title: Myrrha

text: In 2008 the newspaper "The Guardian" named Myrrha's relationship with her father as depicted in "Metamorphoses" by Ovid as one of the top ten stories of incestuous love ever. It complimented the myth for being more disturbing than any of the other incestuous relationships depicted in the "Metamorphoses".


title: Myrrha

text: One of the earliest recordings of a play inspired by the myth of Myrrha is in the "Antiquities of the Jews", written in 93 A.D. by the Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. A tragedy entitled "Cinyras" is mentioned, wherein the main character, Cinyras, is to be slain along with his daughter Myrrha, and "a great deal of fictitious blood was shed". No further details are given about the plot of this play.


title: Myrrha

text: Myrrha appears in the "Divine Comedy" poem "Inferno" by Dante Alighieri, where Dante sees her soul being punished in the eighth circle of Hell, in the tenth bolgia (ditch). Here she and other falsifiers such as the alchemists and the counterfeiters suffer dreadful diseases, Myrrha's being madness. Myrrha's suffering in the tenth bolgia indicates her most serious sin was not incest but deceit. Diana Glenn interprets the symbolism in Myrrha's contrapasso as being that her sin is so unnatural and unlawful that she is forced to abandon human society and simultaneously she loses her identity. Her madness in Hell prevents even basic communication which attests to her being contemptuous of the social order in life.


title: Myrrha

text: Dante had already shown his familiarity with the myth of Myrrha in a prior letter to Emperor Henry VII, which he wrote on 17 April 1311. Here he compares Florence with "Myrrha, wicked and ungodly, yearning for the embrace of her father, Cinyras"; a metaphor, Claire Honess interprets as referring to the way Florence tries to "seduce" Pope Clement V away from Henry VII. It is incestuous because the Pope is the father of all and it is also implied that the city in that way rejects her true husband, the Emperor.


title: Myrrha

text: In the poem "Venus and Adonis", written by William Shakespeare in 1593 Venus refers to Adonis' mother. In the 34th stanza Venus is lamenting because Adonis is ignoring her approaches and in her heart-ache she says "O, had thy mother borne so hard a mind, She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind." Shakespeare makes a subtle reference to Myrrha later when Venus picks a flower: "She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears, Green dropping sap, which she compares to tears." It has been suggested that these plant juices being compared to tears are a parallel to Myrrha's tears being the drops of myrrh exuding from the myrrh tree.


title: Myrrha

text: In another work of Shakespeare, "Othello" (1603), it has been suggested that he has made another reference. In act 5, scene 2 the main character Othello compares himself to a myrrh tree with its constant stream of tears (Myrrha's tears). The reference is justified in the way that it draws inspiration from Book X of Ovid's "Metamorphoses", just like his previously written poem, "Venus and Adonis", did.


title: Myrrha

text: The tragedy "Mirra" by Vittorio Alfieri (written in 1786) is inspired by the story of Myrrha. In the play, Mirra falls in love with her father, Cinyras. Mirra is to be married to Prince Pyrrhus, but decides against it, and leaves him at the altar. In the ending, Mirra has a mental breakdown in front of her father who is infuriated because the prince has killed himself. Owning that she loves Cinyras, Mirra grabs his sword, while he recoils in horror, and kills herself.


title: Myrrha

text: The novella "Mathilda", written by Mary Shelley in 1820, contains similarities to the myth and mentions Myrrha. Mathilda is left by her father as a baby after her birth causes the death of her mother, and she does not meet her father until he returns sixteen years later. Then he tells her that he is in love with her, and, when she refuses him, he commits suicide. In chapter 4, Mathilda makes a direct allusion: "I chanced to say that I thought "Myrrha" the best of Alfieri's tragedies." Audra Dibert Himes, in an essay entitled "Knew shame, and knew desire", notes a more subtle reference to Myrrha: Mathilda spends the last night before her father’s arrival in the woods, but as she returns home the next morning the trees seemingly attempt to encompass her. Himes suggests that the trees can be seen as a parallel to Ovid’s metamorphosed Myrrha.


title: Myrrha

text: The tragedy "Sardanapalus" by George Gordon Byron published in 1821 and produced in 1834 is set in Assyria, 640 B.C., under King Sardanapalus. The play deals with the revolt against the extravagant king and his relationship to his favourite slave Myrrha. Myrrha made Sardanapalus appear at the head of his armies, but after winning three successive battles in this way he was eventually defeated. A beaten man, Myrrha persuaded Sardanapalus to place himself on a funeral pyre which she would ignite and subsequently leap onto - burning them both alive. The play has been interpreted as an autobiography, with Sardanapalus as Byron's alter ego, Zarina as Byron's wife Anne Isabella, and Myrrha as his mistress Teresa. At a more abstract level Myrrha is the desire for freedom driving those who feel trapped or bound, as well as being the incarnation of Byron's dream of romantic love. Byron knew the story of the mythical Myrrha, if not directly through Ovid's "Metamorphoses", then at least through Alfieri's "Mirra", which he was familiar with. In her essay "A Problem Few Dare Imitate", Susan J. Wolfson phrases and interprets the relation of the play "Sardanapalus" and the myth of Myrrha:


title: Myrrha

text: Although [Byron's] own play evades the full import of this complicated association, Myrrha's name means that it [the name's referring to incest, red.] cannot be escaped entirely - especially since Ovid's story of Myrrha's incest poses a potential reciprocal to the nightmare Byron invents for Sardanapalus, of sympathy with the son who is the object of his mother's 'incest'.


title: Myrrha

text: In 1997 the myth of Myrrha and Cinyras was one of 24 tales from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" that were retold by English poet Ted Hughes in his poetical work "Tales from Ovid". The work was praised for not directly translating, but instead retelling the story in a language which was as fresh and new for the audience today as Ovid's texts were to his contemporary audience. Hughes was also complimented on his achievements in using humour or horror when describing Myrrha or a flood, respectively. The work received critical acclaim winning the Whitbread Book Of The Year Award 1997 and being adapted to the stage in 1999, starring Sirine Saba as Myrrha.


title: Myrrha

text: In 1997 American poet Frank Bidart wrote "Desire", which was another retelling of the myth of Myrrha as it was presented in the "Metamorphoses" by Ovid. The case of Myrrha, critic Langdon Hammer notes, is the worst possible made against desire, because the story of Myrrha shows how sex can lead people to destroy others as well as themselves. He comments that "the "precious bitter resin" into which Myrrha's tears are changed tastes bitter "and" sweet, like "Desire" as a whole". He further writes: "The inescapability of desire makes Bidart's long story of submission to it a kind of affirmation. Rather than aberrant, the Ovidian characters come to feel exemplary".


title: Myrrha

text: In 1700 English poet John Dryden published his translations of myths by Ovid, Homer, and Boccaccio in the volume "Fables, Ancient and Modern". Literary critic Anthony W. Lee notes in his essay "Dryden's "Cinyras and Myrrha"" that this translation, along with several others, can be interpreted as a subtle comment on the political scene of the late seventeenth-century England.


title: Myrrha

text: The translation of the myth of Myrrha as it appeared in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" is suggested as being a critique of the political settlement that followed the Glorious Revolution. The wife of the leader of this revolution, William of Orange, was Mary, daughter of James II. Mary and William were crowned king and queen of England in 1689, and because Dryden was deeply sympathetic to James he lost his public offices and fell into political disfavor under the new reign. Dryden turned to translation and infused these translations with political satire in response - the myth of Myrrha being one of these translations.


title: Myrrha

text: In the opening lines of the poem Dryden describes King Cinyras just as Ovid did as a man who had been happier if he had not become a father. Lee suggests that this is a direct parallel to James who could have been counted as happier if he had not had his daughter, Mary, who betrayed him and usurped his monarchical position. When describing the act of incest Dryden uses a monster metaphor. Those lines are suggested as aimed at William III who invaded England from the Netherlands and whose presence Dryden describes as a curse or a punishment, according to Lee. A little further on the Convention Parliament is indicted. Lee suggests that Dryden critiques the intrusiveness of the Convention Parliament, because it acted without constituted legal authority. Finally the daughter, Mary as Myrrha, is described as an impious outcast from civilization, whose greatest sin was her disrupting the natural line of succession thereby breaking both natural as well as divine statutes which resulted in fundamental social confusion. When Myrrha craves and achieves her father's (Cinyras') bed, Lee sees a parallel to Mary's ascending James' throne: both daughters incestuously occupied the place which belonged to their fathers.


title: Myrrha

text: Reading the translation of the myth of Myrrha by Dryden as a comment on the political scene, states Lee, is partly justified by the characterization done by the historian Julian Hoppit on the events of the revolution of 1688:


title: Myrrha

text: To most a monarch was God's earthly representative, chosen by Him for the benefit of His people. For men to meddle in that choice was to tamper with the divine order, the inevitable price of which was chaos.


title: Myrrha

text: In music, Myrrha was the subject of an 1876 band piece by John Philip Sousa, "Myrrha Gavotte" and in 1901, Maurice Ravel and André Caplet each wrote cantatas titled "Myrrha". Caplet finished first over Ravel who was third in the Prix de Rome competition. The competition required that the candidates jumped through a series of academic hoops before entering the final where they were to compose a cantata on a prescribed text. Though it was not the best musical piece, the jury praised Ravel's work for its "melodic charm" and "sincerity of dramatic sentiment". Musical critic Andrew Clements writing for "The Guardian" commented on Ravel's failures at winning the competition: "Ravel's repeated failure to win the Prix de Rome, the most coveted prize for young composers in France at the turn of the 20th century, has become part of musical folklore."


