Wat Si Chum in Sukhothai is perhaps the most intriguing of old Siam's monuments.The peekaboo view of the image through the slit entranceway gives the building a secretive air. Louis Fournereau's photographs from 1891 bathed the ruins in an atmosphere of ancient enchantment.The massive walls hide a narrow twisting staircase roofed with beautiful engravings of Jataka tales. Curiously, there are only 100 Jatakas illustrated, rather than the 500-plus usual for such displays. The roof seems to have totally disappeared.Inscription Two, found inside the temple,is so rich and jumbled that there are at least four interpretations of what it says and means.
This mystery has invited imagination.Most people have imagined the roof was an inverted bowl shape by analogy with similar looking buildings such as Wat Phaya Dam in Si Satchanalai. Eighty years ago, George Coedes proposed that the Jataka engravings had been moved from an original location at Sukhothai's Wat Mahathat. Griswold and Prasert endorsed this idea on grounds that Jatakas were meant for "edification of the general public". Betty Gosling ingeniously reconstructed how they might have appeared at Wat Mahathat, and suggested they had been "hidden away" in
Wat Si Chum after a liturgical schism.
As this beautiful and erudite book shows, all this speculation was possible because none of these scholars went to take a proper look.
After examining the engraved slabs in situ in the concealed staircase, the architect-historian Pierre Pichard shows that they were not moved from elsewhere, but purpose-made to fit
this location. ML Pattaratorn Chir-
pravati adds that there was
nothing strange about them
being "hidden" in such an apparently obscure place. As
with the paintings deep in the sealed crypt of Wat
Ratburana in Ayutthaya,they were offerings, created
as part of the sacredness of the building, and were never meant to be seen.Pichard also has a stunning idea about the roof. The giveaway is that
the walls are unusually thick and heavily buttressed, as if designed to bear an exceptionally heavy weight. What if the surviving structure were only a fraction of the intended building? What if the original design,such as the Chedi Ku Kut in Lamphun province, was a five-stage tower?The base could stand it. The staircase continuing up another four levels could have accommodated the full 500-plus Jataka tales.Pichard has computerconstructed a possible image of what it might have looked like - a massive tower rising 60m and weighing 7,400 tonnes.
Who had the vision and power to attempt such a project? Mr Pattaratorn argues that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to associate the great monk Si Sattha with Wat Si Chum.Further, the clue to the building may lie in Inscription Two, which is an account of Si Sattha's forebears, life, works and travels.
Mr Pattaratorn argues that the Mahathat mentioned in Inscription Two is not in either Sukhothai or Sri Lanka,but is clearly the Sri Dhanyakataka, a massive stupa that once stood near Amaraoti in central India.She speculates that Si Sattha travelled to this site as well as to Sri Lanka, and was inspired to build something as grand as he had seen on his travels back in his hometown of Sukhothai. She calculates that Si Sattha must have returned around 1350. By comparing some motifs in the Jataka engravings (fan, ascetics, peonies,etc.) with other, datable depictions, she estimates the engravings were made around 1370.
Peter Skilling traces the depictions of the Jatakas from the earliest Indian reliefs in the 1st century BC, through the first appearances in Siam at Chula Pathon Chedi in the Dvaravati era, up to their modern appearance in comic books.
Skilling also provides an exhaustive account of the modern discovery and interpretation of Wat Si Chum.
The second part of the book contains a catalogue of the Jataka slabs compiled by Skilling, Prapod Assavavirulhakarn and Santi Pakdeekham. Each engraving is beautifully photographed, with an additional close-up of the inscription. In most cases, Fournereau's
1891 rubbing is presented for comparison, showing how much the engravings have deteriorated in the interim. The compilers had the wonderful
idea of showing the depictions
of the same story at Wat Khrua Wan in Thon Buri, the Ananda Temple in Pagan, and occasionally elsewhere. They
also transcribe and translate
the inscription,and provide a full English rendering of the Jataka
tale. Where the slabs are now totally unreadable,they guess which tales
would have been depicted at this location based on the sequence.
Wat Si Chum has not lost its intrigue. This team has cleared up some old mysteries, but then created a new one.Instead of a tale of engravings being chipped off the Wat
Mahathat and furtively hidden away, we have a story about the most ambitious construction project in the Chao Phraya basin of its time, and a mystery of why it went unfinished. Probably the project faltered when Si Sattha died at an unknown date after 1376. Pichard surmises that Si Sattha had a "touch of megalomania" and would always have faced opposition to his overblown vision.Mr Pattaratorn wonders if the repeated raiding by Ayutthaya armies frightened away the craftsmen and manpower needed for such a massive project.Possibly the kings and nobles were not at all keen on a building that consumed so much local manpower, and glorified religion more than worldly matters.
