A Life In Bits

Can a Christmas romance mend a life that's broken to pieces? Eileen Makenna is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who has traveled the world for over two decades, chasing the next big story. She returns home for the holidays shattered by a life-altering event and facing the terrifying prospect she'll never be able to work again. When Eileen meets Naomi Weaver, a small-town girl who dedicates her free time to helping those in need, Eileen is entranced by Naomi's zest for life. Can Eileen overcome her inner demons and troubled family relationships to let Naomi in? Best-selling lesbian romance authors Harper Bliss & T.B. Markinson have teamed up to bring this touching age-gap love story to life.

Since World War II, the biological and technological have been fusing and merging in new ways, resulting in the loss of a clear distinction between the two. This entanglement of biology with technology isn't new, but the pervasiveness of that integration is staggering, as is the speed at which the two have been merging in recent decades. As this process permeates more of everyday life, the urgent necessity arises to rethink both biology and technology. Indeed, the human body can no longer be regarded either as a bounded entity or as a naturally given and distinct part of an unquestioned whole. Bits of Life assumes a posthuman definition of the body. It is grounded in questions about today's biocultures, which pertain neither to humanist bodily integrity nor to the anthropological assumption that human bodies are the only ones that matter. Editors Anneke Smelik and Nina Lykke aid in mapping changes and transformations and in striking a middle road between the metaphor and the material. In exploring current reconfigurations of bodies and embodied subjects, the contributors pursue a technophilic, yet critical, path while articulating new and thoroughly appraised ethical standards.

'Blown to Bits' is about how the digital explosion is changing everything. The text explains the technology, why it creates so many surprises and why things often don't work the way we expect them to. It is also about things the information explosion is destroying: old assumptions about who is really in control of our lives.

“Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Your information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants. One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we’ve failed to ask exactly why we’re expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create—all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos—amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And it’s an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isn’t just something we produce; it’s the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life. The Ascent of Information offers a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information. Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species. Understanding this relationship will be crucial to preventing our data from becoming more of a burden than an asset, and to preserving the possibility of a human future.

'Very funny. He writes in a sort of whimsical stream of consciousness ... even his more random disquisitions contain glorious nuggets' - Observer With his trademark darkly humorous mix of personal story and social commentary, Leith attempts to answer the question: is everything really as bad as it seems? 'You'll read this book in a weekend ... Leith is, after all, a very good writer: succinct except when he's repeating himself for effect; amusing except when he's predicting the end of the world; perceptive except when he's pretending he can't remember who actually sang Pink Floyd's Time, or which Dutch explorer discovered Easter Island ... Leith's brain is sharper than most, and he deftly weaves solipsistic woe into more pressing concerns about the housing market and the failure of Western capitalism. This is a potentially important book for our times' Andrew Collins, Mail on Sunday

This is a book of recollections and reflections of the authors experiences over a long period from Warsaw, Poland where she was born, through WW11 and the Warsaw Uprising. Arrival in England after the war as a refugee, School and College subsequent marriage enjoying a career as dancer, teacher and choreographer in six countries including New York where she received a MA degree in Theatre Arts form Hunter College. She now lives in London where she still pursues her career as an actor.

This is the second instalment of the author's free-wheeling comments and off-the-cuff remarks on various matters under the sun, appearing in certain social media and other publications or just popping up in his mind, through which he could share his knowledge, reminiscences, ideas, opinions, fantasies, guidance (when sought!) and an occasional jest or two, freely and frankly -- all with a view to inform and entertain his readers, hopefully leaving them some little residue of positive value. The theme of this book, 'Bits and Pieces of Life', covers his generally serious reports and occasionally whimsical explanations of author's experiences in his 87-year old life in three lands. The cover story describes author's eighty-year old journey in photography and photo-journalism. Academics and graduate students may find his essays on research useful, and lifestyle followers may find his short and long responses to serious concerns, including his letter to grandchildren worldwide, quite worthwhile.

Bits ‘n’ Pieces of Life invites its reader to peer inside the corridors of the author’s life experiences, his passion for romance, and the necessity to live each moment to the fullest. He uses a myriad of colorful words and comparisons to beauty and to nature to paint a captivating yet sometimes controversial tapestry. Metaphors of love and nature are infused throughout the book, enhancing the reader’s experience while cultivating a desire for more.