1,075 research outputs found
Way more than luck
No full textWay More Than Luck is the vivid debut collection from the well-known young poet and critic Ben Wilkinson. The book opens with a series of poems that, with a remarkable clarity and sympathy, recall a battle with clinical depression: the “days when you weren’t anyone. Days gone undercover...”. The author interrogates this malady: “two-parts sadness, one-part anger”, grapples to understand that its sources are both personal and cultural. It soon emerges that competitive running, which possibly starts as therapy, a means of combat, becomes a way of life, not just for fitness but for the long-haul, for endurance. The poet finds a still, calm centre: “Running is the pure solitude of a wordless hour.”
The collection centres on a series of vivid character portraits, giving life to the legends of Liverpool Football Club. With characteristic self-deprecation Wilkinson calls this section ‘An Ordinary Game’ and kicks things off with the Bill Shankly quote: “What a great day for football. All we need is some green grass and a ball.” In various inventive forms that echo the characters they celebrate or decry, the author finds in football an apt field for human display. Bruce Grobbelaar shoots a ball straight at the ref’s face; old-school Billy Liddell still inspires hymns in the stands; Stevie Gerrard is the soul of “grit”; the “dancing shadow”of John Barnes endures racism: “dark slurs circle the stands”; Fernando Torres is a latter-day Icarus. These poems recapture both the childish wonder of the young fan and the die-hard faith of adult fans undefeated by cynicism or rain.
The final section, ‘An Absurd Pastime’, contains more occasional poems, about the writing life, both the graft of the craft and the petty indignities of performance as in ‘You Must Be Joking’ where a comedian must, by the brutal trial and error of stand-up, discover the means to laughter. Here, there are also poems about dreams, fraught with strange vertigo. There are also a number of tenderly hesitant love poems. There is an enjoyably vicious satire of the anodyne non-promises of a conservative party speech. Most notably, many poems in this collection are in artfully invisible poetic forms. Their rhymes and repetitions are wonderfully woven to suit content and expression. Way More Than Luck is a beautifully serious debut by a more-than-promising young author, Ben Wilkinson
Movement & complexity. Effect of pattern complexity and expertise on movement kinematics during perception and reproduction of auditory rhythms
No full textIt is an open question whether the sensory motor synchronization stems from general musical ability (independent of music training) or the interaction of domain-specific cognitive and motor predictive processes.
The role of body movement in music-related activities has received increasing attention in recent years (e.g., Eerola, Luck & Toiviainen, 2006; Luck & Toiviainen, 2006; Palmer & DallaBella, 2004; Wanderley, Vines, Middleton, McKay & Hatch, 2005).
Here, we examine the role of body movement in the perception and reproduction of rhythmic patterns, focusing in particular on the influence of rhythmic complexity and expertise on movement kinematics. In addition, participants’ performance was evaluated qualitatively by the first author, and against the baseline of their spontaneous tempo.
We identified systematic relationships between rhythmic complexity and the spatiotemporal characteristics of body movement during both perception and reproduction
Scientists’ views on (moral) luck
No full textScientific discoveries are often to some degree influenced by luck. Whether luck’s influence is at odds with common-sense intuitions about responsibility, is the central concern of the philosophical debate about moral luck. Do scientists acknowledge that luck plays a role in their work and–if so–do they consider it morally problematic? The present article discusses the results of four focus groups with scientists, who were asked about their views on luck in their fields and its moral implications. The participants underscored circumstantial luck as a key dimension of luck in science. Nevertheless, most participants insisted that there are ways of executing ‘control’ in science: They believe that virtues and skills can increase one’s chances for success. The cultivation of these skills and virtues was considered a reasonable ground for pride. Prizes and rewards were rarely tied to personal desert, but instead to their societal function.Ethics & Philosophy of Technolog
Aar
No full textFor over a year and a half, Amanda Thomson has been filming an alder by the burn outside her window, sometimes two or three times a day, occasionally once a week, sometimes just once or twice a month. The resulting work in Practicing Landscape: Land, Histories and Transformation reveals the slow and shifting changes of season, light, and time passing. Aar (a Scots word for alder) also includes notes from a shared diary of recording sightings – often the first flowers or migrant birds of the year: cuckoos, house-martins, geese; spring primroses, summer germander speedwell, late summer creeping ladies tresses. These aren’t necessarily systematically recorded but speak to what is simply noticed when there, and what is seen and heard in the course of the everyday. The diary also records the fleetingness and luck of seeing of residents such as eagles, crossbills, and hares, or a flock of redpolls scared up by a sparrowhawk. Aar is part of what will become a phenological exploration and reflection of a place and ongoing change, questions of attentiveness and care, and human and more-than-human timescales. It feeds into Thomson’s ongoing research and investigations which incorporate a visual arts practice and creative non-fiction and explore questions of slow looking and attentiveness, Scottish landscapes, language (as in her book, A Scots Dictionary of Nature), walking and reflections on the interrelationships of place with self, migrations, native/non-native/‘invasive’ species, and conceptions of home
