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  1. Last 7 days
    1. Eine extreme Hitzewelle hat in der Sahelzone Hunderte, wahrscheinlich Tausende Menschenleben gefordert. World Weather Attribution zufolge ist die Höhe der Temperaturen eindeutig auf die globale Erhitzung durch Treibhausgase zurückzuführen. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/18/lethal-heatwave-in-sahel-worsened-by-fossil-fuel-burning-study-finds

      Zur Studie: https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/extreme-sahel-heatwave-that-hit-highly-vulnerable-population-at-the-end-of-ramadan-would-not-have-occurred-without-climate-change/

  2. Apr 2024
    1. "I made a great study of theology at one time," said Mr Brooke, as if to explain the insight just manifested. "I know something of all schools. I knewWilberforce in his best days.6Do you know Wilberforce?"

      Was Aaron Sorkin inspired by Middlemarch to borrow the name Wilberforce for West Wing Season 4, Episode 9 "Swiss Diplomacy"?

  3. Mar 2024
    1. Österreich könnte auf russisches Gas verzichten, allerdings sind dazu u.a. Ausbaumaßnahmen (West-Austria Gaspipeline) nötig. Über Deutschland transportiertes Gas verteuert sich durch die Speicherumlage. Die Hauptalternative zu russischem Gas ist LNG aus den USA. Der Artikel, der viele Detailinformationen enthält, erwähnt, dass die Probleme mit der Definition von Erdgas als „Übergangsenergie“ zusammenhängen. https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000209552/abkehr-von-russischem-gas-erfordert-investitionen-in-vorgelagertes-netz

  4. Jan 2024
  5. Dec 2023
    1. in west Africa, whereabout 6.4 million (39.3%) of an estimated 16.2 millionpregnant women had malaria infections

      39.3% of pregnant women in West Africa moderate to high transmission countries had malaria infections in 2022. This seems surprisingly high. I haven't seen the regular case incidence for West Africa directly mentioned in this report, but I would expect it lower than the case incidence for Nigeria which I calculate as 30.5% (p202)

    2. 1.2

      1.2% of patients don't respond to the standard malaria medication

    3. A. P. falciparum parasite rate (Pf PR), 2022

      ChatGPT: "The term "Plasmodium falciparum parasite rate" refers to the percentage of individuals in a population who are infected with the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum ... PfPR\(_{2-10}\) refers to the Plasmodium falciparum Parasite Rate in the age group of 2 to 10 years old."

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    1. But just what is an object? At its simplest, an object has two components: Internal state. This is embodied by variables known only to the object. A variable only visible within the object is called a private variable. As a consequence, it is impossible – if the object decides so – to know the internal state of the object from another object. A repertoire of behaviors. These are the messages an object instance responds to. When the object receives a message it understands, it gets its behavior from a method with that name known by its class or superclass.

      Reductionistic vs other definitions

      Is the annotated paragraph describing what is an object or how is an object? This same criticism is also present in Dave West's Object Thinking.

      Other perspectives:

      Smalltalk's design—and existence—is due to the insight that everything we can describe can be represented by the recursive composition of a single kind of behavioral building block that hides its combination of state and process inside itself and can be dealt with only through the exchange of messages. Philosophically, Smalltalk's objects have much in common with the monads of Leibniz and the notions of 20th century physics and biology. Its way of making objects is quite Platonic in that some of them act as idealizations of concepts—Ideas—from which manifestations can be created. That the Ideas are themselves manifestations (of the Idea-Idea) and that the Idea-Idea is a-kind-of Manifestation-Idea—which is a-kind-of itself, so that the system is completely self-describing— would have been appreciated by Plato as an extremely practical joke.

      —Alan Kay Early History of Smalltalk (1972)

      So objects have something resembling agency, see the actor model.

      OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I'm not aware of them.

      —Alan Kay Clarification of "object-oriented", email reply to Stefan Ram

      I also like the complementary view that Gerald Sussman teaches on his video lecture 5A that informs chapter 2 and 3 of SICP; objects are a cheap way of modelling the world.

  6. Nov 2023
    1. Eine neue Studie ergibt, dass sich das Abschmelzen des westantarktischen Eisschilds selbst dann fortsetzen wird, wenn die Erderhitzung auf 1,5° begrenzt wird. Das Schelfeis stellt ein Kipppelememt dar. Der Abschmelzvorgang verstärkt sich selbst und führt zu einer unaufhaltsamen Erhöhung des Meeresspiegels, weil er den Weg für das hinter dem Schelfeis gelegene Gletschereis frei macht. https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000192327/meterhoher-meeresanstieg-durch-abschmelzen-des-westantarktischen-eisschelfs

      Studie: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01818-x

      Mehr zur Studie: https://hypothes.is/search?q=tag%3A%27report%3A+Unavoidable+future+increase+in+West+Antarctic+ice-shelf+melting%27

