A Truly Crazy Idea About Type-IIB Supergravity and Heterotic Sigma-Models

We construct an explicit and manifestly (1,0) heterotic sigma-model where the background fields are those of 10D, N=IIB supergravity.Comment: 10 Pages, Latex (self contained macros

Crossing America’s Borders: Chinese Immigrants in the Southwesterns of the 1920s and 1930s

Today, when we think of the film Western, we think of a genre dominated by Anglo-American heroes conquering the various struggles and obstacles that the nineteenth-century frontier presented to settlers and gunslingers alike—from the daunting terrain and inclement environment of deserts, mountains, and plains to the violent opposition posed by cattle ranchers and Native Americans. What we tend to forget, most likely because the most famous Westerns of the last seventy-five years also forgot, is that Chinese immigrants played an important role in that frontier history. As Edward Buscombe confirms, “[g]iven the importance of their contribution, particularly to the construction of the Central Pacific railroad, the Chinese are under-represented in the Western.” In the 1920s and ’30s, many films focused on the smuggling of illegal Chinese immigrants—whether men for work or women for prostitution. Although a topic for a handful of social dramas such as The Miracle Makers (W. S. Van Dyke, 1923), Speed Wild (Harry Garson, 1925), Let Women Alone (Paul Powell, 1925), Masked Emotions (David Butler/Kenneth Hawks, 1929), and Lazy River (George B. Seitz, 1934), as well as newspaper-crime films such as I Cover the Waterfront (James Cruze, 1933), and Yellow Cargo (Crane Wilbur, 1936), the smuggling of Chinese people was also common in Westerns. According to the AFI Catalog, Chinese characters and actors appear in minor roles in at least seventy-eight silent and classical-era Westerns as cooks, laundrymen, and restaurant owners. These seventy-eight Westerns ranged from A-Westerns set in the nineteenth-century frontier to B-Westerns set in the modern West. Of the latter group, several Westerns—more specifically, “Southwesterns”—offered plots that connected Chinese immigrants to crime through the smuggling of opium, laborers, and prostitutes into the United States from China via Mexico. Southwesterns were lower-budget and were typically shot with cheap sets, grainy film stock, and few retakes (what we would call today B-Westerns), set in the contemporaneous Southwest (i.e., California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) near the border with Mexico: it was this borderland setting that invited stories of smuggling and border penetration.3 According to the AFI Catalog, of the 182 Westerns released between 1910 and 1960 that are set in the Mexican–American border region, 39 offer plots centered on smuggling various kinds of things, from opium and liquor to silver, dynamite, and counterfeit money, as well as guns. Southwesterns exploited the borderland setting to offer exciting smuggling plots that connected crime to Chinese immigrants. Although the opium-smuggling films connect crime to China, they rarely feature Chinese characters. In contrast, the immigrant-smuggling films present Chinese people as a physical and visible alien threat to America’s national borders, and it is these films that are the focus of this article. As this article will demonstrate, there were many Westerns centered on smuggling plots related to Chinese immigration, and the borders that these films were concerned with were as much cultural and racial as territorial. In other words, the presence of illegal Chinese immigrants assisted the genre of the Western to confirm the borders of American national identity

Bennett\u27s Using the Bible in practical theology: Historical and contemporary perspectives (Book Review)

Bennett, Z. (2014). Using the Bible in practical theology: Historical and contemporary perspectives. New York: Routledge. 160 pp. $31.96. ISBN 978147245622

2013 Annual Letter from Bill Gates

In previous annual letters, Gates focused on the power of innovation to reduce hunger, poverty, and disease. But any innovation -- whether it's a new vaccine or an improved seed -- can't have an impact unless it reaches the people who will benefit from it. That's why in this year's letter, Gates discusses how innovations in measurement are critical to finding new, effective ways to deliver these tools and services to the clinics, family farms, and classrooms that need them.The Foundation is supporting these efforts, but more needs to be done. Given how tight budgets are around the world, governments are rightfully demanding effectiveness in the programs they pay for. To address these demands, we need better measurement tools to determine which approaches work and which do not. In this letter, Gates highlights strong examples from the past year of how measurement is making a difference. In Colorado, Melinda and Bill learned how a school district is pioneering a new system to measure and promote teacher effectiveness. In Ethiopia, Gates witnessed how a poor country, pursuing goals set by the United Nations, delivered better health services to its people. In Nigeria, the digital revolution has allowed the foundation to improve the use of measurement in the campaign to eradicate polio. Thanks to cell phones, satellites, and cheap sensors, data can be gathered and organized with increasing speed and accuracy

The Three Sam Spades: The Shifting Model of American Masculinity in the Three Films of The Maltese Falcon

Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon—starring the quintessential hard-boiled private detective, Sam Spade—was adapted for the screen not once, but three times: The Maltese Falcon (also known as Dangerous Female) directed by Roy Del Ruth (US, 1931); Satan Met a Lady directed by William Dieterle (US, 1936); and The Maltese Falcon directed by John Huston (US, 1941).1 It is the last of these films, according to critics, that follows the novel most closely and is the version Hammett liked best, although he had no direct involvement with the production of any of the three films. And it is the last of these films that is remembered best, in part due to Humphrey Bogart’s iconic performance as the tough Sam Spade. The novel’s adaptation to the screen twice in the 1930s, however, attests to the dominance and popularity of a different kind of detective-hero during the Depression. While Bogart’s Spade, as the epitome of the hard-boiled detective, would become a model of American masculinity during world War II, Ricardo Cortez and Warren William’s “Spades” in 1931 and 1936, respectively, embodied different traits—ones more in keeping with what we now regard as belonging to an English tradition of heroism and the American tradition of villainy. The Spades of the Depression were more suave, cultured, self-serving, and more like the villains than the tough, working-class detective who would come to symbolize American manhood in the 1940s, and it is this shift in ideals of national masculinity that an analysis of the three film versions of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon reveals

Ageing in Action: Hollywood’s Ageing Ensemble Action Hero Series

This paper explores the treatment of ageing in the ensemble action hero series RED (2010 and 2013) starring Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren and The Expendables (2010, 2012, and 2014) starring Sylvester Stallone and other 1980s action stars. These two series combine action with comedy to thematize two sets of issues in relation ageing—first, about competence and usefulness and, second, about meaningful relationships. In the RED series, these two overarching concerns are linked explicitly to ageing whereas, in the Expendables films, these concerns replace those about ageing. In other words, the Expendables series mainly ignores ageing and presents its heroes as operating in a continuum of middle-age action, while the RED series explores many of the key issues of ageing in twenty-first century America. The RED and Expendables series rewrite the established narrative of ageing and it is this departure from stereotyped representations of ageing which generates the comedic moments in the films but also what makes them interesting to ageing audiences. The stars and heroes of RED and Expendables are popular precisely because they are not acting their age

The Assimilated Asian American as American Action Hero: Anna May Wong, Keye Luke, and James Shigeta in the Classical Hollywood Detective Film

Plusieurs recherches ont été consacrées au cas de Charlie Chan, ce personnage de détective asiatique souvent interprété par un comédien blanc (Yellowface) dans de nombreuses adaptations cinématographiques. Moins d’études ont été vouées aux personnages de détectives américains d’origine asiatique interprétés par des comédiens de la même origine. Les films provenant des grands studios que sont Daughter of Shanghai (Paramount 1937), Phantom of Chinatown (Monogram 1940), et la production indépendante The Crimson Kimono (1959) sont remarquables par leur utilisation d’Asiatico-américains dans le rôle principal. Cet essai montre comment, pour Hollywood, la question de l’origine ethnique asiatique ou américaine était moins l’affaire de l’origine du comédien interprétant le détective que celui du personnage interprété. Alors que les détectives asiatico-américains — tout comme les détectives asiatiques – étaient considérés plus attrayants et/ou moins menaçants lorsqu’ils étaient assimilés, ils étaient identifiés — contrairement aux détectives asiatiques — aux idéaux américains d’héroïsme, étant représentés non seulement comme de meilleurs limiers mais aussi comme d’authentiques combattants du crime. </jats:p

Innovation With Impact: Financing 21st Century Development

Leadership from the G20 is critically important right now. The global economic situation is as fragile as it has been at any time in the past 50 years. As leaders of the G20, you face a difficult challenge: How do you resolve the immediate crisis while continuing to make smart investments in long-term growth and improved living conditions?During my lifetime, innovations in business, science, and technology have energized the global market economy in unprecedented ways. The world economy is 500 percent bigger than in 1960. Whole groups of countries that had been at the margins have become key drivers of growth. Their success is widely viewed as a miracle.This progress has benefited everyone, not just the richest. You can see progress in the rising Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many countries around the world. You can also see it in falling poverty rates and other quality-of-life indicators captured in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), established by world leaders in 2000 and agreed to by all G20 nations

The CNM-Hypermultiplet Nexus

We consider additional properties of CNM (chiral-nonminimal) models. We show how 4D, N = 2 nonlinear sigma-models can be described solely in terms of N = 1 superfield CNM doublets. These actions are described by a Kahler potential together with an infinite number (in the general case) of terms involving its successively higher derivatives. We briefly discuss how N = 2 supersymmetric extension of the previously proposed N = 1 CNM low-energy QCD effective action can be achievedComment: 23 p, LaTeX twice, no figure

On Aspects and Implications of the New Covariant 4D, N = 1 Green-Schwarz Sigma-model Action

Utilizing (2,0) superfields, we write a supersymmetry-squared action and partially relate it to the new formulation of the Green-Schwarz action given by Berkovits and Siegel. Recent results derived from this new formulation are discussed within the context of some prior proposals in the literature. Among these, we note that 4D, N = 1 beta-FFC superspace geometry with a composite connection for R-symmetry has now been confirmed as the only presently known limit of 4D, N = 1 heterotic string theory that is derivable in a completely rigorous manner.Comment: 15 pages, LaTe