Yet there have been relatively few attempts to understand the video game as an independent medium. Most such efforts focus on the earliest generation of text-based adventures (Zork, for example) and have little to say about such visually and conceptually sophisticated games as Final Fantasy X, Shenmue, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, and The Sims, in which players inhabit elaborately detailed worlds and manipulate digital avatars with a vast—and in some cases, almost unlimited—array of actions and choices. In Gaming, Alexander Galloway instead considers the video game as a distinct cultural form that demands a new and unique interpretive framework. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, particularly critical theory and media studies, he analyzes video games as something to be played rather than as texts to be read, and traces in five concise chapters how the “algorithmic culture” created by video games intersects with theories of visuality, realism, allegory, and the avant-garde. If photographs are images and films are moving images, then, Galloway asserts, video games are best defined as actions. Using examples from more than fifty video games, Galloway constructs a classification system of action in video games, incorporating standard elements of gameplay as well as software crashes, network lags, and the use of cheats and game hacks. In subsequent chapters, he explores the overlap between the conventions of film and video games, the political and cultural implications of gaming practices, the visual environment of video games, and the status of games as an emerging cultural form. Together, these essays offer a new conception of gaming and, more broadly, of electronic culture as a whole, one that celebrates and does not lament the qualities of the digital age. Alexander R. Galloway is assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University and author of Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization.

    . . will encourage ever more critical and creative explorations."—Fernando Coronil, [I]American Journal of Sociology[/I]"Taussig has brought a formidable collection of data from arcane literary, journalistic, and biographical sources to bear on . . . questions of evil, torture, and politically institutionalized hatred and terror. His intent is laudable, and much of the book is brilliant, both in its discovery of how particular people perpetrated evil and others interpreted it."—Stehen G. Bunker, Social Science Quarterly

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    An occasionally humorous and insightful look into what makes socities both similar and unique.

    Far from the thankless, pointless exercises they are often thought to be, mathematics and logic are indispensable guides to ridding ourselves of dominant opinions and making possible an access to truths, or to a human experience of the utmost value. That is why mathematics may well be the shortest path to the true life, which, when it exists, is characterized by an incomparable happiness.

    Clandinin and Connelly have created a major tour de force. This book is lucid, fluid, beautifully argued, and rich in examples. Students will find a wealth of arguments to support their research, and teaching faculty will find everything they need to teach narrative inquiry theory and methods.--Yvonna S. Lincoln, professor, Department of Educational Administration, Texas A&M University Understanding experience as lived and told stories--also known as narrative inquiry--has gained popularity and credence in qualitative research. Unlike more traditional methods, narrative inquiry successfully captures personal and human dimensions that cannot be quantified into dry facts and numerical data. In this definitive guide, Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly draw from more than twenty years of field experience to show how narrative inquiry can be used in educational and social science research. Tracing the origins of narrative inquiry in the social sciences, they offer new and practical ideas for conducting fieldwork, composing field notes, and conveying research results. Throughout the book, stories and examples reveal a wide range of narrative methods. Engaging and easy to read, Narrative Inquiry is a practical resource from experts who have long pioneered the use of narrative in qualitative research.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Rather than relying on abstract generalizations and theories, van Manen offers an alternative that taps the unique nature of each human situation.The book offers detailed methodological explications and practical examples of hermeneutic-phenomenological inquiry. It shows how to orient oneself to human experience in education and how to construct a textual question which evokes a fundamental sense of wonder, and it provides a broad and systematic set of approaches for gaining experiential material that forms the basis for textual reflections.Van Manen also discusses the part played by language in educational research, and the importance of pursuing human science research critically as a semiotic writing practice. He focuses on the methodological function of anecdotal narrative in human science research, and offers methods for structuring the research text in relation to the particular kinds of questions being studied. Finally, van Manen argues that the choice of research method is itself a pedagogic commitment and that it shows how one stands in life as an educator.

