lost in games

Reading: Stuart: A life backwards, by Alexander Masters. A biography of a homeless man in the UK. It’s too early to say anything of substance but it’s keeping my interest in the first few chapters.

Playing:  Panzer Tactics (DS). An excellent turn based WWII strategy game which will satisfy the more hardcore strategy gamer. It’s a clear case of a game receiving a lower rating than it should due to its narrow scope and audience. It keeps its targeted audience happy but not anyone else.

Watching: Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 . I am disappointed with this show. After watching the mini series i had my expectations set very high and has not lived up to them. The main issue i have with the show is that the decisions taken by the characters are not believable and often contradict previous ones they have taken. Humans do tend to be irrational and inconsistent but not to such an extent. Also it fails to take some interesting questions like “what defines humanity?” to the next level. It’s just keeps the show at a more soap opera standard.

I think the most interesting aspect of this show is that it truly reflects the era of the American history in which it was written and shown i.e. the war on terror and all that this implies.

Still planning to finish this but it’s more like going through the motions now than actual interest in the series.

1. Finally finished reading Predictably Irrational and i can recommend it to practically everyone. An excellent read for the summer holidays. For more details check my earlier post here.

2. Also read the final volume of the manga series Death Note. It was my first manga and it definitely provides a different angle in both art style and writing to the western comics/graphic novels. I found it to be a very intelligent series of battles of the minds. I do feel it could half explored the issue of “means justifies the end”more and also it sometimes dragged on so a couple of volumes were a bit unecessary.

A lot of times characters are just describing the logic behind their thinking which can make readers feel as if the book is treating them as stupid. Finally a lot of reasoning is made on assumptions but instead treated as fact.

In any case, i found it to be a great introduction into mangas and can recommend it to people who like celebral stimulating comics.

3.  All Star Superma (Vol. 1). I find Superman to possibly be the least interesting super hero of all due to his 2d character. To be honest i have only seen the movies and also read The Red Son (which i loved) but my understanding appears to be how most people view Superman.

In this series, things are less of a Superman saving the world nature scenes but more of an (self-) examination of his character.  I like it so i will continue the series. Plus the art is great too.

I am currently near the end of Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. He is a behaviour economist and through empirical work presents the case that people’s actions in the market place are affected by irrational but predictable behaviour and therefore economic principles established by neoclassical economists need to be re-examined.

More importantly he attempts to help readers think about how this affects our daily lives.One of the many tests he performs regards the fallacy that prices are determined by the equal forces of supply and demand. In fact, prices are merely presented to us and are anchored in our brain affecting our decision making.

The test he performed was asking a group of students to write down the last two digits of their Social Security number. Then he presented the group with a variety of products and asked them to put the maximum price they were willing to pay for each one. Students who had Social Security numbers from 0-19 had the lowest average in their maximum prices they were willing to pay. On the other hand students whose numbers ended 80-99 had the highest.

He then goes further by claiming that since this irrational behaviour is systematic and therefore predictable can be used towards improving health care system, increasing savings rate, reducing fraud etc.

A very interesting, thought provoking and accessible book. Recommend it!

The New Yorker has a very thorough review of the book here. Link.

Read!

Death Note manga series which is fantastic. (currently at volume 9/13)

Don’t read! (unless you are a pretty hardcore football fan)

Football Against the Enemy by Simon Cuper - Has some intereting bits of information but it lacks cohesion and sometimes not easy to follow.

Anger, frustration, shock, sadness and shame.

I’ve read Shake Hands with the Devil by the Canadian Lt Colonel Romeo Dallaire. He was the military commander of the Force Command of the UN in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994. It is his testimony of  what his experience during the events that led to 800.000 people dying in 100 days.

This book will put your life in perspective.

I also recommend watching Hotel Rwanda which tells the story of a Rwandan hotel manager during the madness.

After reading Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar i took a much needed break by reading a few comic books. Now its back to reading about tyrants. I have just started Dinner with Mugabe, by Heidi Holland. Once again, as with the book on Stalin, i encounter the same conclusions. The people perpetrating some of the most horrific acts in human history are just that, people like you and me.

“According to British Actor Sir Ian McKellen, who over a career spanning 40 years has brought to life monsters of every epoch from Iago to Rasputin: ‘One of the few lessons i have learnt from studying people who do terrible things is that they are all too human. And that we are all capable of doing almost anything.’”

It’s when i read such statements that i realise i should not take anyone’s actions or behaviour for granted. Including my own.

My sister’s birthday is on Thursday. As a present i got her a copy of The Complete Maus, a graphic novel based on the story of Art Spiegelman’s father who was a holocaust survivor. (Wikipedia info)

My experience with graphic novels has been a turbulent one. Between the fantastic Sin City series and Watchmen to the unbelievably overrated Y: Last Man i still haven’t made up my mind on whether it is a medium worth exploring further. But i am still pressing on and currently reading the Preacher series.

Back to the present now. I want to see how she will react to it. Maybe when the next grahic novel i order from Amazon arrives and i open it she will ask “What’s that one about?”.

Selfish, i know…..

Finally finished the book last night and it was a truly fascinating read. It’s very long but it is so well written it rarely feels like a dry history book but more like a novel. I can’t recommend this book enough. Amazon - LINK

The book continues to fascinate me in a chilling way. Here is an excerpt of comments made by other people about two figures who were greatly involved in the mass murders  in the Soviet Union during 1937-8.

“Those who knew these mass murderers later reflected that Malenkov or Krushchev were ‘not wicked by nature’, not ‘what they eventually became. They were men of their time.”

I am against the idea of readers at this point in time primarily for two reasons.

The first is that it’s expensive to carry around with you. I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking a Euro 400 gadget with me to the beach or throwing it in my bag to read during my vacations. It just adds stress to reading books.Compare this to just carrying around a paperback. Let’s face it, having hundreds of titles stored on the reader is meaningless as you are only reading one at a time.

The second is that not all books are available on these devices. Forking out a small fortune just to find out in 1 year that the book i want to purchase is not available on the device is simply ridiculous. I will be spending money which will only limit my book options.

Amazon’s Kindle 2 is another step in the right direction, much like it’s predecessor especially for reading magazines and blogs but the above issues remain. It’s expensive and not all books are available. Oh, and currently only available in the US…..