The Luck Machine
The Luck Machine

Author: E.C. Tubb

Publisher: Gateway

Published: 2011-09-29

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0575107650

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"We talk of good luck and bad luck. We even wear, some of us, good luck charms and we tend to select certain lucky numbers if we enter a raffle. No, Norman, you can't tell me that we don't acknowledge the existence of something we call luck." The world, indeed the Universe, is surrounded by intangible energies of which man has, at present, only the vaguest notions. Electricity is such a force. Magnetism, gravitation . . . all once-unsuspected natural forces, now known for the realities they are. And so why not luck? And once the possibility of luck being an actual force is recognised the next step is obvious - a machine to harness its forces. But if one man can attract the good luck, someone, somewhere is due for bad luck. When the machine falls into the wrong hands, the inventors begin to wish they'd stuck to rabbits' feet and black cats . . .

The Serendipity Mindset
The Serendipity Mindset

Author: Christian Busch

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0593086023

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Good luck isn’t just chance—it can be learned and leveraged—and The Serendipity Mindset explains how you can use serendipity to make life better at work, at home—everywhere. Many of us believe that the great turning points and opportunities in our lives happen by chance, that they’re out of our control. Often we think that successful people—and successful companies and organizations—are simply luckier than the rest of us. Good fortune—serendipity—just seems to happen to them. Is that true? Or are some people better at creating the conditions for coincidences to arise and taking advantage of them when they do? How can we connect the dots of seemingly random events to improve our lives? In The Serendipity Mindset, Christian Busch explains that serendipity isn’t about luck in the sense of simple randomness. It’s about seeing links that others don’t, combining these observations in unexpected and strategic ways, and learning how to detect the moments when apparently random or unconnected ideas merge to form new opportunities. Busch explores serendipity from a rational and scientific perspective and argues that there are identifiable approaches we can use to foster the conditions to let serendipity grow. Drawing from biology, chemistry, management, and information systems, and using examples of people from all walks of life, Busch illustrates how serendipity works and explains how we can train our own serendipity muscle and use it to turn the unexpected into opportunity. Once we understand serendipity, Busch says, we become curators of it, and luck becomes something that no longer just happens to us—it becomes a force that we can grasp, shape, and hone. Full of exciting ideas and strategies, The Serendipity Mindset offers a clear blueprint for how we can cultivate serendipity to increase innovation, influence, and opportunity in every aspect of our lives.

The Myth of Luck
The Myth of Luck

Author: Steven D. Hales

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-07-23

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1350149314

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Humanity has thrown everything we have at implacable luck-novel theologies, entire philosophical movements, fresh branches of mathematics-and yet we seem to have gained only the smallest edge on the power of fortune. The Myth of Luck tells us why we have been fighting an unconquerable foe. Taking us on a guided tour of one of our oldest concepts, we begin in ancient Greece and Rome, considering how Plato, Plutarch, and the Stoics understood luck, before entering the theoretical world of probability and exploring how luck relates to theology, sports, ethics, gambling, knowledge, and present-day psychology. As we travel across traditions, times and cultures, we come to realize that it's not that as soon as we solve one philosophical problem with luck that two more appear, like heads on a hydra, but rather that the monster is altogether mythological. We cannot master luck because there is nothing to defeat: luck is no more than a persistent and troubling illusion. By introducing us to compelling arguments and convincing reasons that explain why there is no such thing as luck, we finally see why in a very real sense we make our own luck, that luck is our own doing. The Myth of Luck helps us to regain our own agency in the world - telling the entertaining story of the philosophy and history of luck along the way.

The Winds of Gath
The Winds of Gath

Author: E.C. Tubb

Publisher: Gateway

Published: 2011-09-29

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 0575106786

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This is the tale of Earl Dumarest. Space-wanderer, gladiator-for-hire, seeker of Man's forgotten home. Dumarest's search begins on the ghost-world of Gath, where he becomes unwilling champion of the Matriarch of Kund, and must undergo a fight-to-the-death at stormtime. Victory could give Dumarest his first clue to the whereabouts of the planet he fled from as a child - an obscure world scarred by ancient wars, which lies countless light years from the thickly populated centre of the galaxy; a world no-one else in the inhabited universe believed exists. Earth, the birthplace of Man. (First published 1967)

The Grand Wheel
The Grand Wheel

Author: Barrington J. Bayley

Publisher: Gateway

Published: 2011-09-29

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 0575102101

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When empires hung on the turn of a card... Cheyne Scarne was a gambler - a lucky one. What he didn't know about randomatics wasn't worth knowing. He had brains to get right to the heart of the Grand Wheel - the syndicate that controlled all illegal activity in the planets under human control. But what Scarne had staked to get that far was chickenfeed compared to what he would risk to get into the real big time - the massive intergalactic combine that dwarfed the empires of mere men. For Scarne, double-crossing at every deal, had laid his life on the line to win a game where no one knew the value of the cards and the rules changed with every trick!

