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BAMPFA STUDENT COMMITTEE
Five Tables Exhibitions
Fall Opening 2021
Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi and Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism: Shattering the Limits of Possibility
by Lucas Fink
[spoiler alert!]
Central to Mark Fisher's theorizations of late capitalism is his emphasis on cultural stagnation and the resultant increase in reliance upon resurrected cultural forms. Nowhere is such a dearth of genuine novelty more apparent than in J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a film that strays a bit too close to being little more than a beat-by-beat retelling of A New Hope. A force-sensitive teenager on a desert planet is uprooted when she meets a droid carrying sensitive information and is swept up into a galactic civil war, meeting a surrogate father who dies at the end and aiding in the destruction of a massive spherical space station which is blown up after a trench run. I love this movie, but not for its originality. I also really love The Last Jedi, which respectfully and thoroughly inverts the predictability of its predecessor, unabashedly exploding convention and leaving in its wake new vistas of possibility I never thought I'd see in the Star Wars universe. Once every blue moon, the system will glitch and release something so self-aware and subversive that its very existence is one of schizophrenic tension. Why in the hell did Disney produce a movie whose fundamental themes call into question the system on which Disney subsists? I don't know, but when these glitches in the matrix happen, I get happy.
Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi is disillusioned and curmudgeonly, denouncing the elitism and bourgeois hubris of the old Jedi Order as a result of which Emperor Palpatine came to power. Poe Dameron learns it's okay to defer to a female authority figure and that his self-worth and identity should not be predicated on a toxic conception of masculinity that consists of reckless, selfish, fame-starved individuality. Finn learns from Rose that there is an overclass of absurdly rich war-profiteering assholes who supply weapons to both the bad and good guys and presumably have been doing so for a while, thus helping to produce and perpetuate the cycle of conflict to which the Star Wars galaxy has been condemned for thousands of years. And then Kylo Ren fucking kills Supreme Leader Snoke (also known as Walmart Palpatine) and for three of the most exhilerating minutes in all of cinema we get to witness a fight scene - so well shot and choreographed it's unfair - between the new Rey-Kylo alliance and Snoke's Praetorian Guard during which we, while admiring the spectacle, contemplate astonishedly and frantically what in the fuck is going to happen next. Will Kylo turn good? Will Rey turn bad? What do the terms good and bad even mean anymore in this new realm of moral blurriness in which we suddenly find ourselves? Watching that moment in theatres, I felt something I never thought I would feel while watching a winter blockbuster produced by Disney that's the eighth installment in a franchise: the promise of something genuinely new. Something interesting and thematically rich and shockingly subversive that all the while manages to enhance my appreciation for and enrich my understanding of the characters I'm already familiar with. I felt giddy and surprised and incredibly happy.
Mark Fisher was a brilliant anticapitalist philosopher, cultural critic, and continental theorist. He took his life in 2017. Before his abrupt and deeply tragic death, Mark gifted us with some of the most lucidly and passionately articulated theorizations of life in modernity, of life in late digital capitalism. His writings are honest, personal, sad, scathing, funny, and often pessimistic, and yet are subtly - but unmistakably - underlined with optimism, a hope that Mark found harder and harder to sustain. For Mark, life in modernity is characterized by a nebulous malaise, in part engendered by the inability of culture to produce anything actually new. Because capitalism presents itself as the last form of social and economic organization, as the end of history, it evacuates the future. There is no future, because capitalism is eternal and inevitable; it is the way things have always been and the way things always will be. In such conditions, art becomes starved of novelty and as such is forced to become parasitic, leeching off of the trends of the past. If a time-traveller played Arctic Monkeys or The Drums or The Strokes at a party in the 1980s, no one would notice. Nirvana and Joy Division t-shirts are easier to find and purchase than any merchandise from a contemporary artist. Only 4 out of every 10 movies released between 2005 and 2014 had wholly original scripts.
The Last Jedi did not have an original script; it was the eighth movie in a franchise now owned by a megacorporation. And yet, somehow, the movie constitutes a rupture in the fabric of the possible. It constitutes the exact thing Mark calls for at the end of his seminal work Capitalist Realism:
"The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again."
The Last Jedi is that glimmer, that tiny event which shatters the imposed limits of capitalist realism and thus renders anything possible. I wish Mark could have seen it.
Akshata Atre
Asri Alhamdaputra
Beck Trebesch
Clara Sperow
Dylan Murphy
Elizabeth Saubestre
Gillian Robin
Haley Kittleson
Jack Wareham
Julia Cunningham
Katherine Schloss
Khaled Alqahtani
Lucas Fink
Melody Niv
Nash Croker
Quentin Freeman
Ruby Bracher
Ryan Simpkins
Saffron Sener
Sam Kurtz
Saprina Howard
Shine Lee
Truly Edison
Zoe Forest
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
University of Califonia, Berkeley
2120 Oxford Street #2250
bampfasc@berkeley.edu
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A brief spell of rainfall in Indonesia has minimized the number of fire hot spots that have been spewing toxic smoke across the country ... for now. Here are four ways we can #StopTheHaze once and for all.
Fires rage in peatland on the island of Borneo, Indonesia. When peatlands are cleared and drained for plantations, the massive amounts of carbon they store are released into the atmosphere, creating a climate crisis.
This article was originally published by Greenpeace International.
Since August, forests have been set alight to make way for plantations — a practice that has been happening for decades. But this year's El Niño means that conditions are extra dry, leaving toxic smoke to lay and linger. To make matters worse, about half of these fires are taking place on peatlands, which are a major global carbon storehouse. In recent days, the rate of carbon emissions from Indonesia's fires has outpaced the entire U.S. economy.
Brief rainfall this week in Sumatra and Kalimantan has provided modest relief, but the crisis is far from over. The fires and smoke will return so long as companies are destroying forests and draining peatlands and the government is lax on enforcing its policies. Here's how we can stop this devastating disaster once and for all.
Military help extinguish the fire of burning peatland inside the Orangutan conservation area in Kapuas district, Central Kalimantan province, Borneo island, Indonesia.
Fact: stopping forest destruction is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to prevent catastrophic climate change. It's estimated that this year's haze will cost Indonesia's economy $14 billion.
All agricultural commodity suppliers must immediately stop forest clearance and any further development on peatland; they must be monitored and held accountable for any potentially dangerous and illegal activities.
Ernie (45) with her husband Pak Plus (47) guard their rubber tree plantation all day to make sure it won''t catch fire.
Last year, President Joko Widodo vowed to protect peatlands and showed his solidarity by damming a canal to stop the drainage of a peat forest in Sumatra. Since then, the area has hardly been affected by this season's fires.
Last week he repeated the same vow, calling for a moratorium on licensing for peatland concessions after at least ten people died due to respiratory illnesses caused by the smoke. It's time for the president to honor his promise.
Re-flooding and implementing other water management measures in critical peatland areas can sharply reduce fire risks — a solution Greenpeace has proposed for years.
Firefighters extinguish fire in burning peatland inside an Orangutan conservation area in Borneo.
Greenpeace researchers looked at 112,000 fire hotspots recorded from August 1 to October 26, 2015, which showed that nearly 40 percent of fires had occurred inside mapped concessions: land granted by the Indonesian government to companies for logging or plantation development.
There are many, many concession where fire hotspots are indicated in mapping analysis, but our research also indicates that the company associated with the most is Asia Pulp & Paper.
This is not surprising. First, they are the largest concession holder in Indonesia and have a legacy of deforestation. Second, they are the only company that has released accurate maps showing where their own, as well as their suppliers concessions are.
However, the government has recently refused Greenpeace's request to make public the latest concession maps for analysis. Other companies have released very little information about their land holdings and the concessions that supply them, which makes us wonder — what do they have to hide?
Ema (13) holds her brother Ading (7 months old) who suffers from respiratory tract infections. Smoke from landscape fires kills an estimated 110,000 people every year across Southeast Asia, mostly as a result of heart and lung problems.
The only way to stop these fires is to stop deforestation. Greenpeace is calling for palm oil and paper companies to join forces and enforce a total ban on forest clearance and peatland development in Indonesia. Companies could make this happen. After all, if corporations have the ability to destroy the world's forests, they also have the power to help save them.
Want to help #StoptheHaze once and for all? Take action today.


