Science in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll's Alice, who first explores Wonderland (1865) and later on the country behind the Looking-Glass (1872), belongs to the most well-known characters in world literature. [...] The scientific reception of Carroll's stories – concerning physics as well as the humanities – has taken place on different levels. On the one hand, […] various Carrollian ideas and episodes obviously correspond to topics, subjects and models that are treated in the contexts of scientific discourses. Therefore, they can be quoted or alluded to in order to represent theories and questions […] – as […] physical models of the world […]or theoretical models of language and communication. […] On a more abstract level of observation, Carroll's stories have been used in order to explain and to discuss the pre-conditions, the procedures, and the limits . of scientific modeling as such. Above all, they make it possible to narrate on the problem of defining and observing an 'object' of research. […] According to Deleuze, the paradox structures of the world that Alice experiences give an idea of all meaning being groundless and all logic being subverted by the illogical. Finally, besides all affinities of Alice's adventures to scientific attempts to explain the world, the absolutely incomprehensible is present in Carroll's books as well. Especially the self proves to be something profoundly incomprehensible […]

Myth and history in Commonwealth literature

The author's interest in Commonwealth Literature is grounded in a concern about the place of English in post-colonial Malta. The writing of those who have been, like the Maltese, through the process of renegotiating their identity through and beyond Independence is of particular interest to our students. In addition, the fact that the author teaches English Colonial, Australian and African Literature within the Department of English has shown her how quick Maltese students are to grasp different aspects of identity construction in the work of these writers. An exploration of myth and history in Commonwealth Literature showed that the traditional European opposition between mythological thought and historic vision was untenable vis-a-vis the writer's practice in Africa, Australia and other Commonwealth countries. Writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Wole Soyinka, Patrick White and Randolph Stow often show a mythopoeic sensibility as well as political consciousness. Such writers utilise myth but do not allow their novels to move outside a time referent. They project indigenous religions with their gods and rituals but remain grounded in their society's actual situation, which they are fully committed to ameliorate.peer-reviewe

Manipulative techniques in political election campaign advertising: experience of Ukraine (Маніпулятивні прийоми у політичній передвиборчій рекламі: досвід України)

The article embraces the scope of the techniques used in manipulation of public opinion by candidates in the election process of Ukraine during the period of 2004-2012. The main focus is on the political election campaign advertising, revealing its meaning as communicative activity and as a process that mostly always is accompanied by the use of manipulative techniques. Based on the author's analysis of election campaigns and works of Ukrainian scholars, there were also determined manipulative methods and techniques that were most actively used during the last election cycles (У статті розкрито особливості використання прийомів маніпуляції суспільною свідомістю суб’єктами виборчих процесів в Україні у 2004-2012 рр. Основна увагу зосереджено на політичній передвиборчій рекламі; розкривається її зміст як комунікативної діяльності та процесу, який фактично завжди супроводжується використанням маніпулятивних технологій. На основі авторського аналізу виборчих кампаній та праць українських вчених, визначено маніпулятивні методики та прийоми, які найактивніше використовувалися під час останніх виборчих циклів

Guidelines for Teaching Object Orientation with Java

How to best teach object orientation to first year students is currently a topic of much debate. One of the tools suggested to aid in this task is BlueJ, an integrated development environment specifically designed for teaching. BlueJ supports a unique style of introduction of OO concepts. In this paper we discuss a set of problems with OO teaching, present some guidelines for better course design and show how BlueJ can be used to make significant improvements to introductory OO courses. We end by esenting a description of a possible project sequence using this teaching approach

Living as if God exists: Looking for Common Ground in Times of Radical Pluralism

This paper offers some comments on some metaphysical and epistemological claims of theological realism from the perspective of continental philosophy of religion, thereby taking the work of Soskice and Hick as paradigmatic for this kind of philosophical theology. The first comment regards the fact that theological realism considers religious and theological propositions as ways to depict or represent reality, and hence aims to bring them as much as possible in line with scientific ones. Some contemporary French philosophers criticize such a representing, depicting knowledge of God, because it encapsulates the divine reality in mundane, specifically scientific categories. eventually, theological realism runs the risk of annihilating God’s radical transcendence and reducing religion to an alternative scientific theory. The second comment tries to explore whether one can affirm God’s reality from a practical perspective, as a postulate of reason, and whether such an approach could serve as a common ground for religious and secular ways of life in times of radical pluralism. This comment begins by investigating the regulative character of Kant’s idea of God as the highest idea of reason, which not only orientates our theoretical enquiries, but also our moral actions. Although this idea is only a heuristic fiction for theoretical reason, God’s existence has to be affirmed on practical grounds, as a symbolic reality that gives orientation to people’s lives

Analyzing Media Representations of Male Rape and Debunking Myths on \u27Law and Order Special Victims Unit\u27

The project that I have done shows the importance of recognizing that male rape does exist and that it is more frequent than people think. By using Law and Order Special Victims Unit I am able to portray how myths about male rape are debunked and how the show creates new ways of thinking about male rape. Little research has been conducted about male rape and what we do know comes from the myths that are created in society and reinforced by false representations in the media. The research also concludes that we need more research to fully understand the prevalence and effects of male rape. I conducted a content and media of analysis of three episodes of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, in which the main focus was male rape by women. I have found that Law and Order Special Victims Unit fully represents the arguments surrounding male rape as well as the emotions that go into these discussions. In addition, this television show highlights the fact that these myths about male rape influence the way the police and judicial system interact with male victims and handle male rape cases. The literature that I have read about male rape and in the episodes that I have analyze have also shown me that the way the police and judicial system handles male victims influences the way victims talk to the police or decide to press charges against their attackers. The analysis of Law and Order Special Victims Unit in combination with the literature that I have read shows that male rape does not only happens in prisons or is committed by gay males

Polytheism and the Euthyphro

In this reading of the Euthyphro, Socrates and Euthyphro are seen less in a primordial conflict between reason and devotion, than as sincere Hellenic polytheists engaged in an inquiry based upon a common intuition that, in addition to the irreducible agency of the Gods, there is also some irreducible intelligible content to holiness. This reading is supported by the fact that Euthyphro does not claim the authority of revelation for his decision to prosecute his father, but rather submits it to elenchus, and that Euthyphro does not embrace the ‘solution’ of theological voluntarism when Socrates explicitly offers it. Since the goal of this inquiry is neither to eliminate the noetic content of the holy, nor to eliminate the Gods’ agency, the purpose of the elenchus becomes the effort to articulate the results of this productive tension between the Gods and the intelligible on the several planes of Being implied by each conception of the holy which is successively taken up and dialectically overturned to yield the conception appropriate to the next higher plane, a style of interpretation characteristic of the ancient Neoplatonists