Read Creativity.Inc & Ride of a Lifetime back to back if you want to see both sides of one of the most fascinating and well executed mergers of our tiRead Creativity.Inc & Ride of a Lifetime back to back if you want to see both sides of one of the most fascinating and well executed mergers of our times.
This is largely a chronicle of acquisitions by Disney under Iger, and not very engrossing for me, but the Pixar section was fascinating....more
It's a fun book, and Elon has cracked the hologram code. But this book is too early - written before Alexander set off from Macedonia. The game has onIt's a fun book, and Elon has cracked the hologram code. But this book is too early - written before Alexander set off from Macedonia. The game has only started....more
Hanson is an intelligent writer. Incredible as it may sound, he really does make a solid case for Trump in this book. He should be read, because most Hanson is an intelligent writer. Incredible as it may sound, he really does make a solid case for Trump in this book. He should be read, because most of the time we hear only the obvious, easy-to-reject pro-Trump arguments. How do we deal with intelligently constructed, solid arguments? That will be the test of how the opposition to Trump will shape up.
I am rating this book high because I expected vitriol and half-baked justifications, but I got a thoughtful thesis. I don't know how much of these arguments are "fake news", but Hanson makes a case for Trump, without ever trying to show him as something he is not. He admits he is a fool and a showman, playing to the worst fears of Americans, but he also shows how that is helping the nation in perverse ways.
The only place Hanson goes off the rails is when he tried to portray Trump as a tragic hero, along the lines of an Achilles or an Ajax. Hanson views the President as akin to a classically tragic hero, whom America needs but will never fully appreciate - yes, Trump is Batman. He will protect the Americans from the immigrants. That is a Trump level fantasy, innit? Now, that gave me the pleasure I expected when I picked up this book - of looking down upon the author in pity. See? This book has made me more honest than I normally would have been.
That is why you should read this. It makes a case for Trump, or at least it tries, even for this guy....more
Read this to supplement the wonderful West End play Photograph 51, by Anna Ziegler. The original had Nicole Kidman as Dr. Franklin. Last weekend at BaRead this to supplement the wonderful West End play Photograph 51, by Anna Ziegler. The original had Nicole Kidman as Dr. Franklin. Last weekend at Bangalore, we had the privilege of watching Bangalore Little Theatre put on an energetic and thought-provoking performance of the "race" to discover the secret of life. Worth a watch.
Maddox's work is a standard biography and checks all the boxes. Nothing special about the treatment, but it covers all the aspects. Of course, after the drama of the compact 90 minute play, the book length treatment felt a bit drawn out, but the consistency of themes across the long book and the short play is remarkable - how the working atmosphere at the boy's club type King's contributed to the isolation of the person who deserved to win the race, how the "race" was never really a "race" according to the honor code of British universities, and also how scheming Watson really turned out to be. The book goes on to show us Dr. Franklin's life beyond the "race" to establish that no she was not a dark lady who could not work with a team - she went on to do brilliant work as part of a team, she went on to get results that led to another Nobel prize, etc. It was the atmosphere of the lab and the friction with Wilkins that led to the "race" being lost.
Her's was the most vital contribution in the epic discovery of the secret of life and feminists across the world has taken her as an icon of the repressed female genius. But, the most elegant aspect of the story is how Dr. Franklin never once expresses the slightest disappointment or resentment of being robbed of recognition. As far as she was concerned, she was the preeminent expert in her field, and did her work admirably well, better than any man or woman could. And that was enough....more
One of the scariest books you will read. Even though Wolff mostly just confirms what we already know or suspect about the Trump White House, it is still shocking to be so elaborately proven right on all of our worst misgivings. And for that, it is an essential book - we might have misgivings, looking in from the outside, and suspect that the administration is in tatters. But the White House is a storied institution, and our imagination never fully grasps that it can be in such bad shape. An inside scoop like this is required to truly appreciate how bad it has become. We need to be shaken into acceptance. Trump, of course, has proclaimed that the book is mere fiction, and it very well might be (after all, Bannon is the main source for Wolff), but if it is, it would also be the truest fiction written in recent times. Like the best fiction, we don't need to enquire about how much of it is true - all of it rings true, even when we badly want it to be just fiction.
The book starts with the absolute joke that was the Trump campaign. How could a presidential campaign be so outrageous? The answer is simple and amazing - because they never expected to win. Precisely for that reason, they could play to the wildest fantasies and pander to the craziest demographies - since they were never checked by any of the concerns that a campaign actually trying to win would be. Like a tail-ender playing an outrageous innings, the campaign rampaged on, wrecking everything in its path. And in the process, Trump was able to somehow get the support of every marginalised, angry, bigoted or otherwise anti-establishment voter in the country.
