Audio CDs for use with Music: The Art of Listening

Book Description

This 4-CD set contains all the music for the Listening Guides in Music The Art of Listening, 7e by Jean Ferris.

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Observing the dot-com boom and bust was like watching time-lapse photography; it seemed unreal, unsettling, yet deeply compelling. How can we try to understand the cultural changes wreaked by the last "new economy" of the 20th century? Oxford scholar Christine A. Finn spent 2000 in San Jose and its surrounding valley, exploring the personal and material culture of the area. Her outsider's report, Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley, is a great start for students of the accelerating rate of social change.

Though she's no techie herself, she has an uncanny knack for meeting the right people at the right time to get the information she needs to drive her story onward. Talking with successes and failures, pre-IPO orchard workers turned uncertain service industry workers, and unashamed old-tech geeks, she finds a wealth of passion and confusion as social upheaval threatens to make the area's daily earthquakes nothing more than a convenient bundle of metaphors.

Finn is blessed with the ability and willingness to admit her own bafflement--when the goings-on get too weird for her to explain, she just shrugs her shoulders and moves on, leaving explanations to later theorists. Written just as the bust was recognized as more than a temporary setback, Artifacts could have been an epitaph or a morality play; instead, Finn guides the reader to a broader understanding of human motivation and behavior amidst trying times. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

Silicon Valley, a small place with few identifiable geologic or geographic features, has achieved a mythical reputation in a very short time. The modern material culture of the Valley may be driven by technology, but it also encompasses architecture, transportation, food, clothing, entertainment, intercultural exchanges, and rituals.

Combining a reporter's instinct for a good interview with traditional archaeological training, Christine Finn brings the perspectives of the past and the future to the story of Silicon Valley's present material culture. She traveled the area in 2000, a period when people's fortunes could change overnight. She describes a computer's rapid trajectory from useful tool to machine to be junked to collector's item. She explores the sense that whatever one has is instantly superseded by the next new thing -- and the effect this has on economic and social values. She tells stories from a place where fruit-pickers now recycle silicon chips and where more money can be made babysitting for post-IPO couples than working in a factory. The ways that people are working and adapting, are becoming wealthy or barely getting by, are visible in the cultural landscape of the fifteen cities that make up the area called "Silicon Valley."

Customer Reviews:

Disappointed.......2002-10-13

I had high expectations for this book, however I was severely disappointed. The book makes claims at being some sort of archaeologist's study, but it reads like a badly written vacation journal written by an easily impressed child. Finn locks onto the most trivial aspects of Silicon Valley and Internet culture and romanticizes them in a way that only someone who doesn't understand them would.

A different view of the valley, removed from the hype.......2002-09-26

This book takes a look at the other side of the Silicon Valley: the side removed from the glitz and glamour of the Silicon Valley (or at least what it had during the writing of the book).
Other reviewers wanted more coverage of local companies. For that, they should turn to the dozens of business publications that already cover that information, or the dozens of books that chronicle the history of the Valley and its various star companies.

This book was written to help outsiders understand the reality of the Silicon Valley and, having been written from the perspective of an outsider, finds significant details that insiders either simply take for granted or just don't notice.

It describes the social foundations upon which the Silicon Valley was built and upon which it currently rests, and uses that information to try to explain how the Valley of Hearts Delight was tranformed. In this regard, the book truly is an archaeological treatise, but written in a friendly and readable style that allows the reader to experience the scene firsthand.

get English-Lueck's Cultures@SiliconValley instead.......2002-07-17

This is not the best book for insights about the Valley. As the other reviewers suggest, this book has a bit of a split personality. On the one hand, one has a stream of observational anecdotes about the Valley. All of the usual cliches are here: Fry's, Buck's Diner, the cherry stands, the 101 traffic jams. These read like someone is trying their hand at writing a confessional ethnographic tale, but without a theoretical argument to provide a central structure. On the other hand, one has a stream of stories about computer-as-artifact -- tales about the collectors, like Nathan Myhrvold, and the people who recycle computers, and so on. One gets the feeling that the author set out to write a book about the latter, found it a bit thin, and the editor suggested fleshing it out with some bubble-era backdrop.

Silicon Valley and Archaeology Redefined?.......2002-04-15

I have to agree with the reader from Woodside, CA. This book is an author's vacation documented with brief historical and computer tech stories. The Title, "Artifacts", does not reflect what the book's content is! It is confusing reading and very hard to follow. Dates, times and places are mixed up, depending on whenever the author remembered a fact or event, jotted it down, and then flips back to another event months after. Silicon Valley and its high tech companies, were not sought after depicting what our high tech companies here have provided, historically, for our world. From an archaeology standpoint, there must have been dozens of companies willing to impart knowledge and "artifacts" to the author, if the author's mind was actually on really gathering pertinent information. I agree, the author had a wonderful vacation here in the Silicon Valley and got to write out her personal travels as she thought they were. There are too many side stories here, including irrelevant cities, places and events written about that clearly have nothing to do with artifacts, the Silicon Valley, or Archaeology.

