s the late Brian Southam has noted, Austen benefited personally from thisimportant educational development through her access to an extraordinarilybroad range of literature from a very young age.8By the time she came topublish her novels, the benefits of this advance in education were being felt inan unparalleled expansion and sophistication of literary culture.

Austen’s expectation of readerly ingenuity is ultimately what sets her apartfrom other novelists of the Romantic period. As generations of critics havefound, Austen’s work is deliberately, at times even maddeningly, puzzling toreaders.

The reason all these people believe the Great Barrier Reef is dying is because they all get their fake news from the same green-left-liberal echo chamber

Right now, the shelf works like a giant bottle-stopper that slows down ice trying to flow from the land into the sea. If it collapses, the ice could flow into the ocean more rapidly, an effect that has already happened on a much smaller scale in other areas of Antarctica. The most vulnerable parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet could raise the sea level by 10 to 15 feet, inundating many of the world’s coastal cities, though most scientists think that would take well over a century, or perhaps longer. They are worried about a possible rise of as much as six feet by the end of this century.

The warmer water seems to be doing the most damage to a series of glaciers that flow into a region of West Antarctica called the Amundsen Sea. Satellites have identified the most rapid loss of ice there, raising a critical question: Has an unstoppable collapse of the ice sheet already begun?

But the story is not straightforward, and the warmer water attacking the ice has not been linked to global warming — at least not directly. The winds around the continent seem to be strengthening, stirring the ocean and bringing up a layer of warmer water that has most likely been there for centuries. Are those stronger winds tied to human-caused global warming? Some scientists think so, but others say the case is unproven. “We’re not sure because we don’t have enough data, for long enough, to separate signal from noise,” said Eric J. Steig, a scientist at the University of Washington who has studied temperature trends in Antarctica.

The acceleration is making some scientists fear that Antarctica’s ice sheet may have entered the early stages of an unstoppable disintegration. Because the collapse of vulnerable parts of the ice sheet could raise the sea level dramatically, the continued existence of the world’s great coastal cities — Miami, New York, Shanghai and many more — is tied to Antarctica’s fate.

Already, scientists know enough to be concerned. About 120,000 years ago, before the last ice age, the planet went through a natural warm period, with temperatures similar to those expected in coming decades. The sea level was 20 to 30 feet higher than it is today, implying that the ice sheets in both Greenland and Antarctica must have partly disintegrated, a warning of what could occur in the relatively near future if the heating of the planet continues unchecked.

Though the role of global warming is unclear now, it is likely to be a factor in the relatively near future. Many experts think warmer air temperatures could start to weaken the ice of West Antarctica from above, even as warmer ocean water attacks it from below. The warmer water seems to be doing the most damage to a series of glaciers that flow into a region of West Antarctica called the Amundsen Sea. Satellites have identified the most rapid loss of ice there, raising a critical question: Has an unstoppable collapse of the ice sheet already begun?

But the story is not straightforward, and the warmer water attacking the ice has not been linked to global warming — at least not directly. The winds around the continent seem to be strengthening, stirring the ocean and bringing up a layer of warmer water that has most likely been there for centuries. Are those stronger winds tied to human-caused global warming? Some scientists think so, but others say the case is unproven. “We’re not sure because we don’t have enough data, for long enough, to separate signal from noise,” said Eric J. Steig, a scientist at the University of Washington who has studied temperature trends in Antarctica.

Incorporating recent advances in the understanding of how ice sheets might break apart, they found that both West Antarctica and some vulnerable parts of East Antarctica would go into an unstoppable collapse if the Earth continued to warm at a rapid pace. In their worst-case scenario, the sea level could rise by six feet by the end of this century, and the pace could pick up drastically in the 22nd century. Dr. DeConto and Dr. Pollard do not claim that this is a certainty — they acknowledge that their analysis is still rough — but they argue that the possibility should be taken seriously.

Remote as Antarctica may seem, every person in the world who gets into a car, eats a steak or boards an airplane is contributing to the emissions that put the frozen continent at risk. If those emissions continue unchecked and the world is allowed to heat up enough, scientists have no doubt that large parts of Antarctica will melt into the sea. But they do not know exactly what the trigger temperature might be, or whether the recent acceleration of the ice means that Earth has already reached it.

Recent computer forecasts suggest that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high level, parts of Antarctica could break up rapidly, causing the ocean to rise six feet or more by the end of this century. That is double the maximum increase that an international climate panel projected only four years ago. But those computer forecasts were described as crude even by the researchers who created them. “We could be decades too fast, or decades too slow,” said one of them, Robert M. DeConto of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “There are still some really big question marks about the trajectory of future climate around Antarctica.”

