Library of philosophy books

"The Philosophical Library"

Rick Lewis on libraries, philosophical classics, unexpected discoveries and the challenges of a digital age.

July/August 2014

Philosophy Now

I remember our school library mostly as a place to keep warm and shelter from the rain and playground bullies. It did, however, contain an eclectic selection of books of varying vintages, and idly browsing them gave me my first taste of what it is like to make unexpected discoveries in literature. Once I found a translation of The Clouds, by Aristophanes. That was the satirical play that Socrates blamed, at his trial in 399 BC, for having influenced public opinion against him. But back then I had barely heard of Socrates so I found Aristophanes’ witty send-up of the philosopher and his students a little difficult to follow. A couple of shelves further up, one wet Tuesday, I found an astronomy textbook from the late 19th century, that included a section explaining why space travel would always be impossible (because in space there is no air to push against). And one day I discovered a book by Albert Einstein. It wasn’t his excellent popular guide to his own Theory of Relativity. Called Out of My Later Years, it was a collection of essays on all sorts of topics in morality, religion, culture and international politics. It may be the nearest that Einstein came to writing an actual philosophy book, unless you count General Relativity itself as being philosophy. (And why not? Isn’t it a dazzling triumph of metaphysics, developed from basic underlying axioms with ruthless clarity, despite the counterintuitive conclusions, until it finally gives us a completely new understanding of the universe?)

A library is a place where you expect the unexpected and a single passing reference can send you off to another book on another shelf, and each book might contain dross or might contain a whole universe of thought. But I had forgotten that book of Einstein’s essays until recently I accidentally made contact with its publishers, and discovered that the reason they publish this and six other books by Albert Einstein is rather interesting. So of course I felt I should share it.

It seems that after he emigrated to the United States in 1933 Einstein kept a particular affinity for German language and culture. In New York he made contact with other German-speaking refugees and immigrants, among them a Romanian-born philosopher called Dr Dagobert D. Runes. Like Einstein, Runes was a humanist, a civil rights activist and an admirer of Baruch Spinoza. The two become close friends. Runes knew almost everyone in émigré circles, and hit on the idea of publishing books by the brilliant European exiles he knew. In 1941 he launched The Philosophical Library to do just that. Apart from Out of My Later Years (1950), the seven books by Einstein that he published included several collections of letters, one of which is a book of Einstein’s correspondence with his translator discussing how best to translate various passages of Einstein’s work. The value of this to anyone trying to clarify Einstein’s meaning on different points is obvious. Then when Runes himself edited a Spinoza Dictionary, Einstein wrote the foreword.

The Philosophical Library continues today, still based in New York City but now under the direction of Dagobert Runes’ daughter Regeen, who remembers playing ‘hide-and-go-seek’ with Einstein when she was a small child. Over the seventy years of its existence the company has published more than 2,000 titles, mainly on philosophy, psychology, history and religion. Like the library at my old school, its catalogue is charmingly eclectic, but includes works by 22 Nobel Prize winners. Apart from Einstein’s books its best-known publications include Tears and Laughter by Kahlil Gibran, Classical Mathematics by Max Planck, the English edition of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, and works by Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Bergson, Dewey, Simone de Beauvoir, Jaspers, Royce and many others.

As technological change accelerates and independent publishing companies either fold or merge into giant corporations that bestride the oceans, the survival of small-scale philosophy publishing depends on discovering models which work both financially and in terms of meeting the needs of readers. The Philosophical Library uses two such models. Firstly, it publishes classics from its vast back-catalogue as e-books, as this avoids much of the financial risk involved in printing and distribution. Secondly, it offers a ‘print-on-demand’ service, whereby it arranges the printing of a single copy of a book once it has received an order.

The Philosophical Library manages an astonishing legacy of 20th century classics. By contrast, Project Gutenberg takes a completely different approach for older books which have passed out of copyright in the United States, which happens 70 years after the death of the author. The books are scanned and proof-read by an army of volunteers and around 45,000 are now available for free download, though only about 100 of those are philosophy books. The project’s founder, Michael S. Hart, passed away in 2011 but his legacy marches on. Finally I should mention another great project for public domain works: LibriVox. This is a website containing free audiobooks, recorded by volunteers. Its collection includes around 300 philosophy titles and it is a great resource both for visually impaired people and anyone else who likes to listen to books.

Deceased--Henry Warren "Hank" Hartsfield, Jr.

Henry Warren "Hank" Hartsfield, Jr.
November 21st, 1933 to July 17th, 2014

"Henry 'Hank' Hartsfield Jr. dies at 80; space shuttle astronaut"

by

Steve Chawkins

July 23rd, 2014

The Los Angeles Times

Over his career as an astronaut, Henry "Hank" Hartsfield Jr. spent many years in training and only 20 days in orbit — but they were very good days.

"I've never had so much fun," he once said of his first mission, a test flight of the shuttle Columbia that made a triumphant July 4 touchdown at Edwards Air Force Base in 1982. "We talked about turning the radio off and staying up there."

He was less ebullient in 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded and seven astronauts perished. By then, Hartsfield, who had flown into space on the shuttles Columbia, Discovery and Challenger, learned that NASA officials had failed to inform him and others about a mechanical problem involving malfunctioning seals.

"I was surprised and angry we didn't know this," he told reporters. "If we don't make something better out of this, we're missing a safe bet. I think my friends who died would want us to be better for it."

Hartsfield, an Air Force test pilot who joined NASA in 1969 but had to wait 13 years before going into space himself, died July 17 in League City, Texas. He was 80.

His death was announced by NASA, which described its cause only as an illness.

An unflappable man with an Alabama drawl, Hartsfield was a space rookie at 48.

As copilot of the Columbia, he spent seven days in space with commander Ken Mattingly on a mission described by The Times as "rekindling America's love affair with manned space flight." When they landed, more than 500,000 people jammed Mojave Desert highways for a glimpse of the incoming Columbia. Fascinated by the venture, more than a million Americans had called a special phone line to listen in on the Columbia duo's laconic conversations with ground control.

Showing their support for the space program, President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan were on hand to greet the returning heroes. "This has to beat firecrackers!" the president joked.

Columbia disintegrated on a mission in 2003, killing its seven-member crew.

In 1984, Hartsfield commanded the space shuttle Discovery on its maiden voyage, a flight that had been delayed by potentially lethal mechanical problems three times, once just four seconds before liftoff. At one point, he decided to keep his frustrated crew in their cramped capsule because of a fire on the launchpad.

"At a press conference we all lied about the tension in the cockpit following the abort and the fire," fellow astronaut Mike Mullane wrote in his 2006 memoir "Riding Rockets."

"Hank took most of the questions and did the 'Right Stuff' routine of 'Aaawh shucks, ma'am. Tweren't nothing."

In an interview, Mullane called Hartsfield "an empowering commander and a fierce patriot."
Hartsfield was so exuberantly right-wing that he deliberately took a bathroom break when the orbiter swung over Havana, Mullane said.

At Hartsfield's 50th birthday party, his colleagues ribbed him with gifts playing off his political leanings. One was an autographed copy of Ms. magazine with an inscription to Hartsfield from feminist publisher Gloria Steinem. It had been arranged by astronaut Sally Ride the first American woman in space.

