Search results for ""Push""

People aren’t looking for an explanation, they want to hear a story.We’ve all survived PowerPoint presentations that feel more like hostage dramas; the only thing worse is when you realize that you are the hostage-taker. Standing at the front of the room, slogging through your carefully prepared slides, realizing that nobody is captivated, many are looking down at their phones, and your message is slipping into the void.In The Tell-Tale Entrepreneur, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and tech blogger Bernard Murphy goes straight to the heart of why so many brilliant businesspeople, particularly in the tech and engineering fields, find it so hard to communicate effectively with prospects, with clients, even within their own organizations. In each chapter, he tells a real business story and explores the fundamental key to effective communication to engage real people—their intellects and emotions—through storytelling. You’ll discover: •The essential elements of effective, memorable stories •The strategies to employ to strengthen the stories you tell •The journey from startup to exit, with critical stories at every step •The essential story—the story you tell yourself We all long to push forward, particularly in tech, but with this humorous and personal exploration of how we can reconnect with our inner storyteller, Bernard reminds us that sometimes it’s worth taking a look back to unearth the timeless truths about how humans find connection.

Read more less

In the spirit of Emma Donoghue’s international bestseller Room, Captive throws readers into the mind of a woman who wakes to find herself in a terrifying and surreal situation: she’s confined to a small grey room and she has no idea why she’s there. Emma has an unremarkable life, a mundane job, and very little contact with her family and friends. Night after night she drinks to forget until one evening she’s jolted out of her routine. She wakes up in a concrete room furnished with only a mattress and a ceiling lamp. Emma is seized by terror. She feels real emotion for the first time in a long time. She tries to make sense of what is happening to her, where she is, who has taken her, and why. As the days, weeks, and possibly months pass she develops a routine that helps her survive her circumstances. But just as Emma begins to find comfort in her routine she receives another terrifying jolt and she must adapt to new circumstances. Her mysterious captors subject her to various tests that push her to her limit and make her question everything about herself, including her will to survive.Captive is a harrowing, suspenseful, and hypnotic debut about honesty and freedom and the importance of living meaningfully and truthfully.

Read more less

Let Secret Brussels guide you around the unusual and unfamiliar. Step off the beaten track with this fascinating Brussels guide book. Let our local experts show you the well-hidden treasures and hidden places of this historic city. Featuring over 300 unusual and unfamiliar places, this Secret Brussels guide is ideal for local inhabitants, curious visitors and armchair travellers alike. Stunning Art Nouveau facades, a stretch of the Senne reconstituted in Saint-Géry, a farm in the centre of the city, a Freemasonic reading of the Brussels Park, the amazing physiognomical fountain of Magritte, the place where the Tsar of Russia vomited at the park of Brussels in 1717, the former rotunda of Panorama parking, a tribute to the soldier pigeon, from speleology to The National Basilica of the Sacred Heart, a panoramic swimming pool, a scandalous pavilion in the park Cinquantenaire, a huge vegetable garden in Uccle, a 19th century artist’s studio in Schaerbeek, a campsite in the heart of the city, a garden forgotten in the Forest … For those who can observe, push the doors, and exit beaten tracks, Brussels is full of curiosities and surprising details that will amaze its inhabitants as well as its visitors who thought they knew it well. An indispensable guide for those who thought they knew Brussels well or would like to discover a difference side of the city.

Read more less

Over recent years, the Government focus on anti-social behaviour has been replaced by a focus on respect. Tony Blair's 'Respect Action Plan' was launched in January 2006, Gordon Brown has spoken of "duty, responsibility, and respect for others", and the Conservatives have launched their 'Real Respect Agenda'. Within government, the respect agenda has a cross-departmental influence, but like anti-social behaviour before it, 'respect' has not yet been tightly defined. And what is it about the contemporary UK that sees respect as lacking, that in order to tackle anti-social behaviour we first need to 'secure respect'? Until now, there has been little attention in the academic and policy literature on the Government's push for respect. "Securing respect" contains ten essays from leading academics in the field that consider the origins, current interpretations and possible future for the Respect Agenda. The contributors explore various policy and theoretical discourses relating to 'respect', behavioural expectations and anti-social behaviour. The book follows the five key themes of: respect in context; young people and children; communities and families; city living; and issues of identity and values. "Securing respect" is inter-disciplinary, linking theory and practice, and will be of value to practitioners, academics and students with interests in criminology, socio-legal studies, social policy, urban geography, housing, social history, sociology and landscape.

Read more less

Introduce your little one to the joys of construction in this interactive activity book full of building fun! Use the cardboard cut outs to make a blueprint or fill your toolbox with a hammer, shovel, hard hat, and more!My First Construction Site is the perfect start for boys and girls to learn about construction. Assemble your toolbox, set up safety cones, use your bulldozer to push gravel and dirt, and lift beams and building materials with your crane. Learn all about big trucks and machines, including dump trucks, cement mixers, excavators, and more. This uniquely designed sturdy activity book will encourage creativity and hours of fun as kids discover everything on the construction site.This interactive book features: Lift-the-flap peekaboo panels and removable cardboard cut-outs that pop up, including a hammer, screwdriver, shovel, safety vest and glasses, and more Sturdy board book style format My First Construction Site: Is perfect for architects and builders who want to introduce their child to the fun world of construction A fun game and activity for children and adults alike Encourages kids to learn more about the world around them Promotes fine motor skills and cognitive development Inspires imagination and creativity Makes a great gift for birthdays, holidays, or architecture enthusiast Don’t miss out on the other activity books in the series: My First Campout, My First Golf Bag, and more!

Read more less

The “servicemesh” pattern, implemented by platforms like Istio, helps you push operational issues into the infrastructure so the application code is easier to understand, maintain, and adapt. Istio in Action teaches you how to implement a full-featured Istio-based service mesh to manage a microservices application. Istio in Action is a comprehensive guide to handling authentication, routing, retrying, load balancing, collecting data, security, and other common network-related tasks using the Istio service mesh platform. With helpful diagrams and hands-on examples, you'll learn how to use this open-source service mesh to control routing, secure container applications, and monitor network traffic. You will also bring Istio to legacy systems without changes to your applications and discover how to use Istio in amulti-cloud world with the data layer deployed on a cluster like Kubernetes. Cloud-native applications can include thousands of clustered containers, distributed components, and complex interactions. To build them effectively, developers need a new approach to infrastructural concerns like monitoring, storage, scaling, orchestration, and security. The Istio platform offers a configurable infrastructure layer called a service mesh that reliably and efficiently manages day-to-day concerns like service discovery, load balancing, encryption, authentication and authorization, circuit breakers, and more. Open source andcloud-ready, Istio is a welcome upgrade from manually managed microservices infrastructure.

