An Unexpected Ally

In the summer of 1660, a strange phenomenon followed Mount Vesuvius’s eruption: red or black crosses started appearing on people’s linen, clothes, and even limbs. Since the Neapolitan people feared that the crosses were a supernatural occurrence and a terrible omen, the political and ecclesiastical leaders promoted the publication of books providing reasonable and pious explanations of the phenomenon. Among the authors who intervened in the debate over the nature of the crosses were Carlo Calà (who was hoping to gain favor with both the Viceroy and the Pope) and Athanasius Kircher, one of the leading protagonists of early modern Catholic culture. This chapter explains how the common interest in the crosses and Kircher’s scientific curiosity for fossils and giants provided Carlo with the opportunity to approach Kircher and make him aware of the case of his ancestor Giovanni, with the hope that the illustrious Catholic intellectual might support it.

China's Annual Turnover of “Double Eleven Global Carnival” after COVID-19

The annual Double Eleven Global Carnival came to an end not long ago. Although the Double Eleven has just been founded for 11 years, it has become one of the most influential projects in the world with its amazing total sales and sales speed and its amazing influences. For 2020, compared with previous years, whether from the perspective of customer demand or the cash flow of the business itself, it seems to be unfavorable to the sales of Double Eleven. But unexpectedly, even though the economy of many enterprises in many countries has stagnated due to the pandemic, the volume of business this year has increased significantly. Moreover, the Double Eleven continued the style of previous years. It continued to expand overseas markets, and achieved win-win situation while cooperating with other countries. In fact, there are many factors behind such a seemingly strange phenomenon.

The Determinants of People’s Preference of Night Entertainment Outfits in Abuja, Nigeria

Night entertainment as a form of leisure and relaxation is not a strange phenomenon globally, it is also gaining prominence in Nigeria particularly in urban centre. Scholars have discussed the prospects of this brand of entertainment in terms of its economic and social rewards, but most of these efforts are foreign based. This study studied the situation in Abuja in Nigeria. The study was quantitative in approach and has questionnaire as its main tool of data collection. A total 100 respondents were involved in the study. The data collected were analyzed, interpreted and presented in simple percentage. Night entertainment was preferred because the period is unique, devoid of hustle and bustle commonly found in the day time (17%) and has power to enhance total wellbeing, opportunity to make business contacts (19%). Live Musical band (42%), wining and dining (34%), indoor game (14%) and comedy corner (10%) were the preferred activities. Challenges encountered in night entertainment include harassment by the law enforcement agents (36%), stigmatization on the part of the general populace (22%) and occasional disturbance due to unruly behaviour of some patrons (30%). Coping measures adopted to mitigate these challenges include moving in group with other patrons to prevent or minimise embarrassment (43%), possession of official identity card to prevent harassment from security agents (36%) and enlightenment of service of security agents to curtail unruly behaviour from patrons (21%).

Distribution of Variables in Lambda-Terms with Restrictions on De Bruijn Indices and De Bruijn Levels

We consider two special subclasses of lambda-terms that are restricted by a bound on the number of abstractions between a variable and its binding lambda, the so-called De-Bruijn index, or by a bound on the nesting levels of abstractions, i.e., the number of De Bruijn levels, respectively. We show that the total number of variables is asymptotically normally distributed for both subclasses of lambda-terms with mean and variance asymptotically equal to $Cn$ and $\tilde{C}n$, respectively, where the constants $C$ and $\tilde{C}$ depend on the bound that has been imposed. For the class of lambda-terms with bounded De Bruijn index we derive closed formulas for the constant. For the other class of lambda-terms that we consider, namely lambda-terms with a bounded number of De Bruijn levels, we show quantitative and distributional results on the number of variables, as well as abstractions and applications, in the different De Bruijn levels and thereby exhibit a so-called "unary profile" that attains a very interesting shape. Our results give a combinatorial explanation of an earlier discovered strange phenomenon exhibited by the counting sequence of this particular class of lambda-terms.

Characteristics of Arabic Alphabets: with Special Reference to the Role of the Letter [kha – [خ as Dustbin in the Arabic Language

This paper is shedding light on the significance and functions of some of the Arabic alphabets. An Arabic letter is found to play an effective role in expressing the speaker or the writer’s target meaning. Our concern here is with the letter [kha - خ], phonetically transcribed as /X/.The discussion in this essay will focus on one strange phenomenon; that this letter is playing a unique role in Arabic. It is found to be associated with almost all the ugly words and dirty jobs in the Arabic language. Its work is similar to the function of the dustbin, where all the house garbage is collected. From 285 root words begins with this letter, it is found that 85% of the words are carrying negative connotative or denotative meanings. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge – there is no similar letter found to play the same role, in any other language as this letter [ خ], does in Arabic. With this result the researchers can showhow rich and lively this language is. The Arabic language has great potentials to maintain survival, shoulder to shoulder, with other living languages of the world. It is also expected to play - with some efforts from its speakers and its linguists - an effective role in the recent human history.

Greenland

Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ was written twice, first in simple-seeing English and then in marmoreal Latin, the latter paving over the first, but beautifully, as with a Roman mosaic. The English poem, with its uncanny, solitary, misogynistic speaker, explores the strange phenomenon of consciousness, but more fundamentally of prosopopoeia, of a face spookily appearing before us in a text, and speaking. We cannot read ‘The Garden’ theologically and we cannot read it morally, either, although these discourses are awakened in it. Nor can we read ‘The Garden’ even from the point of view of common sense, because to do so would destroy the adventure of the spirit that it offers: an encounter with the aesthetic as a new category of experience. In ‘The Garden,’ art becomes compensation for the loss of eternally existing things above the sphere of the moon. The poem is a metaphysical event.

A strange phenomenon for the singular values of commutators with rank one matrices

The singular values of XY 􀀀 Y X are the objects under investigation. Here, X andY are square matrices with complex entries, and one of them has rank one. Hence, there are at most two non-trivial numbers among the commutator's singular values, and the pairs of interest can be depicted in the plane. The emphasis will lie on the unexpectedly intriguing case in which both matrices are of rank one { because the result then is astonishingly complex, and the problem gives rise to interpretations unveiling geometry acting in the background.