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 Strange Attractors (Chaos Chronicles, Book 2) By Jeffrey A. Carver 1995 | 319 Pages | ISBN: 0312856415 | PDF | 2 MB Background: I came to the book because I was interested in reading Sunborn, the fourth installment in the series, and wanted to get the backstory first. Crossing Neptune was interesting enough to get me to pick up Strange Attractors, but unfortunately I couldn't make heads or tails of the book. I gave up after about 100 pages.The characters just aren't that interesting, and their motivation, to keep moving so as not to be eaten by the mysterious boojum -- no joke -- just couldn't persuade me to stick with the story. There are too many good books in the world to read.  Still a Family: A Guide to Good Parenting Through Divorce By Lisa Rene Reynolds M.D. 2009 | 289 Pages | ISBN: 0814412963 | PDF | 2 MB This book is a "must read" for every parent going through separation, divorce or realtionship issues as well as for every professional who works helping parents through these rough times.Dr. Reynolds uses brief chapters and plain language to help give direct, professional guidance that anyone can follow. The entire book is fabulous. However,the layout of the book allows you to find the answers you seek without having to plow through the entire book.The lives of many children will be dramatically improved as more and more parents read Still A Family.
 Sticking Points: How to Get 5 Generations Working Together in the 12 Places They Come Apart by Haydn Shaw English | October 6th, 2020 | ISBN: 1496447840 | 384 pages | EPUB | 3.80 MB Updated with new findings on Gen Z!  Stencil Graffiti By Tristan Manco 2002 | 116 Pages | ISBN: 0500283427 | PDF | 126 MB book showcases over 400 examples of contemporary stencilled works from across the globe,their innovation and vitality achieved with new materials, methods and approaches. "Street art is both an expression of our culture and a counterculture in itself. Heroturko???CommunicationHeroturko??™ has become a modern mantra: the city streets shout with billboards, fly posters and corporate advertising, all vying for our attention. They almost invite a subversive response. As high-tech communications have increased, a low-tech reaction has been the recent explosion in street art.".
 Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails: Real World Preasymptotics, Epistemology, and Applications (Technical Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb English | June 30, 2020 | ISBN: 1544508050 | 446 pages | EPUB | 11 Mb The book investigates the misapplication of conventional statistical techniques to fat tailed distributions and looks for remedies, when possible. Switching from thin tailed to fat tailed distributions requires more than "changing the color of the dress." Traditional asymptotics deal mainly with either n=1 or n=∞, and the real world is in between, under the "laws of the medium numbers"-which vary widely across specific distributions. Both the law of large numbers and the generalized central limit mechanisms operate in highly idiosyncratic ways outside the standard Gaussian or Levy-Stable basins of convergence. A few examples: - The sample mean is rarely in line with the population mean, with effect on "naïve empiricism," but can be sometimes be estimated via parametric methods. - The "empirical distribution" is rarely empirical. - Parameter uncertainty has compounding effects on statistical metrics. - Dimension reduction (principal components) fails. - Inequality estimators (Gini or quantile contributions) are not additive and produce wrong results. - Many "biases" found in psychology become entirely rational under more sophisticated probability distributions. - Most of the failures of financial economics, econometrics, and behavioral economics can be attributed to using the wrong distributions.  Starting Out: The Caro-Kann (Starting Out - Everyman Chess) By Joe Gallagher 2002 | 193 Pages | ISBN: 1857443039 | PDF | 11 MB If you're looking for a good introduction to the Caro-Kann, this is the book for you. It's not a repertoire book for either side. Gallagher presents the main lines and gives ideas for both sides. As with other books in the Starting Out series, this book avoids deep theory as much as possible. The idea is to give the reader a good foundation off of which to build. This book serves its purpose well, but if you want to be a C-K expert, your reading can't end here.As good as the book is, I must give it one criticism. The author's bias for the White side of the Fantasy variation is quite obvious. He gives Black's basic ideas in the theory sections, but the example games could have been chosen better. A repeated theme seems to be Black does something stupid in the opening and then gets crushed. I understand that no chess game is perfect and that mistakes are made in every game, but I do think that it would have been more useful to include games with more accurate play by Black.So, while you may want something else for the Fantasy Variation, and you will want something else if you intend to go far into the Caro-Kann, this book serves its purpose quite well. It will give you a good introduction to the Caro-Kann.  