Wylie Cypher, a corporate attorney, has a dying marriage, a midlife crisis, and is disillusioned with his work. Trying to regain fading youth, he plans a trekking vacation with his daughter, Mercy, across the White Mountains of Peru. When he arrives in Lima a young law student mistakenly believes Wylie is an agent of the US government and gives him a travel guide concealing documents that show how the government is torturing and murdering dissidents. Wylie decides to deliver those documents to US authorities, which will affect the outcome of the civil war raging in Peru at the time. Peruvian government thugs and agents of the Shining Path communist guerrilla movement are quickly on Wylie's trail, both eager to kill Wylie and his entire trekking party. Wylie, his daughter, a local guide, and his friend, an archeologist (who is more than he seems), and porters set out using various ruses to throw their pursuers off track. Wylie narrowly escapes from the local police after being tortured and losing a toe. But can they cross the foreboding eighteen thousand foot high pass and make it to Cajamarca in time to take the only safe flight home and deliver the documents?
What happens when a Master Gardener plants magical seeds from the Peruvian Amazon in experimental agricultural college plots? Why does Bemis International Group (BIG AG), feel so threatened by the plants those seeds produce? What is the mysterious eco-terrorism group doing with genetically modified mildweed seeds? ... The author tells the story with sharp insight and ribald humor. Readers will enjoy meeting the lawyers, tycoons, politicians, young and old lovers, windbags and adventurers who populate Master Gardener"--Page [4], Cover.
Disguised as a semi-dystopian look at America in a few years, this is a delicious satirical send-up of the beltway culture, a paean to our national parks, and an exposition of characters, hilarious, irritating, and very human, who struggle in the Washington web. The author extends current political idiocies to their reasonable, logical, and hilarious conclusions. Along the way, he offers surprising predictions of how current and proposed inventions will affect our future lives. Some of those predictions are happening even sooner than the author expected. Many of the characters that inhabit the pages of National Parks are instantly and indelibly recognizable. Noble and base, they mirror our highest aspirations and lowest common denominators. The author mixes them all in a froth of comic conflict. The director of the national parks, Agatha Jackson, collaborates with green defense lawyer, Portia Merson, to defeat the assault on the parks. Tureen O’Porto, a beautiful lobbyist of questionable moral character, joins forces with the parks’ defenders, not realizing her actions could be fatal. Opposing them is, among others, Senator Deborah Hatchett, who has her own less than honorable reasons for pursuing the sale. There are a lobbyist with a secret toe fetish, a computer genius who creates an x-rated video avatar game, a Chinese gangster looking for respectability, an industrialist intending to dam the Grand Canyon and sell high-priced water to California, corrupt legislators, and, of course, lusty heroines, birth, death, and betrayal . In other words, business as usual.
Longevity is a fable disguised as a medical thriller that ponders the justification for extending human life by thirty years. The tone, however, is light-hearted, even though murder, mayhem, misdirection, and decapitation inhabit Longevity’s pages. The author tosses his main characters into deep holes and finds imaginative ways to extricate them. Lucy Mendoza leads the Longevity project, a medical research team tasked with testing an enzyme that seems to help healthy cells live longer. The trials to extend human life are promising, and others take notice. For several reasons, the federal government, a major pharmaceutical company, and a billionaire investor want the project to fail. To obtain that objective, they have no qualms about eliminating the leader, Lucy. Grant Duran, who left her at the altar, arrives. He’s a former Marine special ops officer who’s lost a hand and is now a molecular biologist. He thwarts the first attempt on Lucy’s life, but as dead bodies accumulate and Lucy and Grant struggle to save themselves, they begin to wonder whether the Longevity project should survive.
Elizabethan poems by such authors as John Donne, Wm Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sydney, Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick. Their poems are juxtaposed with photographs of flowers which compliment the poems. For almost every poem the photograph enlightens or enhances its meaning. The photos are beautifully rendered, and critics call it " a delightful volume." Very colorful and full of meaning.
