It was never good world sence minister must have wyves”: clerical celibacy, clerical marriage, and anticlericalism in Reformation England

The impact of the Reformation was felt strongly in the nature and character of the priesthood, and in the function and reputation of the priest. A shift in the understanding of the priesthood was one of the most tangible manifestations of doctrinal change, evident in the physical arrangement of the church, in the language of the liturgy, and in the relaxation of the discipline of celibacy, which had for centuries bound priests in the Latin tradition to a life of perpetual continence. Clerical celibacy, and accusations of clerical incontinence, featured prominently in evangelical criticisms of the Catholic church and priesthood, which made a good deal of polemical capital out of the perceived relationship of the priest and the efficacy of his sacred function. Citing St Paul, Protestant polemicists presented clerical marriage as the only, and appropriate remedy, for priestly immorality. But did the advent of a married priesthood create more problems than it solved? The polemical certainties that informed evangelical writing on sacerdotal celibacy did not guarantee the immediate acceptance of a married priesthood, and the vocabulary that had been used to denounce clergy who failed in their obligation to celibacy was all too readily turned against the married clergy. The anti-clerical lexicon, and its usage, remained remarkably static despite the substantial doctrinal and practical challenges posed to the traditional model of priesthood by the Protestant Reformation.

Good practice transfer within small construction specialist trade contractors

Government and institutionally-driven ‘good practice transfer’ initiatives are consistently presented as a means to enhance construction firm and industry performance. Two implicit tenets of these initiatives appear to be: knowledge embedded in good practice will transfer automatically; and, the potential of implementing good practice will be capitalised regardless of the context where it is to be used. The validity of these tenets is increasingly being questioned and, concurrently, more nuanced knowledge production understandings are being developed which recognise and incorporate context-specificity. This research contributes to this growing, more critical agenda by examining the actual benefits accrued from good practice transfer from the perspective of a small specialist trade contracting firm. A concept model for successful good practice transfer is developed from a single longitudinal case study within a small heating and plumbing firm. The concept model consists of five key variables: environment, strategy, people, technology, and organisation of work. The key findings challenge the implicit assumptions prevailing in the existing literature and support a contingency approach that argues successful good practice transfer is not just adopting and mechanistically inserting into the firm, but requires addressing ‘behavioural’ aspects. For successful good practice transfer, small specialist trade contracting firms need to develop and operationalise organisation slack, mechanisms for scanning external stimuli and absorbing knowledge. They also need to formulate and communicate client-driven external strategies; to motive and educate people at all levels; to possess internal or accessible complementary skills and knowledge; to have ‘soft focus’ immediate/mid-term benefits at a project level; and, to embed good practice in current work practices.

Synthesis of beaded poly(vinyl ether) solid supports with unique solvent compatibility

Poly(vinyl ether) gels SLURPS (Superior Liquid Uptake Resin for Polymer-supported synthesis) with low cross-linking levels have been synthesized for the first time in beaded form using a non-aqueous inverse suspension polymerisation approach. The synthetic protocol was optimized with regards to several parameters including reactions conditions, type and concentration of suspension stabilizer and controlled low temperature addition of co-initiator. Particle size measurements confirm the production of beads with average diameters of 700e950 mm. Optimization of the monomer composition of the poly (vinyl ether) gels resulted in a novel beaded polymer support with considerably improved as well as unique swelling characteristics in solvents ranging from hexane to water. The synthetic utility of the new gel was confirmed by carrying out a set of transformations with complete conversion leading to a useful amino and hydroxy terminated solid-phase precursor resin. Reaction progress could be monitored easily by 1H and 13C gel-phase NMR.

Morality and the good life

Being moral sometimes handicaps decent people in their pursuit of worthwhile goals. This is especially likely to happen when those with power in society have badly mistaken ideas about what morality requires. A good person might not last long in a bad society.

