This is money well spent. Anyone who plays golf will get a lot of mileage out of the witty phrases in this book You're guaranteed to get some laughs - just don't use more than 3 or 4 per round, or you'll drive the others berzerk...

All golfers will enjoy this book , but non-golfers will laugh a lot. I did - I loved this book so much I'm giving it to all my golfing and non-golfing friends and relatives. Christmas shopping solved!

The book describes the introduction of a virtual community of practice, the Agents Network, at Clarica Life Insurance, Canada's first and oldest mutual insurance company. The book offers a practical and detailed example of the establishment, implementation and evaluation of the virtual community, with examples of the tools used by the project team at Clarica.

The authors introduce the notion of communities of practice as a new strategy to leverage knowledge capital to create sustainable competitive advantage. By valuing communities of practice, by recognising the contribution of community members, and giving support for time and commitment) and providing an infrastructure (e.g. giving them a communication platform, active facilitation and information resources), the authors suggest that organizations can increase the speed of innovation and knowledge sharing.

The Community Development Process Model (p.137) provides an excellent 'roadmap' to the approach they undertook that is readily understood. Practical suggestions and tools about evaluating the value of the community are also provided. There is a good combination of theory and practice and, therefore, something for anyone interested in this topic. It has a balance between high-level strategic models, and detailed and practical examples.

The approach taken at Clarica was systematic and project-managed, with the organization playing a very active role in facilitating the conceptualisation, establishment, growth and expansion of the community. The organization obviously provided significant resources to undertake the project. Virtual communities of practice, like the one described in the book, clearly require strong organisational support and resources due to the technological infrastructure they require to be effective.

The authors do not purport to provide a recipe - rather, they tell a story about the introduction of a virtual community of practice in one organization - as such, the book offers an in-depth view of the process. The questions asked at the end of each chapter are intended to challenge readers to assess whether the approach described would work in their own organization.

Practitioners may be tempted to read more widely to find alternative approaches to developing communities of practice, and to select 'the best of the best'. The Clarica approach is only one way, but it does provide sound conceptual models that set the strategic context, as well as diving directly into the detail. There is a useful associated website.

Hubert and Debra, thanks, you two have written a monumental work, but in such a humble and mater-of-fact manner. The more I read, the more I became frustrated with the title, because although the book is about the strategic nature of "Communities of Practice," it offers so much more. For the last thirty years, people have been trumpeting the 'end of the hierarchy,' but without anything to put in its place. Know we know the future, and it is here!

In Nonaka and Takeuchi's "The Knowledge Creating Company," there was the suggestive diagram of the "hypertext organization." It showed three layers, the hierarchy, the project team community and a third space, the knowledge community. A few years later Nonaka understood that this third space was what the Japanese call "Ba," a shared mental space. Is this not what you two are talking about in your "Reflective and Strategic - Communities of Practice?"

Please write your next book as quickly as possible and reveal the key to the "culture of leadership," a phrase that got short-shrift. Revisit the earlier work you did at The Mutual Group around "values." I am convinced this, more than any number of memos, meetings and check lists, was what made it possible to accomplish what you did at Clarica.

I had the prior version as a textbook in the MBA course in Strategic Marketing. Very instructive and a good learning tool that shows the interaction between the strategic variables in your marketing plan.

Wow!What an excellent simulation!! Nerve recking! Can't sleep withourt seeing the results every day. Better than the class room teachings and bag full of articles and books. Tests your marketing knowledge to the ultimate limits. Best part of this simulation is that no one losses and no one wins but every one LEARNS AND A LOT . This simulation is an eye-opener to the so called market strategists. The team spirit is revitalised and real leaders emerge. I recommend to all serious marketing strategists.

I asked for and received this book as a birthday gift. It was an excellent choice. At first I thought the recipes somewhat intimidating. A closer examination proved me wrong. The directions are as clear as can be, and suggestions in the side boxes are interesting, helpful and appropriate to the recipe. While I won't be using the recipes calling for fresh truffles or caviar (and they're very few), I will be trying out many others. The Seared Tuna on Creamed Spinach is worth the price of the book. The Black Pepper Polenta was perfect with it, but plain rice or coconut rice is very good, too.

