Keys Corner » Reading matter

Broken Economies

John — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:07:14 +0000

Outside the European Central Bank 2011-10-21

I had to go to the dentist this morning, which took me right past the European Central Bank. There are still a large number of “Occupy Frankfurt” people camping out, despite the near-freezing temperature over night, protesting the mess that we are in.

I have just read “The Greatest Crash: How contradictory policies are sinking the global economy” by David Kauders (it’s only available on the Kindle at the moment, I think). It’s worth reading.

David Kauders takes a fresh look at the possible cause of the economic crisis and argues that it is a massive credit bubble (like the housing bubble in the USA that burst a couple of years ago) that has been growing since the early 1960′s and is now starting to burst. The bubble has been promoted by western governments, (democracy encourages politicians to take the easy way out and expand the amount of credit available when there are economic difficulties), and we have now reached the point where no one – neither governments nor private individuals and industry – can afford to take out more credit.

He thinks we are going to experience a generation (30 or more years) of fiscal deflation while everybody tries to pay back the debts they owe, and puts the blame for the mess squarely on the politicians of the western world, and not on the banks.

An scary but interesting and plausible read.

Useful tool to check amazon book prices

John — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:33:42 +0000

There is a useful tool to check which amazon store has the cheapest price for books, including international postage. (Unfortunately it won’t check egg poacher prices).

Check out CheapRiver.com. They do a browser plug-in which will allow you to check worldwide and find the cheapest location to order from. The differences are sometimes . . . → Read More: Useful tool to check amazon book prices

Alice on the iPad

John — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:53:02 +0000

Alice in Wonderland on the iPad

The iPad seems to have quite a potential to shake up the market for eBooks.
(Click the pic to view).

On almost the same subject – we saw the Alice film in 3D at the weekend – and thoroughly enjoyed it!

(Via Daring Fireball)

Economic logic

John — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:40:23 +0000

What makes supermarket employees work harder? Why do rats drink more tonic water, when it becomes more expensive? (Rats hate tonic water, they don’t like the taste of the quinine in it), and why is your boss overpaid?

It’s all down to the logic of economics, according to Tim Harford, or as he calls it The Logic of Life. I discovered Tim Harford when I picked up his first book (The Undercover Economist), in Spain a couple of years ago – it looked interesting, and I started reading it in Spanish, but I got frustrated at the number of words I had to look up, and bought it again and finished it in English.

He is an economist who believes much seemingly irrational behaviour is actually completely logical if you think about it. Which is what both his books illustrate.

He’s got a knack if explaining complex ideas with clear, simple examples, and both books are great fun to read and pick up an understanding of how economic pressures affect everyday life. Both books are a good read, the first one explains the basics of economic theory; the second one looks at why seemingly irrational behaviour is to be expected, and explains some common phenomena in terms of economic logic. You don’t need to read them in the order he wrote them, and you don’t need any maths either.

Selexyz Dominicanen

John — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:42:41 +0000

Next time we drive past Maastricht, we are going to take a look at Selexyz Dominicanen. There’s an article in the Guardian architecture section about this book shop in a converted church, and it looks spectacular. The architects were Merkx + Girod, and the photo above is from their website..

Manga Shakespeare

John — Sun, 13 May 2007 06:51:03 +0000

A British publisher, Self Made Hero, has brought out a series of Shakespeare’s plays as manga comics with abridged texts in the original Shakesperian English. A second publisher, Classic Comics, has gone a step further, producing full colour comics in different versions. You can get them as abridged versions which use the original text, in modern English or in modern English for slow readers (i.e. with much less text).

I have seen several of Shakespeare’s plays in both English and German, and was suprised to discover that I much prefer to see them in German. Why? Because here when the plays are performed, the language is usually modern German. I understand that much, much better than Shakespearian English. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the comics are a big hit, especially with anyone having to study the plays as part of an English course.

aLPHaBeT 26

John — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 08:03:33 +0000

Paul Baker has produced an aLPHaBeT 26 font which can be used if you agree with Bradbury Thompson’s idea that children are hindered in learning to read because they have to learn different symbols for capital and lower-case letters.

On the other hand, a recent study in the UK points to support at home being the main factor in how well children do at school. So perhaps it might be better to focus on getting parents to spend more time with their kids and show more interest in their school work, rather than introducing them to an artificial alphabet.

Invest in “Errant in Iberia”

John — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 11:47:43 +0000

Ruth and I like listening to Ben and Marina’s Spanish podcasts in Notes from Spain, so I decided to buy the book he published last year about how he came to live in Spain. It seems to have become a collecter’s item – we looked on Amazon.co.uk:

It’s listed on the German site at 89 Euro. Not bad for a book which costs around 10 Euro at the list price!
Fortunately, it is in stock for 10 Euro at Lulu.com, so buy several copies and sell the surplus ones on Amazon:

… now with 10% more crap

John — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 14:59:32 +0000

We walked into Brighton’s Churchill Square yesterday and I spotted a book by Banksy in one of the bookshops. So despite having received far too many Christmas presents this year, we are going back with one more book now! If you haven’t run across Banksy before, you clearly haven’t being paying attention here.

You can find a nice collection some of his works online here and his own website here.

When smoke ran like water

John — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:38:16 +0000

I’ve just read When smoke ran like water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution by Devra Davis. Its a real eye-opener about how industry distorts and manipulates evidence about the effects of pollution in an effort to keep their liabilities as low as possible and profits as high as possible.

Of course, an obvious example in Germany is the recent lobbying by the tabacco industry to avoid having a blanket ban on smoking in public places imposed by the government. Here, as in other countries and in other industries, the tabacco industry funds apparently independent research groups to produce reports which either play down the destructive effects of their products or emphasise the negative aspects that a ban may result in. Another common practice is to fund “independent” scientists who criticize and discredit research and those individuals working on that research, something which has actually ruined careers of scientists whose work conflicts with the marketing goals of industry.

What I did find interesting is that this sort of manipulative behaviour goes back a long way.

For example, as far back as the 1930′s, the American automotive industry (including GM, Goodyear, Firestone, Mack Truck and several other companies) started buying up and shutting down railway networks and replacing them with bus services. By the 1950′s they had shut down and motorized more than 900 of the 1200 electric railway transit systems in the USA. In 1947 GM and 9 further corporate co-defendants were convicted on a charge of monopolizing the sale of motor buses… and fined the princely sum of $5000, or the price of two small cars! No wonder cities like Los Angeles are today completely dependent on motor vehicles for transportation.

If you are interested in how industry manipulates politics and the markets to get its way, this book is well worth reading.

Looking forwards looking back

John — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:23:36 +0000

An altogether more entertaining site (than Wordie, mentioned in the previous post) is Retrofuture, which, takes me back to my childhood, reading “Eagle” comics with series such as Dan Dare, set in the future, and articles on technology – such as the Concorde, refrigerated cargo ships and satellite launchers.

Unfortunately, the predictions in Eagle and those collected in Retrofuture were often far from what actually developed, but that’s what makes them such good fun to look back on.

Guerrilla book marketing

John — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 20:38:46 +0000

Spotted on Andy Budd’s weblog:

I always thought the books displayed cover out at bookshops were done so because the staff liked the books or they were good sellers. It wasn�t until I dipped my toes in the publishing world that I found out you actually have to pay for your books to be presented this way.

Well, that’s news to me too. I like his idea which follows on from that – support your favourite authors by turning their books cover out when you see their books in bookshops!