Fables and Futures

Fables and Futures PDF Author: George Estreich
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262351803
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
How new biomedical technologies—from prenatal testing to gene-editing techniques—require us to imagine who counts as human and what it means to belong. From next-generation prenatal tests, to virtual children, to the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, new biotechnologies grant us unprecedented power to predict and shape future people. That power implies a question about belonging: which people, which variations, will we welcome? How will we square new biotech advances with the real but fragile gains for people with disabilities—especially when their voices are all but absent from the conversation? This book explores that conversation, the troubled territory where biotechnology and disability meet. In it, George Estreich—an award-winning poet and memoirist, and the father of a young woman with Down syndrome—delves into popular representations of cutting-edge biotech: websites advertising next-generation prenatal tests, feature articles on “three-parent IVF,” a scientist's memoir of constructing a semisynthetic cell, and more. As Estreich shows, each new application of biotechnology is accompanied by a persuasive story, one that minimizes downsides and promises enormous benefits. In this story, people with disabilities are both invisible and essential: a key promise of new technologies is that disability will be repaired or prevented. In chapters that blend personal narrative and scholarship, Estreich restores disability to our narratives of technology. He also considers broader themes: the place of people with disabilities in a world built for the able; the echoes of eugenic history in the genomic present; and the equation of intellect and human value. Examining the stories we tell ourselves, the fables already creating our futures, Estreich argues that, given biotech that can select and shape who we are, we need to imagine, as broadly as possible, what it means to belong.

Fables and Futures

Fables and Futures PDF Author: George Estreich
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262351803
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book Here

Book Description
How new biomedical technologies—from prenatal testing to gene-editing techniques—require us to imagine who counts as human and what it means to belong. From next-generation prenatal tests, to virtual children, to the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, new biotechnologies grant us unprecedented power to predict and shape future people. That power implies a question about belonging: which people, which variations, will we welcome? How will we square new biotech advances with the real but fragile gains for people with disabilities—especially when their voices are all but absent from the conversation? This book explores that conversation, the troubled territory where biotechnology and disability meet. In it, George Estreich—an award-winning poet and memoirist, and the father of a young woman with Down syndrome—delves into popular representations of cutting-edge biotech: websites advertising next-generation prenatal tests, feature articles on “three-parent IVF,” a scientist's memoir of constructing a semisynthetic cell, and more. As Estreich shows, each new application of biotechnology is accompanied by a persuasive story, one that minimizes downsides and promises enormous benefits. In this story, people with disabilities are both invisible and essential: a key promise of new technologies is that disability will be repaired or prevented. In chapters that blend personal narrative and scholarship, Estreich restores disability to our narratives of technology. He also considers broader themes: the place of people with disabilities in a world built for the able; the echoes of eugenic history in the genomic present; and the equation of intellect and human value. Examining the stories we tell ourselves, the fables already creating our futures, Estreich argues that, given biotech that can select and shape who we are, we need to imagine, as broadly as possible, what it means to belong.

Investment Fables

Investment Fables PDF Author: Aswath Damodaran
Publisher: FT Press
ISBN: 9780131403123
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
One of the world's leading investment researchers runs the numbers on some of today's most widely touted strategies, objectively answering the questions brokers cannot answer and presents exactly what works and what doesn't.

Aesop’s Animals

Aesop’s Animals PDF Author: Jo Wimpenny
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1399401521
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Turns a critical eye on Aesop's Fables to ask whether there is any scientific truth to Aesop's portrayal of his animals. Despite originating more than two-and-a-half thousand years ago, Aesop's Fables are still passed on from parent to child, and are embedded in our collective consciousness. The morals we have learned from these tales continue to inform our judgements, but have the stories also informed how we regard their animal protagonists? If so, is there any truth behind the stereotypes? Are wolves deceptive villains? Are crows insightful geniuses? And could a tortoise really beat a hare in a race? In Aesop's Animals, zoologist Jo Wimpenny turns a critical eye to the fables to discover whether there is any scientific truth to Aesop's portrayal of the animal kingdom. She brings the tales into the twenty-first century, introducing the latest findings on some of the most fascinating branches of ethological research – the study of why animals do the things they do. In each chapter she interrogates a classic fable and a different topic – future planning, tool use, self-recognition, cooperation and deception – concluding with a verdict on the veracity of each fable's portrayal from a scientific perspective. By sifting fact from fiction in one of the most beloved texts of our culture, Aesop's Animals explores and challenges our preconceived notions about animals, the way they behave, and the roles we both play in our shared world.

