Book Reviews

Recent reads (sorry, no reviews) :

Up From Slaver (super book. Read it! Again and again and again! It's all about starting from rags and right definition of riches. While I was in the other hemisphere, I saw some goffiti (government sponsored graffiti) : Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel - Socrates)
-- Booker Taliaferro Washington

Think Without Ink by Venkat - so, so - might up your game a little bit depending what you do - but, mostly, given that we've moved from the information age to the conceptual age, I'd say he can do with a rewrite - and so can the designers of India's CAT.

Oh, BTW, today I meets someone who works in the Sherrif's office and asks him if he's heard of David Lieberman's book "Now You Can Read Anyone", and he says yes. Said he made a lot of money working as a security consultant for companies in his spare time. Nice.

The Deadly P's

Stacy Kaiser's definitions (love em) :

Good pride :

good pride :

care about your work, results, reputation
look and perform at your highest level
keep from being abused and taken advantage of

bad pride :

I'm too good for this
I'm not giving this to you, because you don't give it to me
You did this, so I'm doing that
I'd rather win than give in

Bad power :

Winning is more important than peace
I don't have to listen to you
What I say should go. Period.
I don't care what you want as long as I get what I want.

I think people should read this chapter from Stacy's book once every couple of months..

Physician Test Thyself

Are You Smarter than You Were Yesterday?

The capital city of Russia is:

• A: London
• B: Moscow
• C: Kiev
• D: Paris

Look No Further : Hugh MacLeod

Sheer genius. What would he do without Evernote, you wonder.. the book wrote itself we're told to believe :)

1	Ignore everybody	You are all you got.
2	The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours.	The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.
3	Put the hours in	If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, itls probably because she works harder at it than you do.
4	Good ideas have lonely childhoods.
5	If your business plan depends on suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.
6	You are responsible for your own experience.
7	Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
8	Keep your day job:	The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task at hand covers both bases, but not often.
9	Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
10	Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.	You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don't make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.
11	The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props	Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would seriously surprise me. A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind. Which is why there are so many second-rate art directors with state-of-the-art Macintosh computers.
12	Don't try to stand out from the crowd	avoid crowds altogether. Think blue ocean strategy.
13	If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
14	Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside	The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa.
15	Dying young is overrated	Every kid is a sucker for the idea that there's a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work.
16	The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not	It is this red line that demarcates your sovereignty; that defines your own private creative domain. What crap you are willing to take, and what crap you're not. What you are willing to relinquish control over, and what you aren't. What price you are willing to pay, and what price you aren't.
17	The world is changing	If you want to be able to afford groceries in five years, I'd recommend listening closely to the (people who push change) and avoiding the (people who resist change).
18	Merit can be bought. Passion can't	The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does. Eric Schmidt : go for missionaries, not mercenaries!
19	Avoid the Watercooler Gang	Any place has malcontents who have grown weary. Watch out!
20	Sing in your own voice	The really good artists, the really successful entrepreneurs, figure out how to circumvent their limitations, figure out how to turn their strengths into weaknesses.
21	The choice of media is irrelevant
22	Selling out is harder than it looks	Diluting your product to make it more ?commercial? will just make people like it less.
23	Nobody cares. Do it for yourself	Scratch your own itch!
24	Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time	To me, it's about what you are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth.
25	Don't worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually	Writer's block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something. Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough.
26	You have to find your own shtick	Jackson Pollock discovering splatter paint. Or Robert Ryman discovering all-white canvases. Andy Warhol discovering silk-screen. Hunter S. Thompson discovering gonzo journalism. Duchamp discovering the found object. Jasper Johns discovering the American flag. Hemingway discovering brevity. James Joyce discovering stream-of-consciousness prose. Somehow while playing around with something new, suddenly they found they were able to put their entire selves into it.
27	Write from the heart	Be authentic.
28	The best way to get approval is not to need it
29	Power is never given. Power is taken	You didn't go in there, asking the editor to give you power. You went in there and politely informed the editor that you already have the power. That's what being "ready" means. That's what "taking power" means. Not needing anything from another person in order to be the best in the world.
30	Whatever choice you make, the Devil gets his due eventually	Ending up with some regrets is par for the c.
31	The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it
32	Remain frugal	Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.
33	Allow your work to age with you	You become older faster than you think. Be ready for it when it happens.
34	Being Poor Sucks	The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.
35	Beware of turning hobbies into jobs	James Goldsmith once quipped, 'When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy.' What's true with philanderers is also true in life.
36	Savor obscurity while it lasts	Once you "make it," your work is never the same.
37	Start blogging: Express yourself	Spread the word out. Build a following online.
38	Meaning scales	Create meaning.
39	When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams

