Portable Executive: Building Your Own Job Security - From Corporate Dependence to Self-Direction

Book Description

The downsizing of America -- once thought to be a temporary cost-cutting measure to boost profit margins -- has brought a swift end to the era of "lifetime employment." Given the fact that these terminations are nationwide, affect every industry, and are usually neither fault-based nor predictable, no executive is immune.

Based on interviews with over 100 now-portable executives who were among the first casualties of downsizing, The Portable Executive explores the unlimited opportunities available to those who are independent, self-directed, and willing to work on a contract basis. It explains:

How to make a smooth transition to becoming "portable"
How to identify, continually update, and market your skills
Why companies that downsize full-time employees are willing to hire executives on an as-needed basis
How and why the relationship between employers and executives has changed from boss/worker to peer/peer

And much more -- including how to invent a business, what to charge clients, how to network, market, and sell yourself as a "personal service business entity," and, most important, how to enjoy a greater sense of creativity, satisfaction, and long-term job security than ever before.

Customer Reviews:

The Portable Executive is very confused.......2004-03-13

Written during a time of significant downsizing, the Portable Executive comes across as a confused attempt to make sense of the situation. "Open-Book Management" by John Case does a far better job of properly identifying the causes and consequences of recent economic changes. To name just a few of the many glaring contradictions in this book:

1. The book claims that many jobs are being lost and that there are ample temporary opportunities but if you do the math replacing 2 permanent jobs with 1 contract job does not leave enough contracts for everyone.
2. The book claims companies save money by using contract employees and then also claims that portable executives can make more by contacting than they could as employees.
3. For most executives, relationships with the staffs they lead and peers they must work with is key. Working for multiple companies on a contract basis would thus limit their effectiveness.
4. With all these contract opportunities, the book never discusses who originates these contracts (permanent employees, no doubt).

Contradictions aside, this book does mention some true points, but they are lost in the confused attempts to explain the bigger picture.

Customer Reviews:

Sound financial advice..........2000-07-10

This is a good, clear, concise guide to managing your finances. By reading the book, I was able to answer questions that had been puzzling me previously. The author's use of clear charts, graphs and colorful illustrations make his points stand out and grab your attention. If you seek to grow and protect your investments this is a good book to have by your side. I would rank this among my five favorite books on financial topics.

Book Description

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

Teens are often seen as challenging social mores. They are frequently perceived to engage in activities considered by adults to be immoral, including sexual behavior, delinquent activities, and low-level forms of violence. Yet the vast majority report surprisingly high levels of religiosity. Ninety-five percent of American teens aged 13-17 believe in God or a universal spirit, and 76% believe that God observes their actions and rewards or punishes them. Nearly half engage in religious practices, such as praying alone or attending church or synagogue services.

Adolescents' religious beliefs are clearly important to them. Yet, the law does not know how to approach adolescents' religious rights and needs. In Not by Faith Alone, Roger J. R. Levesque argues that teens' search for meaning does not always serve adolescents or society well. Religious doctrines and institutions are not all "good," with violence linked to religious beliefs, for example—particularly racial/ethnic and sexual orientation harassment—becoming an increasing concern.

Not by Faith Alone is the first attempt to integrate research on the place of religion in adolescent development and to discuss the relevance of that research for policies and laws which regulate religion in their lives. Levesque asks how religion, broadly defined, influences the development of teens' inner moral compasses, and how we can ensure that religion and the apparent need for "religious" activity lead to positive outcomes for individual adolescents and for society.

Book Description

Grown throughout the world, curcurbits include cucumbers, gourds, muskmelons, pumpkins, squashes, and watermelons, and represent one of the most important groups of horticultural food plants. Similar to other volumes in the series, this book gives a scientific introduction to the biology and production of cucurbits in a way that is accessible to non-specialists. It covers production in both greenhouses and in the open field, in both developing and industrialized countries. The book provides a complete and succinct review, suitable for students of horticulture as well as scientifically-inclined growers.

