State Tax Actions 2001 (State Tax Actions)

Book Description

America's last great newspaper strip, presented the way it should be read!

Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead is a pop culture icon. The surrealist-leaning character is one of the most recognizable figures on the newspaper pages, seen by tens of millions of people a day. Syndicated by King Features since 1986, Zippy is read in hundreds of daily newspapers across the country, while the Pinhead's trademark non sequitur, "Are we having fun yet?," has become so often repeated it's in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. His likeness has been graffitied on the Berlin Wall and aped for Saturday Night Live's classic "Conehead" sketches.

This new Zippy collection features approximately a year's worth of strips, from November 2004 through November 2005, including full-color Sundays. Unlike most newspaper pages, the book sports top-notch reproduction worthy of Griffith's master draftsmanship. Part satire, part philosophy, and part surrealism, Zippy is one having fun pinhead and the perfect antidote to the real world.

In Type "Z" Personality, Zippy's new collection of daily and Sunday strips, Zippy dabbles in haiku, visits the malls of Australia, talks to Albert Einstein, lampoons "Manga" and goes into a deep trance while bowling. And if all that wasn't enough, Zippy insults Dick Cheney while imagining he's the hood ornament on a 1931 Studebaker.

Product Description

This little book of whimsical verses by Nathan Laxague really does tickle the funny bone. A very fat snake stuck in the drain, or a telltale fart just about any humorous or off-the-wall reality might be Nathans subject, in styles ranging from Edgar Allen Poe to vintage Dr. Seuss to...pure Nathan Laxague.

Book Description

200 striking photographs, in-depth commentaries, plot synposes, contemporary reviews, and more — about 50 British classics from yesterday and today. Preface. Text. Alphabetical list of films. Bibliography.

Book Description

The only ethnography devoted to the practice of gambling as its core subject, Gambling Life considers the stakes of social action in one community on the island of Crete.

Backgammon cafÈs, card clubs, and hidden gambling rooms in the city of Chania provide the context for Thomas M. Malaby to examine the ways in which people confront uncertainty in their lives. He shows how the dynamics of gambling--risk, fate, uncertainty, and luck--are reflected in other aspects of gamblers' lives from courtship and mortality to state bureaucracy and national identity. By moving beyond risk and fate as unexamined analytical categories, Malaby presents a new model for research concerning indeterminacy, seeing it as arising from stochastic, performative, and other sources. Gambling Life questions the longstanding valorization of order and pattern in the social sciences.

Customer Reviews:

An Ethnography of Risk, Performance, and Sociability.......2003-09-03

This study of gambling and everyday life in Chania, Crete, is an outstanding example of how anthropological ethnography can contribute to larger debates in the social sciences while remaining accessible and engaging to the casual reader. The author's intellectual objective is to shed light on reigning theories of risk and indeterminacy by exploring in finely grained detail how risk is operative and is experienced, interpreted and strategized against/upon by social actors in real life. The setting of the study is ideal for this purpose, as social life in this town is organized for many around the playing, practice and performance of gambling. A range of useful and non-jargony conceptual tools for capturing the experience of uncertainty are introduced (performative indeterminacy, instrumental nonchalance, e.g.), which heighten the feeling that true insight is occurring here. In fact, it is one of the impressive achievements of this book, that it manages to engage the serious scholar in ongoing disciplinary debates (about risk theory, social poetics, modernity and the state) while remaining a perfectly charming read for the nonspecialist.

Book Description

You are Cadet Qaylan Furlong. Your father was killed by the Borg in the battle of Wolf 359. Now, ten years later, the Borg are attacking again, and Starfleet won't allow you to stay aboard the Starship Cheyenne to avenge your father's death.

But Q will.

He'll do better than that, in fact. He will take you back in time ten years and put you on the same ship as your father to give you a chance to save him...and the entire Federation. It's a mission of extreme danger, difficult choices and surprising results.

Starring STAR TREK favorite, John deLancie, reprising his role as "Q".

Brace yourself for 120 minutes of ORIGINAL STAR TREK footage shot entirely on the sound stages at Paramount Studios.

This 3 CD-ROM set also includes The Picard Dossier, a comprehensive guide to the Borg.

