Track my speech

You can take the Wisconsin boy out of Wisconsin but you can’t take Wisconsin out of the boy. This New York Times dialect quiz guesses which part of the country you’re from based on your preferences for certain words (e.g. “sneakers” vs. “tennis shoes” or “dinner” vs. “supper”).

It correctly shows I’m from the Midwest, but I think it gave too much credit to my answer on what you call the night before Halloween (I said “Devil’s Night”, which is only used in the Detroit area, and I know it only from watching the news. Other parts of the country have no word for that night).

I'm a Stimulator? or a Mover?

Top Brain, Bottom Brain by Kosslyn and Miller

I didn't like this book, but having taken the trouble to read it, I'll at least try to summarize what I learned. I put it on my pile due to the praise from my favorite thinker Steven Pinker, but it didn't live up to my unrealistic expectations. The basic idea, drawn from author Kosslyn's deep neurological expertise, is that human brains, complex as they are, can be usefully summarized as carrying two main functions: planning and perceiving. Obviously the functions are highly interactive, so resist the temptation to oversimplify, but neverthless, you can identify four "Cognitive Modes" based on which function is dominant (or not) in a particular situation.

	Highly-utilized Top	Minimally-utilized Top
Highly-utilized Bottom	Mover Mode	Perceiver Mode
Minimally-utilized Bottom	Stimulator Mode	Adaptor Mode

People who are prone to “Mover Mode” are good at planning and execution. Perceivers, on the other hand, don’t initiate complex plans but are good at putting perceptions into context to understand the implications.
Stimulators, while often creative and original, tend to shoot off in a direction without much forethought, sometimes at the expense of social harmony. Adaptors, by contrast, are easy-going and flexible, but can be frustratingly directionless.

The book goes into plenty of detail, much backed by neurology, and with multiple anecdotal examples of how this plays out in real life. Unfortunately, the examples seem contrived and un-researched (Sarah Palin is an example of a “Stimulator”, Michael Bloomberg is a “Mover”).

So which brain type am I? Well, there is a handy test in the book (and online here) but I had a hard time with many of the questions. Some just seemed irrelevant to me (e.g. "when you buy furniture.." or "clothes" -- something I rely on my wife for), but others, I just didn’t understand ("do you observe surfaces?” huh?).
Partly because the questions didn’t make sense, I took the test twice: the first time I scored “Stimulator”. But I tried again and this time I scored “Mover.”  So which am I really?  I guess I’ll need to use both top and bottom of my brain to figure that out.

If you’re really into neurology, you have to read anything by this author, but you’ll probably be as disappointed as I was. Shrug.

[book] Manage Your Day-to-Day

This is a short, easy-to-read, summary of tips for how to be more productive and more creative. The bottom line: focus.

Here are some of the specific tips worth remembering:

• Do your most creative work first thing in the day, before everything else.
• “Feel the frequency”: set up a routine, doing the same things at the same time.
• Defend your creative time against all interruptions: schedule it on the calendar and treat it seriously.
• It’s harder to see day-to-day progress on long, big (and hence worthwhile) projects, so invent metrics to enable self-tracking.

Two specific ways to break mental blocks:

• [Ray Bradbury]: make a list of random word pairs, then force yourself to piece together a story about them.
• [Edward de Bono] Repetition is the enemy of insight. Take a starting point that has nothing to do with your project and work from there.

Most of these tips are found elsewhere, so I didn’t think this was a breakthrough book, but it’s a readable and inspiring.

[book] How Asia Works by Joe Studwell

Long-time journalist Joe Studwell (The Economist, Far East Economic Review, etc.) and now "mid-career PhD at Cambridge University” (what I’d love to do!) has thought about Asia for decades and concluded that three “interventions” are behind the successful Asian economies:

1. First, maximize output from agriculture
2. Next, direct all investment and entrepreneurs toward manufacturing
3. Meanwhile, tame the financial sector to focus capital on intensive small-scale agriculture and on manufacturing development

Using examples from Japan, Korea, Taiwan to prove his point, and counter-examples from Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia, he shows in detail how government policies built on land reform helped struggling poor countries develop economies built on full employment through agriculture and the “garden-level” productivity that comes when people do everything by hand, without machines.  Countries without land equality couldn’t breed the light manufacturing that comes from the demand created by farmland product surpluses.

With rising surpluses from agriculture, successful governments targeted industry, but with an important caveat: only if the products were competitive internationally. This way, even if your officials are corrupt (inevitable), their money has to come from success in other countries. Selling natural resources breeds corruption because the gains all go to whoever controls the resources; in export-based manufacturing, corruption is useless unless a developed economy buys your stuff.

All the while, successful economies tame the banks to ensure their interests are aligned with both agriculture and industry.

One interesting aside that got my attention is how little education matters:

• 55% of Taiwanese were illiterate at the end of WW2 and 45% remained in 1960.
• S Korea literacy in 1960 was lower than 2010 Ethiopia
• Meanwhile, Philippines has the highest university-educated students in SE Asia and places like Cuba have some of the highest literacy and university engineering grads in the world.

So far so good, and I liked his overall analysis.

