Meet the National Animals is a playful and humorous look at the animals all around the world who represent their country. Why do they represent the particular country and what is so special or symbolic about them? Featuring over 35 amazing animals, from the mystical Scottish Unicorn to China's much-loved Giant Panda and the wonderful, but extinct, Dodo from Mauritius. The witty text brings each animal to life and celebrates their quirks and characteristics. Includes a playful, charming narrative along the bottom of each spread, which sees Brown Bear gradually bringing all the animal together as they travel the world, celebrating each country as they go. Filled with fascinating facts about each animal and country, the text also touches gently upon any conservation issues related to each animal and their habitat. The illustrations inject warmth and humour into the narrative, making the animals the stars of their respective countries!
This book is about a trait describing variations in the universal need for novel and intense stimulation and its expressions in various risky kinds of behaviour (including driving habits, health, gambling, financial risk, alcohol and drug use and abuse, sexual behaviour, and sports). Sensation seeking is also important in preferences for various vocations, media forms and content, food, humour and social attitudes. Compatibility in the trait influences premarital and marital relationship satisfaction. Its modes of assessment, behavioural expressions, and genetic and psychobiological bases are described by one of the leading researchers in this field. This book presents the only available study of this fascinating topic and it will be sure to interest researchers and their students active in personality research.
You are what you eat, or are you? What is in food? Where does it come from? Richard Lacey, Professor of Microbiology at Leeds University and a popular media critic on food issues, takes the reader on a culinary exploration into the world of food. Blending science and humour, Richard Lacey stimulates us to question the future, to think about the nature of what we eat and where it comes from. Professor Lacey is on the side of the consumer, you and I, as he reveals the sinister sides of food production and the dangers lurking in the kitchen.The reader is served up with a feast of practical tips on the handling of food. But food is fun too! Our taste buds work overtime as we are shown how to enjoy food that is both delicious, healthy and safe.
Eric Osborn's book presents a major study of Irenaeus (125–200), bishop of Lyons, who attacked Gnostic theosophy with positive ideas as well as negative critiques. Irenaeus's combination of argument and imagery, logic and aesthetic, was directed to the bible. Dominated by a Socratic love of truth and a classical love of beauty, he was a founder of Western humanism. Erasmus, who edited the first printed edition of Irenaeus, praised him for his freshness and vigour. He is today valued for his splendid aphorisms, his optimism, love of the created world, evolutionary view of history, theology of beauty and humour. Why have two millennia of European culture been so creative? Irenaeus points to Greek ways of thinking and the Christian Bible. Irenaeus's thought is complex, yet rewarding to the critical reader, and this full study of it will be of interest to theologians, historians of ideas, classicists, scientists and students.
Half A Brain Is Enough is the moving and extraordinary story of Nico, a little boy who at the age of three was given a right hemispherectomy to control intractable epilepsy. Antonio Battro, a distinguished neuroscientist and educationalist, charts what he calls Nico's 'neuroeducation' with humour and compassion in an intriguing book which is part case history, part meditation on the nature of consciousness and the brain, and part manifesto. Throughout the book Battro combines the highest standards of scientific scholarship with a warmth and humanity that guide the reader through the intricacies of brain surgery, neuronal architecture and the application of the latest information technology in education, in a way that is accessible and engaging as well as making a significant contribution to the current scientific literature. Half A Brain Is Enough will be compulsory reading for anyone who is interested in the ways we think and learn.
Biology and Freedom, first published in 1989, is an essay on human nature: an attempt to make a just assessment of a species often presented as predominantly and unavoidably violent, grasping, selfish and stupid. Likening human beings to animals is a traditional method of influencing attitudes on morals and politics. But in this book Professor Barnett shows that modern ethology, experimental psychology, genetics and evolutionary theory give the now fashionable misanthropy no authentic support. In doing so he asks whether the theory of evolution has any bearing on Machiavellianism in politics or the concept of original sin; and whether laboratory experiments on the effects of reward and punishment tell us anything about the enigma of free will. Combining the findings of biology with logic and humour, Professor Barnett gives a lucid alternative portrait of humanity in which he stresses the questions that the complexities of human existence will raise long after current myths have faded.
Comic Performativities: Identity, Internet Outrage, and the Aesthetics of Communication studies patterns of criticism and public debate in the relationship between humour, identity, and offense. In an
'Full of quirky characters, friendship and humour, you will devour this engaging and heartwarming novel in one sitting' - Sunday Express' S Magazine 'My new favourite author' - Holly Marti
Michael Marshall Smith’s surreal, groundbreaking, and award-winning debut which resonates with wild humour interlaced with dark recollections of an emotional minefield. May we introduce you to Stark.
