Heresy
Heresy is any provocative belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs. A heretic is a proponent of such claims or beliefs. Heresy is distinct from both apostasy, which is the explicit renunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is an impious utterance or action concerning God or sacred things.
The term is usually used to refer to violations of important religious teachings, but is used also of views strongly opposed to any generally accepted ideas. It is used in particular in reference to Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Marxism.
In certain historical Christian, Islamic and Jewish cultures, among others, espousing ideas deemed heretical has been and in some cases still is subjected not merely to punishments such as excommunication, but even to the death penalty.
Etymology
The term heresy is from Greek αἵρεσις originally meant "choice" or "thing chosen", but it came to mean the "party or school of a man's choice" and also referred to that process whereby a young person would examine various philosophies to determine how to live. The word "heresy" is usually used within a Christian, Jewish, or Islamic context, and implies slightly different meanings in each. The founder or leader of a heretical movement is called a heresiarch, while individuals who espouse heresy or commit heresy are known as heretics. Heresiology is the study of heresy.
Heresy (radio series)
Heresy is a comedy talk show on BBC Radio 4, created and originally hosted by David Baddiel, now hosted by Victoria Coren. In the show, the presenter and a panel of guests commit "heresy" by challenging people's most deeply received opinions on a subject, in front of a studio audience.
For example, received wisdom is that New Labour is all about spin, so the panel will try to argue that New Labour is not all about spin, and the guests have to try to make the audience change their minds.
Other assumptions challenged have included, "We should never negotiate with terrorists", "Television is dumbing down" and "We are on the brink of an environmental catastrophe".
The pilot and first series had four guests on each episode, but this has since been reduced to three.
In the fifth series, Baddiel handed over the host's chair to Coren, although he appeared on the first show as a guest, where he made jokes referring to his previous time in the chair.
Episodes
External links
Heresy in Christianity
When heresy is used today with reference to Christianity, it denotes the formal denial or doubt of a core doctrine of the Christian faith as defined by one or more of the Christian churches. It should be distinguished from both apostasy and schism, apostasy being nearly always total abandonment of the Christian faith after it has been freely accepted, and schism being a formal and deliberate breach of Christian unity and an offence against charity without being based essentially on doctrine.
In Western Christianity, heresy most commonly refers to those beliefs which were declared to be anathema by any of the ecumenical councils recognized by the Catholic Church. In the East, the term "heresy" is eclectic and can refer to anything at variance with Church tradition. Since the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation, various Christian churches have also used the concept in proceedings against individuals and groups deemed to be heretical by those churches.
The Catholic Church distinguishes between "formal heresy" and "material heresy". The former involves willful and persistent adherence to an error in matters of faith and is a grave sin and produces excommunication. "Material heresy" is the holding of erroneous opinions through no fault of one's own and is not sinful. Protestants fall in this second group while the Eastern Orthodox are considered to be schismatic but are recognised as churches.
Rope
A rope is a group of yarns, plies, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting, but are too flexible to provide compressive strength. As a result, they cannot be used for pushing or similar compressive applications. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly constructed cord, line, string, and twine. Ropes made from metal strands are called wire rope.
Construction
Rope may be constructed of any long, stringy, fibrous material, but generally is constructed of certain natural or synthetic fibres. Synthetic fibre ropes are significantly stronger than their natural fibre counterparts, but also possess certain disadvantages, including slipperiness.
Common natural fibres for rope are manila hemp, hemp, linen, cotton, coir, jute, straw, and sisal. Synthetic fibres in use for rope-making include polypropylene, nylon, polyesters (e.g. PET, LCP, HDPE, Vectran), polyethylene (e.g. Dyneema and Spectra), Aramids (e.g. Twaron, Technora and Kevlar) and acrylics (e.g. Dralon). Some ropes are constructed of mixtures of several fibres or use co-polymer fibres. Wire rope is made of steel or other metal alloys. Ropes have been constructed of other fibrous materials such as silk, wool, and hair, but such ropes are not generally available. Rayon is a regenerated fibre used to make decorative rope.
Rope (data structure)
In computer programming, a rope, or cord, is a data structure composed of smaller strings that is used for efficiently storing and manipulating a very long string. For example, a text editing program may use a rope to represent the text being edited, so that operations such as insertion, deletion, and random access can be done efficiently.
Description
A rope is a binary tree having leaf nodes that contain a short string. Each node has a weight value equal to the length of its string plus the sum of all leaf nodes' weight in its left subtree, namely the weight of a node is the total string length in its left subtree for a non-leaf node, or the string length of itself for a leaf node. Thus a node with two children divides the whole string into two parts: the left subtree stores the first part of the string. The right subtree stores the second part and its weight is the sum of the left child's weight and the length of its contained string.
The binary tree can be seen as several levels of nodes. The bottom level contains all the nodes that contain a string. Higher levels have fewer and fewer nodes. The top level consists of a single "root" node. The rope is built by putting the nodes with short strings in the bottom level, then attaching a random half of the nodes to parent nodes in the next level.
Rope (rhythmic gymnastics)
Rope (rhythmic gymnastics) may be made of hemp or a synthetic material which retains the qualities of lightness and suppleness. Its length is in proportion to the size of the gymnast. The rope should, when held down by the feet, reach both of the gymnasts' armpits. One or two knots at each end are for keeping hold of the rope while doing the routine. At the ends (to the exclusion of all other parts of the rope) an anti-slip material, either coloured or neutral may cover a maximum of 10 cm (3.94 in). The rope must be coloured, either all or partially. It may be either of a uniform diameter or be progressively thicker in the center provided that this thickening is of the same material as the rope.
The fundamental requirements of a rope routine include leaps and skipping. Other elements include swings, throws, circles, rotations and figures of eight.
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