Download or read book Death Rays and Delusions written by Gerold Yonas and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-06 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Death Rays and Delusions," Dr. Gerold Yonas explains how he found himself thrust into a high stakes world of generals and politicians, international intrigue, multi-billion dollar budgets, laser beams and nuclear annihilation as he faced a mind-boggling assignment-creating a high-tech shield in space to defend America from attack. In this autobiographical narrative about the end of the Cold War, Yonas gives a firsthand account of the creation and evolution of the Star Wars beam weapon program. Having served as the first chief scientist and acting deputy director for Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as the "Star Wars" program, Yonas traces the strange, ironic and humorous events of his career as "Reagan's Ray Gun." He offers insight into the end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the political, military and scientific machinations taking place in the background. Exploring a time characterized by chaos and confusion, politics and public relations, delusions and deceptions, Yonas reflects on the modern lessons from this era and shares his unique perspective on what happens when science and politics collide.
Download or read book Delusion in Death written by J. D. Robb and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lieutenant Eve Dallas must foil a terrorist plot in this explosive thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling In Death series. It was just another after-work happy hour at a bar downtown—until the madness descended. And after twelve minutes of chaos and violence, more than eighty people lay dead. Lieutenant Eve Dallas is trying to sort out the inexplicable events. Surviving witnesses talk about seeing things—monsters and swarms of bees. They describe sudden, overwhelming feelings of fear and rage and paranoia. When forensics makes its report, the mass delusions make more sense: it appears the bar patrons were exposed to a cocktail of chemicals and illegal drugs that could drive anyone into temporary insanity—if not kill them outright. But that doesn’t explain who would unleash such horror—or why. Eve’s husband, Roarke, happens to own the bar, but he’s convinced the attack wasn’t directed at him. It’s bigger than that. And if Eve can’t figure it out fast, it could happen again, anytime, anywhere. Because it’s airborne…
Download or read book Techno Fixers written by Sean F. Johnston and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2020-03-26 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of a seductive idea. Over the past century, the potential of new technology to solve social dilemmas has captivated modern culture. From apps that encourage physical activity to airport scanners meant to prevent terrorism, the concept that clever innovation can improve society is irresistible, but faith in such technological fixes is seldom questioned. Where did this idea come from, what makes it so appealing, and how does it endanger our future? Techno-Fixers traces the source of modern confidence in technology to engineering hubris, radical utopian movements, science fiction fanzines, policy-makers' soundbites, corporate marketing, and optimistic consumer culture from the turn of the twentieth century until today. Sean Johnston demonstrates that, through the promotion of prominent government scientists, technocrats, entrepreneurs, and popular media, modern invention became the favourite tool for addressing human problems and society's ills. Nonetheless, when it comes to assessing the success of cigarette filters as the solution to safe smoking, or DDT as the answer for agricultural productivity, the evidence is sobering. Cautioning that the rhetoric of technological fixes seldom matches reality, Johnston examines how employing innovation to bypass traditional methods can foster as many problems as it solves. A critical examination of modern faith in technology, Techno-Fixers evaluates past mistakes, present implications, and future opportunities for innovating societies.
Download or read book The Delusion written by Laura Gallier and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2018 Christy Award winner! By March of Owen Edmonds’s senior year, eleven students at Masonville High School have committed suicide. Amid the media frenzy and chaos, Owen tries to remain levelheaded—until he endures his own near-death experience and wakes to a distressing new reality. The people around him suddenly appear to be shackled and enslaved. Owen frantically seeks a cure for what he thinks are crazed hallucinations, but his delusions become even more sinister. An army of hideous, towering beings, unseen by anyone but Owen, are preying on his girlfriend and classmates, provoking them to self-destruction. Owen eventually arrives at a mind-bending conclusion: he’s not imagining the evil—everyone else is blind to its reality. He must warn and rescue those he loves . . . but this proves to be no simple mission. Will he be able to convince anyone to believe him before it’s too late? Owen’s heart-pounding journey through truth and delusion will force him to reconsider everything he believes. He both longs for and fears the answers to questions that are quickly becoming too dangerous to ignore.
