What if the nuclear arms race was just a cover for a far more insidious detente? How would the world's government deal with the true fallout of the Cold War? From the minds of comic legends Mark Waid (Kingdom Come, The Flash) and Marc Silvestri (X-Men, Wolverine, The Darkness) comes this science-fiction/action-thriller that has mesmerized fans worldwide.

    network. About their project the collective says "By dinosaurs, we mean Capitalism, The State, Hierarchy, and the countless other guises worn by Authority. What shall come after the dinosaurs! Championing decentralization, chaos, mutual aid and butterfly-wings among other things, this book brings to life the tactics and strategies for an effective resistance against the dinosaurs today."While the Curious George Brigade articulates an expressly anarchist vision, they do not seek to promote anarchism as an ideology. Their book begins with a short preface aptly entitled, "How I forgot the Spanish Civil War and Learned to Love Anarchy". They write that the "moment anarchy becomes capital-A Anarchism, with all the requisite platforms and narrow historical baggage, it is transformed from the activity of people into yet another stale ideology for sale on the marketplace." They describe their nonsectarian, flexible, and inclusive DIY communitarian approach as "folk anarchy... a name, however arbitrary, for an infinite multitude of actions taken to erode the constraints of authority." They believe that there "is no secret for revolution, no grand dialectic, no master theory." Revolutions "are as perpetual as the changing of the seasons."

    With Humankind, he brings that mentality to bear against one of our most entrenched ideas: namely, that human beings are by nature selfish and self-interested.By providing a new historical perspective of the last 200,000 years of human history, Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact evolutionarily wired for cooperation rather than competition, and that our instinct to trust each other has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. Bregman systematically debunks our understanding of the Milgram electrical-shock experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment, and the Kitty Genovese "bystander effect."In place of these, he offers little-known true stories: the tale of twin brothers on opposing sides of apartheid in South Africa who came together with Nelson Mandela to create peace; a group of six shipwrecked children who survived for a year and a half on a deserted island by working together; a study done after World War II that found that as few as 15% of American soldiers were actually capable of firing at the enemy.The ultimate goal of Humankind is to demonstrate that while neither capitalism nor communism has on its own been proven to be a workable social system, there is a third option: giving "citizens and professionals the means (left) to make their own choices (right)." Reorienting our thinking toward positive and high expectations of our fellow man, Bregman argues, will reap lasting success. Bregman presents this idea with his signature wit and frankness, once again making history, social science and economic theory accessible and enjoyable for lay readers.

    This new book takes place in Lockdown Three. This time Key can make Government-sanctioned expeditions out onto the streets of London (remember?). And it is there that the inaction takes place. Phone calls to his mother, promenades with his loyal friend, bubble-negotiations, sitting his fat arse down on benches, drinking mocha. Another three months of mind-freezing inertia. This time on the move. Conversations interspersed with poetry.

    It is also a literary work, an often miraculous interplay between cultural documents and historical periods.

    You are not supposed to think about reading this book. In fact, just plain thinking at all is unacceptable. You have been warned.... From hilarious to horrifying to dangerously insightful, a selection of stories that must not be told, for they slaughter the sacred cows of our age. Do you dare read them? Stories by Nick Cole, John C. Wright, Sarah A. Hoyt, Brad R. Torgersen, Vox Day and more… Non-fiction articles by Tom Kratman and Larry Corriea

    Its starting point is the annual Turing Test, which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computers can “think.”Named for computer pioneer Alan Turing, the Tur­ing Test convenes a panel of judges who pose questions—ranging anywhere from celebrity gossip to moral conundrums—to hidden contestants in an attempt to discern which is human and which is a computer. The machine that most often fools the panel wins the Most Human Computer Award. But there is also a prize, bizarre and intriguing, for the Most Human Human.In 2008, the top AI program came short of passing the Turing Test by just one astonishing vote. In 2009, Brian Christian was chosen to participate, and he set out to make sure Homo sapiens would prevail.The author’s quest to be deemed more human than a com­puter opens a window onto our own nature. Interweaving modern phenomena like customer service “chatbots” and men using programmed dialogue to pick up women in bars with insights from fields as diverse as chess, psychiatry, and the law, Brian Christian examines the philosophical, bio­logical, and moral issues raised by the Turing Test.One central definition of human has been “a being that could reason.” If computers can reason, what does that mean for the special place we reserve for humanity?

    Using translation as his lens, David Bellos shows how much we can learn about ourselves by exploring the ways we use translation, from the historical roots of written language to the stylistic choices of Ingmar Bergman, from the United Nations General Assembly to the significance of James Cameron's Avatar.Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across human experience to describe why translation sits deep within us all, and why we need it in so many situations, from the spread of religion to our appreciation of literature; indeed, Bellos claims that all writers are by definition translators. Written with joie de vivre, reveling both in misunderstanding and communication, littered with wonderful asides, it promises any reader new eyes through which to understand the world. In the words of Bellos: "The practice of translation rests on two presuppositions. The first is that we are all different: we speak different tongues, and see the world in ways that are deeply influenced by the particular features of the tongue that we speak. The second is that we are all the same—that we can share the same broad and narrow kinds of feelings, information, understandings, and so forth. Without both of these suppositions, translation could not exist. Nor could anything we would like to call social life. Translation is another name for the human condition."

