outrageous inventions
The Best Story
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Spinelli, Eileen / Wilsdorf, Anne, PUBLISHER: Dial Books, The best story is one that comes from the heart The library is having a contest for the best story, and the quirky narrator of this story just has to win that rollercoaster ride with her favorite author But what makes a story the best? Her brother Tim says the best stories have lots of action. Her father thinks the best stories are the funniest. And Aunt Jane tells her the best stories have to make people cry. A story that does all these things doesnat seem quite right, though, and the one thing the whole family can agree on is that the best story has to be your own. Anne Wilsdorfas hilarious illustrations perfectly capture this colorful family and their outrageous stories in Eileen Spinellias heartfelt tale about creativity and finding your own voice.
64 Secrets Still Ahead of Us
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Gray, Jonathan, PUBLISHER: Teach Services, 64 ways in which an earlier forgotten science and technology was superior to our own. These are not merely ancient secrets-but knowledge way ahead of our own 21st century. Sixty-four ways in which an earlier, forgotten science and technology was superior to our own...today. You will learn of secret formulas that could revolutionize modern aviation, construction and medicine-advanced secrets our world once knew, and has forgotten. Discover how some geniuses of antiquity soared into inventions and plucked knowledge that our 21st century is just beginning to nudge. You may well ask, what else did they know, that we don't? Art techniques which we cannot copy...super micro technology...sub-ocean tunneling...invisibility...time viewing devices...lamps that never go out...WHAT NEXT
Store Windows: No 11 Martin M. Pegler
Store Windows: No 11 Martin M. Pegler Synopsis: From cover to cover, the pages of this volume overflow with color photographs of imaginative, unconventional store windows to inspire display designers, store owners, and managers of all types of retail establishments. Clever themes, outrageous props, and head-turning arrangements of merchandise make this tour of store windows one that should be looked into by anyone who is responsible for drawing customers into a store. This completely up-to-date review includes information about the key creative personnel involved in each project. Buone condizioni, pagine in ottimo stato di conservazione, segni rinvenibili su sovracopertina. Product details Format Hardback | 160 pages Dimensions 238 x x mm | g Publication date 01 Dec Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc Imprint HarperCollins Design International Publication City/Country New York, NY, United States Language English ISBN10 ISBN13
Wizard:
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Seifer, Marc J., PUBLISHER: Citadel Press, Nikola Tesla (), credited by many as the inspiration for radio, robots, and even radar, has been called the patron saint of modern electricity. Yet very few people know about his life and work. Based on original source materials and previously unavailable documents, Wizard is the definitive biography of this founding father of modern technology. For the first time, Wizard reveals the details of Tesla's struggles with competing contemporary inventors such as Edison, Steinmetz, and Marconi and with financial giants like J. R Morgan and John Jacob Astor, who underwrite his work. An immaculately groomed figure, Tesla once lived at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York and dined at the finest restaurants. Tesla's genius was challenged, however, when his peers vilified his attempts to contact other planets. In the last years of his life, unable to secure financing for his newest inventions, he lived in semipoverty in a fourth-rate hotel. Wizard brings to the fore the intriguing life of this legendary innovator.
Magic Tree House #35: Night of the New Magicians
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Osborne, Mary Pope / Murdocca, Salvatore, PUBLISHER: Random House Books for Young Readers, Merlin sends Jack and Annie on a mysterious mission to Paris, France, over a hundred years ago. There they must find four magicians and give them an urgent message from Merlin himself. When Jack and Annie land in Paris, they make their way to the World's Fair. Below the Eiffel Tower, built especially for the fair, there are thousands of exhibits from all over the world. But how will Jack and Annie find the magicians in the crowds of people? And who are the magicians anyway? Jack and Annie are about to find out in another adventure filled with history, magic, and amazing surprises In "Night of the New Magicians," Mary Pope Osborne brings to life an amazing time in history that gave birth to many startling inventions and scientific discoveries that would change the world forever. The paperback edition boasts all-new backmatter full of activities
Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Owen, Frank, PUBLISHER: Broadway Books, Outrageous parties. Brazen drug use. Fantastical costumes. Celebrities. Wannabes. Gender-bending club kids. Pulse-pounding beats. Sinful orgies. Botched police raids. Depraved criminals. Murder. Welcome to the decadent nineties club scene. In , journalist Frank Owen began researching a story on Special K, a designer drug that fueled the after-midnight club scene. He went to buy and sample the drug at the internationally notorious Limelight, a crumbling church converted into a Manhattan disco, where mesmerizing music, ecstatic dancers, and uninhibited sideshows attracted long lines of hopeful onlookers. Owen discovered a world where reckless hedonism was elevated to an art form, and where the ever-accelerating party finally spun out of control in the hands of notorious club owner Peter Gatien and his minions. In" Clubland," Owen reveals how a lethal drug ring operated in a lawless, black-lit realm of fantasy, and how, when the lights came up, their excesses left countless victims in their wake. Praised for his risk-taking and exhilarating writing style, Frank Owen has spawned a hybrid of literary nonfiction and true crime, capturing the zeitgeist of a world that emerged in the spirit of "peace, love, unity and respect," and ended in tragedy.
