OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review


John Siracusa - 2014
    Siracusa's overview, wrap-up, and critique of everything new in OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World


Sean Carroll - 2012
    It had to be found. But projects as big as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider don’t happen without incredible risks – and occasional skullduggery. In the definitive account of this landmark event, Caltech physicist and acclaimed science writer Sean Carroll reveals the insights, rivalry, and wonder that fuelled the Higgs discovery, and takes us on a riveting and irresistible ride to the very edge of physics today.

Pressing Reset: Original Strength Reloaded


Tim Anderson - 2018
    The fact is, you were created to move! You were also created to be strong enough to do what you need and want to do. After your years of playing then sitting and whatever you do, your body changed. Original Strength teaches you how to PRESS RESET and help your body once again remember how to move, find hope, and share joy with those you love and truly care about. Pressing Reset, Original Strength Reloaded is about restoring your body's abilities the same way you did the first time you learned to walk. Now is the time to restore your Original Strength to do everything you do in life BETTER!

The Ultimate Hero's Journey: 195 Essential Plot Stages Found in the Best Novels and Movies


Neal Soloponte - 2017
     Every great novel and movie follows a common narrative pattern known as the Hero’s Journey. In this book, for the first time at such level of detail, independent writers can have a look into the Hollywood’s manual on how to create a classic. Make no mistake about it: This is not just another popular take on the subject. This is it. All the 195 plot milestones found in the greatest stories of all times are outlined here—clearly, exactly, concisely. If you are writing a novel or a script, don’t run with disadvantage: Step into this mythical landscape and follow your favorite heroes along The Ultimate Hero’s Journey, as you discover the master structure of timeless storytelling.

Sharyn McCrumb's Appalachia


Sharyn McCrumb - 2011
    A collection of essays dealing with the ballad novels of New York Times Best-selling author Sharyn McCrumb, examining the history, folklore and culture of the region of which she writes

Excel Formulas and Functions for Dummies


Ken Bluttman - 2005
    Targets beginning to intermediate Excel users seeking real-world examples of how they can use Excel's powerful built-in functions Shows readers how to use Excel functions in formulas to help them decide between buying and leasing a car, calculate mortgage costs, compute grades, evaluate investment performance, figure college expenses, and more Gives explanations and examples of real-world situations Provides an abbreviated discussion of an additional 200 functions Excel commands nearly 90 percent of the market for spreadsheet applications; although this book is written for Excel 2003, the functions described are in earlier versions as well

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era


James Barrat - 2013
    Corporations & government agencies around the world are pouring billions into achieving AI’s Holy Grail—human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful & more alien than we can imagine. Thru profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs & groundbreaking AI systems, James Barrat's Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? Will they allow us to?

The Case for Mars


Robert Zubrin - 1996
    The planet most like ours, it has still been thought impossible to reach, let alone explore and inhabit.Now with the advent of a revolutionary new plan, all this has changed. leading space exploration authority Robert Zubrin has crafted a daring new blueprint, Mars Direct, presented here with illustrations, photographs, and engaging anecdotes.The Case for Mars is not a vision for the far future or one that will cost us impossible billions. It explains step-by-step how we can use present-day technology to send humans to Mars within ten years; actually produce fuel and oxygen on the planet's surface with Martian natural resources; how we can build bases and settlements; and how we can one day "terraform" Mars--a process that can alter the atmosphere of planets and pave the way for sustainable life.

Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity


Jamie Metzl - 2019
    After 3.8 billion years humankind is about to start evolving by new rules...From leading geopolitical expert and technology futurist Jamie Metzl comes a groundbreaking exploration of the many ways genetic-engineering is shaking the core foundations of our lives -- sex, war, love, and death.At the dawn of the genetics revolution, our DNA is becoming as readable, writable, and hackable as our information technology. But as humanity starts retooling our own genetic code, the choices we make today will be the difference between realizing breathtaking advances in human well-being and descending into a dangerous and potentially deadly genetic arms race.Enter the laboratories where scientists are turning science fiction into reality. Look towards a future where our deepest beliefs, morals, religions, and politics are challenged like never before and the very essence of what it means to be human is at play. When we can engineer our future children, massively extend our lifespans, build life from scratch, and recreate the plant and animal world, should we?