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Economic Malaise Continues to Deepen
by K. Gajendra Singh
"Keynes's collective work amounted to a powerful argument that capitalism was by its very nature unstable and prone to collapse. Far from trending toward some magical state of equilibrium, capitalism would inevitably do the opposite. It would lurch over a cliff," - Hyman Minsky
A few months after I had shifted back to Delhi in end 2007, having stayed abroad from 1989 and since 1996 after retiring from Ankara, as an accredited journalist, with last 10 years in Bucharest, I sent to my civil service batch mates and others my article on onrushing crisis in world economy, which is literally being dragged towards a catastrophe by Wall Street something akin to the American film "Runaway Train", with US economy leading like the rogue locomotive.
Some of my 1961 year civil services batch mates and others specially in India, who had held almost all the top positions in India's federal economic ministries and departments dealing with economic matters and revenue found fault with my analysis that the manifest American economic hegemony could ever be challenged. Some of them took particular objection to my comment that "have always considered an economist as someone who could not become a scientist and tries to shape economics, with its many variables and unpredictables based on fickle human nature, greed and other factors, to conform to the rigors of exact sciences with its equations and graphs. Like an Alchemist's it is hit or miss and when garnished with self-serving propaganda, it is a dangerous cocktail".
They were still skeptical when I sent around my article in end March 2008 predicting a traumatic economic fall by September, 2008 which was hosted by dozens of websites and blogs and much appreciated.
The Decline and Coming Fall of US Hegemony, March 30, 2008
The piece at the end was my third (but unpublished) article on the decline of the American century and its hegemony, since 11 September 2002.
What did surprise me then and continues to anger me very much is the Indian media especially TV channels , all have been unfortunately taken over by India's corporate interests and were misleading the investing public with a rosy picture of the rise and rise in the Sensex. In Indian media not only on economic matters but in other sectors too this has been the fate of fourth pillar of democracy.
Once independent, media led by USA and other Western countries, barring some exceptions, now telecasts spins such as by BBC, CNN, Fox channel and others. This false propaganda barrage led the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq, or for that matter the situation in Libya before and after the brutal assassination of its leader Gadhafi. Now the Dogs of War are swarming around Syria, led by NATO powers, Saudi Arabia, Gulf Emirates and Kingdoms along with an Islamist party dominated Turkey and upcoming Muslim Brotherhoods in Egypt and Tunisia. Truth has become a rare commodity in Western media. Earlier independent, Qatar based Al Jazeera news outlet too has now joined the gang of BBC and CNN.
Even when I wrote the article below it was felt that sooner or later India's GDP growth would hover around 6% of so, but tall claims have been made on the basis of foreign direct investment, a good portion of it the black money stacked abroad by India's corrupt politicians, business houses and bureaucrats via officially recognized shady route , Mauritius, stock exchanges have become like yo-yo Casinos with cheap US stimulus funds without any backing and ill gained Indian hot money moving in and out.
Against overpowering inequities in wealth and incomes in USA, in hundreds of cities beginning with The Wall Street, there are daily demonstrations and sit ins. Violent riots have taken place in UK and other European cities. In India the equivalent has been the movements led by Gandhian Anna Hazare and Yoga teacher Baba Ram Dev, the former attracting middle classes, weighed by the daily exactions of the corrupt ruling classes and their tools, while the latter has strong roots among hundreds of millions of poor masses in urban and rural areas, whom he has been teaching Yoga for years and bringing about a remarkable improvement in their health. More than the combined efforts of health departments of governments, now centers of corruption and loot of public health funds.
The ruling dispensation mired in corruption and moral decay refuses to see the truth at its own peril.
The American leadership is still telling lies to the people although all indicators indicate coming catastrophe sooner than later. Two reports of the United States Government released this week suggest that the so called recovery of the American economy may be losing momentum. The Labor Department admitted that the economy added fewer than half the number of jobs in terms of the market expectations and an acute long-term unemployment problem remains with a total of over 40 percent of the unemployed having been out of job for more than six months. The Commerce Department lowered the economy's growth estimate to 1.9percent from the estimated 2.2 percent, which in itself was lower than the actual 3 percent growth in the last quarter of 2011.
The fraud being perpetrated on public in America and elsewhere by US bankers, financiers, corporate interests and military industry complex with loyal support from their followers elsewhere in India is now in the final stages of a likely collapse, sooner than later along the lines of the October 2008 which sent shockwaves to very foundations of Keynesian neo-liberal model of capitalism.
In India, finally the leadership, our so-called experts in neo-liberal capitalism is confessing that there is something wrong with the Indian economy. Let me quote from my conversation with one such expert in 2000.
Confidence in the US Dollar;
Before 9/11, at a lunch for the Turkish PM at the Rashtrapati Bhavan I had demurred to an Indian economist, now occupying a very high position about the inequities of the current economic order, founded on the US dollar as the dominant reserve currency, which accounted for 68 percent of global currency reserves, up from 51 percent a decade ago. Yet in 2000, the US share of global exports ($781.1 billion out of a world total of $6.2 trillion) was only 12.3 percent and its share of global imports ($1.257 trillion out of a world total of $6.65trillion) was 18.9 percent.
"Ever since 1971, when US president Richard Nixon arbitrarily took the dollar off the gold standard ($35 per ounce) in force since the Bretton Woods Conference at the end of World War II, the dollar has become the global monetary instrument that the United States, and only the United States, can produce by fiat, despite record US current-account deficits and the US as the leading debtor nation. The US national debt as of April 4 was $6.021 trillion against a GDP of $9 trillion. (It is now 9 trillion in a GDP of around 13 trillion)
"India has to maintain ample foreign-exchange reserves, which have now reached $60 billion. Most of this must be kept in low-interest US securities, which US companies like Enron can then invest in India and force governments to guarantee 15 percent returns. Thus US companies earn billions of dollars by investing Indian savings in India. "[This argument I had used in my piece, 'Decline of the American Century '.]
The economist [looked at me disdainfully] replied with great insouciance, "Yes, but you have to create confidence as US has done in the dollar." I had to move away quickly not to give vent to my feelings of dismay and disgust. Since then many lunches have been organized at the Rashtrapati Bhavan and look where is the confidence in the US dollar. (In just 12 years)
Below is my article of January 2008, which had brought quick retorts and brickbats from my batch mates and friends.
Capitalism in Crisis –Again?
After record falls in share index around the world, caused by imminent recession in USA, thus Federal Reserve announced immediate three-quarter-point cut, the largest in 26 years, which calmed the situation, perhaps temporarily. US President George Bush's $150 billion tax rebates were seen as too little and too late and had triggered a frenzy of selling.
"Right now it's 50-50 whether you're going to have a recession in America," said John Silvia, chief economist at the US bank Wachovia. "In the first quarter, growth will be negative and the Fed is struggling to keep it in positive territory for the second quarter."
Profits at the US's second and fourth largest banks, Bank of America and Wachovia, have been all but wiped out by the deepening sub-prime crisis with both companies yesterday announcing multibillion-dollar write downs. The results follow news this month from market leader Citigroup of an $18 bn write-off, leading to the biggest loss in the firm's 196-year history. All told, the world's big banks and broking houses have written off an estimated $120bn since the summer.
I have repeatedly said that navel watching Indian media and so called policy makers think and behave like frogs in a well, albeit a big well. In spite of the developing economic crisis in USA for more than a year, our media and the government remained complacent and refused to see the onrushing tempest. Analysts commented if at all that India would not be affected much by the US crisis. PM and FM, both economists warmed by the rising Sensex based on influx of hot money took credit for the blooming of the Indian economy till the bull dream turned into a nightmare since Monday, ending the Bollywood like dream run into a hangover many an investor in India woke up to after predictions of Sensex crossing 25,000 in near future, to find it crashing down from a recent high of 22,000 to below 17,000. Investors on lost a whopping Rs. 15.82 trillion in the last seven days of market mayhem that included a fall of more than 4,000 points in the benchmark 30-share sensitive Index or Sensex.
Following US Fed decision and calming effect in the US and East Asian shares , Indian Sensex recovered to over 17,000 on Wednesday, 23 January. It could stabilize higher for the time being.
I have always considered an economist as someone who has failed as a scientist and tries to shape economics, with its many variables and unpredictables based on fickle human nature and other factors, to conform to the rigors of exact sciences with its equations and graphs. Like an Alchemist's method it is hit or miss and when garnished with self-serving propaganda, it is a dangerous cocktail.
Capitalism is once again in crisis but the center of gravity unlike the last 1997-98 crisis is in the heart of capitalism, USA. Having globalized and attached the world economy to its coat tails, the US recession is dragging down the whole world.
In 2000 after the 1997-98 economic crisis I had written;
"In August/Sept 1998 the very bastions of capitalism were reduced to utter panic and incoherence after the collapse of East and South East Asian economies, the decimation of the ruble and impending fall of the Brazilian economy. On September 8, The Washington Post under the title "Rethink Capitalism" wrote,' what is frightening about the world's current economic troubles is a sense that rules we thought we understood don't seem to apply now. Until a few months ago, we thought we knew what a developing country had to do to join the ranks of the wealthy. We thought we knew how a Communist country could transform itself into a capitalist one. The general understanding was that as the world became more connected, it also would become more prosperous. Now, with Russia and much of Asia having crashed, with Eastern Europe and Latin America imperiled and with much of Africa going backward, the certainties of only a year ago seem far from certain.—'
"Some other headlines around the same time were 'Global Capitalism, Once Triumphant, Is in Full Retreat' by Robert J. Samuelson in Newsweek, 'In Russia, the Liberal Western Model Has Failed 'by Martin Malia in International Herald Tribune etc. There were similar articles in Foreign Affairs of CFR, Washington and other journals. After chiding Asians for their crony capitalism , in Sep 1998, LTMC a big US Investment firm run by two 1997 Nobel Prize Winners for Economics (derivative trading?) had to be bailed out as its bets around the world amounted to US$ 100 billion. Perhaps in expatiation Amritya Sen was given next year's prize for his writings on famines and democracy. "… from my article "Capitalism in Crisis and Failure of Globalization" - at the end. (It was published in the Romanian Journal of International Affairs, Bucharest Volume VI 1-2 , October , 2000)
Even in the so called socialist era in India before 1991, Indian state sector had lower share in GDP than that sector in UK, but India was demonized by the West as almost a communist state for not opening India to FDI. It is policies of that era implemented by Nehru and others that gave the economic and industrial strength and resilience, and human resources to build up the Indian industry.
Even then officers, especially in economic affairs department of Indian Ministry of Finance and elsewhere (with possibilities of a deputation to the West controlled Institutions) were chosen with tacit approval from USA controlling the IMF, World Bank and other Washington consensus institutes. They were, if found in tune with western thinking, then seconded to these Institutions. They earned fat pensions and have continued to promote policies favoring the West. These gentlemen and others retiring from multinationals have the temerity to write against Nehru's economic policies. Many are in important decision making positions in India. Somebody should request Wajahat Habibullah, Chief of Central Information Commission for information on the pensions earned by these worthies, who now are in the government or writing in corporate owned Indian media promoting unabashed capitalism and globalization. The list will amaze the Aam Aadmi and explain, why when they say that India is shining, the electorate votes out the villains (in walks another set)
Let me give an example from elsewhere.
Victor Yushchenko
Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko as the head of the newly-formed National Bank of Ukraine in 1993 enforced the IMF's usual shock therapy economic medicine which only impoverished the economy. He created a new Ukrainian national currency, which resulted in a dramatic plunge in real wages and the standard of living tumbled. In 1999, Yushchenko was appointed Prime Minister because of loans which IMF etc. had promised. In the now discredited IMF programs, it closed down part of the country's manufacturing base. Yushchenko also tried to undermine bilateral trade in oil and natural gas with Russia and demanded that this trade be conducted in US dollars rather than in terms of commodity barter. In 2001, he was dismissed following a non-confidence vote in the parliament - "Viktor Yushchenko has fulfilled obligations to the IMF better and more accurately than his duties to citizens of his our country, Olena Markosyan, a Kharkiv-based analyst, opined in Ukrainian centrist daily Den" (BBC Monitoring, 16 Nov 2004).
Yushchenko was elected President in a December, 2004 re-poll as a result of US led West supported franchised 'street revolutions', earlier carried out successfully in Serbia and Georgia but which failed in Belarus , Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. There were many write ups in Guardian, Globalsearch and other websites which documented western agencies' massive financial and logistic support to Yushchenko. According to New Statesman Yushchenko was supported covertly by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Freedom House and George Soros' Open Society Institute, the very entities, which helped oust Shevardnadze in Georgia the previous year. The NED has four affiliate institutes: The International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). They" provide technical assistance to aspiring democrats worldwide." Basically they help install pro-US puppets under the pretext of promoting democracy.
While in 1990s and earlier, countries like Mexico. Brazil. Argentina, Thailand. Indonesia became victims of recession this time it is the United States. In my view it is always the speculation on land and buildings, which have no agreed intrinsic value in crunch, which bring economic downfall as in South East Asia in 1997-98. Indians have still not caught on but I have been saying since many months that the land and housing values in spite of genuine demand have reached too sky high. They are not commensurate with returns on rents aka; speculation capital has entered the sector even from abroad. The housing and land price boom will soon come down sharply.
Basically using jiggery pokery the investment banks and speculators in the West have created various kinds of funds and liquidity and disappointed with the returns from one country go to another, demanding opportunities for direct investment (FDI). "Eventually it becomes clear that the investment opportunity wasn't all it seemed to be, and the money rushes out again, with nasty consequences for the former financial favorite. That's the story of multiple financial crises in Latin America and Asia. And it's also the story of the U.S. combined housing and credit bubble. These days, we're playing the role usually assigned to third-world economies," said US economist Paul Krugman in New York Times last week.
In early in 2005, Ben Bernanke before he was named chairman of the US Federal Reserve asked: "Why is the United States, with the world's largest economy, borrowing heavily on international capital markets "rather than lending, as would seem more natural?" His answer was that the main explanation lay not here in America, but abroad. In particular, third world economies, which had been investor favorites for much of the 1990s, were shaken by a series of financial crises beginning in 1997. As a result, they abruptly switched from being destinations for capital to sources of capital, as their governments began accumulating huge precautionary hoards of overseas assets.
The result, said Mr. Bernanke, there was a "global saving glut": lots of money. In the end, most of that was forced to go to the United States. Why? Because, said Mr. Bernanke, of the "depth and sophistication of the country's financial markets." Krugman retorts that those U.S. financial markets, it turns out, were characterized less by sophistication than by sophistry, which" my dictionary defines as a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone." E.g., "Repackaging dubious loans into collateralized debt obligations creates a lot of perfectly safe, AAA assets that will never go bad."
Continues Krugman, "In other words, the United States was not, in fact, uniquely well-suited to make use of the world's surplus funds." It was, instead, a place where large sums could be and were invested very badly. Directly or indirectly, capital flowing into America from global investors ended up financing a housing-and-credit bubble that has now burst, with painful consequences."
Another main reason is US-Saudi axis , with the former protecting the degenerate but Wahhabi ideology spreading dynasty (and others in the Gulf) through Madarsas and support to Jihadis and nominating oil prices in US dollars , forcing the oil importing nations to keep US dollar reserves. But slowly things are changing with oil prices being quoted in Euros or basket of currencies and other such measures. And transfer of dollars into Euros. Iran President Ahmadinejad must be delighted.
An apologia; I am a simple electrical engineering graduate from Banaras of 1958 vintage, who taught it at Patiala for three years and found that chief engineers at IDPL ,which I managed in 1985 and 86 remembered even less of engineering. The job was all about management. In spite of efforts to learn economics I remain a dilettante. Still I keep on trying.
The article below was written for late President K.R Narayanan. Having been his First Secretary in early 1970s when he was Ambassador to Ankara he was very kind and always granted me an audience of half an hour or more whenever I visited Delhi, when he resided up at the Raisina Hill. He also indulged me to 'lecture' on whatever I was writing on. I had spoken to him in early 2000 about the crisis in Capitalism. Next day he telephoned to enquire if I had written much on the subject. So I wrote this piece for him.
It was written based on some further reading of the history of Capitalism and Banking dynasties, and experience of postings and tours in communist and post-Communist countries like Romania, Germany (East), Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan among others. It will provide a useful background on post Communist era, when mafias have taken over many of the institutions if not these countries for the US led west.
Unlike George Bush, who has approval rating of just over 30% in USA, Vladimir Putin has an approval rating of over 70 % in Russia. According to a recent Public Opinion Barometer, conducted by the Soros Foundation Nicolae Ceausescu the demonized dictator remains in the first position of great Romanian leaders during the last hundred years, with 23 per cent votes, followed by current President Traian Basescu, with 15 per cent. The lower positions are taken by Ion Iliescu (7 percent), Kings Carol I (6 per cent) and Mihai I (6 per cent), Gheorghiu Dej (3 percent), King Ferdinand (3 per cent), Nicolae Titulescu (2 per cent), King Carol II (2 per cent), Ion Antonescu (2 per cent), Emil Constantinescu (1 per cent.)
More by : K. Gajendra Singh
Hi, Excellent article but the strength of US is coming from the weekness of others. So how ever the weakness of US, it is self-defeating untill other economies grow strong.
andy william

