America Identified

America Identified PDF Author: Lisa S. Nelson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262288753
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
An examination of the public's perceptions of biometric identification technology in the context of privacy, security, and civil liberties. The use of biometric technology for identification has gone from Orwellian fantasy to everyday reality. This technology, which verifies or recognizes a person's identity based on physiological, anatomical, or behavioral patterns (including fingerprints, retina, handwriting, and keystrokes) has been deployed for such purposes as combating welfare fraud, screening airplane passengers, and identifying terrorists. The accompanying controversy has pitted those who praise the technology's accuracy and efficiency against advocates for privacy and civil liberties. In America Identified, Lisa Nelson investigates the complex public responses to biometric technology. She uses societal perceptions of this particular identification technology to explore the values, beliefs, and ideologies that influence public acceptance of technology. Drawing on her own extensive research with focus groups and a national survey, Nelson finds that considerations of privacy, anonymity, trust and confidence in institutions, and the legitimacy of paternalistic government interventions are extremely important to users and potential users of the technology. She examines the long history of government systems of identification and the controversies they have inspired; the effect of the information technology revolution and the events of September 11, 2001; the normative value of privacy (as opposed to its merely legal definition); the place of surveillance technologies in a civil society; trust in government and distrust in the expanded role of government; and the balance between the need for government to act to prevent harm and the possible threat to liberty in government's actions.

America Identified

America Identified PDF Author: Lisa S. Nelson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262288753
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book Here

Book Description
An examination of the public's perceptions of biometric identification technology in the context of privacy, security, and civil liberties. The use of biometric technology for identification has gone from Orwellian fantasy to everyday reality. This technology, which verifies or recognizes a person's identity based on physiological, anatomical, or behavioral patterns (including fingerprints, retina, handwriting, and keystrokes) has been deployed for such purposes as combating welfare fraud, screening airplane passengers, and identifying terrorists. The accompanying controversy has pitted those who praise the technology's accuracy and efficiency against advocates for privacy and civil liberties. In America Identified, Lisa Nelson investigates the complex public responses to biometric technology. She uses societal perceptions of this particular identification technology to explore the values, beliefs, and ideologies that influence public acceptance of technology. Drawing on her own extensive research with focus groups and a national survey, Nelson finds that considerations of privacy, anonymity, trust and confidence in institutions, and the legitimacy of paternalistic government interventions are extremely important to users and potential users of the technology. She examines the long history of government systems of identification and the controversies they have inspired; the effect of the information technology revolution and the events of September 11, 2001; the normative value of privacy (as opposed to its merely legal definition); the place of surveillance technologies in a civil society; trust in government and distrust in the expanded role of government; and the balance between the need for government to act to prevent harm and the possible threat to liberty in government's actions.

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America PDF Author: Julian Montague
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226829855
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
A taxonomy we didn’t know we needed for identifying and cataloging stray shopping carts by artist and photographer Julian Montague. Abandoned shopping carts are everywhere, and yet we know so little about them. Where do they come from? Why are they there? Their complexity and history baffle even the most careful urban explorer. Thankfully, artist Julian Montague has created a comprehensive and well-documented taxonomy with The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America. Spanning thirty-three categories from damaged, fragment, and plow crush to plaza drift and bus stop discard, it is a tonic for times defined increasingly by rhetoric and media and less by the plain objects and facts of the real world. Montague’s incomparable documentation of this common feature of the urban landscape helps us see the natural and man-made worlds—and perhaps even ourselves—anew. First published in 2006 to great perplexity and acclaim alike, Montague’s book now appears in refreshed and expanded form. Told in an exceedingly dry voice, with full-color illustrations and photographs throughout, it is both rigorous and absurd, offering a strangely compelling vision of how we approach, classify, and understand the environments around us. A new afterword sheds light on the origins of the project.

