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This book is my point of view. It is an expression of my opinion, which is based on my personal perceptions of my observations and experiences.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as adopted and proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948.
I hereby claim this, my right to express my opinion freely, and exercise it by publishing my book The Lost Inheritance through the medium of the World Wide Web.
This book has been designed for best viewing in a browser window whose display area is 540 pixels wide (excluding scroll bar) using Times Roman size 12. Preferred browsers are Internet Explorer 5.5 or Netscape Navigator 4.6 or later. It is also reasonably viewable in HotJava. Mosaic is a nice browser but it does not support Java applets and does not run text around left-aligned or right-aligned images as the others do, and the coding in this book expects the browser to do so. Mosaic should show substituted images in place of applet-generated images. These may not be as up to date or slick as the applet-generated images. The HTML coding in this book formats the text logically. It does not impose fixed physical formatting like a lot of naughty web sites do nowadays. If you have sight impairment or simply prefer larger text, please adjust your browser's Text Size (usually found in the 'View' menu on your browser). Viewing the PDF version of this book is covered later.
Any part of this book, no matter how large or small, is to be taken as existing only within the context of the whole of this book, and nothing but this book. This book is my perception of what I observe and experience. It does not purport to be, or represent, any universal or official view. All stated facts are facts as I perceive them. They are not facts in any absolute, legal or collectively perceived sense.
Full responsibility for what is written in this book is exclusively mine. No other party, such as any who hosts this book on the Internet or publishes it with my permission via any medium, is responsible or liable in any way for its content.
I tried, but in the depth of complicated explanations I found the repeated use of the current 'he/she' thing makes the language far too cumbersome. Using plurals instead in the midst of plurals referring to other things becomes very confusing. Although I appreciate the apparent sexism, I have therefore, throughout this book, had to resort back to using the male pronoun 'he' to represent both the male case, and the generic pronoun where either gender is equally relevant. Perhaps someone will come up with an official genderless pronoun some day. However this must be short and easily pronounced. I suggest che for male-specific, she for female-specific, he for either or both genders, ie: where gender is not specified.
I wrote the first small embryonic draft of this book between the 1st of October and the 5th of November 1991. I did not complete it until March 2000. Consequently, the chapters and articles it comprises were originated at various times, spanning an entire decade.
Just before publication, I considered aligning the whole book so that all of it spoke as if from a single point in time, namely March 2000. However, this seriously eroded the impact of older parts. I therefore opted to leave each chapter and article as a direct observation from the position in time at which it was written.
This does result in apparent anomalies. For example, the farmer, of whom I often speak in the present tense, died in 1996. Nevertheless, I think that having left this book as an observation which spans time, rather than translating it to a view from just one point in time, allows it to deliver its message much more forcefully, clearly and accurately.
If you want to refer to a file in this book, please link to it: don't copy it. That way, you don't breech my copyright. This book is live. I am likely to update any part of it at any time. Therefore, if you link to the part you want, you will always be referring to the up-to-date version.
Sometimes I may get avalanches of email. I am only one person. I have no staff or mail receiving department. Therefore please, please, please don't be offended or feel rebuffed if I don't reply straight away. I could be months, but it is always my wish to reply to constructive emails. You can email me via your own email program at robmorton@clara.net or you can use my browser based email form by clicking the 'Email' link at the bottom or this page.
| Word Count: | 374,882 words |
| Average sentence length: | 15 words |
| Vocabulary: | 15,081 words |
The word count includes only the contents of the body section of each HTML file, and excludes:
This book is available as a e-book. It is obtainable from my download page as a single Adobe PDF file. It is fully pre-paginated and may be viewed and printed using the freely downloadable Adobe Acrobat Reader.
The PDF ebook version is simply the HTML content captured in a PDF file. It was designed from the outset as an electronic book with internal hyper-links and a few which link directly to resources on the Web. It can be browsed in the Adobe Acrobat Reader operating alone or inside a web browser such as the Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. It may also be printed. However, being primarily an e-book, it does rely on hyper-links for navigation.
The following applet displays the numbers of copies of the PDF version downloaded by visitors to this web site each week so far since I started monitoring on 1 July 2001:
The introduction & contents followed by the 12 chapters are meant to be read in sequence. The 12 chapters can be accessed from the chapter list in the introduction & contents by clicking the desired chapter name. The next or previous chapter can be accessed by clicking the link at the end of a chapter. The book ends at the end of Chapter 12.
Beyond Chapter 12 is a collection of articles. These actually form the bulk of the book. These will not make much sense if read in sequence. This is because each article is a footnote to one or more of the chapters. It expounds and qualifies in detail a point or statement made within a chapter. The point or statement concerned is shown in the chapter as a link. The qualifying article is accessed by clicking the link. An article can itself contain links. These point to other articles, and so on. The result is that the links within the chapters and articles form a semantic network of cross references to the subjects and topics covered.
A link comprises one or more words underlined and displayed in blue. They become pink once you visit the article to which the link refers. When you place the open hand mouse cursor over a link, it turns into a pointing hand. If you now click the left mouse button the Adobe Acrobat Reader will take you straight to the article which expands on that point or statement. If the pointing hand has a 'W' on it, this means that the article it will take you to is not in your book: it is on the Web. There is only a very small number of links to the Web. They are not essential for understanding the book. You must be connected to the Internet at the time in order to access a Web link.
The date this PDF version of the book was produced is shown in [brackets] at the extreme bottom of each page. This does not necessarily contain the latest version of every chapter and article. The very latest version of any page is always available at the web address shown before the date at the extreme bottom of the page concerned. The title page of this book is on the Web at http://home.clara.net/robmorton/tli/.
Chapter 5 and some of its footnote articles, plus one footnote article each in chapters 6 and 7 contain applets which generate graphs. These cannot operate in PDF at the time of writing. Where possible, the applets have been replaced in this PDF version by 'gif' images. Unfortunately, the 'gif' image graphs are nowhere near as informative as the applets. To view any of these documents with applets enabled, please use a web browser to view the document at the web address shown at the extreme bottom left of the page concerned.
The page layout of the Adobe '.pdf' file containing this book has been designed for the international A4 paper size (210 by 297 mm). However, the text area should fit reasonably well on American 8½ by 11 inch Letter size paper provided you use the Adobe Acrobat Reader's 'Fit to page' feature when printing. But use A4 if you can.