MAD

Themes And Issues In Asian Cartooning: Cute, Cheap, Mad, And Sexy employs overviews and case studies by noted scholars in an informative and insightful discussion of Asian animation, humor magazines, gag cartoons, comic strips, and comic books. A seminal and benchmark contribution to the subject, Themes And Issues In Asian Cartooning is essential reading for students of Asian popular culture and of intense interest for comics fandom from anima movies to manga comics.

The "usual gang of idiots" gather to make this book another hilarious hit. "Mad" takes on "Alfred Hatchplot" movie that combines all the elements of Hitchcock's movies in one craxy parody. There are posters for movies I'd like to see, such as "The Invasion on the Jolly Green Giant". The bit about illuminated signs is definitely worth the price of admission.

If you enjoyed "Mad" magazine in the past (this is from 1964), you will definitely like this book. I recommend it highly.

"Three Ring MAD" is collection #16 from the usual gang of idiots, which means it goes back to the early 1960s for its collection of reprint fun from the premiere American magazine of parody, humor and satire. The centerpiece for this particular collection is "My Fair Ad-Man," which crosses the musical "My Fair Lady" with Madison Avenue (supposedly based on the book, "You're a Pig, Mallion" by George Bernard Schwartz). This is one of the great "MAD" movie parodies of all time because it takes most of the songs from "My Fair Lady" and makes up new words. The cast consists of Dean Martin, Cary Grant, Charles Laughton, and Frank Sinatra, who starts out looking like a beatnik (Look carefully and you will spot a cameo by Rex Harrison). There is also a nice follow up to this with "New Movie Monsters from Madison Avenue." There is also another visit to the cinema with "MAD Goes to an Alfred Hatchplot Movie." The requisite television parody is "The Rifle, Man," the subject of which you should be able to figure out from the title, man.

Older readers of "MAD" Magazine will enjoy this walk down memory lane with "Hazards of Illuminated Signs," "Distinctive Picket Lines," "The MAD Madison Avenue Primer," and "Mother's Day Cards From Some Children Who Didn't Turn Out Very Well" (e.g., John Wilkes Booth, Lillie Borden). There is also a photo feature of "Literal Translations of Figurative Speech," which continues the collection of pieces that just have that early Sixties "MAD" look, such as the Yesterday vs. Today contrast of "Doctors' Progress." Time and time again I found myself thinking that this was the "MAD" I grew up with (although the Smothers Brothers get more credit for warping my mind into its current state of disrepair). You will also find a couple of classic efforts from Don Martin, one of the few members of the usual gang of idiots who gets an actual credit. Younger readers will probably not appreciate the level at which "MAD" Magazine worked in the old days, but I still think there was a lot more bite to these bits from the good old days.

Not exactly LP, but it tells stories of two places that been
extremely dangerous and one that still is.in SL conflict(the hunter) was fuelled by greed, diamonds made many Lebanese come to SL and
the become rich on trading, MEA (middle east airlines) flew
in several of their big passenger planes to rescue it's citizens, SL
isn't a tourist resort nowadays like The Gambia today, but
still not extremely dangerous.
Bougainville (the Heaven) was Oz mining company property until the fighting

drove them of the island, PNG gov tried to recruit SA mercs to
"conquer" the island and start mining again, but it failed badly.
Chechenya (the Hammer) was also about greed, in this case oil-pipelines from
Azerbadjian. The late Chechen leader Dubajev was a former Soviet
airforce general that was married to an Estonian lady, he stopped
a carnage in the Baltic states planned by hard-liners. The Russians was later upset by the Estonians because the gave away
3 plane loads of roubles to the Chechens (arranged by Georgia) that the Russians refused to take as payment for oil deliveries, the money came when Estonia changed currency from the Soviet rouble to the Estonian Kroon.
3 stories about where everything gone haywire, but in two cases
the violence have halted, at least temporary...

This collection of pulp fiction postcards are both entertaining and provacative. Great conversation pieces! Pin up art at its best!

Reviewer: A reader from New Zealand Peak of a climber's career

7 Summits Solo, (Summit, USA) by Robert Mads Anderson To Everest via Antarctica, Robert Mads Anderson Reviewed by Neil Nelson, The Evening Standard, Wellington, New Zealand Saturday, February 24, 1996

Having spent the past 20 years scaling some of the world's most difficult peaks, American-born Aucklander Robert Anderson set himself a new challenge: to climb the highest peak on each of the world's seven continents.

As an added challenge, he elected to climb them solo.

Ultimately, he failed in his bid, with Everest getting the better of him on two separate occasions. But failure to stand on the top of the world's highest peak doesn't diminish Anderson's achievement or the highly readable accounts he has written of his adventures.

As the price tags would suggest, the two books which have resulted from his seven summits project are totally different.

7 Summits Solo is a large-format, lavishly produced, 160-page volume which includes dozens of superb colour photographs taken by Joe Blackburn during the expedition (Note, nearly all photos in the book are Anderson's).

Anderson's account of the expedition is essentially a précis of the story he tells in To Everest via Antarctica. The 220 page Penguin book (Stackpole Books, USA) contains just a handful of photographs, but includes a far more detailed account of Anderson's adventures.

During the past decade or so, I've read numerous accounts of climbing expeditions: this one rates as one of the best.

