Geology and the Allied liberation of Normandy in World War II: British military applications of geology in France 1944-1945 contrasted with Italy 1943-1945

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 56-66
Author(s):  
Edward P.F. Rose
Aethiopica ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 46-74
Author(s):  
Sterling Joseph Coleman, Jr.

This article examines how Emperor Ḫaylä Śǝllase I succeeded in removing the British military occupation of Ethiopia during World War II with only a minimum of bloodshed. It outlines the various strategies and tactics the Emperor of Ethiopia employed to regain control over his empire. The text also asserts that he engaged in a pre-Cold War variant of the policy of flexible response which permitted him to resist British military rule without provoking a violent response from his occupier. The text highlights a handful of the numerous tactics and strategies which were employed by indigenous leaders and their allies not only in Africa but also throughout the developing world to successfully resist European colonial rule during and after World War II.


Author(s):  
Chris Bleakley

Algorithms are the hidden methods that computers apply to process information and make decisions. The book tells the story of algorithms from their ancient origins to the present day and beyond. The book introduces readers to the inventors and events behind the genesis of the world’s most important algorithms. Along the way, it explains, with the aid of examples and illustrations, how the most influential algorithms work. The first algorithms were invented in Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago. The ancient Greeks refined the concept, creating algorithms for finding prime numbers and enumerating Pi. Al-Khawrzmi’s 9th century books on algorithms ultimately became their conduit to the West. The invention of the electronic computer during World War II transformed the importance of the algorithm. The first computer algorithms were for military applications. In peacetime, researchers turned to grander challenges - forecasting the weather, route navigation, choosing marriage partners, and creating artificial intelligences. The success of the Internet in the 70s depended on algorithms for transporting data and correcting errors. A clever algorithm for ranking websites was the spark that ignited Google. Recommender algorithms boosted sales at Amazon and Netflix, while the EdgeRank algorithm drove Facebook’s NewsFeed. In the 21st century, an algorithm that mimics the operation of the human brain was revisited with the latest computer technology. Suddenly, algorithms attained human-level accuracy in object and speech recognition. An algloirthm defeated the world champion at Go - the most complex of board games. Today, algorithms for cryptocurrencies and quantum computing look set to change the world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-339
Author(s):  
Max Maher

This article attempts to reveal something different about the afterlife of a number of innovations made in British psychiatry during World War II – in particular around the notion of leadership – by reading them in a much broader context which includes Jacques Lacan's article ‘Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty’ (1945). Within such a broader trajectory, considerations of leaders and leaderlessness, which pressed towards democracy and egalitarianism, intersect (paradoxically) with other currents, equally radical, which envision a totalizing reduction of individuals to a technocratic mass. The article's starting point is Jacques Lacan's high praise of British military psychiatry – in particular of W.H. Bion, John Rickman and John Rawlings Rees, consulting psychiatrist to the army during the war. It then weighs Lacan's description of their achievements against a historical account of where such experiments led in the post-war context, and the social functions envisaged for them, that differed from those Lacan hoped they could perform. It concludes with a comparison of Lacan's article ‘Logical Time’, his first published after reading Bion and Rickman, to the contemporary work of Friedrich von Hayek, the early theorist of neoliberal economics, to illustrate the profound ambiguity which exists within the political implications of psychoanalytic theories of groups.


1985 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 684-684
Author(s):  
John Baylis

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