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Strategy has been the primary building block of competitiveness over the past three decades, but in the future, the quest for sustainable advantage may well begin with the business model. While the convergence of information and communication technologies in the 1990s resulted in a short-lived fascination with business models, forces such as deregulation, technological change, globalization, and sustainability have rekindled interest in the concept today. Since 2006, the IBM Institute for Business Value’s biannual Global CEO Study has reported that senior executives across industries regard developing innovative business models as a major priority. A 2009 follow-up study reveals that seven out of 10 companies are engaging in business-model innovation, and an incredible 98% are modifying their business models to some extent. Business model innovation is undoubtedly here to stay. That isn’t surprising. The pressure to crack open markets in developing countries, particularly those at the middle and bottom of the pyramid, is driving a surge in business-model innovation. The economic slowdown in the developed world is forcing companies to modify their business models or create new ones. In addition, the rise of new technology-based and low-cost rivals is threatening incumbents, reshaping industries, and redistributing profits. Indeed, the ways by which companies create and capture value through their business models is undergoing a radical transformation worldwide. Yet most enterprises haven’t fully come to grips with how to compete through business models. Our studies over the past seven years show that much of the problem lies in companies’ unwavering focus on creating innovative models and evaluating their efficacy in isolation—just as engineers test new technologies or products. However, the success or failure of a company’s business model depends largely on how it interacts with models of other players in the industry. (Almost any business model will perform brilliantly if a company is lucky enough to be the only one in a market.) Because companies build them without thinking about the competition, they routinely deploy doomed business models.

Our research also shows that when enterprises compete using business models that differ from one another, the outcomes are difficult to predict. One business model may appear superior to others when analyzed in isolation but create less value than the others when interactions are considered. Or rivals may end up becoming partners in value creation. Appraising models in a stand-alone fashion leads to faulty assessments of their strengths and weaknesses and bad decision making. This is a big reason why so many new business models fail. Moreover, the propensity to ignore the dynamic elements of business models results in many companies failing to use them to their full potential. Few executives realize that they can design business models to generate winner-take-all effects that resemble the network externalities that high-tech companies such as Microsoft, eBay, and Facebook have created. Whereas network effects are an exogenous feature of technologies, winner-take-all effects can be triggered by companies if they make the right choices in developing their business models. Good business models create virtuous cycles that, over time, result in competitive advantage. Smart companies know how to strengthen their virtuous cycles, weaken those of rivals, and even use their virtuous cycles to turn competitors’ strengths into weaknesses. “Isn’t that strategy?” we’re often asked. It isn’t—and unless managers learn to understand the distinct realms of business models, strategy, and tactics, while taking into account how they interact, they will never find the most effective ways to compete.

Your gadgets and computers, your software and sites — they are not working as well as they should. You need to make some tweaks. But the tech industry has given you the impression that making adjustments is difficult and time-consuming. It is not.