The Radium Girls [Excerpt]


Kate Moore - 2017
    During World War I, the young women who were hired to work in America's radium watch dial factories were considered the lucky ones. They were paid well, they got to work with the luminous element dubbed "liquid sunshine" that was all the rage, and they were helping the war effort by providing instruments that shone in the dark. And their bodies literally glowed because of the amount of radium they were ingesting. In her new book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, author Kate Moore gives voice to two groups of workers who became horribly ill and fought back against the companies that poisoned them. Using diaries and letters from the women, their statements in court documents, medical records and archived x-rays, as well as using ancestry documents to track down their relatives for interviews, Moore showcases the forgotten young women whose legal fight led to life-changing workplace safety regulations amid one of the biggest scandals of America's twentieth century. Preorder and find out how their story ends on May 2.

No Exit: Struggling to Survive a Modern Gold Rush


Gideon Lewis-Kraus - 2014
    They're burning through cash, sales have stalled, and investors are nowhere to be found. Welcome to the reality of the new tech boom. Sure, it has produced its glittering share of billion-dollar "exits." But for the vast majority of startups life is nasty, brutish, and short on glamour. NO EXIT explores the feverish world of company founders who are desperately trying to keep their dream afloat. It’s a harrowing and hilarious look at the Silicon Valley no one sees. This is an extended version of a story that appears in the May 2014 issue of WIRED magazine.

How to Love the Universe: A Scientist’s Odes to the Hidden Beauty Behind the Visible World


Stefan Klein - 2018
    In ten short chapters of lyrical prose—each one an ode to a breathtaking realm of discovery—Stefan Klein uses everyday objects and events as a springboard to meditate on the beauty of the underlying science. Klein sees in a single rose the sublime interdependence of all life; a day of stormy weather points to the world’s unpredictability; a marble conjures the birth of the cosmos. As he contemplates the deepest mysteries—the nature of reality, dark matter, humanity’s place among the galaxies, and more—Klein encourages us to fall in love with the universe the way scientists do: with a grasp of the key ideas and theories of twenty-first-century physics that bring to life the wonders of, really, everything. You won’t look at a rose—or at our world—the same way again.

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future


James Bridle - 2018
    Underlying this trend is a single idea: the belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world.   In actual fact, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. Meanwhile, those in power use our lack of understanding to further their own interests. Despite the accessibility of information, we’re living in a new Dark Age.   From rogue financial systems to shopping algorithms, from artificial intelligence to state secrecy, we no longer understand how our world is governed or presented to us. The media is filled with unverifiable speculation, much of it generated by anonymous software, while companies dominate their employees through surveillance and the threat of automation.   In his brilliant new work, leading artist and writer James Bridle excavates the limits of technology and how it aids our understanding of the world. Surveying the history of art, technology, and information systems, he explores the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime.

To Be a Machine : Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death


Mark O'Connell - 2017
    It has found adherents in Silicon Valley billionaires Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis. Google has entered the picture, establishing a bio-tech subsidiary aimed at solving the problem of aging.In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell takes a headlong dive into this burgeoning movement. He travels to the laboratories, conferences, and basements of today's foremost transhumanists, where he's presented with the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries of new technologies like mind uploading, artificial superintelligence, cryonics, and device implants.A contributor to Slate, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine, O'Connell serves as a sharp and lively guide to the outer limits of technology in the twenty first century. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising, singular meditation on what it means to be human."

Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed


Jim Al-Khalili - 2003
    Marvel at the Dual Slit experiment as a tiny atom passes through 2 separate openings at the same time. Ponder the peculiar communication of quantum particles, which can remain in touch no matter how far apart. Join the genius jewel thief as he carries out a quantum measurement on a diamond without ever touching the object in question. With its clean, colorful layout and conversational tone, this text will hook you into the conundrum that is quantum mechanics.