Make It Rain: State Control of the Atmosphere in Twentieth-Century America
Author: Kristine C. Harper File Type: pdf Weather control. Juxtaposing those two words is enough to raise eyebrows in a world where even the best weather models still fail to nail every forecast, and when the effects of climate change on sea level height, seasonal averages of weather phenomena, and biological behavior are being watched with interest by all, regardless of political or scientific persuasion. But between the late nineteenth centurywhen the United States first funded an attempt to shock rain out of cloudsand the late 1940s, rainmaking (as it had been known) became weather control. And then things got out of control. In Make It Rain, Kristine C. Harper tells the long and somewhat ludicrous history of state-funded attempts to manage, manipulate, and deploy the weather in America. Harper shows that governments from the federal to the local became helplessly captivated by the idea that weather control could promote agriculture, health, industrial output, and economic growth at home, or even be used as a military weapon and diplomatic tool abroad. Clear fog for landing aircraft? Theres a project for that. Gentle rain for strawberries? Lets do it! Enhanced snowpacks for hydroelectric utilities? Check. The heyday of these weather control programs came during the Cold War, as the atmosphere came to be seen as something to be defended, weaponized, and manipulated. Yet Harper demonstrates that today there are clear implications for our attempts to solve the problems of climate change. **
Author: Patrick D. Nunn
File Type: pdf
Islands as well as entire continents are reputed to have disappeared in many parts of the world. Yet there is little information on this subject concerning its largest ocean, the Pacific. Over the years, geologists have amassed data that point to the undeniable fact of islands having disappeared in the Pacific, a phenomenon that the oral traditions of many groups of Pacific Islanders also highlight. There are even a few instances where fragments of Pacific continents have disappeared, becoming hidden from view rather than being submerged. In this scientifically rigorous yet readily comprehensible account of the fascinating subject of vanished islands and hidden continents in the Pacific, the author ranges far and wide, from explanations of the region s ancient history to the meanings of island myths. Using both original and up-to-date information, he shows that there is real value in bringing together myths and the geological understanding of land movements.A description of the Pacific Basin and the ups and downs of the land within its vast ocean is followed by chapters explaining how long before humans arrived in this part of the world islands and continents that no longer exist were once present. A succinct account is given of human settlement of the region and the establishment of cultural contexts for the observation of occasional catastrophic earth-surface changes and their encryption in folklore. The author also addresses the persistent myths of a sunken continent in the Pacific, which became widespread after European arrival and were subsequently incorporated into new age and pseudoscience explanations of our planet and its inhabitants. Finally, he presents original data and research on island disappearances witnessed by humans, recorded in oral and written traditions, and judged by geoscience to be authentic. Examples are drawn from throughout the Pacific, showing that not only have islands collapsed, and even vanished, within the past few hundred years, but that they are also liable to do so in the future.
Author: Ronald B. Inden
File Type: pdf
Indologist Ronald Inden has in the past raised questions about the images of a traditional or medieval India deployed by colonial scholars and rulers--Orientalists--and has also argued that a history of early medieval India very different from both the colonial and nationalist accounts could be written. This volume is designed as an important first step towards that goal. The authors look closely at three genres of texts that have been crucial to the representations of precolonial India. All three essays challenge not only colonialist scholarship but the attempts by religious nationalists to identify Hinduism as the essence of national identity in India and Buddhism as the essence of nationality in Sri Lanka.ReviewThis volume is an important, groundbreaking work challenging how we read and understand texts. . . . This is must reading for those engaged in the struggle to understand the deeper past or disheartened by radical deconstruction of texts to the point that signifiers float, meaning everything and nothing.--Stewart Gordon, University of MichiganAbout the AuthorRonald Inden is at University of Chicago. Jonathan Walters is at Whitman College.