    1. Der westantarktische Eisschild wird in diesem Jahrhundert dreimal schneller abschmelzen als im vergangenen, selbst wenn es gelingt, die globale Erhitzung auf 1,5 Grad zu begrenzen. Einer neuen Studie zufolge wurde einer der Kipppunkte, unterhalb derer das Klimasystem stabil bleibt, überschritten. Dadurch wird es zu einem so großen Anstieg des Meeresspiegels kommen, dass mehrere Küstenstädte aufgegeben werden müssen. Die Studie stützt sich nur auf eine einzige Modellierung, wird aber von den Ergebnissen anderer Untersuchungen ergänzt. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/23/rapid-ice-melt-in-west-antarctica-now-inevitable-research-shows

      Studie: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01818-x

  7. Oct 2023
    1. West is by far the most unequivocal in his denunciation of the Democratic and Republican parties as dominated by big money and corporate wealth. He is no less emphatic in his condemnation of Israeli occupation and domination of Palestinians, and in his condemnation of the militarization of American foreign policy. Democratic leaders seem to fear that he might siphon off just enough black and leftist votes from Biden to give Trump a winning margin.
  8. Sep 2023
  9. Jul 2023
  10. May 2023
  11. Apr 2023
    1. “I wrote 86 episodes of ‘The West Wing,’ and every single time I finished one, I’d be happy for five minutes before it just meant that I haven’t started the next one yet, and I never thought I would be able to write the next one. Ever.”

      I'm reminded a bit of Dale Keiger's mention of Mark Strand having this same feeling after writing a poem.

      https://hypothes.is/a/e8L5wuJlEe29ii_FcRhu4g

  12. Mar 2023
  13. Nov 2022
    1. The U.S. Government (starting on 25 July 1945) continued on from where Germany’s Nazi Government left off — and has been far more successful at it than Hitler’s Government was.

      The Hitler is us

  14. Aug 2022
  15. Jul 2022
    1. FollowingSimondon’s social theory [37] and our previous work [10 ], social systems are themselves individualsthat harbour in them preindividual forces of transformation. Therefore we do not see in the currentorganization of personhood, inasmuch as it seems unassailable, a final unchangeable state of affairs.

      !- references : evolutionary biology * Evolutionary biologists have developed similar ideas to explain how throughout history, groups of individual organisms that clustered together and discovered better fitness as a result of symbiotic relationships began to reproduce as a whole new entity. Hence the collective became the new individual * Robin et al. paper: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2Farticles%2F10.3389%2Ffevo.2021.711556%2Ffull&group=world * Robin et al. video presentation: https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F6J-J72GoqhY%2F&group=world * Stuart West video: https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FVUfNEHl44hc%2F&group=world

  16. May 2022
  17. Mar 2022
    1. Προπαγάνδα λοιπόν είναι να θεωρείς ότι οι Πούτιν, Ζελένσκυ και Ερντογάν έχουν ως κοινό τους γνώρισμα τον αυταρχισμό, γιατί η αλήθεια είναι ότι το κοινό ανάμεσα τους είναι ότι έχουν, σε αντίθεση με τους Δυτικούς ομολόγους τους, ικανούς να τα καταφέρουν αντιπάλους που απειλούν την εθνική γραμμή. Μπορεί κάποιος να βρει μία δυτική χώρα που να υπάρχει ισχυρή νόμιμη αντιπολίτευση, που πραγματικά να απειλεί την εθνική γραμμή;

      Διεισδυτική παρατηρηση για την Δυτική πλανη με τους Δικτατορες: ειναι οι διαλεκτική σχεση των αντιπολιτεύσεών τους που τους διατηρεί αυταρχικούς.

  18. Feb 2022
  19. Jan 2022
    1. the House may declare vacant the seat of a member who is absent for 60 days without permission, to wonder whether any suspension could traverse beyond this 60-day limit.

