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Bidirectional trans‐synaptic signaling is essential for the formation, maturation, and plasticity of synaptic connections. Synaptic cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) are prime drivers in shaping the identities of trans‐synaptic signaling pathways. A series of recent studies provide evidence that diverse presynaptic cell adhesion proteins dictate the regulation of specific synaptic properties in postsynaptic neurons. Focusing on mammalian synaptic CAMs, this article outlines several exemplary cases supporting this notion and highlights how these trans‐synaptic signaling pathways collectively contribute to the specificity and diversity (...) of neural circuit architecture. (shrink)

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The microstructures of Ru-excess SrRuO 3 films, which were grown epitaxially on SrTiO 3 substrates by ion-beam sputtering, were studied by transmission electron microscopy. The excess Ru can be accommodated by forming extended defects on the {100} planes, faulted dislocation loops, by making RuO 2 double layers. However, the most stable crystalline phase of the excess Ru in SrRuO 3 film was metallic Ru with a hexagonal structure. The orientation relationship between the Ru precipitates, the SrTiO 3 substrate, and the (...) SrRuO 3 film can be described as follows: Ru // STO // SRO and [100] Ru //[110] STO //[110] SRO where the subscripts STO and SRO indicate SrTiO 3 and SrRuO 3 respectively. Owing to the difference between the crystal symmetries of Ru and SrTiO 3 , the precipitates showed different in-plane alignments along two perpendicular directions on the substrate and accordingly different anisotropic growth morphologies. The precipitates degrade the film surface by making deep trenches and act as sources for defect generation. (shrink)

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Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems were developed so that people can control computers or machines through their brain activity without moving their limbs. The P300 speller is one of the BCI applications used most commonly, as is very simple and reliable and can achieve satisfactory performance. However, like other BCIs, the P300 speller still has room for improvements in terms of its practical use, for example, selecting the best compromise between spelling accuracy and information transfer rate (ITR; speed) so that the (...) P300 speller can maintain high accuracy while increasing spelling speed. Therefore, seeking correlates of, and predicting, the P300 speller’s performance is necessary to understand and improve the technique. In this work, we investigated the correlations between rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task features and the P300 speller’s performance. Fifty-five subjects participated in the RSVP and conventional matrix P300 speller tasks and RSVP behavioral and electroencephalography (EEG) features were compared in the P300’s speller performance. We found that several of the RSVP’s event-related potential (ERP) and behavioral features were correlated with the P300 speller’s offline binary classification accuracy. Using these features, we propose a simple multi-feature performance predictor ( r = 0.53, p = 0.0001) that outperforms any single feature performance predictor, including that of the conventional RSVP T1% predictor ( r = 0.28, p = 0.06). This result demonstrates that selective multi-features can predict BCI performance better than a single feature alone. (shrink)

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This paper examines the influence of CEO career horizon problems on corporate social responsibility. We assume that as CEOs are getting older, they tend to disengage in CSR due to their shorter career horizons. We further argue that high levels of industry-level discretion and blockholder ownership amplify the negative effects of CEO age on CSR. Using a panel sample of US-based firms over 2004–2009, we do not find the main effect of CEO age on CSR, but find support for the (...) moderating effects, such that CEO age is negatively associated with CSR when there are high levels of ILD and blockholder ownership. Therefore, results suggest that CEO career horizon problems matter for CSR when CEOs have sufficient discretion over the firm’s strategic decisions and outside blockholders put more pressure on CEOs to engage in financial earning management. (shrink)

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Using an analogy in science and everyday life is a double-edged sword because they are accompanied by alternative ideas, in addition to scientific concepts. Schools and public education explain global warming by making a common analogy between this phenomenon and greenhouse effects. Unfortunately, this analogy sometimes produces various incorrect explanatory mental models. To construct a correct understanding of global warming, it is necessary: first, to investigate the attributes of analogical reasoning; second, to understand these features by restructuring the greenhouse analogy; (...) and third, to explore the problems and benefits of the greenhouse analogy. The characteristics of relations, rather than objects, must be mapped according to the principle of systematicity, but the public tends to preserve the attributes of the base domain, which is mapped relatively easily. In conclusion, certain facets of the prevailing greenhouse analogy cause a distorted public view of climate change. We must use the greenhouse analogy and yet simultaneously emphasize the relations and attributes highlighted and hidden in the analogy during evaluation. (shrink)

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Previous studies have been split over how to view family owners’ CSR engagement, arguing that they either engage in or disengage from CSR based on different motives (i.e., preserving socio-emotional wealth vs. seeking rent expropriation). Focusing on family owners in business groups, this study integrates these divergent views. We hypothesize that family owners would pursue both motives simultaneously by optimizing the level of CSR of each affiliated firm depending on their ownership level. Furthermore, we argue that this tendency is moderated (...) by group-level contexts. Using a sample of Korean business groups, we found that family ownership is negatively associated with affiliated firms’ CSR. Also, this negative relationship is more pronounced when firms belong to business groups with more charitable corporate foundations and when business networks are greater in their scope and scale. This study contributes to the literature by offering a more complete understanding of how family owners make CSR decisions in business group contexts. (shrink)

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This study examines how the corporate philanthropy decisions of group-affiliated firms in Korea are made. Based on the attention-based view, we argue that when corporate decision makers at group-affiliated firms focus their attention more on internal markets than external stakeholders because of the firm’s high reliance on intragroup transactions, the firm will decrease its level of corporate philanthropy. We further argue that the relationship will be stronger when governance mechanisms focus on the instrumental value of corporate philanthropy. Using a panel (...) sample of group-affiliated firms in Korea from 2011 to 2015, we find that as intragroup sales increase, the level of corporate philanthropy decreases, and such a negative relationship is stronger when outside director representation and foreign investor ownership are high. Our study suggests that internal dependence and corporate governance mechanisms jointly affect the level of corporate philanthropy at firms in a business group. Thus, this study contributes to the literature on corporate philanthropy, business group, and corporate governance. (shrink)

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While the effect of top executives' social networks on their compensations has received substantial scholarly attention, little effort has been made to integrate segmented views to offer more complete understanding of this effect. In this paper, we propose an integrative two-stage model by taking both economic and socio-political views into account. We theorise that some characteristics of top executive's outside social ties are positively related to firm performance, and those relationships are conditioned by external and internal strategic contexts, such as (...) environmental uncertainty, strategic relevance, and tie strength. We also theorise that firm performance leads to executives' compensations, but this linkage is moderated by the socio-political dynamics among executives (within-group dynamics) as well as between executives and a board of directors (between-group dynamics) inside the firm. Based on our integrative framework, this paper provides the comprehensive understanding of how executives' compensations are determined and highlights the importance of executive's social ties and their implications. (shrink)

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The extant literature has examined the effects of ownership structures on corporate social responsibility, yet it has overlooked the non-linear and interactive effects among major shareholder groups. In this study, we examine the non-linear effects of insider and institutional ownerships on CSR. We also examine whether it is necessary to have both incentive alignment and monitoring mechanisms or it is sufficient to have either mechanism to promote CSR. Using a sample of the U.S. Fortune 1000 firms, our results suggest that (...) insider and institutional ownerships have non-linear effects on CSR. We also find support for the complementary mechanisms view, in that the highest CSR rating is observed when both ownership levels are high. Therefore, firms need to maintain strong governance structures to realize synergistic effects in promoting CSR. Our findings provide a more in-depth understanding of the relationships between ownership structures and corporate social outcomes. (shrink)

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Relatively little research has examined the effects of ownership on the firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR). In addition, most of it has been conducted in the Western context such as the U.S. and Europe. Using a sample of 118 large Korean firms, we hypothesize that different types of shareholders will have distinct motivations toward the firm’s CSR engagement. We break down ownership into different groups of shareholders: institutional, managerial, and foreign ownerships. Results indicate a significant, positive relationship between CSR ratings (...) and ownership by institutions and foreign investors. In contrast, shareholding by top managers is negatively associated with firm’s CSR rating while outside director ownership is not significant. We conclude that different owners have differential impacts on the firm’s CSR engagement. (shrink)

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Previous studies in Western contexts have examined the relationships between various board characteristics and CSR, yet the relationships need to be re-examined in non-Western contexts given differential theoretical premises across contexts. We specifically propose that the effects of board characteristics on CSR in Korea should be patterned distinctively from Western-based existing literature, focusing on three important board characteristics, such as a board’s independence, social ties, and diversity. Using a panel dataset from large Korean firms, we found that various relationships between (...) board characteristics and CSR were non-linear, whereas most of the previous research on Western contexts found that the same relationships were linear. Specifically, curvilinear relationships were found between CSR and board independence, CEO-outside director social ties, and educational diversity. Our findings suggest that there is no universal feature of CSR-supportive board characteristics due to the unique characteristics of various institutional contexts. (shrink)

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The instrumental benefits of firm’s CSR activities are contingent upon the stakeholders’ awareness and favorable attribution. While social media creates an important momentum for firms to cultivate favorable awareness by establishing a powerful framework of stakeholder relationships, the opportunities are not distributed evenly for all firms. In this paper, we investigate the impact of CSR credentials on the effectiveness of social media as a stakeholder-relationship management platform. The analysis of Fortune 500 companies in the Twitter sphere reveals that a higher (...) CSR rating is a strong indicator of an earlier adoption, a faster establishment of online presence, a higher responsiveness to the firm’s identity, and a stronger virality of the messages. Incidentally, the higher CSIR rating is also found to be associated with the stronger virality. Our findings also suggest that socially responsible firms can harvest proactive stakeholders’ participation without investing more resources. As the first study that conceptualizes the social media as a proponent of CSR, this paper contends that “being socially responsible” makes more practical sense for firms with the rise of social media. (shrink)

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Corporate social responsibility functions as a positive signal to stakeholders that a firm is a responsible corporate citizen. However, CSR is increasingly becoming an ambiguous signal of organizational goodwill because many companies engage in CSR purely out of self-interest, rather than genuine altruism. In this paper, we integrate attribution theory with signaling theory to explore how stakeholders react when they receive additional signals that contradict the company’s intended positive CSR signal. Specifically, we argue that morally questionable CEO ethics in the (...) media negatively influences stakeholders’ CSR motive attributions, which in turn results in increased cynicism that ultimately impacts CSR support intentions and behaviors. We find support for our hypotheses in a quasi-experimental study of stakeholder media exposure to different types of CEOs. Our findings demonstrate that stakeholders consider CEO ethics an important signal of CSR motives, and will shun the CSR initiatives of morally questionable CEOs. (shrink)

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Previous studies on parenting adult children with ASD were scarce, and their intervention protocols mainly were derived from established work with children. Development of an applicable adult-oriented protocol and demonstration of its effectiveness is warranted. The present study outlined the development and evaluation of Core Autism Parenting Skills, which targets to enhance parenting self-efficacy intervention for adult children with ASD by addressing two intervention goals in parallel: acquisition of parenting skills and cultivating positive attributes. In CAPS, PSE is operationalised into (...) four parent roles: to observe, reinforce, empathise, and accompany, each with requisite attributes, skills, and prescribed training. Twenty-seven parents with adult children with ASD were recruited. They completed measures assessing their PSE, competence in the four parent roles, and emotional well-being at pre-training, post-training and 2-month follow-up. The intervention was well-received by the participants and reported significant improvements in PSE, parent role competence at post-training and 2-month follow-up. The applicability of PSE and parent role competence in constructing effective parenting intervention for adult children with ASD was supported. (shrink)

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EssentialChan Buddhism is the rare unearthing of an ancient and remarkable Chinese spiritual tradition. Master Guo Jun speaks through hard-won wisdom onChan's spiritual themes familiar to Western readers, such as mindfulness and relaxation in meditation, as well as profound, simply expressed teachings and insightful explorations of religious commitment. EssentialChan Buddhism filters formal spiritual practices through the lens of mundane and everyday life activities. The work captures the lyrical beauty and incantatory style of Guo Jun's (...) spoken English from the talks he gave at a fourteen-day retreat near Jakarta in 2010 and in subsequent conversations with his editor Kenneth Wapner. (shrink)

