Media independence is central to the organization, make-up, working practices and output of media systems across the globe. Often stemming from western notions of individual and political freedoms, independence has informed the development of media across a range of platforms: from the freedom of the press as the "fourth estate" and the rise of Hollywood's Independent studios and Independent television in Britain, through to the importance of "Indy" labels in music and gaming and the increasing importance of independence of voice in citizen journalism. Media independence for many, therefore, has come to mean working with freedom: from state control or interference, from monopoly, from market forces, as well as freedom to report, comment, create and document without fear of persecution. However, far from a stable concept that informs all media systems, the notion of media independence has long been contested, forming a crucial tension point in the regulation, shape, size and role of the media around the globe. Contributors including David Hesmondhalgh, Gholam Khiabany, Jose van Dijck, Hector Postigo, Anthony Fung, Stuart Allan and Geoff King demonstrate how the notion of independence has remained paramount, but contested, in ideals of what the media is for, how it should be regulated, what it should produce and what working within it should be like. They address questions of economics, labor relations, production cultures, ideologies and social functions.

A story of buried treasure-a map-hidden coded messages-a secret society-kidnapping-murder! This suspenseful thriller is set in Poughkeepsie, NY where Kari Ingram, a young teacher, discovers an antique scrapbook of drawings that contains hidden clues to the location of a legendary treasure. She must decipher coded messages, follow clues which lead her to numerous locations in and around the city, and thwart the efforts of a secret society that is pledged to stop her as she risks her safety searching for the hidden treasure. Several noteworthy people and historical sites are mentioned in this novel including Adriance Library, Amrita Club, Bardavon Theater, College Hill, Eastman Park, Hudson River State Hospital, Marist College, Poughkeepsie Post Office (murals), Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery, FDR, the Seer of Poughkeepsie, Smith Brothers, Soldiers Memorial Fountain, Vassar College, Walkway Over the Hudson. Included are discount coupons to local businesses, many of which are mentioned in the story.

Winner of 10 national awards including IRA Children's Choice, Teachers' Choice, and Book Sense Children's Pick! "This elegant children's book depicts the journey of life with all the hopes and dreams found along the way... Richly crafted and thoughtfully written, 'Dream' is a dazzling project that challenges us to find a dream and follow it" -- The Bloomsbury Review. Fifteen top children's illustrators each offer a gorgeously illustrated page to complement quotations from historical sages and a beautifully told, multilayered poetic story about life's hopes and dreams from childhood to adulthood, inspiring both children and adults. A book to explore and discuss with children, a keepsake and collector's item, and a lovely gift book for milestones like a birth or graduation, the holidays and birthdays. "Dream" offers wonder, wisdom, and good wishes -- for everyone who dreams.

Television Personalities offers an exciting, engaging approach to studying and understanding the most prominent and popular performers in television and celebrity culture. It is an original, indispensable guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students of media, television and celebrity studies, as well as those interested in digital culture more widely.

Spellbinding narrative and visuals immerse the reader in the mindbending journey of two lonely people in search of each other, and themselves, in Sand Dollar Seven a charmer fans are calling a captivating, romantic mystery and a poetry masterpiece. SD7 is an epic-length tribute to the power of our mind to shape any future we desire. When the dream is strong enough when it s real enough it s never too late for a second chance.

Intercollegiate Athletics, Inc. examines the corrupting influence and damaging financial effects of big-time intercollegiate athletics, especially football and to a lesser extent basketball, on American higher education. Including historical and contemporary perspectives, the book traces the growth of intercollegiate sports from largely student-run activities supervised by faculty to the gargantuan, taxpayer-supported spectacles that now dominate many public universities. It investigates the regressive student fees that have helped subsidize big-time sports at public universities and prop up chronically unprofitable athletic departments, as well as the corrosive effects of athletics on the university's academic enterprise. A review of the alleged salutary effects of massive sports programs, such as spurring alumni donations and student applications, reveals that such benefits are largely illusory, more myth than real. The book also pays special attention to the often prescient, if largely unsuccessful, opponents of these developments, and considers the alternatives to big-time athletics, from abolition to professionalization to club sports. Students, scholars, sports fans, and those interested in learning how big-time football and basketball have cast such an enormous-and often baleful-shadow upon American colleges and universities will profit from this provocative and engagingly written book.