      suspension of MLAs

  20. Dec 2021
    1. city of Arequipa has a significant number of buildings constructed with sillar, resulting in the nickname la ciudad blanca ("the white city").[5]
      • legal capital of Peru
      • Misti stratovolcano
      • my fictitious city like tiruvannamalai will have white buildings made with sillar
  21. Nov 2021
    1. Professional musicians, concert pianists get to know this instrument deeply, intimately. And through it, they're able to create with sound in a way that just dazzles us, and challenges us, and deepens us. But if you were to look into the mind of a concert pianist, and you used all the modern ways of imaging it, an interesting thing that you would see 00:11:27 is how much of their brain is actually dedicated to this instrument. The ability to coordinate ten fingers. The ability to work the pedal. The feeling of the sound. The understanding of music theory. All these things are represented as different patterns and structures in the brain. And now that you have that thought in your mind, recognize that this beautiful pattern and structure of thought in the brain 00:11:52 was not possible even just a couple hundred years ago. Because the piano was not invented until the year 1700. This beautiful pattern of thought in the brain didn't exist 5,000 years ago. And in this way, the skill of the piano, the relationship to the piano, the beauty that comes from it was not a thinkable thought until very, very recently in human history. 00:12:17 And the invention of the piano itself was not an independent thought. It required a depth of mechanical engineering. It required the history of stringed instruments. It required so many patterns and structures of thought that led to the possibility of its invention and then the possibility of the mastery of its play. And it leads me to a concept I'd like to share with you guys, which I call "The Palette of Being." 00:12:44 Because all of us are born into this life having available to us the experiences of humanity that has come so far. We typically are only able to paint with the patterns of thoughts and the ways of being that existed before. So if the piano and the way of playing it is a way of being, this is a way of being that didn't exist for people 5,000 years ago. 00:13:10 It was a color in the Palette of Being that you couldn't paint with. Nowadays if you are born, you can actually learn the skill; you can learn to be a computer scientist, another color that was not available just a couple hundred years ago. And our lives are really beautiful for the following reason. We're born into this life. We have the ability to go make this unique painting with the colors of being that are around us at the point of our birth. 00:13:36 But in the process of life, we also have the unique opportunity to create a new color. And that might come from the invention of a new thing. A self-driving car. A piano. A computer. It might come from the way that you express yourself as a human being. It might come from a piece of artwork that you create. Each one of these ways of being, these things that we put out into the world 00:14:01 through the creative process of mixing together all the other things that existed at the point that we were born, allow us to expand the Palette of Being for all of society after us. And this leads me to a very simple way to go frame everything that we've talked about today. Because I think a lot of us understand that we exist in this kind of the marvelous universe, 00:14:30 but we think about this universe as we're this tiny, unimportant thing, there's this massive physical universe, and inside of it, there's the biosphere, and inside of that, that's society, and inside of us, we're just one person out of seven billion people, and how can we matter? And we think about this as like a container relationship, where all the goodness comes from the outside to the inside, and there's nothing really special about us. 00:14:56 But the Palette of Being says the opposite. It says that the way that we are in our lives, the way that we affect our friends and our family, begin to change the way that they are able to paint in the future, begins to change the way that communities then affect society, the way that society could then affect its relationship to the biosphere, and the way that the biosphere could then affect the physical planet 00:15:21 and the universe itself. And if it's a possible thing for cyanobacteria to completely transform the physical environment of our planet, it is absolutely a possible thing for us to do the same thing. And it leads to a really important question for the way that we're going to do that, the manner in which we're going to do that. Because we've been given this amazing gift of consciousness.

      The Palette of Being is a very useful idea that is related to Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE) and autopoiesis. From CCE, humans are able to pass on new ideas from one generation to the next, made possible by the tool of inscribed language.

      Peter Nonacs group at UCLA as well as Stuart West at Oxford research Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET) West elucidates that modern hominids integrate the remnants of four major stages of MET that have occurred over deep time. Amanda Robins, a researcher in Nonacs group posits the idea that our species of modern hominids are undergoing a Major Systems Transition (MST), due specifically to our development of inscribed language.

      CCE emerges new technologies that shape our human environments in time frames far faster than biological evolutionary timeframes. New human experiences are created which have never been exposed to human brains before, which feedback to affect our biological evolution as well in the process of gene-culture coevolution (GCC), also known as Dual Inheritance theory. In this way, CCE and GCC are entangled. "Gene–culture coevolution is the application of niche-construction reasoning to the human species, recognizing that both genes and culture are subject to similar dynamics, and human society is a cultural construction that provides the environment for fitness-enhancing genetic changes in individuals. The resulting social system is a complex dynamic nonlinear system. " (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048999/)

      This metaphor of experiences constituting different colors on a Palette of Being is a powerful one that can contextualize human experiences from a deep time framework. One could argue that language usage automatically forces us into an anthropomorphic lens, for sophisticated language usage at the level of humans appears to be unique amongst our species. Within that constraint, the Palette of Being still provides us with a less myopic, less immediate and arguably less anthropomorphic view of human experience. It is philosophically problematic, however, in the sense that we can speculate about nonhuman modalities of being but never truly experience them. Philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote his classic paper "What it's like to be a bat" to illustrate this problem of experiencing the other. (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf)

      We can also leverage the Palette of Being in education. Deep Humanity (DH) BEing Journeys are a new kind of experiential, participatory contemplative practice and teaching tool designed to deepen our appreciation of what it is to be human. The polycrisis of the Anthropocene, especially the self-induced climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have precipitated the erosion of stable social norms and reference frames, inducing another crisis, a meaning crisis. In this context, a re-education of embodied philosophy is seen as urgent to make sense of a radically shifting human reality.

