Improbable Destinies

Improbable Destinies PDF Author: Jonathan B. Losos
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184937
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.

Improbable Destinies

Improbable Destinies PDF Author: Jonathan B. Losos
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184937
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Get Book Here

Book Description
A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.

The Book of Destinies

The Book of Destinies PDF Author: Chetan Parkyn
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1608684237
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Have you ever wondered about your life’s purpose? The next step in the life-changing Human Design system, The Book of Destinies presents in-depth profiles of the 192 Life Themes that encompass humanity. Based on the place, date, and time of your birth, your Life Theme reveals a remarkably detailed portrait of your true nature, allowing you the peace of knowing who you really are so you can live your life with clarity and fulfillment. Instead of struggling to achieve unsuitable goals, you can align yourself with a deeper plan for your relationships, career, and decision making. Many passages include a list of noted people who share that Life Theme. The culmination of the authors’ twenty years of research, practice, meditation, and readings, The Book of Destinies is for anyone who has ever stopped to wonder, “What is my life purpose, and how do I realize it?” To determine your Life Theme, visit www.humandesignforusall.com

Combined Destinies

Combined Destinies PDF Author: Ann Todd Jealous
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612345751
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
By beginning a conversation that encourages self-examination and compassion, Combined Destinies invites its readers to look at how white Americans have been hurt by the very ideology that their ancestors created. Editors Ann Todd Jealous and Caroline T. Haskell, both experienced psychotherapists skilled at facilitating dialogue about racial issues, are cognizant of the challenges that even the thought of such conversations often presents. Their book is based on the premise that for positive and lasting change to occur, it is necessary to open hearts as well as minds. This courageous anthology posits that unearned privilege has damaged the psyche of white people as well as their capacity to understand racism. Using intimate stories, some from writers who have never before spoken of these highly charged issues, Jealous and Haskell offer readers a chance to explore their own experiences. Drawing on the personal and heartfelt stories of diverse contributors, including Robert Zellner, Bettina Aptheker, Deb Busman, Deborah Burke, Joe Ruklick, and Alisa Fineman, Combined Destinies is organized thematically, with individual chapters that focus on, for example, guilt, shame, silence, or resistance. The book includes an extensive reader's guide, posing questions for discussion pertaining to each chapter. Anyone who is interested in mental health and spiritual healing will benefit from reading this book, but it's especially suitable for teachers, professors and students of teacher education, the social sciences, and U.S. history, as well as social activists, members of community groups, therapists, clergy, and other members of the counseling profession.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

The Castle of Crossed Destinies PDF Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156154550
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
"A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their tales. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness."--Goodreads

Dragons of Deceit

Dragons of Deceit PDF Author: Margaret Weis
Publisher: Random House Worlds
ISBN: 198481933X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman return to the unforgettable world of the New York Times bestselling Dragonlance series as a new heroine—desperate to restore her beloved father to life—sets off on a quest to change time. “I love Dragonlance and I love Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Plain and simple. Their books are my favorite fantasy series of all time.”—Joe Manganiello Destina Rosethorn—as her name implies—believes herself to be a favored child of destiny. But when her father dies in the War of the Lance, she watches her carefully constructed world come crashing down. She loses not only her beloved father but also the legacy he has left her: the family lands and castle. To save her father, she hatches a bold plan—to go back in time and prevent his death. First, she has to secure the Device of Time Journeying, last known to be in the possession of the spirited kender Tasslehoff Burrfoot. But to change time, she’ll need another magical artifact—the most powerful and dangerous artifact ever created. Destina’s quest takes her from the dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin to the town of Solace and beyond, setting in motion a chain of disastrous events that threaten to divert the course of the River of Time, alter the past, and forever change the future.

