Palau Foreign Policy And Government Guide

Book Description

Strategic and practical information on government, national security, army, foreign and domestic politics, conflicts, relations with the US, international activity, economy, technology, mineral resources, culture, traditions, govt

Book Description

THE international gallery of the best in illustrated erotica! Artcore has set the bar sky-high for innovation and xxxcess, and number four in the series doesn't slow down for a second! Art by such lustry luminaries as Lorenzo Sperlonga, Andrewas Raufeisen, Michael Dutkiewicz, and Cane Hoyer to name just a few. Outrageous airbrush illustration, comix, photo layouts, and other feverish features that make Artcore your one-stop shop for high-tone filth! 80 pages in glorious full color.

Book Description

Humor and laughter are vital for personal and organizational renewal---a common sense idea that isn't too common in many workplaces. With this book you will walk the talk and run your fun, reestablishing people connection, perspective, and creativity. The evidence is now in that humor is effective: from management gurus, key top executives, and most importantly from workshop participants in management sessions facilitated by the author.

Customer Reviews:

A Great Companion to WorkLaughs.......2006-12-29

This is a delightful book that will help you lighten up your workplace. It makes a great companion book to WorkLaugh: Quips, Quotes, and Anecdotes about Making a Buck (also available on Amazon).

Customer Reviews:

Informative and fun.......2002-01-13

This book is not so much about Jackie Chan's life, but his life in films. This book is delightful in it's details. Jackie Chan has managed to make a name for himself and kick his way out from under the shadow of Bruce Lee and this book plots his path. There are great behind the scenes facts, anecdotes from Jackie, and informative facts about all of Chan's films. This is a great book for someone looking to dive into Jackie Chan's filmography.

Fun, Exciting and Delightful Intro to Jackie's life!.......1998-09-21

Dying For Action is a delightful introduction to Jackie's life and movies. Like Jackie, Renee Witterstaetter's book is fun-loving, funny, and at times, a heartwarming look at Jackie's life and growing popularity around the world over the years. The detailed section on every one of Jackie's movies, along with the Renee's well formed thoughts and opinions, is an excellent introduction to each film. One which will easily enable fans to determine which movies to watch fist, before going back to watch them all. Aimed at the potential and new fan market, "Dying For Action" more than adequately fulfills its purpose! Highly recommended, especially to those with little or no real knowledge of Jackie Chan's life, career and movies from across the years! I loved it, and I am sure that so too will most of you as well! Congratulations Renee, for a beautiful tribute to the life and times of our greatest hero, Jackie Chan!

Better than a blank wall.......1998-07-03

This is a good, quick-and-dirty reference to the works of Jackie Chan with some interesting facts and trivia, but there's very little information on his life and training before the movies, which was what I was hoping to get from a book titled "The Life and Films of Jackie Chan." The information is completely lifted from other publications (interviews, fan newsletters, etc.) and it appears that the author did no further interviewing or research for the book. It reads like a term-paper on Jackie Chan, rather than a textbook.

Book Description

Remember when the race to the moon held the rapt attention of millions? Remember the Apollo missions that were supposed to herald the beginning of the Space Age? Thirty years after the last moonwalk, those missions now appear to have ushered in an era's conclusion. What happened?

Marina Benjamin has been asking that question ever since her childhood fascination with space exploration ended in disappointment. Rocket Dreams is her thought-provoking look at the Space Age and the shadow it casts on the fabric of our modern lives. When the futuristic expectations we pinned on Apollo came crashing back to earth, Benjamin argues, new phenomena took up the cause. Pulling movies, literature, junk culture, and the Internet into an irreverent alternative account of the post-Apollo years, she links the demise of the Space Age to groups like the "church" of Noetics -- founded by astronaut Edgar Mitchell -- to the spread of UFO believers, even to the birth of fantasy literature. Propelling us through the golden age of Space Age-dreaming during the seventies and eighties, Benjamin finally touches down on...the Web. Has cyberspace become the new frontier we once thought outer space would be?

From Florida's overgrown rocket graveyards to Roswell, New Mexico, and beyond, this skillful blend of history and social observation examines the rise and fall of America's space obsession as never before.

