Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math - Book Review

If you were to have known before you started this book, that it was written by a genius, who was also a top-flight writer and mathematical theoretician -- albeit with a playful bent -- you probably would have left it right where it was, but still you would have had a playful mathematical "theoretician" doing the research.

Bellos does go over the great Euclidian discoveries and the math theory behind them. It makes sense that if you are going to pun on the name of the master, that you look at his work. Yes, this homage to the Greek mathematician makes it seem as if this will be one of those books you skim and leave on the coffee table to show that you are an intellectual. If that is as far as you get, then you are doing yourself and mathematics a great injustice.

There's far more to Bellos' mathematical journey, not only across mathematical space, than the title would indicate. It is a journey around the globe, following Bellos' journey, that takes you to some surprising places. Bellos can pull this off because he is a snappy writer with a surprising command of the language. Because of these abilities, he pulls you into math, using some real gems that include:

His theory that ants actually count the number of steps in trips to and from their colonies, an interesting construct that anthropromorphizes insects, giving them human-like qualities to them. How else can you explain ant behavior?

His side trip to the Amazon where he meets the only native tribe that uses a base-5 number and counting system because they can only understand numbers up to 5, yet their numbering system works at a highly sophisticated level. They use it to get as any being done anywhere else, which is quite a start to a person schooled in two theories (rote learning with the table cards and "the new math" and "set theory.")

His jump to the zen master of the theoretical math involved in oregami is priceless, as is his proof -- in a way -- that chaos theory is just about chaos and nothing more as he shows that in a chaotic system it is nearly impossible to introduce true randomness into iPod music list building. He theorizes, one cannot get to the absolute randomness as there are too many other distractions in the search for randomness, including the fact that many people like the same musical groups and will inevitably include their music on other music lists.

Bellos' book is so surprising that is also based on our prejudices about math. Just one example reinforces our prejudices. Of course, the teachings of the Buddha are surprising, quickly turning around our prejudices. This lasts until we meet the two New York "mathheads," who would rather build a supercomputer to use to write and argue about their "pi" mania, at a huge number of teraflops per second, rather than put their considerable talents to work on other, more important work.

Yes, Bellos' work is truly dense and takes an understanding -- and rereading of parts -- to make it all understandable, but Bellos, if you stick with him, is a witty, accurate writer who gets his educational point across. That, in itself, makes this a master work.

Roberto Sedycias works as an IT consultant for ecommUS-Book

Characters In Harry Potter

Harry Potter, written by J.K. Rowlings is a series of seven fantasy novels that follow the adventures of three best friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger as they go on a journey to overcome the dark wizard Lord Voldemort, whose ultimate goal is to control the world of wizards, vanquish muggles (non-magical people) and destroy anyone who gets in his way.

If you enjoy getting lost in the world of magic and fantasy, you will be in heaven when reading the Harry Potter Ebook. To help you get started, here is a description of the main characters within the seven Harry Potter novels:

Harry Potter is a half-blood wizard. When he was just a baby, his parents died trying to protect him against Voldemort an evil dark arts wizard, forcing him to live with his non-magic aunt and uncle who are unbelievable cruel to him. At the age of eleven he was visited by Hagrid, who told him of his magical capabilities and his acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. According to the prophecy Harry Potter is the one person who can defeat Lord Voldemort.

Lord Voldemort is a half-blood wizard, who practices the dark arts. During his early years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, he was thought to be one of the most gifted students, but beneath it all he was a psychotic narcissistic. After he dropped out of Hogwarts he formed his own dark army of sorcerers and creatures creating havoc around Britain, and destroying anyone in his path.

Albus Dumbledore is a half-blood wizard, keeper of the elder wand, and known to be the most powerful wizard of his time. He is the headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he is later forced to resign by a rise of wizards who are believed to be on the side of Voldemort.

Hermione Granger was born from non-magic parents, called muggles. When she was eleven she learned she was a witch and had been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft. She endures a constant struggle to fit into the magic world because being muggle born is frowned upon in the wizardly world. But this pushes her even harder to learn the ways of wizardry, there is no spell that Hermione cannot do.

