Download or read book Play to Live Books 1 2 3 AlterWorld the Clan the Duty written by D. Rus and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-11-02 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new pandemic - the perma effect - has taken over Earth of the near future. Whenever you play your favorite online game, beware: your mind might merge with the virtual world and dump its comatose host. Woe be to those stuck forever in Tetris! And still they're the lucky ones compared to those burning alive eternally within the scorched hulls of tank simulators. But some unfortunates - the handicapped and the terminally ill, shell-shocked army vets, wronged crime victims and other society misfits - choose to flee real life willingly, escaping to the limitless world of online sword and sorcery MMORPGs. Once a seasoned gamer and now a terminal cancer patient, Max grasps at this final chance to preserve his life and identity. So he goes for it - goes for the promise of immortality shared with a few trusty friends and the woman he loves. Together they roam the roads of AlterWorld and sample its agony and ecstasy born of absolute freedom.

Download or read book AlterWorld written by D Rus and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-18 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: cation Date: July 18, 2014 A new pandemic - the perma effect - has taken over Earth of the near future. Whenever you play your favorite online game, beware: your mind might merge with the virtual world and dump its comatose host. Woe be to those stuck forever in Tetris! And still they're the lucky ones compared to those burning alive eternally within the scorched hulls of tank simulators. But some unfortunates - the handicapped and the terminally ill, shell-shocked army vets, wronged crime victims and other society misfits - choose to flee real life willingly, escaping to the limitless world of online sword and sorcery MMORPGs. Once a seasoned gamer and now a terminal cancer patient, Max grasps at this final chance to preserve his life and identity. So he goes for it - goes for the promise of immortality shared with a few trusty friends and the woman he loves. Together they roam the roads of AlterWorld and sample its agony and ecstasy born of absolute freedom.

Download or read book The Clan written by D. Rus and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once a seasoned gamer, Max has cheated fate swapping his dying body for an immortal avatar in the world of sword and sorcery MMORPGs. He joins the ranks of a new race of people: perma players, forever stuck in the virtual castles and cities of AlterWorld. Now they have to obey the ever-changing rules of their new home while learning to live together in peace, love and justice.But freedom and immortality are a poisoned chalice. Some of Max's new friends crave power, others become traitors and spies. Soon the first screams of pain fill the virtual world as its freshly-minted slavedrivers and torturers indulge in the absence of law and order. Their crimes provide a constant flow of gold back to their real-world controllers: the power-happy governments plotting to take over AlterWorld's magic technologies and limitless resources.What would you do? Would you step aside and watch the magical world turn into the Earth's dark twin? Or are you strong enough to step in the virtual sharks' way?

Download or read book Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume One Summary written by Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.

Download or read book The Tipping Point written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2006-11-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia: discover Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas. “A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person looks at the world.” —Michael Lewis

Download or read book The Ultimation Play to Live written by D. Rus and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-11-02 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The magic flames are raging. Blades are melting. Souls are reduced to ashes in the fury of battle. The grand finale of the war for the First Temple is upon us. The last trump cards have been played, the reserves are all exhausted, and even the gods have engaged in the plebeian fight. The universe is on the point of collapse. Broken are the chains that held the worlds together. The icy waters of the Baltic cool the scorching sands of the Frontier. The creatures of AlterWorld spill the first blood on the quiet streets of Earth's cities. What is Max to do? Become embittered and butcher his enemies? Seize the deserted castles and abandoned lands? Attempt to save the one who had given her life for him? Or try to win the jackpot by finding a way home, back to Earth?

Download or read book Hollow Land written by Eyal Weizman and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the tunnels of Gaza to the militarized airspace of the Occupied Territories, Eyal Weizman unravels Israel's mechanisms of control and its transformation of Palestinian towns, villages and roads into an artifice where all natural and built features serve military ends. Weizman traces the development of this strategy, from the influence of archaeology on urban planning, Ariel Sharon's reconceptualization of military defence during the 1973 war, through the planning and architecture of the settlements, to the contemporary Israeli discourse and practice of urban warfare and airborne targeted assassinations. Hollow Land lays bare the political system at the heart of this complex and terrifying project of late-modern colonial occupation.

