Satire and the "Inevitability Effect": The Structure of Utopian Fiction from "Looking Backward" to "Portlandia"

In the late nineteenth century the literary genre of utopia enjoyed a boom inspired by the success of Edward Bellamy’s 1888 Looking Backward, 2000–1887. These stories, including novels by William Morris and H. G. Wells, often featured a cicerone who explained how disordered nineteenth-century societies were transformed into superior future worlds. Because this utopian didacticism, inspired by Karl Marx, fell quickly out of fashion and was parodied ruthlessly by twentieth-century dystopias, it is hard to imagine how the form could be revived. However, the TV show Portlandia, which premiered in 2011, avoids the future-oriented “inevitability effect” of the fin de siècle utopias by returning to an earlier moment in the utopian genre: the satirizing of a society somewhere on Earth. Portlandia presents a lightly fictionalized version of Portland, Oregon, as a happy, inclusive, and prosperous town whose inhabitants are free to pursue their visions. Its “cringe comedy” satire of self-involvement complicates, but does not substantially undermine, its depiction of a peaceful alternative to the militarized American imagination of the early 2000s

Impatience, Incentives, and Obesity

This paper explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives, and body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we first show that greater impatience increases BMI even after controlling for demographic, human capital, and occupational characteristics as well as income and risk preference. Next, we provide evidence of an interaction effect between time preference and food prices, with cheaper food leading to the largest weight gains among those exhibiting the most impatience. The interaction of changing economic incentives with heterogeneous discounting may help explain why increases in BMI have been concentrated amongst the right tail of the distribution, where the health consequences are especially severe. Lastly, we model time-inconsistent preferences by computing individualsquasi-hyperbolic discounting parameters (β and δ). Both long-run patience (δ) and present-bias (β) predict BMI, suggesting obesity is partly attributable to rational intertemporal tradeoffs but also partly to time inconsistency.

A Multi-Component Approach to Reducing Self-injury in the Natural Environment

Past research has demonstrated that a variety of medical/pharmacological and behavioral strategies may be effective at reducing self-injury for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of these interventions is rarely evaluated in the natural environment. Also, teachers, who are responsible for the care of these individuals, are often not adequately trained in the use of these procedures. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate treatments for reducing self-injury that combine both behavioral and medical components in the natural environment with a comprehensive staff training package. Three participants (ages 15-48) diagnosed with a profound IDD/autism, who engaged in severe self-injury, participated. A multi-component treatment package was developed for all participants including 1) reinforcing the absence of self-injury and reinforcing communication, 2) blocking self-injury with redirection to appropriate activities, 3) environmental enrichment, and 4) an individualized intervention to address medical and biological influences on self-injury. After the effectiveness of this intervention package was demonstrated, a staff-training package that included feedback and contingent money was evaluated with three of the participants' teachers. The multi-component package was effective at reducing self-injury by 50% for all participants when implemented by the investigators. All teachers were able to consistently implement the intervention plan and produce reductions in self-injury when they received feedback and money regarding their use of the procedures. The multi-component intervention was effective at reducing self-injury and teachers were able to consistently use the intervention in the natural environment. Teachers should receive consistent feedback regarding their use of the procedures so that reductions in self-injury can be maintained in the absence of the investigator

Positive Relationship Development and the Acquisition of Communication and Task Compliance for Individuals with Profound Intellectual Developmental Disabilities

Staff members who provide care for people with severe intellectual disabilities often face a number of obstacles because the people they serve may have few communicative skills, may not engage in appropriate behaviors, and frequently display challenging behaviors such as self-stimulation, self-injury, and aggression. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a "relationship development" procedure in teaching three participants diagnosed with profound intellectual disabilities to approach a teacher, to use manual signs to gain access to highly preferred consequences, and then to follow simple instructions in order to gain access to the highly preferred consequences. The procedures were effective in teaching all three participants all three skills. Although the participants' challenging behaviors such as self-injury and aggression were not directly addressed, the frequency of the participants' challenging behavior decreased substantially

Verification and Comparison of Polar MM5 and AFWA MM5 Forecasts over Alaska

This research compares biases of the Reisner Mixed-Phase Explicit Moisture Microphysics graupel and non-granpel schemes to determine if including graupel and riming processes within the Fifth Generation Mesoscale Model (MM5) will lead to improved forecasts of winter precipitation for Korea and Japan. MM5 forecasts were generated every 12 hours for a 20 days case period from January 1998. Model derived meteorological fields were interpolated to the station coordinates of four verification sites within the East Asian domain and radiosonde observations were used to compare the differences between the average temperature and water vapor errors of the two cloud microphysics schemes. Analysis of the results shows significant differences between the schemes in the magnitude of humidity errors within the lower atmosphere of the model and provides evidence that the more complicated graupel and riming scheme will not increase the skill of the MM5 in forecasting winter precipitation for Japan and Korea. The underlying conclusion of this research is that AFWA should not alter the cloud microphysics scheme currently employed to determine winter precipitation type for its East Asian forecast window

La géomorphologie glaciaire de la région du mont Tremblant. Deuxième partie : La région de Saint-Faustin – Saint-Jovite

Glacial tongues, reaching down from the north by way of the valleys on both sides of Mont Tremblant, have spread out in coalescent-lobes in the St. Faustin - St. Jovite bowl and have built up two terminal moraines at Sommet. On and around the site of the Provincial Fish Hatchery at St. Faustin, at least five ice-dammed lakes have been formed between the face of the receding glacier and the natural slope of the ground. The formation of other ice-dammed lakes preceded the establishment of the Rivière Boulé (which had its mouth first at Morrison, then at David sawmill, before settling into its present bed) while the glacial tongue was receding, by phases, from the valley of the Ruisseau des Français. The intermount glacier then caused the retention of two large areas of lake water, in which the plain of St. Jovite was formed before these waters receded as far as Lac à l’Équerre, where the melting of the ice provided a relief of fluvioglacial deposits. Finally, the Champlain Sea was able to stretch out a long arm though the valley of the Rivière Rouge and flood the lower valley of the Rivière du Diable where varved clay and sand have been deposited

"Sadly and with a Bitter Heart": What the Caesarean Section Meant in the Middle Ages

This article contextualizes the history of the so-called Caesarean section to argue that the history of obstetrics is written at the intersection of manifold cultural phenomena. The article presents a unique historical document, a notarized act of 1473 drawn up for a Provençal barber surgeon commissioned to extract a fetus from a corpse. The procedure it prescribes was technically a postmortem dissection, or sectio in mortua, a process linked to surgery and theology as much as to law, superstition, and inheritance. In addition to its analysis, the article presents a comprehensive critical historiography, a transcription and edition of its primary source, a table of other extant primary sources that reference sectiones in mortua, and a detailed bibliography