The Memory of a Nation: How Spanish Political Parties and Their Electoral Manifestos Address Historical Memory

After years of silence, the last two decades have seen Spain begin to seriously confront its own historical memory for the first time since its transition to democracy. This text aims to deconstruct the ways that Spanish political parties address historical memory and what memories they choose to address. This is accomplished by using data gathered from all major national parties’ political manifestos from 2000 to present. Manifestos, as demonstrations of political rhetoric and popular opinion, give us a valuable insight to the ways that parties and Spanish society as a whole approach historical memory. The data gathered shows foremost the amount of content within a manifesto a party dedicates to historical memory over time, as well as what specific issues parties and ideological groups tend to focus on. Ultimately, analysis shows that virtually all parties and ideological groups have enormously increased the content they dedicate to the topic. However, this comes in the forms of very differing viewpoints and addressing entirely different histories and past events

AGATHOS IN MICHELANGELO’S SISTINE CEILING

Michelangelo’s design of the Sistine Chapel ceiling is examined from the sense of this new journal Agathos. The paper demonstrates to the modern world the point of view, the confidence, of the Christian humanism of the Renaissance. With agathos, that combination of noble and beautiful goodness, we ascend to the overarching realms Michelangelo depicts. We look at the architectural structure, the disegno, as a Jacob’s ladder that returns us to our rightful place, the home that we forgot when we descended to the world into which we were born. Michelangelo makes our origins apparent, shows us that we are scion of the great ancestors of Christ. Through the beauty of the design we are lead to the goodness that is our true place in the universe. Michelangelo then allows our spirit to return home and in that returning to properly view our place in the divine order

Plant canopy shape and the influences on UV exposures to the canopy

The solar spectra at selected sites over hemispherical, conical and pinnacle plant canopy models has been evaluated with a dosimetric technique. The irradiance at the sites varies by up to a factor of 0.31 compared to the irradiance on a horizontal plane. The biologically effective (UVBE) exposures evaluated with the dosimetric technique at sites over the plant canopy are up to 19% of that on a horizontal plane. Compared to a spectroradiometer, the technique provides a more practicable method of measuring the UVBE exposures at multiple sites over a plant canopy. Usage of a dosimeter at one site to provide the exposures at that site for different sun angles introduces an error of more than 50%. Knowledge of the spectra allowed the UV and UVBE exposures to be calculated at each site along with the exposures to the entire canopies. These were dependent on the sun angle and the canopy shape. For plant damage, the UVBE was a maximum of about 1.4 mJ cm-2/min. Compared to the hemispherical canopy, the UVBE exposure for generalised plant damage was 45% less for the pinnacle canopy and 23% less for the conical canopy. The canopy exposures could not be determined from measurements of the ambient exposure