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The Impact of Intergovernmental Grants on the Aggregate Public Sector
Daniel P. Schwallie
Manufacturer: Quorum Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0899303889 |
Book Description
The effects of the intergovernmental grant system have long been a topic of debate among politicians, economists, and political scientists. Until now, however, the question of the impact of grants on the aggregate public sector has been largely neglected. In this volume, Schwallie offers the first detailed study of the extent to which grants-in-aid have affected the size of government. In the process, he provides a good introduction to both the normative and positive theories of intergovernmental grants and a useful summary of grants-in-aid research over the past 25 years. With the aid of economic models that analyze governmental fiscal decision making, econometric findings, and recent empirical studies, Schwallie develops a well-defined theory that explains how a system of intergovernmental grants might affect aggregate public sector size. Schwallie relates models of fiscal decision making to the effect of intergovernmental grants on recipient government fiscal decisions and defines the "optimal" behavior of both grantor and recipient governments. Several chapters offer a measured critique of both the empirical research on intergovernmental grants and theoretical models proposed to explain grantor and recipient behavior. Finally, Schwallie proposes his own general equilibrium theory of intergovernmental grants, which not only explains the existence of intergovernmental grants, but also provides a structure for measuring their impact on aggregate public sector size. Tables, figures, and diagrams illustrate points made in the text. Students of public finance, economists, grant administrators, and policymakers will find this an illuminating discussion of the impact, focus, and implications of the present intergovernmental grant system.
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Report on Wages in Agriculture, 1997
Fish.& Food, Min.of Agriculture
Manufacturer: Stationery Office
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Labor & Industrial Relations
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ASIN: 0112430473 |
Customer Reviews:
Amusing look at Baseball .......2007-07-31
This is a very amusing look at some funny occurrences in baseball. I particularly liked when Lenny Randle tried to blow a ball foul, when Dave Winfield finally "hit" his cutoff man, the antics of the bullpen squads, and Will McEnaney putting his twin brother in uniform so the former could sit in the clubhouse and watch football on tv. There are many such funny moments here, as well as the antics of umpires, and a recounting of some of the worst of baseball's trades. Still, not every occurrence is humorous. I saw little humor in pitcher Ron Perranoski squirting an autograph-seeking kid, Amos Otis' years of corked bats, nor Pepper Martin's throwing at batters that had dared to bunt on him. Still, most of the stories are humorous, and this concise book should make readers smile. Also, if the first two editions are as good as this one, they should be recommended as well.
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Baseball Hall of Shame 3: Young Fans' Edition: Baseball Hall of Shame 3: Young Fans' Edition
Bruce Nash
Manufacturer: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 067175355X |
Book Description
An in-depth look at the creation of one of Bob Dylan's most celebrated albums, Blood on the Tracks.
In 1974 Bob Dylan wrote, recorded, reconsidered, and then re-recorded the best-selling studio album of his career. Blood on the Tracks was composed as Dylan's twelve-year marriage began to unravel, and songs like "Tangled Up in Blue" and "Shelter from the Storm" have become templates for multidimensional, adult songs of love and loss.
Yet the story behind the creation of this album has never been fully told; even the credits on the present-day album sleeve are inaccurate. Dylan recorded the album twice-once in New York City and again in Minneapolis, with a rag-tag gang of local musicians, quickly rewriting many of the songs in the process.
For A Simple Twist of Fate, the authors have interviewed the musicians and producers, industry insiders, and others, creating an engaging chronicle of how one musician channeled his pain and confusion into great art.
Customer Reviews:
Great for Dylan Fans, Not Necessary if You Are Not a Fan.......2007-05-12
A Simple Twist Of Fate is a fascinating look behind the scenes of the making of one of the greatest of Dylan albums, who is one of the greatest singer-songwriters ever. However, the book includes many technical details of the recording sessions which border on the arcane to boring - I mean, how many people really care about the make and model number of the microphone used?
An interesting exclusion in a book about the making of an album is that the book does not include the complete lyrics of the songs (maybe they thought anybody buying book already knows all the lyrics)?
If you are a true fan of Dylan, you will want to read the book. If you aren't, you can avoid this and still lead a productive life (although you may not read this far unless you were already a fan).
