Extraordinary Thing Research Articles

Factors Influencing Islamic Education: Government Policy, Principals and Teachers

Education is something that is familiar in life, and cannot be separated from the human soul, education is a big benchmark for every ability possessed by a person, where everyone takes education in order to achieve their goals in the future. Likewise with Islamic education, Islamic education also contains various matters concerning the religion of Islam, then Islamic education also becomes a reference for every Muslim in the world to assist them in solving every subject matter regarding religion that occurs in everyday life. Education is also an extraordinary thing to elevate one's level of life. This research also discusses the factors that will influence the policies of school principals, teachers and also the government. The purpose of this research is to find out what are the factors in Islamic education that can influence government policies, school principals, and teachers. The research method used is a method with descriptive qualitative understanding by interviewing one of the elementary school teachers in the area where the researcher lives, by asking several questions. Researchers ask several questions related to the subject matter raised. Interviews were conducted continuously until the answers were sufficient to describe the actual situation. The results of this study are that there are many influences of Islamic education that arise in government policies, principals and teachers.

SIHIR DALAM AL-QUR’AN: KAJIAN TAFSIR TEMATIK

This research examines magic in holy Qur’an, which the magic is a maksiat and a great sin, because magic is an odd thing that seems to be an an extraordinary thing but not extraordinary. It can be including to be great sins category because magic can be learned and obtained through with demon approach by committing crimes of statement which contains destruction and praise to demon. Look at the rise if shamanic practices right now, it’s often found that people who depend on witchcraft in their view can give the benefit for him and other, even the magic essentially brings to mudharat. This phenomenon can be looked from peoples whom come to shamans as alternative medicine or to aim of predicting their future or to harm other with guna-guna because of desire and envy. In this regard, Al-Qur’an has explained how dangerous the magic, and need to necessary to understand how the nature of magic, the relationship with demon and mudharat in life. The researcher explains with the thematic interpretation with library research. This research uses primary data sources is Al-Qur’an and tafsir books as secondary data sources. The results of the research obtained that magic is real and affect someone’s soul because Al-Qur’an has explained the verses relating to the magic which happened on the prophet’s time and will not inflict to mudharat from magic to His creatures except His permission. Based of law, the magic is a prohibited act in Al-Qur’an for learn or teach it and the perpetrator of magic is punished as kafir because there is an element of devil worship on it.

Journalism Transformation: Print Media Towards the Digitalization Era for Generation X

Print media has advantages that do not exist in online media in the form of ease of reading anywhere without having to access the internet. The depth of print media in writing news in more detail, not with online media which prioritizes the speed of news presentation. The presence of technology for generation X is actually an extraordinary thing, but it also demands to have to master technology that is experiencing accelerated technological progress. The most significant characteristic difference in generation X with other generations is the mastery of information and technology. The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze the transformation of journalism: print media into the digitalization era for generation X. The research method used was descriptive qualitative, all facts and social phenomena, and field observations were carried out and then analyzed based on what was observed. Data analysis in qualitative research is carried out simultaneously with the data collection process. Qualitative data analysis begins with analysis as data that researchers have collected in the field. The data is good through literature study. The results of the study describe the transformation of journalism: print media towards the era of digitization in generation X provides faster things, but for the generation they still have doubts about their abilities. It requires a deeper form of trust in print media, so that with the advent of digital media, it is hoped that the content of news and information will be the same. That what is written in print media can be read in the world of digital media with just the touch of a finger.

Late Roman Law and the Quranic Punishments for Adultery

Late Roman Law and the Quranic Punishments for Adultery

Taming the Bubble

Taming the Bubble

Mystics in Novel Gentayangan Pilih Sendiri Petualangan Sepatu Merahmu by Intan Paramaditha (Study of Sociology of Literature)

Mystic is one part that is portrayed and narrated by characters related to the occult or things that do not make sense. One of them is mysticism which is told in the novel Gentayangan Pilih Sendiri Petualangan Sepatu Merahmu by Intan Paramaditha. Mystical events that begin with red shoes for your character that make each trip produce a mysterious story and always related to another trip. The purpose of this study was to describe the mystical element in the novel Gentayangan Pilih Sendiri Petualangan Sepatu Merahmu by Intan Paramaditha. This type of research is qualitative research with the research method is descriptive analysis. The stages of this research are carried out by: (1) reading and understanding the novel Gentayangan Pilih Sendiri Petualangan Sepatu Merahmu by Intan Paramaditha as a whole; (2) the incomparable adventure found in the Gentayangan Pilih Sendiri Petualangan Sepatu Merahmu; (3) classifying data according to the inventory data format; and (4) entering data in the format of data inventory. After conducting research on the novel Gentayangan Pilih Sendiri Petualangan Sepatu Merahmu by Intan Paramaditha obtained the following results: (1) not mystical which produces things that are collected (2) not mystical resulting in causes that are not ratios (3) not mystical. Third, it is not a mystical event or an extraordinary thing that cannot be accepted by human common sense contained in the novel Gentayangan Gentayangan Pilih Sendiri Petualangan Sepatu Merahmu by Intan Paramaditha.

