5333 private links
Forward:
A book of this type must often get into discussions of scientific details. Every effort has been made to keep them as readable as possible for the layperson. The more technical details have been put into Appendixes at the end of the book. These can be ignored by readers with less interest in details. For readers with more interest in these, references are given which can be used as starting points for further reading. Personal inquiries about further information or references are always welcome.
Each chapter is broken up into sections. If a reader is not interested in the subject of a particular section or finds it to be too technical, it can usually be skipped over without loss of continuity.
In the modern world, countries need a reliable electricity grid to prosper. Globally, demand for electricity is growing as a result of population growth, new ways to use electricity, and the effort to spread access to electrical power to a greater portion of the world’s population.
For the past four years, Robert Bryce has been intensively studying the electricity business, which he describes as the world’s second largest industry by revenue, trailing only the fossil fuel industry. He calculates that global annual electricity sales total approximately $2 trillion. He traveled to a number of different locations to learn how countries, states, cities and even individual businesses are creating, transmitting and using electricity.
His resulting book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations, was released on March 10, 2020. By the time it had been released, the world was in the throes of responding to the coronavirus and his well-planned book tour had been essentially cancelled.
If you read ebooks a lot, you may have noticed that EPUB is the most widely adopted ebook format. Almost all mainstream eReaders, computer operating systems or ebook reader apps support this format except some Kindle devices (If you have epub books that you want to read on your Kindle, you can send epub to Kindle). In this article, I will share with you the best 10 free epub readers for Android smartphones or tablets to help you read epub ebooks on the screen with the most pleasant reading experience.
Computer Security and the Internet: Tools and Jewels
by Paul C. van Oorschot. 2020, Springer. 365 pages plus frontmatter.
ISBN: 978-3-030-33648-6 (hardcopy), 978-3-030-33649-3 (eBook)
The (chapter PDF) book copy on this site is a self-archived author-created version for personal use.
Reposting and all other forms of redistribution are strictly prohibited.
Copyright (c)2020 Paul C. van Oorschot. Under publishing license to Springer.
The turn language is taking in politics calls to mind that controlling language to control thought was a prime goal of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ //
Orwell’s admonition to think precisely is not an admonition to think narrowly. In fact, a casual perusal of the history of English writing will reveal irrefutably that those who have written most precisely have in fact thought—and read—very broadly. It makes sense. To use words precisely, one must have working knowledge of a number of them at one’s disposal.
This leads us to a somewhat ironic conclusion: The neglect of the language in favor of politics that has taken place in English over the past few decades has led to an impoverishment not only of the language but also of our politics. If we want our politics to improve, we need to reverse the process and start once again to cultivate the language. English needs to be about English.
Orwell said, “In Prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them.” If those whose business in life is to cultivate the language will not take up the fight, then who will?
The only reason to torture Tolkien’s work like this is not to understand it more deeply but to tear it down. And why would modern scholars want to do that? Because everything that Tolkien was, and everything he wrote, is an affront to the modern secular scholar’s understanding of the world, reality, and the meaning and purpose of life.
Put bluntly, the worlds Tolkien created sprang from an imagination shaped and suffused by his deep Roman Catholic faith. “The Silmarillion” in particular is in some ways a poetic and literary reflection on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In considering Tolkien’s Middle Earth, there is no way to escape this reality.
His creation, as he himself said, was a kind of sub-creation under the inspiration and aegis of almighty God. His grand themes — good and evil, truth and falsehood, power and glory and honor and sacrifice — all flow forth from his Christian faith and his decidedly sacramental view of the world. For Tolkien, all the world is shot through with meaning by a Creator who loves mankind and is manifest in His works.
That men and women now come to slander and distort and ultimately destroy these sub-creations of Tolkien is also, in a strange way, a testament to his legacy. Like Melkor, they are possessed by dark thoughts of their own imaginings, unlike those of the great Tolkien, and seek not so much to increase their own power and glory, but to bring Tolkien’s down to their grubby station, where everything can be reduced to race and sex and politics.
These people are taken today to be Tolkien scholars. What can we, who love Tolkien and his profoundly Christian art, do but repeat in sorrow a line from “Lament for the Rohirrim”—
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Last summer, we got our first glimpse of Apple TV's hotly anticipated adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of novels when Apple released a teaser trailer during the 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference. Production on the new show, which stars Jared Harris and Lee Pace, shut down last March due to the pandemic, but filming resumed last October. No official air date besides "late 2021" has surfaced, but there are a few tantalizing extra glimpses in the streaming platform's new summer (and beyond) preview trailer, per the eagle eye of The Spaceshipper on Twitter.
