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This book illustrates the link that unites memory, thought, and narration, and explores how the act of telling helps people to understand themselves and others. The structure of the book is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the aspect of narrative comprehension—the person as narrator. It identifies two different origins of narrative comprehension (memory and play) and argues that the narratives we produce starting from autobiographical memory are intended to give order and meaning to events that happened in the past, in order to be able to interpret the present. Conversely, the narratives we produce starting from play are aesthetically constructed, not forced to respect reality, and because of this create potential new worlds of understanding. The second part of this book is devoted to the study of narrative understanding as an understanding of the other. Chapters examine the different points of view a listener can adopt in order to interpret the text produced by a narrator and how these points of view can interact with each other. The book concludes with a consideration of narrative comprehension in the digital world, and examines the principal effects of stories and narrative on the notion of self in the realm of the “Internet galaxy.” Telling to Understand will be of interest to researchers and students in cognitive science, psychology, literary studies, philosophy, education, and educational technology, as well as any reader interested in enlarging their concept of narrative and how narrating modifies the self.
Unraveling all the mysteries of the khipu--the knotted string device used by the Inka to record both statistical data and narrative accounts of myths, histories, and genealogies--will require an understanding of how number values and relations may have been used to encode information on social, familial, and political relationships and structures. This is the problem Gary Urton tackles in his pathfinding study of the origin, meaning, and significance of numbers and the philosophical principles underlying the practice of arithmetic among Quechua-speaking peoples of the Andes. Based on fieldwork in communities around Sucre, in south-central Bolivia, Urton argues that the origin and meaning of numbers were and are conceived of by Quechua-speaking peoples in ways similar to their ideas about, and formulations of, gender, age, and social relations. He also demonstrates that their practice of arithmetic is based on a well-articulated body of philosophical principles and values that reflects a continuous attempt to maintain balance, harmony, and equilibrium in the material, social, and moral spheres of community life.
The 2012 election will be one of the hardest-fought in U.S. history. It is also likely to be one of the closest, a fact that brings concerns about voter fraud and bureaucratic incompetence in the conduct of elections front and center. If we don't take notice, we could see another debacle like the Bush-Gore Florida recount of 2000 in which courts and lawyers intervened in what should have involved only voters. Who's Counting? will focus attention on many problems of our election system, ranging from voter fraud to a slipshod system of vote counting that noted political scientist Walter Dean Burnham calls “the most careless of the developed world.” In an effort to clean up our election laws, reduce fraud and increase public confidence in the integrity of the voting system, many states ranging from Georgia to Wisconsin have passed laws requiring a photo ID be shown at the polls and curbing the rampant use of absentee ballots, a tool of choice by fraudsters. The response from Obama allies has been to belittle the need for such laws and attack them as akin to the second coming of a racist tide in American life. In the summer of 2011, both Bill Clinton and DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz preposterously claimed that such laws suppressed minority voters and represented a return to the era of Jim Crow. But voter fraud is a well-documented reality in American elections. Just this year, a sheriff and county clerk in West Virginia pleaded guilty to stuffing ballot boxes with fraudulent absentee ballots that changed the outcome of an election. In 2005, a state senate election in Tennessee was overturned because of voter fraud. The margin of victory? 13 votes. In 2008, the Minnesota senate race that provided the 60th vote needed to pass Obamacare was decided by a little over 300 votes. Almost 200 felons have already been convicted of voting illegally in that election and dozens of other prosecutions are still pending. Public confidence in the integrity of elections is at an all-time low. In the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 2008, 62% of American voters thought that voter fraud was very common or somewhat common. Fear that elections are being stolen erodes the legitimacy of our government. That's why the vast majority of Americans support laws like Kansas's Secure and Fair Elections Act. A 2010 Rasmussen poll showed that 82% of Americans support photo ID laws. While Americans frequently demand observers and best practices in the elections of other countries, we are often blind to the need to scrutinize our own elections. We may pay the consequences in 2012 if a close election leads us into pitched partisan battles and court fights that will dwarf the Bush-Gore recount wars.
This landmark work by an innovative modern Kabbalist develops a scientific model for kabbalistic cosmology and soul psychology. Derived from the kabbalistic diagram of the Tree of Life and the author's own Sabbath Star diagram, this universal model encodes the laws of all cosmic manifestation, giving a mathematical basis to many aspects of this mystical tradition and providing a new synthesis of science and spirituality that may well write a new chapter to the Kabbalah.
How do we live well? The first sentence of Grace and Gravity raises the fundamental question that constantly occupies our minds-and of all those who lived before us. Paradoxically, the impossibility of answering this question opens up the very room needed to find ways of living well. It is the gap where all disciplines fall short, where architecture does not fit its inhabitants, where economy is not based on shortage, where religion cannot be explained by its followers, and where technology works far beyond its own principles. According to Lars Spuybroek, the prize-winning former architect, this marks the point where the “paradoxical machine” of grace reveals its powers, a point where we “cannot say if we are moving or being moved”. Following the trail of grace leads him to a new form of analysis that transcends the age-old opposition between appearances and technology. Linking up a dazzling and often delightful variety of sources-monkeys, paintings, lamp posts, octopuses, tattoos, bleeding fingers, rose windows, robots, smart phones, spirits, saints, and fossils-with profound meditations on living, death, consciousness, and existence, Grace and Gravity offers an eye-opening provocation to a wide range of art historians, architects, theologians, anthropologists, artists, media theorists and philosophers.
This book reveals the hidden and potentially misleading nature of measurements, empowering readers to avoid making critical business decisions that are harmful, unreasonable, unwarranted, or plain wrong. Decision makers in business and government are more reliant than ever on measurements, such as business performance indicators, bond ratings, Six-Sigma indicators, stock ratings, opinion polls, and market research. Yet many popular statistical and business books and courses relating to measurement are based on flawed principles, leading managers to the wrong conclusions—and ultimately, the wrong decisions. misLeading Indicators: How to Reliably Measure Your Business provides something unique and invaluable: trustworthy tools for judging measurements. Each chapter illustrates the four key principles for reliable measurements: sufficient background information, accuracy and precision, reasonable inferences, and reality checks in different situations. After the three fundamental methods of measuring are defined, the authors expand to the application and interpretation of measurements in specific areas, including business performance, risk management, process, control, finance, and economics. This book supplies essential information for managers in business and government who depend on accurate information to run their organizations, as well as the consultants who advise them.