Rural Tourism in Europe: Experiences Development and Perspectives : Belgrade (Serbia and Montenegro) 24 and 25 June 2002, Kielce (Poland) 6 and 7 2003, Yaremcha (Ukraine) 25 a

Book Description

This study develops a new way of studying pork barrel politics based on congressional behavior in the 1980s and 1990s.

Customer Reviews:

Seafaring in the Contemporary Pacific Islands.......2002-05-19

This collection of twelve original essays examines contemporary seafaring practices and the unique relationship of the islanders to the sea. The book adds a new dimension to present scholarship on the Pacific Islands by focusing on ordinary people and their attachment to the sea in the course of daily life rather than on the spectacular exploits of long-distance voyagers. Contributors to the volume examine islanders who depend on the sea for food and transportation, who paddle their canoes or fire up their outboard motors to transport copra to the local trader, whose songs and dances depict maritime themes, and for whom the sea provides a metaphor for all the vagaries of life. Geographical coverage of the book includes one Micronesian community (Enewetak), three Polynesian communities (Nukumanu, Sikaiana, and Rotuma), and four Melanesian ones (Marovo in the Western Solomons, Omarakana and Kaduwaga in the Trobriands, and Vanatinai in the Louisiade Archipelago). An essay on the Bugis of Indonesia points out the relevance of Island Southeast Asia to understanding seafaring in Oceania.--Book cover description

Customer Reviews:

What a wacky trip through space!!!.......2001-05-22

This book is so good!! If you love parodies and love Star Trek, then this book and the others in the series are for you!!!! I just finished reading it for the 5th time!! This time, the crews of the Endocrines must save the staff of Geek Space Nine from dullness. What happens when three Treks meet? A Star Wreck!!!

Star Wreck 6: Geek Space Nine : An Extraterrestrial Example of Extreme Silliness

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Star Wreck 6: Geek Space Nine : An Extraterrestrial Example of Extreme Silliness
Lean Rewolinski
Manufacturer: St Martins Mass Market Paper
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTKBBA

Book Description

This study of the blues by one of America's premier essayists and novelists will change old attitudes about a tradition that continues to feed the very heart of popular music-a blues that dances, shakes, shimmies, and exchanges bad news for stomping, rollicking, pulse-quickening good times.

Customer Reviews:

Amazing........2005-09-27

The book has become a favorite, it is quite phenomenal. He does no less than match the poetry of the music in his exquisite depiction of it through his writing. If anyone likes blues, it is a must-have.

most essential work of jazz aesthetics.......2004-08-13

"Stomping the Blues" is a sound and profound appreciation, history, aesthetics and anthropology of the music. Written by an accomplished novelist and essayist, it might also be the funniest and most well-written book on the music, if not the most original book to boot. To label Murray a racist simply because he is less than impressed with certain white jazz musicians is preposterous. What Murray implies, on p. 196 and elsewhere, is that because these white musicians have not been raised in black communities (in the black church, etc.) they have a less rich idiomatic musical vocabulary than the black musician. Murray does not claim that they cannot play the music so that a cultural insider will appreciate it, but that they tend not to. In any case, this didn't stop Murray and Benny Goodman from becoming good friends after "Stomping the Blues" was published. To call it a vision of "racial purity" is give it an absolutely base and scatterbrained reading. People who get so upset about the book because they feel it denies the historical place of the white musician tend, I believe, to condescend to and dismiss the tastes of the people (black people) who created the music in the first place.

Indeed, "Stomping the Blues" was the initial aesthetic cornerstone of "Jazz at Lincoln Center", but J@LC has strayed from the book quite a bit in recent seasons. I do not think it's quite accurate to label the project "conservative" unless we're talking about it in the musical sense of a "conservatory" - to conserve the great classics, etc.. I would argue that Murray gives scant attention to Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane (and whoever else), not because their works became so "avant-garde", but because their works from another angle became "conservative", i.e., tended to sound too European; too much like young European/Eurocentric American composers of the time.

Blues music as Ecstatic Pagan Affirmation and Incantation.......2004-08-13

Albert Murray's "Stomping the Blues" is not an organized book in some kind of European sonata-style way, but rather much like what it talks about--a Blues tune. Beginning with a word "vamp" and ending with an outbreak, in between are a series of analytical riffs of the nature and function of the Blues Music disguised as chapters. Murray's riffs are connected by periodic restated themes, one of which is that Blues music is not essentially melancholy or depressing at all. Rather, Blues music is best defined as music that arises to "stomp" and beat away the blues with rituals of purification, ecstasy, and celebration. So for Murray, the music most might call Jazz is simply one more version of Blues music. Even when the lyrics are down, the music is often intended to highlight irony and audience participation (instead of commiseration). The dominant metaphor for Blues music in this book is a kind of 'ecstatic pagan incantation'--one that brings one of the important existential secrets of responding to difficulty and tragedy in life. As the Black Church brings it own mix of solemnity and reverence to African-American life, so Blues Music responds with its dialectical opposite. And since Blues and Jazz musicians were raised in the Church to begin with, there remains a link, however, tense, between the two spaces of life.

