|
Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Controversial knowledge
Step into the unknown Tales of the paranormal have seduced us and
spooked us for centuries, passed around from person to person and
frequently retold and reimagined in books, films and TV. Whether
they're based on real events or they're simply urban legends which
have taken on a life of their own, the strange happenings,
unexplained events and unsolved mysteries in this book will take
you on a frightening journey to the outer limits of plausibility,
and dare you to believe the unbelievable. Ranging from the
mysterious to the macabre, the stories in this book span a broad
range of supernatural subjects including ghosts, spirits and the
undead, witchcraft and occultism, extraterrestrial life, mythical
creatures, and much more. Whether you're a believer or a sceptic, a
paranormal junkie or an interested observer, let these stories
spark your imagination, capture your curiosity and perhaps even
send a shiver down your spine.
"I have always been intrigued by fringe science," writes Martin
Gardner in the preface to this book, "perhaps for the same reason
that I enjoy freak shows and circuses. Pseudoscientists, especially
the extreme cranks, are fascinating creatures for psychological
study. Moreover, I have found that one of the best ways to learn
something about any branch of science is to find out where its
crackpots go wrong."
A unique combination of horse sense and drollery has made Martin
Gardner the undisputed dean of the critics of pseudoscience. This
bountiful collection of essays and articles will be wholeheartedly
greeted by Gardner's fans, as well as by new readers.
This collection of articles - many of which first appeared in the
Skeptical Inquirer, The New York Review of Books, and Free Inquiry
- explores pseudoscience and strange religious beliefs with the
author's trademark wit and verve. Destined to be a classic of
skeptical literature, this book covers a wide range of topics -
including UFOs, rainmaking, ghosts, the Big Bang, ESP, Oral
Roberts, as well as the early history of spiritualism and today's
bizarre "trance channeling" cults.
What is luck? The chances are you don't really know, but you
probably believe in it, and I bet that you invoke the word every
day of your life ...'Bad luck!' 'That was lucky!' 'You should be so
lucky!' 'What a lucky escape!' - said with varying degrees of
intensity, sincerity, sarcasm, amusement, incredulity or disgust.
But what is luck? This book tries to determine what luck is, how it
operates in our lives, and how far the individual is at its mercy -
favoured by good luck or cursed by bad? Is there any justice or
fair play in life, or are these merely human concepts that don't
exist in the laws governing the universe? Whatever you think you
believe, by the time you have read this book, the odds are that you
will have changed your mind. James M Kileen's analysis ranges from
Astrology to Zoroastrianism and everything in between: the big bang
and the butterfly effect, destiny and determinism, fortune-telling
and feng shui, gambling and game theory, miracles and Murphy's Law,
oracles and ordeals, philosophy and religion, precognition and the
placebo effect, serendipity and synchronicity. A Matter of Luck is
a highly readable yet thought-provoking work, interspersed with
illuminating and amusing examples to illlustrate each facet of this
fascinating subject: for example, the true stories of the man who
broke the bank at Monte Carlo, King Umberto and the chef, James
Dean's car, and the woman who simultaneously chose the winning
numbers for both the Massachusetts and Rhode Island lotteries
(although the numbers she chose for the Rhode Island lottery were
the winning numbers for the Massachusetts lottery, and vice versa).
Lucky or unlucky - you decide, if you can.
Journalist Allum Bokhari has spent four years investigating the
tech giants that dominate the Internet: Google, Facebook, YouTube,
Twitter. He has discovered a dark plot to seize control of the flow
of information, and utilize that power to its full extent-to
censor, manipulate, and ultimately sway the outcome of democratic
elections. His network of whistleblowers inside Google, Facebook
and other companies explain how the tech giants now see themselves
as "good censors," benevolent commissars controlling the
information we receive to "protect" us from "dangerous" speech.
They reveal secret methods to covertly manipulate online
information without us ever being aware of it, explaining how tech
companies can use big data to target undecided voters. They lift
the lid on a plot four years in the making-a plot to use the power
of technology to stop Donald Trump's re-election.
Best-selling author Michael Shermer presents an overarching theory
of conspiracy theories-who believes them and why, which ones are
real, and what we should do about them. Nothing happens by
accident, everything is connected, and there are no coincidences:
that is the essence of conspiratorial thinking. Long a fringe part
of the American political landscape, conspiracy theories are now
mainstream: 147 members of Congress voted in favor of objections to
the 2020 presidential election based on an unproven theory about a
rigged electoral process promoted by the mysterious group QAnon.