Ron Weasley is a pure-blood wizard, but because of his whimsical nature and bad luck he continues to find himself in precarious situations. But his devotion to his two best friends (Harry and Hermione) he always proves to be a trusted and reliable ally.

Draco Malfoy is also a pure-blood wizard, raised strongly to believe the importance of being a pure-blood. He is known from his prominent father, who is very involved in wizardry policymaking. His family is well-known for practicing dark arts and notorious for being mean and cold hearted. At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he is Harry Potter's primary antagonist.

Rubeus Hagrid is a half giant who is the keeper of keys and grounds keeper at HogwartsSchool of Witchcraft and Wizardry. During his early school years, he also attended Hogwarts, but was framed by a dark wizard for the crime of opening the chamber of secrets, that ended in the death of a student. He was expelled and relieved of his wand, but because Dumbledore always believed of his innocence he was allowed to live on the grounds.

Severus Snape is a half blood wizard, who teaches at Hogwarts. Even though he his father was a muggle, he developed a hunger for the dark arts and followed the pure blood supremacists.

Characters in Harry Potter:Learn the main Characters in Harry Potter before reading the Harry Potter EBook on Nook or Kindle - http://harry-potter-ebook.com/

The Age of Insight: Building a Bridge Between Art and Science to Illuminate Both

"But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light." -- Ephesians 5:13 (NKJV)

This is a remarkable five-star book.

The Age of Insight is a hard book to categorize. Professor Kandel's stated purpose is to demonstrate how a knowledgeable scientist can write clearly about science so that the interconnections between art and science can be exposed to those who know only about the art. As such, this book is more about informing those interested in the humanities than those whose interest is in science. As a necessary part of his method, there's a circumscription around a narrow set of artists and literary figures rather than an attempt to make a universal statement. To have attempted otherwise would have made a hefty book into a multi-volume tome that few would read.

As someone who reads a lot of art history, history of science, and current research on mental processes, I was impressed by the conception of the book and how deftly it was carried out in ways that deepened my appreciation for subjects I have long been familiar with. I was grateful for these new perspectives. I found the book to be enjoyable for the most part. If I got to a part that was too elementary for what I wanted to absorb, I just skipped quickly through until I got to weightier material. I didn't have to do that very often.

This book would be a wonderful gift to a budding artist or writer... or to an art historian in training. I'm sure that many wonderful shows could be mounted that would take advantage of the information here in ways that would delight museum and gallery goers.

Although the book will seem flawed to some, I think it succeeds in its purpose of proposing a new way to write about art and science. I'm sure that future books that attempt to do the same will benefit from having observed how this one turned out.

I particularly found the repeated examination of certain art works from different perspectives to be revealing. I think you will, too.

A few times in my younger days I had the opportunity to speak to people who were alive in Vienna during the heady days of the salons that Professor Kandel describes here. Their descriptions carried to me a similar fascination with how the leading thinkers influenced one another there and then. I was pleased to be able to expand my understanding of that unique society in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

I am not much of a fan of Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele. I was pleased to learn more reasons to appreciate their work. I must admit that if the subjects had been tied to artists I like better I would have enjoyed the book more... but don't let that stop you. This is an important book for you to read!

Bravo, Professor Kandel!

Home Security Book Review

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AppId is over the quota

Reading home security books will never prevent a burglar from targeting your home, but arming yourself with more knowledge is never a bad idea. There are a great many home security books that, once read and the information put into practice, can help make your home a more secure, less appealing property for would be criminals to attempt to burglarize. Listed below are just a few of the many informative, highly useful books that can currently be found for readers interested in upping their level of personal, family and home protection.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Home Security

This book is written by a veteran of law enforcement, Tom Davidson. With over twenty seven years in law enforcement, including the Indiana State Police, FBI and London Metropolitan Police Department Davidson is now a practicing attorney and certified police Master Instructor.

With a general overview on the core basics of home security presented in a straight forward and sometimes humorous manner, this book is a fun and easy read on a very serious subject. While this book doesn't go into the more intricate details of actually installing a security system in your home, it provides a great deal of information regarding the assessment of your home's risk in terms of your neighborhood and property in particular. Davidson provides some great inexpensive 'do it yourself' steps you can easily implement as well as providing vital information to parents on the legalities of using 'nanny cams' and monitoring in your home.

