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Collapse (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Diamond uses a "framework" when considering the collapse of a society, consisting of five "sets of factors" that may affect what happens to a society: environmental damage, climatic change, hostile neighbors, loss of trading partners, and the society's own responses to its environmental problems. The Greenland Norse, whose society collapsed owing to all five factors, including the final one (unwillingness to change in the face of social collapse). However, where Toynbee argues that the root cause of collapse is the decay of a society's "creative minority" into "a position of inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit", Diamond ascribes more weight to conscious minimization of environmental factors. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed   (1205 words)

Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book) | EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil News Clearinghouse Collapse might have added to the chorus of voices raised on the first Earth Day, and might have helped drive home the importance of the often-misrepresented Limits to Growth study. Collapse has, in effect, already begun, even though we have seen only the first of the trigger events that will eventually rivet public attention on the cascading process of disintegration taking place around us. Initial work along these lines might be indistinguishable from actions taken to try to prevent collapse-the sorts of things many people have been doing at least since the 1970s: the active protest of war, the protection of ecosystems and species, the defense of indigenous and traditional cultures, and the adoption of lifestyles of voluntary simplicity. www.energybulletin.net /4182.html   (2899 words)

Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse? by Morgan Reynolds The government’s collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms, but its blinkered narrowness and lack of breadth is the paramount defect unshared by its principal scientific rival – controlled demolition. Supposedly, "the probable collapse sequence for the WTC towers are (sic) based on the behavior of thermally weakened structural components that had extensive damage to fireproofing or gypsum board fire protection induced by the debris field generated by aircraft impact" (p. Collapses were total, leaving none of the massive core columns sticking up hundreds of feet into the air. www.lewrockwell.com /reynolds/reynolds12.html   (3982 words)

Jared Diamond's Collapse traces the fates of societies to their treatment of the environment | By Michael J. Kavanagh | ... He identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, trade partners (that is, alternative sources of essential goods), environmental problems, and, finally, a society's response to its environmental problems. His definition of "society" is equally vague; he variously uses it to refer to a settlement (e.g., various Viking communities), a nation (ranging from Rwanda and Haiti, two of the smaller countries in the world, to China, one of the largest), a state (Montana), and an island (Easter). Diamond argues that the proximate cause of collapse in a society like Haiti -- a coup d'état or a flood resulting from a hurricane, for instance -- is only a manifestation of the ultimate cause: the mismanagement of its environment and resources. www.grist.org /advice/books/2005/02/08/kavanagh-collapse   (2206 words)

Amazon.ca: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Books: Jared Diamond   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01) Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. In Collapse, Jared Diamond has successfully examined the thousands of year of human history, by evaluating many of the great civilizations that went extinct due to their inability to recognize the limits of their resources and the strength of the forces of nature. Collapse also looks at some of the current problem areas of the world using the lens of what went wrong in earlier societies. www.amazon.ca /Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Succeed/dp/0143036556   (2107 words)

Collapse - Jared Diamond - Penguin Group (USA) The phenomenon of collapses is thus an extreme form of several milder types of decline, and it becomes arbitrary to decide how drastic the decline of a society must be before it qualifies to be labeled as a collapse. The societies that ended up collapsing were (like the Maya) among the most creative and (for a time) advanced and successful of their times, rather than stupid and primitive. It would be absurd to claim that environmental damage must be a major factor in all collapses: the collapse of the Soviet Union is a modern counter-example, and the destruction of Carthage by Rome in 146 b.c. us.penguingroup.com /nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_9780670033379,00.html   (8087 words)

Hector Parr's Essays: Collapse of the Universe Given sufficient time, one might expect the galaxies to collapse through gravitational attraction, and eventually to fall together, to form one gigantic mass, or one great fl hole, but at present they are distributed throughout space more or less uniformly. The expansion is also playing an important part in delaying gravitational collapse; a static universe comparable in size to ours would probably have collapsed within ten billion years, but because the remote regions are moving away at high speed many more billions must elapse before gravity can reverse the motion and the collapse can commence. On the other hand, if the formation of fl holes proceeds more quickly, it may be possible for the collapse of matter to precede the collapse of space itself; then the whole material universe will occupy only a small part of the total volume, with empty space occupying the remainder. www.c-parr.freeserve.co.uk /hcp/collapse.htm   (2537 words)

Collapse and overshoot The fact that an author of Diamond's caliber writes an (otherwise excellent) book on the collapse of civilizations without explicitly explaining peak oil gives you an idea of the extent to which we are fully and wholly unprepared in any fashion whatsoever to handle what has now become inevitable. When distant Somalia collapsed, in went American troops; when the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union collapsed, out went streams of refugees to all of Europe and the rest of the world; and when changed conditions of society, settlement, and lifestyle spread new diseases in Africa and Asia, those diseases moved over the globe. Living disproportionately high on the food chain, at levels at which toxic substances become concentrated, they are at more rather than less risk of reproductive impairment due to ingestion of or exposure to toxic materials, possibly contributing to their higher infertility rates and the increasing frequency with which they require medical assistance in conceiving. www.oilempire.us /collapse.html   (11730 words)