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Elvis Presley sang about them; Al Capone was afraid of them. The legendary Purple Gang rose from a Jewish ghetto in Detroit to rule the river during the Motor City's booming 1920s heyday. Their dramatic story is revealed in THE PURPLES, a novel blending rich historical detail with nonstop suspense, narrated by the gang's leader—the cool, savvy, unforgettable Joe Bernstein.
While trying to control the pipeline connecting dry America to wet Canada, Joe also must contend with having "a sweetheart in the nut house" and rising tensions within his gang. Worst of all, the D.A.'s office has hired an amputee war hero named Riley—who always seems to be one step ahead of Joe's big plans.
A fast-paced thriller, THE PURPLES blends richly-detailed historical fiction with nonstop action, all narrated by the smart, cynical but self-deluding Joe Bernstein.
After many years writing feature articles for national publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Wired, as well as several nonfiction books for Penguin, Random House and other publishers, Warren (W. K.) Berger plunged into writing his first novel. The idea for THE PURPLES came out of a long-ago family connection to the infamous Purple Gang, a wild group of rumrunners who ruled Detroit during Prohibition. (His connection is to the man who took them down.) With some facts and a lot of imagination Berger chronicles the gang's swift rise and fall through the voice of their smart, cynical, and slightly self-delusional leader, Joe. Find much more info about the writing, setting and characters (along with photos, music and a book trailer) at http://ThePurplesBook.com, and more info about author W. K. Berger's other writing at http://warrenberger.com.


