Download or read book Pandora s Trap written by Thomas Preston and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-09-16 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How important is presidential personality and leadership style in foreign policy decisions? To answer this question, Thomas Preston takes readers inside the Bush administration's decision making process and use of intelligence to better understand how administration officials justified the Iraq War—and how they sought to avoid blame for the consequences of their actions. Based on extensive interviews with key Bush administration officials, Preston offers students of American foreign policy, presidential decision making, the dynamics of blame avoidance, and future practitioners with an in depth examination of how presidential personality and leadership style impacted Bush's central foreign policy failure. In addition, Preston looks critically at the oft-cited comparisons of Iraq to Lyndon Johnson's leadership during the Vietnam War, exploring where the analogy fits and a number of important differences. He shows how both presidents' styles exacerbated their managerial weaknesses in these cases and the limits of blame avoidance strategies. Importantly, the book provides a cautionary tale for future leaders to consider more carefully the long-term consequences of satisfying their short term policy desires by lifting the lid to any new Pandora's trap.
Download or read book Pandora s Brain written by Chace Calum and published by Three CS. This book was released on 2015-03-14 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pandora's Brain Description Around half the scientists researching artificial intelligence (AI) think that a conscious machine with cognitive abilities at or beyond human level will be created by 2050. If they are right, the consequence could be an intelligence explosion, in which the AI rapidly and enormously exceeds human competence. Pandora's Brain is a science thriller by best-selling writer Calum Chace. It uses the issues raised by the possible coming machine intelligence explosion as a platform for a fast-paced and thought-provoking adventure story. The story is set in the very near future, and features Matt, a shy but engaging and resourceful student who discovers that his recently-deceased father was involved in research that could enable the construction of the world's first conscious machine. Matt's enquiries lead to him being kidnapped, as he is caught in the crossfire between two groups pursuing that goal - one led by a Russian billionaire, and another backed by the US military. Matt has to do more than simply survive: he has to harness these powerful forces to his own ends. At stake is his own life and those of his family and friends. A dramatic seaborne rescue operation, a series of brutal murders and other filmic action scenes follow. In the course of his adventures, Matt discovers that the potential upside of creating machine intelligence includes immortality, and godlike powers of understanding and being - but the potential downside is immediate extinction, or worse. As he is drawn deeper into his adventure, he becomes both the symbol and the victim of a global struggle over the approach to be taken towards this powerful new technology. A landmark decision at a meeting of the UN General Assembly forces Matt to make a fateful decision which sparks the story's final twist. Selected reviews for Pandora's Brain: I love the concepts in this book! Peter James, author of the best-selling Roy Grace series Awesome! Count me as a fan. Brad Feld, co-founder of Techstars Pandora s Brain is a captivating tale of developments in artificial intelligence that could, conceivably, be just around the corner. Mainly set in the present day, the plot unfolds in an environment that seems reassuringly familiar, but which is overshadowed by a combination of both menace and promise. Carefully crafted, and absorbing from its very start, the book held my rapt attention throughout a series of surprise twists, as various personalities react in different ways to a growing awareness of that menace and promise. David Wood, Chairman of London Futurists I was eagerly anticipating a fiction adventure book on precisely this topic! Very well done, Calum Chace. A timely, suspenseful, and balanced portrayal of AI and the most important decisions humanity will make in the near future. Hank Pellissier, producer of the Transhuman Visions conferences Pandora s Brain is a tour de force that neatly explains the key concepts behind the likely future of artificial intelligence in the context of a thriller novel. Ambitious and well executed, it will appeal to a broad range of readers. In the same way that Suarez s Daemon and Naam s Nexus leaped onto the scene, redefining what it meant to write about technology, Pandora s Brain will do the same for artificial intelligence. "Mind uploading? Check. Human equivalent AI? Check. Hard takeoff singularity? Check. Strap in, this is one heck of a ride. William Hertling, author of the Singularity series of novels "
Download or read book Pandora s Legions written by Christopher Anvil and published by Baen Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complacently expanding for centuries without major obstacles, the benevolent Centran Empire comes across Earth. In spite of the Centran superiority in technology, the conquest is a nightmare. As a result, a Centran leader has an idea--since humans are so good at fighting, why not send teams of them to planets proving difficult for the Centran Empire?
Download or read book Pandora s Seed written by Spencer Wells and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-06-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten thousand years ago, our species made a radical shift in its way of life: We became farmers rather than hunter-gatherers. Although this decision propelled us into the modern world, renowned geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells demonstrates that such a dramatic change in lifestyle had a downside that we’re only now beginning to recognize. Growing grain crops ultimately made humans more sedentary and unhealthy and made the planet more crowded. The expanding population and the need to apportion limited resources created hierarchies and inequalities. Freedom of movement was replaced by a pressure to work that is the forebear of the anxiety millions feel today. Spencer Wells offers a hopeful prescription for altering a life to which we were always ill-suited. Pandora’s Seed is an eye-opening book for anyone fascinated by the past and concerned about the future.
