It got a karaoke DJ.Leo MacGavin is not the brightest specimen of humanity. But when he inadvertently rescues a flirty alien heiress, he’s promoted from second-rate lounge entertainer to captain of the galaxy’s most sophisticated cruise ship.Before he can flee in terror, a human-hating executive gives Leo an ultimatum—complete the vessel’s maiden voyage or mankind’s last colony will be turned into a sewage dump. To make matters worse, a militant cyborg is undermining his authority, a giant spider is terrifying the passengers, and a sentient plant keeps stealing all the beer.If Leo ever wants to see his home again, he’ll have to keep the guests happy through seven days of onboard antics and madcap shore excursions. As strange malfunctions tear the ship apart, can he hold his rag-tag crew together, or will he flush the last bastion of humanity down the crapper?

    These top guns of tournament poker are frequent winners in today's highly competitive online scene, as well as in live tourneys. Their collective experience and track record is staggering: more than 35,000 tournaments played, more than 1,000 final tables made, over 200 major wins, and more than $6,000,000 in cashes. They regularly outplay fields consisting of other top professionals victories that are documented by detailed online hand histories.Are you ready to learn winning ways from today's true tournament experts?The authors are not only consistent winners, but powerful teachers as well. Step-by-step, they reveal their decision-making processes, using hands drawn from actual play not examples contrived to fit a particular poker theory.Reading this book is like attending a master class in tournament poker.You'll see the way cutting-edge pros use their wisdom and incredibly extensive experience to analyze almost every poker situation imaginable. Deep-stacked or short-stacked, against single or multiple opponents, you'll learn the skills that will make you a winner, including: - When and how to play aggressively or tightly- When to make moves- When to make continuation bets and when to hold back- How to induce and pick off bluffs- How to accumulate chips without constantly risking your tournament life.Poker is a fun game, but it's even more fun when you win.If you want to become a great tournament player, shouldn't you be learning from the best? NOW You can!

    Reviewing hate speech regulations, anti-pornography arguments, and recent controversies about gay self-declaration in the military, Judith Butler asks whether and how language acts in each of these cultural sites. Excitable Speech examines the issue of the threatening action of words. The book suggests that although language is a kind of performance which has the power to produce political effects and injuries, it is best understood as a scene of injury rather than its cause. Rather, Butler warns us against a "sovereign" view of language, in which the words we speak are construed as unequivocal forms of conduct. She shows that the repetition of injurious language can be the occasion of its redefinition. Butler illuminates the efficacy of injurious language, covering speech act therapy in both philosophical and literary traditions, Supreme Court cases, hate speech and pornography critics, and recent bans on gay speech in the military.

    A box set consisting of three Bill Bryson books, 'Notes from a Small Island', 'Notes from a Big Country' and 'A Walk in the Woods'.

     Brush up on your Spanish, improve your reading and listening skills, and make learning new vocabulary so much easier with 11 fun and engaging Spanish stories. Reading and listening to short stories is an effective and enjoyable method to learning Spanish. The audio is FREE! For those of you who can’t just slip away from life, travel to Spain and immerse yourself in the language in order to learn it, this is your solution! Reading and listening to native-spoken Spanish stories is the next best thing. You have at your fingertips the written word AND its accompanying audio recording that allows you to: Gain a greater vocabulary that you can use immediately, every day. You will add 1,500+ Spanish words and expressions to your repertoire through the encounter of descriptive sentences and casual conversations woven throughout the stories. Sharpen your comprehension of the spoken word by listening to a native Spanish speaker. Learn how to pronounce Spanish words properly by comparing the written word to the audio recording. Familiarize yourself with a wide range of grammar structures and put them to use today. Avoid the monotonous task of memorizing grammar rules. How awesome is that?! Recommended for beginning and intermediate level Spanish learners. The stories are written for new Spanish learners. However, a basic understanding of Spanish is highly recommended to achieve maximum enjoyment and effectiveness of the lessons. This program is perfect for those who want to brush up on their Spanish language skills. How will this book improve your Spanish language skills: Each story is recorded by a professional. The speaker speaks slowly to help beginners improve their pronunciation. You receive 2 hours of MP3 audio recording! There is no need for a separate dictionary. Each story is broken down with a Spanish and English glossary that introduces you to the words and phrases you might not understand.Any Spanish to English translations needed to understand the stories are included in a mini dictionary, perfect for Kindle. A vocabulary recap at the end of each chapter allows you to review what you have read and listened to so you don’t forget the essential words and expressions taught throughout the lesson. All stories are written using vocabulary that you could easily use in your day-to-day conversations. With these 11 great Spanish short stories and the accompanying audio you can start improving your Spanish today!

    They fortify their ranch and prepare to ride out the worst of the chaos. Unfortunately, the gang of scavengers who followed them from the city have other plans. How does an ordinary family protect themselves in the wake of violence and chaos? No Power What happens when an EMP sends California back into the stone age? When an EMP bomb knocks out the power in LA and the rest of the United States, Ailani must fight against the unprepared.

    Now, in Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, the award-winning Lincoln authority Allen C. Guelzo offers a penetrating look into the mind of one of our greatest presidents. If Lincoln was famous for reading aloud from joke books, Guelzo shows that he also plunged deeply into the mainstream of nineteenth-century liberal democratic thought. Guelzo takes us on a wide-ranging exploration of problems that confronted Lincoln and liberal democracy--equality, opportunity, the rule of law, slavery, freedom, peace, and his legacy. The book sets these problems and Lincoln's responses against the larger world of American and trans-Atlantic liberal democracy in the 19th century, comparing Lincoln not just to Andrew Jackson or John Calhoun, but to British thinkers such as Richard Cobden, Jeremy Bentham, and John Bright, and to French observers Alexis de Tocqueville and Fran ois Guizot. The Lincoln we meet here is an Enlightenment figure who struggled to create a common ground between a people focused on individual rights and a society eager to establish a certain moral, philosophical, and intellectual bedrock. Lincoln insisted that liberal democracy had a higher purpose, which was the realization of a morally right political order. But how to interject that sense of moral order into a system that values personal self-satisfaction--"the pursuit of happiness"--remains a fundamental dilemma even today. Abraham Lincoln was a man who, according to his friend and biographer William Henry Herndon, "lived in the mind." Guelzo paints a marvelous portrait of this Lincoln--Lincoln the man of ideas--providing new insights into one of the giants of American history.

