writing.
Posted: March 24, 2010 Filed under: unread., wisemansay. Leave a comment »i am amazed by journalists. though they some time employ dirty tricks to get the story that they wanted, we have got to think about the situation that they’re in. they have to come up with stories and news around the clock with deadlines as their faithful companion. even i who writes leisurely and aimlessly without any pressure still can’t think of anything to write sometimes (and don’t even ask about the quality). the only time that i write with the pressure of time limit would be during a GP exam. so imagine journalists as people who need to sit for an extended GP exam everyday. poor them.
talking about writing, i’ve just finished reading another of malcolm gladwell’s book titled ‘outiers’.
outliers - malcolm gladwell
it talks about the underlying cause of being successful. although i deem the book to be too anecdotal, as many of the proofs are derived from the success stories of a select people, i still believe that there are some truth to it. in contrary to the self-help, which tells you to do this and that to become successful, gladwell believes that there are people are born with some innate abilities and opportunities that will help them to become successful.
thus, while reading this book, all you can do is reflect on your own life and hope that you are indeed in the highly selective group.
some notable stories: (ariston, spoiler alert!)
- you stand a great chance to be a top hockey or any sport player if you are born in january. of course it is given that the cutoff date-of-birth for the registration of players being 1st of january. it gives you an edge over your competitors who are born in the later part of the year. for instance, a january boy is more physically developed and experienced compared to a december boy who is practically a year younger. (and guess which date was i born? 7jan, yeah)
- also, you could be on the list of the richest people of all time if you were born on the year 1835 in america. there are 12 american from this generation on the list of top 50 richest people which includes paraohs, kings and cleopatra, that’s a lot. and many more are the heirs of these people. this is because if you were born around this year, you would be at your prime age when industrialisation arrived in america, with the creation of oil and railway companies. these 12 american were entrepreneurs who seized the chance when they see it and capitalised the new market at its birth. the richest of them being john d. rockefeller who founded the standard oil. of course we could only realise thin in retrospect. until now i still do not know whether 1991 was a good year to be born in.
- you should train/practice for 10,000 hours at what you do to be really good. gladwell calculated that this is true for top professional musicians and sportsmen. it is even better if a technological or culture shift suddenly occurs to favour your expertise when you have already clocked your 10,000 hours. bill gates practiced programming early since highschool as he was fortunate enough to go to school which owned a then-expensive workstation (a kind of old computer). there he clocked his 10,000 hours doing computer programming. so, when the age of personal computer suddenly arrived, he dropped out of college and started his own company. suddenly his skill was on high demand which made him successful. joe flom, a famous jewish wall-street lawyer, practiced his 10,000 hours of corporate undertaking law when the non-jewish lawyers deemed it as rude an ungentlemanly to take over another person’s company. and for the period it was true that the companies then thought of corporate takeover as a taboo and business was slow for joe. however, a sudden norm change made takeovers popular, so who do companies look for to represent them on an undertaking case? the best, and it was joe flom. he was also suddenly on high demand and became successful. for me, i have not clocked 10,000 hours doing anything, except maybe for sleeping. maybe i can become a sleeping expert, but sadly there is no demand for one.
it was a good read. and i really enjoyed it. my next read is ‘ the adventures of sherlock holmes’. i found it at borders for a ridiculously low price of $5. it is in the penguin classics section. the book cover is anything but attractive though. it has a bright green cover. but, never judge a book by its cover right, haha.
money can buy happiness.
Posted: February 3, 2010 Filed under: unread., wisemansay. Leave a comment »i have always been and (i hope) will always be one who is against simplification and stereotypes. sadly, this mindset is hugely prevalent among the kids here. to make matters worse, these people are usually the more stubborn ones, they think that what they know is the truth period. i’m just too tired to argue with them. fuck those idiots.
although i’m not the best with words, my logic can quickly tell when an argument is full of shit. and it just so happens during today’s econs lecture.
we were on the topic of national income, and so the lecturer discussed a fair bit about the standard of living and stuff. well, i was sleeping most of the time, but when the lecturer mums the words ‘money can’t buy happiness’, it instantly woke me up.
this is the mother of stereotypes and as any stereotypes is often not true.
just think about it for a second, there is serious flaw in the logic. nowadays, achievement, power, influence and fame can be tagged with a nominal value. certainly the more wealthy someone is, the more successful they are in their respective field, and the biggest source of happiness is certainly success. for instance:
- how good sportsmen/sportswomen are could be determined by money. the big money endorsement for tiger woods shows his greatness. also the prize money received by federer for winning the grand slams. and certainly the $80 million paid for christiano ronaldo was only churned after he was dubbed the best footballer in the world. are they happy? silly question.
