Murakami Haruki and the Naturalization of Modernity

Walter Benjamin famously portrayed the shock sensation as the cause of a "heightening of consciousness" in modernity, a process which in turn causes the disintegration of the "aura" and the suffocation of "experience" under the "protective shield" of consciousness. When applied to the cultural space of Murakami Haruki's novels a discrepancy comes into view that calls for sociological elucidation. Here modernity is a "naturalized" space characterized by tranquillity and stillness, a low consciousness, and a fusion of reification with re-enchantment. This naturalization is made possible by a process of privatization whereby libidinal energy becomes transferred from objective human relations to the interior of the self. Murakami struggles with the dilemma of how to affirm naturalization while counteracting privatization. While the prime cultural contradiction according to Benjamin was the conflict between "the aura" and the heightening of consciousness, in the naturalized modernity portrayed by Murakami another contradiction emerges which revolves around the conflict between painless solitude and the struggle to regain auratic human relations.     

本雅明眼中机械复制时代的文艺审美特征

20世纪初是继19世纪资本主义高速发展后西方文艺从古典向现代递变的时期，此期的文艺作品生产者、文艺作品以及文艺作品接受者较前代有了极大的转变。本雅明目睹了这种变化，并对各种文艺现象进行研究，提出了此期文艺审美的特征。     

本杰明视角下译者地位的重构

翻译中存在一个令人尴尬的现象:译者处于文化的边缘地位。本杰明在《译者的任务》一文中提出了"纯语言"观,"纯语言"观解构了翻译的"忠实"神话,重构了译者的地位。德曼和德里达对《译者的任务》作过不同的阐释,德曼的解释是:译者可以使原文"再生",译文的失败来自语言功能的失败;德里达揭示了译者是原文的"保护者"的观点。翻译是一个译者在不同时空下进行语言转换的行为,译者不是一个无助的完全被动的工具,译者不可能做到绝对地"忠实",译者的使命是促进不同语言和文化的互补与融合。     

关于阿多诺与本雅明复制艺术功能之争

随着20世纪新兴科学技术尤其是机械复制技术不断渗入艺术领域,艺术的生产和接受都呈现出了新的形式和特征。对于这一转型所引起的艺术功能的变化,阿多诺从文化工业的意识形态理论出发,指出机械复制艺术完全为资本逻辑所控制,其功能也随之由原来的独立批判沦落为资本主义的欺骗与整合;本雅明则敏锐地捕捉了机械复制技术所蕴含的革命性与创造性,期望通过“艺术的政治化”来实现新型艺术的颠覆功能。阿多诺与本雅明的观点针锋相对,但理论宗旨和命运又可谓殊途同归。两人的理论交锋奠定了其后西方马克思主义文化研究的视域与平台,同时也揭示了马克思主义的革命和解放理论所面临的理论困境和现实挑战。     

物理常数与物理学的发展及其哲学思考

本文探讨了物理常数与物理学发展的关系及物理常数蕴藏者的哲学思想.     

It gets better ... all in good time: messianic rhetoric and a political theology of social control

Working from Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History,” this essay examines the recent interest in the messianic and messianicity in continental philosophy. To ground its discussion, the essay analyzes two recent cultural examples of messianic rhetoric – Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns and Dan Savage’s 2010 It Gets Better Project, in order to explore hidden theological dimensions of recent cultural and political discourse in the US. The essay argues that both examples showcase a reliance on the language of the messianic promise as a means of creating a docile public focused on imagined future liberation rather than a critical confrontation of the often violent and disturbing realities of the now. At the same time that the essay problematizes messianic rhetoric’s connection to deeply entrenched narratives of “progress,” the essay also works to posit alternative visions of the messianic and to question whether it is possible to redefine the concept of messianism without relying on a narrative of progress which is outdated, irresponsible, and likely violent. In the end, the essay explores how the language of queer theory, with its resistance to traditional logics of future-oriented (re)production, might provide a useful vocabulary for such a reimagining of the messianic.     

A statistic to check model adequacy in time series

A simple statistic is suggested to examine if the assumptions on variances in a fitted time series model is valid or not. The properties of the statistic are discussed and examples are considered.     

Time-of-Day Electricity Consumption Response to Temperature and the Ownership of Air Conditioning Appliances

This article is concerned with the endogeneity of air conditioning appliance ownership in the consumption of electricity by time of day (TOD). Both TOD consumption and air conditioning appliance ownership depend on temperature level and on household responsiveness to temperature variation, as well as on other measured household characteristics. The article presents an appropriate econometric methodology and applies it to obtain estimates and perform tests based on data from Southern California Edison's Residential TOD Pricing Experiment. The authors emphasize the implications for estimated consumption price elasticities.     

Estimation of actuarial quantities at fractional ages with Kriging

ABSTRACT

Life tables used in life insurance are often calibrated to show the survival function of the age of death distribution at exact integer ages. Actuaries usually make fractional age assumptions (FAAs) when having to value payments that are not restricted to integer ages. Traditional FAAs have the advantage of simplicity but cannot guarantee to capture precisely the real trends of the survival functions and sometimes even result in a non intuitive overall shape of the force of mortality. In fact, an FAA is an interpolation between integer age values which are accepted as given. In this article, we introduce Kriging model, which is widely used as a metamodel for expensive simulations, to fit the survival function at integer ages, and furthermore use the precisely constructed survival function to build the force of mortality and the life expectancy. The experimental results obtained from a simulated life table (Makehamized life table) and two “real” life tables (the Chinese and US life tables) show that these actuarial quantities (survival function, force of mortality, and life expectancy) presented by Kriging model are much more accurate than those presented by commonly-used FAAs: the uniform distribution of death (UDD) assumption, the constant force assumption, and the Balducci assumption.     

本雅明美学思想的内在张力

艺术生产理论是本雅明美学思想的核心,充满着多维性和矛盾性。本雅明既留恋传统艺术营造的诗意境地,又对以技术为基础的现代艺术持欢迎态度,因而其思想中技术和灵韵、震惊和经验、神学救赎和政治等内容并行不悖地存在着,使读者在"诗意的怀旧"与"技术的乐观"中感受其理论的强烈辐射,这显示了本雅明思想的巨大张力。