Bookraft

If you are like me and hate to lose at Scrabble, let me recommend the following as a tool that does for the linguist centers of the brain the same that crunches do for your abdomen - exercise and tune them up.

I was pleasant surprised by Baseball's AllStar game this year. First, the dedication to Service in the Country with its honoring of volunteers in the various baseball cities across the country was carried off very well. Second, President Obama proved once again that he is as close to a Natural Born hitter than anyone around in the political game.
First, the shots of his mingling in the clubhouse with All Star players showed a natural enjoyment of sports and athletes not seen since the Kennedy days. Second his willingness to come out and throw the ceremonial First Pitch wearing a Chicago White Sox jacket - and suffer the slings and arrows of St.Louis boos [Chicago is a constant rival to St.Louis in business and sports] showed the innate pluck of the President. His First Pitch had pluck too.
But it was in the broadcast booth where the President worked some magic - showing knowledge of the game and interest in some of its intricacies. Most fascinating was his question to Joe Buck and Tim McCraw, both acute observers of baseball, on why the American League had been winning the All Star Game so consistently for the past 12 years [and now at 13 given last nights win by the AL]. Joe and Tim both noted that the All Star game had shown a streaky trend in the past with the AL dominant and then NL and now the AL again in about 20 year periods. But then both Tim and Joe agreed that the AL was dominant right now because they played better baseball and the Designated Hitter Rule forced them to do so. President Obama asked why that would be true. And the commentators explained that easy outs with pitchers are not available in the American League, so teams have had to adapt with better pitching and fielding to compensate. Obama appeared to be intrigued by the reasoning.

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Note to the President. The US has been like the National League, giving up on Manufacturing by conceding to Low Labor Cost Markets and Globalization while relying on Finance, Innovation and Services to make up the GDP/Balance of Trade gap. But now that good paying Jobs are at a premium, transportation/logistics costs make offshoring a losing proposition[see HBR July-August issue], and Mass Customization is the new Mass Production reality - the US is discovering that it has given away the industries and trained labor necessary to fit into the new realities and be competitive in the new emerging green markets. Even worse, the BRIC players are playing some nasty hardball as they become extremely protectionist [yet again - already crying the "developing-country-blues" to get off having to commit their fair share to CO2 and other pollution controls while putting up trade barriers in emerging new green industries]. Finally, the US can ill afford to have 40% of its Business Profits being garnered by one industry the industry of Ill-Repute, Finance. So it is no wonder the President was interested in hardball - increasingly he is getting dragged into those games not just domestically but worldwide.

Long Island, great riches, and a book that reads like a Greek tragedy - such is the Great Gatsby. And I would not have "read" it if for the opportune chance of getting a discarded audio copy. I was afraid that the audio tracks were scratched .. and thats why it was thrown away. Not so.


So maybe the theme of excesses of the roaring 20's and the Jazz age had something to do with the books demise. Or maybe Financiers and the designated Masters of the Universe was just too much to stomach in these times of withdrawal from Financial Failure. Who knows, Sport. But like the accidental, almost voyeuristic visitor that is Nick Carraway into the lives of Gatsby, Daisy, Tom and I found myself drawn into this tale of loves and idle richness obsessive.

And F. Scott Fitzgerald's uncanny throw away word pearls and phosphorescent phrases catches the mood of the gaudy era - but in a Greek tragic fashion. It is as if the descriptive leaps were like a chorus warning of deeper running emotive rivers than the code of rich casualness would allow to be put on display. Its a world periodically lost and refound among the People of Tyco, Goldman, Morgan, Madoff, Lehman and Bear Stearns. It is a Countrywide Obsession revisited once a generation or two .. or until the Bubble Bursts too Big and Gaudy for even us to endure the Great Moral Hazard.

I have said it before but it bears repeating - the best feed on who, what and why on the ongoing Financial Fiasco is Felix Salmon at Reuters. Here is a delicious post on what has been happening at Harvard University and who had his finger in the pie. More Triple AAA reading.

Reserved

"Reserved" he said confidently
and hover eyes tracered along with the sound of suede
soft gumshoe suede softly caressing
every step of the wayward swaying
sidelong glancing momentum to the patio sun.

"Reserved" she barely whispered as a bright
all too bright brown and ochre wall swayed slowly
and a heart barely came to thru lavender, green
too bright, jiggered and splayed brick brown shades
of uncertainty as inevitable as every never to be
remebered slide shifting same way of the day.

"You and all about you seem reserved" floated
seemed to float of its own will, his will
amidst the tinkle of glasses, of ice
just the impression of cold brought perceptible shiver
that he was wont not to see beyond his own ...

