Everywhere you look – on posters, in offices, on social media – there’s a motivational quote to greet you. Dreams can come true! Happiness is a journey! Think positive! You can do anything! But how many of these are accurate? How many are wise? And which of them are based on evidence you can actually trust? The answer is depressing: not many at all. The Motivation Hoax exposes and unravels the nonsense that permeates the inspiration industry, and in its place offers a suite of tools and insights that are reliable, credible and, most importantly, tested. Who will benefit from this book? The Motivation Hoax is for you if: You’re a leader who abhors clichés and vacuous platitudes. You’re an employee who desires a realistic guide to workplace success. You find yourself rolling your eyes when you see or hear yet another nauseating motivational quote. You value science over rhetoric, no matter how eloquently worded. A reality check like no other, The Motivation Hoax is among the most refreshing, liberating and surprisingly affirming books you’ll read this year. Dr James Adonis is one of Australia’s best-known leadership educators. His nationally syndicated Fairfax columns reach over 100,000 readers every month. Over the past decade, James has worked with hundreds of organisations – including McDonald’s, American Express, Coca-Cola, Qantas, Optus, Ernst & Young, Gucci, Toyota and many government departments – to help them lead change and improve performance.
In October 1869, as America stood on the brink of becoming a thoroughly modern nation, workers unearthed what appeared to be a petrified ten-foot giant on a remote farm in upstate New York. The discovery caused a sensation. Over the next several months, newspapers devoted daily headlines to the story and tens of thousands of Americans—including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the great showman P. T. Barnum—flocked to see the giant on exhibition. In the colossus, many saw evidence that their continent, and the tiny hamlet of Cardiff, had ties to Biblical history. American science also weighed in on the discovery, and in doing so revealed its own growing pains, including the shortcomings of traditional education, the weaknesses of archaeological methodology, as well as the vexing presence of amateurs and charlatans within its ranks. A national debate ensued over the giant's origins, and was played out in the daily press. Ultimately, the discovery proved to be an elaborate hoax. Still, the story of the Cardiff Giant reveals many things about America in the post-Civil War years. After four years of destruction on an unimagined scale, Americans had increasingly turned their attention to the renewal of progress. But the story of the Cardiff Giant seemed to shed light on a complicated, mysterious past, and for a time scientists, clergymen, newspaper editors, and ordinary Americans struggled to make sense of it. Hucksters, of course, did their best to take advantage of it. The Cardiff Giant was one of the leading questions of the day, and how citizens answered it said much about Americans in 1869 as well as about America more generally.
'Utter joy! A delicious romp through the heyday of balderdash and grand-scale deception, penned by one of the country's finest magical minds.' Derren Brown In 1749, a newspaper advertisement appeared declaring that a man would climb inside a bottle on the stage of a London theatre. Although the crowds turned up in their hundreds to witness the trick, the performer didn't. Over the following decades, elaborate pranks would continue to bamboozle audiences across England. In The Century of Deception, magician and magic historian Ian Keable tells the engrossing stories of these eighteenth-century hoaxes and those who were duped by them. The English public were hoodwinked time and time again, swallowing whole tales of rapping ghosts, a woman who gave birth to rabbits, a levitating Frenchman in a Chinese Temple and outrageous astrological predictions. Not only were the hoaxes widely influential, drawing in celebrities such as Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Swift, they also inflamed concerns about 'English credulity'. 'Fake news' and 'going viral' may be modern terms, but as this entertaining, eye-opening book shows, these concepts have been with us for centuries. 'A fascinating, witty and beautifully-written book.' Matt Lucas 'Ian Keable's brilliant book has opened my eyes to an incredible world of hoaxers and deceivers that I didn't know even existed. A cracking read filled with extraordinary stories.' Andy Nyman 'A masterful and fascinating journey into a hitherto hidden world of history, mystery and hoaxes.' Richard Wiseman
This book examines both 'old media' treatment of crime legends: news reports, fictional film and television depictions, as well as 'new' media interactive discussions of them via the Internet and electronic mail.
