Nearly one-third of all professional baseball players under contract in the United States come from Latin America. Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Panama produce some of the great players currently performing in the major and minor leagues. But some of the most promising prospects never had the chance to play in America even though they resided only ninety miles off the coast of Florida. For many years, that was the harsh reality for Cuban baseball players.
Science fiction is the playground of the imagination. If you are interested in science or fascinated with the future then science fiction is where you explore new ideas and let your dreams and nightmares duke it out on the safety of the page or screen. But what if we could use science fiction to do more than that? What if we could use science fiction based on science fact to not only imagine our future but develop new technologies and products? What if we could use stories, movies and comics as a kind of tool to explore the real world implications and uses of future technologies today? Science Fiction Prototyping is a practical guide to using fiction as a way to imagine our future in a whole new way. Filled with history, real world examples and conversations with experts like best selling science fiction author Cory Doctorow, senior editor at Dark Horse Comics Chris Warner and Hollywood science expert Sidney Perkowitz, Science Fiction Prototyping will give you the tools you need tobegin designing the future with science fiction. The future is Brian David Johnson’s business. As a futurist at Intel Corporation, his charter is to develop an actionable vision for computing in 2021. His work is called “future casting”—using ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data, and even science fiction to create a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing. Johnson has been pioneering development in artificial intelligence, robotics, and reinventing TV. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as science fiction short stories and novels (Fake Plastic Love and Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing and the Devices We Love). He has directed two feature films and is an illustrator and commissioned painter. Table of Contents: Preface / Foreword / Epilogue / Dedication / Acknowledgments / 1. The Future Is in Your Hands / 2. Religious Robots and Runaway Were-Tigers: A Brief Overview ofthe Science and the Fiction that Went Into Two SF Prototypes / 3. How to Build Your Own SF Prototype in Five Steps or Less / 4. I, Robot: From Asimov to Doctorow: Exploring Short Fiction as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Cory Doctorow / 5. The Men in the Moon: Exploring Movies as an SF Prototype and a Conversation with Sidney Perkowitz / 6. Science in the Gutters: Exploring Comics as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Chris Warner / 7. Making the Future: Now that You Have Developed Your SF Prototype, What’s Next? / 8. Einstein’s Thought Experiments and Asimov’s Second Dream / Appendix A: The SF Prototypes / Notes / Author Biography
Impending technological advances will widen an adversary’s attack plane over the next decade. Visualizing what the future will hold, and what new threat vectors could emerge, is a task that traditional planning mechanisms struggle to accomplish given the wide range of potential issues. Understanding and preparing for the future operating environment is the basis of an analytical method known as Threatcasting. It is a method that gives researchers a structured way to envision and plan for risks ten years in the future. Threatcasting uses input from social science, technical research, cultural history, economics, trends, expert interviews, and even a little science fiction to recognize future threats and design potential futures. During this human-centric process, participants brainstorm what actions can be taken to identify, track, disrupt, mitigate, and recover from the possible threats. Specifically, groups explore how to transform the future they desire into reality while avoiding anundesired future. The Threatcasting method also exposes what events could happen that indicate the progression toward an increasingly possible threat landscape. This book begins with an overview of the Threatcasting method with examples and case studies to enhance the academic foundation. Along with end-of-chapter exercises to enhance the reader’s understanding of the concepts, there is also a full project where the reader can conduct a mock Threatcasting on the topic of “the next biological public health crisis.” The second half of the book is designed as a practitioner’s handbook. It has three separate chapters (based on the general size of the Threatcasting group) that walk the reader through how to apply the knowledge from Part I to conduct an actual Threatcasting activity. This book will be useful for a wide audience (from student to practitioner) and will hopefully promote new dialogues across communities and novel developments in the area.
