Justifiable Alienation

Introduction by the blog author

Alienation is an often fanciful concept that was made popular by Karl Marx, who contended that capitalism was a disease-causing phenomena that separated people from each other and engendered their alienation from each other.

As preposterous as that politicized concept is, there are indeed people out there who feel like Martians.  There even are a few categories of persons who should feel alienation – and below are two such groups.

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Social alienation, a sociological concept developed by several classical and contemporary theorists, is "a condition in social relationships reflected by a low degree of integration or common values and a high degree of distance or isolation between individuals, or between an individual and a group of people in a community or work environment". The concept has many discipline-specific uses, and can refer both to a personal psychological state (subjectively) and to a type of social relationship (objectively).

Among returning war veterans

Because of intense group solidarity and unique daily hardships brought by combat, many veterans feel alienated from citizens, family, and friends when they return. They often feel they have little in common with civilian peers; issues that concern friends and family seem trivial after combat. There is a clarity of focus and purpose that comes with war that few in civilian life will ever know. Afghanistan veteran Brendon O'Byrne says, "We were really close. Physically and emotionally close. It's kind of terrifying being in such an emotionally safe environment and then suddenly be expelled into an alienated, fractured society." They know how to deal with bullets, and in combat they're dealing with bullets together. But now they're dealing with their loneliness, by definition, alone. It is loneliness and normlessness why so many soldiers choose to return to combat.  As filmmaker and war correspondent Sebastian Junger says, "They didn't want to go back because it was traumatic, but because it was a place where they understood what they were supposed to do. They understood who they were. They had a sense of purpose. They were necessary. All these things that young people strive for are answered in combat." War twists and shifts the landmarks by which combat veterans navigate their lives, casting light on darkened areas that for many people remain forever unexplored. Veterans often see their wartime experience as the most selfless and meaningful period of their lives. In a different perspective, "even in the quiet moments, war is brighter, louder, brasher, more fun, more tragic, more wasteful. More. More of everything."

The experience of the Vietnam veteran was distinctly different from that of veterans of other American wars. Once he completed his tour of duty, he usually severed all bonds with his unit and comrades. It was extremely rare for a veteran to write to his buddies who were still in combat, and (in strong contrast to the endless reunions of World War II veterans) for more than a decade it was even rarer for more than two or more of them to get together after the war. Korean War veterans had no memorial and precious few parades, but they fought an invading army and they left behind them the free, healthy, thriving, and grateful nation of South Korea. No one spat on them or called them murderers or baby killers when they returned. Only the veterans of Vietnam have endured a concerted, organized, psychological attack by its own people. Never in American history, perhaps never in all of Western civilization, has an army suffered such an agony from its own people. The Vietnam War was a long, contentious conflict (1955–75) which in the mid to late 1960s started to lose political and domestic support, most notably in academia and film that often portrayed soldiers of this conflict as ignoble, adding to their social alienation. That the Vietnam War was ultimately lost, on April 30, 1975, furthered the sense of meaninglessness and malaise. It has been demonstrated that as the perception of community alienation increases, an individual's sense of confidence or mastery in decision making will decrease, and so too their motivation to socially engage.

Disability

Differences between persons with disabilities and individuals in relative abilities, or perceived abilities, can be a cause of alienation. One study, "Social Alienation and Peer Identification: A Study of the Social Construction of Deafness", found that among deaf adults one theme emerged consistently across all categories of life experience: social rejection by, and alienation from, the larger hearing community. Only when the respondents described interactions with deaf people did the theme of isolation give way to comments about participation and meaningful interaction. This appeared to be related to specific needs, for example for real conversation, for information, the opportunity to develop close friendships and a sense of family. It was suggested that the social meaning of deafness is established by interaction between deaf and hearing people, sometimes resulting in marginalization of the deaf, which is sometimes challenged. It has also led to the creation of alternatives and the deaf community is described as one such alternative.

Physicians and nurses often deal with people who are temporarily or permanently alienated from communities, which could be a result or a cause of medical conditions and suffering, and it has been suggested that therefore attention should be paid to learning from experiences of the special pain that alienation can bring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_alienation#17th_century

LIDAR Distance Measuring

Lidar (also called LIDAR, LiDAR, and LADAR) is a surveying method that measures distance to a target by illuminating that target with a laser light. The name lidar, sometimes considered an acronym of Light Detection And Ranging (sometimes Light Imaging, Detection, And Ranging), was originally a portmanteau of light and radar.  Lidar is popularly used to make high-resolution maps, with applications in geodesy, geomatics, archaeology, geography, geology, geomorphology, seismology, forestry, atmospheric physics, laser guidance, airborne laser swath mapping (ALSM), and laser altimetry. Lidar sometimes is called laser scanning and 3D scanning, with terrestrial, airborne, and mobile applications.

Lidar originated in the early 1960s, shortly after the invention of the laser, and combined laser-focused imaging with the ability to calculate distances by measuring the time for a signal to return using appropriate sensors and data acquisition electronics. Its first applications came in meteorology, where the National Center for Atmospheric Research used it to measure clouds. The general public became aware of the accuracy and usefulness of lidar systems in 1971 during the Apollo 15 mission, when astronauts used a laser altimeter to map the surface of the moon.

General Description

Lidar uses ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light to image objects. It can target a wide range of materials, including non-metallic objects, rocks, rain, chemical compounds, aerosols, clouds and even single molecules. A narrow laser-beam can map physical features with very high resolutions; for example, an aircraft can map terrain at 30-centimetre (12 in) resolution or better.

Lidar has been used extensively for atmospheric research and meteorology. Lidar instruments fitted to aircraft and satellites carry out surveying and mapping – a recent example being the U.S. Geological Survey Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar.  NASA has identified lidar as a key technology for enabling autonomous precision safe landing of future robotic and crewed lunar-landing vehicles.

Wavelengths vary to suit the target: from about 10 micrometers to the UV (approximately 250 nm). Typically light is reflected via backscattering. Different types of scattering are used for different lidar applications: most commonly Rayleigh scattering, Mie scattering, Raman scattering, and fluorescence. Based on different kinds of backscattering, the lidar can be accordingly called Rayleigh Lidar, Mie Lidar, Raman Lidar, Na/Fe/K Fluorescence Lidar, and so on.  Suitable combinations of wavelengths can allow for remote mapping of atmospheric contents by identifying wavelength-dependent changes in the intensity of the returned signal.

