Hans Dieter Betz's book on the Sermon on the mount is the book to end all books on the Sermon on the Mount ( and the Sermon on the Plain ). It is a must in the library of every minister, every New Testament Scholar, every teacher of New Testament and everyone who wants to know everything about the Sermon on the Mount. There is an extensive bibliography. There are copious notes on every verse. There are comments on exigesis which are extremely helpful. There are even comments on the social and political events which may be relevant to understand the implications of the Sermon on the Mount. The only times it does seem to fall down is his few comments on the organization of the Sermon. Sometimes he expresses a lack of comfort about how one idea relates to another. He should have paid more attention to Michael Golder's "Midrash and Lection in Matthew's Gospel," which he quotes in one or two places. This explains the organization a little better. I highly recommend Dr. Betz's book. Any minister who wants to preach a sermon on any part of the Sermon on the Mount must have this as his primary source.

UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY

Can technology ever duplicate (and perhaps replace) people? This is actually an ancient question which has sparked debate from many positions (yes, no, it depends, etc.). Both recent trends (i.e., modernity ever since Francis Bacon) AND its aesthetic imagination (i.e., modern science fiction) have given new life (and perhaps urgency) to this debate. So?!

Mechanization, automation, and cybernation have certainly replaced people in many repetitive tasks (a process Noah Kennedy aptly calls "The Industrialization of Intelligence"). But what about fully automated factories, or a computer like HAL, or androids, or whatever? Some with generally respected bona fides (Arthur C. Clarke, Raymond Kurzweil, etc.), have speculated that eventual duplication is possible. Others with equally impressive bona fides (John Searle, Hubert Dreyfus, etc.), have argued that duplication is essentially impossible.

If you have already decided an answer for yourself, such debates may not change your mind. But if you really are both interested and open to credible arguments, where does plausibility reside? Collins and Kusch have definitively answered the question (at least for the present). They have developed a theory of what distinguishes human action from machine behaviour, and have shown why there is an impenetrable barrier between the two.

Collins & Kusch's conclusion is basically a theory of contrivance, something which is both very rare and very important. To my knowledge, only Aristotle's Four Causes and McLuhan's Four Effects are in the same class of explanations. The Collins & Kusch typology is different from other classifications of technologies. It essentially distinguishes between contrivances which embody and imply social context (polimorphic), and those contrivances with do not involve such context in use (mimeomorphic).

Technology is limited to the mimeomorphic, and there are four types of possible gizmos:

Simple capability (embodying a single process); Branching capabilities (a limited number of alternatives); Feedback capabilities (built to adjust and regulate performance); Learning capabilities (incorporating the patterns of time-series summaries).

What this amounts to, is that there can be (and are) Expert Systems (knowledgeable technologies), because they are confined to a domain. BUT there can never be Artificial Intelligence (contextualized comparing across domains). And even Expert Systems (and the multitude of lesser gizmos) only function because the faults in their processes are continually corrected by human intervention. Few, if any, gizmos ever live up to their hype! For every other explanation, there is a RAT in the practice. Read the book to see what this means, and why.

The secret garden. The little village of Shared Ground, hidden away in the mountains of Tennessee, was an enchanted place, where ancient knowledge was preserved in a centries-old tradition.

Beck MacDomhall was one of Shared Ground's chosen ones. He had taken his special gifts to a wider world of wealth and power-but now his people had called him home.

Catronia Muir, the lovely bearer of their urgent summons, had powers very nearly the equal of Beck's own. And as Shared Ground and its gentle ways worked their magic on Beck's weary spirit, so did Cat weave her way into his very dreams. But his place was elsewhere, and hers was here. How could there ever be shared ground for them?

I purchased this book to use as a text for my daughter to learn sign as her foreign language. The illustrations are very easily understood, and as the title suggests, pertains to the average school day. The chapters include: Finger Alphabet, Asking Questions and Getting Answers, Courtesies and Greetings, Giving Direction, and Words Around School. This book would make an excellent resource for teachers and students alike to learn how to communicate with a hearing-impaired classmate. We look forward to more titles being added to this series.

An excellent book for beginning signers who are interested in religious signs. This book has incorporated signing of simple songs, the story of Jesus and four scripture passages in less than 30 pages! The pictures are easy to follow even for children.

This book is a coffee table photo collection of the art, advertising and paraphernalia of tobacco in the early part of this century. From celebrity endorsements to electrical trick lighters to objects that literally shudder with political incorrectness, this book gives us a visual history of both tobacco and our national culture during the period. The book simultaneously enlightening and beautiful.

Finally, my coworkers don't feel the need to hassle me every minute for translations!Worth every penny!

In this book, Collins instroduces several precepts that most of us have never thought about before. It's guaranteed to challenge some of your most dearly-held beliefs about selfishness, social conhesion, religion, marriage, power and other enigmatic topics. He guides 'dear reader' gently and is without the 'in your face' style of some social theorists, which makes a book you'll buy with nary a reservation for some of your most conservative friends.

All in all, a great introduction to sociology. It's written at a college freshman level, which makes it a great beginner's book, but you'll find yourself referring back to it again and again through the years - promise.

Two thumbs up for Collins!

This is a wonderful resource for those interested in the prehistory and early history of Spain. The book is well organized, with maps that cross-correlate with listings of sites by time period. Each site is described succinctly, and directions for finding the sites are clear and detailed. Obviously, the book is now about 5 years away from the most recent research, but nonetheless it represents a comprehensive guide for some essential places to know.