5 books found
In the Shadow of Infamy is born out of life experiences in the shadow of Communist paradise created by the Stalinist dictatorship. Author George Farmos was born in Slovakia during a time when Darwinism would be unleashed in the most unanticipated way. Not to believe what the Communist Party championed was considered ignorant, reactionary, and deserving of punishment. Individuals were forced to sacrifice their rights on the altar of collective fairness. Farmos writes this book to illustrate a chilling parallel between Communism and progressive liberalization of America, under governments leadership, in the name of science.
by Alten F. Grandt, W. A. Gustafson, Lawrence T. Cargnino
2010 · Purdue University Press
Purdue University has played a leading role in providing the engineers who designed, built, tested, and flew the many aircraft and spacecraft that so changed human progress during the 20th century. It is estimated that Purdue has awarded 6% of all BS degrees in aerospace engineering, and 7% of all PhDs in the United States during the past 65 years. The University's alumni have led significant advances in research and development of aerospace technology, have headed major aerospace corporations and government agencies, and have established an amazing record for exploration of space. More than one third of all US manned space flights have had at least one crew member who was a Purdue engineering graduate (including the first and last men to step foot on the moon). The School of Aeronautics & Astronautics was founded as a separate school within the College of Engineering at Purdue University in 1945. The first edition of this book was published in 1995, at the time of the school's 50th anniversary. This corrected and expanded second edition brings the school's illustrious history up to date, and looks to Purdue's future in the sky and in space.
Perspectives in Controversy brings together essays from the journal Contemporary Argumentation and Debate into a single volume. These essays explore current controversies in the theory of competitive academic debate.
Two months before the Wright brothers' historic flight at Kitty Hawk, a top scientist declared that "no possible combination of known substances, known forces of machinery and known forms of force can be united in a practical (flying) machine...." Germ theory was first advanced in ancient Sanskrit texts thousands of years ago, but wasn't widely accepted until late in the 19th century. Space travel was declared "utter bilge" in 1956 by the British astronomer Royal, one of a long line of scientists who "proved" it was impossible. Throughout history, it has been difficult, even impossible, to promote the acceptance of new discoveries. Yet during the last two centuries, there has been a veritable explosion of new cures, theories, techniques, and inventions that have revolutionized aviation, space travel, communications, medicine, and warfare. Most of them, of course, were deemed "impossible." Science Was Wrong is a fascinating collection of stories about the pioneers who created or thought up the "impossible" cures, theories, and inventions "they" said couldn't work. How many have suffered or died because cures weren't accepted? How many inventions have been quashed? How much progress was delayed or denied? You will end up shaking your head in disbelief and even disgust as you learn the answers.
If our oil addiction is so bad for us, why don’t we kick the habit? Looking beyond the usual culprits—Big Oil, petro-states, and the strategists of empire—Lifeblood finds a deeper and more complex explanation in everyday practices of oil consumption in American culture. Those practices, Matthew T. Huber suggests, have in fact been instrumental in shaping the broader cultural politics of American capitalism. How did gasoline and countless other petroleum products become so central to our notions of the American way of life? Huber traces the answer from the 1930s through the oil shocks of the 1970s to our present predicament, revealing that oil’s role in defining popular culture extends far beyond material connections between oil, suburbia, and automobility. He shows how oil powered a cultural politics of entrepreneurial life—the very American idea that life itself is a product of individual entrepreneurial capacities. In so doing he uses oil to retell American political history from the triumph of New Deal liberalism to the rise of the New Right, from oil’s celebration as the lifeblood of postwar capitalism to increasing anxieties over oil addiction. Lifeblood rethinks debates surrounding energy and capitalism, neoliberalism and nature, and the importance of suburbanization in the rightward shift in American politics. Today, Huber tells us, as crises attributable to oil intensify, a populist clamoring for cheap energy has less to do with American excess than with the eroding conditions of life under neoliberalism.