Sounds Wild And Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, And The Crisis of Sensory Extinction

The soundscape—a term coined by the author—is our sonic environment, the ever-present array of noises with which we all live. Beginning with the primordial sounds of nature, we have experienced an ever-increasing complexity of our sonic surroundings. As civilization develops, new noises rise up around us: from the creaking wheel, the clang of the blacksmith's hammer, and the distant chugging of steam trains to the "sound imperialism" of airports, city streets, and factories. The author contends that we now suffer from an overabundance of acoustic information and a proportionate diminishing of our ability to hear the nuances and subtleties of sound. Our task, he maintains, is to listen, analyze, and make distinctions.

This book provides contributions on various topics pertaining to moths and caterpillars written by experts in their respective fields. Feeding behavior, phytochemicals, hostplant preferences, and neurophysiological responses of sensory organs involved in peripheral gustatory coding are covered. This book targets a wide audience of entomologists, biologists, ecologists, zoologists, teachers, and students.

Radically simple experimental tools to help anyone tap into a high-energy brain state to fire up innovative potential and shape their lives with intention—by the founder of a Harvard biomedical engineering innovation lab.

This book grapples with what it means when education and democracy are at an end: when these two foundational aspects of our society seem to have reached a culminating point, no longer appearing to produce and make sense amid the crises of our time. Engaging topical political events and mobilizing a variety of cultural resources, Di Paolantonio shows that today the possibility of the future and the significance of an expansive transgenerational sensibility are radically in question as trends toward destruction, cruelty, and banality are steering world-defying calamities, and sparking “chronopathologies” of doom and despair among the planet’s occupants. Unfolding his argument through a series of accessible chapters that draw on contemporary philosophy, educational thinking, and cultural-artistic works, Di Paolantonio explores how the transgenerational sensibility retains a possibility we might tap for overcoming the impasses of our time.

The Earth has reached a tipping point. Runaway climate change, the sixth great extinction of planetary life, the acidification of the oceans—all point toward an era of unprecedented turbulence in humanity’s relationship within the web of life. But just what is that relationship, and how do we make sense of this extraordinary transition?