retratodelinfierno

Uncanny Freud

@"I am deep into Sigmund Freud's 1919 essay on The Uncanny, Das Unheimliche -- which translates literally, as "unhomely." He invented this concept as a way of contemplating and understanding those moments when something feels familiar yet foreign or alien at the same time, so the consequent feeling is of something uncomfortably strange". from Katharine Weber

Según Freud, uncanny es un sentimiento o sensación que nos provoca algo que no es nuevo o extraño, algo familiar y antiguo establecido en nuestra mente que su extrañeza sólo prueba su represión. Lo que viene siendo, que es algo que nos provoca extrañeza aunque no sea tan extraño pero que lo tomamos así porque lo tenemos reprimido en nuestra mente.
Se relaciona con el cine y la literatura de terror como "aquello que te hace sentir intranquilo en el mundo de tu experiencia habitual". Gracias a http://unpromenade.blogspot.com/2006/12/uncanny_30.html @

Helena Béjar: La dejación de España

Entrevista a Helena Bejar en El Cultural

@_"De todas formas, ¿es España un referente emocional para los españoles, o el sentimiento nacional ha sido devorado por los nacionalismos'.

Ésa es precisamente la pregunta a la que el libro que he escrito quiere responder. Para contestar en pocas palabras, lo que se observa es que, después de 30 años de la construcción del Estado de las autonomías, la conciencia nacional española tiene que competir duramente con las llamadas nacionalidades históricas, la catalana, la vasca y la gallega, que sí han sabido construir identidades nacionales seguras y orgullosas.

_¿A que se debe el declive de la conciencia nacional española?

_"Principalmente al abandono de la izquierda y el centro izquierda que representa el PSOE, de los simbolos que contribuyen a la buena salud de dicha conciencia. Por ejemplo, la izquierda no quiere saber nada de la bandera española, que identifica con la extrema derecha, una circunstancia inaudita en el resto de Europa"@

Matthew stanley: Practical Mystic

Stanley, Matthew Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington

@Science and religion have long been thought incompatible. But nowhere has this apparent contradiction been more fully resolved than in the figure of A. S. Eddington (1882–1944), a pioneer in astrophysics, relativity, and the popularization of science, and a devout Quaker. Practical Mystic uses the figure of Eddington to shows how religious and scientific values can interact and overlap without compromising the integrity of either.

Eddington was a world-class scientist who not only maintained his religious belief throughout his scientific career but also defended the interrelation of science and religion while drawing inspiration from both for his practices. For instance, at a time when a strict adherence to deductive principles of physics had proved fruitless for understanding the nature of stars, insights from Quaker mysticism led Eddington to argue that an outlook less concerned with certainty and more concerned with further exploration was necessary to overcome the obstacles of incomplete and uncertain knowledge.@

Living Like A guide from Ed Begley Jr

From the editor:

@A committed environmentalist for more than thirty years, Ed Begley, Jr., has always tried to "live simply so others may simply live." Now, as more and more of us are looking for ways to reduce our impact on the planet and live a better, greener life, Ed shares his experiences on what works, what doesn't - and what will save you money!

From recycling more materials than you ever thought possible to composting without raising a stink to buying an electric car, Living Like Ed is packed with ideas - from obvious to ingenious - that will help you live green, live responsibly, live, well, Like Ed.@

Small Talk: Asne Seierstad

By From http://writerinterviews.blogspot.com/  Marshal Zeringue

The Norwegian writer Åsne Seierstad covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for various publications. Her bestselling account of an Afghan family’s struggles, The Bookseller of Kabul, was published in 2003, followed by her A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal in 2005. Her latest book, The Angel of Grozny: Inside Chechnya, is out now in the U.K. and will be released in the U.S. later this year.

