Order and Disorder in Farce

Oczekiwania widzów, ich cechy osobowościowe i czynniki środowiskowe pełnią ważną, lecz słabo zbadaną rolę w postrzeganiu bodźca humorystycznego i reagowaniu na niego. Tradycja teatralna wykształciła hierarchię typów i stylów komediowych o określonych sygnałach strukturalnych, które pozwalają przewidzieć pewne istotne aspekty tego, czego z dużym prawdopodobieństwem widzowie doznają.Wśród bogactwa gatunków od satyry i burleski po romantyczną komedię i slapstick farsa uważana jest za formę najniższą. Jest ona gatunkiem z długą tradycją, o najsztywniej wyznaczonych cechach i o najściślej określonych regułach komediowych. Niewerbalne żarty czynią z niej gatunek “fizyczny”, szeroko akceptowany jako najmniej agresywny i najbardziej “nieszkodliwy” rodzaj komedii. Ścisłość reguł farsy jest bezpośrednio związana z jej charakterem - przestrzeganie reguł pozwala farsie na częste ich łamanie, wywołujące śmiech widowni

Are there new models of computation? Reply to Wegner and Eberbach

Wegner and Eberbach[Weg04b] have argued that there are fundamental limitations to Turing Machines as a foundation of computability and that these can be overcome by so-called superTuring models such as interaction machines, the [pi]calculus and the $-calculus. In this paper we contest Weger and Eberbach claims

Defining parody and satire: Australian copyright law and its new exception

© 2008 LexisNexis and authors. Published version of the paper reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from LexisNexis .The new exceptions to the Copyright Act in ss 41A and 103AA, providing protection of re-use for ‘the purpose of parody or satire’ seem clearly intended to provide protection for both parody and satire, not merely some confection of the two artistic practices. As these practices are not contiguous and separable genres, as pastoral and epic poetry, or situation comedies and current affairs programs are, it is important to have a model for understanding how these two practices can operate together and separately. The threshold issue of what will legally qualify as parody or satire under the new exception is critical in determining its scope. The answer to this question will determine how far new forms of Australian artistic practice can use existing copyright material before they become infringements, however creative they are. In Part 1 of this article, we argue that it is not safe to rely solely on dictionary definitions of the terms, as the available definitions from the most commonly used dictionaries depend on lexicography too completely shaped by narrowly literary theories of the practice. Moreover, their definitions do not take into account the sort of multi-media re-use that is most likely to cause hard cases to come before Australian courts in the twenty-first century. In our view this caution would be consistent with a judicial approach which surveys a range of dictionaries as one element of the interpretive approach supporting the primary task of textual analysis. Neither is it safe to simply import the US jurisprudence on the terms, for two reasons: broadly, that it has developed in jurisdictions with very different laws, especially those concerning free speech, and narrowly, that the course of US case law has generated a very idiosyncratic distinction between parody and satire which may serve a convenient legal purpose in that jurisdiction, but which does not correspond to the normal meanings of either term in Australia, among practitioners, theorists, and (to the extent they think it through) audiences. In Part 2 of this article (forthcoming) we develop a better theoretical framework for interpreting and applying the threshold definitional part of the new exception.Nth Ryde NS

Defining parody and satire: Australian copyright law and its new exception: Part 2 - Advancing ordinary definitions

