Not as good as the first, as it was a bit draggy as Capt. Laurence and Temeraire take a slow boat to China (literally). A Chinese embassy has come to England to demand the return of their Celestial Dragon (= Temeraire), claiming he was stolen and shouldn’t be subjected to such indignities as having a companion not of the Imperial Family. Britain doesn’t want to offend China so off they go.

Things pick up speed when they finally arrive in China. I was kept wondering all the while how in the world they would overcome the multiple objections to returning Temeraire to Laurence’s keeping, but Novik manages to tie everything up in the end. Also interesting was the description of how different cultures treat dragons – in China, where they are common, the cities are built to accommodate them too and they apparently receive wages and are free to roam around and buy what they want. Also they have to study(!) and take exams, just like scholars.

Anyway, this book’s not bad, quite a good read once the eventful yet tedious ocean voyage is over. I’m looking forward to the third.

A fantasy novel with an interesting twist: it is the time of Britain’s war against Napoleonic France, but the battles take place with an additional dimension: aerial, with the introduction of dragons as essential tools of war. Yes, dragons exist, and though they are rare enough and fierce enough to be feared, their presence has seeped into popular culture (a mural by Michelangelo depicts dragons devouring sinners in Hell).

Quite apart from the interesting battles (which are kinda a cross between 19th century naval tactics and WWI dogfights), the backbone of the story is the budding relationship between Captain William Laurence, a captain in the British Navy, and Temeraire, the dragon that emerges from the egg Laurence captures in a battle with a French frigate. Both characters are immensely likeable and their story carries you easily through the book. I really really wanted to know what happened. Highly recommended.

When I read novels set in the 18th and 19th century I’d always wonder why all these ladies seemed to swoon at the slightest disturbance and need to carry smelling salts all the time. I used to think it was maybe their tight corsets, but actually it’s probably a cultural thing – they knew they were “expected” to swoon at bad news so they did. Just like you sometimes read about contagious fainting fits and all that in some countries – if it’s the culturally expected thing to do, that’s what people will do, almost subconsciously. The fact that the mind can so influence the body is the topic explored in this book.

Well, to be more precise, the history of the idea that the mind can influence the body is what’s explored in this book. It’s not a book that will tell you whether mind-body medicine really works, it’s more of a cultural history. I would like to know a bit more about current double-blind clinical studies exploring whether psychosomatic medicine really works, but I guess there aren’t a whole lot of those. In any case, the histories provided in this book are a good kicking-off point for exploring this controversial world and both lend some credence and some disbelief to the theories.

Harrington splits the book up into six themes. The first theme is the “Power of Suggestion” – hypnotism and all that – which she directly traces back to Catholic exorcism practices (but it actually goes back further: many cultures have possession beliefs and exorcism rites).

The second theme is “The Body That Speaks” – the idea that if you suppress traumas emotionally, the body will express them anyway through physical means (very Freudian).

The third theme is “The Power of Positive Thinking” – quite a recent phenomenon, but then if you connect it to the power of faith, then it becomes something quite old (miracles, Lourdes, etc). And then there’s all the research on the placebo effect that surprisingly shows that there is something to the theory that if you believe your medicine can cure you, it might – for certain classes of illnesses, including pain.

The fourth is “Broken by Modern Life” – the very modern, engineering-based theory that stress will wear your body out. Buttressed by scientific research on the “Type A personality” and the “fight vs flight response”, this is still widely held today.

The fifth and sixth themes are more “healing themes”. The fifth is “healing ties” – the theory that people who live in strong communities live healthier. The sixth is “eastward journeys” – the increasing popularity of alternative medicines and medical practices such as meditation, imported from the east.

One thing that is striking as Harrington traces these themes is how well they cleave to the dominant preoccupations of the times. Since the mind is influenced by culture, the mind-body connection must be mediated by culture too. These movements rise and fall in accordance to culture-wide changes in thinking (e.g. from religious towards scientific). Growing anxiety, particularly after the two world wars, also contributed to the “broken by modern life” theory.

In her conclusion Harrington briefly treats with whether these things really work. It’s clear that she wishes for it to be: she cites several pieces of historical evidence that would seem inexplicable by medicine alone. The most harrowing one is the story of two hundred cases of blindness among Cambodian women who were forced to witness the torture and murder of their loved ones. Their blindness had no physical basis, but was caused by their having “cried until they could not see”. But ultimately the physical reality of the mind-body connection is not the preoccupation of this book. Rather, it is the storied world of mind-body medicine that is explored, effectively and in an interesting way.

Excellent mix of theory and practicality. Much like Colin Ware’s textbook Information Visualization, but with a view to explaining the practical applications of all the research that’s been done on how the visual system perceives objects in the world and how to design best for a that visual system. Not so much in terms of aesthetics but how best to organise information so it can be taken in fluently and understandably. Recommended.

Nice collection of “deceptive art” – sometimes topologically impossible art, but also instances of 2- or even 3-in-1 paintings, etc. A lot of fun trying to spot exactly what’s weird about the painting!

This is a column of well-known Chinese writer Xinran’s columns in the Guardian, talking about Chinese culture and the interface between China and the West. Quite a lively and interesting collection.

Some interesting snippets:

“I read a joke in a newspaper when I was in China last week. An 11-year-old boy asks his father: ‘Dad, where did I come from?’ ‘Your mother and I picked you up from a very special street,’ his father tells him in a serious voice.

“Then the boy goes to his grandfather. ‘Grandpa, where did my father come from?’ he asks.

”’God knows your grandmother and I love children, so he sent an eagle to drop your father, your uncles and your aunt in front of our door, one by one, at different times.’
...
“A week later, the father checks his son’s homework, which is about his family history: ‘It is very strange what happened in my family; I don’t know why, but the previous two generations had no sex at all.’”

