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BOOKS: “Translation: A Very Short Introduction” by Matthew Reynolds
Translation: A Very Short Introduction by Matthew ReynoldsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Site
Language translation is one of those tasks that people take for granted is a straightforward endeavor — especially in the current era in which computers are starting to do a decent job of it. It turns out that translation isn’t at all straightforward, and a number of tradeoffs must be addressed through the act of translating — e.g. should one try to convey the original author’s meaning as closely as possible or should one make the writing as approachable and comprehensible to the readership as possible? This might seem like a false dichotomy, but because languages never map perfectly to each other and reflect differing worldviews, there is always some degree of trade-off necessary.
Reynolds addresses not only cases from literature, but also shows the role that translation (and mistranslation) can play in the legal, political, and business domains as well. I found this book to be interesting and useful in providing food-for-thought on the subject. It is particularly illuminating in its discussion of how translation is changing in an era of AI, and how profound an effect this will have on our future. (e.g. People worry about the death of languages with small followings, but if automated translation becomes cheap and ubiquitous, will the pressure to focus one’s efforts on one of the world’s major languages remain?)
If you are interested in issues of language translation, this is a fine book with which to begin one’s exploration.
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PROMPT: Good Leader
What makes a good leader?
I don’t think I know, not really. But I don’t feel bad because I don’t think a lot of people who consider themselves experts do either. For example, one of the biggest cons in academia is that professors in business schools often get paid much more than their science and humanities counterparts on the presumption that they would go run businesses if they weren’t paid a higher salary than the others. Most of them would not. The idea that a thorough theoretical knowledge of the world of commerce and the operations of a corporation would translate into all the X-factors needed to head a company (e.g. charisma, risk-acceptance profile, creativity, and an internal emotional landscape that borders on [or is outright] psychopathic) seems laughable. If that’s the way the world worked a quartet of music professors would be outselling the Beatles and the ranks of Olympic gold medalists would be swollen with Kinesiology PhDs.
NOTE: I should explain the “psychopathy” crack. Many of us have quite enough angst from making decisions that seem to have the potential to ruin our own lives. Some can take a little more angst and are ok making decisions that might mess up not only their own lives, but also those of their children. It takes a special kind of reptilian-like nature (beneath the appearance of charm and polished interpersonal skills) to regularly make decisions that can screw up the lives of complete strangers by the hundreds or thousands.
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PROMPT: Brands
None whatsoever. I have no loyalty to a logo. If you want my business, you need to provide a product or service that I need at a price &/or quality better than the competitors — every single time.
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BOOK REVIEW: Artpreneur by Miriam Schulman
Artpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living from Your Creativity by Miriam SchulmanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: January 31, 2023
This book is about half pep talk on selling one’s art at a higher price and half guide to marketing and selling art. “Pep talk” isn’t meant to diminish what the book does. First of all, the author does offer extensive justification for higher pricing, both from the body of research and from anecdotal experiences. Secondly, this is a pep talk that needs to be delivered and is the most important function of the book, by far. That doesn’t mean the book doesn’t do a fine job with the marketing and selling bits, but there are so many books available on that subject.
The book is directed toward graphic artists, though some of book’s message is of relevance to musicians and poets as well. (Perhaps that’s why I found the pep talk part so important, because it’s broadly germane to artists, whereas sales are quite different for media where huge numbers of copies are made versus one-of-a-kind works.)
If you’re a struggling artist or would like to avoid being one, this book is worth reading.
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BOOK REVIEW: The Art of the Tale by Steven James & Tom Morrisey
The Art of the Tale: Engage Your Audience, Elevate Your Organization, and Share Your Message Through Storytelling by Steven JamesMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
This is a fine book on storytelling, storytelling with a focus on business presentations and speeches. That said, this is a topic for which the market is glutted. There are many books available about storytelling, and while this one doesn’t distinguish itself by being exceptionally bad, neither does it distinguish itself as exceptionally good. It’s a decent book on storytelling, and if you’re interested in stories for work presentations or speeches and haven’t read other books on the subject, you might as well try this one. However, if you’ve studied up on the subject, I wouldn’t expect to discover anything profound or novel in this book.
