Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. There are varying degrees of solipsism that parallel the varying degrees of skepticism: Metaphysical solipsism is a variety of solipsism. Based on a philosophy of subjective idealism, metaphysical solipsists maintain that the self is the only existing reality and that all other realities, including the external world and other persons, are representations of that self, have no independent existence. There are several versions of metaphysical solipsism, such as Caspar Hare's egocentric presentism, in which other people are conscious, but their experiences are not present. Epistemological solipsism is the variety of idealism according to which only the directly accessible mental contents of the solipsistic philosopher can be known; the existence of an external world is regarded as an unresolvable question rather than false.

Further, one cannot be certain as to what extent the external world exists independently of one's mind. For instance, it may be that a God-like being controls the sensations received by one's brain, making it appear as if there is an external world when most of it is false. However, the point remains. Methodological solipsism is an agnostic variant of solipsism, it exists in opposition to the strict epistemological requirements for "knowledge". It still entertains the points. Methodological solipsism sometimes goes further to say that what we perceive as the brain is part of the external world, for it is only through our senses that we can see or feel the mind. Only the existence of thoughts is known for certain. Methodological solipsists do not intend to conclude that the stronger forms of solipsism are true, they emphasize that justifications of an external world must be founded on indisputable facts about their own consciousness. The methodological solipsist believes that subjective impressions or innate knowledge are the sole possible or proper starting point for philosophical construction.

Methodological solipsism is not held as a belief system, but rather used as a thought experiment to assist skepticism. Denial of material existence, in itself, does not constitute solipsism. A feature of the metaphysical solipsistic worldview is the denial of the existence of other minds. Since personal experiences are private and ineffable, another being's experience can be known only by analogy. Philosophers try to build knowledge on more than an analogy; the failure of Descartes' epistemological enterprise brought to popularity the idea that all certain knowledge may go no further than "I think. The theory of solipsism merits close examination because it relates to three held philosophical presuppositions, each itself fundamental and wide-ranging in importance: My most certain knowledge is the content of my own mind—my thoughts, affects, etc. There is no conceptual or logically necessary link between mental and physical—between, the occurrence of certain conscious experience or mental states and the'possession' and behavioral dispositions of a'body' of a particular kind.

The experience of a given person is private to that person. To expand on the second point, the conceptual problem here is that the previous assumes mind or consciousness can exist independent of some entity having this capability, i.e. that an attribute of an existent can exist apart from the existent itself. If one admits to the existence of an independent entity having that attribute, the door is open; some people hold that, while it cannot be proven that anything independent of one's mind exists, the point that solipsism makes is irrelevant. This is because, whether the world as we perceive it exists independently or not, we cannot escape this perception, hence it is best to act assuming that the world is independent of our minds. There is the issue of plausibility to consider. If one is the only mind in existence one is maintaining that one's mind alone created all of which one is aware; this includes the symphonies of Beethoven, the works of Shakespeare, all of mathematics and science, etc.

Critics of solipsism find this somewhat implausible. Solipsism was first recorded by the Greek presocratic sophist, Gorgias, quoted by the Roman sceptic Sextus Empiricus as having stated: Nothing exists. If something exists, nothing can be known about it. If something could be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others. Much of the point of the sophists was to show that "objective" knowledge was a literal impossibility.. The foundations of solipsism are in turn the foundations of the view that the individual's understanding of any and all psychological concepts is accomplished by making an analogy with his or her own mental states, and this view, or some variant of it, has been influential in philosophy since Descartes e

Congjiang County is a county in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, China. It is divided by the Duliu River, the upper reaches of the Liu River, borders Guangxi to the south, it is an important transit point as the first county inside Guizhou on China National Highway 321 between Sanjiang and Guiyang, the provincial capital. A large bridge connects the city's two halves. In Congjiang County, Miao consists of the following three dialects. Dialectal area 1: parts of Jajiu District 加鸠区; the community of Biasha or Basha is within the county. The population are Miao people, the residents are allowed under the Chinese government to posess and use firearms as this is their cultural heritage. Demonstrations of gun marksmanship and other activities serve as tourist attractions. Katia Andreassi of National Geographic described it as "one of the most visited towns in the area", it is 7.5 kilometres from Congjiang town

