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This book consists of 6 papers focusing on social and economic issues. The topics covered include graph distance and optimal communication, migration in Jaipur, urbanization, clan capitalism, world population growth rate, and scientific inquiry. These papers were written in the period between 2009-2010. Hopefully the readers will find some new insights in this collection of papers....

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In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the literature which discusses new phenomenon associated to social network. One of the well-known phenomenon in this regards is known as ‘six degrees of separation’ [1], which implies that one can always keep a communication with each other anywhere within a six-step. A number of experiments has verified this hypothesis, either in the context of offline communication (postal mail), or online communication (email, etc.). In this article, we argue that by introducing this known ‘six degrees of separation’ into the context of group instability problem, one can find a new type of wisdom in organization. Therefore, we offer a new conjecture, which may be called ‘Group stability conjectures based on Graph/Network distance.”...

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DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi 1 PREPARING TO TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Types of Speaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Briefing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Teaching Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Audience Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Audience Attitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Selecting the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Narrowing the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Choosing a Title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 General Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Specific Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Gathering Material . . . . . . . . . . ....

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Following in the vein of my Coffee-Break collections, this is a collection of short (all under 15 minutes) stories for kids. Focus is on fables and fairy tales published before 1923. (Summary by BellonaTimes)...

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Fairy tales, Children

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Robert Frost, who lived from March 26, 1874 to January 29, 1963, was a winner of 4 Pulitzer prizes and one of America’s best loved poets. This selection of his poems is a short walk through the variety of his simplistic natural themes and complex social understandings. (Summary by Becky Miller, Canal Winchester, Ohio)...

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Nature, Poetry

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A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim. ( Summary by Wikipedia )...

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Children, Fiction, Literature

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Wopsy is the story of a very young Guardian Angel, sent to watch over a pagan baby in Africa. Wopsy desperately wants his baby's soul to become white and clean in baptism, but what is a small guardian angel to do when there is no missionary priest in the village? The author was a member of the missionary order of priests known as the White Fathers (So named because of the white habits they wore). He wrote the Wopsy series of books in order to encourage missionary vocations in young children. (Summary by Maria Therese)...

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Children, Religion

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Uncle Remus' stories feature a trickster hero called Br'er Rabbit (Brother Rabbit), who uses his wits to slide out of trouble and gain the advantage over the slower witted other animals, many of whom are trying to eat him. Br'er Rabbit stories were mostly collected directly from the afro-american oral story-telling tradition and are said to be a direct interpretation of Yoruba tales of Hare. This book contains 11 unique stories and was the last one published before the author's death. (Introduction by Phil Chenevert)...

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Animals, Children, Fairy tales, Fantasy, Fiction, Teen/Young adult

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These are 25 fairy tales written by Hans Christian Andersen - A collection of something for everyone - the very popular stories, the less well-known stories and favorites, that both children and grownups can enjoy. (Summary by Neeru Iyer)...

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Fairy tales

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Since this series of books is intended for all young people from one to one hundred, it opens with about eighty of the old MOTHER GOOSE RHYMES. Nothing better was ever invented to tell to little folks who are young enough for lullabies. Their rhythm, their humor, and thei pith will always cause us to prize them as the Babies' Classics. Editors: Hamilton Wright Mabie, Edward Everett Hale, William Byron Forbush.(Gutenberg Text)...

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Children, Fairy tales

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The author was raised as an American Indian and describes what it was like to be an Indian boy (the first 7 chapters) and an Indian Girl (the last 7 chapters). This is very different from the slanted way the white man tried to picture them as 'savages' and 'brutes.'Quote: Dear Children:—You will like to know that the man who wrote these true stories is himself one of the people he describes so pleasantly and so lovingly for you. He hopes that when you have finished this book, the Indians will seem to you very real and very friendly. He is not willing that all your knowledge of the race that formerly possessed this continent should come from the lips of strangers and enemies, or that you should think of them as blood-thirsty and treacherous, as savage and unclean. (Summary by author's preface)...

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Children, Historical Fiction, Teen/Young adult

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The story told in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel, A Little Princess , was first written as a serialized novella, Sara Crewe, or What Happened at Miss Minchin’s , and published in St. Nicholas Magazine , in 1888. It tells the story of Sara Crewe, an intelligent, wealthy, young girl at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Sara’s fortunes change when her father dies, and she goes from being a show pupil and parlor boarder at the school to a drudge, but eventually she finds happiness and a home again. (Summary by Treesh)...

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Children

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In his programmatic and data-laden tome, "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" (2014), Thomas Piketty makes several assertions, two of which merit a closer look: (1) That r (the return on capital) is, in the long-run always greater than g (the growth of the real economy), thus enriching the rich; and (2) that inherited wealth tends to create a "patrimonial" form of capitalism, akin to the aristocracy in the French and British ancient regimes. Putting aside the somewhat artificial and dubious distinction between the "real" and the financial economy, r and g are apples and oranges and cannot be compared. Economic growth (g) is not the return on the real economy in the same way that r is the return on capital and its assets. R is intended to compensate for a panoply of risks and is comparable to the wave function in Quantum Mechanics: it incorporates all the publicly and privately available information about future uncertainties and provides a distribution function of all plausible scenarios. Put simply: subject to political and market vicissitudes, capital can vanish overnight. Not so the real economy: it is always there, regardle...

