Liquor Bottles Research Articles

Study of Pattern of Cases on Alcoholism Recorded at GMERS Medical College and General Hospital, Vadodara

Gujarat is a dry state for almost six decades. Now has plan to make prohibition law more stringent, particularly for locals who could end up in jail for three years and pay Rs 5 lakh fine if caught with liquor bottle. For visitors and tourists access to alcohol has been made easier. This study was carried out in GMERS Medical College and General Hospital, Vadodara. Total 1276 cases were recorded from April 2015 to march 2016. During the year number of cases found increased during the winter months and decreased during summer months. More cases are recorded from people of low economical communities. Law implementation, education, employment and reduced work stress will definitely help to reduce alcohol intake and to build nation.

Yea, Alabama!: A Peek into the Past of One of the Most Storied Universities in the Nation, the University of Alabama Volume 1: 1819 through 1871 by David M. Battles

Reviewed by: Yea, Alabama!: A Peek into the Past of One of the Most Storied Universities in the Nation, the University of Alabama Volume 1: 1819 through 1871 by David M. Battles James P. Cousins Yea, Alabama!: A Peek into the Past of One of the Most Storied Universities in the Nation, the University of Alabama. Volume 1: 1819 through 1871. By David M. Battles. ( Newcastle upon Tyne, Eng.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. Pp. xiv, 260. $81.95, ISBN 978–1-4438–7252-2.) Historians of the antebellum era and of education in particular will appreciate David M. Battles's attempt to chronicle the rise of Alabama's first institution of higher education. It is a story worth undertaking, one wherein schools born in the expansion-minded, populist age were victims of remorseless political slander and incessant religious zealotry. Southern universities often got the worst of both, and schools that were not undone by partisan squabbling were almost always finished off by Union troops. The fact that the University of Alabama (UA) survived all of this, including an actual siege of the campus, is enough to warrant a read. Battles presents this first volume of a projected multivolume history of the university in seven chronologically arranged parts, closing with an overview of southern slavery. The work is intricately researched and well referenced, with over fifty pages of color illustrations, photographs, and scans of primary sources. UA's history is told through a succession of university presidents from Alva Woods, the New England transplant who designed UA's initial approach to curriculum and student discipline, through the short tenure of William Russell Smith, who struggled to maintain the viability of a diminished postwar southern university. But this is more than just a story of survival, and UA stands out from other state institutions in several important ways. At a time when most states were curtailing commitments to higher education, the Alabama state legislature was amenable to support, allotting money from land endowments to build the campus and maintaining an active interest in the school's long-term fiscal [End Page 190] health. The board of trustees' scheme to auction land for the university's benefit was not remarkable, but it is surprising that the plan worked. Other states pinned their hopes on land sales but sometimes came up short. Kentucky, for example, struggled for decades to fund education with land. Student life constitutes one of the major themes of the book. Battles presents a never-ending parade of student code violations, including periodic dustups between students and professors, occasional brawls between students and townspeople, and all too frequent student duels. UA students showed incredible inventiveness in their pranks, firing guns from dormitory windows and decorating the campus church with liquor bottles. On at least one occasion, students hoisted a bull yearling to the roof of a campus building and tied it to a lightning rod. Battles describes the militarization of the campus—the introduction of military discipline, drills, and uniforms—as a partial response to student rowdiness, though others, Battles admits, may have seen things in a different light. In the years preceding Alabama's voteto secede, legislators came to appreciate the need for military training on campus. Battles is careful to stay well within the boundaries of available source evidence, but the result is something that resembles a chronicle. Bland enrollment statistics, lists of faculty hires, and abstruse budgetary figures may be uninteresting to the uninitiated and of little value to scholars. And, like a chronicle from the ancient world, information is presented without context and with little reference to what comes immediately before or after. For example, a series of two-page chapters, like "Roads Leading to Tuscaloosa," are awkward interludes that appear suddenly and without warning. In the strictest sense, this is an institutional history with little reference to larger developments in the state and almost nothing to inform the reader of wider developments in higher education. Yet there is value in the information Battles presents. Institutions like the University of Alabama survived because they were able to adapt to their circumstances, to their students' needs, and to the public's expectations. James P. Cousins Western Michigan University...

