Parallel Reality Research Articles

RECIPROCIDAD Y CRÍTICA SOCIAL: EL DEBER DE GRATITUD EN ROUSSEAU Y A. SMITH

La reciprocidad se revela como un principio social fundamental cuando se evidencia su estructura dual. Por un lado, el don desvía el valor de las cosas hacia una pretensión de reconocimiento y estatus, con lo que crea un contramundo social; por otro, tales pretensiones, muchas veces defraudadas, contrastan con las relaciones objetivas y éstas son criticadas sobre el trasfondo de la reciprocidad pretendida. En las Confesiones de Rousseau, el sentido del agradecimiento de los personajes jóvenes y marginales les confiere dignidad y derecho a la crítica. Smith esboza un procedimiento de recontextualización afín al de las narraciones de Rousseau, pero en su teoría, el significado distinto que la reciprocidad da a los objetos y sujetos del intercambio tiene que descubrirse en un trasfondo social, como una realidad paralela.

When the EU qualified electronic signature becomes an information services preventer

Pawel Krawczyk has spent a decade in consulting on information security with a special focus on authentication and the digital signature. In this article, he discusses the practical failure of the qualified electronic signature (a digital signature) across Europe,illustrating that other forms of electronic signature are used far more readily, suggesting that the qualified electronic signature exist in a parallel reality, and that it is only used because governments pass laws to force people to use them.

Entertaining elephants: animal agency and the business of the American circus

Consider the career of an enduring if controversial icon of American entertainment: the genial circus elephant. In Entertaining Elephants Susan Nance examines elephant behavior - drawing on the scientific literature of animal cognition, learning, and communications - to offer a study of elephants as actors (rather than objects) in American circus entertainment between 1800 and 1940. By developing a deeper understanding of animal behavior, Nance asserts, we can more fully explain the common history of all species. Entertaining Elephants is the first account that uses research on animal welfare, health, and cognition to interpret the historical record, examining how both circus people and elephants struggled behind the scenes to meet the profit necessities of the entertainment business. The book does not claim that elephants understood, endorsed, or resisted the world of show business as a human cultural or business practice, but it does speak of elephants rejecting the conditions of their experience. They lived in a kind of parallel reality in the circus, one that was defined by their interactions with people, other elephants, horses, bull hooks, hay, and the weather. Nance's study informs and complicates contemporary debates over human interactions with animals in entertainment and beyond, questioning the idea of human control over animals and people's claims to speak for them. As sentient beings, these elephants exercised agency, but they had no way of understanding the human cultures that created their captivity, and they obviously had no claim on (human) social and political power. They often lived lives of apparent desperation.

Parallel Reality of State Defence Order

The State Defense Order 2012 was implemented nearly 80%. Being limited in labor force, Russia’s defense plants are facing problems related to drastically increased the State Defense Order 2013. President Putin’s requirements to create a transparent military economy, establish order in terms of administration in the military-industrial complex and its pricing have encountered serious difficulties.

Сањај санак о Вилу: Шекспир као лик у „Сендмену“ Нила Гејмена

This paper explores the representations of William Shakespeare in Neil Gaiman’s comic book series The Sandman. Shakespeare figures as a character in three of the seventy-five stories, occupying a somewhat special place since through him Gaiman expresses his beliefs on the nature of poetic creation, the relationship between the author and the narrative, as well as the relationship between fiction and reality. By presenting one of the world’s most significant authors and his two plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, Gaiman plays on the ideas that fiction is as real as historical reality (or even more so) and that an author is merely a mediator of great narratives which unavoidably surpass his or her historical existence. Moreover, separate stories are, in Gaiman’s view, only repetitions or reinterpretations of eternal truths embodied in the realm of dreaming. Gaiman’s ideas are in this paper supported by traditional critical views on Shakespeare, his plays and characters, as well as by Barthes’ more general beliefs on the role of the author in the process of artistic creation. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Shakespeare’s development from an ambitious playwright to one of the most recognizable figures of contemporary popular culture. As presented in word and image by Neil Gaiman, this development entails that Shakespeare should first become aware of the parallel reality of his fiction and its power, and then become himself part of it.

Lost in limbo: On multiple levels of reality in cinema

In Chambers describes being in a coma as a purgatory-like, surrealistic nightmare. This article examines the universe created in the film, places its use of a virtual parallel reality in a film historical context, and claims that the action it represents in the coma state was not only a dream.

