Book Review: Barak Obama, “The Audacity of Hope”

For those who do not know, Mr Obama is the Junior Senator from Illinois, elected to the Senate in 2004. He is widely tipped as potential presidential material.

This is his story, his philosophy and his manifesto.

His writing style is both candid and readable, and he comes across as surprisingly “normal” for one who is a professional politician.

The book opens with an account of his birth and background. Unlike most of his colleagues in the U.S. Senate, he has actually seen how the other half lives, having grown up overseas (in Indonesia). This gives him a unique perspective among his peers.

As I read the early pages of this book, I found myself wanting to see this man elected as president. That was until he touched on the constitution, referring to as “a living document”. That was when we parted ideological company.

The Constitution was drafted over a number of years by a bunch of very smart people who believed in small, limited central government, low taxation, individual rights and minimal governmental intervention.

Last time I looked, was a legal document that said what it meant and meant what it said. It is about as negotiable as the Ten Commandments. It is not intended to be interpreted and reinterpreted according to cultural whim and contemporary fad; if it were there would be no need for a mechanism and procedure for changing it.

This document is what the President swears to “preserve, protect and defend” in his Oath of Office. Not “America”. Not “The American People”. The Constitution.

From this point on, the book goes steadily southwards, as he advocates government help in various areas that obviously need improvement. Help that comes out of the pockets of Mr. and Mrs. You and Me.

This is not a pro or anti-demopublican rant - I would vote for neither. There used to be a time when the two parties had major ideological differences (small/big gov’t, taxation, States rights etc), but now it seems that their only real difference is who their friends are.

In conclusion, I have a lot of admiration and respect for this man, and I think that he will bring a bit of horse-sense to the Senate, as long as he remains in touch with reality. However, I cannot bring myself to seriously consider any man for the presidency whose oath of office would be meaningless.

Now Reading: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Now reading…

From time to time, I come across a blog entry or a discussion thread that ends with a one-line statement or tagline informing the reader about what the writer is currently listening to. Nothing wrong with this, to be sure, but I think that what a person is reading will tell you far more about them than what music they are listening to or what movies they most recently watched.

This year alone I have read many interesting thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing books, including…

• So Many Enemies, So Little Time : An American Woman in All the Wrong Places by Elinor Burkett
• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
• The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas J. Stanley
• Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul by John Eldredge
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss
  

You’re probably thinking that I only read books that have a colon in the title, so I will add Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson to the list.

Often I will read several books at once… typically there is a book on the treadmill that I read while working out; sometimes there is another book on my bedside table, with several older books on my PDA in e-book format.

That said, this is not about blowing my own trumpet or going on an ego rampage. While the links are to Amazon, most are available at your local library.

Any road up, from here on out, I will be ending my scribblings with a “Now reading…” message.

That is all.

Now reading…

• Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin
• The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley
• The Autobiography of Ben Franklin (e-book)

Some good advice

Some tips for saving money

I also recommend the book “The Millionaire Next Door“

Why e-books never caught on

In the movie Ghostbusters, Dr Egon Spengler (played by Harold Ramis) uttered a phrase that has remained in my head ever since.

"Print is Dead".

He was right, even then.

Here are two excellent pieces on the subject, from e-week magazine.

1. E-Book Publishing Is Foundering for Good Reason
2. Excuse Me, Mr. Coursey, But E-Books Rock

In the above articles, two pundits pontificate and disagree over whether or not e-books are succeeding. I agree with Mr Coursey's sentiment, but not with his reasoning.

I have been reading e-books for about ten years on Psion and Palm machines. I believe that the reason that e-books have not caught on has more to do with money than anything else. Like the RIAA, the book publishers believe that they are entitled to the same amount of money per copy that they have traditionally enjoyed, even through their costs with e-publishing will be almost zero.

The consumers, on the other hand, see the lower production costs and expect them to be passed on to them, and are unwilling to pay full price for a book with no spine, pages, shipping, production or retail costs/overhead.

If a Hardback costs $15-$25 and a paperback costs $4-5, an e-book should not cost more than about $2.50. Good luck finding one at that price.

