Blind Dates Research Articles

Flying high and breaking stigma: a social identity perspective on Chinese frisbee participants

ABSTRACT The growing popularity of frisbee sport in China has brought both recognition and stigmatisation. Rooted in the social identity perspective, this study employs in-depth interviews and participatory observation to explore this phenomenon, creating a multifaceted analytical framework that includes affective commitment, self-categorisation, group self-esteem and self-expansion. The study finds that the primary manifestations of frisbee stigmatisation encompass the heightened online attention and scrutiny, conflicts due to limited playing venues, misconceptions from one-sided sport perceptions, and controversies around its use for blind dates. Moreover, the study reveals that frisbee community members employ diverse strategies to counteract stigma, such as positive confrontation, ignoring or humorously resolving stigmatisation, selective online self-presentation, and converting opponents into supporters. This research contributes to the field of leisure studies by offering a deeper understanding of how leisure sports identities are negotiated in the context of societal prejudices. Furthermore, it provides practical insights for fostering resilience, promoting a positive sports culture, and encouraging a healthier approach to leisure sports among youth, potentially minimising the negative impact of stigma on emerging leisure sports activities.

Samouraï par Fabrice Caro

Reviewed by: Samouraï par Fabrice Caro Jane E. Evans Caro, Fabrice. Samouraï. Gallimard, 2022. ISBN 978-2-07-298811-0. Pp. 224. In the typical chagrin d'amour, the protagonist grieves a former lover to ultimately adopt a new perspective on their loss. In Samouraï, however, author Fabrice Caro depicts protagonist and writer Alan as expressing the comic in his life following the demise of his intimate relationship with Lisa. What makes Caro's novel so refreshing are his techniques for eliciting laughter and his creation of a main character whose thinking and behavior resonate with the reader. Protagonist Alan daydreams about alternative endings for his former relationship with Lisa, who recently inquired of him, "Tu peux pas écrire un roman sérieux?" (32). In his imagination he envisions her admiring his subsequent writings. He fantasizes publishing the bestseller, Sol y sangre, about his paternal grandparents' flight from Spain to France during Franco's rule; however, he never advances past the title. Instead, he composes the récit of his blind dates arranged by friends. The women, in his opinion, display major flaws, each more outrageous than the last: Mylène adores the theater, whereas Alan abhors it; Chloé loudly discusses intestinal dysfunction and caesarean births while dining out with him; and Louise's social awkwardness exceeds his own. In response to author Caro's accumulation and timing of comic details, the reader must laugh. Besides the amusement produced by Alan's encounters, Caro's choice of experiences for his protagonist enhances the ludic dimension of his work. Asked to house-sit for friends and keep the swimming pool clean during their absence, Alan considers his limited responsibilities and change of setting to be conducive to daily writing, in his words, "m'installer là tous les jours pour y écrire mon roman" (13). Despite his good intentions, mishaps occur: the pool water turns cloudy; a population of swimming "notonectes" (54) booms; and just before his friends' return, a human body further pollutes the murkiness. Consequently, Alan faces the pool store employee's disdain over his chlorine-related ignorance. The "notonectes" divert him from his writing as he studies the first one and calls it "Octave" because of the "sonorités jumelles en ct. Octave la notonecte" (78). His comments about phonetics add a linguistic element to Samouraï. When Alan runs into Lisa and her new boyfriend, a poetry professor, he silently dubs the latter "Ronsard" (206). And when he hears the professor calling Lisa "Lili," he immediately imagines the couple as "Lili et Ronron" (207), a childish expression at odds with the protagonist's adulthood as well as the professor's gentility, but witty all the same. Along with the progressively absurd situations in which the main character finds himself and his comic manipulation of language, Alan includes memories that make the reader chuckle while empathizing with him. One such incident involves his lengthy bathroom visit at the home of Lisa's parents and his ensuing embarrassment. This experience strikes a familiar chord in most people, who have wanted to impress someone, failed miserably, and then tried to make things better, nevertheless. [End Page 226] Jane E. Evans University of Texas, El Paso Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Accurately detecting happy facial expressions associates with perceptions of flirtatiousness

