Life Mission Research Articles

King of Cuba by Cristina García (review)

Reviewed by: King of Cuba by Cristina García Ada Ortúzar-Young García, Cristina. King of Cuba. New York: Scribner, 2013. Pp. 235. ISBN 978-1-47671-024-2. The dictator has been a recurrent character in Spanish American fiction since the birth of the new nations. In 1845 Argentine Domingo Faustino Sarmiento wrote Facundo. Civilización y barbarie (Facundo. Civilization and Barbarism), considered one of the cornerstones of Spanish American literature. The Spaniard Ramón del Valle-Inclán contributed with his own version in 1926, Tirano Banderas, as part of the cycle of the “esperpento”—a distorted and grotesque depiction of characters and reality. Some of the most well known exponents of the genre are Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias’s El Señor Presidente (1946), Mexican Carlos Fuentes’s La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Paraguayan Augusto Roa Bastos’s Yo, el supremo (1974), Cuban Alejo Carpentier’s El recurso del método (1974), Colombian Gabriel García Márquez’s El otoño del patriarca (1975) and Peruvian Mario Varga Llosa’s La fiesta del chivo (2000). These fictional accounts, modeled after real-life dictators, represent ruthless and corrupt characters who terrorize and torture their people, perpetuate their power by any means, and have a lasting and negative impact in their respective countries. [End Page 376] King of Cuba, Cristina García’s latest novel, follows this tradition as it shares many elements with her Spanish-American counterparts. But as a writer, the novelist straddles two waters. She is both an insider (born in Cuba and visited the island a number of times) and an outsider (raised and educated in the United States from an early age) often speaking with a double-voiced discourse appealing to multiple audiences. As a member of the Cuban diaspora, her novels, most notably Dreaming in Cuba (1992), The Agüero Sisters (1997) and A Handbook to Luck (2007), portray the trauma of separation and conflicting ideologies through the eyes of families living on both sides of the Straight of Florida. King of Cuba is not just about the dictator. It is about an era coming to an end and how the Cuban revolution has impacted its citizens in general. It centers on two mirror image figures whose stories are braided together in the novel. In Havana, a Castro-like figure often referred to as El Comandante, and sometimes as the Maximum Líder, the tyrant, or the despot, but never simply Fidel, as the average Cuban would. The English-speaking reader might think it follows in the footsteps of Oliver Stone’s 2002 adulatory documentary-interview with Castro, entitled “Comandante,” portraying a still eloquent and energetic leader very much in control of his country. On the other hand, the Cuban reader might ask whether García is establishing a subtle contact with the average Cuban, who refer to the aging dictator humorously as the “coma andante,” walking in state of coma, as they seek relief of their daily penuries. The prominent Cuban intellectual Jorge Mañach has considered the “choteo” (poking fun) a trait of the Cuban character and a survival strategy in times of adversity. His antagonist, the octogenarian Goyo Herrera, a former classmate of the Comandante, is in exile in southern Florida after having lost all his spiritual and worldly possessions as a result of the revolution. His mission in life is to assassinate him, or at least to live long enough to see him dead. In a way reminiscent of the portrayal of Fuentes’s Artemio Cruz, García centers on the deterioration of the body, which also serves as a metaphor for the deterioration of extreme ideologies on the part of revolutionaries and exiles alike. In Havana, an aging and distrustful dictator is tortured by his failing body: he lacks the strength to open a window, has faced the decline of his sexual prowess, needs dentures, must take an array of pills, needs bifocals, his diet is reduced to oatmeal and toast. Most importantly, his reputation around the world is fading and there is no mention of him on the anniversary of the revolution in the foreign press. He looks outside his window to a...

