Performance Space of the Digital Performer/Reader inside Andy Campbell and Judi Alston’s Digital Fiction the Nightingale’s Playground

A digital performer has to negotiate with different kinds of affordances inside the space of a digital text. The Nightingale’s Playground (2010), a digital fiction authored by Andy Campbell and Judi Alston offers the reader/player with four versions of the text centering on the protagonist Carl Robertson who tries hard to search for his lost school friend Alex Nightingale. The online texts (‘Consensus Trance’, ‘Fieldwork Book’) and the gaming version of the digital fiction (‘Consensus Trance II’) offer the reader different decisional platforms. This makes it a challenging task for the reader to connect the affordances of the digital text. At the same time, the offline pdf version of the digital fiction hints at Carl being affected by a psychological disorder. The paper shall focus on how a digital reader negotiates his/her position inside the digital text by decoding the programmer’s/author’s encoded plot.

No Longer an Adolescent, Not Yet a Prince

The essay explores some of the numerous questions which the readers of The Adolescent — one of the most enigmatic novels by Dostoevsky — face. What is the hidden meaning of the various allusions to Pushkin, Dickens, Shakespeare, which are spread all over the text? What is the encoded meaning of the novel’s specific style, its “cinematographic” visuality, and finally — what is the meaning of the very title, and why it is constantly repeated that the adolescent with a “princely” name is not a “Prince”? The path of the hero and his idea of “becoming Rothschild” is traced. The reasons for such an idea are discovered through parallels to A Christmas Carol by Dickens. The Biblical parable about the rich man and Lazarus is defined as the source of both Dickens’s story and part of Dostoevsky’s novel. The point of transformation of the adolescent’s “idea” is compared with Dostoevsky’s Christmas story The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree. Special attention is paid to such elements of style as the “stream of consciousness”, “internal monologue” etc., which foreshadow revelations of modernism. Cinematographic devices like “close-ups” and materialized metaphors are also in the focus of attention, as most of them visualize the leitmotifs of the novel. The analysis of the adolescent’s spiritual portrait discovers an important role of not only his “two fathers”, but also his school friend Lambert, whose grotesque and almost mythological figure is interpreted in various ways. The structure of the essay leads to the decoding of the laconic formula “Hamlet-Christian” with which Dostoevsky opens his outline and notes to the novel. The maxim is interpreted as some transcendental goal to which the author is leading his hero from the very first line of the novel’s plan. In the context of the theme “No longer an adolescent, not yet a Prince” the essay explores the metaphorical content of such notions as “adolescent” and “prince”. The research highlights that the metaphysical realm of the novel is enormous and embraces not only the path of its young hero but also the possible ways of the historical development of both Russia and Europe.

