Contrarian Commentary

Contrarian Commentary PDF

Author: Mel Fisher

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2024-05-05

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1038307007

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

How did bananas come to be? Who is the most useless member of society? What do language fads tell us about the history of human development? What would space aliens say about our well-kept lawns? These short pieces and essays provide thought-provoking and entertaining social commentary from a point of view not usually seen—that is, Contrarian. Written for a small-town (Dryden, Ontario) newspaper and the author’s blog between 2012 and 2023, Mel Fisher appeals to the “common sense of the common people,” writing about everything from breakfast cereal to Darwin to global warming to God. Contrarian Commentary pokes fun at the foibles of modern life, questions mainstream media, and celebrates the profound strangeness of humanity on the blue-and-green planet we call home.

The Contrarian

The Contrarian PDF

Author: Max Chafkin

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 152661958X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A biography of venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the enigmatic, controversial and hugely influential power broker who sits at the dynamic intersection of tech, business and politics Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater global impact than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel. From the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington, Thiel has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of contemporary life. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious. In the first major biography of Thiel, Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of the innovator's singular life and worldview, from his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents and years at Stanford as a burgeoning conservative thought leader to his founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investment in Facebook and SpaceX, and relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Eric Schmidt. The Contrarian illuminates the extent to which Thiel has sought to export his values to the corridors of power beyond Silicon Valley, such as funding the lawsuit that bankrupted the blog Gawker to strenuously backing far-right political candidates, including Donald Trump for president. Eye-opening and deeply reported, The Contrarian is a revelatory biography of a one-of-a-kind leader and an incisive portrait of a tech industry whose explosive growth and power is both thrilling and fraught with controversy.

President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama PDF

Author: John K. Wilson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-11

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1317253558

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Barack Obama's "improbable quest" has become a fact of American life and a benchmark in American history. Striving now toward "a more perfect union," Obama and the nation confront obstacles unforeseen at the outset of the 2008 electoral campaign. John K. Wilson tracks the sweep of this progress from the beginning of Obama's political career through his move into the White House. With his critical journalistic eye and his sympathetic "native son" perspective, Wilson shows us a side of Obama we haven't seen as well as a view of the media we need to understand-even more now as the Obama administration begins to govern. The paperback edition of this popular book includes a new introduction, updates throughout, and two new chapters on the electoral victory and the transition from campaigning into governing. New photos and new insights include a focus on the continued importance of race in American politics.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama PDF

Author: John K. Wilson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-08

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1317263421

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Barack Obama is quickly becoming America's most popular politician, and his run for the presidency has brought huge crowds at home and an unprecedented wave of international attention as well. Much more than a biography, this book is a political tour of Obama's legislative experience as well as his ideas about race, religion, and politics. Political writer John K. Wilson, author of four previous books including a study of Newt Gingrich, explores the reaction Obama has received from the left, the right, and the media. As the first presidential candidate from Generation X, Obama has generated an exciting movement of young people to support his campaign as he defines a new kind of broadly popular progressive politics. As improbable as such a quest may be this fresh new candidate may be just the right one to bridge not only generations but ideologies that often divide. Amid all the hype surrounding Obama, this book provides the first in-depth look at what he believes, what he represents, and how he might transform American politics.

Commentary on First Corinthians (Commentary on the New Testament Book #7)

Commentary on First Corinthians (Commentary on the New Testament Book #7) PDF

Author: Robert H. Gundry

Publisher: Baker Academic

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 144123764X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Delve Deeper into God's Word In this verse-by-verse commentary, Robert Gundry offers a fresh, literal translation and a reliable exposition of Scripture for today's readers. Gundry unpacks this first letter of Paul to the church in Corinth, addressing the pressing issues the church faces--issues many churches face today as well. Pastors, Sunday school teachers, small group leaders, and laypeople will welcome Gundry's nontechnical explanations and clarifications. And Bible students at all levels will appreciate his sparkling interpretations. This selection is from Gundry's Commentary on the New Testament.

Letters to a Young Contrarian

Letters to a Young Contrarian PDF

Author: Christopher Hitchens

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2009-04-28

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 078673907X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"Art of Mentoring" seriesIn the book that he was born to write, provocateur and best-selling author Christopher Hitchens inspires future generations of radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, angry young (wo)men, and dissidents. Who better to speak to that person who finds him or herself in a contrarian position than Hitchens, who has made a career of disagreeing in profound and entertaining ways. This book explores the entire range of "contrary positions"-from noble dissident to gratuitous pain in the butt. In an age of overly polite debate bending over backward to reach a happy consensus within an increasingly centrist political dialogue, Hitchens pointedly pitches himself in contrast. He bemoans the loss of the skills of dialectical thinking evident in contemporary society. He understands the importance of disagreement-to personal integrity, to informed discussion, to true progress-heck, to democracy itself. Epigrammatic, spunky, witty, in your face, timeless and timely, this book is everything you would expect from a mentoring contrarian.