Emotional facial expressions are relevant to flirtation because they provide information on an individual’s intentions or motivations. Individual differences in the ability to accurately detect and discriminate between normative facially expressed emotions could lead to misperceptions of the level of sexual interest being conveyed, which has been linked to sexual assault and harassment. To explore this notion, we recruited a national sample of college aged male and female participants ( N = 219) who completed a novel facial expression recognition task used to detect accuracy in processing facial emotions of happiness, surprise, anger, and disgust. Participants also viewed multiple video clips of blind dates between two different-sex participants and rated each partner on their degree of flirtatiousness. Consistent with predictions, we found that individuals who misidentified other facial emotions for happiness appeared to overestimate flirtation. Though not predicted, participants who failed to accurately identify happy faces also overestimated flirtation, whereas individuals who took longer to respond to emotional facial expressions and misidentified an emotion as conveying happiness made greater errors in perceptions of flirtatiousness. Overall, these findings suggest that individual differences in the ability to detect and discriminate happiness through facial expressions are relevant to misperceptions of flirtatious behavior, and more broadly illuminates the role of basic emotion recognition on perceptions of flirtatiousness.

Blind dates: Exploring uncertainty in the radiocarbon evidence on the emergence of animal husbandry in the Dutch wetlands

The emergence of animal husbandry in the Netherlands remains the subject of much speculation. Challenges in identifying domesticated animals among the faunal remains, inconsistent excavation documentation, and flawed radiocarbon analysis have resulted in questionable chronologies. This paper examines the available radiocarbon evidence from selected sites which are the mainstay of early examples of domesticated animals in the Netherlands, between 5000 and 4000 BCE.1All radiocarbon dates given in this paper, denoted as BCE, are calibrated unless stated otherwise.1 We approach the legacy data in two ways: by employing principles of chronometric hygiene to reassess the radiocarbon datasets of selected sites and by exploring the use of such data for future studies in chronology by means of Bayesian chronological modelling. The latter is demonstrated with a case study, whereby we employ legacy data from Hardinxveld-Giessendam De Bruin in Bayesian models to demonstrate that, despite their shortcomings, such dates remain a valuable resource for much needed future chronological analysis.

Why lectures are like blind dates

Why lectures are like blind dates

No more blind dates with calcite: Fluid-flow vs. fault-slip along the Očkov thrust, Prague Basin

Dating of fracture-filling calcite with U-Pb geochronology is becoming a rapidly adopted technique for determining the absolute timing of brittle deformation in the upper crust. Slickenfibre calcite is a desirable target, as it precipitates between individual fault slip displacement events, and provides additional kinematic information. Here we present a case study of slickenfibres formed on the Očkov thrust in the Lower Palaezoic Prague Basin, Bohemian Massif, utilising a combination of petrographic and in situ methods. We demonstrate that slickenfibre external textures can be preserved, whilst internally primary textures are removed by fluid infiltration and recrystallization, leading to variable U and Pb mobilisation. One slickenfibre yielded a date of ca. 250 Ma, which we interpret as recording fault slip along the Očkov thrust. Another cross-cutting slickenfibre yielded more scattered U-Pb data, with an imprecise apparent age around ca. 95 Ma. This slickenfibre is recrystallised, destroying the primary textures, and exhibits element mobility. The meaning of this younger apparent age is therefore questionable; whereas it likely reflects Cretaceous U and Pb mobility assisted by fluid-flow along the fault plane, it may not reflect a period of fault slip. Our results demonstrate that slickenfibre-based U-Pb dates do not unequivocally relate to fault motion, and that petrographic and elemental analyses are important requirements for interpreting calcite U-Pb data.