The book does focus on some subjects more than do others. One of my favorite parts was chapter 11, “Warts and All…,” because it addresses an issue that books tend to overlook or gloss over, and that’s how to deal with the skeletons in one’s closet (or in the company’s closet.) It offers an intriguing look at the dark side of Henry Ford.
One of the strengths of this book is that it summarizes key lessons and repeatedly revisits core concepts (e.g. the StoryCube, which is these authors’ outline for presenting the fundamental elements of a story.) The book’s greatest weakness is probably oversimplifications and banal statements, particularly given that the authors critique the simplifying statements of others. For example, they offer a criticism of the common distinction between plot- and character-driven literature that misses that there is something fundamentally different between Joyce’s “Ulysses” and “The Hunger Games” that is worth understanding, and – to the degree their criticism is true – much of this book could be similarly criticized as oversimplification or false dichotomization / categorization.
Reading this book helped me think about the subject of storytelling, particularly the non-written variety of story, but I can’t say there was anything groundbreaking or of unmatched profundity.
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BOOK REVIEW: Radium Girls by Cy
Radium Girls by Cy.My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Out: April 6, 2022
This is a graphic novel that tells the same story [based on actual events] as the similarly titled, but otherwise unrelated, popular book by Kate Moore. The “Radium Girls” were women who worked at watch factories, painting luminescent numbers on watch dials. Unfortunately, the luminescent material being used was radioactive, and the painting process that these women were taught involved touching paintbrushes to their lips between strokes, causing them to ingest minute amounts of it everyday, often over many years. In today’s world, a person who found themselves glowing in the dark from a job (without protective equipment) would know something was radically wrong, but this took place about a century ago and understanding of radioactivity was much less – though scientists clearly understood that precautions needed to be taken when working with radium.
This book captures the highs and lows of a small group of workers from one of the watch / clock factories involved, the one in Orange, New Jersey. Ultimately, this is a sad story of deteriorating health and premature death, but it also shows a relatively new phenomena of women holding jobs that allowed them to increase control their own destinies. By showing the women as they tasted the good life, the experience of the bottom falling out created a more visceral experience. The women did earn a good wage — not the kind of money that makes cancer worthwhile, but higher pay than the usual salary available to women of the day.
I thought the story was well told and touching. The art was in an interesting style – sure to be the cup of tea of some but not others – but nevertheless clearly conveying events of the story. I’d recommend this graphic novel for readers interested in the subject.
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BOOK REVIEW: The Documentary Filmmaking Master Class by Betsy Chasse
The Documentary Filmmaking Master Class: Tell Your Story from Concept to Distribution by Betsy Chasse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book focuses heavily on the business aspects of making a documentary – including legal, financial, and marketing issues [as opposed to the technical and creative aspects.] I suspect that makes it the perfect guide for many would-be filmmakers who learned the art and technique of filmmaking elsewhere, but who may be lacking insight into how to raise money, manage a team, and get the film seen by the right people – or just any people. On the other hand, if you’re expecting in-depth instruction on how to shoot or edit your film, this book doesn’t discuss those topics in great detail. [And would probably need many more graphics to do so. The author presents concepts like narrative arc and discusses interview questions, but that’s all conveyed readily by text.]
The book consists of 19 chapters arranged into seven sections. Section I is, quite logically, about what questions one should ask and answer before putting significant resources into a film. These are questions that one would logically expect a filmmaker to consider, but that could be overlooked in the heat of passion. For example, are there many films on the same subject (and, if so, did most of them flop?)
Section II discusses the business plan. Once one has preliminarily concluded it’s worth pursuing the project, the business plan involves outlining the project soup to nuts so that one isn’t making it up as one goes along, and running into the problems that improvising creates.
Section III explores various approaches to financing one’s project and what is required of each. There are chapters that compare and contrast investor funding, crowd funding, and grants and alternative funding, and which discuss what is needed for each. There is also a chapter about whether a sizzle reel is likely to be worthwhile. [A sizzle reel is somewhat similar to trailer, but cobbled together from existing footage.]