Hartsfield's Discovery crew included Judith Resnik, the second American woman in space. During their mission, Resnik set up a solar array that led to one now in use on the International Space Station, Mullane said.

Resnik was among the seven who died when Challenger exploded in midair on Jan. 28, 1986, three months after Hartsfield had commanded it.

Born in Birmingham, Ala., on Nov. 21, 1933, Hartsfield grew up near a local airfield. As a newsboy, he won a free ride and was hooked on flying.

Graduating from Alabama's Auburn University with a physics degree in 1954, he joined the Air Force in 1955 and logged more than 7,400 hours of flying time in Germany and elsewhere. He also taught test pilots at Edwards. He later received a master's degree in engineering science from the University of Tennessee.

In 1966, he was assigned to the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory — a project that never got off the ground. Three years later, he joined NASA, where he was on the astronaut support crew before his space flights and an administrator from 1985 to 1998. He worked for Raytheon Corp., a defense contractor, until his retirement in 2005.

Hartsfield's survivors include his wife, Fran; daughter Judy Hartsfield Gedies; two grandsons; and his brother Earl. His daughter Keely, who worked as a contractor to the space shuttle program, died in March.

"Henry Hartsfield Jr. Is Dead at 80; Flew, With Fortune, on 3 Shuttles"

by

Bruce Weber

July 22nd, 2014

The New York Times

Henry Hartsfield Jr., who flew on three NASA space shuttles, including as the pilot of the final test flight of the Columbia and as the commander of the maiden mission of the Discovery, died on Thursday. He was 80.

His death was announced by the space agency, which did not say where he died or specify the cause.

Both courageous and fortunate, Mr. Hartsfield flew on the two shuttles — the Columbia and the Challenger — whose histories ended in calamity.

An Air Force pilot who became a NASA astronaut in 1969, Mr. Hartsfield was a member of the astronaut support team for Apollo 16 in 1972, the fifth mission to land men on the moon, and of three Skylab missions. But he did not make his first spaceflight until 1982, when he was part of the two-man crew (along with the commander, Thomas K. Mattingly II, a Navy captain) of the Columbia, the first of the reusable winged planes known as space shuttles, on its fourth and last test flight.

Over seven days, the two men orbited Earth 112 times and, among other things, studied the effects of long-term thermal extremes on elements of the ship and performed arcane genetic experiments involving fruit flies and brine shrimp. Gliding to a smooth landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California on July 4, they were greeted by an estimated 500,000 onlookers, including President Ronald Reagan.

The president praised the astronauts for proving that “Americans still have the know-how, and Americans still have the true grit that conquered a savage wilderness.” He declared the Columbia program “the historical equivalent to the driving of the golden spike which completed the first transcontinental railroad.”

The Columbia eventually flew more than two dozen operational missions, with its astronauts repairing satellites (and, in 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope) and conducting myriad scientific experiments. On a flight in 2003, it broke up during its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, and all seven crew members died.

In 1983, Mr. Hartsfield, who had left the Air Force in 1977 and was serving NASA as a civilian, became the commander of a six-person crew — the others had no spaceflight experience — for the third shuttle, the Discovery. (The second was the Challenger.) After 16 months of training, on June 26, 1984, just before 8:43 a.m., the six were awaiting liftoff as the countdown began at Cape Canaveral, Fla. But computers detected an apparent valve failure in one of the main engines, and the flight was aborted at T minus four seconds.

“I honestly had no concern,” Mr. Hartsfield said at a news conference. “There was a moment of being startled. I think I used an ‘expletive deleted’ and said, ‘We’re not going anywhere.’ ”
The Discovery finally took off at the end of August and successfully completed a six-day mission, circumnavigating Earth 96 times before landing at the Edwards base on Sept. 5.

In flight, the crew deployed three satellites and unfolded an experimental solar power array, extending it out into space from the ship in the first test of electricity-generating systems for space stations. Crew members conducted several scientific tests and photography experiments using the Imax motion picture camera. The crew earned the name Icebusters after Mr. Hartsfield used a robotic arm to dislodge a chunk of ice from the side of the craft that could have caused damage on re-entry.

“We’ve got a good bird there,” Mr. Hartsfield said about the Discovery after the landing.

Henry Warren Hartsfield Jr., known to friends as Hank, was born on Nov. 21, 1933, in Birmingham, Ala., where he graduated from high school. His father, a self-educated bookkeeper, was an office manager for a general contractor. Mr. Hartsfield received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Auburn University, where he was in the Reserve Officers Training Corps, and did graduate work at Duke and at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

Eventually, after joining NASA as an astronaut, he earned an advanced degree in engineering science from the University of Tennessee. He entered the Air Force in 1955, serving with the 53rd Tactical Fighter Squadron in Bitburg, Germany, and graduated from the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base.

Mr. Hartsfield’s survivors include his wife, the former Judy Frances Massey, and a daughter, also named Judy.

When Mr. Hartsfield’s career as an astronaut ended, he worked for NASA on the ground; he was part of the team that planned the deployment of the International Space Station. After retiring from the agency, he was an executive at the Raytheon Corporation.

Altogether, he logged 483 hours in space. He made his third and final spaceflight in October 1985, as the commander of an eight-person crew aboard the shuttle Challenger, which was carrying a German Spacelab and conducted experiments in the areas of physiological sciences, materials processing, biology and navigation. The flight, 111 Earth orbits in seven days, preceded a catastrophe. On Jan. 28, 1986, less than two minutes after liftoff on its next flight, the Challenger disintegrated in midair. In an eerie foreshadowing, a seven-member crew perished.

NASA Biography

Henry Warren "Hank" Hartsfield, Jr. [Wikipedia]

Baghdad's National Museum...a decade later

"National Museum, Baghdad: 10 Years Later"

by

Andrew Lawler

Archaeology

The round hole made by an artillery shell was visible long before we pulled up next to the National Museum in Baghdad in early May of 2003. The puncture, just below a frieze of a king in a chariot, was in the replica of a Babylon gate next to the exhibit halls. An American tank sat in the archway. Though I had seen images of the destruction that took place a month before, the sight was startling.

Inside it was worse. The administrative area was in shambles. Filing cabinets were turned over, and papers dating back to the museum’s founding by British archaeologist Gertrude Bell in the 1920s, were strewn about. Small fires had destroyed some offices. In the display area, angry mobs had shattered the cases and smashed 2,000-year-old statues. The primary storage facility had been breached, and some 15,000 objects—no one knows exactly how many—were gone. Among the missing pieces were thousands of tiny cylinder seals, as well as several iconic artifacts such as the Lady of Warka, a stone head of a woman found at Uruk, which is considered the world’s oldest city.

Had museum officials not hidden 8,366 of the most valuable artifacts in a safe place known only to them, this event might have been a catastrophe for cultural heritage in Iraq. For a while, no one knew for certain how much damage had been done; I was with a team of U.S. archaeologists who arrived to assess the situation. Most of the museum’s estimated 170,000 artifacts were eventually found to be safe. The rampage had earned front-page headlines across the world. It was entirely preventable.

