5 PIN BOWLING EQUIPMENT

The Rational Optimist (P.S.)

Life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down — all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people?s lives as never before. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. But they have been saying this for two hundred years.
Yet Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. The habit of exchange and specialization—which started more than 100,000 years ago—has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair.
This bold book covers the entire sweep of human history, from the Stone Age to the Internet, from the stagnation of the Ming empire to the invention of the steam engine, from the population explosion to the likely consequences of climate change. It ends with a confident assertion that thanks to the ceaseless capacity of the human race for innovative change, and despite inevitable disasters along the way, the twenty-first century will see both human prosperity and natural biodiversity enhanced. Acute, refreshing, and revelatory, The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.

Life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down — all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people?s lives as never before. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. But they have been saying this for two hundred years.
Yet Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. The habit of exchange and specialization—which started more than 100,000 years ago—has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair.
This bold book covers the entire sweep of human history, from the Stone Age to the Internet, from the stagnation of the Ming empire to the invention of the steam engine, from the population explosion to the likely consequences of climate change. It ends with a confident assertion that thanks to the ceaseless capacity of the human race for innovative change, and despite inevitable disasters along the way, the twenty-first century will see both human prosperity and natural biodiversity enhanced. Acute, refreshing, and revelatory, The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.

This image consists only of circles rendered at about 1 pixel thick, of varying intensity. As in the "line thicket" image earlier in the photo stream, the ellipsoidal dark areas emerge only due to a lack of arcs drawn in those regions. Because the circles are restricted to the set of "rational" circles they tend to avoid certain areas and also tend to intersect at certain other locations, giving rise to the background pattern of light and dark. (Also in this image the circles are drawn white on a black background as opposed to dark on white.)

Mathematical information: These are rational circles in the following way. A circle can be represented as a 4-tupple of numbers, say {a, b, c, d}, where a point (x,y) is on the circle if a*(x^2 + y^2) + b*x + c*y + d equals 0. For the rational circles the numbers a,b,c,d are integers. The subset of rational circles drawn above have a^2 + b^2 + c^2 <= 9, and d equal to any integer. The area shown in the image is the unit square. (I call them "rational" because a rational number is a ratio of integers and the density of these rational circles in the space of all circles resembles that of the density of rational numbers in the space of all (real) numbers.)

This year's Rational Support eGuide mini-CD contains the latest IBM Rational Client Support content and self-help tools.

Of special interest - install the IBM Support Assistant (ISA) and the IBM Software Support Toolbar directly from this CD.

The disk's content may also be easily copied to your computer's hard drive - the content has been designed as a stand-alone website that will run on any Windows platform.

You will find your eGuide CD in your RSDC welcome package. If you would like additional CDs, please visit the Rational Support Lounge in the RSDC exhibit hall.

All the support you need is just a click away

For two hundred years the pessimists have dominated public discourse, insisting that things will soon be getting much worse. But in fact, life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
In his bold and bracing exploration into how human culture evolves positively through exchange and specialization, bestselling author Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. An astute, refreshing, and revelatory work that covers the entire sweep of human history—from the Stone Age to the Internet—The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.

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