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When John Muir made his "Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf" the U.S. was not as heavily populated as it is today, although much had changed from the time when European settlers first moved through the area he explored -- a path that stretched from Indianapolis Indiana to the Gulf just north of what is Tampa Florida today.
Muir moved South in the aftermath of the Civil War, so he encountered much unrest, unhappiness, and destruction along the way. He describes not only the flora and fauna he found but the condition of humans as they struggled to rebuild their lives.
He says, "My plan was to simply to push on in a general southward direction by the wildest leafiest, and least trodden way I could find, promising the greatest extent of virgin forest." To a great extent, he was able to do that, however, he could not escape some of the realities of the world around him. For example, in Georgia, he encountered the graves of the dead, whom he says lay under a "common single roof, supported on four posts as the cover of a well, as if rain and sunshine were not regarded as blessings." A bit further he says, "I wandered wearily from dune to dune sinking ankle deep in the sand, searching for a place to sleep beneath the tall flowers, free from the insects and snakes, and above all my fellow man."
Muir wonders at the teachings of those who call themselves God's emissaries, who fail to ask about God's intentions for nature. He says, "It never seems to occur to these far-seeing teachers that Natures's object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more that a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of the unit--the cosmos?"
Partly as a result of his writing, and the writing of other Naturalists, the National Park System came into being, and today, more trees grow on the East coast than grew in the late 1700s (American Revolution). The fight is not over, however, it has only begun. Many of those trees are "harvested" every year. Sometimes, even within National Forests they are all felled at the same time through a process called clear cutting. The lovely large oaks that Muir beheld are mostly long gone and have been replaced by Pine.
There are lots of suspects and lots of motives and how Cribb and Thackery sort them out is great to read. One gets a tremendously amusing picture of Thackery conducting an interview on the run, as it were, with the competitors in his wool suit, bowler hat and regulation boots - and him not an athletic person. Cribb continues as the brains of the team and his determination is prevented from being an obsession, in the readers view, by the unintentional humor he injects, usually at Thackery's expense. Even though at times Thackery gets exasperated with his boss, there is a respect and willingness to serve that keeps the team together.
This is a fine Victorian mystery novel that is a great read from start to finish. I highly recommend it.
Used price: $13.95
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I recommend everybody to read all of it .
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Collectible price: $24.35
An important aspect of any collector's value guide is the basis of the valuations. Charlton uses a method based on the actual going price in each quoted region. They gain this data by contacting dealers in the various countries and getting the actual prices the applicable collectibles are going for in that area. This method eliminates the fluctuations of currency exchange rates that would occur if the item was listed, say in U.S. dollars, and than an exchange rate applied to calculate the prices for Canada and the U.K. Now we can move on to specifics.
I already had The Charlton Standard Catalogue of Beswick Animals, first edition, so my main concern was how did the millennium edition compare to the first edition. After all, you can invest in a new collector's guide or use that money for a new collectible, so the guide just better be worth the replacement cost. Five years lie between the first edition (1994) and the millennium or fourth edition (1999). So right, there you have five years of change. (You also have two editions I haven't seen, but I can't tell you about them.) The first edition only had four pages of color photos and all were of the horses. The millennium edition now has sixteen pages of color photos: eight pages dedicated to cats and cows, four pages display horses, and four pages miscellaneous other items. That sounds like the same amount of horse models pictured, but it isn't. The millennium edition presents horse groupings; the first edition only presented a single horse/photo. The photos are different, which brings up the question of whether to let the old edition go or keep it for the color photos.
The introduction is greatly expanded as well. It now has club information, dealer/show listings, and a discussion on how internet pricing may eliminate regional pricing by creating a new universal price. (Good discussion by the way. I recommended it to anyone concerned with values theory.)
The millennium edition maintains the high quality of the first edition, so if you are looking for a replacement, you won't be disappointed.
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List price: $13.95 (that's 60% off!)
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You'll discover how even the 'healthiest' of foods such as fruit and vegetables can be toxic to some people. You'll also find out about natural toxins including, among many others, mad honey disease, mushroom and mold toxins. There are also sections on food additives and advice on vitamins. And chapters on alcohol and on the important role the gut has to play.
I myself am salicylate sensitive and there is so little information generally available that I wholly applaud John Emsley and Peter Fell for making this information available.
The only down side is that, although they present details of food chemicals and very useful case histories to illustrate the type of health problems that can be caused by these, they don't give much guidance on how to test for a sensitivity to these chemicals. But still, an excellent starting place.
The book is clearly written and easy to read. An absolute must for anyone concerned about food chemicals.
Emsley and Fell are very clear on what is a food allergy and what is not. They explain that a person is properly said to have an allergy to food only if his or her immune system is involved in a negative response, and that true food allergies are not very common. On the other hand, many other people, perhaps as many as 20%, are intolerant of certain foods. According to the authors, this intolerance is because they lack the ability to break down the food into usable chemical substances. Food intolerance can cause many of the same symptoms as food allergies, but it is also implicated in such problems as headaches or mood disorders; in rare occasions, food intolerance attacks can even be fatal.
With their definition of food intolerance as any situation where the body is overwhelmed by the chemicals in what has been consumed, the authors go beyond standard "problem foods" identified in other books on the topic (such as biogenic amines, salicylates, and sulfites). For example, they discuss how alcohol is broken down chemically in the body, and the chemistry behind drunkenness and hangovers. They also discuss the toxins involved in food poisoning, a very extreme type of intolerance reaction that everyone is susceptible to.
Overall, I found this book highly informative, much more so than books that lump all food problems into the allergy category. The book includes a brief guide to nutrition and food for a healthy lifestyle, but these sections seem almost an afterthought. The book doesn't include a special diet or treatment plan. Instead, its main strength is the scientific explanations of what happens in a food intolerance attack. I think it will go a long way towards helping me understand why I can nibble some foods, but not indulge freely. In general, it's great for patient information, but MDs and naturopaths may also find much of interest.
Definition and scope of target costing as explained in the book:
The target costing process is a system of profit planning and cost management that is price led, customer focused, design centred, and cross-functional. The target costing initiates cost management at the earliest stages of product development and applies it throughout the product life cycle by actively involving the entire value chain.
The difference between target costing and cost management is that the latter focuses on reducing the cost when they are already occurring, that means when the product design and the process are already defined. The target costing approach on the other hand helps to identify the allowable cost for a product in the design stage, the cost at the manufacturing stage are therefore known to be achievable and competitive. Further cost improvements are achieved by kaizen costing (continuous improvement).