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Tomorrow has never looked better. Breakthroughs in fields like genetic engineering and nanotechnology promise to give us unprecedented power to redesign our bodies and our world. Futurists and activists tell us that we are drawing ever closer to a day when we will be as smart as computers, will be able to link our minds telepathically, and will live for centuries—or maybe forever. The perfection of a “post-human” future awaits us. Or so the story goes. In reality, the rush toward a post-human destiny amounts to an ideology of human extinction, an ideology that sees little of value in humanity except the raw material for producing whatever might come next. In Eclipse of Man, Charles T. ...
Searching and provocative--The New York Review of Books
The prominent contributors in Conservation Reconsidered establish a fundamentally original view of the conservation movement and the impact of public policy on nature. This collection of essays articulate the belief that the thinkers and actors who helped develop the conservation movement-notably John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and Aldo Leopold-have been seriously misunderstood by scholars who have analyzed them in the context of contemporary environmental debates. Conservationism, the contributors argue, was a diverse movement dealing with difficult questions about the relationship of human beings to nature in a modern liberal democratic state. The essays place conservationism within the framework of 19th century American political thinkers including Darwin, Emerson, Thoreau and Olmsted, and they illuminate perennial questions about citizenship and our place in the natural world. Conservation Reconsidered takes a new look at what is problematic about the legacy of American conservationism and explores worthy alternatives to the dominant environmentalist thinking of today.
Defies the myth that parents must sacrific themselves. Instead, shows them how to reclaim their power, balance, happiness...and lives. When kids turn to substance abuse, parents also become victims as they watch their children transform into irrational and antisocial individuals. This harrowing scenario finds parents buckling beneath the stress--often with catastrophoric consequences: Divorce, career upsets, breakdowns and worse. "Don't Let Your Kids Kill You" is a landmark work that dares focus on the plight of the confused, distressed parent and not the erring child. It sets aside any preconceived ideas that parents are to blame for what is essentially a full-blown global crisis. Drawing on interviews with parents who've survived the heartbreak of kids on drugs, combined with his own experience, Charles Rubin provides practical advice on how parents can help themselves and their families by first attending to their own needs. Liberation begins when you open this book.
"A dizzying display of intellect and wild imaginings by Moravec, a world-class roboticist who has himself developed clever beasts . . . Undeniably, Moravec comes across as a highly knowledgeable and creative talent--which is just what the field needs".--Kirkus Reviews.
Dark Skies provides the first comprehensive and balanced assessment of the space enterprise, past, present and future. It demolishes widely-held optimistic assumptions about the desirability of many major space activities, actual and prospective. Most consequentially, the hiding-in-plain-sight use of outer space as a corridor for long-range bombardment has increased the probability of catastrophic nuclear war. Contrary to the widespread claim that sustainable colonies on other celestial bodies are necessary for human survival from large-scale disasters on Earth, Dark Skies shows that colonization itself poses many severe threats and should be avoided. Instead an Earth-oriented space program should be pursued.
This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.
Robert Rubin was sworn in as the seventieth U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in January 1995 in a brisk ceremony attended only by his wife and a few colleagues. As soon as the ceremony was over, he began an emergency meeting with President Bill Clinton on the financial crisis in Mexico. This was not only a harbinger of things to come during what would prove to be a rocky period in the global economy; it also captured the essence of Rubin himself--short on formality, quick to get into the nitty-gritty. From his early years in the storied arbitrage department at Goldman Sachs to his current position as chairman of the executive committee of Citigroup, Robert Rubin has been a major figure at the ...
Traces the story of how ancient cultures envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices and human enhancements, sharing insights into how the mythologies of the past related to and shaped ancient machine innovations.