The Artist as Antichrist

The chapter provides a close reading of “Answer to a Reproof,” and Cunard’s reputation as a poet who rejected Western culture as she strove to define herself in relation to it as an outlaw. The chapter suggests Cunard uses the figure of Thamar, in the role of Antichrist, “as mistress of sexual excess, embodying female agency in the extreme,” as muse. Marcus also gives an analysis of Cunard’s representation in film and other media as a femme fatale and Ezra Pound as an early influence and male mentor, she would grow suspicious of and go on to reject.

Why I became a respiratory physician with an occupational interest

In Why I became a respiratory physician with an occupational interest David Fishwick briefly explores the early influence of his lighthouse-keeper grandfather, work under Tony Pickering, and combined interest in respiratory and occupational medicine.

A call to action for healthcare organizations to harness social media to counter the anti-vaccination movement. (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED Vaccines have greatly reduced, if not eliminated many devastating diseases. But the number of proponents of the anti-vaccination movement has been growing as ‘anti-vaxxers’ use social media to disseminate misinformation leading to more people choosing not to vaccinate their children or receive vaccines themselves. This has resulted in a lowering of herd immunity and outbreaks around the world. Healthcare organizations need to harness social media to spread accurate information and counter misinformation. Healthcare organizations are reputable sources that can address misinformation, educate the public, accurately explain science and research, and counter misinformation. But they need to be easily accessible and readily involved in online vaccination discussions. Social media serves the anti-vaccination movement by providing several channels to reach audiences; and facilitates the dissemination of a variety of content through both different platforms and different features within a given site. It is crucial for healthcare organizations to use social media in order to (1) have early influence on users, (2) increase direct engagement with users, and (3) counter anti-vaxx claims. How healthcare organizations can harness social media is explained in terms of (1) the content that is posted and where it is posted, (2) passive monitoring of social media.

Logic and the Problem of Necessity

Auguste Comte was an early influence on John Stuart Mill, and Comte’s doctrine of the three phases through which sciences pass (the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive) explain what Mill was attempting to accomplish in his magnum opus, the System of Logic: namely, to move the science of logic to its terminal and ‘positive’ stage. Both Mill’s startling account of deduction and his unremarked solution to the Humean problem of induction were intended to eliminate the notions of necessity or force—in this case, the ‘logical must’—characteristic of a science’s metaphysical stage. Mill’s treatment had a further surprising payoff: his solution to the Problem of Necessity (what today we call the problem of determinism and freedom of the will).