Book Review: No longer human by Osamu Dazai

 Semi-autobiographical book 

Book review: In War and Famine, Missionaries in China's Honan Province in the 1940s by Erleen J. Christensen

 A memoir by a missionary's daughter on her father (a missionary doctor in Henan province) and missionaries in Henan during 1940's Japanese occuputions of Henan. There is a small part that told the work of OSS (a precursor to CIA) in Henan Tantouchen. One of my neighbor's father was in the book as a OSS radio communicator.

Book Review: Bad samaritans, The myth of free trade and the secret history of capitalism by Ha-joon Chang

Since Reagon and Thatcher TINA (there is no alternative), neo-liberalism aka free-market free-trade economics have been a role model for decades, and the rightousness of neo-liberalism is further fanned by academics like Frances Fukuyama and writer like Thomas Friedman. But silver bullet neo-liberalism doesn't yield results it promised in developing countries adopting it, most of the initiatives World Bank/IMF/WTO implemented in developing countries didn't promote growth and economic prosperity. Instead countries like Japan, Korea and China who adopted policies that counter neo-liberalism actually produce sustainable growth.

This book is a look at globalization and neo-liberalism from the viewpoints of the developing(poor) countries rather that of developed(rich) nations , where infant industries protection are at odds with WTO/World Bank/IMF mandates on free trade and free market. A much naunced look at how China achieve the sustainable growth can be seen with Lin Yifu's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g6noa-Zgbo&t=868s, which is a viewpoint from China.

A debunking of Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the olive tree

Re-discovering Daniel Defoe's A Plan for English Commerce, a long lost treatise on true reasons UK became world dominant manufacturing power, not by free trade and free market, but by selective protectionism and high tariff

Neo-liberalism = Free trade and free market, Adam Smith

Civil war was a battle between Southern free-trade/low tariff slave owner vs Northern protectionist of infant industry/high tariff industrialist

"Despite being the most protectionist country in the world throughout the 19th century and right up to the 1920s, the US was also the fastest growing economy

Countries cited in the book: Britian, US, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Finland

So Trumpism may get a point on raising tariff.

Problems with SOE: Principal-Agent problem+Free-rider problem+Soft budget constraint

Success stories of SOE: Singapore airline, Korean's POSCO

allocative deadweight loss

Quotes

 "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." -- Martin Niemöller

Book Review: The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un by Anna Fifield

 

极权政治在亚洲依然盛行，其最极端最邪恶的形式存在于朝鲜：家族的集权独裁统治。北朝鲜的存在也决定性的阻碍了中国东北的经济发展，投资不过山海关，钱投在东北就等于把钞票码在2个火坑的边缘：北朝鲜是一个小火坑，俄罗斯是一个大火坑，准备随时被烧掉吧。

中国经济现在的问题不过是历史的重复

 “90 年代中期之后，困扰中国经济的一个突出问题是所谓的内需不足。这尤

其体现在消费需求的不足上。这个严重困扰延续的时间是如此之长，以至于“提

振内需”变成了各级政府官员常年挂在嘴边的一个政治口号。那么，在国民财富

增长“一支独秀”的同时，中国内部的消费意愿以及消费能力为什么反而会变得

如此低下呢？对这个问题，许多人都从不同的角度给出了自己的解释，但“有消

费能力的缺乏消费意愿，有消费意愿的却缺乏消费能力”恐怕是对这个悖论最有

说服力的解释。显然，这个事实所透露出的信息已经远远不像“内需不足”这个

术语那么中性了。这实际上在暗示，中国社会经过25 年的改革，已经出现严重

的分配失衡。而这种失衡的持续之长及扩展之快都显示，中国的分配模式已经在

相当高的可能性被锁定，一个久别了的词汇——马太效应，正在回到中国人的生

活当中。当然，在中国改革过程中所出现的“马太效应”被注入了典型中国式的

内涵：被权力为分配轴心的模式不是将少数人，而是将大多数人趋入贫困的深渊。”

                   -- 《中国:奇迹的黄昏》袁剑 著 2008年

Heilmeier's Catechism

 A set of questions credited to Heilmeier that anyone proposiing a research project or product development effort should be able to answer

• What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no JARGON
• How is done today? And what are the limits of current practice?
• What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
• Who cares?
• If you are successful, what difference will it make?
• What are the risks and the payoffs?
• How much will it cost?
• How long will it take?
• What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?

