[PDF] Full Fathom 5000 eBook

Author : Graham Bell
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 20,82 MB
Release : 2022
Category : Deep-sea animals
ISBN : 0197541577

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"The abyssal plain. If you could walk directly into the sea, through the surf and away from the land, you would be likely to descend a gentle slope for two or three days. The water over your head would gradually become deeper, until the surface was about 200m above, say two average city blocks away. About this time the gradient would begin to increase, and soon you are walking quite steeply downhill, with the surface rapidly receding. The sediment beneath your feet will thicken as you approach the edge of the continent, where the soil and debris washed from the land eventually accumulates. At the end of a long day's walk the gradient eases and you stride out onto a prairie that stretches away into the far distance, flat and featureless, or sometimes with rolling hills or even studded with sudden abrupt mountains. The surface is now quite far away, not mere city blocks but the whole downtown core of a large city distant from where you stand. You have arrived at the edge of the abyssal plain. The details of your walk will vary according to where you start out, and might be quite different if you begin in eastern Canada and walk into the Atlantic, say, or in western Canada and walk into the North Pacific. In either case, though, you will eventually reach the abyssal plain, where the last of the land has been left behind and nothing is familiar"--

Author : Graham Bell
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 15,83 MB
Release : 2022
Category : Deep-sea animals
ISBN : 9780197541586

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"The abyssal plain. If you could walk directly into the sea, through the surf and away from the land, you would be likely to descend a gentle slope for two or three days. The water over your head would gradually become deeper, until the surface was about 200m above, say two average city blocks away. About this time the gradient would begin to increase, and soon you are walking quite steeply downhill, with the surface rapidly receding. The sediment beneath your feet will thicken as you approach the edge of the continent, where the soil and debris washed from the land eventually accumulates. At the end of a long day's walk the gradient eases and you stride out onto a prairie that stretches away into the far distance, flat and featureless, or sometimes with rolling hills or even studded with sudden abrupt mountains. The surface is now quite far away, not mere city blocks but the whole downtown core of a large city distant from where you stand. You have arrived at the edge of the abyssal plain. The details of your walk will vary according to where you start out, and might be quite different if you begin in eastern Canada and walk into the Atlantic, say, or in western Canada and walk into the North Pacific. In either case, though, you will eventually reach the abyssal plain, where the last of the land has been left behind and nothing is familiar"--

Author : Roslyn Fuller
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 424 pages
File Size : 28,53 MB
Release : 2015-11-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1783605448

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Democracy does not deliver on the things we have assumed are its natural outcomes. This, coupled with a growing sense of malaise in both new and established democracies forms the basis to the assertion made by some, that these are not democracies at all. Through considerable, impressive empirical analysis of a variety of voting methods, across twenty different nations, Roslyn Fuller presents the data that makes this contention indisputable. Proving that the party which forms the government rarely receives the majority of the popular vote, that electoral systems regularly produce manufactured majorities and that the better funded side invariably wins such contests in both elections and referenda, Fuller's findings challenge the most fundamental elements of both national politics and broader society. Beast and Gods argues for a return to democracy as perceived by the ancient Athenians. Boldly arguing for the necessity of the Aristotelian assumption that citizens are agents whose wishes and aims can be attained through participation in politics, and through an examination of what “goods” are provided by democracy, Fuller offers a powerful challenge to the contemporary liberal view that there are no "goods" in politics, only individual citizens seeking to fulfil their particular interests.

