by Colin Eatock

What's up with my friends on Facebook these days? Let's have a look.

One of my friends recently starred in a TedX video. Another friend was just interviewed by the BBC. Another just got tenure at the college where she teaches. Yet another is directing a theatrical piece that's about to open. And a friend of a friend published a short story about a cat in Paris.

These and other similar announcements pop up in my newsfeed on a daily basis. Thanks to Facebook, I know that I have friends who wear only the most fashionable clothes, friends who make scrumptious pies and cakes, friends with perfect marriages, and friends who go on splendid vacations – with the photos to prove it.

All of these informative (if not exactly helpful) nuggets of knowledge can be described with one simple word: boasting. Moreover, there's nothing sly, discreet or tangential about this kind of boasting – it's unfettered, undisguised and unapologetic. It's a kind of boasting doesn't ask permission to speak, and doesn't wonder if anyone is interested in what it has to say. It's so pervasive that Facebook should be renamed “Boastbook.”

Yet not so long ago in North America (and especially in Canada, where I live) boasting was considered a very bad thing. Boasting used to be vain and egotistical. Boasting was tedious and insufferable to others. Boasting was pathetic, because it was rooted in some kind of deep-seated insecurity complex. Boasting was also a stupid thing to do because it so often achieved the opposite of its goal: damaging, rather than enhancing, the boaster's social stature.

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by Gerald Dworkin

There is a story about the philosopher Nuel Belnap who collapsed in his classroom. After a period of time, having recovered, he returned to the classroom and began “As I was saying…” It has been several years since my last blog. My absence is partly due to my having had heart surgery and partly due to trying to finish several philosophical projects. Since both were successful, I return to the fold.

Readers with a long memory will remember two pieces Short Takes and More (and longer) Short Takes. They were excerpts from a commonplace book on philosophical humor– and lots of short, serious stuff– that I had been collecting for many years. One of my projects was to finish (or rather just stop collecting) this book. It now has been published as an e-book on Amazon and other sites. It is called Philosophy: A Commonplace Book.

A few weeks after the book came out, and with no causal relation, a post on the website Reddit called “What’s the most intellectual joke you know?” went viral. Since intellectual does not equate to philosophical, the majority of the jokes are of the “a mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer” type. But there are some good philosophical ones as well.

“Is it getting solipsistic in here, or is it just me?”

“I’m a linguist. So I like ambiguity more than most people.”

“According to Freud, what comes between fear and sex? Fünf.”

“This sentence contains exactly threee erors.”

“Every word in this sentence is a gross misspelling of the word “tomato.” –Doug Hofstadter”

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by Leanne Ogasawara

From Xia to Shang
And from Shang to Zhou….

You know the story: Nine bronze tripods– cast back in the mists of great antiquity– were treasured by ancient Chinese Kings as a symbol of their right to rule.

Passed down from dynasty to dynasty– for nearly 2,000 years (or so the story goes) until the time when the First Emperor, Shihuangdi, finally toppled the last Zhou King– and rather than see their transfer to Shihuangdi’s new dynasty– the last Chu King flung the nine bronzes forever into the River Si

(English wikipedia suggests it was the Qin king; Japanese wikipedia has it as the Qin king who did the flinging).

Given their symbolic significance, Shihuangdi actively attempted to dredge up the sacred bronzes from the river, but it was to no avail; and scholars of later dynasties saw this as further evidence of the lack of moral virtue of the First Emperor.

There is a well known story about these matters, which supposedly took place at the start of the Eastern Zhou Period (770-256 BC). Severely weakened by external and internal threats, the Zhou kings came to rule in name only. Although the Zhou dynasty was the acknowledged recipient of the Mandate of Heaven and therefore possessor of the Nine Tripods, the real political power was held by the kings and generals of various surrounding kingdoms, chiefly those of the Qin, Qi, Chu, Wei and Yan.

The Chu were especially troublesome, and after some showy military displays near the Zhou capital of Luoyang, the worried Zhou king dispatched his trusty Minister, Wáng-sūn Mǎn (王孫満), to negotiate for peaceful relations with their southern Chu neighbors.

