The Suffering Joker and the Cruel Joke: Nabokov\u27s and Bellow\u27s Dark Laughter

This article interrogates the interrelationship between cruelty, suffering, and laughter in novels by Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, positing an affective reading of how bodies that suffer come to produce laughter as a confounding, unexpected, and at times inappropriate readerly affect. Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark and Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King both explore suffering as a form of excessive somatic cruelty inflicted on protagonists who, in experiencing such punishment, engender a strange, troubling, and potentially transformative form of laughter. In order to bring together a discussion of the body, suffering, cruelty, and laughter in Nabokov and Bellow, the essay uses Henri Bergson\u27s idea of the elasticity of laughter in connection to cruelty and suffering, and various “affective” formulations of the body. In both writers, such Bergsonian elasticity of laughter is what allows for laughing at suffering, but there are crucial differences in their depictions of somatic suffering, particularly the responses they elicit from the reader. In Bellow\u27s Henderson the Rain King, it is the protagonist himself who jokes about his suffering body. In Nabokov\u27s Laughter in the Dark, it is the ironic narrator who simultaneously invites the reader to “laugh in the dark” and to check such laughter. What emerges in both novels is laughter as an unsettling readerly affect. Laughing about suffering thus may well become suffering after laughing, as the reader is forced to explore the emotional and ethical implications of such cruel laughter

Art, Artists and Pedagogy

This volume has been brought together to generate new ideas and provoke discussion about what constitutes arts education in the twenty-first century, both within the institution and beyond. Art, Artists and Pedagogy is intended for educators who teach the arts from early childhood to tertiary level, artists working in the community, or those studying arts in education from undergraduate to Masters or PhD level

"The Whole Root Is Somewhere in the Music": Jazz, Soul, and Literary Influence in James Baldwin and Caryl Phillips

This article discusses the contemporary British-Caribbean writer Caryl Phillips and the twentieth-century African American writer James Baldwin within a comparative framework that speaks to the expanding issue of international (and transnational) American literary influence. Baldwin has frequently been cited by Phillips as a major literary source, but the nature of this influence can be difficult to frame. The article is interdisciplinary in nature and takes its theoretical framework not from narrative theory, but from music theory. Issues of creative repetition in black music and rhythmic counterpoint in jazz are suggested as models that can be applied to a relationship of literary influence. The article applies these issues to close readings of Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" (1957) and Phillips's In the Falling Snow (2009), focusing on the musical structures, themes, and motifs that permeate both texts

A feasibility study of a surface modification method for polyolefin plastics formed by injection molding

Polyolefin plastic (i.e. polypropylene, polyethylene, thermoplastic olefin i.e. TPO and blends) articles formed by injection molding have been found to have many useful applications. Many costly and/or hazardous methods are employed to increase the surface energy to a level that promotes the ability of a coating or adhesive to make intimate contact and thereby bond to the molded surface. The method described herein refers to a process that could eliminate the need for a post molding process such as solvent or waterborne adhesion promoting primers or expensive, hazardous surface treatment equipment by modifying the plastic surface during the injection molding process. The method described in this project was found to demonstrate the modification of a nonpolar, polyolefin, plastic surface to that of a chlorine rich plastic surface, during the injection molding process. This change in character of the plastic surface also resulted in improved adhesion of a waterborne paint system

Transatlantic Issues: Report from Scotland

Several bioethical topics received a great deal of news coverage here in Scotland in 2009. Three important issues with transatlantic connections are the swine flu outbreak, which was handled very differently in Scotland, England, and America; the U.S. debate over healthcare reform, which drew the British National Health Service (NHS) into the controversy; and the release to Libya of the Lockerbie bomber, which at first glance might not seem particularly bioethical, but which actually hinged on the very public discussion of the prisoner’s medical records. On a national level, there have been attempts in both Scotland and England to change the law on assisted suicide, where success looks more likely than ever. This paper discusses each of these issues and hopefully will raise awareness of how these issues were dealt with in the United Kingdom and its component countries

