Download or read book The Clock Mirage written by Joseph Mazur and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of Book Riot's Six Great Nonfiction Books about Time: a tour of clocks throughout the centuries--from the sandglass to the telomere--that reveals the physical, biological, and social nature of time "[A] mind-stretching book. . . . Skilfully written."--John Carey, Sunday Times (London) What is time? This question has fascinated philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists for thousands of years. Why does time seem to speed up with age? What is its connection with memory, anticipation, and sleep cycles? Award-winning author and mathematician Joseph Mazur provides an engaging exploration of how the understanding of time has evolved throughout human history and offers a compelling new vision, submitting that time lives within us. Our cells, he notes, have a temporal awareness, guided by environmental cues in sync with patterns of social interaction. Readers learn that, as a consequence of time's personal nature, a forty-eight-hour journey on the space shuttle can feel shorter than a six-hour trip on the Soyuz capsule, that the Amondawa of the Amazon do not have ages, and that time speeds up with fever and slows down when we feel in danger. With a narrative punctuated by personal stories of time's effects on truck drivers, Olympic racers, prisoners, and clockmakers, Mazur's journey is filled with fascinating insights into how our technologies, our bodies, and our attitudes can change our perceptions. Ultimately, time reveals itself as something that rides on the rhythms of our minds. The Clock Mirage presents an innovative perspective that will force us to rethink our relationship with time, and how best to use it.
Download or read book The Clock Mirage written by Joseph Mazur and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tour of clocks throughout the centuries—from the sandglass to the telomere—to reveal the physical, biological, and social nature of time What is time? This question has fascinated philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists for thousands of years. Why does time seem to speed up with age? What is its connection with memory, anticipation, and sleep cycles? Award-winning author and mathematician Joseph Mazur provides an engaging exploration of how the understanding of time has evolved throughout human history and offers a compelling new vision, submitting that time lives within us. Our cells, he notes, have a temporal awareness, guided by environmental cues in sync with patterns of social interaction. Readers learn that, as a consequence of time’s personal nature, a forty-eight-hour journey on the Space Shuttle can feel shorter than a six-hour trip on the Soyuz capsule, that the Amondawa of the Amazon do not have ages, and that time speeds up with fever and slows down when we feel in danger. With a narrative punctuated by personal stories of time’s effects on truck drivers, Olympic racers, prisoners, and clockmakers, Mazur’s journey is filled with fascinating insights into how our technologies, our bodies, and our attitudes can change our perceptions. Ultimately, time reveals itself as something that rides on the rhythms of our minds. The Clock Mirage presents an innovative perspective that will force us to rethink our relationship with time, and how best to use it.
Download or read book The Restless Clock written by Jessica Riskin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A core principle of modern science holds that a scientific explanation must not attribute will or agency to natural phenomena.The Restless Clock examines the origins and history of this, in particular as it applies to the science of living things. This is also the story of a tradition of radicals—dissenters who embraced the opposite view, that agency is an essential and ineradicable part of nature. Beginning with the church and courtly automata of early modern Europe, Jessica Riskin guides us through our thinking about the extent to which animals might be understood as mere machines. We encounter fantastic robots and cyborgs as well as a cast of scientific and philosophical luminaries, including Descartes and Leibnitz, Lamarck and Darwin, whose ideas gain new relevance in Riskin's hands. The book ends with a riveting discussion of how the dialectic continues in genetics, epigenetics, and evolutionary biology, where work continues to naturalize different forms of agency.The Restless Clock reveals the deeply buried roots of current debates in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology.
Download or read book The Mirage written by Matt Ruff and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mind-bending novel in which an alternate history of 9/11 and its aftermath uncovers startling truths about America and the Middle East 11/9/2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners. They fly two into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers. The United Arab States declares a War on Terror. Arabian and Persian troops invade the Eastern Seaboard and establish a Green Zone in Washington, D.C. . . . Summer, 2009: Arab Homeland Security agent Mustafa al Baghdadi interrogates a captured suicide bomber. The prisoner claims that the world they are living in is a mirage—in the real world, America is a superpower, and the Arab states are just a collection of "backward third-world countries." A search of the bomber's apartment turns up a copy of The New York Times, dated September 12, 2001, that appears to support his claim. Other captured terrorists have been telling the same story. The president wants answers, but Mustafa soon discovers he's not the only interested party. The gangster Saddam Hussein is conducting his own investigation. And the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee—a war hero named Osama bin Laden—will stop at nothing to hide the truth. As Mustafa and his colleagues venture deeper into the unsettling world of terrorism, politics, and espionage, they are confronted with questions without any rational answers, and the terrifying possibility that their world is not what it seems. Acclaimed novelist Matt Ruff has created a shadow world that is eerily recognizable but, at the same time, almost unimaginable. Gripping, subversive, and unexpectedly moving, The Mirage probes our deepest convictions and most arresting fears.