Mild spoilers for the first book in the Foundation series below.)
Advertisement
The series started as eight short stories by Asimov that appeared in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and early 1950. Those stories were inspired in part by Edward Gibbons' History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and the first four were collected, along with a new introductory story, and published as Foundation in 1951. The next pair of stories became Foundation and Empire (1952), and the final two stories appeared in 1953's Second Foundation. Asimov's publishers eventually convinced him to continue the series, starting with two sequels: Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986). Next came a pair of prequels: Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1993), the latter published posthumously (Asimov died in 1992).
The original trilogy centered on mathematician Hari Seldon, who has developed a mathematical approach to sociology that he calls "psychohistory." Psychohistory enables him to predict the future of large populations—like the Galactic Empire, which incorporates all inhabitants of the Milky Way. Unfortunately, Seldon's theory predicts an imminent collapse of the empire—well, in 500 years, which is certainly imminent on galactic time scales. This will usher in a Dark Age lasting 30,000 years, after which a second empire will arise. The news is not received well by the members of the Committee on Public Safety, who essentially rule the empire, and Seldon is forced to stand trial for treason, along with a brilliant young mathematical protégé named Gaal. //
In his defense, Seldon argues that he cannot stop the collapse, but there is a way to limit those Dark Ages to just 1,000 years. He proposes creating a Foundation, a group of the most intelligent minds in the empire, charged with preserving all human knowledge in the Encyclopedia Galactica. Rather than executing Seldon, the committee decides to exile him, along with the members of the new Foundation, to a remote world called Terminus, where they can begin compiling the encyclopedia. Much of the first book in the trilogy follows the establishment of the colony on Terminus and the various political machinations that shape its early history, along with a startling revelation: unbeknownst to the committee, Seldon has established a second Foundation at the other end of the galaxy.
We don't yet know how much of this history will be included in the TV adaptation or how closely the show's narrative will follow the books.
Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of copyright restrictions, and free of cost.
Ebook projects like Project Gutenberg transcribe ebooks and make them available for the widest number of reading devices. Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
Standard Ebooks aren’t just a beautiful addition to your digital library—they’re a high quality standard to build your own ebooks on.
Hesperian Health Guides has been kind enough to remove copyright restrictions on the digital distribution of this version of the book. Thus, even if you don’t buy the paperback copy, or in addition to the paperback (“two is one and one is none”), you can still have a copy saved on a computer, laptop, tablet, etc. Here you go:
Download Where There Is No Doctor – PDF
https://www.shtfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Where-there-is-no-Doctor-book.pdf
We honor God when we acknowledge all members of the human race have equal worth. We dishonor Him when we ascribe certain sins to people based on skin color. //
Critical race theory is the most discussed and debated academic theory in America today. Its advocates believe it is a tool for understanding the pervasiveness of systemic racism ever since the country was founded. Its detractors have called it a Marxist framework that causes racism and teaches people to judge each other based on skin color.
One institution that has been particularly damaged by the spread of critical race theory is American evangelicalism. A recent book entitled “Fault Lines,” by Dr. Voddie Baucham Jr., pastor and dean at the African Christian University, directly addresses the social justice movement and how it threatens the unity of Christian believers. //
A critical social justice worldview is not simply a set of beliefs. It is a way of viewing the world that is built on assumptions about, among other things, humanity, authority, evil, and justice. The theories Baucham presents in “Fault Lines” can be thought of as a stone wall that is supported by an arch. Critical social justice is the keystone theory that holds the arch together and critical race theory is the capstone that sits on top of the wall.
The wall itself is built on four cornerstones: Karl Marx’s conflict theory, Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, the Frankfurt School’s critical theory, and Derrick Bell’s critical legal studies. These theories, some of which go back more than 150 years, describe society as a struggle between social classes competing for finite resources. The dominant class uses politics, law, and culture to impose norms on society that maintain the status quo and perpetuate societal inequities.
The Christian faith is built on a different foundation. The Bible states Jesus is the chief cornerstone of the church, the collection of genuine believers in the past, present, and future who are described as a holy temple for the Lord.
