Pair Of Socks Research Articles

On Loving Clothes, and Preferring Not To

On Loving Clothes, and Preferring Not To

Someone said once that God lives on

Someone said once that God lives on Michael Pittard (bio) the other side of the lake.It might be so. I've heardif you gather leaves to seton fire & breathe the smoke,God will emerge from behinda holly tree & answer three questions. Such as why do I have to burnthings to have a conversationwith Him. Or why I can't seemto ever find a comfortable pairof socks. Or why can't I pincha raindrop between my thumb& forefinger to squeeze it & seethe world clearly, only for a moment,& know what my future holds. I've never been to the other sideof the lake. The bridge is almostalways out & it's too far to swim.A man from town once waded out,his pockets filled with rocks.His glasses washed up a few dayslater & when I put them on,the view through the cracked lenseshurt so much I threw them back intothe water where they sankwithout so much as a ripple. [End Page 75] Underneath the tree roots Godslinks about as a black snake,warming Himself in the afternoonsun & slowly digesting mice. Ormaybe He's a starling, His wingsshimmering from a high branch.I suppose He watches those whocome to talk, sees their hesitations,the match trembling in their hands. [End Page 76] Michael Pittard Michael Pittard is an English lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He currently serves as the Book Recommendations editor for The Bookends Review. He has an MFA in Poetry from UNCG and is a former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review. His poetry has appeared in such places as Poetry South, Coffin Bell, and The Citron Review. Copyright © 2022 Berea College ...

From hoarders to the hoard: giving disciplinary legitimacy to undisciplined collecting

In this essay, we juxtapose experiential understandings of the Staffordshire Hoard and Song Dong’s 2005 installation Waste Not as the starting point for a consideration of collecting, hoarding, curating, and art historical scholarship. Far from conclusive and sometimes purposefully provocative, our text proposes avenues for theorizing collections based on the deconstructive possibilities introduced by this comparison. As scholars, we often see our role in relation to collections in curatorial terms, drawing order out of the always-already-existing archive through an analytical process, carefully preserving its most precious information. What this study suggests, however, is that the archive does not predate our curatorial impulse at all. Imagine laying everything you own – every Q-tip and saved twisty-tie, as well as every book and every pair of socks – out on a gallery floor, carefully ordered by object type into grids, with aisles between them so that visitors can tour your possessions as though browsing the tidiest thrift store on earth. Wouldn’t you look like a hoarder?

Sit On Your Phone, Pee In Your Socks

Sitting on a smartphone and peeing into a pair of socks isn’t on everyone’s to-do list. But thanks to scientific developments, people may have a better chance of getting away with doing the first, and—strange as it sounds—doing the second could one day save your life. When it comes to designing phones that people can sit on and not break, South Korea’s Samsung thinks it has the weighty problem covered. The firm’s scientists have replaced a standard three-point pressure test with a robot featuring a humanlike bottom. The robotic gluteus maximus weighs in at a robust 100 kg and even wears a pair of jeans. While most people accidentally sit on their phone occasionally, Samsung ensures its robotic bottom sits on its phones several hundred times. Samsung has used the robotic rear to test its Galaxy Note 4 smartphone. The dummy derriere is “the secret behind the force durability of

