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How big things get done : the surprising factors that determine the fate of every project, from home renovations to space exploration and everything in between / by Flyvbjerg, Bent,author.; Gardner, Dan,1968-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from sketch to the jewel of the New York skyline in twenty-one months; how Amazon started in a garage and became a global retail giant in five years; how, when coronavirus broke out in the city of Wuhan, the Chinese goverment built a 1,500-room hospital in under a week. These grand visions make for inspiring stories. But even for endeavors of far smaller and more modest scales, turning a vision into a plan and a plan into reality isn't easy. Whether it's delivering a key report to a client, organizing a big event, implementing a department-wide process, launching a small business, inventing a product, or renovating a home, many of our everyday projects are in fact complex feats of planning and coordination. Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life's work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed "the world's leading megaproject expert" by KPMG. In Big Plans, he identifies the errors in judgement and decision-making that lead projects to fail, and offers research-based strategies for avoiding common pitfalls. For example: Think slow, act fast: It may seem obvious that we should spend less time planning and more time executing, but in practice this is exceedingly difficult. Plan backwards: Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there. Eliminate the unpredictable: when a project gets derailed, we often cite "unforeseen problems." However, most problems can be foreseen, through a method called reference-class forecasting. Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House to the making of Pixar's first film, Big Plans reveals how to get any ambitious project done: on time and on budget"--
Subjects: Project management; Project management;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The sirens of Mars : searching for life on another world / by Johnson, Sarah Stewart,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A young planetary scientist intimately details the search for life on Mars, tracing our centuries-old obsession with this seemingly desolate planet. Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. And yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium, and Mare Sirenum--on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science. In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own. Johnson's fascination with Mars began as a child in Kentucky, turning over rocks with her father and looking at planets in the night sky. She now conducts fieldwork in some of Earth's most hostile environments, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the salt flats of Western Australia, developing methods for detecting life on other worlds. Here, with poetic precision, she interlaces her own personal journey--as a female scientist and a mother--with tales of other seekers, from Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a utopian society existed on Mars, to Audouin Dollfus, who tried to carry out astronomical observations from a stratospheric balloon. In the process, she shows how the story of Mars is also a story about Earth: This other world has been our mirror, our foil, a telltale reflection of our own anxieties and yearnings. Empathetic and evocative, The Sirens of Mars offers an unlikely natural history of a place where no human has ever set foot, while providing a vivid portrait of our quest to defy our isolation in the cosmos"--
Subjects: Johnson, Sarah Stewart.; Life on other planets.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Shadow state : murder, mayhem and Russia's remaking of the West / by Harding, Luke,1968-author.;
A thrilling account of how Russia is waging a hidden war against America and the West, using espionage, corruption, fake news, and KGB-style murder. March 2018. Two Russian assassins arrive in a provincial English city to kill a former officer from Russia's GRU intelligence agency. His crime? Passing secrets to British spies. The poison? A lethal nerve agent, novichok. The attempted execution was a reminder - as if one were needed - of Russia's contempt for international norms. The Soviet Union and its doctrine are long gone, but the playbook used by the Kremlin's spies during that long confrontation with the West is back. And the underlying goal remains the same: to undermine democracy and exploit divisions within American and European society and politics. Moscow's support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election has grown into the biggest political scandal of modern times. Its American players are well-known. In Shadow State, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Luke Harding reveals the Russians behind the story: the spies, hackers and internet trolls. Harding charts how the Kremlin has updated Communist-era methods of influence and propaganda for the age of Facebook and Twitter, and considers the compelling question of our age: what exactly does Vladimir Putin have on President Trump? Similar to those of the Cold War, Putin's ambitions are truly global. His emissaries include oligarchs, bankers, lawyers, mercenaries, and agents of influence. They roam from Salisbury to Helsinki, Ukraine to Central Africa, London to Washington, D.C. Shadow State is the singular account of how the Kremlin seeks to reshape the world, to divide the US from its European friends, and to remake America in its own dark and kleptocratic image. This is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand how our politics came to be so chaotic and divided. Nothing less than the future of Western democracy is at stake.
