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Why we enjoy works of art, and how repetition plays a central part in the pleasure we receive.Leonard Bernstein, in his famous Norton Lectures (1976) extolled repetition, saying that it gave poetry its musical qualities and that music theorists? refusal to take it seriously did so at their peril. Play It Again, Sam takes Bernstein seriously. In this book, Samuel Jay Keyser explores in detail the way repetition works in poetry, music, and painting. He argues, for example, that rhyme in metrical verse is identical to the way songwriters like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn (Satin Doll) and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (My Funny Valentine) constructed their iconic melodies. Furthermore, the form of these tunes can be found in such classical compositions as Mozart?s Rondo Alla Turca and his German Dances as well as in galant music in general.The author also looks at repetition in paintings like Caillebotte?s Rainy Day in Paris, Warhol?s Campbell Soup Cans, and Pollock?s drip paintings. Finally, the photography of Lee Friedlander, Roni Horn, and Osmond Giglia?Giglia?s Girls in the Windows is one of the highest grossing photographs in history?are all shown to be built on repetition in the form of visual rhyme.The book ends with a cognitive conjecture on why repetition has been so prominent in the arts from the Homeric epics through Duke Ellington and beyond. Artists have exploited repetition throughout the ages. The reason why it is straightforward: the brain finds the detection of repetition innately pleasurable. Play It Again, Sam offers experimental evidence to support this claim.

An ecological epistemology arguing that epistemic agents, communities, and environments adapt to one another to generate evolving understandings of the world.Mainstream epistemology focuses on static states. In Epistemic Ecology, Catherine Elgin adopts a dynamic stance, viewing epistemic subjects as agents rather than onlookers. She examines how, individually and collectively, we construct our epistemic practices, policies, principles, and procedures to overcome our limitations, exploit our assets, and correct our mistakes. Taking an ecological approach, she shows how human organisms and their social and natural environments mutually adjust to accommodate each other. Elgin?s ecological model of understanding reveals that epistemic agents and communities are interdependent and are more deeply implicated in the individuation and characterization of the phenomena they access than standard spectatorial approaches to epistemology assume. Elgin maintains that a commitment?s epistemic acceptability turns in large part on its providing resources for further epistemic advancement. Epistemic progress is an iterative process that corrects, refines, and extends current understanding. Epistemic subjects are agents, not mere observers, and the positions they accept are springboards for improvement rather than windows into the world.  Responsible disagreement is an asset because it has the potential to identify and correct shortfalls in the views that are currently accepted.  Rather than treat epistemic success?knowledge, understanding, wisdom?as fixed and final, Elgin views success as a stable platform on which to build. How, she asks, should we leverage our findings to move beyond them? Her holistic conception of understanding is integral to education.

A moving, patient-centered portrait of the social importance of speech, from a medical expert known for his humanizing explorations of health.Language comes to us through culture, environment, and family. Words embed over time, as we use our minds to comprehend them and then our mouths to say, mean, and own them. Without the ability to speak, or when talking becomes difficult, we face a challenge like few others, forced to reconnect with a world which assumes its communicators are eloquent vocally. In Hard Talk, Jonathan Cole takes a necessary look at the privilege of speech so we can better accommodate those for whom it presents problems. Cole creates space for people with a variety of conditions, including cerebral palsy, vocal cord palsy, cleft palate, Parkinson?s, and post stroke dysphasia, to describe in their own words what the experience of difficult speech is like. No struggle is the same. Each develops along its own axis of factors?cognitive, social, and physical?that lead to unique vulnerabilities as well as extraordinary moments of adaptation and resilience. One person finds social chatter becoming more problematic than work speech. Another grows alarmed as changes in speech begin to constrain inner thoughts. Some lose the ability to find or make words though they retain awareness, while others lose self-awareness but maintain fluent speech bereft of meaning. One even loses the ability to speak with family while continuing to interact at work. Hard Talk reacquaints us with the social power of speech while affirming the humane value of listening. Cole also reflects on the neuroscientific advances we?ve made in understanding barriers to speech and how we might reduce them.