This superb study invites us to look at Wat Si Chum in a whole new light.Rather than a rather squat, blocky building, we can now imagine it as one-fifth of a fantastic tower. Rather than wondering why the Jataka slabs were "hidden away", we can view them as intrinsic to a very ambitious project of religious construction. This revised view of the building raises new questions about Sukhothai's history. What should we make of the fact that this massive project was sited outside the royal city, among the forest monasteries? Why was it never completed? was it never completed?
Monday, September 21, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
CHINA'S ATTACKS ON THE MEDIA UNACCEPTABLE
Emerging superpower's violent trampling of press freedom is a major cause for concern About a week ago, some 700 journalists in Hong Kong got together to voice their concerns over the recent assault on one of their colleagues who was sent to the restive Xianjiang region to cover the disturbances in the Muslim-majority region.
They were calling on the Xinjiang government to apologise to the reporters and called on Beijing to do more to stop media repression and intimidation.
On September 4, television reporter Lam Tsz-ho, and two cameraman - Lau Wing-chuen and Lam Chun-wai - were reportedly tied up and beaten by police while they were covering protests in Urumqi that erupted after a spate of needle attacks in the city.
When the Chinese authorities broke their silence on the issue just a few days later, the Xinjiang government spokeswoman, Hou Hanmin, said the authorities regretted the incident but nevertheless blamed the journalists for inciting unrest.
Mak Yin-ting, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), called the statement "outrageous and blatantly false" allegations against the journalists.
"This is a violent trampling of press freedom," Mak said. "It is not a single incident. Even last year, lots of our journalists were beaten up while reporting in China. The situation is getting worse now," she added.
In August, Chinese authorities detained two Hong Kong NOW TV journalists covering the trial of rights activist Tan Zuoren.
Police said they were looking for drugs. But after seven hours of searching the rooms they came up with noting. We never realised the Chinese authorities were so strict about illicit drugs. Perhaps they just didn't like that Tan, who led an investigation into the collapse of schools in the Sichuan earthquake, was receiving media attention.
This past Friday, Chinese authorities assaulted three journalists from Kyodo News, a Japanese news agency, in their Beijing hotel room.
The three were reportedly kicked and their computers destroyed by pounding on the floor. The journalists were in the Chinese capital to cover the National Day rehearsals when authorities stormed into the room.
They chose the hotel so they could get a good view of the Tiananmen Square, the venue for the upcoming 60th National Day celebration scheduled for October 1.
On this day columns of tanks and assorted other military vehicles bearing missiles and an array of other military hardware will rumble down the Avenue of Heavenly Peace as they make their way towards the square.
Naturally, they wanted a good view. But the authorities thought they had violated a government order to all journalists that they were not permitted to photograph the rehearsal in spite of the fact that it was being conducted out in the open.
It is difficult to understand the logic of such an order. Was the Beijing government afraid that somehow pictures of the rehearsals will detract from the actual event?
Or was it because they just didn't like the fact that somebody out there might be violating their order?
In this day and age where just about every mobile phone has a built-in camera, the idea of keeping such an enormous public event, rehearsal or not, a state secret is nothing less than absurd.
We really hope that the authorities didn't beat up the Kyodo reporters and cameramen because they were working for a Japanese news agency.
For a country that has been billed as an emerging superpower, which is looking to strengthen ties with countries abroad, it is disturbing that the Communist giant does not understand that press freedom is the cornerstone of society.
Beating up journalists, regardless of what outfit they are working for, is, indeed, a non-starter.
The attacks against reporters in Xinjiang and in Hong Kong were not the first and probably will not be the last. The world community and the media industry needs to applaud the reporters in Hong Kong, including the Foreign Correspondents' Club there, for speaking out against such behaviour.
"It is the first time the entire spectrum of Hong Kong society, including senior government officials and National People's Congress delegates, have condemned such treatment of reporters," the club's president Tom Mitchell was reported by Agence-France Presse as saying.
Let's hope that the Beijing government takes notice.
They were calling on the Xinjiang government to apologise to the reporters and called on Beijing to do more to stop media repression and intimidation.
On September 4, television reporter Lam Tsz-ho, and two cameraman - Lau Wing-chuen and Lam Chun-wai - were reportedly tied up and beaten by police while they were covering protests in Urumqi that erupted after a spate of needle attacks in the city.
