Fund-of-funds

Note: this is not a book that appeals to your greed with a get rich quick philosophy. Quite the contrary. Dr. Ross takes you on a guided tour of how and why the markets work, why all the hype of Wall Street can be so misleading to investors, and how you can invest efficiently. And efficiency, as Dr. Ross explains, means avoiding waste - wasted money, wasted time, wasted aggrivation. Work smarter, not harder, as I like to say.

This was the dream book I was looking for. It is an invaluable guide and, I think, the gold standard for those seeking sponsorship.

I have used this book as a ready reference since the first edition was published in 1997. This second edition reflects a major update to the original book in that the proposal management tools in the first edition were woefully out of date and the focus was not on some of the Government opportunities for small business, such as Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)that require a tailored proposal strategy. The second edition also addresses new Government initiatives for e-business and a plethora of other topics that were not present in the first edition.

If you are competing for Government business this is the most complete, accurate book I know of that covers the RFP-Proposal-Negotiation-Award process. Short of memorizing the FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulations), amassing years of proposal writing experience, and gaining the wisdom of knowing what works and what doesn't you will not find a more concise guide to the process. Also, you will benefit greatly from the wealth of tips and pointers that the author provides from his own extensive experience. If you are in the DoD contracting business, regardless of business size, I cannot overemphasize this book's value when it comes to cutting through the maze and providing a clear roadmap. If you are a proposal or capture manager I strongly recommend that you get a copy for every member of your team.

For the book's readers who are in the commercial sector the approach outlined in this book will add process and structure to your proposal writing efforts. The rigorous requirements imposed by the Government are too often lacking in the commercial process, which results in sloppy proposals that meander around issues and miss important client requirements. Also, because the proposal development process can be as large a task in the commercial sector, managing it can be a nightmare without a well thought out strategy for ensuring that all of the "t"s are crossed and "i"s dotted. The approach in this book practically hands you a ready-made process that you can apply to proposal development. This process will not only improve your ability to respond quickly and accurately to RFPs, but do so in an efficient manner. The result will be a significant competitive advantage.

For both sets of readers I think some of the advice, such as using the proposal as a marketing tool as well as a due-diligence instrument for responding to RFPs is excellent. For example, the author emphasizes backing up responses with examples to demonstrate claims. This is a powerful technique that I have used repeatedly to good advantage. It goes a long way towards assuaging client concerns about capabilities versus empty claims, and will turn a proposal that is merely responsive into one that is compelling.

Other things that make this book extremely valuable include the CD ROM of checklists and templates, and the numerous examples from the author's past proposals.

In my opinion this is the best book available for proposal development, and the only one that fully addresses every aspect of managing the proposal process for Government business. It should be on the shelf of anyone who responds to RFPs, and in the library of every company that does Government or commercial contracting.

The first half of the book serves as a comprehensive survey of arguments brought against reform. He begins by analyzing why the proposed legislation would give incumbents enormous advantages over challengers. From there, he discusses how the term corruption has been expanded to mean anything that a legislator does to respond to the wishes of constituents who helped contribute to her campaign-whether or not a causal link can be established between particular contributions and particular legislation. He concludes it with a section on how limits placed on monetary expenditures made to pay for speech are, in fact, limits placed on speech itself because the expenditure of money to pay for speech is inextricably linked to speech itself.

In the second half, he deconstructs philosophical arguments used to justify reforms and turns them on their heads. He starts by pointing out that supporters of reform typically ignore the fact that most non-monetary means of influencing politicians are not distributed on an egalitarian basis. Thus, simply removing private contributions from our political system will not make everyone equal overnight. He develops this point by discussing the traditional notion of political equality-that "...Citizens are free to use their differing abilities, financial wherewithal, and personal disposition to become more or less active in political life, and to attempt to persuade their fellow citizens to vote in a particular manner." He points out that campaign finance reform is nothing more than an attempt to narrow the pool of individuals afforded this freedom.

He concludes by hammering this point home: "...Because the First Amendment...makes no distinction between the different types of political influence, it allows a maximum number of voters to participate and helps to prevent any one faction or interest from gaining the upper hand in political debate." This Madisonian indictment of the campaign finance movement goes above and beyond merely attacking various legislative proposals as incumbent protection schemes. It cuts through all the political rhetoric and reveals what campaign finance reform really is: an attempt by a coalition of elite groups to cast the rules of political debate on their own terms.

If you're concerned about free speech, read this book. You won't be disappointed.

Teach your children well....

These are not fancy dancy books, but basic down to earth helpful information that the modern homesteaders we know still use. And the section on snake lore is informative as well as enchanting. Same with the section on moonshine.

And for those like ourselves who have designed and are in the slow process of building our dream homes or cottages the section on chimney building is one of the best we have ever read or used.

