This movie is more than just another Disney masterpiece. The Jungle Book is a great tale of friendship and adventure. Although almost every animated feature that was created during Walt Disney's life is a classic, this one in particular holds a special place in the heart of many men (and now thanks to video and DVD, boys) who saw it while growing up. There isn't a boy alive who can see this movie and not want to be Mowgli. What a life it would be to live in the jungle, with friends like Baloo and Bagheera. It is every young boys dream to be so free.

That is not to say that only boys will love this movie. As with all Disney films, this one will be enjoyed by all members of the family, young and old. I saw it growing up, and never forgot my memories of the movie, and the days afterward, singing the songs and dreaming of adventure.

The music in The Jungle Book is some of the best in any Disney movie. "The Bare Necessities" is simply one of the best songs ever. Add in the fantastic animation and the characters that come to life (who wouldn't believe a bear could sing after seeing this?), and you have one of the many classic Disney stories.

Starring the voices of Disney regulars Phil Harris and Sterling Holloway, as well as Sebastian Cabot (Mr. French, to those of my generation) and many others, this movie is too good to not buy.

Get a copy of this DVD before Disney removes it for another generation. It is the best that Disney has to offer.

Mowgli was raised by wolves and now he's growing up in the jungle. He's been in the jungle all his life, so he doesn't know what it's like to even be around another person. But it's not as bad as it sounds, Mowgli has tons of great friends such as the hilarious Baloo the bear. But he also has a few enemies, mainly a gruesome tiger named Shere Khan, who doesn't like humans at all. It's up to Mowgli to survive in the wilderness, and with the aid of his friends, he'll have a good chance of not having to worry about Shere Khan. But will Mowgli ever find out what it's like to be around other people?

"The Jungle Book" is a good movie. It has good animation, it's entertaining with the animated drama and the hilarious antics of Baloo, and it has some of the best songs out of any of the Disney movies, such as "Bear Necessities." I recommend anybody who likes animated movies to take a walk in the jungle and give "The Jungle Book" a chance.

The feature-length cartoons Disney continues to produce are fine films, but nowhere near as good as classics like The Jungle Book. Unburdened by the modern-day Disney habit of giving every film a heavy family-friendly moral message, the Jungle Book is just 100% pure fun, with a cool hero (Mowgli), entertaining friends (especially the bear Baloo) and some great villainous characters (most memorably Shere Khan the tiger). This movie was made years before Phil Collins or Elton John were drafted in as cartoon soundtrack composers, and the songs are just awesome - "The Bare Necessities", "I Wanna Be Like You" and Kaa the snake's hissed encouragement to "Trust in Me". Get this DVD while you can!

If you are a beginner and have just graduated from "Mouse Movements and Double Clicking 101", then this book is for you. I was disappointed that a book with "Bible" in it's title could be so superficial. But if you need to read entire pages on how to open and save files, what an alert box is and how to click "OK", then go for it, you will especially enjoy the HUGE pictures of screen shots with the small paragraph of descriptive text on each page.

But if you have any notions of setting up file sharing groups and privileges (without buying OS X Server), you might find the single paragraph on page 357 quite inadequate. Of course, you can do it from the Unix command line, which I wouldn't really expect this book to cover, but you can do it with the GUI interface NetInfo Manager as well. Sorry, you won't even find the word "utilities" in the index of this "Bible."

With great anticipation I cracked open this latest edition of Lon Poole's classic book. Imagine my surprise and dismay when I discovered that it didn't actually cover version 10.1! I immediately called the publisher to complain, and to my delight, they sent me a CD-ROM containing an entire 10.1 PDF update to the book. What started out as a bummer worked out to my advantage in the end, and now I've got the supremely portable (10.1) edition. Hopefully they'll integrate this stuff into a future printing (which would earn it a "5"). In the meantime, I can attest that Lon Poole hasn't lost a step in his lucid, thorough treatment of the latest rev of the latest Mac OS. Thanks again, Lon!

