Once again I’ve been told that “money does not buy health and happiness”. I hear this far too often.

It is illogical to think that money does not buy happiness. Money buys both health and happiness. Money buys everything, as long as you have enough of it.

1. It is undeniable that people want different things, whether it be an experience or physical object.
2. It is also undeniable that when people acquire what they want, they become happy.
3. But how are experiences (such as travels) or physical items (such as Mont Blancs) acquired? Money of course.
4. Therefore it is only logical to see that money buys happiness. The logic here is undeniable as far as I see. There is no reason for anybody to continue claiming “money does not buy happiness”. Of course, people may go to different lengths to acquire that wealth which may negatively impact their health, but ultimately, it differs from the question.

I also started reading Beyond Freedom And Dignity. I was just thinking about the book too and boom, I saw it on the library shelf. It’s interesting, but a tough read. Lots of metaphors, and I have to rack my brain to see the connection.

Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers is the first book by Seth Godin I read. It’s quite good, although the principle of subscription based services is very simple so it got rather redundant near the end.

Unleashing the Ideavirus had some really fantastic ideas about how to promote a business, not through interruption marketing, but through viral idea marketing that will spread organically. While it provides suggestions on how to spread your own “ideavirus”, ultimately, chance is involved, and you can only do your best to help it grow with no guarantees of success. While I was reading, the first thing that came to mind was how Apple was already doing many of the things mentioned in the books to promote their viral ideas, and most all of their products are hugely successful today. Apple seems to know this book front and back, as all of their products are essentially viral already. Microsoft’s products on the other hand, not so much.

Apple uses simple product naming such as iPhoto. Microsoft, not so much. Long names like Windows Live Photo Gallery are commonplace. Apple holds iOrgies like MacWorld to advertise to their biggest advocates, while Microsoft launches massive interruption ad campaigns.

Small is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants and Remarkable Business Ideas is basically 183 ideas that popped into the author’s head, and it’s pretty ineffective to read more than five at a time because unlike the other books, few of the ideas are connected so it becomes necessary to think about each one separately.

Now I’m reading, All Marketers Are Liars, which explains how people cough up big bucks for “the finest natural artesian water made from the finest rain water percolated through volcanic soil extracted from the islands of Fiji”.

It’s time for one of my infamous badly worded book reviews. I recently finished reading Cradle To Cradle, a superb book about “remaking the way we make things“. It outlines a completely new way of looking at reducing and reusing to better reduce human impact on the world. The key idea is that what we currently view as reusing and recycling, such as recycling old newspapers, has a crucial flaw in that the new product created is in worse quality than the original.

Cradle to Cradle describes manufacturing through the ages and documents how little it has changed. Just as in the past, manufacturing involves extracting unused resources and turning it into a product that cannot be recycled, and is eventually thrown away into a landfill as garbage. However, there could be a superior methodology of using resources that mimics that of nature’s. Instead of creating things with only its current lifespan in mind, every product should be created with the intent that it can be reused in the future as something of equal quality.

One problem with green products that currently exists is the expensive price premium over similar non green products. Although this may be true, Cradle to Cradle shows how green design is in face even more economical than traditional products when the entire manufacturing process is analyzed.

Even the book itself embodies the ideals it describes as it’s made of some sort of plastic so that the entire book can be melted down and recycled into an entirely new book of perfect quality. You would think that a plastic book would feel strange, but as a plastic book, it felt even better than paper and it’s resistant to water. This is a must read book that will change the way you look at recycling and design.

I recently finished reading An Ocean Of Air: Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere by Gabrielle Walker. This book was riveting from the start, traveling from labs to mountaintops, while delving through the components of the atmosphere and the scientists who discovered them.

Contrary to the title, the driving of the book is not wholly about the minutiae of the atmosphere, but  also delves into the lives and personalities of the eccentric scientists who made the discoveries. It has detailed narratives of Galileo Galilei, Robert Boyle, Evangelista Torricelli, Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier, Guglielmo Marconi, James Van Allen and many others. While I knew about a few of these individuals from chemistry, many others were rather obscure such as Svante Arrhenius, Joseph Black, William Ferrel, Oliver Heaviside, and Gilbert Plass.

Walker gives a chronological account of the contributions of these scientists to the field, building one discovery upon another and creating an effect of exploration for the reader. By combining such captivating anecdotes with their discoveries, Walker is able to inform and intrigue. When it finally comes to explaining the scientific principles involved, explanations are clear and understandable, fully revealing the importance and delicate nature of our atmosphere. An Ocean Of Air is exciting and educational exploration into the life sustaining atmosphere.