When it comes to heists, Parker believes in some cardinal rules. On this job, he breaks two of them: never bring a dame along—especially not one you like—and never, ever, work with amateurs. Nevertheless, with the help of a creepy coin collector named Billy, and the lure of a classy widow, he agrees to set up a heist of a coin convention. But Billy’s a rookie with no idea how to pull off a score, and the lady soon becomes a major distraction. The Rare Coin Score marks the first appearance of Claire, who pulls off her own heist on Parker's heart—while together they steal two million dollars worth of coins.
Rastafari has been seen as a political organization, a youth movement, and a millenarian cult. This lively collection of papers challenges these categories and offers a "new approach" to the study of Rastafari. Chevannes and his contributors suggest that we can better understand Rastafari-and Caribbean culture, for that matter-by seeing the movement as both a departure from and a continuance of Revivalism, an African-Caribbean folk religion. By linking Rastafari to Revival, we can enrich our understanding of an African-Caribbean worldview, and we can appreciate Rastafari not only as a political force but as a powerful expression of African-Caribbean culture and tradition.
Barry Chevannes provides a concise overview of Rastafari and Revivalism and clearly lays out the volume's "new approach." Leading scholars of Rastafari illustrate and develop the theme with chapters on Rastafari as resistance, the origin of the dreadlocks, Rastafari and language, women in African-Caribbean religions and more. With chapters that range from the specific to the general, this volume will be important to specialists of Caribbean religion and the African diaspora and to those with a burgeoning interest in Rastafari.
The contributors include Jean Besson, Ellis Cashmore, Barry Chevannes, John P. Homiak, Roland Littlewood, H.U.E Thoden van Velzen, and Wilhelmina van Wetering.
While the importance of innovation to economic development is widely understood, the conditions conducive to it remain the focus of much attention. This volume offers new theoretical and empirical contributions to fundamental questions relating to the economics of innovation and technological change while revisiting the findings of a classic book. Central to the development of new technologies are institutional environments, and among the topics discussed here are the roles played by universities and other nonprofit research institutions and the ways in which the allocation of funds between the public and private sectors affects innovation. Other essays examine the practice of open research and how the diffusion of information technology influences the economics of knowledge accumulation. Analytically sophisticated and broad in scope, this book addresses a key topic at a time when economic growth is all the more topical.
Rational Animals: The Teleological Roots of Intentionality offers an original account of the intentionality of human mental states, such as beliefs and desires.
The account of intentionality in Rational Animals is broadly biological in its basis, emphasizing the continuity between human intentionality and the levels of intentionality that should be attributed to animal actions and states.
Establishing the goal-directed character of animal behavior, Mark Okrent argues that instrumentally rational action is a species of goal-directed behavior that is idiosyncratic to individual agents and is distinguished by its novelty and flexibility. He also argues that some nonlinguistic animals are capable of instrumental rationality and that in the first instance, the contents of beliefs and desires are individuated by the explanatory role of those states in rationxadally accounting for such instrumentally rational behavior.
The account of instrumental rationality offered in Rational Animals allows for understanding the practical rationality of linguistically competent human beings as a distinctive capacity of social animals capable of undertaking roles governed by socially sanctioned norms.
Rational Animals will be of interest to cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind, philosophers of biology, philosophers of action, ethologists, and those interested in the debates concerning animal intelligence.
Finalist, 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize
In a voice at times electrified by caustic cynicism, at other times stripped bare by grief, Casey Thayer’s Rational Anthem offers wry tribute to “the greatest country God could craft with the mules he had / on hand.” In seeking to tell the story of the ragged world around him, Thayer examines the links among flag-waving populism, religious fervor, and toxic masculinity. Here male intimacy—among childhood friends, between father and son, and in the tenuous bonds between young adults—generally finds acceptance only when expressed through a shared passion for guns and hunting: “I helped my father clean his hands with field grass, / convinced we had shared a moment / in rolling the internal organs out of the abdomen.”
In “How-To,” the book’s closer—a mash-up of instructions from active-shooter trainings attended by the poet—Thayer grasps at strategies for surviving a world where we have come to see school shootings as routine: “Grab a textbook, they instructed my child, and hug it to your chest over your heart.”
