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Philosophy Through Video Games
2009
Jon CogburnHow can Wii Sports teach us about metaphysics?
Can playing World of Warcraft lead to greater self-consciousness?
How can we learn about aesthetics, ethics and divine attributes from
Zork, Grand Theft Auto, and Civilization?
A variety of increasingly sophisticated video games are rapidly overtaking books, films, and television as America's most popular form of media entertainment. It is estimated that by 2011 over 30 percentnbsp;of US households will own a Wii console - about the same percentage that owned a television in 1953.In Philosophy Through Video Games, Jon Cogburn and Mark Silcox - philosophers with game industry experience - investigate the aesthetic appeal of video games, their effect on our morals, the insights they give us into our understanding of perceptual knowledge, personal identity, artificial intelligence, and the very meaning of life itself, arguing that video games are popular precisely because they engage with longstanding philosophical problems.
Topics covered include:
* The Problem of the External World
* Dualism and Personal Identity
* Artificial and Human Intelligence in the Philosophy of Mind
* The Idea of Interactive Art
* The Moral Effects of Video Games
* Games and God's Goodness
Games discussed include:
Madden Football, Wii Sports, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, Sims Online, Second Life, Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Elder Scrolls, Zork, EverQuest Doom, Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto, Civilization, Mortal Kombat, Rome: Total War, Black and White, Aidyn Chronicles -
Perilous Place, Powerful Storms: Hurricane Protection in Coastal Louisiana
2009
Craig E. ColtenThe hurricane protection systems that failed New Orleans when Katrina roared on shore in 2005 were the product of four decades of engineering hubris, excruciating delays, and social conflict. In Perilous Place, Powerful Storms, Craig E. Colten traces the protracted process of erecting massive structures designed to fend off tropical storms and examines how human actions and inactions left the system incomplete on the eve of its greatest challenge.
Hurricane Betsy in 1965 provided the impetus for Congress to approve unprecedented hurricane protection for the New Orleans area. Army Engineers swiftly outlined a monumental barrier network that would not only safeguard the city at the time but also provide for substantial growth. Scheduled for completion in 1978, the project encountered a host of frustrating delays. From newly imposed environmental requirements to complex construction challenges, to funding battles, to disputes over proper structures, the buffer envisioned for southeast Louisiana remained incomplete forty years later as Hurricane Katrina bore down on the city.
As Colten reveals, the very remedies intended to shield the city ultimately contributed immensely to the residents' vulnerability by encouraging sprawl into flood-prone territory that was already sinking within the ring of levees. Perilous Place, Powerful Storms illuminates the political, social, and engineering lessons of those who built a hurricane protection system that failed and serves as a warning for those guiding the recovery of post-Katrina New Orleans and Louisiana. -
Trap Doors and Trojan Horses: An Auditing Action Adventure
2009
D. Larry CrumbleyIn this educational novel, the famous forensic accountant, Lenny Cramer, has joined the accounting faculty at Georgia State University. In addition to his professorial duties, he is conducting an operational audit for the international soft drink company, Coca-Cola. Espionage and fraud place Lenny's life on the line as he uncovers a scheme to steal Coke's secret formula. The story features a variety of settings, from Washington, D.C. to Poland.
As an expert in his field, Professor Cramer uses his forensic auditing knowledge to assist the Coca-Cola Company, his students, the U.S. Congress, and the legal system as an expert witness. With his assistant, Slam Duncan, an accounting Ph.D. student, he puts state-of-the-art technology to work to solve audit problems in the real world.
Trap Doors and Trojan Horses may be used near the end of an auditing or beginning of a data processing course. It would be ideal for an MBA program that has a light coverage of accounting or used in CPA firms' in-house training programs.
This educational novel illustrates the differences between a regular audit and the investigation required by forensic accountants to uncover computer fraud. Every business executive should read it, because just as termites never sleep, fraud never sleeps. And just like termites, fraud can destroy the foundation of an entity.The novel mixes fraud, crime, politics, ethics, computer techniques, expert witnessing, and auditing for a better and easier way to learn accounting. If used as a supplement to an auditing, forensic accounting, fraud examination, or a computer course, this exciting novel provides a painless way to learn auditing principles. The suspenseful story combines computer and auditing concepts in a fashion even a novice can understand and enjoy. With computer fraud losses reaching $300 billion per year, accountants must be familiar with electronic auditing.
