Electric Dreams turns to the past to trace the cultural history of computers. Ted Friedman charts the struggles to define the meanings of these powerful machines over more than a century, from the failure of Charles Babbage’s “difference engine” in the nineteenth century to contemporary struggles over file swapping, open source software, and the future of online journalism. To reveal the hopes and fears inspired by computers, Electric Dreams examines a wide range of texts, including films, advertisements, novels, magazines, computer games, blogs, and even operating systems. Electric Dreams argues that the debates over computers are critically important because they are how Americans talk about the future. In a society that in so many ways has given up on imagining anything better than multinational capitalism, cyberculture offers room to dream of different kinds of tomorrow.
Many big data-driven companies today are moving to protect certain types of data against intrusion, leaks, or unauthorized eyes. But how do you lock down data while granting access to people who need to see it? In this practical book, authors Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman offer two novel and practical solutions that you can implement right away. Ideal for both technical and non-technical decision makers, group leaders, developers, and data scientists, this book shows you how to: Share original data in a controlled way so that different groups within your organization only see part of the whole. You’ll learn how to do this with the new open source SQL query engine Apache Drill. Provide synthetic data that emulates the behavior of sensitive data. This approach enables external advisors to work with you on projects involving data that you can't show them. If you’re intrigued by the synthetic data solution, explore the log-synth program that Ted Dunning developed as open source code (available on GitHub), along with how-to instructions and tips for best practice. You’ll also get a collection of use cases. Providing lock-down security while safely sharing data is a significant challenge for a growing number of organizations. With this book, you’ll discover new options to share data safely without sacrificing security.
Building a simple but powerful recommendation system is much easier than you think. Approachable for all levels of expertise, this report explains innovations that make machine learning practical for business production settings—and demonstrates how even a small-scale development team can design an effective large-scale recommendation system. Apache Mahout committers Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman walk you through a design that relies on careful simplification. You’ll learn how to collect the right data, analyze it with an algorithm from the Mahout library, and then easily deploy the recommender using search technology, such as Apache Solr or Elasticsearch. Powerful and effective, this efficient combination does learning offline and delivers rapid response recommendations in real time. Understand the tradeoffs between simple and complex recommenders Collect user data that tracks user actions—rather than their ratings Predict what a user wants based on behavior by others, using Mahoutfor co-occurrence analysis Use search technology to offer recommendations in real time, complete with item metadata Watch the recommender in action with a music service example Improve your recommender with dithering, multimodal recommendation, and other techniques
Finding Data Anomalies You Didn't Know to Look For Anomaly detection is the detective work of machine learning: finding the unusual, catching the fraud, discovering strange activity in large and complex datasets. But, unlike Sherlock Holmes, you may not know what the puzzle is, much less what “suspects” you’re looking for. This O’Reilly report uses practical examples to explain how the underlying concepts of anomaly detection work. From banking security to natural sciences, medicine, and marketing, anomaly detection has many useful applications in this age of big data. And the search for anomalies will intensify once the Internet of Things spawns even more new types of data. The concepts described in this report will help you tackle anomaly detection in your own project. Use probabilistic models to predict what’s normal and contrast that to what you observe Set an adaptive threshold to determine which data falls outside of the normal range, using the t-digest algorithm Establish normal fluctuations in complex systems and signals (such as an EKG) with a more adaptive probablistic model Use historical data to discover anomalies in sporadic event streams, such as web traffic Learn how to use deviations in expected behavior to trigger fraud alerts
Presser reveals the sensational details behind the Teamsters' 30-year dominance of American labor. It is a shocking story of violence, corruption, and greed--a story that could have taken place only with the cooperation of legitimate authorities at the highest levels of government.
Almost all current wars are primarily intra-state, involving complex societal conflicts with at least one party a non-state community. Second Track/ Citizens' Diplomacy is broadly defined as facilitated dialogue to address conflict issues between unofficial representatives or equivalent opinion leaders dfrom communities in conflict. It is an essential complement to official (first track) diplomacy for responding to the enormous challenge that these complex conflicts pose to building a sustainable and dynamic peace. In this volume, prominent contributors explain the development, theory and current practice of second track diplomacy. They examine the dynamics of modern complex conflicts, such as those in Sri Lanka, Israel/Palestine, Cyprus, or the Caucasus. Exploring innovative problem-solving methodologies, the book provides a detailed program for guiding 'Partners in Conflict' in the search for common ground and analyzes core issues that arise in the practice and evaluation of second track diplomacy. This book will be valuable to both academics and professionals involved in first or second track diplomacy, or interested in integrative methods of dispute resolution or conflict prevention, as well as to those working in development, peace-building or humanitarian programs at any phase of the conflict cycle.
