The Catholic Case: The Index of Prohibited Books

Sometimes it takes a while for the word to get out, or for it to get in. It has been said that, in India in 1948 as the British were leaving, there were villages that had not yet heard that they had arrived. Similarly, there may be villages in Tibet that have not yet heard that the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959. Deep in Siberia in the mid 1930\u27s, there were communities of Old Believers who did not know of the October Revolution in 1917. Googooling the words, Index of Prohibited Books, resulted in more than a million references. A perusal of the first seven entries revealed that none took any note that the Roman Catholic Index of Prohibited Books had been terminated in 1966, forty years before 2006. Similarly, the same perusal does not reveal the reasons why the Catholic Church abandoned what to many outside the Church had seemed one of its negative defining features, nor the reasons why the Church has become one of the world\u27s greatest defenders of a freedom of religion that precludes the prohibiting, censoring, and banning of books

Book Review: Rediscovering God with Transcendental Argument: A Contemporary Interpretation of Monistic Kashmiri Saiva Philosophy

A review of Rediscovering God with Transcendental Argument: A Contemporary Interpretation of Monistic Kashmiri Saiva Philosophy by David Peter Lawrence

Angels and Gods: A (Radically) Orthodox Experiment

This is the third in a series of orthodox Catholic theological experiments that I am conducting within the theology of relationship of Catholic faith to other religions. Each experiment attempts to ask a positive, existential question of one of the world religions about the reality of one of their reality assertions. Catholic orthodox theologies have almost always answered these questions in the negative, but in my tentative and provisional judgment the negative answers may be unnecessary. To re-ask the questions using the “eyes of faith,”1 the full weight and depth of orthodoxy must be brought to bear, not as a defensive posture that protects the faith, but instead as an exercise in confident Catholic inclusivity that will see how far it can go, in other words, to explore how inclusive Catholicity and orthodoxy can get

The Asymmetry of ‘Creation’ and ‘Origination’: Contrasts within Comparative Theology

THE following essay is a contribution to comparative theology, particularly in its contrastive dimension. For a successful comparative theology, the two theologies or religious perspectives being compared and contrasted must be described accurately and equally in depth. Where Christian theology in its Catholic dimension is one pole of the comparison, it is important to make a distinction between doctrine and theology which I will do below. Issues of translation also immediately arise

Geometry of River Networks II: Distributions of Component Size and Number

The structure of a river network may be seen as a discrete set of nested sub-networks built out of individual stream segments. These network components are assigned an integral stream order via a hierarchical and discrete ordering method. Exponential relationships, known as Horton's laws, between stream order and ensemble-averaged quantities pertaining to network components are observed. We extend these observations to incorporate fluctuations and all higher moments by developing functional relationships between distributions. The relationships determined are drawn from a combination of theoretical analysis, analysis of real river networks including the Mississippi, Amazon and Nile, and numerical simulations on a model of directed, random networks. Underlying distributions of stream segment lengths are identified as exponential. Combinations of these distributions form single-humped distributions with exponential tails, the sums of which are in turn shown to give power law distributions of stream lengths. Distributions of basin area and stream segment frequency are also addressed. The calculations identify a single length-scale as a measure of size fluctuations in network components. This article is the second in a series of three addressing the geometry of river networks.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables, Revtex4, submitted to PR

Geometry of River Networks I: Scaling, Fluctuations, and Deviations

This article is the first in a series of three papers investigating the detailed geometry of river networks. Large-scale river networks mark an important class of two-dimensional branching networks, being not only of intrinsic interest but also a pervasive natural phenomenon. In the description of river network structure, scaling laws are uniformly observed. Reported values of scaling exponents vary suggesting that no unique set of scaling exponents exists. To improve this current understanding of scaling in river networks and to provide a fuller description of branching network structure, we report here a theoretical and empirical study of fluctuations about and deviations from scaling. We examine data for continent-scale river networks such as the Mississippi and the Amazon and draw inspiration from a simple model of directed, random networks. We center our investigations on the scaling of the length of sub-basin's dominant stream with its area, a characterization of basin shape known as Hack's law. We generalize this relationship to a joint probability density and show that fluctuations about scaling are substantial. We find strong deviations from scaling at small scales which can be explained by the existence of linear network structure. At intermediate scales, we find slow drifts in exponent values indicating that scaling is only approximately obeyed and that universality remains indeterminate. At large scales, we observe a breakdown in scaling due to decreasing sample space and correlations with overall basin shape. The extent of approximate scaling is significantly restricted by these deviations and will not be improved by increases in network resolution.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, Revtex4, submitted to PR

Characterization of subsurface media from locations up- and down-gradient of a uranium-contaminated aquifer.

