Pure Chaos Research Articles

Playing in and through Children's Books

Playing in and through Children's Books Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang (bio) I would like to start this editorial by complaining about my dog. It has been difficult to walk her in the last couple of days as she gets distracted easily by the budding snowdrops around the park. The spring is coming—at least here in the north—and it has awakened the somewhat-playful beast within my dog. She forgets about me as soon as she sees the fresh buds of spring flowers, acting all wild with her runs and pounces. But how can I blame her if I had acted the same way several days ago at the Bologna Children's Book Fair? The numerous—and various—children's books showcased in the Bologna Fiere exhibition center made me lose control over myself. My playful inner child was unleashed and, just like my dog, I dropped my grip of time and space. The books transformed me back into the happy days of my childhood, where I was content to stay in my bedroom for the whole day as long as I was surrounded by books. The only thing missing was the presence of my parents and their concern for my well-being, a boy who refused to go out in the sun and play. They were afraid that I had become too studious and wasted my opportunities to play. Little did they know that I was playing through and within those books—that my act of reading is a play in itself. How can children's books be akin to play? That is one of the questions this issue tries to answer. Björn Sundmark and Annette Mars, in their article "The Play of Words, Music, and Images in Hans Alfredson's Flowery Frankfurters," argue that playful storytelling for children can be achieved through a transmedia conversation between a children's illustrated book and recorded songs. On the other hand, Sylvia Pantaleo presents the possibility of playful dialogue through silence or wordlessness in her article, "Reviewing the Multifaceted Complexity and Potential of Wordless Picturebooks." The more tactile, tangible play with and through children's books is further discussed as Frank Serafini and Lindsey Moses discuss children's books requiring unorthodox physical interaction in their article, "An Analysis of the Semiotic Resources of Contemporary Movable Picturebooks." Despite the common association of play with complete freedom, rules are still necessary. A play completely devoid of rules is nothing but pure chaos; the participants need to subject themselves to rules to ensure enjoyment for everyone involved (Nilsson). In terms of children's literature in the globalized world, one of the important rules of play is about representation and inclusivity. "'Paper White' Characters and the Desire for Homogeneity in Spanish-Language Picturebooks" by Macarena García-Gonzáles and Xavier Mínguez-López examines how ethnicity is absent, [End Page 1] erased, or folklorized across recommended picturebooks from various hispanophone countries. Meanwhile, "A Cause for Hope or an Unwitting Complicity?" by Helen Adam and Yvonne Urquhart scrutinizes the representation of cultural diversity in picturebooks nominated for various awards in Australia. This issue also features an article covering other points of interest. "Northern Lights Are Our Friends" by Mateusz Świetlicki and Sylwia Kamińska-Maciąg examines how the chronotopes in children's and young adult books about Soviet deportation both testify to the traumatic historical events and provide readers with a sense of hope. The "Children and Their Books" section features an article about Biblioteca Interactiva Latinoamericana Infantil y Juvenil, a new interactive children's library in Chile, and its attempt to promote reading among Chilean children. In the "Letters" section, readers can enjoy the presentation and discussion of a children's book from India, Faces in the Water. Readers can also find a short interview with Reda Gaudiamo, an Indonesian author, and learn how she drew upon her playful childhood and her daughter's experiences to weave the stories of a five-year-old Willa. There are, of course, many other things to say about the content of this issue. Anamaria Anderson has compiled wonderful Postcards from various corners of the globe. The issue's cover illustration is taken from...

"It's Pure Chaos Every Day": COVID-19 and the work of Canadian federal institutional parole officers.

As the Canadian federal correctional system grappled with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, institutional parole officers, who play a central role in prisoners’ case management team, remained essential service providers. Working in uncertain circumstances, these correctional workers navigated new and rapidly changing protocols and risks, while attempting to continue to provide support to those on their caseloads. Based on semi-structured interviews with 96 institutional parole officers, conducted after Canada’s “first wave” of COVID-19 infections, we analyze three ways in which their work was impacted by the pandemic: shifting workloads, routines, and responsibilities; increased workloads due to decarceration (i.e., efforts to reduce the number of incarcerated individuals); and the navigation of new forms of risk and uncertainty. This study advances the understanding of stress and risk in probation and parole work and presents recommendations to ameliorate the occupational stresses experienced by correctional workers during and beyond COVID-19.

