What should be done about airplane safety and terrorism, global warming, polluted water, nuclear power, and genetically engineered food? All over the globe, risks to safety, health, and the environment are a subject of intense interest. Too much of the time we fear the wrong things. Sometimes we make the situation even worse. Rather than investigating the facts, we respond to temporary fears. The result is a situation of hysteria and neglect - and unnecessary illness and death. Risk and Reason explains the sources of these problems and explores what can be done about them. It shows how individual thinking and social interactions lead us in foolish directions. Offering sound proposals for social reform, it explains how a more sensible system of risk regulation, embodied in the idea of a 'cost-benefit state', could save many thousands of lives and many billions of dollars too - and protect the environment in the process.
Resilience, Risk and Reason reflects the need for organizations to adopt a distributed, risk-based, reasoning approach at the heart of their operations. John Arthur and Louise Moody draw on research
What should be done about airplane safety and terrorism, global warming, polluted water, nuclear power, and genetically engineered food? All over the globe, risks to safety, health, and the environment are a subject of intense interest. Too much of the time we fear the wrong things. Sometimes we make the situation even worse. Rather than investigating the facts, we respond to temporary fears. The result is a situation of hysteria and neglect - and unnecessary illness and death. Risk and Reason explains the sources of these problems and explores what can be done about them. It shows how individual thinking and social interactions lead us in foolish directions. Offering sound proposals for social reform, it explains how a more sensible system of risk regulation, embodied in the idea of a 'cost-benefit state', could save many thousands of lives and many billions of dollars too - and protect the environment in the process.
Human Error, published in 1991, is a major theoretical integration of several previously isolated literatures. Particularly important is the identification of cognitive processes common to a wide variety of error types. Technology has now reached a point where improved safety can only be achieved on the basis of a better understanding of human error mechanisms. In its treatment of major accidents, the book spans the disciplinary gulf between psychological theory and those concerned with maintaining the reliability of hazardous technologies. As such, it is essential reading not only for cognitive scientists and human factors specialists, but also for reliability engineers and risk managers. No existing book speaks with so much clarity to both the theorists and the practitioners of human reliability.
Health promotion and education have traditionally focused on the design of programs based on behaviour change theory to target ‘unsafe’, ‘unhealthy’ and/or ‘risky’ behaviours. Models such as participa
In Foucault's Futures, Penelope Deutscher reconsiders the role of procreation in Foucault's thought, especially its proximity to risk, mortality, and death. She brings together his work on sexuality a
In Foucault's Futures, Penelope Deutscher reconsiders the role of procreation in Foucault's thought, especially its proximity to risk, mortality, and death. She brings together his work on sexuality a
How Excessive Risk Destroyed Lehman and Nearly Brought Down the Financial Industry “Uncontrolled Risk will ruffle feathers—and for good reason—as voters and legislators learn thediffi cult lessons of
Charles J. Givens' Wealth Without Risk has become a classic in the field of financial self-help books for one simple reason: it works. His safe, legal, and proven approach has already started million
Walking is the most popular physical activity in North America, and for good reason: it can be done by people of all ages and all levels of physical ability, the risk of injury is low, and it doesn&#
Nick Miller and his team provide a unique and highly illegal service, relocating at-risk individuals across Europe with new identities and lives. Nick excels at what he does for a reason: he himself h
This book offers an explanation of why commodity processors and dealers use futures markets. It argues that they use futures contracts as part of an implicit method of borrowing and lending commodities, contrary to the accepted view of dealers averse to the fluctuating value of their inventories wanting insurance against price risk. Employing models developed to explain the demand for money, this book demonstrates that risk-neutral dealers have sufficient reason to use futures markets. Moreover, the book exposes major internal inconsistencies in the accepted explanation. Rather than insurance markets, the appropriate analogy is the money market, which is the point the book establishes through discussing actual loan markets in commodities. This insight into the function of futures markets is then used to explain how futures prices for different delivery dates express a term structure of commodity-specific interest rates and why futures markets flourish for some types of commodities and
Why do some people get together to manage their common assets? Why do other groups of people leave those assets to be over-exploited by each member of the group? The answers could be crucial to the proper maintenance and use of 'common property resources', from grazing land through fish stocks to irrigation water. Robert Wade, drawing on research in areas of Andhra Pradesh where rain is scarce and unreliable, argues that some villagers develop and finance joint institutions for cooperative management of common property resources in grazing and irrigation - but others do not. The main reason lies in the risk of crop loss.Villages located towards the tail-end of irrigation systems, and with soils fertile enough to support a high density of livestock, show a larger amount of corporate organization than villages elsewhere. Placing his work in the wider context of both the developing world today and the open-field system of medieval Europe, the author argues that peasants can under certain
