Stroke Of Genius Research Articles

The Dark Side of Branding: Language and the Real in Colson Whitehead’s Apex Hides the Hurt (2006)

The protagonist, an unnamed African American nomenclature consultant, has been a victim of his own trade: his stroke of genius, the name and advertising slogan for a band-aid that fits the many skin tones of multicultural America, “Apex Hides the Hurt”, has ironically cost him an infected toe that he merely covered with the adhesive bandage instead of having it treated. When he is asked to arbitrate the rebranding of the town of Winthrop, the ad man faces both an onomastic and an existential challenge.This paper draws on specific aspects of the philosophy of language to discuss the motivation of signs in relation to naming strategies and analyzes the performatives, performances, and diverse conditions of felicity that naming implies. The former is indebted in part to the legacy of Plato’s Cratylus and branding manuals—strange bedfellows; the latter draws from J. L. Austin’s speech act theory, as revisited by Barbara Cassin and Judith Butler. In both conceptions the real comes to dwell in language, either as a determining factor or as a product of a world-shaping activity. Since Apex is a fiction of naming, it provides an imaginary “actual” context for this verbal act. It can also describe the failed encounters between language and the real, the attempts at euphemizing or repressing reality, as well as the shattering irruptions of the real within discourse. As a satire of corporate culture and its bearing on “race”, it also generates an interface with the reality of contemporary American culture.

P.060 Teamwork makes dreamwork: a stroke of genius

Background: Interprofessional collaboration is at the center of much of our work as Neurologists, yet often Medical Education inadequately prepares students for the complexities of interdisciplinary practice. Authentic, meaningful Interprofessional Education (IPE) requires consideration in involement of all individuals involved in interprofessional health care (IPHC) (Holbrook, 2013). Methods: We have collected authentic stories of acute stroke care through interviews with patients and other health care professionals on the acute stroke care team. Drawing on these narratives, we have crafted a multimedia story combining film, photography, and art. Results: This case will be integrated into Western University’s Undergraduate Medical Education curriculum but is intended to be a valuable tool for teaching IPE competencies in all IPE contexts. All media will be available thorugh Western Libaries open access Health Education Media Library. Main learning outcomes include improved recognition of HCP roles and the vital and diverse contributions of each team member. Conclusions: Drawing on the experiences of real stroke patients, families, and all other HCPs, we have crafted a rich educational case portraying the complexity of IPHC that will allow learners to reflect on the complex roles of health professoinals in a successful interprofessional team.

Blonde (2022)

Blonde (2022)

Nostalgia, novelty and innovation: the illustration of Grimms’ tales in the UK in the twenty-first century

It was a stroke of genius that caused Charles Baldwyn, publisher of the first English translation of tales by the Grimm Brothers, to hire satirical cartoonist George Cruikshank as illustrator for the publication. Cruikshank’s expressive etchings so impressed the Grimms that they decided to publish their own illustrated “small edition” in Germany. Thus the first step was taken towards the international commodification of the tales as illustrated children’s and family classics1. Late nineteenth-century UK editions of the Grimms’ tales showcased the work of numerous British artists, from the sumptuous detail of Walter Crane to the darkly romantic interpretations of Arthur Rackham. In the twenty-first century, publishers have sought to capitalise on Victorian traditions by reissuing classic illustrated Grimm collections, or by creating hybrid volumes of new and extant artwork. Alongside such gift-book editions, a spectrum of new interpretations extends from retellings of individual tales in novelty book form to the dramatic and disturbing canvases of fine artist Paula Rego. Two case studies – one of a 2012 anniversary edition of collected tales that uneasily combines the work of disparate artists, and the second of the cross-cultural travels of Philip Pullman’s retellings as envisaged through the radical imagination of Shaun Tan – illustrate both current global trends in children’s publishing and the inexhaustible visual allure of the Grimms’ tales.

