Michael's posterous

My book on BVI social history, entitled "Slavery, Smallholding and Tourism: Social Transformations in the British Virgin Islands", released two weeks ago in eBook format for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook and Apple iBook/iTunes readers, is now also available online from Amazon and Barnes & Noble in both paperback and hardcover print editions.

Slavery, Smallholding and Tourism is a study in the political economy of development of the British Virgin Islands­­—from plantation economy, through the evolution of a smallholding economy, to the rise of tourism.

“The study argues that the demise of plantation economy in the BVI ushered in a century of imperial disinterest persisting until recently, when a new ‘monocrop’—tourism—became ascendant."

Further details on the book may be found at the publisher’s website (http://quidprolaw.com/?p=2189).

EXCERPT:

French Guiana – despite being a French département, the rough equivalent of an American county – is marooned on South America’s northern shore, and suffers accordingly from low name recognition. It is easily confused with Ghana, across the Atlantic, with any of the countries with “Guinea” in their name [2] or any of the other contiguous Guyanas, of which there are two to five, depending on how you define a “Guyana”: to the west of French Guiana is Suriname, which was also called Dutch Guiana before independence in 1975, and to the west of that is British Guiana, which since independence in 1966 has been known simply as Guyana; the areas flanking these three, now parts of Venezuela and Brazil, were sometimes called Spanish Guyana and Portuguese Guyana [3].

DESCRIPTION:

Mark Raymond studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and since returning to Trinidad in 1993 has been responsible for a wide range of architectural, urban design and planning projects throughout the Caribbean. Mark has lectured on his work at the Caribbean School of Architecture in Kingston, Jamaica, UNPHU in Santo Domingo, London Metropolitan University and more recently at Yale University. He is interested in the capacity of innovative architectural, urban and landscape design to ensure a sustainable future.

EXCERPT:

Beginning Jun. 12, New York’s El Museo del Barrio will put Caribbean art in the spotlight, with Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, a sweeping look at the history of Caribbean art, beginning with the Haitian revolution. In December, El Museo opened Voces Y Visiones: Gran Caribe, which shows some of the Caribbean work in the museum’s permanent collection, in order to introduce some of the major themes of Crossroads – from the ubiquity of water in Caribbean art to the role of spirituality.

EXCERPT:

COULD A PILL PROVIDE the benefits of exercise? Sacrilege to some, the thought has nevertheless motivated researchers seeking to treat some of the most perplexing human diseases, from diabetes to Parkinson’s to cancer. Now researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), led by Harvard Medical School professor Bruce Spiegelman, have isolated a signaling protein that triggers some of the same health benefits as exercise. The results of their work have been posted as an advance online publication by the journal Nature.

DESCRIPTION:

Inaugural Issue of Caribbean InTransit Out Now!

Caribbean InTransit Arts Journal is a global initiative that seeks to foster a community of research and entrepreneurship related to cultural and artistic endeavors emerging from the Caribbean and its Diasporas. It is the only open access academic journal focused on the Caribbean Arts.

DESCRIPTION:

In this revealing documentary, Tracy Assing explores Trinidad’s indigenous history and the inner workings of the organization which represents these indigenous descendants, the Santa Rosa Carib Community--the only recognized group representing indigenous descendants in Trinidad and Tobago.

Source:
Eller, Jack David
2011 Review of The Amerindians. Anthropology Review Database December 19, 2011. http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=4301, accessed January 9, 2012.

EXCERPT:

Multiple citizenship is on the rise. But some states continue to deter it. . . .

The idea that it is possible, let alone desirable, to allow multiple citizenship is relatively recent. In 1849 George Bancroft, an American historian and diplomat, said that for a man to have two countries was as intolerable as for him to have two wives. In 1930 the League of Nations proclaimed that “every person should have a nationality and should have one nationality only”. A treaty in Europe required countries to limit dual citizenship, until it lapsed in the 1990s. Immigrants have commonly had to renounce their old citizenship when taking on a new one; the countries that they left have often disowned emigrants naturalised abroad. These practices were intended in part to preserve the sanctity of citizenship, but they have also been aimed at closing loopholes that might allow migrants to escape taxes or conscription.

EXCERPT:

From the Australopithecines (over a million years ago) to the Neolithic (since 10,000 years ago), carious lesions have been found in almost every population studied. Caries, however, was very uncommon amongst fossil hominids into the Paleolithic and Mesolithic.

One famous exception, however, is the often cited example of rampant caries in a middle Pleistocene skull (specimen BMNH 686) from Broken Hill mine, Zambia.

Figure one. Occlusal and frontal view of maxillary dental arch, from Broken Hill mine. Middle Pleistocene hominid with Neandertal affinities., known as 'Rhodesian man' in the older literature. Note the extensive dental caries. Adapted from Day, and from Keith.

In the most ancient hominids, the incidence of caries is less than 1%. Although many Neandertal specimens have been discovered, no carious lesions have been described except for a single root lesion in some Neandertal teeth from Mt. Carmel,Israel.

In European material, there is a gradual increase from very low rates through the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age, to a rapid rise through Medieval and modern times.

EXCERPT:

The regional blogosphere in 2011 saw a few territories, most notably Cuba, taking front and centre - especially when it came to digital activism. The rest of the Caribbean meanwhile, grappled with everything from homophobia to states of emergency, weathered hurricanes and questioned the boundaries of online privacy, discussed a plane crash and World AIDS Day and became ardent fans of Project Runway.