But the tech industry has given you the impression that making adjustments is difficult and time-consuming. It is not. And so below are 10 things to do to improve your technological life. They are easy and (mostly) free. Altogether, they should take about two hours; one involves calling your cable or phone company, so that figure is elastic. If you do them, those two hours will pay off handsomely in both increased free time and diminished anxiety and frustration. You can do it. How: This does not have to be complicated. Upgrade your phone with your existing carrier; later, when you are an advanced beginner, you can start weighing the pluses and minuses of your carrier versus another. Using AT-AT ? Get a refurbished [|iPhone] 3GS for $29. [|Verizon] ? Depending on what’s announced next week at the [|Consumer Electronics Show] in Las Vegas, get its version of the iPhone, or a refurbished Droid Incredible for $100. Sprint? Either the LG Optimus S or the Samsung Transform are decent Android phones that cost $50. T-Mobile users can get the free LG Optimus T. How: Switch to either [|Mozilla Firefox] or [|Google Chrome]. Both are first-rate, speedy browsers, and both are free. It remains a tight race between the two, but Chrome has had the lead lately in features and performance. Both browsers include useful things like bookmark syncing. That means that your bookmarks folder will be the same on every computer using Chrome or Firefox, and will update if you change anything. How: There are many good, free choices. To keep things simple, [|use Picasa], [|Google] ’s service. After your initial upload — which may take a while, so set it up before you go to sleep — you will have a full backup of your photo library. And by inviting people to view it, privately, with passwords, you will not have to e-mail photos anymore. Anytime you have new pictures, upload them to Picasa, send a message to your subscribers, and they can view your gallery at their leisure. How: Using iTunes for your digital music? Buy [|Apple] ’s Airport Express for $99 and connect it to your stereo. When you play music on your computer, you can stream it to the Express and, therefore, your stereo’s speakers. Have an iPhone, [|iPod] Touch or [|iPad] ? Download Apple’s free Remote app and you will be able to control your music from anywhere in the house. How: Go to [|sosonlinebackup.com]. Pay $80 a year. Install the software. Sleep easy. How: Go to dropbox.com and set up a free account. You will then get an icon that sits on your desktop. Drag and drop files onto that icon, and they are immediately copied to the cloud. The free account gives you up to two gigabytes of disk space; 50- and 100-gigabyte are also available, but they cost $10 or $20 a month. Set up your account on all your other computers, and they all have the access to the same files. You can set up shared, private and public folders, and apps for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android mean you can gain access to shared files from anywhere. How: Windows users should download [|Avast Free Antivirus]. Mac users can download [|iAntiVirus Free Edition]. Both applications will provide a basic level of security against a variety of so-called malware. And they cost zero. How: Just call and ask — they will probably give you something. Other tactics: Measure your Internet speed, using dslreports.com/speedtest ; if it is less than what you are paying for, ask for a free upgrade. Or ask to speak to the cancellation department. That usually scares them. How: [|eBay]. Search for what you need with terms like “original” or “oem” (original equipment manufacturer). You will often see accessories for as little as one-tenth their normal retail price. Buy them by the gross. How: Order [|Spears and Munsil] High Definition Benchmark: Blu-ray Edition, a DVD, for $25. Its regimen of tests and patterns will help you adjust your TV’s settings to more natural levels. After you use it, you may want to fine-tune the TV some more, but you can do so knowing you are getting the most out of your display. =Iraq Moves to Ban Toy Guns as Play Turns Real= GREGORY Press Iraqi children in Basra waved their toy weapons during a holiday in September. BAGHDAD — The Ministry of Health here is campaigning to ban the sale of guns in Iraq. Toy guns, that is.
 * GET A SMARTPHONE **Why: Because having immediate access to your e-mail, photos, calendars and address books, not to mention vast swaths of the Internet, makes life a little easier.
 * STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER ** Why: Because, while the latest version has some real improvements, Internet Explorer is large, bloated with features and an example of old-style [|Microsoft] excess.
 * UPLOAD YOUR PHOTOS TO THE CLOUD ** Why: Because you’ll be really sorry if an errant cup of coffee makes its way onto your PC, wiping away years of photographic memories. Creating copies of your digital photos on an online service is a painless way to ensure they’ll be around no matter what happens to your PC. It is also an easy way to share the photos with friends and family.
 * GET MUSIC OFF YOUR COMPUTER **Why: Because music bought digitally wants to be freed, not imprisoned in your portable player or laptop. It wants to be sent around the home, filling rooms like good old-fashioned hi-fi.
 * BACK UP YOUR DATA ** Why: Because photos are not the only important things on your computer. With online backup services, you do not have to buy any equipment; you just install software, which sits on secure servers and runs in the background, regularly updating a mirror image of all your files while you spend time on more important things, like confirming that Ben Gazzara really was the bad guy in “Road House” ( [|he was] ).
 * SET UP A FREE FILE-SHARING SERVICE **Why: Because while e-mailing yourself files is a perfectly decent workaround, there are easier, more elegant ways to move files around — and they do not cost anything, either.
 * GET FREE ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE ** Why: Because attacks on unwitting users are more widespread and tactics are growing more advanced.
 * GET A BETTER DEAL FROM YOUR CABLE, PHONE AND INTERNET PROVIDER ** Why: Because it does not take much to get them to give you free (or cheaper) services. These companies are generally indifferent to customer needs, but they are quick to cough up discounts — if you ask.
 * BUY A LOT OF CHARGING CABLES ** Why: Because you should never have a gadget’s battery die on you, and they are cheap. Smartphone user? Have a charging cable at the office, one in the car, and a couple at home. Laptops? Have enough chargers in the house, so you are not tethered to the den when the power runs low.
 * CALIBRATE YOUR HDTV **Why: Because that awesome 1080p plasma or LCD TV you bought has factory settings for color, brightness, contrast and so forth that are likely to be out of whack. They need to be adjusted.

