Journal articles on the topic 'Bible – Citations'

The Hebrew works of convert Abner de Burgos/Alfonso de Valladolid (d. ca. 1347) were translated into Castilian in the fourteenth century, at least partly and probably entirely by Abner/Alfonso himself. Because the author avoids Christian texts and cites abundantly from Hebrew sources, his writing includes many passages taken from the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. The Castilian versions of his works translate these citations directly from Hebrew and do not seem to make any direct use of existing Romance-language Bibles (although his work might have relied indirectly on Jewish Bible translations circulating orally in the fourteenth century). Given the abundance of citations, especially in Abner/Alfonso’s earliest surviving work, the Moreh ṣedeq (Mostrador de justicia), his writing can serve as a significant source in the history of Hebrew-to-Romance Bible translation in the fourteenth century. The goal of this article is to consider the impact of polemical writing on Bible translation in the Middle Ages by analyzing these citations in Abner/Alfonso’s Castilian works.

Citation is a category whose linguistic status is ambiguous. This is why a research report on this issue needs to start with the author’s effort to define terminology, in order to avoid potential misinterpretation. In this paper, citation is defined as a textual category, and used in its broad meaning: the notion covers both direct and indirect speech constructions, since the syntactic discrepancy between the two types of structure does not affect the role these constructions play in the analysed texts. These texts are polemicals by Jan Śniadecki, a leading Polish thinker of the Enlightenment. The paper discusses the functions that citations realize (supporting persuasive argumentation, constructing polemical parts of the text), as well as the issue of irregularities in graphic marking and punctuation of citations. The main conclusions are as follows: citation and autocitation of judgements and opinions is a crucial method of organizing discourse in Śniadecki’s writings. The way he reproduces others’ statements influences directly the stylistic and the functional character of citations. Śniadecki uses citations to refer the reader to numerous authors and thinkers, which testifies to his great erudition. He quotes from culturally fundamental texts (the Bible, Cicero, St. Augustine), classics of Polish and world literature (Horace or Krasicki), as well as from scientific works of his contemporaries (Johnson, Voltaie, d’Alambert, Rousseau). These citations depict a panorama of the Enlightenment thought, expressed by the most famous figures of culture and science of that time. The citations also make it clear to us what areas of cultural tradition were appreciated the most by the classics of the Enlightenment.

The main objective of this paper is to describe the types and functions of biblical and liturgical citation in M. V. Lomonosov’s works. This research into Lomonosov’s text corpus shows that explicit biblical and liturgical citation can be revealed in the texts of different genres—both in his poetry and in his prose works (and not only in “poetic” rhetorical prose). The paper focuses on different forms of biblical and liturgical contexts in Lomonosov’s panegyric odes, natural science texts, working papers, and letters. Three sources of biblical and liturgical parallels were used: the Moscow Bible (1663), the Festal Menaion (1730), and the Octoechos (1715); the latter includes Lomonosov’s notes in the margins. The research shows that Lomonosov proceeds in various ways: he might mention a Bible source without citation; he might use marked citations; and he might include biblical and liturgical citations into his own speech without reinterpretation, sometimes giving them some additional semantics. Biblical and liturgical phraseology can be described as using the following specific forms: a) phrases that actuate biblical and liturgical semantics in Lomonosov’s panegyric odes (an important issue is to reveal which context is relevant—the biblical or the liturgical); b) those that demonstrate logical consistency between science and religion in Lomonosov’s natural science texts; c) those that construct polemic and ironic context in prose works of different genres; and d) those that emphasize some statements in Lomonosov’s letters, creating the effect of “switching the languages.”

Harriet Jacobs was the first female to write and publish a narrative about her earlier life in slavery. It is a story unlike any written by her male counterparts, especially as she details the psychological impact of the harrowing sexual exploitation of nineteenth-century antebellum enslavement. Her Incidents is full of citations of and allusions to the Bible, which she learned to read as a very young girl. She developed a strategy for interpreting the pages of the Bible to challenge commonly held southern interpretations that supported the slaveholding aristocracy surrounding her. Her appropriation of the Bible allowed her to defend her humanity and maintain her dignity.

This article examines the use of biblical vocabulary in Pilypas Ruigys’ dictionary „Littauiſch=Deutſches und Deutſch=Littauiſches Lexicon“ (Königsberg 1747). The biblical words in this dictionary were derived from the 1735 Lithuanian translation of the Bibel. This fact is clearly stated in the title of the dictionary. Moreover, in the foreword to the dictionary the author highlights that he attempted to pick out as many Lithuanian synonyms from the Holy Script as possible. The exact chapters and verses of the Bible referenced next to the Lithuanian words help to determine which words and multi-word expressions were included in the dictionary. To this day there hasn’t been a statistical and textual analysis, which would show the nature and scale of the Bible references in Ruigys’ dictionary. The analysis has shown that Ruigys refered to the Bible mostly in search of suitable translation of German words and multi-word expressions. In addition, the Bible was a source for expanding the list of lemmata of German-Lithuanian part of the dictionary. The biblical references are in most cases placed next to the single words or two-word (in rare cases three-word) expressions that refer to some kind of Biblical terminology, i.e. name of a person, a thing or an occurence. There are very few longer citations of the Bible. Approximately 3500 words and multi-word expressions were copied from the Old Testament and about 650 – from the New Testament. Book of Genesis was referenced most times (more than 350), more than 200 examples were taken from Book of Exodus, Psalms, Book of Isaiah and Book of Job. The most cited part of the New Testament was the Book of Matthews.

The Rule of St. Benedict is norm of the life for Christian monks in Occident. According to the biblical index in the edition of R. Hanslik (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 75) in the Rule are citations from 30 and allusions from 39 texts of Corpus Paulinum in 82 places of RB. More of one time are citations or allusions to Rom 2, 11; 12, 10; 1 Cor 4, 12; 9, 27; 10, 4; Eph 4, 37; Phil 2, 8; 2 Tim 3, 13; 5, 20; 2 Tim 4, 2. This is a good example of reading and use of the Bible in ancient monasticism and also help for contemporary monks and nuns.

The Rule of St. Benedict is the norm of the life for Christian monks in Occident. According to the biblical index in the edition of R. Hanslik (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 75) in the Rule are citations from 30 and allusions from 39 texts of Corpus Paulinum in 82 places of RB. More of one time are citations or allusions to Rom 2, 11; 12, 10; 1 Cor 4, 12; 9, 27; 10, 4; Eph 4, 37; Phil 2, 8; 2 Tim 3, 13; 5, 20; 2 Tim 4, 2. This is a good example of reading and use of the Bible in ancient monasticism and also help for contemporary monks and nuns.

The article provides an etymological classification of religiously marked proverbs in the English and Russian languages. Under religiously marked proverbs, the proverbs etymologically originated from the Bible and proverbs, containing a religiously marked component (God, devil, sin) are understood. The results of analysis allowed us to work out the etymological classification of religiously marked proverbs that can be divided into 4 etymological groups: 1) citations from Bible; 2) transformed biblical proverbs; 3) postbiblical proverbs; 4) religiously marked proverbs, reflecting religious views and evaluations of a particular nation. Religiously marked proverbs are characterized by a high tendency to folklorization and lexical, grammatical and structural transformations that conditions the difficulties in identification of their etymology.

AbstractR. Shlomo Yitṣḥaki (Hebrew: שלמה יצחקי), generally known by the acronym Rashi, was a medieval French rabbi who lived between 1040 and 1105 in Troyes (Champagne). Rashi was the author of two comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud and on the Tanakh. His commentary on the Talmud, which covers nearly all of the Babylonian Talmud (a total of 30 tractates), has been included in every edition of the Talmud since its first printing by Daniel Bomberg in the 1520 s. His commentary on the most books of the Tanakh – especially on the Chumash – is still an indispensable exegetical tool to almost all students of the Hebrew Bible. This perush al ha-Torah supplemented almost all printed Hebrew Bibles or Chumash Editions and initiated more than 300 super-commentaries, which analyze and elucidate Rashi’s choices of exegesis, grammar, variant readings, Masora and midrash citations. The manuscript editions of his commentary were augmented with various map diagrams of Erets Israel, which disappeared in the printed editions of the Rashi commentary. Abraham Berliner mentioned this loss and recent scholarship is rediscovering these Rashi diagrams and maps. This paper elucidates the so-called Numeri 34 map-diagrams in the oldest extant manuscripts of the Rashi commentary, and their refinement and recycling within the Masora (figurata) of Ashkenazi bible manuscripts.

Abstract Editio princeps of P.Duk. inv. 660, a possibly third- or fourth-century papyrus fragment containing a mixture or patchwork (i.e. a cento) of citations of and allusions to the Greek bible: Gen 27:28, Pss 26:2, 4, 41:2, 123:7, and 2 Cor 6:2 are present and a number of other scriptural references are likely. What remains of the papyrus indicates that it held some personal or devotional function.

In the early or mid-second century c.e., a Jewish proselyte named Aquila1 translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek.2 The translation survives today only in fragments, but both Jewish and Christian sources from Late Antiquity offer perspectives on and information about Aquila as well as citations of his translation. To fully understand the role his legacy played in Jewish and Christian communities requires careful analysis of each of the sources. I believe that prior scholarship, especially regarding ancient perspectives on Aquila and his translation, as well as the popularity of his translation in various communities, has drawn conclusions based on overall impressions of texts that may appear quite differently when examined closely and in context. My goal in the following pages is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the history of Aquila's Bible translation in Late Antiquity.

When a change of speaker in a Scripture text is not explicitly introduced by a speech orienter, Bible readers may feel the text is “intrusive.” This article proposes a taxonomy for categorizing such intrusive voices in various passages of Scripture. The intrusion may be external (due to scribal activity) or internal (as written by the original author). Internal intrusions can be further classified as citations or unmarked conversational turns. Textual signals that a change of speaker has occurred in the original texts include a change in deictic reference (primarily pronominal) and change in semantic content. The article lists orthographic and linguistic devices that translators have used in existing Scripture translations to clarify that a change of speaker has occurred, and also examines several passages where it is not fully clear whether an intrusive voice is present or not.

Abstract Thomas Aquinas makes occasional references to the coexistence of multiple versions of the Bible. In particular, Thomas was familiar with several versions of the Latin Psalter used in liturgical and scholarly contexts. This article examines Thomas’s references to Ps. 67, 7 as a test case for understanding the role of scriptural plurality in his biblical hermeneutics. Thomas associates this verse with the theme of unity within religious life, the relation of the Eucharist to ecclesial unity, and ecclesial unity in itself. Thomas’s citations of alternate versions of this verse often appear to be consciously chosen in accord with his exegetical purposes.

This article reviews the intertextual relations between the poetry of the Dutch poet Lucebert and the Bible. Although Lucebert is by no means a religious poet he freely uses Biblical citations and allusions in his poetry. This has special relevance for one of his newest volumes of poetry entitled Troost de hysterische robot - Gedichten en een oratorium (Console the hysterical robot - Poems and an oratorio). The last part of this title refers to an oratorio - which can be defined as a lyrical-musical drama which usually has a religious substance. The Biblical jargon that Lucebert uses does not only refer to texts but also refers to isolated words or phrases which belong to Biblical or religious jargon in general. In his reflections on human destiny and fate, the poet uses many anchoring texts from the Bible. One comes to the conclusion that Lucebert's poems do not fall within the framework of a religious system, but he does use religion and then especially Biblical allusions to testify to his dissatisfaction with established institutions which include the church. The main stylistic device he uses to reach his objective is antithesis, which is also a topic of discussion in this article.

English This study aims to investigate how affective states are described in the Old Testament. Three psychology researchers were asked to read the first five books of the first Italian version (from the 18th century) of the Old Testament (Pentateuch, or Torah) and to select all the terms that referred to an emotion or a feeling. For each selected term, they also had to pinpoint its position in the text (i.e. book, chapter) and the various characteristics of the affective episode in which it appeared (i.e. experiencing subject, situational antecedent, intentional object, instrumental behaviors). The textual analysis showed that the affective terms most frequently cited referred to four categories: “fear, awe”, “anger, hate”, “affliction, pain, sadness” and “love, joy, happiness”. These categories were significantly associated with specific instrumental behaviors and characters of the narration. Multivariate analysis also indicated that the frequency of citation of the affective categories varied significantly as a function of the book in which they appeared. In the conclusions, the authors discuss the conception of emotions and feelings issuing from the Pentateuch analysis. French L'article se propose d'analyser de quelle manière les expériences affectives sont décrites et évaluées dans la Bible. On a demandé à trois chercheurs psychologues de lire les cinq premiers livres de la première version italienne (du 18ème siècle) de la Bible (le Pentateuque, ou Torah) et d'y sélectionner tous les termes se référant à des expériences affectives (émotions et sentiments). Pour chaque terme sélectionné, ils devaient aussi indiquer sa position dans le texte (livre, chapitre) et les différentes composantes de l'épisode au cours duquel l'émotion ou le sentiment étaient expérimentés (le sujet qui expérimentait l'expérience affective, la situation qui la causait, l'objet intentionnel auquel elle se référait, le comportement réactif du sujet, l'évaluation morale de l'expérience). Les résultats de la sélection ont mis en évidence que les termes affectifs les plus fréquents se réfèrent à quatre catégories d'émotions, à savoir, dans l'ordre, la peur, la colère, la tristesse, la joie. Ces émotions sont expérimentées à des fréquences différentes par les principaux personnages de la narration (Dieu, les hommes, le Peuple d'Israël). L'émotion le plus souvent expérimentée par Dieu est la colère et par les différents personnages humains, la peur. Aucune évaluation morale négative quant aux expériences affectives n'émerge de l'analyse du texte. L'analyse multivariée met en évidence le fait que la fréquence des citations des catégories émotionnelles change sensiblement en fonction des cinq livres du Pentateuque. Dans leurs conclusions, les auteurs examinent la conception implicite des émotions et des sentiments qui semble émerger du Pentateuque.

The differences between early Ladino liturgical translations andhalakhictranslations, both of which were based on Hebrew sources, are analyzed in this study. The liturgical translations include the Bible, Pirke Avot, the Passover Haggadah, and the Siddur as well as biblical citations in these sources. The halakhic translations includeMesa de el alma(Shulḥan Hapanimin Hebrew) which is a translation ofShulḥan Arukh, the translations ofḤovat Halevavot, and the halakhic instructions in the prayer books. While there are no significant variations in orthography between the two kinds of translations and morphology demonstrates few differences, syntax, discourse analysis, and lexicon reveal great variability. The halakhic translations demonstrate simplification, explicitation, normalization, and a small amount of interference, whereas the liturgical translations adhere to very strict norms of word-for-word translation. It was also found in both kinds of texts that the western translations from Italy and the Netherlands done by former converted Jews (anusim) follow Spanish norms more than the eastern Ladino conventions of the Jews in the Balkans and Asia Minor.

Résumé Je compare le "Bestiaire" de Pierre de Beauvais (version courte) et le "Bestiaire" de Guillaume le Clerc afin de comprendre quelle dépendance existe entre la forme-vers ou la forme-prose du bestiaire et son contenu au début du XIIIe s. A mon avis, ce sont deux textes différents par leur niveau de difficulté. Ils s'opposent par une quantité plus ou moins grande de mots et de noms propres difficiles, de citations de la Bible. En suivant le texte latin, la traduction en prose recrée les allégories complexes et hiérarchisées; le poète n'en conserve que les éléments séparés. Ces bestiaires divergent dans leurs visées: d'une part, spécialement didactique et, peut-être, directement pédagogique, d'autre part, didactique et distrayante en même temps. Ils s'opposent aussi par la manière d'utiliser les descriptions, le vocabulaire abstrait ou concret. Les caractéristiques mentionnées forment des ensembles cohérents dans l'un et l'autre cas. Elles sont liées à la nature même du vers ou de la prose, choisis par des traducteurs, ou bien à la fonction sociale de leurs oeuvres.

It is very easy in universities to forget the importance of teaching. It is easy for this to happen when the accreditation system almost exclusively recognizes research, as is the case in Spain, and teaching is relegated to a huge block of “others,” where teaching, transfer to society and management are practically diluted between them. With no small effort to find the time and little encouragement from his colleagues, still subject manuals come to light. Some are published by the universities themselves and so frequently valued as something minor, and others with great personal efforts from the authors. This review wants to highlight the importance of manuals, the teacher’s book, the work “bible” that will make it possible for students to be great professionals tomorrow. Frequently we find university professors who use references from numerous authors to their own program, plagued by a multitude of citations, which on many occasions cloud the objective, in short, due to the almost obligatory nature of covering a teaching method, a concept, a working tool.

The article presents the results of a study of Latin inscriptions on paintings and engravings of the Vanitas genre. The sources of borrowing citations, their functional-semantic and linguistic load are analysed. The research proves that texts in Latin are an integral part of paintings and engravings of the Vanitas genre, and their use is conditioned by the specifics of the origin and historical development of the genre. The analysis of Latin inscriptions helps form a generalised vision and perception of the world's vanity, the transience of life, and the inevitability of death, which is laid down by artists in their works. The contemplation of such works is designed to inspire viewers with the idea that everything that surrounds and accompanies a person in this life is vanity. Also, there is a significant difference between the death of a person who lives righteously and the death of a sinner. The artists used Latin quotes from various sources to enhance their influence on the audience (the quotes from the Bible and works of ancient authors). Quotes from the works of contemporaries are used less frequently. Artists were relatively free with the quoted phrases: they shortened, supplemented, and combined expressions.

This ground-breaking work is a collection of papers originally given at anacademic conference on the interpretation of scripture in medieval Judaism,Christianity, and Islam, which was held at the University of Toronto in1997. Of equal interest to scholars and students of medieval Judaism,Christianity, and Islam, particularly those concerned with the place of thescriptures in these religious traditions, it demonstrates both the diversitywithin these three faiths’ exegetical traditions as well as their many crossculturalsimilarities.Following a short preface, which briefly outlines the work’s purposesand scope, the book is divided into three sections, each of which containsthe chapters related to each faith tradition. Each section begins with itsown introduction to the history and methods of the medieval exegesis ofthe relevant faith tradition, which provides the non-specialist reader witha historical context in which to place the individual chapters. The introductionsalso draw the reader’s attention to some parallel developmentsand possible interfaith influences among these exegetical traditions,while at the same time promoting a nuanced understanding in order toavoid facile comparisons. The book contains both a general subject indexand an index to citations from the Bible, Rabbinic literature, and theQur’an.Part 1, which contains 10 chapters on medieval Jewish exegesis, isarguably the most vibrant portion of this book. It conveys a sense of thedepth and breadth of this exegetical tradition, as well as the variety ofapproaches that are being used to study it, and the potential such studieshave for shedding light on a variety of historical issues ...

The article discusses intertextuality as a specific feature of fiction of the XIX-XXI centuries, is a peculiar communication code of the author with the reader, helps him to understand not only himself, but also the world in which he lives. Intertext appears in works of literature in the form of citations, allusions, reminiscences, parodies and imitations of other people's stylistic properties. Scientific intelligence analyzes the features of the structure of the Book of Psalms, which is one of the books of the Old Testament of the Bible, addresses the problem of authorship of a monument to world culture. The article analyzes separate poems from the cycle David of Psalms, which both artists have. Of course, each of the poets can trace the interpretation of the biblical text of an outstanding literary and cultural attraction. In the process of analysis, it was found that T. Shevchenko’s works are characterized by deep connections with ancient culture, Slavic mythology, and many European literatures. The “David Psalms” cycle of modern Ukrainian poetess Lina Kostenko is full of modern realities, acute social conflicts, which is a feature of the poetess’s creative manner. It is defined as the original features of the biblical text copying by each writer, and the presence of common features. It is established that in the works of both poets, despite the difference in time, metaphysical ideas take place, reflecting universal moral and ethical principles, opposing the concepts of “good – evil”, “truth – untruth”, “glory – hula”, are widely used Church Slavonic dictionary, there are elements of introspection. The works of Taras Shevchenko and Lina Kostenko are full of deep feelings about contemporary being, creating a unique image of a literary hero, which is a reflection of the author's position. Entering into the main text the motives of intertextuality allows you to create a unique idiostyle of both artists at different levels of literary reception.

