Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

Last week, I finally gave into temptation and purchased the NYT bestseller Freakonomics by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner.

After all, how could anyone resist a book titled such, especially with a cover so tempting?

Needless to say, I was quite skeptical — not because I doubted either of their credentials, but because a lot of NYT bestsellers tend to be full of utter fluff and nonsense.

However, I picked this book up for two reasons — one, because I have heard of Steven Levitt and have read other (academic) papers by him, particularly his famous, “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime” that explained the drop in crime-rates in the US post-90s. And secondly, all the reviews that I had read indicated that the book might actually be quite an interesting read.

Fortunately, I was not disappointed.

Freakonomics is a very fun read, and Levitt and Dubner have a uniquely refreshing way of looking at things. What makes this book especially interesting is Levitt’s use of conventional economic principles to analyse and solve unconventional problems and situations, yielding some very interesting results.

The book has six chapters, each of which analyses a series of related problems and looks at causes and (on occasion) solutions. These include the incentives of cheating, information control, economics of certain nefarious activities (such as drug dealing), the role of abortion in cutting down crime, effects of parenting on education, socio-economic effects of children’s names and the like.

In fact, parts of the book discuss some of Levitt’s papers in layman terms, such as the role of abortion in reducing crime and cheating and other controversies in Sumo wrestling. However, what makes it an interesting read is in the way Levitt and Dubner compare and analyse such results with “conventional wisdom” — or what passes for it these days. To that end, this particularly insightful description that they give themselves probably sums it up better than anything else:

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: if morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work.

It is also interesting to note that although the tagline of the book reads, “A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”, Levitt is not a rogue economist by any stretch. He is a believer in contemporary economic theories of microeconomics — he just uses and applies such theories to unconventional socioeconomic situations and draws some interesting conclusions.

It also turns out that Freakonomics has been recommended as a textbook at several schools. To this end, there are even study guides to help the student learner understand the finer concepts within the book.

Personally, I like the Freakonomics Student Guide by Palmer and Carlson.

This guide shows the application of various economic principles to the problems that Levitt and Dubner discuss and gives an overview of the basic economic concepts used as well as summaries of the topics being discussed.

And after a little further exploration, I also found out that there is a Freakonomics website — and more interestingly — a Freakonomics Blog where the authors discuss other things in the same vein as the book. Although I must add that the blog is in no way a comparison to the content in the book, which turned out to be a very fun and interesting read.

So, how would I rate this book? Here ya’ go:

• Originality: 5/5
• New Insights: 4/5
• Clarity of Thought: 4/5
• Language: 4/5
• Knowledge Value: 4/5
• Overall Rating: 4/5

At the end of the day, a very nice book that is a recommended and good read. Go for it!

Update: If you are interested in getting your copy of Freakonomics signed, Levitt and Dubner have a neat little idea — sign up for it and they will send you a signed bookplate. Swell!

Not that I have all that many books, but I’ve been recently trying to update my compilation of books that I own.

So, here is the list of books that I own for your reading pleasure (horrible pun, I know).

The list is not entirely complete, and I still have a couple of hundred books in storage that I want to add to the list. And of course, I buy a few books every week, so no list is ever going to be up-to-date.

At this point, the count is at 461. It’s not a particularly impressive number to me, but apparently it is to some people — just last week, I had a visitor ask me if they could take a photograph of my book collection.

And on this note, I’d definitely appreciate any suggested readings that you folks may have based on what passes for my reading preferences.

Update: This one is for The Cydonian — just figured you might be interested in looking at the autographed D. Adams book.

“It’s less satisfying to punch you when you run away.”

The remarkably insightful statement above was uttered by none other than my partner-in-crime Rebecca, who has enough medals in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Judo, Muay Thai and other assorted beat-the-crap-out-of-each-other arts that they scare away half the people I know from talking to her.

And she wonders why I run away. When she’s aiming a punch at me.

Don’t you love friends? Especially when they delight in beating the crap out of you and are upset when you don’t let them?

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long supressed, finds utterance. — Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

59 years ago, a young democracy was born from a people of such diverse cultures that nobody believed that it could last very long. This democracy had Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis; it had folks that spoke no less than a few hundred languages and dialects — it had such diversity that each part of it could be a nation on to its own.

Today, all these years later, it is a land where for all its flaws, democracy still works. Unlike its neighbour which was founded on religion, India was born secular, with an implicit constitution to accept people of all backgrounds and beliefs. Unlike its neighbour which has had military dictators overthrow democracy ever so often, it is a democracy where its 14th Prime Minister was just elected.

In a nation of predominantly Hindus, this fledgling democracy has a Sikh Prime Minister who is an economist and a professor to boot, a Muslim President who is vegetarian and a rocket scientist and a Roman Catholic caucasian female ruling party president. Despite the odds, it has made strides in every walk of life — social, economic, scientific.

There are a lot of things that make me cringe when I think of who I’m, but for all its flaws and faults, I’m proud of what and who I’m — no matter where I go or what I end up as, I will always be an Indian.

Here’s to home, and what it stands for. And on this day, celebrating the birth of India, here is something that will bring a smile to your face — something from the days gone by — Ek Titli, Anek Titiliyan!