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Anthology of American Folktales and Legends
2009
Frank de CaroFor folklorists, students, as well as general readers, this is the most comprehensive survey of American folktales and legends currently available. It offers an amazing variety of American legend and lore - everything from Appalachian Jack tales, African American folklore, riddles, trickster tales, tall tales, tales of the supernatural, legends of crime and criminals, tales of women, and even urban legends.The anthology is divided into three main sections - Native American and Hawaiian Narratives, Folktales, and Legends - and within each section the individual stories explore the myriad narrative traditions and genres from various geographic regions of the United States. Each section and tale genre is introduced and placed in its narrative context by noted folklorist Frank de Caro. Tale type and motif indexes complete the work.
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Electronic Records in the Manuscript Repository
2009
Elizabeth H. DowElectronic Records in the Manuscript Repository defines the problems related to electronic records and digital documents, describes the steps the curator should take to manage those electronic records and digital documents, and suggests ways to learn the specific skills and perspectives needed to do the job well.
It provides an introduction to vocabulary, basic concepts, and best practices to date by collecting and contextualizing data from several real-world projects, and it contains almost 30 pages of references to resources that the curator can consult for information on specific topics. Dow starts with a review of archival concepts, including a look at archival practices, and then discusses the problems created by electronic materials in that context, as well as the research in progress to tackle these problems. -
Conversations with Samuel R. Delany
2009
Carl FreedmanA key figure in modern science fiction and fantasy, Samuel R. Delany (b. 1942) is also one of the most acclaimed figures in contemporary literary theory and gay/lesbian literature. As a gay African American writer, Delany's cerebral, experimental prose crosses lines of genre, gender, sexuality, and class. Several of his works--Dhalgren, The Einstein Intersection, Babel-17, Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand, and the Nevèrÿon quartet are considered landmarks of ""new wave"" science fiction. His essays and critical works approach a wide variety of subjects from a perspective that is both resolutely philosophical and deeply provocative.
Conversations with Samuel R. Delany collects interviews with the writer from 1980 to 2007. Delany considers the interview an especially fruitful form for the generation of ideas, and he has made it an integral part of his own work. In fact, two of his critical works are collections of interviews and correspondence. He insists that all interviews with him be written correspondence so that he is allowed the time and space to deliberate on each response. As a result, the conversations presented here are as rigorously constructed, elusive, and intellectually stimulating as his essays. -
Wanted: The Outlaw in American Visual Culture
2009
Rachel HallAssembling a rich archive of images and texts from the eighteenth century to the present, Rachel Hall offers a history of the "wanted" poster, examining its uses, patterns of circulation, and formal development as an iconic print genre. Her narrative covers a wide range of images: execution broadsides, runaway slave notices, private detective posters, FBI posters, artists' approximations, and the depiction of key figures in the "war on terror." Hall's cultural analysis has profound implications for our understanding of contemporary American fantasies of vulnerability, projection of enemies around the world, and adoption of security measures in domestic and foreign policy.
Wanted will appeal not only to students and scholars in literary studies, cultural studies, and art history but also to readers more generally interested in society's outlaws and in the test of wills between law enforcement and criminal evasion.
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Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting
2009
John Maxwell HamiltonIn all of journalism, nowhere are the stakes higher than in foreign news-gathering. For media owners, it is the most difficult type of reporting to finance; for editors, the hardest to oversee. Correspondents, roaming large swaths of the planet, must acquire expertise that home-based reporters take for granted?facility with the local language, for instance, or an understanding of local cultures. Adding further to the challenges, they must put news of the world in context for an audience with little experience and often limited interest in foreign affairs?a task made all the more daunting because of the consequence to national security.
In Journalism?s Roving Eye , John Maxwell Hamilton?a historian and former foreign correspondent?provides a sweeping and definitive history of American foreign news reporting from its inception to the present day and chronicles the economic and technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as well as the cavalcade of colorful personalities who shaped readers? perceptions of the world across two centuries.