    Of particular importance is the examination of Bayesianism and the new experimentalism, as well as new chapters on the nature of scientific laws and recent trends in the realism versus anti-realism debate."Crisp, lucid and studded with telling examples… As a handy guide to recent alarums and excursions (in the philosophy of science) I find this book vigorous, gallant and useful."New Scientist

    The Satanic Narratives - A Modern Satanic Bible is a foundational text thoroughly deconstructing Satan, the adversarial archetype and the individualism of the Left-Hand Path. This updated Satanic Bible marks a reformation in the religion of Satanism, accessible to the average reader and philosopher alike. Satanists who struggled to find meaning in LaVey's Rand-inspired social Darwinism, will embrace this new focus on activism and social justice.While the skepticism and secular ethics mirror that of Humanism, this Satanic philosophy goes much further: incorporating rebellion, unrelenting perseverance, being the outcast, the individualist, and the adversary. The characteristics of each aspect of the Satan archetype are meticulously explained and linked to the philosophy presented. This not only justifies why it is worthy of the name "Satanism", but also answers the question of why it can only be called "Satanism".

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    His explorations of Hollywood's stars, directors, and most famous films--as well as his fresh look at Godard, Bergman, and other great European directors--will be of lasting interest to movie-viewers and intelligent people everywhere.

    It’s about the re-making of your interior world as the exterior world becomes more unfamiliar and uncertain.The sudden arrival of the pandemic pushed the world faster and further into the 21st century. Now, life is dictated by two forces you can’t see: data and the virus. Are you really built for so much change so quickly?Basar/Coupland/Obrist’s prequel, The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, became an instant cult classic. It’s been described as, “a mediation on the madness of our media,” and, “an abstract representation of how we feel about our digital world.”Like that book, The Extreme Self collapses comedy and calamity at the speed of swipe. Dazzling images are sourced from over 70 of the world’s foremost artists, photographers, technologists and musicians, while Daly & Lyon’s kinetic design elevates the language of memes into a manifesto. Over fourteen timely chapters, The Extreme Self tours through fame and intimacy, post-work and new crowds, identity crisis and eternity. This is an eye-opening, provocative portrait of what’s really happening to YOU.

    A System of Logic is the first major installment of his comprehensive restatement of an empiricist and utilitarian position. It begins the attack on ""intuitionism"" which Mill carried on throughout his life, and makes plain his belief that social planning and political action should rely primarily on scientific knowledge, not on authority, custom, revelation, or prescription.Contents Include: OF NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS Of the Necessity of commencing with an Analysis of Language Of Names Of the Things denoted by Names Of Proposition Of the Import of Propositions Of Propositions merely Verbal Of the nature of Classification and the five Predicables Of Definition OF REASONING Of Inference, or Reasoning in General Of Ratiocination, or Syllogism Of the Functions, and logical Values of Syllogism Of trains of Reasoning and Deductive Sciences Of Demonstration and Necessary truths OF INDUCTION Observations on Induction in General On the Ground of Induction Of the Laws of Nature Of The Law of Universal Causation Of The Composition of Causes Of Observation and Experiment, Four Methods of Experimental Enquiry Miscellaneous Examples Plurality of Causes Of the Deductive Method Explanation of Laws of Nature. Keywords: Knowledge, Theory of Logic Science Methodology

    It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of reference, in particular of naming, and of identity. From a critique of the dominant tendency to assimilate names to descriptions and more generally to treat their reference as a function of their Fregean sense, surprisingly deep and widespread consequences may be drawn. The largely discredited distinction between accidental and essential properties, both of individual things (including people) and of kinds of things, is revived. So is a consequent view of science as what seeks out the essences of natural kinds. Traditional objections to such views are dealt with by sharpening distinctions between epistemic and metaphysical necessity; in particular by the startling admission of necessary a posteriori truths. From these, in particular from identity statements using rigid designators whether of things or of kinds, further remarkable consequences are drawn for the natures of things, of people, and of kinds; strong objections follow, for example to identity versions of materialism as a theory of the mind.This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here published with a substantial new Preface by the author.