Gary's Gigantic Dream

Gary's Gigantic Dream PDF Author: Dr. Nicole Julia
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781733272704
Category : Autonomy in children
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
An upbeat, rhythmic tale of a young giraffe who gets evaluated for his very first wheelchair. Upon receiving his chair, Gary discovers newfound independence, zest for life, and a gigantic dream of his own.The Able Fables¿ collection proudly represents characters with diverse abilities, empowering children to embrace inclusion and see first, ability.

Lia's Kind Mind

Lia's Kind Mind PDF Author: Dr. Nicole Julia
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781733272711
Category : Birthmarks
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Meet the second book of The Able Fables®, a heartwarming story of a young lion who adores gymnastics. When Lia struggles to master a new skill on the balance beam, she doubts her abilities and ponders quitting the sport altogether. Encouraged by her teammates, Lia harnesses the power of a kind mind and learns to embrace the balance beam as she does her birthmark.

The Aesop's Fable Paradigm

The Aesop's Fable Paradigm PDF Author: K. Brandon Barker
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253059232
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The Aesop's Fable Paradigm is a collection of essays that explore the cutting-edge intersection of Folklore and Science. From moralizing fables to fantastic folktales, humans have been telling stories about animals—animals who can talk, feel, think, and make moral judgments just as we do—for a very long time. In contrast, scientific studies of the mental lives of animals have professed to be investigating the nature of animal minds slowly, cautiously, objectively, with no room for fanciful tales, fables, or myths. But recently, these folkloric and scientific traditions have merged in an unexpected and shocking way: scientists have attempted to prove that at least some animal fables are actually true. These interdisciplinary chapters examine how science has targeted the well-known Aesop's fable "The Crow and the Pitcher" as their starting point. They explore the ever-growing set of experimental studies which purport to prove that crows possess an understanding of higher-order concepts like weight, mass, and even Archimedes' insight about the physics of water displacement. The Aesop's Fable Paradigm explores how these scientific studies are doomed to accomplish little more than to mirror anthropomorphic representations of animals in human folklore and reveal that the problem of folkloric projection extends far beyond the "Aesop's Fable Paradigm" into every nook and cranny of research on animal cognition.

A More Beautiful and Terrible History

A More Beautiful and Terrible History PDF Author: Jeanne Theoharis
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807075876
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions. Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done. Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction

Fables and Other Lies

Fables and Other Lies PDF Author: Claire Contreras
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998345680
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Do you believe in curses? I never did. Not until that fated night, six years ago, when I sat in The Devil's Chair and made a wish. Not until it came true. Not until I met River Caliban himself, heir to a fortune of curses. My fated sworn enemy. I knew I should have stayed away from him. I should have run the other way when he called out my name, when he flashed that sinful smile of his, but instead, I walked toward him, leaving the light behind. Instead, I go against all reason, against all warning, and attended the gala of the year at his dark, allegedly haunted home at the top of the hill. The moment I step foot inside I know I'm in trouble, but there's something about River that magnetizes me, reels me in, and when he asks for the impossible, I find it impossible to turn him away.

Fables for the Frivolous

Fables for the Frivolous PDF Author: Guy Whitmore Carryl
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3734017645
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
Reproduction of the original: Fables for the Frivolous by Guy Whitmore Carryl

Economic Fables

Economic Fables PDF Author: Ariel Rubinstein
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1906924775
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"I had the good fortune to grow up in a wonderful area of Jerusalem, surrounded by a diverse range of people: Rabbi Meizel, the communist Sala Marcel, my widowed Aunt Hannah, and the intellectual Yaacovson. As far as I'm concerned, the opinion of such people is just as authoritative for making social and economic decisions as the opinion of an expert using a model." Part memoir, part crash-course in economic theory, this deeply engaging book by one of the world's foremost economists looks at economic ideas through a personal lens. Together with an introduction to some of the central concepts in modern economic thought, Ariel Rubinstein offers some powerful and entertaining reflections on his childhood, family and career. In doing so, he challenges many of the central tenets of game theory, and sheds light on the role economics can play in society at large. Economic Fables is as thought-provoking for seasoned economists as it is enlightening for newcomers to the field.