Cycling the Mojave

Cycling the Mojave Kevin Honold (bio) There were times when I would talk to my bicycle or the sky. Usually, it was just a greeting or an observation. “Hello, moon,” I would say on its appearance, or, “That was a good ride, wasn’t it?” to my bicycle leaning into a bush. And whenever I spoke, my voice would startle me with its intrusiveness, and the words jarred like a casual profanity. John Van Dyke writes, in The Desert, You perhaps think to break the spell by raising your voice in a cry; but you will not do so again. The sound goes but a little way and then seems to come back to your ear with a suggestion of insanity about it. When I read those words, months after the trip, I felt comforted, and I knew that nothing John Van Dyke could do would ever lessen my love for him, though he’s been dead these hundred years. I don’t know why people take long bicycle rides. There are as many reasons as people who do it. A man in Needles asked me why I was cycling to Flagstaff and I said, without deliberating much, that sometimes I needed to kick the shit out of myself. I was surprised at how [End Page 59] readily he understood exactly what I meant, even when I didn’t. Some things we do without knowing why, but with a kind of faith that the purpose will be made plain with time, and we don’t examine the issue overmuch because few people care enough to question us about it anyway. Cycling is like that. California City, California, April, 2013 I packed a point-and-click camera, sunscreen, a pouch of Drum tobacco, an air pump, a water pack, headlamp, highway map, sleeping bag, bivouac tent, two long-sleeved shirts, one sweater, one pair of long underwear, knit hat, poncho, rain hat, a pencil and notebook, a ditty bag of toiletries, a multi-purpose bike tool, spare tube, tin cup, two pair of socks, two pair of underwear, electrical tape, binoculars, and a bird guide. For heating food and water I had an Esbit stove and thirty heat tabs. One tab heats a pint of water, enough for a cup of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. The Esbit stove is a German product, the same kind of stove that Wehrmacht troops carried into Russia in 1941. The tabs ignite readily in rain and wind. At Tony’s place in California City, laying out my gear on the bed in the spare room, I had to decide what to leave behind. This culling is both liberating and nauseating. You have to commit to doing without. A sleeping mat is nice to have, but you can sleep without one. A paring knife with a plastic handle weighs a fraction of a Swiss Army knife. I’m not certain but I would bet that Swiss infantrymen are not issued Swiss Army knives and I’m confident they don’t pedal the Alps with collapsible nail files and corkscrews. At night, Tony and I sat on the porch and talked about family and drank beer. He had recently returned to the United States from a yearlong assignment in Afghanistan, where he worked as a contractor at a remote base. He invited me out to California, guessing that I was feeling restless, and he was right, but that was an easy call, since most of us are restless most of the time. We talked about being middle-aged, [End Page 60] unmarried men without children. We talked about the twenty years that had passed since the Army, and the things in life that remained to be done. The things we might have done differently, the places we wished we could return to. He gave me an e-reader as a gift for the ride. He showed me how to use it and we loaded it with e-books. That gift solved a big problem. During past cycling trips I had carried too many pounds of real books. I hung around at his place a few more days, because it takes me some time to work...

Bats

Bats Anne Panning (bio) I When I opened the door to the attic, it lay perfectly still on the stairs. At first I thought it was a pair of socks, but when I peered up close, I saw the brown fur, the wings, the ears. I backed away slowly. Abandoning the Halloween box I’d meant to haul up there, I slammed the door. Later, I implored my husband, Mark, to please take care of the bat. He was making lemon pasta for dinner. Steam rose around his face. BBC News was rolling low-key from a specialty radio he kept on top of the fridge. “I’m not going to kill a bat,” he said. “But I’m terrified of bats,” I said. “You know that. It’s actual terror I feel. Terror.” He looked at me long. “You know the bat population is down,” he said. “There’s a fungus that’s killing them all off.” I was supposed to be setting the table but went to stand before him. “You used to kill bats for me.” He zested the lemon peel, drained the noodles. It was time to call the kids down for dinner. “I can’t kill the bat,” he said. “I’m sorry.” [End Page 69] II My father used to kill bats while my mother and I huddled under an afghan, screaming. Our drafty old Victorian was a bat’s dream with dozens of easy entrances. One of their favorites was scootching down the attic walls and slipping in through the pocket parlor doors on hot summer nights. My father kept a tennis racket by his bed for exactly this purpose. Because my mother kept me fully shrouded, most of what I remember are the sounds: the wet scritchy squeak of the bat, the thump of my father’s sudden footsteps as he ran to corner it, my mother’s tight, labored breathing as she clutched the afghan around us, a few swipes of air through tennis racquet strings, then finally the clean thwack of death upon contact. My father would carry the bat outside and toss it in the lilac bushes. Only after he came back inside would my mother release me from under the blanket. It was hot under there with her. She smelled like day-old deodorant and coffee breath. To be released into fresh air was exhilarating. My father would then sit in the living room with us and smoke a cigarette, regaling us with how tricky the bat was, which rooms he’d had to close off, how many tries it took until he was able to kill it. It often took me days to feel safe again in our house. I’d run from room to room, hunched, searching up in corners with a dishtowel wrapped around my head. III The next day, I tried again. “Mark,” I said. He was eating breakfast this time, granola with fresh blueberries and rice milk. In minutes, he’d be leaving for his thirty-minute commute, not the best time to talk. “So, can we revisit the bat issue?” The look he gave me was a combination of love and endurance. “Okay.” “See, I can’t be in this house, honestly, knowing there’s a bat up there.” I clutched my mug of coffee to my chest. “I don’t think you have any idea how hard this is for me. It’s all I can think about.” [End Page 70] He nodded. He was trying so hard to be patient. “But I really don’t want to kill it. It’s not right.” “Well, do you think you could just capture it and release it somehow?” I asked. “Didn’t you do that once with a cookie sheet and a mason jar?” “I can’t remember,” he said. He put his bowl and spoon in the sink. “Anyway, I have to get going.” After he left, I went upstairs to work in my study, the room closest to the attic door. But I couldn’t focus knowing the bat was just a few feet away: breathing, sleeping, waiting. IV Once, on an island in the Philippines, I’d been dancing...

