Conjured from Fragments: KMD's Mr. Hood and the Transformative Poetics of the Golden Age Rap Album

Between 1988 and 1991, the rap album took flight. Under the dual impetus of innovations in sampling, and of the album form itself, an explosion of youthful creativity ensured the rap album, mined for more self-consciously artistic potential, emerged as a multi-layered artform that revealed a similarly multi-layered Black genius. For innovators like the Bomb Squad (Public Enemy, Ice Cube, Son of Bazerk), Prince Paul (De La Soul) and others, the rap album was now often “more” than just a rap album. It could at once take on the characteristics of a radio show, a simulated game show, a talking comic book, a picaresque novel, an Afrofuturist vaudeville, or a visit to the movies—and, through any of these, invoke a multitude of stories and critiques from marginalized young Black perspectives.Drawing on a variety of ideas from Black American cultural studies, particularly those focused on creative transformation as a form of transcendence, this article analyzes the multi-layered creativity of one of this period's most unsung, yet ultimately important albums: KMD's showpiece of sampling transformation and satiric narrative wit, Mr. Hood. Best known as the album that initiated the career of the MC/producer later known as MF DOOM (arguably the most revered figure in underground rap post-1999), it also initiated his surreal approach to sampling non-musical material from sources in popular culture and envisagement of rap as a kind of modern-day folklore. Attempting to find a new way of working across the layers of the rap album—the magical interplay of mood, beat, references, verbal samples, storytelling, etc.—the article argues that such sample-based flights of the imagination represent a continuation of the Afro-magical tradition Theophus Smith calls Conjuring Culture.

O show matemática do milhão: divulgando e promovendo conhecimento

RESUMO Esse artigo trata da apresentação de um jogo intitulado “Show Matemática do Milhão”, um jogo de perguntas que segue o formato do jogo televisivo “Show do Milhão” apresentado pela emissora de televisão SBT. O intuito do jogo foi despertar o interesse dos alunos por conteúdos matemáticos, visto que o jogo trata de diversos conteúdos de diversos níveis. O aluno acertando sente-se motivado a continuar os estudos e errado sente-se motivado a buscar o conhecimento para que o erro não se repita. Além de despertar o interesse dos alunos, o jogo também é interessante para professores que podem substituir uma avaliação formal de perguntar e respostas por essa avaliação mais dinâmica e divertida. ABSTRACT This paper is about the presentation of a game called "Show Math do Milhão", a quiz game that follows the format of the TV game "Show do Milhão", presented by SBT television network. The purpose of the game was to awaken the students' interest for mathematical contents, since the game deals with several contents at different levels. When the student gets it right, he/she feels motivated to continue studying, and when he/she gets it wrong, he/she feels motivated to seek knowledge so that the mistake will not be repeated. Besides arousing the students' interest, the game is also interesting for teachers, who can replace a formal evaluation of questions and answers by this more dynamic and fun evaluation.

Destination: Space! A Virtual Flash Talk Series

<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>During the series of national lockdowns, interacting onsite with local schools became difficult and increased the demand for virtual content. To meet this challenge, we created an online programme entitled <em>“Destination: Space”</em>, aimed at showcasing the current planetary research conducted within the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Planetary Physics (AOPP) department at the University of Oxford. Over six weeks, school students from the UK and around the globe joined us on an out-of-this-world journey exploring space and planetary physics. <em>Destination: Space</em> has introduced students to fascinating areas of science, including the search for water on the Moon, meteorites and sample return missions, and whether there really could be other life out there in the universe. </p><p>Talks were hosted online in a live webinar-style, where the audience could interact with and ask questions of the scientists involved in each event. The series consisted of four short seminars, one game show style event, and one purely question and answer panel session. The seminar sessions consisted of a short talk delivered by AOPP scientists focused on their research with time for audience questions. The game show event was loosely based on the “Would I lie to you?” BBC hit television show and had the scientists presenting short statements and inviting the audience to determine whether it was fact or fiction. This format encouraged audience participation and debate through the webinar chat feature. Due to the large number of questions we were unable to get to during the seminar sessions, a Q&A panel was added to the series. </p><p><strong>Reception: </strong>The <em>Destination: Space</em> programme was advertised well in advance of its commencement through the Oxford Physics Outreach department mailing lists connected to local schools, and through social media accounts. Over 750 local and international audience members attended the series with an additional 1000+ viewers watching the recorded versions on YouTube as of this time. </p><p><strong>Project Assessment: </strong>For the seminar sessions, polls were used to assess the audience’s knowledge before and after the talk, with the majority self-reporting an increase in understanding of the topic and overall positive comments from the audience, including several emails from teachers supporting the project. The game show session incorporated polls throughout to encourage an interactive event, and showed the audience actively debating in the chat and reaching the right answer 85% of the time. Responses to this event were overwhelmingly positive and many cited the interactivity as enhancing their experience. Overall polling showed support for the programme and calls for similar series covering other space topics. We will look to create another series for the upcoming school year, and to create more activities for teachers to use in conjunction with the programme. </p><p> </p><p>The recorded programme can be found here:</p><p>https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUX8glPeEnsK2Qu97enFmpXuIoMrw7Pdm</p>

