The Luck Machine

The Luck Machine PDF

Author: E.C. Tubb

Publisher: Gateway

Published: 2011-09-29

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0575107650

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"We talk of good luck and bad luck. We even wear, some of us, good luck charms and we tend to select certain lucky numbers if we enter a raffle. No, Norman, you can't tell me that we don't acknowledge the existence of something we call luck." The world, indeed the Universe, is surrounded by intangible energies of which man has, at present, only the vaguest notions. Electricity is such a force. Magnetism, gravitation . . . all once-unsuspected natural forces, now known for the realities they are. And so why not luck? And once the possibility of luck being an actual force is recognised the next step is obvious - a machine to harness its forces. But if one man can attract the good luck, someone, somewhere is due for bad luck. When the machine falls into the wrong hands, the inventors begin to wish they'd stuck to rabbits' feet and black cats . . .

The Luck Archive

The Luck Archive PDF

Author: Mark Menjivar

Publisher: Trinity University Press

Published: 2015-06-09

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 1595342508

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Artist Mark Menjivar was in an antique bookshop in Fort Wayne, Indiana, when he found 4 four-leaf clovers pressed between the yellowed pages of an aged copy of 1000 Facts Worth Knowing. Their discovery beguiled Menjivar so much that he began a multiyear exploration into the concept of luck and its intersections with belief, culture, superstition, and tradition in people’s lives. Menjivar has spent hours and days engaging people in airplanes, tattoo shops, bingo halls, international grocery stores, public parks, baseball stadiums, and voodoo shops—and out on the streets and in their homes. Along the way he documented his findings to create a physical archive that contains hundreds of objects (rings, underwear, food items, clovers, horses, pigs, herbs, rainbows, lottery strategies, seeds, day trader insights, statues, patches, crystals, spices) and the stories and pictures that go with them. Through photographs and first person accounts, The Luck Archive takes the best of these ideas, thoughts, and objects and gives readers a glimpse into the cultures and superstitions of a colorful array of humanity.

The Myth of Luck

The Myth of Luck PDF

Author: Steven D. Hales

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-07-23

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1350149314

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Humanity has thrown everything we have at implacable luck-novel theologies, entire philosophical movements, fresh branches of mathematics-and yet we seem to have gained only the smallest edge on the power of fortune. The Myth of Luck tells us why we have been fighting an unconquerable foe. Taking us on a guided tour of one of our oldest concepts, we begin in ancient Greece and Rome, considering how Plato, Plutarch, and the Stoics understood luck, before entering the theoretical world of probability and exploring how luck relates to theology, sports, ethics, gambling, knowledge, and present-day psychology. As we travel across traditions, times and cultures, we come to realize that it's not that as soon as we solve one philosophical problem with luck that two more appear, like heads on a hydra, but rather that the monster is altogether mythological. We cannot master luck because there is nothing to defeat: luck is no more than a persistent and troubling illusion. By introducing us to compelling arguments and convincing reasons that explain why there is no such thing as luck, we finally see why in a very real sense we make our own luck, that luck is our own doing. The Myth of Luck helps us to regain our own agency in the world - telling the entertaining story of the philosophy and history of luck along the way.

The Winds of Gath

The Winds of Gath PDF

Author: E.C. Tubb

Publisher: Gateway

Published: 2011-09-29

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0575106786

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This is the tale of Earl Dumarest. Space-wanderer, gladiator-for-hire, seeker of Man's forgotten home. Dumarest's search begins on the ghost-world of Gath, where he becomes unwilling champion of the Matriarch of Kund, and must undergo a fight-to-the-death at stormtime. Victory could give Dumarest his first clue to the whereabouts of the planet he fled from as a child - an obscure world scarred by ancient wars, which lies countless light years from the thickly populated centre of the galaxy; a world no-one else in the inhabited universe believed exists. Earth, the birthplace of Man. (First published 1967)

American Casino Guide

American Casino Guide PDF

Author: Steve Bourie

Publisher:

Published: 2004-11

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9781883768140

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Published annually since 1992, the 2005 edition of this bestselling guide continues to gain fame as the best available source for information on U.S. casinos. The new 2005 edition lists more than 650 casinos in 35 states and comes complete with maps of all states showing where the casinos are located, plus detailed maps of Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno and the Mississippi gambling resort towns of Biloxi and Tunica.

What the Luck, Emma Lenford!

What the Luck, Emma Lenford! PDF

Author: Kari Lynn M.

Publisher: Kari Lynn M.

Published: 2020-03-13

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 0463548426

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Alexa, how does one reverse a curse? Because Emma Lenford’s horrendously hapless luck has not improved since her last few brushes with the law enforcement of Wisconsin. Now, though, there’s an old guy in a hot tub and a possible pregnancy to deal with (though, please note, both are completely unrelated), among so many more misfortunes. Emma Lenford is truly the unluckiest 17 year old on the planet. She keeps her sense of humor, though, through this series of seriously ill-fated situations. Her life is basically a sit-com where one traumatic thing after another befalls her, and it's all out of her control. She's constantly kidnapped, held at gunpoint, and even arrested for things she honestly didn't even do. This second book in the series that keeps on giving will have you saying, literally, "Uh, what the luck?" because Emma's circumstances are even crazier than they ever were before. I mean, you thought getting thrown up on in the trunk of a kidnapper's SUV was bad? Try getting thrown around by an actual tornado or, better yet, thrown into performing an actual exorcism on a child that's actually trying to kill you.

Dancing to the Drum Machine

Dancing to the Drum Machine PDF

Author: Dan LeRoy

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-10-06

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1501367285

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Dancing to the Drum Machine is a never-before-attempted history of what is perhaps the most controversial musical instrument ever invented: the drum machine. Here, author Dan LeRoy reveals the untold story of how their mechanical pulse became the new heartbeat of popular music. The pristine snap of the LinnDrum. The bottom-heavy beats of the Roland 808. The groundbreaking samples of the E-MUSP-1200. All these machines-and their weirder, wilder-sounding cousins-changed composition, recording, and performance habits forever. Their distinctive sounds and styles helped create new genres of music, like hip hop and EDM. But they altered every musical style, from mainstream pop to heavy metal to jazz. Dan LeRoy traces the drum machine from its low-tech beginnings in the Fifties and Sixties to its evolution in the Seventies and its ubiquity in the Eighties, when seemingly overnight, it infiltrated every genre of music. Drum machines put some drummers out of work, while keeping others on their toes. They anticipated virtually every musical trend of the last five decades: sequencing, looping, sampling, and all forms of digital music creation. But the personalities beneath those perfect beats make the story of drum machines a surprisingly human one-told here for the very first time.

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