Super Senses


Book Description

From childhood we are told that humans have five senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. But your school teachers were wrong. All of us have at least thirty-two senses - and our survival depends on them. In Super Senses, award-winning science journalist Emma Young explores our surprisingly rich sensory lives. She discovers why the main function of our ears isn't for hearing; how we can find taste receptors in places other than our tongues; how improving your sense of smell might increase your enjoyment of sex; why the semi-nomadic Himba people can't distinguish between blue and green but Russians can see two shades of blue; and how touch can confuse the way your brain registers pain. She also delves into the 'new' senses - including balance and internal-sensing - without which you'd be dead within minutes. And by exploring the lives of people with sensory over-sensitivity to those who feel no emotion at all, Young shows that our senses don't simply inform us, they form us. Traversing cutting-edge research and drawing on the experiences at the extremes of the sensitivity spectrums, as well as stories from history and anthropology, Super Senses takes readers on a journey that will make them see themselves, and the world around them, through entirely fresh eyes.




An Immense World


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong “One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved. Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.” WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD







The Pursuit of Reason


Book Description




Uncommon Sense


Book Description

Book Delisted




The Monist


Book Description

Vols. 2 and 5 include appendices.




The Monster Magnus Vol.I


Book Description

The Monster Magnus I contain descriptions for over 100 monsters not including sub-types plus templates to modify those. The manual also contains information for Player Races which include the traditional RPG stand-bys as well as several new races! This is the first in a short series of Monster Manuals for the Dice & Glory Roleplaying Game focusing on the basic creatures, Player Races, Animals, Vermin, Undead, Therians etc.




A Flight of Delight


Book Description

A Flight of Delight is a work of experiential philosophical text that contemplates the nature of such subtle topics as Karmic evolution, Divine Cosmic Truth, and the relationship between Divinity and Humankind. Utilising an expressive narrative approach that places emphasis on description and aesthetics finely, the author has endeavoured to render a thought provoking analysis in a prose poetic style. The fine text touches the core concepts of theology that look at life as a freely flowing channel of energies in profound human experiences. One of the central ideas of the work is the difference between institutional religion and experiential philosophy, with the conceptual emphasis leaning toward the latter. Fear destroys true faith. Institutional religion is constrictive that remains fixated on rules, systems, and political bureaucracies. A profound human spiritualism on the other hand suggests a cyclical direction of energy that flows without fear, suppression, oppression, exploitation, manipulation, and falsity. Realising and understanding compassion and love is much more important and significant than following set of doctrines in conflict. This is attainable in spiritual evolution - a self-discovery in profound experiences without the confines of specific creed, cast, or race. The discourse includes detailed explorations of different types of Vedic yoga's, mantras, and consciousness. The emphasis placed on the pursuit of divine wisdom and divinity incorporates all of these elements to form a comprehensive insight of profound experience for the inner well-ness and peace. The reader of 'A Flight of Delight' may also benefit from the organised structure afforded to the text. The detailed explanation of the experiential theories familiarises the reader with carefully distilled notions of spiritualism and divinity. Here is an extra ordinary work of self-healing texts from a very special person who has journeyed through adversities himself. The lyrics of this book are particularly special because the author writes from the depth of his heart, to express in the profoundest sense, the relevance of the ancient Vedic Wisdom to the hectic modern world. The mind enriching lyrics bring to us a re-awakening of beautiful divinity filled with solace, hope, and compassionate love. Life oh life! Let it be 'a flight of delight'.




Supernatural Scientific Investigative Team Reports on the Different Breeds of Werewolf, Separate Species of Vampire and Human/animal Shape Shifters by Elisha Worthall and Dr. Xavier Bell


Book Description

What similarities does an Asian Werewolf share with a European Vampire? Or a North American Werewolf to a Human/Animal Shape Shifter? Why are European Werewolves the most dangerous breed of Werewolf in the world? What do they have in common with a Lokoti Werewolf? Read about the physical appearances, history and methods of reproduction of the subjects in the reports. Discover who are man-eaters and who are not, or who is friend and who is foe.




Coming to Our Senses


Book Description

In Coming to Our Senses, cognitive scientist Viki McCabe argues that prevailing theories of perception, cognition, and information cannot explain how we know the world around us. Using scientific studies and true stories, McCabe shows that the ecological disasters, political paralysis, and economic failures we now face originate in our tendency to privilege cognitive processes and products over the information we access with our perceptual systems. As a result, we typically default to making decisions using inaccurate information such as mechanistic theories that reduce the world to extractable, exploitable parts. But the world does not function as an assembly of parts; it functions as a coalition of complex systems--from cells to cities--that organize and sustain themselves and cannot be partitioned and retain their purpose. McCabe also argues that we cannot describe such systems using theories and words. Instead, each system reveals itself in fractal-like geometric configurations that emerge from and reflect the structural organization that brings it into existence and determines its functions--a veritable physics of information. Thus, we comprehend phenomena as disparate as neural networks, river deltas, and economies by perceiving the branching geometry that organizes them into distribution systems. McCabe's key point is that form not only follows function, it doubles as information. If we put our theories aside and focus on the information the world displays, our perceptions can block hostile mental takeovers, reconnect us to reality, and bring us back to our senses.