El Federalista (The Federalist Papers)

Thomas Jefferson pensaba que los niños debían aprender a leer con libros de Historia. El Federalista o “The Federalist Papers” cómo se les conoce en inglés son una colección de artículos publicados en New York previo a la ratificación de la nueva constitución de EUA en 1789, la mejor y más duradera constitución del mundo moderno. Escritos por James Madison, Alexander Hamilton y John Jay estos artículos explican con claridad el razonamiento detrás de la constitución. Dentro de los artículos los de Madison destacan por su claridad filosófica. Hamilton es hoy más popular y tiene una posición más inclinada a favorecer un gobierno federal fuerte. 

No todas las ideas prosperaron y no todas eran igual de buenas para establecer las bases de una República. Sin embargo, siguiendo el consejo de Jefferson, El Federalista es una lectura obligada hoy que muchos de los valores que la Constitución defienden se han puesto en duda y tergiversado. 

Un buen cierre de la lectura sería la advertencia de Benjamin Franklin cuando le preguntaron que habían hecho “una República si la pueden conservar”

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Thomas Jefferson thought that kids should learn to read reading History books. The Federalist Papers is a collection of articles published in a New York newspaper before the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789, the best and longer lived constitution in the modern world. Written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay this columns explain with clarity the rationale behind the Constitution. Within the articles, Madison's outstand thanks to his philosophical clarity. Hamilton is currently the most popular of the three and has a position more incline in favor of a strong central government.

Not all the proposals thrived and not all were equally good to set the foundation of a Republic. However, following Jefferson's advice, The Federalist Papers are a must read today that many of the values that the Constitution defend are questioned and distorted.

A good closing for the book would be Benjamin Franklin's answer when he was inquired of what they did "A Republic if you can keep"

Vida y mentira de Ernesto Che Guevara

Ante el 50 aniversario de la muerte del Che y el nacimiento de un mito esta biografía revisada de Fernando Díaz Villanueva es muy oportuna. Con "Vida y mentira de Ernesto Che Guevara" Díaz Villanueva contribuye a desenmascarar la imagen fantasiosa del joven revolucionario inmortalizada en la fotografía de Alberto Díaz en camisetas, banderas, tatuajes y más medios de expresión modernos.

Desde el inicio el autor nos advierte el esfuerzo por elaborar un relato objetivo, algo difícil cuando se trata de un tipo que genera muchas emociones de un lado y del otro.

"El Che Guevara merecía ser biografiado, pero no para hablar bien de él, tampoco mal, simplemente para contar su vida de una manera apasionada y escéptica. Eso es, en definitiva, lo que pretende el presente libro."

Mi versión del Che
(hecho con imágenes de dominio púbico)

Creo que Díaz Villanueva con un relato bien hilvanado, con toques de ironía que si no fuera por la seriedad de las historias podría llegar a ser divertido, logra su cometido. Poco a poco la historia desempaca el perfil de un jóven oportunista y acomplejado que se creía más de lo que realmente era, el inconforme que saltando entre la adversidad y la suerte llegó a ser uno de los hombres más nefastos de la historia reciente de América Latina. 

El mito del Che ha multiplicado la malignidad del hombre al justificar las acciones de miles de hombres y mujeres. Ojalá la obra Fernando Díaz Villanueva llegue a las personas, sobre todo jóvenes, que viven en contradicción creyendo que defienden causas justas pero portan logotipos del Che. 

Deep Thinking

In a world of pessimism a word of optimism is always welcome. This is what Garry Kasparov has to tell in his new book, "Deep Thinking, where machine intelligence ends and human creativity begins".

Garry Kasparov is a Russian born chess world champion and maybe the best grand master in history. After living in the soviet Azerbaijan he and his family escaped during the collapse of the Soviet Union. A democratic leader and opponent to the Putin regime he had to move to the US in 2013. He is the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation and has worked in defense of human rights and freedom for a long time.

This combination of chess master, computer geek and freedom lover permeates in his new book. He is a believer in the potential of humanity under a free systems despite its natural paradoxes.

"Even the most disciplined human mind wanders in the heat of competition. This is both a weakness and a strength of human cognition. Sometimes these undisciplined wanderings only weaken your analysis. Other times they lead to inspiration, to beautiful or paradoxical moves that were not on your initial list of candidates."

In Deep Thinking, Kasparov narrates his experience loosing against Deep Blue, IBM's supercomputer in a chess match in 1997. When a computer beat the world chess champion it became a tipping point for media and the public in the race of machine against humans.  Beyond a historic recollection of the events and some inside details that were not made public back then, Kasparov's book is a call for hope. Having experienced in person the overwhelming brute power of a computer he is not naïve in being optimist.

"Few people in the world know better than I do what it’s like to have your life’s work threatened by a machine. No one was sure what would happen if and when a chess machine beat the world champion."

The main thesis of Kasparov is that we can't know what is going to happen in the future but we should start from accepting that progress is unstoppable and desirable, therefore we shouldn't pretend to defend ourselves by holding it back.

