scholarly journals Changes in Global Blocking Character in Recent Decades

Atmosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Lupo ◽  
Andrew Jensen ◽  
Igor Mokhov ◽  
Alexander Timazhev ◽  
Timothy Eichler ◽  
...  

A global blocking climatology published by this group for events that occurred during the late 20th century examined a comprehensive list of characteristics that included block intensity (BI). In addition to confirming the results of other published climatologies, they found that Northern Hemisphere (NH) blocking events (1968–1998) were stronger than Southern Hemisphere (SH) blocks and winter events are stronger than summer events in both hemispheres. This work also examined the interannual variability of blocking as related to El Niño and Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Since the late 20th century, there is evidence that the occurrence of blocking has increased globally. A comparison of blocking characteristics since 1998 (1998–2018 NH; 2000–2018 SH) shows that the number of blocking events and their duration have increased significantly in both hemispheres. The blocking BI has decreased by about six percent in the NH, but there was little change in the BI for the SH events. Additionally, there is little or no change in the primary genesis regions of blocking. An examination of variability related to ENSO reveals that the NH interannual-scale variations found in the earlier work has reversed in the early 21st century. This could either be the result of interdecadal variability or a change in the climate. Interdecadal variations are examined as well.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Meis ◽  
J.M. Tyree

Wonder, Horror, Mystery is a dialogue between two friends, both notable arts critics, that takes the form of a series of letters about movies and religion. One of the friends, J.M. Tyree, is a film critic, creative writer, and agnostic, while the other, Morgan Meis, is a philosophy PhD, art critic, and practicing Catholic. The question of cinema is raised here in a spirit of friendly friction that binds the personal with the critical and the spiritual. What is film? What’s it for? What does it do? Why do we so intensely love or hate films that dare to broach the subjects of the divine and the diabolical? These questions stimulate further thoughts about life, meaning, philosophy, absurdity, friendship, tragedy, humor, death, and God. The letters focus on three filmmakers who challenged secular assumptions in the late 20th century and early 21st century through various modes of cinematic re-enchantment: Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, and Krzysztof Kieślowski. The book works backwards in time, giving intensive analysis to Malick’s To The Wonder (2012), Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), and Kieślowski’s Dekalog (1988), respectively, in each of the book’s three sections. Meis and Tyree discuss the filmmakers and films as well as related ideas about philosophy, theology, and film theory in an accessible but illuminating way. The discussion ranges from the shamelessly intellectual to the embarrassingly personal. Spoiler alert: No conclusions are reached either about God or the movies. Nonetheless, it is a fun ride.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2094325
Author(s):  
Dr. Carol Harrington

Coined in late 20th-century men’s movements, “toxic masculinity” spread to therapeutic and social policy settings in the early 21st century. Since 2013, feminists began attributing misogyny, homophobia, and men’s violence to toxic masculinity. Around the same time, feminism enjoyed renewed popularization. While some feminist scholars use the concept, it is often left under-defined. I argue that talk of toxic masculinity provides an intriguing window into gender politics in any given context. However, feminists should not adopt toxic masculinity as an analytical concept. I consider the term’s origins, history, and usage, arguing that it appears in individualizing discourses that have historically targeted marginalized men. Thus, accusations of toxic masculinity often work to maintain gender hierarchies and individualize responsibility for gender inequalities to certain bad men.


Author(s):  
Anton Franks

As ways of making meaning in drama strongly resemble the ways that meanings are made in everyday social life, forms of drama learn from everyday life and, at a societal level, people in everyday life learn from drama. Through history, from the emergence of drama in Western culture, the learning that results at a societal level from the interactions of everyday social life and drama have been noted by scholars. In contemporary culture, electronic and digitized forms of mediation and communication have diversified its content and massively expanded its audiences. Although there are reciprocal relations between everyday life and drama, aspects of everyday life are selected and shaped into the various cultural forms of drama. Processes of selection and shaping crystallize significant aspects of everyday social relations, allowing audiences of and participants in drama to learn and to reflect critically on particular facets of social life. In the 20th century, psychological theories of learning have been developed, taking note of the sociocultural relationships between drama, play, and learning. Learning in and through drama is seen as being socially organized, whole person learning that mobilizes and integrates the bodies and minds of learners. Making signs and meanings through various forms of drama, it is interactive, experiential learning that is semiotically mediated via physical activity. Alongside the various forms of drama that circulate in wider culture, sociocultural theories of learning have also influenced drama pedagogies in schools. In the later part of the 20th century and into the 21st century, drama practices have diversified and been applied as a means of learning in a range of community- and theater-based contexts outside of schooling. Practices in drama education and applied drama and theater, particularly since the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, have been increasingly supported by research employing a range of methods, qualitative, quantitative, and experimental.


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Thuy Trung Luu

In the history of Vietnamese drama, Saigon was one of the places absorbing Western drama from the early time. Although drama in Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City didn’t develop in a smooth and straight way, it was a continuous and unbroken process. This process brought in strong development of drama in Ho Chi Minh city in two decades of the late 20th century and the early 21st century. However, in recent years, drama in Ho Chi Minh City seems to proceed slowly, which reflects some irrational aspects from drama script, performance art to performance operation. Therefore, it’s high time to review the whole history of drama in Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City to collect experiences for the steady development of drama in this City in the future.