Arriving at the military camp outside the capital, the belligerent Lord of Chu immediately asked Minister Wang about the size and weight of the Nine Tripods (問鼎之輕重)– thereby implying that with their transfer to the House of Chu, the Mandate of Heaven would also be transferred to Chu.

Minister Wang–always quick of wit– sharply responded that unless it could be shown that the Will of Heaven had in fact changed, then it was forbidden to inquire after the weight of the tripods. He then went on to explain that the actual weight of the tripods was beside the point–for in fact, their weight corresponded directly to the virtue of the king who had them in his possession; that is, if the ruler truly held the Mandate of Heaven then the tripods would be immovably heavy. However, should a ruler lack virtue, the tripods would become weightless and therefore meaningless as a political and psychological symbol.

He then drove in his point: The tripods do not matter, virtue does.

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That's It

I’d mowed and cut and weeded
tips of fingers inked with earth

I’d heard our cardinal calling
I’d heard our engines down the valley groaning
coming up, distant, moaning

hands between dry stems of garlic moving,
like my mother kneeling, devout, but not in church

I’d yanked contentious weeds, insisting,
grabbing, pulling —this was how I worked:
so much sweat I wore a perspiration shirt

I’d quit and picked my tools up:
shovel rake— and shut the hose off
at the door I took my boots off
smacked them sole to sole to knock the mud off
and turned to see your garden blazing
with inner light in daylight failing
I cracked a beer and sat— amazing!

I watched your garden’s still fires burning
it’s orange lilies burning
its incandescent red & purple gladiolus burning
its spiky flush of bee balm burning
rose campion bursting in the burning
sparking coral bell and yellow lupine burning
moonbeam coreopsis burning

all in all on still all, all lit
until the mountain’s shadow eased the fire’s edge off
as petal embers in its dying spit
as if some hand had turned a dimmer of the sun
to gently cauterized the done
to douse the blaze
to ease the day off
to say, that's it

by Jim Culleny
7/25/13
from Blink

by Maniza Naqvi

Every morning on my way to work, I walk past dead Washingtonians. High and mighty on their pedestals: My morning route has me heading towards the backs of statues of dead men on dead horses—spurs, and swords and boots and saddles. Cast in iron, the backs of dead Generals and horses asses, as if leading a charge towards the White House. Major General John A. Logan in the middle of Logan Circle which is now mainly a dog park for pampered pets to be brought out to poop here; Major General George Henry Thomas in the middle of Thomas Circle again a location for pooping pooches and then Major General James B. McPherson in the middle of McPherson Square the location of the memory of the evicted Occupy Movement's Washington chapter and a perennial home to mainly homeless veterans.

Further on just before the White House, I pass the Ministry of War—- rather, the Department of War Veterans and I enter into the peaceful tree lined beauty of a garden. This is Lafayette Park just outside the White House. Here too, there are more statues—not of artists or poets or writers or singers, nor of doctors, teachers, lawyers, laborers, railway engineers no—not even of Bankers. No, this variety just passes through here, or comes to click their cameras or hold up protest signs. No, here, the statues are of still more Generals posed with plenty of weapons: Brigadier General (US) Thaddeus Kosciuszko at the northeast corner of Lafayette Park, the inscription on his monument, shriek worthy in itself reads, “Freedom shrieked when he fell.” Major General (US) Marquis de Lafayette's statue sits atop a pedestal on the South east corner, Major General (US) Wilhelm von Steuben's on the Northwest corner and General Comte de Rochambeau's at the Southwest corner.