Albert O. Hirschman: A ‘Beamish’ Social Scientist for Our Grandchildren

Albert O. Hirschman: A ‘Beamish’ Social Scientist for Our Grandchildren

The sock matching problem

When matching socks after doing the laundry, how many unmatched socks can appear in the process of drawing one sock at a time from the basket? By connecting the problem of sock matching to the Catalan numbers, we give the probability that k unmatched socks appear. We also show that, for each fixed k, this probability approaches 1 as the number of socks becomes large enough. The relation between the number of socks and the k for which a given probability is first reached is also discussed, but a complete answer is open. In any load of clothes to be washed by a college student, there are inevitably a variety of socks tossed in with all the other garments. By the time the clothes come out of the dryer, the socks have been thoroughly mixed in, hiding underneath shirts or in pant legs. The game of matching then begins: does the sock you just picked randomly out of the pile match any of the others you’ve already removed from the pile? How big is your stack of unmatched socks going to get? This creates a scenario in which there can be k unmatched socks out of n pairs. We wish to determine the likelihood of obtaining a maximum of k unmatched socks while folding a pile of laundry containing the n pairs of socks. We assume that each pair of socks is complete and unique, and that socks are drawn randomly, one at a time. 2. Background

AB0558 Three easy tests of physical functioning (aspi) show improvement after anti-tnf therapy, even in asas20 non-responders in ankylosing spondylitis

BackgroundIn most clinical trials response to anti-TNF therapy is based on the ASAS20% response criteria (ASAS20) [1]. The ASAS20 is based on self-reported questions on physical function (Bath AS Functional...

Unexpected Death in Elephantiasis Due to an Abnormal Life‐Style

A 22-year-old man was found dead after he had continued to sit on a reclining chair for 2 years. He had consumed an unbalanced diet, kept wearing the same pair of socks and never washed himself for the term. His skin of bilateral crura developed into elephantiasis with severely festered ulcers on its surface. At autopsy, subcutaneous edema was significant in his lower limbs, and chronic circulatory disturbance of lymphoducts and veins was observed histologically. There were no crucial findings to account for chronic edema in the lower limbs. It has been reported that maintaining a seated posture obstructs both lymphoducts and veins because of bending the groin, decreases their return flow by inducing muscular atrophy, and causes subcutaneous edema in the lower limbs. Oligotrophia and dirt on his limbs might have exacerbated the chronic edema in elephantiasis. We concluded that a long-term abnormal life-style had caused fatal elephantiasis.

Threading the Needle Between Compassionate Care and Fostering Dependency: An Accurate Assessment of Disability

My community-dwelling 89-year-old mother (Helen) recently fractured her hip followed by a 6-week rehabilitation program in a nursing home. Helen was impressed that some of the staff assisting her with basic activities of daily living (ADLs) seemed to be kind and accommodating while others seemed to place stern edges on the division of labor between her and themselves. She explained that she was able to do more for herself in the morning than after a grueling day of therapy sessions. On one occasion she asked a staff member to hand her a pair of socks as she prepared for bed and was told, “That's not my job.” Helen experienced the latter as meanness.