      Different human experiences presented as different colors of the Palette of Being situate our crisis in a larger context. One important Deep Humanity BEing journey that can help contextualize and make sense of our experiences is language. Once upon a time, language did not exist. As it gradually emerged, this color came to be added to our Palette of Being, and shaped the normative experiences of humanity in profound ways. It is the case that such profound shifts, lost over deep time come to be taken for granted by modern conspecifics. When such particular colors of the Palette of Being are not situated in deep time, and crisis ensues, that loss of contextualizing and situatedness can be quite disruptive, de-centering, confusing and alienating.

      Being aware of the colors in the Palette can help us shed light on the amazing aspects that culture has invisibly transmitted to us, helping us not take them for granted, and re-establish a sense of awe about our lives as human beings.

  22. Oct 2021
  23. Jun 2021
  24. May 2021
  25. Apr 2021
    1. This black Lord is called Musse Melly and is the sovereign of the land of the negroes of Gineva [Ghana]. This king is the richest and noblest of all these lands due to the abundance of gold that is extracted from his lands.

      The black lord refers to Mansa Musa, a dedicated Muslim and Emperor of West Africa during the 14th century. Land of the negroes means dark-skinned civilization. It mentions that his the richest and noblest of all lands indicate his travels because it compares other emperors' wealth and hereditary class to Mansa Musa. No other empire could compare to his status because of the natural resources of gold in Mansa land. His leadership is shown due to him being called black lord. He had vast amounts of his people following him on his travel to Mecca, which shows his people's dedication and respect for him as king.

  26. Feb 2021
  27. Oct 2020
    1. I can't help but wonder what Jonah Goldberg's review of this book will be given his prior effort earlier this year?

      I'm also reminded here of Mark Granovetter's ideas that getting a job is more closely tied to who you know. One's job is often very closely tied to their identity, and even more so when the link that got them their job was through a friend or acquaintance.

    1. This is directly examining the highly visceral emotive response that nature invokes out of humans. I personally think this specific topic is extremely intriguing due to how it can be viewed on a macro and micro scale as well as looked through the lens of “natural” vs “designed” experiences. How a “natural” landscape invokes common feelings of purity, ethereality, picturesque, and leans into an idea of desired paradise, where a “designed” landscape more often distinguishes emotions of framed experiences such as feelings of ephemeral peace, comfort, and easy joy. I think they can both create this idea of paradise, but the difference being, the “designed” landscape is much more approachable, understood, and tangible for humans to achieve; whereas, the “natural” landscape is an ethereal idea, but has a underlying sense of unknown due to its wild attributes that are less palpable. ¬¬Thomas Rainer understands this idea of the tangible and spiritual connection that humans yearn for when he states “It is only in the last hundred years or so of our species that we have become removed from our outdoor environments. It is not that we have lost the capacity to read and see landscapes, but we are out of practice and we are desperate for it. At a deep level, when we see plants that perfectly fit their environment, it reminds us of an ancient fellowship we had...The natural landscapes we seek seem to have an emotional pull on us. They make us breathe deeper and balance our spirits” (Rainer & West 2016). Rainer is distinguishing that nature is quite literally “good for the soul.” This desire and induced emotive response that both Humboldt and Rainer refer to is, I think, the core director in how landscape architects design/should design. Feelings at this depth are a connection that most humans can relate to, and if we can create and manipulate an environment to subsist these connections we will successfully and progressively link humans to the desired experience we want to facilitate.

      Nature as it was, nature as it could be [Introduction]. (2016). In 956545814 744955501 T. Rainer & 956545815 744955501 C. West (Authors), Planting in a post-wild world: Designing plant communities that evoke nature (p. 24). United States: Timber Press.

  28. Sep 2020
  29. Mar 2019
    1. The virus is commonly found in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, North America and West Asia. The World Health Organization (WHO) documents that it was first isolated in a woman in the West Nile district of Uganda in 1937. It was identified in birds (crows and columbiformes like doves and pigeons) in the Nile delta region in 1953. Before 1997, WNV was not considered pathogenic for birds — but then, a more virulent strain caused the death in Israel of different bird species, presenting signs of encephalitis and paralysis. Human infections attributable to WNV have been reported in many countries in the World for over 50 years, the WHO says.

      Zoonotic in nature

  30. Oct 2018
  31. allred720fa18.commons.gc.cuny.edu allred720fa18.commons.gc.cuny.edu
    1. in the harbor of St. Maria–a small, desert, uninhabited island toward the southern extremity of the long coast of Chili.

      Map of Santa Maria, 1700

      Santa Maria is a possession of Chile, roughly 10 nautical miles from the mainland, and just south of the port town Concepcion. More recently the island was used as a penal colony for supporters of Chile's Salvador Allende after his government was overthrown by a US-sponsored coup.

