Turning Leaves of Mind

Book Description

An extraordinary testament to the book as the most elegant information storage and retrieval mechanism ever invented, poet Gerrit Lansing and New York-based artist team Ligorano/Reese's conceptual essay and artist book is a multi-layered, heavily manipulated artwork. At the first level, Nora Ligorano's photo documentation of Spanish bookbinding from the 13th to the 18th century is subtly transformed into abstracted form: images of early decorative, archival, and royal bindings are digitally manipulated, enlarged, and cropped, thus recontextualizing the surface ornamentation and structural design of these early books. On top of this, Marshall Reese and Lansing's poetic text interposes the exquisite visual element, creating a meditation on the word and writing while recalling mystical elements from Sephardic and Moorish poetry. After all the book's components have been transformed and replaced, its pages scanned, its contents digitized, what remain are the physical vestiges of the book itself.

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Turning Leaves of Mind.
[Nora] Ligorano / [Marshall] Reese with Gerrit Lansing.
Manufacturer: Granary Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UWSPH8

Customer Reviews:

Early Cinema Pioneer.......2001-10-26

In 1995, the Gaumont Company celebrated its Centennial Anniversary as one of the oldest existing film producers in the world. This work covers Gaumont's humble beginnings as a producer of films used only to sell the cameras and projectors the company manufactured, all the way to 1994 and the release of the big budget opera film, "Carmen".

Gaumont and Company should be known for many things, but is often overlooked as a footnote in film history. The founder, Leon Gaumont (1864-1946) was an engineer of equal stature with the Lumiere Brothers, Gustave Eiffel, and Georges Demeney. He pursued patents for synchronized sound on film, three-color film processes, and the development of the modern film projector.

His innovation included employment of the world's first female film director, his secretary Alice Guy. His only business rival on the world scene before the advent of Hollywood was the great Charles Pathe himself. His studios employed the likes of Abel Gance, Leonce Perret, Emile Cohl, and Alfred Hitchcock. Gaumont newsreels were preeminent in their field.

Most people who know silent film will recognize film titles like Louis Feuillade's "Judex", "Les Vampires", and "Fantomas". These were all mainstays of this studio, but in today's France, the name is evident above many cinema theatre marquees as a place to see and experience film. Gaumont is also the name above the title in many recent block-buster's like "Highlander" and "Leon".

This book details the considerable financial up's and downs of an innovative and historic manufacturer, producer, distributor, and cultivator of film. "Here, in a lively text and vivid illustrations, is the history of Gaumont, the oldest movie company in the world".

Book Description

With influences from Ireland to India, this inward-looking collection will enfold you in peaceful, evocative melodies. Ten selections.

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Merchant House of Amketch (AD&D 2nd Ed. Fantasy Roleplaying, Dark Sun, DSM2)
L. Richard Baker
Manufacturer: TSR Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1560766433

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Outstanding Book!

Simple investment advice

A Great Introduction to Index Investing Management

So many more words than necessary

Concise, but short on substance

The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On With Your Life
Bill Schultheis
Manufacturer: Palouse Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing

All About Asset Allocation

The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio

The Lazy Person's Guide to Investing: A Book for Procrastinators, the Financially Challenged, and Everyone Who Worries About Dealing with Their Money

The Only Guide to a Winning Investment Strategy You'll Ever Need: The Way Smart Money Preserves Wealth Today

ASIN: 0976585707

Book Description

In The Coffeehouse Investor, Bill Schultheis shows readers that by focusing more on their passions and creativity, and less on money and the hype and hysteria of Wall Street, they will actually build more wealth—and improve the quality of their lives at the same time. The prose may be charming, but the investment advice is powerful and timely. Successful investing has nothing to do with "hot" stocks and "cool" mutual funds, but is achieved by adhering to the three simple steps set forth in The Coffeehouse Investor. There are ways to simplify investment decisions when building a sophisticated portfolio. With just a minimum of effort investors can learn to implement these steps and begin the gratifying process of building wealth, ignoring Wall Street, and getting on with life.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding Book!.......2007-09-02

Schultheis' "The Coffeehouse Investor" is easy to read and understand for those of us that are new to investing. It made a tremendous difference in the way we were looking at our investing, and our investment style. Highly recommended to all new investors; I think even seasoned investors would find it to be a good read. And best of all, you can read and comprehend it all in one sitting. Has motivated us to go on to read some of Bogle's works.

Simple investment advice.......2007-08-18

This book would be excellent for the first time investor. It spends too much time on cooking and mountain climbing but the overall investment advice is solid.

