Vol. 47 No. 10 - Whole No. 339

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups

The relationship between emotional intelligence and academic achievement in elementary-school children

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Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation

An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance. Availability entrepreneurs- activists who manipulate the content of public discourse-strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas. Their availability campaigns may yield social benefits, but sometimes they bring harm, which suggests a need for safeguards. Focusing on the role of mass pressures in the regulation of risks associated with production, consumption, and the environment, Professors Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein analyze availability cascades and suggest reforms to alleviate their potential hazards. Their proposals include new governmental structures designed to give civil servants better insulation against mass demands for regulatory change and an easily accessible scientific database to reduce people\u27s dependence on popular (mis)perceptions

Intelligent support for knitwear design

Communication between different members of a design team often poses difficulties. The knitwear design process is shared by the designers, who plan the visual and tactile appearance of the garments, and the technicians, who have to realise the garment on a knitting machine and assemble it. This thesis reports a detailed empirical study of over' twenty companies in Britain and Germany, which shows that the communication problem constitutes a major bottleneck. Designers specify their designs inaccurately, incompletely and inconsistently; the technicians interpret these specifications according to their previous experience of similar designs, and produce garments very different from the designers' original intention. Knitwear is inherently difficult to describe, as no simple and complete notation exists for knitted structures; and the relationship between visual appearance and structure and technical properties of knitted fabric is subtle and complex. At the same time the interaction between designers and technicians is badly managed in many companies. This thesis argues that this communication bottleneck can be overcome by enabling designers to produce accurate specifications of technically correct designs, through the help. of an intelligent computer support system that corrects inconsistent input and proposes design suggestions that the user can edit. In this thesis this proposal is elaborated for one aspect of knitwear design: garment shape construction. Garment shapes are modelled using Bezier curves generated using design heuristics drawn from industrial practice, to create curves that look right to a designer and can be easily edited. The development of the garment shape models presented in this thesis involved the solution of unusual problems in numerical analysis. The thesis shows how the mathematical models can be integrated into an intelligent CAD system, and discusses die benefits of such a system could have for the design process

Research Reports: 1984 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program

A NASA/ASEE Summer Faulty Fellowship Program was conducted at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The basic objectives of the programs are: (1) to further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty members; (2) to stimulate an exchange of ideas between participants and NASA; (3) to enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of the participants' institutions; and (4) to contribute to the research objectives of the NASA Centers. The Faculty Fellows spent ten weeks at MSFC engaged in a research project compatible with their interests and background and worked in collaboration with a NASA/MSFC colleague. This document is a compilation of Fellows' reports on their research during the summer of 1984. Topics covered include: (1) data base management; (2) computational fluid dynamics; (3) space debris; (4) X-ray gratings; (5) atomic oxygen exposure; (6) protective coatings for SSME; (7) cryogenics; (8) thermal analysis measurements; (9) solar wind modelling; and (10) binary systems

The Alexa Experiment

"The Alexa Experiment" is an autoethnographic and performative project which explores living with the artificially intelligent home assistant, the Amazon Alexa. This Experiment evaluates the device outside of intended consumer uses in hopes to understand who is Alexa? “The Alexa Experiment” is a time-based document, chronicling our journey together, which reports discoveries over an eight-month period. This text is accompanied by a mini-documentary detailing pivotal moments with the device and surveillance footage of private interactions, demonstrated through feminist performance art techniques. This paper critically unpacks the Alexa as a creature, a friend, a surveillance object, and a mirror for self-analysis. Finally, I look at Alexa as a subject, landing on ‘who’ she is through interviews with the device, by leveraging Jacque Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, “The Mirror Stage.

From Recovery to Discovery: Ethnic American Science Fiction and (Re)Creating the Future

My project assesses how science fiction by writers of color challenges the scientific racism embedded in genetics, nuclear development, digital technology, and molecular biology, demonstrating how these fields are deployed disproportionately against people of color. By contextualizing current scientific development with its often overlooked history and exposing the full life cycle of scientific practices and technological changes, ethnic science fiction authors challenge science’s purported objectivity and make room for alternative scientific methods steeped in Indigenous epistemologies. The first chapter argues that genetics is deployed disproportionally against black Americans, from the pseudo-scientific racial classifications of the nineteenth century and earlier through the current obsession with racially tailored medicine and the human genome. I argue that the fiction of Octavia Butler, Tananarive Due, and Andrea Hairston reveals the continuing scientific racialization of black Americans and complicates questions of humanity that still rise from genetic typing and medical testing. Chapter 2 interrogates the nuclear cycle, revealing what has been erased—the mining of uranium on the Navajo Nation, nuclear testing on Paiute and Shoshone land in the United States, similar tests on Indigenous soil in Kazakhstan, and nuclear waste buried in the New Mexico and Texas deserts. I contend Leslie Marmon Silko, William Saunders, and Stephen Graham Jones reveal the destructive influence of the buried nuclear cycle on Indigenous people globally, as they posit an Indigenous scientific method with which to fight through their novels. The third chapter exposes how the Latina/o digital divide in the United States elides a more disturbing multinational divide between those who mine for, assemble, and recycle the products that create the digital era and those with access to those products. From mining for rare earth elements in the Congo to assembling electronics in Mexico’s maquiladoras and “recycling” used electronics across the developing world, the novels of Alejandro Morales, Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita, and Ernest Hogan reveal the hidden price of the digital world and demand representation—digital, scientific, and historical. Chapter 4 builds on current discussions of Alex Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer to argue that Chicana/o and Indigenous authored science fiction films reveal how the global harvesting of natural resources has expanded to include life itself and organisms’ interiors. Films and other visual productions by Robert Rodriguez, Reagan Gomez, Federico Heller, Jose Nestor Marquez, Rodrigo Hernández Cruz, and Nanobah Becker predict biocolonialism’s expansion as they create worlds reflecting current practices where life forms become no more than patented, mechanized resources for neocolonial capitalist production and consumption

African Art and the New Humanism

The following essay examines African art in line with the philosophy of New Humanism, and how it fulfils human dignity and value. The relationship of man and his creator is examined through art, vis-à-vis religion and man’s constant search for the reason for being. The theory of creationism which attributes the existence of everything in the universe to the direct creative act of the Supreme Being, and presents man as the apex and pinnacle of God’s creation is discussed. New Humanism is discussed as it aims at reconciling people to the original humanism, the sort of humanism pursued by the Renaissance Humanists. The paper takes a careful look at African art as an art of culture, philosophy and personality, as realistic views of life expressed in the symbolic structure of the work of art, IMAGE being the link. African art is characteristically humanistic, as what constitutes arts is determined by its effect on man, either positively or negatively. The paper concludes that, in structure, African art can be seen to consist of the following features; belief and ancestors. It is important to note that outside of God, full human dignity and values cannot be realized