A New York City Firefighter's Triumphant Comeback from Crash Victim to Elite Athlete

The Long Run is an emotional and incredibly honest story about Matt's determination to fight through fear, despair, loneliness, and intense physical and psychological pain to regain the life he once had. The book chronicles Matt's road to recovery as he teaches himself to walk again and, a mere three years later, to run in the 2008 New York City Marathon. "Running saved my life," Matt says, and his embrace of the running community and insistence on competing in the marathon has inspired many, turning him into a symbol of hope and recovery for untold numbers of others.

I WILL Foundation

Book Podcast of the Day

Why Cities Rock

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier. By Edward Glaeser.

Loaning Electronic Books

Interesting feature on Amazon- I've always thought one disadvantage of electronic books is that you can't share a good book with your friends- still it has long way to go!

What happens after you loan this book?
When you click the "Send now" button, Amazon.com will send an e-mail to the recipient with your personalized message (if applicable). If the loan is not yet accepted within 7 days, it will automatically be returned to you. You will not be able to read this book while it is on loan.

Kindle needs lots of improvement

Go figure: Figure 1 below- which one is from Kindle and which one's from the book?

The book is Singapore's Success: Engineering Economic Growth by Henri Ghesquiere

July Book Club

Let us hear if any of you're reading the list for July.

“The meaning of life is that it ends”- Kafka

Just finished reading the book 'How Doctors Think' by Jerome Groopman.

Came across two moving stories from the NYT- I recommend the book to every one.

Floyd Norris talks about his cancer treatment.

I am undergoing radiation and drug treatment for cancer.

The drug is Erbitux, which at least is something I had heard about. (You may recall that was the drug involved in the Martha Stewart lying-to-the-S.E.C. case.) It has made my face look worse than anyone’s face ever looked when I was in high school.

I know that it is not news that radiation treatment can be miserable. I did not do all the homework I could have done, so perhaps I should have been better prepared.

But the pain involved is more than I have ever experienced. It is virtually impossible for me to eat. I am losing weight at an impressive rate, to the dismay of the radiation doctor. I have little energy, which is probably both because of the radiation directly and because of the lack of nutrition...

It is not fun, but it has been inspiring. In a way, I am happier about my life than at any time I can remember. Clint Eastwood once asked, “Do you feel lucky?” My answer is a shouted yes...

I am 62, and have had the honor of being a financial columnist here for more than 20 years. I have been happily married for 26 years, and last Friday saw our son graduate from high school. He will be attending an excellent college in the fall.

I hope to have a lot more years. But I’ve had a lot already, and they have been better than a lot of people have any reason to hope for. I am grateful.

A Scare, a Scar, a Silver Lining;

This is trite but also so, so true: A brush with mortality turns out to be the best way to appreciate how blue the sky is, how sensuous grass feels underfoot, how melodious kids’ voices are. Even teenagers’ voices. A friend and colleague, David E. Sanger, who conquered cancer a decade ago, says, “No matter how bad a day you’re having, you say to yourself: ‘I’ve had worse.’ ”

Related:
My surprising inspiration (death!)

LOGICOMIX

Christos Papadimitriou at Google


Related;
Logicomix

Algorithm and Blues

Chutes and Ladders in Harlem

A highly recommended podcast from EconTalk with Katherine Newman,a sociologist at Princeton.

One Author to read 2010- Orhan Pamuk

Pamuk’s appeal has not been lost on politicians. Daniel Cohn-Bendit has credited Pamuk with helping him to ‘understand the importance of Turkey joining the European Union’...

One woman in The Black Book fears that, having spent half her life trying to be someone else, she is now condemned to spend the next half ‘being someone else who regretted all those years she had not spent being herself’. The hero of that novel, a lawyer called Galip (after the 18th-century mystic poet Sheikh Galip), shaken by the disappearance of his wife, Rüya (‘dream’), manages to piece himself together, but only after assuming the identity of the newspaper columnist his wife seems to have run away with; as he loses himself in the back alleys of Istanbul, he begins to suspect that the journalist, the enigmatic Celâl (after the Sufi poet Jelal ud-Din Rumi), is the secret author of his fate. Galip is one of the luckier characters in Pamuk, transported to the shores of a stable identity by a mystical journey; most are left hanging, swinging between East and West, between the mosque and the mall. To the characters in Snow, Islamism is a powerful, almost erotic temptation, since it promises to eradicate this vertiginous sense of dislocation: it’s no accident that one of the Islamist leaders in that novel is a dashing, charismatic seducer of his female followers, beguiling them with his blue eyes and his fiery vision of a cleansed and virtuous Muslim society.