Identification and Geographical Distribution of the Mosquitoes of North America, North of Mexico

Identification and Geographical Distribution of the Mosquitoes of North America, North of Mexico PDF Author: Richard F. Darsie
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813062334
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
"This is the identification manual for North American mosquitoes."--Choice "The essential resource for anyone concerned with mosquito control or biology."--American Reference Books Annual "A valuable resource. . . . This book is the collective product of two very competent scientists."--Journal of Medical Entomology "For the dedicated mosquito worshipper! This book is undoubtedly a must and with its beautifully illustrated keys sets a high standard to follow."--Parasitology Because of the occurrence of mosquito-borne diseases and the widespread distribution of mosquitoes as pests to humans, professionals must know how to identify them. With its wealth of information, this book is the only one of its kind available for specialists working on mosquito-borne diseases and in mosquito control units, and for introductory and advanced students who study entomology. This book updates the successful guide to North American mosquitoes published by the American Mosquito Control Association in 1981. It includes 12 new species that have since been added to the North American mosquito fauna, revised distribution maps of all species, and revised and completely illustrated identification keys for the adult females and fourth instar larvae of all 174 species and subspecies known to occur in North America, north of Mexico. Including 9 exotic species that have been introduced and today successfully thrive in North America, this book's usefulness to mosquito control programs cannot be overestimated.

Spiders of North America

Spiders of North America PDF Author: Darrell Ubick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998014609
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
This beautifully illustrated and updated guide to the spider families and genera north of Mexico is an indispensable reference for both amateur naturalists and professional arachnologists. It provides keys to over 600 genera in 71 different families.

Trees of North America

Trees of North America PDF Author: Christian Frank Brockman
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1582380929
Category : Trees
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Presents a handbook for the identification of over five hundred species of trees by illustration and text.

Caste

Caste PDF Author: Isabel Wilkerson
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0593230272
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES READERS PICK: 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions—now with a new Afterword by the author. #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award • Dayton Literary Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Finalist • Kirkus Prize Finalist “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America PDF Author: Richard Rothstein
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631492861
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An NPR Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review). Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.

How America Lost Its Mind

How America Lost Its Mind PDF Author: Thomas E. Patterson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806165685
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Americans are losing touch with reality. On virtually every issue, from climate change to immigration, tens of millions of Americans have opinions and beliefs wildly at odds with fact, rendering them unable to think sensibly about politics. In How America Lost Its Mind, Thomas E. Patterson explains the rise of a world of “alternative facts” and the slow-motion cultural and political calamity unfolding around us. We don’t have to search far for the forces that are misleading us and tearing us apart: politicians for whom division is a strategy; talk show hosts who have made an industry of outrage; news outlets that wield conflict as a marketing tool; and partisan organizations and foreign agents who spew disinformation to advance a cause, make a buck, or simply amuse themselves. The consequences are severe. How America Lost Its Mind maps a political landscape convulsed with distrust, gridlock, brinksmanship, petty feuding, and deceptive messaging. As dire as this picture is, and as unlikely as immediate relief might be, Patterson sees a way forward and underscores its urgency. A call to action, his book encourages us to wrest institutional power from ideologues and disruptors and entrust it to sensible citizens and leaders, to restore our commitment to mutual tolerance and restraint, to cleanse the Internet of fake news and disinformation, and to demand a steady supply of trustworthy and relevant information from our news sources. As philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote decades ago, the rise of demagogues is abetted by “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” In How America Lost Its Mind, Thomas E. Patterson makes a passionate case for fully and fiercely engaging on the side of truth and mutual respect in our present arms race between fact and fake, unity and division, civility and incivility.

The Frogs and Toads of North America

The Frogs and Toads of North America PDF Author: Lang Elliott
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618663996
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Covering all 101 species of frogs in the United States and Canada, this book contains natural history information, identification tips, range and habitat information, summaries of behavior, and descriptions of calls. A 70-minute audio compact disc includes the calls of nearly every species.

Behold, America

Behold, America PDF Author: Sarah Churchwell
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541673425
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2018 The unknown history of two ideas crucial to the struggle over what America stands for In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases -- the "American dream" and "America First" -- that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality. Churchwell traces these notions through the 1920s boom, the Depression, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, laying bare the persistent appeal of demagoguery in America and showing us how it was resisted. At a time when many ask what America's future holds, Behold, America is a revelatory, unvarnished portrait of where we have been.