A Great Introduction to Index Investing Management .......2007-05-14

This book has a lot of style and is a very enjoyable read. The material is presented in understandable form. This approach to investing will work for the average investor.

However, it would be nice if details on portfolio structuring were included. Specifics on how to allocate investments to indexed mutual fund segements would be helpful. Other books cover this material, so it is readily available to the reader for advanced study.

[...].

So many more words than necessary.......2006-12-08

Everything worth knowing in this book can be covered in 10 pages. The author spends way too much time, and ink, telling the reader all about how investors have better things to do than follow market trends...Things like, risking your life on the side of a mountain, or making cookies, or just being a darned cool urbanite who's always emotionally available. Whatever. Point is that the investment technique works because it's based on sensible asset allocation, something he spends precious little tine discussing considering thats the crucial part of his plan. You can read it in two hours, so the time investment isn't terrible.

Concise, but short on substance.......2006-12-01

The book is short and sweet and (mostly) to the point - invest in broad index funds, invest over a long period of time, and don't worry. That, and meandering discussions on mountain climbing. There, you preety much don't have to read this book now, unless you want to see some nicely put together tables.

The Coffeehouse Investor: How To Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get on With Your Life

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The Coffeehouse Investor: How To Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get on With Your Life
Bill Schultheis
Manufacturer: Palouse Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N74JAC

Book Description

This marvelous collection of images, many of which are drawn from Judi Dench’s personal photo albums, offer the actress’ many fans a rare insight into her life. John Miller, her biographer, has augmented Judi Dench’s own photos with images depicting 50 years of distinguished work in film, theater, and television. From her childhood in York and her first work as an actress in her teens, to recent informal shots backstage and private family photos, these images show Judi Dench as never seen before.

Customer Reviews:

Must have for fans of Dame Judi.......2007-05-14

If your are as big a Dame Judi fan as I am this book is a must read or maybe, more accurately, a must see. It's sprinkled with family photos of Judi Dench, her late husband, Michael Williams and her daughter. Best of all it covers virtually all of her career from her early Royal Shakespearean Company days through all of her stage, movie and TV performances (up to but not including her latest film, "Notes on a Scandal.)
This book is literally presented as "scenes" with great photos and anecdotes about her many talented costars starting with her RSC performances - a virtual who's who of great British actors.

If you are an American like me and were originally introduced to Judi Dench through the limited offerings of her BBC TV show "As Time Goes By," this book gives you loads of insights into the breadth of her career. It has dozens of black and white photos and just as many brilliant color photos.

There are brief comments by Dame Judi about family photos and other personal moments that give one a bit of insight into her real life. She comes across as being very down to earth and her legendary sense of humor shines through. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because this isn't an actual autobiography by Dame Judi. It would have been nice to have had more material written by her.

All in all this is a great coffee table book for fans of one of the great actors of our times.

Touching, warm and funny.......2007-04-03

Judi Dench continually amazes, and her wonderfully open, honest, and often touching personal photo album style of bio leaves one with an even greater sense of her lovliness as a human being. The book is truly a delightful journey.

Judi Dench.......2007-03-09

I have always been a fan of Judi Dench; her acting has inspired me. I enjoyed the book very much. I have never bought a book about an actress in my lifetime but I couldn't resist this one. It's on my table in the living room and everyone scans it and tells me they are going to buy it too.

Judi Dench: Scenes from My Life.......2007-02-15

Quite enjoyable. Nice to get a take on the richness of her remarkable career. The insight she brings to her acting tell volumes between the lines. Certainly one of the greatest artists of our time yet modest and endearing.

Judi Dench: Scenes from My Life.......2007-01-10

Mostly Biographical Pictures from her life as an Actress wife Mother and Grandmother.Her Life in Films Stage Comedy Shakespear

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Scenes From My Life
Judi Dench
Manufacturer: WEIDENFELD & NICOL I
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K7M4MK

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Scenes From My Life
Judi Dench
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N6R446

Book Description

The years 1945-1965 saw heavy partisan conflict in the rural areas of Colombia, with at least 200,000 people killed. This virtual civil war began as a sectarian conflict between the Liberal and Conservative parties, with rural workers (campesinos) constituting the majority of combatants and casualties. Yet La Violencia resists classification as a social uprising, since calls for social reform were largely absent during this phase of the struggle. In fact, once the elite leadership settled on a power-sharing agreement in 1958, the conflict appeared to subside.