And against their wildest expectations, come Jan 20, 2017, Trump was crowned Caesar.
Now came the task of running the country, and both Trump and his team were not only ill-prepared and completely incompetent to take up that task, but they were also least interested in it. Trump had proven his point, now he would probably enjoy a 4 year vacation bossing around everyone who talked down to him. He would play the flute and unleash the Fire & Fury. As the Guardian says, "Unqualified for the job and incapable of doing it, unwilling even to behave presidentially, Trump’s revenge has been to trash the office he holds, paralyse government, and defame the country his baseball cap says he wanted to make great again."
The only hope for the world at this point was that Trump would care less enough to not bother with any major policy issues - maybe, just maybe, the world could tip-toe around this presidency. But that is not to be - power abhors a vacuum, and an entire administration of toadies have stepped into fill the Trump-sized gap in the White House. They run the president and the administration now. But Trump being Trump, knows how to stay in charge - they best way for an incompetent leader to stay the leader is to split his camp and make his teams fight for his attention and loyalties. That way work gets done and loyalty and sycophancy becomes the benchmark for excellence. There is a fight raging in the White House every single day. These competing factions are the real reason for the Fire and the Fury that is spilling from the White House like a volcano about to erupt and with Trump ready to play his flute at any catastrophe, the world is in for very interesting times.
Throughout, Wolff shows starkly how incompetently the most powerful country in the world is run - by exposing the dealings and wheelings that prop up this in-fighting, incompetent, yet super-confident administration. And to consider that such an administration can come to power and hold it for a long enough time, despite all the vaunted checks and balances built into the system truly makes one wonder about the virtues of democracy. Demagogues can easily come to power, that is not new. But here we have a truly incompetent, narcissistic, idiotic person in charge and a team that can give him a runn almost every front. Such a combination, such an absurdity, is surely a first in history.
In fact, Wolff's clear message is that Trump is not even the worst of the protagonists inhabiting this book, his entourage is waging a war for control and he is mostly a pawn. Trump has no interest in devising legislation or conducting foreign policy; his time is spent watching himself on television. There are much more scary characters roaming the halls of the White House and there are times when you might feel genuine pity for the hapless Trump, caught out of his depth among such wolves. The author tries to show that there is a proxy center-right vs alt-right battle going on in the Whitehouse and while the book unfolds, you actually find yourself taking sides with the centrists, hoping at least that the worst of the pack doesn't get any victories. But once you finish the book and put a bit of distance between the fire and fury of the newly sulphurous White House, you start realising that those are meaningless battles, the war is already lost.
Build a wall? No, build a bomb shelter or something. You'll need it....more
Reading about start-ups and founders is part of the cultural education of our era. Even if you are not interested in the business side of things, thesReading about start-ups and founders is part of the cultural education of our era. Even if you are not interested in the business side of things, these books are still required reading since you have to study the idols and the paragons of society to understand the aspirations and the class definitions. Jeff Bezos is right up there with the other founder-luminaries as an aspirational, charismatic goalpost to reach towards. Starting something of your own is easily the most self-fulfilling goal allowed today. Forget the find-yourself goals of a few decades back, it is the start-something goal that is the best option today... Is it a compromise? Does it make a real difference in the quality of life? No founder is ever going to burst that bubble, at least not yet. :)
Anyway, coming to the genre itself, it is part of the reading of this genre that along with the more esoteric reading of such books to understand society, culture, etc., the more relevant reading is to look for "mantras of success", for habits that will lead to success, for methods that will work, for any superstitious tic that might just bring about the next big thing.
But one common thread I have been able to tease out from readings about the colossally successful is that all of them are obsessive about at least one of the following aspects:
1. Obsessive about the Customers Such founders are on a mission to "help" customers who are currently not getting what they deserve. They truly believe that their mission is to wage war for the consumers, to make things easy for them, and make money in the process. Jeff Bezos belongs to this category.
2. Obsessive about the Employees All founders know that the top employees are important, but this category of founders obsess right down to the level of the front-line employees. It is a family mentality at work here. They believe that the best way to retain and motivate is to genuinely care about the employees. The best among these are able to make every employee feel like an owner and work like an owner.
3. Obsessive about the Product These guys are out to create the best that ever was. They need to know that at all times their product is the best out there. Nothing less will suffice.