Abstract When Jesus tells Pilate “my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), he may be reassuring Pilate that Jesus and his followers pose no political threat. In our time, however, the secular idea of “alternate facts” has become something of a new religion and affects both our politics and our academic study. The difficult questions of what constitutes facts or credible critical interpretation of literary facts is particularly vexed when there is a question of citation. This article does not deal with questionable abbreviations of citation (such as “The Lord is merciful and compassionate” Exod. 34:6 without the deflected punishment clauses) or expanded citation (such as “You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemies’ ” [Matt. 5:43]). It concerns rather some instances where a verse may or may not be a citation and where extra-biblical ideology can interfere with the interpretation of what is being quoted, if it is being quoted. “The poor you have always with you” (Mark 14:7, possibly citing Deut. 15:11) is one such example.

SummaryThis book offers an alternative for supersessionism and its challenge requires a response. The oddsounding title Learning Messiah was chosen to convey the author’s position as still on a journey of discovery about how to read the Bible in the light of God’s unending call and commitment to Israel. The book has three parts which cover the Old Testament, the New Testament, and ‘Living in a “New” Canonical Narrative’. The author’s purpose is not exegetical, but many readers will want proof that transcends proof-texting.RÉSUMÉL’auteur offre ici une autre position que le supersessionisme et son point de vue appelle une réponse. Le titre étrange, Learning Messiah, vise à présenter la position de l’auteur comme se situant encore au cours d’un voyage pour découvrir comment lire la Bible à la lumière de l’appel irrévocable d’Israël par Dieu et de l’engagement divin en faveur d’Israël. L’ouvrage comporte trois parties, consacrées respectivement à l’Ancien Testament, au Nouveau Testament et à « la vie dans une nouvelle narration canonique ». L’approche de l’auteur n’est pas exégétique, mais de nombreux lecteurs resteront en manque de preuves allant audelà de la simple citation de textes.ZusammenfassungDas vorliegende Buch bietet eine Alternative zur Erfüllungs- oder Ersatztheologie, deren Herausforderung nach einer Antwort verlangt. Der seltsam anmutende Titel De Messias leren (den Messias lernen) wurde gewählt, um die Position des Autors zu erläutern, der sich noch auf einer Entdeckungsreise befindet; die Reise geht darüber, wie die Bibel im Licht von Gottes fortwährender Berufung Israels und seiner Verpflichtung seinem Volk gegenüber gelesen werden soll. Das Buch hat drei Teile, die das Alte Testament, das Neue Testament sowie das ,,Leben in einer ,neuen‘ kanonischen Narrative“ umfassen. Ziel und Zweck des Autors ist nicht die Exegese, doch nicht wenige Leser werden Belege haben wollen, der über die Vorlage von Beweistexten hinausgehen.

This article demonstrates the use of Eph. 6:10-17 on a Syriac incantation bowl (ibc 3), thereby challenging the commonly held opinion that there are no direct uses of the New Testament among the Syriac bowls. We then situate the use of this biblical passage on ibc 3 within the context of biblical citation and reference in Mediterranean magic more generally. Finally, we briefly reflect on the significance of the usage of the Bible on ibc 3 for the study of Syriac incantation bowls and for the value of categories of religious identification, such as “Christian,” “Jewish,” and “Pagan,” as it pertains to the study of late antique apotropaia.

AbstractThe ›Versio vulgata‹, probably written around 1170 in Paris (St. Denis), a thoroughly accurate Latin translation of its Greek model, the ›Historia of Barlaam and Joasaph‹, is the starting point for the legend of ›Barlaam and Josaphat‹, which was widely used in all literature in the Western Middle Ages. It itself had an unusually rapid and broad reception, in which, according to the testimony of more than 100 preserved manuscripts, especially the new monastic orders of the 12th century participated, led by the Cistercians. The narrative programme of the ›Historia‹ is the path of the king’s son Josaphat into an existence of radical religious renunciation of the world, the central act of the plot being his departure from power, from the country and its people into the eremitic wilderness. It takes place against the protest of the people, who do not want to let the beloved king go, and especially against the protest of Prince Barachias, whom Josaphat forces into his succession. Here the individual’s desire for salvation not only disputes the claim of the salvation of the many, but above all denies the forced successor the possibility of an equal path of salvation. Thus the ›Historia‹ is loaded with an insoluble aporia at its key point. The use of the Bible has a formative effect on the style of the ›Historia‹, not so much the frequent citation of marked exact Bible quotations as the even more frequent insertion of smaller or larger biblical excerpts into the narrator’s speech or that of one of his characters as if they were part of their own speech.

‘Feower tida synd getealde on anum geare’, Ælfric writes inDe temporibus anni, translating a portion of Bede'sDe temporum ratione, and he enumerates the seasons together with their Latin counterparts: ‘Veris lenctentid …Aestasis sumer …Autumnusis hærfest …Hiemsis winter.’ Byrhtferth of Ramsey enumerates ‘Þa feower timan … lengten, sumor, hærfest and winter’, allegorizing them as symbols of childhood, adolescence, manhood and old age, of blood, choler, black bile and phlegm, and of air, fire, earth and water, and elsewhere he refers to ‘gewrixlunge Þæsra feower timan, Þæt ys lenctenis and sumoris and hærfestis and wintres’. From these passages, and others like them, it would appear that the Anglo-Saxons observed four seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. This conclusion seems obvious enough and represents the conceptual baseline for the Bosworth–Toller dictionary entries forlencten, andlenctentid, sumer, hærfestandwinter, even though it is clear from their own citations thatlenctenandlenctentidoften mean ‘Lent’ andhærfestoften means ‘harvest’.

Scholarly research over the last twenty years has marked a profound shift in the understanding of Beckett's sources, his methods of composition, and his attitudes towards citation and allusion in manuscript documents and published texts. Such landmark studies as James Knowlson's biography, Damned to Fame (1996), and John Pilling's edition of the Dream Notebook (1999), and the availability of primary documents such as Beckett's reading notes at Reading and Trinity libraries, opened the way for a generation of work rethinking Beckett's textual habitus. Given this profound reappraisal of Beckett's material processes of composition, this paper seeks to show that Beckett's late prose work, Worstward Ho, represents a profound mediation on writing, self-citation, and habits of allusion to the literary canon. In its epic gestures, it reorients the heavenly aspiration of Dante's Commedia earthwards, invoking instead the language of agriculture, geology and masonry in the process of creating and decreating its imaginative space. Beckett's earthy epic invokes and erodes the first principles of narrative by way of philology as well as by means of deft reference to literary texts and images preoccupied with land, farming, and geological formations. This process is described in the word corrasion, a geological term referring to the erosion of rock by various forms of water, ice, snow and moraine. Textual excursions into philology in Worstward Ho also unearth the strata comprising Beckett's corpus (in particular Imagination Dead Imagine, The Lost Ones, and Ill Seen Ill Said), as well as the rock or canon upon which his own literary production is built. A close reading of Worstward Ho turns up a number of shrewd allusions to the King James Bible and Thomas Browne, as one might expect, but also perhaps surprisingly sustained affinities with the literary sensibilities of Alexander Pope and the poetry of S. T. Coleridge. The more one digs, the more Beckett's ‘little epic’ seems to become one of earthworks, bits of pipe, and masonry, a site and record of literary sedimentation.

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is one of the common adverse drug reactions and the leading cause of drug development attritions, black box warnings, and post-marketing withdrawals. Current biomarkers are suboptimal in detecting DILI and predicting its outcome. This study aimed to quantitatively and qualitatively investigate the research trends on DILI biomarkers using bibliometric analysis. All relevant publications were extracted from the Web of Science database. An online analysis platform of literature metrology, bibliographic item co-occurrence matrix builder, and CiteSpace software were used to analyze the publication trends. CitNetExplorer was used to construct direct citation networks and VOSviewer was used to analyze the keywords and research hotspots. We found a total of 485 publications related to DILI biomarkers published from 1991 to 2020. Toxicological Sciences had been the most popular journal in this field over the past 30 years. The USA maintained a top position worldwide and provided a pivotal influence, followed by China. Among all the institutions, the University of Liverpool was regarded as a leader for research collaboration. Moreover, Professors Paul B. Watkins and Tsuyoshi Yokoi made great achievements in topic area. We analyzed the citation networks and keywords, therefore identified five and six research hotspot clusters, respectively. We considered the publication information regarding different countries/regions, organizations, authors, journals, et al. by summarizing the literature on DILI biomarkers over the past 30 years. Notably, the subject of DILI biomarkers is an active area of research. In addition, the investigation and discovery of novel promising biomarkers such as microRNAs, keratin18, and bile acids will be future developing hotspots.

Believers today are eager to explore the Bible, especially the New Testament, because they believed that the Old Testament is no longer valid in the lives of believers. The discussion in this paper examines the importance of the Decalogue and its application to believers in the present. The Ten Commandments are the culmination (climax) of all the books, centers and themes of the extraordinary book that ever existed. The Ten Commandments are the basis of all Bible themes. The Ten Commandments are the highest foundation of God's law. Many verses in the Bible (Old and New Testaments) are citation extensions of the Ten Commandments. God's command is a measure that enables us to know whether we are on the path that is in accordance with His desires or we are deviating. As John warned in 1 John 3: 4 "Everyone who sins, also violates God's law, because sin is a violation of God's law." From the discussion it is known that the Ten Commandments of God are good news delivered to Israel and also to the Christian nowadays. The Ten Commandments are the good news that God has given us to do. What is meant by the good news is that the Ten Commandments, most of which are in the form of prohibitions or negative things, but behind that all God has good intentions, which are only shown to us believers today.AbstrakOrang percaya pada masa kini cukup bersemangat mendalami Alkitab, dan pada umumnya yang dipelajari adalah Perjanjian Baru, karena berpandangan bahwa Perjanjian Lama tidak lagi berlaku dalam kehidupan orang percaya. Pembahasan dalam tulisan ini mengupas pentingnya Dasa Titah dan aplikasinya bagi orang percaya pada masa kini. Sepuluh Perintah merupakan puncak (klimaks) dari seluruh kitab, pusat dan tema kitab yang sangat luar biasa yang pernah ada dan merupakan hasil dari yang kemudian dan tambahan-tambahannya. Sepuluh Perintah adalah merupakan dasar dari seluruh tema Alkitab. Sepuluh Perintah adalah dasar hukum Allah yang tertinggi. Banyak ayat-ayat dalam Alkitab (Perjanjian Lama dan Baru) merupakan perluasan kutipan dari Sepuluh Perintah. Perintah Allah adalah merupakan suatu ukuran yang memampukan kita untuk mengetahui apakah kita berada di jalan yang sesuai dengan keinginan-Nya atau kita sedang menyimpang. Sebagaimana yang diperingatkan oleh Yohanes di dalam 1 Yohanes 3:4 ” Setiap orang yang berbuat dosa, melanggar juga hukum Allah, sebab dosa ialah pelanggaran hukum Allah.” Dari pembahasan diketahui bahwa sepuluh perintah Allah adalah merupakan kabar baik yang disampaikan bagi Israel dan juga bagi orang percaya. Sepuluh Perintah Allah merupakan kabar baik yang Allah telah berikan kepada kita untuk dilaksanakan. Yang dimaksudkan dengan kabar baik adalah bahwa Sepuluh Perintah, yang sebagian besar di dalam setiap perintahnya berupa larangan atau hal yang negatif namun dibalik itu semua Allah mempunyai maksud yang baik, yang hanya ditujukkan bagi kita orang percaya pada masa kini.

The article is devoted to current scientific data on the cholelithiasis pathogenesis and opportunities for optimizing litholytic therapy. It is shown that cholelithiasis should be considered as a topical manifestation of systemic disorders of metabolic and inflammatory genesis throughout the body. The article shows the key role in the development of its insulin resistance, imbalanced cholesterol and bile acid metabolism, biliary dyskinesia, and the production of inflammatory mediators. There are factors that cause cholelithiasis comorbidity with cardiovascular diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, gastrointestinal cancer of various localization, and liver diseases. The role of cholelithiasis as a risk factor and a criterion for an adverse prognosis is justified. Pathogenetically justified method for improving oral litholysis, which provides a complex therapy effect, is considered; the rationality of using a fixed combination of ursodeoxycholic acid and glycyrrhizic acid is justified. KEYWORDS: gallstone disease, cholelithiasis, cholesterol stones, oral litholysis, ursodeoxycholic acid, glycyrrhizic acid, complex therapy, metabolic disorders. FOR CITATION: Nikitin I.G., Volnukhin A.V. Cholelithiasis: epidemiological data, key aspects of the pathogenesis and comorbidity, relevant therapeutic targets. Russian Medical Inquiry. 2020;4(5):290–296. DOI: 10.32364/2587–6821–2020–4-5-290-296.

В статье на основе полевых материалов рассматриваются особенности траурных шпрухов российских немцев. Основными источниками исследования стали материалы, собранные в немецких поселениях Урала и Сибири. Изучению траурных шпрухов предшествует исторический экскурс, раскрывающий некоторые особенности традиции шпрухов - цитат из религиозных текстов, пословиц и назиданий - в культуре российских немцев. Траурные цитаты рассматриваются как часть широкой традиции шпрухов, как культурное явление российских немцев. Траурные шпрухи представлены текстами в письмах, уведомляющих о смерти человека и предстоящих похоронах, текстами на крышке гроба и венках. Для траурных цитат была характерна своя стилистика оформления. Изначально тексты были выполнены на немецком языке готическим шрифтом. В локальных сюжетах тексты сопровождаются изображениями креста, ангелов. В некотором смысле и сам текст можно считать своеобразной формой украшения. К середине второй половины XX в. происходит постепенный отход от традиционной графики и переход в цитировании на русский язык. Большая часть шпрухов связана с религиозной тематикой. Прежде всего, это выдержки или прямые цитаты из Библии, кроме того, пословицы и иные высказывания. Траурные цитаты ориентируются на христианское понимание жизни и смерти. В текстах находят отражение представления, связанные с устоявшимися общественными, этическими нормами. This article examines the funeral “shpruchs” (Ger. Sprüche, Rus. shprukhi) of the Russian Germans based on field materials collected in the German settlements in the Urals and Siberia. Shpruchs - short quotations from religious texts, proverbs and edificatory material - used in mourning are part of a long tradition among Russian Germans. They appear in letters announcing a person’s death and upcoming funeral and in texts on the coffin lid and wreaths. Funeral shpruchs have their own special design. In some contexts, the texts are accompanied by images of the cross and angels. In a sense, shpruchs themselves can be considered a form of decoration. Initially shpruchs were written in German in Gothic script; by the last quarter of the 20 th century, there was a gradual departure from traditional graphics and a transition to citation in Russian. Most funerary shpruchs are on religious themes. Predominantly, they are excerpts or direct quotations from the Bible, often proverbs. Mourning shpruchs focus on the Christian understanding of life and death and reflect well-established social and ethical norms.

Background:Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is a rare slowly progressive autoimmune disease characterized by inflammatory destruction and fibrosis of intrahepatic bile ducts. It is known to coexist together with rheumatological conditions such as Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) and systemic sclerosis (SSc). There is a wide range in reported prevalence of disease overlap with these entities; however, the exact prevalence rates remain unclear.Objectives:The objectives were to determine the prevalence of: 1) PBC in patients with SS and SSc (and the subsets of limited cutaneous SSc (lcSSc) and diffuse cutaneous SSc (dcSSc)), 2) SSc and SS in patients with PBC, and 3) to analyze changes in frequency over time. SSc occurs in 3/10,000 and PBC in 4-40/10,000 but these rare autoimmune diseases are known to coexist together. We speculated that there could be more cases diagnosed due to increasing availability of standardized antibody tests such as ANA, centromere antibodies, ENA and mitochondrial antibodies.Methods:A systematic review of the literature was performed using Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library databases up till June 16, 2020. Only full text articles in the English language with at least 40 patients were included. Cohorts, case series, cross-sectional studies, correspondences and registries with reported prevalence rates of both PBC in patients with SS and SSc as well as SSc and SS in patients with PBC were included. Data on frequency of co-existent diseases was studied by year of publication to determine if prevalence changed over time using linear regression. We used the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) checklist to assess the quality of the studies.Results:Of 2876 citations identified, 67 were included in the analysis (n=33 for PBC, 15 for SSc, 18 for SS and 1 for SSc/SS). STROBE checklist scores ranged from 7-21. The prevalence of PBC was 5% in patients with SSc. Within the subsets, the prevalence of PBC in lcSSc was 8% and in dcSSc was 1%. In patients with SS, the prevalence of PBC was 4%. The prevalence of SSc overall in those with PBC was 5% and, within the subsets was 6% in lcSSc and 0% in dcSSc. The prevalence of SS in PBC was 18%. There was also no significant association between year of publication and prevalence. There was a lack of standardized definitions so misclassification may have occurred.Conclusion:PBC is increased in SSc but mostly in the lcSSc subset. SS in PBC is common at nearly 1 in 5. Over the years, there was no change in the prevalence of PBC in SSc indicating stability over time.Acknowledgements:Meagan Stanley, Western University Librarian.Disclosure of Interests:None declared.