Cunningham, Balanchine, and Postmodern Dance

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Sally Banes, Terpsichore in Sneakers (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1980). 2. See Noël Carroll, “The Concept of Postmodernism from a Philosophical Point of View,” in International Postmodernism, ed. Douwe Foukkema and Hans Bertens (Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1997). 3. Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon, 1961). 4. Arthur Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 5. David Michael Levin, “Balanchine's Formalism,” in What Is Dance? ed. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 138. 6. Noël Carroll, “The Philosophy of Art History, Dance, and the 1960s,” in Reinventing Dance in the 1960s: Everything Was Possible, ed. by Sally Banes (with Andrea Harris) (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 95- 6. 7. Our discussion of Cunningham in this essay, including our description of his movement, has been deeply influenced by Roger Copeland's excellent book Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance (London: Routledge, 2004). 8. Copeland, pp. 39–43. 9. Noël Carroll, “Cage and Philosophy,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Winter 1994), pp. 93–8. 10. For further descriptions of postmodern dances, see Sally Banes, Democracy's Body: Judson Dance Theater 1962–64 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993). 11. Quoted in Beyond the Mainstream, directed by Merrill Brockway and produced by Merrill Brockway and Carl Carlson for Dance in America, WNET-TV, New York, May 21, 1980. Moreover, walking continued to be a constant in postmodern choreography into the 1970s, notably in some of the work of Lucinda Childs. 12. On the significance of ordinary movement for Rainer, see Noël Carroll, “Yvonne Rainer and the Recuperation of Everyday Life,” in Yvonne Rainer: Radical Juxtapositions 1961–2002, ed. by Sid Sachs (Philadelphia: University of the Arts, 2002), pp. 65–85. 13. Rauschenberg said, “A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric.” Quoted in Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap between Art and Life by Arthur Danto (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), p. ix. 14. Roger Copeland, Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance (London: Routledge, 2004). Although our treatment of Cunningham's work is indebted throughout to this admirable book, there is one point where we do strongly disagree with Professor Copeland's views. In a provocative homologue, he associates Graham with abstract expressionism and Cunningham with the aesthetics of Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. We think there are several errors here. If Cunningham's endeavor is distinct from that of abstract expressionism as characterized by Harold Rosenberg, his modernism is in sync with Pollock's as described by Clement Greenberg. Copeland associates Graham with abstract expressionism, but this also seems wrong. Insofar as Graham remains involved with stories about human characters, her dances are expressionist, maybe, but not abstract. Finally, Rauschenberg and Johns are integrationists by our lights. They do not belong to the same artistic camp as Cunningham does. Their contributions in their collaborations with Cunningham coexist with his, rather than reinforcing them, in a way parallel to Cage's contributions (as discussed above). Thus, we want to challenge Copeland's assimilation of Cunningham to Rauschenberg's project and, instead, align him with the modernist wing of abstract expressionism. 15. For the distinction between representation and exemplification as contrasting symbolic modes, see Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, Ind: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968).

Revisiting Once Upon a Time

Revisiting Once Upon a Time

How Guinness, Lego and others face a struggle

You’re on your way home and have been in Marks & Spencer’s for a pair of socks and a bottle of wine. On your way to the car, your Motorola phone rings and you’re asked to visit a supermarket for a pair of Levi’s and some groceries. “Get some Guinness, too, and a couple of Kit Kats,” is the message, and “Don’t forget you’re helping the children build things with their Lego later.” All’s well with the world and you’re eager to get home to the bosom of your family. Don’t those brand names we all know help create a comfortable feeling – a sort of security blanket that protects us from the dangers that lie in change and unfamiliarity?

Laboratory Evaluation of Compounds for Repellency Against the Cat Flea, 1994

Abstract Thirty compounds were screened for repellency against the adult cat flea and deet (N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide) was used as a standard for comparison. The compounds tested were obtained from the USDA-ARS Medical & Veterinary Entomology Research Laboratory, Gainesville, FL. One pair of knee-high white tube socks (80% cotton, 17% polyester, 3% Lycra, Dupont) was treated with a repellent in acetone solution at an estimated rate of 1 mg/cm2. Each sock was soaked in a solution of 950 mg technical repellent in 100 ml of acetone until the entire amount of solution was absorbed into the sock. The control socks were soaked in 100 ml of acetone. Both pairs of socks were then air-dried for two hours. Each trial was begun by the subject pulling on an under-layer of nylon stockings over his trousers before putting on the treated or control socks. The subject walked for three minutes in a 1 × 1 × 0.5 m square aluminum arena. The arena floor was covered with carpet and was infested before each trial with 200 newly emerged adult cat fleas. After the three minute trial period the subject removed each sock by rolling it off his leg and foot and placing it in a plastic bag which was then frozen to kill the fleas before they were counted. After each trial the carpet was vacuumed to remove fleas that did not attack the subject. To protect the carpet from contamination, the subject wore rubber sandals over the treated socks. Each trial was completed with the same subject used as treatment and control. Compounds which had percent repellency <70% were eliminated. For the remaining effective compounds, tests were replicated four times on different days for each repellent.