Author: Nick Montfort File Type: epub The future is like an unwritten book. It is not something we see in a crystal ball, or can only hope to predict, like the weather. In this volume of the MIT Presss Essential Knowledge series, Nick Montfort argues that the future is something to be made, not predicted. Montfort offers what he considers essential knowledge about the future, as seen in the work of writers, artists, inventors, and designers (mainly in Western culture) who developed and described the core components of the futures they envisioned. Montforts approach is not that of futurology or scenario planning instead, he reports on the work of making the future -- the thinkers who devoted themselves to writing pages in the unwritten book. Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, and Ted Nelson didnt predict the future of computing, for instance. They were three of the people who made it.Montfort focuses on how the development of technologies -- with an emphasis on digital technologies -- has been bound up with ideas about the future. Readers learn about kitchens of the future and the vision behind them literary utopias, from Platos Republic to Edward Bellamys Looking Backward and Charlotte Perkins Gilmans Herland the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair and what led up to Tim Berners-Lees invention of the World Wide Web. Montfort describes the notebook computer as a human-centered alterative to the idea of the computer as a room-sized giant brain speculative practice in design and science fiction and, throughout, the best ways to imagine and build the future.
Author: John H. Foote
File Type: pdf
Now a two-time Academy Award winner for best director, twice winner of the Directors Guild of America Award for best director, and recipient of countless other critics prizes and nominations in multiple capacities, Clint Eastwood stands alongside Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg as one of the finest directors working in modern cinema. Here, John Foote examines the long, impressive, and unlikely film career of a man who fought against expectations to forge his own way and become one of this generations finest filmmakers. Each chapter examines a different film, beginning with Play Misty for Me (1971) and High Plains Drifter (1973) and extending to his 21st-century films Space Cowboys (2000), Blood Work (2002), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), and Changeling (2008). This book is, in the authors own words, a study of how Eastwood managed to quietly get to this leveland a celebration of his gifts as an artist. Eastwood has evolved not only as a director, but also as an actor, a screenwriter, a producer, and a score composer, to become one of the most revered figures in Hollywood.Perhaps it is because he started out in Hollywood with such little influence on the final product that he now demonstrates such a strong desire to collaborate with others and provide help wherever he can. In addition to casting off his reputation as a hack and accumulating two Oscar nominations for Best Actor over the past 15 years, he has guided other actors to no less than three Academy Award wins. The executives love him because he has made them money over the yearsoccasionally even making one for them in exchange for financial backing on other projects. Critics love him because of the care he takes in creating his films. Audiences love him because he has never lost his sense of entertainment, even as his artistry has matured.ReviewArguing that Clint Eastwood stands alongside martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg as one of the finest directors working in modern American film, Foote (director, Toronto Film School) examines each film Eastwood has directed, from Play Misty for Me in 1971 to Changeling in 2008. Each film chapter contains a detailed synopsis and analysis of its critical reception, along with behind-the-scenes details on cast and shooting. A filmography and a list of award and nominations are included. Foote teaches film history and genre study.ullulReference & Research Book NewsBook DescriptionFoote examines Clint Eastwoods entire body of work and chronicles his transition from a B-actor to a respected filmmaker.
Author: Elof Axel Carlson
File Type: pdf
The Unfit, by Elof Carlson explores the sources of a movement -- negative eugenics -- that was used to justify the Holocaust, which claimed millions of innocent lives in World War II. The title reflects the nearly three centuries of belief that some people are socially unfit by virtue of a defective biology, and echoes an earlier theory of degeneracy, dating to biblical antiquity, in which some people were deemed unfit because of some transgression against religious law. The author presents the first biological theory of degeneracy onanism -- and then follows the development of degeneracy theory throughout the nineteenth century and its application to a variety of social classes. The key intellectual theories and their proponents form the framework of this exploration, which includes the concepts of evolution and heredity and how they were applied to social problems. These ideas are followed into the twentieth century with the development of theories of positive and negative eugenics, the establishment of compulsory sterilization laws, racism and anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust.This story of misapplied science and technology is one that still haunts humanity in the twenty-first century. The ghost of eugenics recurs in many guises during debates and controversies about intelligence testing, genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, gene therapy, new reproductive strategies, and uses of our genomic information. Carlson ends his discussion of the history of humanity in this arena with an exploration of the future of genetics that is base on new technologies and application of the Human Genome Project findings, as well as a discussion of the death of the old eugenics and of the problemsthat will not go away, including our ambivalence about our own biology.