-Wanting to Be Something Else

When things go wrong in project managment!

I'm starting to become a big fan of Scott Berkun;

1. Calm down. Nothing makes a situation worse than basing your actions on fear, anger, or frustration. If something bad happens to you, you will have these emotions whether you’re aware of them or not. They will also influence your thinking and behavior whether you’re aware of it or not. (Rule of thumb: the less aware you are of your feelings, the more vulnerable you are to them influencing you.) Don’t flinch or overreact—be patient, keep breathing, and pay attention.

2. Evaluate the problem in relation to the project. Just because someone else thinks the sky has fallen doesn’t mean that it has. Is this really a problem at all? Whose problem is it? How much of the project (or its goals) is at risk or may need to change because of this situation: 5%? 20%? 90%? Put things in perspective. Will anyone die because of this mistake (you’re not a brain surgeon, are you?)? Will any cities be leveled? Plagues delivered on the innocent? Help everyone frame the problem to the right emotional and intellectual scale. Ask tons of questions and get people thinking rather than reacting. Work to eliminate assumptions. Make sure you have a tangible understanding of the problem and its true impact. Then, prioritize: emergency (now!), big concern (today), minor concern (this or next week), bogus (never). Know how long your fuse is to respond and prioritize this new issue against all existing work. If it’s a bogus issue, make sure whoever cried wolf learns some new questions to ask before raising the red flag again.

3. Calm down again. Now that you know something about the problem, you might really get upset (“How could those idiots let happen!?”). Find a way to express emotions safely: scream at the sky, workout at the gym, or talk to a friend. But do express them. Know what works for you, and use it. Then return to the problem. Not only do you need to be calm to make good decisions, but you need your team to be calm. Pay attention to who is upset and help them calm down. Humor, candor, food, and drink are good places to start. Being calm and collected yourself goes a long way toward calming others. And taking responsibility for the situation (see the later section “Take responsibility”), regardless of whose fault it was, accelerates a team’s recovery from a problem.

4. Get the right people in the room Any major problem won’t impact you alone. Identify who else is most responsible, knowledgeable, and useful and get them in together straight away. Pull them out of other meetings and tasks: if it’s urgent, act with urgency, and interrupt anything that stands in your way. Sit them down, close the door, and run through what you learned in step 2. Keep this group small; the more complex the issue, the smaller the group should be. Also, consider that (often) you might not be part of this group: get the people in the room, communicate the problem, and then delegate. Offer your support, but get out of their way (seriously—leave the room if you’re not needed). Clearly identify who is in charge for driving this issue to resolution, whether it’s you or someone else.

5. Explore alternatives. After answering any questions and clarifying the situation, figure out what your options are. Sometimes this might take some research: delegate it out. Make sure it’s flagged as urgent if necessary; don’t ever assume people understand how urgent something is. Be as specific as possible in your expectation for when answers are needed.

6. Make the simplest plan. Weigh the options, pick the best choice, and make a simple plan. The best available choice is the best available choice, no matter how much it sucks (a crisis is not the time for idealism). The more urgent the issue, the simpler your plan. The bigger the hole you’re in, the more direct your path out of it should be. Break the plan into simple steps to make sure no one gets confused. Identify two lists of people: those whose approval you need for the plan, and those who need to be informed of the plan before it is executed. Go to the first group, present the plan, consider their feedback, and get their support. Then communicate that information to the second group.

