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A revised mythology for a new technological age is beautifully rendered through Curran's photographs and words.
Thus do I imagine Douglas Curran, the author of _In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space_. Judging from the material in this book, he has a way of drawing people out to discuss their dreams and hopes about outer space and extraterrestrials. These stories reveal individuals who hold that humanity's salvation or doom might live in outer space, and that flying saucers are the craft of any number of entities: angels, devils, saviours or invaders. A skeptic might see these folk as possessed by an obsession, but Curran views them as adherents to a variety of new religions, all taking their cosmogonies from the outer dark. Most of these people find hope and salvation in that darkness. Though it is difficult to pick a favorite, I think that the book's representative figure is John Reeves, the gentleman who was taken on a trip in a flying saucer to Venus, and who subsequently erected an obelisk marking the spot where the spacecraft landed. Those readers concerned only with scientific truth might laugh at such a narrative, but Curran's portrait reveals a man full of conviction and dedication to the cause of informing the world about visitors from outer space. The book is full of such unique individuals, all convinced completely of their own particular truths. Curran's journey across Canada and the United States produced a wide variety of charming, fascinating, and unique portraits of adherents to their a new mythology for the Space Age.
Though Mr. Curran would probably deny it, one of the most interesting characters in this work is the author himself. Driven by curiosity and a sense of adventure, he set out on a glorified road trip to discover what people thought about outer space. In doing so, he came to believe that humans need order and hope, and that many of us look to the stars for these normalizing abstractions. It would be interesting to see what sort of book Curran would produce today, now that alien abductions have replaced hopeful messages from space angels as the most common UFO event. Perhaps Curran could not write such a book, since the most important elements in his character seem to be hope and joy, ideas which are rare in the abduction phase of our vision of outer space. There is a real need for voices like Douglas Curran's, and I hope that this book comes back into print soon.
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I began reading this when my first son was 2 years old and he loved the poems then and he loves them now. Neither of my children are otherwise very interested in reading about insects but this book captures their interest and they laugh hysterically at some of these poems. After reading these they have found some of the more unusual insects such as the walking stick outdoors and called it to my attention. We've owned the book for 3 years, every once in a while my now-5 year old will find it and get excitedly proclaim "we haven't read this in a long time" and begs me to read it again (and again and again).
Some of the insects featured are the inchworm, tick, walking stick, praying mantis, monarch butterfly, daddy long legs spider and army ants.
The poems are so much fun I don't mind reading the entire book two or three times in a row. A fun book to read to young children. This is good reading for just plain fun or to introduce poetry or to enhance learning about insects and nature.
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Love and best wishes.
I admit I had a hard time with some of his language as there seems to be a slight communication gap (for me anyway) between British and American english. It wasn't until I actually has a headless experience that I saw the profundity of his work. With so many spiritual texts sounding like the other this is truly a unique work and perspective.
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Make Success Measurable is filled with practical techniques. Even more, it is a workbook, providing opportunities to apply new concepts to real work. Whether you want to be able to create more focus within your own work unit, be able to demonstrate tangible results to your manager, prioritize your own work by aligning your day to day activities with the most important initiatives, or coach customers who are seeking your expertise in developing performance measures, this book can help.
As a result of reading this book and trying the exercises, you should be able to:
1) Convert new visions, strategies, and directions into achievable outcome-based goals that can better yourself and others in your organization.
2) Set goals that are specific, measurable, aggressive, achievable, relevant, and time bound. (SMART Goals)
3) Set goals that matter to those expecting a return on their funding dollars.
4) Set goals that matter to you personally in terms of opportunities, rewards, and skills.
5) Choose from a variety of management disciplines to achieve your goals.
6) Set goals that matter to customers who want speed, quality, and prompt service.
Douglas K. Smith organizes his book in four parts. In the first part (Chapters 1-4), he provides the background, concepts, tools, techniques, and frameworks you need to set specific outcome-based goals that matter to successfully navigate today's most pressing performance challenges. In the second part (Chapters 5-7), he focuses on helping you align and coordinate goals throughout your organization. In the third part (Chapters 8-10), he describes the management disciplines you need to achieve your goals and how to make choices among them. In the fourth part (Chapter 11), he concludes the book with a step-by-step design for building an outcomes management system in your organization.
In this context, in Chapter 10, he reviews the management disciplines you must understand in order to succeed in the face of change, and introduces the critical distinction between decision-diven change and behavior-driven change, and describes how to manage each successfully. Hence, he argues that most change efforts fall far short of their potential. Usually that's because leaders fail to address the deep behavioral changes they are seeking. And thus, he lists the following ten management principles as the heart of any successful change effort:
1. Keep performance results the primary objective of behavior and skill change.
2. Continually increase the number of individuals taking responsibility for their own change.
3. Make sure that each person always knows why his or her performance and change matters to the purpose and results of the whole organization.
4. Put people in a position to learn by doing and provide them with the information and support they need just in time to perform.
5. Embrace improvisation as the best path to both performance and change.
6. Use team performance to drive change whenever demanded.
7. Concentrate organizational designs on the work that people do, not on the decision-making authority they have.
8. Create and focus energy and meaningful language because these are the scarcest resources during periods of change.
9. Stimulate and sustain behavior-driven change by harmonizing initiatives throughout the organization.
10. Practice leadership based on the courage to live the change you wish to bring about.
Finally, he argues that if you expect others to change their behavior, you have to change yours. It's as simple and as hard as that.
I strongly recommend.
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The author brings to this work the unusual combination of scientist-technologist and historian-philosopher. His future-world view is upliftingly optimistic about the triumph of the human spirit. By virtue of his education, Dr. Robertson is comfortable with a professional mathematical approach to problem solving. But he keeps this well in the background, using only high-school mathematics in the discussion, and even that quite sparingly. In an engaging and accessible style, he examines several aspects of the human enterprise and projects their restructure based on the emerging ability of ordinary people and specialists alike to access and manipulate vast amounts of information with ease. The restructuring he describes is deep and pervasive, yielding a world as different from ours as was the previous turn of the millennium. He uses historical precedent to motivate and justify his vision of the immensity of the changes he sees coming.
In the final chapter, Robertson rejects the notion put forth by others -- some quite prominent, whom he names -- that we will run out of frontiers. He puts the case in historical perspective and then makes a logical argument about a future in which humans have universal freedom from "tedious and mindless labor" and are able to spend their lives exploring the marvels of the universe, the arts, mathematics, and science. He calls this a minimal list; to it I would add philosophy, sports, adventure, and possibly new classes of activities not yet dreamt of in our transitional world. This portion alone of Robertson's vision of the future makes the book worth reading. For the totality of his projection, the book is an important experience for any open minded person.
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