If I did not know most of the main players I would have thought the author had a vivid and twisted imagination..”—Paul Martin Brown, author of Wild Orchids of Florida“A fascinating true story of obsession, greed, and lust for the unobtainable. Reminds me a great deal of The Maltese Falcon. This rare flower is definitely the stuff that dreams are made of.”—Ace Atkins, author of Devil's Garden and Infamous“Pittman has captured the extreme competition, unique characters, and general insanity that often typify the orchid world. The Scent of Scandal exemplifies how passion and profit can overrule common sense and the law.”—Scott Steward, former associate editor, North American Native Orchid JournalEvery year more than 100,000 people visit Sarasota’s Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, in large part to see its vast orchid collection, one of the most magnificent in the world. But the most famous orchid in Selby’s history—the one hailed as the most significant find in a century—isn't on display. It's the one that led to search warrants, a grand jury investigation, and headlines around the country.           Discovered in Peru in 2002, the Phragmipedium kovachii quickly became the most sought-after orchid in the world. Prices soared to $10,000 on the black market and otherwise rational people bent rules and broke laws in their obsessive quest to possess it.           Award-winning journalist Craig Pittman covered this fascinating story, as it happened, for the St. Petersburg Times, Florida’s largest newspaper. In this enthralling account, he unravels the tangled web of smugglers, scientists, and federal investigators to reveal who the real criminals were in this sordid affair. He also shines a spotlight on flaws in the international treaties governing trade in endangered wildlife—treaties that often protect individual plants and animals in shipping but do little to halt the destruction of whole colonies in the wild.           With candid interviews from nearly everyone involved in the case, The Scent of Scandal unspools like a riveting mystery novel, stranger than anything in Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief or the film Adaptation. Pittman shows how some people can become so obsessed—with beauty, with profit, with fame, with the desire to own a rare flower—that even the possibility of going to prison will not deter their risking everything.Craig Pittman writes about environmental issues for the St. Petersburg Times. He is the coauthor of Paving Paradise: Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss and author of Manatee Insanity: Inside the War over Florida’s Most Famous Endangered Species.

    This claim is not only false, but its presence in the debate is an insult to science." With these words, the authors begin a detailed analysis of one of the most controversial topics of the day. The authors make a compelling case against claims of a scientific consensus. The purported proof of such a consensus consists of sloppy research by nonscientists, college students, and a highly partisan Australian blogger. Surveys of climate scientists, even those heavily biased in favor of climate alarmism, find extensive disagreement on the underlying science and doubts about its reliability. The authors point to four reasons why scientists disagree about global warming: a conflict among scientists in different and often competing disciplines; fundamental scientific uncertainties concerning how the global climate responds to the human presence; failure of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide objective guidance to the complex science; and bias among researchers. The authors offer a succinct summary of the real science of climate change based on their previously published comprehensive review of climate science in a volume titled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science. They recommend that policymakers resist pressure from lobby groups to silence scientists who question the authority of the IPCC to claim to speak for climate science. More than 50,000 copies of the first edition were sold or given away in five months to elected officials, civic and business leaders, scientists, and other opinion leaders. The response from the science community and experts on climate change has been overwhelmingly positive. To meet demand for more copies, we have produced this second revised edition. Changes include a foreword by Marita Noon, at the time executive director of Energy Makes America Great, Inc. Some of the discussion in Chapter 1 has been revised and expanded thanks to feedback from readers of the first edition. Graphs in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are now full color, and new graphs have been added.

    The pages overflow with humor and an array of cool phrases that will have readers bending and sending, blowing soup, and gargling gravy all the way to the bathroom!

    An extraordinarily moving first novel about a charming, gifted, but doomed American family in Arizona.

    In response to the dynamic environment of management, Richard Daft has written a text integrating the newest management thinking with a solid foundation in the essentials of management.

    According to author David Wojahn, a three-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, this collection of poetry “is the best collection yet by a poet who has become one of the most individual and necessary voices of his generation. An almost prophetic rage seems to inhabit these poems, which present us with a speaker who is tender and brutally rueful by turns. Bob Hicok asks to be a voice of conscience in a conscience-less world. And, like all true prophets, his rage and consternation in the end transform themselves into a form of prayer, what one of his poems calls a ‘mad . . . devotion.’ Hicok is able to instruct and console us, and that is a very rare thing indeed.”

    In this book she shows how to build a faithful following and beat the competition clamoring for people's attention by continually delivering value - when, where, and how people want it. People want to be heard, to be involved, to be entertained, to be adventurous, to be informed.Reveals the winning strategies for using social media to achieve dramatic results Shows how to gain influence with social media that requires an unprecedented (and potentially uncomfortable) level of accessibility and ongoing affinity Filled with illustrative examples of social media successes (including Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Nike) that show how humanizing a brand through social media leads to monetization Explores how Amy Jo Martin and other successful entrepreneurs are becoming renegades by using social media to innovate their personal and professional lives The book reveals one of the basic rules of digital media success: Humans connect with humans, not logos and creative taglines.

    Cannato illuminates the Christian concepts of grace, empathy, and the kingdom of God by examining them in light of cutting-edge scientific theory.

    Ripley. Coming from Miramax Films in December 2003, Cold Mountain stars Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Directed by Academy Award®-winner Anthony Minghella who also wrote the screenplay, Cold Mountain is based on Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel of the same name and tells the story of Inman (Law), a wounded confederate soldier who is on a perilous journey home to his mountain community, hoping to reunite with his pre-war sweetheart, Ada (Kidman). In his absence, Ada struggles to survive, and revive her father's farm with the help of intrepid young drifter Ruby (Zellweger).The Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook is annotated with illustrations, movie stills, production design sketches keyed to the screenplay, costume designs, sidebars, and commentary from the cast and crew.