Babies in the Water

Babies in the Water Molly Quinn (bio) Although it was May, the stone path leading up to Kim's childhood home was still glazed with ice. Green stubble poked through the crystalline snow on the front lawn. Kim had crossed the river to East Saint Paul to check on her mother, who was getting so confused she left the oven on and the taps running but refused to go to a nursing home. Kim saw her as little as possible and hadn't been to the house in more than a year. The only reason she'd come was because the personal care attendant had canceled, and her sister, Sharon, had begged Kim to help. Immediately, Kim said no. But then Sharon said maybe that was for the best, since Kim didn't know how to take care of anyone except herself, and she changed her mind. Kim took a swig from the bottle of vodka stashed in her purse before getting out of the car. When their mother was first diagnosed, Sharon had cleared the metropolis of liquor bottles from their parents' bar. Even Kim, steeped in anger and resentment as she was, thought this was unnecessarily cruel. She didn't see why her mother couldn't have a drink every now and then, just because she was confused. She stopped at the liquor store for both their sakes. Spite for Sharon wasn't the only force luring Kim up the walk: recently, her sister had told her it wouldn't be long before their mother didn't recognize them. If there was anything Kim wanted to say, it would have to be soon. The front door was unlocked. Kim walked through rooms that felt like dreams: the den with its wall of antlers; the tobacco-scented breezeway; the living room, dominated by a gleaming teak bar; and finally into the plastic-tiled kitchen, where her mother's feet were visible beneath the pantry doors, darting around in little high heels. She emerged wearing a cocktail dress with an apron tied over it. Her hair was the color of polished maple; her eyebrows were dyed to match. When she saw Kim, she smiled so hard the tendons in her neck stood out. "Kimmie!" [End Page 34] "Kim." She didn't know why she bothered to remind her. Her mother closed in with an odor of perfume that was meant to be floral but had the sharpness of bathroom sanitizer. She placed a hard pucker on Kim's cheek. "I'm glad you're here." "Really?" Kim said, annoyed by the hopeful rise in her own voice. "I made macaroni loaf for us. There's enough for Sharon too, if she stops by." "Sharon's at her kids' swimming lessons. It's just me tonight." "Yes, well. You never know when she might drop in." "Mom," Kim said, "aren't you surprised to see me?" "Surprised?" Kim searched her face, trying to figure out if her mother was confused about how long it had been since her last visit, or if, as usual, she was trying to avoid a conversation about what was really happening. Kim felt the power she'd accumulated with her distance draining away. "It's been awhile," she reminded her. "I suppose it has," her mother said absently. "Now, why do you think the children are swimming in the winter?" "It's spring now. But it doesn't matter—it's an indoor pool." Her mother put her hand over her heart. "I wish I could see them now, those babies in the water!" Kim had seen them at their swimming lessons. All four of them—Kim liked to remind her sister that four was enough to be considered a litter—bobbed along with confident strokes and breathed on both sides. Besides swimming, Sharon's children took tap and Irish dance lessons. The oldest played the viola, the other three the flute. All four were on the t-ball team. They would draw a picture and tell you all about it, chubby hands gesturing as they improvised stories in lisps. Kim knew that in her mother's eyes, there was no way to compete with the...

A man with ischemic heart disease after consuming alcohol found collapsed while eating: a café coronary and intoxication. Which cause preceded the others?

Introduction Complete and abrupt upper airway obstruction by a bolus of food, with sudden onset of symptoms simulating acute myocardial infarction was described as ‘Cafe coronary’ in early 60s. Victims are speechless and breathless; thus, without assistance (e.g.Heimlich manoeuvre) they will die. A typical ‘cafe coronary’ was an obese middle aged man dying, while eating having a chest pain, with eye witness accounts of ‘choking on a piece of meat’ which was hurriedly eaten. Though various theories were postulated at that time regarding the mechanism, later studies showed that multiple factors could be associated. We report a death of an alcoholic with a history of ischemic heart disease found with a bolus of food lodged at the pharynx and larynx. Case Report 51 year-old male after having 1½ bottles of illicit liquor, quarreled with the wife and left home, was found dead two (2) hours later in a partly built house. The examination of the scene revealed half a bottle of alcohol, a partly consumed loaf of bread, a beef curry and a roasted chicken thigh beside. Autopsy revealed obstruction of the mid larynx with a piece of bread, mild laryngeal oedema, myocardial fibrosis, 80% narrowing of the anterior descending artery and a liquor smell from stomach. The toxicological screening revealed 200mg/dlethyl alcohol in the blood, while histology revealed fibrosis of the myocardium. Conclusion Although obstruction of the airway with a food bolus was the apparent cause of death at autopsy, the high blood alcohol level with myocardial fibrosis pauses questions regarding the mechanism of death i.e. which caused which? Therefore, a forensic pathologist should not be hurried to arrive at conclusions during the autopsy without further investigations.

문헌을 통해 본 조선후기 꽃놀이 명소의 경관 특성

본 연구에서는 조선후기 한양의 세시풍습과 명승을 기록한 "경도잡지(京都雜誌)"에 꽃놀이 명소로 등장하는 네 곳-필운대(弼雲臺), 북둔(北屯), 동대문 밖, 서대문의 천연정(天然亭) 등-을 대상으로 한다. 관련 문헌기록을 통해 각 명소들이 구체적으로 어떠한 경관요소들로 구성되고 방문객에게 어떻게 체험되었는지를 살펴보았다. 경관특성은 물경(物境), 정경(情境), 체험행위로 세분하여 분석하였다. 연구 결과, 대표적인 물경은 꽃이었으며, 꽃과 함께 술, 술잔, 술병 등의 음주와 관련된 물리적인 요소와 시 짓는 모임인 시회를 즐기는 장면도 등장하였다. 또한 이용 주체들이 물경에 의미를 부여한 정경의 도출을 통해 주체들이 공간에 성대해 갖는 의미를 해석하고자 하였다. 이를 통해 본 꽃놀이 명소의 의미로는 첫째, 풍류를 향유하기 위한 공간이라는 점이다. 문인들이 모여 꽃을 구경하고 술을 마시며 시회를 여는 등 각 공간들을 문화 창작의 거점으로 활용되었다. 둘째, 주체들이 각 장소에서 묘사한 정경에서 나타나듯, 방문객들은 공감각적인 완상을 통해 경관을 즐기는 것을 확인하였다. 이로써 꽃놀이 명소는 단지 꽃을 감상하는 것 이상의 감각적 체험의 장이었음을 확인하였다. 전통적인 꽃놀이 명소의 경관특성을 도출한 본 연구는 우리 선조들이 여가의 한 형태로 즐긴 꽃놀이와 그 공간이 갖는 의미를 추적하고 한국적인 꽃놀이 명소를 계획함에 있어 기초적인 자료가 될 것이라 판단한다. This study targets flower-viewing sites appearing in "Kyungdojapji" and talks about the seasonal customs and tourist attractions of the later Chosun; Pilundae, Bukdun, Outside of Dongdaemun, Cheonyunjeong and near Seodaemun etc. Through related poetry, paintings and maps, it looks into what scenic elements each attraction was made of and how the elements were felt by visitors. It sub-divided and analyzed scenic features into objective objects, subjective emotions and experienced behaviors. As a result, representative objective objects were flowers and there were also scenes where people enjoyed poem-writing meetings along with drinking-related physical elements such as liquor, liquor glasses, liquor bottles etc. Through drawing out scenes, where users gave meaning to objective objects, it tried to interpret what space meant to them, through which the meaning of flower-viewing attractions is first and foremost a space to enjoy artistic taste. Each space is used as the center of cultural creation such as literary people gathering, viewing flowers, drinking and having poetry-writing meetings. Second, as shown in scenes viewers depicted in each space, visitors were confirmed to enjoy scenes through multi-sensory appreciation. By this, flower-viewing attractions were confirmed to be not just flower-viewing but also venues of sensory experience. This study, which drew out the scenic features of traditional flower-viewing attractions, is expected to be basic material in tracing the flower-viewing enjoyed by our ancestors as a pastime and its spatial meaning and in planning Korea-unique flower-viewing attractions.