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Rgyal ba rdo rje 'chaṅ yab yam gyi rnam thar rin chen gter mdzod -- Saṅs rgyas thams cad kyi rnam 'phrul Rje-btsan Ti-lo-pa'i rnam mgur -- Bde gśegs phag mo gru pa'i rnam thar -- Bram zc chen pos mdzad pa'i ṅoh ha bskor gsum blo gsal mgal brgyan -- Bka' yoṅ dag pa'i tshad ma źes bya ba mkha'i 'gro ma'i man ṅag -- Bya btaṅ stag rtse sku skye'i rtogs brjod med snaṅ chu zla'i zlos gar -- (...) 'Gu-ru rin-po-che'i rnam thar bstod pa dbyid kyi sgra dbyaṅs. (shrink)

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This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN SPACE & PLACE thread: April Vannini, Those Between the Common * Laura Dean & Jesse McClelland, Ballard: A Portrait of Placemaking * Amara Hark Weber, Crossroad * Isaac Linder & Berit Soli-Holt, The Call of the Wild: Terro(i)r Modulations * Ashley D. Hairston, Momma taught us to keep a clean house * Sean Smith, The Garage (Take One) * * * * Preface: Variations of Archiving the Anarchive Through Editorial Witnessing by April Vannini “a diagram is a map, or rather several superimposed maps.” 1 What do we do with essays, art, artefacts, and practices that go against, resist, challenge and reject archival capture or documentation since they do not fit within the screen or manage to move beyond conventional scales? What do we do with an essay or artefact that is the event of the event becoming-event itself, or how do we move from volumetric space to two-dimensional space? How do editors, curators, participants, etc. become witness to an anarchive? And most importantly, what are the potential and unanticipated ways in which a volumetric submission can be diagrammed within a two- dimensional space? In short, how do we archive the anarchive? These are questions that have emerged and have been consciously and purposely activated by Sean Smith’s thinkpiece for this issue, The Garage (Take One) . Sean, as part of his contribution to the special issue of drift within the thread in between space and place , created an artefact that emerged out of an event held during May 2013, titled Cottage University: Topology and Immanence . The visual documentation of The Garage (Take One) is not an archive but an anarchive due to its multimodal form, non-representational diagramming, and its reactivation of non-representational folding which animates its non-representational or more-than -representational condition. In short, The Garage (Take One) stymies attempts to be translated into digital text, representationally. As a reader of Sean’s submission you will only have access to a portion of the original submitted contribution (see “Take One”). At this time, I remain the only witness of The Garage (Take One) in its entirety: I was present at the original event, Cottage University: Topology and Immanence , and I was the sole receiver of the original package because of my role as editor for the thread, in between space and place . However, I would like to stress that I was unaware of what Sean would submit as his contribution to the special issue. What is presented here is an emergent rippling of the event that was not predetermined or arranged in advance ... a drifting of sorts! As for now, the artefact sits here on my desk next to a pile of books—folded, creased and somewhat lost in its translation into digital form. Questions of transcribing, translating and converting volumetric space to two-dimensional space have been considered throughout this process. And more importantly this artefact and its processes raise the issue of not what has been saved and included but what has been left out in each conversion of the original into the academic publication. What follows this preface are various “cuts” or “takes” from The Garage: Take One . Each take or cut is merely an interpretive and representational rendering of the original volumetric submission. Although with that said I would like to propose they are more than just representations or interpretations: each take or cut works as rippling variations of the event itself . It is important to acknowledge that much has been lost in the creases and much still lingers which will never be archived within an academic journal. Hence, a discussion of how to archive the anarchive is so crucial to para-academic “scholarship”. I will sum up the process that has emerged from The Garage (Take One) with a final word from Brian Massumi, written in his foreword to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus : Each 'plateau' is an orchestration of crashing bricks extracted from a variety of disciplinary edifices. They carry traces of their former emplacement, which give them a spin defining the arc of their vector. The vectors are meant to converge at a volatile juncture, but one that is sustained, as an open equilibrium of moving parts each with its own trajectory. The word 'plateau' comes from an essay by Gregory Bateson on Balinese culture, in which he found a libidinal economy quite different from the West's orgasmic orientation. In Deleuze and Guattari, a plateau is reached when circumstances combine to bring an activity to a pitch of intensity that is not automatically dissipated in a climax. The heightening of energies is sustained long enough to leave a kind of afterimage of its dynamism that can be reactivated or injected into other activities, creating a fabric of intensive states between which any number of connecting routes could exist. 2 The Garage (Take One) Double Take 2:31pm/5:31pm Sean Smith You there? I just wanted to emphasize a couple of things about the process of the submission: 2:31pm/5:31pm April Warn-Vannini Yes, listening. 2:36pm/5:36pm Sean Smith 1.When you describe feeding forward from the CU (Cottage University) event, it is a WALKING ACTIVITY that reinvests/reactivates the intensive energies of the event. that is what my photos are in Take One......it connects the intensive state of CU to my "one-take" writing on construction paper experience. i'm not sure if i adequately conveyed that or not, or if you did, or how important that is. 2. In doing so, it ruptures open the "space" and "place" of material practice ...and how these may enter into the mediated production of academic journal work...and its flattened two-dimensional experience. 3. the abstract machines of CU (i.e.coming out of silence) are invested with a new diagramming practice (the photo walk) to produce a new text that is neither-nor: "spaced" as a content of that walk (garages), but "placed" as a technical question (coming out of silence to language). 4. the new text is precisely diagrammatic, non-representational, anarchival. ....multimodal. ok, that's all that comes to mind right now. appreciating your efforts. 5. oh, finally, i think you might need a better definition of "anarchive" here..... it was hard to pin them down in montreal on what this is, so you wouldn't be wrong, per se, but more require a working definition for the reader. obviously, as you say, without getting too academic/citations, etc. know what i am saying? 2:46pm/5:46pm April Warn-Vannini 1. Totally got it but I think I did because of our many past conversations about how to archive the event 2. Yes this is what I love about this. And I think you speak to this very carefully in your writing on the Garage. Now whether others pick up on this I don't know. This is why I wanted to see what it would look like if I flattened it (take 3). 5. I agree that a better definition is needed. This is where I've been stumbling because I have not found anything that clearly defines what is meant by anarchive. 2:47pm/5:47pm Sean Smith "with take one being the only remainder of the original submission left to reveal...." precisely because of its digitality!!! yeah, i would probably just append an edited version of what we are saying here, as if the editing process was still a ripple of the event. me "adding" new text later i think defeats the purpose, but if you were to take snippets of this dialogue as part of the anarachive/ 2:48pm/5:48pm April Warn-Vannini Totally! 2:49pm/5:49pm Sean Smith and just *use them*, i think that's fair game. that way i won't be crafting my words with intent. you can even use this profile pic. 2:50pm/5:50pm April Warn-Vannini Okay perfect. With that said, do you think I should just discuss your process further in the preface or include an introduction that would be in take one? 2:51pm/5:51pm Sean Smith could it be Take Two in its own right, like an atemporal ripple that coexists with the others and bumps them to Three, Four and Five? Or could it be called "Double Take" and leave the others as Two, Three, Four? 2:53pm/5:53pm April Warn-Vannini Perfect. I like double take 2:53pm/5:53pm Sean Smith and it's us hashing through this discussion 2:53pm/5:53pm April Warn-Vannini Double take will follow take one. i like this. The Garage (Take Two) Folded, taped (scotch and duct), folded recycled chart paper previous emergent thoughts: performed, inscribed and made anew Red jiffy, black jiffy, blue ink pen cursive writing/block writing diagramming amplification dilated » » » » directional arrows « « « « Moistened, torn, crinkled Ruptures Anarchive of thought events Deciphering language/writing Exchanged as a volumetrics of new spaces Performing tactics of “writing off the page” on the page Enclosed [OPEN THE DOORS, MOVE FROM SURFACE TO VOLUME…AND THE CONVERSATION JUST MIGHT BEGIN ANEW. *stamped* SEAN SMITH] Drifting Drifting Drifting The Garage (Take Three) 6 Sean Smith video from April Vannini on Vimeo . The Garage (Take Four) The Garage (Take Five). (shrink)