Starting Out: Sicilian Grand Prix Attack By Gawain Jones 2008 | 178 Pages | ISBN: 1857445473 | PDF | 13 MB Even in an age of video and computer games, chess still continues to be one of the most popular and challenging of the gaming pastimes and enjoys a world wide enthusiasm as evidenced by a proliferation of chess clubs, organizations, and tournaments. "Starting Out: Sicilian Grand Prix Attack" by British Grandmaster Gawain Jones focuses specifically on the Grand Prix Attack as one of White's most aggressive options with respect to traditional Sicilian opening move. Illustrative, step-by-step examples provide the aspiring chess student with everything necessary to employ this opening, complete with key moves for both players, along with discussion of the underlying rationales of the moves themselves. "Starting Out: Sicilian Grand Prix Attack" covers all the main lines after 2 Nc3 and 3 f4; as well as featuring informed and informative chapters on the currently fashionable 2 Nc3 Nc6 3 Bb5 moves. One of the newest titles in the extensive and prestigious Everyman Chess series, "Starting Out: Sicilian Grand Prix Attack" is especially recommended reading for novice chess students, as well as players seeking to improve their tournament game performance.  Odd Einar Olsen, Kirsten Voigt Juhl, Preben H. Lindøe, "Standardization and Risk Governance: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach" English | 2019 | ISBN: 0367259737 | PDF | pages: 307 | 4.1 mb This multi-disciplinary book conceptualizes, maps, and analyses ongoing standardization processes of risk issues across various sectors, processes, and practices.  Stalinism: New Directions (Rewriting Histories) By Sheila Fitzpatrick 1999 | 396 Pages | ISBN: 041515233X | PDF | 2 MB Sheila Fitzpatrick has put together an anthology of essays from the "new generation" of Russian/Soviet scholars to emerge within the last decade. The thread of methodology incorporated here harbors on the social/cultural with a sprinkling of post-modernism with its emphasis on rhetoric and language. All of the essays rely heavily on the availability of new archival sources since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. Sarah Davies ("'Us Against Them': Social Identity in Soviet Russia, 1934-41") reveals the "popular mood" of Soviet society through her analysis of anonymous hate mail sent to various ruling boroughs from the "little people" (pp. 47, 55). One is amazed at the oftentimes-brazen attacks coming from a population living within a "totalitarian" state that promotes terror to achieve its political ends. This article is one of the highlights of the book. The Soviet individual is the topic of three of the book's essays. Jochen Hellbeck's ("Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931-39) psychoanalysis of the diary of a Kulak's son to reveal one's inner turmoil of conforming to the new Soviet society raises some interesting questions about historical methodology. Vladimir A. Kozlov ("Denunciation and its Functions in Soviet Governance: From the Archive of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1944-53") employs a similar approach to explore motivations of written denunciations in the post World War II period. In a slightly different vain, Alexei Kojevnikov ("Games of Stalinist Democracy: Ideological Discussions in Soviet Sciences 1947-52") argues against the Lysenko model claiming not all Soviet scholars and scientist paid lip service to the ruling body. Other pieces take a look at the needs of Soviet society. Julie Hessler ("Cultured Trade: The Stalinist Turn Towards Consumerism") believes the mindset of Soviet citizens remained fixed on a "culture of shortages" in spite of official policies to promote a culture of consumerism (p. 194). Vadim Volkov (The Concept of Kul'turnost': Notes on the Stalinist Civilizing Process") explores the concept of Kul'turnost' (culturedness) before communism and how the Bolsheviks attempted to modify this intangible notion. As with many recent historians, Lewis H. Siegelbaum ("'Dear Conrade, You Ask What We Need': Socialist Paternalism and Soviet Rural 'notables' in the mid-1930's) also gleans from