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George Dyson (science Historian)
George Dyson (born 26 March 1953) is an American non-fiction author and historian of technology whose publications broadly cover the evolution of technology in relation to the physical environment and the direction of society. He has written on a wide range of topics, including the history of computing, the development of algorithms and intelligence, communications systems, space exploration, and the design of watercraft. Early life George Dyson is the son of the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson and mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson, the brother of technology analyst Esther Dyson, and the grandson of the British composer Sir George Dyson. Dyson's early life is described in Kenneth Brower's book ''The Starship and the Canoe.'' When he was sixteen he went to live in British Columbia to pursue his interest in kayaking. From 1972 to 1975, he lived in a treehouse at a height of 30 metres that he built from salvaged materials on the shore of Burrard Inlet. Dyson became a Canadian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festival Della Scienza
The Festival della Scienza is an annual science festival held in Genoa, Italy. It was launched in 2003 combining hundreds of different initiatives and events, designed to fulfill and stimulate the interest of visitors of all ages and all levels of knowledge. Modulation in diverse formats and original languages is always one of features of the Festival. The aim of the array of interdisciplinary proposals is to overcome the traditional opposition between scientific and humanistic culture. Events include scientific exhibitions, workshops, interactive educational experiences, photography and "art-science" exhibitions, conferences, round tables, performances, music and films. History 2003: "Beyond" In its first edition, from 23 October to 3 November 2003, the Science Festival faces the theme of the interdisciplinarity of research, condensing the concept of a scientific culture in continuous expansion into the key word Beyond. With the participation of : 2004: "Exploration" In i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treehouse
A tree house, tree fort or treeshed is a platform or building constructed around, next to or among the trunk or branches of one or more mature trees while above ground level. Tree houses can be used for recreation, work space, habitation, a hangout space and observation. People occasionally connect ladders, or staircases to get up to the platforms. History Prehistoric hypotheses Building tree platforms or nests as a shelter from dangers on the ground is a habit of all the great apes, and may have been inherited by humans. It is true that evidence of prehistoric man-made tree houses have never been found by paleoanthropologists, but remains of wooden tree houses would not remain. However, evidence for cave accommodation, terrestrial man-made rock shelters, and bonfires should be possible to find if they had existed, but are scarce from earlier than 40,000 years ago. This has led to a hypothesis that archaic humans may have lived in trees until about 40,000 years ago. The ske ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fairhaven College
Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies is an interdisciplinary liberal arts college at Western Washington University. Instead of completing the general education requirements at Western, students take interdisciplinary classes at Fairhaven, which aim to cover the same breadth and depth of subjects, but within small, interdisciplinary seminars. When it comes time to move onto "concentrated studies," students have the option of pursuing any of the majors or minors offered by Western Washington University, but may also choose to shape their own interdisciplinary concentration or major, combining independent study, internships, and Western Washington University courses with Fairhaven courses to define their course of study. Another unique feature of the college: nearly all classes follow a small seminar format rather than a large lecture format. Class enrollment is rarely above twenty students and will sometimes have two professors for a given class instead of only one. Fair ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baidarka
The baidarka or Aleutian kayak (Aleut: iqyax) is a watercraft consisting of soft skin (artificial or natural) over a rigid space frame. Its initial design was created by the native Aleut (or Unangan) people of the Aleutian Islands. The Aleut people were surrounded by treacherous waters and required water transportation and a hunting vessel. Due to the geography and climate of the Aleutian Islands, trees and wood were in scarce supply and the people relied primarily on driftwood to create the framework of the kayak, which was covered with the skins of sea mammals. Two types of boats were created, one with a covered deck that was used as a hunting kayak, and another that was open and capable of carrying goods and people from one island to another. Modern baidarkas are fast collapsible rowing boats, based on aluminum alloy frame with skin made of PVC fabric. Often the inflatable buoyancy chambers are embedded into the skin, resulting in increased safety and performance. Some des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kayak
A kayak is a small, narrow watercraft which is typically propelled by means of a double-bladed paddle. The word kayak originates from the Greenlandic word ''qajaq'' (). The traditional kayak has a covered deck and one or more cockpits, each seating one paddler. The cockpit is sometimes covered by a spray deck that prevents the entry of water from waves or spray, differentiating the craft from a canoe. The spray deck makes it possible for suitably skilled kayakers to roll the kayak: that is, to capsize and right it without it filling with water or ejecting the paddler. ] Some modern boats vary considerably from a traditional design but still claim the title "kayak", for instance in eliminating the cockpit by seating the paddler on top of the boat ("sit-on-top" kayaks); having inflated air chambers surrounding the boat; replacing the single hull with twin hulls; and replacing paddles with other human-powered propulsion methods, such as foot-powered rotational propellers and "fli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aleut People
