Richard Dawkins - The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Edited by best-selling author and renowned scientist Richard Dawkins, this sterling collection brings together exhilarating pieces by a who's who of scientists and science writers, including Stephen Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, Martin Gardner, Albert Einstein, Julian Huxley, and many dozens more. Readers will find excerpts from bestsellers such as Douglas R. Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach, Francis Crick's Life Itself, Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey, Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us.

A must-read volume for all science buffs, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a rich and vibrant anthology that captures the poetry and excitement of scientific thought and discovery. Amazon

Link 1 (PDF)

Justin Fox - The Myth of the Rational Market

At the core of the current financial crisis has been the widely held assumption that markets behave rationally. Fox, Time magazine editor-at-large, isn't the first to bring scrutiny—or censure—to the conceit, but his analysis is singularly compelling, and the rare business history that reads like a thriller. Fox leads us on a chronological journey of modern economic theory, featuring the cast of scholars who constructed the 20th- and 21st-century financial landscape, from Irving Fisher to such post-WWII figures as Milton Friedman, Harry Markowitz, Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller, Jack Treynor and William Sharpe. Fox offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse at academia's finest, complete with amusing anecdotes about the players and their theories, and illustrates how our economic behaviors and markets have been shaped by a gradually refined theory holding that the stock market prices are both random and perfectly rational. A must-read for anyone interested in the markets, our economy or government, this dense but spellbinding work brings modern finance and economics to life.

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The Guardian Style Guide

English is a malleable language. Many words have multiple spellings and there are perhaps a dozen ways to format the date. To stop their output looking sloppy and inconsistent, most news organisations produce a style guide which contributors must abide by.

Some of these style guides can be bought in books, but The Guardian Style Guide is available for free online.


PDF version: Link 1


Online (updated) version: Link 2

Jane Goodall - Wild Chimpanzees

Did you know that chimpanzees and humans have 98 percent of their DNA in common? You will after watching this absorbing 75-minute (including extras) documentary, featuring and partially narrated by renowned researcher Jane Goodall, who's been on the chimps' case for more than four decades. We see these African apes on the ground and in trees, playing, grooming, teaching, even killing one another. The scenes of them "fishing" for termites and ants using a stick for a pole make for extraordinary viewing; indeed, the film's principal message is that they and we are very much alike. And while the small screen can't capture the full majesty of what began as an IMAX film, one can sense the almost palpable three-dimensionality of the original. The DVD is also loaded with bonus features, including a 15-minute behind-the-scenes look at the filmmaking process and more. This is great stuff. --Sam Graham



http://rapidshare.com/files/385993368/IMAX.Jane.Goodall_s.Wild.Chimpanzees.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385993435/IMAX.Jane.Goodall_s.Wild.Chimpanzees.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385993525/IMAX.Jane.Goodall_s.Wild.Chimpanzees.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385993523/IMAX.Jane.Goodall_s.Wild.Chimpanzees.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385993508/IMAX.Jane.Goodall_s.Wild.Chimpanzees.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/385992402/IMAX.Jane.Goodall_s.Wild.Chimpanzees.part6.rar

Richard Dawkins - The Ancestor's Tale

The Ancestor's Tale is a pilgrimage back through time; a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about 6 million years in the past, orang utans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey provides the setting for a collection of some 40 tales. Each explores an aspect of evolutionary biology through the stories of characters met along the way. The tales are interspersed with prologues detailing the journey, route maps showing joining lineages, and life-like reconstructions of our common ancestors. The Ancestor's Tale represents a pilgrimage on an unimaginable scale: our goal is four billion years away, and the number of pilgrims joining us grows vast - ultimately encompassing all living creatures. At the end of the journey lies something remarkable in its simplicity and transformative power: the first, humble, replicating molecules.

Just as we trace our personal family trees from parents to grandparents and so on back in time, so in The Ancestor's Tale Richard Dawkins traces the ancestry of life. As he is at pains to point out, this is very much our human tale, our ancestry. Surprisingly, it is one that many otherwise literate people are largely unaware of. Hopefully Dawkins's name and well deserved reputation as a best selling writer will introduce them to this wonderful saga.

