Download or read book How to Change Your Mind written by Michael Pollan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now on Netflix as a 4-part documentary series! “Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured.” —New York Times A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research. A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

Download or read book Dead Lies Dreaming written by Charles Stross and published by Tordotcom. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When magic and superpowers emerge in the masses, Wendy Deere is contracted by the government to bag and snag supervillains in Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross' Dead Lies Dreaming: A Laundry Files Novel. As Wendy hunts down Imp—the cyberpunk head of a band calling themselves “The Lost Boys”— she is dragged into the schemes of louche billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge. Rupert has discovered that the sole surviving copy of the long-lost concordance to the one true Necronomicon is up for underground auction in London. He hires Imp’s sister, Eve, to procure it by any means necessary, and in the process, he encounters Wendy Deere. In a tale of corruption, assassination, thievery, and magic, Wendy Deere must navigate rotting mansions that lead to distant pasts, evil tycoons, corrupt government officials, lethal curses, and her own moral qualms in order to make it out of this chase alive. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Liquid Life written by Rachel Armstrong and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If we lived in a liquid world, the concept of a "machine" would make no sense. Liquid life is metaphor and apparatus that discusses the consequences of thinking, working, and living through liquids. It is an irreducible, paradoxical, parallel, planetary-scale material condition, unevenly distributed spatially, but temporally continuous. It is what remains when logical explanations can no longer account for the experiences that we recognize as part of "being alive."Liquid Life references a third-millennial understanding of matter that seeks to restore the agency of the liquid soul for an ecological era, which has been banished by reductionist, "brute" materialist discourses and mechanical models of life. Offering an alternative worldview of the living realm through a "new materialist" and "liquid" study of matter, Armstrong conjures forth examples of creatures that do not obey mechanistic concepts like predictability, efficiency, and rationality. With the advent of molecular science, an increasingly persuasive ontology of liquid technologies can be identified. Through the lens of lifelike dynamic droplets, the agency for these systems exists at the interfaces between different fields of matter/energy that respond to highly local effects, with no need for a central organizing system.Liquid Life seeks an alternative partnership between humanity and the natural world. It provokes a re-invention of the languages of the living realm to open up alternative spaces for exploration, including contributor Rolf Hughes' "angelology" of language, which explores the transformative invocations of prose poetry, and Simone Ferracina's graphical notations that help shape our concepts of metabolism, upcycling, and designing with fluids. A conceptual and practical toolset for thinking and designing, liquid life reunites us with the irreducible "soul substance" of living things, which will neither be simply "solved," nor go away.

Download or read book Dictionary of the British English Spelling System written by Greg Brooks and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will tell all you need to know about British English spelling. It's a reference work intended for anyone interested in the English language, especially those who teach it, whatever the age or mother tongue of their students. It will be particularly useful to those wishing to produce well-designed materials for teaching initial literacy via phonics, for teaching English as a foreign or second language, and for teacher training. English spelling is notoriously complicated and difficult to learn; it is correctly described as much less regular and predictable than any other alphabetic orthography. However, there is more regularity in the English spelling system than is generally appreciated. This book provides, for the first time, a thorough account of the whole complex system. It does so by describing how phonemes relate to graphemes and vice versa. It enables searches for particular words, so that one can easily find, not the meanings or pronunciations of words, but the other words with which those with unusual phoneme-grapheme/grapheme-phoneme correspondences keep company. Other unique features of this book include teacher-friendly lists of correspondences and various regularities not described by previous authorities, for example the strong tendency for the letter-name vowel phonemes (the names of the letters ) to be spelt with those single letters in non-final syllables.

Download or read book Invisible Sun written by Charles Stross and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The alternate timelines of Charles Stross' Empire Games trilogy have never been so entangled than in Invisible Sun—the techno-thriller follow up to Dark State—as stakes escalate in a conflict that could spell extermination for humanity across all known timelines. An inter-timeline coup d'état gone awry. A renegade British monarch on the run through the streets of Berlin. And robotic alien invaders from a distant timeline flood through a wormhole, wreaking havoc in the USA. Can disgraced worldwalker Rita and her intertemporal extraordaire agent of a mother neutralize the livewire contention before it's too late? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Jesus Buddha Krishna and Lao Tzu written by Hooper, Richard and published by Hampton Roads Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws parallels between different religious faiths by presenting side-by-side comparisons of four leaders' teachings on topics such as knowledge, suffering, death, and liberation, along with commentaries for each topic.

