Accustomed as we are to wearing clothes and to using colors in artistic and utilitarian ways, we often forget that the first “monument” offered to color is the human body and that the first “canvas” for the artist was his own skin. Man has created a distance between skin and colors by introducing clothes, which have a meaning that works to the detriment of both skin and colors. Clothes are a kind of second skin which is far more versatile than the first one and with which tailors and fashion designers may cheat to the full extent of their fantasy and in accordance with how we wish to appear. Colors play an infinite game of combinations which enhance and transform clothes. No skin lends itself to such a range of aesthetic manipulations as cloth does.

Organic solvent soluble organosilicate compounds retaining silicate backbone were obtained by the reaction between biotite and trimethylsilylating reagent. The soluble product which was formed at room temperature or at reflux temperature was a viscous liquid and was soluble in a wide range of organic solvents, but insoluble in water. Molecular weights of the soluble products and their thinlayer chromatograms made it clear that the soluble products consisted of several trimethylsilylated derivatives of silicic acids which were mainly the derivatives of mono- and disilicic acid. The influence of reaction temperature for the trimethylsilylation reaction also was discussed.

The spread of Western and Christian civilisation all over the world, during the last four hundred years, has been marked, on all continents, by the disappearance of large numbers of technically less advanced peoples, or by their numerical regression, which in turn was accompanied by the decadence and crumbling of their cultural inheritance. But such feats of extinction are not the prerogative of the white man of modern civilisation. Every point on the globe, at all times, has witnessed struggles for life, where victory went to the stronger. The extinction of Neanderthal man, some thirty thousand years ago, was probably due to the appearance of Cro-Magnon and Chancelade man, who entered Europe at that time and had attained a more advanced technical civilisation than their predecessors. In historic times, we know of several cases in which peoples were driven back and annihilated by neighbours whose civilisation was more advanced and who were endowed with a greater expansive force. The Negritos of South-east Asia had been ousted from a part of their original territory by the Malayans and Chinese long before the arrival of the Europeans. Several Melanesian tribes were exterminated in the course of the ancient Polynesian migrations. These examples could be multiplied. They are in fact so numerous that it has become customary to consider them almost as manifestations of a biological necessity, against which human will remains impotent.

Hydroxy-carboxylic acids inhibit the crystallization of ferrihydrite in the pH range 9–11 in the order

citric > meso tartaric > L-tartaric ≫ lactic

and favor hematite formation relative to goethite in the order

L-tartaric > citric > meso tartaric > lactic.

The crystal shape of hematite can change from hexagonal plates to acicular in the presence of these acids. The influence of the acids on the crystallization rises with increasing concentration and with falling pH.

The effectiveness in suppressing crystallization depends on whether and how strongly the acid adsorbs on ferrihydrite and how strongly it complexes with Fe3+ in solution. Inhibition of crystallization of hematite is believed to be due to the di- and tricarboxylic acid linking ferrihydrite particles in an immobile network. Goethite formation is suppressed by the acid complexing with Fe in solution and hindering nucleation; strongly adsorbing acids also adsorb on the nuclei and hinder further growth. Certain acids can induce hematite formation because they contain a group which acts as a template for nucleation of hematite.

Among the elements in our contemporary civilisation which stand out because of their novelty in comparison with past epochs one must definitely remember the vast field which goes by the name of “industrial design,” which is also connected with the field of graphics (in its various incarnations of advertising graphics, traffic signals, lettering, etc.). Actually the advent of an industrialised society such as our own has brought with it the presence of an “industrial aesthetics,” of a will and an instinctive need to “aestheticise,” to make the “natural” world more pleasant and acceptable since today it is almost turned upside down and subverted by the products of a technological civilisation.

Perhaps nothing is more indicative of an advanced civilisation than informed interest in the arts. There have always been connoisseurs and persons of taste; more recent, however—it goes back only two or three generations—is the academic discipline which has brought the serious historian into a domain which had long been reserved for the enthusiast, the lover of virtu, and the artist. When Nietzsche noted Burckhardt's and Taine's success in combining the history of art with that of civilisations, he wondered whether this was a symptom of decadence. Little inclined to propose, easy tasks to modern man, he perceived a mortal danger in ‘pedantic’ simplifications and did not doubt that the need for ‘scientific’ explanations in matters of art would have as its counterpart a growing paralysis of the creative faculties. To the extent that this meant hypertrophy of memory, it would gradually enervate the fecundity of talent; was it even certain that it always favoured the development of sure and keen taste?