Gábor István Harangozó is a Hungarian politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Hungarian Socialist Party, part of the Party of European Socialists. Harangozó spent his childhood years in Szekszárd. After completing his secondary education, he enrolled in the University of West Hungary in 1995, where he received a degree in Agribusiness, he went on to study European Funds Management at CAH Dronten in the Netherlands. From 2002 he represented the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg in Brussels, he was elected an MEP in the 2004 general elections, he was the youngest Hungarian MEP then. In 2010 he became a member of the National Assembly of Hungary, he is married. His wife is Vanda Harangozóné Tuboly, they have Sára and Emma and a son, Dávid. His younger brother Tamás Harangozó is a representative in the Hungarian Parliament. Biography at the Hungarian Socialist Party Website Profile at the European Parliament Website

Hasegawa Tōhaku was a Japanese painter and founder of the Hasegawa school. He is considered one of the great painters of the Azuchi–Momoyama period, he is best known for his byōbu folding screens, such as Pine Trees and Pine Tree and Flowering Plants, or the paintings in walls and sliding doors at Chishaku-in, attributed to him and his son. Hasegawa Tōhaku, born Okumura Tōhaku in 1539 in Nanao, a town in Noto Province to a noted local family of cloth dyers, although evidence shows that Tōhaku's original family name was Okumura and that he was adopted into the Hasegawa family. Tōhaku started his artistic career as a painter of Buddhist paintings in his home province of Noto. By the age of 20 Tōhaku was a professional painter, by his thirties he had moved to Kyoto to study under the prestigious Kanō school headed by Kanō Shōei; the Kanō school was well known at the time for their large bold paintings that decorated the castle walls of many a wealthy warlord patron. These were ink on white paper or gold-leaf decorative wall panels that served a dual purpose of reflecting light around the dim castle rooms as well as flaunting the castle owner's abundant wealth to commission such extravagant pieces.

Many of Tōhaku's earlier works are in the style of the Kanō school, such as his Maple, Chishaku-in painted in 1593. At the same time he studied the older Song and Muromachi periods' styles of ink painting by examining scrolls from Mu Qi and Sesshū Tōyō, which he is believed to have gained access to in his time at the Daitoku-ji temple in Kyoto. After a period of time in Kyoto, Tōhaku developed his own style of Sumie which in many ways departed from the bold techniques indicative of the Kanō school, called back to the minimalism of its predecessors; the works of Sesshū Tōyō in particular influenced Tōhaku's redirection of artistic style as Tōhaku studied under Sesshū's successor, Toshun for some time. Tōhaku was in fact so much enamored with the techniques of Sesshū that he attempted to claim rights as his fifth successor, though he lost in a court battle to Unkoku Togan. Still, the influence of Sesshū is evident in many of Tōhaku's mid to late works, such as his Shōrin-zu byōbu Pine Trees screen, which were declared a national treasure of Japan are argued to be the first paintings of their scale to depict only pine trees as subject matter.

The school founded by Hasegawa Tōhaku is known today as the Hasegawa school. This school was small, consisting of Tōhaku and his sons; however small, its members conserved Tōhaku's quiet and reserved aesthetic, which many attribute to the influence of Sesshū as well as his contemporary and friend, Sen no Rikyū. It is suspected that these simple aesthetics protest the usage of intimidation and wealth rampant in the Kanō school. Tōhaku's most noted contemporary was Kanō Eitoku who competed with Tōhaku for the patronage of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. After Eitoku's death in 1590, Tōhaku stood alone as the greatest living master of his time, he became the official painter for Hideyoshi, produced some of his greatest and most elegant paintings under his patronage. He and his atelier produced the wall and screen paintings in Shoun-ji, commissioned by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1593; the paintings have survived. At the age of 67, Tōhaku was summoned to Edo and granted the priestly title of hōgen by the shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu.