Section IV is about production. While I said this book is light on creative and technical material, it does address how to go about interviewing, and how to obtain b-roll, music, and other necessary material. Still, a lot of space is devoted to legal and human resources type issues. Section V is about post-production and is also a mix of technical and creative material related to assembling one’s film.
Like Section III, Section VI is one of the cornerstones of the book. It explains how to market one’s film and how to get it distributed. The pros and cons of being shown in a theater versus other platforms (e.g. streaming services, internet sites, etc.) is considered in detail. There is a lot of discussion of legalities and whether it is better to hire someone to handle these tasks or be involved with them oneself. The final section the conclusion.
There isn’t much in the way of ancillary matter in this book, though there are sample contracts and agreements where relevant, that – again – I imagine could be quite beneficial for those entering the field.
As a complete neophyte to the subject, I didn’t know what to expect. I did learn a lot of interesting information about the business and legal considerations involved in filmmaking. Chasse offers a great deal of insider insights. I don’t know how many surprises there would be for someone who’d gone to film school — or even for a dedicated autodidact, but there were certainly a lot of interesting tidbits for an outsider.
I’d highly recommend this book for someone who is interested in making a documentary, though if you haven’t spent a lot of time studying the technical and creative aspects (or at least making iPhone videos,) you’ll probably need to supplement this book with other information sources.
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BOOK REVIEW: Missing Link Discovered by P. Marer, Z. Buzady, and Z. Vecsey
Missing Link Discovered: Planting Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory into Management and Leadership Practice by using FLIGBY, the official Flow-Leadership Game by Paul Marer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
So, you’re a leader and you’ve experienced Flow. Self-criticism vanished. Time fell away. The task was challenging, but the performance felt effortless. Your attention was rapt, and any craving for distractions disappeared. Maybe you even had a spate of creativity. You come away feeling great. Clarity reigns. Maybe you found Flow at work, but maybe it was skiing, golfing, or composing haiku. Either way, after thinking about how to repeat the feat, your next thought is, “What could my business [or organization] achieve if my people were in this state of mind for even a fraction of each day?” Increased productivity? Decreased healthcare costs and / or disruptions from sick days? Maybe, you’d see fewer complaints between stressed co-workers, or coming from customers? Regardless, you know that Flow is elusive and fickle. It may seem that the harder you seek it, the less success you have. You pick up a couple of books on finding Flow—maybe you watch some TedTalks on YouTube–and they provide helpful tips for finding the state for yourself, but most don’t have much to say on facilitating Flow for others.
That’s where FLIGBY comes in, and “Missing Link Discovered” is a companion to FLIGBY. [Note- “FLIGBY” is short for “FLow is Good Business for You,” which ties it into the work of positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who both coined the term “Flow” and wrote a book entitled “Good Business” about both achieving Flow in the workplace and how some businesses succeed in the simultaneous pursuit of profit and virtue. Csikszentmihalyi was actively involved in the development of the FLIGBY game. The “missing link” referenced in the title is between leadership and Flow.] FLIGBY is an educational video game in which the player assumes the role of General Manager (GM) of a winery. The last GM was a hard-driving pursuer of profit who left the winery’s mission and values in a muddle and its employees stressed out and at each other’s throats. The player makes about 150 decisions over the course of the 23 scenes that map to a timeline of one’s first half a year as GM. While the player still has to consider the usual business objectives–such as profitability–to succeed one also has to help one’s employees find Flow. The game is used by both by professors of business education courses (e.g. in MBA programs) and by corporate trainers.
As this is a review of the book and not the FLIGBY game, I won’t talk too much more about it beyond this paragraph. However, I did have an opportunity to play the game and found it to be both educational and engrossing. The scenes are live-action, and the cast did a great job of creating the emotional tension necessary to make one feel a stake in the decisions. There’s a narrative arc that unfolds over the course of the game, and so it appeals to the way our brains best take in information. Of course, the game also pays attention to those factors that facilitate Flow, such as offering immediate feedback and an increasing challenge such that the difficulty rises with one’s skill.
