Scribbles

Since I have been harping on the value of reading the works of significant effort, instead of 140 character tweets and FB postings, I list here a several articles that should well serve your intellectual appetites. Culled through (ironically) Twitter mentions and blog posts, they cover a wide breadth of topics with a geeky bent. Each of them are relatively long and combined make an eclectic grab-bag of reading for the weekend over your favorite cup of caffeine.
 
Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds by Michael Lewis:
Lewis continues his international investigation on the fallout of the financial crises. This time he looks into Greece and describes how that country has processed the credit run up and its aftermath. Fascinating and scathing commentary on the Greek society and its levels of corruption.
 

 
Defying the Longevity Odds by Bill Simmons:
Simmons talks about several NBA stars, such as Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash, who have extended their professional careers through better science, training, and diets. What’s unusual is the fact that they maintain their level of performance without perceptible drops in output that typically comes with age. The result is an realignment of career statistical expectations – all of a sudden the 30k career points milestone becomes the new 20k milestone.
 

 
The Hot Spotters by Atul Gawande:
Gawande, of “The Cost Conundrum” fame, reports on several doctors using a combination of statistical analysis and intensive patient outreach to drastically reduce health care costs. The stats reveal that a minority of patients account for a majority of the overall costs. And the most effective way to reduce those costs often requires more human interaction to ensure that people stay on their meds and encouraging them to exercise and quit poor habits. Seemingly obvious yet antithetical to how our system operates, the article reveals an interesting approach to solving the difficult cost problem.
 

 
Undressing Groupon by Ahmadali Arabshahi:
A deeper look into the economic model of Groupon from two perspectives, the subscriber base (you and me who buy the deals) and the merchants, shows how Groupon increases overall societal value while extracting a nice chunk of revenue for itself as the middle man. Arabshahi believes Google is well positioned to create a better model and prove a worthy competitor. Comments from LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman on the Power of Data collected by Groupon reinforces Arabshahi’s argument on how Google can use its strength in data algorithms to create a stronger model.
 
Dealing With Assange and the WikiLeaks Secrets by Bill Keller:
NY Times editor discusses from a journalist’s perspective on how they dealt with WikiLeaks’ Assange. Great insight on the newspaper’s processes. I was also quite intrigued by their view on how the different administrations dealt with them during public revelations of government activities.
 

 

I’ve nursed this nagging thought in my mind for a while now, the question of where to place liberal arts in our society. My challenge in even raising that question was that I couldn’t resolve what liberal arts – English, History, Languages, Philosophy – actually stood for, and whether they were indeed subjects that propel us in the areas I find sorely lacking: critical thinking and its articulation. And while they remain difficult to categorize generically, two articles (linked below) I read recently clarified for me what I believe to be missing in either practice or the value we grant them. Reading Seth Godin’s recent Linchpin pushed me to the conclusion that we need these essential skills to live as humans instead of merely surviving as drones.
 
For those of you who know my academic/mercenary background may point out the contradiction. I am after all a student of engineering and computer science, topped off with additional degrees in CS and business. And for those who go further back to my undergraduate days, you may remind me of my belittling of liberal arts majors and their lack of post-graduate earning potential. That sentiment, while incorrect, did reflect my immigrant background and the general environment at the time. A large motivation in my developing years was to make a better life for myself and family. And I didn’t have parents or mentors who ever stressed the value of liberal arts. That coupled with a desire to make something “real” (and cool), made engineering a natural career choice. This quote from William Chace’s Decline of the English Department sums up my situation nicely and puts the attitude of my time in perspective with that of a few generations ago (emphasis mine):
 

Finding pleasure in such reading, and indeed in majoring in English, was a declaration at the time that education was not at all about getting a job or securing one’s future. In comparison with the pre-professional ambitions that dominate the lives of American undergraduates today, the psychological condition of students of the time was defined by self-reflection, innocence, and a casual irresponsibility about what was coming next.
 
Also visible in the late 1940s and early 1950s were thousands of GIs returning from World War II with a desire to establish for themselves lives as similar as possible to those they imagined had been led by the college generation before their own. For these veterans, college implied security and tradition, a world unlike the one they had left behind in Europe and the Pacific. So they did what they thought one always did in college: study, reflect, and learn. They would reconnect, they thought, with the cultural traditions the war had been fought to defend.

