10 for Today starts with a wonderful piece about Leonard Bernstein ad ends with octopuses being given ecstasy n

Lenny Boy
via Arts & Letters Daily: Peter E. Gordon in ^The Boston Review

Wikimedia Commons
Leonard Bernstein would have turned 100 this August [of 2018]. As many centenary reflections have shown, it is hard to tell the story of this Great American Conductor-Composer without lapsing into the heroic style, turning his outsized personality into the key for unlocking his music.
Certainly the narrative sweep of his career is irresistible — the transformation of this son of Ukrainian Jewish beauty supply wholesalers into the darling of classical music, the last superstar in a musical culture that was turning from Beethoven to the Beatles. Bernstein held on to that audience; he commanded its attention. Even when he was not conducting he was a performer, the impresario for his own achievements. Already in 1939, when he submitted his senior honors thesis at Harvard, his examiner wrote, “I thoroughly disapprove of Mr. Bernstein’s arrogant attitude and of the air of superiority assumed by him.” This sense of self-assurance could be off-putting, but it was also part of his charm.
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(Mis)Understanding Russia’s two ‘hybrid wars’
via Eurozine by Mark Galeotti
The term ‘hybrid war’ has become synonymous with Russian aggression. It denotes a style of warfare that combines the political, economic, social and kinetic, in a kind of conflict that recognizes no boundaries between covert and overt war. However, this definition fails to recognize crucial distinctions in Russian strategy, writes Mark Galeotti.

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a manoeuvre, a blow with an agreement.
Leon Trotsky (1932)

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5 of the worst inventions in modern history
via the BIg Think blog by Ned Dymoke
Be glad your name isn't attached to any of these bad ideas.

• Some inventions can be celebrated during their time, but are proven to be devastating in the long run.
• The inventions doesn't have to be physical. Complex mathematical creations that create money for Wall Street can do as much damage, in theory, as a gas that destroys the ozone layer.
• Inventors can even see their creations be used for purposes far different than they had intended.

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A Short Analysis of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s ‘A Hymn to the Moon’
via Interesting Literature
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) was a remarkable woman: as well as her writing, she is also celebrated for introducing smallpox inoculation to Britain, half a century before Edward Jenner developed vaccination against the disease. ‘A Hymn to the Moon’ is a wonderful short poem about the moon.
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Gorgeous, stylized portraits of vintage computing hardware
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Docubyte's Visual History of Computing 1945-1979 is a mix of superb staging, outstanding photography, and intense nostalgia, and it just made my day. [And mine!]

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Scientists reveal 10,000-year-old mummy is Native American ancestor
DNA testing discredits theory Nevada’s ‘Spirit Cave mummy’ is of Paleoamerican heritage
via the Guardian by Hannah Devlin, Science correspondent

 Prof Eske Willerslev with Donna and Joey, two members of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe descended from the mummy. Photograph: Linus Mørk/Magus Film
Scientists attempting to map out the historical migrations of North and South America by analysing ancient bones have revealed that a 10,000-year-old skeleton unearthed in a cave in Nevada is the ancestor of a Native American tribe.
The iconic skeleton, known as the “Spirit Cave mummy”, was reburied this summer by the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone people in Nevada, bringing closure to a decades-long legal dispute with anthropologists who fought for it to remain on display in a museum.
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Among Tyrants
via Arts & Letters Daily: Ed Simon for Poetry Foundation
Thomas Wyatt, the first great poet of totalitarianism, speaks to the anxieties of troubled times.
The 190th sonnet of Petrarch’s Canzoniere presents the “sweetly austere” image of a “doe of purest white upon green grass.” Petrarch, a 14th-century Italian poet, contemplates the mystical deer with devotion; it is, after all, a stand-in for his beloved, Laura. Around the deer’s throat is a necklace studded with diamonds and topaz, symbols of steadfastness and chastity respectively—an appropriate bit of mineralogical allegory for a poet so identified with idealized love. It’s telling that when the English poet Sir Thomas Wyatt reimagined Petrarch’s sonnet some two centuries later, he deleted the detail about the topaz. Petrarch wrote about chastity; Wyatt wrote about anxiety.
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A Short Analysis of the ‘Thirty Days Hath September’ Rhyme
via Interesting Literature
As Groucho Marx once said, ‘My favourite poem is the one that starts “Thirty Days Hath September”, because it actually means something.’ The meaning of ‘Thirty Days Hath September’ is self-evident and straightforward. But what are the origins of this famous rhyme?
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Goats friendlier for happy human faces
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza

If you're worried about menacing gangs of goats roaming the moor, here's how to sweeten the savage beasts: smile. Scientists found that “goats are drawn to humans with happy facial expressions”.
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Giving octopuses ecstasy reveals surprising link to humans
A groundbreaking new study shows that octopuses seemed to exhibit uncharacteristically social behavior when given MDMA, the psychedelic drug commonly known as ecstasy.
via the Big Think blog by Stephen Johnson

• Octopuses, like humans, have genes that seem to code for serotonin transporters.
• Scientists gave MDMA to octopuses to see whether those genes translated into a binding site for serotonin, which regulates emotions and behavior in humans
• Octopuses, which are typically asocial creatures, seem to get friendlier while on MDMA, suggesting humans have more in common with the strange invertebrates than previously thought

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The mind boggles as to why anyone would give ecstasy to an octopus.

Climate crimes must be brought to justice

an article by Catriona McKinnon published in the UNESCO Courier


“Climate denial has benefited from the generosity of the fossil fuel industry.”

Climate denial has increased the risk of catastrophic global change. Should international criminal law be used against those who promote this dangerous trend? Economic and political leaders can no longer pretend it is business as usual. Whether they actively induce environmental harm or just ignore the existential threat against the survival of the human species, states and corporations must be held accountable for their actions or inaction regarding climate change.

A fire has started in the theatre, from which there are no exits. Unchecked, the fire will kill and injure many in the theatre, starting with those in the cheapest seats. Many people can smell the smoke, but some others have not noticed it yet. Some people are trying to warn everyone so that the fire can be contained before it spreads out of control. Another group – sitting mainly in the most expensive seats – is trying to shout loudly that there is no fire, or that it is not serious, or that there is plenty of time left to put it out. This group uses emotive language and insists that the other group is not to be trusted.

Many people in the theatre are confused by these conflicting messages or convinced by the fire-deniers. There are enough people in this combined set to significantly slow down the efforts of those listening to the accurate warnings, those who are trying to put out the fire. In this scenario, those shouting “No fire!” ought to be silenced, because there is a fire that requires urgent and immediate action to prevent it from spreading and becoming uncontrollable. But the fire is not being tackled properly because many of the people in the theatre do not know whom to believe.

Can we compare those who deny the reality of climate change to the group that occupies the best seats in the theatre? The answer seems obvious: yes.

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Detecting Historical Inequality Patterns: A Replication of Thomas Piketty's Wealth Concentration Estimates for the United Kingdom

an article by Phillip W. Magness (American Institute for Economic Research) published in Social Science Quarterly Volume 100 Issue 5 (August 2019)

Abstract

Objective
This article utilizes a replication exercise to evaluate the reliability of the historical time series for top wealth share concentrations in the United Kingdom, as presented in Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty‐First Century (2014a).

