What if the key to changing your life--and yourself--is already in your hand? So many women struggle with what to do with their daily lives. They feel trapped in everyday drudgery and disappointment, in dull domestic duties, and in mundane jobs they despise. Where is the abundant, purposeful life they were promised? Kari Patterson shows readers the truth: in each unremarkable life lies an opportunity to see, know, love, and be utterly transformed by a God who meets everyone right where they are. Instead of stepping away from real life to find God, Patterson equips women with a six-step practice to move further in and meet Him in the humdrum moments of everyday existence. And when a woman's inner being is truly changed by the sacred, everything in her world changes too--right down to tackling the dirty dishes. Through entertaining narrative, candid real-life stories, Bible study, and practical instruction, Sacred Mundane guides individuals or small groups to discover the beautiful sacredness in the lives they already lead. Women who long to grow in God and make a real difference in the world--no matter how small--will reach eagerly for this book and the radical transformation it offers. "Our daily routine, with its mundane tasks and mindless repetition, is ultimately an offering of worship to God. What a great truth from a great God!" --Ann Byle, author of The Making of a Christian Bestseller and coauthor of Devotions for the Soul Surfer
Bruce Tate, author of the Jolt Award-winning Better, Faster, Lighter Java has an intriguing notion about the future of Java, and it's causing some agitation among Java developers. Bruce believes Java is abandoning its base, and conditions are ripe for an alternative to emerge. In Beyond Java, Bruce chronicles the rise of the most successful language of all time, and then lays out, in painstaking detail, the compromises the founders had to make to establish success. Then, he describes the characteristics of likely successors to Java. He builds to a rapid and heady climax, presenting alternative languages and frameworks with productivity and innovation unmatched in Java. He closes with an evaluation of the most popular and important programming languages, and their future role in a world beyond Java. If you are agree with the book's premise--that Java's reign is coming to an end--then this book will help you start to build your skills accordingly. You can download some of the frameworks discussed and learn a few new languages. This book will teach you what a new language needs to succeed, so when things do change, you'll be more prepared. And even if you think Java is here to stay, you can use the best techniques from frameworks introduced in this book to improve what you're doing in Java today.
A morally profound chamber piece, A Legend of the Future is a critique of morality. It takes place inside a spaceship after a crash takes place during a failed mission to Titan, one of the Saturn moons. The journey home forces the crew to face its innermost fears while coexisting with each other in a state of desperation. This mesmerizing novel, recalling Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: Space Odyssey, is a roman a clef about the intense pressures—economic, ideological, psychological—inside Socialist Cuba. Praise for A Legend of the Future "The best science fiction writer in Cuba; the only possible debate is which of his works is the best.... His trilogy of Spiral, A Legend of the Future, and Year 200 is still the best of Cuban science fiction.... With a very refined style and well-established scientific-social background, Agustín’s work surprises through its humanistic content. His concerns surrounding the meaning of life and the evolution of human beings put him in a privileged place among national writers.” —Cuenta Regresiva "The best and most popular novelist of this genre that the Island has ever given.... He is considered one of the principal exponents of Cuban science fiction, and he was undoubtedly the one who knew how to best combine solid scientific formation as plots and attractive characters with a confidence well-based in humanity’s socialist future.” —Yoss "One of the best science fiction writers in Cuba—and, until [his death], one of the best Cuban story tellers alive.... Today Agustín de Rojas’ work, from Spiral through Catharsis and Society, is admired by cult readers, pro-government thinkers, and elitists alike." —Félix Luis Viera, Cubaencuentro "The most elevated figure in Cuban science fiction." —Axxón Agustín de Rojas (1949-2011) is the patron saint of Cuban science fiction. A professor of the history of theater at the Escuela de Instructores de Arte in Villa Clara, he is the author of a canonical trilogy of novels: Espiral (Spiral, 1982), for which he was awarded the David Prize; La leyenda del futuro (The Legend of the Future, 1985) and El año 200 (The Year 200, 1990), all scheduled for publication in English translation by Restless Books. While influenced by Ray Bradbury and a translator of Isaac Asimov into Spanish, he aligned himself with the Soviet line of socialist realism defined by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky as well as by Ivan Antonovich Yefremov, author of The Andromeda Nebula, made into a movie directed by Yevgeni Sherstobitov and admired by de Rojas. In Cuban literature, he is said to have begun writing after reading Miguel Collazo’s El viaje (The Journey). After the fall of the Soviet Union, de Rojas stopped writing science fiction and embraced other themes such as Christianity, about which he wrote a novel called El publican (1997), about the disciples of Jesus Christ, that was awarded the Dulce María Loynaz Prize. He spent his last years persuaded—and persuading others—that Fidel Castro did not exist. Nick Caistor is a British journalist, non-fiction author, and translator of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He has translated Cesar Aira, Paulo Coelho, Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé, and Manuel Vázquez Montalban, and he has twice won the Valle-Inclán Prize for translation. He regularly contributes to Radio 4, the BBC World Service, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian. He lives in Norwich, England.
