An Anthropology of Puzzles argues that the human brain is a "puzzling organ" which allows humans to literally solve their own problems of existence through puzzle format. Noting the presence of puzzles everywhere in everyday life, Marcel Danesi looks at puzzles in society since the dawn of history, showing how their presence has guided large sections of human history, from discoveries in mathematics to disquisitions in philosophy. Danesi examines the cognitive processes that are involved in puzzle making and solving, and connects them to the actual physical manifestations of classic puzzles. Building on a concept of puzzles as based on Jungian archetypes, such as the river crossing image, the path metaphor, and the journey, Danesi suggests this could be one way to understand the public fascination with puzzles. As well as drawing on underlying mental archetypes, the act of solving puzzles also provides an outlet to move beyond biological evolution, and Danesi shows that puzzles could be the product of the same basic neural mechanism that produces language and culture. Finally, Danesi explores how understanding puzzles can be a new way of understanding our human culture.
Can the subaltern joke? Christi A. Merrill answers by invoking riddling, oral-based fictions from Hindi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, and Urdu that dare to laugh at what traditions often keep hidden-whether spouse abuse, ethnic violence, or the uncertain legacies of a divinely wrought sex change. Herself a skilled translator, Merrill uses these examples to investigate the expectation that translated work should allow the non-English-speaking subaltern to speak directly to the English-speaking reader. She plays with the trope of speaking to argue against treating a translated text as property, as a singular material object to be "carried across" (as trans-latus implies.) She refigures translation as a performative "telling in turn," from the Hindi word anuvad, to explain how a text might be multiply possessed. She thereby challenges the distinction between "original" and "derivative," fundamental to nationalist and literary discourse, humoring our melancholic fixation on what is lost. Instead, she offers strategies for playing along with the subversive wit found in translated texts. Sly jokes and spirited double entendres, she suggests, require equally spirited double hearings. The playful lessons offered by these narratives provide insight into the networks of transnational relations connecting us across a sea of differences. Generations of multilingual audiences in India have been navigating this "Ocean of the Stream of Stories" since before the 11th century, arriving at a fluid sense of commonality across languages. Salman Rushdie is not the first to pose crucial questions of belonging by telling a version of this narrative: the work of non-English-language writers like Vijay Dan Detha, whose tales are at the core of this book, asks what responsibilities we have to make the rights and wrongs of these fictions come alive "age after age."
"Humans are the only animals who create and solve puzzles--for the sheer pleasure of it--and there is no obvious genetic reason why we would do this. Marcel Danesi explores the psychology of puzzles and puzzling, with scores of classic examples. His pioneering book is both entertaining and enlightening." --Will Shortz, Crossword Editor, The New York Times "... Puzzle fanatics will enjoy the many riddles, illusions, cryptograms and other mind-benders offered for analysis." --Psychology Today "... a bristlingly clear... always intriguing survey of the history and rationale of puzzles.... A] splendid study...." --Knight Ridder Newspapers