The tenant as a customer: can good service improve real estate performance?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) theory suggests that good customer service results in satisfied customers, who in turn are more likely to remain loyal and recommend the service provider to others. Proponents of good customer service for tenants claim that landlords should see a return on any investment in their customer service, in the form of enhanced real estate performance. This paper begins by reviewing research on customer service returns in other industries. Through consideration of the characteristics of real estate markets, the paper explains how factors such as (inter alia) lease terms, property market cycles, and property type, might determine the relationship between customer service and real estate performance. The paper concludes that further research is needed to isolate specific aspects of customer service that are most appreciated by customers. It suggests that the financial returns which accrue to landlords adopting a customer-focused approach might indeed be quantified, and suggests an appropriate method for such future research.

A good enough approach to setting planning obligations

In this paper we propose an alternative model of, what is often called, land value capture in the planning system. Based on development viability models, negotiations and policy formation regarding the level of planning obligations have taken place at the local level with little clear guidance on technique, approach and method. It is argued that current approaches are regressive and fail to reflect how the ability of sites to generate planning gain can vary over time and between sites. The alternative approach suggested here attempts to rationalise rather than replace the existing practice of development viability appraisal. It is based upon the assumption that schemes with similar development values should produce similar levels of return to the landowner, developer and other stakeholders in the development as well as similar levels of planning obligations in all parts of the country. Given the high level of input uncertainty in viability modelling, a simple viability model is ‘good enough’ to quantify the maximum level of planning obligations for a given level of development value. We have argued that such an approach can deliver a more durable, equitable, simpler, consistent and cheaper method for policy formation regarding planning obligations.

“Bad talk” made good: language variety in four Caribbean British children’s poets

This article looks at how four British-based poets born in the Caribbean exploit the rich language repertoire available to them in their work for children and young people. Following initial consideration of questions of definition and terminology, poetry collections by James Berry, John Agard, Grace Nichols and Valerie Bloom are discussed, with a focus on the interplay and creative tension between the different varieties of Caribbean creoles (“Bad Talk”) and standard English evident in their work. Variation both between the four poets’ usage and within each individual poet’s work is considered, and a trend over time towards the inclusion of fewer creole-influenced poems is noted. This and other issues, such as the labelling of the four poets’ work as ‘performance poetry’ and the nature of the poets’ contribution to British children’s literature, are considered in the conclusion.

Improving EU biofuels policy? Greenhouse gas emissions, policy efficiency, and WTO compatibility

Both the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) and Article 7a of its Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) seek to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport fuels. The RED mandates a 10% share of renewable energy in transport fuels by 2020, whilst the FQD requires a 6% reduction in GHG emissions (from a 2010 base) by the same date. In practice, it will mainly be biofuels that economic operators will use to meet these requirements, but the different approaches can lead to either the RED, or the FQD, acting as the binding constraint. A common set of environmental sustainability criteria apply to biofuels under both the RED and the FQD. In particular, biofuels have to demonstrate a 35% (later increasing to 50/60%) saving in life-cycle GHG emissions. This could be problematic in the World Trade Organization (WTO), as a non-compliant biofuel with a 34% emissions saving would probably be judged to be ‘like’ a compliant biofuel. A more economically rational way to reduce GHG emissions, and one that might attract greater public support, would be for the RED to reward emission reductions along the lines of the FQD. Moreover, this modification would probably make the provisions more acceptable in the WTO, as there would be a clearer link between policy measures and the objective of reductions in GHG emissions; and the combination of the revised RED and the FQD would lessen the commercial incentive to import biofuels with modest GHG emission savings, and thus reduce the risk of trade tension.