written letters to question the effectiveness of the Soviet reward and punishment system (paternalism) in the 1930's. Perhaps Volkov's article, though noteworthy, seems a bit out of place sandwiched between the other two contributions. Another section is devoted to the effects of terror on the lower rungs of Soviet society. James R. Harris ("The Purging of Local Cliques in the Urals Region, 1936-7") describes the "coping strategies" devised by the local regional (oblast) leadership to protect themselves from the state bureaucracies as well as, Stalin's reaction to them (p. 267). Paul M. Hagenloh ("'Socially Harmful Elements' and the Great Terror") shows the significance broad ranging crime (what he refers to as "marginal") and the police campaigns to combat it played in the overall picture of the Great Terror. Ethnicity and nationalism provide the themes of the final two essays. Yuri Slezkine ("The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism") shows that the Soviet regime exhibited a sympathetic attitude to nationalist/ethnic groups in spite of its proletarian ideology. In a jingoistic laced essay, Terry Martin ("Modernization or Neo-Traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet Primordialism") utilizes the theory of nationalism (principally Earnest Gellner's interpretations) as "an excellent test case" (p. 350) to compare the modernization and neo-traditionalist paradigms invented by scholars as a means of studying Russia's diverse ethnic and national population. Complimenting Sheila Fitzpatrick's own contribution to this book ("Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia"), Martin concludes it was the latter paradigm that reigns supreme in spite of the fact that Communism societies do not advocate a return to traditional modes of society. Undoubtedly recent archival material played heavily into the contributions of this book. Of course this is a positive step in the advancement of Russian historiography. An underlying idea throughout this collection of essays, however, prompts one to ask whether the plethora of newly available archival material is, in one respect, the tail wagging the dog. To clarify, we as historians are taught to begin by formulating an historical question, then consult primary and secondary evidence to conform or refute a thesis. Not that this methodology is carved in stone, still, by reading the contributions of the "new generation" of Russian scholars, this reviewer gets the impression that these researchers are working backwards. That is to say, they travel to the vast reservoirs of new material, collect whatever they can get their hands on and, only then, do they synthesize the material into a workable theory. The tail (new archival material) is wagging the dog (imaginative research). This point is well illustrated in Mark von Hagen's article ("The Archival Gold Rush and Historical Agendas in the Post-Soviet Era," Slavic Review, April, 1993) and magnified within this collection of essays.  Stagolee Shot Billy By Cecil Brown 2003 | 305 Pages | ISBN: 0674010566 | PDF | 2 MB As disappointed as I am by the other reviewers here, is how overjoyed I am, now that I have read this book. Upon coming across this book wandering in a book store (sorry, Amazon), I literally tossed aside the other books in my hands and proceeded to read most of the book in the store, before rushing up to the register and tossing over my hard-earned cash for this incredible story!I had heard the song - the Lloyd Price version - on oldies stations as a child; it had never occurred to me that it might actually be based upon a true story. And once that possibility came to light, I needed to know everything there was to know about Stagger Lee. But the more the is to learn about Stagger, the more there is to know, as myth and legend are wound together with what we believe we know to be true.The author tries to bring us along the path he took, the journey he made to uncover the real Stagger Lee; this leads to what the other reviewers decribe as "poor editing", when what we thought we learned as fact on one page turns into just another rumor. And when you have a story that grows as organically as this one has and a tale with this many authors who claim to be the original, then this is bound to happen.At the end, even being able to say, "we think this is how it went down", provides a fascinating case study of late 19th century Negro life, in that post-slavery, post-Reconstruction world in which being black meant anything you were able to claim as your own was tenuous, at best. And sometimes, getting into a fight over a hat was the best choice to be made. |
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