"We don’t get to pick and choose when technological progress stops, or where. Companies are globalized and labor is becoming nearly as fluid as capital. People whose jobs are on the chopping block of automation are afraid that the current wave of tech will impoverish them, but they also depend on the next wave of technology to generate the economic growth that is the only way to create sustainable new jobs. Even if it were possible to mandate slowing down the development and implementation of intelligent machines (how?), it would only ease the pain for a few for a little while and make the situations worse for everyone in the long run."

Instead we should embrace change and formulate tougher and deeper questions. The combination of human creativity and machine brute power is super powerful, instead of fear of Artificial Intelligence - AI (machines replacing humans) we need Intelligence Amplification - IA (machines enhancing humans)

"We aren’t competing against our machines, no matter how many human jobs they can do. We are competing with ourselves to create new challenges and to extend our capabilities and to improve our lives. In turn, these challenges will require even more capable machines and people to build them and train them and maintain them—until we can make machines that do those things too, and the cycle continues. If we feel like we are being surpassed by our own technology it’s because we aren’t pushing ourselves hard enough, aren’t being ambitious enough in our goals and dreams. Instead of worrying about what machines can do, we should worry more about what they still cannot do." 

It is in the proper combination of humans and machines that we can reach our full potential.

"A clever process beat superior knowledge and superior technology. It didn’t render knowledge and technology obsolete, of course, but it illustrated the power of efficiency and coordination to dramatically improve results. I represented my conclusion like this: weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process."

But Kasparov positive vision has a caveat. It won't occur unless we have ambitious projects to pursuit and make important changes in politics, R&D, international cooperation and education.

"America still possesses the unique potential to innovate on a scale that can push the entire world economy forward. A world in which America is content with mediocrity is, literally, a much poorer world. 

R&D budgets have been slashed over the years as investors take a skeptical view of anything that doesn't feed the bottom line. Government-backed research tends to favor specific budgets to fit an existing need, not ambitious, open-ended mission to answer big questions. 

Trade wars and restrictive immigration regulations will limit America’s ability to attract the best and brightest minds, minds needed for this and every forthcoming Sputnik moment.

That our classrooms still mostly look like they did a hundred years ago isn’t quaint; it’s absurd. How can a teacher or even a stack of books be the sole source of information for kids who can access the sum of all human knowledge in seconds from a device in their pockets."

Kasparov's book is recommended to those worried about the future. I rate 4 stars because the book is a little repetitive and circular which makes the message less powerful and the reading a little weary.

As an additional reference, Tyler Cowen made an interesting interview to Garry Kasparov short ago(see transcript here) here is the audio.

How to Be Everything

From "What do you want to be when you grow up?" to "What are you up to these days?"

Emilie Wapnick rose to fame after her TED talk "Why some of us don't have one true calling" that has almost 4M views. Emilie has devoted to help people who are "multipotentialites" or someone with many interests and creative pursuits. This book is an extension of her talk giving anecdotal support to what multipotentialites are, and what they do to be more effective in spite of their multiple interests and lack of consistency.

The book is a good intro for multipotentialites, a feel good, "Welcome to the tribe" (as the title of one the chapters) book. It provides some tools to assess if one is indeed a multipotentialite and its kind. Finally it offers some tools to improve effectiveness. However the books is somehow soft, in a way it is expected since the core idea of multipotentialites is that they don't follow social norms on how to live ones lives. Nonetheless, that lightness seems like a rationalization, an excuse to fail on delivering. Like it or not multipotentialites live in the real world where people expect results on time, on cost and on quality, no excuses.

Hope Wapnick work gets the attention in academic circles to become a research subject and thus future books and papers. Meanwhile you can find more about Wapnick and multipotentialites in her site Puttylike.com

Shoe Dog

Bill Gates recommended Phil Knight's book Shoe Dog in his 2015 annual blog. After reading Knight's story I can't but agree with Gates.

Shoe Dog is a very honest memoir of Knight and Nike (NYSE:NKE), full of business wisdom but also the challenges and setbacks. He didn't sugarcoated his story like many entrepreneurial books. Reading Shoe Dog is an emotional rollercoaster, from stories of adventure, success, failure, doubts, despair, sorrow, pride and joy.

Things I found amazing about Phil Knight:

1. He prepared ahead for the adventure. From the very early pages he tells the story of how he wanted to travel around the world. With near $0 budget yet "I spent weeks, reading, planning, preparing for my trip." similar stories are prefaces to his first trip to Japan, to Taiwan and China. 
2. He cared for his team, having hired very odd people at the beginning mainly trying to help them to his support for the athletes they sponsored.
3. He recognized his business journey very honestly, from making money, to dominate the market to contribute to the human drama. "I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud."
4. His almost devotion to his coach and cofounder, Bill Bowerman, as well as to other people who contribute to Nike success. Constantly not letting Bowerman behind, naming the buildings after supporters, his appreciation for Tiger Woods, etc. 
5. His connection with his family could be omitted but it helps to appreciate Knight's humanity. The struggle between a growing business and his family, his regret for not having spend enough time with his kids, his apologies to his wife, Penny, for having to waited and waited, 

The book has some pearls of business wisdom too, not as a recipe but as a testimony.

