Gathering in November 1889 for the second annual meeting of the 1888 legislative biennium, South Carolina House Speaker James Simons greeted his colleagues by celebrating that “not a single vacancy has been occasioned by death.” While American legislators still die in office today, the apparent ubiquity of death in the post-Reconstruction South Carolina House hints at broader differences between the state legislatures of that period and the more contemporary congressional and state legislative arenas in which modern political science has honed its theories and measurement strategies.

Focusing on William Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814) and related essays and tourist writing of the 1810s, this chapter explains how he adapted traditional views of Anglican churchyards as sacred commons where local community was composted and cultivated over time, even as dislocation and erasure of rural communities, urbanization, and religious diversification undermined ties between churchyards and local belonging. The chapter interrogates how Wordsworth re-membered the geography, residents, and species of the Lake District within and around an idealized Anglican churchyard that was based on the one near to him in Grasmere yet loosened from denominational boundaries. He did so to reclaim local interspecies and semi-egalitarian lifeways among small landowners and their environments perceived to be threatened by extractive, colonizing capitalism. He nonetheless nostalgically distorted and risked denying agency to those re-membered, and uneasily suggested that agents and beneficiaries of capitalist empire might become conservators of traces of formal local lifeways.

The city dialect of Liverpool has a unique profile in the context of other urban varieties in Britain. It is well known for such features as stop lenition and the NURSE–SQUARE merger, along with TH-stopping, these traits in combination forming a set which is not replicated elsewhere. The present study examines the historical background to Liverpool English, its geographical position in relation to the counties of Cheshire to the south and Lancashire to the north. In addition, the role of immigration to the city, especially that of Irish people in the nineteenth century, is discussed and the role which this input may have played in determining the developmental course for Liverpool English is evaluated. Finally, the current position of local speech in the city is examined and possible future pathways are indicated.

In this chapter, the first law of thermodynamics is developed using a series of experimental setups. In doing so, some new terminology and concepts are introduced. The idea of specific heat is revisited, and it is discovered that there are two forms of specific heat: a specific heat at constant volume and a specific heat at constant pressure. The important concepts of pressure work and thermodynamic cycles are also introduced.

This chapter considers the history of Scots dictionaries in relation to their purposes and the dominant contemporary perceptions of the Scots language. The twenty-first-century Scots Dictionary for Schools (Scots Abc) mobile phone application encourages literacy and creativity in Scots. Thomas Ruddiman’s glossary (1710) assisted readers of Gavin Douglas’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, Eneados (1513). In his Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808–1825), John Jamieson followed the Vernacular Revivalists, seeking to preserve and celebrate the language. A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (1931–2002) includes lexis shared with England, while the Scottish National Dictionary (1931–1976, 2005) focuses on distinctive use. Although the online Dictionary of the Scots Language (2004) is a major achievement, there is more work to be done. Twentieth-century dictionaries prioritised rural over urban vocabulary, and the diversity of language in Scotland invites debate. This chapter proposes that Scotland would benefit from a new resource, the ‘Dictionary for Scotland’.

This chapter listens closely to songs released by Saweetie (‘My Type’ and ‘Tap In’), Latto (‘Muwop’), Erica Banks (‘Buss It’), and Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion (‘W.A.P.’) in 2019 and 2020. Each of these tracks employs sonic elements of trap music while sampling classic hip-hop and club anthems. Beyond just flipping samples, these rappers flip hip-hop sexuality itself on its head, transforming cuts that position Black women as objects into songs that center Black women’s desire and agency. We listen to these tracks not only in relation to one another (and to the sources of their samples) but also in the context of Sylvia Wynter’s influential analysis of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Riffing on Katherine McKittrick’s engagement with Wynter, we theorize the work of these rappers as “demonic sound,” as they make themselves present in music that had previously absented them.

What Stradivarius and Steinway are to classical music, and Fender and Gibson are to rock and roll, the E-mu SP 1200 and AKAI MPC samplers are to hip-hop. As beat makers in the mid 1980s experimented with newly available digital samplers, E-mu Systems and AKAI introduced their all-in-one sampler. During the so-called Golden Era, the SP 1200 and MPC developed a reciprocal relationship with hip-hop music that saw the specifications of the machines in conversation with the aesthetics of the music. Through analyses of ‘South Bronx,’ ‘It Ain’t Hard to Tell,’ and ‘Unbelievable,’ the chapter addresses how these two machines became primary instruments of beat making. In addition, these examples reveal how each machine developed mythic legacies within hip-hop culture that have long survived their commonplace usage, and how these machines shape an aesthetic consideration of the “sound” of hip-hop beats to the present day.

This chapter considers whether, and under what conditions, private firms can productively combine existing patent assets to support the dissemination and use of green technology. It assesses the unique challenges that face the organizers of private patent commons in the green technology sector. To do so, it first reviews prior efforts to form green patent commons, as well as recent commons proposals that have not yet been implemented. Next, it asks why these efforts have not been successful in achieving their respective goals. Finally, it offers suggestions for future planners seeking to promote the global dissemination and use of patented green technologies through the formation of commons structures.

This chapter examines hip-hop’s rhyme history. With attention to examples from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Big Daddy Kane, and Busta Rhymes, it identifies three main modes of rhyme: “normal,” “extraordinary,” and “impossible.” Popular during hip-hop’s early development, normal rhymes clearly and predictably mark line endings. Sometimes dismissed as unsophisticated, they invite the listener to experience the depicted experience as communal. Extraordinary rhymes concentrate normal rhymes’ infrequent technical flourishes into a defining characteristic. They play intonation against line breaks and feature denser, more complicated multisyllabic rhymes such as mosaic and forced rhymes. They aim for a conspicuous virtuosity. Impossible rhymes are often performed at a formidable speed, without any clear sense of where lines start or end. Riddling passages also cannot be conclusively understood. While normal and extraordinary rhymes encourage their listeners to remember and perform them, impossible rhymes aim for irreproducibility.