An Introduction to the Works of S.L.

32 first encountered the work of s.l. in a group show at the Humboldt Gallery. S.L.’s three unframed paintings —luminous clouds against a bleak sky—hung side by side in an otherwise empty room, tucked away from the gallery’s main hall. They produced the effect of a portal opening from concrete to nature, from substance to air. All three paintings were unsigned, and there was no mention of the artist’s name anywhere in the room, even though other works in the show were identified. I wrote to the curator the following day and received some basic information about the painter; I began following her work, striving to adjust my vision to the demands of her art. It would be years before I felt confident enough to write this essay, to examine certain aspects of her elusive technique. fiction An Introduction to the Works of S.L. Ayşegül Savaş I An Introduction to the Works of S.L. | 33 my first contact with s.l. was as a guest editor for the winter issue of Dark and Moon; I wrote her to ask about using one of her pieces on the cover; the paintings I’d seen at the gallery some years before might work well, I suggested. S.L. asked what texts we would publish in the issue. I hadn’t told her that the theme was “Lost,” but upon reading the pieces I shared with her, she wrote to say that she did not think the cloud paintings were suitable, because she considered the contents of the journal “more labyrinth than dome.” She proposed a charcoal drawing of a forest path, which may also have been a large serpent, that immediately struck me as the right choice; the pieces in the issue, as she pointed out, were indeed labyrinthine. S.L.’s sensitivity to text is apparent in much of her earlier work, in particular her series Hawthorn, chronicling the meeting between a woman and six animals—fox, bear, wolf, seal, eagle, snake— inside a circular structure held up by pillars. The works are narrative in composition, both in the story they tell and the one they withhold: How did the creatures arrive there? What language do the woman and animals speak? They are also visually textual in their dense and sinewy surfaces—the echoing swirls, hatches, and strokes—as if S.L. has invented her own system of writing, a personal code that is at once decipherable and opaque, and might open up to a viewer with the correct focus. Among S.L.’s influences are the writings of the early-­ twentieth-­ century Latvian parapsychologist Konstantı̄ns Raudive, whose life’s work was to capture voices of the dead in electronic recordings . Found in recordings of ocean waves, untuned radios, or microphone static, these voices, Raudive observed, “speak very rapidly, in a mixture of languages, sometimes as many as five or six in one sentence,” and “in a definite rhythm, which seems forced on them.” The sole work of the scientist, according to him, was to give sound to the inaudible. This description resonates with S.L.’s art as well, where a mass of minute organic forms often transforms into human shapes. Within the silver-­ point series Kosmos is tree bark that has grown 34 | Ayşegül Savaş eyes, or the moss of a forest floor teeming with hands and feet. Everything is compressed, stuttering, making its way to us with immense effort, like the muffled voices of the ocean recordings. Viewers cannot be sure if what they see is indeed there, or a product of their imagination: is that the round, swollen shape of a breast? Is that a torso, dripping a luminescent saffron sheath? Several critics point to a lack of intention and rigor in S.L.’s art, echoing a common critique of parapsychological studies that the human forms and voices they unearth are simply the product of the mind making familiar outlines of what it perceives. We are constantly searching for something to hold on to, the critics surmise; in the absence of meaning, we shape patterns out of pure chaos. As such, S.L...

On Belief and the Making of All Things Beautiful and Sublime: Creation by Ordinance and Destruction by Chaos

This is a study of beauty as a construct and a property of structural composition. I examine alternate possibilities of structural compositions, linguistics, or material arguments that beauty, impossible in utter chaos, might not be definitely found in order, but the latter is essential thereto. A distinction is also made between complex systems of order found in nature, often qualified as organic—the seemingly free and flowing forms found in formal sophistication beyond simple geometrical reduction—and the absence of order as pure chaos. Beauty is examined through order from historical linguistic, perceptual, and systemic constructivist perspectives, along with the sublime and the harmonious. Linguistically, order is a term of convergence of the seemingly disparate streams of significance of rank—in society, religion, and the belief in collective constants—and ornament is a term of bearing beauty and enhancement of taste that emanates from within the structure and should not be reduced to superficial application. I cite costume, including accessories of weaponry, as moments of proximity between style, purpose, utility, and the collective as semiotic bearer of meaning in culture and social order.