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continent. 1.2 (2011): 70-75. cartography of ghosts . . . And as a way to talk . . . of temporality the topography of imagination, this body whose dirty entry into the articulation of history as rapturous becoming & unbecoming, greeted with violence, i take permission to extend this grace —Akilah Oliver from “An Arriving Guard of Angels Thusly Coming To Greet” Our disappearance is already here. —Jacques Derrida, 117 I wrestled with death as a threshold, an aporia, a bandit, (...) a part of life. —Akilah Oliver Moraine in geological lingo is that which is left behind. Moraine- a euphemism for the de-stabilizing referent of the writer-ly body as a “troubled and troubling landscape marked by cultural and historical signifiers, the body as flesh memory [...] the body as transitory” (Oliver, Author Statement). Moraine— a geological metaphor of the poet as a holder of memory, as an accumulation of rocks and debris carried along the edge, terminal, dropped at the foot of language (in language). “Flesh Memory” according to Akilah Oliver is "that which my body recalls [...] everything has to do with the task of remembrance and its narrative reinvention [...] I was always translating an idea of the world as it presented itself at any given time. To write was a choice about how to be seen, how to enter the world as translator, actor, participant, in the dialogues that apparently made the real 'real'" (Levitsky). Flesh. Memory. The stuff some poems are made from. The stuff that gets abandoned, gleaned, and picked up by more flesh and memory. "My body, my life has always felt like a kaleidoscopic rip in the dominant fabric [...] has always been a dialogue with the impossible and the apparent” (Levitsky). The impossible-body or poet's body anticipates and performs (through language) an irretrievable death. IN APORIA I realized everything I must have been doing must have been Death. It was Christmas or Labor Day—a holiday—and every time you turned on the radio they said something like ‘four million’ or ‘going to die’.” — Andy Warhol I’m trying on egos, [a justification for the planet’s continuance]. Oh hello transgressor, you’ve come to collect utilitarian debts, humbling narrative space. Give me condition and wheatgrass, I his body disintegrating. I his body is ossification. Death my habit radius, yeah yeah. I his body can’t refuse this summons. I can’t get out this fucking room. Tell me something different about torture dear Trickster. Tell me about the lightness my mother told me to pick the one i love the best how it signals everything I ever wish to believe true just holy on my ship. I jump all over this house. this is it [what I thought is thought only, nothing more deceptive than]: I his body keeps thinking someone will come along, touch me. As like human or lima bean. I’m cradling you to my breast, you are looking out. A little wooden lion you & Peter carve on Bluff Street is quieting across your cheekbone. Not at all like the kind of terror found in sleep, on trembling grounds. It is yesterday now. I have not had a chance to dance in this century. Tonight I shall kill someone, a condition to remember Sunday morning. To think of lives as repetitions [rather than singular serial incarnations]. To understand your death is as exacerbating as trying to figure out why as schoolchildren in mid-nineteen-sixties Southern California we performed reflexive motions: cutting out lace snowflakes, reading Dick and Jane search for their missing mittens, imagining snow. Disintegrat ing . The -ing gerund catapults from the non-finite verb into past, present, future. The -ing as a tail pinned to death, a dog spinning to bite and never fully reaching itself, always shy of the end, circumreferential; a double copulative: deathing. Possessively AO calls it “habit radius” (a virtual fetish attribute) or an inescapable death presence that “confronts us with the paradox of an unattainable object [...] through it’s being unattainable” (Agamben, 27). A flirtation or dialogue with an unknowable thing and aporia utilized as investigative instrument to engage (death) while (in Southern California) we “perform reflexive motions,” cut lace snowflakes, imagine snow, and pay rent like “yeah, yeah” what else is new. And this too, fiction. The book I wish to right. The restored fallen, heroic. Did you expect a different grace from the world? Or upon exit? I’m working on “tough.” They think I am already. All ready. Who is the dead person? Is "I'm sorry" real to a dead person? Browning grass. My hands on this table. A contentious century. A place to pay rent. Redemptive moments. Am I now the dead person? Dead person, dead person, will you partake in my persimmon feast? The body inside the body astounds, confesses sins of the funhouse. I too have admired the people of this planet. Their frilly, orderly intellects. The use they’ve made of cardamom, radiation as well. How they’ve pasteurized milk, loaned surnames to stars, captured tribes, diseases, streets, and ideas too. The living-body as archive: is it possible to experience the living-body as archive without a (kind of) death? Sifting the rubble, rummaging through hoarded debris, skin sheds, memory-napping, and re-awoken (in flesh and) on terrain. “An investigative poetics seeks to unravel staid communities of thought and grasp at what might always be just beyond reach; a poetics of inquiry that lies between language as meaning, and language as rapturous entry into the world of posited ideas and idealism”( Levitsky). Something snaps. Lights blow out prior to embarking upon an investigative poetics. It begins with a question (often a sexy aporia) that leads to openings. "Every politics of memory [...] implies an intervention of the state. It's a state that legislates and acts with regard to the nonfinite mass of materials to be stored, materials which must be collected, preserved” (Derrida & Stiegler, 62). It seems poetic investigation already contains the potentiality of an (invisible) archive if the writer is “always writing” especially when not. Here’s my stupid digital romantic inclination: the living-body (of a poet) is a self-sustaining archive of non-finite memories. But not even I really believe that. AO innovated and sculpted an investigative poetic praxis. In a conversation with poet Rachel Levitsky, poetic-voice is viewed not as a precious identifier, but as a means to think through/about form, concluding that form is linked to framing. While poetic-voice may have tendency to precede form, it also erupts as a result of framing techniques. “They are frames that hold the shape of thinking (which is also to say of imagining) [...].”7 This reminds me of my rabbit who symmetrically chewed the corners of his hutch, which makes me wonder if it’s an expression of the shape of some animal anxiety tick I won’t ever have access to. Beyond the form/frame, death is an unoriginal yet unique limit; death is a damn deathless thing. It functions as a source of poetic investigation; that thing always “just beyond reach.” And how is death not a fetish (in this case an obsessive reverence for something non-material)? “Insofar as it [death] is a presence, a fetish [...] it is in fact something concrete and tangible; but insofar as it is the presence of an absence, it is, at the same time, immaterial and intangible, because it alludes continuously beyond itself to something that can never really be possessed [...] The fetish is [...] a sign of an absence, it is not an unrepeatable unique object; on the contrary, it is something infinitely capable of substitution, without any successive incarnations ever succeeding in exhausting the nullity of which it is the symbol” (Agamben, 33). AO utilized absence (the absent body [catapulted by the death of a beloved]) as an apparatus to investigate. In the process of conversing with absence or that which is absent, the absent body is affectionately objectified, incessantly summonsed back to a place of recognition, of objects, a desire for the absent body to remain intact while exiting the structural limits of grammar and syntax by moving into chant forms “to say what cannot be said” (Levitsky). from AN ARRIVING GUARD OF ANGELS THUSLY COMING TO GREET dear oluchi- the light is blinking rapidly on the black boxy machine. your room seems bigger than before and i am still planning to read some of those robert jordan books of yours. yesterday at the used bookstore where i was browsing the mysteries to “stall reality” (they are really not mysteries at all, they just employ death as the plot mistress but are unable to grasp its mystery at all)—well the point is, things were calm down here for a while and the world was little. i want to be big like you. or i want you not vast, not dead, not gone, but human small and here. i am so selfish. that is what i really want. to see you again. to oil your scalp. to hear you walk in the door, say ma i’m home . give me a chance to say welcome home son. or when leaving, don’t forget your hat . what do you wear out there? i wish you could have taken your new shoes with you. i’m so proud of you. i’m sorry for the way you died. i miss you all the time. even before, i missed you. out there, one time, some different men said: “shake for me girl, i wanna be your backdoor man.” who dat you love. 5/18/03 A letter-poem in sixteen lines “dear oluchi-” is safe-housed in epistolary form. Poetic voice is rendered as internal thought meanderings, a not-so-much confession, private/(pillow?) talk in the desire to be heard/witnessed by the referent and reader with an intent to absolve. The diminutive “i” bears a relation to poet Fanny Howe’s “little g God” in that “One of the (many) things I like about little g God is that you can have a vodka tonic while you talk to little g God, sing along to Bowie’s “I’m Afraid Of Americans,” and hum Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” though maybe not all at the same time” (Oliver, 2009). Towards the middle of the poem AO is at a used bookstore and remarks on the funny employment of death as a ‘plot mistress’ that ‘they’ (the dubious employed mystery authors) are ‘unable to grasp’, thereby giving death a mouthpiece, a modeling job, something to do to pass the time. from THE VISIBLE UNSEEN When I first saw graffiti, I recognized in it an ugly aesthetic, a dialectics of violence, a distortion of limbs, a hieroglyph. It was only later when I read the names of the dead that I then saw the path of ghosts charted there; its narrative of loss for the visible unseen whose place in history has been fictionalized and rendered unseen under the totalizing glare of history. Inscriptions, traces, specters. Graffiti begs a public face just as ghosts require non-ghosts (humans) to sense them. The “visible unseen” is a game of hide-and-seek between public viewer and graffiti-inscriber, an ephemeral-violent aesthetic on an ephemeral-policed canvas. Graffiti-inscribers already submit to being forgotten, expect to be washed away; perhaps it’s a holy urban mandala created by gangster-type monks without Buddhism. [...] in its refusal to disappear it forces a discourse in the public imagination we are forced to see what we would rather not, to make sense of an encoded language that we cannot read on the level of meaning. it irritates, forces its agency on us, speaks outside and beyond semiotic reach. An epic font-size pervading the public’s imagination, illegible, I could just close my eyes, remain passive, drive past, abandon it beyond reach, push it further away beyond death walls. In Barcelona I watched a clean up crew wash walls with an awesome water hose but I was more intrigued by their bodies; not a distortion of limbs, not hieroglyph but also not entirely legible; the laboring body permanently erasing specters of the city, and of course they knew it was also an invitation for the ghosts to return. Graffiti is death’s little sister, is also an aporia. [...] Graffiti (fr GK -graph(os), something drawn or written, to diagram or chart) attempts to stage the impossible: to erase the essence of its own subjectivity. Graffiti is a cartography of ghosts, a mapping of elegiac rapture (the transporting of a person from one place to another, as in heaven) and rupture (the state of being broken open.) Dwelling is a fiction stasis. [...] The notion of the past as being something done with, a look-back event, inhibits the possibility of reading graffiti as rapture, as rupture. If graffiti posits history as always in the process of becoming undone. [...] Because what is the body, if not also a complex temple, an unstable site through which to negotiate subjects, materiality, economies, gods, and modes of representations? The site where we are all already belated. Graphein meaning “to write.” “Derrida says every archive makes a law, and the law of genre is its own rupture” (Bloch, 39). However, graffiti is an (non/anti)-archive of erasure due to (the politics of) washing out its subjectivity, which only adds onto (or is symptomatic of) its character. The inhibition of “reading graffiti as rapture, as rupture” is partly due to it being a “look-back” event in that it’s process involves scratching through layers to reveal previous specters underneath. Graffiti (as an ancient genre) has always been a thing of ‘becoming undone’, and therefore ‘belated and always in arrival’ (Levitsky). It’s a Dionysian activity done at night with it’s back turned toward us. "The specter [...] is of the visible, but of the invisible visible, it is the visibility of a body which is not present in flesh and blood [...] appearing for vision, to the brightness of day [...] something becomes almost visible which is visible only insofar as it is not visible in flesh and blood. It is a night visibility. As soon as there is a technology of the image, visibility brings night. It incarnates in a night body, it radiates in a night light" (Derrida & Stiegler, 115). (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:James's Faith-Ladder JAMES C. S. WERNHAM JAMES WROTE OFTEN of a "faith-ladder."' What he said about it has drawn some side-glances from critics, but not yet any sustained and careful look.' That is surprising, for what he says is puzzling enough to invite inquiry. It is also important enough to deserve it. His presentations of the ladder show significant variation, so it is useful to look at a generous (...) sample. In the interest of brevity the following six passages have been extracted from contexts which sometimes have an important bearing on them. The unquoted contexts will get attention as needed. 1. "The inner process is a succession of 'synthetic judgments'. What is so good, may be, ought to be, must be, shall be,--so far as I am concerned, I won't admit the opposite. ''s 2. "[W]e have a conception which being opposed by another is only probab /e. But we feel, it is so good that it isfit to be true, it ought to be true, it must be true etc. And then we say it shall be true for me, it/s true. ''4 3- "Its [faith's] natural logic is the Sorites: fit to be, ought to be, may be, must be, shall be, is etc.''5 4. "The following steps may be called the 'faith-ladder': ~. There is nothing absurd in a certain view of the world being true, nothing self-contradictory; ' To the best of my knowledge, the name "faith-ladder'"does not occur before 19o6. It occurs in "Faith and Reason" and in "Faith and the Right to Believe," both written in that year. But expositions of the thing predate the name. They are found as early as 1899, and in close connection with the will-to-believe doctrine. 9 Levinson's discussion is a partial exception. His treatment is more extended than most. See H. S. Levinson, $c/ence, Metaphysicsand theChan~e of Salvation (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978), 161--67; also his The Religious Investigations of Wdliam James (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 198 0, 231-34. s Letter to Baldwin, quoted in'R. B. Perry, The Thoughtand Characterof WilliamJames, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1935), 2: 243. 4 Letter to Marshall, Feb. 9, 1899, quoted in Perry, Thought and Character,2: 24~. 5 William James, A Pluralistic Universe (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard Universit~t Press, 1977), 199. [1o5] lO6 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28" 1 JANUARY I990 2. If might have been true under certain conditions; 3- It may be true even now; 4. It isfit to be true; 5- It ought to be true; 6. It must be true; 7- It s/m//be true, at any rate true for me. ''6 5. "Faith's form of argument is something like this: Considering a view of the world: 'It isfit to be true', she feels; 'it would be well if it were true; it might be true; it may be true; it ought to be true', she says; 'it must be true', she continues; 'it shall be true', she concludes, 'for me; that is, I will treat it as if it were true so far as my advocacy and actions are concerned'. ''7 6. "A conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. Is it true or not? you ask. It might be true somewhere, you say, for it is not self-contradictory. It may be true, you continue, even here and now. It is fit to be true, it would be well if it were true, it ought to be true, you presently feel. It must be true, something persuasive in you whispers next; and then--as a final result--it shall be held for true, you decide; it shall be as if true, for you. ''s 9. Between these statements there are clear similarities and clear differences too. Some of them deserve to be noted, some to be noted and explored. a. In these accounts of it the ladder varies in the number of its rungs. By James's own count in one place, it has as many as seven. In... (shrink)

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Monism is our name for a range of views according to which the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is intimate and necessary, or on which there are no categorical bases at all. In contrast, Dualist views hold that the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is distant and contingent. This paper is a defence of Monism against an influential conceivability argument in favour of Dualism. The argument suggests that the apparent possibility of causal behaviour coming apart from (...) categorical bases is best explained by Dualism. We argue that Monism can explain the apparent possibility as well, if we take metaphysically alien laws — namely, laws whose metaphysical nature is alien to the actual world — into account. (shrink)