In Lafayette Park and centered right across from the White House's front entrance door lives the statue of Andrew Jackson. The seventh President of the United States who had also been a General. One morning as I passed by, I came across the typical crowd of high school students with their teacher staring up at the statue of Andrew Jackson depicted seated on a horse whose forelegs are up in the air. From the quick passing glances at the statue each day, I had the impression that Jackson was looking towards the White House tipping his hat, the whole posture that of a rakish blackguard taking leave of his mistress. When I was the age of these school children, I had a crush on Andrew Jackson—a portrait of him, in my history text book, depicted him as having a high forehead, beautiful swept back mane of hair wearing a long leather coat and high riding boots, a scar in battle or a barroom fight and a little story about scandals including a duel over a mistress. Well that did me in. Now these school children gathered at the base of the statue looked up at him as their teacher asked them if they knew whose statue this was. As I continued on my way I heard her say—”That's right, Andrew Jackson.” The kids evidently literate, were able to read the plaque, “He was a war hero—a General before he was President of the United States.” She repeated, it “He was a war hero before he was President.” This was the lesson that she was teaching these young minds. I grimaced and glanced towards the White House as I hurried on towards my office. For me he is Andrew Jackson, the good looking President, the dueling, whoring, swashbuckling, tall, high forehead long haired, long leather coat, boots with spurs President who I had a crush on when I was just a child and reading up on American history.

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by Sarah Firisen

As a woman, I know so much pain
Not the least pre-menstrual weight gain
Menopause is no fun
Birthing pain can quite stun
And we do it and rarely complain

Men get to glide right through life
A failed erection the worst of their strife
We have the right to refuse
But they still get to choose
When it's time to be husband and wife

Men get paid more, the ceiling's still glass
I'm still judged on the size of my ass
My gray hair is old
They're distinguished they're told
And they're still the world's governing class

But through all this we just grin and bear
Even though lots in life don't compare
But enough is enough
Men, we women don't bluff
What is broken it's time to repair

The control of my body is mine
Not yours or some being divine
Some graying white men
Just won't tell me when
My uterus is no longer mine

So back off, Wendy Davis was right
Should we all filibuster all night?
Now what will it take
For all women to wake
And to finally take on this fight?

For the women of Texas to say
“Rick Perry get out of my way”
It's not your choice, it's mine
And I'll make it just fine
We're all done with this male power play

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

Heat is eerie: lipsticks left unrefrigerated melt into deformity, ice cream liquefies and renders the scoop useless; fruit and flower stalls carry the smell of that peculiar cusp between ripe and rotten.

Then rain comes, licking the sky green; the veil between the mysteries and the sun-weary, bleached and hardened world dissolves away, becoming thin as a glassy insect wing. A dusty estrangement washes out, newly woven silken webs everywhere; meditation is possible again.

Clarity makes me humble: I’m smaller than a melon seed, slighter than a fishbone. I’m the moisture in the air and the movement in antennae; I’m filament and feelers, the quiver within the quiver, the wet crease in the smallest leaves. I’m also a rusty door hinge, static on television, soaked clothesline, scurrying lizard, the moving minute hand on the timepiece that is suddenly ticking louder; Rain changes the acoustics entirely— each syllable, sob, twitter, footfall, turning of a knob, is distinct. The airwaves have cleared and the cosmic channels open up.

I watch the raindrops make rings on the surface of a mossy cistern: water bangles! I imagine the continuously disappearing rain bangles on my wrists. Leaves float, throats are stirred into singing: a frog’s croaking has a timbre of energy today, as if it is charging the earth in its deep, steady way.

Birdsong becomes an articulation in a foreign tongue I long to translate and memorize. I’m filled with a peaceful attentiveness. I listen like just another creature, to the sound of rain and the rustling and chirping in response. It occurs to me that the overpowering heat of summer hurts every sparrow, toad and tree as much as it hurts us. It also occurs to me that the heat has a maddening effect—we build rage, boil over, our spirits wilt, our vision blurs as if in sweat, our demons hover incessantly; we lose focus of the essence. It is a defeat of the soul because the body is under an immense attack.

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HALLUCINATIONS

— for Richard Howard

The servants never listen to me
Only when the new wife nods
They run around like rats
To fetch the thermos

There is poison in the spring water
Chanel!
A present from my son
In America — the wind

Carried my message
After all
Thieves
Under my bed

I want latches on my door
And a mirror
The old one shattered
When the nail

Gave way
I hang my shawl on the wall
Dried roses upside down
My room not swept for six days

No water to
dunk clothes
My daughter will clean
When she visits

The door is bolted
From outside
If the house catches fire who will
Open it?

