Search results for ""experiment""

The revolutionary book that teaches you how to use the cutting edge of human psychology to build high performing workplace cultures. Too often, great cultures feel like magic. While most leaders believe culture is critical to success, few know how to build one, or sustain it over time. What if you knew the science behind the magic-a science so predictive and powerful that you could transform your organization? What if you could use cutting edge psychology to unlock people's innate desire to innovate, experiment, and adapt? In Primed to Perform, Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor show you how to do just that. The result: higher sales, more loyal customers, and more passionate employees. Primed to Perform explains the counter-intuitive science behind great cultures, building on over a century of academic thinking. It shares the simple, highly predictive new measurement tool-the Total Motivation (ToMo) Factor-that enables you to measure the strength of your culture, and track improvements over time. It explores the authors' original research into how Total Motivation leads to higher performance in iconic companies, from Apple to Starbucks to Southwest Airlines. Most importantly, it teaches you to build great cultures, using a systematic and sustainable approach. High performing cultures cant be left to chance. Organizations must create systems that shape and maintain them. Whether you're a five-person team or a startup, a school, a nonprofit or a mega-institution, Primed to Perform shows you how.

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Transform your love-making into erotic ecstasy with this fully illustrated book that unlocks the secrets of the Kama Sutra – the most ancient, renowned and explicit guide to sexual pleasure. ‘Pleasures are as necessary for the well-being of the body as food.' Kama Sutra ‘The Modern Kama Sutra’ opens up a new and exotic world of sexual pleasure that will change your sex life for ever. Inspired by the ancient text of the Kama Sutra, this fully illustrated book offers over 40 easy-to-follow explicit positions (try positions such as 'Splitting the Bamboo', ' The Congress of the Cow', 'Yab Yum' and the 'Canopy of Stars'), step-by step instructions and practical tips and 200 stunning colour photographs that guarantee to enhance your erotic pleasure and improve your sexual technique. ‘The Modern Kama Sutra’ is for the modern couple, catering for both experienced lovers and for those wanting to experiment. You will learn how to heighten your awareness of your own and your partner’s bodies, and achieve an emotional intimacy and sexual intensity never before experienced. Why not try fast sex sequences for instant pleasure – use all kinds of locations, from the kitchen table and bathroom shower to the living room sofa and even the office floor! Learn how massage and intimate touching can enhance your sexual desire. Discover how to indulge the body and the senses with separate chapters on seduction, foreplay and oral sex.

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'Dr. Joe Dispenza delves deep into the extraordinary potential of the mind. Read this book and be inspired to change your life forever.' --Lynne McTaggart, author of The Field and The Intention Experiment 'A beautifully written book that provides a strong scientific basis for how the power of the human spirit can heal our bodies and our lives.' --Howard Martin, executive vice president of HeartMath and coauthor of The HeartMath Solution'Joe Dispenza gives you the tools to make real changes in your life.' --William Arntz, producer/director of What the Bleep Do We Know!? Joe Dispenza, D.C., has spent decades studying the human mind---how it works, how it stores information, and why it perpetuates the same behavioral patterns over and over. In the acclaimed film What the Bleep Do We Know!? he began to explain how the brain evolves---by learning new skills, developing the ability to concentrate in the midst of chaos, and even healing the body and the psyche.Evolve Your Brain presents this information in depth, while helping you take control of your mind, explaining how thoughts can create chemical reactions that keep you addicted to patterns and feelings----including ones that make you unhappy. And when you do know how these bad habits are created, it's possible not to only break these patters, but also reprogram and evolve your brain, so that new, positive, and beneficial habits can take over.

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Despite the growing interest in making paddles and canoes, it is difficult to find reliable information for that craft. For the how-to beginner, a paddle represents the perfect challenge, both finite and functional. For the skilled woodworker, the opportunity to experiment with design and technique to create a tailor-made product that perfectly suits a paddler's needs is a dream come true. In Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own, longtime canoeist and woodworker Graham Warren provides detailed information and guidance to make a canoe paddle that will be used with confidence and cherished for generations. The book is thoroughly illustrated with photographs, line drawings and plans with measurements for: How to make a paddle having a single blade, a bent shaft, or double blades; How to protect a paddle with oil or varnish; What to look for when test-driving a paddle; How to decorate a paddle; How to care for and repair a paddle.The book also covers: Paddle design - grips, shaft, blade, flexibility, weight, balance; Paddle woods and adhesives; Hand tools, power tools and homemade tools, carving and finishing tools; Making the paddle - size, design, mark out, cut and carve; Paddle plans, including Beavertail, Voyageur, Algonquin, Whitewater, Bent-shaft, Double-blade, Child's; Templates for grips, tips and blades; Materials sources. The authors include an appreciation of the evolution of the paddle plus a special chapter by renowned canoe-building teacher David Gidmark, which celebrates paddle-making in the native American tradition.

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A profound rumination on the concept of freedom from the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm 'Sebastian Junger bears witness to a hard-won and an uncertain new world, framed in vital and brilliant prose: a true and honest accounting of everything that underlies the frantic performance of life’ Philip Hoare, author of Albert and the Whale Throughout history, humans have been driven by the quest for two cherished ideals: community and freedom. The two don’t coexist easily: we value individuality and self-reliance, yet are utterly dependent on community for our most basic needs. In this intricately crafted and thought-provoking book, Sebastian Junger examines this tension that lies at the heart of what it means to be human. For much of a year, Junger and three friends—a conflict photographer and two Afghan war vets—walked the railroad lines of the east coast. It was an experiment in personal autonomy, but also in interdependence. Dodging railroad cops, sleeping under bridges, cooking over fires and drinking from creeks and rivers, the four men forged a unique reliance on one another. In Freedom, Junger weaves his account of this journey together with primatology and boxing strategy, the role of women in resistance movements and apache renegrades, and the brutal reality of life on the Pennsylvania frontier. Written in exquisite, razor-sharp prose, the result is a powerful examination of the primary desire that defines us.