Introduces the next generation of full-motion full-frame interactive video technology and represents the highest production quality of any digital video product available anywhere.

Directed by Jim Conway, director of numerous STAR TREK episodes, including the favorite STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE™ episode "Little Green Men".

Written by Hilary Bader, a writer for many loved STAR TREK episodes.

Music composed by Dennis McCarthy, composer of the STAR TREK: VOYAGER™ theme.

For Windows 95® Windows®

5 MB hard disk space for The Star Trek:Borg the interactive movie

8 MB hard disk space for the Picard Dossier

Display: 640x480 with 16 bit color support

Pentium required, 90 or better recommended

8 MB RAM for Win'95/16 MB RAM for Win 3.1 (DOS)

20 MB uncompressed hard disk space

16 bit audio card 100% SoundBlaster compatible

Double speed (2x) CD-ROM drive or faster

VESA local bus or PCI video card

For Macintosh®

5 MB hard disk space for The Star Trek: Borg the interactive movie

8 MB hard disk space for the Picard Dossier

Display: 640x480 with 16 bit color support

Power PC or 68/040, 40 Mhz minimum

16 bit audio card

The program will run on System 7.5 or better

20 MB uncompressed hard disk space

8 MB RAM

Double speed (2x) CD-ROM drive or faster /UL>

Book Description

A quick and reliable way to build proven databases for core business functions
Industry experts raved about The Data Model Resource Book when it was first published in March 1997 because it provided a simple, cost-effective way to design databases for core business functions. Len Silverston has now revised and updated the hugely successful First Edition, while adding a companion volume to take care of more specific requirements of different businesses. Each volume is accompanied by a CD-ROM, which is sold separately. Each CD-ROM provides powerful design templates discussed in the books in a ready-to-use electronic format, allowing companies and individuals to develop the databases they need at a fraction of the cost and a third of the time it would take to build them from scratch.
Updating the data models from the First Edition CD-ROM, this resource allows database developers to quickly load a core set of data models and customize them to support a wide range of business functions.

Customer Reviews:

A "Must-Have" For Every Modeling Job.......2006-10-04

Silverston's books (volume 1 and volume 2) are a "must-have" for any data modeler at the onset of a new project. The books are nicely organized by subject-area (for example, "People and Organizations" or "Human Resources" or "Health Care") and the table-of-contents and indicies are rich and very helpful. You can use these books as your main reference books for every question, meeting, inquiry regarding your modeling work (ex: "why did you model currency in this way?" Or "How do you model vendor and client relationships?".

The book saves me a lot of time. In an essence, you can use the book as a great starting point for your modeling work. Simply use the book to quickly create a "straw man" version of a certain subject-area, customize it to your enterprise's needs, and start "throwing scenarios" at the model in ordre to "break it". You will be able to spend less time on the "mechanics of modeling" and more time thinking through how your model supports the real business needs of your organization.

The Resource Book is just that.......2006-02-25

We ordered this book because we are about to begin designing a new information system for our company. Silverston's book addresses many of the issues we found ourselves wrestling with (in designing the CRM portion of the system for instance), and it presents options with the pros and cons of each.

Two surprises I didn't like.......2005-10-25

The text of this book was generally good - although it seemed padded out with a massive listing of model metadata. The book comes with a CD. The first surprise was, the CD does not include the Data Definition Language (DDL) for its sample models... there's an extra cost for that. My question to the publisher would be, what good is the CD you provide for free?
The second surprise is the illustrations. There are plenty of them, but they look like they were done in a primitive graphics package - not in an enterprise modeling tool. They author seems to have invented his own wierd set of conventions, including "foreign keys do not appear in the entities... that is duplicate information". Before you buy this book, take a look at the illustrations of the models. If you can live with the notation, maybe consider buying it.

Good, but sometimes a little too "kitchen sink".......2005-10-22

I like this book. It definitely saves a lot of time and mistakes while data modelling which is one thing you better get right in your app as data migration to a new model both at the app and database level is often a time consuming and bug prone process.