A theory of justice for AI models making decisions about employment, lending, education, criminal justice, and other important social goods.Decisions about important social goods like education, employment, housing, loans, health care, and criminal justice are all becoming increasingly automated with the help of AI. But because AI models are trained on data with historical inequalities, they often produce unequal outcomes for members of disadvantaged groups. In AI Fairness, Derek Leben draws on traditional philosophical theories of fairness to develop a framework for evaluating AI models, which can be called a theory of algorithmic justice?a theory inspired by the theory of justice developed by the American philosopher John Rawls.For several years now, researchers who design AI models have investigated the causes of inequalities in AI decisions and proposed techniques for mitigating them. It turns out that in most realistic conditions it is impossible to comply with all metrics simultaneously. Because of this, companies using AI systems will have to choose which metric they think is the correct measure of fairness, and regulators will need to determine how to apply currently existing laws to AI systems. Leben provides a detailed set of practical recommendations for companies looking to evaluate their AI systems and regulators thinking about laws around AI systems, and he offers an honest analysis of the costs of implementing fairness in AI systems?as well as when these costs may or may not be acceptable.

A theoretical examination of veiling, shame, and modesty in the films of the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami through the lenses of Islamic philosophy and Lacanian psychoanalysis.In Cloud: Between Paris and Tehran, Joan Copjec examines the films of the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. The key to these films, she argues, lies in the image of a fragile yet sheltering tree that appears in several of his films. This simple image depicts a central concept of Islamic philosophy, which is known as the ?Cloud? or the ?Imaginal World.? It designates the place out of which all the things of this world manifest themselves and ?covers,? or veils, that which must remain hidden. The concept of the Cloud plays a significant role in defining: 1) the unique nature of the Islamic God, who is not a creator or father; 2) the nature of the image, which assumes a priority and a greater power than it is elsewhere accorded; and 3) the nature of modesty, shame, and sexuality.Copjec walks her readers through the thicket of Islamic philosophy while demonstrating how its abstract concepts produce what audiences see on screen. The most ambitious aspect of the book lies in its attempt to demonstrate the inheritance by psychoanalysis of a new notion of knowledge, or gnosis, formulated by Muslim thinkers, who radically redefined the relation between body and thought.

Un grupo multirracial de amigos adolescentes aprende cómo la computación puede empoderarlos personal y políticamente, y por qué todos los estudiantes necesitan acceso a la educación en ciencias de la computación.Esta animada novela gráfica sigue a un diverso grupo de adolescentes mientras descubren que las ciencias de la computación pueden ser divertidas, creativas e inspiradoras. Taylor, Christine, Antonio y John se comportan como adolescentes típicos: se comunican a través de interminables mensajes de texto, comparten bromas, se preocupan por el comienzo de su vida en la escuela secundaria y se ayudan mutuamente. Pero cuando un hombre negro es asesinado a tiros por la policía en su ciudad, se indignan y luego se enteran de que había sido identificado y rastreado erróneamente por un programa de inteligencia artificial. ?Cómo puede un algoritmo ser racista? ?Y qué es un algoritmo?En la escuela deciden explorar las clases de computación con resultados variados. En una clase ensenan solo digitación. La clase a la que Christine se quiere unir ya no tiene cupo y la consejera escolar le sugiere que, en su lugar, tome la clase de Turismo y Hospitalidad (??De veras?). Pero la clase de Antonio sí es a todo dar, y cuando Christine encuentra un programa extracurricular, deciden ensenarse unos a otros lo que aprendan. Para cuando llega el verano, cuatro amigos han descubierto que la computación los empodera tanto personalmente como en la política.Intercalados en la narrativa hay cuadros de texto con explicaciones pertinentes a las ciencias de la computación e inspiradores perfiles de mujeres y personas de color en el campo de la tecnología (entre ellos Katherine Johnson de Hidden Figures). !Conectados! es una lectura esencial para los jóvenes, lectores en general, educadores y cualquier persona interesada en aprender sobre el poder de la computación, en su habilidad para causar bienestar o perjuicio, y por qué el abordaje del tema de la subrepresentación necesita ser una prioridad.De las autoras de !Conectados!Hoy en día, la tecnología impacta todos los aspectos de nuestras vidas. Escribimos !Conectados! para llenar un vacío en las aulas de ciencias de la computación y programas extraescolares con una herramienta educacional accesible que permite la discusión de importantes temas de igualdad y ética en tecnología, al mismo tiempo que motiva a la juventud a aprender ciencias de la computación, sin importar la carrera que elijan. Nuestra esperanza es que esta novela gráfica sirva como una forma atractiva de aprender sobre las investigaciones actuales en informática y educación computacional.También esperamos que este libro sirva para motivar conversaciones e introducir un gran rango de temas que los lectores puedan escoger, discutir y aprender juntos. Este libro será publicado con una guía gratuita para maestros disponible en www.poweron.com, con preguntas para la discusión como:?De qué formas la computación está creando bienestar y haciendo dano al mismo tiempo??Los robots pueden ser racistas??Por qué es importante resaltar la subrepresentación de los estudiantes de color y del sexo femenino??Qué se puede hacer para revertir esta subrepresentación??Tienes alguna idea para una innovación tecnológica que pueda ayudar a resolver algún problema social que te interesa??Cómo podemos ayudar para que todos los estudiantes reciban la educación que merecen y necesitan?

