The Case for a Contemplative Philosophy of Education

I argue for the use of contemplative practices, such as meditation, journaling, reflection, etc., as an adjunct or alternative form of pedagogy that can help enrich student engagement, facilitate the creation of a philosophical mind state, and engender intrinsic curiosity and related psychological and/or motivational qualities that are supportive of educational ideals. I report on my own scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research performed in my philosophy classes, as a case study in point. I found that the more times students in my different philosophy courses meditated, the more their subjective responses changed on surveys about their philosophical attitudes and beliefs

The finance and marketing dilemma: Do promotional allowances actually increase revenue and profits for Atlantic City casinos?

Casinos offer free items to attract new guests or to reward their loyal customers. Casino management and marketing personnel believe these promotional allowances are necessary to maintain customers and to increase revenue. Three regression models are run to determine if promotional allowances increase gross revenue, net revenue, and gross operating profit for Atlantic City casinos. Results show that with a $1 increase in promotional allowances there is a significant increase of$4.53 in gross revenue, $3.53 in net revenue, and$1.29 in gross operating profit. These results will help management better understand the effect of offering complimentaries to their customers

What Do Buddhists Think about Free Will?

A critical overview to the bulk of extant Buddhist theories of free will

Earlier Buddhist Theories of Free Will: Compatibilism

A critical review of the first wave of publications on Buddhism and free will between the 1960s and 1980s

Jay L. Garfield, Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy

Book review of Jay Garfield's Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy

Peter Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists

Book review of Peter Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, Pitchstone Publishing, 2013, 280pp., $14.95, ISBN 978-1939578099 (paperback). Foreword by Michael Shermer. Science, Religion & Culture 1:2 (August 2014), 93-9

Analyzing the Relationship Between Systematic Risk and Financial Variables in the Casino Industry

The gaming industry, previous to 2007, had experienced a continued increase in revenues and stock prices, but in late 2007, the industry started to be affected by a recession. To have a better understanding of the relationship between this external economic factor (recession) and a gaming company\u27s systematic risk (beta), this study analyzed which financial ratios are significant predictors of beta and evaluated if these financial ratios better predict beta before or during the recession. The financial ratios examined in this study include return on assets, liabilities as a percentage of assets, asset turnover, quick ratio, EBIT growth rate, and market capitalization. The results revealed that market capitalization was the only variable that had significantly positive impact on beta both before and during the recession. Asset turnover was a significant predictor only before the recession while liabilities as a percentage of assets was significant only during the recession

What Happened to Atlantic City’s Gaming Volume?

Atlantic City casinos were hit by the 2007-2009 recession and the addition of legalized gaming in Pennsylvania at about the same time. Results of this study show the opening of the first three Pennsylvania casinos significantly decreased slot coin-in in Atlantic City while the legalization of table games and the opening of the fourth casino significantly decreased table games drop. After taking this into account, the recession had no significant effect on Atlantic City casino volume. To counteract decreased volumes, casino management needs to understand how much gaming volume they are losing to competition and how much to the recession

A Class of Randomized Primal-Dual Algorithms for Distributed Optimization

Based on a preconditioned version of the randomized block-coordinate forward-backward algorithm recently proposed in [Combettes,Pesquet,2014], several variants of block-coordinate primal-dual algorithms are designed in order to solve a wide array of monotone inclusion problems. These methods rely on a sweep of blocks of variables which are activated at each iteration according to a random rule, and they allow stochastic errors in the evaluation of the involved operators. Then, this framework is employed to derive block-coordinate primal-dual proximal algorithms for solving composite convex variational problems. The resulting algorithm implementations may be useful for reducing computational complexity and memory requirements. Furthermore, we show that the proposed approach can be used to develop novel asynchronous distributed primal-dual algorithms in a multi-agent context

Glass Ceilings & Leaky Pipelines: Gender Disparity in the Casino Industry

While women account for over half the hospitality workforce there is a gap in leadership positions. This study evaluates 10,950 management positions in 972 United States commercial and Native American casinos, as of December 2016. The results show women hold 35.5% of manager and above positions. Women lead in departments such as human resources, public relations, and sales and events, but lag in casino operations management. This demonstrates horizontal occupational segregation. The results also indicate women represent 46.7% of managers, but significantly less of executive leadership. Women held only 19.4% of owner, president, and chief positions. This suggests vertical occupational segregation or a potential glass ceiling. Gaps in vertical leadership occur across individual departments as well