The Luck Archive
The Luck Archive

Author: Mark Menjivar

Publisher: Trinity University Press

Published: 2015-06-09

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 1595342508

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Artist Mark Menjivar was in an antique bookshop in Fort Wayne, Indiana, when he found 4 four-leaf clovers pressed between the yellowed pages of an aged copy of 1000 Facts Worth Knowing. Their discovery beguiled Menjivar so much that he began a multiyear exploration into the concept of luck and its intersections with belief, culture, superstition, and tradition in people’s lives. Menjivar has spent hours and days engaging people in airplanes, tattoo shops, bingo halls, international grocery stores, public parks, baseball stadiums, and voodoo shops—and out on the streets and in their homes. Along the way he documented his findings to create a physical archive that contains hundreds of objects (rings, underwear, food items, clovers, horses, pigs, herbs, rainbows, lottery strategies, seeds, day trader insights, statues, patches, crystals, spices) and the stories and pictures that go with them. Through photographs and first person accounts, The Luck Archive takes the best of these ideas, thoughts, and objects and gives readers a glimpse into the cultures and superstitions of a colorful array of humanity.

Two Worlds
Two Worlds

Author: Nancy Matz

Publisher: Nancy Matz

Published: 1994-09

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9780964780200

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Those Were the Days, Tovarish
Those Were the Days, Tovarish

Author: George Oscar Lee

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2003-12-02

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1469111829

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MAKSIM ZIEMTSOV is in a privileged position at the Soviet Union in 1980s. Son of a high ranking Red Army officer, Hero of the Soviet Union he holds the position of Assistant Curator of Moscows prestigious Ostankino Museum. Yet, he is chaffing at the bit .Depended on the chain of command of the Communist system, he is subject to the whim of every link. Series of apparatchiks from his immediate superior to the Secretary of the Communist Party control his life. A chance meeting with a Swiss diplomat and a subsequent trip to his country open his eyes to a different world. After inhaling the breath of freedom he steals, smuggles, illegally crosses borders and winds up in Canada. The other characters in the book, his Jewish mother, his sister in law a concert pianist, her husband Yefim and a touring American dentist exert some influence on him but ultimately it is his own drive for a better life which determines his decisions. A murder and rape attempt are also part of spellbinding story.

Machine Learning for Civil and Environmental Engineers
Machine Learning for Civil and Environmental Engineers

Author: M. Z. Naser

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 610

ISBN-13: 1119897602

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Accessible and practical framework for machine learning applications and solutions for civil and environmental engineers This textbook introduces engineers and engineering students to the applications of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and machine intelligence (MI) in relation to civil and environmental engineering projects and problems, presenting state-of-the-art methodologies and techniques to develop and implement algorithms in the engineering domain. Through real-world projects like analysis and design of structural members, optimizing concrete mixtures for site applications, examining concrete cracking via computer vision, evaluating the response of bridges to hazards, and predicating water quality, and energy expenditure in buildings, this textbook offers readers in-depth case studies with solved problems that are commonly faced by civil and environmental engineers. The approaches presented range from simplified to advanced methods, incorporating coding-based and coding-free techniques. Professional engineers and engineering students will find value in the step-by-step examples that are accompanied by sample databases and codes for readers to practice with. Written by a highly qualified professional with significant experience in the field, Machine Learning includes valuable information on: The current state of machine learning and causality in civil and environmental engineering as viewed through a scientometrics analysis, plus a historical perspective Supervised vs. unsupervised learning for regression, classification, and clustering problems Details explainable and causal methods for practical engineering problems Database development, outlining how an engineer can effectively collect and verify appropriate data to be used in machine intelligence analysis A framework for machine learning adoption and application, covering key questions commonly faced by practitioners This textbook is a must-have reference for undergraduate/graduate students to learn concepts on the use of machine learning, for scientists/researchers to learn how to integrate machine learning into civil and environmental engineering, and for design/engineering professionals as a reference guide for undertaking MI design, simulation, and optimization for infrastructure.