Evaluation for the Damaged Structures of Notre-Dame de Paris: A way for a correct Reconstruction

An impressive fire devastated the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, one of the symbols of European architecture. The flames started from the scaffolding embracing the base of the spire on the cathedral roof. The fire blazed up in the church during the religious celebration on April 15th at 6:45 p.m. The fire enveloped abruptly the roof and the spire erected by Viollet-le-Duc in 1860. The collapse took place about 80 minutes around 8 p.m [1-3]. Today, the clamor is all around, the silence is in the heart. At the time of the present report, the causes of the catastrophe are still wrapped in a dense smoke, like the one generated by the burning “forest” as the roof structure was called. This is the figure of the disaster. The Cathedral’s inferno devastated a world treasure, prompting an outpouring of collective sorrow and soulsearching over whether to recreate the destroyed oak-framed roofing and spire or adapt the cathedral to the 21st century. In the present paper, an original evaluation of the residual strength taking into account the fire effect and the water saturation in the limestone after the extinguishing is considered. The residual strength ratio (RSR) and the compressive strength evolution (CS) are carefully evaluated for the injured structures. An estimation of the effective strength ratio of the Cathedral walls is estimated. At the same time, the proposed approach is based on the solution of an extreme adaptive structure (grid shell) able to offer a strong temporary shelter in a short time and allowing a careful work of documentation and restoration of the roof cathedral by an approach like “how it was and where it was

Warcraft and the Fragility of Virtue

There is much talk currently about virtue and virtues, and this, I suppose, is all to the good. But if the current debate aspires to be more than an academic exercise, it needs to show how discussion of the virtues makes a difference in moral philosophy. Any serious alternative to the status quo should satisfy the following three conditions: It should involve a shift in the fundamental vocabulary of ethics; it should reorder, if not reject, some of the emphases and priorities found in the status quo; and finally, it should issue in a reevaluation of specific acts and policies as understood within the status quo. I propose in what follows to look both at the considerations which might lead to adopting an understanding of ethics grounded in the virtues and at the difference this would make in understanding war

In the presence of suffering: toward a new understanding of evil

The present dissertation addresses the question of evil and suffering as intrinsically intertwined, linked by the notion of affective temporality, as distinct from ‘clock time.’ Following Adi Ophir, I define evil as superfluity, as what ought not to be, thus divorcing it from any idea of necessity, and its social production that must be reduced or disrupted. The catastrophes that are still happening take precedence over past ones, since the former are still open to reduction, intervention, and alleviation. Here time becomes a key notion that alerts us to the possibilities of responding morally to present disasters. Time reappears again at the heart of suffering, understood as “the duration of the encounter with the unbearable.” I argue that affective time activates and conceptually revitalizes our moral agency, since it is phenomenologically described as open to interruption. Thus, we have the choice to either let the agonizing duration of another’s suffering go on uninterrupted or fragment this temporality, thereby offering the suffer a relief and a glimpse of a more ‘habitable’ temporality, the temporality of going about your business in the world and forgetting the ticking of the clock. Thus, we are capable of altering the suffering other’s sense of time. In my discussion of Spinoza, Ophir, Amery, and Levinas, I situate suffering as the very voice and language of superfluous evil and argue that understanding affective temporality in its relation to evil opens up new possibilities of its concrete, situated alleviation. If evil qua suffering is a language that can be studied and understood, our moral indifference becomes increasingly less justifiable. Ultimately, I submit that failing to exercise our agency in the face of the concrete suffering of others means allowing their torment to continue uninterrupted, thus forming the juxtaposition of moral action and complicity

Effective Strategies to Reduce Employee Turnover at U.S. Higher Education Institutions

Employee intent to leave the organization has the potential for adverse business outcomes. Business owners are concerned with employee intent to leave, as it is the number one predictor of actual employee turnover. Grounded in transformational leadership theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore strategies higher education institution (HEI) leaders use to minimize employees’ intent to leave. The participants were six leaders of two HEI sector organizations who minimized employee intent to leave. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and a review of organization employee handbooks. Through thematic analysis, three themes were identified: (a) positive workplace culture characterized by transparent and efficient communication, (b) implementation of a salary and benefits strategy that incorporates rewards and recognition, and (c) promotion of employee empowerment through training and opportunities for personal growth. A key recommendation is for HEI leaders to implement a positive workplace culture through effective communication and monthly employee recognition activities. The implications for positive social change include the potential to retain valued employees, foster good social development, and support the local community workforce

