Some years ago when I started "collecting" angels as a literary diversion, it was certainly with no thought of serving as their archivist, biographer, and finally as their lexicographer. Such an idea did not occur to me-indeed, could not have occurred to me-until I had corralled a sufficient number of the heavenly denizens to make a dictionary of them feasible. At first I thought that angels, n…
Absolute costadvantagescanplacecompetitors ata cost disadvantage, even if the scale of operations is similar for both firms. Such cost advantages can arise from an advanced position along the learning curve, where average costs decline as cumulative output rises over time. This differs from economies of scale, which involves the relationship between average costs and the output level per period…
Sociolinguistic research in the 1950s and 1960s had shown how people change the degree of formality of their language as a function of the social contexts in which they find themselves. This was explained in terms of social norms dictating language use. In other words, we should speak very softly and respectfully here, but we can be more boisterous and casual there. Communication (or speech) ac…
Blast off into space to discover the galaxies and beyond with the new edition of this out-of-this-world reference. Send your child on an amazing journey into space. They'll see the Hubble telescope orbiting the Earth, discover the birth of our solar system and follow the search for life on Mars. Packed with practical tips for the amateur astronomer, spectacular images from space, detailed chart…
Renowned historian Peter N. Stearns and thirty prominent historians have combined their expertise over the past ten years to perfect this comprehensive chronology of more than 20,000 entries that span the millennia from prehistoric times to the year 2000.
This dictionary contains over 32,000 terms that are specific to Computers and the Internet. Each term includes a definition / description. With more than 750 pages, this dictionary is one of the most comprehensive resources available. Terms relate to applications, commands, functions, operating systems, image processing and networking. No other dictionary of computing terms even comes close to…
The present Government has re-lit the blue touch paper of House of Lords reform, starting with the partial abolition of the hereditary peers in 1999. It has continued to burn slowly. In a democracy, there should arguably be no contest between the legitimacy of an elected and an appointed second chamber. However, in the United Kingdom the issue is clouded with unresolved questions over powers, s…