Read more less

After filing a story for a journalism assignment only two days after giving birth, Amy Westervelt had a revelation: we treat mothers like crap in this country. From inadequate maternity leave to gender-based double standards, emotional labor to the wage gap, Westervelt became determined to understand how we got here--where "having it all" is the fabled, hollow, unreachable goal. In Forget "Having It All," Westervelt traces the roots of our modern problems back to the founding of our nation and through the changing roles of men and women since. What she discovers may be surprising: the roles of mothers have flip-flopped throughout our history (for example, leading up to the Industrial Revolution, many men were home while women worked). Using this historical backdrop, Westervelt draws out what we should replicate from our past (the origin of Mother's Day, for example, was a dedicated day for mothers to organize just as laborers had done--to take stock of their place in society and push for more), and what we must begin anew (such as incorporating working fathers into our discussions about work-life balance) as we overhaul American motherhood. Ultimately, Westervelt presents a measured, historically-backed call for workplace policies, cultural norms, and personal attitudes about motherhood that will radically improve the lives of not just working moms but everyone in our country.

Read more less

How global health practices can end up reorganizing practices of care for the people and communities they seek to serve Commodities of Care examines the unanticipated effects of global health interventions, ideas, and practices as they unfold in communities of men who have sex with men (MSM) in China. Targeted for the scaling-up of HIV testing, Elsa L. Fan examines how the impact of this initiative has transformed these men from subjects of care into commodities of care: through the use of performance-based financing tied to HIV testing, MSM have become a source of economic and political capital. In ethnographic detail, Fan shows how this particular program, ushered in by global health donors, became the prevailing strategy to control the epidemic in China in the late 2000s. Fan examines the implementation of MSM testing and its effects among these men, arguing that the intervention produced new markets of men, driven by the push to meet testing metrics. Fan shows how men who have sex with men in China came to see themselves as part of a global “MSM” category, adopting new selfhoods and socialities inextricably tied to HIV and to testing. Wider trends in global health programming have shaped national public health responses in China and, this book reveals, have radically altered the ways health, disease, and care are addressed.

Read more less

In Frenemies Mark L. Haas addresses policy-guiding puzzles such as: Why do international ideological enemies sometimes overcome their differences and ally against shared threats? Why, just as often, do such alliances fail? Alliances among ideological enemies confronting a common foe, or "frenemy" alliances, are unlike coalitions among ideologically-similar states facing comparable threats. Members of frenemy alliances are perpetually torn by two powerful opposing forces. Haas shows that shared material threats push these states together while ideological differences pull them apart. Each of these competing forces has dominated the other at critical times. This difference has resulted in stable alliances among ideological enemies in some cases but the delay, dissolution, or failure of these alliances in others. Haas examines how states' susceptibility to major domestic ideological changes and the nature of the ideological differences among countries provide the key to alliance formation or failure. This sophisticated framework is applied to a diverse range of critical historical and contemporary cases, from the failure of British and French leaders to ally with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in the 1930s to the likely evolution of the United States' alliance system against a rising China in the early 21st century. In Frenemies, Haas develops a groundbreaking argument that explains the origins and durability of alliances among ideological enemies and offers policy-guiding perspectives on a subject at the core of international relations.

Read more less

Stranger Citizens examines how foreign migrants who resided in the United States gave shape to citizenship in the decades after American independence in 1783. During this formative time, lawmakers attempted to shape citizenship and the place of immigrants in the new nation, while granting the national government new powers such as deportation. John McNelis O'Keefe argues that despite the challenges of public and official hostility that they faced in the late 1700s and early 1800s, migrant groups worked through lobbying, engagement with government officials, and public protest to create forms of citizenship that worked for them. This push was made not only by white men immigrating from Europe; immigrants of color were able to secure footholds of rights and citizenship, while migrant women asserted legal independence, challenging traditional notions of women's subordination. Stranger Citizens emphasizes the making of citizenship from the perspectives of migrants themselves, and demonstrates the rich varieties and understandings of citizenship and personhood exercised by foreign migrants and refugees. O'Keefe boldly reverses the top-down model wherein citizenship was constructed only by political leaders and the courts. Thanks to generous funding from the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot and the Mellon Foundation the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

Read more less

An up-close look at how porn permeates our culture Pictures of half-naked girls and women can seem to litter almost every screen, billboard, and advertisement in America. Pole-dancing studios keep women fit. Men airdrop their dick pics to female passengers on planes and trains. To top it off, the last American President has bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.” This pornification of our society is what Bernadette Barton calls “raunch culture.” Barton explores what raunch culture is, why it matters, and how it is ruining America. She exposes how internet porn drives trends in programming, advertising, and social media, and makes its way onto our phones, into our fashion choices, and into our sex lives. From twerking and breast implants, to fake nails and push-up bras, she explores just how much we encounter raunch culture on a daily basis—porn is the new normal. Drawing on interviews, television shows, movies, and social media, Barton argues that raunch culture matters not because it is sexy, but because it is sexist. She shows how young women are encouraged to be sexy like porn stars, and to be grateful for getting cat-called or receiving unsolicited dick pics. As politicians vote to restrict women’s access to birth control and abortion, The Pornification of America exposes the double standard we attach to women’s sexuality.

Read more less

Standard literary criticism tends to either ignore or downplay the unorthodox tradition of black experimental writing that emerged in the wake of protests against colonization and Jim Crow-era segregation. Histories of African American literature likewise have a hard time accounting for the distinctiveness of experimental writing, which is part of a general shift in emphasis among black writers away from appeals for social recognition or raising consciousness. In Freedom Time, Anthony Reed offers a theoretical reading of "black experimental writing" that presents the term both as a profound literary development and as a concept for analyzing how writing challenges us to rethink the relationships between race and literary techniques. Through extended analyses of works by African American and Afro-Caribbean writers-including N. H. Pritchard, Suzan-Lori Parks, NourbeSe Philip, Kamau Brathwaite, Claudia Rankine, Douglas Kearney, Harryette Mullen, and Nathaniel Mackey-Reed develops a new sense of the literary politics of formally innovative writing and the connections between literature and politics since the 1960s. Freedom Time reclaims the power of experimental black voices by arguing that readers and critics must see them as more than a mere reflection of the politics of social protest and identity formation. With an approach informed by literary, cultural, African American, and feminist studies, Reed shows how reworking literary materials and conventions liberates writers to push the limits of representation and expression.

