Comedy in Unfunny Times: News Parody and Carnival after 9/11

Comedy has a special role in helping societies manage crisis moments, and the U.S. media paid considerable attention to the proper role of comedy in public culture after the 9/11 tragedies. As has been well documented, many popular U.S. comic voices were paralyzed in trying to respond to 9/11 or disciplined by audiences when they did. Starting with these obstacles in mind, this essay analyzes early comic responses to 9/11, and particularly those of the print and online news parody The Onion, as an example of how “fake” news discourse could surmount the rhetorical chill that fell over public culture after the tragedies. By exposing the news as “mere” production and by setting an agenda for learning about Islamic culture and Middle East politics, The Onion avoided violating decorum and invited citizen participation. This kind of meta-discourse was crucial after 9/11, when shifting rules for decorum created controversy and as official voices in government and media honed frames and narratives for talking about the attacks

Avaliação da floco-decantação de manta de lodo associada à decantação de alta taxa no tratamento de águas de consumo humano Evaluation of sludge blanket settler flocculator associated to high rate sedimentation applied on water treatment for human consumption

O presente trabalho objetiva avaliar a eficiência de uma unidade-piloto de floco-decantação de manta de lodo associada à decantação de alta taxa na remoção de turbidez, utilizando polímero catiônico como coagulante primário. Avaliaram-se três taxas de aplicação superficial, para águas de estudo apresentando turbidez de 3 a 100 uT e cor verdadeira praticamente nula. As dosagens de polímero foram definidas em ensaios de jar test. O desempenho da unidade-piloto mostrou-se plenamente satisfatório, para as três taxas avaliadas, com resultados coerentes aos obtidos em escala de bancada. Esta performance abre a perspectiva do emprego da tecnologia em escala real para sistemas de abastecimento público, mesmo para a potabilização de águas naturais de baixa turbidez.<br>This paper aims the efficiency evaluation, in pilot scale, of a sludge blanket flocculator associated to a high rate settler using a cationic polymer as the primary coagulant. Three surface loading rates and different synthetic waters, with variable turbidities (from 3 to 100 NTU), were evaluated. The polymer dosages applied on the pilot scale were set up after jar tests. This technology showed a good performance for all rates and the results for all synthetic waters were similar with those obtained in the bench scale. This performance provides a clear feasibility of its use in actual scale for water supply systems, even to treat natural waters with low turbidity