United in Love & Violence

United in Love & Violence Marc Jampole (bio) Rootwork Veronica Golos Three: A Taos Press www.3taospress.com 122 Pages; Print, $25.00 Veronica Golos’s Rootwork packs structural elements as densely as the underground root system of a tree that graces its cover and many of its pages. She weaves at least three different organizing principles into her material, starting with the absolutely beautiful graphic design, which is dominated by the cover’s crisp photo of a sculpture of a root in electrical wire, paper, acrylics, and fabric, created by contemporary Cuban artist Jorge Mayet. Each chapter begins with a block of yellowing parchment, as if from an antique book, on which we see the chapter number, the years covered by the chapter, the Mayet root image, and the words of a popular spiritualist. After a blank page, the second printed page of the chapter always contains quotes. To the right of the poems, presented as letters or diary entries of either American abolitionist John Brown or his devoted wife Mary Day Brown, sits a postage-stamp sized image of whoever’s voice it is. One or more poems in every chapter is printed over a shadow image of Mayet’s root. With occasional variation, the book repeats this visually rich and antique-looking design pattern eight times. The second structural layer is the story told in Rootwork’s seven chapters plus coda. The narrative takes a circuitous route, going back in time from Mary Brown mourning her husband’s lynching in 1859 to the early days of their 1833 marriage when he was twice her age, and then forward to the end of Mary’s life. The third level of structure involves the interweaving of the three types of documents that Rootwork comprises, all written by Golos even when attributed to either Brown or his wife: entries from Mary Day Brown’s notebook and letters primarily between the Browns, plus the reconstruction (from someone’s notes) of a speech Mary gave near the end of her life; a “chapbook” of May Day Brown’s poems titled “Water Cure” that stands roughly in the middle of the book; and very modernistic poems that Golos calls “ghost code” poems. Each of these types of poems has its own typeface, and each is written in its own style. The contrast between the aesthetics of these three styles is striking. The letters and notebook entries are prosy and plain-speaking, light on imagery and very heavy on narrative: “Mrs. Frances Harper has agreed to deliver this letter. I trust her completely, as do you. She will help, I believe, in the days to come. Trust also in the Lord”; or “We have the slate and coal to mark the lines & together we copy the words of God.” What makes these poems compelling is the story they tell: the history of their relationship focused on the Browns’ self-appointed mission in life—to root out slavery. In Rootwork, both John and Mary are equally devoted to their spouse, their god, and the abolitionist movement—both with a blazing fervor, but of a grim sort, as if the most tender of loves could not be made to crack a smile. In stark contrast to the plain style of these imaginary historical documents stand the imagistic and open-ended ghost code poems. The ghost code poems unfold in stark images, changing perspectives, unconventional syntax, and a relentless musicality: into the hair of tidesI am still dampwhen I wake from before [End Page 13] deep in thisin-between or blaze:(a whistlecan kill) conjure wish shout putscreech field holler blues(for)king or in froth foam in free domesdress in the skins of sky and horizon divedown The 14 poems of “Water Cure” stand somewhere in between the open-ended modernism of the ghost code poems and the prosaic narrative of the letters and notebook. They speak in a straightforward manner but with the elevated sense of meaning that is the essence of poetry: We namedinto each other, named in orderto press each wordcleanly, our forgetting fleshso fragile. or YesterdayI knelt in dry dirt...

If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?

Marx before all else a revolutionary. His real mission in life, noted Frederick Engels at Marx's graveside, was to contribute in one way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the forms of government which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the present-day proletariat. Could the same be said about Marxist economists? That they are revolutionaries whose real mission is to contribute to the overthrow of capitalism?Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Finding Your Passion: Work and the Authentic Self

Finding Your Passion: Work and the Authentic Self

군에서의 자기계발 프로그램의 효과성에 관한 연구

Abstract Recently the military is improving the policies of military culture for soldiers to lead a better military life. In this effect, ‘division A’ introduced “goal-directed self development program’. This program is guiding the soldiers to set up personal mission in life not only in the military but also linked to the future, after being discharged from military service. Therefore the purpose of this research is to test the effect of this program on soldier’s objective management, self esteem and satisfaction and to propose political strategies for creating healthier military culture. The research method was to compare and analyze the difference between two groups, ‘division A’(experimental group), which operated the program, and ‘division B’(controlled group) which did not operated the program. research targets were 488 soldiers in total, 257 soldiers in experimental group and 231 in controlled group. T-test(verification) and analysis of covariance was done with SPSS WIN 11.5 program with collected information. The result showed that the program has meaningful effect in every aspect mentioned above to the soldiers.Key Words : self-improvement, objective management, satisfaction of military life, military policy, selfdevelopment program, maladaptive soldiers

