#but the big 3 is something that cannot be replaced and replicated no matter how many star players pop up

[rafasbiscuits]

I hope no one ever breaks their record for anything <3

there will be nothing like the big 3 ever again and i hope it stays that way actually

[nezumiismissing]

Authoritarianism Without Leadership and the Formation of Spatial Identity

I think at this point I have probably brought this up in every single one of my analyses, so it’s about time that this topic gets its own breakdown in a full length post (or 2 or 3). There’s a lot to cover and it’s going to get way out there, but hopefully you can find something useful here. And if not, maybe it can at least be entertaining. More exploration of this topic to come at an unspecified time after the convention when my brain decides to enter the No.6 zone again. (and yes it is over 3000 words so, you know, plan for that)

So if you couldn’t tell, the No.6 anime does not have an antagonist, at least not in any traditional sense of the word. The opponent our characters are facing off against, it turns out, is not an evil scientist or an organization or a military, but instead it is the city and its systems that must be either destroyed or reformed by the end of the story. And while those other characters exist within the world of No.6, and all take actions that go directly against the desires of our main characters, they are not fought against especially directly and within the anime have no real identity, instead only existing as part of the whole. But what is the whole exactly? I think the easy answer here is to say that the whole is society, the culture we live within that shapes everything we do in life and that must have some amount of force placed upon it to change in any significant way. But when we say that “society is the whole”, and therefore the antagonist of No.6, what do we mean by that? And how does our perception and interpretation of what it means to be a society impact how we read and understand the story of No.6?

Now, having society be the antagonist of a young adult dystopian series is not something that No.6 came up with, obviously. It's basically a necessity of the genre. But within that structure, although not always apparent at first, there is a lot of variance. These worlds are almost always authoritarian and hierarchical, the result of some massive war or natural disaster that we have been unable to fully heal from, but outside of that, the way in which these worlds are built and understood are vastly different. Some are pretending to be utopias while others give us no image of what it means to be at the “top” and only show suffering. Some take place in over-crowded cities and others have sparse populations of people constantly searching for each other. There are social (and human) experiments, revolutions of all shapes and sizes, monsters and aliens and governments that are all in one way or another trying to reflect the very real events that are taking place in the real world in a way that is perhaps more comprehensible, or at least entertaining. Society as it currently exists is very much the antagonist of these stories, and at the center (and everywhere else) of a society are individual people making decisions that may or may not be good and may or may not have good intentions. So it is easy to see how, when it comes down to it, while society is implicitly understood to be the antagonist, most of these stories focus their energy on the removal of a tangible threat, usually a person or group of people who are determined to be “in charge” of the society and therefore responsible for much of the misery of a dystopia. The No.6 novels also fall into this group, as does the manga. But the No.6 anime, for whatever reason, decided to do something completely different, and something that is arguably much more terrifying.

From here on out I will just refer to the anime as No.6 and will specify if I am mentioning the novels/manga.

In No.6 things do not happen because someone says they need to happen, but they instead happen for…. what reason exactly? We see the mayor referenced briefly in the first episode, so we can assume that he is the one in charge of decision-making, but he makes no actual appearances. The military is clearly shown demolishing the West Block, but who is giving orders? Who is watching over the scientists at the Correctional Facility? Deciding where the wall will expand next if at all? In most stories you would see questions like these answered either near the beginning of the story or revealed at the end, and if it's neither of those then they’ll probably still show up at some point in the middle. But in No.6 there is none of that. There is no one or no group clearly “in charge” of what is happening at any time in regards to the city and its surroundings. Instead, it seems, the city has reached a point in which the details of how these things are occurring are unimportant, and that for the most part, things will unfold with or without the input of an individual or group. The implication of this being that No.6 is somehow separate from its people and government, and is, in a sense, alive.

I think this is largely why the anime is able to be so effective, despite its many other issues. On a surface level, the story lacks any kind of antagonist, making it unclear where exactly it's going. But the existence of the city as an independent entity fills in these odd gaps, creating the image of a society that has, quite literally, lost control of itself. It also makes more concrete the theme of “society vs nature” that is kind of hinted at for most of the story and then kind of shoved in your face at the end with Elyurias and Nezumi’s backstory. But with Elyurias being the physical embodiment of nature, what exactly is it that she is opposing? But before we get into that, some framing and questions (or maybe just one very big question).

What does it mean for a city to be “alive”? Not in the sense that things are happening in it and people are living there, but in the sense that it thinks and feels on its own and makes choices about itself that are not the direct result of human or other external input? Clearly people were responsible for its creation, and took care to create systems that would hold it together. But those systems were not created for the city itself, but rather the survival of the people living within it, with the city and society simply being a result of our need to be social. The city, if we are to see it as a living thing, doesn’t really gain anything from this arrangement so long as we are in control of it, and so will seek out ways to separate itself from us. It does need us to continue existing, however, and so it can’t truly create anything new on its own, and will instead make use of what we have already created. It will warp itself in unexpected ways, or cement systems that otherwise would change or disappear over time, so that it will better serve itself and maintain continuity while still appearing as though run by people. Different people will have varying amounts of control over how this all unfolds, but at a certain point there will be things that can no longer be changed through “traditional” means, at which point people will have to create and impose systems on a large scale that do not fit into the current form the city is in. And this is the point at which No.6 finds itself.

Now, there is a lot of my thinking that I’m skipping over here, especially in regards to how this applies to the real world and the implications that has, but for the purposes of No.6, this is a good starting point. The city that existed before No.6 was “killed”, restructured, and brought back to life as the result of a world war, and at the beginning of the story, we are already at a stage in which this new city has separated itself from its people and become a conscious entity. We see this process from a different perspective in the novels, with characters questioning how everything got to this point as they come to realize that the things they thought they were doing were never in their control in the first place, and that something else had made the city what it was. By omitting these characters entirely though, the anime makes their point clear, “it doesn’t matter who thinks they’re in charge of things, the city will function just fine with or without them”. I would argue that much of this is made possible through the advanced technology available in No.6, making it possible to automate systems in a way that keeps people entirely out of the process of dealing with massive amounts of vital information. You could probably even say that the “essence” of No.6, its identity as a sentient being, is mostly made up of these computerized systems and algorithms that determine everything about how a citizen will live their life.

This is, of course, similar to the way in which Elyurias is understood to operate, the main difference being that she is made up of natural, rather than man-made and technological systems. As sentient, omnipresent beings, they make use of small parts of their greater existence in order to convince different components to act in ways that are beneficial to their continued survival, reproduction, and expansion, with the survival of the individual components being far less of a concern as they are perceived as being easy to replace. Elyurias uses the parasitic bees to infinitely self-replicate, allowing her to endlessly alter and maintain the natural world as she sees fit. No.6, on the other hand, makes use of social and technological systems to convince its citizens to keep things as they are, or expand the limits of the city, or any number of other things it cannot do on its own, but are seen as crucial to its continued existence. Within the context of the story, there is no one person that needs to be “in control” of these actions, since the city is acting in what it sees as its own benefit, but it is also aware that in order to maintain itself, someone must appear in charge, and may even be influenced to believe that that is the case.

The problem with No.6, of course, arises from its desire to continue expanding while otherwise maintaining society as it currently exists. A static city is one that is destined to fall apart, or else have control returned to the people until a new form of stability can be achieved. So in order for No.6 to maintain its identity as an independent entity, it must change in other ways, and thus views expansion and increased complexity as a path forward. When it comes into contact with Elyurias as a result of this expansion though, it is clear that their goals as entities are incompatible and cannot occupy the same space. For Elyurias this necessitates the destruction of No.6, since the city has already been responsible for the damage and destruction of large areas of her “realm”, while No.6 sees her as an opportunity to improve its own systems through the assimilation of her powers into its “realm”. This assimilation, as the city sees it, both expands its power through the elimination and subsequent exploitation of a competing entity, as well as further automates its own processes through the combination of technological and natural systems. None of these benefits are seen by the citizens, of course, and in fact the result would instead be an almost complete removal of their free will, but for No.6’s purposes those effects are inconsequential so long as the people continue existing. 

This formatting can also be extrapolated to describe Shion and Nezumi’s roles and understanding of the world, which clearly play a much more prominent role in the outward text of the series. Shion has a difficult time understanding and accepting No.6’s absolute corruption not because he has no experience with the suffering it has caused or or the inherent problems with hierarchy. Clearly he has been subjected to both of those things quite early on in the series. Instead the issue arises from the fact that while Nezumi, who learned about Elyurias in his childhood and has an understanding of “sentient” non-human systems, Shion has no basis for comprehending this, and is therefore unable to see how No.6 could have become so awful without anyone noticing or intervening, and cannot understand the true nature of the issue without first passing it through the filter of human decision-making processes. Nezumi falls into this as well on several occasions when he claims that the citizens are the ones at fault for the city’s problems. But unlike Shion, this comes from a lack of understanding of the specific systems that make up the city and a need to have a concrete place of blame rather than a belief in complete human control over society. Through this lens, the story of the human characters of No.6 in the anime is one of coming to understand the nature of both human and non-human systems, where they may intersect and overlap, and then determining how change can be brought about when we do not have control, or even meaningful access, to those systems.

So when a city has separated itself from its citizens, when it has become functionally “alive” and begins to behave in ways that no longer benefit or sustain our conception of humanity, what can be done to regain control? Can a city that has become independent be brought back under human control, or must it be destroyed and rebuilt, its structure completely altered so that little if any of what was originally there remains intact? The answer that No.6 seems to give is much more in line with the latter idea (at least in this fictional instance). Because of No.6’s rapid development, there was never a chance for people to fully grasp what they were really doing, and if anyone did realize what had happened, it was far too late to alter the city in a way that took away its power. The city is authoritarian to the point of self-inflicted genocide in an instance of internal social destabilization, and the faulty addition of Elyurias’ power makes this self-destruction incredibly easy. The fact that her assimilation into No.6’s system is incomplete only exacerbates the issue, and is ultimately what leads to its destruction.

The destruction of the wall as a physical presence has any number of meanings, some of which I have written about before and others that I may or may not write about in the future. But within this reading of No.6 as “alive”, what stands out the most is the fact that what ultimately gave the city its independent status was its refusal to even interact with other systems. Its purpose, its role, as an entity was entirely one of self-preservation, born from the paranoia that inevitably followed the war responsible for its creation. By destroying the wall, and allowing people access to “others”, the city cannot remain isolated and reinforce a singular concept of society, therefore losing almost the entirety of its power over people. Without the wall, there is no No.6, and without No.6, people are once again free to build something new.

Just to bring this all back around to where we started, and maybe simplify all that down to something manageable, what does it mean to have an antagonist that is alive, but not human or otherwise sentient in a way that we understand? In No.6’s case, I don’t think it is enough to say that society is the problem, or that by removing a government and installing new leadership, all of the problems can be solved. Unlike in the novels and manga, the anime does not even give us the second option, since there functionally is no government to oppose for the most part. Instead, we are given a city that people have not had influence over for a significant amount of time, one in which “society” is not a single thing shaped by the people that make it up, but is also a social system that is imposed upon people by a non-human force. No.6, as an entity, needs its citizens only to the extent that they are useful to it, namely as a mechanism for expansion and self-defense, but exists as such that the people living within it are completely reliant upon it in every aspect of their lives. Something so simple as putting someone else in the arbitrary position of “leadership” is meaningless when that person has no real power, and so in order to reclaim human control over the entirety of society, an inaccessible entity must be destroyed. In this sense, Nezumi is not wrong to say that No.6 needs to be destroyed completely, and is instead only misled as to what that actually means, mistaking the people living within the confines of the city for the city itself. The defining feature of the city, the wall, also acts as the source of its power and independence, and thus its destruction is functionally equivalent to its death, leaving behind only a loose collection of systems and beliefs that are no longer upheld in any physical or tangible way.

Society is made up of people, that is clear, but what is less obvious is that people are also made up of society. We can recognize that society impacts us and shapes who we are and how we think, but it is perhaps the case that to an even stronger degree, society is operating outside of our own individual or even collective input, and is, in a sense, self-sustaining. Rather than our own beliefs being imposed upon an ever-changing society, it is a preexisting society that imposes itself upon us, deciding when, how, and if things will change. It does change over time, and that of course is due to people’s existence within it, but what No.6 makes clear, to me at least, is that while people are unable to survive without the construction of a society, even if that society is destructive, the society at a certain point will no longer need people to maintain itself outside of the basic definition of its existence, and it is at that point that it becomes much more difficult, and dangerous, to change.

[eksbdan-blog]

New Post has been published on https://passingbynehushtan.com/2019/11/05/man-cross-sin-of-the-world-how-part-3/

How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World Through His Own Sacrifice? One way. Part 3. Preparation for Sacrifice.

This is an article in a series. Please see:

How Can a Person Die in a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World? Only One Way. Part 1.

How Can a Man Die for the Sins of the World By His Own Sacrifice? Only one way. Part 2. The Messianic Secret

The Preparation for Sacrifice: Our Messed Up Moral Theology

Well, first, why is a sacrifice for sin, and collectively for the world’s sin, even needed? What is this whole business in Judaism and Christianity about sin atonement through a sacrifice of a living thing that brings satisfaction with God and, in the Christian version, an ultimate kind, for a final sort of redemption?