Method
Using Piketty's identified source records, an attempt is made to replicate the construction of his time series for top wealth concentrations in the U.K. These results are then compared against the series presented in Capital, and subsequent improvements by other scholars.

Results
Piketty's time series is shown to diverge substantially from its source data from the U.K., and does not appear to be replicable. In particular, Piketty's series introduces a sizable post‐1980 adjustment that suggests a substantially more rapid acceleration of wealth concentration than its source statistics reveal. Issues of reliability in the U.K. time series mirror similar problems with Piketty's wealth estimates for the United States, although their implications for historical interpretation differ in light of subsequent data.

Conclusion
These findings indicate that Piketty's account of changing wealth concentrations in the United Kingdom in the 20th century is unreliable for interpreting recent patterns in the evolution of top wealth shares. An alternative interpretation of the source data is therefore offered, pointing to a century‐long L‐shaped pattern in place of Piketty's depicted U‐curve.

JEL Classification: N14, D63

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Analyzing the legal roots and moral core of digital consent

an article by Elizabeth Edenberg and Meg Leta Jones (Georgetown University, USA) published in New Media & Society Volume 21 Issue 8 (August 2019)

Abstract

We will argue that clarifying the “moral core” of consent offers a common metric by which we can evaluate how well different legal frameworks are able to protect the central moral rights and interests at stake.

We begin by revisiting how legal frameworks for digital consent developed in order to see where there may be common moral ground and where these different cultures diverge on the issue of protection of personal information.

We then turn to ethics to clarify the central interests and rights at stake in morally transformative consent, in order to provide a common basis for evaluating the different legal frameworks.

Ultimately, we seek the moral core of digital consent in order to reimagine its role in international conflicts.

Full text (PDF 20pp)

Hazel’s comment:
There are a number of things about which I ask myself is it moral, is it ethical as against the legality of a specific action. Just because the law allows something does not make it right and the opposite is also true.
The authors of this piece have struck what seems to me to be a good balance.

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Politicised nexus thinking in practice: Integrating urban wastewater utilities into regional energy markets

an article by Timothy Moss (Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany) and Frank Hüesker (Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany) published in Urban Studies Volume 56 Issue 11 (August 2019)

Abstract

Infrastructures are key interfaces of urban resource use, connecting production to consumption, cities to their hinterland and energy to water and land use. They have, however, received scant attention in debates on nexus thinking in general, and the urban nexus in particular.

Drawing on an emergent critical literature on the nexus in urban studies and science and technology studies, this article examines practices of (attempted) inter-sectoral infrastructure integration at the interface of urban wastewater treatment and regional energy provision in Germany.

It analyses the nexus approaches and experiences of eight German cities / city-regions as so-called ‘flexibility providers’ in regional energy markets for electricity, gas and heating.

It demonstrates how the practices of wastewater utilities operating in energy markets involve far more than technical adaptation, requiring in addition a major reordering of existing material, spatial and institutional configurations to both wastewater and energy systems.

This is proving a deeply political process with important implications for our understanding of socio-technical transitions at the water-energy nexus.

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When All Else Fails: Hold Steady

a post by Bonnie McClure for the World of Psychology blog



There is no shortage in today’s world of methods for treating depression. Ranging from a regime of medication to more naturalistic approaches that rely on identifying sensitivities of diet and exercise. It is great to have all these options and more to choose from, because everyone is different and different methods work for different people. But management of many different approaches can become exhausting and what about when they simply don’t work?

For someone who struggles with cyclical depression, the heavy return of symptoms can seem to compound suffering even more. It feels like you work so hard, do all the right things, push yourself to the limit, seek all the resources, do all the work, confront the self-discovery, only to feel as though you are brought back to square one, hiding under the covers from your day to day life again. It can feel like nothing is working. It can feel like wasted effort. It can feel like making no progress. The pattern is almost more frustrating than the conditingon itself.

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Problematic smartphone usage and subjective and psychological well-being

an article by Sharon Horwood and Jeromy Anglim (Deakin University, Australia) published in Computers in Human Behavior Volume 97 (August 2019)

Highlights

• Problematic smartphone use is associated with lower well-being.
• Autonomy is negatively associated with problematic smartphone use.
• Negative affect is positively associated with problematic smartphone use.
• Reducing smartphone use could be a targeted intervention in clinical settings.

Abstract

Despite a growing awareness that problematic usage of smartphones is becoming a significant public health issue, there is limited research on how problematic smartphone usage relates to the humanistic concepts of well-being, particularly those captured in Ryff's six psychological well-being dimensions: positive relations, autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, purpose in life, and self-acceptance.

The current study aimed to provide a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between general and problematic smartphone usage and subjective well-being and psychological well-being using long-form, theoretically grounded measures. Australian adults (n = 539, 79% female; age in years M = 25.1, SD = 7.8) completed Diener's Satisfaction with Life Scale, the PANAS, and Ryff's 84-item measure of psychological well-being.

Results showed that problematic smartphone usage was correlated with lower well-being on almost all scales. In particular, negative affect, autonomy, and environmental mastery had the largest negative correlations with problematic smartphone usage. Given the stable and dispositional nature of well-being, it seems likely that much of the relationship is driven by a common underlying tendency to experience anxiety, negative emotions, and a lack of control, combined with a tendency to engage in maladaptive coping and compulsive behavior.

Hazel’s comment:
I was not sure about “problematic smartphone usage”. Just in case you are also a little confused then Wikipedia has an article you may find useful together with links to other information about the effect of problematic usage on your mental health.

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Ontology-based approach to enhance medical web information extraction

an article by Nassim Abdeldjallal Otmani and Malik Si-Mohammed (Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi Ouzou, Algeria) and Catherine Comparot  and Pierre-Jean Charrel (University Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France) International Journal of Web Information Systems Volume 15 Issue 3 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to propose a framework for extracting medical information from the Web using domain ontologies. Patient–Doctor conversations have become prevalent on the Web. For instance, solutions like HealthTap or AskTheDoctors allow patients to ask doctors health-related questions. However, most online health-care consumers still struggle to express their questions efficiently due mainly to the expert/layman language and knowledge discrepancy. Extracting information from these layman descriptions, which typically lack expert terminology, is challenging. This hinders the efficiency of the underlying applications such as information retrieval. Herein, an ontology-driven approach is proposed, which aims at extracting information from such sparse descriptions using a meta-model.

Design/methodology/approach
A meta-model is designed to bridge the gap between the vocabulary of the medical experts and the consumers of the health services. The meta-model is mapped with SNOMED-CT to access the comprehensive medical vocabulary, as well as with WordNet to improve the coverage of layman terms during information extraction. To assess the potential of the approach, an information extraction prototype based on syntactical patterns is implemented.

Findings
The evaluation of the approach on the gold standard corpus defined in Task1 of ShARe CLEF 2013 showed promising results, an F-score of 0.79 for recognizing medical concepts in real-life medical documents.

Originality/value
The originality of the proposed approach lies in the way information is extracted. The context defined through a meta-model proved to be efficient for the task of information extraction, especially from layman descriptions.