Some 2,500 years earlier, the Persian king Cyrus the Great was able to storm nearby Babylon, then the world’s largest city, but texts from the time relate that there was no chaos or looting. However, in 2003, American troops failed to secure what was second on their own list, after the Central Bank, of important places to protect in the modern Iraqi capital. Archaeologists had visited the Pentagon prior to the invasion to provide military officials with detailed coordinates of all major Iraqi cultural heritage sites.

The looting of the museum was over less than 48 hours after it began on April 10, 2003. But it was only the start of a decade of disaster for Iraq’s cultural heritage, a heritage that includes the world’s first cities, empires, and writing system. More than ancient vases and display cases were affected. The invasion began a grim era of sectarian violence and lawlessness in the very land that developed the state, legal codes, and recorded history itself. That era continues. “These are still very tough days,” says Abdul-Amir Hamdani, an Iraqi archaeologist who today is working on a doctorate at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. I first met Hamdani in May 2003 on the sidewalk outside U.S. military headquarters in the southern city of Nasiriya, where he was desperately attempting to get help to stop the vandals poaching ancient sites. “There is still nothing protecting many sites from looting and destruction.”

Looting, particularly in southern Iraq, which was the center of ancient Mesopotamia, had already begun in earnest in the late 1990s and grew to alarming proportions by 2004 and 2005, long after the National Museum was secured. The United States, its allies, and the fledgling government of post-Saddam Iraq did little to address the sources of the problem. Looting notwithstanding, Hamdani says that today’s principal threat is unbridled development; he served time in jail a few years ago for protesting construction on ancient sites. It is true that, now, foreign archaeologists are working in the northern part of Iraq called Kurdistan. A few western excavators are even digging in the southern regions that have long been off-limits. Looting at archaeological sites has decreased. But young archaeologists in the country long ago drifted to other less controversial and more remunerative work as the older generation retired, emigrated, or died.

More ominously, a new generation of Iraqis has grown up without any access to the impressive network of museums across the country that were once crowded with schoolchildren. They know little of their ancient past. Many Iraqi politicians today have a bent toward Islamic fundamentalism that is no friend to secular archaeology. Liwaa Semeism, the tourism minister overseeing the State Board of Antiquities, is a member of a splinter Shiite party. He has reduced the board’s authority and is openly hostile to foreigners. American archaeologists are now forbidden to excavate in Iraq until a trove of Jewish artifacts removed by the U.S. government is returned. And Semeism recently suggested that Germans might not be welcome either until the famous Babylonian Ishtar Gate—the model for the National Museum gateway—is returned.

The National Museum of Iraq today has beautifully renovated galleries and state-of-the-art climate control and security systems run by a staff that still consists of a core of underfunded but dedicated curators. But despite all the effort and money lavished on it by foreign governments, the museum remains closed to all but the most senior VIPs in an attempt to protect it. The fear is that throwing the museum’s doors open to the public exposes the collection and the newly-restored building to risk from another attack.

New elections later this month could bring greater political stability to the country. Eventually, as they have done from Nebuchadnezzar to Saddam, Iraqi leaders may again see their heritage as a major asset. “If you want to think about unity, then the ancient past is a broadly shared culture,” says Elizabeth Stone, a SUNY Stony Brook archaeologist who spent years excavating in Iraq. “Ancient Mesopotamia was real, and that could be used as a basis for natural unity.”

Hamdani will be returning to his home country this summer to continue his research. More than half of the stolen objects from the National Museum have been recovered, the gaping hole in the gate has since been carefully patched, and the tanks are gone. It is worth noting that there were no follow-up congressional hearings or independent investigations to pinpoint the parties responsible for the negligence connected to the museum debacle. No one in the U.S. military was criticized, demoted, or court-martialed. A Marine, who blamed Iraqis for using the site as a base to fight the Americans, wrote the only formal report on the matter.

The chaos that engulfed this land may finally be receding. A decade later, however, the true cost to our understanding of such a rich share of humanity’s heritage has yet to be tallied.

White and male...so goes physics

Loraine Decherd

"We Know Physics is Largely White and Male, But Exactly How White and Male is Still Striking"

Most current physics students will likely never have an African American physics teacher, says a new survey

by

Shannon Palus

July 14th, 2014

smithsonian.com

In the entire United States, of the thousands and thousands of college physics and astronomy faculty, only 75 are African American or Hispanic women, says the American Institute of Physics. According to a new survey by the AIP, female racial minorities make up less than 1% of the 9,050 physics faculty members in the country.

According to the new survey data, just 2.1% of physics faculty in the country are African American and 3.2% Hispanic. Those values come nowhere near the representation of those groups in the general population, where 13% of Americans are black and 17% Hispanic. The overwhelming majority--79.2%--of physics faculty are white. “[M]ost physics students will never see a black faculty member,” says the AIP report. And the situation doesn't look set to change: the number of African American faculty members has flatlined since 2000.

Last year, a separate report from the American Institute of Physics found that women aren't doing any better. They found that the representation of women in physics is still incredibly low. But unlike the lack of movement in physics' racial diversity, the outlook for women is slightly more optimistic: while 14% of all faculty members are female, more than 25% of the new hires in 2010 were female.

Minority women in science “have traditionally been excluded because of biases related to both their race or ethnicity and gender, constituting a double bind,” explains a 2005 report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Maleness and whiteness, even separated, hijack diversity efforts says the AAAS: “[W]omen's science organizations are overwhelmingly white, and the minority science organizations, overwhelmingly male.”
The number of staff on the payroll, though, is only part of the picture, says the AIP:

    Counting numbers of faculty members cannot tell us about the everyday experiences and workplace environments of academic physicists. It also does not tell us about possible inequities in salaries and in promotion and tenure rates.

As a 2012 study showed, biases are often unconsciousness. In their study, the researchers found that both female and male faculty members were less likely to hire an "applicant" for a lab position when the resume had a female name at the top.

The roots of bias run deep, and in some part stem from the idea that physics is a select club, the exclusive realm of brilliant, excentric white men: “The image of Einstein, with his shock of white hair and seemingly superhuman intellectual accomplishments, is not one that most people would gravitate toward nor view as achievable,” says a 2005 International Conference on Women in Physics presentation. A 2006 American Physical Society presentation expands: “And for African American Women this image is less attainable than for most, for we have less in common with him than the majority of the physics community.”

We revere people like Einstein, Newton, Hawking and others because their intellectual pursuits broke the mold of the time--their thinking expanded our knowledge of the universe and helped us to understand our place in it.

Yet just like for these great white men, new ideas often come from new ways of thinking. The different perspectives and experiences of those who--by nature of their gender or skin color--have tred a different path through life should be valuable to all people who care about scientific discovery. Not just because diverse ways of thinking could set the stage for new scientific ideas but because, at its heart, physics explores the underpinnings of the universe, and the keys to the cosmos should be accessible to everyone.

There are exceptions...