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text:
2018 MCHAP AWARD CYCLE BEGINS
The Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture is thrilled to announce the commencement of the third cycle of The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) with a series of noteworthy public events happening this spring at S.R. Crown Hall, home of IIT College of Architecture.
The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) recognizes outstanding built works of architecture that acknowledge the altered circumstances of the human condition in our contemporary age. Honoring projects that consider how we might elevate the quality of our built environments by extending our interests beyond the proverbial four walls, the MCHAP process examines the many excellent works realized in the Americas as recommended by an international and interdisciplinary group of nominators.
The Americas Prize is awarded to the best architectural work in the Americas realized in the preceding two years of each cycle. The authors of the winning project will be recognized with the MCHAP Award, the MCHAP Chair at Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture for the following academic year and funding of towards research and a publication. MCHAP also recognizes, with the Prize for Emerging Architecture, an outstanding built work in the Americas by an emerging practice, within the same time period. The authors of the winning project will be recognized with the MCHAP.emerge Award, the MCHAP Research Professorship in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology for the following academic year where they will lead a studio and funding towards research and a publication.
Significantly, the awarding of the MCHAP prize is preceded and followed by extensive processes of public discourse that aim to generate a dialogue regarding the larger state of architectural work in the Americas in recent years. It is this dialogue among designers, scholars, and urban thinkers that is the objective of the commendation – building a bridge between students, curricula, and professional practice.
The commencement of this third cycle (2018 MCHAP) is marked by an exhibit in SR Crown Hall of the nominated works, the convening of this cycle's esteemed jury, and a public lecture delivered by the jury chair, Ricky Burdett.
The 2018 MCHAP Jury:
Ricky Burdett CBE, Professor of Urban Studies and Director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age Programme, 2018 MCHAP Jury Chair
Jose Castillo, Principal, Arquitectura 911sc, Mexico City
Ron Henderson, Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology and Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism
Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, Professor, Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Estudios Urbanos, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile
Claire Weisz, Founding Principal of WXY, New York
Dirk Denison, Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, Founder of Dirk Denison Architects, Chicago, and Director of Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize
2018 MCHAP Events:
Wednesday, 28 February
6pm, S. R. Crown Hall
Ricky Burdett Lecture: Shaping Cities
"2.5 billion more people will living in cities by 2050. The decisions we take in the next decades will affect life in cities – especially in Africa and Asia – for generations to come. Nearly 80% of the urban infrastructure that will exist in 2050 in India has yet to be built. The lecture will explore how different types of urban systems can act as straightjackets or provide more open and resilient frameworks to respond to known and unknown social and environmental challenges."
Friday, 2 March
5:30pm, S. R. Crown Hall
Exhibition Opening of the 2018 MCHAP Nominated Projects
Summary dossiers of all nominated projects will be displayed for public viewing in SR Crown Hall, 3360 S. State St. The exhibit formally opens with a reception for IIT College of Architecture alumni and guests. The nominated works will be on display through Saturday, 17 March, at SR Crown Hall, thematically curated by IIT students.
Thursday, 12 April
2018 MCHAP for Emerging Practice Symposium
The MCHAP.emerge Symposium will feature presentations by MCHAP.emerge Finalists practices and a roundtable discussion with the 2018 MCHAP jury, engaging the IIT Architecture faculty and student body, as well as the larger MCHAP Network and Chicago architecture community.
2018 MCHAP for Emerging Practice Awards Dinner and Reception
The MCHAP.emerge 2016/17 finalists will be presented at an evening award dinner that concludes with the winner announcement. The authors of the winning project will be recognized with the MCHAP.emerge Award, the MCHAP Research Professorship in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology and funding of a publication related to agreed upon research. The evening's program will feature a conversation with Pezo von Ellrichshausen, the inaugural winners of the MCHAP for Emerging Practice Award.
Maurico Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen, inaugural winners of the MCHAP for Emerging Practice Award for their Polli House, Chile, will discuss their practice, teaching residency at IIT COA, and their MCHAP Publication ""Naive Intention". The conversation will be moderated by Dean Michelangelo Sabatino.
The MCHAP Benefit and Emerging Practice Award is a ticketed event. Details forthcoming.
MCHAP and IIT College of Architecture graciously acknowledge the continued support of the Kohler Foundation, The Alphawood Foundation, and The Mies Society at IIT for making this endeavor possible.


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10 Nights | ROUTE TO THE BALKANS
Dubrovnik is a gorgeous Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist resorts of the Mediterranean and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. The city is nicknamed "Pearl of the Adriatic". The success of Dubrovnik's tourist industry has brought a certain degree of complacency and self-satisfaction. Certain aspects of the city's appeal remain immune to tourist numbers, however, most notably the uniquely stunning setting and the unjaded straightforwardness of the Dubrovčani themselves.
Venice is a city in northeastern Italy sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges. The city is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture, and its artwork. The city in its entirety is listed as a World Heritage Site, along with its lagoon. Venice has been known as the La Dominante, Serenissima, Queen of the Adriatic, City of Water, City of Masks, City of Bridges, The Floating City, and City of Canals. It has also been described as being one of Europe's most romantic cities. It is truly an amazing, stunning and interesting city for the adventurous to explore!
Pisa is a city in central Italy's Tuscany region best known for its iconic Leaning Tower (the bell tower of the city's cathedral). Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the city contains more than 20 other historic churches, several medieval palaces and various bridges across the River Arno. Much of the city's architecture was financed from its history as one of the Italian maritime republics. The city is also home of the University of Pisa, which has a history going back to the 12th century and also has the mythic Napoleonic Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies as the best sanctioned Superior Graduate Schools in Italy.
Corfu, an island off Greece's northwest coast in the Ionian Sea, is defined by rugged mountains and a resort-studded shoreline. Nicknamed ''the island of the Phaeacians'', Corfu is home to the Ionian University. Known also as Kerkyra, is the northernmost of the Ionian Islands in Greece. Located off of the far northwest coast of the country, Corfu lies in the Adriatic sea, east of Italy and southwest of Albania. Historically Corfu has been controlled by many foreign powers, notably the Venetians, French, and British.
Positano is a village and comune on the Amalfi Coast (Costiera Amalfitana), in Campania, Italy. The main part of the city sits in an enclave in the hills leading down to the coast. The church of Santa Maria Assunta features a dome made of majolica tiles as well as a 13th century Byzantine icon of a black Madonna. According to local legend, the icon had been stolen from Byzantium and was being transported by pirates across the Mediterranean. A terrible storm had blown up in the waters opposite Positano and the frightened sailors heard a voice on board saying "Posa, posa!" ("Put down! Put down!"). The precious icon was unloaded and carried to the fishing village and the storm abated.
Kotor is a coastal town in Montenegro with a population of about 13,500. It is well-known for its World heritage medieval structures (including churches and fortifications) and its stunning natural setting at the very edge of the mountain-rimmed Kotor Bay. It is situated in a most secluded tip of Boka Kotorska bay, in the northern part of the Montenegro coast on the Adriatic Sea. Kotor has developed around Stari Grad (local language for "old town"), the city's old town and best known landmark, which is listed with UNESCO World heritage sites. Kotor Bay is the deepest natural fjord-like bay in the Mediterranean Sea, and the scenery around it (including the steep mountains which come almost straight down to the waters edge) is spectacular.
Monte Carlo, officially refers to an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is located. Monaco has four traditional quarters - from west to east they are: Fontvieille (the newest), Monaco-Ville (the oldest), La Condamine, and Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo (literally "Mount Charles") is situated on a prominent escarpment at the base of the Maritime Alps along the French Riviera. Near the western end of the quarter is the world-famous Place du Casino, the gambling center which has made Monte Carlo "an international byword for the extravagant display and reckless dispersal of wealth". It is also the location of the Hôtel de Paris, the Café de Paris, and the Salle Garnier (the casino theatre which is the home of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo).
Civitavecchia is a town and comune of the Metropolitan City of Rome in the central Italian region of Lazio. A sea port on the Tyrrhenian Sea, the name ''Civitavecchia'' means "ancient town". The modern city was built over a pre-existing Etruscan settlement. The massive Forte Michelangelo was first commissioned from Donato Bramante by Pope Julius II, to defend the port of Rome. The upper part of the "maschio" tower, however, was designed by Michelangelo, whose name is generally applied to the fortress. North of the city at Ficoncella are the Terme Taurine baths frequented by Romans and still popular with the Civitavecchiesi. The modern name stems from the common fig plants among the various pools. And also next to the town is the location of the cruise ship docks. All major cruise lines start and end their cruises at this location, and others stop for shore excursion days that allow guests to see Rome and Vatican sights, which are ninety minutes away.
STARS & SEASIDES
From Cabo San Lucas
Cabo San Lucas, Tahiti, Honolulu, Costa Rica, Hilo, Havana, Los Angeles, Miami, Acapulco de Juárez, Moorea, Cartagena, Kahului, Bahías de Huatulco, Municipio de Corinto, Nuku Hiva
TRANSATLANTIC TRAVELER
From Barcelona
Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Miami, Cartagena, 80133
PACIFIC STARS
From Tahiti
Tahiti, Honolulu, Hilo, Los Angeles, Bora Bora, Kahului, Rangiroa, Nāwiliwili, Nuku Hiva
NORTH SEA WAYFARER
From Copenhagen
Copenhagen, St Petersburg, Oslo, Riga, Bordeaux, Stockholm, Porto, Lisbon
WINDMILLS & WATERWAYS
Newcastle upon Tyne, Copenhagen, Paris, Belfast, Antwerp, Londonderry, Admiral Street Police Station (Merseyside Police), Southampton, Oslo, Hamburg, Dublin South, Gothenburg, The Convent Amsterdam, Norfolk Island, Zeebrugge, Justvik, An Cobh, Weymouth, Massachusetts
DIVINE CLASSICS
From Corsica
Corsica, Valletta, Cannes, Messina, Italy, Rhodes, Mykonos, Barcelona, Piraeus, Santorini Airport, Zakynthos, Civitavecchia
From Ibiza Town
Ibiza Town, Florence, Saint-Tropez, Marseille, Barcelona, Valencia, Monte Carlo, Mahon, Civitavecchia, Cinque Terre, Santo Stefano
PICTURESQUE PANAMA
Cabo San Lucas, San Diego, Los Angeles, Key West, Miami, Acapulco de Juárez, Cartagena, Rena
More about Oceania Cruises


