The University of Buckingham Press Journals
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NEW THOUGHTS ON THE HISTORICAL CONSTITUTION OF BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
Get PDFThe present paper aims at revising the main ideas that have been propagated in the academic field concerning the process of constitution of Brazilian Portuguese, whose identity and distance in relation to European Portuguese has long been observed. Moreover, it revives the discussion on the real dimension and role of African languages in the formation process of this linguistic variety in Brazil. To understand linguistic change, this study has sought to rekindle the issue to look beyond the albeit indispensible socio-historical and demographic data. Although studies that adopt the perspective that BP is a creole have yielded good results in the understanding of linguistic origins in the New World, such studies may have overestimated the occurrence of creoles in the southern hemisphere to the point of considering pidgins and creoles the only explanations of any contact that expanding languages might have had. Further and more detailed comparative studies on Bantu and Portuguese are required, which may provide new directions for research in this field
NO BURQAS WE’RE FRENCH! THE WIDE MARGIN OF APPRECIATION AND THE ECtHR BURQA RULING
Get PDFIn the 1970s in parts of the Middle East and in the Gulf, (United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar especially), the burqa or niqab when worn was worn by women from tribal regions only. Otherwise known as a ‘batoola’ this garment is a head and face covering with an area of mesh covering the eyes, another variation is provided by a mask covering the face and nose. Jonathan Raban in 1979 observed such sights in London ‘...it was on the Earl’s Court Road that I first saw the strange beak shaped foil masks of Gulf women...’ There has been a modernist revival in these once rare face coverings for a multiplicity of reasons and correspondingly the wearing of them contain several meanings. The burqa is worn for political, religious and other reasons, but also although not exclusively it is a garment intended to keep women in subjection. Stuart Hall in interpreting the work of Frantz Fanon’s 1960’s writings on the burqa (then called the veil) for Algerian women, explained ‘no sign is fixed in its meaning’emphasising the fluidity of the burqa and also its capacity for appropriation by others. This is also true when considering the symbolic significance of the burqa today. Wearing it is defended as a right to choose, albeit in parts of Asia, for example in Afghanistan in the tribal regions, the burqa is a requirement for women. Whilst in some parts of Africa and the Middle East wearing the burqa is expressly prohibited. In the West and on the streets of London (following recent patterns of migration) the burqa is an increasingly common sight, and whilst it might have been worn by a woman who was subject to the norms of her own society and merely visiting the United Kingdom, many women who choose to settle in the United Kingdom and desire United Kingdom nationality are also wearing the burqa. This demonstration and visible representation of otherness has created anxiety, provoked public debate and criticism, and in France and Belgium, prohibition.
CONSUMER CAPTURE AND THE LEGAL SERVICES ACT 2007
Get PDFIt is now nearly 7 years since the Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA) was brought onto the statute books. It is now 5 years since the major provisions of the Act became effective. For those unfamiliar with the Act, it is a blockbuster piece of legislation which in its entirety runs to 214 sections (covering 120 pages) and 24 Schedules which make up the remainder of the total 389 pages.The LSA 2007 sought to fundamentally recalibrate the regulation of the legal services market. To achieve this, the Act introduced a new tier of oversight regulation, above the then existing regulators of legal services. This new oversight regulator, called the Legal Services Board (LSB) is armed with an arsenal of statutory powers. The LSA 2007 also established a new ombudsman in the form of the Office of Legal Complaints.
Multivariate Methods in Assessing the Accuracy of Prediction Markets Ex Ante based on ohe Highest-Price Criterion
No full textThis study successfully establishes the principal component analysis with discriminant analysis (PCA-DA) model to assess the accuracy of contracts in the prediction markets ex ante based on the highest-price criterion. Trained by the xFuture data (7,274 contracts of future events) from 2006-2011, the PCA-DA model shows learning effects and provides 97.72% confidence to predict the outcome of any contract discriminated to the correct prediction group in the Exchange of Future Events. However, we need to greatly improve the low confidence of 19.58% for the PCA-DA model to predict the result of any contract discriminated to the incorrect prediction group
When is a multiple bet better than a single ?
No full textThe paper addresses an apparent paradox observed in betting on football scores, drawing on 20-year data from the English 2nd tier division (Championship). While accumulator bets have a lower Net Expected Value than single bets, ‘cross double’ bets on the scores, placed over successive playing rounds, produce distinctly better results and indeed a positive return overall. It is argued that this effect rests on the essential stability of the score frequencies across playing seasons and on the bookmakers’ failure, in setting the odds, to allow for occasional and temporary deviations from long run average frequencies. A betting strategy based on overdue scores occurring with compensating frequencies, and possibly clustered together, can then produce positive returns. Neglect of overdue scores can be expressed formally as a bias augmenting the probability of these and turning the odds in the bettor’s favour. It is shown that, while normally the bettor’s disadvantage is compounded in multiple bets, a compounded advantage results once the odds become better than fair. The paper also discusses certain quasi binomial characteristics of the betting involved and explores possible ways of hedging such bets ‘in running’.