    But this is not just a diary for theatre lovers, although his insider’s ear on the arts world is well-attuned and unmissable. Bennett’s life is broader. His accounts of theatre troubles and even more troublesome critics are combined with his memories of a writer’s tour of Russia, life in New York and Camden, filming in Egypt and tales of a Yorkshire village. He also covers the big events of his time: the Falklands War, Mrs Thatcher and the assassination of John Lennon. Taken from Alan Bennett’s bestselling book, Writing Home, this keenly viewed history of the decade confirms Bennett as one of life’s great observers – clear-eyed, compassionate and funny.2 CDs. 1 hr 59 mins.

    Includes:Deja DeadDeath Du JourDeadly DecisionsFatal VoyageGrave SecretsBare BonesMonday MourningCross BonesBreak No BonesBones to AshesDevil Bones206 BonesSpider Bones

     __________ SENSATION (Kid Sensation #1) Like millions of other kids, Jim grew up wanting to be a superhero. Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, Jim actually had the goods: a plethora of super powers that would have been the envy of any meta on the planet. But when his tryout with the Alpha League - the world's premiere group of supers - goes disastrously wrong, Jim basically becomes an outcast. Two years later, Jim is still bitter about what happened to him. However, he soon finds himself the centerpiece in an odd turn of events that gives him a second chance at his dream. But nothing is as easy as it sounds, as Jim soon discovers. Among other things, he’s made an enemy of a prospective super teammate, he’s being stalked by an unknown pursuer, and a shadowy cabal bent on world domination has identified him as the only obstacle to their plans. It’s a lot for one super to handle, even with a smorgasbord of abilities. But if saving the world were easy, everyone would do it… __________ MUTATION (Kid Sensation #2) Kid Sensation is back! The intrepid teen super with the plethora of powers returns in a new adventure. Having saved the planet and earned a place with the world’s premiere superhero team, Jim (aka Kid Sensation) is preparing to attend the prestigious Academy, where teen supers from every corner of the globe learn to master their abilities. At the same time, however, he is approached by a mysterious government organization that wants Jim to work for them - and they won’t take “No” for an answer. Moreover, at the Academy itself, an insidious and highly contagious virus is running amok through the student population, striking at the heart of their abilities. Students are losing control of their powers, with lethal consequences… Now, in addition to evading the machinations of government agents, Jim must solve the mystery behind the virus - and how to stop it - before every super everywhere becomes fatally infected. __________ INFILTRATION (Kid Sensation #3) Having a surfeit of super powers is great for battling bad guys and saving the world, as Jim (aka Kid Sensation) is finding out, but less useful in dealing with day-to-day situations – like bonding with his superhero father, adjusting to a team environment, and coping with what might be perceived as a growing rivalry between himself and another teen super. On top of all that, despite having a serious girlfriend, he finds himself inexplicably drawn to a new female super he’s just met. At the same time, some villain has just gotten himself a new toy: an unknown weapon of tremendous power that is able to strike without warning, causing unprecedented destruction and loss of life. Perhaps more terrifying, the wielders of this weapon make no demands and issue no threats; they simply attack. Even the Alpha League, the world’s greatest superhero team, is not immune, suffering an assault on their very own doorsteps. It quickly becomes clear that the only way to stop this new evil is from within. With his unique abilities, Jim is the only person capable of infiltrating the enemy’s ranks. It’s up to him to figure out who is behind these attacks, what they want, and find a way to stop them – and their secret weapon – before they bring the entire world to its knees.

    This collection of three screenplays displays his defiantly unorthodox approach to film form, as well as the unclassifiable imaginative energy that drives all of his work.

    But how the mind works remains one of humankind's greatest mysteries. With boundless curiosity and enthusiasm, Shannon Moffett, a Stanford medical student, takes us down the halls of neuroscience to the front lines of cutting-edge research and medicine to meet some of today's most extraordinary scientists and thinkers, all grappling with provocative questions: Why do we dream? How does memory work? How do we see? What happens when we think? Each chapter delves into a different aspect of the brain, following the experts as they chart new ground. Moffett takes us to a lab where fMRI scans reveal the multitude of stimuli that our brains unconsciously take in; inside an operating room where a neurosurgeon removes a bullet from a patient's skull; to the lab of Christof Koch, a neuroscientist tracking individual neurons in order to crack the code of consciousness; and to a research lab where scientists are investigating the relationship between dreams and waking life. She also takes us beyond the scientific world—to a Zen monk's zendo, where she explores the effects of meditation on the brain; inside the home of a woman suffering from dissociative identity disorder; to a conference with the philosopher Daniel Dennett, who uses illusions, magic, tricks, and logic to challenge our assumptions about the mind; and to the home of the late Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, co-discoverer with James Watson of DNA's double-helix structure. Filled with fascinating case studies and featuring a timeline that tracks the development of the brain from conception to death, The Three Pound Enigma is a remarkable exploration of what it means to be human.

    While the primary audience for this work is the individual preparing to sit for the Six Sigma Black Belt certification examination, a secondary audience for the handbook is the quality and Six Sigma professional who would like a relevant Six Sigma reference book. With this audience in mind, the authors have greatly expanded the appendices section to include: * The 2001 Body of Knowledge, so that readers can compare changes and perhaps offer recommendations to future bodies of knowledge * Statistical tables completely redeveloped using a combination of Microsoft Excel and Minitab 15 * A table for control constants expanded to now include virtually all control constants * Tables for both cumulative and non-cumulative forms of the most useful distributions, including binomial, Poisson, and normal * Additional alpha values in tables * An expanded glossary, with more terms relating to lean * A second glossary of the most common Japanese terms used by quality and Six Sigma professionals