I'm using GIMP V2.8.14 on Windows 10 and I had the same problem as above. I also found that trying to create a drop shadow on text by Filters->Light and Shadow->Drop Shadow... didn't seem to pull up a drop shadow window, but I could get one using Tools->GEGL Operation... I would wish that the developers of this tool would make the parameters sticky, so that the settings (X, Y, Opacity and... Creating a Drop Shadow¶ Now we may want to get a little fancier and add an effect of a drop shadow behind the logo to make it seem as if it's floating above the background. We've already created what we need to generate this effect, we just need to move a couple of things around to do so.
GIMP :: Moving The Drop Shadow? Aug 16, 2012. Upon inserting a .xcf drop-shadowed image into another .xcf image - by selecting Open As Layers - it inserts fine, but when I select the Move tool to move the image, the drop shadow doesn't move with the image.
Hold down the Shift key to activate the "Add to the current selection" function and click all the white areas inside of the corkscrew. Invert the selection by going to Select > Invert. Step 2: Creating the layers needed for the shadow.
This filter adds a drop-shadow to the current selection or to the image if there's no active selection. Optional the filter resizes the image if that's necessary for displaying the shadow.
I am going to assume you are talking about the application "Gimp" In 'Gimp" you would usually change mainly the " C. Offset Angle. "


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Should Jay Inslee Run for President?
The Washington governor, best known for his climate agenda, has fueled speculation on a 2020 bid for over a year.
By Emma Scher 2/6/2019 at 12:30pm Published in the March 2019 issue of Seattle Met
Image: Courtesy Jay Inslee
"Representation matters. More and more people in our country look to government for leadership [but] they're not seeing people who look like them. Whether it's Inslee or somebody else, this is a perpetuation of a system that isn't living up to its values."
—Kristine Reeves, state representative, 30th Legislative District
"Governor Inslee has been a tireless environmental champion. That's welcome leadership here at home, but one that's sorely needed on the national stage."
—Nick Abraham, former spokesperson, Yes on 1631 campaign
"Most of the country will say, 'Jay who?' Very few governors have a national profile… But you can make money by betting on the underdog. He has a profile that's distinctive from what everyone else is offering at this point."
—Mark Smith, associate chair, University of Washington Department of Political Science
Presidential Election, 2020 Presidential Election, Jay Inslee


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GIBS HomeNews & EventsEventsForumsAndrew Jennings- Global Retail Executive to the World's Top Brands
Andrew Jennings- Global Retail Executive to the World's Top Brands
TOPIC: CORPORATE GOVERNANCE & RISK , ECONOMICS , MARKETING / SALES , OPS MANAGEMENT , RESEARCH / KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT , STRATEGY , SUPPLY CHAIN , INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY , TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT , MANAGEMENT , CEO , ADMINISTRATION , BOARD AND DIRECTOR DEVELOPMENT , FINANCE , HUMAN RESOURCES , PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Start date: 22 October 2018
Sibongile Nkawu: +27 11 771 4390
Nkawus@gibs.co.za
Andrew Jennings is a highly accomplished British senior retail executive with more than 45 years of achievement in leading some of the world's most respected high-end, speciality and department stores.
These include Harrods (General Manager) and House of Fraser (Managing Director) UK, Brown Thomas (Deputy Chairman) Ireland, Holt Renfrew (President) Canada, Saks Fifth Avenue (President) USA, Woolworths (CEO) South Africa and Karstadt Group (CEO) Germany. Recognised for his leadership capabilities and performance-driven management style, Andrew commands a vast knowledge of consumer trends, vendor networks and retail practices in both mature and emerging markets. He has distinguished himself in six countries and on four continents with his agility to translate traditional business models into modern retailing in an increasingly fast-paced world of change.
Key to his sustained success is his ability to adapt his approach to address the challenges and optimise the opportunities presented by dynamic trading environments at pivotal stages in their evolution - from the sophistication of London to the new world complexities of South Africa. Recognised for his trademark passion for brands, breakthrough marketing and the creation of memorable consumer experiences, Andrew was decorated by the Italian Government for his excellence in retail as a Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito (Italian Knighthood) in 2006.
Having recently launched the next chapter of his international career as Senior Retail Advisor, Chairman and Board Member, Andrew is now permanently based in London working with retailers, private equity companies and consulting groups. These include Ted Baker PLC, Hema Europe, Alpha Wealth (SA) and Curzon movie business.
A respected voice for the retail industry, he is a sought-after speaker at conferences and forums on the subject of leadership, change and innovation.
In November 2017, Andrew launched his book titled Almost is Not Good Enough – How to Win or Lose in Retail, sharing pertinent experiences and lessons from his career. His book includes contributions from thirty four Retail CEOs and Presidents from around the world on how to remain relevant in today's fast changing retail environment. The book has been very well received and was shortlisted for Best Business Book of 2018.
Andrew is chairman of the Prince's Trust Retail Leadership Group – a charity which assists disadvantaged, out of work young people. With a strong belief in the integral role that young people play in the retail field, he has a constant focus on the recognition and development of young talent affording them the opportunity to commence and progress their careers. All proceeds from the sale of his book are being donated to The Prince's Trust.
Registration: 17:45
Ends: 19:30
A light supper will be served after the event.
Want to attend but can't afford to? email nkawus@gibs.co.za for one of the limited free seats available.
Please note that GIBS forums are filmed for City Press and BDTV


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Wimbledon has a way of outdoing itself.
Remember last year when Roger Federer and Andy Roddick went thirty games in the fifth set before a champion was crowned? Well that wasn't quite good enoughfor us, so this year we had to go 138 games in the decider of a first round match before we decided who would advance. And we're not even through the first week yet!
So how on earth can this fortnight get any better? Well here are a few possibilities that would make the Championships even more amazing than they already have been.
Fabio Fognini, the Comeback King
It wasn't long ago that the Italian's second round match against Gael Monfils was the most talked-about darkness-suspended match in tennis. After losing the first two sets, the then-#92 Fognini rallied to even the score against the hometown favorite, endured a much-maligned discussion about whether to continue play, and ultimately notched the upset 9-7 in the fifth. He didn't have to deal with darkness in London today, but he did again trail the U.S.'s Michael Russell after about ninety minutes of play and spent the next two hours fighting back. He was down a break to start the decider, but proved himself to be quite the five-set master when after another sixty minutes he pulled off another win.
So maybe that will be his "thing" -- letting his opponent get comfortable before plowing through from behind. At Roland Garros the hangover was apparently too much to handle, and Fabio lost in the next round, but maybe he's learned from that experience. Next up at Wimbledon he faces Julien Benneteau, a man who's already played two five-setters himself this week -- I wouldn't be surprised if he got the upset. And with either Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who's never gotten past the fourth round here, or qualifier Tobias Kamke waiting for him next, this could be Fognini's opportunity to break out.
And if he happens to improve his five-set record on the way, all the better.
A Qualifier Wins the Trophy
I made a mistake earlier this week when I classified Goran Ivanisevic as a qualifier when he won the Wimbledon title back in 2001. As it turns out, he was simply the lowest ranked player ever to win at #125 in the world. Obviously it would be difficult for someone who already battled through three preliminary rounds to then endure another seven, but hey, it could happen. This year the women's draw boasts two ladies who might just have a chance -- if not to win, at least to cause more damage than they already have.
Thirty-one year old Greta Arn lost the first set of her final qualifying match but was able to force her way into the main draw for only the third time in her career. The Hungarian was originally supposed to play Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez in the first round, but when the Spaniard pulled out she was replaced by a slightly less dangerous Kateryna Bondarenko. Arn, who'd only won a single match at Wimbledon before this year, took her first set in a decisive tiebreak and held tough after dropping the second to get the win. She then battled through a feisty Alicia Molik to notch her best ever appearance at the All England Club. It'll be a battle to get past former runner-up Marion Bartoli in the next round, but if she does she could have a clear road to at least the quarters.
On the top half of the bracket former top-twenty player Kaia Kanepi followed up on her #1 seeding in the qualifiers and stunned French Open runner-up Sam Stosur in the first round. She took a little more time to dispatch Romanian Edina Gallovits in the second, but ultimately set up a date with up-and-comer Alexandra Dulgheru. The two have never met, but Kanepi has got to like her chances better than she did a few days ago -- one more win gives her a ton of momentum in a quarter that's really wide open.
Sure, it's a long road from the third round to the final, but we've seen just how strange things can get.
Nicolas Mahut Wins the Doubles Crown
Actually the only titles the runner-up in the Best Match Ever -- you certainly can't call him a loser -- has won have been in doubles. Just a few hours after heart-breaking defeat, Mahut returned to Court 18 with partner Arnaud Clement to play his first round doubles match. And for the third straight day his play was suspended for darkness with the Frenchmen losing the first set tiebreak.
There's no reason the pair can't rally tomorrow to take out Colin Flemming and Kenneth Skupski, but their bigger challenge would come the following round when they would meet four-time finalists Bob and Mike Bryan. Still no one is invulnerable, and it would be a sort of poetic justice if Mahut came away from this tournament with a little bit more.
They Meet Again
Somewhere down the road, the paths of John Isner and Nicolas Mahut will cross again, so why shouldn't it be at the U.S. Open? Maybe even the first round?
One thing's for certain though -- should that happen, we're sure to get a slightly quicker resolution as there are fifth set tiebreaks at Flushing Meadows. Though maybe officials would suspend that rule for the rematch. Just the once.
Yes, I know these are all long shots, and I can't even pretend I expect any of them to happen. But in a world where Roger Federer is almost ousted on the first day, where the Queen of England graces Centre Court with her presence, and where one match lasts three sun-filled days, I won't count anything out.
Labels: Fabio Fognini, Greta Arn, John Isner, Kaia Kanepi, Nicolas Mahut, Wimbledon
Interesting predictions, we'll have to see how they all play out!
I've linked to yours from mine:
tenaciouslytennis.wordpress.com


LIVE IN JOY. Our joy bursts from being good, doing good and feeling our connectedness with all living things. The good feeling that gets us up when we are tired is this joy for living… so we may go on happy and do more good. So we may enJOY the beauty all around and within.
There is no reason ever to be discouraged, to doubt, to hesitate or turn back. Dance your joy! Laugh often! Live deeply! Spread joy!! ?