Introduction. Art would always be a great mirror that reflects various historical epochs with their unique philosophical ideals, aesthetic and ethical principles, and the twenty-first century is no exception in this sense. At the same time, a specific feature of contemporary art is the desire to actualize the heritage of past centuries in the conceptual dialogue of cultures remote in time and space – a tendency that belongs to the basic philosophical and aesthetic characteristics of postmodernism as the dominating cultural paradigm of the XXI century. In modern musical art, the actualization of cultural heritage occurs in many ways, among which the most well-known and studied are citation, collage and stylization. All these phenomena are the subject of close attention of musicologists and cultural scientists. It is worth referring to the famous works of U.Eco, F.Jameson, V. Bibler. Of the Ukrainian musicologists who study these phenomena, let’s call D. Ruzhinskaya, O. Protopopova, O. Samoilenko. But music practice constantly generates new phenomena that also require attention. A striking example of the original use of musical material from previous eras is the compositional work of the Canadian virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin. Having received recognition as an outstanding performer, he also created his own recognizable writing style, and his opuses are of undoubted interest for the music community. The objective of this article is to consider the specifics of the postmodern tendency to actualize the cultural heritage of the past and implementation of this intention on the example of the composer creativity by M.-A.Hamelin. This research is based on structural-functional and genre-style methods. The methodological basis is the works of U. Eco, F. Jameson, V. Bibler, dedicated to the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of postmodernism and, especially, the dialogue of cultures, which reflect the problem of interaction of the old and new in modern art. Research results. The compositions by M.-A. Hamelin are presented now by a significant number of piano miniatures, the cycle of “12 Etudes in all minor keys”, by variation cycles and transcriptions. Most of them involve someone else’s thematic material in one way or another. It can be presented as quotations, which, however, are not entered in the original form, but undergo certain changes at the first appearance. One of the ways of the composer’s interpretation of thematicism is to transfer melodies to a new multi-voiced context, which is so different from the original one that a theme is no longer just a new re-harmonization. For example, M.-A. Hamelin’s Toccata is based on the melody of the famous Renaissance song “L’homme armé” (“The Armed Man”). This work was commissioned as a mandatory piece for the Fifteenth international Van Cliburn piano competition. Using a song theme in the Toccata genre, M.-A. Hamelin accelerates movement not only due to the tempo (molto movimentato, ansioso (ma non senza nobiltà)), but also the relentless movement of the sixteen in the accompaniment, creating the effect of continuous development. The important point in the composer interpretation of the source material is also the “register” transformations of the melody transferring in different octaves. The bright example of reinterpretation of the thematic material of the Renaissance is the variation cycle “Pavane Variée” on the theme “Pavane Belle qui tiens ma vie” borrowed from Tuano Arbo’s treatise “Orchesografia”. This work, like the previous one, was written to order: for the ARD International music competition 2014. When presenting the Pavane theme, the composer almost exactly preserves its original appearance, but makes small changes in the harmony that “modernize” the theme. Further development of the theme is based on a significant transformation of its textural and figurative content. The variation cycle as a whole is characterized by a modified harmonic component, thanks to which the Pavane finds itself in atypical conditions, and as if it begins to “talk” in the musical language of impressionism and jazz, as well as gets away on a rather significant distance from the original theme. For example, in variations No. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, only the general outline of the topic is guessed. In addition to the actual themes of past eras, M.-A. Hamelin sometimes uses old musical forms, filling them with new content. Such example is Ländler III from the collection of plays, which is called “Con intimissimo sentimento”. In this work, the artist imitates the form of an old French couplet Rondó, the peculiarity of which is the thematic similarity between the refrain and the episodes and the immutability of the refrain itself. Precisely following this specific form, M.-A. Hamelin creates a vivid theme for the refrain and develops it in three episodes. At the same time, by its harmonious language, the play approaches to the style of M. Ravel, and is interpreted in an impressionistic character. Conclusions. Referring to the musical heritage of past eras, M.-A. Hamelin covers various historical periods of time. The composer does not limit himself to the use of musical themes, but also refers to early musical forms. Considering the ways of processing themes in the work of M.-A. Hamelin, it is worth highlighting the desire to exhibit the material in a modified form, while the degree of change can be quite different: from a slight modification of the melody and harmony, to a fairly significant change in the harmony and texture of the theme. However, in both cases, the themes are recognizable, and their form is preserved. It is also noteworthy that the Renaissance themes chosen by the author are moved to an atypical virtuoso context, since they are included in the works written to order for music competitions, however, this interpretation gives more freedom for its disclosure in various aspects. When using old forms, M.-A. Hamelin fills them with a new harmonious meaning and combines the various genre elements (such as the features of Landler and Rondó). Through the interaction of forms, genres and harmonic means belonging to different epochs, M.-A. Hamelin’s works possess the effect of a cultural polylogue, which makes it possible to consider retrospection an important feature of his compositional thinking.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not existed since the beginning of time. Hatem Bazian explores the roots of the conflict, locating the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project under the tutelage of British colonial efforts. Bazian’s text is a look at and beyond first-hand accounts, an investigation of and critical analysis of settler practice in relation to similar texts such as Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life, Alan Dowty’s Israel/Palestine, and Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. Hatem Bazian’s Palestine…it is something colonial is not an introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Readers should possess a basic understanding of the conflict and history of the region over the last century. Nor does this text provide the reader with an unbiased look at the timeline of events since the inception of the Zionist movement. Palestine…it is something colonial instead is a rich critique of the Zionist movement and British colonialism. It investigates the way British colonialism influenced Zionism and how Zionism adopted colonial ideas and practices. Bazian locates Zionism as a settler colonialist movement still at work today, which historically planned and systematically executed the removal of Palestinians from their land, with the aid of the United Kingdom and (later) the United States. Bazian examines Ottoman collapse, the colonization of Palestine by the British, Israel’s biblical theology of dispossession, as well as British colonial incubation of Zionism, Zionism as a Eurocentric episteme, the building of Israel through ethnic cleansing, and the Nakba, all of these culminating in legalized dispossession. Throughout the text, Bazian is able to tie each chapter to the present state of affairs and remind the audience of the trauma of a people forcibly removed. Bazian opens with the straightforward assertion that “Palestine is the last settler-colonial project to be commissioned in the late 19th early 20th centuries and still unfolding in the 21st century with no end in sight” (17). In chapter one, “Dissecting the Ottomans and Colonizing Palestine,” Bazian navigates the biased historiography of the fall of the Ottoman empire, linking the collapse of the empire to the colonizing forces of Europe which sought to ensure access to the newly discovered oil in the region as well as to Asia and Africa. Bazian masterfully steers the reader through the history of European intervention, and in particular on behalf of Christians as ethnic minorities in the Middle East. Europe is historically anti-Jewish; at the turn of the century, Zionism was determined to solve Europe’s “Jewish Problem” and maintain a stronghold in the Middle East, he writes. In chapter two, “Israel’s Biblical Theology of Dispossession,” Bazian explores the biblical roots of Zionist ideology. The chapter opens with a discussion of a contemporary Bedouin tribe being expelled in the Negev. Bazian writes that “the biblical text gets transformed into policy by the Zionist state, by which it then normalizes or makes legal the wholesale theft of Palestinian lands and expulsion of the population”(57) using legal documents such as the Levy Report. These policies create “facts on the ground” which lead to “legalized expulsions.” The Bible was central to the historical development of the European Christian supremacist idea of the Holy Land. The loss of the territory conquered during the Crusades ruptured this notion, a break “fixed” through Zionism. In chapter three, “British Colonialism and Incubation of Zionism,”Bazian begins to address British colonialism and Zionism as complementary. Bazian uses primary texts from British political actors of the time, such as Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Balfour, to establish the anti-Semiticinspiration for British actions of the time. Bazian also successfully uses the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and the Sykes-Picot agreement to establish the double dealings of the British in the Middle East in the early twentieth century. Bazian uses many primary texts in this chapter effectively, though their organization could leave readers confused. Chapter four, “Zionism: Eurocentric Colonial Epistemic,” continues the themes of the prior chapter as the colonial influence is cemented. In this chapter, Bazian explores the subterfuge and the genius propaganda selling Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land” along with “making the desert bloom”—as if the indigenous Arab people were not there. Bazian frames this chapter within the Zionist ideology of the peoples living in the land being only a barrier to a Jewish state in Palestine. Bazian uses primary sources (e.g., Herzl) to defend the assertion that the removal of the Palestinian people was always a piece of the Zionist plan. Bazian also includes Jewish critical voices (e.g., excerpts from the reporter Ella Shohat) to establish the European Jewish bias against the indigenous Arab peoples, including Sephardic Jews. Bazian that these biases and the effort to remove Palestinians from their land defined the early Zionist movement and the creation of the state of Israel in chapter five, “Building a State and Ethnic Cleansing.” This chapter draws extensively on primary sources: correspondence, reports, declarations, agreements, commissions, and maps. Bazian struggles to organize these rich resources in a clear fashion; however, his analysis matches the richness of the sources. These sources establish the “legalized” systematic removal of the Palestinians from the land by the Israelis in 1948. In chapter six, “The Nakba,” Bazian uses further legal documents and first-hand accounts to trace the forced removal of Palestinians. He pays homage to the trauma while critically dissecting the process of legalizing ethnic cleansing and peddling the innocence of the Israelis to the rest of the world. Bazian profoundly concludes his chapter with the story of a Palestinian boy who witnessed the mass executions of men and women of his village and marched away from his home. The boy, now a man, closed his story with poignant words that capture the horror of the Nakba: “The road to Ramallah had become an open cemetery” (241). After the land was emptied the new state of Israel needed to legally take possession of the Palestinian-owned property. Chapter seven, “Colonial Machination,” elaborates this process: “the State of Israel is structured to give maximum attention to fulfillment of the settler-colonial project and the state apparatus is directed toward achieving this criminal enterprise” (243). The name “Palestine” is erased as a name for the land and the peoples; former colonial and Ottoman laws were twisted to support a systematic theft of the land. Bazian concludes his book with a look to the future: “What is the way forward and Palestine’s de-colonial horizon?” (276). He lays out the options available for true and lasting peace, discounting out of hand the twostate solution as impossible due to the extent of the settlements in the West Bank. He also dismisses both the options of the removal of Palestinians and the removal of the Jewish people. He instead posits a way forward through a one-state solution, leaving how this is to be done to the reader and the people of Israel/Palestine to determine. Bazian has contributed a full-bodied analysis of primary sources to defend his assertion that Zionism has always been a settler colonial movement with its goal being a land devoid of the indigenous people. The organization of the text, the lack of sectioning in the chapters, and the technical insertion and citation of primary sources could be improved for clearer reading. Bazian thoroughly defends his thesis with tangible evidence that Zionism is something colonial, and has been something colonial from the start. This is a text that complicates the narrative of what colonialism is, what the State of Israel is, and who and what Palestine is, together establishing the book as required reading for understanding nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shelby Perez Master’s Divinity Candidate Chicago Theological Seminary

AbstractThis essay is about the effect of the Bible in the public arena. It explores the fate of biblical texts as they find themselves in the popular press. Secular newspapers are not the natural place to look for biblical citations but now and then they make appearances either to support or subvert issues ranging from asylumseekers to the use of corporal punishment for children. At a time when biblical allusions and imagery have all but evaporated from the Western consciousness, the intermittent showing up of sacred texts in the secular print media is a sign that the scriptures still have some hermeneutical hold. The essay looks at four areas—international conflict, sexual orientation, law and order and bringing-up children—where biblical texts are being summoned either to endorse or to repudiate. The essay raises hermeneutical issues such as how biblical texts are used in print media, the nature of the texts employed, the interface between popular and professional reading, the role of the common reader as a biblical commentator, and concludes with an examination of the standing and sway of the Bible as it moves outside its own natural habitat.

Homosexuality and homophobia in South Africa exist side by side. Homophobia is very common in communities and churches. Biblical texts, traditional cultures and politics partner to dismiss, discredit or disqualify homosexuality, but historians and anthropologists have evidence that homosexuality has been around within African cultures for many ages. Christians are divided into two camps. There are those who openly oppose gay rights with citations from biblical texts, claiming that homosexuality is forbidden by God. Others claim that this is poor biblical scholarship and a cultural bias read into the Bible. To these, the Bible says nothing about homosexuality as an innate dimension of personality; as a sexual orientation, it was not understood in biblical times. Despite a progressive constitution and affirming legislation, sexual and gender minorities experience discrimination in South Africa. The church expresses homophobic tendencies by excluding homosexual people from the sacraments, liturgy and ordination. Theology is invited to embark on a journey of dialogue with communities and homosexual people in order for it to be meaningful and relevant and contribute towards social, political and economic empowerment. Through dialogue with the homophobic community, theology can journey out of the continuous hermeneutic circle spanning biblical text, dogmatic traditions and the present, ever-changing historical context. This journey is taken, applying the ethics of faith, hope and love.Contribution: The article invites further research on theological grounds for exclusion of same-sex orientation people from ecclesial rights such as ordinances, liturgy, confessions and ordination.

Apocacidal Tendencies: Three Excerpts from the Heaven's Gate Website 1995 (A term which blends apocalypse with suicide, apocacides could be best described as those groups or individuals who understand salvation from an imagined approaching armageddon to involve, indeed depend upon, the voluntary sacrifice of one's own life on earth.) 1. '95 Statement by An E.T. Presently Incarnate: "... We brought to Earth with us a crew of students whom we had worked with (nurtured) on Earth in previous missions. They were in varying stages of metamorphic transition from membership in the human kingdom to membership in the physical Evolutionary Level Above Human (what your history refers to as the Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven). It seems that we arrived in Earth's atmosphere between Earth's 1940s and early 1990s. We suspect that many of us arrived in staged spacecraft (UFO) crashes and many of our discarded bodies (genderless, not belonging to the human species), were retrieved by human authorities (government and military). Other crews from the Level Above Human preceded our arrival and 'tagged' -- placed a despite 'chip' -- in each of the vehicles (bodies) that we would individually incarnate into, when that instruction would be given. These 'chips' set aside those bodies for us ... In any given civilisation on a fertile planet such as Earth (and Earth has had many periodic/cyclical civilisations), the Level Above Human plants all the new life forms (including humans) for that civilisation in a neutral condition so that they have a chance to choose the direction of their growth. The Level Above Human -- or Next Level -- directly (hands on) relates significantly to the civilisation at its beginning stage, and subsequently (with few exceptions) at approximately 2000-year intervals (48-hour intervals from a Next Level perspective) until that civilisation's final 'Age.' ..." 2. Our Position Against Suicide: " ... We know that it is only while we are in these physical vehicles (bodies) that we can learn the lessons needed to complete our own individual transition, as well as to complete our task of offering the Kingdom of Heaven to this civilisation one last time. We take good care of our vehicles so they can function well for us in this task, and we try to protect them from any harm. We fully desire, expect, and look forward to boarding a spacecraft from the Next Level very soon (in our physical bodies). There is no doubt in our mind that our being 'picked up' is inevitable in the very near future. But what happens between now and then is the big question. We are keenly aware of several possibilities ... The true meaning of 'suicide' is to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered. In these last days, we are focused on ... entering the Kingdom of Heaven ..." 3. Last Chance to Evacuate Earth Before It's Recycled (Sept 29, 1996): "... I'm in a vehicle that is already falling apart on me, and I'm desperate to try to help you have a last chance to go ... I don't mean to make fun of this. I am desperate -- for your sakes. Within the past twenty-four hours I have been clearly informed by my Older Member of how short the remaining time is; how clearly we cannot concentrate on anything except the perspective that says: the end of this civilisation is very close. The end of a civilisation is accompanied by spading under, refurbishing the planet in preparation for another civilisation. And the only ones who can survive that experience have to be those who are taken into the keeping of the Evolutionary Level Above Human ..." Heaven's Gate -- http://www.trancenet.org/heavensgate/index.html Magnificat Meal Movement [Toowoomba, Australia] -- http://homepages.iol.ie/~magnific/ Apocaholic Cocktails: Mixing Visions of the End Armageddon Anonymous: Hidden Faces Plotting the End on Television The 1996 book release X-Files Confidential describes its subject matter as "'social-science fiction' ... fuelled by the realities -- and internal anxieties -- of [our] time: the era of diminished expectations", a television show which "concerns itself with the dark side of technology, competition, politics, ambition, and selfishness", warning against the "risks of abandoning an interior life or one's community" and reinforcing the notion that "our attempts to combat evil are usually an exercise in futility" though that "effort alone is significant". Unlike the participants within the apocaholic communities who intimate that the 'truth is with us', the X-Files, as an entertainment product of the secular industry, proclaims that the 'truth is out there'. This conceptual and narrative framework within the X-Files works on several levels: Frustrates resolution through contrived revelation; Frustrates revelation through contrived resolution; Identifies and resists externally imposed futures; Gives a narrative voice to marginalised hierarchies of genres, values and futures mythology, eg., those involving ufology, genetic mutations and the like; De-emphasises mainstream hierarchies of authority, genres, values and futures mythology; Suggests a regime of hidden truth, embedded within what initially appears as disconnected and unrelated phenomena; Implicates the mainstream future as conspiricist (i.e., the governments which control our futures do not have our interests at heart); Identifies the ritualistic reassurance set by the mainstream discursive strategy (e.g., "apology is policy"); Cultivates its own in-language, or futurespeak, where special terms refer to a future-oriented conspiracy of mammoth proportions. And, finally, it gives meaning to the millennium beyond a mere change in dates. All in all, the X-Files is popular and successful because it explores the possibilities of resolvable and unresolvable endings. It blurs the boundaries between the theological and the secular imaginings of the end. It borrows elements common to contemporary evangelicalism, endtime signs such as the mark of the beast, and gives them a plausible secular narrative. For example, whereas it might be difficult to suspend disbelief for a story that has a charismatic antichrist controlling the world through marking its population with 666, X-Files modernises the setting by creating a mysterious consortium of 12 elders who are in allegiance with some alien plan to initiate a scheduled holocaust. Such an organised drive towards armageddon involves genetic tagging of the populations through smallpox injections, little biochips which switch on and switch-off cancers, transportation of plague through bee stings and heavenly lights that harbour creatures with sinister purposes. In the X-Files, mainstream society is the cult whose future has been pre-organised by its real architects and whose adherents, the general populace, move through society blinded by ideas and doctrines of thought that Mulder sees as lies. His ultimate quest is find the truth, to reveal the future being secretly planned for the world. His quest involves reading the signs of the times in his encounters with the X-Files. Scully, whose initial introduction was to provide a sceptic balance to his quest, in fact provides a scientific rationale for Mulder's seemingly odd flights of fancy. In explaining Mulder's theories away in pseudo-scientific terms, Scully makes the unthinkable seem more plausible, and her character development from sceptic to believer provides the narrative added credibility for long-term viewers. If Scully can be convinced, then there must really be a hidden sinister future embedded beyond the mainstream outlook. Mainstream programmes such as these can in themselves throw wine of the proverbial armageddon fire. Both Star Trek and the X-Files were favourite pastimes for the Heaven's Gate Cult. Star Trek epitomised the ultimate open-ended humanist future, exploration of the unknown, while the X-Files epitomised the nature of this level, a conspiricist and closed future in which the world's only hope lay in the revealing of the sinister unknown before the great destructive end. Needless to say, X-Files-styled sites proliferate the Webscape in late 1999: Apocalypse Soon -- http://www.apocalypsesoon.org/english.html UFOs & Antichrist Millennium Bug Connection New World Order -- http://www.mt.net/~watcher/nwoy2k.html UFOs, Aliens & Antichrist: The Angelic Conspiracy & End Times Deception -- http://www.mt.net/~watcher/ "The Bible says that the b'nai Elohim, angels, sons of God, were ministers of creation, from before the worlds, Job 38:7. Contrary to popular secular theories, the b'nai Elohim are created beings distinct from ELOHIM the God of Israel. God created the b'nai Elohim to reflect His glory, and reflect His word which spoke all things into being. Before a third of the heavenly host rebelled, they were stewards of creation, building civilizations on the terrestrial planets of our solar system designed to glorify the Word of God. The Cydonia "face" is a monument constructed by these Sons of God, revealing their knowledge of the message in the stars. Both the Cydonia face and the Sphinx are cherubim, combining figures in the constellations Virgo and Leo, symbolic representations of the first and second advent of Christ on Earth." Satan's Plan to Escape Judgement -- http://www.mt.net/~watcher/hate.html "Previous pages explained how Satan was created to lead the angelic hierarchy, ruling over physical civilizations of angels on planets, such as the one still in evidence on Mars. After Satan rebelled, the center of his angelic civilization was destroyed "from among the stones of fire", yet the Bible tells us Satan is still waiting for the time of God's judgment. Satan is not in hell, he is still allowed audience before God, where he accuses the faithful (Rev.), and he still roams above and within the earth (Job). Since Satan is the most beautiful and powerful cherub, Prince of the Powers of the Air, intelligence behind UFO phenomena, the authority over all the aerial regions outward from earth..." The Millennium Group -- http://www.millenngroup.com/ Australia's Fair Dinkum Magazine -- http://unforgiven.iweb.net.au/~dinkum/ Eyes on the World -- http://eotw.orac.net.au/articles/index.html Antichrist / False Prophet -- http://members.tripod.com/jonastheprophet1/antipope.html "Antichrist will arise out of the British Monarchy within the context of the European Union/False prophet will arise out of the Vatican-Whore Church/Both will work together to build Satan's end time kingdom in these last and final days." 666 Sketch: The Mark of the Beast -- http://www.greaterthings.com/Essays/666mark.htm Conspiracy Books -- http://parascope.com/parastore/booksconspiracy.htm Corrupt Government, Conspiracy, New World Order, A Future? -- http://www.pushhamburger.com/ Dark Conspiracy -- http://www.blazing-trails.com/DarkConspiracies/welcome.html "Things have gotten really seriously convoluted. To try to follow some of the conspiracies requires a substantial amount of dedication. Any one thread can lead to so many other threads, eventually, maybe they will come together into a complete tapestry that could scare the bejabbers out of you." New World Order Conspiracy -- http://www.ufomind.com/para/conspire/nwo/ Silver Screen Endings: Blockbuster Profits in Apocalypse Gripped in a delirium of apocaholicism, contemporary secular society is exploring the conditions and consequence of endings. Mainstream presentations such as Independence Day, Event Horizon, Armageddon, End of Days, The Matrix and Deep Impact depict the notion of endings in elaborate and extravagant modes. Independence Day is a lesson in Orwellian doublethink -- it begins by destroying the very values it eschews at its closure. The statue of liberty, the White House, and the Empire State Building, all contemporary icons of western democratic and consumerist values, are brutally and spectacularly disintegrated. Yet the very core of the western meta-narrative, the maintenance of independence, which brought about the empowerment of these icons, is upheld throughout the film, leaving a critical viewer with the sense that what we are watching in this film is not the destruction of the world by some alien force -- certainly no other nation is depicted as so grossly devastated nor are any icons of other significantly known cultures destroyed -- but the annihilation of contemporary western icons: essentially, the death of icons. The values are constant, as emoted by the President of the United States towards the fiery conclusion of the movie, but the icons are unstable, susceptible to external disruption, unlike the proverbial humanist spirit. Hence, most audiences reacted gleefully to seeing famous landmarks blasted to smithereens -- this goes hand in hand I suspect with the prevailing social atmosphere cultivating change: do away with the current icons, they are no longer valid nor do they faithfully represent the social world around us, we require new ones to image our emerging spirit. Event Horizon is very different in content and style. It blends conventional theology with science fiction to create an incredible narrative about a starship so fast that it punches a hole through to hell and back. The concern throughout the film as the blood thickens is not with the collective end to society but rather with the very personal and private closure to individual life and the post-death experience. Other films, like Deep Impact and Armageddon, draw on the "worst bits" in the bible, to quote one trailer, and depict disturbing destructive images of the western metropolitan society, with dramatic wrangling over who will survive and how in order to establish a brave new world. What links these varying cinematic depictions of the end? Is it perhaps the imagined triumph of humanist spiritism, usually legitimised through the sacrificial offering of a main character in a film's final showdown? (Bruce Willis dies in Armageddon, Tea Leoni waits with her estranged father for the tidal wave in Deep Impact, and a half-drunk kamikaze pilot in an old biplane destroys the mothership at the close of Independence Day.) Being excessively popular, one needs to ask what role these films play within the collective social narrative of endism: do these films serve to quiet anxieties about the end by visualising human solutions to impossible destructive odds? Or do apocalyptic blockbusters market towards existing endtimes tension, reflecting the growing apocaholic nature of our societies as we near the close of the twentieth century and thereby, in true western capitalist fashion, profit from this cultural dysfunction? Or do films of this nature answer a more base, unacknowledged desire within our societies to see the end and survive? Event Horizon -- http://www.eventhorizonmovie.com/ End of Days -- http://www.end-of-days.com/ The Matrix -- http://www.whatisthematrix.com/ Deep Impact -- http://www.deepimpact.com/ Timeout: Clocking the Endtimes Christian End-Time Expectations -- Millennia Monitor -- http://www.fas.org/2000/endtime1.htm This resource provides links to a wide variety of Christian sources with a primary focus on millennial, apocalyptic, or other End Time expectations. Countdown 2000: Your Guide to the Millennium -- http://www.countdown2000.com/index.htm "As we approach the millennium, the world seems to be getting weirder. Countdown 2000 is packed with the latest news, hype, and hysteria. Where will the blow-out parties be? Will Y2K cause global havoc? How can I get involved in improving the world? Whatever the millennium and year 2000 mean to you, Countdown 2000 can help you learn what you want to know. Countdown 2000 is packed with over 150 pages, and 2500 links." Amazing Prophecy -- http://bibleprophecy.com/ Topics covered: Bible prophecy, rapture, tribulation, millennium, last days, end times, end of time, second coming, covenants, revelation, advent, antichrist, 666, parousia (appearing of Christ), preterist (fulfilled prophecy), eschatology (the study of last things), and many more. 888 Christ Come: Your Bible Prophecy Website -- http://www.888c.com/ Apocalists: The Tribulation Inbox Interesting things happen on discussion lists. Perhaps a more significant example of apocalyptic dissemination, capable of real-time feedback and iteration on endtime signs within every corner of the Web, millions on the bible highway speak of the premillennial tension that characterises contemporary cultural life and thousands more direct these lunges into apocalyptic extrapolation via discussion lists. Nowhere has the apocalyptic urge to image the end, to identify the sign of its approach, been more revitalised than on this electronic frontier: indeed, Apocalypse has an impressive online presence. Today, anyone can receive daily updates sent to their email inbox on the progress or nearness of the great endtimes tribulation, press releases of the latest armageddon publication list, prophecy ezines, the latest incarnation of the mark of the beast 666, new candidates for antichrist identification and revelation reports, to name but a few: Bible Prophecy Discussion List -- http://www.geocities.com/~dawn-/index.html Bible Prophecy-L was created as an open, moderated forum to discuss and share information related to end times Bible prophecy. Some of the topics you may find discussed are: Eschatology; Global Government; Global Religion and the New Age Movement; Rapture; Antichrist; Environmental Changes (earthquakes, tornados, volcanoes, freak storms, flooding etc.); Israel and the Middle East; Signs in the Heavens (UFOs, Comets, etc.); Pestilence (infectious diseases); Wars and Rumors of Wars; Prophecy Conference Updates ... etc. Bible Prophecy Report -- http://philologos.org/bpr Bible Codes News Update -- http://thebiblecodes.com/news/bcnu.htm Tribulation News -- http://www.tribnews.net/mir Conspiracy Journal -- http://www.members.tripod.com/uforeview/welcome.html Citation reference for this article MLA style: Jason Ensor. "Apocacide, Apocaholics and Apocalists: A Selective Webography of Endism." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/apocacide.php>. Chicago style: Jason Ensor, "Apocacide, Apocaholics and Apocalists: A Selective Webography of Endism," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/apocacide.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Jason Ensor. (1999) Apocacide, Apocaholics and Apocalists: A Selective Webography of Endism. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/apocacide.php> ([your date of access]).

