This paper briefly reviews the theories that seek to explain the phenomenon of corporate charitable donations and then provides a review of the empirical issues that have arisen in previous studies in this area. The findings of an analysis of charitable donations data from the entire U.K. FTSE index for the years 1985–2000 are then reported. These findings include the observation of a time-related increase in charitable donations, which is compared with an earlier study to give a 24 year history (...) of charitable donations in the U.K. The findings note little responsiveness of the monetary value of charitable donations to the economic performance of firms. An international comparison over time against U.S. trends is also reported and shows how U.S. corporations have traditionally been more generous than U.K. firms, but that the trend in the U.S. is downwards. Membership of a U.K.-based "tithing" club (the PerCent Club) is shown to be associated with higher profit performance against non-members. Members' charitable contributions against profit are shown to be higher than the FTSE mean although short of the 0.5% target figure in "cash" terms. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of these findings in relation to the theoretical positions advanced for corporate philanthropy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Teaching Ethics in the Health Care Setting Part I:Survey of the LiteratureMary Carrington Coutts (bio)The last twenty years have brought important changes to health care and health care education. Educators and students alike face an enormous number of new fields of study and new medical technologies. Health care professionals and institutions are also facing new challenges in the form of shrinking economic resources, and the AIDS epidemic. They must (...) also respond to increased patient participation in health care decisions, and public concern about abortion and euthanasia. These challenges to the health care professional have compelled educators to accommodate ethics within their already overcrowded curriculum. Those same dilemmas have influenced health care institutions to become active in health care ethics education.Medical ethics education gained a foothold in the United States during the late 1960s, when the medical schools of Pennsylvania State University, the University of Florida, and the State University of New York at Stonybrook established programs in the humanities (Pellegrino 1982). In 1978 Robert Veatch noted that formal teaching in medical ethics was rare; most institutions that taught medical ethics used "informal instruction in the apprenticeship mode" (Veatch 1978). However, by 1982 a survey by the American Medical Association (AMA) revealed that all but one of the 127 medical schools had courses that included medical ethics. Thirty eight of these had medical ethics as a required course (Pellegrino 1985). And by 1989, 43 of the 127 medical schools had separate courses in medical ethics, while 100 covered medical ethics within required courses. Medical ethics is now an accepted part of medical curriculum, though it is not fully mature, and its future remains somewhat unclear (Miles 1989).The evolution of ethics in the nursing curriculum has essentially mirrored that of the medical curriculum. A 1977 survey of baccalaureate nursing programs revealed that only 7 percent of nursing programs required courses in ethics [End Page 171] (Aroskar 1977). A decade later a second survey of undergraduate programs identified 85 percent of responding nursing schools as teaching nursing ethics either in separate ethics courses or within other required courses (Cassells and Redman 1989).Though the precise future of health care ethics may be unpredictable, there is little thought that the role of ethics will diminish in importance as the 21st century approaches. Ethics is seen as part of a larger plan to develop and enhance the health professional's human values, social conscience, and interpersonal skills. "This broader effort derives from concerns about the personal attributes and humanistic sensitivity of physicians, the recent overly 'scientized' trend in premedical education, the selection of medical students, and the socialization and cynicism engendered by medical education" (Miles 1989, p. 705).While nearly every medical and nursing school in the United States now teaches ethics in one form or another, the degree to which ethics is integrated into the curriculum varies from school to school. Some ethics courses are required elements of the students' education; some institutions require attendance at seminars and ethics grand rounds. Other schools offer an array of elective courses in topics that relate to ethics in medicine and nursing (including medical humanities, medicine and the law, literature and medicine, history of medicine, patient advocacy, and human values in nursing.) "Brown bag" seminars and journal clubs are also common.There is much debate over how health care ethics should be taught. Some argue that medical professionals should be conversant with theories of ethics and principles of biomedical ethics. Others think that a theoretical approach will alienate already over-worked medical or nursing students, and that instruction in ethical theory should be kept to a minimum. Case studies are frequently cited as a way to involve students in medical decision making, forcing them to analyze problems that they can relate to their own experiences.Additional concerns center around who should teach health care ethics. Frequently, physicians and nurses interested in ethics teach courses. Some commentators see this as the most desirable arrangement, asserting that practicing health care professionals best understand the conflicts faced by physicians and nurses-in-training. However, there is a growing pool of professionals who are undergoing training as medical ethicists. These individuals study ethical theory and bioethical... (shrink)

