The Book of Revelation is the strangest book in the Bible. It’s the most controversial. It doesn’t have any stories, moral teaching. It only has visions, dreams and nightmares. Not many people say they understand it, but for 2000 years, this book has been wildly popular. (…)

I started with three questions. First, who wrote this book? And what was he thinking? Second, what other books of Revelation were written about the same time? How did this book, and only this one, get into the Bible? And what constitutes the appeal, whether you’re talking psychologically, literarily, politically, of this book? (…)

The author says he’s a prophet named John. He claims to be a prophet called John of Patmos, because he said he wrote from the island of Patmos, which is about 50 miles off the coast of Turkey, in what was then Asia Minor. John said he was in the spirit, that is, he was in an ecstatic trance, when suddenly he heard a loud voice talking to him. He turned around and saw a divine being speaking to him, telling him what must happen soon. (…)

Next, John says, he was back in heaven, and suddenly he saw seven angels, each of seven angels carrying an enormous golden bowl. And each bowl is full of the wrath of God. And as angels sound the trumpets, the first angel starts to pour the wrath of God over the earth and catastrophes happen. (…)

Finally, John pictures Babylon as the prophet Isaiah had seen Babylon. You may not recognize her, but she is a whore. She’s sitting on a seven-headed red beast, and drinking from a golden cup, the blood of the saints. (…)

You may be wondering, who was John, and why did he write this? The evidence suggests that John was a Jewish prophet. He was living in exile around the year 90 of the first century. We can’t understand this book until we understand that it was written in war time, or shortly after war. John was a refugee, apparently, from the Jewish war that had destroyed his home country, Judea, started, as you may know, in year 66 when Jews rebelled against the Roman Empire. The slogan of the war was, “In the name of God and our common liberty.” And four years later, in the year 70, 60,000 Roman troops stormed into Jerusalem and killed thousands of people. They said that the blood was as high as the horses’ bridles in the city of Jerusalem. That’s what Josephus wrote in his account of the war. And starved and raped, and killed thousands of people, and then finally attacked and burned down the great Temple of God which formed the entire city center.

{ Elaine Pagels/Edge | Continue reading }

Bento de Spinoza was born on November 24, 1632, to a promi­ nent merchant family among Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jews. This Sephardic community was founded by former New Christians, or conversos—Jews who had been forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centu­ ries—and their descendants. After fleeing harassment by the Iberian Inquisitions, which doubted the sincerity of the conversions, many New Christians eventually settled in Amsterdam and a few other northern cities by the early seventeenth century. With its generally tolerant environment and greater concern for economic prosperity than religious uniformity, the newly independent Dutch Republic (and especially Holland, its largest province) offered these refugees an opportunity to return to the religion of their ancestors and re­ establish themselves in Jewish life. There were always conservative sectors of Dutch society clamoring for the expulsion of the “Por­tuguese merchants” in their midst.8 But the more liberal regents of Amsterdam, not to mention the more enlightened elements in Dutch society at large, were unwilling to make the same mistake that Spain had made a century earlier and drive out an economi­ cally important part of its population, one whose productivity and mercantile network would make a substantial contribution to the flourishing of the Dutch Golden Age.

The Spinoza family was not among the wealthiest of the city’s Sephardim, whose wealth was in turn dwarfed by the fortunes of the wealthiest Dutch. They were, however, comfortably well-off. Spinoza’s father, Miguel, was an importer of dried fruit and nuts, mainly from Spanish and Portuguese colonies. (…)

mainly from Spanish and Portuguese colonies. To judge both by his accounts and by the respect he earned from his peers, he seems for a time to have been a fairly successful businessman. (…)

Spinoza may have excelled in school, but, contrary to the story long told, he did not study to be a rabbi. In fact, he never made it into the upper levels of the educational program, which involved advanced work in Talmud. In 1649, his older brother Isaac, who had been helping his father run the family business, died, and Spinoza had to cease his formal studies to take his place. When Miguel died in 1654, Spinoza found himself, along with his other brother, Gabriel, a full-time merchant, running the firm Bento y Gabriel de Spinoza. He seems not to have been a very shrewd merchant, however, and the company, burdened by the debts left behind by his father, floundered under their direction. Spinoza did not have much of a taste for the life of commerce anyway. Financial success, which led to status and respect within the Portuguese Jewish community, held very little attraction for him. (…)

By the early to mid-1650s, Spinoza had decided that his future lay in philosophy, the search for knowledge and true happiness, not in the importing of dried fruit.

