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Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Sexual Politics in the Golden Age of Rap Nationalism
by null Charise CheneyBrothers Gonna Work It Out considers the political expression of rap artists within the historical tradition of black nationalism. Interweaving songs and personal interviews with hip-hop artists and activists including Chuck D of Public Enemy, KRS-One, Rosa Clemente, manager of dead prez, and Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers, Cheney links late twentieth-century hip-hop nationalists with their nineteenth-century spiritual forebears.Cheney examines Black nationalism as an ideology historically inspired by a crisis of masculinity. Challenging simplistic notions of hip-hop culture as simply sexist or misogynistic, she pays particular attention to Black nationalists’ historicizing of slavery and their visualization of male empowerment through violent resistance. She charts the recent rejection of Christianity in the lyrics of rap nationalist music due to the perception that it is too conciliatory, and the increasing popularity of Black Muslim rap artists.Cheney situates rap nationalism in the 1980s and 90s within a long tradition of Black nationalist political thought which extends beyond its more obvious influences in the mid-to-late twentieth century like the Nation of Islam or the Black Power Movement, and demonstrates its power as a voice for disenfranchised and disillusioned youth all over the world.
Habeas Corpus after 9/11: Confronting America’s New Global Detention System
by null Jonathan Hafetz2012 American Bar Association Gavel Award Honorable Mention for Books2012 Scribes Book Silver Medal Award presented by the American Society of Legal WritersThe U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay has long been synonymous with torture, secrecy, and the abuse of executive power. It has come to epitomize lawlessness and has sparked protracted legal battles and political debate. For too long, however, Guantánamo has been viewed in isolation and has overshadowed a larger, interconnected global detention system that includes other military prisons such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, secret CIA jails, and the transfer of prisoners to other countries for torture. Guantánamo is simply—and alarmingly—the most visible example of a much larger prison system designed to operate outside the law.Habeas Corpus after 9/11 examines the rise of the U.S.-run global detention system that emerged after 9/11 and the efforts to challenge it through habeas corpus (a petition to appear in court to claim unlawful imprisonment). Habeas expert and litigator Jonathan Hafetz gives us an insider’s view of the detention of “enemy combatants” and an accessible explanation of the complex forces that keep these systems running. In the age of terrorism, some argue that habeas corpus is impractical and unwise. Hafetz advocates that it remains the single most important check against arbitrary and unlawful detention, torture, and the abuse of executive power.
Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam
by null Dawn-Marie Gibson null Jamillah KarimPresents oral histories and interviews of women who belong to Nation of IslamWith vocal public figures such as Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam often appears to be a male-centric religious movement, and over 60 years of scholarship have perpetuated that notion. Yet, women have been pivotal in the NOI's development, playing a major role in creating the public image that made it appealing and captivating.Women of the Nation draws on oral histories and interviews with approximately 100 women across several cities to provide an overview of women's historical contributions and their varied experiences of the NOI, including both its continuing community under Farrakhan and its offshoot into Sunni Islam under Imam W.D. Mohammed. The authors examine how women have interpreted and navigated the NOI's gender ideologies and practices, illuminating the experiences of African-American, Latina, and Native American women within the NOI and their changing roles within this patriarchal movement. The book argues that the Nation of Islam experience for women has been characterized by an expression of Islam sensitive to American cultural messages about race and gender, but also by gender and race ideals in the Islamic tradition. It offers the first exhaustive study of women’s experiences in both the NOI and the W.D. Mohammed community.
The Tie That Binds: Identity and Political Attitudes in the Post-Civil Rights Generation
by null Andrea Y. SimpsonWhat does it mean to be black in a nation increasingly infatuated with colorblindness? In The Tie That Binds, Andrea Y. Simpson seeks to answer this crucial question through the prism of ethnic and political identification. Historically, African Americans have voted overwhelmingly Democratic in governmental elections. In recent years, however, politically conservative blacks--from Clarence Thomas to Louis Farrakhan to Ward Connerly–have attracted much of the media's gaze. What is the nature of black conservatives' constituency, and is it as strong and numerous as conservatives would have us believe? To what extent, if at all, does black conservatism stem from a weakened sense of collective racial identity? Simpson tackles the peculiar institution of black conservatism by interviewing college students to determine their political attitudes and the ways in which these are shaped. The result is a penetrating interrogation of the relations between political affiliation, racial identity, and class situation.
