Listening to ironically-enjoyed music: A self-regulatory perspective

This research examines adults’ reported motivations for listening to music that they enjoy ironically. In a pilot (N = 96) and main (N = 175) studies, open-ended responses from adults were analysed using Thematic Analysis. Based on the pilot study, ironically enjoyed music was defined as “Music that is enjoyed because of being bad, despite being bad, or for different reasons than intended.” Although many relevant self-regulatory functions of listening to music in general were also relevant to ironically- enjoyed music, it also emerged that ironic enjoyment of music has characteristics that are unique to it: the additional role of mocking, ridiculing, and laughing at the music, and the social benefit that this provides. Music that was listened to “because of” its negative features had a variety of musical features, and the listening usually served functions unique to ironic enjoyment of music, such as mockery. When music was listened to “despite” negative qualities, the music itself was often described as having attractive rhythm, melody or lyrics, while the irony protected the listener from conflicting values associated with the music, helping the listener communicate to others that they did not identify with the music on a higher level. Unfamiliar music mainly played a social role, whereas familiar music related to nostalgia as well as most other functions

Appreciation of entertainment

The purpose of this article is to examine the experience of appreciation to media entertainment as a unique audience response that can be differentiated from enjoyment. To those ends, the first section provides a conceptualization of appreciation in which we outline how we are using the term and how it is distinct from questions of emotional valence. The second section discusses the types of entertainment portrayals and depictions that we believe are most likely to elicit feelings of appreciation. Here, we suggest that appreciation is most evident for meaningful portrayals that focus on human virtue and that inspire audiences to contemplate questions concerning life’s purpose. In the final section we consider the affective and cognitive components of appreciation, arguing that mixed-affective responses (rather than bi-polar conceptualizations of affective valence) better capture the experience of appreciation and its accompanying feelings states such as inspiration, awe, and tenderness

Image and information management system

A system and methods through which pictorial views of an object's configuration, arranged in a hierarchical fashion, are navigated by a person to establish a visual context within the configuration. The visual context is automatically translated by the system into a set of search parameters driving retrieval of structured data and content (images, documents, multimedia, etc.) associated with the specific context. The system places ''hot spots'', or actionable regions, on various portions of the pictorials representing the object. When a user interacts with an actionable region, a more detailed pictorial from the hierarchy is presented representing that portion of the object, along with real-time feedback in the form of a popup pane containing information about that region, and counts-by-type reflecting the number of items that are available within the system associated with the specific context and search filters established at that point in time

Review of the Geology and Hydrology of the Eagle Flat Area, Hudspeth County, Texas

On February 27, 1991, the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority requested that the Bureau of Economic Geology perform a preliminary review of the geology and hydrology of the Eagle Flat area in eastern Hudspeth County, Texas. The purpose of this review was to briefly summarize what is known about the geology and hydrology of the area from a survey of the published literature, to conduct a field reconnaissance of the area, and to comment on factors that the Authority may want to consider in its general assessment of the suitability of the area as a host for a repository for low-level radioactive wastes. Recent maps of land ownership indicate that the State does not own any sections in the main Eagle Flat area, although the State does retain an interest in the mineral rights on some sections. To minimize upstream drainage, avoid drainage basins that flow to the Rio Grande, and maximize the potential for thick basin-fill deposits, the portion of Eagle Flat that lies southeast of the road to Grayton Lake, west of the drainage divide between Grayton Lake and Eagle Flat Draw, and between the Texas and Pacific and Southern Pacific railroad tracks, has been indicated as an area of potential interest. For the purposes of this report, this block of land is referred to as the "Eagle Flat site." The Eagle Flat site is shown on the Grayton Lake 7.5-minute quadrangle topographic map published by the U.S. Geological Survey.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Comparative Gross and Histologic Anatomy of the Gastrointestinal Tract of Pronghorn Antelope and Domestic Sheep

The relationship between the domesticated sheep, Ovis aries, and the pronghorn antelope, Antilocapra americana americana, is close enough to validate a comparative gastrointestinal tract analysis (Table 1). This analysis is intended to compare and describe the various parts of the gastrointestinal tract of each species in the order of their occurrence from the esophagus through the rectum. . . . An attempt was made in this study to compare the gastrointestinal tract of the sheep and the pronghorn antelope, using the sheep as a guide because of its similarity and availability. The purpose of this study is not to prove any anatomical differences, but to compare the gastrointestinal tract of the two species. This comparison is to show correlation between species, with emphasis on pronghorn antelope because of lack of information on wild game ruminants

From Housewife to Household Weapon: Women from the Bolivian Mines Organize Against Economic Exploitation and Political Oppression

