From the "pólis" to the modern state: an approach to the problem of politics in Heidegger

This paper starts off asking whether a strictly political approach may be deduced based on Martin Heidegger’ ontological analyses of modernity. His interpretation of the Greek phenomenon of the polis is discussed along with the distinction established therein between this form of community and the modern state, founded according to Heidegger on the metaphysical essence of modernity. To clarify this question regard is had to the proclamation of values observed by Heidegger in the different forms of state organization arising in the age of technical consummation of metaphysics. In this connection, his vision of nihilism is studied and a hypothesis is finally offered as to the form of state that would be consistent with a renunciation of the values required, in his view, by the manifestation of the entity in modernity as a wholly producible object.

Making 'dirty' nations look clean? The nation state and the problem of selecting and weighting indices as tools for measuring progress towards sustainability

Pressing global environmental problems highlight the need to develop tools to measure progress towards "sustainability." However, some argue that any such attempt inevitably reflects the views of those creating such tools and only produce highly contested notions of "reality." To explore this tension, we critically assesses the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), a well-publicized product of the World Economic Forum that is designed to measure 'sustainability' by ranking nations on league tables based on extensive databases of environmental indicators. By recreating this index, and then using statistical tools (principal components analysis) to test relations between various components of the index, we challenge ways in which countries are ranked in the ESI. Based on this analysis, we suggest (1) that the approach taken to aggregate, interpret and present the ESI creates a misleading impression that Western countries are more sustainable than the developing world; (2) that unaccounted methodological biases allowed the authors of the ESI to over-generalize the relative 'sustainability' of different countries; and, (3) that this has resulted in simplistic conclusions on the relation between economic growth and environmental sustainability. This criticism should not be interpreted as a call for the abandonment of efforts to create standardized comparable data. Instead, this paper proposes that indicator selection and data collection should draw on a range of voices, including local stakeholders as well as international experts. We also propose that aggregating data into final league ranking tables is too prone to error and creates the illusion of absolute and categorical interpretations. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Conditioning and preconditioning of the optimal state estimation problem

Optimal state estimation is a method that requires minimising a weighted, nonlinear, least-squares objective function in order to obtain the best estimate of the current state of a dynamical system. Often the minimisation is non-trivial due to the large scale of the problem, the relative sparsity of the observations and the nonlinearity of the objective function. To simplify the problem the solution is often found via a sequence of linearised objective functions. The condition number of the Hessian of the linearised problem is an important indicator of the convergence rate of the minimisation and the expected accuracy of the solution. In the standard formulation the convergence is slow, indicating an ill-conditioned objective function. A transformation to different variables is often used to ameliorate the conditioning of the Hessian by changing, or preconditioning, the Hessian. There is only sparse information in the literature for describing the causes of ill-conditioning of the optimal state estimation problem and explaining the effect of preconditioning on the condition number. This paper derives descriptive theoretical bounds on the condition number of both the unpreconditioned and preconditioned system in order to better understand the conditioning of the problem. We use these bounds to explain why the standard objective function is often ill-conditioned and why a standard preconditioning reduces the condition number. We also use the bounds on the preconditioned Hessian to understand the main factors that affect the conditioning of the system. We illustrate the results with simple numerical experiments.

Conceptual problem for noncommutative inflation and the new approach for nonrelativistic inflationary equation of state

In a previous paper, we connected the phenomenological noncommutative inflation of Alexander, Brandenberger and Magueijo [ Phys. Rev. D 67 081301 (2003)] and Koh and Brandenberger [ J. Cosmol. Astropart Phys. 2007 21 ()] with the formal representation theory of groups and algebras and analyzed minimal conditions that the deformed dispersion relation should satisfy in order to lead to a successful inflation. In that paper, we showed that elementary tools of algebra allow a group-like procedure in which even Hopf algebras (roughly the symmetries of noncommutative spaces) could lead to the equation of state of inflationary radiation. Nevertheless, in this paper, we show that there exists a conceptual problem with the kind of representation that leads to the fundamental equations of the model. The problem comes from an incompatibility between one of the minimal conditions for successful inflation (the momentum of individual photons being bounded from above) and the Fock-space structure of the representation which leads to the fundamental inflationary equations of state. We show that the Fock structure, although mathematically allowed, would lead to problems with the overall consistency of physics, like leading to a problematic scattering theory, for example. We suggest replacing the Fock space by one of two possible structures that we propose. One of them relates to the general theory of Hopf algebras (here explained at an elementary level) while the other is based on a representation theorem of von Neumann algebras (a generalization of the Clebsch-Gordan coefficients), a proposal already suggested by us to take into account interactions in the inflationary equation of state.