Along the way, Murray argues that Blues instrumentation is much more important than lyric content, that ecstatic incantations of talking drums can't be properly understood in European musicological formalism, and that Blues music is distinctly African-American, and in many ways European, than anything African. Its "Afro-U.S." he calls it. Blues music is, like lyric poetry, more concerned with the personal than the political, more concerned with contrived stylistic mastery than raw emotional output, and more concerned with the aesthetic heroism of adaptive, innovative geniuses than folkart conservatism. Yes, he's harsh with white liberal critics. He's still grudging over the way that white media crowned Paul Whiteman, Bix Beiderbecke, and Benny Goodman--- over Duke Ellington and Count Basie. And he wants to at once claim the centrality of African-American experience and cultural contours to understanding the music, much like Amiri Baraka's famous "Jazz and the White Critic" article. Murray struggles with the same issues jazz and blues historians for years have struggled with--how to understand conservatism and innovation in art, where to place hierarchies such as "folk art" and "fine art," and how recently to take discussions of Blues music. At times he is less successful than others in this way. But to read this book is to understand one of the ideological underpinnings to the new conservatism of the Lincoln Center project, and that is vitally important for all students of cultural history. To dismiss it as "racist" is to misunderstand the cultural context Murray is writing from, and to overstate the absence of Anthony Braxton, as well as the cursory treatments of Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis is to give short shrift to a text published in 1976, when these musicians were still very much in flux.

Deeply flawed, but also inspiring.......2003-12-03

Yes, Murray can be an idiot, and yes he can be offensive and yes he can seemingly just turn his ears (and mind) off sometimes.

One the whole, though, this book is obviously a product of love rather than hate. The photos of artists, venues and record labels, and the writing about the great music he loves I find to be inspiring and enlightening.

Murray is very good at listening with the context of the artist in mind, and he does a good job of discrediting some of the abstract artistic standards some critics have applied to what was in many ways an African American folk expression.

He definitely helped me come to a better and different understanding of Louis Armstrong as an artist and as a man. For this I can thank him, though there is plenty else in the book that I'll just pack away in my mental collection of Murray-isms.

But there are things to be gained from this book if you don't let it get you too angry.

Outrageous vision of racial purity in the arts.......2003-09-29

Murray's ideas that White people cannot produce genuine jazz have done a great deal of harm in their influence. The racist comments, particularly re Bix Beiderbecke and the photograph from "Great Day In Harlem" are absolutely outrageous.

Average customer rating:

Stomping the Blues

Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000EG7J4U

Product Description

A book that rewrites all our previous definitions of the blues as music. The study of American blues music, with roles played by such artists as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Charlie Parker, Jo Jones, Duke Ellington and numerous others.

Average customer rating:

Stomping the Blues
Albert Murray
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000MRE7IM

Product Description

Copyright page reads, "This Da Capo Press paperback edition of Stomping the Blues is an unabridged republication of the edition published in New York in 1976. It is reprinted by arrangement with the author. It is NOT the revised edition circa 1989.

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Stomping the Blues.

Manufacturer: Vintage Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000I31XCI

Average customer rating:

STOMPING THE BLUES_(R)
Albert Murray
Manufacturer: Da Capo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OSTRXY

Book Description

Conspiracy theories are everywhere in post-war American culture. From postmodern novels to The X-Files, and from gangsta rap to feminist polemic, there is a widespread suspicion that sinister forces are conspiring to take control of our national destiny, our minds, and even our bodies. Conspiracy explanations can no longer be dismissed as the paranoid delusions of far-right crackpots. Indeed, they have become a necessary response to a risky and increasingly globalized world, in which everything is connected but nothing adds up.
Peter Knight provides an engaging and cogent analysis of the development of conspiracy culture, from 1960s' countercultural suspicions about the authorities to the 1990s, where a paranoid attitude is both routine and ironic. Conspiracy Culture analyzes conspiracy narratives about familiar topics like the Kennedy assassination, alien abduction, body horror, AIDS, crack cocaine, the New World Order, as well as more unusual ones like the conspiracies of patriarchy and white supremacy.
Conspiracy Culture shows how Americans have come to distrust not only the narratives of the authorities, but even the authority of narrative itself to explain What Is Really Going On. From the complexities of Thomas Pynchon's novels to the endless mysteries of The X-Files, Knight argues that contemporary conspiracy culture is marked by an infinite regress of suspicion. Trust no one, because we have met the enemy and it is us.