Read more less

A pocket-sized brain gym! Mental games, visual conundrums, logic posers, riddles, illusions—in all, over 500 dazzling, full-color puzzles designed to stretch neurons and shake up your usual way of thinking. Be creative. Be challenged. Push your brain in different directions. The puzzles are organized by 12 types with 10 levels of difficulty, each designed to make you feel more curious, intuitive, engaged, and smarter. Written by David L. Hoyt, the most syndicated puzzle writer in the country, with Merriam-Webster, America’s most trusted dictionary. All in a travel-friendly, gift-friendly 4" x 6" chunky size. In Mixed-Up Definition, unscramble the letters to reveal the definition of a given word. In Syllabary, use the clues to link syllables in a grid to create words. In Cross’d Word Connections, find the letters in common to help solve a series of four crossword puzzles. Plus Dictionary Race Winder, Make the Connection, Color Word Chains, Prism Word Finder, and other clever riffs on word searches. The book features 20 puzzle types, which are arranged in a mixed fashion throughout for maximum variety and stimulation. They range in difficulty from an easy “1” to a brain-busting “10”—so puzzle lovers of all skill levels will be tested— and include spaces for recording completion times. Each puzzle type is explained in clear instructions, and all answers are printed in the back.

Read more less

Political analyst Mark Smith offers the most original and compelling explanation yet of why America has swung to the right in recent decades. How did the GOP transform itself from a party outgunned and outmaneuvered into one that defines the nation's most important policy choices? Conventional wisdom attributes the Republican resurgence to a political bait and switch--the notion that conservatives win elections on social issues like abortion and religious expression, but once in office implement far-reaching policies on the economic issues downplayed during campaigns. Smith illuminates instead the eye-opening reality that economic matters have become more central, not less, to campaigns and the public agenda. He analyzes a half century of speeches, campaign advertisements, party platforms, and intellectual writings, systematically showing how Republican politicians and conservative intellectuals increasingly gave economic justifications for policies they once defended through appeals to freedom. He explains how Democrats similarly conceived economic justifications for their own policies, but unlike Republicans they changed positions on issues rather than simply offering new arguments and thus helped push the national discourse inexorably to the right. The Right Talk brings clarity, reason, and hard-nosed evidence to a contentious subject. Certain to enrich the debate about the conservative ascendancy in America, this book will provoke discussions and reactions for years to come.

Read more less

In determining the news that’s fit to print, U.S. courts have traditionally declined to second-guess professional journalists. But in an age when news, entertainment, and new media outlets are constantly pushing the envelope of acceptable content, the consensus over press freedoms is eroding. The First Amendment Bubble examines how unbridled media are endangering the constitutional privileges journalists gained in the past century.For decades, judges have generally affirmed that individual privacy takes a back seat to the public’s right to know. But the growth of the Internet and the resulting market pressures on traditional journalism have made it ever harder to distinguish public from private, news from titillation, journalists from provocateurs. Is a television program that outs criminals or a website that posts salacious videos entitled to First Amendment protections based on newsworthiness? U.S. courts are increasingly inclined to answer no, demonstrating new resolve in protecting individuals from invasive media scrutiny and enforcing their own sense of the proper boundaries of news.This judicial backlash now extends beyond ethically dubious purveyors of infotainment, to mainstream journalists, who are seeing their ability to investigate crime and corruption curtailed. Yet many—heedless of judicial demands for accountability—continue to push for ever broader constitutional privileges. In so doing, Amy Gajda warns, they may be creating a First Amendment bubble that will rupture in the courts, with disastrous consequences for conventional news.

Read more less

Freedom of information is a principle commonly associated with the United States’ First Amendment traditions or digital-era technology boosters. Barriers Down reveals its unexpected origins in political, economic, and cultural battles over analog media in the mid-twentieth century. Diana Lemberg traces how the United States shaped media around the world after 1945 under the banner of the “free flow of information,” showing how the push for global media access acted as a vehicle for American power.Barriers Down considers debates over civil liberties and censorship in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere alongside Americans’ efforts to circumvent foreign regulatory systems in the quest to expand markets and bring their ideas to new publics. Lemberg shows how in the decades following the Second World War American free-flow policies reshaped the world’s information landscape, though not always as intended. Through burgeoning information diplomacy and development aid, Washington diffused new media ranging from television and satellite broadcasting to global English. But these actions also spurred overseas actors to articulate alternative understandings of information freedom and of how information flows might be regulated. Bridging the historiographies of the United States in the world, human rights, decolonization and development, and media and technology, Barriers Down excavates the analog roots of digital-age debates over the politics and ethics of transnational information flows.

Read more less

As Adam M. McKeown demonstrates, the push for increased border control and identity documentation is the continuation of more than 150 years of globalization. Not only are modern passports and national borders inseparable from the rise of global mobility, but they are also tied to the emergence of individuals and nations as the primary sites of global power and identity. McKeown's detailed history traces how, rather than being a legacy of "traditional" forms of sovereignty, practices of border control historically rose from attempts to control Asian migration around the Pacific in the 1880s. New policies to control mobility had to be justified in the context of contemporary liberal ideas of freedom and mobility, generating principles that are taken for granted today, such as the belief that migration control is a sovereign right of receiving nations and that it should occur at a country's borders. McKeown shows how the enforcement of these border controls required migrants to be extracted from social networks of identity and reconstructed as isolated individuals within centralized filing systems. Methods for excluding Asians from full participation in the "family of civilized nations" are now the norm between all nations. These practices also helped institutionalize global cultural and economic divisions, such as East/West and First and Third World designations, which continue to shape our understanding.

Read more less

In the action-packed fourth book in the New York Times bestselling Jackaby series, a supernatural detective and his indispensable assistant, Abigail Rook, are plunged into the heart of an apocalyptic war between magical worlds.The fate of the world is in the hands of detective of the supernatural R. F. Jackaby and his intrepid assistant, Abigail Rook. An evil king is turning ancient tensions into modern strife, using a blend of magic and technology to push the earth and the otherworld into a mortal competition. Jackaby and Abigail are caught in the middle as they continue to solve mysteries in New Fiddleham, New England-like who's created the rend between the worlds, how to close it, and why the undead are appearing around town.At the same time, the romance between Abigail and the shape-shifting police detective Charlie Cane deepens, and Jackaby's resistance to his feelings for the ghostly lady of 926 Augur Lane, Jenny Cavanaugh, begins to give way. But before the four can think about their own futures, they will have to defeat an evil that wants to destroy the future altogether.The epic fourth volume in the New York Times bestselling Jackaby series features wry humor and a cast of unforgettable characters facing off against their most dangerous, bone-chilling foe ever.

