Although enormous industrial advances were made in the USSR, the country still lagged behind the West in the post-industrial age. What the Soviets could not build or manufacture, they had to get from the West. The final outcome was a culture developed in which there was no regard for consumerism and no respect for the environment. The author traces the development of the Soviet malaise, but warns that a future authoritarian regime could still revive the technological race. Conversely, he also replies to the academic debate on the excesses of modern technology in the West, with a sharp criticism of feminist and post-modernist perspectives.

The cover of Lifeconscious helps to explain its topic in a nutshell. The background shows a cliff face that reveals the catastrophic boundary between two historical epochs. In this case the Valles Caldera super volcanic eruption 1.4 million years ago. The thin boundary line separating the two epochs is plainly visible and provides stark evidence that this is just one of many catastrophes of biblical proportions that life has had to overcome during our Earth's turbulent history. Lifeconscious will reveal how nature can generate New Species through assimilation and not through the tedious genetic mutations that evolution preaches. The inset picture of the Venus of Willendorf harks back to a time when Man was a hunter/gatherer and when Women were still regarded in high esteem as the mysterious providers of human life. Lifeconscious will demonstrate how life is an unending linear transference of species-specific memories from females to their unborn young. It will finally provide answers to the puzzling questions of What is instinct?, How are new species generated? and Why can't evolution explain the existence of living fossils?. novel light.

Since the earliest days of our species, technology and language have evolved in parallel. This book examines the processes and products of this age-old relationship: a phenomenon we're calling technolingualism -- the mutually influential relationship between language and technology. One the one hand, as humans advance technology to master, control, and change the world around us, our language adapts. More sophisticated social-cultural practices give rise to new patterns of linguistic communication. Language changes in its vocabulary, structures, social conventions, and ideologies. Conversely-and this side of the story has been widely overlooked-the unique features of human language can influence a technology's physical forms and technical processes. Technolingualism explores the fascinating ways, past and present, by which language and technology have informed each other's development. The book reveals important corollaries about the universal nature of language and, most importantly, what it means to be human. From our first babbling noises to the ends of our lives, we are innately attuned to the technologies around us, and our language reflects this. We are, all of us, technolinguals.

The second great transformation of our society in the modern era has demoted manufacturing to a position that is secondary to the service industries, thus originating today's information society. This volume examines how massive social change over the past few decades has created a new set of winners and losers and what this has done to society. The author rejects the orthodox explanations for the losers' plight--such as job stagnation, income inequality, and an increase in crime and violence--and argues that the main causes of success or failure in today's society are psychosocial. While today's losers lack the character structure and values that would help them adjust to change, the winners--the Chameleons--have acquired a character structure symmetrical with the needs of the new society. This new elite, however, is not immune to anxiety and fear because of the contradictions and impossible demands that characterize what Rosen calls the "Chameleon Complex" and because different factions of the elite constantly fight to control culture and shape the nation's identity. Rosen puts contemporary social change in an historical context, showing that today's turmoil resembles the disturbances that have taken place whenever society has undergone rapid and fundamental social change.

This book takes the reader on a journey, navigating the enigmatic aspects of cooperation; a journey that starts inside the body and continues via our thoughts to the human super-organism. Cooperation is one of life's fundamental principles. We are all made of parts - genes, cells, organs, neurons, but also of ideas, or 'memes'. Our societies too are made of parts - us humans. Is all this cooperation fundamentally the same process? From the smallest component parts of our bodies and minds to our complicated societies, everywhere cooperation is the organizing principle. Often this cooperation has emerged because the constituting parts have benefited from the interactions, but not seldom the cooperating units appear to lose on the interaction. How then to explain cooperation? How can we understand our intricate societies where we regularly provide small and large favors for people we are unrelated to, know, or even never expect to meet again? Where does the idea come from that it is right to risk one's life for country, religion or freedom? The answers seem to reside in the two processes that have shaped humanity: biological and cultural evolution.

There is nothing like this in print anywhere! So, you know history . . . well, Brough explains it. He applies evolutionary natural selection to the whole of human history and prehistory, showing how social evolution works. He fully explains what makes civilizations rise and fall-our own, for example. No wonder all this was never known before: religion-influenced academic thinking stood in the way! If anything is capable of bringing Free Thinkers "out of the closet" so they can come together and organize, this is it. This extensive research effectively explains what the Religious-Right does to a society because the research is objective, impartial. Every Free Thinker who reads it will find out why Religious Reaction is growing, what it did in previous societies (yes, in every civilization, even in prehistory) and what is happening this time.

