Out Of The Norm

Wild, dangerous, and flat-out unbelievable, here is the incredible #1 bestselling memoir of the Canadian actor, gambler, and raconteur, and one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time. A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year As this book’s title suggests, Norm Macdonald tells the story of his life—more or less—from his origins on a farm in the backwoods of Ontario and an epically disastrous appearance on Star Search to his account of auditioning for Lorne Michaels and his memorable run as the anchor of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live—until he was fired because a corporate executive didn’t think he was funny. But Based on a True Story is much more than just a memoir; it’s the hilarious, inspired epic of Norm’s life. In dispatches from a road trip to Las Vegas (part of a plan hatched to regain the fortune he’d lost to sports betting and other vices) with his sidekick and enabler, Adam Eget, Norm recounts the milestone moments, the regrets, the love affairs, the times fortune smiled on his life, and the times it refused to smile. As the clock ticks down, Norm’s debt reaches record heights, and he must find a way to evade the hefty price that’s been placed on his head by one of the most dangerous loan sharks in the country. As a comedy legend should, Norm peppers these pages with classic jokes and long-mythologized Hollywood stories. This wildly adventurous, totally original, and absurdly funny saga turns the conventional “comic’s memoir” on its head and gives the reader an exclusive pass inside the mad, glorious mind of Norm Macdonald.

Norm Miller shares the kind of wisdom you're not likely to hear from many top executives. From a humble beginning as a traveling salesman for Interstate, he worked his way up to become CEO and chairman. Miller is a believer in God's power to change lives. It was that power that turned his life around after years of drinking as hard as he worked.

Short stories about fishing, hunting, and other miscellaneous activities which revolve around a friendship of more than 45 years.

John Gibbons presents an original account of epistemic normativity. Belief seems to come with a built-in set of standards or norms. One task is to say where these standards come from. But the more basic task is to say what those standards are. In some sense, beliefs are supposed to be true. Perhaps they're supposed to constitute knowledge. And in some sense, they really ought to be reasonable. Which, if any of these is the fundamental norm of belief? The Norm of Belief argues against the teleological or instrumentalist conception of rationality that sees being reasonable as a means to our more objective aims, either knowledge or truth. And it tries to explain both the norms of knowledge and of truth in terms of the fundamental norm, the one that tells you to be reasonable. But the importance of being reasonable is not explained in terms of what it will get you, or what you think it will get you, or what it would get you if only things were different. The requirement to be reasonable comes from the very idea of what a genuine requirement is. That is where the built-in standards governing belief come from, and that is what they are.

International Norm Disputes: The Link between Contestation and Norm Robustness offers a rich, comparative study of when and why contested international norms decline. It presents central findings on the link between contestation and norm robustness based on four detailed, contemporary case studies - the torture prohibition, the responsibility to protect, the moratorium on commercial whaling, and the duty to prosecute institutionalized in the International Criminal Court. It also includes two historical case studies - privateering and the transatlantic slave trade. This book provides in-depth knowledge on contestation and robustness dynamics of central international norms. Having meticulously collected relevant data and conducted extensive qualitative coding, the authors demonstrate that norms are likely to weaken when challengers contest the validity of a norm's core claims but remain robust when they contest a norm's application and contestation does not become permanent. These important findings, comparatively presented here for the first time, are crucial for understanding the much-discussed problems of the contemporary liberal international order. The insights provided establish how different types of challenges will affect global governance mechanisms and which conditions are most likely to create fundamental change.

Norm-Struggles explores and challenges normativity in general and heteronormativity in particular. A common trait in all chapters is the focus on contradictions, changes, disruptions and uncertainties that follow with different norms and structuring forces. The authors discuss and explore how norms are produced, and reproduced but also disrupted, subverted and changed. The chapters are based on observations from different settings such as preschools, schools, universities, factories, social welfare, popular culture, passanger ships, and the fire service. They are also based on observations from different countries; Lithuania, Canada, USA, Sweden, Finland, and Great Britain. The book presents studies of media, policies, machines, organisations, academic sexual theory, and the ongoing constructions of nations and nationalities.

The proliferation of non-state armed groups and non-international armed conflicts since the end of the Second World War has challenged the legal frameworks which govern conduct in armed conflict. While aspects of international humanitarian law apply to such conflicts, international law can only go part of the way to explaining behaviour by armed groups. This book seeks to refocus discussion on the limits to armed conflict in such settings by examining the norms that underpin international humanitarian law as espoused by these armed groups to give a clearer picture as to the collectively constructed appropriateness of certain behaviours in or limits to warfare. The specific research question is “What are the norms of armed conflict as identified by non-state armed groups?” Using Winston’s norm cluster model, this study seeks to examine and map the ideations and behavioural prescriptions that constitute the armed conflict norm cluster as defined by non-state armed groups. To do this, it utilises a qualitative content analysis of documents from non-state armed groups coded to identify the different elements of this norm cluster as well as the frequency, pervasiveness, and connections between these elements. The findings showed that, while international humanitarian law is universal, these norms limiting armed conflict are not, with no norm being seen across all contexts examined. Core norms of international humanitarian law, especially those supported by norm entrepreneurs, were seen to be the focus of sub-clusters and the emergence of new parts of the norm cluster could be observed over time. The findings suggest that further work with the conceptualisation of limits to armed conflict as norms could be useful in improving the embeddedness of norms amongst non-state armed groups and could be useful in reconceptualising limits to armed conflict in cases where broadly accepted norms face growing contestation.

Research on small groups is highly diverse because investigators who study such groups vary in their disciplinary identifications, theoretical interests, and methodological preferences. The goal of this volume is to capture that diversity, and thereby convey the breadth and excitement of small group research by acquainting students with work on five fundamental aspects of groups. The volume also includes an introductory chapter by the editors which provides an overview of the history of and current state-of-the-art in the field. Together with introductions to each section, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading, make the volume ideal reading for senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in group dynamics.