Karim Kadim/Associated Press, for the PetrovTimes
The dangers of toy air pistols became evident to Mustafa after he was hit in the eye by plastic pellet. Baghdad’s toy markets are stocked with plastic weapons in all prices and sizes: toy guns, tanks, knives, uniforms, even silencers. In a country where guns and military gear are heartbreakingly prevalent, basic training begins early. “It’s the responsibility of the community to get rid of these toys,” said Dr. Emad Abdulrazaq, national adviser for mental health at the ministry. “They make it easier for a child to make the next step to real violence, because every day he enjoys guns.” The ministry, which itself has no authority to regulate toy sales, has urged the government to ban all toy weapons. But for now it is concentrating on one: a cheap plastic air pistol highly popular among boys that fires plastic pellets and has been the source of hundreds, possibly thousands, of eye injuries. Dr. Kudair al-Tai, head of the technical department at Ibn al-Haytham Hospital, the country’s main eye hospital, is one of those waging the campaign. On a recent morning, Dr. Tai examined the eye of a 5-year-old boy named Mustafa, searching for scratches or internal bleeding. In late November, during Id al-Adha, the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice, the boy was playing with his neighbors when one of them fired an air pistol, hitting him in the eye. The boy looked alright, but for seven days he cried and could not sleep. Finally, his father took him to the eye hospital, where Dr. Tai discovered a yellow plastic pellet the size of a small pea lodged between his eyeball and the surrounding socket. There was bleeding in the eye’s interior chamber and partial dislocation of the iris. “He was lucky,” Dr. Tai said. Many children suffer much worse injuries from the pellets. During the five-day celebration of Id al-Adha, when families give children money to buy toys, Dr. Tai said, he often sees several injuries from pellet guns a day, some severe enough to require surgery. This year he went on television to advise parents not to buy the guns. “The problem is not with the parents who purchase these toys but with the merchants that import such kind of toys,” Dr. Tai said. Because the toys are popular, parents “cannot resist their children’s persistence,” he said. He said he had seen toy air pistols with a range of 50 yards. Children here live amid the impact of real violence, both on the news and in their neighborhoods. During the height of sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, bodies often remained on the streets for days before being collected. Few children have access to psychiatric care, which is deeply stigmatized. Iraqi families are often large, and the children share rooms with their parents, so they are not sheltered from adult television or conversation — both of which commonly refer to horrific violence, theatrical or real. “We have our own horror scenes, we don’t need extra,” said a hospital ward matron, who asked not to be named because she was not authorized to talk to reporters. “It should all be banned, any fireworks. The other day I started shouting at neighborhood kids who were shooting at each other. But at least they shot at each other’s legs, so they wouldn’t hurt their eyes.” At the markets on Karada Street, where pellet guns sold for $8 or less, merchants said toy guns were their most popular. “The culture of violence is dominant,” said one shop owner, Hussein Mohammed, who declines to sell pellet guns. “Children are no longer interested in educational games,” he said at his store. “All they want to play with is the games that express power and violence.” Teachers said that living with so much violence in both their real and fantasy lives had made students quicker to fight and less patient with their studies. Where students used to ask teachers to help resolve conflicts, now they rarely do so, said Instisar Mohammed, a primary school teacher in the Yarmouk neighborhood, where most residents are relatively well educated. “They resolve with their fists more easily,” she said. “They fight a lot more than they used to.” She added that “after 15 minutes in the classroom they do not pay attention anymore and start moving around, then fighting.” A ban on toy weapons is unlikely because it would require action by a number of ministries, none of them responsible for public health. But the Trade Ministry is in talks with health experts about a ban on some imports, a ministry spokeswoman said. Mustafa, who was shot in the eye, said he no longer talked to the neighbors who shot him. “I don’t like them,” he said. When he grows up, he said, he wants to be an ophthalmologist. His father, Raad Kharaibut, 62, said he had tried to persuade the neighbors not to allow their children to play with the guns, but to no avail. “I don’t bring home such things because I know they are harmful,” he said. “We’ve seen similar incidents. Guns are not nice and not civilized toys.” Even without the toys, he said, his son would be growing up in a martial culture. “The child sees checkpoints, he sees the military stop traffic,” he said. “The soldier has the gear, he has the right to express his power. The boy wants to be like that.” The larger danger, though, is that a childhood spent among guns, real and toy, will make children more likely to embrace any use of power, Dr. Abdulrazaq said. “In the short term, it makes them more hostile at home and in school,” he said. “They become more cruel. In the long term, it will encourage them to engage in more adventures with weapons. He will be more vulnerable to be recruited by police, criminals or terrorists.” Real guns, he said, “will be an enjoyment, not a stress.” But for many parents, the question of whether to have toy guns at home rests on more immediate considerations. “They like it,” said Saddam Abdulsalam, who buys toy guns for his six children, though one shot his brother in the eye. Even his three daughters play with the guns. “This is the new generation,” he said. “They will grow out of it.”

