Totally Absurd Inventions

Totally Absurd Inventions PDF Author: Ted Vancleave
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
ISBN: 9780740710254
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Totally Absurd Inventions offers the best of the goofy from the millions of patents granted during the past 70 years. Each of the nearly 100 off-the-wall inventions unearthed for this collection features the detailed patent application illustration and a lively description of the bizarre proposed creation. Need to know when your baby's diaper is dirty? You'll want to see the plans behind the Diaper Alarm. Little boys wanting to avoid playground kisses may find just what they need in the Kissing Shield. Want to add a unique Wisconsin twist to your cigarette? The Cheese-Filtered Cigarette might do the trick. Super Trash Man, the Cranium Cooler, the All-Terrain Stroller, and the Pet Toilet are just a few more of the zany but fascinating inventions highlighted in this compendium of creativity.

Totally Absurd Inventions

Totally Absurd Inventions PDF Author: Ted Vancleave
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
ISBN: 9780740710254
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Get Book Here

Book Description
Totally Absurd Inventions offers the best of the goofy from the millions of patents granted during the past 70 years. Each of the nearly 100 off-the-wall inventions unearthed for this collection features the detailed patent application illustration and a lively description of the bizarre proposed creation. Need to know when your baby's diaper is dirty? You'll want to see the plans behind the Diaper Alarm. Little boys wanting to avoid playground kisses may find just what they need in the Kissing Shield. Want to add a unique Wisconsin twist to your cigarette? The Cheese-Filtered Cigarette might do the trick. Super Trash Man, the Cranium Cooler, the All-Terrain Stroller, and the Pet Toilet are just a few more of the zany but fascinating inventions highlighted in this compendium of creativity.

The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions

The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions PDF Author: Kenji Kawakami
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393326765
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
In Japan, Kawakami is famous for his tireless promotion of Chindogu: the art of the "unuseless" idea. Meant to solve problems of modern life, 200 of these bizarre and logic-defying gadgets and gizmos are featured in this humorous collection. Photos.

On War

On War PDF Author: Carl von Clausewitz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military art and science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description


Our Final Invention

Our Final Invention PDF Author: James Barrat
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250032261
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Elon Musk named Our Final Invention one of five books everyone should read about the future—a Huffington Post Definitive Tech Book of 2013. Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the “smart” in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But Artificial Intelligence can also threaten our existence. In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI’s Holy Grail—human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine. Through profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs, and groundbreaking AI systems, Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to? “If you read just one book that makes you confront scary high-tech realities that we’ll soon have no choice but to address, make it this one.” —The Washington Post “Science fiction has long explored the implications of humanlike machines (think of Asimov’s I, Robot), but Barrat’s thoughtful treatment adds a dose of reality.” —Science News “A dark new book . . . lays out a strong case for why we should be at least a little worried.” —The New Yorker

How We Got to Now

How We Got to Now PDF Author: Steven Johnson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698154509
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
From the New York Times–bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Extra Life, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this illustrated history, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences. Filled with surprising stories of accidental genius and brilliant mistakes—from the French publisher who invented the phonograph before Edison but forgot to include playback, to the Hollywood movie star who helped invent the technology behind Wi-Fi and Bluetooth—How We Got to Now investigates the secret history behind the everyday objects of contemporary life. In his trademark style, Johnson examines unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated fields: how the invention of air-conditioning enabled the largest migration of human beings in the history of the species—to cities such as Dubai or Phoenix, which would otherwise be virtually uninhabitable; how pendulum clocks helped trigger the industrial revolution; and how clean water made it possible to manufacture computer chips. Accompanied by a major six-part television series on PBS, How We Got to Now is the story of collaborative networks building the modern world, written in the provocative, informative, and engaging style that has earned Johnson fans around the globe.

The Secret of Our Success

The Secret of Our Success PDF Author: Joseph Henrich
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178437
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.

Super Sad True Love Story

Super Sad True Love Story PDF Author: Gary Shteyngart
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 067960359X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deliciously dark tale of America’s dysfunctional coming years—and the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • San Francisco Chronicle • The Seattle Times • O: The Oprah Magazine • Maureen Corrigan, NPR • Salon • Slate • Minneapolis Star Tribune • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Kansas City Star • Charlotte Observer • The Globe and Mail • Vancouver Sun • Montreal Gazette • Kirkus Reviews In the near future, America is crushed by a financial crisis and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Then Lenny Abramov, son of an Russian immigrant janitor and ardent fan of “printed, bound media artifacts” (aka books), meets Eunice Park, an impossibly cute Korean American woman with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness. Could falling in love redeem a planet falling apart?

Utopia

Utopia PDF Author: Thomas More
Publisher: e-artnow
ISBN: 8027303583
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

Wonderworks

Wonderworks PDF Author: Angus Fletcher
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982135980
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
"A brilliant examination of literary invention through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante, showing how writers created technical breakthroughs as sophisticated and significant as any in science, and in the process, engineered enhancements to the human heart and mind"--

Sophie's World

Sophie's World PDF Author: Jostein Gaarder
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466804270
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 599

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Book Description
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.