Bloggers Team

Google Wave First Look

Screen grabs from a developer preview: Google Wave First Look - Google Wave - Lifehacker

Shared via AddThis

Tämän päivän kuvan näppäsin töiden jälkeen. Kuvasin studiossa kaksi mallinukkea, joilla oli ulkoiluasut päällään. Olen joskus tehnyt jotain vastaavaa, mutta hyvin olin unohtanut kuinka erittäin hankalaa mallinuken pukeminen on.

Kyllähän kenille ja barbille vaatteet päälle saa, mutta kun niiden vaatteiden pitäisi vielä näyttää komeilta ja hyvin istuvilta. Mallinuken päällä mitkä tahansa releet näyttävät aina liian isoilta ja roikkuvilta. Minä tungin paperia hihoihin ja pistelin nuppineuloja selkään, mutta taitaa silti olla vielä Photoshopilla töitä :-)

En rasita teitä lukijoitani noilla kuvilla, vaan näytän sen sijaan tämän, jossa hemmo makoilee ihan pokerinaamalla pahvilaatikossa. Eikä haittaa sekään, että oma jalka on miltei silmässä ja kädetkin irroitettu.

Kuvasin tämän Nikon D700 kameralla, Nikkor Ai 50 mm f/2 objektiivilla täydellä aukolla ja valotusajalla 1/30 s, kun ISO-arvo oli 2500. Ketä muuten kiinnostaa onko tässä kuvassa objektiivin piirto ja kontrasti paras mahdollinen kuvan nurkissa? Voihan tosin olla, että kuvaa ei muutenkaan kiinnosta katsella, mutta otan riskin.

Custom AddThis Toolbox Menu: New Halo 3 Video

Nice custom implementation (video requires age check...)

Halo3: ODST

Shared via AddThis

Getting Hands On with Google Wave

Ars takes you inside of Google's bold vision for the future of Internet messaging with this hands-on look at Wave. Learn more about the experimental service, its underlying technology, and the opportunities that will provide for third-party developers.

Turning the tide: a hands-on look at Google's Wave - Ars Technica

Shared via AddThis

Can a computer compose music?

Can a computer program really generate musical compositions that are good enough to have been written by humans? Professor David Cope thinks so, and has dedicated decades of research to the topic of artificial intelligence in music, which has resulted in not one, but two controversial composing engines.

Virtual composer makes beautiful music and stirs controversy - Ars Technica

Shared via AddThis

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

Although this genre of military commissions may disappear, as such, a national debate looms within government and outside among the press and public: should al-Qaeda adherents and other terrorists accused of war crimes against the United States be tried in our regular civilian courts or military courts-martial or instead be relegated to military commissions or to special 'national security courts' which would operate under different rules as to openness, use of classified information, availability of privileges against self-incrimination and admissibility of evidence secured by coercive methods? Before giving serious consideration to the creation of a separate and less restrictive system of criminal justice for one group of defendants, we would do well to look at how this military commission experiment has played out so far and what if any lessons can be learned from its initial phase.

-- Patricia M. Wald (below left), in her Foreword to the Military Commission Reporter, available here and reprinted in the new edition of Green Bag 2d. Her essay introduces the newest publication service of the National Institute of Military Justice: the 500-plus-page Military Commission Reporter, volume 1 -- 1 M.C. -- a compendium of decisions of rulings issued between October 2006 and June 2009 by the Guantánamo commissions. (image credit) (The 1st issue of volume 2 is available online here.) Wald's foreword draws on her experience as

the Judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in evaluating the operations so far of the Guantánamo commissions. A sample nugget:

'... I was struck by the almost hopeless lopsidedness of the process.'

On September 30

On this day in ...
... 1966, a region in southern Africa about the size of the U.S. state of Texas, which had been known since 1885 as the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, declared itself the independent state of Botswana. Elected under the terms of the 1965 Constitution was the 1st President, Seretse Khama, who served by re-election until his death in 1980. The country enjoys "flourishing multiparty constitutional democracy."

(Prior September 30 posts are here and here.)

News---Unknown Soldier's Remains Found on Battlefield of Franklin Tennessee

On 14 May 2009, a construction worker unearthed human bones located in a shallow grave. The police were called, and upon their examining the bones and the buttons accompanying them. It was determined that this was the remains of a Civil War soldier. Many questions surround this soldier. Who was he? When did he die? Why was he buried in a coffin?

The soldier, who the majority of Franklin historians think was a Federal, was buried a quarter mile south of Winstead Hill, just a few yards west of Columbia Pike near the site of the McNeely house. He had been buried in a wooden coffin and was wearing a frock coat. The buttons found in the site were Union eagle and “I” buttons. These buttons were the means of identifying him as a Federal soldier. The nonregulation
mix of buttons, however, causes some to contend that possibly this was a Confederate wearing a Federal coat.
Two theories are proposed on why his remains were at this location. The initial theory placed the soldier as a member of the advanced Federal forces pursuing Hood in the Retreat from Nashville. The second suggests that he was part of Conrad’s or Lane’s forward line which was overrun, and, in the attack, the soldier was wounded and carried as a prisoner to this location where he died. However, unless he died some time after the battle, neither theory explains the burial in a coffin. Immediately upon the discovery of the remains, the City of Franklin under the leadership of Alderman Mike Skinner with the support of Mayor John Schroer, set out to protect the soldier and to make arrangements for placing him in a suitable burial site. The developer on whose property the soldier was found has underwritten the cost of the archeological study, the removal of the remains, and the reinterrment of the soldier.

The State of Tennessee is holding the remains until all legal requirements are met and arrangements for reburial are complete. Preliminary plans call for the soldier to be reinterred at Franklin’s historic Rest Haven Cemetery. An appropriate ceremony will be organized utilizing Civil War reenactors. The Civil War soldier will be laid to rest with the honor due. [The tombstone reades] Unknown: Battle of Franklin,
November 30, 1864.”