Formally deft and lyrically dense, Rational Anthem asks why we find it so hard to change the stories we keep repeating.
We explain what people think and do by citing their reasons, but how do such explanations work, and what do they tell us about the nature of reality? Contemporary efforts to address these questions are often motivated by the worry that our ordinary conception of rationality contains a kernel of supernaturalism—a ghostly presence that meditates on sensory messages and orchestrates behavior on the basis of its ethereal calculations. In shunning this otherworldly conception, contemporary philosophers have focused on the project of “naturalizing” the mind, viewing it as a kind of machine that converts sensory input and bodily impulse into thought and action. Eric Marcus rejects this choice between physicalism and supernaturalism as false and defends a third way.
He argues that philosophers have failed to take seriously the idea that rational explanations postulate a distinctive sort of causation—rational causation. Rational explanations do not reveal the same sorts of causal connections that explanations in the natural sciences do. Rather, rational causation draws on the theoretical and practical inferential abilities of human beings. Marcus defends this position against a wide array of physicalist arguments that have captivated philosophers of mind for decades. Along the way he provides novel views on, for example, the difference between rational and nonrational animals and the distinction between states and events.
The nineteenth century marked the high point of imperialism, when tsarist Russia expanded to the Pacific and the sun was said never to set on the British Empire. Imperialism remains a perennial issue in international relations today, and nowhere is this more evident than in the intensifying competition for global resources.
Leo J. Blanken explains imperialism through an analysis of the institutions of both the expanding state and its targets of conquest. While democratic states favoring free trade generally resort to imperialism only to preempt aggressive rivals—or when they have reason to believe another state’s political institutions will not hold up when making bargains—authoritarian states tend toward imperialism because they don’t stand to benefit from free trade. The result is three distinct strategies toward imperialism: actors fighting over territory, actors peaceably dividing territory among themselves, and actors refraining from seizing territory altogether. Blanken examines these dynamics through three case studies: the scramble for Africa, the unequal treaties imposed on Qing Dynasty China, and the evolution of Britain’s imperial policy in India. By separating out the different types of imperialism, Blanken provides insight into its sources, as well as the potential implications of increased competition in the current international arena.
Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice was first published in 1981. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Assumptions about how people form expectations for the future shape the properties of any dynamic economic model. To make economic decisions in an uncertain environment people must forecast such variables as future rates of inflation, tax rates, government subsidy schemes and regulations. The doctrine of rational expectations uses standard economic methods to explain how those expectations are formed.
This work collects the papers that have made significant contributions to formulating the idea of rational expectations. Most of the papers deal with the connections between observed economic behavior and the evaluation of alternative economic policies.
Robert E. Lucas, Jr., is professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Thomas J. Sargent is professor of economics at the University of Minnesota and adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota.
A thought-provoking examination of the intersections of knowledge and violence, and the quandaries and costs of modern, technoscientific warfare.
Science and violence converge in modern warfare. While the finest minds of the twentieth century have improved human life, they have also produced human injury. They engineered radar, developed electronic computers, and helped mass produce penicillin all in the context of military mobilization. Scientists also developed chemical weapons, atomic bombs, and psychological warfare strategies.
Rational Fog explores the quandary of scientific and technological productivity in an era of perpetual war. Science is, at its foundation, an international endeavor oriented toward advancing human welfare. At the same time, it has been nationalistic and militaristic in times of crisis and conflict. As our weapons have become more powerful, scientists have struggled to reconcile these tensions, engaging in heated debates over the problems inherent in exploiting science for military purposes. M. Susan Lindee examines this interplay between science and state violence and takes stock of researchers’ efforts to respond. Many scientists who wanted to distance their work from killing have found it difficult and have succumbed to the exigencies of war. Indeed, Lindee notes that scientists who otherwise oppose violence have sometimes been swept up in the spirit of militarism when war breaks out.
