Factor

For what seems like the millionith alternate future X-Men story, the characters find themselves in a world that exists because Charles Xavier died before he could form the X-Men, and this brought about decades of human/mutant civil war.

When Legion, illigitamite son of Charles Xavier, traveled back in time to kill Magneto and accidently killed Xavier, an alternate world was created called the Age of Apocalypse in which Xavier never lived to form the X-Men and Apocalypse took over North America and most of the world. All the regular X-titles were put in hiatus for four months and replaced with alternate titles. Factor X (X-Factor) finds a faction of Apocalypse's followers. His first horseman Mr. Sinister, the enigmatic one eyed, long haired Cyclops, his jealous, insane brother Havok, and the evil and twisted Beast. Jean Grey stops by later on, and we see Cyclops take a heroic turn and then all hell breaks loose. The story line drags quite a bit in the beginning, but picks up momentum once the action gets going. Cyclops' characterization isn't all that different from his real world counterpart, while the evil and corrupt take on Beast must be seen to be believed. The "Dark" Beast was even used more when the Age of Apocalypse ended and went on to do battle with the normal reality Beast numerous times. All in all, Factor X is one of the lesser AoA books, but plays an important part in the whole storyline.

Welcome to hell on earth. North America is ruled by an evil mutant called Apocalypse. His kingdom only lives by one rule: Survivial of the fittest. Humans are regarded as the lower class and even not all mutants will be survive in this world. This all happened because Professor Charles Xavier never existed. Thus he never got to form the X-Men to appose Apocalypse.

In this book, you see how life can be for a few of the chosen. The ones who are "worthy to live". Like the righteous born leader Cyclops, and his jealous brother Havoc, who only acts out of his jealous and ignorant emotions.

The art is above average (again) and the story is a bit hard to get into. It's a drag at the start and a bit too boring and predictable. But it gets better when you get deeper into the story, as in the characters.

These stories won't mean much if you haven't read this AoA storyline from the start. If you get this, I recommend you get all the other AoA TPBs too. For a complete reading list of it, see my X-Men: LegionQuest review.

If you liked this, I'd recommend the graphic novel "Tales from the Age of Apocalypse: Sinister Bloodlines", which tells about what happened Scoot and Alex's parents in this alterred timeline.

Having grown up learning about the 10 commandments, it was interesting to see how the writer brought other's lives into the big scope of God's Laws regardless of the time frame or plot of the story. Because of the 10 individual stories, I was able to read them out of sequence and at my own pace. There is something for everyone in this book. I encourage all families to have one in their library and would encourage their children to read it as well. I will mine!!!!!

ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS THAT ATTRACTED ME TO THIS BOOK WAS THE SHORT STORIES.I LOVE TO READ, BUT LIKE ALL OF US FIND IT HARD TO HAVE THE TIME.ITS MUCH EASIER TO START A BOOK KNOWING THERE ARE 10 STORIES.HOWEVER I FOUND THE STORIES ALL SO INTERESTING AND EASY TO READ THAT I FINISHED THE BOOK IN LESS THAN ONE WEEK.AND WHAT A GREAT IDEA TO BASE EACH STORY ON ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, MOST OF US CAN'T EVAN SAY THEM,MUCH LESS SAY THEM IN ORDER.WE TEND TO FORGET THAT THE COMMANDMENTS WERE GIVEN AS OUR GUIDE ,JESUS OUR GRACE .EACH STORY IS SO DIFFERENT THAT THERE IS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE.FOR INSTANCE MY HUSBANDS FAVORITE STORY(FUTUREISTIC) WAS MY LEAST FAVORITE.A GREAT BOOK TO BUY !!

What I like about this book is it takes each of the 10 Commandments and makes them relevant to our daily life. So many times the Commandments are "those 10 things we are not supposed to do" but The Heaven Factor brings them to life and clarifies how disobeying these commands can be detrimental to our life.
Each story is believable and enjoyable to read. There is humor, sadness and more. You will enjoy reading this book.

If you are buying this book to help build strength like I did this is the wrong book for you. It may be good to build mass but not strength. The premise of the book is pounds per minute and this will give you your biggest gains. I've tried in the past with lower weight higher reps and more sets and did not see good strength gains. This best strength gains I've had were due to the opposite of what this book suggest. Maybe I'm complaining about something the book was not intended for but it sounded good because the title. There are not many books out there just on how to build bench power I'm still searching.

