David Evans

A collection of short stories from some of your favourite authors. Do you think you know darkness? Think again. Bloodhound Books presents Dark Minds—a collection of stories by authors who have come together to produce an anthology that will lure, tantalise and shock its readers. What took place By the Water? What goes on behind A Stranger’s Eyes? And what is so special about Slow Roast Pork? From master authors such as Lisa Hall, Steven Dunne, Louise Jensen and Anita Waller, readers can expect a one hell of a ride . . . All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to Hospice UK and Sophie’s Appeal. Dark Minds is a collection of 40 crime and thriller short stories from authors including; Louise Jensen, L.J. Ross, Lisa Hall, Steven Dunne, Betsy Reavley, Alex Walters and Anita Waller plus many more. For the complete table of contents, Look Inside.

This book explores how Theodore de Banville's remarkably coherent body of verse theory and practice, shaped debates about poetic value and how to identify it during a period of aesthetic uncertainty caused by diverse social, economic, political and artistic factors.

Peter Freestone was Freddie Mercury's personal assistant for the last 12 years of his life. He lived with Mercury in London, Munich, and New York, and was by his side when he died. In this book, Freestone paints a striking portrait of the man behind the myth. The result is a compelling, entertaining, and ultimately, very touching memoir. From their first meeting at the Biba department store in the early1970s - when Queen was still unknown - Freestone witnessed Mercury's rise and with it the generosity, the excess, and the celebrity friends who came and went. From the famous names - including Elton John, Kenny Everett, Elizabeth Taylor and Rod Stewart - to the shadowy army of lovers, fixers and hangers-on, Peter Freestone saw them all play their part in the tragi-comedy that was Freddie Mercury's life. First published in 2000, Freestone's best-selling account of his life alongside the singular icon is the closest fans will get to an autobiography of Mercury.

The term Federated Learning was coined as recently as 2016 to describe a machine learning setting where multiple entities collaborate in solving a machine learning problem, under the coordination of a central server or service provider. Each client’s raw data is stored locally and not exchanged or transferred; instead, focused updates intended for immediate aggregation are used to achieve the learning objective. Since then, the topic has gathered much interest across many different disciplines and the realization that solving many of these interdisciplinary problems likely requires not just machine learning but techniques from distributed optimization, cryptography, security, differential privacy, fairness, compressed sensing, systems, information theory, statistics, and more. This monograph has contributions from leading experts across the disciplines, who describe the latest state-of-the art from their perspective. These contributions have been carefully curated into a comprehensive treatment that enables the reader to understand the work that has been done and get pointers to where effort is required to solve many of the problems before Federated Learning can become a reality in practical systems. Researchers working in the area of distributed systems will find this monograph an enlightening read that may inspire them to work on the many challenging issues that are outlined. This monograph will get the reader up to speed quickly and easily on what is likely to become an increasingly important topic: Federated Learning.

This book explores how Theodore de Banville's remarkably coherent body of verse theory and practice, shaped debates about poetic value and how to identify it during a period of aesthetic uncertainty caused by diverse social, economic, political and artistic factors.

The second edition of Instant Notes in Plant Biology, has been both updated and reorganized and gives an insight into the whole of plant science, integrating structure, function and physiology. A major addition is the section on understanding plants which introduces the major techniques in plant science and shows how advances are made. Molecular techniques are used in all areas of plant science and are included throughout.

How does language attain to rear view reflection and then timeless analysis? How does language garner its conceptualisation in order to do this? This book is an exploration of the process in which everyday narrative language can become reflective and then analytical. Narrative language is viewed as a way of ‘becoming’ within the flow of time and therefore life. Evans and Herat show that there are levels in language that correspond with conceptual structures existing in the mind and in wider society, which shape the formation of a metalanguage. They explore how metaphor is an important creative tool in raising language to a more conceptual level in the constitution of a metalanguage. The book considers the development of different strands of metalanguage, for example, mind-based logic, physically based metaphor and universal grammar, to provide a fuller account of language and identity by challenging sweeping existential accounts of language. By studying the formation and application of metalanguage, the authors show it can help develop a more questioning, dialogic critical pedagogy in education to accustom students to develop critical awareness.

In recent decades, there has been many attempts to describe, explore, and explain the new ‘post-modern’ capitalism of the twenty-first century. In this context, this book looks at one of the most exciting strands of this research in the late twentieth century: the flexible specialisation research programme (FSRP). Drawing on the history of ideas, discourse, and literature on capitalism of the last four decades, this book shows that although ‘flexible specialisation’ anticipated some of the ways in which capitalism was being transformed in the late twentieth century, they underestimated and failed to anticipate the forms of ‘creative destruction’ and corporate digital control which were becoming embedded in the global capitalist accumulation dynamic itself. The sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union and the ‘end of history’ failed to open up the pathway for new forms of modern social democracy but gave rise instead to the new digital Behemoths. Today, the classical tendencies of capitalism as anticipated by Marx are all too present and, despite talk of ‘post-capitalism’ and ‘digital/techno-feudalism’, the landscape of monopolyfinance capital has consolidated itself. The book counterposes the FSRP with the various Marxist interpretations of the capitalist transition, together with the wider social and economic theories that emerged in the first decades for the twenty-first century around, for example, the ‘great acceleration’, de-growth, and post-growth. This book will be of interest to all readers concerned with heterodox political economy, critical social theory, intellectual history, and, above all, the prospects for social transformation leading to social justice and an ‘egalitarian enlightenment’.

