David Christian, Macquarie University; WCU Professor, Ewha Womans University, Seoul This article is adapted from the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. The English word science derives from the Latin scire, “to know.” In many languages, the word science or its equivalents can be used broadly to mean “a systematic body of knowledge that guides our relations with
April fool! In spite of all the promise of artificial intelligence and the huge amount of data being collected and crunched, the ideas in our April Fool's Day email are just a joke. You're still going to devote all too much time to Facebook. We spun a similar April Fool’s story in in 2005 with the
Guest post from Marjolijn Kaiser: Detailed contents of package: 6 packs Peeps 2 bags Coconut M&Ms 3 bottles vanilla extract 1 bottle maple syrup The shipping information on the box I am sending to myself after a short trip to the US pretty much sums up my culinary experience of the past week and a half.
In all the news about the Crimea lately, one thing I couldn't quite figure out was how big a place the Crimea is. I then remembered a website I discovered a while back called "MAPfrappe.com." MAPfrappe allows you to take the outline of one place and superimpose it on more familiar places. It's clever enough to
Hey boys and girls! Today's topic is "parallel constructions." Why, in God's name, do I want to discuss something with such a horrible sounding name? Parallel construction is the art of keeping lists in your writing consistent, whether it's a list of things you're going to do on vacation, a list of things that drive you
A young ski jumper at the annual Salisbury, Connecticut Ski Jumps, February 2013. The record jump for the day was 71 meters. Photo by Ryan Siever. The Winter Olympics start today in Sochi, Russia! While many in the Western world view Russia as a bewildering place of vodka and extreme cold, those who know
Hooray! We have a government again. That means it's time to get our applications sent off to the Library of Congress for all our upcoming books: This Is America (oh, the irony that this book was delayed by the shut-down); the Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, which we'll be officially launching in Sydney, Australia in early
We've started a new service here at Berkshire - custom publishing. This link on our website has more about this service. In a nutshell, this is for academic authors (or institutions like non-profits and NGOs) who have a wonderful manuscript all ready to go ... and who don't want to wait around for three years while
1. The northeastern Australian state of Queensland is four times the size of California but has only 3.5 million people - about the size of Connecticut, or one-fifth the size of New York City. 2. You've heard of 3-D printing, right? Well, now there is 4-D printing. This involves printing 3-D items that have the ability
I'm looking forward to digging into our next project - This Is America: A short history of the United States. The subtitle is tentative, and we welcome suggestions from people — but we want to stick with the "America" part in order to generate discussion on the fact that the US is a small part of