Television Personalities offers an exciting, engaging approach to studying and understanding the most prominent and popular performers in television and celebrity culture. It is an original, indispensable guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students of media, television and celebrity studies, as well as those interested in digital culture more widely.

Heralded as "the most significant invention [for film] since the coming of sound" (The Observer 2003), by 2005 DVD players were in approximately 84 million homes in the US, making it the "fastest selling item in history of US consumer electronics market" (McDonald 2007: 135). This book examines the phenomenal growth of DVDs in relation to the cultures, economies, texts, audiences and histories of film, television and new media. Film and Television After DVD brings together a group of internationally renowned scholars to provide the first focused academic inquiry into this important technology. The book picks up on key issues within contemporary media studies, making a particularly significant contribution to debates about convergence and interactivity in the digital media landscape. Essays consider DVD as a technology that exists outside the boundaries of "new" and "old" media, examining its place within longer histories of home film cultures and production practices of the film and television industries, whilst also critically evaluating what is genuinely "new" about digital media technologies. From DVDs to downloading, peer-to-peer networking and HD-DVD, this book speaks of the rapidly evolving digital mediascape. Ultimately, Film and Television After DVD is a book that considers the convergence of film, television and new media and their academic disciplines through the DVD as a distinct cultural object, pointing to persistent questions in the study of audiovisual culture that will remain intriguing long after the shelf-life of the DVD itself.

'Magnificent' Daily Mail 'A thrilling fusion of myth and modernity' Kevin Hearne on Chasing Embers The Lore is over. For Ben Garston, the fight is just beginning. The uneasy truce between the human and the mythical world has shattered. Betrayed by his oldest friend, with a tragic death on his hands, there isn't enough whiskey in England to wash away the taste of Ben's guilt. But for a one-time guardian dragon, there's no time to sit and sulk in the ruins. Because the Long Sleep has come undone. Slowly but surely, Remnants are stirring under the earth, unleashing chaos and terror on an unsuspecting modern world. Worse still, the Fay are returning, travelling across the gulfs of the nether to bring a final reckoning to Remnants and humans alike. A war is coming. A war to end all wars. And only Ben Garston stands in the way . . . Fans of BEN AARONOVITCH and JIM BUTCHER will revel in this fiery tale of magic, mayhem and modern-day mythology. Praise for the Ben Garston novels: 'Absolutely loving it. Gorgeous use of language, great humour, characterisation and storyline' Elizabeth Chadwick 'A superior piece of magical myth-making' SFFWorld 'Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher are both fair comparisons to Bennett's attempts to fuse fantasy with a modern-day setting' SciFiNow 'Blending together the best of action, adventure and urban fantasy . . . Chasing Embers is one of my highlights!' The Eloquent Page The Ben Garston novels Chasing Embers Raising Fire Burning Ashes

Heralded as "the most significant invention [for film] since the coming of sound" (The Observer 2003), by 2005 DVD players were in approximately 84 million homes in the US, making it the "fastest selling item in history of US consumer electronics market" (McDonald 2007: 135). This book examines the phenomenal growth of DVDs in relation to the cultures, economies, texts, audiences and histories of film, television and new media. Film and Television After DVD brings together a group of internationally renowned scholars to provide the first focused academic inquiry into this important technology. The book picks up on key issues within contemporary media studies, making a particularly significant contribution to debates about convergence and interactivity in the digital media landscape. Essays consider DVD as a technology that exists outside the boundaries of "new" and "old" media, examining its place within longer histories of home film cultures and production practices of the film and television industries, whilst also critically evaluating what is genuinely "new" about digital media technologies. From DVDs to downloading, peer-to-peer networking and HD-DVD, this book speaks of the rapidly evolving digital mediascape. Ultimately, Film and Television After DVD is a book that considers the convergence of film, television and new media and their academic disciplines through the DVD as a distinct cultural object, pointing to persistent questions in the study of audiovisual culture that will remain intriguing long after the shelf-life of the DVD itself.