Collapse Theories In the area of Collapse Theories, one should mention the contribution by Bohm and Bub [1966], which was based on the interaction of the statevector with Wiener — Siegel hidden variables. As already mentioned, the Collapse Theory [Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber, 1986] we are going to describe amounts to accepting a modification of the standard evolution law of the theory such that microprocesses and macroprocesses are governed by a unique dynamics. The collapse mechanisms so far proposed could, on the one hand, be viewed as ad hoc mutilations designed to force ontology to kneel to prejudice. plato.stanford.edu /entries/qm-collapse   (10404 words)

Collapse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Collapse (Deus Ex), another fictional event within the plot of the computer game Deus Ex and its sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War. "Collapse," a song by Sparta from their 2002 album Wiretap Scars This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Collapse   (112 words)

Penguin Reading Guides | Collapse | Jared Diamond In Collapse, Diamond broadens his perspective and his reach as he links the crash of past civilizations—including the Anasazi of the American Southwest, the Maya of Central America, the Norse colonists of Greenland, and the Polynesian creators of Easter Island’s famed monumental statues—with what is happening today in troubled nations around the world. Diamond identifies five sets of factors that precipitate societal collapse: environmental damage like deforestation, pollution, soil depletion, or erosion; climate change; hostile neighbors; the withdrawal of support from friendly neighbors; and the ways in which a society responds to its problems, be they environmental, political, or social. Collapse is based on the implicit assumption that the past is not really that foreign after all—that the mistakes and blindness and bad luck that led to past collapses can and will happen again, that a lot of the problems of the world today result from the fact that we don’t do things differently. us.penguingroup.com /static/rguides/us/collapse.html   (2659 words)

#154 Meditations on Collapse | New site for Richard Heinberg   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01) Diamond refers on only three occasions (and then briefly) to Joseph Tainter's classic The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1988), which is widely considered the standard work on the subject. Moreover, the American media have been so cowed and co-opted by the dominant party that most oft he citizenry is blissfully unaware of its plight and is thus extremely unlikely to vigorously oppose the current trends. If Diamond focuses on the environmental aspects of collapse, Jane Jacobs - the legendary historian of cites who, in the 1960s, worked heroically to save the neighborhoods of Manhattan from the automotive fixations of urban redeveloper Robert Moses - explores the cultural dimensions of the process in her recent book Dark Age Ahead. www.museletter.com /archive/154.html   (3765 words)

A Black Hole Is Born Black holes are thought to form from stars or other massive objects if and when they collapse from their own gravity to form an object whose density is infinite: in other words, a singularity. How far it collapses, into what kind of object, and at what rate, is determined by the star's final mass and the remaining outward pressure that the burnt-up nuclear residue (largely iron) can muster. The core continues to collapse to a critical size or circumference beyond which there is only one fate: to form a fl hole. archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu /Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoleFormation.html   (772 words)

The New Yorker: The Critics: Books “Collapse” is a book about the most prosaic elements of the earth’s ecosystem—soil, trees, and water—because societies fail, in Diamond’s view, when they mismanage those environmental factors. The lesson of “Collapse” is that societies, as often as not, aren’t murdered. In the second half of “Collapse,” Diamond turns his attention to modern examples, and one of his case studies is the recent genocide in Rwanda. www.newyorker.com /critics/books/?050103crbo_books   (2669 words)

Collapse -- Book Review   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01) Collapse due solely to economic and political complications (ancient Rome in a nutshell) is outside the scope of the book. In the case of the fall of the Roman Empire, such a social collapse may actually result in an increase in economic well-being: the average peasant experienced the collapse as relief from taxation, with life otherwise remaining pretty much the same. An environmental collapse might be as serious as the extinction of all life on earth, or it might mean just that we could only support a much smaller human population (say, half a billion or so) in some degree of comfort and scientific progress. www.compassionatespirit.com /Collapse.htm   (3247 words)

Eyewitness Reports Persist Of Bombs At WTC Collapse The collapse of the structures resembled the controlled implosions used to demolish old structures and was "too methodical to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures," Romero told The Albuquerque Journal hours after the attack. Implosions are violent collapses inwards, which are used to demolish buildings in areas of high density, to prevent damage to surrounding buildings. The contractor who is reported to have been the first on the WTC collapse scene to cart away the rubble that remains is a company that specializes in the scientific demolition of large buildings, Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Baltimore, headed by Mark Loizeaux. www.rense.com /general17/eyewitnessreportspersist.htm   (1160 words)