EMF3 Mechanisms of Injury and Implements Used in Physical Elder Abuse: Preliminary Findings from a Pilot Study of Highly Adjudicated Cases

Elder abuse is common and has serious health consequences, but is under-appreciated and poorly understood. Little is known about mechanisms or implements used in physical elder abuse and how these affect injury patterns. Our goal was to describe these mechanisms and implements and their relation to injury patterns in highly adjudicated cases of physical elder abuse. Partnering with a large, urban district attorney’s office, we closely examined a pilot sample of 76 successfully prosecuted physical elder abuse cases from 2003-2014, which resulted in 166 injuries. We evaluated law enforcement, legal, and medical records from these highly adjudicated cases, focusing on police and victim statements, and photographs of injuries. Results are presented as proportion of injuries. Mechanisms of injury included: blunt assault with hand/fist (44%), feet/knee (2%), both hand/fist and feet/knee (16%), object (14%); grab/twist/pinch (4%); penetrating assault with object (4%); strangulation /suffocation (4%); pulling hair (1%); push/shove (1%); spray with chemical (1%); and unknown (10%). Implements used included cane, baseball bat, keys, liquor bottle, necklace, purse strap, knife, kitchen utensils, broken plate, broken glassware, broken cabinet door, flashlight, and roach spray. The most common injuries were bruises (58%), lacerations (17%), abrasions (16%), and fractures (4%). Bruises in these victims were most commonly caused by blunt assault with hand/fist (49%) or both hand/fist and feet/knees (16%). Abrasions were most commonly caused by blunt assault with hand/fist (56%), both hand/fist and feet/knees (15%), and with objects (15%). Lacerations were most commonly caused by blunt assault with objects (32%), hand/fist (29%), and penetrating assault (18%). Fractures were most commonly caused by blunt assault with both hands/fist and feet/knees (43%), or only the feet/knees (29%). Victims of physical elder abuse with visible injuries are rarely assaulted with a weapon, but are most commonly struck with the hand/fist or the feet/knees of their assailant(s). When an inanimate object was used, it was most commonly a household object and commonly came from the kitchen. Future research of abuse-related injury patterns is critically needed to assist health care providers in identifying suspicious injuries and protecting vulnerable older adults.

Discrimination between authentic and false tax stamps from liquor bottles using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy and chemometrics

This work describes the preliminary application of a compact and low-cost laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument for falsification detection of tax stamps used in alcoholic beverages. The new instrument was based on a diode-pumped passively Q-switched Nd:YLF microchip laser and a mini-spectrometer containing a Czerny–Turner polichromator coupled to a non-intensified, non-gated, and non-cooled 2048pixel linear sensor array (200 to 850nm spectral range). Twenty-three tax stamp samples were analyzed by firing laser pulses within two different regions of each sample: a hologram and a blank paper region. For each acquired spectrum, the emitted radiation was integrated for 3000ms under the continuous application of laser pulses at 100Hz (integration of 300 plasmas). Principal component analysis (PCA) or hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) of all emission spectra from the hologram or blank paper region revealed two well-defined groups of authentic and false samples. Moreover, for the hologram data, three subgroups of false samples were found. Additionally, partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was successfully applied for the detection of the false tax stamps using all emission spectra from hologram or blank paper region. The discrimination between the samples was mostly ascribed to different levels of calcium concentration in the samples.

Research on the Application of the Chinese Ceramic Culture in the Shape Design of the Liquor Bottle

The Chinese ceramic art has high practical value and aesthetic value. The shape design of the liquor bottle made of by the ceramic material plays an important role in reflecting the connotation of the liquor, improving its quality and enhancing the consumers’ purchase design. This paper combines the Chinese ceramic culture to study the semantic features of the shape of the liquor bottle as well as the starting point and type characteristics of the shape design, in the hope of guiding the shape design of the ceramic liquor bottle. Then, it analyzes the existing problems, value of application and development trend of the creative liquor bottle design with Jingdezhen ceramics.

