Barbarians at the Gate—Brian Burroughs

Details the LBO of RJR Nabisco and what quickly became a 25 billion dollar clusterfuck. Reading these books is always surreal–like American Psycho without the irony. The best part, to me anyway, is after reading about how these guys acted and treated people with their “big swinging dick” mentality is looking at pictures. Most of them look like complete douchebags–old, oofy men unaware of their lameness. Which just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how many Gucci suits you buy or how many war analogies you apply to your business, in the end meaning can not be manufactured. None of them really accomplished anything. What mark is it on history that you tore apart a company and put it back together for some fees? No question, LBOs did a lot to shake up and reinvigorate archaic companies (media definitely could use this). Most of the guys that did it though, were just fancy used car salesmen.

All Marketers are Liars—Seth Godin

A quick read, but good. Says that people don’t buy what they need anymore–we have pretty much everything necessarily for survival–and that the future is providing things that tell a story. A marketer is the person that transforms a product into an authentic lie (contradiction on purpose) that provides the customer something to live through or by. Tucker is a master at this: Is he selling funny anecdotes or is it all a story about living Thompson’s “myth and legend”?

Cesar’s Way—Cesar Millan

Trying to train my puppy. The show is awesome and so is the book. It doesn’t matter if you have a dog or not, learning to be calm-assertive is something we all can work on.

Free Prize Inside—Seth Godin

The follow-up to Purple Cow. This is my fourth or fifth Godin book. There is a section in the middle called “A Passel of Tactics” that is an applicable version of the 48 Laws. It tells you how to work within a system to create change. He says rightfully that a great idea is never enough. You’re better set having a good idea with leverage. You should read it just for the tactics section. I think you can find it for free online.

The Four Hour Work Week—Tim Ferriss

I started rereading it for my post on Tim’s blog. Totally forgot he liked Seneca.

Academic Papers/Misc

Evolution of Human Bipedalism: A Hypothesis About Where It Happened—LP La Lumiere

A short, 6 page paper about Aquatic Ape Theory. The idea is that a some point in evolutionary history a group of apes were stranded on an island and forced into the ocean for survival. This is where we developed bipedalism (walking on two legs), our affinity for Omega-3, relative hairlessness and ability to swim. This author thinks it happened near the coast of Africa where the Danakil Alps were mostly submerged by the rising sea. The whole idea seems fascinating to me and I’m trying to read as much as I can on it. If anyone has anything good, please send it.

The Commanding Heights: Battle for the World Economy—PBS ( 6 hr, DVD Boxset)

I should probably do a post on this but if I don’t, watch the DVD. The first disc is about the battle of ideas in economics–Hayek vs Keynes, Chicago School of Economics vs the rest of the academic world. The second disc is about the turmoil of reform, after Milton Friedman won the battle, after the Soviet Union collapsed. And then the last one is called the Rules of the Game and it’s about how to succeed on this new frontier. If anything, get the first disc on Netflix just for its history of the world economy from the Industrial Revolution forward.

I came across this while doing research for the music project I talked about before.

Top Band Sites According to Alexa

1. Emusic.com

2. Iron Maiden

3. Nightwish

4. Backstreets.com (Bruce Springsteen)

5. Linkin Park

Alexa is no gospel, but from any context, the rankings are shocking. Iron Maiden shouldn’t be anywhere on that list. They haven’t had a platinum album in the United States in over 19 years. You never hear them on the radio and outside their core audience, most people think they’re a joke. Nightwish? Using conventional logic, their position is almost unexplainable.