The initial pinch bending roll model of the ASI series is the best solution for bending plates with thickness between 1 mm and 9 mm and width from 1000 mm to 3000 mm. The reliability of the ASI series is guaranteed by its solid electro-welded structure, oversized and assembled on steel rods. In addition, asymmetric geometry in the roll movement featured by the 3-roll bending rolls of the series assures optimal traction and prevents slipping of thin plates during pre-bending: the side roll moves on a linear guide that bends the material close to the pinching point, thus assuring a high quality result comparable to that obtained with more expensive models of 4-rolls plate bending rolls.
ASI asymmetrical bending rolls assure ease of use thanks to the foot control that allows a single operator to fully control all stages, from plate feeding, to pre-bending and bending operations.
ASI asymmetric initial pinch bending roll models can be fitted with rolls for profiles and rolls for tubes. Furthermore, all bending machines of the series are supplied as standard with roll shaft extension, which makes it possible to bend profiles. Thanks to the stiff self-supporting frame, ASI 3-roll bending rolls designed, manufactured and sold by Faccin can be placed securely on any type of surface. Faccin's ASI series asymmetric bending rolls are the best solution to roll cylinders, assuring the highest performance against a minimum initial investment.


It would seem like those with thick, straight hair don't have much to complain about, as the rest of us covet their healthy, shiny straight hair. However, thick, straight hair can be a little difficult to style. Read on for tips on how to get your thick, straight hair to hold a curl.
It's best to start with dirty hair, as it can hold shape a little better than hair that's squeaky clean. Separate your hair into sections and, using a one-inch barrel curling iron, curl very small sections of hair at a time. After releasing the curl, wind it back into its curl shape and clip it to your head to let it set — this will ensure a long-lasting curl.
Set your curls with a strong hold hairspray. Be careful not to overdo it, as you don't want to encourage a crunchy look.
Thick, straight hair doesn't also have to be boring. Experiment with a curling iron and find out what works best for your hair. Explore other styles for thick, straight hair in our style gallery.
Once you've conquered curling your thick, straight hair, try these 12 easy curly hairstyles on your new versatile hair.


skin tag removal in : A skin tag is a small, soft, benign skin growth, often on a stalk.; Skin tags are probably the single most common bump on skin. Skin tags are harmless but can be annoying. Skin tags tend to occur on the eyelids, neck, armpits, groin folds, and under .Wondering how to remove skin tags? You're not alone. According to dermatologist Laurel Naversen Geraghty, skin tag removal is something patients ask her constantly. "People come to me every day ...It can helpful to know how to remove skin tags safely, but do not try to burn, freeze, cut off, tie off, or apply duct tape or nail polish to skin tags; you risk infection and scarring. Natural treatments for how to remove skin tags may take days, weeks, or longer to help. Be patient and consistent with your treatment.Skin tags don't usually require treatment or a visit to the doctor. If you choose to remove a tag, it's possible to do so with products already in your medicine cabinet or kitchen.Here are the best ways to remove skin tags. Removing skin tags at home will restore your skin to a healthy condition. It can happen quickly or naturally, depending on your preference. Read this article to know how.Continued Can I Remove It Myself? Sometimes people try to cut skin tags off themselves or tie them off with fishing line. Don't do this. It can cause bleeding and possible infection.7 Fantastic Home Remedies To Remove Skin Tags. By Joan Clark. Skin tags are a type of benign skin growth that looks like a tiny flap of skin. These are harmless from a medical standpoint, but they can harm a person's self-esteem so getting rid of them is a priority. There are medical treatments, but in many cases, insurance will not cover them.Skin tags can be irritating and unattractive, especially when they seem to pop up continuously. Making frequent trips to a physician to remove skin tags can be just as irritating. You can remove skin tags at home, however, and there are several ways that you can do it.Skin tags are harmless, but some people choose to eliminate large or noticeable tags for cosmetic reasons. There are many simple methods of removal, including creams and freezing kits. In this ...Skin tags are painless and harmless, but you should always remove them. This is the only dermatologist-recommended way to get rid of them.
What Happens When You Get a Mole or Skin Tag Removed?


Amazon just updated their website and now has the incredible W.E. soundtrack by Abel Korzeniowski up for pre-order.
The Golden Globe nominated music from Madonna's upcoming film W.E. composed, orchestrated and produced by Abel Korzeniowski , which also includes Madonna's Golden Globe award winning song "Masterpiece", is scheduled to be released digitally on Interscope Records on January 31st, it was announced today. W.E. which was directed, co-written and produced by Madonna and distributed by The Weinstein Company is scheduled to be released in February.
The Polish born Los Angeles based Korzeniowski previously wrote the original score for the Tom Ford film A Single Man for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination.
"The prevailing sense of obsession was what inspired me in W.E. — the irrational compulsion to sacrifice everything and anything for love – a love that could easily be just an illusion. In my music, I wanted to reflect those powerful and conflicting emotions through a web of melodic themes, which relentlessly repeat and constantly swing between despair and sorrow, and hope and joy," commented Korzeniowski.
"W.E." tells the story of American divorcee Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) and England's King Edward (James D'Arcy) who abdicated his thrown to be with the woman he loved. It is considered one of the greatest love stories of the 20th century. The story is told through the eyes of a modern day New Yorker Wally Winthrop (Abby Cornish). Composer Korzeniowski masterfully and seamlessly bridged the two unique worlds of Europe in the 30's and 40's and the contemporary Manhattan environment of a woman lost in her dreams of the perfect love.
In addition to Korzeniowski's magnificent score, the soundtrack includes the original song "Masterpiece" composed by Madonna, Julie Frost and Jimmy Harry and sung by Madonna which is played during the end credits of the film. It will also be included on Madonna's upcoming solo album for Interscope, MDNA, which is scheduled for release this spring.


Thanks for posting the first 15 minutes :) The show did not air in my area today.
I enjoyed Jane Velez-Mitchell today.
The story of the woman who had acid thrown on her was horrifying; to think that there are such evil people in our world.
I don't watch Scandal, but found Tony Goldwyn interesting as a guest.
I wish 'Anderson Live' would quit giving out tacky gifts to their guests and making a big deal of it on air. I know of no other talk show that does this and it looks so unprofessional, not to mention cheap.
Speaking of unprofessional, Terence once again had to interject himself into the discussion today. It was obvious he just wanted TV face time as his question made no sense if he was actually listening to what Anderson was saying. (No Terence you didn't ask the question all of America was wondering - you made yourself look stupid and like an attention whore.) I loved Anderson's comeback - "I don't know why I'm talking to you - you're not the host!" - and then added "...that guy." Jane told Anderson she had his back. I have a feeling that Anderson is just counting the days until he doesn't have to see or deal with Terence again.
Apparently the talk show thinks everyone is interested in Terence's dog because they tweeted out a link to like the dog's Facebook page -- give me a break. I think there's a reason Anderson doesn't tweet about the talk show any more or add any photos from the talk show to his Instagram page. I think he's over it and almost embarrassed by the low it has sunk to these days. It's certainly not the talk show he originally described/promoted.
Jane V-M is ok, but she's SO HLN, meaning forceful and loud and OUTRAGED. It's a lot to take.
Love Scandal and Tony Goldwyn--been a fan of his since The Pelican Brief.
Terence is really trying to milk his moment in the sun for all its worth and AC is done with him obviously.
Jenn, I pretty much thought the same. At this point it really seems Anderson can't wait untill it's over and he doesn't have to deal with Terence (and a whole bunch of other not exately competent people from his crew) anymore.


I'm not in a rush. Probably a year out from a move to a place to set it up proper. I can store or set up in a tight area though.A storage unit big enough for a tore-down table would be pretty cheap. I don't have any affiliation with Highpockets but these are really good GC4's. A buddy plays there all the time and alerted me to the sale. If i had the do-re-mi i'd buy all five.