A Stroke of Genius: Using Gaming to Reinforce Learning in Neurology Education (1870)

A Stroke of Genius: Using Gaming to Reinforce Learning in Neurology Education (1870)

It doesn't Call for a Stroke of Genius

It doesn't Call for a Stroke of Genius

The Lewis electron-pair bonding model: the physical background, one century later

The shared electron-pair bonding model was suggested by Gilbert Lewis more than 100 years ago. Emerging from the chemical experience of the time, Lewis structures described contemporary aspects of chemical reality in terms of empirically adapted models without any (then unknown) quantum physical underpinnings. This Perspective details the origins and historical development of the Lewis model, which we contrast with the physical understanding of chemical bonding in terms of contemporary quantum chemistry. Some intuitively plausible classical explanations of the past, not least of which are the sharing of electrons by two atoms and the subtypes of shared electron-pair bonding and dative bonding, turned out to be well founded. Some other chemical dogmata, including the concept that bonding occurs only between two nuclei and is caused by spin coupling or that bond energy is of purely electrostatic origin, are less well founded. We now know that covalent bonding is not driven by the formation of an electron pair but rather by the lowering of the kinetic energy density of the shared electrons in the bonding region, which is provided by the interference of the atomic wavefunctions. Lewis structures remain highly useful models for describing chemical bonding in molecular structures and chemical reactions, particularly when supported by quantum chemistry. The concepts behind the three most common quantum chemical approximations — the valence bond, molecular orbital and density functional theories — are described. These methods allow us to learn that bonding is an energetic phenomenon, from which descriptors such as bond length, bond dissociation energies and force constants are derivable. The energetic origins of bonding point to bond energy decomposition analysis as a natural tool for elucidating the actions of bonding electrons. Lewis’ shared electron-pair model was a stroke of genius, describing the structure and reactivity of molecules purely on the basis of his tremendous knowledge of empirical chemistry without any quantum chemistry. Unprecedented in simplicity, its success unfortunately concealed some misleading interpretations of the physical origin of chemical bonding.

Strokes of Genius: A History of Swimming

Strokes of Genius: A History of Swimming

Beyond the Rechtsgemeinschaft, with Trust - Reframing the Concept of European Rule of Law

This article shows that the European Union finds itself in a crisis, to be precise, a crisis of meaning, because the concept European community of law has become inappropriate. This is true especially in German-speaking Europe where, more than in other places, Rechtsgemeinschaft is key to understanding the entire European edifice. A concept that was initially a stroke of genius has become obsolete in light of the transformations of Europe. Today, it should be reduced to an argument for broad powers of the courts, but nothing more. The article then seeks the basis for a robust understanding of the concept of European rule of law. It is informed by contemporary public opinion which addresses the crisis of the rule of law as a crisis of trust. The potential dangers inherent in such an approach are developed in the light of trust research. This enables a substantiation of what constitutes European rule of law as laid down in Art. 2 TEU and allows important crisis phenomena to be better identified. The article concludes with a comparison between the trustworthiness of the current European community and that of currently proposed alternatives.

Hiding in Plain Sight. Amy Suo Wu’s The Kandinsky

The history of 20th century painting conventionally identifies abstraction with modernism and the return of figuration with postmodernism. But abstraction ended much earlier, in a spy operation during World War II, when a British intelligence officer, in a stroke of genius, found abstract paintings to be the perfect carriers for secret messages transported across the ocean. For this purpose, he commissioned a painting to Wassily Kandinsky that included a secret message encoded – in the manner of flag signs or Morse code – into its seemingly abstract visual shapes. This anecdote explains steganography: the clever hiding of messages
 in other messages. Steganographic messages do not need to appear innocuous. At some point,
 militant jihadists were reported to run pornographic websites as a cover, using porn images for hidden communication. [...]

“Radical”: Marianne Moore and the Revision of Modernism1

From the editorial birth of Imagism to the preliminary pruning of The Waste Land, the dominant narratives of Modernism have often been built on foundational acts of crossing out, whether self-imposed, collective or allographic. Since they combine the erasure of past verbal excesses and the endeavor of compression on the page, such slashes of the “creative pencil” (H.D.), aptly seem to enact and materialize the revolutionary dynamics of rejection and renewal that most writers and critics have chosen to foreground over alternative paradigms of change. Leading us from the working manuscript to the little magazine, from the individual collection to the endlessly emended magnum opus, from the anthology to the text-book, the practice of revision, then, retraces the historical construction of literary revolution(s), highlighting lines of rupture and continuity as certain names are marginalized or simply deleted. Because, among them, Marianne Moore was herself a relentless editor of her own or others’ words, yet has remained a shifting figure in the “great narrative” of Modernism, her work allows us to re-examine the claims of artistic radicalism, in the light of more complex modes of revision. Although she may indeed have styled herself as a “radical” (as the title of an early hidden-portrait in verse suggests), and was rapidly hailed as such by her peers, her revising practice opens up the spectrum of transformations to more ambiguous models. While her textual experiments betray a secret pull towards correction and propriety, her tinkering with words evokes the patient chiseling of the craftsman rather than the stroke of genius, or the fanciful errata of natural evolution over historical catastrophe. Wavering between abundant working notes and notoriously truncated publications, between exhaustiveness and silence, between endless starts and the ever-receding horizon of completion, Moore’s unstable corpus thus contributes to the redefinition of creative revolution.