title: Myrrha

text: Italian composer Domenico Alaleona's only opera, premiering in 1920, was entitled "Mirra". The libretto drew on the legend of Myrrha while the music was inspired by Claude Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" (1902) as well as Richard Strauss' "Elektra" (1909). Suffering from being monotonic, the final showdown between father and daughter, the critics commented, was the only part really making an impact. "Mirra" remains Alaleona's most ambitious composition and though the music tended to be "eclectic and uneven", it showed "technical enterprise".


title: Myrrha

text: More recently, Kristen Kuster created a choral orchestration, "Myrrha", written in 2004 and first performed at Carnegie Hall in 2006. Kuster stated that the idea for "Myrrha" came when she was asked by the American Composers Orchestra to write a love-and-erotica themed concert. The concert was inspired by the myth of Myrrha in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and includes excerpts from the volume that "move in and out of the music as though in a dream, or perhaps Myrrha’s memory of the events that shaped her fate," as described by Kuster.


title: Myrrha

text: The "Metamorphoses" of Ovid has been illustrated by several artists through time. In 1563 in Frankfurt, a German bilingual translation by Johann Posthius was published, featuring the woodcuts of renowned German engraver Virgil Solis. The illustration of Myrrha depicts Myrrha's deceiving her father as well as her fleeing from him. In 1717 in London, a Latin-English edition of "Metamorphoses" was published, translated by Samuel Garth and with plates of French engraver Bernard Picart. The illustration of Myrrha was entitled "The Birth of Adonis" and featured Myrrha as a tree delivering Adonis while surrounded by women. In 1857 French engraver Gustave Doré made a series of illustrations to Dante's "Divine Comedy", the depiction of Myrrha showing her in the eighth circle of Hell.


title: Myrrha

text: In 1690, Italian Baroque painter Marcantonio Franceschini depicted Myrrha as a tree while delivering Adonis in "The Birth of Adonis". The painting was included in the art exhibition "Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725" at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California which lasted from December 16, 2008 through May 3, 2009. Normally the painting is exhibited in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (English: Dresden State Art Collections) in Germany as a part of the "Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister" (English: Old Masters Picture Gallery).


title: Myrrha

text: In 1984, artist Mel Chin created a sculpture based on Doré's illustration of Myrrha for the "Divine Comedy". The sculpture was titled ""Myrrha of the Post Industrial World"" and depicted a nude woman sitting on a rectangular pedestal. It was an outdoor project in Bryant Park, and the skin of the sculpture was made of perforated steel. Inside was a visible skeleton of polystyrene. When finished, the sculpture was 29 feet tall.


title: Myrrha

text: Several metamorphosing insects' scientific names reference the myth. "Myrrha" is a genus of ladybug beetles, such as the 18-spot ladybird ("Myrrha octodecimguttata"). "Libythea myrrha", the club beak, is a butterfly native to India. "Polyommatus myrrha" is a rare species of butterfly named by Gottlieb August Wilhelm Herrich-Schäffer found on Mount Erciyes in south-eastern Turkey. "Catocala myrrha" is a synonym for a species of moth known as married underwing. In total the United Kingdom's Natural History Museum lists seven Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) with the myrrha name.


title: Myrrha

text: Myrrh is a bitter-tasting, aromatic, yellow to reddish brown gum. It is obtained from small thorny flowering trees of the genus "Commiphora", which is a part of the incense-tree family (Burseraceae). There are two main varieties of myrrh: bisabol and herabol. Bisabol is produced by "C. erythraea", an Arabian species similar to the "C. myrrha", which produces the herabol myrrh. "C. myrrha" grows in Ethiopia, Arabia, and Somalia.


title: Myrrha

text: A large asteroid, measuring is named 381 Myrrha. It was discovered and named on January 10, 1894 by A. Charlois at Nice. The mythical Myrrha inspired the name and her son, Adonis, is the name given to another asteroid, 2101 Adonis. Using classical names like Myrrha, Juno, and Vesta when naming minor planets was standard custom at the time when 381 Myrrha was discovered. It was the general opinion that using numbers instead might lead to unnecessary confusion.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: The philosophy of artificial intelligence is a branch of the philosophy of technology that explores artificial intelligence and its implications for knowledge and understanding of intelligence, ethics, consciousness, epistemology, and free will. Furthermore, the technology is concerned with the creation of artificial animals or artificial people (or, at least, artificial creatures; see artificial life) so the discipline is of considerable interest to philosophers. These factors contributed to the emergence of the philosophy of artificial intelligence. Some scholars argue that the AI community's dismissal of philosophy is detrimental.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Questions like these reflect the divergent interests of AI researchers, cognitive scientists and philosophers respectively. The scientific answers to these questions depend on the definition of "intelligence" and "consciousness" and exactly which "machines" are under discussion.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Is it possible to create a machine that can solve "all" the problems humans solve using their intelligence? This question defines the scope of what machines could do in the future and guides the direction of AI research. It only concerns the "behavior" of machines and ignores the issues of interest to psychologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers; to answer this question, it does not matter whether a machine is "really" thinking (as a person thinks) or is just "acting like" it is thinking.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: The basic position of most AI researchers is summed up in this statement, which appeared in the proposal for the Dartmouth workshop of 1956:


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Arguments against the basic premise must show that building a working AI system is impossible because there is some practical limit to the abilities of computers or that there is some special quality of the human mind that is necessary for intelligent behavior and yet cannot be duplicated by a machine (or by the methods of current AI research). Arguments in favor of the basic premise must show that such a system is possible.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: It is also possible to sidestep the connection between the two parts of the above proposal. For instance, machine learning, beginning with Turing's infamous child machine proposal essentially achieves the desired feature of intelligence without a precise design-time description as to how it would exactly work. The account on robot tacit knowledge eliminates the need for a precise description all together.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Alan Turing reduced the problem of defining intelligence to a simple question about conversation. He suggests that: if a machine can answer "any" question put to it, using the same words that an ordinary person would, then we may call that machine intelligent. A modern version of his experimental design would use an online chat room, where one of the participants is a real person and one of the participants is a computer program. The program passes the test if no one can tell which of the two participants is human. Turing notes that no one (except philosophers) ever asks the question "can people think?" He writes "instead of arguing continually over this point, it is usual to have a polite convention that everyone thinks". Turing's test extends this polite convention to machines:


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: One criticism of the Turing test is that it only measures the "humanness" of the machine's behavior, rather than the "intelligence" of the behavior. Since human behavior and intelligent behavior are not exactly the same thing, the test fails to measure intelligence. Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig write that "aeronautical engineering texts do not define the goal of their field as 'making machines that fly so exactly like pigeons that they can fool other pigeons'".


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Twenty-first century AI research defines intelligence in terms of intelligent agents. An "agent" is something which perceives and acts in an environment. A "performance measure" defines what counts as success for the agent.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Definitions like this one try to capture the essence of intelligence. They have the advantage that, unlike the Turing test, they do not also test for unintelligent human traits such as making typing mistakes


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: They have the disadvantage that they can fail to differentiate between "things that think" and "things that do not". By this definition, even a thermostat has a rudimentary intelligence.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Hubert Dreyfus describes this argument as claiming that "if the nervous system obeys the laws of physics and chemistry, which we have every reason to suppose it does, then ... we ... ought to be able to reproduce the behavior of the nervous system with some physical device".This argument, first introduced as early as 1943 and vividly described by Hans Moravec in 1988,


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: is now associated with futurist Ray Kurzweil, who estimates that computer power will be sufficient for a complete brain simulation by the year 2029. A non-real-time simulation of a thalamocortical model that has the size of the human brain (10 neurons) was performed in 2005 and it took 50 days to simulate 1 second of brain dynamics on a cluster of 27 processors.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Even AI's harshest critics (such as Hubert Dreyfus and John Searle) agree that a brain simulation is possible in theory.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: However, Searle points out that, in principle, "anything" can be simulated by a computer; thus, bringing the definition to its breaking point leads to the conclusion that any process at all can technically be considered "computation". "What we wanted to know is what distinguishes the mind from thermostats and livers," he writes. Thus, merely simulating the functioning of a living brain would in itself be an admission of ignorance regarding intelligence and the nature of the mind, like trying to build a jet airliner by copying a living bird precisely, feather by feather, with no theoretical understanding of aeronautical engineering.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: In 1963, Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon proposed that "symbol manipulation" was the essence of both human and machine intelligence. They wrote:


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: This claim is very strong: it implies both that human thinking is a kind of symbol manipulation (because a symbol system is "necessary" for intelligence) and that machines can be intelligent (because a symbol system is "sufficient" for intelligence).