Moral and legal luck
No full textArtykuł ma za zadanie wprowadzenie do problematyki prawnego trafu i wyznaczenie ścieżki dalszych badań związanych z tym tematem. Zawiera on odpowiedź na pytanie dotyczące relacji pomiędzy moralnym trafem (moral luck), a prawnym trafem (legal luck). Analizowane są trzy stanowiska. Pierwsze, reprezentowane przez Arthura Ripsteina, głosi, że moral luck i legal luck to autonomiczne względem siebie problemy. Drugie, którego przedstawicielem jest David Enoch, stanowi, że prawny traf to wynik przeniesienia moralnego trafu na grunt prawa. Trzecie zaś, przeciwnie, odnosi się do koncepcji moralnego trafu jako wyniku przeniesienia prawnego trafu na grunt moralności. Autor omawia poszczególne koncepcje, wskazuje na ich mocne i słabe punkty, by ostatecznie opowiedzieć się za jedną z nich, co prowadzi do określonej wizji dalszych badań nad prawnym trafem.The article aims to introduce the issue of legal luck and set the direction for further research on this topic. It contains an answer to the question about the relationship between moral luck and legal luck. Three positions are analyzed. The first one, represented by Arthur Ripstein, says that moral luck and legal luck are autonomous issues. The second one, represented by David Enoch, states that legal luck is the result of applying moral luck to law. The third one, on the contrary, refers to the concept of moral luck as a result of applying legal luck to morality. The author discusses diverse conceptions, indicating their strong and weak points, and finally opts for one of them, which leads to a certain view of further research on legal luck
Managing Performance in a Volatile Environment: Contrasting Perspectives on Luck and Causality
No full textPerformance management is an increasingly perilous and challenging activity for many firms, and involves understanding the drivers of performance as well as its measurement. Academics tend to see performance in terms of rationality, whereas business leaders tend to interpret drivers of overall performance in a broader context. When global crises and high uncertainty confound causal links to performance, practitioners often invoke the notion of 'luck' as a prospective explanation. Academics are less inclined to do so because they tend to conceptualize luck differently. This paper considers the academic/business gap and how Mode 2 research into luck and causality could produce findings that are more meaningful to practising managers in both understanding and affecting performance. It concludes by identifying ways to encourage greater academia-practitioner congruence to meet the challenges of a volatile operating environment. © 2012 The Author(s). British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management
Shorty Junior, or, The son of his dad : a sequel to Shorty in luck / by the author of "Shorty in luck", etc.
No full textThe Mixed Account of Luck
No full textA Mixed Account is mixed because it combines the conditions of two main rival accounts of luck: the control condition and the modal condition. In this chapter, the author encourages the reader to explore the discussions with the Mixed Account and rival accounts of luck in mind. It focuses on defending the account and addresses the issue of what the analysandum should be. The chapter focuses on luck as a property of states of affairs. The reason is that this captures all other phenomena of luck. E. J. Coffman has argued that our focus should be on strokes of luck rather than luck as a property of states of affairs (the actualization of some state of affairs being lucky for someone), since the latter can be explained in terms of the former, but not vice versa. There are two main rival accounts to the Mixed Account of luck: Control Accounts and Modal Accounts
The Mixed Account of Luck
No full textA Mixed Account is mixed because it combines the conditions of two main rival accounts of luck: the control condition and the modal condition. In this chapter, the author encourages the reader to explore the discussions with the Mixed Account and rival accounts of luck in mind. It focuses on defending the account and addresses the issue of what the analysandum should be. The chapter focuses on luck as a property of states of affairs. The reason is that this captures all other phenomena of luck. E. J. Coffman has argued that our focus should be on strokes of luck rather than luck as a property of states of affairs (the actualization of some state of affairs being lucky for someone), since the latter can be explained in terms of the former, but not vice versa. There are two main rival accounts to the Mixed Account of luck: Control Accounts and Modal Accounts
Luck: A Personal Account of Fortune, Chance and Risk in 13 Investigations
No full textcultural history/memoir/narrative non-fiction investigating the meaning, nature, and existence of luck in the western tradition
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