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Why Is MLB Claiming Revenue From Obviously Fair Use Videos On YouTube?

from the forks-and-sandwiches dept of techdirt by Mike Masnick [grateful thanks to Tara at ResearchBuzz Firehose]

Nearly a decade ago, we wrote a bunch about an excellent book called Copyfraud, by law professor Jason Mazzone, which went into great detail about how the legacy entertainment industry companies have used copyright in ways that are clearly against copyright's intent -- to the point that they border on fraud. The concept of copyfraud should be referred to more frequently, and here's a perfect example. Just a couple months ago, we wrote about the amazing social media account of Jimmy O'Brien, who goes by @Jomboy_ on Twitter. He's combined his love of baseball, his video editing skills, his ability to read lips incredibly well, and with a sarcastic, dry sense of humor to make a ton of amazing videos about various things happening in baseball. We highlighted a bunch last time around and his profile has only grown a lot since then, including among Major League Baseball players.

About a month after that post, Jomboy may have had his biggest moment so far, in putting together a truly amazing video of NY Yankees manager Aaron Boone getting ejected -- following a bunch of players and Boone arguing with a young umpire over some bad calls. What took the video from normal great to amazing was that it revealed exactly what Boone was saying to the ump during their argument thanks to a bunch of "hot mics" from the broadcast. That allowed us to learn a lot more about this argument than anyone normally does in watching a manager scream at an ump:

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Against Tolerance: The Ethics Of Empathy

an article by Rafaël Newman published on 3 Quarks Daily


“Quark”, photograph by the author, Bern 2018

I am employed two or three weekends a month as a minder or “Betreuer” at a treatment centre and halfway house for recovering drug addicts in Zurich. My duties include spending the night at the facility as the lone member of supervisory staff, eating meals with the clients, supervising their activities and accompanying their outings, taking urine samples and administering breathalyzer tests, distributing a variety of antidepressants and other prescription meds, and joining them for sessions of meditation and self-led group therapy.

Our clients typically come from the Swiss middle and working class, are predominantly white and “European”, and have in common with other addicts of my acquaintance a marked tendency to egocentrism and either a concomitant failure of empathy or, in reaction to the affective over-sensitivity that has come to be associated with addiction (particularly in the case of celebrity overdose victims such as Philip Seymour Hoffman), a self-protective closing of the border between self and other, whether by chemical, behavioral, or neurotic means.

Among my unspoken responsibilities as a minder, therefore, and in line with the principles of the self-help program that serve the center as an unofficial “philosophy”, is the performance of a living example: of empathy in action; of open-mindedness regarding others and their sensibilities or “struggles”; of humility and the will to serve, rather than simply to use, exploit, and consume. And as a consequence, the recovering addicts in my charge are, implicitly, to learn how to belong to a group rather than to go it alone, as they have been wont to do in active addiction.

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Sexual harassment and appearance-based peer victimization: Unique associations with emotional adjustment by gender and age

an article by Narelle Duncan and Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck (Griffith University, School of Applied Psychology, Australia) and Wyndol Furman (University of Denver, USA) published in Journal of Adolescence Volume 75 (August 2019)

Abstract

Introduction
We examined sexual harassment, alongside other forms of peer victimization, as correlates of self-worth, depression, and anxiety (emotional adjustment). In addition, we investigated joint moderating effects of gender and age in the relationship between sexual harassment and emotional adjustment.

Methods
Participants were 277 high school and 492 university students (12–24 years, 60% female) residing in Australia. All completed a survey to report sexual harassment experiences, as well as in-person and online/social media appearance-related peer victimization, global self-worth, and social anxiety and depressive symptoms.

Results
Age was positively associated with sexual harassment, as well as with general and social media victimization; males and females did not differ. Participants who reported more sexual harassment reported poorer adjustment, but only the association with depressive symptoms remained significant after controlling for other forms of peer victimization. When gender and age were tested as moderators, the positive association between sexual harassment and depression was significant for all groups but younger males and there was a positive association between harassment and anxiety among only younger females and older males.

Conclusion
Sexual harassment was commonly reported, but rather weakly and intermittently associated with emotional health, after controlling for appearance-related peer victimization. Future research should examine when and why youth seem fairly resilient to negative emotional effects that could follow sexual harassment. It is possible that messages about the cause of sexual harassment are being heard and this aids youth to avoid self-blame and emotional maladjustment.

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Do we unfairly demonise food processing?

a post by Alan Kelly for the OUP blog


Featured image by Jessica To’oto’o on Unsplash.

Today, we constantly hear concerns about the dangers of processed food and it is sometimes portrayed as opposite to natural and healthy food. Is this warranted? What does food processing even really mean?

To a food scientist, food processing is any method used to make food safe to eat, enhance its stability, or change its form. Humans are the only species that processes its food, rather than eating plants or animals in the form in which they are found in nature. Learning to cook food was a key step in human evolution, as this made food far more digestible, and freed up energy and metabolic activity to allow development of higher intelligence and all that followed.

Later, rudimentary food processing that allowed food to be stabilised and transported is proposed to have been a key step in the establishment of civilisations and cities, allowing people to become less dependent on finding and producing food. This allowed for the diversification of roles in society beyond primary producers and hunter-gatherers.

Early human migrations also depended on groups being able to transport food. Indeed, the discovery of cheese is attributed by legend to the use of containers made from calf stomachs, from which was extracted an enzyme called chymosin which converted milk therein to a mixture of curds formed from enzymatically destabilised milk protein and surrounding fluid whey. Later migrations in the form of great voyages of exploration required food to be preserved by means such as pickling and salting, while the need for Napoleon to feed his armies on their campaigns led him to offer prizes for solution to this problem, one of which was won by Nicholas Appert for the discovery of what became canning. Most recently, many developments in food safety and packaging which have become commonplace were spurred by the very specific needs of NASA for ultra-safe food for space travel, in easy to open pouches, which were resistant to spills and didn’t produce crumbs in zero-gravity.

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The UK Citizenship Process: Political Integration or Marginalization?

an article by (David Bartram, University of Leicester, UK) published in Sociology Volume 53 Issue 3 (August 2019)

Abstract

The UK ‘citizenship process’ subjects immigrants to requirements ostensibly intended to enhance their identification with ‘British values’. Policy-makers suggest the policy will facilitate immigrants’ integration: as they learn about ‘life in the UK’, they will become better able to understand and navigate core institutions. Many external observers, by contrast, believe that the requirements exacerbate immigrants’ marginalization.

I use panel data from ‘Understanding Society’ to investigate political participation among non-citizen immigrants at Wave 1, comparing those who became citizens by Wave 6 to those who remained non-citizens. Those who became citizens subsequently reported lower interest in politics, relative to those who remained non-citizens; in addition, they were not more likely to be active in organizations (e.g. political parties and trade unions).

These findings reinforce the concerns of critics: the UK citizenship policy appears to do more to alienate new citizens than it does to facilitate their integration in the political sphere.

Full text (PDF 18pp)

Is Science Political?

an article by Michael D. Gordin in the Boston Review posted to 3 Quarks Daily by S. Abbas Raza


Sidney Hook speaking at the opening session of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin on June 26, 1950. The second day of the conference featured a panel on “Science and Totalitarianism.” Image: cia.gov

The word “science” typically evokes epistemic ambitions to explore the fundamental laws of the natural world. This is the stuff of philosophical reflection and documentary specials—and it is unquestionably important. This ethereal vision of science appears starkly divorced from the messy fray of “politics,” however you might want to understand the term.