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Another version of this position was described by philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, who called it "the psychological assumption":


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: The "symbols" that Newell, Simon and Dreyfus discussed were word-like and high levelsymbols that directly correspond with objects in the world, such as <nowiki><dog></nowiki> and <nowiki><tail></nowiki>. Most AI programs written between 1956 and 1990 used this kind of symbol. Modern AI, based on statistics and mathematical optimization, does not use the high-level "symbol processing" that Newell and Simon discussed.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: These arguments show that human thinking does not consist (solely) of high level symbol manipulation. They do "not" show that artificial intelligence is impossible, only that more than symbol processing is required.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: In 1931, Kurt Gödel proved with an incompleteness theorem that it is always possible to construct a "Gödel statement" that a given consistent formal system of logic (such as a high-level symbol manipulation program) could not prove. Despite being a true statement, the constructed Gödel statement is unprovable in the given system. (The truth of the constructed Gödel statement is contingent on the consistency of the given system; applying the same process to a subtly inconsistent system will appear to succeed, but will actually yield a false "Gödel statement" instead.) More speculatively, Gödel conjectured that the human mind can correctly eventually determine the truth or falsity of any well-grounded mathematical statement (including any possible Gödel statement), and that therefore the human mind's power is not reducible to a "mechanism". Philosopher John Lucas (since 1961) and Roger Penrose (since 1989) have championed this philosophical anti-mechanist argument.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Gödelian anti-mechanist arguments tend to rely on the innocuous-seeming claim that a system of human mathematicians (or some idealization of human mathematicians) is both consistent (completely free of error) and believes fully in its own consistency (and can make all logical inferences that follow from its own consistency, including belief in its Gödel statement) . This is provably impossible for a Turing machine to do (see Halting problem); therefore, the Gödelian concludes that human reasoning is too powerful to be captured by a Turing machine, and by extension, any digital mechanical device.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: However, the modern consensus in the scientific and mathematical community is that actual human reasoning is inconsistent; that any consistent "idealized version" "H" of human reasoning would logically be forced to adopt a healthy but counter-intuitive open-minded skepticism about the consistency of "H" (otherwise "H" is provably inconsistent); and that Gödel's theorems do not lead to any valid argument that humans have mathematical reasoning capabilities beyond what a machine could ever duplicate. This consensus that Gödelian anti-mechanist arguments are doomed to failure is laid out strongly in "Artificial Intelligence": ""any" attempt to utilize (Gödel's incompleteness results) to attack the computationalist thesis is bound to be illegitimate, since these results are quite consistent with the computationalist thesis."


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig agree that Gödel's argument does not consider the nature of real-world human reasoning. It applies to what can theoretically be proved, given an infinite amount of memory and time. In practice, real machines (including humans) have finite resources and will have difficulty proving many theorems. It is not necessary to be able to prove everything in order to be an intelligent person.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Less formally, Douglas Hofstadter, in his Pulitzer prize winning book "," states that these "Gödel-statements" always refer to the system itself, drawing an analogy to the way the Epimenides paradox uses statements that refer to themselves, such as "this statement is false" or "I am lying". But, of course, the Epimenides paradox applies to anything that makes statements, whether they are machines "or" humans, even Lucas himself. Consider:


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: This statement is true but cannot be asserted by Lucas. This shows that Lucas himself is subject to the same limits that he describes for machines, as are all people, and so Lucas's argument is pointless.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: After concluding that human reasoning is non-computable, Penrose went on to controversially speculate that some kind of hypothetical non-computable processes involving the collapse of quantum mechanical states give humans a special advantage over existing computers. Existing quantum computers are only capable of reducing the complexity of Turing computable tasks and are still restricted to tasks within the scope of Turing machines. . By Penrose and Lucas's arguments, existing quantum computers are not sufficient , so Penrose seeks for some other process involving new physics, for instance quantum gravity which might manifest new physics at the scale of the Planck mass via spontaneous quantum collapse of the wave function. These states, he suggested, occur both within neurons and also spanning more than one neuron. However, other scientists point out that there is no plausible organic mechanism in the brain for harnessing any sort of quantum computation, and furthermore that the timescale of quantum decoherence seems too fast to influence neuron firing.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Hubert Dreyfus argued that human intelligence and expertise depended primarily on fast intuitive judgements rather than step-by-step symbolic manipulation, and argued that these skills would never be captured in formal rules.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Dreyfus's argument had been anticipated by Turing in his 1950 paper Computing machinery and intelligence, where he had classified this as the "argument from the informality of behavior." Turing argued in response that, just because we do not know the rules that govern a complex behavior, this does not mean that no such rules exist. He wrote: "we cannot so easily convince ourselves of the absence of complete laws of behaviour ... The only way we know of for finding such laws is scientific observation, and we certainly know of no circumstances under which we could say, 'We have searched enough. There are no such laws.'"


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Russell and Norvig point out that, in the years since Dreyfus published his critique, progress has been made towards discovering the "rules" that govern unconscious reasoning. The situated movement in robotics research attempts to capture our unconscious skills at perception and attention. Computational intelligence paradigms, such as neural nets, evolutionary algorithms and so on are mostly directed at simulated unconscious reasoning and learning. Statistical approaches to AI can make predictions which approach the accuracy of human intuitive guesses. Research into commonsense knowledge has focused on reproducing the "background" or context of knowledge. In fact, AI research in general has moved away from high level symbol manipulation, towards new models that are intended to capture more of our "intuitive" reasoning.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Cognitive science and psychology eventually came to agree with Dreyfus' description of human expertise. Daniel Kahnemann and others developed a similar theory where they identified two "systems" that humans use to solve problems, which he called "System 1" (fast intuitive judgements) and "System 2" (slow deliberate step by step thinking).


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Although Dreyfus' views have been vindicated in many ways, the work in cognitive science and in AI was in response to specific problems in those fields and was not directly influenced by Dreyfus. Historian and AI researcher Daniel Crevier wrote that "time has proven the accuracy and perceptiveness of some of Dreyfus's comments. Had he formulated them less aggressively, constructive actions they suggested might have been taken much earlier."


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: This is a philosophical question, related to the problem of other minds and the hard problem of consciousness. The question revolves around a position defined by John Searle as "strong AI":


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Searle introduced the terms to isolate strong AI from weak AI so he could focus on what he thought was the more interesting and debatable issue. He argued that "even if we assume" that we had a computer program that acted exactly like a human mind, there would still be a difficult philosophical question that needed to be answered.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Neither of Searle's two positions are of great concern to AI research, since they do not directly answer the question "can a machine display general intelligence?" (unless it can also be shown that consciousness is "necessary" for intelligence). Turing wrote "I do not wish to give the impression that I think there is no mystery about consciousness… [b]ut I do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question [of whether machines can think]." Russell and Norvig agree: "Most AI researchers take the weak AI hypothesis for granted, and don't care about the strong AI hypothesis."


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: There are a few researchers who believe that consciousness is an essential element in intelligence, such as Igor Aleksander, Stan Franklin, Ron Sun, and Pentti Haikonen, although their definition of "consciousness" strays very close to "intelligence". (See artificial consciousness.)


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Before we can answer this question, we must be clear what we mean by "minds", "mental states" and "consciousness".


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: The words "mind" and "consciousness" are used by different communities in different ways. Some new age thinkers, for example, use the word "consciousness" to describe something similar to Bergson's "élan vital": an invisible, energetic fluid that permeates life and especially the mind. Science fiction writers use the word to describe some essential property that makes us human: a machine or alien that is "conscious" will be presented as a fully human character, with intelligence, desires, will, insight, pride and so on. (Science fiction writers also use the words "sentience", "sapience", "self-awareness" or "ghost"—as in the "Ghost in the Shell" manga and anime series—to describe this essential human property). For others , the words "mind" or "consciousness" are used as a kind of secular synonym for the soul.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: For philosophers, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, the words are used in a way that is both more precise and more mundane: they refer to the familiar, everyday experience of having a "thought in your head", like a perception, a dream, an intention or a plan, and to the way we "see" something, "know" something, "mean" something or "understand" something. "It's not hard to give a commonsense definition of consciousness" observes philosopher John Searle. What is mysterious and fascinating is not so much "what" it is but "how" it is: how does a lump of fatty tissue and electricity give rise to this (familiar) experience of perceiving, meaning or thinking?


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Philosophers call this the hard problem of consciousness. It is the latest version of a classic problem in the philosophy of mind called the "mind-body problem". A related problem is the problem of "meaning" or "understanding" (which philosophers call "intentionality"): what is the connection between our "thoughts" and "what we are thinking about" (i.e. objects and situations out in the world)? A third issue is the problem of "experience" (or "phenomenology"): If two people see the same thing, do they have the same experience? Or are there things "inside their head" (called "qualia") that can be different from person to person?


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Neurobiologists believe all these problems will be solved as we begin to identify the neural correlates of consciousness: the actual relationship between the machinery in our heads and its collective properties; such as the mind, experience and understanding. Some of the harshest critics of artificial intelligence agree that the brain is just a machine, and that consciousness and intelligence are the result of physical processes in the brain. The difficult philosophical question is this: can a computer program, running on a digital machine that shuffles the binary digits of zero and one, duplicate the ability of the neurons to create minds, with mental states (like understanding or perceiving), and ultimately, the experience of consciousness?


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: John Searle asks us to consider a thought experiment: suppose we have written a computer program that passes the Turing test and demonstrates general intelligent action. Suppose, specifically that the program can converse in fluent Chinese. Write the program on 3x5 cards and give them to an ordinary person who does not speak Chinese. Lock the person into a room and have him follow the instructions on the cards. He will copy out Chinese characters and pass them in and out of the room through a slot. From the outside, it will appear that the Chinese room contains a fully intelligent person who speaks Chinese. The question is this: is there anyone (or anything) in the room that understands Chinese? That is, is there anything that has the mental state of understanding, or which has conscious awareness of what is being discussed in Chinese? The man is clearly not aware. The room cannot be aware. The "cards" certainly are not aware. Searle concludes that the Chinese room, or "any" other physical symbol system, cannot have a mind.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Searle goes on to argue that actual mental states and consciousness require (yet to be described) "actual physical-chemical properties of actual human brains." He argues there are special "causal properties" of brains and neurons that gives rise to minds: in his words "brains cause minds."


