I Had No Idea

Prepare to learn everything we still don’t know about our strange and mysterious universe Humanity's understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore —there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don't know about the universe: the enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and unusually entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available for a lot of questions that are still perplexing scientists, including: * Why does the universe have a speed limit? * Why aren't we all made of antimatter? * What (or who) is attacking Earth with tiny, superfast particles? * What is dark matter, and why does it keep ignoring us? It turns out the universe is full of weird things that don't make any sense. But Cham and Whiteson make a compelling case that the questions we can't answer are as interesting as the ones we can. This fully illustrated introduction to the biggest mysteries in physics also helpfully demystifies many complicated things we do know about, from quarks and neutrinos to gravitational waves and exploding black holes. With equal doses of humor and delight, Cham and Whiteson invite us to see the universe as a possibly boundless expanse of uncharted territory that's still ours to explore.

Clinical simulations provide teachers with opportunities to enact professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Building on medical education’s long-standing use of standardized patients, this book infuses standardized individuals and clinical simulations into teacher education. As participating teachers engage with standardized parents, students, paraprofessionals, and community members, they encounter a variety of situations common to K-12 teaching. This book provides teacher educators and professional development facilitators with the background knowledge, training procedures for standardized individuals, logistical steps, and all documents necessary for successful implementation of twelve different clinical simulations. This book is constructed for teacher educators and school district personnel who intend to facilitate clinical simulations for teachers. Teachers serving as participants in the clinical simulations should consult the separate text: Clinical Simulations for Teacher Development: A Companion Manual for Teachers.”

The highly anticipated first book by a widely respected entertainer whose career highlights include The Right Stuff, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, and former Miss America When Vanessa Williams was growing up, she had a plan: She’d go to college and major in musical theater; afterward she’d get her MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and then she would embark on a successful career on Broadway. And to make sure she stayed on that path, her mother, Helen Williams, gave her a list of things that she should never— ever—do. Near the top of that list was “never ever pose nude for anyone.” So when Vanessa became the first African-American woman to win the title of Miss America in September 1983 (an accomplishment that she never planned for or desired), only to be forced to resign ten months later due to a nude photo scandal, the lives of both Vanessa and Helen took an unexpected turn. But Vanessa survived this setback, and many others to come, to enjoy a thirty-plus-year career as an award-winning singer and actress. Vanessa has been asked to write her memoir many times, but only now—with the help of her mother—is she ready to tell her story. Vanessa grew up in Millwood, New York, part of one of the town’s only black families. As a teenager, Vanessa defied Helen, flirting with boys, drinking, and smoking pot. But despite their early conflicts, Helen has always ardently protected her daughter, staying in contact with the FBI about the multiple death threats Vanessa received after being crowned and being there for her during the dissolution of her two marriages. Now the mother of four children, Vanessa describes how she’s made it through the ups and downs of her life as well as her career. Jointly written by Vanessa and Helen and filled with dozens of personal family photos and mementos, You Have No Idea is an empowering celebration of the love between a mother and daughter and the life of a woman who beat the odds to achieve her destiny.

The story centers around a young man that has almost no idea of where he is headed in life and is in no rush to get there. He becomes a specially selected person to carry on an age-old tradition. He develops a goal that takes him from one adventure to another in his attempt to reach the ultimate quest. The learning process and unforeseen roadblocks will baffle as well as reward his travels. He puts his friends at risk and his foes into new lives of turmoil as he moves on to complete the original whim.

A dirt farmer in Southern Indiana in the year 1924 chose to name his son after a famous baseball player who would someday enter the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Little did anyone know at the time, including that famous player, just how much that decision would mean to that son and the generations to follow. That was the beginning of a love affair with baseball that would identify this family, a love that would begin with the Washington Senators and move on to Minnesota in 1961. Now five generations in, this family allegiance is still very much alive today. This is a story of the son of that son with the famous name and his love of baseball that was handed down to him. He in turn has passed that love on to his son, who now has a daughter who will hopefully understand this love of the game. Memories are made with the game of baseball, and so many are worth sharing. As the pages of this book are turned, the reader will begin to recognize many of these memories and hopefully be reminded of memories that are part of their lives. Hopefully, the reader will have a better understanding of how generations of a family can be connected by the threads of a baseball.

DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains is an edgy and erotic investigation of comic book bad boys. These poems employ a language that is highly technical and dense, but it becomes witty, intimate and even tender in its specificity. These poems address the results of abuses of power and taken together present a case study in the pathology of villainy. Praise for Thumbscrews: "Natalie Zina Walschots [is] a writer who engages with the aesthetics of sadomasochism in order to generate elegant, sensual poetry that writhes inside the shackles of its own linguistic constraint... [she] treats each poem as a miniature, theatrical tableau--a 'passion play, ' in which she forces language to submit to her will, beating its grammar into a stupor of ecstatic nonsense."--Christian Bok, The Poetry Foundation

In his poetry book, Ron documents the process of his inner and outer journey of self-discovery. This journey involved awakening to the fact that he wanted more out of life, the internal struggle he faced while convincing himself to leave the only home he knew, and eventually departing his comfort zone by buying a one-way plane ticket. This collection of prose explores the obstacles we must face and figure out for ourselves, the discovery of our true purpose, and the realization that many things in life are more straightforward than we imagine them to be, despite how unnecessarily complicated we make them.