Few studies have examined the influence of the food environment on obesity rates among very young, low-income consumers. This research contributes to this growing literature by examining the relationship between modifications to the retail environment and obesity rates for low-income, preschool-aged children. Based on data combined from various secondary sources, this study finds that changes in the retail environment are significantly related to obesity rates. More specifically, the authors find a positive relationship between the number of convenience stores in the (...) retail environment and obesity rates among low-income, preschool-aged children. Results also show that the percent change in grocery stores and supercenters and club stores in the retail environment is negatively related to the obesity rates of low-income, preschool-aged children [i.e., as grocery stores and supercenters/club stores increase, obesity decreases ].Further, the percent change in supercenters and club stores mediates the positive relationship between participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and obesity rates. (shrink)

In spite of heralded progress in civil rights, this paper pessimistically maintains that blacks are systematically excluded from directorships on the boards of the major industrial companies in this country. The statistics derived from a 1980 survey, which yielded responses from 143 companies, show that blacks constituted only 1.9 percent of the entire directorate pool, with no black chairmen, no company with more than one black director, and significantly high multiple-board service on the part of a few black directors. (...) There is a strong correlation between size and importance of a company and black directorships, as well as between longer-range company commitments and white male directorships. There is discussion of answers from board members relating to constituency representation, philosophy regarding black recruitment and reasons for the paucity of black representation. After drawing a profile of typical boards, the study shows how the pool of individuals traditionally eligible to serve as directors virtually excludes blacks, confining them to rigid and narrow categories, and concludes that the "white club" remains white because it is insulated by an inflexible system whose inequity has been internalized and whose existence current directors would rather not acknowledge. While admitting the difficulty of discussing and even defining the existence of tokenism, the paper looks at the phenomenon of single-black-member boards, questioning the status, use and professions of some black directors. In the context of a climate that encourages governmental mandating of corporate responsibility, the authors suggest that corporate initiative wisely be generated toward achieving more equitable balances in the highest economic echelons where black impotence, given the present system, can neither be remedied nor tolerated much longer. (shrink)

We survey the use of club guessing and other PCF constructs in the context of showing that a given partially ordered class of objects does not have a largest, or a universal, element.

Released in 1999, _Fight Club_ is David Fincher’s popular adaption of Chuck Palahniuk’s cult novel, and one of the most philosophically rich films of recent years. This is the first book to explore the varied philosophical aspects of the film. Beginning with an introduction by the editor that places the film and essays in context, each chapter explores a central theme of _Fight Club_ from a philosophical perspective. Topics discussed include: _Fight Club_, Plato’s cave and Descartes’ cogito moral disintegration identity, (...) gender and masculinity visuals and narration. Including annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, _Fight Club_ is essential reading for anyone interested in the film, as well as those studying philosophy and film studies. (shrink)

It is shown in this paper that it is consistent (relative to almost huge cardinals) for various club guessing ideals to be saturated.

We show that, under PFA, a coherent Suslin tree forces that every two Aronszajn trees are club-isomorphic.

We give an affirmative answer to Brendle's and Hrušák's question of whether the club principle together with h > N₁ is consistent. We work with a class of axiom A forcings with countable conditions such that q ≥ n p is determined by finitely many elements in the conditions p and q and that all strengthenings of a condition are subsets, and replace many names by actual sets. There are two types of technique: one for tree-like forcings and one (...) for forcings with creatures that are translated into trees. Both lead to new models of the club principle. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the movie Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, written by Jim Uhls, and first released in the fall of 1999. The movie is based on the homonym novel by Chuck Palahniuk, published in 1996. I will argue that Fight Club is to be understood in primarily existentialist, nonethical, and nonevidential terms, showing the struggle felt by each and every one of us to find a convincing answer to the question of (...) what (if anything) counts as an authentic life that is worth living. Moreover, I will argue that the movie does not merely illustrate the struggle and the existential angst it engenders; it also advances, if not strictly speaking a theoretical answer grounded in an indisputable philosophical reasoning, then at least a practical way to face it. It is only after positively endorsing the claim that absolutely nothing (whatever it may be) externally imposed on a person can give their life ultimate meaning that a person is free to engage in a conscious, laborious, and exhausting attempt at self-affirmation, a full and positive endorsement of one’s own authenticity. (shrink)

