Explanations 2005

A look back on 2005 through the writings of some loser from New Mexico.

Given the importance of this adjustment Indeed, both the current-year estimates of for the government's ability to show a reduc- revenue and expenditure and the medium- tion in the deficit in its first year in office, term fiscal outlook are designed more to one would have expected the Minister of Fi- manage expectations and maximize the gov- nance to be concerned when the Provincial ernment's fle [...] Forecast revenue evi- meet three overriding political constraints: dently includes a substantial cushion against the need to balance the budget by the end of the possibility that growth forecasts from No- the government's first term in office; the need vember may be revised downwards. [...] How- jected deficits as well as cash costs that are ever, a detailed review of the terms of the not included in budgetary deficit calculations securities up for refinancing shows that a will increase the government's total borrow- substantial proportion of the debt which is ing by approximately 4% in 2004-5, 3% in subject to refinancing in the years 2005-6 to each of 2005-6 and 2006-7 and 2% in 20 [...] All of these exemptions un- that negative impact amounts to a retrospec- dermine the fairness of the system; all of these tive endorsement of the policies that created exemptions cost the people of this province it, and a fiscal plan designed to accommo- a substantial amount in lost revenue; and date Ontario's public services to that reduced none of these exemptions meets the test of capacity amou [...] While the Government's mishandling of More important, exemptions from the the tax issue during and after the election Employer Health Tax are inconsistent with has limited its political options, there are ar- the history behind its creation and the role 10.

The #1 New York Times bestseller that explains why bullshit is far more dangerous than lying One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory." Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications, ADMA 2014, held in Guilin, China during December 2014. The 48 regular papers and 10 workshop papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 90 submissions. They deal with the following topics: data mining, social network and social media, recommend systems, database, dimensionality reduction, advance machine learning techniques, classification, big data and applications, clustering methods, machine learning, and data mining and database.

The regulation of issues like abortion, euthanasia, gun control, same-sex unions, pornography, prostitution, drugs, or gambling is commonly referred to a special class of so called morality policies. The distinctive feature of these policies is that politics are shaped by conflicts over first principle: When does life end? When does it begin? Is gambling, drug consumption or prostitution inherently malignant? The regulation of these value conflicts entails decisions about "right" or "wrong" and hence the "validation of a particular set of basic values". Yet there is still a remarkable lack of scholarly attention on morality policies, in particular with regard to general implications for the study of public policy. To stimulate further research in this area, this book focuses on different concepts and theories of morality policy change in European countries. It is based on a broad and comparative empirical perspective on different morality issues, including, for instance, the regulation of prostitution, abortion, euthanasia, gambling, drugs, as well as gun controls.This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

This work provides an extensive analytic comparison between models and results from econophysics and financial economics in an accessible and common vocabulary. Unlike other publications dedicated to econophysics, it situates this field in the evolution of financial economics by laying the foundations for common theoretical framework and models.

Neuroethics is concerned with the wide array of ethical, legal and social issues that are raised in research and practice. The field has grown rapidly over the last five years, becoming an active interdisciplinary research area involving a much larger set of academic fields and professions, including law, developmental psychology, neuropsychiatry, and the military. Neuroethics and Practice helps to define and foster this emerging area at the intersection of neuroethics and clinical neuroscience, which includes neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry and their pediatric subspecialties, as well as neurorehabiliation, clinical neuropsychology, clinical bioethics, and the myriad other clinical specialties (including nursing and geriatrics) in which practitioners grapple with issues of mind and brain. Chatterjee and Farah have brought together leading neuroethicists working in clinically relevant areas to contribute chapters on an intellectually fascinating and clinically important set of neuroethical topics, involving brain enhancements, brain imaging, competence and responsibility, severe brain damage, and consequences of new neurotechnologies. Although this book will be of direct interest to clinicians, as the first edited volume to provide an overall comprehensive perspective on neurethics across disciplines, it is also a unique and useful resource for a wide range of other scholars and students interested in ethics and neuroscience.

This book investigates the relationships between political violence, social violence and economic violence using examples from South Africa, Northern Ireland, Lebanon and Syria. It examines the cultural impact of war and argues that a culture of violence can explain the high levels of violence which are frequently found in post-war societies.