36 Results for : informally
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Summary of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood: Concise and Succinct EasySummaries , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 28min
Note: This is an unofficial summary and analysis of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. This summary and analysis is not endorsed by or affiliated with Margaret Atwood. Here's a free excerpt from the book: The narrator of the book is an unnamed woman throughout the length of the novel. In the start of the book, the narrator is kept inside a high school's gymnasium (The Rachel and Leah Center, informally known as The Red Center) and several other females are also there. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Sara serve as guards and discipline them. While these two utilize cattle prods to intimidate, other guards possess guns. The women have to stay in the gym except for the walks they are allowed to take twice a day. The school's field is shielded by barbed wire and male guards known as Angels. The women are forbidden from talking among themselves and exchange names via lip-reading. Subsequently, the narrator is inside a room that is white and scarcely furnished. The room does not contain anything that can be utilized as a weapon. As she hears a bell, the narrator changes into red attire engulfing her entire frame. A shade covers her face. She descends the stairs with her shopping basket. The narrator enters the kitchen and receives some tokens from Rita, the cook. Rita is a 'Martha' and dressed in green. The name of the cleaner is Cora. The narrator wants to have conversations with the two like they do with each other but the Marthas are not supposed to have conversations with her kind. She remembers Luke. Rita orders the narrator to go to the market. If you want to know more, download and start listening now - even if it's 3 a.m.! This is a premium summary and analysis of Margaret Atwood's popular book The Handmaid's Tale. Designed with busy people in mind, it will give you a firm grasp on the story without sacrificing quality! Give it a try! ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Elisabeth Lagelee. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/097604/bk_acx0_097604_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.- Shop: Audible
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Blenheim Palace: The History and Legacy of the Only Non-Royal Palace in England , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 84min
By the start of the 18th century, England had recovered from one of the most tumultuous periods in its history and was heading into the future with a new sense of unity. The civil wars were over, and despite some royals' unpopular tendency toward Catholicism and absolutism, the House of Stuart had survived the beheading of Charles I and the overthrow of James VII and II. William and Mary brought a period of reconciliation and stability, and following their deaths, the throne was inherited by Mary's sister, Anne. Under Anne, the Kingdoms of England and Scotland were formally united as a nation. The Acts of Union of 1707 created a single kingdom, that of Great Britain.At the same time, the "political union" also meant a union of the armed forces, and though both developments had been happening informally in the preceding years, they were now made official. Moving forward, there would be a British nation, and just as the nation was uniting, its armies came under the leadership of John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, one of the most outstanding generals in British history.John Churchill was born in 1650 into a noble family from Devon in the south of England. His father, Sir Winston Churchill, had sided with the Royalists in the civil wars, and the fines he had to pay for this left the family relatively poor by English aristocratic standards. The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 went some ways to boosting the family's fortunes. In 1685, Churchill's longstanding patron became King James II and VII. Churchill’s military successes would also earn him the title of Duke of Marlborough, and after the victorious Battle of Blenheim, one of England’s greatest residences was to be built for him to commemorate the success.The English Baroque jewel in Oxfordshire, known to the locals as the fabled Blenheim Palace, is without question one of the finest buildings in the country, and even those who have never been there in person have likely ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Jim D Johnston. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/129823/bk_acx0_129823_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.- Shop: Audible
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Statistics for Making Decisions (eBook, PDF)