Will I burn alive?
The servant's outhouse
Turns my stomach
A pane is broken

I'll spray Chanel!
My grandson from his grave
Come to visit
He is with his great-grandfather

They both received transfusions
My husband says I don't need a doctor
But that doesn't keep his new wife
From going to Combined Hospital

I am still the head of this household
O Wind
Tell my son in America
The dollars he sends

The new wife steals
Tell him I need a car
To buy roses
At Shalimar

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by Liam Heneghan

Male Torso (Wikipedia)

Every year, for a number of years, I received a letter about my body from a man who was neither a family member, nor an especially intimate friend. Invariably they started: “Dear Liam, thank you for your recent visit. I am happy to confirm that you are largely in a healthy condition.” The earliest of these letters was handwritten with a fountain pen, as if to confirm that, though not physically remarkable, I was nevertheless, in his eyes, a very special fellow.

The greetings and general summary thus dispatched, he would describe my physical condition meticulously. I was taller, by an inch, back then apparently. Perhaps I am not physical shriveling and merely relaxed now and less inclined to stretch to impress. On the other hand, I was less weighty back then, and having always had an ability to convert food into more me, I have slowly, and incrementally, squeezed out more Liam, becoming a shorter, heavier version of myself.

My correspondent recorded his observations on my pulse, and noted my blood pressure which was, in the old classification at least, high normal. Today, I understand, these number would be regarded with an arched eyebrow. Consolingly he informed me that “we’ll keep an eye on it.”

There was always in these letters some ominous tones, as if to say that though everything looked normal, potential horrors lurked around the corner. The price: eternal vigilance in matters of the flesh. My liver, for instance, didn’t seem enlarged. He reiterated my self-reported alcohol consumption. “You consume, you say, no more than two drinks a day.” I detected in this a whiff of disbelief, as if his intuition over-ruled both the evidence of his palpations and his ears.

His was not an especially expansive vocabulary. Once he described as “loose” both my stools and my testicles. The former condition I may have mentioned to him; the latter condition he detected for himself after each had descended like imperfect plover’s eggs into the grabby nest of his latexed hand. I coughed. By the mysteries of internal plumping something softly leapt within. I was not herniated.

Fathers should tell their sons what is involved in prostate exams. I swear I had no idea, though the terse preparatory directions make it clear. I was living in Georgia when first this test was administer to me.“This might make you tearful..”, my doctor drawled.

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by Misha Lepetic

“Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp
collectors compose the backbone of society.”
~ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

As the Outlaw Edward Snowden continues to languish in the transit lounge of the Sheremetyovo International Airport, I am struck by the overall nonchalance with which the revelations of comprehensive NSA-sponsored surveillance have been received. Obviously, it is still early days, but for the moment the broad-brush recording of vast amounts of telecommunications and social media information has not spurred any marches on Washington, the Googleplex or anywhere else for that matter. Let's look back on a little history and see why this relaxed attitude might be even more justified than we suspect.

One way to begin is by situating Snowden in his chosen brotherhood of US intelligence whistleblowers. In saying that he has been waiting for someone like Snowden for 40 years, Daniel Ellsberg plays John the Baptist to Snowden's – well, you get it. But Ellsberg's outing of what became the Pentagon Papers and Snowden's NSA reveal are extraordinarily different, not just in terms of the contents, but also in terms of each man's professional status, and the larger social context in which the leaks occurred. As Garance Franke-Ruta wrote on The Atlantic's website, Ellsberg was about as inside as an insider could be, whereas Snowden is the consummate outsider. Ellsberg was himself the author of swathes of the report that was a distillation of everything that the Pentagon needed to know about its own war, whereas Snowden – well, aside from a handful of documents, we still don't really know what he's got on those four laptops, although Glenn Greenwald, Snowden's chosen conduit, just might. Ellsberg knew that the stakes involved a country that was at war and – most crucially – was subjecting its population to a draft, while Snowden's revelations are of a decidedly more ambiguous variety, involving things that we use every day, that seem to be friendly, convenient (if not essential), and free. Finally, Ellsberg remained in the US, as Franke-Ruta puts it, “a powerful insider joining his conscience to an existing upswell in public opinion,” while Snowden is stuck playing Victor Navorski, with little chance of Catherine Zeta-Jones showing up in a stewardess outfit any time soon.

