Author: Aaron W. Hughes File Type: pdf Too often the study of philosophical texts is carried out in ways that do not pay significant attention to how the ideas contained within them are presented, articulated, and developed. This was not always the case. The contributors to this collected work consider Jewish philosophy in the medieval period, when new genres and forms of written expression were flourishing in the wake of renewed interest in ancient philosophy. Many medieval Jewish philosophers were highly accomplished poets, for example, and made conscious efforts to write in a poetic style. This volume turns attention to the connections that medieval Jewish thinkers made between the literary, the exegetical, the philosophical, and the mystical to shed light on the creativity and diversity of medieval thought. As they broaden the scope of what counts as medieval Jewish philosophy, the essays collected here consider questions about how an argument is formed, how text is put into the service of philosophy, and the social and intellectual environment in which philosophical texts were produced.

Author: Andrei Lankov File Type: epub Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. After providing an accessible history of the nation, he turns his focus to what North Korea is, what its leadership thinks, and how its people cope with living in such an oppressive and poor place. He argues that North Korea is not irrational, and nothing shows this better than its continuing survival against all odds. A living political fossil, it clings to existence in the face of limited resources and a zombie economy, manipulating great powers despite its weakness. Its leaders are not ideological zealots or madmen, but perhaps the best practitioners of Machiavellian politics that can be found in the modern world. Even though they preside over a failed state, they have successfully used diplomacy-including nuclear threats-to extract support from other nations. But while the people in charge have been ruthless and successful in holding on to power, Lankov goes on to argue that this cannot continue forever, since the old system is slowly falling apart. In the long run, with or without reform, the regime is unsustainable. Lankov contends that reforms, if attempted, will trigger a dramatic implosion of the regime. They will not prolong its existence. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive.

Author: Charles T. Tart File Type: pdf All attempts to test peoples ESP abilities overlook the fact that ESP is an undeveloped function, so we have to learn how to use it to begin with, not just see how much ESP we can show.Psychologist Charles T. Tart applied basic principles of learning to this task to show how training under conditions of immediate feedback could enhance ESP ability. This highly readable book, originally published by the University of Chicago Press, is the theory and a comprehensive study suggesting the principles can work.About the AuthorCharles T. Tart, Ph.D., is internationally known for research on transpersonal psychology and parapsychology. His 14 books include two classics, Altered States of Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychologies. His Body Mind Spirit Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality looks at the scientific foundations of transpersonal psychology to show it is possible to be both a rigorous scientist and a spiritual seeker. His latest book is Mind Science Meditation Training for Practical People.

Author: Annie Cheney File Type: epub You are a little soul carrying around a corpse. Epictetus Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will follow. Matthew 2428 Body Brokers is an audacious, disturbing, and compellingly written investigative expose of the lucrative business of procuring, buying, and selling human cadavers and body parts. Every year human corpses meant for anatomy classes, burial, or cremation find their way into the hands of a shadowy group of entrepreneurs who profit by buying and selling human remains. While the government has controls on organs and tissue meant for transplantation, these body brokers capitalize on the myriad other uses for dead bodies that receive no federal oversight whatsoever commercial seminars to introduce new medical gadgetry medical research studies and training courses and U.S. Army land-mine explosion tests. A single corpse used for these purposes can generate up to $10,000. As journalist Annie Cheney found while reporting on this subject over the course of three years, when theres that much money to be made with no federal regulation, there are all sorts of shady (and fascinating) characters who are willing to employ questionable practicesfrom deception and outright theftto acquire, market and distribute human bodies and parts. In Michigan and New York she discovers funeral directors who buy corpses from medical schools and supply the parts to surgical equipment companies and associations of surgeons. In California, she meets a crematorium owner who sold the body parts of people he was supposed to cremate, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. In Florida, she attends a medical conference in a luxury hotel, where fresh torsos are delivered in Igloo coolers and displayed on gurneys in a room normally used for banquets. That torso that youre living in right now is just flesh and bones to me. To me, its a product, says the New Jersey-based broker presiding over the torsos. Tracing the origins of body brokering from the resurrectionists of the nineteenth century to the entrepreneurs of today, Cheney chronicles how demand for cadavers has long driven unscrupulous funeral home, crematorium and medical school personnel to treat human bodies as commodities. Gripping, often chilling, and sure to cause a reexamination of the American way of death, Body Brokers is both a captivating work of first-person reportage and a surprising inside look at a little-known aspect of the death care world.