The processing of sediment to accurately characterize the spatially-resolved depth profiles of geophysical and geochemical properties along with signatures of microbial density and activity remains a challenge especially in complex contaminated areas. This study processed cores from two sediment boreholes from background and contaminated core sediments and surrounding groundwater. Fresh core sediments were compared by depth to capture the changes in sediment structure, sediment minerals, biomass, and pore water geochemistry in terms of major and trace elements including pollutants, cations, anions, and organic acids. Soil porewater samples were matched to groundwater level, flow rate, and preferential flows and compared to homogenized groundwater-only samples from neighboring monitoring wells. Groundwater analysis of nearby wells only revealed high sulfate and nitrate concentrations while the same analysis using sediment pore water samples with depth was able to suggest areas high in sulfate- and nitrate-reducing bacteria based on their decreased concentration and production of reduced by-products that could not be seen in the groundwater samples. Positive correlations among porewater content, total organic carbon, trace metals and clay minerals revealed a more complicated relationship among contaminant, sediment texture, groundwater table, and biomass. The fluctuating capillary interface had high concentrations of Fe and Mn-oxides combined with trace elements including U, Th, Sr, Ba, Cu, and Co. This suggests the mobility of potentially hazardous elements, sediment structure, and biogeochemical factors are all linked together to impact microbial communities, emphasizing that solid interfaces play an important role in determining the abundance of bacteria in the sediments

Conjoint Analysis Versus Rating and Ranking for Values Elicitation and Clarification in Colorectal Cancer Screening

PURPOSE: To compare two techniques for eliciting and clarifying patient values for decision making about colorectal cancer (CRC) screening: choice-based conjoint analysis and a rating and ranking task. METHODS: Using our decision lab registry and university e-mail lists, we recruited average risk adults ages 48-75 for a written, mailed survey. Eligible participants were given basic information about CRC screening and six attributes of CRC screening tests, then randomized to complete either a choice-based conjoint analysis with 16 discrete choice tasks or a rating and ranking task. The main outcome was the most important attribute, as determined from conjoint analysis or participant ranking. Conjoint analysis-based most important attribute was determined from individual patient-level utilities generated using multinomial logistic regression and hierarchical Bayesian modeling. RESULTS: Of the 114 eligible participants, 104 completed and returned questionnaires. Mean age was 57 (range 48-73), 70% were female, 88% were white, 71% were college graduates, and 62% were up to date with CRC screening. Ability to reduce CRC incidence and mortality was the most frequent most important attribute for both the conjoint analysis (56% of respondents) and rating/ranking (76% of respondents) groups, and these proportions differed significantly between groups (absolute difference 20%, 95% CI 3%, 37%, p =0.03). There were no significant differences between groups in proportion with clear values (p = 0.352), intent to be screened (p = 0.226) or unlabelled test preference (p = 0.521) CONCLUSIONS: Choice-based conjoint analysis produced somewhat different patterns of attribute importance than a rating and ranking task, but had little effect on other outcomes

Unified View of Scaling Laws for River Networks

Scaling laws that describe the structure of river networks are shown to follow from three simple assumptions. These assumptions are: (1) river networks are structurally self-similar, (2) single channels are self-affine, and (3) overland flow into channels occurs over a characteristic distance (drainage density is uniform). We obtain a complete set of scaling relations connecting the exponents of these scaling laws and find that only two of these exponents are independent. We further demonstrate that the two predominant descriptions of network structure (Tokunaga's law and Horton's laws) are equivalent in the case of landscapes with uniform drainage density. The results are tested with data from both real landscapes and a special class of random networks.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables (converted to Revtex4, PRE ref added