Parallel Social Reality Construction of War Among Muslim and Christian Survivors in the Philippines

Conflicting notions of “the war” as experienced (subjective realities) surfaced in the study but generated “convergence” as these were correlated with the institutionalized beliefs of war (objective realities). Subjective realities include the victims’ psycho-social trauma and portrayal of “the other” culture as co-survivors of war. Divergent perceptions were anchored on the war victims’ age, religion, inter-marriage; the area’s political set-up, and economic climate among others. The victims’ reactions towards the prevailing issues of war (objective realities) are parallel despite distinct experiences. Many have shown disagreement towards the concept that the mass media help crystallize relevant issues, like the war in Mindanao. Majority also negated the belief that “Christians and Muslims can never co-exist peacefully, and that the 1974 war was a form of “jihad” or a religious war among Muslims. Here, communication clarified vital issues of the Mindanao conflict. It performed an emancipatory role that provided rhetorical and psychological relief to war survivors as they deconstructed their realities in a war-torn community like Sulu, Philippines.

Parallel Social Reality Construction of War Among Muslim and Christian Survivors

Conflicting notions of “the war” as experienced (subjective realities) surfaced in the study but generated “convergence” as these were correlated with the institutionalized beliefs of war (objective realities). Subjective realities include the victims’ psycho-social trauma and portrayal of “the other” culture as co-survivors of war. Divergent perceptions were anchored on the war victims’ age, religion, inter-marriage; the area’s political set-up, and economic climate among others. The victims’ reactions towards the prevailing issues of war (objective realities) are parallel despite distinct experiences. Many have shown disagreement towards the concept that the mass media help crystallize relevant issues, like the war in Mindanao. Majority also negated the belief that “Christians and Muslims can never co-exist peacefully, and that the 1974 war was a form of “jihad” or a religious war among Muslims. Here, communication clarified vital issues of the Mindanao conflict. It performed an emancipatory role that provided rhetorical and psychological relief to war survivors as they deconstructed their realities in a war-torn community like Sulu, Philippines.

Parallel Social Reality Construction of War Among Muslim and Christian Survivors in the Philippines

Parallel Social Reality Construction of War Among Muslim and Christian Survivors in the Philippines

Parallel Social Reality Construction of War Among Muslim and Christian Survivors in the Philippines

Parallel Social Reality Construction of War Among Muslim and Christian Survivors in the Philippines

‘Flesh dissolved in an acid of light’: The B-movie as second sight

Recent discussions of ‘paracinema’ have highlighted the re-appraisal of so-called ‘cinematic trash’. This article addresses the theme of ‘badfilm’ by contrasting films from two of the most well-known purveyors of ‘cinematic trash’: Roger Corman's X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) and John Carpenter's They Live (1988). In X, a scientist develops X-ray vision, seeing into the fourth dimension and witnessing something so shocking he rips his eyes out. This act is analogous with Corman's career as purveyor of trash cinema: refraining from pushing badfilm's power to the absolute limit; foregoing the gift of ‘second sight’; and content to exist on a marginalized, second-tier, parallel reality to the Hollywood mainstream. In They Live, Carpenter re-empowers the thesis: the hero stumbles on a secret society that has developed sunglasses to see through the real to the alien-generated subliminal messages in advertising and politics. Rather than withdrawal, Carpenter's hero declares: ‘I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass – and I'm all out of bubblegum.’ Unabashed, glorying in his outsider status, Carpenter reappropriates Hollywood values in a cheap ‘bubblegum’ universe, deploying trash culture as a smart bomb that aims to prise apart not only cinematic convention but also reality itself. Ultimately, both films, in very different historical specificities, offer up the B-movie as a response to the gathering global and economic forces of late capitalism, signified by what Slavoj Žižek identifies as the ‘ideological state apparatus’ of the Hollywood movie-making machine.

