On the Fringe

2021-03-23
On the Fringe

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  • Author: Michael D. Gordin
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 0197555780
  • Category : History
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 122

Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience", typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under its umbrella-- astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind. But defining what makes these fields "pseudo" is a far more complex issue. It has proved impossible to come up with a simple criterion that enables us to differentiate pseudoscience from genuine science. Given the virulence of contemporary disputes over the denial of climate change and anti-vaccination movements--both of which display allegations of "pseudoscience" on all sides-- there is a clear need to better understand issues of scientific demarcation. On the Fringe explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation. This book argues that by understanding doctrines that are often seen as antithetical to science, we can learn a great deal about how science operated in the past and does today. This exploration raises several questions: How does a doctrine become demonized as pseudoscientific? Who has the authority to make these pronouncements? How is the status of science shaped by political or cultural contexts? How does pseudoscience differ from scientific fraud? Michael D. Gordin both answers these questions and guides readers along a bewildering array of marginalized doctrines, looking at parapsychology (ESP), Lysenkoism, scientific racism, and alchemy, among others, to better understand the struggle to define what science is and is not, and how the controversies have shifted over the centuries. On the Fringe provides a historical tour through many of these fringe fields in order to provide tools to think deeply about scientific controversies both in the past and in our present.

Physics on the Fringe

2011-11-01
Physics on the Fringe

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  • Author: Margaret Wertheim
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
  • ISBN: 0802778739
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 336

For the past fifteen years, acclaimed science writer Margaret Wertheim has been collecting the works of "outsider physicists," many without formal training and all convinced that they have found true alternative theories of the universe. Jim Carter, the Einstein of outsiders, has developed his own complete theory of matter and energy and gravity that he demonstrates with experiments in his backyard,-with garbage cans and a disco fog machine he makes smoke rings to test his ideas about atoms. Captivated by the imaginative power of his theories and his resolutely DIY attitude, Wertheim has been following Carter's progress for the past decade. Centuries ago, natural philosophers puzzled out the laws of nature using the tools of observation and experimentation. Today, theoretical physics has become mathematically inscrutable, accessible only to an elite few. In rejecting this abstraction, outsider theorists insist that nature speaks a language we can all understand. Through a profoundly human profile of Jim Carter, Wertheim's exploration of the bizarre world of fringe physics challenges our conception of what science is, how it works, and who it is for.

Life on the Fringes

2014-07
Life on the Fringes

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  • Author: Haviva Ner-David
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 9781934730430
  • Category : Biography & Autobiography
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

Part memoir, part commentary, Life on the Fringes charts a startling Jewish feminist journey both solitary and engaging. Haviva Ner-David draws us into the many facets of her life's story: a complex modern Orthodox childhood (including a battle with anorexia); adherence to a unique combination of Jewish observances; the emergence of her feminist commitments and support of gays and lesbians in Jewish life; a serious engagement with Jewish texts -- and now, studying for rabbinic ordination with an Orthodox rabbi in Israel, where Ner-David and her family have made their home. Over time, we see Ner-David take on both traditionally male practices -- donning a tallit and tefillin every day, wearing tzitzit at all times -- as well as those of traditional Jewish women -- covering her head, and observing in great detail the laws of niddah which govern a woman's separation from her husband in the days surrounding her menstrual period. Her personal wrestling and her halakhic analysis help us see Jewish tradition in new, more textured ways -- and lets us see new possibilities for our own lives. Writing with warmth, vision, and passion, Ner-David unwraps her often startling package of Jewish choices, inviting readers into her many worlds, even as she challenges us to examine and deepen our own allegiances and Jewish feminist journeys. No one who takes seriously the intersection of feminism and traditional Judaism will be able to ignore this book.

Fringes

2021-07-24
Fringes

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  • Author: Ben Mercer
  • Publisher: Outlier Press
  • ISBN: 191500103X
  • Category : Biography & Autobiography
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 378

Updated edition of the #1 Amazon Bestseller LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE 2020 Sports books tend to detail extraordinary achievements, triumphs against the odds or commemorate World Cup winning captains. This book does not do that. For many, playing professional sport is the Dream Job. Few manage it, very few make it to the top and for the rest, life is very different. This is their story. In Fringes, Ben Mercer invites you to witness life at the outer edges of professional rugby. This is a first hand account of what life is like as a journeyman professional athlete. You play, but to the wider public you don't exist. You earn but you don't drive a flash car. You sometimes pack out a stadium but sometimes, you play in a deserted park. This is the story for the majority of sports professionals. Only the minority taste the top, only one person gets to lift the cup or win the medal, only 15 get to play for England at any one time. For the rest, that’s not the case. Ben Mercer is a former professional rugby player who after becoming disillusioned and uninspired plying his trade in the English Second Division, accepted an offer out of the blue to go to France and do something different - help an amateur team turn professional. This is a first hand account of what life is like in the lower reaches of professional sport - where your employment status is as precarious as your health and barely anyone will know your name. It's about how it feels to live year to year, with teammates constantly on the move. It's about how professionalism irreversibly changes the French club Stade Rouennais as they move up the divisions, about the tension between progress and identity in a rugby team. It's also about how it feels to actually be out there on the field, how it feels to occasionally do something extraordinary and how it feels when this is no longer enough for you to make the sacrifices that you need to make to keep playing. There's no ghostwriting, it's an unmitigated meditation on how it feels and what it means to play rugby for a living, to dedicate yourself to an uncompromising but occasionally beautiful game. If you've wanted to know what life is really like as a professional athlete, on the Fringes, away from the glitz and glamour of the international game then look no further.

