Critical Failures

Critical Failures

Author: Robert Bevan

Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub

Published: 2013-01-12

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9781481952439

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Tim and his friends find out the hard way that you shouldn't question the game master, and you shouldn't make fun of his cape. One minute, they're drinking away the dreariness of their lives, escaping into a fantasy game and laughing their asses off. The next minute, they're in a horse-drawn cart surrounded by soldiers pointing crossbows at them. Tim now has the voice and physique of a prepubescent girl. Dave finds that while he lost a foot or two in height, he somehow acquired a suit of armor and a badass beard. Julian's ears have grown ridiculously long and pointy. And Cooper... well Cooper has gotten himself a set of tusks, a pair of clawed hands, and a bad case of the shits. He also finds that he's carrying a bag with a human head in it - a head that he had chopped off when they were still just playing a game. Shit just got real, and if they want to survive, these four friends are going to have to tap into some baser instincts they didn't even know existed in their fast-food and pizza delivery world. It's fight, flight, or try to convince the people who are trying to kill them that they don't really exist. Meanwhile, a sadistic game master sits back in the real world eating their fried chicken.


Glitch Art in Theory and Practice

Glitch Art in Theory and Practice

Author: Michael Betancourt

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-09-13

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1315414805

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Chapter Introduction -- chapter 1 Origins of “Glitch” in The Stoppage -- chapter 2 The Heritage of Materialist Media -- chapter 3 Digital Mis function and Materialist Approaches -- chapter 4 Critical Engagements with Failure.


Too Critical to Fail

Too Critical to Fail

Author: Ben Bisset

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2017-11-30

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 077355260X

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In the summer of 2013, just as a small town in Quebec was decimated due to a train derailment, heavy rainfall prompted thirty Alberta communities to declare a state of emergency. Whereas a SWAT team surrounded train conductor Thomas Harding and brought him to court where he was charged with the deaths of forty-seven in Quebec, Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi emerged from the Alberta crisis as a folk hero. As the Lac-Mégantic train derailment and the flood in Alberta demonstrate, political, economic, legal, and cultural climates influence the way disasters are received and managed. In Too Critical to Fail, Kevin Quigley, Ben Bisset, and Bryan Mills identify the social context that shapes the Canadian government’s ability to prepare for and respond to emergencies. Using original research on natural disasters, pandemics, industrial failures, cyber-attacks, and terrorist threats, the authors evaluate the risk regulation regimes that monitor, interpret, and respond to failures in Canada’s critical infrastructure to limit their possibilities and consequences. More broadly, this book identifies key vulnerabilities and regulatory challenges for both the government and the private sector in mitigating threats to safety and security. Too Critical to Fail applies an investigative lens to the multiple and competing risks that the government balances to secure assets that enable modern civilization. Raising questions about Canadians’ ability to protect critical infrastructure and respond to threats, this book challenges the biases that determine who is held to account when the system fails.


Why Nations Fail

Why Nations Fail

Author: Daron Acemoglu

Publisher: Crown Currency

Published: 2013-09-17

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 0307719227

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NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity” “A wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.”—The New York Times FINALIST: Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, among them: • Will China’s economy continue to grow at such a high speed and ultimately overwhelm the West? • Are America’s best days behind it? Are we creating a vicious cycle that enriches and empowers a small minority? “This book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations . . . as ambitious as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.”—BusinessWeek


Why Startups Fail

Why Startups Fail

Author: Tom Eisenmann

Publisher: Crown Currency

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0593137027

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If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.


Critical Failures VII

Critical Failures VII

Author: Robert Bevan

Publisher: Independently Published

Published: 2019-03-28

Total Pages: 652

ISBN-13: 9781091810532

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Deeming the Whore's Head Inn no longer safe to hide in, the gang decide to take a more proactive role in their pursuit to get back to reality, or at least to keep Mordred from doing so.


Metal Failures

Metal Failures

Author: A. J. McEvily

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780471414360

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comprehensive coverage of both the "how" and "why" of metal failures Metal Failures gives engineers the intellectual tools and practical understanding needed to analyze failures from a structural point of view. Its proven methods of examination and analysis enable investigators to: * Reach correct, fact-based conclusions on the causes of metal failures * Present and defend these conclusions before highly critical bodies * Suggest design improvements that may prevent future failures Analytical methods presented include stress analysis, fracture mechanics, fatigue analysis, corrosion science, and nondestructive testing. Numerous case studies illustrate the application of basic principles of metallurgy and failure analysis to a wide variety of real-world situations. Readers learn how to investigate and analyze failures that involve: * Alloys and coatings * Brittle and ductile fractures * Thermal and residual stresses * Creep and fatigue * Corrosion, hydrogen embrittlement, and stress-corrosion cracking This useful professional reference is also an excellent learning tool for senior-level students in mechanical, materials, and civil engineering.


Fail Better

Fail Better

Author: Anjali Sastry

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Published: 2014-10-14

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1422193454

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If you’re aiming to innovate, failure along the way is a given. But can you fail better? Whether you’re rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better, faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful. In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works, in three steps: 1. Launch every innovation project with the right groundwork 2. Build and refine ideas and products through iterative action 3. Identify and embed the learning Fail Better teaches you how to design your efforts to test the boundaries of your thinking, explore crucial interdependencies, and find the factors that can shift results from just acceptable to groundbreaking—or even world-changing. Practical instructions intertwined with compelling real-world examples show you how to: • Make predictions and map system relationships ahead of time so you can better assess results • Establish how much failure you can afford • Prioritize project activities for disconfirmation and iteration • Learn from every action step by collecting and examining the right data • Support efficient, productive habits to link action and reflection • Distill, share, and embed the lessons from every success and failure You may be a Fortune 500 manager, scrappy start-up innovator, social impact visionary, or simply leading your own small project. If you aim to break through without breaking the bank—or ruining your reputation—this book is for you.


Evaluation Failures

Evaluation Failures

Author: Kylie Hutchinson

Publisher: SAGE Publications

Published: 2018-08-10

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1544320019

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Evaluation Failures: 22 Tales of Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned is a candid collection of stories from seasoned evaluators from a variety of sectors sharing professional mistakes they have made in the past, and what they learned moving forward. As the only book of its kind, editor Kylie Hutchinson has collected a series of engaging, real-life examples that are both entertaining and informative. Each story offers universal lessons as takeaways, and discussion questions for reflective practice. The book is the perfect companion to anyone working in the evaluation field, and to instructors of program evaluation courses who want to bring the real world into their classroom.


Critical Failures IV

Critical Failures IV

Author: Robert Bevan

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2015-11-26

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9781519519900

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The adventure continues. Tim and the C&C gang face their most difficult challenges yet. Horses die. Eyeballs are eaten. People are urinated on. A god is born.