borrelli
Differential Equations: A Modeling Perspective
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Price :
Offer Price : $98.00
2005-12-21
By Sudan (The Netherlands)
I can't believe that this book hasn't been banned yet from every respectable UNIVERSITY. I would think that after a few people have made the huge mistake to buy this book, no others would follow. This review serves this very purpose, for buying this book is a complete waste of your money and time.
Everything in this book suggests that the writers have deliberately tried to put as much NONSENSE in it, just to fill the 736 pages and 'justify' the price. For example the cartoons (this book is supposed to be used by undergraduates, who should not need the 'stimulation' of a ridiculous cartoon), fake proofs, fake theorems, cookie-cutter steps to follow (as mentioned by others), graphs of ALMOST EVERY EQUATION (serving no useful purpose) and they are repeating the same thing on and on and on... Reading this book is a huge humiliation for every young aspiring scientist.
The writers avoid the most important proofs, and do give 'proofs' of such trivial things. And if in the extremely rare case they do prove an important theorem, then the proof is only valid in special cases, making it a 'proof'.
The only good thing is that I paid 'only' 90 dollars for it, so I had more then enough money left to buy Paul Waltman's 'A Second Course in Elementary Differential Equations (Dover Books on Mathematics), ISBN 0486434788'. This book treats much more then this disgusting 'modeling perspective'-book. So if you are going to follow a course that requires 'Differential Equations : A Modeling Perspective' I suggest you buy Paul Waltman's book INSTEAD, for it treats the same subjects in a respectful manner and it is about TEN times cheaper. Believe me, you won't be missing anything, on the contrary. If you don't believe me, PLEASE go to the library BEFORE you buy this book to verify my observations. I wish someone had warned me...
Verdi: La Traviata
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Price : $13.98
Offer Price : $6.94
2004-05-20
By
The sound is the worst, Sills screeches her lungs out. She had no voice for Verdi, this Violetta sounds like a common street-girl instead of a dying courtesan. Shame on her!
Retardead
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Price : $14.98
Offer Price : $8.02
2010-01-24
By Robert I. Hedges
This sequel to "Monsturd" fails to live up to the quality of the original on all levels. While I enjoyed "Monsturd" as an amusing low budget spoof of just about every monster movie ever made, this film takes on the zombie genre and is difficult to endure.
The film starts very promisingly with a series of previews and concession advertisements that effectively parody those seen at the drive-in. The imagery effectively harkened back to "Monsturd": "If you're feeling adventurous, why not try a Cleveland Steamer Barbeque Beef-Flavored Oddity? Mmmmm...hot, brown, and steamy!" For these previews and tempting food advertisements, I give the film two stars; a rating too high for the actual film itself.
I love B-movies, bad movies, alternative cinema, etc., but some movies are just too bad to be good: this is one of those. I have no issues with low budget filmmaking (indeed, the brilliant "Schizopolis" was made by Steven Soderbergh for less than $250,000), and welcome innovation. Unfortunately here the parody was quite heavy-handed, the jokes were all suitable for a seventh grade boy's locker room, the acting was wretched, the script substituted pointless cursing for wit, and the film was far too long.
I was modestly interested in the overt ties to "Monsturd" in the opening where discussions of "The Poo Man" were interspersed with relatively amusing newspaper headlines like "Hero Sheriff Saves Town From Fecal Humanoid". Unfortunately the level of humor and sophistication both took a nose dive quickly thereafter to reveal that the town had a new menace. I did think trying to parallel the writings of the Zodiac killer was a bold move with potential ("This is the Weenie Wagger speaking...") until forced to confront this peeping Tom menace for the first half of the film. I don't even want to tell you how they tracked him down; this results in the worst police interrogation ever. This all (somehow) leads to an utterly pointless scene of a cop having an LSD trip, in which a gorilla plays the banjo for Hitler. That was the best scene of the film, despite it having absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. (That's probably why it was the best scene, in retrospect.)
While the police are chasing the Weenie Wagger all over town, the evil father of the Poo Man returns undercover with half his face melted off and wearing an eye patch to apply for a job working in a school for the mentally challenged. Coincidentally, the cops finally find out that the Weenie Wagger is the janitor at the special ed school, and he wants to cut a deal with them as he knows that the kids are being turned into vampire zombies. The CDC tells the police that this is caused by a horrible virus created by the evil scientist, but too late: someone has let the zombies loose on the town.
The vast majority of the rest of the film concerns itself with buckets of bogus gore (heavy on the intestines), while the police devise a plan and the Weenie Wagger becomes a hero before being eaten. The crazed scientist comes up with a revolutionary plan: shoot them in the head with a bullet...really...no, I am seriously not kidding. Since the police had already thought of that, they moved on to using corpse parts as chum and having one officer dress in the meat suit to be bait. This works surprisingly well, and there is an extremely long shootout at the police station. Of course the evil scientist meets his doom, in this case thanks to a bevy of sexy dancing zombie girls, and the whole movie ends with a hilarious joke and much embarrassed laughter from the survivors.
This movie had potential, but was far too focused on the gore and teenage humor rather than on the satire, and was a much weaker effort than "Monsturd". The film was very haphazardly made and there were huge continuity issues which were partly addressed by having a young girl intermittently narrate the action from her bedroom, a wholly annoying and unnecessary device. While I remain enthusiastic about "Monsturd", and would like to see this team make more films of that quality, I can't find anything to recommend this film except the previews.