Download Description

"In 1958, mankind's centuries-long flirtation with space flight became a torrid love affair. For a decade, tens of millions of people were enraptured -- first, by the U.S.-Soviet race to the moon, and finally, as America outstripped its rival, by Project Apollo alone. It is now more than three decades since the last man walked on the moon...more time than between the first moonwalk and the beginning of World War II. Apollo did not, as had been promised by a generation of visionaries, herald the beginning of the Space Age, but its end. Or did it? Project Apollo, like a cannonball, reached its apogee and returned to earth, but the trajectory of that return was complex. America's atmosphere -- its economic, scientific, and cultural atmosphere -- made for a very complicated reentry that produced many solutions to the trajectory problem. Rocket Dreams is about those solutions...about the places where the space program landed. In Rocket Dreams, an extraordinarily talented young writer named Marina Benjamin will take you on a journey to those landing sites. In the vernacular, the third law of motion states that what goes up, must come down. Thus the tremendous motive force that energized the space program didn't just vanish; it was conserved and transformed, making bestsellers out of fantasy literature, spawning Gaia, and giving symbolism to the environmental movement. Everything from the pop cultural boom in ufology to the worldwide Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) feeds on the energy given off by America's leap toward space. Rocket Dreams is an eloquent tour of this Apollo-scarred landscape.

Customer Reviews:

Dreams into Discussions........2006-07-04

What the author Marina Benjamin attempts to do in her book, is to hold serious discussions about the US Space Program and NASA and all the related, high-tech spin-offs of that fast-paced time. She did an excellent job of describing what she felt and what she saw: Ms Benjamin was raised in England and when she came out to the US, one of the first things she did was drive out to see the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. She was most dismayed to see all the Saturn V launch towers were gone.
The surrounding geography she describes as being a ghost town swamp, with acres of hungry yellowed grass - eager to swallow up the highway and all buildings surrounding the Space Center.
The once majestic Apollo rockets are still laying out there at the Space Center, but instead of gleaming white in the sun - they are instead..... decaying...rusting...and rotting. Not at all being inspiring or taking one's breath away in glorious display: in the fashion they deserve to be displayed.
She wonders what went wrong?
How did America come to abandon it's once lofty space goals?

She launches into beautifully written dialogue...take a look;
"...the pull of space has been understood to elicit in us a kind of spiritual phototropism, or flowering a desire to beleive that it is the better part of ourselves that responds to the call of the heavens. And so, when we dream of space travel, we dream of freedom and beauty; perfection and transcendence: we dream of what we may become."

Isn't that excellent?

She has alot more intellectual dialogue to offer up, and her theories of WHY we embarked on this magnificent journey up to the moon is deserving of winning distinguished writing awards and journalistic trophies.
In her attempt to explain our national drive to conquer the moon, she reels in our most grandiose insights...it's beautiful.

After she states the ideals of the Apollo program, she then launches into some negativity and of course, the national budget which destroyed all ideals that APOLLO had. Apollo 18, 19 and 20 were hurriedly shelved without any discussion it seems, and mysteriously Ms Benjamins wonders why Americans let go of the goals of the Moon and Mars to emotionlessly. This is how she discusses the unfortunate demise of our most brilliant NASA dreams.
She casts most of the blame on the astronaughts completely; because she feels that by landing on the Moon, studying the Moon and spending vast amounts of money, energy and talk about the Moon, all that we wanted to do was speak of the Earth.
We didn't really appreciate our planet until we left it.

Valid and interesting point...I only wish the author spent two chapters discussing the primal bond of Mother Earth and her native sons, who were astronaughts. She has some hostility towards them and further discussed it.

Her chapter on ROSWELL inspires me to take a long road trip out that way .... she warns that we may as well be on the surface of MARS when we're out there.
It was an amusing and fun chapter on that forlorn wide spot on the road...Roswell.
The place of alien dreams and possibly it is the UFO capitol of the nation.
She interviews the surviving local folks (who were alive at the time of the alien crash) who have some personal involvment with the alleged UFO crash from 1947. But she is a non-beleiver.

The book rambles on but hits a rough spot on chapters dealing with cyberspace and Alphaworld. I have no interest whatsoever to read about Internet interactive psuedo worlds.
2 chapters are wasted on this...I skipped them completely.
(Chapters 4 & 5).

By chapter six, Ms Benjamins' back in her rowboat and gets her prose rythm back on track. Discussions on the Pioneer 10 and 11 are held -
as well as discussions on SETI. All are pretty interesting, but her best writing is evidenced in chapters 1,2 and 3.

I found this book on sale and I must say, it was food for thought -- I enjoyed the first 3 chapters very intensely.

Her writing in most of the first three chapters can be described as brilliance in the face of the sun. I do recommend this book for all those persons who wish to upgrade their use of the English language, and range of topics to discuss while in the company of intelligent persons.

