Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife Review

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife Overview

“What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that’s that - the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my laptop?” In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die. She begins the journey in rural India with a reincarnation researcher and ends up in a University of Virginia operating room where cardiologists have installed equipment near the ceiling to study out-of-body near-death experiences. Along the way, she enrolls in an English medium school, gets electromagnetically haunted at a university in Ontario, and visits a Duke University professor with a plan to weigh the consciousness of a leech. Her historical wanderings unearth soul-seeking philosophers who rummaged through cadavers and calves’ heads, a North Carolina lawsuit that established legal precedence for ghosts, and the last surviving sample of “ectoplasm” in a Cambridge University archive.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife Specifications

If author Mary Roach was a college professor, she'd have a zero drop-out rate. That's because when Roach tackles a subject--like the posthumous human body in her previous bestseller, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, or the soul in the winning Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife--she charges forth with such zeal, humor, and ingenuity that her students (er, readers) feel like they're witnessing the most interesting thing on Earth. Who the heck would skip that? As Roach informs us in her introduction, "This is a book for people who would like very much to believe in a soul and in an afterlife for it to hang around in, but who have trouble accepting these things on faith. It's a giggly, random, utterly earthbound assault on our most ponderous unanswered question." Talk about truth in advertising. With that, Roach grabs us by the wrist and hauls butt to India, England, and various points in between in search of human spiritual ephemera, consulting an earnest bunch of scientists, mystics, psychics, and kooks along the way. It's a heck of a journey and Roach, with one eyebrow mischievously cocked, is a fantastically entertaining tour guide, at once respectful and hilarious, dubious yet probing. And brother, does she bring the facts. Indeed, Spook's myriad footnotes are nearly as riveting as the principal text. To wit: "In reality, an X-ray of the head could not show the brain, because the skull blocks the rays. What appeared to be an X-ray of the folds and convolutions of a human brain inside a skull--an image circulated widely in 1896--was in fact an X-ray of artfully arranged cat intestines." Or this: "Medical treatises were eminently more readable in Sanctorius's day. Medicina statica delved fearlessly into subjects of unprecedented medical eccentricity: 'Cucumbers, how prejudicial,' and the tantalizing 'Leaping, its consequences.' There's even a full-page, near-infomercial-quality plug for something called the Flesh-Brush." While rigid students of theology might take exception to Roach's conclusions (namely, we're just a bag of bones killing time before donning a soil blanket) it's hard to imagine anyone not enjoying this impressively researched and immensely readable book. And since, as Roach suggests, each of us has only one go-round, we might as well waste downtime with something thoroughly fun. --Kim Hughes

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The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World Review

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World Overview

A thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London-and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world. The Ghost Map is an endlessly compelling and utterly gripping account of that London summer of 1854, from the microbial level to the macrourban-theory level-including, most important, the human level.

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The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science (with linked TOC)

The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science (with linked TOC) Review

The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science (with linked TOC) Overview

This ebook is complete with linked Table of Content making navigation quicker and easier.

Thomas Troward (1847-1916) was an English author whose works influenced the New Thought Movement and mystic Christianity.In The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science Troward explains the difference between form and being. Because spirit is infinite it is ever present. "...in Him we live and move and have our being."

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Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity Review

Lots of good information, but there are no descriptions for any software or how to get the reports seen in the book. I am trying to recreate these reports using Google Analytics, Coremetrics and Omniture. It seems that most of the reports are the standard reports out of Google Analytics, but I am having a difficult time recreating some of these with other software.

I think this was a great book, but I have a few things I disagree with:

Page 85, he says if he could only have one report, it would be Outcomes by All Traffic Sources. This report shows Goal Conversion Rates, but he does not describe what these are. In Google Analytics, these are custom, so this could be anything.

I am disappointed, he does say it is important to measure ROI, but does not talk about how to do this. The author says that you can do this by comparing the data from Google to your campaign data. It is not that easy. You have to know how much was spent, and you have to know how much incremental revenue came in from SEO/PPC efforts. It is not an easy task. Test and control or some other method should have been addressed. In calculating ROI for PPC in chapter 11, he assumes that all visits from PPC are ones you would not have without the ad. Not necessarily true.

In Chapter 7, testing is finally addressed. I disagree with his method of testing the impact of PPC by turning it off and on completely; this does not take into account any seasonality that may occur naturally in web traffic. This is also a problem if there is a lot of variation in web visits and sales over time. Why not try test and control markets: turning it off in some regions and have it on in others? This method would allow you to compare the on and off markets and find incremental sales.