University of Texas

Off to be scrapped...Costa Concordia

"It’s Make or Break for the World’s Biggest Marine Salvage Operation"

by

Per Liljas

July 14th, 2014

Time

It’s a record attempt in heavy lifting that nobody wishes to ever be matched. On Monday, the operation to raise and refloat the capsized 114,500-ton cruise ship Costa Concordia was finally started. If all goes well, the vessel will be towed away to the Italian port city of Genoa, where it will be decommissioned. However, after more than two and a half years on the sea floor, experts fear the delicate maneuver will rupture the prone ship’s hull, spewing out its toxic load — including fuel and dangerous chemicals — into the pristine Tuscan archipelago.

The Costa Concordia veered off course and ran aground outside the island of Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 people and leaving the enormous liner partially submerged in the shallow waters. In tandem with a legal process against the ship’s captain, a salvage operation of unparalleled proportions was commenced. All but one of the victims’ bodies have been recovered, and in a massive September 2013 exercise, the ship was turned upright (parbuckled) and secured on an artificial platform.

Now begins the final phase. Giant tanks welded to the sides of the 290-m-long wreck will be emptied of water, slowly raising it out of the water. Every floor surfaced will be cleaned of debris and potentially harmful substances that could spill into the sea. They will also be surveyed for signs of Russel Rebello, the Indian waiter who remains missing.

“I strongly believe they will find the body of my dear brother,” writes Russel’s brother Kevin in a Facebook post.

Weather conditions have delayed the operation on several occasions, but even though the forecast still isn’t ideal, the salvage crew has pushed ahead, since the hulk would unlikely survive another winter. In fact, it could already have deteriorated too badly for the refloating procedure and subsequent 240-km tow to Genoa. The first 2 m of the raising are the most dangerous, and the hull will constantly be monitored for possible cracks and fissures.

Cutting up the ship in place is not an option. “It’s far more dangerous to the environment to leave it where it is than to tow it away,” Italy’s civil-protection chief Franco Gabrielli explained to Giglio residents. With luck, they could bid farewell to their unwanted, view-spoiling neighbor in just a couple of weeks. Refloating Costa Concordia and moving it into open waters is estimated to take between five and seven days, tugging it to safety another four to five.

 
Remarkable engineering feat

Now Germany's soccer team must face the tough Greeks

Deceased--Frank M. Robinson

Frank M. Robinson
August 9th, 1926 to June 30th, 2014

"Frank M. Robinson dies at 87; author and Harvey Milk speechwriter"

by

Steve Chawkins

July 9th, 2014

The Los Angeles Times

Frank M. Robinson, an author of thrillers and science fiction who also helped slain San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk craft some of his most powerful speeches, has died. He was 87.

Robinson's June 30 death while under hospice care at his San Francisco home was confirmed by Daniel Nicoletta, a longtime friend who, like Robinson, was part of Milk's inner circle. Robinson had a history of heart problems, Nicoletta said.

As a fiction writer, Robinson told stories set in burning skyscrapers, sinister hospitals and Utopian spaceships drifting a thousand generations into the future. With Thomas Scortia, he wrote "The Glass Inferno," a 1974 novel about a catastrophic blaze. It, along with Richard Martin Stern's "The Tower," formed the basis of the 1974 blockbuster movie "The Towering Inferno."

A sci-fi fan since his teenage years, Robinson also made a living in nonfiction.

Without revealing his gay identity, he wrote Playboy magazine's Playboy Advisor column from 1969 to 1973.

"I didn't trust the outside world," he told the Portland Oregonian in 2008. "I was frightened. Frightened I'd lose my job and my friends."

At the same time, Robinson wrote and edited "Chicago Gay Pride," a 1971 publication that promoted the city's Pride Parade. He kept his byline out of it.

Moving to San Francisco in 1973, he did not intend to throw himself into politics. But strolling by Milk's camera shop in the Castro district, he befriended the man who was to become the first openly gay American elected to a prominent office.

Milk had won 15,000 votes in an earlier, unsuccessful bid for supervisor. Now he was running again and was looking for a speechwriter.

"I never for a moment thought he would win anything," Robinson later wrote. Still, he signed on.

Robinson worked on Milk's stirring "You've Got to Have Hope" speech — a call for gay pride that included Milk's recounting of an anguished call from a confused young boy in Altoona, Pa.

"Harvey polished the speech and used it often," Robinson wrote in his foreword to a collection of Milk's writings, "though the rest of us kidded him because some days the boy lived in Altoona, other times in San Antonio or Buffalo. The boy really got around, we thought."

Eventually, Robinson became such a trusted advisor that Milk, preoccupied with the possibility of his own assassination, left a "political will" designating him as his preferred successor.

"If there were any problems, he would be able to carry on the philosophy and idea of what I stood for," Milk said in a 1977 tape recording he left with his attorney.

On Nov. 27, 1978, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were shot to death by former supervisor Dan White.

Always uncomfortable in the limelight, Robinson never sought office and continued to write books.

Born in Chicago on Aug. 9, 1926, Frank Malcolm Robinson served in the Navy as a radar technician during World War II and the Korean War. Between his tours of duty, he graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin. He later received a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

He wrote or co-wrote more than a dozen works, including coffee-table books that reflected his passion for garishly illustrated, campy pulp magazines.

His 1956 novel "The Power" was about a murderous superman with psychic powers. In 1968, it was turned into a film starring George Hamilton and Suzanne Pleshette.

His 1991 novel "The Dark Beyond the Stars" received a Lambda Literary Award for gay men's science fiction and fantasy.

Robinson's stories feature occasional bisexual or gay characters but are not built around gay themes, said Robin Wayne Bailey, a novelist and past president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

"He used to say he was never in the closet but he was never out waving the flag every day either," Bailey said.

Persuaded by director Gus Van Sant, Robinson reluctantly played a cameo role as himself in the 2008 film "Milk." The scene involved one of Milk's pet crusades — cleaning up after dogs in public spaces — and Robinson's only word was one in common use to describe dog droppings.

"I said I thought I could manage that," Robinson recalled, "and my career as a movie star was born."

Robinson leaves no immediate survivors.

"Frank M. Robinson Dies at 87; Author and Adviser to Harvey Milk"

by

Paul Vitello

July 4th, 2014

The New York Times

Frank M. Robinson, a well-regarded science fiction writer whose credits include a novel adapted for the 1974 blockbuster film “The Towering Inferno,” and who was also a speechwriter and adviser to Harvey Milk, the San Francisco city supervisor assassinated in 1978, died on Monday at his home in San Francisco. He was 87.

The cause was heart disease and pneumonia, said Robin Wayne Bailey, an author, friend and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, which announced the death.

Mr. Robinson had moved to San Francisco from Chicago in 1973 to work with a friend and fellow writer, Thomas N. Scortia, on a novel about a skyscraper fire. While writing the book he befriended Mr. Milk, who owned a camera store in the neighborhood.

“The Glass Inferno,” their 1974 novel, was mined for parts in creating the final script for “The Towering Inferno,” the producer Irwin Allen’s disaster-film follow-up to “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972). Parts of Richard Martin Stern’s 1973 novel, “The Tower,” also found their way into the movie. All three authors earned screen credit and substantial paydays.