Архетипні риси біографії Каспара Гаузера в казковій повісті Галини Пагутяк “Втеча звірів, або Новий бестіарій”

The article analyzes the semantics of the archetype of „the noble savage” embodied in the image of Kaspar Hauser from the fairy-tale „The Escape of the Animals, or the New Bestiary” by Halyna Pahutiak. It looks at such features of this archetype as moral innocence, inborn kindness, harmonious relationships with nature, intentions to restore the lost order of the Universe. The article details the semantics of damaging influences of the civilization which prevent a person from realizing his or her life mission, expressed in a literary interpretation of „Kaspar Hauser syndrome”. It studies the specific character of creating the image of the same name in the novel by the German writer J. Wassermann, which is a sample of a literary biography. The paper considers the allusive connections of Kaspar Hauser image with the myth of the Golden Age, associated with the nostalgia for the lost Paradise; the mythopoetic image of the Unicorn; the semiotic system of the Old Testament. It deals with the peculiar character of realizing the motifs of loneliness, alienation, human sins, lost universal order, search for harmony. The article highlights the particular qualities of Halyna Pahutiak’s mythological thinking, which is realized through the interpretation of the world mythology images, symbols and sacred texts by actualizing the senses subordinate to the author’s intention.

Aging gracefully: A comparative study of Japanese and Malaysian women aged 65–75

Longer lives and extended retirement have created a ‘young old age’ stage of life. How people spend their “young old age” has become increasingly important. This research aims to investigate the different ageing experiences of Japanese and Malaysian women and the activities they engaged in their “young old age”. In-depth interviews were conducted to collect data and an adapted grounded theory approach was used for data analysis. Findings reveal many common characteristics for both groups of research participants. The emerging themes show that Japanese and Malaysian Chinese have different life missions evident in their daily activities, one passing on culture and the other passing on family values and life experience. They also differ in their choice of living arrangement (independent versus dependent/interdependent), attitudes to life (fighting versus accepting) and activities in which to engage (aesthetic pursuits versus family oriented activities).

Vignettes from my half a century : alongside the group of 77

The birth of the Group of 77 (G-77) was the decisive element that launched me on the course of my professional career and life mission devoted to development and the cause of the developing countries. In 1966, as a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, I was in search of a topic for my dissertation. My advisor, Professor Ernst B. Haas, suggested that, while back home in Yugoslavia for the summer break, I contact and consult Leo Mates, a leading Yugoslav political figure and intellectual and one of the architects of the Non-Aligned Movement. Mates spoke to me about the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the birth of the G-77 and suggested that my thesis be on decision-making and the group system in UNCTAD.

켈틱 기독교공동체의 선교

This paper focused on the Celtic Christian Community and their mission. In the centuries BC, the northern neighbours of ancient Greece and Rome were known by the description KELTOI means that strangers or hidden ones. The word CEILT is ‘an act of concealing’ from which the word Kilt, the short male skirt of traditional Celtic dress comes and we all know what a kilt conceals under it! They were rural, tribal, always on the move people, as such they were different to the Roman church which identified with the dominant power of the cities. The Roman church was unsure how to respond to these people as they were relational rather than rational, inspirational rather than institutional. Ireland (unlike Britain and Gaul) was untouched by the Roman Empire, thus it was from Ireland that Celtic Christian community had its roots and passion and expansion. The primary missionary movement across Britain which became a hinge in history as much of Europe was evangelised e.g. Patrick to Ireland 432, Columba 560 Ireland to Iona, Aidan 635 to Lindisfarne. Columbanus 591 to France, Italy and so it goes on. There are ancient sites, crosses all across Europe of Irish and Northumbrian saints bearing witness to the mission. The Celtic Mission is life mission or community mission. In the Celtic Christian world every ‘church’ was monastic. So when we talk about the Celtic church it is synonymous with the monastery, with people living in Community. The monastery was a monastic school where the seeking of God was ‘the one thing necessary’ – the very foundation of life. A commitment to Mission, meaning ‘being sent or obedience to the task’ as connecting with people, community on the road, building relationships, exploring spirituality; living in the story and living out the story. For the Community it is engaging in mission out of a context of being in the monastery. Moving into the unknown as well as the known, wandering for the love of Christ. There life may involve pilgrimage and peregrinati in a physical sense and this is certainly part of celtic Christinity’s vision. Mission is a mixture of going, staying, moving on, doing, being, excitement, mundane in the home and market place. Finding God at work in the everyday ordinariness of life as it is. The Celtic Mission is spiritual mission. They love of nature. An awareness of the unity of creation. Columbanus ‘If you wish to understand the Creator, first understand His creation.’ They were aware of the Cross over Creation. That God was to redeem the whole created order. The Celtic Mission is contextualization mission. A deep love of the Scriptures as God’s memory book of relationships and encounter. To listening & learning from the Scriptures, with both the prayerful reading of Lectio divina and studied research of the Bible encouraged. They had a great love of learning but it was a yearning for wisdom not necessarily knowledge. They had a wonderful balance and were known as Saints and Scholars. They wanted to learn how to live, how to follow Jesus as Lord as a way of life. and they concern about combination with their community's life. The Celtics were vigorous, energetic, and passionate. The Celtic missionaries were committed to scripture, to challenge, and to loving those whom they sought to win. May this celtic tradition lead to similar mission today.

