I am currently reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, as part of my Accounting Theory readings. Ironically, it is the only Accounting Theory reading I care to read because it has practically zero relevance to Accounting Theory – that’s why it’s so darn interesting.

I had to put it down after 3 chapters because it has given me an immense headache, and I was dizzy with excitement, like a child who first learned that plants photosynthesize. Why, in Stephen Hawking’s name, didn’t any Physics teacher recommend this book to us? I would probably have done a Physics degree instead. It’s like, why didn’t I listen to Isaac Stern’s recordings of Mozart when I was learning music? Well, too late. Now I can only hope to find a book that explains Ito’s Lemma as clearly as Stephen Hawking discusses Einstein’s general theory of relativity. (Or maybe, I should aim to write one! )

I was reading in Coffee Bean. As I put down my book with a spinning head and looked around at people walking around in the commercialized man-made heaven, I began feeling extremely extremely small. I felt like an ant, no, smaller, like the bacteria that lives in the guts of an ant. And the expensive coffee I was sipping is merely digested bread crumbs.

Watching the mundaneness of people shopping around feels like watching ants shift bread crumbs. The humanities and social sciences (which I’m usually more inclined to read than the hard sciences) may be interesting, but now they seem little more significant than the most intricate organization of ant colonies.

Like humans as “higher beings” take little interest in the crumbling of ant hills, actually, who gives a damn if AIG and Citigroup fall? It’s like, minuscule in the greater scheme of things. However big, they are merely two of the many companies on Earth, and Earth is only one of the planets in the solar system, and the solar system is one of many in the galaxy, and Milky Way is just one of the many galaxies in the universe, and the observable universe is probably just a small part of god knows what. So yeah, AIG may fall, the economy may collapse, men may go into extinction after destroying Earth, but the universe will still exist, and it doesn’t even matter if the expanding universe eventually collapses on itself because man will most likely not live to see it happen.

While most people were fretting over World War One, Einstein published his theory of relativity and showed that there is no such thing as absolute time, which means identical clocks in different locations measure time differently! Then what does it mean to discount expected returns to obtain option price when no objective measure of time is possible? At seemingly the same point in time, my option price can be higher than yours! What time value of money?

Apparently, bodies like Earth aren’t actually moving in curved orbits. They are moving in straight lines in the four-dimensional space-time, but appear to be moving in curved lines in our three-dimensional view of the world because space-time is curved. That means light doesn’t actually appear to travel in a straight line in space. Now which science teacher made me memorize the fact that light always travels in a straight line? Oh yeah, the same one who told me Pluto’s a planet.

Conversely, of course, I can maintain my worldly belief that whatever happens to the universe doesn’t matter also precisely because man will never live to see its collapse (if it ever does). What’s of immediate concern to us, is of course whether or not we can cling onto the guts of the ant to prevent being passed out, not whether the ant hill crumbles. After all, if AIG does collapse, my world (as I know it) would probably end and it doesn’t matter anymore whether space-time is warped or not.

I enjoy books that screw with my mind.

It’s not a bad movie. It’s worth watching. But it’s really overrated too.

What made the movie interesting is the original manner of stringing a not-very-original rag to riches story together using questions in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It was a great idea, but unfortunately, the movie did not deliver the full potential of the story.

The key problem perhaps, was that Slumdog is too ambitious. In a simplistic story with a few kids, it tried to pack in too many themes. It wanted to show how answers to what may be difficult questions can actually be picked up in everyday life, it wanted to illustrate the hardships faced by a kid growing up in the slums, it wanted to relate the kid’s story to the growth of the city of Mumbai and capture the charms of that exotic city, and it also wanted to be a humorous fairy tale romance.

What resulted was an overpromised, under-delivered film that spread itself far too thin. How Jamal (the protogonist) knew the answers to the game show questions is not convincing at all. So what if his brother shot someone with a gun? How would he know who invented the revolver from that? And how did the blind slumdog kid who told Jamal that the man on the 100 dollar bill is Benjamin Franklin knew this?

The growth of Mumbai was briefly mentioned by Jamal and his brother, reflecting on how modern buildings have grown out of their slums. The colorful depiction of Mumbai slums with Jamal and his brother as kids was interesting, but little more was said of it. The film also glanced pass some typical story of corrupt cops, the call centers, Indian gangsters, and even bollywood dances.

