Beyond the World's End


Book Description

In Beyond the World's End T. J. Demos explores cultural practices that provide radical propositions for living in a world beset by environmental and political crises. Rethinking relationships between aesthetics and an expanded political ecology that foregrounds just futurity, Demos examines how contemporary artists are diversely addressing urgent themes, including John Akomfrah's cinematic entanglements of racial capitalism with current environmental threats, the visual politics of climate refugees in work by Forensic Architecture and Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, and moving images of Afrofuturist climate justice in projects by Arthur Jafa and Martine Syms. Demos considers video and mixed-media art that responds to resource extraction in works by Angela Melitopoulos, Allora & Calzadilla, and Ursula Biemann, as well as the multispecies ecologies of Terike Haapoja and Public Studio. Throughout Demos contends that contemporary intersections of aesthetics and politics, as exemplified in the Standing Rock #NoDAPL campaign and the Zad's autonomous zone in France, are creating the imaginaries that will be crucial to building a socially just and flourishing future.




Undoing the Demos


Book Description

Tracing neoliberalism's devastating erosions of democratic principles, practices, and cultures. Neoliberal rationality—ubiquitous today in statecraft and the workplace, in jurisprudence, education, and culture—remakes everything and everyone in the image of homo oeconomicus. What happens when this rationality transposes the constituent elements of democracy into an economic register? In Undoing the Demos, Wendy Brown explains how democracy itself is imperiled. The demos disintegrates into bits of human capital; concerns with justice bow to the mandates of growth rates, credit ratings, and investment climates; liberty submits to the imperative of human capital appreciation; equality dissolves into market competition; and popular sovereignty grows incoherent. Liberal democratic practices may not survive these transformations. Radical democratic dreams may not either. In an original and compelling argument, Brown explains how and why neoliberal reason undoes the political form and political imaginary it falsely promises to secure and reinvigorate. Through meticulous analyses of neoliberalized law, political practices, governance, and education, she charts the new common sense. Undoing the Demos makes clear that for democracy to have a future, it must become an object of struggle and rethinking.




Great Demo!


Book Description

Have you ever seen a bad software demo ? Peter Cohan helps organizations put the Wow! into their demos to make them crisp, compelling and successful - to get the job done. He has had roles in four corners: technical, product and field marketing (he was banished to Basel, Switzerland for two years for bad behavior); sales and sales management; senior management (he built a business unit up from an empty spreadsheet into a $30M per year operation); and, in this last role, he has been that most important of all possible entities, a customer Peter Cohan leverages twenty-five years of experience in selling and marketing business software and as a customer. The Great Demo! method comes directly from extensive firsthand experiences in developing and delivering software demonstrations, and in coaching others to achieve surprisingly high success rates with their sales and marketing demos. For more information on demonstration methods, guidelines and tips, explore the author's website at www.SecondDerivative.com or contact the author directly at [email protected].




Afraid to Trust


Book Description

This is the story of how God transformed the life of Peter Demos from fear, anger, and emptiness into service to His kingdom. By allowing Christ to rule in his heart, Peter became a man who desires to make God the head of his home and his business. Before Peter surrendered his life to God, his marriage was a ticking time bomb, only salvageable by divine intervention. His business was his idol, and he felt immense pressure to run others over with it. Peter was a walking ball of fear, which manifested itself as uncontrolled anger. But Christ changed all that, granting Peter the peace he had not realized was possible. Dedicating his life and his business to God didn't take away all of Peter's problems. Keeping his new restaurant, Peter D's, running was incredibly challenging and the source of some of his biggest business failures. But God used those failures to draw Peter to Himself and make Peter more like Him. Learning to trust God to lead him through it all has turned those difficulties into growth and blessing in Peter's life. "Peter, with humility, gives clear practical examples of how he has brought his faith to his work, how to be bold in the little things, and how to trust God to overcome his fear. His transparency makes his story compelling and shows that a Christian life is not easy but is secure, knowing the love of God for those who believe." -Mark Whitacre, former FBI informant and current President of Operations at a biotechnology firm




Getting Started with Neurofeedback


Book Description

What is neurofeedback? Neurofeedback is founded upon computer technology joined with auxiliary equipment that can measure the metabolic activity of the cerebral cortex. Neurofeedback training combines the principles of complementary medicine with the power of electronics. It is a comprehensive system that promotes growth change at the cellular level of the brain and empowers the client to use his or her mind as a tool for personal healing.Until now, there has not been a single comprehensive yet easy-to-understand guide for clinicians interested in adding neurotherapy to their practice. Getting Started with Neurofeedback is a step-by-step guide for professional health care providers who wish to begin with neurotherapy, as well as experienced clinicians who are looking for a concise treatment guide.This book answers essential questions such as: How does neurotherapy work?, What is the rationale for treatment? When is neurotherapy the treatment of choice? Why should I add it to my already existing healthcare practice? The author also answers questions important to establishing a successful practice such as: What kind of training should clinicians get? What kind of equipment should clinicians buy? How can clinicians add neurofeedback to their existing practice?The first part of the book introduces the reader to the world of neurofeedback, its history and scientific basis. Case studies help clinicians apply what they are learning to their existing practice. Demos takes the mystery out of the assessment process and charts and examples of topographical brain maps (in full color) serve as teaching aids. Later in the book, advanced techniques are explained and demonstrated by additional case studies. The reader is shown how to use biofeedback for the body to augment neurofeedback training as well as being taught to work with the body and acquire a basic knowledge of complementary medicine.The book concludes by offering clinicians practical suggestions on marketing their expanded practice, purchasing equipment, finding appropriate training and supervision, and keeping up with the ever-growing profession of neurofeedback. Research and theory unite to demonstrate the clinical underpinnings for this exciting new modality. Some images in the ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.




