Insatiable Appetites Research Articles

Julian’s Misopogon and the Food Shortage in Antioch

When Emperor Julian departed from Antioch in early 363 after eight months in the city, he left behind a biting satire that he had posted in its forum. That satire, the Misopogon, is the emperor’s response to the Antiochenes’ criticisms, which they composed in verse and sang through the city streets. He claims that what aroused the Antiochenes’ animosity most of all was his handling of the food shortage that afflicted the city during his stay. Julian details the measures he took to alleviate the shortage, yet despite generous measures he had undertaken, he claims Antiochenes were dissatisfied. He blames powerful citizens for undercutting the effect of his measures and exacerbating the shortage, and he belittles their distress by depicting it as the result of insatiable appetites rather than genuine deprivation. This article focuses neither on the nature nor cause of the shortage, nor on the accuracy of its depiction in the Misopogon. Instead, it draws upon the theory of crisis management that underpins Julian’s defense against accusations that he responded poorly to the shortages. Although explicit references to the food shortage constitute a small fraction of the Misopogon, an examination of the Misopogon’s conceptual dependence on Plato’s De legibus reveals that the text in its entirety contributes to Julian’s defense of his conduct. Julian’s allusions throughout the Misopogon to Plato’s De legibus works to absolve him of any responsibility for the distress caused by the food shortage. In brief, De legibus correlates virtue and vulnerability to crisis: the soul determines behavior, and the behavior of the political community determines its vulnerability to crisis. Virtue is the proper cognitive and emotional disposition of the soul. Besides making explicit the way virtue incites behavior that reduces risk and increases resiliency to crises, Plato’s De legibus also details how an individual’s lifestyle habits indicate their soul’s disposition. In this way, the De legibus provided the framework for Julian’s defense.

Demon in a Dress?

Demon in a Dress?

Unconscious Figures and Otherness: The Case of Ex Machina

The core dynamic of Alex Garland’s Ex Machina centers on three characters. Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), a mogul of insatiable appetites, owns and controls BlueBook, an online social media corporation comparable to Google or Facebook. Nathan possesses a narcissistic personality structure, which disturbs a healthy curiosity into the inner life and the capacity to self-reflect. Obsessed by the ambition to invent post-human intelligence, he has built a succession of AI creatures, all simulacra of glamorous women. Each is imprisoned, enslaved by her inventor; furthermore, each has been constructed by cannibalizing the body parts of her predecessors. Ava (Alicia Vikander) is the latest in that line. Ex Machina portrays the collective problems of our current times powerfully when Nathan summons Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), a bright and easily influenced BlueBook employee, to run the Turin test on Ava. Although the mechanical and electronic structures of her body are unmistakable, his desire to make her his lover soon overwhelms him. As an orphan, Caleb has a trauma history that makes him susceptible to the seductive demands of Nathan’s type of personality. Ultimately, both men’s personal Shadow problems are enacted in their contact with Ava as their distorted relationship with the feminine reaches its denouement. In this paper, we attempt to engage via Ex Machina with concepts that frequently occur in creation myths. Marie-Louise von Franz (1995) regarded such myths as the deepest and, most important of all, belonging to a different class than fairy tales or hero myths, for when they are told, there is always a certain solemnity that gives them a central importance; they convey a mood which implies that what is said will concern the basic patterns of existence, something more than is contained in other myths (p. 1). We find creation myths whenever the unconscious is preparing for an important progressive step in consciousness.

David Wootton. Power, Pleasure, and Profit: Insatiable Appetites from Machiavelli to Madison.

David Wootton. Power, Pleasure, and Profit: Insatiable Appetites from Machiavelli to Madison.