Beyond the Mountains of the Damned: The War inside Kosovo
by null Matthew McAllesterWinner, Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2002, Non-FictionThe story of Pec—Kosovo's most destroyed city during the wars in SerbiaFor every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts long after the act has been committed. Reporters weren’t allowed into Kosovo during the war without the permission of the Yugoslavian government but Matthew McAllester went anyway. In Beyond the Mountains of the Damned he tells the story of Pec, Kosovo’s most destroyed city and the site of the earliest and worst atrocities of the war, through the lives of two men—one Serb and one Kosovar. They had known each other, and been neighbors for years before one visited tragedy on the other. With a journalist’s eye for detail McAllester asks the great question of war: What kind of men could devastate an entire city, killing whole families, and feel no sense of guilt? The answer lies in the culture of gangsterism and ethnic hatred that began with the collapse of Yugoslavia.
Policing Pleasure: Sex Work, Policy, and the State in Global Perspective
by Susan Dewey and Patty KellyMónica waits in the Anti-Venereal Medical Service of the Zona Galactica, the legal, state-run brothel where she works in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico. Surrounded by other sex workers, she clutches the Sanitary Control Cards that deem her registered with the city, disease-free, and able to work. On the other side of the world, Min stands singing karaoke with one of her regular clients, warily eyeing the door lest a raid by the anti-trafficking Public Security Bureau disrupt their evening by placing one or both of them in jail.Whether in Mexico or China, sex work-related public policy varies considerably from one community to the next. A range of policies dictate what is permissible, many of them intending to keep sex workers themselves healthy and free from harm. Yet often, policies with particular goals end up having completely different consequences.Policing Pleasure examines cross-cultural public policies related to sex work, bringing together ethnographic studies from around the world—from South Africa to India—to offer a nuanced critique of national and municipal approaches to regulating sex work. Contributors offer new theoretical and methodological perspectives that move beyond already well-established debates between “abolitionists” and “sex workers’ rights advocates” to document both the intention of public policies on sex work and their actual impact upon those who sell sex, those who buy sex, and public health more generally.
Papa's Baby: Paternity and Artificial Insemination
by null Browne C. LewisWhen a child is conceived from sexual intercourse between a married, heterosexual couple, the child has a legal father and mother. Whatever may happen thereafter, the child’s parents are legally bound to provide for their child, and if they don’t, they’re held accountable by law. But what about children created by artificial insemination? When it comes to paternity, the law is full of gray areas, resulting in many cases where children have no legal fathers. In Papa’s Baby, Browne C. Lewis argues that the courts should take steps to insure that all children have at least two legal parents. Additionally, state legislatures should recognize that more than one class of fathers may exist and allocate paternal responsibility based, again, upon the best interest of the child. Lewis supplements her argument with concrete methods for dealing with different types of cases, including anonymous and non-anonymous sperm donors, married and unmarried women, and lesbian couples. In so doing, she first establishes different types of paternity, and then draws on these to create an expanded definition of paternity.
The Acrylic Artist's Bible: An Essential Reference for the Practicing Artist (Artist's Bibles Ser.)
by Marylin ScottThis guide to painting techniques and subjects includes photos, diagrams and illustrations, providing instruction for both beginner and advanced artists.With its great flexibility, acrylic paint can mimic the appearance of oils, tempera, and watercolors in unique ways, each method pictured in a separate step-by-step demonstration. The author also examines the use of acrylics with airbrush, sculptural, and printing techniques—even three-dimensional relief painting and collagraph printing methods are included—and how several of these different creative processes can be integrated successfully in one composition with ink, pencil, charcoal, and pastel. Inspiring examples of representational and abstract subjects are depicted throughout, and a complete survey of all the latest acrylic materials covers the best paint brands, painting mediums, supports, varnishes, brushes, knives, and palettes.This book contains instructions on painting many different subjects, like landscapes, trees, mountains, buildings, still lifes, and portraits. It makes an ideal gift for someone practiced in the arts of acrylic painting, and newcomers to the art form.
Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics
by Jenny BanghamBlood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through people and institutions, Jenny Bangham explores the intimate connections between the early infrastructures of blood transfusion and the development of human genetics. Focusing on mid-twentieth-century Britain, Blood Relations connects histories of eugenics to the local politics of giving blood, showing how the exchange of blood carved out networks that made human populations into objects of medical surveillance and scientific research. Bangham reveals how biology was transformed by two world wars, how scientists have worked to define racial categories, and how the practices and rhetoric of public health made genetics into a human science. Today, genetics is a powerful authority on human health and identity, and Blood Relations helps us understand how this authority was achieved.
The Telegraph History of the World: An Anthology of the Telegraph's Finest Reporting
by Gavin Fuller and Max DavidsonAn archive of Great Britain’s Daily Telegraph news coverage highlights the major historical events from the Victorian era through the twenty-first century.Celebrating 160 years of reporting, this is an anthology of the headlines that the Telegraph made. The paper sent Stanley to Africa and George Smith to discover the Babylonian story of Noah on ancient tablets. The twenty-two-year-old Churchill wrote from the North-West frontier at £5 a column, and Kipling from the front in the First World War. As well as showcasing the talents of many of these eminent correspondents, The Telegraph History of the World gives a fascinating picture of the way people lived and how news was reported. In 1932 when reporting on the German presidential elections the Telegraph’s headline read “Herr Hitler’s Hopes Dashed Forever.” Not all doom and gloom, the royal births and weddings as well as political scandals make for a diverse and interesting collection from late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Germophobia (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader)
by Bathroom Readers' InstituteFor more than 25 years, there’s always been a home in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader for those stories about doctor visits or routine surgeries gone horribly wrong--the wrong limb getting amputated, the wrong person getting a transplant, the nurse who didn’t notice her patient had died…for three days. Because we never get tired of reading about big boo-boos (as long as they’re happening to someone else), here is a whole book of the troubling and funny stories of when good health care goes bad. Read all about:* The woman who needed her gall bladder out…so she removed it herself* The man who waited in an emergency room…for three weeks* The heart surgeon who got caught drawing his signature on his work* And many more stories of dreadful doctors, hospital horrors, and bad medicine.
Last Man Out: Surviving the Burma-Thailand Death Railway: A Memoir
by H. Robert CharlesAn American Marine recounts his ordeal as a World War II POW forced by the Japanese to build the railway immortalized in The Bridge on the River Kwai.From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, such as a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author.Praise for Last Man Out“A remarkable story, long overdue, of the treatment of POW’s captured by Japan.” —Arthur L. Maher, USN, Senior officer to survive sinking of the USS Houston, POW of the Japanese in World War II“In World War II, to move materials and troops from Japan to Burma by avoiding the perilous sea route around the Malay Peninsula, the Japanese military built a railroad through the jungles of Thailand and Burma at great human cost to its prisoner laborers. Last Man Out is an effective addition to the history of this tragedy.” —Library Journal
Between Nostalgia and Apocalypse: Popular Music and the Staging of Brazil (Music Culture)
by Daniel B. SharpChronicles the entanglement of traditional and experimental music in northeast Brazil Between Nostalgia and Apocalypse is a close-to-the-ground account of musicians and dancers from Arcoverde, Pernambuco—a small city in the northeastern Brazilian backlands. The book's focus on samba de coco families, marked as bearers of tradition, and the band Cordel do Fogo Encantado, marketed as pop iconoclasts, offers a revealing portrait of performers engaged in new forms of cultural preservation during a post-dictatorship period of democratization and neoliberal reform. Daniel B. Sharp explores how festivals, museums, television, and tourism steep musicians' performances in national-cultural nostalgia, which both provides musicians and dancers with opportunities for cultural entrepreneurship and hinders their efforts to be recognized as part of the Brazilian here-and-now. The book charts how Afro-Brazilian samba de coco became an unlikely emblem in an interior where European and indigenous mixture predominates. It also chronicles how Cordel do Fogo Encantado—drawing upon the sounds of samba de coco, ecstatic Afro-Brazilian religious music, and heavy metal—sought to make folklore dangerous by embodying an apocalyptic register often associated with northeastern Brazil. Publication of this book was supported by AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Critical Theory and Science Fiction