That being said the locked cd is a nuisance and sometimes the data model becomes almost ridiculously detailed. For instance in one part of the book the author talks about extending the person data model to include things such as the history of the person's gender (for instance if they had multiple sex changes). I have seen a lot of overbuilt data models that had lots of entities that were rarely used and contributed to a significant amount of clutter and generally overwhelmed developers with useless details and planning for corner cases that never happened.

Encapsulates lots of practitioner experience to jumpstart modeling.......2005-08-18

I got both the volumes 2 years back. I found the concepts really useful and have applied the modeling constructs to actual engagements in supply chain, corporate banking and travel industry. Especially the "party-role-transaction" construct . It is truly a liberating data modeling construct to apply across industry. The models are also at the right level of abstraction. It elegantly positioned in between 2 modeling extremes ... It is neither too abstract/conceptual nor too specific and detailed to one implementation ... a balance which is typically very difficult to maintain . One word of caution on expectation ... the objective is to treat these models as a starting point for your specific projects. It need not be the only way to model a business scenario. But the book opens the modelers mind upto possibilities which one typically tends to ignore and that is the key! Because often times these "outlier scenarios" tend to come and haunt the architecture once realized physically on a database and is often a painful process to modify. Lens varied experience highlights some specific "land mines" to watch for in modeling these scenarios which has helped me in my projects. In a nut shell I have found the book to express in a concise manner the essential elements of modeling to watch out for

Average customer rating:

Fantastic account of history

Great book

For Everyone - Not Just History Buffs

It makes you think

The 50 Most Significant Individuals in Recorded History
Stan Russo
Manufacturer: Inklings Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Reference | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
General | World | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0975912992

Book Description

This book contains a subjective ranking of the 50 most significant men and women throughout recorded history. The author, Stan Russo, conducted more than four years of meticulous research on 500 important figures throughout the ages before settling on this list. Each person's reasons for inclusion are described in a countdown format leading up to the most significant individual. The book not only provides an educational and entertaining look at numerous cultures and time periods in the process but also builds suspense with each page as readers guess which person comes next and why. After the top ranked name is revealed, the author then provides his rationale for why other famous men and women did not make the cut. This book is an excellent resource for educators and all fans of history by serving as a starting point for further debate and discussion. Reintroduce the fun back into historical studies. Learn about individuals who might otherwise have gone unrecognized. See if your own favorite figures from history made the list. Whether you agree or disagree with the choices and the order they are listed in, you'll think about history in new ways.

Customer Reviews:

Fantastic account of history.......2006-04-02

This book was phenomenal. It did everything the author set out to do. I love list books and this one is a gem. I was actually surprised at some of the selctions, but the author makes a good enough case. My list would have been different though.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It can be used as a teaching tool or just a flat out read. I found myself wanting to know more about this historical subjects. Buy it if you can.

Great book.......2006-01-31

I loved this book. I'm a fan of history and this book provides such a diverse account of the history of the world. It is not biased at all, which many books tend to be. I was glad to see that the author included people from all walks of life. It definately makes the book better and I recommend it for everyone.

For Everyone - Not Just History Buffs.......2005-06-08

I just got my copy and couldn't put it down. The best part about this book is that it does not destroy the suspense by listing the higher ranked persons first. Most lists books do, so when you open the first page, the book is ruined. The author starts with number 50 and works down to 1, allowing the reader to join in and become a part of the book. I would recommend this book, for list buffs, just on that alone.

As far as the text, I thought I knew History, but even I didn't know some of these entries. Yet by the time I read the author's synopsis, I was convinced. I will not ruin it by revealing any of the 50, but will say that any reader will be pleasantly surprised. And Mr. Russo's explanations and prose helps his cause immensely.

For the notable omissions, of which there are some, which one should expect with only 50, Mr. Russo has taken the time to briefly explain why. This shows me that the author is actually interested in sparking debate, rather than just merely handing his opinion over to us, which unfortunately is what some list book authors carelessly do.

In conclusion, if anyone was interested in World History, this is the book for you. I guarantee you will learn a few things. I can't stop discussing it with friends. It is also for anyone who loves lists, as I do.

