Professor Hardcore’s Learning Curve: Back to the Wild from 2025 (4 vols.) is more than an Appalachian Trail hiking story. It is about the subject’s whole life and why it took him sixty-three years to complete the trail. How does a naive, spoiled, nerdy, pretentious Lutheran minister’s son come to be Professor Hardcore? Worsening post-polio scoliosis (up to 110 degrees) and the manifold responsibilities of an English professor/outdoor educator married with two children are the physical challenges. But these are nothing compared to the slow learning curve of this escapist dreamer. For reasons to be revealed, his story has a meta-dystopian framing with three narrators, each with his own font color. His chief editor, Overton, is an android with learning capabilities. His AI learning curve mirrors the subject’s and addresses the threat of climate change, of nuclear holocaust, of reoccurring pandemics, of out-of-control artificial intelligence, and the value of wilderness. Volume 1 has three parts: I. Hornè ancestry and early childhood (up to 1950), II. Norristown (1950-1960), III. G’burg and Penn (1960-68). Part I introduces the ancestry overcharged Horne libido and the subject’s conflicts with his Philadelphia-born father and subsequent male authority figures. It also begins the theme of his love for Nature inspired by his mother who was raised in Gettysburg with is bucolic battlefield which he visited often. In Part II, leaving rural Sellersville, “Untrammeled wilderness” was not to be found in congested downtown Norristown where new parsonage was located. Polio at ten and it physical, psychological, and social consequences carry us through to Part III. Breaking loose from his father’s control, he begins to find himself in the College Choir, creative writing, and romance on the Choir tour to Europe. Right after the tour, marriage and parenthood provide focus for this callow young man who next must next jump multiple hurdles as student of English literature and Teaching Fellow at Penn in Philadelphia, his father’s home town. With a second child on the way, he leaves Philadelphia without his dissertation complete to take his first teaching job at University of Michigan-Flint, in Vehicle City, Michael Moore’s hometown.

They're back! And this time, they're a team in more ways than one! As Mr. and Mrs. Santros, Jules and 'Manda Mooney are now both science agents for the Terran Consortium's Military Intelligence. Join them on their toughest mission yet as they first become targets for murder then split up to find out who or what is behind a series of missing space freighters, the destruction of a Navy battleship, and a self-repairing spacecraft housing what may be a new form of life. When their paths finally reunite, Jules and 'Manda discover that the dangers they've faced individually, pale in comparison to the one they both must now face together: one that threatens two star faring civilizations and aims to make mankind in particular, extinct!

This book introduces the mathematics that supports advanced computer programming and the analysis of algorithms. The primary aim of its well-known authors is to provide a solid and relevant base of mathematical skills - the skills needed to solve complex problems, to evaluate horrendous sums, and to discover subtle patterns in data. It is an indispensable text and reference not only for computer scientists - the authors themselves rely heavily on it! - but for serious users of mathematics in virtually every discipline. Concrete Mathematics is a blending of CONtinuous and disCRETE mathematics. "More concretely," the authors explain, "it is the controlled manipulation of mathematical formulas, using a collection of techniques for solving problems." The subject matter is primarily an expansion of the Mathematical Preliminaries section in Knuth's classic Art of Computer Programming, but the style of presentation is more leisurely, and individual topics are covered more deeply. Several new topics have been added, and the most significant ideas have been traced to their historical roots. The book includes more than 500 exercises, divided into six categories. Complete answers are provided for all exercises, except research problems, making the book particularly valuable for self-study. Major topics include: Sums Recurrences Integer functions Elementary number theory Binomial coefficients Generating functions Discrete probability Asymptotic methods This second edition includes important new material about mechanical summation. In response to the widespread use of the first edition as a reference book, the bibliography and index have also been expanded, and additional nontrivial improvements can be found on almost every page. Readers will appreciate the informal style of Concrete Mathematics. Particularly enjoyable are the marginal graffiti contributed by students who have taken courses based on this material. The authors want to convey not only the importance of the techniques presented, but some of the fun in learning and using them.

Echoes of a dynamic history still linger in Springfield, Missouri. The town square was the scene of a Civil War battle, a Wild Bill Hickok shootout and a tragic 1906 lynching. From the phantom landlord of Jefferson Avenue to the spectral bride of Grove Park Bridge, meet figures from the town's past that continue to mystify its present. Pore over reports of supernatural activity at Drury College and the Landers Theater and investigate a bounty of bizarre, sensational rumors from the surrounding countryside in this collection of Springfield ghost lore.

Completely updated, the Second Edition of Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge covers the history of healthcare informatics, current issues, basic informatics concepts, and health information management applications. The text includes key terms, case studies, best practice examples, critical thinking exercises, and web resources.

Traces the continuum of hardcore that runs from the most machinized forms of house music through British and European rave styles like bleep-and-bass, breakbeat house, Belgian hardcore, jungle, gabba, speed garage, and big beat.

This volume provides a much needed update on the state of civil society in post-communist Europe and Russia more than two decades after the fall of the communist regimes. The chapters offer new perspectives on social movement strategies in post-communist Central-Eastern Europe and Russia. The chapters illustrate how social movements develop particular repertoires of action and contention, which are better suited for their specific local contexts in the post-communist setting. In Russia and Poland, the most popular and effective choices are using domestic and transnational legal opportunities, judicial activism and litigation that complement the traditional lobbying and mass mobilization. Human rights framing has become important in Hungary and the Czech Republic. The chapters analyse various types of rights-based activism that operate in otherwise prohibitive social and political environments, thereby raising highly contentious issues, such as animal rights, environment and sustainability, human rights, women’s rights, and gay rights activism. The contributions richly illustrate the often surprising and multiple ways in which transnational discourses and norm pressure are received, translated or resisted in the local contexts. Finally, the volume provides a novel reconceptualisation and offers new understandings of the relationships between the state and civil society in the post-communist context. This book is based on a special issue of East European Politics.

Renowned for his fierce devotion to the people of Texas—as well as his equally fierce rages and unpredictable temper—Bob Bullock was the most powerful political figure in Texas at the end of the twentieth century. First elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1956, Bullock held several key statewide posts before capturing the lieutenant governor's office in 1990. Though nominally the state's number two official, Bullock in fact became Texas's top power broker, wielding tremendous influence over the legislative agenda and state budget through the 1990s while also mentoring and supporting a future president—George W. Bush. In this lively, yet thoroughly researched biography, award-winning journalists Dave McNeely and Jim Henderson craft a well-rounded portrait of Bob Bullock, underscoring both his political adroitness and his personal demons. They trace Bullock's rise through state government as Assistant Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Comptroller, and Lieutenant Governor, showing how he increased the power of every office he held. The authors spotlight Bullock's substantial achievements, which included hiring an unprecedented number of women and minorities, instituting a performance review to increase the efficiency of state agencies, restructuring the public school funding system, and creating the state's first water conservation and management plan.

GameAxis Unwired is a magazine dedicated to bring you the latest news, previews, reviews and events around the world and close to you. Every month rain or shine, our team of dedicated editors (and hardcore gamers!) put themselves in the line of fire to bring you news, previews and other things you will want to know.

Runner's World magazine aims to help runners achieve their personal health, fitness, and performance goals, and to inspire them with vivid, memorable storytelling.