      Although Delano describes it as nothing more than a "desert, uninhabited island" it in fact has a well-documented history in the European colonization of South America, especially concerning the Dutch West India Company's conflicts with Spain in the late 16th century (note mentions of Santa Maria in Lane, pp. 73-77).

      Note as well that by the conclusion of the narrative, the Saint Dominick does fulfill its intended journey from Valparaiso, Chile to Callao, a port just outside of Lima, Peru. (See map, contemporary with the composition of Benito Cereno.)

  32. Aug 2018
    1. He believed that anomie is common when the surrounding society has undergone significant changes in its economic fortunes, whether for better or for worse and, more generally, when there is a significant discrepancy between the ideological theories and values commonly professed and what was actually achievable in everyday life. This was contrary to previous theories on suicide which generally maintained that suicide was precipitated by negative events in a person's life and their subsequent depression.

      Is this what America is experiencing in the midst of Donald J. Trump's new Republican party?

      I'm left wondering if there is a potential link to Jonah Goldberg having used the word Suicide specifically in the title of his recent book? Neither Durkheim nor anomie appear within the text however.

  33. Jul 2018
    1. It would be deeply unphilosophical to select a favourite living philosopher without questioning the philosophical assumptions underpinning the task. The emphasis on great individuals reflects an emphasis on innovation, an idea that rationality is best exercised in the solitary thinking of lone minds, and an ideal of autonomy in which we should think not just for ourselves but by ourselves. These are not uniquely western ideas and values but they are more pronounced here than elsewhere in the world. “Authorship of a philosophy resides not in individuals but in groups” For example, although Confucius is revered in China, he is of secondary importance to the school of thought he helped develop. This is Rujia, or the school of the ru (ru is a scholar or learned man, and jia is literally house or family). Confucianism was a term coined by 16th century Jesuit missionaries, superimposing the western value on founding figures on the indigenous tradition. But Confucius saw himself as a preserver of ancient wisdom, not as a creator of a new philosophy. In this way of thinking, authorship of a philosophy resides not in individuals but in groups. Philosophising is a quintessentially collective enterprise. In that spirit, I would nominate the East-West Philosophy Center in Hawai’i as my favourite “philosopher.” It is a unique locus for comparative philosophy, a hub for a community of scholars that extends beyond its formal members. In its orbit are exceptional thinkers like the Confucian philosopher Roger Ames and the Japan specialist Tom Kasulis. Thinkers like these do not receive as much credit as is due in part because non-western philosophy is undervalued but also because they can be dismissed as mere interpreters rather than original thinkers. In fact, all philosophers work in traditions and some of the most creative work has always emerged as a sympathetic response to existing ideas. What is exciting about the work of the likes of Ames and Kasulis is that it breathes new life into old ideas by bringing disparate traditions into dialogue with each other. In contrast, those that plough their lonely furrows risk creeping into stagnation and irrelevance.
  34. Apr 2018
    1. Fashion can change overnight. It takes a decade or two to change architecture, because it takes so long to become an architect. You have to go through a rigorous training program. The Cultural Revolution arrested the development of architecture in China.  It has taken this long for it to start coming back. The architecture schools are starting to become confident enough that they are starting to encourage students to draw their inspiration from their own environment and culture.   Until now, they have pretty much been borrowing from the West.  Finally, the professors that weren’t happy about the Cultural Revolution are dying or retiring, and younger, less cynical professors are coming forward and saying, “Being a Chinese architect is good. “ Wang Shu won the Prizker Prize not because he was the world’s great architect, but because he was one of the first in his generation of Chinese architects to be original and be Chinese at the same time, and not borrow from the West.  That will happen more and more.
    2. When was Japan on fire in late '80s to early '90s, every famous architect in the world was in Japan. Every major hotel lobby would be filled with famous architects.  Today, there’s nobody there. The Japanese architects have taken control of their own country.  Now, the only people going work in Japan are Japanese architects. I have to believe that one day, the only people doing architecture in China will be Chinese architects
    1. He has since tested his hypothesis in India, which also shows a clear divide in wheat and rice growing regions, with similar results. Almost all the people he questioned are not directly involved in farming, of course – but the historical traditions of their regions are still shaping their thinking. “There’s some inertia in the culture.”
    2. The divide did not seem to correlate with measures of wealth or modernisation, but he noticed that one difference could be the kind of staple crop grown in the region: rice in most southern areas, and wheat in the north. “It splits almost neatly along the Yangtze River,” says Talhelm.Growing rice requires far greater cooperation: it is labour-intensive and requires complex irrigation systems spanning many different farms. Wheat farming, by contrast, takes about half the amount of work and depends on rainfall rather than irrigation, meaning that farmers don’t need to collaborate with their neighbours and can focus on tending their own crops. 
    3. When questioned about their attitudes and behaviours, people in more individualistic, Western societies tend to value personal success over group achievement, which in turn is also associated with the need for greater self-esteem and the pursuit of personal happiness. But this thirst for self-validation also manifests in overconfidence, with many experiments showing that Weird participants are likely to overestimate their abilities. When asked about their competence, for instance, 94% of American professors claimed they were “better than average”.This tendency for self-inflation appears to be almost completely absent in a range of studies across East Asia; in fact, in some cases the participants were more likely to underestimate their abilities than to inflate their sense of self-worth. People living in individualistic societies may also put more emphasis on personal choice and freedom.
    4. But why did the different thinking styles emerge in the first place? The obvious explanation would be that they simply reflect the prevailing philosophies that have come to prominence in each region over time. Nisbett points out that Western philosophers emphasised freedom and independence, whereas Eastern traditions like Taoism tended to focus on concepts of unity. Confucius, for instance, emphasised the “obligations that obtained between emperor and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, older brother and younger brother, and between friend and friend”. These diverse ways of viewing the world are embedded in the culture’s literature, education, and political institutions, so it is perhaps of little surprise that those ideas have been internalised, influencing some very basic psychological processes.
  35. Dec 2017
    1. There is a reason we know Malala's story but not that of Noor Aziz, eight years old when killed by a drone strike in Pakistan; Zayda Ali Mohammed Nasser, dead at seven from a drone strike in Yemen; or Abeer Qassim Hamza al Janabi, the 14-year-old girl raped and set on fire by US troops in Mahmudiyah, Iraq. "I wasn't thinking these people were humans," one of the soldiers involved, Steven Green, said of his Iraqi victims.
  36. Oct 2017
  37. Jun 2017
    1. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti will light up the sky on Thursday with the Bat-signal in honor of actor Adam West.