From the first uses of the gun to the mass production of DDT and the twenty-first-century battlefield of the mind, the science of war has achieved remarkable things at great human cost. Rational Fog reminds us that, for scientists and for us all, moral costs sometimes mount alongside technological and scientific advances.
In keeping with the times, it is not surprising that former professor of chemistry and university president John A. Widtsoe was called to the LDS Quorum of Twelve Apostles in 1921. An inheritor and promoter of “reasonable” religion, his popular book, Joseph Smith as Scientist, and his influential LDS Melchizedek priesthood manual (later released as a book), Rational Theology, underscored his and other Mormon leaders’ positivist assumptions about the world—that science was good, that Mormonism would be proven true, and, drawing from Herbert Spencer’s application of evolution to ethics, that society would be perfected.
Like Widtsoe’s secular books (published nationally and internationally by Macmillan, Webb, and J. Wiley & Sons), Rational Theology would enjoy multiple printings domestically and several foreign translations. Although his other church writings (Evidences and Reconciliations, The Gospel in the Service of Man, Guide Posts to Happiness: The Right to Personal Satisfaction, and others) proved to be influential, none so thoroughly summarized his embrace of science and Mormonism as Rational Theology.
John Andreas Widtsoe was born in Dalöe, Island of Fröyen, Norway, in 1872. He immigrated to Utah in 1883 and graduated from Brigham Young College in 1891 and from Harvard with high honors in 1894. Widtsoe married Leah Eudora Dunford, daughter of Susa Young Gates, in 1898 and had seven children. In 1899 he was awarded a Ph.D. with high honors from the University of Göttingen, Germany. He both taught at and served as president of Utah State Agricultural College and the University of Utah. He was elected to the Victoria Institute in England, an honor received by only one other Mormon scholar—James E. Talmage. Widtsoe served as editor of the Improvement Era and wrote more than thirty books, including religious, autobiographical, and professional publications. His essay on LDS temple worship has been included in the new edition of The House of the Lord: A Study of Holy Sanctuaries Ancient and Modern. He was an apostle from 1921 until his death in 1952.
Rationality and freedom are among the most profound and contentious concepts in philosophy and the social sciences. In two volumes on rationality, freedom, and justice, the distinguished economist and philosopher Amartya Sen brings clarity and insight to these difficult issues. This volume--the first of the two--is principally concerned with rationality and freedom.
Sen scrutinizes and departs from the standard criteria of rationality, and shows how it can be seen in terms of subjecting one's values as well as choices to the demands of reason and critical scrutiny. This capacious approach is utilized to illuminate the demands of rationality in individual choice (including decisions under uncertainty) as well as social choice (including cost benefit analysis and environmental assessment).
Identifying a reciprocity in the relationship between rationality and freedom, Sen argues that freedom cannot be assessed independently of a person's reasoned preferences and valuations, just as rationality, in turn, requires freedom of thought. Sen uses the discipline of social choice theory (a subject he has helped to develop) to illuminate the demands of reason and the assessment of freedom. The latter is the subject matter of Sen's previously unpublished Arrow Lectures included here.
The essays in these volumes contribute to Sen's ongoing transformation of economic theory and social philosophy, and to our understanding of the connections among rationality, freedom, and social justice.
Citizens in democracies complain that political parties’ positions on major issues are too ambiguous for them to confidently understand. Why is party position ambiguity so common? Are party positions ambiguous because political parties fail in forming clear policies or because they deliberately blur their positions? Rationality of Irrationality argues that political parties are motivated to strategically blur their position on an issue when they struggle with a certain disadvantage in the issue. Specifically, political parties present an ambiguous position when their own supporters are divided in their stances on the issue. A political party also blurs position stances when voters do not acknowledge that the party has the ability and integrity to solve problems related to the issue. Political parties blur their position in these cases because ambiguous party positions divert voters’ attention from the issue. Voters support a political party whose policy positions on major issues are close to their own stances. However, voters cannot confidently and exactly estimate party positions on an issue when they are only ambiguous.