Subjects: Espionage, Russian; Political corruption; Political campaigns;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Shadow state [sound recording] : murder, mayhem and Russia's remaking of the West / by Harding, Luke,1968-author.; Smith, Nicholas Guy,narrator.; Blackstone Publishing,publisher.; Harper Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by Nicholas Guy Smith.A thrilling account of how Russia is waging a hidden war against America and the West, using espionage, corruption, fake news, and KGB-style murder. March 2018. Two Russian assassins arrive in a provincial English city to kill a former officer from Russia's GRU intelligence agency. His crime? Passing secrets to British spies. The poison? A lethal nerve agent, novichok. The attempted execution was a reminder - as if one were needed - of Russia's contempt for international norms. The Soviet Union and its doctrine are long gone, but the playbook used by the Kremlin's spies during that long confrontation with the West is back. And the underlying goal remains the same: to undermine democracy and exploit divisions within American and European society and politics. Moscow's support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election has grown into the biggest political scandal of modern times. Its American players are well-known. In Shadow State, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Luke Harding reveals the Russians behind the story: the spies, hackers and internet trolls. Harding charts how the Kremlin has updated Communist-era methods of influence and propaganda for the age of Facebook and Twitter, and considers the compelling question of our age: what exactly does Vladimir Putin have on President Trump? Similar to those of the Cold War, Putin's ambitions are truly global. His emissaries include oligarchs, bankers, lawyers, mercenaries, and agents of influence. They roam from Salisbury to Helsinki, Ukraine to Central Africa, London to Washington, D.C. Shadow State is the singular account of how the Kremlin seeks to reshape the world, to divide the US from its European friends, and to remake America in its own dark and kleptocratic image. This is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand how our politics came to be so chaotic and divided. Nothing less than the future of Western democracy is at stake.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Espionage, Russian; Political campaigns; Political corruption;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Gwynne's grammar : the ultimate introduction to grammar and the writing of good English / by Gwynne, N. M.;
"Crushing national Debt? Climate Change? No: the greatest danger to our way of life is the decline of grammar. Thus preaches the inimitable Mr Gwynne as he shows us the way out of this sorry state. "Grammar is the science of using words rightly, leading to thinking rightly, leading to deciding rightly, without which-as both common sense and experience show-happiness is impossible. Therefore, happiness depends at least partly on good grammar." So writes Mr. Gwynne in his small but perfectly formed new book of grammar with an attitude. Mr. Gwynne believes passionately that we must regain our knowledge of the workings of our language before it is too late. Schools don't teach it, and as the Internet drives the written word to new lows of informality, we approach a tipping point of expressive dysfunction. Into the breach steps this doughty grammarian. Rejecting popular notions that language is simply a matter of the way people use it, he meticulously spells out what tradition and common sense have, over centuries, dictated to be the right and the wrong. His teaching method is also defiantly old school: no one can follow a rule he hasn't committed to memory. But not all rules are equal. For a country whose only broadly subscribed guide to writing is Strunk and White, Mr. Gwynne performs a radical procedure. He presents its original seed: Strunk's 1918 essay, which E. B. White expanded. But neither form was ever meant as a guide to grammar, and so Mr. Gwynne presents only the kernel of Strunk's useful advice as a companion: a guide to putting words together nicely set within Gwynne's wisdom about putting them together correctly. The result is the last word on the subject anyone should need."--Provided by publisher."Crushing national Debt? Climate Change? No: the greatest danger to our way of life is the decline of grammar. Thus preaches the inimitable Mr Gwynne as he shows us the way out of this sorry state."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: English language; English language; English language;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Tracers in the dark : the global hunt for the crime lords of cryptocurrency / by Greenberg, Andy,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A propulsive story of a new breed of investigators who have cracked the Bitcoin blockchain, taking once-anonymous realms of money, drugs, and violence and holding them up to the light. Black markets have always thrived in the shadows of society. Increasingly, these enterprises--drug dealing, money laundering, human trafficking, terrorist funding--have found their shadows online. Digital crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. At the heart of their massive conspiracies: cryptocurrency. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in Bitcoin--a currency with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers--black marketeers robbed law enforcement for years of their chief method of cracking down on criminal markets, namely, following the money. But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn't so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could crack open an entire world of crime. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak; a Bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur; and a colorful ensemble of hardboiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld. The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, sex-abuse rings, and the biggest takedown of an online narcotics market in the history of the internet. This is a cat-and-mouse story and a tale of a technological one-upmanship that's utterly of our time. Filled with canny maneuvering and shocking twists, it answers a provocative question: How would some of the world's most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?"--
Subjects: Commercial crimes.; Computer crimes.; Cryptocurrencies.; Transnational crime.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The beading bible : a comprehensive guide to beading techniques / by Wood, Dorothy,1955-author.; reprint of (manifestation):Wood, Dorothy,1955-Beader's bible.;
