The Magnificent Gift of Agency

The Magnificent Gift of Agency PDF Author: Gary Lawrence
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780990634225
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Agency

Agency PDF Author: William Gibson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101986956
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Get Book Here

Book Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “ONE OF THE MOST VISIONARY, ORIGINAL, AND QUIETLY INFLUENTIAL WRITERS CURRENTLY WORKING”* returns with a sharply imagined follow-up to the New York Times bestselling The Peripheral. William Gibson has trained his eye on the future for decades, ever since coining the term “cyberspace” and then popularizing it in his classic speculative novel Neuromancer in the early 1980s. Cory Doctorow raved that The Peripheral is “spectacular, a piece of trenchant, far-future speculation that features all the eyeball kicks of Neuromancer.” Now Gibson is back with Agency—a science fiction thriller heavily influenced by our most current events. Verity Jane, gifted app whisperer, takes a job as the beta tester for a new product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. “Eunice,” the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and a canny grasp of combat strategy. Realizing that her cryptic new employers don’t yet know how powerful and valuable Eunice is, Verity instinctively decides that it’s best they don’t. Meanwhile, a century ahead in London, in a different time line entirely, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the jackpot. His boss, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice are her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner, and the roles they both may play in it. *The Boston Globe

Report of the Federal Security Agency

Report of the Federal Security Agency PDF Author: United States. Office of Education
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 544

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Book of Laman

The Book of Laman PDF Author: Mette Ivie Harrison
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998605241
Category : Book of Mormon
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mette Harrison is one of the best-known Mormon authors currently writing about Mormonism for a national audience. Her Linda Wallheim mystery series (The Bishop's Wife, His Right Hand, For Time and All Eternities, and, one hopes, many more to come) marks the first time ever that a strong and intelligent Mormon woman (or any other kind of Mormon woman for that matter) has had a starring role in a nationally marketed mystery series. In The Book of Laman, Harrison takes a concept that others have used for a quick joke-the idea of narrating the first part of the Book of Mormon from Laman's perspective-and turns it into a serious and profoundly moving story of redemption that has the ability to make us all better readers, and, more importantly, better people. From the Forward The central conceit of The Book of Laman-telling the story of 1 Nephi from Laman's perspective-seems like a perfect device for a funny book. Indeed, Bob Lewis used it precisely this way in his satirical 1997 novel, The Lost Plates of Laman. Here we see all of the jokes implied the first time we hear that Laman is the narrating the Book of Mormon: the villain becomes the hero, and the hero becomes an insufferable know-it-all, the archaic language is peppered with anachronisms and modern values, and the devotional content of the original text is sacrificed on the twin altars of mocking Mormon weirdness and having a grand time. But Mette Harrison's Book of Laman is not funny. It does not try to be funny. It doesn't use intentional archaisms to make fun of the Book of Mormon's language; rather, it tells its story in a non-distracting modern style. The characters are not simply reversed. Nephi is sometimes an annoying brat, but he is also a real prophet who sees and speaks for the Lord. Laman is neither a comic book villain nor a long-suffering ironist. He is a flawed human being struggling to live well and usually coming up short. And in some of the book's very best scenes, he is touched unexpectedly by grace and God. Harrison's characters are the sorts of people who might actually have existed in history. She does not naturalize the miracles in the Book of Mormon-there really are angels and visions and smiting and all the rest-but she humanizes the actors. And this is important, as it corrects for a reading bias that plagues Latter-day Saints. Simply put: we want the Book of Mormon to be history, not fiction, but we expect the people in it to act like characters in a (not very good) novel and not as the kinds of people who have actually ever existed.

The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency

The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency PDF Author: Christopher Erhard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351597515
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 606

Get Book Here

Book Description
Phenomenology has primarily been concerned with questions about knowledge and ontology. However, in recent years the rise of interest and research in phenomenology and embodiment, the emotions and cognitive science has seen the concept of agency move to a central place in the study of phenomenology generally. The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency is an outstanding reference source to this topic and the first volume of its kind. It comprises twenty-seven chapters written by leading international contributors. Organised into two parts, the following key topics are covered: • major figures • the metaphysics of agency • rationality • voluntary and involuntary action • moral experience • deliberation and choice • phenomenology of agency and the cognitive sciences • phenomenology of freedom • embodied agency Essential reading for students and researchers in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and philosophy of cognitive science The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency will also be of interest to those in closely related subjects such as sociology and psychology.

My Reading Life

My Reading Life PDF Author: Pat Conroy
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
ISBN: 0385533845
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bestselling author Pat Conroy acknowledges the books that have shaped him and celebrates the profound effect reading has had on his life. Pat Conroy, the beloved American storyteller, is a voracious reader. Starting as a childhood passion that bloomed into a life-long companion, reading has been Conroy’s portal to the world, both to the farthest corners of the globe and to the deepest chambers of the human soul. His interests range widely, from Milton to Tolkien, Philip Roth to Thucydides, encompassing poetry, history, philosophy, and any mesmerizing tale of his native South. He has for years kept notebooks in which he records words and expressions, over time creating a vast reservoir of playful turns of phrase, dazzling flashes of description, and snippets of delightful sound, all just for his love of language. But for Conroy reading is not simply a pleasure to be enjoyed in off-hours or a source of inspiration for his own writing. It would hardly be an exaggeration to claim that reading has saved his life, and if not his life then surely his sanity. In My Reading Life, Conroy revisits a life of reading through an array of wonderful and often surprising anecdotes: sharing the pleasures of the local library’s vast cache with his mother when he was a boy, recounting his decades-long relationship with the English teacher who pointed him onto the path of letters, and describing a profoundly influential period he spent in Paris, as well as reflecting on other pivotal people, places, and experiences. His story is a moving and personal one, girded by wisdom and an undeniable honesty. Anyone who not only enjoys the pleasures of reading but also believes in the power of books to shape a life will find here the greatest defense of that credo. BONUS: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Pat Conroy's The Death of Santini.