Silicon Valley extended?.......2002-03-20

I was looking forward to reading this book with the intention of collecting facts, both historical and computer oriented, in regards to the Silicon Valley. However, it was a wee bit like reading a large essay of sorts, and I was distracted by bouncing dates and events not in a specific order, and material that had little or nothing to do with Silicon Valley. Where were the interviews with the large computer companies and internet companies and their CEO's? When I visited the Silicon Valley, I saw several computer companies in Mountain View, Milpitas, Oakland, Redwood City, Alviso, Fremont, Sunnyvale and San Jose that were never addressed. These companies have fed our nation with a wealth of technology and financial stability amongst the world. Instead, there are pages of personal experiences that had no place in an archaeology based text. If you are to read this book, Artifacts, be sure to have a pad of paper to map out chronologically what is going on. Also, I would have liked to have seen actual "artifacts" of Silicion Valley photographed large and in color, with a description and history beneath them as to identify and associate them. I suppose this book would have fancied me if it wasn't suppose to be an archaeology text. Also, I would have liked to read about the cities in Silicon Valley that are crucial to the computer field and their "artifacts". Some of the cities reported on are not considered the "computer" cities of the Silicon Valley. It may have been that the author was side tracked by her personal journies and discoveries.

A Guide to the Artifacts of Colonial America.(Book Review): An article from: American Antiquity

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A Guide to the Artifacts of Colonial America.(Book Review): An article from: American Antiquity
Marshall J. Becker
Manufacturer: Society for American Archaeology
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from American Antiquity, published by Society for American Archaeology on January 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1382 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: A Guide to the Artifacts of Colonial America.(Book Review)
Author: Marshall J. Becker
Publication: American Antiquity (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: Society for American Archaeology
Volume: 69 Issue: 1 Page: 156(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley

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Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley
CHRISTINE A. FINN
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OQIYZI

Customer Reviews:

Great for a Mister Rogers Fan.......2007-09-19

Although this book was written for adults, you can read it to your children and they would probably enjoy it. You learn lots of the inside things about the show that are fun to know or point out to your kids. Understanding that this is a book geared towards adults, you will learn lots of things that will help you understand children. You will also find parts of the book to be funny and touching. I have enjoyed the book and would recommend it for Mister Rogers' fans.

Great for all fans of the show.......2006-03-18

I bought this book primarily as a gift for my cousin, whose son is a big fan of the show. I thought that at 2 1/2, he would soon start asking the type of questions addressed in the book, and this would help his parents answer them. I also enjoyed the innocence of the sometimes silly questions asked by the letter writers, and how Mr. Rogers dealt with each person with the compassion and understanding that has made him a family favorite for the last thirty years. Even though he is gone and will be sorely missed, I'm glad that I could help pass on his wisdom to a new generation of fans.

Worth the read.......2005-10-01

If you love Mr. Rogers, this book is worth your read. Through his letters he reminds us once again how to be a good "friend" and respect the feelings of all the people in our neighborhood.

Mr. Rogers, the planet's best neighbor!.......2005-08-20

I watched Mr. Rogers as a child, I watched and respected him and his TV "ministry" as a Kindergarten teacher and mother. I think he was the most genuine and caring person on television! Very calming and great for kid's self-esteem....what a wonderful role model and human being. This as well as the other books about and by Fred Rogers are priceless. This book is very touching....letters from his viewers with his own responses. A beautiful thing!

Overflowing with wisdom, compassion, and grace.......2004-03-10

In November of 1998, I was sitting in a computer lab/library at an airbase in Saudi Arabia when an unusual magazine cover caught my eye. It was an issue of ESQUIRE, and taking up almost the whole cover was none other than Mister Fred Rogers, grinning from ear to ear. I read Tom Junod's marvelous article about this heroic man (you'll have to find a copy of the article to learn why I use the word "heroic") over and over and over, many times out loud.

So my fascination with Mister Rogers was rekindled for the first time in more than 15 years. But as a child I was mostly fascinated with a magical trolley which could transport you into an enchanted land called Make-Believe. Mr. Junod gave me a much deeper - and therefore, much more fascinating - glimpse at what this man is like.

He was a man who loved children and the adults who once were children as much as he loved himself. He hated television. He believed (or so his actions seem to convey) that his outflow of compassion was as much a necessity for his survival as his intake of oxygen. And his favorite word was grace. In fact, if you met him in person and received his autograph, he would write the word "grace" underneath it - in Greek.