Read more less

Revving engines, smoking tires, and high speeds. Car racing enthusiasts and race drivers alike know the thrill of competition, the push to perform better, and the agony-and dangers-of bad decisions. But driving faster and better involves more than just high horsepower and tightly tuned engines. Physicist and amateur racer Chuck Edmondson thoroughly discusses the physics underlying car racing and explains just what's going on during any race, why, and how a driver can improve control and ultimately win. The world of motorsports is rich with excitement and competition-and physics. Edmondson applies common mathematical theories to real-world racing situations to reveal the secrets behind successful fast driving. He explains such key concepts as how to tune your car and why it matters, how to calculate 0 to 60 mph times and quarter-mile times and why they are important, and where, when, why, and how to use kinematics in road racing. He wraps it up with insight into the impact and benefit of green technologies in racing. In each case, Edmondson's in-depth explanations and worked equations link the physics principles to qualitative racing advice. From selecting shifting points to load transfer in car control and beyond, Fast Car Physics is the ideal source to consult before buckling up and cinching down the belts on your racing harness.

Read more less

The last ten years have seen a shift in television storytelling toward increasingly complex storylines and characters. In this study, Sarah Hagelin and Gillian Silverman zoom in on a key figure in this transformation: the archetype of the female antihero. Far from the sunny, sincere, plucky persona once demanded of female characters, the new female antihero is often selfish and deeply unlikeable. In this entertaining and insightful study, Hagelin and Silverman explore the meanings of this profound change in the role of women characters. In the dramas of the new millennium, they show, the female antihero is ambitious, conniving, even murderous; in comedies, she is self-centered, self-sabotaging, and anti-aspirational. Across genres, these female protagonists eschew the part of good girl or role model. In their rejection of social responsibility, female antiheroes thus represent a more profound threat to the status quo than do their male counterparts. From the devious schemers of Game of Thrones, The Americans, Scandal, and Homeland, to the joyful failures of Girls, Broad City, Insecure, and SMILF, female antiheroes register a deep ambivalence about the promises of liberal feminism. They push back against the myth of the modern-day super-woman—she who “has it all”—and in so doing, they give us new ways of imagining women’s lives in contemporary America.

Read more less

Following his outstandingly successful books Works Escorts in Detail and Works Triumphs in Detail, rally veteran and historian Graham Robson now tackles the story of Ford's emergence during the 1960s as a leader in international saloon car competition, whether in race or rally, beginning with the Mark 1 Cortina in 1962. Walter Hayes was the driving force behind this push forward. It was he who enlisted Colin Chapman to create the Lotus-Cortina, he who had bold ideas like entering the Safari Rally and the London-Sydney Marathon, he who brought in Alan Mann Racing to wipe the board in touring car racing, he who attracted top-flight drivers like Roger Clark, Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Pat Moss, and he who inspired Ford's quite dazzling success in national and international competition. The career of every works Mark I and Mark II Cortina, Lotus-Cortina, Capri and Corsair is individually recounted in this book, with contemporary action photographs and listings of events entered, results and drivers, along with accounts of performances in rallies and races. In addition there are specially commissioned colour photographs of a number of surviving works cars, which have been shot in considerable detail. For fans of the race and rally Fords of these glory days, as well as for motor sport enthusiasts, this book is pure treasure.

Read more less

A bold new assessment of the multipronged attack on rights in the United States, and how to push back An overwhelming majority of Americans agree that rights are essential to their freedom, and that rights today are severely threatened. The promise of rights has been reimagined at pivotal moments in American history—from the American Revolution to the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. Can today become another time of transformation? Holding Together is about the promise of rights as a source of American identity, the struggle to realize rights by countless Americans to whom the promise has been denied or not fulfilled, the hijacking of rights by politicians who seek power by dividing and polarizing, and the way forward in which rights can bring Americans together instead of tearing them apart. Drawing on a series of town hall meetings with representative groups of citizens across the country discussing their concerns over rights, new national opinion polls from all demographic groups and political perspectives conducted in 2020 and 2021, and extensive research, Holding Together is a road map for an American rights revival. John Shattuck, Sushma Raman, and Mathias Risse present a comprehensive account of the current state of rights in the United States—and concrete recommendations to policy makers and citizens on how to reclaim them.

Read more less

“A true gem that invites contemplation and reflection in children, who are often too busy to notice the beauty of everyday life.” — School Library Journal, STARRED REVIEWIn the stillness of a summer dawn, two siblings leave their campsite with fishing rods, tackle and bait, and push a red canoe into the lake. A perfect morning on the water unfolds, with thrilling glimpses of wildlife along the way.The narrator describes the experience vividly. Trailing a lure through the blue-green depths, the siblings paddle around a point, spotting a moose in the shallows, a beaver swimming towards its home and an eagle returning to its nest. Suddenly there is a sharp tug and the rod bends to meet the water. A few heart-stopping moments later, the pair pull a silvery trout from the water, then paddle back to the campsite to fry up a delicious breakfast.The poetic text is accompanied by stunningly beautiful paintings rendered on wood panels that give a nostalgic feeling to the story.Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.7Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.5Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.

Read more less

Ace high school table tennis players push their passion to the limit in this story of self-discovery, told by Eisner Award winner Taiyo Matsumoto.Makoto “Smile” Tsukimoto doesn’t smile even though he’s got a natural talent for playing ping pong. As one of the best players in school, all hopes are on him to win the regional high school tournament, but winning is not what Smile really wants to do. Will the fierce competition to be number one bring out his best or drive him away from the game? Ping Pong is Taiyo Matsumoto’s masterwork reflection on friendship and self-discovery, presented here in two volumes, featuring color art, the bonus story "Tamura" and an afterword by the original Japanese series editor.Translated by Michael Arias, director of Tekkonkinkreet.Makoto “Smile” Tsukimoto and his friend Yutaka “Peco” Hoshino have been playing table tennis since they were kids, but as they enter high school, they find that the game has changed. Seeing potential in them that they themselves don’t fully realize, the coach recruits them for the school team. Bringing out their best will mean challenging the top players from rival schools in the summer tournament, including an ace Chinese exchange student who almost made the Olympic team. With the pressure on, can Smile and Peco take the heat and make it into the finals?

