The Unpredictability of Being Human PDF Download

Author: Linni Ingemundsen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781944589363
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
Linni Ingemundsen is from Norway, though she currently lives in Malta. She does not know how to draw but is somehow a freelance cartoonist. Some of her favourite things in life include chocolate, free Wi-Fi and her yellow typewriter. Linni has lived in three different countries and will never be done exploring the world.

Author: Philip Lieberman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846706
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

View

Book Description
How our brains have evolved so that we control how we think and behave The Unpredictable Species argues that the human brain evolved in a way that enhances our cognitive flexibility and capacity for innovation and imitation. In doing so, the book challenges the central claim of evolutionary psychology that we are locked into predictable patterns of behavior that were fixed by genes, and refutes the claim that language is innate. Philip Lieberman builds his case with evidence from neuroscience, genetics, and physical anthropology, showing how our basal ganglia—structures deep within the brain whose origins predate the dinosaurs—came to play a key role in human creativity. He demonstrates how the transfer of information in these structures was enhanced by genetic mutation and evolution, giving rise to supercharged neural circuits linking activity in different parts of the brain. Human invention, expressed in different epochs and locales in the form of stone tools, digital computers, new art forms, complex civilizations—even the latest fashions—stems from these supercharged circuits. The Unpredictable Species boldly upends scientifically controversial yet popular beliefs about how our brains actually work. Along the way, this compelling book provides insights into a host of topics related to human cognition, including associative learning, epigenetics, the skills required to be a samurai, and the causes of cognitive confusion on Mount Everest and of Parkinson's disease.

Author: William Poundstone
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
ISBN: 0316228087
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 266

View

Book Description
A practical guide to outguessing everything, from multiple-choice tests to the office football pool to the stock market. People are predictable even when they try not to be. William Poundstone demonstrates how to turn this fact to personal advantage in scores of everyday situations, from playing the lottery to buying a home. Rock Breaks Scissors is mind-reading for real life. Will the next tennis serve go right or left? Will the market go up or down? Most people are poor at that kind of predicting. We are hard-wired to make bum bets on "trends" and "winning streaks" that are illusions. Yet ultimately we're all in the business of anticipating the actions of others. Poundstone reveals how to overcome the errors and improve the accuracy of your own outguessing. Rock Breaks Scissors is a hands-on guide to turning life's odds in your favor.

Author: William E. Connolly
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822348799
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

View

Book Description
The prominent political theorist William E. Connolly outlines a political philosophy for the contemporary world: a world whose powers of creative evolution include and exceed the human estate.

Author: Linni Ingemundsen
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1474971253
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 204

View

Book Description
"Perfectly captures how it feels to be an outsider. I loved it." Tamsin Winter Fifteen year old Sander wishes he was like everyone else. But he has Silver-Russell syndrome, a condition that affects one in a hundred thousand. It means he is smaller than all the other kids in school, a place where the biggest and the loudest get all the attention. Like Niklas. Everyone thinks Niklas is cool and good-looking - except Sander. He doesn't like the way Niklas brags, behaves like a jerk and lies. Niklas is one of life's tall people and next to him, Sander always ends up feeling small. But Sander is different in more ways than one. He notices things other people miss, and he's noticed something about Niklas... A moving coming-of-age classic, about fitting in, standing out and the power of friendship. "Exceptional" The Times on Linni Ingemundsen

Author: Rosie Perez
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307952401
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338

View

Book Description
Oscar-nominated actress and star of the new musical drama Rise, Rosie Perez’s never-before-told story of surviving a harrowing childhood and of how she found success—both in and out of the Hollywood limelight. Rosie Perez first caught our attention with her fierce dance in the title sequence of Do the Right Thing and has since defined herself as a funny and talented actress who broke boundaries for Latinas in the film industry. What most people would be surprised to learn is that the woman with the big, effervescent personality has a secret straight out of a Dickens novel. At the age of three, Rosie’s life was turned upside down when her mentally ill mother tore her away from the only family she knew and placed her in a Catholic children’s home in New York’s Westchester County. Thus began her crazily discombobulated childhood of being shuttled between “the Home,” where she and other kids suffered all manners of cruelty from nuns, and various relatives’ apartments in Brooklyn. Many in her circumstances would have been defined by these harrowing experiences, but with the intense determination that became her trademark, Rosie overcame the odds and made an incredible life for herself. She brings her journey vividly to life on each page of this memoir—from the vibrant streets of Brooklyn to her turbulent years in the Catholic home, and finally to film and TV sets and the LA and New York City hip-hop scenes of the 1980s and ‘90s. More than a page-turning read, Handbook for an Unpredictable Life is a story of survival. By turns heartbreaking and funny, it is ultimately the inspirational story of a woman who has found a hard-won place of strength and peace.

Author: Adam Gollner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439109435
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 416

View

Book Description
An exploration of one of the most universal human obsessions charts the rise of longevity science from its alchemical beginnings to modern-day genetic interventions and enters the world of those whose lives are shaped by a belief in immortality.

Author: Patrick Suppes
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940173173X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 481

View

Book Description
The twenty-three papers collected in tbis volume represent an important part of my published work up to the date of this volume. I have not arranged the paper chronologically, but under four main headings. Part I contains five papers on methodology concerned with models and measurement in the sciences. This part also contains the first paper I published, 'A Set of Independent Axioms for Extensive Quantities', in Portugaliae Mathematica in 1951. Part 11 also is concerned with methodology and ineludes six papers on probability and utility. It is not always easy to separate papers on probability and utility from papers on measurement, because of the elose connection between the two subjects, but Artieles 6 and 8, even though they have elose relations to measurement, seem more properly to belong in Part 11, because they are concerned with substantive questions about probability and utility. The last two parts are concerned with the foundations of physics and the foundations of psychology. I have used the term foundations rather than philosophy, because the papers are mainly concerned with specific axiomatic formulations for particular parts of physics or of psychology, and it seems to me that the termfoundations more appropriately describes such constructive axiomatic ventures. Part 111 contains four papers on the foundations of physics. The first paper deals with foundations of special relativity and the last three with the role ofprobability in quantum mechanics.

Author: Milan Kundera
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063290642
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 311

View

Book Description
“Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine. This magnificent novel is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.

Author: Robert Greene
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0670881465
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 481

View

Book Description
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.