LIDAR Design

In general there are two kinds of lidar detection schemes: "incoherent" or direct energy detection (which is principally an amplitude measurement) and coherent detection (which is best for Doppler, or phase sensitive measurements). Coherent systems generally use optical heterodyne detection, which, being more sensitive than direct detection, allows them to operate at a much lower power but at the expense of more complex transceiver requirements.

In both coherent and incoherent lidar, there are two types of pulse models: micropulse lidar systems and high energy systems. Micropulse systems have developed as a result of the ever-increasing amount of computer power available combined with advances in laser technology. They use considerably less energy in the laser, typically on the order of one microjoule, and are often "eye-safe," meaning they can be used without safety precautions. High-power systems are common in atmospheric research, where they are widely used for measuring many atmospheric parameters: the height, layering and densities of clouds, cloud particle properties (extinction coefficient, backscatter coefficient, depolarization), temperature, pressure, wind, humidity, trace gas concentration (ozone, methane, nitrous oxide, etc.).

There are several major components to a lidar system:

1. Laser — 600–1000 nm lasers are most common for non-scientific applications. They are inexpensive, but since they can be focused and easily absorbed by the eye, the maximum power is limited by the need to make them eye-safe. Eye-safety is often a requirement for most applications. A common alternative, 1550 nm lasers, are eye-safe at much higher power levels since this wavelength is not focused by the eye, but the detector technology is less advanced and so these wavelengths are generally used at longer ranges and lower accuracies. They are also used for military applications as 1550 nm is not visible in night vision goggles, unlike the shorter 1000 nm infrared laser. Airborne topographic mapping lidars generally use 1064 nm diode pumped YAG lasers, while bathymetric systems generally use 532 nm frequency doubled diode pumped YAG lasers because 532 nm penetrates water with much less attenuation than does 1064 nm. Laser settings include the laser repetition rate (which controls the data collection speed). Pulse length is generally an attribute of the laser cavity length, the number of passes required through the gain material (YAG, YLF, etc.), and Q-switch speed. Better target resolution is achieved with shorter pulses, provided the lidar receiver detectors and electronics have sufficient bandwidth.
2. Scanner and optics — How fast images can be developed is also affected by the speed at which they are scanned. There are several options to scan the azimuth and elevation, including dual oscillating plane mirrors, a combination with a polygon mirror, a dual axis scanner (see Laser scanning). Optic choices affect the angular resolution and range that can be detected. A hole mirror or a beam splitter are options to collect a return signal.
3. Photodetector and receiver electronics — Two main photodetector technologies are used in lidars: solid state photodetectors, such as silicon avalanche photodiodes, or photomultipliers. The sensitivity of the receiver is another parameter that has to be balanced in a lidar design.
4. Position and navigation systems — Lidar sensors that are mounted on mobile platforms such as airplanes or satellites require instrumentation to determine the absolute position and orientation of the sensor. Such devices generally include a Global Positioning System receiver and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU).

3D imaging can be achieved using both scanning and non-scanning systems. "3D gated viewing laser radar" is a non-scanning laser ranging system that applies a pulsed laser and a fast gated camera. Research has begun for virtual beam steering using DLP technology.

Imaging lidar can also be performed using arrays of high speed detectors and modulation sensitive detector arrays typically built on single chips using CMOS and hybrid CMOS/CCD fabrication techniques. In these devices each pixel performs some local processing such as demodulation or gating at high speed, down-converting the signals to video rate so that the array may be read like a camera. Using this technique many thousands of pixels / channels may be acquired simultaneously.  High resolution 3D lidar cameras use homodyne detection with an electronic CCD or CMOS shutter.

A coherent imaging lidar uses synthetic array heterodyne detection to enable a staring single element receiver to act as though it were an imaging array.

In 2014 Lincoln Laboratory announced a new imaging chip with more than 16,384 pixels, each able to image a single photon, enabling them to capture a wide area in a single image. An earlier generation of the technology with one-quarter as many pixels was dispatched by the U.S. military after the January 2010 Haiti earthquake; a single pass by a business jet at 3,000 meters (10,000 ft.) over Port-au-Prince was able to capture instantaneous snapshots of 600-meter squares of the city at 30 centimetres (12 in)^], displaying the precise height of rubble strewn in city streets. The new system is another 10x faster. The chip uses indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs), which operates in the infrared spectrum at a relatively long wavelength that allows for higher power and longer ranges. In many applications, such as self-driving cars, the new system will lower costs by not requiring a mechanical component to aim the chip. InGaAs uses less hazardous wavelengths than conventional silicon detectors, which operate at visual wavelengths.

Types of Applications

• Airborne lidar
• Terrestrial lidar
• Agriculture
• Archeology
• Autonomous Vehicles
• Biology and conservation
• Geology and soil science
• Law enforcement
• Meteorology
• Military
• Mining
• Physics and Astronomy
• Rock Mechanics
• Robotics
• Spaceflight
• Surveying
• Three-dimensional scanning  with Structure from Motion (SFM) technology
• Transport
• Wind Farm optimization
• Solar photovoltaic deployment optimization
• Video games
• Other uses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar

The Loyalty of Dogs

"Man's best friend" is a common phrase about domestic dogs, referring to their close relations, loyalty, and companionship with humans. The first recorded use of a related phrase is by Frederick the Great of Prussia. It was likely popularized by its use in a poem by Ogden Nash and has since become a common colloquialism.

History

Before the evolution of wolf into dog, it is posited that humans and wolves worked together hunting game. Wolves were the superior tracker but humans were the superior killer; thus wolves would lead humans to the prey and humans would leave some of the meat to the wolves. This working relationship eventually led to the evolution of dogs, though there is controversy as to the exact nature of that transition. Some say wolves evolved naturally into dogs, wherein the wolves that worked best with humans slowly began to assimilate and pass their domesticated genes down. Others say that humans took wolf pups and raised them to be domesticated. Either way, humans and dogs formed a working relationship.

