Contemporary Art and the Baroque. Featuring the work of six international artists, this publication examines a recurring facet of contemporary artistic production material excess, accumulation, bravado, asymmetry, and theatricality. The impact of such art is decidedly visual and primeval, with artists creating powerfully immersive environments aimed at enticing, challenging and even unsettling viewers. Three essays discuss ornamentation, hybridity, material sensibilities, transformation and the sublime in contemporary art practice."
This book reveals the hidden and potentially misleading nature of measurements, empowering readers to avoid making critical business decisions that are harmful, unreasonable, unwarranted, or plain wrong. Decision makers in business and government are more reliant than ever on measurements, such as business performance indicators, bond ratings, Six-Sigma indicators, stock ratings, opinion polls, and market research. Yet many popular statistical and business books and courses relating to measurement are based on flawed principles, leading managers to the wrong conclusions—and ultimately, the wrong decisions. misLeading Indicators: How to Reliably Measure Your Business provides something unique and invaluable: trustworthy tools for judging measurements. Each chapter illustrates the four key principles for reliable measurements: sufficient background information, accuracy and precision, reasonable inferences, and reality checks in different situations. After the three fundamental methods of measuring are defined, the authors expand to the application and interpretation of measurements in specific areas, including business performance, risk management, process, control, finance, and economics. This book supplies essential information for managers in business and government who depend on accurate information to run their organizations, as well as the consultants who advise them.
The fourteen prominent analytic philosophers writing here engage with the cluster of philosophical questions raised by conceptual art. They address four broad questions: What kind of art is conceptual art? What follows from the fact that conceptual art does not aim to have aesthetic value? What knowledge or understanding can we gain from conceptual art? How ought we to appreciate conceptual art? Conceptual art, broadly understood by the contributors as beginning with Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades and as continuing beyond the 1970s to include some of today's contemporary art, is grounded in the notion that the artist's 'idea' is central to art, and, contrary to tradition, that the material work is by no means essential to the art as such. To use the words of the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, 'In conceptual art the idea of the concept is the most important aspect of the work . . . and the execution is a perfunctory affair'. Given this so-called 'dematerialization' of the art object, the emphasis on cognitive value, and the frequent appeal to philosophy by many conceptual artists, there are many questions that are raised by conceptual art that should be of interest to analytic philosophers. Why, then, has so little work been done in this area? This volume is most probably the first collection of papers by analytic Anglo-American philosophers tackling these concerns head-on. Contributors Margaret Boden, Diarmuid Costello, Gregory Currie, David Davies, Peter Goldie, Robert Hopkins, Matthew Kieran, Peter Lamarque, Dominic McIver Lopes, Derek Matravers, Elisabeth Schellekens, Kathleen Stock, Carolyn Wilde, and the 'Art & Language' group.
"The Great Global Warming Blunder provides a simple explanation for why forecasts of a global warming Armageddon constitute a major scientific faux pas: climate researchers have mixed up cause and effect when they have analyzed cloud behavior. Combining illustrations from everyday experience with state-of-the-art satellite measurements, Roy W. Spencer reveals how these scientists have been fooled by Mother Nature into believing that the Earth's climate system is very sensitive to humanity's production of carbon dioxide through the use of fossil fuels. He presents evidence that recent warming, rather than being the fault of humans, is a result of chaotic, internal natural cycles that have been causing periods of warming and cooling for thousands of years" --Cover, p. 2.
This best-seller reveals the secrets of capturing the essence of a scene using abstract techniques, from pouring inks and adding opaque lines to using crinkled wax paper as resists and collaging paintings together.
Global science education is a reality at the end of the 20th century - albeit an uneven reality - because of tremendous technological and economic pressures. Unfortunately, this reality is rarely examined in the light of what interests the everyday lives of ordinary people rather than the lives of political and economic elites. The purpose of this book is to offer insightful and thought-provoking commentary on both realities. The tacit question throughout the book is `Whose interests are being served by current science education practices and policies?' The various chapters offer critical analysis from the perspectives of culture, economics, epistemology, equity, gender, language, and religion in an effort to promote a reflective science education that takes place within, rather than taking over, the important cultural lives of people. The target audience for the book includes graduate students in education, science education and education policy professors, policy and government officials involved with education.
