R.S. Thomas: Ministering Otherness

This article is built around a deeply personal `response to text' –of a poem in response to a poem, where both deal with notions of identity. For myself, writing poetry is a cathartic (though infrequent) source of resolution; a space subject to different constraints from those present in the production of analytic scholarship. A consideration of the broader ideological matrix at work behind the poems suggests links between nationhood and language, class and religion, private and public identity, history and politics. Vast subjects, explored but briefly in the thoughts and notes produced for this article as `background' to the story of the poem cited at the end. For legal and political theory it is a reminder of the delicate interstices of influences traversed in any assertion concerning broad policy. As `scholar' I am constrained in the provision of any further assessment of my own process as `poet': what is provided attempts honesty. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Mixed-Use Zoning: The N.Y.C. Experience

New York City's original mixed-use zoning proposal was part of an “infill zoning” program, intended to allow housing development legally in nonresidentially zoned areas where such development was otherwise feasible. “Infill zoning” was an attempt to encourage housing construction in small areas in which inflexible application of the existing zoning with respect to uses, side yards, or whatever else would discourage or even disallow it. For example, along with the provision for residences in manufacturing zones, it provided for construction “infilling” between rowhouses on lots which did not meet existing minimum sue requirements. A booklet issued by the city planning commission stated the objectives of the mixed-use provisions:     

The Ge.F.I. DNA Proficiency Test: Year-one experience

The Ge.F.I. (the Italian Speaking Working Group of ISFG) has launched the first DNA Proficiency Test in 2012. The aim is to increase the external quality controls in forensic genetics in Italy and to drive to the standardizations of methods within the laboratories. Reference and mixed stains typing as well as statistical exercises were proposed and 26 laboratories submitted results.