The much-anticipated sequel to Butch Heroes, an ingenious retelling of history that combines portraits and texts to recover?and celebrate?queer subjects from around the world.Ingeniously conceived, Ria Brodell?s Butch Heroes books recover and celebrate queer subjects obscured or misrepresented within the dominant narratives of history. More Butch Heroes presents 15 original paintings and biographies in the style of the first volume, Butch Heroes: slyly subverted Catholic holy cards featuring individuals who were assigned female at birth but who presented as masculine.In this book, we meet queer individuals in their everyday lives, relaxing or working, enduring their struggles (which sometimes led to death or punishment), or simply living their lives with their partners or pets: Esther Eng stands with her camera in front of the Mandarin Theatre in San Francisco where she worked in the box office as a child. Tom fishes on the Fraser River in British Columbia. Joe sits astride his horse, ready for a day?s work in Southwestern Idaho.Brodell uses the format of the holy card in its traditional sense, as a means of remembrance and reverence, but also as a way to memorialize those who were often unjustly persecuted by the church. Each deeply researched portrait draws from social class, occupation, clothing, and environmental details of the time period, as well as artifacts, maps, journals, drawings, prints or photos. For Brodell, who was raised Catholic, these queer holy figures act as retrospective replacements for the role models they wish they had known.

The strange, but true biography of the colorful founder of Saucerian Books, a central purveyor and promoter of flying saucer and conspiracist knowledge in the mid-twentieth century.Gray Barker (1925?1984) was an eccentric literary outsider, filled with ideas that were out of step with the world. An author and unreliable narrator of implausible stories, Barker founded and operated Saucerian Books, an independent publisher of books about flying saucers and other ideas at the fringes of popular discourse. In The Saucerian, author Gabriel Mckee tells the fascinating story of Barker?s West Virginia-based press, the unique corpus of materials it published, and how office-copying and self-publishing techniques influenced the spread of paranormal beliefs and conspiratorial worldviews over the last century. Following the development of UFO subculture, Mckee explores the life and career of a larger-than-life hoaxer and originator of pseudoscientific ideas. Ever an entertainer, Barker established his reputation with one of the first flying saucer fanzines The Saucerian and with his first book, the conspiratorial and sensationalistic They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. By the close of the 1950s, he had established a publishing imprint that brought out some of the strangest UFO-related books of the era, with a particular emphasis on flying saucer contactees. Saucerian Books became a platform for those whose stories were too unusual, implausible, or crudely written for more mainstream publishers. Though Barker himself was a skeptic, he viewed the world of occult believers as a source of ongoing entertainment. He also may have used the perceived eccentricity of flying saucer research, or ?ufology,? to obscure his homosexuality from his small-town neighbors. From his place on the fringes of midcentury American culture, Barker left an unmatched legacy in conspiratorial concepts that have become prominent pop cultural folklore, including the Men in Black, the Mothman, and the Philadelphia Experiment. As a mastermind behind the fantastical, Barker?s promotional efforts were the precursor to contemporary conspiracism.

A searing indictment of the American public health, media, and political establishments? decision-making process behind pandemic school closures.An Abundance of Caution is a devastating account of the decision-making process behind one of the worst American policy failures in a century?the extended closures of public schools during the pandemic. In fascinating and meticulously reported detail, David Zweig shows how some of the most trusted members of society?from Pulitzer Prize?winning journalists to eminent health officials?repeatedly made fundamental errors in their assessment and presentation of evidence. As a result, for the first time in modern American history, healthy children were barred from school. Millions of them did not set foot in a classroom for more than a year. Since the spring of 2020, some students in Europe had been learning in person. Even many peers at home?in private schools, and public schools in mostly ?red? states and districts?were in class full time from fall 2020 onward. Whatever inequities that existed among American children before the pandemic, the selective school closures exacerbated them, disproportionately affecting the underprivileged. Deep mental, physical, and academic harms?among them, depression, anxiety, abuse, obesity, plummeting test scores, and rising drop-out rates?were endured for no discernible benefit. As the Europeans had shown very early, after they had sent kids back to class, there was never any evidence that long-term school closures, nor a host of interventions imposed on students when they were in classrooms, would reduce overall cases or deaths in any meaningful way. The story of American schools during the pandemic serves as a prism through which to approach fundamental questions about why and how individuals, bureaucracies, governments, and societies act as they do in times of crisis and uncertainty. Ultimately, this book is not about Covid; it?s about a country ill-equipped to act sensibly under duress.

