Heartland: Forgiveness in Columbus,Three Billboards Outside Ebbing,Missouri, and Lady Bird

Recent movies have used the familiar conventions of classic revenge movies, but the former have avoided the latter's grim resolutions in favor of a wiser, more forgiving attitude toward those who have offended the wronged. This unconventional change in a familiar story line points to the contrast between the pleasure of vicarious vindictiveness and the more thoughtful approach that we prefer in real life.     

Hail the Conquering Hero: Remembering the Troops in The Hurt Locker,Inglourious Basterds and Avatar

Three recent movies about war are examined. All have been honored by critics and welcomed by audiences. The three movies are very different from one another. They reflect different ways of thinking and feeling about war. More specifically, they represent ways we relate to the troops we send into battle and our concerns about whether we have done and are doing the right things.     

Angels With Dirty Faces: Who Invited Slumdog Millionaire and The Visitor?

Two recent movies, The Visitor and Slumdog Millionaire, exemplify very different ways of dealing with the pains of inequality in modern life. Popular culture celebrates the successes of meritorious individuals from backgrounds of victimization and oppression, but it struggles to find positive themes when social arrangements continue to victimize other meritorious individuals. We may appear to transcend our past inequalities, but we still have present inequalities to struggle against. Similarities to recent political events, the unsettled issues of immigration, the fear of Muslims, and the election of a multiracial President are noted.     

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As we travel through life, our journeys offer myriad observations, relationships, and experiences. By chance and choice, our journeys align closely with and are guided by other people's journeys; from these associations we form a sense of our individual cultural characteristics and self-identities. Simultaneously, our journeys follow courses that remain distant and distinct from other people's paths; yet our observations and interpretations from afar also contribute strongly to the formulation of individual cultural characteristics and self-identities. Throughout life's dynamic encounters and events, each of us continues to formulate, reformulate, and negotiate our self-identities as we traverse what seems like parallel paths-journeys that appear distant and distinct from other journeys, yet encountering equally powerful influences shaping our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Rarely are we afforded the opportunities to investigate these parallel paths and communicate honestly with individuals who seemed far away and foreign; seldom can we truly experience multiple perspectives and cross-cultural relationships in our own journeys. This article presents the unique intersection of two parallel lives and the authentic exchange of multiple perspectives reported through narrative or personal life histories. The authors serendipitously met at a National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) conference and by chance shared their childhood stories. The authors were raised in similar environments but from opposite lifestyles -lifestyles that paralleled one another and contributed significantly to their individual understanding of cultural characteristics and self-identity. Here they share their histories spanning 50 years while providing insights and guidelines for teachers and teacher educators to learn from our pasts and reshape our futures.     

Acute effects of static stretching on characteristics of the isokinetic angle - torque relationship, surface electromyography, and mechanomyography

The aims of this study were to examine the acute effects of static stretching on peak torque, work, the joint angle at peak torque, acceleration time, isokinetic range of motion, mechanomyographic amplitude, and electromyographic amplitude of the rectus femoris during maximal concentric isokinetic leg extensions at 1.04 and 5.23 rad x s(-1) in men and women. Ten women (mean +/- s: age 23.0 +/- 2.9 years, stature 1.61 +/- 0.12 m, mass 63.3 +/- 9.9 kg) and eight men (age 21.4 +/- 3.0 years, stature 1.83 +/- 0.11 m, mass 83.1 +/- 15.2 kg) performed maximal voluntary concentric isokinetic leg extensions at 1.04 and 5.23 rad x s(-1). Following the initial isokinetic tests, the dominant leg extensors were stretched using four static stretching exercises. After the stretching, the isokinetic tests were repeated. Peak torque, acceleration time, and electromyographic amplitude decreased (P< or = 0.05) from pre- to post-stretching at 1.04 and 5.23 rad . s(-1); there were no changes (P > 0.05) in work, joint angle at peak torque, isokinetic range of motion, or mechanomyographic amplitude. These findings indicate no stretching-related changes in the area under the angle - torque curve (work), but a significant decrease in peak torque, which suggests that static stretching may cause a "flattening" of the angle - torque curve that reduces peak strength but allows for greater force production at other joint angles. These findings, in conjunction with the increased limb acceleration rates (decreased acceleration time) observed in the present study, provide tentative support for the hypothesis that static stretching alters the angle - torque relationship and/or sarcomere shortening velocity.     

The sales effect of word of mouth: a model for creative goods and estimates for novels

Weekly sales of creative goods—like music records, movies, or books—usually peak shortly after release and then decline quickly. In many cases, however, they follow a hump-shaped pattern where sales increase for some time. A popular explanation for this phenomenon is word of mouth among a population of heterogeneous buyers, but previous studies typically assume buyer homogeneity or neglect word of mouth altogether. In this paper, I study a model of new-product diffusion with heterogeneous buyers that allows for a quantification of the sales effect of word of mouth. The model includes Christmas sales as a special case. All parameters have an intuitive interpretation. Simulation results suggest that the parameters are estimable for data that are not too volatile and that cover a sufficiently large part of a title’s life cycle. I estimate the model for four exemplary novels using scanner data on weekly sales.

Die Bedeutung striataler Plastizitätsvorgänge und unerwarteten Bewegungserfolgs für sportmotorisches Lernen

The cortico-basal ganglia loops play an important role in the organization of human motor function. This article presents findings and thoughts according to which plasticity processes in these cortico-striatal loops and in the striatum mediate long-lasting reorganization of cortical motor representations and possess relevance for sport-specific motor activity. The correlations described point to the great significance of unexpected success of motor activity for motor learning processes.