Mental illness is the poor, and somehow "damaged," cousin to physical ailments in the eyes of too many in our society. Compare the difference in how people would respond to someone who had fallen and broken their leg on the street, to how most react to those mentally ill among us, on those same streets, who spend their winters on steam grates and forage for food in dumpsters. Rationing Sanity is a provocative analysis of the mental health care system in the United States, dealing with issues of justice and access to mental health care.
How should a decent society, affluent but facing many serious calls on its resources, best care for citizens afflicted with severe and persistent mental illnesses? James Lindemann Nelson brings together, for the first time, scholars of the ethics of mental health care and top managed care policy analysts to address this crucial problem. Rationing Sanity integrates those perspectives with the thoughtful practice-based experience of physicians well versed in the actual care of people with emotional and behavioral problems. Over a period of years, the contributors met face-to-face to engage each other on the ethics of managed mental health care—the result is a unique, collaborative effort that provides a wealth of important new insights on not only how Americans can readjust their attitudes toward the mentally ill—but also how we may find more just and humane treatment for those afflicted.
In this groundbreaking analysis of Supreme Court decision-making, Andrew Coan explains how judicial caseload shapes the course of American constitutional law and the role of the Court in American society.
Compared with the vast machinery surrounding Congress and the president, the Supreme Court is a tiny institution that can resolve only a small fraction of the constitutional issues that arise in any given year. Rationing the Constitution shows that this simple yet frequently ignored fact is essential to understanding how the Supreme Court makes constitutional law.
Due to the structural organization of the judiciary and certain widely shared professional norms, the capacity of the Supreme Court to review lower-court decisions is severely limited. From this fact, Andrew Coan develops a novel and arresting theory of Supreme Court decision-making. In deciding cases, the Court must not invite more litigation than it can handle. On many of the most important constitutional questions—touching on federalism, the separation of powers, and individual rights—this constraint creates a strong pressure to adopt hard-edged categorical rules, or defer to the political process, or both.
The implications for U.S. constitutional law are profound. Lawyers, academics, and social activists pursuing social reform through the courts must consider whether their goals can be accomplished within the constraints of judicial capacity. Often the answer will be no. The limits of judicial capacity also substantially constrain the Court’s much touted—and frequently lamented—power to overrule democratic majorities. As Rationing the Constitution demonstrates, the Supreme Court is David, not Goliath.
Here are observations and speculations, legends and yarns, even gossip about the habits and dispositions of these extraordinary creatures—rattlesnakes—their reported size, deadliness, and power to charm their natural enemies. Here are descriptions of actual fights to the death between rattlesnakes and other animals and accounts of the strange experiences human beings have had with them, as well as tips on where to find them and how to act when you see one.
Dobie began systematically collecting lore about the rattlesnake world many years ago, using some of it in such regional publications as Southwest Review and incorporating much of it into essays—with the intention of eventually putting together a book about rattlesnakes. Now, in this collection of twenty-two articles, his wish is posthumously fulfilled.
Only Frank Dobie could tell of this fascinating and frightening creature with such wisdom and humor, thereby tempering "the age-old feud between the snake and man." And the rattlesnake—who once aroused fear among even the boldest men in the Old West—can at last be regarded with tolerance, respect, and even affection.
It used to be that raves were grass-roots organized, anti-establishment, unlicensed all-night drug-fueled dance parties held in abandoned warehouses or an open field. These days, you pay $40 for a branded party at popular riverfront nightclubs where age and status, rather than DJ expertise and dancing, shape your experience.
In Rave Culture sociologist Tammy Anderson explores the dance music, drug use and social deviance that are part of the pulsing dynamics of this collective. Her ethnographic study compares the Philadelphia rave scene with other rave scenes in London and Ibiza. She chronicles how generational change, commercialization, law enforcement, hedonism, and genre fragmentation fundamentally altered electronic dance music parties. Her analysis calls attention to issues of personal and collective identity in helping to explain such social change and what the decline of the rave scene means for the future of youth culture and electronic dance music.
Raven and River leads young readers on a fantastical journey with a raven across the icy Alaska landscape on the verge of spring. Along the way, the raven’s sonorous cry wakes a cast of sleeping woodland creatures, including a bear, a beaver, a hare, and a squirrel—all of whom join him in imploring the still-frozen river to melt and thereby initiate the change of seasons. Packed with information and featuring vibrant full-color illustrations by Jon Van Zyle, Raven and River brings to life these two important harbingers of Alaska’s spring.