Living in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, real-estate dealer Stephen Friedman becomes hungry for answers after he discovers a deceased woman's papers that indicate she owned a priceless religious relic, and that she may have been his mother.
Our earliest mythologies tell us we all start as a little bit of dirt. These stories carry a profound message: each of us is born with a deep and abiding connection to the earth, one that many of us have lost touch with. The Silent Spring for today's environmental activists, this book offers an invitation to reestablish our relationship with nature to repair our damaged environment. Chapter 1 examines the threats to the planet's health through the lens of the human energy system known as the chakras, describing how the broken first chakra relates to our disconnection from our biosphere. Chapter 2 shows how our current environmental crises--global warming, climate change, dwindling water resources, natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes--represent severe manifestations of our disconnection from the earth. Chapter 3 describes how the preponderance of oil in our culture--especially agribusiness--compounds this disconnection, from our dependence on other countries for our energy, to current issues of oil depletion, peak oil, and fracking, to the dumbing down of our agricultural polyculture. Chapter 4 explains how the most basic building blocks of our nourishment--seeds--are being compromised with a loss of biodiversity and rise of GMOs, and how that adversely affects the farmers whose sacred connection to the land has in many cases been severed. Chapter 5 describes the ways in which we as individuals can begin to wake up to climate activism as a spiritual practice. This chapter includes specific activities that you can use to implement change and heal your own connection to the earth. By learning and practicing ritual and understanding the earth's rhythms and seasonal rites of passage, each of us can find unique ways to heal our own connections and help others heal theirs. Chapter 6 brings to life Goethe’s wisdom: “Knowing isn’t enough; neither is being willing. We must do,” by providing strategies and resources for exploring how each of us can find our own Earth Calling, then anchoring that calling with the only force that ignites change: Action.
Are UFOs celestial saviors, coming to save Earth from self-destruction? Are UFOnauts advancing human evolution by birthing hybrid children? Is it time for a new “astrotheology” that enshrines the UFO phenomenon at the same level as the space sciences at NASA and SETI? UFOs: God’s Chariots? uncovers and exposes the clandestine spiritual dimensions within the UFO phenomenon. UFOs vibrate with transcendence, omniscience, perfection, and redemption. UFOs: God’s Chariots? delves deeply into government conspiracies, analyzes the newest models of close encounter interpretation, and reveals the results of The Peters ETI Religious Crisis Survey, in which self-identified believers were asked if making contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization would undermine our historic religious traditions. They said no. Does this mean we’re ready to share our pews with aliens?
Two of Time magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment” reject the status quo of liberal politics and offer a bold vision for addressing climate change. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus triggered a firestorm of controversy with their self-published essay “The Death of Environmentalism,” which argued that the existing model of environmentalism cannot adequately address global warming and that a new politics needs to take its place. In this follow-up to their essay, the authors give an expansive and eloquent manifesto for political change. American values have changed dramatically since the environmental movement’s greatest victories in the 1960s. And while global warming presents exponentially greater challenges than any past pollution problem, environmentalists continue to employ the same tired and ineffective tactics. Making the case for abandoning old categories (nature versus the market; left versus right), the authors articulate a new pragmatism that has already found champions in prominent figures such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Seeing a connection between the failures of environmentalism and the failures of the entire left-leaning political agenda, the authors point the way toward an aspirational politics that will resonate with modern American values and be capable of tackling our most pressing challenges. “To win, Nordhaus and Shellenberger persuasively argue, environmentalists must stop congratulating themselves for their own willingness to confront inconvenient truths and must focus on building a politics of shared hope rather than relying on a politics of fear.” —The New York Times
Resulting from a collaboration between The Atlantic Monthly magazine and the New America Foundation, The Real State of the Union features 18 original essays on the most important facets of our national well-being. Written by many of our nation's most insightful observers, the essays provide an objective and penetrating analysis of the most critical challenges facing America as well as innovative solutions to many of them. The State of the Union Address is among the nation's oldest rituals, but one that has deviated from its original purpose: Rather than a candid assessment of the country or a meaningful self-evaluation by the current administration, it has become a political spectacle marked by self-congratulation and spin. The Real State of the Union seeks to turn an empty exercise into a more meaningful national dialogue about the social, political, and economic health of our country. Rejecting the political correctness of both parties, this volume tells the American public what it needs to know about the real problems that plague the country and why the political solutions that are offered too often fail to address the real nature of those problems.