In conversations on regional blues, the traditions of the Mississippi Delta, the Carolina Piedmont, Chicago, Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, and Los Angeles are frequently lauded. But until now, little attention has been paid to the Midwest, despite the presence and popularity of blues in these heartland communities. Wichita Blues: Music in the African American Community seeks to address this gap in music history by exploring the lively Wichita blues tradition. In interviews with nineteen African American Wichita blues performers, author Patrick Joseph O’Connor reveals the evolution of the blues from the 1930s to the 1960s and beyond.Utilizing twenty-five years of fieldwork, Wichita Blues details the history of performance and camaraderie among the musicians of this often-neglected regional sound. The personal interviews offer unique insight into topics that shape Wichita’s sound, including how migration from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas brought varied artists to the area and the ways musical traditions cross racial divides and generations. The artists articulate the poetics of the blues and the diverse regional influences that can be detected in their music. In exploring the Wichita blues tradition, O’Connor traces African American history in Kansas, ranging from the Exoduster movement in the late nineteenth century and minstrel shows across the state to Black cowboys and growing urban African American communities in Topeka and Wichita.Including a foreword by renowned music scholar David Evans, Wichita Blues allows seasoned blues musicians to tell their own stories and paints a picture of the vibrant Black music scene in the city.

In conversations on regional blues, the traditions of the Mississippi Delta, the Carolina Piedmont, Chicago, Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, and Los Angeles are frequently lauded. But until now, little attention has been paid to the Midwest, despite the presence and popularity of blues in these heartland communities. Wichita Blues: Music in the African American Community seeks to address this gap in music history by exploring the lively Wichita blues tradition. In interviews with nineteen African American Wichita blues performers, author Patrick Joseph O’Connor reveals the evolution of the blues from the 1930s to the 1960s and beyond.Utilizing twenty-five years of fieldwork, Wichita Blues details the history of performance and camaraderie among the musicians of this often-neglected regional sound. The personal interviews offer unique insight into topics that shape Wichita’s sound, including how migration from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas brought varied artists to the area and the ways musical traditions cross racial divides and generations. The artists articulate the poetics of the blues and the diverse regional influences that can be detected in their music. In exploring the Wichita blues tradition, O’Connor traces African American history in Kansas, ranging from the Exoduster movement in the late nineteenth century and minstrel shows across the state to Black cowboys and growing urban African American communities in Topeka and Wichita.Including a foreword by renowned music scholar David Evans, Wichita Blues allows seasoned blues musicians to tell their own stories and paints a picture of the vibrant Black music scene in the city.

Taking a unique approach which combines sociolinguistics with theoretical linguistics, this book presents a view of language and grammar as both a cognitive and socio-cultural phenomena.Beginning with Bakhtin's theories of conceptual grammar and lexico-grammar, this book encompasses a broad philosophical range, engaging with the ideas of key figures such as Bergson, Chomsky, Derrida and Wittgenstein. Drawing on their work, it investigates how language progresses from an inner reflection of the rational mind to develop social and ideological aspects as it interacts with culture. In doing so, it shows how identity is unitary and rational at the linguistic core whilst multiple social identities are simultaneously shaped by linguistic differences at the cultural peripheries.Encompassing theoretical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis, multilingualism, sociolinguistics and semiotics, Rationality and Interpretation demonstrates how the different branches of linguistics can complement each other and highlights the socio-cultural influences of language development, as well as how language development is shaped by those influences.

In recent decades, there has been many attempts to describe, explore, and explain the new ‘post-modern’ capitalism of the twenty-first century. In this context, this book looks at one of the most exciting strands of this research in the late twentieth century: the flexible specialisation research programme (FSRP). Drawing on the history of ideas, discourse, and literature on capitalism of the last four decades, this book shows that although ‘flexible specialisation’ anticipated some of the ways in which capitalism was being transformed in the late twentieth century, they underestimated and failed to anticipate the forms of ‘creative destruction’ and corporate digital control which were becoming embedded in the global capitalist accumulation dynamic itself. The sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union and the ‘end of history’ failed to open up the pathway for new forms of modern social democracy but gave rise instead to the new digital Behemoths. Today, the classical tendencies of capitalism as anticipated by Marx are all too present and, despite talk of ‘post-capitalism’ and ‘digital/techno-feudalism’, the landscape of monopolyfinance capital has consolidated itself. The book counterposes the FSRP with the various Marxist interpretations of the capitalist transition, together with the wider social and economic theories that emerged in the first decades for the twenty-first century around, for example, the ‘great acceleration’, de-growth, and post-growth. This book will be of interest to all readers concerned with heterodox political economy, critical social theory, intellectual history, and, above all, the prospects for social transformation leading to social justice and an ‘egalitarian enlightenment’.

This is a memoir of intimately personal "supernatural" experiences. From a childhood abduction to an answered prayer; with ghosts, UFO's, and telepathy sprinkled between years of unassuming normalcy. It is my hope that most readers will find it entertaining, but not take it too seriously and then go about their surface lives. I anticipate that only a handful of folks, those already possessed of strange experiences and forbidden knowledge, will truly understand that these stories are true. Will grasp all of the cryptic threads.