About

this blog

One of the worlds greatest living investor, Charlie Munger often mentions that during his long
career he never met any person who did not have a good reading habit and had anything valuable to
say. Anyone familiar with Munger would immediately identify it as a typical Mungerism. There is
some truth in the statement, but it is essentially a hyperbole.

There are different ways of learning and knowing. For instance, imagine that you are not at all
familiar with I-pad (or any other tablet or android device) and you get one as a gift. How would you
figure how to operate it? Some people would ask a friend. Some people would prefer watching
another person operate it. I would rather read a manual on I- pad. That is my instinct. Infact, in this
particular example reading about an I- pad is not the best way to learn. Moral of the fable is you
should not be close minded and rigid about your preferred way of learning.

But as far as rigid and close minded ways of learning go, books are perhaps the best. This blog is not
about these, those or other types of books. But rather about analysing, interpreting and figuring out
the world, one good book at a time.

- Amaresh

About this author

(1) Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

- William Shakespeare

The savvy reader will sense a tad of desperation here. For the first post on this blog I have selected a
man (and a book on that man) who is one of the most searched, googled, twittered celebrity on this
planet. What can I possibly say about Steve Jobs, that hasnt already been said? Well, I can say a lot
of thing, as I feel that most of the articles and write ups on Jobs were suffering from something
called a shoe-string complex.

Imagine a hypothetical town, which is isolated from the rest of the world; is very prosperous and
pretty much self sufficient in its economics. A young outsider comes to the town and he notices that
in this very prosperous city, they are only four shoe string manufactures in the four corners of the
city. He figures out that if he slyly buys all of them, he would have a virtual monopoly. He can slowly
increase the prices at which he will sell the strings to the shoe manufactures and keep doing it in
perpetuity making more and more money. The clever outsider does the clever thing and in few years
his business is booming. In fact for a very long period he keeps making money, because he very
brilliantly created a monopoly of shoe strings.
Now the outsider has reached middle age. He is well respected for being the most brilliant business
man the city has known. People seek his opinion on each and every thing. Journalists want to know
his views on elections. He talks about the state of medical infrastructure, education and what not.
But actually all his success is based on one master stroke. Just because he cornered the shoe string
marketin a stroke of brilliance market doesnt mean he is actually brilliant about each and every
topic under the sun.

So where do I start about Jobs and his biography. Let me begin by taking a cue from Malcom
Gladwell, who mentioned in a brilliant article on Jobs in the New Yorker that Jobs was in equal parts
viciousness, delusion and brilliance. Walter Isaacson sure talks a lot about the already well
documented (and filmed) tyrannical and difficult nature of Steve Jobs. For me that is a relatively
tolerable personality flaw (unless of course I was working directly for him).

Most 25 year olds with millions in bank accounts and no experience of managing people will behave
like assholes with their colleagues and juniors. Many young and intelligent men in the age group of
20-25 are brash, cocky and arrogant. Their outer bravado is a mask for inner anxiety, as they are still
trying to sort out their mind and the world that exists around it. As they succeed in resolving their
own anxieties they become calmer towards the world around them. What is more surprising is that
(according to Walter Isaacson) Steve did not become older and wiser as you would expect him to.
The author doesnt have any explanation for it, as he doesnt have any explanation for many other
things about Steve Jobs.

The much bigger personality flaw of Jobs was his delusion. Jobs does not come across as an
intellectual or someone with a scientific or philosophical bent of mind probing for the truth behind
how the technology world is working. Rather, he reminded me of the founding father of the Casino
business in Las Vegas, a guy called Bugsy.

If you think about it, just like Apple it is not easy to explain Las Vegas with standard marketing
frameworks. Bugsy had the vision to dream about Las Vegas. But since Vegas was initially financed
by mob money (unlike much more patient investors in the Silicon Valley), Bugsy was gunned down
when the mafia thought the payback period for their investment has been unduly extended. Some
people say that this kind of madness is needed to fuel entrepreneurship. Perhaps that is often the
case, but there are enough examples of entrepreneurs who are not delusional and who think
logically with a calm calculus of reason (think Bill gates).

