Quotations and notes from "Almost Everyone's Guide to Science" - The Universe, Life and Everything by John Gribbin with Mary Gribbin
Some important developments in the sciences have been made since 1997 when this book was written, however:
" ...the scientific world view < > has taken only about four hundred years to develop {starting from the time of Galileo,"
"Everything in science is about models and predictions," However, "None of the models is the ultimate Deep Truth, but they all have their part to play." " ..even the best model is only a good one in its own context,"
" ..science is primarily an investigation of our place in the Universe -" "It is all about where we came from, and where we are going."
"When physicists try to describe the way the world works at the most fundamental level, the most important component of their toolkit is the concept of a field."
"Ice can only grow over the poles of our planet if the supply of ocean currents carrying warm water from tropical latitudes is cut off, "
"With the present-day geography of the Earth, the natural state of the planet is to be in the grip of a full ice age."
"Roughly speaking < > the pattern of climate change over the past five million years or so has been one in which full ice ages, each a bit more than a hundred thousand years long, are separated by shorter, relatively warm intervals, each about ten or twenty thousand years long."
" ..cold winters go hand in hand with hot summers, "
"Drought goes hand in hand with the spread of ice, "
" ..the important point about all of these astronmical influences on climate is that they do not change the total amount of heat received by the whole Earth over a whole year. All they can do is rearrange the distribution of heat between the seasons."
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Friday, April 19, 2013
Experimental Blog # 154
Quotations and notes from "Tiger Head, Snake Tails - China Today, How It Got There and Where It Is Heading" by Jonathan Fenby
"Average annual per capita income has soared from 528 yuan at the start of < > the early 1980s to 19,100 in urban areas and 5,900 in the countryside at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century."
"Sixty-five million Chinese travel abroad each year."
"The number of patent applications has risen from 50,000 to 300,000 a year since 2000{again placing China second only to the USA}".
"A Chinese publication has reported that more than fifty billionaires have died of unnatural causes since 2003; of these seventeen committed suicide, fifteen were murdered and fourteen were executed."
"Eighty million Chinese belong to the Communist Party .."{apparently 20% are women}.
Since China has such diversity of climate and terrain, "China contains 30,000 species of plants{compared to 17,000 in all North America}."
"Shanghai < > has constructed the equivalent of 334 Empire State Buildings in fourteen years."
"Religion is officially regulated with five faiths allowed: Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism and Daoism - the latter being China's only indigenous creed, with its doctrine of the pursuit of the mystical way, freewheeling belief system and bewildering array of gods and demons .."
"The central bank{of China} estimates that 18,000 officials have skipped abroad in the last two decades, taking a total of more that $120 billion with them."
"Average annual per capita income has soared from 528 yuan at the start of < > the early 1980s to 19,100 in urban areas and 5,900 in the countryside at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century."
"Sixty-five million Chinese travel abroad each year."
"The number of patent applications has risen from 50,000 to 300,000 a year since 2000{again placing China second only to the USA}".
"A Chinese publication has reported that more than fifty billionaires have died of unnatural causes since 2003; of these seventeen committed suicide, fifteen were murdered and fourteen were executed."
"Eighty million Chinese belong to the Communist Party .."{apparently 20% are women}.
Since China has such diversity of climate and terrain, "China contains 30,000 species of plants{compared to 17,000 in all North America}."
"Shanghai < > has constructed the equivalent of 334 Empire State Buildings in fourteen years."
"Religion is officially regulated with five faiths allowed: Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism and Daoism - the latter being China's only indigenous creed, with its doctrine of the pursuit of the mystical way, freewheeling belief system and bewildering array of gods and demons .."
"The central bank{of China} estimates that 18,000 officials have skipped abroad in the last two decades, taking a total of more that $120 billion with them."
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Experimental Blog # 153
Quotations from "Chinese Characters - Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land", edited by Angilee Shah and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Forward by Panaj Mishra
Here are a few quotations from 3 of the 18 contributors, 10 men and 8 women, who compose this anthology.
From Panaj Mishra:
"...the word "capitalism" scarcely describes an economic system in which a one-party state controls the major banks and companies and regulates the movement of capital. < > China has surely also adopted commonplace Western practices such as the privatization and truncating of public services, deunionization, and the fragmenting and lumpenization of urban working classes."
From Jeffrey Wasserstrom:
"It is true that China is still run by a Communist Party ... It is a Communist Party, however, that has stopped celebrating class struggle < > that the pursuit of a "harmonious society" is what China's leaders today talk about most .."
From Angilee Shah:
" ...China's economic rise is{quoting Adam Hersh} "the most rapid socioecnomic transformation in the history of human civilization."
"Some five hundred million people have been raised out of poverty since the 1980s .."
"China today is a place of great diversity and incredible people who are living through an unprecedented time."
Here are a few quotations from 3 of the 18 contributors, 10 men and 8 women, who compose this anthology.
From Panaj Mishra:
"...the word "capitalism" scarcely describes an economic system in which a one-party state controls the major banks and companies and regulates the movement of capital. < > China has surely also adopted commonplace Western practices such as the privatization and truncating of public services, deunionization, and the fragmenting and lumpenization of urban working classes."
From Jeffrey Wasserstrom:
"It is true that China is still run by a Communist Party ... It is a Communist Party, however, that has stopped celebrating class struggle < > that the pursuit of a "harmonious society" is what China's leaders today talk about most .."
From Angilee Shah:
" ...China's economic rise is{quoting Adam Hersh} "the most rapid socioecnomic transformation in the history of human civilization."
"Some five hundred million people have been raised out of poverty since the 1980s .."
"China today is a place of great diversity and incredible people who are living through an unprecedented time."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)