Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge (Communication & Society)

Book Description

Most Americans tend to view censorship as a repressive aspect of other societies or historical eras, one that touches on our lives only in relation to national security or certain cold war considerations. In this provocative history of censorship, Sue Curry Jansen challenges conventional thought with a bold new view: that censorship, an embodiment of the relationship between power and knowledge, is as much a feature of liberal, market societies as it is of totalitarianisms. Building on an analytic tradition laid out by such thinkers as Marcuse and Foucault, Jansen addresses the notion of "market censorship" and shows how the marketplace has become an arena for liberal "power-knowledge." She also analyzes Marx's critique of bourgeois censorship, examines censorship at various levels of Soviet society, and takes an incisive look at economic censorship within our own capitalist nation. The book concludes with a discussion on strategies of resistance to this powerful, and indeed universal, form of social control.

Customer Reviews:

An Important Read, If You Care........2005-05-30

Jansen is known for being a pioneer in the awareness of censorship in the late twentieth century. In her widely read and referred to text, Censorship, she asserts, "The question is not, `is there censorship', but rather `what kind?'"(25). She then goes on to discuss the underground and less obvious ways that censorship has been practiced since the age of Enlightenment.
What do Capitalist and Socialist societies have in common? They both practice censorship. The fact is, people and profit go together, and where you have discomfort, you have people choosing against it. While Jansen's work is too broad to get to the very heart of the issue, ranging from a look at Marx to a Greek Mythology and to the emergence of the internet, she raises questions that need to be looked at. This book is an important one, that has inspired many in the study of academic freedom and censorship in societies past and current.

The Klamath Knot: Explorations of Myth and Evolution, Twentieth Anniversary Edition

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Crawling out of the Ooze in Nor Carl
See for yourself
Overlooked gem of natural philosophy

The Klamath Knot: Explorations of Myth and Evolution, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
David Rains Wallace
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520236599

Book Description

Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing, the Commonwealth Club Silver Medal for Literature 1984, and named one of the twentieth century's best nonfiction books by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Klamath Knot, originally published by Sierra Club Books in 1983, is a personal vision of wilderness in the Klamath Mountains of northwest California and southwest Oregon, seen through the lens of "evolutionary mythology." David Rains Wallace uses his explorations of the diverse ecosystems in this region to ponder the role of evolution and myth in our culture. The author's new epilogue makes a case for the creation of a new park to safeguard this exceptionally rich storehouse of relict species and evolutionary stories, which has largely been bypassed by conservationists since John Muir.

Customer Reviews:

Crawling out of the Ooze in Nor Carl.......2007-01-17

From one special corner of the biosphere, David Wallace explores the evolution of life on earth. Before you say, "not another treatise on evolution," The Klamath Knot is a different animal.

Even though Wallace's knowledge of the Klamath ecosystems and the dynamics of evolution are fundamentally sound, he's grasping for much more in this book. As the smaller print under the title states, it's an "exploration of myth and evolution." The Klamath Knot represents the rare blend of hard science of the world we can observe and measure with that of the world we can only imagine or dream. That's quite a subject-matter-bridge to cross, but Wallace puts it off. Once I got a couple of chapters into the book, the distinction between science and myth began to blur (i.e., Do giants really exist? Not sure).

Wallace doles out each chapter as the creator planned it. He introduces us to rock, primal ooze, water, and ultimately life. And the backdrop for each major step of life evolving on this planet is the Klamath Mountains. A truly magical and diverse region along the California and Oregon border that stretches from the Rogue River south to the Eel River. A place that is home to old growth forests, runs of salmon and steelhead, and high deserts. Wallace takes us into some of the more remote places of the Klamath and masterfully focuses on the biological importance of each ecosystem.

The book goes well beyond the physical world and ponders some interesting questions. Like where is life on our planet headed? Is it possible to know where it's headed? What can we learn from evolution? Does life evolve from cooperation or competition or both? What is the role of myth? Does Big-Foot really exist? Could he exist? Is this creature another branch along life's tree?