Unlike some mountaineers, who feel compelled to describe in minute detail everything they did during the expedition, Anderson concentrates more on the adventures he had actually getting to the mountain.

He admits it is more of a travel book than a book about climbing and that he wrote it for a broader market.

Some chapters have little to do with climbing at all. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Anderson's descriptions of his travels in Russia, late in 1992, after conquering Mt Elbrus, Europe's highest peak. With Elbrus out of the way, and three weeks left on his Russian visa, Anderson decided the opportunity to see some of Russia was too good an opportunity to miss.

With the Russia of old rapidly being split into a series of new countries, and new border crossings appearing at random, it was decided a large bus would be the easiest way of moving around. One was soon found and with several companions Anderson set off for a fascinating tour of parts of Russia which had seldom seen Western tourists. The tales he relates of his journey make for absorbing and humorous reading.

With a degree in writing and a career spent mainly in the advertising industry - the business he set up in New Zealand and subsequently sold helped fund his seven summits project - Anderson wastes few words. He has an economical, easy-to-read style and knows how to tell a good story.

While the price of 7 Summits Solo means it's unlikely to appear on best-seller lists, To Everest via Antarctica deserves to be. One of the most enjoyable books I read in 1995, I look forward to reading of Anderson's further adventures.

See the review of this book in the Wall Street Journal, Thursday, January 30, 2003.

We've loved Paul Jennings since discovering him while visiting friends in Australia. The stories are funny and well written. Kids can identify with the main characters, because there is a certain real-ness to their lives, within which very strange things happen. Every story is totally enjoyable for kids and parents alike, and leaves both with things to think about. Highly recommended.

This is a new exciting book about the life of a pararescue jumper in the USAF. I could not put the book down. It is truly a one of a kind refreshing and insightful. If you ever want to know about soldiers that jump out of airplanes to save the lives of wounded or at need soldiers in harms way this is the book for you. Enjoy the read.
L

Arthur Caplan, who is one of the U.S. major leaders in the bioethics movement, compiled this book demonstrating not only the real use of bioethics in determining the right and wrong of scientific endeavor, but also exposing the fact that in spite of all the knowledge the world has gained from the Nazi atrocities and other questionable experimental science, there are still those who would not only use the data from these sources...but would also excuse some of people who committed these horrors in the name of science.

It was to my surprise that I found this book, and later decided to buy it through Amazon. This book came about by researchers who were attempting to use and excuse the data obtained through one particularly horrific experiment done by the Nazis. There was concern that German aviators would suffer from exposure upon leaving aircraft that had been damaged in dogfights with planes from the Allies. This gave scientists the excuse to use political prisoners, captured soldiers, and Jewish prisoners as subjects in their experiments. They would dress the men as aviators would be dress and expose them to frigid water and lack of oxygen (as would be experienced by aviators at high altitudes). They would try varieties of means of re-warming these men, including absolutely ludicrous ideas that are revolting now in their simplicity and immorality...which I have no intention of discussing here. I don't know what is more amazing...that these men felt they were doing no wrong, or that some of our scientists would continue to advocate the use of the data obtained from these experiments. At least Mengele and the men behind his atrocious twins experiments had the presence of mind to know what they were doing would not be looked upon kindly. Not only did they destroy their work before the Allies could find it, but Mengele disappeared into the South American continent. The men who worked on these exposure experiments left around not only their very bad data, but pictures of themselves standing there as they slowly killed men by exposure.

In 1991, a conference was held to discuss the ethical use of such experiments. Should it be used? Why, or why not? Would use of this type of scientific information constitute an insult to the dead and living survivors of these experiments, or would putting that information gained to use make their unwilling cooperation in these experiments as not having been done in vain? Or did this type of experiment, and those done at Tuskagee, and those done at Willowbrook, merely continue to advocate the use of those considered inferior, or captive populations, by scientists as morally acceptable because the needs of 'society' (as described by scientists and medical researchers) as more important than the needs of individuals? Sound familiar? It should...this question has never been morally answered and now, it is the corporations who put vulnerable populations at risk. Only their excuse is the bottom line, and profits.

Caplan collected a series of essays by those who were the victims of these and other experiments of the Nazi era. There is also input from those who would use this information in references, in their own work. There is input from bioethicists on both sides of the equation, and some input from notable American theologians. So it would seem this is an unbiased look into this question of when and who decides other human beings are of individual worth or are only of use to society as a whole. What is a bit perplexing to me is that the question needs to be asked, fifty years after the Holocaust, and thirty years after the explosive exposure of American experimental atrocities by Henry Beecher in 1966.

And yet it does...and yes we do need to teach these things to the new scientists and new medical researchers, and those who would do business by pushing the moral envelope just a bit farther in the name of profit. With genetics and politics combining to form a new type of eugenics, with stem cell research, the increasing need for organ transplants, emerging diseases, and allocation of limited health care...this book should be part of the required list of those in all these areas as well as in bioethics.

As theologian Neuhaus says in his chapter, "This meeting would be a failure if we were not made to feel uncomfortable." This book should make all of us feel uncomfortable. Maybe if we all were uncomfortable, the slippery slope to another medical and scientific "Holocaust" could be avoided.

Karen L. Sadler,
Science Education,
University of Pittsburgh