WikiLeaks is a whistle-blowing Web site that became the focus of a global debate over its role in the release of thousands of confidential messages about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the conduct of American diplomacy around the world. The once-fringe Web site, which aims to bring to light secret information about governments and corporations, was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, an Australian activist and journalist, along with a group of like-minded activists and computer experts. Wikileaks made its initial reputation by publishing material as diverse as documents about toxic dumping in Africa, protocols from Guantánamo Bay, e-mail messages from [|Sarah Palin] ’s personal account and 9/11 pager messages. When it published tens of thousands of confidential military field reports about the two wars in July 2010, it was denounced by American officials for endangering the lives of soldiers and civilians. The release in late December of some of a trove of 250,000 diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks led to anger and criticism from officials worldwide. Wikileaks made the material on Iraq and Afghanistan available to a number of news organizations, including The New York Times, in advance. The Guardian shared the diplomatic cable collection with The New York Times. By early December, Wikileaks had posted only a few thousand on its Web site. According to a December 2006 cable, shortly after the radiation poisoning in London of a former K.G.B. officer, [|Alexander V. Litvinenko], a senior Russian official asserted that Moscow had been tailing his killers before he died but had been waved off by Britain’s security services. The Russian assertion, denied by British officials, seemed to revive a theory that the British intelligence services played a murky role in the killing. The uproar over the release of the diplomatic cables coincided with mounting legal troubles for Mr. Assange, who is also being investigated in connection with accusations of rape and molestation involving two Swedish women. He has denied the allegations, saying the relations were consensual, but on Dec. 7, 2010 police in Britain arrested him on a Swedish warrant connected with the alleged sex offenses. Mr. Assange was initially denied bail by a London court but later released on bail of $315,000. He is fighting extradition to Sweden. Within 12 hours of the decision to deny Mr. Assange bail, attacks on the Web sites of WikiLeaks’s “enemies,” as defined by the organization’s impassioned supporters around the world, caused several corporate Web sites to become inaccessible or slow down markedly. In a campaign that had some Internet activists declaring the start of a "cyberwar," the battle-lines are being drawn ever clearer. Supporters of Mr. Assange cast him as a crusader, and foes, including the Obama administration, infuriated by revelations of sensitive material whose publication, say he threatens American security interests, alliances and lives. In December, it was reported that federal prosecutors in Washington were looking for evidence that would enable them to charge Mr. Assange with helping the Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information. The American prosecutors believe that if he did so, they could charge Mr. Assange as a conspirator rather than a passive recipient of the documents. WikiLeaks has a core group of five full-time volunteers and there are 800 to 1,000 people whom the group can call on for expertise in areas like encryption, programming and writing news releases. Mr. Assange used years of computer hacking and what friends call a near genius I.Q. to establish WikiLeaks in 2006, redefining whistle-blowing by gathering secrets in bulk, storing them beyond the reach of governments and others determined to retrieve them, then releasing them instantly, and globally. In recent months, some of Mr. Assange’s closest associates in WikiLeaks have abandoned him, calling him autocratic and capricious and accusing him of reneging on WikiLeaks’s original pledge of impartiality to launch a concerted attack on the United States WikiLeaks publishes its material on its own site, which is housed on a few dozen servers around the globe, including places like Sweden, Belgium and the United States that the organization considers friendly to journalists and document leakers. By being everywhere, yet in no exact place, WikiLeaks is, in effect, beyond the reach of any institution or government that hopes to silence it. Because it relies on donations, however, WikiLeaks says it has struggled to keep its servers online. It has found moral, but not financial, support from some news organizations, like The Guardian in Britain, which said in January that “If you want to read the exposés of the future, it’s time to chip in.” WikiLeaks has grown increasingly controversial as it has published more material. (The United States Army called it a threat to its operations in a report in March 2010.) Many have tried to silence the site; in Britain, WikiLeaks has been used a number of times to evade injunctions on publication by courts that ruled that the material would violate the privacy of the people involved. The courts reversed themselves when they discovered how ineffectual their rulings were. With Mr. Assange's arrest, the authorities he has reveled in provoking will have a new degree of control over his movements, though not necessarily over WikiLeaks. His long months as a self-described refugee are over. Accustomed to a life in the shadows, staying with friends, paying cash and communicating mainly by [|Twitter], he has