Book Review: The other great game, The opening of Korea and the birth of modern east Asia by Sheila Miyoshi Jager

 I was born in Harbin of a Korean Chinese parents. I grew up with an identity confusion, I felt as a North Eastern Chinese, I have hard time relate to all adjectives applied to China in my geography and history classes: long history, diverse ethnicity, and grand vision. Northeastern China is backwater of the China we were introduced in our text books. The north eastern China we grew up with is a flat and fertile land with not much of history and only several ethnics, mainly Han Chinese (a lot of them migrants from inlands in search of food and security) and some Korean like myself and some Japanese descendants left behind after Sino Japanese war, and in the city where I grew up  occasional Russian descendants (LaoMaoZi). And we northeasterners are like by-standers, always standing on the sidelines envying all the exciting things happened in the Real China. Chinese living in Manchuria feels like they live on the edge of mainstream Chinese culture. And as a Korean ethnics, I don't feel related to either North Korean or South Korean either. Even food we Korean Chinese prefer are different to what South Koreans like. The staple Korean dish of cold noodle soup, we Korean Chinese like to eat with Wasabi plus chilli and South Korean like to eat with a slice of apple and sweet sour soup. Korean living in Manchuria feel like they live on the edge of mainstream Korean culture. 

People live in Manchuria and northeastern China look at the surrounding regions with a slight different perspective  and viewpoint than their peers living inside Shanhaiguan. 

This book is the first book I read that look at the world from Manchuria and Korean perspective. It framed the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria in the context of geopolitical tension between China, Japan, Russia and to the lesser extent USA. Sino Chinese war, Russia Japanese war and trans Siberia railroad were all covered from the perspective of Korean and Manchuria. It also framed the region in the context of Russian ambitions in gaining a seaport in Pacific, the Japanese dilemma of maritime strategy or continental strategy. 

Apple TV series Pachinko also share similar viewpoint, looking at the history from a Korean Japanese minority.

Book Review: Why Nation Fail, the origin of power, prosperity, and poverty by Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson

• Preface Why Egyptians filled Tahrir Square to bring down Hosni Mubarak and what it means for our understanding of the causes of prosperity and poverty
• 1. So close and yet so different, Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, have the same people, culture, and geography. Why is one rich and one poor?
• The economics of the Rio Grande
• The founding of Buenos Aires
• From Cajamarca ...
• .... to Jamestown
• A tale of two constitutions
• Having an idea, starting a firm, and getting a loan
• Path-dependent change
• Making a billion or two
• Toward a theory of world inequality
• 2. Theories that don't work, poor countries are poor not because of their geographies or cultures, or because their leaders do not know which policies will enrich their citizens
• The lay of the land
• The geography hypothesis
• The culture hypothesis
• The ignorance hypothesis
• 
  