A Passion for Excess or Just Another Way of Telling

Caryl Phillips’s narrative is painfully concerned with the relationship of Empire, Colony, and the In-between; Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean; slavery, rebellion, and freedom; Men, women and children; absent or useless fathers and damaged, aimless sons. It explores what hold in common while never losing sight of the painful quotidian, the specific. It is a narrative where the picaresque shakes hands with the epic and the linearity is broken, encircled, and put fast forward or in reverse by a mise-en-abîme of sorts: the tale-within-the-tale-within-the-tale even if interrupted by the tapestry of an emergent voice that finally proposes itself as both the identity and the difference of its verbal universe. “Enter your own self and discover the world,” Phillips seems to be saying, “but also go out into the world and discover yourself.” Once that call is answered, fiction itself becomes another way of questioning truth as we strive for it through the paradox of a lie. That lie can be called the imagination. It can also be seen as a parallel reality. For it may be observed as a critical mirror of what passes for the truth in the world of convention. It certainly sets up a second universe of being, where the narrator, say Cambridge in Cambridge , has a reality greater, though no less important, than the host of hastily met and then forgotten people we deal with on a daily basis. It is in this sense that Phillips brings into light another way of telling in that his narrative gives weight and presence to the virtues and vices—the fugitive personalities—of our daily acquaintance. This is the prerogative of his style, which I try to discuss in this essay. It has the power to render disenchantment and pleasure without resolving the contradiction between them. In fact, what holds them in tension, as equal forces straining in opposite directions, is the artist’s mature subjectivity, stripped of hubris, unashamed either of its fallibility or of the modest assurance it has gained as a result of being out of place and not quite right.

Elemente de datare a hanurilor Patria şi Neculescului

"Paradoxically, when speaking about the urban architecture of Wallachia, we refer to buildings that transpose into the urban space the characteristics of vernacular architecture. However, the modelling infl uences of this type of formal expression are multiple and owe much to the transit of Bulgarian and Macedonian master masons through the Ottoman Empire. Representing the typical built stock of Bucharest up to the fi rst half of the nineteenth century, this architecture is going to be almost totally replaced by neoclassical, neo-Gothic and eclectic buildings. The late recognition of the value of town architecture is mostly due to causes linked to “the image” of Bucharest. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the city wanted to erase its rural aspect and emphasize the importance of its recently built representative great eclectic palaces. Nevertheless a parallel reality constituted by its rural character impregnates the city up to the present day. “Europe did never have, since the end of World War II, a capital more submissive to the rural than Bucharest.” Until the 70’s urban architecture was still perceived as minor and somewhat insignifi cant. Then a major change in trend appeared, while Romania underwent a period dominated by protocronism - a theory aiming at emphasising Romanian priorities in the most diverse domains. Th is period overlaps the restoration campaign in the Historic Centre of Bucharest, conducted by architect Constantin Joja. Its goal was to convey the “true image” of the town, by eliminating some of the eclectic façades and reconstituting building fronts in the style called urban architecture. Th is controversial restoration approach resulted in very successful examples (as in the case of Manuc Inn, based on consistent iconographic data) but also in the creation of a series of new façades designed by the architects. Under these circumstances the conservation of the few examples of authentic urban architecture becomes even more signifi cant. Two of the buildings erected in the style, belong to a program that was still representative for Bucharest in the fi rst decades of the 19th century: the commercial inn – a late and small scale version of the Great Inns described by Frederic Damé as characteristic buildings of the 18th century Bucharest. Both are to be found in Calea Moşilor (Podul Târgului de Afară), in different stages of use and conservation. Because it belongs to traditional typologies, dating urban architecture is particularly diffi cult. Based mainly on the characteristics of the buildings, with little or irrelevant documentary support, the supposed construction dates of the two inns are in fact, signifi cantly prior to the real date of their completion. Establishing the exact building date does not diminish their value, demonstrating the late persistence of local models. "

Prism (review)

Reviewed by: Prism Deborah Stevenson Kellerman, Faye . Prism; by Faye and Aliza Kellerman. Harper, 2009 [272p]. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-06-168722-8$17.89 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-168721-1$16.99 Reviewed from galleys M Gr. 7-10 When a class trip results in a disastrous car crash, Kaida, Zeke, and Joy find themselves mysteriously transported to a world just like their own, save for a very different response to illness: it's denied and feared, medicine isn't allowed, and the hurt or unwell are swiftly removed from society by the "clean-up crew." Narrator Kaida teams up with Ozzy, a boy who's secretly fighting the system in order to preserve his invalid mother, and they soon find themselves falling for each other. But Joy has damaged her arm in the initial accident, and it's vital that the teens find their way back to their own dimension if they're to save her from being obliterated in a "clean-up." There's an interesting dystopic idea here that's contemporarily relevant, with health care being a primary current concern, and the book is particularly good at depicting Kaida's uncertain yet warm relationships with the alternative world's version of those she loves, especially her older brother. Unfortunately, those virtues are lost amid contrivance, confusion, and awkwardness. The other world's view isn't cohesive or internally plausible, and vast swathes are left unexplained (do other countries exist in this parallel reality, and what do they do about health?). There's little real characterization, and the romances—Kaida's with Ozzy and Joy's with Zeke—never gain emotional traction; in fact, the writing tends to break out in hackneyed ellipses and dramatic dashes when conveying any strong feeling. Send those seeking ethical challenges in worlds like ours to Shusterman's Unwind (BCCB 2/08) instead. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Function and role of laughter in Malaysian women's and men's talk

