This paper reports the results of two parallel 1996 surveys, one of economists, one of the public. It finds that the public has a bleaker picture of what has happened economically to the average family and is more pessimistic than most economists about the intermediate future. The public cites different reasons than economists do for why the economy is not doing better. Also, individuals' perceptions of their own economic experiences yield a different set of beliefs about economic conditions than that described in official statistics. The authors offer possible explanations of the perception gap between the public and economists. Coauthors are John M. Benson, Mollyann Brodie, Richard Morin, Drew E. Altman, Daniel Gitterman, Mario Brossard, and Matt James.

This article examines the ongoing work of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which is charged with addressing that country's past policy of attempting forcibly to assimilate indigenous children in residential schools. It examines the TRC's mandate and its activities while assessing the Commission's conceptions of truth and reconciliation by placing these ideas in their societal context and explaining how they appear to have been produced. As the article shows, these conceptions reflect the prior struggles of victims against particular Canadian forms of indifference and denial, struggles that have led the TRC to take what recent literature calls a 'victim-centred' and, following Mikhail Bakhtin and Teresa Phelps, 'carnivalesque' approach. Despite the TRC's impressive strengths, the author argues that its approach unfortunately fosters the absence of a more detailed and accountability-promoting examination of the agents and institutions responsible for the injustices. Ultimately, this article is about the underlying sociology of knowledge production that shapes the Canadian TRC.

The study of the mechanics of tumbling toast provides an informative and entertaining project for undergraduates. The relatively recent introduction of software packages to facilitate the analysis of video recordings, and the numerical solution of complex differential equations, makes such a study an attractive candidate for inclusion in an experimental physics course at the undergraduate level. In the study reported here it is found that the experimentally determined free fall angular velocity of a board, tumbling off the edge of a table, can only be predicted at all accurately if slipping is taken into account. The size and shape of the board used in the calculations and in the experiments were roughly the same as that of a piece of toast. In addition, it is found that the board, tumbling from a standard table of height 76 cm, will land butter-side down ͑neglecting any bounce͒ for two ranges of overhang (␦ 0 ). ␦ 0 is defined as the initial distance from the table edge to a vertical line drawn through the center of mass when the board is horizontal. For our board ͑length 10.2 cm͒ the approximate ranges of overhang are 0-0.8 and 2.7-5.1 cm. The importance of the 0-0.8 cm ͑only 2% of all possible overhangs for which tumbling is possible͒ favoring a butter-side down landing should not be underestimated when pondering the widely held belief that toast, tumbling from a table, usually falls butter-side down.

In Canada an officially mandated truth commission inquiring into the forced assimilation and abuse of Indigenous children in state-organized and funded residential schools raises profound and in many ways quite novel questions about transitional justice concerning Indigenous peoples in advanced capitalist societies. This article compares the Canadian case with that of a quintessential transitional justice pioneer: Argentina. Focusing on the efforts of justice-seekers in each country, it reveals similarities in their respective pursuits of what the article identifies as three important transitional justice goals: reparation, responsibility and reframing. However, the article also finds a crucial difference between the two cases. This difference is that justice seekers in Argentina have placed a heavy emphasis on social and political accountability, a goal that, in various ways, has received much less attention in the Canadian case. We conclude that this absence raises broader issues about transitional justice processes in countries marked by ongoing legacies of anti-Indigenous colonialism-issues that Canadians from the settler society, in particular, must begin urgently to address.

Success below the seas comes from careful preparation topside. Pressure testing remains one of the most useful tools designers have available to assure their systems function as intended, whether a company chooses to have in-house pressure test capability or to work with a commercial test facility.Capt. Don Walsh, pilot of the bathyscaph Trieste on its historic two-man dive to the floor of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, said with a grin, “Successful operations depend upon a Skill-to-Luck ratio. While luck is important, you always want skill to be more than 50%.”Given the limited availability of ship time, the danger to personnel in close quarters onboard ship or in a submersible, the high cost of ship operations and equipment, and the long lead time of grant and project funding, pressure testing makes sense to validate system integrity before deployment. Simply put, equipment should not see pressure for the first time on its first operational deployment. Pressure testing is a vital environmental check of mechanical integrity, analogous to electronics and software burn-in. Ideally, pressure testing will simulate the actual conditions of deployment and operation. A solid test provides the operator and deck crew confidence in the system being deployed.While pressure testing will appear to add time and cost, in practice it saves both by eliminating failure modes, some potentially catastrophic, while offshore.This technical note is intended to summarize current best practices in pressure testing for engineers and programs managers new to the field, including tips for coordinating work with pressure test facilities. The lessons are based on the authors’ combined experience as users and operators of pressure test facilities.