I admire the author for both his skill and courage in addressing such diverse subject matter. Reading the Klamath Know will leave you with a renewed sense of wonder about the natural world.

See for yourself.......2005-12-20

This is an essay -- for lack of a better term -- that combines natural science, mythology, philosophy, even some anthropology, in a moving discourse centered around the Pacific Northwest's Klamath Mountains.

It's deeply (though not overtly) spiritual, discussing life with a sense of wonder we often leave behind. It's also as intelligent, and as important, as any good academic work on ecology, but unlike most of those, it'll draw you in, pulling so subtly you won't even feel its power until suddenly you've finished a chapter and realized your perceptions have changed.

Until you've picked it up, you won't know what I mean, but it won't take long to see that THE KLAMATH KNOT can make the Mystery that is life more accessible to all of us. For this reason, it isn't just a philosophical toy you'll be able to discard; instead, you'll find it informs the way you live in the world.

Overlooked gem of natural philosophy.......2004-03-31

Nature writing always carries something of the romantic with it, and this is its greatest strength and greatest curse. As a strength, it provides a window into the sublime limit which nature opens for her human observers. Such romanticism is a weakness, however, if it devolves into a reified hymn to an imagined nature which is as unreal as the imagined un-nature from which one hopes to fly. Nature is not a paradigm, is not a given. One has to meet it, encounter it, realize one's place in it, hear what it has to say, say something back to it, wonder about it, and allow it to remain mystery. The best nature writing has does this -- think of Walden, and how Thoreau allows the pond to retain its power and dignity while plumbing its depths, measuring its boundaries, cataloging its flora and fauna, and descibing his own very human comings and goings around its then mostly deforested banks. In the end, we know a lot about the pond, and even more about Thoreau, but Walden remains Walden, the myth, the legend. Having been lucky enough to have lived close to Walden for several years, I can tell you that no amount of reading about Walden, even at Walden, can capture the life of the pond. Thoreau's book takes the measure of the pond, and makes it real in a way that the real Walden always has been, yet never quite is.

Wallace's book accomplishes this for the Klamath mountains of northern California, home of great trees, deep lakes, and sasquatch. His book never holds the Klamath at arm's length, as the romantic impulse al too often wants to do, but rather gives an account of the terrain, measures it out, proposes a history and a taxonomy of the land and the fields and the rivers which captures so much about the place, but never pretends to total knowledge. He writes (as did Aristotle about his fish, and Thoreau about his flowers) as a scientist with the soul of a poet, or perhaps a poet with a scientist's eye. Of course, Wallace is neither a scientist nor a poet (neither were Aristotle or Thoreau), and so what we see is Wallace's experience of the Kalamath, not Klamath poetry and Klamath science. And of course, that is all we can see, just as all we can see in Walden the book is Thoreau's experience of Walden the pond. Such places cannot be captured by a single perspective, but will not be seen at all unless a single perspective widens the vision for the rest of us. There are many small ponds around Concord, Mass, but Thoreau went to live at Walden. And there are many wild knots of mountains and rivers still scattered around this nation, and the world. Each one needs a Thoreau, or a Wallace, or an Ed Abbey, or Aldo Leopold, or Muir, or Whitman, to bring it to our vision in a way we may have never seen it before. I daresay the lumbermen who cut the trees on Walden's shores saw the same water and sky as Thoreau -- but it was Thoreau's way of seeing it that lasted. Wallace's view is the one that needs to last, to stick in the mind, concerning the Klamath region.