3D PRINTING TECHNOLOGY IN TEXTILE AND FASHION INDUSTRY

The extraordinary thing about the application of 3D printing technology is that it can be used to create accessible items customized to personal needs. In the fashion industry, there is a need for individualized protective equipment. The possibility of applying new technologies such as 3D modelling of protective elements that can be made by using 3D printers is presented in this paper. 3D modelling and additive technologies (3D printing) can be used in the development of protective work clothing. The fabrication process only requires the digital fi le with the 3D model and the right material - we chose to use thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU).The design samples were constructed and modelled using a software program called Rhinoceros. The samples can be integrated into the clothing item, in order to follow the body shape and to provide the necessary protection. Purpose. This paper aims to explore the applicability of 3D printing materials using thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) for the development of protective gear. Scientifi c novelty. In the fashion industry, three-dimensional (3D) printing has been used by designers and engineers to create everything from accessories to clothing, but only a few studies have investigated its applicability in personal protective equipment. Practical value. One of the most signifi cant technologies of the fourth industrial revolution is 3D printing. Additive manufacturing and 3D printing are the subject of intensive research and development (methods, materials, new techniques, application areas, etc.). The purpose of this study is to develop 3D printing samples and study conditions related to TPU.

The Concept of Permanent Political Disclaimer in Preventing the Corruptor’s Steps

In Indonesia, corruption isn’t an extraordinary thing but it has become commonplace in front of the public, especially the perpetrators are state officials who have an important role. Criminal sentences for a suspect in a criminal act of corruption can be said to be severe, but it doesn’t provide a deterrent effect so that if there is a gap, the act can be recommited. Until there is a legal reform to remove certain rights inherent in everyone. The legal reform refers to the Supreme Court Decision Number 537K/pid.sus/2014 and the Supreme Court Decision Number 1195K/pid.sus/2014. Meanwhile, the criminal act of corruption itself has been regulated in Law No.20 of 2001 concerning Ammendents to Law No. 31 of 1999 concerning Eradication of Corruption Crime.

Pnma-BN: Another Boron Nitride Polymorph with Interesting Physical Properties.

Structural, mechanical, electronic properties, and stability of boron nitride (BN) in Pnma structure were studied using first-principles calculations by Cambridge Serial Total Energy Package (CASTEP) plane-wave code, and the calculations were performed with the local density approximation and generalized gradient approximation in the form of Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof. This BN, called Pnma-BN, contains four boron atoms and four nitrogen atoms buckled through sp3-hybridized bonds in an orthorhombic symmetry unit cell with Space group of Pnma. Pnma-BN is energetically stable, mechanically stable, and dynamically stable at ambient pressure and high pressure. The calculated Pugh ratio and Poisson’s ratio revealed that Pnma-BN is brittle, and Pnma-BN is found to turn brittle to ductile (~94 GPa) in this pressure range. It shows a higher mechanical anisotropy in Poisson’s ratio, shear modulus, Young’s modulus, and the universal elastic anisotropy index AU. Band structure calculations indicate that Pnma-BN is an insulator with indirect band gap of 7.18 eV. The most extraordinary thing is that the band gap increases first and then decreases with the increase of pressure from 0 to 60 GPa, and from 60 to 100 GPa, the band gap increases first and then decreases again.

Ambulo Ergo Sum

AbstractIt is an extraordinary thing that Descartes' famous Cogito argument is still being puzzled over; this paper is another fragment in an untiring tradition of puzzlement. The paper will argue that, if I were to ask the question ‘do I have a grounds for thinking that I exist?’ the Cogito could provide for a positive answer. In particular, my aim in this is to argue, in opposition to recent discussion by John Campbell, that there is a way of construing conscious thinking on which the Cogito can be seen to provide a non-question begging argument for one's own existence.