So was Jobs just a lucky dreamer and successful due to randomness more than anything else. Jobs
did have an uncanny genius of a particular kind and it will take some explaining. Jobs often talked
about being an artist, and encouraged his engineers to think like artists and respected the artsy
types more than anyone else. It seems gimmicky and lot of people must have made fun of it (they
surely would make fun of such things if someone less successful was doing it). But I think, he did
have genuine artistic instincts. He had the ability to detach himself and look at the really big picture.
That is why he felt isolated as a youth (not many people care to look at the really big picture). That is
why he felt he had to figure out the meaning of life and travel all the way to India on a spiritual
quest. His ability to look at the big picture is also reflected in the legendary Stanford speech when he
talked about death. This detachment also gave him a lot of bravado to fight when pushed in tight
corners. If you have an artists subtle sense of fatalism, you will find it easier to detach yourself from
the numbers in the immediately next quarter and what this, that or the other competitor is doing.
(2) A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes is hip once again. A latest series produced by the BBC (god bless them) called
Sherlock has become a blockbuster hit in the Caucasian world, and a blockbuster hit in the
engineering and MBA colleges of our country (at least that is what I have been told). The series
brings Sherlock back to life in the modern day London, armed with blackberry, google and Macbook
Pro.

That the series is winning new fans for Sherlock Holmes is evident from the increase in sales of his
books. But the series has some charm for old timers as well. What really appeals to a Sherlock
Holmes fan is that series has really managed to stay true to the vision of Arthur Conan Doyle (and
even surpass him at times). This is a much bigger accomplishment that it sounds.

Many countless movies, plays and all sorts of productions exist on Holmes, but most of them fail to
retain the magic of the original writings. The latest attempt by Hollywood, with Robert Downey
Junior as Holmes, is a miserable failure according to many (including yours truly). You really need to
understand what Sherlock Holmes is all about to bring him alive in the 21st century. For me nothing
captures the essence of what Holmes is all about then the first novel A Study in Scarlet.

The first episode in the BBC series was titled A Study in Pink and was loosely based on the first
book written by Arthur Conan Doyle on the super sleuth titled A Study in Scarlet. This fits a
standard pattern followed by the creators of the BBC show where the episodes are loosely based on
original Conan Doyle stories.

In both the versions, we are first introduced to Watson, the more socially groomed side kick, who
none the less has some pent up angst of his own. Watson is in turn introduced to Sherlock by an
acquaintance and he is immediately intrigued by the personality of the super sleuth (and so are the
readers). In the first story, Watson delineates a detailed personality sketch of Sherlock Holmes and
it goes something like this.

Holmes is the super geek. The way he gets his kicks from his work and the level of commitment he
has, would appeal to a lot of scientists, engineers and academicians. He is detached from money and
monetary pursuits, social graces are trivialities for him, he has really good taste in a select few things
and can be charming if the need so arises. He likes his routine and likes doing what he does, over
and over and over again.

In many ways this character is misleading. Its nowhere written that you have to be socially awkward
to be a genius. I think lot of mediocre academicians take advantage of this generalization and get
away with being an asshole. Similarly the attitude Holmes has towards sex (a low pursuit, a
distraction) is not mandated to be a genius either. In fact, research points to the opposite. Brilliant
men tend to be sexually, shall we say more liberated than the average.

Sherlock is also narrow-minded as he only wants to know about his own domain and ignore most
other forms of knowledge. His rationale being that human brain has limited capacity, like a hard
drive on a computer, and you can only store so much. But modern research says, that there is no
limit on how much you can or should store, but it is how you organize your brain is what matters.
And more often than not, brilliant thinkers have a systemic way of thinking, where they can find
connections between apparently unrelated topics.
However it is his fixed nature and his ability to derive lot of kicks from his work, is something he
shares common with many super geeks who accomplish a lot in their lives over a period of time.
Maybe that is why he is a hit with the young geeks currently studying in engineering colleges in
India.