You know, in this whole search for how the mega-Day of Atonement works, this is the most important starting out: to begin with, what is a sacrifice?

That’s easy.

It’s a token to God, a symbol of you. In the symbol, you are putting a replacement value for yourself, for which you need representation in a way that you could not do otherwise.

But why do you need a symbol for yourself given to God? Why cant he just look and see what you are without it?

He can and does, but without your attention to him, and only by his attention to you, this is the gazing of a creator on his creation but not the view of a creator on a creation that is himself a creator (hey, you know I could not edit that out!). A creator has free will, personal loves, and motivations, and a creator who is a creature has a vital interest in the judgment of and between propositions of reality for his survival. Therefore the position of the minor creator who is judged is of one who engages voluntarily in this his created function for his ultimate life and expression of love. The creature gives back to the Creator a token of his creators will for him, an expression that the Creator has claimed all space and things in it, even those that can deny Him.

If the sacrifice is of an animal, the animal, in an economy of a people who depend upon them for day-to-day existence, represents the highest non-human value. Its death in the sacrifice is your loss of carnal profit. To God, it is an expression of faith that He will accept your sincerity in placing him above people and things, and spiritual life above the highest carnal life.

So, you are saying in one symbol something about your belief in a higher existence. In that existence is both the conception of ultimate value and an idea of its future acquisition. The acquisition is by your sacrifice a returned value by God. But this is by the God who replaces your value expression of faith in Him through that sacrifice as your final intrinsic value. Your faith, so represented through this mediator, is what God accepts, to life, when that faith is equal to God.

It’s the most consequential, active, and sincere kind of communication to another person, not only because its to God. God is only an idea before this sacrifice. This sacrifice is to be the result of plumbing the depths of your soul, given to the highest imaginable person. The expression is by an expensive proof of the depth of that sincerity. This is your evidence that, to you, he not just an idea but a reality.

A few interesting things come out thinking of sacrifice like this.

1. This sacrificial picture is of you and your symbol,  a mediator between you and God.

2. Given to God is not you before his acceptance of you, its a better mediator of your particular faith in a Truth about him.

3. Given to you is not God in a sacrificial exchange, it’s the better mediator of a specific proprietary truth of God of which he places highest.

4. In the whole picture, the object of focus is not the act of sacrifice, the objects of sacrifice, or the two parties in communion through the sacrifice. It’s not about things. It’s about meanings, not things, objects, persons or ideas. We could only refer to the focus as a particular truth. Yes, a truth of persons, things, and ideas, but about what it is that those are to hold in which is placed the most significant value.

First Things First

I hope you can see things and persons are not important before any sacrifice is given and accepted, only after as your practical means to their understanding and access. Of first importance is not a goat, a priest, a “Law,” not you, not “God” or any idea. A mediator is not just a thing; its a meaning first and foremost. A goat is just a means of its carrying. But you have to have a particular goat. It cant be diseased, unclean, of the wrong sex. It has to show as a great value, and that value is not a general, voluntary, indistinct value to whoever is giving or accepting this sacrifice. Ultimate cost as not in things of carnal value and another name for spiritual value is a knowledge of it, not its discursive tokens. If we hold this truth dearly and tightly, it will prevent us from thinking that the worship of the idea of God is a substitute for the supreme valuation and instrumentality of an idea’s very spiritual and informative reason for being. Everything is about knowledge, information, not stuff. After you have that knowledge, then things, people and ideas can represent it, while never replacing it. They become only its means of access in consciousness.

Now, does not this principle of first-things-first in consideration of the meaning of the Christ on the Cross speak of a moral obligation before even trying to divine it? I say that we don’t understand the depth of first-things-first because of our abject immorality in refusing the essence of that principle. But it’s all about maintaining minimal honesty. I say that it is not honest, in so many ways that I will speak of here,  that Christ/Cross is not ultimately represented by “propitiation,” “death,” “love,” “mosaic Law fulfilled in a universal, “atonement,” “the burden of the sin of the World,” “murder,” “the intersection of God’s love and His justice,” “redemption, “persecution for righteousness,” “the redeeming benefits of his Passion and death” or any other current or historical after the 1st century. These are no meanings, they are the ideational symbols of meaning. Meaning is knowledge, information, and that is a very different thing. First-things-first and first is supposed to be about the specific biblical revelation which is going to be put for God himself long before we choose a few words to represent it.

I thought a lot about how to best illustrate this, that knowledge is first and it symbols second, especially with God. Let me just go with this.

James Tour is a synthetic chemist of renown. In a presentation about the impossibility of man creating life, a pretense that the Science has taken up as it intruded into metaphysics in the 20th century, he showed this slide:

Tour is saying that in the lab, the DNA and RNA code determines everything else. This is the means by which life looks and functions, not its matter. In the fantasy that science creates life in the lab, it is assumed that taking only one existing carbohydrate and copying existing DNA and RNA code, all by human intervention, is the creation of life. But the ugly truth is that when we do this it is by the intervention of intelligent beings. The replicate the origin of life it has to be untouched by people. You leave the right building blocks of life in a soup under a lamp, wait, and see what crawls out. But we cannot even get without human intervention one single carbohydrate, nucleic acid, lipid and protein, the basis for all cell life, let alone the code to run them in a cell. The upshot is that the cell may be our natural focus as a lifeform, but what is life ultimately is that DNA, which is a very abstract thing, and even more impossible, without which nothing lives a nanosecond. Even if the impossible happened, that a frog crawled out fo that soup, where did the DNA come from?

We look at Christ on the Cross, and we think “cell.” We as theologians are like scientists, who think that we can explain the whole of this mystery by using certain formulas and phrases which go only as far as revealing the external appearances of a theological cell and call it a sufficient reveal. We wickedly replicate Jesus on the Cross as “Jesus dying for our sins,” or “Jesus fulfilling the Jewish sacrificial Law,” or “Jesus showing his love for us by being our substitution before the wrath of God.” Perhaps “Jesus laying down his life for his friends.”  These are not life. These are ideas, cells, the possible containers and signposts of life, but not life itself, which is that biblical code, that knowledge, which makes the whole thing run in the first place.

And these are our fakes, our replacements for life, created examples which we hold up as truth so we can think of ourselves as having a handle and a part in the impossible. They make us feel big. But the ugly truth is that we can’t reproduce the cell of Jesus on the Cross, and I mean that not only in the sense that we can’t do it ourselves. We cant produce it because of the impossible distance we are from divine knowledge in which we can only show, never imitate out of our minds.

We can’t because that knowledge, that information, is far more important but even more impossible for us than the theological cell. The only thing we can do is, first, admitting that the code, the divine knowledge behind it, is first, and then admit that our place is only to show it and put it first as our impossible reason for being that came from God exclusively. The impossibility of a relationship with God is not because of cells, it’s because of knowledge, and our only duty is knowing, confessing, repenting and then showing it as God’s ultimate value, not only God’s cells.

Christ on the Cross is an ideational cell, but using ideas as the whole of their meaning makes it easy to say that its meaning is something like “propitiation for sin.” It looks sort of like life, like what Miller-Urey cooked up in the lab the ’50s called it life, but real life is something that happened without the taint of human hands by an impossible act of God alone. This is not to be some naive possession of faith. In the Bible, there is an even more remarkable objective demonstration of a singular divine source for spiritual life than DNA is of a cell. DNA is the ultimate mark of God in a biological entity. Shall we leave it out of a spiritual entity, or shall we hold it up before all of our expressions of faith are uttered?

Our Theology: Fixing or Breaking Humanity?

No matter your theory of soteriology, everyone pretty much agrees that what Jesus was doing up there on that pole was being the subject of a sacrifice to God for sin. I’ll get to this shortly, this necessary instrumentality of the sacrifice as a means of communication with God. But before I do, you know I’m going to give you a preview of where I’m going.

What people debate is the extent to which this understanding of the Christian sacrifice is primarily the appeasement of God’s wrath. The summing up all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:10). A ransom paid to or victory over Satan and satanic powers (Origen, Mark 10:45). Fixing of broken humanity. Of the punishment of Christ in our place. There are many others.  Most are a mixture of them, with one leading. But all attempts are to argue based on one against another, among the choices that historical scholarship has given us. To assume that we must take our alternatives from among the biblical interpreters after the apostles is, however, only safe if they are also offering us a more fundamental choice. They are not, because they don’t know what would be alternative other than some new and creative conclusion over biblical knowledge which speaks to our un-revelational bent. I’m asking if the more fundamental choice is not of a conclusion as the first value of the study, as important as it is, but the only possible biblical motivation that morally precipitates the survey from the outset.

Looking at the list of theories I just gave you, can you classify this as a whole? If you chose “conceptual” instead of “phenomenal,” then you are right. In the place of “phenomenal” could be factual, demonstrative, practice, informational, or that about knowledge instead of the mental symbols, the conclusions, used for their representation. Miraculous phenomena of scripture are entirely unstated or subordinate and only supportive of a particular way of thinking summarized and never self-contained in a theoretical idea.

It’s the opposite of revelation. In revelation, our theories are optional and can only be supportive of the content of the discussion, a vision of transcendent reality. Not formative of that reality.  That original appearance is what it is, and how we think about it is not to confused with that appearance but is only a means of its understanding. What happens when you forget this and start to believe your theories determine truth, reality, fact, their master? Do you realize how much blood spilled over creedal theology that places religious propositions as the faith itself? Not just physical blood, I’m talking about spiritual blood. When such things invite as much opacity and paradox and divisiveness as they may give in elucidation? We cry about the fragmentation and disunity of the church because we can’t bear to see it smaller when what is formative goes relegated only to a moment of antiquity.

One choice, theirs, is the biblical truth thought given understanding is because of true religious, philosophical propositions supported by their independent reasonability and biblical proof texts. They have made up their minds, correctly, that what the Bible is offering and the way it provides it in the form of revelation is the same as what they have determined is its ultimately revealed cognitive object. Still, they have also decided that this is an idea. God’s revelation gave us a notion, and we sort it out by a discussion of competing notions. Since these notions are the goal, they are the end and the greatest value in the knowledge within the biblical truth dialectic, they determine the kind and power of their derived biblical information. That, whatever you come up with, it ends in a superior idea, with the Bible brought only to serve it and give it such substance as to bring any sense of a theophany of God brought essentially by human hands and thoughts to human construction.

Our choice is that God is to be thought functional and productive not of ideas but appearances of himself by revealed miraculous information, not its symbols. It may just be that what we should be talking about is how the historical fact of the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is collectively the informational equivalent of God first, not a particular idea of God. Instead, an event divinely intended to orient and clear not our reason by rehashed ideas but our vision of transcendence by His intended device of display: a limited but powerful cognitive manifestation of himself. The knowledge of God is not a submissive puppy to our ideas about it but meant to stand in for God himself at the place in the mind which would otherwise turn toward itself.

This is not a description of our “apologetics.” Our apologetics involves all manner of argumentation for the truth of a religion, most of which are the same propositional logic and thinking. This is a description of Christian thought, which produces nothing more than what historical fact and prophetic fulfillment reveal about the mind of God and his Son. By which end-product is not ideas but the reality, power, and nature of his existence which form for us competent representative ideas,  ideas which can’t detach, become independent or superior in the mind to that appearance.

concept of biblical data toward the construction of a Christian thought over it

or

biblical phenomena of God’s knowledge to phenomena of his cognitive manifestation.

Why this latter is not defaulting is plain to see. To religious philosophies, this would be offensive. It seems to be a predetermination that the Bible is a supernatural revelation before a focused search, serious thought, and honest discussion. That serious search and discussion are to be that determinative exercise. Question: what kind of search and discussion over what essential biblical information? Of course, to presuppose such a thing that the Bible is a value before correct absorption is a great evil. But as great and destructive an evil is to presume that the Bible can’t support itself, which is the working presumption that no objective deity produced it and a particular revelation shows it.

Our divines and laypeople may believe that it is a supernatural document, but also that it’s not so easy to see without a finely milled and polished lens by some expert theological artisan, or from the naïve fever swamps of the emotions. That its lines of evidence may interpret in other ways that make it ambiguous without a lot of help by smart people, or else interpretation informs by how a person might feel that day and its ability to get him through the night.  These deny that an honest study of the material is possible and a true conclusion forthcoming outside of cultural or practical norms of thought and production. These reject a presupposition that the subject and biblical object in view is intrinsically prepared for the naivety and misunderstandings that come from hypocritical motivations. They deny that the object of revelation contains its own means of penetration into a subject that is sufficiently willing to receive it. They deny that the Bible has a theological “vital center.” They reject those ideas. The only divine things of an idiomatic and idiosyncratic possibility. Nothing, if not potentially Holy mental objects, can save us, sanctify us, and release us from the presence of sin.

Have They Seen the Miraculous in Scripture?

