Information Technologies and Global Politics: The Changing Scope of Power and Governance (Suny Series in Global Politics)

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Examines how information technologies may be shifting power and authority away from the state.

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As the most comprehensive reference work dealing with knowledge management (KM), this work is essential for the library of every KM practitioner, researcher, and educator. Written by an international array of KM luminaries, its approx. 60 chapters approach knowledge management from a wide variety of perspectives ranging from classic foundations to cutting-edge thought, informative to provocative, theoretical to practical, historical to futuristic, human to technological, and operational to strategic. The chapters are conveniently organized into 8 major sections. The second volume consists of the sections: technologies for knowledge management, outcomes of KM, knowledge management in action, and the KM horizon. Novices and experts alike will refer to the authoritative and stimulating content again and again for years to come.

Handbook on Knowledge Management 2: Knowledge Matters, Vol. 2

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Handbook on Knowledge Management 2: Knowledge Matters, Vol. 2
Clyde W. Holsapple
Manufacturer: Springer-Verlag New York, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MUT6NK

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The title Nabokov's Blues is sure to bewilder many: was the great author depressed? Nothing of the sort--unknown to all but the most dedicated Lolita-philes, the great Russian author was a dedicated lepidopterist; the book, by fellow scientist Kurt Johnson and writer Steve Coates, explores his life's work with the Blue butterflies of South America. Nabokov brought the same gentle sensibility to his scientific work that he used in his writing and teaching careers, and the authors have found great new depths to the man that an army of biographers had failed to excavate. Entomology buffs will find much to love in Nabokov's Blues, with collecting trips into the field and anatomical detective work taking the forefront. Literati seeking new insights into the man's life will also be pleased to find his story told from a new perspective, focusing more on his exacting research than his tumultuous personal life.

Nabokov's life reflects 20th-century biology as well as literature; he involved himself in many of the great debates of his time from his vantage points at Cornell and Harvard (where he held a post at the Museum of Comparative Zoology). His contributions to our thinking about speciation, some of which have only come to light recently, are clear-headed and invaluable. The authors know Nabokov's life well and are eager to share this side of it with us; while he will always be better known for his literary work, Nabokov's Blues throws light into the shadows cast by his great stature. --Rob Lightner

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This insidiously charming book teaches readers about the place of lepidoptery in the life sciences and the kinds of questions that natural scientists seek to answer....Like Nabokov himself, this volume exemplifies some of the virtues shared by art and science: wit, intelligence, and, above all, meticulousness.---The New Yorker

Charming...In a world that often separates science and culture like church and state, this book reminds us that, for Nabokov, butterflies helped shape `a habitual way of looking at the world' that was ultimately conducive to great literature and to great lepidoptery alike.---New York Times Book Review

...a grand book: erudite, generous, and wise. It is written with a grace and intelligence worthy of its eponymous subject.---Boston Globe

Readers with a taste for science and literature will love this book, which is both entertaining and polymathically informative--rather like the English/Russian, naturalist/novelist/scholar/artist Nabokov himself.---Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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Beauty and Science.......2003-04-16

At first blush this book appears to be a footnote to a writer who had an eccentric hobby. Since Professor Boyd's definitive biography some may consider that there was little else to explore. The scientific achievements of Vladimir Nabakov were not lost but perhaps overwhelmed in the literary story.
Nabakov's Blues does more than just dust off the lepidoptry papers. The book is in the final assessment a celebration of how science and research are never a sterile academic exercise but a reflection of greater issues of the beauty and elegance of intellect at work.
During the course of shedding light on the under recognized research we are reminded that the mundane work of classifying and sorting often underpins more glamorous tasks, but are also given insight into the many quiet achievers in science, who often take considerable personal risks to complete research which is part of a greater whole and leaves them only as a name in a arid catalogue.
We are too prone to identify the heros and not those who without clamor or boasting actually do the work.
Nabakov himself never "promoted" his science although he made it clear that his butterflies were an integral part of his life. We grow to specialise and those who can travel in literary circles as well as science are rare. The authors Johnson and Coates do themselves demonstrate that they too can travel the literary salons and the research laboratories, and write an elegant supplement to Professor Boyd that transcends that status to become a commentary on the man who was in many ways a true renaissance figure.

A Wonderful Little Book.......2001-04-19

I picked up the paperback of this book because I'd heard about it when it was in hardback. For anyone who is fascinated by science, literature, history, sociology and much more, they will find the blend of story, information and insight in this book satisfying and enlightening. Its never gets dull because you're reading about a historical literary figure, and his biography, tons of information about science and exploration, the scientists who completed the formative work Nabokov began at Harvard before becoming famous after Lolita, and how this all fits together in todays biodiversity crisis and squabbles over whether Nabokov was really a bona fide scientist or just an boyish aficionado. I felt I had learned a great deal from this book but also enjoyed it. It is a great blend of historical fact, new stories, and insight the into world's environmental dilemmas. I also had no idea of the complex ways in which Nabokov interwove butterflies and their images and symbols into his novels.