Scytonin, a novel cyanobacterial photoprotective pigment: calculations of Raman spectroscopic biosignatures

The Raman spectrum of scytonin, a novel derivative of the parent scytonemin, is predicted from DFT calculations of the most stable, lowest energy, conformational structure. The diagnostic importance of this study relates to the spectral ability to discriminate between scytonemin and its derivatives alone or in admixture with geological matrices from identified characteristic Raman spectral signatures. The successful interpretation of biosignatures from a wide range of cyanobacterial extremophilic colonization in terrestrial and extraterrestrial scenarios is a fundamental requirement of the evaluation of robotic spectroscopic instrumentation in search for life missions. Scytonemin is produced exclusively by cyanobacterial colonies in environmentally stressed habitats and is widely recognized as a key target biomarker molecule in this enterprise. Here, the detailed theoretical analysis of the structure of scytonin enables a protocol to be established for the recognition of characteristic bands in its Raman spectrum and to accomplish the successful differentiation between scytonin and scytonemin as well as other scytonemin derivatives such as the dimethoxy and tetramethoxy compounds that have been isolated from cyanobacterial colonies but which have not yet been characterized spectroscopically. The results of this study will facilitate an extension of the database capability for miniaturized Raman spectrometers which will be carried on board search for life robotic missions to Mars, Europa, and Titan.

An Account of Denmark, With Francogallia and Some Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture and Employing the Poor by Robert Molesworth

