Recent work in dynamical systems theory has both highlighted certain topics in the pre-existing subject of topological dynamics (such as the construction of Lyapunov functions and various notions of stability) and also generated new concepts and results. This book collects these results, both old and new, and organises them into a natural foundation for all aspects of dynamical systems theory.
In the long run of a dynamical system, after transient phenomena have passed away, what remains is recurrence. An orbit is recurrent when it returns repeatedly to each neighborhood of its initial position. We can sharpen the concept by insisting that the returns occur with at least some prescribed frequency. For example, an orbit lies in some minimal subset if and only if it returns almost periodically to each neighborhood of the initial point. That is, each return time set is a so-called syndetic subset ofT= the positive reals (continuous time system) or T = the positive integers (discrete time system). This is a prototype for many of the results in this book. In particular, frequency is measured by membership in a family of subsets of the space modeling time, in this case the family of syndetic subsets of T. In applying dynamics to combinatorial number theory, Furstenberg introduced a large number of such families. Our first task is to describe explicitly the calculus of families implicit in Furstenberg's original work and in the results which have proliferated since. There are general constructions on families, e. g. , the dual of a family and the product of families. Other natural constructions arise from a topology or group action on the underlying set. The foundations are laid, in perhaps tedious detail, in Chapter 2. The family machinery is then applied in Chapters 3 and 4 to describe family versions of recurrence, topological transitivity, distality and rigidity.
This book describes the category of metric manifolds and metric maps to which a broad class of theorems and constructions extend from the realm of compact manifolds. The category is a broad one because all paracompact manifolds admit metric structures.
A simplicial dynamical system is a simplicial map $g: K DEGREES* \rightarrow K$ where $K$ is a finite simplicial complex triangulating a compact polyhedron $X$ and $K DEGREES*$ is a proper subdivision of $K$, for example, the barycentric or any further subdivision. the dynamics of the asociated piecewise linear map $g: X X$ can be analyzed by using certain naturally related subshifts of finite type. Any continous map on $X$ can be $C DEGREES0$ approximated by such systems. Other examples yield interesting
An Ellis semigroup is a compact space with a semigroup multiplication which is continuous in only one variable. An Ellis action is an action of an Ellis semigroup on a compact space such that for each point in the space the evaluation map from the semigroup to the space is continuous. At first the weak linkage between the topology and the algebra discourages expectations that such structures will have much utility. However, Ellis has demonstrated that these actions arise naturallyfrom classical topological actions of locally compact groups on compact spaces and provide a useful tool for the study of such actions. In fact, via the apparatus of the enveloping semigroup the classical theory of topological dynamics is subsumed by the theory of Ellis actions. The authors'exposition describes and extends Ellis' theory and demonstrates its usefulness by unifying many recently introduced concepts related to proximality and distality. Moreover, this approach leads to several results which are new even in the classical setup.
The goal of this work is to describe the dynamics of generic homeomorphisms of certain compact metric spaces $X$. Here ``generic'' is used in the topological sense -- a property of homeomorphisms on $X$ is generic if the set of homeomorphisms with the property contains a residual subset (in the sense of Baire category) of the space of all homeomorphisms on $X$. The spaces $X$ we consider are those with enough local homogeneity to allow certain localized perturbations of homeomorphisms; for example, any compact manifold is such a space. We show that the dynamics of a generic homeomorphism is quite complicated, with a number of distinct dynamical behaviors coexisting (some resemble subshifts of finite type, others, which we call `generalized adding machines', appear strictly periodic when viewed to any finite precision, but are not actually periodic). Such a homeomorphism has infinitely many, intricately nested attractors and repellors, and uncountably many distinct dynamically-connected components of the chain recurrent set. We single out several types of these ``chain components'', and show that each type occurs densely (in an appropriate sense) in the chain recurrent set. We also identify one type that occurs generically in the chain recurrent set. We also show that, at least for $X$ a manifold, the chain recurrent set of a generic homeomorphism is a Cantor set, so its complement is open and dense. Somewhat surprisingly, there is a residual subset of $X$ consisting of points whose limit sets are chain components of a type other than the type of chain components that are residual in the space of all chain components. In fact, for each generic homeomorphism on $X$ there is a residual subset of points of $X$ satisfying a stability condition stronger than Lyapunov stability.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of Industry Oriented Conferences held at IFIP 20th World Computer Congress in September 2008. The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. Proceedings and post-proceedings of refereed international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.
