Dead Man Research Articles

Generating Sympathy for Specific Characters and Events in Mandla Langa’s “The Dead Men Who Lost Their Bones”

In this article, I investigate Mandla Langa’s short story “The Dead Men Who Lost Their Bones” by applying Gérard Genette’s narrative discourse along with Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic imagination to the text. By highlighting the way in which Langa employs narrational strategies to generate meaning in the story, I aim to correct the critical neglect of this aspect of his work. It is established that two narrational modes of the intradiegetic-homodiegetic and the intradiegetic-metadiegetic are employed by two central characters in the narrative. The first character narrator is Clementine, the daughter of the second narrator, Simeon Ngozi. This produces a heterodiegetic narrative, that is, a multiple narrative strategy. This multi-voiced polyphonic narrative accentuates the plight of the main characters and their struggles under oppressive and exploitative conditions in apartheid South Africa. It also generates sympathy for these events, as well as for Clementine and her father.

:Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test: How Behavior Evolves and Why It Matters

:<i>Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test: How Behavior Evolves and Why It Matters</i>

Paradoxical Connections in Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone

The paper examines different types of paradoxical connections in Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone with respect to contemporary characteristics of American theatre. It is so clear that the play has a smooth transformation or connection between paradoxical states or situations. The transformation happens due to spatial, and temporal conditions, and different humankind values. The play is full of different types of connections due to social ties, contradictive life situations, death and life, the whole and the parts, the spatial and the temporal transformation, truth and lies, happiness and misfortune, fancy and facts, and humanity with technology. The study is qualitative depending on the study of the cases within the play that are contradicting each other, yet they serve in deepening the meaning and the understanding of the cases. The paradoxical issues to be studied in a comparative way, these comparative situations serve higher thematic issues in a philosophical dimension in very carefully woven relations between the characters and situational environment as well. The common sense that the play made is to accept the philosophy of black and white as positive paradoxical relation, that the black helps to see the pure white and vice versa. Common unanswered questions are to be presented in a rhetorical and philosophical manner; targeting these questions is the way of being closer to a bunch of truths about the complicated fabric relationships which link the characters all together.

Saxo Grammaticus's Account of the Viking Age Site on the Danish Island of Hjarnø in Gesta Danorum

Saxo Grammaticus's Account of the Viking Age Site on the Danish Island of Hjarnø in <i>Gesta Danorum</i>

초연결 시대의 초자연적 교감과 초연결성의 윤리

This paper focuses on the process of recovering supernatural interactions for all the characters in Dead Man’s Cell Phone. Sarah Ruhl is recognized as a playwright and thinker who expands cultural influence beyond the theatre through a conscious confrontation with the contemporary era. Dead Man's Cell Phones represents a new dimension of dramatic action that generates ‘freedom of hyperconnectivity,’ ‘hyper-connected survival,’ and ‘spiritual networks’ that humanity has neglected due to the temptation of materialism and technological advances. The play revolves around the dead man Gordon and his cell phone, exploring the human ontology that needs to be filled with meaning in the context of change and making connections among humans as well as humans and non-human others. Organ trading in Dead Man's Cell Phone is a dramatic motif that first appeared in English dramas. In this play, organ trading is a dramatic representation of the ethics of hyperconnectivity and raises ethical questions about the consequences of hyperconnectivity. This play demonstrates that drama is a platform for the transition of human life in restoring primitive connectivity in the hyper-connected era.