Witness the Heroic yet devastating Crusade by WHISTLEBLOWER, combat veteran and retired Marine Corps LtCol, Ted Blickwedel, who took on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to defend Veterans’ quality care and the well-being of those who serve them. Blickwedel, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and VET Center counselor for the VA, fought valiantly to protect veterans, their families and counselors from the VA’s misguided, harmful and unethical clinical performance policies, which turned patients into numbers and severely compromised the mental health and welfare of both Veterans and the clinicians who serve them. Consequently, VA management was no longer “keeping the promise” Abraham Lincoln made in 1865 after the Civil War: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.” Now the VA was ‘breaking the promise.’ Broken Promises also uncovers the toxic, malicious and deceptive whistleblower retaliation tactics inflicted on Blickwedel by VA officials designed to silence him from ‘speaking truth to power,’ and it reveals the horrific impact these retributions had on himself, family members, clients and counselors. Though defamed, marginalized, gaslighted, mobbed, and experiencing traumatic near-death health challenges, he marched steadfastly on. Despite being forced to leave the job he loved, counseling his fellow veterans, Blickwedel was compelled and determined to expose and correct the callous misconduct, injustice and abuse perpetrated by VA management. A federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation Blickwedel helped instigate substantiated his allegations, which led to the U.S. Congress passing legislation into law that ensures VA leadership is accountable for protecting the quality of care for our Veterans and their families, as well as safeguarding the well-being and morale of counselors who provide services to them at over 300 VET Centers nationwide. Broken Promises further gives hope to those who undertake similar campaigns to report corruption, neglect and maltreatment by providing indispensable guidelines that will greatly enhance the effectiveness of the endeavor while granting a better chance for a more favorable outcome. Also, self-care strategies are offered which are essential to maintain good health and resilience throughout such an overwhelming ordeal. Blickwedel’s unwavering Battle to rectify jeopardized mental health care and endangered counselor welfare within the VA VET Center program has been featured on NBC and NPR, to include the Military Times, other publications and local news broadcasts. A man of courage, integrity and tireless resolve, Blickwedel epitomizes all that is great in our American heroes.
For millennia, great thinkers have contemplated the meaning and purpose of human existence; but while most assumed that humanity was the end point of creation or the pinnacle of evolution, Ted Chu makes the provocative claim that the human race may in fact be a means rather than an end—that humankind will give rise to evolutionary successors. In this wide-ranging and authoritative work, Chu reexamines the question of human purpose in light of the extraordinary developments of science and technology. Arguing that a deep understanding of our place in the universe is required to navigate the magnitude of the choices that lie ahead, he surveys human wisdom from both East and West, traces the evolutionary trajectory that has led to this point, and explores the potentials emerging on the scientific frontier. The book addresses the legitimate fears and concerns of “playing God” but embraces the possibility of transcending biological forms and becoming or creating entirely new life-forms.
This title was first published in 2000. This is a history of the monetary developments in the international economy of the 19th century. It reviews the monetary developments in the core economies of the period: Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and also India. Particular attention is given to the expansion of the gold standard in the context of the intense national and international debates about the role of precious metals and the author also examines the conflict between supporters of gold, silver and bimetallism, both in terms of competing financial and economic theories and in terms of the varying social and cultural backgrounds that informed them. The main thrust of the work is that the sheer plurality of ideas and contexts helped to ensure the eventual victory of the gold standard, despite the inherent superiority of bimetallic systems.
Freedom of press is a cornerstone of our democratic political system. But reporters, pundits, and editors face intense pressure to serve as propagandists rather than journalists in their coverage of U.S. foreign policy. Too many members of the news media seem unable to make that distinction and play their proper role as watchdogs for the American people regarding possible government incompetence or misconduct. Since World War II, America has become a garrison state―always prepared for armed conflict—and the conflating of journalism and propaganda has grown worse, even in situations that do not involve actual combat for the United States. That behavior increasingly constrains and distorts the public’s consideration of Washington’s role in the world. In Unreliable Watchdog, Ted Galen Carpenter focuses on the nature and extent of the American news media’s willingness to accept official accounts and policy justifications, too often throwing skepticism aside. He takes readers through an examination of the media’s performance with respect to the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the conflicts in the Balkans, the prelude to the Iraq War, the civil wars in Libya and Syria, and Washington’s post–Cold War relations with both Russia and China. The analysis explores why most journalists―as well as social media platforms―seem willing to collaborate with government officials in pushing an activist foreign policy, even when tactics or results have been questionable, disappointing, or even disastrous. Unreliable Watchdog jump-starts a badly needed conversation about how the press must improve its coverage of foreign policy and national security issues if it is to serve its proper role for the American people.