Any founder who doesn't fall into one of these categories would tend to gravitate towards the efficiency-driven, measurement-driven, mundane process of driving the bottom-line. But without a clear understanding of the Why and the How of bottom-line pushing, this never works out in the end. Every great company needs a great focus, and only these few seem epic enough to create the colossally successful....more
Shakespeare was not always the unquestionable genius that he has been for the past few centuries. It would surprisShakespeare: The Invention of Genius
Shakespeare was not always the unquestionable genius that he has been for the past few centuries. It would surprise most literature students to be told that few people thought highly of Shakespeare back in the 17th C, based on what evidence we have (though we can conjecture that he always had good entertainment value). He might have been the [insert objectionable writer/director] of his age.
Of course, to most literature students that bit of information would be more of a condemnation on the entire time period than any reflection upon Shakespeare.
Despite this obvious dismissal of the idea, wouldn’t it be interesting to consider this - if he was not so appreciated back then, how did it come to be that such a Shakespeare eventually became the Shakespeare of today.
His reputation, by some weird alchemy, kept growing throughout the century - though even towards the end of it, he was a crowd favorite but nowhere close to a critics favorite, his reputation lagging behind the likes of Ben Johnson and John Fletcher.
Much later, Shakespeare’s curious afterlife gradually converted him into a genius. How? We cannot be sure and to me this book fails to explain it in any meaningful way, because it leaves out the critical phase of Shakespeare being accepted as Great - mainly because there are no clear records that illustrate this. Probably it was too dispersed a process, greatness accreting over decades or centuries.
My conjecture? It was born out of sustained popularity.
There are these popular works that comes along sometimes the critics don’t really understand - that they feel are just flashes in the pan and explain as mere fickleness of the audience. But once those works remain favorites for 50 odd years the critics have to grudgingly accept them as classics, “Great” becomes an acceptable term to utter in the same breath. And if they refuse to die down in popularity well past a century or so, the term genius has to be dragged out even more grudgingly, but with reservations. Once the genius stays current and happening much longer the reservations disappear - because the rules have to be rewritten to account for this phenomenon, and the work eventually becomes a standard for judging other genius-aspirants.
Shakespearean criticism shows some of the hallmarks of this process:
In the beginning he was considered as just a popular author, but as time wove the cloak of genius around him, the critics were still struggling to "tidy up" shakespeare because he flew in the face of what they knew about drama. For two centuries thousands of actors, editors, auditors struggled with his unconventional methods and tried to clean them up into "proper" theater, leaving us many versions that feel throughly wrongheaded to us.
His faults were many, and must have seemed like in obvious need of improvement to the editors of the time: Poorly constructed plots, with no respect for the three unities of time, place and action, as laid down by Aristotle. Too many lame puns. No real sense of poetic justice. A poorly adjusted notion of decorum (wink, wink). And on top of everything else the stamp of being poorly educated (by most accounts) to add to the potential stereotyping that accompanied these faults.
However, the audience reveled in what we today recognize as the true genius of Shakespeare - of being able to go beyond all these rules - and letting his audience look into the depths of the human soul through his amazing characters and plots, somehow weaving a language and imagery that appealed to all levels of society from the royals to the commons, scholarly or unlettered (and secretly perhaps even the critics), making him a perennial favorite everywhere.
For the first two centuries or so of his afterlife the critics struggled with the basics - of Shakespeare ignoring Aristotle's unities, etc. He might be a genius, but he was clearly not perfect - because perfection was defined that way - of abiding by the rules of perfection. - Back then it was high praise to say that a writer followed classical precedents and rules, and an insult to say he deviated in anyway. - Eventually it became an insult to say that a writer was bound by rules, and high praise to say he was a natural prodigy to whom rules did not apply.
Thus, somewhere along the way, the concept of a “Natural genius” first become a possibility and then something to be celebrated.
Shakespeare was merely very good by the standards of his own age. He became great only later. . This is not to bring down Shakespeare. This is to add to his legend - he forced us to redefine what we meant by greatness, by Genius!
Eventually, whatever Shakespeare did poorly were dismissed as unimportant, and the things he did well has come to set the standards for artistic excellence. He was not great because of what he did, whatever he did became great because of him - The rules for literary excellence had changed. And the poor critics wrestling with the inadequacies of Shakespeare pitted against his obvious genius perhaps accounted for a good bit of that change.