Why Mark Wrote a Gospel: Taking Another Look

At a time when the cult of Christ was becoming increasingly detached from its historical roots in the ministry of Jesus, Mark, in a stroke of genius, reconnects them. By gathering together memories associated with Jesus, some of which already existed in collections, and forming them into a narrative, the Evangelist introduces Jesus by means of his way of faith and kingdom programme – postponing evaluations of his theological significance until after the crucifixion. What is more, by concluding the Gospel with an invitation to encounter the risen Jesus back where the journey began, faith is once more rooted in his ministry, finding expression through practising his way.

A stroke of genius: language but no words. Tomas Tranströmer (Nobel Prize in literature 2011), in memoriam

A stroke of genius: language but no words. Tomas Tranströmer (Nobel Prize in literature 2011), in memoriam

Peter Rothwell: aspirin(g) physician with a little stroke of genius

Peter Rothwell: aspirin(g) physician with a little stroke of genius

A Stroke of Genius

Amyloid-β–targeted nanoparticles allow early detection and treatment of stroke-inducing cerebrovascular inflammation.

How Sommerfeld extended Bohr’s model of the atom (1913–1916)

Sommerfeld’s extension of Bohr’s atomic model was motivated by the quest for a theory of the Zeeman and Stark effects. The crucial idea was that a spectral line is made up of coinciding frequencies which are decomposed in an applied field. In October 1914 Johannes Stark had published the results of his experimental investigation on the splitting of spectral lines in hydrogen (Balmer lines) in electric fields, which showed that the frequency of each Balmer line becomes decomposed into a multiplet of frequencies. The number of lines in such a decomposition grows with the index of the line in the Balmer series. Sommerfeld concluded from this observation that the quantization in Bohr’s model had to be altered in order to allow for such decompositions. He outlined this idea in a lecture in winter 1914/15, but did not publish it. The First World War further delayed its elaboration. When Bohr published new results in autumn 1915, Sommerfeld finally developed his theory in a provisional form in two memoirs which he presented in December 1915 and January 1916 to the Bavarian Academy of Science. In July 1916 he published the refined version in the Annalen der Physik. The focus here is on the preliminary Academy memoirs whose rudimentary form is better suited for a historical approach to Sommerfeld’s atomic theory than the finished Annalen-paper. This introductory essay reconstructs the historical context (mainly based on Sommerfeld’s correspondence). It will become clear that the extension of Bohr’s model did not emerge in a singular stroke of genius but resulted from an evolving process.

PIMPING FICTIONS: AFRICAN AMERICAN CRIME LITERATURE AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF BLACK PULP PUBLISHING