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In the debates on the roles of cultures in the ethics of human rights, one of them concerns Confucianism and Ubuntu, two prominent cultures in East Asia and Southern Africa, respectively. Some scholars assert that both cultures have values that are sharply different from the West, and conclude that the West should learn from these cultures. The aim of this paper is to philosophically investigate the roles of cultures in the ethics of human rights. I first introduce the works of (...) Bell, Metz and others on community values such as relationships and harmony in Confucianism and Ubuntu. I then argue that even if their interpretations were correct, their works still would not justify the conclusion they want. I show that it is better to use consequential evaluation rather than cultural evaluation to justify human rights. An example of human rights to health and privacy is discussed. This paper thus offers some preliminary but important philosophical investigations and addresses practical issues of consequential evaluation related to human rights. Keywords : Confucianism, Ubuntu, Cultural Evaluation, Consequential Evaluation, Human Rights, Health, Privacy. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SBCS Participation in Interfaith Coalition Conference for Global Citizens and Visit to Sogang University ReportsLeo D. Lefebure and Kunihiko TerasawaOn August 21–22, 2023, Mark Unno, Carolyn Jones Medine, Kunihiko Terasawa, Grace Song, and Leo D. Lefebure participated in the historic first in-person meeting of the ICCGC in Seoul, organized by our Won Buddhist colleagues with support from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of the Republic of Korea (...) and the United Religions Initiative in collaboration with SBCS, Wonkwang University, and the Focolare Movement Korea. Leaders from NGSs affiliated with the United Nations, as well as Religions for Peace and Rissho Kosei-kai, also participated.Grace served as a most gracious host for the program. Before the official opening of the conference, Mark chaired a panel discussion on interfaith dialogue, and Leo chaired a session on work for peace. Leo served as co-chair of the conference and offered opening remarks welcoming former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who delivered the keynote speech on "Global Citizenship Now." Mark, Kuni, Carolyn, and Kathy Matsui participated in a panel discussion of global citizenship and the path to peace. Leo gave a talk on the role of religion in a fragmented world and participated in a panel discussion on the place of religion in education for global citizenship.After the ICCGC meeting had ended, Mark, Carolyn, Kuni, Grace, and Leo traveled to the headquarters of Won Buddhism in Iksan, where we met their Head Dharma Master Ven. Jeonsan and other leaders. Mark delivered cordial remarks on behalf of all of us in SBCS.The organizers hope to convene the next meeting of the ICCGC in Manhattan in late August 2024 in co-operation with the NGO leaders attached to the UN.Visit to Sogang University in SeoulIn August 2023, Kunihiko Terasawa and Leo D. Lefebure visited Sogang (Jesuit) University in Seoul. Bhikshu Do Sun of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, who is a doctoral student in Buddhist-Christian studies at Sogang University, graciously met Leo at the airport and accompanied him to the university, where they had dinner with Kuni and a Georgetown University graduate student, Mideum Hong, who is from Korea. Do Sun later accompanied Leo on a visit to the main Jogye Temple in Seoul and to the fine collection of Buddhist art at the National Museum of Korea. The following day, Kuni and Leo had an extended conversation with retired Archbishop Hyginus KIM Hee-joong and Sogang Professor Kim Chae Young. Archbishop Kim [End Page 237] discussed both his extensive interreligious experience with Buddhists and shamanic practitioners, and also his work for more peaceful relations between North and South Korea. The next day, Leo and Kuni met with the leaders of the Woori Theology Institute in Seoul, Balbina Lee and Paul Hwang, who discussed their interreligious efforts in pursuit of social justice and peace.On August 18 and 19, Kuni and Leo participated in a conference on How to Teach Religious Diversity at Christian Universities or Colleges, organized by Kim Chae Young. On the first day of the conference, Leo offered an overview of recent Buddhist-Christian relations in the United States, including activities of SBCS such as the 2021 Statement of Solidarity with Persons of Asian and Pacific Island Descent, and Kuni offered a presentation on interreligious dialogue figures in Japan. On the second day, Kuni spoke about Buddhist-Christian double belonging, and Leo spoke about methods in the comparative study of religion. There were participants from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints and also from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Won Buddhism, the Assemblies of God in Korea, and the Korean Council for University Education.On August 20, Kuni and Leo had an extended discussion with Seil Oh, SJ, the vice president of Sogang University for international relations. Seil Oh expressed the intense interest of Sogang University in developing international contacts, including with regard to developing Buddhist-Christian relations. SBCS members who are interested can contact Leo or Kuni for more information.kunihiko terasawa's reportA week before Leo D. Lefebure and I joined Won Buddhism's ICCGC, along with Mark Unno and Carolyn Medine... (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Attis at Large CATULLUS (Translated by Anna Jackson) And so Attis, seasick, heart sore, having left so terribly fast, with a pause, a leap, a landing, galliambically arrived in the shady regions, wood-clothed, in the goddessy depths of dark in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, having come so terribly far, and himself, still him, he tore off, with a flint, all his manly parts— so that she (...) (now she) when she saw she was all a a a a girl, even while still bleeding fresh blood, a new stain on that shagpile earth, in a flash, a leap, with no pause, she took up here a tambourine— tambourine of yours, your symbol, sign of Cybele’s syllables— with a clash, a strike, a ringing, her soft fingers on the stretched skin, she began to sing this whole song, in a tremble to, to the throng: All of us, not cis, but sisters—with a leap of nothing but faith let’s take off, let’s rush, let’s stampede, like a herd on the, the, the loose— you are lost, you’re all in exile, with a past you have left behind you have only me, your one hope, here to lead, if you’ll follow me, after all that we have been through, salty seas of masculinity we will sail no more, no, not we—let us now be all spiritual, that’s to say, let’s sing, and sing loud, with a clash of the tambourine and with tossing heads and wild leaps, we must throw ourselves into this, as if in to fire, with no fear—a religious sort of a pounce! And in need of no persuading, the stampede, if it was that, starts— all of them, not cis, but sisters, taking off with a lightness of heart like a sisterhood, a herd loosed, with a clash of the tambourine. And so Attis, no true woman, was swept along with the rest, in the lead, but led, herself led, the clash of the tambourine a resounding beat in her head, fa-la-LA, la la la la LA, like a heifer still unbroken, a disorder of flailing flight. And the sisterhood, a herd loose, kept the beat of the tambourine. And the sisters, having found peace, could all sleep when the ringing ceased, having come so far, so hard won, they were restless no more but at peace, after all that they had been through, having come so terribly far. arion 27.2 fall 2019 Yes but when the sun with eyes bright looked out at the whole airy sky, and the whole expanse of hard earth, and the whole wilderness of sea, yes and when the sunlight drove forth all the shadows of the long night, and when sleep itself was sent off, or took flight, as Attis awoke, well then sleep, not Attis, found rest; it was sleep that would rest at last. Not so Attis: sleep departed, and his madness departed too; not so Attis, who reviewed all he had done, and all in his heart, and could see the lie it had been, and see all that the lie had cost, and with surging mind and heart sore made return to shallowing shore. And there Attis, seasick, heart sore, with sore eyes salty as the sea now addressed her country, grief struck, with this song, or more of a speech: Oh my country, nation, homeland, oh my country where I was born! Like a truant out of bounds—bounds like a palace, a place of peace— in a rage, a grief, a wild mood, did I take myself off to here, here to live in lairs of wild beasts, here to live in shivering snow, to inhabit my own madness, my insanity the worst lair of them all. Oh where can I now understand my country to be? My sore eyes both long to be fixed in a gaze shiverless on you, for a pause, a space, to come clear, and to clear what’s left of my mind. Do I have to leave, to have left, my own home, and live in the wild? Do I have to... (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Three Odes HORACE (Translated by Charles Martin) To Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa No fears, Agrippa: your exploits will be Saluted by a bard who will eclipse Homer in singing your command of ships, Your winning use of cavalry. It won’t be us. Gifts far surpassing mine Are to be found in Varius, who sings Achilles’ spleen, Ulysses’ wanderings At sea, or Pelops’ nasty line. Of loftiness, we have a (...) deficit, And so our Muse forbids us to pursue Praising your glory and our Caesar’s too, Lest, overwrought, we lessen it. Varius is fit to sing of Mars arrayed In armor, of Meriones in dust, Or of those gods that Diomedes thrust His lance through, with Athena’s aid. Ours, the wine bar and the local fray, The bachelorettes whose nails leave livid traces We later notice on their boyfriends’ faces And lightly sing of, in our way. (Odes i.6) arion 28.3 winter 2021 74 threee odes To Leuconoe Stop seeking what the gods prohibit us from apprehending, Leuconoe—the date on which it all comes to an ending. Better to toss the Dream Book and accept whatever comes, Whether Jove sends more winters, or the last we’ll know now drums The Tuscan Sea into submission on opposing cliffs. Be wise—decant this evening’s wine, curtail your hopeful ifs: Live in the moment: as we speak, now is becoming then; And insofar as possible, ignore tomorrow’s, “When….” (Odes i.11) To Iccius Iccius, are you hot for Arabian Loot now, devising tactics to subjugate The previously undefeated Kings of Sabaea? Forging new fetters For the ferocious Medes while previsioning Your oriental sex-slave, unguarded by The boyfriend whom you’ve slain in battle? What perfumed page from some royal palace, Whose father taught him Sinoform archery, Will be your Ganymede? Oh, deny falling Rivers the right to scale steep mountains, Tell us the Tiber can’t flow back upstream, When you—who were once so very promising, Rush to exchange your Works of Panaetius AND those Platonic scrolls you scoured bookstalls in search of—for Spanish armor! (Odes i.29)... (shrink)