Wylie Cypher, a corporate attorney, has a dying marriage, a midlife crisis, and is disillusioned with his work. Trying to regain fading youth, he plans a trekking vacation with his daughter, Mercy, across the White Mountains of Peru. When he arrives in Lima a young law student mistakenly believes Wylie is an agent of the US government and gives him a travel guide concealing documents that show how the government is torturing and murdering dissidents. Wylie decides to deliver those documents to US authorities, which will affect the outcome of the civil war raging in Peru at the time. Peruvian government thugs and agents of the Shining Path communist guerrilla movement are quickly on Wylie's trail, both eager to kill Wylie and his entire trekking party. Wylie, his daughter, a local guide, and his friend, an archeologist (who is more than he seems), and porters set out using various ruses to throw their pursuers off track. Wylie narrowly escapes from the local police after being tortured and losing a toe. But can they cross the foreboding eighteen thousand foot high pass and make it to Cajamarca in time to take the only safe flight home and deliver the documents?
Longevity is a fable disguised as a medical thriller that ponders the justification for extending human life by thirty years. The tone, however, is light-hearted, even though murder, mayhem, misdirection, and decapitation inhabit Longevity’s pages. The author tosses his main characters into deep holes and finds imaginative ways to extricate them. Lucy Mendoza leads the Longevity project, a medical research team tasked with testing an enzyme that seems to help healthy cells live longer. The trials to extend human life are promising, and others take notice. For several reasons, the federal government, a major pharmaceutical company, and a billionaire investor want the project to fail. To obtain that objective, they have no qualms about eliminating the leader, Lucy. Grant Duran, who left her at the altar, arrives. He’s a former Marine special ops officer who’s lost a hand and is now a molecular biologist. He thwarts the first attempt on Lucy’s life, but as dead bodies accumulate and Lucy and Grant struggle to save themselves, they begin to wonder whether the Longevity project should survive.
Disguised as a semi-dystopian look at America in a few years, this is a delicious satirical send-up of the beltway culture, a paean to our national parks, and an exposition of characters, hilarious, irritating, and very human, who struggle in the Washington web. The author extends current political idiocies to their reasonable, logical, and hilarious conclusions. Along the way, he offers surprising predictions of how current and proposed inventions will affect our future lives. Some of those predictions are happening even sooner than the author expected. Many of the characters that inhabit the pages of National Parks are instantly and indelibly recognizable. Noble and base, they mirror our highest aspirations and lowest common denominators. The author mixes them all in a froth of comic conflict. The director of the national parks, Agatha Jackson, collaborates with green defense lawyer, Portia Merson, to defeat the assault on the parks. Tureen O’Porto, a beautiful lobbyist of questionable moral character, joins forces with the parks’ defenders, not realizing her actions could be fatal. Opposing them is, among others, Senator Deborah Hatchett, who has her own less than honorable reasons for pursuing the sale. There are a lobbyist with a secret toe fetish, a computer genius who creates an x-rated video avatar game, a Chinese gangster looking for respectability, an industrialist intending to dam the Grand Canyon and sell high-priced water to California, corrupt legislators, and, of course, lusty heroines, birth, death, and betrayal . In other words, business as usual.
This book is an introduction to biophilosophy, written primarily for the student of biology, the practicing biologist, and the educated layperson. It does not presuppose technical knowledge in biology or philosophy. However, it requires a willingness to examine the most basic foundations of biology which are so often taken for granted. Furthermore, it points to the bottomlessness of these foundations, the mystery of life, the Unnamable .,. I have tried to further the awareness that biological statements are based on philosophical assumptions which are present in our minds even before we enter the laboratory. These assumptions, which often harbor strong commitments, are exposed throughout the book. I have tried to show how they influence concrete biolog ical research as well as our personal existence and society. Thus, emphasis is placed on the connection between biophilosophy and biological research on the one hand, and biophilosophy and the human condition on the other.
What happens when a Master Gardener plants magical seeds from the Peruvian Amazon in experimental agricultural college plots? Why does Bemis International Group (BIG AG), feel so threatened by the plants those seeds produce? What is the mysterious eco-terrorism group doing with genetically modified mildweed seeds? ... The author tells the story with sharp insight and ribald humor. Readers will enjoy meeting the lawyers, tycoons, politicians, young and old lovers, windbags and adventurers who populate Master Gardener"--Page [4], Cover.
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