Egypt’s Great Pyramid: How it was Constructed – The Inset Ramp

Egypt’s Great Pyramid: How it was Constructed – The Inset Ramp
John TupperJun 3, 2019
Concept for how the Great Pyramid was constructed using inset ramps.

Water: Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization

GBH Forum NetworkMar 31, 2014
Veteran journalist Steven Solomon addresses the crisis of global freshwater. In writing a book on the subject, Solomon discovered access to freshwater is trickling away in many communities.

Everything hinges on water; it is essential to life and to civilization. Will there be enough fresh water for 9 billion of us by 2050?

Extreme Weather and Climate Change: What We Know and What We Can Do

GBH Forum NetworkSep 22, 2017
We have seen this play out in the extreme weather events that have wrought havoc across New England and the nation over the last decade or longer. Record-breaking events will always occur, but the time between these events should increase. Under climate change, records are getting broken in record time!

There are three truths that climate science tells us about what we can expect from climate change: – Small changes in an average value have bigger effects – Our carbon dioxide emissions has embedded a certain amount of change into the climate system – If we don’t account for our changing climate, our plans and designs will be wrong.

In this presentation, Dr. Ellen Marie Douglas will discuss observations of our changing climate, what changes may be in Boston’s future, and some plans for how to adapt to these changes.

Photo: NOAA Satellites (Hurricane Harvey on August 26, 2017) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Watch UK PM Johnson’s full COP26 opening address

CNBC International TVNov 1, 2021
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson gives the opening address at COP26

Killing Jamal Khashoggi: How a Brutal Saudi Hit Job Unfolded | NYT – Visual Investigations

The New York TimesNov 16, 2018
Get an email as soon as our next Visual Investigation is published: https://nyti.ms/3xhj7dE

An autopsy expert. A lookalike. A black van. Our video investigation follows the movements of the 15-man Saudi hit team that killed and dismembered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Facebook Files: Are teens and democratic societies at risk?

Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of PoliticsStarted streaming 34 minutes ago
Starting soon – Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, lead reporter of the “Facebook Files” series, joins Professor Latanya Sweeney in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum to discuss his groundbreaking reporting on the harm that Facebook may be inflicting on its users and democracy. The conversation begins at 6PM ET.

Dozens missing in Lagos building collapse • FRANCE 24 English

FRANCE 24 EnglishNov 1, 2021
In tonight’s edition: A high-rise collapses in Lagos, Nigeria with dozens feared trapped inside. Rescue efforts are underway, in a search for construction workers caught in the wreckage. And African leaders say Time’s Up when it comes to fighting climate change at the Cop26 Summit in Glasgow. The leader of the Seychelles said his country was ‘already gasping for survival’ and was ‘scared of rising sea levels’.

Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (African Studies, Series Number 94): Martin A. Klein

Using oral sources, as well as official and missionary archives, Martin Klein describes the history of slavery during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in three former French colonies. He considers the impact of the Atlantic slave trade and the evolution of slavery both before the French and under their rule. While he discusses French policy, the main focus of the book is the constantly changing relationships between slave and master, and the attempts on the part of slaves to seek freedom, or autonomy where they remained in servitude.

Review

“This well-written, thoroughly documented history of conquest and accommodation based, in part, on interviews with descendants of masters and of slaves shows that the culture of slavery was so pervasive that it persists into the late 20th century.” Choice

“Based on both archival and oral sources, the book is beautifully researched and is graced by useful appendices and informative maps. Klein comes to grips with the major historiographic issues and wins a central place for the book in the relatively new field of African slavery and its ending.” The International History Review

“This book now becomes the standard text on the abolition of slavery in Senegal, Mali, and Guinea. It will be read because of its provocative interpretation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries…and because it is based on sound evidence.” James L.A. Webb Jr., African Studies Review

“This book is must reading for anyone concerned with slavery studies…” Michael A. Gomez, International Journal of African Historical Studies