Disease of Vegetables: Cucurbits, Garlic, Lettuce, Onion, Tomato (Digital Images Collection)

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Disease of Vegetables: Cucurbits, Garlic, Lettuce, Onion, Tomato (Digital Images Collection)

Manufacturer: Amer Phytopathological Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

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ASIN: 0890542538

Compendium of Cucurbit Diseases (Disease Compendium Series.)

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Cuc reference book

Compendium of Cucurbit Diseases (Disease Compendium Series.)

Manufacturer: American Phytopathological Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

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Compendium of Tomato Diseases (Aps Disease Compendium Series)

ASIN: 0890542074

Customer Reviews:

Cuc reference book.......2000-03-25

An excellent reference book for any person working in the horticultural field. In depth information on all aspects of cucurbit diseases, viruses and associated problems. Well laid out and easily understood information.

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Compendium Of Cucurbit Diseases
Thomas A.; Hopkins, Donald L.; Thomas, Claude E., Editors Zitter
Manufacturer: Aps Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KIRCHQ

Cucurbitaceae '98: Evaluation and Enhancement of Cucurbit Germplasm

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Cucurbitaceae '98: Evaluation and Enhancement of Cucurbit Germplasm
ASHS/USDA-AARS
Manufacturer: ASHS Press (American Society for Horticultural Science)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0961502797

Book Description

This book contains the proceedings from the Cucurbitaceae '98 conference, organized by ASHS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, and convened by ASHS, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cucurbit Genetics Cooperative and the Cucurbit Network. Six major areas are discussed:

Breeding
Entomology
Genetics
Germplasm
Pathology
Production
Resources

Comprised of more than 60 papers, this book is one of the most significant sources on cucurbit germplasm currently available.

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The Cucurbits (The Vegetables of New York, Vol. 1 - Part IV)
William T. Tapley , Walter D. Enzie , and Glen P. van Eseltine
Manufacturer: J. B. Lyon Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Parts | Automotive | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000KUERAY

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Cucurbits: Botany, cultivation, and utilization, (World crops books)
Thomas W Whitaker
Manufacturer: Interscience Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Plants | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0007ITQF0

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Downy mildew control in cucurbits (Current topic)
George Kuepper
Manufacturer: ATTRA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006RP8SQ

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Ecolof! V of the Sauash and Gourd Bee. Peponapis Bruinosa, on Cultivated Cucurbits in California ( Hymenoptera: Apoidea)
Jr., E. Gorton Linsley, And A. E. Michelbacher Paul D. Hurd
Manufacturer: Smithsonian Institution Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JVH3G4

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Identification and Significance of the Cucurbit Materials from Huaca Prieta, Peru.: American Museum Novitates Number 1426
Thomas w and bird, Junius B. whitaker
Manufacturer: American Museum of Nat. Hist [1944]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Pamphlet
ASIN: B000JW0DI8

Book Description

This study results in a timetable of the development of the supra-spinal descending projections, which will serve as a reference table for all studies that describe other parameters of development in the spinal cord and brain-stem (enzyme-histochemistry, immunocytochemistry, neurophysiology, etc.). The present study provides essential data on the physical development of the descending projections to the spinal cord for those investigators who study the development of functional parameters (neurochemical, electrophysiological, etc.) in these projections.

Customer Reviews:

the path to strabo.......1999-09-06

This book is a unique source for the pre-renaissance history of geological science... it is one of the few mentions of the great Strabo, greek philosopher, explorer, geologist... a man more than a thousand years ahead of his time in the understanding of the earth.... a feat which is vastly underappreciated.... aside from that, the author is a solid storyteller...

The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences

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The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences
Frank Dawson Adams
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KP4OWK

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The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences

Manufacturer: Dover Pub.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GR9O7W

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The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences
Adams; Frank Dawson
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KK4M0Y

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The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences
Frank Dawson Adams
Manufacturer: Dover Publications Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000TH99TW

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The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences

Manufacturer: Dover, New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000I9MAYC

