Why Buildings Fall Down

Why Buildings Fall Down

By: Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori

Once upon a time there were Seven Wonders of the World. Now only one survives: the mountainlike Pyramid of Khufu in the Egyptian desert near Cairo. The other six have fallen down. It is the destiny of the man-made environment to vanish, but we, short-lived men and women, look at our buildings so convinced they will stand forever that when some do collapse, we are surprised and concerned. Our surprise may be partly due to the fact that most of us judge buildings by their facades: They look beautiful when very old and ugly when very young, the opposite of human faces. But this kind of judgment is superficial and misleading; a much better metaphor for a building is the human body. A building is conceived when designed, born when built, alive while standing, dead from old age or an unexpected accident. It breathes through the mouth of its windows and the lungs of its airconditioning system. [download]

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Baby Facts

Baby Facts 

By: Andrew Adesman, MD.

I’m a parent, like you. I ’ m also a pediatrician. My young patients are cared for by mothers, fathers, and other loving caregivers who are deeply invested in the physical and emotional well being of their babies and young children and who like you, and like me try hard to make the best decisions when it comes to the health and safety of their sons and daughters. We are luckier than previous generations of parents because we have such a vast wealth of. specifi c parenting information at our fi ngertips: books and magazines, Web sites and Internet chat rooms, community groups, experts galore, and the hard earned wisdom of those parents, grandparents, and friends who were parents before we took the plunge. But after twenty  four years of practicing pediatrics, and seventeen years of helping my wife raise our three children. [download]

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Stalin’s Genocides

Stalin’s Genocides

By: Norman M. Naimark

This short book really an extended essay is intended to argue that Stalin’s mass killings of the 1930s should be classified as “genocide.” This argument is made more difficult by the fact that there was no single act of genocide in the Soviet case, but rather a series of interrelated attacks on “class enemies” and “enemies of the people,” metonyms for diverse alleged opponents of the Soviet state. Episodes of mass killing also took a variety of forms, some involving mass executions, others exile in special settlements and camps of the Gulag, where many hundreds of thousands died from the unusually harsh character of arrest, internment, and interrogation, on the one hand, and hellish conditions of transport, housing, sustenance, and forced labor, on the other. [download]

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Kosovo and The Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention

Kosovo and The Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention 

By: Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Takur

The Kosovo War has the potential to be a defining moment in post Cold War history. It could restructure the pattern of international relations by reshaping the relationships between regional security organizations and the United Nations, between major powers in East and West, between friends and allies within those camps, and between force and diplomacy. It may also call into question the unipolar moment that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War. Moreover, the normative, operational, and structural questions that are raised by the Kosovo crisis will have long-term consequences for the way in which we understand and inter-pret world politics. For instance, can the UN Security Council veto now effectively be circumvented to launch selective enforcement operations? How can the humanitarian imperative be reconciled with the principle of state sovereignty? [download]

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Fakten und Fiktionen

Fakten und Fiktionen

By: Nicole Jung

Es ist Freitagnachmittag. 36 Personen sitzen in einem großen, dunklen und sehr nüchternen Meeting-Raum. Alles ist in Grau gehalten, die Umgebung ist steril und sachlich. Die Tische sind blank, keine Getränke, Gebäck o. Ä. Stehen darauf. Lediglich in einer Ecke des Raumes befindet sich ein kleiner Tisch, an dem man sich in den Pausen mit Wasser oder einer Tasse Kaffee versorgen kann. Die eine Hälfte der Anwesenden sitzt der anderen gegenüber, die Gruppen sind voneinander separiert. Alle sind in Grau oder Schwarz gekleidet, die Stimmung ist angespannt. Der Zeitplan wird minutiös eingehalten. In den Pausen bleiben die Gruppen unter sich, es findet keine Interaktion zwischen ihnen statt. Dennoch kommt es der einen Gruppe den ‚Gastgebern’ zu Ohren, dass die andere Gruppe die‚Gäste’der Meinung ist, das Mikrofon sei nicht laut genug. Keiner der Gäste jedoch hat das Thema offen angesprochen. [download]

