Wagner Books

After just having read The Tristan Chord by Bryan Magee I happened to buy this book, which is somehow a complementary vision to the Schopenhaeurian's, brilliantly given in Magee's book. But I really was not ready for the big surprise.

By concisely beholding Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung in terms of Aristotle's elements of tragedy as expressed in his Poetics - plot (mythos), music, speech, thought, character and spectacle - Jeffrey Buller makes the most precise, lucid and revealing analysis of Wagner I've seen in a long time.

Particularly striking are the chapters on Speech, where alliteration or "Stabreim" is exposed; Thought, where "sleep" as a mythic entity is showed to be the key idea of the whole Ring - I'm still mind-boggled by the sheer brigthness of such an insight; and Character, where the idea of the mesianic hero is lucidly unveiled. There's even a pairing of Siegmund as mesianic hero with Hagen as his exact counterpart which never occurred to me.

In chapter 1, the problem of Wagner's early classical education is cleared out.

This book has given me many a precious clues to better understand a work so great as Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung.

I do heartily recommend it to anyone that cares about Wagner's work.

Simply put, this book is brilliant. I've seen it work in person. It definitely makes for a more "Christian" discussion, as opposed to screaming at people or waving bibles in their faces. Anyone who doubts the approach should consider the results of those that use it. This book has helped me go to the next level in establishing common ground with even the most extreme pro-choice advocate.

As a field of applied mathematics, computational biology has exploded in the last decade, and shows every sign of increasing in the next. This book overviews a few of the topics in the computational modeling of cells. I only read chapters 12 and 13 on molecular motors, and so my review will be confined to these.

Nanotechnology could be described as an up-and-coming field, but in the natural world one can find examples of this technology that surpass greatly what has been accomplished by human engineers. The authors begin their articles with a few examples of natural molecular machines, including the "rotary motors" DNA helicase and bacteriophage, and the "linear motor" kinesin, the latter they refer to as a "walking enzyme". Important in the modeling of all these is the theory of stochastic processes in the guise of Brownian motion, which the authors hold is the key to understanding the mechanics of proteins. In chapter 12 they give a detailed overview of the mathematical modeling of protein dynamics, followed in chapter 13 by an illustration of the mathematical formalism in the bacterial flagellar motor, a polymerization ratchet, and a motor governing ATP synthase.

To the authors a molecular motor is an entity that converts chemical energy into mechanical force. The production of mechanical force though may involve intermediate steps of energy transduction, all these involving the release of free energy during binding events. But due to their size, molecular motors are subjected to thermal fluctuations, and thus to model their motion accurately requires the theory of stochastic processes. Thus the authors begin a study of stochastic processes, restricting their attention to ones that satisfy the Markov property. Starting with a discrete model of protein motion as a simple random walk, the authors show that the variance of the motion grows linearly with time, which is a sign of diffusive motion. The partial differential equation satisfied by the probability distribution function, in the continuous limit where the space and time scales are large enough, is left to the reader to derive as an exercise.

The authors then consider polymer growth as another example of a stochastic process, a kind of hybrid one in that it involves both discrete and continuous random variables, the position of the polymer being continuous, while the number of monomers in the polymer is discrete. The authors derive an ordinary differential equation for the probability of there being exactly n polymers at a particular time. From this they show how to obtain sample paths for polymer growth and give a brief discussion on the statistics of polymer growth.

Attention is then turned to the modeling of molecular motions, with the first example being the Brownian motion of proteins in aqueous solutions. The (stochastic) Langevin equation is given for the motion of the protein, both with and without an external force acting on the protein. To find a numerical solution of this equation is straightforward, as the authors show. But they caution however that simulation of this solution on a computer is liable to introduce spurious results, and so they derive the Smoluchowski model, a somewhat different way of looking at random motion via the evolution of ensembles of paths. In this formulation the Brownian force is replaced by a diffusion term, and the external force is modeled by a drift term.

The authors then consider the modeling of chemical reactions, which supply the energy to the molecular motors. Because of the time scales involved in these reactions, a correct treatment of them would involve quantum mechanics, but the authors use the Smoluchowski model. The simple reaction model they consider involves a positive ion binding to negatively charged amino acid, and using as reaction coordinate the distance between the ion and the amino acid, study the free energy change as a function of the reaction coordinate.

The numerical simulation of the protein motion is then considered in much greater detail, using an algorithm that preserves detailed balance. This involves converting the problem to a Markov chain and a consideration of the boundary conditions, which the authors do for the case of periodic, reflecting, and absorbing. Euler's method is used to solve the resulting equations for the Markov chain, and after dealing with issues of stability and accuracy, the Crank-Nicolson method is used. The last few sections of the chapter are devoted to the physics of these solutions and the authors give some intuitive feel for the entropic factors and energy balance on a protein motor.

In the last chapter of the book, the considerations in chapter 12 are applied to concrete molecular motors. The first one examined is a model for switching in a bacterial flagellar motor, which involves the protein CheY as a signaling pathway. The binding of CheY to the motor is modeled as a two-state process, with the binding site being either empty or occupied. The resulting set of coupled differential equations for the probabilities is solved for when the concentration of CheY is constant. An expression for the change in free energy is obtained, and the authors give a discussion of the physics in the light of what was done in the last chapter. The switching rate is computed, along with the mean first passage time.