Re-Thinking Green

EdAlternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy
ited by Carl P. Close, Robert Higgs

By 1990, 25 years of regulations enforced by the EPA had cost the U.S. economy an estimated 22% of the manufacturing output that otherwise would have been produced. The regulations’ drag on productivity was felt strongly throughout the U.S. economy until the mid-90s boom in high-tech industries less touched by environmental policy. (ch. 2)

Entrenched businesses often support regulations for reasons of competitive strategy. Shell Oil and British Petroleum may have reversed their opposition to the Kyoto treaty because they believed that their natural gas and coal deposits would allow them to cope with the treaty’s restrictions more effectively than could their rivals. (ch. 5)

Federal and state agencies spent $529 million per year on endangered-species protection during the 1990s, but they haven’t come close to saving every threatened species in the U.S. as required by law. The Endangered Species Act fails to establish priorities for species recovery and antagonizes property owners instead of rewarding them for conservation. (ch. 7, 8)

In parts of Africa, community-based natural resource management is challenging the “environmental colonialism” of Western organizations. This approach has reduced black-market poaching and improved living standards by enabling locals to benefit from the presence of wildlife. (ch. 9, 10)

Julia Alvarez: Once Upon A Quinceañera

"This is only my second book of nonfiction, and the only book that I ever was invited to write! Well, take that back. The seed of A Cafecito Story was a request by my husband that I write "something" about the plight of coffee farmers we had become involved with in the Dominican Republic. But that wasn't an invitation so much as "this is what I want for Christmas, my birthday, and any other time you're going to get me a present for the rest of my life." How easy was that to refuse?!"

http://www.juliaalvarez.com/books/index.php#cafecito

CRISIS AND LEVIATHAN by Robert Higss

Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government

From The Independent Institute http://www.independent.org

Everyone knows that government has continually grown in size and scope during this past century, but how and why has it done so? Is this growth inherent in the nature of government or because of some greater social needs, or are there other causes?

In Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs shows that the main reason lies in government’s responses to national “crises” (real or imagined), including economic upheavals (e.g., the Great Depression) and especially war (e.g., World Wars I and II, Cold War, etc.). The result is ever increasing government power which endures long after each crisis has passed, impinging on both civil and economic liberties and fostering extensive corporate welfare and pork. As government power grows, writes Higgs, it achieves a form of autonomy, making it ever more difficult to decrease its size and scope, and to resist its further efforts to increase its reach, so long as the citizenry remain uninformed of its true effects.

One of the most important books ever written on the nature of government power, Crisis and Leviathan is a potent book whose message becomes more trenchant with every passing day. Foreword by Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. 

Link Sinopsis

http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=15

Shavetail Thomas Cobb

From the autor Set in 1871 in the unforgiving desert of the Arizona territories, Shavetail is the story of Private Ned Thorne, a seventeen-year-old boy from Connecticut who has lied about his age to join the army. On the run from a shameful past, Ned is desperate to prove his worth—to his superiors, his family, and most of all, to himself. Young and troubled, Ned is as stubborn as a shavetail, the soldiers’ term for a willful, untrained mule. After a band of Apaches attacks a nearby ranch, killing two men and, perhaps, kidnapping a woman, Ned’s superiors, also seeking to atone for their mistakes, lead Ned and the rest of his company on a near suicidal mission through a particularly menacing stretch of desert and into Mexico in hopes of saving the woman’s life. link http://www.thomascobb.net/work1.htm

David Anderegg's Nerds

Nerds

About the book, from the publisher:

A lively, thought-provoking book that zeros in on the timely issue of how anti-intellectualism is bad for our children and even worse for America.

Why are our children so terrified to be called "nerds"? And what is the cost of this rising tide of anti-intellectualism to both our children and our nation? In Nerds, family psychotherapist and psychology professor David Anderegg examines why science and engineering have become socially poisonous disciplines, why adults wink at the derision of "nerdy" kids, and what we can do to prepare our children to succeed in an increasingly high-tech world.

From  http://americareads.blogspot.com/2008/02/pg-99-david-andereggs-nerds.html