I bought this album thinking that it would sound like their earlier stuff, i.e. well thought out songwriting, exceptional lyrics (especially for this genre) and a voice that is awful at first listen but slowly becomes beautiful and integral to their sound...what a disappointment. I would rate this album as one of the most derivative and boring albums of all time.

I was introduced to this record by a friend, and it was love at the first hearing. The music has an uncanny resemblance to a bit earlier KMFDM stuff (such as Nihil), but has much heavier bass and guitars and more macho singing. The KMFDM influence is evident, as this record has been produced by Sascha K of KMFDM. My favorites on this CD are the most 'traditional' industrock songs, notably tracks #1, #2, #3, #9 and #10. The rest of the songs are a bit too strange mixes of styles to my liking; overall, however, this is a highly enjoyable CD if you're looking for energetic no- holds-barred rock'n'roll. (yes, I call it rock'n'roll even though it's classified as industrial. It's in the attitude)

With "Higher", Treponem Pal shows a way from heavy inductrial rock (Excess and Overdrive period) to crossover like KMFDM and Ministry. This album is made up of dub, reggae, electronic sounds and metal. Marco, the singer, brings a noticeable work on his voice. If you want to discover french crossover, listen this cd.

If all you want is quotes, you will enjoy this book. If, however, you need a reference tool that is accurate, look elsewhere. About one in three quotes is misquoted, misattributed or both. Citations following the quotes only include the authors' names, so why is the book so full of errors? Clearly, little research went into this "reference" book. How appalling that it was published by a major university!

Though the book is lacking REALLY good quotes in some areas, it does provide a wide array of topics. It's alphabetical listing is very convenient. If you don't find what you're looking for under one topic, it lists other areas in which you might find something similar. If you can't find an appropriate quote in this book, one does not exist. There are quotes for ANY situation!! It also gives a brief description of each of the authors which is highly convenient if you'd like to find more books or qoutes by that author. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a great source of familiar and highly amusing quotations.

Thank god I got this at the library...and took it back the next day. This book had the nerve to even suggest reading backwards as a time saver. Not even worth pulling off the shelf. I have looked at several speed reading books and this by far is the worst...pure garbage. Check it out for a good laugh!

After reading the previous review I felt compelled to offer my view.
This book uses some of the same principles as the "Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics" (tm) program.
If you want to increase your reading speed, this is an economical alternative to taking the course.
I have purchased and read this book and the principles taught are sound (i.e. they work if given a chance). If you would like to read 1,500 words per minute or more then get this book or one like it and practice, practice, practice.
I hope this helps.

this book helped me very very little and I offened several china men and women in my visit and had a very bad time.

This IMI yearbook has been published consecutively for a couple of years in Chinese and I have used it in my research and consulting projects quite well. It comprises the largest and most detailed information about Chinese consumers' purchasing power, consumption preference and household goods, etc., among all such kinds of sources available in China so far. It is a quite useful tool, especially for consumer product companies which have entered into or will explore Chinese market. However due to sampling methodology and city coverage of the research, it does not accurately reflect the reality of whole China and should be used with other sources of information as corroboration.

This book covers the whole of the SAS language up to about 6.06. While the core of the language is presented, and that information is presented in a fairly logical order, you'll have to keep in mind that since SAS seems to have been invented by people who were trying to do something different than anyone else in the industry had ever done, that there is nothing to relate any of the information to anything in any other programming language.

Although it says reference on the cover, it is about half reference. The other half covers a lot about the Rules of the SAS Language (which you will need to know to get anything done, or even have an idea of how to do it), and other SAS-unique concepts (and there are so many).

The index is almost useless. You will need to know SAS and everything it can do before it is useful (SAS almost always has its own command-name for any programming operation, and the index contains only those names; hardly a single mention of generic programming tasks or needs and where to find SAS statements that fulfil those needs).

The price of almost $50 is steep, but despite the poor nature of the book, you will still need this book if you are serious about SAS because even though it won't help you figure out what SAS command to use, when you do find out what that command is (any command not in one of the extensive array of sebsequent version updates), this book does provide a complete syntax, which can be the only peace of useful information.

It has been my experience that all SAS Institute documentation and all commercial documenation tends to explain things from the viewpoint of a SAS programmer, that is, someone who programs using SAS concepts and methods. This makes all such documentation difficult to impossible to understand to people who do not think in the "net" of the SAS "way" of programming. Having a heavy lean toward statistical analysis doesn't help, either (large portions of SAS functionality are obscure and useless if you don't have advanced statistical understanding).

Some of the comments of the previous reviewer are appropriate, others are misleading, which I attempt to correct.