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Rich with tales of discovery from Galileo to general relativity, a stimulating and timely analysis of how science works and why we need it. 'The best introduction to the scientific enterprise that I know. A wonderful and important book' David Wootton, author of The Invention of Science It is only in the last three centuries that the formidable knowledge-making machine we call modern science has transformed our way of life and our vision of the universe - two thousand years after the invention of law, philosophy, drama and mathematics. Why did we take so long to invent science? And how has it proved to be so powerful? The Knowledge Machine gives a radical answer, exploring how science calls on its practitioners to do something apparently irrational: strip away all previous knowledge - such as theological, metaphysical or political beliefs - and channel unprecedented energy into observation and experiment. In times of climate extremes, novel diseases and rapidly advancing technology, Strevens contends that we need more than ever to grasp the inner workings of our knowledge machine. 'A stylish and accessible investigation into the nature of the scientific method' Nigel Warburton, Philosophy Bites'This elegant book takes us to the heart of the scientific enterprise' David Papineau, King's College London, author of Knowing the Score'This book is a delight to read, richly illustrated with wonderfully told incidents from the history of natural science' Nancy Cartwright, University of California San Diego

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Since the beginning of the New Deal, American liberals have insisted that the government must do more--much more--to help the poor, to increase economic security, to promote social justice and solidarity, to reduce inequality, and to mitigate the harshness of capitalism. Nonetheless, liberals have never answered, or even acknowledged, the corresponding question: What would be the size and nature of a welfare state that was not contemptibly austere, that did not urgently need new programs, bigger budgets, and a broader mandate? Even though the federal government's outlays have doubled every eighteen years since 1940, liberal rhetoric is always addressed to a nation trapped in Groundhog Day, where every year is 1932, and none of the existing welfare state programs that spend tens of billions of dollars matter, or even exist. Never Enough explores the roots and consequences of liberals' aphasia about the welfare state's ultimate size. It assesses what liberalism's lack of a limiting principle says about the long-running argument between liberals and conservatives, and about the policy choices confronting America in a new century. Never Enough argues that the failure to speak clearly and candidly about the welfare state's limits has grave policy consequences. The worst result, however, is the way it has jeopardized the experiment in self-government by encouraging Americans to regard their government as a vehicle for exploiting their fellow-citizens, rather than as a compact for respecting one another's rights and safeguarding the opportunities of future generations.

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Since the beginning of the New Deal, American liberals have insisted that the government must do more--much more--to help the poor, to increase economic security, to promote social justice and solidarity, to reduce inequality, and to mitigate the harshness of capitalism. Nonetheless, liberals have never answered, or even acknowledged, the corresponding question: What would be the size and nature of a welfare state that was not contemptibly austere, that did not urgently need new programs, bigger budgets, and a broader mandate? Even though the federal government's outlays have doubled every eighteen years since 1940, liberal rhetoric is always addressed to a nation trapped in Groundhog Day, where every year is 1932, and none of the existing welfare state programs that spend tens of billions of dollars matter, or even exist. Never Enough explores the roots and consequences of liberals' aphasia about the welfare state's ultimate size. It assesses what liberalism's lack of a limiting principle says about the long-running argument between liberals and conservatives, and about the policy choices confronting America in a new century. Never Enough argues that the failure to speak clearly and candidly about the welfare state's limits has grave policy consequences. The worst result, however, is the way it has jeopardized the experiment in self-government by encouraging Americans to regard their government as a vehicle for exploiting their fellow-citizens, rather than as a compact for respecting one another's rights and safeguarding the opportunities of future generations.

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The sun shines down on us, giving warmth and light. But did you know that the sun also makes the seasons? As the earth makes one complete rotation around the sun every year, the seasons on the earth change-from winter to spring to summer to fall and back to winter again. Find out how the light from the sun affects life on the earth for all living things in this look at the only star in our solar system. Now rebranded with a new cover look, this book features content-rich vocabulary, fascinating side bars and diagrams by bestselling illustrator Michael Rex, and a find out more section with a simple experiment that allows kids to make their own orbiting model with an orange and a pencil. The author, Franklyn M. Branley, was the author of over 150 science books for children and Astronomer Emeritus and former Chairman of the American Museum of Natural History-Hayden Planetarium. The text and art were vetted for accuracy by an expert in the field. This is a Level 2 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science title, which means the book explores more challenging concepts for children in the primary grades and supports the Common Core Learning Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) standards. Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science is the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.

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Bill Nye the Science Guy meets the Magic School Bus in this new STEM-based picture book series from the Emmy Award-winning host of PBS’s Design Squad and Design Squad Nation, Nate Ball. This nonfiction picture book is an excellent choice to share during homeschooling, in particular for children ages 4 to 6. It’s a fun way to learn to read and as a supplement for activity books for children.Ever stop to smell the roses and wonder how they got there? Ever think about how tadpoles become frogs and how caterpillars become butterflies? Or want to know how they’re all connected?Follow Nate and his team of plucky scientists as they morph into tiny seeds, slippery tadpoles, and fuzzy caterpillars to learn about the life cycle. While on this adventure, learn all about how plants make food from the sun, why some animals transform as they mature, and what truly defines a living thing in this brand-new adventure from everyone’s favorite fun-loving scientist and Emmy Award–winning PBS star, Nate Ball.Featuring vibrant illustrations by Wes Hargis and a lively and a lovable cast of characters, the Let’s Investigate with Nate books align to grade-appropriate state-level learning standards and curriculum. With sidebars and charts and graphs and interactive elements—including a Do It Yourself experiment at the back of the book—The Life Cycle takes young readers on an adventure in learning and makes learning an adventure!

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This landmark volume offers a major re-assessment of the art that emerged in Britain in the twenty years following the end of the Second World War: a period of anxiety, profound social change and explosive creativity. Published to coincide with the Barbican Centre’s 40th anniversary, it draws together the work of fifty artists, exploring a period straddled precariously between the horror of the past and the promise of the future.Spanning painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and photography, Postwar Modern will explore a rich field of experiment which challenges the idea that Britain was a cultural backwater at this time. Through new texts by Jane Alison, Hilary Floe, Ben Highmore, Hammad Nassar and Greg Salter, the book looks afresh at celebrated artists such as Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Lucian Freud and Eduardo Paolozzi, shown in dialogue with lesser-known figures. These will include those, like Francis Newton Souza, Avinash Chandra and Robert Adams, who were acclaimed by contemporaries but neglected in subsequent history-making; others, like Kim Lim, Anwar Jalal Shemza and Franciszka Themerson, are only now attracting the attention they deserve. Throughout their work, vital shared preoccupations become visible: gender, class, race and nationhood; the body, the bombsite, and the home. It is a period resonating strongly with our own: as the UK emerges from more than a decade of austerity and confronts the challenges of post-pandemic reconstruction, society is asking similarly deep questions about who we want and need to be.

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The definitive introduction to data analysis in quantitative proteomics This book provides all the necessary knowledge about mass spectrometry based proteomics methods and computational and statistical approaches to pursue the planning, design and analysis of quantitative proteomics experiments. The author’s carefully constructed approach allows readers to easily make the transition into the field of quantitative proteomics. Through detailed descriptions of wet-lab methods, computational approaches and statistical tools, this book covers the full scope of a quantitative experiment, allowing readers to acquire new knowledge as well as acting as a useful reference work for more advanced readers. Computational and Statistical Methods for Protein Quantification by Mass Spectrometry: Introduces the use of mass spectrometry in protein quantification and how the bioinformatics challenges in this field can be solved using statistical methods and various software programs. Is illustrated by a large number of figures and examples as well as numerous exercises. Provides both clear and rigorous descriptions of methods and approaches. Is thoroughly indexed and cross-referenced, combining the strengths of a text book with the utility of a reference work. Features detailed discussions of both wet-lab approaches and statistical and computational methods. With clear and thorough descriptions of the various methods and approaches, this book is accessible to biologists, informaticians, and statisticians alike and is aimed at readers across the academic spectrum, from advanced undergraduate students to post doctorates entering the field.