From the colonial era?when newspaper printers hustled down to wharfs to collect mail and periodicals from incoming ships?to the ongoing multimedia press coverage of the Iraq War, Hamilton explores journalism?s constant?and not always successful?efforts at ?dishing the foreign news,? as James Gordon Bennett put it in the mid-nineteenth century to describe his approach in the New York Herald. He details the highly partisan coverage of the French Revolution, the early emergence of ?special correspondents? and the challenges of organizing their efforts, the profound impact of the non-yellow press in the run-up to the Spanish-American War, the increasingly sophisticated machinery of propaganda and censorship that surfaced during World War I, and the ?golden age? of foreign correspondence during the interwar period, when outlets for foreign news swelled and a large number of experienced, independent journalists circled the globe. From the Nazis? intimidation of reporters to the ways in which American popular opinion shaped coverage of Communist revolution and the Vietnam War, Hamilton covers every aspect of delivering foreign news to American doorsteps.
Along the way, Hamilton singles out a fascinating cast of characters, among them Victor Lawson, the overlooked proprietor of the Chicago Daily News, who pioneered the concept of a foreign news service geared to American interests; Henry Morton Stanley, one of the first reporters to generate news on his own with his 1871 expedition to East Africa to ?find Livingstone?; and Jack Belden, a forgotten brooding figure who exemplified the best in combat reporting. Hamilton details the experiences of correspondents, editors, owners, publishers, and network executives, as well as the political leaders who made the news and the technicians who invented ways to transmit it. Their stories bring the narrative to life in arresting detail and make this an indispensable book for anyone wanting to understand the evolution of foreign news-gathering.
Amid the steep drop in the number of correspondents stationed abroad and the recent decline of the newspaper industry, many fear that foreign reporting will soon no longer exist. But as Hamilton shows in this magisterial work, traditional correspondence survives alongside a new type of reporting. Journalism?s Roving Eye offers a keen understanding of the vicissitudes in foreign news, an understanding imperative to better seeing what lies ahead. -
Information Systems Outsourcing: Enduring Themes, Global Challenges, and Process Opportunities
2009
Rudy A. HirschheimThree years have passed since the second edition of this book was published. The field of IT outsourcing continues to grow in practice as well as in academia and draws further attention in both domains. Aspects of traditional outsourcing (Part II) have remained pronounced but are becoming more mature. While o- sourcing determinants are still important, they are now of less interest to researchers. Relationship management (Chap. 1) and capability management (Chap. 2) continue to be of interest; so too are outsourcing outcomes (Chap. 3) and, as a new focus, innovation aspects (Chap. 4). These are motivating more and more research activities, complementing the lifecycle of traditional o- sourcing. We note significant growth in the field of IT offshoring (Part II). In our third edition, we offer research results on offshoring patterns and trends (Chap. 5), the crucial aspect of knowledge sharing (Chap. 6), vibrant examples for offshoring dynamics (Chap. 7), and some new contributions on the deter- nants of offshoring success (Chap. 8). The last part of our book investigates the field of business process outsourcing (Part III). In this section, issues such as standardization, process outsourcing to India and deinstitutionalization patterns in the health-care sector are presented. Given these new subjects, we believe that Enduring Themes, Global Challenges, and Process Opportunities is an appropriate subtitle for this third edition of the monograph. Again, we have thoughtfully compiled contem- rary outsourcing research as a primer and a platform for scientific discourse.
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Toward a Credible Pacifism: Violence and the Possibilities of Politics
2009
Dustin Ells HowesAdvocates of pacifism usually stake their position on the moral superiority of nonviolence and have generally been reluctant or unwilling to concede that violence can be an effective means of conducting politics. In this compelling new work, which draws its examples from both everyday experience and the history of Western political thought, author Dustin Ells Howes presents a challenging argument that violence can be an effective and even just form of power in politics. Contrary to its proponents, however, Howes argues that violence is no more reliable than any other means of exercising power. Because of this there is almost always a more responsible alternative. He distinguishes between violent and nonviolent power and demonstrates how the latter can confront physical violence and counter its claims. This brand of pacifism gives up claims to moral superiority but recuperates a political ethic that encourages thoughtfulness about suffering and taking responsibility for our actions.