Bill Schweber's Reading List

•Roving Mars: spirit, opportunity, and the exploration of the red planet, by Steven W. Squyres, the principal investigator on the Mars missions that landed the rovers Spirit and Opportunity in 2004; great insight into the technical challenges and constraints, and how they were overcome.
•Voyager: seeking newer worlds in the third great age of discovery, by Stephen J. Pyne, a lengthy but fascinating look at the 30+ year dual missions (launched in 1977, and recently officially concluded) to the edge of our solar system, and beyond.
•From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, by Sean Carroll, a Caltech theoretical physicist looks at the meaning of time, entropy, and much more. Doesn't talk or dumb down. Really made me stop and think.
•Einstein's Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics, by John Stachel, has English translations of the actual papers that radically changed physics, but also a lengthy introduction and explanation of each one which adds both technical and historical perspective.
•Apollo: The Race to the Moon, by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox, is the best book about the Apollo program I have read; it combines big–picture perspective with details, and insights into the people, technology, and challenges.
•Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight, by David A. Mindell, focuses on the computers and programming of the various Apollo computers; after you read this, you will never complain about insufficient memory, CPU speed, or tools.
•Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance, by Donald Mackenzie, a well-written book which combines history, technology, personalities, and political context of the development of guidance, from earliest gyro systems to advanced missile units. Every other book I have read on guidance systems cites this one as a key reference.
•Skunk Works: A Personal Recollection of My Years at Lockheed, by Ben R. Rich explains how clandestine super-aircraft (U-2, SR-71, as examples) were conceived and developed, and gave rise to a whole new way of developing major projects on the "sly."
•Tube: A History of Television by David E. Fisher and Marshall Jon Fisher is a clear, readable history of this invention which changed our world in so many ways, the people who made it happen, the internal corporate and technical battles, and the challenges that had to be overcome in both prototype and mass production.
•Makers of the Microchip: A Documentary History of Fairchild Semiconductor, by Christophe Lecuyer and David C Brook; this book was a real treat and window into one of the companies and its brilliant, hard-working people that made semiconductors real and manufacturable in volume. Also has images (facsimiles) of meeting notes, and typed memos—some are quite riveting and prescient.
•The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Clifford Stoll, is a first-person account of the lengthy, frustrating hunt for a computer hacker who broke into a computer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL). (This is where the future wars are going to be fought - like it or not:( )
•The universe in a mirror: the saga of the Hubble Telescope and the visionaries who built it, by Robert Zimmerman, tells of the fifty-year struggle to build the first space telescope; how many of the telescope's advocates sacrificed careers and family to get it launched, and how hopes and reputations were shattered when its mirror was found to be flawed.

RD's Face Masks

1. Banana (better : banana + yogurt + honey) 20 min
2. Vinegar
3. Powdered milk + water
4. Oatmeal + honey + yogurt + egg white
5. Mayo
6. Yogurt (or add orange juice too + aloe if you can)
7. Yellow mustard
8. lemon juice + olive oil
9. Egg yolk for dry skin, white for oily skin.

Thanks R's Digest.

McKee At His Best

Soap Opera characters have no inner or extra-personal conflicts. They suffer when they don't get what they want, but because they're either good people or bad, they rarely face true inner dilemmas. Society never intervenes in their air-conditioned worlds. If, for example, a murder should bring a detective, a representative of society, into the story, you can be certain that within a week this cop will have an intimate and personal relationship with every other character in the Soap.

Suppose a story contains three tragic scenes contiguously. What would be the effect? In the first, we shed tears; in the second, we sniffle; in the third, we laugh... loudly. Not because the third scene isn't sad - it may be the saddest of all three - but, because the previous two have drained us of all grief, and we find it insensitive, if not ludicrous, of the storyteller to expect us to cry yet again. The repetition of "serious" emotion is, in fact, a favourite comic device.

McKee's Satirical Genius

If the protagonist has no unconscious desire, then his conscious objective becomes the Spine. The Spine of any Bond film, for example, can be phrased as : To defeat the arch-villain. James has no unconscious desires; he wants and only wants to save the world. As the story's unifying force, Bond's pursuit of his conscious goal cannot change. If he were to declare, "To hell with Dr. No. I'm bored with the spy business. I'm going south to work on my back-swing and lower my handicap," the film falls apart.

Meine Strengths

Your Top Strength
Creativity, ingenuity, and originality
Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.

Your Second Strength
Self-control and self-regulation
You self-consciously regulate what you feel and what you do. You are a disciplined person. You are in control of your appetites and your emotions, not vice versa.

Your Third Strength
Curiosity and interest in the world
You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.

Your Fourth Strength
Love of learning
You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Your Fifth Strength
Zest, enthusiasm, and energy
Regardless of what you do, you approach it with excitement and energy. You never do anything halfway or halfheartedly. For you, life is an adventure