PIMPING FICTIONS: AFRICAN AMERICAN CRIME LITERATURE AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF BLACK PULP PUBLISHING. By Justin Gifford. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2013. 216 pp. $74.50, cloth; $24.95, paperback; $24.95, e-book.In his wildly popular single-cum-political-anthem, Dirt Off Your Shoulder (2003), rapper-mogul Jay Z spits, If you feelin' like a nigga, go and brush your shoulders off / Ladies is pimps too, go and brush your shoulders off. His inclusion of women in the pimp is a brilliant, if wickedly deceptive, move. What Jay Z no doubt recognizes is the political baggage that is bound up in the ideas of and pimping, particularly as they concern black women, sexual violence/exploitation, and black-thug masculinity. He seems simultaneously aware of the cultural and gendered capital of these ideas as they concern black men and revolutionary politics. Indeed, the and player were elevated in blaxploitation films of the 1970s as heroic figures; their hypermasculinity and sexual prowess were inextricably linked to their bravery in the face of white male power. Even the iconic blaxploitation film Foxy Brown (1974), starring Pam Grier, reproduces these hypermasculine and playa versions of black masculinity to a large extent.Though the unwritten, if not also unspeakable, code of black respectability has long resisted at least the pimp-criminality version of these notions of black masculinity (because, as the thinking goes, the celebration of criminality to any extent reinforces white supremacist notions of black pathology), the tropes have remained viable in black spaces over several generations due in part to working-class blacks' extant mistrust of the (white) police and legal system, as well as to a comparable mistrust of an assimilation-minded segment of the black middle class. To be clear, the hypermasculine and playa aspects of black masculinity are not necessarily objectionable or even totally out of sync with the class, sexuality, and gender codes of black respectability (consider the love that middle- and upperclass blacks in particular continue to shower on the likes of Bill Cosby, Jesse Jackson, Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, and Charles Barkley, to name but a few); rather, what may be seen as objectionable are the aspects of these tropes that link black masculinity to criminality, anti-intellectualism, and pathological behavior in general. Jay Z's Dirt Off Your Shoulder is a stroke of genius from a cultural marketing standpoint, then, because it anticipates and attends to the exploitative gendered baggage of pimping even as it recuperates the revolutionary fervor of these age-old, hypermasculine/playa tropes. Culturally speaking, Jay Z is able to have his hypermasculinity/black respectability cake and eat it too.The success, if you will, of Jay Z's song is perhaps most evidenced by the way in which President Barack Obama famously invoked and performed Jay Z's patented gesture of brushing off his shoulders during a stump speech in which he was referencing the hate that was coming his way from the GOP. Without uttering a word, Obama communicated that he was a pimp-subversive of the American political system. That is to say, he indicated that he had managed to bend to his political will the very system of power that was ostensibly designed to keep black folks from ascending to the highest office of the land. Being an outsider black man with a scary, Muslim-sounding name ultimately emerged as more benefit than liability in Obama's political game.But, of course, as we have witnessed with both Obama's ascendance to the presidency and Jay Z's ascendance to international celebrity and economic power, the game is, at bottom, another iteration or expression of status quo power. For all of his hope rhetoric and brush-off-his-shoulders bravado and black cool, Obama is every bit a status quo president. Perhaps a consequence of his blackness and the attendant (unspoken) promise to his white constituency that he would govern as a postracial president is that Obama pays at best only cursory attention to long-standing issues of racial and structural inequalities. …

Ludwig Lange on the law of inertia

Ludwig Lange (1863–1936) published in the years 1885–1886 (at the age of 22– 23 years!) three papers on the law of inertia which have to be judged as a stroke of genius because, nearly 200 years after Newton’s Principia, he succeeded in eliminating the concepts of absolute space and absolute time. A particular merit of Lange’s papers is that he clearly analyzed which parts of Newton’s first law are useful definitions and which parts are non-trivial experimental facts, if not wonders of nature, a distinction which is even missing in most modern textbooks on mechanics. (And it should be clear from the outset that any basic law of physics has to contain both definitions – here inertial system, in other cases electric field, temperature, entropy, quantum state, . . . – and new non-trivial facts about nature.) The papers [1] and [2] are quite extended works, containing, besides Lange’s innovative contributions, also historical and philosophical overviews of the law of inertia, the booklet [2] also containing Lange’s PhD-thesis of the year 1886 at the university of Leipzig. The shorter paper [3], translated here, concentrates on Lange’s own contributions and their mathematical foundations. In the year 1902 Lange published again a quite extended analysis [4] of the law of inertia, together with reactions of other authors on his work from 1885–1886; see below. Lange’s main new findings and his results of lasting significance are contained in part I of the paper [3]. In this part he also gives a clear motivation for his work by saying: “Newton’s absolute space is a phantom that should never be made the basis of an exact science”. “To find a fully valid substitute for it is the goal of the following”. The absolute highlight of Lange’s work are his Definitions I and II and his Theorems I and II, and these are also the parts which are later highly praised and often literally quoted by other authors. Lange’s papers obviously are the first place where the nowadays standard terms ‘inertial system’ and ‘inertial timescale’ are introduced into the literature. As Lange freely admits, his Definition II and Law II concerning the inertial timescale owe much to somewhat earlier work by Neumann [5] and Thomson, Tait [6]. Neumann’s work particularly was a decisive stimulus for Lange, as is clear from the quotation: “The question now arises whether it is possible to eliminate also absolute space by a similar procedure [as Neumann’s one]. Indeed this is possible”. Concerning Definition I we like to point to the fact that originally, in [1], Lange tried to base an inertial system on only two points left to themselves. After an objection

