Brian Collins – författare

Mark Twain is one of the most beloved figures in American history, and one of the most gifted storytellers and critics; through his novels, essays and letters, he is probably one of the most quoted Americans of all time. "When in Doubt, Tell the Truth" captures the essence of Twain's unique gifts - the dark humour, the wry observations and the keen insights into social and political realities, both particularly American and broadly human. "When in Doubt, Tell the Truth" is an extraordinary collection of more than 700 of Twain's most memorable aphorisms, from his jokes - "What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist only takes your skin" - to his darker musings - "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to". It celebrates Twain's gift for telling a story, and gives us his views on over 400 topics, including Adam and Eve, fountain pens, procrastination, gullibiity, grammar and politics. Brian Collins's eloquent introduction survey's Twain's concerns as a writer and speaker, integrating the witty maxims of his early career with the darker observations of his later life in a vivid portrait.An easy-to-navigate collection arranged alphabetically by subject, "When in Doubt, Tell the Truth" lets the wisdom of Mark Twain continue to speak to all of us today.

Toward the end of World War II, the commander of the Air Corps, General Henry Hap Arnold, remarked: Someday . . . the man holding my job will meet here with a staff of scientists, and they will wear no pilot's wings on their chests. That day may be near. Here, Collins reveals the emerging challenges posed by cyberspace to the traditional culture of the Air Force. The U.S. Air Force added cyberspace to its warfighting mission in December 2005, and the 8th Air Force was assigned operational responsibility for cyberspace in November 2006. These events clearly indicate that the nexus of activities collectively known as command, control, communications, computer systems, and intelligence, which are the nervous system of the military, had achieved critical mass. Such activities are no longer merely important to airpower, but form the basis for independent operations in cyberspace. Although the technological implications of this shift in Air Force missions is apparent, the ultimate impact on the officer corps is not. While fighter pilots have traditionally represented the image of the Air Force, today more and more officers work at remote consoles operating unmanned aerial vehicles that deliver precision-guided munitions.

Bollywood Horrors is a wide-ranging collection that examines the religious aspects of horror imagery, representations of real-life horror in the movies, and the ways in which Hindi films have projected cinematic fears onto the screen.Part one, “Material Cultures and Prehistories of Horror in South Asia” looks at horror movie posters and song booklets and the surprising role of religion in the importation of Gothic tropes into Indian films, told through the little-known story of Sir Devendra Prasad Varma. Part two, “Cinematic Horror, Iconography and Aesthetics” examines the stereotype of the tantric magician found in Indian literature beginning in the medieval period, cinematic representations of the myth of the fearsome goddess Durga's slaying of the Buffalo Demon, and the influence of epic mythology and Hollywood thrillers on the 2002 film Raaz. The final part, “Cultural Horror,” analyzes elements of horror in Indian cinema’s depiction of human trafficking, shifting gender roles, the rape-revenge cycle, and communal violence. This book also features images (colour in the hardback, black and white in the paperback).

A systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Paraśurāma ("Rāma with the Axe"), an avatára of Viṣṇu with a much darker reputation.The Other Rāma presents a systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Paraśurāma ("Rāma with the Axe"), an avatára of Viṣṇu best known for decapitating his own mother and annihilating twenty-one generations of the Katriya warrior caste in an extermination campaign frequently referred to as "genocide" by modern scholars. Compared to Rāma and Ka, the other human forms of Viṣṇu, Paraśurāma has a much darker reputation, with few temples devoted to him and scant worshippers. He has also attracted far less scholarly attention. But dozens of important castes and clans across the subcontinent claim Paraśurāma as the originator of their bloodline, and his mother, Reukā, is worshipped in the form of a severed head throughout South India.Using the tools of comparative mythology and psychoanalysis, Brian Collins identifies three major motifs in the mythology of Paraśurāma: his hybrid status as a Brahmin warrior, his act of matricide, and his bloody one-man war to cleanse the earth of Katriyas. Collins considers a wide variety of representations of the myth, from its origins in the Mahābhārata to contemporary debates online. He also examines Paraśurāma alongside the Wandering Jew of European legend and Psycho's matricidal serial killer Norman Bates. He examines why mythmakers once elevated this transgressive and antisocial figure to the level of an avatāra and why he still holds such fascination for a world that continues to grapple with mass killings and violence against women.

A systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Paraśurāma ("Rāma with the Axe"), an avatára of Viṣṇu with a much darker reputation.The Other Rāma presents a systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Paraśurāma ("Rāma with the Axe"), an avatára of Viṣṇu best known for decapitating his own mother and annihilating twenty-one generations of the Katriya warrior caste in an extermination campaign frequently referred to as "genocide" by modern scholars. Compared to Rāma and Ka, the other human forms of Viṣṇu, Paraśurāma has a much darker reputation, with few temples devoted to him and scant worshippers. He has also attracted far less scholarly attention. But dozens of important castes and clans across the subcontinent claim Paraśurāma as the originator of their bloodline, and his mother, Reukā, is worshipped in the form of a severed head throughout South India.Using the tools of comparative mythology and psychoanalysis, Brian Collins identifies three major motifs in the mythology of Paraśurāma: his hybrid status as a Brahmin warrior, his act of matricide, and his bloody one-man war to cleanse the earth of Katriyas. Collins considers a wide variety of representations of the myth, from its origins in the Mahābhārata to contemporary debates online. He also examines Paraśurāma alongside the Wandering Jew of European legend and Psycho's matricidal serial killer Norman Bates. He examines why mythmakers once elevated this transgressive and antisocial figure to the level of an avatāra and why he still holds such fascination for a world that continues to grapple with mass killings and violence against women.

In the beginning, says the ancient Hindu text the Rg Veda, was man. And from man’s sacrifice and dismemberment came the entire world, including the hierarchical ordering of human society. The Head Beneath the Altar is the first book to present a wide-ranging study of Hindu texts read through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory of the sacrificial origin of religion and culture. For those interested in Girard and comparative religion, the book also performs a careful reading of Girard’s work, drawing connections between his thought and the work of theorists like Georges Dumézil and Giorgio Agamben. Brian Collins examines the idea of sacrifice from the earliest recorded rituals through the flowering of classical mythology and the ancient Indian institutions of the duel, the oath, and the secret warrior society. He also uncovers implicit and explicit critiques in the tradition, confirming Girard’s intuition that Hinduism offers an alternative anti-sacrificial worldview to the one contained in the gospels.

Robert Eisler, the polymathic Jewish Austrian scholar and Holocaust survivor, faded into obscurity after his death in 1949. A contemporary and associate of Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg, and Gershom Scholem, Eisler spent his early years in fin-de-siècle Vienna and trained as an art historian and economist. In this book, the first in English devoted to Eisler’s life and thought, Brian Collins takes us through the development of Eisler’s ideas about the philosophy of values, comparative mythology, Christianity, psychoanalysis, monetary policy, and anthropology. Collins also explores the bizarre and sometimes tragic events that defined Eisler’s life, including his arrest for art theft in 1907, his controversial reconstruction of a physical description of Jesus, and the fifteen months he spent in Dachau and Buchenwald, the inspiration for his final book, Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lycanthropy.

This book addresses the fundamentals and practical implementations of antennas for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) In this book, the authors discuss the various aspects of GNSS antennas, including fundamentals of GNSS, design approaches for the GNSS terminal and satellite antennas, performance enhancement techniques and effects of user’s presence and surrounding environment on these antennas.  In addition, the book will provide the reader with an insight into the most important aspects of the GNSS antenna technology and lay the foundations for future advancements.  It also includes a number of real case studies describing the ways in which antenna design can be adapted to conform to the design constraints of practical user devices, and also the management of potential adverse interactions between the antenna and its platform.Key Features: Covers the fundamentals and practical implementations of antennas for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)Describes technological advancements for GPS, Glonass, Galileo and CompassAims to address future issues such as multipath interference, in building operation, RF interference in mobileIncludes a number of real case studies to illustrate practical implementation of GNSSThis book will be an invaluable guide for antenna designers, system engineers, researchers for GNSS systems and postgraduate students (antennas, satellite communication technology). R&D engineers in mobile handset manufacturers, spectrum engineers will also find this book of interest.