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Mohan and Oliver have been very fortunate to have intimate views into the data challenges that face the largest organizations and institutions across every possible industry—and what they have been hearing about for some time is how the business needs to use data and analytics to their advantage. They continually hear the same issues, such as: We're spending valuable meeting time wondering why everyone's data doesn't match up. We can't leverage our economies of scale while remaining agile with data. We need self-serve apps that let the enterprise experiment with data and accelerate the development process. We need to get on a more predictive curve to ensure long-term success. To really address the data concerns of today's enterprise, they wanted to find a way to help enterprises achieve the success they seek. Not as a prescriptive process—but a methodology to become agile and leverage data and analytics to drive a competitive advantage. You know, it's amazing what can happen when two people with very different perspectives get together to solve a big problem. This evolutionary guide resulted from the a-ha moment between these two influencers at the top of their fields—one, an academic researcher and consultant, and the other, a longtime analytics practitioner and chief product officer at Teradata. Together, they created a powerful framework every type of business can use to connect analytic power, business practices, and human dynamics in ways that can transform what is currently possible.

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One hundred and fifty years after Kansas was admitted to the Union, we still find ourselves fascinated by the specter of "Bleeding Kansas" and the violence that preceded the American Civil War by five years. Although ample attention has been devoted to understanding why territorial violence broke out in Kansas in 1856, of equal concern but less illuminated is the question of why government, both local and national, allowed the violence to continue unstanched for so long. This question is fundamentally about governance-its existence, exercise, limits, and continuance-and its study has ramifications for understanding both Kansas events and why the American experiment in government failed in 1861. In addition, the book also sheds light on the nature of democracy, the challenges of implanting it in distant environs, the necessity of cooperation at the various levels of government, and the value of strong leadership. To Govern the Devil in Hell uses the prism of governance to investigate what went wrong in territorial Kansas. From the first elections in late 1854 and early 1855, local government was tarnished with cries of illegitimacy that territorial officials could not ameliorate. Soon after, a shadow government was created which further impeded local management of territorial challenges. Ultimately, this book addresses why Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan failed to act, what hindered Congress from stepping into the void, and why and how the lack of effective governance harmed Kansas and later the United States.

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Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us--it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But, Jason Brennan says, they are all wrong. In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results--and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse--more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government--epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable--may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out. A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines.

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Unique among Western democracies in refusing to eradicate the death penalty, the United States has attempted instead to reform and rationalize state death penalty practices through federal constitutional law. Courting Death traces the unusual and distinctive history of top-down judicial regulation of capital punishment under the Constitution and its unanticipated consequences for our time.In the 1960s and 1970s, in the face of widespread abolition of the death penalty around the world, provisions for capital punishment that had long fallen under the purview of the states were challenged in federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court intervened in two landmark decisions, first by constitutionally invalidating the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972) on the grounds that it was capricious and discriminatory, followed four years later by restoring it in Gregg v. Georgia (1976). Since then, by neither retaining capital punishment in unfettered form nor abolishing it outright, the Supreme Court has created a complex regulatory apparatus that has brought executions in many states to a halt, while also failing to address the problems that led the Court to intervene in the first place.While execution chambers remain active in several states, constitutional regulation has contributed to the death penalty’s new fragility. In the next decade or two, Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker argue, the fate of the American death penalty is likely to be sealed by this failed judicial experiment. Courting Death illuminates both the promise and pitfalls of constitutional regulation of contentious social issues.

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With its increasing presence in a continuously evolving media environment, the essay film as a visual form raises new questions about the construction of the subject, its relationship to the world, and the aesthetic possibilities of cinema. In this volume, authors specializing in various national cinemas (Cuban, French, German, Israeli, Italian, Lebanese, Polish, Russian, American) and critical approaches (historical, aesthetic, postcolonial, feminist, philosophical) explore the essay film and its consequences for the theory of cinema while building on and challenging existing theories. Taking as a guiding principle the essay form's dialogic, fluid nature, the volume examines the potential of the essayistic to question, investigate, and reflect on all forms of cinema-fiction film, popular cinema, and documentary, video installation, and digital essay. A wide range of filmmakers are covered, from Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera, 1928), Chris Marker (Description of a Struggle, 1960), Nicolas Guillen Landrian (Coffea Arabiga, 1968), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Notes for an African Oresteia, 1969), Chantal Akerman (News from Home, 1976) and Jean-Luc Godard (Notre musique, 2004) to Nanni Moretti (Palombella Rossa, 1989), Mohammed Soueid (Civil War, 2002), Claire Denis (L'Intrus, 2004) and Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life, 2011), among others. The volume argues that the essayistic in film-as process, as experience, as experiment-opens the road to key issues faced by the individual in relation to the collective, but can also lead to its own subversion, as a form of dialectical thought that gravitates towards crisis.

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The English settlers who staked their claims in the Chesapeake Bay were drawn to it for a variety of reasons. Some sought wealth from the land, while others saw it as a place of trade, a political experiment, or a potential spiritual sanctuary. But like other European colonizers in the Americas, they all aspired to found, organize, and maintain functioning towns—an aspiration that met with varying degrees of success, but mostly failure. Yet this failure became critical to the economy and society that did arise there. As Urban Dreams, Rural Commonwealth reveals, the agrarian plantation society that eventually sprang up around the Chesapeake Bay was not preordained—rather, it was the necessary product of failed attempts to build cities. Paul Musselwhite details the unsuccessful urban development that defined the region from the seventeenth century through the Civil War, showing how places like Jamestown and Annapolis—despite their small size—were the products of ambitious and cutting-edge experiments in urbanization comparable to those in the largest port cities of the Atlantic world. These experiments, though, stoked ongoing debate about commerce, taxation, and self-government. Chesapeake planters responded to this debate by reinforcing the political, economic, and cultural authority of their private plantation estates, with profound consequences for the region’s laborers and the political ideology of the southern United States. As Musselwhite makes clear, the antebellum economy around this well-known waterway was built not in the absence of cities, but upon their aspirational wreckage.

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One of the most memorable and affecting Shakespearean characters is Edgar in King Lear. He has long been celebrated for his faithfulness in the face of his father's rejection, and the scene in which he saves his blinded father from suicide is regarded as one of the most moving in all of Shakespeare. In Poor Tom, Simon Palfrey asks us to rethink all those received ideas - and thus to experience King Lear as never before. He argues that Edgar is Shakespeare's most radical experiment in characterization - and also his most exhaustive model of both human and theatrical possibility. The key to the Edgar character is that he spends most of the play disguised, much of it as "Poor Tom of Bedlam," and his disguises come to uncanny life. The Edgar-role is always more than one person; it animates multitudes, past and present and future, and gives life to states of being beyond the normal reach of the senses-undead, or not-yet, or ghostly, or possible rather than actual. And because the Edgar - role both connects and retunes all of the figures and scenes in the play, a close attention to this particular part can shine new light on how the whole play works. The ultimate message of Palfrey's bravura analysis is the same for readers or actors or audiences as it is for the characters in the play: see and listen feelingly; pay attention, especially when it seems as though there is nothing there.