There he stayed for the remainder of his life. Hasegawa Tohaku Retrospective, Tokyo National Museum Momoyama, Japanese Art in the Age of Grandeur, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Hasegawa Tōhaku

Conan is a 1967 collection of seven fantasy short stories and associated pieces written by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories were published in various pulp magazines; the book was first published in paperback by Lancer Books in 1967, was reprinted in 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1973. After the bankruptcy of Lancer, publication was taken over by Ace Books, its first edition appeared in May 1977, was reprinted in 1979, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1990. The first British edition was issued by Sphere Books in 1974, was reprinted in 1977; the book has been translated into German, French, Italian and Dutch. It was gathered together with Conan of Cimmeria and Conan the Freebooter into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles. "Introduction" "Letter from Robert E. Howard to P. Schuyler Miller" "The Hyborian Age, Part 1" "The Thing in the Crypt" "The Tower of the Elephant" "The Hall of the Dead" "The God in the Bowl" "Rogues in the House" "The Hand of Nergal" "The City of Skulls" After a letter reflecting on Conan's life written by Howard to P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark, both fans of Howard's work, is an essay on the invented prehistory in which the hero's adventures are set tracing its development up to Conan's own time.

The stories gathered in this collection follow the Cimmerian from his escape from slavery in Hyperborea through his days as a youthful thief in Zamora and Nemedia, to the beginning of his employment as a mercenary for King Yildiz of Turan. To Conan's discomfiture, the supernatural is his constant companion. Chronologically, the seven short stories collected as Conan are the earliest in Lancer's Conan series; the stories collected. Conan #1 Review

Maigret in Retirement is a 1947 detective novel by the Belgian mystery writer Georges Simenon featuring Jules Maigret. Two years into his retirement at Meung-sur-Loire, Maigret has yet to be tempted to take on a case, but 82-year-old Bernadette Amorelle, the widow of Amorelle of Amorelle and Campois, the major gravel and barge company on the Seine, shows up at his door and orders him to Orsennes, where her 18-year-old granddaughter, Monita Malik, has been found dead in the Seine. Maigret arrives and finds an old acquaintance from his days at lycée in Moulins, Ernest Malik, who they'd called "The Tax Collector" after his father's occupation, the sort of man Maigret instinctively disliked, it is made clear that Maigret's presence in Orsennes is unwelcome, but Maigret is intrigued by the apparent disappearance of Malik's younger son, Georges-Henry Malik. Maigret returns to Paris to investigate further and to enlist the services of Mimile, an old circus hand, with whose help he rescues the boy from the cellar his father has imprisoned him in.

The mystery is unraveled when Bernadette shoots and kills her son-in-law Ernest, Maigret returns to hear her story. Malik had been a gambler, enticed Désiré Campois' son, Roger Campois, into gambling way over his head, until he committed suicide, thus freeing Amorelle's daughter from her engagement, giving Ernest room to marry into the family, he was more intrigued by the younger daughter, Aimée Amorelle, who bore his child, but not before he had brought his younger brother, Charles Malik, in to marry Aimée forcing Old Campois from power, conquering all but Bernadette. The daughter, had learned the secret, shared it with Georges-Henry; this Maigret story was first published in French in 38 instalments in the newspaper France-Soir between March and May 1946 and in 1947 by Presses de la Cité in book-form preceded in this same volume by the short-story La pipe de Maigret. It was translated into English by Jean Steward in 1976 and published by Hamish Hamilton in London as part of the anthology, Maigret's Christmas, independently in the US edition published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

In December 2015, this novel was reissued in English by Penguin under the title Maigret Gets Angry, newly translated by Ros Schwartz. A BBC TV version entitled The Dirty House aired on 26 November 1963. Rupert Davies played Maigret. A French television version with Jean Richard as Maigret aired on 1 February 1969