Nietzsche and the Politics of Suffering

Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of the West is just as poignant now as it was at the time of his writing. Arguably, his commentary on nihilism, decadence and the last men are of special interest, because of the ways in which we currently see his predictions as they function in the modem world. Nietzsche challenges us throughout his work to respond to the claim of the madman in “The Parable of the Madman” - what have we done to make ourselves worthy of the death of God? For Nietzsche, the idiosyncratic niceties of modem society are just residuum of the herd morality; and if man was truly desirous of returning to excellence, he would appropriate Nietzsche’s philosophy and embrace the tragic age. Nietzsche’s secular case for suffering presents a worldview underpinned by violence. Emphasizing the tragic man as the excellent, Nietzsche is demonstrating to readers that, in a truly revalued society, nothing that necessitates respect for concepts like equality and dignity. Instead, Nietzsche takes a drastically different approach to the “problem” of modern man, advocating for those things which would remove structures of comfort and necessitate suffering. In this way, suffering is a vehicle for both knowledge and greatness. To the extent we want great culture, Nietzsche argues, we must accept great suffering. Concerning liberalism in the modernized, and secularized, world, Nietzsche’s views are telling. Once we have placed ourselves on the same level as Nietzsche regarding rejection of universal morality, what justifications do we have to reject his desire for suffering, in favor of our own comfort and decadence? It is this question that this paper will seek to address, focusing on Nietzsche’s views on suffering and rejection of universal standards

The Macerata Shooting: Digital Movements of Opinion in the Hybrid Media System

The role of Twitter in the organisation of political action – either by supporting existing street-level protests or native digital mobilizations – has attracted a great deal of attention. However, the wider media, political, and cultural context in which mobilizations take place is often overlooked. In this article, we analyse the trajectory of a digital movement of opinion that reacted to the shooting of black people by a right-wing militant in the Italian town of Macerata in 2018. Using a dataset of 571,996 tweets captured over 31 days, and employing a mix of machine learning, network analysis and qualitative investigation, we study how factors both external and internal to the platform sealed the fate of that movement. We maintain that the permeability of Twitter to outer divided arenas and its re-intermediation by political leaders are key to the transformation of protest movements into polarised crowds

The Macerata Shooting: Digital Movements of Opinion in the Hybrid Media System

The role of Twitter in the organisation of political action – either by supporting existing street-level protests or native digital mobilizations – has attracted a great deal of attention. However, the wider media, political, and cultural context in which mobilizations take place is often overlooked. In this article, we analyse the trajectory of a digital movement of opinion that reacted to the shooting of black people by a right-wing militant in the Italian town of Macerata in 2018. Using a dataset of 571,996 tweets captured over 31 days, and employing a mix of machine learning, network analysis and qualitative investigation, we study how factors both external and internal to the platform sealed the fate of that movement. We maintain that the permeability of Twitter to outer divided arenas and its re-intermediation by political leaders are key to the transformation of protest movements into polarised crowds

Time domain characteristics of human force control in rejection of transient disturbances during movement

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 76-77).Many tasks that humans successfully complete are more naturally represented in terms of their force requirements than their state (position or velocity) requirements. Yet the literature on force and timing is relatively underrepresented. This work was an attempt to clarify whether feedforward and/or feedback force control mechanisms might be available in human motor control. Subjects were trained and tested rejecting simple square pulse disturbance forces perpendicular to concurrent reaching movements. The data was analyzed with the goals of both verifying the feasibility of a proposed control model, and then clarifying the capabilities, limitations and properties of such a controller.by Erin Maneri.S.M

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CORNEAL DISEASES IN AYURVEDA

Cornea is a transparent anterior one-sixth outer fibrous coat of the eye ball which is called Krishna mandala in Ayurveda, resembles a watch-glass in the wrist watch. The diseases of Cornea are due to damage to the Cornea by various causative factors that result in loss of transparency of the Cornea and progress into different stages of disease condition. These different stages of corneal diseases stand a major role in classification of corneal diseases in Ayurveda, i.e; Krishnagata Rogas. Out of total 76 eye diseases mentioned by Sushruta, he had enumerated Krishnagata Netra Roga as 4 in number. Vagbhata had enumerated total eye diseases as 94 among them 5 types of Krishnagata Netra Roga. A comprehensive literary study of assorted text books of Ancient Medicine in view of analogy between Allopathic corneal disorders and Ayurvedic Krishnagata Roga. The purpose of this comprehensive study is paralleling of corneal diseases in both the systems of medicine. The academic Ayurvedic manuscripts had ordered the corneal ailments in a serial and accelerating manner in which one condition will lead to next reciprocal stage of the disease. In a complimentary manner, an attentive effort has been executed to parallel the corneal ailments in both the Systems of Medicine. For the comparison of corneal disorders in both the systems of medicine, the clinical symptoms, advancement of disease, prognostic causes, and management have been considered