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Candid Science V

Candid Science V 

By: Balazs Hargittai and Istvan Hargittai

In this fifth volume of the Candid Science series, there are some departures from the previous volumes in the approach of the compilation of the material. The present volume as a whole is not classified as physics, chemistry or biomedical sciences, but keeping with cross- and inter-disciplinarity, it contains entries from all these disciplines and, in addition, from mathematics. There is only a loosely-followed sequence in the volume, going from mathematics to physics to chemistry and to the biomedical sciences. Another peculiarity of this volume is that it includes nine interviews from another project, the Larson Tapes. The story behind it is as follows. In 1998, I recorded a conversation with Clarence Larson (contained in this volume) and learned about the project he and his wife Jane had been doing, called “Pioneers of Science and Technology”. [download]

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The Facts on File Algebra

The Facts on File Algebra

By: Deborah Todd

The mathematics that we teach and learn today includes concepts and ideas that once were pondered only by the most brilliant men and women of ancient, and not so ancient, times. Numbers such as 1,000, for example, or two, or zero, were at one time considered very abstract ideas. There was a time when a quantity more than two or three was simply called “many.” Yet we have grown up learning all about quantities and how to manipulate them. We teach even young children the concept of fractions as we ask them to share, or divide, their candy between them. Today, in many ways, what used to be stimulating thought for only the privileged few is now considered child’s play. Yet scholars, philosophers, scientists, and writers of the past have spent lifetimes devising ways to explain these concepts to benefit merchants, kings, and countries. [download]

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The 100 Most Influential Women of All Time

The 100 Most Influential Women of All Time 

By: Kathleen Kuiper

The world is fi lled with fascinating women, each with her own compelling story. Clearly, no single tome can hold all the intricate details of their collective lives. But this book, filled with profiles of striking individuals who serve as outstanding representatives of their gender, covers many of the most outstanding, infl uential women from around the globe. Coverage runs the gamut from queens to commoners, with a tip of the hat to those who have made their mark in the arts and sciences, in their country’s political arena, and on the world stage. Most of these women managed to fl ourish in the face of adversity. Some withstood opposition from outside sources, while family intrigue was a malevolent force in the lives of others. For centuries, merely being a woman was an obstacle these individuals had to overcome. [download]

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Justice Without Borders

Justice Without Borders

By: Kok-Chor Tan 

Cosmopolitanism, as a normative idea, takes the individual to be the ultimate unit of moral concern and to be entitled to equal consideration regardless of nationality and citizenship. From the cosmopolitan perspective, principles of justice ought to transcend nationality and citizenship, and ought to apply equally to all individuals of the world as a whole. In short, cosmopolitan justice is justice without borders. On one cosmopolitan interpretation, this impartiality with respect to nationality and citizenship applies also to distributive justice in that a person’s legitimate material entitlements are to be determined independently of her national and state membership (e.g., Beitz 1999a; Pogge 1989, part III). But, as some cosmopolitans themselves have come to recognize, one serious weakness of the cosmopolitan position is its perceived inability to acknowledge and properly account for the special ties and commitments that characterize the lives of ordinary men and women (Beitz 1999b, p. 291). [download]

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Slavery on Trial

Slavery on Trial

By: Jeannine Marie DeLombard

During the three decades leading up to the Civil War, slavery was on trial in the United States. The legal status of the South’s peculiar institution was placed on trial every time slave cases appeared on federal and state dockets, as lawyers, judges, and juries worked out the technicalities of American slave law. From the imprisonment of abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison for libel and the execution of slave revolutionary Nat Turner for insurrection in the early 1830s to the trials of John Brown and his Harpers Ferry co-conspirators for treason in late 1859, numerous cases involving slavery became causes célèbres in the antebellum United States. Throughout the period, throngs of men and women crowded courtrooms, overflowing into the hallways and the streets outside. Countless others followed the most minute details of famous cases through lengthy trial transcripts published in newspapers and pamphlets. Still others read portrayals of notorious cases in poetry and fiction. [download]

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Brain Facts

Brain Facts 

By: Louis vera Portocarrero, Ph.D.