A lot was said, but all at the superficial level, and it is all it is, a fairy tale romance filmed in an exotic location with non-caucasian actors, some sporting a funny accent. That perhaps was what made the film so popular, it was about people and places unfamiliar to the first world.

The acting, except for the charming children, was generally linear and amateurish. Jamal had little more looks than his wide-eyed terrified look. The female lead, Latika, was mostly a pretty face.

Too many themes and mediocre actors made the film mostly an enjoyable, but souless movie not entirely deserving of the hype it created. But watch it, it’s not bad.

I thought I should do some justice to a movie as good as Milk and write it a proper review. Although I wanted to watch it badly more because I just didn’t get to watch it, it’s a really well made movie worth every minute of its 127.

First though, some disclaimers. Milk is not a movie for those who enjoy only thrillers, slapstick comedies, intense dramas or tear-jerking (heterosexual, may I add) romance. And you are most likely not going to enjoy this movie if you cringe at the sight of men kissing or if you are a diehard conservative. Just in case your hopes for a good movie gets dashed and you walk out of the theater disappointed.

The protogonist of the movie Milk is Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to hold public office in the US. The movie traces his political pursuit and fight for the civil rights of gays beginning when he moved from New York to Castro, San Francisco with his boyfriend and opened a camera shop in the 1970s. He believed that remaining closeted only increases the misunderstanding people had towards gays and that that was what hurt gays the most.

In a time when being gay was still considered a mental illness by psychiatrists and satanic by religious conservatives, Milk ran for office to fight for gay rights and made use of the publicity to give hope to other gays, wanting them to know that they are neither sick nor alone. He  rallied support in Castro, a gay neighborhood where social deviants fled to from their conservative hometowns. After several failures, Milk finally won a seat on the board of supervisors and successfully influenced the board to pass an ordinance of gay rights in San Francisco.

Milk was eventually assassinated by a conservative colleague jealous of his success less than a year after holding office. Fully aware of the personal danger he was in, Milk recorded a speech before he died where what he stood for could be summarized in his line, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country.”

What amazes me the most about this movie was the fact that it looked like a documentary when everyone in the movie was actually only enacting a role. The superb acting of Sean Penn and all the supporting actors makes it practically impossible to imagine each of them as a different character. They were simply the person they played. Structured around scenes of Milk recording his final speech/will, the movie took the audience through the events plain and true, without a shard of the memories tainted by opinion or dramatization. Even the movie title was so simply named “Milk”, as a matter of fact.

Milk is about a tragedy, yet there were no tear-jerking scenes or heartbreaking lines desperate to move the audience. Milk is also an inspiring story, but there were no heroic scenes or predictable maxims in the dialogue to demonstrate ideals. Milk is about a funny and bubbly character who loved drama and Puccini’s operas, but cheap puns or silly theatrics were not employed to entertain the audience.

The story was conveyed in the way Harvey Milk’s face wrinkled up as he smiled, laughed or cried and in the changes in energy levels of his good friend and ally Cleave Jones when he first met Milk as an arrogant and hopeful youngster and when he came back to Milk dejected from the end of a relationship but inspired by the gay movement in Spain. All a good movie needs are actors who live their roles and subtle witticisms in the script.

The topping on the ice cream though, is the fashion (or lack of fashion) from that period, where everyone was in faded blue jeans, t-shirts and jean or leather jackets, complete with either a pony tail or uncombed mob of curly hair and accessorized themselves with a pair of large plastic glasses. They were in a time and place where hippies, junkies and people who genuinely believed in a cause were abundant. It was a time when no one cared about a smart Harvard graduate, “not even himself”.

The movie was alive with a counterculture characterized by people who believed in freedom and equality and were willing to stand by and act on their beliefs. If that, and the character of Milk wasn’t inspiring enough, there’re probably very few movies that can inspire you.

I wanted to watch the movie Milk.

Then I realized a couple of good friends wanted to watch it too, so I really wanted to watch Milk.

When Cathay stopped showing it and other theaters were showing it at limited timings and locations, the “they’re going to stop showing it soon!” scare made me desperate to watch Milk. So I frantically called up my interested friends.