The main object of this work is to present a powerful method of construction of subshifts which the authors use chiefly to construct WAP systems with various properties. Among many other applications of these so-called labeled subshifts, the authors obtain examples of null as well as non-null WAP subshifts, WAP subshifts of arbitrary countable (Birkhoff) height, and completely scrambled WAP systems of arbitrary countable height. They also construct LE but not HAE subshifts and recurrent non-tame subshifts.
Hopf bifurcations occur in the class of simple genetic models for the combined effect of selection and recombination. The demonstration of cycling in such models is biologically unexpected. To study this phenomenon we describe the locus of positions at which Hopf bifurcation occurs in the two-locus-two-allele model. The description is given by an explicit, computable parametrization which can be used to generate all possible examples. Asymptotic estimates show that limit cycles can occur.
A simplicial dynamical system is a simplicial map $g: K DEGREES* \rightarrow K$ where $K$ is a finite simplicial complex triangulating a compact polyhedron $X$ and $K DEGREES*$ is a proper subdivision of $K$, for example, the barycentric or any further subdivision. the dynamics of the asociated piecewise linear map $g: X X$ can be analyzed by using certain naturally related subshifts of finite type. Any continous map on $X$ can be $C DEGREES0$ approximated by such systems. Other examples yield interesting
As banks crashed, belts tightened, and cupboards emptied across the country, American prisons grew fat. Doing Time in the Depression tells the story of the 1930s as seen from the cell blocks and cotton fields of Texas and California prisons, state institutions that held growing numbers of working people from around the country and the world—overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately non-white, and displaced by economic crisis. Ethan Blue paints a vivid portrait of everyday life inside Texas and California’s penal systems. Each element of prison life—from numbing boredom to hard labor, from meager pleasure in popular culture to crushing pain from illness or violence—demonstrated a contest between keepers and the kept. From the moment they arrived to the day they would leave, inmates struggled over the meanings of race and manhood, power and poverty, and of the state itself. In this richly layered account, Blue compellingly argues that punishment in California and Texas played a critical role in producing a distinctive set of class, race, and gender identities in the 1930s, some of which reinforced the social hierarchies and ideologies of New Deal America, and others of which undercut and troubled the established social order. He reveals the underside of the modern state in two very different prison systems, and the making of grim institutions whose power would only grow across the century.
This book comprises an extensive series of analyses which span the respective oeuvres of these, surprisingly paired, world literary masters. The poet and novelist-philosopher, though treated separately, nevertheless prove complementary book-fellows. Notably, both espouse and practice a vigilant attentiveness; the obligation to strive for good by one’s lights, and to create lest history repeat; and on rare occasions, a duty to engage in moral contradiction for a higher cause, though only after the most scrupulous reflection. This book presents the ingenious artistry of both writers and further proves their contemporary relevance, as well as giving readers the ability to look at the works of Milton and Camus through a new lens.
An illuminating history of the reform agenda in higher education. For well over one hundred years, people have been attempting to make American colleges and universities more efficient and more accountable. Indeed, Ethan Ris argues in Other People’s Colleges, the reform impulse is baked into American higher education, the result of generations of elite reformers who have called for sweeping changes in the sector and raised existential questions about its sustainability. When that reform is beneficial, offering major rewards for minor changes, colleges and universities know how to assimilate it. When it is hostile, attacking autonomy or values, they know how to resist it. The result is a sector that has learned to accept top-down reform as part of its existence. In the early twentieth century, the “academic engineers,” a cadre of elite, external reformers from foundations, businesses, and government, worked to reshape and reorganize the vast base of the higher education pyramid. Their reform efforts were largely directed at the lower tiers of higher education, but those efforts fell short, despite the wealth and power of their backers, leaving a legacy of successful resistance that affects every college and university in the United States. Today, another coalition of business leaders, philanthropists, and politicians is again demanding efficiency, accountability, and utility from American higher education. But, as Ris argues, top-down design is not destiny. Drawing on extensive and original archival research, Other People’s Colleges offers an account of higher education that sheds light on today’s reform agenda.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An award-winning psychologist reveals the hidden power of our inner voice and shows how to harness it to combat anxiety, improve physical and mental health, and deepen our relationships with others. LONGLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • “A masterpiece.”—Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit • Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Adam Grant, and Daniel H. Pink’s Next Big Idea Club Winter 2021 Winning Selection One of the best new books of the year—The Washington Post, BBC, USA Today, CNN Underscored, Shape, Behavioral Scientist, PopSugar • Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness starred reviews Tell a stranger that you talk to yourself, and you’re likely to get written off as eccentric. But the truth is that we all have a voice in our head. When we talk to ourselves, we often hope to tap into our inner coach but find our inner critic instead. When we’re facing a tough task, our inner coach can buoy us up: Focus—you can do this. But, just as often, our inner critic sinks us entirely: I’m going to fail. They’ll all laugh at me. What’s the use? In Chatter, acclaimed psychologist Ethan Kross explores the silent conversations we have with ourselves. Interweaving groundbreaking behavioral and brain research from his own lab with real-world case studies—from a pitcher who forgets how to pitch, to a Harvard undergrad negotiating her double life as a spy—Kross explains how these conversations shape our lives, work, and relationships. He warns that giving in to negative and disorienting self-talk—what he calls “chatter”—can tank our health, sink our moods, strain our social connections, and cause us to fold under pressure. But the good news is that we’re already equipped with the tools we need to make our inner voice work in our favor. These tools are often hidden in plain sight—in the words we use to think about ourselves, the technologies we embrace, the diaries we keep in our drawers, the conversations we have with our loved ones, and the cultures we create in our schools and workplaces. Brilliantly argued, expertly researched, and filled with compelling stories, Chatter gives us the power to change the most important conversation we have each day: the one we have with ourselves.
