Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised?

From Hellenistic to modern times, in the eyes of Jews and non-Jews alike, circumcision is a sign that marks the boundary between Jews and non-Jews. Jews are circumcised, gentiles are not. What, then, of Jewish women? Why are they not marked with a bodily sign attesting to their place within the covenant? Cohen argues that the Jews of antiquity seem not to have been bothered by this question probably because the fundamental Otherness of women was clear to them. Jewish women were Jewish by birth, but their Jewishness was assumed to be inferior to that of Jewish men. Jews and Christians, however, who opposed circumcision, used the non-circumcision of women as one of their supporting arguments.     

浅谈如何激发学生的数学问题意识

小学思想活跃,求职欲望旺盛,对事物有着强烈的好奇心,这就是问题意识的萌芽种子。这粒种子的能不能萌芽,取决于它是否有一个适宜的环境和氛围。激发学生的问题意识,是教师在课堂教学中通过各种有效的教学手段和方法,指导学生通过观察,主动发现问题和提出问题,并努力分析和解决问题,让学生敢问、会问和爱问,提高学生认识事物和创新实践的技能,从而无形中提高了教师自身的教学技能与水平。     

Being Canadian: Dual Citizenship in Historical Perspective

Why do states configure their citizenship laws in certain ways? Why do they allow or prohibit dual citizenship? Why was it only in 1946 that Canada decided to enact its first citizenship law which prohibited multiple national allegiances? Why was a similar proposal abandoned in 1931? And why was this citizenship law changed in 1977 to allow dual citizenship? A common answer is that citizenship reflects the national “identity” of each nation-state. Through a perusal of the debates regarding citizenship laws in Canada, I locate the particular motivation for introducing those laws. I argue that although the symbolic element of citizenship laws is significant, citizenship laws are enacted as a political instrument to achieve immediate and specific goals. In particular, accepting dual citizenship in Canada should be seen as a one of the strategies political elites tried in order to incorporate English and French speakers under the same flag.     

Nationalism,Loss-Gain Framing and the Confederate States of America

Abstract. In recent years, numerous states have become racked with internal secessionist strife. Why have calls for independence by regional subgroupings been heeded even after long periods of inter-ethnic peace or in regions without any previous history of secessionist activity? I contend that this question can be answered by examining the phenomenon of loss-gain framing, in which people are motivated to adopt risky stratagems, like secession, due to fears of unacceptable losses. This article examines the enigma of why most white American Southerners in 1861 willingly fought for the establishment of the Confederacy, a nation based upon slavery, despite the fact that most Southerners did not own slaves and had continuously rejected secessionist appeals for years. Confederate President Jefferson Davis overcame this reluctance by emphasising what all Southerners – slaveholder and non-slaveholder alike – would lose by remaining in the United States rather than accentuating what would be gained by secession.     

从明朝中后期的民族政策看葡萄牙殖民者窃占澳门得逞的原因

关于葡萄牙殖民者窃占澳门得逞的原因,一些学者已作过探讨,并形成了几种成说。这些成说当然都有其合理成份,但也存在不足,不能令人信服地解释明廷容忍葡人窃占澳门的真实原因。笔者认为,明廷允许葡人租借澳门固然受外部因素的影响,但主要还是内部因素起决定作用。是明朝中后期,明廷对葡萄牙殖民者侵略本性认识不足,而视北方民族为主要威胁,实行以防北方民族为主这一民族政策的结果,将明廷允租澳门的做法称为“明智”是不能令人信服的。     

初中数学活动课操作策略初探

数学活动课可安排学生进行探索性的活动,通过一些具体的操作,亲自实践,然后由学生对问题进行思考,得出数学结论,培养学生解决问题的能力和探索问题的精神。学习的过程,不仅是一个学生主动参与的过程,更是一个学生创造的过程。学生在这个探索空间里,不仅是一个发现者、探索者,更是一个创造者。     

Potential Focusing Projects and Policy Change

Why do policies change dramatically? Most prominent theories and many empirical studies of policy change address that question with attention to external shocks to policy systems or focusing events. These shocks or events are usually described as unplanned, unpredicted jolts such as global crises or natural disasters. I assert a role for focusing projects. These planned activities continue traditional priorities in an issue but do so to a degree perceived as excessive by enough people to shatter seemingly stable policy systems. I then propose a theoretical framework to explain the varying impacts from such projects. The framework uses two dimensions: one that accounts for the mobilization of pro‐change forces and one that assesses policy learning by members of pro‐status quo coalitions. I examine this framework in the context of changes to dam‐building policies in four diverse political settings: United States, Australia, Canada, and China. I find intriguing similarities between the focusing projects in these different contexts but also considerable variation in the extent to which they produce policy change.     

Photius and Poetry

Abstract

‘No art or science, except poetry, was foreign to this universal scholar’. Thus Edward Gibbon. It has long been notorious that poets are excluded from the Bibliotheca. Why? The question persists. Hence the present paper.     

Why Do People Become Involved With Archaeology? Some Answers from Alabama��s Black Belt Region

This paper considers a question posed by the organizers of the Dynamics of Inclusion in Public Archaeology symposium: “Why do people become involved?” Based on my own quest for public involvement with Cahawba, a site in Alabama’s Black Belt region, I contend that people are most likely to become involved when an archaeologist communicates interpretively. Furthermore, certain categories of people are just more likely to become actively engaged with archaeology than others. Who are they? What are their characteristics? Where can they be found? The National Survey on Recreation and the Environment has the answers.     

