Group items tagged

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from? With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward. Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines. Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.

Set primarily in the present day, or very near future, these stories give everyday existence a gentle nudge into the realms of the fantastic, the weird, the erotic, the supernatural, the horrific, the arcane and the surreal. These are stories where a casual sexual encounter can embroil a person in dangerous liaisons with ghosts, aliens or even vengeful gods. Yet also where the bizarre can be found lurking just around the corner, across a cup of cooling mocha in a suburban coffee shop, over a glass of chilled rose wine in beachside cafe on the Cote d'Azur or in the next message to arrive on your mobile phone. These stories tread the fine line between the normal and the fantastic, where the unknown lies behind every unopened door and every unread email.

""Well that fucking hurt!", I shouted after awakening. Feeling myself being dragged by two people by my arms and seeing the surrounding area that once was covered in dust. No Walker to be found as my last seen memory had seen, but more importantly, where the hell is Maddie. Still groggy from being smacked in the back of my head with a gun and a bit nervous, though I won't admit that to these men dragging me along this beaten path. Weak, tired and so damn confused " She is going to kill you all.", I say with a delightful smile on my face. Was only then one of the men dragging me responded " You are right Nick, she is going to kill us all, but not just her as she is not the only one of her kind infected, which is why we are taking shelter underground." With him telling me some of what I already knew " So what is your intent with me?" I asked while trying to regain my balance on my weakend knees. Wanting so badly to strike at these men dragging me underground and also wanting to reach for my gun, but realized it had been taken away "Good luck on finding her dip shits and if you were even capable of, you can't harm her." Then the man on the right of me started to become a familiar face as my eye site started to clear up some "Nick, had we retained her while you both came back to the facility, we would have ended her life as her powers she has of destruction is neutral underground of here. Why did you of all people not think of that idiot?" Calling me an idiot just really pisses me off! "Is that you Agent Jarvis?" Son of a bitch! A once close friend of mine and he is the one calling me an idiot. He was fast to acknowledge that it was in fact him and that I was not going to like the questioning session that was going to be taking place. I myself know what that is like as I have witnessed many sessions before in my time working as an agent myself. 'Fuck!', I would say to myself while my heart started to race faster. Having to plan something quickly and trying to decipher

""Well that fucking hurt!", I shouted after awakening. Feeling myself being dragged by two people by my arms and seeing the surrounding area that once was covered in dust. No Walker to be found as my last seen memory had seen, but more importantly, where the hell is Maddie. Still groggy from being smacked in the back of my head with a gun and a bit nervous, though I won't admit that to these men dragging me along this beaten path. Weak, tired and so damn confused " She is going to kill you all.", I say with a delightful smile on my face. Was only then one of the men dragging me responded " You are right Nick, she is going to kill us all, but not just her as she is not the only one of her kind infected, which is why we are taking shelter underground." With him telling me some of what I already knew " So what is your intent with me?" I asked while trying to regain my balance on my weakend knees. Wanting so badly to strike at these men dragging me underground and also wanting to reach for my gun, but realized it had been taken away "Good luck on finding her dip shits and if you were even capable of, you can't harm her." Then the man on the right of me started to become a familiar face as my eye site started to clear up some "Nick, had we retained her while you both came back to the facility, we would have ended her life as her powers she has of destruction is neutral underground of here. Why did you of all people not think of that idiot?" Calling me an idiot just really pisses me off! "Is that you Agent Jarvis?" Son of a bitch! A once close friend of mine and he is the one calling me an idiot. He was fast to acknowledge that it was in fact him and that I was not going to like the questioning session that was going to be taking place. I myself know what that is like as I have witnessed many sessions before in my time working as an agent myself. 'Fuck!', I would say to myself while my heart started to race faster. Having to plan something quickly and trying to decipher