Souls at the White Heat

Souls at the White Heat Daniel T. O’Hara (bio) The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime Harold Bloom Spiegel and Grau www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books 544 Pages; Print. $35.00 What the daemon knows is, of course, literary greatness and the American sublime. So what is the daemon? It is that creative power which arises when writing and reading that transports us beyond the everyday self. Author and reader become amalgamated (but not one), in the moment of vision, which is a passage marked by imaginative genius. So great is this experience of knowing (and being known, as Bloom has taught us), that it feels like we tap into another realm of, perhaps even beyond, being. This uncanny, and often terrifying recognition, following Longinus’s lead, is “the sublime tribunal” of judgment: “more, less than, incommensurate.” Bloom, borrowing here primarily from Orphic myths, presents this sublime knowledge of our own divinity in the figure of the daemon: the poet as poet. We often feel that such power is borrowed or stolen. Guilt at not being able to reciprocate can accumulate to paralyze, so built up to become resentment at others’ gifts, and self-destruction of one’s own. This complex belief is no organized religious faith, but is a creative fiction known to be a fiction, composing a rough ethics of revisionary reading. One of the lasting healing effects of Bloom’s work, however, is that this distinction between reading and writing, between mere passive reception and active creative imagination, can no longer be made with categorical certainty. However, in particular instances, we must make them. We thereby read in thanks, due to Bloom, with a greater sense of life within us, even as we read without softening illusion about the costs of ecstatic flights. The Daemon Knows consists of six large “chapters,” pairing twelve incontestably great American writers, as follows: Whitman and Melville, Emerson and Dickinson, Hawthorne and James, Twain and Frost, Stevens and Eliot, Faulkner and Hart Crane. I use scare quotes around “chapters” because when the longest is 120 plus pages in print, a chapter is more like a small book. To his credit and the reader’s enlightenment, Bloom keeps connecting his authors, looking ahead, back and forth, via both critical remarks but also many personal ones, which connect not only these authors to each other, but his life and his conversations with other critics, especially Kenneth Burke and Angus Fletcher (two of my own favorites). The reader, in this fuller way, thus feels capable of also connecting to his or her own life of reading. The most extraordinary thing about the book is that, in writing about figures he has often discussed, Bloom gives us new insights. Whether it fits neatly with what he has said before matters not. What matters is the cast of new insights. No foolish consistencies haunt him. We see a great critic, who is in his mid-eighties, animatedly at work learning anew. In following him, we can also incorporate both the particular insight and the greater lesson of being open to such humanistic continuities. For instance, Bloom changes his mind about figures, including T. S. Eliot, whom he admits into his personal pairings (Bloom refuses the term “canon,” rightly, given that idea’s distractions). Reading “Little Gidding,” the last of Four Quartets, he celebrates Eliot’s achievement in the “familiar compound ghost” section, even as he concludes by condemning him, despite his “daemonic gift,” for his Anti-Semitism and misogyny. The Daemon Knows is so copious, Rabelaisian in this respect, I cannot hope to encompass its new riches. The long first part on Whitman and Melville alone is filled with them and is sure to inspire many other critics’ books. But I can give some taste of them by what is a return for me to Emily Dickinson, about whom I once wrote for a special journal issue devoted to “revising the tradition.” In “‘The Designated Light’: Irony in Emily Dickinson,” I was inspired to do so by Bloom’s two-week visit to the university where I then happened to be an assistant professor. Along with giving two...