<p>One of the stages of development of new drugs is a generalization and systematization of existing information flows in the form of scientific abstracts, articles, patents, abstracts, theses, monographs. Often this process for researchers is quite painstaking and consuming, while specialist must possess special skills to find publications, both foreign and domestic origin. It should be noted that the search complicated also a great variety of input data formats which can vary depending on the search engine, database type, nature magazines.</p><p>Scientific information on medicines intranasal topical and systemic use in a variety of distributed databases and libraries, some fragments of it were published in scientific journals in many languages in the form of abstracts, articles, short communications and patents. Systematics and processing of such information in diverse research causes some complications.</p><p>Objective. To analyze the art software that can be used to systematize the published data on intranasal drugs.</p><p>Methods. The material used available software used for organizing research. Served as the Information theses, articles, patents, theses and dissertations on nasal medications. In analyzing the resulting software functionality based on convenience, intuitive and availability.</p><p>Results and discussion. Initially performed literature search intranasal medicines remotely through internet network in such well-known databases as the US National Library of Medicine (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/), full-text database ScienceDirect (http : //www.sciencedirect.com/), full-text database Springerlink (http://www.SpringerLink.com), a specialized database "Inventions (Utility models) in Ukraine" (http://sips.gov.ua), specialized DB "Russian patent documents» (http://www1.fips.ru/), scientific digital library eLIBRARY.RU (http://elibrary.ru), national Library of Ukraine Vernadsky (http: // www.nbuv.gov.ua/). As a result of the search were found literary reference with full access to publications and prints without it.</p><p>As software for working with bibliographic information examined tools such as EndNote ©, Reference Manager ©, ProCite ©, Bible-Master ©, Mendeley ©, Zotero ©. We know that these programs can automate some functions of management science and information retrieval, and can be used by one person or group of people [6]. Having tested the possibility of the above software we stopped at Mendeley © Zotero © and having a similar interface, functionality and freely with each other by exporting it as a universal format RIS and BibTeX. These programs can be used in environments Windows ©, Linux ©, Mac OS ©, are free and easy to use. One advantage of such tools is the ability to synchronize a local base of literature lists and their full texts on selected problem with external servers located in the network internet, which in turn protects against unexpected losses accumulated information and allows you to access your information from anywhere any place. For this Mendeley © Zotero © and can be used free accounts that have a certain amount of disk space in the exhaustion which it is available at an additional cost. In Zotero © along with this is to use your own or free server operating protocol WebDAV (eg "Yandex Disk") that allows you to save free full text publications in the library's own online internet.</p><p>Through tight integration Mendeley © Zotero © and with a word processor «Microsoft Word» and other applications in the design of scientific publications given the opportunity to conveniently cite evidence from the literature by selecting them from the database, and automatically generate lists of references. Making reference list can change quickly due to the built-in templates or styles (Citation Style Language) which is for many magazines and publishing houses. Currently we conducted the adaptation of literary styles of lists as required GOST 7.1: 2006.</p><p>Conclusions. As a result, research was conducted search of published data on the development, manufacturing technology and standardization of drugs intranasal administration. It is established that to optimize storage, analysis and processing of data in the literature appropriate to use modern software.</p>

The return of Jesus Christ, the end of the world, war, devastating earthquakes, invading space ships, asteroid strikes, the Y2K bug, what do they all have in common? Little if anything really, except that they have all been associated with the coming of the year 2000. To many in Australia the year 2000 may well be an end, if not the End. To some of those, however, it may also be the beginning of something else most significant. That expectation will now be examined. You will have a conducted tour through war and peace, demonic activity, and aeroplanes crashing and people flying. The subject is how a significant number of Australian Christians understand the end of the world ("The End Times"), most particularly the return of Jesus Christ. Those who hold this view we will call "EndTimers". That Jesus Christ will return has been the expectation of the church from its conception. The day of Pentecost is usually regarded as the birthday of the church, and a few days before that Jesus ascended into heaven and the astonished disciples who witnessed it were told by two angels that Jesus would return (Acts 1:9-11). An expectation of the literal return of Jesus Christ has been with the church ever since. It being commonly featured in its creeds both ancient and modern. However, some individual Christians do not hold to a literal, physical return, though they would be in the minority. But amongst those who do expect a literal return, there has not always been agreement about its nature. EndTimers are one group among many, but scattered throughout the Protestant churches. They predict that Jesus Christ will return very soon, indeed, he will return in "this generation". This phrase and many of the ideas commonly associated with it are to be found in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 24. In this chapter Jesus predicts some cataclysmic events, and towards the end of his address, in verse 34, says that they will happen in "this generation". The most natural understanding of this phrase in context is that those events would happen in the life time of his hearers. Indeed, events very much like those described by Jesus did happen in the Fall of Jerusalem about forty years later. Such are the similarities between the two, many Christians with a more liberal view of the Bible see Christ's words as a later construct of the church placed on his lips, and thus as prophecy after the event. For reasons that are more complex than logical EndTimers regard the phrase "this generation" as referring to the generation beginning at the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. From that, the events predicted by Jesus are regarded not specifically about a fall of Jerusalem, but about his return and the end of the world. Therefore those who hold this view believe that the End Times will begin within a generation of 1948. If these EndTimers, then, believe that Jesus Christ will return within a generation of 1948, the first question one has to ask is, "How long is a generation?" In the 1960s and 1970s, even into the 1980s, the common answer to that was "Forty years!". Consequently, a glut of books and videos appeared predicting that the End would begin in the 1980s, and they included such titles as: Will Christ Return by 1988: 101 Reasons Why; 88 Reasons Why Christ Will Return in 1988; and Decade of the 80's: A World in Spasm. But the most prominent and influential of them was Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, published in 1970. That book is said to be the third largest selling Christian book of all time, with over 20 million copies in print (weep your heart out Bryce Courtney). Most books of this type have been published in America, but were frequently available in Australia. Though this system of belief seems to have had its origins in nineteenth century Britain, American fundamentalists have been its main advocates and developers. As so often happens with American ideas and practices, many Australians have enthusiastically adopted it. In Australia one of the leading teachers in the EndTimers' camp is Brisbane's Ray Yerbury, though New Zealander Barry Smith through lecture tours and books has probably had more influence here. The books of Hal Lindsey, Ray Yerbury, Barry Smith and a few other sources will now be used to detail the beliefs of these Australian EndTimers. Lindsey is included because though he is American, Late Great Planet Earth has been a major, perhaps the major, factor in many Australian Christians adopting these beliefs. The starting point must be the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. To EndTimers this is fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Lindsey says that the "paramount prophetic sign" concerning the return of Jesus Christ is that "Israel had to be a nation again in the land of its forefathers". As has already been noted, within this scheme the return of Christ must happen within a generation of that occurrence. Lindsey writing in 1970 was bold enough to say a generation was "something like forty years" (Late, 43, 54), and is said to believe that Christ will definitely return before the year 2000. Yerbury, writing twenty years later, had to have other options, and he stated that a generation could be either 40, 70-80, 100 or 120 years (Vital, 11). Now 1988 is well in the past, many EndTimers seem to expect Christ's return in or around the year 2000. However, this belief is not usually held with great dogmatism or precision. Indeed, End Times expectations in Australia have been quieter in 1999 than many would have expected. There has been little banner-waving or overt demonstration. In addition the sale of books about the End Times through Australian Christian bookshops has also been slower this year than expected. EndTimers commonly believe that further "signs" of Jesus Christ's return include widespread wars, earthquakes and famines. This is based on a particular understanding of Matthew chapter 24. In addition, a decline in Christian moral values (2 Timothy 3:1-4) and a worldwide control of the money markets (Revelation 13:11-18) are also seen as signs that Christ's return is not far away. To what level wars, earthquakes and famines have to rise or moral values decline before they can be considered authentic signs is not usually discussed, but is clearly a difficulty. Another "sign" of the approaching End is the emergence of a demonic political leader, the Antichrist, also known as "the Beast" (Revelation 13:1-18). With the time scale involved it is necessary to believe that this man, and it always seems to be a man, is alive today, so Antichrist candidates have included the present Pope, the President of a rapidly emerging United States of Europe, Bill Gates, and Prince Charles. Australian leaders do not seem to be considered sufficiently important or frightening to feature as Anichrist candidates. The Bible gives the identification of this "Beast": the number 666. Barry Smith, with neat numerics (a = 6, b = 12, etc.), favoured Henry Kissinger for this role, his surname totalling 666 on Smith's method. Yerbury, with characteristic caution, says that we cannot know his identity at this stage. Another figure that must appear is the Antichrist's henchman, "the False Prophet", a religious leader (Smith, Warning, 22-56; Second Warning, 57-66; better, 170-173; Yerbury, Ultimate, 99-112; Vital, 53-4). Central to EndTimers' beliefs is the Great Tribulation, a time of terrible war and suffering. The duration of this cataclysm is variously described as being seven years (Lindsey, Late, 42, 137-8; Yerbury, Vital, 42-4) or three and a half years (Smith, Warning, 102-112). Where does the return of Jesus Christ fit into this? Commonly EndTimers believe that he will return twice, the first time will be immediately prior to the Great Tribulation, the second time will be seven years later. This first return is for a particular purpose: to remove all the "true" Christians from Earth and take them to heaven, in what is usually known as "the Rapture". This is sometimes referred to as "His coming for the saints". On this occasion he does not actually visit Earth; he only appears above it, and "the saints" will literally rise up to meet him in the sky (Matthew 24:37-41; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). But for those remaining on Earth this will all be hidden, that is they will know that their Christian friends and neighbours have disappeared, but will have no idea where they have gone or what has happened (Lindsey, Late, 135-142; Smith, Warning, 150-157; Yerbury, Ultimate, 119-122; Vital, 33-6). This belief conjures up some extraordinary expectations. A Christian doctor operating on a patient will be whisked away, mid operation. Car drivers will disappear, causing their vehicles to crash. Airline pilots will suddenly vanish with terrible consequences. Indeed, it is rumoured that some American airlines do not allow Christians to be both pilot and co-pilot of the one aircraft. Christians must be teamed with non-Christians, in case the Christian is suddenly "raptured". Though this specific belief may not have as much significance in Australia as it does in America, there is no doubt that it is still held tenaciously by its Australian advocates. After the Great Tribulation Jesus Christ will return once more, this time actually to Earth. This return is sometimes referred to as Christ's coming "with the saints", for he will bring back the previously taken Christians with him. This will be followed by the fearsome battle of Armageddon, which Christ will win. He will then establish his reign over the whole world, ruling from Jerusalem, in peace, with equity. This reign will last for 1000 years, the millennium of chapter 20 of the book of Revelation. It is normal for EndTimers to perceive this as literally 1000 years, whereas many other Christians, often with very different understandings of End Times events, would see it as symbolic for a long period (Lindsey, Late, 169-178; Smith, Warning, 158-160; Yerbury, Ultimate, 137-149; Vital, 78-101). Following the Millennium there will be a Satan-led rebellion, but this will be short lived, possibly once more of a seven year duration (Lindsey, 178; Yerbury, Vital, 105-7). God, however, will then triumph over Satan, and wrap up the events of this world and this age, judge its inhabitants, and create a new Heaven and a new Earth, upon which the saved will live with Christ forever (Lindsey, 178; Yerbury, Ultimate, 150-154; Vital, 108-117). Who in Australia holds the views outlined above? They are held by most Australian Christian fundamentalists and some Christian evangelicals. Who are these fundamentalists and evangelicals and what else do they believe? Both groups hold to the core traditional Protestant beliefs (the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, etc), and are to be found in most, if not all, Protestant denominations in Australia, from the Anglican Church to the more recently formed charismatic churches. Fundamentalists and evangelicals are not always clearly distinguishable from each other, for there is much overlapping in beliefs between them. But there are, however, some basic differences between the two. Fundamentalists have a very strong emphasis on a literal interpretation of the Bible, frequently interpreting in an unnatural way, often taking metaphors, symbols, and other figures literally. They are also frequently anti-intellectual. Evangelicals, on the other hand, would take a more rational approach to the Bible, giving due regard to the form of the specific writing, and are usually prepared to engage in intellectual debate. Both groups believe that Jesus Christ will literally return, though there is disagreement about the details between and within the two groups. How many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are there in Australia? A survey published in 1994 was conducted amongst the attenders of numerous Protestant congregations, and discovered that 48% of those people believed that "the Bible is the Word of God which needs to be read in the context of the times". These, most of them at any rate, would be what have here been termed "evangelicals". Another 21% believed that "the Bible is the Word of God, to be taken literally word for word", and thus would be "fundamentalists" (Kaldor, 45-7). If the survey was anything like accurate, approaching 70% of those attending Australian Protestant churches are either evangelicals or fundamentalists. As it would also seem that there are over 1 million attenders at Protestant churches in Australia (Kaldor, 344), it is probable that there are more than seven hundred thousand evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in Australia. The specific beliefs outlined in this article are widespread amongst fundamentalist Christians, but also seem to be held by some evangelicals. These Christians can be found in probably all Protestant denominations, though are much more common in charismatic and Baptist churches than in, say, Anglican and Uniting churches. These beliefs are also found in some of the sects outside the mainstream Christian church. The number of EndTimers in Australia is almost certainly well in excess of one hundred thousand, and may be above two hundred thousand. How do these beliefs manifest themselves in current Australian life? First, one would expect EndTimers to be less concerned about certain issues of social concern than other Christians, and this often seems to be the case. For example, one does not often find them championing the protection of the environment. If Christ's Kingdom on Earth is not many years away, then why worry about such things now? They can be attended to when Christ returns. The important issue is to prepare people for that return. Another manifestation is the setting of dates for that return, which is probably more common than many realise. Those writers consulted for this study do not predict exact dates for these events. They rely on the more elastic concept of the "this generation" idea. But other people do predict precise dates and times. It is not uncommon to hear individuals, and it is usually individuals rather than movements, predicting that Christ will return on this date or another. They each have their own schemes of interpreting the numerics of such biblical books as Daniel and Revelation. One of the most famous of these predictions was in 1992 when posters began appearing in various Australian towns declaring: THE FINAL WARNING OF GOD JESUS is COMING IN 1am 29th OCT 1992 IN THE AIR (It's the Rapture) Remember the days of Noah and Lot Reject the 666 of computer bar code Repent your sins to God Ready the 7 years Great Tribulation This particular prediction originated in a movement in Korea, and, indeed, its leader in Australia was a Korean on temporary residence here. Several of the teachings discussed in this article are indicated in the poster, with the addition of a very precise prediction of Jesus Christ's return. When the day approached, the leader of the Australian wing of the movement was interviewed in newspapers and on TV, and he politely but boldly confirmed his conviction to the Australian public. The Current Affair interview with him the day after the prediction was proved false was especially touching. He apologised with great sincerity to those he had misled, and soon after returned to his homeland. Ironically, the organisation of which this man was part seems to have left open the possibility of future predictions. It is one of the astonishing facts of this type of endeavour throughout history, that those who predict the end of the world are not discouraged by failure. They just try again. Why? The answers may vary, but central is a strong belief in the certainty of biblical prophecy and the confidence that some have that they know best how to interpret it. It would seem that it would take more than failure to dent that confidence. References Kaldor, Peter (ed.) Winds of Change: The Experience of Church in a Changing Australia. Sydney: Anzea, 1994. Lindsey, Hal. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970. Smith, Barry R. "... better than Nostradamus." Marlborough: Smith Family, 1996. ---. Second Warning. New Zealand: Smith Family, 1985. ---. Warning. New Zealand: Smith Family, 1980. Yerbury, Ray W. The Ultimate Event. Brisbane: Cross, 1988. ---. Vital Signs of Christ's Coming. Brisbane: Cross, 1990. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Bennett. "That Year 2000: The End or a Beginning?." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php>. Chicago style: David Bennett, "That Year 2000: The End or a Beginning?," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Bennett. (1999) That year 2000: the end or a beginning?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php> ([your date of access]).