Multimedia Histories: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet is the first book to explore in detail the vital connections between today's digital culture and an absorbing history of screen entertainments and technologies. Its range of coverage moves from the magic lantern, the stereoscope and early film to the DVD and the internet. By reaching back into the innovative media practices of the nineteenth century, Multimedia Histories outlines many of the revealing continuities between nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century multimedia culture. Comprising some of the most important new work on multimedia culture and history by key writers in this growing field, Multimedia Histories will be an indispensable new sourcebook for the discipline. It will be an important intervention in rethinking the boundaries of Anglo-American film and media history.

Media independence is central to the organization, make-up, working practices and output of media systems across the globe. Often stemming from western notions of individual and political freedoms, independence has informed the development of media across a range of platforms: from the freedom of the press as the "fourth estate" and the rise of Hollywood's Independent studios and Independent television in Britain, through to the importance of "Indy" labels in music and gaming and the increasing importance of independence of voice in citizen journalism. Media independence for many, therefore, has come to mean working with freedom: from state control or interference, from monopoly, from market forces, as well as freedom to report, comment, create and document without fear of persecution. However, far from a stable concept that informs all media systems, the notion of media independence has long been contested, forming a crucial tension point in the regulation, shape, size and role of the media around the globe. Contributors including David Hesmondhalgh, Gholam Khiabany, Jose van Dijck, Hector Postigo, Anthony Fung, Stuart Allan and Geoff King demonstrate how the notion of independence has remained paramount, but contested, in ideals of what the media is for, how it should be regulated, what it should produce and what working within it should be like. They address questions of economics, labor relations, production cultures, ideologies and social functions.

This book contains the papers presented at the International Symposium, "The Optimum Shape: Automated Structural Design," held at the General Motors Research Laboratories on September 3D-October 1, 1985. This was the 30th symposium in a series which the Research Laboratories began sponsoring in 1957. Each symposium has focused on a topic that is both under active study at the Research Laboratories and is also of interest to the larger technical community. While attempts to produce a structure which performs a certain task with the minimum amount of resources probably predates recorded civilization, the idea of coupling formal optimization techniques with computer-based structural analysis techniques was first proposed in the early 1960s. Although it was recognized at this time that the most fundamental description of the problem would be in terms of the shape or contours of the structure, much of the early work described the problem in terms of structural sizing parameters instead of geometrical descriptions. Within the past few years, several research groups have started to explore this more fundamental area of shape design. Initial research has raised many new questions about appropriate selection of design variables, methods of calculating derivatives, and generation of the underlying analysis problem.

For therapists wishing to build their skills in compassion-focused therapy (CFT), this powerful workbook presents a unique evidence-based training approach. Self-practice/self-reflection (SP/SR) enables therapists to apply CFT techniques to themselves and reflect on the experience as they work through 34 brief, carefully crafted modules. The authors are master trainers who elucidate the multiple layers of CFT, which integrates cognitive-behavioral therapy, evolutionary science, mindfulness, and other approaches. Three extended therapist examples serve as companions throughout the SP/SR journey. In a large-size format for easy photocopying, the volume includes 24 reproducible forms. Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print most of the reproducible materials.

Intercollegiate Athletics, Inc. examines the corrupting influence and damaging financial effects of big-time intercollegiate athletics, especially football and to a lesser extent basketball, on American higher education. Including historical and contemporary perspectives, the book traces the growth of intercollegiate sports from largely student-run activities supervised by faculty to the gargantuan, taxpayer-supported spectacles that now dominate many public universities. It investigates the regressive student fees that have helped subsidize big-time sports at public universities and prop up chronically unprofitable athletic departments, as well as the corrosive effects of athletics on the university's academic enterprise. A review of the alleged salutary effects of massive sports programs, such as spurring alumni donations and student applications, reveals that such benefits are largely illusory, more myth than real. The book also pays special attention to the often prescient, if largely unsuccessful, opponents of these developments, and considers the alternatives to big-time athletics, from abolition to professionalization to club sports. Students, scholars, sports fans, and those interested in learning how big-time football and basketball have cast such an enormous-and often baleful-shadow upon American colleges and universities will profit from this provocative and engagingly written book.