The philosophy of "Power Factor Training" is doing heavy partial reps in X amount of time. Okay? That's it. Some people swear by it. Others swear at it. Make up your own mind. The book is valuable, though, in that it does show which exercises are the most effective for certain areas.

I must say that I am more than satisfied with the content of this book. The research that these two authors have placed in this book is amazing! These authors have given us the basis as to why certain exercises work and why others don't. They also provide us with an incredibly intense workout program.

As a weightlifter, I have read in many books, such as "Beef It" by Robert Kennedy and "Basic Weight Training" by Thomas D. Fahey, that one should not overtrain. What is the definition of overtraining? Well, these two authors have given us a mathematical (yes, mathematical!) formula that can help us measure how much our strength has grown and whether or not we have overtrained our muscles. How many other weight training books have been able to encapsulate our amount of muscular output into a mathematical formula?

These two authors took the time to analyze the most popular arm and chest exercises in existence and rated them according to their overall effectiveness. Do you think dumbell butterfly is a good exercise for you chest? If you do, then you really need to buy this book. It's no wonder why Harvard University's Physiological Department utilizes this book as the basis for their research.

Anyone choosing this book on the basis of the title will be disappointed, since it has nothing to do with architecture and nothing to do with transportation. Instead, this book consists of 22 collections of photographs, all of which take unorthodox approaches to photography in urban settings. We have such things as photos of the pattern of pipes on the ceilings of Paris subway stations, an artificial mountain in the Netherlands made of garbage, snapshots someone found laying in the street, fictitious typed letters between a photographer and some imaginary character, street markings that have been spray-painted by municipal workers, and so on. Despite the editor's introductory essay, I'm mystified as to why this book exists.

Although it's not consistently successful, this book contains many thought-provoking essays and photographic studies, all of which acknowledge the growing interest in the way cities work. It's a confusing book because it mixes ideas from artists, architects, philosophers and geographers, so the changes of pace are often hard to take. Many of the artists make work which is rather allusive and oblique, although I found nearly all of the art projects fascinating. Overall it's one of the better, and more accessible introductions to ideas which have been developed by philosophers such as Paul Virilio and Gilles Deleuze. If you want to know what they are about, read this book first.

In Breathing Cities, projects from various disciplines are presented which closely examine the nature of urban flux. The British architect, Richard Rogers, remarks on the topic that "the buildings of the future will be less immobile than the temple of the past and more like moving, thinking, organic robots." Archigram as well also remarked once that "When it rains in Oxford Street, the architecture is no more significant than the rain." The work of various architects and artists is compiled under the headings "People","Goods", "Geography", "Information" and "Ideologies". The photographers Martyn Rose und Takashi Homma and the artists Langlands & Bell und Nathan Coley use the examples of London, Berlin and Tokyo to present their approach to "breathing cities". The architectural group "Foreign Office", the architect Zaha Hadid, the architectural historian Mark Cousins and the philosopher Simon Glendinning as well as other contributors reflect on the phenomenon of architecture in movement, each from their own particular point of view. In this highly valuable book, it is not the lifeless 'nice' side of the city which is focused on but the city as a living organ with all its "processes of digestion and excretion."

Read more in a-matter.

This book was written by someone who obviously does not have an open mind and may not have even heard Farrakhan actually speak.

I was disappointed...

Alexander has assembled a potpourri of seventeen pieces about Farrakhan, ranging from the scholarly (by Ernest Allen, Jr. on the evolution of the Nation of Islam-the single best quick survey of this subject, incidentally) to the hysterical (by Leonard Pitts, Jr. on Farrakhan's ability to incense white Americans). The short articles also range from the enthusiastic (Aminah B. McCloud lauds his "realistic road to solutions") 182 to the condescending (the editor: "I find the idea of Farrakhan as Dangerous Black Leader a ridiculous proposition") 14 to the outraged (Itabari Njeri considers him "the worst thing that could happen to Black people at the dawn of the twenty-first century"). 240 If no consistency can be found in their approach or their views, one generalization can be hazarded. Few of the authors, not even the several Muslims among them, take Farrakhan's Islamic aspirations very seriously. Repeatedly, they stress that his unique place in the life of American blacks has been won despite the outlandishness of his cosmology and the severity of his way of life. They see him rising to his current position of importance due to an ability to organize and to articulate African-American resentments, plus his perverse ability to alarm whites; 105 they attribute little role to the quasi-Islamic content of his mission.

