View allAll Photos Tagged Understanding
Cape Town, South Africa. July 2012.
South Africa hosted the second global Understanding Risk (UR) Forum in Cape Town from July 2-6, 2012. The Forum convened more than 500 thought leaders and decision-makers from 86 countries to exchange knowledge and share best practice in disaster risk assessment.
Photo: World Bank
Cape Town, South Africa. July 2012.
South Africa hosted the second global Understanding Risk (UR) Forum in Cape Town from July 2-6, 2012. The Forum convened more than 500 thought leaders and decision-makers from 86 countries to exchange knowledge and share best practice in disaster risk assessment.
Photo: World Bank
Forced displacement: A gendered analysis of the Tehri dam project, Uttarakhand - An article in EPW: www.indiawaterportal.org/node/35697
Artist: Sourabh Phadke, Pune
AHF's Latino Outreach & Understanding Division (LOUD) hosted their 3rd annual SOMOS Gala to commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month on Saturday October 21st at the iconic Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. The formal gala dinner and ceremony honored the contributions of both individuals, organizations, and Celebrity honoree Olga Tañon for their contribution to the advancement and well-being of Latino communities in the United States and Puerto Rico.
Understanding the performance penalty: HTTP vs. HTTPS Pete Mastin (Cedexis), Sam Richardson (Microsoft
oreilly, velocity, dev-ops
Who Are We series. Design composed of surreal human portrait, fractal and mathematical patterns as a metaphor on the subject of philosophy, religion, math, science, technology and education
Side event at the fifth Global Meeting of the Mountain Partnership: “Understanding landscape and watershed management in mountains ”, 17.30-19.30, 12 December 2017, FAO HQ. During the side event, the new FAO publication “Watershed Management in Action” was launched.
The fifth Global Meeting of the Mountain Partnership – with its theme “Mountains under pressure: climate, hunger, migration” – was held at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, on 11-13 December 2017.
Photo credit must be given: ©FAO/Roberto Cenciarelli. Editorial use only. Copyright ©FAO
While financial inclusion and financial deepening can promote economic growth and contribute significantly to denting poverty and inequality that is rampant in the region, there are also concerns that it could aggravate systemic risk and financial instability. Various dimensions of financial inclusion will be explored in this day and a half research workshop hosted by the Institute for Emerging Market Studies (IEMS) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and co-sponsored by Centre on Asia and Globalisation (CAG), at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP), National University of Singapore (NUS).
More about the event at iems.ust.hk/events/event/understanding-financial-inclusio...
Sadida was resting waiting for her Erik to come home and I caught her under the covers (she likes to burrow) with the remote right next to her. Does she understand was life is all about or what.
For FGR/Get Cozy
Random Fact: I needed to see something cute when I walked in the door and when I turned the corner she was standing there waiting. When she saw me she came running to see me. I love her!
It’s worth recalling that in December 2016, the Commissioner for Human Resources Science and Technology, H.E. Dr Martial De Paul Ikounga signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Secretary-General of the Association of African Universities (AAU), Professor Etienne Ehouan Ehile.
AAU is the voice of higher education in Africa and has been a lead agency in implementing the continental vision since its founding under the OAU. The African Union Agenda 2063 calls for an education and skills revolution to meet the human resource needs for actualising Africa’s social-economic development. As such, the African university occupies a strategic role in ensuring that our education systems are oriented towards promoting innovation, critical thinking, pan Africanism and entrepreneurial orientations while addressing Africa’s challenges and optimising on its opportunities.
The partnership between the AUC and the AAU over the last decade has witnessed the strengthening of the African higher education space through the promotion of intra-African academic mobility, harmonisation of qualifications for mutual recognition across the Member States; and promotion of a culture of continuous quality improvement through the AU’s African Quality Rating Mechanism.
The AAU has been able to mobilise African academia to appropriate the continental vision of Agenda 2063, and it has helped to build accountable leadership and quality in research and scholarship
GOAL: To increase engagements between the AAU and North America and the Diaspora
Objectives
• Mobilize funds for the advancement of Higher Education in Africa.
• Promote and develop relations between the African Academic Diaspora and African Higher Education Institutions (HEI).
