Gun control debate heating up in statehouses

ATLANTA (AP) ? As President Barack Obama urges tighter federal gun laws, state legislators around the country have responded to the Connecticut school shooting with a flurry of their own ideas that are likely to produce fights over gun control in their upcoming sessions.

There is momentum in two strongly Democratic states to tighten already-strict gun laws, while some Republicans in four other states want to make it easier for teachers to have weapons in schools. One Republican governor, however, used his power this week to block the loosening of restrictions.

The question is whether public outrage after the slayings of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., will produce a meaningful difference in the rules for how Americans buy and use guns. Or will emotions and grassroots energy subside without action?

"I've been doing this for 17 years, and I've never seen something like this in terms of response," said Brian Malte, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, based in Washington, D.C. "The whole dynamic depends on whether the American public and people in certain states have had enough. No matter if it's Congress or in the states, their voices will be heard. That's what will make the difference."

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released a report Thursday showing that the school shooting in Connecticut has led to more discussion about gun policy on social media than previous rampages. The report says users advocating for gun control were more numerous than those defending current gun laws.

The National Rifle Association, a powerful organization that has successfully lobbied for expanded gun rights, has remained largely silent since the shootings, aside from a brief statement mourning the victims and promising that the group "is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again." A spokesman did not respond to a request for comment this week. NRA leaders planned to hold a news conference Friday.

Some of the legislative proposals reflect renewed conviction in the long-held beliefs of lawmakers. Legislators, mostly Democrats, in California and New York plan a push to tighten what are already some of the most stringent state gun-control laws. Many Democrats in presidential swing states are pushing for tighter restrictions, while others take a wait-and-see approach. Meanwhile, rank-and-file Republicans in Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida have called for making it easier for teachers and other adults to have weapons in schools.

Other proposals predate the Newtown massacre. Lawmakers in the GOP-led states of Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Pennsylvania had been considering before the shootings loosening restrictions on employees having guns in their vehicles on work property.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, offered Thursday what appears to be a growing theme among GOP leaders: that the shooting should prompt discussions about mental health treatment, not anti-gun laws.

"Anybody can get a gun, and when bad people get guns, they're going to do what they want to do. No amount of gun control can stop someone from getting a gun when they want to get it," she said. "What we can do is control mental health in a way we treat people who don't know how to treat themselves."

Yet Republican Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan this week vetoed a law that would have allowed certain gun owners to carry concealed weapons in public places, including schools, though he attributed his action to the details of the law, not Newtown. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin this week declined to rule out proposed gun restrictions Democratic lawmakers are pushing in Madison, though he echoed Haley's emphasis on mental health.

The Democrats assuming control of the Minnesota Legislature plan to evaluate the state's gun laws, though no concrete proposals have emerged yet.

"I don't have an answer today," said the state's Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton. "There's a limit to what society can do to protect people from their own folly."

In San Francisco, Ben Van Houten of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said, "Keeping public pressure on legislators is critical here. Legislators have been able to duck their responsibility to keep us safe."

A Pew Research Center survey taken Dec. 17-19, after the shooting, registered an increase in the percentage of Americans who prioritize gun control (49 percent) over gun owner rights (42 percent).

Those figures were statistically even in July. But 58 percent opted for control over individual rights in 2008, before Obama took office. The December telephone survey included 1,219 adults in all 50 states. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Van Houten, whose organization provides model legislation to lawmakers, noted Snyder's veto in Michigan. Less important than the details of the proposed conceal-and-carry law, he said, is that a Republican nixed a relaxation of existing law.

Also noteworthy is a California Republican who previously opposed more gun restrictions. State Sen. Ted Gaines, who represents Sacramento suburbs, said this week that he'll introduce a bill to permanently disallow gun ownership for anyone deemed by the courts to be a danger to others because of a mental diagnosis. Current California law allows those individuals to recover gun rights after treatment.

Of course, those examples don't involve new restrictions for the general population, which the NRA has successfully blocked in most states in the past.

In recent years, NRA's statehouse efforts have centered on expanding the right to carry guns in public places and adopting "stand your ground" laws that expand self-defense rights beyond a person's home. Just four states ? Alaska, Arizona, Vermont and Wyoming ? allow concealed weapons without a permit. But the NRA has over many years chipped away at the burdens to get a license in the remaining states and, more recently, shifted to eliminating exceptions that allow churches, schools, universities and businesses to ban weapons on their property.