      A great tribute! RIP Adam West!

  38. Apr 2017
    1. frontier

      The frontier has for a long time been an essential part of the identity of North America. In the United States, after the French and Indian Wars, people rapidly began to move out West on the "frontier" to create better lives for themselves. They saw the frontier as a land of great opportunity. Especially in America, there was so much fertile land that people would be able to move out westward and own massive areas of land to start agriculture on. But the frontier has also had many different motifs in the development of North America. The frontier was a very difficult place to live. Before the French and Indian Wars, white people on the frontier would constantly be harassed or even killed by Native Americans protecting their land. The frontier was also miles away from any substantial civilization so families were pretty much all on their own out there. It was seen as an area of grit and masculinity. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner talks about how the frontier was crucial to the development of American culture. He says that, "this perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character." While here I focus on the expansion westward, the "frontier" extended both northward and southward. When people began to move to westward and northward into Canada, it had already been done before in America. This led to pre-legislation and treaties with the indigenous people that allowed for easier transitions and avoid creating another "Wild West".

      Turner, Frederick Jackson. The frontier in American history. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1935.

    2. dust-bowl

      The dust bowl is a geographic region in the United States centralized in the panhandle of Oklahoma and northern part of Texas that extends to surrounding states like Kansas and New Mexico. The dust bowl is infamous for experiencing a severe drought for almost a decade in the 1930's. In addition to the drought, decades of poor farming practices led the top soil to be overused and low in nutrients. Because of these compounding problems, crops were not able to be grown in this region which forced tens of thousands of farming families to move away. The drought in the dust bowl could not have come at a worse time as it occurred during the Great Depression. With an already struggling economy, food supplies were severely reduced nationwide leading to even more struggle. "This convergence of geophysical and anthropogenic factors conspired to create what is arguably the most severe long-term human ecological crisis the USA has seen.” An iconic part of the dust bowl were the intense dust storms that were experienced because of the loose top soil and high power winds. These storms were know as black blizzards as they covered the sky in dust and blackened everything. These dust storms reached all the way to areas of the East coast.

      Porter, Jess. 2014. "What was the Dust Bowl? Assessing contemporary popular knowledge." Population & Environment 35, no. 4: 391-416. GreenFILE, EBSCOhost (accessed April 10, 2017).

    3. transportation networks were evolved

      In this sentence, Berger refers to how transport and industrial activity expanded heavily over this time period when many Americans were moving out west. This is a massive part of North American history because of the opportunities it opened up for rich and poor people alike. The first railroads in North America were established in the 1820's and quickly altered the face of life on the continent. The rapid expansion of the railroad industry led to the development of other industries like oil and steel. For a time in the 19th century these were the largest economic factors in the United States and whoever controlled these essentially controlled the country. However, Berger here is referring to the opportunities that railroads opened up for expansion across the west and north. The incredible development of railroads made travel to the west coast of America much easier than it ever was before. This changed the idea of the "frontier" in many people's mind. Because travel was much easier, the idea of the west in North America being a rustic and dangerous environment changed overtime and culminated in western economic opportunities like the Gold Rush. "Gold discoveries in the Far West preceded the gold rush of 1849 and encouraged migration from eastern cities." As western movement became more and more popular, the idea of a pristine, wild, and natural American west began to fade. The idea of a getting rich quick from the California Gold Rush was translated to the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon of Canada in 1896. This had similar affects on how people viewed the Northwest region of Canada and its wilderness.

