Being Muslim (Groundwork Guide Series)

This book is not an idiot or a dummy series. It is, hence, different altogether in content, context, and communication that helps understand the people, minds, concepts, and percepts. Being Muslim, in short, is interesting, thought provoking and educating. See a few extracts, reviews, etc.:

Quotes I like from this book:
>> "He who wrongs a Jew or a Christian will have me as his accuser on the Day of Judgment." Prophet Muhammad, -- a.k.a., Hadith (page 27)
>> "Donot consider me better than Moses" Prophet Muhammad, -- a.k.a., Hadith (p. 34)
>> "I am closest of all people to Jesus, son of Mary." Prophet Muhammad, -- a.k.a., Hadith (p. 34)
>> "Extremists are also being reminded that the wrath of God constitutes a minuscule part of the Qur'an" (author, p. 147)
>> "Nowadays, jihad is often used without any religious connotation, more or less equivalent to the English word, cusade -- a crusade against drugs..." (Rudolph Peters, p. 127)
>> "The most used word in the Qu'ran, after Allah, is ilm (knowledge)" (author, p. 147).
>> "Not all the Saudi restrictions are Islamic. The taboo against women drivers, for example, is not haram (forbidden), but it is not permitted, in deference to tradition." (author, p. 99).

From the Publisher:
Since 9/11, the world has been confronted with the most volatile facets of Islam with little explanation of how or why these controversial elements developed. Written by one of North America's most honored journalists, Being Muslim presents an up-front and clear explanation of this complex and emotion-laden subject.

From School Library Journal:
The author's tone is conversational and engaging, and frequent breaks in the text make this small book very readable.—Sondra VanderPloeg, Tracy Memorial Library, New London, NH Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Without preaching or political jargon and drawing on his travels and interviews in Muslim countries, he shows that the extremists are being challenged by a new generation of Muslims, and welcomes the current internal reformation.

By Deva Kautilya "Too Many Books Too Little Time!" (Cleveland, OH)
I heard the interview of the author on NPR while driving to the airport from a client site! I could not wait to get this book from the library.

By Naazish YarKhan
A must read.

By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) -
If it's an easy overview of key issues, topics and social and political concerns you need to serve as an introduction to Muslim concerns, you can't go wrong with BEING MUSLIM, based on travels in Muslim lands and interviews with experts there and in the West.

When success breeds failure

PS. This is not a review from my desktop.

The Self-Destructive Habits of Good ...
Popular business literature is full of stories of great companies and their invincibility. But with corporate lifecycles coming down at an alarming pace, that doesn’t seem true anymore....

Well known academic Jagdish Sheth is closely watching a clutch of hugely successful companies like Google and Cisco. He is convinced that on their way to success, they have unintentionally acquired certain bad habits which might lead to their downfall. Says Sheth, “With success, Google will become arrogant and complacent. Google is today’s avatar of Microsoft, which is yesterday’s avatar of IBM.” Sheth is convinced that Infosys is treading the same path. And Cisco? “Cisco is succeeding so very well right now that it is underestimating Chinese competition from Huawei,” he says. ...

Jagdish 'Jag' Sheth is the Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta School of Business. An acclaimed expert in Marketing, Sheth is the author and co-author of books like The Rule of Three and Tectonic Shift.

Information and Emotion

This is not a review, probably a reflection of my previous blog post: Toxicity in the library workplace - a survey

Extract from a book review by Hamid R. Jamali @ Webology

Overall, the studies presented in the book cover several affective and emotional aspects of information behaviour of different groups of people in different contexts. While the first three chapters of the book provide helpful theoretical information about research on emotional aspects of information behaviour, the other chapters present a vareity of research questions as well as methodologies that can be applied to investigate them. Therefore the book can be a source of inspiration for those graduate students and researchers interested in this area of human information behaviour. The book is a valuable addition to the ASIST Monograph Series and a second enlightening book coming out of the SIG USE research community after the Theories of Information Behavior. The publication of this book can be a turning point for establishing a research community and literature related to the affective and emotional aspects of human information behaviour.

Book Publisher Experiments

Publishers warm up to 'Net, sell chapters, give away books Nate Anderson, Arstechnica (Feb 11)

Two book publishers will be making more 'print' available online: Random House will sell selected chunks, and HarperCollins will make some titles free to read.

continue reading info posted by Gwen @ Internet News

I predict that this wiki will be none to sticky

NB. This is not from my desktop.

Posted by David E. Williams of the Health business blog

Reed Elsevier and other big scientific and medical publishers have had a hard time adjusting to the electronic age. Their expensive journals are taking a drubbing from open source alternatives like Public Library of Science (PLoS) –co-founded by my junior high school lab partner, Mike Eisen. And despite the fact that the Health Business Blog itself is delivered to Elsevier clients thanks to an agreement between Elsevier subsidiary LexisNexis and Newstex, Elsevier is still in rather deep trouble.
Unfortunately for them, their latest innovation WiserWiki, isn’t going to bail them out. From Information World Review: continue reading

Info courtesy: Informaticopia

Why Google only tells you what you already know by Farhad Manjoo

From the Inside Flap: "In True Enough, Manjoo presents findings from psychology, sociology, political science, and economics to show how new technologies are prompting the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact."

* John Wiley; Due: March 14, 2008; ISBN-13: 9780470050101; 256pp.

Table of Contents:

Chapter One: "Reality" Is Splitting.
Chapter Two: The New Tribalism: Swift Boats And The Power Of Choosing.
Chapter Three: Trusting Your Senses: Selective Perception and 9/11.
Chapter Four: Questionable Expertise: The Stolen Election And The Men Who Push It.
Chapter Five: The Twilight of Objectivity, or What's the Matter with Lou Dobbs?
Chapter Six: "Truthiness" Everywhere.
Epilogue: Living In a World without Trust.

An extract from Farhad Manjoo's Blog @ Salon.com:
"True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society" is a book near and dear to my heart. That's because, wouldn't you know, it's my book! I wrote it, and will be discussing it here a bit in advance of its publication in March.

The book examines a question that's long captivated me, a child of the Internet: Is digital technology advancing truth in the world, or is it distorting it?

By truth, I mean what we call sets of observable, objective, empirical "facts." You might argue -- and many do -- that wide access to information has the capacity to create a more knowledgeable, more tolerant, more rational society. [source: Tech News Review]

NB. I am waiting for the book release. An,d this is nothing to do with a similar blog: http://theytellusnothing.blogspot.com