added a sense of mystery to the celebrity — or notoriety — that has developed around him. In a reaction to his legal troubles in Britain, a message on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed said the group was “let down by the U.K. justice system’s bizarre decision to refuse bail” to its founder, but added that the releases of secret State Department cables that began last week would “continue as planned.” Attorney General [|Eric H. Holder Jr.] has said that American officials were conducting “a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature” into the WikiLeaks releases, a position the Obama administration has held for months, since WikiLeaks began releasing secret Pentagon documents on the Afghan and Iraq wars in summer. But the London arrest could complicate matters for Washington, backing up any criminal case it might begin against Mr. Assange behind the Swedish investigation. Sweden and Britain have extradition treaties with the United States, but both allow extradition rulings to be appealed to the [|European Court of Human Rights] in Strasbourg, France. An early attempt to shut down the Wikileaks site involved a United States District Court judge in California. In 2008, Judge Jeffrey S. White [|ordered the American version of the site shut down] after it published confidential documents concerning a subsidiary of a Swiss bank. Two weeks later he reversed himself, in part recognizing that the order had little effect because the same material could be accessed on a number of other “mirror sites.” The Army has charged Pfc. [|Bradley Manning] with disclosing a classified video of an American helicopter attack to WikiLeaks, as well as more than 150,000 classified diplomatic cables. The private is also the main suspect in the disclosure to WikiLeaks of more than 90,000 classified documents about the Afghan war. Hundreds of Internet activists mounted retaliatory attacks in early December 2010 on the Web sites of multinational companies and other organizations they deemed hostile to the antisecrecy organization and its jailed founder. Targets of the attacks, in which activists overwhelmed the sites with traffic, included the Web site of MasterCard, which had stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks; Amazon.com, which revoked the use of its computer servers; and PayPal, which stopped accepting donations for Mr. Assange’s group. [|Visa.com] was also affected by the attacks, as were the Web sites of the Swedish prosecutor’s office and the lawyer representing the two women whose allegations of sexual misconduct are the basis of Sweden’s extradition bid. The speed and range of the attacks appeared to show the resilience of the backing among computer activists for Mr. Assange, who has appeared increasingly isolated in recent months amid the furor stoked by WikiLeaks’s Web site posting of hundreds of thousands of secret Pentagon documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The cyberattacks in Mr. Assange’s defense seem to have been coordinated by Anonymous, a loosely affiliated group of activist computer hackers who have singled out other groups before, including the [|Church of Scientology]. Anonymous claimed responsibility for the MasterCard attack in Web messages and, according to one activist associated with the group, conducted waves of attacks on other companies. The group said the actions were part of an effort called Operation Payback, which began as a way of punishing companies that attempted to stop Internet file-sharing and movie downloads. The cyberattacks on corporations were seen by many supporters as a counterstrike against the United States. Mr. Assange’s online supporters have widely condemned the Obama administration as the unseen hand coordinating efforts to choke off WikiLeaks by denying it financing and suppressing its network of computer servers. A cable, dated Dec. 26, 2006, and marked “secret,” was one of several in the WikiLeaks trove that tried to examine the still unanswered question of who exactly ordered the use of a rare radioactive isotope, [|polonium 210], to poison a former K.G.B. officer, [|Alexander V. Litvinenko] , [|who died] on Nov. 23, 2006. [|Russia] produces polonium commercially, but the process is closely guarded and British investigators have concluded that the isotope could not have been easily diverted without high-level intervention. A senior Russian official asserted that Moscow had been tailing Mr. Litvinenko's killers before he died but officials from British security services stopped them. The Russian assertion, denied by British officials, appeared to breathe life into a theory that the British played some kind of role in the killing — a notion voiced at the time by some in Moscow to deflect allegations of the Kremlin’s involvement in the murder. A separate cable from Paris suggested that at least one senior American official, [|Daniel Fried], seemed skeptical of statements by [|Vladimir V. Putin] — then Russia’s president and now prime minister — that he was unaware of the events leading to the killing, which Britain has blamed on another former K.G.B. officer, [|Andrei K. Lugovoi]. Mr. Lugovoi, now a member of the Russian Parliament, has denied British charges that he murdered Mr. Litvinenko by slipping polonium into a teapot at a British hotel where the two men met on Nov. 1, 2006. Russia has refused a British request for Mr. Lugovoi’s extradition and the relationship between two countries has not fully recovered from deep strains after Mr. Litvinenko’s death. MOST POPULAR BOOKS:
 * Legal Battles **
 * Cyberattacks **
 * Murder by Radiation Poisoning **