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Gottfried Leibniz made essentially the same argument as Searle in 1714, using the thought experiment of expanding the brain until it was the size of a mill. In 1974, Lawrence Davis imagined duplicating the brain using telephone lines and offices staffed by people, and in 1978 Ned Block envisioned the entire population of China involved in such a brain simulation. This thought experiment is called "the Chinese Nation" or "the Chinese Gym". Ned Block also proposed his Blockhead argument, which is a version of the Chinese room in which the program has been re-factored into a simple set of rules of the form "see this, do that", removing all mystery from the program.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: The computational theory of mind or "computationalism" claims that the relationship between mind and brain is similar (if not identical) to the relationship between a "running program" (software) and a computer (hardware). The idea has philosophical roots in Hobbes (who claimed reasoning was "nothing more than reckoning"), Leibniz (who attempted to create a logical calculus of all human ideas), Hume (who thought perception could be reduced to "atomic impressions") and even Kant (who analyzed all experience as controlled by formal rules). The latest version is associated with philosophers Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: This question bears on our earlier questions: if the human brain is a kind of computer then computers can be both intelligent and conscious, answering both the practical and philosophical questions of AI. In terms of the practical question of AI ("Can a machine display general intelligence?"), some versions of computationalism make the claim that (as Hobbes wrote):


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: In other words, our intelligence derives from a form of "calculation", similar to arithmetic. This is the physical symbol system hypothesis discussed above, and it implies that artificial intelligence is possible. In terms of the philosophical question of AI ("Can a machine have mind, mental states and consciousness?"), most versions of computationalism claim that (as Stevan Harnad characterizes it):


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: This is John Searle's "strong AI" discussed above, and it is the real target of the Chinese room argument (according to Harnad).


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: If "emotions" are defined only in terms of their effect on behavior or on how they function inside an organism, then emotions can be viewed as a mechanism that an intelligent agent uses to maximize the utility of its actions. Given this definition of emotion, Hans Moravec believes that "robots in general will be quite emotional about being nice people". Fear is a source of urgency. Empathy is a necessary component of good human computer interaction. He says robots "will try to please you in an apparently selfless manner because it will get a thrill out of this positive reinforcement. You can interpret this as a kind of love." Daniel Crevier writes "Moravec's point is that emotions are just devices for channeling behavior in a direction beneficial to the survival of one's species."


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: "Self-awareness", as noted above, is sometimes used by science fiction writers as a name for the essential human property that makes a character fully human. Turing strips away all other properties of human beings and reduces the question to "can a machine be the subject of its own thought?" Can it "think about itself"? Viewed in this way, a program can be written that can report on its own internal states, such as a debugger.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Turing reduces this to the question of whether a machine can "take us by surprise" and argues that this is obviously true, as any programmer can attest. He notes that, with enough storage capacity, a computer can behave in an astronomical number of different ways. It must be possible, even trivial, for a computer that can represent ideas to combine them in new ways. (Douglas Lenat's Automated Mathematician, as one example, combined ideas to discover new mathematical truths.) Kaplan and Haenlein suggest that machines can display scientific creativity, while it seems likely that humans will have the upper hand where artistic creativity is concerned.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: In 2009, scientists at Aberystwyth University in Wales and the U.K's University of Cambridge designed a robot called Adam that they believe to be the first machine to independently come up with new scientific findings. Also in 2009, researchers at Cornell developed Eureqa, a computer program that extrapolates formulas to fit the data inputted, such as finding the laws of motion from a pendulum's motion.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: This question (like many others in the philosophy of artificial intelligence) can be presented in two forms. "Hostility" can be defined in terms function or behavior, in which case "hostile" becomes synonymous with "dangerous". Or it can be defined in terms of intent: can a machine "deliberately" set out to do harm? The latter is the question "can a machine have conscious states?" (such as intentions) in another form.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: The question of whether highly intelligent and completely autonomous machines would be dangerous has been examined in detail by futurists (such as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute). The obvious element of drama has also made the subject popular in science fiction, which has considered many differently possible scenarios where intelligent machines pose a threat to mankind; see Artificial intelligence in fiction.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: One issue is that machines may acquire the autonomy and intelligence required to be dangerous very quickly. Vernor Vinge has suggested that over just a few years, computers will suddenly become thousands or millions of times more intelligent than humans. He calls this "the Singularity". He suggests that it may be somewhat or possibly very dangerous for humans. This is discussed by a philosophy called Singularitarianism.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: In 2009, academics and technical experts attended a conference to discuss the potential impact of robots and computers and the impact of the hypothetical possibility that they could become self-sufficient and able to make their own decisions. They discussed the possibility and the extent to which computers and robots might be able to acquire any level of autonomy, and to what degree they could use such abilities to possibly pose any threat or hazard. They noted that some machines have acquired various forms of semi-autonomy, including being able to find power sources on their own and being able to independently choose targets to attack with weapons. They also noted that some computer viruses can evade elimination and have achieved "cockroach intelligence". They noted that self-awareness as depicted in science-fiction is probably unlikely, but that there were other potential hazards and pitfalls.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Some experts and academics have questioned the use of robots for military combat, especially when such robots are given some degree of autonomous functions. The US Navy has funded a report which indicates that as military robots become more complex, there should be greater attention to implications of their ability to make autonomous decisions.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: The President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence has commissioned a study to look at this issue. They point to programs like the Language Acquisition Device which can emulate human interaction.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Some have suggested a need to build "Friendly AI", meaning that the advances which are already occurring with AI should also include an effort to make AI intrinsically friendly and humane.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Turing said "It is customary ... to offer a grain of comfort, in the form of a statement that some peculiarly human characteristic could never be imitated by a machine. ... I cannot offer any such comfort, for I believe that no such bounds can be set."


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Turing noted that there are many arguments of the form "a machine will never do X", where X can be many things, such as:


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly, have initiative, have a sense of humor, tell right from wrong, make mistakes, fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream, make someone fall in love with it, learn from experience, use words properly, be the subject of its own thought, have as much diversity of behaviour as a man, do something really new.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Turing argues that these objections are often based on naive assumptions about the versatility of machines or are "disguised forms of the argument from consciousness". Writing a program that exhibits one of these behaviors "will not make much of an impression." All of these arguments are tangential to the basic premise of AI, unless it can be shown that one of these traits is essential for general intelligence.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Finally, those who believe in the existence of a soul may argue that "Thinking is a function of man's immortal soul." Alan Turing called this "the theological objection". He writes


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.The discussion on the topic has been reignited as a result of recent claims made by Google's LaMDA artificial intelligence system that it is sentient and had a "soul".


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) is an artificial intelligence system that creates chatbots—AI robots designed to communicate with humans—by gathering vast amounts of text from the internet and using algorithms to respond to queries in the most fluid and natural way possible.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: The transcripts of conversations between scientists and LaMDA reveal that the AI system excels at this, providing answers to challenging topics about the nature of emotions, generating Aesop-style fables on the moment, and even describing its alleged fears.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: Some scholars argue that the AI community's dismissal of philosophy is detrimental. In the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", some philosophers argue that the role of philosophy in AI is underappreciated. Physicist David Deutsch argues that without an understanding of philosophy or its concepts, AI development would suffer from a lack of progress.


title: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

text: The main conference series on the issue is "Philosophy and Theory of AI" (PT-AI), run by Vincent C. Müller.


title: Divisions of the Australian House of Representatives

text: In Australia, electoral districts for the Australian House of Representatives are called divisions or more commonly referred to as electorates or seats. There are currently 151 single-member electorates for the Australian House of Representatives.


text: Section 24 of the Constitution of Australia specifies that the total number of members of the Australian House of Representatives shall be "as nearly as practicable" twice as many as the number of members of the Australian Senate. The section also requires that electorates be apportioned among the states in proportion to their respective populations; provided that each original state has at least 5 members in the House of Representatives, a provision that has given Tasmania higher representation than its population would otherwise justify. There are three electorates in the Australian Capital Territory and even though the Northern Territory should have only one electorate based on their population, parliament have legislated that they receive two (by setting the quota for seat allocation using the harmonic mean for territories, meaning only around 1.3 quotas rather than 1.5 quotas are needed to have two seats).


text: In addition, Section 29 forbids electorate boundaries from crossing state lines, forcing populated areas along state and territory borders to be placed in different electorates, such as Albury in New South Wales being part of the electorate of Farrer, while nearby Wodonga in Victoria is part of the electorate of Indi. The same restriction does not apply to territories, and several current electoral divisions incorporate electors from multiple territories. This is currently the case for the Division of Bean (covering part of the ACT and the whole of Norfolk Island), the Division of Fenner (covering part of the ACT and the whole of Jervis Bay Territory), and the Division of Lingiari (covering part of the Northern Territory and the whole of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands).


text: The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) determines the number of members of the House of Representatives to which each state and territory is entitled (called "apportionment") and the boundaries of each electorate, in a process known as "redistribution". Such apportionment and redistributions apply to the next federal election, but not to any by-elections. The last apportionment determination was made in July 2020, and the resulting redistribution is to take place during 2021, in time for the 2022 federal election, which was held on 21 May 2022.


text: Within each state and territory, electoral boundaries are redrawn from time to time. This takes place at least once every 7 years, or when the state's entitlement to the number of members of the House of Representatives changes. Boundaries are drawn by a Redistribution Committee, and redistributions within a state are on the basis of the number of "enrolled voters", rather than total residents or "population". The number of enrolled voters in each division cannot vary by more than 10% from the average across a state or territory, nor can the number of voters vary by more than 3.5% from the average projected enrolment 3.5 years into the future. However, due to various reasons, larger seats like Cowper in New South Wales contain 80% more electors than that of smaller seats like Solomon in the Northern Territory. In 2018, seats in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia were also abolished, in order to make way for seats in similar locations but with different names.


text: At the 2022 Australian federal election, based on the 2021 apportionment, there were 151 divisions: 47 in New South Wales, 39 in Victoria, 30 in Queensland, 15 in Western Australia, 10 in South Australia, 5 in Tasmania, 3 in the ACT and 2 in Northern Territory.


text: The divisions of the House of Representatives are unusual in that many of them are not named after geographical features or numbered, as is the case in most other legislatures around the world. Most divisions are named in honour of prominent historical people, such as former politicians (often Prime Ministers), explorers, artists and engineers. There is also a preference for retaining names used since Federation.