The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have jointly rejected the ideas of increasing gun presence on campus. The proposals generally take two forms: eliminating the exceptions so gun owners can choose to carry on campus or specifically requiring that school personnel be trained and armed.

"We don't believe the solution is to put more guns in the building, but keep them from getting in," said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. But he argued that prevention goes beyond gun control. He said NEA wants more money to finance school counselors and psychologists, better public mental health access generally, and state laws that crack down on bullying.

"It's time to emphasize how all of those services and that comprehensive approach play a role in keeping kids safe," he said.

As advocates talk to lawmakers, Van Roekel added, they should demand more than just a yes or no. "Don't just tell me what you won't do. Tell me what you are willing to do to try to fix this problem. If you vote no, come with an alternative."

___

Associated Press writers Seanna Adcox in Columbia, S.C.; Brian Bakst in St. Paul, Minn.; and Juliette Williams in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this story.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gun-control-debate-heating-statehouses-095959112.html

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Wayne?s World

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre calls on Congress to pass a law putting armed police officers in every school in America during a news conference Friday in Washington, DC.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

Be fair: Nothing that the NRA said on Friday could have possibly won over its enemies. Perhaps if he was a different sort of person, NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre could have fallen to his knees, cried ?Hosannah!? and announced his conversion to the cause of gun control. But that?s not who Wayne LaPierre is, and that?s not why the stagey ?press conference? became a predictable circus.

The organization, based in the D.C. suburbs, rented out a location that was far more convenient for the media. Satellite trucks from all major cable networks were parked around the downtown Willard International Hotel, clustered around the main entrance with a view of the White House. If you tried to get in another way, two guards with NRA pins were ready to politely march you out.

No, you had to pass a small group of pro-gun-control protesters, mostly from the groups CREDO and Avaaz.org, waving signs at anything that looked like a camera. I had the misfortune to enter the hotel along with some aimless protesters who wanted to get in the NRA?s face but hadn?t thought to hide their signs. ?You shouldn?t be holding this!? muttered one protester as she was turned away. ?Children are dying because of these people.? I continued to the second press checkpoint, eyed warily by yet more guards, and I picked up my hard-copy event pass: ?NRA Press Conference, Friday, Dec. 21, Washington, D.C.?

The world?s leading gun rights organization had booked a room fit for a second wedding?a room that filled up fast. Cameramen who showed up late, and missed out on the press risers, ambled around the print-press seats, looking for a good view of the stage. They shot over a short barricade that had been covered with a velvet curtain, keeping the ?program??as it was called in our two-minute warning?about 15 feet from reporters. Finally, at 11 a.m., NRA President David Keene walked onto the stage and set our rules.

?And at the end of this conference we will not be taking questions,? he said. ?Next week we will be available to any of you who are interested in talking about these or other issues of interest to you, so contact us, please, at that point.?

A rare event that had attracted top anchors was transformed into a one-way conversation. The media?s questions, suddenly, were subject to a three-day waiting period. We stayed quiet as LaPierre, a 64-year-old who has spent most of his life at the NRA, took to the podium. His head sunk, as if he needed to compose himself for a confession.

?While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain,? he said. ?We have remained respectably silent.? This was what the NRA said in response to every mass shooting, but it hadn?t been enough this week, so LaPierre promised to ?speak for the safety of our nation?s children.? America?s youth were being put at risk by the lack of armed guards in schools.

?How have our nation?s priorities gotten so far out of order!? said LaPierre. ?Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, court houses, even sports stadiums are all protected by armed security.?

Unbeknownst to LaPierre, or to any of the security guards lurking around wearing NRA pins, two members of the leftist protest troupe Code Pink had gotten into the event with media credentials. Now, one of them had a cue. He walked toward the barricade and unfurled a sign, giving photographers a perfect shot?the NRA president in the background and a pink sign in the foreground.

?Stop killing our children!? yelled the protester. ?It?s the NRA and?the assault weapons that are killing our children, not armed teachers!?

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=4ac4b8bfaf857258e2049c40199ea2c0

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Cellular Mobile System Capacity influenced by Handoff protection ...

Today, there ?is a large number of mobile user groups and In that, the need of? service of mobile user group? plays a great dispute on the utilization of bandwidth. The radio frequency spectrum is an inadequate resource, to improve service quality and system capacity radio spectrum should be carefully planned. Research is carried out to improve system capacity and service quality. Admission capability is highlighted by the system capacity and the service quality relates to the connection continuity. This proposal reveals the impact of protection, which is used to improve? the strength of the ?capacity of cellular mobile systems. Traffic model is established by using the mobility characteristics of the real world. The relation between admission capability and channel reservation is given by the markov?s approach. The proposed dynamic reservation scheme is proposed to provide handoff coordination between the service quality and system capacity.

