Critical Masses

Author : Philip Ball
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466806834
Total Pages : 532 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Mass written by Philip Ball and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2006-05-16 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are there any "laws of nature" that influence the ways in which humans behave and organize themselves? In the seventeenth century, tired of the civil war ravaging England, Thomas Hobbes decided that he would work out what kind of government was needed for a stable society. His approach was based not on utopian wishful thinking but rather on Galileo's mechanics to construct a theory of government from first principles. His solution is unappealing to today's society, yet Hobbes had sparked a new way of thinking about human behavior in looking for the "scientific" rules of society. Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte, and John Stuart Mill pursued this idea from different political perspectives. Little by little, however, social and political philosophy abandoned a "scientific" approach. Today, physics is enjoying a revival in the social, political and economic sciences. Ball shows how much we can understand of human behavior when we cease to try to predict and analyze the behavior of individuals and instead look to the impact of individual decisions-whether in circumstances of cooperation or conflict-can have on our laws, institutions and customs. Lively and compelling, Critical Mass is the first book to bring these new ideas together and to show how they fit within the broader historical context of a rational search for better ways to live.

Author : Daniel Suarez
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593183649
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Mass written by Daniel Suarez and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In New York Times bestselling author Daniel Suarez's latest space-tech thriller, a group of pioneering astropreneurs must overcome never-before-attempted engineering challenges to rescue colleagues stranded at a distant asteroid—kicking off a new space race in which Earth's climate crisis could well hang in the balance. When unforeseen circumstances during an innovative—and unsanctioned—commercial asteroid-mining mission leave two crew members stranded, those who make it back must engineer a rescue, all while navigating a shifting web of global political alliances and renewed Cold War tensions. With Earth governments consumed by the ravages of climate change and unable to take the risks necessary to make rapid progress in space, the crew must build their own nextgen spacecraft capable of mounting a rescue in time for the asteroid's next swing by Earth. In the process they'll need to establish the first spin-gravity station in deep space, the first orbiting solar power satellite and refinery, and historic infrastructure on the moon's surface—all of which could alleviate a deepening ecological, political, and economic crisis back on Earth, and prove that space-based industry is not only profitable, but possibly humanity's best hope for a livable, peaceful future.

Author : Russell J. Dalton
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262541039
Total Pages : 478 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Masses written by Russell J. Dalton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates how citizens in the United States and Russia have used the democratic process to force their governments to address the horrendous environmental damage caused by the nuclear arms race. It is the first in-depth comparative study of environmental activism and democracy in the two countries. Critical Masses focuses on two crucial areas--the Hanford Reservation in Washington State and the Mayak Complex in Russia--that were at the heart of their nations' nuclear weapons programs, examining how the surrounding communities were affected. It explores nuclear weapons production, how both governments concealed environmental and health dangers from people living nearby, and how Russian and American citizens think about environmental issues. And it provides insights into the process of democratization in Russia and the limits of democracy in the United States, as well as the development of nuclear policy in the post-Cold War era.

Author : Mead Art Museum (Amherst College)
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813533032
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Mass written by Mead Art Museum (Amherst College) and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Description: Puts New Jersey at the center of key art movements during the sixties

Author : Steve Martini
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101550236
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Mass written by Steve Martini and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1999-12-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jocelyn "Joss" Cole, a burned-out public defender from L.A., has opted for a quieter life in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Joss has no significant clients other than a group of commercial fisherman suffering from a strange and serious illness, a condition that doctors cannot diagnose, and which Joss believes has an industrial cause. Then into her office comes Dean Belden, a well-heeled client in search of a lawyer to help him set up a business in the islands. Within days Belden is subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury. Less than an hour after testifying, and before Joss can discover what happened in the secrecy of the grand jury room, Belden dies in a fiery explosion of his float plane on Seattle's Lake Union. Gideon Van Ry is a nuclear fission expert and a scholar in residence at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. One of his duties is to update the Center's database, an extensive catalog listing fissionable materials and weapons of mass destruction. Gideon is troubled by the apparent failure to account for two small tactical nuclear devices missing from a storage facility in the former Soviet Union.The two weapons were last seen in packing crates, to be shipped to an American company called Belden Electronics. Gideon has been unable to locate this firm, and now he is left with only one possible lead, the lawyer who incorporated the company-Jocelyn Cole. Fraught with tension and suspense, Critical Mass is Steve Martini at his electrifying best. It is the story of what can happen in a world where private hate and public apathy combine to uncork the sleeping but deadly genie of nuclear terror.

Author : James Wolcott
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0767930630
Total Pages : 530 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Mass written by James Wolcott and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Wolcott’s career as a critic has been unmatched, from his early Seventies dispatches for The Village Voice to the literary coverage made him equally feared and famous to his must-read reports on the cultural weather for Vanity Fair. Bringing together his best work from across the decades, this collection shows Wolcott as connoisseur, intrepid reporter, memoirist, and necessary naysayer. We begin with “O.K. Corral Revisited,” Wolcott’s career-launching account of the famed Norman Mailer–Gore Vidal dust-off on the original Dick Cavett Show. He goes on to consider (or reconsider) the towering figures of our culture, among them Lena Dunham Patti Smith, Johnny Carson, Woody Allen, and John Cheever. And we witness his legendary takedowns, which have entered into the literary lore of our time. In an age where a great deal of back scratching and softball pitching pass for criticism, Critical Mass offers a bracing taste of the real thing.

Author : Sara Paretsky
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101636505
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Mass written by Sara Paretsky and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chicago’s V. I. Warshawski “is at her stubborn, reckless, compassionate best in this complicated page-turner about selfish secrets passed down through generations” (Booklist). In 1939, Dr. Lotty Herschel, V. I. Warshawki’s closest friend in Chicago, escaped the Holocaust in Vienna with her childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. Though the two drifted and animosities grew between them over the years, when Kitty’s daughter finds her life in danger, she turns to Lotty for help. In turn, Lotty summons V. I. to take the case. The threats on the daughter’s life at first seem a simple case of bad drug dealings, but V. I. soon discovers that they are just the tip of an iceberg of lies secrets and silence whose origins trace back to the deadly race among America, Germany, Japan, and England to develop the atomic bomb. And while the secrets may be old, the people who continue to guard them will do anything to make sure they stay buried...

Author : Jacque Srouji
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Mass written by Jacque Srouji and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Richard Noyce
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 1408109395
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Critical Mass written by Richard Noyce and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exciting new book showcases the work of a very diverse selectionof 52 artists from 28 countries, against a spectrum of the concernsthat inform the role and function of art in the increasinglytechnological global society. The mediums used by these artists rangefrom new variations on traditional intaglio and relief techniques, toextreme forms of digital techniques, including time-based forms such asfilm and multi-media presentation. Printmaking continues to evolve asartists develop the traditionaltechniques and experiment with new techniques and materials. In recentyears the boundaries between the once distinct fields of the visualarts have become blurred, and growing numbers of artists nowincorporate printmaking techniques within their practice. This bookprovides a broad-ranging and challenging source of information on themost exciting cutting edge developments in international printmaking,which will be of value to students, professional artists and all thosewith an interest in the contemporary visual arts

Author : Gerald Marwell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521308399
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Critical Mass in Collective Action written by Gerald Marwell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-03-26 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problem of collective action is that each group member wants other members to make necessary sacrifices while he or she 'free rides', reaping the benefits of collective action without doing the work. Therefore, no one does the work and the common interest is not realized. This book analyses the social pressure whereby groups solve the problem of collective action.