Author : Matt Simon
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 22,3 MB
Release : 2018-10-02
Category : Science
ISBN : 1524705144

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A brain-bending exploration of real-life zombies and mind controllers, and what they reveal to us about nature—and ourselves Zombieism isn’t just the stuff of movies and TV shows like The Walking Dead. It’s real, and it’s happening in the world around us, from wasps and worms to dogs and moose—and even humans. In Plight of the Living Dead, science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre evolutionary history of mind control. Along the way, he visits a lab where scientists infect ants with zombifying fungi, joins the search for kamikaze crickets in the hills of New Mexico, and travels to Israel to meet the wasp that stings cockroaches in the brain before leading them to their doom. Nothing Hollywood dreams up can match the brilliant, horrific zombies that natural selection has produced time and time again. Plight of the Living Dead is a surreal dive into a world that would be totally unbelievable if very smart scientists didn’t happen to be proving it’s real, and most troublingly—or maybe intriguingly—of all: how even we humans are affected. “Fantastic . . . You'll be thinking about this book long after you're done reading it.” —Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Soonish

Author : Mark Caro
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 28,97 MB
Release : 2009-03-10
Category : Cooking
ISBN : 143915838X

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In announcing that he had stopped serving the fattened livers of force-fed ducks and geese at his world-renowned restaurant, influential chef Charlie Trotter heaved a grenade into a simmering food fight, and the Foie Gras Wars erupted. He said his morally minded menu revision was meant merely to raise consciousness, but what was he thinking when he also suggested -- to Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Caro -- that a rival four-star chef 's liver be eaten as "a little treat"? The reaction to Caro's subsequent front-page story was explosive, as Trotter's sizable hometown moved to ban the ancient delicacy known as foie gras while an international array of activists, farmers, chefs and politicians clashed forcefully and sometimes violently over whether fattening birds for the sake of scrumptious livers amounts to ethical agriculture or torture. "Take a dish with a funny French name, add ducks, top it all off with celebrity chefs eating each other's livers, and that's entertainment," Caro writes. Yet as absurd as battling over bloated waterfowl organs might seem, the controversy struck a serious chord even among those who had never tasted the stuff. Reporting from the front lines of this passionate dining debate, Caro explores the questions we too often avoid: What is an acceptable amount of suffering for an animal that winds up on our plate? Is a duck that lives comfortably for twelve weeks before enduring a few weeks of periodic force-feedings worse off than a supermarket broiler chicken that never sees the light of day over its six to seven weeks on earth? Why is the animal-rights movement picking on such a rarefied dish when so many more chickens, pigs and cows are being processed on factory farms? Then again, how could the treatment of other animals possibly justify the practice of feeding a duck through a metal tube down its throat? In his relentless yet good-humored pursuit of clarity, Caro takes us to the streets where activists use bullhorns, spray paint, Superglue and/or lawsuits as their weapons; the government chambers where politicians weigh the ducks' interests against their own; the restaurants and outlaw dining clubs where haute cuisine preparations coexist with Foie-lipops; and the U.S. and French farms whose operators maintain that they are honoring tradition, not abusing animals. Can foie gras survive after 5,000 years? Are we on the verge of a more enlightened era of eating? Can both answers be yes? Our appetites hang in the balance.

Author : Deborah Rowan Wright
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 40,73 MB
Release : 2020-10-27
Category : Science
ISBN : 022654270X

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A counterintuitive and compelling argument that existing laws already protect the entirety of our oceans—and a call to understand and enforce those protections. The world’s oceans face multiple threats: the effects of climate change, pollution, overfishing, plastic waste, and more. Confronted with the immensity of these challenges and of the oceans themselves, we might wonder what more can be done to stop their decline and better protect the sea and marine life. Such widespread environmental threats call for a simple but significant shift in reasoning to bring about long-overdue, elemental change in the way we use ocean resources. In Future Sea, ocean advocate and marine-policy researcher Deborah Rowan Wright provides the tools for that shift. Questioning the underlying philosophy of established ocean conservation approaches, Rowan Wright lays out a radical alternative: a bold and far-reaching strategy of 100 percent ocean protection that would put an end to destructive industrial activities, better safeguard marine biodiversity, and enable ocean wildlife to return and thrive along coasts and in seas around the globe. Future Sea is essentially concerned with the solutions and not the problems. Rowan Wright shines a light on existing international laws intended to keep marine environments safe that could underpin this new strategy. She gathers inspiring stories of communities and countries using ocean resources wisely, as well as of successful conservation projects, to build up a cautiously optimistic picture of the future for our oceans—counteracting all-too-prevalent reports of doom and gloom. A passionate, sweeping, and personal account, Future Sea not only argues for systemic change in how we manage what we do in the sea but also describes steps that anyone, from children to political leaders (or indeed, any reader of the book), can take toward safeguarding the oceans and their extraordinary wildlife.

