電影、書評、隨筆

作者： 李逆熵 出版：香港經濟日報 主體： 經濟；社會 初版：2014 ISBN：9789626788448 本書頭兩部分探討了人類的經濟活動歷史，藉描述早期的市場交易、貨幣的使用，到資本主義制度的崛起，它的自我膨脹邏輯與及對環境的禍害等，從中批判現代資本主義。作者嘗試從馬克思的理論出發，分析資本主義的利弊，並於書中最後一部分提出了一些大膽的設想，刺激大家去思考改變的可能性。 書中除了闡釋馬克思的理論，還引述了其他知名的社會／經濟學家如布羅岱爾（Braundel）、佛利民、皮克提（Piketty）、海耶克、波蘭尼（Polanyi）等人的著作，以貫穿整本書的主題。誠然，它提供了一個宏觀，縱合古今、橫貫中西方的角度去了解資本主義在我們世界所扮演的角色，非常適合作為這題目的導讀；但馬克思的理論畢竟很抽象，有些地方很含糊，要以此說服主流的新經典經濟學支持者，恐怕還需要更加嚴謹的論証。 例如，我認為馬克思對剩餘價值的概念便有斟酌的地方：他背後假設了工人的集體勞動價值是簡單的線性疊加，10個工人的集體勞動產出就是這10個人獨立勞動產出的總和，因此才會得出資本家的利潤必然建立在對工人剝削這結論上。但很明顯，公司成立的邏輯便是藉著規模經濟（economy of scale）和分工合作，把利潤最大化，故此10個人的集體勞動價值很可能大於他們獨立勞動的總和，而資本家的利潤理論上可以建立在這些額外的產出中而不構成剝削。當然，現實也可能不是這樣，但這是馬克思的中心思想，要他的理論成立這點必須要站得住腳才成。 縱然如此，正如筆者在序言中寫道：「你可能不同意我的觀點，但我十分肯定，在你反覆思索及提出反駁的觀點期間，你必會對這個世界的理解加深不少。」只要本書能啟發讀者在這議題上思考，無論他們認同與否，這本書的目的已經達到了。 注：經過數個月的苦幹，我終於在7月把全書翻譯成英文，並和李博士修編了一些地方，放在 亞馬遜網上書店 發售，書名為 The Urge of Capital ，請支持一下！

Author:       Malcolm Gladwell Subject:       Successful people Publisher:   Little Brown & Co., New York Year:           2008 ISBN:          9780316017930 Despite easy to read, I think the book does not convey many new ideas as to what makes people succeed. The nexus of the book is that successful people, no matter how gifted, do not make things by themselves; rather they owe a big part of it to the conducive environment in which they are in. Therefore we should not totally take in the notion of "self-made billionaires/innovators" but instead look carefully how their surroundings have assisted them in making their achievement. Though the stories flow well, I think the whole thesis is no much different from the notion of fundamental attribution error we learnt from psychology classes. The fact that we tend to make internal attribution to explain the people's behavio...

Author:        Aleksandr R.  Luria Subject:       Memory,  synesthesia Year:           1987 Publisher :   Harvard UP,  Cambridge, MA ISBN:　　  0674576225 A very interesting case of a man who has seemingly unlimited capacity of memory. It is greatly appreciated that the author, psychologist Luria, did all these observations and experiments at a time where all the modern technology, such as fMRI, EEG etc. were all unavailable. Although the case was centred around the man's extraordinary memory, it also described other aspects of his life, in particular his synesthesia. Overall, it gives a lot of insight about what could happen to a person if his cognitive function runs wild.  On the down side, some part of the book was quite difficult to read, possibility due to the translation as well as the writing style at the time.

The persistence of memory ( Salvador Dalí, 1931) [The following article was written by James T. Webb on the website of Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SNEG)  in 2011. Please click here for the original article.] It has been my experience that gifted and talented persons are more likely to experience a type of depression referred to as existential depression. Although an episode of existential depression may be precipitated in anyone by a major loss or the threat of a loss which highlights the transient nature of life, persons of higher intellectual ability are more prone to experience existential depression spontaneously. Sometimes this existential depression is tied into the positive disintegration experience referred to by Dabrowski (1996). Existential depression is a depression that arises when an individual confronts certain basic issues of existence. Yalom (1980) describes four such issues (or “ultimate concerns”)–death, freedom, isolation and me...

We often conceive of the Trojan horse as a story of courage and trickery, but buried there too is a darker aspect. Cassandra, the princess of Troy, embodies the character of a classic Greek tragedy as she struggles against her own unalterable fate. As the royal heir to the city of Troy, Cassandra got her prophetic ability from Apollo, who offered the beautiful princess her prophetic flair in the hope of sleeping with her. When she refused his advances, Apollo was enraged and took away her ability to make people believe her prophecies. As the fighting broke out in Troy, the combination of an ability to see the future and an inability to convince people of what she saw, made a perfect recipe for a cursed fate. Well aware of the soldiers inside, Cassandra tried in vain to persuade her countrymen not to bring the wooden horse within the city's walls – and hence the famous consequence. Not only was she unable to convince her fellows of what was about to happen, it is also easy...