Author: Arieh Ben-Naim File Type: pdf In this unique book, the reader is invited to experience the joy of appreciating something which has eluded understanding for many years -- entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. The book has a two-pronged message first, that the second law is not infinitely incomprehensible as commonly stated in most textbooks on thermodynamics, but can, in fact, be comprehended through sheer common sense and second, that entropy is not a mysterious quantity that has resisted understanding but a simple, familiar and easily comprehensible concept. Written in an accessible style, the book guides the reader through an abundance of dice games and examples from everyday life. The author paves the way for readers to discover for themselves what entropy is, how it changes, and, most importantly, why it always changes in one direction in a spontaneous process. In this new edition, seven simulated games are included so that the reader can actually experiment with the games described in the book. These simulated games are meant to enhance the readers understanding and sense of joy upon discovering the second law of thermodynamics. Contents Programs for Simulating Some of the Games in the Book Introduction, and a Short History of the Second Law of Thermodynamics A Brief Introduction to Probability Theory, Information Theory, and All the Rest First Let Us Play with Real Dice Let s Play with Simplified Dice and Have a Preliminary Grasp of the Second Law Experience the Second Law with All Your Five Senses Finally, Grasp It with Your Common Sense Translating from the Dice-World to the Real World Reflections on the Status of the Second Law of Thermodynamics as a Law of Physics.

Author: Ted Gioia File Type: pdf Taking a wide-ranging approach rare in jazz criticism, Ted Gioias brilliant volume draws upon fields as disparate as literary criticism, art history, sociology, and aesthetic philosophy in order to place jazz within the turbulent cultural environment of the twentieth century. He argues that because improvisation--the essence of jazz--must often fail under the pressure of on-the-spot creativity, we should view jazz as an imperfect art and base our judgments of it on an aesthetics of imperfection. Incorporating the thought of such seminal thinkers as Walter Benjamin, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Roland Barthes, The Imperfect Art offers vivid portraits of the giants of jazz and startling insights into this vital musical form and the interaction of society and art. **

