Clerihews: A Personal History

It was many years ago that I first became acquainted with a form of light verse called a clerihew. At the time I was reading some poetry by W. H. Auden. Most of Auden\u27s poetry was serious, but some of it was light, and I especially liked the following:James WattWas the hard-boiled kind of ScotHe thought any dreamSheer waste of steam

\u3cem\u3eSpokeo v. Robins\u3c/em\u3e and the Constitutional Foundations of Statutory Standing

In Spokeo v. Robins, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to address the following question: Does Congress have the power to confer standing upon an individual claiming that a privately owned website violated its federal statutory obligation to take specified steps designed to promote accuracy in aggregating and reporting his personal and financial data even if the resulting false disclosures did not produce concrete harm? This somewhat arcane standing issue involves congressional power to broaden the scope of the first of three constitutional standing requirements: injury in fact, causation, and redressability. Although the case does not directly address the prudential standing elements—no right to enforce the rights of others or to litigate diffuse harms—this Essay will demonstrate that along with the remaining constitutional elements of standing, the analysis also implicates these prudential barriers. Spokeo presents a valuable opportunity to solidify standing doctrine’s proper constitutional foundations. This Essay demonstrates that properly understood, standing doctrine is designed to preserve and protect congressional primacy in lawmaking. This includes deferring to Congress’s policy decision concerning who has standing to enforce its statutes

Factors effecting families' response to a treatment offer by a child guidance clinic

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston UniversityThis is a study of factors in the initial contact related to families' handling of a treatment plan offered by a child guidance clinic. When a clinic considers cases for treatment plans it is important to know as closely as possible that the family can and will use such help. The needs of the community for the helping services of the clinic as shown, in part, by the waiting lists are a charge to the clinic to offer treatment wisely. The nature of many of the problem situations presented for consideration is such that the decision can be a crucial one in the lives of whole families. Clinics do not offer a simple remedy, but a complex problem-solving process which involves two or more members of the family in a new kind of experience with the combined efforts of the clinic team. Each clinic has objective criteria to consider in making its selection of cases and each has a vital interest in broadening this objective base for a more scientific procedure. This study of factors relating to acceptance of treatment is pertinent to that interest. Two groups of twelve cases presenting similar problems have been compared. One group consists of cases which did not accept treatment when it was offered. The other is a group of cases which accepted and entered into treatment. The application interviews as recorded in the case records were examined by means of a schedule. The schedule was constructed to examine factual data and the attitudes of both parents toward help, toward their child and toward the problem. The information from the two groups was then contrasted in an attempt to identify any significant differences. [TRUNCATED

Grains of Sand or Butterfly Effect: Standing, the Legitimacy of Precedent, and Reflections on \u3cem\u3eHollingsworth\u3c/em\u3e and \u3cem\u3eWindsor\u3c/em\u3e

One test of whether a scholarly work has achieved canonical status is to ask respected scholars in the field which works, setting aside their own, are essential reads. William Fletcher’s article, The Structure of Standing, now in its twenty-fifth year, would almost certainly emerge at the top of any such lists among standing scholars. And yet, while many at this conference have built upon Fletcher’s insights, there remains notable disagreement concerning standing doctrine’s normative foundations. The central dispute concerns whether standing doctrine should be celebrated as furthering a “private-rights,” or instead, condemned as thwarting a “public-rights,” adjudicatory model. In a series of works employing social choice theory, I have presented standing doctrine as furthering a private-rights adjudicatory model. In separate high-profile works, Professors Heather Elliott and Jonathan Siegel have criticized this account, claiming it rests on the “great myth” that the judicial lawmaking is inextricably tied to dispute resolution, with precedent creation merely an incidental byproduct. Instead, Elliott and Siegel contend that the federal judiciary, including especially the Supreme Court, has the primary responsibility of announcing constitutional rules, with case resolutions a justificatory vehicle for performing that task. Siegel further maintains that if, as the social choice model suggests, standing raises the cost to ideological litigants of timing the path of case law to influence developing doctrine, it is no more effective than tossing a “few grains of sand” into the gears of the judicial-lawmaking apparatus. In this Article I respond to these critiques and defend the social choice analysis of standing and the private-rights model on which it rests. First, these and other public-rights scholars fail to appreciate that the private-rights model enhances the normative legitimacy and durability of precedent. If the justification for creating precedent is the present favorable conditions of judicial staffing, then the arguments for respecting the resulting precedent erode when those conditions change, favoring those opposing the precedent. Second, these critiques misread the social choice model of standing to imply that relaxing its limiting conditions undermines the claim that with reasonable assumptions, even if there are no changes in Supreme Court staffing, in the disposition of cases below, in intervening precedent, and in the jurisprudential views of sitting justices, ideological litigants can effect substantive doctrine through favorable case orderings. The opposite is true: Relaxing these limiting conditions has the potential to enhance, not diminish, incentives to manipulate case orderings for maximal doctrinal effect. Third, and finally, expanding the social choice analysis to account for (1) delays in lower federal courts or state courts, (2) the results of changed judicial staffing on the Supreme Court, and (3) the bidirectional nature of constitutional and prudential standing rules more likely generates a butterfly effect, with substantial implications for developing doctrine, than an inconsequential tossing of sand into the works of developing precedent

