The Blindfold Test
Title | The Blindfold Test PDF eBook |
Author | Barry Schechter |
Publisher | Melville House |
Pages | 347 |
Release | 2020-05-19 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 161219883X |
A raucous comedy about a paranoid loser who maybe wasn't paranoid enough... In the sixties, Jeffrey Parker briefly attended an antiwar rally. He wasn't all that interested--he just listened to a few speeches, and went home...and nothing was ever the same. In this wildly comic novel, Parker's brief dalliance is the beginning of the end. He never lands a decent job. Women never stick around. He has terrible stretches of bad luck, and is the unwilling victim of just plain bizarre occurances: once, he comes home to find that the final page in every one of his books has been removed. Then Parker discovers that he's been the target of a government plot--like the FBI's real-life COINTELPRO--and the obsession of a rogue FBI agent who just won't give up. This outrageously imaginative debut is reminiscent of John Kennedy Toole's explosive, out-of-nowhere farce A Confederacy of Dunces. Part thriller, part national tragedy, and all hysterical comedy, it is devilishly entertaining even as it forces Parker and readers to uncover the truth not only about their country, but about themselves.
To Allay All Prejudices
Title | To Allay All Prejudices PDF eBook |
Author | Lucas Aaron Henry |
Publisher | |
Pages | 556 |
Release | 2008 |
Genre | Jazz |
ISBN |
Psychological Tests for Use with Blind Adults in Vocational Rehabilitation
Title | Psychological Tests for Use with Blind Adults in Vocational Rehabilitation PDF eBook |
Author | Salvatore G. DiMichael |
Publisher | |
Pages | 16 |
Release | 1947 |
Genre | Blind |
ISBN |
The Blind Storyteller
Title | The Blind Storyteller PDF eBook |
Author | Iris Berent |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 288 |
Release | 2020-04-01 |
Genre | Psychology |
ISBN | 0190061944 |
Do newborns think? Do they know that "three" is greater than "two"? Do they prefer "right" to "wrong"? What about emotions--can newborns recognize happiness or anger? If the answer to these questions is yes, then how are our inborn thoughts and feelings encoded in our bodies? Could they persist after we die? Going all the way back to ancient Greece, human nature and the mind-body problem have been the topics of fierce scholarly debates. But laypeople also have strong opinions about such matters. Most people believe, for example, that newborn babies don't know the difference between right and wrong--such knowledge, they insist, can only be learned. For emotions, they presume the opposite--that our capacity to feel fear, for example, is both inborn and embodied. These beliefs are stories we tell ourselves about what we know and who we are. They reflect and influence our understanding of ourselves and others and they guide every aspect of our lives. In The Blind Storyteller, the cognitive psychologist Iris Berent exposes a chasm between our intuitive understanding of human nature and the conclusions emerging from science. Her conclusions show that many of our stories are misguided. Just like Homer, we, the storyteller, are blind. How could we get it so wrong? In a twist that could have come out of a Greek tragedy, Berent proposes that our errors are our fate. These mistakes emanate from the very principles that make our minds tick: Our blindness to human nature is rooted in human nature itself. An intellectual journey that draws on philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and Berent's own cutting-edge research, The Blind Storyteller grapples with a host of provocative questions, from why we are so afraid of zombies, to whether dyslexia is "just in our heads," from what happens to us when we die, to why we are so infatuated with our brains. The end result is a startling new perspective on the age-old nature/nurture debate--and on what it means to be human.
Book of Jazz
Title | Book of Jazz PDF eBook |
Author | Leonard Feather |
Publisher | Horizon Press |
Pages | 280 |
Release | 1988-06-01 |
Genre | Jazz |
ISBN | 9780818012020 |
Discusses the role of each instrument in the development of jazz and profiles major performers as well as describing the origins and development of this truly American art form. Bibliogs
The Blind Watchmaker
Title | The Blind Watchmaker PDF eBook |
Author | Richard Dawkins |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Pages | 386 |
Release | 1996 |
Genre | Science |
ISBN | 9780393315707 |
Reprint of the 1987 original with a new introduction and preface. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Blind Spot
Title | The Blind Spot PDF eBook |
Author | Jean-Yves Girard |
Publisher | European Mathematical Society |
Pages | 554 |
Release | 2011 |
Genre | Logic |
ISBN | 9783037190883 |
These lectures on logic, more specifically proof theory, are basically intended for postgraduate students and researchers in logic. The question at stake is the nature of mathematical knowledge and the difference between a question and an answer, i.e., the implicit and the explicit. The problem is delicate mathematically and philosophically as well: the relation between a question and its answer is a sort of equality where one side is ``more equal than the other'': one thus discovers essentialist blind spots. Starting with Godel's paradox (1931)--so to speak, the incompleteness of answers with respect to questions--the book proceeds with paradigms inherited from Gentzen's cut-elimination (1935). Various settings are studied: sequent calculus, natural deduction, lambda calculi, category-theoretic composition, up to geometry of interaction (GoI), all devoted to explicitation, which eventually amounts to inverting an operator in a von Neumann algebra. Mathematical language is usually described as referring to a preexisting reality. Logical operations can be given an alternative procedural meaning: typically, the operators involved in GoI are invertible, not because they are constructed according to the book, but because logical rules are those ensuring invertibility. Similarly, the durability of truth should not be taken for granted: one should distinguish between imperfect (perennial) and perfect modes. The procedural explanation of the infinite thus identifies it with the unfinished, i.e., the perennial. But is perenniality perennial? This questioning yields a possible logical explanation for algorithmic complexity. This highly original course on logic by one of the world's leading proof theorists challenges mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, and philosophers to rethink their views and concepts on the nature of mathematical knowledge in an exceptionally profound way.