The Confidence Game: Roping in a Globalized World

This is the last in a series of five articles focusing on how Bernard Madoff’s confidence game (con game) worked. It examines the international money collecting activities by ropers for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS). Before globalization, Madoff’s con game brought him millions of dollars; after globalization, it began bringing him billions, making him remarkably successful until his run of luck was brought to a sudden halt by the worldwide economic downturn.     

The Effects of German Unification on the Federal Chancellor's Decision-Making

The purchase of Germany's Mannesmann AG by Britain's telecommunications holding company Vodafone in spring 2000 represented the first major cross-border hostile takeover in German corporate history. As spectacle, the story surrounding the fall of one of Germany's grandest industrial giants lays bare the underlying themes shaping the country's national discourse over how to build a new national consensus on the function of economic activity for the state, for society, and for the German citizen. As such, the Mannesmann-Vodafone saga contains a clear caesura between the Old and the New Economy in Germany. Of course the question remains which values and institutions do the Germans want to carry over from the old world into the new. And there the line between past and present becomes distinctly less discernible.     

Construction of a roller device for the collection of hair and fiber evidence.

The discovery of hair and fiber evidence can be of critical importance in the investigation of crimes, particularly violent crimes. A procedure is described for the construction and assembly of a roller device that utilizes readily available components and single-sided adhesive tape. The advantages over previously described roller devices include decreases in both the potential for contamination and the time required for construction of the device, as well as the ability to disinfect all of the roller components.     

NEW DIRECTIONS IN MEDICAL OUTCOMES RESEARCH: THE VIEW FROM HARVARD

This study evaluates the emerging field of medical outcomes research based on interviews at Harvard Medical School. Medical outcomes research at Harvard is multifaceted, but may be summarized as involving certain key components. The emphasis at Harvard is on “quality of care,” viewed as a combination of outcomes evaluation and process evaluation, delivery of the service and its result. In a time of shrinking budgets, outcomes and process research can be justified economically because of the relatively low cost of patient self‐reports and because of their usefulness. Physicians may be motivated to measure quality of care by emphasizing the positive effects of research on the process of care and outcomes. Medical outcomes research is a field that is undergoing change and is becoming increasingly oriented toward the practical needs of patients and physicians.     

Buddhism,Mindfulness, and Transformative Politics

This article examines whether the American cultural phenomena of the practice of Buddhism or the Buddhism-derived technique of mindfulness are likely to be helpful to the political left. It summarizes the central teachings of the ancient Buddhist texts, with particular focus on the issues of mindfulness and politics. It also reviews the political history of Buddhist countries. The author argues that although modern Buddhism has shed its historical embrace of absolutist monarchy in favor of republicanism, and although there is some ideological overlap between Buddhism and the American Left, Buddhism in America is too small a movement for it to be of much significance for progressive politics. Mindfulness appears to be capable of becoming a much larger phenomenon, but its separation from its Buddhist origins makes it also unlikely to be strategically important for the Left.