This book is truly the standard history on the religious life of the American people.. The fact that it was judged the best book on religion of the 1970's is not difficult to see..

An end to greenhouse gas emissions, a global framework to control nuclear proliferation, a preemptive remedy to looming water wars, and unlimited energy worldwide are just a few of the concrete solutions offered up in Tom Blees's brilliant and timely Prescription for the Planet. Everyone is worried about global warming, energy wars, resource depletion, and air pollution. But nobody has yet come up with a real plan to resolve these problems that can actually work-until now. Prescription for the Planet proposes a workable blueprint to virtually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century and solve a host of other seemingly intractable global problems.

Kahle in a statement denounced the publishers' demands. "Here’s what’s at stake in this case: hundreds of libraries contributed millions of books to the Internet Archive for preservation in addition to those books we have purchased," he said.

"Thousands of donors provided the funds to digitize them.

"The publishers are now demanding that those millions of digitized books, not only be made inaccessible, but be destroyed. This is horrendous. Let me say it again – the publishers are demanding that millions of digitized books be destroyed. //

"And if they succeed in destroying our books or even making many of them inaccessible, there will be a chilling effect on the hundreds of other libraries that lend digitized books as we do." //

During the hearing, Judge Koeltl probed the arguments made by McNamara and IA's attorney, Joseph Gratz. He raised the defendant's point that there's no evidence of financial harm because there's no evidence the defendants would have paid to license electronic versions of their physical books.

McNamara responded that the harm is real. The ebook market is real and IA is just refusing to participate, she argued.

Gratz maintains that libraries have a right to lend a physical book they have purchased and that they have a right under the fair use exception to copyright law to facilitate digital lending so long as it's one copy per book.

The Power of Attorney's Notebook: Everything You Need for Managing Your Loved One’s Estate

BRITISH & EXOTIC MINERALOGY
All 2,242 illustrations from James Sowerby’s compendium of knowledge about mineralogy in Great Britain and beyond, drawn 1802–1817 and arranged by color.

Wings for the Word -- by Arlene Cornelius

Stories from the lives of Rolen and Arlene Cornelius, radio missionaries in Africa and the Caribbean

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The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology eBook : Shippey, Tom

Dan Lawler
4.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase
Was the Way to Middle Earth Shut?
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 8, 2022
Author Tom Shippey demonstrates how the Lord of the Rings/Silmarillion legendarium grew from Tolkien’s deep dive into the search for original meaning associated with Old English words, fragments and stories touching on the subject of Faerie. As a fellow philologist, Shippey is uniquely qualified for the task; he has held the same chair in language at Oxford that Tolkien once had, and the two are certainly rare birds of a feather. Shippey examines Tolkien’s personal motivations in storytelling and the value he placed on fairy tales, including LOTR.

What is fascinating, and worthy of a book itself, is Shippey’s theory in chapters 8 and 9 that, as Tolkien aged, he became increasingly despondent over whether his stories bore the “inner consistency of reality” which, by Tolkien’s reckoning, was the singular quality that justified the immense time and effort he had devoted to writing fantasies at the expense of his professional career.

Tolkien’s metaphysics of storytelling are set out in the essay On Fairy Stories (1939) and the follow-up tale Leaf by Niggle (1943) which illustrated the principles in story form. The two papers presented as optimistic a view of storytelling in particular, and art in general, as any author or artist could ever hope for. Literature and art had the capacity to convey other-worldly truth because man, though fallen in nature, still possessed a capacity to discern and communicate at least some splintered fragments of that truth. Because God is Creator, humans made in His image are sub-creators whose works, if properly done, can possess eternal value. Indeed, the author/artist may hope to find a representation of their earthly work that was only seen in part and partially enjoyed here but in the world to come seen in full and fully enjoyed throughout eternity.

Shippey says of Tolkien that “by the 1960s he was not so sure” of his theory of sub-creation. (Location 5247.) That is no loss to Shippey as he believes Tolkien's works “keep their own purely literary justification; the theory of ‘sub-creation’ is not needed.” Id. But it was otherwise for Tolkien himself as the ideas underlying sub-creation were the only basis by which fantasy was worthwhile and meaningful, and distinguished from mere escapism. Two of those ideas were the inner consistency of reality and eucatastrophe.

In On Fairy Stories, Tolkien created the term eucatastrophe to describe the universally desired joy of the happy ending “or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ … which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well…. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and insofar as evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” It is this peculiar quality of joy that infuses good fantasy with the inner consistency of reality, providing “a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth.”