Back to Owl Creek Bridge

In 1978, reporting on workshop on Literature into Film, Harry M. Geduld spoke of Robert Enrico's adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge as follows: was evident that if one saw Enrico's film without having read story, one would have no sense of author's (56). The critical discussion of film's style seems to have advanced little since. Geduld's observation true enough, but it needs to be qualified; it does not do justice to film's rich texture. Despite general acclaim and several special studies devoted to it, (1) Enrico's adaptation has not been fully appreciated in terms of its stylistic achievement. The present article seeks to rectify this situation. Bierce's ironic palpably felt from beginning of story. (2) In first sentence of third paragraph narrator designates protagonist as the man who was in being hanged (41). (3) Here, crucial touch insertion of phrase, engaged in. While its formal ring suitable for solemn occasion, to say somebody in dying peculiar, and it signals narrator's distance from event. The distance magnified in middle section of story. Farquhar revealed to be a slave owner (42) and his wife, we are told, only too happy to serve supposed Southern scout her own hands (43). The tone in choice of word white unmistakable. Lawrence I. Berkove makes an interesting case for this middle section of story as the most brilliant and underestimated part (123). He argues that what we mainly get here not report of neutral narrator, but Farquhar's mental rationalization, which shows how completely self-deluded he is (125-26). A good example sentence, No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with character of civilian who was at heart soldier (43). This nonsense, according to Berkove (125), betraying as it does Farquhar's misguidedly romantic notion of heroism. (4) In Berkove's view Farquhar arrogant, dishonest, deluded, immoral, and stupid. He goes as far as to say: despises Farquhar. Never before or afterward did Bierce create character upon whom he lavished such utter scorn (129). Although find Berkove's reading little extreme, agree with him in seeing Farquhar essentially as foolish man. (5) For this interpretation of character, most telling detail his remark, I am student of (43). Several views have been offered about this curious sentence, with varying degrees of persuasiveness. (6) But whatever import of Farquhar's cryptic utterance might be, Bierce's point is, would argue, to reveal character's stupidity. Here, as he trying to impress man whom he believes to be Southern scout, it would be natural if Farquhar said something like I am student of civil engineering, so as to stress his capability as saboteur who might destroy bridge. Instead, he says he student of hanging. We are made to wonder: who this man to say such an extraordinary thing? We can imagine Bierce telegraphing to reader, with cruelly absurd logic, that because he makes such an idiotic remark about hanging he ends up actually being hanged. In making film out of story, Enrico deleted its middle section, which, as we have just seen, where Bierce's irony acutely present. This excision was done with deliberation. In an interview director gives his rationale for decision as follows: When went over this draft realized that in this episode with scout what had was simply plot. First of all, it supplies reason for death of Peyton Farquhar.... found this too complicated. think that Bierce's story beautiful if one takes it at its most basic level--in other words, man, civilian, will be hanged. …

PENTINGNYA PERAN BAHASA DALAM PENDIDIKAN USIA DINI (PAUD)

<p>Language is the tool of human interaction to convey a message or<br />idea in fikiranya. It is an extraordinary thing if they were involved in early<br />childhood education teaching materials capable of delivering them well. The<br />students of this age are vulnerable times for them. If they are too restrained, it<br />will hinder their psychological development, and vice versa if they are also not<br />be allowed, it will stabilize their development. Therefore at this time they still<br />play, seek attention, and look for praise. Then an educator should be able to<br />convey recording a language pack.</p>

BEYOND THE OTHER SHORE: GERMAN INTELLECTUALS IN THE UNITED STATES

For over half a century, the American transformation of German philosophy and social thought has been a major theme of modern intellectual history. The main protagonists of this “cultural migration,” as the story traditionally has been told, were German-speaking scholars and writers who, fleeing Hitler's Europe, brought their erudition and indigenous methodologies to American shores. But beyond this beachhead lies a vast and unfamiliar terrain for the historian. What became of German texts and concepts as they traveled further inland? Who transported them—and for what ends? InThe Closing of the American Mind, the philosopher Allan Bloom marveled at the ways in which nonacademic Americans had become complicit in the dissemination of German thought: “What an extraordinary thing it is that high-class talk from what was the peak of Western intellectual life, in Germany, has become as natural as chewing gum on American streets.” It was an extraordinary thing, but not a good one, as far as Bloom was concerned:We are like the millionaire inThe Ghost (Geist) Goes Westwho brings a castle from brooding Scotland to sunny Florida and adds canals and gondolas for “local color.” We chose a system of thought that, like some wines, does not travel; we chose a way of looking at things that could never be ours and had as its starting point dislike of us and our goals. The United States was held to be a nonculture, a collection of castoffs from real cultures, seeking only comfortable self-preservation in a regime dedicated to superficial cosmopolitanism in thought and deed. Our desire for the German things was proof we could not understand them.

On the History of the Intensifier Wonder in English

The intensifying function of the adverb wonder can be traced back to Old English, declining towards the end of the sixteenth century, with some sporadic instances throughout the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Developed from the nominal form wundor ‘an extraordinary thing, a marvel; a strange thing’, the adverb preserved the original senses of the noun to denote the notions of manner ‘wondrously, marvellously, surprisingly’, on the one hand, and degree ‘exceedingly, very’, on the other. The present study pursues the following objectives: (a) to trace the origin and development of this intensifier in English; (b) to cast light on the lexical semantic structure of the right-hand collocates in terms of their mode of construal and their attitudinal features; and (c) to describe the developmental path of this intensifier from a contentful to a configurational meaning.