Author: Brett L. Walker File Type: pdf Every person on the planet is entangled in a web of ecological relationships that link farms and factories with human consumers. Our lives depend on these relationships -- and are imperiled by them as well. Nowhere is this truer than on the Japanese archipelago. During the nineteenth century, Japan saw the rise of Homo sapiens industrialis, a new breed of human transformed by an engineered, industrialized, and poisonous environment. Toxins moved freely from mines, factory sites, and rice paddies into human bodies. Toxic Archipelago explores how toxic pollution works its way into porous human bodies and brings unimaginable pain to some of them. Brett Walker examines startling case studies of industrial toxins that know no boundaries deaths from insecticide contaminations poisonings from copper, zinc, and lead mining congenital deformities from methylmercury factory effluents and lung diseases from sulfur dioxide and asbestos. This powerful, probing book demonstrates how the Japanese archipelago has become industrialized over the last two hundred years -- and how people and the environment have suffered as a consequence. **Review Toxic Archipelago would make an excellent addition to any course on environmental issues in Asia. . . . carefully researched, thoughtfully rendered accounts of industrial disease in Japan make clear that . . . modern technology has . . . tightened the binds between us and the world we inhabit.Darrin Magee, Journal of Environmental Studies and Science, Vol. 1 (2011) Walkers is an unorthodox approach to academic scholarship. It mixes academic rigor with personal anecdotes and experiences. It is historically grounded, soundly documented scholarship. It is fascinating, but at times sickly so.Miranda A. Schreurs, Journal of Japanese Studies, 381, 2012 An uncomfortable, but nonetheless compelling, read. Although the author tells it as he sees it, the book is well-written and offers a reasoned and persuasive argument . . . that certainly delivers strong messages. . . . the originality and depth of the research clearly merit a cover-to-cover exploration.Catherine Mills, Social History of Medicine, August 2011 Toxic Archipelago would make an excellent addition to any course on environmental issues in Asia. Walkers carefully researched, thoughtfully rendered accounts of industrial disease in Japan make clear that, far from liberating us from nature, modern technology has instead tightened the binds between us and the world we inhabit.D. Magee, Journal of Environmental Studies, June 2011 In Toxic Archipelago, Brett Walker breaks new ground with his environmental history of an industrializing Japan over the last two centuries. Building on the literatures of disease and the body, he examines the co-evolution of the institutions of Japanese culture and the biology of the Japanese environment. The link between culture and environment is not simply the body, but the human body in physical and social pain. Walker forces the reader to engage with large-scale transformations of landscape and toxic pollution over time through the prism of suffering and grief with a number of finely drawn personal stories. This nuanced and beautifully written exploration of the meaning of nature and culture in Japan displays the ramifications of the hybrid environments that have evolved and poses powerful questions for people of all cultures and nations.George Perkins Marsh Prize Committee, ASEH Historian Walker effectively links, perhaps for the first time anywhere, the historical processes of the economic, social, and land-use policies involved in modernizing and globalizing Japan with the pain and suffering of its environment and people. Never has a book so clearly illustrated the aphorisms all politics are local, the personal is the political, and we are what we eat. This discussion of the evolution of environmentalism in Japan will reflect new light on the understanding of environmental history. Essential.Choice Walker is a superb historian and analyst, as his body of work, considerable for a relatively young scholar, manifests. Unlike his editor, William Cronon, Brett Walker has immersed himself in a culture whose epistemology features no conceptual space for wilderness as a place where humans are not. His convincing, compelling from the genes up portrait is of a living environment akin to being in Tokyo rush hour, 247.H-Net Walker focuses on the complex causations of environmental crises, documenting how cultural practices, social institutions, and biochemical pathways have intertwined with the toxic byproducts of modern industry to produce devastating pollution incidents. . . . This is a thoroughly compelling and important volume that will have a substantial impact on the study of modern Japan and our understanding of the environmental history of the modern world.American Historical Review This is a fascinating, original, and persuasive book that makes several important contributions to the field of environmental history. With this work Walker further solidifies his position as the leading environmental historian of Japan writing in English.Timothy George, author of Minamata Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan In this powerful, disturbing new book, Brett Walker turns his attention to the environmental consequences of industrialization in Japan over the past two centuries, focusing especially on toxic pollution and the human suffering it has caused. Toxic Archipelago is a major contribution not just to Japanese environmental history but to the history of industrial pollution worldwide.William Cronon, University of WisconsinMadison Brett Walker has written an exemplary history of chemicals, pain, and ecological simplification in Japan. In beautifully clear language, Toxic Archipelago explores what Walker calls the hybrid causations of industrial toxicity, helping us understand how toxic substances pervaded Japans human and nonhuman communities. Above all, Walker keeps us from turning our faces away from the pain at the heart of his histories. This is an illuminating, compelling, and haunting study.Nancy Langston, author of Toxic Bodies Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES Ecology is history, writes Brett Walker. Toxic Archipelago is a history of unexpected relationships and unintended consequences. It is a passionate reflection on the ecology of suffering and sacrifice and a provocative account of biological and social pain situated deep within the bodies and landscapes that have given rise to a modern industrialized Japan.Gregg Mitman, author of Breathing Space How Allergies Shape our Lives and Landscapes

Author: Mark Bevir File Type: pdf Historicism and the Human Sciences in Victorian Britain explores the rise and nature of historicist thinking about such varied topics as life, race, character, literature, language, economics, empire, and law. The contributors show that the Victorians typically understood life and society as developing historically in a way that made history central to their intellectual inquiries and their public culture. Although their historicist ideas drew on some Enlightenment themes, they drew at least as much on organic ideas and metaphors in ways that lent them a developmental character. This developmental historicism flourished alongside evolutionary motifs and romantic ideas of the self. The human sciences were approached through narratives, and often narratives of reason and progress. Life, individuals, society, government, and literature all unfolded gradually in accord with underlying principles, such as those of rationality, nationhood, and liberty. This book will appeal to those interested in Victorian Britain, historiography, and intellectual history. **