In the marginal attribution model from page 368, you change the spending for one type of online marketing, then attribute any sales higher than last month sales to the additional marketing. In my experience, web sales tend to have a large variation in sales from month to month making it difficult to say what the cause of any increase is without any kind of confidence bounds.

The "controlled experiment" on page 375 is a really bad example. The ad is run at the same time in all markets and then compared to pre and post ad time periods. What if at the same time as the ad, some celebrity tweeted that they loved your product or some news program aired a warning about your product. There are too many uncontrollable situations to compare pre and post ad sales. You should have test and control markets to compare sales in the same time period.

On page 377, the Author says: "The analyst at Walmart.com can use the previous URL to track how many people use the website and then visit the store." A view the store locator on the web does NOT equal a visit to your store. In his example, a user on walmart.com views a camera and then the store locator. It is very possible that the customer viewing the camera at walmart.com may also go to target.com and find the same camera at a similar price and find that the target store was much more convenient to visit. There is no way in this case to tie a store locator and product page view to an offline purchase. Using a discount code or unique offer would provide a better method of tracking online to offline behavior.

In Chapter 14, the BMI is introduced. But on page 419, the author says this method is preferred because it has a scale of 0 to 100. It actually has a scale of -100 to 100.
If 5 responders all gave a Not Satisfied or a Not At All Satisfied, the score would be [(0+))-(5):]/5*100=-100. The other method, weighted means can also give a scale of -100 to 100 if the right weights are used.

Not Satisfied At all:=-1
Not Satisfied =-.5
Satisfied=0
Very Satisfied= .5
Extremely Satisfied= 1

With these weights the scale is also -100 to 100.

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity Feature

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Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity Overview

Adeptly address today’s business challenges with this powerful new book from web analytics thought leader Avinash Kaushik. Web Analytics 2.0 presents a new framework that will permanently change how you think about analytics. It provides specific recommendations for creating an actionable strategy, applying analytical techniques correctly, solving challenges such as measuring social media and multichannel campaigns, achieving optimal success by leveraging experimentation, and employing tactics for truly listening to your customers. The book will help your organization become more data driven while you become a super analysis ninja!

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

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slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations Review

I appreciated the way this book is laid out. I love the pacing, the typography, the visual aids and most of all the content. It makes sense that a book about presentations is presented well, but Nancy Duarte goes the extra mile and hits a grand slam with Slide:ology!

The case studies are perfectly relevant and efficient teaching aids for the reader. You decide if this is a pro or con but there are a LOT of case studies in this book.

As someone that works with a business that uses PowerPoint for nearly EVERYTHING this book armed me with a few other tools to help guide the "higher-ups" to a more successful design.

Chapter 3, Creating Diagrams is particularly strong as it helps expand your concepts of diagramming all sorts of different concepts. Hundreds of simple thumbnails to get you started; or use as is for an end state.

Chapter 12, which hardly could be classified as a chapter, is Manifesto: The Five Theses of the Power of a Presentation. SHORT, and AWESOME.
Bottom line: this book takes an everyday presenter and transforms them into a designer! The world would be a better place if everyone that was ever going to make a PowerPoint presentation sat down and read through this book FIRST!

Monkeybutlerninja gives slide:ology 5 `power point' ninja stars!

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slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations Feature

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slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations Overview

No matter where you are on the organizational ladder, the odds are high that you've delivered a high-stakes presentation to your peers, your boss, your customers, or the general public. Presentation software is one of the few tools that requires professionals to think visually on an almost daily basis. But unlike verbal skills, effective visual expression is not easy, natural, or actively taught in schools or business training programs. slide:ology fills that void.

Written by Nancy Duarte, President and CEO of Duarte Design, the firm that created the presentation for Al Gore's Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, this book is full of practical approaches to visual story development that can be applied by anyone. The book combines conceptual thinking and inspirational design, with insightful case studies from the world's leading brands. With slide:ology you'll learn to:

• Connect with specific audiences
• Turn ideas into informative graphics
• Use sketching and diagramming techniques effectively
• Create graphics that enable audiences to process information easily
• Develop truly influential presentations
• Utilize presentation technology to your advantage

Millions of presentations and billions of slides have been produced -- and most of them miss the mark. slide:ology will challenge your traditional approach to creating slides by teaching you how to be a visual thinker. And it will help your career by creating momentum for your cause.

