In reality, this is probably the only text I have reread (and many times) since leaving college. It's an introduction to the scientific method applicable to any of the sciences. It presents relatively advanced topics in statistics: the how and the why. And it's pretty humourous too.

The author provides simple and understandable examples that make abstract notions of statistics and the scientific method concrete and relevant.

Very seriously, I've used the knowledge I found in here will be used on a day to day basis to evaluate all those studies that we're assaulted with: is oat bran good for you, are mammograms associated with increased breast cancer for males under 40, all those things.

I don't think that I could live with just one Access book, but, if I had two, it would be this and The Access 97 Developers Handbook by the same authors along with Mike Gilbert.

The authors of this book have a gift for making concepts accessible. Their patience and understanding of how to take an explanation step by step and still convey the concept as well as the recipe is rare in a field which is usually filled with prose so deadly that it can only be read by Ben Stein.

The only tiny problem for Access 97 users is that all of the sample databases must be converted -- a mind numbing task.

Mr. White's 'MIDI for the Technophobe' explains in simple terms how to make MIDI work. After the first 2 chapters I had a fundamental understanding of the connectivity & interaction between MIDI components.

It is a slow read at first, but it has to be to clarify what other books assume their readers can figure out for themselves. That's what makes this book so excellent for first-time and beginning MIDI users - it doesn't bury you in buzzwords, it buries you in visualizations on how it all connects and makes music.

A great book for the analog musician who wants to add MIDI synths, percussions and orchestrations to their recordings!

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's extraordinary talent for creating poetry that is unrivaled is effective in both establishing character and demonstrating the theme. The characters of this play all speak in poetic form with the exception of the English rustics who speak in prose. This helps to place the fairies and the lovers on a higher and more transcendental plane that the artisans. The artisans, as a result, become even more comical and serve to heighten the misunderstandings of love.

The poetry of Shakespeare's genius also helps to clarify the play^s theme of the extreme confusion and blinding power of love. The rhythmic words help to create a magical setting while the rhyming scheme serves to portray the confusion each character feels while under the power of love.

Those who think that love is only a blissful dream, will find that Shakespeare, in this play of clever intrigue, shows also that love can be a place of extreme confusion. As the audience ponders the revelry they have just seen on stage, Puck steps forth to conclude the confusion:

If we shadows have offended/ Think but this, and all is mended/ That you have but slumbered here/ While these visions did appear/ And this weak and idle theme/ No more yielding than a dream.

The audience is left in as much ambiguity as it felt throughout the performance; the play appropriately ends in a puzzling state of confusion.

The majority of events is this play take place during the night, even the rehearsal for the farcical play-within-a-play. All of the mishaps occur during the nighttime hours and the confusion is not cleared up until the next morning when the four lovers are discovered. This setting of night allows the audience to drift into the idea that the entire play could well have been nothing more than a fantastic dream.

Sleep in another theme that threads its way throughout the play. All of the mishaps and mistakes occur through the guise of sleep. One of the major influences of sleep is that it allows Puck and Oberon to make use of the magic love flower whose power is only effective if its intended victim is fast asleep. The flower, however, causes an hilarious love triangle that is not set straight until Oberon once again finds all of the confused lovers asleep. When they are discovered the next morning and asked to explain their crazy night, the only explanation that can be given is that it was all a dream.

There seems to be no other way for Shakespeare to end this riotous entanglement of lovers, mythological beings, fairies and artisans but to explain it as a dream. Throughout the play, with its nighttime atmosphere and frequent occurrences of sleep, the dreamy state of the characters is passed on to the audience. The play itself is still in an inconclusive state when the characters leave the stage and many questions remain in the mind of the audience. Puck's closing monologue, however, explains that puzzlement is the appropriate emotion to be felt during the course of the play. Puck then goes on to persuade the audience that the only logical explanation for the ambiguity of the play, itself, is that, just as the characters themselves experienced, the audience has just awakened from a comical and fantastic dream.