      "Railroad Promotion and Economic Expansion at Council Bluffs, Iowa, 1857-1869." Annals Of Iowa 42, no. 5 (Summer1974 1974): 371-389. America: History and Life with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed April 6, 2017).

    1. North West Company

      The North West Company (NWC) was founded in 1779 in Montreal, Canada by a group of men from Scotland (The North West Company). The company was created in competition with the already established Hudson Bay Company (HBC). Both companies were fur traders, but the NWC had swift, lightweight boats that allowed them to travel faster than the HBC and the NWC became the leading fur trading company. The success of the NWC relied on merchant partners, agents, voyageurs, and aboriginal trappers. In 1821, NWC and HBC combined resources and became The Hudson’s Bay Company (The Company), with a total of 173 fur trading posts. This merger allowed Britain to retain control over the western provinces of Canada. In 1881, The Company moved toward agriculture and land and transportation development. In 1935, radiotelephone technology became available and The Company received increasing demand from a larger service region. This led to a period of technological advancement. In 1943, Northern Canada was open and many migrated to the area in search of wealth and opportunity. The Company opened community based retail stores in an effort to increase profit and namesake. As advertisements became abundant, the demand for retail stores increased. In 1953, The Company began trading Inuit art at its regional trading posts, which introduced a new art form. In 1987, the Northern trading posts, entitled the Northern Stores Division, were purchased and renamed The North West Company. A complete timeline of the history of the North West Company can be found below.

      "History, About Us, The North West Company." The North West Company. Accessed April 06, 2017. Description

  39. Mar 2017
    1. Provided that the clinical ...

      This rider contravenes with the first objective that people cannot be denied emergency services. How does the establishment exert its right to recover the cost of operations? Is it allowed to determine how much to charge and interest rates, etc?

    2. Which 20%? which 10%? Per day quota of visits? If the bed size is 100, it will be 10 patients but which ten patients? Will they be randomly selected? Same patient can receive the free treatment twice? what will determine this?

    1. Li Delun, one of the Chinese musicians trained in the West whose career survived the Cultural Revolution, helped lead the revival with a new ideological line, declaring, “People need this product of the West to liberate their cultural thinking from 2,000 years of feudalism.” By the early 1990s, the Chinese government was deliberately encouraging the study of music through its education policy. Students and their parents were keenly aware that musical training could be an advantage in China’s brutal competition for slots at top universities. Knowledge of Beethoven was something to show off, and President Jiang Zemin (in office 1993–2003) enjoyed doing just that, taking the baton to conduct orchestras at state banquets and playing the piano for Western leaders.
    1. “Whenever I play in Korea, I feel like I’m at a rock concert,” says Bell. If there’s any irony to the most quintessentially Western music tradition being kept alive by the East, by now it’s a moot point. Classical music is as Asian as tempura and Spam. Even if it eventually dies in the West, it will have an Asian afterlife, much in the way washed-up American rock bands can still pack stadiums in Manila.
    2. And in contrast to celebrity musicians like Yo-Yo Ma and Lang Lang, Asians haven’t made much headway into conducting or composing. Asian music education is not famous for its music theory. The Suzuki method, Asia’s most successful classical music export, is a highly mechanical training regimen based on drills and rote memorization, with no emphasis on “feeling” the music
    3. “There was a time when practically every major soloist was Jewish,” says violinist Joshua Bell. “Every Jewish kid grew up wanting to play the violin. Now it’s true among Asians.” (Or at least among Asian parents.)
    1. Delta-Beaufort area

      The Beaufort Delta is on region in the Arctic. It is situated between the Yukon Territory and Nunavut, and with the Arctic Ocean to its North. Inuvik is a town in the Beaufort Delta. It is commonly considered the hub of the area. The Beaufort Deltas population is almost one fifth of the whole population of the North West Territory, and shares 12% of the whole territory’s income. The towns are mostly connected by a few winter roads, with one major road worth of mentioning being the Dempster Highway Connection. The Dempster Highway is important because it can be navigated in all weather and thus is a likely route used by tourists to get to the region. Without it, the area would be much less accessible. Many Europeans travel to the region as tourists. Because of the rising levels of tourists, facilities and accommodations for the tourists are being financed. The Mackenzie Mountains, the Delta alone, and the Arctic Ocean landscape are some of the most popular natural landmarks that tourists flock to see. The midnight sun is also a big hit for visitors of the region. In terms of industry, the region has a strong gas market. Projects such as the Ikhil Gas Project help the region get power by providing electricity. The Mackenzie Gas Project is a project that is currently being evaluated for development. Fur trade is also sometimes still practiced in the region. Transportation and public administration are also sectors that can be profitable for the region.

