Dispatches from the Cosmic Cobra Breeding Farm

Dispatches from the Cosmic Cobra Breeding Farm PDF Author: Jeremy Bagott
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780999710746
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
The author, a cog in a profession sputtering and wheezing under decades of chaotic regulation, discovers his nemesis, the head of an obscure Beltway foundation that has managed to have its copyrighted code of conduct enshrined in federal and state law. All 50 states and many territories, even the tiny U.S. territories of Guam and the Mariana Islands, now must heed the foundation's continually changing standards and criteria. The nonprofit, known as the "Appraisal Foundation," acts as a U.S. taxpayer-subsidized standard-setting body but it holds a unique government franchise. Hoisting the ensign of waste and abuse, the author, Jeremy Bagott, delivers a clarion call. He takes the reader (and taxpayer) on a whirlwind tour of the grand salons of Europe and Asia as trustees and officers in this congressionally authorized and taxpayer-funded organization travel the world and make badinage with the likes of a former British Labour Party chancellor of the exchequer and other notables at droll receptions in places like Paris, London, Singapore and Dubai. The foundation's winter retreats in places like West Palm Beach, Scottsdale and Pasadena host top officials of the equally obscure U.S. federal agency that provides the nonprofit its public grant. The author, a former newspaper editor, interweaves skillful scene-setting and thoughtful analysis with the surprising comments of stone-honest civil servants, double-talking careerists and anonymous fixers found deep in the plumbing of state and federal government. On his journey, the author discovers a far greater potential menace: the growing and largely unexamined reliance on a practice called "incorporation by reference." Coupled with evidence of rogue regulating, abdication and routine corner-cutting in state and federal rulemaking, it is slowly creating a fourth branch of government.

Dispatches from the Cosmic Cobra Breeding Farm

Dispatches from the Cosmic Cobra Breeding Farm PDF Author: Jeremy Bagott
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780999710746
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book Here

Book Description
The author, a cog in a profession sputtering and wheezing under decades of chaotic regulation, discovers his nemesis, the head of an obscure Beltway foundation that has managed to have its copyrighted code of conduct enshrined in federal and state law. All 50 states and many territories, even the tiny U.S. territories of Guam and the Mariana Islands, now must heed the foundation's continually changing standards and criteria. The nonprofit, known as the "Appraisal Foundation," acts as a U.S. taxpayer-subsidized standard-setting body but it holds a unique government franchise. Hoisting the ensign of waste and abuse, the author, Jeremy Bagott, delivers a clarion call. He takes the reader (and taxpayer) on a whirlwind tour of the grand salons of Europe and Asia as trustees and officers in this congressionally authorized and taxpayer-funded organization travel the world and make badinage with the likes of a former British Labour Party chancellor of the exchequer and other notables at droll receptions in places like Paris, London, Singapore and Dubai. The foundation's winter retreats in places like West Palm Beach, Scottsdale and Pasadena host top officials of the equally obscure U.S. federal agency that provides the nonprofit its public grant. The author, a former newspaper editor, interweaves skillful scene-setting and thoughtful analysis with the surprising comments of stone-honest civil servants, double-talking careerists and anonymous fixers found deep in the plumbing of state and federal government. On his journey, the author discovers a far greater potential menace: the growing and largely unexamined reliance on a practice called "incorporation by reference." Coupled with evidence of rogue regulating, abdication and routine corner-cutting in state and federal rulemaking, it is slowly creating a fourth branch of government.

Cosmic Apprentice

Cosmic Apprentice PDF Author: Dorion Sagan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816681358
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Refreshingly nonconformist and polemically incisive, Cosmic Apprentice challenges readers to reject both dogma and cliché and instead recover the intellectual adventurousness that should--and can once again--animate both science and philosophy. Informed by a countercultural sensibility, a deep engagement with speculative thought, and a hardheaded scientific skepticism, it advances controversial positions on such seemingly sacrosanct subjects as evolution and entropy.

Cosmic Dispatches

Cosmic Dispatches PDF Author: John Noble Wilford
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393322774
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
The scientists seeking to unravel the mysteries of the universe are among the most imaginative and provocative explorers of our time. Like the geographic explorers of earlier centuries, they venture into uncharted spaces, come upon new worlds, expand the knowable, and challenge thinking about the place of humans in all things. Collected here are the most exciting moments of recent astronomical explorations, presented by the award-winning science reporters of The New York Times. Recent leaps in technology have allowed astronomers to peer deeply into the universe and to bring into focus fascinating and unsuspected phenomena. Cosmic Dispatches conveys in thrilling detail the meaning and significance of what scientists have been learning about our universe.

The Cosmos

The Cosmos PDF Author: Jay M. Pasachoff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108431380
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 733

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Book Description
Explains the fundamentals of astronomy together with the hottest current topics in this field, such as exoplanets and gravitational waves.

