Dispatches from Ray's Planet PDF Download

Author: Claire Finlayson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781773860701
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Claire Finlayson
Publisher: Caitlin Press
ISBN: 9781773860305
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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As a child, Claire's big brother Ray was always bright and inquisitive, and she looked up to him. But as the two became teenagers, Ray struggled to acquire the social skills that came more easily to Claire and their friends. Claire tried to help, pointing out what he should or shouldn't have said or done. Ray insisted that he wasn't the problem--"On my planet...", he would explain, there were no social climbers, no cocktail parties, no subtle hints or subliminal messages to miss. On his planet, the telling of little white lies would be a capital offence. At sixteen, sitting with him in the high school cafeteria, Claire vowed to find Ray's "planet." After graduation, Ray took a job as a letter carrier with Canada Post, but after thirty-three years on the job he had developed plantar fasciitis, his feet so painful he couldn't walk. Instead of seeking medical help, he began leaving mail in his truck overnight--a serious dereliction of duty. He was fired, blew his appeal, and spiralled into a suicidal depression. Claire didn't know he was in trouble until he reached out to her by email. Thus began a remarkable email correspondence that pulled back the curtain on an inner life Claire couldn't have imagined. Where in-person interactions plunged him into hot water, by email, Ray's writing revealed a compassionate, funny, sad man who showed extraordinary insight into his often self-destructive way of navigating the world. Ray was fifty when Claire realized he might have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but by then, having survived without a diagnosis his whole life, Ray was reluctant to have a label pinned on him and resisted Claire's efforts to fix him by trying, in all sincerity, to make him more like her. Dispatches From Ray's Planet draws on Ray and Claire's correspondence to tell the story of two siblings from two very different planets. There are thousands of Rays in our world, hiding in basements or holding up walls at social functions. In this collective memoir, Claire and Ray share their journey with the hope that others can also learn that we all perceive the world in different ways, and that "different" does not necessarily mean dangerous.

Author: Marcia Bartusiak
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300235747
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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An award-winning science writer presents a captivating collection of cosmological essays for the armchair astronomer The galaxy, the multiverse, and the history of astronomy are explored in this engaging compilation of cosmological tales by multiple-award-winning science writer Marcia Bartusiak. In thirty-two concise and engrossing essays, the author provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the universe and those who strive to uncover its mysteries. Bartusiak shares the back stories for many momentous astronomical discoveries, including the contributions of such pioneers as Beatrice Tinsley, with her groundbreaking research in galactic evolution, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the scientist who first discovered radio pulsars. An endlessly fascinating collection that you can dip into in any order, these pieces will transport you to ancient Mars, when water flowed freely across its surface; to the collision of two black holes, a cosmological event that released fifty times more energy than was radiating from every star in the universe; and to the beginning of time itself.

Author: John Noble Wilford
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393322774
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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The scientists seeking to unravel the mysteries of the universe are among the most imaginative and provocative explorers of our time. Like the geographic explorers of earlier centuries, they venture into uncharted spaces, come upon new worlds, expand the knowable, and challenge thinking about the place of humans in all things. Collected here are the most exciting moments of recent astronomical explorations, presented by the award-winning science reporters of The New York Times. Recent leaps in technology have allowed astronomers to peer deeply into the universe and to bring into focus fascinating and unsuspected phenomena. Cosmic Dispatches conveys in thrilling detail the meaning and significance of what scientists have been learning about our universe.

Author: Elizabeth Rush
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571319700
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, this powerful elegy for our disappearing coast “captures nature with precise words that almost amount to poetry” (The New York Times). Hailed as “the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing” (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love. With every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant—and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through these dramatic changes, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish. Rush sheds light on the unfolding crises through firsthand testimonials—a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago—woven together with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities. A Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal Best Book Of 2018 Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award A Chicago Tribune Top Ten Book of 2018

Author: Michael E. Mann
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023115254X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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A member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change examines the fossil-fuel industry's public relations campaign to discredit the science of climate change and deny the reality of global warming.

