In Springs, a visiting inventor observes a family harvesting coconuts on Mammoth Island, using a number of devices called springs. Springs come in two shapes: There are coil springs, and there are bending bars -- called "leaf springs"-- which is what the islanders use to improve their coconut collecting. When a spring is bent, the molecules on one side are pushed together while the molecules on the other side are pulled apart. So once the bending force is removed, the molecules rapidly "spring" back into their natural places. Springs store potential energy when they are stretched or compressed.
This book is titled after an observation by St. Augustine in City of God, proposing that what governments coin as "terrorism" in the small simply reflects what governments utilize as "warfare" in the large. Yet, governments coerce their populations to denounce the former while embracing the latter. In the City of God, St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who asked him “how dare he molest the sea”. “How dare you molest the whole world” the pirate replied. “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor”.
One summer's day in 1981 a two-year-old girl, Tamsin Hall, was abducted during a picnic at the famous prehistoric site of Avebury in Wiltshire. Her seven-year-old sister Miranda was knocked down and killed by the abductor's van. The girls were in the care of their nanny, Sally Wilkinson. One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffin who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of 'Junius', the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up, and Umber never heard from him again.
The Seven Mysteries of Life: An Exploration In Science & Philosophy
"All life in all worlds" -this was the object of the author's seventeen-year quest for knowledge and discovery, culminating in this book. In a manner unmistakably his own, Murchie delves into the interconnectedness of all life on the planet and of such fields as biology, geology, sociology, mathematics, and physics. He offers us what the poet May Sarton has called "a good book to take to a desert island as sole companion, so rich is it in knowledge and insight."
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11524.33 | Fiction literature | 11 November 2010
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The Bormann Testament
Special Agent Paul Chavasse is about to start a much-deserved holiday when he is abruptly pulled back to active duty. He knows that if he's being called into action, a job has gone bad--and it's about to get a lot worse.