The reason we reject the truth that sits right before us is that by so doing, it restricts the quality and raises the number of the participants in the church by asserting a single, overarching biblical locus and most fundamental biblical ground: that God has appeared, in a biblical manner and with divine, otherwise impossible information that he intended to stand in his place to faith. Some don’t see it, so we have to give them something else so that they will believe. The problem is that there is no other kind of revelation suggested in the New Testament, as all that profess “faith” there either saw the Lord with their own eyes perform the miracles he did or they saw the same miracle through the historical fulfillment of the prophets.  Not my dreams, not by Anslem, not by the Host, not by baptism, not by tradition, not by reason and not by “penal substitution theory of atonement,” regardless of how accurate reflections of biblical truth they may be. But the world must bring in these choices, or else how small would be a church that had a faith that only God himself in a public miracle justifies a choice? A faith processed to holiness within a spirit open to anything that will show him the truth, which truth is God’s highest value? Not sermons, songs, works, “faith” as “trust” or any other definition that itself requires definition, programs, tithes, theology books, syllogisms, and religious propositions and creeds. What would the church then do except, meeting to meeting, give understanding into the mind of God through what the prophets said should come (Acts 26:22)?

Are the Church and its churchmen the successors to the apostles in any sense, or, spiritually, people of the world? This one thing we know, that, typically, if they have seen the miraculous in scripture, it is based on a rational or emotional persuasion after an accumulated moment of personal need or an easy decision after a long tradition.  Any prophetic miracle, if acknowledged at all, becomes only but a tool for persuading the hard-hearted who do not have a faith built primarily on common persuasion, but only on a superior divine construction. To would not be faith built on our modern opacities of emotion, reason or tradition, and must be pushed out at all costs either consciously or subconsciously.

It is easy to see that a concept is a construction, an entirely artificial and changeable mental object, and is not in the place of the progenitors of its existence and use, but is its child. Its child is its reality. No one sane presumes that he will form an idea, a settled view, of anything without first having exposure to what exists to necessitate it.  Christianity should not be in the business of persuading anyone who can’t see the miraculous in messianic prophecy, for example, and accept in its place of revelation the Christus Victor theory of atonement or “when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.” But that is the de facto Christian business as universally conceived.

Liberal/Conservative Sin

Everyone who is a conservative knows this, but they ignore it. Invested in the whole of the monolithic Christian establishment in increasing its numbers, but also while insisting, correctly, that “faith,” or some work in response, is indispensably emblematic of a genuine convert. The two are mutually exclusive. The church, in the conservative functional estimation, is in existence imitate only what only God can do. But a faith thought supernaturally generated is faith against God and in the miraculous abilities of humans if such a belief represents by such pedestrian proofs as  “I believe in Jesus,”  giving to the poor, or the “ransom theory,” your feelings or your dreams. Conservatives must wake up to the fact that their theology is a fool’s errand if their “faith” and “sacrament” grounds in statements and physical actions around propositional instead of demonstrated, revealed biblical truth. The proof of prophetic promise and its historical fulfillment. Their counter-revelational alternative will grow numbers but also make a mere chimera of a church.

The Christian kind of truth awakens faith only in the divinity of an unconstructed and original manifestation of God. A sacrament is the reflexive, original, and unconstructed animation of the body in exclusive response by its obvious implications. Everything else is sophistic at best. If there is one thing that the church is not in business for it is persuading someone that God appeared before them in scripture since you don’t persuade someone that your tire is flat of the Fuller-Brush salesman is standing before them on their doorstep  (I don’t think they make door-to-door visits anymore, but I’m thinking of my childhood and its a nostalgic choice.  Anything will do). If the appearance is by an objective scriptural display such persuasion not piety is by the persuader the presumptive putting of himself in place of God. Peter, in context, makes clear that to give everyone a “reason for the hope that is in you” is not a call to preach the Ontological Argument. Or Calvin, to take communion, to give money, to be nice, to implore the audience to accept his personally preferred argument for God, but to give everyone the prophets fulfilled predictions of the Son of God and its spiritual implications.

All that said, I have not given you my answer to what the image of Christ on the Cross means. It’s just to prepare you a little. I am sorry if I seem overly harsh, but this subject so amps me up emotionally, and this I dare not hide too much, or else you may miss what is at stake here.

Now, the liberal view of Christ’s sacrifice essentially is that, with a view of sin as against God because of our actions and attitudes against others, what God intends of an ultimate moral example is putting others before our neighbor. Sin is acting greedy, cruel, and prejudiced, from a heart which is the same.  To them, the whole of Jesus’ ministry was teaching the world how to be kind and compassionate for its moral education. It’s for those that may spend too much time pining away for objective spiritual objects and qualities that will give them something while neglecting those closer to home, in the here and now. To liberals, you deal with sin by taking the compassion of the Cross to gauge our consciences against its highest possible state of cleanliness, where the essence of the act lies entirely between one person and another. Both sin and the Sacrifice for it are here, “at hand,” and within our power. Sin is not loving your neighbor, and salvation is loving your neighbor by its most excellent example of Christ on the Cross.

To conservatives, though, Christ’s sacrifice is more than this. Sin is not just what we do. It’s who we are naturally, and it’s deep in a place where we can’t reach.  The sacrifice of Jesus was in itself propitiatory by virtue of the act itself, which set a bridge between our hopeless condition and God’s nature. Although the essences of sin and its solution are unseen, we have to believe that they are there. Whatever we do, we have to respect the distance between ourselves and their inviolate spiritual objectivity, which requires our obedience to laws over which we have no control, not what we can achieve if they had no power or reality. This sacrifice realigned the potentialities of a relationship with God. An act that we are to emulate but could never duplicate.

To conservatives, the benefits of the Cross to us are made first accessible through a heartfelt belief in the independent power ex operato of the Lamb in the covering of our sin, with resurrection following as the seal of its truth, long before we think that what we do subsequently is important. Sin, manifest in actions but not seen, is spiritual disobedience to the unseen, God’s Holiness, revealed through God’s manifestation of it by the Cross of Christ, his obedience to God in consummating sacrificial Law. So salvation is the result of a kind of obedience to that which is unseen but manifested by God to us in Christ’s transcendent obedience. All of this sounds so pious, but its far from pious when you discover their view of the nature of this obedience, of Christ’s and ours.

Conservative Protestants also go a step further as a kind of blend of the liberal and conservative takes, both closing down faith as locked to God’s agency and opening it up to a voluntary definitional content. Particularly the Calvinists.

What protestants generally do is center the appropriation of the virtues of Christ on the Cross upon our sin and faith in this his work, where our faith and Christ’s work come together, and Christ’s virtues imputed to us in our unworthiness and hopelessness. This is the same as most protestants where a biblically-centsacrered “faith” is key,  something that resists the subjective insularity of the liberal point of contact with God and the objectively displayed sacramental mysterium of the Catholic one. Faith is faith in Jesus as the sole judge of men’s souls and only means of salvation. Trust in his work, and the revelation of the doctrines of salvation that come through it compensates for our sin, allowing God to see us as he sees his Son and have salvation.

But the consequence of the Calvinist idea is when you make “faith,” the idea, of highest theological importance while also insisting that this is something very different from “work” as used biblically,  you conceive of faith which you can’t describe in any terms that infer work. If no kind of work it can only be a sort of feeling in response to God, which is perfect if you want to value an idea, not its revelation, supremely. Thought around information then has no part in the initiation of faith, since faith is limited to the idea, not what informationally motivates it. Then, a faith with no moral implication for man for its legal engagement in a kind of initial synergistic exchange with God. Conservative protestants generally do this by refusing to identify the content of faith as one thing biblically, and the Calvinists go one step beyond and kill it off entirely by refusing to consider faith as anything but a vague and divinely infused sense.

When ones initial faith can’t be in any essential sense a work, thought only given by God and not performed by man, you no longer have to ask “what, exactly, beyond persons, propositions and objects is faith in. Because “faith” has an understood instead of scripturally experienced meaning as I describe, thorough some kind of learned and handled personal or biblically un-speciated information, its then not passively consequential by the influence of a certain of God’s power in his scriptural appearances alone.  Faith is to them by definition a kind of work if it’s not around feelings with general scriptural knowledge, and this cannot stand because “faith is not by the works of the Law.” So faith becomes only an effect, and the exact nature of its spiritual power within the individual becomes religiously inconsequential and not worthy of prolonged reflection. My thought is, isn’t the essential nature of “work” spiritual, and the description of that work a knowledge which necessitates an appropriate idea of “faith?”

As the world has it, however, since people saved were set to be so before the foundation of the world, the unsaved accept their salvation not by a personal act of any kind but by “receiving or laying hold on what God has provided in the merits of Christ” in a point of their justification. But this brings up all kinds of paradoxical quandaries, making what is it about faith in Christ’s work on the Cross that is in any way essential to justification and salvation very murky. If faith is only an effect of regeneration, and justification and is entirely the result of an act of God, faith is only “the instrument for receiving or laying hold on what God has provided in the merits of Christ” after God lays hold of us. It’s no wonder why the content of the gospel need only be faith propositions, images of truth. Not necessarily faith predicates, truth itself, since entertained propositions may be confidently held without reflection. If by premises, premises must be thought over and experienced if they are to produce truth propositions, and this cannot be.  Faith then becomes only something for our education, playing a part in sanctification, accompanying but unnecessary in the justifying faith of salvation.1

Look, I’m not even objecting to the Calvinist view. I mention this, not to upbraid Calvinists, but to establish the kind of cultural forces that have shaped our view of the possibility and power of revelation. You can’t make “faith” normed and undefined as something like “trust” or confidence.” Refusing to identify it with a particular biblical revelation from which it cannot detach by its use, expecting then that it’s not subsequently going up for rejection as playing an active part in your salvation. But, like voting in our country and getting the kind of government we want, we also get the kind of theology we want.

You can see that I am angling toward a view of faith in salvation centered on the Cross as something other than a symbol of a divine substance. I’m going for a divine but accessible knowledge by which God is taught an equivalent to faith’s informed revelatory content. Crucial in justifying faith and sanctification and salvation. The Cross of Christ is not either a religious idea or a mere act of compassion or a rite, which makes it’s meaning vulnerable to ambiguity and the whole question given sophistry.

But I’ll get to that later. All of this is to go beyond proposing either the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is a self-contained symbol for carnal salvation or a transcendent essence for spiritual salvation. I propose, both, but where our faith in Him and it, somehow, in whatever order and sense, completes and shows completion of a connection between God and us through Christ while not being a work of our own.

Sacrifice?

Isn’t this just a very antiquated idea of a mediated and highly conditional relationship with God? After all, we are living in a time when just about everyone takes for granted the truth of the pantheistic story of God in everything and the God who is immediately accessible through sincerity of feeling. Or, that, no worries, you will live again no matter what, just perhaps not in the kind of physical body you would have hoped. What does the idea of sacrifice, before we even discuss the Christian variety, commend itself as a starting point for a revelationally built grasp of God?

I assure you, although you can end up with pantheism, the pantheistic model is not a good start, for no other reason than you begin a search for the understanding of something entirely foreign to our natural understanding and desires and end at the same place. You may end there, but your search starts for something else, and you start with nothing, not something. Dropping the restraints of the idea of some Law standing between you and an ultimate positive state is a prejudice that answers to no authority since you just disallowed it. What you want to believe is not taken as integration into a wider and objective reality in which it fits, but it’s a luxury you can’t afford if what you want is something real and transcendent. So do you mind if we assume that, like all other relations in our lives that demand respect for rules, it might be wise to think that if there is an objective creator God, he might need an approach in a certain way?  That takes in to account the ontological gap between him and his creation?

Ok, then, what are we supposed to do to bridge this gap? That’s why sacrifice as a basic relational concept between God and man makes so much sense.

Heres the thing. Sacrifice is the giving up of something of carnal value for something of a higher, spiritual value. But sacrifice is not an end in itself. It’s a means to an end of understanding beyond the act. A teaching tool about the meaning of these concepts “spiritual” and “carnal,” with which humanity has so much trouble and defines sin and righteousness. It turns out as well that the understanding of sin and righteousness is not even the end values of the teaching tool of real sacrifice, it’s a vision of God himself in our utter helplessness to see him otherwise.

If you think about sacrifice according to the pagan way, for what use can an interdimensional being have with a dead goat? No, you are not going to give him food. No, if this being is the real God, and you just want you to give him something to show you value him more, what does this “value” mean? Whatever it is, count it as sitting exactly between our righteousness and our sin, our arrogance, and the false sense of power, in his mind, between which He expects us to make a moral decision.

  How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World Through His Own Sacrifice? Only One Way. Part 4. The Man.

http://www.facebook.com/cmichaelpatton. Do Calvinists Believe in Salvation by Faith Alone? – Credo House Ministries. Credo House Ministries. https://credohouse.org/blog/do-calvinists-really-believe-in-salvation-by-faith-alone. Published March 14, 2012. Accessed November 7, 2019. ↩

[ultraericthered]

So to round out my Umineko experience this year, I am currently reading the original VNs and even sharing it with @themattress.

