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A series of whimsical essays by the New York Times "Social Q's" columnist provides modern advice on navigating today's murky moral waters, sharing recommendations for such everyday situations as texting on the bus to splitting a dinner check.
“Weird and wild.” —BookRiot “An effective critique of authoritarianism.” —NPR “Equal parts dystopia, satire, and allegory. —Los Angeles Review of Books Set against the backdrop of a failed political uprising in Egypt, this chilling debut evokes Orwellian dystopia, Kafkaesque surrealism, and a very real vision of life after the Arab Spring. In a surreal, but familiar, vision of modern day Egypt, a centralized authority known as ‘the Gate’ has risen to power in the aftermath of the ‘Disgraceful Events,’ a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate in order to take care of even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the Gate never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer. Citizens from all walks of life mix and wait in the sun: a revolutionary journalist, a sheikh, a poor woman concerned for her daughter’s health, and even the brother of a security officer killed in clashes with protestors. Among them is Yehia, a man who was shot during the Events and is waiting for permission from the Gate to remove a bullet that remains lodged in his pelvis. Yehia’s health steadily declines, yet at every turn, officials refuse to assist him, actively denying the very existence of the bullet. Ultimately it is Tarek, the principled doctor tending to Yehia’s case, who must decide whether to follow protocol as he has always done, or to disobey the law and risk his career to operate on Yehia and save his life. Written with dark, subtle humor, The Queue describes the sinister nature of authoritarianism, and illuminates the way that absolute authority manipulates information, mobilizes others in service to it, and fails to uphold the rights of even those faithful to it.
How do you get rid of unwanted guests? What do you do if there's a racket in the quiet carriage? How should you eat peas, and behave in queues? How to behave, like how to punctuate, is an aspect of life that many are no longer taught - and getting it wrong is the stuff of comedy at best and humiliation at worst. Thankfully, Sandi Toksvig has come to the rescue with her entertaining guide to modern manners,with tips on what to do whether you're talking to a bore, or forgot their name in the first place. (Just call them 'darling'.) The award-winning Radio 4 broadcaster and writer offers guidance on the social pitfalls of every phase of life, from christenings to condolence letters. With characteristic wit and perceptiveness, and revealing the trickiest of her encounters along the way, she highlights decency rather than convention and provides an essential guide to twenty-first century behaviour. Now this down-to-earth, hilarious guide is available in perfect pocket-sized paperback size.
"Vladimir Sorokin’s first published novel, The Queue, is a sly comedy about the late Soviet “years of stagnation.” Thousands of citizens are in line for . . . nobody knows quite what, but the rumors are flying. Leather or suede? Jackets, jeans? Turkish, Swedish, maybe even American? It doesn’t matter–if anything is on sale, you better line up to buy it. Sorokin’s tour de force of ventriloquism and formal daring tells the whole story in snatches of unattributed dialogue, adding up to nothing less than the real voice of the people, overheard on the street as they joke and curse, fall in and out of love, slurp down ice cream or vodka, fill out crossword puzzles, even go to sleep and line up again in the morning as the queue drags on."--Amazon.com.
Participation in 'activities' can be resented by the Asperger's syndrome (AS) community and the choice to learn and adopt neuro-typical behaviour should be offered as an option and in a respectful way. This volume is a self-help manual written by two AS adults who offer others the benefits of their experiences.
To Queue Or Not To Queue: Equilibrium Behavior in Queueing Systems focuses on the highly interesting, practical viewpoint of customer behavior and its effect on the performance of the queueing system. The book's objectives are threefold: (1) It is a comprehensive survey of the literature on equilibrium behavior of customers and servers in queueing systems. The literature is rich and considerable, but lacks continuity. This book will provide the needed continuity and cover some issues that have not been adequately treated. (2) In addition, it will examine the known results of the field, classify them and identify where and how they relate to each other. (3) And finally, it seeks to fill a number of the gaps in the literature with new results while explicitly outlining open problems in other areas. With this book, it is the authors' paramount purpose is to motivate further research and to help researchers identify new and interesting open problems.
Why do so many people go on about queuing? Have we always been obsessed with traffic? And why do so many of us now eat lunch at our computers - al desko? We spend our days catching buses and trains, writing emails, shopping, queuing...But we know almost nothing about these activities. Exploring the history of these subjects as they come up during a typical day, starting with eating breakfast and ending with sleeping, Joe Moran tells a story about hidden social and cultural changes in Britain since the Second World War. Drawing on his academic research on everyday life, but writing with wit and lucidity for a popular audience, he shows that we know less about ourselves than we think...