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A company with effective cost reduction activities in place will be better positioned to adapt to shifting economic conditions. In fact, it can make the difference between organizations that thrive and those that simply survive during times of economic uncertainty. Reducing Process Costs with Lean, Six Sigma, and Value Engineering Techniques covers the methods and techniques currently available for lowering the costs of products, processes, and services.Describing why cost reductions can be just as powerful as revenue increases, the book arms readers with the understanding required to select the best solution for their company’s culture and capabilities. It emphasizes home-grown techniques that do not require the implementation of any new methodologies—making it easy to apply them in any organization.The authors explain how to reduce costs through traditional Lean methods and Lean Six Sigma. They also present Six Sigma cost savings techniques from Manufacturing Six Sigma, Services Six Sigma, and Design for Six Sigma. The book also presents optimization techniques from operations research methods, design experiment, and engineering process control.Helping you determine what your organization’s value proposition is, the text explains how to improve on the existing proposition and suggests a range of tools to help you achieve this goal. The tools and techniques presented vary in complexity and capability and most chapters include a rubric at the start to help readers determine the levels of competence required to perform the tasks outlined in that chapter.

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Told in the keen, honest voice of a young man growing up on the rural South Carolina coast, The Big Game Is Every Night grapples with masculinity, race, and family in contemporary blue-collar America.Grady Hayes’s whole life revolves around football. When he breaks his leg starting a game against a rival high school, his life comes unglued. As he recovers, Grady grows bored and angry. He no longer relates to his mom, his cousin, or the girl he’s been talking to, and loses interest in catfishing and eating family suppers on the weekends. When Grady tries to return to the team, his spot has been filled, and there are rumors flying about why Coach made Grady a starting running-back in the first place.Frustrated and alone, Grady falls in with Hambone, a brooding older classmate, who takes him deep into the swamps to hunt raccoons and experiment with drugs. After an ugly confrontation with another player in the locker room, his relationship with Hambone turns dark and violent. Out of options, Grady’s mom calls in his estranged father to set him straight, and Grady realizes that his dad isn’t the man he remembers.In his debut novel, Robert Maynor delivers a literary Lowcountry Friday Night Lights that shines a harsh light on the ways American men are steeped in violence, and how hard it can be to shake loose the toxic norms that unchecked can keep us all so far apart.

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The 233-year story of how the American people have taken an imperfect constitution—the product of compromises and an artifact of its time—and made it more democratic Who wrote the Constitution? That’s obvious, we think: fifty-five men in Philadelphia in 1787. But much of the Constitution was actually written later, in a series of twenty-seven amendments enacted over the course of two centuries. The real history of the Constitution is the astonishing story of how subsequent generations have reshaped our founding document amid some of the most colorful, contested, and controversial battles in American political life. It’s a story of how We the People have improved our government’s structure and expanded the scope of our democracy during eras of transformational social change. The People’s Constitution is an elegant, sobering, and masterly account of the evolution of American democracy. From the addition of the Bill of Rights, a promise made to save the Constitution from near certain defeat, to the post–Civil War battle over the Fourteenth Amendment, from the rise and fall of the “noble experiment” of Prohibition to the defeat and resurgence of an Equal Rights Amendment a century in the making, The People’s Constitution is the first book of its kind: a vital guide to America’s national charter, and an alternative history of the continuing struggle to realize the Framers’ promise of a more perfect union.

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The Psychology of Self-Control reviews evidence that indicates low self-control is among the most important individual risk factors for criminal offending. A developmental pathway that begins with this risk factor and leads to criminal offending is presented, and treatment recommendations for reducing the risk that low self-control poses for criminal offending are discussed. Following this, the authors seek to explain why young adolescents have an increased likelihood of becoming involved in a troublesome youth group. Social developmental, personal, and situational risk factors are combined under the umbrella of an integrated theoretical framework that stresses the importance of the moral sense as an important mediator in the relationship between adverse developmental conditions, juvenile delinquency, and troublesome youth group involvement. The authors also test the interaction between choosing a violent response, the inability to resist temptation, and exposure to scenario-criminogeneity using a web-based randomized scenario study. The results indicate that individuals who are able to resist temptation are unlikely to choose a violent response independent of scenario criminogeneity. In the penultimate chapter, the psychological and physiological components of self-control are explored. Then, the developmental aspects of self-control, with a special focus on adolescence, are briefly presented. In conclusion, this collection reviews recent research from McCarter and Winn about the role of stakes in English auctions over Amazon.com gift cards, consumer products on eBay, and items in the behavioral laboratory. Then, the results of an experiment manipulating stakes in penny auctions are reported.

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The first chapter describes the next generation device Stacked Nanosheet, which has the potential to replace the three-dimensional transistor architecture, FinFET. The authors also present the recent progress in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology. Recent biomimetic research examined in the next chapter may enable for a better understanding of biofiltration as well as potential technological applications via experimentation with novel materials, including 3D printed filters simulating natural systems. The possibility of using methane as an alternative and promising reducing agent in various metallurgical and chemical processes is discussed. Additionally, the electrochemical performances of transition-metal-disulfide-based electrodes fabricated from different configurations, including binary and ternary composites, is discussed. Following this, this compilation discusses the assumptions of the physics of transport in nano-scale wire Si pn-junction diodes with the aid of device simulations. An advanced theoretical model to predict current-voltage characteristics of nano-scale wire Si pn-junction diodes is proposed. The authors introduce several voltage contrast studies that have been done so far, introducing an experiment on active voltage contrast imaging of the cross-sectional surface of multilayer ceramic capacitors using helium ion microscopy. Next, the authors present a new two-stage method for the qualitative and quantitative detection method of hydrophobing injection media used as a subsequent masonry seal against rising damp. The aim of the final chapter is to review four classes of integer asymmetric codes and to illustrate their potential for use in modern short-range optical networks.

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Riley Sager meets If We Were Villains in a compelling new psychological thriller by RJ Jacobs, following a tight-knit group of graduate students studying the psychology of lying. When one of them is discovered dead after an experiment, everything the group thought they knew about deception crumbles...Campus is empty, a winter storm is blowing in, and someone is lurking in the shadows, waiting for their chance to kill again.Forest, North Carolina. Under the instruction of enigmatic Professor Joe Lyons, five graduate students are studying the tedious science behind the acts of lying. But discovering the secrets of deception isn't making any of the student's more honest though. Instead, it's making it easier for them to guard their own secrets - and they all have something to hide.When a test goes awry and one of them is found dead, the students find themselves trapped by a snowstorm on an abandoned campus with a local detective on the case. As harbored secrets begin to break the surface, the graduates must find out who's lying, who isn't, and who may have been capable of committing murder. It turns out deception is even more dangerous than they thought...A foreboding new dark academia thriller of deception and suspense, This is How it Ends follows the unraveling of a close group of students as they contend with what it means to lie, and be lied to.

