Mark O'Connell

"We're alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: the weather has gone uncanny, volatile. Our old post-war alliances are crumbling. Everywhere you look there's an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How are we to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What does the world hold for our children? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what is anybody doing about it?"--

A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back

Notes from an Apocalypse

Meet the visionaries, billionaires, professors, and programmers who are using groundbreaking technology to push the limits of the human body--our senses, intelligence, and our lifespans Once relegated to the fringes of society, transhumanism (the use of technology to enhance human intellectual and physical capability) is now poised to enter our cultural mainstream. It has found adherents in Silicon Valley billionaires Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis. Google has entered the picture, establishing a bio-tech subsidiary aimed at solving the problem of aging. In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell takes a headlong dive into this burgeoning movement. He travels to the laboratories, conferences, and basements of today's foremost transhumanists, where he's presented with the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries of new technologies like mind uploading, artificial superintelligence, cryonics, and device implants. A contributor to Slate, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine, O'Connell serves as a sharp and lively guide to the outer limits of technology in the twenty first century. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising, singular meditation on what it means to be human.

Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death

To Be a Machine

What does it mean to write about a killer? From an award-winning author comes a tale of a notorious double-murder, a political scandal, and a writer who found himself entangled in this strange, true story.

A Thread of Violence

Essere una macchina. Un viaggio attraverso cyborg, utopisti, hacker e futurologi per risolvere il modesto problema della morte

The Performing Art of Therapy explores the myriad ways in which acting techniques can enhance the craft of psychotherapy. The book shows how, by understanding therapy as a performing art, clinicians can supplement their theoretical approach with techniques that fine-tune the ways their bodies, voices, and imaginations engage with and influence their clients. Broken up into accessible chapters focused on specific attributes of performance, and including an appendix of step-by-step exercises for practitioners, this is an essential guidebook for therapists looking to integrate their theoretical training into who they are as individuals, find joy in their work, expand their empathy, increase self-care, and inspire clients to perform their own lives.

Acting Insights and Techniques for Clinicians

The Performing Art of Therapy

przygody wśród cyborgów, utopistów, hakerów i futurystów w ich skromnych staraniach, by rozwiązać problem śmierci

Być maszyną

Appunti da un'Apocalisse. Viaggio alla fine del mondo e ritorno

The wildly entertaining and eye-opening biography of J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer who invented the concept of "Close Encounters" with alien life, inspired Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster classic science fiction epic film, and made a nation want to believe in UFOs. In June 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold looked out his cockpit window and saw a group of nine silvery crescents weaving between the peaks of the Cascade Mountains at an estimated 1,200 miles an hour. The media, the military, and the scientific community—led by J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer hired by the Air Force—debunked this and many other Unidentified Flying Object sightings reported across the country. But after years of denials, Hynek made a shocking pronouncement: UFOs are real. Thirty years after his death, Hynek’s agonizing transformation from skepticism to true believer remains one of the great misunderstood stories of science. In this definitive biography, Mark O'Connell reveals for the first time how Hynek’s work both as a celebrated astronomer and as the U. S. Air Force’s go-to UFO expert for nearly twenty years stretched the boundaries of modern science, laid the groundwork for acceptance of the possibility of UFOs, and was the basis of the hit film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. With unprecedented access to Hynek’s personal and professional files, O’Connell smashes conventional wisdom to reveal the intriguing man and scientist beneath the legend. Tracing Hynek’s career, O'Connell examines Hynek’s often-ignored work as a professional astronomer to create a complete portrait of a groundbreaking enthusiast who became an American cult icon and transformed the way we see our world and our universe.

How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs

The Close Encounters Man

Raje Airey

Signs and symbols are a fundamental part of the way we communicate. This book explores the iconography and symbolism that connect them all, including cave paintings of the circle and the square, the signs of the zodiac and modern computer iconography. It has an extensive directory of hundreds of individual graphics, from astrological signs to symbols from around the world, such as a pentagram, a dove and the Chinese sign of yin yang.

A Fascinating Directory of More Than 1200 Visual Images, with an Expert Analysis of Their History and Meaning

The Illustrated Sourcebook of Signs & Symbols

Chris Grosso

A children's book about rocking to your own beat, starring a kid just looking to focus his excitement by drumming. "Cool it, kid!" Ah, no! How's this kid's parent going to stifle him from releasing his energy? Tap tap tap...

I Love Drums

Written by leading authorities in psychology and psychotherapy, the book contains chapters on symbols in society, in nature, in myth and sacred tradition, and in the human life cycle, as well as abstract symbols. The structure of the book is thematic, related signs and symbols are complemented and contrasted, giving a unique guide to their cross-cultural aspects. Some of those symbols that have the most complex meanings - such as the cross, the serpent, the rainbow and the wheel - have been singled out and are discussed in individual essays.

Finding the Meaning of Signs and Visual Codes

Understanding Symbols

Richard Craze

Identification and analysis of the visual vocabulary and secret language that shapes our thoughts and dreams and dictates our reactions to the world.

