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"Blacksmithing"
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Blacksmithing : a guide to practical metalworking, tools and techniques
\"Skilled artisans at the heart of human civilization since the Iron Age, blacksmiths gained the respect of their communities through the utility of their creations, whether these were weapons, armour, farming tools, wagon axles or household items. Industrialization and mass production may have led to the disappearance of the blacksmith from everyday life, but the art of metalworking is alive and well. Today, blacksmithing is still practised throughout the world and is experiencing a revival. Blacksmithing provides a photographic introduction to blacksmith practices today from an expert teacher, offering the novice and enthusiast an insight into this ancient trade. Learn how blacksmiths heat the metal using a variety of methods, including electric induction and traditional coal-fired forges; see the huge range of items that a metalworker can produce, including wrenches, shovels, door plates, bicycle stands and railings; see craftspeople practicing specialist metalworking techniques, such as upsetting, collaring, twisting, fullering and swaging; and understand how blacksmiths respect the environment by using old iron ore and scrap iron. Illustrated with 350 photographs -- many of them of the author at work, with step-by-step guides -- that will instruct and inspire, Blacksmithing is a dazzling pictorial celebration of a craft as old as civilization itself.\"--Publisher website.
BOOK
Roman Failure: Privilege and Precarity at Early Imperial Podere Marzuolo, Tuscany
The case of the early imperial small rural settlement of Marzuolo, in south-central Etruria, paints a micro-history of arrested developments: a couple of decades into the site's existence, an abandoned wine-production facility was converted into a blacksmithing workshop, which in turn burnt down and was abandoned soon after. But were both these endings failures? This article uses the concept of failure as an epistemic lens to examine inequality: who could fail in the Roman world, and for whom was failure not an option? It argues that failure was tied up with particular notions of the future, which were not equally distributed. Yet in contrast to modern paradigms, in the Roman world even the privileged seem not to have embraced failure as a stepping-stone towards growth.
Journal Article
Forging tools for refining predicted protein structures
Refining predicted protein structures with all-atom molecular dynamics simulations is one route to producing, entirely by computational means, structural models of proteins that rival in quality those that are determined by X-ray diffraction experiments. Slow rearrangements within the compact folded state, however, make routine refinement of predicted structures by unrestrained simulations infeasible. In this work, we draw inspiration from the fields of metallurgy and blacksmithing, where practitioners have worked out practical means of controlling equilibration by mechanically deforming their samples. We describe a two-step refinement procedure that involves identifying collective variables for mechanical deformations using a coarse-grained model and then sampling along these deformation modes in all-atom simulations. Identifying those low-frequency collective modes that change the contact map the most proves to be an effective strategy for choosing which deformations to use for sampling. The method is tested on 20 refinement targets from the CASP12 competition and is found to induce large structural rearrangements that drive the structures closer to the experimentally determined structures during relatively short all-atom simulations of 50 ns. By examining the accuracy of side-chain rotamer states in subensembles of structures that have varying degrees of similarity to the experimental structure, we identified the reorientation of aromatic side chains as a step that remains slow even when encouraging global mechanical deformations in the all-atom simulations. Reducing the side-chain rotamer isomerization barriers in the all-atom force field is found to further speed up refinement.
Journal Article
Is Understanding A Species Of Knowledge?
Among philosophers of science there seems to be a general consensus that understanding represents a species of knowledge, but virtually every major epistemologist who has thought seriously about understanding has come to deny this claim. Against this prevailing tide in epistemology, I argue that understanding is, in fact, a species of knowledge: just like knowledge, for example, understanding is not transparent and can be Gettiered. I then consider how the psychological act of “grasping” that seems to be characteristic of understanding differs from the sort of psychological act that often characterizes knowledge. Zagzebski's accountKvanvig's accountTwo problemsComanche casesUnreliable sources of informationThe upper-right quadrantSo is understanding a species of knowledge?A false choice
Journal Article
What is Conscious Attention?
Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. William James Principles of Psychology
Journal Article
The Disappearing Technology and Products of Traditional Tibetan Village Blacksmiths
Tibetans have a long history of iron mining, smelting, and forging. For centuries, craftsmen in major cities and large iron production centers made high-quality swords and suits of armor, as well as decorative iron ritual objects for monasteries and the elites, but blacksmithing workshops in small villages have always produced and repaired everyday objects for agricultural and home use. Modern political changes, along with greater availability of industrial objects in local markets, have greatly reduced the rank of the village blacksmith. Ethnographic fieldwork reported here from two Tibetan Bön villages in the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, China (once part of traditional Amdo area of Tibet), highlights some of the threats to the continued existence of village blacksmiths. Both a part-time blacksmith in one village and a full-time blacksmith in another make only a marginal living from their work. Their descendants are unlikely to continue the business. Many of the village blacksmiths in the area have already stopped production and closed their workshops. It is likely that the village blacksmith tradition might soon disappear altogether in this region of the world without support. Preservation of this tradition could benefit both cultural and environmental sustainability goals.
Journal Article
An ideology critique of the use-value of mathematics
The idea that mathematics is needed for our mundane everyday activities has raised the question of how people deal with mathematics outside the school walls. Much has been written in mathematics education research about the possibility of transferring knowledge from and into school. Whereas the majority of this literature commends the possibility of transfer, thus assuming both the desirability of transfer and the importance of school mathematics for the professional and mundane lives of individuals, I am interested in developing an ideology critique on the beliefs underpinning the research on this issue. It will be argued that the use-value attributed to school mathematics disavows its value as part of a political and economic structure, which requires school mathematics to perform other roles than the one related with utility. This critique will be illustrated through the exploration of a typical transfer situation between school and workplace.
Journal Article