Stata help for collapse collapse converts the dataset in memory into a dataset of means, sums, medians, etc. clist must refer to numeric variables exclusively. Note: See contract if you want to collapse to a dataset of frequencies. collapse allows all four weight types; the default is aweights. www.stata.com /help.cgi?collapse   (496 words)

elfbiter: Collapse Diamond begins with the environmental and economical conditions in Montana, including the leakage of sulphuric acid from the 20.000 abandoned mines and differences of attitudes of local residents and those who just visit the state for recreation. Extensive farming or changing climate brought collapse when the leadership, who had claimed to have access to gods of weather, lost their authority. Collapse is available in Finnish with the name Romahdus, but the translation was over € 40, so I ordered the original that cost half as much. elfbiter.livejournal.com /39509.html   (1159 words)

Amazon.com: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Books: Jared Diamond   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01) In brief, the simulation demonstrated catastrophic population collapse between 2040 and 2060, regardless of how the values of variables and their interactions were adjusted. Well, we can set aside their conclusions as peculiar to their particular set of assumptions, but in Jared Diamond's current book, he concludes that each of the individual, massive environmental issues covered in his various examples will reach catastrophic crisis by about 2050, if they are not addressed promptly and in a dramatic way. In particular, although overpopulation and poor resource management in Rwanda was certainly a big factor in its collapse, I find it odd that he actually downplays the roles of tribal tensions and residual effects of colonialism. www.amazon.com /Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Succeed/dp/0670033375   (3184 words)

Collapse Score points by clicking and thus detonating like-colored blocks that are in clusters of 3 or more. The explosion will collapse the structure above onto what remains below. Larger groupings mean more points and very large groupings earn bonuses to compound your score further. www.coffeebreakarcade.com /games/collapse/instructions.htm   (163 words)

Tracheal Collapse Tracheas collapse due to a flattening of the “C” cartilage due to weak cartilage. If the collapse is in the extrathoracic (also called the “cervical”) trachea, the opposite occurs; the collapse occurs during inhalation and the ballooning during exhalation. Severity of the collapse prior to surgery is not a tremendous factor in obtaining a successful outcome. www.marvistavet.com /html/body_tracheal_collapse.html   (951 words)

USATODAY.com - Kenya building collapse kills at least 11   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01) Wanji was one of several women who had set up stalls inside the building to sell food to workers and some had brought their children with them. Immediately after the collapse, hundreds of people formed lines to carry away chunks of concrete and wooden scaffolding, which a front-loader then carted away. But there were fears that others were caught between the floors that collapsed on top of one another. www.usatoday.com /news/world/2006-01-23-kenya_x.htm   (817 words)

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Universe is 'doomed to collapse' Turning away from the dark side, the cosmos will then collapse, as if everything was falling into a fl hole, say researchers. The standard vision at the moment is that the universe is speeding up so we were surprised to find that a collapse could happen within such a short amount of time. But it predicts that this acceleration will cease and be followed by a cosmic collapse in a "mere" 10 to 20 billion years. news.bbc.co.uk /2/hi/sci/tech/2346907.stm   (677 words)

The Seattle Times: Arts & Entertainment: "Collapse": Diamond's new book explores why civilizations crumble His just-released follow-up to that book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" (Viking, 575 pp., $29.95), is already poised to eclipse his Pulitzer Prize-winner — "Collapse" sits among the top three books on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list (along with works by Jon Stewart and Amber Frey). But most of the interest in "Collapse," Diamond says, is the visceral lure of its topic: "We're all interested in the collapse of civilizations. Diamond says he wrote "Collapse" because he's convinced that the world is near a crisis point. seattletimes.nwsource.com /html/artsentertainment/2002159510_jared25.html   (1163 words)

Amazon.co.uk: Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive: Books: Jared Diamond   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-01) Also delineated in remarkably readable detail are the collapses of the Anasazi of the US southwest, the Maya in Mesoamerica, the Viking-founded colonies in the north Atlantic and especially in Greenland. If we are indeed facing a significant probability of a global collapse caused by our unsustainable use of the natural resources in the next 50 years or so; then surely we should do more than press Ikea and B&Q to use wood from sustainable forests. Nevertheless, this book provides a very valuable insight into societal collapse and decline and it provides a cogent warning to modern society to mend its ways before it is too late. www.amazon.co.uk /Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Survive/dp/0713992867   (3770 words)

Building 7 Collapse WTC - 9/11 Review very small fires in progresswhen the building "collapsed." Not to mention that, as any one with the slightest technical background knows, diesel at normal pressure is non-explosive and barely flammable. The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one. The building had not been hit by any plane, nor sustained any significant damage from the "collapse" of the Twin Towers seven hours earlier, nor was there any major fire in the building at the time. www.911review.org /Wiki/Building7Collapse.shtml   (456 words)

Mark Ketchum's Bridge Collapse Page Its collapse on November 7, 1940 attracted wide attention at the time and ever since, due in part to its capture on film. At approximately 7:15 p.m.on the stormy night of 28 December 1879, the central navigation spans of the Tay bridge collapsed into the Firth of Tay at Dundee, taking with them a train, 6 carriages and 75 souls to their fate. The collapse of the bridge, only opened 19 months and passed safe by the Board of Trade, sent shock waves through the Victorian engineering profession and general public. www.ketchum.org /bridgecollapse.html   (252 words)

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