This contribution aims to explore the historical predecessors of the Five Percenter model of self-realization, as popularized by Hip Hop artists such as Supreme Team, Rakim Allah, Brand Nubian, Wu-Tang Clan, or Sunz of Man. As compared to frequent considerations of the phenomenon as a creative mythological background for a socio-political struggle, Five Percenter teachings shall be discussed as contemporary interpretations of historical models of self-realization in various philosophical, religious, and esoteric systems. By putting the coded system of the tenfold (...) Supreme Mathematics as one of its core teachings in context with the Pythagorean Tetractys, an arrangement of ten points in four lines, the commonalities between the sequence and concepts attributed to the respective numbers will be demonstrated. (shrink)

We investigate club guessing sequences and filters. We prove that assuming V=L, there exists a strong club guessing sequence on μ if and only if μ is not ineffable for every uncountable regular cardinal μ. We also prove that for every uncountable regular cardinal μ, relative to the existence of a Woodin cardinal above μ, it is consistent that every tail club guessing ideal on μ is precipitous.

Resumo Visto por uma lente existencial, o filme Fight Club impele-nos a criar um autêntico self. Porém, também nos adverte que a criação de um autêntico self é algo que só podemos fazer por nós mesmos. A definitiva ironia no filme Fight Club é que, num esforço por rejeitar a sociedade e cultivar a individualidade, as pessoas acabam por se conformar a um culto e aos seus ditames. A lição é que a autenticidade é frágil, facilmente esmagada e (...) facilmente rendida. No final do filme, o protagonista, oferece-nos esperança, ainda que seja para nos tornarmos auto-conscientes e lutar contra as forças que nos procuram subjugar. Palavras-chave : autenticidade, consumismo, existencialismo, Fight Club, Nietzsche, vícioViewed through an existential lens, Fight Club urges us to create an authentic self, but it also cautions us that the creation of an authentic self is something we can only do for ourselves. The ultimate irony in Fight Club is that in an effort to reject society and cultivate individuality, people end up conforming to a cult and its dictates. The clear lesson is that authenticity is fragile, easily crushed and easily surrendered. By the end of the movie, the protagonist at least offers us hope, though, that we can become self-aware and fight back against the forces that seek to subjugate us. Keywords : addiction, authenticity, consumerism, existentialism, Fight Club, Nietzsche. (shrink)

Putative examples of true contradictions in the social world have been given by dialetheists such as Graham Priest, Richard Routley, and Val Plumwood. However, we feel that it has not been decisively argued that these examples are in fact true contradictions rather than merely apparent. In this paper we adopt a new strategy to show that there are some true contradictions in the social world, and hence that dialetheism is correct. The strategy involves showing that a group of sincere dialetheists (...) can, given an appropriately formed institution, bootstrap contradictions into existence. We discuss objections and consider the implications of this finding for debates over logic. (shrink)

Volume XXIX of Studies in Contemporary Jewry takes its title from a joke by Groucho Marx: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member." The line encapsulates one of the most important characteristics of Jewish humor: the desire to buffer oneself from potentially unsafe or awkward situations, and thus to achieve social and emotional freedom. By studying the history and development of Jewish humor, the essays in this volume not only provide nuanced (...) accounts of how Jewish humor can be described but also make a case for the importance of humor in studying any culture. A recent survey showed that about four in ten American Jews felt that "having a good sense of humor" was "an essential part of what being Jewish means to them," on a par with or exceeding caring for Israel, observing Jewish law, and eating traditional foods. As these essays show, Jewish humor has served many functions as a form of "insider" speech. It has been used to ridicule; to unite people in the face of their enemies; to challenge authority; to deride politics and politicians; in America, to ridicule conspicuous consumption; in Israel, to contrast expectations of political normalcy and bitter reality. However, much of contemporary Jewish humor is designed not only or even primarily as insider speech. Rather, it rewards all those who get the punch line. A Club of Their Own moves beyond general theorizing about the nature of Jewish humor by serving a smorgasbord of finely grained, historically situated, and contextualized interdisciplinary studies of humor and its consumption in Jewish life in the modern world. (shrink)