Blind Dates: Exploring Uncertainty and the Application of Bayesian Statistical Modelling of Radiocarbon Evidence on the Emergence of Animal Husbandry in the Dutch Neolithic Wetlands

Blind Dates: Exploring Uncertainty and the Application of Bayesian Statistical Modelling of Radiocarbon Evidence on the Emergence of Animal Husbandry in the Dutch Neolithic Wetlands

Examining First Date Goals across Different Types of Date Initiation

Individual goals for first dates are examined in the context of requesting the first date, accepting a first date request, going on a blind date, and going on a group date in a sample of 211 college students. Results indicate that first dates are more likely to be group dates than blind dates or requested dates and those individuals on blind dates and group dates are less likely to endorse goals of having sex or investigating romantic potential than those who request or accept the first date. Results are considered using error management theory, cognitive valence theory, and stage models of relationships. The differences that emerge across the type of date initiation indicate the type of date initiation and are important in addressing courtship.

Análisis de señales cromatografícas provenientes de muestras de orina, para el análisis de cáncer de próstata usando procesamiento de señales.

La temprana detección del cáncer de próstata es de vital importancia para la puesta en marcha del tratamiento del paciente. Espor ello que este artículo demuestra que las señales cromatográficas provenientes de muestras de orina tienen relación con enfermedadesrelacionadas con la próstata del hombre. En este trabajo se usaron técnicas matemáticas tales como: SVM y RNA con el fin de extraer y verificarel patrón encontrado en cada señal cromatográfica. El algoritmo fue entrenado con 10 señales de cromatografía provenientes de muestras deorina, de las cuales 7 fueron obtenidas de los grupos de pacientes de control, y 7 de pacientes enfermos. La obtención de resultados positivosllevó consigo la aplicación de técnicas de pre y procesamiento sobre las señales de cromatografías, entre las que se encuentran, recorte de zonade interés, filtrado y corrección de línea base; cuyo propósito de aplicación permitió la búsqueda de los patrones característicos propios de cadagrupo de pacientes, debido a la presencia o no presencia de células anormales o cancerígenas en la próstata. El sistema fue validado haciendouso de datos ciegos y el resultado se contrastó con el medico experto en el área, permitiendo de este modo llegar a conclusiones puntuales. Laespecificidad del software fue del 92.86%, índice obtenido en la validación del software, cuyas señales ingresadas provienen de muestras deorinas de los pacientes analizados, pero diferentes a las utilizadas para el entrenamiento.

用众数法和线性插值法及主成分分析法与字符串匹配法——对互联网时代的相亲的研究

用众数法和线性插值法及主成分分析法与字符串匹配法——对互联网时代的相亲的研究

Vibrations guide thornbug treehoppers in pursuit of love

Cunningly disguised as thorns to avoid the unwanted attention of predators, thornbug treehoppers (Umbonia crassicornis) lead a sedentary existence. Sucking sap from the shrubs that they inhabit, the insects grow up in large family clusters until the youngsters strike out to find a mate. ‘Males fly from shrub to shrub, producing vibratory courtship signals, pausing to listen, then flying on to the next shrub if they receive no reply from a female’, says Jeremy Gibson, from the University of Strathclyde, UK. However, after homing in on an amorous female's shrub, the pressure is on to locate her as female thornbug treehoppers mate only once with the first male to arrive. Embarking on a duet in a bid to become united, the would-be lovers shiver their abdomens and the vibrations are carried down their legs and into the plant. However, Gibson and his graduate advisor Rex Cocroft, from the University of Missouri, USA, were unsure how thornbug treehopper males interpret the responses of their inamoratas in the pursuit of love.Arranging thornbug treehopper blind dates on young false tamarind trees (Lysiloma latisiliquum), Gibson recorded the vibrations generated by the duetting insects as the vibrations travelled through the shrub while filming the male's progress toward his intended. Then Gibson abducted the male, tricking the female into continuing her serenade while measuring the minute vibrations that she generated and the motion of the plant stem at the locations where the male had paused, to build a picture of the vibration features that had guided him.At the outset of each search, Gibson and Cocroft found that the males covered longer distances (up to 34 cm) before pausing for periods of 1.3–14.2 s as they vibrated their abdomens and then waited to feel the females’ responses before going on their way again. The male pursuers also located the objects of their affection more speedily and accurately when the females were located high in the tree, taking more wrong turns when lower down on the trunk. In addition, the males were able to determine the direction from which the vibrations approached – by sensing whether the vibration arrived at the front or rear legs first – and their accuracy improved when the vibrations travelled more slowly through the thinner twigs and as the vibrations became stronger when the male neared the female.It was also clear that the vibrations generated by the females became increasingly distorted the further they travelled through the shrub to reach the expectant males, prompting admirers to travel further between check points in order to improve their chances of making the right choice when next they paused. And sometimes the males continued walking even while serenading, pausing only to pay attention to the female's responses, possibly allowing the male to speed up his search in a bid to reach his lady love ahead of competing suitors.However, Gibson and Cocroft point out that the challenges facing vibration-guided amorous male thornbug treehoppers are likely to be even more testing in the rowdy real world – where the insects must also contend with buffeting wind, rain and the cacophony of competitors and predators – and the scientists are keen to learn more about the sensory strategies that the insects employ to ensure success.