Author: Marcia Bartusiak
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307276600
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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The riveting and mesmerizing story behind a watershed period in human history, the discovery of the startling size and true nature of our universe. On New Years Day in 1925, a young Edwin Hubble released his finding that our Universe was far bigger, eventually measured as a thousand trillion times larger than previously believed. Hubble’s proclamation sent shock waves through the scientific community. Six years later, in a series of meetings at Mount Wilson Observatory, Hubble and others convinced Albert Einstein that the Universe was not static but in fact expanding. Here Marcia Bartusiak reveals the key players, battles of will, clever insights, incredible technology, ground-breaking research, and wrong turns made by the early investigators of the heavens as they raced to uncover what many consider one of most significant discoveries in scientific history.

Author: Sarah Kurchak
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
ISBN: 1771622474
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Sarah Kurchak is autistic. She hasn’t let that get in the way of pursuing her dream to become a writer, or to find love, but she has let it get in the way of being in the same room with someone chewing food loudly, and of cleaning her bathroom sink. In I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder, Kurchak examines the Byzantine steps she took to become “an autistic success story,” how the process almost ruined her life and how she is now trying to recover. Growing up undiagnosed in small-town Ontario in the eighties and nineties, Kurchak realized early that she was somehow different from her peers. She discovered an effective strategy to fend off bullying: she consciously altered nearly everything about herself—from her personality to her body language. She forced herself to wear the denim jeans that felt like being enclosed in a sandpaper iron maiden. Every day, she dragged herself through the door with an elevated pulse and a churning stomach, nearly crumbling under the effort of the performance. By the time she was finally diagnosed with autism at twenty-seven, she struggled with depression and anxiety largely caused by the same strategy she had mastered precisely. She came to wonder, were all those years of intensely pretending to be someone else really worth it? Tackling everything from autism parenting culture to love, sex, alcohol, obsessions and professional pillow fighting, Kurchak’s enlightening memoir challenges stereotypes and preconceptions about autism and considers what might really make the lives of autistic people healthier, happier and more fulfilling.

Author: Dave Freedman
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1401384587
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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A shocking biological discovery. A previously unknown predatory species. Evolving just like the dinosaurs. Now. Today. Being forced out of its world and into man's for a violent first encounter. Weaving science and thriller in a way not seen since Jurassic Park, Natural Selection introduces a phenomenally dangerous new species that is rapidly adapting in a way never before seen. A mystery. A chase. A vast expansive puzzle. A team of marine scientists is on the verge of making the most stunning discovery in the history of man. In their quest for answers, they engage a host of fascinating characters. The world's premier neurology expert. A specialist on animal teeth. Flight simulation wizards, evolution historians, deep sea geologists, and so many more. Along the way, the team of six men and women experience love, friendship, loyalty and betrayal. Together, they set off to exotic locales. Literally to the bottom of the ocean. To a vast and mysterious redwood forest. To an unknown complex of massive caves. When people start dying, the stakes are upped even further. Then the real hunt begins. . . . Loaded with astonishing action sequences, Natural Selection is that rare breed of thriller, filled with intricately layered research, real three-dimensional characters, and tornado pacing.

Author: Ray Jayawardhana
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846544
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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An insider's look at the cutting-edge science of today's planet hunters In Strange New Worlds, renowned astronomer Ray Jayawardhana brings news from the front lines of the epic quest to find planets—and alien life—beyond our solar system. Only in the past two decades, after millennia of speculation, have astronomers begun to discover planets around other stars—thousands in fact. Now they are closer than ever to unraveling distant twins of the Earth. In this book, Jayawardhana vividly recounts the stories of the scientists and the remarkable breakthroughs that have ushered in this extraordinary age of exploration. He describes the latest findings--including his own—that are challenging our view of the cosmos and casting new light on the origins and evolution of planets and planetary systems. He reveals how technology is rapidly advancing to support direct observations of Jupiter-like gas giants and super-Earths—rocky planets with several times the mass of our own planet—and how astronomers use biomarkers to seek possible life on other worlds. Strange New Worlds provides an insider's look at the cutting-edge science of today's planet hunters, our prospects for discovering alien life, and the debates and controversies at the forefront of extrasolar-planet research. In a new afterword, Jayawardhana explains some of the most recent developments as we search for the first clues of life on other planets.