The book is titled 'SAS Reference' so what would one expect other than an exhaustive listing of SAS commands. There are dozens of other books out there which will teach you both Stats and SAS (or any other statistical tool you choose such as JMP, SYSTAT, SPSS). To say that "all" SAS Institute and commercial documentation have a SAS insider's bias is plainly inaccurate. If one doesn't know enough stats then these books are not to blame.

Most programmers who code in C, Fortran or Java would not consider SAS (or SPSS, SYSTAT) to be complete programming languages. Though many general programming do concepts apply, if the authors attempted to compare C with SAS, then the latter would appear tame howsoever powerful SAS may touted to be. The only statistical language that would come close to C would be R/S/S-plus family of languages.

SAS is meant for statistical analysis not for baking cookies. Is it any wonder you need to know stats? Similarly one would expect users of Mathlab or Mathematica to know some math - it is not aimed at teaching Math to English Majors, but make the job of engineers/scientists, who use math as a tool, easier.

The plain, old, everyday, ordinary Church is apparently not yet good enough for Tilden Edwards. Especially the kataphatic Western Church with all of its pesky conceptualizing and polarizing. What it awaits is the fulness wrought from a syncretism in which the rational kataphatic tradition of the West is yoked with the mystical apophatic tradition of the East -- and both of these are joined in union with the cosmic Christ -- the unifying Truth behind the plain, old, everyday ordinary Christ. Until such a unity is achieved, the Church will neither be true "religion" or an "integrating force in society." Edwards ambitious project of "reclaiming spiritual direction" for the American church (described in detail in this book) is driven and shaped by this vision of a kataphatic-ataphatic-cosmic syncretism. Ironically, Edwards' analysis of the state of the church is itself a highly conceptual, critical, rational piece of work. But it sets up a "straw man" in my opinion The Western church was never really bereft of mysticism, and there are strains of the apophatic in even the Reformed Tradition. Maybe I am a hopeless kataphatic, maybe I am incurable Barthian evangelical who just cant stand gnosticism. I'm not sure. I do know how to "bone my fish" though, and so, while I disagree with Edwards' analysis and his starting point, I nevertheless find the book valuable in places. His discussion of the Eternal Rhythm of Sabbath and Service is a word that our society needs to hear. We are frantically busy, over-booked, driven, tired and worn out. We do not receive Sabbath as a gift from God. We "give" spurious sabbaths to ourselves once all our work is done. We read Edwards' description of Sabbath at the Zalman's house, and admire it from afar - like looking at a travel poster of a tropical island paradise, knowing that we will never be able to afford to go there ourselves. Abraham Joshua Heschel's insights on the Sabbath (pp. 74- 75) are worth the price of this whole book.

Tilden Edwards is a tallented writer and well educated spiritual leader in Christianity. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Divinity School. Part I of the book titled, "Background", although well intended, served more to show off Edwards' ability to use big words than to provide an understandable background for "Spiritual Friend". My eyes bled for other regualr folks like me who are intersted in the topic but had to tread through section one for nuggets to hold on to (or, for which to hold). The background section does make good observations as to the need of, and establishes the diffrernce between a "spiritual friend" and a therapist or physician. It also points out how modern psychology has helped to refine the art. He identifies Christian's need for spiritual guidance that cannot be met by traditional forms of counseling or therapy. As he puts it, "All of us , being human, need to see and touch the emperor's clothes for a foundation of security in facing the uncontrolable mystery." A spiritual friend or guide exists to nurture others to reconciliation with God. I think getting people to understand the difference between a spiritual friend or guide and say a pastoral counselor, will still be difficult. People will have problems knowing which one to go to and I wonder if individuals in the couseling or theraputic professions know when to refer someone to a "friend". If I read the book again, I will skip part I, refer to it for a few definitions and then maybe I will be abel to dig down deep enough to trust someone with my deepest "spiritual" concerns. rc

Why not just go to the library and pick up volume 1 of the Artificial Life journal. That's all this is. Did someone really have the gall to sell us a journal twice? Yes, Virginia, I guess they did.

Langton pulls together a number of interesting papers from the Los Alamos a-life conference, bound with the perspective only he can provide. Great for the technically-minded curious but most promising as storehouse of ideas for experimentors in dynamic adaptive systems.

IT IS GOOD BOOK FOR EDUCATIO

I have found this dictionary very frustrating in that I cannot find even common words in it or that the definition given is not the most common one. As a new Spanish student, I will use this dictionary first because it is lightweight and portable, but constantly I end up using my desktop dictionary because this one didn't have what I was looking for. I am ready to toss it and buy a different pocket version.

We live in the Dominican Replubic and this dictionary did not contain many of the words we need to communicate or read the newspaper. Even our Spanish teacher found it was incomplete.

This portable dictionary is useful for first and second year students working at their desks, but should be supplemented in the classroom by a more comprehensive resource.

