Boris Aleksandrovsky

bittersweet conclusion of the epic, April 17 2004

Howard Shore's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" is a fitting conclusion of more then 7 years of work which took to complete the trilogy. In this last installment the bittersweet "Ring Motif" acquires trully mystical proportions with the descend of darkness and as Frodo is finally taken up by the powers of the Ring. The theme of the "Riders of Rohan" is one of my favourites - strong penetrating strings are accompanied by trimphant wind instruments as riders charge into the battle. Pippin's song in the "Stuart of Gondor" captures everybody's imagination (the lyrics are actually Bilbo's from the times of gathering garkness) as Faramir's suiside charge to recapture Osgiliath… Read more

not for the faint at heart, but such a pleasure to read, Mar 2 2004

Let me start by saying that this book assumes a lot of background, especially in statistics. It dives into the math right away without even a hint or a gentle slope. But what I appreciate is that math is never used for its own sake, it is always justified. The book starts with the introduction to the problems neural nets are to be applied to - pattern recognition task. It proceeds to the elements of statistical decision theory, then goes up to linear discriminant analysis and perceptrons, then up you go to feed-forward neural nets. Non-parametric models and tree-based classifiers are covered next. Belief networks and unsupervised methods (MDS, clustering, etc..) follow. Coverage is… Read more

extensive and non-biased study, Feb 28 2004

Stuart E. Prall's "The Bloodless Revolution" is an extensive and non-biased study of the seminal constitutional developments in 17th century England; which defined the constitutional monarchy in Britain in the age when absolutism reigned supreme elsewhere in the world. Author prepares the scene for the revolution by explaining relationship between king and the Parliament throughout Stuart dynasty starting from James I, thought Long Parliament, Civil War, Protectorate, Restoration, last years of Charles II, and the many encroachment on liberties and mistakes of James II which ultimately led to Glorious Revolution.

Emphasis is on developments in the legal system and relationship… Read more