Research on the Application of the Chinese Ceramic Culture in the Shape Design of the Liquor Bottle

Research on the Application of the Chinese Ceramic Culture in the Shape Design of the Liquor Bottle

Anarchitecture and Anti-gentrification: Artistic Practices on Homelessness and Urban Renewal in Downtown New York in the 1970s and 1980s

This article addresses how the problem of homelessness and of their residential place emerged as a subject of artistic practice in the late 20th century, focusing on the lower Manhattan, New York. Particularly, pursuing the trajectory of artistic practices dealing with homelessness, this article articulates the process that the homeless people participated as the subject in coping with the issue.BR Before artists directly got involved in the issues of urban development and homelessness, there had been some attempts to explore the urban space and to rethink the residential space beyond functionalism of the modernist architecture. Gordon Matta-Clark developed his idea of ‘Anarchitecture’ by examining the moments of architectural absurdity. Dismantling the vision of ideal urban space and imagining new possible residential spaces for the homeless and the nomad, he came to include them as the subject of architectural consideration.BR Martha Rosler’s meta-critical documentary photography series, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (1974-1975) is an example to show a different perspective on the drunken homeless and their portal space. Removing people from her photographs and including abandoned liquor bottles instead, she transforms her deadpan photographs into a metaphoric representation of them, and suggests a new way to overcome the dominating aesthetics of spectacle in the modern urban planning.BR In the early 1980s, Colab and PAD/D conducted some activist practices against displacement caused by gentrification in the Lower East Side. Colab’s Real Estate Show (1980) was a guerrilla exhibition project to occupy the city-owned old abandoned building and to show their works against the urban renewal that forced poor tenants out. The artists participating in this show tried to communicate with the local community. PAD/D was much more aggressive in communicating with the local community. In conducting Not For Sale project (1983-1984), they directly participated in the Joint Planning Committee, and prepared for their exhibition as a kind of propaganda to unite with locals and made young artists to recognize the seriousness of gentrification and the housing issue.BR Rosler’s If You Lived Here... was a project that combined two different fields of art and activism by bringing the problem of homelessness to the institutions of art. Arranging diverse activities dealing with the housing issue, this project enclosed individual artists and homeless people. Leading participants to collaborative programs, this project collapsed the distinction between ‘they’ and ‘we.’ The alternative space located in SoHo functioned as a new communicative field for art, society, artists, and activists.BR In sum, throughout the 1970s and 1980s the artistic practices involved in the urban space and development went beyond the conventional relationship between artists and audience intermediated by works of art, and proceeded to mutual communication in the social context, in which artists and works of art became part of a social bond.

From Some Grace

from Some Grace Ashley Lee Williams (bio) After a while Beau came and sat beside her on the couch, sighing as he settled into his seat. He stretched out his long legs and crossed them. “I can’t believe she’s gone.” He shook his head. Grace didn’t know what to say. “You would have loved her, Grace. She was sweet, would give you the shoes off her feet if she knew you needed a pair. She raised me and your mama good. She did. And I know that’s what killed her, the way your mama just left us. We was always a close family, thick as thieves.” He was silent for a while. “When we were your age, me and your mama was best friends.” Beau laughed and his cheeks kissed the lids of his eyes. “We were. Oh Lord, everybody knew us. ‘Be careful of them Roux children. They lots of trouble.’ We wasn’t no trouble though. Just always getting into things. We might take a couple of crabs outta a fisherman’s catch or tell small tales to get what we wanted. Harmless fun for kids growing up in the country.” Grace was interested now. She’d never thought of her mother as a child, running barefoot through the woods with the wind in her hair, fearless. It was hard to picture. “Who’s the oldest?” “Me. By two years. But your mama always did think she was older. Nobody could tell her different. But she had a lot of heart and sometimes it was hard to tell who was the oldest. We was together so much some folks thought we was twins. Even my friends joked about me hanging around with my baby sister. But we was friends.” He hung his head. “I miss that.” “You’re not friends now?” Grace already knew the answer but she wanted him to say it. “No, Grace, we not friends. I ain’t seen or talked to your mama in ten years. Sometimes things happen that are so big, the truth gets mixed up and after a while, the truth don’t matter anymore. The only thing that matters is the story you give it. You too young to understand a thing like that and I pray to God you stay that way.” “I understand a lot of things,” Grace said. And it was true. Beau smiled down on her. The glow of his grin was the sun. “You remind me so much of your mama.” His eyes watered. “It’s hard to look at you sometimes because I just see my baby sister, young and free and happy.” He ran a gentle hand down her cheek and kissed her forehead. Suddenly the world was shattering around them. A screeching noise scratched in Grace’s ears and grains of glass cut into her skin. She screamed and covered her head and she could feel the weight of Beau on top of her, covering her with his body. [End Page 324] A hush fell over the house when she sat up. Petals of blood seeped into her dress and her arms were on fire. Her scalp was wet and the scent of alcohol scorched her nose. Everyone stared wide-eyed at her mother, standing across the room shaking, her eyes wild and red. Her outstretched finger was a dagger pointed at Beau. Flecks of glass scattered across the carpet at her feet. Grace was paralyzed with fear. “Don’t you touch her, Beau,” her mother hissed. “Don’t you do that. No. No. No. Don’t you put your hands on my child.” Beau shook the glass out of his shirt and glanced at the wall behind him. Liquid oozed down the wall. His face was a picture of shock. Slowly he turned to face his sister. “Did you just throw a damn liquor bottle at me?” Beau’s lips were grey with fright. “I did and I’ll pick up the pieces and slice open your throat if you put your hands on my child again.” Everyone stared in shock. No one moved. Even The Cousins stood still in the doorway, their mouths agape, foreheads creased...