When the Chinese authorities broke their silence on the issue just a few days later, the Xinjiang government spokeswoman, Hou Hanmin, said the authorities regretted the incident but nevertheless blamed the journalists for inciting unrest.
Mak Yin-ting, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), called the statement "outrageous and blatantly false" allegations against the journalists.
"This is a violent trampling of press freedom," Mak said. "It is not a single incident. Even last year, lots of our journalists were beaten up while reporting in China. The situation is getting worse now," she added.
In August, Chinese authorities detained two Hong Kong NOW TV journalists covering the trial of rights activist Tan Zuoren.
Police said they were looking for drugs. But after seven hours of searching the rooms they came up with noting. We never realised the Chinese authorities were so strict about illicit drugs. Perhaps they just didn't like that Tan, who led an investigation into the collapse of schools in the Sichuan earthquake, was receiving media attention.
This past Friday, Chinese authorities assaulted three journalists from Kyodo News, a Japanese news agency, in their Beijing hotel room.
The three were reportedly kicked and their computers destroyed by pounding on the floor. The journalists were in the Chinese capital to cover the National Day rehearsals when authorities stormed into the room.
They chose the hotel so they could get a good view of the Tiananmen Square, the venue for the upcoming 60th National Day celebration scheduled for October 1.
On this day columns of tanks and assorted other military vehicles bearing missiles and an array of other military hardware will rumble down the Avenue of Heavenly Peace as they make their way towards the square.
Naturally, they wanted a good view. But the authorities thought they had violated a government order to all journalists that they were not permitted to photograph the rehearsal in spite of the fact that it was being conducted out in the open.
It is difficult to understand the logic of such an order. Was the Beijing government afraid that somehow pictures of the rehearsals will detract from the actual event?
Or was it because they just didn't like the fact that somebody out there might be violating their order?
In this day and age where just about every mobile phone has a built-in camera, the idea of keeping such an enormous public event, rehearsal or not, a state secret is nothing less than absurd.
We really hope that the authorities didn't beat up the Kyodo reporters and cameramen because they were working for a Japanese news agency.
For a country that has been billed as an emerging superpower, which is looking to strengthen ties with countries abroad, it is disturbing that the Communist giant does not understand that press freedom is the cornerstone of society.
Beating up journalists, regardless of what outfit they are working for, is, indeed, a non-starter.
The attacks against reporters in Xinjiang and in Hong Kong were not the first and probably will not be the last. The world community and the media industry needs to applaud the reporters in Hong Kong, including the Foreign Correspondents' Club there, for speaking out against such behaviour.
"It is the first time the entire spectrum of Hong Kong society, including senior government officials and National People's Congress delegates, have condemned such treatment of reporters," the club's president Tom Mitchell was reported by Agence-France Presse as saying.
Let's hope that the Beijing government takes notice.
CHINESE GUARDS BEAT JAPANESE JOURNALISTS
Chinese authorities assaulted three journalists from a Japanese news agency in their Beijing hotel room, the agency said yesterday, kicking them and destroying two computers.
The three journalists from Kyodo News were in the Chinese capital covering a National Day rehearsal when authorities stormed into the room of their hotel on Friday night, the news agency said. Kyodo alleged a reporter and two cameramen were kicked "and hit their heads to make them kneel down...", without specifying who the "authorities" were.
They threw the two computers out of the room and into the corridor of the hotel, which is near Tiananmen Square, the venue of the National Day celebrations scheduled for October 1.
Yasushi Kato, bureau chief of the Kyodo News Beijing office, said several men stormed into the hotel room after one of the journalists opened the door, but they did ntot identify themselves.
Kyodo reported they destroyed two computers by throwing them into the corridor. Kato said a reporter and a cameraman were Japanese and the third was a Chinese assistant.
China's Foreign Ministry had ordered news organisations not to take photos when the country conducted a rehearsal September 6, but the ministry has not issued such an order since then, according to Kyodo.
Security forces have swarmed over central Beijing in the lead-up to a parade that will mark 60 years since the founding of Communist China.
Businesses, schools, and traffic shut down as columns of tanks and assorted other military vehicles bearing missiles and an array of other hardware rumbled down the city's deserted mainest-west thoroughtfare, the Avenue of Heavenly Peace, and towards Tiananmen Square.
Security forces had earlier swarmed over cental Beijing, shooing citizens away from what will be the parade's route through the heart of the city.
