內容簡介
故事發生在紐約，時間是西元2259年，在未來的世界裡，人類的生活空間已經延伸至空中，交通工具快速地穿梭於灰色高樓之間，飄在空中的餐廳提供隨叫隨到的服務，而本片中的主角布魯斯威利是一個粗俗的計程車司機，只想謀求三餐溫飽無憂無慮的日子。然而，遠在太陽系之外出現了一位野心勃勃的獨裁者–蓋瑞歐德曼，他率領著一群外星傭兵,意圖摧毀人類的平靜生活，地球上的人類渾然不知危機的來臨，因緣際遇下，布魯斯威利成了地球唯一的救星，代表正邪的雙方都急於找到一顆代表元素的古老石頭，其力量可正可邪,究竟誰會獲得最後勝利？

館藏狀態連結

Book Description

Power has long been a central preoccupation of social and cultural analysis. Culture and Power focuses on power to shape a history of Cultural Studies. A critical analysis of the nature and purpose of Cultural Studies, the book assesses the development of the discipline from the work of Michel Foucault in post-war France and the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies in the 1970s to the expansion of the field in the United States and present day concerns with culture, politics and ethics. As Cultural Studies has shifted, the concept of power has changed and become more problematic. Moving on from the celebrated “culture wars” - and battles over language, objective knowledge and disciplinary values and meanings - Culture and Power unravels the social, ideological and political knots bound up in the concept of power. In doing so, the book charts not only the history but also the possible future of Cultural Studies.

Book Description

Providing decent, safe, and affordable housing to low- and moderate-income families has been an important public policy goal for more than a century. In recent years there has been a clear shift of emphasis among policymakers from a focus on providing affordable rental units to providing affordable homeownership opportunities. Due in part to programs introduced by the Clinton and Bush administrations, the nation’s homeownership rate is currently at an all-time high. Does a house become a home only when it comes with a deed attached? Is participation in the real-estate market a precondition to engaged citizenship or wealth creation? The real estate industry’s marketing efforts and government policy initiatives might lead one to believe so.
The shift in emphasis from rental subsidies to affordable homeownership opportunities has been justified in a variety of ways. Claims for the benefits of homeownership have been largely accepted without close scrutiny. But is homeownership always beneficial for low-income Americans, or are its benefits undermined by the difficulties caused by unfavorable mortgage terms and by the poor condition or location of the homes bought? Chasing the American Dream provides a critical assessment of affordable homeownership policies and goals. Its contributors represent a variety of disciplinary perspectives and offer a thorough understanding of the economic, social, political, architectural, and cultural effects of homeownership programs, as well as their history. The editors draw together the assessments included in this book to prescribe a plan of action that lays out what must be done to make homeownership policy both effective and equitable.

From the Back Cover

“Chasing the American Dream provides a cultural analysis of homeownership that is likely to broaden the scope of a significant public policy debate. This book addresses an important and timely issue: does homeownership work for low-income people? The contributors and editors also discuss subsidiary questions including: What are the real goals of policies supporting homeownership? To what extent are those policies achieving their goals?”–Susan Saegert, CUNY Graduate Center

Book Description

This survey of the ancient levels of lakes, rivers and the sea, as well as changes in the compositions of stalagmites and sediments reveals an astonishing correlation of climate changes with the emergence and collapse of civilizations in the Middle East. Each warm period has been characterized by aridization, economic crisis and mass migration, whereas cold periods brought abundant rain, prosperity and settlement in the arid lands. The authors conclude that climate change has been the decisive factor in the history surrounding the origins of the “cradle of civilization”.