What has gone wrong with the left?and what leftists must do if they want to change politics, ethics, and minds.Leftists have long taught that people in the West must take responsibility for centuries of classism, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and other gross injustices. Of course, right-wingers constantly ridicule this claim for its ?wokeness.? In Coming Clean, Eric Heinze rejects the idea that we should be less woke. In fact, we need more wokeness, but of a new kind. Yes, we must teach about these bleak pasts, but we must also educate the public about the left?s own support for regimes that damaged and destroyed millions of lives for over a century?Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, or the Kim dynasty in North Korea. Criticisms of Western wrongdoing are certainly important, yet Heinze explains that leftists have rarely engaged in the kinds of open and public self-scrutiny that they demand from others. Citing examples as different as the Ukraine war, LGBTQ+ people in Cuba, the concept of ?hatred,? and the problem of leftwing antisemitism, Heinze explains why and how the left must change its memory politics if it is to claim any ethical high ground.

On the timing of seasonal activity in plants and animals, the impact of climate change, and what each of us, as everyday phenologists, can do to help.Phenology is all about timing?when trees leaf out, flowers bloom, birds migrate, animals bear young and hibernate?and it is everywhere around us. This handy companionable volume shows how we are all phenologists in our own way, and how the everyday science can help us make sense of the changing seasons and our changing world. Explaining how the phenomenon of phenology is threaded through our daily lives, Theresa Crimmins points to events that occur on an annual basis in plants? and animals? lives in response to fluctuations in daylength, temperatures, and rainfall patterns. She also covers less visible seasonal events, such as when roots typically begin to grow or when mushrooms release their spores. On a more urgent note, Phenology describes how this seasonal activity is being affected by rapidly changing climate conditions?and why this matters. Consequently, the book invites readers to participate in documenting the timing of seasonal life cycle events?for the practice?s real benefits to mental health, but also for the good of the environment, as the data gathered can be directly helpful in supporting climate change action.

A scientifically-precipitated, out-of-control tale of evolution set in Antarctica?it predates Lovecraft?s At the Mountains of Madness?by a mathematician of note who also wrote science fiction.In The Greatest Adventure, an expedition to Antarctica discovers remnants of an elder race with advanced technology. These ancients had discovered the secret of developing new life-forms . . . but when the mutations threatened to run amok, their creators entombed their entire civilization in ice. Intrepid aviatrix Edith Lane and her comrades must flee through caverns inhabited by the mutated monsters, and when frozen spores begin to thaw out, the planet is threatened by malign plant life. The Greatest Adventure is a tale of horror by John Taine?the pseudonym of mathematician Eric Temple Bell?that is not without moments of humor.

An exciting new title in the vein of Hidden Figures, which tells the inspiring stories of long-overlooked women physicists and astronomers who discovered the fundamental rules of the universe and reshaped the rules of society.Women physicists and astronomers from around the world have transformed science and society, but the critical roles they played in their fields are not always well-sung. Her Space, Her Time, authored by award-winning quantum physicist Shohini Ghose, brings together the stories of these remarkable women to celebrate their indelible scientific contributions. In each chapter of the book, Ghose explores a scientific topic and explains how the women featured in that chapter revolutionized that area of physics and astronomy. In doing so, she also addresses particular aspects of women?s experiences in physics and astronomy: in the chapter on time, for instance, we learn of Henrietta Leavitt and Margaret Burbidge, who helped discover the big bang and the cosmic calendar; in the chapter on space exploration, we learn of Anigaduwagi (Cherokee) aerospace scientist Mary Golda Ross, who helped make the Moon landings possible; and in the chapter on subatomic particles, we learn of Marietta Blau, Hertha Wambacher, and Bibha Chowdhuri, who contributed to the discovery of the building blocks of the universe, and, in doing so, played a crucial role in determining who gets to do physics today.Engaging, accessible, and timely, Her Space, Her Time is a collective story of scientific innovation, inspirational leadership, and overcoming invisibility that will leave a lasting impression on any reader curious about the rule-breakers and trendsetters who illuminated our understanding of the universe.Some of the featured women scientists in the book?   Williamina Fleming?   Annie Jump Cannon?   Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin?   Antonia Maury?   Henrietta Leavitt?   Margaret Burbidge?   Mary Golda Ross?   Dilhan Eryurt?   Claudia Alexander?   Joyce Neighbors?   Navajo women of Shiprock ?   Harriet Brooks?   Marie Curie?   Lise Meitner?   Marietta Blau?   Hertha Wambacher?   Bibha Chowdhuri?   Wu Chien-Shiung?   Women of the Manhattan Project?   Vera Rubin

