Unusual

"Introduces the reader to a wealth of extraordinary life forms"-- P. [4] of cover.

A book about why the United States is different from other industrialized countries.

The Book of Unusual Knowledge is a mammoth 704-page hardcover book crammed with a cornucopia of information--some useful, others not so much--but all of it completely captivating. It's perfect for anyone with a curious mind and a passion for learning. With quirky illustrations and a vast array of articles, anecdotes, lists, and games, this book will provide hours of fascinating reading. It will also expand your knowledge on a range of topics, including the animal kingdom, art, sports, technology, history, politics, the universe, and much, much more. Sample topics include: * Are plastic bags killing sacred cows in India? * Does NASCAR have roots in bootlegging moonshine? * Did Ronald Reagan see not one--but two--UFOs during his lifetime? Gorgeous leatherette binding with gilded accents makes The Book of Unusual Knowledge a handsome addition to your library.

A searing indictment of the American penal system that finds the roots of the recent prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo in the steady dismantling of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment. The revelations of prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib and more recently at Guantánamo were shocking to most Americans. And those who condemned the treatment of prisoners abroad have focused on U.S. military procedures and abuses of executive powers in the war on terror, or, more specifically, on the now-famous White House legal counsel memos on the acceptable limits of torture. But in The Story of Cruel and Unusual, Colin Dayan argues that anyone who has followed U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment would recognize the prisoners' treatment at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo as a natural extension of the language of our courts and practices in U.S. prisons. In fact, it was no coincidence that White House legal counsel referred to a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1980s and 1990s in making its case for torture.Dayan traces the roots of "acceptable" torture to slave codes of the nineteenth century that deeply embedded the dehumanization of the incarcerated in our legal system. Although the Eighth Amendment was interpreted generously during the prisoners' rights movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, this period of judicial concern was an anomaly. Over the last thirty years, Supreme Court decisions have once again dismantled Eighth Amendment protections and rendered such words as "cruel" and "inhuman" meaningless when applied to conditions of confinement and treatment during detention. Prisoners' actual pain and suffering have been explained away in a rhetorical haze—with rationalizations, for example, that measure cruelty not by the pain or suffering inflicted, but by the intent of the person who inflicted it. The Story of Cruel and Unusual is a stunningly original work of legal scholarship, and a searing indictment of the U.S. penal system.

Designed to shed light on sexually unusual expression, this unique book will assist helping professionals in their treatments and referrals of persons with sexually unusual life styles and behaviors. Based on the premise, “First, do no harm,” The Sexually Unusual is targeted for all helping professionals with little or no academic or clinical training in sexuality, who encounter clients involved in coercive and non-coercive unusual sexual behaviors. The vast majority of helping professionals, from all disciplines, who have had neither academic nor clinical training in addressing sex-related concerns, will find sensible and empathetic approaches to working with the sexually unusual--pedophiles, obscene phone callers, transvestites, transsexuals, exhibitionists, sexual addicts, and more. A historical perspective broadens the reader's view and displays the evolving and unfolding nature of the human condition.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF NUMEROUS BOOKS, INCLUDING SUPERNATURAL ACCESS AND HELL'S TOXIC TRIO God's miracles are often uncommon, unordinary, and unusual. This book will challenge you to let God interrupt the mundane in your life so that you can experience unusual blessings, favor, and more. God wants to do extraordinary things in and through His people. He performed uncommon miracles throughout the Book of Acts, revealing a rare dimension of His power that brought miraculous results, and He wants to do the same today. In this sixty-day journey Ryan LeStrange challenges readers to let God interrupt the mundane patterns in their lives and reveal unusual measures of His power. With revelation from Scripture and confessions to declare each day, this book will help readers prepare their hearts for unusual miracles to become a reality in their lives--unusual blessings, unusual favor, unusual breakthroughs, and more. God's people were not born to live mediocre lives void of the power of God. They were designed to do kingdom exploits. This book is a tool that will help readers break the hold of the average, embrace God's supernatural possibilities, and walk in extraordinary power. Also Available in Spanish ISBN: 978-1-62999-307-2 OTHER BOOKS BY RYAN LESTRANGE: A Higher Dimension (2019) ISBN: 978-1629997032 The Power of the Double (2019) ISBN: 978-1629996639 Hell's Toxic Trio (2018) ISBN: 978-1629994888 Supernatural Access (2017) ISBN: 978-1629991689

Abnormal burial practices have long been a source of fascination and debate within the fields of mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology. The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange investigates an unparalleled geographic and temporal range of burials that differ from the usual customs of their broader societies, emphasizing the importance of a holistic, context-driven approach to these intriguing cases. From an Andean burial dating to 3500 BC to mummified bodies interred in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily, during the twentieth century, the studies in this volume cross the globe and span millennia. The unusual cases explored here include Native American cemeteries in Illinois, “vampire” burials in medieval Poland, and a mass grave of decapitated soldiers in ancient China. Moving away from the simplistic assumption that these burials represent people who were considered deviant in society, contributors demonstrate the importance of an integrated biocultural approach in determining why an individual was buried in an unusual way. Drawing on historical, sociocultural, archaeological, and biological data, this volume critically evaluates the binary of “typical” versus “atypical” burials. It expands our understanding of the continuum of variation within mortuary practices, helping researchers better interpret burial evidence to learn about the people and cultures of the past. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

This volume contains the proceedings of the workshop held at the DIMACS Center of Rutgers University (Piscataway, NJ) on Unusual Applications of Number Theory. Standard applications of number theory are to computer science and cryptology. In this volume, well-known number theorist, Melvyn B. Nathanson, gathers articles from the workshop on other, less standard applications in number theory, as well as topics in number theory with potential applications in science and engineering. The material is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in number theory and its applications.

An understanding of severe and unusual weather should be a fundamental part of everyone's storehouse of knowledge. We live in a world that is at least occasionally dominated by severe and unusual weather. Many types of severe weather are sufficiently rare that a common defense mechanism of many people is to assume that they will never be directly affected. However, there is hardly a place in the whole world that does not have some peculiar aspect of weather that requires some degree of understanding and preparedness in order to avoid loss of property and, perhaps, even life itself. Fortunately, no particular location has all the different kinds of unusual and severe weather; thus, coastal areas are exposed to the tremendous power of the hurricane that bring high winds and frequently produce flood conditions, while within the interior United States, where hurricanes are not a threat, such severe types of weather as tornadoes, hailstorms, and blizzards are sufficiently frequent that an understanding of these storms is essential when traveling or living in this part of the United States. Although lightning is a greater hazard in some parts of the world than others, there are very few locations, including Alaska and the Desert Southwest, where occasional severe thunderstorms do not develop numerous lightning strokes. A proper understanding is important for flash flooding, derechos, mountainadoes, haboobs and other unusual weather. People have different responses to everyday weather from resistant to feeling dominated by it. You can find your level of response from a self test that is provided.

This is about a Christmas in the Caribbean, specifically Trinidad and Tobago. Readers are guesting with Anansi and his family a second time. Anansi is usually grumpy and selfish if he does not like the weather, but he is puzzled at the same time because he reflects on a puzzling experience that teaches him to consider the real meaning of Christmas.