Practical Home Security: A Guide to Safer Urban Living

This book is written by Alex Haddox, who hosts the highly rated podcast Practical Defense. Recognized internationally as a personal security expert, Haddox provides a good mixture of research findings and some very potent personal experience to recommend security measures that anyone can use to protect themselves, their family and their home. This book is a must read for anyone looking for high quality information regarding personal and home security in today's urban environment.

Home Security: Your Guide to Protecting Your Family

Written by James Hufnagel and Paula Marshall, this book is what you would expect from a Better Homes and Gardens release. Filled with great pictures and illustrations throughout, the authors do an excellent job of providing you the tools to identify security issues around and in your home. With a security checklist provided, this book looks at issues from your front and backyard to the inside your home.

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http://www.absoluteautomation.com/

Renee Laurin

If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 9 1/2 Things You Would Do Differently - Book Review

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AppId is over the quota

Fred Lee has a great story-telling talent and a unique combination of first-hand experience of working at both hospital and Disney. This book compares their workflows and cultures and teaches us how to design modern hospital patient interactions for success. It turns out that his lessons are directly applicable to our business.

Whenever a medical billing service owner comes to me for "billing software" they usually mean software to manage what they had. I, on the other had, want to understand how their service is designed and delivered and what the practice owner (their customer) and the patient (their customer's customer) would expect. It seems to me that if the billing service is sub-par, outdated, or not profitable, we should consider redesigning it before automating it. I believe that the worst you can do to a poorly delivered service is to scale it up and exacerbate an already negative customer experience by delivering it faster to more customers. This often does not sit well with billing service owners who see my expertise limited to selling my software and see my questions about their business approach and growth, compliance, and convenience as needlessly intrusive.

You would think that a billing service owner has a much more difficult customer than Disney; the risk of client loss is higher; the medical billing environment is much more complex with many more non-standard situations. At Disney, the customers start our happy and excited instead of upset and underpaid. They stand in lines but not worried about their insurance claims, patient referrals, or compliance. They take a ride that's duplicated a million times while every new payer is a unique experience. Meanwhile practice operations, technology, and legal costs are growing. Disney looks like a picnic compared to the nightmare the billing and practice managers face every day in a hostile payer environment over which we have very little of the kind of control we would have at Disney.

Using examples from his work at both Disney and as a senior-level hospital executive, Fred Lee challenges the assumptions that have defined customer service in healthcare. In this unique book, he discovers the key similarities between Disney and hospitals - both provide an "experience," not just a service. It shows how any business can emulate the strategies that earn Disney the trust and loyalty of their guests and employees.

This book also shows how standard service excellence initiatives in healthcare have not led to high patient satisfaction and loyalty, and defines 10 principles to help ant business gain the competitive advantage that comes from being seen as "the best" by their own employees, consumers, and community.

This book is practical and profound. Instantly useful.

Know any health care providers who complain about shrinking insurance payments and increasing audit risk? Help them learn winning Internet strategies for the modern payer-provider conflict by steering them to Vericle - Medical Billing Network and Practice Management Software, which powers such leading-edge billing services as Affinity Billing ( http://www.psychiatry-billing.com/ ) and Billing Dynamix ( http://www.pt-billing.com/ ), and is home for "Medical Billing Networks and Processes" book by Yuval Lirov, PhD and inventor of patents in artificial intelligence and computer security.

Book Review: Outliers

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AppId is over the quota

"The thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder." -Outliers

The tagline of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is: The Story of Success. I think that's a topic of interest to most folks and coaches in particular. I've got a story about a teammate of mine who is the definition of the opening quotation.

My teammate, let's call her Susie, was an all-American at the University of Wisconsin, which was a top twenty-five team at the time. She was the best, most skilled, and hardest working player that I knew. She had aspirations beyond collegiate volleyball...Susie wanted to represent our country in the Olympics. She talked to one of our assistant coaches who'd played on the national team about what she should do...and the coach told her to work harder.

I'm telling you, Susie was already the hardest working player on a nationally ranked team! She was our best player, she was the undisputed leader, she was a baller. But if she wanted to move to the next level, Susie needed to work harder.

