Yossarian Lives !

Top 500 Music List ..

2005-01-01T19:29:00.000-05:00

The rolling stones magazine released this list . Bob Dylan is # 1 - Ironically with the song ' like a Rolling stone' !

Unbounded Rationality?

2005-01-01T19:13:00.000-05:00

Atanu Dey sums up in this article the frustration that a lot of developmental economics and multilateral agencies have for the 'Silent deaths' that go unnoticed throughout the world every single day - This para really interested me

" Why? Bounded rationality? Or as I see it, unbounded stupidity. Fifty-thousand dying each and every day is not news. Being essentially innumerates, we do not find statistics very useful. What we need is pictures of great devastation for entertainment and distraction. The pictures of tsunami-ravaged coastlines compel our attention unlike the numbers we read in the annual reports of global institutions such as the World Bank."

I suppose its the instant and visual gratification that human beings have been become used to. If you look at the Abu Ghraib scandal - People were flagging this for a long time - but someone's digital camera was needed to tell the world. Similarly - somehow we need to get this into the Mindspace and attention span of the world population..

Book Buying Binge

2005-01-01T18:55:00.000-05:00

Bought some interesting stuff on Amazon - Become a big fan of Technorati's reccomendations, so thought I would try something out from their top 100.

Was gifted a book called the 'Feast of the Goat' by Mario Vargas Llosa and have been buying up his stuff after I read that one. The War of the end of the world is the one i picked from Amazon recently. Another one by him is 'The Time of the Hero'

Then two other eclectic ones - The Naked Ape : A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal by Desmond Morris and The Palace of Desire (Cairo Trilogy II) by Naguib Mahfouz.

Still haven't started any of them - hope to do a book reading binge soon..

Catch 22......... and this first post..

2005-01-01T18:42:00.000-05:00

Would probably be one of my top favourite books ever. Yossarian probably has to one of the most negative anti heroes ever. Joseph Heller has written some other stuff like Something Happened (1974), Good As Gold (1979) ,God Knows (1984) , Closing Time (1994) etc - but nothing compares to Catch22

The reason (apart from the obvious fact that you don't get easy names on blogger nowadays) I chose this name - was cos - Crazy Orr was the dude who actually made Yossarian and Doc Daneeka coin the term - 'There is only one catch - the catch 22'

Hope this makes for interesting reading ...