This study examines the semantics of a root form underlying a wide range of Dene lexical expressions. The root evolved from a simple nominal denoting “club” to expressions lexicalizing the movement of stick-like objects and the rotation of helicopter blades. These semantic extensions arise through source-in-target and target-in-source metonymies. Drawing on Cognitive Linguistics, especially the theory of metonymy, offers a method of describing the range of meanings expressed by this root in a concise manner. Focusing on the results of (...) metonymic meaning extensions also opens the way to addressing questions in the history of Dene languages. This study contributes to increasing the typological scope of Cognitive Linguistic approaches and argues for the usefulness of the theory in addressing problems in Dene linguistics. (shrink)

We construct a model satisfying “κ is quasi measurable”. Here, we call κ quasi measurable if there is an ℵ1‐saturated κ‐additive ideal on κ. We also show that, in this model, forcing with adds one but not κ Cohen reals. We introduce a weak club principle and use it to show that, consistently, for some ℵ1‐saturated κ‐additive ideal on κ, forcing with adds one but not κ random reals.

We obtain very strong coloring theorems at successors of singular cardinals from failures of certain instances of simultaneous reflection of stationary sets. In particular, the simplest of our results establishes that if μ is singular and , then there is a regular cardinal θ<μ such that any fewer than cf stationary subsets of must reflect simultaneously.

A highly rigid Souslin tree T is constructed such that forcing with T turns T into a Kurepa tree. Club versions of previously known degrees of rigidity are introduced, as follows: for a rigidity property P, a tree T is said to have property P on clubs if for every club set C (containing 0), the restriction of T to levels in C has property P. The relationships between these rigidity properties for Souslin trees are investigated, and some (...) open questions are stated. (shrink)

Written for the people shearing the same reality, the same mental world of Modernity, this paper starts from the premise that we, as human beings, are not always consciously aware of the world we live in, of its constantly changing characteristics or attributes. It has already been demonstrated that our knowledge is contextual and limited. Thus, in order to accurately depict at least some of the attributes of Modernity, and consequently, to observe the major paradigm shift towards an age of (...) dialogue, entailed by this expending-modernity, it became necessary to describe the values promoted by Modernity. In this paper we aim at discussing notions such as freedom, critical-thinking, history and the increasing need to be in dialogue with those who think differently from us, values which guide us mentally and determine our actions through Modernity. (shrink)

El autor se pregunta por el sentido de la religión en nuestro mundo, en la Modernidad. Nuestro mundo —el moderno— se caracteriza por la libertad en el núcleo del ser humano, la razón crítica como el árbitro de lo que hay que afirmar o no, y la historia, el proceso, el dinamismo visto en el corazón de la vida humana y la sociedad. Pero, más que nada, la Modernidad mundializada siente una creciente necesidad de estar en diálogo con quienes piensan (...) de modo diferente a nosotros. Esta necesidad de diálogo nos interpela agudamente cuando, como en el caso de la religión, el diálogo debe versar sobre cuestiones cruciales en la comprensión que el ser humano tiene de sí mismo y de su entorno. (shrink)

We study combinatorial principles known as stick and club. Several variants of these principles and cardinal invariants connected to them are also considered. We introduce a new kind of side by-side product of partial orderings which we call pseudo-product. Using such products, we give several generic extensions where some of these principles hold together with ¬CH and Martin's axiom for countable p.o.-sets. An iterative version of the pseudo-product is used under an inaccessible cardinal to show the consistency of the (...) club principle for every stationary subset of limits of ω1 together with ¬CH and Martin's axiom for countable p.o.-sets. (shrink)