Solar Stirling receiver alternatives for the terrestrial solar application

Concept studies have been completed for four dish-Stirling receivers, i.e., solar only and thermal storage receiver, each of which is either directly coupled or indirectly (heat pipe) coupled to the Stirling engine. The results of these studies are to be applied to systems benefit/cost analysis to determine the most desirable development approach

Measuring Success in Donor Development: Per Capita Giving Levels Highlight Successful Strategies

Every foundation wants to maximize its investment returns and achieve social impact with the leanest possible organization. Many standard metrics exist -- such as portfolio returns and operating cost ratios -- to help community foundations compare themselves to their peers and set appropriate performance targets. But community foundations also need to raise money from donors, and finding meaningful ways to measure this crucial aspect of their performance is much more complicated.It's easy enough to measure how much money comes in the door, but merely comparing the total contributions received by different community foundations doesn't take into account important variations in size and location. If community foundations are to learn from each other's success, they must find ways to cancel out these distortions and create truly comparable performance data. None of the measures community foundations currently use to gauge the success of their fundraising yet achieves this goal:Total ContributionsComparing total gifts received requires a rigorously-defined peer group to be meaningful. And given the substantial diversity in population and wealth within the areas served by community foundations, identifying a meaningful peer group is very difficult.Past PerformanceComparing this year's gifts with those received in prior years eliminates the challenge of peer group selection, but it doesn't permit foundations to learn from each other. Lower performing foundations will miss opportunities to improve and, of course, one or two large gifts in any year can make year-to-year comparisons meaningless.New funds establishedUsing the aggregate number of new funds established to serve as a proxy for the foundation's penetration of potential donors in its service area is also susceptible to the low expectations trap: It is difficult to measure performance or to set objectives effectively without a sense of the region's potential for giving.Our experience suggests that a new measure -- per capita giving within the foundation's service area -- combined with a new goal setting process can enable community foundations to better understand their own performance and highlight successful strategies

SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT IN WHOLESALE FOOD DISTRIBUTION CENTERS

Discusses the amount of solid wastes generated by wholesale food distribution centers, methods and cost of existing waste disposal systems and recommendations for improvements.Environmental Economics and Policy,

GHOST balloons around Antarctica

The GHOST balloon position as a function of time data shows that the atmospheric circulation around the Antarctic Continent at the 100 mb and 200 mb levels is complex. The GHOST balloons supposedly follow the horizontal trajectory of the air at the balloon level. The position of GHOST balloon 98Q for a three month period in 1968 is shown. The balloon moved to within 2 deg of the South Pole on 1 October 1968 and then by 9 December 1968 was 35 deg from the South Pole and close to its position on 1 September 1968. The balloon generally moved from west to east but on two occasions moved in the opposite direction for a few days. The latitude of GHOST balloons 98Q and 149Z which was at 200 mb is given. Both balloons tended to get closer to the South Pole in September and October. Other GHOST balloons at the same pressure and time period may not indicate similar behavior

A critical discussion on the planning considerations of electric propulsion for space missions

Space missions using electric propulsion systems launched by Saturn V or larger boosters - use of chemical and nuclear rocket