This “acerbic yet compassionate” meditation on humanity by the acclaimed actor and playwright offers “curiosity, thoughtfulness, sharp logic, deep emotion” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Beloved actor and Obie Award–winning playwright Wallace Shawn has been an incisive commentator on civilization and its discontents for decades. Now, having recently passed the age of seventy and watched Donald Trump claim the presidency, he offers a late-stage critique of his species, which he sees as being divided between the lucky and the unlucky. In Night Thoughts, Shawn takes the lucky—himself included—to task for their complacency while offering fascinating reflections on “civilization, morality, Beethoven, 11th-century Japanese court poetry, and his hopes for a better world, among other topics” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
This collection contains a selection of recent work on people’s production of figurative language (metaphoric, ironic, metonymic, hyperbolic, ...) and similarly of figurative expression in visual media and artefact design. The articles illuminate issues such as why and under what circumstances people produce figurative expression and how it is moulded by their aims. By focusing on production, the intention is to help stimulate more academic research on it and redress historically lower levels of published work on generation than on understanding of figurative expression. The contributions stretch across various academic disciplines—mainly psychology, cognitive linguistics and applied linguistics, but with a representation also of philosophy and artificial intelligence—and across different types of endeavour—theoretical investigation and model building, experimental studies, and applications focussed work (for instance, figurative expression in product design and online support groups). There is also a wide-ranging introductory chapter that touches on areas outside the scope of the contributed articles and discusses difficult issues such as a complex interplay of production and understanding.
We all daydream; we've all experienced that moment when we suddenly realise that instead of paying attention in a meeting or reading a book, our mind has wandered. In that moment our conscious mind has detached from the current task at hand and drifted elsewhere. Our attention is a powerful lens which allows us to pick out and filter relevant details from the vast amounts of information our brains receive – so how does our brain decide where to go when it wanders, why does it focus on one thing over another? How important is daydreaming and why do we do it? Traditionally daydreaming was considered to be a single state of mind. However, recent research has shown that not only are there different states of daydreaming, these states are actually governed by different neurological pathways, meaning not all mind wandering is the same! Here, Arnaud Delorme PhD examines the science and theory behind why we daydream, examining its potential purpose. He shows you how to tame your 'monkey mind' and offers easy techniques that will enable you to develop the skill of mind wandering to improve your mood and foster greater creativity.
From Within By: B.M. Stott The town of Gardall is set in a land far away. A land where elves and humans exist together. A land where dragons are also said to live and breathe. Here a small group ventures out to protect the town from attack by trolls, a menacing bunch that attempts to advance from the moors. Calira, Bronwyn, Zye, and Kriso, held in high regard by the folk in Gardall, work to make the land a peaceful place to live. Most individuals here have a tether to the land, an ability or abilities that they discover as they age, and all show tolerance and respect to others in a way that they themselves would like others to respect them. Together, the four are formidable in battle, even without their own personal abilities. When a well-kept man with oily hair and a moustache approaches Zye with a request for his help, he offers Zye a chance to turn a wish into reality. But is this stranger’s promise too good to be true, changing Gardall’s group of four forever? A story of fantasy, intrigue, and love, From Within is about living life with truth and honesty, respecting others and all things, and recognizing the power of Karma.
While education is an inherently political field and practice, and while the political struggles that radical philosophy takes up necessarily involve education, there remains much to be done at the intersection of education and radical philosophy. That so many intense political struggles today actually center educational processes and institutions makes this gap all the more pressing. Yet in order for this work to be done, we need to begin to establish common frameworks and languages in and with which to move. Keywords in Radical Philosophy and Education takes up this crucial and urgent task. Dozens of emerging and leading activists, organizers, and scholars assemble a collective body of concepts to interrogate, provoke, and mobilize contemporary political, economic, and social struggles. This wide-ranging edited collection covers key and innovative philosophical and educational themes—from animals, sex, wind, and praxis, to studying, podcasting, debt, and students. This field-defining work is a necessary resource for all activists and academics interested in exploring the latest conceptual contributions growing out of the intersection of social struggles and the university. Contributors are: Rebecca Alexander, Barbara Applebaum, David Backer, Jesse Bazzul, Brian Becker, Jesse Benjamin, Matt Bernico, Elijah Blanton, Polina-Theopoula Chrysochou, Clayton Cooprider, Katie Crabtree, Noah De Lissovoy, Sandra Delgado, Dean Dettloff, Zeyad El Nabolsy, Derek R. Ford, Raúl Olmo Fregoso Bailón, Michelle Gautreaux, Salina Gray, Aashish Hemrajani, Caitlin Howlett, Khuram Hussain, Petar Jandrić, Colin Jenkins, Kelsey Dayle John, Lenore Kenny, Tyson E. Lewis, Curry Malott, Peter McLaren, Glenn Rikowski, Marelis Rivera, Alexa Schindel, Steven Singer, Ajit Singh, Nicole Snook, Devyn Springer, Sara Tolbert, Katherine Vroman, Anneliese Waalkes, Chris Widimaier, Savannah Jo Wilcek, David Wolken, Jason Wozniak, and Weili Zhao.
