The House of Spirits

With reference to one man’s remarkable struggle to rebuild his home in Havana following its partial collapse, this article contributes to the emerging anthropological literature on care by thematising the role of the state as carer-in-chief. Experiences such as that of Lázaro, the protagonist of the article, demonstrate the central paradox of care as a state project—one that receives its most extreme expression in the totalising project of revolutionary state socialism—namely, the contradiction between the particularistic, affective, and aesthetic character of care and the generalising and neutralising rational order of the state mechanisms charged with delivering it. Drawing on the ritual and cosmological template of Afro-Cuban espiritismo, Lázaro effectively solves this paradox by supplementing his relationship with state structures with an intricate, ever-evolving, and deeply personal relationship with spirits. The upshot is Lázaro’s remarkable sense of inner conviction in the efficacy of state bureaucracy, underpinned by the aesthetics of care that spiritsit practice provides.

Examining Humanity in Bernard Beckett’s Genesis

New Zealand author Bernard Beckett’s young adult novel Genesis (2006) blends classical philosophy and Gothic tropes in a dystopian novel about the nature and ends of humanity. It is a curious work, presented in the form of philosophical dialogue and set in a future world known as The Republic, in which robots have triumphed over humanity and formed a new society based on rational order. Yet sinister underpinnings to their society and their emotional origin-story, which forms the core of this novel, show both that their rational world order is built on lies, deception, and murder, and that the human soul is harder to be rid of than they imagine. The clash between robots and humans is depicted as a clash between reason and passion, and also as a clash between a classical calm (seen in the Republic’s emphasis on classical philosophy) and the Gothic emotions associated with the dark, but emotional, side of humanity. Genesis is a compelling reflection on the nature of the human soul, aimed at young readers. This paper will trace how that reflection plays out through Beckett’s use of classical and Gothic ideals in an unusually thought-provoking dystopian work for young readers.

Finding the fractional value of 2pi

Rational order integral and derivative of a myriad of functions—ln(x); e^(ax) and t^(ax)—are known. Nevertheless, the investigation focuses on rational order integrals and derivatives of sine and cosine as these functions follow a cyclic order and determiningwhether properties of sine and cosine extend to their fractional integrals and derivativescould expand current applications of sine and cosine, which are extensively in engineeringand economics. For example, Mehdi and Majid outline in, "Applications of FractionalCalculus" how fractional integrals and derivatives come handy while modeling ultrasonicwave propagation in human cancellous bones and bettering edge detection technology. Thus, this explorative study investigates the properties of fractional derivatives and fractional integrals of standard sine and cosine functions. THe study also looks at how to generalize the definition of the 2pi using fractional calculus.

Kenzo Tange

Kenzo Tange (Tange Kenzō, b. 1913–d. 2005) was arguably the most prominent Japanese architect in the 20th century. His long career had been tied to the changing trajectory of the nation, making him an important cultural figure to study in modern Japan. Inspired by Le Corbusier since his youth, Tange followed modernism throughout his career with strong faith in its rational order, technological power, and universalizing values, yet he always tried to incorporate them with a Japanese identity and aesthetics. The triumphs in two open design competitions sponsored by the wartime militarist government lifted him to the national stage at a young age but have remained controversial since. He emerged again as the leader during the country’s postwar resurrection and economic takeoff and designed a series of national projects, including the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the Tokyo City Hall, and the National Olympic Gymnasiums, and led the team in the planning and design for the 1970 World Expositions in Osaka. Japan’s continuing growth of economic power in the 1970s through 1990s sent him all over the world with large-scale designs in Macedonia, Italy, Singapore, Middle East, Africa, and the United States, among other nations. Tange was also an influential urbanist, an aspect that has in the early 21st century drawn greater interest of scholarship. His seminal work of city design was the 1960 Plan for Tokyo, which articulated a spectacular though incremental expansion of a linear megastructure cross the Tokyo Bay to carry a new city of five million to decentralize the overcrowded metropolis and basically influenced all his ensuing attempts of inventing inclusive urban frameworks for the transforming postindustrial cities. This endeavor was shared by the architects of Metabolism, who launched the avant-garde movement that Tange helped flourish in the 1960s. Tange’s collaborations with artists, critics, and photographers, as well as his constant engagement in global intellectual exchanges, also generated rich outcomes and served his aspiration for Japan’s cultural identity and international influence, manifest in his coauthored accounts on the Katsura Villa and Ise Shrine, respectively, as well as in Expo ’70. As an accomplished educator, Tange taught for most of his career at the University of Tokyo. His architectural laboratory there and the Department of Urban Engineering that he cofounded have trained generations of Japanese architectural and urban thinkers and practitioners. The author would like to thank Professor Yatsuka Hajime in Tokyo and Yihan Yin of University of Pennsylvania for their inputs to this article.