But generally I found him overusing the term “market failure” and underusing the equivalent danger “government failure” (aka public choice). Like the similar analysis I didn’t like from Martin Jacques, I have the following thoughts:

• His argument would be more persuasive if he analyzed all countries that apply his formula. He touches on India, but what about Africa, southern and eastern Europe, South America, etc.? (Note that he deliberately excuses Singapore and Hong Kong from his analysis because they don’t fit his thesis).
• Culture plays a role, perhaps the biggest role. Japanese or Koreans would have been successful under a lot of different development models. They are driven people, with a deep level of pragmatism that you can’t ignore. There is a contrast between these people and other cultures. There just is.
• State-directed capitalism, of the form this author likes (i.e. “not driven by free market ideology”), may be good at helping your country win in a basic industry (steel or cars). You know the road map, you know how to measure success.
• Japan, the example I know best, has plenty of successes that were not driven by the state. Honda and Sony are the classic brands that thrived in spite of government inattention.
• Predictability and stability are good attributes for the state, and here again Korea and Japan and Taiwan have some advantages. Governments can change, but the overall sense of drive is hard to kick out (it’s that culture again)

I have much more to say about this (check out this review by John Williamson, the man who coined the term “Washington Consensus” that Studwell pans) but overall I thought the book was well-written but with much to dispute.

 

[book] Last Days of the Inca

Having just attended the excellent Peru exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, I was inspired to finally read this highly-recommended book detailing the Spanish conquest. If you've read the opening chapter of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, you already know the story: How on earth did an invading army of only 168 Spaniards defeat an army of 80,000 warriors who were defending on their home turf an empire of ten million people? The invaders had no knowledge of local geography or food supplies and no backup force. How did they do it?

Francisco Pizarro was a poor, rural Spaniard who arrived in the New World only a few years after Columbus’ initial landing, but by 1513 was together with Balboa at the first European sighting of the Pacific Ocean. After hearing of Cortez’ conquest of Mexico in the 1520’s, Pizarro teamed up with Diego de Amalgro to form a company intent on finding another empire. After one failed trip south, they made a more successful visit to the village of Tumbez, where they found natives who seemed to have access to lots of gold and silver trinkets – an incentive for the Spaniards to keep trying. Pizarro traded with these natives for two young boys, who he sent to Spain to learn Spanish and become interpreters for his next voyage.

The big expedition happened in 1531, with168 Spanish recruits (most of whom had never been soldiers before), 100 horses, and an assembly of others including African slaves, "merchants" (?), and women servants. Almagro stayed behind to raise more money and troops while Pizarro took the force into the heart of the Inca empire.

To make a long story short, Pizarro and his men overcame the odds through repeated use of trickery (to kidnap and kill the reigning emperor), and careful “divide-and-conquer” techniques (appointing a puppet emperor). But the Spaniards got carried away, and soon the “puppet”, Manco Inca, led a full-scale backlash that almost restored the Inca empire.

But the Inca suffered from two fatal errors in their counter-attacks: the first was, in their illiteracy, to miscalculate the importance of writing, thinking that captured, valuable documents would “send a message” if handed over, covered in blood, to besieged Spaniards, when in fact they carried valuable intelligence that saved the day. The second mistake was their habit, in battles, of sending the most important, most seasoned general to lead the charge, thinking that would be a symbol of bravery to the hesitant troops following him when in fact it merely demonstrated his irreplaceability when he inevitably was killed.

Reading this with modern eyes, I can’t help think how awful were these European invaders, who committed so many atrocities, against the natives and against themselves. Ultimately nearly all the key Spanish leaders were killed in various civil wars amongst themselves; Francisco Pizarro himself was assassinated by disillusioned supporters of his former business partner.

Still, the defending Incas were no saints either, themselves guilty of unspeakable cruelties against those who resisted their own conquests, just ninety years before the Europeans arrived. Ultimately, history proceeds in many, sometimes ugly directions and it’s pointless to guess what might have happened. But maybe there is a lesson in here about the value of bravery, of hutzpah, in the face of seemingly ridiculous odds and how that can make all the difference between being a conqueror and the conquered.

The real reason for the 40-hour work week

Why do Americans work Monday through Friday and take weekends off?

Labor unions say we should thank the rise of organized labor in the early 20th century, whose tireless efforts on behalf of workers forced selfish capitalists to give their employees a break.

Henry Ford, in an article published in World’s Work Magazine in 1926, says his company switched from 6-day/48 hours to the modern work week in order to give workers a break. Many people still quote Ford as the visionary who paid his workers extra so they could afford to buy his cars. [see this excellent account from Ooomf, reprinted at TNW]

But I have a much simpler explanation: Henry Ford paid his workers more, and gave them weekends off because he didn’t want them to work for his competitors.

Google gives its employees free food. Will future labor historians look back and thank the visionary Google management for putting people above profits? Or is it just a clever way to keep employees longer at the office? If you have free food at the office, why go on a networking lunch with somebody from outside?

Most employers really do care that their employees have relaxing leisure time, but even if they didn’t, a 40 hour work week is a good idea if for no other reason than to raise the stakes for your competitors.

Doug Lemov’s Tips for Teachers

A few notes from Econtalk’s interview with Doug Lemov, founder of Uncommon Schools, who gives several practical tips on how to be a better teacher.Since we all find ourselves “teaching” sometimes, I’d like to see these tips applied more to business presentations too:

• "At bats": Like baseball batters, who practice over and over, make sure your audience applies your instructions over and over, not just until they get it correct once or twice.
• How deeply you know something is more important for getting to the next level than whether you “know it” or not. You must review, practice until something becomes intuitive, not just till you pass a test
• e.g. You learn vocabulary words by understanding the distinctions with synonyms, not just the meanings
• "cold calling": the teacher tells everyone in the classroom to prepare the answer, then asks one student at random
• students know they are on call the entire lecture, so they have to pay attention
• If the person called says "I don't know", you follow up with more questions till they get it.
• "Call and response": Turn your questions into a game a al Rock Paper Scissors. Everyone answers the question at once (e.g. by raising a number of fingers signifying their answer to a multiple choice question)
• Now you know how many in your class really understood -- and you can adjust accordingly
• Technology can help too if everyone answers a quiz on their smart phone.

These and dozens of other practical tips are available in Lemov’s book Teach Like a Champion. Definitely worth checking out.