The Big IF By: B. L. Buehler The Big IF pertains to a righteous relationship with God in the light of truth and reality. Having served the Lord for 30 years at his own expense, B. L. Buehler was anointed to write the book for the spiritual edification of others. The emphasis of The Big IF is upon God first and foremost, sincere and devotional faith, truth, discipline, and reverence for the Lord. Buehler’s experiences, failures, and devotion unto the Lord, and the truth of the spiritual relational reality, which is all about the Lord, are all depicted in the pages within.

This collection of Skeptical Inquirer magazine columns by investigator and folklorist Benjamin Radford guides readers on a science-based (yet open-minded) examination of 70 fascinating and mysterious topics. Drawing on two decades of first-hand research, Big-If True separates fact from fiction using forensics, science, psychology, folklore, and more. Big-If True examines these and dozens more mysteries including Bigfoot, reincarnation, chupacabras, Icelandic elves, conspiracy theories, UFOs, miracles, the terrifying Goat-Man, crop circles, subliminal advertising, sea serpents, wandering trees, medical mysteries, and hypnotist thieves-plus a 1990 Elvis sighting. For mystery lovers and armchair investigators alike, this book offers a look behind the scenes at investigating oddities and curiosities, both ancient and modern. Chapter One LEGENDS 5 A Skeptic's Guide to Ethical and Effective Curse Removal - Egging the Equator - Detour: Elves Ahead - Mysteries of the Coral Castle - Is Elvis Presley in Home Alone? - Searching to Noah Vale - The Bell Witch Mystery - The Myth of the Walking Tree - Bailing in the Mummies - Might Fright Cause White? - (and more) Chapter Two MONSTERS 51 Cryptozoology and Global Warming - The Mystery of the Texas Chupacabra - Texas Goat-Men and the Chupacabra - A Wakey Water 'Monster' - Globsters Ahoy! - Investigating Mothman's Red Eyeshine Chapter Three GHOSTS 83 Do Einstein's Laws Endorse Ghosts? - 'M' is for Mysterious Marks - Have I Ever Seen a Ghost? - Soul Scales - The Cockington Church Ghost Photo - Can Electromagnetic Fields Create Ghosts? - Infrared Cameras and Ghost Hunting - A Closer Look at Orbs - The Sweet Spirit Sounds of Rosemary Brown - (and more) Chapter Four MYSTERIOUS POWERS AND PLACES 121 A Time to Die? - Crop Circle Origins - The GIGO Problem: Crop Circle Research Edition - Channeling Ancient African Wisdom-Or Not - Mystery of the Paulding Light - Dowsing: Dubious and Discredited - Fatima Miracle Claims All Wet - Uri Geller Revisited - Did Psychic Visions Locate Missing California Boy? - Beware Mesmer Thieves! - Secrets of Spectacularly Skewered Skin Chapter Five UFOs 165 The Phantom Menace of UFO Revelation - The Mysterious Phoenix Lights - The Mysterious, Invisible 'Rods' Chapter Six HEALTH AND MEDICINE 175 Bodytalk: Boon or Bogus? - Exercising the Brain Gym - Kinoki Foot Pads - Diving HeadOn Into Pseudoscience - Subliminal Advertising, Trumpian and Otherwise - Freaky Feldenkrais - Measuring Near-Death Experience - A 100C Grain of Truth to Homeopathy? - Battle Over the BMI - The Mysterious Morgellons Malady - Childbirth-Natural or 'Unnatural'? - Vegetable Oil or Snake Oil?: The Pseudoscience of "Oil Pulling" - The Pseudoscience of Personalysis - Left Brain or Right Brain? - (and more) Chapter Seven CONSPIRACIES 229 Sandy Hook School Shooting: The Adam Lanza Death Certificate Conspiracy - Curious Contrails: Death From the Sky? - The Truth About the 9/11 Truthers - Is America a Sheeple Factory? Chapter Eight SKEPTICISM 243 Legitimizing Woo - Just Asking Questions - Caught Between the Possible and the Paranormal - Dealing With Believers in Skeptical Investigation - Anomaly Hunting - Mystery Solved-According to Whom? - Paranormal Qualifications

One man's quest to realise a boyhood dream and break a national record. Sean Dooley seems like a well adjusted, functioning member of society but beneath the respectable veneer he harbours a dark secret. He is a hard-core birdwatcher (aka twitcher'). Sean takes a year off to try to break the Australian twitching record - he has to see more than 700 birds in twelve months. Travelling the length and breadth of Australia, he stops at nothing in search of this birdwatching Holy Grail, blowing his inheritance, his career prospects and any chance he has of finding a girlfriend. Part confessional, part travelogue, this is a true story about obsession. It's about seeking the meaning of life, trying to work out what normal' is, and searching for the elusive Grey Falcon (the bird, not the car). Sean's story of how he followed his childhood dream of becoming a national champion is both inspiring and ridiculous. Could this be the most pathetic great achievement in Australian history?

The Taming of the True defends and develops global semantic anti-realism. Neil Tennant argues compellingly that every truth is knowable, and that manifestationism in the theory of meaning entails logical reform. He extends semantic anti-realism to empirical discourse, developing new accounts of the analytic/synthetic distinction, cognitive significance and constructive falsifiability. The book has important consequences for the philosophy of mathematics and logic, the theory of meaning, metaphysics, and epistemology.

Revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide with translations in 29 languages. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story. Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse life. By applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for everyone, if we make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide, with translations in 29 languages, Bronnie expresses how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a courageous, life-changing book that will leave you feeling more compassionate and inspired to live the life you are truly here to live.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist's bizarre journalistic journey through the world of fringe medicine, filled with leeches, baking soda IVs, and, according to at least one person, zombies. It's no secret that American health care has become too costly and politicized to help everyone. So where do you turn if you can't afford doctors, or don't trust them? In this book, Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling examines the growing universe of non-traditional treatments -- including some that are really non-traditional. With costs skyrocketing and anti-science sentiment spreading, the so-called "medical freedom" movement has grown. Now it faces its greatest challenge: going mainstream. In these pages you'll meet medical freedom advocates including an international leech smuggler, a gold miner-turned health drink salesman who may or may not be from the Andromeda galaxy, and a man who says he can turn people into zombies with aerosol spray. One by one, these alternative healers find customers, then expand and influence, always seeking the one thing that would take their businesses to the next level--the support and approval of the government. Should the government dictate what is medicine and what isn't? Can we have public health when disagreements over science are this profound? No, seriously, can you turn people into flesh-eating zombies? If It Sounds Like a Quack asks these critical questions while telling the story of how we got to this improbable moment, and wondering where we go from here. Buckle up for a bumpy ride...unless you're against seatbelts.

In this book, Lindsey A. Sherrill explores the exponential growth of true crime podcasting, including the role of the ubiquitous Serial podcast in the growth of the industry. Using both demographic population analysis and interviews with podcast hosts and producers, Sherill demonstrates that true crime podcasts exist as hybrid organizations, with diverse goals ranging from entertainment to criminal justice reform advocacy to journalistic inquiry. These competing motivations of podcast producers are explored, along with the ethical quandaries that emerge in the process of telling true crime stories. Sherrill traces true crime podcasting back to the infancy of the medium and examines the influences, innovations, and events that created the true crime podcast ecosystem, as well as its influence on real cases in the United States. Scholars of communication, sociology, and media studies will find this book of particular interest.

In Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True, Mark Dice details actual NSA high-tech spy systems, mind-reading machines, secret government projects, and emerging artificial intelligence programs that seem as if they came right out of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell’s famous book was first published in 1949, and tells the story of a nightmarish future where citizens have lost all privacy and are continuously monitored by the omniscient Big Brother surveillance system which keeps them obedient to a totalitarian government. The novel is eerily prophetic as many of the fictional systems of surveillance described have now become a reality. Mark Dice shows you the scary documentation that Big Brother is watching you, and is more powerful than you could imagine. - The National Security Agency - Facial Recognition Scanners - Mind Reading Machines - Neural Interfaces - Psychotronic Weapons - Orwellian Government Programs - The Nanny State - Orwellian Weapons - Artificial Intelligence - Cybernetic Organisms - A Closer Look at 1984 - Our Social Structure - The Control of Information - Perpetual State of War - The Personification of the Party - Telescreens - A Snitch Culture - Relationships in Shambles - A Heartless Society - Foreign Countries Painted as Enemies - Power Hungry Officials - An Erosion of the Language - Double Think - And More! By the author of The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction

An “essential and riveting” (Jonathan Haidt) analysis of the radical shift in the dynamics of power and influence, revealing how the machinery that powered the Big Lie works to create bespoke realities revolutionizing politics, culture, and society. Renée DiResta’s powerful, original investigation into the way power and influence have been profoundly transformed reveals how a virtual rumor mill of niche propagandists increasingly shapes public opinion. While propagandists position themselves as trustworthy Davids, their reach, influence, and economics make them classic Goliaths—invisible rulers who create bespoke realities to revolutionize politics, culture, and society. Their work is driven by a simple maxim: if you make it trend, you make it true. By revealing the machinery and dynamics of the interplay between influencers, algorithms, and online crowds, DiResta vividly illustrates the way propagandists deliberately undermine belief in the fundamental legitimacy of institutions that make society work. This alternate system for shaping public opinion, unexamined until now, is rewriting the relationship between the people and their government in profound ways. It has become a force so shockingly effective that its destructive power seems limitless. Scientific proof is powerless in front of it. Democratic validity is bulldozed by it. Leaders are humiliated by it. But they need not be. With its deep insight into the power of propagandists to drive online crowds into battle—while bearing no responsibility for the consequences—Invisible Rulers not only predicts those consequences but offers ways for leaders to rapidly adapt and fight back.

There Are No Such Things as Theories considers the fundamental question: what is a scientific theory? It presents a range of options - from theories are sets of propositions, to theories are families of models, abstract artefacts, or fictions - and highlights the various problems they all face. In so doing it draws multiple comparisons between theories and artworks: on the one hand, theories are like certain kinds of paintings with regard to their representational capacity; on the other, they are like musical works in that they can be multiply presented. An alternative answer to the question is then offered, drawing on the metaphysics of musical works: there are no such things as theories. Nevertheless, we can still talk about them, since that talk is made true by the various practices that scientists engage in. The implications of this form of eliminativism for the realism debate is then discussed and it is concluded that this may offer a more flexible framework in which we can understand both the history and the philosophy of science in general.