Yet consider two other central features of today’s science: it is élite, and it is expensive. By élite, I do not mean that only certain sorts of people – the “right sorts” – have the capacity to do science. What I mean is that you cannot just pick up and decide today that you are going to be a scientist. It requires years, even decades, of training in the methods and practices of inquiry; consulting a scientist means that you are obligated to turn to someone who has already undergone that process. You do science with the scientists you have, regardless of whether they are socially or politically agreeable to you.

More here.

Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science
Audra J. Wolfe
Johns Hopkins University Press, $29.95 (cloth)

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Visible and invisible borders in time and space

an article by Geraldine Healy (Queen Mary University of London, London, UK) published in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Volume 38 Issue 6 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how biography influences professional and academic development. It aims to show how in different ways our experiences reflect the structures of society and that histories repeat themselves with different protagonists and different preys. It uses the author’s own biography to argue that in the author’s case, early influences of Irish migration shaped some of the decisions she made and her commitment to researching inequalities. The paper also asks how relevant are early life influences on the careers of equality and diversity academics?

Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a biographical method that draws on a personal history of migration and relates these to historical moments to show the interconnection between the self and wider macro events.

Findings
The findings of the paper show the relevance and interconnection of biography with the macro and political context. The paper explores how an academic's personal biography[1] and the multi-layered relationship between the self and the wider macro historical context have influenced her research development. It does this by using her personal stories of being part of an Irish community and shows how everyday interactions may lead to a sense of being an outsider, of being other. History is used to show the multiple borders that Irish and other migrants experience, from biographic and diasporic borders, to violence and conflict and finally to work borders including the link with the author's research work. The paper argues that while the targets of discrimination may change over time, contemporary events can intensify the devaluation and othering of particular migrant groups.

Originality/value
Each biography has a unique element but the paper shows how individual biographies are connected and interrelated with the macro level of analysis.

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The fundamental drivers of cryptocurrency prices

a column by Siddharth Bhambhwani, Stefanos Delikouras and George Korniotis for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

We do not know which characteristics affect cryptocurrency prices, if any.

The column argues that there are two fundamental factors that drive prices in the long run: the trustworthiness of the cryptocurrency’s blockchain and the adoption of the blockchain. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero are affected by these fundamentals. In some periods prices deviate, but eventually retrace the trend.

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Why You Need To Set Boundaries with Yourself

a post by Sharon Martin for the Happily Imperfect blog [via World of Psychology]



We usually think of personal boundaries as a way to communicate our needs to others; a way to tell them how we want to be treated.

But we also need boundaries with ourselves.

Boundaries are guidelines or limits

An integral part of being a responsible adult is establishing limits for ourselves – making choices that are in our own best interest even when they aren’t enjoyable in the moment.

Why you need boundaries for yourself

Boundaries help you monitor your own behavior and create a healthy structure for your life. They keep you from eating French fries at every meal or staying up until 2 a.m. when you have to be at work at 7 o’clock.

When you set a boundary with yourself, you’re saying: “Here’s the line between what’s okay for me and what’s not. Here’s the line that I won’t cross.”

And we set boundaries for ourselves because we love and respect ourselves. Boundaries keep us safe and healthy. They keep our lives running smoothly.

Continue reading and discover Sharon’s wisdom on this issue with which so many of us struggle. Remember that she is only suggesting not issuing orders!

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Terrorist Masculinities: Political Masculinity between Fiction, Facts, and Their Mediation

an article by Rainer Emig (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany) published in Men and Masculinities Volume 22 Issue 3 (August 2019)

Abstract

This essay proposes that terrorism manifests itself in a relation that encompasses masculinity as well as the media. The origin of this relationship is the joint performativity of gender and acts of terror. This makes terrorism an instrument of social and political change. But in order to legitimize themselves, terrorism as well as masculinity require authorization by a phantasmagorical power.

Drawing on the dominance of males among terrorists, this essay will look at an early depiction of terrorism in Conrad’s The Secret Agent, a contemporary representation in Sahota’s novel Ours Are the Streets and terrorism’s real manifestation in the Paris carnage of November 2015.

It will show that in the desire to satisfy an imagined “higher authority” and thereby assert an individual as well as political identity, masculinity and terrorism share a performative root. This also suggests a possible way of exposing and exploding terrorism and masculinity from within, by feeding into the mediated stream of its representations images and ideas of inferiority, ridicule, and failure.

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It's possible to be paralyzed by choice

a post by Seamus Bellamy for the Boing Boing blog

Mental health problems are a pain in the ass. One of the more obnoxious coping mechanisms I used to use to deal with depression and anxiety was shopping.



Having nightmares again? Stressed out? Buy something new! You earned it, pal!

Sometimes, the brief rush of endorphins I'd snag from spending a little dough was enough to allow me to slide through another day without addressing any of the problems I was suffering from.

On other days, I'd buy something I knew damn well that I didn't need and feel almost instantly guilty. I'd want to return it, but the shame and embarrassment of walking back into a store and having to explain myself felt like too much to tolerate. I'd find ways around having to return stuff by buying non-returnable items, like digital downloads. Back when I was first confronting my addiction to this kind of rampant consumerism, I figured out that I had spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 on iTunes downloads over a five-year period.

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Human emotion detection based on questionnaire and text analysis

an article by Rajib Ghosh and Ditipriya Sinha (NIT Patna, Bihar, India) published in International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion Volume 10 Number 1 (2019)

Abstract

Human emotions have been described by some theorists as discrete and consistent responses to internal or external events which have a particular significance for the organism. Emotions are the topic of extensive research in the recent times.

However, state of the art describes that most of the approaches on emotion detection have been designed on the basis of complex and costly approaches like physiological features, brain signals, etc.

The present article presents a simple and cost-effective emotion detection model by combining questionnaire and text analysis-based approaches and then combining the probability scores of two different classifiers (support vector machine and artificial neural network) using Dempster-Shafer theory (DST).

In the present work, DST has been used effectively in combining multiple information sources which provides incomplete, imprecise, and biased knowledge. Experimental results show that the proposed system outperforms all existing emotion detection systems available in the literature.

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Elderly care postcode lottery: Over 65s in some areas are SIX TIMES more likely to get full funding than in others

Thanks to Angela Gifford of Able Community Care for this item

In a survey carried out by www.moneywise.co.uk the following information is published in respect of fully funded care for people over the age of 65 on a regional and national basis.



The East of England is more likely to fully fund over 65 aged care, 68% with the North East of England fully funding only 11% followed closely by The East Midlands fully funding only 17%.

A [very short] report by Edmund Greaves published in February 2019

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Technology and Modern Friendship

an article by Richard Hughes Gibson in The Hedgehog Review [via 3 Quarks Daily]



Complaints about the decline of friendship have become a staple of conversation in our digital times. But before we dismiss them as simply byproducts of generational turnover, consider the evidence that something more substantial is going on. The very language of friendship, for instance, is changing right before our eyes. Facebook has convinced us that “friend” can be a verb, often deployed in the imperative mood (“Friend me on…”). Apps have elevated the number of friends above the quality of friendship, displaying the tallies for onlookers to admire, one’s (envious) friends especially.

As more than one observer has noted, “Friends used to be counted on; now they are counted up.” The digital age has even spawned a new species of friend, its title still evolving: Online friend? Internet friend? E-friend? These are friends whose acquaintances we make, and whose company we almost exclusively keep, in digital domains, and advice columns warn of the challenges of meeting such friends “IRL”—that is, in real life.

