Significant Objects

Significant Objects PDF Author: Joshua Glenn
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 1606995251
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
100 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES ABOUT ORDINARY THINGS SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS: A Literary and Economic Experiment Can a great story transform a worthless trinket into a significant object? The Significant Objects project set out to answer that question once and for all, by recruiting a highly impressive crew of creative writers to invent stories about an unimpressive menagerie of items rescued from thrift stores and yard sales. That secondhand flotsam definitely becomes more valuable: sold on eBay, objects originally picked up for a buck or so sold for thousands of dollars in total — making the project a sensation in the literary blogosphere along the way. But something else happened, too: The stories created were astonishing, a cavalcade of surprising responses to the challenge of manufacturing significance. Who would have believed that random junk could inspire so much imagination? The founders of the Significant Objects project, that’s who. This book collects 100 of the finest tales from this unprecedented creative experiment; you’ll never look at a thrift-store curiosity the same way again. FEATURING ORIGINAL STORIES BY: Chris Adrian • Rob Agredo • Kurt Andersen • Rachel Axler • Rob Baedeker • Nicholson Baker • Rosecrans Baldwin • Matthew Battles • Charles Baxter • Kate Bernheimer • Susanna Breslin • Kevin Brockmeier • Matt Brown • Blake Butler • Meg Cabot • Tim Carvell • Patrick Cates • Dan Chaon • Susanna Daniel • Adam Davies • Kathryn Davis • Matthew De Abaitua • Stacey • D'Erasmo • Helen DeWitt • Doug Dorst • Mark Doty • Ben Ehrenreich • Mark Frauenfelder • Amy Fusselman • William Gibson • Myla Goldberg • Ben Greenman • Jason Grote • Jim Hanas • Jennifer Michael Hecht • Sheila Heti • Christine Hill • Dara Horn • Shelley Jackson • Heidi Julavits • Ben Katchor • Matt Klam • Wayne Koestenbaum • Josh Kramer • Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer • Neil LaBute • Victor LaValle • J. Robert Lennon • Jonathan Lethem • Todd Levin • Laura Lippman • Mimi Lipson • Robert Lopez • Joe Lyons • Sarah Manguso • Merrill Markoe • Tom McCarthy • Miranda Mellis • Lydia Millet • Maud Newton • Annie Nocenti • Stephen O’Connor • Stewart O’Nan • Jenny Offill • Gary Panter • Ed Park • James Parker • Benjamin Percy • Mark Jude Poirier • Padgett Powell • Bob Powers • Todd Pruzan • Dan Reines • Nathaniel Rich • Peter Rock • Lucinda Rosenfeld • Greg Rowland • Luc Sante • R.K. Scher • Toni Schlesinger • Matthew Sharpe • Jim Shepard • David Shields • Marisa Silver • Curtis Sittenfeld • Bruce Sterling • Scarlett Thomas • Jeff Turrentine • Deb Olin Unferth • Tom Vanderbilt • Matthew J. Wells • Joe Wenderoth • Margaret Wertheim • Colleen Werthmann • Colson Whitehead • Carl Wilson • Cintra Wilson • Sari Wilson • Douglas Wolk • John Wray

Significant Objects

Significant Objects PDF Author: Joshua Glenn
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 1606995251
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
100 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES ABOUT ORDINARY THINGS SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS: A Literary and Economic Experiment Can a great story transform a worthless trinket into a significant object? The Significant Objects project set out to answer that question once and for all, by recruiting a highly impressive crew of creative writers to invent stories about an unimpressive menagerie of items rescued from thrift stores and yard sales. That secondhand flotsam definitely becomes more valuable: sold on eBay, objects originally picked up for a buck or so sold for thousands of dollars in total — making the project a sensation in the literary blogosphere along the way. But something else happened, too: The stories created were astonishing, a cavalcade of surprising responses to the challenge of manufacturing significance. Who would have believed that random junk could inspire so much imagination? The founders of the Significant Objects project, that’s who. This book collects 100 of the finest tales from this unprecedented creative experiment; you’ll never look at a thrift-store curiosity the same way again. FEATURING ORIGINAL STORIES BY: Chris Adrian • Rob Agredo • Kurt Andersen • Rachel Axler • Rob Baedeker • Nicholson Baker • Rosecrans Baldwin • Matthew Battles • Charles Baxter • Kate Bernheimer • Susanna Breslin • Kevin Brockmeier • Matt Brown • Blake Butler • Meg Cabot • Tim Carvell • Patrick Cates • Dan Chaon • Susanna Daniel • Adam Davies • Kathryn Davis • Matthew De Abaitua • Stacey • D'Erasmo • Helen DeWitt • Doug Dorst • Mark Doty • Ben Ehrenreich • Mark Frauenfelder • Amy Fusselman • William Gibson • Myla Goldberg • Ben Greenman • Jason Grote • Jim Hanas • Jennifer Michael Hecht • Sheila Heti • Christine Hill • Dara Horn • Shelley Jackson • Heidi Julavits • Ben Katchor • Matt Klam • Wayne Koestenbaum • Josh Kramer • Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer • Neil LaBute • Victor LaValle • J. Robert Lennon • Jonathan Lethem • Todd Levin • Laura Lippman • Mimi Lipson • Robert Lopez • Joe Lyons • Sarah Manguso • Merrill Markoe • Tom McCarthy • Miranda Mellis • Lydia Millet • Maud Newton • Annie Nocenti • Stephen O’Connor • Stewart O’Nan • Jenny Offill • Gary Panter • Ed Park • James Parker • Benjamin Percy • Mark Jude Poirier • Padgett Powell • Bob Powers • Todd Pruzan • Dan Reines • Nathaniel Rich • Peter Rock • Lucinda Rosenfeld • Greg Rowland • Luc Sante • R.K. Scher • Toni Schlesinger • Matthew Sharpe • Jim Shepard • David Shields • Marisa Silver • Curtis Sittenfeld • Bruce Sterling • Scarlett Thomas • Jeff Turrentine • Deb Olin Unferth • Tom Vanderbilt • Matthew J. Wells • Joe Wenderoth • Margaret Wertheim • Colleen Werthmann • Colson Whitehead • Carl Wilson • Cintra Wilson • Sari Wilson • Douglas Wolk • John Wray