Around the time of his disenchantment with the mercantile life, Spinoza began studies in Latin and the classics. (…) Although distracted from business affairs by his studies and undoubtedly experiencing a serious weakening of his Jewish faith as he delved ever more deeply into the world of pagan and gentile letters, Spinoza kept up appearances and continued to be a mem­ ber in good standing of the Talmud Torah congregation through­ out the early 1650s. He paid his dues and communal taxes, and even made the contributions to the charitable funds that were ex­ pected of congregants.

And then, on July 27, 1656, the following proclamation was read in Hebrew before the ark of the Torah in the crowded syna­gogue on the Houtgracht: “The gentlemen of the ma’amad [the congregation’s lay governing board] hereby proclaim that they have long known of the evil opin­ ions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza. (…) Spinoza should be excommunicated and expelled from the people of Israel. By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse, and damn Baruch de Espinoza. (…) No one is to com­municate with him, orally or in writing, or show him any favor, or stay with him under the same roof, or come within four cubits of his vicinity, or read any treatise composed or written by him.”

We do not know for certain why Spinoza was punished with such extreme prejudice. That the punishment came from his own community—from the congregation that had nurtured and edu­ cated him, and that held his family in high esteem—only adds to the enigma. Neither the herem itself nor any document from the period tells us exactly what his “evil opinions and acts” were sup­ posed to have been, or what “abominable heresies” or “monstrous deeds” he is alleged to have practiced and taught. He had not yet published anything, or even composed any treatise. Spinoza never refers to this period of his life in his extant letters and thus does not offer his correspondents (or us) any clues as to why he was expelled.

{ Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age, Chapter 1 | Continue reading }

painting { Baruch Spinoza by Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1670 }

Two scientists who study icky sounds have figured out why fingernails dragged across a chalkboard make people’s skin crawl. It’s not the highest or lowest sounds in the squeak that are so annoying, but rather tones that lie in the range of a piano keyboard.

{ ScienceNews | Continue reading }

photo { Jordan Kinsler }

By comparing the brains of monkeys living in large groups to those living in smaller groups, scientists have found that the brain can change shape to accommodate social network size.

The finding, published in Science today, reveals that there are still opportunities for the brain to change, even during adulthood. It also suggests that a complex social environment puts pressure on improving brain plasticity - our brain’s ability to efficiently adapt to changes.

The researchers found that areas of the brain known to process social information such as facial expressions were larger in monkeys who lived in larger groups, and vice versa. There was also more activity between neurons in the monkeys who had larger social networks.

{ Cosmos | Continue reading | Scientific American }

It’s weird to think that tens of thousands of years ago, humans were mating with different species—but they were. That’s what DNA analyses tell us. When the Neanderthal genome was sequenced in 2010, it showed that as much as 1 to 4 percent of the DNA of non-Africans might have been inherited from Neanderthals.

Scientists also announced last year that our ancestors had mated with another extinct species, and this week, more evidence is showing how widespread that interbreeding was.

We know little about this extinct species. In fact, we don’t even have a scientific name for it; for now, the group is simply known as the Denisovans.

{ Smithsonian Magazine | Continue reading }

About five years ago, Apple design guru Jony Ive decided he wanted a new feature for the next MacBook: a small dot of green light above the screen, shining through the computer’s aluminum casing to indicate when its camera was on. The problem? It’s physically impossible to shine light through metal.

Ive called in a team of manufacturing and materials experts to figure out how to make the impossible possible, according to a former employee familiar with the development who requested anonymity to avoid irking Apple. The team discovered it could use a customized laser to poke holes in the aluminum small enough to be nearly invisible to the human eye but big enough to let light through.

