Paraguay As a Holy Land: From the Guarani Indians to Reverend Sun Myung Moon

The author details the history of the various groups that settled in Paraguay, including Jesuits, Mennonites, and European refugees. He also discusses the rule of President Francisco Solano Lopez

Battle for Dominion Over Time: War of the Calendars in Thailand

My annual January “get out of cold New York City” vacation was effectively ruined in the lounge of the Unification Theological Seminary. Shortly before I left for Thailand at the end of December 2016 I was describing my plans for a month in sunny Thailand when a student said “Oh, you’ll be in Bangkok for New Year’s. That should be wild!” Another student chimed in “And the Chinese New Year’s too!” “Double the fun and double the pleasure,” I responded, and everyone laughed. The comment that ruined my vacation and turned it from a month of cheap red wine, beaches, exotic food, and maybe a body-sized tattoo into a month of research, writing, note-taking, and eventually a 15,000-word essay with footnotes for the Journal of Unification Studies, came from one of the new members of the Unification movement. Like most new converts, every law, rule, and even suggestion is scrupulously observed. “You’ll also be there for God’s Day.” There was a pause, and I said, “I never heard of that holiday; what is it?” So was my fun-filled month in decadent Thailand transformed into a month-long voyage of research that ended with the article you are now reading. The major premise of this paper is that a calendar is an essential instrument for uniting members of a religious group. A unique calendar firmly anchors a religious group in time, provides a distinct history and predicts a glorious future, distinguishes them from other groups; provides them with a temporal structure for their daily lives; celebrates their ancient founders, heroes, and leaders; and orients them to specific geographical locations. This paper will roughly follow my one-month (January 2017) tour of Thailand and the various calendars I encountered there during my travels. My thesis is that while calendars are ideally essential instruments in uniting followers into a distinct people, in that nation the various calendars employed by its diverse religious groups have become instruments of division, conflict, and even warfare that risk tearing the country apart

How New York City Invented the Holiday Season: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Global Holiday

Jesus may have been born in Bethlehem, but it was the city of New York that transformed the traditional day of his birth, December 25, into a national and eventually global holiday season. The evolution of the Christian religious holiday of Jesus’ birth into a secular global holiday that embraces all religions, cultures, and traditions is a unique example of the emergence of a global culture. Little did Clement Clarke Moore realize when he transferred the holiday of St. Nicholas from December 6 to the 25th, nor Macy’s Department Store when it organized its first Thanksgiving Day Parade, that they were crafting a secular mid-winter holiday that would one day be catapulted onto the global stage to become the planet’s first global holiday, an integral part of the human cultural patrimony. Yet, today, in the early decades of the 21st century, this first global holiday is under siege from all sides and may not long endure. This article will trace this evolution through eight major periods: 1) The establishment of the Christmas holiday in the early churches and the controversies surrounding the holiday during the Protestant Reformation, 2) The Great New York City Christmas War, 3) The emergence of the need for a unifying secular national holiday during the early American Republic and Civil War, 4) The engineering of the “Holiday Season” stretching from Thanksgiving to New Years’ by commercial and marketing interests, 5) The entertainment, food, and fun industries give a hand, 6) The inclusion of non-Christian holidays into the Holiday Season, 7) The globalization of the Holiday Season, and finally, 8) The tinsel covered Trojan Reindeer: the anti-Holiday Season backlash

Questionnaire and projective measures of the relationship between irrational beliefs and self-esteem

The theories of Albert Ellis, known as Rational Emotive Therapy have been tested by means of correlations of measures of Irrational beliefs (measured by a modified Jones questionnaire) with measures of self-esteem tested by the Rosenberg questionnaire. In addition Projective methods were used, to detect the patterns of Irrational beliefs by more covert methods. The Incomplete Sentence Technique, and the Thematic Apperception Technique of Murray were used. A cross correlation of the Rosenberg, Incomplete Sentences and Thematic Apperception Test material was used for a self-esteem measure, extracted from the protocols of the last two measures. A pattern of correlations was found with convergent validity showing a correlation between high levels of Irrational beliefs and low levels of self-esteem, most strongly for 'need for approval'. The scores from the Thematic Apperception Test cards were analysed to find out which cards were most powerful in detecting the relationship between irrational beliefs and self-esteem. Questionnaire methods were convergently valid, and the projective methods were convergently valid to some extent, but without agreement between the two alternative forms of measurement, although some intercorrelation was found

Augmented Reality Tower Technology Assessment

Augmented Reality technology may help improve Air Traffic Control Tower efficiency and safety during low-visibility conditions. This paper presents the assessments of five off-duty controllers who shadow-controlled' with an augmented reality prototype in their own facility. Initial studies indicated unanimous agreement that this technology is potentially beneficial, though the prototype used in the study was not adequate for operational use. Some controllers agreed that augmented reality technology improved situational awareness, had potential to benefit clearance, control, and coordination tasks and duties and could be very useful for acquiring aircraft and weather information, particularly aircraft location, heading, and identification. The strongest objections to the prototype used in this study were directed at aircraft registration errors, unacceptable optical transparency, insufficient display performance in sunlight, inadequate representation of the static environment and insufficient symbology

Detecting outliers when fitting data with nonlinear regression – a new method based on robust nonlinear regression and the false discovery rate

BACKGROUND: Nonlinear regression, like linear regression, assumes that the scatter of data around the ideal curve follows a Gaussian or normal distribution. This assumption leads to the familiar goal of regression: to minimize the sum of the squares of the vertical or Y-value distances between the points and the curve. Outliers can dominate the sum-of-the-squares calculation, and lead to misleading results. However, we know of no practical method for routinely identifying outliers when fitting curves with nonlinear regression. RESULTS: We describe a new method for identifying outliers when fitting data with nonlinear regression. We first fit the data using a robust form of nonlinear regression, based on the assumption that scatter follows a Lorentzian distribution. We devised a new adaptive method that gradually becomes more robust as the method proceeds. To define outliers, we adapted the false discovery rate approach to handling multiple comparisons. We then remove the outliers, and analyze the data using ordinary least-squares regression. Because the method combines robust regression and outlier removal, we call it the ROUT method. When analyzing simulated data, where all scatter is Gaussian, our method detects (falsely) one or more outlier in only about 1–3% of experiments. When analyzing data contaminated with one or several outliers, the ROUT method performs well at outlier identification, with an average False Discovery Rate less than 1%. CONCLUSION: Our method, which combines a new method of robust nonlinear regression with a new method of outlier identification, identifies outliers from nonlinear curve fits with reasonable power and few false positives

The Use of Low-Calorie Sweeteners by Children: Implications for Weight Management123

The rise in pediatric obesity since the 1970s has been well established in the United States and is becoming a major concern worldwide. As a potential means to help slow the obesity epidemic, low-calorie sweeteners (LCS) have gained attention as dietary tools to assist in adherence to weight loss plans or prevention of excess weight gain. Observational studies tend to show positive correlations between LCS consumption and weight gain in children and adolescents. Although the data are intriguing, these epidemiologic studies do not establish that LCS cause weight gain, because there are likely many lifestyle and genetic differences between children and families who choose to consume LCS and those who do not. Short-term randomized controlled trials have shown LCS use to be BMI neutral or to have modest weight-reducing effects in overweight and obese adolescents. The long-term effects of LCS in children and adolescents are unknown. Some compelling research is currently underway and may provide needed insight into the potential role of LCS in weight management. The paucity of data regarding the effects of LCS use in children and adolescents creates challenges in decision-making for health care providers and parents