In this paper the author attempts an analysis of the current financial/economic crisis that is wider ranging and more fundamental than he has been able to find. For this purpose he reviews some social science literature that views the current crisis as an episode in the secular decline of the United States and more generally of the Western Democracies. The timidity of current reforms, which is ...

I was a fan of inflation targets before the conference, so the discussion largely confirmed my prior beliefs. However, the conference also resolved one nagging doubt about current policy. This doubt concerns the practice of interest-rate smoothing discussed by Lowe and Ellis. I have suspected that this policy is suboptimal – that central banks move interest rates slowly because of some kind of ...

This paper takes a closer look at the subjectivity/objectivity relationship, as it plays a role in the science of animal welfare. It argues that subjective, experiential states in animals such as well-being and suffering are, contrary to what is often assumed, open to empirical observation and scientific assessment. The presumably purely private, inaccessible nature of such states is not an inh...

Behaviour and use of the cage area were studied in 96 rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) kept in an enriched cage system - with access to shelter and raised height at the back of the cage - and in a conventional cage system to estimate the effects of the environmental enrichment on the rabbits' welfare. The rabbits' behaviour and placement in the cage were observed, using continuous video recordin...

A cognitive model of persecutory delusions is used to predict the occurrence of nonclinical paranoid thoughts in a virtual reality environment. Scorers across the range of paranoia entered a virtual reality scene populated by five computer characters programmed to behave neutrally (N = 30). Many appraisals of the computer characters were positive or neutral. However, there were also persecutory...

This essay owes its appearance here to the good offices of Reinhard Kahle who, at short notice, allowed me the opportunity to turn into something publishable a rat’s nest of clandestine fragments hitherto available only to the author’s friends and students. I had always assumed that they were in any case so heretical that nobody would publish them even if I tidied them up and I am grateful to K...

an i'n f r'a through the year, and in general seemed very rugged ' (. s .rong. On 22nd June was having rather a severe attack of dn'1' re''CV0(' by a 5-gr. pill of euquinine on two successive ' y.s> with no unpleasant effect. On the 29tli fever came on <8ain with chill and vomiting, all through complaining of g -?rs 'n the region of the stomach. No euquinine was at hand, 1 Jth some timidity 4 g...

The health care reform signed by President Obama in March 2010 mirrors the Clinton reform proposal of 1993 in that both excluded undocumented immigrants from federal insurance coverage. In both cases substantive discussion of their possible inclusion was stifled by political timidity. This paper begins with a brief descriptive overview of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and their health car...