Applying that solution at massive volume was a different matter. Apple needed lasers, and lots of them. The team of experts found a U.S. company that made laser equipment for microchip manufacturing which, after some tweaking, could do the job. Each machine typically goes for about $250,000. Apple convinced the seller to sign an exclusivity agreement and has since bought hundreds of them to make holes for the green lights that now shine on the company’s MacBook Airs, Trackpads, and wireless keyboards.

Most of Apple’s customers have probably never given that green light a second thought, but its creation speaks to a massive competitive advantage for Apple: Operations. This is the world of manufacturing, procurement, and logistics in which the new chief executive officer, Tim Cook, excelled, earning him the trust of Steve Jobs.

{ BusinessWeek | Continue reading }

[November 11, 2011]

According to the historian Annemarie Schimmel in her book “The Mystery of Numbers,” medieval numerologists all considered the number one to represent divinity, unity or God. At the same time, though, scholars had absolutely nothing good to say about the number 11: “While every other number had at least one positive aspect, 11 was always interpreted in medieval [analysis] in a purely negative sense,” Schimmel wrote. The 16th-century numerologist Petrus Bungus even called 11 “the number of sinners and of penance.”

{ LiveScience }

images { 1 | 2 }

Florida pizza workers burned down rival store.

Artificial stupidity: Siri suffers a 5-hour outage.

N.Y. Woman ‘Performs’ Live Birth for Gallery Patrons.

Couple jailed, lose custody of daughter, over stolen sandwiches at a supermarket in Honolulu.

PETA sues SeaWorld for enslaving killer whales.

Colorado Springs police say a man’s girlfriend unexpectedly came home just before another woman was due to visit, so he called police to report his new acquaintance as a burglar.

Thousands of people in Florida convicted of DUI may not have been drunk at all according to reports discrediting the Intoxilyzer 8000.

A raid on Gibson Guitar Corp. by U.S. agents seeking illegally imported wood has given anti- regulation activists from the Tea Party to fiddler Charlie Daniels one more reason to dislike the Obama administration.

92% of Top Ten Billboard Songs Are About Sex.

Your brain knows a lot more than you realize.

New research suggests that eating sweets can actually make you not only seem more sweet, but also lead you to behave in more caring ways.

Depression could be staved off before it even appears using a computer game so simplistic that even the psychologist testing it once bet it wouldn’t work.

Exposure to television coverage of terrorism causes women to lose psychological resources much more than men, which leads to negative feelings and moodiness, a new study shows.

The Big List of Behavioral Biases.

Eye movements confirm hypnosis. A true trance can’t be faked, research suggests.

Scientists revisit ‘faster-than-light’ experiment.

Socially-minded dolphins help each other find girlfriends.

Inspired by the gecko, scientists have developed a tank-like robot that can scale vertical walls and crawl over ledges without using suction cups, glue or other liquid bonds to adhere to the surface.

The mechanisms behind the incredible infectiousness of measles are poorly understood - that is, until now.

Using Experiments and Forensics to Understand Cremated Remains.

The Best Places to See Hominid Bones Online.

Google Has Made More Than 50 Acquisitions This Year — Here Are The Ones We Know About

The latest invention from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale launches today, and it’s no virtual world. Coffee & Power is an online marketplace that lets people buy and sell small jobs from each other.

New software can spot cheating at the roulette table and alert the croupier.

Get Some Therapy From An App That Reads Your Feelings Through Your Voice.

Financial-risk models got us in trouble before the 2008 crash, and they’re almost sure to get us in trouble again. Why Economic Models Are Always Wrong.

Governments consistently overestimate their future budgets.

In Oakland, California, protesters - including workers - have blocked the operation of a major US port; in New York, one of the world’s top stockbrokers is bust; in Europe the Greek government is on the brink of collapse, the Italian government in disarray and speculators are short-selling French sovereign debt in the expectation of a domino effect.

Sex Advice From Occupy Wall Street Protesters.

This article explores how anarchic/anarchist spaces/places are denied/rejected. This rejection is due to, first, an ideological rejection of anarchism and, second, a metageographical impossibility.

A charismatic entrepreneur, an ex-con turned devout Christian, and the politicians who championed them. Related: Intellectual history of British anarchism between 1886 and 1968 and Too often associated with mayhem on the streets, for centuries anarchists have actually sought a more ordered society.