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Sermons From a Southern Rabbi
2009
Charles David IsbellEvery Shabbat in synagogues around the world and across America, sermons from the local rabbi are an important component of worship. This book brings together thirty-five sermons preached to the congregation of a typical small southern city, Lake Charles, Louisiana. Included are several sermons based upon the weekly parashah (assigned biblical portion from the Pentateuch), a series of messages brought during the high holy days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) of 2007, three funeral sermons, a special Yom ha-Sho'ah (Holocaust-memorial) address, and a short talk about freedom, given on July 4, 2008. Each message represents the author's attempt to link the concerns of the modern world back to the classical, biblical roots of the Jewish faith, thereby invoking the principles of biblical faith to serve as guidelines in the twenty-first century.
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Hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico
2009
Barry D. Keim"The storm has entered the Gulf." For those who live or travel near the Gulf of Mexico, this ominous announcement commands attention, especially given the frequency and force of hurricane strikes in recent years. Since 2004, the shores around the Gulf of Mexico have been in the crosshairs for an increasing number of hurricanes and tropical storms, including Charley and Wilma in southwestern Florida and Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike along the northern Gulf coast from Panama City to near Galveston. In this definitive guide, climatologists Barry D. Keim and Robert A. Muller examine the big picture of Gulf hurricanes -- from the 1800s to the present and from Key West, Florida, to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula -- providing an extraordinary compilation and interpretation of the entire region's hurricane and tropical storm history.
Drawing from their own research and from National Hurricane Center records, Keim and Muller examine numerous individual Gulf storms, considering each hurricane's origin, oceanic and atmospheric influences, seasonality, track, intensity, size, point of landfall, storm surge, and impact on life, property, and the environment. They describe the unique features of the Gulf that influence the development of hurricanes, such as the loop current and its eddies, and identify areas of the coastline that are more or less vulnerable because of physical environment, socioeconomic environment, or both. They point out that the increase in population along the Gulf Coast over the past century has led to a rise in hurricane damage as once sparse coastlines are now lined with residents, commerce, and industry. In addition, they assess predicted hurricane activity for coming years in light of competing climate theories as well as cyclical patterns over the past century.
Keim and Muller begin their book by scrutinizing the Gulf's deadliest storm, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, whose victims received little to no warning of its approach. They then retrace 2005's Hurricane Katrina, the most costly storm, using NHC advisories and reports. Their comparison of these two catastrophic events shows that despite 105 years of tremendous technological advances, hurricanes remain ultimately rather unpredictable and human warning, readiness, and response measures continue to be imperfect. Keim and Muller also detail other memorable Gulf storms -- the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, Audrey, Betsy, Camille, Gilbert, Andrew, Wilma, and more -- and give the hurricane strike records from 1901 to 2005 at thirty locations around the Gulf. They extend the New Orleans hurricane strike record back to the middle of the nineteenth century, providing key insight into comparisons of storm activities during the two centuries.
An epilogue summarizes the destructive 2008 hurricane season, including storms Dolly, Gustav, and Ike. Plentiful maps, charts, tables, graphs, and photos, along with anecdotal observations and an informative text, make Hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico a captivating and useful volume for Gulf residents, storm trackers, or anyone fascinated by the weather. -
Cocktail: A Play About the Life and HIV Drug Development Work of Dr. Krisana Kraisintu
2009
Vincent J. LiCataDr. Krisana Kraisintu was awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award for public service, Asia's equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize, in July 2009.
Cocktail is a play about one woman's audacious crusade to fight the AIDS epidemic and the pharmaceutical industry's unyielding control over lifesaving drugs. Scientist-activist Dr. Krisana Kraisintu, a Thai national, defied politicians, patents, and restrictions to give the world its first generic "cocktail" pill for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Her generic drugs changed the course of HIV in her native Thailand and later in Africa, but brought her into direct conflict with some of the world's leading drug manufacturers.
The play powerfully dramatizes the worldwide explosion of AIDS and Dr. Krisana's visionary work, from her research in a windowless storage room mixing and combining toxic raw materials in grueling solitary toil, to her confrontation with corporate greed and political corruption, and ultimately to her single-handedly saving millions of lives.
Cocktail is a mesmerizing experience of Kraisintu's life that is in turns spine chilling, lyrical, heartbreaking, and funny, yet ultimately humbling and inspiring.
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Approaches to Teaching Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Other Works
2009
John LoweZora Neale Hurston emerged as a celebrated writer of the Harlem Renaissance, fell into obscurity toward the end of her life, yet is now recognized as a great American author. Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is popular among general readers and is widely taught in universities, colleges, and secondary schools. A key text of African American and women's literature, it has also been studied by scholars interested in the 1930s, small-town life, modernism, folklore, and regionalism, and it has been viewed through the lenses of dialect theory, critical race theory, and transnational and diasporan studies.