Image Objects

Image Objects PDF Author: Jacob Gaboury
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262045036
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
How computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium, as seen through the histories of five technical objects. Most of us think of computer graphics as a relatively recent invention, enabling the spectacular visual effects and lifelike simulations we see in current films, television shows, and digital games. In fact, computer graphics have been around as long as the modern computer itself, and played a fundamental role in the development of our contemporary culture of computing. In Image Objects, Jacob Gaboury offers a prehistory of computer graphics through an examination of five technical objects--an algorithm, an interface, an object standard, a programming paradigm, and a hardware platform--arguing that computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium. Gaboury explores early efforts to produce an algorithmic solution for the calculation of object visibility; considers the history of the computer screen and the random-access memory that first made interactive images possible; examines the standardization of graphical objects through the Utah teapot, the most famous graphical model in the history of the field; reviews the graphical origins of the object-oriented programming paradigm; and, finally, considers the development of the graphics processing unit as the catalyst that enabled an explosion in graphical computing at the end of the twentieth century. The development of computer graphics, Gaboury argues, signals a change not only in the way we make images but also in the way we mediate our world through the computer--and how we have come to reimagine that world as computational.

Elegant Objects

Elegant Objects PDF Author: Yegor Bugayenko
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781534908307
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
TL;DR Compound variable names, validators, private static literals, configurable objects, inheritance, annotations, MVC, dependency injection containers, reflection, ORM and even algorithms are our enemies.

Shiny Objects

Shiny Objects PDF Author: James A. Roberts
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062093622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
In Shiny Objects, a cross between In Praise of Slowness and The Tipping Point, consumer behavior expert Professor James A. Roberts takes us on a tour of America's obsession with consumerism—pointing out its symptoms, diagnosing specific problems, and offering a series of groundbreaking solutions. Roberts gives practical advice for how to correct the materialistic trends in our lives which lock us into a cycle of financial hardship and stress. Shiny Objects, a new The Paradox of Choice for the modern reader, is more than a critique of capitalism—it's also an exploration into how we can live happier, fuller, more productive lives today.

Lost Objects

Lost Objects PDF Author: Joshua Glenn
Publisher: Hat & Beard Press
ISBN: 9781955125185
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Is there a "Rosebud" object in your past? A long-vanished thing that lingers in your memory--whether you want it to or not? As much as we may treasure the stuff we own, perhaps just as significant are the objects we have, in one way or another, lost. What is it about these bygone objects? Why do they continue to haunt us long after they've vanished from our lives? In Lost Objects, editors Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker have gathered answers to those questions in the form of 50 true stories from a dazzling roster of writers, artists, thinkers, and storytellers, including Lucy Sante, Ben Katchor, Lydia Millet, Neil LaBute, Laura Lippman, Geoff Manaugh, Paola Antonelli, Margaret Wertheim, and many more. Each spins a unique narrative that tells a personal tale, and dives into the meaning of objects that remain present to us emotionally, even after they have physically disappeared. To bring this collection of essays even more vividly to life, the editors gathered a similarly impressive array of artists to illustrate these meaningful things that have gone missing. Visual contributors include Seth, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Oliver Munday, Lisa Congdon, Matt Wuerker, Anita Kunz, Alex Eben Meyer, Gary Panter, and Kelli Anderson. Glenn and Walker began Lost Objects following the success of Significant Objects, a project-turned-book collecting fictional stories inspired by thrift store finds. With Lost Objects, they have shifted to nonfiction narratives in their continuing exploration of objects and meaning. Supplemented by additional analyses from the editors and an original foreword from noted design writer Debbie Millman, the book combines evocative storytelling, art, and design, rewarding deep readers and visual thinkers alike. We have all lost something that was meaningful--and that we'll never forget. While we may never recover this Rosebud, Lost Objects will teach us something new about why it mattered in the first place, and matters still.