• Promote sister university collaborations
• Promote and develop research and education networks among African Higher Education Institutions and their North American counterparts
• Promote corporate and non-profit America to support African Higher Education Institutions
• Sensitize potential development partners to the education needs of African HEIs
• Promote student and staff exchange
• Promote a role for Higher Education in US-Africa relations
• Develop and implement comprehensive international Initiatives for senior leadership at public research universities to facilitate seamless integration of international dimensions into the learning, discovery and engagement missions of our AAU institutions.
• Foster the development of globally competent students, internationally engaged faculty, and institutions capable of addressing global challenges.
• Identify critical issues, gather information, and create opportunities for AAU members to discuss challenges and share knowledge with their NA counterparts.
• Serve as the leading advocate for advancing the broad interests of the AAU in NA
• Support the development of innovative approaches and solutions to African Higher Education
The Geology of “A” Mountain
If you drive up Sentinel Peak Road, you will travel past a series of rock layers that formed between twenty and thirty million years ago. These multicolored strata produce the bedrock that constitutes “A” Mountain as well as the nearby Tumamoc and Powder House Hills. These hills and “A” Mountain are the visible remains of a former landlocked peninsula that was anchored in the west by the Tucson Mountains and extended beyond the present day Santa Cruz River to the east. “A” Mountain is an erosional remnant of this land prominence sculpted by the forces of ice, wind and water. Four distinct and interesting rock layers are easily visible on the face of this 550-foot mountain.
Flowing lava created the dark red rock strata at both the top and the bottom of “A” Mountain. Nearby volcanic pipes and fractures supplied the basaltic magma that created these beds, each one separated by a span of nine million years from the formation of the other. None of this lava came from the large “volcano like” crater on the northeast side of the mountain. Quarrymen from the Griffith Construction Company dug this basin at the turn of last century in the pursuit of its stone, used for building Tucson homes, walls and other structures.
The dark red color of these two basalt layers is due to a high concentration of iron and magnesium in the original magma. These elements reduce the lava’s viscosity and the explosive tendency of the sourcing eruptions while allowing the molten rock to flow more uniformly across the surface. Much of the basalt layer at the base of “A” Mountain contains small cavities known as vesicles. The magma, in this case, erupted out of the ground just fast enough for the dissolved gasses to vaporize in the decompressing molten rock and then cooled fast enough to retain the holes formed by these gas pockets. The same bubble forming principle occurs when opening a bottle of beer. An example of this vesiculated basalt is visible on the west side of Sentinel Peak Road between the parking lot at the bottom and the beginning of the one-way road around the summit. The basalt cavities are at the top of this dark layer, presumably because the bubbles floated upward before the cooling lava locked them in place.
The two rock layers sandwiched between the basalts were the result of more violent volcanic activity about 27 million years ago. The older of these two light colored rock strata is composed of rough dark pebble size cinders (basalt) embedded in silt, sand and ash. This material fell from the sky in the form of a volcanic cinder fall. The light brown agglomerate layer with its dark embedded pebbles is visible on the left side of the one-way lane just beyond the split in the road.
Finally, the most visually striking layer of “A” Mountain is composed of tan and pink rock, known as tuff. This layer resulted from one or more volcanic ash falls. The magma for this ash also went through decompression near the earth’s surface. In this case, however, the eruption occurred so suddenly that the expanding gas in the magma shattered the molten minerals and rock into very fine pieces and threw them forcefully into the air. After settling back to the ground, the combination of heat, pressure and time welded this bed of ash into the light colored rock layer that we can see today. Look for a sharp color transition between the tan rock and pink rock as you drive up the southern slope of “A” Mountain. This will identify the tuff layer that is also visible as a large light horizontal bed on Tumamoc Hill to the west.
This introduction to the geology of “A” Mountain is an invitation to explore and enjoy our hilly community with an understanding of its primordial past. The vestige of this beginning is locked within every pebble and stone of our iconic mountain.
Photo shows D.Psych student Lidija Balaz with Dr Mitchell Byrne. The two have presented at the Aspect’s Autism in Education Conference.
Photo shows D.Psych student Lidija Balaz with Dr Mitchell Byrne. The two have presented at the Aspect’s Autism in Education Conference.
www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/portal/web/rielcano_es/ac...
Madrid, 2 de julio de 2015. Conferencia pública con expertos internacionales sobre Rusia, el régimen de Vladimir Putin y los retos socioeconómicos del país. Organización: CIDOB, Real Instituto Elcano y Fiedrich Ebert Stiftung, con la colaboración de Europe for Citizens.