by Carl Freedman Carl FreedomSelected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year. This innovative cultural critique offers valuable insights into science fiction, thus enlarging our understanding of critical theory. Carl Freedman traces the fundamental and mostly unexamined relationships between the discourses of science fiction and critical theory, arguing that science fiction is (or ought to be) a privileged genre for critical theory. He asserts that it is no accident that the upsurge of academic interest in science fiction since the 1970s coincides with the heyday of literary theory, and that likewise science fiction is one of the most theoretically informed areas of the literary profession. Extended readings of novels by five of the most important modern science fiction authors illustrate the affinity between science fiction and critical theory, in each case concentrating on one major novel that resonates with concerns proper to critical theory. Freedman's five readings are: Solaris: Stanislaw Lem and the Structure of Cognition; The Dispossessed: Ursula LeGuin and the Ambiguities of Utopia; The Two of Them: Joanna Russ and the Violence of Gender; Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand: Samuel Delany and the Dialectics of Difference; The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick and the Construction of Realities.
X-15: The World's Fastest Rocket Plane and the Pilots Who Ushered in the Space Age (Smithsonian Ser.)
by John Anderson Richard PassmanThe concise illustrated history of the first space plane, featuring exclusive photographs.The exciting story of the X-15—the iconic rocket plane of the Cold War space race is recounted by John Anderson, curator of aerodynamics at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. This experimental space plane was on the cutting edge of hypersonic aerodynamics, and its winged reentry from space foreshadowed the development of the Space Shuttle decades later. Launched from the wing of a modified B-52 bomber—again foretelling a concept that would be used decades later, in this case by SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo—the ship rocketed higher and faster than any manned aircraft of the time. Designed to approach seven times the speed of sound, it was the first hypersonic aircraft ever created and was engineered to function both in the Earth’s atmosphere and at the edge of space. Illustrated with period NASA and USAF photographs, as well as exclusive Smithsonian photography of the first of three X-15s built, X-15 captures the risks and dangers of the X-15 program as Anderson follows the test pilots (including Neil Armstrong) who pushed the very limits of their piloting skills to master groundbreaking experimental technology. Even with the fatal crash of the third X-15, the overall success of the program helped pave the way for NASA to continue to the Moon—and this is the definitive, expertly curated, and beautifully illustrated account of its development.Praise for X-15“[X-15] lays out the case for why the X-15 was and continues to be such an important aircraft. This book makes the reader want to visit the National Air and Space Museum and view the X-15 up-close in a whole new light, in which its aerospace accomplishments rank alongside other distinguished aircraft on display at the museum.” —DefenseMediaNetwork.com“The authors have crafted an excellent introductory story for this aircraft. This book is a good read and I can highly recommend it to anyone who wants to start to learn about this most remarkable airplane.” —International Plastic Modelers Society
Transcendentalism and the Cultivation of the Soul
by Barry M. AndrewsA study of the spiritual practices developed by the nineteenth-century American Transcendentalist movement and a case for their necessity today.“The stern old faiths have all pulverized,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1860. “‘Tis a whole population of gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions.” Often seen as a mainspring of the nineteenth-century literary tradition and the preserve of New England intellectuals in retreat from society, American Transcendentalism is more accurately described as a religious movement. In Transcendentalism and the Cultivation of the Soul, Barry M. Andrews shows how Transcendentalists developed rich spiritual practices, nurtured their souls, and discovered the divine. The practices they adopted are common and simple—among them, keeping journals, contemplation, walking, reading, simple living, and conversation. As Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and others pursued meaningful and rewarding spiritual lives, they were inspired to fight for abolition, women’s rights, and education reform. In approachable and accessible prose, Andrews uncovers a wealth of spiritual practices that are of particular value for today’s spiritual seekers and religious liberals.
Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience (Music Culture)
by Harris M. BergerA lively comparison of musical meaning in Ohio's Jazz, metal, and hard rock scene. This vivid ethnography of the musical lives of heavy metal, rock, and jazz musicians in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio shows how musicians engage with the world of sound to forge meaningful experiences of music. Unlike most popular music studies, which only provide a scholar's view, this book is based on intensive fieldwork and hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews. Rich descriptions of the musical life of metal bars and jazz clubs get readers close to the people who make and listen to the music. Of special interest are Harris M. Berger's interviews with Timmy "The Ripper" Owens, now famous as lead singer for the pioneering heavy metal band, Judas Priest. Owens and other performers share their own experiences of the music, thereby challenging traditional notions of harmony and musical structure. Using ideas from practice theory and phenomenology, Berger shows that musical perception is a kind of practice, both creatively achieved by the listener and profoundly informed by social context.
Introducing Elixir: Getting Started in Functional Programming
by Simon St. Laurent J. David EisenbergSmooth, powerful, and small, Elixir is an excellent language for learning functional programming, and with this hands-on introduction, you’ll discover just how powerful Elixir can be. Authors Simon St. Laurent and J. David Eisenberg show you how Elixir combines the robust functional programming of Erlang with an approach that looks more like Ruby, and includes powerful macro features for metaprogramming.Updated to cover Elixir 1.4, the second edition of this practical book helps you write simple Elixir programs by teaching one skill at a time. Once you pick up pattern matching, process-oriented programming, and other concepts, you’ll understand why Elixir makes it easier to build concurrent and resilient programs that scale up and down with ease.Get comfortable with IEx, Elixir’s command line interfaceLearn Elixir’s basic structures by working with numbersDiscover atoms, pattern matching, and guards: the foundations of your program structureDelve into the heart of Elixir processing with recursion, strings, lists, and higher-order functionsCreate Elixir processes and send messages among themStore and manipulate structured data with Erlang Term Storage and the Mnesia databaseBuild resilient applications with the Open Telecom Platform
SQL in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference
by Kevin Kline Brand Hunt Daniel KlineSQL in a Nutshell applies the eminently useful "Nutshell" format to Structured Query Language (SQL), the elegant--but complex--descriptive language that is used to create and manipulate large stores of data. For SQL programmers, analysts, and database administrators, the new second edition of SQL in a Nutshell is the essential date language reference for the world's top SQL database products. SQL in a Nutshell is a lean, focused, and thoroughly comprehensive reference for those who live in a deadline-driven world.This invaluable desktop quick reference drills down and documents every SQL command and how to use it in both commercial (Oracle, DB2, and Microsoft SQL Server) and open source implementations (PostgreSQL, and MySQL). It describes every command and reference and includes the command syntax (by vendor, if the syntax differs across implementations), a clear description, and practical examples that illustrate important concepts and uses. And it also explains how the leading commercial and open sources database product implement SQL. This wealth of information is packed into a succinct, comprehensive, and extraordinarily easy-to-use format that covers the SQL syntax of no less than 4 different databases.When you need fast, accurate, detailed, and up-to-date SQL information, SQL in a Nutshell, Second Edition will be the quick reference you'll reach for every time. SQL in a Nutshell is small enough to keep by your keyboard, and concise (as well as clearly organized) enough that you can look up the syntax you need quickly without having to wade through a lot of useless fluff. You won't want to work on a project involving SQL without it.
