Author: Marion Nestle File Type: pdf Food safety is a matter of intense public concern, and for good reason. Millions of annual cases of food poisonings raise alarm not only about the food served in restaurants and fast-food outlets but also about foods bought in supermarkets. The introduction of genetically modified foodsimmediately dubbed Frankenfoodsonly adds to the general sense of unease. Finally, the events of September 11, 2001, heightened fears by exposing the vulnerability of food and water supplies to attacks by bioterrorists. How concerned should we be about such problems? Who is responsible for preventing them? Who benefits from ignoring them? Who decides? Marion Nestle, author of the critically acclaimed Food Politics, argues that ensuring safe food involves more than washing hands or cooking food to higher temperatures. It involves politics. When it comes to food safety, billions of dollars are at stake, and industry, government, and consumers collide over issues of values, economics, and political powerand not always in the public interest. Although the debates may appear to be about science, Nestle maintains that they really are about control Who decides when a food is safe? She demonstrates how powerful food industries oppose safety regulations, deny accountability, and blame consumers when something goes wrong, and how century-old laws for ensuring food safety no longer protect our food supply. Accessible, informed, and even-handed, Safe Food is for anyone who cares how food is produced and wants to know more about the real issues underlying todays headlines.**

Author: Donald MacKenzie File Type: epub Most aspects of our private and social livesour safety, the integrity of the financial system, the functioning of utilities and other services, and national securitynow depend on computing. But how can we know that this computing is trustworthy? In Mechanizing Proof, Donald MacKenzie addresses this key issue by investigating the interrelations of computing, risk, and mathematical proof over the last half century from the perspectives of history and sociology. His discussion draws on the technical literature of computer science and artificial intelligence and on extensive interviews with participants.MacKenzie argues that our culture now contains two ideals of proof proof as traditionally conducted by human mathematicians, and formal, mechanized proof. He describes the systems constructed by those committed to the latter ideal and the many questions those systems raise about the nature of proof. He looks at the primary social influence on the development of automated proofthe need to predict the behavior of the computer systems upon which human life and security dependand explores the involvement of powerful organizations such as the National Security Agency. He concludes that in mechanizing proof, and in pursuing dependable computer systems, we do not obviate the need for trust in our collective human judgment.ReviewA most readable account of how program verification came to promise so much and deliver so little. - Richard Clayton, The Times Higher Education Supplement About the AuthorDonald MacKenzie is Professor of Sociology (Personal Chair) at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Inventing Accuracy (1990), Knowing Machines (1996), and Mechanizing Proof (2001), all published by the MIT Press. Portions of An Engine, not a Camera won the Viviana A. Zelizer Prize in economic sociology from the American Sociological Association.

Author: Frank Chouraqui File Type: pdf Friedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Chouraqui argues, are linked by how they conceive the question of truth. Although both thinkers criticize the traditional concept of truth as objectivity, they both find that rejecting it does not solve the problem. What is it in our natural existence that gave rise to the notion of truth? The answer to that question is threefold. First, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty both propose a genealogy of truth in which to exist means to make implicit truth claims. Second, both seek to recover the preobjective ground from which truth as an erroneous concept arose. Finally, this attempt at recovery leads both thinkers to ontological considerations, regarding how we must conceive of a being whose structure allows for the existence of the belief in truth. In conclusion, Chouraqui suggests that both thinkers investigations of the question of truth lead them to conceive of being as the process of self-falsification by which indeterminate being presents itself as determinate. The answer to that question is threefold. First, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty both propose a genealogy of truth in which to exist means to make implicit truth claims. Second, both seek to recover the preobjective ground from which truth as an erroneous concept arose. Finally, this attempt at recovery leads both thinkers to ontological considerations, regarding how we must conceive of a being whose structure allows for the existence of the belief in truth. In conclusion, Chouraqui suggests that both thinkers investigations of the question of truth lead them to conceive of being as the process of self-falsification by which indeterminate being presents itself as determinate. Friedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Chouraqui argues, are linked by how they conceive the question of truth. Although both thinkers criticize the traditional co ncept of truth as objectivity, they both find that rejecting it does not solve the problem. What is it in our natural existence that gave rise to the notion of truth? The answer to that question is threefold. First, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty both propose a genealogy of truth in which to exist means to make implicit truth claims. Second, both seek to recover the preobjective ground from which truth as an erroneous concept arose. Finally, this attempt at recovery leads both thinkers to ontological considerations regarding how we must conceive of a being whose structure allows for the existence of the belief in truth. In conclusion, Chouraqui suggests that both thinkers investigations of the question of truth lead them to conceive of being as the process of self-falsification by which indeterminate being presents itself as determinate. The answer to that question is threefold. First, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty both propose a genealogy of truth in which to exist means to make implicit truth claims. Second, both seek to recover the preobjective ground from which truth as an erroneous concept arose. Finally, this attempt at recovery leads both thinkers to ontological considerations, regarding how we must conceive of a being whose structure allows for the existence of the belief in truth. In conclusion, Chouraqui suggests that both thinkers investigations of the question of truth lead them to conceive of being as the process of self-falsification by which indeterminate being presents itself as determinate.**

Author: Richard B. McKenzie File Type: epub How Prices Matter rices are ubiquitous, so much so that their importance to the smooth operation of a market economy (even one constrained by extensive polit- P ical controls as is the case in China) can go unnoticed and unheralded. Prices are what all trades, whether at the local mall or across the globe, are built around. Tey facilitate trades among buyers and sellers who dont know each other, meaning they make less costly, or more socially benefcial, the allocation and redistribution of the planets scarce resources. Indeed, as the late Friedrich Hayek is renowned for having observed, prices summarize a vast amount of - formation on the relative scarcity and, hence, the relative cost of resources (with much of the information subjective in nature) that can be known only by ind-i viduals scattered across markets and cannot be collected in centralized loc- tions, except through market-determined prices. 1 Because they summarize, and largely hide from view of buyers, so much i- formation spread among people throughout the world, prices can be puzzling. Why prices are what they are, and change for reasons that are obscured by a multitude of economic events that can extend backward in time and forward into the future, can be mysterious. Explaining many puzzling prices can be - tective work that the modern-day Sherlock Holmes would surely fnd challenging.