Read more less

Dan Lyons was Technology Editor at Newsweek Magazine for years, a magazine writer at the top of his profession. One Friday morning he received a phone call: his job no longer existed. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was unemployed and facing financial oblivion. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the nebulous role of "marketing fellow." What could possibly go wrong? What follows is a hilarious and excoriating account of Dan's time at the start-up and a revealing window onto the dysfunctional culture that prevails in a world flush with cash and devoid of experience. Filled with stories of meaningless jargon, teddy bears at meetings, push-up competitions and all-night parties, this uproarious tale is also a trenchant analysis of the dysfunctional start-up world, a de facto conspiracy between those who start companies and those who fund them. It is a world where bad ideas are rewarded with hefty investments, where companies blow money lavishing perks on their post-collegiate workforces, and where everybody is trying to hang on just long enough to cash out with a fortune.

Read more less

From Torey Hayden, the number one Sunday Times bestselling author of One Child comes Lost Girl, a poignant and deeply moving account of a lost little girl and an extraordinary educational psychologist's courage and determination.Jessie is nine years old and looks like the perfect little girl, with red hair, green eyes and a beguiling smile. She even has a talent for drawing gorgeous and intricate pictures. But Jessie also knows how to get her own way and will lie, scream, shout and hurt to get just exactly what she wants.Her parents say they can't take her back, and her social workers struggle to deal with her destructive behaviour and wild mood swings. After her chaotic passage through numerous foster placements, Jessie has finally received a diagnosis of an attachment disorder. Attachment disorders arise when children are deprived of the all-important close bonds with trustworthy adults that allow them to develop emotionally and thrive. Finally educational psychologist Torey Hayden is called in to help. Torey agrees to weekly meetings with Jessie to try and uncover why she is acting out. Torey's gentle care and attention reveal shocking truths behind Jessie's lies. Can Torey and the other social workers help to provide the consistent loving care that has so far been missing in Jessie’s life, or will she push them away too?

Read more less

A detailed, illustrated account of the air campaign that accompanied the Red Army's final push towards Berlin, in which massed Soviet air power defeated the Luftwaffe's high-tech Me 262 jets and Mistel exploding drones. The last months of World War II on the Eastern Front saw a ferocious fight between two very different air forces. Soviet Air Force (VVS) Commander-in-Chief Alexander Novikov assembled 7,500 aircraft in three powerful air armies to support the final assault on Berlin. The Luftwaffe employed some of its most advanced weapons including the Me 262 jet and Mistel remotely-guided bomb aircraft. Using photos, 3D diagrams, maps and battlescene artwork, William E. Hiestand, a military analyst with a longstanding interest in Soviet military history, explains how Germany's use of high-tech weaponry and massed Soviet air assaults was not just the culmination of World War II air combat, but also pointed to how the future rivalry with NATO would play out. The VVS used powerful and flexible air armies to control and employ its huge force of aircraft – organizational and employment concepts that would shape Soviet plans and preparations for combat during the Cold War. For the first time, this volume explains how air power helped win the war on the Eastern Front, and how victory shaped Soviet air power doctrine for the decades to come.

Read more less

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Dr. Daniel Crosby-the behavioral finance book all investors have been waiting for. In The Laws of Wealth, psychologist and behavioral finance expert Daniel Crosby presents three sets of real, actionable rules that investors can use to apply the lessons of behavioral finance. He begins with ten rules that are the hallmarks of good investor behavior, including 'Forecasting is for Weathermen', 'If You're Excited, It's Probably a Bad Idea', and 'Trouble is Opportunity'. From here, attention turns to the Four Cs of Rule-Based Investing: Consistency, Clarity, Courageousness, Conviction. The Four Cs provide practical methods to combat behavioral risk in investing. And finally, he introduces the Five Ps of successful equity investing: Price, Properties, Pitfalls, People, Push. Investors can draw on these five methods to select stocks and take advantage of behavioral opportunities in the stock market. Throughout, anecdotes, research, and graphics illustrate the lessons in memorable ways. And in highly valuable 'What now?' summaries at the end of each chapter, Crosby provides clear, concise direction on what to think, ask, and do next to become a better investor. If you are wondering what years of behavioral finance has delivered for real investors, you should follow the laws of wealth to manage your behavior and improve your investing!

Read more less

By the beginning of May 1942, five months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the US Navy was ready to challenge the Japanese moves in the South Pacific. When the Japanese sent troops to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, the Americans sent the carriers Lexington and Yorktown to counter the move, setting the stage for the Battle of the Coral Sea.In Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea, historian Robert C. Stern analyzes the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first major fleet engagement where the warships were never in sight of each other. Unlike the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Coral Sea has received remarkably little study. Stern covers not only the action of the ships and their air groups but also describes the impact of this pivotal engagement. His analysis looks at the short-term impact as well as the long-term implications, including the installation of inert gas fuel-system purging on all American aircraft carriers and the push to integrate sensor systems with fighter direction to better protect against enemy aircraft. The essential text on the first carrier air campaign, Scratch One Flattop is a landmark study on an overlooked battle in the first months of the United States' engagement in World War II.

Read more less

Winner of British Psychological Society Best Book Prize (Popular Science) 2023 Nature’s Top 10 Books of 2023 A Financial Times Book of the Year 2023 A Waterstones Book of the Year for Politics 2023 One of the world’s top experts on fighting misinformation reveals the psychology behind its power – and how we can protect ourselves. From fake news to conspiracy theories, from pandemics to politics, misinformation may be the defining problem of our era. Like a virus, misinformation infects our minds – altering our beliefs and replicating at astonishing rates. Once the virus takes hold, our primary strategies of fact-checking and debunking are an insufficient cure. In Foolproof Sander van der Linden describes how to inoculate yourself and others against the spread of misinformation, discern fact from fiction and push back against methods of mass persuasion. Everyone is susceptible to fake news. There are polarising narratives in society, conspiracy theories are rife, fake experts dole out misleading advice and accuracy is often lost in favour of sensationalist headlines. So how and why does misinformation spread if we’re all aware of its existence? And, more importantly, what can we do about it? Sander van der Linden takes us through the psychology of conspiratorial thinking and equips us with the eleven antigens needed to help stop the spread of misinformation once and for all.

