Reports about NDEs of children, from teenagers down to fetuses in the mother’s womb, have shown content and themes of the experiences very similar if not identical to the NDE themes of adults. The science-based explanation for this consistency of NDE themes, across virtually all ages, considers the known development of the nervous system, of memory functions, of language acquisition, and of social communication in childhood. Since episodic memory – the content of NDEs – can be recalled only for short periods (days, weeks) in children of 2 years and younger with no or little language competence, the narratives of their NDEs may not reflect their genuine experiences. Instead, their NDE knowledge can be assumed to be learned from communicative interactions with adults. Esoteric approaches to childrens’ NDEs, often published together with fanciful NDE stories in popular books, represent belief or credo while lacking scientific credibility.

This section sets out the key aims, argument, and methodology of the book, concluding with a comprehensive chapter summary.

Not all rural lineages in southern Panjab made the transition from ra‘iyati origins to riyasat as successfully as did Gurbaksh and Jodh Singh. If the Kalsia household were amongst the still considerable pool of rural folk that carved out principalities for themselves in late Mughal Panjab, there was a far larger number of lineages that continued to jostle with each other in less successful bids at expansion and stratification. This chapter considers the ensemble of these communities in the early nineteenth century. Using James Skinner's Tazkirat al-Umara, it identifies a number of powerful ra‘iyati lineages that were dominant in the region in this period. Using early correspondence of the East India Company, which had formally annexed the region in 1803 and was slowly gathering local information, this chapter then considers the coalescence and internal organization of these rural lineages. It brings their shallow hierarchies into relief, highlighting the narrow and unstable differences in status and influence between lineage elites and other members. It suggests that this tenuous stratification was the counterpart of two paradoxical tendencies that animated such lineages: the necessity to cooperate to collectively manage resources, and the ambition amongst members to establish a position of superiority within the lineage.

The weak hierarchies within ra‘iyati lineages and the circumscribed localities within which these emerged both reflected and shaped the practice of caste in the early nineteenth century. The second half of this chapter uses a close reading of Skinner's Tashrih al-Aqwam to identify some of the key aspects of this practice.

In this chapter, we examine how both variation in levels of judicial independence and in the partisanship of litigants affects citizens’ willingness to punish executives who ignore courts. We again test the partisanship-centered account against our theoretical framework. Leveraging the presence of abstract review in Germany, Poland, and Hungary, we demonstrate that judicial independence continues to be a prerequisite to judicial efficacy, even with the appearance of a discernible influence from partisanship. Our results in this chapter suggest that judicial review holds the promise – at least where courts have high levels of judicial independence – to constrain executives even in contexts where partisanship is heightened.

In the previous chapters, we built the basic foundation of satellite remote sensing. In this chapter we will explore a relatively recent innovation in information technology called cloud computing that has dramatically improved data accessibility and the practicality of applying large satellite remote sensing datasets for water management. Future chapters on specific targets and water management themes will have hands-on examples and assignments based on actual satellite data. Most of these chapters will assume prior knowledge of cloud computing for understanding and completing assignments. Since cloud computing is gradually proliferating in all walks of water management practice, the aim of this chapter is to introduce readers to cloud computing concepts and specific tools currently available for dealing with the very large satellite data sets on water.

Locke held that any number of persons might join together to form a government. He imposed no limitation on the knowledge or reasoning that joiners might make use of. It is likely that Locke imagined that governments typically arose by consensus among private landowners, who then by a majority vote chose the procedure by which the legislative power was to operate. It is safe to say that Locke did not favor a wide suffrage or democracy. Locke also did not insist on any strict separation of executive and legislative powers: Of necessity, the executive must have a “prerogative power” to further the common good even if contrary to legislation. The notions of an independent judiciary and judicial review of legislation are nowhere found in Locke. Locke did, however, advocate reform of the composition of Parliament to make it more representative. And he was defensive of the rights of commoners against enclosures – so, logically, he may have favored a wider franchise.

Paranormal explanations of NDEs generally refer to the dualistic view of the world. These explanations are built upon the belief or derived from the credo that NDEs can be explained through paranormal concepts.

This chapter reflects upon the conditions that made southern Panjab a political and ecological frontier. The region's nature as a borderland was particularly in evidence during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as Mughal imperial control receded in tandem with an efflorescence of regional polities. This fragmentation is explicable with reference to two opposing trends—the growing prosperity of rural Panjab during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and its subsequent economic stagnation. This at once facilitated the rise of ambitious new rural elites and intensified their internecine competition, as each of these fledgling states fought to attract subjects to their domains and keep them there, and to protect precious resources such as pasture and watering holes from encroachment. Yet these efforts were consistently undermined: first, by the very processes of competition to which this political efflorescence owed. Political consolidation also came up short against ecological factors. The aridity and seasonal variability of southern Panjab lent husbanding in the region a hybrid, itinerant, and opportunistic nature, which was not conducive to centralization but rather to the dispersion of authority. To illustrate the interplay of these dynamics, this chapter alternates between an analysis of enduring ecological patterns and the political context of the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries.

Local Topologies

Southern Panjab is an arid, rolling plain that roughly corresponds with the Indo- Gangetic Divide. This is the belt of land separating the river systems of the Indus and the Ganga. It is bordered on the east and southeast by the Yamuna River and the Aravalli Hills and on the north and west by the Satlaj River.

This chapter explores stand-up comedy in the UK arising out of comic song in the music hall. Spoken patter rather than songs became the centre of performances of the front cloth comedians in variety theatres, which continued until the 1950s. Subsequently, stand-ups found other places to perform, notably the working men’s club (WMC), with varied performance styles but a shared canon of jokes. The working-class Londoner is a performer and type existing across the development of stand-up. Alternative comedy arose from 1979 as a critique of the perceived sexism, racism and limited creativity of WMC comedy, and most comedians since have careers within these broad parameters. Despite this, inequalities still exist in the UK stand-up scene, and the consequences of the Covid pandemic were greater for comedians affected by inequalities of class, gender, race, disability, and sexuality who suffered more severe career setbacks, being less able to garner income online.

Rawls expounded “a theory of justice that generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstraction the traditional conception of the social contract.” His theory applies to society’s basic structure, a system of productive cooperation over generations. The state of nature was reconfigured as an “original position” which “incorporates certain procedural constraints on arguments.” The “parties” in the original position have general knowledge but no knowledge specific to themselves: their strengths, weaknesses, values, desires, social position, and so on. The “parties” choose principles that will maximize their fund of “primary goods,” or all-purpose means – means useful to all, whatever their particular interests, talents, etc. Two principles would be chosen: a maximum-equal-liberties principle, and a principle governing the distribution of opportunities, wealth, and income. These are in “lexical” order: equal basic liberties, then fair equal opportunity, then the “difference principle,” viz. distribute so to maximize the resources of the least-advantaged class. The chapter describes the “fact of reasonable pluralism” the social contract must accommodate, and the “well-ordered society” the social contract is to stabilize “for the right reasons,” securing the three great achievements of the tradition: toleration, limited government by popular consent, and “the winning of the working classes to democracy.”