A Life Table Approach to Estimating Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Juvenile Justice System

Disproportionate minority contact (DMC) in the U.S. juvenile justice system persists despite substantial efforts to reduce it. The juvenile justice system is comprised of a series of interconnected stages, yet few studies to-date use methods to measure DMC that take the cascading nature of the decision-making process into account. Our study addresses this gap by applying life table analysis to identify the cumulative nature of DMC across multiple stages of the juvenile justice system using data from 2008 to 2010 in Georgia that include white, black, and Hispanic/Latino youth. We then compare these state-level results to life tables from a national sample of black youth and a subnational sample of Hispanic/Latino youth. Our findings show that arrest/referral accounts for the greatest proportion of total system-wide DMC for black youth, but most of the total DMC for Hispanic/Latino youth results from later stages.     

On the Relationship of Technical Images With Their Outside

What is reality, the truth, good, justice, man, etc., is something we have learned from texts for a historically long period of time. Together with writing and linear alphabet, a new ability which could be called conceptual thinking has become part of our life. Therefore, deciphering texts means nothing else than revealing images denoted by these texts. Traditionally, learning meant to be able to read in the book of the world, i.e., to learn to code the world in texts using linear writing first and then to learn to decipher texts applied to reality. Media theorist Vil6m Flusser states in his key texts that technical images become a dominant cognitive metaphor of the contemporary society. New social culture is being formed in connection with their creation, distribution, transfer, and consumption. Such new social structure needs new criteria of analysis and requires a new interpretive beginning. Flusser does not wonder how a medium is possible, but he deals with the consequences of the effect of one type of media abstraction, namely technical images. The following paper briefly analyses the dominant cognitive metaphor of Flusser＇s theory --the concept technical image.     

DROMOCRATIC TELETOPY AND STATUS OF MAN

Dromologic research of ＂man＇s status in the world＂ shows that manhis perception, his language as well as his thinking is substantially changed by the speed of information translation. This paper critically analyses the theory of French cultural critic, city planner and philosopher Paul Virilio. Virilio＇s texts which deal with the impact of speed on the contemporary world. The development of means of transport used by people for the purpose of movement-from horse carts, railways and cars to planes, culminated by the arrival of digitalized audio-visual hypertext, the last ＂vehicle＇＂ that replaces its drivers ＂physical movement by total inertia. How does that historical succession starting with metabolic vehicles such as a horse, ships, railways, cars planes to the latest ways of tele-transfer, tele- presence and audio-visual vehicles, influence our present-day concept of the world？ What are the social cultural political and economic consequences resulting from continuous acceleration of social processes, from inertia of absolute speed？ Can increasing the speed of our technologies lead up to the irreversible immobilization of social players？ Does our effort to represent the reality depend on the kind of media and on speed？ The study analyses Virilio ＇s texts and it presents the interpretation of the main propositions of his dromology.     

Symptom validity testing of feigned dissociative amnesia: A simulation study

Abstract

It has been argued that Symptom Validity Testing (SVT) has limited sensitivity in correctly identifying feigned autobiographical memory loss (e.g., dissociative amnesia) because malingerers would easily understand that below change performance on the SVT implies feigned memory loss. The current study tested this assumption in a sample of undergraduate students (N = 20) who committed a mock crime and then were instructed to feign complete amnesia for this event. Next, they had to answer 15 forced-choice questions that always contained the correct answer and an equally plausible alternative. Results show that a nontrivial minority of participants (40%) performed below chance. As well, understanding the SVT rationale appeared not to be related to random behaviour. Taken together, the results indicate that SVT procedures might be helpful in identifying feigned dissociative amnesia.     

Speed,Wealth and Power

In many of his texts French cultural critic, city planner and philosopher Paul Virilio emphasises that speed is not a phenomenon, but a relation between phenomena. The difference between contemporary society and societies of the past consists in the fact that earlier speed used to be mainly connected with transport, now it concerns relations within information. The question of speed is central. Speed and wealth go hand in hand. To give a philosophical definition of speed, we can say that it is not a phenomenon, but rather the relationship between phenomena. In other words, it is relativity itself. Virilio’s influential books analyses new problems resulting from the fact that the development of industrial capitalism has reached the stage in which wealth and power in society have been interconnected with ever increasing speed. In view of Virilio’s statement that wealth is an aspect of speed it has become necessary to consider speed and all its aspects and consequences through a prism of a new discipline – dromology. Dromology originates from the Greek word dromos. Hence dromology is the science of the ride, the journey, the drive, the way. This means that speed and riches are totally linked concepts. And that the history of the world is not only about the political economy of riches, that is, wealth, money, capital, but also about political economy of speed. Text analyzes the two main themes. Firstly, the treatise attempts at an philosophical analysis of – dromology. Dromologic revolutions cause artificial acceleration of speed in the form of steam or combustion engine, or, nowadays, nuclear energy and they immediately form both e.g. waging wars and kinds of communication. The second part of the study discusses the difference between contemporary society and societies of the past. Vehicles of speed create new dromospheric chronology, new tracks and nodal points (ports, roads, airports, telecommunications etc.) through which things, goods, money, weapons, people or information will start flowing within a different structure.     

Roads to safety

He has written and lectured widely on problems of road construction and safety. He is co-editor (with H. V. Hurdle) of Transportation and Traffic Theory: Eighth International Symposium.     

Society and the Second Age of Machines: Algorithms Versus Ethics

The term “Second Machine Age” was used by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in their book of the same name as an indication of the impact of AI technology on people, society, and the economy. The term seeks to analyse the age we actually live in, its hidden patterns, which jobs and fields of study have a perspective, and which do not. It is about the second industrial revolution that is going on right now, and it changes the world no less radically than the first one, driven by the steam locomotive. Exponential growth of digital technologies, digitization of everything and recombinant innovation is a driving engine and fuel of the Second Machine Age. However, the ethical issues of this change remain unaddressed. Artificial intelligence is currently being dealt with by a great many scientists and philosophers who ask many questions. The most important questions are whether the machines can think, whether we will give them the copyright, which the animals do not have until now, and the question whether AI can has its own ethics. The study focuses on these issues, and uses concrete examples to show our unpreparedness for these topics.