Medicaid prescription drug diversion : a major problem, but state approaches offer some promise : statement of Janet L. Shikles, Director, Health Financing and Policy Issues, Human Resources Division, before the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, House of Representatives /

"July 29, 1992."

The individual and the state : the problem as presented by the sentencing of Roger N. Baldwin.

Cover title.

A state monopoly of workmen's compensation insurance plus a political administration of same equals the ultimate bankruptcy of the whole scheme : the state of Washington after five years' practical experience has solved this problem; examinations by the Department of Auditor of State Bureau of Inspection and Supervision of Public Offices; startling disclosures and denunciations in the language and logic of the state examiners /

Mode of access: Internet.

State programs for the aging; a review of the problem and of recent action in the States.

Mode of access: Internet.

The problem of forestry in Minnesota. Report to the State Forestry Board of Minnesota ...

Mode of access: Internet.

Airborne engineered nanoparticles : are they a health problem?

This article focuses on airborne engineered nanoparticles generated in a growing number of commercial and research facilities. Despite their presence in the air of many such facilities, there are currently no established and validated measurement methods to detect them, characterise their properties or quantify their concentrations. In relation to their possible health impacts, the key questions include: (i) Are the particles in the nano-size range are more toxic than larger particles of the same material? (ii) Does the surface chemistry of the lung alters the toxicity of inhaled nanoparticles? (iii) Do nano-fibers pose the same risk as asbestos? and (iv) Are the methods for assessing the health risk are appropriate? This article summarises the state of knowledge in relation to these issues.

Punitiveness and the criminalisation of the other : State wards, unlawful non-citizens and Indigenous youth

This paper explores the genealogies of bio-power that cut across punitive state interventions aimed at regulating or normalising several distinctive ‘problem’ or ‘suspect’ deviant populations, such as state wards, non-lawful citizens and Indigenous youth. It begins by making some general comments about the theoretical approach to bio-power taken in this paper. It then outlines the distinctive features of bio-power in Australia and how these intersected with the emergence of penal welfarism to govern the unruly, unchaste, unlawful, and the primitive. The paper draws on three examples to illustrate the argument – the gargantuan criminalisation rates of Aboriginal youth, the history of incarcerating state wards in state institutions, and the mandatory detention of unlawful non-citizens and their children. The construction of Indigenous people as a dangerous presence, alongside the construction of the unruly neglected children of the colony — the larrikin descendants of convicts as necessitating special regimes of internal controls and institutions, found a counterpart in the racial and other exclusionary criteria operating through immigration controls for much of the twentieth century. In each case the problem child or population was expelled from the social body through forms of bio-power, rationalised as strengthening, protecting or purifying the Australian population.

State convergence in the initialisation of stream ciphers

An initialisation process is a key component in modern stream cipher design. A well-designed initialisation process should ensure that each key-IV pair generates a different key stream. In this paper, we analyse two ciphers, A5/1 and Mixer, for which this does not happen due to state convergence. We show how the state convergence problem occurs and estimate the effective key-space in each case.

Heidegger's hippies : a dissenting voice on "the problem of the subject"

This is a deliberately contentious paper about the future of the socio-political sphere in the West based on what we know about its past. I argue that the predominant public discourse in Western countries is best characterised as one of selective forgetfulness; a semi-blissful, amnesiacal state of collective dementia that manifests itself in symbolic idealism: informationalism. Informationalism is merely the latest form of idealism. It is a lot like religion insofar as it causally relates abstract concepts with reality and, consequently, becomes confused between the two. Historically, this has proven to be a dangerous state of affairs, especially when elites becomes confused between ideas about how a society should work, and the way it actually does work. Central to the idealism of the information age, at least in intellectual spheres, is the so called "problem of the subject". I argue that the "problem of the subject" is a largely synthetic, destabilising, and ultimately fruitless theoretical abstraction which turns on a synthetically derived, generalised intradiscursive space; existentialist nihilism; and the theoretical baubles of ontological metaphysics. These philosophical aberrations are, in turn, historically concomitant with especially destructive political and social configurations. This paper sketches a theoretical framework for identity formation which rejects the problem of the subject, and proposes potential resources, sources, and strategies with which to engage the idealism that underpins this obfuscating problematic in an age of turbulent social uncertainty. Quite simply, I turn to history as the source of human identity. While informationalism, like religion, is mostly focused on utopian futures, I assert that history, not the future, holds the solutions for substantive problematics concerning individual and social identities. I argue here that history, language, thought, and identity are indissolubly entangled and so should be understood as such: they are the fundamental parts of 'identities in action'. From this perspective, the ‘problem of the subject’ becomes less a substantive intellectual problematic and more a theoretical red herring.