Mr. Robinson used his money to settle in San Francisco, and to help Mr. Milk in his quest to become one of the first openly gay elected officials in the country.

“It came up that I was a writer,” Mr. Robinson said in a 2008 interview with The Chicago Reader, describing the conversation that began his political partnership with Mr. Milk. “He said, ‘Hey, why don’t you be my speechwriter? It’ll be a hoot.’ ”

“I figured it would be a lot of fun,” Mr. Robinson recalled — “and I might meet somebody.”

Mr. Robinson was also gay, but not publicly. In Chicago, where he spent the first half of his life, he had earned his living as a writer and editor for men’s magazines like Rogue, Gallery and Playboy. At Playboy, where he worked from 1969 to 1973, he had ghostwritten the “Playboy Advisor” column, a colloquium of sex and lifestyle advice for men.

His reputation as a science-fiction author was established with “The Power,” a 1956 novel about a man with advanced mental powers. Considered a classic of the paranormal genre, it was made into a television special in 1956 starring Theodore Bikel and a film in 1968 starring George Hamilton and Suzanne Pleshette.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Robinson teamed with Mr. Scortia on several projects. Besides “The Glass Inferno,” they wrote “The Prometheus Crisis” (1975), “The Nightmare Factor” (1978) and “The Gold Crew,” a nuclear-nightmare thriller.

His 1991 novel, “The Dark Beyond the Stars,” a space travel reimagining of Christopher Columbus’s journey, was selected as one of The New York Times’s notable books of the year.

Frank Malcolm Robinson was born in Chicago on Aug. 9, 1926. After a tour of duty in the Navy during World War II, he graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin and then was drafted again to serve in the Korean War. He earned a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and worked in the magazine business while writing fiction.

He is survived by a brother, Mark.

Mr. Robinson had a small role in “Milk,” Gus Van Sant’s 2008 film about Harvey Milk, and was interviewed extensively by Sean Penn, who played the title role, for his insights about his friend. Mr. Milk was killed along with Mayor George Moscone at San Francisco’s City Hall on Nov. 27, 1978, by a disgruntled political rival, Dan White.

Mr. Robinson had little or no dialogue in most of his scenes. But at one point he improvised a line, standing at a window to shout a profane coming-out announcement about his sexuality. “I’ll tell my brothers!” he said. Mr. Van Sant liked the moment well enough to film it a second time.

Mr. Robinson had never told anyone in his family that he was gay, neither his parents nor his four brothers. And though the scene did not end up in the film, saying the words had made him tremble with emotion, he told The Chicago Reader. It had been his coming out.

“I suddenly realized I was saying goodbye to all that baggage.”

Frank M. Robinson website

Frank M. Robinson [Wikipedia]

Two samples...

Decision

The Worlds of Joe Shannon

Deceased--John King

John King
1925 to July 6th, 2014

"John King, professor emeritus of physics, dies at 88"

Innovative researcher and educator was a champion of attacking science problems with “ferocious vigor.”

by

Teresa Lynne Hill

July 7th, 2014

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor emeritus John G. King ’50, PhD ‘53, an experimental physicist, transformative physics educator, and leader of the MIT Molecular Beams Laboratory in the Research Laboratory for Electronics for 42 years, died on June 15 at his summer house in Wellfleet, Mass. A longtime resident of Cambridge, King was 88. The cause of death was congestive heart and renal failure.

“John was an inspiring teacher and experimentalist. His educational passion was creating hands-on experiments built from ordinary parts you can find at any hardware store, what he lovingly called ‘mulch,’” said MIT senior lecturer in physics, and former King student, Peter Dourmashkin ’76 (physics), ’78 (math), PhD ‘84. “He was MITx before MITx.”

King was born in London and educated in France, Switzerland, and the United States. He came to MIT as an undergraduate in 1943 and completed his undergraduate studies in physics following war service for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and the Harvard Underwater Sound Lab. He joined the MIT physics faculty in 1953. King was named the Francis L. Friedman Professor of Physics in 1974 and retired from MIT in 1996.

King was renowned for his null experiments — those designed to test fundamental principles. He helped develop the atomic clock and invented the molecular microscope. King’s best-known experiment, still found on the first page of most electricity and magnetism textbooks, is the measurement of the charge magnitude equality of the electron and the proton, and the neutrality of the neutron to a 10-20 of an electron charge. King also conceived an imaginative experiment, prompted by cosmological ideas, to set a hard limit on the possibility that matter, over cosmological time, begets new matter, a version of what was once called the steady state cosmology.

Building atomic and molecular beam research

Professor of physics emeritus Rainer Weiss ’55, PhD ’62 was a colleague of King throughout his student and faculty years at MIT and considers him to be “one of the most creative and imaginative experimental physicists of his generation.” Both physicists were students of Jerrold Zacharias, who began the Molecular Beam Laboratory at MIT shortly after World War II. Molecular beam experiments measure the properties of individual atoms in a vacuum unperturbed by interactions with other molecules. The technique provides precise and universally reproducible values for the energy levels and other parameters of these quantized systems. King began his work in molecular beams by pioneering new methods to measure the charge and current distributions in the nuclei of the halogens. He discovered the magnetic octupole moment of the common isotope of iodine.

During his years as director and principal investigator of the Molecular Beam Laboratory, King transformed the research conducted there. It branched into molecular beam techniques applied to collective body physics, cosmology, and biophysics. More than 100 undergraduate and 25 doctoral students obtained their degrees working on these topics during King’s tenure at the laboratory.

At a 2000 gathering to celebrate King’s career, Fred Dylla ’71, SM ’71, PhD ’75 described working in the Molecular Beams Lab as “getting your hands dirty and being surrounded by brilliant students who were around all the time.” Dylla is currently executive director and CEO of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), a nonprofit umbrella organization for 10 scientific societies that publishes scientific journals and provides information-based products and services.

Applying atomic beam techniques to biophysics, King invented a molecular microscope using water molecules rather than light as the illuminating projectile. His idea was to map the locations where water would evaporate or stick on small biological samples such as cells with biologically interesting spatial resolution. Working models of the device were developed for some biology labs, though the technique has yet to be widely adopted. 

When inventions such as the molecular microscope were not as successful as he had hoped, King attributed the failure to insufficient effort in combining enough money and skilled personnel. Achieving this winning combination required, in his view, an attack on the problem with “ferocious vigor.” Moderate vigor was not enough.

Reinventing physics education

Dissatisfied with the lab exercises used in mid-century physics pedagogy, King worked tirelessly on innovative methods that stressed hands-on learning and independent thinking. In 1966, he initiated the Project Lab, in which students developed their own open-ended research projects. His belief that anyone could “find something interesting to study about any mundane effect” reflects the independent spirit of King’s own early and eclectic science education. He told his students that “the best way to understand your apparatus is to build it.”

As an adviser, King quickly became a project participant. Charles H. Holbrow, professor of physics emeritus at Colgate University and currently a lecturer at MIT, recalled that King had “the wonderful gift of seeing physics in everyday phenomena and turning these into research projects.” Some 2,000 MIT undergraduates experienced Project Lab.