Open-economy Central Banking: Explaining Australia's Recommitment to Central Bank Independence

Why do governments offload major instruments such as monetary policy to an independent central bank? This article answers this question in relation to the Australian case, a case which reflects wider global developments. The article challenges the methodology of quantitative approaches to explaining central bank independence and instead argues that a model of 'embedded statism' is the most fruitful explanatory approach.     

化学高考简答题解法例谈

培养学生用化学用语准确、简明扼要说明问题的能力,是化学教学中应重视和强化的问题。除应加强基础知识教学外,还应培养学生认真审题、抓住答题的关键和要点、使用准确化学用语表述问题的能力。此外,还要加强此类题解法的指导。     

Last out — First in

I first met Sir Granville Beynon as a first year undergraduate student at the University College of Swansea in 1953. I later joined his research group and was his postgraduate student from 1956–1959. This was a particularly exciting time in Sir Granville's career; he was heavily involved in the International Geophysical Year, 1957–1958, was appointed to the Chair of Physics in Aberystwyth (1958) and awarded the CBE (1959). I was the last student to complete a Ph.D. in Ionospheric Physics at Swansea and the first postdoctoral research assistant to be appointed in the new group formed at Aberystwyth. I have very fond memories of this period during which I received an excellent training in ionospheric physics and radio propagation.     

Limits of Historical and Scientific Knowledge

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that subtle and essential uncertainties in language determine the limits of science and history, and thereby define the boundaries of research in the history of science. Historical research, in the strict sense of history as opposed to prehistory, begins with the examination of written records. There is a host of problems in the interpretation of the historical record, but underlying all of these is the simply stated yet complex question of the meaning of words in historical documents. Since this is where the practice of history begins, this problem delimits the boundaries of historical knowledge. In this paper, I will examine structural ambiguities in the meaning of words, explain how they arise, and provide independent evidence for the validity of the analysis.     

Limits of historical and scientific knowledge

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that subtle and essential uncertainties in language determine the limits of science and history, and thereby define the boundaries of research in the history of science. Historical research, in the strict sense of history as opposed to prehistory, begins with the examination of written records. There is a host of problems in the interpretation of the historical record, but underlying all of these is the simply stated yet complex question of the meaning of words in historical documents. Since this is where the practice of history begins, this problem delimits the boundaries of historical knowledge. In this paper, I will examine structural ambiguities in the meaning of words, explain how they arise, and provide independent evidence for the validity of the analysis.     

The Supreme Court in Times of Hot and Cold War: Learning from the Sounds of Silence for a War on Terrorism

Justice William J. Brennan once remarked that the Court has never fully developed a jurisprudence of national security. It is simply too episodic, he said. ¹ Our present Chief Justice would, it would seem, largely agree, though his own research shows some greater willingness for the Court to superintend—at least after the fact ² —the actions of the executive in times of war or similar crisis. My assignment in this essay was to ask the question slightly differently; namely, has the posture of the Court differed in times of hot or cold war, and if so, how has it differed? As will be evident momentarily, that question is less helpful to our present circumstance than it might seem. Why? Because, frankly, we are in neither a hot nor cold war, but something quite different ³ —something that has the potential to be not only hot, but blistering, and something which will likely never be fully appreciated as having gone truly cold.     

The growth of long-distance telephony in the Bell System: 1875–1907

The growth of the long-distance network in the Bell System is evaluated in relation to the state of competition within the industry and technical advances in long-distance telephony. The Bell System had a monopoly over the industry from 1875 to 1894, because of its control of the fundamental patents covering telephony. During this period the Bell System's long-distance network was expanded to cover the industrial heartland of the country. Despite a rapid growth in the number of independent telephone companies in the period of competition from 1895 to 1907, the Bell System emerged by 1907 in a dominant position within the industry. This dominance stemmed, in part, from the system-wide interconnections which the Bell System provided through its long-distance network. Technical advances and the continued expansion of the network gave the Bell System a major advantage over the competing independent companies.     

Aspects of the History of the Nerves: Bell’s Theory,the Bell-Magendie Law and Controversy,and Two Forgotten Works by P.W. Lund and D.F. Eschricht

The French physiologist François Magendie showed, in 1822, that the anterior roots of the spinal nerves are motor and the posterior sensory. The English anatomist Charles Bell claimed the discovery, but his claim was based on republications of papers in which the wording had been altered to be consistent with Magendie’s findings. Bell also appropriated Herbert Mayo’s discoveries of the functions of the fifth and seventh cranial nerves. Bell repeated his claims in a number of influential publications, supported by his brothers-in-law John and Alexander Shaw. And for a century and a half, Bell figured as the discoverer in most references to the subject. During this period, several reviewers did go back to Bell’s original papers, disclosing Bell’s falsifications in the republished texts. But Magendie was not definitely acknowledged as the discoverer of the function of the spinal nerve roots until Cranefield’s (1974) treatise. Cranefield, as did all other reviewers, overlooked accounts from 1825 by P.W. Lund and F.D. Eschricht. They critically reviewed Bell’s early publications and reached conclusions similar to those of Cranefield concerning the roles of Bell and Magendie in the discovery of the function of the spinal nerve roots.     

Process and Dynamics of Mediterranean Neolithization (7000–5500 bc)

Journal of Archaeological Research - Why did the farming lifestyle appear and proliferate so rapidly through the Mediterranean basin between 7000 and 5500 bc? In this paper, I review the...     

Walking to the Tsosisumkyi“Tribe”

Why do I refer to Tsosisumkyi village as a"tribe"?The simple reason is that this rural community did not go through any democratic reform while Tibet experienced its transition from a feudal serfdom to socialism.How is Tsosisumkyi today?Is there any kind of chieftain in control of this"tribe"?