 
My attitude in college was study, learn, and earn. After all, there were student loans to pay back and family to take care of. There wasn’t much room for self-reflection. It took a decade after personally experiencing the dot-com bubble, global outsourcing, and the worse financial crisis since the Great Depression, for me to see how we arrived in the age of white collar slavery through that very system I came out of. Today corporations dole out deliverables and its accompanying script to follow. Every output is measurable. People sit in cubes and use their brains to generate words and numbers instead of sweating under the sun erecting pyramids; yet still no true thinking, deciding, and its associated risk taking are necessary. So are these white collar workers – the accountants, analysts, lawyers, programmers, whatever office person – really valuable, or simply replaceable cogs that can be swapped out for the next cheapest alternative?
 
As the years progressed, I’ve come to realize the value for effectively thinking, communicating those ideas, and acting on them, all things we’ve been deprogrammed to do. I’ve witnessed this through my professional experiences: programmers who generated ideas instead of just pumping out code, or consultants who did those things better than everyone else. These things translated into huge profits for the businesses they were hired by. Ironically, even corporate executives want other people to do the thinking and risk-taking for them. (Hey, we followed the money consultants’ advice and failed, it’s not our fault.)
 
The most valuable people, the ones reaping disproportional rewards are the creative types who bother to reflect, create, and share. The rest are commoditized and weeded out through a slow death of declining salaries and vanishing long term security. This is evident in all forms of businesses and media: technology companies, movies, food production industry, even newspapers. This phenomena is magnified by our information age. There’s little value in sheer quantity (when’s the last time you read anything memorable or even thought-worthy from the AP?), because there’s already too much content on the Internet. The problem is winning people’s limited attention to consume your content. And they won’t unless it’s of value.
 
What does this have to do with the role of liberal arts? Our entire system, from education to corporations to democracy, predicates its existence on making drones out of us, beating us into conforming to non-thinking, not-challenging the status quo. That’s a slippery path and that’s why we should emphasize true thinking in our education and especially in our value system. It may seem inconsequential to producing growth or saving the world. How can dead authors help us today, right? I say it’ll yield a better society, one not soley measured by per capita GDP. Meacham puts up a good argument:
 

… the difficulty of making the case for something so expensive and so seemingly archaic—an undergraduate liberal education—in an economic and cultural climate that favors efficiency and tangibility. It is inarguably hard to monetize a familiarity with Homer or an intimacy with Shakespeare.
 
It is just possible, though, that the traditional understanding of the liberal arts may help us in our search for new innovation and new competitiveness. The next chapter of the nation’s economic life could well be written not only by engineers but by entrepreneurs who, as products of an apparently disparate education, have formed a habit of mind that enables them to connect ideas that might otherwise have gone unconnected.

 
I’m not arguing for everyone to pursue a liberal arts degree. I am saying we should elevate its status and more importantly what it represents: rigorous thinking, reflection, and articulating one’s mind. Demand more of others and yourself. Be picky in what you consume and spend the effort to digest the quality out there. Reward your favorite writers and columnists through buying books or sharing links to their writing. Reward the filmmakers out to generate thought and not mere blockbusters. Subscribe to the blog that makes you think. Pay for the music download that made you feel something. Do all that, incorporate it into you, and give it back in your personal form. Become a producer, not a consumer in the world of thought.
 

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That’s the verbatim summary of Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food from the introduction. Before all the carnivores out there start rolling their eyes, let me say this book isn’t about promoting vegetarianism. While it’s true that I keep a mostly vegan diet, something I work and laugh at, this isn’t my attempt at convincing you to give up meat.



 
I will however share my take from his book, based on those three simple guidelines – not hard commandments – to eating. It’s time to move away from the unhealthy food obsessions that involve breaking down every meal into its components, counting carbs, following the diet fad du jour. Embracing this infatuation with nutritionalism for the past 30 years, we’ve abandoned thousands of years of eating cultures from all around the world that has proven to work. In the meanwhile, the Western diet, quickly spreading through globalization, has produced worse health and less satisfaction in eating. We should simply eat and enjoy real food. I won’t expound on not eating too much, something I hope you find obvious already. Instead let’s look at what constitutes real food and why mostly plants.
 