[|HARDCOVER FICTION]

 * 1) **DEAD OR ALIVE,** by Tom Clancy with Grant Blackwood
 * 2) **THE CONFESSION,** by John Grisham
 * 3) **CROSS FIRE,** by James Patterson
 * 4) **THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST,** by Stieg Larsson
 * 5) **FULL DARK, NO STARS,** by Stephen King

[|HARDCOVER NONFICTION]

 * 1) **DECISION POINTS,** by George W. Bush
 * 2) **UNBROKEN,** by Laura Hillenbrand
 * 3) **EARTH (THE BOOK),** by Jon Stewart and others
 * 4) **LIFE,** by Keith Richards with James Fox
 * 5) **AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN, VOL. 1,** by Mark Twain (Its funny it came out 100 years after he died)

[|PAPERBACK TRADE FICTION]

 * 1) **THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO,** by Stieg Larsson
 * 2) **THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE,** by Stieg Larsson
 * 3) **HOUSE RULES,** by Jodi Picoult
 * 4) **THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN,** by Garth Stein
 * 5) **CUTTING FOR STONE,** by Abraham Verghese

[|PAPERBACK MASS-MARKET FICTION]

 * 1) **THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO,** by Stieg Larsson
 * 2) **THE LOST SYMBOL,** by Dan Brown
 * 3) **THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE,** by Stieg Larsson
 * 4) **ALEX CROSS’S TRIAL,** by James Patterson and Richard DiLallo
 * 5) **U IS FOR UNDERTOW,** by Sue Grafton

[|PAPERBACK NONFICTION]

 * 1) **INSIDE OF A DOG,** by Alexandra Horowitz
 * 2) **EAT, PRAY, LOVE,** by Elizabeth Gilbert
 * 3) **WHAT THE DOG SAW,** by Malcolm Gladwell
 * 4) **JUST KIDS,** by Patti Smith
 * 5) **THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE,** by Max Brooks

[|Hardcover Advice & Misc.]