Text Source: Fort Donelson Camp Number 62 FORT DONELSON CAMP No. 62, Newsletter,
Volume 15 Issue No. 3 Summer 2009

Top Image: Memorial To the Union Dead, Rest Haven Cemetery, Franklin Tennessee

Clinton chairs Security Council Wednesday

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is slated to chair Wednesday's session of the U.N. Security Council.
Clinton (left) is due to return to the Council's headquarters (prior post) and gavel the session to order at 10 a.m. Eastern time tomorrow, September 30. (photo credit)
The subject is "Women, Peace, and Security," and the Council is expected to vote on a U.S.-sponsored resolution concerning sexual violence in armed conflict. The new resolution will follow up on S.C. Res. 1820 (2008), on which IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Doris Buss posted recently. Resolution 1820 is itself a followup to S.C. Res. 1325 (2000).
Check for live webcast here.

CWL----The Last Letter Home: On Campaign, On The Battlefield, In The Hospital, In Prison

Proud To Say I Am A Union Soldier: The Last Letters Home From Federal Soldiers Written During the Civil War, 1861-1965, Franklin R. Crawford, Heritage Books, 238pp., , 20+ photographs, notes, bibliography, index, $29.95.

Crawford has done good service to Federals who died during the war. Similar in many ways to a portion of Greg Coco's work focusing on Gettysburg, Crawford organizes and edits the letters home of 31 Federal soldiers. He is a careful researcher who offers between 15 and 40 notes for each of the individuals. Crawford's comments are not overwrought with Victorian pathos but are clear and concise summaries of the soldiers journeys, camplife and encounters on the battlefield.

Private Pliny F. White, Company E. 14th Vermont encounters drills, picket duty, drills, weapon care, drills after he enlists in early September 1862. With other Vermont regiments that enlisted during the early fall of 1862, the 14th travel to Washington D.C. to man the forts. White frets that his term of service will expire and no combat will be seen. Fortunately Confederate raider Mosby strays to close to Washington DC and two Vermont brigades are ordered out of the forts. Marching from northern Virginia, through Maryland, the Vermonters arrive in Gettysburg on July 2. He writes on July 2 to his sister, "The chances are that today we shall go into battle." Pliny must wait 24 hours for that to happen. Wounded severely in the arm, Pliny is sent on July 5 to the Seminary Hospital. His last letter is July 31. One other letter follows. Francis Bell writes to White's family that Pliny died at 10pm on August 5 due to fever and diahrea (sic).

Ernst Damkoehler,a veteran of the Prussian army and private in Company I, 26th Wisconsin, has commissary duties which bores him but does allow him to sell his free time as a horse groom. Safe during the 1862 and 1863 campaigns of the Army of the Potomac due to his rear eschelon duties. The Eleventh Corps in which Ernst serves is transferred to Chattanooga and participates in the breakout. Stripping the commissary to the barest essentials, Sherman orders commissary soldiers to be transferred to the front in the Atlanta campaign. His last letter home is April 17 1864. He is wounded and captured at Resaca, sent to Andersonville Prison. He dies in June 1864 from complications of the wound and diarrhea. Twelve graves in Anderson hold men of the 26th Wisconsin.

Crawford sets forth soldiers' remarks with a simplicity and directness that is sobering. Each soldier's story takes about 20 minutes to read. The impact of reading the soldiers' description of the ordinariness of their camps, their marches, their cooking, their drills helps the reader to understand these were ordinary men. Loving and missing terribly their families contrasts with the aloneness of being one dying soldier in the Seminary Hospital that held over 700 or being one of the fifty a day who died at Andersonville.

Readers who are reenactors or those who wish to recall to memory the lives of Civil War soldiers will enjoy this book. Also, those editing family letters would do well to look to this book as a model of a difficult task well done.

Google Wave adds more users

Google Wave is ready for its next step: a more thorough test of its scalability and stability as more than 100,000 new users crowd onto the service.

Google Wave ready for wider testing via CNET

Shared via AddThis

Search, Trends and Google

Ok, I can admit I have a problem: I love usage data. It's fascinating to peek into the numbers behind a user experience and try to understand not just what users are doing, but why and how. More about data and AddThis later, but years ago at AOL I designed the original "Hot Searches" product that showed which search terms were rising and falling the fastest. From these humble beginnings grew two fun AOL programmed destinations, Hot Searches and AOL's year end Hot Searches retrospectives.

More recently, Google has integrated their Hot Trends data into search results, one more volley into the battle of real-time search:

Google Hot Trends Integrated Into Google Search via SearchEngineLand

Shared via AddThis

Päivän kuvatus

Tänään tulee iPhonella tuotettu kuva. Valaisin kuvan studiosalaman ohjausvalolla ja Lightroomissa säätelin hiukan kontrastia sekä värikylläisyyttä.

Ex-Guantánamo detainees arrive in Ireland

Last weekend two Uzbek nationals who had been detained in Guantánamo Bay for seven years but who were found not to be a threat to national or international security arrived in Ireland (Irish Times article). The former detainees could not be returned to their own country because of a real risk that they would be subjected to persecution there. The former detainees are, it seems, to be granted leave to remain by the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern.
As a legal status, leave to remain is normally granted where someone has been unsuccessful in an asylum application but there are also humanitarian reasons for not returned the person to their country of origin. This is provided for under s. 17 of the Refugee Act 1996. However, leave to remain can be granted in broader circumstances than this as it is a discretionary status.
What is somewhat unusual about the present circumstances is that normally leave to remain is granted where an individual is already within the territy of the state and is a means of avoiding deportation (see the interesting paper by Brian Ingoldsby here). In the case of the former detainees who arrived in Ireland this weekend, however, the Minister had announced that he would grant them the right to reside here by means of leave to remain before they ever entered the territory of the state or made an application for asylum. In the Irish Times article

yesterday, however, it provides that "[b]oth men will be given leave to remain" (my emphasis) suggesting that the status will formally be given post entry to the state, although the entry to the state was clearly facilitated by the government itself. The process seems, therefore, somewhat irregular.
In addition, persons with leave to remain do not have a right of family reunificiation but in the case of these two individuals the prospect of freeing them from Guantánamo Bay and from seven years without their families and then not permitting their families to come and reside here with them seems a cruel irony. The Department of Justice has not, as far as I know, made any announcements as to the status of these persons' families but it is to be hoped that family reunification will be facilitated in these cases.
The decision by the Irish government to accept former detainees is an important one that ought to be welcomed; it has by now become clear that the United States has no intention of allowing former detainees to reside within the US itself and therefore other countries' co-operation is neeed to facilitate the closure of the prison there. Thus, this action is a very positive one by the government. Putting that aside, however, this use of leave to remain and the means of deploying that status in this particular case is a little curious.

