Dick Wolfsie is the world's cheeriest curmudgeon. Much of the world mystifies him; bad news for Dick, but great news for the many fans of his syndicated humour column, his video essays on TV, and his weekly Public Radio commentary. Chapters include Moping About The House, Moping About My Manhood, Matrimonial Mopiness, Moping About Money and more. In this book the author battles cell phones, chin exercisers, snoring dogs, out of control dandelions, ear buds, vacuum cleaners, leg cramps and security passwords.
Dr Wayne Somerville's Shallow Thought, Deep Mind gives you the knowledge and skills to succeed, thrive and make the world better. With stories, thought experiments and practical advice, Dr Somerville leads you from shallow thinking to the power of the deep mind. The human spirit is strong. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the human mind. But in this post-truth age, the ancient, simple ways of thinking and behaving that got us here threaten to take us out. Our thoughts and actions will determine what follows for us and the generations to come. We have been the problem. It is time to become the solution. Shallow Thought, Deep Mind is for everyone who takes on life's challenges and dreams of a brighter tomorrow. Drawing on his experiences as a clinical psychologist, horseman, bush regenerator and environmental activist, Dr Somerville guides you to discover who you really are and what you can achieve. Part 1 looks at shallow thought - what it is and how it can create trouble - and what it takes to find solutions to big problems. The book examines three challenges from the author's life: to find gentle therapies for psychological trauma, to develop a treatment for forest dieback and to protect rural communities from invasive gas field industrialisation. All these problems could only be solved by going beyond shallow thinking to the deep mind. Part 2 discusses the Key Mental Processes that determine all we know and do. Why 'key'? Because understanding and knowing how to use these capacities unlocks the power of the creative deep mind. Our conscious attention is limited: much goes on that we are not aware of. Dr Somerville takes us behind the scenes to show how we can use memory and imagination to learn from the past and to create the future, free ourselves from limiting beliefs, foster attitudes that generate success, break harmful word spells, employ powerful language to motivate ourselves and others, use our negative emotions positively, and tap into the subtle, but profound wisdom of our intuition and dreams.
A collection of inspirations for the uninspired, this work offers an antidote to the meaningful muses of the New Age. Designed for the natural born cynic, it contains thoughts on children, literature and losing your keys.
Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction: “Nicholas Carr has written a Silent Spring for the literary mind.”—Michael Agger, Slate “Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways. Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection. Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
In a radical reinterpretation of how the mind works, an eminent behavioral scientist reveals the illusion of mental depth Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental “surface” of conscious awareness lies a deep and complex set of inner beliefs, values, and desires that govern our thoughts, ideas, and actions, and that to know this depth is to know ourselves. In this profoundly original book, behavioral scientist Nick Chater contends just the opposite: rather than being the plaything of unconscious currents, the brain generates behaviors in the moment based entirely on our past experiences. Engaging the reader with eye-opening experiments and visual examples, the author first demolishes our intuitive sense of how our mind works, then argues for a positive interpretation of the brain as a ceaseless and creative improviser.
We always wanted planet Earth to perform better, and we sent some higher paradigm shifts inside the third-dimensional world of that planet. We gave them the perfect hint about almost everything. Leonardo said, "Everything is connected to everything else." Tesla mentioned, "3, 6, 9 is the key to the universe." Einstein contemplated, "The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Earthlings ignored our hint almost every time. *** A higher-dimensional species created a simulated universe to complete the chain of incidents that happened before. The level four parallel universe species grow aware of this simulation, and after Amanda's hypothesis on the Theory of Dimigliostasia, a civilization of Zatch planet explores four other equally advanced civilizations inside their galaxy. After the counterinsurgency conquest between five habitable worlds, Valmir realizes that higher-dimensional entities created a STAROLICTS (Subconscious Transformed Artificially Rooted Organic Legeme Implemented Cerebral Tran-manifested System) program to create their interferences inside different levels of the universe, and by uniting them, he develops an Omega Field Generator that can maneuver two cosmic strings to discover disputed enigmas like: Who is the creator of this universe? What happens after death? How can a human imagine? If this universe is a simulation, then who decides what we are? Who are we, and what will we become? Instagram: theprimethinker2035 Email address: [email protected] Twitter: @theprime2035
There comes a time in every girl's life, when she has to choose good or choose bad. Amy Asbury chose bad, hands down. Good meant wallflowers, secretaries and subservient wives. Bad meant power- and a possible escape from a life of secrets. At twelve years old she was trying to make sense of a drug-addicted father and his disturbing behavior. By fifteen she was dealing with horrendous depression, blackouts and rape. At sixteen she was in a mental institution for suicidal tendencies and violent behavior. She knew she could never be normal. The only place for a girl like her was Hollywood. Read the true story of the social ascent (and eventual decline) of a girl in the Sunset Strip music scene of the early 1990's. From crazy parties to glittered junkies and man-eating strippers, Amy has chronicled what life was like back in the days of excess and debauchery. It is not just a fascinating look into an amusing time in pop culture, but also details the mindset of a young woman trying to find confidence and self-worth in a life full of pain and chaos. The party came screeching to a halt when the Grunge movement took over and heroin became more prominent. How far off track can a person go before it's too late?
A mind-expanding, deeply humane tour of language by the bestselling author of Born on a Blue Day and Thinking in Numbers. Is vocabulary destiny? Why do clocks "talk" to the Nahua people of Mexico? Will A.I. researchers ever produce true human-machine dialogue? In this mesmerizing collection of essays, Daniel Tammet answers these and many other questions about the intricacy and profound power of language. In Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing, Tammet goes back in time to London to explore the numeric language of his autistic childhood; in Iceland, he learns why the name Blær became a court case; in Canada, he meets one of the world's most accomplished lip readers. He chats with chatbots; contrives an "e"-less essay on lipograms; studies the grammar of the telephone; contemplates the significance of disappearing dialects; and corresponds with native Esperanto speakers - in their mother tongue. A joyous romp through the world of words, letters, stories, and meanings, Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing explores the way communication shapes reality. From the art of translation to the lyricism of sign language, these essays display the stunning range of Tammet's literary and polyglot talents.
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2O16 PICK IN BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP WALL STREET JOURNAL BUSINESS BESTSELLER A BUSINESS BOOK OF THE WEEK AT 800-CEO-READ Master one of our economy’s most rare skills and achieve groundbreaking results with this “exciting” book (Daniel H. Pink) from an “exceptional” author (New York Times Book Review). Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep Work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way. In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill. 1. Work Deeply 2. Embrace Boredom 3. Quit Social Media 4. Drain the Shallows A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.