Middle East Quarterly: Islam in the United States December, 1998

Foolish enough to have dropped a dollar into the cup of a blind man? Don't feel too bad -- over a million other benighted souls did the same thing! Listening to a million dollars rattle sounds a lot like a diamondback on his last lurch forward. Great ideas have never come at such a discount and this book tells you why.

If you're looking for something new and different, you won't find it here. It's more of the same -- too much detail to read, and the menus are repetious. The "rotation" diet is also too low in calories.

I found the T-Factor 2000 book to be very informative. I have read many health facts and tidbits from numerous sources, but this book actually gives you the scientific reasoning and breakdowns behind each. Sometimes it can get tedious. The reviewer who commented that this book does not give anything "new and informative" needs to realize that most of the "new and informative" books are filled with garbage and unhealthy eating plans. T-Factor 2000 gives sensible, pratical and healthy advice that works drastically to anyone who continues to fight the battle of the bulge.

It doesn't promise any magic solutions, or strange new combinations to make fat disappear. I enjoyed the detail and logical reasoning of the book which agrees with several other health experts. They have been telling us to cut down on fat for years. The recipes consist of foods that anyone would enjoy eating...not strange or extreme. Eating natural whole foods and getting enough excercise is just plain common sense. The family size recipes can be overwhelming for a single person...but thank God for freezers! You just cook and freeze leftovers. I like having the menus planned for me. One less thing for me to do and that leaves more time for living!

...especially not anything you would not be much better off simply scouring the net for. Which happens to be FREE and sports a truckload of such putative blueprints, best practices, ROI enablers, success stories and whatNot -- CRM Guru, CRM Forum, CRM Daily ...ad infinitum. If your reasoning is to skip the information overload and bag all the available wisdom in one neatly bound huggable volume, you'd still do better to look elsewhere, there is easily a wild smattering of CRM wisdom in books that cost a decent coin instead of the Four Seasons price on this tome. After all, it is only fair to expect some ROI on reading dollars, no?

Dick Lee and Bob Thompson are two names that have been around the CRM space for years. But more than their tenure, they're noted for their straight talk and solid opinions. 'Blueprint for CRM Success' continues this no-nonsense tradition.

First, you'll learn CRM is not just software and is not just about technology. Beyond this however are clear step by step guidelines for instituting change and implementing a CRM culture as well as application.

Part II's 'Blueprint for CRM Success' and Part IV's 'Customer-centric Strategies' alone are worth the price of admission!

Many corporations have adopted this book as part of their Corporate Diversity Program. This is a tragic shame, as the authors do little more than attack traditional values and American culture under the guise of diversity. While this book is marketed in the business category, it is in fact, a thinly veiled collection of radical left wing political writings. This book does not subscribe to Dr. King's "Content of their Character" premise, but rather focuses on dominant and non-dominant "groups". Equal rights are not the focus of the authors, but rather equal outcomes, ignoring the relative effectiveness of differing patterns of behavior, cultural values or economic practices in producing wealth, advancing careers or building functional communities. The authors believe that decisions should only have consequences if the decision maker is part of a "dominant" group.

In the corporations that the authors would have us build, "incorrect" points of view, including values, facts and integrity are cast aside if they conflict with the authors "correct" worldview. Family and Christian values are dismissed as homophobia and heterosexism, in effect creating a new prejudice to marginalize Evangelical Christians. Those who simply believe in a free society based on equal rights and equal application of laws are simply dismissed out of hand. The editors and authors of this anthology advocate suppression of free speech for the sake of their utopian "non-judgemental" (IF and only if you fit one of their acceptable "groups") vision.