Reviewed by: An Account of Denmark, With Francogallia and Some Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture and Employing the Poor by Robert Molesworth D. W. Hayton Robert Molesworth . An Account of Denmark, With Francogallia and Some Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture and Employing the Poor, ed. Justin Champion . Indianapolis : The Liberty Fund , 2011 . Pp. lvii + 394 . $18.49 . Robert, first Viscount Molesworth (1656–1725) was perhaps the most important of the Irish “commonwealthsmen” identified in Caroline Robbins’s pathbreaking study The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman (Harvard, 1959; reprinted by The Liberty Fund in 2004). Political historians focus on his exposition of “Gothic constitutionalism” as a classic exemplar of libertarian Whiggism, and explore his connections with the third earl of Shaftesbury, whose advocacy of a “polite” culture of civic virtue he is alleged to have brought to Ireland. After 1715, Molesworth, despairing of preferment in England, retired to his Irish estates and ensconced himself within a circle of disciples, including the young Francis Hutcheson, through whom Shaftesbury’s ideas were transmitted to Scotland. Historians of Ireland are interested in Molesworth’s contributions [End Page 186] to the development of a “patriot” interest in the Dublin parliament and the Dublin press after 1714. And historians of Denmark, where Molesworth served unhappily as William III’s envoy extraordinary between 1689 and 1692, still pick over the insults to their native land, its people, and especially its monarchy, contained in the famous (or to, Danes, infamous) Account of the kingdom published in 1694. These different phases of Molesworth’s life reflect an unsettled temperament and disappointed ambition, resulting in a public life marked by sharp changes of direction. For many years, he was torn between settling in Ireland and London; he oscillated between supporting Whig ministries as bastions against “popish” absolutism, and opposing them when he smelled a betrayal of traditional principles; and he was himself alternately attracted by the prospects of office and repelled by the expectations of patronage. Throughout, however, he kept the greater good firmly in view. Devoted to the ideal of liberty and public virtue, he despised tyranny, especially “priestcraft,” whether Roman Catholic or High Anglican. Molesworth’s attributable published writings have been gathered for the first time in this handsomely produced volume, one of a series of principal libertarian tracts in the library of Thomas Hollis, the eighteenth-century English Dissenter whose mission in life was to reprint and circulate works from the canon of English republican thought. Hollis was a particular benefactor of American colleges, including Harvard, and this connection presumably forms the rationale for the series. Molesworth’s editor is Mr. Champion, whose own studies of English anti-clericalism, and of Toland, an Irish writer with a close personal connection to Molesworth, fit him admirably for the task. This edition brings together the Account of Denmark and the full text of Molesworth’s translation of Hotman’s Franco-Gallia (the preface of which is often studied separately), and adds an interesting pamphlet from the days of Molesworth’s Irish exile, the Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture and Employing the Poor (1723), an early example of the literature on Irish “improvement” that reached maturity a decade or so later with the writings of Thomas Prior and Arthur Dobbs. Although the editorial apparatus is minimal (some might wish for more since Molesworth is not important enough to make another edition likely in the near future), Mr. Champion amply explains for the “general reader.” The discussion of the Account of Denmark, with its essential warning that liberty could be imperiled and even destroyed by Protestant as well as Catholic monarchs bent on absolute rule, and of Franco-Gallia, with its account of the ideal “Gothic constitution,” in which liberty was guaranteed by aristocratic virtue, sets Molesworth’s writing in a long chronological and a broad continental perspective. It also integrates them into a vision of liberty’s origins in historical processes. Mr. Champion’s persuasive reading emphasizes Molesworth’s “historical scholarship,” which connects closely with that of Molesworth’s protégé Toland, and finds a link between the Danish and French experience as establishing “how historically contingent these traditions of freedom were.” The afterlife of both texts is discussed...

My modus operandi

My modus operandi

The Devil's Wall: The Nationalist Youth Mission of Heinz Rutha by Mark Cornwall (review)