- bill gates built a technological empire that made him the richest man in the world. (well, at least use to be) the fortune he earned enable him to help the poor through the ‘bill and melinda gates foundation’ which gives substantial aid to the 3rd world countries. he certainly find a sense of satisfaction from this. is he happy? no doubt.
- famous celebrities earns millions from selling records or filming movies. this made them able to do so much things. live a fulfilled life. are they happy? i would like to think so.
i can cite million examples, but you get what i mean.
although happiness is a subjective attribute to measure, the sentence ‘money can’t buy happiness’ gives the impression that ‘rich people are unhappy’. which is not true.
sure, some things can’t be bought. the main thing being ‘love’. in the greater or smaller sense of it. but, wealth certainly made it easier. tim harford in the book, ‘ the logic of life’, explains that there are more women in the urban areas where the concentration of rich men are greater. like in new york, there are 1.3 million men for 1.8 million women. advantage for rich men!
although there certainly are rich people who are not happy, it might not be the real trend for all cases. these few examples were only made to be anecdotal examples. sadly, these anecdotes are more sentimental and closer to the human feelings. (aka. easy to remember) well, it’s not true, if anything, being richer just made life easier. some people with big bucks who are still not happy may not be caused by the money, so don’t put the money at fault.
please, don’t indulge in shallow stereotypical arguments, it just shows how stupid some people are.
gotta have dinner. ciao.
the undercover economist.
Posted: January 3, 2010 Filed under: unread. Leave a comment »i’ve finally finished reading the last of the book my dad gave me for my birthday present. and it is still a few days shy from my birthday, and another week before school restarts.
the undercover economist.
the undercover economist.
that is what tim harford dubbed himself on his journey to use economic concept to explain modern phenomenon.
i study economics at school, and it is famous to be a boring subject. full of economic jargon, definitions, and graphs. but all of this has been kept at minimum by harford, really minimum.
like levitt and dubner, in freakonomics and superfreakonomics, harford explain seemingly mundane things in terms of the incentives among the people involved. it gives insights on starbucks, supermarkets, insurance and healthcare and used-car business. some of these examples are really taught in my economics lecture at school. but the arguments in the book are certainly more entertaining to read.
it kinda give me a purpose, and made me angry at corrupt governments, especially the one in indonesia (although they are trying to solve it there, real progress is being made i think). harford shows that we could create a better living for the majority of people if we could get rid of scarcity and corruption; correct externalities; try to maximise information; get incentives right; and most importantly to embrace free market.
a good read.
the book dilemma.
Posted: December 29, 2009 Filed under: unread. Leave a comment »T minus 2 days to the new year. maybe i should make a recap of the year and a resolution. but that’s for another time.
was browsing the books at borders today. aww, they should ban me from borders. for two reasons, firstly is that i may be one of its biggest free-rider, reading unpaid books on their comfy couch every time i was there. and secondly, the books there are just too enticing, they’re like hypnotizing me to bring them to the cashier and pay for them.
here’s what happened, i was looking at the ’3 for 2′ books, by which you could buy 3 books for the price of 2, but you would only get the cheapest one for free. which was still pretty good. it was almost like a 30% discount on each book. anyway, i managed to find, after half-an-hour of searching, these three books:
1. the logic of life by tim hardford
the logic of life
2. the tipping point by malcolm gladwell
the tipping point
3. outliers by malcolm gladwell
outliers
and they’re all in the ’3 for 2′ promotion. which means i could get all of them with just 40 dollars. geez, i wanted them real bad. and so i just kept them while i continued browsing.
suddenly, there was this section that caught my eye. it literally stung your eyes when you look at it, because all the books there had bright green covers. a closer look will reveal to you the titles from penguin classics. these renowned literature books came from the class of authors including shakespeare, jules verne, charles dickens and the like. but, the eye-stinging and the acclaimed authors are not the highlight. these books only goes for $5 dollars apiece! (these will set the record for the cheapest book i’ve seen in borders.)