(Cross-posted at Human Rights in Ireland)

On September 29

On this day in ...
... 1944 (65 years ago today), Prof. Dr. Lerke Osterloh (right) was born in Holle (Oldenburg), Germany. She received her Dr. jur. degree in 1978, having completed a dissertation on a question involving property in civil law and public law). She completed her Habilitation, with a thesis relating to fiscal law, in 1989, the same year that she became a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Heidelberg. Subsequently she's held Chairs of Public and Fiscal Law at the University of Trier and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. Since 1998 Osterloh has served as a Judge of the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany.

(Prior September 29 posts are here and here.)

News---The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Goes To the Bank With $25,000 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

Annette Gordon-Reed, Professor of Law at New York Law School, Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard University, has been selected as the winner of the 2009 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition. Gordon-Reed won for her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. The prize is awarded by Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

In addition to Gordon-Reed, the other finalists for the prize were Thavolia Glymph for Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household and Jacqueline Jones for Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War. The $25,000 annual award is the most generous history prize in the field.

"In Annette Gordon Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello, an enslaved Virginia family is delivered -- but not disassociated -- from Thomas Jefferson's well-known sexual liaison with Sally Hemings," says Bonner, the 2009 Douglass Prize Jury Chair and Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College. "The book judiciously blends the best of recent slavery scholarship with shrewd commentary on the legal structure of Chesapeake society before and after the American Revolution. Its meticulous account of the mid-eighteenth century intertwining of the black Hemingses and white Wayles families sheds new light on Jefferson's subsequent conjoining with a young female slave who was already his kin by marriage. By exploring those dynamic commitments and evasions that shaped Monticello routines, the path-breaking book provides a testament to the complexity of human relationships within slave societies and to the haphazard possibilities for both intimacy and betrayal."

Text Source: Gilder Lehrman Center and Institute. The Institute maintains two websites: www.gilderlehrman.org and the quarterly online journal www.historynow.org

Sigma 24 - 70 mm läheltä

Tässä vielä pieni täydennys Sigma 24 - 70 mm juttuuni. Tein Sigmalla tuotekuvia studiossa, koska halusin selvittää miten tämä osa-alue sujuu. Jotkut objektiivit, makroja lukuunottamatta, saattavat toimia yllättävästi lähikuvauksessa. Jotkut yllättävän hyvin ja jotkut taas yllättävän huonosti.

Oma Nikonin valmistama 24- 70 mm f/2.8 ei ole mitenkään huikaiseva lähimmillä tarkennusetäisyyksillä. En käytä tätä muuten niin erinomaista objektiivia mielelläni pienten tuotteiden kuvauksessa, koska lasin suorituskyky laskee näissä olosihteissa. Piirto huononee reunoilla ja kromaattiset aberraatiot lisääntyvät.

Sigma toimii Zoom Nikkoria paremmin tämän tyyppisessä kuvauksessa, mutta saman suuntaisia virheitä alkaa näkyä siirryttäessä lähietäisyyksille, tosin paljon lievempänä kuin Nikkorissa.

Kumpikaan zoomi ei ole paras vaihtoehto pienehköjen tuotteiden kuvaamiseen, mutta satunnainen tuotekuvaus kyllä sujuu, jos muutakaan objektiivia ei satu ulottuvilla olemaan.

Tässä käytin vielä vertailun vuoksi vanhaa käsitarkenteista Nikkor Ai 50 mm f/2 normaaliobjektiivia yhdessä Nikon lähilinssin kanssa. Lähilinssi on peräisin sekin jostakin 70 - 80-lukujen taitteesta. Olen maksanut tästä objektiivista käytettynä 50 euroa.

Yllä oleva kuva puhukoon puolestaan. Kuva on ruudun vasemmasta reunasta, polttoväli zoomeilla n. 50 mm, kuvausaukko f/16 ja kuvausetäisyys n. 40 cm. Tämä on vain yksi esimerkki, mutta havainnollistaa asian hyvin.

Design Pattern Repositories

When designing interactive experiences, there are lots of ways to innovate, but also situations where it doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel. There are many parts of a larger experience with which users could or should already be familiar, and this is where design pattern libraries can be excellent resources for designers. Here is a list of libraries and resources culled from a LinkedIn group of user experience designers that I thought I'd compile for easier browsing:

Guest Blogger: Máiréad Enright

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Máiréad Enright (right) as today's guest blogger.
Máiréad is a Ph.D. Candidate in Law and the EJ Phelan Fellow in International Law, 2008-2010, at University College Cork, Ireland. She's completing a thesis on the reception of Muslim divorce law in secular legal systems. Her guest post below discusses British law and culture with respect to forced marriage and arranged transnational marriage.
Her work at Cork forms part of a 3-year thematic research project on Gender, Multiculturalism and the Law in Ireland, directed by her supervisor, Dr. Siobhán Mullally, Senior Lecturer and Co-Director Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights at University College Cork. Funding the project is the Irish Research Council in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Called to the Irish Bar in 2006, Máiréad was awarded a visiting fellowship to the Feminism and Legal Theory Project at Emory Law School in Atlanta, Georgia, in Spring 2009 and a visiting fellowship to Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Canada, in Summer 2009, and next month will be a visitor at Queen Mary, University of London, England.
Máiréad dedicates her contribution to the Irish poet Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill, of whom she writes:

Eibhlín was born in 1743 in Derrynane, at left, in my county of Kerry, to a wealthy family with a tradition of producing women poets. She is best known as the author of the famous poem, Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire, a 'keen,' or lament, for her dead husband. Eibhlín's husband Art was killed by a local magistrate who had offered to buy the Catholic noble's racehorse for an insultingly low price. When Art refused, thus flouting the Penal Laws designed to limit Catholics' civil and political rights and undermine their culture, he was murdered. He left behind his pregnant wife and two small sons. His murderers were never punished.
In choosing to commemorate Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill, I wanted to think about the many women harmed by colonisation and by the brutal law that inevitably accompanies it, and about the damaging echoes of colonisation which persist in countries, such as Ireland, that have gained their independence. In 1829, Eibhlín's nephew, the barrister Daniel O'Connell, finally secured Catholic Emancipation: for this achievement he is remembered as 'The Liberator'. O'Connell's statue, at right, is on Dublin's main street, which is named after him. There is no surviving picture of his aunt.

