The changing vista of the northern Northwest Coast Indian Deer Ritual

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1999From time immemorial until the start of the 20th century, when disputing Tlingits decided to end a conflict, Tlingit clan leaders and elders met in council and negotiated an equitable peace settlement. After reaching a satisfactory negotiation, a peace dance took place to validate the settlement. Besides the Tlingits, the neighboring Indian groups in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia practiced this custom. When the European and Western powers assumed governance, the deer ritual--a judicial function of the Pacific Northwest Coast Indians--was modified, and new forms appeared. Presently, while elders know their regional history, many do not remember the protocol and formalities of the rite that was performed. This thesis undertakes a step into the past when the rite had an active and viable purpose in settling disputes and validating agreementsBiographical data -- Introduction -- Tlingit law -- Negotiation -- Tlingit territory and social organization -- Tlingit temperament -- Village defense -- The anatomy of warfare -- Early accounts of peace overtures in the 18th and early 19th centuries -- International peace ceremonies -- Peace settlements not involving the Deer Ritual -- Negotiation and the Deer Ritual -- Speculation concerning the origin of the Guwakaan (Deer) Ritual -- Conclusion -- Appendix I. Some symbols pertaining to the meaning of war and Guwakaan, Deer Ritual -- References cited

Designing a High Throughput Bounded Multi-Producer, Multi-Consumer Queue

Multi-Producer Multi-Consumer (MPMC) Queues are the most natural way to solve the common parallel programming Producer-Consumer Problem. The problem arises when a group of entities need work to be done, and another group of entities are responsible for doing said work. The problem is then of how should work be allocated to the workers such that neither group is hindered by the communication required for work allocation. MPMC Queues can solve the problem of allocation by functioning as a global location for work requests to be posted by the former group and later removed to be acted on by the latter group joining the two, but as the amount of work to be done by a system increases, this singular connection can easily become a bottleneck preventing work from being done. Current high performance MPMC Queue implementations strictly enforce that work posted first will be scheduled to a worker first, and while this improves the latency of a system, it can greatly decrease the overall work throughput, crippling bulk data-processing application performance. This project aims to create an MPMC Queue that is focused on overall throughput and investigate what performance optimizations can be made by sacrificing the standard latency guarantees

Security, uncertainty, and urban futures: a conversation with Austin Zeiderman

How has the opposition between “civilized” urbanity and “barbaric” rurality conditioned future imaginaries in Latin America? What are the historical links between urbanization and attempts to establish social and spatial order during colonization, after independence, and in other political conjunctures? In the following conversation, anthropologist Austin Zeiderman reviews historical perspectives on Latin American cities with a focus on the future. With an interest in the genealogy of urban imaginaries, he sheds light on contemporary preoccupations with future uncertainty and the specific role that security plays therein. Ever since the conquistadors set foot on the continent, he argues, the future has exerted affective power via hopes, threats, and visions of both utopian and dystopian possibilities

Estimates of abundance : VIMS small fish trawl survey, York and Rappahannock Rivers, 1955 to 1982

This report presents information on catch of iuvenile fish with a 30 ft. semi-ballon trawl in the York and Rappahannock Rivers, and graphically compares those with the commercial landings in Virqinia waters for the years 1955 throuqh part of 1982

How Many Americans Are Unnecessarily Incarcerated?

While mass incarceration has emerged as an urgent national issue to be addressed, the reforms currently offered are dwarfed by the scale of the problem. The country needs bolder solutions.How can we significantly cut the prison population while still keeping the country safe? This report puts forth one answer to that question. Our path forward is not offered as the only answer or as an absolute. Rather, it is meant to provide a starting point for a broader discussion about how the country can rethink and revamp the outdated sentencing edifice of the last four decades. This report is the product of three years of research conducted by one of the nation's leading criminologists, experienced criminal justice lawyers, and statistical researchers. First, we conducted an in-depth examination of the federal and state criminal codes, as well as the convictions and sentences of the nationwide prison population (1.46 million prisoners serving time for 370 different crime categories) to estimate how many people are currently incarcerated without a sufficient public safety rationale. We find that alternatives to incarceration are more effective and just penalties for many lower-level crimes. We also find that prison sentences can safely be shortened for a discrete set of more serious crimes. Second, based on these findings, we propose a new, alternative framework for sentencing grounded in the science of public safety and rehabilitation.Many have argued that regimented sentencing laws should be eliminated and replaced with broad judicial discretion. Others counter that this would reinstate a system wherein judges are free to deliver vastly divergent sentences for the same crime, potentially exacerbating racial disparities and perpetuating the tradition of harsh sentences.This report proposes a new solution, building on these past proposals. We advocate that today's sentencing laws should change to provide default sentences that are proportional to the specific crime committed and in line with social science research, instead of based on conjecture. These defaults should mandate sentences of alternatives to incarceration for lower-level crimes. For some other crimes that warrant incarceration, they should mandate shorter sentences. Judges should have discretion to depart from these defaults in special circumstances, such as a defendant's criminal history, mental health or addiction issues, or specifics of the crime committed. This approach is grounded in the premise that the first principle of 21st century sentencing should be to protect public safety, and that sentences should levy the most effective, proportional, and cost-efficient sanction to achieve that goal. It aims to create more uniform sentences and reduce disparities, while preserving judicial discretion when needed. Our proposed sentencing defaults for each crime weigh four factors:Seriousness: Murder, for instance, should be treated as a far graver crime than writing a bad check.Victim Impact: If a person has been harmed in the commission of a crime, especially physically, weight toward a more serious sentence.Intent: If the actor knowingly and deliberately violated the law, a more severe sanction may be appropriate.Recidivism: Those more likely to reoffend may need more intervention. Our findings and recommendations, determined by applying the four factors above to the prison population, are detailed below. (The rationale for these factors and our full methodology is described in Appendix A.

ANS hard X-ray experiment development program

The hard X-ray (HXX) experiment is one of three experiments included in the Dutch Astronomical Netherlands Satellite, which was launched into orbit on 30 August 1974. The overall objective of the HXX experiment is the detailed study of the emission from known X-ray sources over the energy range 1.5-30keV. The instrument is capable of the following measurements: (1) spectral content over the full energy range with an energy resolution of approximately 20% and time resolution down to 4 seconds; (2) source time variability down to 4 milliseconds; (3) silicon emission lines at 1.86 and 2.00keV; (4) source location to a limit of one arc minute in ecliptic latitude; and (5) spatial structure with angular resolution of the arc minutes. Scientific aspects of experiment, engineering design and implementation of the experiment, and program history are included