In Praise of Slacking: Richard Linklater’s Slacker and Kevin Smith’s Clerks as Hallmarks of 1990s American Independent Cinema Counterculture

Some people live to work, others work to live, while still others prefer to live lives of leisure. Since the Puritans, American culture and literature have been dominated by individuals who have valued hard work. However, shortly after its founding, America managed to produce the leisurely Rip Van Winkle, who, over time, has been followed by kindred spirits such as, for instance, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Twain’s Huck Finn, Melville’s Bartleby, Jack Kerouac, Diane di Prima, the Hippies, and Christopher McCandless. With the rise of the Indie Film movement of the 1990s, so came the rise of the slacker film. Films such as Slacker (1991), Singles (1992), Wayne’s World (1992), Reality Bites (1994), Clerks (1994), Kicking and Screaming (1995), Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), and Office Space (1999) filled theatres over the decade with characters who take an unorthodox view of work and stress the importance of leisure in life. This essay discusses two slacker films, Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) and Kevin Smith’s Clerks (1994), which defined the slacker phenomenon in the 1990s and constituted two important landmarks in American independent film. While many of us may find the slacker pathetic and annoying, this essay argues that there is much value to be found in this healthy counterculture. By offering their perspectives on issues such as the Puritan work ethic, work-incited self-importance, leisure versus idleness and human relationships, Linklater and Smith join the preceding generations of slackers, providing a much needed balance to the American obsession with work and success

Extending the Boundaries of Decorum. The Poetry of Dennis O’Drisco

Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 dofinansowane zostało ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej nauk

“The Dude Abides”: How The Big Lebowski Bowled Its Way from a Box Office Bomb to Nation-Wide Fests

Since Blood Simple, the first film they wrote and directed together, the Coen Brothers have been working their way up in the film world and, in spite of their outside-the-mainstream taste for the noir and the surreal, have earned a number of prestigious prizes. After Fargo, one of their most critically acclaimed films, expectations were high, and when the Brothers released their next bizarre venture, most critics rushed to measure it against Fargo’s success. Consequently, The Big Lebowski, the Coens’ 1998 neo-noir detective comedy, was considered an incoherent, “unsatisfactory” medley of genres and styles and a box office bomb, and nothing hinted that this unorthodox story of mistaken identity, featuring a pot-smoking, unemployed character named the Dude as its “hee-ro,” would gain a following. Yet, since its 1998 DVD release, The Big Lebowski has been hailed as the first cult film of the Internet, continuously inspiring versatile cultural phenomena as nonconformist in their nature as the movie itself. This essay examines particular factors which initially might have been responsible for alienating the audience only to help The BigLebowski become a peculiar cultural event in later years. It looks at TheBig Lebowski’s characters, the historical time and place of the film’s action as well as at various external historical events, phenomena, places and people such as, for example, the Port Huron Statement, the Reagan-Bush era, Los Angeles and its immigration issues, racial minorities, civil rights activists, the Western genre and, last but not least, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Reflecting the film’s oddities, this bag of cultural idiosyncrasies appears to provide some plausible explanations for The Big Lebowski’s unexpected, against-all-odds rise from the marginal position of a critical and commercial failure to the status of a cult classic and cultural landmark

GARCH CLASS MODELS PERFORMANCE IN CONTEXT OF HIGH MARKET VOLATILITY

In the presented paper GARCH class models were considered for describing and forecasting market volatility in context of the economic crisis. The sample composition was designed to emphasize models performance in two groups of markets: well-developed and transition. As a preview to our results, we presented the procedure of model selection form the GARCH family. We distinguished three subperiods in the time series in a way that the dependencies between forecast outcomes and a scale of market volatility were emphasized. The comparison of the forecast errors revealed a serious problem of volatility prediction in times of high market instability. The crisis impact was particularly apparent in transition markets. Our findings showed that GARCH models allowed risk control, with risk understood as a relation of forecast error to the level of predicted volatility

Wpływ obciążeń podatkowych na funkcjonowanie przedsiębiorstw uspołecznionych w latach 1991-1992

Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 dofinansowane zostało ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej naukę