The evolution of cellular mobile systems began with the first generation (1G) cellular systems introduction, and pass on through second generation (2G) and continuing third generation (3G ), featuring the development into the fourth generation (4G) systems. This generation systems are divided based upon the coding, modulation, and multiple access techniques which are used.

First public mobile telephone system (MTS) began operation in 25 American cities. In this system contains an efficient transmitter on tall building with in the city and the? permanent single channel is assigned to mobile cellular phone? for sending and receiving data through the concept of push-to-talk. Late 1960s, improved MTS(IMTS) implemented and dual channels for sending and receiving the data. In the starting of? cellular mobile systems there very few number of users. In New York, 12 calls only simultaneously supported over 1000 square mile area.

In 1968, Bell laboratories demonstrated the concept of? cellular system. In the cellular concept contains 2-way communication. This type of communication used hexagonal , N-cell frequency reuse pattern by using the intracellular mobile stations (MS), which are controlled by a base station (BS). The factors which improve the capacity of cellular system are handoff, frequency reuse and sectorization . By decreasing the power of BS in the cell, in another BS the particular frequency can be reused which is remotely far away. Handoff between stations intensively increases the flexibility provided to the customer. This in turn improves the capacity and user access area is also expanded.

signal processing technology? and very large scale integration (VLSI) were? developed in 1980s, which paved the route for the digital era. In this generation digital signal processor are used for the 2G cellular. ASICs are used, which reduced the size of mobile phones and new signal processing? features. Second generation systems are of digital nature, which offered? elementary data services and improved voice quality compared to that of previous generation. 2G systems were designed for the improvement of communication. In 1G radio signals are analog where as in 2G systems radio signals are digital.

2G systems are mainly developed into the CDMA and TDMA systems based on the type of multiplexing is used. in less popular areas digital signals are not reaching the tower. In digital signal call completely fails to connect when the signal strength is less, where as in analog systems it used to gradually drop.

3G is the generation of mobile phones and telecommunications. In 3G different countries used different types of radio interfaces. Mainly used radio interface is W-CDMA, FDMA is also used in this generation. 3G has various application such as mobile tv, video demand, video conferencing etc. In this generation the users increased enormously, the demand for channels also increased. The main impact on the system capacity and quality of service provided by the service provider. Researches where conducted to increase the system capacity and to decrease the call failing during the handoff.

The main issue of the mobile system is the design. Radio spectrum is limited, which must be shared by several users. Each is cell is allocated with the portion of the total frequency of the spectrum. Users in the particular cell can use the channel allocated to that cell. Different cells can use the same channel separated by the minimum distance between the cells because to reduce the co-channel interference. There are three types of channel allocation techniques, they are fixed channel allocation, dynamic channel allocation, hybrid channel allocation.

1. BACKGROUNDS:

In cellular systems, the number of mobile systems under a base station is random and time varying. The users of mobile systems move between cells, so there will be variations in the number of users under the particular base station. So there are lots of variations which causes the traffic and handoff of mobile systems. In the third generation mobile communication systems there is lot of research work is carrying. The objective of the research is to offer personalized and integrated services for the mobile users with the service quality than that of fixed users. In the third generation there is lot of demand for the personal communication, there is explosive growth of the user community because its available for affordable price. Increase in the? mobile customers and the? need? of? diversity? will be a great challenge to utilize the bandwidth. The radio spectrum is limited it should be carefully planned for the usage.

The research work on radio channel allocation mainly focuses on the admission capability and connection continuity. It gives out the compressed channel exploitation , which in turn maximizes the number of channels. If there is any special variation in requirement of the service, full admission capacity can?t? be achieved by fixed channel allocation [1]. We are considering the dynamic channel allocation (DCA)[2]due to this service request imbalance. In DCA, channels are allocated according to the service requests distribution and load sharing also improve the? user admission capacity.

1.1 PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:

The initial connection requests to start new calls are considered to improve the user accommodation capability. Accommodation capacity is based upon the admission capability of new user. Since the user moves around, its needed to establish the connection many number of times with in a single call duration. The user accommodation capacity also depends upon the connection continuity. Impulsive call break takes place when a cellular mobile user transfers from its serving cell into a new one [8], but it is not sure that channel is assigned in the different cell to remain in connection. Protecting the connection continuity is studied extensively. The basic techniques which are used to establish connection continuity for mobile users include guard channel[3], predictive channel reservation and handoff queuing. The other techniques of? handoff? protection are subrating, channel sharing and channel carrying [4].