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First published 45 years ago, this is a beautiful new edition of Mary Stewart's beloved magical classic illustrated by Shirley Hughes. Don't miss the beautifully animated film adaptation called Mary and the Witch's Flower (by the producer of The Tale of The Princess Kaguya), in cinemas now. 'The little broomstick gave a leap, a violent twist, a kick like the kick of a pony.'Mary's been exiled to her great-aunt, deep in the English countryside. Miserable and lonely, she befriends strange black cat Tib who leads her deep into the forest to an ordinary looking broomstick. Before Mary can gather her wits, the broomstick jumps into action, whisking her over the treetops, above the clouds, and to the grounds of Endor College, school of witchcraft.But something is terribly wrong at Endor. Students are taught spells that are petty and ill-wishing, and when Mary discovers evidence of a terrible and cruel experiment in transformation, she decides to leave. But the moment her broomstick takes off, she realises that Tib the cat has been captured ...Mary Stewart is the bestselling author of fourteen romantic thrillers, including the classic novelsThis Rough Magic and The Moon-Spinners, and five historical fantasy novels of Arthurian Britain. The animated film, Mary and the Witch's Flower, will be released in 2018 by Studio Ponoc. The producer, Yoshiaki Nishimura, also produced The Tale of The Princess Kaguya and When Marnie Was There.

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LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZEWINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION'Dazzling' Sunday Times'A truly wonderful intellectual work that makes you think and laugh' Daily Mail'Playful, ebullient, brainy' Financial TimesThe artist Harriet Burden, furious at the lack of attention paid her by the New York art world, conducts an experiment: she hides her identity behind three male fronts in a series of exhibitions. Their success seems to prove her point, but there's a sting in the tail - when she unmasks herself, not everyone believes her. Then her last collaborator meets a bizarre end. In this mesmerising tour de force, Burden's story emerges after her death through a variety of sources, including her (not entirely reliable) journals and the testimonies of her children, lover and a dear friend. Each account is different, however, and the mysteries multiply.'A novel that gloriously lives up to its title, one blazing with energy and thought' The TimesPRAISE FOR SIRI HUSTVEDT:'Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom' Salman Rushdie'One of our finest novelists' Oliver Sacks'Reading a Hustvedt novel is like consuming the best of David Lynch' Financial Times'Few contemporary writers are as satisfying and stimulating to read as Siri Hustvedt' Washington Post'A 21st-century Virginia Woolf' Literary Review

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For decades Meditation: The First and Last Freedom has been the essential guide to meditation and Osho meditation techniques. Developed specifically for a contemporary audience, this foundational guide shows that meditation need not be a specific "spiritual discipline" that is set apart from the real world. Rather, in essence, it is simply the art of becoming aware of what is going on inside and around us and developing the capacity to respond creatively to whatever comes our way. As we acquire the knack, meditation can be our companion wherever we are - at work, at play, at rest. This newly revised edition includes: - New meditations for daily practice, including many that can be seamlessly integrated into the activities of everyday life. - Updated presentations of the classic Osho Active Meditations, gathered together in one volume for the first time in print. - Detailed instructions for each method, many with links to online tutorials and specific music composed to support each technique. - Vital active physical meditations such as the Osho Dynamic Meditation and Osho Kundalini Meditation. - Meditation techniques suitable for children. Whether you are an experienced meditator, a beginner, or just curious about meditation's benefits, an introvert or extrovert, an intellectual or emotional type, this comprehensive guide offers a method uniquely suited to you, and the support you need to experiment with it. When mind knows, we call it knowledge. When heart knows, we call it love. And when being knows, we call it meditation. - Osho

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Fascination with conspiracies is massive right now, especially since the rise of Donald Trump, who is both the subject of many conspiracy theories and also the purveyor of them. New theories appear on social media on a near-daily basis, and with continual claims and counter-claims about fake news, it's hard to know what to believe. To help clear up the confusion, here is a new edition of the most balanced and informed book on the topic, now updated with all the latest events, including pro- and anti-Trump theories, Edward Snowden’s mass-surveillance claims, post-truth issues, and much more. In this outstanding guide to conspiracies, researcher Andy Thomas looks at all the major theories, from the Roman Empire to the present day, exploring the social and psychological factors that have prompted them to spread. The accounts are stripped of unfounded opinion and presented factually, dramatically highlighting the core issues. Are we really under everyday mass-surveillance, as Edward Snowden claims? Is the rise of Donald Trump and global populism a genuine movement of the people or a manipulated social control experiment? Is there a secret governing elite ruling from the shadows, using fear and economic manipulation to create a network of global superstates? Could the attacks of 9/11 have been engineered by agencies within the USA itself? Andy Thomas invites you to read accounts and analyses of these and many other issues, to consider the facts and decide for yourself.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'MOVE OVER, MARIE KONDO' Washington Post'EXCELLENT' Telegraph'YOU WILL FEEL LIKE YOU CAN TAKE ON THE WORLD' Grazia'WISHING I HAD A RUBIN TO HELP ME MAKE SENSE OF MY BELONGINGS' Red'DECLUTTER YOUR WAY TO HAPPINESS' Good HousekeepingIn the context of a happy life, a messy desk or a crowded wardrobe is a trivial problem - yet Gretchen Rubin found that getting control of our stuff makes us feel more in control of our lives.Ask yourself: DO I NEED IT? DO I LOVE IT? DO I USE IT?With 150 concrete clutter-clearing ideas, insights, strategies, and sometimes surprising tips, Gretchen tackles the key challenges of creating outer order by explaining how to 'make choices', 'create order', 'know yourself', 'cultivate useful habits' and, of course, how to 'add beauty'.At home, at work, and in life, when we get our possessions under control, we can create a more serene environment. With a sense of fun, and a clear idea of what's realistic for most people, Gretchen suggests dozens of manageable steps to help us achieve the lives we yearn for.ALSO BY GRETCHEN RUBINThe Four Tendencies: the indispensable personality profiles that reveal how to make your life betterANDBetter Than Before: learn how to make good habits and break bad ones, for goodANDHappier At Home: a year-long experiment in making the everyday extraordinary

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Albert Einstein is often viewed as the icon of genius, and his theories are admired for their beauty and correctness. Yet the final judge of any theory is the rigorous test of experiment, not the fame of its inventor or the allure of its mathematics. For decades, general relativity has passed test after test with flying colors, including some remarkable new tests using the recently detected gravitational waves. Still, there are reasons for doubt. Einstein's theory of gravity, as beautiful as it is, seems to be in direct contradiction with another theory he helped create: quantum mechanics. Until recently, this was considered to be a purely academic affair. But as more and more data pour in from the most distant corners of the universe, hinting at bizarre stuff called "dark energy" and "dark matter," some scientists have begun to explore the possibility that Einstein's theory may not provide a complete picture of the cosmos. This book chronicles the latest adventures of scientists as they put Einstein's theory to the test in ever more precise and astonishing ways, and in ever more extreme situations, when gravity is unfathomably intense and rapidly churning. From the explosions of neutron stars and the collisions of black holes to the modern scientific process as a means to seek truth and understanding in the cosmos, this book takes the reader on a journey of learning and discovery that has been 100 years in the making.

