Climate Collapse, Judgment Day, and the Temporal Sublime

It is commonplace today to hear climate change identified as the single most important challenge facing humanity. Consider the headlines from COP24, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Poland in December 2018. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres opened the proceedings by calling climate change “the most important issue we face” (PBS 2018). The Secretary-General’s remarks paraphrase the opening line of the U.N.’s climate change web page, which announces that “[c]limate Change is the defining issue of our time and we are at a defining moment” (United Nations n.d.). Such statements about the singular significance of climate change—the most important, the defining issue—are often followed by proclamations about what hangs in the balance, and this was the case at COP24. There, the celebrated British naturalist Sir David Attenborough warned that “collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizons,” amounting to, in his words, “disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years” (PBS 2018).

“Congratulations! You just won the title for ‘worse Tinder opening line’”

Often preferred to its face-to-face counterpart, online dating has transformed the way we perceive practices relevant to meeting people, mostly, because it offers “a wider pool of potential partners” (Heino, Ellison, and Gibbs 2010, 428). Despite its popularity, however, online dating is an under-researched area in general, crucially in linguistics. Looking at (mostly unsuccessful) naturally occurring initial interactions that have taken place on the popular Tinder application, the aim of this study is to gain some insights into the relationship among language aggression, impoliteness and communication failure in the context of flirting on Tinder. Results show that the most common way that users initiate interaction in this dataset is through sexually loaded language, which seems to be understood as a breach of the norms of appropriateness for first-time contact. Although Tinder has no manual to prescribe what should or should not be said in interaction, it transpires from the data that avoiding overstepping in terms of sexual matters (i.e. refraining from using sexually loaded language and/or innuendos) functions as an unwritten law which sparks impoliteness when not followed. Resulting impoliteness manifests itself mostly through the strategies of sarcasm and ignoring/snubbing the other, used to counteract (perceived) inappropriateness. Tracing this escalation of non-cooperative practices, from inappropriateness to impoliteness, also provides the opportunity to examine the emergence of playfulness and creativity as language behaviours interwoven with aggression. Therefore, online dating seems to lend itself well to the study of impoliteness and violation of norms of appropriate behaviour, providing opportunities for an expansion of contexts for linguistic analysis.

Brain Functional Architecture and Human Understanding

The opening line in Aristotle’s Metaphysics asserts that “humans desire to understand”, establishing understanding as the defining characteristic of the human mind and human species. What is understanding and what role does it play in cognition, what advantages does it confer, what brain mechanisms are involved? The Webster’s Dictionary defines understanding as “apprehending general relations in a multitude of particulars.” A proposal discussed in this chapter defines understanding as a form of active inference in self-adaptive systems seeking to expand their inference domains while minimizing metabolic costs incurred in the expansions. Under the same proposal, understanding is viewed as an advanced adaptive mechanism involving self-directed construction of mental models establishing relations between domain entities. Understanding complements learning and serves to overcome the inertia of learned behavior when conditions are unfamiliar or deviate from those experienced in the past. While learning is common across all animals, understanding is unique to the human species. This chapter will unpack these notions, focusing on different facets of understanding. The proposal formulates hypotheses regarding the underlying neuronal mechanisms, attempting to assess their plausibility and reconcile them with the recent ideas and findings concerning brain functional architecture.

Dichotomy and Violent Student Protests

“How dare you!” was the opening line 16-year-old Greta Thunberg used in her address to world leaders at the United Nation Global Summit on Climate Change. This young woman demanded global political and business leaders to listen to her plea, as she firmly believes global systems are in crisis and politicians and business persons alike are not playing their part to resolve our people, planet, and profit crisis. Student protests in response to leadership in higher education institutions have become a generic form of expressing discontent. In a quantitative investigation, this study assessed student perceptions regarding higher education leadership in relation to three core leadership capabilities: a strategic approach, communication and collaboration, and institutional drivers and results. Data collection from students in their final year was done using a combination of simple and stratified sampling. SPSS version 25 was used for data analysis. Findings reiterated a current dichotomy and urge the need for social cohesion between student and university leadership.

(ADHVC) VIRGINEVSQVE HELICON: A SUBTEXTUAL RAPE IN OVID'S CATALOGUE OF MOUNTAINS (MET. 2.219)

In his lengthy survey of the cosmic devastation wrought by Phaethon's disastrous chariot ride, Ovid includes two catalogues detailing the scorching of the world's mountains (Met. 2.217–26) and rivers (2.241–59). Ovid enlivens these lists through his usual play with sound patterns and revels in the opportunity to adapt so many Greek names to Latin prosody; for instance the opening line of the catalogue of mountains (ardet Athos Taurusque Cilix et Tmolus et Oete, 2.217) masterfully illustrates both of these features. The lists are also brimming with playful erudition. To take but a few examples: a dried-up Ida belies its standard epithet πολυπῖδαξ, ‘many-fountained’ (2.218); the sun's heat doubles the flames of volcanic Etna (2.220); burning Xanthus is destined to burn again (2.245; cf. Hom. Il. 21.330–82); and the famous gold-bearing sands of the Tagus are melting (2.251). These features not only ‘relieve monotony’; they warrant the catalogues’ inclusion in the category of Ovid's most entertaining.