Something happened during Shakespeare’s afterlife, something that changed the way the world thought about Genius. He was there at the dawning of the modern romantic idea of “Genius” and he probably helped define a fair share of it. Truly, the biggest testimony to Shakespeare's greatness is maybe that he changed what it meant to be great....more
Great background reading for anyone contemplating the epic task of taking on the fifteen (and more) volumes of Science and Civilisation in China -- on Great background reading for anyone contemplating the epic task of taking on the fifteen (and more) volumes of Science and Civilisation in China -- one the greatest compendiums of knowledge, a supreme feat of imagination and will power, and one of the most lasting bridges built between the east and the west.
Winchester provides the historic and political backdrop for the composition and allows us to understand why it was such an important work — why it was so necessary and so brave an undertaking, and how challenging a task it really was. Winchester also brings alive for us the eccentric and lovable man behind the work and thus makes the forbidding work more accessible by humanizing it, since we now know the moving will that animates it. It is a grand narrative and quite befitting such a grand achievement....more
This book should be read along with Levin’s Great Debate. That will allow a right wing perspective to balance out a left wing persp The Shifting Lights
This book should be read along with Levin’s Great Debate. That will allow a right wing perspective to balance out a left wing perspective. It is very interesting to note how two authors with different viewpoints approach the same two protagonists and mould them to their requirements. With Paine and Burke this is easier because they lived through such momentous events that their ideas and actions can be seen differently depending on where the author chooses to stand.
Levin chooses to stand and judge both from a post-revolutionary viewpoint and exult in the fact that Burke knew the French Revolution would be disastrous while naive Paine precipitated the disaster by not realizing that human institutes and traditions can’t be just pulled down so easily without consequences.
In fact, Levin chooses to examine Burke’s attitudes towards the American Revolution to show his progressive nature and then his attitude to French Revolution to show his wisdom; and Paine’s attitude during the pre-Revolutionary zeal to show how he was just a revolt-monger who has grand plans and no sense of the reality.
Hitchens on the other hand chooses to view the debate from a pre-revolutionary position. This allows him to praise Paine for his contribution the American Independence and Constitution, showing his skills as a spokesman and influencer par compare. When Hitchens comes to Burke, he focuses on his opposition to the French Revolution and ridicules his passionate defense of monarchy. This allows Hitchens to show Paine as a progressive future-oriented leader who changed the course of history and Burke as a reactionary who just wants to hang on to the outdated age of chivalry.
Of course, neither Paine nor Burke were consistently right throughout their political engagement. Both were probably right in supporting the American Revolution and both were perhaps wrong in their over-the-top attitudes to the French Revolution. But Hitchens and Levin combine to show us how just by shifting the viewpoints we can see them in such different lights — the naive and the wise keep shifting before our eyes like in a hall of mirrors. It is a spectacle....more
Bakewell's work is too structured and readable to be a modern re-mix of Montaigne! Bakewell takes us through Montaigne's life even as we are taken thr Bakewell's work is too structured and readable to be a modern re-mix of Montaigne! Bakewell takes us through Montaigne's life even as we are taken through the essays and their evolution. To top it off we are also taken through the evolving reception of the essays and of the changing reflections that various readers of various generations and centuries found in them. In the end we are given not only a life of Montaigne but a glimpse at four centuries of Montaigne reading. The book is hard to capture and I cannot imagine how someone who has not read Montaigne will get much out of it, but as with all things Montaigne, we can be assured they will get as much out of it as they put into it....more
OK, was thrown into an inverted Faust here, but with Faust helping Mephistopheles in his conquests! What then? Should the mor A Wound Masked As a Boast
OK, was thrown into an inverted Faust here, but with Faust helping Mephistopheles in his conquests! What then? Should the morality change in any way?
Mephistopheles is a seducer, the poor devil. The eternal seducer, but the one who bores of his victims at the cusp. Or is that just what he tells himself? (yeah, the "wills evil, does good" bit.)
"In the vast literature of love, The Seducer's Diary is an intricate curiosity--a feverishly intellectual attempt to reconstruct an erotic failure as a pedagogic success, a wound masked as a boast."
Descartes probably had the best questions ever and the worst answers ever.
Questions: How can I know if reality is as I perceive it? If I exist? If GodDescartes probably had the best questions ever and the worst answers ever.
Questions: How can I know if reality is as I perceive it? If I exist? If God exists?
Answers: I can think, hence my mind exists, hence I exist. I can think of a god hence God exists. God must be good. A good God wouldn't fool me. So reality exists as I perceive it....more
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