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From a small radio studio in the heart of the Deep South, the voices of gay and lesbian Southerners suddenly filled the AM airwaves. “For far too long,” the announcer stated, “talk radio airwaves have been dominated by the people who talk about us. Starting this fall, we speak for ourselves!” What began as an experiment—Rainbow Radio, South Carolina’s first gay and lesbian radio show—has grown into a grassroots-driven community radio show that, since 2005, has offered diverse, accurate, and often unparalleled stories of gay and lesbian Southerners, their families and their friends. Citadel cadets and drag queens, a slam poet from Columbia and a Spartanburg schoolteacher, a seminary student in Atlanta and a gay Army vet just back from the Middle East, West Columbia rednecks and rural Texas tomboys, as well as South Carolina’s first lesbian Congressional candidate. A young man talking about his gay uncle and a retired attorney talking about her gay son. Two boys who dare to dance at the prom, a psychic who may be attuned to the gay agenda, and a dying man who makes his last visit to church on Christmas. These voices have now been collected in a book, Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio, edited by Ed Madden and Candace Chellew-Hodge. Their stories will inspire you, enrage you, and transform the way you think about what it means to be gay and lesbian in the South.

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“Ice cube trays are the new muffin tin.” —Delish.com Contemporary ice cube trays are arguably one of the most overlooked gems of the modern kitchen. If you have a refrigerator that produces its own ice, you may not even be aware of how far ice cube trays have come and how useful they can be in creating something other than ice. Trays are now available in many different styles, ranging from the traditional rectangular shape to the one-inch square to the cocktail-style two-inch sphere—and there are a variety of decorative shapes, as well. And the ones made from baking-grade silicone neither melt nor crack, making them a respectable vessel in the kitchen.Ice Cube Tray Recipes teaches you how to use these trays to create everything from infused ice cubes to one-bite appetizers and even mini main dishes that will impress family and friends of all ages and keep the mess at bay. In chapters that include everything from soups and smoothies to canapes and sweets, you’ll find recipes for every meal of the day. From the useful to the novel to the downright intriguing, each recipe offers a suggestion of the best ice cube tray to use but also allows for adaptations to traditional, regular-sized trays and novelty trays. This is the fun and inspirational book for home cooks who adore kitchen hacks and trendy entertaining and who like to experiment with new ideas.

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Thomas Jefferson was a figure both central and polarizing in his own time, and despite the passage of two centuries he remains so today. Author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, yet at the same time a slaveholder who likely fathered six children by one of his slaves, Jefferson has been seen as an embodiment of both the best and the worst in America’s conception and in its history.In Monticello in Mind, poet Lisa Russ Spaar collects fifty contemporary poems--most original to this anthology--that engage the complex legacy of Thomas Jefferson and his plantation home at Monticello. Many of these poems wrestle with the history of race and freedom at the heart of both Jefferson’s story and America’s own. Others consider Jefferson as a figure of Enlightenment rationalism, who scrupulously excised evidence of the supernatural from the gospels in order to construct his own version of Jesus’s moral teachings. Still others approach Jefferson as an early colonizer of the West, whose purchase of the Louisiana territory and launch of the Lewis and Clark expedition anticipated the era of Manifest Destiny.Featuring a roster of poets both emerging and established--including Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Claudia Emerson, Terrance Hayes, Robert Hass, Yusef Komunyakaa, Tracy K. Smith, Natasha Tretheway, Charles Wright, and Kevin Young--this collection offers an aesthetically and culturally diverse range of perspectives on a man whose paradoxes still abide at the heart of the American experiment

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The ultimate gift edition of Walden for bibliophiles, aficionados, and scholars “Replaces all other available editions of Walden as the most attractive and reliable way to approach this great American book.”—Joel Porte, author of Consciousness and Culture: Emerson and Thoreau Reviewed This is the authoritative edition of an American literary classic: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, an elegantly written record of his experiment in simple living. With this edition, Thoreau scholar Jeffrey S. Cramer has meticulously corrected errors and omissions from previous editions of Walden and provided illuminating notes on the biographical, historical, and geographical contexts of the great nineteenth-century writer and thinker’s life. Cramer’s newly edited text is based on the original 1854 edition of Walden, with emendations taken from Thoreau’s draft manuscripts, his own markings on the page proofs, and notes in his personal copy of the book. In the editor’s notes to the volume, Cramer quotes from sources Thoreau actually read, showing how he used, interpreted, and altered these sources. Cramer also glosses Walden with references to Thoreau’s essays, journals, and correspondence. With the wealth of material in this edition, readers will find an unprecedented opportunity to immerse themselves in the unique and fascinating world of Thoreau. Anyone who has read and loved Walden will want to own and treasure this gift edition. Those wishing to read Walden for the first time will not find a better guide than Jeffrey S. Cramer.

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For courses in introductory algebra-based physics. Help students learn physics by doing physics College Physics: Explore and Apply, Volume 2 (Chapters 17-30) allows students to build a deep and robust conceptual understanding of physics by encouraging an active role in the learning process. Through this approach, students build a strong conceptual foundation via observation, analysis, and testing that leads to confidence in applying knowledge to complex situations. The 2nd Edition offers an updated, pedagogically driven design that streamlines the content to help students focus and use the textbook more effectively. As students actively pursue the process of science, they're able to build the foundations for conceptual understanding and develop more sophisticated reasoning and problem-solving skills using features such as redesigned Experiment Tables with new Video Demonstrations and innovative Worked Examples. New types of End-of-chapter problems give students the chance to apply what they have learned while the Active Learning Guide (ALG), Instructor Guide, and Ready-to-Go Teaching Modules create a comprehensive learning system that instructors can efficiently adapt to their method of instruction. NOTE: VOLUME 2 CONTAINS CHAPTERS 17-30 If you would like to purchase both the physical text CONTAINING CHAPTERS 1-30 and Mastering Physics, search for: 0134630467 / 9780134630465 College Physics: Explore and Apply Plus Mastering Physics with Pearson eText -- Access Card Package Package consists of: 0134601823 / 9780134601823 College Physics: Explore and Apply 0134630041 / 9780134630045 Mastering Physics with Pearson eText -- ValuePack Access Card -- for College Physics: Explore and Apply

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Maria Lassnig (1919–2014) is internationally recognized as one of the most important painters of the 20th and 21st centuries. The leitmotif of her painting, the act of rendering her “body awareness” visible found additional expression in film in the early 1970s. During her time in New York, Lassnig studied animation at the School of Visual Arts and began to film in 8mm and 16mm. While several of these New York films have long since been part of her canonical works (e.g. Selfportrait, Iris, Couples, Shapes), many remained unfinished. These "films in progress" can be regarded as autobiographical notes as well as an artistic experiment featuring many of Lassnig’s recognizable sujets and methods. In 2018, this filmic legacy was restored and in many cases completed according to Lassnig’s original concept and instructions by two close collaborators, artists Hans Werner Poschauko and Mara Mattuschka, and presented to great international acclaim.This German-language publication provides the first comprehensive index of Lassnig’s film works, offering insight into the filmmaker’s world of ideas through a wide selection of Lassnig’s own previously unpublished notes. It also includes a selection of Lassnig's "films in progress" on DVD. Two essays by James Boaden and Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni place Lassnig’s work in the context of the US-American film avant-garde of the 1970s, while conversations with Mara Mattuschka, Hans Werner Poschauko and the restoration team shed a light on the rediscovery of Lassnig’s fascinating films.