Concerns about technology’s impact on friendship have been issuing from the academy as well.

More here.

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Corporate social responsibility perceptions and employee engagement: role of psychological meaningfulness, safety and availability

an article by Richa Chaudhary (Indian Institute of Technology Patna, Bihar, India) published in Corporate Governance Volume 19 Issue 4 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
The primary research question addressed through this paper is whether and how corporate social responsibility (CSR) can create business value for organizations as measured through employee attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, this study aims to examine the impact of CSR on employee engagement through its influence on psychological meaningfulness, safety and availability.

Design/methodology/approach
In total, 187 business professionals working for a wide variety of organizations in India constituted the study sample. Regression analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Findings
CSR positively predicted employee engagement. Psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability fully mediated the relationship of CSR with employee engagement.

Practical implications
The study establishes CSR as an important talent management tool in the hands of management to cultivate an engaged workforce. The results provide corporate managers with the necessary evidence to justify their investment in CSR initiatives.

Originality/value
The study by establishing CSR as a determinant of employee engagement addresses the need for micro-level CSR research, and, hence, bridges the macro-micro gap in the CSR literature. In addition, the application of micro-level theories helped to establish the psychological processes defining CSR and employee engagement relationship. In doing so, the study empirically tests Khan’s theory of engagement and the underlying mechanisms of engagement.

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The philosophical and ethical issues of climate change

via the UNESCO COURIER


Minimum Monument, an ephemeral public art project by Brazilian artist Néle Azevedo. Hundreds of tiny human ice figures thaw in high temperatures the moment they are installed. São Paulo, Brazil, 2016.

Humanity is in a state of debit. Year after year, it consumes more resources than nature can provide. This over-consumption has a direct effect on the climate. To better understand the issues at stake, the Belgian philosopher and biologist Bernard Feltz sheds light on the complex relationships between humans and nature and then focuses on the ethical aspects of climate change management.

A major challenge for our time, climate change concerns both our daily lives and the world geopolitical order. It is one of the dimensions of a global ecological crisis, a direct consequence of the complex interactions between humans and nature. These relationships can be divided into four main approaches.

Continue reading

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The Great Trade Collapse: An evaluation of competing stories

a column by Hakan Yilmazkuday for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

During the Global Crisis, international trade decreased more than overall economic activity, despite standard trade models predicting a one-to-one relationship. This ‘Great Trade Collapse’ has been investigated extensively in the literature, resulting in alternative competing explanations.

This column evaluates the contribution of each story using data from the US. The results show that retail inventories have contributed the most to the collapse and the corresponding recovery, followed by protectionist policies, intermediate-input trade, and trade finance. Productivity and demand shocks have played negligible roles.

Continue reading

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Through the magnifying glass: Empathy's differential role in preventing and promoting traditional and cyberbullying

an article by Daniel Graf, Takuya Yanagida and Christiane Spiel (University of Vienna, Austria) published in Computers in Human Behaviour Volume 96 (July 2019)

Highlights•

• Facets of empathy are differentially related to cyber- and traditional bullying.
• Cognitive empathy is more strongly related to traditional than cyberbullying.
• Perspective taking is positively related to cyber- and traditional bullying. 
• Online simulation is negatively related to cyber- and traditional bullying.
• Peripheral responsivity is related to cyber- but not to traditional bullying.

Abstract

Empathy is considered a common protective factor against traditional and cyberbullying.

Existing studies have only considered broad components of empathy, such as affective and cognitive empathy. However, there are still inconclusive results regarding the role of cognitive empathy in (cyber)bullying. Therefore, we examined relationships between not only components but also subcomponents of empathy and traditional and cyberbullying in order to investigate contextual differences (face-to-face, cyberspace) and unravel the blurry picture regarding cognitive empathy.

A total of 521 students (37.4% girls; Mage = 17.83 years; SD = 2.13) answered questionnaires during regular school hours on their traditional and cyberbullying involvement, empathy and covariates (age, gender, social media use, migration background and gaming attitudes).

The results for cognitive empathy revealed no differences in its protective function across contexts. However, the strength of the protective association was stronger for traditional than for cyberbullying.

In contrast, affective empathy was not related to either form of bullying.

Subcomponents of cognitive empathy exhibited positive and negative associations with (cyber)bullying.

Considering subcomponents of affective empathy revealed differential relationships with traditional and cyberbullying.

The functional and quantitative differences in empathy's relation to bullying across contexts and the results' potential contribution to the development of environment-specific interventions are discussed.

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‘Mystification is a brutal process

published in Eurozine (9 August 2019)

The streets of Bucharest, winter 1989

In an interview with Andrea Pipino, Romanian historian Lucian Boia talks about Romanian identity from its Roman-Dacian beginnings through Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian rule, modernization, fascism, communism, and the paradoxical present, in which this extremely nationalistic country has no openly nationalist political party.

Continue reading PDF available

I found this item extremely informative. Romania is a country that I knew little or nothing about, I know a bit more now should I ever need to!

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Declining teen employment: minimum wages, returns to schooling, and immigration

an article by David Neumark (UCI, NBER, and IZA, and CESifo, University of California-Irvine, USA)) and Cortnie Shupe (DIW, Free University Berlin, and Mercatus Center. DIW Berlin Mohrenstr, Germany) published in Labour Economics Volume 59 (August 2019)

Highlights

• We investigate three main explanations for the decline in teen employment in the United States, which began in 2000 and occurred mainly among those who had been employed while in school.
• The three main explanations we consider are increases in minimum wages, rising competition for low-skill jobs from immigrants, and increases in the returns to schooling.
• The predominant explanation for the decline in teen employment is increases in minimum wages.
• Increased immigration also played a role, while changes in returns to schooling have had a negligible influence.

Abstract

We explore the decline in teen employment in the United States since 2000, which was sharpest for 16–17 year-olds.

We consider three main explanatory factors: a rising minimum wage that could reduce employment opportunities for teens and potentially increase the value of investing in schooling; rising returns to schooling; and increasing competition from immigrants that, like the minimum wage, could reduce employment opportunities and possibly also raise the returns to human capital investment. We find that, among these factors, higher minimum wages are the predominant factor explaining changes in the schooling and workforce behavior of 16–17 year-olds since 2000.

The employment decline arises from a combination of a lower likelihood of being both employed and enrolled in school, and a higher likelihood of being enrolled in school only (not employed). These effects are consistent with the minimum wage leading students to increase their focus on schooling to meet a higher productivity standard for jobs with a higher minimum wage.

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Some limits and political implications of participation within health and social care for older adults

an article by Malcolm Carey (University of Chester, Warrington, UK) published in Ageing & Society Volume 39 Issue 8 (August 2019)

Abstract

This paper critically examines service user participation and involvement for older adults. It concentrates on research and community-led engagement for older people, and maintains that despite extensive support and expansion, participation offers a complex form of governance and ideological control, as well as a means by which local governments and some welfare professions seek to legitimise or extend their activities.

Some of the paradoxes of participation are discussed, including tensions that persist between rhetorical claims of empowerment, active citizenship and democratic engagement, on one hand, despite tendencies towards risk-aversion, welfare retrenchment and participant ambivalence, on the other.