Earlier this week, hundreds of journalists protects in Hong Kong, in southern China, ahainst alleged police brutality towards three of their colleagues covering syringe attacks in China's restive Xinjiang region.
Around 700 demonstrators, wearing black and holding placards, held a march to call on the Xinjiang govekrnment to apologise to the reporters and demanded Beijing move to stop media repression.
The three journalists from Kyodo News were in the Chinese capital covering a National Day rehearsal when authorities stormed into the room of their hotel on Friday night, the news agency said. Kyodo alleged a reporter and two cameramen were kicked "and hit their heads to make them kneel down...", without specifying who the "authorities" were.
They threw the two computers out of the room and into the corridor of the hotel, which is near Tiananmen Square, the venue of the National Day celebrations scheduled for October 1.
Yasushi Kato, bureau chief of the Kyodo News Beijing office, said several men stormed into the hotel room after one of the journalists opened the door, but they did ntot identify themselves.
Kyodo reported they destroyed two computers by throwing them into the corridor. Kato said a reporter and a cameraman were Japanese and the third was a Chinese assistant.
China's Foreign Ministry had ordered news organisations not to take photos when the country conducted a rehearsal September 6, but the ministry has not issued such an order since then, according to Kyodo.
Security forces have swarmed over central Beijing in the lead-up to a parade that will mark 60 years since the founding of Communist China.
Businesses, schools, and traffic shut down as columns of tanks and assorted other military vehicles bearing missiles and an array of other hardware rumbled down the city's deserted mainest-west thoroughtfare, the Avenue of Heavenly Peace, and towards Tiananmen Square.
Security forces had earlier swarmed over cental Beijing, shooing citizens away from what will be the parade's route through the heart of the city.
Earlier this week, hundreds of journalists protects in Hong Kong, in southern China, ahainst alleged police brutality towards three of their colleagues covering syringe attacks in China's restive Xinjiang region.
Around 700 demonstrators, wearing black and holding placards, held a march to call on the Xinjiang govekrnment to apologise to the reporters and demanded Beijing move to stop media repression.
NICE BRICKWORK FROM DAN BROWN
"The Lost Symbol", the follow-up to Dan Brown's 2003 mega-bestseller "The Da Vinci Code", has been released, and you don't have to be a Freemason to enjoy it - although that wouldn't hurt.
Like "angels and Demons", published in 2000, and "Da Vinci Code", "The Lost Symbol" solves puzzles, analyses paintings and reveals forgotten histories.
Brown's tireless hero Robert Langdon tracks down a legendary Masonic treasure despite special-ops squads dogging him and a bizarre killer who has kidnapped his dear friend and mentor.
There is one mystery, though, that remains unsolved after three books.
Will Langdon ever get to rest?
You'd think a 46-year-old Harvard symbologist's most strenuous chores would be grinding his Sumatran coffee beans in the morning or persuading bored undergrads to appreciate hidden meanings in the world around them.
Langdon does these things, but he's also the guy who survived an antimatter explosion at the Vatican and a Paris manhunt and uncovered the truth about the Holy Grail (although, according to the new novel, he's kept this a secret).
So Langdon is unlikely to get any rest anytime soon. After all, he specialises in what all esoteric evildoers need: rituals and their transcendent meanings.
Consider an early incident in "Symbol", a scene that 's as gruesome and allusive as the opening of "Code", in whice a dying, bloodcovered curator in the Louvre arranges his body into a puzzle.
Langdon arrives in Washington, invited by his wealthy friend Peter Solomon, a highranking Mason, to deliver a speech in the Capitl Building.
The moment he enters the rotunda, however, Langdon discovers there is no speech.
The "invitation" has been faked by an 1865 painting of George Washington depicted as a pagan god.
As horrific as this is, Langdon recognises that the grisly object resembles something called "the Hand of the Mysteries".
"It seems the man we are dealing with, in addition to being mentally unstable, is also highly educated," Langdon says. "This hand is proof that he is well versed in the Mysteries as well as their code of secrecy ... The Hand of the Mysteries is a sacred invitation."
That educated, unstable person calls himself Mal'akh ("angel" in Hebrew), and in him Brown gives us a villain as unique, zealous and eerie as teh albino monk Silas in "Code".
Mal'akh is a muscled, tattooed eunuch, a chameleon-like figure who seeks a hidden Masonic pyramid because, the legend goes, it contains the power of transformation.