막걸리시장 트랜드변화에 따른 Map분석을 이용한 용기디자인개발

오늘날 우리나라의 주류문화는 일반주류와 기능성주류로 분류할 수 있는데, 이 연구에서 기능성주류시장이 특용작물 및 과채류 주류시장에서 농작물(곡류)을 원료로 한 발효주류 시장으로 급격하게 변화하고 있는 것을 인식하게 되었다. 현재, 막걸리 수요는 계속 증가하는 반면 기존 막걸리 용기디자인은 소비자의 욕구 및 현 소비시장의 트렌드에 맞지 않는 용기디자인이 난무하고 있는 실정이다. 당장 주류시장에서 다른 상품과 경쟁하려면 막걸리 용기디자인의 개발이 불가피하다. 이에 따른 현재 생산되는 막걸리 용기디자인이 어떠한 종류들이 있으며, 지금까지 어떻게 변화되어 왔고, 얼마나 경쟁력이 갖추고 있는지를 조사 분석하여, 현, 소비자 트렌드에 부합하면서 막걸리라는 주류의 특성을 고려한 기능성과 실용성을 겸비한 용기를 개발하고자 한다. 그러므로 본 연구는 급속한 주류시장의 변화에서 경쟁력을 갖는 디자인적인 형태와 막걸리라는 특성에 맞는 기능적인 형태 구조를 제시하고자 한다. Today's liquor culture in Korea is basically divided into a general liquor culture and a functional liquor culture. In particular, the market of the latter has been going through a rapid change. In the previous days, it was a crop for a special purpose or a fruit which was mostly used to make liquor but now, many other regular crops are being used in the liquor market. At present, while the demand for Makgeolli has risen sharply, the designs of Makgeolli bottles have never satisfied needs from consumers nor the trends in the consumer market. As a result, Makgeolli industry should come up with new designs for the bottles immediately if it dose not want to lose in a competition with other liquor products. The study has looked into existing designs of Makgeolli bottles, investigating how the designs have changed over the past years and how competitive they are in the market. Based on results from the investigation, the study focuses on finding out designs which would fit the trends in the consumer market to develop Makgolli bottles which would be equipped with both functionality and practicality. In other words, to make Makgeolli survive in these rapid changes in the liquor market, the study works on offering a Makgeolli bottle design which is appropriate for certain characteristics of Makeolli and also competitive over other liquor bottles.

Rationalism Called into Question in the Latin American Narrative: From Jorge Luis Borges to Jorge Amado

Among the many elements markedly present within Latin American twentieth-century literature, one that stands out as a characteristic feature is the criticism of a rationalist logic. This criticism is expressed in distinct ways, extending from simple critique to the employment of the mimetic realism that dominates this type of cultural production to the exploration of two categories of the real. In itself, the introduction of these categories of real within a narrative threatens any attempt at representation based exclusively on the reproduction of an empirically provable reality. These categories, which have been designated the “strange,” the “uncommon,” the “fantastic,” or the “marvelous,” or even the “strangely fantastic” the “purely marvelous,” or “marvelous realism,” have been the object of study of a number of literary critics and theorists. The intention here, however, is neither to direct the reader’s attention to these concepts nor to attempt to classify literary works based on them. Instead, it is simply to examine how works such as those by Jorge Luis Borges and Jorge Amado have many elements in common even though there are remarkable differences between them, elements that derive from the use of the fantastic as a form of protest against rationalist logic and as the only way to understand the real in literature. In an already classic book on the subject, Introduction a la litterature fantastique (1970), translated by Richard Howard as The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1973), Tzvetan Todorov affirms that the fantastic

Pink Smog: Becoming Weetzie Bat (review)

Reviewed by: Pink Smog: Becoming Weetzie Bat Karen Coats Block, Francesca Lia . Pink Smog: Becoming Weetzie Bat. HarperTeen, 2012. 185p. Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-156598-4 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-210201-0 $9.99 R Gr. 7-10. It's been over twenty years since YA lit's most notable Manic Pixie Dream Girl introduced readers to her slinkster-cool world of Shangri-L.A. Now the question of who Weetzie Bat was before she appeared decked out in feathers and glitter and swimming in her love current is answered, and in a rather surprising way. Louise Bat is a skinny, awkward seventh-grader saddened by the fights between her alcoholic mother and drug-addicted father. When her beloved father leaves and her mother slips into an alcoholic haze, she flounders in her sadness until she befriends two equally beleaguered classmates, who bond with her over their outcast status. [End Page 340] Weetzie has two mysteries to solve: first, who is the beautiful boy who shows up out of nowhere whenever she needs him, and second, who keeps sending her cryptic riddles that introduce her to intriguing places in her city? As she follows the scavenger hunt of the messages and gets to know her guardian angel and his sinister, voodoo-practicing sister (whose name and practices hint that she may become Vixanne Wigg, Weetzie's nemesis), Weetzie begins a self-aware transformation from sad, neglected tween to self-sufficient caregiver, who intentionally replaces despair with pistachio-and-cherry ice cream, fills her mother's empty liquor bottles with stolen flowers, and learns "how to forget the things that make [her] sad." The prose both charts and matches Weetzie's transformation from ordinary girl into someone who deliberately creates the world she wants to live in; as she changes, so does the language, from a straightforward reporting of events to the more dreamlike, haunting quality of Block's signature style. This canny introduction to Weetzie is the perfect prep for younger readers to get to know someone they can grow with. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

What Virtual Reality Research in Addictions Can Tell Us about the Future of Obesity Assessment and Treatment