Download or read book Advances in Computers written by and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 1994-09-29 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advances in Computers
Download or read book The China Mirage written by James Bradley and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-04-21 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bradley is sharp and rueful, and a voice for a more seasoned, constructive vision of our international relations with East Asia." --Christian Science Monitor James Bradley introduces us to the prominent Americans--including FDR's grandfather, Warren Delano--who in the 1800s made their fortunes in the China opium trade. Meanwhile, American missionaries sought a myth: noble Chinese peasants eager to Westernize. The media propagated this mirage, and FDR believed that supporting Chiang Kai-shek would make China America's best friend in Asia. But Chiang was on his way out and when Mao Zedong instead came to power, Americans were shocked, wondering how we had "lost China." From the 1850s to the origins of the Vietnam War, Bradley reveals how American misconceptions about China have distorted our policies and led to the avoidable deaths of millions. The China Mirage dynamically explores the troubled history that still defines U.S.-Chinese relations today.
Download or read book Vision or Mirage written by David Rundell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Clear-eyed and illuminating.' Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor 'A rich, superbly researched, balanced history of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.' General David Petraeus, former Commander U.S. Central Command and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency 'Destined to be the best single volume on the Kingdom.' Ambassador Chas Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Assistant Secretary of Defense 'Should be prescribed reading for a new generation of political leaders.' Sir Richard Dearlove, former Chief of H.M. Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Something extraordinary is happening in Saudi Arabia. A traditional, tribal society once known for its lack of tolerance is rapidly implementing significant economic and social reforms. An army of foreign consultants is rewriting the social contract, King Salman has cracked down hard on corruption, and his dynamic though inexperienced son, the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, is promoting a more tolerant Islam. But is all this a new vision for Saudi Arabia or merely a mirage likely to dissolve into Iranian-style revolution? David Rundell - one of America's foremost experts on Saudi Arabia - explains how the country has been stable for so long, why it is less so today, and what is most likely to happen in the future. The book is based on the author's close contacts and intimate knowledge of the country where he spent 15 years living and working as a diplomat. Vision or Mirage demystifies one of the most powerful, but least understood, states in the Middle East and is essential reading for anyone interested in the power dynamics and politics of the Arab World.
Download or read book The Mirage Factory written by Gary Krist and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling author Gary Krist, the story of the metropolis that never should have been and the visionaries who dreamed it into reality Little more than a century ago, the southern coast of California—bone-dry, harbor-less, isolated by deserts and mountain ranges—seemed destined to remain scrappy farmland. Then, as if overnight, one of the world’s iconic cities emerged. At the heart of Los Angeles’ meteoric rise were three flawed visionaries: William Mulholland, an immigrant ditch-digger turned self-taught engineer, designed the massive aqueduct that would make urban life here possible. D.W. Griffith, who transformed the motion picture from a vaudeville-house novelty into a cornerstone of American culture, gave L.A. its signature industry. And Aimee Semple McPherson, a charismatic evangelist who founded a religion, cemented the city’s identity as a center for spiritual exploration. All were masters of their craft, but also illusionists, of a kind. The images they conjured up—of a blossoming city in the desert, of a factory of celluloid dreamworks, of a community of seekers finding personal salvation under the California sun—were like mirages liable to evaporate on closer inspection. All three would pay a steep price to realize these dreams, in a crescendo of hubris, scandal, and catastrophic failure of design that threatened to topple each of their personal empires. Yet when the dust settled, the mirage that was LA remained. Spanning the years from 1900 to 1930, The Mirage Factory is the enthralling tale of an improbable city and the people who willed it into existence by pushing the limits of human engineering and imagination.
Download or read book The Witching Hour written by Anne Rice and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-11-17 with total page 1058 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved author of the Vampire Chronicles, the first installation of her spellbinding Mayfair Chronicles—the inspiration for the hit television series! “Extraordinary . . . Anne Rice offers more than just a story; she creates myth.”—The Washington Post Book World Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life. He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him. As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, an intricate tale of evil unfolds. Moving through time from today’s New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the Louis XIV’s France, and from the coffee plantations of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, The Witching Hour is a luminous, deeply enchanting novel. The magic of the Mayfairs continues: THE WITCHING HOUR • LASHER • TALTOS
Download or read book Dwellers in the Mirage written by Abraham Merritt and published by eStar Books. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Leif Langdon who discovers an amazing warm valley in Alaska! Two races inhabit the valley, the Little People and a branch of an ancient Mongolian race and they worship the Kraken named Khalk'ru which they summon from another dimension to offer human sacrifice. The inhabitants believe Langdon to be the reincarnation of their long dead hero, Dwayanu...
