We are guilty of actions that make no sense. We perform acts of beauty and acts of ugliness. We give in to hidden ambitions, latent hungers, and clumsy grasps at insight. At the heart of these stories are the rituals—grand and small—in which we humans partake; the peculiar gestures we hope will forge meaning or help us glean some sort of understanding. They may be formally ceremonial and spiritual, like the imposition of ashes in a darkened church. But often they are secular, private, and bizarre. A woman slips her son's old baby tooth into her mouth as he's led away to prison. A girl in a tunnel plays an invisible piano while bombs ravage the city above. A man with a laser machine creates a private galaxy to rekindle lost love. A daughter frantically searches a wax museum for her mother's second self. Set mostly in Michigan, the stories in The Things We Do That Make No Sense are woven through with the power of ritual and glimmer with lush descriptions and poignant dialogue. From both the everyday and the sacred, these characters piece together the strange mosaic of life.

He also shows how our evolutionary past together with Darwinian processes currently occurring within our bodies, such as the evolution of new brain connections, provides insights into the immediate and ultimate causes of behavior.".

Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Even today there are experimental results that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar anomalies have revolutionised our world: in the sixteenth century, a set of celestial irregularities led Copernicus to realise that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse. In 13 Things That Don't Make Sense Michael Brooks meets thirteen modern-day anomalies that may become tomorrow's breakthroughs. Is ninety six percent of the universe missing? If no study has ever been able to definitively show that the placebo effect works, why has it become a pillar of medical science? Was the 1977 signal from outer space a transmission from an alien civilization? Spanning fields from chemistry to cosmology, psychology to physics, Michael Brooks thrillingly captures the excitement and controversy of the scientific unknown.

Technical Support Essentials is a book about the many facets of technical support. It attempts to provide a wide array of topics to serve as points of improvement, discussion, or simply topics that you might want to learn. The topics range from good work habits to the way technical support groups establish their own style of work. This book applies theories, models, and concepts synthesized from existing research in other fields—such as management, economics, leadership, and psychology—and connects them to technical support. The goal is to build on the work of others and allow their success to evolve the profession. The book’s broad perspective looks at proven practices, legal issues, dealing with customers, utilizing resources, and an array of other topics of interest to tech support professionals.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Designed to change anyone's life; you cannot read this book and walk away unchanged. "Ending the Epidemic of Child Abuse" is an all encompassing guide for survivors that will help you learn to thrive, not just survive. Anyone can read this book to learn how to help survivors of child abuse across the globe, and it all starts by changing one life at a time. This book covers all the information required to become totally psychologically healthy. In this book I start by explaining the critical first steps needed for healing, and I end up explaining how to use all the tools I mention in a way to end the suffering that is due to child abuse. This book is timeless, the information will be just as valuable, and applicable 20 years from now as it is today. Every survivor can benefit from the knowledge it contains.

A dozen problems in the philosophy of mind - The turn to materialism - Arguments against materialism - Consciousness and the mind-body problem - The structure of consciousness and neurobiology - Intentionality - Mental causation - Free will - The unconscious and the explanation of behavior - Perception - The self.