“Leviathan”, or an essay on the doctrine of the state by T. Hobbes

The study focuses on individual episodes of the biography, the most notable ideas and main socio-political views of the outstanding English scientist, social philosopher, theorist of the origin of the state – T. Hobbes. On the basis of the classic work “Leviathan”, his backbone thoughts on the processes of state building, the development of a balanced normative and legislative system and specific motives for striving for power are highlighted. In particular, attention is focused on the search by the researcher of the optimal balance between freedom and the duties of a citizen. The aspiration of the classic to a comprehensive study of the most effective mechanism, optimal forms of public administration, primarily for the establishment of stable social order and safety, is noted. The scientist emphasized that an authoritative, sovereign, legitimate state is able to effective cope with the tasks set. In which those in power are obliged to be guided by norms of morality and law. Characterized, according to the researcher, the socio-psychological traits of both average citizens and sovereigns for the full life support of the country.Highlighted his heuristic principles of anthropomorphism, which more metaphorically, expressively detail the likely destructive diseases of the state, among which he considered the lack of frugality and the processes of oligarchization of the socio-political system to be especially unsafe. Scientists emphasized the absolute rejection of corruption, lack of social justice, abuse of power. Thus, the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of government were highlighted, in particular, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic. The scientists himself was an active supporter of absolute monarchy and the unshakable authority of the state. At the same time, he focused not so much on the duties of citizens to the state, as on the duties of state representatives to their citizens, the implementation of which can state structure effective, authoritative and legitimate. At the same time, the contribution of T. Hobbes to the development of the philosophy of law is highlighted. In general, it was emphasized that the English scientist comprehensively substantiated his own thought about the immutability of human nature in the form of manifestations of selfishness, individualism, insatiable appetites, unrestrained passions, and the desire for social change. According to the philosopher, only a just, sovereign, authoritative state is capable of curbing the negative manifestations of human nature. In addition, attention focused on the state-forming nature of his philosophy and the scientist’s significant contribution to the development of the theory of the social contract or the contractual origin of the state is highlighted.

Diabetes and COVID-19: Moving From News to Knowledge and a Glucose Hypothesis.

Science makes civilization possible. New observations provoke theories as to what they mean. Theories (hypotheses) are tested by systematically gathering and analyzing further information. Support for a theory by these methods (experiments) can lead to a plan of action. Other observations from this process (research) may pose further questions, leading to more experiments. In the past, actionable knowledge accumulated slowly, but digital technology has accelerated everything. Novel observations appear as “news” distributed by electronic, broadcast, and print media. Floods of reports, all apparently equal in significance, compete for attention. The media have insatiable appetites—they demand new material daily. Delivery of news is driven by its power to elicit emotional reactions, and we are all somewhat addicted. But news does not teach us what to do. Some items are valid and reproducible, others confusing, some misleading. Each can be placed in context, verified, and converted into useful knowledge using the scientific method, but this takes time. Experience with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its implications for people with diabetes illustrates this process. Diabetes Care has welcomed early reports on COVID-19, even when the first data sets were unavoidably limited. Special collections of articles appeared in the July and August issues, but most were available online earlier (1). These and articles published elsewhere confirmed the alarming news that people with diabetes are up to three times more likely than others to become severely ill or die of COVID-19. They showed that older age, obesity, and other medical conditions often associated with diabetes are also associated with increased risk. These reports highlighted the need for people with diabetes to take precautions to avoid infection, but they did not provide much guidance on how to treat these patients if they did fall ill. Articles by expert clinicians, based on the evidence and …

