Sustaining the West
Sustaining the West

Author: Liza Piper

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 2015-03-31

Total Pages: 585

ISBN-13: 1554589258

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Western Canada’s natural environment faces intensifying threats from industrialization in agriculture and resource development, social and cultural complicity in these destructive practices, and most recently the negative effects of global climate change. The complex nature of the problems being addressed calls for productive interdisciplinary solutions. In this book, arts and humanities scholars and literary and visual artists tackle these pressing environmental issues in provocative and transformative ways. Their commitment to environmental causes emerges through the fields of environmental history, environmental and ecocriticism, ecofeminism, ecoart, ecopoetry, and environmental journalism. This indispensable and timely resource constitutes a sustained cross-pollinating conversation across the environmental humanities about forms of representation and activism that enable ecological knowledge and ethical action on behalf of Western Canadian environments, yet have global reach. Among the developments in the contributors’ construction of environmental knowledge are a focus on the power of sentiment in linking people to the fate of nature, and the need to decolonize social and environmental relations and assumptions in the West.

Music Radio
Music Radio

Author: Jim Cox

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2024-10-17

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 1476604517

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Long before the invention of "talk radio," music was the heart and soul of radio programming--whether standing alone, filling in the time between features, or identifying to widespread audiences the shows coming on and signing off the air. Jim Cox's Music Radio encompasses the entire range of musical programming from the early 1920s to the early 1960s. Jazz, country, classical, gospel, pop, big band, western, and semi-classical forms are covered, as are the vocalists, instrumentalists and disc jockeys who made them available to listeners. Virtually all the major series and artists are explored in depth, and lesser known shows and performers are touched on as well. Some of the series included are The Bing Crosby Show, The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, The Fred Waring Show, Grand Ole Opry, The Bell Telephone Hour, The Cities Service Concerts, Your Hit Parade, The Kate Smith Show, The Railroad Hour, and The Voice of Firestone.

New Geographies of the American West
New Geographies of the American West

Author: William Riebsame Travis

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2007-05-11

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1597266140

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Reconciling explosive growth with often majestic landscape defines New Geographies of the American West. Geographer William Travis examines contemporary land use changes and development patterns from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and assesses the ecological and social outcomes of Western development. Unlike previous "boom" periods dependent on oil or gold, the modern population explosion in the West reflects a sustained passion for living in this specific landscape. But the encroaching exurbs, ranchettes, and ski resorts are slicing away at the very environment that Westerners cherish. Efforts to manage growth in the West are usually stymied at the state and local levels. Is it possible to improve development patterns within the West's traditional anti-planning, pro-growth milieu, or is a new model needed? Can the region develop sustainably, protecting and managing its defining wildness, while benefiting from it, too? Travis takes up the challenge , suggesting that functional and attractive settlement can be embedded in preserved lands, working landscapes, and healthy ecologies.

Scale
Scale

Author: Geoffrey West

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 014311090X

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"This is science writing as wonder and as inspiration." —The Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in. Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term “complexity” can be misleading, however, because what makes West’s discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science: West found that despite the riotous diversity in mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal’s circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient—and lives 25% longer. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism’s body. West’s work has been game-changing for biologists, but then he made the even bolder move of exploring his work’s applicability. Cities, too, are constellations of networks and laws of scalability relate with eerie precision to them. Recently, West has applied his revolutionary work to the business world. This investigation has led to powerful insights into why some companies thrive while others fail. The implications of these discoveries are far-reaching, and are just beginning to be explored. Scale is a thrilling scientific adventure story about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in simple but profound ways. Through the brilliant mind of Geoffrey West, we can envision how cities, companies and biological life alike are dancing to the same simple, powerful tune.

Sustaining Seas
Sustaining Seas

Author: Elspeth Probyn

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-02-06

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1786612844

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Why read Sustaining Seas? It is as simple as this: the seas sustain all life. This edited book emerges from conversations across several disciplines, and including practitioners of different specialities (artists, writers, planners, policy makers) about how to sustain the seas, as they sustain us. Sustaining Seas: Oceanic space and the politics of care aims to build a better understanding of what it means to care for aquatic places and their biocultural communities. The book is truly interdisciplinary and brings together a wide range of authors including, academics from diverse fields (architecture, science, cultural studies, law), artists, fisheries managers, and Indigenous Traditional Owners. It provides readers with new theoretical framings, as well as grounded case studies with a wide geographical and cultural breadth. This book assumes that understanding complexity, including social, cultural, ecological and economic interconnections, is crucial to any solution. Sustaining the seas is one of the most pressing global challenges for the planet and all her inhabitants. How to do justice to this challenge is an exigency for all scholars, and how to represent the oceans is a guiding theme in the book that is addressed by scholars, artists, and practitioners.

Musicmakers of Network Radio
Musicmakers of Network Radio

Author: Jim Cox

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 0786489626

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Before television, radio was the sole source of simultaneous mass entertainment in America. The medium served as launching pad for the careers of countless future stars of stage and screen. Singers and conductors became legends by offering musical entertainment directly to Americans in their homes, vehicles, and places of work and play. This volume presents biographies of 24 renowned performers who spent a significant portion of their careers in front of a radio microphone. Profiles of individuals like Steve Allen, Rosemary Clooney, Bob Crosby, Johnny Desmond, Jo Stafford, and Percy Faith, along with groups such as the Ink Spots and the King's Men, reveal the private lives behind the public personas and bring to life the icons and ambiance of a bygone era.