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Don't tell terrible stories—everyone here has enough of their own. Everyone here has a whole bloody sack of terrible stories, and at the bottom of the sack is a hammer the narrator uses to pound you on the skull the instant you dare not believe your ears. Or to pound you when you do believe. Not long ago I saw a tomboyish girl on Khreshchatyk Street demand money of an elderly woman, threatening to bite her and infect her with syphilis. (...) Don't stroll through Volodymyr Hill Park, don't stroll around the botanical garden, and especially don't stroll on Kontraktova Square. Don't stroll anywhere. Don't go to the pavilion with the Golgotha panorama near St. Alexander's Church. Not even the twelve-meter-tall crucified Christ will save you. Don't go outside when it's dark and people turn into shadows a shade darker than dark. Also don't go where you can be seen from far away. Not to imply that people used to be like a bunch of lilies, but now they stink like a cellar of cabbage.The city, which earlier might have had some fun, is now going crazy. It's like a fish in warm water: it doesn't react to anything, swims slowly like it doesn't care if it swallows a hook or not. The excitement and exaltation pass into oppression, just as our necks have sunk into our shoulders, our shoulders into our lumbars, our lumbars into our nether regions. The holiday turns into a funeral, the parades into explosions, depression into mania. Winter passes into summer, people turn into beasts, the hours into ages, and the ages into hours. It's worth simply walking around the city to see a soldier from an unknown army taking a piss near the opera. Farther on is a row of identical old widows selling ball gowns and candelabra. Then there are the aristocrats and manufacturers who throw so much at the prostitutes that they'll soon be richer than their wives.I returned late through the Kyryliv Wood, not heeding all the warnings that I myself have given here. It really is dangerous—the place is famous for it. There's a madhouse nearby, caves where criminals and the sick can hide out. Also, once upon a time, as they say in fairy tales, the great dragon Zmei Gorynich lived here beside the Puchai River. The stench in these places drives away the most committed misanthropes and even one type of philanthrope—that is, perverts. It sounds dumb, but the stench is cleansing. I don't know where it comes from. After the operating theaters and the rooms with amputees, the stench no longer repelled or attracted me; it just was. And this was a great place to think. As I walked, I considered an incident with our patient.The patient, a respectable individual whose name carries too much weight for me to state it directly, one day began to assault people. He nearly strangled a merchant who he believed asked too much for a beaver coat. He likewise wanted to kill his business partner when he didn't say hello loudly enough. But the worst was, he lost all shame of his own nakedness. At first it was the police who took care of it. When our future patient slipped off his pants and undergarments, he was taken to Kyrylivska, which has had means for dealing with such cases dating back to the day when unhinged Cossacks and composers from Kyiv Mohyla Academy were taken there.During the examination we determined that the patient was experiencing a severe breakdown. His wife added that lately, more than once, he had allowed himself strong words in front of the children and often suffered from ennui. Furthermore, she said, the patient had been undergoing treatment for “the French disease” for some years—which was, obviously, where we needed to start.“Syphilis!” Skorsky spat out the matchstick he was chewing on. He was a specialist on the psychological aspects of diseases related to the venereal. “Tertiary syphilis! When poorly treated, over time ‘the French disease’ can destroy the central nervous system. Hence the patient's chicanery. Such theater!”Skorsky and I had not spoken since the incident at Bilinsky's. Meanwhile, something significant had happened to him. The most boring person on earth, Skorsky had simply caught fire. He said hello and kibitzed. I even heard the doctor got drunk alone in his office, then wandered through the forest. Could he be using narcotic substances?“Cocaine!” was the doctor's second proclamation. It was his favorite treatment for the psychological complications of syphilis. Skorsky himself never took what he called “the universal drug”—good for alcoholism and toothaches, neuroses and morphine dependency—though he had read in an article by a respectable Viennese physician, who used cocaine as a panacea, that it was not addictive. That doctor subsequently recanted, but Skorsky paid no attention. He believed the retraction was made under pressure from pharmacologists who had no incentive to cease production of the medications that cocaine might supplant. Their representatives either paid or threatened the Viennese to repent.As the patient was escorted to his room, he assaulted the orderly, Alevtyna. They tried pulling him off her, but, though he released his fingers from her neck, he buried his teeth in her leg. The poor orderly, who had not until then been attacked by a psychotic, nearly died of fear. Later, panic set in over Skorsky's diagnosis. He told her about the consequences of syphilis: grotesque patterns on one's face due to infection of the skin, mucous membranes, cartilage, and bones. He went on about the devastation to the central nervous system, which they had just observed in real life: “The face starts to look like lace some mangy dogs fought over before rolling in the mud.”Alevtyna, who had not yet regained her faculty of speech, straightened up. Ignoring the slavering male orderlies, she bared her leg to get a better look at the wound. She then ran down the hall and out into the garden, where she fell on the ground to rip up grass and small bunches of daisies. Alevtyna ate them along with the soil in their roots.“Minor hysteria. She needs fifteen milligrams of cocaine.”Skorsky took a snuff box out of his pocket and scooped up some white powder with a toothpick made from a goose feather. He gave the order to close Alevtyna's mouth and one of her nostrils, forcing her to snort the medication.We fretted over her so long that evening fell. I decided to walk down, along the ravine, behind the church.It was unlikely there were any large beasts there, but something was rustling. The pits and mounds, ravines, paths, graves of witches whose living sisters flew in the treetops from time to time, the whispers of the forest spirits, the spirits of the nutcases who died in the hospital, the spirits of the monks from the St. Cyril Monastery, Zmei Gorynich and the bogatyrs who wanted to defeat him. The city would be calmer without this forest. I saw the gaps between the trees and went off in the direction of the tram tracks.As I was coming out of the forest, there was a patch of Amanita muscaria that had been trampled into porridge. A bit farther on, the body of Professor Bilinsky lay killed in the blackberry bushes. The way he was lying it looked as though he had not struggled before death. I quickly examined his body but saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were no wounds, no dirt under the fingernails. Animals had not yet smelled the carrion, but swarms of various insects covered him. Oh, why did I have to find the putrid body?The best thing would be to take the tram to his house to inform his relatives. The doors closed, and I noticed my own calm. This death had not evoked any emotions in me other than a feeling of responsibility, the need to tell the family. But also—some alarm at the thought of who the murderer could be. I knew that it was murder.“Your nose is bleeding.” A woman as round as an onion, carrying two baskets full of strawberries, offered me an ironed and starched handkerchief.“Have I dirtied my shirt?”“No, it's as neat as a pin. It's just your nose that's dirty. Wipe it now before you spray blood on my strawberries.”“No one will see the red on red.”“Ah, but it's salty!”“You know why it's not sweet? We'd drink it like syrup.”“Those with Christ in their heart do not talk that way.”“Are your strawberries expensive?”“Why? What?”“I'm checking to see if you have God in your heart.”“Child, if you knew how I have to work for this berry! I have to weed it a hundred times. In a week, the quitch grass grows as high as a horse. And I water it with water I carry from the stream, it kills my arms... ”“How much are the berries?”“They're not for sale. Anyway, soon money won't mean a thing. Soon all money, all these papers made from the skins of sinners on their satanic presses will be annulled. What matters is how we treat each other.”“So if I try your strawberries for free, my ‘thank you’ will be enough?”“Hands off!” she said and thwacked my fingers.I heard loud laughter behind me—same laughter as from the café near the Continental. There was no one sitting near Alina. (This is what fate looks like, remember.) Without asking, I sat next to her, away from the old lady.“Excuse me, but the night before last didn't you, yes, didn't you intrude on my privacy?” She started right away.“I saw it a little differently. Who was that young man with the mustache who paid me for you?”“Are you checking to see if you can flirt?”The tram stopped. People got on and off.“Are you coming back from the hospital?” she asked. “Don't be shocked. My uncle works there. He's told me all about you.”“An uncle by the name of Skorsky?”(Remember: this is what fate looks like.)“Yes. Skorsky's been strange recently—says things that make me wonder if he hasn't lost his mind. Have you noticed anything?”“I don't know.”“You know perfectly well.”“Where are you going?” I tried to change the subject.“I have to send something to my theater friends in Odesa. By the way, they'll be putting on Oedipus Rex soon in Kyiv—in Ukrainian.”“Greek tragedy in Ukrainian! That's a first.”“Exactly. The troupe is rehearsing now in Odesa. The theater where they will perform this fall is being remodeled.”“Wait. Now I remember where I've seen you before—it was at a performance! Vynnychenko's Black Panther and White Bear, at the Bergonier on Fundukleivska.“The same director is doing the Oedipus. He's my friend.”“He's your friend in what sense?”“Again with that tired subject. By the way, I've been thinking about you.”“And I about you.”“That's good. I was thinking not about you, to be precise, but about that elevator you invited me on.”“Who was that man with you?”“Like a broken record! Even if he had been my fiancé, I'm not bought or inherited. I'm not a brooch or a hundred acres of land, and I'm not a house in Kaniv!... Who was with you when you saw Black Panther?“Ah, so.”“Answer!”“That was my mother. She looks very young. She is coming to Kyiv the day after tomorrow. I can introduce you.”“Oh, this is my stop.”I looked out the window and realized that I had long since passed the stop for Bilinsky's.“Can we see each other again?”“We can. But you have only one chance.”Alina the anarchist wrote something on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.Morning, not morning but a thick porridge (I hate porridge). Dew, thick spit, crushed fruits, urine, all on the sparkling cobblestones. The sun, just barely having made its appearance, is already scorching. The human masses scurry and grumble like poorly digested food inside a stomach.I walked diagonally across St. Sofia's Square, then along the perimeter, then one edge, then again diagonally across. I went underground. The basement café of the Continental Hotel was practically empty. I again asked the server to bring the cloth with the embroidered portrait, but I couldn't remember the musician's last name, only that it ended with -sky. The server said that -sky was currently in the southern cities of Yalta and Odesa. I added that Kurbas, the director, Alina's friend, was also in Odesa, rehearsing Oedipus Rex, and that he'd previously put on Black Panther.I was bored, so I walked along Khreshchatyk and then headed down, calling to mind all the Kyiv churches of Podil: there's Birth of Christ, St. Nicholas on the Shore, Intercession, Pyrohoshcha, Holy Presentation, St. Dymytrii Rostovsky, St. Illia's. And also the Epiphany Brotherhood Monastery, Ascension Convent, and St. Katherine's, all these whipped-cream churches on the waffles of our streets. A few of them reminded me of themselves by appearing suddenly out of nowhere.The smells on Kontraktova Plaza where commerce buzzed were like multicolored light bulbs turning on one after another. Here you could catch the aroma of Balabukha jam, which blended with the next smell, English shoe polish at the Raiskys’ shop. Then the crunchy-smelling cabbage from old women standing in a row like herons and spitting out the shells of sunflower seeds. Farther on, the stench of a good-sized rat that crawled under Mrs. Shevchuk's shop where she sells broadcloth. Oh, she can't scream: no, she'll quietly dig that rat out herself so as to not scare off her clients.I bought a paper and two pairs of underwear. I asked two laughing young chambermaids who were secretly puffing in a grape-filled yard for a smoke. I wandered around Podil until evening when I came across a sawmill near the Dnipro that surprisingly smelled pleasantly of mazut fuel oil. The weather was dry, yet in the middle of the road was an enormous puddle, a deep dark black. A forty-year-old woman in a pale pink dress stood near it. The theatricality of it all provoked me to pose her a question,“Ma'am, what should I do?”But she paid me no attention. I shouted,“What should I do?”“What to do, what to do?” she said in Polish. “Jump in the water and swim so far away that you cannot return.”I quickly crossed a section of the forest. The wind brought a mixture of unpleasant air, like a stinky handkerchief held under one's nose. Passing the trees, I saw light in the spaces between them and exited at the hospital.Outside the windows, two orderlies lay in chairs with their heads thrown back. Two others—fools—ran around the yard in different directions, peering out at... something. The lights on the first floor of the hospital were on, and the staff milled about.“You're just in time!” said Ivan, a tall, young orderly.“For what?”“Your patient ran away! We went into his room and he wasn't there.”“What patient?”“The one who bit Alevtyna,” said Danylo, the other orderly, short and middle-aged.“That's Skorsky's patient, not mine.”I had no intention of helping them. This was all history—like my family, Kyiv, and my previous life. I had no intention of thinking about it. I wanted to go to my office, pack up my field surgery kit, and get out. So what? Their psychotic syphilitic ran away—it happened.Of course, that patient could have something to do with Bilinsky's murder. But that was no longer my problem.“What a strange coincidence!” the doctor on duty said. “Comrade doctor, the other one responsible for this patient was just here.”“And where is he now?”“He took off toward the church to look for the patient.”“Didn't the patient escape earlier?”“Don't know.”“How do you not know? You had better call the police, moron, before he kills someone. And get those sleeping orderlies to look for him.”“They can't... ”“Why not? Should I go wake them?”“They're on morphine.”“And you, I can see, have lost your mind. Go, catch your psycho! If it turns out that he killed Bilinsky—and on your watch—you can't imagine what's in store for you.”I adjusted my homburg and set off in the direction of St. Cyril's, that unwelcoming monolithic cube. I glanced around—what if our escaped syphilitic were to jump out of the bushes and bite or strangle me. I looked around because I wasn't sure of my actions, wasn't sure of my choices. Tripping over a clump of clover, I reached the open doors of the church. I couldn't stop myself from going in.The walls and ceiling were covered with frescoes. There was what used to be an angel rolling up the sky on the southern column of the narthex. But also graffiti: people scratched their names on it so as not to be forgotten—their idea of eternity. Prince Volodymyr the Great compared this activity to the desecration of graves. The vandals paid a fine and were beaten with canes. During the raids of Batu Khan, the church was deserted and cracks appeared all over it. Wild martens and feral dogs sought shelter here; insects swarmed under the ceiling with its red mosaics. Birches grew in its midst. Water seeped in the cracks, the water became ice, the ice widened the cracks, more water seeped in the cracks, becoming more ice that further widened the cracks, the wall split and nearly fell over, and then the wall fell over. Yet the angel is still rolling up the sky... When I reached the exit, I heard a rustling behind me. I turned after I stepped outside: in the depths of the church, like a stick in a pot of tar, stood a man with a large bag thrown over his shoulder and a revolver pointed right at me.“Is that you, Doctor?“Don't move!”“What's... Skorsky, what's with you?”“Don't move, I say!”“What are you doing here?”And finally I understood... Skorsky was himself the psycho! (Really, I had known for a while.)“You are the murderer! I knew it! But—why?”“Shut up.”“It was you. You! The stolen cigarettes, the strange behavior, Bilinsky. If I shout, everybody will come running. They've already called the police!”There was heavy breathing behind me. And then a gun rang out.The city is overgrown with new buildings. They encircle everything that was once on the periphery. Kyiv has become an old lady that can no longer restrain herself in the face of pastries. The city climbs farther. It steps over the swamps, turns the old rivers into a series of lakes; the other bodies of water it drives into canals. The grain that falls from the wild wheat is black. When the sun heats it, the grain melts and trickles into the earth. St. Cyril's stands indestructible. No one spackles the small cracks in its walls with either expensive putty or glues, nor with cheap cement and whitewash. One day a small fox appears in the doorway. It runs inside and along the floor of simple gray tiles. The gods watch from the walls, watch and fall into ruin. The fox runs to the iconostasis. Before it is a time-darkened Virgin Mother and Child in oil on sheets of zinc. The fox runs the metal steps that wind up to the second floor. The fox runs past all the vaults, naves, all the frescoes. A buckthorn seed flies in through a broken window. It will be the first. Soon the buckthorn will grow everywhere. A dumb hare will make its nest in the buckthorn bushes and nightingales will settle in the upper branches to sing until the end of the world. The fox runs between the thick rays that penetrate the windows. It catches one of the rays, squints its eyes, and warms itself in the sun.The shot rang out, but I did not fall. I looked around—and on the church threshold was our syphilis patient bearing a rod. His head lay on the rocks by the doorway.“If only he'd been at the stage of nose deformity! Just imagine: a hole instead of a nose plus a hole from the bullet—like an extra pair of eyes!” Skorsky laughed at the corpse.“We need to call the orderlies.”“They heard the shot. They'll run here on their own. You see, Professor Bilinsky believed it would take two or three years to wrap up this patient's case,” Skorsky told me. “But I took care of it much faster!”“Excuse me, but I'm going crazy in this city. I thought that you were Bilinsky's murderer.”“Just so. Why not? I am Bilinsky's murderer.”“Don't tease. You've changed a lot recently, so... ”“Yes, I've started killing people. You might term such a change significant.”“You have the right to irony.”“I am not being ironic.”“Let's call it sarcasm.”“It's the honest-to-God truth.”“And yes, you have the right to mock me.”“Well then, let's be done. To the horses!”“What horses?”“Alina's waiting!”Alina, her uncle Skorsky, a few others I didn't know, and I rode like the wind that ripped off my homburg and carried it back to Kyiv.“There's a fresco in the choir loft at St. Cyril's where Vrubel painted himself and patients from the hospital as the apostles. When I came across it by accident, I really believed they were saints,” Alina said.“I've never been up there. I've only seen the church from below.”“Remember the way back so you can see it sometime.”“The Puchai River used to flow here. You shouldn't trust the landscape,” Skorsky said, reaching for something, perhaps his bag, just when we left the darkness of the trees and saw the endless steppe ahead of us.We rode all night without stopping. Though no one was chasing us. Though we had nowhere to be. We rode like beasts released from a cage. The promises of the horizon turned what we'd left behind into a cage fit for those from whom freedom had been severed, like an anomaly, at birth.The pre-morning sky looked at first like a sack of turnips—filled with something heavy. But with each verst, the sky became lighter. When it was finally light enough to see clearly, we arrived at a knoll at the foot of a stone wall that from a distance had appeared to be a gigantic piece of halva. The exterior ruins of the castle gave no hint of how it was when all was fine here, when people defended themselves successfully from the nomads’ raids. From far off, the wreckage looked like a natural agglomeration of stones—a rocky elevation, no more: a cluster of cliffs. It would rain a few hundred more times, a few hundred more winds from a few hundred directions would blow on this heap, and it would collapse as though nothing had ever been here.A few stalks of wheat grew from one of the rocks. Someone had probably cast a handful of grain here for some birds that forgot to eat it.“Who could this castle belong to?” I asked Skorsky.“I reckon the Swan Princess,” the doctor rejoined, hoping to sound knowledgeable.From behind one of the piles of gray sandstone emerged a young man in a black reptilian coat and a white papakha as lush, bright, and out of place as a dahlia. His name was Artem. The heat was melting our brains, but he was dressed like that, in rooster fashion, which was popular among the otamans. Artem helped Alina dismount her horse and tried to kiss her on the lips, but she offered him a cheek instead.Had she been racing to see this clown?We entered the yard—the ruins had fashioned an internal space that was more or less protected, at least from strangers’ eyes. It turned out that there were even places where it was possible to hide from the rain, and from there the ruins didn't look half bad.In the center of the court was a table, and on it a wooden bucket with pink gladiolas. How romantic! It all looked like it came from outer space. Where on earth, in the middle of the steppe, far from any village or town, did this table, this simple table, come from? And the gladiolas? The steppe hadn't been plowed in so long that any cultivars would have gone wild, degenerated, dried up completely.A campfire crackled nearby—a little preview of what we would soon do to the houses, villages, and cities. Artem the otaman brought over a cezve from the fire and poured the first portion into a small, copper cup for Alina. He also got out a porcelain cup with images of rosy cherubim—but how...?“Who else would like coffee?”Only Skorsky and I responded. The question excited me, even distracted me from the thought of the kiss I had recently witnessed and the Kyiv I had recently left.“It's obvious who the professors here are; cultured people drink coffee. Are you both doctors?”“Uh-huh.”“For wolves of the steppe, like us, doctors are gold, even more precious than gold. Actually, a Hippocrates like you should eat more, because those in your profession will soon be worth your weight in gold. Work on your figures, both of you.”“Who will take pity on the horses that have to carry us?”“We'll find the horses. And very large doctors can be transported on machine-gun carts. We'll need to seat the otamans near you. Only a fool would shoot at a doctor.”“I think we'll find quite enough fools here.”“With your beard, Doctor, you look like Tsar Nicholas II. But even so you won't be shot. You might even be canonized!”“We've only just arrived and you're going on about executions,” Skorsky grumbled and checked to make sure that he still had his bag.“Apologies, apologies, pardonnez-moi. But you are not merely a doctor. A venereologist! Skorsky, you're a specialist! A venereologist is the most important person in wartime. The most valuable! You are the botanists of war. You can't imagine what varieties of flowers grow here, and these beds have long awaited a proper gardener. Or even just a man with a scythe!”