The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska and the Russian administrative division of Kamchatka Krai. Etymology In the Aleut language they are known by the endonyms Unangan (eastern dialect) and Unangas (western dialect), both of which mean "people". The Russian term "Aleut" was a general term used for both the native population of the Aleutian Islands and their neighbors to the east in the Kodiak Archipelago, who were also referred to as "Pacific Eskimos". Language Aleut people speak Unangam Tunuu, the Aleut language, as well as English and Russian in the United States and Russia respectively. An estimated 150 people in the United States and five people in Russia speak Aleut. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by the Times Mirror Company. The newspaper’s coverage emphasizes California and especially Southern California stories. In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to labor unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. In recent decades the paper's readership has declined, and it has been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, and other controversies. In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize and final ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Jose Mercury News
''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidiary of Digital First Media. , it was the List of newspapers in the United States#Top 25 newspapers by circulation, late 2012 through early 2013, fifth largest daily newspaper in the United States, with a daily circulation of 611,194. , the paper has a circulation of 324,500 daily and 415,200 on Sundays. As of 2021, this further declined. The Bay Area News Group no longer reports its circulation, but rather "readership". For 2021, they reported a "readership" of 312,700 adults daily. First published in 1851, the ''Mercury News'' is the last remaining English-language daily newspaper covering the Santa Clara Valley. It became the ''Mercury News'' in 1983 after a series of mergers. During much of the 20th century, it was owned by Knight Ridder. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing. The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and research commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s to enable time-sharing of computers. The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s to enable resource shari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darwin Among The Machines
"Darwin among the Machines" is an article published in ''The Press'' newspaper on 13 June 1863 in Christchurch, New Zealand, which references the work of Charles Darwin in the title. Written by Samuel Butler but signed '' Cellarius'' (q.v.), the article raised the possibility that machines were a kind of "mechanical life" undergoing constant evolution, and that eventually machines might supplant humans as the dominant species: The article ends by urging that, "War to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race." ''Book of the Machines'' Butler developed this and subsequent articles into ''The Book of the Machines'', three chapters of ''Erewhon'', published anonymously in 1872. The Erewhonian society Butler envisioned had long ago undergone a revolution that destroyed most mec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Samuel Butler (4 December 1835 – 18 June 1902) was an English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel ''Erewhon'' (1872) and the semi-autobiographical novel ''Ernest Pontifex or The Way of All Flesh'', published posthumously in 1903 in an altered version titled ''The Way of All Flesh'', and published in 1964 as he wrote it. Both novels have remained in print since their initial publication. In other studies he examined Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art, and made prose translations of the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' that are still consulted. Early life Butler was born on 4 December 1835 at the rectory in the village of Langar, Nottinghamshire. His father was Rev. Thomas Butler, son of Dr. Samuel Butler, then headmaster of Shrewsbury School and later Bishop of Lichfield. Dr. Butler was the son of a tradesman and descended from a line of yeomen, but his scholarly aptitude being recognised at a young age, he had been sent to Rugby ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project Orion (nuclear Propulsion)
Project Orion was a study conducted between the 1950s and 1960s by the United States Air Force, DARPA, and NASA for the purpose of identifying the efficacy of a starship directly propelled by a series of explosions of atomic bombs behind the craft—nuclear pulse propulsion. Early versions of this vehicle were proposed to take off from the ground; later versions were presented for use only in space. Six non-nuclear tests were conducted using models. The project was eventually abandoned for multiple reasons, including the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear explosions in space, and concerns over nuclear fallout. The idea of rocket propulsion by combustion of explosive substance was first proposed by Russian explosives expert Nikolai Kibalchich in 1881, and in 1891 similar ideas were developed independently by German engineer Hermann Ganswindt. Robert A. Heinlein mentions powering spaceships with nuclear bombs in his 1940 short story "Blowups Happen". Real life propos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