THE ACHILLES HEEL OF THE SOVIET SOLDIER

In the 1930s democratic people watched with growing incredulity as the world's political systems broke up: the Depression gave rise to disintegration, disintegration led to anarchy, and anarchy to war. Some eminent men, observing the pattern of events and foreseeing the consequences, tried to bring them to public notice. Sadly, the general reaction, especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries, was that those who warned of the dangers were 'prophets of doom' and 'alarmists'. Peace could be maintained, so the theory ran, by just one more minor concession; but each such surrender was never the last, but led inexorably towards bigger demands. This whole tragic story is epitomised in one word: 'Appeasement'. The extraordinary thing is that it all seems to have been forgotten and there is a strong possibility that the same bitter and costly lessons will have to be learnt all over again in the last two decades of the Twentieth Century.

Commentary: Obama’s Latin America Policy

When Latin America's left presidents watched the campaign of Barack Obama for president in 2008, they thought that they might finally see a U.S. president who would change Washington's foreign policy in the region. It seemed as if another revolt the ballot box was arriving in the Western Hemisphere of the kind that had elected Lula da Silva, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Fernando Lugo, and Tabare Vazquez. Before Obama's election, President Lula da Silva of Brazil expressed this sentiment (Weisbrot, 2008a): Just as Brazil elected a metal worker, Bolivia elected an Indian, Venezuela elected Chavez, and Paraguay a bishop, I think that it would be an extraordinary thing if, in the largest economy in the world, a black man were elected president of the United States. In a sense, the shift in the electorate had similar causes in the hemi sphere. Latin America's swing to the left was largely driven by the failure of neoliberalism: the worst long-term economic growth performance in more than a century, from 1980 to 2000 (Weisbrot, 2007). More than a gen eration of Latin Americans had lost out on any chance to improve their liv ing standards. In the case of the United States it was not so much a growth failure (although the growth of per capita gross domestic product did decline significantly in the neoliberal era [Baker, 2007]) as a vast increase in inequality and, of course, the worst recession since the Great Depression that finally brought voters to demand an end to nearly four decades of rightward drift (Weisbrot, 2008b). A few months after taking office, in April 2009, Obama seemed to raise Latin America's expectations the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. Acting like the former community organizer he was, Obama walked over to shake hands with Chavez—an image that sped instantly around the world and infuriated the right. He made some unprecedented statements for a U.S. president, admitting that at times we sought to dictate our terms (Obama, 2009a). Even Raul Castro was impressed, responding to Obama's loosening of travel and remittance restrictions (for Cuban-Americans only) by saying that he was ready to discuss rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners, everything. He added, could be wrong. We admit it. We're human beings (Carroll, 2009).

Evolution and Emergence

It is an extraordinary thing that an idea that in Darwin’s time (and to Darwin himself) appeared so alien to and indeed destructive of Christianity should now prove so fruitful for the purpose of finding an expression of Christian faith appropriate for a scientific and secular age. The idea of evolution and the emergence of new forms of being – not simply in the biological sphere but in the cosmos as a whole and in human history itself – has in fact provided Christian theology with a new paradigm within which to conceptualise such basic elements of faith as the notion of creation, the doctrine of God’s incarnation in Jesus, the indwelling in us of the Holy Spirit, and the function of the Church in the world. My aim in this article is to outline the steps taken that have made this possible, and to provide a sketch of the theology that results. In my recent work I have relied on many thinkers in this project, especially on the work of Karl Rahner and his “Christology within an evolutionary view of the world”, but also visionaries such as Teilhard de Chardin and, in more recent times, Brian Swimme. The opposition to Darwin’s ideas when they first appeared, particularly that of public figures such as the Bishop of Oxford, has become so notorious that any sympathy with them from those who felt them to be compatible with Christian faith has been largely overlooked. Yet from the very first this was forthcoming, in spite of public opinion. One must remember that at the time Christian orthodoxy was almost universally held to imply what is now seen to be a seriously mistaken view of biblical inerrancy, as well as being bound up with the soundness of the design argument as advanced by Paley and others. Hence any acceptance of evolutionary ideas had somehow to be fitted in to the notion of design as well as a revision of one’s attitude to scripture. One even finds Darwin himself writing, in a letter to Asa Gray the Harvard botanist, “With respect to Design, I feel more inclined to show a white flag than to fire my usual long-range shot…If anything is designed, certainly man must be” (Clark 1984:121). And in the Origin itself: “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one.” To which, in the second edition, he added “by the Creator” (Clark 1984:150). Very soon after the publication of Darwin’s “dangerous idea” attempts began to be made to see in evolution God’s method of creation, or at least as God-directed, whether by intervention or not. And some thinkers, such as Alfred Wallace in particular, made a distinction between the evolutionary origin of the human body and the immediate creation by God of the human soul. A letter from Sir Charles Lyell, the famous geologist, to Darwin is very revealing in both these respects: I reminded him (Alfred Wallace) that as to the origin of man’s intellectual and moral nature I had allowed in my first edition that its introduction was a real innovation, interrupting the uniform course of the causation previously at work on the earth. I was therefore not opposed to his idea that the Supreme Intelligence might possibly direct variation in a way analogous to that in which even the limited powers of man might guide it in selection, as in the case of the breeder and horticulturalist. In other words I feel that progressive development or evolution cannot be entirely explained by natural selection. I rather hail Wallace’s suggestion that there may be a Supreme Will and Power which may not abdicate its function of interference, but may guide the forces and laws of Nature (Clark 1984:134). It would be some time before Christian theology was able to detach itself from the argument from design, and even longer before it felt able to abandon the idea of an intervention in world process by God in the case of the creation of the human soul, let alone the Incarnation. But the compatibility of the evolution of new species and Christian faith was an idea that only strengthened with the passage of time. This is exemplified by the following passage from a sermon given to the University by Charles Gore, later Bishop of Oxford, in 1894.