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SPAA Archives
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ALGOCLOUD 2021: Deadline Extended to 5th July
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**** Important: Submission Deadline Extended to 5th July, 2021****
ALGOCLOUD 2021
6th International Symposium on Algorithmic Aspects of Cloud Computing
September 6-7, 2021, Lisbon, Portugal - part of ALGO 2021
http://algo2021.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/ALGOCLOUD2021/index.html
*Submission deadline: July 5th, 2021 (AOE)*
ALGOCLOUD is an annual international symposium aiming to tackle the
diverse new topics in the emerging area of algorithmic aspects of
computing and data management in modern cloud-based systems interpreted
broadly so as to include edge- and fog-based systems, cloudlets, cloud
micro-services, virtualization environments, decentralized systems, as
well as dynamic networks.
ALGOCLOUD aims at bringing together researchers, students, and
practitioners to present research activities and results on topics
related to algorithmic, design, and development aspects of modern
cloud-based systems.
ALGOCLOUD 2021 is co-located with ALGO 2021, a leading international
event of researchers working on algorithms and their engineering.
ALGOCLOUD welcomes submissions on all theoretical, design, and
implementation aspects of modern cloud-based systems. ALGOCLOUD is
particularly interested in novel algorithms in the context of cloud
computing, cloud architectures, as well as experimental work that
evaluates contemporary cloud approaches and pertinent applications.
ALGOCLOUD also
welcomes demonstration manuscripts, which discuss successful system
developments, as well as experience/use-case articles and high-quality
survey papers. Contributions may span a wide range of algorithms for
modeling, practices for building and techniques for evaluating
operations and services in a variety of systems, including but not
limited to, virtualized infrastructures, cloud computing platforms, edge
computing platforms, fog computing platforms, datacenters, cloud-storage
options, cloud data management, non-traditional key-value stores on the
cloud, HPC architectures, decentralized systems, as well as dynamic
networks.
Submissions should focus on aspects of cloud-based systems and their
algorithms, including (but not limited to) the following areas:
-  Analysis of Algorithms and Data Structures
-  Algorithms for Decentralized Systems
-  Algorithms for Dynamic Networks
-  Game-theoretic Approaches for Cloud Computing
-  IoT and Cloud Computing
-  Resource Management and Scheduling
-  Data Center and Infrastructure Management
-  Privacy, Security and Anonymization
-  Cloud-based Applications
-  Virtualization and Containers
-  Performance Models
-  Cloud deployment tools and their analysis
-  Novel programming models
-  Storage management
-  Fog and Edge Computing
-  Economic models and Pricing
-  Energy and Power Management
-  Big Data and the Cloud
-  Network and graph analysis
-  Network Management and Techniques
-  Caching and Load Balancing
-  Machine Learning for Cloud Computing & Systems
-  Cloud Computing & Systems for Machine Learning
Submission deadline: *July 5, 2021 (AOE) - Extended*
Author Notification: August 1, 2021
Symposium: September 6-7, 2021
Submissions must be in the form of a single PDF file prepared using
Springer's LNCS style file
(https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs).
ALGOCLOUD 2021 asks for the following types of submissions:
- Regular paper submissions: authors are invited to submit high-quality
manuscripts reporting original unpublished research in the topics
related to the symposium. A regular paper submission should clearly
motivate the importance of the problem being addressed, discuss prior
work and its relationship to the paper, explicitly and precisely state
the paper's key contributions, and outline the key technical ideas and
methods used to achieve the main results. A regular paper submission
should not exceed 12 pages including title page and abstract, but
excluding references and an optional appendix. Authors should include
all necessary details in their submission so that the Program Committee
can judge correctness, importance and originality of their work. Any
material (e.g., proofs or experimental results) omitted (from the main
part of 12 pages) due to space limitations can be put into the optional
appendix, which will be read at the Program Committee's discretion.
Regular papers will be allotted up to 20 pages in the proceedings.
- Short paper submissions: a short paper submission may present
work-in-progress on a specific topic, or work appeared elsewhere (but is
worth publicizing it in the symposium), or a demonstration of a system
or library, or an experience/use-case paper, or a vision paper. Authors
should clearly motivate the importance of their contribution, discuss
prior work and its relationship to the paper, and in general provide
sufficient details in their submission so that the Program Committee can
judge the quality and importance of their work. A short paper submission
should be at least 2 and at most 8 pages. Short papers will be allotted
up to 8 pages in the proceedings.
- Survey paper submissions: a survey paper submission concerns the
write-up of a high-quality survey paper on an emerging hot topic.
Authors are asked to submit a proposal between 5 and 10 pages that
clearly motivates the importance of the topic, and contains the
structure of the survey paper along with the most important references
that will be critically reviewed and presented. If the proposal is
accepted, then authors will be given sufficient time (until end of
October 2021) to prepare the full version of their survey paper that
needs to pass a quality control check by the PC, in order to be finally
accepted and appear in the proceedings. Survey papers will be allotted
up to 40 pages in the proceedings.
All papers should be submitted electronically via the EasyChair
submission system through the link which will be available at the
ALGOCLOUD 2021 website.
By submitting a paper the authors acknowledge that in case of acceptance
at least one of the authors must register at ALGO/ALGOCLOUD 2021 and
present the paper (this holds for all types of papers, including
accepted survey proposals).
Authors should consult Springer's authors' instructions and use their
proceedings templates, either for LaTeX or for Word, for the preparation
of their papers. Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in
their papers. In addition, the corresponding author of each paper,
acting on behalf of all of the authors of that paper, must complete and
sign a Consent-to-Publish form. The corresponding author signing the
copyright form should match the corresponding author marked on the
paper. Once the files have been sent to Springer, changes relating to
the authorship of the papers cannot be made.
Springer's proceedings LaTeX templates are available in Overleaf.
Accepted papers will be included in the post-proceedings published by
Springer in its Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.
submission system at:
Submissions website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=algocloud2021
Awards will be given to the best regular paper and the best student
regular paper. A regular paper is eligible for the best student paper
award if at least one of the authors is a full-time student (Bachelor,
Master, or Ph.D.) at the time of submission and the student(s) must have
made a major contribution to the paper. The program committee can decide
to decline or to split the awards. Awards are sponsored by Springer.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIRS
Gianlorenzo D'Angelo, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy
Othon Michail, University of Liverpool, UK
Janna Burman, Universite Paris-Saclay, LISN, France
David Coudert, INRIA, France
Giuseppe Di Luna, University of Rome, La Sapienza, Italy
Klaus-Tycho Foerster, University of Vienna, Austria
Chryssis Georgiou, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Dariusz Kowalski, Augusta University, USA
Gianpiero Monaco, University of L'Aquila, Italy
Dennis Olivetti, University of Freiburg, Germany
Nikos Parotsidis, Google Zurich, Switzerland
Evaggelia Pitoura, University of Ioannina, Greece
Maria Potop-Butucaru, Sorbonne Universite - LIP6, France
Amitabh Trehan, Durham University, UK
Kostas Tsichlas, University of Patras, Greece
Prudence Wong, University of Liverpool, UK
############################
https://optout.acm.org/unsubscribe.cfm?rl=SPAA&RE=&UEMAIL;


23 Therefore he said559 that he would destroy8045 them, had not3884 Moses4872 his chosen972 stood5975 before6440 him in the breach,6556 to turn away7725 his wrath,2534 lest he should destroy4480 7843 them.
29 Thus they provoked him to anger3707 with their inventions:4611 and the plague4046 broke in6555 upon them.
36 And they served5647 853 their idols:6091 which were1961 a snare4170 unto them.
41 And he gave5414 them into the hand3027 of the heathen;1471 and they that hated8130 them ruled4910 over them.
viam civitatis habitaculi non invenerunt.
anima eorum in ipsis defecit.
ut irent in civitatem habitationis.
vinctos in mendicitate et ferro.
infirmati sunt, nec fuit qui adjuvaret.
et de necessitatibus eorum liberavit eos.
propter injustitias enim suas humiliati sunt.
et appropinquaverunt usque ad portas mortis.
et eripuit eos de interitionibus eorum.
et mirabilia ejus in profundo.
et exaltati sunt fluctus ejus.
et omnis sapientia eorum devorata est.
et de necessitatibus eorum eduxit eos.
et deduxit eos in portum voluntatis eorum.
a malitia inhabitantium in ea.
et terram sine aqua in exitus aquarum.
et jumenta eorum non minoravit.
et posuit sicut oves familias.
et omnis iniquitas oppilabit os suum.