"Stanley Swanson-Breed of a Werewolf" I've lived an extraordinary life to say the least. I started out in journalism and found myself located in Kansas City, KS working for the largest output of the newspaper known as the Kansas City Star. Born in 1974 and currently living in Stull, KS is where I have ended up and have retired at a young age of almost forty years old. I retired because I happen to be paralyzed from the waist down as a drunk person who ran a red light had t-boned me while on my motorcycle on my way home from work. That happened only a few years ago. I am not here to write about my life, but let me introduce myself. My name is Kain Edward. There were many things I wrote about in my time as a journalist, but found the most intriguing to me was that of paranormal existence, sightings, vampires and werewolves. Something I found I could exaggerate in my mind freely and always wanted to believe in them. During my life as a young boy, I loved anything to do with 'mythology' or those creatures that had certain powers. I grew up watching a lot of movies that involved Vampires and Werewolves and I believe that is why I had grown to be so time consumed in the research of such. One thing that always stood out to me was the fact that there never really ever seemed like there was a book or movie that gave great details of 'Werewolves', which would become more fascinating to me as I began to lose a slight interest in Vampires. "Surely there has to be more to Werewolves then just being some hideous beast that kills humans?" I would say to myself many times over. I had to do a lot of traveling and research as one might imagine. I had spoken to so many people from all parts of the world that claimed to have seen such subjects of interest or heard of someone who had. It only grew my interest that much more. Unfortunately, nothing ever turned out as a positive result as I often ran into dead ends. I soon became a laughing stock to co-workers and even

Short of money, the inventor Thomas Edison is captivated by the charismatic figure of J.P. Morgan, the world's greatest banker. Accepting Morgan's glittering offer of almost unlimited cash in return for helping the man change the way the world does business, Edison sees himself descend from being the godlike inventor of electric light to being complicit in the invention of the electric chair. Ever more enmeshed in Morgan's personal life, he becomes infatuated by a world of privilege and power, where duty and desire, faith and immorality are thrown into conflict, ultimately threatening his own spiritual and creative survival.

This is a funny book, funny-strange and funny-ha-ha. All the writing leans towards the absurd but mostly without the capital A. These are the kind of pieces where you want to go right back to the start of a story once you've finished it to see what you missed. They are slight but tightly written and they treat the reader with respect. Krüger leads you along the garden path and then leaves you to find your way home yourself. That may annoy some readers but I was far from annoyed and I'd happily read this guy again.

Women are dying in their millions. Some blame scientists, some see the hand of God, some see human arrogance reaping the punishment it deserves. Jessie Lamb is an ordinary girl living in extraordinary times: as her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her towards the ultimate act of heroism. If the human race is to survive, it s up to her. But is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her father fears, impressionable, innocent, incapable of understanding where her actions will lead? Set just a month or two in the future, in a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, The Testament of Jessie Lamb explores a young woman s determination to make her life count for something, as the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart.

Escaping the ghetto 11-year-old Hugo is left by his mother in the local brothel, where Mariana, one of the prostitutes, has agreed to hide him. Mariana is a bitterly unhappy woman who hates what she has done to her life, and night after night Hugo sits in her closet and listens uncomprehendingly as she rages at the Nazi soldiers who come and go. Quickly the two become fiercely protective of each other and, as her life spirals downwards, Mariana reaches out for consolation to the adoring boy who is on the cusp of manhood.

WW2 is about to start but life for a young boy in a small town in Albania is still a game. Yet, as the town falls to the Italians, the Greeks, then the Nazis, the boy grows up. Falling in love with unattainable women, seduced by magic and literature and finally forced to flee, his existence changes from marvellous, terrifying and extraordinary into a primitive world where the severed arm of a British airman becomes a talisman and girls vanish-possibly killed by their own fathers. Forging the unexpected and terrible link between childish playfulness and a horrifying political future, Kadare has created a story with a depth and brilliance characteristic of the master story-teller.

A story about a little person in a very big world. Magnus Mandalora never thought he would leave the safe confines of the small homely village of Lower Kertoob. He certainly never expected to end up in the middle of a long-running war between the saintly Cherines and the beastly Glurgs. But when circumstance places him in such a dubious position, he finds himself on a rollicking adventure where nothing is quite as it seems. Magnus Opum is an epic fantasy that's slightly skewed - Tolkien with a twist.

I consider Robert Heinlein's most fascinating novel to be his prescriptive utopia Beyond This Horizon. (A prescriptive utopia is where an author "prescribes" what he or she believes a better civilization would look like.) While Heinlein did opine, extensively, about society in many books, from Starship Troopers to Glory Road, it is in Beyond This Horizon (BTH) that you'll find him clearly stating This Is The Way Things Ought To Be. And it turns out to be a fascinating, surprisingly nuanced view of our potential future.

