This thesis explores the problems associated with an individual's interpretation of historical events; especially through a question such as "Where were you when you heard the news of the Challenger explosion?" Remembering an event in this manner implies that both a physical and temporal distance exists between an individual watching from afar and the event in question. This distance indicates that the event is never transparent nor is its meaning self-evident; it unfolds over time and is rendered almost incomprehensible through the proliferation of language and discourse surrounding the event, the fragmentary nature of its remnants, and the fallibility of both individual memory and the historical record. But instead of making the event meaningless, notions of 'distance' and 'incomprehensibility' provide a space where an event's meaning is most understandable for an individual. Beginning with Wittgenstein's Tractatus and ending with Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, I would like to show how little separates the philosopher attempting to understand the world, the historian interpreting the historical record, the amorous subject deciphering the signs and gestures of an absent or unattainable lover, and the individual remembering a historical event.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [213]-218).

Cenotaph is a work of fifteen minutes duration for solo tape realized on the Synclavier Digital Music System at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia. All of the sound materials in the work consist of resynthesized timbres derived from the analysis of digital recordings of seven different human voices, each speaking the last name of one of the Challenger astronauts. The work's harmonic resources are derived in a unique way involving partitioning of the octave by powers of the Golden Section. The work is in a single movement divided into three sections which function as prologue, action, and epilogue, respectively. This formal structure is reinforced by differentiation of harmonicmaterials and texture. Although Cenotaph cannot be performed "live" and exists only as a recording, a graphic score is included to assist analysis and study.

Today, many financial institutions extending credit rely on automated credit scorecard decision engines to drive credit strategies that are used to allocate (application scoring) and manage (behavioural scoring) credit limits. The accuracy and predictive power of these models are meticulously monitored, to ensure that they deliver the required separation between good (non-delinquent) accounts and bad (delinquent) accounts. The strategies associated to the scores (champion strategies) produced using the scorecards, are monitored on a quarterly basis (minimum), ensuring that the limit allocated to a customer, with its associated risk, is still providing the lender with the best returns on their appetite for risk. The strategy monitoring opportunity should be used to identify possible clusters of customers that are not producing the optimal returns for the lender. The identified existing strategy (champion) that does not return the desired output is challenged with an alternative strategy that may or may not result in better results. These clusters should have a relatively low credit risk ranking, be credit hungry, and have the capacity to service the debt. This research project focuses on the management of (behavioural) strategies that manage the ongoing limit increases provided to current account holders. Utilising a combination of the behavioural scores and credit turnover, an optimal recommended or confidential limit is calculated for the customer. Once the new limits are calculated, a sample is randomly selected from the cluster of customers and tested in the operational environment. With the implementation of the challenger, strategy should ensure that the intended change on the customer's limit is well received by the customers. Measures that can be used are risk, response, retention, and revenue. The champion and challenger strategies are monitored over a period until a victor (if there is one) can be identified. It is expected that the challenger strategy should have a minimal impact on the customers affected by the experiment and that the bank should not experience greater credit risk from the increased limits. The profit from the challenger should increase the interest revenue earned from the increased limit. Once it has been established through monitoring whether the champion or the challenger strategy has won, the winning strategy is rolled-out to the rest of the customers from the champion population. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Operational Research))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

Today, many financial institutions extending credit rely on automated credit scorecard decision engines to drive credit strategies that are used to allocate (application scoring) and manage (behavioural scoring) credit limits. The accuracy and predictive power of these models are meticulously monitored, to ensure that they deliver the required separation between good (non-delinquent) accounts and bad (delinquent) accounts. The strategies associated to the scores (champion strategies) produced using the scorecards, are monitored on a quarterly basis (minimum), ensuring that the limit allocated to a customer, with its associated risk, is still providing the lender with the best returns on their appetite for risk. The strategy monitoring opportunity should be used to identify possible clusters of customers that are not producing the optimal returns for the lender. The identified existing strategy (champion) that does not return the desired output is challenged with an alternative strategy that may or may not result in better results. These clusters should have a relatively low credit risk ranking, be credit hungry, and have the capacity to service the debt. This research project focuses on the management of (behavioural) strategies that manage the ongoing limit increases provided to current account holders. Utilising a combination of the behavioural scores and credit turnover, an optimal recommended or confidential limit is calculated for the customer. Once the new limits are calculated, a sample is randomly selected from the cluster of customers and tested in the operational environment. With the implementation of the challenger, strategy should ensure that the intended change on the customer's limit is well received by the customers. Measures that can be used are risk, response, retention, and revenue. The champion and challenger strategies are monitored over a period until a victor (if there is one) can be identified. It is expected that the challenger strategy should have a minimal impact on the customers affected by the experiment and that the bank should not experience greater credit risk from the increased limits. The profit from the challenger should increase the interest revenue earned from the increased limit. Once it has been established through monitoring whether the champion or the challenger strategy has won, the winning strategy is rolled-out to the rest of the customers from the champion population. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Operational Research))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