The Ancestor's Tale takes us from our immediate human ancestors back through what he calls concestors, those shared with the apes, monkeys and other mammals and other vertebrates and beyond to the dim and distant microbial beginnings of life some 4 billion years ago. It is a remarkable story which is still very much in the process of being uncovered. And, of course from a scientist of Dawkins stature and reputation we get an insider's knowledge of the most up-to-date science and many of those involved in the research. And, as we have come to expect of Dawkins, it is told with a passionate commitment to scientific veracity and a nose for a good story. Dawkins's knowledge of the vast and wonderful sweep of life's diversity is admirable. Not only does it encompass the most interesting living representatives of so many groups of organisms but also the important and informative fossil ones, many of which have only been found in recent years.  

Richard Wentk, FOCUS MAGAZINE




E-book link




Audiobook links:


http://rapidshare.com/files/130982724/Richard.Dawkins-The.Ancestors.Tale-Audiobook.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/130993962/Richard.Dawkins-The.Ancestors.Tale-Audiobook.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/131003095/Richard.Dawkins-The.Ancestors.Tale-Audiobook.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/131011296/Richard.Dawkins-The.Ancestors.Tale-Audiobook.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/131011877/Richard.Dawkins-The.Ancestors.Tale-Audiobook.part5.rar

Steven Pinker - How The Mind Works

How exactly does the brain, a three-pound snarl of electrochemically frantic nervous tissue, create inspired inventions, the feeling of hunger, the experience of beauty, or the sense of self - and how reliable is it?
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Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World (Audiobook)

Eminent Cornell astronomer and bestselling author Sagan debunks the paranormal and the unexplained in a study that will reassure hardcore skeptics but may leave others unsatisfied. To him, purported UFO encounters and alien abductions are products of gullibility, hallucination, misidentification, hoax and therapists' pressure; some alleged encounters, he suggests, may screen memories of sexual abuse. He labels as hoaxes the crop circles, complex pictograms that appear in southern England's wheat and barley fields, and he dismisses as a natural formation the Sphinx-like humanoid face incised on a mesa on Mars, first photographed by a Viking orbiter spacecraft in 1976 and considered by some scientists to be the engineered artifact of an alien civilization. In a passionate plea for scientific literacy, Sagan deftly debunks the myth of Atlantis, Filipino psychic surgeons and mediums such as J.Z. Knight, who claims to be in touch with a 35,000-year-old entity called Ramtha. He also brands as superstition ghosts, angels, fairies, demons, astrology, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and religious apparitions.

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The Economist (04/10/2008 - 20/12/2008 + The World in 2009)

The World in 2009
http://rapidshare.com/files/176284010/TheEconomist_TheWorldIn2009.pdf
December 20, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/176284009/TheEconomist_2008-12-20.pdf
December 13, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/173378781/TheEconomist_2008-12-13.pdf
December 6, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/171967341/TheEconomist_2008-12-06.pdf
November 29, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/169345982/TheEconomist_2008-11-29.pdf
November 22, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/167083265/TheEconomist_2008-11-22.pdf
November 15, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/163916987/TheEconomist_2008-11-15.pdf
November 8, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/162660581/TheEconomist_2008-11-08.pdf
November 1, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/162660580/TheEconomist_2008-11-01.pdf
October 25, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/162660579/TheEconomist_2008-10-25.pdf
October 18, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/162660578/TheEconomist_2008-10-18.pdf
October 11, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/162663482/TheEconomist_2008-10-11.pdf
October 04, 2008
http://rapidshare.com/files/162663481/TheEconomist_2008-10-04.pdf

Socks a la Carte

Flip-book concept is unique to the marketplace in that knitters will be able to create literally thousdands of customized sock designs by simply flipping divided pages.

Socks a la Carte is the ultimate resource for sock knitters who want to design their own original patterns without starting completely from scratch. General instructions at the beginning of the book outline the basics of sock construction, including measuring feet and making calculations based on gauge. The unique flip section is where the pages are divided into three categories: cuff, leg and sock body, which includes the heel and toe. Readers can flip these pages to see how the individual elements work together and then mix and match these patterns to create unique sock styles that they can then knit according to their personal preferences. A bonus gallery will feature a number of finished sock styles in a variety of colors as inspiration for the reader.


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Louis G. Perez - The History of Japan

Every school and public library should update its resources on Japan with this engagingly written and succinct narrative history covering prehistoric times through 1997. This history, based on the most recent scholarship, provides a chronological narrative examining the political, cultural, philosophical, and religious continuities in Japan’s long, rich history in an exploration of why the Japanese are who they are today. Unlike earlier histories of Japan, it brings into sharp focus a discussion of women and other previously ignored subjects.

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