A very interesting and entertaining book!.......2001-04-17

This book is a fun read for anyone with an interest in the personal histories that shape authors, in biology and/or in the environment and ecology. It provides great insight into the scientific passion that moved one of the more interesting figures in literature, and nicely weaves the tale of Nabokov's first passion, lepidoptery, providing many interesting biographical details (including his wonderful sense of humor!), and the modern day story of the scientists who continued his work and discovered that his scientific legacy was truly as important and inventive as his literature. It discusses the science in a way that is interesting and easily understood by the non-scientist, but does not diminish the nature of the scientific information conveyed. In addition, it shows how the science impacted the literature. How interesting that a butterfly-gathering trip would provide the backdrop for Lolita! I found this book to be very interesting, informative and entertaining, and I highly recommend it.

insight into science and art.......2000-12-01

NABOKOV'S BLUES

Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius. Kurt Johnson, Steve Coates. Cambridge, MA: Zoland Books, 1999. Pp 372 $27.00

In his Field Guide to the Butterflies of North America Alexander Klots wrote of the genus Lycaeides that "the recent work of Nabokov has entirely rearranged the classification of this genus." The response of Vladimir Nabokov, the acclaimed author of Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, was "That's real fame. That means more than anything a literary critic might say."

Nabokov was born in April 1899 and his reputation as a leading literary figure of the century he was almost born in seems secure; the Random House Modern Library proclaimed Lolita the fourth greatest novel of the century and the memoir Speak, Memory, the eighth greatest work of non-fiction, thus Nabokov was the only author to feature in the top ten of both lists. It is well known that Nabokov had a strong interest in lepidoptery. Often however it is dismissed as mere dilettantism, or seen by academics and critics as a source of Freudian symbolism. Nabokov himself detested such phenomena as the crass observation that "insect" and "incest" are anagrams, and attacked "the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with its crankish quest for sexual symbols." Full-time lepidopterists were either ignorant of Nabokov's work or regarded it as amateur dabblings; perhaps they also felt resentment at this part-timer who was nevertheless dubbed "the most famous lepidopterist in the world."

Kurt Johnson is a lepidopterist associated with the Florida State Collection of Arthropods, while Steve Coates is an editor at The New York Times. This, their first book, fights on many fronts; it tries to restore Nabokov's scientific reputation and give some account of lepidoptery's place in his life and literary work; pleads for the oft-ignored discipline of taxonomy, more important now than ever in the light of the crisis in biodiversity; and is an exciting scientific adventure story ranging from the "incorrigible continent" of South America to the squabbles of the world of academia.

Nabokov's scientific work belongs in every sense in a different era; he represents one of the last of the gentleman naturalists. Lepidoptery was an interest inherited from his father, a prominent Russian liberal assassinated in Berlin in 1922. It remained constant throughout the upheaval of the Russian Revolution and exile in Cambridge, Germany and France. On coming to the United States in May 1940 he soon visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York City with certain puzzling specimens from Europe. In Autumn 1941 he visited Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology and found the collections in disarray, and first as a volunteer and then as a part-time research fellow in entomology he endeavoured to straighten it out. This was typical of the war years; considerable lacunae existed in academia and were filled with available workers with little regard for their professional training.

Nabokov's paper Notes on Neotropical Plebejinae is the key in the reassessment of his position in science. It was a pioneering classification of the Latin American Polyommatini, a diverse group of Blue butterflies with members from the tip of Chile to the Caribbean. This paper established a broad framework of genera for later researchers to insert new species. In 1948 he left the Museum of Comparative Zoology to become Professor of Russian and European Literature at Cornell University. This marked the end of Nabokov's formal association with the world of lepidoptery, and with the publication of Lolita Nabokov's fame became a two-edged sword as far as his scientific reputation was concerned.

In the 1980s a series of expeditions to Las Abejas, a jungle enclave near Dominican Republic's Haitian border, began to turn up new specimens of what were known as Blues. Over the next decade and a half, Johnson and other lepidopterists travelled all over South America, becoming increasingly aware of the crucial relevance of Nabokov's classification system to the multiplicity of new species they discovered. In these chapters the authors make us aware of the biodiversity crisis which means species are becoming extinct faster than science can ascertain their existence. The humble place of the taxonomist, seen by some as a drone of biology, is scarcely deserved, considering the importance of this work. The authors are also at pains not to judge Nabokov by the standards of today; some of his beliefs on mimicry and evolution appear scientifically unorthodox, but reflect that when he was working these issues were still being resolved.

This book will provide both enjoyment and enlightenment to any reader interested not only in Nabokov but in the relationship of the arts and sciences, the current state of natural science and the biodiversity crisis. The crucial question for Johnson and Coates is "Was Nabokov a true scholar of Lepidoptera, or merely a dilettante whose contributions were remarkable?" The casual observer might wonder how "mere" a dilettante would make "remarkable" contributions, but the question is deeper; seeing Nabokov as a scientist gives the understanding of his life and works a whole new dimension.

