Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

This chapter examines the impact of external forces on the film Hitchcock often claimed to be his personal favorite. The Production Code office found little fault with the tale of a serial killer returning to his small-town roots. The War Production Board, by putting a limit of $5,000 on construction costs using new materials in Hollywood pictures, forced Hitchcock and screenwriter Thornton Wilder to shoot much of the film on location in Santa Rosa, California, adding greatly to the small-town feel of the film.

A High Efficiency Coffee Roaster Development Based on Gas Baking Technology for Home Use

Home coffee roasting becomes increasingly popular in recent years. Besides freshness, coffee lover can achieve personal favorite flavors and make it with fun. In this paper, a new coffee roaster development based on gas baking method is introduced. Premixed fuel and direct-fired baking technologies are adapted for increasing energy efficiency, in which premixed flame contacts the beans inside the vertical-rotated drum. Meanwhile, a touch screen controller with fancy human machine interface is also designed for presetting roasting modes, controlling the procedures of roasting, and/or storing recent roast profile for use at other time. Experimental results show that the proposed structure is eco friendly, enriches the energy efficiency, reduces the gaseous emission, and achieves a consistent roast.

A Cookbook of Cinematic Delicacies That Do Not Expire

Despite the increasing number of film rankings that are created on the basis of economic considerations, critical acclaim, or personal taste, cinema lacks the means to quantify the long-term success of films. The authors therefore propose a novel approach to the analysis of cinematic influences which is based on a film citation network that is extracted from a large data base. The resulting top list of films is more diverse in terms of the main creators, genre, actors, and technical specifications than a representative selection of personal favorite lists, voting lists, lists of individual experts, or lists deduced from expert polls.

Interactive Proxy for URL Correction

This chapter will address the issues of Uniform Resource Locator (URL) correction techniques in proxy servers. The proxy servers are more and more important in the World Wide Web (WWW), and they provide Web page caches for browsing the Web pages quickly, and also reduce unnecessary network traffic. Traditional proxy servers use the URL to identify their cache, and it is a cache-miss when the request URL is non-existent in its caches. However, for general users, there must be some regularity and scope in browsing the Web. It would be very convenient for users when they do not need to enter the whole long URL, or if they still could see the Web content even though they forgot some part of the URL, especially for those personal favorite Web sites. We will introduce one URL correction mechanism into the personal proxy server to achieve this goal.

The Study on Personalized Guidance in Intelligent Library Based on Multi-Agent

The system integrated RFID technique, wireless and mobile phone which apply in the intelligent guidance and book management of large scale of library, and to collate the real time information by different functional mobile agents to provide customized information and service, according to the favorite of each reader. Meanwhile, to display forgoing information by multimedia video of book introduction for readers to replace traditional looking for some particular book provide the customized knowledge search style and effective book introduction. In addition, our article set forth System Environment Aware and Recommending Mechanism which bring up considerations for customized information, besides to analyzing personal favorite, should think about the environmental factors in the library, such as, moving path of readers, service and so on such synthetic factors to have a complete analysis and consideration, so as to know what the most appropriate guided service and information is for readers and to make it as a customized intellectual guided service.

Florian Coulmas, The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. Oxford (UK) & Cambridge (Mass.): Blackwell, 1996. Pp. xxvii, 603. Hb £65.00, $74.95.

What is alloglottography? A diaeresis? A digamma? Whose writing system has kanamajiri writing and kokuji? How would you start to find any of these in a conventional writing system text/reference, unless you knew where (in the world) to start? What about opisthograph, ostracon, quoc-ngu, and tugra? None are in the index of Daniels & Bright 1996, which I consider the best book to date on the world's writing systems. But all are entries, cross-referenced to other entries, in Coulmas's Encyclopedia. The reader can also look up Bamum writing, Djuka syllabic writing, the Hatrene script, Hsi-hsia writing, the Loma syllabary, Peguan script, Tifinagh, Urartian writing, and the Wolof alphabet directly, without having first to know what set of writing systems, geographical or typological, they belong to. My personal favorite is Sogdian writing (471–74), an Aramaic-derived script used by Persian colonists in Chinese Turkestan; the cursive form of this writing system is attributed to Ahriman the devil, because it is so hard to distinguish the letters. What a pleasant surprise, for one satiated with discussions of the weaknesses and unnecessary complexities of Japanese writing!

“To know this is the true essential business of a king”: The Prince of Wales and the Study of Public Finance, 1755–1760

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the growth of the national debt, the burden of the taxes necessary to support it, and the effect of this system of public finance on the politics, economy, and society of Britain, deeply concerned politicians in opposition. Their frequent expressions of concern were sufficiently persuasive to induce similar apprehensions on occasion in politicians at court. In 1753, when the national debt was a little over £74,000,000, earl Waldegrave, a personal favorite of George II, felt compelled to tell the House of Lords about a “consideration of very great importance, … the state of our national debt [and] the heavy taxes which are the consequences of this debt.” The situation required, he went on, “prudent measures of government, with that strict national economy which must be our only remedy.” Waldegrave did not go so far as to believe the nation was on the verge of collapse. As he pointed out, “a country and a government like ours has so many and so great resources, that we may bear a great deal and still be in a flourishing condition.” “Yet as long as this evil does subsist,” he warned the House, “we can never expect fully to exert our proper strength.” He concluded, “Till this burden is removed it will remain a check to our trade, will be still heavier on the landed interest, must lessen our credit and influence abroad, and will be a cause of discontent if not of disaffection at home.”

Election Forecasts in 1984: How Accurate Were They?

One autumn out of four, election forecasting surpasses baseball as America's national pastime. Then, everyone wants to know who will win, and everyone has a guess. Now, with the ballots carefully counted, forecasters await their awards. Below, I evaluate the quality of a wide range of 1984 presidential and congressional forecasts. The evaluation proceeds from nonscientific to scientific approaches, although this distinction is sometimes blurred. To lower the level of suspense, I should say that some forecasts turned out to be quite good. By way of conclusion, I offer a set of rules for selecting a high-quality forecasting instrument.Lucky GuessesMany popular election forecasting rules take advantage of chance, which has been working in their favor. Perhaps the most famous is the World Series forecast, which says, “If the American League wins the World Series, then the Republican presidential candidate will win.” This technique was accurate from 1952 to 1976, missed in 1980, but worked again in 1984 with the victory of the Detroit Tigers. A lesser known rule of this type, which is my personal favorite, is based on the Beaujolais wine harvest. Accordingly, “If the Beaujolais vintage looks bad, then the Republican will take the presidency.” This has held post-1960, and continues to do so with the poor 1984 crop (yielding a wine too light, with little color). There are other such rules that relate more directly to the candidates themselves and, in that sense, have more verisimilitude.