Women as a Sign of the New? Appointments to South Africa's Constitutional Court since 1994

The aim of the article is to develop our understanding of the role bodies play in processes of institutional change. It does so through developing an approach to the politics of institutional newness that highlights the way in which raced and gendered bodies can become entangled with claims to, or judgements of, “being new.” These questions are explored through South Africa's Constitutional Court, newly established as part of South Africa's transition to democracy in the 1990s and at the center of the broader claims being made about the creation of a new democratic, nonracial, and non-sexist South Africa. Focusing on judicial appointments to the Constitutional Court since 1994, the article draws attention to the ways in which historically excluded bodies, women and black men, have been included into this new space within the judiciary. It is argued that exploring the ways in which institutions lay claim to “being new” through the bodies of historically excluded groups is important for our understanding of the dynamics of institutional change being constituted

The Decisions and Ideal Points of British Law Lords

Policy-sensitive models of judicial behaviour, whether attitudinal or strategic, have largely passed Britain by. This article argues that this neglect has been benign, because explanations of judicial decisions in terms of the positions of individual judges fare poorly in the British case. To support this argument, the non-unanimous opinions of British Law Lords between 1969 and 2009 are analysed. A hierarchical item-response model of individual judges’ votes is estimated in order to identify judges’ locations along a one-dimensional policy space. Such a model is found to be no better than a null model that predicts that every judge will vote with the majority with the same probability. Locations generated by the model do not represent judges’ political attitudes, only their propensity to dissent. Consequently, judges’ individual votes should not be used to describe them in political terms

John Ruskin his theology and faith

John Ruskin (1819-1900) was brought up by wealthy Evangelical parents. By the time he went to Oxford he was already interested in art, architecture and geology, which studies he continued afterwards. His first books. Modem Painters, Vols. 1 and 2, were about art and its relationship to God and nature. Great artists depicted God through their painting of nature, which Ruskin called 'God's second book'. Though Ruskin was outwardly a strong Evangelical, in reality he had serious doubts which he kept concealed from the public. In 1858 he had an 'unconversion' experience while in a Turin chapel, becoming convinced that religion and faith could be better found outside a Church. Both before and after his 'unconversion', he tried unsuccessfully to reconcile his Evangelical upbringing and beliefs with his doubts, depressions and questioning faith. Ruskin's marriage was annulled, but then he fell in love with a girl. Rose La Touche, which relationship caused great emotional crises, partly because she, as a pious young lady, would not accept Ruskin with his 'heathenism'. At about this time Ruskin was becoming interested in Greek mythology, discovering in it religious and moral truths that he could not find in contemporary religion and Church life. In 1860 he wrote Unto This Last which was a severe criticism of 'Political Economy' and the harshness of industrial society. Fran then on he wrote much social criticism, blaming the clergy and Church for allowing these social evils contrary to Christ's teachings. In later life Ruskin gradually accepted the Christian teachings again, with a renewed respect for the Bible. But he remained extremely critical of society, clergy and Church people who did not practice the moral teachings of Christ

The impact of using social media data in crime rate calculations: shifting hot spots and changing spatial patterns

Crime rate is a statistic used to summarize the risk of criminal events. However, research has shown that choosing the appropriate denominator is non-trivial. Different crime types exhibit different spatial opportunities and so does the population at risk. The residential population is the most commonly used population at risk, but is unlikely to be suitable for crimes that involve mobile populations. In this article, we use "crowd-sourced" data in Leeds, England, to measure the population at risk, considering violent crime. These new data sources have the potential to represent mobile populations at higher spatial and temporal resolutions than other available data. Through the use of two local spatial statistics (Getis-Ord GI* and the Geographical Analysis Machine) and visualization, we show that when the volume of social media messages, as opposed to the residential population, is used as a proxy for the population at risk, criminal event hot spots shift spatially. Specifically, the results indicate a significant shift in the city center, eliminating its hot spot. Consequently, if crime reduction/prevention efforts are based on resident population based crime rates, such efforts may not only be ineffective in reducing criminal event risk, but be a waste of public resources

Building cities from slime mould, agents and quantum field theory

Managing the unprecedented growth of cities whilst ensuring that they are sustainable, healthy and equitable places to live, presents significant challenges. Our current thinking conceptualise cities as being driven by processes from the bottom-up, with an emphasis on the role that individual decisions and behaviour play. Multiagent systems, and agent-based modelling in particular, are ideal frameworks for the analysis of such systems. However, identifying the important drivers within an urban system, translating key behaviours from data into rules, quantifying uncertainty and running models in real time all present significant challenges. We discuss how innovations in a diverse range of fields are influencing empirical agent-based models, and how models designed for the simplest biological systems might transform the ways that we understand and manage real cities

\u3ci\u3eHerat: the granary and garden of Central Asia\u3c/i\u3e

Contents: Chapter I. - Argument Chapter II. The new Frontier Chapter III. Herat Chapter IV. Herat: the granary and garden Chapter V. Kandahar to Herat Chapter VI. Mashad to Herat Chapter VII. Herat to Sarrakhs, Merv, and Charjui Chapter VIII. Herat to Maimane and Andkhoi Chapter IX. Herat to Shiborgan, Balkh, Takhtapul, Khuduz, and Faizabad Chapter X. Kabul to Khulm Chapter XI. Herat to Kabu