In Homer's Odyssey (c. 8th century BC), upon Odysseus' return [after 20 years away], his beloved dog Argos is the only individual to recognize him. Odysseus anonymously asks his old friend, "Eumaeus, what a noble hound that is over yonder on the manure heap: his build is splendid; is he as fine a fellow as he looks, or is he only one of those dogs that come begging about a table, and are kept merely for show?" "This dog," answered Eumaeus, "belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead and gone, and the women take no care of him." Unable to greet his beloved dog, as this would betray who he really was, Odysseus passed by (but not without shedding a tear) and entered the well-built mansion, and made straight for the riotous pretenders in the hall. But Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had fulfilled his destiny of faith and seen his master once more after twenty years. This story shows both companionship and neglect towards dogs amongst humans.

It is said that giving up all their belongings and ties, the Pandavas, accompanied by a dog, made their final journey of pilgrimage to the Himalayas. Yudhishthira was the only one to reach the mountain peak in his mortal body, because he was unblemished by sin or untruth. On reaching the top, Indra asked him to abandon the dog before entering the Heaven. But Yudhishthira refused to do so, citing the dog's unflinching loyalty as a reason. It turned out that the dog was his god-father, Dharma. The incident symbolized that dharma follows you till the end.

Previous to the 19th century, dogs, other than lap dogs, were largely functional. Used for activities such as hunting, watching, and guarding, language describing the dog often reflected these positions within society. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “In the oldest proverbs and phrases dogs are rarely depicted as faithful or as man’s best friend, but as vicious, ravening, or watchful.” Beginning in the 18th century, multiplying in the 19th and flourishing in the 20th century, language and attitudes towards dogs began to shift. Possibly, this societal shift can be attributed to discovery of the rabies vaccine in 1869.

The statement that Dog is man's best friend was first recorded as being made by Frederick, King of Prussia in 1789. Frederick referred to one of his Italian Greyhounds as his best friend.

The earliest citation in the U.S. is traced to a poem printed in the The New-York Literary Journal, Volume 4, 1821:

The faithful dog - why should I strive

To speak his merits, while they live

In every breast, and man's best friend

Does often at his heels attend.

In 1870 Warrensburg, Missouri, George Graham Vest represented a farmer suing for damages after his dog, Old Drum, had been shot and killed. Vest’s closing speech included this quote, “The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.” In 1958, a statue of Old Drum was erected on the Johnson County Courthouse lawn containing a summation of Vest’s closing speech, “A man’s best friend is his dog.”

Much earlier, however, Voltaire had written in his Dictionnaire philosophique of 1764:

CHIEN. —- Il semble que la nature ait donné le chien à l'homme pour sa défense et pour son plaisir. C'est de tous les animaux le plus fidèle : c'est le meilleur ami que puisse avoir l'homme.

Translated, this reads:

DOG. —- It seems that nature has given the dog to man for his defense and for his pleasure. Of all the animals it is the most faithful : it is the best friend man can have.

Metallic Hydrogen Research

Metallic hydrogen is a kind of degenerate matter, a phase of hydrogen in which it behaves like an electrical conductor. This phase was predicted theoretically by Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington in 1935.

At high pressure and temperatures, metallic hydrogen might exist as a liquid rather than a solid, and researchers think it is present in large amounts in the gravitationally compressed interiors of Jupiter, Saturn, and in some extrasolar planets.

                                                      Gas giants such as Jupiter (pictured
                                                     above) and Saturn may contain large
                                                     amounts of metallic hydrogen
                                                    (depicted in grey) and metallic helium

In October 2016, there were claims that metallic hydrogen has been observed in the laboratory at a pressure of around 495 gigapascals (4,950,000 bar; 4,890,000 atm; 71,800,000 psi). As of January 2017, these findings have not yet been replicated. Some observations consistent with metallic behavior had previously been reported, such as the reported observation of some new phases of solid hydrogen under static conditions, and, in dense liquid deuterium, electrical insulator-to-conductor transitions associated with an increase in optical reflectivity.

Superconductivity

In 1968, Neil Ashcroft put forward that metallic hydrogen may be a superconductor, up to room temperature (290 K or 17 °C), far higher than any other known candidate material. This stems from its expected strong coupling between the conduction electrons and the lattice vibrations.

Claimed Observation of Solid Metallic Hydrogen, 2016

On October 5, 2016, Ranga Dias and Isaac F. Silvera of the Lyman Laboratory of Physics at Harvard University released claims of experimental evidence that solid metallic hydrogen had been synthesised in the laboratory. This manuscript first appeared on the arXiv preprint server in October 2016, and a revised version was subsequently published in the journal Science in January 2017.

In the preprint version of the paper, Dias and Silvera write:

With increasing pressure we observe changes in the sample, going from transparent, to black, to a reflective metal, the latter studied at a pressure of 495 GPa... the reflectance using a Drude free electron model to determine the plasma frequency of 30.1 eV at T = 5.5 K, with a corresponding electron carrier density of 7023670000000000000♠6.7×10²³ particles/cm³, consistent with theoretical estimates. The properties are those of a metal. Solid metallic hydrogen has been produced in the laboratory.

— Dias & Silvera (2016)

Shortly after the claim was published in Science, Nature's news division published an article stating that some other physicists regarded the result with skepticism, pointing out that it appears to be a matter of them testing the reflectivity of the sample at high pressure since there is a good chance it could be other factors like alumina coating used on the diamonds to prevent hydrogen from leaking into the crystal and making it brittle. Silvera stated that they did not repeat their experiment since doing more tests could damage or destroy their existing sample, but assured the scientific community that more tests are coming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_hydrogen

Kurdish Rebellions in Turkey

Kurdish rebellions in Turkey refer to Kurdish nationalist uprisings in Turkey, beginning with the Turkish War of Independence and the consequent transition from the Ottoman Empire into the modern Turkish state and lasting until present with the ongoing Kurdish-Turkish conflict.