Download or read book Ready Player One written by Ernest Cline and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. “Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready? In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself. Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club “Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost “An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN “A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe “Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR “[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9

Download or read book Script Effects as the Hidden Drive of the Mind Cognition and Culture written by Hye K. Pae and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-14 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access volume reveals the hidden power of the script we read in and how it shapes and drives our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures. Expanding on the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (i.e., the idea that language affects the way we think), this volume proposes the “Script Relativity Hypothesis” (i.e., the idea that the script in which we read affects the way we think) by offering a unique perspective on the effect of script (alphabets, morphosyllabaries, or multi-scripts) on our attention, perception, and problem-solving. Once we become literate, fundamental changes occur in our brain circuitry to accommodate the new demand for resources. The powerful effects of literacy have been demonstrated by research on literate versus illiterate individuals, as well as cross-scriptal transfer, indicating that literate brain networks function differently, depending on the script being read. This book identifies the locus of differences between the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and between the East and the West, as the neural underpinnings of literacy. To support the “Script Relativity Hypothesis”, it reviews a vast corpus of empirical studies, including anthropological accounts of human civilization, social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, applied linguistics, second language studies, and cross-cultural communication. It also discusses the impact of reading from screens in the digital age, as well as the impact of bi-script or multi-script use, which is a growing trend around the globe. As a result, our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures are now growing closer together, not farther apart.

Download or read book The Worlding Project written by Christopher Leigh Connery and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Globalization discourse now presumes that the “world space” is entirely at the mercy of market norms and forms promulgated by reactionary U.S. policies. An academic but accessible set of studies, this wide range of essays by noted scholars challenges this paradigm with diverse and strong arguments. Taking on topics that range from the medieval Mediterranean to contemporary Jamaican music, from Hong Kong martial arts cinema to Taiwanese politics, writers such as David Palumbo-Liu, Meaghan Morris, James Clifford, and others use innovative cultural studies to challenge the globalization narrative with a new and trenchant tactic called “worlding.” The book posits that world literature, cultural studies, and disciplinary practices must be “worlded” into expressions from disparate critical angles of vision, multiple frameworks, and field practices as yet emerging or unidentified. This opens up a major rethinking of historical “givens” from Rob Wilson’s reinvention of “The White Surfer Dude” to Sharon Kinoshita’s “Deprovincializing the Middle Ages.” Building on the work of cultural critics like Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Kenneth Burke, The Worlding Project is an important manifesto that aims to redefine the aesthetics and politics of postcolonial globalization withalternative forms and frames of global becoming.

Download or read book The War Play to Live written by D. Rus and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-11-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The magic flames are raging. Blades are melting. Souls are reduced to ashes in the fury of battle. The grand finale of the war for the First Temple is upon us. The last trump cards have been played, the reserves are all exhausted, and even the gods have engaged in the plebeian fight. The universe is on the point of collapse. Broken are the chains which hold the worlds together. The icy waters of the Baltic cool the scorching sands of the Frontier. The creatures of AlterWorld spill the first blood on the quiet streets of Earth's cities. What will Max do? Become embittered and butcher his enemies? Seize the deserted castles and abandoned lands? Attempt to save the one who had given her life defending him? Or try to win the jackpot by finding a way home, back to Earth?

Download or read book Unlocking Luhmann written by Claudio Baraldi and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Luhmann's theory is fascinating and complex. It offers incomparably enlightening insights, references and research opportunities, but reveals its utility only after a quite high competence threshold. Using the reticular form of the glossary, this book makes the theory accessible while maintaining its complexity. Without being obstructed by knowledge gaps or by references to concepts presented elsewhere, readers inside and outside sociology get the required support to explore sociological systems theory and to engage with it. Luhmann himself, in his introduction, praises the form of the glossary to cope with the challenges of the theoretical description of our highly complex society.

Download or read book Survival Quest The Way of the Shaman written by Vasily Mahanenko and published by Magic Dome Books. This book was released on 2021-05-17 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original LitRPG fantasy from one of the fathers of LitRPG. #1 bestseller in audiobooks. The unrelenting #1 LitRPG bestseller. Translated into English, German, Polish, Czech and Korean languages. Barliona is a brand-new virtual world which offers everyone the chance to start a new life as a valiant knight, a hero or a beautiful princess. Many people have come here in search of a new identity. Still, for some users Barliona has become their biggest nightmare. They are convicts sentenced to serving their term in virtual reality with their sensory filters disabled. They can feel everything that happens to their character whether it's pleasure or pain, strain or fatigue. For them, the difference between the real and virtual worlds is so slim that some of the inmates lose all sense of reality. Daniel Mahan is one such convict, tried and sentenced for hacking the city sewage network. He's assigned the class of Shaman which can become his blessing or his curse. Will he fail - or will he rise to unthinkable heights, founding the greatest clan ever, winning the most amazing woman and going on the most incredible escapades? The seven books of the series tell the story of the Shaman's virtual adventures in Barliona: his ups and downs, his treacherous allies and trusty friends. Because there's no other path if you want to become a player capable of taking the Way of the Shaman.