This diploma thesis focuses on challengers' success in the US House of Representatives elections in a selected group of states during the time period 2000-2010. It deals with the context of the American party system and describes the framework of electoral politics and campaigns. Specific position of incumbents in the elections and the incumbency advantage are taken into account as well. Aim of this work is to determine whether and how particular dominance (or absence of a dominant position) of political party in the electoral districts influences challengers' chances to be elected. Electoral districts are divided into two groups according to the presidential election results of 2000, 2004 and 2008. First, there are districts where one party has a dominant voters' support and candidates of that party are safe in the elections. Second, there are districts where neither party has a dominant position. After analysing the House election results 2000-2010 from the perspective of successfully elected challengers, the diploma thesis concludes that when the district was (according to specified criteria) safe for one party, challenger of the other party had no chance of being elected.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2000. / Computer printout. "April 2000." "March 7, 2000"--Cover. Includes bibliographical references (p. 360-377).

This dissertation presents a new approach for identifying, assessing, mitigating, and managing the risks of failure in complex systems. It describes the paradigm commonly used today to explain such failures and proposes an alternative paradigm that expands the lens for viewing failures to include alternative theories derived from modern theories of physics. Further, it describes the foundation for each paradigm and illustrates how the paradigms may be applied to a particular system failure. Today, system failure commonly is analyzed using a paradigm grounded in classical or Newtonian physics. This branch of science embraces the principles of reductionism, cause and effect, and determinism. Reductionism is used to dissect the system failure into its fundamental elements. The principle of cause and effect links the actions that led to the failure to the consequences that result. Analysts use determinism to establish the linear link from one event to another to form the chain that reveals the path from cause to consequence. As a result, each failure has a single cause and a single consequence. An alternative paradigm, labeled contemporary, incorporates the Newtonian foundation of the classical paradigm, but it does not accept the principles as inviolate. Instead, this contemporary paradigm adopts the principles found in the theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos, and complexity. These theories hold that any analysis of the failure is affected by the frame of reference of the observer. Causes may create non-linear effects and these effects may not be observable directly. In this paradigm, there are assumed to be multiple causes for any system failure. Each cause contributes to the failure to a degree that may not be measurable using techniques of classical physics. The failure itself generates multiple consequences that may be remote in place or time from the site of the failure, and which may affect multiple individuals and organizations. Further, these consequences, are not inevitable, but may be altered by actions taken prior to and responses taken after the occurrence of the failure. The classical and contemporary paradigms are applied using a single embedded case study, the failure of the space shuttle Challenger. Sources, including literature and popular press articles published prior to and after the failure and NASA documents are reviewed to determine the utility of each paradigm. These reviews are supplemented by interviews with individuals involved in the failure and the official investigations that followed. This dissertation demonstrates that a combination of the classical and contemporary paradigms provides a more complete, and more accurate, picture of system failure. This combination links the non-deterministic elements of system failure analysis to the more conventional, deterministic theories. This new framework recognizes that the complete prevention of failure cannot be achieved; instead it makes provisions for preparing for and responding to system failure. / Ph. D.

The 2006 Congressional elections included some of the closest elections in recent history. Party control was on the line in both houses of Congress. As a result, candidate message strategies were subject to intense scruntiny by media and voters alike since each election played a significant role in determining which party would control the Senate. This thesis employs a content analysis of ten candidate-controlled blogs from five 2006 U.S. Senate elections to evaluate candidate issues, incumbent and challenger strategies, and message tactics used by the candidate to reach a wide classification of voters. The entire population of posts from the ten candidate blogs (N = 474) was included in this analysis. The thesis assesses candidate blog strategies and candidate gender difference through the theoretical perspectives of the issue ownership framework, agenda setting, and incumbent and challenger strategies. Findings show little evidence of intercandidate agenda setting through blogs, general adherence to assumptions of the issue ownership framework, and offer foundations for future communication research focused on candidate blogs. Recommendations for future research include a more expansive study of all campaign blogs as well as an intermedia agenda setting study to measure systematically the influence of blogs on other media. / Master of Arts