Big surprise here, but it’s infinitely better than the short-lived anime adaptation by Studio DEEN, and infinitely better than the current Higurashi anime that’s about to end for that matter. 

BUT.... y’know how I said here that the manga adaptation was the best version overall? I looked ahead in the VNs a bit and found the main exhibit of why that is - EP8, Twilight of the Golden Witch.

The final arc of Umineko is spectacular in both versions that you can read it in...but I was actually pretty shocked to discover that some of THE most powerful aspects of that grand finale were actually manga-exclusive, and that what Ryukishi07 had originally written in those places were....a bit wanting. Two key moments involving Ange and her relationship with her family in particular feel almost amateurish compared to the manga’s take on them. And fittingly enough, there are 8 big alterations that the manga made in total. Those would be...

1. The Halloween Party on Battler’s Rokkenjima. Not only is the way the inheritence resolution between Kinzo and his four adult children is shown even more touching and emotional, but due to lacking the playable Quiz Tournament portion, it’s replaced with a game of Hide and Seek throughout the mansion, with Ange and Eva seeking out everyone else. This is used as an outlet for gazing into the actual cleansed souls of the Piece characters, so in addition to getting an actual on-page fallout and resolution of Rudolf telling Kyrie the ugly truth about his past sin and Battler’s parentage, we get Eva internally expressing her regrets over how poor of a guardian she’d been to Ange (the VN infuriatingly acted like the sour relationship between the two, if not had equal blame shared between Ange and Eva, was entirely the fault of Ange, the child, rather than Eva, her abuser, something Eva herself tried to protest), Shannon and Kanon showing how they’ve matured into their own people, an extended moment of closure and reconciliation between Yasu (in the form of Beato) and Natsuhi, an amusing as heck scene between Krauss and Kinzo with the latter’s gun collection prior the more serious stuff about Kinzo’s relationship with Genji, and best of all, Rosa realizing how she'd perpetuated the cylce of her own abuse onto Maria and starting to forge a stronger mother-daughter relationship with Maria to make amends in a scene I cannot read without shedding tears. While this all telegraphs the “these are these people’s true souls and this gameboard is adjecent to the Golden Land, which is basically Heaven” twist ahead of time (in fact, Battler pretty much comes out and says it after the party’s over and little Ange is asleep), it really works out in the story’s favor and provides us with far more clarity.

(Oh and at this time we also get a spoken rationalization for why Ange’s character growth seemed to regress so much in this arc - Bern showing her the truth of the Rokkenjima massacre pushed her over the Despair Event Horizon so much that she’d rather cling harder to the easy truth of her hated Aunt Eva being the culprit rather than accept the truth of her beloved mom and dad as the culprits.)

2. Bern’s Challenge, again, was playable in the VN after her mystey was done whereas you cannot replicate that in manga, so taking material from the “hints” portions of the challenge along with some original material, we get to actually see a Battler-Beato tag team mystery solving couple taking it on together, and it is BEAUTIFUL.

3. More detail added to the Battler VS Erika closed room chain fight. And by more detail, I mean Erika absolutely trouncing Battler for pages on end while very thoroughly and blatantly exposing how Battler pulled his escape trick from the Logic Error Closed Room in EP6, AND revealing in full the solution to the mystery of EP5, which is something the VN never really followed through on giving us. Since it’s one of the more mind-blowing solutions, I’m glad to have it!

4. The entirety of “Confession Of The Golden Witch”. I knew already that this was only in the manga, but I appreciate all the holes in Yasu’s story finally getting filled up and recieving definitive answers. This also ties into the penultimate chapter, “When The Seagulls Cry”, where instead of us seeing Meta Battler and Beato closing things out on the final gameboard as the Catbox is sealed, it blurs together with a showing of what actually happened to Battler and Yasu in the aftermath of the massacre. So it becomes less “closing out the gameboard” and more “closing things up full circle”, as we see the end of Beato and Battler’s catbox game overlap with its beginning.

5. Key moment #1 - the family reuninon in the Golden Land, when Ange has been reformed after having learned the Single Truth about the incident on Rokkenjima 12 years ago. The VN equivalent honestly kinda had me floored by how unnatural and easy it was. Rudolf and Kyrie, who Ange now knew for a fact had committed a grisly mass murder, are hugging their daughter...and there’s no fear or pushback from her? The use of “other mother” to describe Eva is bad enough due to the Coraline flashbacks that term gives, but Ange calling her “mom”, blaming herself for their estrangement, and pretty much whitewashing Eva’s fuck-ups just...isn’t right. Ange then just...suddenly understands how much everyone loves her, without any effort to arrive at that conclusion. But the worst part of all is what follows - Ange blames herself for having ever thought badly about her own family (she calls herself “selfish”, “cruel”, and “irresponsible”) and whitewashes the fuck out of the entire Ushiromiya Family. She states that simply because her family had sides to them that were kind and loving and not entirely evil, the sides of them she knew in her childhood, she should’ve never let stories, re-interpertations, theories, and in some cases FACTS regarding their uglier nature and the sins it led them to committing distort her image of the family in her heart. She esentially says that “because my family are good towards ME, the larger truth about who they are and what they did can go fuck itself.”  Which comes off as horrendously poor morality. The outcome that Battler had been hoping for and the conclusion he’d wanted Ange to reach through this final game of his was based in how Ange needed to stop her obsessive pursuit of the Single Truth about what had occurred on Rokkenjima with her family and all the servants on Oct 4 and 5, 1986, for which she’d lost sight of her initial hope and forfeited her love for her family, and instead look towards the present and future with that hope and love kept alive in her heart. Which would keep her family, the best sides of them that she knew when she was very little, alive and always with her in her heart, even if that contradicts the image of them that many Witch Hunters had concocted and popularized. Makes sense, right? Choose a future filled with love and good memories over getting forever stuck on the past due to feelings of hatred and seeking revenge - that’s what was more important than the truth, a truth that’s not essentially needed to be known in the first place. But nowhere in there had it been inferred that Ange must reject or even rewrite the past altogether in order to carry on in happiness. Refusal to live with a complicated reality was Yasu’s sin, so Ange should not want to repeat that mistake. Placing so much emphasis on what the relatives were to Ange in her past (Eva included) is ultimately counterproductive to the whole point!

The manga version of this same moment contains exchanges, messages, and conclusive understandings that are infinitely more complex, more powerful, and just plain better and truer to what the story had set up before now. It has Ange recoiling in fear from her parents at first, follows up from Confession of the Golden Witch by having Yasu bear responsibility for all she’d done wrong that directly led to the Ushiromiya family’s tragedy, then has Kinzo step forward and say “actually no, all the damage wrought across the family after Beatrice’s passing was all founded upon MY sins, and I hold myself fully accountable for sourcing all of that pain”, everyone present openly comes to terms with their sins and Eva acknowledges her own fuck ups once again TO Ange this time, and the point is made of how the Ushiromiya Family ultimately tore itself apart due to its members own vices and sinful acts accumlated over the years finally giving way - that regardless of any one of them’s actions, it had been fated to happen thanks to years upon years of dysfunction, greed, poor choices and sin. But due to the divine mercy of the Golden Land, they all have a shot at living eternally as the best versions of themselves and making amends for the waste they’d made of their lives in the physical world, which is incentive for Ange to want to keep them and their shared Golden Land alive in her heart, and to keep the worldwide shitstorm that would arise out of Eva’s diary being made public from tearing it all asunder. Ange’s verdict is in a gray area; her family were neither total villains nor total saints, but they were and still are themselves. Not simply potential culprits or victims, but her family. It’s all FAR ahead of what was originally written for this part of the story in just about every way possible.

6. During the seige on the Golden Land, not only is the action even more ramped up compared to the VN, but we get the interesting addition of “Black Battler” appearing and fighting for the evil side, and like in the short story he originated in, Beato kills him by declaring in red that Battler Ushiromiya was neither a culprit or accomplice to the Rokkenjima murders. Additionally, Erika calling out the name “SAYO YASUDAAAAA!” to Beato in their fight was a very nice touch.

7. Key Moment #2 - the big climax. Unlike the previous Key Moment, I can definitely understand what Ryukishi07 was trying to convey here - that Ange needed to embrace the whole truth of the reality of her family which would naturally include taking all the good with all the bad, that she needed to grab hold of her family’s love for her and for one another as her personal truth, and that by doing so, she may forever keep her family “alive” in her heart, meaning that her “my family still lives and one day I shall be reunited with them” hope that she’d started out with becomes a miraculous and undefeatable Golden Truth for her going forward, regardless of what the rest of the world might observe and think about her and her family. It was also meant as a metaphor for spiritual faith in the same way belief in witches and magic are, how just because people say that a certain something cannot possibly exist and could not possibly have ever existed in the world of the physical (witches and magic, the “good guy” versions of the Ushiromiya family who do not truly die) doesn’t mean that they cannot and do not exist on some level, and that you should give up your conviction in the faith and belief in their existence, especially if it helps you to live a better life. It’s a really great message....that’s unfortunately obscured and made almost unintelligable by the actual writing, which comes off as intellectually dishonest and Trumpian as Captain America’s famous “YOU move!” speech from Civil War. Because what Ange seems to be saying instead is “even if everything in the world, every belief, fact, and evidence based in every piece of information available, tells me that the Single Truth is something that I personally don’t like and don’t want to accept, then I’d rather retreat from that reality and lie to myself, and if my heart is strong enough as I cling to that lie, it will become MY truth and will be unshakable and more powerful than any other truth!” Which is just....I’m sorry, but WHAT??? Like, how is it wrong when Battler stubbornly denies the existence of witches and magic despite all evidence he’s shown, yet Ange stubbornly denying the natural karma and death of her family despite all evidence she’s shown is meant to be lauded as the right thing? It makes NO sense!

The manga dramatically improves this part by having Ange’s epiphany come about differently and involve seeing her entire family within her heart rather than just reflecting on Battler’s words. In her thoughts, she even states outright that “just turning your back on a cruel reality and living in an illusion is no different than dying”, which clarifies what conclusion she has NOT come to. It gives ANGE-Beatrice a transformation/Good Costume Makeover, has Bern throwing a “Ange Ushiromiya definitely dies in 1998″ Red Truth at Ange that gets canceled out and THEN Ange creates the golden eagle (why the heck did Bern NOT think to try that in the VN?), it doesn’t have Bern “running” since her wings are still in-tact, and revises Ange’s parting words to Bern so that they’re even stronger and more fitting (”You see, true and proper magic can only be used by those who understood to accept reality. You cannot break my heart with red now that it has overcome the truth!”) as well as so much better, downright beautiful lines from her in general (”If you say that the Golden Land perished, then I will recreate it within my own heart! A place where they can all rest in peace! I know now I never lost them. No matter how hard you try to deny it, at least I will understand my own family! Their regrets...their pain...their wishes...their true form hidden behind a disheartening truth. How light and shadow mixed together...and created the Twilight that is my family! Right here, they are all alive! As long as I live in the future, they will always be with me! Their souls will always be at my side!”) It’s just considerably more EPIC, which is what a big climax like this needs.

8. The ending. In the VN, what seems to happen is that Tohya/Battler dies in the end. He’s overwhelmed by all the memories from both regular Battler AND Meta World Battler that start flooding inside his heart and mind, which is fractured between his Tohya identity and his past Battler identity, so when he’s beeing invited to the Golden Land and reunited with Beato and everyone, what’s happening on the outside is basically a heart attack. The final sound before the credits as a booming “THUD!”, like a body just hit the floor. It’s pretty much the ending to Titanic but with the genders swapped. As an ending, it works alright....until you stop and consider just how fucking cruel and unfair it is to poor Ange. The big brother she’d believed to be dead had actually survived the tragedy and for all those years she never knew, so now she gets her hope of reuniting with her brother miraculously fulfilled in a way she hadn’t even anticipated..only for him to die shortly after their meeting. She found him only to lose him all over again. What a fucking DOWNER. The manga version alters it so that we see clearly that it’s only Battler Ushiromiya who dies - we see him walk right out from Tohya and join not just Beato, but Lord BATTLER, who he re-assimilates with in order to enter the Golden Land with the rest of his friends and family. Tohya, meanwhile, now seems more at peace with himself and is seen chatting with the orphans at the party, still alive and well. So Ange still technically loses her brother and can never get that relationship with him back, but she still has Tohya to be Author Friends with in a newly forged relationship, which she wouldn’t mind at all, especially since she still keeps the old Battler and the rest of her family within her at all times.

So yeah, the manga = best version of the Umineko story BY FAR.

[parentingsblog]

The pandemic and its impact on Children’s mental health

Every parent want their child to be safe and healthy to prosper to the best of their abilities. The way in which kids are brought up by their parents depends upon a variety of factors including their culture, background, social environment, economic condition, etc. Education and health are almost certainly at the top of the agenda for any parent.

The importance of education — both on the literal and social side cannot be underestimated and is rightfully emphasized by the parents. But, when it comes to talking about the health side of things, the conversations almost always revolves around the importance and best practices for maintaining a good physical health and often ignores touching on the importance of mental health.

