Hand Making Paper

This beautiful book draws on Robert Race's extensive collection of traditional moving toys, looking at the ways the makers have achieved remarkable and varied results, often with very limited resources. Each chapter begins by looking at the mechanisms and materials used in some of these traditional moving toys, goes on to consider possible variations, and describes how to make a related moving toy.

Making Digital Cultures brings together recent theorizing of the 'digital age' with empirical studies of how institutions embrace these technologies in relation to older established technological objects, processes and practices.

THE SHADOW BOXING (1979) is also known as SPIRITUAL BOXER 2 but is not exactly a sequel to THE SPIRITUAL BOXER (1975). It's by the same director, Lau Kar Leung, and features some of the same actors, including the star, Wang Yu (sometimes spelled Wong Yu and not to be confused with One-Armed Swordsman Jimmy Wang Yu), but has little in common with the earlier film, which was a wry treatment of Chinese folk superstitions and told the story of a conman who used villagers' beliefs in traditional gods to run various scams. There were no supernatural elements in that film. In this one, however, the main characters are a pair of "corpse herders," played by Wang Yu and Lau Kar Wing—the director's brother—whose job is to deliver corpses for burial in their home villages. They do this by putting hand-inked paper spells on the corpses (called "vampires" in the subtitles here) and making them hop from town to town on their journey at night. It's a far-fetched supernatural premise based on Chinese folklore that's treated in a matter-of-fact fashion that is completely at odds with the director's treatment of folk gods in the earlier film. Such treatment also means that the supernatural elements are never given the kind of free rein we would later see in such over-the-top horror/martial arts/action comedies as Sammo Hung's SPOOKY ENCOUNTERS (aka ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPOOKY KIND, 1980) and Ricky Lau's MR. VAMPIRE (1985). As a result, things get pretty tedious by the time the already slim plot kicks into gear late in the film. This plot involves the use of the "corpse herd" by a fugitive seeking to pass through checkpoints and avoid capture by pursuing soldiers. A lot of comic possibilities are offered up by this plot twist, few of which are adequately exploited.

A cracking and insightful read about doing business for good in Africa’s newly emerging giant economy and megacity, Lagos, Nigeria. Lagos, Nigeria, a city of about 20 million people (no one knows exactly how many) is growing fast and it is not the same Africa as that of the open plains of the Serengeti or the thunderous white cloud of Victoria Falls. This is Africa’s wild side, a place where ethics can be lost and where enormous good can be done; it is where Africa’s future will be made.