John Logie, Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion: Rhetoric in the Peer-to-Peer Debates

Parlor Press | ISBN: 1602350051 | 2006 | 173 p. | PDF
PEERS, PIRATES, AND PERSUASION: RHETORIC IN THE PEER-TO-PEER DEBATES investigates the role of rhetoric in shaping public perceptions about a novel technology: peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. While broadband Internet services now allow speedy transfers of complex media files, Americans face real uncertainty about whether peer-to-peer file sharing is or should be legal. John Logie analyzes the public arguments growing out of more than five years of debate sparked by the advent of Napster, the first widely adopted peer-to-peer technology. The debate continues with the second wave of peer-to-peer file transfer utilities like Limewire, KaZaA, and BitTorrent. With PEERS, PIRATES, AND PERSUASION, Logie joins the likes of Lawrence Lessig, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Jessica Litman, and James Boyle in the ongoing effort to challenge and change current copyright law so that it fulfills its purpose of fostering creativity and innovation while protecting the rights of artists in an attention economy. Logie examines metaphoric frames-warfare, theft, piracy, sharing, and hacking, for example-that dominate the peer-to-peer debates and demonstrably shape public policy on the use and exchange of digital media. PEERS, PIRATES, AND PERSUASION identifies the Napster case as a failed opportunity for a productive national discussion on intellectual property rights and responsibilities in digital environments. Logie closes by examining the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the "Grokster" case, in which leading peer-to-peer companies were found to be actively inducing copyright infringement. The Grokster case, Logie contends, has already produced the chilling effects that will stifle the innovative spirit at the heart of the Internet and networked communities.

The Economist June 16 2007
PDF | English

The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication owned by "The Economist Newspaper Ltd" and edited in London. It has been in continuous publication since James Wilson established it in September 1843. As of 2006, its average circulation topped one million copies a week, about half of which are sold in North America.[1] Consequently it is often seen as a transatlantic (as opposed to solely British) news source.

David Semple / Roger Smyth / Jonathan Burns / Rajan Darjee / Andrew McIntosh,
«Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry (Oxford Handbooks)»
Oxford University Press, USA | ISBN: 0198527837 | 2005-04-15 | 976 pages | CHM

The Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry is a new book directed at medical students, doctors coming to psychiatry for the first time, psychiatric trainees, and other professionals who may have to deal with patients with psychiatric problems. It is written by a group of experienced, middle-grade psychiatrists and is designed to provide easy access to the information required by psychiatry trainees on the wards or on-call. It closely follows the familiar format of the Oxford Handbooks series, and provides coverage that is comprehensive, evidence based and practical. The content of the handbook is written in the concise, note-based style characteristic of the series, with topics confined to single pages. The book is divided into four sections: Fundamentals of Psychiatric Practice; General Adult Psychiatry; Psychiatric Subspecialties; and Useful Reference Material. Within each chapter, topics are covered in a clear, logical, manner. For the clinical disorders there is detailed information on the aetiology, epidemiology, clinical features, common differential diagnoses, assessment / investigation, management, and prognosis. There is in-depth coverage of psychiatric assessment, psychopathology, evidence-based practice, mental health legislation in the UK, therapeutic issues, transcultural psychiatry, and eponyms in psychiatry. The book is internally cross-referenced and has both key references to important papers and to further information resources. As well as being indexed alphabetically, it is also indexed by ICD-10 / DSM-IV codes, and there is a quick index for acute presentations. This Handbook is practical and directive in style, designed to provide portable reassurance to doctors beginning psychiatry. There is helpful advice for the management of difficult and urgent situations, and the text is peppered with clinical observations on the practice of clinical psychiatry and guidance based upon the experience of the authors.

Advances in Web-based Education: Personalized Learning Environments
Information Science Publishing | ISBN: 1591406900 | 2005. | 397 p. | RARed | PDF

Advances in technology are increasingly impacting the way in which curriculum is delivered and assessed. The emergence of the Internet has offered learners a new instructional delivery system that connects them with educational resources. Advances in Web-Based Education: Personalized Learning Environments covers a wide range of factors that influence the design, use and adoption of personalized learning environments, and it shows how user and pedagogical considerations can be integrated into the design, development and implementation of adaptive hypermedia systems to create effective personalized learning environments...

MySQL/PHP Database Applications, Second Edition
Wiley | ISBN: 0764549634 | 819 pages | PDF

Welcome. If you are thumbing through these pages, you?re probably considering writing Web-based applications with PHP and MySQL. If you decide to go with these tools, you?ll be in excellent company. Thousands of developers?from total newbies to programmers with years of experience?are turning to PHP and MySQL for their Web-based projects, and for good reason.
Both PHP and MySQL are easy to use, fast, free, and powerful. If you want to get a dynamic Web site up quickly, there are no better choices. The PHP scripting language was built for the Web. All the tasks common to Web development can be performed in PHP with an absolute minimum of effort. Similarly, MySQL excels at tasks common to dynamic Web sites. Whether you?re creating a content-management systemor an e-commerce application, MySQL is a great choice for your data storage.

Ted Gambordella, "100 Deadliest Karate Moves"
MartialArtsBooks | ISBN: N/A | 64 pages | PDF

It is strongly recommended NOT test these moves on your friends!

