Debt, Imperialism, Eunuchs, and Contemporary Christian Worship

(Excerpt) There are three ways to begin a lecture such as this. The first is to ask people to turn to each other and say why they came to this particular part of the program and what they expect to hear. This approach has the advantage of giving the speaker five to ten minutes less lecturing time. Much as I\u27m tempted, I think this tactic might leave you feeling shortchanged. The second approach is to say: I don\u27t quite understand the title I\u27ve been asked to address and then waffle for twenty minutes on the semantics before ever dealing with the subject. But since I chose the title, I can hardly quibble over it. The third approach (at least for me) is to admit that the last sixty seconds have simply been an exercise in enabling your ears to be attuned to my [Scottish] accent, so that when I begin to deal with the topic, you might at least acknowledge that you can hear if not understand

The "Carex" fen vegetation of northern New South Wales

The floristic composition and extent of Carex-dominated fens in the New South Wales New England Tablelands Bioregion and Barrington Tops area (lat 28° 41’ S–31° 55’ S; long 151° 23’ E–152° 05’ E) together with outliers from the central west (Coonabarabran) are described from 81 full floristic survey sites. These fens contained 234 vascular plant taxa of which 27% were exotic. The fens were dominated by herbaceous vegetation (96% of taxa). Cluster analysis of cover-abundance scores of vascular plant taxa from 81 plots placed within 71 separate Carex fens revealed three alliances: 1) Carex appressa, 2) Scirpus polystachyus – Carex tereticaulis and 3) Carex gaudichaudiana and seven communities: (1) Carex appressa – Stellaria angustifolia Fen (2) Carex appressa Fen (3) Scirpus polystachyus – Carex appressa Fen (4) Carex tereticaulis Fen (5) Carex gaudichaudiana – Isachne globosa Fen (6) Carex sp. Bendemeer – Carex gaudichaudiana Fen (7) Carex gaudichaudiana – Glyceria australis Fen The distribution of alliances showed a pattern of east-west separation. The most easterly alliance shares many features with the Carex gaudichaudiana Alliance of the Monaro Region of southern NSW while the other alliances have no counterparts within the current literature. We estimate that up to 5 000 ha of fen vegetation survive in the New England Bioregion of which 90% is on grazed land and only 0.2% is within conservation reserves. Seven outstanding examples of fens remain; most are examples of Community 5, with one representing Community 6 and none representing the other five communities. Many of these are not secured, and none of those within reserves are in their ‘natural’ state. We therefore strongly encourage measures to allow closure of drains, the opening of dams, and the rehabilitation of important fens such as Bishops, Racecourse and New Country Swamps

Vegetation of montane bogs in east-flowing catchments of northern New England, New South Wales

The floristics of the montane bogs in east-flowing catchments of northern New England, north-eastern New South Wales (lat 28° 47’–31° 25’ S; long 151° 50’–152° 30’ E), are described from 62 full floristic survey sites (20 x 20 m in area). Eight vegetation communities are based on flexible UPGMA analysis of cover-abundance scores of vascular plant taxa. Shrub species make up 26% of the flora and herb species 69%, with the remaining taxa trees, climbers or vines. Shrub species were of little diagnostic value, as a few common dominants were shared across most communities. The herbaceous layer was found to be of better circumscriptive value. Communities described (based on dominant herbaceous species) are: (1) Themeda australis – Gonocarpus micranthus, (2) Baumea articulata – Baloskion stenocoleum, (3) Lepidosperma limicola – Baloskion stenocoleum, (4) Baloskion fimbriatum – Lomandra longifolia, (5) Lepyrodia scariosa – Blandfordia grandiflora, (6) Lepidosperma gunnii – Lepidosperma scariosa, (7) Baloskion stenocoleum – Empodisma minus, (8) Lepidosperma limicola – Xyris operculata. The mean annual moisture index was found to account for 26% of the variation in species density. These montane bog systems are some of the richest in Australia, with a high number of rare and restricted taxa. They are vulnerable to both present landuse practices and future changes in climate, are restricted in area, and need further conservation efforts to ensure their long-term survival

Asset Price Instability and Policy Responses: The Legacy of Liberalisation

The debate about the dynamics and potential policy responses to asset inflation has intensified in recent years. Some analysts, notably Borio and Lowe, have called for 'subtle' changes to existing monetary targeting frameworks to try to deal with the problems of asset inflation and have attempted to developed indicators of financial vulnerability to aid this process. In contrast, this paper argues that the uncertainties involved in understanding financial market developments and their potential impact on the real economy are likely to remain too high to embolden policy makers. The political and institutional risks associated with policy errors are also significant. The fundamental premise that a liberalised financial system is based on 'efficient' market allocation cannot be overlooked. The corollary is that any serious attempt to stabilize financial market outcomes must involve at least a partial reversal of deregulation.

A Low Mach Number Model for Moist Atmospheric Flows

We introduce a low Mach number model for moist atmospheric flows that accurately incorporates reversible moist processes in flows whose features of interest occur on advective rather than acoustic time scales. Total water is used as a prognostic variable, so that water vapor and liquid water are diagnostically recovered as needed from an exact Clausius--Clapeyron formula for moist thermodynamics. Low Mach number models can be computationally more efficient than a fully compressible model, but the low Mach number formulation introduces additional mathematical and computational complexity because of the divergence constraint imposed on the velocity field. Here, latent heat release is accounted for in the source term of the constraint by estimating the rate of phase change based on the time variation of saturated water vapor subject to the thermodynamic equilibrium constraint. We numerically assess the validity of the low Mach number approximation for moist atmospheric flows by contrasting the low Mach number solution to reference solutions computed with a fully compressible formulation for a variety of test problems

Firm Performance and Wages: Evidence from Across the Corporate Hierarchy

Does it matter whether you work for a successful company? And if so, does it matter who you are? To answer these questions we construct a unique panel dataset covering the pay of all CEOs, senior managers and a fully representative sample of workers for a large group of publicly-listed companies covering just under 90% of the market capitalization of the UK stock market. We show that senior management appear to have pay that is strongly associated with various measures of firm performance (such as shareholder returns and quasi-rents), while workers' pay is only weakly associated with such measures. A 10% increase in firm value is associated with an increase of 3% in CEO pay but only 0.2% in average workers' pay. Falls in firm performance are also followed by CEO pay cuts and significantly more CEO firings. This is essentially a result of the responsiveness of flexible pay to performance and only senior executives have a large enough share of pay in bonuses to generate a sizeable overall effect on pay. External control matters for pay - firms with lower levels of institutional ownership have smaller pay-performance elasticities for CEOs and do not cut their pay when performance is poor.

Bankers' pay and extreme wage inequality in the UK.

It is well known that the distribution of income in the United Kingdom has widened considerably in the last three decades. This rise has been a result of a widening at both the top and bottom of the wage distribution. More recently, most of the action appears to have occurred at the top of the distribution with lower wage workers keeping pace with the median. This paper explores this increased dispersion at the very top of the wage distribution. We show that the growth has occurred primarily within the top few percentiles and that the rise in inequality in recent years is much more pronounced when we focus on annual earnings as opposed to weekly wages (where most work has concentrated). This is because annual wages include bonuses. By the end of the decade to 2008, the top tenth of earners received £20bn more purely due to the increase in their share (it would have been only £173bn had their share of the pie remained the same as 1998), and £12bn of this went to workers in the financial sector (almost all of which was bonus payments). We consider various reasons why the bankers have managed to capture an increasing share of the wage bill over the last decade.