The acceleration is making some scientists fear that Antarctica’s ice sheet may have entered the early stages of an unstoppable disintegration. Because the collapse of vulnerable parts of the ice sheet could raise the sea level dramatically, the continued existence of the world’s great coastal cities — Miami, New York, Shanghai and many more — is tied to Antarctica’s fate.

Severe coral bleaching has ravaged two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia's northeastern coast

This will require anunderstanding of the nature of the relationship between discursive prac-tices and material phenomena, an accounting of “nonhuman” as well as“human” forms of agency, and an understanding of the precise causalnature of productive practices that takes account of the fullness of matter’simplication in its ongoing historicity

In this article, I offer an elaboration of performativity—amaterialist, naturalist, and posthumanist elaboration—that allows matter itsdue as an active participant in the world’s becoming, in its ongoing “intra-activity.”4It is vitally important that we understand how matter matters.

Although thc standard models of rhetorical situation can tell us much about the elements that are involved in a particular situation, these same models can also mask the fluidity of rhetoric.

at risk.

natureofthosecontextsinwhichspeakersorwriterscreaterhetoricaldiscourse:

rhetoricaladdressgivesexistencetothesituation;onthecon-trary,itisthesituationwhichcallsthediscourseintoexistence.

current globalclimate models are not fit for the purpose of attributing the causes of recentwarming or for predicting global or regional climate change on timescales of decades to centuries, with any high level of confidence.

Itis an empirical fact that the Earth’s climate has warmed overall for at least the past century.However, we do not know how much humans have contributed to this warming and there is disagreement among scientists as to whether human-caused emissionsof greenhouse gasesisthe dominant cause ofrecentwarming, relative to natural causes.

Parallel universes then, is an inappropriate metaphor; perpendicu~ far universes is perhaps a more accurate visual description.

Black rhetoric is not utterly divorced from white rhetoric.

I 1say that I know Jane Austen's intentions with the sentence, at least in its main lines. But can I really call what I know in this sense knowledge? It is clearly subjective, it cannot be proved by any deductive chain of reasoning or by any ordinary laboratory experiment, and it is obviously doubtable both in the sense that many readers will not see it and can doubt it honestly and in the sense that anyone who is determined to doubt what cannot be demonstrated can say he doubts it.

t the goal of all thought and argument is to emulate the purity and objec-tivity and rigor of science, in order to protect oneself from the errors that passion and desire

hreshold of the existence of signs. Yet even here, things are not so simple, and the meaning of a term like "the existence of signs" requires elu-cidation. What does one mean when one say!, that there are signs, and that it is enough for there to be signs for there to be a statement? What spe-cial status should be given to that verb to be?

conditions necessary for the appear-ance of an object of discourse, the historical con-ditions required if one is to "say anything" about it, and if several people are to say different things about it, the conditions necessary if it is to exist in relation to other objects, if it is to establish with them relations of resemblance,

The completeness of any reference varies; it is more or less close and clear, it "grasps" its object in greater or Jes~ degree.

So that A may become non-A. But not merely by a leap from one state to the other. Rather, we must take A back into the ground of its existence, the logical substance that is its causal ancestor, and on to a point where it is con-substantial with non-A; then we may return, this time emerging with non-A instead.

and if we consider that the same process must have gone on with the words of our mother tongue from childhood upwards, we shall clearly see that the earliest learnt and of-tenest used words, will, other things equal, call up images with less loss of time and energy than their later learnt synonyms.

I rejoice, because I am persuaded that the rights of woman, like the rights of slaves, need only be examined to he un-derstood and asserted, even hy some of those, who arc now endeavoring lo smother the irre-pressible desire for mental and spiritual freedom which glows in the breast of many, who hardly dare to speak their sentiments.

Until our inlercourse is purified by the \ \ forgelfulness of sex,-until we rise above the present low and sordid views which entwine themselves around our social and domestic inter-change of senliment and feelings, we never can derive lhat benefit from each other's society which it is the design of our Creacor that we should.

Wherefore, my respected friends, let us no longer talk of prejudice, till prejudice becomes extinct at home. Let us no longer talk of opposition, till we cease to oppose our own. For while these evils exist. to talk is like giving breath to the air, and labor to the wind.

f such women as are here described have t-.... once existed, be no longer astonished then, my s brethren and friends, that God at this eventful pe-5~ riod should raise up your own females to strive, ~' by their example both in public and private, to · assist those who arc endeavoring stop the strong current of prejudice that flows so profusely against us at present. No longer ridicule their ef-forts, it will be counted for sin. For God makes use of feeble means sometimes, to bring about his most exalted purposes.

