Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction I BACKGROUND Long-term astrophysical processes Evolution theory and the future of humanity Millenial tendencies in responses to apocalyptic threats Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgement of global risks Observation selection effects and global catastrophic risks Systems-based risk analysis Catastrophes and insurance Public policy towards catastrophe II RISKS FROM NATURE Super-volcanism and other geophysical processes of catastrophic import Hazards from comets and asteroids Influence of Supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, solar flares, and cosmic rays on the terrestrial environment III RISKS FROM UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES Climate change and global risk Plagues and pandemics: past, present, and future Artificial Intelligence as a positive and negative factor in global risk Big troubles, imagined and real IV RISKS FROM HOSTILE ACTS Catastrophe, social collapse, and and human extinction The continuing threat of nuclear war Catastrophic nuclear terrorism: a preventable peril Biotechnology and biosecurity Nanotechnology as global catastrophic risk The totalitarian threat Author's biographies Index

Global Catastrophic Risks

(The place of publication is London and the date 2007 unless otherwise stated.)

List of publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland published in 2007

(The place of publication is London and the date 2008 unless otherwise stated.)

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/ehr_507.pdf?abstractid=1488491&mirid=5

List of publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland published in 2008

The Seven Deadly Sins of Prostitution: Perceptions of Prostitutes and Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century London Jessica Steinberg Supervised by Dr. Richard Connors 2014 This thesis examines perceptions of lower-class female prostitutes and prostitution in eighteenth-century London. It reveals that throughout the Hanoverian period perceptions of prostitution were shaped by sensibilities about morality, the social order, and sin. To explore attitudes towards prostitution in eighteenth-century London, this dissertation evaluates how governing elites, ecclesiastical authorities, contributors to the newspaper press, and popular commentators discussed prostitution. This dissertation engages with two main assumptions about prostitution in eighteenth-century London. First, it demonstrates that there is more continuity in perceptions of prostitution than historians have recognized; attitudes towards prostitutes did not shift from hostility to sympathy in a straight-forward manner. Second, this dissertation reveals that prostitution was regarded by Augustan and Hanoverian Londoners as a significant social problem because it embodied and encapsulated the seven deadly sins – lust, avarice, pride, envy, gluttony, sloth, and wrath. This thesis suggests that prostitutes’ excessive lust and avarice were not seen as disparate issues, but were often discussed together. Paradoxically, discussants recognized that financial considerations drove some women into prostitution, but these women were regarded as abnormally greedy and corrupt because they resorted to deceptive tactics. Pride and envy were associated with prostitution because Hanoverians believed some prostitutes bought

The Seven Deadly Sins of Prostitution: Perceptions of Prostitutes and Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century London

The cessation of hostilities to the Great War with the signing of the Armistice on 11
November 1918 brought the largest and most devastating war hitherto known to an end. It was meant to be the “War to End War”, yet a little over twenty years later in 1939 it was eclipsed by the devastation of the Second World War. The shadow of war loomed over the intervening years, which were marked by pronounced speculation on where human society was going; for every prophet of
doom anticipating collapse into degradation, animosity, and self-annihilation there was a contrasting viewpoint awaiting the move towards a better new world. Further, these assessments often overlapped. This thesis examines the impact of apocalyptic ideas within British art in the interwar years. It looks at painting, drawings, prints, and sculpture, addressing the use and development of
apocalyptic concepts during the period 1918-1939, and explicitly relates contemporary anxieties and apocalyptic evocations with Christian apocalyptic narratives. Interwar British society at large identified with Christian traditions, either as products of a Christian education and state, or through
belief. The Apocalypse is central to Christian hope. The project surveys this under appreciated aspect of the period in order to recognise the influence of Judeo-Christian apocalyptic traditions. The apocalyptic orientation, both in its religious and secular forms, has been recognised as a manifestation arising from anxiety in the contemporary context. This thesis reveals a British permutation of a general (European) trend.

Visions of the End in Interwar British Art

Cultures of Shame

Christian Ideals in British Culture

This article argues that the religious history written within the last thirty years has been unduly constrained by the impact of the secularization thesis. Through evaluating the original historiog...

Reconnecting Religion with Social and Cultural History: Secularization's Failure as a Master Narrative

Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors The History and Theory of Shame - Then and Now Private Passions and Public Penance: Popular Shaming Rituals in Pre-Modern Britain The Shame and Fame of Half-Hangit Maggie: Attitudes to the Child Murderer in Early Modern Scotland 'To Make Men of their Honesty Afraid': Shaming the Ideological Dissident 1650-1834 Conservatives, Humanitarians and Reformers Debate Shame The Everyday Life of a Wexford Parson: The Rev. William Hughes' Taste for Drink, Blasphemy, Indecent Exposure, Criminal Damage, Bestial Voyeurism and Field Sports 'The Woman in the Iron mask': From Low Life Picaresque to Bourgeois Tragedy - Matrimonial Violence and the Audiences for Shame 'Writing Cuckold on the Forehead of a Dozen Husbands': Mid-Victorian Monarchy and the Construction of Bourgeois Shame Conclusion: Reconciling Shame with Modernity Bibliography

Cultures of Shame: Exploring Crime and Morality in Britain 1600-1900

This article examines the comparatively neglected history and historiography of blasphemy relating this to wider histories of sin, crime and criminality. It charts the history of the subject and identifies significant epochs of change altering the crime’s character in Europe and America over the last four hundred years. This history is then related to the chief paradigms associated with crime and violence, those proposed by Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias, noting the comparative strength and weaknesses of these two approaches. . The article suggests that blasphemy occurred as either a 'passive' or 'active' entity. The former was characteristic of late medieval and early modern states where the harm caused by blasphemy was visited upon the whole community and this entity was responsible for seeking restitution and redress. After the enlightenment and the rise of liberal regimes of rights this was replaced by ‘active’ blasphemy which henceforth required individuals to demonstrate the actual harm they had experienced. The article concludes that the dangerous fissures in multiculturalism and the vanishing confidence of liberal states is arguably rejuvenating the model of "passive" blasphemy.

David Nash

Papers

Cultures of Shame

Christian Ideals in British Culture

Reconnecting Religion with Social and Cultural History: Secularization's Failure as a Master Narrative

Cultures of Shame: Exploring Crime and Morality in Britain 1600-1900

Analyzing the History of Religious Crime: Models of "Passive" and "Active" Blasphemy since the Medieval Period