Becoming a telepath was hard. Being a telepath is harder. Eighteen-year-old Amber is the youngest of the five telepaths who protect the hundred million citizens of one of the great hive cities of twenty-sixth century Earth. Her job is hunting down criminals before they commit their crimes, but this time her team arrive too late. Someone is already dead. Someone that Amber knows. Amber is determined to catch the murderer, but she doesn’t realize who she’s up against, or the true danger of opening her mind to the thoughts of others. Defender is the second book in the Hive Mind series.
Amber is one of over a million eighteen-year-olds in one of the great hive cities of twenty-sixth century Earth. She’s about to enter the Lottery of 2532, which will assess her abilities and decide her hive level, her profession, her whole future life. Amber’s dream is to be level 10 or above, her nightmare is to be a level 99 Sewage Technician. When Lottery discovers Amber is a rare and precious telepath, she must adapt to a new life protecting the people of the crowded hive city. Her job is hunting down criminals before they commit their crimes, but she doesn’t know she’s being hunted herself.
Collects Secret Defenders (1993) #15-25. The Merc with a Mouth joins the non-team without a known lineup! But can a talkative guy like Wade Wilson keep things hush-hush? Following Deadpool through the ever-rotating door of the Secret Defenders are the Heroes for Hire and a future Guardian of the Galaxy! Luke Cage is among the first recruits for new leader Doctor Druid, taking on the malevolent Malachi! But will he and Deadpool dig Cadaver, their newest ally? Then, Iron Fist, Giant-Man, Iceman and Archangel will feel the sting of Swarm! Spider-Woman, Venom and U.S.Agent enlist for a showdown with Slaymaker, while the mysterious Shadowoman transforms into Sepulchre! Then, Dagger, Deathlok and Drax the Destroyer join the fun when the Secret Defenders battle the Defenders?! Is this the end for comics most surreptitious super group?
A sensational YA science fiction debut from an exciting new British author! Just because she's confined to the planet, doesn't mean she can't reach for the stars. 2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. Eighteen-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can't travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She's an "ape," a "throwback," but this is one ape girl who won't give in. Jarra makes up a fake military background for herself and joins a class of norms who are on Earth for a year of practical history studies excavating the dangerous ruins of the old cities. She wants to see their faces when they find out they've been fooled into thinking an ape girl was a norm. She isn't expecting to make friends with the enemy, to risk her life to save norms, or to fall in love. From the Hardcover edition.
Learn a new model for understanding how organizations really operate and implement changes that get real results. With so many forces of change buffeting the business world today, a scary state of flux has replaced any sense of certainty, stability, and familiarity, delivering a wake-up call to make crucial changes happen, make them happen quickly, and make them stick. Traditional approaches to change management fall into one of two categories: Organizations function like machines, where managers pull change levers to “fix” problems with an engineer’s mindset (IQ). Or People form social networks wherein individual “influencers” make change happen by developing effective interpersonal relationships (EQ). Neither of these models offer a full picture to what really happens in an organization. In this groundbreaking new book, change expert Siobhan McHale offers a third option: organizations are complex ecosystems that require a Hive Mind or Group Intelligence (GQ) to bring about meaningful and lasting change. We can learn a lot of lessons from how bees operate: Hard work: An individual bee spends its entire 40-day life span gathering food for the hive. Teamwork: Inside each teeming beehive an entire community works collectively to achieve shared goals. Role clarity: Every bee has a specific job, with the queen, drones, and worker bees faithfully playing their part. Resilience: Bees can overcome daunting challenges, including all the parasites, pathogens, pesticides, and climate fluctuations from Maine to Miami and beyond. See how a hive mindset solves many of the common problems all businesses struggle with today!
Over the last few decades, economists and psychologists have quietly documented the many ways in which a person's IQ matters. But, research suggests that a nation's IQ matters so much more. As Garett Jones argues in Hive Mind, modest differences in national IQ can explain most cross-country inequalities. Whereas IQ scores do a moderately good job of predicting individual wages, information processing power, and brain size, a country's average score is a much stronger bellwether of its overall prosperity. Drawing on an expansive array of research from psychology, economics, management, and political science, Jones argues that intelligence and cognitive skill are significantly more important on a national level than on an individual one because they have "positive spillovers." On average, people who do better on standardized tests are more patient, more cooperative, and have better memories. As a result, these qualities—and others necessary to take on the complexity of a modern economy—become more prevalent in a society as national test scores rise. What's more, when we are surrounded by slightly more patient, informed, and cooperative neighbors we take on these qualities a bit more ourselves. In other words, the worker bees in every nation create a "hive mind" with a power all its own. Once the hive is established, each individual has only a tiny impact on his or her own life. Jones makes the case that, through better nutrition and schooling, we can raise IQ, thereby fostering higher savings rates, more productive teams, and more effective bureaucracies. After demonstrating how test scores that matter little for individuals can mean a world of difference for nations, the book leaves readers with policy-oriented conclusions and hopeful speculation: Whether we lift up the bottom through changing the nature of work, institutional improvements, or freer immigration, it is possible that this period of massive global inequality will be a short season by the standards of human history if we raise our global IQ.
This collection vigorously addresses the religious implications of extreme human enhancement technology. Topics covered include cutting edge themes, such as moral enhancement, common ground to both transhumanism and religion, the meaning of death, desire and transcendence, and virtue ethics. Radical enhancement programs, advocated by transhumanists, could arguably have a more profound impact than any other development in human history. Reflecting a range of opinion about the desirability of extreme enhancement, leading scholars in the field join with emerging scholars to foster enhanced conversation on these topics.
Array 2781 is the third part of the 2781 sequence featuring Drago Tell Dramis as a newly qualified fighter pilot, and best read after Hera 2781 (A Drago short story) and Hestia 2781 (A Drago novel) Drago has now learned the secret that his Betan clan has been hiding for almost a decade. He's currently alternating between moods of pitying his second cousin and fighter team leader, Jaxon, and wanting to strangle him. They both have to put their feelings aside though, and concentrate on using lumbering solar array transport ships to help with the repairs of the five Earth solar arrays, because Earth is critically short of power. Fortunately, repairing solar arrays is perfectly routine work, so Drago definitely can't get into trouble. Cover depicts the solar array transport ship, Antares.
Sol 2781 is the third of three full-length novels set immediately after the novelette length short story Hera 2781. Major Drago Tell Dramis is celebrating the fact that the saboteur has been caught, and the Earth solar arrays will be safe now. The arrest of a member of the main board of Hospital Earth has consequences though. As Drago hits orbital levels of fury, and declares his own personal war against Hospital Earth, he’s hit by even more unexpected problems. There’s a joke that says one birth member of the Tell clan attracts trouble, two birth members of the Tell clan invite minor disasters, while three is the critical mass that triggers cataclysmic events. As the danger mounts, the question is whether Drago and his two cousins, Jaxon and Gemelle, can prove an alternative theory. Are three members of the Tell clan really the critical mass that resolves cataclysmic events? This extra-long novel concludes the Drago Tell Dramis 2781 sequence of Hera 2781, Hestia 2781, Array 2781, and Sol 2781.