Today Ní Chonaill joins other transnational foremothers in IntLawGrrls' list below the "visiting from..." map at right.
Heartfelt welcome!

Law & forced & arranged marriages

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to guest post on my work on forced marriage and transnational arranged marriage.)

My article called ‘Choice, Culture and the Politics of Belonging: The Em erging Law of Forced And Arranged Marriage’, recently published at 72 Modern Law Review 331 (2009), generally reflects my interest in the construction of the female citizen subject in legal discourse. (photo credit)

The majority of reported victims of forced marriage in the United Kingdom are young women of South Asian Muslim origin. Because

of this fact, the forced marriage project must be read critically against the background of a wider politics of British Muslim belonging, which is linked to the counter-terrorism and social cohesion agendas. This politics operates to exclude some British Muslims from full membership in the ‘we group’ of British citizens. The ground for exclusion is that of ‘excessive’ or ‘difficult’ culture. Those British Muslim who are presented as most bound up in cultural practice, I argue, have become the British citizen’s ‘other’, and are subject to law’s discipline on that basis.

I trace the developing construction of the act of forcing another to marry as the exemplar performance of difficult culture, and as the exemplar rejection of British values – particularly the value of autonomy – in the major policy statements on forced marriage prevention.

Within the article are two points of critique:

► First, the focus on culture borne of the present need for the politics of belonging to define its other as a ‘cultural’ other leads to an effective culturisation of forced marriage. This means that much effective work has been done to tackle the considerable ‘internal cultural’ obstacles to exit from an unwanted marriage. The third-party and secondary-offender provisions of Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC's Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007 are excellent examples. A focus on culture also, doubtless, sparked the involvement of specialist women’s organisations such as Southall Black Sisters in the drafting of the initial bill, and this is a good thing.

On the other hand, I argue that the focus on culture has been almost entirely to the exclusion of other socio-economic factors which also contribute to the difficulty of ‘exit’.

So, for instance, it is very telling that, at the same time that the Forced Marriage Act was being birthed, many specialist women’s refuges and domestic violence services – the support organisations which are invaluable to women seeking to leave a difficult family situation – were struggling to remain open for lack of adequate government funding. The focus on culture served to hide the state’s contribution to women’s oppression.

► A second point flows from the influence of the politics of belonging on the forced marriage project. We might imagine that, in this arena, the relative (particularly the father, because a deeply gendered construction of the violence of forced marriage is at play) who forces a young woman into marriage occupies the most precarious position in the schema of British Muslim citizenship. But some perhaps counter-intuitive exclusions also take place when, particularly in the new immigration legislation:

the often vulnerable immigrating spouse in a transnational marriage is reduced to perpetrator status, by virtue of his or her ‘foreign’ culture; or
the young British Muslim citizen is the subject of wide-ranging protective intervention which has the effect of disciplining those who choose ‘with’ culture and in favour of transnational arranged marriage.

Questions arise about who is ‘permitted’ to occupy the ‘victim slot’ in the forced marriage debate, and about whether the right to make certain marital choices, and to claim that right from a position of victimhood if it is denied, carry a ‘duty’ to make the ‘more British’ choice. Since the article was written, an idealised forced marriage victim has begun

to emerge in media coverage of the issue. This is reflected in the newspapers’ presentation of the case of Dr. Humayra Abedin, a British National Health Service physician. Hers is one of the first of 23 successful applications so far under the new Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007. (credit for photo of Abedin, center, with her solicitor, Anne-Marie Hutchinson, left)

What does the forced marriage project tell us about the citizenship of British Muslim women who do not sufficiently fit the model of victimhood: young, English-speaking, educated, thoroughly ‘Westernised’? Is there another subject position which they can legitimately occupy?

On September 28

On this day in ...

... 2009 (today), is marked, at least among some in the United States, Ask a Stupid Question Day. It's said that this holiday dates to the 1980s:

[T]here was a movement by teachers to try to get kids to ask more questions in the classroom. Kids sometimes hold back, fearing their question is stupid, and asking it will result in ridicule.

This day, then, is dedicated to remind students, and all of us, early in the school year, that there are no stupid questions. Or perhaps better said:

[N]o question is too stupid to ask.

It is the search for answers that results in learning.

(Prior September 28 posts are here and here.)

Look On! "Mrs. Goundo's Daughter"

(Look On! takes occasional note of noteworthy films.) "Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter,” a new documentary by Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater, is a sensitive and galvanizing account of gender discrimination at the intersection of culture and bureaucracy. (View a clip here.)
The filmmakers follow a mother’s struggle to keep her family from being deported to Mali. The documentary focuses on the serious harm caused by female genital mutilation/cutting practices.
I’ve discussed the complexities in a 1995 article, Between Irua and Female Genital Mutilation: Feminist Human Rights Discourse a nd the Cultural Divide and in a more recent article on “Female Genital Mutilation and Female Genital Cutting” in the Encyclopedia of Human Rights.
Awaken!, an excellent newsletter published by the women’s human rights NGO Equality Now!, tracks developments on the issue in English, French, and Arabic. IntLawGrrls Fiona de Londras and Jaya Ramji-Nogales posted here and here on human rights and gender asylum decisions involving FGM-FGC. This World Health Organisation Bulletin discusses some grassroots eradication efforts in Mali.
FGM-FGC practices violate international human rights norms and are prohibited under instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, and the Maputo Protocol.
The practices cause serious physical injury and death to infants, girls, and women in practicing regions. Yet because FGM-FGC is deeply rooted in community and family traditions (but not required by any formal religion), the practices remain widespread among some ethnic groups. Many countries now outlaw the practices. But the private circumstances under which they occur mean that indigenous community-based education and organizing are important keys to ending FGM-FGC. (On legal and political approaches, see Anika Rahman & Nahid Toubia, Female Genital Mutilation: A Practical Guide to Worldwide Laws and Policies.)
In the film, Mrs. Goundo, who experienced FGM-FGC as a girl, works with an immigrant

