Karl Marx's Das Kapital - A modern day interpretation by Steve Shipside

Kind of an crisp and concise book trying to interpret and revisit the relevance of the issues raised and concepts discussed and espoused by Karl Marx.

The author has taken the key points on labour, impact of mechanisation on labour and on Capital, stagnation of mental side of labourers due to excessive mechanisation etc.

No system is perfect, neither Marxism nor Capitalism .But over a period , people have generally found that Capitalism with its innate ability to get the best out of people by making them work for themselves ( selfish interests ) with great motivation and creativity and in the process end up doing something good for the society.

Karl Marx' theory , some of them are a reflection of the times he was in like Capitalists explouting labour for enhgancement of their interests only etc appear to be taking things a bit too far in the current context, some ideas especially on the impact of excessive mechanisation on people's creativity, the impact of how continuous exploitation of labour would not benefit the Capitalists in the long run appear to have relevance even today. Just have a look at the HR policies these days . A typical BPO appears to be a blue collared labour shop and there too, new and innovative practices to keep the employees motivated have come about.

Understand that Karl Marx took several years to complete his magnum opus.

With Capitalism also showing up gaping holes , Financial crisis which is nothing but result of excessive speculations , building up of bubbles , Capitalists creating such a big bubble and making hay in the bubble ( front ended incentives ) and creating a situation whereby the entire society has to bear the burden in dissipating the crisis, Governments taking up the bad debts bears testimony to that.

One would accept the fact that there are more good in Capitalistic way than a socialistic way where accountability is poor and efficiencies take a beating, one can not adopt the current Capitalistic ways in an unadulterated fashion.

There is also the aspect of unending exploitation land. At a certain stage, it appeared as if the resources are limitless, not so any longer. May be Karl Marx hit upon the right idea ( this aspect atleast ) unknowingly or may be he was very prescient. Now it does appear that the resources are not limitless and in fact there is need to ensure that use of natural resources is judicious.

Good book on the whole.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Good book but not sure whether you can come to any kind of generalisations based on that or you can draw any specific theory. The author talks of how a split second or a decision based on an apparently perfunctory look at something backed apparently on instinct as against a considered and well thought through decision, sometime turns out to be better and correct.
The apparent "instinctive" decision is nothing but what the author terms as thin slicing or ability of individuals to draw on their experience and judgements and brain's ability to process the same without any external or extraneous noises.

I read somewhere that the author has a tendency to draw conclusions based on anecdotal experience rather than empirical and experimental experience. May be a bit unfair considering that he does draw on research undertaken by top class and committed researchers.

He talks of how a " Kouros" ( some greek .. some 2000 years back ) was found to be authentic and original based on an examination of documentation and even by leading experts who establish facts after scientific analysis of the samples ( in fact after this the Museum bought this for several millions ) but a perfunctory look by experts who had several years of experience in this field were not impressed about the authenticity.Later it was proved that it was in fact fake.

Very interesting topic was on mind reading. He talks of one Silvin Tomkins who was an expert and who with no background knowledge of some people ... comes to the right conclusion on the character of the people , he sees in a matter of few minutes , primarily based on ability to read the mind. He had trained himself to read minds based on the facial expressions.
Couple of people, one Eckman and Freisman take the research further and map out what one feels inside and how various muscles in the face act. They term it as Action Unit (AU ) 1/2/3/4 so on.There are some 32 muscles on the face.
Interesting thing is,how these muscles act is quite independent of the country. class , race etc.
They also come out with a strange finding which reverses the cause and effect. Mind causes the face to react. They find that , once one starts moving muscles in a certain way, the mind starts feeling the effect. You exercise your laugh muscles, you start feeling happy and so on.

Interesting read, atleast brings out the fact that the general myths about how snap decision is always inferior can be wrong.

He also discusses the way people react based on prejudices like race, color etc.

He tries to establish the same with anecdotal and sometimes experimental data on colored people

He draws how , women were considered inferior in the classical western music world and how that changed once the audition was just audition and not an audition where the judges get to see the people. The practice of putting a curtain between the performer and the judge , makes people take the correct decision devoid of prejudices.

Fault lines by Raghuram Rajan

Very extensive analysis of the reasons for financial turmoils which keeps happening once every 10 or 20 years.

Very well written book. The author deals at length all aspects of growth, economic turmoil, reasons for the same and broad solutions

Talks of how the western economies have become consumption driven and how the asian world has followed an export led growth. He is not a votary of export led growth either nor a great fan of exchange rate manipulated growth

Recommends various mneasures to optimise on economic growth and democratic aspects.