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Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping--Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping--Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond Review

A more appropriate title would be "How We Buy." The book does not go into the emotions of buying or how and why we decide to buy items, which I thought would be included in the book. The author mostly talks about shopping behaviors and how retailers can improve the shopping experience. The author also talks about some interesting trends. I was very interested to learn about the nature of the author's business and about his observations. For example, the observations that we make most of our shopping decisions in the store, and the importance of adjacencies were extremely interesting and I think of the utmost importance for entrepreneurs to consider.

However, I must echo another reviewer who did not like the end of this book. I wasn't bothered by the author pumping his business as much as I was disappointed in the author's analysis of the internet. It was weak compared to the in-depth analysis that is the rest of the book, and it sounds like he has a bone to pick with Amazon and some other online retailers. That aside, I recommend this highly for anyone in sales, as it will make you think much more critically about how your customers interact with your store and products.

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping--Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond Feature

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Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping--Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond Overview

Revolutionary retail guru Paco Underhill is back with a completely revised edition of his classic, witty bestselling book on our ever-evolving consumer culture -- full of fresh observations and important lessons from the cutting edge of retail, which is taking place in the world's emerging markets. New material includes:

• The latest trends in online retail -- what retailers are doing right and what they're doing wrong -- and how nearly every Internet retailer from iTunes to Amazon can drastically improve how it serves its customers.

• A guided tour of the most innovative stores, malls and retail environments around the world -- almost all of which are springing up in countries where prosperity is new. An enormous indoor ski slope attracts shoppers to a mall in Dubai; an uber luxurious Sao Paolo department store provides its customers with personal shoppers; a mall in South Africa has a wave pool for surfing.

The new Why We Buy is an essential guide -- it offers advice on how to keep your changing customers and entice new and eager ones.

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Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success

Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success Review

Mathew Syed is a past British national ping pong champion and current award winning sports writer. In his book Bounce, he provides an in depth analysis on the basis of skill, and more specifically, superlative excellence.

The idea behind Syed's analyses is that genius or perceived natural skill is nothing more than significant levels of precise practice combined with circumstance. Using his own excellence as a focal point for his study, he emphasizes the importance of thousands of hours of purposeful practice that often goes unseen in the realm of greatness, referring to the iceberg effect; where only the end result is often seen or even given consideration. He provides an extremely compelling section on child prodigies with the iceberg effect in mind.

Syed derives some interesting analysis from the fact that he had opportunities that others did not, of which were instrumental to his success. As a young boy he had access to a ping pong table, he attended a school with a teacher who was also as a national ping pong coach, and he had parents who fully invested in his passion. Compared to the millions of others in England who may have aspired to the same greatness, Syed points out the reality that there were less than 100 who had the same opportunities as he, thus his true success is relative to a small group; the key to success being a need to out-train and out-perform only those in a small select group.

Equally compelling are Syed's thoughts on the importance of belief, explaining that attitude can ultimately be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Put best in his own words: "If we believe that attaining excellence hinges on talent, we are likely to give up if we show insufficient early promise...if, on the other hand, we believe that talent is not implicated in our future achievements, we are likely to persevere. Moreover, we will be inclined to move heaven and earth to get the right opportunities for ourselves and our families: the right teacher, access to decent facilities; the entire coalition of factors that lead to the top. And if we are right, we will eventually excel. What we decide about the nature of talent then could scarcely be more important."

Syed's investigation also includes an in depth look at child prodigies, purposeful practice, and many other areas of significant performance. He is a humble author, willing to put aside his own pride and acknowledge that external factors played a major role in his own success; an element that speaks to the veracity of his research. If you seek to thrive or at least to understand the elements of excellence, this is a book that you should not be without.

Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success Feature

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Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success Overview

Why have all the sprinters who have run the 100 meters in under ten seconds been black?

What's one thing Mozart, Venus Williams, and Michelangelo have in common?

Is it good to praise a child's intelligence?

Why are baseball players so superstitious?

Few things in life are more satisfying than beating a rival. We love to win and hate to lose, whether it's on the playing field or at the ballot box, in the office or in the classroom. In this bold new look at human behavior, award-winning journalist and Olympian Matthew Syed explores the truth about our competitive nature—why we win, why we don't, and how we really play the game of life. Bounce reveals how competition—the most vivid, primal, and dramatic of human pursuits—provides vital insight into many of the most controversial issues of our time, from biology and economics, to psychology and culture, to genetics and race, to sports and politics.

Backed by cutting-edge scientific research and case studies, Syed shatters long-held myths about meritocracy, talent, performance, and the mind. He explains why some people thrive under pressure and others choke, and weighs the value of innate ability against that of practice, hard work, and will. From sex to math, from the motivation of children to the culture of big business, Bounce shows how competition provides a master key with which to unlock the mysteries of the world.

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