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Do you find yourself wondering if someone came in the middle of the night, stole your beautiful child or family member, and left a distant stranger seemingly lost in a nightmarish prison of sensory defensiveness and walled-in isolation in their place? Are you tired of the never-ending battle to stay ahead of screams, mind blindness, and over or under stimulation using medications designed to mask and sedate rather than treat and heal? Well if you want to really begin to understand what is going on, if you want to take charge of your loved one's life and put them on a path to better health and a more promising future, then read this book.
I'm not the publisher, I'm a parent advocate who has spent the better part of the last 9 years living and dealing with Autism and lobbying for awareness and a cure. I'm not the author, but I have met and heard him and an innumerable number of his counterparts speak, and I want to tell you this book is not just enlightening, it's liberating. If you are in anyway involved with someone on the Autistic Spectrum, this book is an absolute "must read".
Dr. Shaw takes the complicated and often convoluted theory, and discoveries of some of the most brilliant researchers, physicians, scientists, and other experts in their fields, and explains, dissects, and relates their research and findings in a way that just about anyone can understand regardless of education or background. His book will help you discover how researchers are finally beginning to unravel the mystery and biological origins of a disorder that as recently as the 1970's was considered a psychological malady often attributed to cold and unfeeling "refrigerator mothers"
Using easy to follow examples and his unique way of relating complex concepts, Dr. Shaw thoughtfully examines the ground breaking medical research, case studies, and clinical trials behind some of the newest treatments and many more looming on the horizon. As you progress through chapters on various topics such as yeast proliferation, allergies, and fungus, you will begin understand the correlation between the gut and the brain, how the various systems of the body interact, and how and why a breakdown in one system directly and indirectly affects the others. Before you know it the dynamics and theory behind such controversial interventions as Secretin and Anti-fungal therapy begin to make sense, and the veil of mystery surrounding Autism seems to lift ten fold.
Although several cases of recovery are presented in the book it should be noted that there is still a long way to go. A lot more research needs to be done, and many more questions need to be answered. After reading this book however, I think you will find many exciting treatment options and a lot of viable alternatives to more conventional medications that merely eclipse symptoms and further submerge personality. More importantly, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness will diminish as your understanding increases and the very real prospects for recovery and eventual cure of this wide-ranging disorder are presented.
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Volume 2 is a chronological list of knights bachelors -- "ordinary" knights -- from the introduction of the Angevin dubbing ceremony c1250. Shaw's articulate essays on each order, and on the system of knights bachelors (and why most fief-holders didn't want to join), provide an antidote to American confusion on this subject.
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William Shaw joinedseveral cults in Britain, without telling its members or leaders that he was a journalist and recounts his experiences in this book.
I must preface that I do not refer to the term "cult" with a negative connotation but merely use it to address any small segregate somewhat secretive philosophical research group of an intense or disciplined nature.
One of the "cults" he spent over 5 months with was the "Emin Society" founded by Raymond Armin also know as Leo.
I have spent over a year intermittently "researching" with the Emin society I have recognized many of the phenomena described in this book.
I definitely, will be the last to discount the value of keeping an open mind in relation to esoteric currents of thought available through the "Emin Society" as one of many attempts to minimize one's ignorance of the world. This is great as long as you retain the ability to question and to refuse to believe what you do not understand yet. I found that the majority of the people who remain involved with the "Emin Society" do not retain that ability and are carried away in believing in a subculture which they do not dare to question.
I was attracted to the Emin by the fresh esoteric research methodology but was quickly turned off by its conformist, secretive, and closed mentality.
"Spying in Guru Land : Inside the Britain's Cults" by William Shaw can be purchased at Amazon.com.
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The play is wonderful, but the theater program must be 200 pages long. You need all the 111 pages before the play to get all of the meanings of the play.
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It worked with pretty good results for ROMEO AND JULIET, but then we ran out of gas somewhere in the middle of our next selection, JULIUS CAESAR.