“The author magisterially explores the logic of slavery within Africa, the struggles between masters and slaves, and the impact of colonialism upon systems of servility. Klein’s book is not only a significant and lasting contribution to the literature on slavery in Africa – a major achievement in and of itself. It also represents one of the most thorough, wide-ranging, and richly textured accounts of French – West African contact yet to be written, from which all modern French historians will benefit.” Journal of Modern History

“…Klein’s book may be one of history, but it is a must read if one is to have any idea of how to understand what will unfold in this part of the world in the near future.” Ann McDougall, The Historian

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; Illustrated edition (July 28, 1998)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 382 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0521596785
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521596787
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.99 x 0.95 x 9.01 inches

See whole series of African Studies

Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation (African Studies, Series Number) AldenYoung

Following the conclusion of the Second World War, the nature of inequality in Africa was dramatically altered. In this book, Alden Young traces the emergence of economic developmentalism as the ideology of the Sudanese state in the decolonization era. Young demonstrates how the state was transformed, as a result of the international circulation of tools of economic management and the practice of economic diplomacy, from the management of a collection of distinct populations, to the management of a national economy based on individual equality. By studying the hope and eventual disillusionment this ideology gave to late colonial officials and then Sudanese politicians and policymakers, Young demonstrates its rise, and also its shortfalls as a political project in Sudan, particularly its inability to deal with questions of regional and racial equity, not only showing how it fostered state formation, but also civil war.

Review

‘Today, a technocratic, economistic vision of a modern Sudan is a half-remembered dream. Alden Young’s superb book – a combination of political economy and cultural history – brings into focus the important but neglected story of how the country was once a model of planned development, led by an elite of Sudanese and British economists.’ Alex DeWaal, Tufts University, Massachusetts

‘This is a compelling study of the imaginative, destructive projects of economic planning. Alden Young explains how officials in late colonial and independent Sudan came to imagine ‘the economy’ as a particular, measurable, phenomenon; how they sought to transform it through schemes of development – and how calamitous the consequences of those policies were for the people of Sudan. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of Sudan’s history – and provides a salutary lesson for planners everywhere.’ Justin Willis, Durham University

‘Young genuinely advances the literature on decolonization, development, and state formation. Transforming Sudan belongs on the bookshelf of every scholar of these related fields and will be of great interest to African and Middle Eastern historians, too.’ Cyrus Schayegh, H-IslamInAfrica

‘… [Alden Young] offers an insightful and valuable history of how political choices shaped the creation of national statistics and how the implementation of those statistics necessarily constrained the economic imaginaries of Sudanese leaders. One great contribution of his book is to show just how important a vision of limitless economic growth was to post-colonial Sudanese officials.’ Stephen Macekura, Diplomatic History

‘A series of crises in Sudan, which in the 2000s saw the country being discussed in the company of countries such as Rwanda and Somalia, is often explained as the result of old, lingering ethnic and religious hatreds. But Alden Young offers a well-researched and compelling alternative explanation, arguing that an ‘economizing logic’ that became the ‘policy making lens’ in Sudan (p. 10) is to blame.’ Jessica Watson, Survival

‘… the book powerfully illuminates how discussions regarding economic policy cannot be disentangled from broader questions of meaning of nationalism and legitimate political order as well as how political and economic marginalization is rationalized with purportedly neutral justifications.’ Zhe Yu Lee, Journal of Economic Geography

Book Description

This book traces the formation of the Sudanese state following the Second World War through a developmentalist ideology.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press (February 13, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 195 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 131662384X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1316623848
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.42 x 9 inches

World leaders open Cop26 with climate crisis warning: ‘Digging our own graves’

Guardian News – Nov 1, 2021

The UN secretary general António Guterres warned humanity was ‘digging its own grave’ as the Cop26 climate talks opened in Glasgow. He was joined by Boris Johnson, Prince Charles, Sir David Attenborough and Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley – all of whom delivered a scathing critique of world leaders’ efforts so far to cut greenhouse gas emissions and stave off climate breakdown