Displaying the top 100 results that match your query. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/rssapi.jsp?Re=6666&Ne=6670&N=3+6061+6670+8032 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1351524 A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of todays great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand lifes mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe. They have unlimited scope and power to cause change, and the quest to improve them is the basic regulating principle not only of science but of all successful human endeavor. This stream of ever improving explanations has infinite reach, according to Deutsch: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper boundary to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve. In his previous book, The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch describe the four deepest strands of existing knowledge-the theories of evolution, quantum physics, knowledge, and computation-arguing jointly they reveal a unified fabric of reality. In this new book, he applies that worldview to a wide range of issues and unsolved problems, from creativity and free will to the origin and future of the human species. Filled with startling new conclusions about human choice, optimism, scientific explanation, and the evolution of culture, The Beginning of Infinity is a groundbreaking book that will become a classic of its kind-- http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1336406 In 2002, NASA fellow Thad Roberts hatched the most daring heist ever conceived: steal NASAs precious moon rocks. With the help of his girlfriend and another female cohort, both NASA interns, Roberts successfully stole the rocks. However, selling the invaluable stones proved to be Roberts downfall. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1279608 This book will shine light on some of the hard-to-reach places in the brain, showing the ways in which we are not the ones driving the boat. Why does the conscious mind know so little? What do visual illusions unmask about the machinery running under the hood? How much of our lives are determined by choices and behaviors that are hard-wired, unconscious, and beyond our control? Do we have any management over who we find gorgeous or repugnant? How is it possible to get angry at yourself: who exactly, is mad at whom? If the drunk Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite and the sober Mel Gibson is authentically apologetic, is there a real Mel Gibson? Why did Supreme Court Justice William Douglas claim that he was able to play football and go hiking, when everyone could see that he was paralyzed after his stroke? Why do people willingly give up their money to banks for Christmas accounts (and why dont monkeys do this)? Why do patients on Parkinsons medications become compulsive gamblers? Why do athletes follow routines, like bouncing the ball three times before taking a free throw? Why did Charles Whitman suddenly kill his family and shoot forty six others from the UT Austin tower, and what did this have to do with his brain? How much of who we are is in the genes, and how much in the environment? Does free will exist or not, and how does that affect our view of blameworthiness and credit? The emerging understanding of the brain drastically changes our view of ourselves, shifting us from an intuitive sense that we are at the center of the operations, to a more sophisticated, illuminating, and wondrous view of the situation--Provided by publisher. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1275110 Dogs have been mankinds faithful companions for tens of thousands of years, yet today they are regularly treated as either pack-following wolves or furry humans. The truth is, dogs are neither--and our misunderstanding has put them in serious crisis. What dogs really need is a spokesperson, someone who will assert their specific needs. Renowned anthrozoologist Dr. John Bradshaw has made a career of studying human-animal interactions, and in Dog Sense he uses the latest scientific research to show how humans can live in harmony with--not just dominion over-- their four-legged friends. From explaining why positive reinforcement is a more effective (and less damaging) way to control dogs behavior than punishment to demonstrating the importance of weighing a dogs unique personality against stereotypes about its breed, Bradshaw offers extraordinary insight into the question of how we really ought to treat our dogs--Provided by publisher. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1363774 From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbuss voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning of an extraordinary exchange of flora and fauna between Eurasia and the Americas. As Charles Mann shows, this global ecological tumult--the Columbian Exchange--underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest generation of research by scientists, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Manila and Mexico City-- where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted--the center of the world. In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination-- http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1170143 Bestselling author Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1149815 The author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity. Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you cant walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As the author discovers, its possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASAs new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), she takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=1003304 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=686249 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=702493 This young readers version of the recent documentary films companion adult volume cuts the page count by about a third but preserves the originals cogent message and many of its striking visuals. After explaining that his interest in the environment predates even his mothers reading of Silent Spring aloud to him as a teenager, Gore proceeds to document steeply rising carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, and then to link that to accelerating changes in temperature and precipitation patterns worldwide. Using easy-to-grasp graphics and revealing before-and-after photos, he shows how glaciers and ice shelves are disappearing all over the globe with alarming speed, pointing to profound climate changes and increased danger from rising sea levels in the near future. OConnor rephrases Gores arguments in briefer, simpler language without compromising their flow, plainly intending to disturb readers rather than frighten them. He writes measured, matter-of-fact prose, letting facts and trends speak for themselves but, suggesting that what happens locally has worldwide consequences, he closes with the assertion that we will all have to change the way we live our lives. Like the film, this title may leave readers to look elsewhere for both documentation and for specific plans of action, but as an appeal to reason its as polished and persuasive as it can be. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=582275 Travel thirty miles north, south, or east of San Francisco city hall and youll be engulfed in a landscape of thick traffic, fast enterprise, and six-dollar cappuccinos. Venture thirty miles due west, however, and you will find yourself on what is virtually another planet: a spooky cluster of rocky islands called the Farallones, battered by foul weather, thronged with two hundred thousand seabirds, and surrounded by the largest great white sharks in the world. Journalist Susan Casey was in her living room when she first glimpsed this strange place and its resident sharks, their dark fins swirling around a tiny boat in a documentary. These great whites were the alphas among alphas, the narrator said, some of them topping eighteen feet in length, and each fall they congregated here off the northern California coast. That so many of these magnificent and elusive animals lived in the 415 area code, crisscrossing each other under the surface like jets stacked in a holding pattern, seemed stunningly improbable - and irresistible. Casey knew she had to see them for herself. Within a matter of months she was in a seventeen-foot Boston Whaler, being hoisted up a cliff face onto the barren surface of Southeast Farallon Island - part of the group known to nineteenth-century sailors as the Devils Teeth. There she joined the two biologists who study the sharks, bunking down in the islands one habitable building, a haunted, 120-year-old house spackled with lichen and gull guano. Less than forty-eight hours later she had her first encounter with the famous, terrifying jaws and was instantly hooked. Curiosity yielded to obsession, and when the opportunity arose to return for a longer stay she jumped at it. But as Casey readied herself for shark season, she had no way of preparing for what she would find among the dangerous, forgotten islands that have banished every campaign for civilization in the past two hundred years. Illustrated with sixteen pages of color photographs, The Devils Teeth offers a rare glimpse into the lives of natures most mysterious predators, and of those who follow them. Here is a vivid dispatch from an otherworldly outpost, a story of crossing the boundary between society and an untamed place where humans are neither wanted nor needed.--BOOK JACKET. http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=547353 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=538115 http://www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org/record.jsp?R=516056