Science Reality

Fifty years after the sexual revolution, we are told that we live in a time of unprecedented sexual freedom: that if anything, we are too free now. But beneath the veneer of glossy hedonism, millennial journalist Rachel Hills argues, we are controlled by a new brand of sexual convention: one that influences all of us - woman or man, straight or gay, liberal or conservative.

Through more than 50 Koans - pleasingly paradoxical vignettes following the ancient Zen tradition - leading physicist Anthony Aguirre takes the listener across the world from West to East, and through ideas spanning the age, breadth, and depth of the Universe. Using these beguiling Koans (Could there be a civilization on a mote of dust? How much of your fate have you made?

In 1939, Richard Feynman, a brilliant graduate of MIT, arrived in John Wheeler's Princeton office to report for duty as his teaching assistant. A lifelong friendship and enormously productive collaboration was born, despite sharp differences in personality. The soft-spoken Wheeler, though conservative in appearance, was a raging nonconformist full of wild ideas about the universe. The boisterous Feynman was a cautious physicist who believed only what could be tested. Yet they were complementary spirits.

Dive into the future of AI with this audiobook! Embodied AI is transforming the world by seamlessly integrating advanced technologies into real-world applications. This audiobook offers an in-depth exploration of how AI is bridging the gap between simulations and reality. Discover the secrets of Embodied AI and learn how it’s revolutionizing industries. From innovative techniques like Sim2Real Transfer to the latest in Multimodal Perception, this audiobook covers it all.

Ceasefires have one big downside: They eventually come to an end. And when they do, once again game nodes are set ablaze, and platoons of Dark Faction soldiers threaten our customary world with destruction. The enemy has grown stronger and more numerous. To make matters worse, they also got their hands on even deadlier weaponry. They have learned painful lessons from previous encounters and adjusted their tactics accordingly.

Half-norn event planner Anders Skuldsson is under strict orders from Asgard not to meddle with Fate. But with Enchanted Occasions’ latest booking - the competition for the hand of Faerie’s one true prince - crashing around his ears, it’s really, really, really difficult to toe that particular line. So...if Andy just happens to pose as a contender for the prince? It’s an emergency, damn it. Besides, it’s only temporary, so Odin can hardly blame him. Right?

Does a bear shift in the woods? Well, partially. That was what got grizzly-shifter Ted Farnsworth into trouble. He wasn’t trying to break the Secrecy Pact. He just wants people to see the real him. So he signs up with the mate-matching service Supernatural Selection - which guarantees marriage to a perfect partner. Not only will Ted never be lonely again, but once his new beaver-shifter husband arrives, they’ll build Ted’s dream wilderness retreat together. Win-win.

What does it mean to be human in the 21st century? How do we be real people in a world of online personas and "authentic" simulated experiences? In this innovative examination of our present reality, award-winning writer Laurence Scott charts the ways our traditional mental models of the world have started to fray. Effortlessly applying philosophy to the quotidian, Scott "makes banal things shimmer with meaning" (Guardian).

Who are we, and how do we relate to each other? Luciano Floridi, one of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy, argues that the explosive developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is changing the answer to these fundamental human questions. As the boundaries between life online and offline break down, and we become seamlessly connected to each other and surrounded by smart, responsive objects, we are all becoming integrated into an "infosphere".

Joey Harker isn't a hero. In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house. But then one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension. Joey's walk between the worlds makes him prey to two terrible forces: armies of magic and science who will do anything to harness his power to travel between dimensions.

You've probably heard that the metaverse—a word that seemingly went from nonexistent to everywhere—is the next big thing in technology. What is it? Written by a leading futurist, Metaverse For Dummies unravels the mysteries of the metaverse, for the curious and for anyone looking to get in on the ground floor. Discover how to carve out your niche in the metaverse with easy-to-understand breakdowns of the major technologies and platforms, a guide to doing business in the metaverse, and explorations of what meta means for sports, education, and just about every other area of life.

Over the past few decades, a handful of scientists have been racing to explain a disturbing aspect of our universe: only four percent of it consists of the matter that makes up you, me, our books, and every star and planet. The rest is completely unknown. Richard Panek tells the dramatic story of the quest to find this “dark” matter and an even more bizarre substance called “dark energy”. This is perhaps the greatest mystery in all of science, and solving it will bring fame, funding, and certainly a Nobel Prize.

Becoming a global celebrity overnight would make most people happy. Not Lynn Raven. As a teenage gaming prodigy, she’s enjoyed years of anonymity behind the virtual mask of Larry Coughlin, war-hardened vet and virtual gaming mercenary. But now Lynn has stepped out of the shadows to compete in the cutting-edge augmented reality game TransDimensional Hunter that has taken the world by storm. And she’s winning. But with success has come swarms of paparazzi drones, jealous teammates, and a backstabbing rival team that will use any trick in the book to ruin her.

Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.

When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.

When disaster strikes a cargo flight over the arctic, pilot Andre decides it's time to upload. He pays to have his brain sliced and scanned so his mind can live in the computerized, virtual world of Talespace. Since Talespace runs on the logic of a game, Andre takes full advantage. He becomes a high-flying pegasus learning the magic of the sky and battling monsters for the Night Queen. He's even in time for a fun little war.

Reality is all very well in small doses. It's a perfectly conventional and convenient way of neutralising the imagination. But sometimes when there's more than one reality at play, imagination just won't be neutralised, and the walls between realities come tumbling down. Unfortunately there's usually a damned good reason for there being walls between them in the first place. To keep things out. Things who want to make mischief and play havoc with the natural order.

In Connectography, visionary strategist Parag Khanna travels from Ukraine to Iran, Mongolia to North Korea, Pakistan to Nigeria, and across the Arctic Circle to explain the unprecedented changes affecting every part of the planet. He shows how militaries are deployed to protect supply chains as much as borders, and how nations are less at war over territory than engaged in tugs-of-war over pipelines, railways, shipping lanes, and Internet cables. The new arms race is to connect to the most markets.

The author of The Internet of Things presents his latest book.

The world's best introduction to philosophy, Knowledge, Reality, and Value explains basic philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, such as: How can we know about the world outside our minds? Is there a God? Do we have free will? Are there objective values? What distinguishes right actions from wrong actions? The text clearly explains the most important arguments about these things, and it does so a lot less boringly than most books written by professors.