Handoff protection strategy acquire pessimistic effect on the new user admission. The intake of new users in to the system are reduced by the priority based handoff protection schemes? such as guard channel, handoff queuing, and predictive channel reservation. particular portion of the available channels are confined to only the new users by the Guard channel , so guard channel elimination on the new user admission is apparent. Smaller impact on the new user admission is the advantage of handoff queuing over the guard channel. Assume, both handoff queuing and guard channel techniques contains the equal number of? nominal channels, the over lapping cell structure infatuated by handoff queuing, which? leads to the higher? channel density than guard channel. So the minimum impact of the channel queuing can be attributed to the increase number of nominal channels. To differentiate? these? techniques, let us observe the case? which is? similar channel set is deployed to envelop the same service area with implementation of? the two strategies respectively. The cell Overlapping layout demands a huge amount of the reuse factor in order to continue the co-channel interference distance, compared to that of guard channel strategy? only fewer nominal channels per cell present in the handoff queuing strategy, since the other technique does not need? the cell overlapping structure. Both the number of guard channels and non-guard channels may be equal. Equal level of handoff protection can be achieved by substituting guarded channels for handoff queuing. Due to exchange problems in handoff queuing , new call admission capability and handoff protection cont be realized. though reservation channels are not properly used, new users are blocked by the predictive channel reservation.

New user admission capability consists of some? disadvantages because of handoff protection. In order to over come these constrains researches investigated chances for better providing handoff protection. In [5] Oh and Tcha introduced the division of nominal channels to protect and unprotect channel sets in order to minimize the handoff failure. Therefore a predefined grade of service satisfies the expected results for the? above proposed division of nominal channels. The functioning of handoff protection and new user admission is affected due to adding or removing the guard channels. If the handoff requests are less then the new users access guard channel because of dynamic channel allocation[7].

2. Current status and development of research:

2.1 Literature survey:

If? an user being engaged in a call connection, then he said to be active. The? number of? factors influence the active time that include walking or driving, speed, impediment and delay at street intersections, traffic density around, shopping intensions and so on. For this dwelling time? negative exponential function is good approximation to the probability distribution? through the assumption of various factors. when an active mobile user ?found to be approaching cell boundary, then the ?Channel reservation for handoff? is conducted. The speed and position of active mobile user are monitored to calculate the remaining time left connection with the particular current cell. If the remaining time falls below threshold is known as channel reservation interval ( CRI). After confirming the the intention of transfer of the call to the new cell, target cell receives the request for the channel reservation. if there is any ideal channel in the target cell then it is reserved and it is known as locked which means temporarily it cont be used by any other. If in the target cell does not contain any free channels then the reservation request will be in a queue. After? channel is emptied? in the target cell, the request queue searches? to find any requests which are to be processed. The? request? leaves the queue by assigning it to the free channel.

A released channel remains to be free until next channel requests for it when an queue is empty. After sending the reservation request the mobile user can end this current call connection. In this situation the target cell receives reservation cancellation request from the user. After receiving a cancellation request the locked channel will be released by the the target cell after processing corresponding reservation request. We assume CRI to be accurate enough that call completion is the single account for a mobile user not to show up at ending of the CRI. If channel has been reserved to take it over or blocked for mobile user, then the target cell handoff will be successful. Whereas in the previous cases the mobile user continues its call on the new channel until leaving or call completion while in the later on into termination [8], since new call is not prioritized, if a free channel exists then new user will be accepted or else it is blocked and cleared from the system. The following figure describes the working process of reservation admission in the flowchart.

Markov Approach

????????? A markov model is implemented for analysis of the some of active channels and the number of reservation requests which are to be processed. Consider ?for each cell C? number of channels are allocated ?and buffer size limit for requesting queue is S. The transition rates of the neighbouring channels are obtained as follows. Before channel reduction new calls and handoff calls are entertained, consider the gross arrival rate as the transition rate.? When a handoff call reserves one channel for later use, immediately new call takes one channel for the later use. Whenever all channels have been occupied new call is rejected and reservation request is queued upto maximum length of S, which in result get a transition rate equal to the arrival rate of the channel reservation requests only.