A comparative analysis of the keyword multicultural(ism) in French, British, German and Italian migration discourse

This chapter looks into discourses about migration in four European countries through the lens of cultural keywords (cf. Williams 1983; Bennett et al. 2005; Wierzbicka 1997); using Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis, it compares the use of the keywords multicultural and multiculturalism. The study is based on corpora from British, French, German and Italian newspaper articles covering the time span 1998-2012, collated from one conservative and one left-liberal national newspaper in each language. Across the languages, the results show that the adjective multicultural is mostly descriptive of a state of affairs, typically without negative evaluation, and that the noun multiculturalism is associated with abstract concepts and points to a more negative discourse prosody, indicated by collocates such as ‘failure’

The emergence, uses and impacts of narratives on migration:State of the art

This Working Paper provides an overview of social science literature on narratives, with a particular focus on narratives on migration (MiNa). The paper starts by tracing the emergence of the concept of narratives in a range of social sciences (sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology and media studies), and then outlines a working definition of the concept for use in the BRIDGES project. We then map key literature about the emergence and sources of narratives; their psychological, social and political functions; and the factors influencing their spread and prevalence. We go on to explore how the concept has been applied to understand the dynamics of mobility, displacement, integration, public attitudes and political mobilisation in migration studies. We examine some of the key themes of the literature in relation to gender, a key dimension of the BRIDGES project, and then set out a number of trends that might be expected to shape the content and diffusion of narratives

Subcooled Boiling Near a Heated Wall

Experimental measurements of void fraction, bubble frequency, and velocity are obtained in subcooled R-134a flowing over a heated flat plate near an unheated wall and compared to analytical predictions. The measurements were obtained for a fixed system pressure and mass flow rate (P = 2.4 MPa and w = 106 kg/hr) at various inlet liquid temperatures. During the experiments, electrical power was applied at a constant rate to one side of the test section. The local void fraction data, acquired with a hot-film anemometer probe, showed the existence of a significant peak near the heated wall and a smaller secondary peak near the unheated wall for the larger inlet subcoolings. Local vapor velocity data, taken with the hot-film probe and a laser Doppler velocimeter, showed broad maxima near the centerline between the heated and unheated plates. Significant temperature gradients near the heated wall were observed for large inlet subcooling. Bubble size data, inferred from measurements of void fraction, bubble frequency and vapor velocity, when combined with the measured bubble chord length distributions illustrate the transition from pure three dimensional spherical to two-dimensional planar bubble flow, the latter being initiated when the bubbles fill the gap between the plates. These various two-phase flow measurements were used for development of a multidimensional, four-field calculational method; comparisons of the data to the calculations show reasonable agreement

Fate of rising methane bubbles in stratified waters: How much methane reaches the atmosphere?

There is growing concern about the transfer of methane originating from water bodies to the atmosphere. Methane from sediments can reach the atmosphere directly via bubbles or indirectly via vertical turbulent transport. This work quantifies methane gas bubble dissolution using a combination of bubble modeling and acoustic observations of rising bubbles to determine what fraction of the methane transported by bubbles will reach the atmosphere. The bubble model predicts the evolving bubble size, gas composition, and rise distance and is suitable for almost all aquatic environments. The model was validated using methane and argon bubble dissolution measurements obtained from the literature for deep, oxic, saline water with excellent results. Methane bubbles from within the hydrate stability zone (typically below ∼500 m water depth in the ocean) are believed to form an outer hydrate rim. To explain the subsequent slow dissolution, a model calibration was performed using bubble dissolution data from the literature measured within the hydrate stability zone. The calibrated model explains the impressively tall flares (>1300 m) observed in the hydrate stability zone of the Black Sea. This study suggests that only a small amount of methane reaches the surface at active seep sites in the Black Sea, and this only from very shallow water areas (<100 m). Clearly, the Black Sea and the ocean are rather effective barriers against the transfer of bubble methane to the atmosphere, although substantial amounts of methane may reach the surface in shallow lakes and reservoirs