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The Return back to the Facility (by S.K. Ballinger) - 0 views

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    ""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
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    ""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
thinkahol *

Time isn't what it used to be - 0 views

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    Time isn't what it used to be  TIME is not what it used to be. Once a flowing river whose current we passively monitored, time is now more properly understood as something constructed by the brain and personalised by culture. We have relationships with time; we fight it and manipulate it. Into this arena steps Eva Hoffman with her poetically scientific and austerely titled Time. Hoffman is on an exploration to become intimate with time, motivated by her sense that our interaction with time has changed. Our societies have become obsessed with time and timekeeping, both in the workplace and at home. Jet travel manipulates our experience of day-night cycles and seasons, while biomedical science races to increase our lifespan yet further. At the other end of the spectrum, new technologies adapt our minds to the ever-briefer scales of micro and nano. Hoffman covers a lot of ground, from physics (why time flows in only one direction) to biology (the circadian rhythm and sleep) to neuroscience (how temporality is constructed by the brain). She addresses questions of time and consciousness, including the uniquely human ability to envision large vistas of past or future. Perceived time is illuminated by disease states such as Alzheimer's disease or Korsakoff's syndrome, in which one's time narrative becomes disorganised, and by fantasies and dreams, in which the unconscious brain does not necessarily commit to a temporal narrative at all. Hoffman also investigates individual differences in how people treat time (those who leave parties early versus those who have to be shooed out at the end) as well as cultural differences (communities in which haste amounts to a breach of ethics, for instance). A recurring theme is that the human capacity to manipulate our environment ushers in new complexities to the basic biology of time. For example, while other animals age and die on a strict schedule, humans do everything in their power to control that timing. And the book is full of
thinkahol *

The Book | Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the men who stole the world | A book by Nic... - 0 views

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    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
thinkahol *

'World Wide Mind' - Total Connectedness, and Its Consequences - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    Imagine, Michael Chorost proposes, that four police officers on a drug raid are connected mentally in a way that allows them to sense what their colleagues are seeing and feeling. Tony Vittorio, the captain, is in the center room of the three-room drug den. He can sense that his partner Wilson, in the room on his left, is not feeling danger or arousal and thus has encountered no one. But suddenly Vittorio feels a distant thump on his chest. Sarsen, in the room on the right, has been hit with something, possibly a bullet fired from a gun with a silencer. Vittorio glimpses a flickering image of a metallic barrel pointed at Sarsen, who is projecting overwhelming shock and alarm. By deducing how far Sarsen might have gone into the room and where the gunman is likely to be standing, Vittorio fires shots into the wall that will, at the very least, distract the gunman and allow Sarsen to shoot back. Sarsen is saved; the gunman is dead. That scene, from his new book, "World Wide Mind," is an example of what Mr. Chorost sees as "the coming integration of humanity, machines, and the Internet." The prediction is conceptually feasible, he tells us, something that technology does not yet permit but that breaks no known physical laws.
jimmy4559

String Bridge by Jessica Bell (book review) - 0 views

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    Melody, an Australian living in Greece, decides she wants it all: to combine who she used to be with who she is now. She's ready to pick up her guitar again and play gigs as well as pursue a chance to further her editorial career while being a wife and mother. Yet nothing is life is ever so simple. Jessica says: I wrote String Bridge because I wanted to break into the women's fiction market and steer it away from the stereotypically glorified woman that is most commonly portrayed today. Not every woman is inspirational to others. Not every woman can leave their comfort zone to better their future. But, so what? Does that mean a less strong-minded woman doesn't have an interesting story to tell? Definitely not.
microcerpt

Stanley Swanson-Breed of a Werewolf - 0 views

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    "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
thinkahol *

‪Elizabeth Warren - The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers... - 0 views

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    Elizabeth Warren discusses how the dreams of the middle class american family are being depleted by the dramatic increase in bankruptcies and foreclosures. Warren discusses the role that credit card companies and ballooning interests rates have played in rapidly increasing mortgage rates as well as the how the over consumption myth is clouding our understanding of the average middle class family, who is in fact experiencing a lower standard of living than their parents and still finding themselves one payment away from losing their home. Elizabeth Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and chaired the Congressional Oversight Panel created to investigate the U.S. banking bailout . This program originally aired in April 2004. it is being re-aired because Professor Warren's predictions of economic disasters and the reasons for them have proven correct, and she is a candidate to head a commission to guard against recurrence. The Massachusetts School of Law also presents information on important current affairs to the general public in television and radio broadcasts, an intellectual journal, conferences, author appearances, blogs and books. For more information visit http://www.mslaw.edu
suzain johan

Different types of sentences - 0 views

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    What is a sentence? A sentence is a word or phrase that has a complete sense. It begins with a capital letter. Example: Jackie is my best friend. A sentence is incomplete if there is no mind or thought at all. Example: My friend. Our leader. With all my love. His mother.
thinkahol *

What the Bible Says - And Doesn't Say - About Homosexuality - 0 views

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    In fact, the Bible accepts sexual practices that we condemn and condemns sexual practices that we accept. Lots of them! Here are a few examples. DEUTERONOMY 22:13-21If it is discovered that a bride is not a virgin, the Bible demands that she be executed by stoning immediately.DEUTERONOMY 22:22If a married person has sex with someone else's husband or wife, the Bible commands that both adulterers be stoned to death.MARK 10:1-12Divorce is strictly forbidden in both Testaments, as is remarriage of anyone who has been divorced.LEVITICUS 18:19The Bible forbids a married couple from having sexual intercourse during a woman's period. If they disobey, both shall be executed.MARK 12:18-27If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered by biblical law to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir.DEUTERONOMY 25:11-12If a man gets into a fight with another man and his wife seeks to rescue her husband by grabbing the enemy's genitals, her hand shall be cut off and no pity shall be shown her.
thinkahol *

WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson - YouTube - 0 views

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    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.
thinkahol *

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost: A Declaration for Independence... - 0 views

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    If, as Lessig conclusively demonstrates, Congress is indifferent to the will of the people and to democratic debate - because it has been captured by monied interests to whose interests it exclusively attends - then the people lose the ability to affect what government does in any realm. It doesn't make much difference which problem you believe is most pressing: this is the dynamic that lies at the heart of it. Inaction on climate issues is due to the power of polluters and energy companies; the power of the private health insurance industry blocks fundamental health-care reform; endless war and civil liberties abuses are sustained by the power of the surveillance and National Security State industries; and a failure to achieve real Wall Street reform is due to the fact that, as Sen. Dick Durbin amazingly acknowledged about the institution in which he serves, "the banks frankly own the place." Without finding an effective way to address that overarching problem, the only recourse for citizens becomes either passive acceptance of their powerlessness (i.e., apathy and withdrawal) or disruption and unrest fomented outside of the electoral system (the driving ethos of OccupyWallStreet).
thinkahol *

Being No One - The MIT Press - 3 views

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    According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.
David Leonhardt

Books are back - in a tactile way - 0 views

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    What is it about a physical book? There is something about holding a book and turning the page that is somehow, comforting. What is even more reassuring is that book sales are resurging with more than 825M print books sold in 2021, an increase of more than 8% according to this article.
jimmy4559

This is Life by Dan Rhodes (book review) - 0 views

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    This is Life is a missing baby mystery and an enchanted Parisian adventure. Hand in hand with lovable heroine Aurelie Renard, you will see life as you've never seen it before, discover the key to great art, witness the true cost of love, and learn how all these things may be controlled by the in-breath of a cormorant. Chock-full of charming characters and hilarious set-pieces this is a hugely enjoyable novel that will make you see life anew.
jimmy4559

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (book review) - 0 views

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    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.
jimmy4559

The Happy Numbers of Julius Miles by Jim Keeble (book review) - 0 views

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    The Roman gods may be history but Cupid's not dead in fact he's had a sex change, is living in London and goes by the name Felicity; she drinks too much and pops too many pills but it's still business as usual for this Cupid. Her current target is one Julius Miles, a tall, socially-awkward statistician and everything is going by the numbers under the woman who is top of her list dies and Felicity finds she can't move onto Plan B as easily as she might have hoped and turns detective.
thinkahol *

The Blog : Twilight of Violence : Sam Harris - 0 views

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    Steven Pinker is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, the author of several magnificent books about the human mind, and one of the most influential scientists on earth. He is also my friend, an occasional mentor, and an advisor to my nonprofit foundation, Project Reason.Steve's new book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Reviewing it for the New York Times Book Review, the philosopher Peter Singer called it "a supremely important book." I have no doubt that it is, and I very much look forward to reading it. In the meantime, Steve was kind enough to help produce a written interview for this blog.
thinkahol *

Book release: With Liberty and Justice for Some - Salon.com - 0 views

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    I'm genuinely excited today to announce the release of my new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. As of this morning, it is available in bookstores as well as for shipping online. The book focuses on what I began realizing several years ago is the crucial theme tying together most of the topics I write about: America's two-tiered justice system - specifically, the way political and financial elites are now vested with virtually absolute immunity from the rule of law even when they are caught committing egregious crimes, while ordinary Americans are subjected to the world's largest and one of its harshest and most merciless penal states even for trivial offenses. As a result, law has been completely perverted from what it was intended to be - the guarantor of an equal playing field which would legitimize outcome inequalities - into its precise antithesis: a weapon used by the most powerful to protect their ill-gotten gains, strengthen their unearned prerogatives, and ensure ever-expanding opportunity inequality. This is how I described that development in the book:
amby kdp

BuDpdt9CQAE6lOx.jpg large - 0 views

shared by amby kdp on 17 Nov 14 - No Cached
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    Are you new to learn Spanish Language? Looking somewhere to learn Spanish? There are many ways that you can use. The best way to learn Spanish is to buy a Spanish Learning book. Book is the least expensive way to start. Here is a well written Spanish Learning Book for Beginners. "How To Learn Spanish For Beginners" is the best Spanish learning book, which will really help you to understand the sounds and structure of the language. It consists of consists of examples of mostly commonly used phrases, commonly used greetings, commonly used Help and Directions, Wish Someone Something, Spanish Expressions and Words written in Spanish to English. Download the Book from here - http://www.amazon.com/How-Learn-Spanish-Beginners-Phrases-ebook/dp/B00L85OCLE/.
amby kdp

Want To Live Healthy, Grow Better And Lose Weight? - 0 views

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    It is an E-book that provides insight about the reason to stay healthy. The extreme work pressure and hectic working schedules is leading you towards stress and fatigue. Life is all about to enjoy every moment but stressful life and increasing competition is not letting you enjoy peaceful time. It has been seen that anxiety attacks to those people who live a very stressful life. The book helps you to understand the importance of eating healthy, staying nourished. When you eat right, you not only stay healthy but need not to fight to get perfect body curves.
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