Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut
Author: Mike Mullane File Type: mobi From Publishers WeeklyWith a testosterone-fueled swagger and a keen eye for particulars, Mullane takes readers into the high-intensity, high-stress world of the shuttle astronaut in this rough-hewn yet charming yarn of low-rent antics, bureaucratic insanity and transcendent beauty. Mullane opens this tale face down on a doctors table awaiting a colorectal exam that will determine his fitness for astronaut training. I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses, he writes, setting the tone for the crude and often hilarious story that follows. Chosen as a trainee in 1978, Mullane, a Vietnam vet, quickly finds himself at odds with the buttoned-up post-Apollo NASA world of scientists, technocrats and civilian astronauts he describes as tree-huggers, dolphin friendly fish eaters, vegetarians, and subscribers to the New York Times. He holds female astronauts in special disregard, though he later grudgingly acknowledges the achievement and heroism of both the civilians and women. The book hits its stride with Mullanes space adventures a difficult takeoff, the shift into zero gravity, his first view of the Earth from space To say the view was overwhelmingly beautiful would be an insult to God. (Feb. 14) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From BooklistOne of the first astronaut memoirs from the space-shuttle era tells a thoroughly absorbing story. Mullane, an air force brat, flew 134 missions in Vietnam. In the late 1970s, he volunteered for the shuttle program, was accepted, and flew three orbital missions before retiring. His accounts of those missions are gripping. They leave one in no doubt that the shuttle was a somewhat imperfect instrument that somehow still performed marvels. Mullane also pays tribute to his fellow astronauts, a small community that suffered with every death or other loss to the family it constituted, and to his wife, who endured 40 years of the stresses of being a pilots partner. And while this isnt an expose, Mullane makes it clear that NASAs corporate culture wasnt optimal for getting the results it sought. Despite the shuttles apparent failures, the era when it was Americas mainstay in space laid groundwork for the future, and further shuttle chronicles are needed and deserved. A strong addition to science and space collections of any size. Roland Green American Library Association. lt
Author: Andrew Joynes
File Type: pdf
Strongly recommended. M R JAMES NEWSLETTER Stories of restless spirits returning from the afterlife are as old as storytelling. In medieval Europe ghosts, nightstalkers and unearthly visitors from parallel worlds had been in circulation since before the coming of Christianity. Here is a collection of ghostly encounters from medieval romances, monastic chronicles, sagas and heroic poetry. These tales bore a peculiar freight of spooks and spirituality which can still make the hair stand on end. Look at the story of Richard Rowntrees stillborn child, glimpsed by his father tangled in swaddling clothes on the road to Santiago, or the sly habits of water sprites resting as golden rings on the surface of the river, just out of reach. The writer and broadcaster Andrew Joynes brings together a vivid selection of these tales, with a thoughtful commentary that puts them in context and lays bare the layers of meaning in them.Review(Revied together with Medieval Comic Tales) Both make a delightful contribution to our understanding and mapping of those mental landscapes. They also allowed me to see the physical medieval landscape differently, reminding me that in the medieval period it had supernatural and metaphorical dimensions. In these tales a wide range of medieval people come to life. FINDS RESEARCH GROUP NEWSLETTERBRA collection of stories that have stood the test of time. HISTORY MAGAZINE (US)(An) excellent compendium of medieval folklore. FORTEAN TIMESTruly ... a landmark work. This impeccably researched and very readable book should appeal to a wide audience. MEDIEVAL REVIEWEvery reader is sure to find something new and many readers may find something to treasure in this sprightly anthology. ARTHURIANAStrongly recommended. A convenient compendium indeed! MR JAMES NEWSLETTERAssembles dozens of ghostly tales from an impressive array of original sources ranging from Iceland to Florence. BBC HISTORY
Author: Emily Dickinson
File Type: epub
Presents the first four volumes of Emily Dickinsons poetry, complete with their original introductions, and offers modern commentaries on her work.
