Book Description
The dominant architectures in our culture of development consist of generic protocols for building offices, airports, houses, and highways. For Keller Easterling these organizational formats are not merely the context of design efforts -- they are the design. Bridging the gap between architecture and infrastructure, Easterling views architecture as part of an ecology of interrelationships and linkages, and she treats the expression of organizational character as part of the architectural endeavor.
Easterling also makes the case that these organizational formats are improvisational and responsive to circumstantial change, to mistakes, anomalies, and seemingly illogical market forces. By treating these irregularities opportunistically, she offers architects working within the customary development protocols new sites for making and altering space.
By showing the reciprocal relations between systems of thinking and modes of designing, Easterling establishes unexpected congruencies between natural and built environments, virtual and physical systems, highway and communication networks, and corporate and spatial organizations. She frames her unconventional notion of site not in terms of singular entities, but in terms of relationships between multiple sites that are both individually and collectively adjustable.
Book Description
Uber-babe bounty hunter Rally Vincent is on the trail of counterfeiters, but vengeance-minded killers are on the trail of Rally. And they've got her pal Misty under wraps. Rally has to team up with a pal who happens to work for one of Rally's bounty targets! Round and round Rally goes, but where she stops...you'd better believe she's heavily armed! Duck and cover! Gunsmith Cats is gun-blazing, tire-screeching, eye-popping manga as only Kenichi Sonoda can deliver. Includes two special Gunsmith Cats short stories.
Customer Reviews:
Worth it for the ending, but Misty disappoints.......2003-02-01
With the title Misty's Run, one hopes for a long-overdue storyline focusing on chronically underused Misty, who hasn't had a chance to let her talents shine since her introductory cameo in Misfire. In that appearance, Misty's skill with a knife rivaled Rally's with a gun, and when Misty joined the team two books later, it seemed that the Gunsmith Cats has a trifecta in place: Guns, bombs, and knives.
Perhaps that was the intention, and Sonoda later discovered he couldn't think of anything interesting to do with knives. Since then, Misty has often seemed to be a third wheel at worst and a plot device at best.
Misty briefly takes the spotlight at the beginning of Misty's Run, but quickly reveals herself to be a bit of an airhead who panics foolishly under pressure. She is promptly kidnapped and inexplicably stripped naked by her captors for no better reason than the fact that kidnappers just like to do that in GSC. She spends most of the book as eye candy for the reader, a lust object for a villain, and a damsel in distress to drive the plot.
The villains are lame pushovers compared to GSC villains past, and the action quickly coasts into yet another warehouse shootout, as though Sonoda is writing on autopilot. The tale draws to a close with a rather underachieving car chase, especially disappointing because this book is the first to prominently feature Bean Bandit's custom-built "Buff" sports car (originally appearing in the Bean Bandit anime that spawned Bean and Rally, but introduced to the GSC manga in Mister V) but fails to do very much with it.
Even Sonoda's amazing attention to detail dwindles here, with more and more backgrounds and even cars more sparsely drawn than ever. One pay phone is drawn like a Japanese pay phone (with a phonecard slot) instead of an American pay phone--a detail which Sonoda has gotten right in the past. On the whole, the effort feels rushed, as if Sonoda wants to do justice to the characters' swan song, but can't maintain his interest long enough to do so.
On the upside, Bean Bandit's car, though underutilized, is pretty impressive, and Bean's character turns in a strong performance as well. His teamwork with Rally and their briefly considered partnership (another nod to the OVA Bean Bandit anime) is an intriguing suggestion of what might have been, and a realization of the mutual respect and growing friendship they've shared throughout the series. And Misty's pointless nudity, though a bit lazy, does uphold the shameless titillation factor that is a GSC hallmark.
Why is this volume worth it? For completeness, perhaps, as it is the final book, but mainly for the the story that ended the Gunsmith Cats run, "Birthday." This touching tale of Rally's self-doubt on her birthday effectively takes stock of all of Rally's adventures and accomplishments, without short-changing the tragedies and failures along the way. It ends the series on the right note, and is a fitting farewell to the characters we've grown to love.
After "Birthday" is another short one-shot, published as a special after the official GSC run had ended. It's an unambitious but solid enough entry, sort of the equivalent of a good reunion special. Some of the old Sonoda razzle-dazzle detail work is back, which is a nice sign that he's still got it when he takes some time to rest up and recharge his artistic enthusiasm.