Download or read book The Blind Watchmaker written by Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science Richard Dawkins and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 1996-09-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patiently and lucidly, this Los Angeles Times Book Award and Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize winner identifies the aspects of the theory of evolution that people find hard to believe and removes the barriers to credibility one by one. As readable and vigorous a defense of Darwinism as has been published since 1859.--The Economist.

Download or read book Philosophy and Education written by Paul Smeyers and published by Springer. This book was released on 1995-08-31 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many books have been written about Wittgenstein's philosophy, but this collection of articles on Wittgenstein and education is the first study in book form in this area. There have been several articles in scholarly education journals, but the special cachet of this collection is that the contributors come from six countries. The collection has been edited by Paul Smeyers and Jim Marshall, philosophers of education who live in Belgium and New Zealand, respectively. Each of the chapters represents an original study of Wittgenstein, commissioned by the editors from colleagues they know to have written well on Wittgenstein and the implications of his ideas for education. Audience: Teachers, students and academics in the field of philosophy and education. Especially interesting to advanced students in these areas.

Download or read book Fanged Noumena written by Nick Land and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dizzying trip through the mind(s) of the provocative and influential thinker Nick Land. During the 1990s British philosopher Nick Land's unique work, variously described as “rabid nihilism,” “mad black deleuzianism,” and “cybergothic,” developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of “continental philosophy” —a route that was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British “speculative realist” philosophers who studied with him, and through the many cultural producers—writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers—who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision. Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s—long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print)—in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids. Fanged Noumena gives a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker's work, and has introduced his unique voice to a new generation of readers.

Download or read book The Royal Son of God written by Brian M. Nolan and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Being a Buddhist Nun written by Kim Gutschow and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They may shave their heads, don simple robes, and renounce materialism and worldly desires. But the women seeking enlightenment in a Buddhist nunnery high in the folds of Himalayan Kashmir invariably find themselves subject to the tyrannies of subsistence, subordination, and sexuality. Ultimately, Buddhist monasticism reflects the very world it is supposed to renounce. Butter and barley prove to be as critical to monastic life as merit and meditation. Kim Gutschow lived for more than three years among these women, collecting their stories, observing their ways, studying their lives. Her book offers the first ethnography of Tibetan Buddhist society from the perspective of its nuns. Gutschow depicts a gender hierarchy where nuns serve and monks direct, where monks bless the fields and kitchens while nuns toil in them. Monasteries may retain historical endowments and significant political and social power, yet global flows of capitalism, tourism, and feminism have begun to erode the balance of power between monks and nuns. Despite the obstacles of being considered impure and inferior, nuns engage in everyday forms of resistance to pursue their ascetic and personal goals. A richly textured picture of the little known culture of a Buddhist nunnery, the book offers moving narratives of nuns struggling with the Buddhist discipline of detachment. Its analysis of the way in which gender and sexuality construct ritual and social power provides valuable insight into the relationship between women and religion in South Asia today.

Download or read book Your Computer Is on Fire written by Thomas S. Mullaney and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology scholars declare an emergency: attention must be paid to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems. This book sounds an alarm: we can no longer afford to be lulled into complacency by narratives of techno-utopianism, or even techno-neutrality. We should not be reassured by such soothing generalities as "human error," "virtual reality," or "the cloud." We need to realize that nothing is virtual: everything that "happens online," "virtually," or "autonomously" happens offline first, and often involves human beings whose labor is deliberately kept invisible. Everything is IRL. In Your Computer Is on Fire, technology scholars train a spotlight on the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.

Download or read book The Constitution of Capital written by R. Bellofiore and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this collection address specific themes in Volume I of Marx's Capital . Although the essays can be read independently, they present complementary perspectives on issues at the cutting edge of recent scholarship on Marx's work. Although all Parts of Capital I are discussed, the book is not intended to be a textbook. It will be read by specialists in the field as well as graduate students in the history of economic thought, political economy and philosophy.

Download or read book The Tarot written by Paul Foster Case and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many students of the Western esoteric tradition consider Paul Foster Case's The Tarot the finest explanation that has yet appeared on the occult meaning of numbers, the construction of the Tarot, and the attribution of the 22 Major Trumps to the Hebrew alphabet. In clear and understandable language, Case elucidates the Tarot tradition and technique for the modern thinker. Students of the Tarot will find in these pages the necessary information to understand and apply the principles of Tarot-and the correspondences of symbol, tone, color, and number-to the art of daily living. The author also includes extremely useful chapters on methods of study and Tarot divination. In this 2006 edition, the book appears for the first time with an index and an appendix of resources. Here is a genuine underground masterpiece, made available to a broad new readership.

