Rejoice with Me

This chapter explores the expressions of joy that are surely the most conspicuous feature of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, making three complementary methodological moves: close reading of the language of joy in ancient letters between friends and kin; comparison with modern prisoners’ expressions of joy; and engagement with recent studies of collective emotions and their regulation. Emphasizing the role of Paul’s Philippian addressees in producing and sustaining his joy, it describes Paul’s letter as an epistolary vehicle for the cultivation of positive affect—the Philippians’ as well as Paul’s own.

The age, foraminifera, and palynology of the Upper Cretaceous Eagle Plain Group, northern Yukon

A re-evaluation of the age of the formations comprising the Eagle Plain Group of northern Yukon was necessitated by widely disparate age determinations in recent years from various authors. Maximum age estimates for the base of the group have varied from middle Albian to Cenomanian, and age estimates for the uppermost strata varied by an even greater range, from Cenomanian to late Maastrichtian. A re-examination of new and archival foraminiferal and palynological data indicates an age range of Cenomanian to late Maastrichtian for the Eagle Plain Group. The late Maastrichtian age is derived from palynology from the northeasternmost area of Eagle Plain. However, the stratigraphic relationship of these youngest beds within Eagle Plain Group remains uncertain. Marine strata of the Eagle Plain Group contain foraminiferal indices that correlate with long-established regional foraminiferal zones from the Mackenzie Delta area. The Cenomanian Zone of Trochammina superstes occurs in the Parkin and Boundary Creek formations of Eagle Plain and Mackenzie Delta, respectively. The Haplophragmoides bilobatus and overlying Glaphyrammina spirocompressa zones occur in the Burnthill Creek and Smoking Hills formations of Eagle Plain and Mackenzie Delta, respectively. Reworked microfossils are a conspicuous feature of strata within the Eagle Plain Group. The basal sandstone of the Parkin Formation, for example, contains an assemblage of foraminifera that is entirely reworked. Palynomorph assemblages through the Eagle Plain Group have been estimated at as much as 99% reworked in some strata.

The Christianization of the Pig

Religious identity enters the pig’s history later than we’d expect. Although today the dietary avoidance of pork is a conspicuous feature of Judaism and Islam, in antiquity and for a good stretch of the early Middle Ages it was not a prominent symbol of religious difference. But over time, pigs became increasingly “Christianized,” in the sense that Christians used them as metaphors for elucidating complex facets of their culture, as well as to antagonize non-Christians.

Neoliberal Oligarchy

Practical wisdom in political institutions is threatened by an ideology that is radically hostile to politics as a means to attain common goods. Neoliberalism promotes competition in all spheres of life in order to foster utility maximizing behavior. A major consequence of the resulting failure to balance goods has been the rise of inequality, which has damaged democracy by concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the rich, by reinforcing the power of corporations, which are incapable of good citizenship, and by increasing the corrupting influence of money in politics. Aristotle warned that oligarchies emerge when the rich hold power and govern only for themselves, and this tendency has been a conspicuous feature of politics under neoliberalism.

Nature and Modernity

A conspicuous feature of modernity has been the rejection of nature as an authoritative ground of intelligibility and value, a position once defended by nearly all Catholic philosophers. Since Fr. Ernan McMullin’s 1969 article, “Philosophies of Nature,” however, the philosophy of nature has been eclipsed by the philosophy of science in mainstream Catholic philosophy. After examining McMullin’s reasons for setting aside the philosophy of nature and Thomas Nagel’s recent re-affirmation of the possibility of a philosophical reflection upon nature prior to the claims of empirical science, this article responds to McMullin’s critique and defends the viability of an Aristotelian understanding of nature today.