Papyrus
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Parkinson, Richard / Quirke, Stephen / Parkinson, R. B., PUBLISHER: University of Texas Press, One of the most outstanding inventions of ancient Egypt was the making of "paper" from the papyrus plant. As early as B.C., sheets and rolls of papyrus provided an ideal surface for writing with reed pen and cakes of carbon black and red ochre pigment. Egyptian scribes were able to record on papyri everyday details such as administrative records, legal documents, and letters of business and personal life. Equally important for our understanding of ancient Egypt, pen and papyrus were used to record literary texts, tales, and moral instructions, as well as compendia of Egyptian knowledge exemplified by the famous Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the books of treatment, prescriptions, and recitations for healing. Religious hymns and litanies are recorded, as are the great formulae to secure life after death--the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead. In this book, Richard Parkinson and Stephen Quirke freshly examine the methods of papyrus-making and its different uses, not only under the Pharaohs, but also other Egyptian civilizations such as the Hellenistic kingdom of the Ptolemies and the colonial rule of the Roman Empire. Papyrus remained the writing material of the Mediterranean world until it was eclipsed by the cloth paper of the Orient in the ninth century A.D., bringing four thousand years of writing tradition to an end. Acquista Ora
The Rapture of the Nerds
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Doctorow, Cory / Stross, Charles, PUBLISHER: Tor Books, Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century. Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun. The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander...and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple. So until the overminds bore of stirring Earth's anthill, there's Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy technovirus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.
The Nikola Tesla Treasury
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Tesla, Nikola, PUBLISHER: Wilder Publications, Here's the Tesla collection you've been waiting for: 214 figures; 668 pages; and 107 articles, letters to editors, and lectures. All the famous lectures and articles that you'd expect are here, such as A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers; Experiments with Alternating Currents of High Frequency; Experiments with Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination; Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency; On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena; The Problem of Increasing Human Energy, With Special References to the Harnessing of the Sun's Energy; and My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla You'll also get his many letters to editors, commenting on Marconi, Edison, and many issues of the day. And if that wasn't enough you'll also get other articles that you've heard about but probably never seen, such as Famous Scientific Illusions; High Frequency Oscillators for Electro-Therapeutic and Other Purposes; The Disturbing Influence of Solar Radiation on the Wireless Transmission of Energy; The Wonder World to Be Created by Electricity; A Speech Delivered Before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; and Electrical Oscillators. This is an amazing collection that will give you the most complete look into the mind of Nikola Tesla, who has been called the most important man of the 20th Century. Without Tesla's ground-breaking work we'd all be sitting in the dark without even a radio to listen to.
Status Signals: A Sociological Study of Market Competition
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Podolny, Joel M., PUBLISHER: Princeton University Press, Why are elite jewelers reluctant to sell turquoise, despite strong demand? Why did leading investment bankers shun junk bonds for years, despite potential profits? "Status Signals" is the first major sociological examination of how concerns about status affect market competition. Starting from the basic premise that status pervades the ties producers form in the marketplace, Joel Podolny shows how anxieties about status influence whom a producer does (or does not) accept as a partner, the price a producer can charge, the ease with which a producer enters a market, how the producer's inventions are received, and, ultimately, the market segments the producer can (and should) enter. To achieve desired status, firms must offer more than strong past performance and product quality--they must also send out and manage social and cultural signals. Through detailed analyses of market competition across a broad array of industries--including investment banking, wine, semiconductors, shipping, and venture capital--Podolny demonstrates the pervasive impact of status. Along the way, he shows how corporate strategists, tempted by the profits of a market that would negatively affect their status, consider not only whether to enter the market but also whether they can alter the public's perception of the market. Podolny also examines the different ways in which a firm can have status. Wal-Mart, for example, has low status among the rich as a place to shop, but high status among the rich as a place to invest. "Status Signals" provides a systematic understanding of market dynamics that have--until now--not been fully appreciated.
