Their meeting captured headlines; the waiting list for tickets was nearly 2000 names long. If you were unable to attend, this book will take you there. Including both the papers given at the conference, and the animated discussion and debate that followed, The Dalai Lama at MIT reveals scientists and monks reaching across a cultural divide, to share insights, studies, and enduring questions.
Is there any substance to monks’ claims that meditation can provide astonishing memories for words and images? Is there any neuroscientific evidence that meditation will help you pay attention, think better, control and even eliminate negative emotions? Are Buddhists right to make compassion a fundamental human emotion, and Western scientists wrong to have neglected it?
The Dalai Lama at MIT shows scientists finding startling support for some Buddhist claims, Buddhists eager to participate in neuroscientific experiments, as well as misunderstandings and laughter. Those in white coats and those in orange robes agree that joining forces could bring new light to the study of human minds.
This extraordinary volume features the very best of the scholarship presented at the Deaf Way II, the second international Deaf gathering in 2002 in Washington, DC. More than 100 contributors from countries as far afield as Brazil, Cyprus, Denmark, Great Britain, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, and Thailand share their research on a broad spectrum of disciplines joined together by the common Deaf experience.
The Deaf Way II Reader addresses every facet of the human condition from a Deaf World perspective in 65 unique studies, including all plenary addresses. Editor Harvey Goostein has organized these articles in 12 parts: Advocacy and Community Development; Economics; Education; Family; Health and Mental Health; History; Language and Culture; Literature; Recreation, Leisure, and Sports; Sign Language and Interpreting; Technology; and Youth. Each treatise examines one aspect of the deaf experience within a particular community or country. Together, they reveal how deaf people throughout the world live, study, work, and play, as well as how they relate to their families and the dominant hearing societies in which most of them reside. The Deaf Way II Reader provides a fascinating compendium of current knowledge that can, in the words of Deaf Way II host I. King Jordan, “help make the world a better place for deaf people.”
Death, Resurrection, and Human Destiny: Christian and Muslim Perspectives is a record of the 2012 Building Bridges seminar for leading Christian and Muslim scholars, convened by Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury. The essays in this volume explore what the Bible and Qurān—and the Christian and Islamic theological traditions—have to say about death, resurrection, and human destiny. Special attention is given to the writings of al-Ghazali and Dante. Other essays explore the notion of the good death. Funeral practices of each tradition are explained. Relevant texts are included with commentary, as are personal reflections on death by several of the seminar participants. An account of the informal conversations at the seminar conveys a vivid sense of the lively, penetrating, but respectful dialogue which took place. Three short pieces by Rowan Williams provide his opening comments at the seminar and his reflections on its proceedings. The volume also contains an analysis of the Building Bridges Seminar after a decade of his leadership.
Terrorism and national security have been in the foreground of the nation’s political landscape since the uncertain times brought on by the attacks of September 11, 2001. This collection of scholarly essays provides a chance to learn from the past by offering an analytic—and sometimes provocative—look at the inseparability of security and history. This work is divided into separate elements depicting security on the national and international levels. "Part One–The US and National Security," focuses on topics such as “Rank-And-File Rednecks: Radicalism and Union Leadership in the West Virginia Mine Wars,” among others. "Part Two–International Terrorism," looks at violence overseas, such as “Beyond Victims and Perpetrators: Women Terrorists and Their Own Stories.”
Before the transition in forestry can be made from conventional approaches of the past century to the ecosystem approach of the next, a consensus must be reached on the meaning of "sustainable forestry." Defining Sustainable Forestry presents the results of a national conference convened by The Wilderness Society, American Forests, and the World Resources Institute to help establish a common framework upon which to guide the future development of forestry.
If humankind were given a mandate to do everything in our power to undermine the earth's functioning, we could hardly do a better job than we have in the past thirty years on the world's oceans, both by what we are putting into it-millions of tons of trash and toxic materials-and by what we are taking out of it-millions of tons of wildlife. Yet only recently have we begun to understand the scale of those impacts.
Defying Ocean's End is the result of an unprecedented effort among the world's largest environmental organizations, scientists, the business community, media, and international governments to address these marine issues. In June 2003, in the culmination of a year-long effort, they met specifically to develop a comprehensive and achievable agenda to reverse the decline in health of the world's oceans.
As conservation organizations begin to expand their focus from land issues to include a major focus on preservation of the sea, it is increasingly apparent that we have to approach marine conservation differently and at much larger scale than we have to date. What's also clear is the magnitude and immediacy of the growing ocean concerns are such that no one organization can handle the job alone.
Defying Ocean's End is a bold step in bringing the resources needed to bear on this vast problem before it is too late. It offers a broad strategy, a practical plan with priorities and costs, aimed at mobilizing the forces needed to bring about a "sea change" of favorable attitudes, actions, and outcomes for the oceans-and for all of us.
The vision of a garden shared peacefully by humans and animals is a familiar, but elusive, landscape trope. Whether threatened by habitat destruction or climate change, displaced by urbanization or invasive species, poisoned by industrial toxins, or hunted to extinction, many wild animals have failed to thrive in the company of people. There is growing scientific consensus that we are in the midst of the sixth great extinction in earth history—and the first caused by human activities.