Considering the ubiquity of Hurston's work in the nation's classrooms, there have been surprisingly few book-length studies of it. This volume helps instructors situate Hurston's work against the various cultures that engendered it and understand her success as short story writer, playwright, novelist, autobiographer, folklorist, and anthropologist. Part 1 outlines Hurston's publication history and the reemergence of the author on the literary scene and into public consciousness. Part 2 first concentrates on various approaches to teaching Their Eyes , looking at Hurston's radical politics and use of folk culture and dialect; contemporary reviews of the novel, including contrary remarks by Richard Wright; Janie's search for identity in Hurston's all-black hometown, Eatonville; and the central role of humor in the novel. The essays in part 2 then take up Hurston's other, rarely taught novels, Jonah's Gourd Vine , Moses, Man of the Mountain , and Seraph on the Suwanee . Also examined here are Hurston's anthropological works, chief among them Mules and Men , a staple for many years on American folklore syllabi, and Tell My Horse , newly reconsidered in Caribbean and postcolonial studies. -
Constructions of Strict Lyapunov Functions
2009
Michael MalisoffConverse Lyapunov function theory guarantees the existence of strict Lyapunov functions in many situations, but the functions it provides are often abstract and nonexplicit, and therefore may not lend themselves to engineering applications. Often, even when a system is known to be stable, one still needs explicit Lyapunov functions; however, once an appropriate strict Lyapunov function has been constructed, many robustness and stabilization problems can be solved through standard feedback designs or robustness arguments. Non-strict Lyapunov functions are often readily constructed.
This book contains a broad repertoire of Lyapunov constructions for nonlinear systems, focusing on methods for transforming non-strict Lyapunov functions into strict ones. Their explicitness and simplicity make them suitable for feedback design, and for quantifying the effects of uncertainty. Readers will benefit from the authors' mathematical rigor and unifying, design-oriented approach, as well as the numerous worked examples.
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German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
2009
Suzanne L. MarchandNineteenth-century studies of the Orient changed European ideas and cultural institutions in more ways than we usually recognize. "Orientalism" certainly contributed to European empire-building, but it also helped to destroy a narrow Christian-classical canon. This carefully researched book provides the first synthetic and contextualized study of German Orientalistik, a subject of special interest because German scholars were the pace-setters in oriental studies between about 1830 and 1930, despite entering the colonial race late and exiting it early. The book suggests that we must take seriously German orientalism's origins in Renaissance philology and early modern biblical exegesis and appreciate its modern development in the context of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century debates about religion and the Bible, classical schooling, and Germanic origins. In ranging across the subdisciplines of Orientalistik, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire introduces readers to a host of iconoclastic characters and forgotten debates, seeking to demonstrate both the richness of this intriguing field and its indebtedness to the cultural world in which it evolved.
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Applied Behavior Analysis for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
2009
Johnny L. MatsonAutism was once thought of as a rare condition, until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network released the statistic that about 1 in every 150 eight-year-old children in various areas across the United States is afflicted by an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. This news led to a dramatic expansion of research into autism spectrum disorders and to the emergence of applied behavior analysis (ABA) as the preferred method of treatment, even among prescribing practitioners.
Applied Behavioral Analysis for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders ably synthesizes research data and trends with best-practice interventions into a comprehensive, state-of-the-art resource. Within its chapters, leading experts review current ABA literature in depth; identify interventions most relevant to children across the autism spectrum; and discuss potential developments in these core areas:
Assessment methods, from functional assessment to single case research designs. Treatment methods, including reinforcement, replacement behaviors, and other effective strategies. The role of the differential diagnosis in ABA treatment planning. Specific deficit areas: communication, social skills, stereotypies/rituals. Target behaviors, such as self-injury, aggression, adaptive and self-help problems. ASD-related training concerns, including maintenance and transition issues, and parent training programs.
This volume is a vital resource for researchers, graduate students, and professionals in clinical child and school psychology as well as the related fields of education and mental health.