A provocative and inspiring look at the future of humanity and science from world-renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees Humanity has reached a critical moment. Our world is unsettled and rapidly changing, and we face existential risks over the next century. Various outcomes—good and bad—are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism. In this short, exhilarating book, renowned scientist and bestselling author Martin Rees argues that humanity’s prospects depend on our taking a very different approach to planning for tomorrow. The future of humanity is bound to the future of science and hinges on how successfully we harness technological advances to address our challenges. If we are to use science to solve our problems while avoiding its dystopian risks, we must think rationally, globally, collectively, and optimistically about the long term. Advances in biotechnology, cybertechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence—if pursued and applied wisely—could empower us to boost the developing and developed world and overcome the threats humanity faces on Earth, from climate change to nuclear war. At the same time, further advances in space science will allow humans to explore the solar system and beyond with robots and AI. But there is no “Plan B” for Earth—no viable alternative within reach if we do not care for our home planet. Rich with fascinating insights into cutting-edge science and technology, this accessible book will captivate anyone who wants to understand the critical issues that will define the future of humanity on Earth and beyond.
Written in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s—but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher—the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony: a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling “everything you need for suicide”; an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken; a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn’t join it as there’s no guarantee the logic will last; a sociable corpse misses his own funeral; an inventor gets a glimpse of the far-from-radiant communist future.
An eye-opening, mind-bending exploration of how mankind is reshaping its genetic future, based on the viral TED Talk series “Will Our Kids Be a Different Species?” and “The Next Species of Human.” Are you willing to engineer the DNA of your unborn children and grand-children to be healthier? Better looking? More intelligent? Why are rates of autism, asthma, and allergies exploding at an unprecedented pace? Why are humans living longer and having far fewer kids? Futurist Juan Enriquez and scientist Steve Gullans conduct a sweeping tour of how humans are changing the course of evolution for all species—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. For example: • What if life forms are limited only by the bounds of our imagination? Are designer babies and pets, de-extinction, even entirely newspecies fair game? • As humans, animals, and plants become ever more resistant to disease and aging, what will become the leading causes of death? • Man-machine interfaces may allow humans to live much longer. What will happen when we transfer parts of our “selves” into clones, into stored cells and machines? Though these harbingers of change are deeply unsettling, the authors argue we are also in an epoch of tremendous opportunity. Future humans, perhaps a more diverse, resilient, gentler, and intelligent species, may become better caretakers of the planet—but only if we make the right choices now. Intelligent, provocative, and optimistic, Evolving Ourselves is the ultimate guide to the next phase of life on Earth. Chosen by Nature magazine as a Fall 2016 season highlight.
The Guardian cartoonist relates the daily deadpan adventures of the last policeman living on the moon "Living on the moon...Whatever were we thinking? ...It seems so silly now.” The lunar colony is slowly winding down, like a small town circumvented by a new super highway. As our hero, the Mooncop, makes his daily rounds, his beat grows ever smaller, the population dwindles. A young girl runs away, a dog breaks off his leash, an automaton wanders off from the Museum of the Moon. Each day that the Mooncop goes to work, life gets a little quieter and a little lonelier. As in Goliath, Tom Gauld’s retelling of the Bible story, the focus in Gauld's science fiction is personal—no big explosions or grand reveals, just the incremental dissolution of an abandoned project and a person’s slow awakening to his own uselessness. Depicted in the distinctive, matter-of-fact style of his beloved Guardian strips, Mooncop is equal parts funny and melancholy. Gauld captures essential truths about humanity, making this a story of the past, present, and future, all in one.