According to Ottoman military records, Kurdish rebellions have been taking place in Anatolia for over two centuries, While tribal Kurdish revolts had shuttered the Ottoman Empire through the last decades of its existence, the conflict in its modern phase is considered to have begun in 1922, with the emergence of Kurdish nationalism in parallel with the formation of the modern State of Turkey. In 1925, an uprising for an independent Kurdistan, led by Shaikh Said Piran, was put down quickly, and Said and 36 of his followers were executed soon thereafter. Several other large scale Kurdish revolts occurred in Ararat and Dersim in 1930 and 1937. The British consul at Trebizond, the diplomatic post closest to Dersim, spoke of brutal and indiscriminate violence and made an explicit comparison with the Armenian massacres of 1915. "Thousands of Kurds," he wrote, "including women and children, were slain; others, mostly children, were thrown into the Euphrates; while thousands of others in less hostile areas, who had first been deprived of their cattle and other belongings, were deported to vilayets (provinces) in Central Anatolia. It is now stated that the Kurdish question no longer exists in Turkey."

Kurds accuse successive Turkish governments of suppressing their identity through such means as the banning of Kurdish language in print and media. Atatürk believed the unity and stability of a country lay in a unitary political identity, relegating cultural and ethnic distinctions to the private sphere. However, many Kurds did not relinquish their identities and language. Large-scale armed conflict between the Turkish armed forces and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) occurred throughout the 1980s and 1990s, leaving over 35,000 dead. Recent moves by the Turkish government have provided Kurds with limited rights and freedoms, particularly in regards to the Kurdish language, education, and media. Kurdish politicians and activists still face pressure.

Kurdish-Turkish Conflict 1978-present

Kurdish ethnic revival appeared in the 1970s when Turkey was racked with left-right clashes and the Marxist PKK was formed demanding a Kurdish state. PKK declared its objective as the liberation of all parts of Kurdistan from colonial oppression and establishment of an independent, united, socialist Kurdish state. It initially attracted the poorer segments of the Kurdish population and became the only Kurdish party not dominated by tribal links. PKK's chairman, Abdullah Öcalan, was proud of being from humble origins. It characterized its struggle mainly as an anti-colonial one, hence directing its violence against collaborators, i.e., Kurdish tribal chieftains, notables with a stake in the Turkish state, and also against rival organizations. The military coup in 1980 lead to a period of severe repression and elimination of almost all Kurdish and leftist organizations. The PKK, however, was the only Kurdish party that managed to survive and even grow in size after the coup. It initiated a guerrilla offensive with a series of attacks on Turkish military and police stations and due to its daring challenging of the Turkish army, gradually won over grudging admiration of parts of the Kurdish population. In the beginning of 1990, it had set up its own local administration in some rural areas. Around this time, PKK changed its goals from full Kurdish independence to a negotiated settlement with the Turkish government, specially after some promising indirect contacts with President Turgut Özal. After Özal's sudden death, the Turkish military intensified its operations against PKK bases. These measures succeeded in isolating the PKK from the civilians and reduced it to a guerrilla band operating in the mountains. In 1999, increased Turkish pressure on Syria led to Öcalan's expulsion and ultimate arrest by Turkish Maroon Berets in Kenya. A cooling down occurred, and a ceasefire was brokered in 2014 - but then due to the Siege of Kobane the conflict has restarted.

During the 1980s Turkey began a program of forced assimilation of its Kurdish population. This culminated in 1984 when the PKK began a rebellion against Turkish rule attacking Turkish military and civilian targets. Since the PKK's militant operations began in 1984, 37,000 people have been killed. The PKK has been continuing its guerrilla warfare in the mountains. However, since 1995, and especially since the AK Party came to power there have been numerous reforms and the situation has greatly improved. As a result, the fighting is limited to approximately 3000 fighters.

Serhildan (1990-present)

The Serhildan designate several Kurdish public rebellions since the 1990s with the slogan "Êdî Bese" ("Enough") against the Turkish government. The first violent action by the populace against police officers and state institutions occurred in 1990 in the Southeast Anatolian town Nusaybin near the border to Syria. The rebellion in Nusaybin is the beginning of the Serhildan, during the following days the riots initially widened to other cities of the province Mardin and to the neighboring provinces Batman, Diyarbakır, Siirt, Şanlıurfa and Şırnak, and later to other Eastern Anatolian provinces such as Bingöl, Bitlis, Hakkâri, Muş and Van, as well cities such as Ankara, Istanbul, İzmir and Mersin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_rebellions_in_Turkey

Tales of Uncle Remus

Uncle Remus is the fictional title character and narrator of a collection of African-American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, published in book form in 1881. A journalist in post-Reconstruction Atlanta, Georgia, Harris produced seven Uncle Remus books.

 

                                                                  Uncle Remus
                                                               1881 Illustration

Structure

Uncle Remus is a collection of animal stories, songs, and oral folklore, collected from southern African-Americans. Many of the stories are didactic, much like those of Aesop's Fables and Jean de La Fontaine's stories. Uncle Remus is a kindly old former slave who serves as a storytelling device, passing on the folktales to children gathered around him.

The stories are written in an eye dialect devised by Harris to represent a Deep South Gullah dialect. The genre of stories is the trickster tale. At the time of Harris's publication, his work was praised for its ability to capture plantation Negro dialect.

Br'er Rabbit ("Brother Rabbit") is the main character of the stories, a likable character, prone to tricks and trouble-making, who is often opposed by Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear. In one tale, Br'er Fox constructs a lump of tar and puts clothing on it. When Br'er Rabbit comes along, he addresses the "tar baby" amiably but receives no response. Br'er Rabbit becomes offended by what he perceives as Tar Baby's lack of manners, punches it, and becomes stuck.

Controversy and Legacy

The animal stories were conveyed in such a manner that they were not seen as racist by many among the audiences of the time. By the mid-20th century, however, the dialect and the narrator's "old Uncle" stereotype were considered overly demeaning by many African-American people, reflecting what they considered to be racist and patronizing attitudes toward African-Americans. Providing additional controversy is the stories' context, as they are set on a former slave-owning plantation and portrayed in a passive, even docile, manner. Nevertheless, Harris's work was, according to himself, an accurate account of the stories he heard from the slaves when he worked on a plantation as a young man. He claimed to have listened to, and memorized, the African American animal stories told by Uncle George Terrell, Old Harbert, and Aunt Crissy at the plantation; he wrote them down some years later. He acknowledged his debt to these storytellers in his fictionalized autobiography, On the Plantation (1892). Many of the stories that he recorded have direct equivalents in the African oral tradition.