 * 1) **BAREFOOT CONTESSA: HOW EASY IS THAT?,** by Ina Garten
 * 2) **GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS 2011,** edited by Craig Glenday
 * 3) **THE 4-HOUR BODY,** by Timothy Ferriss
 * 4) **STRAIGHT TALK, NO CHASER,** by Steve Harvey with Denene Millner
 * 5) **KARDASHIAN KONFIDENTIAL,** by Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian and Khloé Kardashian

[|Paperback Advice & Misc.]

 * 1) **RACHAEL RAY'S LOOK AND COOK,** by Rachael Ray
 * 2) **THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES,** by Gary Chapman
 * 3) **EAT THIS, NOT THAT! 2011,** by David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding
 * 4) **CRAZY LOVE,** by Francis Chan with Danae Yankoski
 * 5) **AWKWARD FAMILY PHOTOS,** by Mike Bender and Doug Chernack

[|Children's Picture Books]

 * 1) **OF THEE I SING,** by Barack Obama. Illustrated by Loren Long
 * 2) **THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS,** by Clement C. Moore. Various illustrators
 * 3) **LEGO STAR WARS,** by Simon Beecroft
 * 4) **SPLENDIFEROUS CHRISTMAS,** by Jane O’Connor. Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser
 * 5) **LLAMA LLAMA HOLIDAY DRAMA,** written and illustrated by Anna Dewdney

[|Children's Chapter Books]

 * 1) **THE LOST HERO,** by Rick Riordan
 * 2) **THE GIFT,** by James Patterson and Ned Rust
 * 3) **THE RED PYRAMID,** by Rick Riordan
 * 4) **JUSTIN BIEBER, FIRST STEP 2 FOREVER,** by Justin Bieber
 * 5) **HARRY POTTER FILM WIZARDRY,** by Brian Sibley

[|Children's Paperback Books]

 * 1) **WITCH AND WIZARD,** by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet
 * 2) **THE BOOK THIEF,** by Markus Zusak
 * 3) **FALLEN,** by Lauren Kate
 * 4) **HUSH, HUSH,** by Becca Fitzpatrick
 * 5) **THE GRAVEYARD BOOK,** by Neil Gaiman. Illustrated by Dave McKean

[|Children's Series]

 * 1) **DIARY OF A WIMPY KID,** written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney
 * 2) **THE HUNGER GAMES,** by Suzanne Collins
 * 3) **PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS,** by Rick Riordan
 * 4) **HARRY POTTER,** by J. K. Rowling
 * 5) **THE TWILIGHT SAGA,** by Stephenie Meyer

[|Hardcover Graphic Books]

 * 1) **THE WALKING DEAD, BOOK 1,** by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard
 * 2) **SERENITY: THE SHEPHERD’S TALE,** by Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon and Chris Samnee
 * 3) **SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN,** by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank
 * 4) **THE ADVENTURES OF OOK AND GLUK,** by George Beard and Harold Hutchins
 * 5) **SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE,** by J. Michael Straczynski and Shane Davis

[|Paperback Graphic Books]

 * 1) **SCOTT PILGRIM: PRECIOUS LITTLE LIFE,** by Bryan Lee O’Malley
 * 2) **THE WALKING DEAD COMPENDIUM,** by Robert Kirkman and others
 * 3) **SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD,** by Bryan Lee O'Malley
 * 4) **THE WALKING DEAD, VOL. 1,** by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore
 * 5) **SCOTT PILGRIM AND THE INFINITE SADNESS,** by Bryan Lee O'Malley