Narrative Strategies in Orhan Pamuk's Novel My Name is Red

The novel My Name is Red combines a whodunit thriller, a love story with a discussion of art, comparing 16th century oriental miniatures and Renaissance painting. With a non-linear approach to history, Pamuk presents the narrative against the background of such a paradigmatic theological context, which is forgotten and incomprehensible for the modern era. In this multi-layered and multi-centric narrative, we find narratives within narratives, labyrinths of signs and symbols. The narrative moves between two ideology of paintings, merging history and artistic creativity. The implicit discourse of the novel is medieval paintings, allegories, signs, visual codes, concepts, that the Turkish novelist applies to show the canonical discourses of oriental painting. In the polyphonic narration of the novel main thematic lines of the work are expressed: the murder, the identification of the killer and the love triangle, which reminds the story of Nizami Ganjevi "Khosrow and Shirin" at the metatextual level. My Name Is Red has 20 explicit narrators. Various creatures and artifacts come to life from the miniatures: a dog, a horse, a red, a tree, ink, death, Satan, etc. They are decorative and digressive in terms of deviations from the main theme. &nbsp;A large number of storytellers serves to expand the murder in different planes. In the absence of an omniscient autochthonous narrator who sees the truth, all narrators are unreliable. Pamuk makes his narrators serve one pressing plot. Pamuk's narrators are speaking, like the storyteller `Meddah`&nbsp;&nbsp; in old Istanbul coffee-house. To hold the narratives together Pamuk needs the reader, the person to whom his protagonists confess. Characters keep turning to reader for confirmation. Each fragment of narrative is in the first-person. The novel's characters tell a part of their own stories. The novel's first chapter is spoken by a dead man. He is a miniaturist, as he tells us, has been murdered and thrown down a well. Later the murderer kills another man, the master of the miniaturists, we hear first-hand from the victim about being killed. The novel will be concerned with finding the culprit and the motive for the murder. Pamuk builds the structure of the novel in such a way that the narration of all the narrators takes place within the framework of one main narrative flow. Multiperspectivety of focalization is a fundamental aspect of storytelling in the novel. This narrative model requires different choices and projections at different levels, and each choice potentially activates alternative viewpoints. The narrators speak to the reader as if they are aware of their existence in the novel, passing on the narrative baton creates the specific structure of the novel. Many actors create a metafictional picture of the book. “My Name Is Red” is a 59-chapter metafictional postmodern narrative with multiple unreliable narrators. The dichotomy of East and West, which is produced on the basis of the competing painting styles, fills the story with a theological discourse, Ekphrasis&nbsp;brings a contemplative-meditative tone to the expressive technique of writing. Considering all these factors and the complex structure of the text and modes of narration, we must say, that the narrative technique of the novel is splendid

Dead Men Telling Tales: Napoleonic War Veterans and the Military Memoir Industry, 1808–1914

Dead Men Telling Tales is a clever and ironic title for a book that examines how Napoleonic-era veterans (those who survived the war) wrote memoirs that strove to be legitimate histories and not just personal tales. Matilda Greig has assembled an impressive corpus of up to three hundred autobiographical texts from the Peninsular War (1808–14), in which Spanish guerrillas successfully repelled French invaders with the aid of British forces, dealing a decisive blow to Napoleon’s imperial ambitions. Her sources include French and British memoirs as well as lesser-known Spanish ones and a smattering of Portuguese works published throughout the nineteenth century. These provide an original and comparative angle on a familiar topic. By also integrating archival research on the publication of these books, Grieg is able to address broader questions about war memoirs as a genre and war veterans as their enterprising authors.Like others before her, Greig notes the unprecedented outpouring of autobiographical writings among veterans of the Napoleonic wars; unlike others, she is less interested in their reasons for writing than in the outcome, and in particular the material conditions in which war memoires were produced. Her central argument is that, for the first time, the experience of war was commodified and successfully sold to a large audience. This, she suggests, made war memoirs into a genre and turned soldiers into legitimate authors. To support these claims, Greig turns to book history and what she nicely calls “the secret lives of books”—all that had to happen behind the scenes for these texts to find their publishers and a growing readership. For sell they would, as publishers soon came to understand, enticing veterans to write and to take an active role in the production and marketing of their memoirs. What some disparagingly dubbed a bout of “scribblomania” developed, over the course of the century, into a vast repertoire of autobiographical writings with solid print runs, changing formats, new and enriched editions, imitations and parodies, and more or less successful spin-offs in travel and history writing (among other genres). The lives of these books lasted well beyond their authors’ deaths, implicating widows and descendants interested in keeping memories and royalties flowing. Whether these developments actually amount to the forging of a literary genre—and, moreover, one that “made a deep impression on nineteenth-century culture, memory, and literature, shaping the way multiple generations of readers imagined war” (3)—is something that this particular book cannot fully answer. To do so would have required more analysis of reader reception and, especially, of the formal qualities of these and subsequent writings. Greig is quite justified in not wanting to examine these sources purely for their factual content (as soldiers’ writings often are); but in failing to look closely at the texts themselves she glosses over significant differences between, for instance, letters, diaries, and memoirs drafted at various moments during and after the facts. If a genre’s form has a content, so does its content have a form.Dead Men Telling Tales is most convincing when studying Spanish war memoirs alongside better-known French and British ones. This is a significant contribution to the literature on Napoleonic-era memory. Greig shows how these autobiographical manifiestos developed a style of their own, influenced by petition-like juridical models handed down from the eighteenth century but equally polemical and argumentative in their postwar intent. Most were written in the immediate aftermath of the conflict and had to navigate a rapidly evolving political landscape and censorship laws. Little wonder, therefore, that Spanish veterans—whether aristocrats or guerrilleros—sought to frame the historical events they had taken part in, if necessary engaging in historiographical debates with accredited historians and official institutions. Here we see most clearly how veterans became true authors and not just war witnesses. Greig’s comparative analysis is often tentative, but the transnational approach does yield some important findings, not least a common willingness among veterans to document, for the first time, war’s more gruesome aspects and confront their participation in scenes such as those depicted in Goya’s celebrated Disasters of War. Some memoirs—French and British ones especially—circulated across borders, often in unofficial translations and publications that proliferated freely before the advent of international copyright legislation. Paradoxically, this circulation tended to solidify nationalist frames and different ways of interpreting, even naming the conflict: Peninsular War, Guerre d’Espagne, Guerra de la Independencia. Each had its particular narratives and stereotypes: lazy or savage Spaniards, evil French, perfidious Brits, a heroic “people’s war.” Greig reminds us that if the Napoleonic wars gave birth to what George Mosse famously called the “myth of the war experience,” this myth came in various shapes, sizes, and fonts. Specialists on this pivotal moment in the history of total and asymmetric warfare, and on veterans’ writings in general, will find Greig’s analysis of these texts very stimulating.