I met Hubert here in Brazil, and I love his food. The recepies were written carefully (Chantal, his wife tasted them all! ). I have a cooking school in São Paulo and so far I have not seen anything like him. His food is so elaborated in terms of taste and so simple in terms of wook. It is light, but with a lot of taste and charm. When you taste it, you will never forget!

I have to admit that I think Hubert Keller is one of the best chefs in the world, and his restaurant should have 3 Michelin stars. This is one beautiful book, and the receipes, while not for the beginner, are not difficult for the average cook at home. I have made many of the receipes and have found them all delicious. I also enjoyed Chef Kellers' story of growing up in Ribeauville and his professional history working with some of the best chefs in the world. Having taken cooking classes taught by Hubert, I can also say he is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. From one Alsatian to another, thanks Hubert for a great book, and Vive L'Alsace!

This books explains the very basic knowledge of available-light photography, like when and how to use a tripod. Additional information is given about how to choose and use the right (Kodak-) film for specific situations. Thus I can recommend this book only to beginners in this field or people with their own lab. The photographs in this book are old and not very impressive.

This small book summarizes almost everything the begginer to intermediate available light photographer needs to know (zone system not included - buy Adams "The Negative"), and includes several technical tables, understandably mentioning only Kodak products. It's pleasant to find a book that describes what I have been using for years without having read it before.

Although the example pictures look like they were taken quiet some time ago, this book is very up-to-date in my opinion. I've searched through the book stores, and I think that this is the best guide for this particular topic. Easy to read, good examples, etc., "suggested exposure settings" table that comes with it, is very useful for a beginner like me.

I felt that William Teire wrote a great deal of information that he understands, but didn't always make it understandable for the learner. An example is his chapter on map reading. He talks about townships and quadrants without really expalining to the reader how to read a map. With a little more in depth work in some areas of this book it could be the best handbook out there.

This book is absolutely essential to anyone involved in wildland firefighting. It is full of basic information as well as "oh, I remember now" information most of us forget after time. I loved this book for teaching new recruits, and seasoned veterans, and encourage any training officers to purchase this book ASAP.

This book is quite informative. The NDF (Nevada Division of Forestry) is now using this book, and the accompanying workbook, for Wildland Firefighting Training. It is written in a very detailed manner, and covers just about every aspect that a firefighter may come across in fighting wildland fires. Even if the reader fights wildland fires from their truck, other sections that are included in the book will give the reader another aspect to think about. What is the IC thinking? What are the hand crews doing and where? Where are the firelines being cut? Even though these items don't mean much to the firefighter on the engine, they give the reader the means and information to know what to expect.

The most defining moment for the 12th SS was the murder of 12 Canadain POW at the Abby Ardennes during the Normandy landings. This event is glossed over, the commanding general, Kurt Meyer was Canada's only war criminal. He served 5 years in Dorchester Prison in NB. This book is a very weak translation from German - very slow at times. However, a must for those interested in the Waffen SS. Comes with a seperate map book, so you can follow the battles - very neat!

An excellant review on the history of an outfit in which not much has been written about. It has both tactical information on the unit's movements and fighting as well as excerpts of individuals memoirs of those who participated.

The Bluest Eye is a beautifully written book. This was the first time I have read Toni Morrison, and I was amazed by her use of language. This book is really a piece of literary art. There were so many passages in this book that were just wonderful- perhaps my favorite was the description of Pauline losing her front tooth, which actually was symbolic of the decaying of a relationship. However, although the language was incredible, the style and structure of the book were a bit confusing to me. I found myself asking "who is talking now? and what relationship does this person have to the people I already know" at the beginning of each chapter. Then when I finally figured things out, I had to go back and reread. Still, I suppose this was a minor annoyance. The Bluest Eye really is a wonderfully written book about so many things- perhaps most obviously the tragic consequences of living in a day and time when the standards of physical beauty are ridiculous and unachievable. Anyone who has ever felt physically inadequate (and who wouldn't? Just take a look at all of today's media images) will feel for Pecola and wish she could have had a happier ending. But that, I suppose, would have defeated the purpose of the book.

I will admit to some apprehension prior to picking up this book. I had heard that Toni Morrison, although a brilliant author, is a little hard to understand. And there's nothing I hate more than wading through a book full of abstract poetic descriptions and thick symbolism that goes right over my head. Despite all this, I pulled up my bootstraps and dived right in. What was to follow was quite a surprise.