Wallace's theme in the book is an "evolutionary myth," one that tells a story about the land which provides a key to meaning. He writes, "Moses forced his society to accept a unifying law; Jesus forced his to accept the unity of all of humanity; Darwin forced his to accept the unity of all of life" (8). He acknowledges that placing Darwin in league with Moses and Jesus will strike some as odd, but Wallace is a man with a vision. He points out that "both religion and science are mythologies, in the sense that each provides the individual with an account of the origins and meanings of life. It seems to me irrelevant, in this mythological sense, whether such accounts are facts or fictions. They need only to provide their believers with a workable key to life, an invisible world of origins and meanings to help them make sense of an often confusing, sometimes frightening, physical world" (8). Following this idea, he presents his explorations of the Klamath as a playing-out of an evolutionary mythology, a story about how the land came to be, what it might mean, and how the story fits in with the rest of life. It is a powerful and original story he tells, and bound to last. More than a memoir of a love-affair with a place, and more than a naturalist's account of a fragile and vanishing ecosystem, Wallace's book is a testament to the power of a place to transform one's very understanding of the world, and what it means to be human in that world after the knot has been unraveled, and then re-tied. It is a powerful and meaningful vision of lost wild places which avoids romanticism and doomsaying, and which holds as much hope as horror about the loss and preservation of the American wilderness.

Five More Golden Rules: Knots, Codes, Chaos, and Other Great Theories of 20th-Century Mathematics
Average customer rating:

MEANT for non-mathematicians???

Where is the value added?

nice sequel for math major not the layperson

Beauty that is not made accessible to the layperson

More Difficult than Five Golden Rules

Five More Golden Rules: Knots, Codes, Chaos, and Other Great Theories of 20th-Century Mathematics
John L. Casti
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0471395285

Amazon.com

Bring more joy to your favorite math-head with Five More Golden Rules from science writer and national treasure John L. Casti. Though a quick glance through the book will cause an intense fight-or-flight response in the numerophobic, Casti's writing is lovely and lucid as ever, explaining not just equations and theorems but their significance in our lives. Having discovered in Five Golden Rules that he couldn't restrict himself to just five important 20th-century mathematical theories, this follow-up explores the intricacies of knot theory, functional analysis, control theory, chaotic systems, and information theory. Each of the five lively chapters introduces its subject with a seemingly unrelated anecdote that is (of course) informed by the theory in question. Then it's headlong into the wonderful details of postulation and demonstration that make math so much fun. Unlike a textbook, Five More Golden Rules meanders and breaks away from its proofs to discover relations between the symbols and the real world, from the stock market to the coastline of Norway. Besides giving the reader a break, this makes the abstract, almost ethereal concepts concrete and provides a definite advantage to the interested student. Perhaps textbook publishers should take note of this technique; until they do, we'll have to curl up with Casti's Five More Golden Rules if we want to have fun with our higher math. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

"Casti is one of the great science writers." -San Francisco Examiner
"Casti's gift is to be able to let the nonmathematical reader share in his understanding of the beauty of a good theory." -Christian Science Monitor
Following up the acclaimed Five Golden Rules, another quintet of gleaming math discoveries
With Five More Golden Rules, readers are treated to another fascinating set of theoretical gems from acclaimed popular science author John Casti. Injecting all-new ingredients into his trademark recipe of real-world examples, historical anecdotes, and straightforward explanations, Casti once again brings math to thrilling life. All who enjoyed the unique pleasures of the original will love this follow-up survey highlighting the creme de la creme of math in the last century.
Explores how knot theory informs the classic tale of Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot
* Considers how the Shannon Coding Theory applies to decoding the human genome
John L. Casti, PhD (Santa Fe, NM), a resident member of the Santa Fe Institute, is a professor at the Technical University of Vienna and the author of Would-Be Worlds (Wiley) and Cambridge Quintet.

Customer Reviews:

MEANT for non-mathematicians???.......2002-05-23

I'm math and computer science student. I have studied linear algebra and know lots about linear spaces, n-dimensional vectors, matrices and other stuff. Still I sometimes found it hard to get out proof or just idea of those formulas. Why do you need formula, if you can't understant its essence. Then there are lots of calculus expressions. I DON'T think it's for everyone!