But despite setting up several meetings, we didn’t get to watch it. By then, the craving for Milk was driving me nuts. So I thought I’ll just go watch it on my own some day after school. 

When even that plan didn’t materialize, watching Milk became my short term goal in life.

Anyway, I finally watched it today, although I knew it’s not an absolute must-watch movie or that I really wanted to see it so badly. If theaters made use of such scare tactics more often, I bet the box office will rake in millions even on the most unpopular movies.

But Milk was good. Great acting. Inspiring and funny in subtle ways. It’s refreshing to see a movie without exaggerated acting, corny lines and too much silly humor. =)

Affluenza by Oliver James is another book I picked up this holidays. Sadly, it’s a huge disappointment, at least that first half I’ve read.

Maybe it’s the topic. When you write about “why we are better off now but not as happy and what we can do about it”, it’s pretty tough to come out with some insights on why we are so screwed up and let all us unhappy “virus-striken” (as James calls it) poor souls in on that great secret – assuming there is a secret, and assuming you know about it.

I began reading this book expecting it to be something good because in James’ prologue, he mentioned how he was paid a sum upfront to travel many places and interview many people for his book. He did mention a detailed report of his research published somewhere else (and I noticed some correlation statistics in the appendix), but rigorous research is not to be found in this book.

In fact, there were many times when I thought I just have to read this book as an opinion piece about something the author passionately believes in, instead of a well-researched book aimed at informing.

I began finding it difficult to take him seriously when he repeatedly refer to Lee Kuan Yew as “Lee Kuan” in his book. Has Mr. Lee gotten a new nickname, or is James, despite all his credentials and travels, completely misinformed about Chinese naming conventions?

The part that had me attempting a non-voluntary single eyebrow raise in a public bus was when he tried to explain the difference between the level of emotional distress between Shanghainese and Singaporeans. He wrote, “This cannot be down to genes, because 70 percent of Singaporeans are of Chinese genetic stock.” By that argument, it would also mean that obesity cannot be down to genes because people who have easy access to food are more prone to obesity than people from the same race located in a famine-striken place. Right, so genetic causes (or any other causation factor) can always be ruled out if there are other reasons, especially if that other reason is obvious.

In most of his book, he explains and supports his arguments by bringing out excerpts of what people he interviewed told him, and psychoanalyzing what they say so it supports what he wants to explain. And then he generalizes it to the population. I hope the detailed research report he has is different.

In short, what James argues for in his book is this: People in developed nations are less happy because they are often hankering for material goods that enhance their social status. There is an obsession with “having” rather than “being”. If we can be self-motivated and align our reasons for obtaining material goods with intrinsic beliefs and personal satisfaction, we will happy and contented instead of being depressed and screwed up while busy keeping up with the Joneses.

That is a convincing argument. If all you ever cared about is whether other people (especially unimportant people) like what you wear and where you live, you must be very unhappy if someone is unimpressed or if someone has something better. Now if you start doing only the things that please you without a care in the world about what other people think, then you will be a very happy soul.

That has to be the case, because you are only as happy as your expectations - you think your dress looks good, so you feel happy wearing it. If you start realizing that what you think is wrong, and you start noticing the flaws and imperfections, then you will be sorely disappointed and very very unhappy unless all that imperfection is rectified.

This reminds me of another Calvin & Hobbes quote. “So the secret to good self-esteem is to lower your expectations to the point where they’re already met?”

The truth is, we live in a society. And in a society where we are not alone, we compare with each other and we are influenced by social values and social norms. I don’t think it takes a sociologist to tell us that.

It is extremely difficult to keep to our own ideals and values, and it is impossible to tell which of these ideals and values are self-induced or planted into our heads by our upbringing, education and the general environment we live in.

Besides, where’s the fun in stubbornly sticking to our own ideas? We live to compare, compete and to bounce ideas off each other. I may say, “I think this dress is good enough.” And then someone will tell me, “No, the patterns don’t match across the seams. That’s bad workmanship. Look at my dress, isn’t it much better?” Sure, my ego takes a hit. How could I have been so happy with it when the problem is so blatant? I would be extremely unhappy knowing that I could have something better.

