Systems Science

The American standard system of measurement is a unique and odd thing to behold with its esoteric, inconsistent standards: 12 inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, 16 ounces in a pound, 100 pennies to the dollar. For something as elemental as counting and estimating the world around us, it seems like a confusing tool to use. So how did we end up with it? Most of the rest of the world is on the metric system, and for a time in the 1970s America appeared ready to make the switch.

Here is the novelization of the premiere episode of Star Trek, Voyager, the unprecedented fourth television series based on Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future. It is the story of the crew of the Starship Voyager, who are hurled far across the galaxy and must team up with their most dangerous adversaries to return home. Read by Robert Picardo, and enhanced with sound effects and an original score!

John Lee has left Earth behind him as he travels to the capital of the Galactic Council. Seeking rest and an answer to what the enigmatic System is, John plans to spend his time reading and researching on Irvina. But fate has other plans for the human Paladin. Faced with a new quest and a Galactic Society that is as unfair to its citizens as it was to Earth, John must decide if his desire for a quieter life outweighs his conscience.

From the hosts of New Hampshire Public Radio’s Civics 101 and New Yorker cartoonist Tom Toro comes A User's Guide to Democracy, a lively crash course in everything you should know about how the US government works.

When Stink learns that Pluto has flunked the Planet Test for being too shrimpy, he has no choice but to take a stand for the sake of little planets (and little people) everywhere. Will our humble hero, Stink Moody, be smart enough to defeat a panel of big-shot scientists and class know-it-all Riley Rottenberger? For the answer to this burning question, tune in - and prepare to have your universe rocked!

Whether your garden is big or small or you are a complete beginner, building raised beds can help you achieve the perfect garden. It offers many benefits over traditional gardening, including—improving the drainage, being able to manage the quality of the soil, extending your growing season, along with many more. And you don’t need to be an expert to build and manage raised beds.

The System Apocalypse has brought the clothing industry, and just about everything else, to a grinding halt. Now Lana Pearson intends to kickstart the local industry into gear to help Vancouver self-sustain itself. Key to her strategy are special teams of non-combat classes.

The spectacular conclusion to the thrilling double-sized adventure! Even if, against all odds, the Genesis Wave can be defeated, Picard and his potentially treacherous allies must still confront the greater mystery of what unknown intelligence dared to launch the wave against an unsuspecting galaxy - and for what malevolent purpose...Read by Tim Russ, Tuvok on Voyager!

New York Times best-selling author Seth Siegel tells how contaminants got in our drinking water, what they’re doing to us, and what we must do to make our water safe.

On March 16, 2018, just 26 hours before his scheduled retirement from the organization he had served with distinction for more than two decades, Andrew G. McCabe was fired from his position as deputy director of the FBI. President Donald Trump celebrated on Twitter: "Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy." In The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, Andrew G. McCabe offers a dramatic and candid account of his career and an impassioned defense of the FBI.

Lieutenant Saru is a Kelpien, a member of a prey species born on a world overrun by monstrous predators...and a being who very intimately understands the nature of fear. Challenged on all sides, he is determined to surpass his origins and succeed as a Starfleet officer aboard the U.S.S. Shenzhou. But when Saru breaks protocol in order to prove himself to his crewmates, what begins as a vital rescue mission to save a vessel in distress soon escalates out of control. Forced into a command role he may not be ready for, Saru is caught between his duty and two conflicting agendas.

How did the world’s greatest systems thinkers handled crises, invented revolutionary ideas, and solved complex problems? How did the field of systems thinking develop? Who were the pioneers in the field? Learn about the answers in Lessons from Systems Thinkers, from Norbert Wiener’s pioneering contribution on positive and negative feedback to Warren McCulloch’s research on feedback mechanisms in neurology, from Gregory Bateson’s double bind and how it affects family relationships to Margaret Mead’s systems approach to cultural anthropology.

Everything about Jupiter is big! Its size is big. Even its storms are big! Get the big and small facts about this gas giant that can be seen glowing in the night sky.

Not since The Thin Blue Line has there been a true-crime saga as engrossing as Making a Murderer. Captivating audiences across demographic lines, it made Steven Avery a household name and thrust defense attorney Jerome F. Buting - and his fight against America's dysfunctional criminal justice system - into the spotlight. In Illusion of Justice, Buting uses the Avery case as a springboard to examine the shaky integrity of our law enforcement and legal systems, which he has witnessed firsthand for nearly four decades.

A growing chorus of officials and commentators argues that the Supreme Court has become too political. On this view, the confirmation process is just an exercise in partisan agenda-setting, and the jurists are no more than “politicians in robes” - their ostensibly neutral judicial philosophies mere camouflage for conservative or liberal convictions.

Dennoch wird es für Hal Mason kein Kinderspiel sein, die System-Apokalypse zu überleben. Während er einen Kautionsflüchtling dingfest macht, unterbrechen ihn durchsichtige, blaue Fenster. Sie kündigen es an: Das System – eine Welle strukturierter mystischer Energie, die Galaxien umspannt, alle Elektronik zerstört und der Menschheit Fähigkeiten aus Videospielen verleiht.

“Kill it with fire”, the typical first reaction to a legacy system falling into obsolescence, is a knee-jerk approach that often burns through tons of money and time only to result in a less efficient solution. This book offers a far more forgiving modernization framework, laying out smart value-add strategies and proven incremental techniques that work equally well for ancient systems and brand-new ones.

In June 1985, a young Black man named Darryl Hunt was falsely convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a white copyeditor at the local paper. Many in the community believed him innocent and crusaded for his release even as subsequent trials and appeals reinforced his sentence. Finally, in 2003, the tireless efforts of his attorney combined with an award-winning series of articles by Phoebe Zerwick in the Winston-Salem Journal led to the DNA evidence that exonerated Hunt.

Earth is one step away from a nuclear war, and Paradigm Alpha’s solution to saving what they can of humanity is to upload their brains to The Doomsday System. But while most of the minds are being stored while they sleep, Jeff doesn’t have that option. As the only one who can be uploaded digitally and remain awake, he will be kept alive, as it were, in order to help humanity 10,000 years from now. But thanks to time compression in the system, it will only be a thousand years for him.

For decades, James MacGregor Burns has been one of the great masters of the study of power and leadership in America. Now he turns his eye to an institution of government that he believes has become more powerful---and more partisan---than the Founding Fathers ever intended: the Supreme Court. Much as we would like to believe that the Court remains aloof from ideological politics, Packing the Court reveals how often justices behave like politicians in robes.