When Phyllis Barber’s thirty-three-year marriage ended, she had to redefine herself as a woman, a mother, and an artist. Raw Edges is her moving account of the “lean years” that followed her divorce. It is interwoven with a narrative of the marriage of two gifted people that begins with “sealing” in a Mormon temple, endures through the birth of four sons and the development of two careers, and founders when the couple’s personal needs no longer match their aspirations or the rigid strictures of Mormon life. Raw Edges reflects the predicament that many women experience as their marriages disintegrate and they fail to achieve their own expectations as well as those set by their society and their faith. It is also a story of hope, of how a woman overcome by grief and confusion eventually finds a new approach to life.
At the height of his powers as a poetic prose stylist, Bradbury shifted his creative attention to film and television, where new successes gave him an enduring platform as a compelling cultural commentator. His passionate advocacy validated the U.S. space program's mission, extending his pivotal role as a chronicler of human values in an age of technological wonders.
Informed by many years of interviews with Bradbury as well as an unprecedented access to personal papers and private collections, Ray Bradbury Unbound provides the definitive portrait of how a legendary American author helped shape his times.
Raymond Carver has become a literary icon for our time. When he died in 1988 at the age of fifty, he was acclaimed as the greatest influence on the American short story since Hemingway. Carver's friends were the stuff of legend as well. In this rich collection—greatly expanded from the earlier When We Talk about Raymond Carver—of interviews with close companions, acquaintances, and family, Sam Halpert has chronologically arranged the reminiscences of Carver's adult life, recalling his difficult “Bad Raymond” days through his second life as a recovering alcoholic and triumphantly successful writer. The result is a spirited Irish wake—toasts, anecdotes, lies, songs, confessions, laments—all beautifully orchestrated by Halpert into a very readable and moving narrative.
These funny, poignant, intensely remembered interviews juxtapose personal anecdotes and enlightening criticism. Memory mixes with analysis, and a lively picture of Carver emerges as we hear different stories about him—of the same story told from different viewpoints. He is here presented as hero, victim, and even villain—Carver's readers will recognize the woof and warp of his stories in these affectionate narratives.
Vocals tinged with pain and desperation. The deep thuds of an upright bass. Women with short bangs and men in cuffed jeans. These elements and others are the unmistakable signatures of rockabilly, a musical genre normally associated with white male musicians of the 1950s. But in Los Angeles today, rockabilly's primary producers and consumers are Latinos and Latinas. Why are these "Razabillies" partaking in a visibly "un-Latino" subculture that's thought of as a white person's fixation everywhere else?
As a Los Angeles Rockabilly insider, Nicholas F. Centino is the right person to answer this question. Pairing a decade of participant observation with interviews and historical research, Centino explores the reasons behind a Rockabilly renaissance in 1990s Los Angeles and demonstrates how, as a form of working-class leisure, this scene provides Razabillies with spaces of respite and conviviality within the alienating landscape of the urban metropolis. A nuanced account revealing how and why Los Angeles Latinas/os have turned to and transformed the music and aesthetic style of 1950s rockabilly, Razabilly offers rare insight into this musical subculture, its place in rock and roll history, and its passionate practitioners.
Raúl R. Salinas is regarded as one of today's most important Chicano poets and human rights activists, but his passage to this place of distinction took him through four of the most brutal prisons in the country. His singular journey from individual alienation to rage to political resistance reflected the social movements occurring inside and outside of prison, making his story both personal and universal.
This groundbreaking collection of Salinas' journalism and personal correspondence from his years of incarceration and following his release provides a unique perspective into his spiritual, intellectual, and political metamorphosis. The book also offers an insider's view of the prison rebellion movement and its relation to the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The numerous letters between Salinas and his family, friends, and potential allies illustrate his burgeoning political awareness of the cause and conditions of his and his comrades' incarceration and their link to the larger political and historical web of social relations between dominant and subaltern groups. These collected pieces, as well as two interviews with Salinas—one conducted upon his release from prison in 1972, the second more than two decades later—reveal to readers the transformation of Salinas from a street hipster to a man seeking to be a part of something larger than himself. Louis Mendoza has painstakingly compiled a body of work that is autobiographical, politically insurgent, and representative.