How Starbucks Transformed Coffee From A Commodity Into A $4 Splurge.

Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation.

On the misuse of apostrophe’s.

The first time “awesome” appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary, in 1598, it was a description for someone feeling awe, rather than someone inspiring it.

Journalists all use Wikipedia.

All was dark and quiet on Black Tom Island in New York Harbor, not far from the Statue of Liberty, when small fires began to burn on the night of July 30, 1916.

The neuroses of New York.

The 20 Cheapest Zip Codes In America.

The Zapruder film is a silent, color motion picture sequence shot by private citizen Abraham Zapruder with a home-movie camera, as U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, thereby unexpectedly capturing the President’s assassination. Though not the only film of the shooting, it has been called the most complete. [video]

History’s greatest conspiracy theories.

Vizify + Twitter = Tweetsheet.

How music travels. [animated chart]

Chihuahua Rescue.

My gay male readers say I don’t post enough beefcake. This should shut you up.

Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc.

Sticky thing.

†.

Tired of being fat & ugly?

Janet Mogwai Jackson.

What are some examples of fairytale romanticism? (…)

There is only one ideal partner for me. AKA: Soulmates. This belief is a great way to turn yourself into a neurotic mess by 35. There are many compatible relationship partners for someone out in the world. (…)

(…)

If you’re in love, you’ll “just know.” OR Love at first sight. Some singletons are waiting to be hit over the head with love as soon as they see their soulmate. For some, only an instant blazing fire of emotion will do. These people miss potential compatible relationship partners simply because their first meeting didn’t automatically create this sensation.

{ eHarmony | Continue reading }

A leading theory of romantic love is that it functions to make one feel committed to one’s beloved, as well as to signal this commitment to the beloved (Frank, 1988). Because women tend to be skeptical of men’s commitment, this view entails that men may have evolved to fall in love first, in order to show their commitment to women.

Using a sample of online participants of a broad range of ages, this study tested this sex difference and several related individual difference hypotheses concerning the ease of falling in love. There was mixed evidence for sex differences: only some measures indicated that men are generally more love-prone than are women. We also found that men were more prone to falling in love if they tended to overestimate women’s sexual interest and highly valued physical attractiveness in potential partners. Women were more prone to falling in love if they had a stronger sex drive.

{ Evolutionary Psychology | Continue reading | PDF }

photo { Richard Avedon }

A new study shows that the simple act of walking through a doorway creates a new memory episode. (…) Memory performance was poorer after traveling through an open doorway, compared with covering the same distance within the same room.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

Since September 7, .XXX domains are for sale. (That is, if you own a porn site or a trademark to protect – the rest of us have to wait till December 6 and hope nobody scoops our name first).

But the arrival of .XXX begs the question: How much of the internet is actually for porn? (…) In 2010, out of the million most popular (most trafficked) websites in the world, 42,337 were sex-related sites. That’s about 4% of sites.

{ Forbes | Continue reading }

photo { Roger Moore as James Bond, with Barbara Bach as Agent XXX, aka Major Anya Amasova }

In the 1950s, in the midst of what came to be known as the Economic Miracle, West Germany was positively deluged with other wonders: mysterious healings, mystical visions, rumors of the end of the world, and stories of divine and devilish interventions in ordinary lives. Scores of citizens of the Federal Republic (as well as Swiss, Austrians, and others from neighboring countries) set off on pilgrimages to see the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and hosts of angels, after they began appearing to a group of children in the southern German village of Heroldsbach in late 1949. Hundreds of thousands more journeyed from one end of the Republic to the other in the hopes of meeting a wildly popular faith healer, Bruno Gröning, who, some said, healed illness by banishing demons. Still others availed themselves of the skills of local exorcists in an effort to remove evil spirits from their bodies and minds. There also appears to have been an eruption of witchcraft accusations—neighbor accusing neighbor of being in league with the devil—accompanied by a corresponding upsurge in demand for the services of un-bewitchers (Hexenbanner). In short, the 1950s was a time palpably suffused with the presence of good and evil, the divine and the demonic, and in which the supernatural played a considerable role in the lives of many people.