Demos Assembled


Book Description

An intelligent, engaging, and in-depth reading of the nature of the state and the establishment of the modern political order in the mid-nineteenth century. Previous studies have covered in great detail how the modern state slowly emerged from the early Renaissance through the seventeenth century, but we know relatively little about the next great act: the birth and transformation of the modern democratic state. And in an era where our democratic institutions are rife with conflict, it’s more important now than ever to understand how our institutions came into being. Stephen W. Sawyer’s Demos Assembled provides us with a fresh, transatlantic understanding of that political order’s genesis. While the French influence on American political development is well understood, Sawyer sheds new light on the subsequent reciprocal influence that American thinkers and politicians had on the establishment of post-revolutionary regimes in France. He argues that the emergence of the stable Third Republic (1870–1940), which is typically said to have been driven by idiosyncratic internal factors, was in fact a deeply transnational, dynamic phenomenon. Sawyer’s findings reach beyond their historical moment, speaking broadly to conceptions of state formation: how contingent claims to authority, whether grounded in violence or appeals to reason and common cause, take form as stateness.




The Heathen School


Book Description

Longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award The astonishing story of a unique missionary project—and the America it embodied—from award-winning historian John Demos. Near the start of the nineteenth century, as the newly established United States looked outward toward the wider world, a group of eminent Protestant ministers formed a grand scheme for gathering the rest of mankind into the redemptive fold of Christianity and “civilization.” Its core element was a special school for “heathen youth” drawn from all parts of the earth, including the Pacific Islands, China, India, and, increasingly, the native nations of North America. If all went well, graduates would return to join similar projects in their respective homelands. For some years, the school prospered, indeed became quite famous. However, when two Cherokee students courted and married local women, public resolve—and fundamental ideals—were put to a severe test. The Heathen School follows the progress, and the demise, of this first true melting pot through the lives of individual students: among them, Henry Obookiah, a young Hawaiian who ran away from home and worked as a seaman in the China Trade before ending up in New England; John Ridge, son of a powerful Cherokee chief and subsequently a leader in the process of Indian “removal”; and Elias Boudinot, editor of the first newspaper published by and for Native Americans. From its birth as a beacon of hope for universal “salvation,” the heathen school descends into bitter controversy, as American racial attitudes harden and intensify. Instead of encouraging reconciliation, the school exposes the limits of tolerance and sets off a chain of events that will culminate tragically in the Trail of Tears. In The Heathen School, John Demos marshals his deep empathy and feel for the textures of history to tell a moving story of families and communities—and to probe the very roots of American identity.




Flattering the Demos


Book Description

This volume brings together reflections on the relationship between politics and storytelling, especially within the democratic context. Examples are drawn from the ancient and modern worlds, from classical Greek tragedy and Shakespeare to television, science fiction, and comic books, in order to examine the relationship between the philosophical and the poetical. As a political phenomenon, storytelling is used to confirm the prejudices and uphold the principles that prevail within the culture that produces it, while also providing a means for sparking a criticism of that culture from within. What role should literature play in educating a population, especially as regards one’s civic responsibilities and relationship to the political regime, and how does it compete with or complement rational inquiry in providing that education? What observable effects does storytelling in fact tend to have, especially among democratic peoples, and what effects does it have on their political identities, viewpoints, commitments, and behavior? Which passions does it stoke: our hopes or our fears, our suspicions or our loyalties? Can storytelling in democratic times offer resistance to the logic and momentum of democratization or does it only reliably propel it further forward? Does democratic literature only cater to the satisfaction of personal appetites or can it ennoble people so that they are more apt to fulfill their responsibilities to each other as moral agents and fellow citizens? This volume takes diverse approaches to addressing questions like these.




The Appearing Demos


Book Description

As the waves of Occupy movements gradually recede, we soon forget the political hope and passions these events have offered. Instead, we are increasingly entrenched in the simplified dichotomies of Left and Right, us and them, hating others and victimizing oneself. Studying Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, which might be the largest Occupy movement in recent years, The Appearing Demos urges us to re-commit to democracy at a time when democracy is failing on many fronts and in different parts of the world. The 79-day-long Hong Kong Umbrella Movement occupied major streets in the busiest parts of the city, creating tremendous inconvenience to this city famous for capitalist order and efficiency. It was also a peaceful collective effort of appearance, and it was as much a political event as a cultural one. The urge for expressing an independent cultural identity underlined both the Occupy movement and the remarkably rich cultural expressions it generated. While understanding the specificity of Hong Kong’s situations, The Appearing Demos also comments on some global predicaments we are facing in the midst of neoliberalism and populism. It directs our attention from state-based sovereignty to city-based democracy, and emphasizes the importance of participation and cohabitation. The book also examines how the ideas of Hannah Arendt are useful to those happenings much beyond the political circumstances that gave rise to her theorization. The book pays particular attention to the actual intersubjective experiences during the protest. These experiences are local, fragile, and sometimes inarticulable, therefore resisting rationality and debates, but they define the fullness of any individual, and they also make politics possible. Using the Umbrella Movement as an example, this book examines the “freed” political agents who constantly take others into consideration in order to guarantee the political realm as a place without coercion and discrimination. In doing so, Pang Laikwan demonstrates how politics means neither to rule nor to be ruled, and these movements should be defined by hope, not by goals.




Hackish C++ Games & Demos


Book Description

This guide to maximizing visual effects and optimizing graphics for game programming with C++ and DirectX is a practical introduction to the latest C++ technologies and techniques. The new concept of demo coding—a program whose purpose is to present the technical and artistic skills of programmers—is provided, as is help for programmers demonstrating their new skills in creating 2-D and 3-D games and demo scenes. An accompanying CD-ROM includes demo scenes, game-development projects, and examples from the book.