Harris himself said, in the introduction to Uncle Remus, that he hoped his book would be considered:

...a sympathetic supplement to Mrs. Stowe's [author of Uncle Tom's Cabin] wonderful defense of slavery as it existed in the South. Mrs. Stowe, let me hasten to say, attacked the possibilities of slavery with all the eloquence of genius; but the same genius painted the portrait of the Southern slave-owner, and defended him.

Mark Twain read the Uncle Remus stories to his children, who were awed to meet Harris himself. In his Autobiography Twain describes Harris thus:

He was the bashfulest grown person I have ever met. When there were people about he stayed silent, and seemed to suffer until they were gone. But he was lovely, nevertheless; for the sweetness and benignity of the immortal Remus looked out from his eyes, and the graces and sincerities of his character shone in his face.

Twain wrote: "It may be that Jim Wolf was as bashful as Harris. It hardly seems possible...."  Jim Wolf is a character from the first humorous story Twain ever told: "Jim Wolf and the Cats.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Remus

Overview of Essentialism

Essentialism is the view that for any specific entity there is a set of attributes which are necessary to its identity and function. In Western thought the concept is found in the work of Plato and Aristotle. Platonic idealism is the earliest known theory of how all things and concepts have an essential reality behind them (an "Idea" or "Form"), an essence that makes those things and concepts what they are. Aristotle's Categories proposes that all objects are the objects they are by virtue of their substance, that the substance makes the object what it is. The essential qualities of an object, so George Lakoff summarizes Aristotle's highly influential view, are "those properties that make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not that kind of thing". This view is contrasted with non-essentialism, which states that, for any given kind of entity, there are no specific traits which entities of that kind must possess.

Essentialism has been controversial from its beginning. Plato's Socrates already problematizes the concept of the Idea by positing in the Parmenides that if we accept Ideas of such things as Beauty and Justice (every beautiful thing or just action would partake of that Idea in some sense in order to be beautiful or just), we must also accept the "existence of separate forms for hair, mud, and dirt". In biology and other natural sciences, essentialism provided the basis for and rationale of taxonomy at least until the time of Charles Darwin; the precise role and importance of essentialism in biology is still a matter of debate. In gender studies, essentialism (summarized as the basic proposition that men and women are essentially different) continues to be a matter of contention.

French structuralist feminism was often accused of subscribing to an essentialism, which was set in contrast to gender constructionism.

In Philosophy

An essence characterizes a substance or a form, in the sense of the Forms or Ideas in Platonic idealism. It is permanent, unalterable, and eternal; and present in every possible world. Classical humanism has an essentialist conception of the human being, which means that it believes in an eternal and unchangeable human nature. The idea of an unchangeable human nature has been criticized by Kierkegaard, Marx, Heidegger, Sartre, and many other existential thinkers.

In Plato’s philosophy (in particular, the Timaeus and the Philebus), things were said to come into being in this world by the action of a demiurge who works to form chaos into ordered entities. Many definitions of essence hark back to the ancient Greek hylomorphic understanding of the formation of the things of this world. According to that account, the structure and real existence of any thing can be understood by analogy to an artifact produced by a craftsman. The craftsman requires hyle (timber or wood) and a model, plan or idea in his own mind according to which the wood is worked to give it the indicated contour or form (morphe). Aristotle was the first to use the terms hyle and morphe. According to his explanation, all entities have two aspects, "matter" and "form". It is the particular form imposed that gives some matter its identity, its quiddity or "whatness" (i.e., its "what it is").

Plato was one of the first essentialists, believing in the concept of ideal forms, an abstract entity of which individual objects are mere facsimiles. To give an example; the ideal form of a circle is a perfect circle, something that is physically impossible to make manifest, yet the circles that we draw and observe clearly have some idea in common — this idea is the ideal form. Plato believed that these ideas are eternal and vastly superior to their manifestations in the world, and that we understand these manifestations in the material world by comparing and relating them to their respective ideal form. Plato's forms are regarded as patriarchs to essentialist dogma simply because they are a case of what is intrinsic and a-contextual of objects — the abstract properties that makes them what they are. For more on forms, read Plato's parable of the cave.

Karl Popper splits the ambiguous term realism into essentialism and realism. He uses essentialism whenever he means the opposite of nominalism, and realism only as opposed to idealism. Popper himself is a realist as opposed to an idealist, but a methodological nominalist as opposed to an essentialist. For example, statements like "a puppy is a young dog" should be read from right to left, as an answer to "What shall we call a young dog"; never from left to right as an answer to "What is a puppy?”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism

Synthetic DNA Base Pairs

TSRI Scientists Create First Stable Semisynthetic Organism

LA JOLLA, CA –The Scripps Research Institute -- January 23, 2017 – Life’s genetic code has only ever contained four natural bases. These bases pair up to form two “base pairs”—the rungs of the DNA ladder—and they have simply been rearranged to create bacteria and butterflies, penguins and people. Four bases make up all life as we know it.

Until now. Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have announced the development of the first stable semisynthetic organism. Building on their 2014 study in which they synthesized a DNA base pair, the researchers created a new bacterium that uses the four natural bases (called A, T, C and G), which every living organism possesses, but that also holds as a pair two synthetic bases called X and Y in its genetic code.

TSRI Professor Floyd Romesberg and his colleagues have now shown that their single-celled organism can hold on indefinitely to the synthetic base pair as it divides. Their research was published January 23, 2017, online ahead of print in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We’ve made this semisynthetic organism more life-like,” said Romesberg, senior author of the new study.

While applications for this kind of organism are still far in the future, the researchers say the work could be used to create new functions for single-celled organisms that play important roles in drug discovery and much more.

Building a Unique Organism

When Romesberg and his colleagues announced the development of X and Y in 2014, they also showed that modified E. coli bacteria could hold this synthetic base pair in their genetic code. What these E. coli couldn’t do, however, was keep the base pair in their code indefinitely as they divided. The X and Y base pair was dropped over time, limiting the ways the organism could use the additional information possessed in their DNA.

“Your genome isn’t just stable for a day,” said Romesberg. “Your genome has to be stable for the scale of your lifetime. If the semisynthetic organism is going to really be an organism, it has to be able to stably maintain that information.”

Romesberg compared this flawed organism to an infant. It had some learning to do before it was ready for real life.

