"A humorous compendium for the electronic age, comprising 320 fun-filled pages of the very best (and worst) of internet humour."

How design can improve the quality of our everyday lives by engaging the invisible electromagnetic environment in which we live. As our everyday social and cultural experiences are increasingly mediated by electronic products—from "intelligent" toasters to iPods—it is the design of these products that shapes our experience of the "electrosphere" in which we live. Designers of electronic products, writes Anthony Dunne in Hertzian Tales, must begin to think more broadly about the aesthetic role of electronic products in everyday life. Industrial design has the potential to enrich our daily lives—to improve the quality of our relationship to the artificial environment of technology, and even, argues Dunne, to be subverted for socially beneficial ends. The cultural speculations and conceptual design proposals in Hertzian Tales are not utopian visions or blueprints; instead, they embody a critique of present-day practices, "mixing criticism with optimism." Six essays explore design approaches for developing the aesthetic potential of electronic products outside a commercial context—considering such topics as the post-optimal object and the aesthetics of user-unfriendliness—and five proposals offer commentary in the form of objects, videos, and images. These include "Electroclimates," animations on an LCD screen that register changes in radio frequency; "When Objects Dream...," consumer products that "dream" in electromagnetic waves; "Thief of Affection," which steals radio signals from cardiac pacemakers; "Tuneable Cities," which uses the car as it drives through overlapping radio environments as an interface of hertzian and physical space; and the "Faraday Chair: Negative Radio," enclosed in a transparent but radio-opaque shield. Very little has changed in the world of design since Hertzian Tales was first published by the Royal College of Art in 1999, writes Dunne in his preface to this MIT Press edition: "Design is not engaging with the social, cultural, and ethical implications of the technologies it makes so sexy and consumable." His project and proposals challenge it to do so.

Dealing with the most translated work of German literature, the Tales of the brothers Grimm (1812-1815), this book discusses their history, notably in relation to Denmark and subsequently other nations from 1816 to 1986. The Danish intelligentsia responded enthusiastically to the tales and some were immediately translated into Danish by a nobleman and by the foremost Romantic poet. Their renditions remained in print for a century and embued the tales with high prestige. This book discusses translators, approaches, and other parameters such as copyright, and changes in target audiences. The tales’ social acceptability inspired Hans Christian Andersen to write his celebrated fairytales. Combined, the Grimm and Andersen tales came to constitute the ‘international fairytale’.This genre was born in processes of translation and, today, it is rooted more firmly in the world of translation than in national literatures. This book thus addresses issues of interest to literary, cross-cultural studies and translation.

Charlie Parker is an African Grey Parrot. He entered the life of the Smith family three decades ago when they first encountered him in a downtown Manhattan bird shop and found him so irresistible, they had to bring him home. Charlie is many things in the Smith family, articulating them all in an astonishingly diverse and colorful vocabulary. He can be demanding, squawking imperiously "Clean my cage" or "Want some water." He can be very direct, warning an aggressive business associate who had been yelling at Debby "I'm going to kick your ass, you sonofabitch" He can be mischievous, making meowing noises to a neighbor's confused dog in the elevator. He is a survivor, who ended up recovering on an IV after the collapse of the World Trade Center filled the Smiths neighboring apartment with toxic dust. He is often the entertainer, with a songbook that extends across the opening bars of "Home on the Range" and "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Most of the time he is affectionate, as when he hangs upside down against the side of the cage and asks for his tummy to be tickled. In hearing Charlie's tales in this charming book, we come to realize that parrots are intelligent, sociable and loving creatures, to an extent that, as the renowned avian scientist Professor Irene Pepperberg insists in her introduction, they cannot meaningfully be owned by humans but should rather be enjoyed as companions.

Can we speak with the spirits of the dead? Is it possible to know the future? Are our dreams harbingers of things to come? Do auspicious omens and cautionary portents effect our lives? Edited by Ross E. Lockhart, Tales from a Talking Board examines these questions--and more--with tales of auguries, divination, and fortune telling, through devices like Ouija boards, tarot cards, and stranger things. So dim the lights, place your hands upon the planchette, and ask the spirits to guide you as we present fourteen stories of the strange and supernatural by Matthew M. Bartlett, Nadia Bulkin, Nathan Carson, Kristi DeMeester, Orrin Grey, Scott R. Jones, David James Keaton, Anya Martin, J. M. McDermott, S.P. Miskowski, Amber-Rose Reed, Tiffany Scandal, David Templeton, and Wendy N. Wagner.

Complex, surprising pieces by a brilliant, underrated Russian 20th-century Romantic whose music, though similar to that of his friend Rachmaninoff, is more cerebral and harmonically adventurous. These 34 "fairy tales" for piano highlight the composer's gift for musical storytelling, with their intense polyrhythms, intricate textures, and complex harmonic development.

The only way to appreciate the legendary musician Mark E. Smith is to encounter the man in his own words. 'May be the funniest music book ever written' Observer The Fall are one of the most distinctive British bands, their music - odd,spare, cranky and repetitious - an acknowledged influence on The Smiths, The Happy Mondays, Nirvana and Franz Ferdinand. And Mark E. Smith IS The Fall. 47 members have come and gone over the years yet he remains its charismatic leader, a professional outsider and all-round enemy of compromise, a true enigma. There have been a number of biographies of the legendary Smith, but this is the first time he has opened up in a full autobiography. For the first time we get to hear his full, candid take on the ups and downs of a band as notorious for its in-house fighting as for its great music; and on a life that has endured prison in America, drugs, bankruptcy, divorce, and the often bleak results of a legendary thirst. 'A riot' Independent on Sunday 'Unbeatable' Time Out 'Vicious' Daily Telegraph 'Hilarious' Scotland on Sunday