[Review of] Continuing Perspectives on the Black Diaspora. Revised Edition. Eds. Aubrey W. Bonnett and Calvin B. Holder

As a follow-up to their Emerging Perspectives on the Black Diaspora (published in 1990), authors/editors Aubrey Bonnett and Calvin Holder have given another serious treatment of the African diaspora. In this new volume, they take on new trends, ones that are often underappreciated or neglected within the scholarly community. Continuing Perspectives proffers an examination of some of the new and nuanced challenges which forcibly test the themes of persistence and resilience of the black diaspora communities (xvii). As the authors proclaim in their introduction, the essays in this volume [. . .] try to look back, access current positions, and project into the future and, as such, attempt to make an ongoing contribution to the scholarship and pedagogy in this multi disciplinary, academic field (xvii). With this objective in mind, these authors have fallen short at times through this book

Environmental Personhood and Standing for Nature: Examining the Colorado River case

As the planet faces the growing threat of climate change, environmental advocates are searching for alternative legal avenues to protect natural entities in the courts. In 2017, the Colorado River Ecosystem brought a lawsuit against the State of Colorado for violating its constitutional rights. The advocates behind this action were seeking to establish in federal court two doctrines that have made strides in other countries as part of the international Rights of Nature movement: environmental personhood and standing for nature. Environmental personhood would recognize natural entities as legal persons, endowing them with corresponding rights and duties under the law. Standing for nature would allow such entities to litigate their grievances on their own behalf in court. If courts were to recognize these doctrines, advocates would gain a significant tool to protect natural entities from ecological catastrophe. However, as an analytical reading of the pleadings in the Colorado River case illustrates, litigants must draft robust complaints that specifically address the standing requirements in order to make progress on this front. In Part I, this Note examines corporate personhood as a possible analogy for the development of environmental personhood. Part II discusses Article III standing as background for the justiciability standard environmental litigants must meet and analyzes animal standing as another comparative path. In Part III, the Note turns to the Colorado River lawsuit, critiques its pleadings, and suggests that a stronger litigation strategy would have increased the likelihood of surviving a justiciability challenge. Part IV recounts the international successes of the Rights of Nature movement to provide a global context for the Colorado River case. In Part V, the Note explores the issues around representation of natural entities in court and how some of these challenges might be navigated. Finally, this Note provides a few concluding thoughts on the path forward for environmental personhood and standing for nature

Speaking and Mourning: Working Through Identity and Language in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker

In my essay entitled “Speaking and Mourning: Working Through Identity and Language in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker,” I argue that the novel’s protagonist Henry Park finds himself at a critical juncture in his life at the novel’s beginning. I analyze the protagonist’s relationship to language acquisition and identity, which have been developed by Lee to be associated as traumas. Furthermore, these topics are complicated by the death of his son, Mitt. This loss is a trauma of the heart and of the self for the main character who sees a successful navigation of language and immigration lost by his son’s accidental passing. Lelia and Dr. Luzan are characters that help to promote Henry’s change and working through of the traumas he has encountered. By the novel’s conclusion, Henry has begun to work through his psychological insecurities with language and identity and begins to mourn his son’s death. I find that Lee leaves the reader with a hopeful outlook for the protagonist’s future. This essay theoretically frames Asian American identity and the concept of “working through.

Quantification and description of braking during mountain biking using a novel brake power meter : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sport & Exercise at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Olympic format cross country mountain biking is both physically and technically demanding. The demands of this cycling genre are in contrast to road cycling because of the demanding off-road terrain. With its many obstacles and different surfaces, riders must make their way up and over steep hills a number of times throughout a lap. It’s very easy to be able to measure the performance of the riders on ascending sections of the track thanks to on-the-bike personal power meter that measure the propulsive work rates in the pedals. However, there is currently no commercially available method to assess the way the rider handles the bike on descending sections. This thesis first highlighted the differences in physiological demand of descending on off-road versus on-road (Chapter 4). An interesting finding in Chapter 4 also showed that riders might be able to save energy by adopting a coasting strategy down hills. This caused the researchers to question the bicycle handling attributes that might allow this, which led to the development and validation of a device designed to measure how the rider uses the brakes while riding/racing (Chapter 5). From there, we completed an investigation akin to the early mountain biking descriptive studies (Chapter 6), but instead of focusing on data related to respiratory and metabolic load, the brake power meter was employed. The finding that braking patterns were related to mountain biking performance was not surprising, but being the first team to quantify this was very exciting. Since most of the braking was occurring on the descents in that study, we examined the differences in braking between training groups on an isolated turn (Chapter 7). The finding that inexperienced riders use their brakes differently—and that this results in reduced performance—left no doubt to the importance of braking. From there, we revisited the method used to calculate rear brake power, since current methods led to inaccurate measurement during skidding (Chapter 8). This thesis culminated with the exploration of an algorithm that could quickly and easily describe mountain bike descending performance with one single metric (Chapter 9); the hope is that the normalized brake work algorithm should increase the utility of the brake power meter for training purposes and post-competition performance analysis. Overall, this thesis highlights the need, importance and utility of a bicycle brake power meter to assess mountain bike performance

Competition Among Spatially Differentiated Firms: An Empirical Model with an Application to Cement

The theoretical literature of industrial organization shows that the distances between consumers and firms have first-order implications for competitive outcomes whenever transportation costs are large. To assess these effects empirically, we develop a structural model of competition among spatially differentiated firms and introduce a GMM estimator that recovers the structural parameters with only regional-level data. We apply the model and estimator to the portland cement industry. The estimation fits, both in-sample and out-of-sample, demonstrate that the framework explains well the salient features of competition. We estimate transportation costs to be $0.30 per tonne-mile, given diesel prices at the 2000 level, and show that these costs constrain shipping distances and provide firms with localized market power. To demonstrate policy-relevance, we conduct counter-factual simulations that quantify competitive harm from a hypothetical merger. We are able to map the distribution of harm over geographic space and identify the divestiture that best mitigates harm.