Freakonomics book summary

I am still reading this book but wanted to put in a few comments about what I have read so far. This is a fun book to read. The examples picked by the authors are from day to day life but the way they have arrived at some conclusions using economics is surprising. The conclusions are even more surprising but totally make sense once you read how they were arrived at. I will reserve this book for more casual reading when I have time.

Books to read in 2010

I have decided to compile a list of Non-fiction books that I want to read in 2009-2010. I will try and write a short summary of each book and post it here.

1. Freakonomics
2. How to be a star at work
3. The 10 day MBA
4. The Checklist Manifesto
5. The Art of the Start
6. Anti-Cancer: A new way of Life
7. The 5 people you meet in Heaven
8. Innovation and entrepreneurship

The mind wanders

Once upon a time, I had a lesson in Sanskrit. Our teacher was enacting the lesson and she asked the students, "What is that thing which travels fastest ?" Somone answered 'Light'. He or she (I don't remember now) was wrong. The teacher said, the fastest thing in this universe is a human mind. It can be at one place and can be at another within a fraction of second.

Sometimes it just wanders over small things like " What to wear today ?". Somtimes over larger issues, "How can I spend $150 on a dinner for 10 people when I know it can feed a couple hundred people back in my country who are suffering from hunger ?" Sometimes its just about me, sometimes its about other people. And sometimes it just goes beyond all worldliness and asks the most fundamental questions. Why should I be bothered with small issues when I am a mere spec in this vast universe. A mere infinitesimal blip in the billion year old universe. If I do certain things how is it ever going to change anything in the universe ? I am like an electron moving about randomly in its orbit in a huge mass of some element. How does my motion even affect the huge mass ? Or does it ? If I step out of my orbit and so do many others with me, I may be able to change some properties of the mass. See again the mind is concocting some theory to control something to make me do what it wants. But what it wants afterall is dictated by some atoms in my brain.

With 24 years of human life behind me, I am still not sure if human mind is a boon or a bane. I know for sure however I can never understand its purpose in the ultimate sense. Sometimes I appreciate being born as a human. Being a mindless creature would have been really boring. But then when you are mindless, you don't even know what boring means. Maybe the destiny of a human is just to define your own scope, your own circle of influence and then work inside it forgetting all that is outside.

"Apne hi pani mein pighal jana barf ka muqaddar hota hai "

Whacky ideas - might make millions ?

Some whacky ideas that could work :

1. A use and throw laptop/PC keyboard , mouse cover. So that one could use laptop while having lunch and use oily/dirty hands without any problem to type.

2. A music sorter software using AI which people could use on IPods and similar devices to automatically sort all dumped music by Genre, Artist, etc.

3. A meeting scheduler software which works on the network. All ppl to attend that meeting write in their busy and availiable times into a time table and the software picks a time when everyone is availiable for the meeting.

4. An online compiler for latex which complies every character as one types.

More to be added

Leap of Faith - Book by Queen Noor

Recently I have been reading this book titled " Leap of Faith" by Queen Noor of Jordan, the widow of King Hussein. It was quite literally eye-opening to read this book about the Middle east and the life of King Hussein and Queen Noor. Surprisingly, Indian's rarely have the chance to learn about the arab history in their schools even though in recent years middle-east Asia has become quite important from a political and economic stand point. Anyways, more about the book.

Though I am not knowledgable in writing styles, the book has a nice flow and feels more like a converstation than a history book sorted by date. The book tells about events in the middle east in the last 5-6 decades from the viewpoint of Arabs. The principles shown by King Hussein during his dealings with all political leaders are inspiring. The book is a great read and I feel people from developing nations will be easily able to connect with the ideas express by Queen Noor and the work done by her in developing Jordan.

An average educated middle class Indian normally sees politics and politicians as being dirty without any morals or principles and not many are willing to enter this feild which has led to a dearth of young leadership for India. As Abe Lincoln wrote in a letter to the headmaster of his son's school, "Teach him that for every bad politician there is a genuine leader", King Hussein would be a role model for people willing to enter politics and willing to lead the country to developement and prosperity.

We are never even taught political science in school. Instead as an engineer I had to take courses in Psycology, Philosophy and Economics. Not that there is anything wrong with learning these but I feel, to get a better world view it is essential to know political science too.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know about middle-east and a little bit about world politics.

Why not make every college IIT and have the common nationwide exam ?

Regarding the article in Times on reducing the syllabus of JEE as it causes students to commit suicide.
I just had some questions for the committee members :
1. Will you let any Tom, Dick and Harry, who doesnt have the guts to look beyond his 12th class books, join the IITs ?
2. Will they reduce the level of difficulty of questions along with the topics ? If not, how does removing topics shut down the coaching classes ? Their main source of income is by teaching students to solve problems which normal colleges don't teach.
3. Why not do that to the IAS entrance, the IIM entrace as well while we are on the go ?

I did not expect this statement from an IIT director, in the article he quotes what the HRD committe feels, does he agree with them ??

And then they say, IIT's cause brain drain.

On Reading

One of my most wonderful memories from childhood is having lunch and dinner with the likes of Ayn Rand, Alistair Mclean, Alfred Hitchcock, etc. ( There are other interesting times I shared with them but not everything is suitable for a bog .. oops! i meant blog.) It was fun living through those stories in my own dream world. I was always hungry for more. Those books started a desire for reading which helped me survive 6 years of college. The tech books got me through exams where I had no clue what the professor had taught because I had been snoozing in most of his classes. Inspritational books got me through tough times when I had suffered defeat. They taught me that one deafeat does not mean failure. The only failure is when you stop trying. One of my favourites has been Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which depicts the indomitable spirit, the desire to grow beyond your circumstances. And I feel that is one quality Indians need to learn for sure. Anyways thats a topic for some other time.
Some of the books that I enjoy are those which contain the knowledge gained by the author through a lifetime of discovery. Wise and Otherwise a book by Sudha Murthy is one such book that I have liked immensly. It is enriching and entertaining at the same time. Another genre of quality books are those with radical ideas or perfect ideals. But then the question arises what do you call radical ? An example of book which presents a contrast between different ideals is Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
I fondly rembember a teacher of mine who used to say "Some books are to be tasted, some are to be digested and some are to be assimilated and ingrained for life".

Dance Concert

Last weekend I coordinated the organization of a Dance concert and dinner porgramme to raise funds for Tsunami victims. It was insipiring to see how ppl from different backgrounds came together to make the event a success. Inspite of a short planning period of 15 days we carried out the event without any glitches and collected over $2500. The money is going to be used to long term projects like supporting education of children that were orphaned due to Tsunami. There is no greater satisfaction than being a part of something and contributing back to the community.