Thoughts on the Symbolism and Origin of Apollo’s Fight Against the Pythian Snake

The following paper deals with the mythological story about Apollo’s fight against a she-snake at Pytho, where he eventually builds a sanctuary – the Delphic Oracle. First, it is attempted to decipher the terms Pytho, Delphi and Omphalos. A symbolism revolving around an underlying theme of birth is considered. Then, the stories about Apollo and about Kadmos, as well as a motif in Pherecydes’ theogony, and the Anatolian Illuyanka Myth are being presented as subjects of a comparative analysis. This leads to the proposal that all four narratives have a common origin in Western Anatolia or Pre-Greek Hellas.

Understanding digital disconnection beyond media studies

Digital disconnection or ‘digital detox’ has become a key reference point for media scholars interested in how media technology increasingly gains influence on our everyday lives. Digital disconnection from intrusive media is often intertwined with other types of human conduct, which is less highlighted. There is a potential for media scholars to engage with what seems to be a mainstreaming of digital disconnection from self-help literature via mobile applications to media activism and public debate. In this article, we therefore aim to examine digital disconnection beyond media studies by distilling five common positions: disconnection as health, concentration, existentiality, freedom and sustainability. An underlying theme in all five positions appears to be the notion of responsibilisation, although some of the positions attempt to portray disconnection as a way to ultimately resist such responsibilisation. The article thus aims to spur media scholars to treat digital disconnection as part of broader cultural trends.

Public health policy in developed countries

Public health policies might thus be thought of as the policies that guide these ‘organized efforts’ to protect and improve health. The scope of such policies depends a good deal, however, on what is considered to be entailed by ‘organized efforts’. and on how centrally ‘organized efforts’ are understood to be related to efforts that are more decentralized, more informal, less organized, perhaps even ‘spontaneous’. The relative importance and legitimacy of centralized versus decentralized uses of knowledge in protecting and enhancing health is a common underlying theme in discussion of public health policy. This chapter discusses public health policy, and differences in outcomes, across different developed countries.

AI for Planning Public Health Interventions

Several scenarios involving public health interventions have a unifying underlying theme, that deals with the challenge of optimizing the limited intervention resources available. My dissertation casts this as a Restless Multi-Armed Bandit (RMAB) planning problem, identifying and addressing several new, fundamental questions in RMABs.

Introduction to the English Legal System

Introduction to the English Legal System 2021–2022 has been fully updated to consider the latest developments in the English legal system. The underlying theme is change and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the underlying approach is holistic. Changes to the criminal system (Chapter 5), the administrative system (Chapter 6), the family justice system (Chapter 7), and the civil and commercial (Chapter 8) justice systems are all considered. Developments in the ways in which the legal profession is regulated are also discussed (Chapter 9). Ways of funding access to justice and controlling the cost of litigating are considered (Chapter 10), as are the purposes and sources of law (Chapters 2 and 3). Chapter 11 offers a final reflection on a system in flux.

Life as a (bio)political input: critical genealogies of Michael Foucault and Giorgio Agamben

The present work means to analyze the relation between politics and life throughout Michael Foucault’s and Agamben’s critical-conceptual articulations. That way, we try to explain the following question: to what extent and under which arguments is it possible to reflect upon the politics over the biological human life taking as reference Foucault’s and Agamben’s thesis and even finding a connection between both? We hypothesize that: (1) it is possible to acknowledge the discovery of politics over life back at the Greco-Roman world, linking the bio politics to the Western political structure; (2) while having its spectrum projected in the Age of Antiquity, bio-politics blossomed within the Modern history, since the appearance of medico-social categories and the realizations around the human life potentiality. To inspect the underlying theme of the question, our text is organized in three different moments: first, we go through Foucault’s perception of bio-politics and its connections to the human life; next, we observe how Agamben proposes his thesis and which arguments he makes use of to sustain his statements; and lastly, we present a liaison between both thesis, putting forward how they connected themselves within a research hypothesis.

Policy Note: Digital Feedback-based Interventions for Water Conservation

Progress in water conservation is dependent as much on human behavior as on the promise of new technologies. Digital feedback-based interventions present an opportunity to bring these two factors together, as increasingly sophisticated technologies can help change behaviors rather than simply solving problems caused by those behaviors. This paper explores the various options and opportunities for adopting feedback-based interventions — those that communicate information for the purpose of encouraging individuals to alter water consumption habits. Lessons proposed are applicable to any realm in which individual human behavior contributes to a collective environmental or social problem. Focusing on five determinants of success (design, delivery, content, integration, and commitment), this paper presents findings of related studies and fashions them into a suite of recommendations that serves as a template for practice and agenda for future research. The underlying theme — that technology is no absolute substitute for behavioral change but can be one catalyst for it — contributes to broader discussions about the relationship between human systems and the environment.

Discovering the City and its Environs Ramji Das and his Tareekh-o Aasar-e Dehli

In 1854, Ramji Das, a retired officer from the Collectorate of Delhi penned a small, wonderful work, at the behest of Colonel Hamilton, called Tareekh-o Aasar-e Dehli, introducing to us several typologies of structures focussed partially on the city and the rest in its environs, including villages. He used the structures to highlight three to four important issues. The names of the builders, the purpose of the structures, their present state and the colloquialisms, anecdotes and popular cultures associated with them. The underlying theme of all structures was that they were for the benefit of large numbers of people. The author of this book apprised the readers of the newly created administrative divisions in the geographical region of Delhi. Ramji Das’s work was contemporaneous with Saiyid Ahmad Khan’s second edited version of Asar-us Sanadid, yet it has a relevance, importance and uniqueness of its own. Only one manuscript copy has been located recently, that too after nearly 165 years and it is now a published text in Urdu.

Understanding Compassion in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 14:13–21)

The compassionate-love Jesus feels moves him to solve the problems of the suffering. Hence, everything Jesus thought, said, or did in his mission to salvage humankind was motivated by compassionate love. Jesus demonstrated that his mission-mandate should be done on the platform of genuine compassionate love. That is why, in the gospels, he was described as always being moved by compassion. Jesus demonstrated that his followers are to carry on the mission-mandate of the church in compassionate love. But in this era, the church has undergone a paradigm shift from this model of Jesus’ compassion. The problem of the church being less compassionate is hindering the contemporary church from achieving mission-desired goals. Consequently, this article studies the concept of compassion as an underlying theme in the gospel of Matthew and its implications for the mission-mandate of the church in Nigeria. Through the application of the redaction-criticism method of doing biblical exegesis, the study found that the church in Nigeria lacks the model of compassion which Jesus exemplified.

Resounding: Peter Hughes, Jeff Hilson and Tim Atkins

The listening of translation, an underlying theme in much of the book, is the subject of the final chapter, which describes the noisy reversionings of sonnets by contemporary UK poets Peter Hughes, Jeff Hilson and Tim Atkins, and their work of defamiliarising song so that it can resonate in new relationships. It explores their experimental approaches to translation via the contrasting repetitions and temporalities of recorded song. As the voices of the dead come over the airwaves of their poems, the logic of the cover version makes temporality audible through difference and variation. Rather than narrowing in on myths of Petrarchan obsession, these translations turn outward to the peripheral sociality of song and the new contexts in which it is heard.