Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths

Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths PDF Author: Shimon Edelman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262542781
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
A guide for making sense of life--from action (good except when it's not) to thinking (depressing) to youth (a treasure). This book offers a guide to human nature and human experience--a reference book for making sense of life. In thirty-eight short, interconnected essays, Shimon Edelman considers the parameters of the human condition, addressing them in alphabetical order, from action (good except when it's not) to love (only makes sense to the lovers) to thinking (should not be so depressing) to youth (a treasure). In a style that is by turns personal and philosophical, at once informative and entertaining, Edelman offers a series of illuminating takes on the most important aspects of living in the world.

Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths

Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths PDF Author: Shimon Edelman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262542781
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book

Book Description
A guide for making sense of life--from action (good except when it's not) to thinking (depressing) to youth (a treasure). This book offers a guide to human nature and human experience--a reference book for making sense of life. In thirty-eight short, interconnected essays, Shimon Edelman considers the parameters of the human condition, addressing them in alphabetical order, from action (good except when it's not) to love (only makes sense to the lovers) to thinking (should not be so depressing) to youth (a treasure). In a style that is by turns personal and philosophical, at once informative and entertaining, Edelman offers a series of illuminating takes on the most important aspects of living in the world.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power PDF Author: Al Gore
Publisher: Rodale
ISBN: 1635651085
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller! The follow up to the #1 New York Times bestselling An Inconvenient Truth and companion to Vice President Al Gore’s new documentary, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, this new book is a daring call to action. It exposes the reality of how humankind has aided in the destruction of our planet and delivers hope through groundbreaking information on what you can do now. Vice President Gore, one of our environmental heroes and a leading expert in climate change, brings together cutting-edge research from top scientists around the world; approximately 200 photographs and illustrations to visually articulate the subject matter; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming. He presents, with alarming clarity and conclusiveness (and with humor, too) that the fact of global climate change is not in question and that its consequences for the world we live in will be assuredly disastrous if left unchecked. Follow Vice President Gore around the globe as he tells a story of change in the making. He connects the dots of Zika, flooding, and other natural disasters we've lived through in the last 10+ years—and much more. The book also offers a comprehensive how-to guide on exactly how we can change the course of fate. With concrete, actionable advice on topics ranging from how to run for office to how to talk to your children about climate change, An Inconvenient Sequel will empower you to make a difference—and lets you know how exactly to do it. Where Gore’s first documentary and book took us through the technical aspects of climate change, the second documentary is a gripping, narrative journey that leaves you filled with hope and the urge to take action immediately. This book captures that same essence and is a must-have for everyone who cares deeply about our planet.

Bee Reaved

Bee Reaved PDF Author: Dodie Bellamy
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1635901588
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A new collection of essays from Dodie Bellamy on disenfranchisement, vulgarity, American working-class life, aesthetic values, and profound embarrassment. So. Much. Information. When does one expand? Cut back? Stop researching? When is enough enough? Like Colette's aging courtesan Lea in the Chéri books, I straddle two centuries that are drifting further and further apart. --Dodie Bellamy, "Hoarding as Ecriture" This new collection of essays, selected by Dodie Bellamy after the death of Kevin Killian, her companion and husband of thirty-three years, circles around loss and abandonment large and small. Bellamy's highly focused selection comprises pieces written over three decades, in which the themes consistent within her work emerge with new force and clarity: disenfranchisement, vulgarity, American working-class life, aesthetic values, profound embarrassment. Bellamy writes with shocking, and often hilarious, candor about the experience of turning her literary archive over to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale and about being targeted by an enraged online anti-capitalist stalker. Just as she did in her previous essay collection, When The Sick Rule The World, Bellamy examines aspects of contemporary life with deep intelligence, intimacy, ambivalence, and calm.

Roswell

Roswell PDF Author: Karl T. Pflock
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615925015
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
For over 50 years an incident near Roswell, New Mexico, has sparked UFO enthusiasts. In this definitive study of the incident, researcher Karl T. Pflock uncovers the mystery of the alien craft and bodies supposedly found at Roswell. Photos.

The Really Inconvenient Truths

The Really Inconvenient Truths PDF Author: Iain Murray
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596980621
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Al Gore is bad for the planet... Talk about really inconvenient truths--that's one of the many you'll find in Iain Murray's rollicking exposé of environmental blowhards who waste more energy, endanger more species, and actually kill more people (yes, that's right) than the environmental villains they finger. Did you know that estrogen from birth control and "morning after" pills is causing male fish across America to develop female sex organs? Funny how "pro-choice" and "environmentalist" liberals never talk about that. Or how about this: the Live Earth concert to "save the planet" released more CO2 into the atmosphere than a fleet of 2,000 Humvees emit in a year? We hear a lot about AIDS in Africa, but the number one killer of children in much of Africa is malaria--and guess who was responsible for banning the pesticide that used to have malaria under control? Iain Murray, a sprightly conservative environmental analyst with a long record of skewering liberal hypocrisy, has dug up seven of the all-time great environmental catastrophes caused by the Left and exposed them in The Really Inconvenient Truths.