It makes you think.......2005-05-02

After reading the author's Jack the Ripper book I decided to read this one. You can really tell he did a great deal of research while coming up with this list. He gives you a brief synopsis of each individual's life and accomplishments and why they were significant to the world. He lists military leaders, religious leaders, scientists, economists and others; his choices were interesting and some I would say are kind of controversial especially as to the order.

His style is straight forward and his writing is easy to read. I really like the way he used certain individuals' real names instead of the common ones history usually goes by. (I'd give you an example but that would ruin the list for you.)

If anything this book will introduce you to some people that you may not have heard of before but probably should have. For me it was very enjoyable and it made me think of the people I would put on my list, I would definately recommend it to my friends.

Customer Reviews:

15 centuries of undeserved fame.......2007-02-08

In contrast to other reviewers, I found Otto Maenchen-Helfen's compendium on the Huns to be fun to read. It is always amusing to see a magisterial scholar speak frankly about lesser mortals. Maenchen-Helfen certainly considered E.A. Thompson, the best known of the few English historians of the Huns, to be a slipshod scholar and -- unkindest cut of all in Oxford -- a poor Latinist.

Well, all these scholars are long gone. But the myths than Maenchen-Helfen worked so hard to explode live on. One in particular is standard fare in recent books: that the Huns in eastern (and briefly western) Europe were the same as the Hsiung-nu on the borders of China. This error creates a gigantic transcontinental Hunnic empire in the 4th or 5th centuries that never existed.

Maenchen-Helfen also explodes the story still taught, at least in Catholic school histories, that the bold and holy Leo III confronted Attila and saved Rome. This, too, never happened.

It turns out that despite their well-earned fearsome reputation, the Huns were a passing fad in history and not much of a military force. Masters of the compound bow and mounted, they were hideous raiders. But they won few big battles against the Romans (more properly, Germans in Roman pay) and were often slaughtered. From the time they showed up around 370 to their disappearance was hardly more than 70 years.

Maenchen-Helfen is suitably agnostic about most details, including their language, which may have been a kind of Turkish, their religion, their political organization etc. One of the few things certain is that they boiled mutton in poorly manufactured copper kettles.

Maenchen-Helfen himself is an attractive character. As a young scholar, he spent some months with the last of the "wild" Turkic tribes in Mongolia. That was in 1929. A few years later, he evacuated Germany. His friends who assembled this volume from his papers after his death do not say he was rejecting Hitlerism, but that is the implication. Few enough among German scholars, especially in such a racially charged field as Hunnic studies, showed such humanity.

In exile in California for the rest of his life, he seems to have maintained intellectual integrity in a field where ax-grinding, by German, Soviet, Slav and sometimes Turkish students was rife.

It is odd enough that practically every educated American "knows" a bit about the Huns, though few have even heard of the Sarmatians, who were their more important predecessors. This is thanks to the effect, still lingering after nearly 1,500 years, of outrageously dishonest Christian propaganda. Odder that everything we were taught was wrong. Those who dislike being abused by bad teachers will want to know this book, even if they care little about what the Huns did or who they were.

Masterpiece on the Huns.......2002-12-15

This is truely a masterpiece on the Huns. The sad part is that it is incomplete. It is far superior to the work of Thompson in the Huns even in this incomplete state. The analytical methodical scholarship, typical of savants of the German school, is seen throughout the book. This is supported by the author's firsthand experience amidst the Altaic nomads. One can only imagine the out come if Maenchen-Helfen had lived longer. I do not see scholars of his stature anymore in Central Asian studies.

Incomplete Masterpiece.......2001-04-22

This is a remarkable work. It has all the bearings of a lifetime's achievement, all too noticable in the unfinished nature of the book. Maenchen-Helfin died before it was finished and the book was edited together by Max Knight from the author's papers. It is encyclopedic. If you want to know anything about the Huns then consult this book, E A Thompson's "The Huns" formerly "Attila and the Huns" and P Heather's section in the Cambridge Ancient History Vol. XIII. If it's not in these books then it's not worth knowing. This book, more than the others, is indispensible but difficult to use. It is patchy and often unwieldy but breathtaking in scope and vision. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to know about the Huns who also has the time to work with the book to get the information out.