This course is complete nonsense. You spend hours repeating syllables without any context to meaning, and learning about pronunciation. It's impossible to learn anything about Italian, much less have any fun. I'm angry I was tricked by their "you'll master grammer, pronunciation, vocabulary" blurb on the back of the package. There's no way to develop mastery with this boring, repetetive, overly structured system. It pauses every 30 seconds to say "information unit 576" or some such nonsense. If their were a law against poorly conceived programs being sold for high prices, Barron's would be in jail. Try Pimsleur's complete Italian I -- You'll actually learn Italian if you work through their three courses.

There are 2 major drawbacks to this course... Firstly, a large part of the course revolves around the learning and recognition of pronunciation-related technical terms (accents, inflections, tones, ect.) which can be tedious to some. Secondly, the actual language instruction (grammer, vocabulary, ect.) really doesn't go beyond a certain beginner's level despite the size of the book and large amount of recorded material on the cassetts. While the premise behind this type of instruction is unique and forseeably effective, I wish this course could have been designed in a better way.

Most language courses begin with a general pronunciation guide then devote the rest to learning new phrases or grammer rules as well as hearing the target language spoken. This course instead begins with a foundation of phonetic sounds and learing their technical terms... and then being tested on them until later in the course when those same terms are used to teach Italian words and phrases and to recognize their meaning. A typical sequence in this course is to listen to an Italian phrase and then to answer which type of inflection was used, and in turn, to deduce the meaning of the phrase based on this. Like I said, this is a unique way of approaching language instruction, but in this case the langauge instruction doesn't go far enough. The drills in the book and on the tapes can be useful to beginners, but I don't see them being too useful for the intermediate or advanced student.

A note about the pronunciation drills presented early on: a previous review stated that Italian is very easy to learn to pronounce and therefore the pronunciation drills shouldn't have been as long or tedious. This may be true for some people who have a good ear for picking up new sounds in a language and easlity reproducing them exactly. But in my experience, Italian is the language most people think they can pronounce perfectly but actually can't. This is because on the surface it doesn't look as difficult as many other more complex languages, but slight variations in tone and accent can really lead to miscommunication. I've found this to be true especially with travelers relying solely on phrase books and tapes (as well speakers of other romance languages who use the pronunciation and inflection from that language for Italian words), many times they still aren't understood when traveling to Italian cities despite using the correct phrases. Non-native speakers usually don't pick up the subleties, but the locals will. Attention to these little details in sounds DO make a huge difference.

For the most part, being understood in a general sense isn't difficult to achieve. But if the goal is total fluency with no accent, then that takes specific practice and knowledge of the phonetic sounds like the ones presented in this course (however boring it may be). So the tedious pronunciation drills are a necessary evil for many beginners and should not be underestimated. Although the later drills can serve as a refresher course to keep sharp, the end result falls short of expectations.

The most fundamental aspect of verbal communication is pronouncing the words correctly. This sounds like it should go without saying, but it doesn't. Try walking around less touristed areas of Italy incorrectly pronouncing your phrasebook Italian. You might as well be talking Chinese. Believe me I have been there. This course is a bit tedious at times and it is hard. But guess what? So is learning a foreign language as an adult. This course is the best I have ever used and I have used alot. It teaches the begginer what he or she absolutely has to know to learn to really communicate verbally in Italian.

You will not finish this course speaking like a native, but it gives you the foundation you must have to improve your Italian.

I brought this a while back to help me learn Japanese. I expected that the expensive price meant a quality language course. I was completely dissapointed. The package says that the course will enable you to speak, READ, and WRITE the language (emphasis mine). However the book uses only roomaji (the Roman alphabet) and is concerned only with speaking. The Hiragana and Katakana(Japanese phonetic alphabets) aren't that hard to learn. Why doesn't the book teach them? Moreover, being copywrited in the early 60's, the book is completely out of date. My Japanese friends informed me that using the word "jibiki" for dictionary (which the book teaches) sounds horribly old fashion and archaic. The dialogues are really stupid (For example we get to learn how to say "Boy, these are pretty ashtrays!") and the drills are mindless substitution drills as opposed to actual comprehension. Grammar is explained rather poorly. Finally the vocabulary introduced is insufficient and rather poor. For example we get to learn about buying cigarettes and ashtrays, but there is no vocabulary for the college student, or vocabulary dealing with business.

I bought this book through another retailer...I wish I could get a refund but it is opened media. The title clearly says "Mastering Japanese, Hear it, Speak it, Write it, Read it" One might assume that this system will teach you to do just that... But the book inside states "This textbook is concerned only with spoken Japanese"...This is no doubt from the cold war era... I only wish I could get a refund.

I've read many bad reviews for this product from people with no patients. I've lived in Japan for 3 years. I wish I had this study guide during my stay in Japan, it would have help me immensely. I especially liked the CDs, it made so much easier to queue to next lesson.