Book picks similar to
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Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling
David Wolman - 2008
In Righting the Mother Tongue, the author of A Left-Hand Turn Around the World brings us the tangled story of English Spelling, from Olde English to email. Utterly captivating, deliciously edifying, and extremely witty, Righting the Mother Tongue is a treat for the language lover—a book that belongs in every personal library, right next to Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, and the works of Bill Bryson and Simon Winchester.
The Missing Link Reflections on Philosophy and Spirit
Sydney Banks - 1998
It reveals a simplicity beneath the complex workings of the mind and the principles behind the creation of our life experience.
Jackasses of History: Bathroom Reader and Handy Manual of Unpleasant Trivia
Seann McAnally - 2018
Norman Baker said that about his autobiography. Why? He was a jackass. In the pages of this book meet 20 losers, killers, confidence tricksters, and incompetents - the Jackasses of History. For adult readers.
How to Start a Blog Today: A Free Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide to Create a Blog in 20 minutes
Scott Chow - 2017
The entire process is explained in simple, easy to understand terms, so you can create a great blog without any technical knowledge. First, you will learn the basic process of WordPress blogging, which is the free software your blog will be built with. Once that is done, you will move on to customization of your new blog. The book then ends with chapters on promoting your blog and blogging for profit. In addition, the author offers additional support and updates through his website, free of charge.
The Art of the Handwritten Note: A Guide to Reclaiming Civilized Communication
Margaret Shepherd - 2002
Just as you cherish receiving personal mail, you can take pleasure in crafting correspondence. Love, gratitude, condolences, congratulations--for every emotion and occasion, a snippet of heartfelt prose is included, sure to loosen the most stymied letter writer.
The Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path of Buddhism: Discover the Essence of Buddhism and the Path to Nibbana
Briggs Cardenas - 2014
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
The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech
Avital Ronell - 1989
Affiliated with discontinuity, alarm, and silence, it raises fundamental questions about the constitution of self and other, the stability of location, systems of transfer, and the destination of speech. Profoundly changing our concept of long-distance, it is constantly transmitting effects of real and evocative power. To the extent that it always relates us to the absent other, the telephone, and the massive switchboard attending it, plugs into a hermeneutics of mourning. The Telephone Book, itself organized by a "telephonic logic," fields calls from philosophy, history, literature, and psychoanalysis. It installs a switchboard that hooks up diverse types of knowledge while rerouting and jamming the codes of the disciplines in daring ways. Avital Ronell has done nothing less than consider the impact of the telephone on modern thought. Her highly original, multifaceted inquiry into the nature of communication in a technological age will excite everyone who listens in. The book begins by calling close attention to the importance of the telephone in Nazi organization and propaganda, with special regard to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. In the Third Reich the telephone became a weapon, a means of state surveillance, "an open accomplice to lies." Heidegger, in Being and Time and elsewhere, elaborates on the significance of "the call." In a tour de force response, Ronell mobilizes the history and terminology of the telephone to explicate his difficult philosophy.Ronell also speaks of the appearance of the telephone in the literary works of Duras, Joyce, Kafka, Rilke, and Strindberg. She examines its role in psychoanalysis—Freud said that the unconscious is structured like a telephone, and Jung and R. D. Laing saw it as a powerful new body part. She traces its historical development from Bell's famous first call: "Watson, come here!" Thomas A. Watson, his assistant, who used to communicate with spirits, was eager to get the telephone to talk, and thus to link technology with phantoms and phantasms. In many ways a meditation on the technologically constituted state, The Telephone Book opens a new field, becoming the first political deconstruction of technology, state terrorism, and schizophrenia. And it offers a fresh reading of the American and European addiction to technology in which the telephone emerges as the crucial figure of this age.
Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care
John McWhorter - 2003
Critically acclaimed linguist John McWhorter has devoted his career to exploring the evolution of language. He has often argued that language change is inevitable and in general culturally neutral-languages change rapidly even in indigenous cultures where traditions perpetuate; and among modernized peoples, culture endures despite linguistic shifts. But in his provocative new book, Doing Our Own Thing, McWhorter draws the line when it comes to how cultural change is turning the English language upside down in America today, and how public English is being overwhelmed by street English, with serious consequences for our writing, our music, and our society. McWhorter explores the triumph of casual over formal speech-particularly since the dawn of 1960s counterculture-and its effect on Americans' ability to write, read, critique, argue, and imagine. In the face of this growing rift between written English and spoken English, the intricate vocabularies and syntactic roadmaps of our language appear to be slipping away, eroding our intellectual and artistic capacities. He argues that "our increasing alienation from 'written language' signals a gutting of our intellectual powers, our self-regard as a nation, and thus our very substance as a people." Timely, thought-provoking, and compellingly written, Doing Our Own Thing is sure to stoke many debates about the fate of our threatened intellectual culture, and the destiny of our democracy.
The Chinese Typewriter: A History
Thomas S. Mullaney - 2017
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.
Idiot Nation
Michael Moore - 2005
Stupid White Men was published by Penguin in the UK in 2002 and has since sold well over 1.5 million copies. These hilarious and scorching extracts show exactly why Moore is the man that everyone has an opinion on.
Trivium: The Classical Liberal Arts of Grammar, Logic, & Rhetoric
John Michell - 2016
Following on the success of Quadrivium and Sciencia, Trivium gathers six Wooden Books titles together into a beautiful six-color package that presents ancient wisdom in an accessible way. Trivium includes the books Euphonics, Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric,, Poetic Meter and Form, and Ethics.
Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique
Marc Drogin - 1980
Moreover, it is the only modern book that provides clearly described, brilliantly photographed, and accurately reproduced examples of both major and minor hands along with explicit directions for writing them.The author — a professional calligrapher of medieval styles, as well as illuminator, writer, and teacher — presents a spirited historical account of thirteen important writing styles developed from about the fourth century to the end of the fifteenth. These include Roman Rustic, Uncial, Carolingian Minuscule, Early Gothic, Luxeuil Minuscule, Gothic Littera Bastarda , and seven other distinctive hands. The text explains how and why different styles evolved, why certain devices, codes, and abbreviations were used, and how form and function interacted.In addition to fascinating facts about the origin and development of medieval scripts, Medieval Calligraphy also shows you how to duplicate medieval techniques with modern writing tools. Thorough instructions and sharply detailed, full-page photographs of the original alphabets explain pen angles and stroke sequences for each letter and capital. By carefully studying and practicing the techniques described, calligraphers will be able to master some of history's most interesting and influential scripts. Mr. Drogin has rounded out the book with helpful lists of suppliers of tools and materials, American and European sources for facsimiles and books, calligraphic societies, a bibliography, index, and more.
The Power Of Words: Words are free, its how you use them that may cost you
J. Martin - 2016
Words, however, are the reason that one person lives a life of abundance while another person lives a life of lack. Words can open doorways that hands can not. They can break down invisible boundaries. A few words can destroy life or breathe new life into a withering one. Words can fill a person full of happiness or fill them full of despair. Words can build up a person’s confidence, or take it crashing to the ground. As most people do not value their words, they misuse them, which allows the power of their words to work against them. They want to go in one direction, but their words push them in another. This conflict is what most people battle with each day. They ask God to grace their lives with favor, health and abundance, but their words keep them in a life full of disappointment, sickness, and lack. In this book, I want to share with you the correct way to harness the power of your words, so instead of holding you back, they propel you towards the life that you desire. The life that you were destined to live. I will draw from personal experience and Scripture to illustrate how positive thoughts and words can be used to overcome every challenge that stands in your way. I will share how important it is to stop the habit of talking idly about your problems and instead focus on speaking about solutions. “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Pick up your copy today by clicking the BUY NOW button at the top of this page.
History and culture, language, and literature: selected essays of Teodoro A. Agoncillo
Teodoro A. Agoncillo - 2003