Table of Contents Details
Contents Chapter Page BOARD OF REVIEWERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi A Perspective from the Commander in Chief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Barack H. Obama SECTION I: RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION 1 Religion in the Military: Finding the Proper Balance . . . . . . . . 15 Barry W. Lynn 2 Burning Bibles and Censoring Prayers: Is That Defending Our Constitution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Gordon James Klingenschmitt 3 The Need for (More) New Guidance Regarding Religious Expression in the Air Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Paula M. Grant 4 The One True Religion in the Military . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 James E. Parco and Barry S. Fagin 5 Against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Chris Rodda 6 Religious...

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In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain creates an entertaining adventure of Middle America in the 1800's - afloat on a raft on the Mississippi River. Huck escapes his civilized life when he arranges his own murder and turns back into the backwoods, downriver yokel he started as, and in the process springing a slave, Jim, from bondage.Huck and Jim experience life as a series of tableaus as the river sweeps them through small towns on their way South. At each stop, Huck engages his talent for mixing fact with bald-faced lies to endlessly get himself out of situations... and of course, putting him into others!Much has been written about the statement Twain is making about slavery in this book, but it's really secondary to the story. The facts of how black people were treated in this period give Huck and Jim their license for life on the run. Modern listeners will be intrigued by the unencumbered life of the pair; they make do with coffee, fish from the river, and little else (but of course, when they do need something extra, they don't mind helping themselves to it without recourse to money!)Huck and Jim have run-ins with de...

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Literature, Adventure, Humor, Travel, Teen/Young adult, Children

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Lysistrata read by the Classics Drama Company at DePaul. The Classics Drama Company at DePaul is a new gathering of Thespians and Classicists dedicated to performing and understanding ancient literature. If you live in Chicago and attend DePaul University, we welcome new additions to our group. Contact Dr. Kirk Shellko (kshellko@depaul.edu), if interested. First performed in classical Athens c. 411 B.C.E., Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” is the original battle of the sexes. One woman, Lysistrata, brings together the women of all Greece, exhorting them to withhold sexual contact from all men in order that they negotiate a treaty. Double entendres abound as men of Greece attempt to keep Lysistrata and her prurient gang from putting an end to the Peloponnesian war. Notably risqué, this comic drama sheds light on gender relations in ancient Athens. Lysistrata: Courtney Nehls Calonice: Natalie Chavez Myrrhine: Thu Hien Pham Lampito: Nick Marotta Stratyllis: Maggie Hogan Magistrate: Ryan Keifer Cinesias: Neil Loomis Spartan Herald: Maggie Hogan Envoys: Maggie Hogan, Neil Loomis Athenians: Courtney Nehls, Natalie Chavez, Thu Hien Pham, Nicholas...

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Classics (antiquity)

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Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw that takes place in 1885, during the Serbo-Bulgarian War. Raina Petkoff is engaged to the gallant Sergius Saranoff, hero of the recent Bulgarian victory over the Serbs. But she is distracted by the abrupt arrival of Captain Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary who fought for the Serbian army. He takes refuge in her bedroom after the battle and although he is initially threatening, reveals that he carries chocolate creams instead of bullets. Will Raina marry the posturing Sergius or the chocolate cream soldier? Extra intrigue is provided by saucy servant girl Louka, her dour fiance Nicola, and Raina's hand-wringing parents. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)...

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Comedy

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The classic story of how Rat, Mole, and the other river-bankers saved Toad from his excesses. This book has it all: excitement, sentiment, destruction of private property (plenty of that), paganism, and a happy ending. The prose is beautiful and occasionally requires the use of a dictionary - I had to look up “asperities.” Written as a children’s story, The Wind in the Willows is enjoyed by many grown-ups who relish Grahame’s ability to evoke the long summer days of childhood. (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis)...

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Animals, Children, Adventure, Comedy

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Yosef Haim Brenner (1881-1921) was a Ukrainian-born Hebrew-language author, one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew literature. Born to a poor family, Brenner grew up in grinding povery. Brenner immigrated to Palestine (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in 1909. He worked as a farmer, eager to put his Zionist idelogy into practice. Later he devoted himself to literature and teaching at the Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv. He was murdered in southern Tel Aviv in May 1921 in the course of the anti-Jewish Arab riots known as the massacres of 1921. Brenner was very much an experimental writer, both in his use of language and in literary form. With Modern Hebrew still in its infancy, Brenner improvised with an intruiging mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic, Yiddish, English and Arabic. In his attempt to portray life realistically, his work is full of emotive punctuation and ellipses. Out Of A Gloomy Valley was his first book pulished in Warsaw 1900. It is a collection of 6 short stories about Jewish life in the diaspora. (Summary by Wikipedia and Omri Lernau)...

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Short stories

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Excerpt: A chapter of which the last page only is of any importance comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. Credulity is not wooed through the impressionable senses; nor have we recourse to the small circular glow of the watchmaker?s eye to raise in bright relief minutest grains of evidence for the routing of incredulity....

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Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an advertisement in a London magazine promising the prospect of financial gain. Glennard was once pursued by Margaret Aubyn, a famous and recently deceased author, and he still has her passionate love letters to him. Glennard removes his name from the letters and sells them, making him a fortune and building a marriage based on the betrayal of another....

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Fiction, Romance