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT EATS TOO – the biggest argument for avoiding meat from a health perspective. Putting ethical concerns aside for this argument, let’s examine eating meat from the purely selfish goal of health. It tastes great, provides protein, and satisfies the inner hunter – all things I completely relate to. But today’s meat from the supermarket isn’t the same meat my grandmother bought from her local street butcher. The entire meat production industry has changed so much, that today its sole purpose is to convert energy to protein in the most efficient manner, so efficient that it disregards concerns we should be wary of. Livestock are stuffed with grain, antibiotics, and growth hormones instead of their natural diet. Although these details are slowly gaining coverage through books and movies, they’re still relatively obscure to the public. I lament that, without our conscious knowing, the industry has sacrificed quality for quantity, cost over health over the decades. We now arrive at a point of getting inferior meat on both fronts of nourishment and taste. It’s telling that beef in Argentina or wild game taste better because of the importance of what the animals eat. If I want a hamburger nowadays not stuffed with crap or contaminated by E. coli, I have to go great lengths and costs to procure the meat and cook it myself. (This includes Californian hamburger stalwart In-n-Out too.) Even disregarding the low probability of getting sick from individual incidents, eating such mass produced meat several times a day, over a long period of time will inevitably lead to undesirable consequences down the road.
 
The industrial food complex has affected vegetables as well through a relentless maximization of crop yields using artificial fertilizers and genetic modification/selection. They follow the same formula of producing the most quantity by spending the least. Hence the push for eating well-grown food from healthy soils. (Pollan uses this description instead of organic because you can still obtain such food without the organic certification.) It’s been shown that vegetables grown in such soils without synthetic fertilizers contain significantly more vitamins, antioxidants, and nutrients, which is the whole reason for eating more plants to begin with; these antioxidants help our bodies detoxify the poisons from the environment and our diets. This is a case where a carrot from the supermarket really isn’t the same as the carrot from your backyard or a local farmer. They look the same, but inside they’re vastly different. While many of us shy away from spending more for such commodities (when did you ever differentiate carrots from various sources the way you’d differentiate the makes of cars?), the bottom line is our health. By comparing the seemingly identical vegetables from vastly different sources and choosing correctly, we truly nourish ourselves beyond filling the belly.
 
My last piece of advice is to avoiding fake foods, especially items containing trans fat and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Trans fat, found in processed fats like margarine and almost every fast food chain, will kill you, plain and simple. This is common knowledge now that many product labels tout zero trans fats as a selling point. Credit NYC for standing up on behalf of people in banning trans fats in restaurants. As for the HFCS found in almost all processed foods from soda to meats to even bread, examine the ingredients label of some of your favorite foods and you’ll be surprised to find it there. While the cheapest sweetener to purchase, it’s produced at a high environmental cost. And that’s not even accounting for its role behind many health problems and likely one of the biggest culprits behind America’s obesity epidemic. Its prevalence in almost everything is tragic, as PGuy will attest to in his breakfast forays. Sadder yet, the media has kept relatively under the lid that HFCS is suspected of containing mercury. I doubt it’s completely avoidable from one’s diet, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to reduce intake. Check the advice linked through the picture below.


High Fructose Corn Syrup – Cut it Out

All this can be quite overwhelming for the average eater. For myself, similar challenges exist: howto change what grandma buys and cooks, my passion for adventuring in great food, and my wallet’s limitations. My approach, or compromise so to speak, to all this is my flexitarian diet (eating mostly plants with the occasional meat), follow the guidelines as much as possible, but not like a religion. Most days I’m fairly disciplined, but give myself the leeway to not restrain those moments that should be enjoyed. As for enjoyment, give yourself the pleasures of a real meal, one shared with friends and loved ones. Make it an experience, one over conversation and personal exchange, instead of an allotted time to feed at the trough. No matter the cultural background, humans historically have not scarfed down thousands of calories with eyeballs glued to the television. It’s bad enough that we already do that in front of a monitor during lunch (guilty as charged, amongst many folks in the US). So why not invest a little time in improving not just the what but also the how in our eating habits?
 
A final take on the Michael Pollan: he delivers the bad news through exceptional story telling and a personable voice of authority backed by extensive research. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Omnivore’s Dilemma a couple years ago. While this follow-up has less of the story telling elements, it does not disappoint. I highly recommend reading both books in sequence; they’ll entertain while opening your conscious mind to what enters your body every day. And what can be more vital, more fascinating than that?
 

I’m still kicking myself for waiting this long to read Crypto. Not that I ever doubted Neal Stephenson‘s genius, as I have read much of his other work. But as somebody with such a fascination with WWII and computer science and hacker culture, I’m way behind the curve. Better late than never, but sure could’ve been sooner.
 
