One of the toughest things I have to do as an executive mentor is to convince my clients–most of whom are tough-as-nails, driven workaholics–that they’re more effective when they routinely take some time off. Recharging your batteries isn’t optional for growth; it’s mandatory.

The good news is, the power of escape is at our fingertips. All you have to do is get in your car, fight off the Del Mar Fair traffic, jockey for the last parking spot at the Beach, and stake your claim on the sand.

Or, just close the office door for 30 minutes every day, and savor some classics. When the going gets tough, the tough get reading. With tongue only slightly in cheek, I’d like to recommend some personal favorites, slotted into “traditional categories.” Remember: The point is to enjoy. This isn’t homework. Laugh a little. ‘Tis the season for light clothing, light food, and light reading.

Fiction and Poetry Birth of the Chaordic Age. Dee Hock (1999, Berrett-Koehler) The Founder of VISA International explains the magical birth of VISA’s creation, revealing how chaos and order merged to allow competing banks to peacefully create a $1.25 trillion organization for a time (who can forget the 1998 Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit against VISA and Mastercard?). Hock has a magical way of discussing the impact the “monkey mind” (aka “inner voice” or “doubting Thomas”) on the success of new projects.

Non Fiction The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women. Harriet Rubin (1999, Dell) Rubin offers practical examples of how women, ranging from George Eliot to Golda Meir, have gained power using ease and grace. She outlines a critical distinction between winning the battle versus “besting” your enemy, and demonstrates how a battle strategy defeated Hilary Clinton’s efforts to launch her Health Care Initiative (her own husband’s team was sent in to work against her!). Who needs fiction when you can learn age-old lessons from real-life political drama?

Mystery Cyber Rules. Thomas Siebel, et. al. (2000, Doubleday) Want to learn how to write a company brochure disguised as a hardcover visionary book? Add this flavor of the month from days gone by to your paperweight list! In this high-tech “whodunit,” protagonist Siebel carefully orchestrates twists, turns, and surprises that finally culminate in the revelation of The Secret Of Success. (If you hate spoilers, skip ahead to the next book.) The real twist in the plot appears when Siebel asks a Board member – Charles Schwab – to write the Foreword. Later, the big secret comes out: “Put the Customer First.” While the real mystery might be how it took civilization 2000 years to figure this out, Cyber Rules remains a relatively good read. Auctioned copies start at $.09, so hurry and order your copy today.

Science Fiction The Road Ahead. Bill Gates (1995, Penguin) Wherein Mr. Gates describes his future dream home: “A house that tracks its occupants in order to meet their particular needs and combines two traditions: Unobtrusive service, and that an object we carry entitles us to be treated in a certain way.” (Does this mean I can program the bulletin board to refuse to give my husband the Mercedes keys when he’s just going to the grocery store? Sign me up!) The title appears to have been a mix-up; I am convinced that it really meant to say, George Orwell goes to Redmond. Still an amusing read after all these years.

Children’s Books The One Minute Millionaire. Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen. (2002, Harmony) Here’s a novel idea for an industry that once prided itself in get rich quick schemes, high margin products and services: What if you gave away a percentage of your profits each year to mentor young people, or to support worthwhile non-profit endeavors? The storybook layout of this book keeps things entertaining and light, yet the messages are compelling. If you want to create new prosperity possibilities for yourself and your family, read on–especially the story about Millionaire Michelle.

What Should I Do With My Life? Po Bronson (2002, Random House) Two years have passed since we saw early signs of the dot-com collapse’s impact on millions of careers. This turn of events inspired Bronson to listen to the life stories of more than 900 people who have challenged their own career choices. “What makes this a children’s book,” you ask? Many of Bronson’s subjects dug deep into their childhoods to remind themselves of what fuels and inspires them.

Isn’t that what summer is all about?

Lisa Nirell, President of Nirell & Associates, mentors high-tech entrepreneurs and executives to accelerate growth. Lisa also writes for ComputerWorld, San Diego Daily Transcript, and Software Strategies and has served on three Boards of Directors. For more information, visit www.nirell.com.

About the Author

Lisa Nirell, President of Nirell & Associates, advises high-tech entrepreneurs and executives who want to accelerate growth. With more than 20 years in software, consulting, and sales, Lisa has served on 3 Boards of Directors and has published in ComputerWorld and Software Strategies. For more information, visit www.nirell.com.

If you were asked for examples of company-backed volunteer work, you’d most likely talk in terms of blood drives, perhaps a Christmas donation drive, and no more, but that’s simply not true in the modern day. Athletic shoe recycling programs and more energetic efforts like tree replanting weekends – these and other activities have been organized by Adaptive Marketing for its staff. Once all the pertinent information – location, time, date, type, et cetera – had been clearly displayed it became very simple for employees to work out the precise amount of time they’d be giving and how they’d be using it.

It is essential to let volunteers find projects that fit their interests. Employees of Adaptive Marketing choose from among a number of local initiatives. Previous projects have included work in a wide variety of areas including aid and assistance for children and young adults, environmental projects, and events supporting theatre. A happy volunteer is an effective volunteer, consequently, by offering so many projects Adaptive Marketing guarantee that their staffers will make progress on all the initiatives. Most often a company sponsored volunteer program – getting involved with a homeless shelter or helping out at a local school – is either done on a regular schedule or as a one-off event. There are those who say they don’t have enough time, but even they can arrange a Saturday morning park clean-up. You’ll find plenty of tales of companies finding ways of helping the people who live around them. Adaptive Marketing supports volunteer programs to support the people of its hometown and to spread goodwill through its home community through its members of staff actions. What volunteer work is sure to do is leave your workforce feeling good about themselves, leading to a motivated corporate culture. By now, we think, the benefits for everyone involved of a company sponsored volunteer drive are should have become plain to grasp for everyone.