LANGUAGE REPRESENTATION OF SPACE (BASED ON THE MATERIAL OF THE TEXTS OF UKRAINIAN SPELLS)

The purpose of the article is to study the linguistic representation of space in the texts of Ukrainian folk spells. To achieve the goal we are to fulfill the following tasks: to define a vocabulary for the designation of spatial concepts, which presents consecrated (clean) and profane (impure) space; analyze traditional formulas that denote space; to describe the linguistic means by which the limitlessness, dynamism, and mobility of space are expressed in the texts of Ukrainian spells. We present examples of Ukrainian spells in the forms in which they occur in the studied texts. So, in the texts of Ukrainian folk spells, we can see the functioning of a consecrated (clean) and a profane (impure) space, the reflections of which are reflected in the vocabulary to designate spatial concepts. Mobility, dynamism of space is conveyed by verbs of motion, and one of the spatial representatives is the lexeme sea, which in turn activates the epithet blue. In addition to verbs of motion, spatial semantics are conveyed by nouns and adverbs of place. Traditional formulas denoting space include constructions with the prepositions by, near, through, in, on, and geographical designations. Clean space is associated with the presence of Christian characters in it, but diseases are sent to places with the meaning of remote (unclean) space. The heavenly space of spells is represented by the symbols the sky, the sun, the moon, stars, and a fiery bugalo. Earthly space contains realities represented by lexemes denoting abstract space (north, south, west, east, side, parts, earth), natural landscape (mountains, forests, mounds, driftwoods, thickets, banks, stones, stumps, slums, ravines), formed territories (road, yard) and buildings (house, church). The spells denoting space are represented by plant names: trees (oak, willow, pear), bushes (viburnum), flowers (rose), herbs (mint, primrose, rowan), agricultural crops (rye), as well as generalized names of plants (tree, grass) and their parts. The lower water-land world is represented by the following nominations: snake, serpent, viper, plow, pike, dead man, devil. Prospects for further research consist in the study of the category of time in the texts of Ukrainian spells.

Incapacitous patients, assisted reproductive technology, and the importance of informed consent