“Bite your tongue,” Alina said. “I don't need to listen to this.”“Yes, yes, of course. Excuse me, my r—. ” He almost said “rose.”We rested all day. We went down to a surprisingly close river overgrown with lilies. We rowed the boats left by fishermen. I talked to Skorsky. He took his bag everywhere, refusing even to swim so he wouldn't have to part with it. I asked him what he had in it, but he said it wasn't my damned business.Alina rowed with the otaman to the middle of the river. They were having a loud discussion. She was waving her hands. The current carried their boat downstream slowly and smoothly. What a nuisance, that current!I tried to meet with Alina one-on-one, but she was avoiding me. In the morning I was confused, by lunch I was sad, and after lunch I got angry.In the evening, I lay on the hot grass and drank another cup (I have no idea where they got such good coffee), which had no effect at all on my sleep. I watched the Perseids. Every year, the Earth passes through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle. People can see the meteor shower and make a wish. I wished. I counted forty-seven falling stars. All forty-seven of my wishes were for the same thing.Around the campfire, they were sitting, talking. I saw how he tickled her face with a piece of grass and she brushed him off in annoyance. Then they were screaming at each other. Later they again spoke kindly, after which they again quarreled. My joy grew after each tiny mistake that Artem made. I wanted him to show the worst he was capable of.They were screaming at each other, but all I could hear was beautiful opera singing. The stars fell to the sound of their screaming. The stars blessed my joy.Then this happened: Alina kicked the fire, scattered burnt kindling, and burned some of the grass. Artem grabbed her by the arm, but she broke away from him and ran off to the horses.“Go then! I guarantee you'll get to Katerynoslav and return with your tail between your legs.”“I'm going to Huliai-Pole! To Father Makhno!”I jumped up and ran after her.“Where do you think you're going?” Artem shouted.Really—where was I going? I was going after her: to Huliai-Pole, to Katerynoslav, to Rome, to Washington, to Istanbul, to Montevideo... “Go to sleep,” he said. “Come morning, this coquette will be here, right as rain. We've already been through this show. Tomorrow she'll be right here next to my boot!”... No, she won't.In some sort of shape we entered some town. There were some buildings that were some colors, some trees, some streets, some roads, and some signs. Posts, flustered birds’ nests, echoes, colors, shapes—each of some kind. A wedding procession was coming toward us. If you want to make orange, you need to add yellow to red, and then bam—it's black. If you want to salt the soup, shake in a little, and then bam—two handfuls. You want to say a kind word, and then bam—a punch in the face. I was rocked around like a watermelon on a boat and threw up my breakfast straight into the horse's fluffy mane. Sanko found this hilarious, but I said I'd pulverize him. So Sanko sped ahead.No one knew anything about Alina. The daytime sky was like a poorly washed bowl. The sun was a squashed, rotten apricot. The night sky looked like the sole of a boot to me. The moon was a dirty cheap copper coin that had gotten stuck to the sole. Everything seemed spoiled to me, irrelevant, unnecessary. Without her, this journey was a waste of time.“You'd better stay away from everyone,” Artem said. “You'll infect us with your pining, and pining is worse than the clap.”The wedding procession was before us. The young couple, still utter children, walked so calmly it was as if they didn't see us. As if we were made of a light breeze—our bodies, clothes, our horses and their iron shoes—of the lightest gasses. As if we were visible only to ourselves and the coal-black dog that barked, panting and gasping.The wedding was headed straight for us. We were in the middle of the road, and so were they. We approached each other slowly, a wave going toward a wave. Some ten meters before their indifferent faces, I noticed the color of the bride's eyes. And the coral-colored tulips that fell on the road before her. Round goose eggs on meaty stems, the flowers were falling and falling before her. The bride's eyes were almond shaped.“Hey there,” Artem shouted at me. “Wake up!”I came to and saw the whole village, everyone there, not realizing my group had turned left onto a side street away from the procession. The tulips disappeared—where'd they get tulips in the fall? I was sitting alone on my horse in the middle of the road, and the entire wedding procession came to a stop. I moved to the side, and the throng marched on, cutting off our escape route. We rode a few more meters and came across the synagogue.“You know what, you're right,” said the otaman.“Who is?”“Oleksii is the only one here who's right.”“About what?”Artem turned his horse and raced back. Everyone stood still while he ran his horse into the crowd and began firing his revolver. People scattered in all directions. Artem trotted, cackling like an imbecile. The horse kicked an old guy in the mouth. The man fell, spitting out his gold teeth. We rode up to the commotion and formed ranks, but none of us wanted to join the otaman.The bride stopped in the middle of the street. On both sides were buildings and trees, as well as dust, sky, and sun. She stood still, beautiful, as if nothing had happened. Then she adjusted her garland and walked calmly on.“Well, should we get some sugar now?” Artem laughed, looking at the bride, and off he went toward the sugar factory.It was then I noticed that all of the houses had shutters—fuchsia, blue, ocher—and that all the shutters were closed.We flew toward the dirty building, whistling and shouting. If there had been aesthetes among the otamans, they would certainly have razed the abomination in this field after seizing it. They would have spread soil on top and sown buckwheat. Long live buckwheat!, that wonderful crop. Like hunting dogs hot on the trail, we raced to our defenseless victim, with the baying of hundreds of hounds behind us. The field shook beneath us. We became an artist's canvas, evolving from Realism to Romanticism, Romanticism to Expressionism, Expressionism to Suprematism. If we had been painted in black and white, we would have been splotches (until the ink ran, annihilating all remaining patches of white).Two men stood near the gate—unarmed and undressed, in nothing but their undershirts and boots. Our fervor, our kinship with the elements, our entirety, were all for naught.“Jesus Christ! What bores!” Artem exclaimed. “How boring you are!”“Maybe boring for us, but fireworks for them,” Sanko said, dismounting his horse.“The fear of death engenders creativity,” our otaman—a distinguished philosopher of the early twentieth century, that demonic breed—prophesied.He went on, “Excuse me, but with all due respect, we are not going to search you. Just show us right away where the money is. Why are there so few of you? Don't say there's not much money. I want piles and piles of money! If you don't show it to us, we'll print our own on your skin. Believe me, we will.”We entered the factory grounds. There were no workers, only an enormous mountain of sugar beets that looked like a pile of coal from a distance and a pile of dead rats from up close.“So, did you have a good year?” Artem asked a man in an undershirt.“Not really—too dry.”“Nah, that's fine. You wouldn't have been able to gather most of the harvest this year anyway. There's a fire burning across all of Ukraine, all of Russia. The whole world!”While Artem tossed thoughts like well-chewed sunflower seeds into the crowd, the two men quietly stepped aside and then ran fast ahead to the factory's main hall. The gigantic door slammed shut. The gate was locked behind us! The windows were smashed! The factory roared from inside like a cumbersome machine starting up. Bullets whirred through every window.“Bastards! It's a trap! Quick, after me!”Still on horseback, Artem bounded over to a vast window, low to the ground, and smashed it mercilessly. He broke the frame and jumped inside on his horse. I and a few others followed. We broke into their lair, threw open the doors, and let the other warriors inside.Iron vats of hot sugar were steaming, pipes were clattering; machinery groaned.“Parasites!” Artem gritted his teeth. “I'll get you. I'll get you red sons of bitches. Painted whores!”At the word “painted,” his horse fell to the ground. Lying prone, Artem continued fighting, but the red soldiers wouldn't let him stand. Fighting nearby, I rode over to assist but did not know where to aim. Artem got up, ran forward, and brought his sword down on the head of the closest soldier, all the way to the middle of his skull, to the bridge of his nose. It was like butchering a pig. Artem thrust the sword into the buttock of another who was fleeing and cut off his leg at the bend in the knee.“I'll cut off every last one of your asses! Cut off your asses!” Artem bellowed.A half hour later, the dead were lying, the captured sitting, and the victors doing anything they pleased.“Skorsky, are there a lot of casualties?” I asked the doctor, whose hour it was. I hoped not, because I was too tired to help him.“Just a few. The dead are already dead, and the wounded are not ours.”Though Skorsky rarely asked my help, and though I'd become an ordinary soldier, the doctor in me was still present in the most unpleasant attribute—knowledge. Others saw an eviscerated man, pieces of dusty flesh smeared with clay, soil, sand, and straw. I saw a perfectly formed kidney hanging perfectly from the rest of its body like a child's mitten from its coat. You could try this death on for size. Wear it like a sanbenito of the Inquisition.Artem counted the money and then lay on the floor alongside the gigantic sugar mountain in the middle of the room. From time to time, the crystals rustled as they fell.“I didn't think you'd be such a fighter!” the otaman said without turning toward me. “I thought you'd be healing us. You'd keep to the rear and we'd hide you like a girl. But here you are, in the vanguard, like a lion!”“I got excited,” I told him, choosing not to react to the “girl” part.“’Cause Alina said there was no sense counting on you to fight.”“Really?”“Does that sting?”“Why would it? I'm a doctor—not everyone is. It requires a brain. Unlike waving a sword.”“Yeah, yeah. I gave her gladiolas. We were lying in the boat near that castle, doing all manner of things, and she told me all about you. How you met.”“You were lying in that boat talking about me?”“It was the day before you left Kyiv. You agreed to go with the anarchists so quickly!”“Were you surprised? Doctors make fast decisions.”“But you probably had great prospects. Your parents are rich, right?”“And who are your parents?”“Probably all your relatives fled abroad—bourgeois. Why did you stay?”“What the hell's your point?”“Alina, by the way, died a while ago. Probably.”“Don't jinx her.”“Listen here,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “And listen good. If you have designs on her—dead or alive—it's best you castrate yourself now.”“After you.”“If I want to kill somebody, you know, I just do it.”At last he looked at me. I was lying on the floor nearby and looking in his direction, sweaty and relaxed, my appearance complemented by my disdain for his opinion, his authority, his stupid hat. His everything.Artem raised his arm above his head, stuck a finger in the sugar mountain, and licked it. We both got up. Had I anticipated this turn of events, I would have readied a gift for him. Artem held his revolver. Under my hand I found a knife the workers used for gathering beets: it was a deliberately sharpened arc they sank into the swollen brassicas. I jumped up and quickly stepped around the sugar mountain.Artem's bullet hit a pane and broke the glass.“Not man enough for hand-to-hand?”The otaman shot again.“You should've challenged me to a duel, you romantic!”Encrusted with white crystals, I charged Artem from the sugar mountain. We fell in, and the sugar stuck in our hair, mustaches, nostrils, armpits.The gang ran in to get us apart, then backed off because it had nothing to do with them. By now the sugar mountain had burst its banks. Of the once perfect pyramid, a deformed mound remained.Wounded, Artem fell on the sugar mound, turning the white red.I stood before the gang sugar-coated and holding a bloody hook. The old otaman was drawing his last breath. Blood trickled from the corner of Artem's mouth and streamed from the left side of his breast.“What's the commotion?” Old Roman had just come in.“Be quiet,” the boys told him. And a good thing they did.“You killed him? You killed the otaman!”“Shut your mouth,” the boys told him.“You... ”I slugged Roman's stinky herring mouth. How did that son of a bitch find pickled herring in a sugar factory? My fist was now bigger and stronger than ever before, a steel anvil that could split nails and shatter memorial plaques. The unfortunate man's jaw twisted like an upper millstone that had gone off track from the lower.“Let's get out of here and go to Makhno's camp,” I gave my first order.We galloped so fast the grass burned beneath us. The birds and bugs had no time to fly out of the way; hooves trampled the burrows of rodents who didn't dare crawl out of their holes for a long time after. We raced like no one had ever raced before.The steppe, that sly fox, pretended to be an innocent fool. The steppe said, “I'm like Adam: I don't even know my own name.” But its grass harbored the tracks of thousands of armies and the heels of Herodotus, the crunch of Trypillia vessels, and the smell of Scythian hemp, Roman coins, clay figures of wolf people, the chevrons of Denikin's army, glass from the Chekists’ ruby stars, traces of uranium from flying saucers. I threatened it: “Steppe, show me your layers, or I will burn you, plow you under, flood you.” But it just replied: “I'm like Adam: I don't yet know my name.”I lost geography as if it were a silver coin. It fell out of my pocket and rolled through the feather grass that blanketed the steppe in white foam. The open space ahead was so endless that the whole world might as well have been steppe. If people ended up here from somewhere else, they would conclude they were on another planet. The coin fell and became an argentum, became one with the ring on the hand of the princess who had one green eye and one blue, with the twisted candlestick at the monastery on the other side of the steppe, with melted ingots. It broke down into simpler elements, simpler and simpler yet. The horse carried me spreading the seeds of northern plants to the south, just as southern riders had once brought flowers and weeds to the north. And then I turned back. Just as I had no geography, I had no time. Every night I fell asleep with the thought that the next day I would again race. Through all spacelessness, all timelessness. I exchanged one horse for another, got on a train, on a boat, traversed forty versts on foot—in rain that brought the river up to the road, in heat that overturned cattle. The earth I walked on became mine. Mine was the water in the lakes and springs, clean water, dirty water, enlightened water, contaminated with oil, stinking of algae, of fish that died in wells, stinking of the memory of atrocities, water as clean as broken bread. The water did not become Alina.I was doing this for her: I got the basturma out from under my saddle, sodden with the horse's sweat, sliced the throat of a rich man whose daughter I had danced with at a ball, climbed into a vat of beet juice and took a sugar bath, carried out the expropriation of the savings banks, wiped the sweat from my face with my shirt—and the cloth turned red; I didn't know from what. If it was someone else's blood, I didn't care; if it was my own, even less.We mostly came across Reds. We scraped them up like old red paint on a door in order to repaint the boards black. Black looked better. Red is tasteless, but black has style. Healthy men died before us of myocardial rupture like bunnies found in the nest. The ones whose hearts were sewn of steel wire envied the deceased. Seizing estates, banks, distilleries, and prisons reminded us of gathering in the harvest. If you're too lazy to pick an apple, you can shake the tree; some of the fruit gets bruised when it falls. We seized buildings like we were shaking apple trees. No one picked the fruits, we just shook: shook under the beds, under the tables, behind the curtains. No, there was no picking. We just shook until the red juice spurted from the apples.Near the Khorol River with Father Makhno and me in charge, we captured sixteen machine guns and four cannons, as well as five hundred prisoners who immediately came over to our side. The villagers voluntarily gave us bread and cheese, chickens and kvas. People joined us. The front of the machine-gun cart said “You can't run,” and “You won't catch us” at the back. We took factory after factory. Millions of karbovantsi, thousands of poods of sugar, weapons. We smashed the telephone exchanges and captured the telegraphs. We made alliances with some and then with others. Lenin, Wrangel, Frunze, the Germans, Chinese, Australians, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Cleopatra, Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina. We ran the steppe. There were a hundred thousand of us. There were three hundred thousand of them. There were three hundred thousand of us. There were a million of them. There were two million of them. We were all of humanity. We were so many that we were none.The nobles’ estates were long ago forsaken. In the people's deepest trunks lay silks and guipure laces that were once perhaps used only to cover a table. Five steps from the barn in the direction of the pear tree, some silver candlesticks are buried; there's a plaster figure of an angel in the chicken coop, covered with shit and feathers.I was reluctant to be going to my home, but I didn't see any way out. Fate intended me to be a different being from the one I was before.Here my grandfathers and great-grandfathers were born. Here the ones who caused my grandfathers and great-grandfathers to flee had stopped. When we were still far off I noticed that someone was in the house. It was our men—Skorsky had brought them here, about twenty in all. I asked Sanko, whom I had walked with side by side more than once, where the doctor was now. All the men answered that he was around somewhere, but I didn't see him that evening.In 1918, the spirit of my great-grandfather Stepan, along with my mother and uncle, had gotten into a britzka and scrambled off to Paris, to Napoleon, against whom my great-grandfather had fought with the Cossacks, to whom the Russians promised to return self-rule. Following him in the cart went the soul of Grandpa Oleh, who lost a finger when he cut down the old linden near the house; his second finger was blown off by a cannonball near Balaklava, and later his entire hand was cut off by some Turk. Next went the spirit of my father, also Stepan, who did not take part in any war but died of measles at the age of forty. They all got the hell out of here. First, they went to Kyiv, led by my mother, Tamara Makarivna, in order to collect Uncle's family and me, their son. And their son, it turns out, has now come back to rob his own home (I didn't drive my war buddies away, did I?). It's a shame that I didn't know where the bathtub was, or whatever they bathed me in when I was small. It would have been good to walk through the ranks of anarchists with that basin and tell them all to spit into it.Remembering every room, I carried Alina upstairs to my mother's bedchamber. There was no longer furniture or pictures, only bare walls. The bed and mattress remained, but that was enough. Mother hated noise, so she set up her room far away from the running in the halls and the creaks on the stairs. I adjusted the mattress; in a gap, looking like a stalk of wheat, there lay a gold bracelet that she lost in the haste and that the thieves could not find in the mayhem. I tucked it into my pocket.The place could still be saved. It was strong, built under the leadership of my grandfather, who knew how to do it right. He built a sawmill, a gristmill, a dress factory (today it's probably been ransacked, maybe even by our own men).Alina had a complete, displaced break in her right fibula. We needed water first. I went downstairs—the guys were dragging out the piano like an old cow to the slaughter.“What are you doing with that?”“Taking it out.”“Why?”“What's it to you? We want to have fun.”“Can you play?”“We're not your bourgeois lily-handed bitches.”They couldn't play, but they were famous at destruction. “Noise is the music of the new time,” one of the smarter among them might have said. “But noise is the opposite of music. Just as a rose is the opposite of your ugly mugs,” I'd have responded if there was anyone to say it to. I could also have said that this was a Bosendorfer grand piano, that it was very valuable—but do the guys not deserve such a luxury?“Why are you so boring? We're relaxing.”“Then let me play a little first.”“Go ahead, but fast. One-two.”So I played. As before. My fingers ran up and down the black and white keys, which weren't simply keys of these, the simplest, colors. These were the keys that remembered my fingers specifically—achieved by that slovenly German Katerina, our governess. She knew a bundle of languages, could play the piano, and was interested in the latest scientific discoveries. But she had not an ounce of sympathy for anyone who couldn't master anything on the first try. More than once she hit my pinkie against the black key that remembered every one of its four thousand touches. She would pound it on the key and shout, “Si bémol! Si bémol,” and later bang my fingers and translate, “B flach! B flach!”I played. I could not expose myself, so the only thing I could do was believe in miracles. What if these coarse men saw value in this bit of furniture so unintelligible to them? And what if they didn't destroy it, this emblem of my childhood, my land, my air, which I could protect in no other way? My air. My water.“Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka,” one of them who recognized the tune began to sing along.“Look at you.” They did not expect music from me, who had until recently been drinking blood like water.They said, “Again, again!”A group of curious men gathered around me. They were ordinary farmers, thieves, and recidivists, peasants and workers, everyone except for Skorsky. They needed this music as they needed baths. The music cleansed them from the inside, perhaps. They had not heard anything besides the whistle of a bullet, the neighing of a horse, or the knocking of a chisel and the whirring of a saw, amputating limbs, for a long time.But it could not go on long. I did not close the piano lid, just stood and went to fetch water for Alina, leaving the unfinished song for later. The well was to the north—that is, at the “Head.” My father once promised to give me a compass if I could learn to identify the ends of the earth by means of the sun. And to make it easier to remember, I gave each one of them a name: the east where the day begins was “Right” (my right hand), the west “Left,” the north “Head,” and the south “Feet.” Back when I could still do whatever I wanted all day long, I would wake in the morning and say: I'm going to the Feet. The mound was at the Feet, Left had the river, Right had the forest. It was only to the Head that I rarely went, because a village was located there. When the villagers saw me, they would speak in whispers and avoid the master's son.... I wiped her brow and her burning, sunken cheeks. I lay down next to her to feel the heat of her skin.When the fire in Alina calmed slightly, I went out into our orchard. My father had once been given a gift from Japan—a tulip tree that blossomed with yellow-green flowers. It had to have grown in the time that I was away. It would have been fatal had it been cut down. I again took the stairs down into the drawing room and came across nobody—they had all disappeared in search of food or were hidden away in their burrows. In the middle of the hall, like an opened rib cage, was the piano, irreparably shattered.B Flach! B Flach!Translation © Ali Kinsella 2022. (shrink)