Sharp Objects

Sharp Objects PDF Author: Gillian Flynn
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9781474601610
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Majhno mesto, velika skrivnost. Nekako tako bi lahko opisali Wind Gap, mestece na ameriškem srednjem vzhodu, rojstno mesto novinarke Camille. Po dolgem času se vrne, da bi za svoj časopis raziskala nenavaden umor in izginotje dveh deklic. Camille ve, da pod na videz idealistično krinko malega mesteca, kjer se vsi poznajo, brbotajo zamere in deviacije, zato se z odporom odpravi domov. Njena mama, bogata dedinja ogromne prašičje farme, je do nje hladna, medtem ko se do njene mlajše pol sestre Amme vede čudaško. Bolj ko Camille brska po odnosih v mestu, bolj se ji razkriva zamolčana, temačna družinska zgodovina, hkrati pa tudi osrčje teme, ki prepreda neraziskana umora.

Ordinary Objects

Ordinary Objects PDF Author: Amie Lynn Thomasson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199764441
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
'Ordinary Objects' shows how to develop a common-sense ontology and defend it against a variety of eliminativist arguments. The text argues that the apparently diverse eliminativist arguments rest on a few shared assumptions, and that questioning these gives us reason to reevaluate the proper methods and limits of metaphysics.

A History of the World in 100 Objects

A History of the World in 100 Objects PDF Author: Neil MacGregor
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141966831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them. The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with an object from the 21st century which represents the world we live in today. Neil MacGregor's aim is not simply to describe these remarkable things, but to show us their significance - how a stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people, how Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency or how an early Victorian tea-set tells us about the impact of empire. Each chapter immerses the reader in a past civilisation accompanied by an exceptionally well-informed guide. Seen through this lens, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. An intellectual and visual feast, it is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years.

Unconventional Flying Objects

Unconventional Flying Objects PDF Author: Hill, Paul R.
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing
ISBN: 1571747133
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Paul Hill was a well-respected NASA scientist when, in the early 1950s, he had a UFO sighting. Soon after, he built the first flying platform and was able to duplicate the UFO's tilt-to-control maneuvers. Official policy, however, prevented him from proclaiming his findings. "I was destined," says Hill, "to be as unidentified as the flying objects." For the next twenty-five years, Hill acted as an unofficial clearinghouse at NASA, collecting and analyzing sightings' reports for physical properties, propulsion possibilities, dynamics, etc. To refute claims that UFOs defy the laws of physics, he had to make "technological sense... of the unconventional object." After his retirement from NASA, Hill finally completed his remarkable analysis. This book, published posthumously, presents his findings that UFOs "obey, not defy, the laws of physics." Vindicating his own sighting and thousands of others, he proves that UFO technology is not only explainable, but attainable.

On the Origin of Objects

On the Origin of Objects PDF Author: Brian Cantwell Smith
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
On the Origin of Objects is the culmination of Brian Cantwell Smith's decade-long investigation into the philosophical and metaphysical foundations of computation, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. Based on a sustained critique of the formal tradition that underlies the reigning views, he presents an argument for an embedded, participatory, "irreductionist," metaphysical alternative. Smith seeks nothing less than to revise our understanding not only of the machines we build but also of the world with which they interact. Smith's ambitious project begins as a search for a comprehensive theory of computation, able to do empirical justice to practice and conceptual justice to the computational theory of mind. A rigorous commitment to these two criteria ultimately leads him to recommend a radical overhaul of our traditional conception of metaphysics. Everything that exists - objects, properties, life, practice - lies Smith claims in the "middle distance," an intermediate realm of partial engagement with and partial separation from, the enveloping world. Patterns of separation and engagement are taken to underlie a single notion unifying representation and ontology: that of subjects' "registration" of the world around them. Along the way, Smith offers many fascinating ideas: the distinction between particularity and individuality, the methodological notion of an "inscription error," an argument that there are no individualswithin physics, various deconstructions of the type-instance distinction, an analysis of formality as overly disconnected ("discreteness run amok"), a conception of the boundaries of objects as properties of unruly interactions between objects and subjects, an argument for the theoretical centrality of reference preservation, and a theatrical, acrobatic metaphor for the contortions involved in the preservation of reference and resultant stabilization of objects. Sidebars and diagrams throughout the book help clarify and guide Smith's highly original and compelling argument. A Bradford Book