The extant reviews and acclaim more than describe its content. As to how I got into it is where this post comes in. After years of reading non-fiction, I decided to switch back to some fiction for a break. In picking a book, I went through my long list of “must-reads” and stumbled across this massive novel. Wanting to put my eReader to work, this tome was perfect for saving trees, not to mention being on sale. Besides, does it get any more appropriate than reading a geeky book on a digital reader?
 

Reading Stephenson on my eReader
 
Does the device displaying the book seem rather unfamiliar, especially compared to the iPod-esque Kindle? It’s actually a Sony PRS-500, one of the first reading devices using electronic paper. A wonderful hand-me-down from my gadget friendly uncle, this svelte toy has been the perfect companion on the plane, subway, and coffee shops. While I still drool over the Kindle 2, like when I saw it on the subway the other day, I don’t feel so bad after learning about Amazon’s draconian methods for restricting where one can get books from. Regardless, you’ll find me in the camp of happy eReader owners.
 
Over the past couple weeks, Crypto managed to entertain on many a late nights, and tickled my inner geek with ingenious hacker stories and reviving some great times in my past. I’m certain that non-geeks would still enjoy this book tremendously. So don’t procrastinate like I did and give yourself a treat.
 

While reflecting on my reading habits, I noticed that while I’ve been devouring the newsweeklies, online papers, and blogosphere lately, I realized that I haven’t read any books lately. The last book I finished a couple months back was actually a compilation of blog posts. Not to take away anything from online articles or blog posts, – you’re reading one right now – books simply cover a single topic in much greater depth. The best advice for reading is diversification, and I’m back into books now.

I picked up the God Delusion off my shelf. I found it an appropriate book after watching the move Religuous.

So far I’m halfway through the book and I find it pretty fascinating. Having a Christian upbringing, I’ve been exposed to a lifetime of pro-God arguments. While I had my own skepticisms, as any person rightfully should, devoutly religious or not, I’ve never encountered the arguments against it, from such a scientific perspective. (Don’t worry, I believe in evolution). Dawkins has done a superb job in framing the arguments against religion, as well as poke huge holes in the common arguments for it. I haven’t even finished the book yet and I would highly recommend it, especially to religious, logically-oriented people who are open minded enough for another perspective.

Thomas Friedman, one of my favorite columnists from the New York Times, argues in his new book, The World is Flat, that we have reached a point where the physical and mental walls that barricaded individuals from participating in a global community and accessing information and knowledge have come tumbling down, resulting in a flat world.  He supports his theory by describing the enabling technologies and the shift in people’s beliefs all around the world that contribute to the massive globalization we are witnessing today.  This is far beyond outsourcing white collared jobs overseas.  This 500 page book articulates how the attitudes and thoughts of people all around the world have changed.  The rest of world is no longer trying to play catch up to the US; they are trying to get ahead of the US.  Globalization 3.0, he claims, is when everyone right down to the individual level, everywhere, can compete on a level playing field.

Before reading this, I had several threads of thought that closely mirror those presented.  But they were loose and unorganized.  And even though, through my own background, I am already familiar with most of the “ten flatteners” Friedman describes, I appreciate his taking out the time to organize and present these current events in such an informative and enjoyable read.  He summarizes those loose thoughts of mine nicely into a congruent theory, replete with anecdotes, statistics, and insight.

One of the author’s perspectives that resonated was on what the US should do in education and attitude towards the surrounding competition.  He conveys the point of how fewer students today find science and engineering an attractive field of study compared to just a few decades ago.  Not only that, but our government has done little to attract both homegrown and foreign talent to research and development in those fields.  Back in first grade when I declared my intent to become a scientist, it was met with sound approval and encouragement all around.  But nowadays, it’s treated as nerdy and uncool, thanks to a sense of complacency and misportrayal by the entertainment industry.  I wonder at what point in our society did being “cool” and having an analytical, quantitative mindset become mutually exclusive.  Regardless, if you haven’t been paying attention, the gap between US and the rest of the world is becoming surprisingly thin.  I couldn’t have found a better analogy to compare this to than the one Friedman conjures – the recent failures of the US basketball team in international competition.

Many critics claim he oversimplifies.  But Friedman does in fact present the many potential obstacles in the world, such as terrorism and political instabilities, that could erect the walls back up again.  He even describes how people with the intent of creating chaos can and will use the very same flatteners to bring those walls back up.  Nonetheless, he shares my view, which is to approach the future with grounded optimism and to spread the ideal of creating something positive for others.