КАПІТАЛИЗАЦІЯ ОСОБИСТОСТІ В УМОВАХ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНОГО СУСПІЛЬСТВА

The article is devoted to the actual topic, which reflects modern trends in the development of the information society. The author tried to derive the formula of personal capitalization in the system of self-improvement of the subject. Since modern society is influences by rapid information mobility, individuals have to constantly change. The speed with, which information flows actualize modern human activity, cannot be compared, analyzed or even determined. We can only observe certain trends, but as soon as we can focus on them, they immediately lose their relevance. High informatization conditions imposed on constantly changing trends present new requirements for a modern person. They are little perceptible and the subject is in a constant search for personality characteristics that can satisfy the "insatiable appetites" of the information egregor.The theoretical basis of this article, the work of Michel Foucault, «Self-care» is especially interesting. In this work the author anticipated the modern culture, referring to the work of Christopher Lef «The culture of narcissism». The study of postmodern society updated a list of issues: whether individuals need «spiritual exercises», how to form a system in «self-care», in “knowing yourself”, what is behind these transformations – personal growth or manipulative technologies of a consumer society.The author notes that a person located between social networks, between everyday life and its future projection, loses real assessments of what is happening. These “three pillars” determine the economic, socio-psychological, spiritual and cultural portrait of a modern subject in the conditions of the information society. A person, as a hostage of the system, is looking for opportunities to satisfy their requirements. A personal approach to achieving this goal is the most relevant, since it is much easier at the individual level to adapt to information mobility. For this, it is necessary to undertake the capitalization of one’s own personality in order to be able to allocate assets and liabilities, profitably actualize strengths and work out weaknesses in order to increase competitiveness in the human resources market.Such a pragmatic approach is necessary, first of all, for the individual himself. Working on your-self, self-improvement processes are quite difficult. For their implementation, willpower and internal motivation are necessary. The source of such motivation is most often located from outside, attracting additional external resources. The individual scans the reality around us through the information channels, with the possibility of continuous analysis, feedback searching, how it meets the requirements of a modern public.The analysis of health capital, emotional capital, spiritual capital and social capital are presented as part of a systematic approach, where all components are closely intertwined. The relevance of the topic is to develop a system of personal capital to increase the capitalization of the individual in the information society. Understanding this combination will allow a person to use their own resources more comfortably, as well as better understand personal prospects for growth and development.

Online Pricing with Reserve Price Constraint for Personal Data Markets

The society's insatiable appetites for personal data are driving the emergence of data markets, allowing data consumers to launch customized queries over the datasets collected by a data broker from data owners. In this paper, we study how the data broker can maximize its cumulative revenue by posting reasonable prices for sequential queries. We thus propose a contextual dynamic pricing mechanism with the reserve price constraint, which features the properties of ellipsoid for efficient online optimization and can support linear and non-linear market value models with uncertainty. In particular, under low uncertainty, the proposed pricing mechanism attains a worst-case cumulative regret logarithmic in the number of queries. We further extend our approach to support other similar application scenarios, including hospitality service and online advertising, and extensively evaluate all three use cases over MovieLens 20M dataset, Airbnb listings in U.S. major cities, and Avazu mobile ad click dataset, respectively. The analysis and evaluation results reveal that: (1) our pricing mechanism incurs low practical regret, while the latency and memory overhead incurred is low enough for online applications; and (2) the existence of reserve price can mitigate the cold-start problem in a posted price mechanism, thereby reducing the cumulative regret.

David Wootton, Power, Pleasure and Profit. Insatiable Appetites from Machiavelli to Madison

David Wootton’s latest book is an attempt to show how “Power, Pleasure and Profit” – each related in turn to Machiavelli, Hobbes and Smith’s works – have shaped our modern world because they are “three goods which can be pursued without limits” (p. 241). Based on a series of six Carlyle Lectures entitled “Power and Pleasure, 1513-1776”, given at the University of Oxford in 2014, the book attempts a major reinterpretation of the ideas of the thinkers of the period from 1500 to 1800. David Woot...

Comments: A Lot to Be Proud Of

Editor's column Last year, the SPE Board of Directors approved a new 5-year Strategic Plan, a blueprint to provide guidance on how the association can meet the needs and expectations of its members and the industry over the next several years. The plan identified four strategic areas of emphasis to advance its vision in the near term: lifelong learning, knowledge transfer, membership engagement, and professional pride. It is the professional pride piece of that document that this issue of JPT is built around. The professional pride segment identifies objectives such as helping SPE members better understand and become more inspired by the industry’s contributions to society, demonstrating the benefits of oil and gas so members can communicate that positive value to the public, and highlighting industry achievements as well as contributions to sustainability and social responsibility. With that backdrop, the 45-page special section in this issue covers three main areas: What satisfaction do petroleum engineers receive from the work they do? What value does oil and gas bring to individuals and to society? What trends and challenges will help define the future work of petroleum engineers? JPT invited a variety of engineers to participate to ensure a broad perspective. In these pages, you will read about what practicing petroleum professionals value about their careers and what brings them the most reward; what specific contributions the industry is making to society, including some you might not regularly hear about in the media; some great individual and technical achievements; how to communicate these successes and contributions to an often skeptical public; and what issues the industry will confront in the coming years. One of these issues is climate change, and no report on the oil and gas industry’s future would be complete without some discussion of this topic. But there is not universal agreement—in the public, in the industry, or in these pages—on the best approach to take in addressing this issue. Nor is there agreement throughout the industry on future hydrocarbons demand and what role oil and gas will play in the global energy mix a decade or two from now. Industry reports from companies and consultancies often lay out different scenarios about hydrocarbon demand in the future and the “transition” to renewables. Some predict declines in crude demand for transportation because of the increased use of electric vehicles, while others see almost insatiable appetites for all forms of energy, both traditional and new. The oil and gas industry will likely look a lot different 10 or 20 years from now. But the role of petroleum engineers may not. The job of solving problems, figuring out how to get the most oil and gas out of the ground with the smallest environmental footprint, and ensuring that the world has sufficient energy to improve quality of life will continue.

Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World

Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World

PWS Preparations

Prader-Willi Syndrome is a complex chromosomal birth defect that causes neurological disorders, health issues, and insatiable appetites. Lifelong care for PWS patients is complex because their physical health issues cause psychological behavior issues that require unique strategies. PWS patients have unique needs in schools, community programs, and adult care programs and if they do not receive proper care it is life threatening. Therefore, parents must seek professional expert support to develop lifelong preparations with securities plans to foster the best interest of their PWS child. The Children’s Institute (TCI) Center for PWS in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and PWSA USA are resources for PWS expert support in America with over 20 years of experience. The challenges PWS families face with adult programs is a crisis that requires national support from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World by Kelly L. Watson

Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World by Kelly L. Watson

Tranzicija pop kulture iz potrošačkog u hiper­potrošačko društvo

The author of this paper deals with the turbulence of pop culture in a transition from the industrial-mass production to the post­industrial post-cultural hyper-consumer society. The first section identifies the consumer mentality of a consumer, preoccupied by the consumption of material and symbolic goods, and of a turbo­ or hyper-consumer, who has raised consumption to the level of fetish. In both cases consumption could not function without marketing, advertising and creation of brands. Following a comprehensive analysis of the general characteristics of consumption (in the industrial stage of society) and hyper-consumption (in the post­industrial stage), the author uses sociological instruments to observe the consumption of popular cultural contents - film, television and various genres of popular music in particular. The section titled 'Rock - from the music of rebellion to a market item' examines the transformation of rock music and different manners of its perception, from its first notes to this date. The author analyses the post­war youth market, including the industry of records, cassette tapes, CDs, music videos and other media. The economy of rock-n-roll and the commercial basis of this music have subjected rock to great temptations, leading to its double life, which on the one hand, serves the purpose to meet the tastes and expectations of a large and demanding audience, and on the other, to make profit so as to satisfy the insatiable appetites of various business people, music producers, organizers and managers.

Masculinity and Pornography in Martin Amis’s London Fields

The portrayal of masculinity has been a predominant theme in Martin Amis’s fiction, which, in the case of London Fields, triggered a wave of fierce criticism from feminist circles, most notably from Maggie Gee and Val Hennessy. According to these critics, this controversial “bloke” novel is a mere misogynistic caricature aimed to reduce the role of women to objects of the infamous male gaze. However, this paper argues that the depiction of male characters, especially the working-class Keith Talent, conjures an image of a helpless man so strongly driven by the insatiable sexual appetites, which eventually leads to his downfall caused by a disturbingly powerful femme fatale, Nicola Six. The tragicomic epitome of a promiscuous woman by choice, Six transforms herself into a perfect pornographic material for Keith Talent by inviting him to masturbate to her self-made videos. Apart from frequent mentions of sexual acts, the novel presents a thought-provoking view on pornography: Talent perceives reality through the lens of pornographic frames. This analysis is further complemented by Amis’s own behind-the-scenes research into the world of pornography business. Additionally, the characterisation of Keith Talent is examined against the leading theories dealing with the representation of masculinity in contemporary literature. The scrutiny of the relationship between masculinity and pornography in London Fields has not been extensively studied, therefore an analysis combining these closely related issues in London Fields may contribute to a more specific interpretation of Amis’s repulsive, yet strangely intriguing protagonist.

