Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 27,59 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Mathematics
ISBN : 0195128427
In the tradition of "Longitude, " a small and engagingly written book on the history and meaning of zero--a "tour de force" of science history that takes us through the hollow circle that leads to infinity. 32 illustrations.
Author : Johanna Skibsrud
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 15,66 MB
Release : 2019
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781771665292
"Written over a period of more than a decade, The Nothing That Is is a collection about the very concept of "nothing," approached from a variety of angles and in a variety of ways. Addressing a broad range of topics and works by contemporary writers and artists, these essays seek to decentre our relationship to both the "givenness" of history and to a predictive or probable model of the future. They do so by drawing attention to the ways that poetic language activates the multiple, and as yet undesignated, possibilities replete within our every moment, and within every encounter between a speaking "I" and what exceeds subjectivity--a listening "Other," be it community or the objective world."--
Author : Kyle Winkler
Publisher :
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 25,77 MB
Release : 2021-04-17
Category :
ISBN :
"Infused with cosmic, culinary dread and seasoned with dark humor, The Nothing That Is reads like Anthony Bourdain riffing on Lovecraft. Winkler's engaging style and hypnotic prose will consume you whole, and if that doesn't whet your appetite, there's an exploding graveyard. Eat this one up, my friends, before it eats you!" -- Kealan Patrick Burke, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Kin and Sour Candy"Wild, fast-moving, and disorientingly hilarious... down to earth and completely unhinged. It also gave me a jolt of sickening, infinite horror I hadn't felt since the Vermicious Knids jumped out of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator."-- Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and FlyingIt's 1986. Cade McCall is an assistant manager for a catering business. Driving to work one morning, part of the local graveyard explodes. Later the same day, Cade gets an odd message from a client who needs catering for an Extreme Food Club. He calls himself Mr. Dinosaur. And he's paying $11,000. Despite Cade's reservations, he takes the gig. Although, who's feeding whom is another question entirely...Involving female biker gangs, cults, possessed furniture, and a full dose of cosmic horror, The Nothing That Is serves up the weird.
Author : Paula Poundstone
Publisher : Crown
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 47,10 MB
Release : 2022-04-05
Category : Humor
ISBN : 0593444019
Part memoir, part monologue, with a dash of startling honesty, There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say features biographies of legendary historical figures from which Paula Poundstone can’t help digressing to tell her own story. Mining gold from the lives of Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, and Beethoven, among others, the eccentric and utterly inimitable mind of Paula Poundstone dissects, observes, and comments on the successes and failures of her own life with surprising candor and spot-on comedic timing in this unique laugh-out-loud book. If you like Paula Poundstone’s ironic and blindingly intelligent humor, you’ll love this wryly observant, funny, and touching book. Paula Poundstone on . . . The sources of her self-esteem: “A couple of years ago I was reunited with a guy I knew in the fifth grade. He said, “All the other fifth-grade guys liked the pretty girls, but I liked you.” It’s hard to know if a guy is sincere when he lays it on that thick. The battle between fatigue and informed citizenship: I play a videotape of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer every night, but sometimes I only get as far as the theme song (da da-da-da da-ah) before I fall asleep. Sometimes as soon as Margaret Warner says whether or not Jim Lehrer is on vacation I drift right off. Somehow just knowing he’s well comforts me. The occult: I need to know exactly what day I’m gonna die so that I don’t bother putting away leftovers the night before. TV’s misplaced priorities: Someday in the midst of the State of the Union address they’ll break in with, “We interrupt this program to bring you a little clip from Bewitched.” Travel: In London I went to the queen’s house. I went as a tourist—she didn’t invite me so she could pick my brain: “What do you think of my face on the pound? Too serious?” Air-conditioning in Florida: If it were as cold outside in the winter as they make it inside in the summer, they’d put the heat on. It makes no sense. The scandal: The judge said I was the best probationer he ever had. Talk about proud. With a foreword by Mary Tyler Moore
Author : John D. Barrow
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 30,2 MB
Release : 2009-05-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 0307554813
What conceptual blind spot kept the ancient Greeks (unlike the Indians and Maya) from developing a concept of zero? Why did St. Augustine equate nothingness with the Devil? What tortuous means did 17th-century scientists employ in their attempts to create a vacuum? And why do contemporary quantum physicists believe that the void is actually seething with subatomic activity? You’ll find the answers in this dizzyingly erudite and elegantly explained book by the English cosmologist John D. Barrow. Ranging through mathematics, theology, philosophy, literature, particle physics, and cosmology, The Book of Nothing explores the enduring hold that vacuity has exercised on the human imagination. Combining high-wire speculation with a wealth of reference that takes in Freddy Mercury and Shakespeare alongside Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking, the result is a fascinating excursion to the vanishing point of our knowledge.
