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The members of greedy communities do not make good citizens because they are only marginally interested in the political community; their sense of the common good is determined mostly by their religious beliefs and not by their membership in or allegiance to the state: some of them refuse, on principle, to declare their allegiance to anything as secular as a state. Immigration is an individual (or familial) decision, a free choice, which represents a break with those Old World communities whose members were, in Sandel’s exact sense, encumbered selves, that is, men and women whose obligations were given; the immigrants, once they have arrived in their new country, do not have obligations in quite the same sense. The more active members of groups (though not of the greediest groups) are also the more active citizens of the republic, the people who come closest to the civic commitment that Sandel wants to encourage–but a substantial part of what they are doing, and they probably understand it this way, is representing particular interests, bargaining for a place on “balanced” tickets, negotiating compromise arrangements, getting as much as they can from the state. Justice is a kind of recognition, and individual men and women who are recognized in their communities and empowered by them may be the most likely citizens of the community of communities.

This chapter surveys further important techniques for designing fixed-parameter algorithms. These include color-coding, integer linear programming, iterative compression, greedy localization, and graph minor theory. The practical relevance of each technique is also evaluated. From a practical point of view, the two most important techniques are colour-coding and iterative compression.

This chapter introduces some refinements by which regular expressions might be restrained from their customary greedy and exuberant activities. This is introductory obedience school for regular expressions. Regular expressions (regex), introduced in Chapters 4 and 6, are revisited. Like an overgrown golden retriever puppy, regexes are lots of fun and eager to please. They are also destructive and a bit dangerous if trained incorrectly. Good practices are shown for documenting your regex with the extended formatting mode and taking care with regex ‘greediness’. The more advance uses of non-capturing groups and look-ahead assertions as well as a two-page summary of regex syntax are included. Side boxes include: braille, hieroglyphics, and informatino on joining the DNA philological club.

The chapter explain the concept of a greedy algorithm, and provide four successively less-greedy versions of a contraction algorithm. Here, the earlier work familiarizing the reader with dependency networks and their coloration conventions is key. The chapter discusses further possible sophistications of our approach, which would involve relaxing some of our simplifying assumptions: (i) making use of information about relative entrenchment of beliefs; (ii) being able to give up transitional steps among beliefs, in addition to beliefs themselves; and (iii) weakening the degree of support that the premises of a step afford its conclusion, so that it is probabilistic rather than apodeictic. The fourth version of our algorithm addresses (i).

Matroids can be defined in many different but equivalent ways. This chapter introduces these different axiom systems and proves their equivalence. It also presents various fundamental examples of matroids and illustrates the basic concepts in the context of these examples. The discussions cover independent sets and circuits; bases; rank; closure; geometric representations of matroids of small rank; transversal matroids; the lattice of flats; and the greedy algorithm.

This chapter explains the nature of the vice of greed, focusing on what can be called “modest greed.” It illuminates why the globally wealthy may be greedy even when not obsessive about wealth or status, and why greed will be an especially problematic vice for future generations.

This chapter focuses on some of the ways in which the organizational structure of the Orthodox neighborhood structures commitment on an everyday life. Using network analysis and ethnographic observations, I show how Orthodox residents are summoned by multiple organizations that vie for their time, money and commitment. Although residents usually belong to a primary sub-affiliation, they are pulled by other affiliations and organizations. As I show, the rhythms of organizational life—from the schools, synagogues and ritual baths to international panhandlers who come from Israel in search of alms—come to be anticipated by Orthodox residents. These rhythms and syncopations thus form the fulcrum of a shared social word.

There are many forms of mathematical insights, but only a few major strategies can be used to construct polynomial-time algorithms. These include divide and conquer, dynamic programming, greedy algorithms, duality, and reductions. This chapter explores these strategies and considers how a problem can be broken into subproblems that are small enough, and few enough, to solve quickly. It presents examples that demonstrate how to sort a pack of cards, align genomes, find short paths, hear the music of the spheres, route the flow of traffic, typeset beautiful books, build efficient networks, or run a dating service. The chapter begins with a classic example of recursion: the Towers of Hanoi, introduced by the mathematician Edouard Lucas. It then looks at several important problems where a divide-and-conquer strategy works and explains how so many other problems can be expressed in terms of reachability and shortest path.

This chapter presents a cultural sociological case study of C3 Toronto (C3T), a neo-Pentecostal church. It begins by tracing the history of C3 Church and the wider Charismatic movement to which C3T belongs. It then demonstrates how the religion of the heart is institutionalized at C3T in the form of Charismatic Christian (CC) discourse. Next, by treating the church’s Sunday worship service as a collective ritual, the chapter argues that—through a combination of customized aesthetics, language ideology, conversion narratives, conferring moral authority on pastors, and practices of self-cultivation—C3T successfully reconstitutes members’ selves to accord with the church’s collective conscience. Moreover, C3T functions as a “greedy institution,” in that it seeks to stifle shifting involvements and alternative commitments among its members. The chapter concludes that the case of C3T vindicates critics’ fears about the intimate affinities shared between the religion of the heart (or “spirituality”) and neoliberalism. However, it also challenges the view that the appeal of Charismatic Christianity is wholly economic in character.

This chapter considers the effects of a robust nuclear posture on nuclear arms races. Critics have argued that attaining nuclear advantages is difficult because the effort will provoke dangerous arms races. Drawing on existing international relations scholarship and an empirical examination of US arms competitions, it argues that arms races are not generally a significant cost to the maintenance of a robust nuclear force. It advances new theoretical propositions on “nuclear underkill” to delineate the reasons why US adversaries are often unwilling or unable to respond to US nuclear advantages. Further, it shows that enemy buildups often occur irrespective of US nuclear posture decisions. Third, it explains that winning arms races is sometimes a necessary, if undesirable, part of international politics. Finally, the chapter shows that arms races are rare and that the United States has consistently been able to achieve meaningful and enduring strategic advantages over its nuclear-armed rivals.

This chapter is one of four case studies of an interpretive approach in action, this time informed by the genres of thought found in gender studies. It seeks to identify, map, and understand the ways in which the everyday beliefs and practices of British central government departments embed social constructions of masculinity and femininity. It draws on observational fieldwork and repeat interviews conducted between 2002 and 2004 to analyse the everyday practices of departmental courts. It argues that these courts have gendered practices and are ‘greedy institutions’. The chapter unpacks their practices of hierarchy, civility, rationality, gendered division of work, and long hours. It shows the persistence of inherited beliefs and everyday practices that maintain gender inequality at the apex of government. It argues that these practices have significant gender consequence; most notably women have few institutional options other than to ‘manage like men’.

The final chapter revisits the framework for the army’s strategic culture that was laid out earlier in this volume and identifies the implications for Pakistan’s behavior over the near term. It argues that Pakistan is a greedy state in the parlance of Glaser. Thus, policies of appeasement, such as helping to secure a resolution of Kashmir, may encourage Pakistan’s persistent revisionism rather than vitiate it. The chapter concludes with the ominous suggestion that the world must be ready for a Pakistan that is willing to take ever more dangerous risks because, in the view of the Pakistan army, it has everything to lose by not doing so. For the army, to be defeated is not to lose on the battlefield; rather, defeat is to forego the opportunity or ability to keep resisting India and the agenda that Pakistan ascribes to its eastern nemesis.