Download or read book The Failed Species written by Lance Broughton and published by Strategic Book Publishing Rights Agency. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a treble bypass heart operation, Leech realises that he is no longer invincible and is doomed to die in a few short years. Thus he comprehends that mankind has a limited life span because of its increasing level of stupidity. Humans seems to be the only species on planet Earth that thinks it is impregnable, and will survive for the inevitable forever and three days. His high intelligence gets his mind into top gear and he converses with a strange creature called Powerdip, who arranges mind-bending trips to teach him the reality of life in numerous universes. His king-sized long-term Maori lady companion, Lyndia, accompanies him much of the time. But her memory of universe trotting is deliberately erased from her equally intelligent mind to suit Leech’s reasoning. As to be expected, the unexpected happens unexpectedly and causes him intensified mental trauma. To hasten the inevitable, he decides to create the world record for the longest drinking himself to death session. Powerdip is watching from afar and arranges matters to suit his own perceptions. Thank God the inevitable will inevitably happen. The Failed Species offers a mind-bending fantasy trip through the universe that is blended with true events.
Download or read book Quo Vadis Homine Are ye Sapiens or Failed Species written by Sam T. Dudic and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2019-10-05 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outlook on this insane, sickly, degrading, insecure, ugly world - where the worst and meanest (criminals, predators and parasites) win and rule, not merely the fittest... Is this "the glory of Creation" .. It seems, we live in the world of animals, in a society of inadequate morons not responsible for their actions and deeds, from top to the bottom, worldwide, without any Cosmic guidance and grace... The real issue is not East vs. West, or South vs. North, nor conflict of civilizations, but incompatible antagonism between the upper strata and masses, power/authorities and the people, exploiters and the destitute, Labor and Capital, the Good and the Evil... Conflict between Homo Sapiens and Homo Defectus... Real people's enemies are banks, financial speculators, bureaucracy, mass-media, entertainment and insane politicians... Criminality of the most authorities is in disrespect, contempt for their own people. In majority of the countries the state does not fulfill its due functions, turning into the Monster degrading and terrorizing the people in all spheres. That's the common social decease which can be solved only through transformation of inadequate state into Volksstaat based on equality, collective, just economy...
Download or read book When the Invasion of Land Failed written by George R. McGhee Jr. and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The invasion of land by ocean-dwelling plants and animals was one of the most revolutionary events in the evolution of life on Earth, yet the animal invasion almost failed—twice—because of the twin mass extinctions of the Late Devonian Epoch. Some 359 to 375 million years ago, these catastrophic events dealt our ancestors a blow that almost drove them back into the sea. If those extinctions had been just a bit more severe, spiders and insects—instead of vertebrates—might have become the ecologically dominant forms of animal life on land. This book examines the profound evolutionary consequences of the Late Devonian extinctions and the various theories proposed to explain their occurrence. Only one group of four-limbed vertebrates exists on Earth, while other tetrapod-like fishes are extinct. This gap is why the idea of "fish with feet" seems so peculiar to us, yet such animals were once a vital part of our world, and if the Devonian extinctions had not happened, members of these species, like the famous Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, might have continued to live in our rivers and lakes. Synthesizing decades of research and including a wealth of new discoveries, this accessible, comprehensive text explores the causes of the Devonian extinctions, the reasons vertebrates were so severely affected, and the potential evolution of the modern world if the extinctions had never taken place.
Download or read book Tempo and Mode in Evolution written by George Gaylord Simpson and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Very Short History of Life on Earth written by Henry Gee and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Royal Society's Science Book of the Year "[A]n exuberant romp through evolution, like a modern-day Willy Wonka of genetic space. Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function.” —Adrian Woolfson, The Washington Post In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. Although these membranes were leaky, the environment within them became different from the raging maelstrom beyond. These havens of order slowly refined the generation of energy, using it to form membrane-bound bubbles that were mostly-faithful copies of their parents—a foamy lather of soap-bubble cells standing as tiny clenched fists, defiant against the lifeless world. Life on this planet has continued in much the same way for millennia, adapting to literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter and thriving, from these humblest beginnings to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. Drawing on the very latest scientific understanding and writing in a clear, accessible style, he tells an enlightening tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed.
Download or read book A Natural History of the Future written by Rob Dunn and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past century, our species has made unprecedented technological innovations with which we have sought to control nature. In A Natural History of the Future, biologist Rob Dunn argues that such efforts are futile. We may see ourselves as life's overlords, but we are instead at its mercy. In the evolution of antibiotic resistance, the power of natural selection to create biodiversity, and even the surprising life of the London Underground, Dunn finds laws of life that no human activity can annul. When we create artificial islands of crops, dump toxic waste, or build communities, we provide new materials for old laws to shape. Life's future flourishing is not in question. Ours is. A Natural History of the Future sets a new standard for understanding the diversity and destiny of life itself.
