How is public morality understood in the twenty-first century, and what effect does this have on legislation and social policy? Public Morality and the Culture Wars is a strictly non-polemical analysis of the intellectual and ideological conflicts at the heart of the 'culture wars'. Taking debates on human nature, sexuality, gender identity, abortion, censorship, and free speech, Bryan Fanning offers an accessible analysis of modern public morality, identifying a 'triple divide' between conservative, liberal and progressive viewpoints. A nuanced analysis of 'culture wars' now dividing Anglophone democracies is badly needed. Public Morality and the Culture Wars makes a vibrant and invigorating contribution to the debate, essential reading for scholars and students in the fields of social policy, law, politics, philosophy, sociology and social justice.

Misinformation has had dramatic and dangerous effects, as evidenced by numerous events of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Reading a steady stream of misinformation leads to distrust, potentially leading to conflict in one's family and workplace, and even to civil unrest. At the heart of many such matters is scientific illiteracy. Many people enjoy a life of ease and convenience because of science-and since science also crosses courtrooms, classrooms and cultures, it has great potential to debunk misinformation and untangle the confusion on such issues as vaccines, sexual identity, race and evolution, alternative medicine, and human reproduction. This book addresses those issues and the popular stories, conspiracies, and misleading headlines that circulate across media platforms. Bringing accurate knowledge into people's agendas is challenging, and this book uses science and facts as a basis of every deliberation over laws and policies. The chapters weave together history, politics, human biology, and law, and demonstrate how our lives are dependent on understanding the nature of things.

The ritual of rainmaking is one of half a dozen Japanese folk practices and festivals described in this book. The story of rainmaking ceremonies begins with personal experience and then draws on the work of Japanese folklorists to record significant local variations and to construct a general account of the history and purpose of the ceremony. Field research was conducted during study visits to Kyoto, to Tenri in Nara Prefecture and to Shiga Prefecture. The chapter order follows the year cycle, from New Year via early summer purificatory festivals and rainmaking ceremonial to the feast of Bon, which with New Year ceremonies divides the year. Alongside these community or public rites are described private or family rituals concerned with birth, marriage and death. The introductory chapter relates aspects of Japanese culture, myth and language to the constant features of folk practice recorded or extant in 1950s Japan. Originally published in 1963.

Conspiracy theories are a popular topic of conversation in everyday life but are often frowned upon in academic discussions. Looking at the recent spate of philosophical interest in conspiracy theories, The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories looks at whether the assumption that belief in conspiracy theories is typically irrational is well founded

Why do people and groups ignore, deny and resist knowledge about society's many problems? In a world of 'alternative facts', 'fake news' that some believe could be remedied by 'factfulness', the question has never been more pressing. After years of ideologically polarised debates on the topic, this book seeks to further advance our understanding of the phenomenon of knowledge resistance by integrating insights from the social, economic and evolutionary sciences. It identifies simplistic views in public and scholarly debates about what facts, knowledge and human motivations are and what 'rational' use of information actually means. The examples used include controversies about nature-nurture, climate change, gender roles, vaccination, genetically modified food and artificial intelligence. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship and personal experiences of culture clashes, the book is aimed at the general, educated public as well as students and scholars interested in the interface of human motivation and the urgent social problems of today. -- .

Conservative journalist Allum Bokhari examines how the liberal-leaning elites of Silicon Valley have completely overtaken social media, creating a crisis for privacy and freedom of expression. In the beginning, the entrepreneurs who created the internet wanted to disrupt an old, oppressive system. They wanted to ensure that everyone -- no matter their social standing or level of education -- could have a voice. Today, those same entrepreneurs are in control, and they've created an oppressive system of their own. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are more powerful than most governments. They censor conservative voices. They ban content they don't like. They hide the profiles of users whose views don't align with their own. In #DELETED, Allum Bokhari tells the story of how this happened, and taps sources from deep in the government and several social media companies who are willing to speak out about it. The book includes several never-before-reported stories about censorship in big tech, and serves as a warning about what could happen if we don't do something about it.

75,000 years ago... early humans built a stone calendar that predates all other man-made structures found to date. Who were they? Why did they need a calendar?

Adam's Calendar firmly places the many ancient ruins of southern Africa at a point in history that we modern humans have never faced before some 75,000 ago.

It therefore symbolises the first conscious human looking at his first sunrise as a free species on planet Earth.

'A brilliant and important book ... Five Stars!' Mark Dolan, talkRADIO 'An important new book' Daily Express An alternative history of the world that exposes some of the biggest lies ever told and how they've been used over time. Lincoln did not believe all men were created equal. The Aztecs were not slaughtered by the Spanish Conquistadors. And Churchill was not the man that people love to remember. In this fascinating new book, journalist and author Otto English takes ten great lies from history and shows how our present continues to be manipulated by the fabrications of the past. He looks at how so much of what we take to be historical fact is, in fact, fiction. From the myths of WW2 to the adventures of Columbus, and from the self-serving legends of 'great men' to the origins of curry - fake history is everywhere and used ever more to impact our modern world. Setting out to redress the balance, English tears apart the lies propagated by politicians and think tanks, the grand narratives spun by populists and the media, the stories on your friend's Facebook feed and the tales you were told in childhood. And, in doing so, reclaims the truth from those who have perverted it. Fake History exposes everything you weren't told in school and why you weren't taught it.