Reservation of a channel extends the channel holding time from channel utilization interval(CUI) to channel occupation interval (COI). COI is also assumed that it is exponentially distributed, the mean value of which is obtained by[8]

The expected value of the inactive period of a reserved channel before the? utilization of channel is known as the dormant period, dormant period is stated dependent that longer dormancy can be expected and written as

[8]

The average dormant time on state n is given as

[8]

Let Fx(t) is considered as the cpd (Cumulative probability distribution ) of the time interval before the ( X + 1)th channel release. The Fx(t) can be written as

Fx(t) [8]

We? canapproximate the sojurn of a request in the queue, which has? to be exponentially distributed to give out a time independent request. The? living rate that has the value equal to 1/Tcri. The state probabilities are given by

2.2 EVALUVATION:

• Traffic model supports assures mobility properties and certain geometry in real-world cell plan.
• Where as manhattan model considers a classic city scenario which is regarded as by the? association of buildings, big structures with streets.
• In the manhattan model the connection distracts, when a mobile user roams in the streets, a street corner and suffers a sharp signal strength path loss.
• Handoff protection with prudent channel usage decreases the user accommodation capacity.
• In the markov approach, accommodation capacity is evaluvated by using the single over the entire system.

2.3 OUTLOOK:

In this paper, we have discussed the impact of? on capacity of the cellular mobile systems by the channel reservation. A user should receive un disrupted service through out the life time? after admission which is known as capacity. By using the handoff protection, capability of new user admission increases to that of connection continuity. user accommodation capacity is weakened by handoff protection. Which indicates system capacity and service quality are conflicting objectives. So tradeoff is cont be eliminated. Our further research to be carried out on channel reservation with out degrading the system capacity

[1] S.Jordan and A.Khan, ?A Performance bound on dynamic channel allocation in cellular systems: equal load?.

[2] D.Everitt and N. MacFayden, ?analysis of multicellular mobile radio telephone systems with loss.?

[3] K. Yeung and T.S. Yum, ?Compact pattern based dynamic channel assignment for cellular mobile systems.?

[4] ?channel carrying: A novel handoff scheme for mobile cellular networks.?

[5] S. H. Oh and D. W. Tcha, ?prioritized channel assignment in a cellular radio network.?

[6] F. A. Cruz-Perez, D. Lara-Rodriguez and M. Lara ? fractional channel reservation in mobile communication systems.?

[7] Y. C. Kim, D. E. Lee, B. J. Lee, Y. S. Kim, and B. Mukherjee, ?Dynamic channel reservation based on mobility in wireless ATM networks.?

[8] Yi Xu, Quan Long Ding, Chi Chung Ko, ?impact of handoff protection strategies on cellular mobile system capacity.?

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Tags: cellular mobile system, free essay

Category: Free Essays, Information Technology

Source: http://writepass.co.uk/journal/2012/12/cellular-mobile-system-capacity-influenced-by-handoff-protection-strategies/

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Wizards Vs Magic preview: Meet the NBA's biggest overachievers

The Washington Wizards square off against the Orlando Magic less than 24 hours after yet another heartbreaking overtime loss.

Another game, another heartbreaker. Can the Washington Wizards finally catch a break and rebound from their overtime loss to the Atlanta Hawks? We'll find out when the team travels to Orlando to take on the streaking Magic in the second game of yet another back to back.

Where and When? Tip off is at 7 p.m. EST in Orlando.

Why Should I Care? Because Washington could learn a thing or two from Orlando. The Magic are arguably the least talented NBA team since the Charlotte Bobcats debuted, and yet their current three game winning streak has them at 11-13 on the year. Not too shabby.

Are They Good? Not really, but again, they're getting the most out of what little talent they have. If you go by Player Efficiency Rating (PER), Orlando only has three rotation players who would be considered even slightly above average players, and one of them is Glen Davis. Jameer Nelson, J.J. Reddick, and Arron Afflalo are the only other players on the team that all but the most hardcore NBA fans will be able to recognize. Despite the team's lack of ball handlers and shot creators, it finds itself only one game out of the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

Who's Out? Hedo Turkoglu and Al Harrington are out indefinitely for Orlando, while the Wizards will be without John Wall, A.J. Price, Trevor Ariza and Trevor Booker.

What Are They Good At? Playing good defense while not fouling. Orlando's defense is currently ranked seventh in the NBA in points allowed per possession. The team's lack of a long, mobile frontcourt player has made Orlando vulnerable to quick ball handlers, but the defense is otherwise very good. MySynergySports.com has Orlando ranked third in the NBA in points per possession allowed against post ups, fourth against players coming off of screens, and second against spot up shooters, and eighth against pick and roll dive men. They've managed to pull this off due to smart defenders like Afflalo and Davis who never gamble and excel at cutting off dribble penetration.