Slave Mentality: The Bane of Development in Africa

This paper conceptualizes slave mentality as an attitudinal disposition characterized by general vulnerability to external influence by things or people, dependence, and lack of intrinsic motivation. It identified power, wealth, and foreign allure and cosset as the major attitude values among African leaders. It viewed development as a universal concept with milieu relativity, and by using the cognitive behavioural paradigm, explains the relationship between this attitudinal disposition and under development in Africa. It concludes that Africa can only develop if and only if her leaders are healed of this mentality. Key Words: Slave; Mentality; Attitude; Development, Foreign Allure, African Leaders

The Imposter Phenomenon among Emerging Adults Transitioning into Professional Life: Developing A Grounded Theory

This study qualitatively explored the imposter phenomenon among 29 emerging adults who were transitioning into professional life. A grounded theory was developed that described the imposter phenomenon, internal and external contributing factors, and its impact in terms of performance and affective reactions. Implications for counselors of emerging adults are discussed

Representations of leadership within a gender perspective among secondary school students

This work focuses on the analysis of the attitudes of young people towardsleadership with a view to gender, with the aim of investigating some culturalimplicits that can influence the future choices of students and which, preciselyfor this reason, must be taken into consideration in the educationalfield. In particular we decided to focus our attention on two dimensionsthat affect the construction of the image of leadership and which can constituteboth obstacles and driving forces in promoting female participation.On one hand we tried to analyse the stereotypes of leadership with a viewto gender, and on the other hand we looked into the awareness that younggirls and boys have concerning female participation in the labour market.We were particularly interested in understanding if and to what extent theconstruction of the image of leadership with a view to gender could be influenced by stereotypes and prejudices that lie behind the segregationmechanisms that lead to the glass ceiling phenomenon.Here we present the results of a survey which involved an initial explorativequalitative phase and a later stage of quantitative investigation involving almost1900 students enrolled in the last year of secondary school in Italy (inthe provinces of Bologna and Rimini). These young males and females weredelivered a multi-purpose questionnaire including a series of questions onthe image of leadership with a view to gender, among perceptions, experiencesand future projections

Hannah Arendt Meets QAnon: Conspiracy, Ideology, and the Collapse of Common Sense

A June 2020 survey found one in four Americans agreeing that “powerful people intentionally planned the coronavirus outbreak.” In fall 2020, seven percent said they believe the elaborate and grotesque mythology of QAnon; another eleven percent were unsure whether they believe it. November and December 2020 found tens of millions of Americans believing in election-theft plots that would require superhuman levels of coordination and secrecy among dozens, perhaps hundreds, of otherwise-unconnected and unidentified miscreants. Conspiracy theories are nothing new, and they raise a question that preoccupied Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism: whatever happened to common sense? Arendt analyzed both conspiracy theories and totalitarian ideologies; in both, she argued, common sense was replaced by “supersense” – her name for all-encompassing Theories of Everything that trace surface political events back to hidden causes. Refuting fake facts doesn’t help, she warned, because “if everyone always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes anything at all anymore.” The result, she warns, is a dangerous mix of gullibility and cynicism. My aim in this paper is threefold: to explain Arendt’s arguments, to explore their contemporary relevance, and to examine their consequences through the lens of virtue epistemology (the study of intellectual virtues and vices and their relation to reliable knowledge). In a section on “the epistemology of bullshit” I use virtue epistemologists’ concepts of epistemic malevolence and epistemic insouciance to examine the production, distribution, and consumption of bullshit, and to define a vice I call culpable credulousness. The final sections discuss the collapse of moral common sense that led multitudes to believe that mass murder can be justified. Arendt sometimes wrote as though morality had mysteriously turned upside-down, replacing “Thou shalt not kill” with “Thou shalt kill.” I argue that this need not be so: the moral principle of justifiable self-defense, applied to fake facts about existential threats, can explain the behavior. Even so, Arendt powerfully analyzes the ways that rules of moral common sense fail in a society where factual common sense has lost its validity