The technical problems confronting different societies and periods, and the measures taken to solve them, form the concern of this annual collection of essays. It deals with the history of technical discovery and change, and explores the relation of technology to other aspects of life.

The editors have assembled a collection of original essays offering a holistic view of how technology shapes the modern world. Consideration is given to several major issues, such as the dehumanizing effects of technology, which tends to objectify social life; the emphasis on productivity and the accumulation of material goods; and the intricacies involved in creating a responsible technology that would establish more socially sensitive principles, values, and beliefs. Technology is examined not simply as machinery, but as a procedure that can be used to define every aspect of social existence, and the book demonstrates how to bring about the changes that are necessary to remedy this alienating situation.

In this age of global communication, local identities and nation-states reassert themselves when cultural boundaries are dissolved and reconstructed. This collection of essays by noted scholars in many fields provides a wide range of theoretical approaches and empirical studies that, together, shed light on how local cultural identities resist the forces of globalization by virtue of tradition, transculturation, domestication and hybridization. Examining how people make sense of the world and their own identities as cultural and national boundaries are crossed, In Search of Boundaries transcends many traditional dichotomies between East and West and, more importantly, between tradition and modernity. Interest in the study of boundaries has grown in sociology, anthropology, geography, and other social sciences, but it has not focused on communication processes. This book fills that void with a series of wide-ranging approaches, from the critical to the liberal, the empirical to the cultural, and the Occidental to the Oriental, and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the increasingly global nature of nationality, culture, and identity.

Spracklen explores the impact of the internet on leisure and leisure studies, examining the ways in which digital leisure spaces and activities have become part of everyday leisure. Covering a range of issues from social media and file-sharing to romance on the Internet, this book presents new theoretical directions for digital leisure.

Show the children in your life the awe-inspiring connection between the natural world and the God who created it. The bestselling children's devotional Indescribable: 100 Devotions About God and Science resonated with more than 100,000 kids and parents. Now Louie Giglio offers 100 more devotions about God and science that will expand the curiosity of your 6- to 10-year-olds. Including amazing scientific facts, beautiful photography, fun illustrations, and simple activities, How Great Is Our God covers topics like Space and time Earth and weather The human body Animals Plants and more! With this science devotional, which is based on Giglio's "How Great Is Our God" message and A Trip Around the Sun sermon series, children will embark on a journey to discover more about God and His incredible creation. From radioactive bananas to the earth's trip around the sun to the desert frog that hibernates for seven years, the wonders of the universe will deepen your kids' appreciation for God's wild imagination.

The book demonstrates that food safety is a multidisciplinary scientific discipline that is specifically designed to prevent foodborne illness to consumers. It is generally assumed to be an axiom by both nonprofessionals and professionals alike, that the most developed countries, through their intricate and complex standards, formal trainings and inspections, are always capable of providing much safer food items and beverages to consumers as opposed to the lesser developed countries and regions of the world. Clearly, the available data regarding the morbidity and the mortality in different areas of the world confirms that in developing countries, the prevalence and the incidence of presumptive foodborne illness is much greater. However, other factors need to be taken into consideration in this overall picture: First of all, one of the key issues in developing countries appears to be the availability of safe drinking water, a key element in any food safety strategy. Second, the availability of healthcare facilities, care providers, and medicines in different parts of the world makes the consequences of foodborne illness much more important and life threatening in lesser developed countries than in most developed countries. It would be therefore ethnocentric and rather simplistic to state that the margin of improvement in food safety is only directly proportional to thelevel of development of the society or to the level of complexity of any given national or international standard. Besides standards and regulations, humans as a whole have evolved and adapted different strategies to provide and to ensure food and water safety according to their cultural and historical backgrounds. Our goal is to discuss and to compare these strategies in a cross-cultural and technical approach, according to the realities of different socio-economic, ethnical and social heritages.

Our Scientists today, have come to believe in a new god, "The Scientific Method." However, virtually all of the greatest scientists of all time, e.g. Einstein, Franklin, Newton, Euclid, and many more, believed in a personal, omnipotent, omniscient, and all loving God who has provided a place for our ego, soul, spirit, or whatever you choose to call it, following our body's death. This book is dedicated to showing that science and theology are all part of the same. The Story A newspaper reporter from outside our culture is asked to investigate a place referred to as New Jerusalem. He soon learns: What: It is the Heaven that the soals of the followers of Jesus Christ go to following their Earthly body's death and others may go later. When: Does it occur and is it the same for all Where: Is New Jerusalim located, is it perhaps in inter-dimensional space. Why: Has God prepared this for his children? How: Is this process explained scientifically? Is this explanation scientifically reasonable?

