Bookman, my favorite local used bookstore, had a 25-percent-off sale this weekend and here’s what I got: Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Books
Milton Friedman Would Be 100 Years Old Today
What the market does is to reduce greatly the range of issues that must be decided through political means, and thereby to minimize the extent to which government need participate directly in the game. The characteristic feature of action through political channels is that it tends to require or enforce substantial conformity. The great advantage of the market, on the other hand, is that it permits wide diversity. It is, in political terms, a system of proportional representation. Each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what color-the majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit. It is this feature of the market that we refer to when we say that the market provides economic freedom. But this characteristic also has implications that go far beyond the narrowly economic. Political freedom means… Read more →
Stephen Covey, 1932-2012
Stephen Covey, the author of the best-selling book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” died early Monday morning at 79 years old, according to The Associated Press. — TODAY.com Here are the seven habits: Be Proactive Begin with the End in Mind Put First Things First Think Win/Win Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood Synergize Sharpen the Saw One way to assess the value of advice is to ask, “Would anyone advise the opposite?” If the answer is no, then all you have are platitudes and truisms. Let’s try it: Let Life Wash Over You Like a Big Wave Go Off Half-Cocked Proceed in a Frivolous, Undirected Manner … You get the idea. By selling more than 25 million copies of this book, and becoming known as one of the leading business thinkers of his time, Covey revealed the vacuousness of the modern mind, although I don’t… Read more →
I Dont No Why Im Dumb Agen
Via Best of the Web Today: Read more →
Aside
ShortList Magazine: The 50 Coolest Book Covers Ever
Ernest Hemingway on Symbolism
There isn’t any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The sharks are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know. Read more →
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
“Time’s a goon, right? Isn’t that the expression?” Jules had drifted over from across the room. “I’ve never heard that,” he said. “‘Time is a goon’?” “Would you disagree?” Bosco said, a little challengingly. There was a pause. “No,” Jules said. — Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad It’s not easy in a book to communicate the passage of time . . . you can write a book that takes place over a long period of time, but what I mean is to communicate the passage of time so the reader feels it rushing by, which Jennifer Egan has done. Highly recommended! Read more →
Illusions of Patterns and Patterns of Illusion
In 1978, [Leonard] Koppett revealed a system that he claimed could determine, by the end of January every year, whether the stock market would go up or down in that calendar year. [Koppett’s system] worked for eleven straight years, from 1979 through 1989, got it wrong in 1990, and was correct again every year until 1998. But although Koppett’s predictions were correct for a streak of eighteen out of nineteen years, I feel confident in asserting that his streak involved no skill whatsoever. Why? Because Leonard Koppett was a columnist for Sporting News, and his system was based on the results of the Super Bowl, the championship game of professional football. Whenever the team from the (original) National Football League won, the stock market, he predicted, would rise. Whenever the team from the (original) American Football League won, he predicted the market would go down. Given that information, few people would argue that Koppett was anything but… Read more →
Nicholas Sparks
I got a job description via email from a recruiter named Nicholas Sparks. Like most jobs I get from recruiters, 1) it was unrelated to my actual experience; and 2) it was nowhere near where I live. I wrote back anyway to say, “I’ve never enjoyed you as a novelist and I’m glad to see you’ve gone into another line of work.” Read more →
From Science Fiction to Everyday Life in Just a Few Years
This is the world we live in now. It’s one where computers improve so quickly that their capabilities pass from the realm of science fiction into the everyday world not over the course of a human lifetime, or even within the span of a professional’s career, but instead in just a few years. — Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against The Machine Read more →
Case Study: One Programmer is Better Than 80
When I was working at the Boeing Company in the mid-1980s, one project with about 80 programmers was at risk of missing a critical deadline. The project was critical to Boeing, and so they moved most of the 80 people off that project and brought in one guy who finished all the coding and delivered the software on time. I didn’t work on that project, and I didn’t know the guy, but I heard the story from someone I trusted, and it struck me as credible. — Steve McConnell, Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It Read more →
Steal Like an Artist
There’s an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income. I think the same thing is true of idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with. — Austin Kleon, Steal Like An Artist Read more →
The Buffalo Bridle
“Well, if you’re going to control buffalo, you got to know two things, and only two things: First is, “You can make buffalo go anywhere, just so long as they want to go there. “And second, “You can keep buffalo out of anywhere, just so long as they don’t want to go there. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
The Titanic Effect
The thought that disaster is impossible often leads to an unthinkable disaster. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
Whatever the Client is Doing, Advise Something Else
People who are close to a problem tend to keep repeating what didn’t work the first time. If it did work, they wouldn’t have called in a consultant. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
It’s Always a People Problem
Even when it’s “really” a technical problem, it can always be traced back to management action or inaction. Even so, the experienced consultant will resist pointing out that it was management who hired all the technical people and is responsible for their development. At the same time, the consultant will look for the people who should have prevented this problem, or dealt with it when it arose. — Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting Read more →
Television
Not once during those months did there emanate from the screen a genuine idea or emotion, and I came to understand the medium as subversive. In its deceit, its outright lies, its spinelessness, its weak-mindedness, its pointless violence, in the disgusting personalities it holds up to our youth to emulate, in its endless and groveling deference to our fantasies, television undermines strength of character, saps vigor, and irreparably perverts notions of reality. But it is a tender, loving medium; and when it has done its savage job completely and reduced one to a prattling, salivating infant, like a buxom mother it stands always poised to take one back to the shelter of its brown-nippled bosom. — Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes Read more →
Love is Fleeting
I recently bought a collection of short novels by Marguerite Duras from my favorite used book store. Inside the front cover is this inscription: To M—, Because her work influences me so much, and you inspire me so much. Please read and think about me!! Love Always, G— P.S. Merry Xmas XOXO I bought the book for $3.95, so M—- couldn’t have gotten more than a buck, maybe two, for unloading it. Read more →
Chinese Parents vs Western Parents
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, “You’re lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you.” By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they’re not disappointed about how their kids turned out. — Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Read more →
The Big Short
What is amazing is not just that people are greedy and prone to engage in ethically questionable activities; the big lesson is how people can reach unimaginable positions of power and essentially be (a) incompetent, and (b) not willing to do even the most mundane and trivial parts of their job. — Jeffrey Pfeffer, reviewing The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis (quoted on WSJ.com) Read more →