When we have a plumbing problem, we call a plumber. When we have a problem with our government, we call someone who studied government. Right?

I majored in government in college. I am an attorney and the son of a former Indiana Democratic Party chairperson. I received the highest grade in my public high school class of 1,250 students in a standardized government exam. I have government, politics and law running through my veins, but does anyone ever call me with their government problems? Heck no! Everybody’s an expert on government, some just more than others.

Very few government experts, except some Libertarians, seem to know anything about our unalienable natural rights. These rights are referred to in the Declaration of Independence (1776) and in both of Indiana’s constitutions (1816 and 1851). The former reads: “WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness …”

Unalienable rights are natural choices – choices that Nature or our Creator gives us as our birthright, and that we cannot give up, waive or “lien” away. They are choices for which we would not naturally ask government’s permission, nor for which we can rightly be punished. The only moral and lawful limit to the exercise of our natural rights is to refrain from violating the same rights of others.

We don’t ask government’s permission to eat, breathe, drink, use the toilet or sleep. Nor do we call our favorite bureaucrat to think, pray or recreate. We also have natural rights to possess property, to contract with one another and to defend ourselves – all without the permission of government.

As well, we have the right to exchange our talents for value, called the right to work. This natural right does not mean that we have a right to a job or a certain wage. Those “rights” are actually government-bestowed privileges, called civil rights. All civil rights benefit one special-interest group at the expense of the natural rights or choices of others.

Natural unalienable rights are rights or choices that our ancestors exercised long before any governments (and their civil rights) were conceived. What made this country’s various governments different from all others before them was that they promised to protect these rights, free from the will and tyranny of those more powerful. “(T)o secure these Rights,” says the Declaration of Independence, “Governments are instituted among Men.”

I began voting Libertarian when I realized that both the Indiana General Assembly and Congress had strayed from their sole purpose to secure our natural rights and were violating them on behalf of special interest groups, including people in government.

For example, the income tax violates at least three of our natural rights: our rights to work, to contract and to the exclusive possession of our property. If we still exercised these rights, we could choose to work without first presenting a Social Security number. We would not be required to sign forms and report to the government every year, and we would take home all of our pay.

Most economic monopolies would not exist if our governments respected our natural rights to contract. We could hire whom we wanted to represent us in court, teach our children, or relieve our pain – based on their background, education and experience – not on government’s meaningless, biased and often dangerous stamps of approval.

In a world that respected our choices, there would be no licensed health-care monopoly, which uses government to protect and insulate itself from the 100,000 people it negligently kills each year. There would also be no education monopoly, run by teachers unions, to march our children into mediocrity. Injustice and ignorance are just two of the consequences when special interest groups use government to trample upon others’ rightful choices.

So hear it from a government major: Our state and federal governments’ sole legitimate function is to aid us in self-defending our own natural unalienable rights, and every single one of them is doing a horrible job at it. Almost every piece of modern legislation violates someone’s natural rights, which all the governments long ago promised to protect.

This is all because our current political leaders know less about the purpose of government than you do right now.

About the Author

Attorney, screenwriter and Libertarian Party activist in Indianapolis

Even so, there is a sometimes imperceptible yet important influence litter plays on human psychology. One is more likely to believe a neighbourhood is lacking law and order if litter is scattered around, and so felons see litter as a likely signal for an opportunity of a mugging or robbery. The same sign instills some fearfulness in other individuals who worry they might be walking into a more dangerous location and are concerned about possibly being robbed.

Not only that, but also the impact on the aesthetic appeal of an area. Rubbish lying around can make an area look a bit derelict even if it’s only been trashed by people from the night before. This can harm the reputation of an area if people are visiting the location for this specific time and only see it in its littered state.

There’s no purpose to drop rubbish if there are unfilled bins around the neighbourhood. If there are no litter bins, or the rubbish bins that are there are overloaded, this is an issue to take up with the local council. Littering has a damaging influence on everyone.

Quite a few health centres are now seeing more people with pleural mesothelioma. Because of this, pathologists studying the case are given a number of problems, which can be separated into those discovered in finding the differences between cancer of the mesothelium and worriless changes and those discovered in separating malignant mesotheliomas from different forms of e-cadherin and tissue tumors that connect. Immunohistochemistry is a major factor in diagnosis, nevertheless it should be understood in regards to the experimental setting and radiological characteristics, and taking into consideration the vast morphological differentiations seen in cancer of the mesothelium.

Cancer of the mesothelium is a cancer directly affecting the serosal cavities, an anatomic location that is frequently affected by metastasis, predominantly from primary carcinomas of the ovary, lung and breast. Advances in IHC have resulted in improved diagnostic sensitivity and mesothelioma regarding cytological and histological material. As of late, the authors faction used increased levels of throughput technology to the recognition of new flags that could help in telling the difference between malignant mesothelioma from cancer in the peritoneum and ovaries, closely related histogenesis found in tumors and antigenic profile. Together with the better tools available for cancer of the serosa diagnosis, knowing the biology of mesothelioma has accumulate lately.