Chaos as a Mode of Living in Samuel Beckett's <em>The Unnamable</em>

In this article, I examine the deployment of chaos as a textual practice in Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable . My contention is that, in its endeavor to wrest chaos from the appropriative gestures of order and make room for newness, the text breaks with grammatical frames and conceptual systems that organize subjectivity. The Unnamable "squirms" involuntarily and willfully at the same time, in-between paradoxical turns, multiplying "I"-s, and stream-of-consciousness eruptions. Its squirming undermines stability, identity, and order, inviting into them the unborn, the unthought, chaos. Every proposition that the speaking voice utters subverts the premises upon which subjectivity is constructed and, thus, endeavors to turn the self into a site of chaos. Through its syntactic and semantic movements, The Unnamable inhabits the impossibility of "pure silence" as pure chaos and locates in it an impetus for self-transformation.

A FUZZY-LOGIC BASED CHAOS GA FOR COOPERATIVE FORAGING OF MULTI-ROBOTS IN UNKNOWN ENVIRONMENTS

This paper investigates the foraging of multiple robots in completely unknown environments. The onboard robot sensor information and expert knowledge of foraging are used to forage the targets. The foraging problem in this paper is defined as a searching task, where the robots cooperate to find and reach all the targets in an efficient way. A novel fuzzy-logic based chaos genetic algorithm (FCGA) is proposed for target foraging in unknown environments. The fuzzy logic is used to avoid the disorder of the robot movement and reduce the search time when there is no information about the targets or the information density around the robots is the same. The chaos genetic algorithm enables the robots find the targets efficiently. In the proposed approach, the robot motion can be dynamically adjusted to guarantee that all the targets can be found, even in some difficult situations such as targets are at some locations difficult to find or obstacles are linked together. The proposed approach is capable of dealing with uncertainties, e.g., some robots break down. In comparison to the pure chaos genetic algorithm (PCGA) and the random-search approach, experimental results show that the proposed approach is more efficient in foraging all the targets.

The dynamics of the NAIRU model with two switching regimes

We consider a model of inflation and unemployment proposed in Ferri et al. (JEBO, 2001), in which the dynamics are described by a discontinuous piecewise linear map, made up of two branches. We shall show that the bounded dynamics may be classified in two cases: we may have either regular dynamics with stable cycles of any period or quasiperiodic trajectories, or only chaotic dynamics ( pure chaos in which a unique absolutely continuous invariant ergodic measure exists, and structurally stable), in a rich variety of cyclical chaotic intervals. The main results are the analytical formulation of the border collision bifurcation curves, through which we give a complete picture of the possible outcomes of the model.

Sensitive Dependence on Initial Condition (SDIC) on the Three South East Asian Countries Capital Markets: A Comparison to Fully Deterministic and Pure Chaotic Models

This research paper tries to detect the chaos structure on the three South East Asian Countries Capital Markets by investigating one of chaos attributes – Sensitive Dependence on Initial Condition (SDIC) - which can describe phenomenon of crisis, order and disorder. Knowledge of sensitivity to any changes or perturbation is important for understanding instability of Asia Capital Market due to the impact of future implementation of ASEAN Charter through multilateral agreement ASEAN blueprint on AFAS (ASIAN Free Trade Agreement on Services) of Financial Services. SDIC is tested through performing positive largest (maximum) Lyapunov Exponent. This research paper also compares the three South East Asian Countries Capital Markets to chosen renowned fully deterministic and pure chaos models - Logistic Equation and Henon Map. Comparing to chosen renowned pure and fully deterministic chaos models - Logistic Equation and Henon Map- will provide broad view of analysis of SDIC on STI, PSEi & JCI indices series. The capital markets of three South East Asian Countries - Indonesia, Philippine, and Singapore - are chosen. Daily return data of Capital Markets composite indices from January 01, 1991 to December 31, 2007 with 4435 points of each series are observed: Straits Times Index (STI) of Singapore Exchange, Pilipino Stock Exchange Index (PSEi) of Philippines Stock Exchange and Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) of Indonesia Stock Exchange. Since there are some different algorithms and due to limitations of each algorithm for calculating Lyapunov exponent this research paper also tries to investigate some different algorithms and their results to convince of SDIC finding. Through using different algorithms of Lyapunov Exponent testing will assure of proofing SDIC. Two different Lyapunov Exponent algorithms of Wolf et al. (1985) algorithm and of Rosenstein et al. (1993) and Kantz (1994) algorithm as our tools for testing one of chaos attributes – SDIC - are applied. The evidence of chaotic process – SDIC - is confirmed through positive largest Lyapunov Exponent in all pure chaotic models by using two different algorithms of SDIC testing. The evidence of chaotic process SDIC is confirmed in all three capital markets through Wolf algorithm. SDIC are found through Rosenstein et al. and Kantz algorithm in JCI and STI series only. Testing results of SDIC through Rosenstein et al. and Kantz algorithm for all capital market return series suggests existence of noise in capital market data series to be filtered out. Other types of algorithms for comparison are also needed for further research.