When so much in Russia has changed, the banya remains. For over one thousand years Russians of every economic class, political party, and social strata have treated bathing as a communal activity integrating personal hygiene and public health with rituals, relaxation, conversations, drinking, political intrigue, business, and sex. Communal steam baths have survived the Mongols, Peter the Great, and Soviet communism and remain a central and unifying national custom. Combining the ancient elements of earth, water, and fire, the banya paradoxically cleans bodies and spreads disease, purifies and defiles, creates community and underscores difference. Here, Ethan Pollock tells the history of this ubiquitous and enduring institution. He explores the bathhouse's role in Russian identity, following public figures (from Catherine the Great to Rasputin to Putin), writers (such as Chekhov and Dostoevsky), foreigners (including Mark Twain and Casanova), and countless other men and women into the banya to discover the meanings they have found there. The story comes up to the present, exploring the continued importance of banyas in Russia and their newfound popularity in cities across the globe. Drawing on sources as diverse as ancient chronicles, government reports, medical books, and popular culture, Pollock shows how the banya has persisted, adapted, and flourished in the everyday lives of Russians throughout wars, political ruptures, modernization, and urbanization. Through the communal bathhouse, Without the Banya We Would Perish provides a unique perspective on the history of the Russian people.
We are taught in civics class that the Constitution provides for three basic branches of government: executive, judicial, and legislative. While the President and Congress as elected by popular vote are representative, can they really reflect accurately the will and sentiment of the populace? Or do money and power dominate everyday politics to the detriment of true self-governance? Is there a way to put &"We the people&" back into government? Ethan Leib thinks there is and offers this blueprint for a fourth branch of government as a way of giving the people a voice of their own. While drawing on the rich theoretical literature about deliberative democracy, Leib concentrates on designing an institutional scheme for embedding deliberation in the practice of American democratic government. At the heart of his scheme is a process for the adjudication of issues of public policy by assemblies of randomly selected citizens convened to debate and vote on the issues, resulting in the enactment of laws subject both to judicial review and to possible veto by the executive and legislative branches. The &"popular&" branch would fulfill a purpose similar to the ballot initiative and referendum but avoid the shortcomings associated with those forms of direct democracy. Leib takes special pains to show how this new branch would be integrated with the already existing governmental and political institutions of our society, including administrative agencies and political parties, and would thus complement rather than supplant them.
Ethan Mordden has been hailed as "a sharp-eared listener and a discerning critic," by Opera News, which compares his books to "dinner with a knowledgeable, garrulous companion." The "preeminent historian of the American musical" (New York Times), he "brings boundless energy and enthusiasm buttressed by an arsenal of smart anecdotes" (Wall Street Journal). Now Mordden offers an entirely fresh and infectiously delightful history of American musical theatre. Anything Goes stages a grand revue of the musical from the 1700s through to the present day, narrated in Mordden's famously witty, scholarly, and conversational style. He places us in a bare rehearsal room as the cast of Oklahoma! changes history by psychoanalyzing the plot in the greatest of the musical's many Dream Ballets. And he gives us tickets for orchestra seats on opening night-raising the curtain on the pleasures of Victor Herbert's The Red Mill and the thrill of Porgy and Bess. Mordden examines the music, of course, but also more neglected elements. Dance was once considered as crucial as song; he follows it from the nineteenth century's zany hoofing to tap "combinations" of the 1920s, from the injection of ballet and modern dance in the 1930s and '40s to the innovations of Bob Fosse. He also explores the changing structure of musical comedy and operetta, and the evolution of the role of the star. Fred Stone, the avuncular Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, seldom varied his acting from part to part; but the versatile Ethel Merman turned the headlining role inside out in Gypsy, playing a character who was selfish, fierce, and destructive. From "ballad opera" to burlesque, from Fiddler on the Roof to Rent, the history and lore of the musical unfolds here in a performance worthy of a standing ovation.
