What if someone else stood under that tree where that serpent of old tricked Adam and Eve? Would they have the smarts to challenge his lie, or would they eat of the fruit knowing they'd die? One baby rat has a story to tell when he woke up in time to break the lie's spell. The lie is like slumber to those deceived, but the truth can awaken those who sleep! Can this riddle be solved from reading this book? Can a fish be caught without baiting the hook? Why was the serpent's lie so delectably enticing, like a cream-filled donut with chocolate icing?

Drats! My Hair is a Rats Nest is a silly story about messy, uncooperative hair. A young Asian girl, Kiran, is adopted into a Caucasian family and questions her differences, and how to fit in. Her world is further complicated through a divorced family, but her new extended family reaches out with advice and love to help her find acceptance. Author Susan Stevens tackles the topics of adoption and divorce, which are realities affecting families every day. In this humorous tale of a hairdo gone wrong, two extended families can work through anger and pain for the benefit of the children, emphasizing the needs of every individual.

Is Colby Elliott cursed? He had to quit the football team, his girl loves someone else, debts are working his mother to death, and his father is gravely ill. He thinks things can't get worse, but they do. Then Colby discovers a secret on the grounds of a huge spooky estate. Will his discovery be the answer to his family's problems? Or will it result in deception and violence that might ruin his life? If Colby does the right thing -- no matter what it costs him -- maybe he'll survive the "Secret of the Pack Rat's Nest."

Fiction. Poetry. Mysterious and sometimes hallucinogenic, RATS NEST builds a narrative out of the complexity and dialectical uncertainty that many people feel about being alive in the 21st century. This first full-length book by Mat Laporte introduces readers to a protoplasmic, fantastical underworld, as navigated by a self-reproducing 3D Printed Kid made especially for this purpose. As the Kid descends the layers of a seemingly never-ending pit, its nightmares and hallucinations--recorded in stunning detail--unfold in twelve chilling chapters of unreality that will make readers think twice about what it means to be a human (or humanoid) on the planet we call home. "RATS NEST is a fragmented and extended transmission from 'the world's first 3D Printed Kid.' It is a dissident, noir, cyberpunk diary that recalls the monotony of service/ office labour and projects that struggle onto the failed tropes of 'what the future may hold.' Here, the future is a recursive failure of both affinity and empathy, launched from the outer reaches of a space-time where both identity and narrative are in flux. This is a work that simultaneously calls to mind Ovid's Metamorphosis and the prose of Philip K. Dick, both Alice Notley's Descent of Alette and the riotous 'cut-up' novels of Kathy Acker. Has Mat Laporte eaten our dreams? Are these texts the cognitive-enteric-cybernetic remnants of a necessarily alienated posthumanity? 'Bursting forth from the primordial/ id itself . a flickering/non-linear flood of fact and sensory data,' Laporte has engendered for us an austere and gorgeous horror." --Liz Howard

How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business "The real value of this book is that it makes SOA and Webservices, which are critical and business-transforming,crystal-clear to the layman, both business and IT leaders. The bookstays focused on the real-world issues facing business andgovernment institutions today. In an industry full of experts ofmany stripes, Ron and Jason are the real thing: savvy, experienced,and realistic. They have produced a must-read book formanagement." —Paul Lipton, Senior Architect, Unicenter Web Services andApplication Management Computer Associates "This is by far the finest publication on SOA of our time. Fromcover to back, Service Orient or Be Doomed! strips away thelayers of confusion most IT stakeholders face when confronted withenterprise architecture, and illustrates pragmatic and practicalpaths towards a sustainable and efficient enterprise architecture.Both the technically savvy and the bean counters will enjoy thisbook that speaks to the critical points they need tounderstand." —Duane A. Nickull Senior Standards Strategist, Adobe Systems,Inc. Chair, OASIS SOA Reference Model Technical Committee Vicechair, United Nations CEFACT (UN/CEFACT) "If you're looking for a guide that's based on reality, this isit. These guys know how you can service-orient your enterprise andhave the best chance of success. This book is the best SOA tool youcan buy. I'm recommending it to everyone." —Dave Linthicum, CEO, BRIDGEWERX "Jason and Ron are experts on Service-Oriented Architecture(SOA) and have written the first book that is aimed at helping anontechnical businessperson understand why the SOA computingrevolution is critical to business. Rather than provide a nerdydeath via buzzword book, Jason and Ron take a humorous, clever, andinsightful romp through this new technology and how it impactsbusiness in general." —Brad Feld, Mobius Venture Capital Authors Jason Bloomberg and Ronald Schmelzer-senior analysts forhighly respected IT advisory and analysis firm ZapThink-say it allin the title of their new book, Service Orient or Be Doomed!:How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business. That is, ifyou fail to service orient your company, you will fail in competingwith the organizations that do. This provocative new book takes service orientation out of itsmore familiar technological surroundings within service-orientedarchitecture and introduces it as a philosophy that advocates itsrightful place within a business context, redefining it as a newway of thinking about organizing your business and itsprocesses. Informal, challenging, and intelligent in style, ServiceOrient or Be Doomed!: How Service Orientation Will Change YourBusiness shows you how you can best use technology resources tomeet your company's business goals and empower your company to gofrom "stuck" to "competitive."

Forkbraid is the Earth’s most powerful psychic and leads the psychic remote viewing teams that maintain peace on Earth. A bomb explodes in a Psychic Academy, a place which aught to have been safe from any strife. Forkbraid reveals that the crime was planned in the one place that remote viewing teams can not scan. Off world! Few psychics on Earth can use their gifts off world. Forkbraid leaves the Earth to track down the terrorists amongst the myriad colonies of solar system. For the price of freedom is constant vigilance, what now the price of peace?