Transatlantic - Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World. By Kelly L. Watson . New York: New York University, 2015. Pp. 239. $40.00 cloth.

Transatlantic - Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World. By Kelly L. Watson . New York: New York University, 2015. Pp. 239. $40.00 cloth.

Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World by Kelly L. Watson

<i>Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World</i> by Kelly L. Watson

Page 2: Slow Philosophy

Page 2Slow Philosophy Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Editor and Publisher (bio) Slow and low? Or fast and loud? Led Zeppelin or Metallica? Hydraulics or Hemis? When it comes to rock music and custom cars, opinions are sharply divided. Does the same hold for reading and writing? Speech and argument? Is loud argument preferable to low? Fast reading to slow? While the “need for speed” is more than adequately represented in our culture, the “Slow movement” has been catching on ever since the publication of Carl Honoré’s In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed in 2004. “These days,” writes Honoré, “we exist to serve the economy, rather than the other way around.” As servants of what he calls “turbo-capitalism,” we pay a heavy cost. “Long hours on the job are making us unproductive, error-prone, unhappy and ill,” says Honoré. “Doctor’s offices are swamped with people suffering from conditions brought on by stress: insomnia, migraines, hypertension, asthma, and gastrointestinal trouble, to name but a few.” And while a vacation would lessen the suffering, on average Americans only use eighty percent of their paid time off, while only forty percent of workers in the UK use their full vacation entitlement. The work of Honoré, a Canadian journalist based in London, has led to a spate of “slow” books and articles. There is the slow food movement, the Slow Science Academy (http://slow-science.org), and various slow “philosophy” manifestos. The Australian magazine simply entitled Slow is dedicated to “promoting the slow philosophy.” Michelle Boulous Walker’s Slow Philosophy: Reading against the Institution (2017), argues that philosophy teaches us to read slowly, something which “inevitably clashes with many of our current institutional practices and demands.” Another recent book, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy (2016), contends that academics must slow down. Authors Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber argue that “adopting the principles of Slow in our professional practice is an effective way to alleviate work stress, preserve humanistic education, and resist the corporate university.” Who would have contended that napping has the potential to bring down neoliberal academe? To be sure, in the age of the internet and social media, speed is the key. Faster, shorter, and often shriller messages are seen as most effective. Concentration has given way to skimming; attention to inattention; and depth to surface. This manifests itself in a public discourse that favors the fast and loud over the slow and low. In politics and public life, more focus is given to those who yell. Those who take time to think before they speak are at a disadvantage. Pundits scream at each other at a rapid-fire pace about anything and everything in the hopes of gaining greater attention for themselves and their sponsors. Dialogue and debate degenerates in this climate into demagoguery and diatribe. The content of the speech of the pundit is secondary to its performative aspects. Hyperbole gets social media attention and more hits on the internet than measured opinion, which is often relegated to non-commercial venues like PBS. Writers and thinkers need to consider our own practices and preferences. We aim for fast book sales over slow sales. We champion the book that flies off the shelf over the novel that takes years to gain an audience. We admire the relentlessly self-promoting author, busy with readings and other promotional activities. We look for bold and hyperbolic praise in our reviews, preferring a quick thumbs up or five star promotion over a subtle analysis weighing merits and contextualizing a work in literary and intellectual traditions. In a driven environment intensified by the insatiable financial appetites of corporate America, calm, careful, unhurried, patient, and reflective commentary about writing and writers does not increase the bottom line of the neoliberal publishing industry as effectively as aggressive, inattentive, hurried, and superficial commentary. The loud voices muffle out the low ones in the book world. And they are indeed fast and furious in the age of digital communication. To take the other road in American publishing—the one where the voices are not so loud and the pace not as fast—is to take the road...

Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World, written by Kelly L. Watson

Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World, written by Kelly L. Watson

Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World, written by Kelly L. Watson

Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals in the North Atlantic World, written by Kelly L. Watson