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Social Behavior and Skills in Children
2009
Johnny L. MatsonThat children are capable of pathology--not only such conditions as ADHD and learning disabilities, but also such "adult" disorders as anxiety and depression--stands as a defining moment in psychology's recent history. Within this recognition is the understanding that the social skills deficits that accompany these disorders must be targeted for assessment and treatment to ensure optimal functioning in school, with peers, and in later transitions to puberty and adulthood.
Social Behavior and Skills in Childrencuts across disciplinary lines to clarify the scope of assessment options and interventions for a wide range of disorders. A panel of leading scholars reviews current research, discusses social deficits unique to specific disorders, and identifies evidence-based best practices in one authoritative, approachable reference.
This volume:
Discusses theoretical models of social skills as they relate to assessment and treatment. Analyzes the etiology of social behavior problems in children and the relation between these problems and psychopathology. Reviews 48 norm-referenced measures of social skills in children. Examines the range of evidence-based social skills interventions. Addresses challenging behaviors, such as aggression and self-injury. Focuses on specific conditions, including developmental disabilities, conduct disorders, ADHD, chronic medical illness, depression, anxiety, and severe psychopathology.
Social Behavior and Skills in Childrenis an essential reference for university libraries as well as a must-have volume for researchers, graduate students, and clinicians in child, and school psychology, special education, and other related fields.
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Theory and the Common from Marx to Badiou
2009
Patrick McGeeUsing a method that combines analysis, memoir, and polemic, McGee writes experimentally about a series of thinkers who ruptured linguistic and social hierarchies, from Marx, to Gramsci, to Badiou.
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Reconsidering Islam in a South Asian Context
2009
M. Reza PirbhaiDespite late reconsideration, a dominant paradigm rooted in Orientalist essentialisations of Islam as statically 'legalistic' and Muslims as uniformly 'transgressive' when local customs are engaged, continues to distort perspectives of South Asia's past and present. This has led to misrepresentations of pre-colonial Muslim norms and undue emphasis on colonial reforms alone when charting the course to post-coloniality. This book presents and challenges staple perspectives with a comprehensive reinterpretation of doctrinal sources, literary expressions and colonial records spanning the period from the reign of the 'Great Mughals' to end of the 'British Raj' (1526-1947). The result is an alternative vision of this transformative period in South Asian history, and an original paradigm of Islamic doctrine and Muslim practice applicable more broadly.
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Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic
2009
John ProteviFor many philosophers, the rational cognitive (Cartesian) subject defines the human, or at least defines what humans should be. Yet some recent cognitive science, as well as the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, has called into question such individuality and rationality and emphasized social and emotional subjectivity. Understanding such embodied and embedded subjectivity, John Protevi argues, demands the notion of bodies politic.
In Political Affect , Protevi investigates the relationship between the social and the somatic: how our bodies, minds, and social settings are intricately and intimately linked. Bringing together concepts from science, philosophy, and politics, he develops a perspective he calls political physiology to indicate that subjectivity is socially conditioned and sometimes bypassed in favor of a direct connection of the social and the somatic, as with the politically triggered basic emotions of rage and panic. Protevi's treatment of affective cognition in social context breaks new theoretical ground, insisting that subjectivity be studied both in its embodied expression and in terms of the distribution of affective cognitive responses in a population.
Moving beyond the theoretical, Protevi applies his concept of political affect to show how unconscious emotional valuing shaped three recent, emotionally charged events: the cold rage of the Columbine High School slayings, the racialized panic that delayed rescue efforts in Hurricane Katrina, and the twists and turns of empathy occasioned by the Terry Schiavo case. These powerful individual and collective political events require new philosophical understanding.
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Measure and Integration: A Concise Introduction to Real Analysis
2009
Leonard F. RichardsonA uniquely accessible book for general measure and integration, emphasizing the real line, Euclidean space, and the underlying role of translation in real analysis
Measure and Integration: A Concise Introduction to Real Analysis presents the basic concepts and methods that are important for successfully reading and understanding proofs. Blending coverage of both fundamental and specialized topics, this book serves as a practical and thorough introduction to measure and integration, while also facilitating a basic understanding of real analysis.