Identification and Analysis of the Visual Vocabulary and Secret Language That Shapes Our Thoughts and Dreams and Dictates Our Reactions to the World

The Ultimate Illustrated Guide to Dreams, Signs and Symbols

This book is for any couple—same or opposite sex—seeking a personalized wedding that dignifies the relationship and the individual self. No “new normal” here—this guide emboldens you to harness your unique, brazen, queer truth; to be creative; and to plan your wedding your way. Every fiancé faces the question, how do I become something new without losing myself? Using his own story, author Mark O’Connell reflects on conflicts that arrive during wedding transitions, as well as various other transitions throughout your lives. As a psychotherapist, O’Connell offers ideas to bridge relational gaps with your partner, family, and friends. As a professional actor, he also offers insight into the ways your wedding is a theatrical production and how this can help you to conceptualize the event, consolidate your efforts, and increase creative collaboration as a couple. This will serve you not only on your big day, but also for the rest of your time together. Whether we’re straight, gay, or other, weddings inspire us to carve out more fun, freedom, recognition, life space, love space, and connubial space than we’ve ever had before.

A Guide to Planning Straight, Gay, and Other Nontraditional Twenty-First-Century Weddings

Modern Brides & Modern Grooms

Baby boomers' expectations for their marriages are often unrealistic. When their relationship comes up short on romance and sex, but seems long on disagreements and strife, many boomers choose to leave. The Marriage Benefit is less a book about how to make our relationships better than it is about how our relationships can make us better if we just work on our expectations and improve communications. Harvard Medical School clinical instructor and psychotherapist O'Connell offers a peek behind the door of a marriage therapist, where readers can see that their problems are not unique. Through wonderfully revealing anecdotes of couples with problems many of us face: long-held bitterness, diminished sexuality, the scars of infidelity, and the search for authentic meaning, O'Connell shows how by respecting each other's individuality, looking for "real" sex, and learning how to play with each other again, we can reap the benefits of the long-term emotional investment we've made.

The Marriage Benefit

Christine McRae

Further Notes with TI-Nspirea (CAS) is a comprehensive new study guide that is designed to enhance the skills and confidence of students studying VCE Further Mathematics Units 3 & 4 with an approved TI-Nspirea (CAS) calculator.

TI-Nspire (CAS)

Further Notes VCE Further Mathematics Units 3 & 4

From an award-winning author comes a tale of a notorious double-murder, for readers of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, or Emmanuel Carrre's The Adversary. In 1982 Malcolm Macarthur, the wealthy heir to a small estate, found himself suddenly without money. The solution, he decided, was to rob a bank. To do this, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them, he killed two people, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest in the apartment of Ireland's Attorney General nearly brought down the government. The case remains one of the most shocking in Ireland's history. Mark O'Connell has long been haunted by the story of this brutal double murder. But in recent years this haunting has become mutual. When O'Connell sets out to unravel the mysteries still surrounding these horrific and inexplicable crimes, he tracks down Macarthur himself, now an elderly man living out his days in Dublin and reluctant to talk. As the two men circle one another, O'Connell is pushed into a confrontation with his own narrative: what does it mean to write about a murderer?

A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder

"Richly illustrated with over 170 photographs and fine art paintings, together with 1000 black and white line drawings detailing some of the most important sets of signs and symbols" - on cover.

What They Mean and how We Use Them : a Facinating Visual Examination of how Signs and Symbols Developed as a Means of Communication Throughout History in Art, Religion, Psychology, Literature and Everyday Life

Signs & Symbols

Questo libro è un viaggio straordinario, proprio nel senso in cui lo erano quelli di Jules Verne. Tutto quanto O'Connell racconta sembra frutto di una fantasia vagamente allucinata. Solo che non lo è. I cilindri d'acciaio nel capannone criogenico vicino all'aeroporto di Phoenix contengono davvero i primi corpi umani in attesa di risvegliarsi in un futuro simile all'eternità. Ray Kurzweil, uno dei cervelli di Google, inghiotte davvero 150 pillole al giorno, convinto di vivere a tempo indeterminato. Elon Musk o Steve Wozniak sono serissimi quando dichiarano che di qui a poco la nostra mente potrà essere caricata su un computer, e da lì assumere una quantità di altre forme, non necessariamente organiche. Sì, il viaggio di O'Connell fra i transumanisti – fra coloro che sostengono che, nella Singolarità in cui stiamo entrando, i nostri concetti di vita, di morte, di essere umano andranno ripensati dalle fondamenta – porta molto più lontano di quanto a volte vorremmo. Regala sequenze indimenticabili, come la visita alla setta di biohacker che tentano di trasformarsi in cyborg. E apre uno dei primi, veri squarci sulla destinazione di una parte degli immani proventi accumulati nella Silicon Valley. Che possibilità reali abbiamo di vivere mille anni? chiede a un certo punto O'Connell a un guru del movimento, Aubrey de Grey. «Qualcosa più del cinquanta per cento» si sente rispondere. «Molto dipenderà dal livello dei finanziamenti».

Un viaggio attraverso cyborg, utopisti, hacker e futurologi per risolvere il modesto problema della morte

Essere una macchina

In 2000, Walt Disney Pictures released the film Remember the Titans which stirred the hearts of many but falsely depicted the Titans of T.C. Williams playing their arch-rival, George C. Marshall, in a nail-biter of a championship football game decided on the last play in a place called Roanoke Stadium. Wrong! The Titans played a small and scrappy bunch of players from Salem known as the Wolverines of Andrew Lewis High in the historic Victory

Mark O'Connell

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