For twenty-plus years on a small Midwestern campus, Dr Lewis has directed The Shakespeare Project, a seminar scrutinizing four-six plays per semester with a cadre of accompanying sonnets. Master a method of reading the Bard through focus on a small set vis-à-vis scattershot survey, his syllabi promise, and one not only could, but would want to read Shakespeare – “not for an age, but for all time” (Ben Jonson ) – all one’s life. The Bard’s idiom, though complex, proves eminently comprehensible, as have observed such scholars as Kermode, Vendler, Bloom, Garber, Greenblatt, Nuttall, Booth, Eliot, Auden, and others. This book, the harvest of Lewis’ endeavor, consists of three parts: the seminar essay-syllabi; a collection of close readings of Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, Henry VIII, Timon, and The Sonnets; and a series of footnotes intended as mini-master essays on minutiae. The Project is grounded on the originary definition of scholarship as studying in school, and offers a revisionary reading of three “minor” characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies (Emilia, Albany, Siward), in the process of contending for a sensible coalescence of ‘old-fashioned’ character criticism with New Critical and Poststructural perspectives. The text also formulates criteria for responsible reading via triple vision – perceiving the work as at once reality, poem, and play – a method forwarded through addressing ethical matters in the works: faith in Hamlet; conscience in Henry VIII; stewardship in Timon of Athens. The Shakespeare Project models reinfusing Shakespeare as terrain for critical thinking that affects everyday life.
In The Road Home, Ethan Nichtern, a senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, investigates the journey each of us takes to find where we belong. Drawing from contemporary research on meditation and mindfulness and his experience as a Buddhist teacher and practitioner, Nichtern describes in fresh and deeply resonant terms the basic existential experience that gives rise to spiritual seeking--and also to its potentially dangerous counterpart, spiritual materialism. He reveals how our individual quests for self-awareness ripple forward into relationships, communities, and society at large. And he explains exactly how, by turning our awareness to what's happening around us and inside us, we become able to enhance our sense of connection with others and, at the same time, change for the better our individual and collective patterns of greed, apathy, and inattention.
Ethan Mordden completes his history of the Broadway musical by looking at how The Great White Way kept the lights burning in the depths of the Depression
Citizens are asked to buy, and asked to consider to buy, goods of all sizes and all prices, nearly all of the time. Appeals to political decision-making are less common. In The Consumer Citizen, Ethan Porter investigates how the techniques of everyday consumer experiences can shape political behavior. Drawing on more than a dozen original studies, he shows that the casual conflation of consumer and political decisions has profound implications for how Americans think about politics. Indeed, Porter explains that consumer habits can affect citizens' attitudes about their government, their taxes, their politicians, and even whether they purchase government-sponsored health insurance. The consumer citizen approaches government as if it were just an ordinary firm. Of course, government is not an ordinary firm---far from it---and the disjunction between what government is, and the consumer apparatus that citizens bring to bear on their evaluations of it, offers insight into several long-unanswered questions in political behavior and public opinion. How do many Americans make sense of the political world? The Consumer Citizen offers a novel answer: By relying on the habits and tools that they learn as consumers.
A literary critic aspires to eloquence, though makes no pretense to mirror the sublimity of the monuments inspiring his endeavors. Poets express their wonder through works of art. Critics articulate their homage via analysis of art’s workings. Hence, these essays and lectures, addressed to the quizzical, though not of necessity scholarly, reader, explore Shakespeare and noted re-envisioners of the Bard; four modern novels that interrogate identity; and underappreciated works and writers. They conclude with a series of pensees (thinkings) that, in the course of glossing nuances, reflect upon the interpretative craft itself.
This forward-looking exploration of contemporary American film across the last 40 years identifies and examines the specific movies that changed the film industry and shaped its present and future. Since the mid-1970s, American cinema has gone through enormous changes, such as the birth of the modern summer blockbuster, the rise of the independent film industry, ongoing technological advancements in special effects, and the ever-evolving models for film distribution. Written by a professional film critic and film buff, this book tells the story of contemporary American cinema in a unique and engaging way: by examining 25 key movies that demonstrated a significant creative, technological, or business innovation that impacted the industry at large. Each chapter in this chronological survey of contemporary film is divided into two sections: "The Film," which offers a critical overview of the film in question; and "The First," which describes the specific innovation achieved by that film and places that achievement in the larger historical context. Two additional appendices in each chapter explore other significant aspects of both the film and its groundbreaking nature. The broad coverage—ranging from action movies to horror films to science fiction favorites—ensures the work's appeal to all film fans.