Routledge Handbook of Media, Conflict and Security

Routledge Handbook of Media, Conflict and Security PDF

Author: Piers Robinson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 1317914295

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This Handbook links the growing body of media and conflict research with the field of security studies. The academic sub-field of media and conflict has developed and expanded greatly over the past two decades. Operating across a diverse range of academic disciplines, academics are studying the impact the media has on governments pursuing war, responses to humanitarian crises and violent political struggles, and the role of the media as a facilitator of, and a threat to, both peace building and conflict prevention. This handbook seeks to consolidate existing knowledge by linking the body of conflict and media studies with work in security studies. The handbook is arranged into five parts: Theory and Principles. Media, the State and War Media and Human Security Media and Policymaking within the Security State New Issues in Security and Conflict and Future Directions For scholars of security studies, this handbook will provide a key point of reference for state of the art scholarship concerning the media-security nexus; for scholars of communication and media studies, the handbook will provide a comprehensive mapping of the media-conflict field.

Being Brown

Being Brown PDF

Author: Lázaro Lima

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0520300890

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Being Brown: Sonia Sotomayor and the Latino Question tells the story of the country’s first Latina Supreme Court Associate Justice’s rise to the pinnacle of American public life at a moment of profound demographic and political transformation. While Sotomayor’s confirmation appeared to signal the greater acceptance and inclusion of Latinos—the nation’s largest “minority majority”—the uncritical embrace of her status as a “possibility model” and icon paradoxically erased the fact that her success was due to civil rights policies and safeguards that no longer existed. Being Brown analyzes Sotomayor’s story of success and accomplishment, despite seemingly insurmountable odds, in order to ask: What do we lose in democratic practice when we allow symbolic inclusion to supplant the work of meaningful political enfranchisement? In a historical moment of resurgent racism, unrelenting Latino bashing, and previously unimaginable “blood and soil” Nazism, Being Brown explains what we stand to lose when we allow democratic values to be trampled for the sake of political expediency, and demonstrates how understanding “the Latino question” can fortify democratic practice. Being Brown provides the historical vocabulary for understanding why the Latino body politic is central to the country’s future and why Sonia Sotomayor’s biography provides an important window into understanding America, and the country’s largest minority majority, at this historical juncture. In the process, Being Brown counters “alternative facts” with historical precision and ethical clarity to invigorate the best of democratic practice at a historical moment when we need it most.

Quantitative Finance and Risk Management

Quantitative Finance and Risk Management PDF

Author: Jan W Dash

Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company

Published: 2016-05-10

Total Pages: 1000

ISBN-13: 9814571253

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Written by a physicist with extensive experience as a risk/finance quant, this book treats a wide variety of topics. Presenting the theory and practice of quantitative finance and risk, it delves into the "how to" and "what it's like" aspects not covered in textbooks or papers. A "Technical Index" indicates the mathematical level for each chapter. This second edition includes some new, expanded, and wide-ranging considerations for risk management: Climate Change and its long-term systemic risk; Markets in Crisis and the Reggeon Field Theory; "Smart Monte Carlo" and American Monte Carlo; Trend Risk — time scales and risk, the Macro–Micro model, singular spectrum analysis; credit risk: counterparty risk and issuer risk; stressed correlations — new techniques; and Psychology and option models. Solid risk management topics from the first edition and valid today are included: standard/advanced theory and practice in fixed income, equities, and FX; quantitative finance and risk management — traditional/exotic derivatives, fat tails, advanced stressed VAR, model risk, numerical techniques, deals/portfolios, systems, data, economic capital, and a function toolkit; risk lab — the nuts and bolts of risk management from the desk to the enterprise; case studies of deals; Feynman path integrals, Green functions, and options; and "Life as a Quant" — communication issues, sociology, stories, and advice.

English Nouns

English Nouns PDF

Author: Rochelle Lieber

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-09-26

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1316785351

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Using extensive data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008), this groundbreaking book shows that the syntactic patterns in which English nominalizations can be found and the range of possible readings they can express are very different from what has been claimed in past theoretical treatments, and therefore that previous treatments cannot be correct. Lieber argues that the relationship between form and meaning in the nominalization processes of English is virtually never one-to-one, but rather forms a complex web that can be likened to a derivational ecosystem. Using the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF), she develops an analysis that captures the interrelatedness and context dependence of nominal readings, and suggests that the key to the behavior of nominalizations is that their underlying semantic representations are underspecified in specific ways and that their ultimate interpretation must be fixed in context using processes available within the LSF.