The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level of
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Robertson, Douglas S., PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press, USA, The electronic computer, argues Douglas Robertson, is the most important invention in the history of technology, if not all history It has already set off an information explosion that has changed many facets of civilization beyond recognition. These changes have ushered in nothing less than the dawn of a new level of civilization. In The New Renaissance, Robertson offers an important historical perspective on the computer revolution, by comparing it to three earlier landmarks of human development--language, writing, and printing. We see how these three inventions changed how we capture, store, and distribute information, and how each thereby triggered an information explosion that transformed society, ushering in a new civilization utterly unlike anything before. But history has never seen a revolution on the scale of the one being sparked by computers today. What can we expect from the most important technological breakthrough in human history? Robertson lays out possible scenarios regarding transformations in science and mathematics, education, language, the arts, and everyday life. School children, for instance, will forsake pencil and paper for keyboard and calculator, much as their forebears forsook clay tablets and abaci for pencil and paper. In films, the computer simulations of Jurassic Park could be eclipsed by "synthespians," artificial actors indistinguishable from living ones. Whether one is a computer enthusiast, a popular science buff, or simply someone fascinated by the future, The New Renaissance provides a breathtaking peek at the magnitude of changes we can expect as the full power of computers is unleashed.
Hiking the Florida Trail: Miles, 78 Days, Two Pairs of
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Molloy, Johnny / O'Keefe, M. Timothy, PUBLISHER: University Press of Florida, The Florida Trail stretches the length and breadth of the Sunshine State, from Gulf Islands National Seashore in the panhandle to Big Cypress National Preserve less than an hour from suburban Miami. In , veteran hiker and outdoorsman Johnny Molloy hiked the length of the trail in one three-month stretch. This engaging story of his journey, the first narrative account of a Florida Trail thru-hike, is peppered with outrageous and charming characters. Molloy's peanut butter thermometer and his "Five Foot Radius Theory of Camping" for tired hikers will make experienced backpackers smile knowingly. Novice hikers will find his insider tips priceless. Beginning at the southern end of the trail, less than an hour from suburban Miami, he was challenged by some of the roughest terrain he would face before making his way around Lake Okeechobee, the second largest freshwater lake in the continental United States. Traveling north and west traversing sand pine scrub forests, he made his way up the Suwannee River, around the Big Bend into the cathedral of palms in St. Marks Refuge, through the Apalachicola National Forest, and along white sand beaches to the Alabama state line. Many may never hike the entire course of the Florida Trail, but its convenient trailheads make it easily accessible to any resident or tourist. So, start the adventure; plan your own short hike, thru-hike, or simply join Molloy without leaving the comfort of your armchair. ""
Cake or Death: The Excruciating Choices of Everyday Life
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Mallick, Heather, PUBLISHER: Vintage Books Canada, A brilliant new book from one of Canada's most popular columnists - a no-holds-barred riposte to the mess we've made of things. "Mrs. Tittlemouse is heaven in a sponge mop. I read Beatrix Potter's books as a child and love her paintings, her stories, her home-boiling of squirrels so her watercolours could be anatomically exact. But most of all, Beatrix Potter made domesticity desirable. All right, she didn't, but she domesticated me. Personal order has become my badge and it's the only thing that really works with melancholy." Heather Mallick is sorely disappointed. The world has not turned out quite the way she had hoped it would. But rather than retreat from it, she takes the world head on, fearlessly and formidably on her own terms. In a new work of entirely original writing, we have Heather unplugged (some might even say unhinged), and uncensored from the restrictions of her "Globe and Mail "column writing. As her many fans have come to expect from her, she is incisive and outrageous, whether she's cataloguing the many situations and items in our daily lives that we are told we should fear, teaching us how to cope with people we just can't stand (ruthless mockery is the key, really, says Heather) or writing about the valuable life lesson to be learned from one of her childhood heroes: Mrs. Tittlemouse, the original domestic goddess. A candid reflection on the complicated state of our lives and our world today, viewed through the lens of Heather's inimitable wit and outlook on life, Cake or Death: The Excruciating Choices of Everyday Life will provoke and delight readers. "From the Hardcover edition."
Net.Wars
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Grossman, Wendy M. / Jun, Helen, PUBLISHER: New York University Press, Full text online version at www.nyupress.org/netwars. Who will rule cyberspace? And why should people care? Recently stories have appeared in a variety of news media, from the sensational to the staid, that portray the Internet as full of pornography, pedophilia, recipes for making bombs, lewd and lawless behavior, and copyright violators. And, for politicians eager for votes, or to people who have never strolled the electronic byways, regulating the Net seems as logical and sensible as making your kids wear seat belts. Forget freedom of speech: children can read this stuff. From the point of view of those on the Net, mass-media's representation of pornography on the Internet grossly overestimates the amount that is actually available, and these stories are based on studies that are at best flawed and at worst fraudulent. To netizens, the panic over the electronic availability of bomb-making recipes and other potentially dangerous material is groundless: the same material is readily available in public libraries. Out on the Net, it seems outrageous that people who have never really experienced it are in a position to regulate it. How then, should the lines be drawn in the grey area between cyberspace and the physical world? In net.wars, Wendy Grossman, a journalist who has covered the Net since for major publications such as "Wired, The Guardian," and "The Telegraph," assesses the battles that will define the future of this new venue. From the Church of Scientology's raids on Net users to netizens attempts to overthrow both the Communications Decency Act and the restrictions on the export of strong encryption, net.wars explains the issues and the background behind the headlines. Among the issues covered are net scams, class divisions on the net, privacy issues, the Communications Decency Act, women online, pornography, hackers and the computer underground, net criminals and sociopaths, and more.
