This case describes a recent iteration of the Ponzi scheme originated in 1920 by Charles Ponzi: creating a plausible investment, attracting investors, using the money from more recent investors to pay off earlier investors, and earning a substantial profit, estimated to be $15 million (worth $220 million today).1 While not as big as Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, as a result of which he was sentenced to 150 years in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $170 billion to his victims,2 (...) the Federal district court in Miami was asked to order Par Funding’s cofounders, Joseph W. LaForte and his wife, Lisa McElhone, to pay $337 million to Par Funding investors and to declare they engaged in a Ponzi scheme in defrauding those investors.3 Ultimately the Federal district court in Miami ordered Par cofounders to pay “$219 million in ‘ill-gotten gains,’ fines and interest so the funds can be used to help reimburse 1,200 investors who were duped into buying the risky, unregistered securities used to finance the high-fee loan company.”4 How LaForte and McElhone executed their scheme is an intriguing story which provides helpful insight into ethical and U.S. securities law principles. (shrink)

Among contemporary religious believers, some follow in the footsteps of Newton, allowing their religious understanding to fill in gaps left by the sciences. Others take a more Wittgensteinian approach, discretely separating religious from scientific ways of thinking. Because neither of these relatively irenic positions captures the important element of cultural reform that is prevalent in so much of the religious life of the past, George Lakoff's recent work in cognitive studies is used to suggest ways that religious ideas may be (...) used to challenge and enrich scientific thought. A scrutiny of Richard Dawkins's biological analyses of human behavior reveals the distorting limitations of exclusively scientific understanding, thereby clearing conceptual space for genuinely religious values, actions, responsibilities, and forms of human life. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Fetal and Maternal Bodies brings together the voices of abortion providers, abortion counselors, clinic owners, neonatologists, bioethicists, and historians to discuss how and why providing abortion care is moral work. The collection offers voices not usually heard as clinicians talk about their work and their thoughts about life and death. In four subsections--Providers, Clinics, Conscience, and The Fetus--the contributions in this anthology explore the historical context and present-day challenges to the delivery of abortion care. Contributing authors address the motivations that (...) lead abortion providers to offer abortion care, discuss the ways in which anti-abortion regulations have made it increasingly difficult to offer feminist-inspired services, and ponder the status of the fetus and the ethical frameworks supporting abortion care and fetal research. Together these essays provide a feminist moral foundation to reassert that abortion care is moral work. (shrink)

Contrary to Hume’s contention, there is no essential connection between miracles and violations of natural laws. Not only may violations of natural law be utterly nonmiraculous, miracles may occur in complete conformity with such laws. Furthermore, a proper understanding of miracles in terms of divine agency places them into an epistemic context where the growth of science does not directly threaten their possibility.

This ground-breaking book brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to discuss the control and coordination of processes involved in perceptually guided actions. The research area of motor control has become an increasingly multidisciplinary undertaking. Understanding the acquisition and performance of voluntary movements in biological and artificial systems requires the integration of knowledge from a variety of disciplines from neurophysiology to biomechanics.