Download or read book Pandora s Hell written by Jennifer Pierce-Gaeta and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-03-05 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enter into a world where supernaturals are the human races last hope. Hell has escaped its prison early and is devastating the world. The humans are useless to help themselves and all could be lost if the gates of Hell are not slammed shut. That's where my team comes in. I am Kira Gaetano and my team may be the world's last hope for survival. We fight the big bad nightmares and are racing against the clock to stop Hell from taking over the world. The only question I have is can we do it?......
Download or read book Pandora s Risk written by Kent Osband and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author of the acclaimed work Iceberg Risk: An Adventure in Portfolio Theory, Kent Osband argues that uncertainty is central rather than marginal to finance. Markets don't trade mainly on changes in risk. They trade on changes in beliefs about risk, and in the process, markets unite, stretch, and occasionally defy beliefs. Recognizing this truth would make a world of difference in investing. Belittling uncertainty has created a rift between financial theory and practice and within finance theory itself, misguiding regulation and stoking huge financial imbalances. Sparking a revolution in the mindset of the investment professional, Osband recasts the market as a learning machine rather than a knowledge machine. The market continually errs, corrects itself, and makes new errors. Respecting that process, without idolizing it, will promote wiser investment, trading, and regulation. With uncertainty embedded at its core, Osband's rational approach points to a finance theory worthy of twenty-first-century investing.
Download or read book Pandora s Curse written by Jack Du Brul and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deadly fifty-year-old secret from World War II, hidden away at a top-secret Nazi submarine base, could spell disaster for the modern world when a ruthless corporate mercenary plans to hold the entire world hostage, unless geologist Philip Mercer and his colleague, Anika Klein, can stop him. Original.
Download or read book Pandora s Locks written by Jeff Alexander and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The St. Lawrence Seaway was considered one of the world's greatest engineering achievements when it opened in 1959. The $1 billion project-a series of locks, canals, and dams that tamed the ferocious St. Lawrence River-opened the Great Lakes to the global shipping industry. Linking ports on lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario to shipping hubs on the world's seven seas increased global trade in the Great Lakes region. But it came at an extraordinarily high price. Foreign species that immigrated into the lakes in ocean freighters' ballast water tanks unleashed a biological shift that reconfigured the world's largest freshwater ecosystems. Pandora's Locks is the story of politicians and engineers who, driven by hubris and handicapped by ignorance, demanded that the Seaway be built at any cost. It is the tragic tale of government agencies that could have prevented ocean freighters from laying waste to the Great Lakes ecosystems, but failed to act until it was too late. Blending science with compelling personal accounts, this book is the first comprehensive account of how inviting transoceanic freighters into North America's freshwater seas transformed these wondrous lakes.
Download or read book Pandora s Star written by Peter F. Hamilton and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2005-01-25 with total page 994 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An imaginative and stunning tale of the perfect future threatened . . . a book of epic proportions not unlike Frank Herbert’s Dune or Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.”—SFRevu The year is 2380. The Intersolar Commonwealth, a sphere of stars, contains more than six hundred worlds interconnected by a web of transport “tunnels” known as wormholes. At the farthest edge of the Commonwealth, astronomer Dudley Bose observes the impossible: over one thousand light-years away, a star . . . disappears. Since the location is too distant to reach by wormhole, the Second Chance, a faster-than-light starship commanded by Wilson Kime, a five-times-rejuvenated ex-NASA pilot, is dispatched to learn what has occurred and whether it represents a threat. Opposed to the mission are the Guardians of Selfhood, led by Bradley Johansson. Shortly after the journey begins, Kime wonders if the crew of the Second Chance has been infiltrated. But soon enough he will have other worries. Halfway across the galaxy, something truly incredible is waiting: a deadly discovery whose unleashing will threaten to destroy the Commonwealth . . . and humanity itself. “Should be high on everyone’s reading list . . . You won’t be able to put it down.”—Nancy Pearl, NPR “Recommended . . . A large cast of characters, each with his own story, brings depth and variety to this far-future saga.”—Library Journal
Download or read book Pandora s Box written by Jane Carling and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kat Carrington finally opens the box containing her dead sister's effects and unleashes an intrigue spanning 40 years. She finds a cryptic note and is shocked to discover her junkie sister had a child and the only person who knows is the elusive multi-billionaire, Manolis Magnitis. Circumstances force her to gate-crash a prestigious event where they meet and are immediately attracted to each other, unaware of each other's identity, until Kat introduces herself. Coincidences compound when she discovers his brother was killed in the same accident as her sister. Reluctantly Manolis flies her to Greece to meet her nephew. Kat is seduced by the idyllic surroundings and soon hot passion erupts. Manolis's mother, Eleni, a lady with a past and secrets, tries to prevent the budding romance with her son. Fate, however deals a blow and Kat and Eleni face a terrifying ordeal. Will their lives ever be the same again?
