The Moral Accounting of Terrorism: Competing Interpretations of September 11, 2001

Drawing on comparative case studies, the research elucidates competing constructions of justice, responsibility, and victimhood articulated in response to September 11, 2001 on three digital discourse fora in Brazil, France, and the United States. The research extracts the moral metaphors through which Brazilian, French, and American participants judge the terrorist acts. It contrasts the underlying moral accounting schemes employed to legitimize or delegitimize the use of terrorism on 9/11. Two contrasting standpoints on political violence and associated moral underpinnings are elucidated: the morality of retribution and the morality of absolute goodness (Lakoff 2002). One ideological faction uses the morality of retribution to hold the US accountable for inciting the terrorists to act. For these individuals, political violence can be seen as a form of action that upholds a binary framing of moral order in which all moral debts must be paid. By contrast, opposing camps employ the morality of absolute goodness to condemn the terrorists by arguing that terrorist violence is inherently unjustifiable, as it necessarily results in human suffering.

Ethnic and religious perspectives on disability and the helping professions

This note looks at ethnic and religious perspectives of people who are training for and/or working in the helping professions in regard to their views of disability. The Modified Issues in Disabilities Scale (MIDS) was administered to a sample of people training for and/or working in the helping professions. A statistically significant association was found between ethnic and religious perspectives and scores on the MIDS.     

Developing an identity model for transgender and intersex inclusion in lesbian communities

The article briefly highlights past ideologies of Essentialism and Constructionist thought, identifying their weaknesses as arguments of exclusion. By combining corporeality and mentality, the article posits an identity model, the spherical characterization model that argues for transgender inclusion in lesbian space by deconstructing the ideology behind identity group construction. Next the article applies the spherical characterization model to the characters in Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando' and Jeffrey Eugenides' 'Middlesex' to delineate how the model argues for transgender inclusion within lesbian space.     

Edgeworth Expansions for Semiparametric Averaged Derivatives

A valid Edgeworth expansion is established for the limit distribution of density‐weighted semiparametric averaged derivative estimates of single index models. The leading term that corrects the normal limit varies in magnitude, depending on the choice of bandwidth and kernel order. In general this term has order larger than the n^−1/2 that prevails in standard parametric problems, but we find circumstances in which it is O(n^−1/2), thereby extending the achievement of an n^−1/2 Berry‐Esseen bound in Robinson (1995a). A valid empirical Edgeworth expansion is also established. We also provide theoretical and empirical Edgeworth expansions for a studentized statistic, where some correction terms are different from those for the unstudentized case. We report a Monte Carlo study of finite sample performance.     

Complexity Factors and Intuition-based Methods for Facility Network Design

Logistics managers frequently utilize decision support systems (DSS) to make facility network design decisions. Many DSS do not provide optimization capabilities, but instead rely on scenario evaluation as a means for developing solutions. We experimentally assessed the performances of decision makers, including experienced managers, who used four variants of a scenario evaluation-based DSS to solve realistically sized network design problems of varying complexities. Complexity factors included DSS attributes, problem size, network types, and demand dispersion patterns. Decision makers' performances were assessed relative to optimal solutions. Overall, the decision makers generated relatively high-quality solutions using the DSS variants. The type of design problem solved did not significantly impact problem-solving performance. However, performance degraded and variability in solution quality escalated as problem size was increased. The availability of incremental solution cost improvement cues in the DSS significantly improved solution quality and reduced performance variability. Iconic graphic enhancements to the DSS did not consistently affect performance. However, significant interactions existed among the effects of DSS graphics capabilities, DSS information cues, and problem attributes.