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The design of a database interface, the different types of decisions supported, the nature and applications of the system outputs, and continuing work on extending the system are described. The system was designed to forecast the enrollment for Guilford College. (Author/MLW)

Byline: Jennifer A. Pope, James A. Pope Advertising has always played an important role when a society has an open market. China opened its market in 1979 and changed the official stance toward advertising from 'an essential corrupter of capitalism' to an accepted part of the new socialist doctrine (Pollay & Tze, 1990). Since that time, the Chinese market has developed from a strictly state controlled one to a market that is relatively open. There has already been a significant amount of research done on the first decade of advertising in the People's Republic of China. This paper proposes to examine the development in consumer advertising in China during the second decade. The development of distinct market segments as well as the privatisation of many of the state-controlled enterprises should have a significant impact on the advertisements in the PRC in the late 1980s and 1990s.

In 2006 and 2010, I published papers in Convergence, which analysed readers' responses to several interactive narratives: From this research, I formed a set of 'assessment' criteria for such narratives, intended to be of use to writers, academics and teachers, looking for ways to understand how readers might react to the very new and changing forms of digital storytelling, which continue to surprise, delight and puzzle readers. Despite huge technical advances, and although some recent examples are doing well commercially, digital interactive narrative remains largely unknown to the general reading public (who nonetheless love their novels, films and games). This article reviews a very specific set of interactive narratives – those which have been shortlisted for the international New Media Writing Prize – against the criteria I established in the 2010 paper. These are cutting edge, exemplar works, which one might suppose demonstrate the best of everything that new-media storytelling can offer. I revisit my criteria in the light of technical and creative developments over the past 5 years, using the responses of volunteer readers to aid my own evaluation of the pieces under discussion. Overall, I argue that many of the issues I previously found to be a barrier to readers have been overcome, but that there are still problems for readers, which writers/developers need to consider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judging from present-day legal and popular discourse, one might think that the Punishment Clause of the Thirteenth Amendment has always had one single, clear meaning: that a criminal conviction strips the offender of protection against slavery or involuntary servitude. Upon examination, however, it appears that the Amendment's Republican framers took an entirely different view. It was the former slave masters and their Democratic allies in Congress who promoted the interpretation that prevails today. From their point of view, the text clearly specified that, once convicted of a crime, a person could be sold into slavery for life or leased for a term at the discretion of state legislatures and officials. But contemporary Republicans emphatically rejected that reading. They held that convicted persons retained protection against any servitude that was inflicted not as a punishment for crime but for some non-penological end, such as raising state revenue, generating private profits, or subjugating black labor. Within a few months of the Amendment's ratification, the Republican majority in the Thirty-Ninth Congress had outlawed the early, race-based forms of convict leasing. When that proved insufficient, the House passed a bill outlawing race-neutral convict leasing, which the Senate postponed when the focus of Republican strategy shifted to black voting rights. The Republican reading faded from view after the Democratic Party regained control of the Deep South. For several decades, white supremacist regimes incarcerated African-American laborers en masse and leased them to private employers without facing a serious Thirteenth Amendment challenge. Present-day scholars sometimes treat this silence as evidence that the Amendment authorizes such practices. Courts similarly honor the Democratic reading on the assumption it has always prevailed. So thoroughly has it triumphed that even prisoners' rights advocates accept it as constitutional truth. Neither courts nor advocates have, however, taken into account the framers' views. Their interpretation sank from sight not because it was wrong but because Democratic paramilitaries terminated Reconstruction, freeing states to expand convict leasing and insulate it against challenges, constitutional or otherwise. Had the Republican reading been enforced during the era of convict leasing, it might have prevented one of the most barbaric and shameful episodes in United States history. And perhaps, if revived today, it might yet accomplish similar results. Nothing in the text, original meaning, or Supreme Court jurisprudence of the Punishment Clause blocks that path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States today, there is a dramatic shortage of qualified public swimming pool operators. This article describes a training program initiated in South Carolina to serve the needs of everyone responsible for and involved in the safe operation and management of a public swimming pool. (MT)

The need is expressed for curricula to train professional administrators of intramural-recreational athletic programs. Various definitions of professionalism are discussed and their applicability to intramural-recreational sports administration is pointed out. (PP)

This Article presents the first comprehensive treatment of the basic and officially "open" question whether Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment directly bans the badges and incidents of slavery. Surprisingly, in light of present-day uncertainty, the historical record is relatively clear on this issue. Members of the Thirty-Ninth Congress generally agreed that Section 1 banned at least some of the badges and incidents; they parted company over which ones. The Democrats and their allies claimed that it outlawed only the core incidents of slavery, for example chattelization and physically or legally forced labor. But their Republican opponents maintained that it banned a far broader set including-- at a minimum--denials of the rights enumerated in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, namely to enjoy the same rights to make contracts, own property, and participate in court as were enjoyed by white citizens. Until 1968, courts also assumed that the issue of badges and incidents hinged on Section 1. Contrary to the received wisdom, Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., decided in that year, announced for the first time that the identification of badges and incidents might be a task for Congress under the Section 2 power to enact "appropriate" enforcement legislation. Although the Court has maintained for nearly half a century that the question is "open," the practical reality is that lower courts honor the narrow reading of Section 1 initially proposed by the unsuccessful Democratic opponents of both the Amendment and the 1866 Civil Rights Act, and later introduced to jurisprudence in the now-discredited Jim Crow decisions of Plessy v. Ferguson and Hodges v. United States. It is not too late to resolve the official uncertainty by embracing the Republican reading. This choice would restart the process, commenced by the Thirty-Ninth Congress but derailed in Plessy and Hodges, of determining what it means to ensure that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude "shall exist." The Article concludes by exploring some of the basic interpretive issues and their implications for the constitutional law of racially disparate impact, race-based affirmative action, gender equality, and reproductive freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]