A Christian worldview uses scripture as the basis for absolute moral truth as well as the standard by which good, evil, equity, and justice are defined. Critical race theory sees oppression based on skin color as society’s main problem and the transformation of structures and systems as solutions. The scriptures, by contrast, see sin as humanity’s main problem and faith in Jesus Christ as the only solution. The tension between these two competing worldviews is a central theme of the book. //
“Fault Lines” shows that the weapons Christians need for this ideological battle are spiritual, not physical. Christians should be a shining example to the rest of the world of what it looks like to have unity across ethnicity, tribe, and nation.
We honor God when we acknowledge all members of the human race have equal dignity and worth. We dishonor Him when we ascribe certain sins to people based on ancestry and mistreat others because of their skin color.
The sin of racism, whether expressed through ethnic hatred or partiality, is a problem of the human heart. Its solution is the gospel of Jesus Christ, not the work of antiracism.
Many people download free royalty free ebooks from Project Gutenberg. It is the largest site in the world for this type of content and offers downloads in EPUB and MOBI for Kindles. One of the best alternatives is Standard Ebooks who reformats ebooks from PG and edits them, adjusts the typesetting, add better cover art and metadata.
Architecture
Development
Operations
EDGE / IOT / OPEN SOURCE
The Open Book Project: An eBook Reader You Can Build Yourself
2 Feb 2020 6:00am, by David Cassel
An amateur hardware enthusiast wants to prove it’s possible for people to build their own ebook readers.
“As a society, we need an open source device for reading,” explains the project’s page on GitHub. “Books are among the most important documents of our culture, yet the most popular and widespread devices we have for reading — the Kobo, the Nook, the Kindle and even the iPad — are closed devices, operating as small moving parts in a set of giant closed platforms whose owners’ interests are not always aligned with readers’.”
“The Open Book aims to be a simple device that anyone with a soldering iron can build for themselves.”
HTML(HyperText Markup Lanuage) is the standard markup language to create web page while Mobi is a file format created by Mobipocket but now also adopted by Amazon Kindle Readers. You may need to convert HTML to Mobi when you want to read files saved from wabpage on your kindle devices just like reading other ebooks instead of reading them in the browser. Or you have written your own ebooks with HTML format and want to share them with your family and friends who own the popular kindle devices.
Three major discoveries during the last century contradict the forecasts of scientific atheists, pointing instead in a distinctly theistic direction. //
In fact, three major scientific discoveries during the last century contradict the expectations of scientific atheists (or materialists) and point instead in a distinctly theistic direction.
First, cosmologists have discovered that the physical universe likely had a beginning, contrary to the expectations of scientific materialists who had long portrayed the material universe as eternal and self-existent (and, therefore, in no need of an external creator). //
This evidence of a beginning, later reinforced by other developments in observational astronomy and theoretical physics, not only contradicted the expectations of scientific materialists, it confirmed those of traditional theists. As physicist and Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias observed, “The best data we have [concerning a beginning] are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the first five books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Bible as a whole.”
Second, physicists have discovered that we live in a kind of “Goldilocks universe.” Indeed, since the 1960s, physicists have determined that the fundamental physical laws and parameters of our universe have been finely tuned, against all odds, to make our universe capable of hosting life. Even slight alterations in the values of many independent factors — such as the strength of gravitational and electromagnetic attraction, the masses of elementary particles, and the initial arrangement of matter and energy in the universe — would have rendered life impossible. //
Finally, discoveries in molecular biology have revealed the presence of digital code at the foundation of life, suggesting the work of a master programmer. After James Watson and Francis Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, Crick developed his famed “sequence hypothesis.” In it, Crick proposed that the chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language or digital symbols in a computer code.
Functioning computer code depends upon a precise sequence of zeros and ones. Similarly, the DNA molecule’s ability to direct the assembly of crucial protein molecules in cells depends upon specific arrangements of chemical constituents called “bases” along the spine of its double helix structure. Thus, even Richard Dawkins has acknowledged, “the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.” Or as Bill Gates explains, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”
No theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the information in DNA (or RNA) needed to build the first living cell from simpler non-living chemicals. Instead, our uniform and repeated experience — the basis of all scientific reasoning — shows that systems possessing functional or digital information invariably arise from intelligent causes.
We know from experience that software comes from programmers. We know generally that information — whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in radio signals — always arises from an intelligent source. //
Stephen C. Meyer directs Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle. His new book, "Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe," is now available from HarperOne.