Drawing from oral histories which I gathered while living in Bolivia, this thesis tracks the start, growth, and development of the political movement led by women from the Bolivian mines from 1961 to 1987. This movement helped create a new political culture that recognized the importance of women’s participation in politics and human rights. Today, this culture lives on. Bolivia has not experienced a coup since 1980, and the nation’s human rights record has improved dramatically since the 1980s as well. Prior to the mid-1980s, Bolivia was often under the control of oppressive military regimes that resorted to many different types of coercion in attempts to silence resistance in the mining centers, the national government’s main source of conflict. This uneven power struggle between working class activists and the national government motivated many women to challenge gender roles and involve themselves in politics. After establishing their political organization called the Housewives’ Committee, women activists organized and acted collectively to challenge political oppression and mitigate the effects of extreme poverty. They frequently employed compelling tactics, most commonly hunger strikes, to win attention for their issues. They also involved themselves in many other diverse projects and demonstrations depending on their communities’ need. Women’s political development resulted in a number of personal transformations among those who participated: it awakened a political consciousness and also enabled women to recognize the importance of their paid and unpaid work in the mining economy. These changes eventually altered women’s understanding of how women’s oppression fit into the broader struggle of working class activism by convincing them of the deep connection between women’s liberation and the liberation of their community. These transformations led to the acceptance of women as political activists and leaders, which continues in the present. This work also tracks the United States’ impact on the relationship between the mining centers and the state. This analysis serves to remind us that as United States citizens we must be very critical of our nation’s impact; because of our ability to enormously affect small land-locked countries like Bolivia, we must also hold ourselves accountable to understanding our historical impact so that we can make informed decisions in the present

Surface Casing Database Project

In 2005, the Bureau of Economic Geology expanded the surface casing database developed in 2004 for Brazos County to include three additional counties: Robertson, Madison, and Leon. All work was funded by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) under the oversight of John Estepp. Methods employed and the functionality of the database, which is designed to be accessed by the public using the Internet, are essentially the same as those of the prototype project for Brazos County. All TCEQ "Q-Logs" for the three counties were scanned and delivered to TCEQ. This letter report is a summary of a few refinements and changes from the initial project, and some recommendations for how the project may be expanded in the future. Bureau personnel are essentially the same as for the initial project, which greatly facilitated the work. The geology of the study area is mostly updip from Brazos County, and the three-county area includes a salt dome and an impact structure.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Reading foreign policy archives: how regime-made disasters, pointillism, and citizen-perpetrators underpin U.S. Empire-building

This political project analyzes documents within the foreign policy archives of the Bush Jr., Obama, and Trump administrations to tell a story of how U.S. imperial relations are constructed to reproduce differential rule, exploitation, and the distribution of subject positions. Through a combination of postcolonial critiques of imperial knowledge production and poststructuralist discourse analysis, I argue that these documents expose how U.S. officials construct Afghanistan as a regime-made disaster, a nation-state enclave for unfettered U.S. pointillism and unequal integration into the imperial world order. In addition, the documents reveal how U.S. officials reproduce the nation and perpetuate the imperial condition through the construction of U.S. citizens as citizen-perpetrators, figures outside and above the “realm of imperial accountability” (Azoulay, Potential History, 554). This project is meant to serve as a commitment to ongoing efforts for U.S. citizens to reclaim the right to not be a perpetrator and begin the labor of reparations necessary to revive a shared world

Regional Ecological Resource Assessment of the Rio Grande Riparian Corridor: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Understanding Anthropogenic Effects on Riparian Communities in Semiarid Environments

Data for this report is available at the Texas Data Repository: https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/AAB1LYRiparian ecosystems of the southwestern United States are among the most productive ecosystems of North America. The rapid decline of these ecosystems throughout the United States, including the Lower Rio Grande Valley, has made riparian conservation a focal issue. This multidisciplinary study of riparian communities along the Lower Rio Grande of Texas and Mexico had several objectives, including (1) acquiring and analyzing high-resolution, remotely sensed data from multiple sensors; (2) integrating existing and new field data and remotely sensed data into a geographic information system (GIS); (3) ascertaining whether the native vegetation communities are maintaining themselves and identifying the topographic, edaphic, and other ecological factors that perpetuate these communities; (4) interpreting spatial variations in riparian habitats, including comparisons of the north and south banks of the Rio Grande; (5) analyzing temporal changes at specific locations; and (6) developing a foundation for future analysis of riparian floodplain communities by linking local and remotely sensed regional data using GIS. Analysis and classification of riparian vegetation in the Lower Rio Grande Valley using remote sensing data supported by field surveys confirmed what other researchers have qualitatively suggested, that riparian vegetation has been greatly diminished since the early 1900s. Digital analysis of historical maps and aerial photographs of woodland distribution in Cameron County as part of this study revealed that in the mid-1930s there were ~81,887 ha of woodlands in Cameron County. By the early to mid-1980s, only 7,337 ha of woodlands in this original area remained, indicating a loss of ~91% of this resource. This quantitative assessment of woodland loss helps confirm the earlier qualitative estimates of up to 95% loss.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Kentucky’s Rebel Press: Pro-Confederate Media and the Secession Crisis

As the secession crisis yielded the bitter fruit of civil war in the spring of 1861, Abraham Lincoln understood well the multifaceted importance of the border states, including his native state of Kentucky. He is said to have remarked that, while he hoped that God was on his side, he needed Kentucky. Indeed, Union and Confederate partisans in and out of the state coveted Kentucky’s manufacturing capacity as well as its ability to provide military resources such as soldiers and draft animals. The state’s geographical position was vital as well. Kentucky offered a springboard for invasion of the North or the South, and the forces that controlled the state’s portions of the Cumberland, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers would be well positioned to drive deep into enemy territory—a fact that Ulysses S. Grant demonstrated effectively with his seizure of Forts Henry and Donelson in February of 1862