2-Meth­oxy-3-[(3,4,5-trimethoxy­anilino)methyl­idene]-3,4-dihydro-2H-1-benzopyran-4-one

The title mol­ecule, C20H21NO6, adopts a keto–amine tautomeric form. An intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond, classified as a resonanse-assisted hydrogen bond, influences the mol­ecular conformation; the two benzene rings form a dihedral angle of 24.6 (1)°. In the crystal structure, weak inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link mol­ecules into chains propagating along [001]

Michał Janeczek, Katalog starych druków Archiwum Państwowego w Poznaniu, Poznań: Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu, Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwów Państwowych 2016, s. 420 [1]

Michał Janeczek, Katalog starych druków Archiwum Państwowego w Poznaniu, Poznań: Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu, Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwów Państwowych 2016, s. 420 [1

Dobroć uwalniająca z "gry w wartości". O dekonstrukcji myślenia aksjologicznego

The aim of this article is to show that metaphysical level is the core and condition of possibility of axiology. The paper focuses on methodological differentiation concerning two levels: metaphysical and axiological one. The first one is connected with Goodness, which is the essence of values and an atmosphere that precedes every evaluation, while the second one means discourse about values. When metaphysical level with its Goodness is forgotten, axiology changes itself into “game of values”, that arbitrarily builds hierarchy and tries to measure everything. This “game of values” discounts the level of Goodness and functions as a closed area – a system of rules, where there are only  pseudo-values (goods), but there is no reference to Goodness. Without taking into consideration the metaphysical (i.e. ethical in Levinasian terminology) level and personal thinking axiology shows itself as a totalitarian construct, which only seems to be interested in Goodness and in fact it is more focused on constructing values. The difference between metaphysics and axiology is described via phenomenological analysis of Enigma of Goodness (the order of metaphysics) and phenomenon of good (the order of axiology)

O behawioralnym podejściu do badania prawa, paradoksie, do którego prowadzi i sposobie jego przezwyciężenia

The claim of the paper is that postulates of law making, as well as of analyzing law on the basis of thescientific knowledge on the behavioral regularities lead to paradoxical consequences. I present basic assumptions of the behavioral approach to analysis of law and the reasoning which results in the paradox. In the contemporary research on law, one may observe an increasing interest, especially in the United States and Western Europe, in the development and outcomes of behavioral sciences. References to these sciences are justified from the theoretical perspective (behavioral theories and methods should enable better understanding of the behavioral impact of law), as well as from the policy perspective (they should make possible more effective influences on people’s behavior). In the paper I analyze whether current findings of behavioral sciences allow for formulating such far-reaching conclusions concerning the content of legal norms and their behavioral impact. It will be demonstrated how paradoxes could be avoided, when taking into account concepts and analyses of Leon Petrażycki, especially methodological aspects of his work.W artykule przedstawiam podstawowe założenia behawioralnego podejścia do analiz prawa i wykazuję, że akceptacja twierdzeń dotyczących zastosowania nauk behawioralnych do analiz prawa, formułowanych przez zwolenników tego podejścia, prowadzi do paradoksu. We współczesnej refleksji nad prawem, prowadzonej zwłaszcza w Stanach Zjednoczonych i Europie Zachodniej, twierdzi się, że wyniki badań nauk behawioralnych mogą znaleźć zastosowanie w kontekstach prawnych. Odwołania do wiedzy o działaniu mają umożliwić z jednej strony adekwatne wyjaśnienie (przez teoretyków) wpływu prawa na działania, z drugiej zaś – skuteczne wpływanie (przez prawodawców) na zachowania i decyzje adresatów norm prawnych. Analizuję, czy aktualne badania i ustalenia nauk behawioralnych pozwalają na formułowanie tak daleko idących wniosków i rekomendacji dotyczących treści norm prawnych oraz ich oddziaływania na decyzje adresatów norm, jak te spotykane w omawianych i krytykowanych pracach. Pokazuję, w jaki sposób paradoksów można uniknąć, nawiązując do koncepcji teoretycznych Leona Petrażyckiego, a w szczególności metodologicznych aspektów jego rozważań