Critical Mass
Critical Mass

Author: Philip Ball

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2006-05-16

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 1466806834

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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 Masses
Critical Masses

Author: Russell J. Dalton

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 9780262541039

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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.

Critical Mass
Critical Mass

Author: Daniel Suarez

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2023-01-31

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0593183649

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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.

The Critical Mass in Collective Action
The Critical Mass in Collective Action

Author: Gerald Marwell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-03-26

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0521308399

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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 Masses
Critical Masses

Author: George D. Moffett

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13:

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Based on conversations with families and individuals from Kenya to Guatemala, Mexico to Thailand, a diplomatic correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor unveils the human face of the population crisis, traces its history and evolution, and explains why the decisions made during the '90s will determine the fate of the earth as a home for human beings.

Critical Mass
Critical Mass

Author: Chris Carlsson

Publisher: AK Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9781902593593

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Documenting 10 years of fun, radical, spontaneous bicycle demonstrations that challenge the autocentric world.

Critical Mass
Critical Mass

Author: Carter Plymton Hydrick

Publisher: Jiffyline

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780975985311

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The True Story of the Manhattan Project you haven't heard. On May 19, 1945, eleven days after the surrender of Nazi Germany in Europe, a U-boat was escorted into Portsmouth Naval Yard, New Hampshire. News reporters covering the surrender of U-234 were ordered, contrary to all previous and late Why the tight security? Buried in the nose of the mammoth boat, sealed in cylinders lined with gold, was 560 kilograms, 1,120 pounds, of enriched uranium oxide labeled U235-the fissile material from which atom bombs are made. Following ten years of research, author Carter Hydrick presents documentation that demonstrates surrendered German components from U-234 were used by the Manhattan Project to complete both the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the plutonium bomb d

Critical Mass
Critical Mass

Author: James Wolcott

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2015-04-14

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 0767930630

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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.

Critical Mass
Critical Mass

Author: William E. Burrows

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 9780671748951

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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
Critical Mass

Author: Whitley Strieber

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2009-02-17

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0765322536

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A nuclear interdiction expert and his wife try to prevent a planned attack on a major U.S. city.