Does her homework.......2006-01-20

Benjamin's book may burn with a sense of a dream betrayed, but her smoldering, often cynical anger never blinds or paralyzes her narrative. Without feigning objectivity, she takes on a very tough question: what does space mean to us? Then she follows it through launch facilities, astronaut autograph sessions, alleged UFO crash sites in Roswell, and, apparently, into many a library. Unlike most space writers, her facts check out completely. She's not kidding when she traces the modern dream of space-going utopias back to aviation fantasists such as Alfred Lawson. This is the guy who wrote in 1916 that airplanes would bring about the next phase of human development, a superior being known as "Alti-man" who would live in the sky. Echoes of this seemingly laughable notion persist to the present day in the lore of UFO enthusiasts and would-be space pioneers alike. Benjamin does a nice job showing how it's also alive and well among cybernauts building virtual-reality worlds for themselves. Rocket Dreams is a brutally honest journey that will shake spacers down to their core beliefs. For everyone else, it will provide loads of dry wit and some good laughs.

Wow!.......2004-11-08

Sputnik was launched when I was in the [...], and I have followed the space program with rapt attention ever since. But even though I count myself among the geekiest of space buffs, I've sometimes felt that there is a deep contradiction at the heart of the human spaceflight effort. I could never put my finger on it, but Marina Benjamin has.

For one, it never occurred to me that the mesmerizing short film "Powers of Ten," which has been widely shown in schools and museums for 30 years, has been unwittingly undermining the case that we will ever go anywhere in the cosmos. Space is just too vast and empty, as that film shows with visceral impact.

Benjamin uses another film, the 1972 Russian version of "Solaris," as the jumping off point for this thought: "Is mankind's push into the cosmos the result of a natural drive--an urge as deeply embedded as the other basic impulses, for example, the sex drive? Or are we in our determination to fling ourselves off the planet contravening the very essence of who we are?"

Elsewhere, she observes that commerce usually follows in exploration's wake, except that it hasn't really worked out that way for space. "Without successfully accommodating the interests of business, space could never measure up to the 'new frontier' legacy, much less become the 'final frontier'.... It would only be another Everest or another South Pole--which is to say, it would merely be a place whose emptiness and isolation piques our vanity." Wow, has she nailed it!

Her book will be upsetting to those who unreflectingly believe that we are destined to spread throughout the cosmos just as we spread across the Earth. But if you're interested in getting at the origin of that peculiar notion and want to have your mind jostled in a myriad of other ways, I encourage you to read this stimulating little book.

Dream Denied.......2004-06-03

This book is rich in detail about how American psychology has adjusted to the failed promise of space exploration represented by the Apollo program. Benjamin accurately identifies the current of passion that runs through society that so desperately wants to make a connection with the meaning of outer space.

But, it seemed that Benjamin came to some very wrong conclusions based on her observation and research. Benjamin come across sounding like a 'lover scorned.' Profoundly pro-space in her youth, she deeply felt the betrayal of the demise of Apollo, as many of us did. Her reaction, however, reminded me of the woman whose failed romantic experience caused her to disavow the any possibility of a future loving relationship.

Benjamin wrongly concludes that because our current social/political environment rejected further manned exploration beyond Apollo, it meant that we were never really meant to do so in the first place. The fact is the passion for space flight, and eventual human habitation of space, was a passion that came well before and Apollo and still lives on as a burning desire that many are working to realize. That we may have stumbled temporarily as a society does not in the least deminish that passion.

It is a shame Benjamin didn't see it this way.

Money better spent elsewhere.......2004-03-24

As a genuine space buff, I read this hoping that the author would be able to find the legacy of the space program and its impact. She didn't. The book reads as a poorly written collection of magazine articles "from the field," complete with obscure references to other literature that we should have read and paradigms that all enlightened individuals should identify with. It seems as though the author had some notes on the UFO phenomenon and some other interesting pop culture fads and strung these notes into a book.

It's not that I didn't like her conclusions, but there weren't any conclusions to like or dislike. Or any arguments or revelations, for that matter. The only redeeming feature of the book is her space-related reference list, and that's the only thing keeping it on my shelf.

Average customer rating:
Rocket Dreams: How The Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond [A book review from: Space Policy]
I. Miles
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000RR0EGQ

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Space Policy, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:

Customer Reviews:

Awesome.......2003-09-25

... Today my grandmother gave him the Puzzle Gallery: Food book, and he loves it! The only drawback is that the puzzles can be hard to fit together if you try to do them inside the book. I'd recommend doing them out of the book, on a table or the floor.

Excellent introduction to art & development of puzzle skills.......1999-08-09

We got this book for our toddler daughter, who loved looking at the pictures, representing charming examples of children in fine art. At age 2 we introduced her to the actual working of the puzzles, and at 3, having mastered them, it is still one of her favorite books and activities. Highly recommended.

