Public Money, Public Accounts, and Accountability

Trust carried within it a duty of accountability, not only to show that the trustee acted in the interests of the entrustor or beneficiary but also to account financially for moneys that an entrusted official handled. This chapter examines formal methods of accountability in an age of an expanding state and empire. The chapter highlights the ambiguities over how far officials could, legally and morally, profit from public money in their hands and hence whether ‘abuse’ of public money constituted ‘corruption’. The failures of good oversight in the corporations and both the domestic and imperial contexts are stressed. The analysis then turns to the development and (at times transformative) influence of public accounts committees and commissions, beginning in the mid-seventeenth-century revolution. Throughout, the emphasis is on how long the process of achieving formal accountability took and the slow change of mentalities behind the regulatory innovations.

Limestone Acoustic Emission Evolution Characteristics Under Different Experimental Loading and Unloading Conditions

To study the acoustic emission evolution characteristics of saturated limestone under different loading and unloading paths, three cyclic loading and unloading tests were conducted with different loading rates and initial cyclic peak stresses, and acoustic emission monitoring was performed simultaneously. The results indicate that, during loading and unloading, the intermediate-frequency signals of saturated rock exhibit a variation trend of sparse–dense–sparse signals, whereas the low-frequency signals are continuously and massively produced. With the increase in the loading rate, the development trends of cumulative hits and energy become closer, and the development form of ringing count changes from N-type to U-type and then to N-type. The slight increase period and attenuation period are extended, whereas the intense growth period and postpeak calm period are shortened. With an increase in the initial cyclic peak stress, the change in cumulative energy is more obvious than that in cumulative hits near the rock failure. The development form of the ringing count changes from U-type to W-type and then to N-type, and each period is first shortened and then extended. With the increase in loading rate, the increase in the slow-change period tends to change from gradually increasing to increasing and then decreasing. By contrast, the increase in the step tends to change to a gradual increase. With the increase in the initial cyclic peak stress, the duration of and increase in the energy in the step and the slow-change period tend to decrease and then increase.

Blackstone’s Long Tail

This chapter returns to the idea of harmonic justice, suggesting its association with tyranny, an association formally legible in intolerance for deviations from form. The happiness it promises is undone by Blackstone's ambivalent and shifting position on slavery and the uses his text served in America. Blackstone's reach is demonstrated through a reading of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, where the children of enslaved people learn to read from the Commentaries as Lee celebrates Blackstone's claims for liberty as a fundamental value of the English common law. But the irony inherent in this argument is as cruel as the cruel optimism Blackstone inspired. The novel inspires not racial justice, but complacent acceptance of glacially slow change, in which gradualism cloaks the most brutal racism. Difference here is represented as deformity and deformity is erased by the end of the novel, replaced with a false sense of ease and comfort.

SET: Still a Relevant Theory for the Future of Work

Few would argue that the workplace has changed tremendously over a short period of time and will continue to evolve in the years to come. Regardless of whether change is major or minor, lightning fast or painfully slow, change in and of itself may not be sufficient cause for substantial revision of existing theories, such as social exchange theory (SET); the formulation of entirely new theories; or the creation of new constructs. This is for two reasons: (a) the possibility that we overestimate the impact of change on the workplace, and (b) change can be readily incorporated into our existing theories. We expand on each of these points below and describe several possible macrolevel trends that may impact SET in the years to come.

Variation Characteristics of Mass-Loss Rate in Dynamic Seepage System of the Broken Rocks

When the collapse column and its adjacent rocks in complex geological structures are disturbed by mining, concomitant fine particle migration, mass loss, and porous structure variation during the water seepage process in broken rocks are the inherent causes for collapse column activation and water inrush. Studying the time-varying characteristics of the mass-loss rate in the dynamic seepage system of the broken rocks is of theoretical importance for the prevention of water inrush from the collapse columns. In this study, the seepage tests of the broken mudstone were carried out using the patented pumping station seepage method, and the time-varying function of the mass-loss rate was generalized. Then, the optimal coefficients in the function of mass-loss rate were computed using the genetic algorithm. At last, the mass-loss rate in the dynamic seepage system of the broken rocks with consideration of the acceleration factor was calculated using Lagrange discrete element method. The results showed that (1) the mass-loss rate was expressed as a time-dependent, exponential function with its coefficient related to the porosity, and its time-varying characteristics were affected by gradation; (2) the time-varying curves with Talbol power exponents less than 0.6 had a rapid change stage and a slow change stage, while the time-varying curves with Talbol power exponents greater than 0.6 had an initial gradual change stage, a rapid change stage and a slow change stage; (3) at the early seepage stage, the mass-loss rate decreased with Talbol power exponent increasing; and (4) after long time seepage, the mass-loss rate was close to zero and unrelated to Talbol power exponent, and the porous structure in broken rocks remained stable with its porosity close to a certain stable value.

No Good Taliban?

An important but little known aspect of India’s Afghanistan policy after 2001 was the slow change in its outlook on the Afghan Taliban. Opening secret channels of communications, some via the Afghan government, and others directly, India began to understand, and exploit (to a limited extent), political fissures within a resurgent Afghan Taliban. Having understood that the Afghan Taliban could not be defeated militarily, Indian security planners coldly calculated that reaching out to some Taliban factions would be in India’s long-term interest. The conciliators had charted and implemented this strategy at tactical, operational and strategic levels. The partisans, who knew about these covert channels, could do little to halt them.