In the intellectual history of the West and the East the words “experience” and “dialectic” have been used in various senses. Their respective roles in knowledge have been differently conceived—depending invariably on the meanings given to the words “knowledge” and “experience.” The problem of the mutual relationship between experience and dialectic is at bottom that of the relation between experience and reason. Reason can be understood in a static sense and a dynamic sense. It may stand for that human capacity which apprehends formal logical relations between certain propositions and deduces conclusions from given premises. Or it may refer to that dynamic effort of the human mind to articulate, to grapple with and render intelligible the immediately felt experience. In this latter sense reason is involved in a dialectical and dramatic process which aims at recapturing, as it were, the felt unity and totality of experience. That is why underlying the diverse uses of “dialectic” one can discern in the concept a common flavor which is a unique combination of the rational and the dramatic, the intellectual and the imaginative, the discursive and the non-discursive. Failure to understand the proper relation between experience and dialectic has given rise either to “insoluble paradoxes” or to grandiose, “metaphysical,” over-all solutions which are hardly convincing. In this paper I intend to bring out, what seems to me, the proper way of understanding their relation through a critical consideration of the dialectics of the famous Mādhyamika dialectician Nāgārjuna, of ancient India, interspersed with incidental remarks on some Western dialecticians.

Some observers are surprised by the fact that economic phenomena occupy an increasing place in the average man's concerns. Has not economic life been the necessary basis for man's physical existence since the most distant times? Have not agriculture, industry, business and finance been in existence for thousands of years ? Do not the nations’ standards of living, and even their manner of life, depend necessarily on their production?

Dickite and kaolinite are polymorphs of Al4(Si4O10)(OH)8. Dickite traditionally is regarded as hydrothermal, based on field and laboratory evidence. Dickite and kaolinite occur in cavities in phylloid algal limestones, in interstices of biocalcarenites and sandstones, and along joints, fractures, and stylolites, in Pennsylvanian rocks exposed throughout 9600 square miles of southeastern Kansas. The stratigraphic interval of approximately 1100 ft extends from the Fort Scott Limestone (Desmoinesian) through the Lecompton Limestone (Virgilian). The best crystallized dickites are found in porous algal limestones as pockets of glistening white powder composed of well developed pseudohexagonal plates up to 40 μ across. Very well crystallized kaolinites occur similarly, except the crystals are much smaller. Less well crystallized dickites and b-axis disordered kaolinites occur in less porous rocks. Variations in crystal size and morphological development are genetically significant.

Dickite-kaolinite distribution is related to: (1) stratigraphic alternation of limestones and impervious shales; (2) gentle, westward regional dip; (3) thick, mound-like buildups of highly porous algal limestones, miles in length and width; (4) igneous intrusions (early Tertiary?) in Woodson and Wilson counties. Dickite is confined to an elliptical area 125 miles long northeast-southwest, extending 60 miles eastward from the intrusions. Dickite is associated preferentially with porous algal mounds. Kaolinite occurs in less porous rocks within the dickite area, and also is abundant well beyond. Heated groundwaters, possibly mixed with magmatic waters, moved readily up-dip and along strike outward from the intrusions through the conduit-like algal mounds; dickite was deposited from such solutions. Where water movement was restricted or where water had travelled tens of miles from the intrusions, water temperature fell below the limit for dickite crystallization, and kaolinite precipitated instead. Kansas dickite, unlike most other reported dickites, formed in rocks that were neither deeply buried nor extensively altered hydrothermally.

This article relates Chesterton’s theology, and that of other theologians, to existing theories of humor. It asks: With regard to the understanding of humor, what is offered by a theological perspective—especially by Chesterton’s theology—that cannot be supplied by philosophical and psychological theories? The article situates Chesterton’s work in relation to three theories of humor: the superiority theory, the release theory, and the incongruity theory. It then examines two important relationships: first, that between humor, worship, and joy; then, that between humor, cognition, and theology. While focusing on Chesterton’s writing, it also considers relevant aspects of the work of other thinkers, including Ian Ker, Duncan Reyburn, Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Rahner, Peter Berger, Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Terry Lindvall, and Brian Edgar. The article concludes by suggesting the beginnings of an outline of a theology of humor.

A method is described for quantitatively expressing orientation of kaolinite particles in a wet clay mass. Wet clay is impregnated with a polyalcohol which permits grinding of a very flat surface (without disrupting the original fabric) for quantitative X-ray measurement. In the specific procedure discussed, a Norelco diffractometer equipped with a pole figure device and a Geiger detector was employed to measure by reflection the diffracted intensity of the 002 and 020 kaolinite reflections. The amplitude of the 002 peak to the amplitude of the 020 peak is called the peak ratio, PK, which quantitatively expresses particle orientation at any chosen angle to the specimen surface. Limits of orientation are random and maximum orientation. For the kaolinite tested, truly random orientation was achieved which gave a PR = 2.0. Maximum orientation found experimentally was PR = 200 for thoroughly dispersed slurry slowly dried on a glass slide. Vertical and lateral variations can be measured either continuously or in steps of any chosen size.

Learned and voluminous works, of course, have brought together and compared the representations men have fashioned for themselves of the Beyond—in other words, of the kind of life in store for them after death. Sometimes the authors of such compilations have tried to classify these imaginary worlds and discover by what secret laws the after-universes where the dead live were designed, and in what spaces, both near and irremediably separate, they were located. It is not always easy to reach them, even if it is inevitable. As for returning, it is impossible, aside from a few legendary exceptions: a goddess, Ishtar; a fabled hero, Orpheus; a man who was raised from the dead but of whom nothing further is known, Lazarus.