Prismatic Greys and Introverted Projections


Book Description

In your hand is a little piece of my mind, stitched together within the confines of a fragile little book (that is at your mercy, I might add.) So please, be gentle with this representation of my thoughts; I’ve been rough enough on my mind already. I would like to tell you more about myself, but I won’t. I feel that giving you insight to my character may influence your interpretations on the words within. I understand that you may or may not perceive the world in the same way as I, and that is perfectly acceptable. I think. I also thought about organizing the poems into categories, like religion, abuse, pop culture, love, political, etcetera, but opted against. Again, I don’t want to influence your perceptions on these works in any way. I like it when people think beyond the surface, in most cases. Why? The answer is simple: because if something dark and twisted is viewed in these poems, there is no one to blame but your dirty little self. (Or your bright and beautiful self, if you’re one of them “rainbows and sunshine” types.) There is also no conscious decision to put these in any order. Perhaps on some level, I set a pattern, I just don’t care to look. I have been told I’m somewhat emotional by many people in my life, so I’ll just stick to that theme. Well, enough from me, as I have said enough already; you’re going to get enough of me within the pages inside...or you’ve already had enough, if you’re one of those who read IN a book before you read the back of one. (Which makes more sense to me, kind of.) Enjoy, or not. I’m here.




I, Spectrum


Book Description

From my early years as a young boy under the name of Randall to growing up into the effeminate thing named Ev and everywhere in-between, poetry has always been there for Me even when I have not. It is in stanza and verse that I go to church, and in meter and pace I find my pulse. Rhyme for me breaks the monotony of everyday life. Sanity is crammed hard within the tight spaces between the confining and restrictive lines of madness, seeking to break apart the chaos and form from the hideous fragments something beautiful and orderly. This meeting of black and white to create an entire range of colors and greys is what makes poetry such a precious thing to many. Contained within this book is a wide and diverse collection of works: a full prism of love and hate, selfishness and unity, faith and unbelief. What you have, then, is something human. Even in the lies of a scoundrel, you find the truth of characterand in the sharpest reality of a wise man, you find the foggiest illusions. Here I present to you my latest work of poetry called I, Spectrum. I release this little monster into the world and smile, as It is the closest thing to a human being I have ever made. Fear it, love it, hate it...do what you will with it. It is here!




Blindsight


Book Description

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




The Cult of Smart


Book Description

Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.




Architecture


Book Description

A superb visual reference to the principles of architecture Now including interactive CD-ROM! For more than thirty years, the beautifully illustrated Architecture: Form, Space, and Order has been the classic introduction to the basic vocabulary of architectural design. The updated Third Edition features expanded sections on circulation, light, views, and site context, along with new considerations of environmental factors, building codes, and contemporary examples of form, space, and order. This classic visual reference helps both students and practicing architects understand the basic vocabulary of architectural design by examining how form and space are ordered in the built environment.? Using his trademark meticulous drawing, Professor Ching shows the relationship between fundamental elements of architecture through the ages and across cultural boundaries. By looking at these seminal ideas, Architecture: Form, Space, and Order encourages the reader to look critically at the built environment and promotes a more evocative understanding of architecture. In addition to updates to content and many of the illustrations, this new edition includes a companion CD-ROM that brings the book's architectural concepts to life through three-dimensional models and animations created by Professor Ching.




Microbe Hunters


Book Description

First published in 1927.




Through the Language Glass


Book Description

A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how—and whether—culture shapes language and language, culture Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence language—and vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for "blue"? Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions is—yes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water—a "she"—becomes a "he" once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial. Audacious, delightful, and field-changing, Through the Language Glass is a classic of intellectual discovery.




Hendrik Petrus Berlage


Book Description

Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Dutch architect and architectural philosopher, created a series of buildings and a body of writings from 1886 to 1909 that were among the first efforts to probe the problems and possibilities of modernism. Although his Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with its rational mastery of materials and space, has long been celebrated for its seminal influence on the architecture of the 20th century, Berlage's writings are highlighted here. Bringing together Berlage's most important texts, among them "Thoughts on Style in Architecture", "Architecture's Place in Modern Aesthetics", and "Art and Society", this volume presents a chapter in the history of European modernism. In his introduction, Iain Boyd Whyte demonstrates that the substantial contribution of Berlage's designs to modern architecture cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the aesthetic principles first laid out in his writings.




Funeral Rites


Book Description

A fictionalized account of the author's lover, Jean Decarin, who was killed in the Resistance during the liberation of Paris in World War II.




Mindstorms


Book Description

In this revolutionary book, a renowned computer scientist explains the importance of teaching children the basics of computing and how it can prepare them to succeed in the ever-evolving tech world. Computers have completely changed the way we teach children. We have Mindstorms to thank for that. In this book, pioneering computer scientist Seymour Papert uses the invention of LOGO, the first child-friendly programming language, to make the case for the value of teaching children with computers. Papert argues that children are more than capable of mastering computers, and that teaching computational processes like de-bugging in the classroom can change the way we learn everything else. He also shows that schools saturated with technology can actually improve socialization and interaction among students and between students and teachers. Technology changes every day, but the basic ways that computers can help us learn remain. For thousands of teachers and parents who have sought creative ways to help children learn with computers, Mindstorms is their bible.