Unmerited favor received from God.

Believing his standards to be no higher than that of God's, Mister Rogers strove to treat others with as much grace as he had received.

The reason I state all of this is because it will all be proven when you read DEAR MISTER ROGERS. This book, containing letters both to and from Mister Rogers, shows that he can be funny, sad, nurturing, and firm. But he was always compassionate. Never in this book is he ever insincere. On more than a few occasions, he proves he does not lack the humility to admit some of the mistakes he has made in life.

Some of the letter exchanges are very cute. None are more so than the one about the father whose little boy insisted that Mister Rogers doesn't "poop"; to which Mister Rogers replies, "I am a real person. And, one thing for certain is that all real people 'poop.'" (Page 7)

The fact that Mister Rogers had a hand in compiling and editing all of these letters, shows his sense of humor. For instance, in the final chapter, 17-year-old Tyler writes

Dear Mister Rogers,
In your younger years did you get a lot of chicks because you were Mister Rogers?
(Page 185)

Some of the letters will provoke different emotions, like the ones from Alexandria, who at the tender age of four, was suffering from leukemia; and another letter about one child who listened to (rather than watched) the program because she was blind. (Interesting side-note I learned from Mr. Junod's article: Mr. Rogers was color-blind.)

Book Description

Mark Collins and Margaret Mary Kimmel detail the story of Pennsylvania native Fred Rogers and his classic PBS children’s program Mister Roger’s Neighborhood.

Customer Reviews:

One of the greatest 20th century entertainers.......2003-06-15

In 2003, Fred "Mister" Rogers departed this world after a lifetime of public service to all children.

In a day when many people from all points on the political spectrum had eagerly reduced `compassion', `equality' and `pro-child' to catchy, but ultimately divisive and meaningless words, he continued to bring out the best in everybody.

He is one of the few people in this world deserving of all his awards/honors and then much more.

As evidence of his timeless appeal, I never tired of watching his namesake PBS children's show. Even when I was much older (and out of the intended demographic service range), I loved the truly nurturing environment regularly brough into my living room. Well before I realized my parents were not getting along (eventually divorcing), Mr. Rogers "told" me via daily broadcast that good families come in all structures, and the family format is subsequently less important than how the individual members treat eachother and themselves. When my parents finally did divorce in high school, I had been so helped by Roger's work, I immediately flashed back to his reassuring songs.

That the sets were decidedly showing their age in places by the late 1980's, and the cast themselves featured in some segments had died mattered much less than their overall mission of helping ALL kids navigate an often unforgiving world in uplifting and supportive tones.

The mostly male ensemble cast of the neighborhood (although this changed in latter seasons) was not problematic in the long-run for this feminist, because it suggested an alternate male sexuality that was built on empathy and peace as opposed to macho swaggering. It was okay for men of all ages to cry, hug and freely embrace a side of themselves that Western culture remains fixated on suppresing.

At a different developmental stage in the human life-span, kids were smart, and did not deserve the condescending behavior so many other adults (including those on `educational/children's' programming) spew at us in the pursuit of ratings and the almighty American dollar.

Unlike PBS's other "flagship" children's program, Sesame Street (now famous for abandoning the original-audience at-risk urban kids to focus on the offspring of suburban yuppies), Mr. Rogers always remembered his audience, and never sold out or let us down.

Even when growing partisan political battles and budget cuts provided powerful incentive to follow suit, he made sure principles were more than abstract words. All children had an inalienable right to be treated with respect and dignity.

From tackling such edgy subjects as the RFK Assassination to hostages and war, Mr. Rogers always both captured and nurtured his audience's imagination. Talking things out wasn't necessarily high-tech or flashy, but it was unbelievably better when compared to letting personal feelings bottle up inside.

Adding to the quality, Rogers was scrupulous about not parading his religious affiliations (licensed minister in the Presbyterian Church) as the reason his advice should be taken.

For my generation with the unfortunate timing to grow up with the beginnings of a markedly aggressive televangelist craze, his conduct provided a welcome alternative to the less-than-admirable actions of other adults in our world. It was not enough to simply apply religious freedoms to one's self, they belong to every citizen.---including those of differing perspectives and no religious affiliation.

Thus, the most constructive educational pedagogy was one that did not continually promote any religion (or the formal absence) but far more civil neutrality.

As with so many other people, I never got to personally thank him for the gift, but I know I am using it whenever I think both critically and compassionately about the larger world around me. I also know I am not the only one who remembers him through this type of a tribute, and our collective efforts will produce the best kind of off-screen "neighborhood" possible.

The not-so-subtle discounting of this very same instructional idea by self-appointed educational guardians suggests both how far ahead of his time he was and effective Rogers truly remains.