James would probably say, who says the patterns must match across the seams? What if I do like that mismatched pattern which you call bad workmanship, and it does make me very happy to have something different? Well then, I can’t argue against that. You can stick with it.

It’s just me and my warped belief that I cannot be ignorantly and ambitionless-ly happy. Yes, that means that even if I do like that mismatched pattern on my dress, but if it was merely a fortunate mistake in the tailor’s bad workmanship, I would rather be unhappy with that knowledge and a thirst for something better, than be mindlessly happy about something that intrinsically appeals to me.

I say, happiness is overrated. Go ahead James, psychoanalyze me. I’m a Singaporean too, by the way.

Sure, I don’t want to be unhappy all the time. (James’ examples often involve people who seemed clinically depressed.) But I’m sure all of us can live with some unhappiness. That’s what makes the upside sweet.

Besides, like I’ve written before, it’s too easy to be happy. Listening to a good piece of music makes me happy, achieving something new makes me happy, giving and receiving a small favor makes me happy. Oh yes, there are plenty of secular pleasures too. Indulging myself with a new item I don’t exactly need makes me very happy and I am very much entertained by mindless commercial flicks, including “Sex and the City” which James seems to dislike a lot. Reading James’ book also leaves me quite amused, and so I would say, rather happy.

On the other hand, being unhappy is a challenge. It means sticking your neck out of the comfortable box you’re in and putting your ideas and values out to be compared, discussed and possibly trampled on.

So would I “trade up” that knowledge of the imperfections, the fun in competition and the drive for something better for a contented and happy life? Hell no.

I first came across MGMT’s Time to Pretend in Time’s Top 10 Songs of 2008. When listening  to the first verse, I was really apprehensive about it(especially after really disliking the top song on that list), Time to Pretend sounded like yet another Nickelback “I wanna be a rockstar” song – fun, catchy and feel-good but nothing more than a party flick. I was wrong.

With clues from the all important line “We’re fated to pretend” and the second verse,

I’ll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms
I’ll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world
I’ll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home
Yeah, I’ll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone.

I realized that there’s much more to this song.

Time to Pretend is really one big satire, and a brilliantly sarcastic one too. As an emerging band, MGMT puts up an outright mockery of the established institution of “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll”, positing themselves as a progressive band not tied down by the existing screwed up commercial show business.

What is more impressive about this band is the originality of their song style. It is original to the point of being genre-less. Perhaps the closest I can put it is Psychedelic with a touch of Electronica – think Pink Floyd meets Pet Shop Boys. Everything I can see about MGMT is outlandish, out of this world even, but there is a feel of genuineness in their music, rather than a mere attempt to shock and just be different.

MGMT is about change and progressiveness, hopefully for the better. It is not surprising that BBC named them as one of the top ten artists to watch. This looks like a band that is either going to fade into obscurity after one good single and debut album, or it’ll make it big.

I’ve not listened to their entire album yet, but a few that caught my ears are The Youth, which speaks about a changed generation, and Kids, which I see as a subtle song on environmental conservation.

Innovative music and thoughtful lyrics, there’s hope for 21st century pop.

About a book: Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Although Taleb (very arrogantly) stated that unsolidated reviews, especially by unqualified people, are entirely unwelcomed, here’s me talking about his book anyway. Since he has also (quite accurately) pointed out that any measurements of a table done by a badly calibrated ruler is equivalent to using the table to measure the ruler, I will blatantly write as the ruler being measured by the table – I’ll state why I like his book. In no particular order,

I enjoy the subtleties

The Table that out-measures many Rulers – Taleb must be a table right? And definitely, a stool won’t be an appropriate object to use in this analogy.

Nero Tulip, the trader who outlived many high-flyers in a treacherous trading life - anything to prove, Nassim Taleb?

I agree

“I despise the moralizers beyond anything on this planet…” Well there might be things or people worse than moralizers, but moralizers are about the most irritating (and probably misguided) people around. If moral values were so clear cut, “controversy” won’t be in our dictionaries.

