Through original analysis of three contemporary, auteur-directed melodramas (Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia and Todd Haynes’s Mildred Pierce), Living Screens reconceives and renovates the terms in which melodrama has been understood. Returning to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s foundational, Enlightenment-era melodrama Pygmalion with its revival of an old story about sculpted objects that spring to life, it contends that this early production prefigures the structure of contemporary melodramas and serves as a model for the way we interact with media today. Melodrama is conceptualized as a “plastic” form with the capacity to mould and be moulded and that speaks to fundamental processes of mediation. Living Screens evokes the thrills, anxieties, and uncertainties accompanying our attachment to technologies that are close-at-hand yet have far-reaching effects. In doing so, it explores the plasticity of our current situation, in which we live with screens that melodramatically touch our lives.

New: Updated Second Edition! Most of us are unintentional with screens, but tech industry architects intentionally make their content distracting, manipulative, and addictive. [Un]Intentional shows how our obsession with screens often takes us-unintentionally-to places we regret. It reveals the way many apps, games, and videos are designed to entice us to make decisions and form harmful habits that profit the creators at our expense. [Un]Intentional helps you break free by guiding you through proven biblical practices to reclaim your thought life, make good decisions, and fulfill your God-given mission.

Yesterday, our kids were dressing up in princess costumes and tracking mud in the house. Today, they are lost in a virtual world, obsessed with video games, social media, and smartphones. As a result, kids are getting hurt. They have become more stressed, anxious, and depressed. And families are being pulled apart. But it's not too late to win back your kids. In "The Screen Strong Solution," you will learn how to free your child from screen addiction and obsession. Based on scientific research and authentic experiences, Melanie Hempe, RN by trade and mother of four, lays out the step-by-step game plan you'll need to reclaim your kids and reconnect your family. You'll learn why your child craves screen time, what building blocks are necessary for healthy development, how to nurture the most important relationships in your child's life, and how to replace the digital world with the real one. Today is the day to rethink the screens in your home, reclaim your kids, and reconnect your family.

How does the future look to us? Well, clearly we realize we now live in a world of screens, from the microcosmic universe of to smartphone . . . to the imposing vigil of the multiplex giants, looming over us in Imax and 3-D--more "real" than real--and to all the screens in between, from computers to iPads, to muted, high definition flat-screens pouring out images in homes, restaurants, banks, businesses, schools, doctors' offices, and hospitals, and on and on everywhere we turn. We cannot change this reality, so what these Christians, and so many like them are doing is trying to find ways to redeem what we put on these screens: what message we are sending out in word and image to the watching world. So, clearly, our task, whether we have been called to create or not, is to join these artists as "screen redeemers," assisting the Holy Spirit in reconciling the world to God (2 Cor 5:18-19) through helping the pervasively influential means of the media adjust its goals to the mission of Jesus Christ.

Discusses how a person's view of the world influences how a person lives and argues that Christians are called not only to personal faith but to a biblical worldview.

To Live Without Warning is a story set in a future San Francisco, where public transportations is the only way to travel, and people with colds are required by machines called breathe-eraters to wear masks. Within this speculative fiction novel, there are aliens who disguise themselves as homeless people, and there are twins from an alien abduction, one human, one not, plus a virtual couple who live in a bungalow on a beach in a virtual Costa Rica who mix up their computer code to have a virtual child, and then there is a cat woman who can do all sorts of erotica with her tail, and a drummer who leads more than a band called Death, Ax and Grind. "Joshua Cromwell has a dream, one he has had for some time, where he's a planet. After a mysterious woman tells him of the aliens that are about to attack the Earth, she takes him to her home in the tenderloin where he meets a robot the color and texture of an orange. His life seems to be very, very important to these aliens called the Hymenopts, but he would really rather not participate in whatever is about to happen, if only he had that choice. "This is a love story, a growing up story, and a coming home story. It's about friendship and family and about the planet Earth. This is the story of how we begin to remember." If you enjoy sci-fi fantasy fiction, you'll probably enjoy To Live Withour Warning. Most of my readers know that I'm not a great fantasy fan; however, as I grew up in San Francisco and play the drums myself, this novel had a unique appeal, plus I enjoy novels with an element of the metaphysical. Timothy LaBadie is a good writer with a colorful imagination and spicy style. The novel is well-written and well-edited. LaBadie is the author of essays and fiction which stand out for their offbeat settings and timeless humor. Give him a try. - Kaye Trout, Kaye's Bookshelf, Reviewer's Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review, January 2008 For more information, please visit http://www.tolivewithoutwarning.com.