The Wasteland

Riverine floodplains and deltas that have cradled human civilization and are now ravaged by ecologically blind land-use policies form the context of this poem. Policies that term nutrient rich wetlands as wastelands are economically motivated and backed by policy makers for short-term gains. The conversion of wetlands makes refugees out of resident wild species. The first few lines of the poem describe the character of the fishing cat, the only cat in South Asia that is adapted for wetlands and is an indicator of the health of wetland ecosystems. The poem talks of a nemesis that awaits the human world—we would meet the same fate that we are meting out to the fishing cat. The poem ends as it alludes to the peace that a motherly womb offers. Wetlands are such wombs: they are life givers

The Wasteland of Random Supergravities

We show that in a general \cal{N} = 1 supergravity with N \gg 1 scalar fields, an exponentially small fraction of the de Sitter critical points are metastable vacua. Taking the superpotential and Kahler potential to be random functions, we construct a random matrix model for the Hessian matrix, which is well-approximated by the sum of a Wigner matrix and two Wishart matrices. We compute the eigenvalue spectrum analytically from the free convolution of the constituent spectra and find that in typical configurations, a significant fraction of the eigenvalues are negative. Building on the Tracy-Widom law governing fluctuations of extreme eigenvalues, we determine the probability P of a large fluctuation in which all the eigenvalues become positive. Strong eigenvalue repulsion makes this extremely unlikely: we find P \propto exp(-c N^p), with c, p being constants. For generic critical points we find p \approx 1.5, while for approximately-supersymmetric critical points, p \approx 1.3. Our results have significant implications for the counting of de Sitter vacua in string theory, but the number of vacua remains vast.Comment: 39 pages, 9 figures; v2: fixed typos, added refs and clarification

Flowers In A Wasteland 2

This piece represents abstracted flowers thriving in a wasteland. Though the flowers are difficult to make out, the viewer can still distinguish each flower through the hazy blur of a landscape

Rebuilding an Impoverished Region

When Mujib Kamawal’s family fled to Pakistan from their native Afghanistan, they left a lush, vibrant region. When they returned for a visit years later, the Kama district was a wasteland. They knew they had to help

Gatekeepers in a digital wasteland

It is already a cliché to announce the demise of the book in the wake of the digital revolution. While it might be unwise to stake our futures on the printed-and-bound codex, it seems doubtful that a shift in the way words are delivered will result in the downfall of long-form writing itself. What does seem questionable, however, is the persistence of the current publishing model in which publishers act as gatekeepers. In the ‘democratised’ digital republic enabled by self-publishing, what threatens to remain is a wasteland in which the inhabitants elect their culture via a ballot of sparsely distributed consumer capital. The ‘book’ looks likely to persist. What may not is the current way in which we decide what is worthwhile between the (digital) covers

Shangri-la: From Utopia to Wasteland?

The rapid urbanization movement in China’s uplands and up-streams, home to ethnic groups, are problematic for ecological and cultural reasons. Shangri-La County in southwest China is one such destination that has experienced such environmental and sociocultural challenges. The scale and speed of urbanization that has occurred in Shangri-La has outpaced what local communities can adapt to. As a consequence, a significant regional wetland as well as a culturally important water burial site are in serious distress

Salinized wasteland expansion in western northeast China during 1975－2004

Due to human impact under climatic variations, western part of Northeast China has suffered substantial land degradation during past decades. This paper presents an integrated study of expansion process of salinized wasteland in Da’an County, a typical salt-affected area in Northeast China, by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing. The study explores the temporal and spatial characteristics of salinized wasteland expansion from 1975 to 2004, and land use/cover changes during this period. During the past 30 years, the salinized wasteland in study area have increased by 11175 ha, and in 2004 covers 32.31 % of the total area, in the meantime grassland has decreased by 32534 ha and in 2004 covers only 13.15% of the study area. Grasslands, croplands and swamplands were found the three main land use types converted into salinized wasteland. The major factors influencing salinized wasteland expansion and land use/cover changes were also explored. In general, climatic factors supplied a potential environment for soil salinization. Human-related factors, such as policy, population, overgrazing, and intensified and unreasonable utilization of land and water resources are the main causes of salinized wasteland expansion

The nineteenth century wasteland : the void in the works of Byron, Baudelaire, and Melville

The theme of the twentieth century "wasteland" began with T. S. Eliot's influential poem, and has reached its present culmination point in the literature of the Absurd. In a wasteland or an Absurd world, man is out of harmony with his universe, with his fellow man, and even with himself. There is Nothingness in the center of the universe, and Nothingness in the heart or center of man as well. "God Is Dead" in the wasteland and consequently it is an Iconoclastic world without religion, and without love; a world of aesthetic and spiritual aridity and sterility. Most writers, critics, and students of literature are familiar with the concept of the wasteland, but many do not realize that this is not a twentieth century thematic phenomenon. The contemporary wasteland has its parallel in the early and middle nineteenth century with the Romantics; with such writers as Byron, Baudelaire, and Melville