What Are They Bad At? Orlando's offense is the NBA's second worst on a per possession basis this year, and it's easy to see why: no one can break down a defense. Point guard Nelson is a quick little guy with an underrated handle, but even at his best, he was never a good enough playmaker to be his team's primary option. As a result, Orlando has been forced to make Davis a primary offensive weapon, and the results have been bad. Davis uses a greater proportion of the Magic's possessions than any other player on the roster, and yet he's averaging only about 18 points and two assists per 36 minutes this year while shooting terribly from the floor. That's fine when you're playing with three of four Hall of Famers, not so much when you're the team's leading scorer.

How Well Do the Wizards Match Up With Them? Pretty well, and you could even make the case that Afflalo is the only Orlando starter who will be better than his Washington counterpart. Crawford actually has a decent post game against little guards like Nelson, plus he's going to be able to shoot over him at will, so he could have another big night. Seraphin should struggle to back down Davis in the post and will inevitably get called for at least one charge on him tonight, although he should have no trouble getting clean looks when he shoots. Beal could also surprise people a bit, as Afflalo has lost some of his defensive moxy as he's grown into a more prominent offensive role.

Is There Anyone Wizards Fans Should Keep An Eye On? Power forward Andrew Nicholson has been really good on both sides of the ball this year. The 19th pick in the 2012 draft has a high skill level and the ability to score with his back to the basket or facing up. He's old for a rookie at 23 years old, but if he can maintain his current production levels, he could wind up being sort of a poor man's Elton Brand.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Source: http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/12/19/3784210/wizards-vs-magic-preview-2012

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The writer-editor relationship. Part one. | Words and Scenes

If you want to get your articles published in magazines, you will obviously need to satisfy the editor that your work is worth publishing, and appropriate for that magazine.

However, another aspect of publication that doesn?t often get a mention ? but should ? is your relationship with the editor of that magazine.? If you don?t get along well together, you are not likely to get any more articles published there.?

I well recall the first few times I spoke with a real, live editor. I was caught by surprise each time. The first time, an editor rang me about an article I had sent. The second time was when I rang a magazine editor?s office to politely ask the name of the editor to send a query to, and suddenly I found myself speaking directly with that editor. Wow; was I nervous (both times)! I also learned something that has stood me in good stead ? the editors were actually real people. Honestly, they were. I hadn?t thought of that before.

As?I?ve?developed my freelance writing business, and had over 100 articles published since those two encounters,?I?ve?learned a bit more about this unique relationship.

?So, how do you develop and foster an enduring professional relationship with editors, specifically of magazines?

The answer is a word you will see in the question; that is, ?professional?.?

Treat the editor as a professional

When you first write or speak to an editor, treat him or her as a professional. Be formal; be polite. Show respect in your tone of voice. ?I don?t mean cold and sterile, though, because you don?t want to give the impression of haughtiness. It is quite possible to be friendly and respectful at the same time.

?If you are going to speak to an editor on the phone (check first that the editor doesn?t mind being called, as phonecalls can be very annoying for editors), get organised before ringing. Plan what to say, and don?t speak longer than is really necessary. Likewise, any written correspondence should only be brief and to the point. This is not the time or place to ramble on.

When starting correspondence with an editor, write in a formal tone, and use your very best writing quality.? Your skills as a writer are on show ? so it is foolish to pull down your chance of success by sloppy spelling and grammar. Tell the editor who you are, and send samples of work if you can; or even better, direct the editor to your website showing samples of your published articles.

In future correspondence, continue to keep a professional manner ? although you can become less formal as time goes on. My own guideline is to always keep to a level of formality a notch above that of the editor?s. You will not therefore come across as cold (which unwarranted formality can seem like); but neither are you forgetting the professionalism required for a good working relationship. The editor wants to know you?re a real person; but not a slob.

A good working relationship depends a lot on how we treat the other person involved, so keep this in mind at all times. ?

Note: This subject is being written as a two-part article.?

Tags: a professional working relationship with editors, how to get on with an editor, relationship with editors, working with editors

Posted in Writing Process 1 hour, 55 minutes ago at 8:00 pm. Add a comment

Source: http://www.wordsandscenes.co.nz/?p=1810

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The Wire at Ten? Jonathan Simon, Wiring in the Empirical | Points ...

