Core curriculum, general education and other nostrums

What should American educators aim at accomplishing in the closing years of the twentieth century? Everybody agrees that major changes are desirable, but the proposal that is most widely discussed and that is being pushed by Bloom, Bennett and other secular theologians of a right-wing persuasion -- to resusitate "general education," alternatively "core curriculum," alternatively again "the liberal arts" -- would make matters worse, not better. It would be seriously dysfunctional in our proletaritized, polyglot society

Does moral philosophy rest on a mistake?

I have expropriated the title of Prichard's 1912 paperl because, I too answer his question affinnatively. But the mistake I detect is not the one Prichard thought he had uncovered, and his article is a classic example of the mistake I propose to discuss. It is to believe, as some moral philosophers still appear to do, that moral philosophy has a special domain or special method that distinguishes it in some important way from sociology, anthropology, psychology and economics. I shall argue that these moral philosophers are misled by the "philosophical" vocabulary they use

Roles, role modulations and differential moral assessment of role performance

This paper is a further development of the second section of Social Science Working Paper Number 410. I argue here that disagreements over how well or how ill someone has performed in some social role are affected by a widespread tendency to confuse public and private roles. Those who assess performance in a given role by the standards appropriate for private roles will never agree with those who assess the same performance by the standards appropriate for public roles. I illustrate this thesis by examining differing evaluations of a number of typical policy decisions. While I do not expect that this discussion will terminate all such disagreements, I hope it may help disputants to understand what it is they are disagreeing about

Effect of the geomagnetic field on the diffusion of meteor trains

A solution to the problem of the diffusion of a meteor train in the geomagnetic field from an initial line density may be written in closed form in terms of effective diffusion coefficients depending on direction, enabling detailed calculations across the entire range of angle of train to field and relevant heights. While the effective diffusion coefficient in the plane of train and field then remains close to the zero field ambipolar value right up to 90 deg, the effective coefficient in the direction of the normal to plane of train and field drops steadily to its theta = 0 value at theta = 90 deg. At 95 km this corresponds to a change of almost 5 km, in 'diffusion height', that is, the height of an underdense meteor calculated on the basis of the exponential decay of its radar echo. We have estimated the consequent changes in the expected distribution of diffusion heights for various orientations of radar antenna and find the dependence on azimuth is very marked. The effect of the field is relatively minor for a south pointing beam but very strong if the beam is pointing north

Evolution of the Quadrantid meteor stream

According to previous orbital calculations, the last close approach of the Quadrantid stream with Jupiter occurred 3200 years ago at which time the parent comet of the stream may have been captured into its present short-period orbit. If this is the case the stream may only be a few thousand years old. We have modeled the evolution of the stream to determine if such a short time scale is consistent with the observed features of the Quadrantid/ delta- Aquarid/Arietid/Ursid complex. A detailed modeling of a stream consisting of 500 test particles released 4000 yr ago and which included the effects of the gravitational perturbations of 6 planets as well as the likely spread in the initial orbital elements resulting from the ejection of the grains from the comet was carried out. Our calculations indicate that an intense shower should be seen a few days before the Quadrantid shower, and that, 4000 yr is too short a period for the branch corresponding to the D-Arietid branch to appear. We have considered the quasi-constants of motion 1/a and J, the Tisserand quantity, and find that the Ursids and the D-Arietids are unlikely to be members of the complex, and that, the complex is probably be less than 4000 yr old