A Bubble

Cover title.

Why do stock and housing markets sometimes experience amazing booms followed by massive busts and why is this happening more and more frequently? Boom and Bust reveals why bubbles happen, and why some bubbles have catastrophic economic, social and political consequences, whilst others have actually benefited society.

What are we not seeing? Our naked eyes see only a thin sliver of reality. We are blind in comparison to the X-rays that peer through skin, and the animals that can see in infrared or ultraviolet or with 360-degree vision. In The Reality Bubble, Ziya Tong illuminates this hidden world and takes us on a journey to examine ten of humanity’s biggest blind spots. What she reveals is not on the things we didn’t evolve to see but, more dangerously, the blindness of modern society. Fast-paced, utterly fascinating and deeply humane, this vitally important book gives voice to the sense we’ve all had – that there is more to the world than meets the eye.

The Bubble Book was written to introduce and excite my preschool classroom about Belly Breaths through a fun, interactive experience. We use these Belly Breaths as a tool to get our bodies calm and settled after a rough moment on the playground, before nap time, or just to get feeling good again. Belly Breaths are an important first step towards emotion regulation and mindfulness. They bring more oxygen to the brain so we can process what is happening and think more clearly. I use this book to simply introduce the term "Belly Breaths" to my kiddos in a fun and engaging activity. Then, when the time comes, I can say, "Remember the Belly Breaths? Let's give them a try!"

This book is a collection of short poems written in the quatrain format and inspired by the ancient Persian poet Omar Khayyam. The style of the poems is quite unique and, along with the subject matter the poems cover, this book is a rare find indeed. If you have ever wondered about our life on this earth and how we end our journey into oblivion and all the questions these bring forth into our minds, then this book will be a pleasant read. All of man's curiosity and bewilderment in this world are addressed in various poems in a gentle rhyming manner. The poems are thought-provoking and at the same time quite easy to understand, whether for laymen or professionals.

It's Only a Bubble aims at the liberation of man from his conviction that he suffers because he is inherently sinful. The traditional religious idea that man fell from the state of perfection that he was made by God is replaced by the idea that man was made perfect in the “core field,” but he was simultaneously placed in the “dimensions” for gaining perfection also by free choice. Man moves up the dimensions by evolving, which is achieved by growing over obstacles. Obstacles are not punishments by God, but stimulation for growth. God does not interfere directly, because He wants man to act so that he can grow. Help is not offered as a result of faith or prayers but is embedded in the creation and is released automatically as one grows. The author walks the readers through the process of facing obstacles, including overwhelming events, like death. He also identifies the benefits of moving up the steps of spiritual evolution and describes how formal education can become meaningful, if it’s finally made an integral part of growth.

How to design a world in which we rely less on stuff, and more on people. We're filling up the world with technology and devices, but we've lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if "tech" ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the end it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we're unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how? In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now—not in a remote science fiction future; it's not about, as he puts it, "the schlock of the new" but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can't. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology—ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles—above all, lightness—inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation.

A provocative perspective on the fragile fundamentals, and forces for resilience, in the Chinese economy, and a forecast for the future on alternate scenarios of collapse and ascendance.