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  Drift into Failure , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 469min

  What does the collapse of sub-prime lending have in common with a broken jackscrew in an airliner’s tailplane? Or the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with the burn-up of Space Shuttle Columbia? These were systems that drifted into failure. While pursuing success in a dynamic, complex environment with limited resources and multiple goal conflicts, a succession of small, everyday decisions eventually produced breakdowns on a massive scale. We have trouble grasping the complexity and normality that gives rise to such large events. We hunt for broken parts, fixable properties, people we can hold accountable. Our analyses of complex system breakdowns remain depressingly linear, depressingly componential - imprisoned in the space of ideas once defined by Newton and Descartes. The growth of complexity in society has outpaced our understanding of how complex systems work and fail. Our technologies have gotten ahead of our theories. We are able to build things - deep-sea oil rigs, jackscrews, collateralized debt obligations - whose properties we understand in isolation. But in competitive, regulated societies, their connections proliferate, their interactions and interdependencies multiply, their complexities mushroom. This book explores complexity theory and systems thinking to understand better how complex systems drift into failure. It studies sensitive dependence on initial conditions, unruly technology, tipping points, diversity - and finds that failure emerges opportunistically, non-randomly, from the very webs of relationships that breed success and that are supposed to protect organizations from disaster. It develops a vocabulary that allows us to harness complexity and find new ways of managing drift. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Sidney Dekker. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/137324/bk_acx0_137324_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  Careless Love: A DCI Banks Novel , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 623min

  His fans include Stephen King, Michael Connelly, Tess Gerritsen, Ian Rankin, and Louise Penney. He has won acclaim and numerous international prizes and awards, including the Edgar. Now, Peter Robinson, one of the world’s greatest suspense writers, returns with a powerful mystery in which his legendary Detective Superintendent Alan Banks must solve two perplexing crimes.Two suspicious deaths challenge DS Alan Banks and his crack investigative team.A young local student’s body is found in an abandoned car on a lonely country road. The death looks like suicide, but there are too many open questions for Banks and his team to rule out foul play. The victim didn’t own a car. She didn’t even drive. How did she get there? Where - and when - did she die? Did someone move her, and if so, why?A man in his 60s is found dead in a gully up on the wild moorland. He is wearing an expensive suit and carrying no identification. Post mortem findings indicate that he died from injuries sustained during a fall. Was it an accident - did he slip and fall? Or was he pushed? Why was he up there? And why are there no signs of a vehicle near where he fell?As the inconsistencies multiply and the mysteries surrounding these two cases proliferate, a source close to Annie reveals a piece of information that shocks the team and impacts the investigations. An old enemy has returned in a new guise - a nefarious foe who will stop at nothing, not even murder, to get what he wants.With the stakes raised, the hunt is on. But will Banks be able to find the evidence to stop him in time? ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Simon Prebble. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/harp/008464/bk_harp_008464_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  The 40 Laws of the Alpha Male: How to Dominate Life, Attract Women, and Achieve Massive Success , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 54min

  Become the strongest version of yourself today! Do you possess any of these traits? Extremely anxious at parties? Shy around women? People never listen to you? Lack the ability to fully express yourself? Take jokes too seriously? Constantly in the dreaded friend zone? Neurotic approval seeking? Follower? Any of these sound familiar? If they do, then there is work to be done. For a long time, I found myself possessing the majority of those traits. I thought, "This is just who I am. I can't change that." Wrong. So Wrong. Most of these traits were handed to me, and probably you too, without request. With the way our society is organized (media, school, parents, etc.), these character traits proliferate. However, it wasn't until I started Un-Learning, that I truly became the well-rounded confident man I am today. Free and fulfilled in ways you can't currently imagine. But you will be able to soon.... Here's what you'll learn.... What is an alpha male? A modern perspective The psychology of the alpha How society encourages man-children What does true confidence look like? Grounded: Finding your strength Women: Bringing out the masculine energy Killing your father: Becoming the man Leading your tribe: Where it all started How to instantly increase your confidence And much, much more! The principles you will learn in this book are VERY powerful, when properly and consistently implemented. I've seen some of the most Beta guys turn their entire life around in no time. This is very potent stuff, but it requires an action taker to make it work. As the saying goes, I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it. Download now and awake ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: J. Alexander. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/047428/bk_acx0_047428_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  Oryx and Crake , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 630min

  A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker PrizeMargaret Atwood’s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that listeners may find their view of the world forever changed after listening to it.This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For listeners of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again.The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief. With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humor, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Campbell Scott. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/rand/000281/bk_rand_000281_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  Kimono

  What is the kimono? Everyday garment? Art object? Symbol of Japan? As Terry Satsuki Milhaupt explains in this book, the kimono has served all of these roles, its meaning changing across time and with the perspective of the wearer or viewer. Kimono: A Modern History traces the transformation of the kimono from everyday garment to national symbol of Japan. It begins by revealing the foundations of the modern kimono fashion industry in the 17th- and 18th-century. With Japans exposure to Western fashion in the 19th century, and Westerners contact with distinctive Japanese modes of dress and design, the kimono took on new associations and came to symbolize an exotic culture and an alluring female form. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the kimono industry was sustained through government support. The line between fashion and art became blurred, as kimonos produced by famous designers were collected for their beauty and displayed in museums, rather than being worn as clothing. Today, the kimono has once again taken on new dimensions, as the Internet and social media proliferate images of the kimono as a versatile garment to be integrated into a range of individual styles.Published to accompany the Kimono exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, commencing in September 2014, Kimono: A Modern History not only tells the story of a distinctive garments ever-changing functions and image, but provides a novel perspective on Japans modernization and encounter with the West.

