intellectual evening
miei cari, tonight I give you some hints on some nice books I am reading/read (yes, obviously I had Jasmina over for dinner and I am sort of drunk, otherwise you would get some nice random crap as usual)
first book is called some like wikinomics (don't know where I put it anymore so you just have to go with a random description): this is a book written about new (kind of) ways of doing economy by sharing - hence the name. The book has some nice parts and some are really boring, because, dear author, if you write saying that things are changing so fast you also need to consider that if you write your book in 2006 by now most of the stuff is old anyway - ah, funny. Still, it is nice to know that you can actually make a living by writing about wikipedia, myspace and facebook, so if one day I get bored I can turn into a writer. And there goes the business plan, dear readers.
second book is called the tiger that isn't. And this, as far as I can tell (because I haven't finished it yet), is a nice book. Basically it is a book that forces you to remember that every time you hear a number you should switch on you little bullshit-detector fuse in the back of the head and start thinking. Example? If a government, let's say the UK one (and here I am copying shamelessly from the book), tells you that they are going to invest 300 million pounds to create 1 million childcare places over 5 years, should you go down in the streets chanting and dancing and prasing the government? I mean, 300 million pounds is a significant shitolad of money. In reality, when you think about it, you should take 300 millions and divide them by 1 million (the places): this gives you 300 pounds per place. The you take 300 pounds and you divide them by 5 (the number of years) and that gives you 60 pounds per year. Then you take your annual 60 pounds per place and divide them by 52 (number of weeks in a year) and you end up with little more than 1 pound per week per place - which is far less than what a normal person would spend on a weekend out with friends and by far not enough to have some proper childcare. So what does it mean? That they are bullshitting us. And this is the simplest of examples. Now, I understand that you might think that this is a nerdy book to read. And you are wrong. Numbers are nice but they can cheat you badly (not the numbers themselves, but whoever massages them and boasts them and tricks them to fool you). Think about it next time your boss gives a salary increase, and you start wondering. I assume I need to go to bed. Peano rulez!
first book is called some like wikinomics (don't know where I put it anymore so you just have to go with a random description): this is a book written about new (kind of) ways of doing economy by sharing - hence the name. The book has some nice parts and some are really boring, because, dear author, if you write saying that things are changing so fast you also need to consider that if you write your book in 2006 by now most of the stuff is old anyway - ah, funny. Still, it is nice to know that you can actually make a living by writing about wikipedia, myspace and facebook, so if one day I get bored I can turn into a writer. And there goes the business plan, dear readers.
second book is called the tiger that isn't. And this, as far as I can tell (because I haven't finished it yet), is a nice book. Basically it is a book that forces you to remember that every time you hear a number you should switch on you little bullshit-detector fuse in the back of the head and start thinking. Example? If a government, let's say the UK one (and here I am copying shamelessly from the book), tells you that they are going to invest 300 million pounds to create 1 million childcare places over 5 years, should you go down in the streets chanting and dancing and prasing the government? I mean, 300 million pounds is a significant shitolad of money. In reality, when you think about it, you should take 300 millions and divide them by 1 million (the places): this gives you 300 pounds per place. The you take 300 pounds and you divide them by 5 (the number of years) and that gives you 60 pounds per year. Then you take your annual 60 pounds per place and divide them by 52 (number of weeks in a year) and you end up with little more than 1 pound per week per place - which is far less than what a normal person would spend on a weekend out with friends and by far not enough to have some proper childcare. So what does it mean? That they are bullshitting us. And this is the simplest of examples. Now, I understand that you might think that this is a nerdy book to read. And you are wrong. Numbers are nice but they can cheat you badly (not the numbers themselves, but whoever massages them and boasts them and tricks them to fool you). Think about it next time your boss gives a salary increase, and you start wondering. I assume I need to go to bed. Peano rulez!
posted by alba at
10:57 PM
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