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- The woulda, coulda, shoulda guide to Canadian inventions / by Smith, Steve,1945-author.; Smith, David T.,1978-author.;
"One of Canada's greatest inventors takes on his peers, with mixed results. The author of How to do everything and Red Green's beginner's guide to women has never been reluctant to take on enormously difficult jobs that are doomed to failure. This latest project has turned out to be perhaps his nearest thing to a triumph yet. In Woulda, coulda, shoulda, Red surveys, analyzes, critiques and in some cases tells you how to replicate at home the best Canadian inventions, from the Wonderbra to the hard-cup jockstrap, by way of insulin, the walkie-talkie, synchronised swimming and more world-changing innovations than you can wave a Canadarm at. And speaking of the Canadarm, Red shows how by simply combining common household items such as a cordless drill, metal tape measure, broomstick, ice tongs, bungee cord, fishing reel and, of course, the handiman's secret weapon -- duct tape -- you will in no time at all be lifting oranges out of the fruit bowl like a trained astronaut. Elsewhere, Red tells the little-known story of how the BlackBerry inspired a freelance piccolo player from the Possum Lake area to create a WhistleBerry communication device requiring no internet connection, wireless or electricity. He explains definitively the difference between the alkaline battery and Al Kaline, who played right field for the Detroit Tigers. And he reveals how Lodge Member Dennis Holmsworth's test-run of magnetic shoes along the underside of the Mercury Creek Railway Bridge literally came undone as a result of poor lace-tying skills. The illustrations are inimitably -- because really, who else would want to? -- the work of the author himself, relieved throughout with a large number of photographs in vivid black and white. An important contribution to the sesquicentennial celebrations, and an inspiration to the handiman and handiwoman to aim high, however badly they might miss, The woulda, coulda, shoulda guide to Canadian inventions is a book no shed should be without"--- Subjects: Inventions;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Life as we made it : how 50,000 years of human innovation refined--and redefined--nature / by Shapiro, Beth Alison,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Humans seem to be destroying nature with incessant fiddling. We can use viruses to insert genes for pesticide resistance into plants, or to make the flesh of goldfish glow. We can turn bacteria into factories for millions of molecules, from vitamin A and insulin to diesel fuel. And this year's Nobel Prize went to the inventors of tool called CRISPR, which lets us edit genomes almost as easily as we can edit the text in a computer document. The potential for harm can seem both enormous and inevitable. In Life as We Made It, evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro argues that our fears of new technologies aren't just mistaken, but they miss the big picture about human history: we've been remaking nature for as long as we've been around. As Shapiro shows, the molecular tools of biotechnology are just the latest in a long line of innovations stretching back to the extra food and warm fires that first brought wolves into the human fold, turning them into devoted dogs. Perhaps more importantly, Shapiro offers a new understanding of the evolution of our species and those that surround us. We might think of evolution as a process bigger than humans (and everything else). To the contrary, Shapiro argues that we have always been active participants in it, driving it both inadvertently and intentionally with our remarkable capacity for technological innovation. Shapiro shows that with each innovation and every plant and animal we touched, we not only shaped our own diets, genes, and social structures but we reset the course of evolution, both theirs and ours. Indeed, although we think of only modern technology as capable of gene editing, she shows that even the first stone tools could edit DNA, simply by changing the world in which all life lives. Recasting the history of biology and technology alike, Life as We Made It shows that the history of our species is essentially and inevitably a story of us meddling with nature. And that ultimately, our species' fate depends on how we do it in the future"--- Subjects: Biotechnology; Biotechnology; Nature;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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