Along those lines : the boundaries that create our world / Peter Cashwell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cashwell, Peter, 1963-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American essays.

Genre:

Essays.

Physical Description:

ix, 237 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First Paul Dry Books Edition.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : Paul Dry Books, 2014.

Summary:

"After years of crossing borders to see new birds and new landscapes, Peter Cashwell's exploration of lines between states, between time zones, and between species led him to consider the lines that divide genders, seasons, musical genres, and just about every other aspect of human life. His conclusion: most had something in common--they were largely imaginary. Nonetheless, this tour of the tangled world of delineation attempts to address how we distinguish right from wrong, life from death, Democrat from Republican--and how the lines between came to be. Part storyteller, part educator, and part smartass, Cashwell is unafraid to take readers off the beaten path--to the desert vistas of the Four Corners, a quiet breakfast among the redwoods, or a pumping station in Cleveland: something amusing and/or educational awaits at every stop. And he's not alone: the tricks and treats of the human instinct for drawing lines are revealed in interviews with experts of all sorts. Learn about the use of the panel border from a Hugo Award-winning comics creator. Trace the edge of extinction with the rediscoverer of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Get the truth about the strike zone from an umpire with a physics degree"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part 1 Space and Time

Maps and Legends 11

Retting, scotching, and heckling

Things get recursive

On the border

What the South is really like

No supernatural forces

Carolinas in my mind

The buck stops here and there

The verb 'to border'

State of the Union 23

American pie

Physical and political

West-running lines

London Company calling

The landless states

A house divided

"He was James K. Polk, Napoleon of the Stump"

The Great Compromiser and the other guy

Boundary manipulation

Drivers Education 59

North of Calvander

Anticipation

It is wrong

"The map is not the territory"

As above, so below

Under the sea

Ocean views

I am a pale shadow

The line of descent

History's Greatest Monster 53

Malapropisms, bowdlerizations, and smoots

The very best or the very worst

Spreading santorum

A Field Guide to Gerrymanders

From the New World

A small and niggling sort of shame

The Starting Lineup 65

What it is is football

How to get paid to watch sports

Interview with the umpire

Quantum baseball

A Platonic ideal

A short trip to Cooperstown

Framing devices

The Four Corners Offense 75

Salient points

The Carolina Way

Not a debilitating form of insanity

Terminators and time zones

Uncoordinated Universal Time

Saturday forever

What questions

Lumpers and splitters

The rings of Saturn

What God Has Put Asunder 89

The Lord is One

Acts of division

The longest afternoon of my life

Sailing the Sea of Talmud

Fishing for capybara

I wouldn't think of it

Surveying the moral landscape

Time of the Season 102

Heavenly bodies

Errors add up

From Hanke to Henry

Ithacation

You must believe in spring

Why migrate?

I go north

Scary birders

"Spring is here"

Part 2 Arts and Sciences

Just Lines on Paper 121

Not on the ground

Nearly touching the chicken

A really stupid question

Nothing whatsoever about lines or paper

All in the gutter

What happens in between

This Is So Lame

Bricks and Mortar 131

A new kind of pain

I am not the only one thinking about it

"Pixels were the only way I knew the world"

Vultures eating obsolete technology

Between 1 and 0

Spoiled by jagged edges

Compressed and rarefied air

A much more complex set of skills

Exchanging fidelity for convenience

Chaotic interactions

Rock and a Hard Place 147

"The Sound of Difference"

An illegitimate reason

Scandalized metal fans

The surprising contents of Pandora's box

Dickie defies corporate policy

In search of Beethoven's Third Symphony

High-powered consultants

Parts Is Parts 157

An exercise in double entendre

Bikinis and burkas

A pair of overlapping bell curves

"Sex is biology. Gender is sociology."

I'm thinking of Mrs. Frisby

Elephants do it too

The South's most widespread invasive plant

People who are not typical

Smudging the lines

Names Will Never Hurt Me 173

The science of names

Interspecies romance

The kind of creature that would break a taxonomist's spirit

Talking with non-scientists

The magpie issue

Stupid hybridization

Rite of Passage 184

A certain degree of frustration

The commercial engine of our culture

Where no heads roll

Not by maturity, but by age

The biggest myth about adolescence

Considerable upset

Thirteenness

Right at the edge of the nest

An entirely different animal

The Undiscovered Country 198

The most famous speech in English literature

The only truly important line

Iterations of immortality

Virginia and Martha

Pigeons unknown to science

Special Creation

The elephant in the room

Jeffersonian paleontology

Lazarus species

They can't all be hiding

We're Not Lost 213

Hovering right at the brink

Deep in the swamp forest

"I've never felt any doubt"

Bucking consensus

The Romeo error

"It would be insane"

The next mass extinction

The place where we live.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-234).

ISBN:

9781589880924

1589880927

OCLC:

833301316

Publisher Number:

99958865041