Download or read book The Garden of Evening Mists written by Tan Twan Eng and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “elegant and haunting novel of war, art and memory" (The Independent) award-winning novel from the acclaimed author of The Gift of Rain follows the only Malaysian survivor of a Japanese wartime camp as she begins working for an exiled former gardener of the Emporer. Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes." Then she can design a garden for herself. As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

Download or read book The Ark Before Noah written by Irving Finkel and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent translation of a Babylonian tablet launches a groundbreaking investigation into one of the most famous stories in the world, challenging the way we look at ancient history. Since the Victorian period, it has been understood that the story of Noah, iconic in the Book of Genesis, and a central motif in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, derives from a much older story that existed centuries before in ancient Babylon. But the relationship between the Babylonian and biblical traditions was shrouded in mystery. Then, in 2009, Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and a world authority on ancient Mesopotamia, found himself playing detective when a member of the public arrived at the museum with an intriguing cuneiform tablet from a family collection. Not only did the tablet reveal a new version of the Babylonian Flood Story; the ancient poet described the size and completely unexpected shape of the ark, and gave detailed boat building specifications. Decoding this ancient message wedge by cuneiform wedge, Dr. Finkel discovered where the Babylonians believed the ark came to rest and developed a new explanation of how the old story ultimately found its way into the Bible. In The Ark Before Noah, Dr. Finkel takes us on an adventurous voyage of discovery, opening the door to an enthralling world of ancient voices and new meanings.

Download or read book Swahili Language Handbook written by Edgar C. Polomé and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Handbook of Palestine written by Sir Harry Luke and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Travancore State Manual written by V. Nagam Aiya and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Keeping the Wild written by George Wuerthner and published by Foundations for Deep Ecology 3. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it time to embrace the so-called “Anthropocene”—the age of human dominion—and to abandon tried-and-true conservation tools such as parks and wilderness areas? Is the future of Earth to be fully domesticated, an engineered global garden managed by technocrats to serve humanity? The schism between advocates of rewilding and those who accept and even celebrate a “post-wild” world is arguably the hottest intellectual battle in contemporary conservation. In Keeping the Wild, a group of prominent scientists, writers, and conservation activists responds to the Anthropocene-boosters who claim that wild nature is no more (or in any case not much worth caring about), that human-caused extinction is acceptable, and that “novel ecosystems” are an adequate replacement for natural landscapes. With rhetorical fists swinging, the book’s contributors argue that these “new environmentalists” embody the hubris of the managerial mindset and offer a conservation strategy that will fail to protect life in all its buzzing, blossoming diversity. With essays from Eileen Crist, David Ehrenfeld, Dave Foreman, Lisi Krall, Harvey Locke, Curt Meine, Kathleen Dean Moore, Michael Soulé, Terry Tempest Williams and other leading thinkers, Keeping the Wild provides an introduction to this important debate, a critique of the Anthropocene boosters’ attack on traditional conservation, and unapologetic advocacy for wild nature.

Download or read book The Making of Species written by Douglas Dewar and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Reptile Biodiversity written by Roy W. McDiarmid and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-01-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Authoritative and comprehensive—provides an up-to-date description of the tool box of methods for inventorying and monitoring the diverse spectrum of reptiles. All biodiversity scientists will want to have it during project planning and as study progresses. A must for field biologists, conservation planners, and biodiversity managers.”—Jay M. Savage, San Diego State University “Kudos to the editors and contributors to this book. From the perspective of a non-ecologist such as myself, who only occasionally needs to intensively sample a particular site or habitat, the quality and clarity of this book has been well worth the wait.”—Jack W. Sites, Jr.

Download or read book The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers written by Mark T. Conard and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-12-12 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Written for both fans of the Coen brothers and the philosophically curious, without the technical language . . . educational and entertaining.” —Library Journal Joel and Ethan Coen have made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, but no matter what genre they’re playing with, they consistently focus on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To borrow a phrase from Barton Fink, all Coen films explore “the life of the mind” and show that the human condition can often be simultaneously comic and tragic, profound and absurd. The essays in this book explore the challenging moral and philosophical terrain of the Coen repertoire. Several address how Coen films often share film noir’s essential philosophical assumptions: power corrupts, evil is real, and human control of fate is an illusion. In Fargo, not even Minnesota’s blankets of snow can hide Jerry Lundegaard’s crimes or brighten his long, dark night of the soul. The tale of love, marriage, betrayal, and divorce in Intolerable Cruelty transcends the plight of the characters to illuminate competing theories of justice. Even in lighter fare, such as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, the comedy emerges from characters’ journeys to the brink of an amoral abyss. However, the Coens often knowingly and gleefully subvert conventions and occasionally offer symbolic rebirths and other hopeful outcomes. At the end of The Big Lebowski, for example, the Dude abides, his laziness has become a virtue, and the human comedy is perpetuating itself with the promised arrival of a newborn Lebowski. The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers sheds new light on the work of these cinematic visionaries. From Blood Simple to No Country for Old Men, the Coens’ characters look for answers—though in some cases, their quest for answers leads, at best, only to more questions.

