Body Count
Body Count

Author: Peter Gill

Publisher: Profile Books

Published: 2010-09-03

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1847651089

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With 20 million dead and another 40 million infected, AIDS is the world's worst epidemic, but the catastrophe could have been prevented. This book shows how millions could have been saved and many millions more infections could have been prevented if the world had responded properly to the crisis. Peter Gill reveals how politicians and religious leaders in both the rich and poor worlds have failed in their duty to protect their people from the disease. Simple messages about safe sex and condoms have been consistently downplayed out of embarrassment or misplaced moral fervour. Just as the world begins to wake up to the enormity of the AIDS disaster, the America of George W. Bush is threatening to undermine the global effort. The Christian Right has decided that sexual abstinence is the answer to the pandemic. Big business manoeuvres to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical industry against cheap AIDS drugs from developing countries. And the US challenges every other Aids initiative that does not square with its determination to export a conservative and Christian ideology. Twenty-five years on from the first identification of AIDS in America in 1981, this book at last fixes historical and contemporary responsibility for the tragedy.

A Paradise Built in Hell
A Paradise Built in Hell

Author: Rebecca Solnit

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-08-31

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1101459018

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The author of Men Explain Things to Me explores the moments of altruism and generosity that arise in the aftermath of disaster Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster? whether manmade or natural?people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities? In A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.

Catastrophe aversion
Catastrophe aversion

Author: Christoph Rheinberger

Publisher: FonCSI

Published: 2016-06-01

Total Pages: 55

ISBN-13:

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In light of climate change and other existential threats, policy commentators sometimes suggest that society should be more concerned about catastrophes. This document reflects on what is, or should be, society’s attitude toward such low-probability, high-impact events. The question underlying this analysis is how society considers - a major accident that leads to a large number of deaths ;  - a large number of small accidents that each kill one person where the two situations lead to the same total number of deaths. We first explain how catastrophic risk can be conceived of as a spread in the distribution of losses, or a “more risky” distribution of risks. We then review studies from decision sciences, psychology, and behavioral economics that elicit people’s attitudes toward various social risks. This literature review finds more evidence against than in favor of catastrophe aversion. We address a number of possible behavioral explanations for these observations, then turn to social choice theory to examine how various social welfare functions handle catastrophic risk. We explain why catastrophe aversion may be in conflict with equity concerns and other-regarding preferences. Finally, we discuss current approaches to evaluate and regulate catastrophic risk, with a discussion of how it could be integrated into a benefit-cost analysis framework.

Code of Federal Regulations
Code of Federal Regulations

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 958

ISBN-13:

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Special edition of the Federal Register, containing a codification of documents of general applicability and future effect ... with ancillaries.

Ecstasy, Catastrophe
Ecstasy, Catastrophe

Author: David Farrell Krell

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2015-08-01

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1438458274

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In Ecstasy, Catastrophe, David Farrell Krell provides insight into two areas of Heidegger's thought: his analysis of ecstatic temporality in Being and Time (1927) and his "political" remarks in the recently published Black Notebooks (1931–1941). The first part of Krell's book focuses on Heidegger's interpretation of time, which Krell takes to be one of Heidegger's greatest philosophical achievements. In addition to providing detailed commentary on ecstatic temporality, Krell considers Derrida's analysis of ekstasis in his first seminar on Heidegger, taught in Paris in 1964–1965. Krell also relates ecstatic temporality to the work of other philosophers, including Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Schelling, Hölderlin, and Merleau-Ponty; he then analyzes Dasein as infant and child, relating ecstatic temporality to the "mirror stage" theory of Jacques Lacan. The second part of the book turns to Heidegger's Black Notebooks, which have received a great deal of critical attention in the press and in philosophical circles. Notorious for their pejorative references to Jews and Jewish culture, the Notebooks exhibit a level of polemic throughout that Krell takes to be catastrophic in and for Heidegger's thought. Heidegger's legacy therefore seems to be split between the best and the worst of thinking—somewhere between ecstasy and catastrophe. Based on the 2014 Brauer Lectures in German Studies at Brown University, the book communicates the fruits of Krell's many years of work on Heidegger in an engaging and accessible style.

The 2030 Spike
The 2030 Spike

Author: Colin Mason

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-17

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1136555110

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The clock is relentlessly ticking! Our world teeters on a knife-edge between a peaceful and prosperous future for all, and a dark winter of death and destruction that threatens to smother the light of civilization. Within 30 years, in the 2030 decade, six powerful 'drivers' will converge with unprecedented force in a statistical spike that could tear humanity apart and plunge the world into a new Dark Age. Depleted fuel supplies, massive population growth, poverty, global climate change, famine, growing water shortages and international lawlessness are on a crash course with potentially catastrophic consequences. In the face of both doomsaying and denial over the state of our world, Colin Mason cuts through the rhetoric and reams of conflicting data to muster the evidence to illustrate a broad picture of the world as it is, and our possible futures. Ultimately his message is clear; we must act decisively, collectively and immediately to alter the trajectory of humanity away from catastrophe. Offering over 100 priorities for immediate action, The 2030 Spike serves as a guidebook for humanity through the treacherous minefields and wastelands ahead to a bright, peaceful and prosperous future in which all humans have the opportunity to thrive and build a better civilization. This book is powerful and essential reading for all people concerned with the future of humanity and planet earth.