This book focuses on the second phase (1958-1965) of the struggle, in which the social dimensions of the conflict emerged in a uniquely Colombian form: the campesinos, shaped by the earlier violence, became social and political bandits, no longer acting exclusively for powerful men above them but more in defense of the peasantry. In comparing them with other regional expressions of bandolerismo, the authors weigh the limited prospects for the evolution of Colombian banditry into full-scale social revolution.

Published originally in 1983 as Bandoleros, gamonales y campesinos and now updated with a new epilogue, this book makes a timely contribution to the discourse on social banditry and the Colombian violencia. Its importance rests in the insights it provides not only on the period in question but also on Colombia's present situation.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent analysis of the post "La Violencia" era.......2003-12-14

What is the difference between a "social" bandit and a mere "criminal" bandit? How do guerrilla organizations come into being? How do they gain legitimacy from their local populations?

For those looking to understand the period immediately following La Violencia (1948-1956) and how Colombia's disenfranchised peasants turned to collective violence in a desperate attempt to survive, this book is invaluable. Because of the book's respectability among Colombian scholars, this version was re-printed from its original spanish-language version of 1983. Sanchez and Meertens have been the foremost analysts of La Violencia and its immediate aftermath, and this should be required reading for serious scholars of the complex and important era between La Violencia and the National Front. Far from trying to impress their professors, these men ARE the professors...

zzzzzzzzzzz.......2002-09-26

Colombia's unique history of brutality and violence in the 1850's and 1860's. How can you make such an interesting topic unbearably boring? Write it like a student trying to impress his professor. I can learn much more from listening to my wife's stories about those days. [...]

A glaring account of military & police corruption.......2002-07-13

Liberals were butchered. The military and police, on explicit orders from the Conservative Party government brutally killed and stole anything of value from all Liberal Party members. The government was absolutely corrupt and allowed a ghastly assault of murder, rape and torture. Consequently, the Liberal Party was forced to form a guerrilla resistance army. La Violencia is unquestionably the ugliest chapter in Colombian history and possible the greatest episode of genocide in Latin America. To that end, Gonzalo Sanchez and Donny Meerterns document the hatred that fueled the violence in Colombia. This book is gory and destroys the feeble argument that Colombia is the oldest democracy in Latin America.

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Thoughtful Outside View with Academic Bent

Essential for Understanding Intelligence Reform

Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society)
Richard A. Posner
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 074254947X

Book Description

Posner discusses the utter futilty of this reform act in a searing critique of the 9/11 Commission, its recommendations, Congress's role in making law, and the law's inability to do what it is intended to do.

Customer Reviews:

Thoughtful Outside View with Academic Bent.......2006-06-15

Judge Posner is not intelligence professional but he is certainly one of the most thoughtful of outside critics, with a legal, academic, and organizational-economic point of view that is helpful.

This, his first of two books disagreeing with the 9-11 Commission focus on centralization, has a number of nuggets worthy of study, but this book is largely oblivious to the many recommendations of both insiders and outsiders who can be considered "iconoclastic." Judge Posner is an insider, and he draws primarily from "establishment" sources.

He states, I believe correctly, that the Intelligence Reform Act was a "backward step" and provides very professional and detailed support for his view.

The biggest mistake in his view was the refusal to remove intelligence from the FBI culture and create a separate domestic intelligence agency (note: since the Department of Homeland Security has steadfastly refused to do its assigned job of integrating intelligence in support of its mission, Judge Posner can be said to be totally correct in this view).

He posits a fork in the road for the Director of National Intelligence, between engaging in substance and managing the larger enterprise, and appears oblivious to the fact that the Vice President has ordered the DNI to distance himself from the three national agencies captured by the Department of Defense, which are "hands off" in all practical terms.

Judge Posner is at his most articulate and most pointed when he says that the Intelligence Reform Act is a placebo, misleading the public into thinking something has been done, and preventing or lessening focus on other needed defenses including border security, deterrence, and hardening of potential targets.

He noted, accurately, that most of the commissioners were lawyers without an intelligence background, but does not mention that most of them were also compromised (as were senior members of the staff) by ties to the Administrations, precisely what Congress did not want.

He posits a potential role for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and this would indeed be a good thing for a future president to consider, but first they would have to put the M back into OMB, as it died over a decade ago.

He brings to bear a familiarity with the literature on organization but not the literature on "organizational intelligence," nor, as alluded to above, does he appear to have read any of the many works from Allen to Codevilla to Gentry and onwards.

He obsesses on the impossibility of predicting and understanding surprise, while acknowledging that we could do better if we had a *deep* understanding of other cultures that he correctly terms *alien* to our own. Never-the-less, he completely avoids the matter of pre-emptive morally based reduction of incentives to surprise attack and he completely avoids any discussion of the degree to which US budgets and behavior might be aggravating rather than ameliorating the global situation that threatens America.