Study on In-Process Detection and Diagnosis of Faults Arc Based on Early Sounds Signature and Intermittent Chaos

Up to now, faults arc protection in electrical power system is passive by detecting electric current or arcing light. An active technique used to forecast faults arc is presented in this paper. By applying power spectrum density analysis, two signature bands of arc sound has been found before faults arc take place, one is inside of (5~10) kHz which is strong in intensity and variable in both bandwidth and center in different experimental conditions, the other one is situated on 19.25kHz which is weak in intensity but invariable in center. The proposed technique detects the arc sounds signature in the frequency of 19.25 kHz based on Duffing chaos oscillator. The arc sound is recorded using precision fiber microphone and imported into the chaos based detecting system. For the sensitivity to periodic signal, the chaos system appears either pure chaos or intermittent chaos. So arc sound can been identified by detecting the motion state of chaotic system, and the presently fault arc protection method can been improved into an active forecast and early warning one. Some experiment results and fault arc diagnosis and early warning scheme are also detailed in the paper.

The Topology of Deleuze’s Spatium

One of Gilles Deleuze's major ontological categories is that of a virtual continuum which, much like Spinoza's substance, presents two sides-pure extension and thought-or, rather, two powers: the power of being and the power of thinking. This virtual continuum receives a variety of designations throughout Deleuze's corpus: "intensive spatium" in Difference and Repetition,1 "ideal or metaphysical surface" in The Logic of Sense,2 "plane of consistency" in A Thousand Plateaus (written with Felix Guattari)3 and "plane of immanence" in What is Philosophy? (equally coauthored with Guattari).4 While these diverse terms may be argued to accentuate different aspects of the continuum so designated, Deleuze's characterization of the latter remains, nevertheless, fundamentally constant-such that, as one commentator puts it, the various "objects" in question (spatium, surface, plane of immanence or, again, hyperspace) are all rigorously homothetic.5 Such a continuum is, accordingly, consistently described as a pre-extensive, non-qualified "milieu" or "space-stratum" enveloping complexes of differential relations, pure intensities and singularities, with Deleuze seeking to determine in this way an impersonal and pre-individual transcendental field that, assembling the conditions of real-and not merely possible-experience, would neither resemble the corresponding empirical fields (with their correlation of a consciousness and its objects) nor amount to an undifferentiated "depth" or groundlessness (sans-fond indifferencie) identified as pure chaos. Aiming in this way to escape the ultimatum, laid down by both metaphysics and Kant's transcendental philosophy, which claims the transcendental field must be defined in terms of a supremely individuated Being or an intensely personalized Form if it is not to end up inevitably confounded with an undifferentiated abyss or pure chaos, Deleuze consistently mobilizes what we might call a "topological model" in order to describe the properties of this real transcendental field. Along lines similar to Michel Serres' positioning of topology as the first objective elaboration of a transcendental field ("field of invariants") or, indeed, to Merleau-Ponty's exhortation to "take topological space as the model of being"-Deleuze views the topological "categories" of position, junction, and connection as the best able to explain the way in which the transcendental plane gives consistency to the elements (multiplicities, pure intensities or singularities) that populate it. One of the most rigorous statements of the "topological" nature of the transcendental field is found in Deleuze's early article on structuralism where, after defining structuralism's "scientific ambition" as being "topological and relational," he notes that, for this reason, "structuralism is inseparable from a new transcendental philosophy where places are more important than what fills them."6 In short, "what is structural is space, but a non-extensive, pre-extensive, pure spatium."7 Such a space is a space of co-existence, articulated by a system of differences that, far from being external relations defined with regard to pre-existing entities, are, on the contrary, relations constitutive of the "reciprocal determination" of the singularities which occur in the space "like topological events" and which compose multiplicities. As Deleuze writes in Difference and Repetition: "These elements must, in effect, be determined, but reciprocally, by reciprocal relations which allow no independence whatsoever to subsist. Such relations are precisely non-localizable ideal connections, whether they characterize the multiplicity globally or proceed by the juxtaposition of neighboring regions. In all cases, the multiplicity is intrinsically defined, without external reference or recourse to a uniform space in which it would be submerged."8 In sum, it is, above all, the category of connection that Deleuze takes from topology in order to determine his transcendental plane in terms of a structurally stable (or better, "metastable") system auto-regulated by a relational and dynamic, non-quantitative, organization of potential values. …

