Tolkien\u27s Middle-Earth: Race Personified through Orcs

From the time of Middle-earth’s creation, a complex society of hierarchies has existed both within and among the different races and creatures in Tolkien’s world. The race-constructed hierarchies speak to the way in which the different races understand themselves and those around them, just as people do in today’s modern society. While embarking on the journeys of this world with Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, with Frodo and the fellowship’s journey across Middle-earth to destroy the ring and Sauron in Mordor in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and from the creation of Arda and Middle-earth until the Third Age in The Silmarillion, the reader begins to get a greater understanding of the multifaceted intricacies the creatures of this world create in view of their differences. However, what role do the creatures of Middle-earth accept for themselves if they were mere corruptions of another race by someone or something that is seemingly purely evil? The Orcs present this existential question throughout Tolkien’s world, most engagingly in The Lord of the Rings. The reader is left to determine for themselves not only how the Orcs are viewed by the rest of Middle-earth, but also how they understand themselves, where they come from, and if they are inherently evil because of the way in which they were created. Understanding the Orcs’ racial identity will first be examined by understanding their creation story, then by examining the way in which they live and function among other Orcs, both with and without a formal leader, and lastly by addressing the way other races in Middle-earth refer to and understand Orcs as a creature in their world and obstacles on their journeys. Essential to this discussion is the determination of whether or not the conception of an inferior and superior race is a conscious ideological construction

Mount makes liquid nitrogen-cooled gamma ray detector portable

Liquid nitrogen-cooled gamma ray detector system is made portable by attaching the detector to a fixture which provides a good thermal conductive path between the detector and the liquid nitrogen in a dewar flask and a low heat leak path between the detector and the external environment

Harm, authority and generalizability: further experiments on the moral/conventional distinction

Certain researchers in the field of moral psychology, following Turiel (1983), argue that children and adults in different cultures make a distinction between moral and conventional transgressions. One interpretation of the theory holds that moral transgressions elicit a signature moral response pattern while conventional transgressions elicit a signature conventional response pattern (e.g., Kelly et al. 2007). Four dimensions distinguish the moral response pattern from the conventional response pattern (e.g., Nichols 2004). 1. HARM/JUSTICE/RIGHTS – Subjects justify the wrongness of moral transgressions by stating that they involve a victim that is harmed, whose rights have been violated or who has been subject to an injustice. Conventional transgressions do not involve a victim that is harmed, whose rights have been violated or who has been subject to an injustice. 2. AUTHORITY – Subjects judge moral transgressions as wrong independent of structures of authority while the wrongness of conventional transgressions can be changed by an authority. 3. GENERALIZABILITY – Subjects judge moral transgressions as generalizably wrong, i.e., independent of time and place, while conventional transgressions’ wrongness depends on time and place. 4. SERIOUSNESS – Subjects judge moral transgressions as more seriously wrong than conventional transgressions. Others have criticized this view for a diversity of reasons. Relevant for our purposes is that, first, there appear to be cultural differences in what constitutes a moral transgression (e.g., Haidt et al. 1993) and second, it is unclear what the exact hypotheses are, surrounding this supposed moral/conventional distinction (e.g., Stich et al. 2009). I will present planned and ongoing experimental research that investigates two specific problems we encountered in the moral-conventional literature. First of all, we cannot draw reliable conclusions from previous work about the generalizability of the wrongness of different kinds of transgressions. In previous experiments, differences in time and place are often but not always confounded with a variety of other differences. For example, Huebner et al. (2010) ask participants if the depicted act would be OK for someone who lived elsewhere where everyone else did this. Moreover, when varying time and/or place, participants are likely to assume that other things differ as well. In our study, we vary time and/or place in a variety of scenarios in order to investigate what assumptions participants make when confronted with the generalizability question. Second, it is an open question as to what extent any transgression will universally elicit one of the two signature response patterns. In our study, we make use of existing differences in participants’ value hierarchy to test this. For one and the same scenario, we compare the response of participants for whom authority is an important value with the results of participants for whom authority is not an important value, in order to see if there are differences in the two groups’ response patterns. References: Haidt J., Koller S. & Dias M. 1993. Affect, culture and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65:613-628. Huebner B., Lee, J.L. & Hauser, M.D. 2010. The Moral-Conventional Distinction in Mature Moral Competence. Journal of Cognition and Culture 10: 1-26. Kelly D., Stich S., Haley K.J., Eng S.J. & Fessler D.M.T. 2007. Harm, Affect, and the Moral/Conventional Distinction. Mind & Language 22:117-131. Nichols S. 2004. Sentimental Rules: on the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment. Oxford University Press. Stich S., Fessler, D.M.T. & Kelly D. 2009. On the Morality of Harm: A response to Sousa, Holbrook and Piazza. Cognition 113:93-97. Turiel E. 1983. The Development of Social Knowledge. Morality & Convention. Cambridge University Press

WETAIR: A computer code for calculating thermodynamic and transport properties of air-water mixtures

A computer program subroutine, WETAIR, was developed to calculate the thermodynamic and transport properties of air water mixtures. It determines the thermodynamic state from assigned values of temperature and density, pressure and density, temperature and pressure, pressure and entropy, or pressure and enthalpy. The WETAIR calculates the properties of dry air and water (steam) by interpolating to obtain values from property tables. Then it uses simple mixing laws to calculate the properties of air water mixtures. Properties of mixtures with water contents below 40 percent (by mass) can be calculated at temperatures from 273.2 to 1497 K and pressures to 450 MN/sq m. Dry air properties can be calculated at temperatures as low as 150 K. Water properties can be calculated at temperatures to 1747 K and pressures to 100 MN/sq m. The WETAIR is available in both SFTRAN and FORTRAN

Operational amplifiers for use in nuclear spectroscopy

Operational amplifiers for nuclear spectroscop

Radiofrequency system analysis of the Lewis cyclotron modification

Computer code for analyzing radio frequency system of modified cyclotro