Download or read book Pandora S Box written by Brandi Darnell Eade and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2015-06-08 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heavens grieve as Mother Earth frantically fights for her life. The explosions rippled in the heavens allowing destruction to ensue. The undulant impact caused pulsars, quasars, red and blue giant stars to detonate far too soon. The discharge sent repercussions the neighboring nebulas. This place where birth is given becomes a cradle of death. With the last star winking out all of the heavens go dark. Deaths insatiable appetite is heading for Earth. Reaching out its hand and overcome with the desire for human obliteration. One child will stand-alone possessing the power of all universes bringing time and space to a standstill. Born with two souls, blessed with three graces, and having a predators heart the heavenly stars will cry out this childs name. Life ever present and death waning. Lifeblood springs from royalty and the seer of dreams. Where there is despair, hope will shine through. This child is a castle that stands tall in the middle of a storm sheltering all in need. Its a slayer of monsters, and a warrior for the common man. Spiritual assassins sent to devour this child, breaking its mind is a must do. So begins the battle of wills.
Download or read book Pandora s Boy written by Lindsey Davis and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A suspicious death and subsequent murder send Flavia Albia down a twisted path to expose corruption and betrayal in Lindsey Davis’s next historical mystery, Pandora's Boy. First century Rome is not the quiet, orderly city that it pretends to be and in this environment, a very clever private informer can thrive. Flavia Albia, daughter of Marcus Didius Falco, is a chip off the old block. She's taken over his father's old profession, and, like him, she occasionally lets her love of a good puzzle get in the way of her common sense. Such is the case when one such puzzle is brought to her by the very hostile ex-wife of Albia's new husband. It seems that over on the Quirinal Hill, a naive young girl, one Clodia Volumnia, has died, and there's a suggestion that she was poisoned by a love potion. The local witch, Pandora, would have been the one to supply such a potion. Looking into the matter, Albia soon learns that Pandora carries on a trade in herbal beauty products while keeping hidden her much more dangerous connections. Albia soon discovers the young girl was a handful and her so-called friends were not as friendly as they should have been. The supposedly sweet air of the Quirinal hides the smells of loose morality, casual betrayal, and even gangland conflict. When a friend of her own is murdered, things become serious and Albia is determined to expose as much of this local sickness as she can—beginning with the truth about the death of little Clodia.
Download or read book Pandora s Box written by Alan Davis and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PANDORA’S BOX: STAY IN OR EXPAND is an alternative-world fiction book. Siena is a Celestial Messenger in training. Siena gets inspired by watching her favorite instructor Penti dancing with Her Love Sirius. Penti giving off the strong feelings of safety and love while Sirius danced with Her is what Siena has always longed for. Unlike Siena, Penti is meant to go through the Carnation Ceremony to live in the Physical World. Siena convinces Penti to reveal Her story and becomes the recorder for one of the greatest romance books of all time, Penti’s Love!
Download or read book Pandora s Inner Goddess written by MM Gibbons and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-11-04 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When youthful graduate rookie journalist Milad Brown meets erotic novelist and publishing sensation Pandora Poste, he is blown off the course of his previously contented life. Sharing a scruffy flat with his mate Sparky in a quiet Sussex town, he loves everything about his life - his gang of mates, his football, his first job on the local newspaper, his local pub, and his family. Relatively unworldly, girls are no immediate priority for Milad...until he is sent to interview Pandora. Sucked into her media and publishing entourage, Milad is twice contractually engaged. There is a contract of employment and a contract to submit - and they are not so subtly inter-linked. Embracing both with gusto and the pink secrets that Pandora keeps hidden from public view, Milad sets out on an emotional and painful voyage.
Download or read book Roping Pandora s Box written by Daphine Bronwyn and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2006-03-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interior designer Madison Harper is positive she has her life under control. Her career is flourishing, her social calendar is full, and each night she falls asleep in her Brentwood condo overlooking the Los Angeles skyline. Her life is a far cry from the mercurial years she spent on her grandfather's ranch. Unfortunately, her predictable life is knocked off balance when her friend, Beth, requests Madison's help. What else can Madison do but return to the one place she swore never to set foot in again, Montana? Now Madison's days are filled with a massive renovation project, her dreams are haunted by the past and her future happiness depends on taking a risk with sexy Ryder Templeton. The catch, after a childhood absent a mother and a bitter broken engagement, Ryder prefers his life without the emotional dependency of relationships. Madison's only chance is to convince Ryder that faith in others is worth the gamble, even if it means confronting her own dark past.
Download or read book Contributions to the Tertiary Fauna of Florida written by Dall and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Contributions to the Tertiary Fauna of Florida written by William Healey Dall and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