Approached by a student seeking a thesis experiment or a colleague with an idea, King would, before long, be sketching ideas on the backs of envelopes, estimating orders of magnitude, and offering ideas on how to build and run the experiment.  Fred Dylla’s own undergraduate thesis with King was designed to determine the difference in charge between an electron and a proton. Still considered a highly sensitive measurement, the experiment utilized $20 worth of equipment.

A King student from his MIT sophomore year through graduate school, Samuel A. Cohen, director of the Program in Plasma Science and Technology at Princeton University, learned how to operate a drill press and to build his own electron multipliers. At the same time, he was being influenced by King’s ideas. He says, “John’s mind kept jumping decades ahead, from atomic beams to superfluid He3 to molecular microscopy — always decades ahead.”

King believed that an understanding of fundamental science concepts should extend beyond physics course curricula. For years he championed the creation of a “Corridor Lab.” Never entirely realized at MIT (a couple of experiments now grace the Infinite Corridor), Corridor Lab would have placed 100 experiments, each demonstrating a scientific principle, along the miles of MIT hallways. Anyone passing could interact with an apparatus; faculty members could send students to experiment with them; and other departments could participate. King envisioned similar modules in a wide range of venues to further public understanding of science.

With other educators in the late 1950s and ‘60s, King worked on the revitalization of high school physics, following the startling realization on the part of Zacharias that “while students had taken physics, they didn’t understand anything.” When the 1957 launching of Sputnik spurred a nation-wide alarm and allocation of money to improve science teaching, King became deeply involved. In cooperation with the influential Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC), he produced — and acted in —eight physics movies, including “Times and Clocks,” “Interference with Photons,” “Size of Atoms from an Atomic Beam Experiment,” and “Velocity of Atoms.” One of the films featured King demonstrating a principle of physics by driving one of the Bugatti automobiles he had meticulously restored down the Massachusetts Turnpike at high speed.

A lengthy 2009 interview for the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics shows King’s ongoing interest in science as a basis for a healthy and rewarding intellectual life. Speculating on the significance of the earliest point on the educational spectrum, he proposed that each child at birth be equipped with a kit of simple tools (balls, funnels, etc.) designed to stimulate a life of joyful investigation. A more advanced set of gear would be universally furnished at age six.

A life of invention

Family, friends, and colleagues paint a portrait of an energetic, curious, and engaging man who applied these characteristics equally to his intellectual, professional, and personal lives. King’s wife, Jane Williams, recalls him as “interesting, imaginative, ingenious and lots of fun.” In addition to his enthusiasm for physics and the value of science as the basis for understanding the world around us, she says, he was throughout his life “passionate about classical music, poetry, and any kind of dictionary. Since his early years were spent in France, he cared about things French, including French wines.”

King’s French stepfather introduced him to the tinkering that informed much of his approach to science, especially science teaching. As a high school student at Phillips Exeter Academy, he had his own laboratory. In life, as in science, he remained a relentless tinkerer, once rebuilding a bus, complete with bunks, to transport his large family to the farm in Woolwich, Maine, where he and his first wife, Elizabeth, lived for many years. She and several of their eight children still live in or around Woolwich.

King was the recipient of many honors and awards for contributions to physics and physics education. These include the Alfred P. Sloan Award (1956), the AAPT Robert Millikan Medal (1965), the E. Harris Harbison Award (1971), and the Oersted Medal (2000), the most prestigious award of the American Association of Physics Teachers. His numerous publications include co-authorship with Paul Gluck of Jerusalem of “Physics Project Labs,” (Oxford University Press) to be published in fall 2014.

In addition to his wife, King is survived by a daughter, Martha, and sons Andrew, James, Charles, David, Benjamin, and Matthew; granddaughters Sara, Katy, and Lily; stepchildren Cynthia, David, Catherine, and Nicholas; and eight stepgrandchildren. His oldest son Alan predeceased him.

A memorial service will take place at MIT in October.

John G. King [Wikipedia]

Butt, butt, butt...I don't have £15,500

"Athena 'tennis girl' poster dress sells for £15,500 at auction"

Dress featured in classic 1970s poster fetches eight times its original estimate with racquet

by

Chris Johnston

July 5th, 2014
   
theguardian.com

The white minidress worn by the model in the famous 1970s "Tennis Girl" poster has been sold for £15,500 at auction.

The price was almost eight times the £2,000 estimate set by Fieldings Auctioneers in Stourbridge, which offered the dress along with the tennis racquet featured in the image and two copies of the poster.

The picture featured 18-year-old Fiona Butler and was taken at the University of Birmingham by her boyfriend at the time, Martin Elliott. She was not paid for her modelling.

Elliott, who died in 2010, sold the image licence for the 1977 Athena poster, which sold more than 2m copies.

The identity of the woman in the picture had been unknown until Fiona Butler – now Fiona Walker, 55 – came forward in 2011. "It never ceases to make me smile when I see it," she said at the time.

The dress was made by Butler's friend Carol Knots. "As I played tennis at the local club in Stourbridge, I bought a 'Simplicity' pattern and made my own dress, complete with lace trim. Fiona was a friend and one day asked if she could borrow my dress and racquet," she said before the auction.

"When she returned them, she gave me a big box of chocolates as a thank you. I've had the dress tucked away in a cupboard for all those years. It's a little piece of tennis history and I hope someone might find it an interesting novelty item to buy," she said.

Elliott, whose reputation as a photographer was established by the global success of the picture, split with his girlfriend three years after it was shot.

Walker's pose has been imitated by many over the years including pop star Kylie Minogue, comedians Frank Skinner and Ricky Gervais, and tennis legend Pat Cash, as well as Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden, who was photographed in her tennis whites last month.

The identity of the purchaser has not been revealed. The auction was held ahead of the Wimbledon ladies' singles final.

Life after philosophical academia

"What Do Philosophers Do?"

Outside of academia, that is.

by

Rebecca J. Rosen

July 8th, 2014

The Atlantic

The romanticized version of what it's like to be a philosopher must be one of the most appealing careers possible: read great thinkers, think deep thoughts, and while away the days in a beautiful office, surrounded by books, an Emeralite lamp, a hot mug of coffee, and perhaps a cat curled up by your feet. For the very few, your profound thoughts could revolutionize whole fields, herald new political ages, and inspire generations.

Of course, for many, academic philosophy proves a disappointment—an endless slog to publish, the tedium and heartache of departmental politics, and a dismal job market that tends to  people to far-flung college towns, far away from family and friends.

So what is a budding philosopher to do?

An informative series of posts by Helen De Cruz of New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science features interviews with seven philosophy Ph.D.s who have left academia for the private sector. There's a software engineer, a television comedy writer, a statistical researcher, a consultant, a network-security engineer, and a search-engine developer. None of them are what would traditionally be thought of as a "philosopher."