Book Description

In answer to the intense development of new financial products and the increasing complexity of portfolio management theory, Portfolio Optimization and Performance Analysis offers a solid grounding in modern portfolio theory. The book presents both standard and novel results on the axiomatics of the individual choice in an uncertain framework, contains a precise overview of standard portfolio optimization, provides a review of the main results for static and dynamic cases, and shows how theoretical results can be applied to practical and operational portfolio optimization. Divided into four sections that mirror the book’s aims, this resource first describes the fundamental results of decision theory, including utility maximization and risk measure minimization. Covering both active and passive portfolio management, the second part discusses standard portfolio optimization and performance measures. The book subsequently introduces dynamic portfolio optimization based on stochastic control and martingale theory. It also outlines portfolio optimization with market frictions, such as incompleteness, transaction costs, labor income, and random time horizon. The final section applies theoretical results to practical portfolio optimization, including structured portfolio management. It details portfolio insurance methods as well as performance measures for alternative investments, such as hedge funds. Taking into account the different features of portfolio management theory, this book promotes a thorough understanding for students and professionals in the field.

Book Description

The Enlightenment is that crucial, and profoundly exciting, period between the late seventeenth century and the French Revolution. It was the great age of rationalism and tolerance, an age of boundless curiosity about the physical universe and the nature of the human mind, an age that rejected
superstition in favor of observation and experiment to arrive at the truth–an age, in fact, that laid the foundations for the world in which we live.
With nearly four hundred illustrations selected from a wide array of sources, the book tells the fascinating story of the men and women of the Enlightenment in their search for definition and redefinition of the values of their time. Included are the range of ideas they explored–from
coffee-house conversations to astronomy, from voyages of discovery to the investigation of dreams, from the first dictionaries and encyclopedias to new attitudes on marriage and women’s rights. Theirs was an enthralling journey that reflected the intellectual revolution that transformed human
consciousness.

Book Description

The idea of nature as a cultural construction has been discussed extensively in postmodern theory. Less attention, however, has been paid to the underlying motivations shaping the ideologies of nature, in particular the desire to submit to some larger order outside of oneself. Aspiring to the Landscape examines this persistent desire and how it is made manifest in contemporary landscape art.

Four installations of large-scale paintings by Canadian artists Eleanor Bond, Susan Feindel, Stephen Hutchings, and Wanda Koop are the focus of Petra Halkes’s study. The works vary widely in style and iconography but are drawn together by the way they invite a reflection on the troubled relationship between culture and nature and our contradictory and simultaneous longing to conquer and to succumb to nature.

It is the tension between modern and postmodern interpretations of the subject of nature that makes the theory and the artwork discussed in Aspiring to the Landscape so important to contemporary Canadian culture.

Book Description

This book addresses the pressing issue of severe poverty and inequality, and questions why violations of socio-economic rights are treated with less urgency than violations of civil and political rights, such as the right to freedom of speech or to vote? Socio-economic rights have been widely regarded as aspirational goals, rhetorically useful, but having few practical implications for government policy and the distribution of resources within a polity. It is not therefore surprising that socio-economic rights have been systematically neglected in the world today, with millions still lacking access to even basic shelter, food or health-care. This book seeks to provide a sustained argument for placing renewed emphasis upon socio-economic rights in the fight against desperate poverty. It utilizes a combination of political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy in its focus on the right to food, to housing, and to health-care. Part I involves the development of a philosophical theory of rights that provides a common normative foundation for both civil and political rights and socio-economic rights. This theory involves developing an understanding of value that recognizes individuals have fundamental interests of differing levels of urgency. It also involves drawing an important distinction between conditional rights that flow purely from a normative focus on the equal importance of individuals and unconditional rights that involve competing normative and pragmatic considerations. A general theory of judicial review is also put forward that provides a justification for judicial involvement in the enforcement of socio-economic rights. Part II then considers the implications of this general philosophical theory for the interpretation and enforcement of socio-economic rights in law. The focus of this more applied discussion is upon South Africa, where entrenched, directly justifiable socio-economic rights are expressly protected in the constitution. The current approach of the South African Constitutional Court to their interpretation and enforcement is considered and criticized primarily for failing to provide sufficient content to such rights. A modified version of the minimum core approach to socio-economic rights is proposed as an alterative way which is supported by the philosophical theory developed in the first part of the book. This approach requires priority to be given to worst off in society through placing a heavy burden of justification on any society that fails to meet the minimal interests of individuals. It also requires concrete steps to be taken towards realising a higher level of provision that guarantees individuals the necessary conditions for realising a wide range of purposes. This is also shown to have important policy implications both for developing and developed countries that can, it is hoped, assist in creating an urgency and commitment towards eradicating extreme poverty.