American Wild: Explorations from the Grand Canyon to the Arctic Ocean by Michael Engelhard

Reviewed by: American Wild: Explorations from the Grand Canyon to the Arctic Ocean by Michael Engelhard Jennifer Schell Michael Engelhard, American Wild: Explorations from the Grand Canyon to the Arctic Ocean. Danvers, MA: Hiraeth P, 2016. 215 pp. Paper, $17.95. A paean to both the American Southwest and the Far North, American Wild consists of a series of twenty-five loosely connected essays describing the author's outdoor adventures in Arizona, Utah, and Alaska. Engelhard divides the collection into two parts, each addressing one of these regions. The essays deal with a wide variety of outdoor activities, such as backpacking, river rafting, mountaineering, bicycling, and berry picking. They also engage more abstract and personal issues, such as industrial development, climate change, Indigenous culture, blind dates, and cross-country moves. Both literally and figuratively, Engelhard covers some well-worn literary terrain. In "Homes on the Range," he ponders his nomadic tendencies, wondering, like Kerouac, why Americans embrace "such restlessness" (4). In "Vermilion Light," he declares his preference for backpacking, highlighting, like Thoreau, the many advantages of walking. Willing to take risks with his writing, though, Engelhard offers fresh insights into these familiar themes and subjects. Thus, with respect to restlessness, he contends that "the nomad's commitment to places, like that of the whale or the crane, can match Thoreau's or Wendell Berry's in every way" (4). Alongside his thoughts on the importance of deceleration, he comments on the historical figure John Doyle Lee [End Page 366] and his homestead, thereby turning his essay into a kind of "trail-side memento mori" (76). Not all of Engelhard's experiments are quite so successful. In "Tough Times on Denali" he focuses more on his experiences in base camp than those on the mountain, rendering the essay somewhat anticlimactic. And in "Least Force Necessary" he tries to animate the confrontation-with-a-bear story, an obligatory feature of Alaskan writing, but for some reason—perhaps because of the circumstances of the encounter—his philosophical approach feels a bit overdone. Still, American Wild contains some outstanding essays that readers interested in the Southwest and North will certainly appreciate. A tribute to Edward Abbey, "The Last Fifteen Miles" describes Engelhard's attempt to "reconstruct" the loss of Glen Canyon by touring the dam facilities and hiking down to the Colorado River at its foot. At turns irreverent and nostalgic, the essay criticizes the severe costs of industrial development in the American Southwest. Employing a self-deprecating tone absent from most of the other essays, "Mating Dance under the Midnight Sun" details Engelhard's fruitless attempts to impress a date during an ill-fated kayaking trip on Alaska's Koyukuk River. In addition to furnishing some welcome comic relief, the piece adds dimension to the persona the author constructs throughout the collection. "In the Wake of Skin Boats," perhaps the book's best essay, describes a sea kayaking trip to Kenai Fjords National Park, skillfully weaving together descriptions of outdoor adventure, Indigenous culture, and colonial history while showcasing their interconnectedness. Jennifer Schell University of Alaska Fairbanks Copyright © 2017 Western Literature Association

