Background Go on, admit it. However much you may dismiss soap operas, at some point in your life you’ve been fascinated by them. Maybe as a teenager coming home early from school, as a medical student taking a break from exams, or as a young parent at home with the children, you too have been drawn into the world of ‘The Street’ or ‘The Square’ – or even ‘The Police Station’. You too have been ...

Each member of an ordinary congregate audience receives a clear impression of the personality of the speaker. Complex visual perceptions of his physical build, posture, clothes, and movements, in addition to auditory perceptions derived from his speech and voice, make this impression seem accurate and complete. Over the radio the rich and informative visual pattern is absent; only the voice and...

The judging procedure for Athenian dramatic contests is not well understood. In this paper, we present a new model that we believe takes account of all the relevant data, which possesses the additional virtue of clarity of execution, so that a large festival audience can easily follow the proceedings as the winner is determined publicly. It differs in certain important respects from other inter...