Read more less

Charter schools continue to grow in influence, as does the push for inclusive education for students with disabilities. What is the value and impact of these schools, especially on the marginalized populations they often serve? Relying on the fields of DisCrit, and Sociology of Special and Inclusive Education, this book answers these questions by focusing on the topics of neoliberalism and inclusive education. Mac focuses on the history of the school choice and privatization movement in the United States with special consideration given to how ideologies such as disaster capitalism and neoliberalism shaped and influenced the movement, as well as how successful (or not) these privatization efforts have been overall as a social justice endeavor for marginalized students. The author also recounts the history of education for students with disabilities, highlighting historical inequities of schooling for students with disabilities in the United States. Drawing from an ethnographic case study of an independent, urban charter school, the school’s vision and reality of day-to-day life for students with disabilities at this school are explored. The author investigates the school’s inclusion program in the broader neoliberal landscape of free market competition in the educational marketplace and argues that as a result of inclusive education and neoliberal reforms being virtually incompatible, the pervasive neoliberal environment presents the biggest hurdle to successful inclusive education.

Read more less

THE WORKSCAPE HAS CHANGED. HAVE YOU? The workscape has changed—one of the most dramatic transformations of the past few years. Think about it. For so many people just starting their careers, working virtually is all they know. For everyone else who has had the remote option, work is no longer synonymous with a physical location. In this push-pull world, that means navigating and negotiating between the flexibility and opportunity you want—and the commitment and performance that organizations need. In other words, you need to take control. Whether you're focused on getting your next job or you are striving to get ahead where you are, this is the book to guide your career path. In the first section, you'll understand how you're wired—your A.C.T. (being authentic, making a connection, and giving others a taste of you who are you), tapping your right brain, and learning as the secret to sustainable success. In the second section, you'll figure out how to get the job—and get ahead, from targeting your next opportunity to nailing the interview. And in the third section, you'll master working with others—from the 4 Career Knockout Punches, to getting along with your boss and workers, navigating culture, and communicating and connecting. In Take Control, you'll discover how you can have the career you've always wanted.

Read more less

From the author of ALTAR OF EDEN and MAP OF BONES comes another fantastic mystery adventure, this time set deep in the Amazon jungle.Out of the inhospitable Amazon rainforest a man stumbles into a missionary village. Soon the CIA operative and former Special Forces soldier, his eyes wide with terror, is dead. The photograph of Agent Clark's corpse in the Brazilian morgue shows two intact upper limbs, yet Agent Clark had only one arm, the other lost to a sniper's bullet. Nathan Rand's father led a scientific mission into the rainforest and never returned - the same expedition that took Clark into the jungle. Now Nate is to follow the elder Rand's trail, along with a team of scientists and experienced US Rangers. For somewhere in the dark, impenetrable depths of Earth's most dangerous region lie mysteries that must be solved...whatever the cost. As Nate Rand and his party push on into the jungle, they are haunted by a truth: that they are not alone. But each step brings the team closer to an ancient, unspoken terror that even the native people dread. As madness, fear and horrific death descend upon the second cursed expedition, those still living must confront a power beyond human imagining - one that can for ever alter the world beyond the dark, lethal confines of the Amazon rainforest for better...and for worse.

Read more less

'Rich, intricate worldbuilding meets swoonworthy romance. . . Phédre and Joscelin’s story is the beating heart of every romantasy to follow' - Olivie BlakeThe triumphant conclusion to this trilogy, Kushiel’s Avatar by Jacqueline Carey is a sumptuous fantasy of defiance and redemption – perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Jennifer L. Armentrout.Desire. Duty. Death.Phèdre has lain with princes and pirate kings, battled a wicked temptress, and saved two nations. But Joscelin has remained her loyal swordsman throughout. Chosen to experience pain and pleasure as one, Phèdre’s nature is tortuous to them both. Yet Joscelin has never forsaken his vow: to protect and serve, even if her plans push his pledge to its limit.For Phèdre can’t abandon her friend, Hyacinthe, who bargained with gods to spare her life. She’s long sought the key to free him from eternal servitude – even if this means her death. This now takes Phèdre and Joscelin to a distant court where madness reigns and souls are used as currency. But they’ll also find a power so mighty that none dare speak its name . . .‘Effortlessly rich . . . with a huge cast of well-defined characters’ - Publishers Weekly‘An emotionally charged tale seasoned with explicit scenes of love and sacrifice’ - Romantic Times‘A savoury feast for mind and heart’ - Booklist starred reviewStart the journey with Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey.

Read more less

The “powerful” (Michelle Alexander) exploration of the harsh and harmful experiences confronting Black girls in schools, and how we can instead orient schools toward their flourishing On the day fifteen-year-old Diamond from the Bay Area stopped going to school, she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school. In a work that Lisa Delpit calls “imperative reading,” Monique W. Morris chronicles the experiences of Black girls across the country whose complex lives are misunderstood, highly judged—by teachers, administrators, and the justice system—and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Painting “a chilling picture of the plight of black girls and women today” (The Atlantic), Morris exposes a world of confined potential and supports the rising movement to challenge the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures. At a moment when Black girls are the fastest growing population in the juvenile justice system, Pushout is truly a book “for everyone who cares about children” (Washington Post). Book cover photograph by Brittsense/brittsense.com.

Read more less

This book offers an unified treatment of the problems solved by publish/subscribe, how to design and implement the solutions In this book, the author provides an insight into the publish/subscribe technology including the design, implementation, and evaluation of new systems based on the technology. The book also addresses the basic design patterns and solutions, and discusses their application in practical application scenarios. Furthermore, the author examines current standards and industry best practices as well as recent research proposals in the area. Finally, necessary content matching, filtering, and aggregation algorithms and data structures are extensively covered as well as the mechanisms needed for realizing distributed publish/subscribe across the Internet. Key Features: Addresses the basic design patterns and solutions Covers applications and example cases including; combining Publish/Subscribe with cloud, Twitter, Facebook, mobile push (app store), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Internet of Things and multiplayer games Examines current standards and industry best practices as well as recent research proposals in the area Covers content matching, filtering, and aggregation algorithms and data structures as well as the mechanisms needed for realizing distributed publish/subscribe across the Internet Publish/Subscribe Systems will be an invaluable guide for graduate/postgraduate students and specialists in the IT industry, distributed systems and enterprise computing, software engineers and programmers working in social computing and mobile computing, researchers. Undergraduate students will also find this book of interest.

Read more less

Official Companion to the Library of Congress Exhibition.The campaign for women’s suffrage—considered the largest reform movement in American history—lasted more than seven decades. The struggle was not for the fainthearted. For years, determined women organized, lobbied, paraded, petitioned, lectured, picketed, and faced imprisonment in pursuit of the right to vote. Drawing from the Library’s extensive collections of photographs, personal papers, and the organizational records of such figures as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Church Terrell, Carrie Chapman Catt, the National Woman’s Party, and the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Shall Not Be Denied traces the movement leading to the women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, the contributions of suffragists who worked to persuade women that they deserved the same rights as men, the divergent political strategies and internal divisions they overcame, the push for a federal women’s suffrage amendment, and the legacy of the movement. A companion to the exhibition staged by the Library of Congress, which opened on June 4, 2019—the 100th anniversary of the US Senate’s passage of the suffrage amendment that would become the 19th amendment—Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote is part of the national commemoration of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.Published by Rutgers University Press in association with the Library of Congress.