In foregrounding the performative character of hate speech, legal scholars and activists have sought to demonstrate why hate speech should be prohibited not only on the basis of what it says but on the basis of what it does. In this article I examine the conditions upon which hate speech has been posited as performative speech in order to consider how virtual environments trouble existing understandings of hate speech. In particular, this article seeks to show how cyberspace may in fact create the conditions for a more immediate and radical recontextualisation and recirculation of hate speech where speed operates as a potential source of resistance. In foregrounding the performative character of hate speech, legal scholars and activists have sought to demonstrate why hate speech should be prohibited not only on the basis of what it says but on the basis of what it does. In this article I examine the conditions upon which hate speech has been posited as performative speech in order to consider how virtual environments trouble existing understandings of hate speech. In particular, this article seeks to show how cyberspace may in fact create the conditions for a more immediate and radical recontextualisation and recirculation of hate speech where speed operates as a potential source of resistance. Judith Butler maintains that "speech is always in some ways out of our control" (15). This is not to suggest that our speech is bound to misfire. Instead, Butler's claim draws attention to the range of possibilities located precisely within the failed speech act, revealing how such misfires offer the possibility that certain words which carry the potential to injure may eventually become "disjointed from their power to injure and recontextualised in more affirmative modes" (15). Whereas Langston suggests that such speech events inevitably work to silence intended victims, Butler recognises how the subject may also be inaugurated through such linguistic injuries. She maintains that to be injured through language is to "suffer a loss of context, that is, not to know where you are" (4). The "loss of context" or disorientation she claims might result from hate speech not only suggests that hate speech is context-specific but also that hate speech, understood as a performance, might transform or even produce a speaker's social location. In this view, the very words used to "put someone in their place" may also enable people to speak up from their position on the margins of power. Thus, the repetition of hate speech does not necessarily reinforce certain words' power to injure but may result in a pattern of "slippages" which enables the meaning and force of such speech to eventually come undone. In order to understand the impact of hate speech in virtual environments, it is useful to consider how the spatial and temporal character of cyberspace affects the repetitions to which Butler refers. While we typically speak of cyber-space, the emergence of cyberspace has arguably resulted in an increased preoccupation with time. For Virilio, the shift from space to time appears to be most visible in cyberspace, which he maintains does not represent a space so much as a particular temporal dimension where speed, not territory, holds the most strategic value. However, he further maintains that we have also reached a moment when humans, who have already surpassed the sound and heat barriers, are left with nothing to race against but speed of light -- something which can never be surpassed. And, as he warns, like other technological revolutions, this one is bound to result in an accident, this time not a physical one but instead one which will throw history itself into a disarray. "Cyberspace looms up like a transfer accident in substantial reality", he warns, "what gets damaged is no longer the substance, the materiality of the tangible world, it is the whole of its constitution" (Open Sky 131). Thus, cyberspace not only appears to give rise to an accelerated sort of time but to create the conditions under which we run the risk of suffering a "fundamental loss of orientation" (Speed and Information). I would like to consider how the speed and subsequent loss of orientation Virilio associates with virtual environments may in fact be the very condition which opens up the possibility for a more immediate and radical recontextualisation of hate speech in such spaces. In positing cyberspace as a radically discontinuous space, Virilio implies that cyberspace may represent a break with history itself. One need only consider how quickly existing forms of inequity have become entrenched in cyberspace to understand the extent to which it is not an entirely new or autonomous space. It follows then that the pattern of perlocutionary effects which apparently enables certain words to injure is not disrupted simply because such words are circulating in a virtual space. However, this is not to suggest that subordinate speech necessarily acts identically on line and off. If to be injured through language is to "suffer a loss of context, that is, not to know where you are" (Butler 4), what might it mean to suffer a loss of context in cyberspace? What might it mean to become disoriented in a space where one's context is always and already destabilised? And, what sorts of possibilities are created in cyberspace when one is thrust into an ill-fitting or undesirable social location? I maintain that in cyberspace the potential to suffer a loss of context as a result of a linguistic injury is always partially foreclosed by the fact that one never knows precisely where one is to begin with. It follows that in cyberspace the intended victim of a verbal assault is also at least less likely to become disarmed, debilitated, and silenced. Without overemphasising the agency one gains in virtual environments, is it not possible that one's ability to "talk back", while not guaranteed, may be made significantly more likely, if only due to the fact that one's rhetorical skills are unlikely to be rendered worthless in the face of physical threats? To illustrate the extent to which the illocutionary force of hate speech may be undermined by the spatial and temporal character of virtual environments, I draw attention to Reverend Phelps's "godhatesfags.com" site. Once you move past the yellow construction sign reading "Warning -- Gospel Preaching Ahead", you discover a list of Bible Passages which apparently confirm the site's claim that "god hates fags". The site also contains a list of so-called "fag churches" and a variety of news items that draw attention to the supposed dangers of the growing global gay agenda. However, while the Website is clearly offensive, it also seems to produce the possibility for politically promising misinterpretations. The Website's editorials on subjects as diverse as Canada's "gay Mafia" and Finland's allegedly lesbian Prime Minister and news about Phelps's intention to carry out "missionary work" in both of these demonic nations seems more likely to amuse than offend many of the site's visitors. The site's tendency to misinterpellate everyone from lesbians to P-FLAG mothers as "fags" may be read as another amusing misfire, another failed attempt on the part of Phelps to demonise gays, lesbians, and their supporters. While Phelps's claims are bound to misfire in any context, the ability to find Phelps's claims immediately humourous appears to be at least partially linked to their context. People who seek to prohibit hate speech not only on the basis of what it says but also on the basis of what it does typically maintain that the effects of hate speech are immediate, final, and ultimately, debilitating (Langston; MacKinnon; Matsuda et al.). In cyberspace, such claims appear to be even less easily established than in the material world. As previously argued, the speed associated with virtual environments seems to produce a disorienting effect, making the potential to suffer a "loss of context" in the face of a linguistic "attack" at least less likely. In addition, in contrast to the material world, where an encounter with hate speech is likely to lead to a feeling of entrapment if not complete debilitation, cyberspace invests people with an unprecedented degree of mobility. As a result, in sharp contrast to the experience one might have encountering Phelps's message in a public space near their home, the person who encounters Phelps's message online, where neither proximity nor distance hold their traditional values, can escape both quickly and with little effort. However, it is also important to consider the extent to which the speed associated with virtual spaces may also affect the pace at which potentially injurious words, images, and ideas are recirculated and recontextualised. Building on Butler, I have emphasised that hate speech is always repeatable speech. If we take for granted the fact that cyberspace not only increases the amount of speech generated but also the rate at which such speech is recontextualised and redeployed, it would appear as if the potential exists both for the amount of hate speech in circulation to increase and for such speech to be repeated more often and more rapidly. If we further accept the claim that the repetition of hate speech is always an imperfect one, bound to result in some loss of meaning or minor transgression, it becomes possible to see how this highly indeterminable context may also enable hate speech to be reclaimed more quickly. Once again, "godhatesfags.com" serves as a useful example. Shortly after Phelps's Website appeared, online monitoring organisations, including Hate Watch, established direct links to the site. The link between Hate Watch and "godhatesfags.com" not only serves to place Phelps's online activities under surveillance but also to recontextualise the site. Viewed through their link, Phelps's site is quite literally framed by the Hate Watch site, and subsequently, recontextualised by their anti-hate discourse in a surprisingly direct manner. In addition, various features of Phelps's site have also been parodied and appropriated. "Godhatesfigs.com", which among other features includes a list of bible passages which allegedly confirm the Website's claim that "god hates figs", is one such example. The creators of "Godlovesfags.com" gained notoriety when they managed to steal Phelps's domain name and redirect all "godhatesfags" visitors to their counter site for seventy-two hours. "Godhatesphelps" is another site that seeks to parody and repeat aspects of Phelps's message in an effort to reveal the absurd nature of Phelps's claims. Shortly after Phelps's Website appeared, online monitoring organisations, including Hate Watch, established direct links to the site. The link between Hate Watch and "godhatesfags.com" not only serves to place Phelps's online activities under surveillance but also to recontextualise the site. Viewed through their link, Phelps's site is quite literally framed by the Hate Watch site, and subsequently, recontextualised by their anti-hate discourse in a surprisingly direct manner. In addition, various features of Phelps's site have also been parodied and appropriated. "Godhatesfigs.com", which among other features includes a list of bible passages which allegedly confirm the Website's claim that "god hates figs", is one such example. The creators of "Godlovesfags.com" gained notoriety when they managed to steal Phelps's domain name and redirect all "godhatesfags" visitors to their counter site for seventy-two hours. "Godhatesphelps" is another site that seeks to parody and repeat aspects of Phelps's message in an effort to reveal the absurd nature of Phelps's claims. References Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words. 15th ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. (Original work published in 1962.) Butler, Judith. Excited Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997. Langston, Rae. Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts. Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (1993): 293-330. Matsuda, M.J., et al. Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment. San Francisco: Westview Press, 1993. MacKinnon, C. Only Words. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. Virilio, Paul. "Global Algorithm 1.7: The Silence of the Lambs: Paul Virilio in Conversation (with C.Oliveira)." CTHEORY 1995. 18 June 1999 <http://www.ctheory.com/ga1.7-silence.php>. Virilio, Paul. Open Sky. Trans. J. Rose. New York: Verso, 1997. Virilio, Paul. "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!" CTHEORY 18.3 (1995). 18 June 1999 <http://www.dds.nl/~n5m/texts/virilio.htm>. Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromololgy. Trans. M. Polizzotti. New York: Semiotext(e), 1986. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Kate Eichhorn. "Cyberhate and Performative Speech in Accelerated Time(s)." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/cyberhate.php>. Chicago style: Kate Eichhorn, "Cyberhate and Performative Speech in Accelerated Time(s)," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/cyberhate.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Kate Eichhorn. (2000) Cyberhate and performative speech in accelerated time(s). M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/cyberhate.php> ([your date of access]).

The Garden of Eden is the original surveillance state. God creates the heavens and the earth, turns on the lights, inspects everything that he has made and, behold, finds it very good. But then the creation attempts to acquire the surveillant properties of the creator. In Genesis 3, a serpent explains to Eve the virtues of forbidden fruit: “Ye shall not die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3: 4–5). Adam’s and Eve’s eyes are certainly opened (sufficiently so to necessitate figleaves), but in the next verse, God’s superior surveillance system has found them out. The power relationship Genesis illustrates has prompted many – the Romantics in their seditious appropriations of Paradise Lost, for instance – to question whether Eden is all that “good” after all. Why was God so concerned for Eve and Adam not to see? For that matter, why was he not there to intercept the serpent, but so promptly on the scene of humanity’s crime? Various answers (that God planned the Fall because it would enable him to demonstrate supreme love through Jesus, that Eve and Adam were wilfully wrong to grasp for equality with the Creator of the Universe, that God could not intervene in the temptation because it would compromise humanity’s free will) do not alter the flaw in God’s perfect garden state. Consciousness of this imperfection surfaces repeatedly in Western utopian narratives. The very existence of such narratives points to a humanist distrust in God as social engineer; the fact that these secular Edens are themselves often flawed suggests both a parody of the original Eden and an admission that humans are not up to the task of social engineering either. Thomas More’s Utopia and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner – one the ostensible depiction of a new Eden, the other an outright dystopic inferno – address the association of Eden (or the Creator) with surveillance, and so undermine the ideality of the prelapsarian Garden. The archetypal power relationship, that of All-Seeing Creator with always-seen creation, is reconfigured sans God: in Utopia, with society itself performing the work of a transcendent surveillance system; in Blade Runner, with the multi-planetary Tyrell corporation doing so. In both cases, the Omnisurveillant is stripped of the mitigating quality of being God, and so exposed as oppressive, unjust, an affront to the idea of perfection. Like Eden, the eponymous island of Thomas More’s Utopia is a surveillance state. Glass, we read, “is there much used” (More 55). Surveillance is decentralised and patriarchal: wives are expected to confess to their husbands, children to their mothers (More 65). Each year, every thirty families select a “syphogrant”, whose “chief and almost … only office … is to see and take heed that no man sit idle, but that every one apply his own craft with earnest diligence” (More 57). In the mess halls, “The Syphogrant and his wife sit in the midst of the high table … because from thence all the whole company is in their sight” (More 66). Elders are ranged amongst the young men so that “the sage gravity and reverence of the elders should keep the youngsters from wanton licence of words and behaviour. Forasmuch as nothing can be so secretly spoken or done at the table, but either they that sit on the one side or on the other must needs perceive it” (More 66). Not only are the Utopians subject to social surveillance, but also to a conviction of its inescapability. Believing that the dead move among them, the Utopians feel that they are being watched (even when they are not) and thus regulate their own behaviour. In his preface to The Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham extols the virtues of his surveillance machine: “Morals reformed – health preserved – industry invigorated instruction diffused – public burthens lightened – Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock – the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws are not cut, but untied – all by a simple idea in Architecture!” (Bentham 29). As Foucault points out in “Panopticism”, the Panopticon works so well because the prisoner can never know when she or he is being watched, and this uncertainty compels the prisoner into constant discipline. Atheist Bentham had created a transcendent surveillance system that would replace God in (he trusted) an increasingly secular society. Bentham’s catalogue of the Panopticon’s benefits is something of a Utopian manifesto in its own right, and his utilitarianism, based on the “greatest-happiness principle”, was prepared to embrace the surveillance system so long as that system maximised overall happiness. Perhaps Thomas More was a proto-utilitarian, prepared to take up the repressive aspects of panopticism in exchange for moral reform, health preservation, the invigoration of industry and the lightening of public burdens. On the other hand, Utopia is widely read as a deliberately ironic representation of the ideal state. Stephen Greenblatt has pointed out that More “remained ambivalent about many of his most intensely felt perceptions” in Utopia, and he offers the text’s various ironising elements (such as the name of More’s fictitious interlocutor, Hythlodaeus, “well learned in nonsense”) as evidence (Greenblatt 54). Even the text’s title undermines its Edenic vision: as Louis Marin argues, “Utopia” could derive equally from Greek ou-topos, no-place, or eu-topos, good-place (Marin 85). More’s ambivalence about Utopia – to the extent of attributing his account of No-place to a character called Nonsense – suggests his impatience with his own flawed social vision. While Utopia is ambivalent in its depiction of the perfect state, more recent utopian narratives – Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1931), for instance, or George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) – are unequivocally ironic about the subordination of the individual to the perfect state. The Bible’s account of human society begins with Eden and ends with Apocalypse, in which divine surveillance reaches its inevitable conclusion in divine judgement. The utopian genre has undergone a very similar trajectory, beginning with what seem to be sincere attempts to sketch the perfect state, briefly flourishing as Europeans became first aware of Cytherean islands in the South Pacific, and, more recently, representing outright apocalypse (as in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale [1986] and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner [1992]), or at least responding pessimistically to human attempts at social engineering. Blade Runner’s dystopic inversion of biblical creation illustrates an enduring distrust in both human and divine attempts to establish Eden. The year is 2019 (only one year off 2020, perfect vision); the place is Los Angeles, the City of Angels. Corporate biomechanic Eldon Tyrell manufactures a race of robots, “replicants”, who are physically indistinguishable from humans, capable of developing emotional responses, but burdened with a four-year self-destruct mechanism. When the replicants rebel, their leader, Roy Batty, demands of Tyrell, “I want more life, Father”. Tyrell is not only “Father”, but “the god of biomechanics”; and Batty is simultaneously a reworking of Adam (the disaffected creation), Lucifer (the rebel angel) and Christ (as shown in the accompanying iconography of crucifixion and doves). The Bible’s leading actors are all present, but the City of Angels, 2019, is unmistakeably not Eden. It is a polluted, dank, flame-spewing dragon of a city, more Inferno than human habitation. The film’s oppressive film noir atmosphere relays the nausea induced by the Tyrell Corporation’s surveillance system. The Voight-Kamff test – a means of assessing emotional response (and thus determining whether an individual is human or replicant) by scanning the pupils – is a surveillance mechanism so intrusive it measures not only behaviour, but feelings. The optical imagery throughout the film reinforces the idea of permanent visibility. The result is a claustrophobic paranoia. Blade Runner is unambiguous in its pessimism about human attempts to regulate society (attempts which it shows to be reliant on surveillance, slavery and swift punishment). It seems unlikely that the God of Genesis is specifically targeted by this film’s parody of the Creator-creation power relationship – its critiques of capitalism and environmental mismanagement are much more overt – but by configuring its dramatis personae in biblical roles, Blade Runner demonstrates that the paradigm for omnisurveillant creators comes from the Bible. In turn, by placing Los Angeles, 2019, at such a distant aesthetic remove from Eden, the film portrays the omnisurveillant creator unrelieved by natural beauty. Foucault’s formulation of panopticism, that power is seeing without being seen, that being seen without seeing is disempowerment, informs all three texts – Genesis, Utopia and Blade Runner. What differentiates them, determines how perfect each text would have its world believed to be, is the extent to which its authors approve this power relationship. References Bentham, Jeremy. The Panopticon; or, The Inspection House (1787). In The Panopticon Writings. Ed. Miran Bozovic. London: Verso, 1995. 29-95. Foucault, Michel. “Panopticism”. In Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan (1977). New York: Vintage Books, 1995. 195–228. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1980. Marin, Louis. Utopics: The Semiological Play of Textual Spaces. Trans. Robert A. Vollrath. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1990. More, Thomas. Utopia (1516). In Susan Brice, ed. Three Early Modern Utopias: Utopia, New Atlantis, The Isle of Pines. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Scott, Ridley. Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut. United States, 1992. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Harley, Alexis. "Resurveying Eden: Panoptica in Imperfect Worlds." M/C Journal 8.4 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/02-harley.php>. APA Style Harley, A. (Aug. 2005) "Resurveying Eden: Panoptica in Imperfect Worlds," M/C Journal, 8(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/02-harley.php>.

