A Guide to Sideloading: How to get our files into your e-reader – Ebooks Direct

A Guide to Sideloading: How to get our files into your e-reader – Ebooks Direct:

Sideloading is getting an ebook into your e-reading device (or app) when you haven't bought it from that reader's own maker/sponsor (like Amazon for the Kindle family, Barnes & Noble for the Nook readers or Kobo for the Kobo readers).

Most big e-reader sponsors have automatic or semi-automatic ways to load the ebooks you buy from them to their own readers. You buy them and minutes later they magically turn up in your device.

But that's not how it goes when you buy an ebook from an independent provider like us (and thank you for doing that, if you have!) or from a company like Smashwords, or acquire a free ebook from an online source like Project Gutenberg. When that happens, you have to load the book to your device yourself: not uploading, or downloading, but sideloading.

Mining activists in SA face death threats, intimidation and harassment - report | Saturday Star

Mining activists in SA face death threats, intimidation and harassment - report | Saturday Star:

The 74-page report, compiled by Human Rights Watch, the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), groundWork, and Earthjustice, describes a system designed to "deter and penalise" mining opponents.

The authors conducted interviews with more than 100 activists, community leaders, environmental groups, lawyers representing activists, police and municipal officials, describing the targeting of community rights defenders in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Northwest, and Eastern Cape between 2013 and 2018.

They report intimidation, violence, damage to property, the use of excessive force during peaceful protests, and arbitrary arrest for their activities in highlighting the negative impacts of mining projects on their communities.

"The attacks and harassment have created an atmosphere of fear for community members who mobilise to raise concerns about damage to their livelihoods from the serious environmental and health risks of mining and coal-fired power plants," write the authors.

"Women often play a leading role in voicing these concerns, making them potential targets for harassment and attacks."

But municipalities often impose barriers to protest on organisers that have no legal basis while government officials have failed to adequately investigate allegations of abuse.

Why Easter never became a big secular holiday like Christmas - Vox

Why Easter never became a big secular holiday like Christmas - Vox:

The very nature of having a holiday, furthermore, was seen as problematic. Rather, the Puritans argued, singling out any day for a “holiday” implied that celebrants thought of other days as less holy.

Easter, too, was singled out as a dangerous time. A Scottish Presbyterian minister, Alexander Hislop, wrote a whole book about it: the 1853 pamphlet The Two Babylons: The Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife. Using questionable and vague sources, Hislop argued that the name of Easter derived from the pagan worship of the Germanic goddess Eostre, and through her the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. (This claim has persisted into the present day, and is often cited by those who want us to make Easter more fun and secular. Still, the evidence for the existence of Eostre in any mythological system — a single paragraph in the work of an English monk writing centuries later — let alone actual religious links between Eostre and Easter is scant at best.)

Egypt and Christianity in antiquity – TheTLS

Egypt and Christianity in antiquity – TheTLS:

Late antique Egyptian Christianity has left a wonderfully rich, and sometimes beguilingly strange, literary and material heritage for us to appreciate and try to interpret. There are tales of holy men who could command man-eating crocodiles and pronounce curses, and of dramatic feats of ascetic renunciation in the desert. Papyrus fragments include oracles, spells and curses; the walls of monasteries still display the paintings of saints and the graffiti of pilgrims. The two books under review offer new and complementary approaches to understanding this heritage and the world it came from. Each is strongly influenced by theoretical approaches that stress the importance of material culture, but they both remain humane and indeed sympathetic.

Darwin In Your Brain. Four Reasons Why Evolutionary Psychology Is Controversial – The Evolution Institute

Darwin In Your Brain. Four Reasons Why Evolutionary Psychology Is Controversial – The Evolution Institute:

Evolutionary psychology, like sociobiology or Marxism, has become associated with controversy. Why should it, and why has it? Yes, debates about evolution totter endlessly along, and psychology remains a discipline that sometimes seems orphaned by both humanities and the hard sciences. Why should combining psychology and evolution ignite a confabulation of loathing, fear, and scientific vitriol?

Which Countries Are Caucasian?

Which Countries Are Caucasian?:
The region of the Caucasus takes its name from the mountain range of the same name that is 5000 meters in height. It is located between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, straddling Russia to the north and Turkey and Iran to the south. The Caucasus is divided into two main regions: the northern Caucasus, called Ciscaucasia, which is entirely located in the Russian Federation and which includes several autonomous regions, and the South Caucasus, called Transcaucasia, which includes 3 independent countries (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan).

The Caucasus is a very diverse region in which there are a dozen different ethnic groups and more than a hundred languages and dialects are still spoken there. There are major religions, especially the Christian and Muslim religions and a Jewish and Buddhist minority. It is a real ethnic, linguistic and cultural mosaic.