i was stunned in front of that section for a minute or so.
i was faced with a dilemma, should i:
- buy the ’3 for 2′ books for $40
-or, buy a lot of these penguin classic books for $5 apiece
talk to me about difficult decisions. damn it man!
suddenly though, i received a call from singgih. asking me if i want to go on a singapore city tour with the new scholars. i would feel bad leaving him alone with all the prc’s, and a free dinner did not sound bad to me at all. so i said okay.
i must make it to the parkway bus stop in 5 minutes by then. and i still the book dilemma on my hand.
my solution:
- the penguin books are still aplenty, it would certainly still be there when i get back.
-but how about the 3 books? i found a secluded section and hid them there. by any luck no one would find them and the staff would not return them to their respective places, cos they’re pretty much the last copies.
i hope luck is on my side.
for now i need to run to make it for the bus!
ciao.
superfreakonomics.
Posted: December 27, 2009 Filed under: unread. 1 Comment »woohoo.
just finished a great book today. thru a freezing italian cherry cappuccino freeze and a scrumptious glazed donut at bugis j.co bar table.
superfreakonomics
this is a really enjoyable book to read. the writing style made me laugh my ass off sometimes. which accounts for the many stare i attracted from the other j.co customers. the combination of irony and paradox and sarcasm and more irony made it funny and you just can’t stop reading. my mind was totally unaware of my noisy and crowded surroundings when i put my gaze on the book.
one thing that i didn’t like was the fact that my dad bought me a hardback version of it which made it slightly heavier to carry about. and that still has nothing to do with the content.
i’m not an established academic and nor am i smart. for me, the logic in the book is impeccable. i can’t help but to agree with whatever argument the writers put forward. but one thing is certain, this book made me more aware of the issues around me and provide insights on other arguments than the boring conventional ones.
just one example, my favorite chapter is the last one in which the writers dwell with global warming. they put forward that maybe human actions of polluting the atmosphere by discharging carbon dioxide may not be, unlike what is vastly believed, the greatest cause of global warming. the methane discharge by bovine and water vapour may just be a more potent cause.
it also did not just babble about the cause of global warming, it further discusses about the ways of reducing its effect or even reversing the trend. not just about the search for a greener fuel. but also about geoengineering in which scientists plan to release huge amount of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere which showed to be able to cool off the earth’s surface.
at the end of the day, it’s another irony.
we want to dump tons of gases into the atmosphere to solve the problem of… dumping tons of gases into the atmosphere.
tschuss. aldo.
syllogism.
Posted: December 21, 2009 Filed under: unread. 1 Comment »firstly i wanna rant about people who read really fast. i hate it when someone brags that they could finish reading a book overnight or for just a few hours. okay, i know i’m slow reader, but could you not point it out. i’m on the perception that one must savor the experience of reading a book and give time for the precious knowledge to sink into our heads. although, somewhat, i feel like i read faster and faster now.
maybe i’m just a naturally slow person. my brain gets distracted easily. i eat slowly, write slowly and run slowly (my teammates can assure you that). but that shows i enjoy everything i do.
okay, i’ve just finished reading freakonomics. it’s cool. but it can get you confused trying to figure out what these guys are trying to say with this book. they say in the beginning of the book that it has no unifying theme tough.
the lesson i took: we’ve gotta think things more deeply. cause some things may not be caused by something that is most apparent. but by another absurd subtle factor.
pretty much the same message from the book ‘black swan’ by nassim nicholas thaleb.
in one of the chapter, the authors explained that the reduction in crime in america in the 1990′s is caused by the legalisation of abortion following the roe v. wade case in the 1970′s. they argue that the absence of unwanted children, who are most likely to become criminals, in the 1990 batch of teenagers and young adult, when these criminals are supposed to reach their prime age, reduced the pool of potential criminals and thus the crime rate falls in the 1990′s. this breaks the conventional wisdom that the crime rate fell because of the improvement in the police force. so yeah, we gotta think things through.
i also learnt the term syllogism. this is an example:
‘unwantedness leads to high crime; abortion leads to less unwantedness; abortion leads to less crime.’
but the author shows that a syllogism can also be misleading, if the logic involved is wrong.
‘all cats die; socrates died; therefore socrates was a cat.’
ciao.
