Responses to the recent pandemic have been driven by fear, with social distancing and locking down of communities and borders as the most effective tactics. Out of fear and strategies that separate and isolate, emerges what has been described as the “new normal” (which seems to mutate daily). Truly global in scope, with contributors from across the world, this collection revisits four old responses to crises – assure, protest, trick, amend – to explore if/how those might still be relevant and effective and/or how they might be mutated during and after a global pandemic. Together they paint a grounded, earthy, context-focused picture of what it means to do theology in the new normal.
This paper focuses on the sluggish growth of world trade relative to income growth in recent years. The analysis uses an empirical strategy based on an error correction model to assess whether the global trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. An estimate of the relationship between trade and income in the past four decades reveals that the long-term trade elasticity rose sharply in the 1990s, but declined significantly in the 2000s even before the global financial crisis. These results suggest that trade is growing slowly not only because of slow growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but also because of a structural change in the trade-GDP relationship in recent years. The available evidence suggests that the explanation may lie in the slowing pace of international vertical specialization rather than increasing protection or the changing composition of trade and GDP.
The instant New York Times bestseller By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health? Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Cowritten with his son Daniel, The Myth Of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.
Have you ever wanted to be a bigger, braver version of yourself? Can you imagine how that would expand your perspective on your career, your relationships and your life? Now is the time to be bold! In Bold Moves, Pippa Hallas, shares the inspiring story of her great aunt, Ella Baché, who fled war-torn Europe to start one of the world’s best loved skin care companies. Through conversations with other remarkable Australian women including Lorna Jane Clarkson, Tracy Spicer and many more, Pippa shares the moments when these women stood up, spoke out and fearlessly redefined their futures. As women and beauty trends have evolved over the decades, Ella Baché has kept pace while holding true to the core values of the company. Pippa opens up about the journey behind the brand, the disruptions, the innovations, the mistakes, and the risks that have made it what it is today. Featuring personal advice — as well as her own journey as CEO and as the mother of two young boys — this book will show you how to: embrace your personal story fortify your voice design the life you want to live love your own skin build your personal legacy. In a world of constant change, ground breaking technology, unprecedented transparency and unrivalled expectation, it is harder than ever to live a life of truth and passion. Bold Moves will give you everything you need to stand up and be bold in every part of your life.
"John Lindell’s book New Normal: Experiencing God’s Best for Your Life will challenge your status quo in the best sort of way. By unpacking the truths of Scripture and sharing powerful personal stories, John will guide you on a faith-filled journey that has the potential to reshape your future." —CRAIG GROESCHEL, NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR, SENIOR PASTOR, LIFE.CHURCH Too many of us visit the land of God’s blessing but never live there. What if what you have grown accustomed to is far less than what God has for you? What if what you call “normal” falls tragically short of what you were created for? What if the difference between you living in God’s best and where you find yourself today is simply your willingness to rise up and fight to experience the new normal—He has for you? The truth is far too many of us visit the land of God’s blessing but never live there. We spend much of our lives feeling like we are on the outside of His blessing looking in, but never knowing a sustained experience of God’s best. The reason for our sporadic acquaintance with the fullness of God’s goodness is that we are not willing to wage the battle necessary to inhabit that new normal. This book explores the pathway into the Promise Land that Joshua and the people of Israel trekked and provides spiritual principles for fighting the spiritual battles that unlock a life of walking in God’s best. In New Normal, John Lindell invites you to join him on a life-changing journey following Joshua and the nation of Israel as they find out what it takes to live in the land of blessing God has prepared for them. Through these pages, you will discover an existence where you no longer view God’s best as a passing reality but as the place where you live. Experience God’s best for your life!
In this timely book, New Zealand's best-known commentator on population trends, Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley, shows how, as New Zealand moves into the 2020s, the demographic dividends of the last 70 years are turning into deficits. Our population patterns have been disrupted. More boomers, fewer children, an ever bigger Auckland, and declining regions are the new normal. We will need new economic models, new ways of living. Spoonley says: "It is not a crisis (even if at times it feels like it), but rather something that needs to be understood and responded to. But I fear that policy-makers and politicians are not up to the challenge. That would be a crisis."
In Simple Prosperity, Dave Wann showed readers how to have an abundant, sustainable life. In The New Normal, he challenges us to do some heavy lifting and transform our non-sustainable culture by transforming ourselves. For Wann, our current "old normal" lifestyle - buying water in disposable bottles, allowing the government to ignore global warming - will not preserve the planet. To nurture our world, he challenges us to rethink our lives, stand up for a healthy planet and move towards a "new normal" lifestyle in an agenda that includes: - Initiating local business alliances that actively lobby for local buying. - Creating an investment strategy that values the balance of nature. - Supporting the design, manufacture, and use of products made with natural chemicals. - Publicly advocating a more efficient use of water by placing a higher cultural value on wetlands, streams, rivers, and lakes. The New Normal is Dave Wann's way forward, a blueprint for a better life that preserves our world.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
A smart, tight, provocative techno-thriller straight out of the very near future—by an iconic visionary writer Some people call it "abyss gaze." Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you. There are two types of people who think professionally about the future: foresight strategists are civil futurists who think about geo-engineering and smart cities and ways to evade Our Coming Doom; strategic forecasters are spook futurists, who think about geopolitical upheaval and drone warfare and ways to prepare clients for Our Coming Doom. The former are paid by nonprofits and charities, the latter by global security groups and corporate think tanks. For both types, if you're good at it, and you spend your days and nights doing it, then it's something you can't do for long. Depression sets in. Mental illness festers. And if the "abyss gaze" takes hold there's only one place to recover: Normal Head, in the wilds of Oregon, within the secure perimeter of an experimental forest. When Adam Dearden, a foresight strategist, arrives at Normal Head, he is desperate to unplug and be immersed in sylvan silence. But then a patient goes missing from his locked bedroom, leaving nothing but a pile of insects in his wake. A staff investigation ensues; surveillance becomes total. As the mystery of the disappeared man unravels in Warren Ellis's Normal, Dearden uncovers a conspiracy that calls into question the core principles of how and why we think about the future—and the past, and the now. The ebook edition also includes four conversations with Warren Ellis about Normal, featuring Robin Sloan, Laurie Penny, Geoff Manaugh, and Lauren Beukes. The conversations originally appeared on tor.com.