He’s skeptical about scientific findings. I love scientific findings, some are funny to quote, most sound intelligent enough to appear in reports, but will I bet my life on a published statistic or correlation? Hell no. The “scientific proofs” that support the hypothesis are the ones that will be published. Statistics can be calculated/interpreted to fit a requirement. Most quantified correlations are not meaningful, those that are will already be logically obvious.

He hates self-help books and people who tell you to brush your teeth. If I thought self-help books will actually help me, I would listen to my mother’s nagging.

Hindsight bias could be more rampant than we think. I always listen to what people attribute to their success with a pinch of salt. I’m especially skeptical when people tell me ”Warren Buffett is doing it/has done it too”. Taleb attributes a lot of insanely successful projects to randomness (black swans). Well, I believe randomness/luck definitely has a large part to play. But even if luck is not the reason, what we (on hindsight) think is the reason behind our success may not really be the reason. Most of the “how I became successful” cannot be repeated in the same environment many times to test its validity. And we certainly cannot use the strategy in everchanging real life situations while expecting to obtain the same success. So unless it’s some down-to-earth advice like “work hard” or “the chances of getting a job increases dramatically after you send in an application”, fancy strategies generally don’t stick with me.

Taleb argues that the eventual performance cannot be used to judge the validity of the strategy. It’s not very intuitive, but if you think about it, certainly true. If I bought a lottery ticket and won, does that mean I should always buy loterry tickets? Sure, not all things in life are governed by pure randomness like the lottery, but the popular advice of “taking chances” is dangerous advice. By starting a niche business, I could either strike it rich or be bankrupted. Who knows the chances? Although ships are not made for staying in the harbour, they’re not meant to be crashed either.

I found out that I could be…

An above average driver – There’s that frequently quoted proof of self-delusion where a (possibly mythical) survey showed that more than 50% of people believe that they are above average drivers. Turns out it’s entirely possible. If most people are good drivers, but there exists a small amount of impossibly bad drivers (say, we measure the driving skills of drunk drivers), then the average could be something that more than half the people are above. (Taleb didn’t talk about drivers, he showed how more than 50% of the individuals can be wealthier than average). Why didn’t I think about this earlier? I could have outsmarted some professors.

Smarter than my doctor – Here’s a probability question that actually appeared in one of my notes (but I didn’t pay attention to it because I was too turned off by the mathematical notations). If the probability that a diagnostic test says that you have a disease when you don’t is 5%, and 1 in 1000 people in a population has this disease, what’s the probability of you having the disease if the test says you’re positive? According to Taleb, most doctors think it’s 95%. It’s not. The answer is actually less than 2%, ask your doctor to rerun the test.

I enjoy the honest arrogance

Despite repeated mentions that his only advantage is in knowing his fallibilities and weaknesses, there is no attempt to mask how much he thinks he’s better off than a lot of people. It’s funny how those people who believe that “only fools are sure of themselves” are so sure of skepticism.

Exhausted after a full day of classes and meeting, I planned on sleeping on the bus ride home. But I made the wrong choice of album to listen to. When it’s been a long while since you last heard an album you previously liked, everything you liked about it gushes back at double the intensity, and you often have some new understanding of the songs.

Tonight’s album is Switchfoot’s Nothing is Sound. It’s an old album, which I needed to play a bit of Jenga with my CD stack to pull out from near the bottom of the pile. (I need to get a proper CD rack and develop some indexing system, or I should stop buying CDs.)

In short, the album is dark, desperate, critical and much too loaded with complex questions and guitar riffs. The stuff I like, despite it being very Christian.

The lyrics brought out real issues in the band’s raw and opinionated way, which is perhaps the type too honest for radio. Again, the stuff I like. Bands should stay real and write about issues that matter to them, not mindless love ballads with vague lyrics and catchy tunes to feed the consumers and rake in millions with. Although honestly, having millions would be very nice.

This brings me to Happy Is A Yuppie Word, which (according to some readings online) was inspired by Bob Dylan’s 1991 interview with the Rolling Stone. When asked if he was happy, Dylan replied, “Those are yuppie words, happiness and unhappiness. Its not happiness or unhappiness, its blessed or unblessed.”