Download or read book The Technical Delusion written by Jeffrey Sconce and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delusions of electronic persecution have been a preeminent symptom of psychosis for over two hundred years. In The Technical Delusion Jeffrey Sconce traces the history and continuing proliferation of this phenomenon from its origins in Enlightenment anatomy to our era of global interconnectivity. While psychiatrists have typically dismissed such delusions of electronic control as arbitrary or as mere reflections of modern life, Sconce demonstrates a more complex and interdependent history of electronics, power, and insanity. Drawing on a wide array of psychological case studies, literature, court cases, and popular media, Sconce analyzes the material and social processes that have shaped historical delusions of electronic contamination, implantation, telepathy, surveillance, and immersion. From the age of telegraphy to contemporary digitality, the media emerged within such delusions to become the privileged site for imagining the merger of electronic and political power, serving as a paranoid conduit between the body and the body politic. Looking to the future, Sconce argues that this symptom will become increasingly difficult to isolate, especially as remote and often secretive powers work to further integrate bodies, electronics, and information.
Download or read book Optical Delusions in Deadwood written by Ann Charles and published by Ann Charles. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Someone is spreading rumors around Deadwood that Violet Parker likes to chat with dead folks. With her reputation endangered, her bank account on the verge of extinction, and her career at risk of going up in flames, Violet is desperate. When the opportunity to sell another vintage home materializes, she grabs it, even though this “haunted” house was recently the stage for a two-act, murder-suicide tragedy. Ghost or no ghost, Violet knows this can’t be as bad as the last house of horrors she tried to sell, but sexy Doc Nyce has serious doubts. Her only hope of hanging on to her job is to prove that the so-called, ghostly sightings are merely the eccentric owner’s optical delusions. But someone—or something—in the house wants Violet stopped...dead.
Download or read book Tragedy in Sedona written by Connie Joy and published by Pen and Publish Inc. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "James Ray's debut in the film, The Secret, thrust him into the spotlight. . . appearances on Oprah and Larry King Live... 'Tragedy in Sedona' is a behind the scenes look at the rise and fall of the James Ray Empire, through the eyes of an ultimately disenchanted follower. Connie Joy takes you on her personal and authentic journey-from being a devoted member of James' inner circle andDream Team to...trying to warn others." ~From the Foreword by forensic psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman Follow Connie Joy inside the seminars and once-in-a-lifetime trips to Egypt and Peru for an up close look at the transformative work of a charismatic teacher-and the underlying danger of mixing up the message with the messenger! In 2007, Connie participated in Ray's sweat lodge, a Native American ceremonial sauna meant to be a place of spiritual renewal and mental and physical healing. It turned out to be only a test of endurance for Connie and many of the participants. Her prediction that someone could be seriously hurt came true in October 2009 when three people died and 18 participants were injured during a sweat lodge run by James Arthur Ray and his staff. After injuries at his previous events, why didn't Ray get the message he was literally playing with fire? Connie and her husband attended 27 events over three years presented by James Arthur Ray, "Rock Star of Personal Transformation." As this book is released, Ray is charged with three counts of manslaughter and faces a criminal trial in Arizona as well as numerous civil suits.
Download or read book Taking America Off Drugs written by Stephen Ray Flora and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2007-08-09 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues for the superiority of behavioral treatments over drug therapies for psychological problems.
Download or read book Victor Hugo Romancier de l Abime written by James Hiddleston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study of Victor Hugo's work aims to uncover the diversity, the thematic and narrative singularity, and the shifting ironies and resistance to interpretative closure of his writing. Novels examined include: ""Notre-Dame de Paris"", ""Les Miserables"", ""Les Travailleurs de la Mer"", ""Quatre vingt-treize"", and ""L'Homme qui Rit"". The 11 essays in the volume bring together various critical approaches from French, British and American scholars, in an attempt to provide a new point of departure and to provoke discussion of Victor Hugo's novels. This publication marks the bicentenary of Hugo's birth in 1802."
