Too Little Too Late? The Introduction of the Spencer Rifle

The photo above does not seem like much, but the story behind it is incredible. On August 17, 1863, a man named Christopher Miner Spencer entered the White House, gun in hand. He was let in past the sentries and ushered in to meet with President Abraham Lincoln. Spencer was at the White House to show the president his invention, the repeating rifle. He had been trying to get it adopted by the United States Army with little success, so he decided to go to the man with the most power. Spencer showed Lincoln his gun, and the president was impressed by how simple it was. One could take it apart and put it back together in only a few minutes, needing only a screwdriver. Lincoln invited Spencer back to the White House so that they could test the rifle. [excerpt

4. Social Darwinism

The singular impact of Darwin in fields other than biology can be attributed largely to one man, Herbert Spencer (1820- 1903). It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the expression survival of the fittest. Although neglected today except by historians of the nineteenth century thought, Spencer\u27s influence on his own time was so great that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was able to wonder if any writer of English except Darwin has done so much to affect our whole way of thinking about the universe. Herbert Spencer was born into a traditionally nonconformist English family of modest means. He refused a university education and trained for a career as a civil engineer. He was employed first as an engineer and later as an editor of the Economist, a publication advocating free trade. By 1853 his major ideas were fixed and he spent his remaining years systematizing and propounding them. [excerpt

Deformation of a smooth Deligne-Mumford stack via differential graded Lie algebra

For a smooth Deligne-Mumford stack over \CC, we define its associated Kodaira-Spencer differential graded Lie algebra and show that the deformation functor of the stack is isomorphic to the deformation functor of the Kodaira-Spencer algebra if the stack is proper over \CC

Involutivity of field equations

We prove involutivity of Einstein, Einstein-Maxwell and other field equations by calculating the Spencer cohomology of these systems. Relation with Cartan method is traced in details. Basic implications through Cartan-Kahler theory are derived.Comment: 13 pages; this version is updated with new field equations (radiation, dust etc) - they are proved involutive, Spencer cohomology calculate

Kodaira-Spencer formality of products of complex manifolds

We shall say that a complex manifold $X$ is emph{Kodaira-Spencer formal} if its Kodaira-Spencer differential graded Lie algebra $A^{0,*}_X(Theta_X)$ is formal; if this happen, then the deformation theory of $X$ is completely determined by the graded Lie algebra $H^*(X,Theta_X)$ and the base space of the semiuniversal deformation is a quadratic singularity.. Determine when a complex manifold is Kodaira-Spencer formal is generally difficult and we actually know only a limited class of cases where this happen. Among such examples we have Riemann surfaces, projective spaces, holomorphic Poisson manifolds with surjective anchor map $H^*(X,Omega^1_X) o H^*(X,Theta_X)$ and every compact K"{a}hler manifold with trivial or torsion canonical bundle. In this short note we investigate the behavior of this property under finite products. Let $X,Y$ be compact complex manifolds; we prove that whenever $X$ and $Y$ are K"{a}hler, then $X imes Y$ is Kodaira-Spencer formal if and only if the same holds for $X$ and $Y$. A revisit of a classical example by Douady shows that the above result fails if the K"{a}hler assumption is droppe

Homecoming

Prose by Spencer Lough

The Life and Miracles of Fisher Alumnus…

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. My name is Ken Shelton and I am 26 years old. I am a 1999 graduate from Spencer-Van Etten Jr./Sr. High School, of Spencer New York, and a 2003 graduate from St. John Fisher College, where I earned a BA in Religious Studies, with a minor in Philosophy