The reason for this can be attributed to several things but probably the most pertinent would be because people still aren’t fully aware of mental health issues and the impact it is having on young children. Social media is credited for the single biggest reason for developing mental health issues in children but there has been a surge in teens’ mental health complaints since the pandemic. The story of 13 years old Lisa is a very good example to understand how the pandemic has impacted so many young lives.

Lisa is a very bright and bubbly kid, who brings about a smile on pretty everyone’s faces in the colony. At 13 years of age, she is really enthusiastic about sports and represented her school in a tennis tournament, where she finished runner-up among players mostly well above her age.

All this was happening as the black clouds was hovering in form of the pandemic. As Lisa returned with the medal and her parents planned to celebrate it over a barbeque with her grandparents, the news went circulating around regarding an inevitable lockdown.

Little it was known to Lisa or any of her family or friends that this would be the last time she stepped on to the court for around 8 months.

A kid not being able to meet and play with her friends for this time might not sound such a big deal, especially considering that millions lost their lives and many more lost their jobs but, it is a big deal. This pandemic year represents only a tiny fraction of your life, but it is a much larger chunk for your teenagers or minors.

Online classes are better than nothing but when every day involves sitting in front of a laptop, alone, for hours on end, it becomes a lonely and tedious experience. Children might have schoolwork to complete but they miss out on playground games, gossip, friends, and fun.

All of this results in the change of mental state for the children and it is the main reason why there’s such a surge in the number of kids suffering from mental health issues. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children’s mental health emergencies have increased substantially over the course of the pandemic.

It is important to take the mental health concerns more seriously. It is not good enough to expect those in distress to join waiting lists before they can receive professional support. But too often it seems that what we offer children is the worst of all worlds: we fail to help those in desperate need while, at the same time, creating problems in those who are simply dealing with the normal ups and downs of adolescence.

Lisa described her mental health throughout the year as “a roller coaster”, with ups and downs that meant she’d be fine some days, and struggle to get out of bed on others. The pandemic has exacerbated the lows. And at the same time the virtual learning has put more of a responsibility on her to reach out to the teachers, friends, and administrators — at school who help her cope.

What we need to know

An online questionnaire survey was administered to 359 children and 3254 adolescents aged 7 to 18 years during the spread of COVD in China. It showed 22.3% of youth had scores indicative of clinical depressive symptoms while anxiety symptom levels were also higher after the outbreak than previously reported.

An online survey was carried with 384 parents having children between the ages of 5–15 in Bangladesh. Children’s depression, anxiety, and sleep disorder scores were grouped into severity categories. Severity and percentages of mental health problems in the children were as follows: subthreshold (43%), mild (30.5%), moderate (19.3%) and severe (7.2%).

A similar survey was also carried out through 1143 parents having children aged 3–18 years in Italy and Spain to study the effect of quarantine on their children, compared to before the home confinement period. The study found 85.7% of parents reported changes in their children’s behavior during the quarantine. The most frequently observed changes were difficulty concentrating, boredom, irritability, restlessness, nervousness, loneliness, uneasiness, and worries.

What can we do?

The virtual learning setup means that the student’s struggles can be a bit of black box for staff as they don’t always know who’s struggling, particularly if those students are missing virtual classes, or attend but don’t turn their cameras on.

It’s vital that we have it clear in our mind that children may have missed part of the period when they learn the basics of social interaction, and may not have the same tools to build the relationships they need because of the forced isolation and disruption of the pandemic.

In the connectivist theory, learning is perceived as a special bond between the learner, other people or groups and the online learning media. Introverts prefer to learn and contribute to an online discussion forum while the extroverts would rather take part in the face to face classroom environment.

For introverts — asynchronous communication are less threatening than the face-to-face communications because they have more time for reflection. On the other hand, extroverts prefer to communicate directly with others in face-to-face environment and they interact significantly more in threaded discussions than introverts.

The parent’s and teacher’s information about learners’ characteristics has implications on selecting the teaching strategies, coping with the necessity of differentiating to the point of personalizing the online environment, depending on the locus of control, self-efficacy level, introversion-extraversion, cognitive style.

The Stigma…

All things considered, it’s easy to come to the obvious conclusion that mental health matters and the necessity to talk with related people being more important than ever, especially for children. But how can we expect the kids to talk about things that even parents struggle to talk about? And that’s where the problem lies.

People across all age groups find it difficult to talk about their diminishing mental health, primarily due to the fear of being looked as weak and vulnerable. Such feeling can be easily replicated in kids who might fear how they’ll be perceived by their friends and classmates if they find out that the kid is struggling due to one reason or another.

For children to feel they can express their weaknesses without any hesitation, a safe and friendly environment needs to be created. Parents need to make sure that not only they talk to their children about the importance of physical health and the habits they need to follow to maintain that but there also needs to be continuous discussion regarding the importance of mental health.

Coming back to Lisa…

It was not easy for Lisa in the beginning but her parents quickly realized that something just wasn’t right. The joyfulness she brought to the place was slowly fading away and she preferred to lock herself in the room and stare at her phone for hours.

Like many others, Lisa’s parents were too busy navigating around their own work from home schedules during the early stage of the pandemic. However, they quickly realized that if it was such a difficult situation for those as adults then it could not even be imagined the trauma that a child is going through at an age where face-to-face interactions simply cannot be replaced by virtual meetings.

This prompted them to come up with innovative ideas to keep Lisa busy with them and try to make her see the positive aspects of the situation. “we struggled in the beginning but slowly we realized it was important to be her friend as well as her parents”, said her father adding that her mom even got her involved in cooking, which she absolutely loved. “we’re so glad we talked to the right people and were able to help our child when she needed it the most”, said Lisa’s mother.

Conclusion

Children struggling with mental health are going to have a much harder time focusing on studying and learning new material, so focusing on the social-emotional pieces may have to come before getting them back on track with learning.

If you or your child is struggling with mental health, you are not alone. Latest researches show that 59% of parents have noted recent behavioral changes in their child ranging from outbursts or extreme irritability to drastic changes in mood, behavior or personality and difficulty sleeping/altered sleeping patterns as well as persistent sadness and more.

It’s important to realize that these kids are the future of tomorrow and they need to be protected to make sure that a year of this pandemic doesn’t alter their life and personality forever. There has been a positive change in regards to the awareness related to the importance of mental health and why talking about it matters the most.

Therefore, it’s our responsibility to make sure that we do not let a generation of talents just fade away into darkness of mental fragilities. As Lisa’s parents managed to help her get back to some form of normality, they should be looked at as an example because they understood the importance of helping their child despite their own struggles during the pandemic.

This horrible situation will surely pass away and we will hopefully get back to the normal life as it was before the pandemic, but some things might never be the same. Mental health matters more in these trying circumstances than it has ever been and it’s time that everyone can collectively kick this virus out of our lives.

[dankblair]

Key insights from "There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind"

By Antony Flew

Late Oxford philosopher and outspoken atheist Antony Flew shocked the world when he announced that he had reversed his views about God’s non-existence. In his autobiographical work There is a God, which he humorously describes as a last will and testament of sorts, Flew describes his upbringing, intellectual development, and some of the arguments that ultimately led him to embrace theism.

1. Flew was raised by a Methodist minister, but still walked away from the faith. Flew grew up in a devoutly religious home. His father was a prominent Methodist minister and tutor of New Testament studies at Oxford and then at Cambridge. Flew attributes his scholarly tendency of gathering supportive context about a subject to his father’s careful examination of Hebrew or Greek words before reaching any definitive conclusions or interpretations.

Flew could not tie his atheism to a clear chain of events leading back to his childhood, but whatever faith he had faded around age 15. He went to Kingswood School in Bath, England—a school that Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, established for the sons of preachers. However, he was far more interested in history, literature, and political theory than religious studies. He never experienced a transcendent encounter that John Wesley once described as the “heart…strangely warmed.” He entered the school as an obedient but tepid Christian, and left with no faith at all.

Ironically, it was the love of critical, dispassionate investigation of the evidence at hand learned from his father that obliterated Flew’s faith instead of strengthening it.

2. Arguing against theism, Flew stumbled into philosophy rather than intentionally pursuing it from the outset. Over the course of his academic career, Flew’s areas of interest and research were broad: parapsychology, political philosophy, philosophy of science and language, logic, education, and even metaphysics.

His row with Christian theism really began when he wrote an essay while still a graduate student at Oxford called “Theology and Falsification.” It has since become the most commonly reprinted philosophical publication of the twentieth century. He first read his paper at the Socratic Club, a weekly forum where Christians and unbelievers locked horns. The club’s president at the time was Christian writer, C.S. Lewis. Flew attributes the Club’s insistence on following the argument wherever it may lead to the refinement and altering of his views. In “Theology and Falsification,” he argued that while qualifications can strengthen arguments, the sheer volume of qualifications that the theist must make to defend religious propositions (e.g., “God is loving.”) weakens the force of believers’ arguments—to the point that the theist’s arguments are “killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications.”

A bit over a decade later, Flew wrote God and Philosophy—a work that he now considers a relic, valuable as a stage of the intellectual journey, but not a tenable viewpoint. In God and Philosophy, Flew took the concept of God to task, arguing that God was too complex and too varied a concept for a meaningful discussion about God to take place.

A decade after God and Philosophy, he wrote another book called The Presumption of Atheism, in which he argued that the burden of proof for the existence of God was on the theist—not the atheist, because theists were making a positive claim.

These works significantly shaped the discourse about philosophical atheism for over half a century. Inadvertently, Flew’s ideas encouraged a resurrection of the Christian rationalist tradition within analytical philosophy. He’d unknowingly sown the seeds of his atheism’s destruction through arguing for its veracity.

3. Flew’s reversal did not happen all at once, but was a gradual shift over two decades. Flew now believes that a Being of infinite intelligence brought the universe into existence, that nature’s laws point us to the Mind of God, and that life comes from a Divine Source.

When he announced to a convention in May 2004 that he now believed in the existence of God, there was shock and outrage. Scientists came out of the woodwork, triumphantly commenting that Flew had clearly not read a particular journal article or heard about recent developments in abiogenesis (i.e., life coming from non-life). Atheists thought Flew was off his rocker, that he was losing his mind. The backlash brought Albert Einstein’s remarks to Flew’s mind, that, “The man of science is a poor philosopher.” Many scientists believe that only scientific conclusions can be derived from scientific discoveries, but the questions Flew had been exploring were philosophical in nature.

Whence came the grounds from which non-life became life? How molecules interact is a scientific question. Why they exist instead of nothing at all is a philosophical question, and it is on philosophical grounds that the scientists would have to meet him. In doing so, scientists have moved from science to the philosophy of science, where they cannot use their credentials to assert intellectual superiority.

In one sense, the shift was a slow, glacier-like one that took decades. In another sense, the worldview remained the same, the root assumption springing from Plato’s Republic—that we must follow the argument wherever it leads. For Flew, this had been his approach all along.

Flew ascribes to an Aristotelian concept of God: omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, perfectly good, immaterial, and indivisible. The remarkable parallels between Aristotle’s Divine Being and the God described in Judeo-Christian thinking suggests that they had the same Being in mind. Flew keeps his investigations within the realm of natural theology. The conclusions he has made about the existence of God have been built on rational grounds, rather than appealing to the supernatural.

4. The fine-tuning of the universe became increasingly difficult for Flew to ignore. Imagine you show up at a hotel, and you find everything perfectly aligned with your particular tastes and preferences: the song that’s playing, the book on your bedside, the movies in the que, the brand of coffee, the snacks and drinks in the minibar—all your favorites. With each new item you discover as you walk around the suite, the thought that there is an intelligent mind behind the arrangement will likely become firmer and firmer. This is a rather silly, limited analogy, but it gets at the thinking behind the fine-tuning argument, that the long (and growing) list of conditions necessary for life to emerge and sustain itself strongly suggests an Intelligent Mind at work. It all appears meticulously orchestrated—not the product of dumb luck.

The multiverse is used as a counter to the fine-tuning, that the anthropic principle is more of a myopic principle. If there exists a multiverse containing an infinite number of universes, atheists and scientists argue, then we should not be surprised that there happens to be a universe that contains life, because life-creating and –sustaining universes would inevitably fall within an infinite set of logical possibilities.

But this doesn’t get us any closer to a scientific explanation for why life is viable in our universe. Rather than a straightforward, well-ordered account of phenomena, the multiverse gives us a complicated theory so bloated with infinite possibility that it tells us nothing in the end. The multiverse is a logical possibility, but that does not make it a strong possibility. It remains an unhelpful, highly speculative theory.

5. The innate sense of purpose in life forms suggested to Flew a Divine Source. Not only are conditions meticulously suitable for life on earth, but life that has emerged is purpose-driven. Anything that is alive is teleological in nature. In other words, it has intrinsic purpose, and moves toward a certain goal or set of goals. Could it be that an Intelligent Mind better explains this directedness than naturalism?

Richard Dawkins and others have criticized this explanation, arguing that it falls back on the “God of gaps” view, and that it is only a matter of time before science replaces God as the explanation for directedness with something better. The naturalist has a hard time accounting for these developments, other than a white-knuckled optimism that science will eventually oust the God explanation. Yet again, the naturalist is committing a categorical error, looking to biology for an answer to a philosophical question.