There is, however, an interesting thread that makes its way across all of these disparities. I would like to call it a matter of effort, and the difference that effort makes. In fact, I will further argue that the progress of technology has led to a progressive dissipation of the value of effort, and that in turn leads to a proportionate dilution of the stakes that we think we are talking about.

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by Rishidev Chaudhuri

The disciplined practice of being aware of bodily sensations is common to a number of meditative and psychological techniques, ranging from mindfulness meditation to the various species of humanistic psychology (especially those influenced by Wilhem Reich). Here's an example from Perls, Hefferline and Goodman's book “Gestalt Therapy”:

Concentrate on your `body' sensation as a whole. Let your attention wander through every part of your body. How much of yourself can you feel? To what degree and with what accuracy and clarity does your body—and thus you—exist? Notice pains, aches and twinges ordinarily ignored. What muscular tensions can you feel? Attending to them, permit them to continue and do not attempt prematurely to relax them. Try to shape their precise limits. Notice your skin sensations. Can you feel your body as a whole? Can you feel where your head is in relation to your torso? Where are your genitals? Where is your chest? Your limbs?

Walk, talk, or sit down; be aware of the proprioceptive details without in any way interfering with them. As you sit or lie comfortably, aware of different body-sensations and motions (breathing, clutching, contracting the stomach, etc.), see if you can notice any combinations or structures—things that seem to go together and form a pattern—among the various tensions, aches and sensations. Notice that frequently you stop breathing and hold your breath. Do any tensions in the arm or fingers or contractions of the stomach and genitals seem to go with this? Or is there a relationships between holding your breath and straining your ears? Or between holding your breath and certain skin sensations? What combinations can you discover?

Similar exercises exist in Buddhist meditations under the framework of mindfulness of the body (considered one of the four foundations of mindfulness), and in yogic exercises. It's intriguing to try to figure out what these techniques are doing, why awareness of bodily configurations should appear in practices that are aimed at insight into the nature of one's thought and cognitive life, and whether the justification for these practices can be usefully translated into some sort of scientific framework (or at least a language that is friendly to what we know of the brain and the biology).

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Sleep

Between twilight and dawn
a breach in something

The world stops, but for barely intelligible flashbacks
which Dylan wrote songs about, as many poets have

episodes of turns on earth in a collapse of reason
with juxtapositions that delight
or rip the fabric of everyday distraction

In that space Nothing mounts his void
a cowboy on a hyphen regardless of tock or tick
he whirls a lasso cipher round his head
leading his posse of fear & mirth
chasing unherdable cats across a crevasse
like the one that divides forever’s deaths & births

behind night’s scenes galloping
galloping from last to first

.
by Jim Culleny
7/14/13

by Carol A Westbrook

The late Kingsley Amis, a noted authority on drink and a beer-lover himself, acknowledged that “the best wine is much better than the best beer,” but also pointed out that “wine is a lot of trouble, requiring energy and forethought.” He might be pleased today to find that beer, which requires a lot less trouble, has finally come into its own.

Not long ago, beer was considered to be an uninspired, bitter-tasting beverage that was drunk in large amounts by fraternity boys or construction workers. Wine was preferred among intellectuals, the educated, and the true gourmet. We struggled to learn enough about wine so as not to embarrass ourselves when presented with a wine list. And any self-made wine expert–a wine snob–was held in high regard. But the increasing popularity of craft beer means it is now appearing on the menus of even the most discerning restaurants, because it is a delightfully tasty, complex beverage that pairs well with food. So now, in addition to being able to navigate a wine list, we must learn to read a beer list as well.

Fortunately, it's easy to master craft beer–in part because there are only a limited number of beer styles and breweries for you to remember. Furthermore, even the most posh menu will feature only a short selection of beers, and most are inexpensive, in contrast to dozens of expensive wines. If you follow a few simple rules you can quickly reach point where you can hold your own with a beer list–or at least bluff your way through it. With a little effort you can become recognized by your friends as one who knows craft beer, can select the best brands, and can wax elequent about breweries and beer trivia. Yes, you can become a beer snob.