“Sparkling . . . it’s all systems go for a wonderful romance . . . a charming story told with large doses of love and humour.”–The Australian Women’s WeeklyEva Kennedy is in a rut. After seven years o
'Full of quirky characters, friendship and humour, you will devour this engaging and heartwarming novel in one sitting' - Sunday Express' S Magazine The brand new book from bestselling aut
From Petrarch and Dante to Pound and Eliot, the influence of the troubadours on European poetry has been profound. They have rightly stimulated a vast amount of critical writing, but the majority of modern critics see the troubadour tradition as a corpus of earnestly serious and confessional love poetry, with little or no humour. Troubadours and Irony re-examines the work of five early troubadours, namely Marcabru, Bernart Marti, Peire d'Alvernha, Raimbaut d'Aurenga and Giraut de Borneil, to argue that the courtly poetry of southern France in the twelfth century was permeated with irony and that many troubadour songs were playful, laced with humorous sexual innuendo and far from serious; attention is also drawn to the large corpus of texts that are not love poems, but comic or satirical songs.
This original NCL collection brings together Leacock’s comic masterpieces, the many varieties of his remarkable humour. In one story a young man is seized by fear as he attempts to open his first bank
To consider comedy in its many incarnations is to raise diverse but related questions: what, for instance, is humour, and how may it be used (or abused)? When do we laugh, and why? What is it that wri
Thomas Love Peacock (1785‒1866) is one of the most distinctive prose satirists of the Romantic period. The Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock offers the first complete text of his novels to appear for more than half a century. Crotchet Castle (1831), his sixth novel, contains all the humour and social satire for which Peacock is famous. Its lively farce is more ambitious than that of the earlier works in its range of cultural and intellectual targets, including progressivism, dogmatism, liberalism, sexism, mass education and the idiocies of the learned. The book constitutes an artistic, political and philosophical miscellany of sorts, thematically unified in its satirical emphasis on folly and dispute – and on the folly of dispute itself. This edition provides a full introduction, chronology, annotations and detailed textual and scholarly apparatus.
Have you ever found yourself re-reading the same sentence four or five times and thought 'I should get more sleep'? Are you clueless as to why one paragraph just seems to 'flow' while you simply can't recall the contents of another? Guess what: you are not alone. Even the best writers fail to grasp why their writing works. The Reader's Brain is the first science-based guide to writing, employing cutting-edge research on how our minds process written language, to ensure your writing can be read quickly, assimilated easily, and recalled precisely - exactly what we need to transform anyone into a highly effective writer. Using the 5Cs - clarity, continuity, coherence, concision, and cadence - this book combines irreverent humour with easy-to-follow principles that will make readers perceive your sentences, paragraphs, and documents to be clear, concise, and effective.
Biology and Freedom, first published in 1989, is an essay on human nature: an attempt to make a just assessment of a species often presented as predominantly and unavoidably violent, grasping, selfish and stupid. Likening human beings to animals is a traditional method of influencing attitudes on morals and politics. But in this book Professor Barnett shows that modern ethology, experimental psychology, genetics and evolutionary theory give the now fashionable misanthropy no authentic support. In doing so he asks whether the theory of evolution has any bearing on Machiavellianism in politics or the concept of original sin; and whether laboratory experiments on the effects of reward and punishment tell us anything about the enigma of free will. Combining the findings of biology with logic and humour, Professor Barnett gives a lucid alternative portrait of humanity in which he stresses the questions that the complexities of human existence will raise long after current myths have faded.
Hilarious, cringe-inducing stories about teachers, students and parents, from CBC star of Mr. D, one of Canada's hottest comedic talents. Gerry Dee is a rising comic star whose humour has been compare
This is the first full-length study in English of the Roman poet Martial's life, poetry and politics, as well as of the survival of his fifteen books of epigrams and short poems from his death around AD 104 to the present. The subjects examined include his defence of epigram as an art form, his misogyny and obscenity, his style, wit and humour, and, not least, his imperial propaganda. The concluding part of the work examines his high reputation in the Renaissance and the later censorship and neglect of his work until comparatively recently. All the material is presented for a modern objective assessment of his achievement, without in any way disguising the unpleasant aspects of his genius, and the political and literary pressures on poets in Rome at that period.
Boojums All the Way Through is a collection of essays that deals in a variety of ways with the problem of communicating modern physics to both physicists and non-physicists. The author is Professor David Mermin, a well-known theoretical physicist, who recently won the first Julius Edgar Lileinfeld prize of the American Physical Society 'for his remarkable clarity and wit as a lecturer to nonspecialists on difficult subjects'. David Mermin's wry humour is clearly apparent in most of these articles, but even those that are more serious are characterized by a liveliness and commitment to finding startlingly simple ways of presenting ideas that are traditionally regarded as complex. This book will appeal to physicists at all levels, to mathematicians, scientists and engineers, and indeed to anyone who enjoys reading non-technical accounts of new ways of looking at modern science.