But this is only the latest example in a long history of ideas that
include the satanic panics of the 1980s, the New World Order and
Vatican conspiracy theories, fears about fluoridated water,
speculations about President John F. Kennedy's assassination, and
the notions that the Sandy Hook massacre was a false-flag operation
and 9/11 was an inside job. In Conspiracy, Michael Shermer presents
an overarching review of conspiracy theories-who believes them and
why, which ones are real, and what we should do about them. Trust
in conspiracy theories, he writes, cuts across gender, age, race,
income, education level, occupational status-and even political
affiliation. One reason that people believe these conspiracies,
Shermer argues, is that enough of them are real that we should be
constructively conspiratorial: elections have been rigged (LBJ's
1948 Senate race); medical professionals have intentionally harmed
patients in their care (Tuskegee); your government does lie to you
(Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Afghanistan); and, tragically, some
adults do conspire to sexually abuse children. But Shermer reveals
that other factors are also in play: anxiety and a sense of loss of
control play a role in conspiratorial cognition patterns, as do
certain personality traits. This engaging book will be an important
read for anyone concerned about the future direction of American
politics, as well as anyone who's watched friends or family fall
into patterns of conspiratorial thinking.
 |
Rsky Bzns
(Hardcover)
Paul Illidge
|
R865
R754
Discovery Miles 7 540
Save R111 (13%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
This is not a book of facts; it's a book of 'facts'. Should you
finish it believing we became the planet's dominant species because
predators found us too smelly to eat; or that the living bloodline
of Christ is a family of Japanese garlic farmers - well, that's on
you. Why are we here? Do ghosts exist? Did life on Earth begin
after a badly tidied-up picnic? Was it just an iceberg that sank
the Titanic? Are authors stealing their plotlines from the future?
Will we ever talk to animals? And why, when you're in the shower,
does the shower curtain always billow in towards you? We don't know
the answers to any of these questions. But don't worry, no matter
what questions you have, you can bet on the fact that there is
someone (or something) out there, investigating it on your behalf.
From the sports stars who use cosmic energy to office plants
investigating murders, The Theory of Everything Else will act as a
handbook for those who want to think differently.
A significant number of Americans spend their weekends at UFO
conventions hearing whispers of government cover-ups, at New Age
gatherings learning the keys to enlightenment, or ambling around
historical downtowns learning about resident ghosts in
tourist-targeted "ghost walks". They have been fed a steady diet of
fictional shows with paranormal themes such as The X-Files,
Supernatural, and Medium, shows that may seek to simply entertain,
but also serve to disseminate paranormal beliefs. The public hunger
for the paranormal seems insatiable. Paranormal America provides
the definitive portrait of Americans who believe in or have
experienced such phenomena as ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs, psychic
phenomena, astrology, and the power of mediums. However, unlike
many books on the paranormal, this volume does not focus on proving
or disproving the paranormal, but rather on understanding the
people who believe and how those beliefs shape their lives. Drawing
on the Baylor Religion Survey-a multi-year national random sample
of American religious values, practices, and behaviors-as well as
extensive fieldwork including joining hunts for Bigfoot and
spending the night in a haunted house, authors Christopher Bader,
F. Carson Mencken, and Joseph Baker shed light on what the various
types of paranormal experiences, beliefs, and activities claimed by
Americans are; whether holding an unconventional belief, such as
believing in Bigfoot, means that one is unconventional in other
attitudes and behaviors; who has such experiences and beliefs and
how they differ from other Americans; and if we can expect major
religions to emerge from the paranormal. Brimming with engaging
personal stories and provocative findings, Paranormal America is an
entertaining yet authoritative look at a growing segment of
American religious culture.
In the spirit of Schott's Miscellany, The Magic of Reality, and
The Dangerous Book for Boys comes Can a Bee Sting a Bee?--a smart,
illuminating, essential, and utterly delightful handbook for
perplexed parents and their curious children. Author Gemma Elwin
Harris has lovingly compiled weighty questions from precocious
grade school children--queries that have long dumbfounded even
intelligent adults--and she's gathered together a notable crew of
scientists, specialists, philosophers, and writers to answer
them.
Authors Mary Roach and Phillip Pullman, evolutionary biologist
Richard Dawkins, chef Gordon Ramsay, adventurist Bear Gryllis, and
linguist Noam Chomsky are among the top experts responding to the
Big Questions from Little People, ("Do animals have feelings?,"
"Why can't I tickle myself?," "Who is God?") with well-known
comedians, columnists, and raconteurs offering hilarious
alternative answers. Miles above your average general knowledge and
trivia collections, this charming compendium is a book fans of the
E.H. Gombrich classic, A Little History of the World, will
adore.
|
You may like...
Rhetoric
Aristotle
Hardcover
R791
Discovery Miles 7 910
|