Small is Beautiful

Thanks Peter for giving me the book as a present. At the same time,I bought a very thick OS Manual for my mac-Mac OS X,The Missing Manual that Apple forgot to give when I bought my iBook.

Below is a review on Small is beautiful taken from amazon.com:

Not Only Beautiful, But Also Practical, December 19, 2003

Reviewer: Tony Theil (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews

In my college days I struggled with economics and barely passed. My economic professors and the course material were dull, ambiguous, and non-stimulating. None of these adjectives could be used to describe Schumacher's Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.

Schumacher makes economics come alive with wit, humor, and practicality. His approach is qualitative, not quantitative. A recurring statement throughout the book epitomizes his philosophy, "Why use the computer if you can make the calculation on the back of an envelope"? He gives the science a personality when identifying the disparities between the rich and poor, the educated and uneducated, and the gap between city people and country-folk.

Small is Beautiful created a humanistic economics movement. It's a wholistic approach containing ethical, ecological, and metaphysical components that are missing from the statistical models that solely measure GNP. Schumacher sounded the alarm regarding globalization when asking "how much further 'growth' will be possible, since infinate growth in a finite environment is an obvious impossibility". He was critical of a society that generates unbounded materialism, and motivated by greed and envy.

Some of the more interesting of the 20 essays are: "Peace and Permanence", "The Role of Economics", "Buddhist Economics", "The Greatest Resource - Education", "Technology with a Human Face", "Development of Intermediate Technology", and "Two Million Villages".

Although the book was written in 1973, it is as timely now as it was then. The 25th anniversary edition contains provocative updates provided as sidebars by contributors such as Hazel Henderson, Peter Warshall, Amory Lovins, Godric Bader, et al. --This text refers to the Paperback edition

Firewall

It has been years since I last read Andy McNab Bravo Zero Two. I bought it for RM 22.90 and the original price was US24.95! Good bargain for a hardcover novel.

1511 H[KOMBAT]

After my morning walk with Ibnu Ariff at KLCC, I went to Kinokuniya bookshop looking for a Malay novel to read. Honestly, it has been years since I read a good one.It has got nothing to do with the quality per se, but I am more inclined to read English novels.

I asked Ibnu Ariff to recommmed a good novel and he brought me one corner near the cashier dedicated to Sastera. He recommend two books by Faisal Tehrani( whom I know personally),and I decided to buy 1511H.

Btw,last night I got a call from the editor of a newspapers offering me to be a weekly columnist for book reviews. I replied to him that I agree in principle subjected to my time and capability.