Yingjin Zhang, ed. China in a polycentric world : essays in Chinese comparative literature

This article reviews the book China in a Polycentric World: Essays in Chinese Comparative Literature edited by Yingjin Zhang

The American Nightmare: The Ford Edsel Flop and Sputnik Terror

During the late 1950s, it seemed everyone was pelting Ford Motor Company’s ill-fated Edsel. What was supposed to be the car of the future and an emblem of American prestige had turned into a symbol of America’s sharp decline. Two years earlier, Ford promised consumers riding on the waves of economic good times that they would no longer have to settle for their old entry-level Ford’s. Instead of allowing middle-class Ford customers to defect to General Motor’s flashy medium-price brands that showed personality and prestige, in 1957 Ford launched the Edsel as the perfect car for these “professional...famil[ies].” Yet soon after the Edsel launched, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite made the good times come to a grinding halt. The triumphant America that Ford designed the Edsel for ceased to exist once the Soviets seemingly conquered outer space, and the failed Edsel only fueled America’s fears that they were slipping behind the Russians. Ultimately Ford tried selling excess, American technological prowess, and the American Dream when the Edsel and Sputnik were proof that all three were in jeopardy

Narcissistic Traits of Police Officers in America

The narcissistic traits of police officers aged 17 to 78 in the United States affect American citizens in various degrees. Improvements made to pre-employment psychological evaluations, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2), the L (Lie) Scale, and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), may detect and screen out police officer candidates with underlying Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). It is important that candidates with NPD be screened out as, if they become officers, they may commit acts of police misconduct, which greatly affect the safety and trust of the American people

Maximizing Symmetric Submodular Functions

Symmetric submodular functions are an important family of submodular functions capturing many interesting cases including cut functions of graphs and hypergraphs. Maximization of such functions subject to various constraints receives little attention by current research, unlike similar minimization problems which have been widely studied. In this work, we identify a few submodular maximization problems for which one can get a better approximation for symmetric objectives than the state of the art approximation for general submodular functions. We first consider the problem of maximizing a non-negative symmetric submodular function $f\colon 2^\mathcal{N} \to \mathbb{R}^+$ subject to a down-monotone solvable polytope $\mathcal{P} \subseteq [0, 1]^\mathcal{N}$. For this problem we describe an algorithm producing a fractional solution of value at least $0.432 \cdot f(OPT)$, where $OPT$ is the optimal integral solution. Our second result considers the problem $\max \{f(S) : |S| = k\}$ for a non-negative symmetric submodular function $f\colon 2^\mathcal{N} \to \mathbb{R}^+$. For this problem, we give an approximation ratio that depends on the value $k / |\mathcal{N}|$ and is always at least $0.432$. Our method can also be applied to non-negative non-symmetric submodular functions, in which case it produces $1/e - o(1)$ approximation, improving over the best known result for this problem. For unconstrained maximization of a non-negative symmetric submodular function we describe a deterministic linear-time $1/2$-approximation algorithm. Finally, we give a $[1 - (1 - 1/k)^{k - 1}]$-approximation algorithm for Submodular Welfare with $k$ players having identical non-negative submodular utility functions, and show that this is the best possible approximation ratio for the problem.Comment: 31 pages, an extended abstract appeared in ESA 201

Even Better than the Real Thing

In an era where the youth were obsessed with an appearance of success and being hip, when Coke finally altered its New Coke brand identity to appeal to the youth, they still could not make the youth accept New Coke. In the end when Coke had the chance to market to the trendy Generation X in 1985, they focused on taste instead of adapting the brand to fit youth trends. When they finally changed the strategy to appeal to the youth, it was far too late. The “smart shoppers” of the 1980s had already identified New Coke as a failure and moved on

Book review: campaign communication and political marketing

James Moran reviews an extensively well-researched and thorough book dealing with every level and stage of political campaigning

How to change the world: tales of Marx and Marxism

James Moran takes a closer look at Eric Hobsbawm’s work on the relevance of Marxism for the 21st century. This is a serious, detailed and lucidly written collection, which gives the reader a rigorous account of Marxism. Though not, perhaps, a text for someone approaching Marxism for the first time, Hobsbawm’s experience certainly impresses one already familiar with Marxism’s central ideas. How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism. Eric Hobsbawm. January 2011. Little, Brown

Book review: climate policy after Copenhagen

Karsten Neuhoff’s compact contribution aims to scope the role of and recent experience with carbon pricing, and provides all the reasons why a global carbon pricing scheme is a truly formidable undertaking, finds Dominic Mora