Books by "John S G Blair"
3 books found
The Olympic Games is unquestionably the greatest sporting event in the world, with billions of viewers across the globe. How did the Olympics evolve into this multi-national phenomenon? How can the Olympics help us to understand the relationship between sport and society? What will be the impact and legacy of the 2016 Olympics in Rio? Now in a fully revised and updated new edition that places Rio 2016 in the foreground, Understanding the Olympics answers all these questions by exploring the social, cultural, political, historical and economic context of the Games. This book presents the latest research on the Olympics, including new material on legacy, sustainability and corruption, and introduces the reader to all of the key themes of contemporary Olympic Studies including: the history of the Olympics Olympic politics access and equity the Olympics and the media festival and spectacle the Olympic economy urban development Olympic futures. The most up-to-date and authoritative introduction to the Olympic Games, this book contains a full Olympic history timeline as well as illustrations, information boxes and ‘Olympic Stories’ in every chapter. Understanding the Olympics is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the Olympics or the wider relationship between sport and society.
This monograph describes a methodology for the design of knowledge-based systems. A knowledge-based system contains knowledge as well as information and data. The information and data in such a system can be modelled and imple mented as a database. The knowledge in such a system can be implemented either in a programming language or in an expert systems shell. This methodology has two distinguishing features. First, it is "unified". A unified methodology repre sents the data, information and knowledge in a homogeneous manner, as well as the relationships between them. Second, the methodology builds a maintenance mechanism into the design. In knowledge engineering terms, the representation used by this methodology to model knowledge bases applies equally to databases. In database terms, the representation used by this methodology to model databases applies equally to the database rules. The unified methodology unifies the design of the "knowledge base compo nent" and the "database component". "Unification" is achieved in five senses.
The Rise and Fall of British Policy for Membership of Europe
by John S.F. Wright
2024 · Springer Nature
This is a book about policy change that focusses on a single case study; the rise and fall of the British policy for membership of European institutions. It traces the establishment of British identity as a European Member State and the meaning of the country’s participation in the block in 1973, to its deterioration through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, ending with its eventual failure at the 2016 referendum. Considering the abject state into which the meaning and identity of the pro-European policy had fallen by that time, the book argues that while David Cameron might have lost his June referendum by a slender 1.8% majority, he should have lost by a whole lot more. It also raises important implications for understanding the nature and dynamics of policy change in UK politics and beyond. It will appeal to scholars and students of political theory, public policy, British and European politics.