The authors seem to suggest that a healthy relation between CP Snow's "two cultures" requires not a facile "unity" but a deep appreciation of both the humanities and the sciences. Nabokov's quote "Does there not exist a high ridge where the mountainside of 'scientific' knowledge joins the opposite slope of 'artistic' imagination" is often quoted in this context. Far from an airy abstraction, this refers to a specific example; Nabokov's 1952 review of a book centred around the drawings of John James Audubon; Nabokov found Audobon's butterfly drawings inept, and wondered "can anyone draw something he knows nothing about?" Nabokov considered a knowledge of natural science indispensable for a truly cultured sensibility; he was shocked when his literature students at Cornell University were ignorant of the names of local trees and birds.

We see Chekhov and William Carlos Williams as doctors and as writers; we see Primo Levi as a chemist and as a writer. Johnson and Coates convincingly try to persuade us that Nabokov should be seen as a writer and as a lepidopterist. Nabokov himself said "whenever I allude to butterflies in my novels ... it remains pale and false and does not really express what I want it to express, what, indeed, it can only express in the special scientific language of my entomological papers."

In Pursuit.......2000-02-20

Nabokov's Blues by Kurt Johnson and Stephen Coates is a testament to the dogged pursuit of their art by basic scientists such as Drs. Vladimir Nabokov and Kurt Johnson who continue their efforts with minimal funding and little glamour, and the roles played by happenstance and eccentricity in substantial discoveries. The adventure stories spun by Stephen Jay Gould in Wonderful Life and Jonathan Weiner in The Beak of the Finch in high profile, well-financed disciplines, and by Mark Jaffe in And No Birds Sing and now by Johnson and Coates in Nabokov's Blues in lesser known arenas, demonstrate how events and personalities conspire. Johnson and Coates capture this process and invite the reader into this adventure as the scientists and their colleagues pursue the magic of butterflies. Nabokov's Blues is an engaging retelling of the exciting set of adventures, in the field and in museums, begun by one of the great storytellers of the 20th Century, Vladimir Nabokov. With the disclaimer of a member of a class described by the reviewer as "eccentrics and polymaths" who played a minor role in Kurt Johnson's great adventure, I cannot disagree more strongly with Richard Conniff's assertion in his February 20,2000 review in The New York Times Book Review that "the authors fail to capture the full wonder and oddity of the enterprise." This is exactly what the authors accomplish.

Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius.(Review) (book review): An article from: New Criterion

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Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius.(Review) (book review): An article from: New Criterion
Guy Davenport
Manufacturer: Foundation for Cultural Review
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on September 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1254 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius.(Review) (book review)
Author: Guy Davenport
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2000
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 19 Issue: 1 Page: 74

Article Type: Book Review

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Nabokov's Blues - the Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius

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Nabokov's Blues - the Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius
Kurt & Steve Coates Johnson
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Companies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OFXIUU

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Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius
Kurt; Coates, Steven Johnson
Manufacturer: Zoland Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000P3YDKU

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Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius
Kurt Johnson
Manufacturer: McGraw Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000K1QDG4

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Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius.
Vladimir]. Johnson, Kurt & Coates, Steven. [NABOKOV
Manufacturer: Cambridge: Zoland
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000U2DJV0

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Until recent years, formal bank insolvency proceedings were rare occurrences, with governments more often than not coming to the rescue of failing banks. As a result, few studies relating to bank failure have paid much attention to the regulatory framework for failing banks and the conduct of formal bank insolvency proceedings. However, in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, more attention has been focused on issues of bank insolvency. Structural reforms in the banking sector of various Asian countries, in particular the implementation of effective exit rules to expel insolvent and non-viable banks from the market, have been considered of primary importance to restoring confidence in the troubled banking sector. In addition, the ability of governments within the European Union to rescue insolvent banks has been significantly limited by strict rules on competition, suggesting that failing banks will become increasingly subject to insolvency proceedings. The Legal Aspects of Bank Insolvency compares the legal framework for dealing with insolvent banks in Western Europe, the United States and Canada, identifying the distinctive features of each regime and discussing the main issues and choices in dealing with failing banks. It also examines the implications of a cross-border bank insolvency, and considers different approaches to the problems it raises, including the supranational approach of the proposed European Directive on the Reorganization and Winding-up of Credit Institutions. This work will be of value to lawmakers, to consultants and scholars engaged in technical assistance work, and to those who advise the legislators and officials involved in devising a legal framework for bank insolvency. It will also be of interest to practitioners and in-house counsel working in the field of banking and corporate law.

Bankruptcy;: A study in comparative legislation (Studies in history, economics and public law, v. 2, no. 2)

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Bankruptcy;: A study in comparative legislation (Studies in history, economics and public law, v. 2, no. 2)
Samuel Whitney Dunscomb
Manufacturer: AMS Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0006CZ80O

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