Read more less

Richard Osman meets MasterChef. In this cookery school, murder is on the menu...'Delicious fun!' Tess Gerritsen'Knife Skills for Beginners is a joy.' S. J. Bennett‘A deliciously dark slice of murder and mystery.’ Chris Whitaker'If Ruth Rendell had teamed up with Delia Smith they’d have produced something like this.’ J. M. Hall‘Dazzlingly sharp with a wit that sparkles off the page.' Jane CorryA recipe for disaster.When chef Paul Delamare takes a job teaching at an exclusive residential cookery school in Belgravia, the only thing he expects his students to murder is his taste buds. But on the first night, the unthinkable happens: someone turns up dead...The school rests on a knife-edge.The police are convinced Paul is the culprit. After all, he’s good with a blade, was first on the scene – and everyone knows it doesn’t take much to push a chef over the edge. To prove his innocence, he must find the killer. Could it be one of his students? Or the owner of the school – a woman with secrets and a murky past?It all boils down to murder.If Paul can’t solve the mystery fast – as well as teach his students how to make a perfect hollandaise sauce – he’ll be next to get the chop.

Read more less

Service business accounts for more than 75 per cent of the wealth and employment created in most developed market economies. This interdisciplinary Handbook provides a critical and multi-disciplinary review of current service business processes and practices. Broadening our understanding of services in the world economy, the editors push back the frontiers of current critical thinking by bringing together eminent scholars from economics, management, sociology, public policy, planning and geography.Chapters contribute to ongoing debates about the nature and management of service business and the characteristics of service-led economies. Disciplinary perspectives on services, services and core business processes, and the management of service business are explored. Included is a series of case studies from the EU, USA, UK and Australia.Designed as an additional text for undergraduates and postgraduate studies, this book will appeal to students and scholars seeking a multi-disciplinary understanding of this increasingly mainstream field.Contributors: L. Andres, U. Apte, J.R. Bryson, C. Chapain, A. Coad, P.W. Daniels, F. Djellal, M. Ehret, J. Frankish, F. Gallouj, R. Greenwood, C. M. Hall, S. Hollis, A. Jones, U. Karmarkar, C.A. Kieliszewski, P.P Maglio, R. Mason, T. Morris, H. Nath, M. O'Mahony, A. Potter, J. Roberts, R. Roberts, L. Rubalcaba, M. Smets, D.J. Storey, P. Strom, J. Sundbo, D.J. Teece, M. Toivonen, R.H. Tsiotsou, J. Wirtz, F.F. Yang, A.G.O. Yeh

Read more less

Abusive leaders are now held accountable for their crimes in a way that was unimaginable just a few decades ago. What are the consequences of this recent push for international justice? In The Justice Dilemma, Daniel Krcmaric explains why the "golden parachute" of exile is no longer an attractive retirement option for oppressive rulers. He argues that this is both a blessing and a curse: leaders culpable for atrocity crimes fight longer civil wars because they lack good exit options, but the threat of international prosecution deters some leaders from committing atrocities in the first place. The Justice Dilemma therefore diagnoses an inherent tension between conflict resolution and atrocity prevention, two of the signature goals of the international community. Krcmaric also sheds light on several important puzzles in world politics. Why do some rulers choose to fight until they are killed or captured? Why not simply save oneself by going into exile? Why do some civil conflicts last so much longer than others? Why has state-sponsored violence against civilians fallen in recent years? While exploring these questions, Krcmaric marshals statistical evidence on patterns of exile, civil war duration, and mass atrocity onset. He also reconstructs the decision-making processes of embattled leaders—including Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Charles Taylor of Liberia, and Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso—to show how contemporary international justice both deters atrocities and prolongs conflicts.

Read more less

An up-close look at how porn permeates our culture Pictures of half-naked girls and women can seem to litter almost every screen, billboard, and advertisement in America. Pole-dancing studios keep women fit. Men airdrop their dick pics to female passengers on planes and trains. To top it off, the last American President has bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.” This pornification of our society is what Bernadette Barton calls “raunch culture.” Barton explores what raunch culture is, why it matters, and how it is ruining America. She exposes how internet porn drives trends in programming, advertising, and social media, and makes its way onto our phones, into our fashion choices, and into our sex lives. From twerking and breast implants, to fake nails and push-up bras, she explores just how much we encounter raunch culture on a daily basis—porn is the new normal. Drawing on interviews, television shows, movies, and social media, Barton argues that raunch culture matters not because it is sexy, but because it is sexist. She shows how young women are encouraged to be sexy like porn stars, and to be grateful for getting cat-called or receiving unsolicited dick pics. As politicians vote to restrict women’s access to birth control and abortion, The Pornification of America exposes the double standard we attach to women’s sexuality.

Read more less

From the influential work of Los Bros Hernandez in Love & Rockets, to comic strips and political cartoons, to traditional superheroes made nontraditional by means of racial and sexual identity (e.g., Miles Morales/Spider-Man), comics have become a vibrant medium to express Latino identity and culture. Indeed, Latino fiction and nonfiction narratives are rapidly proliferating in graphic media as diverse and varied in form and content as is the whole of Latino culture today.Graphic Borders presents the most thorough exploration of comics by and about Latinos currently available. Thirteen essays and one interview by eminent and rising scholars of comics bring to life this exciting graphic genre that conveys the distinctive and wide-ranging experiences of Latinos in the United States. The contributors’ exhilarating excavations delve into the following areas: comics created by Latinos that push the boundaries of generic conventions; Latino comic book author-artists who complicate issues of race and gender through their careful reconfigurations of the body; comic strips; Latino superheroes in mainstream comics; and the complex ways that Latino superheroes are created and consumed within larger popular cultural trends. Taken as a whole, the book unveils the resplendent riches of comics by and about Latinos and proves that there are no limits to the ways in which Latinos can be represented and imagined in the world of comics.