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by Mara Jebsen

The play I am writing has its own totem animal, an elephant. The characters in this play, who are the inmates of my imagination, do not know what to make of this elephant, and neither do I, their god.

For months, it did little more than lift and drop its trunk.

It stands to the left in the corner of my dreams, taking the vertical space available. It is tall.

I see it from below.

I see its streaked tusks rising above me as a scythe, and its thick ankles with their leathery drapes and odd toenails stand flat in a pile of elephant-colored dirt.

It knows what one cannot. It thinks of matters one cannot think of. It is old, and remembers specific things that happened before I was born—crimes and sex between animals and people of our grandparents’ age, and sunsets over now-unrecognizable landscapes, and beautiful things, and sad ones. It has lots of memories that do not belong to us, but which pertain to us. Its the keeper of the unspeakable.

For a while, I thought the teeth were important. I haven’t ruled it out. There is a tiny sculpture of a mammoth—one of the first sculptures ever made by what we call a man— carved of mammoth tusk. It strikes me as cruel to make the image of a thing out of its own teeth. I wouldn’t think to kill a man, and then carve little men out of his own bones, I hope.

But perhaps the mammoth died of natural causes? I suppose it is the circumstances of the death of the animal that determine whether the carving of its teeth into a representation of itself a cruel thing, or simply a ‘natural’ act of remembering.

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by Ruchira Paul

Ruchira Paul

We don't have accurate standards for measuring smell. No yard stick like the wavelength of light, nor any criterion like scale, pitch or timbre that measure sound, exists for odor perception. We don't even have very good words to describe smells. Yet like sight and sound our sense of smell is a powerful component of our experience and memory.

The exact mechanism of olfaction is still being debated. Odors are defined by our reaction to them. Adjectives like overpowering, fruity, spicy, pungent, appetizing, stale, putrid etc. are used to describe smells. We have formulaic expressions such as bouquet, aroma, fragrance or stench which can encompass a whole host of different smells, unlike a precise word like “blue.” The best we can do sometimes is to compare a new smell to another familiar one. We resort to evocative similes such as “the restaurant had a dank odor like a musty cellar,” “her hair smelt of green apples,” “he reeked of alcohol and tobacco,” or “the garbage is stinking of rotten eggs.” We use abstract concepts for imagined odors – a smell like death, the acrid smell of fear, smelling victory. Impossible though it may be to put in words, we are constantly reacting to our environment through our sense of smell. Recording an odor in the brain can also trigger other physiological reactions – increase or decrease in appetite, nausea, feeling of cleanliness, relaxation, sexual arousal. We even smell danger. In the case of fire we often smell it burning before we see its light or feel its heat. Most of the time we are able to get a fair idea of what an odor may be like from its description, provided we are familiar with the reference through prior experience.

Smells are powerful reminders of our past experiences. It has been established that the olfactory memory stays with us long after visual memory has faded. Vivid childhood memories are very often intimately associated with distinct scents. We clearly remember festive days, our mother's proximity and mundane household routines from remembered smells. Most of us who are parents, forever recall the happy smell of an amalgamation of baby powder and regurgitated milk which dominated our senses when our children were infants. A particular scent in one place reminds us of another one far away. Many of us are reminded of the homes we have lived in and the places we have visited through odors. I have never encountered the very special fragrance of wet earth after the first monsoon rains break the oppressive monotony of the scorching summer heat, anywhere outside India. A pleasant smell does not necessarily evoke pleasant memories and neither is a foul odor always a reminder of an unpleasant one. A friend of mine could not stand the perfume of sandalwood; it reminded her of the day in childhood when her grandfather died and the house was redolent with the scent of sandalwood incense. On the other hand, the rather noxious reek produced by the intermingling vapors of benzene, acetone and acetic acid, the stock odor of all chemistry labs, to this day floods my mind with pleasing nostalgia for the earnest hours spent as a student and teacher of chemistry many moons ago.

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