© 2008 LexisNexis and authors. Published version of the paper reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from LexisNexisIn Part 1 of ‘Defining Parody and Satire’ we sought to show that, for the purposes of the new exception to infringement of the Copyright Act in ss 41A and 103AA (the ‘new exception’), it is unsafe to construe parody and satire according either to US law on the matter or to available dictionary definitions. In this part we propose working definitions for parody and satire which, we suggest, are more congruent with both the intention of the Act to protect the free speech of Australian humorists and with the ordinary meanings of the words. There are four categories of artistic practice that the new Australian exceptions would seem designed to protect. The largest two groups combine the two terms: (1) satirical parodies in which copyright material is reused and distorted for the satirical effect of ridiculing that material. These are the staple of many literary, theatrical, video and digital media. We propose a metaphor of the satirical fist of critical intent animating the parodic glove of formal reuse to help comprehend this group particularly. (2) A group of satirical parodies where the target is not the artistic form parodied, but where the parody, for example of a popular song, provides a vehicle for satirical comment of some other person, group, or event. (3) Pure parody — formal play without discernible satirical intent either towards the vehicle text or any other potential target. This is, perhaps, most common these days in the visual arts, where a layering of pre-existing images creates juxtapositions which defy rhetorical purpose; there is also an established tradition of affectionate literary and dramatic parody. (4) Straight or pure satire, which may be independent of parody, but which may also quote its object so that the audience can know what the target is, without distorting the form of that object (text or image) in parodic ways. This category would include the use of excerpts of television broadcasts which became the subject of Australian copyright litigation in the well known ‘Panel’ case decided before the introduction of the new exception. We submit that unlicensed use of copyright material in all of these categories should enjoy the protection of the new Australian exception, subject to the issues of ‘fairness’ and possibly also moral rights in particular instances — a consideration of which is beyond the scope of this article. The definitions of parody and satire we will propose are: Parody: the borrowing from, imitation, or appropriation of a text, or other cultural product or practice, for the purpose of commenting, usually humorously, upon either it or something else; Satire: the critical impulse manifesting itself in some degree of denigration, almost invariably through attempted humour; the artistic results (usually humorous) of expression of such a critical impulse.Nth Ryde NS

Estimating acoustic speech features in low signal-to-noise ratios using a statistical framework

Accurate estimation of acoustic speech features from noisy speech and from different speakers is an ongoing problem in speech processing. Many methods have been proposed to estimate acoustic features but errors increase as signal-to-noise ratios fall. This work proposes a robust statistical framework to estimate an acoustic speech vector (comprising voicing, fundamental frequency and spectral envelope) from an intermediate feature that is extracted from a noisy time-domain speech signal. The initial approach is accurate in clean conditions but deteriorates in noise and with changing speaker. Adaptation methods are then developed to adjust the acoustic models to the noise conditions and speaker. Evaluations are carried out in stationary and nonstationary noises and at SNRs from -5dB to clean conditions. Comparison with conventional methods of estimating fundamental frequency, voicing and spectral envelope reveals the proposed framework to have lowest errors in all conditions tested

Running in standard versus minimalist shoes

The purpose of this study was to determine if running in a minimalist shoe results in a reduction in ground reaction forces and alters kinematics over standard shoe running. The secondary purpose of this study was to determine if within–session accommodation to a novel minimalist shoe occurs. Running in a minimalist shoe appears to, at least in the short–term, increase loading of the lower extremity over standard shoe running. The accommodation period resulted in less favorable landing mechanics in both shoes. These findings bring into question whether minimal shoes will provide enough feedback to induce an alteration that is similar to barefoot running

Hexatic Order and Surface Ripples in Spherical Geometries

In flat geometries, two dimensional hexatic order has only a minor effect on capillary waves on a liquid substrate and on undulation modes in lipid bilayers. However, extended bond orientational order alters the long wavelength spectrum of these ripples in spherical geometries. We calculate this frequency shift and suggest that it might be detectable in lipid bilayer vesicles, at the surface of liquid metals and in multielectron bubbles in liquid helium at low temperatures. Hexatic order also leads to a shift in the threshold for the fission instability induced in the later two systems by an excess of electric charge.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure; revised version; to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Variational calculations of the Λ\Lambda-seperation energy of the Λ17_{\Lambda}^{17}O hypernucleus

Variational Monte Carlo calculations have been made for the $_{ \Lambda}^{17}$O hypernucleus using realistic two- and three-baryon interactions. A two pion exchange potential with spin- and space-exchange components is used for the $\Lambda$N potential. Three-body two-pion exchange and strongly repulsive dispersive $\Lambda$NN interactions are also included. The trial wave function is constructed from pair- and triplet-correlation operators acting on a single particle determinant. These operators consist of central, spin, isospin, tensor and three- baryon potential components. A cluster Monte Carlo method is developed for noncentral correlations and is used with up to four-baryon clusters in our calculations. The three-baryon $\Lambda$NN force is discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figs available by fax., for publication in Phys. Rev.