Misty's Run is worth it for the pitch-perfect ending, but unfortunately that's just a fraction of the book. If we ever get another Gunsmith Cats special, one way to invigorate it would be for Sonoda to finally do justice to Misty's potential.
Gunsmith Cats.......2002-11-11
wow
this book was really good its defintly one of my favs now
i dont know what volume this is but you catch on fast
its just like the discription only better
and theres 3 stories (but ones really a short extra)
if you know you like gunsmith cats cheek it out if you dont buy it anyway
Average customer rating:
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The Annotated Casey at the Bat: A Collection of Ballads About the Mighty Casey/Third, Revised Edition
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
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Casey At the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 (Caldecott Honor Book)
ASIN: 0486285987 |
Book Description
Entertaining tribute to the immortal slugger tells the story behind one of America’s best-loved poems. Includes introductory material on author Ernest L. Thayer, complete original version of poem and a profusion of amusing sequels and parodies, among them Casey’s Revenge, by Grantland Rice, Why Casey Whiffed, by Don Fairbairn; and Casey’s Sister at the Bat, by James O’Dea.
Customer Reviews:
Great Joy in Mudville.......2000-05-11
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Casey fans that day,
For their favorite ballad's history was fading fast away.
So when "Casey's Wife" was hard to find, and other poems were worse,
A pallor wreathed the features of the patrons of the verse.
A staggering few gave up the search, leaving there the rest,
With hope that springs eternal, within the human breast.
For they thought if only Gardner would take a careful look,
They'd put their hard-earned money down, if Gardner wrote a book.
But collecting all the parodies was too much work to do;
Mad Magazine had written one; and Grantland Rice wrote two.
And so the stricken multitude might never get to know 'em,
For there seemed but little chance of learning all about the poem.
But Dover publications has a Casey book to read,
With every bit of Casey lore that you will ever need.
To find these old forgotten poems, you need just take a look,
For Gardner, Martin Gardner, has compiled them in a book.
There is fun in Gardner's comments; there is wit from this old sage;
There are reams of careful research, and notes on every page.
So if you click the button, and wait a day or two,
There'll be Casey on your bookshelf, with all the others, too.
...
Oh, somewhere in these fabled lands, the sun is all too dim,
A band is silent somewhere, and somewhere hopes are slim,
And baseball lore is fading, and no one cares a bit,
But there is great joy in Mudville - Martin Gardner's scored a hit!
Customer Reviews:
Still useful reviews.......2007-05-17
A book I am keeping in my library for the useful reviews of individual performances of classical music. Even "out-of-date" books have their uses.
Customer Reviews:
How to Lose Your Chess Rating in Ten Days.......2007-06-19
Sorry for the brevity of this review, but I have no better way to sum up this book. As with most of Eric Schiller's work, this book makes your chess worse. It is loaded with filler "wisdom," such as how to win in 4 or less moves in six different ways, two of them involving the losing side's king marching to e2(e7) unprovoked. This completely useless material is a good example of what a waste of trees this book is.
Typos apart, this book is an all-in-one package..........2006-01-04
I am referring to the 2003 edition of this book which had a lot of errors corrected and now the games notation and illustrations are rarely erronous. The content of the book however is anything but "sloppy". This book is a must for the beginner-amateur level. There is hardly anything chess that this book hasn't covered. The chapters could be rearranged for better clarity but apart from that, the book is a great guide for getting into serious chess.
Canadian Reviewer.
Decent........2004-05-30
This book can be useful in 2 ways. First, it can expose beginners to a whole host of topics that they will eventually have to delve into in order to be decent at chess. These beginners can learn most of the broad rules of thumb that decent players take for granted. Second, once you become a weak intermediate - intermediate player, it might be useful to review the concepts once in a while, just to keep them fresh in your mind. It's funny how after studying a particular opening for a long period of time, you often forget one or two basic broad opening principles...
This book is the epitome of a three star book. It's decent, simple (necessary for its target audience) and does what it sets out to do with no frills or great "bonuses". In other words, it's fine. Unlike the atrocity that Schiller's "Standard Chess Openings" is, but that's another story...