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A geneticist tells the stories of men, women, and children whose genes have shaped their lives in unexpected ways. It was while listening to a colleague tell the parents of a newborn girl that their daughter was going to die that a lifelong interest in genetic medicine was sparked in Dr Edwin Kirk. Warmth and gentleness tempered a direct, sure manner — this was the medicine he wanted to practise, where the most advanced science and the most deeply human meet. Twenty-five years later, Dr Kirk works both with patients and in the lab, and he spearheads a campaign that will change the way we think about having babies. His experience is without parallel, but it is his humour and insight that make all the difference. Find out why Dr Kirk found himself among hundreds of people, each with a glass of poison in front of them — and how you might perform the same experiment yourself (without the poison). Learn how the realisation that a young boy wasn’t short ended up saving the life of his mother — and how Angelina Jolie has saved the lives of many more. Sit in the room with Dr Kirk and his patients as they navigate the world of heartbreaking uncertainties, tantalising possibilities, and thorny questions of morality. In genetics, it is the particularities of an individual’s history that matter, and here, in clear and considerate writing, those individual stories are given voice.

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Repeatedly jamming his fork of curiosity into the live toaster of opportunity, comedian Richard O. Smith captures the experience of living in Oxford in probably the funniest book written about the Dreaming Spires. Collected here are 70 of his best Oxford Examined columns from the award-winning Oxford Times magazine Oxfordshire Limited Edition including several previously unpublished stories.In these unflinchingly truthful columns he meets celebrities (Kate Middleton, Dara O'Briain, the one who plays Phoebe in Friends and a predictably grumpy Alan Sugar), visits the 11th dimension with an Oxford University maths protegee, gatecrashes Encaenia, flirts with a Roman slave girl from 79AD, is ejected from the Oxford Union by burly security, witnesses a comeuppance for a pack of arrogant students, conducts a walking tour for Britain's scariest hen party, moves a library (which transpires to be harder work than moving a mountain), sees Britain's most pretentious theatre production, participates in the UK's national bell ringing championships (yes, that is a thing), allows Oxford University psychologists to experiment on him, rescues four escaped horses in a busy Oxford street (thankfully it wasn't the apocalypse), becomes a crime-fighting superhero, is hospitalised in a serious bike accident, gets chased by a furious revenge-fixated woman dressed as a Friesian cow, strides out of his house one morning and disappears down a giant sink hole, mentors two stand-up comedy virgins, commits a devastating social faux pas and pledges to never use a split infinitive or sentence this long again.

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This authoritative book analyses the recent problems associated with the UK's monetary system and suggests a long-term solution to control bank lending in the future. It draws on extensive historical material, discussions with former senior officials and politicians, and the perceptive insights of Gordon Pepper, an advisor to Margaret Thatcher when the foundations of monetary control were being laid, to revisit and re-examine the monetarist experiment of the 1980s.The authors argue that, in spite of the instinct of the Prime Minister, the authorities never attempted to control the supply of money in the 1980s and only paid lip service to controlling the demand for money. Extraordinary behaviour of bank lending was a significant cause of the Barber boom in the mid-1970s, of the Lawson boom of the 1980s and of the depth of the recession in the early 1990s. They assert that varying interest rates is an ineffective tool to manage lending and controversially propose that the only enduring solution is to control the banks' reserves. The authors forcefully argue that should the UK not become a member of the European Single Currency the debate surrounding monetary base control will need to be reopened.By reassessing a significant era in British economic policy and suggesting a strategy for the future, this book will be of great interest to economic historians, monetary and political economists, policymakers and investment advisers.

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Y Tu Mamá También (2001), an intelligent and sensual road movie directed by Alfonso Cuarón and co-written by him and his brother Carlos, is both an acclaimed feature by a director who would go on to win Oscars and a box office success abroad and in its native Mexico, where it was the biggest grossing local film of all time. Its teenage protagonists Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna went on to be major stars of global cinema. Yet on its release the film was vilified by established Mexican critics as a coarse comedy and ‘Penthouse fantasy’ of youthful lust for an older woman. Paul Julian Smith's lucid study of the film argues that Y Tu Mamá También not only addresses with playful seriousness such major issues as gender, race, class, and space, which are yet more urgent now than they were on its release; but that the film’s apparently casual aesthetic masks a sophisticated audiovisual style, one which brings together popular genre film and auteurist experiment. Smith suggests Y Tu Mamá También remains an example for world cinema of how a very local film can connect with a global audience that is ignorant of such niceties. Combining production and distribution history, based on unexplored material held in Mexico City archives, with close textual analysis, Smith makes an argument for Cuarón’s film as an enduring masterpiece that hides in plain sight as an ephemeral teen movie.

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Is it possible for Africa to rise above its present unfulfilling conditions for good? Can poverty, inequality, corruption, maladministration, and intolerance be overcome? This special volume of Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations argues that it certainly is. The epoch of Transcendent Development has arrived, and an authentic African philosophy is at hand to understand it. In this landmark scholarly anthology, seven chapters blaze a trail towards an African philosophical ethos for organisational and business ethics rooted in the complex South African experience. With almost unmatched sociocultural diversity, South Africa is an ideal melting pot for the great unity-in-diversity experiment of Universal Dignity. If the disparate people of planet earth have any fighting chance of averting the looming dystopian existential crisis inherent in unsustainable development, the hopes thereof begin in the South. Identity-based polarisation and its attendant torment of destructive strife must be exchanged for a mutually beneficial ethos of fulfilment, that truly “leaves no one behind”. This volume offers meaningful pathways to this haven of “Ubuntu”. Edited by Dr. Andani Thakhathi, this special volume of seven chapters presents insightful gems of wisdom that clarify how the self-fulfilling cycle of “Compound-Indignity” may be overcome through the systematic operationalisation of Bantu Wisdom as Transcendent Development. Collectively, the chapters in this special volume contain morally courageous, creative storytelling prose offering paradigm shifts, empirical evidence and surprising “antenarratives” that explain how a harmonious Africa may be realised, starting in the Mother Continent’s Southern-most tip.

