Critical Mass

Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466806834
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Book Description
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.

Critical Mass

Author: Daniel Suarez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593183649
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Book Description
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.

Critical Mass

Author: Mead Art Museum (Amherst College)
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813533032
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Description: Puts New Jersey at the center of key art movements during the sixties

Critical Mass

Author: William E. Burrows
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9780671748951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614

Book Description
Third World superweapon proliferation is more frightening than the cold war arms race. This new arms race is a genocidal contest, fueled by hatred and meant to settle old racial, ethnic, and religious scores.

Critical Mass

Author: Sara Paretsky
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101636505
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
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...

Lady Gaga

Author: Elizabeth Goodman
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312668406
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
Packed with 120 full-color photos of the new queen of pop, this volume celebrates the fashion of the edgy, wildly original Lady Gaga, catching this rocketing star at her most outrageous, most revealing, and most fashionable.

The Critical Mass in Collective Action

Author: Gerald Marwell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521308399
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
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.

Critical Mass

Author: James W. St.G. Walker
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554581400
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description
Public concern about inequitable economic globalization has revealed the demand for citizen participation in global decision making. Civil society organizations have taken up the challenge, holding governments and corporations accountable for their decisions and actions, and developing collaborative solutions to the dominant problems of our time. Critical Mass: The Emergence of Global Civil Society offers a unique mixture of experience and analysis by the leaders of some of the most influential global civil society organizations and respected academics who specialize in this field of study. Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

Critical Mass

Author: Frederik Pohl
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780553109481
Category : Science fiction, American
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description

Shift Happens!

Author: Chris Carlsson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780926664081
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
A new anthology celebrating the accomplishments of the Critical Mass movement over the past twenty years. From both theoretical and practical perspectives, the book explores how Critical Mass has gone around the world, how it has evolved along the way, and the impacts it has had on local politics, transportation, and cultures. Includes contributions from San Francisco, Paris, Chicago, Los Angeles, Puerto Elegre, Manchester, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Rome, São Paulo, A Coruña, Guadalajara, Nuevo León, Budapest, Prague, Helsinki, Ponce, Mexico City, Bilbao, Baton Rouge, Capetown, Vigo, Naples, New York City, Portland, London, Berkeley, Florianopolis, Calais, Dubai, and Palestine!