This book is divisive. Instead of advancing diversity it serves only to undermine integrity and trust. By substituting radical orthodoxy for open dialog, it in effect creating a new segregation between those who believe in American culture and those who would change it to something more closely resembling socialism. Instead of wasting your time on this, read Vision of the Annointed, or Race and Culture by economist and social scientist Thomas Sowell, A Dream Deferred, by Shelby Steele, Diversity by Peter Wood, Who Stole Feminism by Christina Hoff Sommers or The End of Racism by Dinesh D'Souza!

The Diversity Factor shows the emerging maturity in the understanding of valuing and managing diversity in today's workplace. By incorporating writings and viewpoints of those other than the Editors, the benefits of diveristy and multiple perspectives are promoted within the book itself. This alone supports the shifting paradigms about the richness and merits of diversity. Cross and Blackburn White are to both be acknowledged for this refreshing and engaging publication, in addition to their continued efforts publishing The Diversity Factor periodical. The Editors step out of the comfort zone by addressing differnces that make many uncomfortable but yet are very important, such as the gay and lesbian worker and how their difference matters. Whenever a diversity book, management program, or training program exclude sexual orientation, promoting and inclusive understanding of diversity is greatly diserviced and undermined. Cross and Blackburn White break free of this dilemma by embracing inclusion. As a Diveristy Awareness and Communications Educator, I highly recommend this insightful and inclusive reading to all managers and diveristy educators as a valuable resouce. Frank Stonehouse

Do all Christians wonder if they've made a mistake? When they're alone at night and they hear the dead silence that answers their prayers, do they wonder if maybe, just maybe, there isn't a God out there listening? I assume Dr. Habermas would classify this as factual doubt. (He says the other kinds are emotional, when you're angry at God for letting a loved one die, or volitional, which he defines as a weak or immature faith, meaning you are unwilling to submit to biblical principles and let some minister make all the important decisions in your life for you, using a 1,900 year old text.) I got the impression that Habermas has so many doubts about Christianity, he doesn't really believe that Jesus is a divine being any more. In his other books, Habermas claims to be an expert on the resurrection appearances, so he knows how flimsy the evidence is. Anyone who watches a beloved teacher and friend die a horrible death over several hours, nailed to a cross on the side of a busy public road, and then has a dream in which a gardener tending his grave suddenly starts speaking with the voice of the dead man, well, these dreams have to be viewed with skepticism, and not accepted as evidence that the loved one actually came back from the dead to visit. Human beings store memories for years, and memories with a strong emotional content are often replayed during sleep as dreams. This is a normal process, and the first Twelve disciples encouraged new converts to report their dreams as prophecies. In this book, Habermas treats his feelings of doubt that came from categorizing the evidence. Now, his conclusion is that "Doubt doesn't come until I give myself permission to question." And I think that illustrates the Christian position. As a Christian, you don't have to give yourself permission to question the divinity of Jesus. You can go out and buy books that affirm the validity of Christianity, but those books are dishonest unless you allow yourself to evaluate the evidence honestly. A Christian who does not give himself permission to question the evidence, by saying things like "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it" is always going to be troubled by emotional doubts. Every time God betrays this blind faith (the 700 recent deaths in Uganda by a Christian minister who took money in anticipation of the end of the world comes to mind) then all of the hidden doubts rise to the surface. This book presents so much compelling evidence for doubting Christianity, I can only encourage the reader to write his own last chapter. What happens when you give yourself permission to doubt? Personally, I like the advice of John Stuart Mill, "Proportion your faith to the evidence." If the evidence for a "resurrection" 1,900 years ago is based on slight evidence, then don't give 100% belief. Give your belief in proportion to the strength of the evidence. Habermas knows the evidence better than most, and he has written an entire book explaining how he uses his doubts to make his faith stronger. Well, I don't think that's the right conclusion.

While most of his premises seem quite reasonable, a lot of them don't seem to be developed enough to be thouroughly convincing. As someone who counsels people I find his case histories much too brief to be of great use. Perhaps my perception suffers because I recently read the Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft (5 Stars in my book). I feel like I've gone from Shakespeare to Reader's Digest.

I ordered this book while going through a bout of doubt both about my current girlfriend and my faith (strange how some things are linked at times). Of course, since I live in Switzerland, the book took its time to arrive, and by the time I read it, my doubts had been blown away like the clouds on a windy day - by a four-hour phone call with my girlfriend. Previously, they had been exacerbated by reading the book "What is Atheism" by Douglas Krueger, to the point where I was wondering what would happen if I renounced my faith.