community leader in Philadelphia, an asylum lawyer, and her husband to prevent her own daughter from returning to Mali. Goundo understands that even if she and her husband object, grandparents, relatives, or other community members might well force the practice on the child.
But there’s another problem. Mrs. Goundo must request legal status for herself under the byzantine U.S. immigration and asylum laws, or else be separated from her U.S.-born daughter and other family members.
Attie and Goldwater provide a nuanced treatment of her predicament. They place Mrs. Goundo and her family in the context of a supportive immigrant community and explore the challenges of navigating the U.S. legal system successfully. They also travel to Mali, where they interview local women’s rights and health advocates who condemn and educate against the practices. They also surface the stereotypes and misinformation that lead some religious and cultural leaders to support them despite the awful consequences.
"Mrs. Goundo's Daughter" is never graphic, but makes the danger and emotional trauma to girls abundantly clear. Students should be prepared in advance with readings on the subject matter and instructors should plan time for discussion after showing the film.
Consultants on the film included leading refugee and gender-asylum expert Deborah Anker and yours truly. The documentary is an effective way to begin discussions about the complex legal, gender, and cultural issues involved. Heartfelt thanks to research assistant Alexis Smith for her help with this post.

Päivän iPhone

Tänään sunnuntaina on vuorossa iPhonella kuvattu otos salolaisen ostarin katolla olevalta parkkipaikalta.

News----Philly's Civil War Museum To Exhibit Artifacts at GNMP

Civil War Museum's Artifacts To Be Displayed Elsewhere, Edward Colimore, Philadelphia Inquirer, Septmeber 26, 2009.

They're stored in crates, bubble wrap, and archival boxes, locked away and awaiting their fate at an undisclosed Philadelphia storage facility. Under the packaging are wool uniforms and glistening swords worn by great generals of the Civil War, men who helped preserve the Union. Next to them are muskets, sidearms, and flags carried into desperate battles that determined the nation's fate. Since the closing of the Civil War Museum on Pine Street more than a year ago, at least 3,000 artifacts have been unseen by the public.

Now come plans to put them on display again at other institutions in Philadelphia and Gettysburg while the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia seeks funding for a new home in the city, museum president and chief executive officer Sharon Smith said. The collection would be exhibited and cared for over the next three years at the Gettysburg National Park Visitors Center, the National Constitution Center, and the African American Museum in Philadelphia, according to an interim plan.

Some of the historic treasures also would be in a traveling exhibit visiting sites in Pennsylvania and across the country during the 150th anniversary of the war. With no money for a building and no desire to leave Philadelphia, museum officials proposed the plan, which is expected to be approved in an order issued soon by Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Anne E. Lazarus. "This is the best 'plan B' we could imagine because the collection will be taken care of and seen in different venues, and the museum board can concentrate on building a museum in Philadelphia," Smith said.

The board set the goal of opening the new museum by 2014, "but that's the outer edge," she added. "We hope to have it before then." Smith said the board would spend the next six to eight months revising its plans to increase public and private support for the museum and would identify a new location in an existing building in Philadelphia.

The Civil War institution's move follows the Rendell administration's refusal to provide $8 million to $10 million in promised capital funding. That prompted the loss of the museum's planned new location at the historic First Bank of the United States in the heart of Independence National Historical Park. Museum officials sought funding from the legislature, but with so many competing interests across the state, their pleas didn't receive the needed support. By July, Smith spoke of being forced to make preparations to move the collection within weeks if financial support couldn't be found. "Since we couldn't get funding to build a museum and we lost the First Bank," Smith said, "a new plan was needed if we are going to reach our ultimate goal."

Given all the possibilities, "the dissolution of the collection or permanent relocation outside of the city or state, this keeps the dream alive for a Civil War museum in Philadelphia," said Gary Steuer, the city's chief cultural officer. "This is an interim step that allows the collection to be kept intact and conserved to the highest standards with strong partners that have the capacity to place some of the collection in front of the public."

Steuer, who also serves as director of the city's office of arts, culture, and the creative economy, said the museum must now look for a combination of public and private financial support while waiting for the economy to pick up. The plan "is not my first choice," said State Rep. James R. Roebuck Jr. (D., Phila.) of West Philadelphia. "But it is a reasonable choice given the circumstances we find ourselves in. "Everyone was influenced by the downturn in the economy," he added, while laying much of the blame on Harrisburg. "It's frustrating that the political leadership is lacking. I do very much put that responsibility on the governor . . . possibly a new governor might help."

In the meantime, "the collection will go to Gettysburg for care in their state-of-the-art facility and for exhibition," Smith said. "Artifacts related to abolition and the U.S. Colored Troops will be exhibited at the African American Museum in a new exhibit they will develop." Artifacts from the collection also "will be used by the National Constitution Center for a 150th anniversary exhibit that will open here in Philadelphia and then travel in the commonwealth and nationally."

The Civil War Museum will work with the Gettysburg Foundation, which operates the Gettysburg National Park Visitors Center, and the National Constitution Center to choose the artifacts to be displayed in the center's exhibition as well as its traveling exhibition. "For us, the [Philadelphia Civil War Museum's] 'plan B' is our 'plan A,' " said Steve Frank, vice president of education and exhibits at the Constitution Center. "We're able to collaborate to develop a world-class exhibition." That exhibition will remain in Philadelphia for at least nine months before traveling," Smith said.

Dru Neil, a spokeswoman at the Gettysburg Foundation, said the organization would talk with the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia "about potential arrangements" for the collection. Nothing definite has been planned. An official at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, who declined to be named, said the museum "is happy to help in any way we can" but no arrangements have been made so far to receive artifacts. Former Union officers established the Civil War Museum in 1888, and with their families donated artifacts and memorabilia over the years until a house was bought in 1922 in the 1800 block of Pine Street to display the collection.