(3) Gullivers Travel by Jonathan Swift

Kids are often introduced to classics by giving abridged versions to read. I thought I had read Great
Expectations by Charles Dickens in high school, only to realize later when I grew up that the actual
novel is not about a school guy who ran into a convict in some wheat fields (or was it a
neighbourhood forest) but rather a complicated tale about social stratification and class system.

If there is one classic that can be abridged to a nursery rhyme and yet merits multiple readings as a
grown up, it is Gullivers travel.

There are many major themes in the book. Most of them are well documented elsewhere on the
net. However, there is one theme that is of particular significance (at least according to me). Let us
start by going over the more run of the mill themes.

The tale is divided into four parts. Most of us know the shtick of the first two. Gulliver first lands in
an island of little people and then he lands in an island of giants. The actual theme of the first part
was to show how petty, small and trivial human beings are (or can be at times). Gulliver observes
that Laputa is at fight with its neighbour over silly issues like egg shells or something. The writer was
satirizing the fights between England and France. Even today, the writing is relevant. Economist is
filled with issues and conflicts, which would seem trivial and silly from a larger perspective. Thus the
book lampoons human nature. If only we would be a little bigger (at heart) and realize how trivial
our pursuits (sometimes) are.

The second part mocks the notion of beauty humans have developed in their minds (I am a little
tired of writing at this point so wont get into the details). The third part mocks the pursuit of
knowledge which does not have any practical application (think business school professors). Now
the savvy reader will notice a pattern here. The book is quite misanthropic and cynical since the first
three parts end up satirizing most of humanity.

It is the fourth part where the book makes its most profound statement. Gulliver after being fed up
of humanity lands up in an island filled with most rational creatures. They have heads like horses and
are called homonyms,( I do not want to type homonyms again and again, so let is just call them
Spocks, reminding the readers of the super rational Spock TV series Star Trek, the one who is free of
all biases and super objective). After being disgusted with humans, Gulliver falls in love with the very
rational and logical Spocks. So much so that after he returns from his journey, he refused to socialize
at all with the lowely humans, and spends his time in his stable, as the horses remind him of Spocks.

So what is the moral of the fable? If you fall in love with a rational ideal of a gregarious, far sighted,
intelligent and logical person, you would end up hating most of the people. There is no need to do
that. It is not going to change those people anyhow. They will remain irritating unless you cultivate
some tolerance in yourself. Just like all people would not be in the top 1 percentile of IQ (somebody
has to make rest of the 99), similarly all people would not be in the top one percentile of other
qualities (say sensitivity).
Sounds simple doesnt it, cultivate tolerance. However, it is remarkably difficult to do. I actually
ended up writing about this book while reminiscing on the Nevermind album of Kurt Cobain. Now
Cobain had genuine artistic instincts. He could feel life and its whirl wind of emotions at a level most
people would not. If you are more sensitive than most people, you would find most people shallow.
But those people have to exist to make up the remaining 99 percentile. If you go through a quote list
of Kurt Cobain, you will notice how often he uses the word hate I hated the jocks in high school
and I hated the cheer leaders and I hated Paul McCartney although I loved the Beatles and I hated
Robert Plant although I loved Zeppelin. Well it is true that Paul McCartney and Robert Plant can be
irritating. They are also relatively shallow as compared to John Lennon or Jimmy Page. But
somebody always will be relatively shallow. You dont have to hate them for that.

- Amaresh

(4) The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck

MACBETH.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd;

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR.

Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

- From the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Road less travelled is a self help book.

Well dear reader, if you got a smirk after reading that last sentence; no one really blame you.

In fact it is possible to make an argument against the phrase self help itself. It is not exactly self
help when you are doing what someone else (a guru or author a self help book) tells you to do.
Particularly when you have paid him, so you can help yourself. Why the price then? (in this case the
price of the book).

