Comedy Writing Secrets, 2nd Edition: The Best-Selling Book on How to Think Funny, Write Funny, Act Funny, And Get Paid For It

A comprehensive (and fundamental) guide to writing, selling and performing all types of comedy, including comments, advice, gags and routines from dozens of top comics.
Updated and revised, this new edition enables readers to master the fundamentals of humor writing and better understand the demands of the comedic market.

Comedy Writing Secrets now includes:

- Examples from comedy greats as well as cutting-edge contemporary comedians, including Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, and Tina Fey
- A complete spectrum of techniques, from writing one-liners and stand-up routines, to finding a market for one's work
- Step-by-step writing exercises accompanied with sample answers, so readers can practice and hone their skills

Computational Explorations in Cognitive Neuroscience:
Understanding the Mind by Simulating the Brain

The goal of computational cognitive neuroscience is to understand how the brain embodies the mind by using biologically based computational models comprising networks of neuronlike units. This text, based on a course taught by Randall O'Reilly and Yuko Munakata over the past several years, provides an in-depth introduction to the main ideas in the field. The neural units in the simulations use equations based directly on the ion channels that govern the behavior of real neurons, and the neural networks incorporate anatomical and physiological properties of the neocortex. Thus the text provides the student with knowledge of the basic biology of the brain as well as the computational skills needed to simulate large-scale cognitive phenomena.
The text consists of two parts. The first part covers basic neural computation mechanisms: individual neurons, neural networks, and learning mechanisms. The second part covers large-scale brain area organization and cognitive phenomena: perception and attention, memory, language, and higher-level cognition. The second part is relatively self-contained and can be used separately for mechanistically oriented cognitive neuroscience courses. Integrated throughout the text are more than forty different simulation models, many of them full-scale research-grade models, with friendly interfaces and accompanying exercises. The simulation software (PDP++, available for all major platforms) and simulations can be downloaded free of charge from the Web. Exercise solutions are available, and the text includes full information on the software.

Icelandic Fairy Tales
translated and edited by Angus W. Hall
(Rare Book Collection)

In their original form, many of the stories are - somewhat crude and rough for juvenile reading. It will be found that though some bear a similarity to the well-known standard fairy tales, which have been the delight of countless children for many generations, yet they all possess an originality peculiarly their own.
It is remarkable too that, whereas in most southern legends it is always the prince who delivers the princess and performs the heroic and valorous deeds, in these tales it is for the most part the young princess or peasant maiden who undergoes all the hardships and trials, and after countless dangers rescues the prince who has fallen under the ban of some wicked witch or giantess. The story of the five brothers, one of the quaintest, is an exceedingly effective illustration of the old proverb of the bundle of sticks.
A strong moral tone runs more or less through all the tales, exhibiting the higher and better qualities of human nature.

Swedish Fairy Tales
by Herman Hofberg
translated by W. H. Myers
(Rare Book Collection)

It is probably known to most readers that there is a distinction between Tradition and Saga. Tradition has, or at least seems to have, to do with facts, usually designating some particular spot or region where the incident is said to have taken place, often even giving the names of actors, while the Saga is entirely free in its scope, equally as regards incident, and the time and place of its happening. Not infrequently the traditions of a people are founded upon actual historical occurrences, which, often repeated in the naive manner of the peasantry, become, finally, folk-lore. A great many are, however, drawn from ancient myths, which, in time, become clad in historical garb, and are located in some particular place.