Two Centuries of US Military Operations in Liberia: Challenges of Resistance and Compliance
By Dr. Niels Stephan Cato Hahn / Published March 31, 2020
Book cover with the title Two Centuries of US military Operations in Liberia: Challenges of Resistance and Compliance by Dr. Niels Stephan Cato HahnLiberia is the country in Africa where the United States has the most extended history of military engagement, and each intervention is layered on the experience of previous interventions. Over the years, the interventions have become more comprehensive and sophisticated, and Liberia can be considered an essential case for the general study of US military interventions in Africa. This book reviews the history of the United States-Liberia relations from the early 1820s to 2015, with particular attention paid to the role of the US armed forces. Contrary to most literature on the genesis and development of Liberia, this book demonstrates how US military power has been the primary influence shaping Liberia's history. This includes the role played by the US military in the founding of Liberia, the protection of the country during the European formal colonial era, multiple covert operations in securing US-friendly administrations in Liberia, and direct military interventions when necessary to secure American interests in the region [Niels Hahn/ 2020 / 381 pages / ISBN: 978158566304 / AU Press Code: B-164]
THE NUCLEAR ENERGY OPTION
Professor Emeritus Bernard L. Cohen University of Pittsburgh
Published by Plenum Press, 1990
Forward:
A book of this type must often get into discussions of scientific details. Every effort has been made to keep them as readable as possible for the layperson. The more technical details have been put into Appendixes at the end of the book. These can be ignored by readers with less interest in details. For readers with more interest in these, references are given which can be used as starting points for further reading. Personal inquiries about further information or references are always welcome.
Each chapter is broken up into sections. If a reader is not interested in the subject of a particular section or finds it to be too technical, it can usually be skipped over without loss of continuity.
You, too, can enjoy reading books on an e-ink screen without that sour aftertaste left in the back of your throat. And it starts with buying yourself a different e-reader.
Industrial Power System Grounding Design Handbook is a comprehensive reference and study guide for the design of global industrial and commercial power systems as dictated by optimized neutral-grounding and ground-fault-protection practices. Except for the noted isolated IEEE references, there are no comparable books currently on the market. In fact, the authors actively contributed to the accrual of the relevant IEEE-paper bibliography.
Benefits for the Reader
This book was written with a dual purpose:
- As a one-stop reference for budding, as well as practicing electrical engineers/consultants interested in, or responsible for, the design of safe and effective electrical installations for industrial plants.
- As a text book for a graduate course on industrial and commercial power system design in general, and system grounding and ground-fault protection, in particular.
The reader should find the book self-sufficient as it develops in the first 11 chapters the pertinent preparatory engineering and analytical know-how. In Chapter 12, this collective proficiency will be merged into the formulation of guidelines for the ultimate goal of designing the industrial systems with optimized grounding and protection attributes. Chapter 13 offers a focused synopsis of symmetrical components and a sample of its application.
Considering the reported shrinking base of electrical engineering graduates with a well-developed power background suggests that such engineers would benefit from this comprehensive book; not only as a source of reference but also a study guide for on-the-job training.
What Makes This Book Unique?
Industrial Power System Grounding Design Handbook was authored and published by engineers with life-time experiences as industrial and commercial power system design engineers, who accumulated considerable experience practicing, and teaching the subject. The resulting 584-page manuscript features some 360 detailed illustrations and 19 photographs to facilitate explication.
The scope of this book is not limited to "grounding and ground-fault protection", which is covered in just one of the 13 chapters. Instead, the core subject is the development of an engineering aptitude and rationale to design conceptual industrial and commercial power systems from a grounding perspective; a subject not known to be taught in college, or anywhere else the authors know of. This aptitude is developed only through exposure to comprehensive engineering practices. The appearance of mediocre conceptual designs in contemporary professional papers and journals suggest that the book's subject is in urgent need of revelation to would-be authors, reviewers, and instructors alike.
The war that brought unspeakable suffering also contributed to the creation of some of the most beloved and heroic literature of modern times. //
There were not many bright spots in the years 1939-1945 when it seemed that not only Great Britain but Western civilization itself sat on the edge of a knife. Yet these years proved to be among the most creative and meaningful for two of the 20th century’s greatest Christian authors. Indeed, those uncertain times were the crucible for a friendship that helped to ignite their astonishing literary imagination. //
Throughout the war years, Tolkien read each new chapter of “The Lord of the Rings” out loud to Lewis, who sometimes wept over the poignancy of a passage. “But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more,” Tolkien later explained, “I should never have brought the ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to a conclusion.”
The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear
By: Petr Beckmann (1979)
Softcover, 190 pages
Golem Press