Download or read book Delusions of Grandma written by Carrie Fisher and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lasers Death Rays and the Long Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon written by Jeff Hecht and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The whole story of laser weapons with a focus on its many interesting characters and sometimes bizarre schemes The laser--a milestone invention of the mid-twentieth century--quickly captured the imagination of the Pentagon as the key to the ultimate weapon. Veteran science writer Jeff Hecht tells the inside story of the adventures and misadventures of scientists and military strategists as they exerted Herculean though often futile efforts to adapt the laser for military uses. From the 1950s' sci-fi vision of the death ray, through the Reagan administration's Star Wars missile defense system, to more promising developments today, Hecht provides an entertaining history. As the author illustrates, there has always been a great deal of enthusiasm and false starts surrounding lasers. He describes a giant laser that filled a Boeing 747, lasers powered like rocket engines, plans for an orbiting fleet of robotic laser battle stations to destroy nuclear missiles, claims that nuclear bombs could produce intense X-ray laser beams, and a scheme to bounce laser beams off giant orbiting relay mirrors. Those far-out ideas remain science fiction. Meanwhile, in civilian sectors, the laser is already being successfully used in fiber optic cables, scanners, medical devices, and industrial cutting tools. Now those laser cutting tools are leading to a new generation of laser weapons that just might stop insurgent rockets. Replete with interesting characters, bizarre schemes, and wonderful inventions, this is a well-told tale about the evolution of technology and the reaches of human ambition.
Download or read book Ben Jonson and Envy written by Lynn S. Meskill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-16 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the centrality of envy in the works of Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's greatest literary rival.
Download or read book The Divided Self written by R. Laing and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, 'sane' self that we present to the world.
Download or read book Reflections on Groups and Organizations written by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflections on Groups and Organizations is the third and final book in the On the Couch with Manfred Kets de Vries series. Broadening the Kets De Vries canvas, this book examines concepts of organizational health, performance, and change. Material ranges from studies of high performance teams – based on time the author spent with the pygmies of central Africa – to the study of organizational stars, to the use of coaching interventions to improve personal and organizational functioning. Kets de Vries looks at the interpersonal and group processes that determine how organizations work within specific contexts, including family firms. He studies dysfunctional leader-follower relationships, downsizing, and organizational transformation. Kets de Vries also introduces his concept of the "authentizotic" organization – a pleasant, healthy, well-functioning workplace.
Download or read book The Delusions of Crowds written by William J. Bernstein and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “disturbing yet fascinating” exploration of mass mania through the ages explains the biological and psychological roots of irrationality (Kirkus Reviews). From time immemorial, contagious narratives have spread through susceptible groups—with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay’s nineteenth-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, neurologist and author William Bernstein examines mass delusion through the lens of current scientific research in The Delusions of Crowds. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last five hundred years—from the Anabaptist Madness of the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that pervade today’s polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles. Through Bernstein’s supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their “desire to improve one’s well-being in this life or the next.” Bernstein’s chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania. He observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of this all-too-human phenomenon, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.
Download or read book Popular Radio written by Kendall Banning and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hallucinations written by Oliver Sacks and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hallucinations, for most people, imply madness. But there are many different types of non-psychotic hallucination caused by various illnesses or injuries, by intoxication--even, for many people, by falling sleep. From the elementary geometrical shapes that we see when we rub our eyes to the complex swirls and blind spots and zigzags of a visual migraine, hallucination takes many forms. At a higher level, hallucinations associated with the altered states of consciousness that may come with sensory deprivation or certain brain disorders can lead to religious epiphanies or conversions. Drawing on a wealth of clinical examples from his own patients as well as historical and literary descriptions, Oliver Sacks investigates the fundamental differences and similarities of these many sorts of hallucinations, what they say about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.