Behind the Scenes.......2007-01-02
Throughout his songwriting career Bob Dylan's creativity knows no bounds. Dylan effortlessly swings back and forth from folk to rock-a-billy to gospel to blues. In 1974, Dylan was looking for a new sound, but at the same time to get back to his roots. The album "Blood on the Tracks" was the successful culmination of this effort, and the album continues to be Dylan's most popular. "A Simple Twist of Fate" gives the everyman's version of the making of this album. Most Dylan fans know that "Blood" was recorded once in New York City and once in Minneapolis. It is clear that the authors favor the Minneapolis sessions not only because one of the authors played on the tracks, but because the sound that was produced seemed crisper. One of the leading gripes of the New York session musicians is that they did not have time to practice or warm up before Dylan went right in to the music. Besides that Dylan kept changing around the chords without any warning to the musicians. Eventually, those same musicians realized that Phil Ramone (the New York producer) "was only interested in getting Dylan on tape. It didn't matter what any of us played. That could be dealt with later.' Because of the various problems with the New York sessions, Dylan went back to the mid-west where his brother set up another session. This session, according to the authors, was a much more successful endeavor. As a result, the album itself is a mix between the relative confusion of the New York session and the more temperate Minneapolis session. Throughout the book, the authors attempt to offer contextual analysis of the album but almost wholly concentrating on the vagaries of Dylan's break-up with his wife. The last third of the book drags itself down with various gripes of the Minneapolis session musicians who did not receive credit for their input. This is the principal weakness of the book and takes away from the strength of the very interesting behind the scenes narrative that the book offers.
Slight.......2006-03-30
A pretty entertaining, minor work in the Dylan-analysis cannon. The making of this album is pretty fascinating, and it gives you a view into Dylan's psychology that it's often difficult to get, but as music journalism it doesn't really hold up. Long periods are direct quote from session men, and the analysis is just weak. I'd go for Invisible Republic (aka The Old, Weird America) or Positively 4th Street if you haven't read those yet.
simple twist of fate:bob dylan and the makeing of blood on thr tracks.......2006-03-26
hi! a nice read of the makeing of a classic album. the songs being either improved or ruined,as other have commented on is a matter of individual taste. the book however is a afternoon well spent.
A Most Rare Book from Masterful Musicians All 'Round.......2006-01-27
First, I must apologize for not quite "getting it" (this book) at the outset. It is a most rare book not only because it is about Bob Dylan's creation of arguably his best album ever; but the authors have written from the masterful point of view of "the musicians" who worked with Dylan all 'round. One not only learns about how "records" back then were engineered and produced but the most fascinating material like why Bob Dylan never used a capo on guitar; why Graham Nash and Steven Stills thought these miraculous songs in the raw were not up to their expectations; why the musicians had difficulty keeping up with Dylan and ultimately gained a deeply profound respect for not only his songwriting ability but extremely complicated musical gifts on a variety of instruments. You will be thrilled to read this especially if you have ever attempted to seriously play solo, or as part of a band and "the gig" let alone - anyone aspiring to do so...now. A great book.
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Judging the Image (Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism)
Alison Young
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
History & Criticism
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ASIN: 041530184X |
Book Description
Art, value, law--the links between these three terms mark a history of struggle in the cultural scene. Studies of contemporary culture have thus increasingly turned to the image as central to the production of legitimacy, aesthetics and order. Judging the Image extends the cultural turn in legal and criminological studies by interrogating our responses to the image. This book provides a space to think through problems of ethics, social authority, and the legal imagination. Concepts of memory and interpretation, violence and aesthetic, authority and legitimacy are considered in a diverse range of sites, including:
* body, performance, and regulation
* judgment, censorship, and controversial artworks
* graffiti and the aesthetics of public space
* HIV and the art of the disappearing body
* witnessing, ethics, and the performance of suffering
* memorial images--art in the wake of disaster.
This book will be fascinating reading for students and academics working at the crossroads of aesthetics, crime, law, and culture.
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Judging the Image
Alison Young
Manufacturer: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MV5J8U |
Customer Reviews:
damn funny........2005-01-14
If you're a tortured artist, a sucker for wit, a would-be critic, a bit of loser when it comes to attractive women, Do you have a passion for bohemian culture, want to travel around europe? Do you have a hard time trying to hold down menial jobs? Have you got a university education? Well, then "Falling towards england" is your book. If you've watched Clive in "post-cards", and remember his hillarious deadpan voice, you'll laugh out loud as you read his hard-to-put down 2nd installment within his "unreliable memoirs" series. If you're a bit of comedian and a bit of a geek at uni, then reading this book will help relieve the pain a little bit as James' details countless romantically inept experiences which he includes in what he calls "Another chapeter in the history of what never happened". pure gold.
* keep an eye out for the talking book version. listening to it is damn funny.
A CLEVER BOY.......2004-07-15
Clive James should be 65 by now, if the arithmetic of the years works in the same way for him as for me. This volume of his memoirs, the second, was issued in 1985, but presumably it calls on diaries kept in his 20's, the period the book covers, so one can't really gauge how it reflects his maturation.