Take us generally as a people, we arc neither lazy nor idle; and considering how Huie we have to excite or stimulate us, I am almost astonished that there arc so many industrious and ambitious ones to be found; although I acknowledge, with extreme sorrow, that there arc some who never were and never will be serviceable lo society. And have you not a similar class among your· selves'!

The cultural divide has two daunting consequences.

. One of the distinct pleasures in Pixar’s films is the pleasure of seeing the deepest of human struggles, timeless philosophical questions projected in and through remote forms of representation.

Pixar habitually leaves behind the playful in its adult address and gives sustained attention to dark musings traditionally minimized in the G-rated

Few sequences in contemporary cin-ema evoke the sense of isolation we get from the sequence where a panicked Jessie refuses to go back into “stor-age,

WALL-E not only anthropomorphizes but Westernizes our robot hero and the loving sequences between WALL-E and the two loves of his life, EVE and his pet cockroach, are loaded with Disney’s signal sentimen-tality

the peculiar self-alienation—and particularly the alienation from the body—experienced by technologically immersed humans

Presenting objects with a utopian kinesthetic, they grant them just a bit more fluidity and less gravity than they have in reality. These films have therein shifted spectatorial possi-bilities—and enabled additional payoffs with repeat viewing (Belton 198).

The de-cision of Pixar to mirror the techniques of the cinema—to render things not in perfect focus but to invent in the realm of the digital blurry focus, shadow and darkness, is an important part of the emotional and philosophical make-up of these films, and links Pixar with “so-phisticated” cinema, making it a part of a cinematic canon in ways that margin-alized animation has rarely been.

Sharing with Toy Story the trope of mounting an overwhelming set of ethi-cal tragedies and concerns beneath the veneer of fun, kinetically-driven enter-tainment, the first several minutes of WALL-E underscore the literal massive-ness of Earth’s problems

resonant with the his-tory of slavery. Jessie tries to convince Woody that he is “valuable property” (a virtue we don’t know quite how to take) and that although he will be sold away from his “owner,” this is a good thing because he will be sold as “a set” with herself, Bullseye, and Pete—mak-ing him part of a new family with which he was always destined to belong. There is much anxiety about being sold away from the “set”—and about being left be-hind. In the same sequence, Stinky Pete even asks Buzz if Andy “broke” him, a double entendre that takes on a disci-plinary resonance within the surround-ing discourse on ownership, auctioning and captivity.

If identification with the object is ex-hilarating, it is also, at moments, fright-ening. The Toy Story films and WALL-Ealso generate important, though embed-ded, insights on both human and inani-mate objectification

Nostalgia is one of the central pleasures of the Pixar films, which not only focus on “classic,” vintage objects (the world worn, low-tech WALL-E and his collection of ephemera, and timeless classic toys in Toy Story), but also on a nostalgia for Hollywood

These films transform the interstitial space between man and his graven objects (robots and toys) into a virtue, exploiting its uncan-niness to provoke a distant kind of fear while maintaining an innocent and un-censorable narrative.

While its uncertain jitters are less obvious than the uncontrolled movement of a child, there is a sense in which adulthood is less about gaining control than about steadily losing control. It is about, as Woody and Buzz discuss, managing to fall gracefully rather than to fly.

Thus, these Pixar features exploit the tendency of the ratings system to judge the “adult-ness” of a film based on its sex and vio-lence quotient alone. They remind us of something that the rating system appar-ently doesn’t know: that sexual titilla-tion and violence are not the only wages of adulthood. They are only manifesta-tions of far deeper crises and struggles. The films revive a broad cinematic discourse open to child and adult alike about the strange, imaginary life of ob-jects and the complexity of the project of material being

The encouragement these toys offer each other to stop struggling and accept death undermines the hope-fulness of previous Toy Story texts, be-cause it reminds us that these toys will ultimately become maimed, broken, and tortured “junk.” It reminds us of the du-bious status of the object—and of the objectified—in a culture built around commodity fetishism. It encourages a kind of revisionist mental return to the previous texts, revising their innocent themes and visual pleasures against the weight of so dreadful a demise. What is more, it places spectators in the position of identifying with the toys in their help-lessness and in their reversion to junk

Reflect-ing perhaps Western concerns about the artificial extension of life through ma-chines, the Toy Story series represents a fear not so much about life’s brevity as about its unendurable length amidst hardly bearable changes.

It may be that the single most impor-tant theme in the Toy Story series is ob-solescence

these films call spectators to meditate on consumer objects but not in ways that always directly moralize consumerism. Instead they prompt adult spectatorial identification with the consumer object.