Here in lies the first lesson. It is alright to seek self help by consulting a guru. A genuine guru (or
consultant) lets you know that he cannot solve your problems. In such matters you must minister
yourself. And to his credit M. Scott Peck lets the reader know that ultimately he has to help himself.

This book does have a lot of merit. So let us go through the preaching one section at a time. In the
first section the author talks about discipline. And by discipline he means delay of gratification. To
succeed in life you should let go of temporary or ephemeral pleasures. The simplest way to
understand is investing. Investing is nothing but letting go of present consumption for a more
financially secured future. Another easy way to understand the concept is pizza and weight gain. As
they say once on the lips, forever on the hips. Easy lesson, nothing controversial here, behavioural
psychologists recommend the same.

Then he talks about love. This was my favourite part of the book. Like a true iconoclast M. Scott Peck
blasts most peoples notion of love.

If you love someone as he fits into your scheme of things, then you dont really love that person. If
you are in a giddy falling in love phase where you think that only that other special person matters
in the whole world, then the news for you is that such a phase is not going to last. Real love is when
one person helps the other person grow mentally (or so says the writer). I am not able to sum this
part up with succinct examples but let me say I found myself agreeing with almost everything in the
book so far.

After that the book gets really rubbish. M. Scott Peck talks about how there is a universal force he
calls grace (he is not suggesting anything new but the good old concept of god) and the ultimate
objective of any human life is to be filled with grace (or godliness). He manages to force fit evolution
into his unscientific framework; using an often repeated but very ridiculous argument (will get into
the details in some other post) about how evolution was a mechanism incepted in the world by god
almightily himself. There is no logic to whatever he is saying; just broad sweeping generalizations.

But after I was disgusted by the third part (the one where he talks about grace), I realized how
flawed my reading of the book was. The first and second parts of the book were not logical either.
They were also full of broad sweeping generalizations without much scientific basis.

I just enjoyed the first two parts of the book as they fitted nicely with my already existing world
view. But the third part that I hated, was not any more or any less logical or scientific than the
others.

We all like to see what we want to see. We do not like being confronted by things that do not fit
into our version of reality; no matter how real they are. A person who is a de facto atheist will not
find much merit in M. Scott Pecks argument for striving to achieve unity with god. But a religious
person would.

- Amaresh

(5) Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray

What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate"

- from the movie Cool Hand Luke

It is an urban myth that a writer has arrived when pirated copy of his books are sold on the
footpaths of India. By that measure, John Gray has certainly done very well with this book. At least a
large part of the success of this book must be attributed to the fact that dudes like to gift books to
chicks that they are trying to impress, and maybe they want to show how sensitive they are by
buying sweet -syrupy titles like this one. But jokes aside, there is plenty of value in this book.
Dont judge the book by the use of the cheesy metaphor. Men Mars, Women Venus, surely sounds
like bull shit. But the author uses many such metaphors in this book to communicate many good
points about relationships. To be more specific, he manages to communicate many good points
about how couples can communicate better with each other. It is indeed a communication tour de
force.

But is a successful relationship only about good communication?

Well to answer the question we will have to delve a little deeper into the dark arts of self help
writing and melancholic topic of failed relationships. All self help writers make their audience believe
that they can make it big in business, or as entrepreneurs or as husbands. Suppose someone did pick
this book, would it save his troubled marriage or improve an otherwise rocky relationship?

Lets run a thought experiment. Divide all men and women into 100 personality types each. Now
imagine yourself as having one of those 100 personality types. For you, the 100 personality types of
females can be ranked in an order. Female 1 is most compatible for you (she will make your heart
sing all the powerful love ballads) and you will detest and loathe female 100 within a matter of few
minutes of coming across her.

Female 2-5 will make you very happy too. Females 99-95 will still make you cringe. I hope you get
the drift. Females in the range 40-60 will neither upset your nor arouse any passions in you (except
maybe the more primal ones, which even female 100 can do, guys being what they are).