Extaordinary on two levels.......1999-07-11

I just got this book for my 2.75 year old son who loves puzzles. I was very pleased to find that, not only did he love to work the puzzles, he was also fascinated with the paintings themselves. He's too young to address the questions that the text poses about each painting, but has spent a good deal of time simply studying each on his own. I highly recommend this book!

wonderful book art and puzzle aspect make it fun for kids.......1998-10-20

This book was a big hit with 2 boys (ages 7 & 8) They enjoyed answering the questions of what to look for in the painting. And the puzzle of the paintings kept them interested in the art by trying to put it back together. Very nice book great' value And a keepsake for other children to use

Book Description

If you prefer to see what things look like and how to perform a task, instead of just being told, this is your ideal A to Z reference. Part I shows every Photoshop CS2 tool and how to use it. Part II provides step-by-step instructions for more than 130 key tasks and techniques. Both are arranged alphabetically and illustrated in full color. It's the ultimate Visual resource - you'll see!
* Each tool and technique illustrated in color
* Alphabetical listings for easy reference
* Step-by-step instructions for performing dozens of tasks
* A comprehensive guide for visual learners

A Visual guide to
* Identifying and using each Photoshop CS2 tool
* Fine-tuning color, brightness, contrast, and exposure
* Automating various image adjustments
* Converting bitmaps to halftones or RBGs to CMYKs
* Applying more than 15 different filters
* Working with type in illustration

Customer Reviews:

Other books are better.......2007-04-05

I bought this book based on the reviews I read on this website. I also got 3 other books: The photoshop cs2 book for digital photographers by Scott Kelby, Photoshop masking and compositing by Katrin Eismann and Photoshop cs2 killer tips by Scott Kelby and Felix Nelson. The visual encyclopedia is the worst of the four. Scott Kelby is a photoshop wizard who is also a very clear and often amusing writer. I'd buy any of his books. Katrin Eismann's book, masking and compositing, is pretty much indispensible if you are going to be seriously manipulating and compositing images. She has years of experience and her writing is in depth and easy to understand.
The Visual Encyclopedia was put together by about 30 people with Stephen Romaniello as the Author. He is a very bad, very boring, very confusing writer. Take this sentance for example:"To finish the process, you need a brush tool and a black or white Forground color swatch to finish the process." That's from page 304, one of maybe 20 pages that I've read. In addition to several credited editors there are also 3 people credited for 'quality control'. You could learn from this book but you won't learn much. A true photoshop encyclopedia would require volumes of books much thicker than this one. This book barely scatches the surface. Camera Raw is covered in 4 picture filled pages. Unless you like reading bad textbooks or are looking for new ways to fall asleep, I would not buy this book. I wish I never had.

An Extremely Useful Format.......2006-03-23

Most computer books are either a reference guide in a dictionary like alphabetical format, or else they are a tutorial where they start with a blank screen and tell you to do this, do that until you have used most of the functions avaiable in the software package.

This book is different, an interesting and useful combination of the reference format and the tutorial format. Basically it is a reference book, but then each subject is treated in tutorial format. The book is broken into two major parts: tools (about one third of the book) and techniques. Within each part it is arranged alphabetically:

A - Annotations: Attach a Note
B - Background Color
- Blur Tool
- Burn Tool
and so on.

Reading the table of contents will give you a pretty good idea of what's included in the book, and then you can go to the particular entry as you need to do something. This is a format that works for me. As the Visual Books tag line says: 'Read Less - Learn More.' Sooner or later you will have read about and used all the tools and techniques, and it's almost painless to learn what you need as you need it.

Made me an instant PS expert.......2006-02-02

This book is absolutely awesome. I'm just an amateur who uses Photoshop on digital photos, and the beauty of PS has always been that just about anyone can use it at a comfortable depth -- relying on the adjustment tools and not doing anything too tricky. However, this book give me an instant boost to several levels above where I was operating previously. Now I'm working with layers, masks, and channels, doing color replacements and composites that I never would have considered or attempted before...and all I had to do was go to the technique in which I was interested and simply go through the illustrative steps. I'm an instant expert, so to speak, and my creativity has been unleashed. Amazing!

Awesome, definitive reference.......2006-01-25

This book is a heavy volume, but I venture to say that it's just about worth its weight in gold. It contains nearly 400 pages of large-format, step-by-step, illustrated references to Photoshop tools and techniques. Every major tool is here, along with scores of easy-to-follow techniques -- all in color, with numbered steps. An added bonus is the multitude of useful cross-references that appear in nearly every spread. All of this works together to create a supremely useful reference for quick, accessible Photoshop solutions. Every Photoshop user would benefit from this superb publication, and for students, beginning or intermediate users, or those getting acquainted with CS2, it's a "must have."

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