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In this essay, I look at two negative portrayals of egoism. I summarize in detail the superb All About Eve—which won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The movie is about the rise of a ruthlessly ambitious actress, and how she treats her main competitor. Eve Harrington worms her way into top theatrical actress Margo Channing’s inner circle by pretending to be an admirer, but she is really a schemer who wants to eclipse Margo’s star in the theater universe. However, (...) Eve runs into trouble when she attempts to manipulate tart-tongued theater critic, Addison de Witt. The movie portrays the New York theater industry as being full of narcissists. I then review the classic film noir The Third Man (1949), rated by the prestigious British Film Institute as the greatest film of the 20th century. The film centers around a charismatic, handsome criminal mastermind Harry Lime living in bombed-out post-War Vienna. Lime is a man of no conscience or empathy—a true psychopath. He cripples children by selling hospitals adulterated penicillin. But we (the audience) still feel sympathy for him. I end the piece by explaining the psychological mechanisms at work that give rise to our paradoxical sympathy. (shrink)

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Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not their categorical (or intrinsic) properties, whereas our qualia are constituted by those categorical properties. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between Russellian monism and a seminal paradox facing epiphenomenalism, the paradox of phenomenal judgment: if epiphenomenalism is true—qualia are causally inefficacious—then any judgment (...) concerning qualia, including epiphenomenalism itself, cannot be caused by qualia. For many writers, including Hawthorne (Philos Perspect 15:361–378, 2001), Smart (J Conscious Stud 11(2):41–50, 2004), and Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (The philosophy of mind and cognition, Blackwell, Malden, 2007), Russellian monism faces the same paradox as epiphenomenalism does. I will assess Chalmers’s (The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996) and Seager’s (in: Beckermann A, McLaughlin BP (eds) The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind. Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) defences of Russellian monism against the paradox, and will put forward a novel argument against those defences. (shrink)

