The Transaction of Meaning

This is a very integral paper to human history. It is not only a history detailing the reason for the fall of the Republic (and thus the Empire), it is a complete history of Rome itself. Moreover, it represents Cicero's view of the evolution of consciousness, of which the history of Rome is an integral part, and has it's place in the historiography set out by Ken Wilbur and many more. Look for a follow-up paper on these topics, which I am currently working on, "Simulacrum and Singularity."

"Carter's music poses struggles of opposition, for instance in timbre (Double Concerto), space (String Quartet No. 3) or pulse (String Quartet No. 5). His preference for the all-interval tetrachords, 4–Z15 [0, 1, 4, 6] and 4–Z29 [0, 1, 3, 7], is also well known. From these facets of Carter's music, I develop a narrative interpretation of his Petrarch sonnet–inspired solo flute piece, Scrivo in Vento (1991). Specifically, I forge narrative pathways by imagining the two tetrachords as active agents opposed in competition. Previous Scrivo analyses (Capuzzo 2002; Childs 2006) stress continuity by revealing Q-transforms and common-note voice leading between the tetrachords. While acknowledging such features, my analysis emphasises oppositional struggle by tracing the tetrachords as separate entities which cooperate and conflict as they manoeuvre to outdo each other.

The analysis advances three theses: (1) it guides listening to and reading Scrivo in a way which resonates with Carter's concern for the aesthetics of oppositional struggle, his choice of a sonnet as inspiration and his affinity for all-interval tetrachords; (2) it shows that music-analytical detail can be organised into dramatic narratives by (a) projecting dramatic roles onto categories asserted by a formal theory and (b) treating the formal theory's relations metaphorically as actions performed by each role as the musical work unfolds; and (3) it shows how detailed pc-set analysis can support a Heraclitean view of music: a flux of opposing forces seeking and resisting unity."

Literary Darwinism is an emerging interdisciplinary research field that seeks to explain literature and its oral antecedents (“literary behaviors“), from a Darwinian perspective. Considered the fact that an evolutionary approach to human behavior has proven insightful, this is a promising endeavor. However, Literary Darwinism as it is commonly practiced, I argue, suffers from some shortcomings. First, while literary Darwinists only weigh adaptation against by-product as competing explanations of literary behaviors, other alternatives, such as constraint and exaptation, should be considered as well. I attempt to demonstrate their relevance by evaluating the evidentiary criteria commonly employed by Literary Darwinists. Second, Literary Darwinists usually acknowledge the role of culture in human behavior and make references to Dual Inheritance theory (i.e., the body of empirical and theoretical work demonstrating that human behavior is the outcome of both genetic and cultural inheritance). However, they often do not fully appreciate the explanatory implications of dual inheritance. Literary Darwinism should be extended to include these recent refinements in our understanding of the evolution of human behavior.

de reunião pública; não ouvem nem vêem as leis nem as decisões escritas ou faladas. As disputas dos cargos públicos nas hetérias, as reuniões e os festins, os banquetes animados por tocadoras de flautas: nem em sonhos lhes ocorre comparecer a nada disso. Nasceu na cidade alguém de nobre ou baixa estirpe? Certo cidadão herdou tara de seus antepassados, homens ou mulheres? É que o filósofo conhece tão pouco, como se diz, como quanta areia há no mar. Nem chega mesmo a saber que não sabe nada disso. 23 No contexto da pólis, essa descrição é a de um ser alienado por completo da vida comum. Nas dimensões restritas da astú, 24 o filósofo ignorava a ágora -o espaço por excelência do contato diário dos habitantes e visitantes das póleis -, assim como desconhecia os locais em que os cidadãos exerciam seus direitos e cumpriam suas obrigações. Seu êthos, seu modo de ser, tornava impensável participar dos banquetes, fosse para se divertir, fosse para participar das maquinações políticas que também podiam ocorrer em reuniões festivas. Sábio, desde jovem, revelava sua absoluta indiferença para com a vida comum na própria ignorância de sua condição de "alienado".

This study resumes elements of pioneering research initially conducted in Internet addiction and dependency (Thompson, 1996). Further study of Internet phenomena over the 15 years since, has taken the author into the realm of iconic mediated messaging as a struggle between global media, terrorism, and the viewer (Thompson, 2010). Having grown in access and privilege within the consumer Web -- initial concerns over usage and expectations as laid out in 1996 whereby Internet addiction and dependency were determined to be more along the lines of investment and empowerment vs. self-destructive habit -- the maturation process from initial usage to full-fledged Internet literacy has been fraught with obstacles, yet with deep reward.

As a scholar well-versed in interdisciplinarity and cybercultures, and having moved away from the fears of Internet addiction to the reality of empowerment, one recognizes a plethora of reasons why Internet literacy has molded scholarship and individual into a new creation of cybernetic origin: cyberspace provides and subscribes opportunity for humans to communicate as more than the sum of their parts. In the process of literacy change and alteration over this time period, there has also been adjustment in the cyber network, which has been fed both the good and bad that humanity has been able to conjure and upload: a vast, endless, exponential archive of every human conception.

What have we learned in the last 15 or so years as a species interacting with the virtual species that has seemingly aligned itself with our purposes and future, a future that has taken on the permanent persona of an ever-presence in which we are? This study evaluates emerging information literacy trends, the media, and individual participatory freedoms and consequences that confront those trends within the Internet.