The paper also highlights practical problems in relation to participative research and community involvement, and questions arguments that participation may challenge the authority of welfare professionals.

Critical theory is drawn upon to contextualise the role of participative narratives within wider welfare, including its role in moving debate away from ownership or redistribution while masking and validating policy-related goals which can counter many older people's needs.

Tension is also noted between participation projects represented as resources to support ageing identities as opposed to those representing technologies for social regulation and conformity.

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10 for Today starts with Pelagius (condemned by Pope Zosimus) and ends with another author, James Joyce

How Pelagius’s philosophy of free will shaped European culture
via the New Statesman by Michael Axworthy
Like the rebel theologian, we believe in the perfectibility of mankind, the ability of people to make the right choices, do good and make things better.

PRISMA ARCHIVO/ALAMY
Sixteen centuries ago, in AD 418, after a long and complicated series of debates over several years, Pope Zosimus finally issued a letter condemning as heretical the writings of Pelagius, the earliest known British writer.
Should we pay any attention to this anniversary, when so many others have occupied us this year? There were many heresies and theological disputes in the early centuries of the Christian Church – many of them incomprehensible even to practising believers today. Is Pelagius of more than antiquarian interest?
I have absolutely no idea. Never heard of him. Continue reading, as I did, and discover something. Or maybe you already knew about this man and his ideas about free will.

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Satellites watch over the graves of ancient steppe nomads
va ResearchBuzz Firehose: Kiona N. Smith for arsTECHNICA

This Google Earth image shows two large Scythian burial mounds, each over 20 meters (65.6 feet) wide.
Around 900 BCE, a group of nomads from Siberia called Scythians began spreading across the central Asian steppe, their mounted archers sweeping across huge swaths of territory. Today the steppe from the Black Sea to northern China is dotted with thousands of their tombs—deep grave pits, covered with mounds of stone or soil. Centuries of looters have ransacked the burial mounds for the ornate gold art and jewelry, as well as the finely crafted weapons and horse gear buried with the Scythian dead. Satellite imagery sheds light on the extent of the destruction, and it may eventually help protect the ancient graves from modern looters.
Continue reading

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The Gauls really did embalm the severed heads of enemies, research shows
New chemical analysis of iron age skulls confirms the grisly practice, referred to in ancient texts
via the Guardian by Nicola Davis

Experts found traces of conifer resins on ancient skulls at Le Cailar iron age site in France, supporting texts saying heads were embalmed. Photograph: Handout
They were fearsome warriors who cut off the heads of their enemies and displayed them for all to see, bringing them back from battle hanging around their horses’ necks. But now research has confirmed that the Gauls did not merely sever the heads of their foes, they appear to have embalmed them to boot.
Experts say they have found traces of conifer resins on the remains of skulls discovered at the iron age settlement of Le Cailar in the south of France – a discovery they say backs up ancient reports that the Celtic Gauls preserved their grisly trophies.
Continue reading

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Listen to Vincent Price's delightful 1969 lecture on witchcraft, magick, and demonology
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

In 1969, Capitol Records released this incredible double LP set (and double 8-track tape) from Vincent Price titled "Witchcraft-Magic: An Adventure in Demonology." Hear the whole thing above. The nearly two hours of spoken word includes sections on the history and culture of "witchcraft" and helpful guides such as "How To Invoke Spirits, Demons, Unseen Forces" and "How To Make A Pact With The Devil." I certainly wouldn't vouch for the factual accuracy or research rigor of the material, but hearing horror icon Price's silky narration about such topics as necromancy and the "Witches Sabbat" is a joy.
Continue reading (and watch the video)

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A Short Analysis of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Sonnet: To the River Otter’
Coleridge, the co-author with Wordsworth of Lyrical Ballads, was born in Ottery St Mary in Devon in 1772. The village is named for the river which passes through it – the river which Coleridge eulogises in this Romantic sonnet, ‘To the River Otter’, recalling his childhood when he skimmed stones along the river’s surface:
Continue reading

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Is neuroscience a bigger threat than artificial intelligence?
via Arts & Letters Daily: Alex Rosenberg in 3:AM Magazine
IBM’s Jeopardy winning computer Watson is a serious threat, not just to the livelihood of medical diagnosticians, but to other professionals who may find themselves going the way of welders. Besides its economic threat, the advance of AI seems to pose a cultural threat: if physical systems can do what we do without thought to give meaning to their achievements, the conscious human mind will be displaced from its unique role in the universe as a creative, responsible, rational agent.
Continue reading

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Hungarian Conquests of Europe
via About History

The Hungarian conquests in Europe were carried out in the 9th and 10th centuries – a transitional period in the history of Europe of the Early and High Middle Ages, periods when the territories of the former Carolingian Empire were threatened by the Magyars (Hungarians) from the east, the Vikings from the north and the Arabs from the south.
Continue reading
A map would have been more useful than a work of art. My knowledge of this area of Europe is sketchy to say the least.

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This website preserves the sounds of obsolete devices
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

The gadgets of the past had gears, levers, clicky buttons, motors, and other noise-making components. Most of today's electronics have very few moving parts. The sounds they make are edited-in aural skeuomorphs. A website called Conserve the Sound has recordings of the sounds made by old phones, rubber stamps, pinball machines, cameras, typewriters, fans, video game consoles, and other products from 1910 onwards. They have an Instagram account, too.
An office doesn't sound like an office without the dot matrix printer thundering away in the background!

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Magic mushrooms evolved to scramble insect brains, send them on wild, scary trips
How psilocybin evolved has more to do with sending insects on terrifying trips than it does making Phish sound good.
via the Big Think blog by Matt Davis

• Fungi species that produce psilocybin—the main hallucinogenic ingredient in "magic" mushrooms—aren't closely related to one another.
• Researchers have discovered that the way these fungi independently gained the ability to produce psilocybin is because of horizontal gene transfer.
• Based on how uncommon horizontal gene transfer is in mushroom-producing fungi and the types of fungi that produce psilocybin, it seems likely that the hallucinogenic chemical is meant to scramble the brains of insects competing with fungi for food.

Continue reading

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A Summary and Analysis of James Joyce’s ‘The Sisters’
via Interesting Literature
On one of Joyce’s finest short stories
‘The Sisters’ is the opening story in James Joyce’s 1914 collection, Dubliners. Unlike the other stories in the collection, it is told in the first person, by a young man recalling his friendship, as a boy, with a Catholic priest. As this very brief summary of the story would suggest, there is something odd in the story being given the title ‘The Sisters’, since the two sisters are actually not the central focus of the story. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
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10 for Today starts with Quentin Blake and ends with Emily Dickinson extolling a stone

Made famous by Roald Dahl, but hugely successful in his own right: the art of Quentin Blake
via the New Statesman by Mishelle Thurai

GETTY
The gavel hit the soundboard with one swift movement marking the end of lot 388 in The Valuable Books and Manuscripts Sale on 11 July 2018 at Christie’s auction house. A watercolour, Charlie, Willie Wonka, and Grandpa Joe, had been sold for £50,000, more than three times its estimate (£10,000-15,000).
It was the highest ever price for a work by Sir Quentin Blake, whose career as an illustrator has spanned four decades. At 85 years old, he still illustrates with the same recognisable style that makes his work globally famous.
Continue reading