Catching a Liar Through Facial Expression of Fear

High stakes can be stressful whether one is telling the truth or lying. However, liars can feel extra fear from worrying to be discovered than truth-tellers, and according to the “leakage theory,” the fear is almost impossible to be repressed. Therefore, we assumed that analyzing the facial expression of fear could reveal deceits. Detecting and analyzing the subtle leaked fear facial expressions is a challenging task for laypeople. It is, however, a relatively easy job for computer vision and machine learning. To test the hypothesis, we analyzed video clips from a game show “The moment of truth” by using OpenFace (for outputting the Action Units (AUs) of fear and face landmarks) and WEKA (for classifying the video clips in which the players were lying or telling the truth). The results showed that some algorithms achieved an accuracy of >80% merely using AUs of fear. Besides, the total duration of AU20 of fear was found to be shorter under the lying condition than that from the truth-telling condition. Further analysis found that the reason for a shorter duration in the lying condition was that the time window from peak to offset of AU20 under the lying condition was less than that under the truth-telling condition. The results also showed that facial movements around the eyes were more asymmetrical when people are telling lies. All the results suggested that facial clues can be used to detect deception, and fear could be a cue for distinguishing liars from truth-tellers.

One game show, two boys, two aces, three prisoners - what’s an AI to do?

We review a quartet of widely discussed probability puzzles – Monty Hall, the three prisoners, the two boys, and the two aces. Pearl explains why the Monty Hall problem is counterintuitive using a causal diagram. Glenn Shafer uses the puzzle of the two aces to justify reintroducing to probability theory protocols that specify how the information we condition on is obtained. Pearl, in one treatment of the three prisoners, adds to his representation random variables that distinguish actual events and observations. The puzzle of the two boys took a perplexing twist in 2010. We show the puzzles have similar features, and each can be made to give different answers to simple queries corresponding to different presentations of the word problem. We offer a unified treatment that explains this phenomenon in strictly technical terms, as opposed to cognitive or epistemic.

Catching a liar through facial expression of fear

The leakage theory in the field of deception detection predicted that liars could not repress the leaked felt emotions (e.g., the fear or delight); and people who were lying would feel fear (to be discovered), especially under the high-stake situations. Therefore, we assumed that the aim of revealing deceits could be reached via analyzing the facial expression of fear. Detecting and analyzing the subtle leaked fear facial expressions is a challenging task for laypeople. It is, however, a relatively easy job for computer vision and machine learning. To test the hypothesis, we analyzed video clips from a game show “The moment of truth” by using OpenFace (for outputting the Action Units of fear and face landmarks) and WEKA (for classifying the video clips in which the players was lying or telling the truth). The results showed that some algorithms could achieve an accuracy of greater than 80% merely using AUs of fear. Besides, the total durations of AU 20 of fear were found to be shorter under the lying condition than under the truth-telling condition. Further analysis found the cause why durations of fear were shorter was that the duration from peak to offset of AU20 under the lying condition was less than that under the truth-telling condition. The results also showed that the facial movements around the eyes were more asymmetrical while people telling lies. All the results suggested that there do exist facial clues to deception, and fear could be a cue for distinguishing liars from truth-tellers.

BGS – Brasil Game Show: mais uma versão do maior legado dos eventos de games da América Latina

O livro de 2019 da BGS – Brasil Game Show mostra em suas primeiras páginas dados importantes que formam o legado desse evento. São mais de 2,1 milhões de pessoas que desde 2009 visitam a feira que começou em um churrasco, depois se tornou em RGS – Rio Game Show. O mesmo tomou tanta proporção que veio para São Paulo para atingir mais pessoas, principalmente os patrocinadores. O capítulo dois fala da vida de Marcelo Tavares. O terceiro trata todas as edições da BGS. Para finalizar o quarto capítulo mostra números dessa história e evolução do logo.