Scholars across a variety of disciplines have raised important questions about the epistemological and methodological capacities of the social sciences to capture the lived reality of otherworldly encounters, past and present. (…)

Why do supernatural experiences matter for history?

{ Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture | Continue reading }

artwork { Andy Warhol, One multicolored Marylin, 1979 | acrylic and silkscreen on canvas }

Reductio ad absurdum and slippery slope: Two sides of the same coin? (…)

The overall argument of Hobbes’s Leviathan is a classic example that arguably lends itself to analysis via both of the two argument forms. The general outline of Hobbes’s argument is as follows: to prove that government is necessary, Hobbes assumes the opposite—suppose that we have a state of no government, what he calls a “state of nature.” Hobbes then argues that this situation entails absurdities, or consequences that no reasonable person would find tolerable. In Hobbes’s words, it would be a “constant state of war, of one with all.” (…)

Hobbes’s argument again seems clearly to be understandable as possessing the form of a reductio ad absurdum. (…)

If Hobbes is making a nominalist argument, wherein the conclusions reached are reached through conceptual analysis, one might well be prepared to concede that the argument is of the reductio ad absurdum form. But if, on the other hand, the argument is conceived to be making claims about the actual world and events that would/will/might happen therein, the argument can only be conceived of as offering an account of a slippery slope, and, in fact, one in which the slip could be stopped.

{ Annales Philosophici | Continue reading | PDF }

Your therapist is probably giving you multiple personality disorder.

Oh sure, he’s going to deny it. He will say you obviously had some problems to begin with, and that he just uncovered the form they’re taking and their source. And there you will be, disassociated into several different personalities. People you don’t know will greet you with names you don’t recognize. You’ll find notes around your apartment written in unfamiliar handwriting. You’ll walk into hotel rooms without pants (every person who has ever had multiple personality disorder has always had one who was a slut).



And maybe by the end of it you will remember seeing your father drink the blood of a newborn baby. So strange that you had forgotten something like that for the last twenty years, you think it would be a pretty memorable event. Or being raped by your brother. Never mind the fact that you never had a brother, you are sure it happened. And your therapist will say, Aha! That is why you are such a mess, can’t keep a boyfriend or a job for more than six weeks, that is why you dread going home for Christmas. It’s because you remember your parents donning black robes and smearing the blood of a virgin all over your face before they let their friends have their way with you on a Satanic altar. That must be it.



Oh, and that will be $250, sweetie. You can leave the check with the receptionist.



Back in the 1980s, multiple personality disorder was a thing. The thing. You don’t hear so much about it today; it’s like we all woke up one day and thought, right, probably not possible after all, let’s move on. But when MPD was hot, it wasn’t just something to be burdened with, a problem to be overcome: It was something to be proud of. (…)

At the base of this disorder was abuse. Abuse so intense and dramatic that it was wiped from victims’ memory but still shattered their psyches. (…) And so here we have a collection of strange girls who had been through some shit.

{ The Smart Set | Continue reading }

photo { Miss Aniela }

We have the rise of the two-earner household and so previously if you just had the head of household working, and the head of household lost his job, it was less of an issue to move. Now if you have both members of the couple working and one of them loses their job, it’s very problematic to try to locate and try to find a better opportunity for both people. That’s one of the things that’s sort of been supporting large cities. If you look at what the data says–there’s been kind of a lot of work on this in the past two decades–it suggests, especially in recent decades, density has become quite important for improving productivity. (…) When a particular industry has a lot of participants in one geographical location, the whole industry gets better. It’s not just that there’s more competition, although that’s part of it, but that there’s a lot of cross-pollination of ideas between the participants, new spin-offs get started; so many aspects of that process take place in Silicon Valley, one of the examples you use, Boston, and other places like that; or in New York, the finance sector–some of them not so healthy–but a lot of innovations taking place that are harder to take place in geographically disparate locations. (…)

Places like New York, Boston, Washington, the Bay area–these are places that have been incredibly economically successful over the last ten years, and I think a lot of that is due to the way a lot of new technology has supported the high levels of human capital that they have. Made those places more productive. What’s striking is that this economic success, growth in wages, employment, to some extent, has not translated into a lot of population growth. In fact, quite the opposite. There has been some population growth there but most of that is due to natural increase or immigration. (…)