So what are the odds that you will find the female 1. Well dear reader, the odds are not in your
favour. Sure if you came across female 1, chemistry will be instant, fireworks will follow and trousers
will be unzipped. But what if you came across female 2 to female 10, before you ever came across
female 1. Chemistry will not be instant but still great, sparks may follow and once a while a few
fireworks and trousers will be unzipped. Thing is you will be tricked into thinking that this is as good
as it gets and settle for it, ending your quest for female 1.

What about female 20-30. Chemistry will take some time to develop. There will be certainly sparks
but lot of dry and boring patches (though trousers will still be unzipped). You will be tricked into
thinking that this is as good as it gets and you will tell yourself all that love baloney only happens in
movies. You will have to find your happiness in other things such as food, sports and travelling. Its
not your fault. You were just unlucky in love.

If I managed to communicate my point well in the last three paragraphs, you would have realized
that finding the right female (or male) is more than anything else a matter of luck. You never know
what sequence of females (or males) would come into your life. Female 1 and Female 100 would
evoke stark emotions in your head, but it will get really muddy in the middle. And that is why failed
relationships would always remain a staple diet for sitcoms and romantic comedies.

So how good is the book in the situation Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. It can
only help a person who has been lucky to be in a relationship with a compatible partner. You cannot
do much if you were tricked into marrying female 41. But if you married female 1 -20, sure the book
can help you a lot.
And this is the dark secret self help books do not reveal. John Gray would not want to reduce his
market by 1/5, would he. Yes you can make a lot of difference in your life with a lot of hard work.
But externalities (like lady luck, genetic blessings, right parents, intellectual endowments) play a
large part as well. In many situations they play a lesser part. In finding partners, they play a much
bigger part.

(6) Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John de Graff

The plot of the books is simple. We are all becoming greedier. Some countries are greedy than
others. People want material goods because they see others hoarding them, even though they do
not have much need for them. Hoarding material goods is not the answer. Does the book give you
an answer?

In the last 100 (or so) pages of the book the author rambled on for some time about some preachy
answers. However the first 200 (or so) do make an interesting reading. However, the book never
amounts to a genuine scholarly probing about why our society is materialistic. For one, it never
mentions the goodness inherent in the two deadly sins the book is warning us about greed and
envy.

There is a good evolutionary reason to be greedy. If the cave man did not horde the food greedily in
the summer, the cave women and the cave kids would have died in the winter. Hoarding per se is
not a bad idea, the problem starts when you are overdoing it. One of the reasons why we overdo it is
because we tend to get envious of other people hoarding stuff (a point the books makes again and
again). However, even envy has an important role to play. It is not such a bad idea to compare what
you have and what others have. That is how you realize your own strengths, others competitive
advantages and get inspired. It is precisely because there is always some utility in greed and envy,
you can never totally get rid of them.

(7) The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien

I am cheating here. I have not actually read the book. I just watched the first instalment of
Hollywoods interpretation of the book. However I could easily connect to some of the standard
themes from Lord of the Rings. Both books have similar morals to teach - how the most primitive
creatures can play as crucial a role, as the mighty ones (thou shall not be arrogant), how the wise are
tolerant and the evil ones are not, how the management style of the evil tyrant is to keep their
subordinates scared and demoralized (sounds familiar?). However many scenes also made me
wonder about the reasons for the works of Tolkien being considered sacred texts by the hippies.

One can make a case for Tolkiens works being escapists fantasy. So did the hippies like his works
because they were escapists, and Tolkien helped them escape? Did they relate to those hobbits
puffing away their dope merrily? Maybe it helped the hippies argue in favour of dope. There is surely
nothing malicious in the way the hobbits get doped. They are just puffing away in their idyllic hobbit
holes. Why should anyone complain?

Well for one you can say the hobbits (read hippies) are being selfish. They are not creating any value
for the world or society (or the shire folks) while they are getting doped. Sure it is making them
happy, but when you are doing something that only makes you happy, you cannot expect society to
respect that behaviour.