His greatest strength and his main weakness are one and the same thing. He produces some brilliant one-liners, but so many of them, and so similar in style, that they become just a little wearisome over the length of even a shortish book. I became familiar with him first as the BBC film pundit and then as the television critic of The Observer on Sundays. Within the scale of a half-hour programme or a Sunday review he was absolutely unsurpassable for wit and originality. He did various other tv programmes over the years, and I remember in particular a series on a tour he had made in eastern Europe, at the time still the Evil Empire of fond memory. There was a clip of a rock band consisting of various balding 40ish gents in dull suits, on which James commented in his flat Australian accent `They don't just look like secret policemen, they sing like secret policemen'. Does that have you rolling in the aisles? It did me. It still does, and this book rarely goes two pages in succession without something of the kind. As a writer of English he is a consummate workman on his own terms. The tone is studiously light and informal, but the expression is never careless or cheap. Indeed his other fault as a stylist is a kind of demotic pretentiousness. The relaxed and plain-Joe paragraphs are liberally larded with obscure literary and cultural allusions, and it would serve him right if some readers find this patronising. What do you make of a chapter-heading `Solvitur acris James', for instance? I happen to recognise the reference to the ode of Horace starting `Solvitur acris hiems' (Sharp winter melts) but not only will it totally escape many, perhaps most, it doesn't have all that much point anyway in its context.
The period narrated is from his arrival in England in 1962 until just before he went up to Cambridge. As a document of an impoverished, chaotic, Hogarthian gin-lane existence it is simply brilliant. It would be hard to describe the feel of his account as precisely introspective - Rabelaisian might be nearer the mark. In saying that, I begin to suspect that James's manner is beginning to infect me too - the style of Rabelais is nothing like what you might expect from its English dictionary definition or the common usage of the word insofar as it has a common usage. Towards the end I thought I detected a distinctly deeper tone. I wonder what he could really do if he really tried.
Very funny and clever!.......1997-12-30
This is one of a series of autobiographical books from Clive James - Unreliable Memoirs and May Week Was in June being the others - which take Clive from his boyhood in Australia to the hallowed halls of Cambridge University. Clive has a clever, satirical and self-deprecating style. The humor is sly, very personal, and tends to creep up on you. It helps if you have heard him speak and can imagine the text in his rhythmic, expressive voice. The book, although written from the vantage point of Clive's current, and considerable, fame as a television presenter and journalist, does not endow Clive with any more talent than he had at that time. In fact you begin to wonder how he would ever make his mark, let alone a living. The characters he introduces are rich and colorful, presented honestly, to be liked or hated, much as Clive did. The pace is easy and undemanding, it's a gentle book, but not wimpy, rather it is very much in the style of the author himself. I highly recommend reading the books in sequence - Unreliable Memoirs is first - but if not possible, this one is a great place to start to appreciate Clive's work.
Customer Reviews:
Reliable James.......2007-02-27
It's a decade since I read the first instalment of these Memoirs but the contrast effect is strong nevertheless. I remember the first book was funny and well written but I don't remember it having much point. In fact that was the point: "...someone who had done nothing writing a book about how he had prepared himself for not doing it...". Reading the fourth volume is like being given sound advice from a much admired uncle: try to learn from your mistakes so you can do better next time. James illustrates this theme by stuffing up over and over again while his career somehow manages to assemble itself around him. Eventually he even manages to learn from his mistakes. There are dull moments, or at least moments that are dull if you neglected to have a literary career in London during the 1970s, but these are easy to plough through because you know it won't be long before Martin Amis walks into the next pub. On the whole I smiled a lot. Sometimes I laughed loud enough to frighten the chooks, and I cried on the last page right on cue. One thing I didn't do was put it down.
Disappointed.......2006-12-07
I approached the book with anticipation, having enjoyed "Unreliable Memoirs" (Volume One).This latest volume, which brings us up to James' post-Cambridge early career, is unbelievably tedious: solipsistic, self-absorbed, full of endless references to literary editors, TV producers, buddies from the London literary world - most of whom no-one has ever heard of, though the big names, like Martin Amis, get grovelling accolades. James tries to justify his frantic, over-achieving persona by suggesting that he is presenting a cautionary tale from which the willing reader can learn. Don't believe it. The book is unutterably boring, lacking the verbal wit we once enjoyed from this former media celebrity. He should have quit while he was ahead with the fatherless little boy from Kogarah riding his billycart down that hill.
Book Description
The goal of this book is to explain elementary programming concepts such as loops, abstractions, composition, and conditionals to novices of all ages. It teaches the core programming concepts based on simple problems, involving the manipulation of robots or "turtles" as frequently seen in school learning environments. The ideal reader wants to have fun programming. And the reader does not have to be fluent in any programming language before they pick up this book.
The chapters of this book are relatively small. The idea is that each chapter can be turned into a one or two hour lab session. This book creates a path to teach object-oriented programming and promote the encapsulation of data, but most readers will simply appreciate the delightful sequence of fun and easy-to-do exercises with a robot/turtle.