BUT, I found the book SPLENDID just because of those subjects covered - and covered quite generally without too deep details (although sometimes I wanted more).

I certainly don't agree with those folks who say that there is no explanation on subject's importance. There is ENOUGH! Then I ask you: "Why did you buy that book? Just randomly?" If you have little gray cells in your box then you'll understand why something is or isn't important. I DON'T have need for lengthy texts of explanations why this and not other subject. That is boring!

Where is the value added?.......2001-11-23

In this book, John Casti takes an academic's eye toward 5 interesting areas of mathematics. Unfortunately, his treatment of the material reminds me of sitting in all too many classrooms in graduate school, with a professor rambling and scribbling on the board without ever bothering to indicate why it even mattered. Like all too many of my professors, he leaves the truly interesting material (the impact) to the reader's imagination. Casti really missed the mark here. He had the opportunity not just to present mathematical proofs, but to show why this is really interesting stuff. Instead, the material is presented no differently than how it would appear in a graduate level textbook. So, why not stick with those graduate level textbooks? Where is his value added as an author?

nice sequel for math major not the layperson.......2001-05-03

In Five Golden Rules John Casti wrote a wonderful book about important theorems in mathematics that were discovered in the 20th Century. The style and description was such that a layperson could understand, enjoy and appreciate the results. All the theorems were discovered before 1950 and they all dealt with topics in applied mathematics and particularly game theory and operations research.

Perhaps he found the list of five golden rules too restrictive and thus comes the sequel "Five More Golden Rules". Again, it would be hard to argue the choices. Casti goes into the details of the theorems and the theory related to them much like he did in the first book. However, in this book, he has chosen topics from very abstract areas of mathematics. I have a masters degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in statistics and yet I had no familiarity with knot theory. So I learned a lot from chapter 1 but found it to be difficult reading, more like a mathematics textbook than a popular book for the scientist and layman.

This feeling continued as I read the other four chapters even though I was treading on territory that was very familiar to me (e.g. the Kalman filter of control theory). It was reassuring to me to see that this impression was also shared by the three customers that had already written reviews on the book.

I recommend this book wholeheartedly for mathematicians and other with strong math training. The Hahn-Banach theorem was the most important theorem that I learned about when I took my functional analysis course at the University of Maryland some 26 years ago. But I have not had much use for it since and I completely forgot what it said. Casti provides me with a nice reminder and shows how this result is a generalization of very practical results that relate to quantum mechanics and other results in physics.

The latter part of the 20th Century saw a great deal of activity in nonlinear dynamics. This is connected by Casti to the Hopf Bifurcation theorem. That chapter deals with many topics that grasped the attention of applied mathematicians, including chaos and catastrophy theory, strange attractors and the beautiful geometry of fractals. This material is not for a layperson. On the other hand, the introduction to the chapter, covering what a dynamical system is, provides a wonderful analogy to a treasure hunt in Central Park that can be appreciated by everyone.

The Kalman filter provides an example of how linearization of real dynamic systems allows one to write a prediction equation for the state at the next time point recursively as a function of the current state and the new measurements. This recursive formulation leads to the same solution that Wiener had found much earlier, but because of the recursion, it is much more suitable for real time computer applications. This was essential to controlling space vehicles and is the important result that made the trip to the moon possible. Casti covers the theory of Kalman filtering very well but emphasizes many of the interesting abstract concepts rather than the more concrete aspects of the solution.

The finally chapter on the Shannon Coding Theorem takes us into the realm of information theory. Casti provides the key references. Electronic communication in the 20th century has benefitted from the efficient coding of information that makes transmissions faster easier and error free. This is very important work with unforeseen applications. Casti points to applications in genetics.

Another interesting feature of the book is the connection made between the knot theory associated with Alexander's polynomials and DNA sequencing, a subject to be further explored in the 21st Century.