The collection, now in storage, includes items connected with the great heroes of the war along with others specifically connected to Philadelphia. There are blue wool frocks once worn by generals including Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and George Gordon Meade; Confederate President Jefferson Davis' ornate smoking jacket, taken when he was captured in 1865; and plaster casts of Abraham Lincoln's face and hands. "This collection begs for display, interpretation, and public scrutiny," said Andy Waskie, a Civil War historian, author, and Temple University professor who serves on the board of the Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum and Library in the city's Frankford section.

"Given the fast-approaching sesquicentennial of the Civil War era, it is even more essential that this museum be preserved and open to the public and its collections available to inspire and educate." Philadelphia has "a unique opportunity" to tell the story of America, Roebuck said. "We tend to focus on the Revolution, but the Revolution became a reality when the principles were affirmed by the Civil War," he said. "We can tell both of those stories in Philadelphia. There are few other places like that."

Text Souce: Philadelphia Inquirer, September 26, 2009

Images's Source: Museum of the Civil War, Philadelphia, PA

Top Image: Stuffed head of Old Baldy, Gen. George G. Meade’s battle horse. Old Baldy served with Gen. Meade from 1861 to 1864, when he was retired due to his wounds. Old Baldy died of natural causes on a farm just outside Philadelphia in 1882.

Middle Image: The smoking jacket of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The smoking jacket was made for Davis by a slave in his household. The jacket was captured with the rest of Davis’ baggage on May 10, 1865, as he attempt to escape to Texas in order to carry on the Confederate war effort there.

Bottom Image: Battle log with artillery shell lodged in it from the Battle of Gettysburg. This log was cut from a tree of the western slope of Big Round Top in Gettysburg. On July 2, 1863, a shell from Reilly's North Carolina Battery fired at Union forces defending Little Round Top lodged in this tree. The tree fell in a storm in 1906, and the section was cut and preserved as a war relic.

Getting started

I've been posting links to Facebook and Twitter for some time now, however I'm finding neither the right fit. Twitter is great for blasting out links, but mixing work with friends and family on Facebook isn't the best use of that medium. I'd rather not try to blog on Facebook, and Twitter is, well, Twitter. So, after much thought and consideration (in other words, procrastination...) I'm starting a more design-oriented blog. I won't promise it will be all about design -- likely a mix of visual design, UI, UX, technology, brand marketing, science and whatever else leaps out at me.

As you may already know, I'm the Director of User Experience for Clearspring and AddThis, having held several UI/UX related positions at Netscape, AOL and Revolution Health. I am very fortunate to work with Jeff Wong, our creative director, and other incredibly talented folks at Clearspring Technologies. If you'd like to learn more, check out the "Follow Me" links off to the side.

I'll be writing a good bit more about AddThis and sharing in this blog, so stay tuned.

Interview with Rob Janoff, designer of the Apple logo | creativebits

Interview with Rob Janoff, designer of the Apple logo | creativebits

Shared via AddThis

Write On! 4 Societies Workshop

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.) We posted last year about the 2d meeting, in Edmonton, Canada, of the 4 Societies Workshop, a scholarly roundtable cosponsored by the Japanese Society of International Law, the American Society of International Law, the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law, and the Canadian Council on International Law. The 1st meeting had been in Wellington, New Zealand. Meeting 3 having been set for August 27-28, 2010, on Awajish ima Island, Hyogo, near Kobe, Japan, organizers now are seeking paper proposals. (credit for photo of Akashi Bridge, which connects the island to Kobe)
Each sponsoring society will select 4 unpublished papers; submitters are encouraging to send to the society with which they are likely to have a longterm affiliation. Preference will be given to authors in the early stages of their careers and to "innovative and cutting edge proposals"

related to the workshop's theme, "International Law in the New Era of Globalization."
Submission deadline very soon for applicants to the Canadian Council -- this Thursday, October 1 -- and later for all other applicants -- December 20, 2009.
Selected participants will be notified by next February and expected to submit a full paper by the end of next July. The working language of the conference will be English. All proposals should include a project description not exceeding 500 words and the applicant’s curriculum vitae; papers may be published in a conference volume. Details on the theme and on how to submit are here.

On September 27

On this day in ...

... 1962, the publishing house of Houghtom Mifflin issued Silent Spring, a book that a Time cover story credited with "Breaking the Silence on DDT." Preceding publication of the work by biologist Rachel Carson had been excerpts in the New Yorker; her allegations that DDT and other

pesticides were being overused to the point that they had become "Elixirs of Death" had so disturbed chemical manufacturers that they threatened to sue to block publication of the book. In Time's words:

When the book appeared, industry critics assailed 'the hysterical woman,' but it became an instant best seller with lasting impact. It spurred the banning of DDT
in the U.S., the passage of major environmental laws and eventually a global treaty to phase out 12 pesticides known as 'the dirty dozen.'

Carson died from breast cancer 2 years after publication and well before adoption of the treaty mentioned above, the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. A 2007 National Public Radio broadcast, marking the centenary of her birth, detailed how, decades after Silent Spring appeared, Carson's "work continues to stir up controversy on Capitol Hill." (credit for Book-of-the-Month Club edition, including approving "report" on the book by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas)

(Prior September 27 posts are here and here.)

Off Topic Novel---1840s New Orleans Drenched In Heat, Opium, Yellow Fever, Mercury Poisoning, Sex and Voodoo

Yellow Jack, A Novel, Josh Russell, W.W.Norton Publishing, 250 pp, paperback, $14.95

In 1838 a fugitive apprentice photographer lands in New Orleans and sets up shops in warehouses, bedrooms, and the streets of antebellum New Orleans. In Paris he apprentice steals a camera from Louis Daguerre and in New Orleans takes the name Claude Marchand, is wildly successful as a portraitist, as a sexual partner to both a octroon voodoo practitioner and a adolescent heir to a fortune.

Millicent, the voodoo adept, offers her sexual services to the gossip columnist of the Daily Tropicto protect Claude's secret after Daguerre exhibits his process in Paris. Vivian, a 10-year-old becomes a subject of many of Claude's portraits. For several years, Vivian and Millicent vie for Claude's attention. At age 14 Vivian catches yellow fever and her family takes her to New York. Claude and Millicent marry, adopt deformed twins and experiment with a domestic life.