Abstract The principle of self-determination has gained significant judicial support over the last three decades, and the choice to procreate using assisted reproductive technology is a clear example of our right to choose a treatment that enhances our personal lives. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (as amended in 2008) stipulates that each party must give written, informed consent to ensure that our reproductive materials are used within strict parameters. However, the growing number of posthumous conception cases in several jurisdictions has raised concerns, particularly in situations where gametes are extracted from incapacitous patients without their consent, leading to posthumous parenthood. The landmark case of Y v A Healthcare NHS Trust [2018] EWCOP 18 caused significant concern when it authorised the retrieval, storage and use of sperm from a suspected brain stem dead man for procreative purposes under the Mental Capacity Act 2005. It has never been known to be in the ‘best interests’ of a patient who lacks capacity to procreate in English law, and the consequences of this decision could be highly significant, raising questions about the exploitation of incapacitous patients and the misuse of genetic material. The decision has since been confirmed as the correct approach by the Court of Protection in Re X (Catastrophic Injury: Collection and Storage of Sperm) [2022] EWCOP 48, and a public consultation has now been opened by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. This paper examines the rigorous consent regime of the 1990 Act and the ethical complexities of retrieving gametes from incapacitous patients for procreative purposes. It will be determined that the 1990 Act's preference for a rigorous consent regime for public policy reasons is appropriate, and any alternative forms of consent could open a slippery slope to the unethical use of vulnerable individuals for their reproductive materials.

Analysing the Readability Level of the Short Stories Used in the IEEL Course

The short story as a literary work has been ubiquitously used to teach language and literature. However, not all short stories are appropriate and suitable to be used in the language-learning classroom. One of the aspects that should be considered in choosing short stories to teach language and literature is the readability level. The matching of appropriate text difficulty level to the readers’ reading ability is crucial to inculcate an interest in reading and elicit comprehension. Derived from this rationale, this study aimed to investigate the readability level of short stories used in the Introduction to Educational English Literature Course (IEEL). Moreover, this study also attempted to analyse the students’ perceptions of the short stories assigned to them to read in the IEEL course. In measuring the readability level, document analysis utilizing the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Formula was employed. To strengthen the data and ensure triangulation, 5 participants were purposely selected to be interviewed to explore their perspectives after reading those short stories. The results showed that 3 short stories namely The Birthday Party, The Dead Men’s Path, and Turning Thirty were categorized as standard (63.1), fairly easy (74.4), and easy level (83.7) respectively. Lastly, further inquiries through semi-structured interviews found that the 5 participants were reported to have positive viewpoints after reading those short stories.

A Phenomenological Exploration of Relaxation as a Movement Skill

ABSTRACT This article takes a phenomenological approach to explore the phenomenon of relaxation as a movement skill. The phenomenological perspective takes inspiration primarily from selected works of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Samuel Todes, and Kym Maclaren. The author explores the phenomenon of relaxation as a movement skill by analysing three situations: 1) the new-born embracing and being embraced in interpersonal relaxation, 2) the “relaxed attack” approach of elite athletes, and 3) the yogi’s experience of finding relaxation in shavasana (dead man's pose). The analyses draw on the phenomenological framework of Husserl’s concepts of “passivity”, Maclaren’s idea of “letting oneself be” and Todes’ conceptualisation of a spatiotemporal field further illustrates how the body’s unity with the world. The conclusion suggests that relaxation is an ambiguous movement skill, simultaneously an intrinsic part of being alive as a human being, a precondition for all movement capability and an achievement in its own right.