An explosive action-adventure novel created by will.i.am and renowned futurist Brian David Johnson.Wizards are real, robots from the future are here, and the fate of our world rests in the hands of one unsuspecting teenager.When a young man breaks into her home claiming her life is in danger, Ada Luring's world changes forever. Geller is a wizard, on the run from his father's hidden clan who want to kill Ada and her mother. Sara Luring is the scientist who will create the first robot, the wizards' age-old foes. But a robot has travelled back in time to find Ada, and will lay everything on the line to protect her, as she may just be the key to preventing the earth's destruction in the future. Ada, Geller and the robots must learn to work together to change the past and secure the future. But they don't have much time before a mysterious enemy launches its attack on Earth...
Step through the looking glass, into a world where logic and imagination intertwine in the most curious ways . . . This expertly-curated book collects the best puzzles written by the author of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.Lewis Carroll was a mathematician who loved puzzles of all kinds, invented the word ladder, delighted in acrostics and riddles and posed twisty maths and logic questions in his most famous works, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.Mind-bending and utterly charming, this celebratory collection of puzzles and games includes delights such as Doublets (word ladders) and Syzygies (a more elaborate form of the word ladder), Mirror Writing, Arithmetical Croquet as well as some of the most delightfully puzzling riddles from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Enough to keep even the most curious of minds entertained for hours.Plus, Chair of the Lewis Carroll Society, Brian Sibley, uses his expert knowledge to take readers inside the inimitable mind of Carroll, with a beautiful introduction and annotations throughout.Packed with wit and nostalgia and illustrated with beautiful full colour imagery from John Tenniel – the original illustrator of Alice in Wonderland - this is the ultimate celebration of one of the most famous puzzlers of all time. The Lewis Carroll Puzzle Book is the perfect gift for both seasoned puzzlers and the Carroll-curious.
*Updated and revised edition, with a new epilogue and interview with Michael J Fox*'Engagingly written, informative, often funny' Daily Telegraph'Has the hard-boiled style of a Raymond Chandler novel' The Times'Think Oliver Sacks meets Gregory House, with a sprinkling of a hypochondriac's worst nightmare' Sunday TimesWhat is it like to try to heal the body when the mind is under attack? In this gripping and illuminating book, Dr Allan Ropper reveals the extraordinary stories behind some of the life-altering afflictions that he and his staff are confronted with at the Neurology Unit of Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.Like Alice in Wonderland, Dr Ropper inhabits a place where absurdities abound: a sportsman who starts spouting gibberish; an undergraduate who suddenly becomes psychotic; a mother who has to decide whether a life locked inside her own head is worth living. How does one begin to treat such cases, to counsel people whose lives may be changed forever? Dr Ropper answers these questions by taking the reader into a world where lives and minds hang in the balance.
An oral history of the UK's soundsystem culture, featuring interviews with Dubmaster Dennis Bovell, Skream, Youth, Norman Jay MBE, Adrian Sherwood, Mala, and others.In the years following the arrival of the Windrush generation, the UK's soundsystem culture would become the most important influence on contemporary pop music since rock and roll. Pumped through towering, home-built speakers, often directly onto the thronged streets of events like the Notting Hill Carnival, the pulsating bass lines of reggae, dub, rave, jungle, trip hop, dubstep, and grime have shaped the worlds of several generations of British youth culture but have often been overlooked by historians obsessed with swinging London, punk, and Britpop.This oral history, consisting of new interviews conducted by respected dance music writer Joe Muggs, and accompanied by dramatic portraits by Brian David Stevens, presents the story of the bassline of Britain, in the words of those who lived and shaped it. Features interviews with Dubmaster Dennis Bovell, Norman Jay MPE, Youth, Adrian Sherwood, Skream, Rinse FM's Sarah Lockhart and many others.
"Tell the doctor where it hurts." It sounds simple enough, unless the problem affects the very organ that produces awareness and generates speech. What is it like to try to heal the body when the mind is under attack? In this book, Reaching Down the Rabitt Hole, Dr. Allan h. Ropper and Brian David Burrell take the reader behind the scenes at Harvard Medical School's neurology unit to show how a seasoned diagnostician faces down bizarre, life-altering afflictions. Like Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Ropper inhabits a world where absurdities abound: - A figure skater whose body has become a ticking time-bomb - A salesman who drives around and around a traffic rotary, unable to get off - A college quarterback who can't stop calling the same play - A child molester who, after falling on the ice, is left with a brain that is very much dead inside a body that is very much alive - A mother of two young girls, diagnosed with ALS, who has to decide whether a life locked inside her own head is worth living How does one begin to treat such cases, to counsel people whose lives may be changed forever? How does one train the next generation of clinicians to deal with the moral and medical aspects of brain disease? Dr. Ropper and his colleague answer these questions by taking the reader into a rarified world where lives and minds hang in the balance.