• 3. The making of prosperity and poverty, how prosperity and poverty are determined by the incentives created by institutions, and how politics determines what institutions a nation has
• The economics of the 38th parallel
• Extractive and inclusive economic institutions
• Engines of prosperity
• Extractive and inclusive political institutions
• Why not always choose prosperity?
• The long agony of the Congo
• Growth under extractive political institutions
• 4. Small differences and critical junctures: the weight of history, how institutions change through political conflict and how the past shapes the present
• The world the plague created
• The making of inclusive institutions
• Small difference that matter
• The contigent path of history
• Understanding lay of the land
• 5. "I've seen the future, and it works": Growth under extractive institutions, what Stalin, King Shyaam, the Neolithic Revolution, and the Maya city-states all had in common and how this explains why China's current economic growth cannot last
• I've seen the future
• On the banks of the Kasai
• The long summer
• The unstable extraction
• What goes wrong?
• 6.Difting apart, how institutions evolve over time, often slowly difting apart
• How Venice became a museum
• Roman virtues...
• ... Roman vices
• No one writes from Vindolanda
• Diverging paths
• Consequencess of early growth
• 7.The turning point, how a political revolution in 1688 changed institutions in England and led to the Industrial Revolution
• Trouble with stockings, William Lee's stocking knitting Tmachine
• The glorious revolution
• The industrial revolution
• Why in England
• 8. Not on our turf: barriers to development, why the politically powerful in many nations opposed the industrial revolution
• No printing allowed
• A small difference that mattered, Spain vs England
• Fear of industry, Habsburg empire
• No shipping allowed, Ming and Qing dynasties in China
• The absolutism of Prester John, Ehiopia
• The children of samaale, Somalia
• 9.Reversing developmen, how European colonialism impoverished large parts of the world
• Spice and genocide, Southeast Asia
• The all-to-usual institution, Slave trade and slavery 
• Making dual economy. South Africa
• Development reversed 
• 10 The diffusion of prosperity, how some parts of the world took different paths to prosperity from that of Britain
• Hornor among thieves, Australia
• Breaking the barriers: The French revolution
• Exporting the revolution, Europe
• Seeking modernity, Japan
• Roots of world inequality
• 11. The virtuous circle, how institutions that encourage prosperity create positive feedback loops that prevent the efforts by elites to undermine them
• The black act ,UK
• The slow march of democracy, UK
• Busting trusts, USA
• Packing the court, FDR in USA
• Positive feedback and virtuous circles
• 12. The vicious circle, How institutions that create poverty generate negative feedback loops and endure
• You can't take the train to Bo anymore Sierra Leone
• From Encomienda to land grab Guatemala
• From slavery to Jim Crow US South
• The iron law of Oligarchy Ethiopia
• Negative feeback and vicious circles
• 13. Why nations fail today, institutions, institutions, institutions
• How to win the lottery in Zimbabwe
• A children's crusade? Siere Leone and sub-Sahara Africa's child soldiers
• Who is the state? Colombia
• El Corralito, Argentina
• The new absolutism, North Korea
• King cotton, Uzbekistan
• Keeping the playing field at an angle, Egypt
• Why nations fail
• 14. Breaking the mold, how a few countries changed their economic trajectory by changing their institution
• Three African Chiefs, Botswana
• The end of the southern extraction, US
• Rebirth in China, China under Deng 
• 15. Understanding prosperity and povery, how the world could have been different and how understanding this can explain why most attempts to combat poverty have failed
• Historical Origins
• The irresistible charm of authoritarian growth
• You can't engineer prosperity
• The failure of foreign aid
• Empowerment

Chinese economy: It is structural issue, stupid!

 Export decline (Geopolitical tension +misstep in diplomacy) and consumption slump(due to China's authoritarian driven and cronysm economy)

  =>

GDP growth slowdonw (China needs to maintain 6%+ growth to create jobs)

=>

Youth unemployment rise

Book Review: The New China Playbook, Beyond Socialism and Capitalism By Keyu Jin

 A book from a China raised scholar who is currently living in London. Her viewpoint would be a gentle introduction to westerners deeply ingrained in Western thinking, the way to look at new China from Chinese perspective. [updated 10/21/2024] She thought an extractive political system(One party rule and authoratarian system) such as China has won't hinder China's ecnomic uprising, as long as China maintains an inclusive ecnomic system.

A little light in academic, greatly enlived by interjecting her own upbringing and life experience.

[Updated on 10/21/2024] Newly minted Nobel Economy Prize winner Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson in their book Why Nations Fail had predicted an extractive political system will undermine ecnomic development.

Book review: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zuner

• Notable quotes from the book

My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault line-generational, cultural, linguistic-we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligible to the other's expectations.

I remembered these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you, not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation, but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it. She remembered if you liked your stews with extra broth, if you were sensitive to spice, if you hated tomatoes, if you didn't eat seafood, if you have a large appetite. She remembered which banchan side dish you emptied first so the next time you were over it'd be set with a heaping double portion, served alongside the various other preferences that made you, you.

"Stop crying! Save your tears for when your mother dies。” This was a common proverb in my household. In place of the English idioms my mother never learned, she coined a few of her own. "Mommy is the only one who will tell you the truth, because Mommy is the only one who ever truely love you." Some of the earliest memories I can recall are of my mother instructing me to always "save ten percent of yourself." What she meant was that, no matter how much you thought you loved someone, or thought they loved you, you never gave all of yourself. Save 10 percent, always, so there was something to fall back on. "Even from Daddy, I save," she would add.

....She felt Americans were overly cautions and overly medicated and had instilled this belief in me from a young age, so much so that when Peter got food poisoning from a bad can of tuna and his mother suggested I take him to urgent care, I actually had to stifle a laugh. In my household, there was nothing to do for food poisoning except threw it up. Food poisoning was a rite of passage. You couldn't expect to eat well without taking a few risks, and we suffered the consequences twice a year.