Millets are a staple crop for tens of millions of people throughout Asia and Africa. Known as Smart Food, millets are gluten-free, and an excellent source of protein, calcium, iron, zinc, and dietary fiber. They can also be a better choice for farmers and the planet, requiring 30 percent less water than maize, 70 percent less water than rice, and can be grown with fewer expensive inputs, demanding little or no fertilizers and pesticides.
Despite these benefits, millets have fallen out of favor in recent decades, often being perceived as a low-value crop for the poor. Research and development money has mostly been dedicated to rice, maize, and wheat, and consequently, those crops became symbols of socio-economic improvement. Markets and supply chains developed to support them, consumers sought to eat them, and farmers were encouraged to grow them.
This perception is beginning to shift, however. In India, the federal government has declared 2018 as the National Year of Millets. Leading the way in shifting public perception are innovative chefs who recognize the nutritional and environmental benefits of millets, and are incorporating them into their menus to champion local agricultural diversity, experiment with new ingredients, and celebrate culinary traditions.
Food Tank is highlighting 10 chefs who are drawing from these traditional grains to inspire culinary innovations, transforming "old-fashioned" millets into foods for the future.
Ahaar Kuteer is an all-millet restaurant in Begumpet, Hyderabad. After 10 years in the IT industry, Sri Ram made a dramatic career change, founding the city's first eatery to focus primarily on millets, and is passionate about inspiring healthy diets by promoting millets as a better grain choice. Ahaar Kuteer is now a popular spot with vegans and health-conscious eaters, serving up millet-centric breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.
For chef and culinary entrepreneur Sabyasachi Gorai, the resurgence of millets will be more than just another trend. Gorai believes that their nutritional advantages and role in preserving India's agricultural biodiversity will cement millets in the culinary mainstream as flavorful and versatile ingredients. Signature Chef Saby dishes, like black olive millet risotto and millet cranberry laddoo are popularizing millets as a healthy and delicious grain alternative.
Prateek Sadhu is head chef at Masque, a Mumbai farm-to-fork restaurant that has made waves in the city's culinary scene since opening in 2016. Chef Sadhu's talent and creativity in the kitchen is apparent as he utilizes a dizzying variety of unusual, but always in-season ingredients for Masque's menu, which changes every two weeks. He believes in promoting the variety and versatility of local crops like millets, showing how they are suitable for nearly any setting, from traditional home-cooking to experimental fine-dining.
Surendra (Sunny) Gandharva and Manoj (Manu) Prajapat, are big fans of millets—the pair founded Millets of Mewar in 2011, in their hometown of Udaipur after years of cooking and promoting local, nutritious food. Millets of Mewar was a natural progression of this work, with millets being the centerpiece of a menu promoting healthy and environmentally conscious eating. The cafe also serves as a community hub, hosting artistic performances, book exchanges, and sustainability initiatives.
Pierre Thiam is arguably Senegal's best-known chef. But more than just a chef, he has been sharing Senegalese culinary traditions with the world. Among his priorities has been to popularize fonio, a variety of millet with over 5,000 years of history in Senegalese cuisine. Thiam is currently working to bring high profile New York City chefs to Senegal, in an effort to popularize the country's food in the West, which he hopes will result in a revitalization of native cuisine in Senegal, and preserve the diversity of traditional crops like fonio and other millet varieties with strong roots in African cultures.
N.S. Krishnamoorthi's restaurant Prems Graama Bhojanam (PGB) is based on a simple premise: traditional, rural dishes based around millets, brought to the city of Chennai. Krishnamoorthi has decades of cooking experience, traveling through much of India for work. During his travels, he fell for the village food he often enjoyed in homes and family-run hotels, coming from food cultures still steeped in tradition and local ingredients, including millets. He brought this approach to the big city. Millets are found in every dish on the menu at PGB, and Krishnamoorthi is happy his traditional approach is catching on with the next generation, with urban young adults forming the majority of his customer base.
Millets won over baker Jonathan Bethony during a tour of an organic grain farm, just outside his hometown of Washington D.C. Bethony had come to the farm looking to source wheat for his D.C. based bakery and mill, SEYLOU, but he left with another idea in mind. Inspired by how farmer Heinz Thomet managed his land by minimizing inputs, rotating crops, and growing a variety of cereal grains, he sought to support farmers like Thomet by incorporating other local grains into his baking. He immediately challenged his pastry chef to bake with only millets for a week. They were both impressed with the results, and creations including a millet canelé and a millet chocolate chip cookie have made it permanently onto their menu. Following his millet revelation, Bethony traveled to Africa to learn more about the Millet Business Services Project, an initiative working to improve the value chain of millets in Senegal.
When renowned chef Manu Chandra opened his 13th restaurant in Mumbai in 2017, he emphasized sustainability and utilizing local, seasonal ingredients as focal points of the new venture. Millets feature front and center in Chandra's food philosophy. He is a major proponent of the grains in India, citing their nutritional and environmental benefits, along with their versatility as an ingredient. Chandra has utilized millets in desserts, pancakes, salads, croquettes, and even featured a millet risotto bar at a large catering event.
The Bombay Canteen, located in Mumbai, has been listed as one of the world's 50 best restaurants, known for its high-quality menu emphasizing local ingredients. Executive chef Thomas Zacharias showcases regional Indian cuisine through the use of a variety of millets. Jowar, kodo, foxtail, and proso millets all make appearances on his ever-evolving menu. Zacharias sees the variety and versatility of millets as an enormous source of inspiration and culinary innovation. Given their nutritional benefits and cultural significance in Indian cuisine, he is hopeful that many more chefs will follow suit.
Chef Ramasamy Selvaraju is turning the preconception of millets as a food for the rural poor on its head at the upscale Vivanta, in Bangalore. Six months after introducing the grains onto his menu, customers were asking for even more millet-based options. Selvaraju sees this as an indication of the shifting perceptions of the urban middle class, who are beginning to seek out millets for their nutritional advantages. The breakfast buffet at Vivanta features a sorghum millet congee, proso millet banana loaf, and kodo millet muffins, among many other millet-based options. Selvaraju has even begun conducting workshops on cooking with the traditional grains.


text:
The Summits of Modern Man: Mountaineering after the Enlightenment
by Peter H. Hansen
eISBN: 978-0-674-07452-1 | Cloth: 978-0-674-04799-0
Library of Congress Classification GV199.89.H36 2013
Dewey Decimal Classification 796.522
ABOUT THIS BOOK | REVIEWS | TOC
The history of mountaineering has long served as a metaphor for civilization triumphant. Once upon a time, the Alps were an inaccessible habitat of specters and dragons, until heroic men—pioneers of enlightenment—scaled their summits, classified their strata and flora, and banished the phantoms forever. A fascinating interdisciplinary study of the first ascents of the major Alpine peaks and Mount Everest, The Summits of Modern Man surveys the far-ranging significance of our encounters with the world's most alluring and forbidding heights.
Our obsession with "who got to the top first" may have begun in 1786, the year Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard climbed Mont Blanc and inaugurated an era in which Romantic notions of the sublime spurred climbers' aspirations. In the following decades, climbing lost its revolutionary cachet as it became associated instead with bourgeois outdoor leisure. Still, the mythic stories of mountaineers, threaded through with themes of imperialism, masculinity, and ascendant Western science and culture, seized the imagination of artists and historians well into the twentieth century, providing grist for stage shows, poetry, films, and landscape paintings.
Today, we live on the threshold of a hot planet, where melting glaciers and rising sea levels create ambivalence about the conquest of nature. Long after Hillary and Tenzing's ascent of Everest, though, the image of modern man supreme on the mountaintop retains its currency. Peter Hansen's exploration of these persistent images indicates how difficult it is to imagine our relationship with nature in terms other than domination.
[A] learned and complex analysis of 'multiple modernities' as seen through the prism of mountaineering… One of the most revealing accounts of the Everest expedition that I have read.
-- Adam Thorpe Times Literary Supplement
[A] marvelous book...The Summits of Modern Man handily dispels rosy visions of the past...putting the lie to the contention that mountaineering was a once noble, principled pursuit that has only recently deteriorated.
-- Colin Dickey Los Angeles Review of Books
In this treatise on peak bagging and its post-Enlightenment significance, Peter Hansen unearths stories with a crampon-like grip. We meet star summiteers such as Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat, who both ascended Mont Blanc in 1786; nineteenth-century 'golden age' alpine mountaineers like physical scientist John Tyndall; and Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on Everest. But with today's retreating glaciers, Hansen reminds us that the idea of what it means to 'conquer' nature needs reconfiguring.
-- Nature
In his monumental work on mountaineering Peter Hansen explores the intricacies of climbing and theorizes on the act's social and psychological significance. The book under review is a serious engagement with men and mountains from the vantage points of social history, eco-critical theorizing and cultural geography...The Summits of Modern Man is a phenomenal achievement; it links facts, figures, and theory into one powerful and intriguing tale of the trekkers who ventured in to the vertical heights of mountains in search of solitude and victories...The Summits of Modern Man is not just another book on mountain climbing. It is an inquiry into the making of the modern world.
-- Murali Sivaramakrishnan The Hindu
In this wide-ranging and subtle cultural history of climbing, Peter H. Hansen explores our evolving relationship with the rocky heights. At the center of this (beautifully presented) study is the paradox that mountaineering, the ultimate team pursuit, has been mythologized as an individualistic contest.
-- Michael Kerrigan The Scotsman
[Hansen] focuses on the relationship between climber and mountain, the ropes that link humankind to the natural world, and how people have defined themselves through the summits they have 'conquered.' Nowhere is Hansen better than when he details the complex and varied meaning of the first successful Everest summit. Climbing, for Hansen, is an ascent into the clouds of ideas and images, and nature, as much as humans, is at the center of his quest.
-- R. W. Roberts Choice
Peter H. Hansen has long been known to specialists in the field of climbing history as a tireless researcher, subtle theorist, and compelling storyteller. The publication of The Summits of Modern Man brings him to the summit of mountaineering scholarship.
-- Maurice Isserman, Hamilton College
No one writes more interestingly about mountains and mountaineering than Peter Hansen. He is one of the best cultural historians of mountaineering out there.
-- Stewart Weaver, University of Rochester
1. Beginnings
2. Discovery of the Glacières
3. Ascent and Enfranchisement
4. Who Was First?
5. Temple of Nature
6. Social Climbers
7. Age of Conquest
8. History Detectives
9. Almost Together
10. Bodies of Ice
See other books on: Enlightenment | Modern Man | Mountaineering | Sports & Recreation | Summits
See other titles from Harvard University Press
Nearby on shelf for Recreation. Leisure / Outdoor life. Outdoor recreation / Mountaineering:
eISBN: 978-0-674-07452-1
Cloth: 978-0-674-04799-0