Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market: The Breakdown of Scientific Thought By Ylva Hasselberg, Sharon Rider (auth.), Sharon Rider, Ylva Hasselberg, Alexandra Waluszewski (eds.)
2013 | 222 Pages | ISBN: 9400752482 | PDF | 2 MB
This volume tackles head-on the controversy regarding the tensions between the principles underlying Academe on the one hand, and the free market on the other. Its outspoken thesis posits that seemingly irresistible institutional pressures are betraying a core principle of the Enlightenment: that the free pursuit of knowledge is of the highest value in its own right. As 'market principles' are forced on universities, inducing a neoteric culture of 'managerialism', many worry that the very characteristics that made European higher education in particular such a success are being eroded and replaced by ideological opportunism and economic expediency.Richly interdisciplinary, the anthology explores a wealth of issues such as the phenomenon of bibliometrics (linking an institution's success to the volume and visibility of publications produced). Many argue that the use of such indicators to measure scientific value is inimical to the time-consuming complexities of genuine truth-seeking. A number of the greatest discoveries and innovations in the history of science, such as Newton's laws of mechanics or the Mendelian laws of inheritance, might never have seen the light of day if today's system of determining and defining the form and content of science had dominated. With analytical perspectives from political science, economics, philosophy and media studies, the collection interrogates, for example, the doctrine of graduate employability that exerts such a powerful influence on course type and structure, especially on technical and professional training. In contrast, the liberal arts must choose between adaptation to the dictates of employability strategies or wither away as enrollments dwindle and resources evaporate. Research projects and aims have also become an area of controversy, with many governments now assessing the value of proposals in terms of assumed commercial benefits. The contributors argue that these changes, as well as 'reforms' in the managerial and administrative structures in tertiary education, constitute a radical break with the previous ontology of science and scholarship: a change in its very character, and not merely its form. It shows that the 'scientific thinking' students, researchers, and scholars are encouraged to adopt is undergoing a rapid shift in conceptual content, with significant consequences not only for science, but also for the society of which it is a part.
Thomas' Calculus: 2 Volumes
English | 2018 | ISBN: 0134438981 | 1213 Pages | PDF (True) | 27 MB
Thomas' Calculus helps students reach the level of mathematical proficiency and maturity you require, but with support for students who need it through its balance of clear and intuitive explanations, current applications, and generalized concepts. In the 14th Edition, new co-author Christopher Heil (Georgia Institute of Technology) partners with author Joel Hass to preserve what is best about Thomas' time-tested text while reconsidering every word and every piece of art with today's students in mind. The result is a text that goes beyond memorizing formulas and routine procedures to help students generalize key concepts and develop deeper understanding.
Pamela McCorduck, "This Could Be Important: My Life and Times with the Artificial Intelligentsia"
English | ISBN: 0359901344 | 2019 | 546 pages | EPUB | 2 MB
In the autumn of 1960, twenty-year-old humanities student Pamela McCorduck encountered both the fringe science of early artificial intelligence, and C. P. Snow's Two Cultures lecture on the chasm between the sciences and the humanities. Each encounter shaped her life. Decades later her lifelong intuition was realized: AI and the humanities are profoundly connected. During that time, she wrote the first modern history of artificial intelligence, Machines Who Think, and spent much time pulling on the sleeves of public intellectuals, trying in futility to suggest that artificial intelligence could be important. Memoir, social history, group biography of the founding fathers of AI, This Could Be Important follows the personal story of one AI spectator, from her early enthusiasms to her mature, more nuanced observations of the field.
Edward Gross, Mark A. Altman, "They Shouldn't Have Killed His Dog: The Complete Uncensored Ass-Kicking Oral History of John Wick, Gun Fu, and the New Age of Action"
English | ISBN: 1250278430 | 2022 | EPUB | 288 pages | 2 MB
There have been iconic moments in the action movie genre over the years, but nothing has come close to matching the kinetic, balletic gun-fu of the John Wick films.
Thee Psychick Bible By Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
2010 | 544 Pages | ISBN: 1932595902 | PDF | 8 MB
Foreword by Carl Abrahamsson. Introduction by Jason Louv.Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) will be remembered for its crucial influence on youth culture throughout the 1980s, popularizing tattooing, body piercing, "acid house" raves, and other ahead-of-the-curve cultic flirtations and investigations. Its leader was Genesis P-Orridge, co-founder of Psychick TV and Throbbing Gristle, the band that created the industrial music genre.The limited signed cloth edition of Thee Psychick Bible quickly sold out, creating demand for any edition of this 544-page book, which will be available in a handsome smyth-sewn paperback edition with flaps and ribbon. According to author Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, "this is the most profound new manual on practical magick, taking it from its Crowleyan empowerment of the Individual to a next level of realization to evolve our species."
The monster at our door: the global threat of avian flu By Mike Davis
2005 | 212 Pages | ISBN: 1595580115 | EPUB | 3 MB
Avian influenza is a viral asteroid on a collision course with humanity. In 1918, a pandemic strain of influenza killed at least 40 million people in three months. Now, leading researchers believe, another world catastrophe is imminent.A virus of astonishing lethality, known as H5N1, has become entrenched in the poultry and wild bird populations of East Asia. It kills two out of every three people it infects. The World Health Organization warns that it is on the verge of mutating into a super-contagious pandemic form.In this urgent and extraordinarily frightening book, Mike Davis reconstructs the scientific and political history of a viral apocalypse in the making, exposing the central roles of agribusiness and the fast-food industries, abetted by corrupt governments, in creating the ecological conditions for the emergence of this new plague. He also details the scandalous failure of the Bush administration, obsessed with hypothetical "bio-terrorism," to safeguard Americans from the greatest biological threat since HIV/AIDS.
The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe by James Belich
English | July 19, 2022 | ISBN: 0691215669 | True PDF | 640 pages | 59 MB
A groundbreaking history of how the Black Death unleashed revolutionary change across the medieval world and ushered in the modern age
Tomas Björkman, "The World We Create"
English | ISBN: 1912892596 | 2019 | 578 pages | EPUB | 2 MB
The world is entering a new technological, social and global age and it is our ability to create meaning which will decide whether we face a bright future or a tragic decline.
Viktor E. Frankl, "The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy"
English | ISBN: 0142181269 | 2014 | 176 pages | EPUB | 999 KB
From the author of Man's Search for Meaning, one of the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud.
John Wood Sweet, "The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America"
English | ISBN: 1250761964 | 2022 | EPUB | 384 pages | 28 MB
A riveting Revolutionary Era drama of the first published rape trial in American history and its long, shattering aftermath, revealing how much has changed over two centuries―and how much has not.