Falling in love with a [sperm] warrior: conscripting women’s wombs to the dissemination of a religio-political ideology

This article focuses on the screening and marketing of sperm in Israel as a mechanism for enlisting women’s wombs to political goals. The background for the analysis is the recent rise in demand for sperm from combat soldiers during the war between Israel and Hamas. The data-set for the project is comprised of multiple sources which converge to provide evidence for the transfusion of Zionist ideology into sperm donation. The article suggests the compatibility of the venerated status gained by donors who are Israeli Defense Force combatants with Zionist militarism. The banks screen candidates for sperm donation based on their military service and military health profile. The discursive climate which glorifies ‘warriors’ permeates sperm marketing, contributing to the cultural reproduction of a militaristic ideology. The article concludes by contending that sperm banks provide a platform for a subversive discourse that triggers Enloe’s thesis of patriotic motherhood and the role of women in the process of militarization.     

关于构建安全保卫风险评估课程的思考——《安保风险评估》课程设置构建的必要性与可行性论证

安全保卫风险评估是安保、安防行业的一项核心业务,具有高端性、统领性、综合性等特点.但是,它目前在国内安保行业培训中还没有成为一门系统的教学课程.鉴于此,本文在相关调研、工作实践以及教学活动等准备工作基础上,对安全保卫风险评估课程构建的必要性和可行性进行论证和探讨.在此基础上,逐步探索出整个课程的课程定位、构建思路以及课程内容体系架构,以期对安全保卫专业教学培训乃至整个安保行业的持续发展起到积极的促进作用.     

Judgment and Calculation in the Selection of Sentence

Formal sentencing guidelines, which are increasingly seen as the best means of eliminating unwarranted disparity, have undoubted merits. Well-crafted guidelines can promote more transparent and coherent sentencing practices. Their primary goal will usually be to ensure that similarly situated offenders convicted of similar offences receive broadly similar penalties. This, in turn, should increase public confidence in the criminal justice system. Judicially-developed guidance has its own advantages. A judgment, unlike a statute or a formal guideline, must persuade its audience as to the merits of the decision reached. Appeal court sentencing judgments must (or ideally should) engage in some degree of moral reasoning so as to explain why a particular offence or offender deserves the penalty that is being imposed or upheld. Adjudication of this nature plays an important role in stimulating debate and deliberation about the purposes of punishment, the appropriate use of particular sentencing options, the relevance of various offence- and offender-related factors and other fundamental questions about which opinions will inevitably change over time. Although they may have distinct epistemic properties and different objectives, formal guidelines and judicially-developed principles have their own unique merits. We should therefore aim for a system that incorporates the best qualities of both. In practice, this means that guidelines should be so constructed as to leave space for judicial deliberation about fundamental principles and current practice. In this way, guideline creators and courts can continue to learn from each other.     

个体网络借贷(P2P)监管立法例及解读

央行会同其他部委发布的《关于促进互联网金融健康发展的指导意见》明确了'网络借贷业务由银监会负责监管'。十八届五中全会《关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十三个五年规划》要求'规范发展互联网金融'。银监会直面网络借贷(P2P)存在的诸多问题,如何有效地规范发展网络借贷(P2P)活动已经成为亟待解决的问题。规范发展网络借贷(P2...     

Meditation,Idealism and Materiality: Vivid Visualization in the Buddhist ‘Qizil Yoga Manual’ and the Context of Caves

Journal of Indian Philosophy - This paper examines the topic of Yogācāra idealism through a little studied Buddhist meditation manual, the so-called ‘Yogalehrbuch’ or...     

“Last Hired,First Fired”: The Effect of the Unemployment Rate on the Probability of Repeat Offending

Research examining the connection between the unemployment rate and the aggregate crime is inconclusive. One explanation for the inconsistent findings is that the unemployment rate influences the criminal activity of repeat and first-time offenders in different ways. Results support this thesis by revealing an inverted U-shaped association between the unemployment rate and the probability of repeat offending. The curvilinear relationship likely results from repeat offenders and those lacking a criminal record entering and exiting the labor force at different levels of unemployment. Our findings highlight the role that the unemployment rate plays in affecting repeat offending and underscore the importance of distinguishing between repeat and first-time offending when analyzing the effect of the unemployment rate on crime.     

The inhibiting factors that principal investigators experience in leading publicly funded research

Securing public funding to conduct research and leading it by being a principal investigator (PI) is seen as significant career development step. Such a role brings professional prestige but also new responsibilities beyond research leadership to research management. If public funding brings financial and infrastructure support, little is understood about the inhibiting factors that publicly funded PIs face given the research autonomy offered by publicly funded research. Our study finds that there are three key PI inhibiting factors (1) political and environmental, (2) institutional and (3) project based. Traditional knowledge, skills and technical know-how of publicly funded PIs are insufficient to deal with the increasing managerial demands and expectations i.e. growing external bureaucracy of public funding agencies. Public funding is no longer the ‘freest form of support’ as suggested by Chubin and Hackett (Peerless science: peer review and US science policy. Suny Press, New York, 1990) and the inhibiting factors experienced by publicly funded PIs limits their research autonomy. We also argue that PIs have little influence in overcoming these inhibiting factors despite their central role in conducting publicly funded research.     

Indigeneity,Ethnicity, and the State: Australia,Fiji, and New Zealand

This article draws on the politics of indigeneity to distinguish the claims of first occupancy from simple ethnic identity politics, illustrating that relative political marginalization in Australasia is not so much a function of minority status but of indigeneity itself. The politics of indigeneity's aim is to create political space for self-determination and a particular indigenous share in the sovereign authority of the nation-state itself. The Australasian states are compared with Fiji to demonstrate that the significance of historical constraints on political authority transcend the withdrawal of a colonial power and the restoration of collective indigenous majority population status.     

Children’s Allegations of Sexual Abuse: A Model for Forensic Assessment

It is important both clinically and forensically to gain information to provide an understanding of the veracity of a child’s allegations of sexual abuse. Even though it is reasonable to hypothesize that most allegations are true—children are not infallible and thus some allegations are false. A systematic model of pathways to false allegations—however rare or common—is important because so much depends on this question (i.e., both false positives and false negatives are harmful to children). We propose that there are two major pathways to false allegations of child sexual abuse: (1) the child is lying and (2) the child has a false memory due to his or her problems in information processing. We conclude by presenting a more detailed protocol for more formally evaluating these pathways to false allegations in specific cases.