The polish elections of 2005: Pure chaos or a restructuring of the party system?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. See note 5 below. 2. The other coalition partner, the Labour Union (UP), was a marginal party with negligible support of about 2–3%. 3. For readers less familiar with Polish affairs, let me recall that in fact Poland proved extremely successful during this period. Poland's economy was the first to come through the ‘valley of tears’ and already in 1992 registered a 2.5% growth in GDP, which continued the highest in the region at 6–7% GDP annual growth in the mid-1990s; inflation was brought under full control; state reserves were excellent, unemployment slightly above 10%. The central statistical office showed that by the end of the 1990s household wealth had increased rapidly, consumer optimism had gone up, associated for instance with the overall highest proportion of the public being ‘satisfied with the way democracy works in Poland’ (different surveys show about 60% (+/−5) always expressing a positive evaluation of the democratic performance. Democracy in Poland has also been considered by external monitoring agencies (Freedom House and the like) as ‘fully consolidated’ or ‘almost consolidated’. 4. A reminder might help at this point. In the 2001 election completely new competitors were Civic Platform (PO), Law and Justice (PiS), League of Polish Families (LPR), and new formally, i.e. Self-defence (SRP) and Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) which only in this election were running as party entities. 5. The Polish NES tradition combines accomplishment of a classical socio-political research of the mass public preferences, elite (MPs) survey, party manifesto analysis and macro-ecological (geographical, cultural and economic) determinants of the vote. The 2005 edition has been designed as a panel study. The results quoted above come from its first wave (N = 2404 respondents). 6. In this section most of the data and the quoted results of my analyses, for the sake of space, are not shown, but only descriptively presented; data are however available upon request from the author. 7. The size of the circles/ellipses indicates the homo-/heterogeneity of the electorates (measured by standard deviation). The centres of these geometrical figures indicate their mean location on the two dimensions. The two dimensions are constructed on the basis of factor scores from factor analysis with varimax rotation. The questions/variables used in both elections for constructing the dimensions are the same. 8. The Polish NES question concerning party identification uses classical Michigan wording: ‘is there any party you feel close to?’ and if yes, ‘how close?’. 9. In Polish democratic politics it is a common rule that the two main coalition partners divide between them the posts of premier and lower house speaker.

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Can we Determine the Intrinsic Dynamics of Real Plant Populations?