Download or read book WTF Evolution written by Mara Grunbaum and published by Workman Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all have our off days. Why should Evolution be any different? Maybe Evolution got carried away with an idea that was just a little too crazy—like having the Regal Horned Lizard defend itself by shooting three-foot streams of blood from its eyes. Or maybe Evolution ran out of steam (Memo to Evolution: The Irrawaddy Dolphin looks like a prototype that should have been left on the drawing board). Or maybe Evolution was feeling cheeky—a fish with hands? Joke’s on you, Red Handfish! Or maybe Evolution simply goofed up: How else to explain the overgrown teeth of the babirusas that curl backward over their face? Oops. Mara Grunbaum is a very smart, very funny science writer who celebrates the best—or, really, the worst—of Evolution’s blunders. Here are more than 100 outlandish mammals, reptiles, insects, fish, birds, and other creatures whose very existence leaves us shaking our heads and muttering WTF?! Ms. Grunbaum’s especially brilliant stroke is to personify Evolution as a well-meaning but somewhat oblivious experimenter whose conversations with a skeptical narrator are hilarious. For almost 4 billion years, Evolution has produced a nonstop parade of inflatable noses, bizarre genitalia, and seriously awkward necks. What a comedian!
Download or read book Sex and the Failed Absolute written by Slavoj Žižek and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the most rigorous articulation of his philosophical system to date, Slavoj Žižek provides nothing short of a new definition of dialectical materialism. In forging this new materialism, Žižek critiques and challenges not only the work of Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Joan Copjec, Quentin Meillassoux, and Julia Kristeva (to name but a few), but everything from popular science and quantum mechanics to sexual difference and analytic philosophy. Alongside striking images of the Möbius strip, the cross-cap, and the Klein bottle, Žižek brings alive the Hegelian triad of being-essence-notion. Radical new readings of Hegel, and Kant, sit side by side with characteristically lively commentaries on film, politics, and culture. Here is Žižek at his interrogative best.
Download or read book General Technical Report PNW GTR written by and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Pioneer Exotic Tree Search for the Douglas fir Region written by Roy R. Silen and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ecological Dimensions for Sustainable Socio Economic Development written by A. Yáñez-Arancibia and published by WIT Press. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book fills a gap in the literature on environmental sustainability by addressing the topic from the perspective of social and economic development. Progress in understanding and achieving sustainability requires the integration of scientific, social, economic, and legal issues. Yet progress in understanding and achieving sustainability will only be achieved through integration of scientific, social, economic, and legal aspects. A treatise on environmental sustainability should raise the current state of knowledge by proposing and recommending decision-making efforts and breaking new ground with agendas aimed for the younger generation. These younger scientists will be confronted with future uncertainty related to the set of crises that characterise the 21st Century (e.g. ecological, social, food, energy, environmental, climatic, financial, etc.). Currently, there are a number of indicators that demonstrate that ecological conditions are being compromised globally. These include reduced primary productivity, reduction in biological complexity, spreading pollution such as eutrophication, ecological degradation in any continental/basin/coastal/sea ecosystem, reduction in biodiversity, lowered resilience and slow recovery of damaged ecosystems, and reduced ecological integrity. All of these problems are related to social and economic pressure. The challenge for most ecological systems is not only to establish the baseline for current ecosystem conditions, but also to explore options for recovery and sustainability. The latter involves ecological restoration where ecosystem and environmental services are maintained and enhanced. These services are essential to social integration and economic development. This book not only introduces a theoretical and conceptual framework for the topic, but also analyses the uncertainty for sustainability because of dwindling natural resources. It includes contributions providing a basis for public policies, case studies integrating concepts and tools for solutions, and a set of position papers addressing new agenda topics that will shape the 21st century. The book will be useful for researchers, professors and students alike, as well as for all stakeholders from social, economic and academic sectors.
Download or read book The Symbolic Species The Co evolution of Language and the Brain written by Terrence W. Deacon and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1998-04-17 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.