Verwantschap in vroegere tijden, verwantschap in de toekomst

In this essay I ask questions that, while crucial to the lived legacies of the Catastrophe, are all too often neglected in favor of overly-familiar questions of recognition and reconciliation. How have presumptions about kinship functioned to sanction and sanctify state-sponsored and vigilante violence, as well as the less visible but no less disciplinary acts of normative power exercised by nationalisms, both diasporic and statist, on a quotidian scale? And how might we imagine kinships that stand against such violent and normative powers, future kinships for which there is no precise precedent? I show how two recent cultural texts offer some provocative answers: Aikaterini Gegisian’s “Self-Portrait as an Ottoman Woman”, a curated collection of popular postcard portraits of women in folkloric guises from the early twentieth century; and “AH-HA,” a collaboration between the artists Nina Katchadourian and Ahmet Ögüt for the Blind Dates Project curated by Defne Ayas and Neery Melkonian. I cull from these two insightful reflections on kinships past some ways of imagining kinship’s futures that challenge, or at least unsettle, the normative terms that continue to structure discourse on the Catastrophe.

Spanish and Moroccan Youths on Social Networks: A Quantitative Study in Spain.

The purpose of this research is to identify the usage that young people make of social networks and if any differences exist between genders. To this aim we have based our study on a survey of 1680 students in Spain. From the results of the study, it is worth mentioning that when using social networks, boys engage in riskier behaviours such as going on blind dates and contacting with strangers.

Erratum

Article: Blind Dates and Arranged Marriages: Longitudinal Processes of Network Orchestration Authors: Raymond L Paquin and Jennifer Howard-Grenville Published in Organization Studies 2013, Volume 34 Issue 11, pages 1623–1653, first published on May 1, 2013 doi: 10.1177/0170840612470230 . Table 4 in this article was not published correctly. The corrected table can be found below. [Table: see text]

Notes on Internment Camp

I have always been skeptical about matchmaking and blind dates. But when the artist E. G. Crichton declared that my “perfect match” was a deceased gay Asian American dandy named Jiro Onuma, I was intrigued. In 2009 Crichton invited me to participate in her ongoing project Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive, in which she couples contemporary artists with LGBT individuals from the past in hopes of sparking “dyadic” queer bonds between the living and the dead that will result in artistic responses to the archive.

Blind Dates and Arranged Marriages: Longitudinal Processes of Network Orchestration

Using longitudinal qualitative and network data capturing five years of evolution of an interorganizational network, this paper explores network orchestration – the process of assembling and developing an interorganizational network. In particular, we analyze shifts in the network orchestrator’s actions and the network’s structure and composition. We find that an orchestrator builds the capacity to assemble a network over time through the accumulation of resources and specialized expertise. However, as the network develops, an orchestrator faces an evolving set of dilemmas arising from the need to demonstrate value for various members and audiences. To resolve these dilemmas, orchestrators may shift their actions, moving from initially encouraging serendipitous encounters between network members (“blind dates”) to increasingly selecting members and more closely influencing their interactions (“arranging marriages”). We discuss implications of our findings for a processual understanding of orchestrated network assembly and growth.