      ITI. “Beaufort Delta”. Last modified unknown. http://www.iti.gov.nt.ca/en/beaufort-delta

    2. Bluenose caribou herd

      Many of the same concerns regarding the well-being of the Bluenose caribou herd in the Berger Inquiry are still being discussed today due to continued industrial exploration, specifically regarding oil and gas, in the Northwest Territories and the Arctic. Since oil and gas are still valued resources in our current societies, exploration continues in the North, as described by Anne Dunn and her colleagues in the 2009 Arctic publication. These concerns include changes of habitat due to the introduction or industrial development such as roads, oilfields, mines, etc. The attraction of job opportunity to areas surrounding the Bluenose caribou herd could potentially cause an increase in demand of caribou meat. Increased income as a result of employment for industrial exploration allows for the advancement of hunting methods regarding the locating of caribou and utilization of year-round roads implemented originally for industrial exploration. The concerns regarding the Bluenose East and Bluenose West caribou herds of the Northwest Territories result specifically from oil and gas exploration (Gunn et al. 2009, iii).

      Besides industrial exploration, there are concerns about the population and survival of the Bluenose caribou herd surrounding climate trends. Specifically, warmer temperatures will affect the environmental conditions in which the caribou rely on for sustenance. An increased temperature in the wintertime could correspond to more freeze-thaw cycles (Gunn et al. 2009, iii).

      Regarding population size, according to the Arctic journal, “migratory wild reindeer and caribou numbers have dropped by about one-third since populations peaked in the 1990s and early 2000s”. There are natural periods of abundance and scarcity among migratory tundra caribou herds. These increases and decreases in population size are likely results of “continental climate switches” (Gunn et al. 2009, iii). According to the Northwest Territories Environment and Natural Resources division, the Bluenose West caribou herd was estimated to have population of 112,000 in 1992. In 2015, its population was estimated to be approximately 15,000. The Bluenose East caribou herd was estimated to have a population of 104,000 in 2000. In 2015, its population was estimated to be between 35,000 and 40,000 (Northwest Territories).

      References

      Gunn, Anne, Don Russell, Robert G. White, and Gary<br> Kofinas. "Facing a Future of Change: Wild<br> Migratory Caribou and Reindeer." Arctic 62, no. 3 (2009): Iii-Vi. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40513303.

      Northwest Territories: Environment and Natural Resources. "Barren-ground Caribou: Northern Herds." Environment and Natural Resources. Accessed March 08, 2017. http://www.enr.gov.nt.ca/node/2979.

  40. Dec 2016
  41. Apr 2016
    1. like a dial-hand, Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;

      I see what the author did there because he was comparing her beauty going away to a hand on a clock because the hand of a clock slowly creeps away from time and that how the womens beauty was to people

    2. Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:

      This part of the poem confused me because he went from speaking so highly of this women to saying her beauty is going away and his eyes are deceived.

    3. Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;

      This is the Volta in my poem because the poet was highly talking about how beautiful the women was and how great she is, but when he says "Ah!..." and continues with that quote he says how her beauty began to disappear.

    4. In process of the seasons have I seen

      The stressed syllables in this line are pro-, of, sea-, have, seen. The unstressed syllables are In, -cess, the, -sons, I. The rhyme connected her is every other syllable and this helps show the main idea and importance of the poem.

    5. Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green

      The stressed syllables in this line are first, saw, fresh, yet, green. The unstressed syllables are Since, I, you, which, are. The stressed and unstressed creates a rhyme to emphasize and help enhance the importance of the poem. When the poet does this it gives the pom more importance.

    6. Hath

      The meaning of hath in the context is saying how her beauty is actually changing and he just isn't able to see it.

    7. dial-hand

      the meaning of dIal-hand in the poem is a hand of a clock. The hand of the clock compares beauty and how a clock creeps away from the person she is attached to

    8. doth

      The word doth in this context of the poem is comparing the women's beauty to a hand of a clock.

  42. Mar 2016
    1. So while we are told to dress this way, walk that way, avoid those men and stay indoors during these hours, so as to prevent sexual assault, the fact is that women are not the ones who can prevent sexual assault. Men are.

      No matter what preventative steps women take to avoid being victims of sexual assault and violence, he acts continue. It is not women who need to change their behavior, it is men who must be given the proper resources to express themselves. By holding in their emotions, men develop controlling and aggressive tendencies.

  43. Jan 2016
    1. raine.

      What is the purpose of repetition here specifically and in poetry in general?

  44. Aug 2015
    1. coming.

      Study questions for this section:

      What roles do sugar and slavery play in the expansion of European empires?

      What diseases devastate Native American peoples?