When the sharpest doubt subsided (the "O boy, he is intelligent and logical and convincing and here I thought it was all true, what do I do now) I realized that while I still wanted to reread Krueger's book and check his arguments against those of apologists (dealing with factual doubt), any decision as to my beliefs should be made with a level head and not while in a panicked frenzy (i.e. while suffering from emotional doubt).

The mere fact of doubting something does not mean it's necessarily wrong, and it would be foolish to change convictions every time someone rattles you with his or her arguments. (As reviews demonstrate, neither Atheists nor Christians seem to do that.) This is the main point Dr. Habermas is making, and his goal is clearly to lead any doubting Christian to the point where he or she can take a step back, take a look at the whole picture, and decide rationally and calmly on the course to be taken. It therefore seems to me that Bill Hays mistook Dr. Habermas' main thrust for a recommendation to exercise blind faith. Not so! Dr. Habermas encourages Christians to read apologetic books to counter factual doubts instead of simply using psychological tricks to push them aside; where he urges Christians not to question is in the area of emotional doubt, where questions frequently are "what ifs" of the destructive kind. To give an example: the question "What if I had married a more beautiful woman?" is not only destructive to your marriage, it tends to preoccupy your mind and preclude a levelheaded assessment of your wife's true qualities. The same is true for questions of the type "What if God does not exist despite what I factually know?" Rarely does anything positive come of them. (If the question is reduced to "What if God does not exist?" or "What facts are there about God's existence?", I believe it can lead to a very positive outcome.)

In fine, Dr. Habermas has written a clear, logical assessment of doubt (it clicks very nicely with what I've experienced), throwing aside many popular misconceptions in the process. The reason I do not give it five stars is that I have not yet been in the position to apply his principles (I'm on a surprisingly long doubt-free period) and therefore cannot evaluate them. (Another reason is that I dislike the free-flowing margin - looks sloppy - but that's not his fault.) All in all I'd recommend this book to people who are worrying about their faith; to others who have factual questions, it will be of little help (one short chapter and a reference section).

This is a dreadful book. It isn't even because it covers the same old, neo-Nazi (and old-Nazi for that matter) plots put to much better use by other authors. It is the author's choice of words. No one uses the stilted language of either the author in his narrative or of the dialogue between characters. The language makes this novel tedious reading. Making matters worse is the usual nonsense of an everyday person surviving attacks by professional killers and even dispatching some of them with little trouble. Gifford is clearly no Ludlum, and his heroes are no more likeable than his villians.

Actually, Gifford wrote a sequel to this book a number of years later. He brought back Cooper and his long lost sister, etal. Trying to be fair and allowing for the fact that "The Wind Chill Factor" was an early novel, I started reading it. Unbelievably, it was worse than the original. Even though I make it a practice to finish any book I start, I gave up after the first 100 pages.

1972: Drat! We have Nixon AND resurgent Nazi sleeper cells here and around the globe? John Cooper is recently divorced and eking out an AA-assisted writer's existence in Cambridge, MA when he receives a cryptic telegram from his elder brother, who is inexplicably in Buenos Aires:

"URGENT YOU MEET ME COOPER'S FALLS 20 JANUARY. DROP EVERYTHING. FAMILY TREE NEEDS ATTENTION. CHEERS OLD BOY. CYRIL."

So home to the family namesake Cooper's Falls, Mn goes John Cooper. This Ludlum-esque page-turner had me as soon as John Cooper's Lincoln swung northward in Chicago and headed on the long ago familiar Illinois Tollroad trip towards home in Minnesota - with a stop at "one of the Fred Harvey emporiums." Almost run off the road near Madison in a blizzard, John goes home to revisit old family secrets. Then round and round the globe he goes, where it stops only author Thomas Gifford knows. I was up all night following the intrigue!

The Wind Chill Factor isn't necessarily an easy book to read. The plot is complex and if you don't keep up with the different twists, it would be easy to get lost in the details. However, this is absolutely one of the most richly written books I've ever read. The sensations the lead character experience become the reader's sensations; his thoughts, your thoughts. Once you commit your energy to the story, you'll be hard pressed to put the book down until you are finished.