REVIEWS 915 Cornwall, Mark. The Devil’s Wall: The Nationalist Youth Mission of Heinz Rutha. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 2012. 352 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. $39.95: £25.00: €36.00. Heinz Rutha was born in 1897, on Adolf Hitler’s eighth birthday. More important, he first saw the light of day within two weeks of the ‘Badeni decrees’, which required civil servants in the imperial Austrian crownlands of Bohemia and Moravia to know both German and Czech, and provoked German protests so vehement as to mark perhaps the beginning of the end for the multinational Habsburg Monarchy. After 1918, in the new Czechoslovak state, Rutha, a young veteran and repressed homosexual, dedicated himself to forging a new leadership for its German minority from young men united in erotic friendship. Drawing inspiration much less from Nazism than from the radically anti-liberal Austrian philosopher Othmar Spann, he founded the Kameradschaftsbund, or Comrades’ Union, which developed into a powerful cohort within the völkisch, ‘Sudeten’ subset of German politics outside Germany. In 1926, Rutha served as best man to another German from Northern Bohemia, Konrad Henlein. And between 1935 and 1937, as tensions between Czechoslovakia and Henlein’s Sudeten German movement escalated, Rutha served as his emissary abroad. Arrested in October 1937 for the crime of homosexuality, however, he escaped the confines of a Czechoslovak cell a month later by committing suicide. Mark Cornwall concludes his remarkably researched biography of Rutha by declaring that he died ‘on the twin altars of Sudeten German patriotism and homosexuality’ (p. 267). The Devil’s Wall rescues Rutha from an undeserved obscurity born of a now bygone taboo. Cornwall promises, and delivers, fresh perspectives on the internaldynamicsoftheSudetenGermanmovement,aswellasoninternational dimensions to the Czech-German conflict after 1933. Confirming the nuance of Ronald Smelser’s pathbreaking study, The Sudeten Problem (Middletown, CT, 1975), Cornwall demonstrates disunity among völkisch leaders in Czechoslovakia, with Rutha perhaps the least extreme and Henlein somewhere in the middle, but lurching toward the Sudeten Nazis. Pushing against a tradition of reading Sudeten German appeals to West European public opinion as nothing but a fig leaf atop a treacherous irredentism, Cornwall argues that Rutha was ‘sincere over the righteousness of the Sudeten cause’ (p. 233). In 1935 and even somewhat later, Rutha and others in Henlein’s inner circle assessed the international framework in ‘conservative, pragmatic terms’, hoping at best for a ‘domestic revolution within Czechoslovakia’ (p. 184). Diplomats, of course, often equate sincerity with naivety. And using ‘conservative’ to describe revolutionaries begs a question: conservative compared to what? Perhaps the most riveting chapters stretch from the Great War to about 1933. Drawing on a long-lost diary that Rutha kept for half of 1918, Cornwall SEER, 91, 4, OCTOBER 2013 916 captures the anxieties of a lower-middle-class Catholic at the age of twenty-one as he experienced not only combat and political catastrophe but attraction to fellow men. Over the following several years, Rutha discovered his life mission: leading male adolescents in a militantly nationalist pedagogic crusade to which he could sublimate his sexual insecurities and desires. In the late 1920s came a personal crisis, despair over having found no ‘son and friend for life’ (Rutha’s own words, p. 146) to nurture as his successor. ‘For me,’ Rutha declared in a never sent letter, the Sudeten state idea ‘comes alive and grows only where a young man loves me’ (p. 142). In 1932, it seems, he began to initiate ‘mutual gratification’ (p. 148) with disciples, including one who was only fifteen years old. As the Depression and the Nazi seizure of power in Germany broke open locked doors for Sudeten Germans, Rutha sowed the seeds of his own destruction. Cornwall sees ‘interesting parallels’ (p. 241) between the persecution of homosexuals in the Czechoslovak Republic and in the Third Reich. Yet one and the same discriminatory intent should not obscure the difference made by liberal safeguards in Czechoslovakia such as due process and independence of the judiciary. And to state that Rutha’s ‘sexual and nationalist “deviances” increasingly left him exposed to enemies who wanted to assert “normality”’ (p. 9) seems to miss fundamental...

Finland's War of Choice: The Troubled German-Finnish Coalition in World War II by Henrik O Lunde (review)

