‘Oh You Pretty Thing!’: How David Bowie ‘Unlocked Everybody’s Inner Queen’ in spite of the music press

The 1967 Sexual Offence Act decriminalised homosexual acts between men allowing gay men to discuss their sexuality in public. Few prominent popular musicians came-out until 1972 when David Bowie claimed that he was bisexual in an interview with Melody Maker. Music papers and Bowie had substantial cultural power: Bowie was a rising star and music papers recruited journalists who discussed and perpetuated social change. The subsequent conversation, however, reinforced negative stereotypes in constructing the queer subject and tried to safeguard commercial concerns due to the assumption that the market for popular music avoided queer music. This undermined arguments that associate permissive legislation with a permissive media and society, but, to some, representation alone empowered people and destabilised preconceptions about queer identity.     

Human sacrifice and natural law in Las Casas’s Apologia

This study examines how Bartolomé de las Casas argues that Spain is not justified in waging war in the Americas to save the innocent victims of human sacrifice. It focuses on his three main lines of reasoning in this area and on how they relate to one another structurally and logically. These arguments are: (1) that the wars of conquest were a worse evil than human sacrifice; (2) that the practice of human sacrifice was an excusable error that almost all societies had committed at some point in their history; and (3) that this practice did not violate natural law. It also considers Domingo de Soto's treatment of the subject in his De iustitia et iure (1556), as well as his summary of the Valladolid debate between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1552), where Soto seems reluctant to convey the full scope of Las Casas's more radical assertions.     

"Don't Go Changing to Try and Please Me": A Preference-Consistency Analysis on Trade Policy in the U.S. House

Trade voting in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2001 provides an opportunity to move beyond examining the determinants of trade voting on single bills and to focus on the consistency members of Congress demonstrate in their trade preferences. We find that while a significant percentage of House members are consistent in their trade preferences during the time period, a surprising percentage of those members serving over the entire period are inconsistent, affecting important changes in U.S. trade policy. Ideological, partisan, and constituency- based factors prove significant cross-pressures on House members' trade preferences throughout the time period; however, we unearth differences in effects between the two parties. It is these cross-pressures that lead to inconsistent preferences among some legislators.     

Methods for calculating brine evaporation rates during salt production

Salt is recognized by archaeologists as an important commodity due to the biological need for sodium and other cultural uses. Numerous studies have described the various techniques used in converting brine to crystallized salt, but few, if any, have attempted to quantify the physical processes of evaporation in pre-industrial societies. Apart from the few areas where salt mining is possible, nearly all forms of salt production require evaporation of water to concentrate brine and ultimately produce salt crystals. This study quantifies three of the most common evaporation techniques and provides insight into the production rates of salt and fuel requirements. Methods of calculation are provided for determining evaporation through (1) direct solar heating of brine, (2) applied external heat to a vessel, and (3) an immersed heated object (e.g., stone). These results provide physical constraints on the evaporation process and provide investigators with techniques for estimating efficiency and total production of prehistoric and historic saltworks.     

The Heckscher-Ohlin Hypothesis and Structural Divergence in Quebec and Ontario, 1961–1969

The industrial structures of Quebec and Ontario differ, with labour-intensive industries prevalent in Quebec, capital-intensive in Ontario. Existing explanations of this structural divergence are complemented by a trade theory interpretation based on the Heckscher-Ohlin hypothesis. Analysis based on the twenty major industrial categories of the sic yields insignificant results, but when resource and market-oriented industries are excluded, significant results are obtained. Trade between Quebec and Ontario also conforms with the theory. The results suggest that it is to Quebec's advantage to continue trading freely with the rest of Canada.
Les structures industrielles au Quebec et en Ontario sont differentes: les industries de main d'truvre predominent au Quebec et celles capital eleve predominent en Ontario. Aux explications actuelles de cette divergence structurelle s'ajoute celle d'une theorie des echanges basee sur I'hypothese HeckscherOhlin. Une analyse basee sur les vingt premieres categories du recensement industriel rev& des resultats peu probants. On obtient cependant des resultats significatifs lorsque I'on exclue de cette analyse les industries dont la localisation est liee aux marches ou a la prksence de tessources naturelles. Le commerce entre le Quebec et I'Ontario est aussi en accord avec cette theorie. Ces resultats suggerent qu'il est avantageux pour le Quebec de poursuivre une politique de libre echange avec la reste du Canada.