Author: Henry Petroski File Type: pdf Henry Petroski traces the origins of the pencil back to ancient Greece and Rome, writes factually and charmingly about its development over the centuries and around the world, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and technology today.Amazon.com ReviewLike most other human artifacts, the common pencil, made and sold today by the millions, has a long and complex history. Henry Petroski, who combines a talent for fine writing with a deep knowledge of engineering and technological history, examines the story of the pencil, considering it not only as a thing in itself, but also as an exemplar of all things that are designed and manufactured.Petroski ranges widely in time, discussing the writing technologies of antiquity. But his story really begins in the early modern period, when, in 1565, a Swiss naturalist first described the properties of the mineral that became known as graphite. Petroski traces the evolution of the pencil through the Industrial Revolution, when machine manufacture replaced earlier handwork. Along the way, he looks at some of pencil makings great innovators--including Henry David Thoreau, the famed writer, who worked in his fathers pencil factory, inventing techniques for grinding graphite and experimenting with blends of lead, clay, and other ingredients to yield pencils of varying hardness and darkness. Petroski closes with a look at how pencils are made today--a still-imperfect technology that may yet evolve with new advances in materials and design. --Gregory McNameeFrom Publishers WeeklyThis delightful history of the lowly pencil offers a mind-sharpening look at the intersection of engineering, economics and culture. Illustrated. 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: W. Russell Neuman File Type: pdf Photo opportunities, ten-second sound bites, talking heads and celebrity anchors so the world is explained daily to millions of Americans. The result, according to the experts, is an ignorant public, helpless targets of a one-way flow of carefully filtered and orchestrated communication. Common Knowledge shatters this pervasive myth. Reporting on a ground-breaking study, the authors reveal that our shared knowledge and evolving political beliefs are determined largely by how we actively reinterpret the images, fragments, and signals we find in the mass media. For their study, the authors analyzed coverage of 150 television and newspaper stories on five prominent issuesdrugs, AIDS, South African apartheid, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the stock market crash of October 1987. They tested audience responses of more than 1,600 people, and conducted in-depth interviews with a select sample. What emerges is a surprisingly complex picture of people actively and critically interpreting the news, making sense of even the most abstract issues in terms of their own lives, and finding political meaning in a sophisticated interplay of message, medium, and firsthand experience. At every turn, Common Knowledge refutes conventional wisdom. It shows that television is far more effective at raising the saliency of issues and promoting learning than is generally assumed it also undermines the assumed causal connection between newspaper reading and higher levels of political knowledge. Finally, this book gives a deeply responsible and thoroughly fascinating account of how the news is conveyed to us, and how we in turn convey it to others, making meaning of at once so much and so little. For anyone who makes the newsor tries to make anything of itCommon Knowledge promises uncommon wisdom. **From Publishers Weekly In this ponderous but informative study, the authors argue that experts who see the public as a passive audience for the media or as uninformed voters ignore the complex ways in which people think about public issues. The authors conducted interviews and surveys regarding five current issues--including drug abuse and the 1987 stock market crash--to determine how people analyze information from newspapers, news magazines and television news programs. From these they conclude that people invoke morality more often than the media do. They found, contrary to accepted wisdom, that television is not the cause of public ignorance rather, people who have lower cognitive skills are more likely to seek news from television. What people learn from the media, the authors suggest, depends on the their skills and education. They conclude that the media should present less salient topics with greater creativity but focus more on providing context and the hard news angle for provocative topics such as the AIDS crisis. Neuman teaches communications at Tufts Just and Crigler are political scientists at Wellesley and USC, respectively. 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: Eitan Ginzberg File Type: pdf It was not the original intention of the Spanish to harm the Hispanic-American natives. The Spanish Crown, Councils and Church considered the natives free and intelligent vassals entitled to be embraced by Christianity and by the Hispanic civil culture. However, it was the same (Spanish) monarchys decision to exploit the natives as taxpayers and as a reservoir of forced labor that made its rule in America exceptionally destructive. The recruitment of the natives to serve the interests of the Spanish Empire under what can only be considered near to slave conditions, compounded by systematic annihilation of their cultures and by cyclical epidemics, led to the near total eradication of the Indians. A Genocidal Encounter narrates the story of the Spanish conquest and the widespread violations against the Hispanic-American natives. The author ponders on the question why the Spanish Crown and the Church failed to apply the necessary measures to effectively protect the natives, particularly during the first years of the conquest and its aftermath as exploitation practices were gradually formed and implemented, despite a constant flow of reports emphasizing the clear and present danger to the very existence of the natives. Based upon primary sources and current research on the relationship between colonialism and genocide, this book examines whether the Spanish actions were genocidal. What lies at the heart of the issue is whether the wide range of exploitative acts imply Crown and Council ministerial responsibility, or whether the destruction of a peoples resulted from unplanned but acute circumstances, making it impossible to place the blame on specific persons or institutions. **

Author: Steve Summers File Type: pdf Is the Church a community of friends? Steve Summers explores the significance of friendship for our understanding of the church today. Since Jesus statement in St. Johns gospel You are my friends the concept of friendship has had a huge influence on the Christian understanding of community. But is the historical understanding of friendship enough to serve the needs of the church in a postmodern age? Steve Summers investigates the limits of this concept, as well as its possible use in contemporary ecclesiology.