Books about Rational from Amazon.com

A Message to Amazon Readers from Author Tim Harford

Give yourself a pat on the back. You're not as stupid as everyone says you are, and now there's a book that proves it.

When I first conceived of The Logic of Life, my aim was to show that a world full of smart people--people like you, that is--doesn't necessarily look logical on the surface. We eat too much and worry about being fat; drink too much and cringe when we remember; spend too much at Christmas and worry about the bills in New Year. And that's just the small stuff: what about crime, racial segregation, divorce, big-money politics?

And yet underneath it all there is a hidden logic. It isn't always pretty, but it's there if you know how to see it. That is what The Logic of Life is all about.

But when I'd finished the first draft, my editor told me that he didn't think that people were as logical as I'd said. He wanted me to prove my point.

At first, I thought it was my editor thinks people are illogical because he works in the publishing business. Of course life looks illogical if you do that. (In fact, life looks crazy in most offices: see "Why Your Boss is Overpaid," chapter four.) But then I realised he was right. I'd left the most important step out.

So I went back and made sure that I laid out all the amazing evidence. I looked at single women hitting the dating scene in American cities; I looked at juvenile delinquents across the US; I looked at Mexican prostitutes; I looked at traders at a convention in Disney World; I looked at professional poker players in Las Vegas and professional soccer players in Europe. I looked at violent spouses, alcoholics, and school bullies.

In every case I discovered a story of hidden incentives and unexpected logic. And through the process of writing--and living--the book, I discovered that this crazy world of ours makes more sense than you might think.

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Price: $6.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Ron Paul has always believed that foreign and domestic policy should be conducted according to the same principles Government should be restrained from intervening at home or abroad because its actions fail to achieve their stated aims, create more harm than good, shrink the liberty of the people, and violate rights.Does that proposition seem radical? Outlandish or farflung? Once you hear it stated, it makes perfect sense that there is no sharp distinction between the principles of domestic and foreign policy. They are part of the same analytical fabric. What would be inconsistent would be to favor activist government at home but restraint abroad, or the reverse: restraint at home and activism abroad. Government unleashed behaves in its own interests, and will not restrict itself in any area of life. It must be curbed in all areas of life lest freedom suffer.Ron Paul's singular voice on foreign affairs has done so much to keep the flame of a consistent liberty burning in times when it might otherwise have been extinguished. He has drawn public attention to the ideas of the Founders. He has alerted people to the dangers of empire. He has linked domestic and foreign affairs through libertarian analytics, even when others have been bamboozled by the lies or too intimidated to contradict them.He has told the truth, always. For this, every American, every citizen of the world, is deeply in his debt. We can't but be deeply grateful that Ron Paul's prophetic words have been collected in this book. May it be widely distributed. May its lessons be absorbed by this and future generations.-- Foreword to "A Foreign Policy of Freedom" by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr..
Price: $12.32 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Integration Services feature of Microsoft® SQL Server 2005 brings together data from diverse sources in a high-performance data integration platform, to enable users to work across multiple applications that may not have been designed to cooperate. In this book, Donald Farmer, Microsoft's Group Program Manager for SQL Server Integration Services, clearly explains how to build practical and useful scripts for this exciting new SQL Server 2005 feature. His systematic approach, friendly tutorials, and numerous examples are suitable for both developers and IT professionals alike. You'll learn how scripting in SQL Server Integration Services can enable you to easily add new, fully-integrated functionality to achieve your enterprise data integration needs.

This book takes a rational, no-nonsense approach in a compact guide - only 224 pages. The book is written to give you the basics...fast!

Technical Accuracy is assured by Ashvini Sharma, Development Lead, SQL Server Integration Services, Microsoft Corporation.

* Bonus Chapter: "Monitoring SSIS Performance with Scripts"
* Bonus Chapter: "Accessing Web Services with SSIS Scripts"
* Bonus Chapter: "Using SSIS as a Data Service"
* Sample code for the examples in the book
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Price: $18.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn's article on evolution and creation in The New York Times launched an international controversy. Critics charged him with biblical literalism and "creationism".

In this book, Cardinal Schoenborn responds to his critics by tackling the hard questions with a carefully reasoned the "theology of creation". Can we still speak intelligently of the world as "creation" and affirm the existence of the Creator, or is God a "delusion"? How should an informed believer read Genesis? If God exists, why is there so much injustice and suffering? Are human beings a part of nature or elevated above it? What is man's destiny? Is everything a matter of chance or can we discern purpose in human existence? In his treatment of evolution, Cardinal Schoenborn distinguishes the biological theory from "evolutionism", the ideology that tries to reduce all of reality to mindless, meaningless processes.

He argues that science and a rationally grounded faith are not at odds and that what many people represent as "science" is really a set of philosophical positions that will not withstand critical scrutiny.

Chance or Purpose? directly raises the philosophical and theological issues many scientists today overlook or ignore. The result is a vigorous, frank dialogue that acknowledges the respective insights of the philosopher, the theologian and the scientist, but which calls on them to listen and to learn from each another..
Price: $9.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.

Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of Americans' voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse. Caplan lays out several bold ways to make democratic government work better--for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular misconceptions and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack.

The Myth of the Rational Voter takes an unflinching look at how people who vote under the influence of false beliefs ultimately end up with government that delivers lousy results. With the upcoming presidential election season drawing nearer, this thought-provoking book is sure to spark a long-overdue reappraisal of our elective system.

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Price: $16.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (PPS) is a complete performance management solution, allowing companies to monitor their progress toward goals, analyze information, plan, budget, and forecast using dynamic modeling tools. Using interactive dashboards, PPS enables the integration of refined data from one or more sources into a single point-of-contact for key performance indicators, which are directly aligned to corporate strategies and goals.

This book will bring you up to speed on the Monitoring and Analytics features of PPS 2007. Topics include performance management theory, PPS installation and configuration, the Dashboard Designer, and the six Monitoring elements. Advanced topics include deployment, security, and scoring.

This book is a companion volume of The Rational Guide to Planning with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007.

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Price: $17.22 [Notify me when price goes down.]