For more than twenty years, film critic, teacher, activist, and fan Thomas Waugh has been writing about queer movies. As a member of the Jump Cut collective and contributor to the Toronto-based gay newspaper the Body Politic, he emerged in the late 1970s as a pioneer in gay film theory and criticism, and over the next two decades solidified his reputation as one of the most important and influential gay film critics. The Fruit Machine—a collection of Waugh’s reviews and articles originally published in gay community tabloids, academic journals, and anthologies—charts the emergence and maturation of Waugh’s critical sensibilities while lending an important historical perspective to the growth of film theory and criticism as well as queer moviemaking. In this wide-ranging anthology Waugh touches on some of the great films of the gay canon, from Taxi zum Klo to Kiss of the Spider Woman. He also discusses obscure guilty pleasures like Born a Man . . . Let Me Die a Woman, unexpectedly rich movies like Porky’s and Caligula, filmmakers such as Fassbinder and Eisenstein, and film personalities from Montgomery Clift to Patty Duke. Emerging from the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, Waugh traverses crises from censorship to AIDS, tackling mainstream potboilers along with art movies, documentaries, and avant-garde erotic videos. In these personal perspectives on the evolving cinematic landscape, his words oscillate from anger and passion to wry wit and irony. With fifty-nine rare film stills and personal photographs and an introduction by celebrated gay filmmaker John Greyson, this volume demonstrates that the movie camera has been the fruit machine par excellence.

Mark Griffiths has carried out extensive research into why some adolescents get hooked on gambling, how they gamble and what can be done about it. In this book he provides an overview of adolescent gambling worldwide.

While clutching the handgun inside the pocket of his grey overcoat, it began to dawn upon Harry there would be no response to the knocks he had made on the front door of the flat. He began to wonder how he would face Frederick without the money. Harry turned from the door and made his way to the top of the stairs. From where he stood, the second floor was beyond his view. He glanced down at his shoes that now glistened in the dim light of the corridor before taking the first step down the stairs.

From the 1950s to the late 1990s, agents of the state spied on, interrogated, and harassed gays and lesbians in Canada, employing social ideologies and other practices to construct their targets as threats to society. Based on official security documents and interviews with gays, lesbians, civil servants, and high-ranking officials, this path-breaking book discloses acts of state repression and forms of resistance that raise questions about just whose national security was being protected. Passionate and personalized, this account of how the state used the ideology of national security to wage war on its own people offers ways of understanding, and resisting, contemporary conflicts such as the "war on terror."

Laugh out loud and then think seriously about these outlandish scientific studies Marc Abrahams, the mind behind the internationally renowned Ig Nobel Prizes, is on a mission: to gather the bizarre, the questionable, the brilliant, the downright funny, the profound – everything improbable – from the annals of science research. What’s the best way to slice a ham sandwich, mathematically? What makes Bobs look especially Bob-like? Is the right or left ear better at discerning lies? Could mice be outfitted with parachutes to kill tree snakes?

This is the second in a series of books intended to review and evaluate the most popular and influential explanations for gambling and the many research studies that have been conducted to confirm or refute them. This book focuses on the contributions of specialists in the social sciences, most of whom are convinced that gambling is a consequence of the social or subcultural environment in which the gambler lives. To further the understanding of why people gamble, investigators went to places where gambling occurred and spent time among and interacted with the gamblers. Some attended Gamblers Anonymous meetings and others became participant observers in gambling establishments by becoming employed as roulette croupiers or card dealers. Topics covered include the gambler’s point of view, the researcher’s point of view, social structure, economics, statistical tests of earlier ideas, special populations, ‘‘armchair’’ theories, gambling and the public, problem correlates, and risk factors. In addition, a critique of the qualitative and quantitative studies involving survey research methods and interview research methods is given that provides theoretical explanations for why people gamble. Numerous results from geographical surveys are provided, as well as tables that examine the research of problem gambling.