Introduction

‘Who does not know,’ writes Gadadhar Singh, the author of Chīn Me Terah Mās (Thirteen Months in China), in the opening line of the concluding section entitled ‘Chin aur Hind[ustan]’, ‘that in the Asian continent, both China and India are very big and fertile countries and, as civilizations, the most superior’...

“Canadian, Please”: The Intimate Space of YouTube Racism

“Yeah I know that you wanna be Canadian, please.” This is the opening line of the 2009 “Canada Day” YouTube music video by Julia Bentley and Andrew Gunadie that went viral days after it was posted. The video is a kitsch anthem celebrating the benefits of Canadian identity, but there is a deeper message in it, and, indeed, in the troubling responses that it initiated, that makes it a ground-breaking text in Canadian cultural discourse about national identity and anti-racism. The YouTube site invited responses from viewers, and soon became flooded with racist slurs aimed at Gunadie’s Asian descent and his questionable right to claim to “be” Canadian. In short, the very public space of YouTube became a disturbing site of intimate violence. The backlash against the video was so extreme and unsettling that it led to a CBC news investigation, in which Gunadie described the racism the video inspired and his equally “inspired” YouTube fight against the racists. Fed up with being subjected to online violence, Gunadie retaliated by creating a number of ingenious videos. His responses did not resolve intimate and uncomfortable moments into invisibility. On the contrary, the discomfort of online racism prompted from him a self-consciously “uncomfortable” affective response. These cultural texts stand as a powerful testament to the mediating force of online exchanges as a forum in which debates about national and transnational identities are being waged.

Jindou: A Musical Form Found in Southern Song Lyric Songs

By introducing a newly-discovered manuscript copy of the lyric song anthology of the poet-musician Jiang Kui (1155–1221), this article aims to elucidate a hitherto unnoticed musical form of the genre: the jindou form. A comparison between the manuscript and all the early modern editions reveals discrepancies in the stanzaic divisions of four of Jiang’s seventeen songs for which he provided notation. Through musical analysis it is argued that the opening line of the second stanza in all the early modern editions may have been intentionally placed at the end of the first in the newly-discovered manuscript in order to remind the singer of the jindou form, in which the cadential notes of the first stanza immediately repeat at the beginning of the second. Therefore, these “unusual” stanzaic divisions are not mistakes, but indications of conventional performance practice in the Southern Song dynasty as dictated by musical factors. S’appuyant sur une copie manuscrite récemment découverte de l’anthologie de poèmes chantés du poète et musicien Jiang Kui (1155–1221), cet article s’attache à élucider une forme musicale propre à ce genre et à laquelle on n’a jamais prêté attention : la forme jindou. La comparaison entre ce manuscrit et l’ensemble des éditions de la fin de la période impériale révèle des différences dans la division strophique de quatre poèmes de Jiang sur les dix-sept pour lesquels la notation musicale est fournie. L’analyse musicale permet d’établir que le premier vers de la seconde strophe dans toutes les éditions de la fin de l’empire a été délibérément placé à la fin de la première strophe dans le nouveau manuscrit, ce afin de rappeler au chanteur la forme jindou, dans laquelle les notes cadentielles de la première strophe sont immédiatement répétées au début de la seconde. Cette division inhabituelle entre strophes n’est donc pas le résultat d’une erreur: elle signale ce qui était le mode d’exécution conventionnel, basé sur des facteurs purement musicaux, à l’époque des Song du Sud.

The Story of My Work: How I Became Disabled

<div class="WordSection1"><p>Perhaps the best opening line in disability studies comes from Georgina Kleege: &ldquo;Writing this book made me blind.&rdquo; Following this honorable tradition, I begin my explication of disability studies through my own experience with a similar starting point: &ldquo;Feminism made me disabled.&rdquo; Honoring as well the tradition of making theory through narrative, I also follow Helen Keller, who like Kleege situates her knowledge in the local. From these exemplary works of feminist disability studies, I develop an explication of how I grew disability studies and how it grew me. Throughout, I consider the categories of <em>disabled </em>and <em>nondisabled </em>and the ways in which they have developed in disability studies literature broadly. I conclude by asserting the importance of both access and identity and community for disabled people.&nbsp;</p></div> <p class="Body1"><strong>Keywords:</strong> feminist disability studies, disability identity, misfitting, history of disability studies</p>

Process Study of Atomic Layer Deposition Al2O3 in Industry Application for Solar Cells

The rear surface of multi-silicon has been passivated by Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) Al2O3and Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) SiNx. The results of the effective lifetime of the silicon before and after firing show that the thickness of Al2O3thin films has a significant effect on the passivation quality. The effective lifetime of the silicon can reach up to 40.64μs and show a better passvation quality when the thickness of Al2O3film is 18nm. Moreover, the impact of spacing of the laser opening-line contact on open-circuit voltage and fill-factor has been furthermore investigated. The cells have a better performance when the spacing of the opening-line is 1.2mm. The result of the local topography of the opening-line contact tested by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) shows that the existing of the void in the interface between Al and Si is the main reason for the bad performance of the cells.