Understanding the Essence of Flowers - Exploring Pollen 12-14th
June, 2013, Helsinki
Photo: Tommi Taipale
Living in Transit: The Thinkers of a World in Turmoil
War looms over Europe, uncertainty seeps into everyday life, and the weight of history presses upon the present. The world is burning, and yet—there are those who seek understanding, those who bury themselves in the quiet refuge of books, the dim glow of libraries, the solitude of knowledge.
This series captures the introspective minds of young academic women—readers, thinkers, seekers. They wander through old university halls, their fingers tracing the spines of forgotten books, pulling out volumes of poetry, philosophy, and psychology. They drink coffee, they drink tea, they stay up late with ink-stained fingers, trying to decipher the world through words.
They turn to Simone Weil for moral clarity, Hannah Arendt for political insight, Rilke for existential wisdom. They read Baudrillard to untangle the illusions of modernity, Byung-Chul Han to understand society’s exhaustion, Camus to grasp the absurdity of it all. They devour Celan’s poetry, searching for beauty in catastrophe.
But they do not just read—they reflect, they question, they write. Their world is one of quiet resistance, an intellectual sanctuary amidst the chaos. In their solitude, they are not alone. Across time, across history, across the pages they turn, they are in conversation with those who, too, have sought meaning in troubled times.
This is a series about thought in transit—about seeking, reading, questioning, about the relentless pursuit of knowledge when the world feels on the brink.
Where the Thinkers Go
They gather where the dust has settled,
where books whisper in the hush of halls.
Pages thin as breath, torn at the edges,
cradling centuries of questions.
They drink coffee like it’s ink,
trace words like constellations,
follow Rilke into the dusk,
where solitude hums softly in the dark.
Outside, the world is fraying—
war threading through the seams of cities,
the weight of history pressing forward.
Inside, they turn pages, searching
for answers, for solace, for fire.
And somewhere between the lines,
between time-stained margins and fading ink,
they find the ghosts of others who
once sought, once wondered, once read—
and they do not feel alone.
Three Haikus
Night falls on paper,
books stacked like silent towers,
thoughts burn in the dark.
Tea cools in the cup,
a poem lingers on lips,
war rumbles beyond.
Footsteps in silence,
the scent of old ink and dust,
pages turn like ghosts.
ooOOOoo
The Intellectual Pursuit: What They Read in 2025
In a world teetering between war and uncertainty, young academic women turn to books—not as mere escape, but as a way to confront reality, to seek wisdom in the echoes of history, and to understand the weight of the present. They read in dimly lit libraries, at café tables littered with half-drunk cups of tea, in quiet university archives where dust clings to forgotten volumes. They are drawn to words that unravel complexity, books that demand contemplation, and authors who have wrestled with the same existential questions that haunt their minds today.
Here is what they read.
1. Existential and Philosophical Works
In times of crisis, philosophy becomes a mirror—reflecting both the weight of the world and the possibilities of thought. These books challenge, unsettle, and offer a way to navigate uncertainty.
Simone Weil – Gravity and Grace (moral clarity and reflections on human suffering)
Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism (a timeless study of power, ideology, and authoritarianism)
Byung-Chul Han – The Burnout Society (a philosophical take on modern exhaustion and performance-driven culture)
Jean Baudrillard – Simulacra and Simulation (a critique of reality and illusion in an age of digital manipulation)
Albert Camus – The Plague (a novel that mirrors today’s existential and ethical dilemmas)
Søren Kierkegaard – The Concept of Anxiety (an exploration of freedom, dread, and the human condition)
These thinkers guide them through uncertainty, offering both discomfort and clarity—challenging them to see beyond the immediate chaos.
2. Poetry and Literature of Longing, Loss, and Human Experience
Sometimes, only poetry and fiction can capture what analysis cannot—the deep, wordless truths of grief, love, exile, and the quiet resilience of the human spirit.
Anne Carson – Nox (a fragmented, deeply personal meditation on loss and memory)
Paul Celan – Todesfuge (haunting post-Holocaust poetry that lingers between beauty and horror)
Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet (a lyrical guide to solitude, art, and self-discovery)
Ocean Vuong – On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (poetry-infused storytelling on identity and survival)
Virginia Woolf – The Waves (a novel that reads like a long poem, exploring time, consciousness, and human connection)
Clarice Lispector – The Hour of the Star (a sparse, existential novel that lingers long after the last page)
These books are read slowly, lines underlined in pencil, phrases whispered to oneself in quiet moments.