The human nervous system is divided into the central nervous system (CNS), which includes the brain and spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system (PNS), which includes the cranial nerves, arising from the brain, and the spinal nerves, arising from the spinal cord. The basic functional units in our nervous system are the nerve cells (neurons) and glial cells (glia). There are about 100 billion neurons in the human brain. Neurons present a great variety of sizes and shapes. Most of them possess a long process called the axon and a main body known as the cell body or soma. Neurons also possess a series of smaller processes called dendrites. The principal function of the neuron is to communicate information. The dendrites of the neurons receive information from other neurons, and this information is passed to the soma, where the information can be modified and then passed along to other neurons via the axon. [download]

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Allah’s Mountains

Allah’s Mountains

By: Sebastian Smith 

Shamil Basayev Chechen hero, most wanted man in Russia sits in front of me and lights a Marlboro. We are in a dusty courtyard at the edge of Dargo, a village lost in the jungle-like foothills of the Caucasus, far behind the frontlines, with only the speck of a war plane circling high overhead to remind us of the Russians. Basayev wears a faded camouflage suit, sandals and a Moslem amulet on a thin black cord around his neck. A Russian special forces rifle topped by a silencer lies on his lap and he drinks heavily-sweetened black tea from a tin mug. Nearby sit bodyguards: tall men with carved, tanned and bearded faces – faces from another age, almost Biblical. Their chests are heavy with grenades, Kalashnikov ammunition clips and the long Caucasus dagger, the kinzhal. [download]

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Black Hole – Lubang Hitam

Black Hole – Lubang Hitam 

Penulis: Stephen Hawking dan Paul Strathern

Stephen Hawking, pikirannya berkelana jauh ke kedalaman semesta. Dan pikiran itu jugalah yang telah menciptakan sejumlah gagasan kosmologis paling menarik sepanjang masa. Seluruh pandangan kita tentang kosmos mengalami perubahan drastis selama era Hawking. Gambaran yang diciptakan Hawking dan rekan-rekannya memiliki tingkat imajinatif dan keindahan yang setara dengan sebuah karya seni agung. Namun juga tidak masuk akal seperti layaknya mimpi, serta rumit dan berada jauh di luar pemahaman sehari-hari. Hawking menciptakan gagasan-gagasan baru dan sensasional tentang Black Hole (Lubang Hitam), dan “teori tentang segala sesuatu”, serta asal-usul semesta. Seperti apakah itu..?. [download]

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Mossad of Spyonase – Mata-Mata Terandal Dalam Sejarah Dunia

Mossad of Spyonase – Mata-Mata Terandal Dalam Sejarah Dunia

Penulis: Anonymous

Bila dibandingkan dengan bentuk yang luwes dan anggun, yang merupakan ciri khas kebanyakan senjata genggam automatic pasukan infanteri modern, maka Kalashnikov tampak amat pendek tak berbentuk. Senapan penyerang yang resmi disebut dengan AK 47 ini konon diciptakan oleh seorang petani Siberia. Sekurang-kurangnya menurut dongeng di seputar senjata teror internasional yang paling populer ini, AK 47 berdampak sederhana dan kasar. Senjata ini dibuat dalam berbagai model di Uni Soviet (Rusia) dan di banyak negara blok komunis yang lain. Bila digunakan dari jarak dekat, muntahan pelurunya dapat benar-benar membelah mangsa menjadi dua. Senjata inilah yang menjadi andalan para spionase Israel (Mossad) membungkam orang-orang tak berdosa dan lawan-lawannya. [download]

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Kumpulan Fakta Terunik

Kumpulan Fakta Terunik

Penulis: Yulius Haflan

Tahukah anda bahwa suara ikan paus biru setara dengan 1 juta kali suara mesin Jet?, Tahukah anda bahwa organisme terbesar yang pernah ditemukan di dunia ternyata bukanlah seekor harimau, gajah ataupun paus, melainkan hanya sebuah Jamur madu!, yang memiliki luas sekitar 890 hektar. Tahukah anda bahwa kota terkecil di dunia (Hum), hanya berpenduduk 23 orang? Melalui ebook ini anda akan menemukan berbagai macam fakta-fakta unik yang mungkin selama ini sama sekali tidak pernah terfikirkan oleh anda sebelumnya, dari mulai fakta-fakta unik tentang binatang, tanaman, kota-kota dunia, tokoh-tokoh dunia dan sebagainya. [download]

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