Other Destinies

Other Destinies PDF Author: Louis Owens
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806126739
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This first book-length critical analysis of the full range of novels written between 1854 and today by American Indian authors takes as its theme the search for self-discovery and cultural recovery. In his introduction, Louis Owens places the novels in context by considering their relationships to traditional American Indian oral literature as well as their differences from mainstream Euroamerican literature. In the following chapters he looks at the novels of John Rollin Ridge, Mourning Dove, John Joseph Mathews, D'Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, and Gerald Vizenor. These authors are mixedbloods who, in their writing, try to come to terms with the marginalization both of mixed-bloods and fullbloods and of their cultures in American society. Their novels are complex and sophisticated narratives of cultural survival - and survival guides for fullbloods and mixedbloods in modern America. Rejecting the stereotypes and cliches long attached to the word Indian, they appropriate and adapt the colonizers language, English, to describe the Indian experience. These novels embody the American Indian point of view; the non-Indian is required to assume the role of "other". In his analysis Owens draws on a broad range of literary theory: myth and folklore, structuralism, modernism, poststructuralism, and, particularly, postmodernism. At the same time he argues that although recent American Indian fiction incorporates a number of significant elements often identified with postmodern writing, it contradicts the primary impulse of postmodernism. That is, instead of celebrating fragmentation, ephemerality, and chaos, these authors insistupon a cultural center that is intact and recoverable, upon immutable values and ecological truths. Other Destinies provides a new critical approach to novels by American Indians. It also offers a comprehensive introduction to the novels, helping teachers bring this important fiction to the classroom.

Indonesian Destinies

Indonesian Destinies PDF Author: Theodore Friend
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674037359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 648

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Book Description
How can such a gentle people as we are be so murderous? a prominent Indonesian asks. That question--and the mysteries of the archipelago's vast contradictions--haunt Theodore Friend's remarkable work, a narrative of Indonesia during the last half century, from the postwar revolution against Dutch imperialism to the unrest of today. Part history, part meditation on a place and a past observed firsthand, Indonesian Destinies penetrates events that gave birth to the world's fourth largest nation and assesses the continuing dangers that threaten to tear it apart. Friend reveals Sukarno's character through wartime collaboration with Japan, and Suharto's through the mass murder of communists that brought him to power for thirty-two years. He guides our understanding of the tolerant forms of Islam prevailing among the largest Muslim population in the world, and shows growing tensions generated by international terrorism. Drawing on a deep knowledge of the country's cultures, its leaders, and its ordinary people, Friend gives a human face and a sense of immediacy to the self-inflicted failures and immeasurable tragedies that cast a shadow over Indonesia's past and future. A clear and compelling passion shines through this richly illustrated work. Rarely have narrative history and personal historical witness been so seamlessly joined.

The Two Destinies

The Two Destinies PDF Author: Wilkie Collins
Publisher: ICON Group International
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description


Savage Messiah

Savage Messiah PDF Author: Robert Newcomb
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0345477081
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
Robert Newcomb’s dazzling debut trilogy, The Chronicles of Blood and Stone, introduced readers to the strange and wondrous land of Eutracia. Now, in Savage Messiah, the first volume in a sweeping new trilogy of magic, romance, and adventure, Newcomb returns to the world of his epic saga, unlocking fresh secrets and startling surprises. With the demise of his evil half brother, Wulfgar, Prince Tristan restored peace to Eutracia . . . or so he thought. But the Orb of the Vigors was damaged in the climactic battle, and now the powerful artifact is bleeding magical energy and cutting a swath of death and destruction across the kingdom. Tristan can heal the wounded Orb, but not until his enchanted blood is returned to normal. Only then will the powers of the Vigors be his to command. Unfortunately, the secret of reversing the enchantment is lost. Even worse, Wulfgar is neither dead nor defeated. Ensconced in his fortress across the Sea of Whispers, Tristan’s hideously scarred half brother plots with the Heretics, the otherworldly masters of the Vagaries. With their aid, Wulfgar has grown even stronger in the dark arts. Now, with powerful demonic servants and weapons of dire potency, Wulfgar sets forth to complete the destruction of the Orb . . . and to avenge himself on the Chosen Ones. Preceding him, he sends a brotherly greeting: a cunning assassin with orders to dispatch Eutracia’s ruling council. Tristan and his trusted allies—the wise wizards Wigg and Faegan, the beautiful pirate Tyranny, and, dearest of all, his beloved Celeste—embark on a desperate quest to cleanse his blood. It is a journey that will lead from the Sea of Whispers to distant Parthalon to the mysterious Well of Forestallments, and it will change everything the Chosen Ones think they know about themselves and their destiny. If they should fail, the Orb will perish, and with it, the Vigors. As for success, it may prove more costly still. . . .

Human Design

Human Design PDF Author: Chetan Parkyn
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1577319419
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Going beyond horoscopes, Human Design posits that everyone is born with an individuality as unique as a fingerprint. A foremost international practitioner of HD now offers readers the tools to do their own readings to map the life charts of family and friends.