For Socrates the act of communication is grounded in the world of original forms, archetypes, or abstract ideas. These ideas exist independently of the human mind and reflect a reality that is truer than the world of everyday experience. The task of the speaker is to draw the listener closer to the truth of these ideas, and this requires an intimate coupling of the form of speech to the character of the listener. In Phaedrus, Socrates explains, ". . . a would-be speaker must know how many types of soul there are. The number is finite, and they account for a variety of individual characters. When these are determined one must enumerate the various types of speech, a finite number also." The types of soul must then be carefully paired with the types of speech. This theoretical knowledge by itself, however, is not sufficient. A speaker must also know when ". . . he has actually before him a specific example of a type which he has heard described, and that this is what he must say and this is how he must say it if he wants to influence his hearer in this particular way" (Plato 91-92). Thus, the aspiring speaker must sharpen his powers of observation. Exactly how a speaker goes about discerning the various types of souls in his audience is not discussed in Phaedrus, but one assumes it is by mastering the art of face reading, or physiognomy. The science of physiognomy was of particular importance to the ancient Greeks. Nearly all the well-known Greek writers had something to say about the subject. Pythagoras is claimed to be the first Greek to formalize it systematically as a science. Hippocrates wrote voluminously on the subject, as did Aristotle. Socrates not only recommended physiognomy to his students (Tytler) but he is also reported to have demonstrated his facility with the science at least twice: once in predicting the promotion of Alcibiades and once upon first meeting Plato, whom he immediately recognized as a man of considerable philosophical talent (Encyclopedia Britannica). Writing is inferior to speech, Socrates tells Phaedrus, precisely because it cannot see and adapt the message to the reader. Like a painting of an object, writing is merely the image of dissociated speech. What is missing in writing-and what writing seems ever intent on reconstructing-is the human face. Pressing Faces Behind the Typeface Although physiognomy was banned by the Church, as it was associated with paganism and devil worship (practitioners of the science were burnt at the stake), it was revived in the Renaissance and became an obsession with the advent of the printing press. The printing press heralds democracy. But as human rights grew, urban centers developed, and new professions and classes emerged, people were no longer able to divine their own destiny or to predict the behavior and destiny of others. It became imperative to find other more reliable means of identifying the good and the bad, the talented and the unremarkable. Two books were considered indispensable: the Bible and Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy (Juengel). Physiognomy was the science that helped people decipher class and profession. It became the spelling book of character, one that people diligently studied so that they could learn to read not only the marks of character in others but also the signs of talent and potential in their own faces and in the faces of their children. Face reading was egalitarian and leveling (Juengel). The heads of state could be read and debunked in the flourishing art of caricature, and people delighted in decoding the physiognomy of the ordinary faces that crowded the pages of the popular press. The populace applauded the artists that succeeded in revealing the whole spectrum of a character-class, intentions, profession-in the masterly strokes of the pen (Wechsler). Unfortunately, so intense was the interest in face reading that many people were forced to cover their faces when out in public (Zebrowitz). Inside the religious, medical, educational, and criminal justice institutions, authorities scanned faces to identify the virtuous and the vile. People were hanged because of the shape of their jaws ("A physiognomic auto-da-fé,") and sometimes convicted of crimes because of an unfortunate physiognomy, even before any crimes were committed (Lichtenberg. 93). Mass Consumption of the Face Open a magazine. What do you see? I counted over 200 faces in the September 15, 2003 issue of Newsweek, 120 faces in the September 29, 2003 issue of Forbes, 124 faces in the September 15, 2003 issue of Time, and 37 faces in the November, 2003 issue of Handgunner (I included the masked faces). Whereas, in the 19th century, face reading was used by the religious, medical, and criminal justice authorities to identify a person's character, in the modern world face reading becomes face righting. Early in the century, people came to be viewed less as individuals than as masses that were dynamically statistical with fluctuations of opinions and tastes that could be sampled and manipulated. It quickly became apparent to the behemoth advertising industry that was erected with the advent of mass media that product designs and packages could be collated with viewer reactions. The audience is scrutinized, labeled, and targeted. What people are fed are fleshless images of themselves. Horkheimer and Adorno have observed that the media have reduced the individual to the stereotype. Stereotypes package people, typically in unflattering boxes. Mediated faces are used to mirror, to prime, and to manipulate the audience (Kress and van Leeuwen). On television and in print, images of canned faces proliferate. Not all stereotypes are unsavory. Nothing recommends itself nor sells like a beautiful face, but even beautiful faces must be retouched, even recomposed from features extracted from databases of perfect facial features. So important is the image of the face that media icons routinely visit the plastic surgeon. Michael Jackson is the most extreme example of what has been derogatorily termed a "scalpel slave." Plastic surgery is not exclusive to celebrities; countless millions of ordinary Americans feel compelled to undergo various cosmetic surgeries. The 20th-century consumption of the face has ended by consuming the face. Facing the Face Interface Text has made a comeback in hypertext. Empowered by the hyperlink, readers have become writers as they assemble texts with the clicks of a mouse (Landow). Electronic texts are pushed as well as pulled. Businesses have learned to track and to query users, building individual profiles that are then used to assemble personalized pages and email messages. Socrates' objection that writing is unable to perceive the reader no longer holds. The virtual text is watching you. And it is watching you with virtual eyes. There is a growing interest in developing face interfaces that are capable of perceiving and talking. The technical requirements are enormous. Face interfaces must learn to make eye contact, follow speaking faces with their eyes, mirror emotion, lip synch, and periodically nod, raise eyebrows, and tilt the head (Massaro). Face interfaces are also learning to write faces, to map rhetorical forms to the character of their interlocutors in ways Socrates could not have imagined. Socrates did not teach his students to consider the rhetorical effects of their faces: the speaker's face was thought to be fixed, a true reflection of the inner soul. Virtual faces are not so constrained. Smart faces are being developed that are capable of rendering their own appearances from within a statistical model of the users' impressions of faces. The goal is for these virtual faces to learn to design, through their interactions with users, facial appearances that are calibrated to elicit very specific impressions and reactions in others (Brahnam). Some people will disapprove of virtual faces. Just as the media use faces to manipulate the viewer and perpetuate facial stereotypes, smart faces run the risk of doing the same. Some may also worry that virtual faces will be attributed more intelligence and social capacity then they actually possess. Do we really want our children growing up talking to virtual faces? Can they satisfy our need for human contact? What does it mean to converse with a virtual face? What kind of conversation is that? For the present at least, virtual faces are more like the orators and bards of old. They merely repeat the speeches of others. Their own speech is nearly incomprehensible, and their grammatical hiccups annoyingly disrupt the suspension of disbelief. On their own, without the human in the loop, no one believes them. Thus, the virtual face appears on the screen, silently nodding and smiling. Not yet a proper student of classical rhetoric, it is much like the virtual guide at artificial-life.com that recently greeted her visitors wearing the following placard: A virtual guide that greeted visitors at artificial-life.com. Access date: October 2003. Works Cited Brahnam, Sheryl. "Agents as Artists: Automating Socially Intelligent Embodiment," Proceedings of the First International Workshop on the Philosophy & Design of Socially Adept Technologies, in conjunction with CHI 2002. Minneapolis, MN, 2002: 15-18. Encyclopedia Britannica. "Physiognomy." LoveToKnow Free Online Encyclopedia, 1911. Available: http://21.1911encyclopedia.org Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Seabury, 1944. Juengel, Scott Jordan. "About Face: Physiognomics, Revolution, and the Radical Act of Looking." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Iowa, 1997. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge, 1996. Landow, P. George. Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: John Hopkins U P, 1997. Lavater, Johann Caspar. Essays on Physiognomy: For the Promotion of the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind. Trans. Thomas Holcroft. London: printed by C. Whittingham for H. D. Symonds, 1804. Lichtenberg. Quoted in Frey, Siegfried. "Lavater, Lichtenberg, and the Suggestive Power of the Human Face." The Faces of Physiognomy: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Johann Caspar Lavater. Ed. Ellis Shookman. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993. 64-103. Massaro, D. M. Perceiving Talking Faces: From Speech Perception to a Behavioral Principle. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1997. Plato. Phaedrus and the Seventh and Eighth Letters. Trans. Walter Hamilton. London: Penguin, 1973. Tytler, Graeme. Physiognomy in the European Novel: Faces and Fortunes. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U P, 1982. Wechsler, Judith. A Human Comedy: Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris. London: U of Chicago P, 1982. Zebrowitz, Leslie A. Reading Faces: Window to the Soul? Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1998. Web Links http://vhost.oddcast.com/vhost_minisite/ http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/facedemo/ http://www.faceinterfaces.com http://www.artificial-life.com Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brahnam, Sheryl. "Type/Face" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/04-brahnam.php>. APA Style Brahnam, S. (2004, Jan 12). Type/Face. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/04-brahnam.php>

Over the last decade or so, much has been written about the possibilities offered by the internet for creating sites of community based on exchange, collaboration, and reciprocity. Since Howard Rheingold published his polemic, The Virtual Community, in 1993, much has been written on this subject. The notion of just what constitutes ‘virtual reality’ has been extensively debated; however, ‘community’ is almost universally assumed to be good. There are failed communities and successful communities, but the critique of ‘community’ itself as a concept stops there. How, then, do we account for websites that create a sense of community precisely through the promotion of hatred and violence, and on which hatred of others is what the community ‘has in common’? Community as Good: The Origins of Virtual Community The term ‘community’ suggests communication; indeed, the work derives from the Latin communicare, which, as Peter Gould explains, ‘originally meant to share, to join and to unite” (3), and from which is also derived the verb ‘to communicate.’ Hence, accounts of online culture draw on this definition of community, suggesting that computer technology brings people together by allowing them to communicate. Such proximity is, therefore, privileged over geophysical location. In recent debates about cyber-culture, definitions of online community tend to define community through the concept of ‘shared interests’. What is more, some accounts of cyber-culture share a certain view of online community as inherently liberating. The Bad Community: God Hates Fags God Hates Fags is perhaps one of the best-known far-right sites on the Web. It is a non-interactive website, set up and maintained by Benjamin Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, in association with his grandfather Fred Phelps, who originally founded the church in 1964. Phelps first achieved notoriety in 1991 when he organised a picket of the San Francisco Pride Parade, to ‘warn this evil city that they’re going the way of Sodom’. In 1997, the church’s members were ordered by the American Supreme Court to limit their picketing activities after they targeted a local Episcopalian church that they claimed had promoted gay rights. Since the ruling, church members have continued their campaign of homophobic picketing. However, it is as an online promoter of homophobia and other forms of hatred that Phelps has achieved notoriety on an international scale. On paper, Westboro Baptist Church’s Website seems like the perfect example of the Net’s utility as a means of giving voice to small, marginalised community groups, and of bringing together people who share ‘a commonality of interests and goals’. However, this, like other Christian fundamentalist sites, challenges the view of such networks as essentially liberating (though they are certainly utopian in tone), since their shared interests happen to include insisting that creationist dogma be taught in schools, picketing the funerals of those who die of Aids or as a result of homophobic attacks, and promoting violence against lesbians and gay men. God Hates Fags sees itself as both a site of community and as a pressure group fighting a desperately immoral liberal society. It also draws on the idea of a society becoming good through the erasure of certain marginalised subjects, with the erasure to take the form of individuals suppressing their sexual identity in real life, not just online. While God Hates Fags and other sites like it primarily express the fantasy of a post-apocalyptic New Jerusalem. They do so by referring to fantasies of the nation (as a space that must be purified in order for this apocalyptic transformation to take place), of the online community (here imagined as a community of haters), and of the local community producing the site (who, far from being a small, marginal force, are re-presented as a community of ‘knowers’ attempting to promote ‘the truth’ about life in the United States: that is, as a force for good). Fantastic communities are often unaware of their own violence, and the community that hates is no exception, although its claims to peacefulness often stretch credulity to a greater than usual extent. Here is Westboro’s description of its ‘peaceful’ protests: WBC engages in daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations opposing the homosexual lifestyle of soul-damning, nation-destroying filth. We display large, colourful signs containing Bible words and sentiments, including: GOD HATES FAGS, FAGS HATE GOD, AIDS CURES FAGS, THANK GOD FOR AIDS, FAGS BURN IN HELL, GOD IS NOT MOCKED, FAGS ARE NATURE FREAKS [sic] … FAGS DOOM NATIONS, etc. (God Hates Fags) The site’s authors are able to claim such sentiments as ‘non-violent’ precisely because of the way that violence is imagined purely in terms of the physical act; that is, as embodied. Discursive violence, the violence of the text, is not recognised as such. Reading the passages above, I find it hard to maintain any sense of critical distance at the notion of picketing a funeral, and then going online to publicise the activity and exhort others to do the same. The site is frustrating precisely because it assumes the reader’s sympathy. For Phelps, a community of ‘fag haters’ already exists within the wider, corrupt national community of the United States; the site merely serves to unite this community and to provide it with resources. Nevertheless, the statement is itself part of the process by which the site attempts to construct a community through a process of rehabilitation, which aims to re-position hatred of homosexuals both as a political position and as an identity position. The site assumes that the experience of hatred, like that of other extreme emotions, has been wrongly constructed as essentially private, even impossible to articulate. Phelps assures us that it is not, that our hatred (and the reader is always assumed to be on side; the site is never defensive in tone, and never attempts to address its critics) is shared by others. The community exists in the bodies of individuals; by making hatred public and visible, the community can finally become visible in the public domain. This site, and others like it, provide a chilling new perspective on the notion of ‘shared interests’ as a basis for community, as well as giving an insight into the ways in which inequalities might not only translate from geophysical into online communities but actually be heightened, not least by the liberal rhetoric of free speech in which the intended victims of such assaults are urged simply to ignore them, even as they are imposed an ever-increasing number of victims (Porter 234-5). In order to justify their attacks on outsiders, hate sites reproduce discourses of virtual community alongside fundamentalist dogma. So, for example, Westboro Baptist Church claims that it is necessary to draw together a community based on a shared homophobic response in order to protect the larger community of the nation from destruction. In order to construct the virtual community then, it is necessary to mobilise fantasies of the nation as it might be in an ideal world. The community does not simply represent the wider community of the United States; that is, it is not a ‘virtual America.’ Rather, it draws upon a fantasy of the nation as perfectible, and this fantasy assumes a desire to purify the nation by destroying or expelling strangers. Despite the dystopian violence of Phelps’s vision, however, I do not think it is enough to argue that such manifestations are simply an example of a medium with great potential for spiritual growth falling into the wrong hands. Margaret Wertheim seems to predict the use of the Internet to promote hatred when she writes that ‘[t]here is every potential, if we are not careful, for cyberspace to be less like Heaven, and more like Hell’ (298). This reading of virtual culture tends to normalise the idea of a utopian internet community, from which deviations occur only as the result of insufficient vigilance. What is more, the invocation of a group of right-thinking cyber-citizens—the ‘we’ who must be ‘careful’—reproduces the very liberal rhetoric which, as I have argued, tends to perpetuate, or at least obscure, power structures within online communities. Indeed, the notion of ‘the online community’ invoked here seems, ironically, to reproduce the notion of a single unlimited community which, if it is not conterminous with all mankind exactly, is certainly conterminous with all (responsible) users of the internet. As I have shown, it is by drawing on the notions of universality and redemption that underpin utopian theories of cyber-culture that Phelps is able to present his site as a site of community. I would suggest, then, that the notion of a community that has the potential to be good but is constantly under threat from deviant outsiders, is inadequate. Rather, it is necessary to pay attention to the ways in which utopian rhetoric might in itself play a role in reproducing inequalities that exist in society more generally, both online and off. References Gould, P. “Dynamic Structures of Geographic Space.” Collapsing Space and Time: Geographic Aspects of Communications and Information. Eds. S.D. Brunn and T.R. Leinbach. London: HarperCollins, 1991. 3-30. Porter, J.E. “Liberal Individualism and Internet Policy: A Communitarian Critique.” Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st-Century Technologies. Eds. G.E. Hawisher and C.L. Selfe. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. Rheingold, H. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. HarperPerennial, 1993. 16 Oct. 2002 http://www.well.com/www/hlr/vcbook/index.html>. Wertheim, M. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. London: Virago Press, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ferreday, Debra. "Bad Communities: Virtual Community and Hate Speech." M/C Journal 8.1 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0502/07-ferreday.php>. APA Style Ferreday, D. (Feb. 2005) "Bad Communities: Virtual Community and Hate Speech," M/C Journal, 8(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0502/07-ferreday.php>.