Customer Reviews:
Effective teaching of the ideas of programming.......2006-10-29
This book actually teaching computer programming, rather than teaching a computer programming language. It has to use something, and Smalltalk (Squeak) is gentle enough that it doesn't get in the way of the topic.
Stéphane Ducasse, a prolific writer about object-oriented programming, says in his preface: "The material for this book was originally developed by my wife, who is a physics and mathematics teacher in a French school where the students are between eleven and fifteen years old". Indeed, the pains taken to make object-oriented programming understandable to someone with no background are quite apparent, and they certainly pay off. The author has more than met his goal "to teach you object-oriented programming, because this paradigm provides an excellent metaphor for teaching programming".
Instead of teaching Smalltalk, the computer language he uses, he's actually teaching programming. Smalltalk, originally designed as a teaching language, has minimal syntatic issues and it very simple once the student knows a few basic rules. The reader of this book doesn't have to know much to start workign though, since the author distributes a working Squeak environment that's ready to use. He's already provided a "Bot factory" and a working (virtual) robot to which the reader can send commands, much like the LOGO language and its turtle. Without getting caught in the details of object or class design, the readers start out simply by interacting with objects and sending them messages to control their behavior.
As the reader learns more about what the robot knows how to do, the author devises trickier problems for the reader to solve. These usually involve causing the robot to move in such a way as to draw out a pattern. In doing so, the reader is actually writing programs that control the robots behavior to accomplish the goal. Although the language is really SmallTalk, the author effectively hides most of that through the use of the robot's little language.
The Squeak environment the author distributes is easy to use for anyone with a basic idea of computers (i.e. mouse and keyboard, click here, and so on). It's easy to install because you only need to download it and click on the file. From there, you see the Squeak environment and a ready-to-use robot. Move the mouse near the robot and a speech bubble with a blinking cursor appears. Type a command and the robot responds. Easy peasy.
If you are already a computer programmer, or have some experience with computer programming and want to learn Smalltalk, this book is probably too basic for you. However, if you go to the authors web page (Amazon tends to edit links from reviews, so google the author's name) you'll find links to many free Smalltalk books that you can download as PDFs.
Good stuff!.......2005-09-07
I've used this book and the BotsInc environment to show my 12-yr old daughter how much fun writing software can be and it's been a wild success!
In fact, it all fits together so well that I'm planning to use it as the basis of an introductory series of classes on software writing as craftwork, to be offered through a local craft organization.
Help train the next generation of software writers! Buy this book!
Excellent intro to the nature of programming.......2005-07-27
I whole-heartedly recommend this book for introducing the novice to the nature of computing. I am giving a copy to my 14 year old grandson to introduce him to the fascinating world of programming. He lives 500 km away from me, so he will largely be on his own. I do not expect this to be a problem because the book is perfect for self study.
I want my grandson to learn the essence of computing without spending time on things that he will have to unlearn later or that prove to be blind alleys on his road to computer proficiency . This book is ideal for this purpose. It will let him experience the basic notions of computing in carefully graded steps. Each step tells him how to do fun experiments in the provided environment where he directs a robot/turtle to draw interesting patterns on the screen. The 22 steps take him from a simple sequence of commands to the creation of elaborate simulations; ending at the point where my grandson should start creating his own classes and subclasses.
The experiments are all done in Squeak, a dialect of Smalltalk. It could be argued that my grandson had better learn Java or some other mainstream language. I believe Smalltalk is a better choice because it is simpler, cleaner, and more immediate. The basic concepts are universal and my grandson can easily switch to some other language after he has mastered the fundamentals.
The book is written in a fluent, idiomatic English. It is written in the first person; the writer speaks directly to the reader. This writing style combined with the examples being concrete makes for the smooth communication of what are really abstract ideas.
Anybody wanting to understand more than e-mail and text processing could not do better than to install the free robotic environment on their computer and work through the book’s text and examples.
nifty development environment.......2005-07-25
The use of an Integrated Development Environment [IDE] for a user to learn a language in, and to then program within, is well known. Microsoft has made powerful IDEs for its languages. And the open source Eclipse can be used for Java. Along these lines, Ducasse offers his book. It teaches Smalltalk using the Squeak IDE.
The twist is that Squeak uses the visual metaphors of robots and robot factory, to convey the crucial concepts of objects/classes. As Ducasse explains, Squeak can be directed at an audience that is perhaps of high school age or even younger. So a clear visual feedback between example code and what the student sees then happen is vital, given her limited background and possibly limited attention span.
Squeak uses Smalltalk in part because that is a very minimalist language. If you come from C++, Java or C#, you may be struck by its simplicity, compared to the oodles of classes and notational intricacies of those languages. Which of course also makes it easier for a young student to learn Smalltalk or Squeak itself.
I wonder a little about the book itself, though. A motivated high school student could easily use it. But for some younger students? In that situation, it may well be that the book could be best directed at a teacher, who can then instruct from it.
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