Author: Tariq Omar Ali
File Type: pdf
Before the advent of synthetic fibers and cargo containers, jute sacks were the preferred packaging material of global trade, transporting the worlds grain, cotton, sugar, tobacco, coffee, wool, guano, and bacon. Jute was the second-most widely consumed fiber in the world, after cotton. While the sack circulated globally, the plant was cultivated almost exclusively by peasant smallholders in a small corner of the world the Bengal delta. This book examines how jute fibers entangled the deltas peasantry in the rhythms and vicissitudes of global capital. Taking readers from the nineteenth-century high noon of the British Raj to the early years of post-partition Pakistan in the mid-twentieth century, Tariq Omar Ali traces how the global connections wrought by jute transformed every facet of peasant life practices of work, leisure, domesticity, and sociality ideas and discourses of justice, ethics, piety, and religiosity and political commitments and actions. Ali examines how peasant life was structured and restructured with oscillations in global commodity markets, as the nineteenth-century period of peasant consumerism and prosperity gave way to debt and poverty in the twentieth century. A Local History of Global Capital traces how jute bound the Bengal deltas peasantry to turbulent global capital, and how global commodity markets shaped everyday peasant life and determined the difference between prosperity and poverty, survival and starvation. **
Author: Laurie M. Johnson
File Type: pdf
After a century-long hiatus, honor is back. Academics, pundits, and everyday citizens alike are rediscovering the importance of this ancient and powerful human motive. This volume brings together some of the foremost researchers of honor to debate honors meaning and its compatibility with liberalism, democracy, and modernity. Contributorsrepresenting philosophy, sociology, political science, history, psychology, leadership studies, and military scienceexamine honor past to present, from masculine and feminine perspectives, and in North American, European, and African contexts. Topics include the role of honor in the modern military, the effects of honor on our notions of the dignity and purity of women, honor as a quality of good statesmen and citizens, honors role in international relations and community norms, and how honors egalitarian and elitist aspects intersect with democratic and liberal regimes. **
Author: Volker Roder
File Type: pdf
This book contains concrete and step by step information with many practical examples. It is in line with the most actual international empirical findings about schizophrenia and contains the most updated therapy approach being available currently. The techniques and exercises (partly computer-based) are described in detail. Case examples point out specific therapeutic situations and teach the therapist how to cope with complicated group and individual demands. Assessment for patient selection, differential indication and therapy control within a multi-dimensional treatment and rehabilitation system are discussed. INT was evaluated successfully in an international randomised multi-centre study. In the meantime it is implemented in many clinical settings in German speaking countries. Integrated Neurocognitive Therapy (INT) is a cognitive remediation therapy approach. INT is the first treatment manual comprising all MATRICS areas (Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia). The NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health, USA) initiated this MATRICS initiative. MATRICS defines 11 neurocognitive and social cognitive areas of functioning being relevant for patients with schizophrenia. The improvement of these areas in a group therapy is the main goal of INT. INT is based on IPT (Integrated Psychological Therapy, Roder et al 2010). It is a resource and a recovery oriented intervention to enhance also therapy motivation and self-esteem and to reduce negative symptoms. Therapy focuses especially on group processes and the exercises augment transfer and generalisation to daily life. As a meta goal INT intends to amend life quality and the reintegration of the patients in the community. The presented manual offers the clinicians a practically orientated guide for carrying out INT. **From the Back Cover Integrated Neurocognitive Therapy (INT) is a cognitive remediation therapy approach. INT is the first treatment manual comprising all MATRICS areas (Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia). The NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health, USA) initiated this MATRICS initiative. MATRICS defines 11 neurocognitive and social cognitive areas of functioning being relevant for patients with schizophrenia. The improvement of these areas in a group therapy is the main goal of INT. INT is based on IPT (Integrated Psychological Therapy, Roder et al 2010). It is a resource and a recovery oriented intervention to enhance also therapy motivation and self-esteem and to reduce negative symptoms. Therapy focuses especially on group processes and the exercises augment transfer and generalisation to daily life. As a meta goal INT intends to amend life quality and the reintegration of the patients in the community. The presented manual offers the clinicians a practically orientated guide for carrying out INT. The techniques and exercises (partly computer-based) are described in detail. Case examples point out specific therapeutic situations and teach the therapist how to cope with complicated group and individual demands. Assessment for patient selection, differential indication and therapy control within a multi-dimensional treatment and rehabilitation system are discussed. INT was evaluated successfully in an international randomised multi-centre study. In the meantime it is implemented in many clinical settings in German speaking countries.
Author: Tim Pat Coogan
File Type: epub
The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) was founded in 1884, its objective being to promote Irish identity and revive the traditional sports of hurling, football and handball. After the turn of the century, the GAA became politicised, its club committees infiltrated by members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. As Ireland drifted close to civil war in 1914, the Irish Volunteers drilled with hurley sticks in the absence of guns. Many of those interned after the 1916 Rising were GAA members and the British banned Gaelic games after 1918. On Bloody Sunday, 1920, twelve spectators and a player were killed at Croke Park in a raid by British Auxiliary forces. Tim Pat Coogan charts the relationship between Gaelic sports and Irelands national struggle in the period 1916-23 and explores the central role they have played in the social, cultural and political life of nationalistic Ireland.
Author: Kate Greasley
File Type: pdf
Does the morality of abortion depend on the moral status of the human fetus? Must the law of abortion presume an answer to the question of when personhood begins? Can a law which permits late abortion but not infanticide be morally justified? These are just some of the questions this book sets out to address. With an extended analysis of the moral and legal status of abortion, Kate Greasley offers an alternative account to the reputable arguments of Ronald Dworkin and Judith Jarvis Thomson and instead brings the philosophical notion of personhood to the foreground of this debate. Structured in three parts, the book will (I) consider the relevance of prenatal personhood for the moral and legal evaluation of abortion (II) trace the key features of the conventional debate about when personhood begins and explore the most prominent issues in abortion ethics literature the human equality problem and the difference between abortion and infanticide and (III) examine abortion law and regulation as well as the differing attitudes to selective abortion. The book concludes with a snapshot into the current controversy surrounding the scope of the right to conscientiously object to participation in abortion provision. **
Author: James Williams
File Type: pdf
ReviewIt is a mark of quality that Williamss book helps the reader to grasp firmly some of the most difficult questions that arise onreading Difference and Repetition...[The book] is written in an accessible style and takes a bold and clear interpretativestand in response to the two challenges of illustrating Deleuzes philosophy in relation to our lives and of explaining some of histechnical innovations in a critical manner...The book will certainly motivate any reader to study Deleuze.(Isabella Palin The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology )This book is a turning point for those interested in Deleuze that will mean that writing on Deleuze will never be thesame...Williams has produced an exemplary reading of what he rightly calls one of the great philosophical works of thetwentieth century...This book deserves to be called a major event in Deleuze scholarship.(Iain MacKenzie Poststructural & Radical Politics Newsletter ) ReviewA major event in Deleuze scholarship.(John Protevi, Louisiana State University )