There’s been some interesting research on this lately which is that essentially there was no surplus labor in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s. Pretty low unemployment rate, like 2-3%. That was great for the workers who could afford to be there. Salaries were skyrocketing. But it was very difficult to attract new people. You wonder why, if salaries are going up so much, why wouldn’t people just be flooding into this market and taking advantage of that; and that’s because housing prices were growing even faster than compensation. So even as the tech industry was booming, people were leaving Silicon Valley. I think what’s interesting about that is that it put a chill on entrepreneurship; made it very lucrative to stay at a place that was established, to keep piling up stock options. It was much better to be a salaried worker than to be self-employed, so the rate of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley at this point was much lower than the national average. You have a place that’s producing some of the best ideas; it’s a center for innovation; and it’s important that we start new businesses in the center of innovation–that’s what the research tells us. And yet it was very unattractive to start a new business at that point because the labor market was so tight, thanks to the tightness of the housing market.

{ Ryan Avent/EconTalk | Continue reading }

What is the universal edibility test?

G­etting lost or stranded in the wilderness is serious business, and ­you need to make sound decisions to give yourself the best chance at survival. (…) Going without food will leave you weak and apt to make poor decisions, which could endanger your life. Being able to identify edible plants in the wilderness is a good skill to have under your belt.

The problem is, there are more than 700 varieties of poisonous plant in the United States and Canada alone, so unless you have a book that clearly identifies edible species, it’s nearly impossible to determine whether or not a plant will make you sick with absolute certainty. (…)

The universal edibility test requires breaking down the parts of a plant and testing them individually over a period of 24 hours. (…)

Find something near you that’s growing in abundance. To prepare for the test, don’t eat or drink anything but water for at least eight hours beforehand.

Separate - Because only some parts of the plant may be edible, separate it into its five basic parts. These are the leaves, roots, stems, buds and flowers. There may not be buds or flowers. Check out the parts for worms or insects — you want a clean and fresh plant. Evidence of parasites or worms is a good sign that it’s rotting. If you find them, discard the plant and get another of the same variety or choose a different one.

Contact - First you need to perform a contact test. If it’s not good for your skin, it’s not good for your belly. Crush only one of the plant parts and rub it on the inside of your wrist or elbow for 15 minutes. Now wait for eight hours. If you have a reaction at the point of contact, then you don’t want to continue with this part of the plant. A burning sensation, redness, welts and bumps are all bad signs. While you wait, you can drink water, but don’t eat anything. If there is no topical reaction after eight hours, move along to the next step.

Cook - Some toxic plants become edible after they’re boiled. (…) Once you’ve boiled it, or if you’re going raw, take the plant part and hold it to your lip for three minutes. (…)

Taste - Pop the same part in your mouth and hold it on your tongue for another 15 minutes. If you experience anything unpleasant, spit it out and wash your mouth with water. (…)

If you’ve made it this far through the test, then you’re well on your way to determining if part of the plant is edible. But before you can start wolfing down that root, stem or flower, there are a few more steps to the universal edibility test: Chew, Swallow and Chow.

{ How Stuff Works | Continue reading }

[In Time, 2011, directed by Andrew Niccol.]

Time is money: Everyone is genetically engineered to stop aging at 25; after that, people will live for only one more year unless they can gain access to more hours, days, weeks, etc. A cup of coffee costs four minutes, lunch at an upscale restaurant eight-and-a-half weeks. The distribution of wealth is about as lopsided as it is today, with the richest having at least a century remaining and the poorest surviving minute to minute. Each individual’s value is imprinted on the forearm as a clock, a string of 13 neon-green digits that suggests a cross between a concentration camp tattoo and a rave glow stick.

{ Village Voice | Overcoming Bias }

artwork { Charles Dana Gibson, Bedtime Story }

By consuming fewer calories, aging can be slowed down and the development of age-related diseases such as cancer and type 2 diabetes can be delayed. The earlier calorie intake is reduced, the greater the effect.

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have now identified one of the enzymes that hold the key to the aging process.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

related { She was found dead that afternoon; poisoned by water. From salami to soda pop: what does “toxic” really mean?