Book Description

There are fundamental relations between three vast areas of physics: particle physics, cosmology and condensed matter physics. The fundamental links between the first two areas, in other words, between micro- and macro-worlds, have been well established. There is a unified system of laws governing the scales from subatomic particles to the Cosmos and this principle is widely exploited in the description of the physics of the early Universe. The main goal of this book is to establish and define the connection of these two fields with condensed matter physics. According to the modern view, elementary particles (electrons, neutrinos, quarks, etc.) are excitations of a more fundamental medium called the quantum vacuum. This is the new 'aether' of the 21st Century. Electromagnetism, gravity, and the fields transferring weak and strong interactions all represent different types of the collective motion of the quantum vacuum. Among the existing condensed matter systems, a quantum liquid called superfluid 3He-A most closely represents the quantum vacuum. Its quasiparticles are very similar to the elementary particles, while the collective modes of the liquid are very similar to electromagnetic and gravitational fields, and the quanta of these collective modes are analogues of photons and gravitons. The fundamental laws of physics, such as the laws of relativity (Lorentz invariance) and gauge invariance, arise when the temperature of the quantum liquid decreases. This book is written for graduate students and researchers in all areas of physics.

Customer Reviews:

An out-of-this-world plunge into liquid helium.......2004-12-16

What is the Universe made of?

I remember that long ago, I read "Geometrodynamics," which hypothesized that the Universe might be made entirely of empty space! Curved space, of course. "Imagine," I told a cosmologist friend. "Mass without Mass! Charge without Charge!"

"Yes," said my friend. "Equations without Solutions. Theories without Content."

My friend continued, sarcastically, "To say the Universe is empty is a mistake, caused by making a sign error in the equation 1 + 1 = 2, and getting 1 + 1 = 0. That's the problem when you make an odd number of sign errors instead of an even number of them. After all, there are only three kinds of cosmologists, those who can count and those who can not."

Since then, I've read books that got me to picture the Universe in other ways. As a collection of harmonic oscillators. As real poles in a complex plane. As strings. As a cellular automaton. As a set of binary values. And as an n-dimensional brane.

Now we have a very interesting and award-winning monograph which gets us to think of the Universe as a droplet of superfluid Helium. And I was reminded of my earlier conversation when the author began by saying:

"A number of different vortices with an intricate structure of the multi-component order parameter have been experimentally observed in the superfluid phases of Helium-3, but the mathematics which is used to treat them is as simple as the equation 1 + 1 = 0."

Of course, by this Volovik means that two soliton walls annihilate each other.

In any case, this is a book for some of you Acoustics People out there. Yes, you. Ahoy! You who work with waves and oscillations in superfluid liquid Helium! Abandon your futile searches for Sixth Sound. And Fifth Sound. Switch to Cosmology! Here is a Model you can all understand!

The idea of this book is to find a condensed matter system analog to support the idea that elementary particles are excitations of a more fundamental medium called the quantum vacuum. And superfluid Helium3-A comes closest. When the temperature is non-zero, this "vacuum" is excited. The helium quasiparticles are very similar to the chiral elementary particles of the Standard Model. The helium "collective modes are very similar to gravitational, electromagnetic, and SU(2) gauge fields, and quanta of these modes are analogs of gravitons, photons, and weak bosons."

This comparison can remove the need for the ultraviolet renormalization we see in quantum field theory. And it may get us to dispose of quantum gravity entirely, and conclude that gravity simply is not fundamental.

James Bjorken, in a paper on Emergent Gauge Bosons, said that he likes the fact that Volovik's model supplies a solution to the cosmological constant problem (without having to invoke supersymmetry or any fine tuning). After all, a cold quantum liquid in equilibrium will have a pressure due to surface corrections, and that pressure will scale as an inverse power of droplet size. Bjorken tells us in the introduction to this book that "the vacuum dark pressure scales with the vacuum dark energy, and thus is measured by the cosmological constant, which indeed scales as the inverse square of the 'size' of the universe." Volovik says the cosmological constant is not a constant but a dynamical quantity which is either continuously or in a stepwise manner adjusted to perturbations.

This is how the helium droplet model serves to explain why the cosmological constant is so small, 120 orders of magnitude less than predicted by relativistic quantum field theory, and solves the coincidence problem of having the cosmological constant on the order of the present mass of the universe. The model also provides a (non-inflationary) rationale for the Universe being flat and answers the question of why the vacuum is (almost) non-gravitating.

