From toothpick legs to dropping vaginas: Gender and sexuality in Joan Rivers' stand-up comedy performance

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2011 Intellect.This article employs sociocultural analysis to examine Joan Rivers’ stand-up comedy performances in order to reveal how she successfully operates in a sphere of artistic expression that has been, and continues to be, male-dominated. The analysis uncovers how Rivers’ stand-up comedy performance involves a complex combination of elements and how it fuses features that are regarded as ‘traditionally masculine’, such as aggression, with features frequently used by other female stand-up comedians, such as self-deprecating comedy and confessional comedy. Furthermore, the analysis exposes the complex ways in which constructions of gender and sexuality are negotiated and re-negotiated in Rivers’ stand-up comedy performance, and illustrates how dominant ideological identity constructions can be simultaneously reinforced and subverted within the same comic moment

Smart Machines are Not a Threat to Humanity

The root of my argument is that any AI threat comes, not from machines that are too smart, but from machines that are too dumb. Such dumb machines pose a threat to individual humans, but not to humanity. Worrying about machines that are too smart distracts us from the real and present threat from machines that are too dumb

From troubleshooter to the apprentice: the changing face of business on British television

This commentary seeks to open up a discussion around how British factual television has represented the world of business and finance over the last decade or so. It investigates the ways that factual television representations of the financial and business environment have changed and in so doing begins to identify the key drivers of this process. As the traditional boundaries between news and current affairs, drama and documentary have blurred and new formats emerged, this research begins to capture how British television has responded to these shifts through its engagement with the world of work, business and finance. Previous research in this area has tended to focus on the specific realm of television news journalism and the reporting of industrial and economic issues (Gavin, 2000; Jensen, 1987; Philo, 1995; Richardson, 1998), while more recently attention has been centred on the BBC and the issue of journalistic impartiality in its coverage of business (Svennevig, 2007). While such concerns naturally inform this research, attention here is on the ideas and discourses created beyond the television news arena and specifically on the role that factual entertainment television formats play in representing business on television. Given the centrality of the BBC in this process, it is worth briefly reflecting on recent attempts to change the institutional climate within that organization regarding its coverage of the world of business

Minsky's financial instability hypothesis: information asymmetry and accounting information: events surrounding the UK financial crises of 1966 and 1987

This article examines two major events in the economic and financial history of the UK in terms of the financial instability hypothesis (FIH), a theory of boom, bust and financial crises. The first involves the rise of limited liability in the 1860s and its subsequent disgrace. The second involves the economic boom of the 1980s, the stock market crash, and the subsequent recession. It is shown that, while the FIH is underpinned by a microeconomic model of the financial management of a business, it does not recognize the differences between the company’s interests and those of its owners, the conflicts caused, the likelihood of informational asymmetry and its implications for accounting information. The article shows how in these two episodes the owners of companies may exploit their limited liability and informational asymmetry. Because the FIH does not consider these factors, it is incomplete both as an explanation and as a predictor of financial crises.25 page(s