Making decisions is a ubiquitous mental activity in our private and professional or public lives. It entails choosing one course of action from an available shortlist of options. Statistics for Making Decisions places decision making at the centre of statistical inference, proposing its theory as a new paradigm for statistical practice. The analysis in this paradigm is earnest about prior information and the consequences of the various kinds of errors that may be committed. Its conclusion is a course of action tailored to the perspective of the specific client or sponsor of the analysis. The author's intention is a wholesale replacement of hypothesis testing, indicting it with the argument that it has no means of incorporating the consequences of errors which self-evidently matter to the client. The volume appeals to the analyst who deals with the simplest statistical problems of comparing two samples (which one has a greater mean or variance), or deciding whether a parameter is positive or negative. It combines highlighting the deficiencies of hypothesis testing with promoting a principled solution based on the idea of a currency for error, of which we want to spend as little as possible. This is implemented by selecting the option for which the expected loss is smallest (the Bayes rule). The price to pay is the need for a more detailed description of the options, and eliciting and quantifying the consequences (ramifications) of the errors. This is what our clients do informally and often inexpertly after receiving outputs of the analysis in an established format, such as the verdict of a hypothesis test or an estimate and its standard error. As a scientific discipline and profession, statistics has a potential to do this much better and deliver to the client a more complete and more relevant product. Nicholas T. Longford is a senior statistician at Imperial College, London, specialising in statistical methods for neonatal medicine. His interests include causal analysis of observational studies, decision theory, and the contest of modelling and design in data analysis. His longer-term appointments in the past include Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, USA, de Montfort University, Leicester, England, and directorship of SNTL, a statistics research and consulting company. He is the author of over 100 journal articles and six other monographs on a variety of topics in applied statistics.- Shop: buecher
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Variations on 1930
This album is comprised of piano gems from 1927-1933 incorporating compositions ranging from Kodály's ethnic explorations to Tatum's sparkling riffs on American music theater. My inspiration came from an offhand comment while talking with my friend, Bill Bordonaro, at Bethany Church (where I am the music director and this album was recorded). Bill mentioned that the sanctuary of the church, the last part to be built, was completed in 1930 - just after the start of the Great Depression. The time frame sparked a desire in me to explore how the historical events of this period affected the music of the time in the United States and globally. The true problem was culling the great works, there is music enough for many albums but I started here. This recital was performed in Toronto, February 5, 2013 at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheater's recital series where it received critic's pick and, subsequently, came home to Bethany Church in Chicago on May 11, 2013. Zoltan Kodály composed the piano version of Dances of Marosszék (Marosszéki táncok) in 1927 and decided it's colorful, folk-inspired music would adapt well to a full orchestration (completed in 1930). Kodály, like his compatriot and friend Bartók, devoted much time to the collection and arrangement of ethnic music. The six tunes used here were collected in Marosszék, a town in the Szekely region (formerly of eastern Hungary, currently of Romania). Kodály reveals in his notes for the orchestral version that the dances are originally from "Fairyland", otherwise known as Transylvania (Dracula and fairies...). The dances are quite a ride from heavy to creepy, finally to a swirling explosive coda. Poulenc is the perfect balm for the bombast at the end of the Kodály. The novelette in C major is the epitome of neoclassical piano beauty. Poulenc eschews his normally lush harmony for a more restrained palette which allows for the melody to come to the fore. One can almost hear Bach (C major prelude from the well-tempered clavier book 1) or Brahms (Op.117, #1) but with "Poulencian" wit. The second novelette in B flat minor is a scherzo humoresque, more typical of the whimsical side of Poulenc. I paired the novelettes with the valse-improvisation sur le nom de BACH, composed in 1932. The waltz, dedicated to Vladimir Horowitz, is a miniature with lush harmonies and wide melodic leaps, finishing with a bravura octave passage. Sergei Rachmaninoff arranged Bach's Violin partita in E Major in 1933, during a period of relatively little compositional output due to his extensive concertizing. His transcription consists of three of Bach's original six movements. Rachmaninoff follows the original Bach structure, but seamlessly fleshes the single line out for the piano in a way that is personal and satisfying. The prelude begins exactly as Bach's original with just with one line that gradually expands and finishes in a flurry of Rachmaninovian brilliance - an ending that is equal parts Bach and Rachmaninoff. The gavotte is a light, almost jazzy take on the dance with an elegant and controlled development and good use of contrast between piano registers. The gigue is contrapuntally dense and adds a fuller bass line. The three character pieces of Benjamin Britten were composed when he was 17 in his first semester at the Royal Conservatory. I describe the three pieces as restless arioso, bittersweet