Chapter 4 is especially valuable, a thoughtful and detailed listing of all of the mind-set, bureaucratic, and other obstacles to intelligence reform that characterize the continually failing secret intelligence environment.

His understanding of open source information (OSIF) and open source intelligence (OSINT) is glib and incomplete. He is still back in the era where CIA defined OSINT as the mainstream media that Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) could cover in comfort from air-conditioned cubicles in Reston. He appears to have no grasp of the degree to which localized overt collection and distributed leverage of thousands of overt human observers and indigenous experts contribute "real time intelligence" that is legal and ethical (and in languages CIA and FBIS cannot handle).

He suggests that the problem with intelligence is not collection, but rather sense-making. He is half right. For $60B we collect the 5% we can steal and ignore the rest. He is also right that sense-making is the challenge--as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Commission Report of December 1999 made quite clear, we have invested hundreds of billions in technical collection and next to nothing in tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination (TPED). The SAIC failure with NSA's Trailblazer program and the FBI's digitization case file program can be partly blamed on inept government contract management, but the bottom line is that secret processing is dead in the water, withy 80% of the data being "off line" and the processing power now available being marginal.

At the end of the book he raises the issue of "diseconomies of scale" and he is very thoughtful in this regard. He appears to favor a distributed community that can engage in competitive analysis, and I applaud that with one caveat: the intelligence arms of each cabinet department must be fully independent of their policy masters, or "cooking the books" will continue to be the prevailing attribute of the intelligence-policy relationship.

Essential for Understanding Intelligence Reform.......2005-05-14

Richard Posner's book will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the rapid changes now taking place in the US intelligence community. This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the function and organization of intelligence. Posner's arguments are so clear and compelling that you will find yourself saying "Ah-ha!" after almost every chapter.

Specifically, Posner takes on the "The 9/11 Commission Report," for offering an organizational solution for a managerial failure. He shows how the Commission's organizational line and block solution led to the enactment of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. He shows how this happened with little or no debate about the Commission's recommendations.

Posner explains why surprise attacks happen, and how little the organization of an intelligence apparatus has to do with it. For example, the Arab nations surprised Israel in the Yom Kipur War. An Israel commission determined, after the fact, that the reason for the surprise was lack of decentralization in its intelligence services. The 9/11 Commission, on the other hand, determine the surprise of 9/11 was due to not enough centralization. The fact that there are divergent views on this matter is not surprising. What is surprising is that the 9/11 Commission failed to even investigate them.

As Posner explains, surprise attacks happen, because the adversary does something that is essentially stupid and self-defeating. Often, the surprise attack is a miscalculation, not just for the attacked, but for the attacker as well. This makes anticipation of such attacks particularly challenging. As result, the Commission's hindsight was not 20/20, but altogether distorted by its focus on what had already happened, and not on the full range of possible future surprise attacks.

The range of such attacks is nearly infinite. According to Posner, the desire of the Commission to create an "Intelligence Czar" will not enhance the US intelligence community's ability to foretell these events. It will have the opposite effect of limiting the scope of vision and the diversity of analysis that will make any accurate and timely prediction possible. An Intelligence Czar will be much more prone to political influence, and he will function well above the horizon of subtle surprise attack indicators. He will also be much more likely to spend his time focusing on the "threat de jure" instead of genuine threats.

Posner, however, is not simply beating a dead horse here. While it is true that the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act has been signed into law, the ambiguity of that law still allows for a less destructive interpretation and execution of the law. Under the new law, the Director of National Intelligence may become the "Intelligence Czar," acting as the CEO of the intelligence community. Hopefully, however, he will take on a more constructive role - facilitator of greater coordination, acting as the chairman of the board of the intelligence community. This still remains an open debate.

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Rotation and Mixing in Stellar Interior: Proceedings of the Workshop Frontiers in Stellar Structure Theory Held in Honor of Professor Evry Schatzman (Lecture Notes in Physics)
Workshop Frontiers in Stellar Structure Theory , M. J. Goupil , and Evry L. Schatzman
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0387530592

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Rotation and Mixing in Stellar Interiors: Proceedings of the Workshop Frontiers in Stellar Structure Theory Held in Honor of Professor Evry Schatzman (Lecture Notes in Physics, 366)
M. J.; Zahn, J. P. (Editors) Goupil
Manufacturer: Springer-Verlag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LUOYTC

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