Computing the Mind

Computing the Mind PDF Author: Shimon Edelman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199717637
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 640

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Book Description
In a culmination of humanity's millennia-long quest for self knowledge, the sciences of the mind are now in a position to offer concrete, empirically validated answers to the most fundamental questions about human nature. What does it mean to be a mind? How is the mind related to the brain? How are minds shaped by their embodiment and environment? What are the principles behind cognitive functions such as perception, memory, language, thought, and consciousness? By analyzing the tasks facing any sentient being that is subject to stimulation and a pressure to act, Shimon Edelman identifies computation as the common denominator in the emerging answers to all these questions. Any system composed of elements that exchange signals with each other and occasionally with the rest of the world can be said to be engaged in computation. A brain composed of neurons is one example of a system that computes, and the computations that the neurons collectively carry out constitute the brain's mind. Edelman presents a computational account of the entire spectrum of cognitive phenomena that constitutes the mind. He begins with sentience, and uses examples from visual perception to demonstrate that it must, at its very core, be a type of computation. Throughout his account, Edelman acknowledges the human mind's biological origins. Along the way, he also demystifies traits such as creativity, language, and individual and collective consciousness, and hints at how naturally evolved minds can transcend some of their limitations by moving to computational substrates other than brains. The account that Edelman gives in this book is accessible, yet unified and rigorous, and the big picture he presents is supported by evidence ranging from neurobiology to computer science. The book should be read by anyone seeking a comprehensive and current introduction to cognitive psychology.

I Am a Beautiful Monster

I Am a Beautiful Monster PDF Author: Francis Picabia
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262517485
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
The first definitive edition in English of writings by poet, painter, pickpocket-plagiarist, and consummate anti-artist Francis Picabia, one of Dada's leading figures. Poet, painter, self-described funny guy, idiot, failure, pickpocket, and anti-artist par excellence, Francis Picabia was a defining figure in the Dada movement; indeed, André Breton called Picabia one of the only “true” Dadas. Yet very little of Picabia's poetry and prose has been translated into English, and his literary experiments have never been the subject of close critical study. I Am a Beautiful Monster is the first definitive edition in English of Picabia's writings, gathering a sizable array of Picabia's poetry and prose and, most importantly, providing a critical context for it with an extensive introduction and detailed notes by the translator. Picabia's poetry and prose is belligerent, abstract, polemical, radical, and sometimes simply baffling. For too long, Picabia's writings have been presented as raw events, rule-breaking manifestations of inspirational carpe diem. This book reveals them to be something entirely different: maddening in their resistance to meaning, full of outrageous posturing, and hiding a frail, confused, and fitful personality behind egoistic bravura. I Am a Beautiful Monster provides the texts of of Picabia's significant publications, all presented complete, many of them accompanied by their original illustrations.

No Impact Man

No Impact Man PDF Author: Colin Beavan
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9781429952576
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A guilty liberal finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, and generally becomes a tree-hugging lunatic who tries to save the polar bears and the rest of the planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging his baby daughter and Prada-wearing, Four Seasons–loving wife along for the ride. And that's just the beginning. Bill McKibben meets Bill Bryson in this seriously engaging look at one man's decision to put his money where his mouth is and go off the grid for one year—while still living in New York City—to see if it's possible to make no net impact on the environment. In other words, no trash, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no air-conditioning, no television . . . What would it be like to try to live a no-impact lifestyle? Is it possible? Could it catch on? Is living this way more satisfying or less satisfying? Harder or easier? Is it worthwhile or senseless? Are we all doomed or can our culture reduce the barriers to sustainable living so it becomes as easy as falling off a log? These are the questions at the heart of this whole mad endeavor, via which Colin Beavan hopes to explain to the rest of us how we can realistically live a more "eco-effective" and by turns more content life in an age of inconvenient truths.

Unsettling Truths

Unsettling Truths PDF Author: Mark Charles
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830887598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award American Society of Missiology Book Award ★ Publishers Weekly starred review You cannot discover lands already inhabited. Injustice has plagued American society for centuries. And we cannot move toward being a more just nation without understanding the root causes that have shaped our culture and institutions. In this prophetic blend of history, theology, and cultural commentary, Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah reveal the far-reaching, damaging effects of the "Doctrine of Discovery." In the fifteenth century, official church edicts gave Christian explorers the right to claim territories they "discovered." This was institutionalized as an implicit national framework that justifies American triumphalism, white supremacy, and ongoing injustices. The result is that the dominant culture idealizes a history of discovery, opportunity, expansion, and equality, while minority communities have been traumatized by colonization, slavery, segregation, and dehumanization. Healing begins when deeply entrenched beliefs are unsettled. Charles and Rah aim to recover a common memory and shared understanding of where we have been and where we are going. As other nations have instituted truth and reconciliation commissions, so do the authors call our nation and churches to a truth-telling that will expose past injustices and open the door to conciliation and true community.

Alex & Zee

Alex & Zee PDF Author: Strube, Cordelia
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1770909508
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
ñVivid and fresh and finely crafted, this is a book that will strike a chord with anyone who has loved, lived, or wondered how we manage, in the face of our fragility, to carry on.î „ Nino Ricci This is the story of Zee, an aimless ex-lawyer who has turned his inability to make a decision into a fine art, and his wife, Alex, a practical and hard-working social worker who feels her biological clock ticking loudly. Reverberating with the emotional crises of the urban adult, Alex & Zee is an offbeat portrait of contemporary relationships, full of wickedly astute observations of city life and its multifarious life forms. Grimly hilarious at every turn, this is a terrific debut novel. Nominated for the 1995 W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the recipient of widespread critical acclaim, Alex & Zee is the long-awaited reissue of Cordelia StrubeÍs biting take on contemporary romance.