To put it bluntly, e-books have failed to catch on because of the intransigence of the publishers (who want a license to print more money) and the stubbornness of the public (who won't pay more for less). The publishing industry has an annoying tendency to expect the public to pay more for less, while their customers expect just the opposite.

I believe e-books can catch on, and quickly. However, it is unlikely to happen until the publishers do three things:

1. Agree on a common format. People will want to read their e-books on different devices, ranging from PCs to PDAs to dedicated e-book readers. Ignore this and they will ignore you.
2. Quit trying to use restrictive DRM to "lock down" their products to individual devices. In the real world, stuff happens - hardware breaks or gets stolen; people upgrade. Do you really think that people will repurchase their entire collection of e-books if that happens? No - they will expect to be able to transfer or assign their purchases to another device at will, without hassle. That's called fair use rights, and the customer will demand them. Unless you have infrastructure to give it to them, don't bother.
3. Lower the price to half the price of a paperback at most. Your customers know what you pay the Authors, and have a pretty good idea of how much you should make - remember that electronic publishing cuts out all sorts of middlemen and material costs - and what is left is almost pure profit. Those saved costs should be passed onto the customer, and not used to line the pockets of the publishers and their lawyers. Don't make the same mistake as the RIAA.

Until these three things happen, do not expect e-books to be universally accepted.

Book Look: Your Marketing Sucks, by Mark Stevens

I consider myself to be a Geek (when a capital G - according to this test, I am a “supergeek” whatever that is). As such, I have what I consider to be a healthy disrespect for those I consider “marketing types”. That is not to say that they are useless, but I feel that they are, as a breed, a little too full of themselves. I am pretty sure that the antipathy is mutual, and I am ok with that.

Perhaps the biggest reason that geeks dislike marketing types is because geeks stand for truth - the facts, the data, the provable - while marketing types tend to deal in sentiment, desire and psychology.From my standpoint, geeks make the products that the guys and girls in marketing have to sell… and yet a VP of Marketing invariably has a bigger salary and more clout than, for instance, a VP of engineering. It seems almost upside-down, but people who make things are often looked down upon by those who sell them.So what exactly is marketing? My best definition is the creation and identification of sales opportunities and trends.

In this book, the author openly accuses prominent marketers of not doing their jobs - of doing marketing that sucks. He suggests that most marketing campaigns do not result in increased sales, and are therefore a pointless waste of money that is more concerned with keeping marketing budgets well funded than with generating new sales.

The book is not perfect, and has several shortcomings; for instance, some have described the book as a blatant pitch for the author’s marketing consultancy business. While there is certainly an element of self-promotion, most of it is more of a challenge - a dare to try his services and see if he cannot do better.Others have said that the book is long on criticism and short on encouragement. This is true, but given the title of the book, one cannot reasonably expect much else. Bear in mind also that there are many marketing “how-to” books out there.

Even if you are not into marketing - or even, for that matter, a geek - this is a very entertaining read and well worth checking out of the library - or even buying. Marketing types, however, may want to give it a miss, though, as they take themselves way too seriously (another diffeence between Geeks and Marketing types), and will not appreciate a book that pokes fun at most of that which they hold so dear…

Book Look: Out of America - Keith B Richburg

Keith Richburg is an American. He is a reporter. And he is black. This book is his travelogue of Africa, where he spent several years in various countries on the dark continent.

• Being black, he thought that he could “blend in” with the local populace. That was before he found out how the local populace lived.
• He believed that the western powers could fix things…. until he saw them try and fail disastrously in Somalia.
• He believed that sending aid to poor countries helped… until he saw most of that aid being diverted into the pockets of the local warlords.

This is the story of a man who has seen, first-hand, the devastation caused by the wars that have wracked nations where no-one counts the bodies. A man who returned home proud and grateful to be an American.

If this book does not move you to tears, not a lot will.

Book Look: Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss

A book about punctuation - hoodathunkit?

Light-hearted, witty and at times, downright shocking. After reading this book you'll never look at the apostrophe the same way again.

Get it from the library - or buy a copy…