Q Books

This book is amazing. It is the number one key and a must have for every aspiring myrmycologist.

In America for the last few decades, Q discussions in America have been largely framed by scholars like Robinson, Kloppenborg, Mack and Crossan. In their works, these scholars claim, with a surprising amount of confidence, to know many things about the origin, development, genre, character, extent and purpose of Q. As a result, many far reaching conclusions have been asserted with regard to Christian origins and the historical Jesus. But truth be told, many of these conclusions have been built on little more than speculation and methodological problems are never hard to detect.

Let me try to summarize briefly the conclusions that have been drawn by many of the folks writing books about Q who have based their works on the above-mentioned scholars. It is frequently assumed (and occasionally argued) that Q was once a single Greek document, or that it can be precisely classified according to genera (e.g. "sayings of the wise") or that Q and the "community" responsible for it can be fairly associated with ancient Cynicism. Early Christianity, we are told, began with a group of itinerant Cynics who liked to talk about nature and who enjoyed being a stick in the eye of traditionalism (earliest strata of Q). Afterwards, it evolved into an eschatologically-oriented group with much closer ties to Judaism (later strata of Q). Then, with the composition of Mark's Gospel and with the stratified Q's eventual enshrinement in the Gospel's of Matthew and Luke the origian Q was lost and all but forgotten ... until recent scholars recovered it and explained to us what it all means.

Kloppenborg's stratification theory and Downing's, Vaage's, Crossan's and Mack's claims about Jesus being a "Cynic sage" have provided popular authors with fodder for all sorts of ridiculous historical reconstructions about the life of Jesus and early Christianity. In his own historical sketch of Q research Casey runs through the scholarship leading up to our sad current state of affairs in Q scholarship, focusing on men like Toedt, Luehrman and Kloppenborg, showing how their methodologies were very unsound and have been accepted all-too-uncritically. Casey complains of how Q research has become "beaurocratized", by which he means that scholars often rely on one another's prior arguments rather than personal examinations of the primary source material (e.g. the recent discoveries at Qumran). He also points to the way arguments for Q involve a lot of question-begging techniques. For example, the arguments Kloppenborg uses to show how Luke or Matthew displaced certain sayings within Q could just as easily be taken to show that these sayings originally existed independently and were not extracted from an existing document (at least not one with its own meaningful arrangement) and then rearranged according to the redactor's theological programme.

Casey's criticisms on recent Q scholarship would alone make the book worth buying since good criticisms like his are going virtually unheard in the ruckus of all the sensationalist ideas being proposed these days.

Casey also, rather unexpectedly, criticizes many of the early Aramaic approaches to the Gospels, even Matthew Black's impressive work. I found his remarks here insightful and an indicator of his own reflective and critical mind.

Casey's thesis is that at least some of Q was originally preserved in Aramaic, not Greek. Moreover, it was not a united composition, but may have existed as several independent sayings. The translated Greek Q existed in at least two translations before Matthew and Luke got to it and these distinctive translations are detectable and partially recoverable by retroverting the texts into Aramaic - the language in which they were originally preserved and which Jesus most likely knew and spoke.

Casey also challenges the widespread assumption that Q contained nothing more than what Matthew and Luke now hold in common. For example, it is often characterized as a "sayings source" since it contains very few narratives. But this claim relies on a rather elaborate view of stratification. As it comes down to us, Q contained several narratives (e.g. stories about John the Baptist, Christ's temptation, the healing of the centurion's servant, Peter's leaving the scene and weeping bitterly after his three-fold denial, the question posed to Christ, "Who is he that struck you?").

One problem I have with Casey is his method of demonstrating the Aramaic Vorlage behind Q: he tries to show how Matthew or Luke may have misread or misinterpreted certain Aramaic words. I'm not convinced any of these arguments really hold up.