1. Cash management is crucial specially for a fast growing business.
2. Plans have a short life, specially when conditions change.
3. Tell people what you want and let them surprise you with their results
4. When you believe in something being stubborn pays off, but if you have doubts trust your team.
5. An IPO may be necessary but the timing is important.

For those interested in entrepreneurship this book is a must. 

An interesting conversation with HBR Ideacast.

Fight Club

The first rule about Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club. The second rule about Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club. Thus, should I write a book review in the first place? 

Usually book lovers agree that books are better than their movie version. Popularized by the 1999 movie featuring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton  Fight Club is not the exception, despite I saw the movie years before reading the book. A recent interview to Chuck Palahniuk reported in Clash Daily brought up my interest in the story but this time I decided to go for the book. The story of a franchise of clandestine fight clubs were otherwise peaceful people vent their frustrations,  Fight Club illustrates what Kierkegaard wrote about Irony.

"Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks of what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude". - Soren Kierkegaard

The irony of a life without major risks but no meaning, a life so boring as to join a number of support groups trying to find novelty. The irony that "the first step to eternal life is you have to die".

Palahniuk tells the story between a regular Joe, the narrator, and his alter-ego, Tyler Durden. A permanent conflict between a typical, boring, uneventful lives and what we would like them to be. We find in their relationship with Marla the struggle between a platonic love and a lusty lover. Or the complex contrast between the beautiful and the ugly as in manufacturing an expensive soap out of human fat.

"Our goal is the big red bags of liposuctioned fat we'll haul back to Paper Street and render and mix with lye and rosemary and sell back to the very people who paid to have it sucked out. At twenty bucks a bar, these are the only folks who can afford it."

A constant battle to be different but as the narrator says:

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile."

Fight Club evolves into a larger goal, Project Mayhem, a project so secret that the first rule about Project Mayhem was not to ask questions about Project Mayhem. 

"The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history. We, each of us, can take control of the world."

The power to control the world was the power to "complete and rightaway destroy civilization to make something better out of this world".

Palahniuk leaves us with a reflection about our own reality.

We are not special.

We are not crap or trash, either.

We just are.

We just are, and what happens just happens.

How do you find meaning in life? Do you need to destroy in order to be? Can we instead learn from our mistakes and grow creating?

Playborhood

Mike Lanza is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with whom I identified, not because his professional career but his devotion to his children and family. Like me, and many parents, Mike was concerned by the few opportunities children have to freely play this days. 

Mike's story came to me after reading an article in the New York Times by Melanie Thernstrom. The story was interesting but had a feeling of critique that I couldn't understand. Mike is not a play expert but a father who is not sitting in his couch whining and waiting for the government to fix his problem, he honestly is trying to provide a safe and fun environment for his kids to play. It was a relief to read play experts like Tim Gill, Peter Gray or  Lenore Skenazy, appreciate what Lanza is doing. 

But Mike didn't stop at doing something for his kids, he wrote Playbordhood. He researched about other initiatives all over the US of people acting and not just complaining. People of different socioeconomic backgrounds, in different setting, with different approaches. His book is not only a collection of stories but a guide for those who want to do something; from selecting the right neighborhood, to creating attractions for kids, to building a community, and more. He lays out a plan on how to create a playborhood. He is not naive in pretending that this is a magic potion that will fix the problem, kids outgrow the attractions, there is fierce competition from electronics, other parents have their own fears and preferences, etc. His message can be summarized as don't give up and keep trying. 

"My approach has been to stay the course as long as the positive response outnumber positive responses outnumber the negative ones. When I do get a specific negative reaction, I try to accommodate whatever complaint the neighbor might have."

Some of the critiques to Mike's solution are that he is an affluent Silicon Valley entrepreneur and thus he can spend lots of money on his playground. Mike challenges this idea not only by recognizing other initiatives with fewer resources but invites people to put their money in their priorities.

"I hope readers of this book will re-evaluate the relative budgets for the inside and outside of their homes. When weather is OK, a great yard is far more important to kids than the inside of the house. Moreover, even in bad weather months, kids don't appreciate expensive decor at all..... Having a great home entertainment system inside the house is attractive for them, but they will benefit far more from a great yard"

One of the key concepts of Playborhood is they are right were children live. Other alternatives like playgrounds and city parks are places where kids can't go on their own at the time they please. Going to those places become a planned activity. People come from different locations making it hard to create a culture of play and a community. Playborhoods have their issues, Mike may have done things differently from suggested by experts but the big picture is that this is an idea to stimulate others to act and improve.

Monica and me visiting Mike's playborhood