"An indispensable guide to beads and beading techniques, presenting essential beading know-how together with a wide range of inspirational projects, tips and ideas. Beads are the oldest and most widespread art form, having been used in virtually every culture since ancient times. Over the years new materials and methods of making beads have been introduced and now bead workers have a vast array of stunning beads to work with. Beading has also developed over the years and, even though many traditional techniques are still popular, the craft is constantly evolving. With so many techniques, and such a vast array of beads and materials available for the contemporary beader, there is definitely a need for a comprehensive guide. The Beading Bible is just that-- an encyclopaedia of beads and beading techniques that aims to educate and inspire anyone who loves working with beads. The Beading Bible begins by looking at beads themselves; how to choose beads from metal, modelled, gemstone, seed beads and cylinder beads to hex beads, crystals, glass and bugle beads. There are handy tables to help you to understand how beads are measured and bead quantities, as well as advice on choosing bead colors. You are then guided through the basic to more specialist tools and equipment that you will need in beadwork. You will find each beading technique explained in detail throughout the chapters. However, the book begins by giving you the basic knowledge of essential techniques, such as working from a chart and knotting. The book is divided into eight chapters that cover all the traditional techniques : bead loom weaving, off loom bead stitches, ropes and cords, fringing, netting and tassels, threading and stringing, wire work and jewellery techniques, bead embroidery and even knitting and crochet with beads. Within each chapter you are guided through the basic skills, tools and materials, before tackling more advanced techniques. Inspiration pages will give you interesting ideas using the different techniques, and there are over 30 fabulous projects, ranging from beautiful bags and jewellery to stylish scarves and accessories-- perfect excuses for trying out your new skills! Easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions, clear diagrams and stunning photography combine to create the must-have resource for beaders of all abilities." --
Subjects: Beadwork; Beadwork.; Beadwork;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Self Help This Is Your Chance to Change Your Life [electronic resource] : by Bernstein, Gabrielle.aut; Schwartz, Richard C..; cloudLibrary;
#1 New York Times best-selling author Gabrielle Bernstein charts a path to healing that can literally change your life—a simple, powerful method informed by Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy. Are you ready to unlock the greatest resource of your life? Gabby Bernstein has written the ultimate self-help guide, offering a revolutionary practice to radically shift your core beliefs and connect you to an infallible inner guidance system: the energy of Self within you. In this groundbreaking book, Gabby demystifies the power of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, taking its life-changing teachings out of the therapist’s office and into your everyday life. You'll discover how extreme patterns like addiction, rage, pleasing, or constant self-judgment often develop as ways to suppress old feelings of inadequacy, shame, or fear. Once you bring these patterns into the light and care for them, healing happens swiftly. True to her gift, Gabby has translated the principles of IFS into a relatable, step-by-step practice. Sharing her signature wisdom, her calm presence, and her own lived experience, she guides you through a simple 4-step process to help you compassionately care for yourself, resolve inner conflicts, and transform your self perception. As you learn to approach your own behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs with curiosity, love, and understanding, you’ll start to see yourself through the lens of self-compassion, clearing space for miraculous shifts. In Self Help, you’ll discover: Gabby's 4-step “Check In” process to transform the patterns that have held you back Relatable, practical tools that fit into your actual life–instead of hours of contemplation Lasting relief from the negative stories you’ve been playing on repeat A practice you can apply anywhere, anytime, to connect with Self energy for instant relief Self Help is the culmination of Gabby Bernstein's extensive experience as a motivational speaker, spiritual leader, and best-selling author. Her unique approach, rooted in love, compassion, and authenticity, has resonated with millions of readers worldwide. In these pages, Gabby empowers you to become your own inner healer. This is your chance to change your life.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Motivational & Inspirational; Emotions; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD);
© 2024., Hay House,
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Digital minimalism : choosing a focused life in a noisy world / by Newport, Cal,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives. Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience "fear of missing out" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction. Now, Newport gives us a name for this quiet movement, and makes a persuasive case for its urgency in our tech-saturated world. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives, and attempts to unplug completely are complicated by the demands of family, friends and work. What we need instead is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions. Drawing on a diverse array of real-life examples, from Amish farmers to harried parents to Silicon Valley programmers, Newport identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. He shows how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude. He then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day "digital declutter" process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control. Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. This book shows the way.
Subjects: Self-help publications.; Information technology; Internet addiction; Technological innovations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The knowledge : how to rebuild our world from scratch / by Dartnell, Lewis.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow, perhaps from a viral pandemic or catastrophic asteroid impact, what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible-a guide for rebooting the world? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest-or even the most basic-technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, accurately tell time, weave fibers into clothing, or even how to produce food for yourself? Regarded as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can't hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn't just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all-the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. This would allow survivors to learn technological advances not explicitly explored in The Knowledge as well as things we have yet to discover. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very idea of scientific knowledge itself"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Discoveries in science; Knowledge, Theory of; Survival; Technology;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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