Customer Reviews:

Pipes, Barkun, Knight uninformed trio.......2004-03-25

Another useless book that is mindlessly critical of people who are interested in protecting our liberties, rights, and freedoms. Authors such as these seem to desire a curtailing of the freedom that everyone in the world deserves. It is unfortunate that such drivel still seeps out of publishing houses.

Amazon.com

Cable television networks, since they have an enormous capacity to transmit analog and digital information and reach into almost every North American home, are being called upon to serve as the infrastructure for all sorts of consumer services. In Broadband Cable TV Access Networks: From Technologies to Applications, Intel Corporation expert Shlomo Ovadia explains the operation of cable television networks for the benefit of network designers, operations engineers, and people engaged in designing cable modems and other equipment. The approach in this book is detailed and specialized, but the clear writing style, attention to detail, and eagerness to explain how principles extrapolate out to customer services make it outstanding.

Ovadia approaches the subject through electrical engineering and electronics principles, illustrating explanations with circuit diagrams, oscilloscope traces, equations, and plots. Explanations of fundamentals are accompanied by discussions with block diagrams, and are dissected in ever greater detail.

While this book has done a great job of explaining, from a technical point of view, the increasing overlap of the cable television network with the switched telephone network and the Internet, be sure to read Telecommunications Convergence for a more (but not entirely) business-oriented look at the issue. --David Wall

Topics covered: Cable television networks and why they work, with emphasis on how they can be adapted for all sorts of last-mile broadband applications. Fundamentals are covered, such as lightwave transmitters and receivers, optical fiber amplifiers, RF digital quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modems, and the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) protocol.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent book on CATV network.......2006-01-10

The book "Broadband Cable TV Access Networks" by Dr. Ovadia presents both a high level overview and low level details of CATV technology. It is a well organized system engineering handbook for cable TV network. It gives an excellent introduction to the overall CATV architecture. The introduction is very descriptive and easy to understand. And then extends to rigorous technical details in transmission technologies (over both fiber and coax cable), RF and digital transceiver design, cable modem protocols, software architecture and applications. The book can be a good tutorial for people interested in CATV technology and a good reference for engineers working in the area.

Good Cable Modem Technology Tutorial.......2005-02-02

As a non-expert in the field, "Broadband Cable TV Access Networks" is a very complete book that is well-organized and full of information. The introduction sections are very clear and setup up the rest of the book very well. It is clear that Shlomo is an expert in the field and also a very good writer that integrates difficult concepts into a readable story. On areas that Shlomo is not an expert in, the descriptions are not so complete. Sometimes, the book moves too quickly through the details, but the amount of material in the book is impressive for its size. Overall this is a very good book that holds the reader's interest.

Broadband Cable TV Access Networks by Shlomo Ovadia.......2003-07-23

I am working in MRV Communications in the field of FFTx Receivers Transceivers design, focusing in the analog side of the system video transport.

I had purchased the book and enjoyed reading it. Indeed, it is a great system engineering book covering a broad spectrum of technical subjects which I have a lot of interest. It broadened my knowledge on the arena of CATV which was new to me.
(I came from Israel from the Satellite Communications field).

It is a recommended book to any communications engineer, component engineer and system engineer dealing with fiber optics data communications and video transport.
It covers all design aspects in all perspectives, system wise and component wise.
It provides a broad review, showing the affects of RF chains and , optical links imperfections on a QAM signal in most scientific analytic and professional way.

The book is structured as a zoom-in, taking the reader from a broad picture of definitions, system architectures and topologies such as HFC, PON, zooming into each building block requirements and constrains such as optics CWDM WDM optical none linearity, pre-distortions, CATV receivers topologies , specs and optimized solution. Additionally it covers the aspects of protocols such as DOCSIS and CATV standards showing how to approach to system design, understanding its requirements in order to reach the proper design.

The books provides block diagrams, schemes plots and conclusion to each chapter subject.

Indeed Dr. Shlomo Ovadia did here a huge effort and a great job.
This book is must have in any technical library.

Avi Brillant
Senior Design Engineer
Luninent-Inc
20550 Nordhoff Street
Chatsworth
CA-91311

Cell 818-266-7330

BroadBand Cable TV Access Networks.......2003-07-15

I am working in MRV Communications in the field of FFTx Receivers Transceivers design, focusing in the analog side of the system video transport.

The book is structured as a zoom-in, taking reader from a broad picture of definitions, system architectures and topologies such as HFC, PON,zooming into each building block requirements constrains such as optics CWDM WDM optical none linearities, pre-distortions, CATV receivers topologies , specs and optimized solution. Additionally it covers the aspects of protocols such as DOCSIS and CATV standards showing how to approach to system design, understanding its requirements in order to reach the proper design.

The books provides block diagrams, schemes plots and conclusion to each chapter subject.

Indeed Dr. Shlomo Ovadia did here a huge effort and a great job.
This book mast have in any technical library.

