Jeremy Bentham, social criticism and levels of meaning

Published in an e-journal

Novels in the Internet Age: “House of Leaves” and New Media’s Influence in Contemporary Fictional Literature

The now-ubiquitous nature of the Internet has changed the way we see the world, and these changes must be reflected in how we experience other media forms. Postmodern works such as Harry Mathew\u27s The Journalist have challenged the way we read and electronic literature like Steve Tomasula\u27s Toc have stretched the use of the digital to produce stories; but contemporary literature combines the medium and techniques of postmodern literature with the character of the digital. This project explores the influences of the characteristics and attitudes of the Internet medium as they are partially realized in Jonathan Safran Foer\u27s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and as they are fully realized in Mark Z. Danielewski\u27s House of Leaves. It reveals through these examples the focus on multimedia, connectivity, and interactivity imbued in the literary medium through consideration of the Internet-savvy reader. By examining the form and content of these texts, this study shows how literature can come to grips with a medium that may consider neither form nor content but instead motion, comparison, and experience

A generalization of Vassiliev's planarity criterion

Motivated by his studies in knot theory V. Vassiliev introduced $X$-graphs as regular 4-valent graph with a structure of pairs of opposite edges at each vertex. He conjectured the conditions under which $X$-graph can be embedded into a plane respecting the the $X$-structure at every vertex. The conjecture was proved by V.Manturov. Here we generalize these results for graphs with vertices of valency 4 or 6, *-graphs. A problem of such generalization was posted by A.Skopenkov

The liberal Hegelianism of Edward Caird: or, how to transcend the social economics of Kant and the romantics

Purpose: The paper establishes that Edward Caird developed a distinctive form of liberal Hegelianism out of his critical responses to Kant, the romantic tradition of Rousseau, Goethe and Wordsworth and indeed Hegel himself. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a philosophical reconstruction of Caird's social economics that is based on a close reading of a very wide range of Caird's writings including his recently published lectures on social ethics and political economy. Findings: Caird's theory of historical development underpinned his writings on social economics. One of his greatest debts in this regard was to his interpretation of the romantics, which introduced a rich conception of higher human capacities into his critical analysis of capitalism. When combined with his critique of Kantian formalism, this led Caird towards Hegel. Yet, Caird's concerns regarding corporatism's stultifying tendencies led him to develop a dynamic form of liberal Hegelianism, which placed far greater trust than had Hegel in the ability of free conscientious citizens to restructure and enrich established social categories (classes, professions, gender roles and so on) and the system of nations which those categories helped to constitute. Practical implications: If Caird's liberal Hegelianism were to be adopted today, we could live in much freer, fairer and enriching communities than we do at present. Originality/value: Edward Caird has been wrongly neglected in intellectual histories of Anglo-American political theory, and while his writings on Kant's critical philosophy have received some scholarly attention, his critique of romanticism has never received the attention it deserves. This also draws on manuscripts that have been published only within the past five years, having been edited for the first time by the author of this paper

What we leave behind: poetry, music, and Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney’s death in late summer, 2013, came as a shock and is now a residual sadness. I miss his guidance, his humanity, his humor. Heaney’s presence, through the poems, has been a richly-colored thread connecting each stage of my life—or at least of how I made sense of them. I sometimes think most everything I do is still stitched with his color (the color of a woodland in bloom). . .

Geometric Bounds for Favard Length

Given a set in the plane, the average length of its projections over all directions is called Favard length. This quantity measures the size of a set, and is closely related to metric and geometric properties of the set such as rectifiability, Hausdorff dimension, and analytic capacity. In this paper, we develop new geometric techniques for estimating Favard length. We will give a short geometrically motivated proof relating Hausdorff dimension to the decay rate of the Favard length of neighborhoods of a set. We will also show that the sequence of Favard lengths of the generations of a self-similar set is convex; this has direct applications to giving lower bounds on Favard length for various fractal sets.Comment: 7 page

The Impact of Inter-Hospital Transfer on Clinical Outcomes following Endovascular Treatment for Acute Ischemic Stroke

PURPOSE Hospitals designated as primary stroke centers offer noninvasive treatment for acute ischemic stroke, but only comprehensive stroke centers are equipped to provide endovascular treatment. When stroke patients needing endovascular treatment present to the emergency department at a primary stroke center, they then require inter-hospital transfer to a comprehensive center for definitive treatment. Recent studies have found significant treatment delays and poor clinical outcomes in patients requiring inter-hospital transfer1,2. The primary aim of this study is to determine if inter-hospital transfer impacts clinical outcomes after endovascular treatment for acute ischemic stroke. A secondary aim is to determine whether inter-hospital transfer coincides with any significant treatment delay. METHODS This study involves retrospective chart review for 107 patients undergoing endovascular treatment for acute ischemic stroke at one of three hospitals in Austin, Texas from October 2016 to September 2018. 26 patients required inter-hospital transfer, while 81 (the control group) presented directly to a hospital offering endovascular treatment. Two-tailed T- and U-tests were used for analysis of parametric and non-parametric variables pertaining to time intervals and baseline characteristics. Odds ratios were calculated to compare dichotomized outcomes between groups, with significance determined by chi-square. RESULTS Inter-hospital transfer significantly prolonged onset to groin (mean difference = 37.2 min, p=.02). The transfer group was more likely to experience intracranial hemorrhage (53.9% > 22.2%, p<.01). Clinical outcomes did not significantly differ between groups. CONCLUSIONS Although observed trends in these data suggest poor outcomes for transfer patients, small sample size limits the significance of these findings. However, the significant treatment delay seen in the transfer group warrants a discussion on city protocol changes regarding patient transport via emergency services. Protocol changes favoring direct delivery of patients to comprehensive stroke centers may reduce treatment delay and yield improved clinical outcomes.Dell Medical Schoo