Still, the book comes as a refresher to me since I've read several books on this topic now and they've usually been from the same standpoint. This book offers a different look at things and I think presents some good food for thought. A more comprehensive book on Q that I'd recommend is "Q and Early Christianity" by Christopher Tuckett. Richard Horsley has also written some good critiques of Kloppenborg. For a good critique of the Cynic hypothesis, Craig Evans has a good chapter in his book "Fabricating Jesus." It's a very easy read too, unlike this book by Casey.

Before I ordered this book for my Queers and Theory class various folks told me, "It changed my life." Academic books don't usually elicit such comments.

Yet it is not a "self-help" book, far from it. It is a thoughtful and graceful mix of cultural criticism, media engagements, insightful and workable theory, participant analysis, histories and interpretations of lgbt lives, and steadfastly original work on trauma across all these sites of meaning and scholarship.

It is also a rather compulsive read. It feels remarkably personal, reaching out to the reader's person too. And the personal here is crafted so sparingly, practically zen. It's deep without being intrusive, empathetic without being sentimental. I marvel at this poetic distillation.

Everyone in my class loved this book. It drew us together, even though everyone cared most about quite different chapters. People thought our discussions about it were the best of the semester.

When I told my therapist about it, she went immediately to her computer to order it.

Cvetkovich's approach is lean, quiet and profound. And it is a big book. It starts you out on a range of threads of connection: to great music, conscious film-making, archives and histories, activisms and contemplation. I'm so glad I wanted to read it.

If you spend enough time using this guide to review all the questions, the CORRECT answers, you will pass. I used mainly this book for my study. I created some flash cards on some tougher items in the material. I did a lot of on-line practice exams, just search on "amateur extra practice exam" There are many sites. I really did not use the actual Extra ARRL book, even though I did buy one. This Q&A guide can get you a new ticket.

The ARRL Q&A guides are well thought-out mini instruction guides. You can actually learn - really learn - a good percentage of the exam material by reading through the brief answer explanations that accompany each question. That will not suffice for the more complex material, of course, but even there, reading this book first will better focus your study of the full exam guide. That's especially important when studying for the Extra exam, as the full guide has a lot of supplementary learning material for concept building, and if you don't have a good notion of what the exam will focus on, you'll find yourself trying to absorb more than you will need for the exam, and at a very detailed level. The ARRL Q&A book and full exam guide go hand-in-hand.

While I used ARRL's license manual by itself when studying for my General, I used both the Q&A book and manual when studying for my Extra. I heartily recommend using both! You will find that much material can be learned by reading through the short explanations that accompany each answer in the Q&A book. This is not only good enough for some of the test material, it is actually all that's needed. Some topics only require short exposure (e.g., rules), not extended study. I don't advocate merely memorizing answers, so don't misunderstand this review. My view is that the Q&A book - for a fair percentage of the test - is good teaching material in its own right.

ARRL's full license manual for the General exam may be found here: The ARRL General Class License Manual for Radio Operators (Arrl General Class License Manual for the Radio Amateur)

This was a great read for indiviudals looking to be amateur radio operators. I was expecting more nudity. I thought they would illustrate a lot of their theory with porn-like photos. I was wrong. I didn't really see a lot of skin in this book. I still read it, it just wasn't as enjoyable as it could of been. Overall, it's a good technical book, but some nice pics would have made it a great book!

The term "Win-Win" has become an every day buzz word. I read Gerard's book nearly thirty years ago when the term was really something new. He actually coined the phrase "Everybody Wins." Virtually the same concept.
His examples are creative and pertain to real life situations. It is good to read a book by someone who has actually been there and done that. His other books are quite informative also. ;-)

OK, so I'm the author. So, I may a bit biased. But, if you're looking for a robust way to detect chemicals, or even just anomalies in the environment, this is a good read.

Granted, this book isn't exactly the best book on the Chinese Zodiac, it does have really good stories from mythology that show off the characteristics of each of the signs in a very clever way. If you like reading mythological stories, I would recommend this, if you want a book that simply lists off the characteristics of each of the signs, I don't recommend it. I found it to be a very enjoyable read, and would recommend it to those interested in stories that show off characteristics of the signs.