Author : Susan A. Crane
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 20,97 MB
Release : 2021-01-19
Category : History
ISBN : 1503614050
The past is what happened. History is what we remember and write about that past, the narratives we craft to make sense out of our memories and their sources. But what does it mean to look at the past and to remember that "nothing happened"? Why might we feel as if "nothing is the way it was"? This book transforms these utterly ordinary observations and redefines "Nothing" as something we have known and can remember. "Nothing" has been a catch-all term for everything that is supposedly uninteresting or is just not there. It will take some—possibly considerable—mental adjustment before we can see Nothing as Susan A. Crane does here, with a capital "n." But Nothing has actually been happening all along. As Crane shows in her witty and provocative discussion, Nothing is nothing less than fascinating. When Nothing has changed but we think that it should have, we might call that injustice; when Nothing has happened over a long, slow period of time, we might call that boring. Justice and boredom have histories. So too does being relieved or disappointed when Nothing happens—for instance, when a forecasted end of the world does not occur, and millennial movements have to regroup. By paying attention to how we understand Nothing to be happening in the present, what it means to "know Nothing" or to "do Nothing," we can begin to ask how those experiences will be remembered. Susan A. Crane moves effortlessly between different modes of seeing Nothing, drawing on visual analysis and cultural studies to suggest a new way of thinking about history. By remembering how Nothing happened, or how Nothing is the way it was, or how Nothing has changed, we can recover histories that were there all along.
Author : Celeste Headlee
Publisher : Harmony
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 46,66 MB
Release : 2020-03-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1984824740
“A welcome antidote to our toxic hustle culture of burnout.”—Arianna Huffington “This book is so important and could truly save lives.”—Elizabeth Gilbert “A clarion call to work smarter [and] accomplish more by doing less.”—Adam Grant We work feverishly to make ourselves happy. So why are we so miserable? Despite our constant search for new ways to optimize our bodies and minds for peak performance, human beings are working more instead of less, living harder not smarter, and becoming more lonely and anxious. We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can’t we just take a break? In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside, and start living instead of doing. As it turns out, we’re searching for external solutions to an internal problem. We won’t find what we’re searching for in punishing diets, productivity apps, or the latest self-improvement schemes. Yet all is not lost—we just need to learn how to take time for ourselves, without agenda or profit, and redefine what is truly worthwhile. Pulling together threads from history, neuroscience, social science, and even paleontology, Headlee examines long-held assumptions about time use, idleness, hard work, and even our ultimate goals. Her research reveals that the habits we cling to are doing us harm; they developed recently in human history, which means they are habits that can, and must, be broken. It’s time to reverse the trend that’s making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive, and return to a way of life that allows us to thrive.
Author : D. J. Palladino
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 37,96 MB
Release : 2016-07-30
Category :
ISBN : 9781940412207
On a gray winter day in 1958, the body of a man washes up on Santa Barbara's breakwater. Trevor Westin, a young local writer, sees murder where the local press sees only a simple case of drowning. Trevor goes on a dangerous search for answers. Along the way he will cross paths with beatniks, beach bums, Aldous Huxley, Dennis Hopper, and the CIA.
Author : Cheryl Bardoe
Publisher : Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Page : 41 pages
File Size : 20,60 MB
Release : 2018-06-12
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 0316394297
The true story of eighteenth-century mathematician Sophie Germain, who solved the unsolvable to achieve her dream. When her parents took away her candles to keep their young daughter from studying math...nothing stopped Sophie. When a professor discovered that the homework sent to him under a male pen name came from a woman...nothing stopped Sophie. And when she tackled a math problem that male scholars said would be impossible to solve...still, nothing stopped Sophie. For six years Sophie Germain used her love of math and her undeniable determination to test equations that would predict patterns of vibrations. She eventually became the first woman to win a grand prize from France's prestigious Academy of Sciences for her formula, which laid the groundwork for much of modern architecture (and can be seen in the book's illustrations). Award-winning author Cheryl Bardoe's inspiring and poetic text is brought to life by acclaimed artist Barbara McClintock's intricate pen-and-ink, watercolor, and collage illustrations in this true story about a woman who let nothing stop her.
Author : Janne Teller
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 15,53 MB
Release : 2012-03-20
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 144244116X
When thirteen-year-old Pierre Anthon leaves school to sit in a plum tree and train for becoming part of nothing, his seventh grade classmates set out on a desperate quest for the meaning of life.
