The Pinball Effect takes the reader on many different journeys through the web of knowledge. Knowledge, it turns out, has many unforeseen and surprising effects. The book, for instance, owes its existence to German jeweler Johannes Gutenberg's getting the date wrong one day in the fifteenth century. James Burke, author and host of the highly rated documentary series Connections 2, draws upon years of research to examine the intrigues and surprises on the journey through knowledge, a trip with all the twists and turns of a detective story. Ultimately, the larger picture that emerges has far-reaching and important implications for the future, revealing why the fundamental mechanism of change is the way things come together and connect. To add to the excitement, The Pinball Effect has been designed to be read interactively: throughout the book, cross-chapter references mimic computer hypertext "hot links" and allow readers to leap from one chapter to another. The result is a fascinating tour through history's most dramatic innovations.

Our choices are a result of how we have learned to be. The good news is if our choices are not getting us the outcomes we want - we can change - we can learn another way of doing things. Unlike that pinball who really is at the mercy of the next big 'ol bumper that's waiting there to change its direction, we can take control of our lives. We can't always choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we are going to respond. It is each choice we make that defines who we are. In this instant, in a blink of an eye, is our defining moment. Each time we react, we give away pieces of ourselves, like the little bits of the storm drain eaten away by toxic waste. How do we reclaim ourselves? How do we activate our choices? We make a choice to change the ways we have learned to be that aren't getting us the outcomes we want. Come on this exciting journey with me.

Heal Your Nervous System is a 5-Step plan for building a thriving nervous system by leading influencer Dr. Linnea Passaler, creator of @HealYour Nervous System.

Contains over fifty activities designed to help students build their reading, writing, and research skills, grouped in the categories of evaluating, sorting, analyzing and synthesizing, and working with information.

From the twisted mind of Jerzy Kosinski, a novel of kink and consequences set in the turbulent world of 1970s rock music excess. Jerzy Kosinski’s bestselling novel Pinball, which he wrote for George Harrison, is a rock ‘n’ roll mystery centered on a superstar named Goddard who has, despite his success, managed to keep his identity a secret, even from his closest friends. But a beautiful young woman, obsessed with finding Goddard, stalks him relentlessly, driven by a secret goal that justifies all means. Ricocheting with humor and bursting with erotic intensity, Pinball is a game as intricate, unpredictable, suspenseful, and complex as life. “Pinball is classic Kosinski.” —Chicago Tribune “Kosinski has created a suspenseful, readable, and unsentimental tale that showcases his love for and knowledge of music and examines the nature of fame and success and the frightening alienation and violence it often spawns.” —Library Journal

Improving Students' Learning Outcomes is a book for educators and administrators in higher education who have a genuine interest in developing an inspired curriculum centered on student learning. Integrating theoretical perspectives with empirical practice, researchers and practitioners from four continents discuss why and how students' learning outcomes can be improved. The book offers new theoretical approaches to the understanding of students' learning outcomes, as well as normative implications and inspiring examples from people professionally engaged in teaching, learning, and assessment-practices. Editors Claus Nygaard and Clive Holtham are the founders of the international academic association LIHE (Learning in Higher Education). The book came out of an international symposium held on Aegina Island, Greece, arranged by LIHE.

Life improves under the economic system often called "entrepreneurial capitalism" or "creative destruction," but more accurately called "innovative dynamism." Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism shows how innovation occurs through the efforts of inventors and innovative entrepreneurs, how workers on balance benefit, and how good policies can encourage innovation. The inventors and innovative entrepreneurs are often cognitively diverse outsiders with the courage and perseverance to see and pursue serendipitous discoveries or slow hunches. Arthur M. Diamond, Jr. shows how economies grow where innovative dynamism through leapfrog competition flourishes, as in the United States from roughly 1830-1930. Consumers vote with their feet for innovative new goods and for process innovations that reduce prices, benefiting ordinary citizens more than the privileged elites. Diamond highlights that because breakthrough inventions are costly and difficult, patents can be fair rewards for invention and can provide funding to enable future inventions. He argues that some fears about adverse effects on labor market are unjustified, since more and better new jobs are created than are destroyed, and that other fears can be mitigated by better policies. The steady growth in regulations, often defended on the basis of the precautionary principle, increases the costs to potential entrepreneurs and thus reduces innovation. The "Great Fact" of economic history is that after at least 40,000 years of mostly "poor, nasty, brutish, and short" humans in the last 250 years have started to live substantially longer and better lives. Diamond increases understanding of why.

The overarching theme of this volume is the cyclical nature of technological change, its impact on economic growth, and the limits of government intervention. Technological revolutions are infrequent; there were only three in all of the twentieth century. When they occur, their possibilities are often not immediately apparent. Technology revolutions induce capital investment, not just because they stimulate the need to acquire the new technology, but also because of the need to replace obsolete capacity and new infrastructure. While government has encouraged general economic progress by carrying out highly risky innovations unrelated to fostering economic growth, it seldom succeeds with specific efforts to foster growth. Recent examples of success include the Internet and the global positioning system (GPS), which trace their origins to defense-related research. In contrast, the countercyclical economic stimuli of 2007-2009 have achieved little in the way of general growth. The lack of data about the technology cycle makes formulating appropriate monetary and other policy countercyclical interventions difficult. A technology-founded upswing animated the American economy after 1990, and the -great recession- of 2007- 2009 reflected the waning of the investment boom that this revolution generated. Edmonson argues that the impact of technology revolutions on general economic growth has never received the attention it deserves. This volume will contribute much to debates on economic policy.