Neil Tenant of The Pet Shop Boys crooned the song and memorable line ‘I love to hate you’. Today this refrain has become a global phenomenon within public rhetoric. Many thinkers, most famously Freud, have argued that war is innate to human nature, warfare being a projection of internal battles onto the external world. Etymologically war relates to ‘confusion’ and ‘strife’, two words intimately connected with a certain form of lovemadness. As with love, war is ‘play’ where only the noblest survive (Pick 70). While traditionally God is love in most main religions, J.F.C. Fuller maintains ‘war is a God-appointed instrument to teach wisdom to the foolish and righteousness to the evil-minded’ (Pick 109). For Mussolini, ‘war is to man what maternity is to the woman’ (Bollas 205). In the Christian tradition the pains of childbirth are the punishment for the original rejecting of divine love, that is God, for a love of the carnal and a lust for knowledge, just as the toil of work is the punishment for man. Chivalry equated war and love; ‘love is war’ and ‘the gift of her body to man by the woman is a reward for valour … love and war form an endless dialectic; Venus and Mars in eternal symbolic (not actual) copulation in the interests of nation building’ (Bush 158). In the twentieth century the symbolic becomes literal. Mussolini maintained that war must be embraced as a goal for humankind, just as fervently as intercourse must be embraced for procreation. ‘Man’ must metaphorically fuck man to the death and fuck women literally for more war fodder. Love of food is analogous to love of war, one involving masticating and excreting, the other doing the same literally or metaphorically, depending on the type of war. One first world war soldier remarked how it is very close to a picnic but far better because it has a purpose; it is the most glorious experience available (Storr 15). To William James, war defines the essence of humanity and human potential (Pick 140), often the exact description given by others for love. The very fact that men sacrifice their lives for others supposedly raises humans above animals, but this warlike attribute is akin to divine love, as in Christ’s sacrifice. War is mystical in its nature, as many believe madnesslove to be, and is an end in itself, not a tool. The jingoism of war brings out the most extreme form of comments, as in the following example from the Southern literary critic William Gilmore Simms on the US-Mexican War. ‘War is the greatest element of modern civilization, and our destiny is conquest. Indeed the moment a nation ceases to extend its sway it falls a prey to an inferior but more energetic neighbour’ (Bush 154). The current US president’s rhetoric is identical. What is clear is that the debates surrounding war in the nineteenth century take on a similar tone to those on lovereligion. This could be seen as inevitable given the emphasis of both in certain circumstances on sacrifice. Like love, war is seen as the healthiest of pursuits and the most ‘sane’ of activities. Without it only ‘madness’ can result, the irony being, as with love, that war often causes insanity. Contemporary psychotherapists use examples from world history to indicate how the same drives within the individual may manifest in society. The ‘butterfly principle’ is an example of this, where apparently trivial events can trigger enormous consequences (Wieland-Burston 91). Just as war may appease demands of the id for action and the pressure of the super ego for conformity, so love may satisfy these needs. Mad love can been viewed as a process where the conflict between these two forces is not reconciled via the ego and thus ‘insanity’ results. Daniel Pick discusses Hegel’s theories regarding the benefits of death in terms of the state. ‘The death of each nation is shown to contribute to the life of another greater one: “It then serves as material for a higher principle”’ (28). For Hegel, ‘man is the highest manifestation of the absolute’, so these actions which lead man as a group to ‘a higher principle’ must be God driven, God in a Christian context being defined as love(xviii). War is divinely inspired; it is love. ‘Scatter the nations who delight in war’ (NIV 1986 593), but it is inevitable, part of an internal process, and will continue till the end of time (2 Corinthians 10:3; Romans 7:23; Daniel 9:26). Of course there are many types of love and many types of war, current technology making the horrors of war more prolific but less real, more virtual. However, satisfaction from this form of warfare or virtual love may be tenuous, paradoxically making both more fertile. Desire is the desire of the Other, just as in war it is the fear of the Other, the belief that they desire your destruction, that leads you to war. With reference to Lacan, Terry Eagleton comes up with the following: ‘To say ‘I love you’ thus becomes equivalent to saying ‘it’s you who can’t satisfy me! How privileged and unique I must be, to remind you that it isn’t me you want…’ (Eagleton 279). We give each other our desire not satisfaction, so there can be no love or war without desire, which is law-like and anonymous, and outside of individual wishes. George W. Bush’s speech at the Department of Defence Service of Remembrance, The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia on 11 October 2001 in many ways denied al-Qaida’s responsibility for the September 11th atrocities. The speech mentions that it is enough to know that evil, like good, exists. In true Biblical language, ours is not to reason why and in the terrorists evil has found a willing servant. For Nietzsche the Last Judgement is the sweet consolation of revenge for the lower orders, just as for those who believed they had suffered due to US imperialism, there was something sweet about September 11. Nietzsche as Zarathustra writes ‘God has his Hell; it is love for man (my italics) … God is dead; God has died of his pity for man’ (Nietzsche 114). Nietzsche writes that Zarathustra has grown weary of retribution, punishment, righteous revenge and that this is slavery; he wills that ‘man may be freed from the bondage of revenge’ (123). Importantly, both Bush and bin Laden, while declaring the power of their beliefs, concurrently set themselves and their followers up as victims, the unloved. Nietzsche reveals the essence of public rhetoric by declaring that the central lie is to maintain that it is part of the public’s voice. ‘The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: ‘I, the state, am the people’’ (76). In the Memorial speech quoted above Bush maintains that, unlike ‘our’ enemies, ‘we’ value every life, and ‘we’ mourn every loss. Again, from the Pentagon speech: ‘Theirs is the worst kind of violence, pure malice, while daring to claim the authority of God’. When we kill, so the argument goes, it is out of love, when they kill it is out of malice, hate. There is something infantile about George W. Bush. For Nietzsche every step away from instinct is regression. To suggest that George W. Bush is aping Nietzsche’s superman may appear preposterous, but his anti-intellectual slant is the essence of Nietzsche’s thought: actions speak louder than words; America is not about Being, but Becoming. ‘More than anything on earth he enjoys tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions; and when he invented Hell for himself, behold, it was his heaven on earth’ (Nietzsche 235). Why were the images of the Twin Towers’ attack shown repeatedly? Do people love the challenge of adversity, or revel in the idea of hell and destruction, loving damnation? Nietzsche himself is not innocent. Despite his feigning to celebrate life, man must be overcome; man is a means to an end, just as the bombing of Afghanistan (or Iraq) and the Twin Towers for rival ideologies is a means to an end. ‘They kill because they desire to dominate’; ‘few countries meet their exacting standards of brutality and oppression’. Both Bush or bin Laden may have made these comments, but they are from the former, George W Bush’s, speech to the UN General Assembly in New York City, 10 November 2001. Bush goes on, maintaining: ‘History will record our response and judge or justify every nation in this hall’. God is not the judge here, but history itself, a form of Hegelian world spirit. Then the Nietzschean style rhetoric becomes more overt: ‘We choose the dignity of life over a culture of death’. And following this, Nietzsche’s comments about the state are once again pertinent, given the illegitimacy of Bush’s government. ‘We choose lawful change and civil disagreement over coercion, subversion and chaos’. The praise, that is, the love heaped on Bush for his rhetoric is telling for ‘when words are called holy - all the truth dies’ (Nietzsche 253). The hangover of the Old Testament revenge judge God swamps those drunk on the lust of hatred and revenge. This is clearly the love of war, of hatred. Any God worth existing needs to be temporal, extemporal and ‘atemporal’, yet ultimately ‘Being itself – and not only beings that are “in time” – is made visible in its “temporal” character’ (Heidegger 62). While I am not therefore insisting on a temporal God of love, a God of judgement, of the moment, makes a post-apocalyptical god unnecessary and transcendent love itself unthinkable. Works Cited Bollas, Chistopher. Being a Character. Psychoanalysis and Self Experience. London, Routledge: 1993. Bush, Clive. The Dream of Reason. London: Edward Arnold, 1977. Duncombe, Stephen. Notes From Underground. Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. London: Verso 1997. Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. London: Blackwells, 1996. Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin, 1986. Hegel, G. Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics. Trans. Bernard Bosanquet. London: Penguin, 1993. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time in Basic Writings. Ed. David Farrell Krell. London: Routledge, 1978. Pick, Daniel. War Machine, The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age. London: Yale University Press, 1993. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin, 1969. Storr, Anthony, Human Destructiveness. The Roots of Genocide and Human Cruelty. London: Routledge, 1991. Wieland-Burston, Joanne. Chaos and Order in the World of the Psyche. London: Routledge, 1991. The Holy Bible, New International Version. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1986. lt;http://www.september11news.com> Links http://www.september11news.com Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Lee, C. Jason. "I Love To Hate You/All You Need Is Hate" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/ilovetohateyou.php>. APA Style Lee, C. J., (2002, Nov 20). I Love To Hate You/All You Need Is Hate. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/ilovetohateyou.html

Introduction In The World Is Not a Desktop, Marc Weisner, the principal scientist and manager of the computer science laboratory at Xerox PARC, stated that, “a good tool is an invisible tool.” Weisner cited eyeglasses as an ideal technology because with spectacles, he argued, “you look at the world, not the eyeglasses.” Although Weisner’s work at PARC played an important role in the creation of the field of “ubiquitous computing”, his ideal is widespread in many areas of technology design. Through repetition, and by design, technologies blend into our lives. While technologies, and communications technologies in particular, have a powerful mediating impact, many of the most pervasive effects are taken for granted by most users. When technology works smoothly, its nature and effects are invisible. But technologies do not always work smoothly. A tiny fracture or a smudge on a lens renders glasses quite visible to the wearer. The Microsoft Windows “Blue Screen of Death” on subway in Seoul (Photo credit Wikimedia Commons). Anyone who has seen a famous “Blue Screen of Death”—the iconic signal of a Microsoft Windows crash—on a public screen or terminal knows how errors can thrust the technical details of previously invisible systems into view. Nobody knows that their ATM runs Windows until the system crashes. Of course, the operating system chosen for a sign or bank machine has important implications for its users. Windows, or an alternative operating system, creates affordances and imposes limitations. Faced with a crashed ATM, a consumer might ask herself if, with its rampant viruses and security holes, she should really trust an ATM running Windows? Technologies make previously impossible actions possible and many actions easier. In the process, they frame and constrain possible actions. They mediate. Communication technologies allow users to communicate in new ways but constrain communication in the process. In a very fundamental way, communication technologies define what their users can say, to whom they say it, and how they can say it—and what, to whom, and how they cannot. Humanities scholars understand the power, importance, and limitations of technology and technological mediation. Weisner hypothesised that, “to understand invisibility the humanities and social sciences are especially valuable, because they specialise in exposing the otherwise invisible.” However, technology activists, like those at the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), understand this power of technology as well. Largely constituted by technical members, both organisations, like humanists studying technology, have struggled to communicate their messages to a less-technical public. Before one can argue for the importance of individual control over who owns technology, as both FSF and EFF do, an audience must first appreciate the power and effect that their technology and its designers have. To understand the power that technology has on its users, users must first see the technology in question. Most users do not. Errors are under-appreciated and under-utilised in their ability to reveal technology around us. By painting a picture of how certain technologies facilitate certain mistakes, one can better show how technology mediates. By revealing errors, scholars and activists can reveal previously invisible technologies and their effects more generally. Errors can reveal technology—and its power and can do so in ways that users of technologies confront daily and understand intimately. The Misprinted Word Catalysed by Elizabeth Eisenstein, the last 35 years of print history scholarship provides both a richly described example of technological change and an analysis of its effects. Unemphasised in discussions of the revolutionary social, economic, and political impact of printing technologies is the fact that, especially in the early days of a major technological change, the artifacts of print are often quite similar to those produced by a new printing technology’s predecessors. From a reader’s purely material perspective, books are books; the press that created the book is invisible or irrelevant. Yet, while the specifics of print technologies are often hidden, they are often exposed by errors. While the shift from a scribal to print culture revolutionised culture, politics, and economics in early modern Europe, it was near-invisible to early readers (Eisenstein). Early printed books were the same books printed in the same way; the early press was conceived as a “mechanical scriptorium.” Shown below, Gutenberg’s black-letter Gothic typeface closely reproduced a scribal hand. Of course, handwriting and type were easily distinguishable; errors and irregularities were inherent in relatively unsteady human hands. Side-by-side comparisons of the hand-copied Malmesbury Bible (left) and the black letter typeface in the Gutenberg Bible (right) (Photo credits Wikimedia Commons & Wikimedia Commons). Printing, of course, introduced its own errors. As pages were produced en masse from a single block of type, so were mistakes. While a scribe would re-read and correct errors as they transcribed a second copy, no printing press would. More revealingly, print opened the door to whole new categories of errors. For example, printers setting type might confuse an inverted n with a u—and many did. Of course, no scribe made this mistake. An inverted u is only confused with an n due to the technological possibility of letter flipping in movable type. As print moved from Monotype and Linotype machines, to computerised typesetting, and eventually to desktop publishing, an accidentally flipped u retreated back into the realm of impossibility (Mergenthaler, Swank). Most readers do not know how their books are printed. The output of letterpresses, Monotypes, and laser printers are carefully designed to produce near-uniform output. To the degree that they succeed, the technologies themselves, and the specific nature of the mediation, becomes invisible to readers. But each technology is revealed in errors like the upside-down u, the output of a mispoured slug of Monotype, or streaks of toner from a laser printer. Changes in printing technologies after the press have also had profound effects. The creation of hot-metal Monotype and Linotype, for example, affected decisions to print and reprint and changed how and when it is done. New mass printing technologies allowed for the printing of works that, for economic reasons, would not have been published before. While personal computers, desktop publishing software, and laser printers make publishing accessible in new ways, it also places real limits on what can be printed. Print runs of a single copy—unheard of before the invention of the type-writer—are commonplace. But computers, like Linotypes, render certain formatting and presentation difficult and impossible. Errors provide a space where the particulars of printing make technologies visible in their products. An inverted u exposes a human typesetter, a letterpress, and a hasty error in judgment. Encoding errors and botched smart quotation marks—a ? in place of a “—are only possible with a computer. Streaks of toner are only produced by malfunctioning laser printers. Dust can reveal the photocopied provenance of a document. Few readers reflect on the power or importance of the particulars of the technologies that produced their books. In part, this is because the technologies are so hidden behind their products. Through errors, these technologies and the power they have on the “what” and “how” of printing are exposed. For scholars and activists attempting to expose exactly this, errors are an under-exploited opportunity. Typing Mistyping While errors have a profound effect on media consumption, their effect is equally important, and perhaps more strongly felt, when they occur during media creation. Like all mediating technologies, input technologies make it easier or more difficult to create certain messages. It is, for example, much easier to write a letter with a keyboard than it is to type a picture. It is much more difficult to write in languages with frequent use of accents on an English language keyboard than it is on a European keyboard. But while input systems like keyboards have a powerful effect on the nature of the messages they produce, they are invisible to recipients of messages. Except when the messages contains errors. Typists are much more likely to confuse letters in close proximity on a keyboard than people writing by hand or setting type. As keyboard layouts switch between countries and languages, new errors appear. The following is from a personal email: hez, if there’s not a subversion server handz, can i at least have the root password for one of our machines? I read through the instructions for setting one up and i think i could do it. [emphasis added] The email was quickly typed and, in two places, confuses the character y with z. Separated by five characters on QWERTY keyboards, these two letters are not easily mistaken or mistyped. However, their positions are swapped on German and English keyboards. In fact, the author was an American typing in a Viennese Internet cafe. The source of his repeated error was his false expectations—his familiarity with one keyboard layout in the context of another. The error revealed the context, both keyboard layouts, and his dependence on a particular keyboard. With the error, the keyboard, previously invisible, was exposed as an inter-mediator with its own particularities and effects. This effect does not change in mobile devices where new input methods have introduced powerful new ways of communicating. SMS messages on mobile phones are constrained in length to 160 characters. The result has been new styles of communication using SMS that some have gone so far as to call a new language or dialect called TXTSPK (Thurlow). Yet while they are obvious to social scientists, the profound effects of text message technologies on communication is unfelt by most users who simply see the messages themselves. More visible is the fact that input from a phone keypad has opened the door to errors which reveal input technology and its effects. In the standard method of SMS input, users press or hold buttons to cycle through the letters associated with numbers on a numeric keyboard (e.g., 2 represents A, B, and C; to produce a single C, a user presses 2 three times). This system makes it easy to confuse characters based on a shared association with a single number. Tegic’s popular T9 software allows users to type in words by pressing the number associated with each letter of each word in quick succession. T9 uses a database to pick the most likely word that maps to that sequence of numbers. While the system allows for quick input of words and phrases on a phone keypad, it also allows for the creation of new types of errors. A user trying to type me might accidentally write of because both words are mapped to the combination of 6 and 3 and because of is a more common word in English. T9 might confuse snow and pony while no human, and no other input method, would. Users composing SMS’s are constrained by its technology and its design. The fact that text messages must be short and the difficult nature of phone-based input methods has led to unique and highly constrained forms of communication like TXTSPK (Sutherland). Yet, while the influence of these input technologies is profound, users are rarely aware of it. Errors provide a situation where the particularities of a technology become visible and an opportunity for users to connect with scholars exposing the effect of technology and activists arguing for increased user control. Google News Denuded As technologies become more complex, they often become more mysterious to their users. While not invisible, users know little about the way that complex technologies work both because they become accustomed to them and because the technological specifics are hidden inside companies, behind web interfaces, within compiled software, and in “black boxes” (Latour). Errors can help reveal these technologies and expose their nature and effects. One such system, Google’s News, aggregates news stories and is designed to make it easy to read multiple stories on the same topic. The system works with “topic clusters” that attempt to group articles covering the same news event. The more items in a news cluster (especially from popular sources) and the closer together they appear in time, the higher confidence Google’s algorithms have in the “importance” of a story and the higher the likelihood that the cluster of stories will be listed on the Google News page. While the decision to include or remove individual sources is made by humans, the act of clustering is left to Google’s software. Because computers cannot “understand” the text of the articles being aggregated, clustering happens less intelligently. We know that clustering is primarily based on comparison of shared text and keywords—especially proper nouns. This process is aided by the widespread use of wire services like the Associated Press and Reuters which provide article text used, at least in part, by large numbers of news sources. Google has been reticent to divulge the implementation details of its clustering engine but users have been able to deduce the description above, and much more, by watching how Google News works and, more importantly, how it fails. For example, we know that Google News looks for shared text and keywords because text that deviates heavily from other articles is not “clustered” appropriately—even if it is extremely similar semantically. In this vein, blogger Philipp Lenssen gives advice to news sites who want to stand out in Google News: Of course, stories don’t have to be exactly the same to be matched—but if they are too different, they’ll also not appear in the same group. If you want to stand out in Google News search results, make your article be original, or else you’ll be collapsed into a cluster where you may or may not appear on the first results page. While a human editor has no trouble understanding that an article using different terms (and different, but equally appropriate, proper nouns) is discussing the same issue, the software behind Google News is more fragile. As a result, Google News fails to connect linked stories that no human editor would miss. A section of a screenshot of Google News clustering aggregation showcasing what appears to be an error. But just as importantly, Google News can connect stories that most human editors will not. Google News’s clustering of two stories by Al Jazeera on how “Iran offers to share nuclear technology,” and by the Guardian on how “Iran threatens to hide nuclear program,” seem at first glance to be a mistake. Hiding and sharing are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. But while it is true that most human editors would not cluster these stories, it is less clear that it is, in fact, an error. Investigation shows that the two articles are about the release of a single statement by the government of Iran on the same day. The spin is significant enough, and significantly different, that it could be argued that the aggregation of those stories was incorrect—or not. The error reveals details about the way that Google News works and about its limitations. It reminds readers of Google News of the technological nature of their news’ meditation and gives them a taste of the type of selection—and mis-selection—that goes on out of view. Users of Google News might be prompted to compare the system to other, more human methods. Ultimately it can remind them of the power that Google News (and humans in similar roles) have over our understanding of news and the world around us. These are all familiar arguments to social scientists of technology and echo the arguments of technology activists. By focusing on similar errors, both groups can connect to users less used to thinking in these terms. Conclusion Reflecting on the role of the humanities in a world of increasingly invisible technology for the blog, “Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory,” Duke English professor Cathy Davidson writes: When technology is accepted, when it becomes invisible, [humanists] really need to be paying attention. This is one reason why the humanities are more important than ever. Analysis—qualitative, deep, interpretive analysis—of social relations, social conditions, in a historical and philosophical perspective is what we do so well. The more technology is part of our lives, the less we think about it, the more we need rigorous humanistic thinking that reminds us that our behaviours are not natural but social, cultural, economic, and with consequences for us all. Davidson concisely points out the strength and importance of the humanities in evaluating technology. She is correct; users of technologies do not frequently analyse the social relations, conditions, and effects of the technology they use. Activists at the EFF and FSF argue that this lack of critical perspective leads to exploitation of users (Stallman). But users, and the technology they use, are only susceptible to this type of analysis when they understand the applicability of these analyses to their technologies. Davidson leaves open the more fundamental question: How will humanists first reveal technology so that they can reveal its effects? Scholars and activists must do more than contextualise and describe technology. They must first render invisible technologies visible. As the revealing nature of errors in printing systems, input systems, and “black box” software systems like Google News show, errors represent a point where invisible technology is already visible to users. As such, these errors, and countless others like them, can be treated as the tip of an iceberg. They represent an important opportunity for humanists and activists to further expose technologies and the beginning of a process that aims to reveal much more. References Davidson, Cathy. “When Technology Is Invisible, Humanists Better Get Busy.” HASTAC. (2007). 1 September 2007 http://www.hastac.org/node/779>. Eisenstein, Elisabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Latour, Bruno. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard UP, 1999. Lenssen, Philipp. “How Google News Indexes.” Google Blogscoped. 2006. 1 September 2007 http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-07-28-n49.html>. Mergenthaler, Ottmar. The Biography of Ottmar Mergenthaler, Inventor of the Linotype. New ed. New Castle, Deleware: Oak Knoll Books, 1989. Monotype: A Journal of Composing Room Efficiency. Philadelphia: Lanston Monotype Machine Co, 1913. Stallman, Richard M. Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman. Boston, Massachusetts: Free Software Foundation, 2002. Sutherland, John. “Cn u txt?” Guardian Unlimited. London, UK. 2002. Swank, Alvin Garfield, and United Typothetae America. Linotype Mechanism. Chicago, Illinois: Dept. of Education, United Typothetae America, 1926. Thurlow, C. “Generation Txt? The Sociolinguistics of Young People’s Text-Messaging.” Discourse Analysis Online 1.1 (2003). Weiser, Marc. “The World Is Not a Desktop.” ACM Interactions. 1.1 (1994): 7-8. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hill, Benjamin Mako. "Revealing Errors." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/01-hill.php>. APA Style Hill, B. (Oct. 2007) "Revealing Errors," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/01-hill.php>.