Now that I've finally finished reading the play long after our allotted "couple months," I have to say that the fault (the mutual disinterest that effectively brought our little Shakespeare club to a halt) doesn't lie in the play itself, but rather in my preconceptions of what the play was about.
I can't speak for my friend, but since I took the Cliff Notes route in high school when we were supposed to be reading about Caesar and Brutus and the rest of the treacherous Roman senate (and didn't do a very thorough job at that) I always assumed the play's action revolved around the plot to kill Caesar and culminated with his death scene. I wasn't prepared to find Caesar dead halfway through the play, with two-plus acts remaining. I think I just lost interest once Caesar blurted, "Et tu, Brute?" and slouched over lifeless on the cold marble.
But thankfully I eventually kept going, and discovered what the play is really about: the manipulation of the public that goes on after Caesar's death. The speeches in JULIUS CAESAR, given by those who would take his place, are full of the damage-control, image-making spin that happens everday on our "all news" channels. It's an interesting play, maybe not Shakespeare's best, but one that has certainly has some modern relevance and is worth examining.
Now if my friend and I can just get our club back on its feet. Maybe a comedy next time...
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Nothing and no one intimidates Macbeth. He murders all who oppose him, including Banquo, who had been a close friend. But the witches predict doom, for Macbeth, there will be no heirs and his authority over Scotland will come to an end. Slowly as the play progresses, we discover that Macbeth's time is running up. True to the classic stylings of Shakespeare tragedy, Lady Macbeth goes insane, sleepwalking at night and ranting about bloodstained hands. For Macbeth, the honor of being a king comes with a price for his murder. He sees Banquo's ghost at a dinner and breaks down in hysteria in front of his guests, he associates with three witches who broil "eye of newt and tongue of worm", and who conjure ghotsly images among them of a bloody child. Macbeth is Shakespeare's darkest drama, tinged with foreboding, mystery and Gothic suspense. But, nevertheless, it is full of great lines, among them the soliloquy of Macbeth, "Out, out, brief candle" in which he contemplates the brevity of human life, confronting his own mortality. Macbeth has been made into films, the most striking being Roman Polansky's horrific, gruesome, R-rated movie in which Lady Macbeth sleepwalks in the nude and the three witches are dried-up, grey-haired naked women, and Macbeth's head is devilishly beheaded and stuck at the end of a pole. But even more striking in the film is that at the end, the victor, Malcolm, who has defeated Macbeth, sees the witches for advise. This says something: the cycle of murder and violenc will begin again, which is what Macbeth's grim drama seems to be saying about powerhungry men who stop at nothing to get what they want.
The plot does not seem to move along as well as Shakespeare's other most popular dramas, but I believe this is a result of the writer's intense focus on the human heart rather than the secondary activity that surrounds the related royal events. It is fascinating if sometimes rather disjointed reading. One problem I had with this play in particular was one of keeping up with each of the many characters that appear in the tale; the English of Shakespeare's time makes it difficult for me to form lasting impressions of the secondary characters, of whom there are many. Overall, though, Macbeth has just about everything a great drama needs: evil deeds, betrayal, murder, fighting, ghosts, omens, cowardice, heroism, love, and, as a delightful bonus, mysterious witches. Very many of Shakespeare's more famous quotes are also to be found in these pages, making it an important cultural resource for literary types. The play doesn't grab your attention and absorb you into its world the way Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet does, but this voyage deep into the heart of evil, jealousy, selfishness, and pride forces you to consider the state of your own deep-seated wishes and dreams, and for that reason there are as many interpretations of the essence of the tragedy as there are readers of this Shakespearean masterpiece. No man's fall can rival that of Macbeth's, and there is a great object lesson to be found in this drama. You cannot analyze Macbeth without analyzing yourself to some degree, and that goes a long way toward accounting for the Tragedy of Macbeth's literary importance and longevity.