Lewellen gives us the first analytic overview of an important new subject area in a field that has long been identified with the study of relatively bounded communities. Globalization refers to the increasing flows of trade, finance, culture, ideas, and people brought about by the sophisticated technology of communications and travel and by the worldwide spread of neoliberal capitalism. Unlike dependency theory and world systems analysis, which tended to assume a bird's-eye perspective, globalization offers a down-and-dirty, ground-up approach in which ethnographic research is not marginal but essential. Through multiple examples, selected from the latest ethnographic research from all over the world, Lewellen examines the ways that globalization impacts migrants and stay-at-homes, peasants and tribal peoples, men and women. A crucial theme is that the global/local nexus is one of unpredictable interaction and creative adaptation, not of top-down determinism. Theoretically, globalization studies have become the focal point for the convergence of interpretive anthropology, critical anthropology, postmodernism, and poststructuralism, which are combined with a tough empiricism. For the casual reader or the classroom, this work draws together the ethnographic studies and cutting-edge theories that comprise the anthropology of globalization.
Winner of the Eric Hoffer Book Award, Money Smart delivers a better approach to personal money management with a simple and accessible style. Author Ted Hunter shows readers that they are capable of managing their money better than anyone else, including financial professionals. He first exposes the destructive myths and system-wide incompetence that have dominated money management advice for decades. Hunter then empowers readers by providing the information they need to make their own decisions.
The Aging of the World's Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation
The Aging of the World's Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation
TEMPORARY Bergman looks at the representation of criminals in early modern Spanish theatre and the connection between criminality, the portrayal of criminal heroes on stage, and public displays of law enforcement within and outside the playhouse. His main purpose is to see to how Baroque spectacle (a term of art in theatre that refers to a particular event, often in expressions of popular culture) appears either to align itself, work against, or be independent of the social means of control of the day. His main argument is that that the propaganda power of early modern Spanish spectacle has been vastly overstated. Ted L. L. Bergman is a Lecturer in Spanish, University of St Andrews.
In 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an autism alarm, estimating that one in 150 children may be affected by autism spectrum disorder. Autism has been treated mainly with technical approaches: principally applied behavior analysis and psychopharmacology. The findings in this book implicate oxidative stress as a common feat
If you’re a highly sensitive person (HSP), you’re in good company. HSP’s make up some 20 percent of the population, individuals like you who both enjoy and wrestle with a finely tuned nervous system. You often sense things that others ignore such as strong smells, bright lights, and the crush of crowds. Even the presence of strangers in your immediate vicinity can cause you considerable distraction. You already know that this condition can be a gift, but, until you learn to master your sensitive nervous system, you might be operating in a constant state of overstimulation. As an HSP, the most important thing you can learn is how to manage your increased sensitivity to both physical and emotional stimulation. This accessible, practical guide contains strategies to help you master this critical skill. Build your coping skills by exploring the books engaging exercises. Then, keep the book by your side, a constant companion as you make your way through your vibrant and highly stimulating world. •Find out what it means to be a highly sensitive person •Take the self-examination quiz and find out whether you are highly sensitive •Learn coping techniques indispensable to IHP’s •Discover how to manage distractions like noise and time pressure at home and at work •Reduce sensory-provoked tension with meditation and deep relaxation techniques •Navigate the challenges of interacting with others in social and intimate relationships
In the wake of disaster emergency responders are first on the scene and last to leave. They put concern for the lives of others over concern for their own lives, and work tirelessly to recover the bodies of the missing. Their heroic actions save lives, provide comfort to and care for the wounded and inspire onlookers, but at what cost to themselves? We now know that rescue workers who are exposed to mutilated bodies, mass destruction, multiple casualties, and life-threatening situations may become the hidden victims of disaster. The traumatic consequences of exposure can profoundly impact emergency responders, radiate to their families, and permeate the emergency organization. This much-needed new book, based on the authors' original research and clinical experience, describes the consequences of trauma exposure on police officers, fire fighters, and paramedics. Weaving data collected in large-scale quantitative studies with the personal stories of responders shared in qualitative interviews, this much-needed account explores the personal, organizational, and