Author: Arthur Asa Berger
File Type: pdf
Now in its fourth edition, Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture deals with the impact of advertising upon American character and culture. It offers a definition of advertising, explains the way advertising agencies work, discusses the functions of advertising, and provides a psycho-cultural perspective on advertising. Among the topics it deals with are the role of brands in selling products and the problem of self-alienation and its relation to consumption. It also analyzes consumer cultures, places advertising in the communication process, and considers the use of sexuality in advertising, political advertising, and marketing theory. The marketing discussion deals with the Values and Lifestyle Typology (VALS) and the Claritas typology. The chapters analyzing print advertisements and television commercials are distinctive features of the book. For print advertising, it provides a list of topics to consider in analyzing print advertising and then provides a detailed analysis of a fascinating Fidji perfume advertisement that shows a Polynesian woman with a snake around her neck. It provides a semiotic, psychoanalytic, sociological, Marxist, mythic, and Feminist analysis of this advertisement. For television commercials, it analyzes the famous Macintosh 1984 commercials in a number of different ways as well. In the last chapter it speculates about the role of advertising in selling drugs to people, children and advertising, and the problems advertising agencies have in getting peoples attention. It also offers a glossary to terms used in the book and an annotated bibliography.
Author: Jean M. Auel
File Type: mobi
span DejaVu Sans, serif 14pxJean M. Auels enthralling Earths Children series has become a literary phenomenon, beloved by readers around the world. In a brilliant novel as vividly authentic and entertaining as those that came before, Jean M. Auel returns us to the earliest days of humankind and to the captivating adventures of the courageous woman called Ayla. With her companion, Jondalar, Ayla sets out on her most dangerous and daring journey--away from the welcoming hearths of the Mammoth Hunters and into the unknown. Their odyssey spans a beautiful but sparsely populated and treacherous continent, the windswept grasslands of Ice Age Europe, casting the pair among strangers. Some will be intrigued by Ayla and Jondalar, with their many innovative skills, including the taming of wild horses and a wolf others will avoid them, threatened by what they cannot understand and some will threaten them. But Ayla, with no memory of her own people, and Jondalar, with a hunger to return to his, are impelled by their own deep drives to continue their trek across the spectacular heart of an unmapped world to find that place they can both call home.span p DejaVu Sans, serif 14px**
Author: Lee Trepanier
File Type: pdf
In the first half of the twentieth century, the rationalist tide had reached its high mark in the arts, politics, and work. But the Holocaust, the Gulag, and other failures have dimmed the popularity of rationalism. However, the evidence of those practical failures would not have been as convincing as it was if not for the existence of a theoretical diagnosis of the malady. This book compares and contrasts the ideas of some of the leading twentieth-century critics of rationalism Hans-Georg Gadamer, F.A. Hayek, Aurel Kolnai, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Oakeshott, Michael Polanyi, Gilbert Ryle, Eric Voegelin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. While each can be seen as a critic of rationalism, were they each attacking the same thing? In what senses did their analyses overlap, and in what senses did they differ? Clarifying these issues, this book will provide important insights into this major intellectual trend of the past century. By including these major thinkers, Tradition v. Rationalism, we see that that these thinkers believed that tradition should still have a place in the world as a repository of wisdom. As our lives becomes increasingly dominated by various forms of rationalismswhether political, technological, economic, or culturalwe need to ask ourselves whether this is the type of world in which we want to live and if not, how can we critique and propose an alternative to it? The thinkers in this book provide us a starting point on our journey towards thinking about how we can have a more hopeful, humane, and brighter future.**ReviewCallahan and Trepanier have put together an engaging volume on one of the most influential intellectual currents of modernity rationalism. Drawing primarily from 20th century critics of rationalism, the essays explore various facets of rationalism with an eye towards the political and spiritual consequences. More than just an historical account of the debate between tradition and rationalism, this volume brings to life questions that must be grappled with in 21st century politics. (David Whitney, Nicholl State University) Professors Callahan and Trepanier have assembled an exceptional group of scholars to produce a collection that is both a valuable study of modern political philosophy and a timely examination of the crisis within Western politics. Anyone seeking to understand the breakdown of rationalism, and how to reconcile the human requirement for both authority and freedom, will find this volume to be indispensable. (Eric Fleury, College of the Holy Cross) The debate over rationalism in modern politics is perennial, but it is especially significant at present. Recent challenges to the global political and economic order from below bring new relevance to twentieth century critics for whom modern rationalism was insufficiently sensitive to particular traditions and circumstances. This volume is a momentous contribution to the broader debate, but in reminding us of the tensions between abstract and concrete rationality, it can also ward us against the temptation to dismiss every contemporary challenge to the staus quo as mere irrationalism. Alan Baily, Assistant Professor (Department of Government), Stephen F. Austin State UniversityAbout the AuthorGene Callahan is industry associate professor of mathematics at New York University. Lee Trepanier is professor of political science at Saginaw Valley State University.