Vivian's return sets the sex and drugs back into action. Vivian, resumes her monthly portrait sitting, seduces Claude who intentionally wrecks his family and marriage. Millicent, voodoo practitioner, is not to be crossed. Fame and wealth come to Claude as a portraitist of the dead slain by yellow fever but contentment eludes him. Vivan's accepts a fiancee who soon dies of the plague.

There are three versions of this tale story and for the reader, three worlds collide: Claude's first-person narration, Millicent's diary entries, and an art historian's notes for an exhibition book. The voice of Claude's opium and mercury poisoning, the voice of Millicent's jealousy and revenge, and an anonymous art historian arid voice of Claude's neglected daguerreotypes.

Yellow Jack is also a collision of the works of Tennessee Williams (dramas set in one room, not Southern regionalism), Anne Rice (the soft porn books not the vampire books), and maybe William Faulkner (his view of manipulative women) and Flannery O'Connor (her naturalism in the damnation of souls). The scenes and settings are finely etched, the behaviors are well sketched but the characters are not compelling. In the Old English language the word 'wicked' meant 'twisted' like the wick of a candle. These characters are wicked in the Old English sense. Sadly wicked and sadly unredeemed, full of sound and fury, sex and mortality, but signifying very little. Death will come to all and madness might precede it.

Of course, that precisely might be the author's point.

Big Screen--- Dog Jack Premier: Chicago/Pittsburgh In October

Civil War's Dog Jack Saluted After 7 Score, 4 Years: Story of Pennsylvania Regiment's Faithful Comrade Brings Movie Crew to Soldiers & Sailors [National Museum], Lillian Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 10, 2005.

Dog Jack, a mixed-breed warrior, conducted himself with such valor during the Civil War that the men of the 102nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment exchanged a Confederate prisoner for him when he was captured and commissioned a portrait of him at war's end.

The portrait hangs in Soldiers & Sailors National Military Museum & Memorial in Oakland: The brown-and-white dog with the patch on his left eye lies on the floor, his head turned to look straight at the viewer. Many years ago, Florence Biros of New Wilmington, Lawrence County, saw it and had to know more. Soon there was "Dog Jack," the novel. Now "Dog Jack," the movie -- starring a deaf female pit bull named Piglet -- is being filmed.

A plaque hanging by the large oil portrait of Dog Jack tells much of what is known about him. He was the mascot of the Niagara Volunteer Fire Co. on Penn Avenue, which was headquartered close to the present-day Engine Co. 3 in the Strip District. He went with the firefighters when they enlisted in the 102nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment in 1861 "and fought in most of their battles except during his period of captivity when he was a prisoner of war," reads the plaque. He took part in the Wilderness campaign, the battle of Spotsylvania and the siege of Petersburg, all in Virginia.

Dog Jack was known for charging straight to the front lines during battle, said Josh Fox, a Soldiers & Sailors curator. He was said to understand bugle calls and obey orders only from his own regiment. After battle, he would roam the battlefield, seeking out wounded and dead comrades. He twice was taken prisoner.

"Captured at Salem Church, six months later he was exchanged for a Confederate prisoner at Belle Isle, Va." says the plaque (other accounts say he was traded for two Confederate POWs). "At Savage Station he was again captured but managed to escape." Jack was badly wounded at Malvern Hill in Virginia but returned to the regiment after recovering in a field hospital. His last campaign was in Maryland. On Dec. 23, 1864, Dog Jack disappeared in Frederick, Md., and was never found.

Some say the silver collar the men had gotten for him attracted the attention of thieves, who dispatched him. Or he may have been wounded in battle that day and gone off to the woods to die, said Fox. The men of the 102nd commissioned the portrait, modeled on a photograph of Jack in the same pose. Soldiers & Sailors also has a charcoal drawing of Dog Jack, this time lying at the feet of a Union soldier. To this bare-bones story, Biros added a runaway slave boy, Jed, who is Dog Jack's fast companion. Her self-published novel for young adults blends fictional characters like Jed with historical ones, including Chaplain Alexander Stewart of the 102nd, who wrote about Dog Jack in his journal.

Biros met Chicago director Edward McDougal at a conference and told him Dog Jack's story; he agreed it had the makings of a movie. McDougal wrote and is producing and directing the film. Californian Woody Young, the executive producer, has provided financial backing; there also are two local investors. It was filmed mainly in Illinois, but some battlefield scenes with historic re-enactors were shot near Darlington, Beaver County, last week, and on Friday, the Soldiers & Sailors ballroom was used for a dance scene.

McDougal expects a spring release of the 105-minute film. He declined to disclose the film's budget. Biros, decked out in a hoop skirt and corkscrew curls, was on hand at Soldiers & Sailors to watch the filming and pose for photographs.

Piglet also was sitting for photographs, in front of Jack's portrait. Except for more white in her coat and a svelter build, she's a ringer for Jack -- variously described as a mutt, a bulldog mix or a bull terrier -- with the same brown patch over the left eye. Piglet had not acted before, said trainer Tracy Doyle of Rockford, Ill., who found her in a Dumpster. A pit bull, she may have been abandoned when the breeder realized the 12-week-old puppy was deaf, said Doyle, who uses hand signals to give commands to Piglet.

Not being able to hear has its advantages during filming of noisy, chaotic battle scenes, and Piglet is a sweet-tempered dog who has tolerated with patience and grace the long waits, repeated takes, lengthy sessions of playing dead and handling by strangers. As to a female playing a macho warrior dog, Doyle said, "Lassie was played by seven generations of male dogs. This is payback." The film departs somewhat from the novel, said McDougal, who has directed a number of films aimed at young audiences, including "The Prodigy."

"We wanted to expand the audience [beyond children], and we wanted to grapple with some of the issues raised," including slavery and the role of slaves and ex-slaves in the war. The movie sets up a conflict within Jed, who is encouraged to seek revenge on his former master by an aggressive soldier of the regiment and urged toward forgiveness by Chaplain Stewart. The ending was the subject of much debate, McDougal said. Having Dog Jack just disappear or die didn't play well with focus groups. "We struggled with that," he said. "The fate of the dog is a major part of the film."