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Hardship is now equated with victimhood. Outward displays of vulnerability in defeat are celebrated over winning unabashedly. The pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism are at the heart of American identity, and the disappearance of these ideals in our country leaves a deep moral and cultural vacuum in its wake.But the solution isn't to simply complain about it. It's to revive a new cultural movement in America that puts excellence first again.Leaders have called Ramaswamy "the most compelling conservative voice in the country" and "one of the towering intellects in America," and this book reveals why: he spares neither left nor right in this scathing indictment of the victimhood culture at the heart of America's national decline.Following the success of his instant bestseller Woke Inc., Ramaswamy explains in his new book that we're a nation of victims now. It's one of the few things we still have left in common-across black victims, white victims, liberal victims, and conservative victims. Victims of each other, and ultimately, of ourselves.This fearless, provocative book is for readers who dare to look in the mirror and question their most sacred assumptions about who we are and how we got here. Intricately tracing history from the fall of Rome to the rise of America, weaving Western philosophy with Eastern theology in ways that moved Jefferson and Adams centuries ago, this book describes the rise and the fall of the American experiment itself-and hopefully its reincarnation.

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A close examination of an iconic small town that gives boundless insights into architecture, landscape, preservation, and philanthropyAvant-Garde in the Cornfields is an in-depth study of New Harmony, Indiana, a unique town in the American Midwest renowned as the site of two successive Utopian settlements during the nineteenth century: the Harmonists and the Owenites. During the Cold War years of the twentieth century, New Harmony became a spiritual “living community” and attracted a wide variety of creative artists and architects who left behind landmarks that are now world famous. This engrossing and well-documented book explores the architecture, topography, and preservation of New Harmony during both periods and addresses troubling questions about the origin, production, and meaning of the town’s modern structures, landscapes, and gardens. It analyzes how these were preserved, recognizing the funding that has made New Harmony so vital, and details the elaborate ways in which the town remains an ongoing experiment in defining the role of patronage in historic preservation.An important reappraisal of postwar American architecture from a rural perspective, Avant-Garde in the Cornfields presents provocative ideas about how history is interpreted through design and historic preservation—and about how the extraordinary past and present of New Harmony continue to thrive today. Contributors: William R. Crout, Harvard U; Stephen Fox, Rice U; Christine Gorby, Pennsylvania State U; Cammie McAtee, Harvard U; Nancy Mangum McCaslin; Kenneth A. Schuette Jr., Purdue U; Ralph Schwarz; Paul Tillich.

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A company with effective cost reduction activities in place will be better positioned to adapt to shifting economic conditions. In fact, it can make the difference between organizations that thrive and those that simply survive during times of economic uncertainty. Reducing Process Costs with Lean, Six Sigma, and Value Engineering Techniques covers the methods and techniques currently available for lowering the costs of products, processes, and services.Describing why cost reductions can be just as powerful as revenue increases, the book arms readers with the understanding required to select the best solution for their company’s culture and capabilities. It emphasizes home-grown techniques that do not require the implementation of any new methodologies—making it easy to apply them in any organization.The authors explain how to reduce costs through traditional Lean methods and Lean Six Sigma. They also present Six Sigma cost savings techniques from Manufacturing Six Sigma, Services Six Sigma, and Design for Six Sigma. The book also presents optimization techniques from operations research methods, design experiment, and engineering process control.Helping you determine what your organization’s value proposition is, the text explains how to improve on the existing proposition and suggests a range of tools to help you achieve this goal. The tools and techniques presented vary in complexity and capability and most chapters include a rubric at the start to help readers determine the levels of competence required to perform the tasks outlined in that chapter.

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Once condemned by Modernism and compared to a ‘crime’ by Adolf Loos, ornament has made a spectacular return in contemporary architecture. This is typified by the works of well-known architects such as Herzog & de Meuron, Sauerbruch Hutton, Farshid Moussavi Architecture and OMA. There is no doubt that these new ornamental tendencies are inseparable from innovations in computer technology. The proliferation of developments in design software has enabled architects to experiment afresh with texture, colour, pattern and topology. Though inextricably linked with digital tools and culture, Antoine Picon argues that some significant traits in ornament persist from earlier Western architectural traditions. These he defines as the ‘subjective’ – the human interaction that ornament requires in both its production and its reception – and the political. Contrary to the message conveyed by the founding fathers of modern architecture, traditional ornament was not meant only for pleasure. It conveyed vital information about the designation of buildings as well as about the rank of their owners. As such, it participated in the expression of social values, hierarchies and order. By bringing previous traditions in ornament under scrutiny, Picon makes us question the political issues at stake in today’s ornamental revival. What does it tell us about present-day culture? Why are we presently so fearful of meaning in architecture? Could it be that by steering so vehemently away from symbolism, contemporary architecture is evading any explicit contribution to collective values?

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One hundred and fifty years after Kansas was admitted to the Union, we still find ourselves fascinated by the specter of "Bleeding Kansas" and the violence that preceded the American Civil War by five years. Although ample attention has been devoted to understanding why territorial violence broke out in Kansas in 1856, of equal concern but less illuminated is the question of why government, both local and national, allowed the violence to continue unstanched for so long. This question is fundamentally about governance-its existence, exercise, limits, and continuance-and its study has ramifications for understanding both Kansas events and why the American experiment in government failed in 1861. In addition, the book also sheds light on the nature of democracy, the challenges of implanting it in distant environs, the necessity of cooperation at the various levels of government, and the value of strong leadership. To Govern the Devil in Hell uses the prism of governance to investigate what went wrong in territorial Kansas. From the first elections in late 1854 and early 1855, local government was tarnished with cries of illegitimacy that territorial officials could not ameliorate. Soon after, a shadow government was created which further impeded local management of territorial challenges. Ultimately, this book addresses why Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan failed to act, what hindered Congress from stepping into the void, and why and how the lack of effective governance harmed Kansas and later the United States.

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"It must be some kind of experiment or something, to see how long people can live without food, without shelter, without security."—homeless woman, Grand Central Station, winter "Homelessness is a routine fact of life on the margins. Materially, it emerges out of a tangled but unmysterious mix of factors: scarce housing, poorly planned and badly implemented policies of relocation and support, dismal prospects of work, exhausted or alienated kin.... Any outreach worker could tell you that list would be incomplete without one more: how misery can come to prefer its own company."—from the book Kim Hopper has dedicated his career to trying to correct the problem of homelessness in the United States. In his powerful book, he draws upon his dual strengths as anthropologist and advocate to provide a deeper understanding of the roots of homelessness. He also investigates the complex attitudes brought to bear on the issue since his pioneering fieldwork with Ellen Baxter twenty years ago helped put homelessness on the public agenda. Beginning with his own introduction to the problem in New York, Hopper uses ethnography, literature, history, and activism to place homelessness into historical context and to trace the process by which homelessness came to be recognized as an issue. He tells the largely neglected story of homelessness among African Americans and vividly portrays various sites of public homelessness, such as airports. His accounts of life on the streets make for powerful reading.

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