Author : Helen Scales
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 14,75 MB
Release : 2018-05-03
Category : Nature
ISBN : 1472936833

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'Scales's genuine appreciation and awe for fish are contagious.'- Science 'Delightful' - New Scientist Seventy per cent of the earth's surface is covered by water. This vast aquatic realm is inhabited by a multitude of strange creatures and reigning supreme among them are the fish. There are giants that live for centuries and thumb-sized tiddlers that survive only weeks; they can be pancake-flat or inflatable balloons; they can shout with colours or hide in plain sight, cheat and dance, remember and say sorry; some rarely budge while others travel the globe restlessly. And yet the mesmerising and complex lives of fish remain largely underrated and unseen, living hidden beneath the waterline, out of sight and out of mind. Helen Scales is our guide on an underwater journey, as we fathom the depths and watch these animals going about the glorious business of being fish. As well as the fish, we meet devoted fishwatchers past and present, from voodoo zombie potion hunters and scientists who taught fish how to walk to nonagenarian explorers of the deep sea. Woven throughout are vignettes of Helen's own aquatic explorations, from eerie nighttime dives with glowing fish and up-close encounters with giant manta rays, to floating in the middle of a swirling shoal being watched by thousands of inquisitive eyes. As well as being a rich and entertaining read, this book will inspire readers to think again about these animals and the seas they inhabit, and to go out and appreciate the wonders of fish, whether through the glass walls of an aquarium or, better still, by gazing into the fishes' wild world and swimming through it. 'Engaging and informative' The Economist

Author : Maarten Boudry
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 30,73 MB
Release : 2018-01-12
Category : Science
ISBN : 022649828X

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All too often in contemporary discourse, we hear about science overstepping its proper limits—about its brazenness, arrogance, and intellectual imperialism. The problem, critics say, is scientism: the privileging of science over all other ways of knowing. Science, they warn, cannot do or explain everything, no matter what some enthusiasts believe. In Science Unlimited?, noted philosophers of science Maarten Boudry and Massimo Pigliucci gather a diverse group of scientists, science communicators, and philosophers of science to explore the limits of science and this alleged threat of scientism. In this wide-ranging collection, contributors ask whether the term scientism in fact (or in belief) captures an interesting and important intellectual stance, and whether it is something that should alarm us. Is scientism a well-developed position about the superiority of science over all other modes of human inquiry? Or is it more a form of excessive confidence, an uncritical attitude of glowing admiration? What, if any, are its dangers? Are fears that science will marginalize the humanities and eradicate the human subject—that it will explain away emotion, free will, consciousness, and the mystery of existence—justified? Does science need to be reined in before it drives out all other disciplines and ways of knowing? Both rigorous and balanced, Science Unlimited? interrogates our use of a term that is now all but ubiquitous in a wide variety of contexts and debates. Bringing together scientists and philosophers, both friends and foes of scientism, it is a conversation long overdue.

Author : Schrödinger
Publisher : AuthorHouse
Page : 163 pages
File Size : 26,39 MB
Release : 2019-10-09
Category : Reference
ISBN : 1728394511

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In today’s world, the use of numbers grows by the day, and we depend on them for so much. This book contains a series of lists that contain information about numbers and their use in society. They will be most useful to those with a quizzical nature but should be of general interest to all. ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ was an infamous and cruel thought experiment dreamt up in the last century to expose one of the mistaken ideas current in science at that time. Since escaping from the box Felix has taken up writing and, in collaboration with retired water engineer Pyotr Stilovsky, he has compiled this factual compendium.