The past century has born witness to a growing interest in the belief systems of ancient Europe, with an array of contemporary Pagan groups claiming to revive these old ways for the needs of the modern world. By far the largest and best known of these Paganisms has been Wicca, a new religious movement that can now count hundreds of thousands of adherents worldwide. Emerging from the occult milieu of mid twentieth-century Britain, Wicca was first presented as the survival of an ancient pre-Christian Witch-Cult, whose participants assembled in covens to venerate their Horned God and Mother Goddess, to celebrate seasonal festivities, and to cast spells by the light of the full moon. Spreading to North America, where it diversified under the impact of environmentalism, feminism, and the 1960s counter-culture, Wicca came to be presented as a Goddess-centred nature religion, in which form it was popularised by a number of best-selling authors and fictional television shows. Today, Wicca is a maturing religious movement replete with its own distinct world-view, unique culture, and internal divisions. This book represents the first published academic introduction to be exclusively devoted to this fascinating faith, exploring how this Witches' Craft developed, what its participants believe and practice, and what the Wiccan community actually looks like. In doing so it sweeps away widely-held misconceptions and offers a comprehensive overview of this religion in all of its varied forms. Drawing upon the work of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of religious studies, as well as the writings of Wiccans themselves, it provides an original synthesis that will be invaluable for anyone seeking to learn about the blossoming religion of modern Pagan Witchcraft.
The Georgic Mode in Twentieth-Century American Literature: The Satisfactions of Soil and Sweat explores environmental writing that foregrounds labor. Ethan Mannon argues that Virgil’s Georgics, as well as the georgic mode in general, exerted considerable influence upon some of America’s best-known writers—including Robert Frost, Willa Cather, and Wendell Berry—and that these and others worked to revise the mode to better fit their own contexts. This book also outlines the contemporary value of the georgic literary tradition—two thousand years of writing that begins with the premise that humans must use the world in order to survive and search for a balance between human needs and nature’s productive capacity. In the georgic mode, authors found an adaptable discourse that enabled them to advocate for the protection and responsible use of productive lands, present rural places and people in all of their complexity, explore human relationships with laboring animals, and advertise the sensory pleasures of rooted work.
The inside story of the decades-long unravelling of the Gaddafi regime, and of the West's role in both empowering his dictatorship and seeding revolution.
This text will “make one see something new [by granting] new eyes to see with,” as Ezra Pound remarked of Imagism. Still he soon dissociated himself from the movement he helped found, to which T. S. Eliot never belonged. Why, then, study Pound and Eliot as Imagists? As the former phrased it, to offer “language to think in” regarding their shared premium on precision; and to explicate differing reasons for this emphasis. Pound plies accuracy to carve distinctions. By carving, he sought to delineate components of a model culture. Conversely, and paradoxically, severances renderable through apt language enabled Eliot to intuit a divine “amalgamation”—which would displace inevitable confusions among objects, and between subject and object: turmoil dramatized in Eliot’s early work. A book focusing this opposition requires concrete manifestations. Imagist poetics of the nineteen teens and twenties, as our authors understood it, informs exploring their disparate tendencies; and provides examples of that contrast. Because they transcended it, Imagism initiates Pound’s and Eliot’s development. Poets wed to Imagism necessarily treat “small things” (Dasenbrock), due to their “poetic of stasis” (Kenner). Imagist techniques, however—presenting interactive “complexes”; creating illusions of spatio-temporal freedom—set the course for the Modernist long poem. Our subjects extend a tradition, limned by several scholars, principally Sir Frank Kermode. Romantic Imag[ism] “animates ... the best writing between Coleridge and Blake ... and Pound and Eliot.” A parallel critical inheritance this study will humbly continue.
Ethan Campbell argues that a central feature of the Gawain-poet's Middle English works' moral rhetoric is anticlerical critique. Written in an era when clerical corruption was a key concern for polemicists such as Richard FitzRalph and John Wyclif, as well as satirical poets such as John Gower, William Langland, and Geoffrey Chaucer, the Gawain poems feature an explicit attack on hypocritical priests in the opening lines of Cleanness as well as more subtle critiques embedded within depictions of flawed priest-like characters.
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