...THE B L A C K SWAN The HIGHLY I mpact IM of the PROBABLE Nassim Nicholas Taleb U.S.A. $26.95 Canada $34.95 is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpre dictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9 / 1 1 . For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. A BLACK SWAN Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate oppor tunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossible." For years, Taleb has studied how we fool our selves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this reve latory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know. He offers...
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...FREAKONOMICS A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything Revised and Expanded Edition Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner CONTENTS AN EXPLANATORY NOTE In which the origins of this book are clarified. vii PREFACE TO THE REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION xi 1 INTRODUCTION: The Hidden Side of Everything In which the book’s central idea is set forth: namely, if morality represents how people would like the world to work, then economics shows how it actually does work. Why the conventional wisdom is so often wrong . . . How “experts”— from criminologists to real-estate agents to political scientists—bend the facts . . . Why knowing what to measure, and how to measure it, is the key to understanding modern life . . . What is “freakonomics,” anyway? 1. What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common? 15 In which we explore the beauty of incentives, as well as their dark side—cheating. Contents Who cheats? Just about everyone . . . How cheaters cheat, and how to catch them . . . Stories from an Israeli day-care center . . . The sudden disappearance of seven million American children . . . Cheating schoolteachers in Chicago . . . Why cheating to lose is worse than cheating to win . . . Could sumo wrestling, the national sport of Japan, be corrupt? . . . What the Bagel Man saw: mankind may be more honest than we think. 2. How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents? 49 In which it is argued that nothing is more powerful than information,...
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...[pic] Гальперин И.Р. Стилистика английского языка Издательство: М.: Высшая школа, 1977 г. В учебнике рассматриваются общие проблемы стилистики, дается стилистическая квалификация английского словарного состава, описываются фонетические, лексические и лексико-фразеологические выразительные средства, рассматриваются синтаксические выразительные средства и проблемы лингвистической композиции отрезков высказывания, выходящие за пределы предложения. Одна глава посвящена выделению и классификации функциональных стилей. Книга содержит иллюстративный текстовой материал. Предназначается для студентов институтов и факультетов иностранных языков и филологических факультетов университетов. GALPERIN STYLISTICS SECOND EDITION, REVISED Допущено Министерством высшего и среднего специального образования СССР в качестве учебника для студентов институтов и факультетов иностранных языков |[pic] |MOSCOW | | |"HIGHER SCHOOL" | | |1977 | TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Предисловие к первому изданию……………………………………………………..6 Предисловие к второму изданию……………………………………………………..7 Part I. Introduction 1. General Notes on Style and Stylistics…………………………………………9 2. Expressive Means (EM) and Stylistic Devices (SD)………………………...25 3. General Notes on Functional Styles of Language……………………………32 4. Varieties of Language………………………………………………………..35 5. A Brief...
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...UNIT ONE THE GIFT OF THE MAGI By O. Henry I. Introduction O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter (1867 – 1910), is famous chiefly for his short stories. These stories are usually set amid the poorer working – class life of the cities, the characters being ordinary simple people with their daily living to earn, a life which O.Henry knew well. But the stories are not mere realistic sketches. O. Henry had both the craftsmanship of a writer and the compassion of a man. As a writer he constructs a clever plot with an unforeseen and an unexpected climax suddenly released so that the reader is kept guessing till the last moment what the outcome is to be. As a man he saw the drab surrounding and narrow circumstances which he described, but he lit them with sympathy and humour. Though in most of his stories humour seems to be predominant, yet the sympathy is always there, so the humour is warmed and enriched by its humanity. The story that follows, however, is an example of the reverse process. There are more tears in it than laughter. Yet laughter is implied and one might say that because of it the tears are touched with a more tender compassion. II. Text One dollar and eighty – seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two and a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One...
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...premiums and sales promotions, or for use in corporate training programs. To contact a representative please visit the Contact Us page at www.mhprofessional.com. TERMS OF USE This is a copyrighted work and The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (“McGraw-Hill”) and its licensors reserve all rights in and to the work. Use of this work is subject to these terms. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the right to store and retrieve one copy of the work, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, reproduce, modify, create derivative works based upon, transmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish or sublicense the work or any part of it without McGraw-Hill’s prior consent. You may use the work for your own noncommercial and personal use; any other use of the work...