Sciences of the Earth: An Encyclopedia of Events, People,
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Good, Gregory A. / Rothenberg, Marc, PUBLISHER: Routledge, The planet as seen by its inhabitants In two millenia, our knowledge of the planet and its natural laws and forces has undergone remarkable changes--from the religious belief of earth as the center of the universe to the modern astronomers' view that it is a mere speck in the cosmos. Now a first-of-its-kind reference work charts this remarkable intellectual progression in our evolving perception of the earth by surveying the history of geology, geography, geophysics, oceanography, meteorology, space science, and many other fields. Covers human understanding of the Earth in various times and cultures The "Encyclopedia" traces our understanding of the earth and its functioning throughout history, summarizing historical explanations of earthly occurrences, including explanations with no scientific basis. It presents the latest facts and theories, explains how our understanding of the earth has evolved, and shows why many outrageous and fanciful earlier ideas were accepted in their time. The coverage explores the physical phenomena that inform our knowledge, starting at the earth's core and extending outward through the mantle, crust, oceans, and atmosphere to the magnetosphere and beyond. Charts the evolution of our perceptions The primary focus of the "Encyclopedia" is the history of the study of the earth. It also discusses the institutions that advanced and shaped science and probes the interplay between science, practical applications, and social and political forces. The result is a unified historical overview of the earth across a wide canvas of time and place, from antiquity to the space age. Its wide-ranging articles summarize subjects as diverse as geography and imperialism, environmentalism, computers and meteorology, ozone formation theories since , scientific rocketry, the Scopes trial, and much more. Special Features Shows how diverse disciplines, from geology to space science, fit together in a coherent view of the earth * Explains earlier ideas and theories in the context of the beliefs and scientific knowledge of their time * Spotlights important institutions that have shaped the history of science * Explores relationships between science, practical applications, and sociopolitical concerns * Provides a subject index and an index of scientists with birth/death dates
The Stranger's Child
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Hollinghurst, Alan, PUBLISHER: Vintage Canada, INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER The Stranger's Child is Alan Hollinghurst's masterpiece, the book that cements his position as one of the finest novelists of our time. In its scope, intelligence and elegance, The Stranger's Child can be placed in the great tradition of the novel alongside epics by Marcel Proust and Anthony Powell. And yet, in its subtly political exploration of homosexuality in English society, it deals with an utterly contemporary subject in an utterly contemporary way. The Stranger's Child""begins with sixteen-year-old Daphne Sawle sitting in a hammock in the garden of Two Acres, the family home in suburban London. She is making a show of reading Tennyson before her brother George arrives to visit with his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a handsome, assured and sometimes outrageous young man with a burgeoning reputation as a poet. After a tantalizing and dramatic weekend Cecil writes a long poem in Daphne's autograph album as a parting gift. It is titled "Two Acres," and both Daphne and George (whose feelings for Cecil also go well beyond mere friendship) immediately see how important the poem is - but none of them can foresee the complex and lasting effects it will have on all their lives. When the next section of the novel begins, everything has changed: Daphne is married to Cecil's brother Dudley Valance; George to a historian named Madeleine; and Cecil is dead, killed by a sniper in World War One. A Cabinet officer and man of letters named Sebastian Stokes has come to Corley Court, the Valance family's country home, to put together an edition of Cecil's poemsand speak to each family member in turn about him. He is especially curious about Cecil's personal (and passionate) letters and unpublished poems, papers that seem to have gone missing, and whose absence will loom paradoxically through the rest of the novel. The book leaps forward and we are at another party, this one to celebrate Daphne's seventieth birthday. George is now the acclaimed historian G.F. Sawle; Daphne's son Wilfrid, a charming boy in the previous section, has grown into a nervous and somehow fractured adult. We meet Peter Rowe, a music teacher at the boarding school that now occupies Corley Court, and his boyfriend, Paul Bryant, a bank employee with a feeling for Cecil's poetry. Soon Paul is taking up an idea that Peter abandoned: to write a biography of Cecil Valance. It means making some startling discoveries about a past that the Valance family would prefer to keep in sepia and shadows. The Stranger's Child""is by turns a gripping literary mystery, an absorbing social study of some pivotal moments in history, and a sensuous and beautiful exploration of the secret passions that determine our lives. From Edwardian suburbs to the offices of the "Times Literary Supplement" in the s, from High Table wit to the realities of life working behind the counter at a provincial bank, it seems there is no corner