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  The Novel, Volume 1 (eBook, PDF)

  Nearly as global in its ambition and sweep as its subject, Franco Moretti's The Novel is a watershed event in the understanding of the first truly planetary literary form. A translated selection from the epic five-volume Italian Il Romanzo (2001-2003), The Novel's two volumes are a unified multiauthored reference work, containing more than one hundred specially commissioned essays by leading contemporary critics from around the world. Providing the first international comparative reassessment of the novel, these essential volumes reveal the form in unprecedented depth and breadth--as a great cultural, social, and human phenomenon that stretches from the ancient Greeks to today, where modernity itself is unimaginable without the genre. By viewing the novel as much more than an aesthetic form, this landmark collection demonstrates how the genre has transformed human emotions and behavior, and the very perception of reality. Historical, statistical, and formal analyses show the novel as a complex literary system, in which new forms proliferate in every period and place. Volume 1: History, Geography, and Culture, looks at the novel mostly from the outside, treating the transition from oral to written storytelling and the rise of narrative and fictionality, and covering the ancient Greek novel, the novel in premodern China, the early Spanish novel, and much else, including readings of novels from around the world. These books will be essential reading for all students and scholars of literature.

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  • Price: 37.95 EUR excl. shipping
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  The Legal Concept of Money (eBook, PDF)

  This new book analyses the challenge of how money (including coins, notes, credit, and virtual currency) should be defined from both a legal and an economic perspective. As new electronic payment mechanisms proliferate, this question of definition is likely to become an important issue in global legal, commercial, economic, macro-prudential and fiscal policymaking. The book re-examines money in this context by identifying the role it plays in various transactions and to what extent, for example, cryptocurrencies and quasi-money are interchangeable with, analogous to, or different from traditional monetary systems. Beginning with a summary of the legal nature of money, the book explains the distinction between money and payment obligations, as well as providing an overview of the fundamental characteristics of money. It analyses how the law identifies money by pinpointing characteristics of particular transactions such as sale of goods transactions, including the position where the exchange of goods is for e-currency. Other situations or transactions examined include the recovery of stolen money, claims for non-delivery of money, and how obligations to pay operate. The book also considers the role of money in the banking system, exploring how various currencies can be used as claims on financial institutions, examining whether the systemic stability of the industry is threatened by non-traditional currency forms. Finally, the book addresses, and seeks to develop a conceptual framework for how alternative currencies might work in place of money as a medium for saving.

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  • Price: 65.95 EUR excl. shipping
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  Laziness Does Not Exist

  From social psychologist Dr. Devon Price, a conversational, stirring call to "a better, more human way to live" (Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author) that examines the "laziness lie"—which falsely tells us we are not working or learning hard enough. Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles. Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity. Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the "laziness lie," including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough. Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society's pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist "is the book we all need right now" (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet).

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  • Price: 17.99 EUR excl. shipping
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  Power of Position

  How biodiversity classification, with its ranking of species, has social and political implications as well as implications for the field of information studies. The idea that species live in nature as pure and clear-cut named individuals is a fiction, as scientists well know. According to Robert D. Montoya, classifications are powerful mechanisms and we must better attend to the machinations of power inherent in them, as well as to how the effects of this power proliferate beyond the boundaries of their original intent. We must acknowledge the many ways our classifications are implicated in environmental, ecological, and social justice work-and information specialists must play a role in updating our notions of what it means to classify. In Power of Position, Montoya shows how classifications are systems that relate one entity with other entities, requiring those who construct a system to value an entity's relative importance-by way of its position-within a system of other entities. These practices, says Montoya, are important ways of constituting and exerting power. Classification also has very real-world consequences. An animal classified as protected and endangered, for example, is protected by law. Montoya also discusses the Catalogue of Life, a new kind of composite classification that reconciles many local ("traditional") taxonomies, forming a unified taxonomic backbone structure for organizing biological data. Finally, he shows how the theories of information studies are applicable to realms far beyond those of biological classification.

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  • Price: 40.99 EUR excl. shipping
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  Power of Position (eBook, ePUB)

  How biodiversity classification, with its ranking of species, has social and political implications as well as implications for the field of information studies. The idea that species live in nature as pure and clear-cut named individuals is a fiction, as scientists well know. According to Robert D. Montoya, classifications are powerful mechanisms and we must better attend to the machinations of power inherent in them, as well as to how the effects of this power proliferate beyond the boundaries of their original intent. We must acknowledge the many ways our classifications are implicated in environmental, ecological, and social justice work-and information specialists must play a role in updating our notions of what it means to classify. In Power of Position, Montoya shows how classifications are systems that relate one entity with other entities, requiring those who construct a system to value an entity's relative importance-by way of its position-within a system of other entities. These practices, says Montoya, are important ways of constituting and exerting power. Classification also has very real-world consequences. An animal classified as protected and endangered, for example, is protected by law. Montoya also discusses the Catalogue of Life, a new kind of composite classification that reconciles many local ("traditional") taxonomies, forming a unified taxonomic backbone structure for organizing biological data. Finally, he shows how the theories of information studies are applicable to realms far beyond those of biological classification.

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  • Price: 23.95 EUR excl. shipping

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