7. Execute. Make it happen. Ensure whoever is doing the work was involved in the process and has an intimate understanding of why he’s doing it. There is no room for assumption or ambiguity. Have specific checkpoints (hourly, daily, weekly) to make sure the plan has the desired effect and to force you and others in power to consider any additional effort that needs to be spent on this issue. If new problems do arise, start over at step 1.

8. Debrief. After the fire is out, get the right people in the room and generate a list of lessons learned. (This group may be different from the right people in step 4 because you want to include people impacted by, but not involved in, the decision process.) Ask the question: “What can we do next time to avoid this?” The bigger the issue, the more answers you’ll have to this question. Prioritize the list. Consider who should be responsible for making sure each of the first few items happens.

Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management
-Scott Berkun

Confessions of a Public Speaker- recommended by Tyler Cowen

Tyler Cowen recommends:

Scott Berkun, Confessions of a Public Speaker. If you get only one good tip from this book, it's worth it.

Political Islam 101

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Juan Cole
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Mark Sanford

Engaging the Muslim World by Juan Cole Palgrave MacMillan, 282 pages, $26.95

Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi, Beacon Press, 308 pages, $25.95

Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright, Penguin Press, 464 pages, $26.95

What I'm reading

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

Kenneth Rogoff Interview, The Region

Making Great Decisions in Business and Life, David R. Henderson

Reading List on Middle East

Middle East Studies Greatest Hits

A Brief Economic History of the World

A course on economic history using Greg Clark's book- taught by Barry Eichengreen- The Mastery of Nature:A Brief Economic History of the World

The "text" for this course is Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton University Press, 2007). We will read a portion of Clark's book every week in order to understand how economic historians think about the big issues of growth, stagnation, development and underdevelopment in the very long run. This book will be supplemented by other readings. Students will be aware that there are two kinds of textbooks. First, those in which the author purportedly suppresses his personal opinions and provides a digest of "the facts" as they are understood by scholars. Second, those in which an opinionated author alerts his readers to unsettled controversies and prompts further reflection. Clark's book is the second sort. Students should not expect to find conventional wisdom and easy answers. But those who bear with it will be stimulated to think further.

Related;

The Industrious State

In conclusion, Gregory Clark has given us a provocative work. It is economic history, but it has strong implications for contemporary problems. His quantitative techniques for demonstrating such phenomena as the innumeracy of pre-industrial humanity and the evolution of the speed of information flows are clever. However, the contest between institutional accounts of economic performance and Clark's cultural explanation is probably best resolved through a synthesis. Clark's attempt at a winner-take-all for cultural Darwinism falls short.

To Do Lists Voyerism

Book event at Google on To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soulmate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us,



To-do List Blog

One Economics, Many Recipes

Crooked Timber is planning on doing a seminar on Rodrik's One Economics, Many Recipes

Related;
Solow et al. make my weekend
One economics or two?
Why I wrote a book
Dani Rodrik is a Liar

A Farewell to Alms-Why did the Industrial Revolution happen?

All our readers are encouraged to participate in the book forum on the book at Marginal Revolution.

Related Podcasts;
Interview with author
Interview at Princeton University Press

Bayesian Heresy’s Friday Book Club

I’m starting a new series- Fridays Book Club. Every week we would discuss a book on the blog- for the coming weeks it is The Prize by Daniel Yergin.

The prize for the most regular commentator on the blog over the course of a year is any book from the person’s wish list on Amazon (the price of the prize has to be less than 100 dollars).

The Rules- the person has to read at least 100 pages of the book assigned for the week- for the next week it is the first 100 pages of The Prize.


Related;
The Prize- Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Getting to Know Daniel Yergin

Commanding Heights: The World Bank Discussion

In Defense of Globalization

Fighting the Globalization Flu

Predicting the Future of Oil Prices

TCS Spotlight: Interview with Dan Yergin

Securing the Future: A Conversation with Daniel Yergin and Thane Gustafson

A discussion on the future of the oil market with Daniel Yergin

Alumni Profile: Daniel Yergin '68

Energy Security

A Survey of Oil, The Economist (listen to an interview with author)

Energy Links (World Bank)

Private Sector Participation in Energy

Blogs; The Oil Drum / Energy Roundup / The Energy Blog / Peak Energy