That is a pretty impressive statement. Whenever I think of happiness, it somehow relates to a selfish enjoyment or some sort. While you can make someone else happy, the concept of happiness suggests some sort of personal enjoyment that everyone has a right to. But how do you really be “happy” when there is much to be “unhappy” about in this world? Somehow there has to be a trade-off with the amount of information you wish to assimilate – ignorance is bliss.

Yet, when Dylan mentioned “blessed or unblessed”, the context changes. It is no longer plain enjoyment, but rather, it is a humble recognition that you are simply “luckier” or that you simply have more than other people. Sure, you can be the yuppie who worked hard to get what you have, but happiness is not a right simply because you worked hard and earned more. There is too much to be unhappy about because there are too many ways in which things can become better. You can only recognize that you are “blessed” with so much.

What I see is that Switchfoot expresses their interpretation of the quote in a yearning for something that is more than superficial; something that doesn’t break and is long lasting,

“Happy is a Yuppie word,

Blessed is the man who lose it all.

Looking for an orphanage,

I’m looking for a bridge I can’t burn down.

I don’t believe the emptiness,

I’m looking for the kingdom coming down.

Everything is meaningless,

I want more than simple cash can buy.”

Nice, except that “blessed is the man who lose it all“ is too much of a leap of faith. Blessed with nothing?

Other great songs in the album include Lonely Nation, which is again a critical (and grim) take on the emptiness of modern culture,

“We are the target market,

We set the corporate target.

We are slaves of what we want.

We’re just numb and amused and we’re just used to bad news and,

We are slaves of what we want.”

But my all-time favorite in this album is Easier than Love, which has biting comments on modern notions of promiscuity and how sex sells in media. Even though I’m not offended by media portrayal of “love”, I’m very much attracted to the bluntness of these lyrics,

It’s easier leave
It’s easier to lie
It’s harder to face ourselves at night,
Feeling alone
What have we done?
What is the monster we’ve become?

Lovely lovely.

Who knew a dirty and greasy robot could be so cute without saying anything intelligent? Nothing beats big eyes to reach that cuteness factor in cartoons, even if they’re very big electronic eyes.

It’s very easy to enjoy the movie with its lovable story and captivating characters, if you’d just ignore the blatant Americanism bits of it.

Well, the movie takes a jab at laziness, consumerism (in the literal sense of the word) and the air-headed instant messaging our generation is addicated to at the extreme that it completely takes away personal interactions. It also attempts to induce some fear about our reliance on technology that we do not completely understand and the thrash we’re dumping.

But robot love and environmentally friendly pep talk aside, the movie basically tells us that the world will end in 100 years, the CEO of the world will be a white male speaking on a podium that resembles where US presidents usually speak from and the survivors of the world will be mostly white, homogenously dumb and obese, and speak with American-accented English.

Oh, and Wall-E uses the iPod too. What is Pixar feeding the kids these days?

That’s why he wavered, he grieved, he has scars on his back, and he didn’t take it all in stride. He has no superpowers and he told himself “I can take it”, instead of that big fat self-important maxim, “with great power comes great responsibility“. Even his name was a recognition of his shortcoming and attempt to overcome it, unlike the insecure fools desperate to prove themselves. That’s why Batman’s the only superhero ever created.

Joker’s right. “I am not a monster, I’m the top of the curve.” He sunk below everyone and has risen above, high enough to mock. It’s precisely because of the masses’ strong sense of morality and mistaken self-righteousness that the incorruptible dark knight is condemned, while the fallen white knight remains in high regard. The fragile humanity of people can’t take the harsh truth.

The most classic scene in the movie was when the meanest and burliest crook persuaded the self-important and authoritative man-in-suit to hand over the detonator for the bombs on the other ferry by volunteering to “do the dirty job”, then threw it out of the ferry’s window as swiftly as the detonator landed in his hand. Who is to judge who’s the crook and who deserves to die?

Mad or not, Joker is the most clear minded character in the movie and “Why so serious?” is a sick stab at our highest moral discussions and beliefs in our humanity. The ones who “never lived long enough to see himself turn into a villian” are either dead, fake, or a superhero.

Batman deserves a Nobel prize for literature.

(even though he crashed my Lamborghini)

List of bests: Best Joker, Best make-up for Joker, Best Batmobile, Drop dead gorgeous Bruce Wayne.