For Tolkien, without this hope, joy and truth, there was no escape from the nihilism of universal final defeat. Yet Shippey finds it absent in Tolkien’s later writings: “For Tolkien there was no eucatastrophe” and “the sense of age and exclusion seems to have grown on him more and more strongly.” Loc. 5553. Tolkien came to doubt his theory of sub-creation and “the legitimacy of his own mental wanderings.” Loc. 5239. According to Shippey, Tolkien “asked more than he had a right to” and all hopes for a supernatural guarantee “are bound to be disappointed.” Loc. 5247.

Shippey’s conclusions are certainly shaped in part by his own skepticism. Tolkien scholar Joseph Pearce, who is acquainted with Shippey, said he is not a Christian and “conceded readily that he did not fully understand the religious and theological aspects of [Tolkien’s] work but most certainly did not dismiss it or deride it.” Still, it is true, as Shippey elaborates, that Tolkien’s later poems and short stories lack the joyful turn of the eucatastrophe, and end with the protagonists being denied access to the Perilous Realm of Faerie, returning with melancholy to the ordinariness of their everyday lives. Shippey concludes from this that Tolkien “no longer imagined himself rejoining his own creations after death, like Niggle” and “he felt they were lost….” Loc. 5247.

Shippey does not address the cause of Tolkien’s apparent disillusionment. Perhaps, given his own predispositions, Shippey simply attributed it to the man growing older and wiser. But without the theory of sub-creation, or an equivalent, there really is nothing beyond the circles of this world except a universal final defeat that awaits all. Tolkien could not have fallen that far, but there must have been something underlying the ominous change in tone of his later works. Its worth pursuing.

The book presents much to think about. Also, the word-craft on the philological side is superb and provides many surprises and delights. In addition, Shippey’s droll and deadly rebuttals to Tolkien’s snobbish literary critics are especially satisfying. Definitely a good read.

Some of my publications that are most currently useful are accessible below. Items 1-6 and 9 are in PDF format that can be read with Adobe Acrobat. Items 7,8, and 10-16 are text only. .

• Items 1,2,7,8,14 and 16 deal with our test of the linear-no threshold theory of radiation induced cancer, based on lung cancer rates vs radon exposures in U.S. counties. #7 is the best
  place to start in reading about that study; it reviews and justifies the procedures, with special emphasis on treatment of confounding factors. #1 is the basic paper published in 1995. #2 is an extension involving substantial additional data. #8 is a less technical fairly recent review of that project, but parts of it are superseded by #7. Several other papers on that study are included in my list of publications in the CV. Item #14 is a response to a criticism of that work published in a British journal. Item #15 is a response to a very interesting observation by Puskin relevant to that work. Item #16 is my response to a letter by Mossman published in the July 2003 edition of
  Health Physics News.
• Item 12 is my book The Nuclear Energy Option published by Plenum Press in 1990.
  Figures are missing (few are important for understanding the text) and the editing is deficient, but otherwise, the material is there.

2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a conspiracy on Earth's Moon—a history-making clandestine project—and ends up involuntarily cryocelled for his troubles. Twelve years later, Riordan awakens to a changed world. Humanity has achieved faster-than-light travel and is pioneering nearby star systems. And now, Riordan is compelled to become an inadvertent agent of conspiracy himself. Riordan's mission: travel to a newly settled world and investigate whether a primitive local species was once sentient—enough so to have built a lost civilization.

When Ana Belén Montes was arrested as a Cuban spy 10 days after Sept. 11, 2001, the people who knew her best couldn’t believe it. One college friend said such treachery didn’t seem true to Ana’s character. During their time at the University of Virginia, the pal wrote in a newspaper op-ed, “The only secret she ever gave us was her mother’s luscious flan recipe.” But not only was Montes a Cuban spy, she was “one of the most damaging spies in US history,” author Jim Popkin writes in “Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America’s Most Famous Female Spy — and the Sister She Betrayed” (Hanover Square Press). (The book title refers to the FBI’s randomly generated code name for Ana.)

During her illustrious two-decade Washington career, Ana Montes shined at both her real job and her shadowy side hustle.

As an analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), she won citations and cash awards for her impeccable work in charge of the agency’s Cuba desk — colleagues even called her the “Queen of Cuba.”

But outside office hours, Montes shared her knowledge about American plans for Cuba — gleaned from classified US government documents — with the DGI, Castro’s intelligence agency. From 1984 to 2001, Ana would memorize secret documents on American policy before sharing the information over casual dinners with her Cuban handlers. Montes was literally given medals by the Cuban government for her undercover work (which they would take back for “safekeeping”), but as Montes regularly “Ironically it was partly the work of Montes’ sister Lucy that ultimately did Ana in. Lucy’s involvement in the FBI, NSA, and Navy’s Royal Flush Task Force broke up a Cuban spy ring in South Florida, and part of the information uncovered revealed a mole working in an unknown Washington, DC intelligence agency. The double agent was known to have had a student loan paid off by the Cubans, owned a particular type of Toshiba computer, and traveled to Guantanamo Bay in the summer of 1996.