Extreme Programming Pocket Guide: Team-Based Software Development
by ChromaticExtreme Programming (XP) is a radical new approach to software development that has been accepted quickly because its core practices--the need for constant testing, programming in pairs, inviting customer input, and the communal ownership of code--resonate with developers everywhere. Although many developers feel that XP is rooted in commonsense, its vastly different approach can bring challenges, frustrations, and constant demands on your patience.Unless you've got unlimited time (and who does these days?), you can't always stop to thumb through hundreds of pages to find the piece of information you need. The Extreme Programming Pocket Guide is the answer. Concise and easy to use, this handy pocket guide to XP is a must-have quick reference for anyone implementing a test-driven development environment.The Extreme Programming Pocket Guide covers XP assumptions, principles, events, artifacts, roles, and resources, and more. It concisely explains the relationships between the XP practices. If you want to adopt XP in stages, the Extreme Programming Pocket Guide will help you choose what to apply and when. You'll be surprised at how much practical information is crammed into this slim volume.O'Reilly's Pocket Guides have become a favorite among developers everywhere. By providing a wealth of important details in a concise, well-organized format, these handy books deliver just what you need to complete the task at hand. When you've reached a sticking point in your work and need to get to a solution quickly, the new Extreme Programming Pocket Guide is the book you'll want to have beside your keyboard.
RELAX NG: A Simpler Schema Language for XML
by Eric van der VlistAs developers know, the beauty of XML is that it is extensible, even to the point that you can invent new elements and attributes as you write XML documents. Then, however, you need to define your changes so that applications will be able to make sense of them and this is where XML schema languages come into play. RELAX NG (pronounced relaxing), the Regular Language Description for XML Core--New Generation is quickly gaining momentum as an alternative to other schema languages. Designed to solve a variety of common problems raised in the creation and sharing of XML vocabularies, RELAX NG is less complex than The W3C's XML Schema Recommendation and much more powerful and flexible than DTDs.RELAX NG is a grammar-based schema language that's both easy to learn for schema creators and easy to implement for software developers In RELAX NG, developers are introduced to this unique language and will learn a no-nonsense method for creating XML schemas. This book offers a clear-cut explanation of RELAX NG that enables intermediate and advanced XML developers to focus on XML document structures and content rather than battle the intricacies of yet another convoluted standard.RELAX NG covers the following topics in depth:Introduction to RELAX NGBuilding RELAX NG schemas using XML syntaxBuilding RELAX NG schemas using compact syntax, an alternative non-XML syntaxFlattening schemas to limit depth and provide reusabilityUsing external datatype libraries with RELAX NGW3C XML Schema regular expressionsWriting extensible schemasAnnotating schemasGenerating schemas form different sourcesDeterminism and datatype assignmentand much more.If you're looking for a schema language that's easy to use and won't leave you in a labyrinth of obscure limitations, RELAX NG is the language you should be using. And only O'Reilly's RELAX NG gives you the straightforward information and everything else you'll need to take advantage of this powerful and intelligible language.