The concept of the “other” is starting to get a little worn out, as it has been used extensively. Despite this it still is a clarifying term to be used when we talk of things that we tend to marginalize. The concept is largely built on fear, for it is that which we find distant, different and threatening that we name the “other”. We construct others because of fear and then fear them because of their otherness. (Cohen 1996). One forgotten group of “others” are animals. Of course, we don’t always see the animals as others, and maybe are heading more into the direction of seeing similarities instead of differences between them and ourselves. Still, the animals are often seen as our opposites. It is through the animal that anthropocentric cultures have defined “humanity”: we are what animals are not (see Clarke & Linzey 1990). One differentiating thing is their “wildness”, and it is often the cause of fear. Unlike us supposedly “cultural” creatures, we like to see (biased as ever) the animals as irrational and instinctual beings that threaten our control. Together with wildness also the “unknown” nature of animals makes us fearful, for the silent animals (especially when lurking in the waters or forests) remain beyond our reach. This fear has given birth to animal monsters that have been meddling with our imagination for centuries: the folklores tell about wear wolves, hell hounds and dragons that brave nights have to kill so that human cultures can flourish, the Bible suggests that the fallen angle is a dragon and the anti-christ a “beast”. Especially in the Middle Ages animals were often seen as demonic beings not to be messed with. (Salisbury 1997; Serpell 1986, 46). It does not seem like a big leap to claim that sometimes we see the animal as the silent, immoral, instinctual, material and even evil enemy that needs to be destroyed so that human rationality, morality and spirituality can prevail. The animal monster has not gone anywhere. They still live in the media, in the horror films and in the urban stories. Natural nasties The animal monsters became increasingly popular in the 70’s horror film. Andrew Tudor has called the genre “eco-doom” and refers to the animal monsters as “natural nasties” (Tudor 1989, 48-62). In his opinion the increased number of animal monsters can be tied to the fear of ecological catastrophe. I’d like to add the growing attention to animal rights issues and animal welfare. All of a sudden the superior status of humans was being critically examined, and animal monsters were one way to deal with the fear of loosing the old safe position. Tudor points out that at the same time also paranoia and helplessness were being emphasised: it was in the presumably safe environment that monsters all of a sudden emerged from, and the heroes were no longer quite as strong in protecting the society against them. This could be linked to the awareness of environmental and animal welfare issues: it was the supposedly controlled area that was attacking humanity. The most famous example of “zoohorror” (perhaps a better term for specifically animal monster horror) is of course Jaws (Spielberg, USA 1975). In the film an idyllic small town with happy holiday enjoyers is attacked by a seemingly psychopathic shark. Through out the film the difference and otherness of the shark are emphasised, and it is described as an instinctual “eating machine”. The humans trying to fight it are morally upright people who care for the community, the shark on the other hand is an aggressive killer who’s only motive seems to be to eat as many people as possible. The otherness is underlined with the way the shark is constructed. He remains out of sight for the majority of the film, neither the swimmers or the viewers get to see it. When it is seen for brief few seconds it is shown as a bodily spectacle of a fin, grey glittering body and – of course – huge jaws. Tudor calls these kinds of monsters “alien”, but I think a better term in this case would be “physical”. The monster lacks all personality and its motives are nonexistent. It becomes known only through its body and aggressive actions: it is constructed as an acting body. Otherwise it remains hidden, causing fear with its invisibility and absence. This goes well together with the idea that the animal is the opposite of humans – where as the humans in the films are intentional, rational and moral heroes the animal remains an instinctually acting violent body that is unseen, unknown – and frightning. Pets gone bad As said, it is the wildness and uncontrollability of animals that often causes us to view them as “others” and make us fear them. This is most evident with wild animals, but also present when it comes to domesticated animals. Domestication has often been understood as a process of improvement, of bringing animals from the natural state into culture that is supposed to be somehow “higher” (Thomas 1980; Harris 1996). Domestication also makes it possible to take control over animals (Passariello 1999). The threatening wildness disappears, and animals are made tame creatures that follow our control (of course, this is not always the motive behind domestication). Still, the wildness never completely disappears. As Steve Baker (1993) has claimed, it seems that there always is a fear of our control breaking and the animal going back to its natural stage. A nice little puppy can turn into a hellhound over night and kill the mailman. These stories make the headlines regularly causing even hysteria. The feared others can be domesticated and tamed, but they can still any time break free. The most famous example of an animal monster that causes fear because of “dedomestication” is Cujo (Teague, USA 1983). In the film a friendly family dog turns into a killer after being bit by a bat, and goes after the local villagers with amazing determination to kill everyone in sight. Another example is Man’s Best Friend (Lafia, USA 1993), where a genetically engineered Rottweiler kills all the people he considers rivals in respect to the owner. These (and many more) films construct animal monsters on the basis of our fear that something might go wrong with the domestication. The differences to the “natural nasties” are interesting. Where as wild animals are often physical monsters, domesticated animals are closer to the “anthropomorphic” (the term from Tudor 1989, 115) or “individual” monsters, for unlike wild animals, we are familiar with them. They are not hidden away like the wild animals, but remain in the viewers’ sight. They are also not as instinctual, and we can even understand their motives. Still, they are monsters that cause fear, for they have fought our cultural control and gone back into being “wild”. Psychopathic primates Where as wild animals are far away and domesticated animals close to us, primates are understood to be like us. Their cognitive skills and DNA’s have made it difficult to categorise them, and we feel a little embarrassed of how much they are like us. Still, and perhaps even because of this, they also cause fear. Planet of the Apes (Schaffner USA 1968) plays with the idea of roles being turned upside down, Link (Franklin 1985) and Congo (Marshall 1995) on the other hand show us primates as monsters. In these films the main motive seems to be to find a difference between humans and primates. Eventually it is claimed to be (when all else fails) morality. In Link a domesticated chimpanzee, who can use language, dresses in clothes and even works as a butler for a scientist, turns into a psychopathic killer when he discovers he might be replaced. In the film the scientist keeps saying humans should never forget that they are “the dominant species” and that primates “lack morality”. In Congo there is both a well behaving domesticated gorilla, and a pack of wild gorillas. The scientist, who owns the domesticated one decides to bring her back to the jungle (where she supposedly “belongs”) and has to fight back a group of monstrous wild gorillas. In the course of the film he becomes to understand that not all primates are as nice as the one he’s had, and that some are “killer apes”. The lesson seems to be quite clear: primates can resemble us, but because they lack morality they can ultimately become viscious monsters. Where as wild animals are physical and domesticated animals somewhat closer to individual monsters, primates are completely individuated – after all, they are “closest” to us. In the films the primate monsters are portrayed much like traditional human villains: we understand their motives and they remain visible to us most of the time. Monstrosity is built on individuality that lacks a crucial feature. Conclusion The existence of animal monsters depends on our understanding of what animals are. When we want to emphasise their difference, we create dualisms and classify animals under the one headline “animal”. Through this “generic animal” we can distance ourselves from animality and nature: we are individuals, they are all part of the class of “animals”, who are determined by animality and attributes that go with it (Birke & Parisi 1999). Cultural studies generally ignore the animal others. Nature and animals are mentioned as the opposites to culture and human beings (Haraway 1991), but they usually remain just that – a mention. Certain understandings of their meaning still make us tend to believe that the analyses of animals is somehow disinteresting (Baker 1993; Steeves 1999; Simons 1997). Paradoxically animals are made the opposite of human beings, and then marginalized even in cultural studies as the disinteresting “other”. Analysing what we understand “animality” to be and why we make it our opposition is crucial in seeking to find new ways to relate to animals. Maybe if this was done, the next time the wolf from the national park or the dog that bit the mailman would not cause fear, panic, and hatred. References Baker, Steve. Picturing the beast. Animals, identity and representation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. Birke, Lynda and Parisi, Luciana. “Animals, Becoming.” Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology and Animal Life. Ed. Peter Steeves. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. 55-75. Clarke, Paul & Linzey, Andrew. Political Theory and Animals Rights. London: Pluto Press, 1990. Cohen, Jeffrey. ”Monster Culture: Seven Theses.” Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Ed. Jeffrey Cohen. Minneapolis: UMP, 1996. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Harris, David. “Domesticatory Relationships of People, Plants and Animals.” Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication. Eds. Roy Ellen, Katruyoshi Fukui. Berg: Oxford International Publishers, 1996. Passariello, Phylis. “Me and my totem: cross-cultural attitudes toward animals.” Attitudes to Animals: View to Animal Welfare. Ed. Francine Dolins. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 12-26. Salisbury, Joyce. “Human Beasts and Bestial Humans in the Middle Ages.” Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History. Eds. Jennifer Ham and Matthew Senior. London: Routledge, 1997. 9-23. Serpell, James. In the Company of Animals. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Simons, John. “The Longest Revolution: Cultural Studies after Speciesism.” Environmental Values vol. 6, no 4 (1997): 483-497. Steeves, Peter. Introduction. Animal Others: on Ethics, Ontology and Animal Life. Ed. Peter Steeves. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. 1-14. Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800. London: Penguing Books, 1983. Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Aaltola, Elisa. "Animal Monsters and the Fear of the Wild" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/animals.php>. Chicago Style Aaltola, Elisa, "Animal Monsters and the Fear of the Wild" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/animals.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Aaltola, Elisa. (2002) Animal Monsters and the Fear of the Wild. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/animals.php> ([your date of access]).

There are three stages in internet dating: first, the emailing back and forth; second, the phone conversation; and third, the meeting for 'coffee'. But before we discuss the three stages, here are some hints about the preliminary work you have to do. At the outset, you have to trawl through the thousands of people who have placed their profiles on the site. This is aided by limiting your search to a certain age spread, and your city or region. Then you can narrow it down further by checking educational background, whether they have kids, whether they write in New Age jargon, etc You have to try to assess, from their self-descriptions, which ones are likely to be compatible. You also scrutinise their photos, of course, as they will yours — but don't trust these images entirely — more on that later. Self-description. Almost without exception, women and men who describe their main interests as 'romantic walks on the beach and candle-lit dinners' have no real interests and as much personality as a lettuce. Those who say what matters to them is "good food and wine with a classy guy/lady" have a personality, but it's a repugnant one. Here is a useful binary opposition that could provide a useful key to gauging compatibility: people vary in terms of their degree of interiority and exteriority. People with interiority have the ability to think a little abstractly, can discuss emotions, probably read books as well as watch films. They analyse life rather than just describing it. People mainly given to exteriority find their pleasure in doing things — like boating or nightclubs or golf. They see themselves in the world in a different way. Of course, we are all a mixture of the two — and perhaps the best bet is someone who isn't at one extreme end of the spectrum or the other. Useful tip 1. The 'spiritual woman': for reasons unclear, and despite the fact that Australia is one of the most pagan nations on Earth, a disproportionate number of women, rather than men, claim to be religious. Perhaps because in general, women are still more inclined to interiority than men. But most religious women don't expect a partner to be. Instead, the people to be very careful about are the New Agers — they are a large and growing sub-group and apparently spend much of their time devouring books on spirituality, personal growth and self-love. If you have any sort of intellect, or are just a middling humanist who occasionally ponders "Is this all there is? " these people will drive you nuts with their vague platitudes about knowing their inner child. On the other hand, if they seem terrific in all other respects, you can probably gain their respect by saying in a reflective manner, "Is this all there is?" If you can arrange to be gazing at the star-stained night sky while saying this, all the better. This may seem calculating, but we are all putting on a performance when courting. A lot of single people have self-esteem and loneliness issues, and a personal God, the universe, and astrology make them feel less lonely. Useful tip 2: say that although you don't subscribe to mainstream religion, you feel close to some kind of spirituality when gardening — and add how you love to plant herbs. Some okay herbs to mention are: Rosemary, Thyme, Sage. Chuck a couple of these weed-like green things in your garden just in case. Useful tip 3: no matter what else you do, at all costs avoid anyone who smacks of fundamentalism. This cohort takes the Bible literally, think dinosaurs roamed the planet only a few years before Shakespeare, want gay people to admit they are an abomination - and above all, fundos cannot be reasoned with — not in your lifetime. They are deeply insecure and frightened people — which is sad, so be sympathetic to their plight - but don't get drawn into the vortex. Besides, talking about the approach of Armageddon every date gets a bit tedious. Education: It is usually best to pick someone who has an approximately similar level of education to yourself. Having a tertiary education often gives a person a different way of seeing themselves, and of perceiving others. On the other hand, it is possible to do a five year degree in a narrow professional area and know nothing at all useful about human beings and how they operate. (Ref: engineers, dentists, gynaecologists). There are high school graduates who are better-read and more intelligent than most products of a university. So it is up to the individual case. It is a plus to be interested in your partner's work, but not essential. It can be a minus to be in the same field. Ask yourself this: if you were living with this person and you asked them at night how their day had been, would the answer send you to sleep in less than a minute? A lovely man or woman who is an accountant will likely wax lyrical about having just discovered a $245 error in a billing data base. Their face will be flushed with pride. Can your respond appropriately? How often? Or the love of your life may work in an oncology ward, and regale you with the daily triumph of removing sputum from the chests of the moribund. Are you strong enough for that? And worst of all, you may go out with a writer or poet, who regularly drones on about how their rival always gets friendly reviews from his/her newspaper mates, even though they write books full of derivative, precious crap. Sense of humour (SOH): Most men and women will claim in their profile to have a sense of humour — to love to laugh — and, surprisingly often, to have a 'wicked sense of humour'. This is a difficult personal quality to get a bearing on. You may yourself be the kind of person who tricks themselves into thinking their date has a great sense of humour simply because they laughed at your jokes. That is not having a SOH. Having a SOH is possessing the ability to make others laugh — it is active as well as passive. Do they make you laugh? Are their emails touched with wit and whimsy — or just shades of cute? Is one of their close friends, the one who actually possesses a SOH, helping write their emails? It has been known to happen. You will gain a better sense of the SOH situation during the phone call, and definitely during the coffee. Interests: Most internet websites give people the chance to describe themselves by jotting down their favourite music, books, movies, sport. Often this is pretty much all you will know about what interests them, and it is an imperfect instrument. Many internet dating women say they like all music except heavy metal. Why there is this pervasive, gut-wrenching female fear of the E, A and B chords played loudly is a mystery. Anyway, some of those bands even throw in a G or C#m. But who cares. If you are a bloke, hide your Acca Dacca CDs and buy some world music CDs. New Agers of either sex will have collections full of warbling pan pipes, waterfalls and bird calls. If they are a great person in other respects, then you'll just have to get used to the flock of magpies and whip birds in the dining or bedroom. Photographs: Now, the photo on the profile is only a vague guide. It is useful for confirming the person belongs to homo sapiens, but not a lot else. Some people get a professional pic taken, but most include happy snaps, and that is a blow struck for candidness. The more the photo looks like a "glamour" shot, the softer the focus, the less reliable it is. You can get some idea of whether someone is attractive, handsome, cute or weird from the photo. But — and this is really important — they will always look different in the flesh. They will have grown a beard, cut or streaked their hair, and you will for the first time notice they have a nose the size of the AMP building. Fortunately for men, though women are not oblivious to the looks factor, they tend to be more tolerant and less shallow about it. There is a recent trend for women and men with children to put he most attractive and least manic one in the profile photo with them. This signifies: a) love me, love my kid, because I'm proud of James/Jessica/Jade; b) family values; c) at least my kid only has one head. Stage One. The first stage is in some ways the most enjoyable. It is low risk, low stress, you have the pleasurable experience of a comfortable adventure. There is anticipation, getting to know someone, being complimented on your fascinating emails and witty humour (if it's going well), and all the while wearing an old t-shirt and dirty, checked shorts or fluffy slippers. There is the extreme luxury of re-inventing yourself, of telling your favourite story (your own life-story) again and again to a new audience, the little joys of self-disclosures, the discoveries of like-interests, the occasion when they add at the bottom of their letter "looking forward to hearing from you soon". The writing stage is where you try to establish whether you have intellectual, emotional and cultural compatibility — and whether the person is sincere and relatively well-balanced (I stress 'relatively' — no one is perfect). The discovery process is one of exchanging increasingly personal information — work history, enthusiasms and dislikes, family background. She will want to know whether you are 'over' your last girlfriend/partner/wife. Not surprisingly. A lot of internet men are still bitter about their ex — either that, or they rave on about the saintliness of their ex. If encouraged, women will also tell you about the bastard who refused to pay maintenance. There are clearly a lot of those bastards out there. Both of these practices are unwise on the first coffee if you don't want to scare your potential partner off. In reality, you probably are still seething with hurt and injustice as a result of your last dumping, and maybe even the one before that. You may lie in bed at night thinking nostalgically of your ex's face — but this is a dark secret which you must never reveal. People will ask you to be open, but they don't want that open. Involve your friends: without exception, your close friends will enjoy being part of the process when you are deciding which men or women to contact on the internet. You first make a long short list by browsing through the hundreds of profiles. Print off those profiles, then get your friends to sort through them with you. If you have experience in being on selection panels for jobs, this will help. It is a quite complex matter of weighing up a whole range of variables. For example, candidate A will be gorgeous and sexy, have compatible interests, bearable taste in music, be the right age, but have two small children and live on the other side of town. Candidate B will be less attractive, but still look pretty good, have no children, and a very interesting job. Candidate C will be attractive, have two teenage children with whom he/she shares custody, a worthy but dull job, but seems to have an especially self-aware and witty personality. It's tough work rating these profiles, and the best you can do is whittle them down to a top three, and write to all of them. In the emailing stage, you will get more data to either enhance or diminish their desirability. And remember, no one is perfect: if you find someone with a beautiful brain and body who loves Celine Dion — just put up with it. As Buddhists point out, suffering cannot be avoided if you are to live a full life. But let your friends help you with that selection process — they will remind you of important issues that somehow escape your attention; such as: you really don't like other people's children in reality, just in theory. The last time you went out with someone who was newly broken up or divorced he/she hadn't got over his/her girlfriend/husband. Anyone who describes themselves as a 'passionate playmate' is probably unbalanced and tries to find male/female acceptance through over-sexualising or infantalising themselves. It means nothing that someone describes their children as "beautiful" — all mothers/fathers think that, even of the most ghastly, moronic offspring. You really don't like nightclubs any more and you are an awkward dancer. The last time you fell in love with, and tried to rescue, someone with serious emotional 'issues', it led to unimaginable misery, and you swore in future to leave such rescues to the professionals. And so on. Listen to your friends — they know you. And your bad choices impinge on their lives too. Writing is a powerful means of constructing a 'self' to project to others. There is a Thomas Hardy story about a young man who meets a beautiful girl at a fair — but he must return to London. They agree to write to each other. Only the beautiful girl is illiterate, so she asks her employer, an older woman, to ghost-write her love letters to the young man, and the employer kindly agrees. The young man falls in love with the soul and mind of the sensitive and intelligent writer of the letters and assumes the beautiful young girl has authored them. The employer also falls in love with him through his letters. Only on the day he marries the girl does he discover that he has married the wrong woman. This tale tells us about the richness of the written word, but it omits an important point — you can be intrigued and drawn to someone through his or her e-mails, but find on meeting him or her that there is no chemistry at all. Works Cited This creative non-fiction article was based on primary research. The largest Australian internet dating service is RSVP (www.rsvp.com.au). I mainly used that for my research and ensuing coffees/participant observation. There are other sites I checked out, including: www.datenet.com.au www.AussieMatchMaker.com.au www.findsomeone.com.au www.VitalPartners.com.au www.personals.yahoo.com.au There are also internet dating site guides such as: www.shoptheweb.com.au/dating.shtml www.theinternetdatingguide.com www.moonlitwalks.com www.singlesites.com/Australian_Dating.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Neilsen, Philip. "An extract from 'The Internet of Love'" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/internet.php>. APA Style Neilsen, P., (2002, Nov 20). An extract from "The Internet of Love". M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/internet.html