Avi Brillant
Senior Design Engineer
Luninent-Inc
20550 Nordhoff Street
Chatsworth
CA-91311

Cell 818-266-7330

An excellent introduction to CATV technology.......2003-04-13

In this book Shlomo Ovadia gives an excellent introduction to many aspects of CATV technology. Starting from the analog TV background, following by optical transmission, the author covers issues in modulation, impairments, protocols and applications. Although the book is a bit US-centric, and some European standards may deserve more attention (like the DVB set of standards), at the bottom line, I would recommend this book as a reference for digital CATV and cable modem technology.

Customer Reviews:

Had I known then what I know now..........2007-05-14

I wish I had known about this book much sooner. I began reading this after my dad was hospitalized on 4/10/07, I purchased the MGN-3, protocel and graviola mentioned in the book with the hopes of being able to administer it to him for the reccurence of cholangiocarcinoma, but he passed away in the hospital on 4/30/07. Even in my bereavement, I have pointed several people in the direction of this book because I know that's what my daddy would want me to do. My mom is a 13 year breast cancer survivor so she, my sister and I will still arm ourselves with the powerful information inside this book and share it with anyone who even mentions the word cancer. Chemotherapy and radiation are not the only options available! I only wish the medical doctors would have been more concerned with saving my father by trying the alternative therapies rather than being tied to helping the pharmaceutical companies make a profit with the help of the FDA. You will NOT be disappointed in this book.

Pays for itself in 10 minutes.......2005-02-08

This is a fantastic book! It is written extremely positive and will be a "Bible" throughout a cancer ordeal. It is a ray of hope and friend for the lost soul on a solo Cancer journey. It is very well organized and easy to read. It is up-to-date and has many online links that work on the web. It will provide a positive and structured environment to help you make intelligent decisions in healing yourself with or without a doctor's aid. This book taught me more about Cancer than a visit to the Oncologist only after 10 minutes of browsing it.

Cutting Edge!!!.......2003-11-11

OK, sorry for the pun, but it's true. Bill Henderson has found a way to provide the best researched PROVEN treatments and CURES for cancers of all shapes and sizes in an easy to read and understand format. While waiting for my doctors to schedule, execute and analyse a biopsy of my neck (prior tests have made them suspect some kind of lymphoma), I started doing some research of my own and stumbled across Bill's fabulous book. I immediately started upping my dosages of some of the supplements I was already taking, and added some others recommended by several of the doctors and scientists mentioned in the book. I also modified my diet somewhat. Within 3 days of starting, the seering and throbbing pain I was experiencing DISAPPEARED! The mass in my neck, what ever it is (still haven't got the results back from the biopsy) softened and shrunk by 20-30%. Within a week, I can now see the shape of my face again (mass now smaller by over 50%!!), and I feel like I am winning my fight already! I am still fine-tuning my protocol based on many of the recommendations in Bill's book, have several supplements on order through discount nutrient providers (all found in the book), and have been constantly reading new material through many of the links provided within the book. It may only seem like 200 pages or so, but with the links to other invaluable sites as well as the newsletter archives on Bill's website, you too can become an "expert" on cancer and alternative treatments in a very short time. And you can keep learning new proven techniques because Bill is contstantly researching and updating his site with the latest and greatest. This book could literally save your life or the life of someone you love. Even if no one you know has cancer, you can learn how to insure that you and your family never get it by reading this book and learning EXACTLY what causes cancer (turns out it's pretty simple!) and how you can make yourself virtually cancer-proof. I only wish I knew this information 3 years ago when my Dad was battling leukemia. Chemo did not save him. Read this book. You won't regret it.

A MUST HAVE BOOK FOR ANYONE DEALING WITH CANCER!!!.......2003-11-03

I must say that Bill has really done his research and has written a book that is a definite wealth of information for the cancer patient and family. This information will not be shared by your run of the mill oncologist! Bill's book will direct you to some of the finest websites that offer alternatives to cure your cancer. Also you will be able to locate Dr's who are willing to work with you when you choose not to go with the cut, burn and poison treatments if you have cancer. The book tells you about lifestyle changes, being healthy eating, exercise and what supplements to take to help cure your cancer. If you are looking for this kind of information and feel lost out there in cyberspace, then you need this VERY helpful guide book of Bills! Thank you Bill for helping so many people! Lynn Miller P.S. Bill also made this book very easy to understand.

An Easy Read of Fantastic Information.......2003-08-12

Bill Henderson's book is a solid, comprehensive work of information for curing your cancer. It should give real hope, not false hope, to anyone diagnosed with cancer who doesn't know which way to turn for help, or whom to believe, trust or rely on. It is objective, exhaustively researched, and presented in a format that is not only reader friendly but imbues a feeling of confidence and optimism.
Definately five *****

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