Feed"God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens might well become the little red book of modern antitheism. The roughly 350 pages in this book are an erudite exposition of its subtitle "How Religion Poisons Everything". The book seeks to show that it would do modern society a lot of good to get rid of religion. If you are an atheist, you will find a lot of reaffirming material in this book. If you are religious, this book might rekindle some of the suppressed incredulity you probably felt when you were first introduced to your particular dogma.
News Archive for 2008
[2008-12-19] "God is Not Great"
[2008-12-08] "The Black Swan"
"The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a follow-up to his last book "Fooled by Randomness". A Black Swan is a completely unforeseen event with significant consequences. It could be the sudden crash of the stock market after a prolonged bull phase or the unexpected success of a book by a previously-unknown author. The term refers to the shattering of the long-held idea of a swan always being white by the sighting of black swans in the newly-discovered land of Australia. The book is a warning against using induction to derive conclusions that are then prone to Black Swans.
[2008-11-20] "The Design of Everyday Things"
As I struggle with opening a fruit-juice pack by tugging at its inconveniently-placed pastic ring (that hurts your finger if you pull it too hard or for too long) or try to open a cola can by trying to get my thick finger under the metal ring that is placed too close to the surface of the can, I think to myself: "Who designs such things? What were they thinking?" In "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman I find a kindred spirit who is frustrated by the apparent lack of thought put into the design of most of the things around us and who suggests several ways of improving such designs.
[2008-11-18] "Fooled by Randomness"
It is not easy to put "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb into one of the standard book categories like "Business" or "Science" or "Philosophy". This is because the book is about all of these and more. The main message of the book is that humans have an innate tendency to overlook the randomness of most of the events in their lives and they must learn to recognise this. Chance plays a much greater role in our lives than we are willing to believe. The success or failure of a person depends a lot on luck as well as the usual suspects like skills, hard work, risk-appetite, etc.
[2008-08-28] "The Undercover Economist"
"The Undercover Economist" by Tim Harford attempts to explain some of the basic principles of economics using a jargon-free language that is easy to understand for the lay person. He provides several examples of these principles at work in our day-to-day life. Peppered with his great sense of humour, this book is an extremely interesting and insightful read.
[2008-08-17] "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is the seventh book in the "Harry Potter" series by J. K. Rowling. At least as of now, this book is supposed to be the final book in this series. So it was natural for me to wonder before picking it up whether it would provide a closure and a satisfactory resolution for this saga.
[2008-06-02] "Atonement"
I was tempted to read "Atonement" by Ian McEwan after having watched the eponymous film based on the novel. The film was good, but a novel has more space to develop the characters and present their thoughts. The downside of having watched the film based on a novel before having read it is that it constrains your imagination to be based on the scenes and the actors in the film.
[2008-05-22] "Granta 100"
Granta is a quarterly magazine dedicated to new writing. It usually contains a motley collection of fiction, essays, photographs, poems, etc. Granta 100 is a special issue celebrating the 100th edition of this magazine featuring contributions from the likes of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Doris Lessing, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, etc.
[2008-04-29] "The Calculus Wars"
In "The Calculus Wars", Jason Bardi writes about the bitter fight in the beginning of the 18th century between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over the right to be known as the inventor of calculus. Since this episode paints an extremely unflattering picture of the two great men, it is either ignored or only mentioned in passing by most authors writing about the history of mathematics.
[2008-02-10] "The Little Book That Beats the Market"
With a title like "The Little Book That Beats the Market", this book might appear to be peddling nothing more than snake oil to gullible people looking to make money from the stock market. It still merits a look since the author Joel Greenblatt is a respected value investor and a professor, who started and managed the hedge fund Gotham Capital that achieved an average annual return of 40% over more than 20 years.
[2008-01-27] Web-site Slightly Reorganised
I have once again slightly reorganised this web-site in order to make it a bit faster to load, a bit easier to use and a lot easier to maintain. Among the major user-visible changes are a web-site feed, per-post pages, lighter aggregating pages and a web-site-specific Google search.
