Fans of poetry should read this regardless of how you feel about drugs... ...And anybody who's ever been curious about, or involved with drugs, in any way, you should read this regardless of how you feel about poetry. "Gargoyle" Never mind the broken wing, this is one of my favorite things. To still have him, you can't imagine how much joy it brings. He has a name... And we used to play a little game. He's shared my joy, and shared my pain... A drop of blood each time I broke a vein. It started with the eyes, and before I even realized, the blood began to fall like rain.
Hank is mowing his lawn when a horrifying blast rocks his world. He sees a mushroom cloud rise over a distant valley and runs for shelter in his fruit cellar. In a matter of minutes, the only life Hank knows has disappeared. Nine months after the nuclear bomb explodes, resources are stretched thin as greed, fear, and self-preservation trump morals, ethics, and civilized behavior. Led by his animalistic instinct to survive, Hank becomes a nomad as he attempts to escape the hordes of undead rising in his city as well as his own conscience. With his life now reduced to eluding the relentless rotting, walking corpses and lurking diseased hiders, Hank spends his few peaceful moments battling guilt for not pursuing his dream of becoming an ordained minister. As he struggles with his fading religious beliefs and the stark reality of not knowing who he can trust, he soon realizes he is not alone in this godless existence. From within the dark shadows, a new enemy emerges that poses an even greater threat than the undead. As the world sits on the brink of nuclear war in an effort to stop a cataclysmic infection, one man embarks on a perilous journey for survival without any idea that the government may have its own plans for his future.
Virus of the Mind is the first popular book devoted to the science of memetics, a controversial new field that transcends psychology, biology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Memetics is the science of memes, the invisible but very real DNA of human society. In Virus of the Mind, Richard Brodie carefully builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and others who have become fascinated with memes and their potential impact on our lives. But Richard goes beyond science and dives into the meat of the issue: is the emergence of this new science going to have an impact on our lives like the emergence of atomic physics did in the Cold War? He would say the impact will be at least as great. While atomic bombs affect everybody’s life, viruses of the mind touch lives in a more personal and more pernicious way. Mind viruses have already infected governments, educational systems, and inner cities, leading to some of the most pervasive and troublesome problems of society today: youth gangs, the welfare cycle, the deterioration of the public schools, and ever-growing government bureaucracy. Viruses of the mind are not a future worry: they are here with us now and are evolving to become better and better at their job of infecting us. The recent explosion of mass media and the information superhighway has made the earth a prime breeding ground for viruses of the mind. Will there be a mental plague? Will only some of us survive with our free will intact? Richard Brodie weaves together science, ethics, and current events as he raises these and other very disturbing questions about memes.
With sections on perception, memory, emotion, thought, consciousness, and the unconscious, "The Book of the Mind" is an imaginative bringing together of case notes, journals, and letters, that present humanity's most significant attempts to understand the mind and how it works.
By the time John Brown hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper's Ferry, Northern abolitionists had made him a “holy martyr” in their campaign against Southern slave owners. This Northern hatred for Southerners long predated their objections to slavery. They were convinced that New England, whose spokesmen had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern “slavocrats” like Thomas Jefferson. This malevolent envy exacerbated the South's greatest fear: a race war. Jefferson's cry, “We are truly to be pitied,” summed up their dread. For decades, extremists in both regions flung insults and threats, creating intractable enmities. By 1861, only a civil war that would kill a million men could save the Union.
In Regimens of the Mind, Sorana Corneanu proposes a new approach to the epistemological and methodological doctrines of the leading experimental philosophers of seventeenth-century England, an approach that considers their often overlooked moral, psychological, and theological elements. Corneanu focuses on the views about the pursuit of knowledge in the writings of Robert Boyle and John Locke, as well as in those of several of their influences, including Francis Bacon and the early Royal Society virtuosi. She argues that their experimental programs of inquiry fulfill the role of regimens for curing, ordering, and educating the mind toward an ethical purpose, an idea she tracks back to the ancient tradition of cultura animi. Corneanu traces this idea through its early modern revival and illustrates how it organizes the experimental philosophers’ reflections on the discipline of judgment, the study of nature, and the study of Scripture. It is through this lens, the author suggests, that the core features of the early modern English experimental philosophy—including its defense of experience, its epistemic modesty, its communal nature, and its pursuit of “objectivity”—are best understood.
A personal invitation to walk with God through of the great classics of Christian spirituality. This book of daily devotions is based upon The Cloud of Unknowing. In this edition Robinson sought to remain as true as possible to the voice of this medieval classic. Cloud Devotion follows the original Middle English text sentence by sentence, with Robinson’s own translation and paraphrase, divided work into 366 small portions, with a Scripture passage related to the theme from each daily reading. “My heart has yearned for this book. I wanted a guide to help me savor and reflect on the spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing. David has insightfully discerned how we might do this. The partnership of this unknown, ancient writer and this known, living pastor is masterful. I invite you into the clouds with the slow reading of this book.” —Dr. MaryKate Morse, author and mentor-professor of formation and leadership