text: In some cases where a division is named after a geographical locality, the connection to that locality is sometimes tenuous. For instance, the Division of Werriwa, created in 1901, was named after the Aboriginal word for Lake George in the Canberra region. However, Werriwa has not contained Lake George for many decades, and has steadily moved some 200 km north to the south-western suburbs of Sydney over the past century.


title: Chenogne massacre

text: The Chenogne massacre was a war crime committed by members of the 11th Armored Division, an American combat unit, near Chenogne, Belgium, on January 1, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge.


title: Chenogne massacre

text: According to eyewitness accounts, an estimated 80 German prisoners of war were massacred by their American captors; the prisoners were assembled in a field and shot with machine guns. It was one of several war crimes committed during the Battle of the Bulge by members of both Allied and Axis forces.


title: Chenogne massacre

text: The events were covered up at the time, and none of the perpetrators were ever punished. Postwar historians believe the killings were carried out on verbal orders by senior commanders that "no prisoners were to be taken".


title: Chenogne massacre

text: On December 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, soldiers from the Waffen-SS gunned down 84 American prisoners at the Baugnez crossroads near the town of Malmedy. When news of the killings spread among American forces, it aroused great anger among frontline troops. One American unit issued orders that "no SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight."


title: Chenogne massacre

text: At Chenogne, the prisoners of war killed were members of the "Führerbegleitbrigade" and 3rd Panzergrenadier Division.


title: Chenogne massacre

text: S/Sgt. John W. Fague of B Company, 21st Armored Infantry Battalion (of the 11th Armored Division), in action near Chenogne, describes the killing of German prisoners by American troops:


title: Chenogne massacre

text: The official postwar history published by the United States government states that while "It is probable that Germans who attempted to surrender in the days immediately after the 17th ran a greater risk" of being killed than earlier in the year, "there is no evidence... that American troops took advantage of orders, implicit or explicit, to kill their SS prisoners." However, according to George Henry Bennett, "The caveat is a little disingenuous", and he notes that it is likely orders given by the U.S. 328th Infantry Regiment to shoot prisoners were carried out, and that other US regiments were likely given similar orders. But the killing of SS prisoners had become routine at the time for some units. The 90th Infantry Division at the Saar "executed Waffen-SS prisoners in such a systematic manner late in December 1944 that headquarters had to issue express orders to take Waffen-SS soldiers alive so as to be able to obtain information from them".


title: Chenogne massacre

text: In July 2018, KQED-FM radio aired an episode of the Reveal series called "Take No Prisoners: Inside a WWII American War Crime", in which Chris Harland-Dunaway investigated the Chenogne massacre. According to his sources, US soldiers shot about 80 German soldiers after they had surrendered (roughly one for each American killed in the Malmedy massacre). Harland-Dunaway refers to General George S. Patton's diary in which the latter confirms that the Americans "...also murdered 50 odd German med [sic]. I hope we can conceal this".


title: Chenogne massacre

text: According to a declassified file Harland-Dunaway got access to, a soldier named Max Cohen described seeing roughly 70 German prisoners machine-gunned by the 11th Armored Division in Chenogne. Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force General Dwight D. Eisenhower demanded a full investigation, but the 11th Armored were uncooperative, saying "it's too late; the war is over, the units are disbanded." Eisenhower never obtained an investigation of Chenogne. American lawyer Ben Ferencz, who served as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, said after acquainting himself with the declassified report that "It smells to me like a cover-up, of course."


title: Light cavalry

text: Light cavalry comprised lightly armed and armored cavalry troops mounted on fast horses, as opposed to heavy cavalry, where the mounted riders (and sometimes the warhorses) were heavily armored. The purpose of light cavalry was primarily raiding, reconnaissance, screening, skirmishing, patrolling and tactical communications. Prior to the early 17th century they were usually armed with swords, spears, javelins, or bows, and later on with sabres, pistols, shotguns, or carbines.


title: Light cavalry

text: Light cavalry was used infrequently by Ancient Greeks (who used hippeis such as prodromoi or sarissophoroi) and Ancient Romans (who used auxiliaries such as equites Numidarum or equites Maurorum), but were more common among the armies of Eastern Europe, North Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and East Asia. The Arabs, Cossacks, Hungarians, Huns, Kalmycks, Mongols, Turks, Parthians, and Persians were all adept light cavalrymen and horse archers.


title: Light cavalry

text: With the decline of feudalism and knighthood in Europe, light cavalry became more prominent in the armies of the continent. Many were equipped with early firearms, as their predecessors had been with bows or javelins. European examples of light cavalry included stradiots, hobelars, hussars, "chasseurs à cheval", cossacks, "chevau-légers", uhlans, and some dragoons.


title: Light cavalry

text: Armies of the ancient Roman-Germanic wars made use of light cavalry as patrolling squads, or armed scouts, and often had them in the front lines during regional battles.


title: Light cavalry

text: During the Punic Wars, one of Carthage's main advantages over Roman armies was its extensive use of Numidian light cavalry. Partly because of this, the Roman general Scipio Africanus recruited his own cavalry from Sicily before his invasion of Tunisia during the Second Punic War.


title: Light cavalry

text: Light cavalry played a key role in mounted scouting, escorting, and skirmishing during the Napoleonic era. Light horse also served a function in major set-piece battles. While lacking the sheer offensive power of heavy cavalry, light cavalry were still extremely effective against unprepared infantry, cavalry, and artillery. All infantry commanders were forced to respect the danger any cavalry presented to their forces, and light cavalry were effective at changing the movement of enemy forces simply through their presence. In the aftermath of battles, light cavalry were used to press a victor's advantage or to screen retreating forces from further attack.


title: Light cavalry

text: As late as the early 1900s, most European armies still retained a nominal division of mounted troops according to the size and weight of the men,


title: Light cavalry

text: into "light cavalry" (raiding, reconnaissance, and screening), "medium cavalry" (offense or defense), and "heavy cavalry" (direct shock). While colonial warfare had led to a blurring of these distinctions in the British army, tradition remained strong in the cavalry arm of some other nations. As an example, the Imperial German army maintained a marked difference between the sizes and weights of the men and horses allocated to the hussar regiments that made up its light cavalry and those of the other two categories. The early weeks of World War I saw light cavalry attempting to continue its long established function of being the "eyes and ears" of the respective main armies. However, despite some early success, the advent of trench warfare and aircraft observation quickly rendered this role obsolete, except to an extent in the Middle East in 1917, and in Eastern Europe where light cavalry mounted actions on a diminishing scale continued to occur until the revolution of 1917 took Russia out of the war.


title: Light cavalry

text: During the Vietnam War, the US Army converted parts of the 1st Cavalry Division for heliborne tactics with a concept known as Air Cavalry. Helicopters were used to insert troops and support them. They were also used for suppression fire, search and rescue, medical evacuation, scouting and resupply. This concept was first tested at the Battle of Ia Drang Valley. Modern tactics call for the use of gunships to dominate the airspace and provide fire support while transport helicopters ferry ground forces and supply them.


title: Light cavalry

text: Light reconnaissance vehicles (LRV) are also being used by cavalry squadrons and infantry scout units for scouting, skirmishing and providing light fire support.


title: Leandro Lo

text: Leandro Pereira do Nascimento Lo (11 May 1989 – 7 August 2022), better known as Leandro Lo, was a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt competitor. A record holder with eight IBJJF world championship titles in five different weight classes, as well as multiple wins at every major international tournament, Lo is considered one of the most accomplished jiu-jitsu competitors of all time.


title: Leandro Lo

text: Born in São Paulo, Lo began training Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) at fourteen, after joining a social jiu-jitsu training program for underprivileged children. In 2005 he won his first world championship, competing as a blue belt. In 2010 his coach Cicero Costha promoted him to black belt. During the 2011–12 season Lo won medals at two no-gi championships, and his first black belt IBJJF world, Pan Am and UAEJJF World Pro titles. In 2015, he established his own jiu-jitsu team: "NS Brotherhood".


title: Leandro Lo

text: In 2016 Lo became the first "Copa Pódio" triple crown champion, winning three different weight divisions within the same year; three years later in 2019, he made history after winning the World Championships in five different weight classes. In June 2022 Lo won an eighth world championship, exactly ten years after his first title as black belt. Lo was tragically killed in August 2022 at the age of 33.


title: Leandro Lo

text: Leandro Pereira do Nascimento Lo was born on 11 May 1989 on the east side of São Paulo, Brazil. He started practising Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) at the age of 14, after joining a program for low-income children and adolescents, set up by Jiu-Jitsu instructor and coach Cicero Costha, called or "PSLPB" ("Social Project Fighting for Good" ).


title: Leandro Lo

text: As a blue belt, Lo won his first IBJJF world championship in 2005, competing as a lightweight under team "Barbosa JJ", winning silver the following year, and bronze at the 2006 Brazilian National Championship competing as a featherweight. As a purple belt, Lo won silver at the 2006 World Championship but suffered a serious injury that kept him from most tournaments, using that time to heal and refine his technique, Lo then won silver at the 2008 CBJJE Brazilian Cup. Lo received all his belts from Costha's hands, and in July 2010, was promoted to black belt.


title: Leandro Lo

text: Fighting at lightweight (under ), Lo won the 2011 CBJJ Rio International Open, coming third in Absolute, and won the Brazilian Nationals. That same year Lo won the 2011 Abu Dhabi World Pro defeating Michael Langhi, who at the time was unbeaten in the lightweight division for three consecutive years, and Celso Vinicius one of the best jiu-jitsu lightweight competitor at the time. Competing in No-Gi Lo became two-time Brazilian National No-Gi champion after winning gold for two consecutive years in three divisions; in 2012 Lo won silver in Absolute at the 2012 IBJJF World No-Gi Championship, losing the final to Xande Ribeiro via advantage.