lullaby, and moto perpetuo - Britten lists only the tempo markings and dedications (informally to his school friends). When selecting these pieces, I played them for my musician friends and asked them to guess the composer/school in which they were composed. Invariably, the response was that the composer was French, and there was always great surprise when I revealed Britten as the composer. Fleurs de France are 8 miniatures that were composed in 1930 by one of Les Six - the only female composer, Germaine Tailleferre. The pieces are spare and concise, yet poignant and fluid. Tailleferre created these pieces in the midst of her most fruitful period of composition. Most of the pieces have a simple ABA form which is elegantly obscured by simple changes in harmonization and figuration. Each piece describes a flower: Jasmin de Provence, Coquelicot de Guyenne, Rose d'Anjou, Tournesol du Languedoc, Anthémis du Roussillon, Lavandin de Haute-Provence, Volubilis de Béarn, and Bleuet de Picardie. Copland's Piano Variations stands as a stark and stentorian presence between his earlier jazz influenced works and later populist works. I became acquainted with the work from my teacher in high school, Dan Plante. He recommended that I learn the variations for my senior recital. Always up for a challenge, I fell in love with the work. The economy of means, development, and declamatory piano writing resonated with me. The work became the backbone of many of my concerts. As I was researching these liner notes and the lectures I gave surrounding the recital, I came across this article that Leonard Bernstein wrote about the Variations contextualizing the piece and it's composer: In the fall of 1937 I had just begun my junior year at Harvard. Although I had never seen Copland, I had long adored him through his music. He was the composer who would lead American music out of the wilderness, and I pictured him as a cross between Walt Whitman and an Old Testament prophet, bearded and patriarchal. I had dug up and learned as much of his music as I could find, the Piano Variations had virtually become my trademark. I was crazy about them then--and I still find them marvelous today--but in those days, I especially enjoyed disrupting parties with the work. It was the furthest you could go in avant-garde 'noise,' and I could be relied upon to empty any room in Boston within three minutes by sitting down at the piano and starting it. The theme of the Piano Variations is made up of intentionally dissonant intervals, illustrating a tension between the major and minor thirds. The theme is declaimed in single notes using sympathetic vibrations to create ghostly sonic "after-images". Twenty variations follow, concluding with a massive rhythmically unsettled coda. Out of avant garde and swing emerged perhaps the greatest pianist of the 20th century, Art Tatum. His technique was a thing of beauty, impeccable and unimpeded. His style was absolutely his own: rococo, baroque, ornamental, witty and fast ... outrageously fast ... and he played this way mostly blind (cataracts at birth, assaulted in 1930). In 1993, J. A. Bilmes, an MIT student, invented a term that is now in common usage in the field of computational musicology: the Tatum. It means "the smallest perceptual time unit in music" and is a tribute to Tatum's pianistic velocity. He took stride piano and stretched it in every direction, improvising ornate cadenzas á la Liszt and making free use of colorful harmonic substitution. He was one of the major inspirers of bebop and many of the luminaries of the classical music world were avid admirers of Art Tatum's playing, in particular, Horowitz. At one point, Horowitz, so impressed by Art Tatum's playing, composed a set of virtuosic variations on Tea for Two, which he played Art Tatum. Tatum said "very good, I enjoyed it". Tatum then sat down and played his own set variations. Horowitz, stunned at the brilliance of Tatum's performance, asked "when did you come up with this?" Tatum said "Oh, I was just improvising". Horowitz then threw out his manuscript and vowed never to play Tea for Two in public again. There is debate over whether or not this story is true, regardless, it's a great story and shows the extent to which Art Tatum was admired by his virtuosic pianist peers. An album like this does not simply rise out of the ether and is not a solo creation. I am deeply indebted to the many individuals who helped make this happen: Nina Draganic, who programmed this recital in Toronto and came up with the catchy title, Bethany United Church of Christ and pastor Bill Bor- Shop: odax
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Rachel Buchman's Homeband Band
We started playing music informally in our living rooms years ago with Scott's kids. In spring of 2008, Rachel was invited to play for KTRU Outdoors, and asked Scott and Jacob if they'd like to start a band to play for that show. We've been playing together ever since. We've played around Houston for West University fundraiser Father's and Flashlights in October 2008, the Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in March '09. Jacob was traveling around the world for that gig, so Little Screamin' Kenny Blanchet of Hightailers fame sat in for him. We'll be playing at Bayou Bend and KTRU again in 2010 and looking forward to more gigs.- Shop: odax
- Price: 20.41 EUR excl. shipping
