Local governments are abusing their power in many places because courts usually don't enforce private property rights guaranteed by our Constitution. This is the story one man's 5 year struggle bouncing from court to court, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to save his land.

The surprise ending shows the extent of the evil in some people. The only part of the book I didn't like was the section of verbatim court testimony.

The book is also partly an autobiography and Lucas has led an interesting life.

Patterns in the Sand is a racy introduction to a wide cross section of the ideas which comprise "Complexity Theory". Barely a stone in this ecclectic intellectual landscape is left unturned with examples drawn from mathematics, computation, genetics, ecology, and social dynamics to focus the reader on the relevance of systems approaches of understanding complex behaviour, and how even very simple everyday phenomena are rich with complex detail.

The book is generally well written, with only the occaisional paragraph leaving the reader begging for relevance; though the pace of ideas is frenetic, sometimes moving through an entire chapter without two paragraphs on the same topic. The style is readily accessible but sufferes somewhat through lack of conclusive discussion. One gets the impression that the impact of the book could be improved by a more detailed development.

Still, there is a wealth of material here, and it serves as an excellent introduction to the trandisciplinary nature of complexity theory and it's applications. I read the book in conjunction with a number of other, less popularly oriented works and found this combination brought the ideas in "Patterns..." to the fore. The strength of the book I felt was in sketching the relationships between a large number of ideas rather than in exploring any of the ideas per se.

If you are looking for a mathematical treatment, or an in-depth discussion on the foundations of complexity, I'd recommend you shop elsewhere. But if you are looking for an intellectual brainstorm to cross-fertilise your own ideas on complexity, this may be the book for you.

As Green points out in his introduction, Queen Anne remains a remarkably obscure British monarch, considering the relatively recent date of her reign (1702-1714). To some, such as Churchil, she was shining queen of the Augustan age; to others, she was an inconsequential ninny. The central relationship of her life was a "friendship" with Sarah Jennings, wife of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and many now accept that the relationship was sexual.

Sadly, Green's biography doesn't approach the same level of excellence that his earlier biography of the Duchess of Marlborough. Even though Anne suffered through seventeen pregnancies (none bearing her a surviving heir), even though she witnessed revolution (and usurped her own father), even though she presided over the Union of England and Scotland (thus becoming the first person to reign a unified Great Britain) and even though she reigned through a tumultuous world war, we are lost in a morass of private letters and a catalogue of courtiers' comings and goings. And, for what it is worth, Green is prepared to suggest that Anne's feelings for Sarah were purely platonic. This would get three stars if not for the fact that the sources are so good. But the great popular biography of Anne perhaps remains to be written.

Well how is that, according to the data provided the fourth edition appeared in 1920!

Whenever the history books have to describe the reign of Queen Anne in one paragraph or less, the name of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough invariably pops up, together with a coy reference to Anne's "friendship" with Sarah, or Sarah's "influence" with Anne.

The facts are these: Sarah Churchill, nee Jennings, was the wife of the renowned Captain-General John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough and de facto prime minister of England during the Wars of the Spanish Succesion (not to mention umpteenth great-grandfather to Sir Winston.) At SOME point during the Spanish war, she and Anne had a huge falling out, following which Marlborough was stripped of his post and forced into early retirement at his new estate, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire.

Where this biography excels is in chronicling the palace life of Sarah, who lived most of her childhood in the royal residences as a playmate and confidante of Princess (later to be Queen) Anne. Green had unfettered access to the Blenheim Palace archives and to Sarah's private correspondence and diaries. Following her split with Anne, and Marlborough's death, he steers us through Sarah's later life, when she became eccentric, obstreporous and highly litigious. Sarah, a voluminious writer, is omnipresent, and her intelligence and sarcastic wit still sparkle as we read her thoughts (and jibes).

