The “Jewish Knight” of Slobodka honor culture and the image of the body in an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish context

Scholarship on Ultra-Orthodox Jewish thought has traditionally assumed that the views of these communities derive from a struggle against the Jewish Enlightenment and Zionism, as well as against any values they identify as “modern.” This article challenges that assumption. Beginning with an examination of Ultra-Orthodox sources that present an image of the religious leader as the “ideal Jew,” the author then focuses on sources concerning the founder of the Slobodka Yeshiva in Lithuania. This rabbi intended his students to internalize “modern” norms found in the European honor culture of his time, while translating them into the language of Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy. The author chooses to present his argument by tracing the image of the body in the Slobodka method, since it is precisely through the nexus of the body that Ultra-Orthodox Judaism was segregated from general European society and culture.     

SHINTO RESEARCH AND THE HUMANITIES IN JAPAN

Three approaches to scholarship are “scholarship as a way,” which aims at perfection of character; “scholarship as a method,” which clearly limits objects and methods in order to achieve precise perception and new knowledge; and “scholarship as an expression,” which takes various approaches to questions and inquiry. The “humanities” participate deeply and broadly in all three of these approaches. In relation to this view of the humanities, Japanese Shinto is a field of study that yields rich results. As a religion of awe, shrine groves, community, arts, and entertainment, it offers a research field that joins together the study of human beings, nature, society, and expression. Though we elucidate the characteristics of Shinto and its differences with Buddhism, we also draw attention to the seven dimensions of “place, way, beauty, festival, technique, poetry, and ecological wisdom,” and then finally take up “research on techniques of body and mind transformation” as a comprehensive and creative development in the “humanities.”     

WALKER PERCY,LANGUAGE, AND HOMO SINGULARIS

The novelist Walker Percy argued that modern science has a tremendous blind spot in its view of human nature. Unlike purely physical phenomena, which can be explained by the interaction of dyadic relationships, human beings must also be understood in terms of triadic relationships brought into being by symbolic language. The self brought into being by symbolic language is nonmaterial but real, and operates by different “laws” than those that govern dyadic relations. In making this case, Percy drew a sharp line between human and nonhuman language, a line that more recent developments in science has challenged. However, Percy's central point, that the agent of symbolic language cannot be understood within a materialist framework, remains valid.     

Differences in the micromechanical properties of dendrites and interdendritic regions in superalloys

Statistical analysis of white-light interferometry (WLI) experiments performed on Ni-based single-crystal superalloys (SX) have revealed a different height distribution between the dendritic cores (DCs) and the interdendritic regions (IRs) of the polished samples. The micromechanical property difference is largely ascribed to the uneven distribution of the alloying elements. In this context, possible reasons for this difference are discussed by comparing with different experiment results obtained by previous researchers, and a proposal forecasting the hardness ratio of IRs/DCs is put forward.     

肥胖谈论:心理学视角下的沟通方式

肥胖谈论是一种关于身体外貌交流的社会现象,特别是指女性之间关于体型、体重和饮食习惯等自我贬损的谈话。通常认为女性通过肥胖谈论中的自我贬损,能够获得他人的安慰、支持以及印象管理等积极效果,但是研究表明肥胖谈论对身体意象、饮食失调、情绪等存在消极影响。未来的研究应该增加对肥胖谈论的纵向研究,进一步探究肥胖谈论的影响作用,扩展完善肥胖谈论的标准性操作。     

男性身体意象失调:大众媒体的影响及作用机制

近年来,男性身体意象失调越来越普遍,大众媒体被认为是一种重要的影响因素。大量研究证实了媒体对男性身体意象的消极影响,主要表现在对身体意象的认知、情绪情感和行为调控等方面。研究者基于社会文化理论提出三重影响模型(Thompson,Heinberg,Altabe,Tantleff-Dunn,1999),用以解释媒体影响男性身体意象的作用机制。该模型假设社会文化因素,即家庭、同伴、媒体是身体意象失调的三个最初影响源;外貌比较和"瘦理想"或"肌肉理想"内化是社会文化和身体意象失调之间的中介变量。未来研究应关注被试群体的多样化,将实验室研究和纵向研究相结合,并考虑其他变量的影响作用,对三重影响模型进行丰富和拓展,同时运用脑科学技术探究其神经机制。此外,还应从干预的角度展开研究。     

Cognitive empathy modulates the visual perception of human-like body postures without imitation

To examine the mechanism of visual perception of human-like body postures, we conducted a posture recognition task, a questionnaire survey, and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). The majority of participants perceived the pseudo-posture as a human posture in the early stage (78%), but only approximately half of them reported the imagination of bodily movement (66%). These results suggest that the majority of observers perceive pseudo-postures as human postures in the early stage of perception, but this human posture perception does not necessarily lead to the visualisation of bodily movement. In a group of who received the pseudo posture as a human-posture regardless of the perception stages, the participants who imagined bodily movement (64%) showed significantly higher scores than those who did not on the Fantasy subscale of the IRI. Highly empathic participants are more likely to detect a kinematic relation between the pseudo-postures.     

大学生职业选择和职业价值观的调查研究

本研究通过对天津地区七所高校663名在校大学生的理想职业和“现实职业”进行问卷调查,得出以下结论:(1)大学生的理想职业与“现实职业”之间有着很大的不同,但他们在选择理想职业和“现实职业”时所用的标准却有很高的一致性.(2)“高级职员”既是大学生理想中的首选职业,又是现实中的首选职业.(3)“收入”、“充分发挥能力”、“职业中的自主程度”成为大学生择业时的主要标准.(4)大学生的理想职业和“现实职业”与其所在的学校、所学的专业科类、性别、是否临近毕业等因素都有一定的关系.     

Euclid: Strategic alternative assessment matrix

The vast amount of information that must be considered to solve inherently ill‐structured and complex strategic problems creates a need for tools to help decision makers (DMs) recognize the complexity of this process and develop a rational model for strategy evaluation. Over the last several decades, a philosophy and a body of intuitive and analytical methods have been developed to assist DMs in the evaluation of strategic alternatives. However, the intuitive methods lack a structured framework for the systematic evaluation of strategic alternatives while the analytical methods are not intended to capture intuitive preferences. Euclid is a simple and yet sophisticated multiobjective value analysis model that attempts to uncover some of the complexities inherent in the evaluation of strategic alternatives. The proposed model uses a series of intuitive and analytical methods including environmental scanning, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), subjective probabilities, and the theory of displaced ideal, to plot strategic alternatives on a matrix based on their Euclidean distance from the ideal alternative. Euclid is further compared to the quantitative strategic planning matrix (QSPM) in a real world application. The information provided by the users shows that Euclid can significantly enhance decision quality and the DM's confidence. Euclid is not intended to replace the DMs, rather, it provides a systematic approach to support, supplement, and ensure the internal consistency of their judgments through a series of logically sound techniques. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The supposed shame of aging female bodies and the saving grace of transience

Where does the supposed shame of older women's bodies come from? In this essay, I suggest that such shame is not a natural response to aging; rather, it is a culturally conditioned reaction to the patriarchal fantasy of female physical perfection. While certain norms and narratives within Christianity tacitly encourage women to pursue this fantasy, there are also resources within this tradition that can help us challenge the stigma assigned to older female flesh and affirm the goodness of bodies that have lived a long time. Simultaneously, aging itself can provide a lens for fruitfully rethinking some central Christian ideas.