title: Leandro Lo

text: In 2012 he won another Brazilian Nationals title, the Pan American championship. and that same year, Lo won his first black belt world title becoming the 2012 lightweight world champion after beating Lucas Lepri in the final. Lo won again the 2013 World lightweight division the following year. Lo held an unbeaten winning streak at the "Copa Podio Grand Prix" from 2011 to 2013, one of the biggest professional jiu-jitsu events in Brazil, winning the 2013 edition in Rio de Janeiro after submitting UFC welterweight Gilbert Burns in an epic 20 minutes match. Until then a two-time lightweight world champion and already considered the best lightweight in the world, Lo won double gold (both weight and absolute) at the 2013 CBJJ Rio International Open, competing as middleweight alongside his partner at the time, Luiza Monteiro who also won double gold.


title: Leandro Lo

text: Lo entered the 2014 World Championship moving up a weight class to middleweight (under ). After defeating Otavio Sousa Lo became the 2014 middleweight world champion, also winning Pan Am and Abu Dhabi Pro that year.


title: Leandro Lo

text: In 2015, Lo left PSLPB to form his own team "NS Brotherhood" ("Jiu-Jitsu New School Brotherhood" ) taking with him several fellow competitors. That same year Lo defeated Lucas Lepri in Rio de Janeiro for the GP lightweight title, becoming "Copa Podio" champion for the fourth time. Going up a weight class again to medium heavyweight (under ), Lo won the 2015 World (his fourth title in a row), the Pan Am and the Abu Dhabi Pro tournaments.


title: Leandro Lo

text: In October 2016, Lo made history by becoming the first ever "Copa Podio" triple crown champion: winning three consecutive Grand Prix titles in three separate weight classes: Lightweight, Middleweight and Heavyweight, all in the same year; a performance never before accomplished in the sport of jiu-jitsu. Lo won the last heavyweight title without conceding a single point. In addition to the three Copa Podio Grand Prix, Lo won the IBJJF World and Pan championships as well as the UAEJJF World Pro that year.


title: Leandro Lo

text: In 2017 Lo went again up another weight class by entering the IBJJF tournaments at heavyweight (under ), that year he won silver in absolute and silver in heavyweight at the world championship, after losing to Nicholas Meregali in the final. Lo then won double gold at Pan after defeating ultra heavyweight João Gabriel Rocha in the open weight final. Lo also won double gold at the Brazilian Nationals and double gold at the European Championship, where he competed for the first time, after submitting Tanner Rice in the heavyweight final and Claudio Calasans by points (4-0) in the open weight final.


title: Leandro Lo

text: During the ADCC North American West Coast Trials, held in Anaheim California on 15 April 2017, Lo defeated Gordon Ryan in a "Superfight" by 4×0 pts. Invited to the 2017 ADCC World Championships in Espoo, Finland, competing for the first time for the - title, Lo was eliminated in the first round by Asia and Oceania Trials winner Craig Jones. After achieving a "double Grand Slam", gold medals in weight and absolute divisions in the four main IBJJF tournaments: Euros, Pans, Brazilian Nationals and Worlds, Lo placed #1 in the IBJJF 2016–2017 ranking,


title: Leandro Lo

text: Lo became two-time Absolute Pan Champion, after winning the heavyweight and absolute divisions at the 2018 tournament taking place in March in Irvine, California. Lo defeated Tanner Rice in the heavyweight finals and Gutemberg Pereira in the finals of the Absolute division, furthering his record to eight Pan titles.


title: Leandro Lo

text: In May 2018 Lo entered the world championship as super-heavyweight (under ) but dislocated his shoulder twice during the super-heavyweight final and was unable to continue; in a surprising move, his close friend Marcus Buchecha, who he was supposed to face in the Absolute final, forfeited his match to give Lo the 2018 open weight title, the only title missing in his career. In November Lo announced that he was stepping down from his role as NS Brotherhood head coach, to focus on competition and on his career.


title: Leandro Lo

text: Lo went back to heavyweight at the 2019 World Championship, winning silver after losing to Kaynan Duarte in the final. Competing for the open weight title, Lo defeated Keenan Cornelius in the semi-final but made the final a close out when he gave Buchecha the victory, returning the previous year favour. However, after Kaynan Duarte was stripped of his victory for failing a USADA Test, Lo was crowned world heavyweight champion, making him a record world champion in 5 different weight classes, thus dethroning the record held for 20 years by Saulo Ribeiro.


title: Leandro Lo

text: Returning at medium-heavyweight for the first time since 2016, training at Unity Jiu Jitsu in New York, Lo won bronze at the 2021 World Championship and at the 2022 Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championship; he then became the 2022 World Jiu-Jitsu Champion after defeating Isaque Bahiense in the medium heavyweight final; winning his eighth and last world championship title, an accomplishment only reached at the time by three others in IBJJF history. That last title placed him at number 1 in the medium-heavy male gi division for the 2021–2022 season of the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation Ranking.


title: Leandro Lo

text: His guard technique earned Lo recognition as one of the "best pound for pound grapplers to have ever graced the mat." According to top coach John Danaher, Lo was "unquestionably one of the greatest Jiu-jitsu athletes of his generation and indeed in the history of the sport". The International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation called Lo "one of the greatest athletes our sport has ever produced" and "an example of a true black belt, martial artist and champion on and off the mats".


title: Leandro Lo

text: Carlos Gracie > Helio Gracie > Rickson Gracie > Marcelo Behring > Waldomiro Perez > Roberto Godoi > Marco Barbosa > Cicero Costha > Leandro Lo


title: Leandro Lo

text: On the morning of 7 August 2022, while attending a concert in a São Paulo club, Lo was allegedly assaulted by an off-duty police officer who shot him in the head. Lo was taken to hospital where he was declared brain dead. The shooter was arrested the next evening after handing himself in to the Brazilian police. An investigation for attempted murder has been opened.


title: Leandro Lo

text: Lo's funeral took place on 9 August 2022 at Morumbi Cemetery in São Paulo. Lo's fellow athletes, many wearing their Jiu-Jitsu Gi, lined the way from the chapel to the cemetery in a guard of honour, while his body was being carried in an open coffin.


title: Eidolon

text: In ancient Greek literature, an eidolon (; 'image, idol, double, apparition, phantom, ghost'; plural: eidola or eidolons) is a spirit-image of a living or dead person; a shade or phantom look-alike of the human form.


title: Eidolon

text: The concept of Helen of Troy's eidolon was explored both by Homer and Euripides. Homer uses the concept as a free-standing idea that gives Helen life after death. Euripides entangles it with the idea of "kleos", the one being the product of the other. Both Euripides and Stesichorus, in their works concerning the Trojan Horse, use the concept of the eidolon to claim that Helen was never physically present in the city at all.


title: Eidolon

text: The concept of the eidola of the dead has been explored in literature regarding Penelope, who in later works was constantly laboring against the eidola of Clytemnestra and later of Helen herself. Homer's use of eidola also extends to the "Odyssey" where, after the death of the suitors of Penelope, Theoclymenus notes that he sees the doorway of the court filled with them.


title: Eidolon

text: In "Dream-Land", an 1844 poem by Edgar Allan Poe, an Eidolon rules over a realm haunted by "ill angels only" and reserved for the ones whose "woes are legion" and who "walk in shadow".


title: Eidolon

text: Walt Whitman's poem by the same name in 1876 used a much broader understanding of the term, expanded and detailed in the poem. In Whitman's use of the term we can see the use broaden to include the concept of an oversoul composed of the individual souls of all life and expanding to include the Earth itself and the hierarchy of the planets, Sun, stars and galaxy.


title: Eidolon

text: In Theosophy, the astral double or perispirit or kamarupa after death, before its disintegration, is identified with the eidolon.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: The Lure () is a 2015 Polish horror musical film directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska. It tells of two sirens who emerge from the waters and perform in a nightclub. One falls in love with a man, and gives up her tail, but loses her voice in the process. The story is a reworking of the 1837 fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen, with inspiration from Smoczyńska's experiences. After a Polish premiere, the film screened at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and Fantasia Film Festival, to positive reviews.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: Some time in the 1980s, two sirens, Golden and Silver, encounter a rock band, Figs n' Dates, relaxing and playing music on a beach in Poland. They accompany the band back to the nightclub where they regularly perform and begin playing gigs there, performing as strippers and backup singers. The sirens soon become their own act, The Lure, with the band backing them. Golden murders a bar patron after a show one night and continues to thirst for blood; Silver falls in love with the bassist Mietek, but Mietek only sees her as a fish and not a woman.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: Golden meets a Triton, a fellow sea creature and singer of a metal band, who informs her that if her sister falls in love and her love marries someone else, she will turn into sea foam; if she is to have her tail removed, she will lose her voice. When Golden's murder victim is discovered, one of the bandmates punches Silver and Golden, and it appears that they die. The bandmates roll their bodies in carpets and throw them into the river. But they return to the club, alive, and the band apologizes. Silver has her tail surgically replaced with a pair of legs to make Mietek love her back, but this makes her lose her singing voice. She tries to have sex with her new lower-half, but Mietek is disgusted when she gets blood on him from her surgery scars.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: Mietek later meets a woman in a recording studio, whom he marries. The sisters attend the reception; Golden and the Triton warn Silver that she must eat Mietek before daybreak or she will become sea foam. Silver dances with Mietek, but cannot bring herself to eat him, and turns into sea foam in his arms. Distraught, Golden tears Mietek's throat out and returns to the ocean in full view of the entire wedding party.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: Director Agnieszka Smoczyńska called the film a "coming-of-age story", echoing her own youth. She recalled that her mother ran a nightclub, where she had her "first shot of vodka, first cigarette, first sexual disappointment and first important feeling for a boy." The mermaids were an abstraction that allowed her to tell her story without revealing too much of herself. The screenwriter Robert Bolesto sought to write a story based on two friends of his that frequented nightclubs in the 80s, which enthused Smoczyńska and resonated with her own childhood.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: Smoczyńska also wanted the film to be a retelling of "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen, and developed her idea of mermaids from tales of the 14th–16th century that described them as the sisters of dragons, and hence made them part monstrous. She invented their need to feed on human hearts and that propensity to attack the larynx of their victims.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: Smoczyńska likened the mermaids to immigrants, abused by the locals (used in the sex industry) on their way to their real goal—America. She added they represent innocence, yet their odour and slime recalled girls maturing, "they menstruate, they ovulate, their bodies start smelling and feeling different." David Ehrlich of IndieWire, noting the mermaids' "bodies are a source of constant fascination", said that ""The Lure" is having some fun with chauvinist objectification; the film has a funny habit of lambasting dumb misogynist rhetoric by applying it literally."