I’ll now clarify what I mean by the book being “a companion” to the FLIGBY game. It’s not a game manual. [i.e. The nuts and bolts of how to navigate the game as well as general background information are provided within the game itself as well as through a series of digital appendices—a list of which is included in the book.] Rather, “Missing Link Discovered” is intended to bring readers up to speed in three areas relevant to the FLIGBY game. These areas are delineated by the book’s three parts. Part I (Ch. 1 – 3) introduces Flow and explains how its pursuit fits into the larger scheme of leadership responsibilities. It begins with an introduction to Flow and Csikszentmihalyi’s research, then links Flow and leadership, and—finally–describes the set of leadership skills used in the game.
The second part (Ch. 4 – 8) introduces the game, situates it in the context of serious games (those for which entertainment is a secondary concern), and discusses the topic of feedback in great detail (Note: feedback is a crucial issue because delayed or inadequate feedback is one of the major reasons that people have trouble achieving Flow–particularly in a workplace setting.) The last chapter in this section is a collection of captioned photos that charts the development of the game from the first meeting with Professor Csikszentmihalyi to the game’s use for both instruction and research.
While the first two parts of the book are relevant to all players, the last part is aimed at Professors, corporate trainers, and researchers. It consists of two chapters. Chapter 9 discusses such issues as where in an individual’s education or training the game should be situated, and how it should be presented. The last chapter (Ch. 10) is a bit different in that it opens up a discussion about the research potential offered by FLIGBY. Given the game’s widespread use in both academia and the corporate world, a great deal of data is collected that can be used anonymously by researchers to study interesting research questions (e.g. how players in differing demographics or job positions make decisions.)
The book offers a number of ancillary features that increase its usability and clarity. The first of these features are two single-page summaries that introduce readers to Flow and FLIGBY, respectively. Besides the aforementioned photo chapter, the book has many diagrams and other graphics to clarify concepts addressed in the text. The book is footnoted throughout, and provides a glossary of key terms. It should also be noted that there is an introduction by Professor Csikszentmihalyi in which he describes his involvement in the project and presents his thoughts on the value of FLIGBY.
I recommend this book, particularly for those who will be playing FLIGBY or who are in the process of determining whether FLIGBY is right for one’s students or employees. From corporate programs in mindfulness to interest in Flow-based leadership, all signs point to a workplace revolution in which there is a long overdue convergence of incentives and objectives between employees and employers. It’s been a long road from Henry Ford’s plan to make sure all employees could afford the cars the company made to the explosion of Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” program and others like it, but this revolution is picking up steam and if you’re unaware, you might want to look into it.
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BOOK REVIEW: Narconomics by Tom Wainwright
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Narconomics” is about how drug cartels are taking pages from the playbooks of big businesses like Walmart and Coca-cola. In cases like diversifying into new markets or deciding to collude with a competitor, this might not seem surprising. However, it may come as a shock to find out about the franchising and CSR (corporate social responsibility) practices of drug cartels. Other than being outside access to the justice system, and thus resorting to violence to achieve what contracts, mediators, and courts would do for other businesses, the drug business it turns out is very much a business.
Along the way a secondary story emerges that is just as interesting and even more important. It’s the story of how the drug war makes no sense from the standpoint of economic logic. Destroying fields in South America only makes for poorer farmers because their monopsonistic (i.e. single buyer) market pushes the cost of lost crops back onto them. And because raw product is such a tiny portion of retail price, their destruction has almost no effect on prices at the user end. Furthermore, as more US and European states legalize marijuana, it seems that this will have more of an effect at putting cartels out of business and ending their reign of violence than all the arms shipments and foreign aid for drug enforcement ever had.
The book consists of ten chapters, each of which addresses an area of business practices that have been taken up by the drug cartels. Chapter one is about supply chains, and in the case of cocaine there is a rather long one. The raw product is grown in South America and must be infiltrated into the US—usually through Mexico. (For a while there was a prominent Caribbean route, but it was shut down—at least for a while.) This is where we learn about how the cartels adapt to eradicated crops, as well as how the product is marked up at various stages of the operation.