Useful Objects: Museums, Science, &amp; Literature in Nineteenth-Century America

Useful Objects: Museums, Science, &amp; Literature in Nineteenth-Century America

Made Holy

Made Holy Michael Downs (bio) St. James Infirmary After Jim died, his house fell into the custody of a violinist who drove a small hatchback that looked like a black soybean, if a soybean were decorated with affirming bumper stickers. Jim had been a choir director for a Lutheran church, and the violinist was a friend. She hired contractors to reclaim the basement that Jim had left flooded knee-high and to dispose of the packaged underwear he’d bought in bulk rather than do laundry in the flooded basement. Then came a family with boxes to live in Jim’s house, to eat at his table, to stretch out on his mattresses, to sit on his chesterfield sofa. This was late summer. The oldest of the two daughters practiced clarinet, and through open windows her notes came innocent and bright. A yellow bus arrived each day to pick her up for school; she, the only passenger. Sheri and Michael, who lived two doors away, said they’d heard that this service meant the family had been homeless. Why that would be so, Michael and Sheri didn’t understand, though who but a homeless family would seek shelter among the furnishings of a dead man? Robert, the husband in that family, repeated over and over for neighbors, us, his sad tale. He explained to Joyce as they stood in the street and then again across her fence, to Bert from his driveway, to Michael as he walked [End Page 19] with the dogs, to Sylvia in her backyard. Big and unshaven, Robert spoke of his tenure as an Episcopal priest, of the parish he’d recently lost. He detailed for all the unholy conspiracies and politics, the enemies who hid behind brocaded curtains, the vague betrayals, and incomprehensible motivations. Neighbors would nod along, confused by his homilies, then turn to a chore that required their attention. But not Sylvia, who in her seventies and with no hobbies enjoyed a wide-open schedule. At a small table shaded by her patio awning from the July sun, she offered a glass of chilled white wine, and Robert accepted. This was at noon. He’d talk. Then he’d pour himself another. Then another. She’d find an uncorked bottle. Then it was four o’clock. “He never leaves!” she later brayed to Michael. “He won’t go home.” Each weekday, Robert’s wife drove to a job. On the weekends, she mowed the yard. She never visited with neighbors. She worked and mowed and worked and mowed until the day she packed their car with boxes and with the daughters, then drove away from Jim’s house forever. For a time, through the windows, neighbors glimpsed Robert lumbering from room to room. But no garbage can appeared at the curb on collection days. And he did not come outdoors to bring details of this fresh sad tale. Then, one afternoon when leaves fell, the violinist arrived in her tiny car. Robert had slipped away, she told neighbors. No one on Sefton Avenue had noticed. Let them go, let them go, God bless them, wherever they may be. Bible Study Today’s lesson: that number who have his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads and so have places reserved in heaven. “Like a restaurant,” says Sister Dorothea. “There are only so many tables. You can’t seat everyone. You can’t even seat all the ones you’d like. But it’s not true that He lets the others go hungry. Because to be in the sight of God is to be fed with His love.” Joyce sets her rock-solid bohunk jaw. A devoted twice-each-year-Lutheran, she’s thankful that Sister Dorothea visits, bringing God and the Bible each Thursday at ten a.m.—to the porch on pleasant days like today, into the house when it’s cold or hot. But this? Only 144,000 pass through Heaven’s gate? And most have already arrived? [End Page 20] “According to Scripture,” says Sister Dorothea, and she nods. She points her wrinkled finger to a page in The Watchtower and to another in her Bible...

신라 금령총의 장신구 그리고 사람들

The Geumryeong-tomp is a tomb in the Silla period, located at the northern end of Gyeongju. It was first excavated in 1924 and again in 2018. Now in 2022, a special exhibition of past archaeological achievements and research is being held. In this tomb, which was named as a ‘Geumryeong-tomb’ in commemoration of the excavation of golden bell, precious Silla precious metal ornaments such as golden crown and golden belt were also excavated. The Geumryeong-tomb was recognized as the tomb of Prince Shilla. It was because the golden crown and the golden belt were all small items suitable for young people of small size.&#x0D; In this article, I have illuminated the objects and the people who handled them with the material of the Geumryeong-tomb. With the results of the research accumulated until recently, I looked at the Geumryeong-tomb ornaments. Explain the speciality and production technique of the Geumryeong-tomb.&#x0D; Because ornaments are artifacts, people are involved in some way. In this article, I explored the three subjects involved in the use of ornaments: the dead, the funeral, and the craftsmen.&#x0D; Find out why the Geumryeong-tomb’s dead man is an infant. I looked at the funeral director who is the actual leader of this funeral. The funeral ornaments prepared by the funeral organizer were derived and explained his presence. Finally, I looked at the craftsmen who made the funeral items. The main characters on the stage of death and funeral are the dead, the funeral, and the craftsmen. And they are intertwined with relics.&#x0D; The purpose of this study is to explore their correlation and Silla society with the theme of Geumryeong-tomb ornaments. This study explains the archaeological existence of Geumryeong-tomb’s dead man, funeral director, and craftsmen with clues to ornaments.

THE CONCEPT OF IDENTITY DEPICTED BY MARGO IN JOHN GREEN’S PAPER TOWN

This study aims to analyze Margo’s Identity in John Green’s Paper Town. The primary source is the novel Paper Town by John Green. To analyze the problems formulated above, the writer uses the theory of identity from Erik Erikson. The result of the study is Margo is an introverted person. She does not like to share her feelings with others. She always keeps her problems to herself. It makes other people create their perspectives about her and she cannot show her real side of her. Margo is also a smart girl. When she is a child, she does an investigation about the dead man. She manipulates the police and the woman in the apartment so she can get information about the dead man. Her decision to leave the town and never want to come back is a big decision. Her parents, sister, friends, and all the people live in that town, but she chooses to leave all of them forever. When she finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her with her best friend, she starts to change her way of thinking. The finding of this thesis is identity is developed by individuals, but must be recognized and confirmed by others. In Paper Towns, those that are idealized are done so in a positive light. If people have a negative outlook on generalized portions of life, then when faced with individual forms, their negative outlook will translate and prevent people from truly being honest about whether something is good or bad for their identity.