Abstract Academically speaking, for many years humour has been studied in the spheres of philosophy, linguistics, sociology, psychology, anthropology and even the neurosciences. In its role, humour allows the speaker to represent a parallel reality, which often induces positive feedback such as laughter, smiles and grins from his/her fellow listeners. This gender study of humour, analyses the roles and functions as well as the similarities and differences of humour found in the recorded discourses of Malaysian males and females. Whilst males and females tend to share similar topics (such as sex), the data shows that both genders approach them in different ways. That is to say, males tend to be more direct as opposed to females.

Efficient virtual reality design of quiet underwater shells

Abstract Efficient computational tools are developed to model, visualize, and feel the structural-acoustics of shells in a virtual reality environment. These tools aim at building the structural-acoustic models of shells from an array of basic building blocks including: beams, shells, and stiffeners. The concepts of finite element analysis, sub-structuring, model reduction, meta-modeling, and parallel computations form the main steps to be followed for building simplified computational models of complex shell systems. The resulting models are particularly suitable for the efficient application of multi-criteria optimization techniques in order to select the optimal design parameters of these complex shell systems. The developed integrated analysis tools enable the engineers to design complex systems in a cost effective and a timely manner. Furthermore, engineers will be immersed in an audio-visually coupled tele-operated environment whereby direct interaction and control of the design process can be achieved. In this manner, the behavior of synthetic models of shells can be monitored by literally walking through the shell and adjusting its design parameters as needed to ensure optimal performance while satisfying design and operational requirements. For example, engineers can move electronic wands to vary the number, size, type, and location of stiffeners in the shell, monitor the resulting structural-acoustic visually or by haptic feedback and simultaneously listen to the radiated sound pressure field. Such manipulations of the virtual shells in the scene are carried out while the engineer is navigating through and around the shell to ensure that the vibration and sound levels, at any critical locations, are within the acceptable limits. The developed integrated approach also serves as a means for virtual training of students and engineers on designing and operating complex smart structures on the site as well as through collaborative efforts with other virtual reality sites. Such unique capability will enable engineers to design prototypes of expensive vehicles without building them. Examples of these vehicles include aircraft, submersibles, torpedoes, and others that can share this virtual experience and can be profoundly impacted upon by the proposed approach. The presented optimal design approach is implemented in the Virtual Reality CAVE Laboratory at the University of Maryland that is controlled by an eight parallel processor Silicon Graphics Infinite Reality (ONYX2) computer.

Trager®: Mentastics®-presence in motion—part 4

Abstract This paper is the fourth in a series on the Trager Approach from the perspective of an experienced practitioner. Trager emphasized to his students the physical effects of motion as apprehended by the client's mind. He guided his clients toward actively recreating off the table, as ‘mental gymnastics ( Mentastics ), new movements they had passively experienced on the table, Mentastics are the playful side of Trager . Most Mentastics moves do not involve muscular contractions or forced stretching, and as such may compliment remedial exercises. Mentastics involve engaging and releasing muscles while consciously monitoring for minimal exertion, creating movements that do not involve activating the muscles that would normally produce a particular movement, using gravity to create movement, taking advantage of momentum to sustain movement, and using visualization to create a parallel reality in the mind. Trager was convinced that the regular practice of Mentastics would produce an attitude of agelessness in the client.

Scientific Haze

This essay concentrates on scientific-rationalist discourses entering massively the realm of literature at the beginning of the 20th century. They open new horizons revealing phenomena unknown before on the one side, but they also obscure the world around us providing convenient screen from painful truths on the other. This paper tries to demonstrate how technological discourses move the reader from a highly visual receptive position to a pure cognitive realm of symbolic representations with its own dynamics. The scientific-rationalist discourses produce a new parallel reality, a scientific haze tending to withdraw from visual representation.