Hotel Managers' Responses to Ethical Dilemmas

Ethics is a hot topic today in many professions. The author creates a number of scenarios testing ethical situations and surveyed lodging managers as to their reactions.

Finite element model updating of a RC building considering seismic response trends

Peer reviewed

A framework for rapid post-earthquake assessment of bridges and restoration of transportation network functionality using structural health monitoring

Peer reviewed

Identification of unusual events in multi-channel bridge monitoring data using wavelet transform and outlier analysis

Peer reviewed

Alienated Selfhood and Heroism: A Poststructuralist Reading of John le Carré’s Spy Fiction Novels

John le Carré’s novels “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” (1963), “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (1974), and “The Tailor of Panama” (1997), focus on how the main characters reflect the somber reality of working in the British intelligence service. Through a broad post-structuralist analysis, I will identify the dichotomies - good/evil in “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” past/future in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” and institution/individual in “The Tailor of Panama” - that frame the role of the protagonists. Each character is defined by his ambiguity and swinging moral compass, transforming him into a hybrid creation of morality and adaptability during transitional time periods in history, mainly during the Cold War. Le Carré’s novels reject the notion of spies standing above a group being celebrated. Instead, he portrays spies as characters who trade off individualism and social belonging for a false sense of heroism, loneliness, and even death.

Eduardo Arroyo contra la historia

El objetivo de este ensayo crítico es realizar un retrato biográfico del pintor y escritor Eduardo Arroyo (Madrid, 1937) para, a partir de él, llevar a cabo a un análisis temático y formal de su producción pictórica. Su obra, una de las propuestas figurativas más singulares del arte europeo contemporáneo, es testimonio de la actualidad, de lo público, al tiempo que un registro de su historia personal. Por medio de sus cuadros, Arroyo pone de manifiesto la posición crítica que ha adoptado con respecto a su contexto histórico-social, marcado durante más de tres décadas por la dictadura franquista, más tarde, por la transición democrática y en tiempos recientes por las transformaciones ocurridas en el proceso de homogeneización del mundo occidental. Así, desde comienzos de los años sesenta del siglo pasado, no ha dejado de cuestionar la validez de la historia, como disciplina que narra sucesos, de polemizar sobre los fundamentos del arte de vanguardia, además de destacar la responsabilidad ética del pintor actual en una época en la que se ve peligrar la supervivencia de su oficio. Para definir las obsesiones que han conformado su creación, detestaciones, pasiones y ambiciones, se ha extraído el ideario artístico del pintor de las fuentes primarias existentes, como son ensayos de carácter autobiográfico, artículos periodísticos, entrevistas, memorias y disertaciones públicas. En el caso de un creador locuaz, que ha sido calificado de «prestidigitador de la palabra», en virtud de las declaraciones hechas sobre los más diversos temas de la cultura, este abundante material tiene un valor extraordinario. Dichas confesiones se han puesto en relación con los ciclos pictóricos desarrollados por el artista para ser analizados a la luz de la bibliografía crítica existente sobre la materia. Entre los escritores y especialistas que han abordado su obra destacan: Francisco Calvo Serraller, Bernard Dahan-Constant, Fabienne di Rocco, Juan Goytisolo, Fernando Savater, Michel Sager, Leonardo Sciasca, Jorge Semprún, Wener Spies, José Miguel Ullán o María Zambrano...

Drummond and Paul Klee: a glances' dialogue

Thinking about Drummond, the word that comes immediately on mind is gauche, this word which has consecrated the modernist poet with the open verses from Alguma Poesia. Such behavior, for it is not just a mere objective definition to the word, is suggested by the bent angel who lives in shadows, and this designation prevails front of the circumstances. The angel spies the poet from the shadows, however, in two specific moments he appears to the lyric self: in his birth when he was a boy and in his birth as a poet. The gauche glance’s perspective modifies during his trajectory, the poet sees himself in the world like: larger, lesser and equal, according to Sant’Anna (1992). Being inside the world, gauche is, besides an observer, an experienced man, and his mature eyes can be compared to the torn eyes from Klee’s angels as Cançado (2006) says. Therefore, this dialog between the modernist poet and the Swiss impressionist painter from the vanguard intends to observe and analyze, through gaucherie notion, the angels from the paintings, as a way of illustrate how Drummond’s poetry shows itself like effective art in literary constructive process and also in the constitution of a symbol subject in modern and postmodern universe.