Still there are lot of activities that are not respected but not frowned upon either. So why were the
hippies made to feel guilty for their gay abandon. Perhaps there is cowardice in escapism. They say
one indulges in escapism when he cannot face the reality. But is a hippy really more out of touch
from reality than a religious person (if you think god exists, than you can replace religious with
atheist). Most people escape reality by creating some sort of optimistic bubble in their head. Only a
really courageous person can be true to his own self. So why is everyone so harsh on the hippies?

Doping is not necessarily escapism, but an easier way to get high and rise from the banalities of life.
Either you take the tough road full of dangers and uncertainties which will also give you many highs
(like Frodo or Bilbo); or you puff away which is something any hobbit can do. Nobody is interested in
reading a book about a hobbit smoking weed, and in the long run you would want your life story to
read like a real adventure.

(8) Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi

I picked this one up on an impulse when I was browsing a fancifully famous book store in Hauz Khas,
Delhi. While leaving I started feeling guilty for not purchasing anything, and saw this book. I had
already seen the movie on the other more famous book by the same author, Persepolis. This book is
to Persepolis, what Godfather 3 was to Godfather 2, a really lame follow up. However the book does
make one good point.

The writing has been compared to a Sex and the City episode set up in Iran. A bunch of women
sitting and raising queries, that have already been answered repeatedly by many philosophers,
psychologists and academicians. While Persepolis could really make you question many of your
frameworks, the discussions here can be diffused easily with a modicum of logic. So why do people
discuss same things over and over again; when they already have been explained by wiser men

My bet is that people do not have good reading habits, either in Tehran or in New York. Some
problems transcend time and space.

(9) Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (revisited)

Post by Guest Author:

"Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"...catchy title for a book indeed!. It had caught my
attention and became part of conscious mind while growing up surrounded by popular western
cultural influences in an urban milieu of my country. And you can laugh at my naivet, when I tell
you that at the time I had taken the title in the literal sense, as the metaphorical implications of
words had not yet developed fully for my understanding. It kept cropping up time and again around
me till I graduated from my college. But, in spite of the catchy title and the colourful animated book
cover, I had never bothered to actually get hold of the book, until recently, when one fine day my
husband of 4 years bought home a cheap and pirated paperback version of the book.

I have to admit, it took me a while to get through the book; not that the language is difficult to grasp
but it is the style of writing which was not able to hold my interest. Also, things explained are
repetitive and lack a certain rhythm or flow in their structure. But eventually I decided to hobble
through it, after being hurt in a heated argument with my husband who had already hogged the
book and was taking a high ground by pointing out the flaws on my part which he found starker in
the glow of his recent enlightenment on such issues.

I tell you, it has apparently helped in some small ways to make our conjugal relationship more
congenial. I have always wondered how come our formal education misses out on effectively
teaching us the fundamentals of two most important things in almost everyone's life. First, the basic
financial management and second the man-woman relationships. Our parents also do not do very
good job of teaching us much as they themselves had never bothered to work it out and probably
that is why most of the marriages become marriages in disguise and some end up in flames of
divorce.

Anyways, the author of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" seems to have done a decent
job by at least being one of the few who has bothered to find out about what it takes to make
"marriages made in heaven" feel also as heavenly blissful. He starts out by pointing out the basic
differences between men and women, hence men from mars and women from venus, which he
consistently and annoyingly uses liberally throughout the book. Of course, he does so to reinforce by
reminding you that how two genders are essentially two different species with differing behavioural
attributes (which are interchangeable). The sooner one accepts that fact, better are the chances of
making a harmonious relationship between the two genders.

Then he goes on to elaborate on how and why two different species start upsetting the harmony
between each other. Essentially why and what leads to fights and arguments supported by various
instances and examples from day to day life of coupling couples. Then towards the end he gives you
the solutions or rather methods to help you to improve or as he claims, to overhaul the whole
relationship between the married and buried couples. One thing that I think author failed to
mention is that it requires certain level of basic compatibility first between man and woman to be
willing to make any effort on either side to save their sinking ship. It seems to give the impression
that any flagging relationship between man and woman can be revived if they follow his
prescriptions. In my view, it requires some luck to first find a compatible companion and further how
much hard work one is willing to put in to achieve success.