SEER, 91, 4, OCTOBER 2013 916 captures the anxieties of a lower-middle-class Catholic at the age of twenty-one as he experienced not only combat and political catastrophe but attraction to fellow men. Over the following several years, Rutha discovered his life mission: leading male adolescents in a militantly nationalist pedagogic crusade to which he could sublimate his sexual insecurities and desires. In the late 1920s came a personal crisis, despair over having found no ‘son and friend for life’ (Rutha’s own words, p. 146) to nurture as his successor. ‘For me,’ Rutha declared in a never sent letter, the Sudeten state idea ‘comes alive and grows only where a young man loves me’ (p. 142). In 1932, it seems, he began to initiate ‘mutual gratification’ (p. 148) with disciples, including one who was only fifteen years old. As the Depression and the Nazi seizure of power in Germany broke open locked doors for Sudeten Germans, Rutha sowed the seeds of his own destruction. Cornwall sees ‘interesting parallels’ (p. 241) between the persecution of homosexuals in the Czechoslovak Republic and in the Third Reich. Yet one and the same discriminatory intent should not obscure the difference made by liberal safeguards in Czechoslovakia such as due process and independence of the judiciary. And to state that Rutha’s ‘sexual and nationalist “deviances” increasingly left him exposed to enemies who wanted to assert “normality”’ (p. 9) seems to miss fundamental distinctions between Rutha’s sexuality and his nationalism; he despised Jews, and at the very least fraternized with fascists. On the whole, however, Cornwall has written a thorough and thoughtprovoking study. In the college classroom, The Devil’s Wall will make a marvellous complement to Martin Pollack’s Dead Man in the Bunker (London, 2008). Department of History, Mount Holyoke College Jeremy King South Hadley, Massachusetts Lunde, Henrik O. Finland’s War of Choice: The Troubled German-Finnish Coalition in World War II. Casemate Publishers, Haverton, PA and Newbury, 2011. 382 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Appendices. Index. $32.95. Henrik Lunde is a scholar of Norwegian origin who served with distinction in the US armed forces. He makes the starting-point of his book explicit in the title: Finland chose to go to war against the Soviet Union in 1941, in that part of the Finnish-Soviet conflict known as the Continuation War (1941–44), because the Finns felt that it was a continuance of the struggle against Russia known as the Winter War (1939–40). In the second phase of conflict with Russia, Finnish propagandists concocted the term ‘cobelligerent’ to explain the relationship their country had with Nazi Germany. But Lunde will have none of that. He finds the Finns to have been in REVIEWS 917 coalition with the Germans and what is more they ought not to have done it. That is because they had an alternative. The alternative was a Nordic Defence Alliance to be formed immediately after the peace that ended the Winter War in March 1940. A day later, however, a leading Norwegian politician, Carl Hambro, made a speech in which he affirmed that the Moscow Peace between the Soviet Union and Finland could never be considered as permanent. It did not take long (about two weeks) for Viacheslav Molotov to follow this up by a condemnation of the whole idea of such an alliance. For the Russians, the alliance that counted was still the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact. For the Germans, it was the same and in April 1940 they began to occupy Norway. Could a Nordic Defence Alliance ever have run the risk of taking on both great Powers especially after bearing in mind the exhaustion of Finland from the Winter War? Some breathing-space was allowed to the Finns when the Germans permitted the Norwegian army to station its troops temporarily in Finmark where Norwegian territory bordered on Finnish Lapland. But as Nazi Germany gathered strength after its seizure of the Western European states, the alluring option of turning a Blitzkrieg war on the Soviet Union began to grow in importance. It wasn’t the only option, since while Germany was tempting the Finns with emissaries like Joseph Veltjens, Hitler...

Alan Turing’s “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”

It is a pleasure for me to direct your attention on the recent work of Alan Turing, a brilliant scholar who, in my reckoning, is less influential than he should be. He is a mathematician, yet in this work the topic is not mathematics or formal tools, but rather a much more challenging issue: to offer a principled foundation of cognition and of its ‘‘machinery’’ and function, and thus also the foundation of computer science and Artificial Intelligence (henceforth, AI for short). This invites a new, much needed reflection on the nature and mission of AI, and Turing is to be applauded for bringing us back to the future, against the currently received wisdom. Nowadays, AI researchers see themselves mostly as ‘‘engineers’’: their mission in life is to produce technical results, software solutions of practical problems with a relevant industrial, commercial, or military impact. In sharp contrast, AI was and (involuntarily) still is a science, aimed at understanding, modeling, building computational theories of (possible) cognition, interaction, society. I appreciate that research (not researchers) needs money, but research should never forget its basic questions. Turing, without any aggressiveness, tries to bring the AI community back to its role and origin, and to reflect on its theoretical and methodological foundations. Moreover, his challenge is very timely, since AI is not an aborted project, contrary to what many people like to claim—usually while appropriating and exploiting its solutions. On the contrary, if anything, the discipline has grown to be quite threatening in its results and perspectives. And the major threat is precisely the lack of awareness and critical discussion. AI cannot continue, out of condescension or convenience, to disguise itself just as a ‘‘technology’’, or to deny the radical character of its challenges. AI should demonstrate greater critical awareness and be more explicit on what it does or can do (or not). Negation and removal are not adequate reactions to its present and future developments. In this critical notice of Turing’s recent work, I trust he will forgive me for failing to give (or even try to) a correct and complete picture of his main results and ideas. I just want to present and discuss some issues I was very impressed with, and offer a few digressions based on them.