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: "Córki dancingu" premiered in Poland on 25 December 2015. "The Lure" was later shown in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and then the Fantasia Film Festival.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: In 2016, American art house distributor Janus Films acquired the rights to distribute "The Lure" in North America, for a limited release beginning on 1 February 2017. It was afterwards chosen for DVD and Blu-ray release in Region A by The Criterion Collection.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: The film had a mixed reception in Poland. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on 71 reviews, with an average rating of 7.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""The Lure" adds a sexually charged, genre-defying twist to well-established mermaid lore, more than overpowering its flaws through sheer variety and wild ambition." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: Giuseppe Sedia of the "Krakow Post" wrote that Smoczynska's debut feature is a "cinematic act of love towards Poland’s capital city in the 1980s with its sparkling neon signs, lighthearted nightlife, and ability to knock back gallons of vodka in its best days". Rubina Ramji, film editor and reviewer for the "Journal of Religion and Film", described the film as a "rock opera, a horror movie and fairytale story about mermaids all rolled up into one". Guy Lodge of "Variety" praised it for its originality, describing it as "never less than arresting, and sometimes even a riot". However, he felt the screenplay lacked ideas in portraying the mermaids' vampiric attributes, and was unsure of the film's 1980s setting and whether it alluded to the politics of the time. "IndieWire" critic David Ehrlich gave it a B+, calling it "the best goth musical about man-eating mermaids ever made".


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: "The Lure" garnered 14,899 admissions in its opening weekend in Poland from 112 cinemas, finishing at fifth place. The film received 41,776 admissions in total.


title: The Lure (2015 film)

text: On its North American opening weekend in February 2017, "The Lure" grossed $7,370 in one theatre. It finished its run on 4 May 2017 with a gross of $101,657 total in North America.


title: Duplex (film)

text: Duplex (released in the United Kingdom and Ireland as Our House and in Poland as The Old Lady Must Go) is a 2003 American black comedy film directed by Danny DeVito (who also narrated the film) and written by Larry Doyle. The film stars Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore with Eileen Essell, Harvey Fierstein, Robert Wisdom, Justin Theroux and James Remar in supporting roles.


title: Duplex (film)

text: Alex Rose and Nancy Kendricks, are in search of their dream home. The seemingly perfect Brooklyn brownstone duplex has one flaw: Mrs. Connelly, an old Irish lady who lives on the rent-controlled top floor. Assuming she won't live long, they buy the apartment.


title: Duplex (film)

text: However, they soon realize Mrs. Connelly is lively, enjoys blasting her TV 24-7 and rehearsing in a brass band. A novelist, Alex must finish his latest against a looming deadline. However, he is interrupted constantly daily by Mrs. Connelly, and it quickly escalates into an all-out war. They try to get her to move out, but she refuses. Next, they try to file a noise complaint against her, but discover that she has gone to the police first and filed a harassment charge against them. Their friends turn against them when she play-acts as the "poor, innocent, old lady" making it appear they are out to harm her.


title: Duplex (film)

text: Nancy loses her job and Alex misses his deadline thanks to the old lady's antics, so they are trapped at home together with Mrs. Connelly with no place to go. Their rage turns to homicidal fantasy as they plot ways to get rid of their manipulative, no-good neighbor. Peace overtures and a break-in lead to nothing, so they hire a hitman, Chick, to kill her. His asking price for the hit is $25,000. Desperate and needing the money in two days, they sell almost everything they own to pay for the Christmas Eve hit.


title: Duplex (film)

text: Chick breaks into Mrs. Connelly's apartment as planned, but fails to kill her as she defends herself with a speargun, shooting him in the shoulder. She is incapacitated in the fight, and the duplex catches fire. Nancy and Alex appear to leave her to die, but then return and save her and her parrot. The fire department puts out the fire. Accepting defeat, Alex and Nancy leave, and find out the old woman has just died. Moving away, they contemplate their strange encounter.


title: Duplex (film)

text: We then learn they are not the first to be elaborately scammed by: the realtor of the duplex, Kenneth (Mrs. Connelly's son); the ill-tempered NYPD Officer Dan (Kenneth's boyfriend) who had frequently harassed and distrusted the couple, always siding with Mrs. Connelly in her disputes against them, and Mrs. Connelly herself (who is not in fact dead).


title: Duplex (film)

text: The real-estate scam has been run by the trio for several years: Kenneth sells the ground-floor apartment to an unsuspecting, naive young couple. Then Mrs. Connelly, aided by Dan, harasses them, eventually forcing them to move out. Finally, she fakes her own death so they will never suspect a thing, thus leaving them to collect and live off of the sales commission from the next unsuspecting occupants. Alex and Nancy were their latest victims among many. Despite everything, as they celebrate their latest victory, she admits she actually liked Alex and Nancy and hopes they find success and happiness elsewhere.


title: Duplex (film)

text: A final voice-over by Alex relates that he and Nancy relocated to The Bronx. Like the other couples the trio scammed, they never saw Mrs. Connelly or returned to Brooklyn again. Alex used their unpleasant experience as inspiration for his next book entitled "Duplex", which became a best-seller, rescuing him and Nancy from poverty and giving the film a semi-happy ending.


title: Duplex (film)

text: "Duplex" has a 50/100 on Metacritic and a 35% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The site's consensus states: "It was funnier when it was called "Throw Momma from the Train"." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film two stars out of four and wrote that the "murder schemes aimed at Mrs. Connelly don't generate the laughter they should, maybe because no matter what she does, she still seems, irremediably, unredeemably, a sweet little old lady. [...] 'Duplex' is all about plotting; it tries to impose emotions that we don't really feel. We can't identify with Mrs. Connelly, that's for sure, but we can't identify with Alex and Nancy, either, because we don't share their frustration -- and the reason we don't is because we don't believe it. There's too much contrivance and not enough plausibility, and so finally we're just enjoying the performances and wishing they'd been in a more persuasive movie."


title: Duplex (film)

text: Barrymore earned a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress for her performances in both "Duplex" and "", but lost to Jennifer Lopez for "Gigli".


title: Sexual ritual

text: Sexual rituals fall into two categories: culture-created, and natural behaviour, the human animal having developed sex rituals from evolutionary instincts for reproduction, which are then integrated into society, and elaborated to include aspects such as marriage rites, dances, etc. Sometimes sexual rituals are highly formalized and/or part of religious activity, as in the cases of "hieros gamos", the hierodule and the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO).