Some other examples of molecular motors are also discussed, including the flashing racket, the polymerization ratchet, and a simplified model of the ion-driven F0 motor of ATP synthase. This latter motor is fascinating, since it describes the electrochemical energy involved in mitochondria for the production of ATP. The authors do a nice job of showing how the techniques of chapter 12 are used to solve this model, and also give an analytical solution for a certain limiting case.

Plucked from the gallows by the daring rebels of the White Rose, the mighty Conan joins his rescuers in their blood-soaked struggle to rid Zingara of its hated despot. Soon Conan himself will draw steel against a new, still crueler tyrant and his terrifying Final Guard - the indestructible warriors of stone from the age of legends.

While they are hundred of SAP or BAAN or J.D. Edwards or Oracle books in the market, only few books were really written in "ERP context". Fortunately, this book is one of few.

The teaching experience told Brady and Monk that "teaching SAP application" to business students was not sufficient to make students understand the "concept of ERP". This is the impression for them to write this book. The foundation of ERP are addressed in business process perspectives; and then, mapped to the ERP process. One "BIG" case-study is used to describe the ERP component, with respect to SAP R/3 system. However, the fundamental is not limited to SAP package since extensions are also provided.

The uniqueness of this book is the combination of "O'Leary's book (ISBN 0521791529)" and "Jacobs & Whybark (ISBN 0072400897)". Like "Why ERP? by Jacobs and Whybark", Brady and Monk use a single case study to describe the ERP in "formal format" (not in novel as Why ERP). Like "O'Leary's book", this book gives the fundamental to understand ERP rather than "implementation of specific package".

Unlike "Why ERP", this book is the formal textbook, very easy to read textbook, not a novel. Unlike "O'Leary's book", this book is the explanation of ERP and interaction of business process, instead of implemenation and outline.

Another major advantage of this book is the easy-well-written is in 200 pages. Graduate students or passion-readers may finish it in one night. This book is also good for ERP introduction (1-3 meetings) for any Production/Operation Management classes or Supply Chain Management.

One thing that I'd like to see more is the "reference". While this book is quite comprehensive, the reference are limited to the CIO (www.cio.com), instead of many existed publications. I wish the authors would do more research in this area and put additional reference in the context in the next edition.

What is a religious spirit? "A religious spirit is a demonic force that influences people to act pious, self-righteous or super-spiritual. The religious spirit has a clear-cut agenda" to disorient one's perception of who Jesus is and to stand in the way of God's effort to build His glorious Church". Wow! That is deep. They continues to describe the ways of a religious spirit. One of the most powerful examples is that of the Pharisees - they used the ritualistic traditional of keeping everything within the status quo. The book continues to illustrate how to overcome the religious spirit by - using the bad breath of pride test, discussing three theologies you should not believe, defeating the religious spirit and walking into the freedom God intends for you.

Femrite and Sytsema proves that God speaks to everyone but you must quiet yourself, listen and do His command. Through years of self-study, reading the Word, and learning from Godly friends, they show us all how to conquer the religious spirit. This book is grounded in the Word and provides all the references you need to check out the lesson. This book may be difficult to read for some as recognizing if you have a religious spirit puts Satan on notice. Everyone should read this book and pray to rebuke any religious spirit that may be looming over you.

Deltareviewer
Reviewing for Real Page Turners

Diane Wagner apparently knew that there was something extraordinary about the now almost forgotten case of one Leonard Ewing Scott who was put on trial for the murder of his wealthy wife in the mid 1950's in Los Angeles. In any case, Ms. Wagner's timing in writing the book was great because she was able to interview not only the (at that point) aging and failing Mr. Scott before he died, but she also interviewed the hard-charging Los Angeles prosecutor who put Mr. Scott behind bars against all odds.

You see, L. Ewing Scott (he liked the "Ewing" part) killed his unsuspecting wife Evelyn and carried out a "body disposal" scheme so clever that Mrs. Scott was never found. Mr. Scott thought, of course, that without any body, he would never be charged with murder and he told everyone a wide range of stories to account for his wife's sudden departure. ("She was in a sanitarium back East" he'd whisper. "Somewhere.")

While the general public and true crime buffs have almost forgotten about this original "missing woman" case, prosecuting attorneys have not because the case Ms. Wagner discusses forms the basis for nearly all prosecutions of "bodiless homicides" in the U.S.

The assistant D.A., J. Miller Leavy, took on the Scott case, body or no body, and effectively prosecuted the homicide even though there was no body, no crime scene evidence, and "only" circumstantial evidence.

For a new book which puts the L. Ewing Scott case into the context of crimes in which men skillfully dispose of their wives or girlfriends in carefully constructed plots to "get away with murder", see Marilee Strong's new Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives. If you can find a copy of Corpus Delecti, it is a great combination of true crime and legal procedural on just how such a tough case can be built.

Loved this book! The writer paints each scene so vividly, I couldn't put it down. The characters were so real that I found myself getting personally involved with their dilemmas. Very scary in spots though - you might not want to read it alone at night! Am looking forward to more novels by this author.

Excellent integration of the current and past child psychology literature. The author adopts a multidimensional perspective when discussing child therapy from diverse theoretical orientations, including psychodynamic, child-centered, and cognitive-behavioral.

I have used the receipe for Peach Eggnog for years. It is a hit every time. Great receipes like Chocolate Eggnog, teapot cookies, basil-garlic snack wafers and many, many more. Not only great recipes but great craft ideas to serve your goodies in. Highly recommended.