I also will add that the used copy we bought via Amazon,com to replace another copy we gave away, arrived in mint condition. If you haven't bought used books via Amazon.com you are missing out on a money saving gem.

Thankfully, the old ways of Appalachian country living are preserved in these interesting and relevant instructional books. If you've ever been interested in how rural Americans survived before the days of Wal-Mart and Shoprite, you only have to look to the Foxfire books.

These books are very useful and informative. They come with plenty of diagrams and photos to teach you how to live off the land. Before the advent of trailer homes and double-wides, rural Americans had to build log homes. Before satellite TV and Playstations we had banjos and ghost stories. And before welfare, people were self-sufficient and could live off the land.

Not only can these books teach you about country living, they are handy for any writers or researchers who want details on Appalachian mountain life. There are lots of monologues and stories told by old-timers here. In many cases the living language of these folks is preserved quite well, and by reading their stories you almost feel like you're with them.

-- JJ Timmins

The best to do this is by following a strategy of just investing in a fund that tracks the major indexes, which does two things. First, it minimizes costs, so you won't pay any management fees as you would for your typical mutual fund. Also, most investors don't realized such costs as advertising and sales expenses are minimal for an index, compared to other funds, and those are typically passed on to the investor in the load or management fee. But the most important reason is that 90% of fund managers fail to beat the averages over the long haul. Since there are now more mutual funds than there are stocks on the New York Stock Exchange (which is over 5000) and as I said, 90% of them fail to beat the indexes, it's hard to imagine a more sobering reason for making an index at least a part of your investing strategy. So overall, a good book on investing emphazing a no frills, common-sense, and back-to-basics approach.

A brief side note here. I noticed the forward is by Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman who was succeeded by the present Al Greenspan. Volcker went on to head up the World Bank after that job, and I was glad to see he's still around and working.

As Bogle points out, since 90% of fund managers fail to beat the averages over the long haul, the best strategy is to buy a fund that tracks the major indexes, which does two things. First, it minimizes costs, so you won't pay any management fees as you would for your typical mutual fund. Also, most investors don't realize such costs as advertising and sales expenses are minimal for an index, compared to other funds, and those are typically passed on to the investor in the load or management fee. Since there are now more mutual funds than there are stocks on the New York Stock Exchange (which is over 5000) and as I said, 90% of them fail to beat the indexes, it's hard to imagine a more sobering reason for making an index at least a part of your investing strategy. So overall, a good book on investing emphazing a no frills, common-sense, and back-to-basics approach.

Although Bogle amply documents and demonstrates that most fund managers can't beat the averages over the long haul, and so the best way to invest in a mutual fund is to buy one that invests in the indexes and avoid the costs of managed funds, this doesn't mean a small investor can't beat the averages. The reason most funds don't is that most own so many stocks, as in the case of the Magellan fund, which used to own 1400 stocks, that they're forced to buy too many second and third tier stocks (or worse), which degrades their performance. The individual investor, however, can cherry-pick and do much better that way, assuming he's successful at it. But the point is that mutual funds have an inherent disadvantage in terms of owning a quality portfolio that inevitably stacks the odds against them, a limitation which small investor doesn't have.

A brief side note here. I noticed the forward is by Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman who was succeeded by the present Al Greenspan. Volcker went on to head up the World Bank after that job, and I was glad to see he's still around and working.

Watch out for some inconsistency in this book however, as Thorne sometimes gets into too much sentimental detail about the scientists' social lives (including his own), while the middle of the book sags as it digresses into the mechanical specs of radio telescopes and gravitational wave detectors. Also, beware of Thorne's suspiciously enthusiastic endorsements of gravitational wave research in chapter 10, as this is his own field of research, and I suspect he's trying to promote the need for funding. There's also a little intellectual arrogance here, as several times Thorne proclaims that the laws of quantum mechanics, as they are currently understood (which isn't much), are "indisputable" or "incontrovertible." Scientists used to say the same thing about Newton's laws until they were weakened by Einstein. Then the theories of Einstein (worshipped by every physicist in this book) were weakened by quantum mechanics. You never know, the knowledge presented in this book may someday be overthrown as well. But in the meantime, Thorne does a great job of explaining it to those of us who are interested but don't have multiple PhD's.

WHAT YOU GET: Many books have been written about black holes. Some are really simple. They make for a good introduction but are somewhat too basic for my taste. Some aim at staying intellectually affordable but they describe more than they explain. You are left frustrated: you don't understand what you are shown (see among others, John Gribbin's Unveiling the Edge of Time ). Some are too technical and took me out of my depth. K. Thorne gives explanations wich are complete enough to give you a coherent understanding while still being aimed at a non specialist public.