title: Sexual ritual

text: Part of the rites of passage of growing up are what have been termed 'rites of separation from the asexual world...followed by rites of incorporation into the world of sexuality'. These may be formal or semi-formal—'for some students, going to college is partly a sexual ritual, like the ceremonial dances of the whooping crane'—or take the form of a more private induction: 'formal and artificial...the impression that a long-established rite was to be enacted, among Staffordshire figurs and "papier-mâché" trays, with the compelling, detached formality of nightmare'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: Freud was particularly interested in ethnological accounts of 'the "ceremonial" (purely formal, ritual, or official) coitus, which takes place' in connection with 'the taboo of virginity'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: Freud also noted that in 'numerous examples of marriage ceremonies there can be no doubt that people other than the bridegroom, for example his assistants and companions (our traditional "groomsmen"), were granted full sexual access to the bride'. To his followers, 'the "wedding as orgy", with the bride taking on all the men present, is the clear historical reality behind the modern jokes... and the climactic line-up or "gang"-kissing of the bride, by all the men present'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: In such a view, 'other examples of sacred or permitted public coitus of all women with all men do survive, in similarly modified "kissing" form', as under the mistletoe 'to revive the dying sun at the winter solstice, when the strongest human "life-magic", namely ritual intercourse, is to be deployed'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: To the sociologist looking upon 'sexual intercourse as interaction ritual...sexual intercourse is the ritual of love; it both creates and recreates the social tie (since Durkheimian rituals need to be repeated periodically, as solidarity runs down), and symbolizes it'. In similar fashion, Margot Anand has pointed out that 'rituals pervade our daily life and give it a sense of ceremony and celebration(...)a ritual, through your own unique symbolic gestures...will help you transform your lovemaking into a special and sacred act'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: Erving Goffman has noted however 'the considerable informational delicacy of this form of interaction', and how 'individuals may use darkness to ensure strategic ambiguity'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: In perversion, sexual rituals may emerge as a necessary part of sexual activity. For the criminologist, 'sexual ritual involves repeatedly engaging in an act or series of acts in a certain manner because of a sexual need'. Within a relationship, 'the Compulsive libido type takes advantages of opportunities to use the specific sexual ritual that causes intense arousal, and in its stronger form, the Compulsive lover can only arouse using the sexual object or ritual". In any relationship however, 'a sexual habit that becomes routine or stylised...can lead to a sexual ritual', so that 'if you don't have a way to talk to your partner about your sexual relationship, you may find yourself...stuck in sexual rituals that could be limiting your sexual enjoyment': as a wife might say, '"Same old technique, same old Lewis. It's you all right, I'd know that old routine anywhere'. Thus one's sex life may all 'be about rituals: the ritual of sex in the morning, or the ritual of sex at night; and the ritual of sex at anniversaries, and the ritual of sex at Christmas'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: In the Buddhist art of India, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet, yab-yum is the male deity in sexual union with his female consort. The symbolism is associated with Anuttarayoga tantra where the male figure is usually linked to compassion ("") and skillful means ("upāya-kauśalya"), and the female partner to 'insight' ("prajñā"). The symbolism of union and sexual polarity is a central teaching in Tantric Buddhism, especially in Tibet. The union is realised by the practitioner as a mystical experience within one's own body. Yab-yum is generally understood to represent the primordial (or mystical) union of wisdom and compassion. Tantric Buddhism is itself an outcrop of Tantrism, advanced techniques of which included 'the ritual sex act (Maithuna) which was a feature of Tantric yoga'. Given that 'sex is holy to a Tantric...Tantric art, writings and religious rituals glorify sex'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: A sex organ 'makes an admirable fertility symbol, and has been worshipped as such privately from time to time, or even publicly...gives dramatic promise of productivity and protection'. Such "worship" may only become more common in late modernity, as 'in our secular culture sexuality often replaces religion as a means of pursuing the meaning of life'. Alan Watts maintains that 'when you are in love with someone, you do indeed see them as a divine being...through a tremendous outpouring of psychic energy in total devotion and worship for this other person'. A woman may 'want someone who adores me...like he was adoring my breasts with his hands'. A man (more ambivalently) may muse on 'the white breasts he worships; adores; is scared of; detests'. For Shakespeare, 'this is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity, a green goose a goddess; pure, pure idolatry'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: In the further reaches of chick lit, ' the male organ...becomes a tower of strength, a tree trunk in girth, the pillar that sustains the universe...a Pillar of Hercules, sustaining heaven'—evidence perhaps that 'the phallic religious tendency is alive in the modern and the civilized...a compulsive fascination' with what Jung termed 'the phallus as the quintessence of life and fruitfulness'. Correspondingly, the Western adept may borrow, in the quest 'to create a Sacred Space...names given to the vagina in the East, including Valley of Joy, Great Jewel, Pearl, Lotus Blossom, Moist Cave, Ripe Peach, Enchanted Garden, and Full Moon'.


title: Sexual ritual

text: In the "Satyricon", the hero is throughout 'hounded by the mighty rage of Priapus of Hellespont'—almost certainly because early on he 'has offended Priapus...by impersonating him in some sexual ceremonies'.


title: Opinion polling for the 2022 Brazilian presidential election

text: Since the 2018 Brazilian general election, polling companies have published surveys tracking voting intention for the next election. The results of these surveys are listed below in reverse chronological order and include candidates who frequently polled above 3%.


text: The first round of the 2022 Brazilian general election took place on 2 October. As no candidate reached a majority of the votes, a second round was held on 30 October.


title: Nashville Pussy

text: Nashville Pussy is an American rock band from Atlanta, Georgia. Initially called Hell's Half-Acre, the band's name comes from Ted Nugent's introduction to "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang" on the "Double Live Gonzo" album.


title: Nashville Pussy

text: Following the initial 1997 breakup of Kentucky cowpunk band Nine Pound Hammer, guitarist Blaine Cartwright formed Nashville Pussy where he would take up vocal duties in addition to guitar. The core lineup of Nashville Pussy consists of husband-and-wife duo Blaine Cartwright and Ruyter Suys (pronounced "Rider Sighs"), and drummer Jeremy Thompson, formerly of Texas band Phantom Creeps. Original drummer Adam Neal (Nine Pound Hammer) left to form the Hookers. Original bassist Corey Parks (sister of nine-season NBA basketball player Cherokee Parks) quit one month after the release of the album "High as Hell", and later joined Die Hunns. Tracy Almazan a.k.a. Tracy Kickass formerly of New York City's The Wives, and Helldorado was enlisted to replace Parks mid-tour.


title: Nashville Pussy

text: Nashville Pussy recorded "Say Something Nasty" with Almazan on bass only to be replaced by Katielyn Campbell (of the band Famous Monsters). Katie Lynn's image is on the album "Say Something Nasty". Campbell was subsequently replaced by Karen Cuda for the album "Get Some". Karen Cuda also appeared as bassist on the album "From Hell to Texas", and in the live DVD "Live in Hollywood".


title: Nashville Pussy

text: The band's influences include ZZ Top, Ted Nugent, The Isley Brothers, Betty Davis, Commodores, Funkadelic, Chuck Berry, Ramones and New York Dolls. Their musical style is a blend of psychobilly, southern rock, hard rock and punk rock. This style has been classified as shock rock, hard rock, thrash metal and southern rock. The band's lyrical themes mostly revolve around sex, drugs, drinking, fighting, and rock and roll.


title: Nashville Pussy

text: The band has remained largely underground, but has been gaining a large cult following in the rock club scene, and in Europe, Australia, Japan, France, and the rest of the world. Grassroots promotion of the band has been aided by their taper-friendly show recording policy.


title: Nashville Pussy

text: Ruyter Suys was recently voted One of the Greatest Female Electric Guitarists in ELLE magazine. Nine Pound Hammer has since reunited and plays the introduction song for the Adult Swim cartoon "12 Oz. Mouse". Cartwright also had a cameo in the "Mr. Show" spinoff movie "Run Ronnie Run" as Duke's Bar Owner. The band also played themselves in the Dutch Film 'Wilde Mossels' (Wild Mussels).


title: Nashville Pussy

text: Nashville Pussy received a Best Metal Performance Grammy nomination for their song "Fried Chicken and Coffee" from their debut release, "Let Them Eat Pussy" (1998, The Enclave) 1999 Grammy. Between April 2 to May 7, 1999, the band toured as the opening act for the North American leg of Marilyn Manson's Rock Is Dead Tour. Ruyter Suys was featured on National Enquirer TV along with Jennifer Lopez on the Grammy Red Carpet for her 'revealing' Evel Knievel meets Wonder Woman leather bustier in a feature titled 'Too Much Too Little' and their songs "Come On, Come On" and "Hate & Whisky" were featured in the video game "". Additionally, "Snake Eyes" was for the end credits in the video game "" and both "Shoot First and Run Like Hell" and "Wrong Side of a Gun" were in the movie "Super Troopers". The song 'DRIVE' with its Gary Glitter style drum beat was featured in the episode 'Watching Too Much Television' of the HBO series The Sopranos. HBO'S Entourage also featured Nashville Pussy's 'Hell Ain't What It Used to Be' in the episode 'A Day in the Valley'. In 2012 Ruyter Suys has also played guitar and toured for Atlanta comedy metal band Dick Delicious and the Tasty Testicles.


title: Diary of an Oxygen Thief

text: Diary of an Oxygen Thief is a 2006 Dutch novel, written by Anonymous and published in Amsterdam by NLVI. "Diary of an Oxygen Thief" was called a "surprise dark-horse Williamsburg best seller" by "New York Magazine", referring to the independent art, literature, and music scene in Brooklyn, New York.


title: Diary of an Oxygen Thief

text: Purporting to be an autobiography, "Diary of an Oxygen Thief" begins with the narrator, an Irish advertising executive living in London, describing the pleasure he used to receive from emotionally abusing women. After the narrator starts attending AA meetings, he sobers up and looks back on his past relationships with a measure of remorse. After taking a job in the United States, the narrator is confronted externally by the absurdity of corporate America, culture shock, and the conflict of moving from the lower to upper-middle class. Internally he grapples with paranoia, addiction, and a legacy of pain. Later, he meets a young, aspiring photographer in New York and falls in love with her.


title: Diary of an Oxygen Thief

text: The "Oxygen Thief" in the title refers to narrator's low self-esteem. Because of his sense of self-loathing he seems to go through life unworthy of the very air he breathes.


title: Diary of an Oxygen Thief

text: "Diary of an Oxygen Thief" quickly became popular from its initial publication in 2006 to 2016 where it was listed on both Amazon and iTunes 20 top selling books.


title: Tailored Access Operations

text: The Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), now Computer Network Operations, and structured as S32, is a cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit of the National Security Agency (NSA). It has been active since at least 1998, possibly 1997, but was not named or structured as TAO until "the last days of 2000," according to General Michael Hayden.


title: Tailored Access Operations

text: TAO identifies, monitors, infiltrates, and gathers intelligence on computer systems being used by entities foreign to the United States.


title: Tailored Access Operations

text: TAO is reportedly "the largest and arguably the most important component of the NSA's huge Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID), consisting of more than 1,000 military and civilian computer hackers, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer hardware and software designers, and electrical engineers".


title: Tailored Access Operations

text: A document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden describing the unit's work says TAO has software templates allowing it to break into commonly used hardware, including "routers, switches, and firewalls from multiple product vendor lines". TAO engineers prefer to tap networks rather than isolated computers, because there are typically many devices on a single network.


title: Tailored Access Operations

text: TAO's headquarters are termed the "Remote Operations Center" (ROC) and are based at the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. TAO also has expanded to NSA Hawaii (Wahiawa, Oahu), NSA Georgia (Fort Gordon, Georgia), NSA Texas (Joint Base San Antonio, Texas), and NSA Colorado (Buckley Space Force Base, Denver).