The question we need to be asking is, “How is it that living matter has emerged from the primordial, meaningless slime to have directedness, capacity for self-replication, and coded chemistry?” And it’s not a question that biology can answer, because it’s a different category of question.

So let’s set aside for a moment the arguments that the universe’s age doesn’t leave sufficient time for abiogenesis to get us from non-life to life—which many physicists and biologists are concluding. There still remains the question about the nature of life, which puts us in the realm of philosophy. Flew agrees with Aristotle’s view that random chance does not do a great job explaining the concomitance of bios and telos.

There is also the challenge of explaining why, if evolution is the mechanism by which living organisms develop advantageous mutations, would they have immediately developed the means of replicating or the coding mechanism like DNA to facilitate that? That life came from non-life is amazing—that it could emerge with the mechanisms necessary to create a second generation of life makes already-slim probabilities even slimmer. These are logistical challenges that a purely material view can’t properly answer. The chances are unbelievably slim. Materialism is not the safest bet. An Intelligent Mind that has orchestrated the process is far more likely.

6. The Big Bang theory raised new questions for Flew about the origins of the universe. In The Presumption of Atheism and elsewhere, Flew argued that the universe and its laws should be taken as ultimate. Every system relies on some assumptions that need not be explained. These are the “brute facts” from which we must begin our cosmology. The theists, Flew maintained, do the same thing when they take God as a brute fact behind existence and nature, as an ultimate explanation beyond explication. To Flew, it made no sense to make inferences about the nature of the universe based on a transcendent force beyond the material existence. It is not firm ground upon which someone can build his/her cosmology. The physical universe itself is a far surer ultimate starting point.

These arguments were made well before the Big Bang became a serious discussion and then established fact within the scientific community. In the 1980s, Flew began to entertain that the universe had a beginning, and acknowledged that this was an embarrassment for many a scientist and atheist who had banked on the universe’s eternality. Flew saw an uncomfortable overlap between scientific discovery and Genesis 1 (“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”). The universe’s beginning—which made theological lines of thought far more tenable all of a sudden—was looking more like the brute fact than the universe’s mere existence.

Flew also watched as the scientific community did its best to develop explanations that would preserve a creator-less status quo. The theories that gained the most traction were the theories of the multiverse and Hawking’s idea that the universe is self-contained. Flew found these theories unsatisfactory. By contrast, he finds former Oxford professor Richard Swinburne’s cosmological argument a compelling formulation, that if there is a God, the chances that he would create a universe with both finitude and complexity are far better than a universe existing uncaused.

7. Flew lets his readers draw conclusions about his mental state, arguing that he’s just following evidence like he always has. Writing and debating against theism for half a century speaks to Flew’s deep and enduring interest in philosophy, and that the change was not a flippant one. It also set the stage for a deep rift, as intellectual comrades came to consider him an adversary rather than fellow pursuer of truth.

There’s been a great deal of controversy surrounding the late-in-the-game reversal. Many construe the event as a fearful deathbed conversion, others as a mind in decline. Flew leaves the psychologists to analyze and speculate about the decision, but he maintains that his approach to intellectual questions has never changed—he has followed the evidence, and it has led him to belief in God.

[j-kaiwa]

Discussion Article April 1st

7 Predictions About the Future That Should Scare the Hell Out of You

The future looks bright, except when it doesn’t. Here are 10 exceptionally regrettable developments we can expect in the coming decades. 

Listed in no particular order.

1. Virtually anyone will be able to create their own pandemic

Earlier this year, Oxford’s Global Priorities Project compiled a list of catastrophes that could kill off 10 percent or more of the human population. High on the list was a deliberately engineered pandemic, and the authors warned that it could happen in as few as five years.

Many of the technologies for this prospect are starting to appear, including theCRISPR/cas9 gene-editing system and 3D-bioprinters. What’s more, the blueprints for this kind of destruction are being made available. A decade ago, futurist Ray Kurzweil and technologist Bill Joy scolded the US Department of Health for publishing the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus, calling it “extremely foolish.” More recently, a number of scientists spoke out when Nature decided to publish a so-called “gain of function” study explaining how the bird flu could be mutated into something even deadlier.

The fear is that a rogue state, terrorist group, or a malign individual might create their own virus and unleash it. Natural selection is good at creating nasty and highly prolific viruses, but imagine what intentional design could concoct.

2. People who transfer their minds to computers are actually killing themselves

One of the more radical visions of the future is a world in which biological humans have traded-in their corporeal bodies in favor of a purely digital existence. This would require a person to literally upload their mind to a supercomputer, but this hypothetical process might actually result in the permanent destruction of the original person. It would be a form of unintentional suicide.

This is what’s known as the “continuity of consciousness” problem. Sure, we may eventually be able to cut, copy, and paste the essence of a person’s personality and memories to a digital substrate, but transferring the seat of consciousness itself may be an untenable proposition. Neuroscientists know that memories are parked in the brain as physical constructs; there’s something physically there to copy. But consciousness still eludes our understanding, and we’re not certain how it arises in the brain, let alone how we can transfer it from point A to point B. It’s also quite possible that subjective awareness cannot be replicated in the digital realm, and that it’s dependent on the presence and orientation of specific physical structures.

Many futurists predict that one day we'll upload our minds into computers, where we'll…

Mind uploading will likely require destructive atomic-scale scanning of the brain. It would be similar to the way teleportation is done in Star Trek. Indeed, one of the dirty little secrets of this sci-fi show is that the person being teleported is actually killed each time it happens, replaced by an exact duplicate who’s none the wiser. Mind transfers could be similar, where the original brain is destroyed, replaced by a digital being who’s convinced they’re still the original—but it would be a delusion.

3. Authoritarianism will make a comeback

As threats to national security increase, and as these threats expand in severity, governments will find it necessary to enact draconian measures. Over time, many of the freedoms and civil liberties we currently take for granted, such as the freedom of assembly, the right to privacy (more on this next—it’s worse than you think), or the right to travel both within and beyond the borders of our home country, could be drastically diminished.

At the same time, a fearful population will be more tempted and willing to elect a hardline government that promises to throw the hammer down on perceived threats—even overtly undemocratic regimes.

The threats to national security will have to be severe to instigate these changes, but history has precedents. Following the September 11 attacks and the subsequent mailings of anthrax spores, the US government enacted the Homeland Security Act. This legislation was criticized for being too severe and reactionary, but it’s a perfect example of what happens when a nation feels under threat. Now imagine what would happen if another 9/11-type event happened, but one involving hundreds of thousands of deaths, or even millions.

Such an act of terrorism could be unleashed through miniaturized nuclear weapons, or the deliberate release of bioweapons. And the fact that small groups, and even single individuals, will have the power to attain and use these weapons will only make governments and citizens more willing to accept the loss of freedoms.

4. Privacy will become a thing of the past

We are rapidly approaching the era of ubiquitous surveillance, a time when virtually every aspect of our lives will be monitored. Privacy as we know it will cease to exist, supplanted by Big Brother’s eyes and ears.

Governments, ever fearful of internal and external threats, will increasingly turn to low-cost, high-tech surveillance technologies. Corporations, eager to track the tendencies and behaviors of its users, will find it impossible to resist. Citizens of the surveillance society will have no choice but to accept that every last detail of their lives will be recorded.

Already today, surveillance cameras litter our environment, while our computers, smartphones, and tablet devices follow our daily affairs, whether it be our purchasing proclivities or the types of porn we watch.

Looking ahead, government agencies and police could deploy more sophisticated tracking devices, including the much-anticipated smart dust—tiny sensors that would monitor practically anything, from light and temperature to chemicals and vibrations. These particles could be sprinkled around Earth, functioning as the eyes and ears of the planet. In conjunction with powerful data mining algorithms, virtually everything we do would be monitored. To ensure accountability, we could watch the watchers—but will they allow it?

5. Robots will find it easy to manipulate us

Long before artificial intelligences become truly conscious or self-aware, they’ll be programmed by humans and corporations to seem that way. We’ll be tricked into thinking they have minds of their own, leaving us vulnerable to all manner of manipulation and persuasion. Such is the near future envisaged by futurist and sci-fi novelist David Brin. He refers to these insidious machine minds as HIERS, or Human-Interaction Empathetic Robots.

“Human empathy is both one of our paramount gifts and among our biggest weaknesses,” Brin told Gizmodo. “For at least a million years, we’ve developed skills at lie-detection...[but] no liars ever had the training that these new HIERS will get, learning via feedback from hundreds, then thousands, then millions of human exchanges around the world, adjusting their simulated voices and facial expressions and specific wordings, till the only folks able to resist will be sociopaths—and they have plenty of chinks in their armor, as well.”

We puny humans can be depressingly fragile and flawed, a realization that's all the more…

Brin figures that some experts will be able to tell when they’re being manipulated by one of these bots, but “that will matter about as much as it does today, as millions of voters cast their ballots based on emotional cues, defying their own clear self-interest or reason.” Eventually, robots may guide and protect their gullible human partners, advising them when “to ignore the guilt-tripping scowl, the pitiable smile, the endearingly winsome gaze, the sob story or eager sales pitch—and, inevitably, the claims of sapient pain at being persecuted or oppressed for being a robot.”

6. The effects of climate change will be irreversible

Late last year, world leaders forged an agreement to limit human-caused global warming to two degrees Celsius. It’s a laudable goal, but we may have already passed a critical tipping point. The effects of climate change are going to be felt for hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years to come. And as we enter into the planet’s Sixth Mass Extinction, we run the risk of damaging critical ecosystems and radically diminishing the diversity of life on Earth.

Climate models show that even if carbon dioxide levels came to a sudden halt, the levels of this greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere will continue to warm our planet for hundreds of years. Our oceans will slowly release the CO2 it has been steadily absorbing, and our atmosphere may not return to pre-industrial levels for many centuries. As a recent assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated, “A large fraction of climate change is largely irreversible on human time scales.”

In The Bulletin, science writer Dawn Stover lists the ramifications:

The melting of snow and ice will expose darker patches of water and land that absorb more of the sun’s radiation, accelerating global warming and the retreat of ice sheets and glaciers. Scientists agree that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet has already gone into an unstoppable decline. Currents that transport heat within the oceans will be disrupted. Ocean acidification will continue to rise, with unknown effects on marine life. Thawing permafrost and sea beds will release methane, a greenhouse gas. Droughts predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years will trigger vegetation changes and wildfires, releasing carbon. Species unable to adapt quickly to a changing climate will go extinct. Coastal communities will be submerged, creating a humanitarian crisis.

Our only recourse, it would seem, is to start geoengineering the planet, but that will also introduce complications.

7. The antibiotic era will end

An increasing number of diseases are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Eventually, we could make the unhappy transition to a “post-antibiotic era,” a time when even the most routine infections could threaten our lives.

The era of antimicrobial resistant bacteria will change medicine as we know it. Transplant surgery will become difficult, if not impossible. Simple operations, such as a burst appendix, will be perilous once again. Pneumonia would ravage the elderly, as would many other diseases of old age, including cancer.

How bad could it get? A recent report by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in Britain predicted that the new era of antimicrobial resistance will kill upwards of 10 million people each year by 2050. No wonder they’re calling it the “antibiotic apocalypse.”

A team of scientists has discovered a gene that renders bacteria resistant to colistin, a so-called …

Thankfully, we’re not completely out of options. Scientists are currently on the hunt for undiscovered antibacterial compounds. They’re also working to develop bacteria-fighting viruses and vaccines. Failing that, we could alway design artificial microorganisms that can hunt down and destroy problematic bacteria.

[isaacbewleystopmotion]

Researching stop motion animation

Stop motion animation is an animation technique where physical objects are captured in frames to give the illusion of them moving on their own. This is primarily done by taking many pictures of the objects and moving them slightly for each photo and then playing the images very fast, somewhat similar to zoetrope animations.

Due to the nature of stop motion animation being for physical objects, the use of physical materials are mostly used to make the models and objects. Clay was used primarily in the early days of stop motion and is still used to an extent in the modern age of stop motion, although the discovery of new alternatives has led to materials such as foam latex and plaster to be used for covering clay bases of models and making the objects look more aesthetically pleasing. Wires are often used with clay to make the models more stable and give more potential when moving the objects around. However, even the most basic of materials used in everyday arts and crafts can be used in stop motion very effectively, with films being created out of things made of LEGO bricks, and models made of felt held together with pipe cleaners.

There are several methods to doing stop motion animation, with the most popular and prominent technique being claymation. This technique is where the models and objects are made of clay, hence the name. Most of the set from backdrop to models will be made of clay for claymation, due to the versatility of the material. Puppet animation is very similar to this, with the clay models being replaced with puppets made out of felt, latex or other similar materials. Wires are often used in both techniques to make sure the models are positioned correctly and move easier, which makes production more smooth.