State-Sponsored Sacrilege: “Godnapping” and Omission in Neo-Assyrian Inscriptions

Because of the symbolic and religious importance of cult statues in ancient Mesopotamia, these images were targeted on numerous occasions by invading forces as part of the conquest of a foreign polity. In the case of the Assyrians, triumphant kings would sometimes list cult statues from a newly-conquered city or group as spoils of war, alongside members of the royal family, their subjects, and their precious goods. Such acts of divine deportation are sometimes called “godnapping” in secondary literature. A conspicuous feature in godnapping reports is the paucity of divine names mentioned. Deported cult images are instead simply called “gods” of a foreign king, people, or city. Because godnapping has thus far been studied purely as a political tactic, the omission of names has been ascribed to the Assyrians’ disinterest in or ignorance of non-Assyrian divinities. This study proposes viewing godnapping not through a political lens but rather a religious one, arguing that the Assyrians would certainly have been aware of which cult statues they were deporting, and that they would have considered the non-Assyrian cult images gods in their own right. Focusing upon the religious and inscriptional traditions of the Assyrians, this paper seeks to demonstrate that omitting divine names in deportation accounts may have been purposeful and meant to prevent these gods from seeking retribution. Instead of using the traditional approach of examining the political ramifications for the conquered polity whose gods have been deported, this paper turns instead to the religious and psychological consequences for those who were deporting the gods and exposes the Assyrian perspective of godnapping as presented in their own inscriptions.

A new species of Thismia (Thismiaceae) from Brunei Darussalam, Borneo

A new species of Thismia (Thismiaceae) from Borneo is described. Thismia hexagona was discovered in 2013 in lowland mixed dipterocarp forest in Ulu Temburong, Brunei Darussalam. The species is circumscribed, illustrated and its position within the Malesian species of the genus is characterised by insertion into the existing determination key. Its most conspicuous feature is bright yellow, sharply hexagonal flower annulus.

Study of Active-Learning-Based Theme Crawling System

This paper aims to design the active-learning-based theme crawling system and to realize the capacity of active learning of theme crawling by the use of semantic functions of ontology. The most conspicuous feature of this crawling system is the introduction of iterative process of ontology-incremental active learning. With the above circulating iterative process, the system can capture large quantities of theme-related web pages and the relatedness of the obtained web pages and the capturing rate are obviously superior to the crawling system without the ontology.

Experimental evidence that sentinel behaviour is affected by risk

Sentinels are a conspicuous feature of some cooperative societies and are often assumed to provide benefits in terms of increased predator detection. Similar to other cooperative behaviours, variation in investment in sentinel behaviour should reflect variation in the benefits of such behaviour. However, evidence for this is inconclusive: to date experiments have manipulated the cost of sentinel behaviour, and considerations of changes in the benefits of sentinel activity on investment patterns are lacking. Here, we experimentally manipulated the benefits of sentinel behaviour in the cooperatively breeding pied babbler ( Turdoides bicolor ) to assess whether this had any impact on sentinel activity. We simulated the presence of an unseen predator using playbacks of heterospecific alarm calls, and the presence of an actual predator using a model snake. In both cases, the increase in perceived predation risk caused an increase in sentinel activity, demonstrating that investment in sentinel activity increases when the benefits are greater.

Trying Again and Again: Multiple Repetitions in Early Modern Reports of Experiments on Snake Bites

This essay deals with a conspicuous feature of early modern experimental reports: references to multiple repetitions. I examine an episode from the history of research on venomous snakes, the dispute between Francesco Redi and Moyse Charas about the cause of death from viper bites. I identify different kinds of repetitions that are described and specify the various different roles that are attributed to repetitions in experimental reports. I argue that repetition (the successive reproduction of one's own experimental trials) should be distinguished from replication (reproducing other investigators' experiments). At first, replications played hardly any role in the exchange, but references to repetitions were crucial to show that contingencies had been obviated, to support inductive generalizations, and to specify the exact cause of an experimental effect. Notably, it appears that the replication of effects by different experimental means was not part of the repository of methodological notions that Redi and Charas brought to bear on their experiments. Reruns and repetitions with variations (including complementary trials) bore the epistemic weight.