The World of the Huns : Studies in Their History and Culture

Average customer rating:

The World of the Huns : Studies in Their History and Culture
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfin
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000I4AXXM

Average customer rating:

THE WORLD OF THE HUNS: STUDIES IN THEIR HISTORY AND CULTURE
Otto J Maenchen-Helfen
Manufacturer: Univ. Of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0000E8U6H

Customer Reviews:

Gary Taubes Has A Lot of Explaining To Do.......2004-11-08

Well, now it's 2004, eleven years after Gary Taubes eulogy to Cold Fusion, "Bad Science : The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion". Unfortunately for Mr. Taubes, science eventually sorts things out and figures out what's real and what's not real. Well, now fifteen years after the big Pons & Fleischmen announcement, it turns out that Cold Fusion is on the cusp of regaining legitmacy in the scientific community. Not only has the U.S. Navy revealed a decade of clandestine Cold Fusion research, but numerous reputable labs around the world have verified that the Cold Fusion is real.

While a well written, and fairly well researched book, Mr. Taubes' burial of Cold Fusion is going to more of a historical artifact in the long saga of Cold Fusion than the definitive last word for this controversal field of science. Seems like Mr. Taubes is going to have to update this book soon, with an admission that he missed the mark in 1993.

The History of Cold Fusion -- In Depth.......2001-02-18

This book is excellent. It describes in amazing detail the events leading up to and following the "Cold Fusion" news conference. It's the story of how two scientists fooled themselves into believing that they were onto something so big that they had to claim credit for it -- fast. And it's the story of how the least qualified researchers quickly "confirmed" Cold Fusion, and how the best qualified researchers found nothing. If you're interested in how science is done, both well and poorly, read this book.

revealing, witty.......1999-07-10

I strongly recommend this book. Taubes carries the reader through complex issues with wit and clarity. Some of his deadpan observations are hilarious. (Even though Pons and Fleischmann hadn't tried to measure neutrons, they should have known their apparatus wasn't producing enough of them to be consistent with their claims of nuclear fusion. "They weren't dead, for instance.")

Although it's primarily written in the style of fly-on-the-wall journalism, "Cold Fusion" is also a meditation on human frailties and on the differences between good and bad science. But fundamentally, it is a tragic story of people getting lost in circumstances beyond their control.

Mr. Taubes' book is seriously truncated and misleading.......1999-03-26

When the original Cold Fusion press conference was held on 3-23-89, the reaction of the physics establishment in the first world was immediate , orchestrated and highly hostile. Mr. Taubes book is an effort to spin-doctor an entire area of emerging global science out of exisitence . As of 3-23-99 there are over 3000 peer reviewed scientific papers available in this area of science with nearly every institution connected with nuclear phenomena having checked in. Mr. Taubes confines himself with attacking Drs. Fleischmann and Pons during the begining few years of this controversy and ignoring the mountain of official replications: EPRI, US Naval Weapons Lab China Lake, U of Minnesota, MITI et al... If you want to see how "black propaganda" works read this tome. I recommend it to anyone getting involved in the "new Energy" movement to get a temper of the opposition. As Lord Macaulay put it over a century ago " If a big enough commercial interest were threatened, even Newton's law of Gravity would be called into question". Dana Rotegard, Minnesota Cold Fusion Alliance Former technical consultant Janes Space Markets, Asst. Ed., Futurics, Future Trends Newsletter

Excellent, but protracted.......1998-06-06

The author does an excellent job in chronicling the saga and travail of cold fusion. The "lessons learned" are applicable to numerous technical fields, particularly where conclusions are drawn far ahead of substantiating evidence and critical peer review.

Book Description

This important overview of the special problems facing Southeast Asian rainforests contains essays by many of the world`s leading authorities on these tropical forests, including policy officials as well as scientists. The book emphasizes the need for immediate solutions in maintaining healthy populations of plant and animal species as well as in providing support for the local people.

Tropical Rain Forests of Southeast Asia: A Forest Ecologist's View (Monographs of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University)

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Tropical Rain Forests of Southeast Asia: A Forest Ecologist's View (Monographs of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University)
Isamu Yamada
Manufacturer: Univ of Hawaii Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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