La Bocce Vita

La Bocce Vita

The virtues of bans on high-THC content cannabis products?

Product bans may have some advantages over tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-based taxes as a response to high THC content cannabis products, but another driver of higher levels of THC consumption may be legalization-induced price declines, not just legalization-induced increases in potency. Hall et al. [1] observe that (1) legalizing commercial cannabis supply brought greater availability and use of high-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) products (both higher potency flower and forms such as vapes and dabs), and (2) the (imperfect) literature suggests that although consumers use less when potency rises (i.e. they ‘titrate’) the reduction is less than proportionate, so higher potency brings greater THC consumption. As greater THC consumption might increase health harms, Hall et al. suggest considering policy responses including better labeling, product bans and progressive THC-based taxes (e.g. taxing 20% flower more per gram than 15% flower). I will comment upon these observations through the lens of economics but—perhaps surprisingly—conclude that product bans may be more promising than THC taxes. Hall et al. note that many who supported legalization failed to anticipate the trend towards higher-THC products. However, it is naive to imagine that legalizing supply will change little besides arrest rates. Legalization is like a radical technological innovation that upends the structure, conduct and performance of the industry [2]. Among its myriad effects are distribution methods that permit greater product variety (a store can stock hundreds of products; a classic ‘drug dealer’ can only carry a few) and the ability to own and operate machinery that can extract and concentrate cannabinoids from parts of the plant that used to be discarded. Regarding potential policy responses, few could argue with providing consumers with accurate labels. Efficient markets depend upon good information. When products create harms, economists often eschew crude product bans and prefer manipulating tax rates to create socially optimal incentives (e.g. Pigouvian taxes that internalize externalities [3]). However, taxing cannabis potency is complicated. Whereas alcohol is just one molecule (ethanol) that appears in varying concentrations, cannabinoids, like opioids, are a family of related molecules with varying strengths. Taxing Δ9-THC might induce producers to sell products with Δ8-THC. Taxing all forms of THC equally might induce producers to sell Δ9-THCP products, as Δ9-THCP appears to be much more potent per unit weight [4]. One day there may be cannabinoid equivalency ratios analogous to the morphine equivalent dose (MED) system that compares different opioids’ analgesic effects, but the requisite science base does not yet exist. By contrast, bans on specific types of products are simple, common and—contrary to some claims—do not always produce illegal markets large enough to undermine their benefits. Uruguay restricted cannabis potency, Canada limited legalization to flower products in the first year and Quebec still restricts the forms and flavors of edible cannabis products, all without collapsing the system. Banning certain alcohol and tobacco products is also common. For example, the United States banned flavored cigarettes in 2009 and caffeinated alcohol drinks in 2010. Not all bans are models of science-based reasoning. Many countries banned absinthe for almost a century based on absinthe-specific fears that now seem dubious or manageable by regulating thujone content [5]. My point is not that all product bans are good. They have costs and benefits that must be weighed, but concerns regarding illegal markets should not automatically silence their consideration. The viability of banning specific products within a broader class is even more clear when looking at safety regulations more widely. For example, in 1982, the United States banned walk-behind rotary lawn mowers that lacked blade control systems [6]. That did not spawn a massive illegal market for lawn mowers lacking a ‘dead man’s switch’. Safer (albeit somewhat more expensive) lawn mowers are good substitutes for the older type, so that product ban achieves its end. In short, product-specific bans are not like broad prohibitions, so legally supplied low- and medium-THC products may be good enough substitutes for illegally produced high-THC products that banning high-THC forms will not create large illegal markets. However, I wonder whether the main driver of potentially problematic levels of THC consumption is the proliferation of high-potency products or the sharp declines in cannabis prices. The Western States Information Network’s 2008 Drug Price and Purity Guide describes pound prices for sinsemilla-type marijuana in California as averaging approximately $4000 in 2008, and Cannabis Benchmarks reports California pound prices of $702 in November 2022 [7]. Adjusting for inflation, that is a real price decline of 87%. As THC content is now approximately 50% higher (e.g. 21% versus 14% THC), the decline in price per unit of THC is more like 92%. Therefore, observed increases in THC consumption during the period of policy liberalization that ushered in high-potency products may be due, in part, to legalization-induced declines in price, not just legalization-induced increases in potency. None. None.

