Globalization has "scaled up" the financial system and the level of risk, "so now when [the system] fails, it fails catastrophically on a much greater scale than we have ever seen before".
They effectively declared the mildly abnormal normal, making deviant behavior acceptable, right up until the moment when, after the shuttle launched on a particularly cold Florida morning in 1986, its O-rings failed catastrophically and the ship broke apart.
"Every small business Exchange server I have seen has failed catastrophically at some point because it wasn't being maintained," says Matt Siegel, IT professional and owner of New York's Little Tree Networks.
"Even though public housing failed catastrophically elsewhere in the country, it has largely been successful here," Torres says.
"Engineers will tell you if it fails it will not fail incrementally," said Ward. "It will fail catastrophically".
Under starved lubrication conditions, the non-textured samples always failed catastrophically by scuffing, which is a sudden and catastrophic failure.
The prime minister's gamble in calling last Thursday's snap election, in a bid to consolidate her Conservative party's power, failed catastrophically, resulting in the party losing its parliamentary majority, while its main rival, Labour, performed strongly.
Unrestrained capitalism had failed catastrophically, and there were even calls in some quarters to junk it altogether.
They seem to be at the whim of a system that failed catastrophically, and which is held to be faulty by those who supported it in the first place".
BEHIND THE NEWS Judge Martin L. C. Feldman said the government had failed to justify its "blanket, generic, indeed punitive, moratorium," given the economic disruption it would cause, beyond simply assuming that all rigs must pose a danger because one failed catastrophically.