Read more less

General Douglas MacArthur is one of the towering figures of World War II, and indeed of the twentieth century, but his leadership of the second largest air force in the USAAF is often overlooked. When World War II ended, the three numbered air forces (the Fifth, Thirteenth and Seventh) under his command possessed 4004 combat aircraft, 433 reconnaissance aircraft and 922 transports. After being humbled by the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942, MacArthur and his air chief General George Kenney rebuilt the US aerial presence in the Pacific, helping Allied naval and ground forces to push back the Japanese Air Force, re-take the Philippines, and carry the war north towards the Home Islands. Following the end of World War II, MacArthur was the highest military and political authority in Japan and at the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 he was named as Commander-in-Chief, United Nations Command. In the ten months of his command, his Far East Air Forces increased dramatically and saw the first aerial combat between jet fighters. Written by award-winning aviation historian Bill Yenne, this engrossing and widely acclaimed book traces the journey of American air forces in the Pacific under General MacArthur’s command, from their lowly beginnings to their eventual triumph over Imperial Japan, followed by their entry into the jet age in the skies over Korea.

Read more less

Born in Augusta, Georgia, to Black Catholic parents, Raquel spent years feeling isolated, even within a loving, close-knit family. There was little access to understanding what it meant to be queer and transgender. It wasn’t until she went to the University of Georgia that she found the LGBTQ community, fell in love, and explored her gender for the first time. But the unexpected death of her father forced her to examine her relationship with herself and those she loved. These years of grief, misunderstanding, and hard won epiphanies seeped into the soil of her life, serving as fertiliser for growth and allowing her to bloom within. Upon graduation, Raquel entered a career in journalism against the backdrop of the burgeoning Movement for Black Lives, intersectional feminism going mainstream, and unprecedented visibility of the trans community. After hiding her identity as a newspaper reporter, her increasing awareness of the epidemic of violence plaguing trans women of colour and the heightened suicide of trans teens inspired her to come out publicly. Within just a few short years of community organizing in Atlanta, Oakland, and New York, Raquel emerged as one of the most formidable Black trans activists in history. In The Risk It Takes to Bloom, Raquel Willis recounts the possibility of transformation after tragedy, and how complex moments can push us all to take necessary risks and bloom toward collective liberation.

Read more less

Push CSS3 and your design skills to the limit—and beyond! Representing an evolutionary leap forward for CSS, CSS3 is chock-full of new capabilities that dramatically expand the boundaries of what a styling language can do. But many of those new features remain undocumented, making it difficult to learn what they are and how to use them to create the sophisticated sites and web apps clients demand and users have grown to expect. Until now. This book introduces you to all of CSS3’s new and advanced features, and, with the help of dozens of real-world examples and live demos, it shows how to use those features to design dazzling, fully-responsive sites and web apps. Among other things, you’ll learn how to: • Use advanced selectors and an array of powerful new text tools • Create adaptable background images, decorative borders, and complex patterns • Create amazing effects with 2D and 3D transforms, transitions, and keyframe-based animations • Take advantage of new layout tools to solve an array of advanced layout challenges—fast • Vastly simplify responsive site design using media queries and new layout modules • Create abstract and scalable shapes and icons with pseudo-elements • Leverage preprocessors and use CSS like a programming language within a stylesheet context Don’t pass up this opportunity to go beyond the basics and learn what CSS3 can really do!

Read more less

Provides a comprehensive picture of today’s energy world, describes the potential for energy savings that can be achieved, and analyzes the technology developments which will lead to a 100% renewable energy-powered world The world is at the crossroads of either quickly changing the energy picture towards implementing efficient renewable energy sources or postponing this process by another generation. Based on the author’s more than 30 years’ industrial experience, this book gives a set of assumptions by extrapolating known technology developments and shows that 100% coverage by renewable technology of global energy needs is much more probable than previously argued. Basic facts using "rule of thumb" and "order-of-magnitude" considerations underpin the author’s argument. The book shows how energy efficiency technologies will be able to drastically reduce the energy consumption for the same quality of life. The most relevant renewable energy technologies are discussed. Solar photovoltaic, solar thermal concentrators, solar thermal wind, as well as biomass and biofuels, hydro, geothermal, wave, and tidal technologies are debated. The conclusion of this unique book shows how and why the renewable technologies will be cost competitive and even superior to the traditional technologies in the mid-term. Market-pull instead of technology-push provide the increase of the cumulative installed volume of the new renewable technologies, thereby driving down the specific price of the critical components along Price Experience Curves.

Read more less

As the dust settles on nearly three decades of economic reform in Latin America, one of the most fundamental economic policy areas has changed far less than expected: labor regulation. To date, Latin America's labor laws remain both rigidly protective and remarkably diverse. Continuity Despite Change develops a new theoretical framework for understanding labor laws and their change through time, beginning by conceptualizing labor laws as comprehensive systems or "regimes." In this context, Matthew Carnes demonstrates that the reform measures introduced in the 1980s and 1990s have only marginally modified the labor laws from decades earlier. To explain this continuity, he argues that labor law development is constrained by long-term economic conditions and labor market institutions. He points specifically to two key factors—the distribution of worker skill levels and the organizational capacity of workers. Carnes presents cross-national statistical evidence from the eighteen major Latin American economies to show that the theory holds for the decades from the 1980s to the 2000s, a period in which many countries grappled with proposed changes to their labor laws. He then offers theoretically grounded narratives to explain the different labor law configurations and reform paths of Chile, Peru, and Argentina. His findings push for a rethinking of the impact of globalization on labor regulation, as economic and political institutions governing labor have proven to be more resilient than earlier studies have suggested.

Read more less

Mothers of children with Attention Deficit Disorder must inevitably make decisions regarding their children's diagnosis within a context of competing discourses about the nature of the disorder and the legitimacy of its treatment. They also make these decisions within an overriding climate of mother-blame. Claudia Malacrida's Cold Comfort provides a contextualized study of how mothers negotiate with/against the 'helping professions' over assessment and treatment for their AD(H)D children. Malacrida counters current conceptions about mothers of AD(H)D children (namely that mothers irresponsibly push for Ritalin to manage their children's behaviour) as well as professional assumptions of maternal pathology. This thought-provoking examination documents Malacrida's extensive interviews with mothers of affected children in both Canada and the United Kingdom, and details the way in which these women speak of their experiences. Malacrida compares their narratives to national discourses and practices, placing the complex mother-child and mother-professional relations at the centre of her critical inquiry. Drawing on both poststructural discourse analysis and feminist standpoint theory, Malacrida makes a critical contribution to qualitative methodologies by developing a feminist discursive ethnography of the construction of AD(H)D in two divergent cultures. On a more personal level, she offers readers a moving, nuanced, and satisfying examination of real women and children facing both public and private challenges linked to AD(H)D.

Read more less