Volovik explains that his model can also be used to construct analogs of black holes in the laboratory. "Quasiparticles cannot escape from the region of liquid which moves faster than they can propagate. Such regions serve as black holes." Two superfluid liquids sliding along each other can be used to construct an analog of an event horizon. And we might deduce something about collapse of black holes from this.

One problem for me is that this model would make the speed of light other than a fundamental constant. After all, the analogy is to the speed of sound in Helium3-A, which varies between 3 centimeters per second and 10,000 centimeters per second, depending on the direction of propagation! In our world, we wouldn't notice that. But there could be "external" observers who would. It all sounded too eerily similar to Tom Van Flandern's discussion of the speed of light. Van Flandern said that while the speed of light is the same for all observers, no matter what their velocities, that's true "for any wave in any medium, if one uses only waves of various types in that medium for the measurement." And I had given only two stars to Van Flandern's book!

More seriously, as Volovik admits, when one goes from microscopic theories to a more phenomenological approach, one runs into problems of non-locality.

The author tells us that so far, there has indeed been a success in using a superfluid Helium3 simulation. The Iordanskii force has been experimentally identified in rotating superfluid Helium3-B. And it provides verification of the analog of the gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect!

You'll learn quite a bit about particle physics, cosmology, and even liquid helium if you read this book.

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The Universe in a Helium Droplet
Grigory E. Volovik
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKU89Y

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Fascinating

Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology (Oxford World's Classics)

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

The Norton Book of Travel

Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing

The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

Abroad: British Literary Traveling between the Wars

ASIN: 0192840517

Book Description

'How is the mind agitated and bewildered, at being thus, as it were, placed on the borders of a new world!' - William Bartram 'Thus you see, dear sister, the manners of mankind do not differ so widely as our voyage writers would have us believe.' - Mary Wortley Montagu With widely varied motives - scientific curiosity, commerce, colonization, diplomacy, exploration, and tourism - British travellers fanned out to every corner of the world in the period the Critical Review labelled the 'Age of Peregrination'. The Empire, already established in the Caribbean and North America, was expanding in India and Africa and founding new outposts in the Pacific in the wake of Captain Cook's voyages. In letters, journals, and books, travellers wrote at first-hand of exotic lands and beautiful scenery, and encounters with strange peoples and dangerous wildlife. They conducted philosophical and political debates in print about slavery and the French Revolution, and their writing often affords unexpected insights into the writers themselves. This anthology brings together the best writing from authors such as Daniel Defoe, Celia Fiennes, Mary Wollstonecraft, Olaudah Equiano, Mungo Park, and many others, to provide a comprehensive selection from this emerging literary genre.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating .......2006-08-11

This is an anthology composed of 77 excerpts from travel writings by English authors in the 18th century. It is organized into sections or categories geographically (South Pacific, Europe, etc..). Each excerpt/author is preceded with a pithy historical background, as is each section, and there is a general Preface. The selections are rounded from the well known Captain Cook to little known private letters of women travelers to slave narratives to exploration accounts.

Overall this is like having a well-read instructor introduce you to the best and most well known travel writing, and most interesting sections from each text. Many of these accounts I have heard of before but never would have the time to read in full, but in excerpt form I discovered about 20 that were so good I would like to continue on and read the books in full. The editors notes are very learned (if not too pithy) and give excellent context and background to each text and category - it is certainly possible to study history through travel narratives, and have a great time doing it!

Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology [A book review from: Tourism Management]

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Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology [A book review from: Tourism Management]
K. Durie
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000PDSN9W

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Tourism Management, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology (oxford Worldandapos;s Classics)

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Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology (oxford Worldandapos;s Classics)
Elizabeth A. Duncan, Ian Bohls
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKQBRC

TRAVEL WRITING, 1700-1830: AN ANTHOLOGY. Oxford World's Classics

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TRAVEL WRITING, 1700-1830: AN ANTHOLOGY. Oxford World's Classics
Elizabeth A. & Ian Duncan (editors). Bohls
Manufacturer: Oxford Univ. Press,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N7I5WA

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