Author: Kimberly A. Francis
File Type: pdf
Nadia Boulanger and Igor Stravinsky began corresponding in 1929 when Stravinsky sought someone to supervise the musical education of his younger son, Soulima. Boulanger accepted the position and began what would prove to be a warm and lasting dialogue with the Stravinsky family. For fifty years, Boulanger exchanged letters with Igor Stravinsky. An additional 140 letters exist written to Boulanger from Stravinskys immediate family his wife Catherine, his mother Anna, and his sons Theodore and Soulima. Nadia Boulanger and the Stravinskys A Selected Correspondence makes available a rich selection from this many-sided dialogue. The letters are published here in English translation (most for the first time in their entirety or at all). The little-known French originals are available on the books companion website. The letters allow us to follow the conversation shared between Boulanger and the Stravinskys from 1929 until 1972, the year following Igor Stravinskys death. Through the words they exchanged, we see Boulanger and Stravinsky transition from respectful colleagues to close friends to, finally, distant icons, with music serving always as a central topic. These letters are a testament to one master teachers power to shape the cultural canon and one composers desire to embed himself within historical narratives. Their words touch upon matters professional and personal, musical and social, with the overall narrative reflecting the turmoil of life during the twentieth century and the fragility of artists hoping to leave their mark on the modernist period.BR Kimberly A. Francis is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Guelph, Canada. **
Author: William H. Goetzmann
File Type: epub
From 1776, when Citizen Tom Paine declared, The birthday of a new world is at hand, America was unique in world history. A nation suffused with the spirit of explorers, constantly replenished by immigrants, and informed by a continual influx of foreign ideas, it was the worlds first truly cosmopolitan civilization.In Beyond the Revolution, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian William H. Goetzmann tells the story of Americas greatest thinkers and creators, from Paine and Jefferson to Melville and William James, showing how they built upon and battled one anothers ideas in the critical years between 1776 and 1900. An unprecedented work of intellectual history by a master historian, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of our national culture.**ReviewNew York Observer In Beyond the Revolution, intellectual historian William Goetzmann reminds us that the most brazen utopian ambition of them all had nothing to do with sex or rapture, but was rather founded in the radical provisions of we the people and those certain inalienable rights.New York Times Book Review [Goetzmanns] strange and valuable bookis richly populated with radicals and utopians who, with one eye on the innermost soul and the other on world history, created a tradition of open-ended experiment. Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University Beyond the Revolution is one of the most complete, wide-ranging, readable, and insightful accounts of American intellectuals we have ever had. It deserves to be recognized as a major classic history of American intellectuals to be read by every thinking American. Virginia Quarterly An excellent summary of American thought before the Civil War. It is sure to engage readers interested not only in the history of ideas but also in the history of the early nation. Texas Observer We now have Goetzmanns life of learning distilled into what may be the capstone of his career to help us understand who we were.About the Author William H. Goetzmann is Jack S. Blanton, Sr. Professor in History and American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He taught American Intellectual History for fifty years at Yale and the University of Texas. His Explorations and Empire won both the Pulitzer Prize and Francis Parkman Award. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Author: Susan Bassnett
File Type: pdf
This outstanding collection brings together eminent contributors to examine some crucial connections between postcolonial theory and translation studies. As English becomes an increasingly global language, more people become multilingual and translation becomes a crucial communicative activity. The essays in this book, by contributors from Britain, the US, Brazil, India and Canada, examine the relationships between language and power across cultural boundaries, and reveals the vital role of translation in redefining the meanings of culture and ethnic identity.Contributors Rosemary Arrojo, Ganesh Devy, Vinay Dharwadker, Andre Lefevere, G.J.V. Prasad, Sherry Simon, Nathaniel Tarn, Maria Tymoczko, Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira, Vanamala Viswanatha.