The big lingering mystery that this book prefers not to address is Sarah's own sexuality. It's clear - abundantly, painfully, tragically so - that Anne's "passion" for Sarah was much more than platonic. But whether Sarah reciprocated these feelings, or merely played on them in order to win preferment for herself and her husband, is a question Green doesn't address. We are left to draw our own conclusions - but perhaps there's nothing wrong with that.

This is a pretty good resource for DMs. It has two new classes, the death knight and the necromancer, both of which have some neat abilities. However, you can't really use this for players because it seems (to me, at least, from playing a bit with it) the Necromancer is a bit more powerful than an equivalently levelled wizard or cleric. This probably holds true until somewhere around 9th level, at which time it is quite a bit more even (the reduction in spells become significant at that point). The Death Knight is a great nasty to throw against players, I haven't used it as much but the flavor is much appreciated and I think these folks have done a good job overall.

An excellent book on the theory of ROC. Its an early book on the subject but the coverage is quite broad and extensive. i consider it still current information.

The book goes deeper into areas not normally covered in ROC explanations. For example it diagrams and explains how different gausian distriutions ( different std deviation) affects the shape of the "ideal" ROC curve. It helped me understand why my real data created ROC curves in Excel didnt quite look as good as all those nice textbook examples.

You'll like the theory it if you think like an engineer. Otherwise it could be considered fairly dry reading.
I would consider this book as an excellent reference book. Its early date gives it a nuts and bolts innocence. No new-age fluff or pyrotechnical fireworks of intellectual obsfucation. Good old fashioned information I can grasp.

You need to understand a bit of maths and statistics.

I would suggest that you use on-line tutorials on the subject first ( Introduction and tutorial material ) and then delve into the book. There are some excellent hands on , live, Java script ROC Graphs , on the net with which to learn from.

Search on the keywords Signal Detection Theory and ROC.

Recommended.

The editor says the the purpose of this dictionary is to analyze the religious statements of the Old Testament with the aid of all accessible resources and the present them in their peculiarity, in order to shed as much light as possible on the connections of the content of Old Testament though in a given text, tradition, or institution. To accomplish this goal 39 international Old Testament scholars have written articles on 53 Hebrew words found in the Old Testament, ranging from the word for "father" to that for "alone." There are articles on "light, "man," "God," "land," among others. While the words are arranged according to their Hebrew form, all Hebrew words are transliterated. This is the first of several volumes translated from the German original.

Most people who are familiar with a modicum of knowledge of world affairs know that in Britain there is socialised medicine. Indeed, if one follows Prime Minister's Question Time on Sunday evenings on C-SPAN, it is one of, if not the greatest, achievements of the Labour Party while in office.

The Labour Party prides itself on being the party of the working class and in that sense, the creation of a National Health Service free at the point of use was indeed a triumph. In the official history of Britain, it is recorded that way.

However, this is not the whole story. What Britain has is a National Health Service was funnels healthcare towards those who have the biggest political pull in the system, the middle classes. It is true that the system is free at the point of use but that is only one facet of the NHS. There is rationing - by time, by location, by employment, by social class - just not by price.

This book tells the story of a class betrayed by it's own political party. The (perhaps) unintended consequences of their actions resulted in power being transferred from the people and their organic institutions to the doctors which resulted in a powerful class of technocrats, heavily unionised, which run the health service today.

Working Class Patients charts the development of a private health care system run by working people themselves. It shows how those same people, the uneducated serfs as portrayed by Charles Dickens, rationally allocated part of their meagre incomes for healthcare, choosing doctors and holding them accountable. This book is a treasure trove for anyone interested in delving further into the development of state sponsored healthcare. It is rich in examples and detail and provides a scholarly look at the real history of the people in Britain.

Dr. Green has done a great service to the working people in showing how they acted with great consideration for each other, in dignity despite difficult circumstances, in the provision of health services for themselves and their families.

It is because of this book that Labour politicians should be ashamed rather than proud of the creation of the National Health Service in Britain.