My decision to undertake my studies abroad has been reaffirmed by Friedman’s ideas.  When you read his book, you will understand why I find my upcoming education at INSEAD so exciting and so crucial.

Just finished reading A Slight Trick of the Mind for the second time, and it really struck a cord.  The conclusion was no surprise to me, but coincidentally, I just watched House of Sand and Fog earlier tonight. At this point, I’m not certain what to make of the theme I found in both pieces:

I believe that the manner in which people deal with this notion reflects the meaning they attach to their lives.  In both cases, the protagonists respond to a gaping loss of meaning, spawned so suddenly and unexpectedly.  Yet while I refuse to ever allow the significance of my being to be defined by the placement of hope and attachment on external and uncontrollable outcomes, I can’t help ponder how many people unintentionally end up in hopeless situations guided by societal and cultural expectations, and obviously by the very human emotion of love.

Given my relatively young age and focus in life, my dismissal of people’s lack of meaning can appear condescending and outright insensitive.  But I think what I really want to question is whether people as a whole lose their love for living as a result of societal expectations, aging, or the gradual diminishing of the spark that ignites one’s reason d’etre.  Why cannot parents attach the same passion and curiosity to their lives as do their children? Responsibilities, unfulfilled dreams, physical breakdown?  I suppose we can make any of these (and more) an excuse, but then again, we can also choose not to.

Instead of adding my own review of this best seller, A Slight Trick of the Mind, for which tons of reviews already exist, I’m just scribbling some of my initial reactions after my first reading.

As I kid, I loved to read the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr Watson.  Needless to say, those memories made this book very enjoyable to me, as Holmes’ character is close to my heart.  But in allusion to the rave reviews on how Cullin succeeds at portraying his human frailties, part of the famous sleuth’s attraction for me was his superhero-ness, the persona that was beyond ordinary humans.  The deft presentation of this humanity leaves me wondering which I would’ve preferred.  Do I cling to Sherlock Holme’s invincible aura I was so accustomed to reading about as a kid, or do I feel more connected to the being that I can better relate to, one with weaknesses and faults?  Due to the moroseness of these frailties presented, I am tempted to say the former.  But I hesitate to declare this choice unequivocally.  In making me squirm as I read about my hero and question how I really want to remember him, the author demonstrates his mastery in touching the reader on a personal and intimate level, perhaps uncomfortably so.  As I put the book down with mixed feelings about the story, I invite you to enjoy the superb writing and come to your own conclusions on how you feel about it.

Spent the last few nights before hitting the sack reading through former GE CEO’s latest book, Winning.  It was easy enough reading but the values he espoused were insightfully presented in the context of his experiences.  I expected it to be more of a blueprint for running a corporation but there was unexpected candor about how people need to figure out what they are really going after, be it money, work-life balance, or becoming the head honcho.

Several points that stood out: To get a promotion, you have to deliver surprising results above what your boss normally expects from you.  Say you’re an engineer, you can’t just complete your component on time with quality.  You have to actively seek out additional projects, such as putting in new features or processes that help the team.  In many ways, I did this in my career but didn’t see it the way it was explicitly spelled out in the book.  I viewed my actions as just doing a great job, but not as a way to force a promotion.  Instead, I would ask my boss what needs to get done to reach the next level, and when I delivered and sometimes still didn’t get the promotion, I was frustrated.  Jack Welch points out that if you only deliver the expected, then you’re just “doing your job” and you don’t get rewarded with fast promotions for that.

Another thing he said, “I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but the world generally favors people who are energetic and extroverted.  That’s also something you learn young, and it’s reinforced in school, at church, at camp, in clubs, and usually at home too…”  He goes on to describe that while not a requirement for success, this helps tremendously in many aspects of life and career.  Again, something I always implicitly understood but never thought about explicitly.  Back in the high school days, the intellectual nazi in me would confuse being outgoing and extroverted with boisterous and juvenile.  Later, I came to see it differently, but seeing it in print really cemented that realization.

Apparently he’s gotten a bunch of flak for touting GE’s practice of differentiation, where people are ranked in the three groups of 20-70-10, the numbers denoting percentile ranking.  I see that at our company, but we don’t even come close to GE’s candor and transparency of the ranking process and how to move within it.  Welch also mentions people actually do get let go from the bottom 10 group, whereas at our company, I always felt that the bottom five percent (BFP) was just an empty threat.

Many other nuggets of goodness included in the book make for great light reading before bed.  If you get a chance, read it and learn something new and interesting about making it in the corporate world.