In a few cases, they've found that their new jobs provide surprising platforms for further philosophical examination, such as the television screenwriter Eric Kaplan, who said, “I’m very interested in [the] tension between life and theory and mind and emotions; I explore that both in philosophy writing and in script writing.” Similarly, Claartje van Sijl, who now runs her own consulting and training company, says that the philosophy she studied informs the advice she gives. Her philosophy training, she explains, "has familiarized me with the greatest philosophical thoughts of 2500 years of history that I can now use as a sounding board for my clients’ and my own reflections."
But, for the most part, the philosophers aren't deploying their firm grasp of Kierkegaard in their private-sector work. Rather, it's the skills that philosophers are trained in—critical thinking, clear writing, quick learning—that translate well to life outside of academia. As Zachary Ernst, a software engineer at Narrative Science, puts it, "As a professional philosopher, if you haven't gotten over-specialized and narrow, then you've got really good analytic and communication skills. So you've got the ability to learn quickly and efficiently. You're also in the habit of being very critical of all sorts of ideas and approaches to a variety of problems. And if you've taught a lot, then you're probably pretty comfortable with public speaking. Those skills are very rare in almost any workforce, and they're extremely valuable."

This is not to say that the transition from academia to industry was easy. A few of the philosophers report that the dim view of private industry inside academia can stifle an exploration of what else might be out there. Ian Niles, the search-engine developer, advises, "Don't consider a job outside academia as 'slumming it.' Academia, for all of its virtues, instills a fear of the 'real world' in students, particularly graduate students."
To that end, another one of the philosophers noted that for all the training he received, very little of it led him to conclude that he might be able to make it outside of a university. Carl Baker, who is now a statistical researcher at the House of Commons Library, said, "If I had to highlight one weakness in my postgraduate training it would be the lack of discussion of how the skills developed during a philosophy Ph.D. can be used elsewhere."

And...

"This Is What Your Professors Really Think About You Leaving Academia"

by

Annalee Newitz

July 9th, 2014

io9

As university budgets shrink, more and more graduate students are seeking jobs outside academia. You'd think this would be a good thing for the world, but professors aren't convinced. In fact, many actively discourage their students from striving for non-academic jobs.

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Stacey Patton reports that at a recent conference on the topic of careers for grad students and postdocs, this issue came to the fore. University of California at San Francisco's director of career development, Bill Lindstaedt, showed a slide with comments he'd heard from faculty about students pursuing nonacademic jobs. They were dismissive of the idea that students might need such jobs, despite the tiny academic job market, and expressed no interest in helping students discover other career paths.

UCSF is a medical school, so all their work is focused on medical and scientific research. Here are some choice quotes:

    "The problem isn't that there are too few faculty positions. The problem is that more students and postdocs are CHOOSING not to become faculty."

    -Program director at large graduate program

    "It's my JOB to create more people like me."

    -Senior faculty member

    "I'm very supportive of students in my lab who decide they want to leave academia. But they're smart. They'll figure out how to get there (alternative career) on their own."

    -Senior faculty member

    "If a rotation student comes in saying they want to be a science writer, they're not staying [in my research group]."

    -Senior faculty member

    "They shouldn't get distracted until after quals. And after quals, they need to be in the lab doing research. I don't want my students out of the lab teaching or other distracting activities."

    -Senior faculty member

    "I made it and nobody helped me. Plus, I was the only woman in my graduate program. The best students will always succeed."

    -Senior faculty member
As a science writer, I especially love the comment from the professor about how potential future writers will get kicked out. Because why would you want science writers who had formal scientific training in a lab, anyway? Better to complain later about how science journalists are "dumb" and just "don't get" science.

You'll note that a lot of these comments center on how university professors want their students focused on lab work, AKA the professor's research. So this reluctance to discuss outside careers is as much about wanting cheap grad student and postdoc labor as it is about wanting to create "more people like me," as one faculty member said.

But there are also more subtle causes for this disconnect between what professors prepare their students for, and what they can actually expect in the real world. Many senior researchers came of age in an era when university budgets were not taxed to their maximum, so they don't realize how uncommon a tenure-track position is anymore. And in my personal experience (yes, I was a grad student back at the turn of the millennium) there is also intellectual prejudice against nonacademic jobs. If you want to be a true scholar, you are supposed to stay in the Ivory Tower. Anything else is getting your hands dirty, or catering to mere commercial interests.

Whether it's out of clueless prejudice or a venal desire for low-paid lab assistants, professors may be endangering the future of their disciplines by assuming that university work is the only legitimate path. Scientists and researchers are leaving the academy, no matter what we do. As these freelance scholars come of age, gaining more power and legitimacy, it will be better for everyone if they regard academia as a possible partner in their future work — not as the place that used them up and threw them away.

Pizza for all

"Push Button for Pizza: A New Era for Vending Machines"

by

Jonathan Chan

July 7th, 2014

Reviewed.com Publications

It happens every day: Around 3pm, I start fumbling for quarters and trying to decide which unsatisfying, wastefully packaged, nutritionally vapid nugget to get from vending machine around the corner.

But what if instead of candy, chips, and soda, a vending machine could dispense hot pizza and cupcakes? That'd make them more like an automat, and a heck of a lot more enticing.

Good news: There are a growing number of companies working to create vending machines that dispense your favorite treats. It's a new dawn for speedy snacking.
Pizza

According to Pizza Marketplace, Americans consume 350 slices of pizza a second (collectively, not per person). With five billion pizzas eaten worldwide each year, it's no wonder Dutch company A1 Concepts has created a pizza vending machine.

The coolest thing about this contraption is that it actually constructs and bakes your pizza on request, rather than reheating a frozen pie. The mechanical wonder starts with all the base ingredients like flour, water, and tomato sauce. It only requires 2.5 minutes to prepare and serve a personal size pizza, and each one costs €3.

Just imagine the profits from putting one of these in a college dormitory.

Cost...

€3=$4.08

Promo...

Demonstration...

Vocabulary list--#27

POSP stringer Tim had some time on his hands...so here is another vocabulary list.

ambrosia

am-broh-zhee-uh

noun

1a. The food of the Greek and Roman gods.
1b. The ointment or perfume of the gods.
2. Something extremely pleasing to taste or smell.
3. A dessert made of oranges and shredded coconut.


ambulant

am-byul-luhnt

adjective

1. Moving from place to place, itinerant, shifting.
2. [Medicine]: Patient able to walk.


antebellum

an-tih-bel-um

adjective

Existing before a war, especially, existing before the Civil War.


arsy-varsy

ar-see-vahr-see

adjective

1. Informal: Wrong end foremost' completely backwards.
2. Informal: In a backward or thoroughly mixed up fashion.


chivy

chiv-ee

verb

1. To tease or annoy with persistent petty attacks.
2. To move or obtain by small maneuvers.


clement

clem-uhnt

adjective

1. Mild or merciful in disposition, lenient, compassionate.
2. [Of temperature] mild or temperate, pleasant 


crapulous

krap-yuh-luhs

adjective

1. Given to or characterized by excessive drinking or eating.
2. Suffering from or due to such excess.


dactylogram

dak-til-uh-gram

noun

A fingerprint.


diffident

dif-uh-dunt

adjective

1. Hesitant in acting or speaking through lack of self-confidence.
2. Reserved, unassertive.


droke

drohk

noun

A valley with steeply sloping sides.


epithalamion

ep-uh-thuh-let-mee-on

noun

A poem or song in honor of a bridegroom and bride.


evince

ih-vinns

verb

1. To constitute outward evidence of.
2. To display clearly, reveal.


faze

fayz

verb

To disturb the composure of, disconcert, daunt.


gallinipper

gal-uh-nip-er

noun

Informal. any of various insects that sting or bite, especially a large American mosquito, Psorophora ciliata.


garboil

gahr-boil

noun

[Archaic]: confusion.


germane

jer-mayn

adjective

Being at once relevant and appropriate, fitting.


gloze

glohz

verb

To explain away, extenuate, gloss over.


