Expect a life-changing experience[Re]Awakenings are the starting points for life-changing experiences; a new plane of existence, an alternate reality or cyber-reality. This genre-spanning anthology of new speculative fiction explores that theme with a spectrum of tales, from science fiction to fantasy to paranormal; in styles from clinically serious to joyfully silly. As you read through them all, and you must read all of them, you will discover along the way that stereo-typical distinctions between the genres within speculative fiction are often arbitrary and unhelpful. You will be taken on an emotional journey through a galaxy of sparkling fiction; you will laugh, you will cry; you will consider timeless truths and contemplate eternal questions.All of life is within these pages, from birth to death (and in some cases beyond). In all of these stories, most of them specifically written for this anthology, the short format has been used to great effect. If you haven'¿¿t already heard of some of these authors, you soon will as they are undoubtedly destined to become future stars in the speculative fiction firmament. Remember, you read them here first!
Expect a life-changing experience[Re]Awakenings are the starting points for life-changing experiences; a new plane of existence, an alternate reality or cyber-reality. This genre-spanning anthology of new speculative fiction explores that theme with a spectrum of tales, from science fiction to fantasy to paranormal; in styles from clinically serious to joyfully silly. As you read through them all, and you must read all of them, you will discover along the way that stereo-typical distinctions between the genres within speculative fiction are often arbitrary and unhelpful. You will be taken on an emotional journey through a galaxy of sparkling fiction; you will laugh, you will cry; you will consider timeless truths and contemplate eternal questions.All of life is within these pages, from birth to death (and in some cases beyond). In all of these stories, most of them specifically written for this anthology, the short format has been used to great effect. If you haven'¿¿t already heard of some of these authors, you soon will as they are undoubtedly destined to become future stars in the speculative fiction firmament. Remember, you read them here first!
Why did dreams matter to Jews, Byzantine Christians, and Muslims in the first millennium? Dreams and Divination from Byzantium to Baghdad, 400 - 1000 CE shows how the ability to interpret dreams universally attracted power and influence in the first millennium. In a time when prophetic dreams were viewed as God's intervention in human history, male and female prophets wielded was unparalleled power in imperial courts, military camps, and religious gatherings. The three faiths drew on the ancient Near Eastern tradition of dream key manuals, which offer an insight into the hopes and fears of ordinary people. They melded pagan dream divination with their own scriptural traditions to produce a novel and rich culture of dream interpretation. Prophetic dreams enabled communities to understand their past and present circumstances as divinely ordained and helped to bolster the spiritual authority of dreamers and those who had the gift of interpreting their dreams. Bronwen Neil takes a gendered approach to the analysis of the common culture of dream interpretation across late antique Jewish, Byzantine, and Islamic sources to 1000 CE, in order to expose the ways in which dreams offered women a unique opportunity to exercise influence. The epilogue to the volume reveals why dreams still matter today to many men and women of the monotheist traditions.
With candid text and never-before-published photographs, this dynamic yearbook captures the dramatic story lines, high quality of play, and enthusiasm of the crowd that characterize Davis Cup. Launched in 1900 as a match between the United States and Great Britain, Davis Cup has grown into the largest annual team competition in sport with more than 130 nations entered in the year 2002. With Patrick McEnroe returning as the coach for a U.S. team that has advanced to the semifinals with Pete Sampras and Andy Roddick in its lineup, the competition now generates more attention in the U.S. than ever before.
A case for why regionalization, not globalization, has been the biggest economic trend of the past forty years The conventional wisdom about globalization is wrong. Over the past forty years as companies, money, ideas, and people went abroad more often than not, they looked regional rather than globally. O’Neil details this transformation and the rise of three major regional hubs in Asia, Europe, and North America. Current technological, demographic, and geopolitical trends look only to deepen these regional ties. O'Neil argues that this has urgent implications for the United States. Regionalization has enhanced economic competitiveness and prosperity in Europe and Asia. It could do the same for the United States, if only it would embrace its neighbors.
From the 1950s through the 1990s, antisemitism everywhere seemed to be on the wane. But as Neil Kressel documents in this startling book, the Muslim world has resurrected in recent decades almost every diatribe that more than two millennia of European hostility produced against the Jews, and it has introduced many homegrown and novel modes of attack. Though it is impossible to determine precisely how many of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims hold anti-Jewish beliefs, Kressel finds that much bigotry comes from the highest levels of religious and political leadership. Compounding the problem, as Kressel demonstrates, many in the West refuse to recognize this issue. The growing epidemic of hate has been largely ignored, misunderstood, or downplayed, Kressel reveals, because of apathy, ignorance, confusion, bigotry, ideology, purported pragmatism, and misguided multiculturalism. Those who value human rights ignore antisemitism at their own risk, he cautions, noting that no antisemitic regime or movement has ever been otherwise reasonable or progressive. Kressel argues convincingly that Muslim antisemitism provides an acid test of the seriousness of Western liberalism. If the West fails to stem this growing tide, as now seems likely, future affairs will not go well for the true proponents of democracy. Kressel moves beyond sounding the alarm to explore the diverse religious, political, social, and psychological forces that have created and nurtured the new hostility to Jews in the Muslim world; he concludes with a bold and clear plan for what must be done to confront this hostility.