Amateur sleuth and professional trouble magnet Lexi Carmichael gets her geeky adventure on in three full length mysteries! No Biz Like Show Biz (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery, Book 4)Lexi Carmichael: helping geeks everywhere get some. Okay, so it’s not exactly as it seems, but that’s what’s happening on the dating reality show called Geeks Get Some that I, geek extraordinaire Lexi Carmichael, have been called to work on. Not that I’m a fan of reality shows (I can barely deal with my own reality). Still, I’ve been sent to Hollywood to find a hacker who’s screwing with the results of the show’s online voting system. So what happens when I get there? Well, the producers convince me to continue my investigation from the inside. And what should be an easy hunt for the hacker turns ugly when he sets his sights on me. Add to that a studio obsessed with ratings, a bunch of nerdy contestants, and my own confusing love life, and unraveling this mystery might make me a star...or get me killed. No Test for the Wicked (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery, Book 5)A geek’s worst nightmare: going back to high school Returning to high school is not something I ever wanted to do over—it was awful the first time around. So why do I have to go back as part of a new undercover assignment? Because the universe loves playing jokes on me, obviously. I’ve been ordered to go all 21 Jump Street and track down the students who are breaking into the computer system, changing grades, and causing all kinds of havoc. Although I’m not thrilled about my new gig, at least it gives me something to do other than worry over the fact that I now have a boyfriend. And no freaking idea what to get him for Christmas. Or it did give me something else to worry about, until I stumbled across a more sinister threat. I was shocked to find distinct traces of a group of international hackers inside the network. What exactly have I gotten myself into? No Woman Left Behind (A Lexi Carmichael Mystery, Book 6)Things are a bit bumpy in Geek Paradise My mother’s life goal has been to see me, geek extraordinaire Lexi Carmichael, happily married. So bringing my first boyfriend, Slash, home for dinner has me hyperventilating. Things get a lot worse when bullets start flying over our corn chowder. Now the entire alphabet soup of government agencies want my help finding the man behind the attack—Johannes Broodryk, a cyber mercenary I foiled on my last case. He wants revenge and he’s taken something of mine to ensure I’ll play, so it’s game on. But the government has its own agenda, and Slash is not on board with the plan. Although I’m more comfortable with computer code than commandos, I’ve been assigned a team of Navy SEALs to help bring Broodryk down. The question is, will they survive me long enough to solve his cryptic puzzles and save the day?
Lexi Carmichael: helping geeks everywhere get some. Okay, so it’s not exactly as it seems, but that’s what’s happening on the dating reality show called Geeks Get Some that I, geek extraordinaire Lexi Carmichael, have been called to work on. Not that I’m a fan of reality shows (I can barely deal with my own reality). Still, I’ve been sent to Hollywood to find a hacker who’s screwing with the results of the show’s online voting system. So what happens when I get there? Well, the producers convince me to continue my investigation from the inside. And what should be an easy hunt for the hacker turns ugly when he sets his sights on me. Add to that a studio obsessed with ratings, a bunch of nerdy contestants, and my own confusing love life, and unraveling this mystery might make me a star...or get me killed. This book is approximately 75,000 words Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Alissa Davis Other Books in the Lexi Carmichael Mystery Series: No One Lives Twice (Book 1) No One To Trust (Book 2) No Money Down (Book 2.5) — Novella No Place Like Rome (Book 3) No Biz Like Showbiz (Book 4) No Test for the Wicked (Book 5) No Woman Left Behind (Book 6) No Room for Error (Book 7) No Strings Attached (Book 8) No Living Soul (Book 9) No Regrets (Book 10) And Coming Soon: No Stone Unturned (Book 11) No Title Yet (Book 12 — LOL!)
The author reminds us of what it means to be saved by grace, but in this work he is more concerned to explore what it means to live graciously as a result of that salvation. With this emphasis, he breaks new ground in the literature of grace.
