smart

Fisher Price Smart Cycle Extreme
$119.99
The Extreme Smart Cycle is well worth the money spent as it provides hours of educational fun for you children. It helps them learn with letters, numbers, shapes, spelling and character identification. Additonally you can also purchase additional cartridges if you feel your kids are getting a little bored with the included disk.

Get Smart (Single-Disc Widescreen Edition)
$19.98
Yay! My 100th review. Now that that's done; I couldn't imagine Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway in an action film but they pulled it off well. Nobody can top what Adams, Feldon, Platt, Kopell, etc. did in the series and the actors in this don't rip off their interpretations or belittle what they had done. Carell plays Max with a deadpan wit, which I enjoy, compared to Adams' nasily voice which defined the character back in the 60s and it still does now. Hathaway is the accomplished agent who doesn't even tolerate Max until the end while Feldon immediately fell in love with him. Platt's Chief grew exasperated with Max's antics while Arkin's actually admired Max's talent. And Kopell (who makes a cameo) used a thick German accent while Terence Stamp is an English actor who plays Seigfreid with a bit more menace. The references to the series are excellent from Max's catchphrase to the shoe-phone. Even the three cars Adams drove in the opening credits are featured. The plot is a little cliched (drawing comparisons from how Steve Martin's Clouseau gets humiliated only to be redeemed in the end) and some twists aren't that surprising but it doesn't stop this from being funny and exciting. The gags and jokes are clever (this being one of few comedies I've seen in theatres and the whole audience was laughing) but the vomit joke was disgusting and not remotely funny. The action sequences were executed well, some scenes being homages to the Bond films (the original series being a spoof of them) such as the free fall fight sequence with Dalip (who reminds me a little of Richard Keil's Jaws and Kabir Bedi's Gobinda) from Moonraker. Trevor Rabin's score is excellent and I love the reorchestrated TV theme.

SMART FORTWO COUPE/CONVERTIBLE 2008 2009 2010 HEATSHIELD Windshield Heatshield Custom-fit sunshade
$39.95
Love It! Fits perfect, very sturdy. Ordered on 6/9 and it arrived on my doorstep 6/11 - fabulous service. Sure cuts down on the heat inside the little car!

Smarts: Are We Hardwired for Success?
$21.95
This book may, on the surface, sound like the strengths books of Markus Buckingham, but it is significantly different. To start with the strengths listed here are 12 "executive skills" (executive as in execution, not position). These have been determined based on neuroscience. They are:

1. Self restraint
2. Working memory
3. Emotion control
4. Focus
5. Task initiation
6. Planning and prioritization
7. Organization
8. Time management
9. Defining and achieving goals
10. Flexibility
11. Observation
12. Stress tolerance

While the 12 strengths here are certainly more manageable than the 34 in the model espoused by Buckingham, I don't think they are as crisp. That is, many can be used, or not, in a variety of different ways. For example, is one who keeps one's computer files organized but one's desk disorganized strong in "organization"?

But there are many good ideas here, many I hope Buckingham incorporates. Probably the most important is the idea of being aware of one's weakest areas, not just one's top strengths, is key. As discussed in Smarts - skills are distributed, more or less, as a bell curve - most people have a few at which they are really strong, and a few at which they are really weak- but the majority are more "in between". When looking to match people to job responsibilities, it is hard to have a perfect match, but if one focuses on most of the top skills and none of the bottom ones, that will result in a much better fit than looking at only the top skills.

Another good idea presented here is the idea of not just looking at fit between skills and a job or tasks, but corporate culture as well.

This book also has some limitations, especially when compared to the model used by Buckingham. The quizzes provided to determine strengths are poor. I actually found the quizzes used to assess strengths in others to be more useful at self-assessment than the provided self-assessment quizzes. One thing that hurt the model presented here, as well as all the quizzes, was failing to take into account interest. One's success at various skills can be based on interest of applications of the skills, and success is largely questioned rather than talent and/or interest.

In summary, Smarts is a well-written book with some great ideas, but it, in my opinion, is best used in conjunction with one or more of Buckingham's books.