Doing more harm than good? Community based natural resource management and the neglect of local institutions in policy development

Approaches to natural resource management emphasise the importance of involving local people and institutions in order to build capacity, limit costs, and achieve environmental sustainability. Governments worldwide, often encouraged by international donors, have formulated devolution policies and legal instruments that provide an enabling environment for devolved natural resource management. However, implementation of these policies reveals serious challenges. This article explores the effects of limited involvement of local people and institutions in policy development and implementation. An in-depth study of the Forest Policy of Malawi and Village Forest Areas in the Lilongwe district provides an example of externally driven policy development which seeks to promote local management of natural resources. The article argues that policy which has weak ownership by national government and does not adequately consider the complexity of local institutions, together with the effects of previous initiatives on them, can create a cumulative legacy through which destructive resource use practices and social conflict may be reinforced. In short, poorly developed and implemented community based natural resource management policies can do considerably more harm than good. Approaches are needed that enable the policy development process to embed an in-depth understanding of local institutions whilst incorporating flexibility to account for their location-specific nature. This demands further research on policy design to enable rigorous identification of positive and negative institutions and ex-ante exploration of the likely effects of different policy interventions.

Conformism and reciprocity in public good provision

People contribute more to experimental public goods the more others contribute, a tendency called “crowding-in.” We propose a novel experimental design to distinguish two possible causes of crowding-in: reciprocity, the usual explanation, and conformity, a neglected alternative. Subjects are given the opportunity to react to contributions of a payoff-irrelevant group, in addition to their own group. We find evidence of conformity, accounting for roughly 1/3 of crowding-in.

Dissociating between object affordances and spatial compatibility effects using early response components

Perception and action are tightly linked: objects may be perceived not only in terms of visual features, but also in terms of possibilities for action. Previous studies showed that when a centrally located object has a salient graspable feature (e.g., a handle), it facilitates motor responses corresponding with the feature's position. However, such so-called affordance effects have been criticized as resulting from spatial compatibility effects, due to the visual asymmetry created by the graspable feature, irrespective of any affordances. In order to dissociate between affordance and spatial compatibility effects, we asked participants to perform a simple reaction-time task to typically graspable and non-graspable objects with similar visual features (e.g., lollipop and stop sign). Responses were measured using either electromyography (EMG) on proximal arm muscles during reaching-like movements, or with finger key-presses. In both EMG and button press measurements, participants responded faster when the object was either presented in the same location as the responding hand, or was affordable, resulting in significant and independent spatial compatibility and affordance effects, but no interaction. Furthermore, while the spatial compatibility effect was present from the earliest stages of movement preparation and throughout the different stages of movement execution, the affordance effect was restricted to the early stages of movement execution. Finally, we tested a small group of unilateral arm amputees using EMG, and found residual spatial compatibility but no affordance, suggesting that spatial compatibility effects do not necessarily rely on individuals’ available affordances. Our results show dissociation between affordance and spatial compatibility effects, and suggest that rather than evoking the specific motor action most suitable for interaction with the viewed object, graspable objects prompt the motor system in a general, body-part independent fashion

Are superhumps good measures of the mass ratio for AM CVn systems?

We extend recent work that included the effect of pressure forces to derive the precession rate of eccentric accretion discs in cataclysmic variables to the case of double degenerate systems. We find that the logical scaling of the pressure force in such systems results in predictions of unrealistically high primary masses. Using the prototype AM CVn as a calibrator for the magnitude of the effect, we find that there is no scaling that applies consistently to all the systems in the class. We discuss the reasons for the lack of a superhump period to mass ratio relationship analogous to that known for SU UMa systems and suggest that this is because these secondaries do not have a single valued mass-radius relationship. We highlight the unreliability of mass-ratios derived by applying the SU UMa expression to the AM CVn binaries.

Good machine performance in Turing’s imitation game

In this paper we consider transcripts which originated from a practical series of Turing’s Imitation Game which was held on 23rd June 2012 at Bletchley Park, England. In some cases the tests involved a 3-participant simultaneous comparison of two hidden entities whereas others were the result of a direct 2-participant interaction. Each of the transcripts considered here resulted in a human interrogator being fooled, by a machine, into concluding that they had been conversing with a human. Particular features of the conversation are highlighted, successful ploys on the part of each machine discussed and likely reasons for the interrogator being fooled are considered. Subsequent feedback from the interrogators involved is also included