It seems Mal'akh gained the trust not only of Peter but also of Peter's sister Katherine, a scientist through whom Brown introduces the theme of science versus magic - not to mention the possibility that a wedding might be in Langdon's future.
Like the "cryptex" in "Code", an antique object aids Langdon and Katherine on a hunt across and beneath the city. It's a hunt in which they're helped and hindered by characters including the blind dean of Washington's National Cathedral and the gnomic director of the CIA's Office of Security, Inoue Sato (don't mess with her).
All of this is going to feel very familiar to readers of the previous Langdon books, even though Brown has shifted from foreign places to plant his thriller firmly on American soil.
That, of course, is fine for Langdon: He finds this country's past as rich and mysterious as any other. "Seriously," he tells his students, "Washington, DC, has some of the world's finest architecture, art and symbolism. Why would you go oversas before visiting your own capital?"
Why, indeed. Some people believe Freemasonry's origins in mediaeval craft guilds include a darker, conspiratorial side. Historians point out that the secrecy of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, in particular, has led to its being the least understood of Masonry's variants - a situation Brown exploits to the fullest with depictions of occult ceremonies.
Hidden knowledge takes many shapes in "Symbol". Alchemists, Egyptians and rabbi sages are invoked, and so are the US government's eavesdropping tactics in the war on terror, superstring theory and the New Agesounding study of noetics, which Katherine believes one day will enable the mind to bring about real changes in the physical world.
Brown's narrative moves rapidly, except for those clunky moments when people sound like encyclopaedias ("The sacred symbol of the Hebrews is the Jewish star - the Seal of Solomon - an important symbol to the Masons!").
But no one reads brown for style, right? The reason we read Dan Brown is to see what happens to Langdon: We want to know if he will overcome long odds to uncover Mal'akh's motives and a cunning plan that, while not involving antimatter, is a major threat to national security.
And yet, it's hard to imagine anyone, after reading "Symbol", debating about Freemasonry in Washington, the way people did Brown's radical vision of Jesus and Mary Magdalene in "Code".
"The Lost Symbol" is more like the experience on any roller coaster - thrilling, entertaining and then it's over.
Like "angels and Demons", published in 2000, and "Da Vinci Code", "The Lost Symbol" solves puzzles, analyses paintings and reveals forgotten histories.
Brown's tireless hero Robert Langdon tracks down a legendary Masonic treasure despite special-ops squads dogging him and a bizarre killer who has kidnapped his dear friend and mentor.
There is one mystery, though, that remains unsolved after three books.
Will Langdon ever get to rest?
You'd think a 46-year-old Harvard symbologist's most strenuous chores would be grinding his Sumatran coffee beans in the morning or persuading bored undergrads to appreciate hidden meanings in the world around them.
Langdon does these things, but he's also the guy who survived an antimatter explosion at the Vatican and a Paris manhunt and uncovered the truth about the Holy Grail (although, according to the new novel, he's kept this a secret).
So Langdon is unlikely to get any rest anytime soon. After all, he specialises in what all esoteric evildoers need: rituals and their transcendent meanings.
Consider an early incident in "Symbol", a scene that 's as gruesome and allusive as the opening of "Code", in whice a dying, bloodcovered curator in the Louvre arranges his body into a puzzle.
Langdon arrives in Washington, invited by his wealthy friend Peter Solomon, a highranking Mason, to deliver a speech in the Capitl Building.
The moment he enters the rotunda, however, Langdon discovers there is no speech.
The "invitation" has been faked by an 1865 painting of George Washington depicted as a pagan god.
As horrific as this is, Langdon recognises that the grisly object resembles something called "the Hand of the Mysteries".
"It seems the man we are dealing with, in addition to being mentally unstable, is also highly educated," Langdon says. "This hand is proof that he is well versed in the Mysteries as well as their code of secrecy ... The Hand of the Mysteries is a sacred invitation."
That educated, unstable person calls himself Mal'akh ("angel" in Hebrew), and in him Brown gives us a villain as unique, zealous and eerie as teh albino monk Silas in "Code".
Mal'akh is a muscled, tattooed eunuch, a chameleon-like figure who seeks a hidden Masonic pyramid because, the legend goes, it contains the power of transformation.
It seems Mal'akh gained the trust not only of Peter but also of Peter's sister Katherine, a scientist through whom Brown introduces the theme of science versus magic - not to mention the possibility that a wedding might be in Langdon's future.