Mystery fiction in culture: evolution of genre and crisis of cultural paradigm of modernity

The subject of this research is the phenomenon of mystery fiction and its evolution in the context of development of sociocultural project of modernity. The latter is viewed as a complex system, which fundamental principles permeate the entire fabrics of European culture, generating such phenomenon as a mystery fiction plot. The analysis of its varieties deepens the understanding of specificity of modernity and mature of crises that has captured it. Hermeneutic analysis allows going beyond the frames of the narrow-disciplinary analysis of the corresponding texts, allowing to determine the inevident layers within the phenomenon of narration of mystery fiction. The initial methodological point is presented by the concept of V. P. Rudnev, who identified interrelation between the mystery fiction storylines and dominant gnoseological paradigm. The author determines the four levels of narration of mystery fiction: ontological, gnoseological, anthropological, and ethical-normative. The classical (analytical) mystery fiction describes reality commensurable to human reason (ontological level), investigation appears as strict analysis (gnoseological level), detective resembles a “private thinker” who is distant from the society and the crime itself (anthropological level), and a crime is interpreted as a deviation that disturbs harmony of the rational order (ethical-normative level). In this sense, a classical mystery fiction is a reflection of metanarrative of modernity, aimed at building a complete system, and excluding the Other. At the same time, the crisis of the basis of modernity is essentially reflected in metamorphoses of mystery fiction genre. In existential and pragmatic mystery fiction, reality is irrational, and boundaries between the norm and deviation are being diluted. Such situation may be describes as disappointment in metanarrative – in underlines the inability of modern culture to adequately fulfill its fundamental functions. The Other strike roots in the cultural space; however, the space itself exists in accordance with the principles of postmodern anarchy.

FORMING OF A RATIONAL SCHEME OF SERVICING ORDERS FOR CARGO DELIVERY BY THE FREIGHT FORWARDING COMPANY

The paper analyzes this day state of development and current trends in the forming of a rational scheme for servicing cargo delivery orders within the framework both individual enterprises and transport on the whole. It’s allowed to form the main purposes of the study this article. The scientific works about the cargo delivery improve-ment by the freight forwarding enterprise focus on the development of effective interaction between the process participants, but they don't consider possible changes in the execution of technological operations under the impact of relevant factors. It has been determined there is a need to choose a methodical approach to form a rational order servicing scheme to further reduce the cost of cargo delivery and accordingly to increase the profits of freight forwarding enterprise. Seven alternative schemes of servicing the order for the cargo delivery by the freight forwarding company have been proposed. They take into account the possible combinations of the relevant operations list execution that accompany the transport process organization and realization. The process of choosing a rational scheme for the cargo delivery is guided by the maximum profit and considers the established parameters, such as: the customer service scheme, the transportation distance, the volume of cargo. In order to obtain the most reliable data on the parameters of the transport process, the required number of observations has been determined; it amounted to 127 observations of the volume of shipment, and 142 ones of the delivery distanc-es. The developed plan of full-factorial experiment allows to adequately assessing the effect of initial parameters (a shipment volume and a delivery distance) on the efficiency criterion (an enterprise's profit). The model's reproducibility check was performed with use Cochran's criterion, that was amounted 0.9779; it means the experiment can will be reproduce. According to certain assumptions, values of initial data and duration of operations that were performed by the enterprise, it has been calculated the values of the elements of the estimation indicator – income and expenses for each scheme of service, as well as the efficiency criterion – the profit. On the basis of the regression analysis of the experiment's results, a regression model in linear form with a non-zero coefficient has been determined, in which each coefficient indicates the respective factor influence quantity on the resultant indicator – the profit. It is found this model is the most adequate because the value of the "R-square" is the largest and equal to 1. The results of the profit determination showed that the highest level of the indicator is achieved when servicing the order for cargo delivery of 21.45 tons for a distance of 1817 km according to the scheme service № 5; it is the least costly in terms of number of services, time of work execution, when the vehicles and handling machinery are used effectively enough. In this case the company makes a profit of 28951.86 UAH, which is many 26292.69 UAH than servicing the order the existing in the enterprise scheme № 2. Keywords: rational scheme, delivery, freight forwarding company, profit

Cicero the Barbarian

Late Into The Night, I Sit Alone in My Study, Listening. in This, I Am Not Unlike The Title Character of Italo Calvino's “A King Listens,” one of three stories that make up his Under a Jaguar Sun, first published as a collection in 1986. The aim of Calvino's king is the acoustic surveillance of his realm, every corner of which is connected to the throne room by a twisting network of resonant tubes. Day in, day out, he listens, learning much, but feeling very little.This royal listener would later capture the imagination of the philosopher Adriana Cavarero, who opens her book For More than One Voice with a close reading of the story. For Cavarero, Calvino's king is very much like philosophy in its traditional Western form, listening for bodiless, universal logos, the Greek word for “word” that ancient philosophy uses to designate the rational order of the cosmos. In the story, the king is brought to his knees, suddenly and unexpectedly, by the sound of a woman singing. For Cavarero, this single, singular voice embodies the particularity that philosophy traditionally excludes in the name of the universal.