HUBUNGAN LINGKUNGAN TERHADAP PENYALAHGUNAAN NARKOBA PADA REMAJA DI LEMBAGA PEMBINAAN KHUSUS ANAK KLAS II PEKANBARU

Abstrak: Remaja memiliki rasa yang penuh dengan kegoncangan, mencari jati diri dan remaja ialah periode yang paling berat sehingga menimbulkan kenakalan remaja seperti penyalahgunaan narkoba. Berdasarkan pendataan dari aplikasi Sistem Informasi Narkoba (SIN) jumlah kasus narkotika yang berhasil diungkap selama 5 tahun terakhir dari tahun 2012-2016 per tahun sebesar 76,53%. Tahun 2016 jumlah kasus narkotika yang berhasil diungkap adalah 868 kasus, jumlah ini meningkat 36,05% dari tahun 2015. Salah satu penyalahgunaan narkoba adalah suasana lingkungan tidak sehat/ rawan terhadap narkoba yang merupakan tempat berinteraksinya seseorang baik itu lingkungan keluarga, masyarakat, teman sekolah/ sebaya. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah mengetahui adakah hubungan lingkungan terhadap penyalahgunaan narkoba pada remaja di Lembaga Pembinaan Khusus Anak Klas II Pekanbaru Tahun 2018. Metode penelitian ini menggunakan jenis penelitian kuantitatif dengan desain analitik dengan pendekatan cross sectional dan dilakukan pada bulan Februari-Maret 2018 di Lembaga Pembinaan Khusus Anak Klas II Pekanbaru. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah sebanyak 56 remaja dan sampel yang diambil sebanyak 49 remaja dari data primer (kuesioner). Analisis data yang digunakan adalah analisis univariat dan bivariat dengan uji chi-square. Dari analisis univariat dari 49 remaja yang menggunakan narkoba sebanyak 44,9% yang berpengaruh dengan lingkungan keluarga 47,2%, lingkungan masyarakat 51,7%, lingkungan teman sekolah/ sebaya 54,1%. Dari uji chi square didapat tidak ada hubungan lingkungan keluarga, masyarakat, teman sekolah/ sebaya terhadap penyalahgunaan narkoba Abstrack : Teenagers have a sense of jolting, self-seeking and teenagers are the toughest periods that lead to juvenile delinquency such as drug abuse. Based on data collection from Drug Information System (SIN) application, the number of narcotics cases successfully revealed during the last 5 years from 2012-2016 per year is 76,53%. By 2016 the number of successful narcotics cases has been revealed is 868 cases, this number increased 36.05% from 2015. The purpose of this study is to know whether there is an environmental relationship to drug abuse in adolescents at Special Education Institution of Children Class II Pekanbaru Year 2018. This research method using the type of quantitative research with analytical design with cross sectional approach and conducted in February-March 2018 at the Institute of Special Development Children Class II Pekanbaru. The population in this study were as many as 56 teenagers and samples taken as many as 49 teenagers from the primary data (questionnaire). Data analysis used was univariate and bivariate analysis with chi-square test. From univariate analysis from 49 adolescents who use drugs as much as 44,9% which influenced with family environment 47,2%, society environment 51,7%, school friend / peer environment 54,1%. From chi square test, there is no relation between family environment, society, school friend / peer to drug abuse. For that researchers expect that this research can be used as material comparison and reference to be added and equipped in the future

Site Stories

Architects’ responses to place are framed by the actions of other people, and by the legislative contexts in which they operate. Building professionals, clients, planners, and consultants are often met on-site. Tom explains some of the background of a possible new project on the drive over. He had a call the preceding week from Michael, the father of an old school friend. They had a chat about a couple of building projects. Both sounded interesting, though it is still unclear what they would entail and whether they were likely to be feasible. There is no brief. Depending on today’s visit, there may even be no project....

Conclusion

In the Introduction to this book I posed a series of questions which have woven throughout the chapters, with shifts in emphasis upon each of these questions at different moments in my own narrative of feminism and women’s short story writing. The first of these questions was how do first-, second- and third-wave feminism inform and influence women’s short story writing and, subsequently, how are these differing political moments represented within women’s short story narratives? An interesting avenue into reflecting on this question comes through reading Helen’s Simpson’s short story ‘The Festival of the Immortals’ (2010). Featuring the narrator, Viv Armstrong, and her school friend Phyllis Goodwin, who meet for the first time in fifty years at a book festival, the story explores generational relations and raises questions about what it means to be a woman across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Historical boundaries are diminished as the presence of Daniel Defoe, Charlotte Brontë and Virginia Woolf (all of whom are immortal in this tale) is perceived as a normal occurrence. Instead, it is the women’s personal histories that become the significant focus of the story as they reminisce about school days and their life trajectories. Notably, it is the figure of Woolf who is responsible for first bringing Phyllis and Viv together: ‘”The first time I saw you, we were in the canteen,” said Phyllis. “You were reading ...