The Future for Renewable Energy 2

The Future for Renewable Energy 2 PDF Author: EUREC Agency
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134276389
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
The ability of renewable energy sources to supply global energy needs - if not completely then to a significant degree - has been amply demonstrated. What needs to happen now in order to make large-scale implementation possible? Leading researchers and specialists in the various fields of renewable energy have once again been commissioned by EUREC Agency (the European Union Renewable Energy Centres Agency) to completely re-assess the position of renewable energy technologies in the context of global energy supply, and to recommend a development path for each technology branch based on this analysis. The Future for Renewable Energy 2 presents the results of this extensive research, incorporating the findings of specialists from over 40 renewable energy research institutes, which represent in total over 1000 scientists. The Future for Renewable Energy 2 examines each of the major renewable energy technologies. It provides a qualitative evaluation of their achievements to date, proposes for each sector detailed, realistic goals for a strong and coherent research, development and demonstration (RD&D) policy, and maps out a path to a stronger market and more widespread deployment of renewable energy sources. Individual chapters cover biomass, photovoltaics, small hydro, solar buildings, solar thermal power stations, wind energy and solar process heat as well as other renewables including ocean energy and solar chemistry. Further chapters discuss the integration of these various technologies and their uptake by developing countries. Essential reading for energy policy makers and planners, and for all those involved in renewables whether as researchers, manufacturers, utilities or practitioners, The Future for Renewable Energy 2 will be regarded as a critical and authoritative source for strategic planning of renewable energy development worldwide.

Body of Secrets

Body of Secrets PDF Author: James Bamford
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307425053
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 782

Get Book Here

Book Description
The National Security Agency is the world’s most powerful, most far-reaching espionage. Now with a new afterword describing the security lapses that preceded the attacks of September 11, 2001, Body of Secrets takes us to the inner sanctum of America’s spy world. In the follow-up to his bestselling Puzzle Palace, James Banford reveals the NSA’s hidden role in the most volatile world events of the past, and its desperate scramble to meet the frightening challenges of today and tomorrow. Here is a scrupulously documented account—much of which is based on unprecedented access to previously undisclosed documents—of the agency’s tireless hunt for intelligence on enemies and allies alike. Body of secrets is a riveting analysis of this most clandestine of agencies, a major work of history and investigative journalism. A New York Times Notable Book

Dark Side of the Moon

Dark Side of the Moon PDF Author: Gerard Degroot
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814721133
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
A selection of the History, Scientific American, and Quality Paperback Book Clubs For a very brief moment during the 1960s, America was moonstruck. Boys dreamt of being an astronaut; girls dreamed of marrying one. Americans drank Tang, bought “space pens” that wrote upside down, wore clothes made of space age Mylar, and took imaginary rockets to the moon from theme parks scattered around the country. But despite the best efforts of a generation of scientists, the almost foolhardy heroics of the astronauts, and 35 billion dollars, the moon turned out to be a place of “magnificent desolation,” to use Buzz Aldrin’s words: a sterile rock of no purpose to anyone. In Dark Side of the Moon, Gerard J. DeGroot reveals how NASA cashed in on the Americans’ thirst for heroes in an age of discontent and became obsessed with putting men in space. The moon mission was sold as a race which America could not afford to lose. Landing on the moon, it was argued, would be good for the economy, for politics, and for the soul. It could even win the Cold War. The great tragedy is that so much effort and expense was devoted to a small step that did virtually nothing for mankind. Drawing on meticulous archival research, DeGroot cuts through the myths constructed by the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations and sustained by NASA ever since. He finds a gang of cynics, demagogues, scheming politicians, and corporations who amassed enormous power and profits by exploiting the fear of what the Russians might do in space. Exposing the truth behind one of the most revered fictions of American history, Dark Side of the Moon explains why the American space program has been caught in a state of purposeless wandering ever since Neil Armstrong descended from Apollo 11 and stepped onto the moon. The effort devoted to the space program was indeed magnificent and its cultural impact was profound, but the purpose of the program was as desolate and dry as lunar dust.

Maggie McNair Has Spiders in Her Hair

Maggie McNair Has Spiders in Her Hair PDF Author: Sheila Booth-Alberstadt
Publisher: Sba Books
ISBN: 9781732663442
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 34

Get Book Here

Book Description
Maggie McNair, like many other children, doesn't like her hair brushed. After much persuasion and struggle, Maggie's mother gives up and decides to let Maggie learn a lesson the hard way. Ironically, threats turn to reality when Maggie McNair discovers a spider in her hair. In this humorously entertaining story, Sheila Booth-Alberstadt tells a "slightly" exaggerated tale that will keep both children and adults amused to the very last page. While attempting to help her own child with hair brushing issues, Sheila has ingeniously solved a daily challenge she and many others have experienced with other children alike. Through vibrant illustrations, Maggie McNair is set to become a much-loved and favorite character in everyone's life.