Secrets, lies, and dead bodies. Just another week in the life of geek-girl Lexi Carmichael… Two full-length Lexi Carmichael novels included! No Place Like Rome Italy might seem like a long way to go to hide after a disastrous date. But when sexy Ùberhacker Slash (no, that’s not his real name) asks me to go with him to Rome on an investigation, the timing is sort of perfect. My messed-up love life becomes the least of my worries, though, after the dead body, the near-kidnapping and the discovery of a top secret encrypted file that even I can’t hack. With time running out, there’s only one thing to do: call in the legendary Zimmerman twins and my best fluent-in-Italian friend, Basia, to crack the code. Now if only someone could help me solve the mystery of whether Slash is flirting, or if all the kissing is just one of those “when in Rome” things… But when we finally uncover the secret someone would kill to keep, it’s up to me to solve the case and save the lives of my best friends. No Biz Like Showbiz Lexi Carmichael: helping geeks everywhere get some. Okay, so it’s not exactly as it seems, but that’s what’s happening on the dating reality show called Geeks Get Some that I, geek extraordinaire Lexi Carmichael, have been called to work on. Not that I’m a fan of reality shows (I can barely deal with my own reality). Still, I’ve been sent to Hollywood to find a hacker who’s screwing with the results of the show’s online voting system. So what happens when I get there? Well, the producers convince me to continue my investigation from the inside. And what should be an easy hunt for the hacker turns ugly when he sets his sights on me. Add to that a studio obsessed with ratings, a bunch of nerdy contestants, and my own confusing love life, and unraveling this mystery might make me a star...or get me killed. Originally published in 2013, 2014
In 1973 the firebombing of the Whiskey Au-Go-Go nightclub grabbed the headlines in Brisbane unlike any other disaster beforehand. 15 people were killed amid the inferno, the worst mass-murder ever in Australia. Rumours were rife. Detectives were forewarned, but was the firebombing part of an implausible notion to embark on an extortion racket? Or was it a scheme for insurance purposes? Perhaps it was the act of a disgruntled customer, a former employee, or someone owed money? Politicians from all sides of Parliament demanded quick answers. Unbeknown to but a few, early in the morning after the fire, Billy McCulkin was the first person interviewed by detectives while his wife and young daughters fled from their Highgate Hill house; and they only returned to their house after the arrests of John Stuart and Jim Finch. Later, Mrs McCulkin confided to her co-worker, as well as a neighbour, and her brother that she feared for her safety because she knew her husband and his associates were involved in both the Torino and Whiskey Au-Go-Go nightclub fires. During the months of anxiety for Mrs McCulkin, the courtroom appearances of Stuart and Finch heard repeated outbursts from them asserting that detectives had concocted a false verbal confession. The subsequent wire-swallowing protests by Stuart and Finch were extraordinary. Finch even whacked off a piece of his finger, but the self-mutilating efforts from both achieved nothing. The trial, being the longest and costliest staged in Queensland, proceeded without Stuart, or any legal representative for him, while he lay handcuffed to a hospital bed - a first for any Australian court when a life imprisonment term is mandatory. Not long after the Whiskey murder trial, and the fifth reported wire-swallowing protest from Stuart, Mrs Barbara McCulkin and her two daughters disappeared, murdered by Vince O’Dempsey and Gary Dubois, though they were not then brought to stand trial because the case was far too riddled with the standard 1970s police corruption. Interwoven around the Waterside Workers Union journal, Port News, as its publisher William Stokes’ account of his acquaintanceship with everyone concerned - including the bizarre Clockwork Orange gang and a nympho wife who believed she was demoniacally possessed - leads to a harrowing tale. Expect the unexpected.
This book deals with alchemy's rich, multifaceted tradition from three perspectives - history, psychology, and nomothetic science - something rarely seen in other books on the same subject. Part I - Alchemy: Histories concerns the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural intercourse that occasioned the rich tapestry of alchemical tropes, themes, narratives, and pursuits, addressing the harmonious fusion of Hellenistic nature philosophy, Gnostic mythology, and Egyptian crafts and metallurgical practices in late antiquity - and much more, including the alchemy's role during the Renaissance, its influence on Jacob Boehme’s theosophy, and its medieval imagery's integral role in Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. Part 2 - Alchemy: Processes of the Mind looks at the alchemical opus and its stages in the context of analytical, developmental, and clinical psychology, offering psychological interpretations of the Splendor Solis plates and integrated alchemical interpretations of personality, personal growth, and the human condition. Part 3 - Alchemy: The Noetic Science examines the empirical validity of alchemical theory and pursuit, addressing the viability of metallic transmutation, the theory of esoteric correspondences - the planet-metal connections - and how its animistic paradigm and principles of transformation might connect to more innovative, radical ideas emergent within the nomothetic disciplines.