Patricia Wolfe, «Brain Matters: Translating Research into Classroom Practice»
Association for Supervision & Curriculum Dev. | ISBN: 0871205173 | 2001-07 | 207 pages | PDF

Everyone agrees that what we do in schools should be based on what we know about how our brain learns. Until recently, however, we have had few clues to unlock the secrets of the brain. Now, research from the neurosciences has greatly improved our understanding of the learning process, and we have a much more solid foundation on which to base educational decisions.

In this book, Patricia Wolfe makes it clear that before we can effectively match teaching practice to brain functioning, we must first understand how the brain functions. In Part I, several chapters act as a mini-textbook on brain anatomy and physiology. Then, in Part II, Wolfe brings brain functioning into clearer focus, describing how the brain encodes, manipulates, and stores information. This information-processing model provides a first look at some implications of the research for practice--why meaning is essential for attention, how emotion can enhance or impede learning, and how different types of rehearsal are necessary for different types of learning.
In Part III, Wolfe devotes several chapters to practical classroom applications and brain-compatible teaching strategies. This section shows how to use simulations, projects, problem-based learning, graphic organizers, music, rhyme and rhythm, writing, active engagement, and mnemonics. Each chapter provides examples using brief scenarios from actual classroom practice, from the lower elementary grades to high school. The book also includes a glossary of terms.

Seth Anderson / Parvez Ahmed, «Mutual Funds: Fifty Years of Research Findings»
Springer (Innovations in Financial Markets and Institutions Series) | ISBN: 0387253076 | April 20, 2005 | 166 pages | PDF

Mutual funds are the dominant form of investment companies in the United States today, with approximately $7 trillion in assets under management. Over the past half century an important body of academic research has addressed various issues about the nature of these companies. These works focus on a wide range of topics, including fund performance, investment style, and expense issues, among others.

MUTUAL FUNDS: Fifty Years of Research Findings is designed for the academic researcher interested in the various issues surrounding mutual funds and for the practitioner interested in funds for investment purposes. The authors briefly trace the historical evolution of funds, present important aspects of the Investment Company Act of 1940, and then summarize a substantial portion of the academic literature which has been written over the past five decades.

"This book presents an outstanding wealth of information on mutual funds in a remarkably readable format. It is probably the most comprehensive work currently available on funds. The book sheds light on the numerous issues surrounding mutual fund performance and pricing and is an important resource for any serious investor." -- Kathleen A. Wayner, Bowling Portfolio Management, President and CEO

Matt Ridley, «The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature»
Penguin (Non-Classics) | ISBN: 0140245480 | June 1, 1995 | 416 pages | PDF

Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture -- including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.

Review:
The implications to the future human civilization are staggering

Science writer Matt Ridley's book "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" is outstanding. I have read at least 20 other books by various authors on this subject, and yet Ridley's book contains a vast amount of original work and brilliant viewpoints.

His language is accessible, witty, and moving. His explanations and arguments are well researched, and elegantly written.

Ridley takes you on a journey, for those willing, into nature's infinite world of sexual evolution using existing species as examples. You'll end up realizing how constricted our society is in relation to our nature. The book opened my mind to how diverse our society can be, and how we limit and restrict ourselves. I find this book to be one of his best works.

Experts in every field of living systems should read this book, the implications are staggering. Although written entirely from a biological / genetic / nature point of view, anyone could use the material to develop an improved system. For example, improved political systems, draft laws that make sense, market products more successfully, understand the criminal mind-set, raise children better, better discern the cause of war and violence, etc.

In a nut-shell, if you want to understand the infinite possibility of human potential, this book gives you the "theory of operation" and should be considered the bible on how central sexuality is to the nature of humankind and our modern civilization.

Jack Purcell, «Desert Emergency Survival Basics: Heartache And Heartburn»
NineLives Press | ISBN: 0974385220 | 2003 | 38 pages | PDF

The potential range of human experience includes finding ourselves in unanticipated dangerous situations. Most of those situations have been examined minutely and described in print in the form of survival manuals. Desert survival is not an exception. Excellent books are available to explain primitive survival in the desert southwest duplicating lifestyles of Native Americans a thousand years ago. That is not the intent of this book.

A few decades ago I had an acquaintance with a man named Walter Yates. Walter had the distinction of surviving a helicopter crash in the far north woods by jumping into a snowdrift before the impact. He managed to survive winter months with almost nothing except the clothes on his back when he jumped. Walter?s experience was a worthy test of human potential for emergency survival in extreme conditions. The margin for error was microscopic. The reason he survived rested on his ability to quickly detach his mind from how things had been in the past, how he wished they were, and accept completely the situation he was in. He wouldn?t have made it out of those woods if he couldn?t rapidly assess his new needs and examine every possibility of fulfilling them. ?It?s all in the mind,? he once told me. The margin for error in the desert is also narrow. That margin is dehydration.

Extremes of temperature are also a factor, but they are more easily managed than the needs of the human body for water. Anyone who survives an unanticipated week in desert country did so by either having water, by carrying it in, or finding it.

Over the years I've followed a number of search and rescue accounts and discussed the issue with searchers. The general thinking among those workers is that a person missing in the desert southwest should be found or walk out within three to five days. After three days the chances for live return spiral downward. Returns after five days are lottery winners. When a missing person isn?t found within a week, it?s usually because he?s been dead for five days.

This book is to assist in avoiding situations that lead to the need to survive those crucial three days, and to provide the basics of how to walk out and how to find water in the desert southwest. If you need the emergency information here it will be because you became lost, stranded by mechanical failure, or physically incapacitated. I won't address the bugs and plants you might find to eat. If you have water you?ll survive without eating until rescue.