Musical Indeterminacy as Critical and Affirmative play

Musical Indeterminacy as Critical and Affirmative play1 Kirsten L. Speyer Carithers (bio) "Dialed Music, or Whatever, Offers Stiff Test of Nerves," proclaimed a headline in the Buffalo Evening News in December 1966. The article's author, music critic JOHN DWYER, further argued that the evening's concert was more challenging for the audience than Russian roulette or "Dead Man's Curve at 120 in the rain."2 What was so demanding about this event? The recently formed Sonic Arts Union, visiting the University at Buffalo's Baird Hall as part of the Slee Music Lecture series, incorporated strange new techniques into their performance, disrupting norms and unsettling audience members. Musicians ROBERT ASHLEY, GORDON MUMMA, DAVID BEHRMAN, and ALVIN LUCIER presented new compositions that evening, many of which incorporated experimental technology. By that point, MUMMA and ASHLEY had developed the ONCE Festival (in Ann Arbor, Michigan) into an important site for new music, and they brought that [End Page 119] energy to the Buffalo concert, performing works that altered typical conventions of vocalization and instrumental performance. The Sonic Arts Union's work coincides temporally with the rise of the do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos within certain forms of popular music, which has been an important aspect of several musical subcultures, and experiments like Mumma and Ashley's suggest a similar fascination with sonic technology.3 As explained by Dwyer, Mumma "played a wired-up French horn, though used more as a modifying long-tube for the whispering or growling voice, and his colleagues made amplified vocal sounds through throat mikes."4 It seems likely that an early version of Mumma's composition Hornpipe was presented that evening in 1966. In the composer's own description, "Hornpipe is a live electronic work for French horn with cybersonic console," in reference to "a small metal box worn by the performer" that "contains electronic circuits of my own design which respond to the sounds of the Horn and to the acoustical resonances of the performance space" (Fig. 1).5 In other words, the artist modified his instrument—a practice that, as I will demonstrate, predicts similar actions in electronic and digital games. The group also presented Ashley's now-(in)famous piece The Wolfman (1964), which is "essentially a work about feedback—a microphone is positioned so close to the performer's mouth that changes in the size of the oral cavity bring about great changes in the feedback sound."6 While the performer must actually produce the sounds extremely quietly, the amplification and feedback are arranged in such a way that the resulting sound can be painfully loud for the audience. In fact, Renée Levine Packer, the longtime program coordinator in the School of Music at UB, recalls the Buffalo performance as "fierce amplified growls and yells emanating from the hall" near her office.7 Like so many of the events presented by the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts (CCPA, also known as the Creative Associates) at Buffalo, which was active from 1964 to 1980, the artists in this concert incorporated strange new techniques into their performance, disrupting norms and unsettling audience members. At a recital held in 1970, for example, Petr Kotík and his group effectively rewrote the conventions of classical concert attendance. By placing musicians in three separate rooms, the audience had to actively participate by moving through the space, or limit themselves to only one set (or, as suggested in the program, "take a break from listening and go to the basement for some [End Page 120] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Gordon Mumma performing Hornpipe with cybersonic console and horn at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 19, 1972. Gordon Mumma, Cybersonic Arts: Adventures in American New Music ed. Michelle Fillion (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 56. refreshment, to play ping-pong or "bowl").8 Performers in the 1972 concert called S.E.M. Gives a Lecture turned the lecture-recital on its ear by eating dinner onstage, then sharing dessert with their bemused audience before playing a little music, including Julius Eastman's Eine kleine Nachtmusik—almost certainly a riff on W. A. Mozart's well...

Dead Men Telling Tales: Napoleonic War Veterans and the Military Memoir Industry, 1808–1914 by Matilda Greig (review)

Dead Men Telling Tales: Napoleonic War Veterans and the Military Memoir Industry, 1808–1914 by Matilda Greig (review)

Культ орла в мифологии хангаласцев

Культ орла в мифологии хангаласцев