The world of business for all organizations in the twenty-first century is global, interdependent, complex, and rapidly changing. That means sophisticated global leadership skills are required more than ever today. Individual and organizational success is no longer dependent solely on business acumen. Our ability to understand, communicate, and manage across borders, countries, and cultures has never been as important as it is now. The understanding and utilization of cultural differences as a business resource is a key building block as companies rely on their global reach to achieve the best profit and performance. For this reason, international business and cross-cultural management are key topics in undergraduate business, MBA, and executive education programs worldwide as companies and institutions prepare current and future business leaders for the global marketplace. This exciting new edition of the highly successful textbook, Managing Cultural Differences, seeks to guide students and any person with global responsibilities to understand how culture fits in a changing business world, how to gain a competitive advantage from effective cross-cultural management, and gives practical advice for doing business across the globe. With updated content, new case studies, and a new author team, Managing Cultural Differences is required course reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and MBA students alike, as well as being of significant value for anyone who sells, purchases, travels, or works internationally.
Both human rights and globalization are powerful ideas and processes, capable of transforming the world in profound ways. Notwithstanding their universal claims, however, the processes are constructed, and they draw their power from the specific cultural and political contexts in which they are constructed. Far from bringing about a harmonious cosmopolitan order, they have stimulated conflict and opposition. In the context of globalization, as the idea of human rights has become universal, its meaning has become one more terrain of struggle among groups with their own interests and goals. Part I of this volume looks at political and cultural struggles to control the human rights regime -- that is, the power to construct the universal claims that will prevail in a territory -- with respect to property, the state, the environment, and women. Part II examines the dynamics and counterdynamics of transnational networks in their interactions with local actors in Iran, China, and Hong Kong. Part III looks at the prospects for fruitful human rights dialogiue between competing universalisms that by definition are intolerant of conradiction and averse to compromise.
Part meditation book, part oracle, and part collection of Sufi lore, poetry, and stories, The Sufi Book of Life offers a fresh interpretation of the fundamental spiritual practice found in all ancient and modern Sufi schools—the meditations on the 99 Qualities of Unity. Unlike most books on Sufism, which are primarily collections of translated Sufi texts, this accessible guide is a handbook that explains how to apply Sufi principles to modern life. With inspirational commentary that connects each quality with contemporary concerns such as love, work, and success, as well as timeless wisdom from Sufi masters, both ancient and modern, such as Rumi, Hafiz, Shabistari, Rabia, Inayat Khan, Indries Shah, Irina Tweedie, Bawa Muhaiyadden, and more, The Sufi Book of Life is a dervish guide to life and love for the twenty-first century. On the web: http://sufibookoflife.com
Quirky and wonderfully candid, Neil Young's second book of reminiscences is as compelling as his first book. He returns with more unforgettable stories about his six decades in the music business - but this is not your average rock biography. He centres this work on one of his life's passions, cars, using the framework of all the cars he's ever owned to construct a narrative of his life and career, exploring and demonstrating how memories are attached to objects. Young also expresses regret for the environmental impact of his past cars, and now passionately advocates the use of clean energy. 'Special Deluxe' is a mix of memoir and environmental politics by one of the most gifted and influential artists of our time.
Where was your soul before you were born? If your soul is immortal, did it have a "life" prior to birth? Did you choose your life and parents? Is reincarnation real? Elizabeth and Neil Carman, the authors of Cosmic Cradle, address these questions through interviews with adults and children who report pre-birth experiences (PBEs) not based on regression, hypnosis, or drugs. Instead, interviewees recall their pre-birth existence completely sober and awake. In contrast to near-death experiences (NDEs), which have been well documented to show us what the soul experiences after death, PBEs throw light upon our lives before birth. People with NDEs sense that they "return home" when their spirits cross to the other side. What is the nature of this place we "return" to? PBEs suggest that we come from the same place we return to: we come from the Light and return to the Light. The same eternal "you" progresses through life before life, human life, and life after death. This new edition of Cosmic Cradle explores your soul's journey into your mother's womb--where your soul comes from, the origin and purpose of your life, and the process by which you entered an earthly body. In pre-birth communications, parents meet a soul seeking to cross over from the heavenly realm to human birth. Persons with pre-birth memories recall existence in a luminous world before birth, in which they preview the upcoming life with a Divine Planner, and recall how they journeyed to their mothers' wombs. Contents Foreword by Bernie Siegel, MD Introduction: Amnesia of Our Spiritual Origins Part One: Pre-Birth Memory 1. Children as Messengers 2. Memories of the Cosmic Cradle 3. “I Was in Your Tummy Twice” 4. Scanning Soul Plans: Contemporary Pre-Birth Memories 5. Welcome to Planet Earth 6. Shirley Temple and the Blue Bird 7. Our Soul as a Tiny Spaceship 8. I Saw All My Costumes Part Two: Pre-Birth Communications 9. Souls Waiting in the Wings for Birth 10. Soul as a Sphere of Light 11. Cosmic Conception 12. Miscarriages and Stillbirths in the Light of Pre-Birth Plans 13. Conversations with Unborn Children Part Three: Pre-Birth Wisdom down through History 14. Spirit-Children Down Under 15. Lodge of the Great Manitou 16. The Cosmic Designer 17. Travelers from the Light 18. Journey from Forgetting to Remembering
For decades knowledge of the 1961 massacre of Algerian demonstrators by the Paris police was suppressed. This study investigates the roots of this violence within the colonial system and how the event was covered up until it resurfaced after the 1980s to become one of the most controversial issues in contemporary French politics.