Download or read book English Synonyms Explained written by George Crabb and published by . This book was released on 1844 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Guided Evolution of Society written by Bela H. Banathy and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a comprehensive review of human and societal evolution the book develops an approach to conscious, self-guided evolution. In the course of the evolutionary journey of our species, there have been three seminal events. The first happened some seven million yeas ago, when our humanoid ancestors entered on the evolutionary scene. Their journey toward the second crucial event lasted over six million years when - as the greatest event of our evolutionary history - homo sapiens sapiens, started the revolutionary process of cultural evolution. Today, we have arrived at the threshold of the third major event, `the revolution of conscious evolution,' when it becomes our responsibility to enter into the evolutionary design space and guide the evolutionary journey of our species. The book tells the story of the first six million years of the journey in just enough detail to understand how evolution had worked in times when it was primarily biological, driven by natural selection. With the human revolution some fifty thousand years ago, with the emergence of self-reflective consciousness, the evolutionary process transformed from biological into cultural. From this point on, the book follows the journey with detailed attention, in order to learn how cultural evolution works. The book is organized in three parts. Part One commences with an exposition of a brief history of the evolutionary idea through time with a focus on a review of the science of general evolution and specifically social and societal evolution. Next, the book unfolds the `evolutionary story' of our species from the time when the first humanoids entered the evolutionary scene to our current era. Part Two develops a systems view of evolution, explores the ways and means of how evolution works, characterizes evolutionary consciousness and develops the idea of conscious evolution. Part Three builds upon the knowledge developed in the first two parts and sets forth the key conditions of conscious, self-guided evolution, elaborating the core condition, which is the acquisition of evolutionary competence through evolutionary learning. The focus of this part is on an approach to the design of evolutionary guidance systems that our families, neighborhoods, communities, organizations, social and societal systems can use to design the future they aspire to attain. The work is set aside from other statements in three important ways. It provides: (1) a comprehensive review of how evolution has worked with a focus on socio-cultural evolution, (2) an explanation of evolutionary consciousness and the conditions of engaging in conscious evolution, and (3) most significantly, it develops a detailed approach and a methodology to the design of evolutionary guidance systems.
Download or read book Lost Kingdom Animal Death in the Anthropocene written by Wendy A. Wiseman and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors in ‘Lost Kingdom’ grapple with both the catastrophe of mass animal extinction, in which the panoply of earthly life is in the accelerating process of disappearing, and with the mass death of industrial animal agriculture. Both forms of anthropogenic violence against animals cast the Anthropocene as an era of criminality and loss driven by boundless human exceptionalism, forcing a reckoning with and an urgent reimagining of human-animal relations. Without the sleights of hand that would lump “humanity” into a singular Anthropos of the Anthropocene, the authors recognize the differential nature of human impacts on animal life and the biosphere as a whole, while affirming the complexity of animal worlds and their profound imbrications in human cultures, societies, and industries. Confronting the reality of the Sixth Mass Extinction and mass animal death requires forms of narrativity that draw on traditional genres and disciplines, while signaling a radical break with modern temporalities and norms. Chapters in this volume reflect this challenge, while embodying the interdisciplinary nature of inquiry into non-human animality at the edge of the abyss—historiography, cultural anthropology, post-colonial studies, literary criticism, critical animal studies, ethics, religious studies, Anthropocene studies, and extinction studies entwine to illuminate what is arguably the greatest crisis, for all creatures, in the past 65 million years.
Download or read book Catastrophic Thinking written by David Sepkoski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-12-06 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of scientific ideas about extinction that explains why we learned to value diversity as a precious resource at the same time as we learned to “think catastrophically” about extinction. We live in an age in which we are repeatedly reminded—by scientists, by the media, by popular culture—of the looming threat of mass extinction. We’re told that human activity is currently producing a sixth mass extinction, perhaps of even greater magnitude than the five previous geological catastrophes that drastically altered life on Earth. Indeed, there is a very real concern that the human species may itself be poised to go the way of the dinosaurs, victims of the most recent mass extinction some 65 million years ago. How we interpret the causes and consequences of extinction and their ensuing moral imperatives is deeply embedded in the cultural values of any given historical moment. And, as David Sepkoski reveals, the history of scientific ideas about extinction over the past two hundred years—as both a past and a current process—is implicated in major changes in the way Western society has approached biological and cultural diversity. It seems self-evident to most of us that diverse ecosystems and societies are intrinsically valuable, but the current fascination with diversity is a relatively recent phenomenon. In fact, the way we value diversity depends crucially on our sense that it is precarious—that it is something actively threatened, and that its loss could have profound consequences. In Catastrophic Thinking, Sepkoski uncovers how and why we learned to value diversity as a precious resource at the same time as we learned to think catastrophically about extinction.
Download or read book The role of CITES in the governance of transnational timber trade written by Rosalind Reeve and published by CIFOR. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This scoping paper analyzes the governance of trade in timber-producing species regulated by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in light of the Conventions increasing relevance as a tool to control transnational timber trade. The CITES regulatory framework is outlined as it relates to tree species, along with the compliance mechanisms developed to build range state capacity for implementing trade controls in relation to tropical timber species and to apply sanctions to countries that fail to take recommended action to resolve implementation problems. The study describes stricter domestic measures developed by consumer countries, most notably the EU, to control imports of CITES-listed species, including trees, as well as additional regulatory frameworks designed by importing countries to exclude illegal timber from their markets. It also examines the implications for CITES of regional economic integration given the Conventions dependence on national border controls, with a focus on experience in the EU and trends in Asia. Key findings from three case studies of how CITES has approached governance of trade in valuable timber-producing species ramin (Gonystylus spp.) from Asia, afrormosia (Pericopsis elata) from Central and West Africa and bigleaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) from Latin America are presented and other potential case studies identified. The study concludes by identifying priority areas where further research could contribute towards catalyzing positive change to strengthen the governance of transnational timber trade, and ultimately towards the survival of tree species traded illegally and unsustainably.