Mary's Womb as the 'Space Within Our Space for the Gestating Son of God'

AbstractSpeaking of Mary's womb, Hans Urs von Balthasar draws attention to the place where the Word 'staked out' a space in a human being in order there itself to become man (human), as the child of a mother. In similar vein we are directed to the mystery that Catholic and Orthodox Christians have always overtly recognized: Mary's unique place among human beings as the one who 'contains the uncontainable God.' If this mystery lies at the heart of our faith, then at the heart of that heart is God's grace. In grace God selects a poor, Galilean girl to be the locus of what Christians believe to be the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened. There is much to learn about 'grace, space and race' through reflection on what occurred in Mary's womb, not least in the relationship between immanence and transcendence. This and other themes which have their origin here provide both the imagery and the theological undergirding for other themes – more concrete, specific, and contemporary – that we might explore in a theology of place in (South) Africa today.

Obama & Latin America: Magic or Realism?

101 Latin America and the Caribbean are no exception to the all but universal global applause for the election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States. The 33 developing countries of the Western Hemisphere broadly welcomed Obama’s election to the White House. Indeed, there is no part of the world outside of Africa where the election of a black U.S. president has greater symbolic value. Latin America, which has its own dark history of slavery and racism, is home to a large African diaspora, and as much as one-third of the region’s 550 million inhabitants is of African descent, including a large fraction of the population in Brazil, the vast majority of the Caribbean, and smaller communities throughout the Andes and Central America. Coupled with the fact that Latin American countries generally prefer Democratic presidents (for reasons that have as much to do with unpleasant Cold War memories of Nixon and Reagan as any specific policy agenda), Obama’s emergence was a welcome event. In a BBC poll of Latin American countries, which included opinion surveys in Brazil, Mexico, and Panama, the respondents heavily favored Obama over his opponent, Senator John McCain, and about half thought that their nation’s relations with the United States would improve as a result of his election. About 60 percent of Mexicans added that it would fundamentally change their view of the United States, and slightly less than half of all Panamanians and about one-third of Brazilians agreed. While Obama’s election was hailed by virtually all the presidents of Latin America and the Caribbean, the specific responses reflected the idiosyncrasies of each country— perhaps nowhere more than Brazil, where six candidates in municipal elections legally changed their names to either Barack or Obama in an attempt to capitalize on the local popularity of the American candidate. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist who had burnished his credentials as a pragmatist by cozying up to the Bush administration, placed Obama’s candidacy in a regional context, saying, “In the same way that Brazil elected a metalworker [referring to himself], Bolivia an Indian, Venezuela a Chavez, and Paraguay a bishop, I believe it will be an extraordinary thing if in the biggest economy in the world a black is elected president.” Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim agreed, saying “We aren’t going to deny that the Brazilian government had a good, pragmatic relationship with the Bush government, but now the relationship can be Daniel P. Erikson is senior associate for U.S. policy at the Inter-American Dialogue and the author of The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution (Bloomsbury Press, 2008).