With optimism, these films suggest that these objects—and perhaps with them, their adult human viewers—can potentially exceed the limits of their frame and return to a position of har-mony with the surrounding beings and objects that define them.

That is, Pixar’s films encourage adult audiences to both encounter and deny each film’s veiled dark content and its implications for them.

The professional aspirations for fe-male characters thus become an oppor-tunity for ridicule within situation com-edies.

Dow demonstrates how the character’s qualities bring her career success while they also cripple her ability to sustain a relationship and start a family

Roles for female characters in early sitcoms were domestic ones, such as housekeeper and child care-taker

“The point of the hegemonic perspective is not that television never changes—it clearly does—but that it is less progressive than we think. The medium adjusts to social change in a manner that simultaneously contradicts or undercuts a progressive premise”

The comedy allows the genre to address taboo subjects through the show’s hu-mor and story lines. While the potential exists for commenting on and possibly even changing how these ideas get rep-resented, the situation comedy instead mostly reinforces the hegemonic under-pinnings and thus the status quo

Overall, neither Amy nor Bernadette are accepted just as intelligent, success-ful women by the group. Instead, their intelligence is not a feature that defines these characters for themselves, but in-stead functions as a means to attract and maintain the attention of their men.

The three main female characters do appear in the work situations at different times, but their locations remain primarily in the domestic ones.

Sitcoms fall into two broad types: domestic comedies and workplace comedies

The valuing of female attractiveness becomes the fourth theme. Steinke ana-lyzes filmic representations of how fe-male scientists are represented as attrac-tive, stylish, and fashionable (39). What the the naïve expert lacks in knowledge she makes up for in appearance (Flicker 312).

Traditional situation comedies fol-lowed rather rigid gender roles in that men were cast as the breadwinners and women as the homemakers. Follow-ing those divisions, men exercised the power over the family, while women catered to supporting men’s needs. The male’s power came not only from earn-ing potential but also from career gains and assumed authority.

Female scientists also struggle to engage in romantic relation-ships. Flicker refers to the lonely hero-ine, or the woman who exhibits extreme competence in her work yet still suffers from the lack of recognition or romance (315–16). In the end, though, a female scientist only can succeed at home life or work life, but not both

Even within these teams, the female scientists do experience chal-lenges and dismissals from their male colleagues

A professional role refers to a char-acter’s job or occupation outside the home. Roles for female characters in early sitcoms were domestic ones, such as housekeeper and child care-taker as in I Love Lucy (1951–1957), The Brady Bunch (1969–1974), and Leave It to Beaver (1957–1963). These domestic restrictions limited the range of oppor-tunities and expression available in that these women received little power and supported others in their roles as wives and mothers (Dow, “Hegemony” 264). These representations shifted during the 1970s and 1980s when more situation comedies featured women with careers and relocated their settings to work-places.

plain how female scientists’ capabilities get downplayed while their ineptitude gets played up in professional settings, sometimes highlighting their lack of skills (359). Flicker calls these women “the naïve expert;” these naïve experts might make some contributions to sci-ence, but their emotions become part of the problems in dramatic arcs

scientists were more likely to be male than female and were more likely to be white than of other ethnic groups (761). They also found that scientists were more likely to be “good” (Dudo et al. 762), but these scientists still overall were not as com-monly represented as other professions

The first theme to emerge is the domi-nance of males and masculinity in sci-ence (Steinke 35). This dominance leads to observations of the lack of female scientists in various media

he found that these characters exhibited features of intelligence but overall re-mained less attractive, sociable, or warm when compared to other television char-acters (Gerbner 41–44).

These appearances and audience reac-tions to them vary form genre to genre. Nonfiction programming includes news, talk shows, and children’s educational programs. Within nonfiction program-ming, scientists often appear for their expertise, but not all programs or audi-ences respect that expertise. For news, experts, including scientists, remain a staple part of these programs. While we might think that their increased use in news programs would affirm people’s views, instead, as their use in programs increases, the public trust in them de-clines

surface some challenging and even undermining of these stereo-types do appear, those challenges re-main short-lived in light of the situation comedy’s goals to entertain while rein-forcing the status quo.

It concludes by suggesting that while on the surface there is some challenging and even undermining of these stereotypes, those challenges remain short-lived in light of the situation comedy’s goals to entertain while reinforcing the status quo.

occurred to him to claim a Latino identity

Regulation through architecture is just as powerful as law, but it is less explicit, less identifiable, and less familiar to courts, legislators, and the general public

system in crisis.

We’ll start with extraction which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation which is a fancy word for trashing the planet

improves the scoring of co-occurrences and enhances PolySearch2's ability to distinguish genuine associations from incidental co-occurrences that arise by chance