3. Political Thought and Social Critique
Understanding the present requires looking at the past and tracing the patterns of history, power, and resistance.
Naomi Klein – Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World (on misinformation, conspiracy culture, and the fracturing of reality)
Timothy Snyder – On Tyranny (20 lessons from history on how democracy is lost—and how it can be protected)
Achille Mbembe – Necropolitics (on the politics of death, control, and who gets to exist in modern power structures)
Olga Tokarczuk – Flights (a novel that blurs fiction and philosophy, exploring movement, exile, and identity)
Rebecca Solnit – Hope in the Dark (on why history is shaped by those who refuse to give up)
These books are read with urgency—annotated, discussed, debated. They provide frameworks for understanding the unfolding crises of today.
4. Science, Psychology, and the Search for Meaning
In times of uncertainty, some turn to the mind and the universe—to trauma studies, quantum physics, and new ways of seeing.
Carlo Rovelli – The Order of Time (a poetic examination of time and its illusions)
James Bridle – New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (on the unpredictability of AI, climate change, and human systems)
Bessel van der Kolk – The Body Keeps the Score (on trauma, memory, and how the body stores experiences)
Donna Haraway – Staying with the Trouble (rethinking human and non-human relationships in a time of ecological crisis)
These books stretch their understanding beyond politics and poetry—into the unseen forces that shape the self and the cosmos.
Operation Understanding DC student leader Sam Edelman speaks at the Black and Jewish Members of Congress Breakfast in Washington, DC on March 9, 2011
Cape Town, South Africa. July 2012.
South Africa hosted the second global Understanding Risk (UR) Forum in Cape Town from July 2-6, 2012. The Forum convened more than 500 thought leaders and decision-makers from 86 countries to exchange knowledge and share best practice in disaster risk assessment.
Photo: World Bank
Side event at the fifth Global Meeting of the Mountain Partnership: “Understanding landscape and watershed management in mountains ”, 17.30-19.30, 12 December 2017, FAO HQ. During the side event, the new FAO publication “Watershed Management in Action” was launched.
The fifth Global Meeting of the Mountain Partnership – with its theme “Mountains under pressure: climate, hunger, migration” – was held at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, on 11-13 December 2017.
Photo credit must be given: ©FAO/Roberto Cenciarelli. Editorial use only. Copyright ©FAO
Living in Transit: The Thinkers of a World in Turmoil
War looms over Europe, uncertainty seeps into everyday life, and the weight of history presses upon the present. The world is burning, and yet—there are those who seek understanding, those who bury themselves in the quiet refuge of books, the dim glow of libraries, the solitude of knowledge.
This series captures the introspective minds of young academic women—readers, thinkers, seekers. They wander through old university halls, their fingers tracing the spines of forgotten books, pulling out volumes of poetry, philosophy, and psychology. They drink coffee, they drink tea, they stay up late with ink-stained fingers, trying to decipher the world through words.
They turn to Simone Weil for moral clarity, Hannah Arendt for political insight, Rilke for existential wisdom. They read Baudrillard to untangle the illusions of modernity, Byung-Chul Han to understand society’s exhaustion, Camus to grasp the absurdity of it all. They devour Celan’s poetry, searching for beauty in catastrophe.
But they do not just read—they reflect, they question, they write. Their world is one of quiet resistance, an intellectual sanctuary amidst the chaos. In their solitude, they are not alone. Across time, across history, across the pages they turn, they are in conversation with those who, too, have sought meaning in troubled times.
This is a series about thought in transit—about seeking, reading, questioning, about the relentless pursuit of knowledge when the world feels on the brink.
Where the Thinkers Go
They gather where the dust has settled,
where books whisper in the hush of halls.
Pages thin as breath, torn at the edges,
cradling centuries of questions.
They drink coffee like it’s ink,
trace words like constellations,
follow Rilke into the dusk,
where solitude hums softly in the dark.
Outside, the world is fraying—
war threading through the seams of cities,
the weight of history pressing forward.
Inside, they turn pages, searching
for answers, for solace, for fire.
And somewhere between the lines,
between time-stained margins and fading ink,
they find the ghosts of others who
once sought, once wondered, once read—
and they do not feel alone.
Three Haikus
Night falls on paper,
books stacked like silent towers,
thoughts burn in the dark.