Download or read book Daughter of Smoke Bone written by Laini Taylor and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in the New York Times bestselling epic fantasy trilogy by award-winning author Laini Taylor Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out. When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

Download or read book Priests Tongues and Rites written by Jacco Dieleman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005-05-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an investigation into the sphere of production and use of two related bilingual magical handbooks found as part of a larger collection of magical and alchemical manuscripts around 1828 in the hills surrounding Luxor, Egypt. Both handbooks, dating to the Roman period, contain an assortment of recipes for magical rites in the Demotic and Greek language. The library which comprises these two handbooks is nowadays better known as the Theban Magical Library. The book traces the social and cultural milieu of the composers, compilers and users of the extant spells through a combination of philology, sociolinguistics and cultural analysis. To anybody working on Greco-Roman Egypt, ancient magic, and bilingualism this study is of significant importance.

Download or read book The Alignment Problem Machine Learning and Human Values written by Brian Christian and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A jaw-dropping exploration of everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix them. Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us—and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole—and appear to assess Black and White defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And as autonomous vehicles share our streets, we are increasingly putting our lives in their hands. The mathematical and computational models driving these changes range in complexity from something that can fit on a spreadsheet to a complex system that might credibly be called “artificial intelligence.” They are steadily replacing both human judgment and explicitly programmed software. In best-selling author Brian Christian’s riveting account, we meet the alignment problem’s “first-responders,” and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel. In a masterful blend of history and on-the ground reporting, Christian traces the explosive growth in the field of machine learning and surveys its current, sprawling frontier. Readers encounter a discipline finding its legs amid exhilarating and sometimes terrifying progress. Whether they—and we—succeed or fail in solving the alignment problem will be a defining human story. The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity’s biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture—and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.

Download or read book Buyology written by Martin Lindstrom and published by Currency. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A fascinating look at how consumers perceive logos, ads, commercials, brands, and products.”—Time How much do we know about why we buy? What truly influences our decisions in today’s message-cluttered world? In Buyology, Martin Lindstrom presents the astonishing findings from his groundbreaking three-year, seven-million-dollar neuromarketing study—a cutting-edge experiment that peered inside the brains of 2,000 volunteers from all around the world as they encountered various ads, logos, commercials, brands, and products. His startling results shatter much of what we have long believed about what captures our interest—and drives us to buy. Among the questions he explores: • Does sex actually sell? • Does subliminal advertising still surround us? • Can “cool” brands trigger our mating instincts? • Can our other senses—smell, touch, and sound—be aroused when we see a product? Buyology is a fascinating and shocking journey into the mind of today's consumer that will captivate anyone who's been seduced—or turned off—by marketers' relentless attempts to win our loyalty, our money, and our minds.

Download or read book The Life of Birds written by David Attenborough and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2023-11-09 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully updated new edition of David Attenborough’s bestselling classic.

Download or read book East Benue Congo written by John R. Watters and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first in what hopefully will be a growing set of edited volumes and monographs concerning Niger-Congo comparative studies. This first volume addresses matters that are relevant to the entire East Benue-Congo family as well as the particular branches Kainji, Plateau, and Bantoid. In the case of Bantoid, the particular focus is on Grassfields and the Grassfields-Bantu borderland, though other Bantoid subgroups are referenced. The potential topics for comparative studies among these languages are numerous, but this volume is dedicated to presentations on nominal affixes, third person pronouns, and verbal extensions. A forthcoming volume will provide some results of reconstructions and lexicostatistics in Cross River, exploratory reconstructions in Southern Jukunoid, and reconstructions in Ekoid-Mbe and Mambiloid.

Download or read book Figments of Reality written by Ian Stewart and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-07-28 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the universe around us a figment of our imagination? Or are our minds figments of reality? In this refreshing new look at the evolution of mind and culture, bestselling authors Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen eloquently argue that our minds necessarily evolved inextricably within the context of culture and language. They go beyond conventional reductionist ideas to look at how the mind is the response of an evolving brain trying to grapple with a complex environment. Along the way they develop new and intriguing insights into the nature of evolution, science and humanity.

Download or read book Finn Family Moomintroll written by Tove Jansson and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moomintroll and his friends, Snufkin and Sniff, find a hat with magical powers.