Conventions Books

Finally someone put together Barack Obama's most electrifying speeches of the 2008 Democratic primary in a single volume, formatted especially for the Kindle.

Reading these you get to re-experience the excitement, word-for-word, of 11 of his best speeches including

* Obama's announcement of his candidacy for the President of the United States;

* The night he won the Iowa Caucus and declared "...at this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again."

* The historic "race speech" where Obama shares his vision for "a more perfect union."

* The last night of the democratic primary, when, after 54 contests, he could say "I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States."

* His riveting acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in front of more than 80,000 people where he spelled out his American Promise.

This book is your chance to relive the history-making democratic primaries of 2008. Not in sound bytes, but the complete, official transcripts from 11 speeches that inspired a nation.

This book starts with Obama's speech announcing his candidacy for the President of the United States and goes straight through to his riveting acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in front of more than 80,000 people.

This book also includes --

The night he won the Iowa Caucus and declared "...at this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again."

The historic "race speech" where Obama shares his vision for "a more perfect union."

The last night of the democratic primary, when, after 54 contests, he could say "I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States."

There are a total of 11, complete, unedited, full text transcripts which can be read and savored in a fraction of the time of watching these speeches live. I was able to relive the best moments of the primary, one after another, after another.

This little booklet looks with a spiritual eye at the philosophical question of the relationship between the human soul and body.

Table of Contents

1. There are two worlds--the spiritual world, where spirits and angels are, and the natural world, where men are
2. The spiritual world existed and subsists from its own sun, and the natural world from its own sun
3. The sun of the spiritual world is pure love, from Jehovah God, Who is in the midst of it
4. From that sun proceeds heat and light, and the heat proceeding from it is in its essence love, and the light from it is in its essence wisdom
5. Both the heat and the light flow into man--the heat into his will, where it produces the good of love, and the light into his understanding, where it produces the truth of wisdom
6. Those two, namely, heat and light, or love and wisdom, flow conjointly from God into the soul of man, and through this into his mind, its affections and thoughts, and from these into the senses, speech, and actions of the body
7. The sun of the natural world is pure fire, and by means of this sun the world of nature existed and subsists
8. Therefore everything which proceeds from this sun, regarded in itself, is dead
9. The spiritual clothes itself with the natural, as a man clothes himself with a garment
10. Spiritual things, thus clothed in a man, enable him to live a rational and moral man, thus a spiritually natural man
11. The reception of that influx is according to the state of love and wisdom in a man
12. The understanding in a man can be elevated into the light, that is into the wisdom, in which the angels of heaven are, according to the improvement of his reason; and in like manner his will can be elevated into the heat of heaven, that is into love, according to the deeds of his life; but the love of the will is not elevated except so far as the man wills and does those things which the wisdom of the understanding teaches
13. It is altogether otherwise with beasts
14. There are three degrees in the spiritual world, and three degrees in the natural world, hitherto unknown, according to which all influx takes place
15. Ends are in the first degree, causes in the second, and effects in the third
16. From these things it is plain what is the quality of spiritual influx from its origin to its effects

Research guides must be judged on the usefulness, not their readability, but Bauchner and Ramani have done pretty well in both regards in this very practical guide. Their subject matter is timely, important, and sexy, and it is clear that both have delved into their subjects deep enough to ferret out the less useful information. Bauchner's book list is quality-oriented, and the Internet resources are carefully cataloged. Both authors are careful to note the strengths and limitations of Internet research, and both offer helpful research tips based on experience. For example, Bauchner suggests checking for the most current developments on the EU Data Directive. No doubt, he has encountered researchers who failed to heed such common-sense advice. Overall, Bauchner and Ramani have taken complex subjects about which there is voluminous information available and presented a readable guide that should save researchers time while directing them to the most useful and valid sources.

Jim Klotz has written an outstanding book on international sales contracts. The book clearly discusses all contractual aspects involved in an international sale of goods, from trade, pricing, delivery and payment terms to the relevant Rules (ICC, CISG, etc.). Most impressively, the book contains a sample of almost every contract clause and explains what it does for (or to) both buyer and seller. While written by an international lawyer for lawyers, the lay reader will find the book extremely useful in understanding how to contract with foreign buyers or sellers. I highly recommend Klotz's International Sales Agreements.

These are letters written by swami satyananda to his female disciple. If you haven't heard of satyananda you probably don't know how great he is. A disciple of the famous Sivananda, he is one of the greatest innovators and masters of yoga of this era. It's ironic that many lesser lights are much better known in the u.s.a. And here's the interesting part--what this book doesn't even hint at is that the woman he wrote these letters to later went deep into inner/outer space and was lost in samadhi for several years before she could fully regain her earthly consciousness, and now she is considered a saint in India. No kidding. (I was informed of this fact by another swami of the saraswati order when I mentioned I was reading this). The book is very readable and not overly long. Reading it, you begin to feel the power of satyananda's personality coming through the pages. He makes you believe this pathway is do-able. It does contain a lot of yogic terms, but there is a glossary in the back you can easily use to look them up. If you like yoga meditation this is well worth the time. In fact, it may be a classic. This deserves more than just five stars and, in fact, it feels a little overly-samsaric to rate a book that has such a strong feeling of the sacred about it, but that's america for you, it's one big marketplace.