Virtual reality (VR), a system of human-computer interaction that allows researchers and clinicians to immerse people in virtual worlds, is gaining considerable traction as a research, education, and treatment tool. Virtual reality has been used successfully to treat anxiety disorders such as fear of flying and post-traumatic stress disorder, as an aid in stroke rehabilitation, and as a behavior modification aid in the treatment of attention deficit disorder. Virtual reality has also been employed in research on addictive disorders. Given the strong evidence that drug-dependent people are highly prone to use and relapse in the presence of environmental stimuli associated with drug use, VR is an ideal platform from which to study this relationship. Research using VR has shown that drug-dependent people react with strong craving to specific cues (e.g., cigarette packs, liquor bottles) as well as environments or settings (e.g., bar, party) associated with drug use. Virtual reality has also been used to enhance learning and generalization of relapse prevention skills in smokers by reinforcing these skills in lifelike environments. Obesity researchers and treatment professionals, building on the lessons learned from VR research in substance abuse, have the opportunity to adapt these methods for investigating their own research and treatment questions. Virtual reality is ideally suited to investigate the link between food cues and environmental settings with eating behaviors and self-report of hunger. In addition, VR can be used as a treatment tool for enhancing behavior modification goals to support healthy eating habits by reinforcing these goals in life-like situations.

‘Unconscious transference’ can be an instance of ‘change blindness’

AbstractThree experiments investigated the role of ‘change blindness’ in mistaken eyewitness identifications of innocent bystanders to a simulated crime. Two innocent people appeared briefly in a filmed scene in a supermarket. The ‘continuous innocent’ (CI) walked down the liquor aisle and passed behind a stack of boxes, whereupon the perpetrator emerged and stole a bottle of liquor, thereby resulting in an action sequence promoting the illusion of continuity between perpetrator and innocent. The ‘discontinuous innocent’ (DI) was shown immediately afterward in the produce aisle. Results revealed that: (1) more than half of participants failed to notice the change between the CI and the perpetrator, (2) among those who failed to notice the change, more misidentified the ‘CI’ than the ‘DI’, a pattern that did not hold for those who did notice the change. Participants were less likely to notice the change when they were distracted while watching the video. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform Kristen Tegtmeier Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform. By Bruce Laurie. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 328. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $23.99.) In Beyond Garrison, Bruce Laurie acknowledges the profound influence the Bay State's famous native son had on shaping the abolitionist movement in New England. Laurie urges us, however, to push through Garrison's apolitical "moral dead end" (5) and accept the claim that "politics had meaning and significance extending beyond Garrison" (9). Laurie's detailed study of the roots of antislavery politics in Massachusetts offers historians a fresh interpretation of the demographic and ideological base of the antislavery movement. Perhaps most important, however, he demonstrates how Bay State politicians linked antislavery concerns with other social reforms, such as the ten-hour movement and temperance, and thus strengthened, rather than weakened, the effectiveness of antislavery politics. Ultimately Laurie argues that "political action was an effective strategy consistent with moral rectitude and not a naïve plunge into a smarmy world of compromise and accommodation" (5). Moving beyond Garrison and his allies, Laurie points to men like Elizur Wright and Lewis Hayden and the "ordinary" citizens who fueled political abolitionism as the most successful leaders of Bay State antislavery activism. Laurie charts the evolution of antislavery politics from its origins in evangelical Protestantism and Garrisonian abolitionism to the rise and fall of the Liberty party, the creation of the Free Soil party and its coalition with Democrats, and the beginnings of the Republican party. Through biographical narratives and a thorough examination of voting behavior and demographics, Laurie demonstrates the importance of men "of the country" from "middling families" who embraced the utility of political action. Elizur Wright, Rev. Joshua Leavitt, and William S. Robinson are just a few of the many politicians, journalists, and activists who Laurie unearths from the ashes of Garrisonian abolitionism; he follows their path toward partisan antislavery vehicles like the Liberty party. He also underscores the importance of free blacks like Lewis Hayden and John Swett Rock in pressing white reformers to enact civil rights legislation. Laurie claims that "black activists were emphatically more combative" than whites [End Page 205] in their resistance to segregation and the fugitive slave law and applauds their rejection of the "non-resistance" abolitionism touted by most Garrisonians and politicos alike (253–54). In addition, Laurie makes the trenchant observation that some of the most effective antislavery politicians opposed "all kinds of slavery, wherever it exist[ed]," referring specifically to labor reform in the textile mills but also referencing the efforts of many Bay Staters to liberate their peers from the liquor bottle (147). Laurie shows that by supporting the ten-hour movement in the 1840s and the Maine Law in 1852, the supposed single-issue antislavery parties actually gained support and widened their political base. He also eschews the predominant view that abolitionism's strength was grounded only in middle-class, educated urbanites who lived in Boston. Instead, he finds some of the movement's most radical champions in industrial centers like Lowell, where working women like Sarah Bagley participated in the "cross-fertilization of abolitionism and labor reform" (145). Laurie reveals one of the weaknesses of his study by highlighting Bagley, however. Laurie features Bagley's courageous leadership of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, but Bagley is only one of the numerous reform-minded women who undoubtedly influenced political abolitionism in the 1840s and 1850s. If Bagley could encourage voters to link wage slavery with plantation slavery, as Laurie says she did, then other women like Abby Kelley and Lydia Maria Child certainly held sway with Liberty and Free Soil men in their home state. But Laurie almost wholly neglects women's antislavery activism, an oversight that could have been forgiven had recent studies by Julie Roy Jeffrey (1998), Melanie Gustafson (2001), and Susan Zaeske (2003) not provided numerous examples of how women participated in sectional politics. While it is true that many political abolitionists eschewed the "woman question," it is not the case that antislavery women were wholly divorced from political action. Although Laurie may have underestimated the significance of female politicos, he did provide...

Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform. By Bruce Laurie. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp 328. Cloth $65.00; paper $23.99.) In Beyond Garrison, Bruce Laurie acknowledges the profound influence the Bay State's famous native son had on shaping the abolitionist movement in New England. However, Laurie urges us to push through Garrison's apolitical "moral dead end" (5) and accept the claim that "Politics had meaning and significance extending beyond Garrison" (9). Laurie's detailed study of the roots and multiple manifestations of antislavery politics in Massachusetts offers historians a fresh interpretation of the demographic and ideological base of the antislavery movement. Perhaps most importantly, however, he demonstrates how Bay State politicians linked antislavery concerns with other social reforms, like the ten-hour movement and temperance, and thus strengthened, rather than weakened, the effectiveness of antislavery politics. Ultimately Laurie argues that "political action was an effective strategy consistent with moral rectitude and not a naïve plunge into a smarmy world of compromise and accommodation" (5). One consequence of the study is to expand the focus from only Garrison and his followers when asking why Massachusetts integrated its common schools in 1855 or why state legislators supported personal liberty laws as early as 1843. Instead, Laurie points to men like Elizur Wright and Lewis Hayden and the "ordinary" men and women who fueled political abolitionism as the most successful leaders of Bay State antislavery activism. Laurie charts the evolution of antislavery politics from its origins in evangelical Protestantism and Garrisonian abolitionism to the rise and fall of the Liberty Party, the creation of the Free Soil party and its coalition with Democrats, and [End Page 100] the beginnings of the Republican party. Through biographical narratives and a thorough examination of voting behavior and demographics, Laurie demonstrates the importance of men "of the country" from "middling families" who embraced the utility of political action. He also highlights the importance of free blacks in pressing white reformers to enact civil rights legislation; he claims that "black activists were emphatically more combative" than white ones in their resistance to segregation and the fugitive slave law and applauds their courage and leadership in their rejection of the "non-resistance" abolitionism touted by most Garrisonians and politicos (253–54). In addition, Laurie makes the trenchant observation that some of the most effective antislavery politicians opposed "all kinds of slavery, wherever it exist[ed]," referring specifically to labor reform in the textile mills but also referencing the efforts of many Bay Staters to liberate their peers from the liquor bottle (147). Laurie shows that by supporting the ten-hour movement in the 1840s and the Maine Law in 1852, the supposed single-issue antislavery parties actually gained support and widened their political base. He also eschews the predominant view that abolitionism's strength was grounded in middle-class urbanites who lived in Boston. Instead, he finds some of the movement's most radical champions in industrial centers like Lowell, where working women like Sarah Bagley participated in the "cross-fertilization of abolitionism and labor reform" (145). Laurie, however, reveals one of the weaknesses of his study by highlighting Bagley. Her story reminds us that women played meaningful roles in the political sphere, even if they could not cast their own ballots. Laurie gives Bagley her historical due as he illustrates her courageous leadership of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. But Bagley and her Lowell cohorts are only a few of the numerous reform-minded women who undoubtedly influenced political abolitionism in the 1840s and 1850s. If Bagley could encourage voters to link wage slavery with plantation slavery, then other women like Abby Kelley and Lydia Maria Child certainly held sway with Liberty and Free Soil men in their home state. Laurie almost wholly neglects women's antislavery activism, an oversight that could have been forgiven if recent studies by Julie Roy Jeffrey (1998), Melanie Gustafson (2001), and Susan Zaeske (2003) had not provided numerous examples of how women participated in sectional politics. While it is true that many political abolitionists eschewed the "woman question," believing it to be outside the...

Edward II, and: Measure for Measure (review)