The rich history of a centuries-old document security technology?folding and securing a letter into its own envelope for delivery?and a comprehensive guide to learning how to make your own locked letters.Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, how did people secure their private letters? The answer is letterlocking?the ingenious process of securing a letter using a combination of folds, tucks, slits, or adhesives such as sealing wax, so that it becomes its own envelope. This almost entirely forgotten practice, used by historical figures ranging from Elizabeth I and her spies to Japanese samurai lords, was an everyday activity for centuries, across cultures, borders, and social classes. In Letterlocking, Jana Dambrogio and Daniel Starza Smith, experts who have pioneered the field over the last ten years, tell the fascinating story of letterlocking within epistolary history, drawing on real historical examples from all over the world.Fully illustrated with more than 300 images and diagrams, including a dictionary of sixty technical terms and concepts, Letterlocking describes the essential precepts of the practice and provides sources of practical support needed for beginner and advanced users of letterlocking. The authors also advocate for the understanding of letterlocking and for its inclusion in a range of intellectual and cultural research, from conservation science and archival databases to historical television shows. By the end of the book, readers will learn how to make locked letters, study letters that may have been locked, and categorize those letters using systems the authors developed while studying more than 250,000 historic letters.Letterlocking is accompanied by a website, freely accessible scholarly articles, and instructional videos and diagrams, as well as foldable tear-out sheets with instructions on how to fold and lock models of extant historical letters.

How to create our industrial future with inspiration and lessons from the originators of the industrial revolution.Climate change, global disruption, and labor scarcity are forcing us to rethink the underlying principles of industrial society. In The New Lunar Society, David Mindell envisions this new industrialism from the fundamentals, drawing on the eighteenth century when first principles were formed at the founding of the Industrial Revolution. While outlining the new industrialism, he tells the story of the Lunar Society, a group of engineers, scientists, and industrialists who came together to apply the principles of the Enlightenment to industrial processes. Those principles were collaboration, the marriage of practical and scientific knowledge, and the belief that the world could progress through making things.The Lunar Society included pioneers like James Watt, Benjamin Franklin, and Josiah Wedgwood, and their conversations no less than ignited the Industrial Revolution and shaped the founding of the United States. Telling the stories of these makers in parallel with those of our current moment of crisis on multiple fronts, Mindell argues for a new industrialism. He asks: What does industry look like when it strives to optimize for the lowest carbon footprint as well as the greatest profit? When it values resilience as much as efficiency? When it upholds dignified, inclusive, sustainable work? Optimistic but not utopian about our ability to build the world, The New Lunar Society shines a light on how a new generation can reanimate the best ideas of our thinking doer forebears and begin to build a future that is both realistic and human-centered.

A fresh view of animals and what we owe them.Do animals have moral standing? Do they count, morally speaking? In Animal Rights, Mark Rowlands argues that they do and explores the implications of this idea. He identifies three different waves in animal rights writing. The first wave was defined by a traditional dispute between utilitarianism (represented by Peter Singer) and rights-based approaches (represented by Tom Regan) to ethics. The second wave was defined by an expansion in a conception of ethics, which saw utilitarian and rights-based approaches supplemented by other ethical traditions, including contractualism, virtue ethics, and care ethics. The third wave was defined by an expansion in our conception of animals, driven by exciting new developments in the field of comparative psychology.Each of these waves had ramifications for how we understand the moral status of animals, but, this book argues, and reinforces, the core idea that animals deserve moral respect. In earlier waves, discussions of animal ethics had been focused on the issue of animal suffering. But the third wave is defined by the idea that animals are far more than merely sufferers or enjoyers of experiences but are instead authors of their own lives: creatures capable of choosing how to live, shaped by a conception of their life and how they would like it to go. Rowlands writes that, no matter what moral theory you choose, the most plausible version of that theory entails that animals have moral standing and that our obligations to them are far more substantial than many of us care to acknowledge.