A championship basketball coach caught between his team, his family and the rabid partisans in his town. A traveling salesman consigned to a late-night bus ride. A prison inmate stripped of everything but his pride. A teenage runaway. Mismatched lovers. In his debut collection of short fiction, award-winning novelist Craig Lancaster returns to the terrain of his Montana home and takes on the notion of separation in its many forms - from comfort zones, from ideas, from people, from security, from fears. These ten stories delve into small towns and big cities, into love and despair, into what drives us and what scares us, peeling back the layers of our humanity with every pag
This book uses art photography as a point of departure for learning about physics, while also using physics as a point of departure for asking fundamental questions about the nature of photography as an art. Although not a how-to manual, the topics center around hands-on applications, most-often illustrated by photographic processes that are inexpensive and easily accessible to students (including a versatile new process developed by the author, and herein first described in print). A central theme is the connection between the physical interaction of light and matter on the one hand, and the artistry of the photographic processes and their results on the other. Geometry and the Nature of Light focuses on the physics of light and the optics of lenses, but also includes extended discussions of topics less commonly covered in a beginning text, including symmetry in art and physics, different physical processes of the scattering of light, photograms (photographic shadow prints) and the nature of shadows, elements of 2-dimensional design, pinhole photography and the view camera. Although written at a beginning undergraduate level, the topics are chosen for their role in a more general discussion of the relation between science and art that is of interest to readers of all backgrounds and levels of expertise.
Modern is a word much used, but hard to pin down. In Inventing Modern, John H. Lienhard uses that word to capture the furious rush of newness in the first half of 20th-century America. An unexpected world emerges from under the more familiar Modern. Beyond the airplanes, radios, art deco, skyscrapers, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Buck Rogers, the culture of the open road--Burma Shave, Kerouac, and White Castles--lie driving forces that set this account of Modern apart. One force, says Lienhard, was a new concept of boyhood--the risk-taking, hands-on savage inventor. Driven by an admiration of recklessness, America developed its technological empire with stunning speed. Bringing the airplane to fruition in so short a time, for example, were people such as Katherine Stinson, Lincoln Beachey, Amelia Earhart, and Charles Lindbergh. The rediscovery of mystery powerfully drove Modern as well. X-Rays, quantum mechanics, and relativity theory had followed electricity and radium. Here we read how, with reality seemingly altered, hope seemed limitless. Lienhard blends these forces with his childhood in the brave new world. The result is perceptive, engaging, and filled with surprise. Whether he talks about Alexander Calder (an engineer whose sculptures were exercises in materials science) or that wacky paean to flight, Flying Down to Rio, unexpected detail emerges from every tile of this large mosaic. Inventing Modern is a personal book that displays, rather than defines, an age that ended before most of us were born. It is an engineer's homage to a time before the bomb and our terrible loss of confidence--a time that might yet rise again out of its own postmodern ashes.
From the author of the #1 bestselling The Atlantis Gene comes a new novel in which the world’s past and future rests in the hands of five unwitting strangers in this definitive edition of A. G. Riddle's time-traveling, mind-bending speculative thriller. En route to London from New York, Flight 305 suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, plunging a group of strangers into a mysterious adventure that will have repercussions for all of humankind. Struggling to stay alive, the survivors soon realize that the world they’ve crashed in is very different from the one they left. But where are they? Why are they here? And how will they get back home? Five passengers seem to hold clues about what’s really going on: writer Harper Lane, venture capitalist Nick Stone, German genetic researcher Sabrina Schröder, computer scientist Yul Tan, and Grayson Shaw, the son of a billionaire philanthropist. As more facts about the crash emerge, it becomes clear that some in this group know more than they’re letting on—answers that will lead Harper and Nick to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy involving their own lives. As they begin to piece together the truth, they discover they have the power to change the future and the past—to save our world . . . or end it. A wildly inventive and propulsive adventure full of hairpin twists, Departure is a thrilling tale that weaves together power, ambition, fate, memory, and love, from a bold and visionary talent.
This book continues exploring the experiences, trials and tribulations of both the Journalist Romano known here as the First Man Adam and his Celestial Guide Zarathustra while they travel to the remaining Limboland Arenas and Inferno witnessing the horror of the after-world with the contemptuous Devil and his swaggering Three Crown Princes in their secret Offices in the lowest Infernal Ring. Here the disenchanted souls still struggle to survive with the interference of the narcissistic Devil and without the influence of God’s help. The remaining Limboland Arenas include the Black Afrikan; the Primitives Mini-Limboland; the Russian Marxists; the Conspiracy Theorists; the Persians; the Ottoman Turks; the Filipino Mini-Limboland and the Limbo-Limbo Lands through the Gates of Hades. The draconian Devil’s Inferno sites include Ring One as the De-Militarized Zone; the Jungleland Inner Sanctum; Ring Two as Carnality; Ring Three as Gluttony; Ring Four as Greed & Avarice; a Culinary Intermezzo Between Greed & Anger; Ring Five of the Anger & Wrathful & Sullen; Ring Six of Heresy; Ring Seven of Violence; Ring Eight of the Evil Pouches; Ring Nine of the Traitors & Fraud; and Ring Ten of Lucifer’s Demonic Cabaret. Not to be captured or outdone by the Devil the duo finally arrange Getting Out of Hell while the last scenes include The Devil’s Last Hurrah and Lilith Gets the Last Laugh; Infernus Not.