Chapter 2 is about the decision to compete versus collude. We mostly read about the competition, because in a lawless market competition equals violence. However, over time cartels have been increasingly willing to agree on distribution of territory. Although, there are also clever means to compete unique to criminal enterprises, such as engaging in violence in someone else’s territory to cause the police to crack down there—thus making it harder for said opposition.
Chapter 3 is about human resources, and the different approaches used to handle problems in this domain. In the movies, a drug cartel employee who fouled up always gets a bullet to the brain, but it seems that this isn’t always the case—though it certainly happens. Different countries and regions have differing labor mobility. In some cases, there is no labor mobility. (i.e. if one has a gang’s symbols tattooed all over one’s body, one can’t interview with a rival gang and Aetna sure as hell isn’t going to hire you.)
Chapter 4 is about public relations and giving to the public. One doesn’t think about drug lords engaging in CSR, but in some cases they may be more consistent with it than mainstream businesses. The cartels face an ongoing risk of people informing on them, and at least some of those people can do so without their identities becoming known. Violence is often used to solve problems in this domain, but it can’t do it all. That’s why drug lords build churches and schools, and often become beloved in the process.
Chapter 5 explores “offshoring” in the drug world. This may seem strange, but drug cartels, too, chase low-cost labor. But it’s not just about lowering costs, it’s also about finding a suitable regulatory environment—which in the cartel’s case means a slack one. An interesting point is made that all the statistics on doing business are still relevant to the drug business, but often in reverse. That is, if Toyota is putting in a plant, it wants a place with low corruption, but if the Sinaloa want to put in a facility–the easier the bribery the better.
Chapter 6 describes how franchising has come to be applied to drug cartels—famously the Zetas. The franchiser provides such goods as better weaponry in exchange for a cut of profits. Of course, there’s always a difference in incentives between franchisers and franchisees when it comes to delimiting territory, and this doesn’t always work out as well for drug dealers as it does for McDonald’s franchisees.
While the bulk of the book focuses on cocaine and marijuana, Chapter 7 is different in that most of it deals with the wave of synthetic drugs that has popped up. The topic is innovating around regulation, and so it’s certainly apropos to look at these drugs. If you’re not familiar, there are many synthetic drugs that are usually sold as potpourri or the like. Once they’re outlawed, the formula is tweaked a little. In a way, these “legal highs” may be the most dangerous because no one knows what effect they’ll have when they put the out on the street.
In chapter 8 we learn that the drug world hasn’t missed the online retail phenomena. Using special web browsers, individuals are able to make transactions that are not so difficult to trace. In an intriguing twist, the online market may foster more trust and higher quality product than the conventional street corner seller ever did.
Chapter 9 examines how drug traffickers diversify—most notably into human trafficking. Exploiting their knowledge of how to get things across the border, they become “coyotes.”
The last chapter investigates the effect of legalization, and it focuses heavily upon the effects that Denver’s legalizing marijuana has had in Denver, in the rest of the country, and on the cartels. Wainwright paints a balanced picture that shows that not everything is perfect with legalization. E.g. he presents a couple of cases of people who ingested pot-laced food products intended for several servings, and did crazy stuff. However, the bottom line is that legalization (and the regulation and taxation that comes with it) seems to be the way to go if you want to really hurt the cartels and stem the tide of violence, as well as to reduce the number of people showing up at the ER having ingested some substance of unknown chemical composition.
There is an extensive conclusion, about the length of one of the chapters that delves into the many ways our approach to eliminating drug use is ill-advised and dangerous. This connects together a number of the key points made throughout the chapter.
I found this book fascinating. Wainwright does some excellent investigative reporting—at no minor risk to life and limb. If you’re interested in issues of business and economics, you’ll love this book. If you’re not into business and economics, you’ll find this book to be an intriguing and palatable way to take on those subjects.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 