Wren received something for her eighteenth birthday that she was fairly sure was one of a kind: sky-blue wings. But along with those wings comes the knowledge that her father had a surprisingly practical reason for abandoning her when she was eight. In his letter to her, delivered via talking raven, she learns that it’s up to her to save billions of humans and Winged Blue from a threat that’s on the horizon and closing in fast. She is to travel to the world of the Winged Blue thirteen days after her birthday, and before she leaves, an attractive winged young woman named Sia will be teaching her how to fly. Wren has to hope that her world’s prophecy is right, and that she is up for something even more challenging than growing up gay in a small town: saving two entire worlds from the Winged Red.

The faith confessions written in this book have their foundation in the scriptures. Study notes are given after each confession for reference and meditation. This book unveils the benefits and power that occur when faith confessions are made. (Christian)

People and churches across America are discovering that their secular friends and neighbors have been unknowingly waiting for the chance to experience the good God. Blue Ocean Faith is a network of churches that have seen thousands of secular people—from Harvard deans to public housing residents—connect with God. Blue Ocean founder Dave Schmelzer details six profound paradigm shifts that unlock a depth of connection to God that’s new for many churchgoers and that’s unprecedented for their secular neighbors. Embracing centered-set faith, becoming solus Jesus, and taking a third-way approach to LGBTQ congregants are among the game-changers that empower this rich life of faith. Rather than retreating from or drawing lines against our increasingly secular world, people of faith can join Jesus—as followers like Saint Francis of Assisi have done for millennia—in joyfully entering the world around them with profound wonder and an equally-profound offer of a life that really is life. “Blue Ocean Faith is a riveting book about an exciting new movement of churches emerging out of the ashes of American evangelicalism/fundamentalism. This could be a charter document for a new kind of Jesus movement. Everyone should read it,” writes David P. Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics and Director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University. With plenty of engaging storytelling, Schmelzer brings together ancient and cutting-edge insights in a book that might revitalize your experience of God, open up your connection to your neighbors and your city … and maybe even kick off a new Jesus movement.

Western scholars of ancient Chinese ceramics have long thought blue and white porcelain manufactured before the Ming (1368-1644 A.D.), dates to the Yuan (1279-1368 A.D.). Even in China today these porcelains are still termed “Yuan Blue and White.” Based upon first-hand surveys of sites in Inner Mongolia, Adam T. Kessler’s Song Blue and White Porcelain on the Silk Road demonstrates that blue and white was made during the Song (960-1279 A.D.) ended up in the hands of the Xi Xia (1038-1226 A.D.) and the Jin (1115-1234 A.D.). Blue and white found today in hoards was buried prior to Mongol invasions of China in the 1200s. Sites from the Philippines to Egypt have yielded Song blue and white. Also reviewed is the cobalt-bearing ore used by Song China to create blue and white.

Part I. Knowledge: 1. Conclusive reasons 2. Epistemic operators 3. The pragmatic dimension of knowledge 4. The epistemology of belief 5. Two conceptions of knowledge: rational vs. reliable belief Part II. Perception and Experience: 6. Simple seeing 7. Conscious experience 8. Differences that make no difference 9. The mind's awareness of itself 10. What good is consciousness Part III. Thought and Intentionality: 11. Putting information to work 12. If you can't make one, you don't know how it works 13. The nature of thought 14. Norms and the constitution of the mental 15. Minds, machines, and money: what really explains behavior.

The twenty-eight essays in this Handbook, all by leading experts in the field, provide the most extensive treatment of various epistemological problems, supplemented by a historical account of this field. The entries are self-contained and substantial contributions to topics such as the sources of knowledge and belief, knowledge acquisition, and truth and justification. There are extensive essays on knowledge in specific fields: the sciences, mathematics, the humanities and the social sciences, religion, and language. Special attention is paid to current discussions on evolutionary epistemology, relativism, the relation between epistemology and cognitive science, sociology of knowledge, epistemic logic, knowledge and art, and feminist epistemology. This collection is a must-have for anybody interested in human knowledge, and its fortunes and misfortunes.