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...Barack Obama Dreams from My Father “For we are strangers before them, and sojourners, as were all our fathers. 1 CHRONICLES 29:15 PREFACE TO THE 2004 EDITION A LMOST A DECADE HAS passed since this book was first published. As I mention in the original introduction, the opportunity to write the book came while I was in law school, the result of my election as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest publicity, I received an advance from a publisher and went to work with the belief that the story of my family, and my efforts to understand that story, might speak in some way to the fissures of race that have characterized the American experience, as well as the fluid state of identitythe leaps through time, the collision of cultures-that mark our modern life. Like most first-time authors, I was filled with hope and despair upon the book’s publication-hope that the book might succeed beyond my youthful dreams, despair that I had failed to say anything worth saying. The reality fell somewhere in between. The reviews were mildly favorable. People actually showed up at the readings my publisher arranged. The sales were underwhelming. And, after a few months, I went on with the business of my life, certain that my career as an author would be short-lived, but glad to have survived the process with my dignity more or less intact. I had little time for reflection over the next ten years. I ran a voter registration project in...
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...Around the World in 80 Days By Jules Verne Download free eBooks of classic literature, books and novels at Planet eBook. Subscribe to our free eBooks blog and email newsletter. CHAPTER I IN WHICH PHILEAS FOGG AND PASSEPARTOUT ACCEPT EACH OTHER, THE ONE AS MASTER, THE OTHER AS MAN M r. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron—at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old. Certainly an Englishman, it was more doubtful whether Phileas Fogg was a Londoner. He was never seen on ‘Change, nor at the Bank, nor in the counting-rooms of the Around the World in 80 Days ‘City”; no ships ever came into London docks of which he was the owner; he had no public employment; he had never been entered at any of the Inns of Court, either at the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn, or Gray’s Inn; nor had his voice ever resounded in the Court of Chancery, or in the Exchequer, or the Queen’s Bench, or the Ecclesiastical Courts. He certainly was not a manufacturer; nor was he a merchant or a gentleman farmer. His name was strange to the scientific and learned societies...
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...FAMILY OF SECRETS The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years RUSS BAKER Contents Foreword by James Moore 1. How Did Bush Happen? 2. Poppy’s Secret 3. Viva Zapata 4. Where Was Poppy? 5. Oswald’s Friend 6. The Hit 7. After Camelot 8. Wings for W. 9. The Nixonian Bushes 10. Downing Nixon, Part I: The Setup 11. Downing Nixon, Part II: The Execution 12. In from the Cold 13. Poppy’s Proxy and the Saudis 14. Poppy’s Web 15. The Handoff 16. The Quacking Duck 17. Playing Hardball 18. Meet the Help 19. The Conversion 20. The Skeleton in W.’s Closet 21. Shock and . . . Oil? 22. Deflection for Reelection 23. Domestic Disturbance 24. Conclusion Afterword Author’s Note Acknowledgments Notes Foreword When a governor or any state official seeks elective national office, his (or her) reputation and what the country knows about the candidate’s background is initially determined by the work of local and regional media. Generally, those journalists do a competent job of reporting on the prospect’s record. In the case of Governor George W. Bush, Texas reporters had written numerous stories about his failed businesses in the oil patch, the dubious land grab and questionable funding behind a new stadium for Bush’s baseball team, the Texas Rangers, and his various political contradictions and hypocrisies while serving in Austin. I was one of those Texas journalists. I spent about a decade...