The Folk of the Fringe

2010-04-01
The Folk of the Fringe

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  • Author: Orson Scott Card
  • Publisher: Orb Books
  • ISBN: 142996653X
  • Category : Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 273

In Orson Scott Card's classic apocalyptic science fiction novel The Folk of the Fringe, only a few nuclear weapons fell in America--the weapons that destroyed the nation were biological and, ultimately, cultural. But in the chaos, the famine, the plague, there existed a few pockets of order. The strongest of them was the state of Deseret, formed from the vestiges of Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. The climate has changed. The Great Salt Lake has filled up to prehistoric levels. But there, on the fringes, brave, hardworking pioneers are making the desert bloom again. A civilization cannot be reclaimed by powerful organizations, or even by great men alone. It must be renewed by individual men and women, one by one, working together to make a community, a nation, a new America. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Tales from the Fringes of Fear

2020-04-07
Tales from the Fringes of Fear

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  • Author: Jeff Szpirglas
  • Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
  • ISBN: 1459824601
  • Category : Juvenile Fiction
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 179

Dragged fresh from the grave and pulled out of the haunted corners of a school locker, these thirteen new stories are a nod to the storytelling style of Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone. Most kids don’t have to stress about things like exotic insects with a taste for human flesh when they go to class. But students at this school have to be ever vigilant. You never know when a supernatural pastry or a clay monster bent on revenge might be lurking just around the corner. Even a simple field trip to a local animal sanctuary can have s-s-serious consequences. A companion volume to Tales from Beyond the Brain, these stories are guaranteed to make you laugh like a hyena, shake your head in wonder or tremble with fear.

The fringes of citizenship

2021-07-27
The fringes of citizenship

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  • Author: Julija Sardelic
  • Publisher: Manchester University Press
  • ISBN: 1526143151
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 120

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book presents a socio-legal enquiry into the civic marginalisation of Roma in Europe. Instead of looking only at Roma’s position as migrants, an ethnic minority or a socio-economically disadvantage group, it considers them as European citizens, questioning why they are typically used to describe exceptionalities of citizenship in developed liberal democracies rather than as evidence for how problematic the conceptualisation of citizenship is at its core. Developing novel theoretical concepts, such as the fringes of citizenship and the invisible edges of citizenship, the book investigates a variety of topics around citizenship, including migration and free movement, statelessness and school segregation, as well as how marginalised minorities respond to such predicaments. It argues that while Roma are unique as a minority, the treatment that marginalises them is not. This is demonstrated by comparing their position to that of other marginalised minorities around the globe.

Labor on the Fringes of Empire

2018-01-23
Labor on the Fringes of Empire

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  • Author: Alessandro Stanziani
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISBN: 3319703927
  • Category : History
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 343

After the abolition of slavery in the Indian Ocean and Africa, the world of labor remained unequal, exploitative, and violent, straddling a fine line between freedom and unfreedom. This book explains why. Unseating the Atlantic paradigm of bondage and drawing from a rich array of colonial, estate, plantation and judicial archives, Alessandro Stanziani investigates the evolution of labor relationships on the Indian subcontinent, the Indian Ocean and Africa, with case studies on Assam, the Mascarene Islands and the French Congo. He finds surprising relationships between African and Indian abolition movements and European labor practices, inviting readers to think in terms of trans-oceanic connections rather than simple oppositions. Above all, he considers how the meaning and practices of freedom in the colonial world differed profoundly from those in the mainland. Arguing for a multi-centered view of imperial dynamics, Labor on the Fringes of Empire is a pioneering global history of nineteenth-century labor.

At The Fringes Of Science

2018-03-05
At The Fringes Of Science

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  • Author: Michael W Friedlander
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 0429970714
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 216

Scientific discoveries are constantly in the news. Almost daily we hear about new and important breakthroughs. But sometimes it turns out that what was trumpeted as scientific truth is later discredited, or controversy may long swirl about some dramatic claim. What is a nonscientist to believe? Many books debunk pseudoscience, and some others present only the scientific consensus on any given issue. In At the Fringes of Science Michael Friedlander offers a careful look at the shadowlands of science. What makes Friedlander's book especially useful is that he reviews conventional scientific method and shows how scientists examine the hard cases to determine what is science and what is pseudoscience. Emphasizing that there is no clear line of demarcation between science and nonscience, Friedlander leads the reader through case after entertaining case, covering the favorites of "tabloid science" such as astrology and UFOs, scientific controversies such as cold fusion, and those maverick ideas that were at first rejected by science only to be embraced later. There are many good stories here, but there is also much learning and wisdom. Students of science and interested lay readers will come away from this book with an increased understanding of what science is, how it works, and how the nonscientist should deal with science at its fringes.

Filmmaking on the Fringe

1995
Filmmaking on the Fringe

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  • Author: Maitland McDonagh
  • Publisher: Citadel Press
  • ISBN: 9780806515571
  • Category : Performing Arts
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 236

Provides candid interviews with low budget filmmakers who have made exploitation films their specialty, including Zalman King, Wes Craven, Jim Wynorski, and Paul Bartel