San Antonio College Library

We've heard the warning in dozens of horror flicks, "don't go in the basement," but the ghastly has become the grand. Today, computer-aided design and robotic layout are creating a playboy's paradise. The basement is a recipe for in-home pleasure. It's the nerve center for climate control, fire suppression, and it's the room most likely to save your life.

This program explains the surprisingly strong effect that street lighting has on our cities. In addition to being a powerful tool to prevent crime, more and better lighting has improved the sense of well-being and added new dimensions to the business and social activities of the city. But as a whole new world was created from lighting the darkness, the problem has turned from quality of light to the quantity. What are the consequences of too much...

For thousands of years, travel by foot, horseback, carriage, and sailing ship were the only ways to get around, setting the pace of society and, to a large degree, circumscribing the potential of humankind. But all of that changed with the advent of steamships, trains, automobiles, and airplanes. In this program, Ronald E.G. Davies, curator of air transport at the National Air and Space Museum; historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan; MIT researcher Andreas...

Birth rates in the industrialized world are lower than ever, and many people are concerned. This program, hosted by Ben Wattenberg, explores the phenomenon, and what it may mean in social and human terms. Wattenberg and a panel of population experts are fearful that programs such as Social Security, which rely on taxes paid into the system by younger workers, may be jeopardized. On location in France and Italy-two countries with the lowest birth rates-experts...

Early cities emerged from trading posts and fortresses; they were generally accessible by water and easily defended. This program examines the metamorphosis of the city from fort and trading post to cultural epicenter and beyond. Ancient cities are discussed and Athens and Rome are compared. Modern cities including New York and Paris are also presented, with a focus on Paris' attempt to re-create itself in the 19th century by razing slums to build...

It has altered our sense of space, fueled our mega-economy, knifed into the hearts of thriving city neighborhoods, and changed the lives of millions of people in the 40 years it's taken to build. This program about the Interstate Highway System combines archival material, newsreels, and interviews to describe the impact of what has been called the world's largest public works project. The Interstate's effect on community, culture, regionalism, and...

Since World War II, suburbia has taken over broad sections of America, squeezing out Main Street USA in favor of cookie-cutter subdivisions, shopping centers, and business parks. Is the New Urbanism-in which the needs of people, not cars, come first-the antidote for suburban sprawl? In this program, ABC News anchor Forrest Sawyer and correspondent Michel McQueen report on the housing paradigm called "traditional neighborhood developments" with architect...

The head of the UN's world food program says "a perfect storm" is hitting hungry people around the globe. What are the causes, and what is being done to help the poorest of the poor? This edition of the Journal begins with a report on the situation in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an estimated 45,000 people die every month of hunger and disease. Then, Bill Moyers interviews David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, an...

The modern city is a complex maze of choices and decisions. This program describes the brain's empirical approach to finding sense amid confusion. Subconscious methods of information gathering, including visual scanning to find goods in a supermarket and direction finding while traversing an urban environment, are analyzed. In addition, the natural human ability to learn by trial and error is observed, emphasizing the concept of "natural mapping"...

Ireland never had an industrial revolution-its economy leaped from agrarian gloom into high-tech high-gear almost overnight. This Wide Angle case study visits Limerick, one of the country's largest cities and the epitome of the Celtic Tiger's rise. Once the blighted setting of Angela's Ashes, today's Limerick boasts the glories and the growing pains of all economic boomtowns: heavy foreign investment, a burgeoning services industry, high levels of...