Outsource the 3:00 am call…

This is hilarious:
“Sure,” I say, “J… can do Australian, American, French and English accents. Sometimes all in the same sentence. Imagine how close the other world leaders will feel to you. Birds of a feather and all that.”

TV Series - All time favourites and recent additions

The one true indulgence I have is TV series, especially sitcoms.
After a long day’s work, when the brain refuses to function anymore, the one thing I always manage to do is plunk in front of the telly and watch an episode of whichever TV series I am addicted to at the moment.
The recent [...]

Review: The Logic of Life

There is just something about the team “popular Economics” that is so paradoxical that I am usually tempted to stay away from any book that even slightly falls into this genre. But the rave reviews that Tim Harford’s Logic of Life had been receiving, combined with the fact that I have, on more than one occasion, enjoyed his FT columns, decided to give the book a try. I am far from disappointed – in fact, I confess that I am ready to replace my unreasonable distrust of the genre with a new found enthusiasm to read some of the titles referred to in this book, some of which may be heralded as icons of the genre. I promise you, true to my usual self, I will make a list of these books before I go about buying and / or reading them. But before that, let’s spare some thought for the book that affected this change of heart.

The fundamental concept in the book, unsurprisingly, is that human beings are rational – everything we do, however illogical it might seem – is founded in cold hard reason, if only you look hard enough. By the end of the first chapter, Harford has you pretty much convinced of this and you will be ready to believe that, from hookers to teenagers to criminals, everyone is endowed with a rational mind. The one caveat to this thesis that Harford himself admits to is that rationality is accentuated by experience. The way I see it, this is similar to conditional learning – the more times you have done something, the more likely you are to know the likely effects of a wide range of your actions and you will pick the one most likely to lead to positive gains for you – either now or in the future. Whether you call it good old common sense or logic, the end result remains the same, and can be explained rationally.

The beauty of the book lies in the wide range of examples that Harford has chosen to explain the logic of. Unlike many of the best sellers of the past years, which left you with the distinct feeling that one idea or concept, best suited for a long article, had been pulled and stretched in all possible directions to fill enough pages to call it a book – Harford introduces refreshingly new analyses chapter after chapter. His wand of rationality illumines the logic behind seemingly instinctive moves of seasoned poker players, emotion-laden decisions behind marriage and divorce and even tries to explain why your boss will always be overpaid and why your job sucks – obviously not a great ad for careers at FT considering that he does not even entertain the thought that some of us might like our jobs, but powerful analyses nevertheless.[...]

Noam Chomsky on Terrorism

Noam Chomsky eloquently discusses “The Most Wanted List”:
“.. they and their apologists regarded Africans much as we do the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not intend to kill them because they are not [...]

Technology and creativity

When you start writing an article, what is the first thing you do?

Several years before, the first thing I would have done would have been to settle down in a nice comfortable chair with a blank sheet of paper, a good pen and armed, probably, with a nice cup of coffee. I would then jot down my train of thought, along with the main points of argument and counterargument. I would glance into space every now and then, and think. Then I would arm myself with a list of topics I would want to research deeper and then head to the local library to hopefully get a few books on the topic. At least this is how I remember preparing for my high school essays.

But now, just as I was considering writing my blog post, the first thing I did was Google the words “creativity and modern technology”. With not many hits on what I wanted to write, I tried permutations of the topic and spent a good ten minutes figuring out what has been written on the topic by those before me. Admittedly, a blog post does not have the same bearing on my life as a bad grade in a school essay would have had nor do I have the luxury of time to spend as much time on one post – but somehow, I would like to believe that all those years of school education had some impact on the way I think and write.

Technology has affected the way we create content. I remember the first time I wrote an html page, I had bought a tome of a book on HTML and familiarized myself with most of the commands before writing <html> on a blank txt file. Yet, now if I were to write a Wordpress template, even though I don’t know CSS and I barely remember HTML, I wouldn’t consider reading up. I would start with an old template and work by trial and error, till I am happy with what I see.

So what has been the impact of modern technology on the way we create content? Have the changes been for better or for worse? And how can we maximize what is good about the new change while keeping the less desirable aspects to a minimum? [...]

Review: Desert Flower

As they say, everyone has one story to write about - their own. But when you have a story like that of Waris Dirie, it will make a book truly worth reading.
Last weekend while I was browsing at the local bookstore, I picked up Desert Flower. Waris Dirie grew up as a nomad in Somalia, [...]

Holiday list 2008

Every year, I make a list of places I would like to go to. And then end up going to completely different places. But that never stops me from making the list. So today I decided to make a list of destinations I would love to visit over the coming year. Let’s see how [...]

Young, upwardly mobile and professional - how to avoid the common pitfalls

Young, ambitious, upwardly mobile and professional - without giving in to the marketing definitions of yuppies and yumps and what have you - we still can admit that this is a socially defined association often stronger than cultural, racial, gender or geographic affiliations. Life stages are often so much more uniting than we give them [...]

Travel lessons learnt the hard way

The annoying thing about those really cheap deals that you see advertised on the travel agents offices is that more often than not, they are geared towards the lazy traveler. No offence meant here, it’s just that the best deals are to one location, often to a 4 or 5 star hotel which is in [...]

Sweet Crimson

I wonder if it is the lucidity of the blood
Flowing freely down the lanky arm
Criss-crossing past the veins
Till the tip of the long yellowing finger nails?

Or is it the takeover by the bright crimson
Of the white of my ghostly pale skin
Till the memory of anything monochrome
Is just a faded image, as if it never were?

Could it be the sound of the blade
As it elegantly swishes past its enemy
Could it be the ecstasy in my heart
At the inevitability of what’s in store?

Could it be happy anticipation
Of the pain that will give me my pleasure
Could it be the pleasure of control
Of inviting death, at one’s own accord?

Could it be this moment, and nothing else
That I had spent my whole life waiting for?
Born perhaps to live, but certainly to die
If the destination is so near, why travel so far?

Defying life, defying all,
I give up my life, in happy delirium
For in pleasure, we seek pain,
And in pain, we find our pleasure.