Added by: Maria | Karma: 3098.81 | Non-Fiction | 9 July 2008
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The spectacular but unsettling reality of faster cycles of change,
breakdown of traditional values and institutions, and many other
symptoms of technological innovation-what makes these necessary is the
subject of this thought-provoking book. All the good intentions of
educators, scholars, politicians, and policymakers will fail if they do
not recognize why literacy as a dominant framework of human activity is
no longer adequate. The current dynamics of human activity is without
precedent. It is not the result of technology, but of deeper forces of
change. The answer to the failure of many seemingly eternal
institutions-government, family, education-is not improvement in the
traditional sense, but a fundamentally new perspective. The digital
paradigm underlying the new civilization provides a basis for this
perspective. But it will be misapplied unless understood within the
broader framework of the driving forces behind human activity.
In the early decades of the 8th century AD, Islamic forces were flooding into Europe through the Iberian peninsula, threatening Frankish and Burgundian territory and raiding it with ever-increasing ferocity.
At the battle of Poitiers, also known as Tours, Christian forces under the Frankish leader Charles Martel 'The Hammer' (grandfather of Charlemagne) confronted a massive invading Islamic army.
AUDIOBOOK: Hell Island
Four groups of special forces are being parachuted into Hell Island with no idea who or what will they be fighting once they get there. Can the best of the US armed forces defeat their unknown enemy? Definitely one for the boys, it's action-packed.
It is an island that doesn't appear on any maps. A place where secret tests have been going on. Tests that have gone terribly wrong...
When all contact with the island is suddenly lost, four crack special-forces units are dropped in. Their mission: to land on Hell Island and discover what has happened.
Nothing can prepare them for what they find there. You could say they've just entered hell. Only that would be wrong.
This is much, much worse.
Richard Dawkins is not a shy man. Edward Larson's research shows that most scientists today are not formally religious, but Dawkins is an in-your-face atheist in the witty British style. The title of this book, refers to the Rev. William Paley's 1802 work, Natural Theology, which argued that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Dawkins: "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way... it is the blind watchmaker." Dawkins is a hard-core scientist: he doesn't just tell you what is so, he shows you how to find out for yourself.
Every page rings of truth. It is one of the best science books-one of the best any books-I have ever read.
Lee Dembart, Los Angeles Times
