Year: 2006

The World Is Flat

The World Is FlatI have just finished reading the book by Thomas Friedman “The World Is Flat“.

As you’ve probably noticed I am not a big book freak. I rarely read anything outside of very technical literature. But I felt that I absolutely had to read this one.

I ordered immediately after I saw this video, which is Thomas Friedman’s speech in MIT, in which he talks about the globalization and the flat world. Basically, what he did in MIT, was a very quick and brief overviwe of the first three chapters of the book. His speech was amazing. He was talking in very simple language about really complex things. He made a lot of stuff so much easier to understand. And he made some really interesting connections.

I have to say though, that many of the things he was talking about weren’t new to me. I was thinking about them myself. I just couldn’t possibly form them into any shape or express them in any understandable form.

Friedman did very clearly. And he introduced a lot of examples. And he added a lot of credebility to what he was saying by interviewing a whole lot of smart people.

While the book is written in a very simple language and with a lot of examples, it was difficult to read for me. It was so thought-provoking that I had to stop about every two or three pages for an hour or a day to re-think everything I read. It took me alsmot two month to read 470 pages. And I am sure I’ve missed a lot too. I’ll have to re-read it in the near future.

This is the most complete and wide view of globalization that I have come across. Ever. The book doesn’t just talk and talk about some abstract forms. It shows the very specific connections between events that happened throughout the human history, with more focus on the last 30 or so years. All events and connections are looked at from a multitude of angles – political, economical, cultural, technological. Each of those angles is futher down broken into a multitude of options. Examples from American, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, African, and European cultures are given. Interviews were conducted with a whole lot of people from ex-presidents and current ministers to CEOs of international corporations to religious leaders, as well as plenty of common people from a multitude of backgrounds.

Globalization aside, this book is the best piece of journalism that I’ve read in a long long while. A job well done. Truly a bestseller. I would seriously recommend this book to anyone. Yes, to anyone. Not only people who are interested in globalization, but to all people who are interested in their own present and future. There are lots of questions, and there are lots of answers. You’ll surely understand the world better after reading this book.

I do.

Internationi Women’s Day

Today is a major international holiday, although most of the internation community has no idea about it. Internation Women’s Day is a huge holiday in Russia and many other countires of the ex-Soviet platform. It’d probably be a good thing if it was better recognized worldwide.

Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate all women of the world with his holiday. I wish them all happyness, love, and general well-being. Fight for your rights, make your choices, but also, please, stay as beautiful and pretty as you all are.

Thank you all for balancing out our crazy half of the world! Please, stay with us.

Walk like an Egyptian. With a pyramide.

It is sometimes difficult to communicate the fun and excitement of parenting to those who don’t have kids. Especially when talking about small things. Adults take A LOT OF things for granted, and they don’t realize to what extent they do until they see a child acquering those grants, working hard for each of them on a daily basis.

Let me give you an example of the most recent Maxim’s development milestone – a pyramide. Even if you don’t have any children, you’ve probably seen them a billion times – small plastic or wooden pyramids of brightly-colored rings on a stick.

When any adult sees this thing, it is immediately obvious to him what is the purpose of the said toy. Disassembling the rings from the stick and then assembling them back onto it in the right order. TADA. That’s it.

We’ve been watching Maxim trying to figure it out for the last three or four month.

No adult probably has enough imagination to occupy himself with such a toy for three hours. What in the world can you do with it? Here are a few examples: turn the whole pyramid over and over all its axises, drop it, drop it in such a way that rings come off, pick up each ring one at a time, pick up two rings simultaneously – one in each hand, pick up rings differently based on their colors and sizes, suck those rings, bite those rings, attempt to pick up more than two rings simultaneously (possible, but needs a lot of figuring out), drop rings, throw rings (a lot of fun!), combine rings with other toys, combine empty pyramide stick with other toys, suck pyramide stick, bite pyramide stick, knock yourself on the head with pyramid stick, knock yourself on the head with each ring in each possible order and then repeat the procedure with two rings simultaneously, hide rings, hide rings forever, find rings, and so on and so on and so on.

It’s not that he couldn’t have figured out how to put rings on the pyramid stick. It’s just that there are so many ways to play with this toy that it is difficult to single out any particular one of them.

But we finally go there. Now Maxim got interested in putting the rings back on the pyramid stick. And he can even combine them in the right order. Wow!

A note for those of you who don’t have kids: pyramide is this kind of toy that stimulates child’s mental development. Apparently, it can be so hard on the kid’s brain, that often kid would avoid this toy alltogether. We know a few kids who are much older than Maxim and who haven’t yet figured out the pyramide or tried to do so and lost interest.

Last paragraph in one sentence: we are breeding a genious!

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