Author: Annie M. G. Schmidt
File Type: epub
Alle mensen en dieren in de wereld van Annie M.G. Schmidt zijn familie van elkaar.Wist jij dat Floddertje familie is van Slordige Saartje? En Wiplala van Pietertje Pluim? Dat Minoes al net zo n hekel heeft aan nare overjassen als Isabella Caramella? Dat de beren Moem en Psasj uit Pluk redt de dieren al bij mevrouw Van Gelder in de kelder zaten voor ze bij Spijtebijts tante Pleeg terechtkwamen?In Het grote Annie M.G. Schmidt voorleesboek kom je de hele Schmidt-familie tegen Otje en Abeltje, tante Patent en Jip en Janneke, Ibbeltje en Wiplala, Floddertje en Pluk en ga zo maar door. Ook haar versjes en andere verhalen ontbreken natuurlijk niet in deze bloemlezing. Net zo min als de tekeningen van Fiep Westendorp. Maar er zijn ook illustraties van ThA Tjong-Khing, Jan Jutte, Margriet Heymans, Harrie Geelen, Martijn van der Linden en anderen.Recencie(s) Bundeling van verhalen over onder meer Jip en Janneke, Abeltje, Wiplala, Tante Patent, Minoes, Pluk, Otje, Floddertje, Ibbeltje, juffrouw Knoops en de Diepvriesdames. In deze bloemlezing uit het werk van Annie M.G. Schmidt staan ook versjes als Waar de koning trek in had, De mislukte fee, Het hele schaap Veronica, Ik ben lekker stout, De Heks van Sier-kon-fleks, Slordige Saartje en Pietertje luim. Thematisch ingedeeld waardoor verrassende verbanden opduiken, zoals die tussen de lange familie Pijpestang en het paard Langhors uit Pluk. Zo ook is Minoes te vinden naast De koning die bang was voor k , en staat het verhaal over Jip en Janneke in de dierentuin tussen de versjes over de giraf van Dikkertje Dap en zebra Flopje. Goede wijn behoeft geen krans dit is een heerlijk voorleesboek, dat laat zien hoeveel moois de auteur heeft geschreven. Aantrekkelijk uitgevoerd en prachtig geillustreerd met tekeningen in zwart-wit en kleur van diverse illustratoren. Met register. Vanaf ca. 4 jaar.Redactie (source Bol.com)
Author: Stefaan Blancke
File Type: pdf
For decades, the creationist movement was primarily situated in the United States. Then, in the 1970s, American creationists found their ideas welcomed abroad, first in Australia and New Zealand, then in Korea, India, South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhereincluding Europe, where creationism plays an expanding role in public debates about science policy and school curricula. In this, the first comprehensive history of creationism in Europe, leading historians, philosophers, and scientists narrate the rise ofand response toscientific creationism, creation science, intelligent design, and organized antievolutionism in countries and religions throughout Europe.Providing a unique map of creationism in Europe, the authors chart the surprising history of creationist activities and strategies there. Over the past forty years, creationism has spread swiftly among European Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims, even as anti-creationists sought to smother its flames. Antievolution messages gained such widespread approval, in fact, that in 2007 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution advising member states to defend and promote scientific knowledge and firmly oppose the teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline on an equal footing with the theory of evolution. Creationism in Europe offers a discerning introduction to the cultural history of modern Europe, the variety of worldviews in Europe, and the interplay of science and religion in a global context. It will be of interest to students and scholars in the history and philosophy of science, religious studies, and evolutionary theory, as well as policy makers and educators concerned about the spread of creationism in our time.**
Author: Gottfried Hermann
File Type: pdf
Gottfried Hermanns Opuscula (1827-1877) collects in eight volumes the shorter writings of this central figure of nineteenth-century classical philology. Best known for his work on Greek metrics and his editions of Aeschylus, Euripides and others, Hermann (1772-1848) drew on Kantian phenomenology as well as his own formidable understanding of ancient grammars to advance a compelling program of classical scholarship that took language itself as the primary witness to the distant past. Hermanns grammar-based scholarship drew criticism, but established him as foundational to modern philology. As Sihler wrote in 1933, He accepted nothing on mere authority, but investigated the causes and roots of every matter. Volume 1 (1827) contains essays on Greek literature, including a fragment from Sophocles Clytemnestra, as well as occasional works, such as a poem dedicated to his university, Leipzig. This diverse collection provides fuller insight into the mind of this highly influential scholar.Book DescriptionThe shorter works of the eminent classical philologist Gottfried Hermann are collected in this eight-volume Opuscula (1827-1877). Exemplifying the range and thoroughness of Hermanns scholarship, Volume 1 (1827) contains essays on Sophocles, Pindar, Greek dialects and poetics, and the Roman fables, as well as occasional verse.