“It began at Heathrow airport. After queuing for a long time at customs, we spent more than half an hour learning how to start being ‘an independent Chinese, needing no foreigner’s help’ just to find the right exist. ‘How do we get out of this airport?’ ‘Way out.’ What does that mean? Finally, we got in a taxi. ‘Where are you going, darling?’ the driver asked. Oh, my God, we had found a sexual hooligan! We looked at each other fearfully, because in China only your husband or sexual hooligans use the word ‘darling’. ‘Hollow,’ we answered coldly. We thought we had said Harrow, short for Harrow Road. In China you don’t need to add ‘road’, you just use the name of the road by itself. ‘Hollow.’

”’Hollow to you too, you beautiful ladies!’ replied the cab driver. ‘Where are you going? Have you got a piece of paper with the address?’...

”’Dress?’ my friend said to me in Chinese. ‘I know what this English word means, but why is he asking about our clothes? I think we have met a bad man, we should get out of this taxi.’”

Hilarious anecdotes, some of them, and thoughtful, reflective ones too. I also liked her series of articles on the differences between Chinese and Western art. Overall an excellent collection for dipping into.

A quite engaging book about three very different men who have monopolised the casino industry in the United States.

• Steve Wynn (Wynn), the prime architect of Las Vegas’ resurrection from seedy gambling dens to the new entertainment capital of the United States. Energetic and creative as he personally designs every detail of his properties.
• Kirk Kerkorian (MGM), who doesn’t seem to put in many ideas into the industry personally (he doesn’t run his own properties and often hasn’t stepped into them) but is extremely canny in seeing when to pounce on companies at their most vulnerable, including Steve Wynn’s.
• Gary Loveman (Harrah’s), the oddest in the bunch. A Harvard economist who used lessons from large retail operations to transform Harrah’s operations. He introduced the “Total Rewards card”, which gave him enough information on people’s gambling habits that, combined with the power of statistical modelling, allows them to maximise value out of every gambler.

I was most interested in Gary Loveman’s applications of his statistical modelling. Because every gambler’s location is known through their Total Rewards card, hostesses can approach high-value gamblers, address them by name (personal attention is a big reason many people return to Harrah’s) and offer them food and drink to keep them from having to step away from their gambling. When they’re down on their luck, their depression is alleviated by luck ambassadors who offer a dinner or money voucher to “turn their luck around” – really to keep them from feeling down so they’ll keep on gambling. When people phone to book hotels, algorithms categorise them into “high-value” and “low-value” customers based on telephone number, which will promote them into fast or slow telephone queues. Hotel prices quoted vary from high to low-value gamblers and low to high-value gamblers. When customers are “past due” at a Harrah’s casino, they’re contacted by mail, email or even by phone and are given juicy coupons to entice them to return.

By the way, Loveman’s focus is on frequent but not necessarily high-spending gamblers – very different from the glitzy places that MGM and Wynn run. Again, this is because of the numbers – such gamblers actually bring in the most money to Harrah’s.

I was surprised there was little information on Sheldon Adelson, who owns Sands. I was pretty interested in his tactics as he’s won the right to build one of two casinos in Singapore. In fact this is mentioned, but he’s not one of the major players showcased, even though I would say that until Harrah’s’ acquisition of Caesar’s, Harrah’s’ presence in Las Vegas was minimal – they actually were the most distributed of the three.

I wished there was more “interaction design” mentioned in the book. After all, casinos are in the business of keeping people’s attention, keeping them in the “flow” – a major aspect of interaction design. But apart from Loveman’s tactics and Wynn’s careful design of his properties, there’s not a huge amount of attention to this. I’ll have to find some other book that discusses this in more detail. But from a business perspective, this is a pretty interesting book that kept me reading even though normally I would turn my nose up at Las Vegas.

This book is a good argument for taking a customer-centric approach to product development. Seybold recommends engaging customers in researching what sorts of products to develop and even engaging them in the actual development and marketing process.

• Identify lead users and engage them to recommend future directions for the product
• Build communities (usually online) for your biggest fans to talk to each other and from their discussions, figure out where to go next.
  
  • If your product isn’t compelling enough for a user community to build up around it, try identifying some users and compensating them for their time.
  • Or, try to identify a bigger theme they will be excited by and rally around (e.g. Axe deodorant’s theme is “How to pick up girls”)
  • Be sure to lay down ground rules for the community, but be humorous and open about why the rules are necessary.
• Engage beta testers from the community, validate your assumptions – don’t wait till product launch to spring your product on the actual people who will use it.
• Open up your products so your customers can modify them to their own needs. Allow mash-ups. Open source. DIY construction kits. Allow customers to configure their own stuff.
• Don’t just ask people what they need your product to do, observe them at work. Identify their passion and pain points that they’ll want alleviated – that’s a great place to build a product.
• Identify and streamline customer-critical scenarios, and engage them in co-designing their ideal scenarios and solutions.
• Communicate the insights gained from these ethnographic surveys to the whole organisation. Tell stories.
• Let customers help each other, help them share content. You can even monetize off the content they voluntarily contribute (e.g. Amazon, TripAdvisor).

The continuation of Persepolis: A Childhood, this book covers the time from when Marjane goes to Austria alone as a 14 (or so) year old, her experiences there freed from almost all ties, and finally her return to Iran, where the war has ended but the restrictions are still there. She gives an impassioned defence of the importance of a good education. She really makes your heart throb for her as she experiences her own heartaches in life.

Bittersweet coming-of-age story. It really opened my eyes to what life was like – especially for women – under the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Iran-Iraq war that followed it.