The Ethics Program at General Dynamics was evaluated relative to its stated objectives and its implied objectives. The program was found to have met its specific objectives which require employees to follow rules and standards of conduct. The program did not apparently meet its implied objectives which would have created a more humanistic work environment for employees. This result apparently stemmed from program planners' intentions to use the hope for better working conditions as a motivation for employees to follow company (...) standards. A substantial conflict was found between the philosophical bases for ethics programs and work environment improvement programs. (shrink)

The United States Constitution was written for the purpose of establishing an effective but limited national government, a government that would be capable of dealing with national and international problems, but that would not be able to violate the traditional liberties of the people. Thus, the Constitution was, and is essentially a practical-juridical document. One should not expect to find there pronouncements about the nature of man, society, law, or the state, such as are often found in many other national (...) constitutions and international conventions. Nevertheless, several important characteristics of the Constitution—indeed its most important characteristics—are clear and admirable applications of the natural law. The principal drafters of the Constitution believed that God, in creating the universe, implanted in the nature of man a body of law to which all human beings are subject, which is superior to all manmade law, and which is knowable by human reason. Thus, the natural law of the American founders was traditional natural law as understood and expounded by classical and Medieval writers and carried forward in the English common law, and not the “Enlightenment” versions in vogue in eighteenth-century Europe. The classical-traditional natural law understanding of Madison, Hamilton, Wilson, and other leaders of the Philadelphia Convention are reflected in the three most important characteristics of the Constitution: the principle of limited government; the principle of subsidiarity (in both political and larger societal matters); and the practice of guaranteeing traditional rights, and only as against government. (shrink)

Barker, Renae In recent weeks the issue of the religious content of Australian education has been hotly debated. In February The Age reported the latest development: principals in several Victorian state schools had ceased to offer special religious instruction in their schools.

The current public debate about the role and place of religion in Australia's education system feels very much like deja vu. The Religious Freedom Review2 may be new, but we've been here before. Religious schools have regularly been at the forefront of the evolving relationship between the state and religion in Australia, from the creation and collapse of the Church and Schools Corporation in the 1830s, and the implementation of the dual board system in the 1840s, to the removal of (...) all government funding for religious schools in the 1860s-90s, and then its reintroduction in the 1960s and '70s.3 The current debate about the extent to which religious schools will continue to be permitted to discriminate against students, staff and contractors in line with the religious ethos of the school is therefore just the latest reiteration of an ongoing narrative. (shrink)

Rulers of all kinds, from feudal monarchs to democratic presidents and prime ministers, justify themselves to themselves through a variety of rituals, rhetoric, and dramatisations, using everything from architecture and coinage to etiquette and portraiture. This kind of legitimation - self-legitimation - has been overlooked in an age which is concerned principally with how government can be justified in the eyes of its citizens. In this book, Rodney Barker argues that at least as much time is spent by rulers legitimating (...) themselves in their own eyes, and cultivating their own sense of identity, as is spent in trying to convince ordinary subjects. Once this dimension of ruling is taken into account, a far fuller understanding can be gained of what rulers are doing when they rule. It can also open the way to a more complete grasp of what subjects are doing, both when they obey and when they rebel. (shrink)

Whom a prime minister or president will not shake hands with is still more noticed than with whom they will. Public identity can afford to be ambiguous about friends, but not about enemies. Rodney Barker examines the available accounts of how enmity functions in the cultivation of identity, how essential or avoidable it is, and what the consequences are for the contemporary world.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder of the nervous system that affects about 1 in 800 people and for which we have symptomatic but not curative therapies. At the core of the disease is the loss of a specific population of dopaminergic neurons within the brain, and replacement of dopamine through drug therapies has provided clinically significant benefit for many patients. However this therapy only ever offers a temporary amelioration of symptoms and with time this symptomatic therapy becomes (...) less efficacious and produces its own unique side-effects. As a result more effective curative therapies have been sought, including the use of cell based therapies to replace the lost dopaminergic neurons. In this review I am going to discuss PD and its possible repair using neural transplants. In particular I am going to discuss which type of cells are best considered as a reparative therapy, where they should be transplanted in the brain, when in the disease course and in which type of patient. By considering these issues, I hope to be able to make some recommendations as to the future use of this approach in PD. (shrink)

This book explores the puzzling phenomenon of new veiling practices among lower middle class women in Cairo, Egypt. Although these women are part of a modernizing middle class, they also voluntarily adopt a traditional symbol of female subordination. How can this paradox be explained? An explanation emerges which reconceptualizes what appears to be reactionary behavior as a new style of political struggle--as accommodating protest. These women, most of them clerical workers in the large government bureaucracy, are ambivalent about working outside (...) the home, considering it a change which brings new burdens as well as some important benefits. At the same time they realize that leaving home and family is creating an intolerable situation of the erosion of their social status and the loss of their traditional identity. The new veiling expresses women's protest against this. MacLeod argues that the symbolism of the new veiling emerges from this tense subcultural dilemma, involving elements of both resistance and acquiescence. (shrink)

Anuj Dawar poses two questions which give finitary analogies to the Löwenheim–Skolem theorems. Grohe , has shown that the first of these, which corresponds to the downward Löwenheim–Skolem theorem, has a negative answer. In this paper we combine Grohe's technique with that of Robinson's famous paper ) to show that the second question, which corresponds to the upward Löwenheim–Skolem theorem, also has a negative answer.

Idiopathic Parkinson’s disease impairs working memory, but the exact nature of this deficit in terms of the underlying cognitive mechanisms is not well understood. In this study patients with mild clinical symptoms of PD were compared with matched healthy control subjects on a computerized battery of tests designed to assess spatial working memory and verbal working memory. In the spatial working memory task, subjects were required to recall a sequence of four locations. The verbal working memory task was methodologically identical (...) except for the modality of the stimuli used, requiring subjects to orally recall a sequence of six digits. In either case, half of the sequences were structured in a way that allowed ‘chunking’, while others were unstructured. This manipulation was designed to dissociate the strategic component of task performance from the memory-load component. Mild medicated patients with PD were impaired only on the structured versions of the verbal working memory tasks. The analogous deficit in the spatial working memory was less pronounced. These findings are in agreement with the hypothesis that working memory deficits in PD reflect mainly the executive component of the tasks and that the deficits may be at least partly modality-independent. (shrink)