scholarly journals A SIMULATION STUDY OF TEXAS HOLD ’EM POKER: WHAT TAYLOR SWIFT UNDERSTANDS AND JAMES BOND DOESN’T

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-64
Author(s):  
J. FALLETTA ◽  
S. WOODCOCK
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Simulation Study ◽  
Partial Information ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Significant Figures

Recent years have seen a large increase in the popularity of Texas hold ’em poker. It is now the most commonly played variant of the game, both in casinos and through online platforms. In this paper, we present a simulation study for games of Texas hold ’em with between two and 23 players. From these simulations, we estimate the probabilities of each player having been dealt the winning hand. These probabilities are calculated conditional on both partial information (that is, the player only having knowledge of his/her cards) and also on fuller information (that is, the true probabilities of each player winning given knowledge of the cards dealt to each player). Where possible, our estimates are compared to exact analytic results and are shown to have converged to three significant figures.With these results, we assess the poker strategies described in two recent pieces of popular culture. In comparing the ideas expressed in Taylor Swift’s song, New Romantics, and the betting patterns employed by James Bond in the 2006 film, Casino Royale, we conclude that Ms Swift demonstrates a greater understanding of the true probabilities of winning a game of Texas hold ’em poker.

scholarly journals James Bond a dylematy tożsamościowe Brytyjczyków – kultura popularna a kształtowanie tożsamości narodowej

1970 ◽  
pp. 85-105
Author(s):  
Daria Hejwosz-Gromkowska
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
James Bond ◽  
British Identity ◽  
National Symbols ◽  
Patriotic Education

The author assumes that popular culture plays a powerful role in the process of socialization of young generation. The author tries to present that the conventional national symbols are being replaced by pop symbols and thus become the sources of national identity. The concepts of banal nationalism put forward by Michael Billig or Tim Enderson’s idea of everyday life’s practices in the development of national identity are being used. In the text, the phenomenon of James Bond is used to analyze the contemporary debates on British identity (Britishness). The author assumes that James Bond is a great example of Englishness that serves as a complex manifestation of a British hero which may, in turn, play a crucial role in political, civic, and patriotic education.

The bond beyond

2018 ◽  
pp. 159-198
Author(s):  
Claire Hines
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Cultural Anxieties ◽  
The Relationship

The final chapter considers aspects of the Playboy–Bond connection from the mid-1960s onwards, reflecting on the legacy of past associations and outlining some of the broader transformations that tested the limits of James Bond and Playboy as cultural icons. The nature and general patterns of the relationship formed between Bond and Playboy magazine in the early- to mid-1960s proved to be influential in the decades that followed, but were also negotiated in relation to social and cultural change. These changes include perceived shifts in gendered power relations and feminist critiques, meaning that strategies like humour and nostalgia became increasingly prominent ways to address cultural anxieties and the ongoing struggle to maintain some kind of contemporary relevance. In particular the chapter discusses the mid-1960s Bond parodies, the women of the Bond films in Playboy, the Bond of the Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig eras, and challenges to the playboy post-1960s. In the later sections of this chapter the importance of nostalgia to the Playboy–Bond relationship, and contemporary popular culture more generally, becomes especially apparent. The chapter concludes that the foregrounding of nostalgia is a key strategy used by Playboy and Bond to mediate and (re)narrate the relationships between past, present and future.

Before the bond

2018 ◽  
pp. 8-23
Author(s):  
Claire Hines
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Publishing Industry ◽  
James Bond ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Climate ◽  
Men's Magazine ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War

This chapter begins by recognising the apparent coincidence that both James Bond and Playboy magazine first entered popular culture in 1953. It goes on to make the case that this can in fact be explained with reference to the publishing industry, certain influences on the lives and imaginations of creators Ian Fleming and Hugh Hefner, and the social and cultural climate of the post-war era. The strong coincidence of Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, and Hefner’s Playboy being published in the same year, though on opposite sides of the Atlantic, appears less accidental when understood within the wider context of the 1950s, as do the changes that were made to the pre-existing literary formulas of the spy thriller and the men’s magazine. Looking at the post-war contexts of Britain and America, the chapter demonstrates that the early Bond novels and Playboy negotiated aspects of the changing social and cultural circumstances in similar ways, creating a playboy lifestyle fantasy that celebrated independence from the traditional breadwinner ideal.

scholarly journals The Cultural Life of James Bond

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Literary Creation ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Secret Agent ◽  
Bond Phenomenon