Like the "cryptex" in "Code", an antique object aids Langdon and Katherine on a hunt across and beneath the city. It's a hunt in which they're helped and hindered by characters including the blind dean of Washington's National Cathedral and the gnomic director of the CIA's Office of Security, Inoue Sato (don't mess with her).
All of this is going to feel very familiar to readers of the previous Langdon books, even though Brown has shifted from foreign places to plant his thriller firmly on American soil.
That, of course, is fine for Langdon: He finds this country's past as rich and mysterious as any other. "Seriously," he tells his students, "Washington, DC, has some of the world's finest architecture, art and symbolism. Why would you go oversas before visiting your own capital?"
Why, indeed. Some people believe Freemasonry's origins in mediaeval craft guilds include a darker, conspiratorial side. Historians point out that the secrecy of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, in particular, has led to its being the least understood of Masonry's variants - a situation Brown exploits to the fullest with depictions of occult ceremonies.
Hidden knowledge takes many shapes in "Symbol". Alchemists, Egyptians and rabbi sages are invoked, and so are the US government's eavesdropping tactics in the war on terror, superstring theory and the New Agesounding study of noetics, which Katherine believes one day will enable the mind to bring about real changes in the physical world.
Brown's narrative moves rapidly, except for those clunky moments when people sound like encyclopaedias ("The sacred symbol of the Hebrews is the Jewish star - the Seal of Solomon - an important symbol to the Masons!").
But no one reads brown for style, right? The reason we read Dan Brown is to see what happens to Langdon: We want to know if he will overcome long odds to uncover Mal'akh's motives and a cunning plan that, while not involving antimatter, is a major threat to national security.
And yet, it's hard to imagine anyone, after reading "Symbol", debating about Freemasonry in Washington, the way people did Brown's radical vision of Jesus and Mary Magdalene in "Code".
"The Lost Symbol" is more like the experience on any roller coaster - thrilling, entertaining and then it's over.
OUTLIERS Malcolm Gladwell
What is it that makes a person successful? And when I say "successful" I don't mean leaving RCA linking arms with someone with their own teeth on a Saturday night.
I'm talking about tangible achievements that inevitably lead to riches. The kind of success that makes people like Microsoft's Bill Gates, prominent US lawyer Joe Flom or Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy "outliers"- men and women who, according to Malcolm Gladwell,"For one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August."
Is it hard work? Intelligence? Ambition? Yes, says Gladwell. It's all these things. But it's also so much more. Gladwell argues that we have a crude way of looking at how people achieve. He says that we are far too focused on the individual. That nobody makes it alone.
To understand an outlier we must look at their culture and the community around them. Are Asians really better than Caucasians at maths, and if so why? Gladwell argues that the stereotype is true and can be explained by cultural reasons ranging from language to a history of farming rice.
Does the culture of a country directly relate to the safety record of its national airline? Again, yes - and Gladwell explains why.
Using empirical evidence, the author demonstrates that one of the conditions for success is often as simple as the date a person is born professional athletes like footballers and ice hockey players are more often than not the oldest kids in their school year. Success also comes from opportunity - the young Bill Gates got the chance to programme computers thanks to some extraordinary luck, for example.
Outliers will change the way you think about success and quite possibly make you feel a lot better about yourself if you haven't yet achieved it.
I'm talking about tangible achievements that inevitably lead to riches. The kind of success that makes people like Microsoft's Bill Gates, prominent US lawyer Joe Flom or Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy "outliers"- men and women who, according to Malcolm Gladwell,"For one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August."
Is it hard work? Intelligence? Ambition? Yes, says Gladwell. It's all these things. But it's also so much more. Gladwell argues that we have a crude way of looking at how people achieve. He says that we are far too focused on the individual. That nobody makes it alone.
To understand an outlier we must look at their culture and the community around them. Are Asians really better than Caucasians at maths, and if so why? Gladwell argues that the stereotype is true and can be explained by cultural reasons ranging from language to a history of farming rice.
Does the culture of a country directly relate to the safety record of its national airline? Again, yes - and Gladwell explains why.
Using empirical evidence, the author demonstrates that one of the conditions for success is often as simple as the date a person is born professional athletes like footballers and ice hockey players are more often than not the oldest kids in their school year. Success also comes from opportunity - the young Bill Gates got the chance to programme computers thanks to some extraordinary luck, for example.
Outliers will change the way you think about success and quite possibly make you feel a lot better about yourself if you haven't yet achieved it.
Brown's latest breaks record
The latest novel from The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown,The Lost Symbol , broke one-day sales records, its publisher and booksellers said.
