Weak Gibbs measures and large deviations

Let (X,T) be a dynamical system, where X is a compact metric space and T a continuous onto map. For weak Gibbs measures we prove large deviations estimates.Comment: 5 page

Years of Dressing Dangerously: Modern Women, National Identity and Moral Crisis in Sukarno's Indonesia, 1945-1966

This dissertation on the role of women, modernity and moral crisis in the development of the Indonesian nation during the Sukarno Era (1945-1966), argues that a full understanding of the mass killings of the Indonesian left in the aftermath of the “coup” of September 30, 1965 is incomplete without an analysis of Indonesian women’s modernity at its center. The idea of Indonesia was modern, based on a new “Indonesian national identity,” conceived of as “one archipelago, one language, one people.” The press played an important role in imagining the new nation. Women’s magazines played a particularly important role in providing a space where literate, mostly urban women could flesh out what it meant to be simultaneously “Indonesian” and “modern.” Indonesian modernity was complex, attempting to “take the best” from western technical modernity without losing a cultural base of “authentically eastern” values. The result was a specific Indonesian way of being “moderen” which the dissertation analyzes as a “multiply enmeshed cultural web” of the interplay of both local and global influences. Tensions that arose over what might be “too much” modernity were often conceived of as instances of “moral crisis” that put the future of the Indonesian nation at risk. Such crises often centered around women, their clothing and makeup, their bodies and their comportment. When oversteps were perceived as particularly blatant or salacious, violence was sometimes seen as an appropriate corrective. Under Sukarno, Indonesia was also beset by both political and regional pressures that sought to tear the nation apart. However, politically active women worked together in coalition as “Mothers of the Nation,” connected across Indonesia’s various political “streams,” to advance a progressive political agenda aligned with Sukarno’s vision of the nation. In October 1965, mounting political tensions in Indonesia exploded when a group of senior generals were kidnapped from their homes in the middle of the night and shot. The army blamed the Communist Party for the deaths, and exacted harsh revenge, leading to the destruction of the Indonesian Left, through the mass killings of at least half a million people. To do this, the army invented and deployed a salacious story about Communist women who were present at the killings of the generals, alleging they had sexually tortured the generals before executing them. In the words of John Roosa, the story served as a “pretext” for the annihilation of the Indonesian left under the army’s command. This narrative has received significant attention from historians. To date, however, there is little explanation of why it actually “worked” in an Indonesian cultural context. The dissertation proposes that the “Lubang Buaya Narrative” about Communist women is best read as a massive instance of moral crisis. The dissertation argues, therefore, that the narrative was constructed as a “post-text” of Indonesian cultural tensions about modernity. Recent historiography has argued that the mass killings represent an instance of genocide. The dissertation asks how historians might use the details of the construction of Indonesian women as modern, including the web of cultural meanings imbedded in questions of clothing, beauty, comportment and motherhood in the pages of women’s magazines to serve as markers for reading the causes of the Indonesian killings as genocide. The Sukarno era, and particularly its bloody end, therefore, cannot be understood without a complex reading of the lives of Indonesian women.PHDHistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163162/1/rowcoach_1.pd

Some conodonts of the Upper Richmond of Ohio, and their application in determining stratigraphic position

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Plausibility Pleading Employment Discrimination

The Supreme Court’s unanimous 2002 decision in Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A., which took a very permissive approach to pleading discrimination claims, may or may not remain good law after Ashcroft v. Iqbal. As is well known, Iqbal took a restrictive approach to pleading generally under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and its application to employment discrimination cases could pose serious problems for plaintiffs attempting to get into federal court. In addition, there is certainly a tension between Swierkiewicz and Iqbal. This is in part because the former is a strong reaffirmation of notice pleading as it has traditionally been understood whereas the latter makes clear that “plausible pleading” is something very different. But it is also because Iqbal was, after all, a discrimination case, albeit brought under the Constitution rather than a federal statute, and its finding that the discrimination alleged there was not plausibly pled could easily be applied to statutes such as Title VII, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Numerous scholars have analyzed Iqbal generally and several have addressed the application of plausible pleading to claims under the antidiscrimination laws. A respectable view is that Swierkiewicz remains good law, although the commentators recognize legitimate questions about its continued vitality. This Article, while agreeing that readings of both Swierkiewicz and Iqbal would permit this result, nevertheless explores the contrary possibility: supposing Iqbal sub silentio overruled Swierkiewicz and applies plausible pleading to discrimination claims, what must a plaintiff plead to avoid dismissal for failure to state a claim? The most obvious response is that the plaintiff should plead a prima facie case of discrimination under the traditional McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green standard. Although Swierkiewicz held that pleading a prima facie case was not necessary, in part because there are other ways of proving discrimination, it did not suggest that such pleading would be insufficient. There are, however, complications with pleading a traditional prima facie case that should be explored. Further, there are at least three alternatives for attorneys who cannot, consistent with Rule 11, allege such a prima facie case. First, the Article proposes that the plaintiff might survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion by pleading “direct evidence” of discrimination. Although the term has a checkered history in discrimination jurisprudence, the pleading context suggests a new look at an old concept. Second, the Article addresses the possibility of pleading the existence of a “comparator” whose more favorable treatment than the plaintiff may make the claim of discrimination plausible. Third, and perhaps most radically, the Article argues that plaintiffs should be able to take the Supreme Court at its word in Iqbal that, in deciding a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, a district court must take as true all facts, as opposed to legal conclusions, alleged in the complaint. The Article proposes that plaintiffs plead the existence of social science research showing the pervasiveness of discrimination. Taken as true, this body of literature may well “nudge” a particular claim across the border drawn by the Supreme Court between a “possible” claim and a “plausible” one