Author: Rogerio Miranda de Almeida
File Type: pdf
Translated from the French, this book analyzes the paradoxes that fundamentally characterize Nietzsches philosophy and texts. Newly translated into English, this book analyzes the paradoxical discourse that flows through and fundamentally characterizes Nietzsches writings. Examining Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy Human, All Too Human Beyond Good and Evil On the Genealogy of Morals and The Antichrist Rogerio**** Miranda de Almeida patiently opens these texts to the multiplicity of truths that unfold through the process of continuous reinterpretation and reevaluation. Never formally defining the contradictions within Nietzsches conception of metaphysics, religion, art, science, and philosophy, Miranda de Almeida acknowledges instead that the history of thought, and the development of Nietzsches writings in particular, is an interplay of forces and drives, encroachment and surrender, construction and destruction, overcoming and transformation, lack and fulfillment, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, pleasure and displeasure, pain and delight. This book reveals the endless perspectives and truths that Nietzsche creates and transforms. Drawing on the broad tradition of the French Nietzsche, this book offers a rich tapestry of reflections on the multiplicitiesstill to be mined in Nietzsches thought, including the aesthetics of art and appearance, on woman and dissimulation, as well as morality, religion, and, of course, paradox. Babette E. Babich, author of Words in Blood, Like Flowers Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Holderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger From texts prior to The Birth of Tragedy through the final works of 1888, Miranda de Almeida dramatically draws out the tensions, torsions, and the dynamics of Nietzsches theoretical development. In remarkably clear terms, he explains how, for Nietzsche, the whole subsoil of concepts and values are orchestrated by drives and needswhether they be fictive or realand shows how this results in the unique character of his ever-changing appreciation of the cultural symbolic. David B. Allison, author of Reading the New Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and On the Genealogy of Morals**
Author: Jakob Munk Højte
File Type: pdf
The study of Roman imperial statues has made remarkable strides in the last two decades. Yet the fields understandable focus on extant portraits has made it difficult to generalise accurately. Most notably, bronze was usually the material of choice, but its high scrap value meant that such statues were inevitably melted down, so that almost all surviving statues are of stone. By examining the much larger and more representative body of statue bases, Jakob Munk Hujte is here able to situate the statues themselves in context. This volume includes a catalogue of 2300 known statue bases from nearly 800 sites throughout the Roman Empire. Moreover, since it covers a period of 250 years, it allows for the first time consistent geographic, chronological and commemorative patterns to emerge. Hujte finds among other things that imperial portrait statues are connected chiefly with urban centres that they were raised continuously during a given reign, with a higher concentration a couple years after accession that a primary purpose was often to advertise a donors merits and that they increased six-fold in frequency from Augustus to Hadrian, an increase attributable to community dedications.
Author: Amelia Bădică
File Type: pdf
ul bigListIconslRecent Developments in Computational Collective Intelligence ll Carefully edited postproceedings book ll Written by experts in the field l uldiv springerHTMLThe book consists of 19 extended and revised chapters based on original works presented during a poster session organized within the 5th International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence that was held between 11 and 13 of September 2013 in Craiova, Romania. The book is divided into three parts. The first part is titled Agents and Multi-Agent Systems and consists of 8 chapters that concentrate on many problems related to agent and multi-agent systems, including formal models, agent autonomy, emergent properties, agent programming, agent-based simulation and planning. The second part of the book is titled Intelligent Computational Methods and consists of 6 chapters. The authors present applications of various intelligent computational methods like neural networks, mathematical optimization and multistage decision processes in areas like cooperation, character recognition, wireless networks, transport, and metal structures. The third part of the book is titled Language and Knowledge Processing Systems, and consists of 5 papers devoted to processing methods for knowledge and language information in various applications, including language identification, corpus comparison, opinion classification, group decision making, and rule bases. span bolderContent Level span spanResearchspan span bolderKeywords span span spanComputational Collective Intelligencespan spanspan span - span spanComputational Intelligencespanspan Series Studies in Computational Intelligence, Vol. 513
Author: Marcus Aldredge
File Type: pdf
It has been over 60 years since David Riesmans most famous work The Lonely Crowd brought him international acclaim. While this remains a best-selling sociology book, Riesmans expertise and publications spanned far beyond the treatment of the American social character type offered there. This volume recasts and reintroduces Riesman by presenting newly discovered and unpublished manuscripts of his work, including excerpts from a previously unpublished critical biography of Freud that Riesman began with this assistant at the time, Philip Rieff, an interview in which Riesman describes in detail his early biography and his route into the social sciences, and other research notes and memoranda. With additional chapters analyzing the unpublished works, as well as discussions of Riesman as a public intellectual, his multi-disciplinary method of understanding society and his connections with figures such as Goffman and Fromm, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and the history of American social science. **Review David Riesman was American sociologys great public intellectual of the 20th century. Riesman theorized about society and social character, cared about undergraduate teaching and higher education and intervened in the world effectively on questions of the nuclear arms race and the Berlin crisis in the early 1960s. These unpublished Riesman manuscripts and original essays on his ideas and life are an indispensable resource for understanding the pre-history of public sociology. --Neil McLaughlin, McMaster University, Canada David Riesman was a major public intellectual of the second half of the last century, his views regularly solicited by major media and institutions. This volume collects some of his unpublished papers - lectures, letters, speeches, uncompleted articles - on a range of subjects, which illustrate his amazing fertility of mind, his talent as a writer and phrase-maker, and his unique ability to discern, from simple engagement with individuals and aspects of popular culture, significant trends in American society that now give him the aura of a prophet. --Nathan Glazer, Harvard University, USA About the Author Keith Kerr is Associate Professor of Sociology at Quinnipiac University, USA and author of Postmodern Cowboy C. Wright Mills and a New 21st Century Sociology. B. Garrick Harden is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lamar University, USA and co-editor of Co-opting Culture Culture and Power in Sociology and Cultural Studies. Marcus Aldredge is Assistant Professor of Sociology at at Iona College, USA and author of Singer-Songwriters and Musical Open Mics.