Reviewed by: Edward II, and: Measure for Measure Justin Shaltz Edward II Presented by the Stratford Festival of Canada at the Studio Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. August 4–September 24, 2005. Directed by Richard Monette. Set by Michael Gianfrancesco. Lights by Kevin Fraser. Compositions by Paul Shilton. Sound by Todd Charlton. With David Snelgrove (King Edward II), Michelle Giroux (Queen Isabella), Jamie Robinson (Gaveston), Nicolas Van Burek (Spencer), Scott Wentworth (Mortimer), James Blendick (Warwick, Lightborn), Walter Borden (Lancaster), and others. Measure for Measure Presented by the Stratford Festival of Canada at the Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. August 5–September 24, 2005. Directed by Leon Rubin. Set by John Pennoyer. Lights by Michael Vieira. Sound by Jim Neil. With Thom Marriott (Duke), Robert King (Escalus), Jonathan Goad (Angelo), Don Carrier (Lucio), Diane D'Aquila (Mistress Overdone), Andrew Massingham (Pompey), Jeffrey Wetsch (Claudio), Dana Green (Isabella), Shane Carty (Elbow), Sarah Wilson (Mariana), and others. Artistic Director Richard Monette designed Stratford Festival of Canada's 2005 season with a "Saints and Sinners" theme, and two late-season productions provided insights into the connections between sex and violence. Monette himself directed Christopher Marlowe's Edward II in the Festival's stripped-down Studio Theatre and Leon Rubin directed a modernized Measure for Measure—all urban degradation in neon and cold steel—in the black-box Tom Patterson Theatre, twice the size of the Studio but still intimate with seats surrounding on three sides the narrow runway of a stage. Monette's vision of Edward II featured standard period costuming—medieval 14th century warriors with a touch of Elizabethan doublet and hose—with the exception of the King's beloved, Piers Gaveston. The shirtless Gaveston strutted across the stage clad in black leather, a medallion around his neck, as if he had emerged from a modern gay dance club. His hair a sloppy afro, he addressed the audience then rushed into the seats to deliver sarcastic asides. His interaction with King Edward was all physical lust: they knelt together and kissed several times before Edward wrapped Gaveston in his kingly robes and mounted him in feigned sodomy. Monette's blocking tended to position the nobles against the King like a firing squad, sometimes half-encircling him, at other times turning their backs on him in disgust. When Isabella confronted Edward, Gaveston sat at the King's side in her place, and they kissed while Edward pawed at Gaveston's crotch. When the two lovers stood to confront their accusers, they faced upstage so the audience was aware of Gaveston's constant caress of the royal behind. In an incisive counterpoint, the mortified nobles again turned away when, moments later, Isabella lustily embraced Mortimer. There was no pretense of deep feelings between Edward and Gaveston. Their relationship was entirely carnal. Early on, while the nobles signed their rebellious allegiance in downstage lamplight, the King, Gaveston and a group of nearly naked young men cavorted in the small upper-balcony space: undulating, swigging from liquor bottles, and pantomiming sex acts. After Gaveston was captured and executed, Edward mourned briefly, quick to replace his sexual favorite with the eager Spencer. Edward [End Page 92] donned the crown and retrieved his fallen sword, then kissed Spencer passionately on the mouth. Spencer giggled, seized a herald by the neck and snapped a banner pole in two. Like Edward II's sexually deviant court, the modern Vienna of Measure for Measure was a sordid milieu, filled with bored prostitutes and seedy customers. Neon signs surrounded the stage—blue "Vanity," orange "Sin Tax," red "Hottie"—and amid pulsating lights and throbbing club music, garishly made-up strippers in leather and lace gyrated along poles, within cages and from a hanging trapeze bar; two of them pantomimed sex inside a large metal hoop suspended over the stage. Stage fog swirled, liquor was served from an upstage bar, and young clubbers worked the front row of the audience, chatting with patrons as the Duke watched from a private table. A group of outraged nuns appeared upstage but pulled off their habits to reveal themselves as lithe young strippers, and they gyrated and thrashed to wild applause. The crowd's roar extended to a...

Fear of Falling Sideways : Alexander Payne's Rhetoric of Class

Fear of Falling Sideways: Alexander Payne’s Rhetoric of Class Derek Nystrom (bio) Review of: Sideways. Dir. Alexander Payne. Perf. Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh. Fox Searchlight, 2004. In a moment that we are meant to take as a sign that its protagonist has hit rock bottom, Sideways (2004) puts failed novelist and wine snob Miles (Paul Giamatti) on all fours outside a bedroom in a slovenly, bombed-out looking tract home; there, he watches with surprise and horror as an overweight, tattooed, working-class couple passionately fuck, the man taking intense pleasure in his wife’s recounting of how she had seduced another man. There is much to say about this primal scene of class abjection, but I will start by noting that it echoes the inaugural scene of Alexander Payne’s cinematic oeuvre. His 1996 debut film, Citizen Ruth (which, like all of Payne’s films, was co-written with Jim Taylor), opened by similarly positioning the spectator outside the filthy bedroom of a white-trash couple, their tattered mattress surrounded by empty 40-oz. malt liquor bottles, as the title character (Laura Dern), an aficionado of inhalants, endures joyless intercourse with her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. One might trace the trajectory of Payne’s career by noting that where the scene from his latest film—which is also his best received—provides us with an on-screen delegate, whose discerning middle-class gaze we are meant to share, the opening sequence of Ruth does not align our perspective on its delinquent working-class protagonist with any reassuring spectatorial stand-in. One might also note that the abjected couple in Sideways seems to be having a much better time—and that it is now the middle-class voyeur who has the chemical addiction. All of these developments point to the complicated, ambivalent rhetoric of class that Payne has developed over the course of his films, a rhetoric that takes a new turn in his latest, Oscar-winning release.[1] That Payne’s cinema is centrally about class is clear—or at least would be clear to any culture that did not struggle mightily to repress this fundamental condition of social life. The subversive frisson of Citizen Ruth comes as much from its protagonist’s unrepentant resistance to standards of middle-class dignity (indeed, even her choice of intoxicant makes trucker speed look chic) as from the film’s allegedly irreverent take on the abortion debate.[2] Meanwhile, the comically monstrous ambition of Election’s (1999) Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) is identified as the product of a shrill class ressentiment instilled in Tracy by her stewardess-turned-paralegal mother. The impending tragedy that retired insurance actuary Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) attempts to avert in About Schmidt (2002) is the upcoming wedding of his daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) to Randall (Dermot Mulroney), a handlebar mustachioed, mulleted doofus whose family resides in lower-middle-class squalor on a street where shirtless men blithely toss their garbage onto the lawn. Yet the class condescension of these films is complicated by their portrayals of middle-class characters. Ruth finds a way to valorize its title character by critiquing the instrumentalist handling of her situation by anti- and pro-choice advocates—a process that discourages the audience from having a similarly reductive relationship to her. Similarly, in Election we see Tracy largely through the eyes of high school teacher Mr. McAllister (Matthew Broderick), whose annoyance at her relentless striving is mixed with a barely sublimated desire for her and resentment at his own station in life; any disdain for Tracy we might share with him is thus called into question. The audience is forced to adopt an equally dubious perspective in Schmidt, as we are privy only to the information available to its solipsistic and emotionally self-deluding title character. As a result, we are led to recognize that his dismay at his daughter’s choice of partner seems to be as much the product of his disconnection from Jeannie (and from virtually everyone else) as that of Randall’s apparent unsuitability. Our understanding of Randall and of his dissolute post-hippie family, we come to feel, may be...