WRB

The next time you feel the need to reach out, touch base, shift a paradigm, leverage a best practice or join a tiger team, by all means do it. Just don’t say you’re doing it.

If you have to ask why, chances are you’ve fallen under the poisonous spell of business jargon. No longer solely the province of consultants, investors and business-school types, this annoying gobbledygook has mesmerized the rank and file around the globe.

“Jargon masks real meaning,” says Jennifer Chatman, management professor at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “People use it as a substitute for thinking hard and clearly about their goals and the direction that they want to give others.”

To save you from yourself (and to keep your colleagues and customers from strangling you), we have assembled a cache of expressions to assiduously avoid.

=> http://yhoo.it/zRWB1G

Tags: words // Add Comment »

A Sick Day for Amos McGee

Philip Christian Stead
Winner of the 2011 Randolph Caldecott Medal

THE BEST SICK DAY EVER and the animals in the zoo feature in this striking picture book debut. Friends come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. In Amos McGee’s case, all sorts of species, too! Every day he spends a little bit of time with each of his friends at the zoo, running races with the tortoise, keeping the shy penguin company, and even reading bedtime stories to the owl. But when Amos is too sick to make it to the zoo, his animal friends decide it’s time they returned the favor.

Read the review and watch as Illustrator Erin Stead talks about the process of creating the artwork for her Caldecott-winning picture book, A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE. => http://bit.ly/wFdS8B

Tags: A Sick Day for Amos McGee, Christina Stead, Illustrators, Philip Christian Stead, Radolph Caldecott Medal, books, children's books, kids books // Add Comment »

Zero Day

David Baldacci

EAN:978-0446573016
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: November 2011

Busy Baldacci, already on his third hardcover of the year (after The Sixth Man and One Summer), here launches a new series starring combat veteran John Puller. Now a top-notch investigator in the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigative Division, Puller is asked to look into the murder of an army man and his wife, a Pentagon contractor, in their isolated rural home. => http://bit.ly/mrzgjj

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Clearly defined goals are key to success because without clear direction your dreams have no chance to become a reality. Embrace the ten rules of goal setting shared in the movie, Goals, The 10 Rules for Achieving Success and give witness to a powerful transition in your life.

The Goals book and movie from Simple Truths is the perfect tool to provide the goal setting and achieving information you need in a straight forward and systematic manner. => http://bit.ly/As0Sm6

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The Price of Life

Nigel Brennan

Nigel travelled to Somalia with a Canadian journalist to cover the humanitarian and food crises, the ongoing conflict and drought that has ravaged Somalia for nearly 20 years. Four days after arriving in Mogadishu, they where ambushed just outside the capital. They were to be held hostage for the next 462 days. => http://bit.ly/u8MTMv

Tags: Nigel Brennan, Price of Life, autoiography // Add Comment »

Adopt a Book makes a great Christmas gift for friends and family. The booklist has been updated for Christmas and includes a variety of choices from classic children’s titles to 18th century cookbooks.

For more than 20 years, Adopt A Book has been at the heart of the British Library’s giving programme.

Thousands of donors have chosen to adopt rare, imaginative, quirky and intriguing volumes from the Library’s collections and, in doing so, have made valuable contributions to our vital Conservation programme.

=> http://bit.ly/tVfmiU

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There’s a Hippopotamus on our roof eating cake

Hazel Edwards

My daddy says there’s a hole in our roof. I know why there’s a hole. There’s a hippopotamus on our roof eating cake.’ This classic story about one of the largest and most famous imaginary friends has been delighting children around the world now for 30 years.

http://bit.ly/jjjXT0 for more on the book, the trailer and fiction activities for the book

Tags: Hazel Edwards, There's a hippopotamus on our roof eating cake, book trailers, books, children's books, kids books // Add Comment »

Sing You Home

Jodi Picoult

After Zoe and Max’s last attempt to conceive fails tragically, their marriage breaks apart. When Zoe falls in love again and considers having a family, she remembers that there are still frozen embryos that were never used. But who do they really belong to? An honest and moving story of contemporary relationships and the consequences when love and desire collide with science and the law.

More (plus the trailer) here => http://bit.ly/oREe9n

Tags: Sing You Home, book trailers, books // Add Comment »

The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age: A historical, sociological and philosophical enquiry

by John Thornton

EAN:978-0733988486
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Pearson Education Australia
Publication Date: 2007

The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age is a book both for undergraduate computing students and for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of technology in the modern world. Dispensing with simplistic explanations, the book first considers the evolution of the computer from the origins of number to the development of the microprocessor. It goes on to provide a theoretical explanation of computation and a practical demonstration of how a computer works. Using this as background, the text then examines the phenomenon of information technology within the broader context of modern science, culture and civilisation. In this way, the reader is drawn to consider how our technical, materialistic understandings have ignored the underlying reality from which all technology emerges: human consciousness.

RRP $80.95 Our price $26.95 => http://bit.ly/q6kPl3

Tags: John Thornton, The Foundations of Computing and the Information Technology Age, books, discounts, pre-loved books, text book // Add Comment »

I think of the paperback game as a summertime entertainment, best played in beach and lake houses and old inns, all of which tend to collect visitors’ random and abandoned books. So the weekend of the Fourth of July seems like a good time to share, review and/or clarify the rules. From here you can bend them to your will and make the game your own.

Here’s what you’ll need to play: slips of paper (index cards work well), a handful of pencils or pens and a pile of paperback books. Any sort of book will do, from a Dostoyevsky to a Jennifer Egan, and from diet guides to the Kama Sutra. But we’ve found it’s especially rewarding to use genre books: mysteries, romance novels, science fiction, pulp thrillers, westerns, the cheesier the better. If you don’t have well-thumbed mass-market paperbacks in your house, you can usually buy a pile from your library, or from a used-book store, for roughly 50 cents a pop.

=> http://nyti.ms/kDFBYn

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