Five French Critics

Five French Critics Philippe Roger, Editor of Critique (bio) When I met with Rita Felski some months ago on the sunny grounds of the University of Virginia in the ever-busy hall of Alderman Library, and she asked me to write a short presentation for a forthcoming issue of New Literary History hosting several contemporary French critics and scholars of literature, I gave myself no time to think twice, probably suspecting that any second thoughts would have deterred me from such a venture. There was at least one good reason to accept the invitation and to ignore the foreseeable difficulties of the exercise. After more than fifteen years directing the French journal Critique, founded in 1946 by Georges Bataille, I have grown more and more convinced that journals—or revues—and more particularly literary journals are probably the closest thing we have left to what used to be the Republic of Letters. Had I been invited as a scholar of French literature—which I also am on other days—to introduce this anthology of French critical texts, I would most probably have declined the honor as too perilous as well as undeserved. Coming from a fellow editor, however, this was an offer I could hardly refuse. To be honest, there was also an element of excitement in that hasty decision. The special issue was still in its exploratory stage and the list of potential French contributors very much tentative. We had a mutual agreement that I would play no part in the process of selection. This is how I signed up for five blind dates with French authors. But then I have always liked blind dates—the expression, that is, ever since I first met it with perplexity, at an early stage of my acquaintance with the English language, in Nabokov's Pale Fire. Now that the cards have been dealt, let us see our hand. I think it is a pretty good one. During the past decade, Marielle Macé has emerged as a remarkable new voice on the French theoretical scene—a voice that has already been heard on several American campuses, from Columbia to New York [End Page 205] University and from Chicago to Charlottesville. Her work exemplifies a new ability, typical of her generation, to reconcile institutional excellence and intellectual singularity; immersion in the French intellectual debate and international openness; carefully crafted writing (manifest in her books as well as her articles) and uninhibited ventures in Web Land (she was a cofounder of the successful French literary website Fabula). Her first book on the essay in twentieth-century France has become a reference book on the topic. Her more recent book on literature as a stylization of existence has been praised by both academics and journalists. I should also mention the special issue of Critique entitled "Du Style!" (note the exclamation mark!) which she inspired and directed, a strong manifesto praising the role of literature in allowing us to live meaningfully—and stylishly. Marielle Macé is a nondogmatic reader who finds comfort in a close contact with literary works. Although Gérard Genette or Thomas Pavel are among her intellectual beacons, fiction is not her primary focus. She is more attracted to poetry and, above all, to "prose for thought" and the essay as a literary vehicle for cognitive experiences. While she enjoys direct engagement with literary works, there is also ample evidence of her interest in theoretical thinking. Delineating different "phases" in a career still in its prime may sound a bit artificial. Two major threads, however, can be followed in her writing. Her first published works clearly reflected an epistemological rapprochement of literary history and critical theory, in a spirit typical of the 90s. Her recent publications adopt a more phenomenological approach, without taking leave of history, politics, or ethics, another core element in her intellectual project. Devoted to Sartre, the central and longest chapter in her recent book—indeed, almost an essay within an essay—is a fine illustration of her take on literature. Dates indicate that Pierre Bayard was born almost twenty years earlier than Marielle Macé. However, we know better than to confuse generations as defined by demographers and intellectual generations. Undeniably...

Blind Dates and Mate Preferences: An Analysis of Newspaper Matchmaking Columns

Parental investment theory and sexual strategies theory predict that women and men should differ on many of the criteria by which they choose mates. These theories posit a gender selectivity effect, such that women should be more selective than men in their mating choices. The theories also posit an age differential effect, such that women should seek older mates, and men should seek younger mates. These two hypotheses have been supported by self-report surveys, speed-dating studies, analysis of on-line and newspaper personal ads, and laboratory analog studies. However, each of these data sources has limitations. Therefore, a new source of data may provide a valuable additional test of the robustness of these effects. The current study examined two independent sources of data involving blind dates arranged and paid for by newspapers. Consistent with the first hypothesis, we found women to be more selective than men. We also found that matchmakers tended to pair older men with younger women, consistent with the second hypothesis. However, contrary to the second hypothesis, we found no evidence that the age differential between members of a couple influenced their ratings of the date. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Blind dates and mate preferences: an analysis of newspaper matchmaking columns.

Parental investment theory and sexual strategies theory predict that women and men should differ on many of the criteria by which they choose mates. These theories posit a gender selectivity effect, such that women should be more selective than men in their mating choices. The theories also posit an age differential effect, such that women should seek older mates, and men should seek younger mates. These two hypotheses have been supported by self-report surveys, speed-dating studies, analysis of on-line and newspaper personal ads, and laboratory analog studies. However, each of these data sources has limitations. Therefore, a new source of data may provide a valuable additional test of the robustness of these effects. The current study examined two independent sources of data involving blind dates arranged and paid for by newspapers. Consistent with the first hypothesis, we found women to be more selective than men. We also found that matchmakers tended to pair older men with younger women, consistent with the second hypothesis. However, contrary to the second hypothesis, we found no evidence that the age differential between members of a couple influenced their ratings of the date. The implications of these findings are discussed.