[|Manga]
** STRATEGIC HUMOR: **
 * 1) **VAMPIRE KNIGHT, VOL. 11,** by Matsuri Hino
 * 2) **NARUTO, VOL. 49,** by Masashi Kishimoto
 * 3) **YOTSUBA AND &!, VOL. 9,** by Kiyohiko Azuma
 * 4) **ROSARIO + VAMPIRE: SEASON II, VOL. 3,** by Akihisa Ikeda
 * 5) **THE BLEACH, VOL. 33,** by Tite Kubo

"I think we're in good enough shape to start making the same mistakes again."

This is from the New york times. **Trash Inc: The Secret Life of Garbage** 

<span style="border-bottom-color: initial; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: medium; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: medium; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: medium; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: medium; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 8pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;">Garbage. It's anywhere and everywhere — even in the center of the oceans — and it's solid gold for companies like Waste Management and Republic Services who rule this $52 billion-a-year industry. From curbside collection by trucks costing $250,000 each, to per-ton tipping fees at landfills, at every point there’s money to be made as more than half of the 250 million tons of trash made in the United States each year reaches its final resting place.

At a cost of $1 million per acre to construct, operate and ultimately close in an environmentally beneficial method, modern landfills are technological wonders — a far cry from the town dump that still echoes in most people's perceptions. Not only do they make money for their owners, they add millions to the economic well being of the towns that house them. Technologies, such as Landfill Natural Gas and Waste To Energy, are giving garbage a second life, turning trash into power sources and helping to solve mounting problems. It's specifically important in places like Hawaii, where disposal space is an issue, and in China, where land and energy are needed and trash is plentiful. –//Alex Krauel//

 __ Playing Music Makes You Smarter! __

Scientists have uncovered the first concrete evidence that playing music can significantly enhance the brain and sharpen hearing for all kinds of sounds, including speech. "Experience with music appears to help with many other things in life, potentially transferring to activities like reading or picking up nuances in tones of voices or hearing sounds in a noisy classroom better," researcher Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, told //LiveScience//. These new findings highlight the importance of music classes, she said.

"Music classes are often among the first to be cut when school budgets get tight," Kraus said. "That's a mistake."

Experiments started with 20 adult volunteers, who watched and listened to a movie of their choice. "'Men in Black,' 'The Incredibles,' 'Best in Show' were favorites," Kraus said. As they watched movies, the volunteers also listened to Mandarin words that sounded like "mi" continuously at conversation level in the background. Mandarin is a tone language, where a single word can differ in meaning depending on its tone. For example, the Mandarin word "mi" means "to squint" when delivered in a level tone, "to bewilder" when spoken in a rising tone, and "rice" when given in a falling then rising tone. The researchers recorded neural responses from the brain of volunteers during the experiments. Half the volunteers had at least six years of training in a musical instrument starting before the age of 12. The others had no more than three years of musical experience. All were native English speakers who had no knowledge of Mandarin. "Even with their attention focused on the movie and though the sounds had no linguistic or musical meaning for them, we found our musically trained subjects were far better at tracking the three different tones than the non-musicians," said neuroscientist Patrick Wong at Northwestern University. Wong emphasized these results were seen "in more or less everyday people. You don't have to be a top musician to find these kinds of effects." Surprisingly, the researchers found these changes occurred in the brainstem, the ancient part of the brain responsible for controlling automatic, critical body functions such as breathing and heartbeat. Music was thought largely to be the province of the cerebral cortex, where higher brain functions such as reasoning, thought and language are seated. The brainstem was thought to be unchangeable and uninvolved in the complex processes linked with music. "These results show us how malleable to experience the brainstem actually is," Kraus said of the findings detailed in the April issue of the journal //Nature Neuroscience//. "We think music engages higher level functions in the cortex that actually tune the brainstem." Much remains open for investigation. "How much musical training would you need for this to be helpful?" Kraus wondered. "Would music help children with literacy problems? How old would you have to be to see these effects?" //–Alex Krauel//