A new edition of the only story collection compiled by legendary writer, actress, ex-biker, and columnist Cookie Mueller, featuring additional writings.First published in 1991, Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black was the only story collection that the legendary writer, actress, ex-biker, and columnist Cookie Mueller compiled in her lifetime. Featuring a new introduction by Olivia Laing and an afterword by the book’s first editor, Chris Kraus, this new edition collects all of Mueller’s fiction, together with her Details magazine columns (1982–1989) and other writings. The additional stories were discovered by Amy Scholder, who edited the anthology Ask Dr. Mueller for High Risk/Serpent’s Tail books in 1996. As Scholder writes in her introduction, the new stories were “written around the same time she wrote the stories in Walking Through Clear Water, but for some reason Cookie decided not to include them. They are darker than most of her other stories; they are the quoti
* A People Best Book of the Year * Time and The Washington Post’s Most Anticipated List * Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence *From the MacArthur genius, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and playwright, this “captivating, insightful memoir” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) is “a beautiful meditation on identity and how we see ourselves” (Real Simple).With a play opening on Broadway, and every reason to smile, Sarah Ruhl has just survived a high-risk pregnancy when she discovers the left side of her face is completely paralyzed. She is assured that 90 percent of Bell’s palsy patients experience a full recovery―like Ruhl’s own mother. But Sarah is in the unlucky ten percent. And for a woman, wife, mother, and artist working in theater, the paralysis and the disconnect between the interior and exterior brings significant and specific challenges. So Ruhl begins an intense decade-long search for a cure while simultaneously grappling with the reality of her new face―one
A heartwarming story about family, healing from loss, and finding love, even when you never dreamed it was possible.Ashley Howland Scott has no time for romance as she grieves the loss of her husband, cares for her young son, and runs Magnolia Harbor’s only bed and breakfast. Ashley never imagined she’d notice―let alone have feelings for―another man after her husband was killed in Afghanistan five years earlier. But slowly, softly, Rev. Micah St. Pierre has become a friend . . . and now maybe something more. Despite her reluctance, Ashley has to admit that Micah is kind, thoughtful, and handsome to boot. All the more reason to steer clear of him. She can’t risk her heart again.After becoming the center of Magnolia Harbor’s rumor mill once, Micah St. Pierre has no interest in letting the members of the local quilting club play matchmaker for him. Besides, the only woman he’s interested in is the one he can never have. Micah is not allowed to date a member of his congregation, so there’s
In this volume, Richard Ned Lebow introduces his own constructivist theory of political order and international relations based on theories of motives and identity formation drawn from the ancient Greeks. His theory stresses the human need for self-esteem, and shows how it influences political behavior at every level of social aggregation. Lebow develops ideal-type worlds associated with four motives: appetite, spirit, reason and fear, and demonstrates how each generates a different logic concerning cooperation, conflict and risk-taking. Expanding and documenting the utility of his theory in a series of historical case studies, ranging from classical Greece to the war in Iraq, he presents a novel explanation for the rise of the state and the causes of war, and offers a reformulation of prospect theory. This is a novel theory of politics by one of the world's leading scholars of international relations.
In this volume, Richard Ned Lebow introduces his own constructivist theory of political order and international relations based on theories of motives and identity formation drawn from the ancient Greeks. His theory stresses the human need for self-esteem, and shows how it influences political behavior at every level of social aggregation. Lebow develops ideal-type worlds associated with four motives: appetite, spirit, reason and fear, and demonstrates how each generates a different logic concerning cooperation, conflict and risk-taking. Expanding and documenting the utility of his theory in a series of historical case studies, ranging from classical Greece to the war in Iraq, he presents a novel explanation for the rise of the state and the causes of war, and offers a reformulation of prospect theory. This is a novel theory of politics by one of the world's leading scholars of international relations.
A columnist and editor for Reason magazine charges that the government and media have exaggerated the public's fears of recreational drugs, calling for better educational methods about the actual risk
One reason for our failure to "save the earth," argues Neil Evernden, is our disagreement about what "nature" really is—how it works, what constitutes a risk to it, and even whether we ourselves are p