A central goal of ecological studies is to understand the behaviour of species in their natural environments. A corollary of this is that if we understand that behaviour, we should be able to predict what happens. A methodology then emerges, beginning with the description of processes, leading to the development of models and ending with the testing of their predictions. The study of plant population biology has, for the most part, followed this pattern. There have been many studies of monocultures and simple mixtures in pots, often in the glasshouse. A considerable volume of papers has used mathematical models to investigate what, in theory, could happen to populations of both plants and animals as a result of intrinsic processes. However, attempts to test these predictions on plant populations in the field are hard to find (e.g. Symonides et al. 1986) and even then they may be equivocal (Rees & Crawley 1991). Why is this? Has plant population biology lost its way? Are few researchers trying to bridge the gap between theory and reality? Or are there practical problems which are insurmountable? The environment of a plant population is variable and, in many respects, unpredictable. Long-term monitoring studies may be impressive and appear to be valuable sources of information (e.g. Inghe & Tamm 1985) but the nature of the intrinsic population dynamics is expected to be masked by considerable environmental 'noise', by the complexity of the habitat/community and by sampling error. This difficulty with detection has even led to the conclusion that density-dependence does not occur in many communities. Many plant population biologists, however, choose to work over a short period, usually of less than one generation. Experiments can be designed to minimize environmental noise; density dependence is then invariably shown. Through models based on these data, complex patterns of behaviour have been deduced as being possible in theory and, there, many studies end. The ultimate objectives of most researchers must usually be inferred from the aims of various isolated papers which cover only part of their research area. Perhaps these objectives are, or have become, restricted to simply generating short-term data and predicting the resulting long-term dynamics in the (artificial) absence of environmental noise? Perhaps this is sufficient to complete one piece of our ecological jig-saw but it is surely not sufficient as the objective of plant population biology in its entirety? It is clear that at least some researchers have more optimistic expectations of population models. For example, Thrall et al. (1989) state that, 'In general, statistical analyses of time-series of census data will not necessarily allow one to determine whether fluctuations in population size are caused by densitydependent factors or are environmentally driven noise. Perhaps the only reliable way to demonstrate that oscillations are caused by density-dependent interactions is to calibrate a quantitative model of density-dependent regulation at a single point in time.' Begon & Mortimer (1986) consider that, because a deterministic mathematical model predicts that density-dependence can generate population fluctuations, '... we need not look beyond the intrinsic dynamics of a species in order to understand the fluctuations in numbers of its natural populations'. Not only are these expectations optimistic but they are also philosophically untenable. Even if a realistic model can be formulated, its predictions can only tell us what might happen in a constant environment. Unvalidated deterministic density-dependent models based on short-term data are not sufficient to confirm cause and effect of long-term dynamics in the field. Plant population biology must surely be concerned with the actual and not just the theoretically possible. How can we, for example, distinguish in the field between environmentally driven fluctuations of an otherwise asymptotic trajectory, pure chaos driven by density-dependence and stable cycles perturbed by environmental noise? The aim of this paper is to discuss briefly some of the current methodologies used to study the effects of intrinsic factors on plant population dynamics and to examine the extent to which they are bridging the gap between theory and reality.

Systemic rationality and the effects of financial regulation: Rejoinder to Kindleberger

In his Reply, Kindleberger falsely ascribes to me the views that political actors are utterly incompetent, while market actors are completely rational; and that political processes are pure chaos, while market processes are perfectly efficient. My point was that the relatively better performance of the market is a result of systemic factors, not the rationality of individuals. Kindleberger fails to address the historical evidence indicating the comparatively poor performance of government intervention in the monetary order. “Market manias” are, in fact, largely the product of ill‐conceived government regulations.

Semi-modularity and testability of speed-independent circuits

In this paper, we relate the property of semi-modularity to the testability of speed-independent circuits. We show that, under the pure chaos delay model, live speed-independent circuits that are strongly connected and composed of ANDs, ORs, and C-elements (with a possible inverter on each gate input) can be decomposed into a set of semi-modular circuits and therefore fully testable for certain classes of output stuck-at-faults (OSAFs). In addition, we show that a subclass of such speed-independent circuits are fully testable for all multiple OSAFs and for certain input SAFs (ISAFs) as well. Specifically, we qualify the kind of SAFs that are detectable during the normal operation of speed-independent circuits regardless of individual gate delays. These results demonstrate the inherent self-checking property of speed-independent circuits and indicate the kind of faults for which speed-independent circuits can be easily tested. We also present a CAD tool that checks the testability of a speed-independent circuit.

An Exactly Solvable Difference Equation that Gives Pure Chaos for a Continuous Range of a Parameter

A one-dimensional first-order nonlinear difference equation which is an extended version of currently well-studied systems is presented and solved analytically. From the exact solution it is shown that for a continuous range of a parameter of the system (i.e., 0 ≦ k2 < 1) nonperiodic solutions behave in a purely chaotic fashion, whereas for k2 = 1 the exact solution converges to a unique attractor.