That ended up being strikes one, two and three against Montes. After the earlier accusation against her, those new disclosures were enough for DIA investigators to point the finger at their very own “Queen of Cuba.” ” her US superiors with the quality of her work, no one was the wiser. //

It was a lonely existence for Montes though, who couldn’t talk to anyone other than her Cuban handlers about her double life.

Worse, her immediate family had unwittingly become Ana’s enemy: Her brother Tito and his wife became agents in the FBI’s Atlanta office, while her closest sibling, Lucy, worked for the FBI’s Miami field office — on a task force rooting Cuban spies out of South Florida.

“Ana was surrounded,” Popkin writes.

The isolation Montes felt from her deceit nearly broke her, leading her to visit a psychiatrist, take anti-depressants, and become obsessed with cleanliness, including spending hours every day in the shower — a calm, cool and collected James Bond of a spy Ana Montes was not. //

Ironically it was partly the work of Montes’ sister Lucy that ultimately did Ana in. Lucy’s involvement in the FBI, NSA, and Navy’s Royal Flush Task Force broke up a Cuban spy ring in South Florida, and part of the information uncovered revealed a mole working in an unknown Washington, DC intelligence agency. The double agent was known to have had a student loan paid off by the Cubans, owned a particular type of Toshiba computer, and traveled to Guantanamo Bay in the summer of 1996.

That ended up being strikes one, two and three against Montes. After the earlier accusation against her, those new disclosures were enough for DIA investigators to point the finger at their very own “Queen of Cuba.” //

The FBI broke into Ana’s Washington apartment under a FISA court order — “we snuck in like ninjas” the agent in charge boasted — to plant cameras and recording devices and soon found the very model of Toshiba computer used by the mole. There was a short-wave radio that could be used to communicate with Cuba and, most damningly, unencrypted messages on a typewriter cartridge that unequivocally proved Ana Montes betrayed her country.

After she was arrested, Montes denied nothing. She pled guilty in open court, even confessing she hadn’t committed treason for the money. Other than the $2,000 student loan the Cubans had paid off at the beginning of Ana’s second career, she’d continued undermining US national security for the next 15 years as a matter of principle.

In February of 2011 we started posting free nonfiction we at Baen thought might be of interest to our readers. The first article was "The Size of it All" by Les Johnson, a Baen author and space scientist. As new nonfiction is made available, it will be posted on the main page, then added to this book (to save the Baen Barflies the trouble of doing it themselves). This is our compilation of nonfiction for 2020.

As is usual with such copyrighted material from Baen, the contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold. All commercial rights are reserved to Baen Books.

As a Christian holiday, Christmas is foundational to America’s original character. It’s affected our founders’ understanding of human nature. //

Across cultures, people have sought to flee oppression and escape persecution from the beginning of recorded history. A recurring theme in Western classical literature and in modern classics such as Superman and Disney originals, which revolve around the struggle between good and evil, is the need and critical role for a rescuer or savior.

The ultimate rescuer and savior for mankind would be a “messiah,” who would vanquish evil, oppression and falsehood once and for all. It is no accident that only Christianity has its roots and its entire reason for being in the messiah Jesus Christ. No other religion makes the claim that it was founded by a messiah. //

As a Christian holiday, Christmas is foundational to America’s original character. If Christ had never been born and died the way He did, all of history would have been different. For one thing, neither Columbus nor the Pilgrims would have received or have been motivated by the good news of salvation through Christ to explore or establish a new community with a higher purpose in the New World.

There would never have been a constitutional government created in the way and time that it was in America, without two necessary conditions: First, the foundation of recognizing man’s unalienable rights of freedom and equality that came out of the teachings of Christ, more fully recognized in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

Second, the unprecedented collection of Christian human genius that came together—rather amazingly at the same time—people we call the Founding Fathers, who were deeply influenced by Christianity. The founders knew the potential depravity that exists in everyone can lead to abuse of power and tyranny. For this reason, they structured the government with checks and balances between the three branches of government, but also through the federalist system of division of power between the states and the federal government.

The constitutional republic formed by the Founders provided for and protected individual rights of freedom and independence such that America achieved material prosperity more rapidly than any other prior civilization. Additionally, the American constitutional framework enabled people to move closer to the divine image in which all people are created free and equal more than they would have achieved under any prior system. //

Rediscovering America: How the National Holidays Tell an Amazing Story about Who We Are – by Scott S. Powell

We may not know what the next chapter will look like or how we’re going to make it, but we can be confident that ours is a God who does indeed bring us through the fire and the flood. There will be twists and turns along the way, but a way will most surely be made. The end has been determined: God will walk us all the way Home. //

As one of the characters so perfectly says near the end of the series, when they’ve made it through the seemingly impossible, “Dawn has conquered dark since the Maker spoke the world. The night is deep, but light runs deeper.”