Text and Image Source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Image to the Right: Ann Redd and CWL, 2009. Ann's dress is lilac and was worn in the Dog Jack ballroom scene. CWL dressed as a civilian for the scene. The ballroom scene took almost four hours to shoot. Hope we are in it. The wetplate photo by Rob Gibson, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Dog Jack film's wwwsite link

Forthcoming and Noteworthy---Modern Perspectives On Civil War Medicine

Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine, Guy R. Hasegawa and James M. Schmidt, editors, Edinborough Press, $29.95.

Peter D'Onofrio, Ph.D., founder and President of the Society of Civil War Surgeons, Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine ". . . is [a]collection of essays by eight renowned authors and scholars give us a . . . vision of Civil War medicine. A must volume for the library of any Civil War medical historian."

Dr. Bill Gurley, editor, I Acted From Principle: The Civil War Diary of a Confederate Surgeon: Years of Change and Suffering is a collection of fresh and insightful essays on those essential, yet often overlooked, underpinnings of ...medical care in the Civil War. With impeccable scholarship each essay ...illuminates [the subjects'] importance to the progress of medical science, both during the war years and beyond.”

Dr. Gordon Dammann, founder of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine: "The new book Years of Change and Suffering is a must for all interested in the subject of Civil War medicine. Its authors are the elite of Civil War medical scholars of our time and they give a new, modern insight to the subject. Highly recommended."

James Schmidt is the author of Lincoln's Labels: America's Best Known Brands and the Civil War (2009) and Guy Hasegawa is the author of The Confederate medical laboratories, Southern Medical Journal, December 2003.

New and Noteworthy---Louisiana Tigers On The Way In and On The Way Out Of Pennsylvania

The Louisiana Tigers in the Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863, Scott Mingus, Louisiana State University Press, 352 pages,8 maps, bibliography, index, $34.95.
Previous works on Confederate brigadier general Harry T. Hays's First Louisiana Brigade--better known as the "Louisiana Tigers"--have tended to focus on just one day of the Tigers' service--their role in attacking East Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863--and have touched only lightly on the brigade's role at the Second Battle of Winchester, an important prelude to Gettysburg. In this commanding study, Scott L. Mingus, Sr., offers the first significant detailed exploration of the Louisiana Tigers during the entirety of the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign.
Mingus begins by providing a sweeping history of the Louisiana Tigers; their predecessors, Wheat's Tigers; the organizational structure and leadership of the brigade in 1863; and the personnel that made up its ranks. Covering the Tigers' movements and battle actions in depth, he then turns to the brigade's march into the Shenandoah Valley and the Tigers' key role in defeating the Federal army at the Second Battle of Winchester.

Combining soldiers' reminiscences with contemporary civilian accounts, Mingus breaks new ground by detailing the Tigers' march into Pennsylvania, their first trip to Gettysburg in the week before the battle, their two-day occupation of York, Pennsylvania--the largest northern town to fall to the Confederate army--and their march back to Gettysburg. He offers the first full-scale discussion of the Tigers' interaction with the local population during their invasion of Pennsylvania and includes detailed accounts of the citizens' reactions to the Tigers--many not published since appearing in local newspapers over a century ago.

Mingus explores the Tigers' actions on the first two days of the Battle of Gettysburg and meticulously recounts their famed assault on East Cemetery Hill, one of the pivotal moments of the battle. He closes with the Tigers' withdrawal from Gettysburg and their retreat into Virginia. Appendices include an order of battle for East Cemetery Hill, a recap of the weather during the entire Gettysburg Campaign, a day-by-day chronology of the Tigers' movements and campsites, and the text of the official reports from General Hays for Second Winchester and Gettysburg. Comprehensive and engaging, Mingus's exhaustive work constitutes the definitive account of General Hays's remarkable brigade during the critical summer of 1863.

Scott L. Mingus, Sr., has written numerous books on the Civil War, including the two volume Human Interest Stories of the Gettysburg Campaign, its companion volume Gettysburg Glimpses: True Stories from the Battlefield; and Flames beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863. He lives in York, Pennsylvania. (Text from publisher)

CWL: Mingus' work is most likely the first that dwells exclusively on the Pennsylvania Campaign. Previous books on the Louisiana Tigers include Wheat's Tigers: The 1st Louisiana Special Battalion in the Civil War by Gary Schreckengost, Gentle Tiger: The Gallant Life of Roberdeau Wheat by Charles L. Dufour, and Lee's Tigers: The Louisiana Infantry in the Army of Northern Virginia by Terry L. Jones.

Off Topic---Carl Gustav Jung, Psychotherapist With Legacy of Star Wars Films

Jung: A Very Short Introduction, Anthony Stevens, Oxford University Press, 159pp, charts, illustrations, $11.95.

20th century Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung's approach is influential and he is considered as the first modern psychologist to advocate that the human psyche is by nature religious. He advanced an understanding the mind through exploring of dreams, art, mythology, religion and philosophy. Both as a theoretical psychologist and a practicing clinician, his work explored other areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, literature and the arts. Jung's ideas of the concept of psychological archetypes, the collective unconscious and synchronicity are found in George Lucas' Star Wars films. Joseph Campbell, an educator and mythologist drew Lucas' attention to Jung's concepts of archetypes.

Emphasizing the importance of balance and harmony, Jung came to believe that people rely too heavily on science and logic and ignore the benefits of integrating spirituality and appreciation of unconscious realms. The process of integrating the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining conscious autonomy of the individual is a central tenet of his analytical psychology.

The strength of Anthony Stevens' Jung: A Very Short Introduction is that in 159 pages the the birth, development and implications of Jung's central tenets are presented clearly and concisely. Jung, a very close student and personal friend of Sigmund Freud, repudiated Freudian as being a reductionist. Stevens captures Jung's growth into and then out of Freud's sphere of influence. In the course of a lifetime as a psychologist who read deeply in anthropology, Jung explored dimensions of theof the mind and creativity as represented in a variety of cultures. Lucas' use of Jungian archetypes, as described by Joseph Campbell in interiews with Bill Moyers in a PBS series, is what made the first Star War film attractive to many viewers.