Download or read book Sunday Best written by John Carey and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of John Carey’s greatest, wisest, and wittiest reviews—amassed over a lifetime of writing In 1977, newly installed as a professor of English at Oxford, John Carey took the position of chief reviewer for the Sunday Times. In a career spanning over 40 years and upwards of 1,000 reviews, Carey has kept abreast of the brightest and best books of the day, distilling his thoughts each week for the entertainment of Sunday readers. Contained in this volume is the cream of that substantial crop: a choice selection of the books which Carey has most cherished. Covering subjects as diverse as the science of laughter, the art of Grayson Perry, the history of madness, and Sylvia Plath’s letters, this is a collection of treats and surprises, suffused with careful thought, wisdom, and enjoyment. The result is a compendium of titles that have stood the test of time, offered with Carey’s warmest recommendation.
Download or read book An Oasis in Time written by Marilyn Paul and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a surprising way out of the frenzy, that always-being-behind feeling, and the endless to-do list. Now more than ever, people are seeking a reprieve from the constant pressure to achieve, produce, and consume. While many turn to sporadic bouts of mindfulness and meditation, organizational change specialist Marilyn Paul offers a complementary solution that is as radical as it is ancient. In her new book An Oasis in Time, Paul focuses on the profound benefits of taking a modern-day Sabbath each week for deep rest and nourishing renewal. The energy, perspective, creativity, sense of well-being, and yes, increased productivity that ensue are lifesaving. Drawing on Sabbath tradition, contemporary research, and interviews with scores of busy people, Paul shows that it is possible to introduce these practices regardless of your religious beliefs. Starting with just an hour or two, you can carve out the time from your packed schedule, design your weekly oasis experience, and most importantly, change your mind-set so you can enjoy the pleasure of regularly slowing down and savoring life every week. From surrounding yourself with nature to practicing rituals for beginning and ending oasis time to implementing strategies for connecting with friends and family, self, and source, you will discover practical ways to step off the treadmill and into timeless refreshment on your way to a calmer, richer, more fulfilling life.
Download or read book Symbiotic Autoethnography written by Liana Beattie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autoethnography is generating increasing levels of interest in research circles, gaining popularity as an innovative and inciting qualitative approach. Drawing on the vast diversity of researchers' opinions on autoethnographic praxes, this book presents a cogent analysis of the ongoing debates in the field before moving on to the discussion of a new approach to both theorizing about and 'doing' autoethnography: a 'symbiotic autoethnography'. This approach synthesizes central aspects from the diversity of existing arguments into one adaptable 'framework' that combines key characteristic features of autoethnographic research. The author uses the concept of 'symbiosis' in its broader sense to denote close interdependence and interrelation between its suggested seven attributes, including temporality, researcher's omnipresence, evocative storytelling, interpretative analysis, political (transformative) focus, reflexivity and polyvocality. The book offers both experienced and novice researchers a theoretically informed multi-functional and multi-disciplinary methodological tool that can accommodate the dynamics of diverse personal experiences within a topography of specific professional, cultural and socio-political contexts.
Download or read book American Rifleman written by and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thirteen Days in September written by Lawrence Wright and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’ S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, The Economist, The Daily Beast, St. Louis Post-Dispatch In September 1978, three world leaders—Menachem Begin of Israel, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and U.S. president Jimmy Carter—met at Camp David to broker a peace agreement between the two Middle East nations. During the thirteen-day conference, Begin and Sadat got into screaming matches and had to be physically separated; both attempted to walk away multiple times. Yet, by the end, a treaty had been forged—one that has quietly stood for more than three decades, proving that peace in the Middle East is possible. Wright combines politics, scripture, and the participants’ personal histories into a compelling narrative of the fragile peace process. Begin was an Orthodox Jew whose parents had perished in the Holocaust; Sadat was a pious Muslim inspired since boyhood by stories of martyrdom; Carter, who knew the Bible by heart, was driven by his faith to pursue a treaty, even as his advisers warned him of the political cost. Wright reveals an extraordinary moment of lifelong enemies working together—and the profound difficulties inherent in the process. Thirteen Days in September is a timely revisiting of this diplomatic triumph and an inside look at how peace is made.
Download or read book The Motion Paradox written by Joseph Mazur and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the epic history of Greek philosopher Zeno's yet-unsolved paradox of motion, citing the contributions of top minds to the scientific community's understanding of the elusive basic structure of time and space.
Download or read book Air Corps News Letter written by and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 1262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