Our hope is secure. The promise is sure. The weary world has reason to rejoice, for the story is in good hands. Dawn is already on the way.⁣

We’re going to be okay. We know how the story ends.

Jack Devanney; CTX Press 2020

This book focuses on the Gordian knot of our time, the closely coupled problems of electricity poverty for billions of humans, and global warming for all humans. The central thesis of the book is that nuclear power is not only the only solution, it is a highly desirable solution, cheaper, safer, less intrusive on nature than all the alternatives.

Just about everybody, including most pro-nuclear folks, accept the fact that nuclear electricity is inherently expensive. Thanks to its remarkable energy density,
nuclear power is not inherently expensive. It is inherently cheap. This book argues that conventional nuclear power should cost less than three cents per kilowatt hour.

But nuclear power is expensive, prohibitively so in most parts of the planet. The reason why nuclear power is so expensive is a regulatory regime which by design is mandated to increase costs to the point where nuclear power is at least as expensive as coal. In such a system, any technological improvement which should lower cost simply provides regulators with more room to drive costs up. This same regime does an excellent job of stifling competition and technological progress by erecting multiple layers of barriers to entry.

Our goal is not just to make nuclear electricity as cheap as coal or gas fired electricity. The goal is to keep pushing the cost of nuclear power down and down, allowing us to replace fossil fuels almost everywhere. Imagine what we could do with 2 cents per kWh power in electrifying transportation and producing carbon neutral synfuels. This can only be done in a harshly competitive environment. We must force the providers of nuclear power to compete with everybody.

If nuclear power is to be allowed to cleave the Gordian knot of electricity poverty and global warming,then we must completely change the way we regulate nuclear electricity. This book makes the case for this change and outlines what the replacement system needs to look like.

The author is the Chief Designer for ThorCon which is developing a molten salt reactor based nuclear power plant. Although the book makes no mention of ThorCon, he has a horse in this race and an obvious conflict of interest.

the flexi disc made its first (and last) appearance in Spectrum, accompanying an article entitled “Voice signals: bit-by-bit,” written by Jon W. Bayless, S. Joseph Campanella, and A.J. Goldberg. The piece provided an overview of the emerging field of voice digitization, which the authors suggested might alleviate the stress placed on global telecommunications networks by increased demand for long-distance and overseas phone calls. It was a prescient prediction, given that analog telephones are close to becoming extinct today. //

Most of the article is devoted to technical descriptions of these competing methods, but the authors realized that a written summary could not fully convey the experience of listening to digitized voices. As a result, they collaborated with colleagues at academic, military, and industrial laboratories to record samples of various speech digitization techniques. The recording lasts just under six minutes and contains fourteen audio excerpts, each consisting of a few sentences that were generated using different methods and sampling rates. The resulting passages are frequently nonsensical, but the words themselves are less important than any noise or distortion resulting from the digitization process.

This flexi disc is, in effect, an audio time capsule preserving the state of speech digitization research in the early 1970s. //

There is something elegantly recursive about watching this flexi disc revolve on the turntable and hearing the resulting stream of sample sentences. After all, this is a digital video of an analog record that contains samples of digitized human speech. Variations of the PCM and vocoder techniques that are being demonstrated here are still used to encode audio signals today.

Beyond its significance as an artifact of the early days of digital audio, this flexi disc is also a reminder of the ongoing value of libraries and archives to 21st century researchers. Databases like IEEE Xplore allow users to review a vast amount of scientific and technical literature, but they are not comprehensive. There are still plenty of books and journals that have never been scanned, not to mention multimedia materials that might be more complicated to digitize or distribute. Whether one considers audio recordings or scarcely-held publications, sometimes there is just no substitute for consulting the original source.

The year is 2072. At the lunar farside radio observatory, an old school radio broadcast is detected, similar to those broadcast on Earth in the 1940s and early 1950s, but in an unknown language, coming from an impossible source, and originating at an equally impossible location—Proxima Centauri. While the nations of Earth debate making First Contact, they learn that the Proximans are facing an extinction-level disaster, forcing a decision: Will Earth send a ship on a multiyear trip to provide aid?

Interstellar travel is not easy, and by traveling at the speeds required to arrive before disaster strikes at Proxima, humans will learn firsthand the effects of Einstein’s Special Relativity and be forced to ponder the ultimate of questions of "Are we alone in the universe?" and "What does it mean to be human?"

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future

Joseph J. Corn, Brian Horrigan
Published by Simon & Schuster, 1984
ISBN 10: 0671541331 / ISBN 13: 9780671541330