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The Unpredictability of Gameplay explores the many forms of unpredictability in games and proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding and categorizing non-deterministic game mechanics. Rather than viewing all game mechanics with unpredictable outcomes as a single concept, Mark R. Johnson develops a three-part typology for such mechanics, distinguishing between randomness, chance, and luck in gameplay, assessing games that range from grand strategy and MMORPGs to slot machines and card games. He also explores forms of unanticipated unpredictability, where elements of games fail to function as intended and create new forms of gameplay in the process. Covering a range of ga...
Introduction: bringing the body to mind -- Cognitive science and Dewey's theory of mind, thought, and language -- Cowboy bill rides herd on the range of consciousness -- We are live creatures: embodiment, American pragmatism, and the cognitive organism / Mark Johnson and Tim Rohrer -- The meaning of the body -- The philosophical significance of image schemas -- Action, embodied meaning, and thought -- Knowing through the body -- Embodied realism and truth incarnate -- Why the body matters
“A welcome renewal and defense of John Dewey's ethical naturalism, which Johnson claims is the only morality ‘fit for actual human beings.’” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews What is the difference between right and wrong? This is no easy question to answer, yet we constantly try to make it so, frequently appealing to absolutes, whether drawn from God, universal reason, or societal authority. Combining cognitive science with a pragmatist philosophical framework, Mark Johnson argues that appealing solely to absolute principles is not only scientifically unsound but even morally suspect. He shows that the standards for the kinds of people we should be and how we should treat one anot...
This book describes the risks facing patients with congenital heart disease who wish to become pregnant and the ways in which these patients can best be followed and treated during pregnancy. In addition, the organization of care around the delivery is discussed in detail. The first section provides clear advice on pre-pregnancy risk estimation, counseling of patients, medication use, and inheritance. The specific risks associated with congenital heart defects of differing severity are then explained, with guidance on monitoring and management. The coverage includes simple lesions such as atrial and ventricular septal defects, conditions associated with moderate risk, including tetralogy of Fallot and coarctation, and complex disease such as a Fontan or Mustard repair. The final section is devoted to delivery and considers the mode of delivery, anesthetic use, and postpartum care. Readers will find much information that is underreported in the literature, and the book goes well beyond the European Society of Cardiology guidelines, for example, by considering medical conditions not defined as high risk and addressing the organization of care thoroughly.
Making a game can be an intensive process, and if not planned accurately can easily run over budget. The use of procedural generation in game design can help with the intricate and multifarious aspects of game development; thus facilitating cost reduction. This form of development enables games to create their play areas, objects and stories based on a set of rules, rather than relying on the developer to handcraft each element individually. Readers will learn to create randomized maps, weave accidental plotlines, and manage complex systems that are prone to unpredictable behavior. Tanya Short’s and Tarn Adams’ Procedural Generation in Game Design offers a wide collection of chapters fro...
Doping is as old as organized sports. From baseball to horse racing, cycling to track and field, drugs have been used to enhance performance for 150 years. For much of that time, doping to do better was expected. It was doping to throw a game that stirred outrage. Today, though, athletes are vilified for using performance-enhancing drugs. Damned as moral deviants who shred the fair-play fabric, dopers are an affront to the athletes who don’t take shortcuts. But this tidy view swindles sports fans. While we may want the world sorted into villains and victims, putting the blame on athletes alone ignores decades of history in which teams, coaches, governments, the media, scientists, sponsors,...
The widespread uptake of digital platforms – from YouTube and Instagram to Twitch and TikTok – is reconfiguring cultural production in profound, complex, and highly uneven ways. Longstanding media industries are experiencing tremendous upheaval, while new industrial formations – live-streaming, social media influencing, and podcasting, among others – are evolving at breakneck speed. Poell, Nieborg, and Duffy explore both the processes and the implications of platformization across the cultural industries, identifying key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and demo...
Seditious Theology explores the much analysed British punk movement of the 1970s from a theological perspective. Imaginatively engaging with subjects such as subversion, deconstruction, confrontation and sedition, this book highlights the stark contrasts between the punk genre and the ministry of Jesus while revealing surprising similarities and, in so doing, demonstrates how we may look at both subjects in fresh and unusual ways. Johnson looks at both punk and Jesus and their challenges to symbols, gestures of revolt, constructive use of conflict and the shattering of relational norms. He then points to the seditious pattern in Jesus' life and the way it can be discerned in some recent tren...
2023 Caroline Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library 2023 WHA W. Turrentine Jackson Award From the earliest days of non-Native settlement of Montana, when Chinese immigrants made up more than 10 percent of the territory's population, Chinese pioneers played a key role in the region's development. But this population, so crucial to Montana's history, remains underrepresented in historical accounts, and popular attention to the Chinese in Montana tends to focus on sensational elements--exoticizing Chinese Montanans and distancing their lived experiences from our modern understanding. The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky seeks to recover the stories of Montana's Chinese populatio...
Offers authoritative overviews of topics related to the definition, computation and application of molecular similarity and emphasizes current research trends with molecular similarity as the unifying concept. Introduces and defines the concept of molecular similarity and explains how it can be used to explore the data containing 2-D and 3-D chemical information. Addresses the basic problem of relating chemical structures to their associated chemical and biological properties. Final chapters illustrate the use of similarity arguments in the study of chemical reaction pathways and present theoretical approaches to the concept of molecular similarity.