And if we want to be better, we've got to work harder as well. And so do our athletes.

The rundown: Like Daniel Coyle talked about in The Talent Code, Gladwell identifies ten thousand hours as the magic number for success. It's not just ten thousand hours of casual practice...but motivated, focused, persistent practice. We've probably all coached the athlete who gives up about twenty seconds after we've tried to teach her a new skill. We've got to let her know that "success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds."

Recommended for: Coaches who want to get better and who want their athletes to get better. I believe we all want to put ourselves and our players in the best position to excel and reach our highest potential. This book will motivate us all to put in the work necessary to never have regrets about our achievement level.

Not recommended for: Coaches who believe that hard work is all it takes to be successful. While Gladwell talks about the ten thousand hour rule, he also mentions things that are out of our control that influence success. Things like the month and year we're born, the era in which we're born (if I were a woman fired up about coaching a hundred years ago, I'd be out of luck), affluence or lack thereof, etc.

So, Susie didn't make the Olympic team. As I think back, I wonder what would have happened if she'd stuck with it, because she was almost at her ten thousand hours. Gladwell says that it takes about ten years to reach that threshold...Susie stopped playing in year eight. We didn't know about this kind of stuff back then.

But we do now...let's make sure we're using the information that's available to us.

Dawn Redd is the Head Volleyball Coach at Beloit College. Come visit Coach Dawn's community of coaching nerds and team leaders over at her blog, http://www.coachdawnwrites.com/, where she teaches how to become an excellent coach, motivate individuals, and build successful teams.

Her book, Coach Dawn's Guide To Motivating Female Athletes, is available for purchase on her website.

Follow Coach Dawn on Twitter: @CoachDawnWrites

Moonwalking With Einstein

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AppId is over the quota

Have you ever wondered who the world's smartest person is? In a world that celebrates the antics of the world's strongest people very little time is given to those who excel in mental pursuits. Such antipathy for mental prowess put Joshua Foer on a quest to find out who might fit the bill of world's smartest person. When he began his quest, he did not discover who the smartest person was in the world...rather he was introduced to the world of the mental athletes.

Foer's path crossed with the like of memory champions Ben Pridemore, who could memorize gargantuan amounts of numerical digits and the layout of five decks of cards in just a few minutes. Such mental prowess piqued Foer's curiosity and set the journalist within ablaze to discover all he could about their techniques. His quest propelled him along a path which would ultimately culminate in his competition in the U.S. Memory Championship.

This trek placed him in the pathway of interesting individuals-such as Britain's Tony Buzan, an educational consultant who is credited with developing the "mind mapping" technique of taking notes. After meeting with Buzan, Foer enlisted the help of a youthful United Kingdom memory competitor, Ed Cooke, to coach him and prepare him for the U.S. Memory Championship. At Ed's behest, Foer dove into available literature-finding references to mnemonic techniques from around the fifth century BC. Not wanting to leave any stone unturned, Foer also tracks down Kim Peek, the inspiration for the character in Dustin Hoffman's Rain Main, to determine if there were any memory techniques he could glean from an obvious savant..

Foer unearthed techniques many refer to as building a memory palace which allowed him to "store" information spatially along routes of which he was familiar. Want to learn a list of 75 words? No problem. Imagine walking through your house and assigning these words in bizarre contexts (include the most sensory stimulation you can) along the pathway. Suppose the first item is an aardvark...you might place the inconspicuous fellow outside your mailbox juggling the second word you need to remember. Then, when called upon to regurgitate the list you would simply walk through these pre-constructed locations and recall the mental images. Foer used this very technique to place in key events and ultimately win the 2006 National Memory Championship. Not only did he win, he set a new U.S. record by memorizing a deck of playing cards in a minute and 40 seconds.

Although the title seems a little bizarre, it is not until you are reading his blow-by-blow account of the championship that you realize that one of his "mental images," was Foer moonwalking with Einstein to help remember a playing card. After the championship, Foer settled back into journalism and is not sure that his overall memory was changed very much.

This book is commended as a good read of an interesting memory challenge.

But wait, where did I put my car keys?