In stepped TSRI Graduate Student Yorke Zhang and Brian Lamb, an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow in the Romesberg lab at the time of the study. Together, they helped develop the means for the single-celled organism to retain the artificial base pair.

First, Zhang and Lamb, co-first authors of the study, optimized a tool called a nucleotide transporter, which brings the materials necessary for the unnatural base pair to be copied across the cell membrane. “The transporter was used in the 2014 study, but it made the semisynthetic organism very sick,” Zhang explained. The researchers discovered a modification to the transporter that alleviated this problem, making it much easier for the organism to grow and divide while holding on to X and Y.

Next, the researchers optimized their previous version of Y. The new Y was a chemically different molecule that could be better recognized by the enzymes that synthesize DNA molecules during DNA replication. This made it easier for cells to copy the synthetic base pair.

A New Use for CRISPR-Cas9

Finally, the researchers set up a “spell check” system for the organism using CRISPR-Cas9, an increasingly popular tool in human genome editing experiments. But instead of editing a genome, the researchers took advantage of CRISPR-Cas9’s original role in bacteria.

The genetic tools in CRISPR-Cas9 (a DNA segment and an enzyme) originated in bacteria as a kind of immune response. When a bacterium encounters a threat, like a virus, it takes fragments of the invader genome and pastes them into its own genome—a bit like posting a “wanted” poster on the off chance it sees the invader again. Later, it can use those pasted genes to direct an enzyme to attack if the invader returns.

Knowing this, the researchers designed their organism to see a genetic sequence without X and Y as a foreign invader. A cell that dropped X and Y would be marked for destruction, leaving the scientists with an organism that could hold on to the new bases. It was like the organism was immune to unnatural base pair loss.

“We were able to address the problem at a fundamental level,” said Lamb, who now serves as a research scientist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Their semisynthetic organism was thus able to keep X and Y in its genome after dividing 60 times, leading the researchers to believe it can hold on to the base pair indefinitely.

“We can now get the light of life to stay on,” said Romesberg. “That suggests that all of life’s processes can be subject to manipulation.”

A Foundation for Future Research

Romesberg emphasized that this work is only in single cells and is not meant to be used in more complex organisms. He added that the actual applications for this semisynthetic organism are “zero” at this point. So far, scientists can only get the organism to store genetic information.

Next, the researchers plan to study how their new genetic code can be transcribed into RNA, the molecule in cells needed to translate DNA into proteins. “This study lays the foundation for what we want to do going forward,” said Zhang.

Additional authors of the study, “A semisynthetic organism engineered for the stable expansion of the genetic alphabet,” were Aaron W. Feldman and Anne Xiaozhou Zhou of TSRI; Thomas Lavergne of the University of Grenoble; and Lingjun Li of Henan Normal University.

http://www.scripps.edu/news/press/2017/20170123romesberg.html

Compulsions of a Workaholic

A workaholic is a person who works compulsively. While the term generally implies that the person enjoys their work, it can also imply that they simply feel compelled to do it. There is no generally accepted medical definition of such a condition, although some forms of stress, impulse control disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder can be work-related.

Word Origin

The word itself is a portmanteau word composed of work and alcoholic. Its first known appearance, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, came in Canada in the Toronto Daily Star of 5 April 1947, page 6, with a punning allusion to Alcoholics Anonymous:

If you are cursed with an unconquerable craving for work, call Workaholics Synonymous, and a reformed worker will aid you back to happy idleness.

Behavioral Patterns and Symptoms

The term workaholic refers to various types of behavioral patterns, with each having its own valuation. For instance, workaholism is sometimes used by people wishing to express their devotion to one's career in positive terms. The "work" in question is usually associated with a paying job, but it may also refer to independent pursuits such as sports, music, art and science. However, the term is more often used to refer to a negative behavioral pattern that is popularly characterized by spending an excessive amount of time on working, an inner compulsion to work hard, and a neglect of family and other social relations.

Researchers have found that in many cases, incessant work-related activity continues even after impacting the subject's relationships and physical health. Causes of it are thought to be anxiety, low self-esteem and intimacy problems. Further, workaholics tend to have an inability to delegate work tasks to others and tend to obtain high scores on personality traits such as neuroticism, perfectionism and conscientiousness.

Clinical psychologist Professor Bryan E. Robinson identifies two axes for workaholics: work initiation and work completion. He associates the behavior of procrastination with both "Savoring Workaholics" (those with low work initiation/low work completion) and "Attention-Deficit Workaholics" (those with high work initiation and low work completion), in contrast to "Bulimic" and "Relentless" workaholics - both of whom have high work completion.

Workaholism in Japan is considered a serious social problem leading to early death, often on the job, a phenomenon dubbed karōshi. Overwork was popularly blamed for the fatal stroke of Prime Minister of Japan Keizō Obuchi, in the year 2000. Death from overwork is not a uniquely Japanese phenomenon; in 2013, a Bank of America intern in London died after working for 72 hours straight.

Workaholics feel the urge of being busy all the time, to the point that they often perform tasks that are not required or necessary for project completion. As a result, they tend to be inefficient workers, since they focus on being busy, instead of focusing on being productive. In addition, workaholics tend to be less effective than other workers because they have difficulty working as part of a team, trouble delegating or entrusting co-workers, or organizational problems due to taking on too much work at once. Further-more, workaholics often suffer sleep deprivation, which results in impaired brain and cognitive function

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workaholic

Asterism ("star stones")

Asterism (from Ancient Greek: ἀστήρ star), or star stone, is a name applied to the phenomenon of gemstones exhibiting a luminous star-like shape when cut en cabochon (shaped and polished rather than faceted). The typical asteria is the star sapphire, generally a bluish-grey corundum, milky or opalescent, with a star of six rays. In red corundum the stellate reflection is less common, and hence the star-ruby occasionally found with the star-sapphire in Sri Lanka is among the most valued of "fancy stones". When the radiation is shown by yellow corundum, the stone is called star-topaz. Cymophane, the chatoyant chrysoberyl known as cat's eye, may also be asteriated. In all these cases the asterism is due to the reflection of light from twin-lamellae or from fine tubular cavities or thin enclosures definitely arranged in the stone. The astrion of Pliny the Elder is believed to have been a moonstone, since it is described as a colourless stone from India having within it the appearance of a star shining with the light of the moon. Star-stones were formerly regarded with much superstition.