Readers snapped up over 1 million hardcover copies across the US, Canada and the UK after it was released on Tuesday, said publisher Knopf Doubleday, a division of Random House.
"We are seeing historic, recordbreaking sales across all types of our accounts in North America for The Lost Symbol ," said Sonny Mehta, editor in chief of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Amazon.com, the world's largest online retailer, called the book its bestselling first-day adult fiction title ever,including pre-orders.
The success of Mr Brown's latest is a boost to publisher Knopf Doubleday and booksellers, which have endured sliding sales in the midst of the recession.Booksellers have anxiously awaited a popular title that will resonate with readers and fuel the same sort of frenzy seen earlier this decade with the Harry Potter series, from author J.K. Rowling.
But the $25 billion US high street book market has wallowed in a slump in recent years as more readers make their purchases online, or forego books altogether for online games and other forms of media and entertainment. Now,digital books and electronic reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle or Sony's Reader are seen as avenues of growth and sources of competition for traditional media, and publishers and booksellers are scrambling to respond.
The highly anticipated book from Mr Brown comes six years after the release of The Da Vinci Code . It continues the adventures of Harvard professor Robert Langdon and is set in the secret world of Freemasons in Washington D.C.
The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies worldwide. It was made into a film starring Tom Hanks that grossed more than $758 million.
Readers snapped up over 1 million hardcover copies across the US, Canada and the UK after it was released on Tuesday, said publisher Knopf Doubleday, a division of Random House.
"We are seeing historic, recordbreaking sales across all types of our accounts in North America for The Lost Symbol ," said Sonny Mehta, editor in chief of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Amazon.com, the world's largest online retailer, called the book its bestselling first-day adult fiction title ever,including pre-orders.
The success of Mr Brown's latest is a boost to publisher Knopf Doubleday and booksellers, which have endured sliding sales in the midst of the recession.Booksellers have anxiously awaited a popular title that will resonate with readers and fuel the same sort of frenzy seen earlier this decade with the Harry Potter series, from author J.K. Rowling.
But the $25 billion US high street book market has wallowed in a slump in recent years as more readers make their purchases online, or forego books altogether for online games and other forms of media and entertainment. Now,digital books and electronic reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle or Sony's Reader are seen as avenues of growth and sources of competition for traditional media, and publishers and booksellers are scrambling to respond.
The highly anticipated book from Mr Brown comes six years after the release of The Da Vinci Code . It continues the adventures of Harvard professor Robert Langdon and is set in the secret world of Freemasons in Washington D.C.
The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies worldwide. It was made into a film starring Tom Hanks that grossed more than $758 million.
Google offers its digital books for printing
Google is giving 2 million books in its digital library a chance to be reincarnated as paperbacks.
As part of a deal announced yesterday,Google is opening up part of its index to the maker of a high-speed publishing machine that can manufacture a paperback-bound book of about 300 pages in under 5 minutes. The new service is an acknowledgment by the internet search leader that not everyone wants their books served up on a computer or an electronic reader like those made by Amazon.com and Sony.
The "Espresso Book Machine" has been around for several years, but it figures to become a hotter commodity now that it has access to so many books scanned from some of the world's largest libraries. And On Demand Books, the Espresso's maker, potentially could get access to even more hard-to-find books if Google wins court approval of a classaction settlement giving it the right to sell out-of-print books.
"This is a seminal event for us," said Dane Neller, On Demand Books' chief executive, as he oversaw a demonstration of the Espresso Book Machine on Wednesday at Google's Mountain View,California, headquarters.
In the background, some of the books that Google spent the past five years scanning into a digital format were returning to their paper origins.
"It's like things are coming full circle,"Google spokeswoman Jennie Johnson said."This will allow people to pick up the physical copy of a book even if there may be just one or two other copies in some library, or maybe it's not even available at all." On Demand's printing machines already are in more than a dozen locations in the United States,Canada, Australia, England and Egypt,mostly at campus book stores, libraries and small retailers. The Harvard Book Store will be among the first equipped with an instant-publishing machine to have access to Google's digital library.
The books published by The Espresso Machine will have a recommended sales price of US$8(270 baht) per copy,although the final decision will be left to each retailer. New York-based On Demand Books will get a $1 of each sale with another $1 going to Google, which says it will donate its commission to charities and other nonprofit causes.
The high-speed publishing machine itself sells for about $100,000, although On Demand Books is willing to lease the equipment to retailers instead.
For starters, Google is only allowing The Espresso Machine publish from the section of its digital library that consists of 2 million books no longer protected by copyright.