"the thought, the very thought of bright patio sun"
raced in her mind astraying, again heavy hearted
evincing, birthing a wincing-some smile
a smile mistaken but for the moment
a moment of self congratulatory reflection.

Reserved for when the self charm wafted above
as crisply as the salad chewed - and oh damn
its caught again between roof and palate
the only tinge of embarrassment to run scarlet
in this soon to be made pleasant day.

Reserved in her mind as rendezvous irreplaceable
undeniably free-ightful - no, not to be vexed again by words
not into feelings slipping like a knot to be
as other eyes and earfuls radared on
she felt not to be again alone again.

"Can we have that place?"
"- no, I am sorry it is reserved."

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley is a purported satire on Washington DC and American elites - politicians, budding bureaucrats, lobbyists, PR spin doctors, Ivy league faculty, press-flak flunkees, business tycoons and the outlandish things they will say and do to get ahead - where "ahead" clusters somewhere between the power to humiliate without peer and wealth seriously shooting for the $trillions in networth. The whole story revolves around the unberievable characters who are lobbying Government Assisted Suicide=>Voluntary Transitioning among the elderly in order to rescue Social Security and MedicAid from insolvency

Illustration for Frank Rich's Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack, a superb op-ed piece.

The Crisis of Islam by Bernard Lewis - This book written back in 2003 has stood the test of news time - which is to say it is still relevant and telling 5 years after its publication. This is the definitive analysis of the religious background that distinguishes Islam from most of the other major religions of the World. It reflects balance in its praise of Islam's stellar contributions to World culture particularly during the Dark Ages in Europe and changes in regimes in China and India (circa 800-1300 AD). It also is unrelentingly caustic about the effects of not just Western imperialism from 1700's through to 1950's but also the dual standard of support for ill-legitimate regimes in Muslim countries by Western Powers while making Democracy and Capitalism mere an line-item pledges since the 1950's.

But perhaps the best analysis is of the two central problems of Islam. The Muslim doctrines are not just religious but also social, political and military in nature. In addition there is noone Islamic authority, an aspect that vanished with the Ottoman Empire as the head of Islamic religious and legal/political thinking. This second problem, the lack of an overseeing theological authority to pronounce on Islam religious/social beliefs has allowed the theological basis for jihad, fatwa , and fedayeen terror-suicide to become ever more malignant and diverse of forms in the hands of various factions and fundamentalists who themselves vary among Sunni, Wahabi, Shia and other extremes.

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But what becomes astonishingly clear is that a)religion and poltics including war are still inextricably bound together in basic Islamic beliefs in contrast to the separation of Church and State (still touch and go in Pentecostal parts of America and Shinto favoring regions of Japan) has not happened meaningfully in Islam. And b)the supposed tolerance of other religions, is only a salve indicated by the ferocity of attack against apostasy - no punishment is too much for those who dare to fall away from their Islamic faith - even to a "neutral" atheism. This intolerance towards freedom of religion, in Lewis' view incapacitates the ability of many Islamic regions to incorporate innovation and modernity. Morocco, Abu Dhabi, Malaysia and Indonesia will put this hypothesis to the test. In sum, if you wondered how the world got to 9/11 and beyond - this book offers much light and insight on the questions. One caution - I would like to have seen more information on the historical origins of the Sunni, Shia, Wahabi sects and there occasional internecine struggles - are they reflections of Christianity's Reformations ?

When drawing or writing I often wonder what some of the masters do - do they start in a corner and just carry the work out in full glory? Or do they outline and sketch and then fill in the details ? I saw a film of Picasso sketching and it seemed to be a mix of the two - almost terrible in its brilliance. Ditto for Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov in this audiobook reading:

This party has been saying for a long time that Google and Wikipedia as models for how intelligent search should be done ... well they leave a lot to be desired. Especially for tackling questions of science and computation. Enter Wolfram Alpha. Yes, the makers of Mathematica have created a new search engine that is "computationally smart". Or as Wolfram phrases it - the Computational knowledge engine.

Try it - by entering any chemical formula (HPO3), food (blueberries), Stocks (Exxon, Chevron), date (January 1, 1), mathematical formula [sin(x)*(x^3-10*x^2+24*x - 176] and Wolfram has suggestions for about half a dozen others. I certainly wish I had this available for Physical Chemistry class or before diet lunch each day. Just seeing the curve: 30*sin(x) - 4*x^2 is a thing of beauty. And try some of the chemical formulas - enter teflon or better, Calcium Carbonate. Suddenly a whole world of Science is made simple, summarized and even elegant for you!