Advocates for the rights of people with disabilities have worked hard to make universal design in the built environment “just part of what we do.” We no longer see curb cuts, for instance, as accommodations for people with disabilities, but perceive their usefulness every time we ride our bikes or push our strollers through crosswalks.
This is also a perfect model for Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework grounded in the neuroscience of why, what, and how people learn. Tobin and Behling show that, although it is often associated with students with disabilities, UDL can be profitably broadened toward a larger ease-of-use and general diversity framework. Captioned instructional videos, for example, benefit learners with hearing impairments but also the student who worries about waking her young children at night or those studying on a noisy team bus.
Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone is aimed at faculty members, faculty-service staff, disability support providers, student-service staff, campus leaders, and graduate students who want to strengthen the engagement, interaction, and performance of all college students. It includes resources for readers who want to become UDL experts and advocates: real-world case studies, active-learning techniques, UDL coaching skills, micro- and macro-level UDL-adoption guidance, and use-them-now resources.
From Hollywood blockbusters to art films, distributors play an important role in getting films in front of audiences and thus in shaping the nature of film culture. Of central concern to Reaching Audiences are the distribution practices developed to counter Hollywood’s dominance of the marketplace, designed to ensure audiences have access to a more diverse moving image culture. Through a series of case studies, the book tracks the inventive distribution and exhibition initiatives developed over the last forty years by small companies on the periphery of the United Kingdom’s film industry—practices now being replicated by a new generation of digital distributors. Although largely invisible to outsiders, the importance of distribution networks is widely recognized in the industry, and this book is a key contribution to our understanding of the role they play.
If white Americans could reveal what they really think about race, without the risk of appearing racist, what would they say? In this elegantly written and innovative book, Paul Sniderman and Edward Carmines illuminate aspects of white Americans' thinking about the politics of race previously hidden from sight. And in a thoughtful follow-up analysis, they point the way toward public policies that could gain wide support and reduce the gap between black and white Americans.
Their discoveries will surprise pollsters and policymakers alike. The authors show that prejudice, although by no means gone, has lost its power to dominate the political thinking of white Americans. Concentrating on the new race-conscious agenda, they introduce a method of hidden measurement which reveals that liberals are just as angry over affirmative action as conservatives and that racial prejudice, while more common among conservatives, is more powerful in shaping the political thinking of liberals. They also find that the good will many whites express for blacks is not feigned but represents a genuine regard for blacks, which they will stand by even when given a perfectly acceptable excuse to respond negatively to blacks.
More crucially, Sniderman and Carmines show that the current impasse over race can be overcome if we remember what we once knew. The strongest arguments in behalf of equality for black Americans reach beyond race to the moral principles that give the issue of race itself a moral claim on us.
“She has a funny way of looking at you,” a fourth-grader told Rhona Weinstein about his teacher. “She gets that look and says ‘I am very disappointed in you.’ I hate it when she does that. It makes me feel like I’m stupid. Just crazy, stupid, dumb.” Even young children know what adults think of them. All too often, they live down to expectations, as well as up to them. This book is about the context in which expectations play themselves out.
Drawing upon a generation of research on self-fulfilling prophecies in education, including the author’s own extensive fieldwork in schools, Reaching Higher argues that our expectations of children are often too low. With compelling case studies, Weinstein shows that children typed early as “not very smart” can go on to accomplish far more than is expected of them by an educational system with too narrow a definition of ability and the way abilities should be nurtured. Weinstein faults the system, pointing out that teachers themselves are harnessed by policies that do not enable them to reach higher for all children.
Her analysis takes us beyond current reforms that focus on accountability for test results. With rich descriptions of effective classrooms and schools, Weinstein makes a case for a changed system that will make the most of every child and enable students and teachers to engage more meaningfully in learning.
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