If intuitions are associated with gender this might help to explain the fact that while the gender gap has disappeared in many other learned clubs, women are still seriously under-represented in the Philosophers Club. Since people who don’t have the intuitions that most club members share have a harder time getting into the club, and since the majority of Philosophers are now and always have been men, perhaps the under-representation of women is due, in part, to a (...) selection effect. (shrink)

From dogs to gods, the science of understanding mysterious minds--including your own. Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club." It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of mind do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who (...) have discovered that minds--while incredibly important--are a matter of perception. Their research opens a trove of new findings, with insights into human behavior that are fascinating, frightening and funny. The Mind Club explains why we love some animals and eat others, why people debate the existence of God so intensely, how good people can be so cruel, and why robots make such poor lovers. By investigating the mind perception of extraordinary targets--animals, machines, comatose people, god--Wegner and Gray explain what it means to have a mind, and why it matters so much. Fusing cutting-edge research and personal anecdotes, The Mind Club explores the moral dimensions of mind perception with wit and compassion, revealing the surprisingly simple basis for what compels us to love and hate, to harm and to protect. (shrink)

We present a technique for destroying stationary subsets of Pκκ+ using partial square sequences. We combine this method with Gitik’s poset for changing the cofinality of a cardinal without adding bounded sets to prove a variety of consistency results concerning saturated ideals and the set S.

Assume $\mathsf {ZF} + \mathsf {AD}$ and all sets of reals are Suslin. Let $\Gamma $ be a pointclass closed under $\wedge $, $\vee $, $\forall ^{\mathbb {R}}$, continuous substitution, and has the scale property. Let $\kappa = \delta (\Gamma )$ be the supremum of the length of prewellorderings on $\mathbb {R}$ which belong to $\Delta = \Gamma \cap \check \Gamma $. Let $\mathsf {club}$ denote the collection of club subsets of $\kappa $. Then the countable length everywhere (...) club uniformization holds for $\kappa $ : For every relation $R \subseteq {}^{<{\omega _1}}\kappa \times \mathsf {club}$ with the property that for all $\ell \in {}^{<{\omega _1}}\kappa $ and clubs $C \subseteq D \subseteq \kappa $, $R(\ell,D)$ implies $R(\ell,C)$, there is a uniformization function $\Lambda : \mathrm {dom}(R) \rightarrow \mathsf {club}$ with the property that for all $\ell \in \mathrm {dom}(R)$, $R(\ell,\Lambda (\ell ))$. In particular, under these assumptions, for all $n \in \omega $, $\boldsymbol {\delta }^1_{2n + 1}$ satisfies the countable length everywhere club uniformization. (shrink)

We take a philosophical look at solitude and community through the phenomenon of the iPod. We observed that this tiny technological wonder is at one and the same time a possibility of shutting oneself off from the world in real or imagined solitude, and a way we can find ourselves in the company of like-minded others, sharing experiences as a member of a community. The first part of the article deals with how iPod enables solitude. Second, we look at the (...) other side of the coin and explore what it means to be in a community of iPodders. Finally, we describe a fascinating phenomenon that, for us, exemplifies the concepts of solitude and community. CLUBISMO MÓVEL: IPOD, SOLITUDE E COMUNIDADEResumoObservamos, sob a perspectiva filosófica, a solitude e a vida em comunidade a partir do fenômeno do iPod. Argumentamos que esta pequena maravilha tecnológica é, ao mesmo tempo, a possibilidade de isolar-se do resto do mundo numa solidão real ou imaginada, e uma maneira de encontrarmo-nos na companhia de outros curtidores, compartilhando experiências como membro de uma comunidade. A primeira parte do artigo trata de como o iPod permite a solitude. Em segundo lugar, olharemos para o outro lado da moeda e exploraremos o que significa estar em uma comunidade de iPodders. Finalmente, descrevemos um fenômeno fascinante que, para nós, exemplifica os conceitos de solitude e comunidade. (shrink)