This week the Novel of Life brings us to glittering Las Vegas, where Lethe grows anxious about returning to the Backpacker's Inn with the older man he has been hanging out with. In a desperate move, he flees from a poker table and runs through a labyrinthine casino at breakneck speed.

This week's chapter of The Novel of Life takes us to Madrid, Spain, where Lethe Bashar follows a street up to the top of a hill and discovers a small gathering of festive Spaniards. Lethe sometimes leaves the Senora' apartment at night. He has a habit of going out to buy hashish. On this night however he sticks around the neighborhood and wanders the streets nearby. Upon witnessing the Spaniards, Lethe is struck by a longing to connect with people his age.

In the latest installment of Lethe in Spain, the Director calls the Senora's apartment with an unfavorable piece of news. Lethe returns to his room where he longingly looks over the edge of the balcony and tries to imagine his future in Spain.

In the next chapter to the Novel of Life, Lethe rides through the city of Madrid in a speeding car and ends up at Javier's parent's condo, where the Spaniards gather to celebrate.

Sometimes referred to a place where one can find one's textbook for free. I wouldn't count on that; surveying the Mathematics section, I found it limited. Still, considering what one pays for Math and Science books, a page of free downloads may be worth one's while.

This book does what it says on the tin. Over 240 pages the author provides short entries in alphabetical order in which she describes herself and her life. She says in the foreword: "I have not survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary. This is my story." And if you think that sounds boring that is where you would be wrong.

Millions of people have a queasy feeling that something is not right in the global economy - but they struggle to put their fingers on what exactly the problem is. Treasure Islands at last tells the real story of where it all went wrong. This is the great untold story of globalisation. Tax havens are not exotic, murky sideshows at the fringes of the world economy: they lie at its centre. Half of world trade flows, at least on paper, through tax havens. Every multinational corporation uses them routinely. The biggest users of tax havens by far are not terrorists, spivs, celebrities or Mafiosi - but banks. Tax havens are the ultimate source of strength for our global elites. Just as European nobles once consolidated their unaccountable powers in fortified castles, to better subjugate and extract tribute from the surrounding peasantry, so financial capital has coalesced in their modern equivalent today: the tax havens. In these fortified nodes of secret, unaccountable political and economic power, financial and criminal interests have come together to capture local political systems and turn the havens into their own private law-making factories, protected against outside interference by the world's most powerful countries - most especially Britain. Treasure Islands will, for the first time, show the blood and guts of just how they do it. Tax havens aren't just about tax. They are about escape - escape from criminal laws, escape from creditors, escape from tax, escape from prudent financial regulation - above all, escape from democratic scrutiny and accountability. Tax havens get rich by taking fees for providing these escape routes. This is their core line of business. It is what they do. These escape routes transform the merely powerful into the untouchable. "Don't tax or regulate us or we will flee offshore!" the financiers cry, and elected politicians around the world crawl on their bellies and capitulate. And so tax havens lead a global race to

* Explores the lifestyle of indigenous peoples of the world who exist in complete harmony with the natural world and with each other.* Reveals a model of a society built on trust, patience, and joy rather than anxiety, hurry, and acquisition.* Shows how we can reconnect with the ancient intuitive awareness of the world's original people. Deep in the mountainous jungle of Malaysia the aboriginal Sng'oi exist on the edge of extinction, though their way of living may ultimately be the kind of existence that will allow us all to survive. The Sng'oi - pre-industrial, pre-agricultural, semi-nomadic - live without cars or cell phones, without clocks or schedules in a lush green place where worry and hurry, competition and suspicion are not known. Yet these indigenous people - as do many other aboriginal groups - possess an acute and uncanny sense of the energies, emotions, and intentions of their place and the living beings who populate it, and trustingly follow this intuition, using it to make decisions about their actions each day. Psychologist Robert Wolff  lived with the Sng'oi, learned their language, shared their food, slept in their huts, and came to love and admire these people who respect silence, trust time to reveal and heal, and live entirely in the present with a sense of  joy. Even more, he came to recognize the depth of our alienation from these basic qualities of life. Much more than a document of a disappearing people, Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing holds a mirror to our own existence, allowing us to see how far we have wandered from the ways of the intuitive and trusting Sng'oi, and challenges us, in our fragmented world, to rediscover this humanity within ourselves.