These "public domain" books were published before 1923- an era that includes classics like Moby Dick and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as very obscure titles. The paperbacks churned out in Wednesday's demonstration of the Espresso included Lathe Work For Beginners
Lathe Dame Curtsey's Book
MOf Candy Making , and Memoirs Of A Cavalier , a Daniel Defoe novel that never caught on quite like his most famous work,Robinson Crusoe .Millions more titles could be added to On Demand's virtual inventory if Google gets federal court approval of a classaction settlement that would grant it the right to sell copyrighted books no longer being published. Google estimates it already has made digital copies of about 6 million out-of-print books.
The settlement terms includes a provision that could authorise republishing the books with a machine like the Espresso. Some of Google's rivals and a long list of other critics are hoping to block the settlement, mainly because they believe it will give Google a monopoly on the digital rights to out-of-print books and make it too easy to track people's reading preferences.
The US Justice Department is investigating the monopoly allegations and is scheduled to share some of its preliminary thoughts with District Judge Denny Chin in a brief due today.
Mr Neller is thrilled just to have the right to publish selections fromGoogle's digital library of public domain books.
He thinks it could help him reach his ambition to turn the Espresso machine into publishing's equivalent of an ATM.
"It's more efficient for everyone and readers are the biggest beneficiaries,"Mr Neller said.
As part of a deal announced yesterday,Google is opening up part of its index to the maker of a high-speed publishing machine that can manufacture a paperback-bound book of about 300 pages in under 5 minutes. The new service is an acknowledgment by the internet search leader that not everyone wants their books served up on a computer or an electronic reader like those made by Amazon.com and Sony.
The "Espresso Book Machine" has been around for several years, but it figures to become a hotter commodity now that it has access to so many books scanned from some of the world's largest libraries. And On Demand Books, the Espresso's maker, potentially could get access to even more hard-to-find books if Google wins court approval of a classaction settlement giving it the right to sell out-of-print books.
"This is a seminal event for us," said Dane Neller, On Demand Books' chief executive, as he oversaw a demonstration of the Espresso Book Machine on Wednesday at Google's Mountain View,California, headquarters.
In the background, some of the books that Google spent the past five years scanning into a digital format were returning to their paper origins.
"It's like things are coming full circle,"Google spokeswoman Jennie Johnson said."This will allow people to pick up the physical copy of a book even if there may be just one or two other copies in some library, or maybe it's not even available at all." On Demand's printing machines already are in more than a dozen locations in the United States,Canada, Australia, England and Egypt,mostly at campus book stores, libraries and small retailers. The Harvard Book Store will be among the first equipped with an instant-publishing machine to have access to Google's digital library.
The books published by The Espresso Machine will have a recommended sales price of US$8(270 baht) per copy,although the final decision will be left to each retailer. New York-based On Demand Books will get a $1 of each sale with another $1 going to Google, which says it will donate its commission to charities and other nonprofit causes.
The high-speed publishing machine itself sells for about $100,000, although On Demand Books is willing to lease the equipment to retailers instead.
For starters, Google is only allowing The Espresso Machine publish from the section of its digital library that consists of 2 million books no longer protected by copyright.
These "public domain" books were published before 1923- an era that includes classics like Moby Dick and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as very obscure titles. The paperbacks churned out in Wednesday's demonstration of the Espresso included Lathe Work For Beginners
Lathe Dame Curtsey's Book
MOf Candy Making , and Memoirs Of A Cavalier , a Daniel Defoe novel that never caught on quite like his most famous work,Robinson Crusoe .Millions more titles could be added to On Demand's virtual inventory if Google gets federal court approval of a classaction settlement that would grant it the right to sell copyrighted books no longer being published. Google estimates it already has made digital copies of about 6 million out-of-print books.
The settlement terms includes a provision that could authorise republishing the books with a machine like the Espresso. Some of Google's rivals and a long list of other critics are hoping to block the settlement, mainly because they believe it will give Google a monopoly on the digital rights to out-of-print books and make it too easy to track people's reading preferences.
The US Justice Department is investigating the monopoly allegations and is scheduled to share some of its preliminary thoughts with District Judge Denny Chin in a brief due today.
Mr Neller is thrilled just to have the right to publish selections fromGoogle's digital library of public domain books.
He thinks it could help him reach his ambition to turn the Espresso machine into publishing's equivalent of an ATM.
"It's more efficient for everyone and readers are the biggest beneficiaries,"Mr Neller said.
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