Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters -- in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter.The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for "Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained "typewriter girls" and "typewriter boys." Still later was the "Double Pigeon" typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of "predictive text."Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an "object history" but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened.

     Buddhism is an agnostic religion. It neither acknowledges the existence of a god nor denies it. It simply teaches that we must live by a moral code because it is our nature to do so, regardless of whether a god exists or not. To choose good in the hopes of reward, while avoiding evil out of fear of punishment, is not true goodness. It is sheer hypocrisy — a selfish desire to do something in return for our own benefit. To understand the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, we first have to understand the word “dukkha.” This is often mistranslated into English as “suffering,” giving people the idea that Buddhism is a pessimistic religion. Nothing can possibly be further from the truth. While dukkha can certainly be understood to mean “suffering,” it would be more accurate to translate this word as “anxiety,” “stress,” or “dissatisfaction.” This book endeavors to explain the Buddha’s perspective on dukkha, and how one can live in spite of it, even striving to move beyond it. If you’re ready to learn more about dukkha and the path to liberation, let’s get started! Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn... About Buddhist Diversity Understanding Dukkha The Four Noble Truths The Eightfold Path Panna – Wisdom Śila – Ethical Conduct Samādhi – Concentration Nibbāna – Blown Out Much, much more! Download your copy today! Tags: eight-fold path, nirvana, the four noble truths and the eightfold path, four noble truths and eightfold path, buddhism, buddhist, theraveda buddhism, Eightfold Path, four noble truths, nibbana, eightfold path of buddhism, the eightfold path, noble eightfold path, eight fold path

    Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger (†)--which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bible--or the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic squiggles, both exotic (¶) and everyday (&).From the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs, figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Vladimir Nabokov, and George W. Bush cross paths with marks as obscure as the interrobang (‽) and as divisive as the dash (--). Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and artifacts.Richly illustrated, ranging across time, typographies, and countries, Shady Characters will delight and entertain all who cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life.

    36 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more – everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King.

    This substantially revised 3rd edition of this text on political ideologies takes full account of the impact of the post Cold War world order, the challenge of postmodernism, the advance of globalization and the advent of global terrorism, and includes additional coverage of the prospects for ideologies in the 21st century.

    Accounts of those psychedelic experiences, along with his interest in Eastern mystical religions, accompany the moving story of Aldous Huxley's later years with his wife, Laura. Huxley's fascination with the spiritual world remained with him throughout his life and never wavered through his final illness in 1963. THIS TIMELESS MOMENT takes the reader into the lively mind of one of the most profound thinkers of any generation.

    Since the turn of the century linguists and politicians have been on a mission to create a common language for China. From the radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement, to leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Zedong, all fought to push the boundaries of language reform. Now, internet users take the Chinese language in new and unpredictable directions. David Moser tells the remarkable story of China’s language unification agenda and its controversial relationship with modern politics, challenging our ideas of what it means to speak Chinese.

    In this much-anticipated book, Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Once our ancestors learned to put their heads together with others to pursue shared goals, humankind was on an evolutionary path all its own.Tomasello argues that our prehuman ancestors, like today's great apes, were social beings who could solve problems by thinking. But they were almost entirely competitive, aiming only at their individual goals. As ecological changes forced them into more cooperative living arrangements, early humans had to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborative partners. Tomasello's "shared intentionality hypothesis" captures how these more socially complex forms of life led to more conceptually complex forms of thinking. In order to survive, humans had to learn to see the world from multiple social perspectives, to draw socially recursive inferences, and to monitor their own thinking via the normative standards of the group. Even language and culture arose from the preexisting need to work together. What differentiates us most from other great apes, Tomasello proposes, are the new forms of thinking engendered by our new forms of collaborative and communicative interaction.A Natural History of Human Thinking is the most detailed scientific analysis to date of the connection between human sociality and cognition.

    But how could sovereign nations be made to share power and learn to look beyond their own narrow interests? The old monarchs had one idea. Mazzini and the partisans of nationalist democracy had another, and so did Marx and the radical Left. It is an argument that has raged for two hundred years now, and Mark Mazower tells its history enthrallingly in Governing the World. With each era, the stakes have grown higher as the world has grown smaller and the potential rewards to cooperation and damage from conflict have increased.As Mark Mazower shows us, each age’s dominant power has set the tune, and for nearly a century that tune has been sung in English. He begins with Napoleon’s defeat, in 1815, when England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia formed the Concert of Europe. Against this, there emerged many of the ideas that would shape the international institutions of the twentieth century–liberal nationalism, communism, the expertise of the scientist and the professional international lawyers. Mazower traces these ideas into the Great War through to the League of Nations. He explains how the League collapsed when confronted by the atrocities of the Third Reich, and how a more hard-nosed approach to international governance emerged in its wake.The United Nations appeared in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, and a war-fighting alliance led by Great Britain and the United States was ultimately what transformed into an international peacetime organization. Mazower examines the ideas that shaped the UN, the compromises and constraints imposed by the Cold War and its transformation in the high noon of decolonization. The 1970s ushered in a sea change in attitudes to international government through the emergence of a vision of globalized capitalism in the 1970s that marginalized the UN itself and utilized bodies like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization—the final acts of Anglo- American institution-building.But the sun is setting on Anglo-American dominance of the world’s great international institutions. We are at the end of an era, Mazower explains, and we are passing into a new age of global power relations, a shift whose outcome is still very much in question.

    "Hopper represents the most lethal of organized religions many opponents: a curious, well-educated individual with a sharp wit." Queen's University Journal Review "Wickedly fun and informative." Toronto Star "The Heathen's Guide To World Religions has taken up permanent residence on my bookshelves... a masterfully written, wonderfully funny, and deliciously snarky trip down religious lane." Al Stefanelli, UNITED ATHEIST FRONT. "Like Monty Python in religious garb... easily one of the best places to invest your book buying dollar." Georgia Straight

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    His previous books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate, have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today's most important and popular science writers. Now, in The Stuff of Thought, Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter. Even the names we give our babies have important things to say about our relations to our children and to society. With his signature wit and style, Pinker takes on scientific questions like whether language affects thought, as well as forays into everyday life: why is bulk e-mail called spam and how do romantic comedies get such mileage out of the ambiguities of dating? The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of readers of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

    

    Cosmic Universe and Human History, microcosm and macrocosm, inorganic and living matter coexist and form a unique unity manifested in multiple forms. The Physical and the Mental constitute the form and the content of the World. The world does not consist of subjects and objects, the “subject” and the “object” are metaphysical abstractions of the single and indivisible Wholeness. Man’s finite knowledge separates the Whole into parts and studies fragmentarily the beings. The Wholeness is manifested in multiple forms and each form encapsulates the Wholeness. The rational explanation of the excerpts and the intuitive apprehension of the Wholeness are required to combine and create the open thought and the holistic knowledge. This means that the measurement should be defined by the ''measure'', but the responsibility for determining the ''measure'' depends on the man. This requires that man overcomes the anthropocentric arrogance and the narcissistic selfishness and he joins the Cosmic World in a friendly and creative manner.