Love on the Final Slopes of Life: Fedor Ivanovich Tiutchev and “The Denis’eva Cycle”

Old age represents a serious contemporary social issue. With the greater incidence of longevity also literary approaches to ageing have emerged, and “Ageing and literature” is now established among literary scholars as a critical perspective in its own right, with a perspective usually marked by an interdisciplinary stance.What insights can literature offer when it comes to old age that other kinds of knowledge cannot? As my article aims to show, literature is and remains (inter alia) highly relevant as a unique access to individual ageing, enabling us to grasp the ambivalences and intricacies connected to growing old more distinctly then quantitative, statistical sociological studies and medical reports can do. And most notably, literature can investigate the domain of ageing senses and sensations and widen our understanding of how elderly people experience sensual attractions, love and desire.To concretize these assumptions, I will focus on the so called “Denisieva cycle”, by Feodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, one of the greatest poets in the classical Russian tradition. The cycle has an autobiographical context: it retells in lyrical verse how the married Tyutchev, at 50, an advanced age at that time, fell in love with Elena Aleksandrovna Denisieva, a noblewoman of 22 and a school-friend of his daughters. While not divorcing, the poet kept up an illicit relationship with Denisieva for 15 years and she bore him three children. The affair ended in utmost tragedy, when Denisieva, ostracized by both family and former friends, died in 1865, followed closely by the death of two of their children. These events brought the elderly lover into a spiral of endless despair, but also resulted in a sublime body of poems which constitutes a remarkably testimony of the senescent subject in love, questioning, as I will demonstrate, a number of prevalent stereotypes about passions in the winter of a man’s life. Moreover, the manner in which Tyutchev in these poems builds his final love into an utterly moving narrative, making bearable through its sheer literary and poetical magnetism the real sufferings it is based on, reminds us in a meaningful way of the words once uttered by Karen Blixen: “All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story”.

We were the world’s first computer operators

In 1944 I worked at Bletchley Park and lived at nearby Woburn Abbey. My job was to assist the codebreakers by operating one of the Colossus machines. In this chapter I describe how this came to be and what it was like to live and work at Bletchley Park during the last months of the war. In 1944 I was working in London, in a philatelist’s business. One of my friends joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) as a motor transport driver, and I decided to join too. In great trepidation I went to Queen Anne’s Gate and volunteered. I was interviewed immediately and very soon was called to a medical. Not long after, I received a letter telling me to report on 2 August 1944 to a WRNS establishment at Tullichewan Castle near Glasgow. I found out much later that it would have been more usual to report to Mill Hill in London, but there had been a spate of bombing and the powers that be did not wish to take any chances with the new intake, so they sent us up to Scotland. Strangely enough, in the week before I was due to set off on this adventure I met a school friend who was also joining the WRNS and had been asked to report to Tullichewan on the same day. I was pleased to discover that I had a companion to go with. As it turned out, we were to stay together until we were demobbed at the end of December 1946. We travelled to Glasgow and then out to a small station on the edge of Loch Lomond, where we were picked up and taken to Tullichewan WRNS reception camp, a requisitioned castle standing in a large hillside estate. At the bottom of the hill was the Regulating Office, together with a large number of Nissen huts—the sleeping quarters, a mess, the stores hut, and so forth. Opposite the huts was an enormous parade ground, while at the top of the hill was the castle, used by the officers, and another parade ground with the naval flag. Every day a bell sounded at 5 a.m. to get us up, after which we were required to do various menial tasks, such as cleaning out the huts, potato peeling, and blancoing the steps of the castle.

Letter to Stanley Ede

Letter from Winnicott to his school friend Stanley Ede, ca. 1912-1913, on wanting to be a doctor.

Giannozzo Manetti

Giannozzo Manetti (b. 1396–d. 1459) was a man in whom the currents of his time flowed together—an intellectual who participated fully and successfully in economic and political life, an accomplished scholar with strong religious convictions, and a humanist who retained roots in the medieval past. His studies were shaped by Ambrogio Traversari in the Camaldolensian convent of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, where he learned Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin. Manetti held a series of increasingly important offices in his native Florence, including his service abroad as provincial governor and ambassador. In 1454 he left Florence, first serving Pope Nicholas V, who was a school friend from his youth, then Alfonso of Aragon, King of Naples. As a member of one of Florence’s richest families, Manetti had the resources to build a large library, which he used to write works in a number of areas, including biographies, speeches, one of the first humanist defenses of the dignity of man, and a wide-ranging apology for Christianity. Much work remains to be done on Manetti: many of his writings are unedited, there is no full-length modern intellectual biography, and many areas of his scholarship remain largely unexplored with not much available in English.