Split Decision

Award-winning actor, rapper, and producer Ice-T unveils a compelling memoir of his early life robbing jewelry stores until he found fame and fortune—while a handful of bad choices sent his former crime partner down an incredibly different path. Ice-T rose to fame in the late 1980s, earning acclaim for his music before going on to enthrall television audiences as Odafin “Fin” Tutuola in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. But it could have gone much differently. In this “poignant and powerful” (Library Journal, starred review) memoir, Ice-T and Spike, his former crime partner—collaborating with New York Times bestselling author Douglas Century—relate the shocking stories of their shared pasts, and how just a handful of decisions led to their incredibly different lives. Both grew up in violent, gang-controlled Los Angeles neighborhoods and worked together to orchestrate a series of jewelry heists. But while Ice-T was discovered rapping in a club and got his first record deal, Spike was caught for a jewelry robbery and did three years in prison. As his music career began to take off, Ice made the decision to abandon the criminal life; Spike continued to plan increasingly ingenious and risky jewel heists. And in 1992, after one of Spike’s robberies ended tragically, he was sentenced to thirty-five years to life. While he sat behind bars, he watched his former partner rise to fame in music, movies, and television. “Propulsive” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), timely, and thoughtful, two men with two very different lives reveal how their paths might have very well been reversed if they made different choices. All it took was a split decision.

Stand-out efforts on the freshman football and basketball teams have Cody Martin in demand with both the track and baseball coaches. And to complicate matters further, his personal life's a mess since his dad remarried-and now Cody thinks Pork Chop might be using performance-enhancing drugs. When Pork Chop's coach confronts Cody, he is forced to make a tough decision-lie to the coach or risk losing his best friend. What's the right thing to do?

Is it time to take a break from feminism? In this pathbreaking book, Janet Halley reassesses the place of feminism in the law and politics of sexuality. She argues that sexuality involves deeply contested and clashing realities and interests, and that feminism helps us understand only some of them. To see crucial dimensions of sexuality that feminism does not reveal--the interests of gays and lesbians to be sure, but also those of men, and of constituencies and values beyond the realm of sex and gender--we might need to take a break from feminism. Halley also invites feminism to abandon its uncritical relationship to its own power. Feminists are, in many areas of social and political life, partners in governance. To govern responsibly, even on behalf of women, Halley urges, feminists should try taking a break from their own presuppositions. Halley offers a genealogy of various feminisms and of gay, queer, and trans theories as they split from each other in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. All these incommensurate theories, she argues, enrich thinking on the left not despite their break from each other but because of it. She concludes by examining legal cases to show how taking a break from feminism can change your very perceptions of what's at stake in a decision and liberate you to decide it anew.

Sometimes you want something so badly you are willing to abandon everything you've ever known--including yourself. Eighteen years ago, Jaynee Monroe married the man of her dreams, became the mother of four, and fulfilled her career goals. About to turn forty, she senses something is missing from her idyllic life. While Googling her name in an attempt to find herself, she unearths something so impossible, she contemplates her own sanity. Seeking answers, she embarks on a journey to discover the truth, only to end up abducted by a deranged stranger who insists on calling her Caycee. Caycee took the road less traveled. After rejecting a marriage proposal from the only decent man she has ever known, she ventures to California to become famous. Eighteen years later, success has left her alone and miserable. Attempting to locate her lost love on Facebook, she discovers his infatuation with her. Not only does his presumed-dead wife have Caycee's uncommon middle name, it also appears he has photo-shopped Caycee's face over his wife's face. Never could Caycee and Jaynee have imagined that decisions they made years earlier would threaten not only their lives, but also their loved ones. Caycee must now reunite with the southern gent she dismissed eighteen years ago and convince him to accompany her to New York to locate his wife, the most important person in both their lives. Although Split Decisions is part of The Southern Collection, it is a stand-alone story that can be read on its own. This is a cliffhanger-free zone here, friends!

This volume contains the papers selected for presentation at the 17th Inter- tional Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems (ISMIS 2008), held in York University, Toronto, Canada, May 21–23, 2008. ISMIS is a conference series started in 1986. Held twice every three years, ISMIS provides an inter- tional forum for exchanging scienti?c research and technological achievements in building intelligent systems. Its goal is to achieve a vibrant interchange - tween researchers and practitioners on fundamental and advanced issues related to intelligent systems. ISMIS 2008featureda selectionof latestresearchworkandapplicationsfrom the following areas related to intelligent systems: active media human–computer interaction, autonomic and evolutionary computation, digital libraries, intel- gent agent technology, intelligent information retrieval, intelligent information systems, intelligent language processing, knowledge representation and integ- tion, knowledge discovery and data mining, knowledge visualization, logic for arti?cial intelligence, soft computing, Web intelligence, and Web services. - searchers and developers from 29 countries submitted more than 100 full - pers to the conference. Each paper was rigorously reviewed by three committee members and external reviewers. Out of these submissions, 40% were selected as regular papers and 22% as short papers. ISMIS 2008 also featured three plenary talks given by John Mylopoulos, Jiawei Han and Michael Lowry. They spoke on their recent research in age- oriented software engineering, information network mining, and intelligent so- ware engineering tools, respectively.

Cleveland Arena featured professional boxing from 1937 to 1973 and left a lasting legacy that can never be duplicated. Many Cleveland boxers fought there during those years, including Jimmy Bivins, Joey Maxim, Chuck Hunter, Georgie Pace, and Carmen Barth. These men all came out of the Cleveland Golden Gloves. Cleveland Arena was the mecca of Ohio boxing with appearances from 50 fighters who at one time held recognition as world champions. Those fighters include such names as Henry Armstrong, Jake LaMotta, George Foreman, Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles, Jersey Joe Walcott, and Sonny Liston. Each of the arena's 162 fight shows--feature bouts, undercards, and all results--appear here together for the first time in print, accompanied by great stories and rare photographs. Jerry Fitch started following boxing in the 1950s. His love of the sport began while watching televised fights and eventually attending the World Welterweight Championship match between Carmen Basilio and Johnny Saxton at Cleveland Arena on February 22, 1957. He was only 10 years old. Fitch has since participated in many boxing activities; the one that has stayed with him is writing. He has written hundreds of articles for major boxing magazines and authored six books, including Arcadia's Cleveland's Greatest Fighters of All Time. This latest continues his journey.