The author develops the theory of measure and integration on abstract measure spaces with an emphasis of the real line and Euclidean space. Additional topical coverage includes:
Measure spaces, outer measures, and extension theorems
Lebesgue measure on the line and in Euclidean space Measurable functions, Egoroff's theorem, and Lusin's theorem Convergence theorems for integrals Product measures and Fubini's theorem Differentiation theorems for functions of real variables Decomposition theorems for signed measures Absolute continuity and the Radon-Nikodym theorem Lp spaces, continuous-function spaces, and duality theorems Translation-invariant subspaces of L2 and applications
The book's presentation lays the foundation for further study of functional analysis, harmonic analysis, and probability, and its treatment of real analysis highlights the fundamental role of translations. Each theorem is accompanied by opportunities to employ the concept, as numerous exercises explore applications including convolutions, Fourier transforms, and differentiation across the integral sign.
Providing an efficient and readable treatment of this classical subject, Measure and Integration: A Concise Introduction to Real Analysis is a useful book for courses in real analysis at the graduate level. It is also a valuable reference for practitioners in the mathematical sciences.
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Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together
2009
Felicia Wu SongDoes contemporary Internet technology strengthen civic engagement and democratic practice? The recent surge in online community participation has become a cultural phenomenon enmeshed in ongoing debates about the health of American civil society. But observations about online communities often concentrate on ascertaining the true nature of community and democracy, typically rehearsing familiar communitarian and liberal perspectives. This book seeks to understand the technology on its own terms, focusing on how the technological and organizational configurations of online communities frame our contemporary beliefs and assumptions about community and the individual. It analyzes key structural features of thirty award-winning online community websites to show that while the values of individual autonomy, egalitarianism, and freedom of speech dominate the discursive content of these communities, the practical realities of online life are clearly marked by exclusivity and the demands of commercialization and corporate surveillance. Promises of social empowerment are framed within consumer and therapeutic frameworks that undermine their democratic efficacy. As a result, online communities fail to revolutionize the civic landscape because they create cultures of membership that epitomize the commodification of community and public life altogether.
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Ms. Mentor's New and Ever More Impeccable Advice for Women and Men in Academia
2009
Emily TothMs. Mentor, that uniquely brilliant and irascible intellectual, is your all-knowing guide through the jungle that is academia today. In the last decade Ms. Mentor's mailbox has been filled to overflowing with thousands of plaintive epistles, rants, and gossipy screeds. A mere fraction has appeared in her celebrated monthly online and print Q&A columns for the Chronicle of Higher Education ; her readers' colorful and rebellious ripostes have gone unpublished--until now.
Hearing the call for a follow-up to the wildly successful Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia , Ms. Mentor now broadens her counsel to include academics of the male variety. Ms. Mentor knows all about foraging for jobs, about graduate school stars and serfs, and about mentors and underminers, backbiters and whiners. She answers burning questions: Am I too old, too working class, too perfect, too blonde? When should I reproduce? When do I speak up, laugh, and spill the secrets I've gathered? Do I really have to erase my own blackboard? Does academic sex have to be reptilian?
From the ivory tower that affords her an unparalleled view of the academic landscape, Ms. Mentor dispenses her perfect wisdom to the huddled masses of professorial newbies, hardbitten oldies, and anxious midcareerists. She gives etiquette lessons to academic couples and the tough-talking low-down on adjunct positions. She tells you what to wear, how to make yourself popular, and how to decode academic language.
She introduces you to characters you must know: Professor Pelvic, Dr. Iron Fist, Mr. Upstart Whelp, Dean Titan, Professor McShameless.
In this volume Ms. Mentor once again shares her wide-ranging unexpurgated wisdom, giving tips on bizarre writing rituals, tenure diaries, and time management (Exploding Head Syndrome). She decodes department meetings and teaches you the tricks for getting stellar teaching evaluations.
Raw, shocking, precise, clever, absurd--Ms. Mentor has it all. -
Organic Nomenclature: A Programmed Introduction
2009
James G. TraynhamThe perfect complement to your first organic chemistry course or for quick review in later courses, Organic Nomenclature: A Programmed Introduction, Sixth Edition teaches correct, up-to-date organic chemical nomenclature. The rules, styles, and details of IUPAC names are emphasized -- such as punctuation and spacing -- which are used almost exclusively in Chemical Abstracts indexing. It includes a separate treatment of functional group classes and combines coverage of aliphatic and aromatic compounds. Also, it focuses more on systematic nomenclature than on unsystematic names that may have little use in the future.
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