The Bluest Eye tell the story of the Breedloves, a poor black family living in Lorain, Ohio in the early 1940s. Each chapter tells something different -- the journey of the dad, Cholly, from curious young boy to a drunk and unloving father; the history of the mother, Pauline, and her dreams of movie stars and romance; and the childhood of the children, Sammy and Pecola, and how they deal with life as they've been given. Full of hardships and unfairness, the Breedloves have been through tough times most of their lives. And young Pecola's wishes of blue eyes and blonde hair in order to be loved and respected by others is a testament to the unjust world they lived in.

My fear is that this review won't do the book justice. There is so much written here that left me with feelings of sadness and horror, but also of hope -- hope that our world now has moved on from the racism of the past and will eventually surpass it. The Bluest Eye is highly moving and sensitive, and written in an addictive easy and lyrical style. I may have missed an important part of the book, any underlying symbolism or meaning that Toni Morrison was trying to convey -- I don't know. All I do know is The Bluest Eye is a darn good story, and I'm extremely glad I read it.

Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye' originally published in 1970, is her first novel. It displays an abundance of talents of a great writer who later (1993) won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The novel is set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941. It is the story of 11 year old girl, Pecola Breedlove. This is a powerful story which draws from several themes such as historical memory, racial hatred and several other important themes. Pecola who is a black girl and attracted to blond, blue-eyed children and prays for her eyes to turn blue like the children she adores. The journey of Pecola 's agony is powerfully portrayed and crafted aesthetically.

It is a poetical examination into the beauty of logic and irrationality behind an American family and how and why this innate beauty gets wasted and overlooked in the World's most democratic society.

It is not just a story of Pecola Breedlove, a young black American kid. You may find similar characters all over the world. I have heard stories similar to Pecola in many countries where I have lived including Australia!

No wonder why it is a best seller and resurfaced again winning the attention of thousands and thousands of readers. It may be the reason why it was selected for Oprah's book club in April 2000.

Creation science is to evolution what this book is to artificial intelligence.

Creation "scientists" often have no credentials in the field they attack; similarly, Dreyfus is a philosopher, not a computer scientist.

Creation "scientists" often use inflated rhetoric and impute dishonesty to their opponents; similarly, Dreyfus has likened AI to alchemy and made scandalous allegations against AI researchers such as Simon.

Creation "scientists" only attack evolution; they do not provide any scientific alternative; similarly, Dreyfus only attacks strong AI and does not offer any alternative line of research.

The criticisms of creation "scientists" are based on religion; Dreyfus bases his critique on philosophy. Neither critique has any scientific foundation.

Creation "scientists" continue to advance objections that have been decisively refuted, such as arguments based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the bogus Paluxy River tracks. Bogus claims are rarely retracted. Similarly, Dreyfus has rarely acknowledged that many of his previous claims have been refuted.

Finally, creation "scientists" have had essentially no impact on evolutionary biology, but great impact among the lay public. Similarly, Dreyfus' book is popular among non-scientists, but has had very little impact among people who actually do AI.

Dreyfus' book is about the history of failure of Artificial Intelligence researchers such as Marvin Minsky to embody intelligence at the human level. It is easy to read, but is rather exasperating. It is like riding in a truck driven by Minsky, and other AI researchers, where they are trying to make a long trek across a country without roads. They keep getting caught in swamps, blowing tires, and hitting trees, all the time shouting "We're almost there!" Meanwhile Dreyfus is a dog in the bed of the truck continually barking at dangers, and the folly of the drivers. Amidst Dreyfus' continuous cacophony of sarcastic cynicism there are some important points on what assumptions are doomed to failure, which he made quite clear by tedious repetition.

Basically there are two types of mistakes made by Minsky and many others:
1. believing they were getting close to understanding human thought,
2. repeatedly announcing same to the world.

The philosophy of Dreyfus in the first 300 pages is largely concerned with fallacious assumptions made by AI researchers. Finally in the last 50 pages (350 page book) he settles down and gives us some interesting concepts that should be understood if we are to seek AI at the human level. He develops the concept of "nonformal behavior" - which we humans usually learn by generalizing examples and following intuition without use of formal rules. Examples: chess at the gestalt master level, and disambiguation of broken sentences.

Dreyfus acknowledges the possible importance of neural network architectures, but dismisses them as outside the scope of his critique. He touches on the poor idea of AI trying to program a full functioning adult, and further carries out a critique of machine learning ("reinforcement learning").