What agency can landscape architects and garden designers have in conserving or restoring wildlife diversity? Designing Wildlife Habitats gathers essays by designers, scientists, and historians to explore how they might better collaborate to promote zoological biodiversity and how scientific ambitions might be expressed in culturally significant and historically informed design. Established conservation practices within ecology have begun to shape landscape architecture, and current initiatives in ecosystem services, restoration ecology, and designer-generated ecological experiments provide an enlarged role for landscape architects in the creation of productive habitats. Design has become increasingly instrumental to both the appearance and the ecological function of landscapes.
The number of Americans eligible to receive Social Security benefits will increase from forty-five million to nearly eighty million in the next twenty years. Retirement systems must therefore adapt to meet the demands of the largest aging population in our nation’s history. In Developments in the Economics of Aging, David A. Wise and a distinguished group of analysts examine the economic issues that will confront policy makers as they seek to design policies to protect the economic and physical health of these older Americans.
The volume looks at such topics as factors influencing work and retirement decisions at older ages, changes in life satisfaction associated with retirement, and the shift in responsibility for managing retirement assets from professional money managers of traditional pension plans to individual account holders of 401(k)s. Developments in the Economics of Aging also addresses the complicated relationship between health and economic status, including why health behaviors vary across populations and how socioeconomic measures correlate with health outcomes.
The Diagram as Paradigm is the first book that looks at medieval diagrams in a cross-cultural perspective, focusing on three regions—Byzantium, the Islamicate world, and the Latin West—each culturally diverse and each closely linked to the others through complex processes of intellectual, artistic, diplomatic, and mercantile exchange.
The volume unites case studies, often of little-known material, by an international set of specialists, and is prefaced by four introductory essays that provide broad overviews of diagrammatic traditions in these regions in addition to considering the theoretical dimensions of diagramming. Among the historical disciplines whose use of diagrams is explored are philosophy, theology, mysticism, music, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and cosmology. Despite the sheer variety, ingenuity, and visual inventiveness of diagrams from the premodern world, in conception and practical use they often share many similarities, both in construction and application. Diagrams prove to be an essential part of the fabric of premodern intellectual, scientific, religious, artistic, and artisanal life.
Provides a politically and historically informed review of Cuban archaeology, from both American and Cuban perspectives.
Many Americans are aware of the political, economic, and personal impacts of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. But the communication blockade between scholars has also affected the historical course of academic disciplines and research in general. With the easing of restrictions in the 1990s, academics are now freer to conduct research in Cuba, and the Cuban government has been more receptive to collaborative projects.
This volume provides a forum for the principal Cuban and American archaeologists to update the current state of Cuban archaeological research--from rock art and potsherds to mortuary practices and historical renovation--thereby filling in the information gap created by the political separation. Each group of researchers brings significant new resources to the effort, including strong conservation regulations, innovative studies of lithic and shell assemblages, and transculturation theories. Cuban research on the hacienda system, slavery, and urban processes has in many ways anticipated developments in North American archaeology by a decade or more. Of special interest are the recent renovation projects in Old Havana that fully integrate the work of historians, architects, and archaeologists--a model project conducted by agreement between the Cuban government and UNESCO.
The selection of papers for this collection is based on a desire to answer pressing research questions of interest for North American Caribbeanists and to present a cross-section of Cuban archaeological work. With this volume, then, the principal players present results of recent collaborations and begin a renewed conversation, a dialogue, that can provide a foundation for future coordinated efforts.
Just as trade, finance, information, and technologies are moving rapidly across borders, so too have labor markets and transnational migrant communities. Migrants are sending large quantities of money back to their countries of origin in the form of philanthropy, remittances, and commercial investments. They are also sharing knowledge and skills learned or developed abroad. Is greater global equity an inevitable consequence of such diaspora philanthropy, or can this giving actually aggravate inequity? Diasporas and Development examines the positive—and sometimes negative—impacts of diaspora engagement in Africa, Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean.
How can the equity impact of this global giving be maximized? Might creative intermediary mechanisms or public policies help channel diaspora philanthropy in positive directions? They also explore motivations for the dark sides of diaspora engagement such as support for extremist organizations, organized crime, ethnic violence, and even civil war. Diasporas and Development aims to deepen the understanding of the promise and pitfalls of diaspora philanthropy and how it might help bridge the distances between societies in an unequal world.
The scientific study of forgiveness is a new approach to an age-old problem. For thousands of years, people have practiced forgiveness within religious systems. Now, the field of scholarly research of forgiveness reveals the beneficial aspects of the process.
p>Contributors include Elliot Dorff and Martin Marty discussing religious interpretations, followed by social implications explained by Kenneth Pargament and Mark Rye. Roy Baumeister, Julie Exline, and Kristin Sommer present the victim's point of view. Other contributors focusing on the forgiveness research are: Everett Worthington, Robert Enright, Catherine Coyle, Carl Thoresen, Frederic Luskin, and Alex Harris. An annotated bibliography by Michael McCullough, Julie Exline, and Roy Baumeister, covers the empirical literature on the subject. Lewis Smedes concludes with the four steps necessary for forgiveness: moving from estrangement to forgiveness to reconciliation to hope.