Walt Whitman Laughs: An Uncollected Piece of Prose Journalism

HuMor, pol itics, and a rt are subjects of an uncollected piece of Walt Whitman's journalism published on October 17, 1872, Evening Star. Portraying poet laughing enormously at some comic sketches by Republican political satirist Thomas Nast, article lauds development of editorial cartoon as an American art form. unsigned contribution appeared on page 1 regular column entitled Washington News and Gossip:IT HAS BEEN GOOD FUN to-day observing groups gathered around Shilling- ton's, Beal's, Parker's, Robert Reill's, Bishop's, and other periodical stores of Avenue and 7th street, to look at Nast's latest comic pictures, The Tidal Wave and irresistible Do you see anything green my eye? Both are strokes of genius, and, judging by city, appreciation of this sort of thing is complete. motley crowds, by dozens and scores, big and little, old and young, white, black and brown, learned and illiterate, all made it plain enough where laugh came in. In fact it was one general smile varied by guffaws, grins, and every known form of cachinnation. Here was a stray Senator or Representative, there a head of a bureau or even Department, swarms of clerks up to 9 o'clock, visitors, colored people, knights, mechanics-the whole mass put merry humor by these amusing cartoons. Among rest of jolly heads one group on Avenue, we saw white locks and red face of Walt Whitman, proving that he can, on due provocation, laugh enor- mously, (notwithstanding some of his foreign critics,) and was now doing same.The general pictorial illustration business, and especially original comic line, is certainly going to develop- or is already developed-into a great American institu- tion. Already we compete with best English and German wood-engravings, and their artists and designs; French only are ahead of us. But we shall yet, and soon, outstrip whole world. We have more of spirit of fun us, as a people, than any other. It is racy, a perennial product of soil, breed. Nast is Moses who has smitten rock, and waters are already beginning to gush forth. Several of inferior comic papers also show talent of first order every number. Then there is something pictorial art that affords a subtler, juicier, more appropriate medium for expression of absolute humor than any other artistic outlet.From all and several of which we launch prophecy that Art America is go- ing to loom up at least one new and special institution of first class, Pictorial Comic. For there is unquestionably droll side of life, and all its affairs, persons, politics, everything-and even as an influence of civilization-such chaps as Nast, and others whose names we would give, if we knew them-show that in hands of men entirely great, burin too is mightier than sword.Whitman's authorship is confirmed by an extant manuscript Yale's Beinecke Library, which is nearly identical to published piece.1 In particular, manuscript reads as follows:Scores ofread proofcarefully & copyverbatim and punctuationIt has been good fun to-day seeing watchingobserving groups gathered around Shillingtons,Beal's, Parker's, Robert Reill's, Bishop's, and theother periodical stores of Avenue andSeventh street, to look at Nasts latest comicpictures, the Tidal Wave and irresist-ible Do you see any thing green myeye? Both are strokes of genius, and judging by city, their appreciation of this sort of thing is complete.Themotley crowds, by dozens and scores, big and little, old and young,white, black and brown, learned and illiterate,all made it plain enough exhibited where laugh came in,. by In fact it wasone general continual smile varied by guffaws,grins grins, and every known all forms of cachinnation. …

A Stroke of Genius? Religion, the Founding Fathers and the Creation of the American Polity

The place of religion in the United States has been hotly contested ever since the establishment of the Americanpolity. This article revisits the origins of national identity in that country and argues that while religion played acrucial role in the formation of American consciousness, the wisdom of the US Founding Fathers lies in theirdecision to separate the public and private spheres—and to keep Church and State firmly divided. This was not,it should be noted, because they regarded the State to be more important than the Church, but rather because theythought that government was unworthy of interfering with religious faith and private conscience.