Download or read book The Infinite and The Divine written by Robert Rath and published by Games Workshop. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore a story told across the millennia that delves deep into a pair of fascinating necron characters, their relationship and their plans for the galaxy. Before the being called the Emperor revealed Himself, before the rise of the aeldari, before the necrontyr traded their flesh for immortal metal, the world was born in violence.Even when they inhabited bodies of flesh, Trazyn the Infinite and Orikan the Diviner were polar opposites. Trazyn, a collector of historical oddities, presides over a gallery full of the most dangerous artefacts – and people – of the galactic past. Orikan, a chronomancer without peer, draws zodiacs that predict and manipulate the future. But when an artefact emerges that may hold the key to the necrons’ next evolution, these two obsessives enter a multi-millennia game of cat and mouse that ends civilisations, reshapes timelines, and changes both forever. As riddles unwind and ancient secrets are revealed, the question remains: will their feud save the necron race or destroy it?

Download or read book The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs written by Sir Ronald Storrs and published by Freeman Press. This book was released on 2008-11 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SIR RONALD STORRS - PREFACE THIS has not been been an easy book to write. My books and papers were destroyed by fire with the rest of my property in 1931, so that of material, consciously prepared or preserved as such, I have none. I had, however, the habit ever since leaving England in 1904 of writing weekly to my mother, and of enclosing briefly minuted items I thought might entertain her. All these documents she kept with my letters, including a few diaries of special missions or journeys during the Wan In the longest of these, describing Baghdad in 1917, she inked over my pencil version with the result, as in a palimpsest, that some of the words she could not read then I cannot decipher now. These surviving records I have wherever possible quoted in original with, I hope, a gain in immediacy and actuality by recording not only historic facts, sometimes already known, but also my feelings at the time with stories and details, trifling in themselves yet constituting atmosphere the hardest of all things to recapture after many years. There are no corrections but many omissions, especially of personal remarks intended only for home consumption. The retention of many faults of youthful slang and flippancy proceeds not so much from any illusion as to their intrinsic demerits as from a preference for the varied patina of the past over the shiny smoothness of a Vernis Martin surface. The loss of a slowly collected library bearing on the chief interests of a mans life is a handicap, less only than the loss of serious docu ments. Not total replacement, not even the Socialist ideal of the British Museum Library access to everything, possession of nothing can recall the annotations andcross-references of many years. In a book full of Oriental names it is impossible to avoid the vexed question of transliteration. That is a subject upon which, as indicated, I have strong ideas and even stronger feelings. In 1920 Sir Herbert Samuel made me Chairman of a small Committee appointed for the purpose of transliterating Palestinian Arabic. We worked long and hard, and in due course submitted to His Excellency the neat little viii . Preface brochure which at this moment meets my resentful gaze. By the time it had reached London the Colonial Office had decided to adopt the system of the Royal Geographical Society. Lawrence was pleasant about his spelling members of our Committee cannot be. My object now is to present the strange sounds and symbols of the East with a minimum of fatigue to the reader. The system is that of English consonants with Italian vowels, and I add accents and quantities. There are one or two irregularities. The name of the founder of Islam is accurately rendered to convey the pronunciation of Muhammad even for personages such as Prince Mahomed All, in whose reigning house is a tradition of pronuncia tion alia Turca. By the time the name has reached Cyprus it has become Mehmet. Nevertheless, with a positive advantage of differentiation, I write the Sharif and King Husain ibn All of Arabia correctly according to system but the Prince and Sultan Hussein of Egypt, with the French spelling that comes close to his own Turkish utterance. By holding, though illogically, to accepted spellings of some famous words, I have at least avoided the exasperation of Quran and Makkah and of that in tolerable clenching of the glottis, the letter, ain...

Download or read book Dark State written by Charles Stross and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dark State is the second book in a thrilling series - set in the same world as Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series. This book follows Empire Games. The time for peace is ending . . . In the near future, one America is experiencing its first technological revolution – whilst in a parallel world, the United States is a hi-tech police state. But both timelines are poised for conflict. Miriam Burgeson’s America is heading for civil war. However, a high profile defection might avert this crisis, if only Miriam and her agents can arrange it in time. And Rita Douglas, rival US spy, arrives during this turmoil. Rita’s world is rocked when she realizes Miriam is her birth mother, changing her own mission irrevocably. Then her United States discovers yet another parallel earth, and the remains of an advanced society. Something destroyed that civilization, Rita’s people are about to rouse it – and two worlds will face the consequences.