RIP Mr. Rogers.

fantastic.......2003-04-28

i found this book remaindered for a very low price, but it is totally worth the full list price. a respectful, intelligent look at the great man Fred Rogers and his TV show that isn't even a TV show, really... varying points of views. the essayists only occasionally become too weirdly academic or navel-gazing. i like the production values on this hardcover, too -- it's fully cloth-covered with a full cloth, smythe-sewn binding, acid free paper, and neat endpapers. the back cover photo rules, too. 2003 May 3rd is the Mr Rogers memorial ceremony in downtown pittsburgh -- go!

How do we make goodness attractive?(children's television)(Transcript): An article from: Federal Communications Law Journal

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How do we make goodness attractive?(children's television)(Transcript): An article from: Federal Communications Law Journal

Manufacturer: University of California at Los Angeles, School of Law
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Federal Communications Law Journal, published by University of California at Los Angeles, School of Law on May 1, 2003. The length of the article is 797 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: How do we make goodness attractive?(children's television)(Transcript)
Publication: Federal Communications Law Journal (Refereed)
Date: May 1, 2003
Publisher: University of California at Los Angeles, School of Law
Volume: 55 Issue: 3 Page: 569(2)

Article Type: Transcript

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed is a revision of the best-selling ASP.NET Unleashed, by Microsoft Software Legend Stephen Walther. It covers virtually all features of ASP.NET 2.0 including more than 50 new controls, personalization, master pages, and web parts. All code samples are presented in VB and C#. Throughout the more than 2,000 pages, you will be shown how to develop state-of-the-art Web applications using Microsoft's latest development tools. This resource is guaranteed to be used as a reference guide over and over!

Customer Reviews:

Asp.Net 2.0 revealed.......2007-06-08

Trying to read most other book on asp.net 2.0 programming books are dull, boring, and mostly hard to follow. ASP.Net 2.0 Unleashed was considerable easier to follow steps and really hit on the concepts!

Book of ASP NET 2.0 heaven.......2007-05-14

I've been read a lot of ASP NET books, but since I read this one my knowledge of using this tecnology has changed and a lot of concepts in this plataform as well. Therefore, the best ASP NET book I've ever read!

Lies and Greed - no C# in book.......2007-04-22

"All code samples are presented in VB and C#." If you were able to read the previous sentence describing the book's contents, you, like me, would naturally assume that C# code is present in the book. You would be wrong. The C# code is relegated to the CD only, making reading the book from a C# perspective awkward at best. I've written the publisher, who foolishly asked for feedback. Bottom line, if you develop in C#, this book is not for you.

Great ASP.NET 2.0 Book!.......2007-03-10

I am a web developer that started with Classic ASP and eventually moved to the .NET framework. With the release of .NET 2.0 came a wide variety of new tools and objects to use and I wanted to get up-to-date with all the new features it provided. Looking for the right book (built on a tutorial/reference base) I read through the different reviews of books on ASP.NET 2.0 offered on this site and ultimately chose this book. I AM GLAD I DID!!! This book is jam packed with 1600 pages of tutorial-style code that goes over all the new functions and essentially everything I wanted. The book provides source code in C# as well as VB.NET. If you are looking to come to speed with ASP.NET 2.0 this is definitely the book for you.
-John W. [asp:webDeveloper]

A quality book - cannot be ignored.......2007-02-28

I would give this book 1000 stars if I could, and yet it's far from perfect. How can this be?
I will try to explain.

Well this book is a product of amazing quality, input and hard work from the author.
Here are the pros:
it is only written by one author.
It has complete code listings [it comes in at a wapping 1900+ pages] - and this cannot be underestimated, as lots of books give you snippets so you have to look in 2 or 3 places to understand what you're doing.
The code listings are on the disk and they are very very well organized by chapter. They are in VB and C#
The code listings all work
it has few typos, I'm reading it from front to back and I've come across very little that is wrong.
It progresses very nicely from the simple to the complex
it is intensely practical in the way that it's written being basically one long tutorial covering all the vital aspects ASP.net and how they relate to the .Net framework

the cons:
the listings are in VB which is verbose and a worse choice for a thick book (obviously that's a subjective point)

often the examples contain scads of features (sqldatasource, objectdatasource etc...etc..) that are not explained until later in the book. This can be a good thing though

it's not the only book you can read because even though it goes through all the features it's not definitive and does not contain industrial quality or highly elegant code.

it's very light on theory.

Even having said all that, I still can't recommend this book enough because so much of what passes for computer books (especially on ASP.net) is so awful and incomplete that this tome stands out for the right reasons.

I'm not alone in praising it, even the father of ASP.Net Scott Guthrie gives it 5 stars, that has got to count for something

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