What is 'technology'? What does it help us to do? What does it force us to consider about our experience of being in the world? In Challenging the Phenomena of Technology, technology is positioned as an experience with specific features, rather than as a class of objects, and this enables a reflection on the ways in which amateurs and experts interact with the artefacts that all humans rely upon. Using e-readers, such as the Kindle and iPad, as a case study, Hayler argues that the use of technology is both more complicated and more human than public discussion often gives it credit for, forcing us to consider its impacts on perception, cognition, and what it means to know anything at all.

What are we doing on planet earth? Why are we here? Did we evolve? Or, are we created? Many of us, as we age, don't so easily accept many philosophies and teachings about life. We come to realize the degree to which truth is bent and shaped by special interests in social, political, and religious affairs. After 40 years in the making, In Search of Destiny brings to you a gripping scientific and spiritual search for human destiny. Are we here to just be born, grow old, and die on planet earth? Or, is there evidence beyond this? In Search of Destiny draws a decisive conclusion.

This book provides a sociological analysis of the controversy surrounding GM crops in Telangana, India. There is much debate as to whether GM technology holds the key to improving the welfare of poor farmers globally or serves primarily to increase the profits of multinational corporations while enhancing cultivator risk. Desmond's study is located in the economically vulnerable and politically volatile district of Warangal in Telangana, a context associated with high numbers of farmer suicides. Uniquely foregrounding the perspectives of cultivators and the landless, Desmond explores how GM crops are variously legitimated and delegitimated in three Warangal villages by those whose livelihoods are at stake in the debate, but whose voices are rarely heard within it. This book will be significant for those with an interest in GM crops, power and knowledge and their relation to understandings of development, democracy and risk management worldwide.

The God Delusion caused a sensation when it was published in 2006. Within weeks it became the most hotly debated topic, with Dawkins himself branded as either saint or sinner for presenting his hard-hitting, impassioned rebuttal of religion of all types. His argument could hardly be more topical. While Europe is becoming increasingly secularized, the rise of religious fundamentalism, whether in the Middle East or Middle America, is dramatically and dangerously dividing opinion around the world. In America, and elsewhere, a vigorous dispute between 'intelligent design' and Darwinism is seriously undermining and restricting the teaching of science. In many countries religious dogma from medieval times still serves to abuse basic human rights such as women's and gay rights. And all from a belief in a God whose existence lacks evidence of any kind. Dawkins attacks God in all his forms. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry and abuses children. The God Delusion is a brilliantly argued, fascinating polemic that will be required reading for anyone interested in this most emotional and important subject.

An author on the cutting edge of today's theology and science discussions argues that creedal Christianity has much to contribute to the ongoing conversation. This book contains an intellectual history of theology's engagement with science during the modern period, critiques current approaches, and makes a constructive proposal for how a Christian theological vision of natural knowledge can be better pursued. The author explains that it is good both for religion and for science when Christians treat theology as their first truth discourse. Foreword by David Bentley Hart.

A fascinating look at the historical relationship between environmental issues and scientific study, social attitudes, and public policy from the 17th century to the present. The Environment and Science: Social Impact and Interaction explores the history of how science investigates nature and how those studies both shape and are shaped by the social attitudes, philosophies, and politics of their times. It follows the changes in perceptions of the natural world and humankind's place in it from the European colonization of North America through the Industrial Revolution and westward expansion, to the rise of the consumer economy and the recent hardening of the ideological battle lines over environmental policy. Coverage includes the emergence of ecology as a science and conservation as a movement, the long history of conflicts between business interests and environmentalists, and the role of scientific studies in debates over atomic and nuclear power, pesticides, toxic emissions, and other human-made sources of environmental degradation. Biographical sketches of major contributors to the study of human/environment interaction, including Carolus Linnaeus, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson, and Barry Commoner Primary source documents from key environmental writers

Fascination with satellite television and Internet technology has become an obsession. People throughout the world watch television and believe what they see and hear--without realizing that pictures are selected and stories are sometimes distorted. Concurrently, the world's elite are drawn to the increasing availability of news on the Internet, effectively widening the gap between those who have and do not have access to the new technologies. This analysis of the worldwide impact of new communications technologies shows how ordinary citizens can protect themselves from media brainwashing. Interviews from across the globe shed light on this dynamic and on the roles of viewers as victims or victors in different situations. This is a book for the media professional; students and scholars in the fields of journalism, communications, political science, international relations, and business; as well as for government officials and concerned citizens who do not want to be controlled by the media.