Book Description

In virtually all corners of the Western world, 1968 witnessed a highly unusual sequence of popular rebellions. In Italy, France, Spain, Vietnam, the United States, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, and elsewhere, millions of individuals took matters into their own hands to counter imperialism, capitalism, autocracy, bureaucracy, and all forms of hierarchical thinking. Recent reinterpretations have sought to play down any real challenge to the socio-political status quo in these events, but Gerd-Rainer Horn’s book offers a spirited counterblast. 1968, he argues, opened up the possibility that economic and political elites on both sides of the Iron Curtain could be toppled from their position of unnatural superiority to make way for a new society where everyday people could, for the first time, become masters of their own destiny. Furthermore, Horn contends, the moment of crisis and opportunity culminating in 1968 must be seen as part of a larger period of experimentation and revolt. The ten years between 1956 and 1966, characterised above all by the flourishing of iconoclastic cultural rebellions, can be regarded as a preparatory period which set the stage for the non-conformist cum political revolts of the subsequent ‘red’ decade (1966-1976). Horn’s geographic centres of attention are Western Europe, including the first full examination of Mediterranean revolts, and North America. He placed particular emphasis on cultural nonconformity, the student movement, working class rebellions, the changing contours of the Left, and the meaning of participatory democracy. His book will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in this turbulent period and the fundamental changes that were wrought upon societies either side of the Atlantic.

Antonio E. Puente, Ph.D., professor of psychology, University of North Carolina at Wilmington
An engaging tapestry weaving philosophy, poetry and science that brings the reader closer to understanding the riddles of mind and brain through the eyes of those fighting to regain meaning and purpose as a function of neuropsychological challenges.

Sumer Verma, M.D., director, Geriatric Psychiatry Education Program, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA; lecturer on psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
A book that takes us back to the future. As medicine travels with ever-increasing speed to discover the perfect biomedical cure for the many varieties of human illness, it moves further and further away from the impact that these illnesses have on the human condition. The word “suffering” seems to have lost its original meaning and has come to imply that someone has this or that condition. Yet suffering is what brings patients to caregivers and each person suffers in a unique way that is entirely their own. The loss of control over one’s body and one’s actions causes one person to despair while another may become more determined than ever before. It is not the pill that ultimately makes the difference in a person’s life or their suffering–it is what we as caregivers ‘wrap’ around it that does.
This book is a tour de force. It is a true return to the biopsychosocial model that pioneers like George Engel spoke of fifty years ago. This book addresses not only the neuroanatomical and neuropsysiological deficits that stem from neurological illnesses, but also the impact of these deficits on the coping ability of the individual. This book tells us how to help the individual overcome these deficits and to develop effective coping strategies that help them recover their potential. Most importantly this book tells us not simply how to ‘fix’ things but how to help people heal.

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This fascinating book illustrates the complex relationship between gender and research. The authors use concrete examples and draw upon their own gendered experiences by including mini-case studies from research projects in areas such as childhood studies, health care and education.

本書置於總圖書館4F科技資料區，歡迎讀者來館借閱，請點選館藏目錄

Presented in a luxurious edition and on a spectacular scale, this album reveals the beauty and history of Britain. From positions of elevation, John Davies surveys the landscape-from its mountains to its city centers-making compelling views layered with social and historical detail. Includes detailed captions and an introduction by Guardian columnist and popular broadcaster Jonathan Glancey.

本書置於總圖書館4F科技資料區，歡迎讀者來館借閱，請點選館藏目錄