Back to Basics: Human Rights and the Suffering Imperative

Anniversaries provide a conventionally appropriate opportunity to take stock and, where necessary, to remind ourselves of why we hold to the commitments we do. All too often the raison d?etre of any collective human venture can be lost amidst the sheer banality of daily doing what we do and pursuing the goals we have become accustomed to. The question we often forget to ask ourselves is the following: why should we care? Expressed more specifically, one may ask, why do you care about the human rights of others and why should others care about your human rights? Fear not, this short piece will not attempt to reinvent the wheel of human rights theory. Nor am I in a position to definitively settle enduring questions concerning the validity and veracity of the ultimate justifications offered in support of a commitment to human rights principles tout court. My motive is far more modest and intellectually circumspect; having said that, this piece is driven by a distinct ambition. In taking stock of current debates in human rights theory, I shall argue that we are in danger of losing sight of the ethical imperative of human suffering in our discussions about the form and content of human rights in the contemporary world. The cornerstone of human rights must be a concern for human suffering. This amounts to an ethical truism for human rights theorists but despite, perhaps even because of this, it has been obscured from view in much theoretical reflection upon human rights as an ethical, legal, political and, increasingly, cultural doctrine. This piece takes the reflexive opportunities afforded by the spirit of anniversary to re-focus attention upon the basis and strength of our motivations and invites a return to the ethical basics of a commitment to human rights. In so doing, I aim to make a theoretical case for an appreciation of what might be referred to as a pre-theoretical impulse and motive. If human rights are to realise the promise of establishing the conditions for a world far less beset by human suffering, then the doctrine must address us at a level that does not immediately succumb to the contingency of conceptual verbiage and political opportunism

Between God and Democracy

A review of: Understanding Human Rights Principles edited by Jeffrey Jowell and Jonathan Cooper. Portland, OR: Hart Publishers, 2001 201pp. and The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries, by Michael J. Perry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 162pp

Practicing Universality: the Inter-disciplinary Imperatives of Human Rights

A review of: Human Rights: Universality in Practice by Peter R. Baehr. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave, 2001. 178pp

New insights into the biomechanics of Legg-Calvé-Perthes’ disease: The role of epiphyseal skeletal immaturity in vascular obstruction

ObjectivesLegg–Calvé–Perthes’ disease (LCP) is an idiopathic osteonecrosis of the femoral head that is most common in children between four and eight years old. The factors that lead to the onset of LCP are still unclear; however, it is believed that interruption of the blood supply to the developing epiphysis is an important factor in the development of the condition.MethodsFinite element analysis modelling of the blood supply to the juvenile epiphysis was investigated to understand under which circumstances the blood vessels supplying the femoral epiphysis could become obstructed. The identification of these conditions is likely to be important in understanding the biomechanics of LCP.ResultsThe results support the hypothesis that vascular obstruction to the epiphysis may arise when there is delayed ossification and when articular cartilage has reduced stiffness under compression.ConclusionThe findings support the theory of vascular occlusion as being important in the pathophysiology of Perthes disease

An Analysis of Race and Ethnicity Patterns in Boston Police Department Field Interrogation, Observation, Frisk, and/or Search Reports

The report, authored by researchers from Columbia, Rutgers and the University of Massachusetts, analyzed 200,000+ encounters between BPD officers and civilians from 2007–2010. It is intended to provide a factual basis to assess the implementation of proactive policing in Boston and how it affects Boston's diverse neighborhoods. It found racial disparities in the Boston Police Department's stop-and-frisks that could not be explained by crime or other non-race factors. Blacks during that period were the subjects of 63.3% of police-civilian encounters, although less than a quarter of the city's population is Black.

Escaping the Cultural Context of Human Rights

A review of: The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom by Chandran Kukathas. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp.29

The Relative Contributions Of Parental And Sibling Substance Use To Adolescent Tobacco, Alcohol, And Other Drug Use

While research demonstrates that parental tobacco and alcohol use increases the likelihood of children's substance use, it is unclear whether or not sibling use has a greater, weaker, or similar effect. Based upon self-reported information from Australian adolescents, their siblings and parents, this investigation examines the association between siblings' tobacco and alcohol use. The relationship is consistent, moderately strong, and remains significant when controlling for a number of family-related factors, indicating that the shared environment cannot fully explain the extent of similarity in siblings' behaviors. In addition, sibling substance use has a greater effect on adolescent substance use than does smoking or drinking by parents. These findings indicate the need to include siblings and information regarding sibling relationships in prevention and intervention programs

A General Formulation for Least-Squares Problems

Abstract — We show in this paper that many different least-squares problems which have applications in signal processing may be seen as special cases of a more general vector space minimization problem called the Minimum Norm problem. We show that special cases of the Minimum Norm problem include: least squares fitting of a finite set of points to a linear equation and to a quadratic equation; the infinite length MMSE-optimum linear equalizer; the finite length MMSE-optimum linear equalizer; the steepest descent algorithm and the more practical LMS algorithm for iterative estimation of the finite-length MMSE-optimum linear equalizer for an unknown channel; and the finite-length least-squares-optimum linear equalizer with a forgetting factor. These examples are not exhaustive but are chosen to illustrate the scope of this framework