Editor?s note? We round out our consideration of ?The Wire at Ten? with a post by legal, historical, and policy studies heavyweight Jonathan Simon.? Simon is the Adrian Kragen Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, where he teaches classes on criminal law and socio-legal studies; he is also the author of multitudinous law review and criminology articles as well as several monographs, including Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (Oxford University Press, 2009), and the forthcoming Mass Incarceration on Trial: America?s Courts and the Future of Imprisonment (New Press 2013). Simon?s post today closes out our series on HBO?s The Wire with a consideration of the overlaps?and gaps? between the show?s narrative ?realism? and the empiricism that goes by that name in the contemporary legal academy. Thanks again to all the Wire fans (and non-fans) who contributed to the series: Joe Spillane, Carlo Rotella, Sergio Campos, Stan Corkin, and Jack Halberstam.? All your pieces matter!

The popularity of HBO?s The Wire among legal academics ? especially scholars of criminal law?responds to the same transformations in the legal field that have made empirical studies increasingly influential there.? But might the satisfaction of getting ?realism? from a DVD (or download) deter a scholar from trading the couch for the backseat of a police car?

This is What Empiricism Looks Like

Empirical knowledge about law is enjoying unprecedented prestige in both law schools and courts. These days, top candidates for academic law teaching jobs frequently show up at faculty interviews with their lap-tops loaded up with regression tables, scatter-plots with lines fitted, a nifty difference of differences tests.? If they get pushed by the audience, it is likely because someone thinks they should have used a different form of multivariate analysis.? It is ok for someone to ask them to articulate the normative pay off of their analysis, law professors are supposed to do that, but not to bother them with the meaning of a series of Supreme Court precedents they might or might not have read.? And it is not only quantitative research that is displacing philosophical conundrums and doctrinal searches for principle from the pages of the nation?s law reviews: ethnography, qualitative interviews, and discourse analysis are also making their mark on a field once known for ?black letter[s].?

It is in the context of this empirical moment of legal knowledge that we might appreciate the wide appeal of The Wire among law professors, who have discussed it in thirteen law review articles and many other journals and book chapters since 2009, including a symposium in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law.? The show?s following among professors of criminal law and procedure reflects the degree to which, for scholars of criminal law and justice in particular, The Wire has filled a real need for an empirical object of analysis that has remained frustratingly absent even as the war on drugs and mass incarceration has pushed them to go beyond case law and statute.? In this post I want to suggest transformations of the legal field that have given rise to a desire for an empirical object, even one that has to be largely imagined. These transformations include:

The Primacy of Policy
The question of whether a particular reading of the law is correct has always fascinated lawyers; what has changed at the turn of the century is the degree to which this question had merged with the question of whether that particular reading will lead to good public policy.? With the rise of law and economics this has included not just public areas of law, like criminal or constitutional law, but also classic private areas of law.? Indeed, some orthodox economists have argued that welfare gains (economist talk for policy outcomes) are the only consideration appropriate to law.

Twenty years ago when I started teaching, the idea that criminal laws and justice agencies operated in a wholly different manner for young men of color in urban neighborhoods than for suburban whites was still largely ignored by casebooks. Today that background has come into the foreground.? The idea that mass incarceration is a new Jim Crow (as the title of Michelle Alexander?s best-selling book about the racial character of criminal law enforcement makes clear), is today widely recognized by law professors and many if not most of their students.? The idea that the disproportionate racial impact of arrest and incarceration policies has undermined the effectiveness and legitimacy of our criminal justice system is also becoming a new common sense, as brilliantly expressed in the late William Stuntz?s posthumously published The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (2011).

The Wire aired during the decade when what my colleague Frank Zimring calls The Great American Crime Decline was becoming visible.? It created a rich, albeit fictional information environment in which the gathering critique of mass incarceration on sociological grounds could be documented and its relationship to the machineries of justice made visible.? After all, the other narrative, the one in which criminals are rational bad actors making real and morally salient choices in a landscape of freedom and personal effectiveness has long been promoted by popular police television shows.? As legal scholar Bennett Capers wrote in the introduction to the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law symposium:

Law and order shows, especially the ones that give the illusion of being police procedurals, are uniquely positioned to critique this justice. Law and order shows, at their best, bring out of the shadows the justice that actually exists. No show does this better than The Wire.

?A Great Moment of Civic Compromise?