The book starts getting preachy towards the end, but then such is the flaw of books of this nature
which are usually written by plain observation, some experience and no hard evidence unlike
scientific subjects. Such books, in my opinion are meant to be read with a sense of scepticism and at
the most one can take cues from it. Additionally, one needs to process and verify the truth of things
mentioned in the book at one's own level with experience and constantly revise them in the light of
some new information. This sounds simple but is the hardest to implement and probably that is why
in spite of abundant availability of such guides, divorce rates are rather soaring up across cultures
and nationalities.

10) The Origin of the Species: Led Zeppelin

Good artists borrow, great artists steal

- Picasso
The manner in which rock fans argue in favour of their bands on internet forums is pretty juvenile.
Perhaps it has got something to do with the fact that most rock fans are in fact juvenile. However,
the stronger hypothesis is that rock fans project some of their egos on to their favourite musicians
and thus they argue so irrationally in favour of them. In this rock fans are no different from sports
fan who project their egos on to their sports team (have you noticed that when your favourite team
loses you sigh they lost, but whenever they are triumphant you exclaim we won!!).

Led Zeppelin is my favourite band. So I am inclined to argue in the favour for them being the
greatest band of all times. However the rational part of my brain knows that that title only belongs
with the Beatles. None the less Led Zeppelin does have a strong case. However there is one
argument cited against the greatness of Led Zeppelin plagiarism.

Many of the Zeppelins greatest songs were not written from scratch. They mined lot of old blues
music, and turned some of them into what rock fans are familiar with as Led Zeppelin songbook.
How can you call Zeppelin the greatest band in the world, when half of their tunes were not original?

Well the greatness of the band lies in the treatment of the material. Take for example one of the
most famous thefts Whole lotta love. The original conjures an image of an old and poor factory
worker returning home to his wife and demanding some romance. It is pretty, pleasing and homily.
Led Zeppelins treatment makes it dark, sinister and ominous.

And therein lays the explanation for one of the most clichd quotes of all time - Good artists
borrow, great artists steal. If you take a work of art, and turn it into something else which is good
but not as good as the original you borrowed a concept. But when you took something and turned
it into something much profounder than original, you stole.

The book origin of species traces the background of many legendary tunes from Led Zeppelins first
two albums, and how the band stole from the original blues music.

- Amaresh

(11) Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves

Most Philosophers are half dead

- Plato

Emotional intelligence (abbrevitated as EQ) has become a clich in the popular culture. Part of the
reason why the clich has become so popular is that it gives people hope. Even if you have a low IQ,
you can be very successful still, by working in your EQ. Further hope is handed over by pointing that
EQ is very learnable. However the curious thing is why people with high IQ, often have low EQ.

For the sake of argument, lets say that there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who
operate on intellectual and intutitive level and those who operate on an emotional and sense level.
People who are operate on an emotional and sense level are not aware of their own emotions. Since
they are not aware of their own emotions, they will not be very good at managing the emotions of
others. For them the path of cultivating emotional intelligence starts with developing self awareness.
People who operate on intellect level can lake emotional awareness because they try and solve
everything with a logical and rational approach. This is actually the right approach to take because
rationality and logic takes you closer to the truth. Such people are already self aware. However they
do not realize that there is no point in telling the rational truth to an emotional person.

More curious still is the low emotional intelligence of intuitive and imaginative people. The poets,
and musicians often extremely sensitive yet jerks to the people around them. A philosopher would
have both intellect and imagination yet can lack EQ. Part of the reason is that such people can create
a realm so beautiful in their head, that they become heedless to the people around them.

I think the road to cultivating EQ for such people starts with the realization, that there is no point
using reason with an emotional person, or emotions with a sense driven person. Even a very rational
person cannot handle the truth. Most of the people are not true to their own selfs. And the last mile
of rationaity is to be true to your own self, and let others take their own pace.

- Amaresh