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Book Review

Book Review

Thomas A. Lyson, G.W. Stevenson, and Rick Welsh (Eds.) Food and the Mid-Level Farm: Renewing an Agriculture of the Middle. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 296 pp. ISBN 9780262622158. US $27.00, paperback.

Book Review

The paper promotes urban parks as suitable locations for geology field trips. A sample field guide of Griffith Park in Los Angeles is presented. The area described includes fault splays in the Santa Monica Fault Zone, and shows an inferred linkage between the Hollywood Fault and the Eagle Rock Fault. A conjunction of three faults is described, along with prominent jointing.

Hypatia of Alexandria was the most famous woman mathematician of antiquity, and her story is as relevant now as it was in her day. This play tells her story. While the events in the play are based closely on extant historical texts, inspiring excerpts from classical works by Porphyry, Plotinus, Aristotle and Plato are woven into the action to further the plot and add to the classical mood. Dance and music, including an Homeric hymn, add to the artistic texture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The average atmospheric charge density of Earth is neutral. Charge built up from thunderstorms and lightning phenomena is offset by oceanic surface charging, and offers a source of energy that has not been harnessed broadly. Unfortunately, the total terrestrial energy of the Earth's atmospheric electrical system is modest (250–500 MW) compared to industrial requirements: Innovations are likely to offer improvements to societal efficiency rather than broad transformations. Direct capture systems located in places with very high occurrence of lightning discharge can generate ≈1 kWh per year on average. Material processing via triggered lightning is limited to techniques that utilize rapid discharges, e.g., metal and glass preprocessing of materials, waste volume reduction, biomass energy conversion, where current prices make plasma‐arc processes prohibitive. Triggered lightning may be used to assist blasting of mountain rock; or as a high‐voltage input for processes such as nuclear fusion. Passive collection of atmospheric electricity is modest but may be used in urban agriculture to increase biomass production. Thunderstorm charge‐separation processes suggest a new class of electricity generators based on kinetic energy and material collision. Ball lightning suggests additional research in dusty plasmas. These methods are all at proof‐of‐concept or early translation stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medication- and symptom-free recovery has been the author’s experience since March 2006. Details of 127 potentially therapeutic lifestyle activities were explored using a structured reflective analysis. These activities were divided into twelve communities: family, arts, romance, etc. Perceived therapeutic effects are noted. Also included is the author’s method for weaning from psychiatric medication very slowly, plus personal details of success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Camping in the national forest is recounted via a poem, replete with rhyme, relation, and rapture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]