Letonica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liene Markus-Narvila

Keywords: folksongs, subdialects, Lejaskurzeme, phonetics, morphology It has been a long time since linguists have spoken about the levelling of subdialects in Latvia, for instance, linguist Jānis Endzelīns already in the middle of the 20th century, when he spoke about the language of the district of Vidzeme said these significant words: “As elsewhere also in Latvia the standard language exterminates subdialects and partly has already exterminated them. There are many areas where it is hard to find a person who speaks only in subdialect.” Therefore, it is important to identify the most important sources of the acquisition of subdialects, which would be useful to all who are interested in subdialectic studies. One of these sources is Latvian folksongs, which vividly preserve the most prominent phonetic and morphological features. The phonetical and morphological features of the subdialects of Lejaskurzeme have been identified in both folksong materials and in later linguistic sources—in the descriptions of Anna Ābele “Par Rucavas izloksni” (On the Rucava Sub-Dialect (1927)), “Rucavas izloksne” (The Rucava Sub-Dialect (1928)), “Gramzdas draudzes izloksne” (The Sub-Dialect of Gramzda Parish (1929)) and also in the description of Emma Valtere “Pērkones izloksne” (The Pērkone Sub-Dialect (1938)) as well as in late 20th century and early 21st century linguistic sources, which allow a comparison between characteristic subdialectical peculiarities and to track their changes over the years. This article analyses the most prominent peculiarities of the subdialects of Lejaskurzeme both in folksongs and in subdialectal sources: in phonetics and morphology. The analysis of the folksongs shows that the treasures of our language are still living; moreover, especially the sources of folklore, including folksongs, are still an actual source of studying subdialects, which, if we use correctly, can reveal grammatical, phonetical, and morphological peculiarities.


2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER TOWNSEND

By the late 20th century, the plight of millions of older people in many developed countries was regarded as serious and was acknowledged to require concerted cross-national remedial action. Sociologists and social gerontologists only then were beginning to put together explanations rooted in the evolution of social policy and its corresponding institutions. One thesis that attracted support was that the dependency of the aged had been ‘structured’ by long-term economic and social policies. During the final decades of the 20th century, older people were perceived and treated, according to accumulating research evidence, as more dependent than they really were or needed to be. This had been fostered by the emerging institutions of retirement, income maintenance, and residential and domiciliary care. This development had been the responsibility primarily of the State, which tried to deliver welfare but also to accommodate the market. Forms of discrimination against older people had become, or continued to be, as deep as forms of discrimination against women and ethnic minorities. Such ‘institutionalised ageism’ had to be countered. Hopes were invested in anti-discriminatory policies that reflected good reciprocal relationships between the generations in many families and the rights of individuals of any age to human dignity and opportunities to practise their skills. The globalisation of the market and affiliation to neo-liberal policies, together with the simultaneous passage of various instruments of human rights, have changed the nature of the problem, and therefore the debate, during the early 21st century. This paper argues that the release and implementation during and after the Second World War of collective liberal egalitarian values, expressed in many countries in international statements on human rights, as will be shown, had a big impact on the design of public services, including those for older people. If the claims for the elderly in the welfare states of 50 years ago were exaggerated, as we can now safely conclude, the claims for older people today are even more exaggerated – at a time of heightened emphasis on individual rights and individual market powers. The various problems of ‘structured’ dependency persist, and seem set to grow in many parts of the world. Human rights offer a framework of rigorous analysis and anti-discriminatory work. Success depends on good operational measurement, and the incorporation of international and national institutions and policies that reflect those rights.


Author(s):  
David L. Dudley

In September 1773, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in London. Its author, Phillis Wheatley, slave to John Wheatley of Boston, thus became the first African American to publish a book. Brought to America in 1761, Wheatley had soon proved herself astonishingly precocious; she mastered English and, as Hannah Mather Crocker later recalled, “made some progress in the latin [sic].” Wheatley read the classics in translation and began writing poetry. Her book made her internationally famous and won her freedom. Nevertheless, events beyond her control—including the death of many friends and patrons, and the chaos caused by the American Revolution—plunged the young (and now free) poet into poverty. Marriage to John Peters did not provide long-lasting financial security. According to 19th-century sources, Wheatley bore, and lost, three infant children, but no records exist of any births, baptisms, or deaths. In 1784, Wheatley died alone (Peters may have been in prison for debt), and an unmarked grave received her. The poet’s surviving canon consists of about sixty-five poems and about two dozen letters. Many other poems are now lost, yet Wheatley’s importance is enormous. Praised by some as a writer of genius, a worthy Mother of the African American literary tradition, Wheatley has also been excoriated for not demonstrating sufficient racial pride or fighting hard enough for abolition. In the late 20th century, critics began to re-evaluate her work, and in the early 21st century, Wheatley is regarded as worthy of her place in American letters—a woman who detested tyranny; a writer keenly attuned to the political, racial, and spiritual movements of her times; and an influence on the Romantic poets who followed her.


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