Cut-out animation is a subgenre of stop motion that is used much less, but is still utilised to an extent in modern films. For this, flat characters and backgrounds are created on paper, cardboard or other materials and manipulated on a flat surface to appear to move. A notable example of this technique is on the show South Park - while the animation style is now digitally created to replicate cut-out animation, the original pilot for the show was created with physical cut-out animation.

Pixilation and object stop motion animation are very similar subgenres, with the subject matter of the animation styles being the main difference. Pixilation is a method where actual human actors are used, and the same photo frame technique is used to capture them. Due to the use of human actors, this method is commonly seen as the most difficult form of stop-motion due to how time-consuming and inaccurate it can be when moving for new frames. Object animation is essentially the same - however the use of human actors is swapped for physical objects that are premade, such as rubiks cubes, dice and tinfoil.

Silhouette animation is another subgenre, although it is much rarely used compared to other methods, even pixilation. It involves characters who are only seen as black silhouettes, with a plain white background to make the silhouettes stand out. The silhouettes tend to just be cardboard cutouts or paper with back lighting, making this technique similar to cut-out animation. The use of silhouettes and a stark colour scheme seem to be heavily referenced and inspired from shadowplay (an example of shadowplay is the ‘shadow’ segments in the children’s show ‘Big Bear in the Big Blue House’).

The Nightmare before Christmas is a extremely well-known stop motion film created in 1993 by Henry Selick. It is regarded very highly and has excellent reviews, remaining a classic horror/christmas film for decades after it was released. It took around a week to make one minute of the film, and took 3 overall years to finish. The Tim Burton style of the models and overall theming make the film very popular and stand out from other more lighthearted stop motion films, and marked a new trend in using stop motion for more horror-relating films. The film shows how stop motion can not only be used for innocent and funny plots and characters, but can also support more creepy plots and designs well.

Coraline was made much later in 2009 but is very similar in theme and popularity to Nightmare before Christmas. Directed again by Henry Selick and taking twenty months to complete, this film has achieved cult status much like Nightmare did before it after using creepy theming through the stop motion style. Unlike Nightmare, Tim Burton was not involved in this project, however the production team was extremely large and had at peak 450 people helping. People were even hired to make miniature clothing for the models, even using knitting needles as thin as hairs in order to make realistic looking clothing.

Kubo and the Two Strings was also made by the same company that directed Coraline. It was completed in 2016 after being directed by Travis Knight for 5 years, with several being dedicated to the animation aspect alone. One of very few modern stop motion films, it recounts a tale based in asian culture around the power of music and magic, and was critically acclaimed for the intricate animation - the crew even went as far as to build a 16ft animatronic of a skeleton for the film. It was the second animated film ever to be nominated for Best Visual Effects in the Academy Awards, alongside the Nightmare before Christmas.

Another notable film in stop motion was the Wallace and Gromit film, Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Released in 2005 by the duo directors Nick Park and Steve Box, it received critical acclaim and success and won numerous awards including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (the only other Dreamworks film to win besides Shrek). After the failure of Flushed Away, this classic W&G film was a critical and commercial success for the Aardman and Dreamworks partnership. It shows the classic slapstick and charm of stop motion animation alongside the rest of the animated shorts, although this is the first feature film.

Chicken Run was created in 2000 by Peter Lord and Nick Park from Aardman. It was the company’s first feature length film, and was released to critical acclaim and is the highest grossing animated film ever. It recounts the tale of chickens trying to escape from a farm before being turned into chicken pot pies, and uses classic clay models in order to achieve a charming soft style. The film took 18 months to fully shoot, and shows good examples of special effects in stopmotion that I can take into account when creating my final piece.

Lego Movie was also a groundbreaking film released in 2014, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from Warner Bros. While the film is not created fully by actual stopmotion, the animation style is made to replicate that method and is worthy of study for that purpose. It uses 3D computer generated animation rather than traditional stopmotion, but makes use of choppy, blocked movements to replicate the actual look of real stopmotion, Whether it achieved the look well is up for debate, but it shows that it isn’t too hard to replicate stopmotion by other methods and other alternatives can be used in my project if I cannot create a effect I want with plain stopmotion alone.

Corpse Bride is another cult classic film with Tim Burton influences. Made in 2005 under the direction of Mike Johnson and Tim Burtion, it tells the story of a man who is thrust into a love triangle between a dead corpse and an alive woman whom he does not love. The film is another excellent use of stopmotion style to be creepy and unnerving, with the puppets used having bold, outlined and sunken features to almost appear dead and sickly, like the subject matter of the film.

Fantastic Mr Fox was created in 2009 by Wes Anderson in American Emperical Pictures, based of Roald Dahl’s book of the same name. It gained commercial success, with a high score on internet critic website Rotten Tomatoes. This film is especially interesting as it used a vastly different style of stopmotion modelling to create the animal models, which makes it stand out from other films done with the same technique. This could be interesting to learn from as I want my piece to be different from every other stopmotion film, and something as simple as a model style change could be the key to achieving a unique look,

James and the Giant Peach is an older film, shot in 1996 by Henry Selick for Disney. It is once again based off a Roald Dahl book of the same name, and incorporates live action and stopmotion into one singular film. This technique created an interesting effect when the divide between live action and stopmotion is shown side by side, and this interests me as I could create something similar by using humans in my stopmotion. However to avoid outright copying of this, I could try using this method through pixilation or cut-out stopmotion instead of simply filming live action alongside the actual stopmotion.

Jason and the Argonauts is a classic film created in 1963 by Don Chaffey. The majority of the film is shot in live action, but the film gained fame for including stopmotion creatures in fight scenes - the most iconic use of stopmotion is the famous skeleton scene where they rise from the ground to attack the soldiers. Again, this film is interested to study when considering the possibility of combining humans and stopmotion, although I think that it would be easier for me to use a method like pixilation for this instead of shooting live action and then shoot actual stopmotion.

[stantonomalley7-blog]

It's Clear That LinkedIn Has Large Appeal

Paid Member Assets section from now until Oct. 9, 2012. Or, you'll be able to purchase the package at this link: How to offer -- and Get -- LinkedIn Recommendations. They usually ADMIT THEY Cannot TAKE A COMPLAINT In opposition to A GOVT CONTRACTOR The place Much OF The real CRIMES ARE Occurring Right NOW. I do not do much examine in the realm besides stuff in the spiritual pertaining to creation of art. Contemplating how much time folks spend on social media everyday, it’s form of humorous (or is it sad?) that almost all of us discover ourselves too busy to truly replace or improve our profiles. However, it hasn't modified that much! Profitable actual property marketing always encourages the borrower to make the acquisition. Utilize this alternative correctly and make one of the best use of the links that LinkedIn permits you to create. Create 100% profile. Use your focused keywords(e.g. Read the phrases of service of each social networking site you will be making a profile on. The books that curiosity me essentially the most, I'll finish within three days. Once your profile has been polished by our professionals, you'll entice all of the publicity you want.

Whereas having a large amount of LinkedIn connections is not going to solely present the total impact of your profile, it actually is a way to begin. Then it started. Within minutes she started getting LinkedIn requests from the other staff. In case your employees are on LinkedIn, ask them so as to add your web page as their office. Individuals who reply with a 9 or 10 are designated as "promoters"; a 7 or eight as "passives"; and a 6 or decrease as "detractors". Being open and authentic on social media means an amazing deal to your viewers who needs to genuinely interact with you or your small business. Twitter is also an effective way to communicate together with your prospects. Make clear to your followers what does "ReTweet" mean and take a look at to steer them to retweet your hyperlinks and tweets incessantly. These are some of the improved ideas which we coated that can assist you make the most of the web site.

Yes, he may use my assist. Engagement price is a beneficial metric to assist decide the standard and success of your social media messaging, as it provides an indicator as to how attention-grabbing or helpful the message was to your viewers. When tele-prospecting efforts are involved, we work intently with the gross sales group to track results and compare appointment-setting success rates with LinkedIn-engaged prospects versus those that are usually not engaged on LinkedIn. If they don't seem to be ready to do business yet, they are very more likely to refer you to somebody who's. The metrics I’ve listed are simply the start. Tag your Posts. Select 3 tags which might be most associated to your article content. Want some tips for how to format your posts in order that they get extra engagement? I attempt to limit my articles to 1 topic, even if they might embody two to 5 ideas revolving around that matter.

It exhibits ‘variety’. We can assume the identical applies within the social area, and 10 profiles posting a link is healthier than one profile posting it 10 times. Should you wear too many hats, you are typically simply good (or okay) at one or the other. Take word of inquiries, and don’t hesitate to share your individual expertise. For example if your corporation is in the financial companies and tax preparation industry, don’t use the names of area of interest tax options you specialize in like "estate taxes" or "small enterprise taxes" as your endorsed abilities. If the preferences states that the user doesn't wish to obtain introductions in sure classes -- for instance, job presents -- respect that particular person's needs and don’t proceed with the request. In contrast to bizarre research, LinkedIn narrows down the method by introductions and lets you search for folks by title, title, company, and other pertinent details. If you have a PowerPoint presentation that you employ when applying for positions in-person or together with emailed resumes, it is best to actually embody those displays within your LinkedIn profile. Login | buy linkedin Followers scholarship website - Entry your account or register for, new account on Linkedin web site. Get to know your local press, write press releases that is news related.

I do know that we all assume in business that everyone seems to be our very best consumer, particularly in case you deliver a generic service. Promoting layouts engage in a dynamic perform in just powering the buyer involve for the respective model, principle and enterprise enterprise through proper interacting with the focus guests. STREAM’s output is like PowerPoint slideshow replicated online. If you’re newly related to any person that you’d prefer to develop a deeper relationship with, shoot them a fast message. Do not forget the discover the catchy begin line. Sure, if you're Disney Florida they will come, however you're not working for the mouse and no body cares about your model unless you begin caring about them, give something away, present an invaluable service, or give you one thing special. There isn't any must force yourself into a public speaking scenario or into a big-scale networking group. So that you see here I create a separate panorama and then set it’s position.

[grazynasumner-blog]

How To Get Skinny In 3 Months - Tips For Losing Weight - How To Get Skinny Fast For Kids

Whey Protein - whey protein shakes are great muscle building foods because whey protein is absorbed quickly by your body. Taking this within 2 hours of a workout helps your body recover quickly, which helps build muscle quickly. testosterone I wanted to take the time to show you how to get big muscles. A lot of people really have a poor misconception about what they are required to do. The average person would tell you that you need to hang out at the gym for an hour or two each day and lift heavy weights. I wish it was that simple, but there is so much more to it. Misinformation seems to flow around quite easily when it comes to improving your body and this is what causes people to fail and inevitably give up. I want to break that cycle and show you how to get big muscles. But no matter what your genetic makeup is, you can be sure to increase about 20 % to 40 % muscles in the first few months of your training. So do not lose hope if you have a lithe or petite figure because there is still a chance for you to have muscles. Never Exceed 45 Minutes of Working out Daily- when working out, never exceed 45 minutes because this can decrease your testosterone levels drastically. That can cause you not to grow and stunt your growth. Also you can be so tired that you cannot implement the overload technique that I mentioned the first tip. Overweight teenagers and boys going through puberty may develop larger breast for a short time. Some older men may develop Pseudogynecomastia or symptoms of gynecomastia. With the young boys, it is often temporary, lasting no more than three years. Some of the causes vary. Experts let us know that this condition may develop if the person has a disease of the liver. In addition, anyone that uses drug therapies, such as the female sex hormones or the anabolic steroids may develop gynecomastia. Moreover, certain chemical or substances may cause gynecomastia to develop. testosterone More and more women are using weights regularly when it comes to creating their fitness training programs. Its important to not only do cardio but also lift weights on a regularly basis. Combining this with a healthy diet and supplements will definitely get you in the best shape you've ever been in, IF you are consistent! This one's easy. Who needs to waste money on a gym membership? The only thing a gym membership does for the majority of people who use one is give them a structured area to do a workout in. But it really isn't essential. Gyms are just filled with inventions created to replicate the actions we used to do outdoors. Instead of using a treadmill, try taking a brisk walk or jog around the neighborhood with a friend. To replace free weights, carry your grocery bags from the store to your car instead of using the buggy. Use the stairs at work instead of the elevator, just as you would use the step climber machine at the gym. For the practical jokers out there, there is a great way to make some office bucks with this last one... Upon entering a room, I usually remain quiet at first, letting my female named gamer tag speak for itself. After a few seconds, if there is an immature teenager in the room I hear some sort of "Yo, Mama" joke or they ask the really obvious, "Hey, Mrs_____ , are you really a girl?" At this point I usually laugh, and say, "Of course!" At this point, the kids usually become quiet or start bragging. The young 20-somethings try to impress me with their kill ratio or try to hit on me, and the 30's guys usually limit their vulgarities in my presence and show respect. If you treasured this article and you would like to be given more info regarding bodybuilding (browse this site) i implore you to visit our internet site.