This book uses art photography as a point of departure for learning about physics, while also using physics as a point of departure for asking fundamental questions about the nature of photography as an art. Although not a how-to manual, the topics center around hands-on applications, sometimes illustrated by photographic processes that are inexpensive and easily accessible to students (including a versatile new process developed by the author, and first described in print in this series). A central theme is the connection between the physical interaction of light and matter on the one hand, and the artistry of the photographic processes and their results on the other. One half of Energy and Color focuses on the physics of energy, power, illuminance, and intensity of light, and how these relate to the photographic exposure, including a detailed example that follows the emission of light from the sun all the way through to the formation of the image in the camera. These concepts are described in both their traditional manner, but also using very-low sensitivity photography as an example, which brings the physical concepts to the fore in a visible way, whereas they are often hidden with ordinary high-speed photographic detectors. Energy and Color also considers color in terms of the spectrum of light, how it interacts with the subject, and how the camera's light detector interacts with the image focused upon it. But of equal concern is the only partially-understood and sometimes unexpected ways in which the human eye/brain interprets this spectral stimulus as color. The volume covers basic photographic subjects such as shutter, aperture, ISO, metering and exposure value, but also given their relations to the larger themes of the book less familiar topics such as the Jones-Condit equation, Lambertian versus isotropic reflections, reflection and response curves, and the opponent-process model of color perception. Although written at a beginning undergraduate level, the topics are chosen for their role in a more general discussion of the relation between science and art that is of interest to readers of all backgrounds and levels of expertise.
This is a book about the quanta that make up our universe--the highly unified bundles of energy of which everything is made. It explains wave-particle duality, randomness, quantum states, non-locality, Schrodinger's cat, quantum jumps, and more, in everyday language for non-scientists and scientists who wish to fathom science's most fundamental theory.
An eccentric comic about the central mystery of quantum mechanics Totally Random is a comic for the serious reader who wants to really understand the central mystery of quantum mechanics--entanglement: what it is, what it means, and what you can do with it. Measure two entangled particles separately, and the outcomes are totally random. But compare the outcomes, and the particles seem as if they are instantaneously influencing each other at a distance—even if they are light-years apart. This, in a nutshell, is entanglement, and if it seems weird, then this book is for you. Totally Random is a graphic experiential narrative that unpacks the deep and insidious significance of the curious correlation between entangled particles to deliver a gut-feel glimpse of a world that is not what it seems. See for yourself how entanglement has led some of the greatest thinkers of our time to talk about crazy-sounding stuff like faster-than-light signaling, many worlds, and cats that are both dead and alive. Find out why it remains one of science's most paradigm-shaking discoveries. Join Niels Bohr's therapy session with the likes of Einstein, Schrödinger, and other luminaries and let go of your commonsense notion of how the world works. Use your new understanding of entanglement to do the seemingly impossible, like beat the odds in the quantum casino, or quantum encrypt a message to evade the Sphinx's all-seeing eye. But look out, or you might just get teleported back to the beginning of the book! A fresh and subversive look at our quantum world with some seriously funny stuff, Totally Random delivers a real understanding of entanglement that will completely change the way you think about the nature of physical reality.
François Laruelle emerged from the hallowed generation of French postwar philosophers that included luminaries such as Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray, and Jean Baudrillard, yet his thinking differs radically from that of his better-known contemporaries. In Laruelle and Art, Jonathan Fardy provides the first academic monograph dedicated solely to Laruelle's unique contribution to aesthetic theory and specifically the 'non-philosophical' project he terms 'non-aesthetics'. This undertaking allows Laruelle to think about art outside the boundaries of standard philosophy, an approach that Fardy explicates through a series of case studies. By analysing the art of figures such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Anish Kapoor, Dan Flavin, and James Turrell as well as the drama of Michael Frayn, Fardy's new book enables new and experienced readers of Laruelle to understand how the philosopher's thinking can open up new vistas of art and criticism.
This is a cultural history of mathematics and art, from antiquity to the present. Mathematicians and artists have long been on a quest to understand the physical world they see before them and the abstract objects they know by thought alone. Taking readers on a tour of the practice of mathematics and the philosophical ideas that drive the discipline, Lynn Gamwell points out the important ways mathematical concepts have been expressed by artists. Sumptuous illustrations of artworks and cogent math diagrams are featured in Gamwell's comprehensive exploration. Gamwell begins by describing mathematics from antiquity to the Enlightenment, including Greek, Islamic, and Asian mathematics. Then focusing on modern culture, Gamwell traces mathematicians' search for the foundations of their science, such as David Hilbert's conception of mathematics as an arrangement of meaning-free signs, as well as artists' search for the essence of their craft, such as Aleksandr Rodchenko's monochrome paintings. She shows that self-reflection is inherent to the practice of both modern mathematics and art, and that this introspection points to a deep resonance between the two fields: Kurt Gödel posed questions about the nature of mathematics in the language of mathematics and Jasper Johns asked "What is art?" in the vocabulary of art. Throughout, Gamwell describes the personalities and cultural environments of a multitude of mathematicians and artists, from Gottlob Frege and Benoît Mandelbrot to Max Bill and Xu Bing. Mathematics and Art demonstrates how mathematical ideas are embodied in the visual arts and will enlighten all who are interested in the complex intellectual pursuits, personalities, and cultural settings that connect these vast disciplines.