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...Educational Psychology: Developing Learners This is a protected document. Please enter your ANGEL username and password. Username: Password: Login Need assistance logging in? Click here! If you experience any technical difficulty or have any technical questions, please contact technical support during the following hours: M-F, 6am-12am MST or Sat-Sun, 7am-12am MST by phone at (800) 800-9776 ext. 7200 or submit a ticket online by visiting http://help.gcu.edu. Doc ID: 1009-0001-191D-0000191E DEVELOPING LEARNERS JEANNE ELLIS ORMROD Professor Emerita, University of Northern Colorado EIGHTH EDITION ISBN 1-256-96292-9 Boston Columbus Indianapolis New York San Francisco Upper Saddle River Amsterdam Cape Town Dubai London Madrid Milan Munich Paris Montreal Toronto Delhi Mexico City São Paulo Sydney Hong Kong Seoul Singapore Taipei Tokyo Educational Psychology: Developing Learners, Eighth Edition, by Jeanne Ellis Ormrod. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc. Vice President and Editorial Director: Jeffery W. Johnston Vice President and Publisher: Kevin Davis Editorial Assistant: Lauren Carlson Development Editor: Christina Robb Vice President, Director of Marketing: Margaret Waples Marketing Manager: Joanna Sabella Senior Managing Editor: Pamela D. Bennett Project Manager: Kerry Rubadue Senior Operations Supervisor: Matthew Ottenweller Senior Art Director: Diane Lorenzo Text Designer: Candace Rowley Cover Designer:...
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...Praise for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down “Fadiman describes with extraordinary skill the colliding worlds of Western medicine and Hmong culture.” —The New Yorker “This fine book recounts a poignant tragedy…It has no heroes or villains, but it has an abundance of innocent suffering, and it most certainly does have a moral…[A] sad, excellent book.” —Melvin Konner, The New York Times Book Review “An intriguing, spirit-lifting, extraordinary exploration of two cultures in uneasy coexistence…A wonderful aspect of Fadiman’s book is her even-handed, detailed presentation of these disparate cultures and divergent views—not with cool, dispassionate fairness but rather with a warm, involved interest that sees and embraces both sides of each issue…Superb, informal cultural anthropology—eye-opening, readable, utterly engaging.” —Carole Horn, The Washington Post Book World “This is a book that should be deeply disturbing to anyone who has given so much as a moment’s thought to the state of American medicine. But it is much more…People are presented as [Fadiman] saw them, in their humility and their frailty—and their nobility.” —Sherwin B. Nuland, The New Republic 3/462 “Anne Fadiman’s phenomenal first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, brings to life the enduring power of parental love in an impoverished refugee family struggling to protect their seriously ill infant daughter and ancient spiritual traditions from the tyranny of welfare bureaucrats and intolerant...
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...62118 0/nm 1/n1 2/nm 3/nm 4/nm 5/nm 6/nm 7/nm 8/nm 9/nm 1990s 0th/pt 1st/p 1th/tc 2nd/p 2th/tc 3rd/p 3th/tc 4th/pt 5th/pt 6th/pt 7th/pt 8th/pt 9th/pt 0s/pt a A AA AAA Aachen/M aardvark/SM Aaren/M Aarhus/M Aarika/M Aaron/M AB aback abacus/SM abaft Abagael/M Abagail/M abalone/SM abandoner/M abandon/LGDRS abandonment/SM abase/LGDSR abasement/S abaser/M abashed/UY abashment/MS abash/SDLG abate/DSRLG abated/U abatement/MS abater/M abattoir/SM Abba/M Abbe/M abbé/S abbess/SM Abbey/M abbey/MS Abbie/M Abbi/M Abbot/M abbot/MS Abbott/M abbr abbrev abbreviated/UA abbreviates/A abbreviate/XDSNG abbreviating/A abbreviation/M Abbye/M Abby/M ABC/M Abdel/M abdicate/NGDSX abdication/M abdomen/SM abdominal/YS abduct/DGS abduction/SM abductor/SM Abdul/M ab/DY abeam Abelard/M Abel/M Abelson/M Abe/M Aberdeen/M Abernathy/M aberrant/YS aberrational aberration/SM abet/S abetted abetting abettor/SM Abeu/M abeyance/MS abeyant Abey/M abhorred abhorrence/MS abhorrent/Y abhorrer/M abhorring abhor/S abidance/MS abide/JGSR abider/M abiding/Y Abidjan/M Abie/M Abigael/M Abigail/M Abigale/M Abilene/M ability/IMES abjection/MS abjectness/SM abject/SGPDY abjuration/SM abjuratory abjurer/M abjure/ZGSRD ablate/VGNSDX ablation/M ablative/SY ablaze abler/E ables/E ablest able/U abloom ablution/MS Ab/M ABM/S abnegate/NGSDX abnegation/M Abner/M abnormality/SM abnormal/SY aboard ...
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