This book offers a thoughtful analysis of how and why conspiracy thinking has become a popular mode of political discourse in the United States. How did conspiracy thinking become such a significant and surprisingly widely accepted form of political thinking in the United States? What compels people to respond to devastating, unpredictable events-terrorist acts, wars, natural disasters, economic upheavals-with the conviction that nothing is a coincidence, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected? Conspiracy Rising: Conspiracy Thinking and American Public Life argues that while outlandish paranoid theories themselves may seem nonsensical, the thread of conspiracy thinking throughout American history is a both a byproduct of our democratic form of government and a very real threat to it. From the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, and the Freemasons to the government hiding aliens and faking the moon landing; from the New World Order to the Obama "Birthers," the book explores the enduring popularity of a number of American conspiracy theories, showing how the conspiracy hysteria that may provoke disdain and apathy in the general public, can become a source of dangerous extremism.

Soon after 9/11, wild rumors began to spread: that Arab-Americans were celebrating publicly, that some people had been warned, that politicians knew all along.
The Global Grapevine reveals how--through our everyday thoughts and conversations, and the rumors we spread--we grapple with the new global world. Drawn from diverse sources, the book illuminates urban legends like the claim that a certain t-shirt with a Chinese pictogram brands the wearer as a prostitute, conspiracy theories such as the "9/11 Truth Movement," or stories of tourists infected with AIDS by locals. These rumors, the authors argue, reflect our anxieties and fears about contact with foreign cultures--how we believe foreign competition to be poisoning the domestic economy and foreign immigration to be eroding American values. Focusing on the threat posed by terrorism, the impact of immigration, the risks involved in international trade, and the dangers faced by naive tourism, the book provides a broad survey of the most widely circulated rumors and examines what these tales reveal about contemporary society.

PSI Spies will take you behind the scenes of the U.S. Army s formerly top-secret remote viewing unit to discover how the military has used this psychic ability as a tool, and a weapon. Despite the fact that remote viewing was developed by various tax-supported government agencies, including the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and even the U.S

Conspiracy theories seem to be proliferating today. Long relegated to a niche existence, conspiracy theories are now pervasive, and older conspiracy theories have been joined by a constant stream of new ones - that the USA carried out the 9/11 attacks itself, that the Ukrainian crisis was orchestrated by NATO, that we are being secretly controlled by a New World Order that keep us docile via chemtrails and vaccinations. Not to mention the moon landing that never happened. But what are conspiracy theories and why do people believe them? Have they always existed or are they something new, a feature of our modern world? In this book Michael Butter provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the nature and development of conspiracy theories. Contrary to popular belief, he shows that conspiracy theories are less popular and influential today than they were in the past. Up to the 1950s, the Western world regarded conspiracy theories as a legitimate form of knowledge and it was therefore normal to believe in them. It was only after the Second World War that this knowledge was delegitimized, causing conspiracy theories to be banished from public discourse and relegated to subcultures. The recent renaissance of conspiracy theories is linked to internet which gives them wider exposure and contributes to the fragmentation of the public sphere. Conspiracy theories are still stigmatized today in many sections of mainstream culture but are being accepted once again as legitimate knowledge in others. It is the clash between these domains and their different conceptions of truth that is fuelling the current debate over conspiracy theories.

The second edition of this popular text, updated throughout and now including Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election and aftermath, introduces students to the research into conspiracy theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing so, Uscinski and Enders address the psychological, sociological, and political sources of conspiracy theorizing. They rigorously analyze the most current arguments and evidence while providing numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the current debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.

As soon as the armed man realized that iron and steel were the best defences for his body, he would naturally insist that some sort of a guarantee should be given him of the efficacy of the goods supplied by his armourer. This system of proving armour would be effected by using those weapons commonly in use, and these, in the early times, were the sword, the axe, the lance, the bow, and the crossbow. The latter seems to have been the more common forms of proof, though as late as the seventeenth century we have evidence that armour was proved with the "estramaon" or sword blow. -from "The Proof of Armour" Not a history of defensive armor but rather a guide to the actual making of armor, as well as the regulations that governed the artisans who made it, this is a fascinating-and practical-handbook on the production, selling, and wearing metal traditional medieval body armor. First published in 1912, this classic book-by British historian and author CHARLES JOHN FFOULKES (1868-1947), curator of London's Royal Armouries-draws on records of the time to detail the tools and appliances of the trade, the decoration and cleaning of armor, the use of leather and fabrics, and much more to offer a complete reference for readers of period fiction and history, wargamers, costumers, and anyone fascinated by the craft of the armorer. This replica of the 1912 edition is complete with all of the original diagrams, illustrations, and photos.

In-depth ethnographic study of those active in the conspiracy milieu

Here is a true story of international intrigue, romances, corruption, graft, and political assassinations, the like of which has never been written before. It is the story of how different groups or atheistic- materialistic men have played in an international chess tournament to decide which group would win ultimate control of the wealth, natural resources, and man- power of the entire world. It is explained how the game has reached the final stage. The International Communists, and the International Capitalists, (both of whom have totalitarian ambitions) have temporarily joined hands to defeat Christian-democracy. The solution is to end the game the International Conspirators have been playing right now before one or another totalitarian-minded group imposes their ideas on the rest of mankind. The story is sensational and shocking, but it is educational because it is the TRUTH. The author offers practical solutions to problems so many people consider insoluble.