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What's eating this 400-year-old painting? A whole ecosystem of microbes
via ResearchBuzz Firehose: Kiona N. Smith for ArsTechnica
Microbes are everywhere, even between layers of paint on classic works of art


Enlarge / The middle image shows the painting as it now appears, with close-ups of four centuries of damage and wear on the right. The asterisks mark the locations of Caselli and her colleagues' samples.
A new study describes the complex ecosystems of bacteria and fungi that live and feast on a 17th-century painting—and how other species of bacteria may one day help art conservators fight back.
If you could zoom in for a microscopic look at an oil painting on canvas, you would see many thin, overlapping layers of pigments—powdered bits of insects, plants, or minerals—held together with oils or glue made from animal collagens. Many of those pigments and binding materials are surprisingly edible to bacteria and fungi. Each patch of color and each layer of paint and varnish in an oil painting offers a different microbial habitat. So when you look at a painting, you’re not just looking at a work of art; you’re looking at a whole ecosystem.
Continue reading

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Enlightenment without end
If we no longer seek virtue and salvation, we should blame the triumvirate of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Adam Smith.
via The New Statesman by John Gray

According to David Wootton, we are living in a world created by an intellectual revolution initiated by three thinkers in the 16th to 18th centuries. “My title is, Power, Pleasure and Profit, in that order, because power was conceptualised first, in the 16th century, by Niccolò Machiavelli; in the 17th century Hobbes radically revised the concepts of pleasure and happiness; and the way in which profit works in the economy was first adequately theorised in the 18th century by Adam Smith.” Before these thinkers, life had been based on the idea of a summum bonum – an all-encompassing goal of human life. Christianity identified it with salvation, Greco-Roman philosophy with a condition in which happiness and virtue were one and the same. For both, human life was complete when the supreme good was achieved.
Continue reading

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Watch this once-lost 'Empire Strikes Back' doc-film from 1980
via Boing Boing by Rusty Blazenhoff

The Making of "The Empire Strikes Back", the rare 1980 French TV movie documentary about the second film in the Star Wars trilogy, was considered lost until recently. Since clips surfaced a few years ago, it's been considered the "Holy Grail" for Star Wars fans. Directed by late director Michel Parbot, the hour-long film has now been found and posted on YouTube. Watch it while you can.
58 minutes of pure delight for fans!

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A Short Analysis of Christina Rossetti’s ‘From Sunset to Star Rise’
via Interesting Literature
‘From Sunset to Star Rise’ is not one of the best-known poems by Christina Rossetti (1830-94), but it’s a real gem of a poem.
Continue reading

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How Did Life Emerge?
via Arts & Letters Daily: Adam Gaffney in The New Republic

NASA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A new book argues that life may be spread more widely through the universe than we think.
How did life begin? Two common answers come to mind. One is that, at some point, a deity decided to suspend the laws of physics and will a slew of slimy creatures into being. A second is that a one-in-a-trillion collision of just the right atoms billions of years ago happened to produce a molecular blob with the unprecedented capacity to reproduce itself.
Continue reading

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The Norman Dynasty and its History
via About History

The dynasty was founded by the Norwegian Viking Rollo, who received from the French king in 911 the territory of Normandy, which later became the duchy. As a result of the conquest of England by the duke William in 1066, the Kingdom of England passed under the authority of the Norman dynasty. The last representative of the male dynasty, Henry I, died in 1135 , he was succeeded by his nephew Stephen of Blois, also sometimes attributed to the Norman dynasty. After the death of King Stephen in 1154, the Plantagenet dynasty established itself on the thrones of England and Normandy.
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Dutch Golden Age wasn’t all that Dutch
By the late 18th century, up to 70% of the soldiers manning the ships of the Dutch East India Company came from outside the Netherlands
via the Big Think blog by Frank Jacobs
The Dutch still call it their Golden Age: in the 17th century, they built a trading empire that spanned the globe and propelled them to the pinnacle of power and influence in Europe. World cities as far apart as New York, Cape Town and Jakarta are all built on Dutch foundations.
But the Dutch Golden Age wasn’t all that Dutch. As these maps show, the crews manning the ships of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, came from all over Europe, and indeed from all over the world.
Continue reading

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Traditional Danish houses thatched with tons of seaweed
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

The island village of Läsö off the Danish mainland has preserved houses built hundreds of years ago, when owners would thatch the roof with tons of seaweed.
Continue reading (and watch a short video)

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A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘How happy is the little Stone’
via Interesting Literature
‘How happy is the little Stone’ is a delightful and delighted lyric about the simple features of the natural world, written by the prolific poet Emily Dickinson (1830-86). This poem is more upbeat than some of Dickinson’s more famous poems, which take on themes such as death and depression, so we thought it worth sharing here.
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10 for Today starts with floppy-eared dogs and it goes downhill from there to arrive with a thump at scientific progress

Unraveling the mystery behind dogs' floppy ears
via the Big Think blog by Matt Davis

• Nearly all domestic animals share several key traits in addition to friendliness to humans, traits such as floppy ears, a spotted coat, a shorter snout, and so on.
• Researchers have been puzzled as to why these traits keep showing up in disparate species, even when they aren't being bred for those qualities. This is known as "domestication syndrome."
• Now, researchers are pointing to a group of a cells called neural crest cells as the key to understanding domestication syndrome.

Continue reading

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Six Female Poets Whose Poetry Has Been Forgotten
via Interesting Literature
In this special guest blog post, Ana Sampson discusses six female poets whose poetry has been forgotten (even if they are remembered for something else!)
In 2017, I decided that I wanted to read an anthology of poems by women spanning many centuries and diverse points of view. There had been nothing of this nature published for at least the last two decades. I began to research my own, in the process discovering a rich seam of wonderful work I had never read before, though some of the names were already familiar. Here are six women who wrote fantastic poetry – though it is not what they are remembered for today.
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The great disillusionist
via Arts & Letters Daily: Tim Parks in AEON
In an age when so many people are at a loss to give life meaning and direction, Giacomo Leopardi is essential reading
Imagine you spend your childhood almost entirely in a library, your father’s library. There are thousands upon thousands of volumes, most of them old, many in foreign languages. Your native language is Italian, but by age 10 you are reading in Latin, Greek, German and French. English and Hebrew are next on the list.
Why are you doing this? Your father is ambitious for his firstborn son. He wants you to be a priest. At 12, you receive the tonsure, meaning your hair is cut like a monk’s to dedicate you to God. You are dressed in a cassock. More than a priest, or even a bishop, your father wants you to be a champion of Christianity, a theologian; you will use your learning to refute false doctrines, liberalism, atheism.
Your progress is astonishing. At 14, your tutors tell you they have nothing more to teach you. Left to your own devices, you limber up with translations from the classics, philolo­gical commentaries, philosophical dissertations, tragedies, epigrams, History of Astronomy and a Life of Plotinus, until, at age 17, you embark on your first major work: an Essay on the Popular Errors of the Ancients. ‘The world is full of errors,’ you write in the opening line, ‘and man’s first task must be to know the truth.’ Your father is delighted. But the truth, as time slips by among the ‘sweat-stained pages’ in the book-lined rooms, is that the more you write about gods and ghosts and mythical monsters, the more attractive these stories begin to seem, especially when compared with the Christian rationality that was supposed to sweep them away.
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Gorgeous, illustrated Japanese fireworks catalogs from the early 1900s
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

