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Category: Life

Le Guin: An Appreciation

I mentioned the news of the author Ursula Le Guin passing away in an earlier post. Here is a note of appreciation. As an Operations Research person, I love hard science fiction (Clarke, Niven, Reynolds, and others).  But, it was astounding to read Le Guin the first time, and the sense of mystery has only deepened over the years.  She was distinct from every other literary author that I have read. In her writings, Le Guin brought her unique sensitivity in creating imagined worlds with poetic words corralled with a rational curiosity of science. Much has been written on the internet on the social foresight in her writings:  the physical appearance of her protagonists, gender issues, politics of social choice, etc. She…

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Le Guin

I learned that Ursula Le Guin passed away, earlier today. I am a bit surprised how much this news has affected me.  Le Guin was one of the best writers that I had the pleasure of reading, first as a teenager, and then through the college years, as the appreciation of her nuanced writing grew unceasingly. Her writing transformed how I thought about Science, Fiction, and the world.  She was the SF writer that deserved the Nobel more than anyone. More later, but here is the NYTimes Obit.    

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Review: A Full Life

A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety A successful presidency may be a function of steadfastness, leadership, decency and intellectual acuity, but it is also a resultant of happy accidents of cosmic confluence and contemporary affections of the citizenry. Presidential historians do not rate Carter’s presidency very highly. President Carter is a living testament that being a decent human being is not sufficient to be a successful president. In his book, President Carter reflects on his life at 90, looking back at his idyllic childhood in rural Georgia, his entry into politics, his life in submarines, and finally evaluates his presidential tasks completed and incomplete. Some Notes:  President Carter remembers his house being a Sears Roebuck catalog house.  In these days…

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Review: Hit Makers

Derek Thompson’s writing is always enjoyable.1 In his Hit Makers, Thompson looks at two main questions: 1. What is the secret to making products that people like? 2. Why do some products fail in the marketplaces while similar ideas catch on and become massive hits? To address the first one, he shows that many of the viral hits have some strong shared features  (timely exposure, MAYA rule2– most advanced yet acceptable designs, refrain and repetition for music, helpful economics, network effects, and the force of storytelling).  But these features are, as Thompson himself argues, not exactly some “secret sauce”. I hope that the readers are not frustrated by the eventual answer to Why question: much of virality is due to…

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A List of Links

As 2017 has concluded, time to take stock. Here is the list of most read posts on the OWL Blog.  2017 Book Recommendations Books read in 2017  Where have all the Retail jobs gone?  Death by a Single Cut?  Roaming Workforce: A Review of Nomadland  Dynamic Pricing of Parking Spots This is just from raw data – I am omitting recency bias, about page, etc.

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2017 Book Recommendations

Highlighting five books that I loved reading in 2017.  These are not necessarily books that were published in 2017.  By design, and by inhibitions imposed by the relative paucity of my prior readings, I tend to read books after a time lag. On the flip side, I would like to think that my reading is not strongly influenced by the news cycle. The time lag also provides opportunities to discover older, well-regarded books. In the recommendation below, I did not include books I read again (e.g. Tolkien and Marcus Aurelius) and also some books that I thoroughly enjoyed (e.g., a new translation of Crime and Punishment by Pevear and Volokhonsky).  More or less, I have tried to curate books based…

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Some 2017 Recommendations

Here are some curated recommendations for your holiday watching/reading/listening. I limit my consumption of media (not books). So, like all lists, this one is also highly subjective. (I have no financial interest in recommending these). Movies Kubo and the two strings.  Animated movie (from Laika studios) with a layered and complex narrative. Great for families with kids interested in slightly mature themes (similar to Miyazaki movies). Features a beautiful cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps by Regina Spektor. On NetFlix. Contratiempo. (The Invisible Guest).  Spanish Crime Thriller and morality play. On NetFlix. Get Out. A brilliant genre-bending film, with the audacity of vision, and taut storytelling. What a directorial debut. Wonder woman. All praise well-deserved.  A blockbuster movie that…

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