The Minds of Boys is our practical guide to helping boys learn, do better in school, and succeed in life. This book provides you with a kind of “operating system” that you can immediately “load into” your own life and your son’s schooling.
Added by: huelgas | Karma: 1208.98 | Fiction literature | 22 December 2008
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Arguably the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived, Isaac Asimov also possessed one of the most brilliant and original minds of our time. His accessible style and far-reaching interests in subjects ranging from science to humor to history earned him the nickname "the Great Explainer." I. Asimov is his personal story--vivid, open, and honest--as only Asimov himself could tell it. Here is the story of the paradoxical genius who wrote of travel to the stars yet refused to fly in airplanes; who imagined alien universes and vast galactic civilizations while staying home to write; who compulsively authored more than 470 books yet still found the time to share his ideas with some of the great minds of our century.
In this lucid and revealing book, Marcus argues that the mind is not an elegantly designed organ but rather a "kluge," a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. He unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the human mind -- think duct tape, not supercomputer -- that sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature. Taking us on a tour of the fundamental areas of human experience -- memory, belief, decision-making, language, and happiness -- Marcus reveals the myriad ways our minds fall short. He examines why people often vote against their own interests, why money can't buy happiness, why leaders often stick to bad decisions, and why a sentence like "people people left left" ties us in knots even though it's only four words long. Marcus also offers surprisingly effective ways to outwit our inner kluge, for the betterment of ourselves and society. Throughout, he shows how only evolution -- haphazard and undirected -- could have produced the minds we humans have, while making a brilliant case for the power and usefulness of imperfection.
"Fictional Minds suggests that readers understand novels primarily by
following the functioning of the minds of characters in the novel
storyworlds. Despite the importance of this aspect of the reading
process, traditional narrative theory does not include a complete and
coherent theory of fictional minds. Readers create a continuing
consciousness out of scattered references to a particular character and
read this consciousness as an "embedded narrative" within the whole
narrative of the novel. The combination of these embedded narratives
forms the plot.
We want to live better, more youthful days while we’re living longer. Diet, exercise and a lucky draw from the gene pool can take us only so far, however. That’s where science comes in.
In this special edition from Scientific American, you’ll find firsthand reports from the researchers leading the efforts to understand the mechanisms of aging. They are teasing out ways to slow the biological clock as well as the degradation that time imposes on our bodies and minds. They are battling the diseases of age, including cancer and heart disease.