 

                                                         Asterism on the surface

                                                          of a blue star sapphire

Description

An asterism is an optical phenomenon displayed by some rubies, sapphires, and other gems (i.e. star garnet, star diopside, star spinel, etc.) of an enhanced reflective area in the shape of a "star" on the surface of a cabochon cut from the stone. Star sapphires and rubies get their asterism from the titanium dioxide impurities (rutile) present in them.  The Star-effect or "asterism" is caused by the dense inclusions of tiny fibers of rutile (also known as "silk"). The stars are caused by the light reflecting from needle-like inclusions of rutile aligned perpendicular to the rays of the star. However, since rutile is always present in star gemstones, they are almost never completely transparent.

A distinction can be made between two types of asterism:

• Epiasterism, such as that seen in sapphire and most other gems, is the result of a reflection of light on parallel arranged inclusions inside the gemstone.
• Diasterism, such as that seen in rose quartz, is the result of light transmitted through the stone. In order to see this effect, the stone must be illuminated from behind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterism_(gemology)

The Graveyard of the Pacific

The Graveyard of the Pacific is a nickname for a stretch of the coastal region in the Pacific Northwest, from Tillamook Bay on the Oregon Coast northward to Cape Scott Provincial Park on Vancouver Island. The unpredictable weather conditions and coast characteristics have caused a significant number of shipwrecks in this area.

                                                     Map of the Graveyard of the Pacific

 

Description

The region's seas are frequently subject to heavy and unpredictable weather year round combined with the rugged rockbound coastline, especially along Vancouver Island and its northwestern tip at Cape Scott, causing sea conditions which, since European exploration of the area began in the 15th century, have endangered and wrecked thousands of marine vessels.

More than 2000 vessels and 700 lives have been lost near the Columbia Bar alone. One book about regional wrecks lists 484 wrecks at the south and west sides of Vancouver Island.

Combinations of fog, wind, storm, current and wave had crashed hundreds of ships in the region by the middle of the twentieth century, including famous wrecks in regional history. Charts of the region show its famous, and dangerous, landmarks:

• Columbia Bar: a giant sandbar at the mouth of the Columbia River
• Cape Flattery
• Reefs and rocks lining the west coast of Vancouver Island
• Strait of Juan de Fuca

Shipwreck charts are studded with sites. Salvage attempts are often unsuccessful or of limited success, and physical wreckage is usually minimal anyway due to the age of many wrecks, the unpredictable weather and sea conditions, and the extensive damage often suffered by vessels at the time they were wrecked.

The term is believed to have originated from the earliest days of the maritime fur trade, not only as increasing numbers of traders' ships began to be wrecked, but also because of the ongoing state of incipient warfare in the area between Russia, Spain, Great Britain, and native tribal peoples, making it one of the most dangerous and deadly regions to trade in the Pacific for political as well as climatic reasons.

The rate of major wrecks has decreased considerably since the 1920s, but several lives are still lost each year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_of_the_Pacific

Donald Trump's Inauguration

Introduction by the Blog Author

I’ve lived much of my life in the counties and independent city that surround the District of Columbia, America’s capital.  These suburbs are among the richest counties of more than 3,200 counties in America.  They have indeed grown large and wealthy as the national government has expanded, a fact clearly stated by President Trump in his speech today.

I have something important in common with President Trump’s background – my education is also capped by a Master’s Degree in Business Administration.  As such, I offer two pieces of advice to the new President related to his speech below.

My first piece of advice relates to these middle class jobs that have gone overseas and that the new president wants to take back to America.  The good news is that this is entirely possible.  The bad news is that those jobs will be performed by brand new, intelligent robots.  There will be startlingly few blue collar jobs involved.

My second piece of advice deals with the notion of tariffs and trade barriers to close the decades-long American trade deficit.  These are dangerous tools that were intimately involved with the decade-long depression of 1931.  In the early 1920s, the American government raised tariffs on farm products to help the farm belt.  Unfortunately, every major trading partner raised its tariffs on American farm goods, so agriculture grossly underperformed the urban economy of the roaring twenties.  In the summer of 1929, the stock market, particularly the Dow Jones Industrial Average, hit one new high after another.  There was a streak in July of 1929 where this average was up for 18 out of 20 trading days, a feat that has never been repeated.  The Federal Reserve was worried about this giddy market and raised interest rates a full percentage point in the September meeting to break this almost riotous advance in the market.  The result was a massive market crash in October of 1929.

In 1930, the market half-way recovered.  Things were getting back to normal.  Americans were uneasy and scared, though, and they elected Democrats to control both the House and the Senate.  That party would continue to control both chambers continuously for sixteen years.  But before they took control in January of 1931, the Republican congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930; this was designed to protect American manufacturing jobs by raising tariffs on imported goods.  Foreign governments retaliated, and in 1931, on the same day that the Empire State Building was dedicated, the market crashed again.  The newspapers correctly called it the depression of 1931  because the market went down and down and down with no ‘dead cat bounce,’ no 1930-style return to normal.  By 1932 the market had lost, on average, 89 percent of its peak 1929 value.  The 1929 peak would only be surpassed a quarter century later, in December of 1954.

Be careful about tariffs, Mr. Trump.  America has a trade deficit, yes, but our exports are at an all-time high.  And tough tariffs were tried before and failed catastrophically.

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Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, delivers his inauguration address:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: thank you.

We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people.

Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come.

We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.

Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent.

Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.

For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.

Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth.

Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.

Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.

This is your day. This is your celebration.

And this, the United States of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.

The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Everyone is listening to you now.

You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.

Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves.

These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry;

Subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military;

We've defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own;

And spent trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.

One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.

The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.

But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

From this moment on, it’s going to be America First.

Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.

We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.

I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down.

America will start winning again, winning like never before.

We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.

We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.

We will get our people off of welfare and back to work – rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.

We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.

We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.

When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

The Bible tells us, “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.”

We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity.

When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.

There should be no fear – we are protected, and we will always be protected.

We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God.

Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger.

In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving.

We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action – constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.

The time for empty talk is over.

Now arrives the hour of action.

Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America.

We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.

We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.

A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.

It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.

And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.

So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:

You will never be ignored again.

Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.