The Yokohama Board of Education has posted scans of six fantastic catalogs from Hirayama Fireworks and Yokoi Fireworks, dating from the early 1900s. The illustrated catalogs are superb, with minimal words: just beautiful colored drawings depicting the burst-pattern from each rocket.
Continue reading/looking [but don’t bother with the link Cory provides unless you read Japanese]

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The language of victory: 8 ancient phrases used by Emperor Justinian
via the OUP blog by Madeline Woda

“Hocgracili” by Alatius. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Between the fall of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century and the collapse of the east in the seventh, the remarkable era of the Emperor Justinian (527 – 568) dominated the Mediterranean region. Famous for his conquests in Italy and North Africa and for the creation of stunning monuments such as the Hagia Sophia, his reign was also marked by global religious conflict within the Christian world.
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The hunt for the nearly undetectable neutrino is taking place deep underground
Quantum particles are mysterious and difficult to track down, but neutrinos may be the most elusive quantum particles yet. The facilities designed to observe neutrinos are feats of engineering, and what they hope to uncover is profound.
via the Big Think blog by Matt Davis
Across the globe, miles beneath mountains, under polar ice caps, and below the ocean are massive facilities filled with sensitive and obscure instruments. They are manned by scientists working to snatch signs of nearly undetectable particles that could, all at once, be used as a tool for understanding supernovae, the impossibly dense interiors of stars, and potentially provide insight into the origin of the universe. These facilities detect neutrinos, at once the most ubiquitous particle we know of and the most difficult to detect.
Continue rerading

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A Summary and Analysis of Aesop’s ‘The Fox and the Grapes’ Fable
via Interesting LIterature
Aesop’s fable of the fox and the grapes is among the most famous of all of Aesop’s fables. What does this little tale mean? And what common everyday phrase did it inspire?
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Butchered rhino points to hominin activity in The Philippines over 700,000 years ago
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

Archaeologists have determined from a butchered rhinoceros that the Philippine island of Luzon was inhabited by hominins hundreds of thousands of years before anatomically modern humans arrived.
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History and Formation of The Holy Alliance
via About History by Alcibiades

The Holy Alliance is a conservative union of Russia, Prussia and Austria, created to maintain the international order established at the Vienna Congress (1815). To the declaration of mutual aid of all Christian princes, signed in October 1815, subsequently all monarchs of continental Europe, except England, the Pope and the Turkish sultan gradually joined. Not being in the exact sense of the word a formalized agreement of the powers that would impose certain obligations on them, the Sacred Union nevertheless entered the history of European diplomacy as “a cohesive organization with sharply outlined clerical-monarchist ideology, created on the basis of suppression of revolutionary sentiments”.
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The dilemma of 'progress' in science
via the OUP blog by Subrata Dasgupta

 ‘Colossus’ from The National Archives. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Most practicing scientists scarcely harbor any doubts that science makes progress. For, what they see is that despite the many false alleys into which science has strayed across the centuries, despite the waxing and waning of theories and beliefs, the history of science, at least since the ‘early modern period’ (the 16th and 17th centuries) is one of steady accumulation of scientific knowledge. For most scientists this growth of knowledge is progress. Indeed, to deny either the possibility or actuality of progress in science is to deny its raison d’être.
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Measuring Welfare Beyond GDP

an article by Andrew Aitken (National Institute of Economic and Social Research; Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE)) published in National Institute Economic Review Volume 249 Issue 1 (August 2019)

Abstract

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is often treated as shorthand for national economic well-being, even though it was never intended to be; it is a measure of (some) of the marketable output of the economy.

This paper reviews several developments in measuring welfare beyond GDP that were recently presented at the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) annual conference in May 2019.

The papers discussed fall into three broad areas.

First, a significant amount of work has focused on incorporating information about the distribution of income, consumption and wealth in the national accounts.

Second, the effects of digitisation and the growth of the internet highlight the potential value in measuring time use as a measure of welfare.

Third, the digital revolution has spawned many new, often ‘free’ goods, the welfare consequences of which are difficult to measure. Other areas, such as government services, are also difficult to measure.

Measuring economic welfare properly matters because it affects the decisions made by government and society. GDP does a reasonable job of measuring the marketable output of the economy (which remains important for some policies), but it should be downgraded; more attention should be given to measures that reflect both objective and subjective measures of well-being, and measures that better reflect the heterogeneity of peoples' experiences.

JEL classification: I31, D31, E01

Full text (PDF 14pp)

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The Impact of Mindfulness on Empathy, Active Listening, and Perceived Provisions of Emotional Support

an article by Susanne M. Jones (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, USA), Graham D. Bodie (The Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College, Baton Rouge, USA)  and Sam D. Hughes (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA) published in Communication Research Volume 46 Issue 6 (August 2019)

Abstract

Mindfulness has emerged as an important factor that assists people in regulating difficult emotions, but it is not yet known whether mindfulness plays a role in supportive communication.

The current study examines whether mindfulness facets (describing, observing, nonjudging, aware acting, nonreacting) positively influence self-reported abilities to

1. discern more and less person-centered (PC) supportive messages and
2. facilitate reappraisals via two core cognitive factors, namely, empathy and active listening.

College students with little or no meditation experience (N = 183) completed an online survey. Mediation analyses showed that empathy and active listening partially mediated the relationship between two mindfulness facets (describing, observing) and the two perceptual outcome measures (PC message discriminations, facilitating reappraisals) by accounting for 33% and 62% of the variance.

Additional structural equation modeling suggested that mindful observing and describing positively predicted empathy and active listening.

Both mindful describing and nonjudging also positively predicted facilitating reappraisals.

Interestingly, nonjudging negatively predicted empathy and active listening.

The results point to mindfulness as an important factor that influences cognitive-affective processes in supportive communication.

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Emerging Roles of Complement in Psychiatric Disorders

an article by Mélanie Druart and Corentin Le Magueresse (INSERM UMR-S 1270, Paris; Sorbonne Université, Paris; Institut du Fer à Moulin, Paris) published by Frontiers in Psychiatry: This article is part of the Research Topic “The Role of Immune Components in Psychiatric Disorders” View all 9 Articles

Abstract

The complement system consists of more than 30 proteins that have long been known to participate to the immune defence against pathogens and to the removal of damaged cells. Their role, however, extends beyond immunity and clearance of altered “self” components in the periphery.

In particular, complement proteins can be induced by all cell types in the brain. Recent discoveries highlight the role of complement in normal and pathological brain development. Specifically, the complement system mediates synaptic pruning, a developmental process whereby supernumerary synapses are eliminated in the immature brain.

The complement system has been implicated in pathological synapse elimination in schizophrenia, West Nile virus infection, and lupus, all of which are associated with psychiatric manifestations.

Complement also contributes to synapse loss in neurodegenerative conditions.

This review provides a brief overview of the well-studied role of complement molecules in immunity. The contribution of complement to embryonic and adult neurogenesis, neuronal migration, and developmental synaptic elimination in the normal brain is reviewed. We discuss the role of complement in synapse loss in psychiatric and neurological diseases and evaluate the therapeutic potential of complement-targeting drugs for brain disorders.

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