LOWER LIMB MUSCULOSKELETAL STIFFNESS CAN PREDICT OVERUSE INJURIES IN HIGH LEVEL ADOLESCENT FEMALE ATHLETES

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether measures of lower limb musculoskeletal stiffness (MSS) can prospectively predict overuse injuries in adolescent female athletes. Thirty-nine athletes from high-impact sports (gymnastics and track & field) completed a series of repeat jumps on force plates at baseline and 12 months later. Sport-related injuries were tracked using a self-report questionnaire. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves established the predictive ability and appropriate cut-off value of baseline MSS measures. Logistic regression based on the ROC findings showed measures of MSS were able to correctly categorise 77% (

Contributions to an arthropod inventory of Santa Cruz Island, California

Arthropods have been understudied on Santa Cruz Island, resulting in an incomplete understanding of these diverse and ecologically important members of island ecosystems. To enhance the current understanding of Santa Cruz Island biodiversity, we sampled arthropods in 2 native plant habitats: island scrub oak (Quercus pacifica) woodland and patches of island morning glory (Calystegia macrostegia ssp. macrostegia). We used 4 standardized sampling techniques to sample arthropods in 16 Q. pacifica woodland plots. We sampled arthropods associated with C. macrostegia by pan trapping within 1 m of blooming morning glory individuals. In total, we sampled over 18,000 arthropod specimens, sorted the specimens to morphotypes by order, and had taxonomic specialists identify 10 orders to the narrowest possible identification (n = 458 total species or morphotypes). The taxonomic distribution of our identified specimens is as follows: 1 species of Scorpiones, 5 morphospecies of Pseudoscorpiones, 74 species of Araneae, 4 species of Orthoptera, 10 species of Psocodea, 10 species of Hemiptera, 1 species of Neuroptera, 60 species of Coleoptera, 8 species of Lepidoptera, and 42 species of Hymenoptera (Formicidae and Apoidea). Of these, 62 species represent newly recorded arthropod species on Santa Cruz Island. The diversity of our collections within the Quercus pacifica and Calystegia macrostegia habitats, the deficiency of current knowledge of Channel Island arthropods, and the fundamental role of arthropods in island ecosystems emphasize the need for a more comprehensive arthropod inventory across the California Channel Islands

Digital drug screening to detect falsified, expired and recalled medicines

Falsified medicines are a global health and pharmaceutical sector issue which affect supply chains in low, middle and high-income countries. There are many methods to identify substandard and falsified medicines. However, the European Union has introduced the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) to combat this problem. This directive requires the majority of all prescription-only medicines to be serialised, risk-based verified at wholesaler level and decommissioned at the end of the supply chain at a healthcare facility; using digital medicine screening technology (DMST) often referred to as medicines authentication technology. This thesis implemented a DMST into a live hospital environment for use by healthcare professionals. This thesis looked at the technical and operational effectiveness of the proposed digital solution in a hospital, gained user consensus on the strengths and limitations of the hospital DMST and implemented technological change to understand if the proposed changes demonstrated a quantitative or qualitative benefit. This thesis explains how the health information technology (HIT) intervention was perceived by the users and draws on literature to explain the observed results. This thesis involved the development and testing of a mobile app based DMST which could be used by public for the verification of medicines. This thesis involved a sample of social media users to gain an understanding of the consumer-based medicine verification concept, its limitations, and its opportunities from a convenience sample cohort. A DMST in a hospital environment can work effectively in practice. However, some factors such as DMST offline instances, poor compliance to the DMST alerts and poor staff engagement remain a risk for this solution. It is established that ‘active’ alerts, such as an audio alert can improve adherence to policy (detection rates) and that staff-led technology improvements have a positive impact on technology compliance. There is also a consumer appetite for a mobile DMST app, and although some consumers are happy to share their data, this cohort would prefer if a hospital or University controlled the data generated by the app due to concerns relating to data management. This thesis has generated evidence to support the development of DMST systems for hospitals and mobile phone users