Lon Poole has been writing computer books for quite a long time. A quick search on Amazon shows 33 titles with his name on the cover, with some titles dating back to the Apple II and Atari 400 (!) days. Dennis Cohen, while not quite as prolific as Poole, has a substantial amount of computer writing experience. He also has spent time as a professional Macintosh programmer.

The MacWorld Mac OS X Bible clearly shows the years of writing experience at work here. It is a solid, well-crafted, and readable manual that covers Macintosh OS X 10.1. Be forewarned that it is not the be-all and end-all reference manual for aspiring Unix geeks. That market is better served by Mac OS X Unleashed.

The MacWorld Mac OS X Bible (hereafter referred to as Mac OS X Bible) is targeted at those who are upgrading to OS X, as well as those new to the Mac OS. Poole and Cohen present the material with a logical flow, discussing Mac OS X concepts, features, and tips. Most of the OS X material is followed with a compare-and-contrast with OS 9, so upgraders will be able to see how OS X differs from OS 9. I found this approach useful, as my mind works better by knowing how the new is different from the old, rather than just being told what's new.

Poole and Cohen cover the expected material; OS X basics, the Aqua user interface, Internet setup, how to use the included OS X applications, etc. This is familiar ground that every OS X book covers (or should cover). The author duo presents this information in a steady, workmanlike fashion. I did not learn anything new that other OS X titles had not covered. There is only so much one can write about Sherlock, and every book says much the same things. But the writing style is clear and easy to follow.

Part III: Beyond the Basics is the best part of this 779 page tome. The authors strike a good balance between too-simple and too-complex in their presentation of more advanced OS X concepts. Again, it is important to note that the target readership is beginner to intermediate level Macintosh users. Mac OS X Bible is not going to tell you much about using the included Apache web server to administer your personal web site. Nor is there a down and dirty how-to for advanced Terminal use.

But that's not the point. Most readers of this book want end-user information, not Unix administrator information. And that's what they get. The authors do a good job of covering User accounts and privileges, local area networks, and the various methods of sharing files (Web sharing, FTP, and remote login). It's the right mix of detail for the home or small-business Mac user who wants to do something, but who does not need the amount of detail that a professional administrator does.

Apple released OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) last month. Is this book (and review) obsolete? Not at all. It will take several months before the Jaguar books hit the shelves. Even then, the fundamentals of Max OS X will not have changed. MacWorld Mac OS X Bible is still very useful, even if you are using 10.2.

MacWorld Mac OS X Bible is a worthwhile competitor in the fight to be the best all-around OS X manual

MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5

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David Weeks
http://www.mymac.com/weeks/mwosx_9.19.02.shtml

This work has a high value to understand how our brain works and I do recommend it from that point of view. Indeed, the book is probably a first full description of the neurobiological foundations of the self (as we understand this today). Yet, Damasio's approach in this book is somewhat reductionistic. It reduces our emotions and our thinking to the facts that a neuroscientist will be able to observe.

From that perspective, it's a real masterpiece. On the other hand, it won't be very useful in achieving a higher level of emotional intelligence, since that requires answering a different question: "How do people use the brain?" To compare: it's not because you understand how a PC functions from a technical point of view that you'll understand how to use a program such as an E-mail editor (to give a simple example). From this second perspective, its really difficult for me to accept some of his conclusions on how consciousness causes emotions, especially since for him a mental image is the same as a mental pattern and his definitions for the word "feeling" and "emotion" differ from the convention definitions. Where his neuroscience vocabulary is more detailed than that of an average cognitive scientist, his vocabulary for the cognitive psychological processes is smaller, and as Wittgenstein has stated: "The boundaries of my language are the boundaries of my world."

Near the end of the book Damasio states: "in all likelihood, I will never know your thoughts unless you tell me, and you will never know mine until I tell you". I agree with him in that his approach won't help him to understand someone's behavior, but I know that many other theories will help me in that area.