Needs to be read like a text book. Very detailed , sound and in depth analysis.

I recall, that thge author was one of the first to raise the red flag on the low interest rate led asset bubble ,e specially the hosing asset

He traces the history if how successive US President starting from Reagan to Clinton to Bush cheerled lending , to increase howm ownership. In the zeal , all around , the basic economic aspect of long term capabily to repay by the borrower was forgotten

Lending was more asset price based and not on capability to repay. With increased asset prices, that i sthe housing prices, the tendency was to go for refinance at higher prices . Once the prices started falling , the asset prices were lesser than the loan itself.

Need to read again to capture all aspects . One of the best and not one of this dogmatic ones. Fact based and rational

Hot water - PG Wodehouse

May be the usual PG Wodehouse type ones but still hilarious with twists and turns . Predictable but still you want to read . Fabulous language and to put it mildly, exaggerations of events and character with a what you call similies or metaphors drawan from the animal world.

Happens in France in a Chateau, people crawling over one another to lay siege to the "safe" for different reasons.
Wives of one of the rich americans wanting him to become US amabassdaor of France and trying to influence a US senator.
The hero ( or you can call the main character) , a football player and fun loving guy, engaged to one of the brainy types, later in trying to help the daughter of the senator realises that they are more suited to each other and end up getting engaged.

Terrific language and racy read.As one of the book reviewers ( Stephen Fry , I think) mentions, you get in to a fictional world where things are completey hilarious, nothing wrong or bad happens. So what, it keeps people happy , extremely happy. PG Wodehouse creates a world for people to revel and be happy. So do a lot of other novelists do but they make a pretense of high gravity and seriousness. PG Wodehouse does not get in to any such territory. He writes fiction and makes no pretense about it

Money for nothing- PG Wodehouse

Usual PG Wodehouse , humorous, excellent language, exaggerations, attempted theft by an apparent millionaire who is nothing but a smooth conman from USA and his lady accomplice who is the brain behind the enterprise .The attempted theft is as usual of an English heirloom .
The usual nephew whose property is kept under trust by the uncle who is the title holder . The nephews ( two of them) , one of whom is in love with the neighbour's daughter. The falling off between the uncle and the girl's father and renewal of their freidn ship , forced by the nephew. The usual twists and turns.

Good ( good by PGW standards is great by normal standards ) but not in the same class as a Jeeves or a Psmith or an Emsworth.

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis

Interesting book. Traces how bond trading from the days when it was considered a staid profession to beconing a glamorous and in a way a manly profession. How pampered the bond traders get.
The internal politicking, the show of strengths and the moves have all been traced.
The author was in Salomon brothers in the early part of his career. He starts off as to how coveted the positions in Investment banking companies had become and how he managed to get in to sales and how he becomes an ace salesman.

Author talks of the lack of ethical standards. He brings out how tradres caught with some lousy bonds take the help of salesmen to palm off on gullible inestors.

Good book. Not a very tough read as is the case with Taleb's but may require a revisit to capture the points in toto.

Champions league T20 RCB Vs South Australia and later Vs New South Wales

Took Vishaal for T 20 matches Royla Challengers Vs South Australi Redbacks and later the semis against New south wales

First time for Vishall, watching a match at the stadium. First day we had N Stand Rs 1000 ticket, not very crowded . He thoroughly enjoyed it. SA batted first and score more tha 200 runs. RCB responded very well with excellent scores by Dildhan and later by Virat Kohli. Gayle had given a good start. The match was almost lost towards the final stages. RCB after being in a good position lost their way, lost a number of wickets , the run rate sufferred and ir came to some 13 runs of the last over and 6 of the last ball. Unimaginable, Arun Karthik hit a six of the last ball and won the match for them. They made the semis by the skin of their teeth.

For semis there was a much larger crowd. We went for the Rs 750 ticket P3 Pavilion. Not as good as N stand. It was quite crowded also. We opted for this only because the entry gate to the stand was closer to the ticket counter .

Match again was a high scoring match.200 plus, Galye and Virat Kohli batted very well to win the match. It was a much easire win.

Vishaal as usual had his quota of chips and Coke . Was a bit scared the second day when the crowd was much more and in fact our stand was packed. I had to go and fetch some eatables for him from the stalls while he was sitting.

One the whole enjoyed the experience, may be the first day much more than the secodn day.