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Resource rationality may explain suboptimal patterns of reasoning; but what of “anti-Bayesian” effects where the mind updates in a direction opposite the one it should? We present two phenomena — belief polarization and the size-weight illusion — that are not obviously explained by performance- or resource-based constraints, nor by the authors’ brief discussion of reference repulsion. Can resource rationality accommodate them?

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Animals, in the age of biotechnology, are the subjects of a myriad of scientific procedures, interventions, and modifications. They are created, altered, and experimented upon—often with highly beneficial outcomes for humans in terms of knowledge gained and applied, yet not without concern also for the effects upon the experimental subjects themselves: consideration of the use of animals in research remains an intensely debated topic. Concerns for animal welfare in scientific research have, however, been primarily directed at harm to and suffering (...) of animal subjects and their prevention. Little attention has been paid to the benefits research might potentially produce for animals themselves and the interests that some animals may therefore have in the furtherance of particular avenues of science. (shrink)

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Based on two years’ ethnographic research on doctor-patient relations in urban China, this paper examines the causes of patients’ mistrust of physicians. I identify the major factors at the societal, institutional, and interpersonal levels that lead to patients’ mistrust of physicians. First, I set the context by describing the extent of mistrust at the societal level. Then, I investigate the institutional sources of mistrust. I argue that the financing mechanism of public hospitals and physicians’ income structures are the most crucial (...) factors in inducing patients’ mistrust. Hospitals’ heavy reliance on self-finance has basically caused public hospitals to run like private hospitals, resulting in blatant conflicts of interest between hospitals and patients. Related to this is physicians’ reliance on bonuses and commissions as part of their regular incomes, which has inevitably resulted in overtreatment and, hence, mistrust from the patients. At the interpersonal level, I describe how individual physicians’ attitudes toward and interaction with patients may also affect patients’ sense of trust or mistrust in physicians. In conclusion, I discuss the ethical implications of the mistrust problem, and suggest changes at the institutional and interpersonal levels to mitigate the problem. (shrink)

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This paper offers a brief historical survey of the development of analytic philosophy in Hong Kong from 1911 to the present day. At first, Western philosophy was a minor subject taught mainly by part-time staff. After the Second World War, research and teaching in analytic philosophy in Hong Kong began to grow and consolidate with the expansion of higher-education and the establishment of new universities. Analytic philosophy has been a significant influence on comparative and Chinese philosophy and played a crucial (...) role in the teaching and promotion of critical thinking. Analytic philosophers in Hong Kong are now active participants in the global philosophical community. We review the development of analytic philosophy across the major tertiary institutions in Hong Kong and discuss some of the future challenges faced by the discipline. (shrink)

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A tic disorder (TD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by tics, which are repetitive movements and/or vocalizations that occur due to aberrant sensory gating. Its pathophysiology involves dysfunction in multiple parts of the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuits. Spontaneous brain activity during the resting state can be used to evaluate the baseline brain state, and it is associated with various aspects of behavior and cognitive processes. Theta–gamma coupling (TGC) is an emerging technique for examining how neural networks process information through interactions. However, the (...) resting-state TGC of patients with TD and its correlation with cognitive function have not yet been studied. We investigated the resting-state TGC of 13 patients with TD and compared it with that of 13 age-matched healthy children. The participants underwent resting-state electroencephalography with their eyes closed. At the global level, patients with TD showed a significantly lower resting-state TGC than healthy children. Resting-state TGC with the eyes closed was significantly negatively correlated with the attention quotient calculated for omission errors in a selective visual attention test. These findings indicate that the resting-state brain network, which is important for the attentional processing of visual information, is dysfunctional in patients with TD. Additionally, these findings support the view that TGC reflects information processing and signal interactions at the global level. Patients with TD may have difficulty gating irrelevant sensory information in the resting state while their eyes are closed. (shrink)

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This book examines, through a multi-disciplinary lens, the possibilities offered by relationships and family forms that challenge the nuclear family ideal, and some of the arguments that recommend or disqualify these as legitimate units in our societies. That children should be conceived naturally, born to and raised by their two young, heterosexual, married to each other, genetic parents; that this relationship between parents is also the ideal relationship between romantic or sexual partners; and that romance and sexual intimacy ought to (...) be at the core of our closest personal relationships - all these elements converge towards the ideal of the nuclear family. The authors consider a range of relationship and family structures that depart from this ideal: polyamory and polygamy, single and polyparenting, parenting by gay and lesbian couples, as well as families created through current and prospective modes of assisted human reproduction such as surrogate motherhood, donor insemination, and reproductive cloning. (shrink)

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The United Kingdom is the first and so far only country to pass explicit legislation allowing for the licensed use of the new reproductive technology known as mitochondrial replacement therapy. The techniques used in this technology may prevent the transmission of mitochondrial DNA diseases, but they are controversial because they involve the manipulation of oocytes or embryos and the transfer of genetic material. Some commentators have even suggested that MRT constitutes germline genome modification. All eyes were on the United Kingdom (...) as the most likely location for the first MRT birth, so it was a shock when, on September 27, 2016, an announcement went out that the first baby to result from use of the intervention had already been born. In New York City, United States-based scientist John Zhang used maternal spindle transfer to generate five embryos for a woman carrying oocytes with deleterious mutations of the mitochondrial DNA. Zhang then shipped the only euploid embryo to Mexico, where it was transferred to the mother's uterus. Zhang's team's travel across international borders to carry out experimental procedures represents a form of scientific tourism that has not been properly ethically explored; it can, however, have seriously detrimental effects for developing countries. (shrink)

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We may sum up the five roles which human beings might play in the existence of the polis in the following way: (1) Human nature plays the role of the inner principle of change which explains the type of human relation a polis takes (the polis as a type); (2) General patterns of human behaviours, together with patterns of societal conditions, play the role of material conditions which explain the variety of forms of polis; (3) Statesmen or politicians play the (...) role of political craftsmen which explains the particular form of the natural type a polis actually takes; (4) Human effort plays the role of one of the external conditions which explains the occurrence of a polis; (5) Individual human persons or groups play the role of an artificer which is responsible for and wholly explains the type of the human relation a polis takes. What I have argued in this paper is, firstly, that (1) is compatible with (2), (3) and (4), but not with (5), and secondly, that Aristotle affirms (1), (2), (3) and (4), but denies (5). Aristotle's theory of the naturalness of the polis is, therefore, not the blundered doctrine its critics suppose it to be. (shrink)

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