Freud saw each of his visits to Rome as a means of experimenting, in his private life with his several selves and his personal relationships, his sexual proclivities, his private obsessions and his literary interests to such a point, that he eventually came to see himself as a Roman and Rome as Freudian! One consequence of this, is that anecdotes of his visits to Rome have, in a sense, adhered to the eternal city itself, requiring a personal visit following what trails might remain of Freud’s adventures there. To go there is to move closer to Henri Bergson’s theme of the union of body and soul, that within matter that pure perception places us, and it is really into spirit that we penetrate by means of memory, which for Bergson is the interpenetration of past and present. Or should I say, an intuitive kind of feeling I get when I actually put myself in the same situation, in the same place. Interpreted by Ken Evans, a London based Sociologist-Philosopher
Niall didn't want to know. He thought he didn't care what had happened to his mother after she disappeared all those years ago. But, the past has a way of rising from the, er, dead when least expected. Niall regrets answering that mid-morning phone call. In the past few years, Niall's learned to open up his heart an inch or two. He doesn't like it one bit, but it's proving impossible to slam it shut again. Of course, his beloved husband, Mat, and the few people he thinks of as friends rally around him after he learns Ana's remains have been found--but will they be enough? Will the discovery bring him closure, or will it open a whole new can of worms? Niall's guess is worms, but he's a glass-half-full guy. Full Disclosure is a Veiled Intentions novella set a few years after Black Moon. It is book four in the series and cannot be read as a standalone.
DEVOTED WIFE HIDDEN QUEEN POWERFUL PRIESTESS Mariam knew she would marry Yeshua and was aware of the work expected of them. They both needed education at the mystery schools of their time to be able to fulfill their mission. Through her initiations at the university surrounding the Library of Alexandria and at Ephesus, she becomes a powerful and dangerous priestess. What has been chosen to be revealed, and what has been masterfully hidden, has made the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene even more alluring. Veiled in mystery and obscurity, this fascination has beeen amplified as more historical facts have come to light, showing a story that is richer and more surprising than any could have imagined. “Rituals in Sacred Stone, Part One” takes place while she is trained as a priestess. Her rituals are presented in mesmerizing details, allowing the reader to follow her as she becomes a spiritual technician. Part Two will show how she used her knowledge as she worked next to her husband in Jerusalem and Part Three will follow her in exile in France. This fascinating trilogy is a work of visionary historical fiction.
Although many depictions of the city in prose, poetry, and visual art can be found dating from earlier periods in human history, Obsession, Aesthetics, and the Iberian City emphasizes a particular phase in urban development. This is the quintessentially modern city that comes into being in the nineteenth century. In social terms, this nineteenth-century city is the product of a specialist class of planners engaged in what urban theorist Henri Lefebvre has called the bourgeois science of modern urbanism. One thinks first of the large scale and the wide boulevards of Baron Georges von Haussmann’s Paris or the geometrical planning vision of Ildefons Cerdà’s Barcelona. The modern science of urban design famously inaugurates a new way of thinking the city; urban modernity is now defined by the triumph of exchange value over use value, and the lived city is eclipsed by the planned city as it is envisioned by capitalists, builders, and speculators. Thus urban plans, architecture, literary prose and poetry, documentary cinema and fiction film, and comics art serve as windows into our modern obsession with urban aesthetics. This book investigates the social relationships implied in our urban modernity by concentrating on four cities that are in broad strokes representative of the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of the Iberian peninsula. Each chapter introduces but moves well beyond an identifiable urban area in a given city, noting the cultural obsession implicit in its reconstruction as well as the role of obsession in its artistic representation of the urban environment. These areas are Barcelona’s Eixample district, Madrid’s Linear City, Lisbon’s central Baixa area, and Bilbao’s Seven Streets, or Zazpikaleak. The theme of obsession—which as explored is synonymous with the concept of partial madness—provides a point of departure for understanding the interconnection of both urbanistic and artistic discourses.
Sheila McDonald is sixty and recently retired from a job she loved. She looks forward to her husband’s imminent retirement and to the plans they’ve started to make together but John is consumed by work and dismissive of her demands. He, and daughter Caitlin, feel she should be content with her lot and focus on family responsibilities including caring for her grandson Milo. Sheila tries to do what’s expected but struggles to find meaning in her new life and feels emotionally distant from John. She takes up a short-term assignment back at work and joins a local history club but is made to feel uncomfortable and is ultimately humiliated by two men she believed valued her company and insights. She gradually opens up to her husband, and they begin to reconnect as she carves out a plan for the future – this time on her terms. This contemporary novel set in affluent Edinburgh explores a woman’s right to respect and her journey towards rediscovering love.