The most important point he makes is that of nonformal behavior -- the non-logical almost Zen-like process that humans must go through. The irony is that we have to struggle with our nonformal thinking to do simple formal tasks such as long division; whereas the computer must struggle with its built-in hard logic to attempt nonformal tasks such as pattern recognition.

The book is for the most part quite dated, but nevertheless, it is very worthwhile reading for anyone in a serious pursuit of machine intelligence. My criticism of his style is just that. I have only a minor criticism of the intelligent content and his restrictions in scope.

Mr. Shallit compares the critique of cognitive science by Professor Dreyfus to 'creation science'. He remarks that Dreyfus is not a computer scientist. This is true. But many 'cognitive scientists' aren't either, cognitive science being an interdisciplinary pursuit engaging philosophers, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists, anthropologists and sociologists. It is unfortunate that Dreyfus allowed himself to polemicize by using the word 'alchemy' to characterize his opponents, but he has, by far, been the victim of unargued diatribes against his work. The fact is: most of the salient issues in cognitive science are logical and conceptual, NOT technological. Here, Dreyfus broke new ground (although I would have preferred his treatment to have been more Wittgensteinian than Heideggerian). Phil Agre's brilliant book on computation and human experience (Agre IS a computer scientist) shows that SOME AI-workers have found aspects of Dreyfus's work very telling. But, of course, the issues are, again, not empirical but logical in this field. See, for example, Graham Button et al., "Computers, Minds and Conduct" (Polity/Blackwell, 1995) which picks up where Dreyfus left off. Shallit remarks that Dreyfus has been 'refuted': where? by whom?

The fact is that cognitivism is hotly contested by serious thinkers in many disciplines, but Shallit's name-calling (and the comparison of cognitivism's serious critics to creation scientists) smacks of an abdication from serious engagement and argument.

Dreyfus's revised edition is a fine piece of work, worthy of serious intellectual discussion and confrontation. His many aarguments against Fodor, Chomsky, Simon and others have great merit. It is unfortunate that some folks simply close their eyes and argue from authority. But appeals to (even 'scientific') authority wear thin when left to stand alone!!

After Requiem for a Dream, I thought the Room would be a good book to read. I was expecting an emotionally disturbing, but thought provocking book, much like Requiem, but the Room was not like the well know Selby novel. Room is a wandering and discusiting book, with discriptions of rape and tourute that seem to come from the mind of a sick and twisted man. Unlike Requiem for a Dream, Selby is not shocking yet intriging, in the Room, Selby is just sick. The plot is weak, and there is no sticking moral message in the book. It was promising at first, but left me very disapointed. I highly recomend not reading this book.

but not always a good book. The room, has an interesting premise, maybe for a short story. But for a novel it gets tiring quick. It doesn't seem to have much of a point other than to offer up two different fantasies of an inmate: one very violent and disturbing, then other benevolent. Whatever, they both get old. Some of the writing is the most disturbing I've ever read, which is fine, if it has a point. I don't believe it does. I have read two other Selby books, Last Exit and Requiem.. both are far superior to Room, Requiem is a masterpiece! So if you haven't read any selby go to one of those two first.

On the one hand this book does a pretty good job delving into the tedium that a prisoner must experience and it does a pretty good job exploring in a realistic manner the fantasies in which a criminal pyschopathic personality might engage. But to tell the truth, I got bored with the book. Maybe that's one of the points--incarceration in not an exciting thing.

Basically, the main character, the prisoner, engages in two alternating fantasies. In the first, he dreams about using his intellect to blow the cover off of the corrupt law enforcement system. In his mind he becomes the hero of the oppressed and the hero of reformers making it all the way to capital hill to regale the senate with his misfortunes. I don't doubt that many criminals engage in self-deceptive ego trips, but after 10 or so pages of redundant self-aggrandizement the reader gets the idea. The second line of fantasies involves the brutal torture of the two police officers that arrested the prisoner. In his mind he dehumanizes the policemen in almost every way imaginable. Again, I don't doubt that many convicts engage in this manner of perverse self-pleasure, but it does get somewhat monotonous as every last detail of the gruesome fantasies are laid out time and time again.

This was my first Selby book and it is obvious that he is a talented writer. I am going to give his other books a try.