“Entertaining. . . . practical, ghostly, and often very funny tales . . . including those by saints like Rumi as well as lay storytellers from Turkey and Persia.” —Publishers Weekly The stories in this book are drawn from the dozens of Sufi tales that Douglas-Klotz has enjoyed telling in his seminars over the past 20 years. Most of them appear in works of the classical Sufis, such as Rumi, Attar, or S’adi. To preserve some of the in-person feeling and bring the language up to date, he has given them his own improvised turns. “If you want to hear a good story but prefer to read it instead, then read Douglas-Klotz! He writes as if he’s sitting in your living room, invited over for afternoon tea to entertain you with some heart-pleasing, often humorous, yet soul-searching Sufi stories. His modernization of these old texts is gentle and mindful, yet unapologetic.” —Maryam Mafi, from the foreword
In his latest collection of essays, Neil Davidson brings his formidable analytical powers to bear on the concept of the capitalist nation-state. Through probing inquiry, Davidson draws out how nationalist ideology and consciousness is used to bind the subordinate classes to “the nation,” while simultaneously using “the state” as a means of conducting geopolitical competition for capital.
The Holocene provides students, researchers and lay-readers with the remarkable story of how the natural world has been transformed since the end of the last Ice Age around 15,000 years ago. This period has witnessed a shift from environmental changes determined by natural forces to those dominated by human actions, including those of climate and greenhouse gases. Understanding the environmental changes - both natural and anthropogenic - that have occurred during the Holocene is of crucial importance if we are to achieve a sustainable environmental future. Revised and updated to take full account of the most recent advances, the third edition of this classic text includes substantial material on the scientific methods that are used to reconstruct and date past environments, as well as new concepts such as the Anthropocene. The book is fully-illustrated, global in coverage, and contains case studies, a glossary and more than 500 new references.
How did the individual human being become the focus of the contemporary discourse on security? What was the role of the United Nations in "securing" the individual? What are the payoffs and costs of this extension of the concept? Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong tackle these questions by analyzing historical and contemporary debates about what is to be secured. From Westphalia through the 19th century, the state's claim to be the object of security was sustainable because it offered its subjects some measure of protection. The state's ability to provide security for its citizens came under heavy strain in the 20th century as a result of technological, strategic, and ideological innovations. By the end of World War II, efforts to reclaim the security rights of individuals gathered pace, as seen in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a host of United Nations covenants and conventions. MacFarlane and Khong highlight the UN's work in promoting human security ideas since the 1940s, giving special emphasis to its role in extending the notion of security to include development, economic, environmental, and other issues in the 1990s.
Disrupt your industry, boost profitability, and grow your business with a powerful A.I. strategy. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is on the verge of disrupting every domain of human existence. What does that mean for your business? Everything. Building on the power of A.I. is the factor that will determine success or failure in the very near future—and this in-depth guide from the man who designed the A.I. system that famously won Jeopardy provides everything you need to be a leader in this revolution. Own the A.I. Revolution provides a future-forward look at A.I.—how it will look in the coming years, the countless business opportunities it will offer, the risks that come with it—and delivers the knowledge you need to navigate it all in real and practical ways. You’ll learn how to: •Find the right off-the-shelf A.I. solutions for your needs•Perform a cost/benefit analysis of implementing A.I. into your business strategy•Train and test A.I. before fully committing•Assemble superior teams to steer your A.I. future•Ensure you remain current and ahead of the curve You’ll also find interviews with today’s top experts and A.I. thought leaders on the exciting ways organizations are already transforming themselves through this revolutionary technology. A.I. sounds scary to some, but the best business leaders see it as an opportunity—as a way not only to drive profits and outpace the competition, but to build value for customers and make the world a better place. It’s time to face our brave new A.I.-driven world—and make sure you Own the A.I. Revolution!
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.