The Sample Handling System for the Mars Icebreaker Life Mission: From Dirt to Data

The Mars Icebreaker Life mission will search for subsurface life on Mars. It consists of three payload elements: a drill to retrieve soil samples from approximately 1 m below the surface, a robotic sample handling system to deliver the sample from the drill to the instruments, and the instruments themselves. This paper will discuss the robotic sample handling system. Collecting samples from ice-rich soils on Mars in search of life presents two challenges: protection of that icy soil--considered a "special region" with respect to planetary protection--from contamination from Earth, and delivery of the icy, sticky soil to spacecraft instruments. We present a sampling device that meets these challenges. We built a prototype system and tested it at martian pressure, drilling into ice-cemented soil, collecting cuttings, and transferring them to the inlet port of the SOLID2 life-detection instrument. The tests successfully demonstrated that the Icebreaker drill, sample handling system, and life-detection instrument can collectively operate in these conditions and produce science data that can be delivered via telemetry--from dirt to data. Our results also demonstrate the feasibility of using an air gap to prevent forward contamination. We define a set of six analog soils for testing over a range of soil cohesion, from loose sand to basalt soil, with angles of repose of 27° and 39°, respectively. Particle size is a key determinant of jamming of mechanical parts by soil particles. Jamming occurs when the clearance between moving parts is equal in size to the most common particle size or equal to three of these particles together. Three particles acting together tend to form bridges and lead to clogging. Our experiments show that rotary-hammer action of the Icebreaker drill influences the particle size, typically reducing particle size by ≈ 100 μm.

The Icebreaker Life Mission to Mars: A Search for Biomolecular Evidence for Life

The search for evidence of life on Mars is the primary motivation for the exploration of that planet. The results from previous missions, and the Phoenix mission in particular, indicate that the ice-cemented ground in the north polar plains is likely to be the most recently habitable place that is currently known on Mars. The near-surface ice likely provided adequate water activity during periods of high obliquity, ≈ 5 Myr ago. Carbon dioxide and nitrogen are present in the atmosphere, and nitrates may be present in the soil. Perchlorate in the soil together with iron in basaltic rock provides a possible energy source for life. Furthermore, the presence of organics must once again be considered, as the results of the Viking GCMS are now suspect given the discovery of the thermally reactive perchlorate. Ground ice may provide a way to preserve organic molecules for extended periods of time, especially organic biomarkers. The Mars Icebreaker Life mission focuses on the following science goals: (1) Search for specific biomolecules that would be conclusive evidence of life. (2) Perform a general search for organic molecules in the ground ice. (3) Determine the processes of ground ice formation and the role of liquid water. (4) Understand the mechanical properties of the martian polar ice-cemented soil. (5) Assess the recent habitability of the environment with respect to required elements to support life, energy sources, and possible toxic elements. (6) Compare the elemental composition of the northern plains with midlatitude sites. The Icebreaker Life payload has been designed around the Phoenix spacecraft and is targeted to a site near the Phoenix landing site. However, the Icebreaker payload could be supported on other Mars landing systems. Preliminary studies of the SpaceX Dragon lander show that it could support the Icebreaker payload for a landing either at the Phoenix site or at midlatitudes. Duplicate samples could be cached as a target for possible return by a Mars Sample Return mission. If the samples were shown to contain organic biomarkers, interest in returning them to Earth would be high.

100. Gender Differences in Relationships Between Having a Sense of Mission in Life and Sexual Health Behaviors in Emerging Adults

100. Gender Differences in Relationships Between Having a Sense of Mission in Life and Sexual Health Behaviors in Emerging Adults

Understanding the importance of life mission when advising soldiers

AbstractMost military students take college courses in order to be promotable, learn a new skill, and/or transition into civilian life. This chapter describes the difference between viewing advising through a transient lens (addressing only the immediate needs of enrollment and program completion) and a permanent lens (planning long‐term career and personal aspirations).

The Influence of a Positive Psychology Course on Student Well-Being

This study examined the influence of participation in a positive psychology course on undergraduates’ well-being. Twenty-three students from a small liberal arts college in the Northeastern United States participated in this study. As hypothesized, students reported gains in hope, self-actualization, well-being, agency, and pathway hopefulness, purpose, and mission in life. However, contrary to the hypotheses, students did not report significant gains in presence of meaning, or reduction in the envy of others. These findings are discussed in light of previous research supporting the efficacy of positive psychology exercises on mood and well-being, The APA Guidelines for the Psychology Major major, and the increasing number of positive psychology courses offered at undergraduate institutions.