IMPRESSIONS： HOW SPECIAL IS THE TIBET＇S CHANGTANG？

The goup, numbering 30 or 35, all moved in unison, dressed in thick bluish-gray coats, they descended the steep rocky slopes. Their goal was obvious. These blue sheep were looking for water. They dropped lower. My colleague and friend, Dr. Aili Kang, and I used our binoculars for a better look. Suddenly, the animals bolted, fleeing in different directions and all moving upslope away from snowfields.     

A Framework for Exploring Urban Retail Discontinuities. 探索城市零售业不连续性的框架

A key area in the analysis of urban structural evolution is identifying discontinuities. Effective analysis could improve long‐term forecasting and provide a better understanding of how to steer an urban system toward a desirable future state. We use a simple aggregate retail model to demonstrate an algorithm for identifying discontinuities in model parameter space. Explorations of retailing in both Greater London and South Yorkshire in the United Kingdom illustrate how understanding a system's potential for discontinuity can provide insights for both policy makers and retail businesses. The Harris and Wilson model, described in the section so‐named, is used as a simple archetype to illustrate the new framework. This model can be developed in a straightforward way to incorporate further refinement. In “ Executing the model and visualizing the results ,” we describe a single model run and in “ Investigating discontinuities ,” we explain our framework for detecting and analyzing discontinuities. “ Identifying discontinuities in the London retail system ” shows the results of applying this methodology to the Greater London retail system, and in “ Practical applications ,” we explore the policy applications for this technique as related to the decline of town centers in the South Yorkshire retail system. Some concluding comments are offered in “ Conclusions .”     

Missing links: W. V. Quine, the making of ‘Two Dogmas’, and the analytic roots of post-analytic philosophy

This essay argues that post-analytic philosophy finds its origins not only in an invented tradition—that of ‘analytic philosophy’—but also in an invented dilemma: namely, the response to the allegedly overweening dominance of ‘positivism’ in American philosophy. I begin by surveying the problems with the folk wisdom about positivism and analytic philosophy. This pervasive narrative locates the emergence of post-analytic philosophy after a period of hegemony for logical positivism and cognate philosophical subfields. Taking seriously evidence indicating a distinct overlap in the construction of the analytic and post-analytic traditions, I return to the founding moment of American analytic philosophy in the years immediately following World War II. What we see, I suggest, is not a reaction against a clearly defined and powerful logical positivist mainstream, but the careful, piecewise co-ordination of what would become characteristic ‘analytic’ modes of argument, problematics, and tool kits. Willard Van Orman Quine played a central role in this process, and for this reason I focus on the circumstances in which his field-defining 1951 article, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ was written and received. I conclude with the claim that both analytic and post-analytic philosophers relied on a peculiar image of the failure of logical positivism, and of the opportunities that failure presented.     

The Congressional Committee Intelligence System: Information,Oversight, and Change

Data from a study of top staffers on congressional committees indicate that Congress is rich in sources of information about the executive branch, and that it exploits these sources surprisingly well. An observer of the contemporary Congress can read Max Weber's classic essay on "bureaucracy" with minimum alarm. Weber's bureaucracy had an "overtowering" position relative to its nominal political masters because of its continuity, expertise, and ability to guard information (secrecy). U.S. congressional committees have built a formidable counter organization. Committee staffers are not mere "dilettantes" who stand opposite administrative "experts." They have a significant level of experience in the areas covered by the agencies they oversee, and well developed communication networks which give them significant opportunities to push aside any veil covering bureaucratic decisions and activities. Moreover, they indicate a surprisingly active approach to keeping track of agency activities, leading one to question the predominance in the contemporary period of the "fire alarm" approach described in the literature. The article develops reasons why an active information seeking style may be more attractive now than in the past and suggests a connection between environmental changes, changes in information seeking behavior, and changes in other aspects of oversight behavior.     

An Early Islamic Inter-Settlement Agroecosystem in the Coastal Sand of the Yavneh Dunefield,Israel

This study examines the remains of an agricultural complex found in the Yavneh coastal dunefield, central Israel. Known as a plot-and-berm agroecosystem, the complex consisted of earthworks in a crisscross pattern of sand berms and sunken agricultural plots that were used for groundwater harvesting. The plots, which provided easy access to the high groundwater table and the berms around them, are overlaid by a gray sand unit covered by pottery sherds and artifacts. This gray sand is more fertile than the underlying sand, suggesting refuse enrichment. Artifactual similarity of the finds to those of inland (Tel) Yavneh suggests that Yavneh was the main source for the refuse additive. Based on artifacts and OSL ages it seems that this agroecosystem was active during the 10th to early 12th centuries a.d. The agroecosystem demonstrates an early example of an Early Islamic agrotechnological attempt in marginal and sandy regions of the Mediterranean basin.     

Italy in the Aftermath of the First World War

France and Italy at the Paris Peace Conference