Beauty that is not made accessible to the layperson.......2000-12-03

«The linear dynamical system (**) is completely reachable if and only if the block matrix C contains n linearly independant vectors, that is, rank C = N»

If you don't feel completely at ease with this sentence, do not read this book. Every page contains mathematical propositions of such level, and such level of mathematical fluency is required in order to fully appreciate the content of John Casti's book. The content is interesting but the reading is made rendered somewhat tedious by this high density of maths. I have a degree in engineering, and I often fast forwarded trough the equations in an effort to not lose sight of the big picture Casti want to show the reader.

At the end you will be smarter, but it will not have been a relaxed reading. If you are looking for food for toughts, I would recommand, among others, «Paradigms Lost : Tackling the Unanswered Mysteries of Modern Science», by the same author.

More Difficult than Five Golden Rules.......2000-08-13

The prospective reader is warned that this book requires considerably more mathematical background than Five Golden Rules, a fact that is not made clear on the book jacket nor in the nonexistent forward or table of contents. In addition, Casti seems to have found it necessary to leave many more points incompletely explained than in Five Golden Rules; though perhaps this was unavoidable given the more difficult subject matter. I am puzzled about what audience Casti thought would read the book.

Political Trials: Gordian Knots in the Law

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Political Trials: Gordian Knots in the Law

Manufacturer: Transaction Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Air power's Gordian knot centralized versus organic control (SuDoc D 301.26/6:G 65)

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Air power's Gordian knot centralized versus organic control (SuDoc D 301.26/6:G 65)
Stephen J. McNamara
Manufacturer: Air University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00010WUJS

Air Power's Gordian Knot: Centralized Versus Organic Conytol

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Air Power's Gordian Knot: Centralized Versus Organic Conytol
Stephen J. McNamara
Manufacturer: Air Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 9994407309

History and Science of Knots (Series on Knots and Everything , Vol 11)

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History and Science of Knots (Series on Knots and Everything , Vol 11)

Manufacturer: World Scientific Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
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Encyclopedia of Knots and Fancy Rope Work

ASIN: 9810224699

Book Description

This book brings together twenty essays on diverse topics in the history and science of knots. It is divided into five parts, which deal respectively with knots in prehistory and antiquity, non-European traditions, working knots, the developing science of knots, and decorative and other aspects of knots.

Its authors include archaeologists who write on knots found in digs of ancient sites (one describes the knots used by the recently discovered Ice Man); practical knotters who have studied the history and uses of knots at sea, for fishing and for various life support activities; a historian of lace; a computer scientist writing on computer classification of doilies; and mathematicians who describe the history of knot theories from the eighteenth century to the present day.

Book Description

Mindsteps to the Cosmos shows how modern global civilization depends on giant leaps of understanding that have been made in the past. Science and technology have been inspired and formulated by the sky — the cosmos in which we live. Human development could not have taken place on a cloud-shrouded planet. Mathematics was invented to track the movements of the sun, moon and stars even though back then these were thought to be gods. The space program has taken us beyond the earth, and satellite systems are exploring to the ends of the visible universe. This book provides the reader with algorithms to construct personal computer programs for finding the position of the moon and planets, and for calculating dates through historic periods in the Egyptian as well as the old and new style calendars.

Resolving China and Taiwan's differences.(Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait)(Taiwan's Security: History and Prospects)(Book review): An article from: Parameters

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Resolving China and Taiwan's differences.(Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait)(Taiwan's Security: History and Prospects)(Book review): An article from: Parameters
Larry M. Wortzel
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Parameters, published by Thomson Gale on December 22, 2006. The length of the article is 2056 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Resolving China and Taiwan's differences.(Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait)(Taiwan's Security: History and Prospects)(Book review)
Author: Larry M. Wortzel
Publication: Parameters (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 36 Issue: 4 Page: 124(4)

Article Type: Book review

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