Patrick E.C. Merlevede, MSc. -- co-author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"

Like the Roman aqueduct of Segovia, Spain, Dr. Damasio has built a monument, block by block. At the clinical level this book is a must for neuropsychiatrists when searching for rational guidance in their therapeutic approaches. At the scientific level, Dr. Damasio has accomplished,singlehandedly, what Watson and Crick did in piecing together portions of multifaceted data to give birth their DNA mosaic; but it had to wait for Nirenberg's genetic code to achieve a solid scientific status. As we move forward to the philosophical level, we find Damasio's projections somewhat illusive. To start with, he seems to have a confusion between 'awareness' and 'consciousness'; the latter lacking the purpose element that underlies the former. Awareness brings together the object and the body for an effective adaptive goal (which may not even require being conscious,see "Thinking About my Thoughts", submitted in Dec.'99 for March 2000 publication in Telicom* by the undersigned). Consciousness is just 'experiencing' or "feeling the feelings". We may agree up to the "feeling" but being able to feel the self is a qualitative jump. At the end of the book Dr. Damasio substitutes the "object" being imaged by the brain for an 'emotion' and then reasons that if you can image an object (ideal or natural), you can also image the subject of the emotion. The problem being that the an object (natural or ideal) has essence and existence, is substantive whereas an 'emotion' is a predicate, devoid of an independant existence, devoid of the "self" he is claiming to have felt. Perhaps just as serious is his scalpel excision of language from his conceptual model. "Language" is any system of signs useful to man to communicate his thoughts"** By limiting the definition of language to its most sophisticated stage of evolution, the spoken word, it is understandable that it can't be accomodated in his conceptual model. Interoceptive (body), exteroceptive (object) and language domains are interactive and form a "feeling" but 'feeling the self' is incorporating interactively the non-materiality of 'self'into the materiality of the brain, a pipe dream!.

*Telicom is a publication of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (ISPE) **Biopsychosociology, Limusa Ed, Mexico 1987, by the undersigned.

I much appreciated reading Damasio's book. First and for most because Damasio's study logically combines objective neurologic facts with rigorous introspective analysis. At last, «hard» science can be profitably put to work to tackle global subjective problems. Damasio seems to be at the forefront of this relatively new trend. And his book is a good reference point to help any serious reader to think about the way consciousness works.

Brain injuries mentioned in the book show that, contrary to widespread belief, consciousness does not originate in the cortex, or in a «higher» human faculty; it originates in the more primitive areas of the brain. Damasio stresses that it is a fact, not an hypothesis, independantly of what we may think of his thesis exposed in the book. The core of his thesis is that consciousness originates from the internal representation of perceived modifications to the body (to the «proto-self» ) caused by perceived external objects interacting with the body during that time. We become conscious of ourselves, of the external objects and of the interaction between the two at the same time.

Even if most of the time, the language used is very easy to understand, I had difficulties grasping his multi-levels concepts about the self and about consciousness. At first they seemed to me badly defined and arbitrary. But further attentive reading, further exposure to the neurological facts put forward by Damasio and further thinking made me see the reasons behind those concepts.

However, I still think that Damasio's notion of the self is a too passive one. He doesn't emphasize the essential role of the «inner drive» of the body (instincts, impulses, basic desires, etc.) in the making of consciousness. It seems to me that the concrete feeling of that basic inner drive is a unifying whole in front of the external world and objects. It is much more concrete and real than any other internal representation of our own body. It is that drive that made us (as babies) interact in the first place with external objects, experience with them and distinguish them from us. So, it surely must have a central role to play in the process of consciousness, maybe taking the place of Damasio's more general «proto-self».

Anyway, Damasio's book is a great one that made me think a lot and put order in my own thoughts. He is a courageous scientist trying to explain objectively what is going on subjectively. He is upgrading with the newest science what great thinkers like Hegel and Piaget had been doing (in other fields of knowledge).