Eric Schiller produces another terrible book.......2002-07-20
This book atracted me at first, since it looked good, and seemed to convey the essential knowledge any player who wants to improve his game needs. It dosent. after buying this books, i realise it was made for complete beginers, and was filled with extremly useless knowledge. The best example was a section about "mates in the opening", where Schiller presented how to mate in the scandinavian: 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 and if Ke2 then Qe4 mate. what does this useless examples, which will never occeur in a game (who plays 2.Ke2?) help me?
Schiller is a 2200 player, who has published over 80 books, some of which he writes in days, and ive seen many of his books, all of low quality. I urge you not to buy this or any other Schiller book. No matter what your level is, this book just will not help you.
Great essential themes and ideas book!.......2002-03-18
I picked up this book and it found it truely lives up to it's title. It gives the essential wisdom of basically all chess topics without going into tons of unnecessary over-analysis. Will introduce the topic, give you the main themes and important facts to know and a few examples to clearly illustrate those facts, and do so in an easy to read and understandable fashion.
I read this book on a trip and it was perfect since it illustrated it's points without too many examples.
Amazon.com
Responding to the familiar observation that what you don't know can and will hurt you, American Productivity and Quality Center leaders Carla O'Dell and C. Jackson Grayson Jr. have countered with a contention that the "hidden reservoirs of intelligence that exist in almost every organization" can, with work, be efficiently tapped "to create customer value, operational excellence, and product innovation--all the while increasing profits and effectiveness." If Only We Knew What We Know is their detailed examination of the resultant groundbreaking but common-sense methodology they have dubbed "knowledge management," along with their analysis of several companies such as Amoco, Arthur Andersen, Buckman Laboratories, and Xerox that are successfully employing it today. By studying the execution and evolution of this practice in over 70 companies involved with their non-profit management organization, the two have observed how top practitioners are turning internal information that's already selectively available into dynamic improvements that are apparent throughout the companies. They describe how to implement knowledge management in your own firm and describe the "enabling context" (including infrastructure, culture, technology, and measurement) that help or hinder the process. --Howard Rothman
Book Description
While companies search the world over to benchmark best practices, vast treasure troves of knowledge and know-how remain hidden right under their noses: in the minds of their own employees, in the often unique structure of their operations, and in the written history of their organizations. Now, acclaimed productivity and quality experts Carla O'Dell and Jack Grayson explain for the first time how applying the ideas of Knowledge Management can help employers identify their own internal best practices and share this intellectual capital throughout their organizations.
Knowledge Management (KM) is a conscious strategy of getting the right information to the right people at the right time so they can take action and create value. Basing KM on three major studies of best practices at one hundred companies, the authors demonstrate how managers can utilize a visual process model to actually transfer best practices from one business unit of the organization to another. Rich with case studies, concrete examples, and revealing anecdotes from companies including Texas Instruments, Amoco, Buckman, Chevron, Sequent Computer, the World Bank, and USAA, this valuable guide reveals how knowledge treasure chests can be unlocked to reduce product development cycle time, implement more cost-efficient operations, or create a loyal customer base. Finally, O'Dell and Grayson present three "value propositions" built around customers, products, and operations that could result in staggering payoffs as they did at the companies cited above.
No amount of knowledge or insight can keep a company ahead if it is not properly distributed where it's needed. Entirely accessible and immensely readable, If Only We Knew What We Know is a much-needed companion for business leaders everywhere.
Customer Reviews:
Very easy to read and usefull KM book.......2007-02-12
KM is about People, IT, Infraestructure and Metrics, I agree with Carla on that. KM is the key of today business.
Good 'outside the box' thoughts on KM.......2006-11-04
This book offers useful 'outside the box' reasons that knowledge management is needed and helpful. People generally think of knowledge management as being internally focused (i.e. "didn't we solve that problem last year"), this book goes beyond that to deeper levels of knowledge management. An example is you hire a person with 10 years experience (read: KNOWLEDGE) but peer teams aren't made aware of past experience (KNOWLEDGE), they are only made aware of the current job position. Knowledge management from a technology stand point is both a searchable repository and a broker service that links people with questions to people with answers. Creating a knowledge management system is challenging and should always involve outside council, use a good consulting company that won't try and sell you software but will provide a well designed solution. [...]
Useful introduction to KM .......2006-07-19
KM was a vague and fuzzy terminology for me, before i read this book. We had a KM subject as a part of the IT management course in Graduation and this book was suggested as a good reference to get insight and understanding. I found this book useful in giving a clear picture on KM - the concept underlying KM, the way to approach it, implementation methods, challenges, common pitfalls, lot of practical examples, success stories - all of this is covered. Another salient aspect is, the book is very easy to read - it doesn't thrown in too much of jargon or heavy-duty management stuff. This can be an easy read for anybody(the casual reader, the management junkie, student etc).