The release of No Time To Die in 2020 heralds the arrival of the twenty-fifth installment in the James Bond film series. Since the release of Dr. No in 1962, the cinematic James Bond has expedited the transformation of Ian Fleming's literary creation into an icon of western popular culture that has captivated audiences across the globe by transcending barriers of ideology, nation, empire, gender, race, ethnicity, and generation. The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007 untangles the seemingly perpetual allure of the Bond phenomenon by looking at the non-canonical texts and contexts that encompass the cultural life of James Bond. Chronicling the evolution of the British secret agent over half a century of political, social, and cultural permutations, the fifteen chapters examine the Bond-brand beyond the film series and across media platforms while understanding these ancillary texts and contexts as sites of negotiation with the Eon franchise.

scholarly journals The Popular Culture of 3D Printing

2019 ◽  
pp. 188-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
James I. Novak ◽  
Paul Bardini
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
3D Printing ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Printing Technology ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
New Perspective

As 3D printing technology achieves mainstream adoption, people are forming new relationships with products as they shift from passive consumers to “prosumers” capable of both producing and consuming objects on demand. This is fueled by expanding online 3D printing communities, with new data within this chapter suggesting that prosumers are challenging existing understandings of popular culture as they bypass traditional mass manufacturing. With 3D digital files rapidly distributed through online platforms, this chapter argues that a new trend for “viral objects” is emerging, alongside the “3D selfie,” as digital bits spread via the internet are given physical form through 3D printing in ever increasing quantities. Analysis of these trends will provide academics, educators, and prosumers with a new perspective of 3D printing's socio-cultural impact, and further research directions are suggested to build a broader discourse around the opportunities and challenges of a cyberphysical future.

The literary Bond

2018 ◽  
pp. 24-57
Author(s):  
Claire Hines
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Direct Relationship ◽  
Real Life ◽  
James Bond ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Men's Magazine ◽  
Formal Relationship

This chapter deals with the first phase in the formal relationship between Playboy, Ian Fleming and the Bond novels, which began in 1960 and lasted up to the middle of the decade. During this time, Fleming and his writing made regular appearances in Playboy, and there began a direct relationship between the author, the literary James Bond and Hefner’s men’s magazine that blurred the lines between real life and fiction. The chapter also considers how Fleming and the Bond novels endorsed Playboy, and how Playboy endorsed Fleming and the Bond novels, against the backdrop of James Bond’s introduction into American popular culture. Examples considered include Fleming’s Thrilling Cities trip to Chicago, his ‘Playboy Interview’, and the presentation of the Bond stories and serialisations as part of Playboy’s ‘Entertainment for Men’ formula. The chapter concludes by identifying that Fleming’s death in 1964 and the growing popularity of the Bond films in the mid-1960s, in association with the strength of Sean Connery’s public identification with the character of Bond, meant that as the decade continued Playboy’s relationship with James Bond entered its next phase.

The playboy and James Bond

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Hines
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Close Association ◽  
James Bond ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Media ◽  
Post War ◽  
Bond Phenomenon

This is the first book to focus on James Bond’s relationship to the playboy ideal through the sixties and beyond. Examining aspects of the Bond phenomenon and the playboy lifestyle, it considers how ideas of gender and consumption were manipulated to construct and reflect a powerful male fantasy in the post-war era. This analysis of the close association and relations between the emerging cultural icons of James Bond and the playboy is particularly concerned with Sean Connery’s definitive Bond as he was promoted and used by the media. By exploring the connections that developed between Bond and Playboy magazine within a historical framework, the book offers new insights into these related phenomena and their enduring legacy in popular culture.

Opera in the Jazz Age

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Jazz Age ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Fault Lines ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Mass Entertainment

Opera in the Jazz Age examines the place of opera in the contemporary ‘battle of the brows’: a debate, prompted by the growth of the mass entertainment industry, about the extent to which art forms ought to be labelled ‘highbrow’, ‘middlebrow’, or ‘lowbrow’. The book considers this question from a number of viewpoints, examining topics including: the audience for opera during the period; opera’s interactions with forms of popular culture including jazz, film, and middlebrow novels; and the ways in which different types and nationalities of opera were categorised differently. A number of significant figures in the highbrow–lowbrow debate are scrutinised, among them highbrow and middlebrow critics, the mythical figure of the ‘man in the street’, and the much reviled celebrity singer. The book explains how modern technological dissemination methods such as gramophone recordings and broadcasting came to bear upon questions of cultural categorisation, as did contemporary anxieties about national identity. The book concludes that opera was very difficult to categorise according to the new terms: for some commentators it was too highbrow; for others not highbrow enough. Examining the battle of the brows through an operatic lens challenges received wisdom by revealing the fault lines in this supposedly definitive system of cultural categorisation, undermining any simplistic binary between the high and the low. More broadly, the book also gives a detailed account of British operatic culture of the 1920s from the perspectives of performance, staging, opera-going, and criticism.

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