Incongruous

in-kahn-gruh-wus

adjective

1. Not harmonious, incompatible.
2. Not conforming, disagreeing.
3. Inconsistent within itself.


onomasticon

on-uh-mas-ti-kon

noun

1. A list or collection of proper names.
2. A list or collection of specialized terms as those used in a particular field.


peregrine

per-i-grin [green-grahyn]

adjective

1. Foreign, alien, coming from abroad.
2. Wandering, traveling, migrating.


perdue

per-dur

verb

To continue to exist, last.


prate

preyt

verb

To talk incessantly and pointlessly, babble.
To utter in empty or foolish talk.



prevaricator

pri-var-i-key-ter

noun

1. A person who speaks falsely, liar, mythomaniac.
2. Speaking to avoid the truth, quibbler, equivocator.


rident 

rahyd-nt

adjective

Laughing, smiling, cheerful.


sophomoric

sahf-mor-ik

adjective

1. Conceited and overconfident of knowledge but poorly informed and immature.
2. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a sophomore.


sparge

spahrj

verb

To sprinkle or scatter.


strident

strahyd-nt

adjective

1. Making or having a harsh sound, grating, creaking, such as insects or hinges.
2. Having a shrill or irritating quality or character such as writing.


Vocabulary list--#1

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Vocabulary list--#19

Vocabulary list--#20 

Vocabulary list--#21 

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Vocabulary list--#24

Vocabulary list--#25 

Vocabulary list--#26

Physics comics from Comic Book Plus

"7 Public Domain Physics Comics Worth Reading"

June 23rd, 2014

Physics Central

The Golden Age of comic books stretched from the 1930s through the 1950s and overlapped with a time of unbridled optimism about the progress of science. People wanted to know about how the latest technology worked, and LOTS of people wanted to read comic books, so putting the two together seems like a no-brainer.

Comic Book Plus is an amazing archive of public domain comics from this era. sprinkled amongst long forgotten titles like Lars of Mars and The Adventures of Captain Havoc and The Phantom Knight are a plethora of scanned comic books about real science. They run the gamut. Some are illuminating, funny and really helpful while others are just weird, wildly inaccurate and are terribly dated. So, my list of the top seven public domain science comics worth reading are...

7- How Atomic Energy Works

Golly wilikers! Who wouldn't wanna learn how atomic energy works from a man in a fedora?! In all seriousness, this Bill Cosmo character is a bit over eager to tell little Johnny more than he actually knows. His explanation of nuclear fission is pretty muddled, his metaphors don't make a lot of sense and he has a hard time telling the difference between weight and mass as well as speed and velocity. He claims to work in a physics lab, but I have my doubts.

In the heady early days of the atomic age, nuclear power seemed like it was going to change everything. However the race to explain how this new technology worked was hampered by the fact that in 1946 everything was still so new and a lot of information about nuclear technology was still secret.

"How Atomic Energy Works" appeared in the Summer 1946 issue of Future World Comics. Page 41.

6- Radar: It Sees the Invisible

Apart from splitting the atom, radar was the other, big physics breakthrough of World War II. It let pilots see in the dark, and was instrumental in turning the tide of the war. "Radar: It Sees the Invisible" is actually a pretty good, no frills rundown of how pilots use bouncing radio waves to see. When the comic was published in March of 1946, it was another military technology transitioning into peacetime use.

"Radar: It Sees the Invisible" appeared in the March 1946 issue of Science Comics. Page 10

5- Adventures Inside the Atom

By the time 1948 rolled around, it seemed like people started to "get" nuclear energy. General Electric published their "Adventures in Science" series to highlight the work they doing to develop telephones, power generators, lightbulbs, aerospace technology and of course, nuclear energy. All together, GE produced 68 million comics over the entire series run. They're well done too, with imaginative illustrations and creative analogies.

In "Adventures Inside the Atom, the prototypical Johnny is eager to learn all about how fission works, and Ed here seems to know quite a bit more about the process than the aforementioned Bill Cosmo. He takes Johnny on a tour from the prognosis of atomic theory in ancient Greece, to the atom-powered world of tomorrow! It's a pretty solid introduction to nuclear energy, plus bonus points for recognizing the often overlooked contributions of Lise Meitner to fission's discovery.

Adventures Inside the Atom was a standalone comic published in 1948.

4- How Sonar Works

I know I'm always ready for a science lesson after dispatching the nefarious plot of a brawny murderer. In "How Sonar Works," adventurer Jack Boyd takes some time to explain to the salty ol' cap'n how that newfangled sonar technology works, following a harrowing treasure hunt. Actually, seeing the ocean floor using bouncing sound waves was invented around World War I, but hey, it's never too late to learn.

"How Sonar Works" appeared in the fall 1946 issue of Future World Comics. Page 28.

3- Adventures in Electricity: Generation

More General Electric goodness, except this time Johnny and Ed are exploring the science of electricity and how industry (read: your friends at General Electric) harnesses it. After little Johnny almost electrocutes himself, Ed takes him around the world to learn how magnets induce electrical currents, and the many ways that energy gets converted into electricity. This time, Ed's got some help in the form of an army of tiny, friendly, anthropomorphized electrons.

Illustrator George Roussos drew a bunch of GE's "Adventures" series, only some of which are available on Comic Book Plus. In an interview in 1983, he said that at the time "Comics were selling so good it was obvious that children would rather read them than their school books so someone had the idea to do comic books about electricity."

"Adventures in Electricity: Generation" was published in 1946.

2- Andy's Atomic Adventures

This may be the outright weirdest of the bunch. Andy loses his dog around the atomic bomb proofing grounds in Nevada, which is possibly the worst place in the world to lose your dog. When the army finds the pooch, they take little Andy on a tour of the top secret weapons facility and tell him a little bit about radiation.

Apparently, if your dog is covered in radioactive fallout, don't worry, everything will be fine in a week.

"Andy's Atomic Adventures" took up the whole September 1953 issue of Picture Parade.

1- Hero Scientist of the Atom Bomb

This one's downright cool! It's the real life story of smuggling Nobel laureate physicist Niels Bohr out of Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943, followed up by the British and Norwegian secret mission to blow up a critical part of the German's atomic bomb program. I had no idea that his escape was as harrowing as it was, Bohr almost died of asphyxiation while hiding in a British airplane's bomb bay! Fair warning though, there are a couple of fist fights and shootouts in it that didn't actually happen; It is a comic book after all. It's a bit light on the science, but action packed and a great read.

"Hero Scientist of the Atomic Bomb" appeared in the March 1946 issue of Marvels of Science. Page 7.