This book was written almost eight years ago. Much has changed due to the Internet revolution and the spawn of great IT tools. Even though the material of the book is still relevant (remember: IT is only a enabler and not be-all of KM), it would have been useful to have an updated version of the book with examples of implementation of KM in the current environment.
Here are some intresting excerpts from the book:
*******************
-Knowledge is what people in an organization know about their customers, products, processes, mistakes and successes, whether that knowledge is tacit or explicit. It is dynamic - a consequence of action and interaction of people in an organization with information and with each other.
-Knowledge Management is a conscious strategy of getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time and helping "people share and put information into action" in ways that strive to improve organizational performance.
-It's guaranteed that exhortation to "Share more!" will not work. It takes systems and systematic approaches like internal benchmarking, mapping the knowledge terrain, creating new practices, which costs time and money. That's why having a clear business case and a value proposition is important.
-Culture is important, because learning and sharing knowledge are social activities. They take place among people.
-while new technologies are making the transfer of practices and knowledge more affordable then ever before, companies that think that simply by developing an intranet they will make sharing happen are dangerously wrong.
-Technology is a catalyst for KM but no panacea.
-Business Values Drive Transfer benefits
-Having the right culture is critical
-There is no conclusion to managing knowledge and transfering best practices. It is a race without finishing line
**************
Solid Theory, But More Execution Tasks Needed.......2004-04-19
This book focuses on making the case for a knowledge management system. If you're already convinced and need specific, measurable steps, try a different book.
Very Relevant and Excellent Read.......2003-05-12
This book provides a terrific introduction to knowledge management and so much more. The authors have gone well beyond the theoretical treatment that most have provided on the subject and provide real world examples and processes for implementing knowledge management in your own company. The authors did not spend much time talking about applications that support KM, since the market is still growing, instead they touch upon the concepts that the software applications address. Although it was written in late 1998, the information presented is very timely and still accurate.
-- Highlights --
The first section of the book (3 chapters, 30 pages or so) get you up to speed on what knowledge management is and is not. It also addresses some barriers and benefits of KM.
The second section of the book makes you think about the reasoning behind a KM initiative. This should be standard management-type thinking, but I've found it to be often overlooked in today's IT environment. Why are we doing this? The authors give you three reasons (customer intimacy, time-to-market, and operational excellence) and tell you the type of data to focus on for each of the three reasons.
The third section talks about enabling the enterprise to effectively use a KM system. The authors note that it is vital for the processes to be aligned witht he strategy of the company and the job tasks people currently undertake. To that end, they look at the cultural, technological, infrastructure, and measurement requirements of the KM initiative.
The fourth section gives some case studies of Texas Instruments, Buckman Laboratories, and Sequent. The text refers to these case studies throughout the earlier chapters of the book and now gives them each a chapter to overview how they went about building a successful knowledge sharing infrastructure.
The fifth and final section of the book gives a framework for pursuing the sharing of knowledge and best practices. This is the "What do I do on Monday?" section, according to the authors. It gives a 40 page prescription for the planning, designing, implementing, and scaling phases of a knowledge management program.
The next several years will be very interesting in the I.T. arena. These authors were somewhat ahead of their time in writing this book. Companies across the globe have been storing knowledge in their silos for the past decade as they have taken products to market, built disconnected customer information systems, and as employees have given feedback on internal business processes. The coming business intelligence revolution will seek to organize that information and put it in the hands of people who can create value and grow the business based on the intrinsic knowledge it contains. This book provides a great framework for those who have to conceptualize, design, and build information systems to meet those needs.
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- Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto
- Pandora's Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (Mythos: the Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology)
- Passionate Journey: A Novel Told in 165 Woodcuts
- Performing the Visual: The Practice of Buddhist Wall Painting in China and Central Asia, 618-960
- Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art (Topographics)
- Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection
- Promo 2: The Ultimate in Graphic Designer's and Illustrator's Self-Promotion (Promo)
- Raphael and His Circle: Drawings from Windsor Castle
- Ready-to-Use Popular Music Illustrations: 96 Different Copyright-Free Designs Printed One Side (Dover Clip-Art Series)
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