AMAZON BESTSELLER This book is for anyone who wishes to be more successful online, by learning the success principles of the online masters.Why thrash around in the dark when you can learn the success secrets of the best in the world?SIXTY DAYS (OR LESS) TO A TRANSFORMED SUCCESSFUL ONLINE YOU Reach inside the brains of the world's best online and learn from and emulate their success.GREAT AS A GIFT ALSO FOR ANYONE WHO WORKS OR ENJOYS BEING ONLINEThese are the revolutionaries taking over the online world. Gary Vaynerchuk - After defining the online wine business, Gary is now transforming the social media agency world. The disrupter of the disrupters, Vaynerchuk has Steve Jobs potential and ability.Jason Calacanis - The King of online content. From humble and rougher beginnings Jason has grown into his own skin while carving out a quickly expanding online content and media empire.Brian Tracy - The legend of success principles, sales and publishing is expanding his domination online.Kara Swisher - The world's #1 tech journalist (rivaled only, perhaps, by her partner Walt Mossberg) and #1 key influencer in the tech online space. Be very very afraid of this woman if you are a tech leader with a shortcoming or secret to hide.David Cohen - How would you feel if you had taken over via your company TechStars (Y Combinator notwithstanding) an entire Tech category, that of startup accelerators?Insights into the masters as you have never seen them before.Alex Hammer is the CEO of Exponentials.
A musician, a visionary, a shapeshifter – David Bowie was an artist of reinvention who was many things to many people, including himself. Through legendary personas, such as Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, his fearless individuality inspired many. But where did the real Bowie exist and what journey did he make to rediscover himself? This graphic novel follows his friendship with Iggy Pop and other musicians, including Brian Eno; it charts his life during this decade and explores the background to his seminal albums Heroes, Low, and Lodger. Calling ground control to all major Bowie fans, this is an essential collector’s classic. The IconGraphic series Depicting the stories of cultural legends, told in the bold, contemporary and captivating format of the graphic novel, the series includes the lives of Alexander McQueen, Taylor Swift and David Bowie.
Life on the American frontier in the early 1700s was very difficult – continually threatened by disease, attack, and brutally cold winters. The English and Native Americans lived side by side, which often led to conflict. David Brainerd arose as a compassionate and fearless missionary to the various Indian tribes in America. Riding on his horse across rivers, over mountains, and through towns, Brainerd carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost, the hurting, and the broken. Notable pastors and missionaries like John Wesley, William Carey, Adoniram Judson and Jim Elliot were all influenced by the life, passion, and dedication of David Brainerd. In this book, Brian Cosby takes the reader on a journey from Brainerd’s teenage years on the farm to his expulsion from Yale; from preaching on the frontier to his death in his late 20s. The reader will be encouraged, inspired, and challenged by the perseverance and single–minded devotion of the early American missionary to the Indians, David Brainerd. The Trailblazer’s series collects great stories from Christians of the past and delivers them to the young people of today. This gripping and astonishing story from Brian Cosby will challenge young readers to trust God as David Brainerd did. A well–known and long–standing series: Over 50 titlesGreat for ages 9 to 14Published in 14 languagesHalf a million books soldAlso available in box sets when one book is not enough! 7 themed box sets, each with 5 books Each biography follows the trailblazer’s journey to faith, and on to the work that God had planned for them. With lots of dialogue, these engaging stories show how God uses normal individuals to bring about his purpose. Each book features: Thinking Further Topics for each chapter to help readers think about how what they’ve read applies to their life todayTimeline of important events in the lifetime of each book’s subject
