Cows—certain types ofbovinae—can evoke strong emotions among peo-ple, different emotions rooted in different worldviews. One worldview,which is arguably a galaxy of worldviews emerging over centuries in India,has come to be called “Hindu.” Some people who identify themselvesas Hindus have strong feelings about cows—feelings that tie into theirsense of conviction that cows are not just…
The IOL Power Club began because of a happen-stance meeting on the last day of the ASCRS meeting in San Diego on May 4, 2004. Thomas Olsen, MD (Århus, Denmark), had visited me in Santa Monica for 2 days prior to the meeting. On the last day of the meeting, he asked me to meet him in the large conference area to discuss the study we were working on. While we were chat-ting, …
In A Very Short Introduction to Politics, Kenneth Minogue begins with a discussion of issues arising from a historical account of politics, and goes on to offer chapters dealing with the Ancient Greeks and the idea of citizenship; Roman law; medieval Christianity and individualism; freedom since Machiavelli and Hobbes; the challenge of ideologies; democracy, oligarchy, and bureaucracy; power an…
The exploratory title of this book aims to encourage the reader to think about thedevelopment of safety and security in combination and with renewed perspectives. Akey background for this bringing together of concepts is the general trend in societythat the safer and more secure our organizations and institutions become, the moreof it we demand from them. While many of the biggest threats to he…
This collection of 75 plans for small homes offers more than 500 usable blueprints and other illustrations for a variety of living spaces suitable for every environment and style, from a New England farmhouse to a sophisticated townhouse in the city to a Santa Fe ranch. The designs include site drawings, floor plans, elevation drawings, section drawings, perspective drawings, and exploded vi…
It was a cold winter evening in 2010, and I had just arrived in Paris for a short research trip. The tiny hotel where I would be staying was on the fifth floor of the ophthalmological wing of the hôtel-Dieu (or hospital) just across from the cathedral of Notre Dame. 1 Given the subject of the book I was in France to research, it seemed appropri-ate that I should s…
“Precarity is everywhere today”, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu announced in a lecture in 1997 (qtd. in Springveld 26). “[P] recarity is not a passing or episodic condition, but a new form of regulation that distinguishes this historical time”, American philosopher Judith Butler writes in her foreword to German political theorist Isabell Lorey’s study State of Insecurity: Governme…
The Bronze Age in Greece began around 3100 B.C. with the first bronze work-ing for the manufacture of tools and weapons (see map 1). Already in the Neo-lithic, there had been limited use of copper, the essential ingredient of bronze, while stone tools were still essential for some purposes in the Bronze Age. Copper typically was alloyed with tin to produce bronze, but…
The term "gender" was first distinguished from "sex" in the 1950s, when psychologists began to discuss the idea of "gender roles"--behaviors and responsibilities given to people by a society rather than flowing from their biology. Over the last two decades, transgender people have expanded our understanding of gender even further, introducing to the mainstream the concept of "gender identity," …
In general, I distinguish between four models of the kind of text gener-ally (in publishing and reviews) classified as “family memoirs”. As with all forms of literature, there are no definitive barriers between the forms I clas-sify as distinct. Part of my interest in contemporary auto/biographical writ-ing lies in how writers continually open up possibilities for self-representation throug…