Tea cools in the cup,
a poem lingers on lips,
war rumbles beyond.
Footsteps in silence,
the scent of old ink and dust,
pages turn like ghosts.
ooOOOoo
The Intellectual Pursuit: What They Read in 2025
In a world teetering between war and uncertainty, young academic women turn to books—not as mere escape, but as a way to confront reality, to seek wisdom in the echoes of history, and to understand the weight of the present. They read in dimly lit libraries, at café tables littered with half-drunk cups of tea, in quiet university archives where dust clings to forgotten volumes. They are drawn to words that unravel complexity, books that demand contemplation, and authors who have wrestled with the same existential questions that haunt their minds today.
Here is what they read.
1. Existential and Philosophical Works
In times of crisis, philosophy becomes a mirror—reflecting both the weight of the world and the possibilities of thought. These books challenge, unsettle, and offer a way to navigate uncertainty.
Simone Weil – Gravity and Grace (moral clarity and reflections on human suffering)
Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism (a timeless study of power, ideology, and authoritarianism)
Byung-Chul Han – The Burnout Society (a philosophical take on modern exhaustion and performance-driven culture)
Jean Baudrillard – Simulacra and Simulation (a critique of reality and illusion in an age of digital manipulation)
Albert Camus – The Plague (a novel that mirrors today’s existential and ethical dilemmas)
Søren Kierkegaard – The Concept of Anxiety (an exploration of freedom, dread, and the human condition)
These thinkers guide them through uncertainty, offering both discomfort and clarity—challenging them to see beyond the immediate chaos.
2. Poetry and Literature of Longing, Loss, and Human Experience
Sometimes, only poetry and fiction can capture what analysis cannot—the deep, wordless truths of grief, love, exile, and the quiet resilience of the human spirit.
Anne Carson – Nox (a fragmented, deeply personal meditation on loss and memory)
Paul Celan – Todesfuge (haunting post-Holocaust poetry that lingers between beauty and horror)
Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet (a lyrical guide to solitude, art, and self-discovery)
Ocean Vuong – On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (poetry-infused storytelling on identity and survival)
Virginia Woolf – The Waves (a novel that reads like a long poem, exploring time, consciousness, and human connection)
Clarice Lispector – The Hour of the Star (a sparse, existential novel that lingers long after the last page)
These books are read slowly, lines underlined in pencil, phrases whispered to oneself in quiet moments.
3. Political Thought and Social Critique
Understanding the present requires looking at the past and tracing the patterns of history, power, and resistance.
Naomi Klein – Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World (on misinformation, conspiracy culture, and the fracturing of reality)
Timothy Snyder – On Tyranny (20 lessons from history on how democracy is lost—and how it can be protected)
Achille Mbembe – Necropolitics (on the politics of death, control, and who gets to exist in modern power structures)
Olga Tokarczuk – Flights (a novel that blurs fiction and philosophy, exploring movement, exile, and identity)
Rebecca Solnit – Hope in the Dark (on why history is shaped by those who refuse to give up)
These books are read with urgency—annotated, discussed, debated. They provide frameworks for understanding the unfolding crises of today.
4. Science, Psychology, and the Search for Meaning
In times of uncertainty, some turn to the mind and the universe—to trauma studies, quantum physics, and new ways of seeing.
Carlo Rovelli – The Order of Time (a poetic examination of time and its illusions)
James Bridle – New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (on the unpredictability of AI, climate change, and human systems)
Bessel van der Kolk – The Body Keeps the Score (on trauma, memory, and how the body stores experiences)
Donna Haraway – Staying with the Trouble (rethinking human and non-human relationships in a time of ecological crisis)
These books stretch their understanding beyond politics and poetry—into the unseen forces that shape the self and the cosmos.
2022 Rockefeller Center Understanding The Spirit of Progress figure friezes at 30 Rock NYC - theatre Midtown Manhattan 50th Street New York City nude nudes profile by Paul Manship American sculptor frieze Art Deco figures architecture 1930s style Futurist modern stone rock carved carving gargoyle gargoyles poeple Greek god types mythology myths myth mythological young and Gold Prometheus statue woman
Cape Town, South Africa. July 2012.
South Africa hosted the second global Understanding Risk (UR) Forum in Cape Town from July 2-6, 2012. The Forum convened more than 500 thought leaders and decision-makers from 86 countries to exchange knowledge and share best practice in disaster risk assessment.
Photo: World Bank