societal factors that can ameliorate or exacerbate traumatic response. Stress theory, organizational theory, crisis theory, and trauma theory provide a framework for understanding trauma responses and guiding intervention strategies. Using an ecological perspective, the authors explore interventions spanning prevention, disaster response, and follow-up, on individual, family, group, organizational, and community levels. They provide specific suggestions for planning intervention programs, developing trauma response teams, training emergency service responders and mental health professionals, and evaluating the effectiveness of services provided. Disaster, whether large-scale or small, underscores our ongoing vulnerability and the crucial need for response plans that address the health and well being of those who confront disaster on a daily basis. In the Line of Fire speaks directly to these emergency response workers as well as to the mental health professionals who provide them with services, the administrators who support their efforts, and the family members who wonder if their loved one will return home safely from work tonight.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Ted Koppel reveals that a major cyberattack on America’s power grid is not only possible but likely, that it would be devastating, and that the United States is shockingly unprepared. “Fascinating, frightening, and beyond timely.”—Anderson Cooper Imagine a blackout lasting not days, but weeks or months. Tens of millions of people over several states are affected. For those without access to a generator, there is no running water, no sewage, no refrigeration or light. Food and medical supplies are dwindling. Devices we rely on have gone dark. Banks no longer function, looting is widespread, and law and order are being tested as never before. It isn’t just a scenario. A well-designed attack on just one of the nation’s three electric power grids could cripple much of our infrastructure—and in the age of cyberwarfare, a laptop has become the only necessary weapon. Several nations hostile to the United States could launch such an assault at any time. In fact, as a former chief scientist of the NSA reveals, China and Russia have already penetrated the grid. And a cybersecurity advisor to President Obama believes that independent actors—from “hacktivists” to terrorists—have the capability as well. “It’s not a question of if,” says Centcom Commander General Lloyd Austin, “it’s a question of when.” And yet, as Koppel makes clear, the federal government, while well prepared for natural disasters, has no plan for the aftermath of an attack on the power grid. The current Secretary of Homeland Security suggests keeping a battery-powered radio. In the absence of a government plan, some individuals and communities have taken matters into their own hands. Among the nation’s estimated three million “preppers,” we meet one whose doomsday retreat includes a newly excavated three-acre lake, stocked with fish, and a Wyoming homesteader so self-sufficient that he crafted the thousands of adobe bricks in his house by hand. We also see the unrivaled disaster preparedness of the Mormon church, with its enormous storehouses, high-tech dairies, orchards, and proprietary trucking company—the fruits of a long tradition of anticipating the worst. But how, Koppel asks, will ordinary civilians survive? With urgency and authority, one of our most renowned journalists examines a threat unique to our time and evaluates potential ways to prepare for a catastrophe that is all but inevitable.
While the first healers were musicians who relied on rhythm and song to help cure the sick, over time Western thinkers and doctors lost touch with these traditions. In the West, for almost two millennia, the roles of the healer and the musician have been strictly separated. Until recently, that is. Over the past few decades there has been a resurgence of interest in healing music. In the midst of this nascent revival, Ted Gioia, a musician, composer, and widely praised author, offers the first detailed exploration of the uses of music for curative purposes from ancient times to the present. Gioia’s inquiry into the restorative powers of sound moves effortlessly from the history of shamanism to the role of Orpheus as a mythical figure linking Eastern and Western ideas about therapeutic music, and from Native American healing ceremonies to what clinical studies can reveal about the efficacy of contemporary methods of sonic healing. Gioia considers a broad range of therapies, providing a thoughtful, impartial guide to their histories and claims, their successes and failures. He examines a host of New Age practices, including toning, Cymatics, drumming circles, and the Tomatis method. And he explores how the medical establishment has begun to recognize and incorporate the therapeutic power of song. Acknowledging that the drumming circle will not—and should not—replace the emergency room, nor the shaman the cardiologist, Gioia suggests that the most promising path is one in which both the latest medical science and music—with its capacity to transform attitudes and bring people together—are brought to bear on the multifaceted healing process. In Healing Songs, as in its companion volume Work Songs, Gioia moves beyond studies of music centered on specific performers, time periods, or genres to illuminate how music enters into and transforms the experiences of everyday life.
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