Download or read book Inferno written by D. Rus and published by . This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fabric of reality is bursting at the seams. The gnolls' negotiators are knocking at the gates of the Kremlin. Ancient half-forgotten gods take on a new lease of life as AlterWorld's avatars. A spark of the Creator's almighty will is still alive in the hearts of millions of players, obeying the impulses of their faith and knowledge while reshaping the Universe to suit their unspoken needs. Initially AlterWorld came complete with infernal planes. So how about confronting a few demons? Not the cartoon characters dreamed up by some game designer: these are the true spawn of evil, archdemons and princes of hell, the vengeful retributors that our faith has delivered unto this newborn world. Max has a lot on his plate. As a clan and alliance leader, he has to repay his debt to the gods and prepare for the upcoming battle for the First Temple. And still, how could he say no to a potential ally? Could he leave desperate fellow players without help? And how could he ignore the vast unclaimed territories just begging to be taken? Soon, the volcanic wastelands of Inferno will shudder from the march of the steel legions. Its lands will awaken to the tramping of the countless mounts, players' pets and familiars - and groan under the thunderous gait of the many assault golems.

Download or read book A World of Many Worlds written by Marisol de la Cadena and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-23 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A World of Many Worlds is a search into the possibilities that may emerge from conversations between indigenous collectives and the study of science's philosophical production. The contributors explore how divergent knowledges and practices make worlds. They work with difference and sameness, recursion, divergence, political ontology, cosmopolitics, and relations, using them as concepts, methods, and analytics to open up possibilities for a pluriverse: a cosmos composed through divergent political practices that do not need to become the same. Contributors. Mario Blaser, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Déborah Danowski, Marisol de la Cadena, John Law, Marianne Lien, Isabelle Stengers, Marilyn Strathern, Helen Verran, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

Download or read book More Than a Game written by Andrey Vasilyev and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2017-02-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step into a future, in which advanced technology creates a virtual world, with superior capabilities that allow players to experience real-world sensations. The popularity of the RPG game Fayroll is growing by the day, attracting millions of users to this alternate reality. What is the secret of Fayroll? What makes it so different from other games?Our protagonist, Harriton Nikiforov is an everyman - a binge drinking, tabloid column reporter who has settled for the humdrum of the everyday, with a job that pays the wages, a neurotic girlfriend who gives him migraines and a boss that gives him constant grief. Tasked with a new assignment, Harriton suddenly finds himself ripped away from his normal routine of Moscow society life, to a journalistic quest of sorts that leads him deep into the realm of the Virtual Gaming World of Fayroll. Given explicit orders to write a series of fluff pieces on the game and its developers, Harriton grudgingly accepts the assignment, but soon finds himself enthralled by the virtual fantasy world and its amazing quests, unpredictable challenges, and nearly endless possibilities. Harriton is reincarnated as a warrior named Hagen and becomes a full participant in the fantasy world, plunging into the exciting world full of action, quests, humor, legendary weapons and ancient secrets. He meets faithful and courageous comrades and outwits those who are trying to hunt him.In this world, the thirst for success and vanity of high-level players in pursuit of legendary objects spills into the real world, where high-stakes bets are made on the success of the virtual characters. Harriton, as Hagen, unwittingly enters into the Fayroll world, where events and decisions that he makes in the virtual space starts to affect his own reality. His unpredictable character, perseverance, and excitement attract the attention of powerful gamers and influential Moscow elite with a vested interest in Fayroll's outcome. It is not long before he realizes that this fantastic world, (created according to the best canons of cult games, Warcraft and Lineage), conceals many dangers. Can he pass all the tests?Fayroll is more than a novel; it's a brilliant synergy of fantasy fiction and online gaming. It gives the reader the best of both worlds. The first novel of the 13 part epic series Fayroll, has captivated Russian readers countrywide and was voted the 2014 new fantasy book of the year. Andrey Vasilyev's masterpiece 'More Than a Game' is now available to the English-speaking World. Join us in this breathtaking narrative that takes both its main character and the reader deep into the heart of the Virtual Gaming Universe and explore the Fantasy Series that has captured the imagination of the Slavic world.

Download or read book Government of the Shadows written by Eric Michael Wilson and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2009-03-15 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expose of what really goes on behind the closed doors of state power