    The inspiration to write a work of art arises from the unconscious, full of ideas that the very author may have been unaware of. “The Little Prince for Grown-ups” gets to the roots of some of Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince, using mythology and Jungian psychology concepts to expose some of its buried treasures. As in the book of Saint-Exupéry, the crash that leads the pilot to land in the Sahara desert becomes the beginning of a self-knowledge journey. Exupéry himself, or rather, Antoine, is the protagonist of this journey, and his companions are the blonde boy with the scarf around his neck and the Wise Old Man. In addition, there are many stories from the Bible as well as Gnostic texts, and Greek mythology.. Despite being based on Jungian ideas, no psychology knowledge is required to the read the book.

    Drawing both widespread interest and criticism, his Earth Chronicles series of books, beginning with The 12th Planet, detailed how humanity arose after the arrival of the Anunnaki (“those who from Heaven to Earth came”), alien “gods” who created modern man in their own image and imparted gifts of civilizing knowledge. Providing an insider’s look into the decades of research behind Zecharia Sitchin’s complete works as well as an in-depth overview of his theories, this collection includes carefully selected chapters from the Earth Chronicles series as well as never-before-published letters, articles, and lectures. We learn about the genesis of The 12th Planet in “The Book as a Story,” the Sumerians and their Anunnaki influences in “The Sudden Civilization,” the orbit of Nibiru in “UFOs, Pyramids, and the 12th Planet,” the prehistory of the Americas in “Cities Lost and Found,” the extraterrestrial origins of modern man in “The Cosmic Connection--DNA,” and much more. We get to read never-before-published lectures, culled from Sitchin’s decades of presentations, as well as the article that spurred the writing of There Were Giants Upon the Earth. Each piece includes an introduction by Sitchin’s niece, offering context and insight into Sitchin’s passionate work. These introductions reveal the man behind the theories, a world traveler known for his scholarship, dry humor, and precisely chosen words. If his theories are true, as Sitchin wholeheartedly believed, then this collection presents some of the most important knowledge we have of our origins and future.

    A compelling and revolutionary work that calls for the immediate extension of our human rights to the great apes.The Great Ape Project looks forward to a new stage in the development of the community of equals, whereby the great apes-chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans-will actually receive many of the same protections and rights that are already accorded to humans.This profound collection of thirty-one essays by the world's most distinguished observers of free-living apes make up a uniquely satisfying whole, blending observation and interpretation in a highly persuasive case for a complete reassessment of the moral status of our closest kin.

    Here, for the first time and in detail, Zimbardo tells the full story of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the landmark study in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week, the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners. By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to how once upstanding American soldiers came to abuse and torture Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. He replaces the long-held notion of the “bad apple” with that of the “bad barrel”—the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around.

    But we are also an animal that does not think it is an animal. How well do we really know ourselves?How to Be Animal tells a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our existence is a profound struggle with being animal. We possess a psychology that seeks separation between humanity and the rest of nature, and we have invented grand ideologies to magnify this. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this mindset evolved, Challenger's book examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives, from our politics to the way we distance ourselves from other species. We travel from the origin of homo sapiens through the agrarian and industrial revolutions, the age of the internet, and on to the futures of AI and human-machine interface. Challenger examines how technology influences our sense of our own animal nature and our relationship with other species with whom we share this fragile planet.That we are separated from our own animality is a delusion, according to Challenger. Blending nature writing, history, and moral philosophy, How to Be Animal is both a fascinating reappraisal of what it means to be human, and a robust defense of what it means to be an animal.

    It is a perfect way to introduce yourself and others to this giant of the 20th century. The book begins with Hayek's most excellent essay on money. It is also his most radical. He plainly says that central banks cannot be reformed. There can never be sound money so long as they are in charge. He calls for their complete abolition, no compromises accepted. He wants the market in charge of money from top to bottom. His words predicting crisis followed by wild swings in valuation are up to the minute. He also relates the quality of money with the recurrence of crisis, showing an excellent application of Austrian theory.Hayek was deeply influenced by Mises, and this shows here in the area of money.The second essay is "The Pretense of Knowledge," his shocking Nobel speech that explained why the very idea of government in our times is unintellectual, presumptuous, and untenable. He is as critical of socialism as he is of interventionism. He shows that the state is not capable of doing all that it is charged with doing, and why conceding it any role in social and economic management is dangerous to liberty.It was not the speech everyone expected. But it lived up to Hayek's lifelong commitment to telling truth to power. This small book is really a first in the Hayekian literature: small form, powerful words, and by the great man himself.[Description taken from Mises.org]

    The victory of IBM's Watson on the television quiz show Jeopardy! revealed how scientists and engineers at IBM and elsewhere are pushing the boundaries of science and technology to create machines that sense, learn, reason, and interact with people in new ways to provide insight and advice.In Smart Machines, John E. Kelly III, director of IBM Research, and Steve Hamm, a writer at IBM and a former business and technology journalist, introduce the fascinating world of "cognitive systems" to general audiences and provide a window into the future of computing. Cognitive systems promise to penetrate complexity and assist people and organizations in better decision making. They can help doctors evaluate and treat patients, augment the ways we see, anticipate major weather events, and contribute to smarter urban planning. Kelly and Hamm's comprehensive perspective describes this technology inside and out and explains how it will help us conquer the harnessing and understanding of "big data," one of the major computing challenges facing businesses and governments in the coming decades. Absorbing and impassioned, their book will inspire governments, academics, and the global tech industry to work together to power this exciting wave in innovation.