Together, We Will Make America Strong Again.

We Will Make America Wealthy Again.

We Will Make America Proud Again.

We Will Make America Safe Again.

And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless America.

Three Kinds of Satire

Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society.

A feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm—"in satire, irony is militant"—but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) the very things the satirist wishes to attack.

Satire is nowadays found in many artistic forms of expression, including literature, plays, commentary, television shows, and media such as lyrics.

Satirical literature can commonly be categorized as either Horatian, Juvenalian, or Menippen.

Horatian

Horatian satire, named for the Roman satirist Horace (65–8 BCE), playfully criticizes some social vice through gentle, mild, and light-hearted humour. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) wrote Satires to gently ridicule the dominant opinions and "philosophical beliefs of ancient Rome and Greece" (Rankin). Rather than writing in harsh or accusing tones, he addressed issues with humor and clever mockery. Horatian satire follows this same pattern of "gently [ridiculing] the absurdities and follies of human beings" (Drury).

It directs wit, exaggeration, and self-deprecating humour toward what it identifies as folly, rather than evil. Horatian satire's sympathetic tone is common in modern society.
A Horatian satirist's goal is to heal the situation with smiles, rather than by anger. Horatian satire is a gentle reminder to take life less seriously and evokes a wry smile. A Horatian satirist makes fun of general human folly rather than engaging in specific or personal attacks. Shamekia Thomas suggests, "In a work using Horatian satire, readers often laugh at the characters in the story who are the subject of mockery as well as themselves and society for behaving in those ways." Alexander Pope has been established as an author whose satire "heals with morals what it hurts with wit" (Green). Alexander Pope—and Horatian satire—attempt to teach.

Examples:

• The Ig Nobel Prizes.
• Bierce, Ambrose, The Devil's Dictionary .
• Defoe, Daniel, The True-Born Englishman .
• The Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
• Gogol, Nikolai, Dead Souls .
• Groening, Matthew ‘Matt’, The Simpsons .
• Lewis, Clive Staples, The Screwtape Letters .
• Mercer, Richard ‘Rick’, The Rick Mercer Report .
• Pope, Alexander, The Rape of the Lock .
• Reiner, Rob, This Is Spinal Tap .
• Twain, Mark, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .

Juenalian Satire

Juvenalian satire, named for the writings of the Roman satirist Juvenal (late first century – early second century AD), is more contemptuous and abrasive than the Horatian. Juvenal disagreed with the opinions of the public figures and institutions of the Republic and actively attacked them through his literature. "He utilized the satirical tools of exaggeration and parody to make his targets appear monstrous and incompetent" (Podzemny). Juvenal satire follows this same pattern of abrasively ridiculing societal structures. Juvenal also, unlike Horace, attacked public officials and governmental organizations through his satires, regarding their opinions not just as wrong, but as evil.
Following in this tradition, Juvenalian satire addresses perceived social evil through scorn, outrage, and savage ridicule. This form is often pessimistic, characterized by the use of irony, sarcasm, moral indignation and personal invective, with less emphasis on humor. Strongly polarized political satire can often be classified as Juvenalian.
A Juvenal satirist's goal is generally to provoke some sort of political or societal change because he sees his opponent or object as evil or harmful. A Juvenal satirist mocks "societal structure, power, and civilization" (Thomas) by exaggerating the words or position of his opponent in order to jeopardize their opponent's reputation and/or power. Jonathan Swift has been established as an author who "borrowed heavily from Juvenal's techniques in [his critique] of contemporary English society" (Podzemny).

Examples:

• Barnes, Julian, England, England .
• Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451 .
• Brooker, Charlie, Black Mirror .
• Bulgakov, Mikhail, Heart of a Dog .
• Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Orange .
• Burroughs, William, Naked Lunch .
• Cooke, Ebenezer, The Sot-Weed Factor; or, A Voyage to Maryland,—a satire, in which is described the laws, government, courts, and constitutions of the country, and also the buildings, feasts, frolics, entertainments, and drunken humors of the inhabitants in that part of America .
• Ellis, Bret Easton, American Psycho .
• Golding, William, Lord of the Flies .
• Hall, Joseph, Virgidemiarum .
• Heller, Joseph, Catch-22 .
• Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World .
• Johnson, Samuel, London , an adaptation of Juvenal, Third Satire .
• Kubrick, Stanley, Dr. Strangelove .
• Mencken, HL, Libido for the Ugly .
• Morris, Chris, Brass Eye .
• [television show], The Day Today .
• Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four .
• Orwell, George, Animal Farm .
• Swift, Jonathan, A Modest Proposal .
• Zamyatin, Yevgeny, We .
• Voltaire, Candide .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire#Juvenalian

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The genre of Menippean satire is a form of satire, usually in prose, which has a length and structure similar to a novel and is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities. Other features found in Menippean satire are different forms of parody and mythological burlesque, a critique of the myths inherited from traditional culture, a rhapsodic nature, a fragmented narrative, the combination of many different targets, and the rapid moving between styles and points of view.

The term is used by classical grammarians and by philologists mostly to refer to satires in prose (cf. the verse Satires of Juvenal and his imitators). Typical mental attitudes attacked and ridiculed by Menippean satires are "pedants, bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious and incompetent professional men of all kinds," which are treated as diseases of the intellect. The term Menippean satire distinguishes it from the earlier satire pioneered by Aristophanes, which was based on personal attacks

Examples of Menippean Satire

The form was revived during the Renaissance by Erasmus, Burton, and Laurence Sterne, while 19^th century examples include the John Buncle of Thomas Amory and The Doctor of Robert Southey. The 20th century saw renewed critical interest in the form, with Menippean satire significantly influencing postmodern literature. Contemporary scholars including Frye classify the following works as Menippean satires:

• François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel (1564)
• John Barclay, Euphormionis Satyricon (1605)
• Joseph Hall, Mundus Alter et Idem (1605)
• Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
• Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels
• Voltaire, Candide (1759)
• William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1794)
• Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey (1818)
• Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
• Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies
• Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
• Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928)
• Nikolai Gogol, "Dead Souls"
• Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (1936)
• James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
• Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman (1939)
• Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle" (1963)
• Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49" (1966)
• Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
• Jacob M. Appel, The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up (2012)
• Dave Eggers, The Circle (2013)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menippean_satire