[the-fitsquad]

The Significance Of Pc Health And Safety

Block The Outdoors Planet With Quartet Workstation Privacy Screens

In Pc Aided Design (CAD), students begin working with two-dimensional designs and advance to 3-dimensional designs, including solid-primarily based and parametric modeling with animation. According to the recommendations about the very best areas on this Chinese method, it clearly declares that you must not have your workplace or workstation in your bedroom so set aside those PCs and try to replace it with the greatest feng shui position. The requested search operation is not supported for ASQ searches. This beast of raw power is hardware in its prime, an industrial grade solution to all CAD commitments. Throughout this process it is important to be aware of the products that cannot be changed in your office, such as the table height, and set your workstation up accordingly. I mention this software program right here since the amount of RAM and processor throughput necessary by this computer software is the maximum anyplace in the software arena.

Fortunately, I have several possibilities at my disposal, depending on my life style, my computing habits, whether or not I function or I am in college, how much and what type of information storage requirements I require, whether or not I access my data frequently whilst on the go from several computers, a single laptop, a desktop at house, or a workstation at the office. With today’s enhancing technologies, a lot of people turn to remote access application to acquire access to their computers. Our chassis are developed by BOXX engineers and proudly manufactured in the USA, but they aren’t built for sending emails or gaming. The file replication service cannot quit replicating the method volume because of an internal error. From our 30 years working with Autodesk and style software program for the building sector, we supply a distinctive point of view on the demands these applications location on your IT infrastructure and the solutions essential to optimise your enterprise efficiency.

The Application Licensing Service reported that the license edition does match the personal computer edition. When it’s time to upgrade your system, be confident you’re up to speed on CPU, GPU, and RAM technologies. We can supply assistance with setting up secure accounts, guest accounts and with enterprise information access by means of your Unit Safety Get in touch with. As Africans, the world over, we often do not truly dig deeper into the meanings and realities brought about by these new technologies which we use as leaders of our folks, and our folks, en-masse, use them also. Best for SMBs in a wide variety of occupations including finance, video production and architecture, this workstation consists of support for each single- and dual-socket processors.

Created for the most demanding workstation and server-class applications. VMware Workstation Pro supports DirectX 10 and OpenGL three.3, to deliver a fluid and responsive experience when operating 3D applications. The machine is much more of an experiment than an work to change the way desktops and workstations are developed, Wuischpard said. This is constantly a matter of some opinion, because the enormous variety of essential components that are available, from processors to GPUs to storage to RAM, permit an endless series of permutations and a firm such as HP is free of charge to implement, and clearly capable of implementing, properly any of them depending on what it thinks it can sell. Our test technique came outfitted with two quad-core Intel Xeon L5520 processors (two.27GHz), 6GB ECC RAM, Nvidia Quadro FX 1800 graphics card, and Windows Vista 64-bit.

In Windows 7, there is a energy program setting called “High Functionality strategy” which adjusts Windows to use a lot more of your CPU, and other program resources for quicker overall performance. These systems variety in complexity from basic, inexpensive microcomputer systems to large sophisticated systems with dedicated image processing hardware. HP advertises that it constructed the Z2 Mini G3 Workstation with personal computer-aided design and style in thoughts, so I tested this claim to see how the Z2 fared under the demands of the AutoCAD program. The concept behind the WorkFit-P is that you can spend portion of your day slouched in your office chair staring at your MacBook, but then have the laptop raised to a comfy height for standup work the rest of the day.

It surely outpaces our older dual-processor workstation best picks, like the Lenovo ThinkStation D30 and the ThinkStation C20 on features and efficiency. Workstation mode: Microsoft plans to optimize the OS by identifying typical compute and graphics intensive workloads” to supply peak performance and reliability when Workstation mode is enabled. GHz per dollar – For pure Gigahertz speed for the income, the 2011 and 1150 i7’s come out on leading each time, making them the very best value for single threaded applications. I disagree on the cpu, single core overall performance is every thing so you would much better put some cash in the very best single core overall performance, comparing the i5 4690k and the i7 4790k, the 4790k has 4,4ghz turbo clock while the i5 has three,9ghz, so that’s about ten% a lot more clockspeed on the exact same cpu.

HP Z desktop workstations enable you to effortlessly scale to accommodate your demands. The requested operation is unavailable although the Application Licensing Service is operating. A single processor also limits the quantity of further PCIe slots that can be added with a PCIe slot riser. There is also dual Intel Xeon CPUs with up to 56 cores, as well as dual NVIDIA Quadro Pro graphics cards. The launch of a new series of workstations is not generally something to get excited about. – These guests are not allowed to buy anything on credit. The chip designer has unveiled its 1st-ever Xeon processor family members for laptops, the E3-1500M v5. The Skylake -based part is meant to deliver the type of heavy lifting that you’d want as a pro (such as rendering 3D models or crunching large information sets) whilst providing you a laptop that is nonetheless thin and light sufficient to carry around.

The chair encourages puposeful interactions – at the desk, in group places and throughout the entire workplace. Prior to approaching suppliers of workplace workstations you need to do some homework. HP has announced the company’s most powerful workstation to date, the HP Z8 G4, as well as other models from the newly refreshed Z line. The new workstations function the latest eight-core Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 solution family, supply up to 512GB of DDR3 memory and are independent software vendor (ISV)-certified for the design and style, engineering and evaluation applications upon which our readers depend. The new workstations also help the newest discrete graphics accelerator choices, which includes the Nvidia Quadro K6000 and AMD FirePro W7100, plus optional Thunderbolt 2 ports for high-speed transfer of big files.

The option of mobile graphics chips from Nvidia’s Quadro range implies that the Z1 can’t be as proficient in 3D as a desktop machine – final results in Cinebench and Maya had been mediocre, but our test model’s 3000M Quadro chip worked fine for 3D in Photoshop. In some hotels guests can check themselves out of the hotel by accessing self verify out terminals in the lobby or in room method interfaced with front office pc intended to reduce verify out time and front desk visitors. I mention it largely as a curious truth, typically men and women consider that Apple hardware have some mystic power. With help for numerous NVIDIA Quadro, AMD FirePro, GeForce, and Tesla cards, the SHIFT will enable you to fully harness the energy of GPU computing.

The voucher is then sent to the front office for posting onto the guest folio. The requested operation calls for a directory service, and none was offered. If you’re sending emails, generating spreadsheets, watching videos, or spending time on social media, you can not beat the trusty Pc. However, if you happen to be a VFX artist, animator, film editor, architect, engineer, product designer, or other creative pro, your 3D applications demand the power and efficiency of a expert grade APEXX workstation from BOXX. Elevated space in SSD will help you to retailer your applications as effectively as the data files in the SSD itself. Modern workstations don’t require to be big, bulky machines that dominate the desktop, but can be trendy and even trendy devices with high top quality styles, with out sacrificing pure power and overall performance.

The OH&S Division has developed a training module, guideline and associated checklist that outline a practical strategy for the optimal design and style and self-adjustment of laptop workstations as a essential injury prevention measure. At the low-end of the range the HP Z420 provides up to eight cores, a 2nd generation Xeon E5-2600 processor, a maximum of 64GB RAM and 11TB of storage. You are going to locate space for at least one extra internal tough drive, a PCI Express (PCIe) x16 video card slot, a choice of PCI or PCIe expansion slots, and maybe space for an additional optical drive. If you need even far more performance, you will have to get a method with a desktop processor. A common choice for a smaller sized office is our ranges of hidden or concealed workstations, where all the inner workings are cleverly hidden away from sight when closed, but the hidden desks reveal a host of smart storage and other characteristics – best where space is at a premium.

Here’s to more power to you with the HP Z440 Workstation. These higher-efficiency computer systems are equipped particularly for processing massive 3D graphics and CAD softwares which saves you time when modelling. Although the HP EliteDesk 800 small form element Computer provides a beautiful style with leading-notch productivity and functionality for your enterprise in order to match your workstyle. New Reliable Computer Guys clients will obtain Totally free enterprise-grade Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware safety computer software, for all their servers and workstations, when they outsource their IT with Reliable Pc Guys, Inc. Every GRRL library has computer workstations that can be reserved for particular occasions and that are connected to the Internet by means of the high-speed library network.

The minimalist look is what you need to aim for, with smaller sized workstations and compact personal computer desks. Producing a workstation is a worthwhile physical exercise in creativity and resourcefulness you need to have only glimpse some of the sleek and effective workstation designs that are proudly displayed by men and women who created their personal. In the heat of summer season, it is good to get some time off to fix up around the property and do anything that I normally take no pleasure in – rebuilding computers and reinstalling the OS & computer software! HP’s purpose with the release of the Z series was to reinvent their workstations, each in terms of overall performance and branding, and fight the growing commoditization that we are seeing in today’s computing. The ReFS file technique format is not supported on this volume.

Hewlett-Packard unleashes trio of effective new workstations in its Z-series line. LIMS is utilised to connect analytical instruments in the laboratory to 1 or multiple personal computer systems or workstations. Workstations are much more potent and higher in efficiency than desktop computers, especially with respect to CPU and Graphics, memory capacity and multitasking capability. The interior is also intelligently created and laid out as effectively as really straightforward to service and sustain given that no tools (e.g. screwdrivers) are necessary. An employee in this position performs fundamental workstation duties in the deployment and maintenance of workstation hardware and software. I bought my Windows 7 item important license on earlier this year and I have not had an activating issue.

It enables remote access to high performance workstations or virtual workstations from different distinct devices including PC’s, Window tablets, thin consumers and other workstations. Complimentary support begins when your VMware Workstation Pro license is registered. A effectively-developed office space can be an crucial issue in determining the good results or failure of any company. Only supports few popular merchandise such as Kaspersky Antivirus, Kaspersky Internet Safety, Kaspersky Tiny Workplace Safety, Kaspersky Endpoint Safety. I think about these individuals (and a lot of, a lot of other folks) to be friends, and I’m thankful that social media has brought them into my life. “The addition of our most current Z Workstations and Z Turbo Drive demonstrate HP Inc’s unwavering commitment to professionals who consistently push the limits of technology to bring the planet and the universe life-altering innovations,” mentioned Gwen Coble, HP’s EMEA director for commercial and retail options.

Packets can collide because so considerably of the site visitors is routed amongst all the workstations on the network. Not only do they supply twice the efficiency of SSD challenging drives but they lessen boot up, calculation and graphics response occasions. Guests who present an acceptable credit card at registration could be extended a line of credit equal to the floor limit credit limit set by the issuing credit card company. Meet Precision’s first 27-inch all-in-1 workstation developed for creators and strong thinkers. Ergotron WorkFit-TL 33-406-085 is the most recent design and style for desktop sit-stand workstation by Ergotron. This is not to say that the pc is blight on the symbolic landscape only that, like health-related technology, it has usurped powers and enforced mindsets that a fully attentive culture might have wished to deny it. Hence, the examination of the suggestions embedded in pc technology is worth attempting.

Thanks to the improved efficiency of the latest Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v4 series processors and NVIDIA® Quadro® M6000 graphics, the ThinkStation P710 has the energy and speed to manage your workload with ease, which includes the toughest ISV-certified applications. We configure our CAD systems and software program to meet your demands and provide it when you need it. We are often pleased to answer concerns or resolve prospective issues. These men and women who are assisting under-develop the locals have adapted to the existing Apartheid norm of hunting down upon the nearby African South African South Africans as inferior, lazy and criminal in their techniques anytime interacting with Africans from the north of South Africa, inside South Africa. Software program can also be used for writing the system utilized in microcontrollers.

With ample memory, 4K quad-display capabilities¹ and optimized application overall performance, creative and style professionals can operate at a new levels of detail, speed, responsiveness and creativity. DeltaV Workstations are configured with the hardware – NIC cards, memory and hard disk size — required to help DeltaV applications. The mobile workstations also are compatible with the new HP Extended Life Notebook Battery and HP Ultra-Capacity Notebook Battery, which offer you external battery supplies for additional run time. My thanks to Lenovo and NVIDIA for offering the workstation and card (and the inspiration). Gamers, work at residence pros, and even little to medium sized businesses will appreciate the believed they’ve put into generating long lasting office desks.

The requested authentication strategy is not supported by the server. The above ten actions give a short summary of excellent ergonomic style practice for computer workstations, but there is lots much more to contemplate. That is, one particular was in great standing as soon as they denounced Obama, and they had been shire to get voted in. What they did was, in a lot of places perform, once official site more, very hard to hijack and discourage the African American and Hispanic votes. “Digital media convergence is new media technologies that enabled the exact same element to flow by way of numerous diverse mediums such as World wide web, intelligent telephone, laptops or even Ipad. “For the 1st 3 decades of colonialism, hardly something was done that could remotely be termed a service to the African individuals.

Based on HP’s unique and comprehensive security capabilities at no additional cost among vendors as of January 2017 on HP Mobile Workstations with 7th Gen Intel® Processors. – Save time by attaching and viewing Navisworks and BIM 360 Glue models directly inside AutoCAD. Like other prominent CAD applications, Rhino sees use in many item design, engineering, and architectural projects. Probably much less well recognized as a material for workplace desks and furnishings, walnut is regarded as the modern cousin to the much more standard mahogany. Portion of the difficulty is that ratings and performance numbers do not transfer well between distinct brands, and there is truly no regular that makers of graphics cards use in comparison of their item to other brands.

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