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Apr. 8th, 2004
Its been several years now since I have had staff reporting to me. In fact, since IBM bought LGS. Since I am now self-employed I may never have staff reporting to me again. I miss it in many ways as I think I was a pretty good mentor, trainer and coach. At least my boss and my staff said so and in my AT Kearney days people used to try pretty hard to get onto my projects. I still follow the progress of my former proteges with considerable interest and I still haven't (and likely never will) forgive IBM for callously destroying a very effective team that I had put much effort into building.
Anyway, the point of that long self-laudatory preamble was to put in context the news that one of my former team at LGS has just landed a pretty good job after a period out of work. I spent half an hour yesterday on the phone with the executive search guy who was doing the usual reference check (thoroughly and perceptively at that) and the offer must have come immediately after so I guess I said the right things.
Anyway, the point of that long self-laudatory preamble was to put in context the news that one of my former team at LGS has just landed a pretty good job after a period out of work. I spent half an hour yesterday on the phone with the executive search guy who was doing the usual reference check (thoroughly and perceptively at that) and the offer must have come immediately after so I guess I said the right things.
Ten influential books
Apr. 8th, 2004 11:43 amI like this meme. From ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rahael, my top ten influential books:
Plato - The Republic
This has influenced my thinking on a variety of levels and on a number of issues. The most practical example would lie in using insights from The Cave to understand modes of perception and how people react to information in organizational settings.
Sartre - The Roads to Freedom
First read at age fifteen or so (I think The Age of Reason was a fifth form history prize) and at intervals ever since, it helped form my idea of ‘commitment’ in the political sense. At an early age I identified much more strongly with Brunet than with Matthieu Delarue.
Wilfred Owen - Collected Poems
First read for ‘O’ level, they have been a constant companion ever since. Nothing else expresses so well the triumph of the human soul under appalling conditions.
Hill - The World Turned Upside Down and Thompson - The Making of the English Working Class
I learned so much from these two books. I learned how deep and how continuous the English radical tradition is. I learned that contrary to Tory mythology, socialism is not an alien creed. I also learned to understand that historical processes and events are rooted in the particular history and collective experiences of the people who participate in them. Theory can help illuminate those events but it is not a substitute for seeking to understand the mentalities and motivations of the participants. The English Revolution wasn’t some sort of premature, bastardized version of the French Revolution despite the pulings of wannabee-French pseudo historians like Anderson and Nairn. To be English and a socialist was to be rooted in perhaps the richest of all radical traditions.
Mostow, Sampson, Meyer - Fundamental Structures of Algebra
Pivotal, for me, in making the transition from the pseudo mathematics of school, ‘A’ levels and engineers to the real thing. At some point in my first year at Durham I reached a sufficient level of enlightenment to realize that I was a real mathematician, if not destined to be a great one. The window opened on to a world of beauty that transcended the ‘wrangler’ type skills of earlier studies.
Walter Strachan - The Artist and the Book in France
I knew Strachan when he was very old and I was barely in my teens. His collection of livres d’artiste and his passion for them lay dormant for a couple of decades before finally becoming an obsession for me too. I still have a couple of small prints (Christmas cards actually) that I acquired from him.
Gareth Morgan - Images of Organization
One of the few truly brilliant books on management. It has profoundly influenced my views on organization design and change management and hence my professional practice. Plus, Gareth is a really neat person!
Modris Ecksteins - Rites of Spring
Modernism, Stravinsky, Joyce and WW1. The world changed utterly in the first two decades of the 20th century. Ecksteins, better than anyone, shows how.
Roger Penrose - The Emperor’s New Mind
Quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence and the nature of ‘truth’. This book connects the dots on several of my obsessions; uncertainty, mathematical elegance, artificial intelligence and more.
The one author who should be here but isn’t because I can’t find one single book that captures what he means to me is Marc Bloch. Perhaps Strange Defeat would come closest but it is too untypical to make the top ten.
rahael, my top ten influential books:Plato - The Republic
This has influenced my thinking on a variety of levels and on a number of issues. The most practical example would lie in using insights from The Cave to understand modes of perception and how people react to information in organizational settings.
Sartre - The Roads to Freedom
First read at age fifteen or so (I think The Age of Reason was a fifth form history prize) and at intervals ever since, it helped form my idea of ‘commitment’ in the political sense. At an early age I identified much more strongly with Brunet than with Matthieu Delarue.
Wilfred Owen - Collected Poems
First read for ‘O’ level, they have been a constant companion ever since. Nothing else expresses so well the triumph of the human soul under appalling conditions.
Hill - The World Turned Upside Down and Thompson - The Making of the English Working Class
I learned so much from these two books. I learned how deep and how continuous the English radical tradition is. I learned that contrary to Tory mythology, socialism is not an alien creed. I also learned to understand that historical processes and events are rooted in the particular history and collective experiences of the people who participate in them. Theory can help illuminate those events but it is not a substitute for seeking to understand the mentalities and motivations of the participants. The English Revolution wasn’t some sort of premature, bastardized version of the French Revolution despite the pulings of wannabee-French pseudo historians like Anderson and Nairn. To be English and a socialist was to be rooted in perhaps the richest of all radical traditions.
Mostow, Sampson, Meyer - Fundamental Structures of Algebra
Pivotal, for me, in making the transition from the pseudo mathematics of school, ‘A’ levels and engineers to the real thing. At some point in my first year at Durham I reached a sufficient level of enlightenment to realize that I was a real mathematician, if not destined to be a great one. The window opened on to a world of beauty that transcended the ‘wrangler’ type skills of earlier studies.
Walter Strachan - The Artist and the Book in France
I knew Strachan when he was very old and I was barely in my teens. His collection of livres d’artiste and his passion for them lay dormant for a couple of decades before finally becoming an obsession for me too. I still have a couple of small prints (Christmas cards actually) that I acquired from him.
Gareth Morgan - Images of Organization
One of the few truly brilliant books on management. It has profoundly influenced my views on organization design and change management and hence my professional practice. Plus, Gareth is a really neat person!
Modris Ecksteins - Rites of Spring
Modernism, Stravinsky, Joyce and WW1. The world changed utterly in the first two decades of the 20th century. Ecksteins, better than anyone, shows how.
Roger Penrose - The Emperor’s New Mind
Quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence and the nature of ‘truth’. This book connects the dots on several of my obsessions; uncertainty, mathematical elegance, artificial intelligence and more.
The one author who should be here but isn’t because I can’t find one single book that captures what he means to me is Marc Bloch. Perhaps Strange Defeat would come closest but it is too untypical to make the top ten.
Real cinematography
Apr. 8th, 2004 07:39 pmJust spent half an hour watching the first part of Lawrence of Arabia in the new Superbit transfer. First thought, this Superbit thing works. Its a kick ass HD quality picture (bar a few motion artefacts in the opening scene) and the DTS soundtrack is spectacular. This is technically probably the best DVD I have watched.
More importantly, this movie has cinematography for adults. The director and cinematographer do us the favour of assuming we have an attention span that isn't measured in pico-seconds and are prepared to hold a shot, and a long one at that, for several seconds. Its such a contrast with the cut cut cut cut, camera up your nose style that Jackson used in LOTR and which made LOTR pretty much unwatchable for me.
More importantly, this movie has cinematography for adults. The director and cinematographer do us the favour of assuming we have an attention span that isn't measured in pico-seconds and are prepared to hold a shot, and a long one at that, for several seconds. Its such a contrast with the cut cut cut cut, camera up your nose style that Jackson used in LOTR and which made LOTR pretty much unwatchable for me.