For legal academics, who want not just to understand the failure of contemporary crime policies but to promote alternatives to them, The Wire offered up experiments unavailable in even the most progressive cities.? If the war on drugs was generating a lucrative industry of arrest and incarceration without? bringing peace or dignity to the streets of Baltimore (or any other large American city), what would happen if police allowed the drug markets to operate in the open on an agreement to operate without violence and to keep it out of sensitive areas?? Season 3?s ?Hamsterdam? episodes, when a frustrated police commander decides to run that experiment, represented a socio-legal public policy experiment as rogue police operation, itself a biting critique of what remains the official drug war criminology of the federal government and most criminologists.

New Technologies and the Ability of Law to Govern Society
The empirical turn in law has tracked alongside the rise of new technologies, especially the personal computer and telecom, that have transformed the economy and fundamentally reordered both the way legal rules touch on people?s lives and the capacity of law enforcers to know and act on them.? Throughout its five seasons, The Wire managed to make the technologies through which police and drug dealers watch each other and communicate a persistent theme.? The title?s evocation of wiretapping links the show to the recent pre-digital past, in which a great deal of our criminal procedure around policing was developed in the 1960s and 1970s.? As Season 2 revealed, the rapid spread of cell phones among drug dealers (and other young people) was making the wiretap, one of the stronger points of judicial control over police action, increasingly irrelevant.? Season 3, which brought us back to a close look at the Barksdale organization under Stringer Bell, included memorable scenes of Stringer at his laptop running Business School-like applications to improve his drug distribution business.? Throughout the series, the title sequence showing the surveillance camera capturing its own damage by a rock was a reminder of the vulnerabilities of law enforcement that relies on technologies of surveillance rather than real communication between police and the communities they are supposedly making safer.

Crime and Punishment
Crime, and the social response to crime, has long been taken as a proxy for the basic American attitude toward law.? The proliferation of alcohol-trafficking related crime in the 1920s after national prohibition, and the resulting increases in imprisonment and the growth of new enforcement agencies, helped stimulate the first great wave of interest in empirical research among legal academics, known as ?legal realism.?? Since the 1990s both the significant rise of the prison population and its connection to intense policing of drug sales, especially in low income minority majority neighborhoods, has grown as a significant concern among legal scholars. Since the end of that decade, this has been joined by the question of what caused the substantial nationwide drop in crime that began early in the 1990s and has so far leveled off but not been reversed. (On this point, in addition to Zimring?s book noted above see The City that Became Safe: New York?s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control [2011].)

The Wire was produced during years when the crime decline was becoming visible? to criminologists but had not yet begun to really influence thinking about criminal justice policy. Its basic message, that there is little we can do to arrest our way out of the toxic tangle of inequality, mistrust, and violence in high crime urban neighborhoods, needs little revision.? Whatever the best police departments managed to do in the mid-1990s to drive down crime, it was not happening in either the real or the fictional Baltimore, and still has yet to happen in many cities across the United States.? In keeping the focus on police failure, The Wire helped solidify what has become a new common sense among academic criminal law experts, namely that aggressive enforcement of drug laws targeting the young men most often recruited to be the exposed element of drug distribution networks cannot create more secure neighborhoods.

Serving the Public Good, the Western District Way

Empiricism from the Couch
I have suggested that popularity of The Wire among criminal law academics reflects its fit with broader transformations in law and society that have made empirical knowledge about law more salient then ever before. The Wire was based on both good journalism grounded in local knowledge of Baltimore, and the best available sociology, grounded in William Julius Wilson?s understanding of America?s urban crisis, so it is perhaps a reasonable substitute for the robust empirical research on contemporary urban policing that is much needed but still relatively rare.? Half a century ago, the publication of Jerome Skolnick?s Justice Without Trial (now in its third edition), helped launch both an academic industry in ethnographic studies of policing, and a popular culture shift toward realism in the portrayal of police procedurals on television.

Today The Wire has not so much displaced Skolnick as helped make up for the absence of? social science empiricism on policing. ?While a flood of statistics about the performance of criminal justice agencies are now readily available, qualitative knowledge of how those agencies actually operate on citizens, especially through policy, remain rare and subject to the whim of local officials. ?A strong indicator of that is the tremendous reception among criminal law scholars of Richard Leo?s definitive empirical study of how police coerce confessions, Police Interrogation and American Justice.? Leo, a student of Skolnick?s, demonstrates the continuing demand for empirical knowledge of police practice?a demand that has been, if anything, primed rather than diminished by watching The Wire.

Source: http://pointsadhsblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/the-wire-at-ten-jonathan-simon-wiring-in-the-empirical/

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