REST API Design Rulebook: Designing Consistent RESTful Web Service Interfaces
by Mark MasseIn todayâ??s market, where rival web services compete for attention, a well-designed REST API is a must-have feature. This concise book presents a set of API design rules, drawn primarily from best practices that stick close to the Webâ??s REST architectural style. Along with rules for URI design and HTTP use, youâ??ll learn guidelines for media types and representational forms.REST APIs are ubiquitous, but few of them follow a consistent design methodology. Using these simple rules, you will design web service APIs that adhere to recognized web standards. To assist you, author Mark Massé introduces the Web Resource Modeling Language (WRML), a conceptual framework he created for the design and implementation of REST APIs.Learn design rules for addressing resources with URIsApply design principles to HTTPâ??s request methods and response status codesWork with guidelines for conveying metadata through HTTP headers and media typesGet design tips to address the needs of client programs, including the special needs of browser-based JavaScript clientsUnderstand why REST APIs should be designed and configured, not coded
Real World Instrumentation with Python: Automated Data Acquisition and Control Systems
by J. M. HughesLearn how to develop your own applications to monitor or control instrumentation hardware. Whether you need to acquire data from a device or automate its functions, this practical book shows you how to use Python's rapid development capabilities to build interfaces that include everything from software to wiring. You get step-by-step instructions, clear examples, and hands-on tips for interfacing a PC to a variety of devices.Use the book's hardware survey to identify the interface type for your particular device, and then follow detailed examples to develop an interface with Python and C. Organized by interface type, data processing activities, and user interface implementations, this book is for anyone who works with instrumentation, robotics, data acquisition, or process control.Understand how to define the scope of an application and determine the algorithms necessary, and why it's importantLearn how to use industry-standard interfaces such as RS-232, RS-485, and GPIBCreate low-level extension modules in C to interface Python with a variety of hardware and test instrumentsExplore the console, curses, TkInter, and wxPython for graphical and text-based user interfacesUse open source software tools and libraries to reduce costs and avoid implementing functionality from scratch
Practical Computer Vision with SimpleCV: The Simple Way to Make Technology See
by Kurt Demaagd Anthony Oliver Nathan Oostendorp Katherine ScottLearn how to build your own computer vision (CV) applications quickly and easily with SimpleCV, an open source framework written in Python. Through examples of real-world applications, this hands-on guide introduces you to basic CV techniques for collecting, processing, and analyzing streaming digital images. You’ll then learn how to apply these methods with SimpleCV, using sample Python code. All you need to get started is a Windows, Mac, or Linux system, and a willingness to put CV to work in a variety of ways. Programming experience is optional.Capture images from several sources, including webcams, smartphones, and KinectFilter image input so your application processes only necessary informationManipulate images by performing basic arithmetic on pixel valuesUse feature detection techniques to focus on interesting parts of an imageWork with several features in a single image, using the NumPy and SciPy Python librariesLearn about optical flow to identify objects that change between two image framesUse SimpleCV’s command line and code editor to run examples and test techniques
PayPal Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools (Hacks)
by Shannon Sofield Dave Nielsen Dave BurchellIf you've bought or sold items through eBay, or through hundreds of other online sites, then you're familiar with PayPal, the online payment service. With PayPal, a valid email address, and a credit card or bank account, you can easily send and receive payments online. Not a bank or financial institution itself, PayPal describes its service as one that builds on the financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards, and using advanced propriety fraud prevention systems, creates a safe, global, real-time payment solution. Put simply, PayPal provides the means for people to conduct financial transactions online, instantly and securely.But there's more to PayPal than meets the eye. PayPal Hacks shows you how to make the most of PayPal to get the most out of your online business or transactions. Authors Shannon Sofield of Payloadz.com and PayPal evangelist David Nielsen guide you through the rigors of using and developing with PayPal. Whether you're building an ecommerce site using PayPal as a transaction provider, or simply trying to pay for an eBay auction without getting burned, PayPal Hacks will give you the skinny on this leading global online payment service.The collection of tips and tricks in PayPal Hacks shows you how to find or even build the right tools for using PayPal to buy and sell on eBay or as a transaction provider for ecommerce on your own site. Written for all PayPal users, from those just starting out to those developing sophisticated ecommerce sites, this book begins with the basics such as setting up your account, then moves quickly into specific tips and tools for buyers, sellers, and developers.With PayPal Hacks, you can:Learn extra steps to help protect yourself while buying or selling on eBaySave time and money with advanced tips and undocumented featuresLearn dozens of easy-to-follow procedures to help you request and receive payments and fill ordersUse PayPal to handle subscriptions, affiliate systems, and donationsCreate and customize your customers' checkout processEffortlessly integrate PayPal's shopping cart system into your own websiteImplement digital fulfillment with Instant Payment Notification (IPN) and Payment Data Transfer (PDT)Develop and distribute ecommerce applications with the PayPal APIEach hack consists of a task to be accomplished or a creative solution to a problem, presented in a clear, logical, and task-oriented format. PayPal Hacks provides the tools and details necessary to make PayPal more profitable, more flexible, and more convenient.