When Dionysus the Renegade faked a Sophocles text in 400BC (cunningly inserting the acrostic 'Heraclides is ignorant of letters') to humiliate an academic rival, he paved the way for two millennia of increasingly outlandish literary hoaxers. The path from his mischievous stunt to more serious tricksters like the controversial memoirist and Oprah-duper James Frey, takes in every sort of writer: from the religious zealot to the bored student, via the vengeful academic and the out-and-out joker. But whether hoaxing for fame, money, politics or simple amusement, each perpetrator represents something unique about why we write. Their stories speak volumes about how reading, writing and publishing have grown out of the fine and private places of the past into big-business, TV-book-club-led mass-marketplaces which, some would say, are ripe for the ripping. For the first time, the complete history of this fascinating sub-genre of world literature is revealed. Suitable for bookworms of all ages and persuasions, this is true crime for people who don't like true crime, and literary history for the historically illiterate. A treat to read right through or to dip into, it will make you think twice next time you slip between the covers of an author you don't know...
This is the 12th edition of the Cebu Journalism and Journalists (CJJ) magazine. CJJ, an annual publication, contains articles and features useful to media practitioners, mass communication students, sectors that deal with the press, and media consumers.
History's biggest lie is that there's one "God" and he created the universe out of nothing. Nothing has done more damage to the human psyche than monotheism - the doctrine of an all-powerful "Spy God", the divine peeping Tom, who sentences to hell anyone who doesn't slavishly obey him. In fact, the universe is a mathematical "God factory" and creates infinite Gods over eons of time. The universe, via dialectical ontological mathematics, is converging on the perfect answer to everything: the condition known as the Absolute or the Omega Point. The universe travels, mathematically, from Alpha to Omega, from perfect potential to perfect actualization. The ancient secret society of the Illuminati has waged a war against Abrahamic monotheism and promoted the doctrine of "becoming God". Mathematics is the Philosopher's Stone that can transmute base metal (ordinary humans) into gold (Gods). You too can complete your cosmic journey, across countless reincarnations. Are you ready to become an Omega Human?
New Book Addresses Crippling Nature of Irrational Belief in the 21st Century Christian Volz's Six Ethics takes both a philosophical and a pragmatic approach to addressing the dangers posed by irrational belief, and proposes a framework for creating a legal and social environment where rationality and spirituality might be reconciled. In the 21st century, as international business continues to expand and the Internet and other means of global communications, as well as immigration, continue to bring people from different cultures and groups into contact, individuals need to be prepared to live side-by-side with others who have very different belief systems as well as be self-aware of the sources and principles of their own beliefs. Six Ethics: A Rights-Based Approach to Establishing an Objective Common Morality is the result of author Christian Volz's quest to understand the nature of belief and the relationship of beliefs and ethics in the face of 21st century issues. Volz explains that the late nineteenth century intellectual revolution known as modernism is characterized by the maturing of the concepts of human rights, civil liberties, personal freedoms and, most especially, the constituents of essential human dignity. This new, modern approach has defined these concepts based on science and the cumulative history of human ethics guided by reason and compassion, and has largely enshrined them in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "I believe," Volz says, "that there is a dangerous underestimation of the peril posed to the world's democratic societies and institutions by religious radicals and fundamentalists, of all stripes, who believe that they retain the moral authority to selectively edit these evolved concepts of human rights and dignity. Many conservative people of faith continue to reject science and reason as the basis whereby we measure, evaluate, and make decisions about the material world and the temporal relations among human beings, with potentially disastrous consequences for the future of our planet. If we are to effectively counter these religious, authoritarian-conservative movements, it is helpful to understand how we got to where we are." Citing numerous contemporary and historical sources—from Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins to John Locke and Alexis de Tocqueville—Six Ethics addresses a broad range of topics, interrelated by their essential relationship to human dignity and rights. These include: the origins and development of ethical, religious and scientific thought; how otherwise rational people can be so easily seduced to embrace irrational beliefs and the societal consequences when they do so; and why anyone believes anything. In doing so, he touches on many fields of study, including a consideration of genetic, psychological, sociological and political influences upon how people think within the context of a group. Six Ethics proposes what Volz refers to as Rational Progressivism as a framework within which societies might advance toward genuine equality and true freedom of conscience for a diverse population.
The proceedings of the Social and Humanities Research Symposium (SoRes) shares ideas, either research results or literature review, on islam, media and education in the digital era. Some recent issues consists of innovative education in the digital era, new media and journalsm, islamic education, human wellbeing, marketing and fintech in terms of islamic perspective, economic welfare, law and ethics. It is expected that the proceedings will give new insights to the knowledge and practice of social and humanities research. Therefore, such parties involved in social and humanities research as academics, practitioners, business leaders, and others will acquire benefits from the contents of the proceedings.