HOW IT IS DONE: The theoritical concepts involved are exposed along an historical structure . This way, the necessity of each element of the theory is made more obvious. Also, one gets briefly acquainted with the circumstance of the discoveries, the personnality of the involved researchers and the prevalent questionning as our knowledge evolved.

WHAT YOU NEED: The book contains very little mathematics. A college level should suffice. There are no equations (still rigourous; quite a challenge). Thorne illustrates his text with schematic illustrations, diagrams and simple mathematical curves. Being acquainted with the theory of relativity is probably a prerequisite. Thorne's explanation's of Einstein's space-time appears too short to bring you up to speed if you have no notion on the subject. Many good books with varying level of maths exist on the subject, including the original monography by A.Einstein himself (Relativity, by A. Einstein). I personnaly read Banesh Hoffmann's: Albert Einstein Creator and Rebel .

THE RESULT: This book is pleasant to read yet does not shy away from in dept explanations. It is intellectually rigourous without being austere. As an eagerly curious non specialist, I was very satisfied with that book.

Like many, I started Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time"
(1988), bogged down, and set it aside. Thorne's book got equally good
reviews, but my God, the thing's 600+ pages.... so it sat on my "to-
read" shelf for years. This tardy review is intended for others in
similar circumstances -- or for anyone interested in modern physics &
astronomy.

The book is written as a history of 20th century physics, from
Einstein's theory of the relativity of space & time (1905), to black
holes, gravity waves and wormholes in the 90's. I found this a very
engaging approach. Thorne's writing is (usually) clear and direct, and
he includes enough biographical tidbits and anecdotes to keep the
human juice in potentially dry topics.

A few gems: Einstein's college math professor Minkowski, who had
called the young genius a "lazy dog", later worked out the
mathematics combining space and time into "absolute spacetime."
Einstein made cruel jokes denigrating Minkowski's work, not
realizing, until after Minkowski's death, that his old teacher's math
was essential to Einstein's special relativity work.

Cosmic radio waves were discovered by a Bell Telephone engineer in
1932. Despite widespread publicity, professional atronomers weren't
very interested -- the first radiotelescope was built by a radio "ham",
in his mother's back yard in Illinois, in 1940. The first professional
radiotelescopes weren't built until after WW2, in England and
Australia; Americans didn't become competitive until the late 50's.

Thorne has a fair command of Russian, which gave him an "in"
when the USSR started allowing scientific contacts in the post-Stalin
era. Now that Russia is such a mess, we forget that the Soviets
produced a *bunch* of world-class scientists and engineers [note 1],
from the 1930's on -- including some of the best physicists since

Einstein.

Dr. Thorne, the Feynman Professor of Physics at Caltech
is best known to the
general public for his 1988 wormhole "time machine" proposal. Press
coverage included a photo of the author doing physics in the nude on
Mt. Palomar. Embareassing, but didn't hurt the book sales. The
wormhole work grew out of a request from Carl Sagan for a plausible
FTL transport scheme for his 1985 science-fiction novel "Contact"
(which I recommend). Sagan's request made Thorne realize the value
of thought experiments that ask, "What things do the laws of physics
permit an infinitely advanced civilization to do, and what do the
laws forbid?" This style of speculation by world-class scientists has
become popular (and somewhat respectable) in the last decade, and
has resulted in some very stimulating reading, such as K. Eric
Drexler's "Engines of Creation" (1986), and Hans Moravec's "Mind
Children" (1988) and "Robot" (1999).

My last exposure to formal physics was two painful undergraduate
courses (mumble) years ago. Since then I've kept up at roughly a
Scientific American level or below (plus I read a lot of science fiction).
I think I'm close to the author's aim-point for his potential audience.
I found some of the physics tough going, but these sections can be
safely skimmed without losing the thread of his arguments. I read
most of the book in two sittings -- it's surprisingly gripping. So --
don't put off reading "Black Holes" any longer!
__________
Note 1) --along with some remarkable pseudo-science. Iosif Shlovsky tells
of many such projects in his very entertaining "Five Billion Vodka
Bottles to the Moon" (1991).

A Walk For Sunshine is a light, inspiring, easy read, and chronicles the 2,000 + mile journey of a "regular Joe." The book was written from accounts taken from Mr. Alt's own AT journals, and he does, in fact, mention within the book that he did not set out to be an author. Mr. Alt's subtle humor within the book just happens to be a wonderful bonus. While giving detailed descriptions of trail life, observations of other hikers, or a reminder that kindness still exists in this world (trail angels), Mr. Alt consistently turns negatives into positives.

I had the wonderful opportunity of meeting Mr. Alt at a presentation in Shenandoah National Park. His enthusiasm and energy are contagious and his personality definitely comes through on the pages of his book.

Corny or not, right now I'm going to do what I did at the end of Mr. Alt's presentation and at the conclusion of his book.

::::::: APPLAUSE ::::::::