THE IMPACTS OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY ELASTICITIES ON GAMBLING TAX CHOICES
No full textThis study shows that whether a tax is heavy for local casinos in terms of economy-wide efficiency hinges on how much of the tax can be passed on to tourists. The division of the tax burden between casinos and tourists is affected by the relative elasticity of demand versus supply and tourists’ income factors. We find that gaming tax incidence is robust across different market structures. An uncompetitive casino industry may be more favorable for tax efficiency than its competitive counterpart. Policy choice between tax rates is observed to rest on the economic incidence of a statutory tax. We provide the economic rationale behind why a high tax is imposed inMacaoand a lenient tax is adopted inLas Vegas
THE STORY OF RAPE: WRONGDOING AND THE EMOTIONAL IMAGINATION
Get PDFThis is a response to John Gardner’s article – The wrongness of rape. It claims that Gardner is fundamentally or radically wrong; not by attacking his careful and well-constructed argument from the ‘inside’ – by attempting to demonstrate some logical flaw in his argument – but by attacking his world-view. He shows us a world which simply does not accord with reality as perceived in our everyday lives by most, or all, of us. Whilst many philosophers, and certainly most philosophers of law, analyse the world in the way exemplified by Gardner, it is to be hoped that they reserve this analysis to their professional lives and do not make the mistake of thinking that it is connected with reality. For them reason prevails with emotion being relegated to the status of a mere ‘epiphenomenon’; whilst, for most of us, our emotional life is at least as important as our rational life.This article is an invitation to Gardner and others to make a ‘paradigm shift’ in the sense proposed by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn, in his explanation of the history of cosmology, showed how in order to explain the observed motion of the planets increasingly complicated systems of circular orbits were used (consisting of cycles, epicycles, epi-epicycles and so forth). These complex systems of orbits were used to explain the motion of the planets round the sun because people refused to believe that the planets could move in anything other than perfect circles. However, as the observational data grew it became clear that no system of circular orbits, no matter how complex, could explain the observations. When Johannes Kepler advanced the work of Nicolas Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Galileo Galilei and showed that the orbit of Mars could be best modelled by showing that it was elliptical, the problem was solved. Similarly, it is averred that no system of purely rational explanation, such as that advanced by Gardner, can explain the wrongness of rape. The explanation needs to start from a different position by explicitly including emotion in the explanation.
Prediction Markets – A literature review 2014
No full textIn recent years, Prediction Markets gained growing interest as a forecasting tool among researchers as well as practitioners, which resulted in an increasing number of publications. In order to track the latest development of research, comprising the extent and focus of research, this article provides a comprehensive review and classification of the literature related to the topic of Prediction Markets. Overall, 304 relevant articles, published in the timeframe from 2007 through 2013, were identified and assigned to a herein presented classification scheme, differentiating between descriptive works, articles of theoretical nature, application-oriented studies and articles dealing with the topic of law and policy. The analysis of the research results reveals that more than half of the literature pool deals with the application and actual function tests of Prediction Markets. The results are further compared to two previous works published by Zhao, Wagner and Chen (2008) and Tziralis and Tatsiopoulos (2007a). The article concludes with an extended bibliography section and may therefore serve as a guidance and basis for further research. (250 WORDS
Slot Machine Payback Percentages: The Devil is in the Moment
Get PDFThe average payback percentage from slot machines is important to gamblers, casinos and governments. While apparently simple to define several complications can exist, among them which measure to average and potentially misleading formulas to calculate the average. Daily slot machine data from the state of Maryland for 19 months are analyzed for the expected value of the average payback ratio per machine and per dollar gambled. On a per dollar gambled basis, the payback percentage meets legislative requirements that the gaming floor payback be at least 90 percent. On a per machine basis, that requirement is not met which can imply a significant shift of money from gamblers to casino operators and the state. Other payback measures are hypothesized to also be less than the per-dollar gambled measure but data are lacking
ON THE EMERGENCE OF A GULF ENGLISH VARIETY: A SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH
Get PDFThe paper discusses the question of Linguistic identity in the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (henceforth CCASG). The notion of identity is analysed with reference to linguistic practices as a sociocultural means of communication. The existing register is a natural outcome on which the vast and fast process of modernization is reflected. The paper discusses a corpus of the Gulf register to seek an answer for the question of how the Arabic Gulf native identity impacts the English linguistic practice, as an interdisciplinary and integrative part in the sociocultural approach. Arabic meets with English as a global non-native variety of English and results in the new Gulf code. The result of the examination of linguistic practices confirm that identity in the Gulf reflects a cultural transformation and does not resist the new linguistic and sociocultural system. The selected theoretical framework for the analysis is drawn from a variety of linguistic sub-disciplines and research traditions. The sociocultural approach is selected for this study as it is the most applicable