Fear and loathing in Kansas City: Political harassment and the making of moderates in America's abortion wars (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The pro‐life movement regularly employs tactics of political harassment in its campaign against abortion. As the murder of the controversial abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, demonstrated last year, such tactics often betray a potential for violence. This paper explores how the militant tactics of the pro‐life movement in the 1990s have contributed to the formation of a ‘new’ political identity in Kansas politics: that of the moderate Republican. But for those that seek to counter‐mobilize against the Christian right, the political stakes remain high.     

Britische Politiker als Liebhaber der Wissenschaft (ca. 1850–1914) — Zur Ideologie des Amateurismus

The various scholarly and scientific endeavours — comprising both arts and sciences —, which British statesmen persued in their leisure time, transcend the mere biographical aspect. In the light of the slow, yet steady professionalisation of educational and political institutions, many of them modernised or newly created in order to achieve what came to be called “National Efficiency”, the literary and scientific pastimes of men, like Gladstone, Morley, Salisbury, Balfour or Haldane, seemed soon to become somewhat obsolete. Yet, it is argued, that the often professedly amateurish activities did not merely display the traditional hobby attitude to the sciences, so characteristic of the wealthy aristocrat, but in some cases revealed a good understanding of the scientific and educational needs of society, leading up to their active advancement. The British amateurs, it would seem, were pleading for providing a balanced higher education and training, rather than going for the technical excellence of the political rival Imperial Germany, which dazzled and, at the same time, intimidated some of them.     

Toward Conceptualizing Trip-Chaining Behavior: A Review

This paper critically reviews the existing literature on multiple-trip journeys, and clarifies the need for an improved conceptualization and modeling strategy. It also suggests different ways that trip chaining can be treated and a theory constructed. Exploratory studies, from the 1960s and 1970s, are briefly surveyed (Section I). While they developed the existence and complexity of travel patterns, they lacked any comprehensive theoretical framework. However, they were useful in that they supported the conceptual framework of various kinds of stochastic processes used by transportation scientists to replicate trip-chaining behavior (Section II). Scientists subsequently improved their conceptualization of the issue by grounding individual behavior on the principle of utility maximization. In this latter area the economists have emphasized theoretical concerns while transportation researchers have emphasized operationality (Section III).