This is a cracker of a book, concise, well paced and alive to actual outcomes and possibilities. It describes a convention held in 1917 to establish a process whereby various Irish representatives were encouraged to come together to work out a method of self-rule. The convention was a response to the crisis precipitated by the 1916 Rebellion in Dublin. The parties were encouraged by a British government distracted by the life-and-death struggle of World War One. Modelled on a conference held in South Africa, it invited representatives of Irish non-violent nationalism, Southern Unionism and Northern Unionism (the last two are quite different - read the book) along with clergy, unions and an author or two. McDowell describes the proceedings with a significant eye for character and argument, while not shying away from the foreboding overhanging the entire proceeding due to the Southern Irish public's increasing attraction to what McDowell politely refers to as `Advanced nationalism' i.e. Sinn Fein.
The Northern unionist came to the Convention to water down the Home Rule provisions which had been legislated, but not implemented, in 1914; the Nationalists wished to increase those provisions. The Southern unionists could have played a levelling role, but the irrelevance of the proceedings was only increased by the parties inability to reach any sort of an agreement. Lloyd George hoped that a minimum of two of the three parties might agree, but this was beyond their powers
I was quite surprised to see the level and nature of the participation of the Catholic clergy- it was detailed, serious and at times, more entrenched even than the Nationalists. There was much discussion of methods to allow the different communities in Ulster to participate in the envisaged self-rule, some discussion centred on letting each Ulster county decide. One Bishop (of Raphoe, I think) stated that his careful study had found that most Nationalists in Ulster lived above a certain elevation above sea-level and most Unionists below; therefore it might be as well if people above that elevation level gave allegiance to Dublin and below it to Belfast or London. McDowell gives this nugget with a cheerful nod to the Bishops erudition, if not his administrative acumen!.
As we are aware, post war elections swept the Nationalists and Southern Unionists into political oblivion, and the reciprocal anathemas of self-rule and partition confronted the parties who remained - Sinn Fein and the Northern Unionists. This, roughly is where we are today, with the added problem that whereas the Convention undertook negotiation about how to practice self rule within a sovereign union, now Anglo-Irish negotiations have a backdrop of a conflict of loyalties between two sovereign states, making agreement trickier than ever.
This is a magnificent book, detailed, informed, short and readable - an amazing combination.

How to use it against interference over NT, Reverses, Preempts

Excellent. Full of great examples. This is a GREAT book!


Having all the examples and quizes really helps.
Don't rely on someones notes, buy this book if you want to use Lebensohl.

The best part of this book is its the ONLY material I've ever seen on handling artificial interference over an NT opener.

Classic Lebensohl is great over natural overcalls, but it needs to be adjusted against artificial interference (DONT, CAPPELLETTI, LANDY, BROZEL, etc.)

This is the best book for overall English usage that I have seen! I am ordering 6 more for my office.

I found this recently published book absolutely riveting. It is destined to change the very basis of digital systems design and potentially the basis of programming and software engineering as well. Its author, Karl Fant, is the principal of Theseus Research http://www.theseusresearch.com/ and founder of spin-off company Theseus Logic http://www.theseus.com/.

He holds 29 patents in various aspects of digital design and is, without doubt, one of the most profound thinkers on the fundamentals of digital design and computer science. On his website there are a number of papers challenging the very basis of computer science http://www.theseusresearch.com/invocation model.htm

He challenges many accepted "obvious" truths. According to Karl:

* "Boolean logic" is expressively incomplete as the basis for circuit design as it requires some other means for expressing the timing relationships needed to guarantee correct computing results. He replaces Boolean logic with his 2 state Null Convention Logic (2NCL) with amazing results.
* Concurrency is the most basic and most general model of computing, with sequential processing as a special case.
* Computer science as the science and theory of process expression rather than the science of algorithms.
* Replacing the notion of variable and thereby eliminating a large number of logical and expressive problems.

This work is immensely practical. A logically and expressively complete method for designing asynchronous circuits should result in circuits and chips that are faster; consume less power; make better use of use on-chip real estate; and produce less radio interference.

The potential to specify software fully without the need to deal separately with timing issues is very exciting indeed.

For the past 40 odd years most computers and computer-based devices have been designed as clock-driven or synchronous devices. This was not always so. The early computers such as the ENIAC and UNIVAC were asynchronous, largely because clocked synchronicity had not yet been fully figured out.

In the early 50s and 60s there were several University-based research projects to develop explicitly architectures including the University of Manchester (UK) MU5 project (www.computer50.org/kgill/mu5/mu5.html) and the University of Illinois ILLIAC I and ILLIAC II computer series (See the book "Asynchronous System Design by Chris J Myers 2001, John Wiley and Sons, Inc and http://www.async.ece.utah.edu/). One of the last commercially viable fully asynchronous computers was the first PDP-10 (Digital Equipment), the KA 10 designed by a team led by Alan Kotok.

There are currently a number of asynchronous design research projects in Universities and industry. Ivan Sutherland and Jo Ebergen of SUN summarised a lot of the current work in Computers Without Clocks, Scientific American, 15 July 2002.

What Mr. Fant has done that is unique is provide a solid universal logical theory that, for the first time encompasses all of the known special cases and much more besides.