    A handbook of the myriad ways we go about being illogical - how we deceive others and ourselves, how we think and argue in ways that are disorderly, disorganized, or irrelevant.

    This comprehensive work covers both statistical and symbolic approaches to language processing; it shows how they can be applied to important tasks such as speech recognition, spelling and grammar correction, information extraction, search engines, machine translation, and the creation of spoken-language dialog agents. The following distinguishing features make the text both an introduction to the field and an advanced reference guide.- UNIFIED AND COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE OF THE FIELDCovers the fundamental algorithms of each field, whether proposed for spoken or written language, whether logical or statistical in origin.- EMPHASIS ON WEB AND OTHER PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSGives readers an understanding of how language-related algorithms can be applied to important real-world problems.- EMPHASIS ON SCIENTIFIC EVALUATIONOffers a description of how systems are evaluated with each problem domain.- EMPERICIST/STATISTICAL/MACHINE LEARNING APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE PROCESSINGCovers all the new statistical approaches, while still completely covering the earlier more structured and rule-based methods.

    This crafty revision of English vocabulary posits that Platypus should signify “to give your cat pigtails;” that Flemish should mean “rather like snot;” and that Celtic is in fact a prison for fleas. With nearly 600 new definitions, this side-splitting resource pushes the boundaries of the English language to riotous new limits.

     Lady Josephina Crawford, daughter of Viscount Whitemore, harbours a devastating secret that keeps her from finding a suitable husband in high society and risks bringing scandal to her family name should it ever be revealed. Custom, duty, and propriety stand in the way of her happiness, and within the confines of Regency England’s high society, those barricades are enough to keep her encaged forever. Gerard Sheridan, Marquess of Richmond, heir to the Duke of Bedfordshire, suffers from a secret of his own – he struggles to deal with the enormous pressure to fulfil a role that he never expected would be his. Oil paint, color, light, and composition fill his imagination every waking moment, but all of that must be cast aside when Lord Richmond as he takes on the role of heir, after his brother’s tragic death. He needs to find a wife, and fast. A chance encounter opens up new hope. But from behind the masks that they wear, Josephina and Gerard must face the truth that they see in each other’s eyes; they’re lost in a battle between convention and love, and within the glittering walls of Almack’s Assembly Rooms, they’re without question set up to fail. Can Gerard overcome his doubts, and believe that love is possible? Can Josephina risk trusting that her secret could be safe with Gerard? Or will the conventions of society tear them apart forever?

    It is not primarily concerned with specific pictures and the things people say about them, but rather with the way we talk about the idea of imagery, and all its related notions of picturing, imagining, perceiving, likening, and imitating. It is a book about images, therefore, that has no illustrations except for a few schematic diagrams, a book about vision written as if by a blind author for a blind reader. If it contains any insight into real, material pictures, it is the sort that might come to a blind listener, overhearing the conversation the sighted speakers talking about images. My hypothesis is that such a listener might see patterns in these conversations that would be invisible to the sighted participant.

    Even people who have tried other books without success have learned to read Hebrew using this book. Here's what makes it different: * Fun memory tricks make it super simple to remember the sounds of the letters * Pace - The book is divided into 12 simple lessons. Two a week for 6 weeks. * The cheerful style of the book is great for adults and children alike. * From week one you are given words you can read from the Hebrew Bible! * The charming illustrations make learning Hebrew a pleasure. At the end of six weeks you WILL be able to read from the original Hebrew Bible, Psalms or the Siddur (Jewish prayer book) and you will have taken the first big step towards learning the Hebrew Language!

    He examines the power of the arguments embedded in these speeches to inspire people to achieve great things, or do great harm. Abbott draws upon his political expertise to explain how our current understanding of the world is rooted in pivotal moments of history. These moments are captured in the words of a range of influential speakers including: Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King, Jr, Enoch Powell, Napoleon Beazley, Kevin Rudd, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, Margaret Beckett, Winston Churchill, Salvador Allende, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Tim Collins, Mohandas Gandhi, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Robin Cook and Barack Obama. The speeches in this book are arranged thematically, linked by concepts such as 'might is right', 'with us or against us' and 'give peace a chance'. Each transcript is accompanied by an insightful commentary that analyses how the words relate to our modern society. Fresh and relevant, this is a book that will make you stop in your tracks and think about what is really happening in the world today.

    Your body language is on display almost all of the time so isn't it important you know what signal you're sending? Discover how to use your body language to your advantage and at the same time learn how to decipher other people's signals. Research shows that up to 90% of communication is transmitted non-verbally and that the most successful people - in all walks of life - are intuitive in deciphering these signals. We may think we know how to use this silent' language but how many of us can actually use it well? Body Language will help you: gain a deeper understanding of other people so you can read' their minds know what non-verbal signals you may be giving out to others and how to use this to communicate and gain the response you want notice if what someone says is completely at odds with what they are thinking or feeling learn how your extremities' can give you away (despite what's coming out of your mouth). make a better impression in your social and work life by being aware of your bodytalk' (and that of others). ..and more.