So how is Iron Maiden on the list? How do they have a 7,000 Alexa Rank when Eminem and Fergie are at 75,000 and 20,000 respectively? For one, there is clearly a large demographic that is not being served by traditional radio and pop-culture. And when the distribution walls no longer exist–as they don’t online–the habits and tastes of consumers radically change. What Hollywood and mass-media does is create a round hole that makes it impossible for square pegs to go through. Then as gatekeepers, they can shape and control what constitutes a successful artist. All of that is artificial and relies on what Godin calls the 3 legged stool of the FCC, strict copyrighting, and limited retail outlets. The internet gets rid of all three–a massive power vacuum…

And mostly, I think it has a lot to do with this:

“There is an unspoken contract between the band and the audience. If you’re David Bowie and your fans want you to change every album then thats his style. With Maiden, that’s not our style, fans like us to play something thats identifiable; they want to see nuances of change but they’re happy with Maiden. Maiden’s music appeals to a certain person and in every generation theres a certain amount of those people born, thats why Maidens appeal is finite in terms of the number of records we sell in the short term.”

Bruce Dickinson

Followup to: Being Free from Perturbation Pt. 1, Pt. 2 and Pt. 3

If you can’t accept doing things differently, you’ve got a shitty ride ahead of you. Apart from the radical changes we face in business, the way we live our lives is going to change as well. Think of the medical advances that every day extend people’s lives, think simply of the population increases and how that will redefine our notions of comfort, status and home. As control of the commanding heights of the world economy leaves the hands of the state, what of our notions of hierarchy and structure? There are still people alive today that were born in the 1800’s–there were Americans living in holes then.

A while back I worked with a friend on a paper and I was enraged by their work style (not to be confused with ethic). In school, or when I have deadlines, I almost always finish the night before it’s due. If I had a test at 3pm on Friday, I’d have finished studying by the time I went to bed on Thursday. I can’t possibly conceive the stress that goes along with doing it any other way. That’s just how I am.

And so I heard them say “Oh, I have a few hours to work on it in the morning before my other class” I was appalled. “How can you live like that?” But then I saw the paper after it was done and I was genuinely impressed (and not just because I wrote most of it). Clearly, my attitude is the one that is unhealthy. I react like that all the time. Who am I to say that any one way is better than another? And more importantly, why do I care? It shouldn’t affect me either way. But it does; I am incapacitated by it. That has to change.

So how free are you really? You can’t be free from perturbation and still be enslaved to control. You’re clutching at fucking sand–sand that will inevitably slip from your fingers just like your sanity. That’s what I do and if you’ve yet to experience it, I hope you never join that hell. It pushes you away from people you have nothing but love for and it makes it nearly impossible for you to keep your mouth shut.

We (I) can sit here and criticize slow moving behemoths, out of touch idiots and people who will be justifiably out of a job in the near, near future, but it will make no difference if we don’t actively prepare to face the same pressures ourselves. Just a few years ago Google didn’t exist, the record industry was at massive highs, cell phones were for adults only, and we hadn’t been marred by a foreign attacker on our own soil since the 40’s. The profundity of those changes is so massive that we’ve yet begun to try and make sense of them. And what things like Moore’s Law or the Law of Disruption tell us is that such momentum is exponential. The cycle gets faster and then it gets faster and faster, faster, faster, faster. If you thought today was chaotic, wait for tomorrow. Our future will be one of constant adaptation and of coming to terms with change.

But forget business–and let go of the megalomaniacal hubris that is thinking you can bend the world to accept your demands instead of the other way around–you cannot be happy this way. Freedom from perturbation is the state in which neither your actions nor the actions of others dislodge your from your center. Your peace, ironically, is guarded best by everything but the effort to protect it. There is that saying about catching more with an open hand than a closed fist…

If you can’t accept new systems, understand alternative means of action or the imposition of different cultural norms, all you’ll ever be is angry. “Why can’t it just be easier?” “But my way makes so much more sense!” So the fuck what. This is what Aurelius called “silently weeping over the chains that bind us,” except for in this case, they are illusory. They only exist so long as you let them. So we might not be built for the age that is upon us, but then again, we weren’t really built for anything but walking around in groups 150 on the plains of Africa (or the ocean, perhaps). If you want to be among that happy minority, of whom held the same characteristics 1,000 years ago as they should now, I think the key is transcendence–controlling the center not through tightness but extreme looseness. So, Phew. Breathe. Let it go. Accept the change. And move on.