Cosmic Collisions

Cosmic Collisions PDF Author: Dana Desonie
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805038442
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
An encyclopedia encompassing a variety of natural science subjects relating to the understanding of weather and climate including the technology and policy discussions which have become part of contemporary environmental and political debates impacting forestry, aviation, famine relief, and pollution. Each entry is a short essay written by one of the over 200 distinguished contributing scholars; entries are cross-referenced and are written at different levels of technicality, making the reference suitable for scientists and non- scientists alike. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Dispatches from Planet 3

Dispatches from Planet 3 PDF Author: Marcia Bartusiak
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300240589
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
An award-winning science writer presents a captivating collection of cosmological essays for the armchair astronomer The galaxy, the multiverse, and the history of astronomy are explored in this engaging compilation of cosmological tales by multiple-award-winning science writer Marcia Bartusiak. In thirty-two concise and engrossing essays, the author provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the universe and those who strive to uncover its mysteries. Bartusiak shares the back stories for many momentous astronomical discoveries, including the contributions of such pioneers as Beatrice Tinsley, with her groundbreaking research in galactic evolution, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the scientist who first discovered radio pulsars. An endlessly fascinating collection that you can dip into in any order, these pieces will transport you to ancient Mars, when water flowed freely across its surface; to the collision of two black holes, a cosmological event that released fifty times more energy than was radiating from every star in the universe; and to the beginning of time itself.

The Extravagant Universe

The Extravagant Universe PDF Author: Robert P. Kirshner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691173184
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The Extravagant Universe tells the story of a remarkable adventure of scientific discovery. One of the world's leading astronomers, Robert Kirshner, takes readers inside a lively research team on the quest that led them to an extraordinary cosmological discovery: the expansion of the universe is accelerating under the influence of a dark energy that makes space itself expand. In addition to sharing the story of this exciting discovery, Kirshner also brings the science up-to-date in a new epilogue. He explains how the idea of an accelerating universe--once a daring interpretation of sketchy data--is now the standard assumption in cosmology today. This measurement of dark energy--a quality of space itself that causes cosmic acceleration--points to a gaping hole in our understanding of fundamental physics. In 1917, Einstein proposed the "cosmological constant" to explain a static universe. When observations proved that the universe was expanding, he cast this early form of dark energy aside. But recent observations described first-hand in this book show that the cosmological constant--or something just like it--dominates the universe's mass and energy budget and determines its fate and shape. Warned by Einstein's blunder, and contradicted by the initial results of a competing research team, Kirshner and his colleagues were reluctant to accept their own result. But, convinced by evidence built on their hard-earned understanding of exploding stars, they announced their conclusion that the universe is accelerating in February 1998. Other lines of inquiry and parallel supernova research now support a new synthesis of a cosmos dominated by dark energy but also containing several forms of dark matter. We live in an extravagant universe with a surprising number of essential ingredients: the real universe we measure is not the simplest one we could imagine.

Afterlives of Affect

Afterlives of Affect PDF Author: Matthew C. Watson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478012072
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
In Afterlives of Affect Matthew C. Watson considers the life and work of artist and Mayanist scholar Linda Schele (1942–98) as a point of departure for what he calls an excitable anthropology. As part of a small collective of scholars who devised the first compelling arguments that Maya hieroglyphs were a fully grammatical writing system, Schele popularized the decipherment of hieroglyphs by developing narratives of Maya politics and religion in popular books and public workshops. In this experimental, person-centered ethnography, Watson shows how Schele’s sense of joyous discovery and affective engagement with research led her to traverse and disrupt borders between religion, science, art, life, death, and history. While acknowledging critiques of Schele’s work and the idea of discovery more generally, Watson contends that affect and wonder should lie at the heart of any reflexive anthropology. With this singular examination of Schele and the community she built around herself and her work, Watson furthers debates on more-than-human worlds, spiritualism, modernity, science studies, affect theory, and the social conditions of knowledge production.

Cosmic Butterflies

Cosmic Butterflies PDF Author: Sun Kwok
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521791359
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
At the end of a star's life, it wraps itself in a cocoon by spilling out gas and dust. Sometime later, a butterfly-like nebula emerges from the cocoon and develops into a planetary nebula. They are among the most beautiful of the celestial objects imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. Their structures, like bubbles floating in the void, are complemented by a kaleidoscope of colour emitted by glowing gases. Delicate, lacelike, streamers of gas add to their complexity. The production of a planetary nebula by a star is a milestone in the life of a star, an event that foretells the doom of the star when its central energy source runs out. In this book, Sun Kwok tells the story of the discovery process of the creation of planetary nebulae and of the future of the Sun. Full colour illustrations are included throughout the book.

Space Exploration

Space Exploration PDF Author: Richard Brownell
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
ISBN: 142050875X
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
Humans have always wondered about the nature of the universe outside the tangible reaches of Earth. Not until the twentieth century could space be explored in earnest, as advances in rocket, computer, and optical technologies made crewed travel outside the atmosphere possible. Yet even after humans walked on the moon, space continues to hold many secrets that can enrich our understanding of the universe we live in. Author Richard Brownell offers a compelling account of space exploration as it has evolved and sharpened its focus. Chapters discuss the evolution of astronomy, early attempts at manned flight, the race between the Soviet Union and the United States to land on the moon, the advances in science yielding from space exploration that have changed life on Earth, and the future of space exploration as space programs contract and budgets tighten.