Book Review: The death of money, The coming collapse of the international monetary system by James Rcikards

•  Money illusion : The lag of comprehension of inflation by central bank. It is an opportunity for bankers and smart investors to capture the wealth while general public are left with devalued savings and pensions. 
• Question: How does investor achieve this? 
• Possible causes for dollar collapse and global financial system collapse outlined in the introduction chapter:
• Financial war
• Inflation
• Deflation
• Chapter 1 Prophesy
• john mulheren
• allen m. poteshman
• signal amplication
• randy tauss
• steve levitt
• dave davos nolan
• red teaming
• chris ray
• lenny raymond
• mike morell
• Chapter 2 The war god's face
• Mirror imaging
• Andy Marshall
• Chapter 3 Ruin of the market
• Adam Smith, The theory of moral sentiments
• Friedrich Hayek, The use of knowledge in society
• Charles Goodheart, Goodheart law
• Wealth effect
• George Akerloft, information asymmetry
• Ben S. Bernanke, Irreversibility, uncertainty and cyclical investment
• Regime uncertainty, by Charles Kindleberger
• Chapter 4 China's new financial warlords
• Chapter 5 The new German Reich
• Downward norminal wage rigidity
• Internal adjustment through lower wages vs external adjustment through cheap currency and inflation
• sticky wage theory by Keynes
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• 3 views on money: Monetarism, Chatalism, Creditism

Book Review: End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation by Barry C Lynn

 The book is a bit old, published in 2006. It was referred to as a must-read for understanding globalization.

And it fits the bill. Considering current de-globalization or globalization without China and Russia, it is as relevant as ever.

Xi Jinping stated that we are in the period of change that only occurs every one hundred years. There is a main driver behind this seismic change: USA. The book illustrated how globalization came into being during Reagan era, it is US driving initiative to throw off Japan from dominating global manufacturing. And China became the winner in this US-driven initiative. 

Now US is trying to throw off China by de-globalization, will it succeed again? 

Understanding deglobalization by understanding the history of globalization

• Globalization was started by three people: Reagan, Thatcher and Deng. TINA, There Is No Alternative
• Aim of globalization was to counter Japanese dominance in manufacturing and electronic industry, based on End of line
• Setup of the globalization: US being the strongest country in the world acts as consumer and financer, China being the most populous country acts as main manufacturer and producer
• Losers of globalization: South American countries, Japan 
• Deglobalization was started by Trump 
• Aim of deglobalization was to counter China's emergence and dominance

特变电工： 顺周期慢牛

中国人的智慧

• 窃钩者诛，窃国者侯
•  

撐不起的善良

“贫苦时代的人们亲情都比较淡漠，即便是母女，父子，在贫困生活的压力下，也会尽显自私的一面。人要活的善良需要许多许许多多的条件，没有这些条件，善良的天性也会渐渐被埋没。很多人以为自己比那些穷苦的人更善良，其实他们只不过更幸运而已。 ”  --- 王志安

"父亲的一些老同事，老战友，老同学，老朋友在历次的运动中，自杀了。父亲是历次运动中的老“运动员”，但靠着自私与冷漠的心理保护，活了下来。"

善良會讓人死，自私和冷漠讓人活， 而這些活下來的幸存者主宰著未來，影響著下一代。

回答

卑鄙是卑鄙者的通行证，

高尚是高尚者的墓志铭。

看吧，在那镀金的天空中，

飘满了死者弯曲的倒影。

冰川纪过去了，

为什么到处都是冰凌？

好望角发现了，

为什么死海里千帆相竞？

我来到这个世界上，

只带着纸、绳索和身影，

为了在审判之前，

宣读那些被判决了的声音：

告诉你吧，世界，

我——不——相——信！

纵使你脚下有一千名挑战者，

那就把我算做第一千零一名。

我不相信天是蓝的，

我不相信雷的回声；

我不相信梦是假的，

我不相信死无报应。

如果海洋注定要决堤，

就让所有的苦水都注入我心中；

如果陆地注定要上升，

就让人类重新选择生存的峰顶。

新的转机和闪闪的星斗，

正在缀满没有遮拦的天空，

那是五千年的象形文字，

那是未来人们凝视的眼睛。

    - 北島

Good travel writers

 Michael Booth

生平

參軍： 1959.12

復員： 1969.6

1978 寫信給瀋陽軍區改成轉業

Lowy Institute Analysis: Revising down rise of China By Raja and Leng

 Report link

Book review: Strangers to our selves: Understanding Minds and the stories that make us by Rachel Aviv

 Stories about 6 mentally ill people

• Rachel, author herself, checked into hospital at age of 6 for anorexia
• Ray, a middle aged cocasian man checked in Chesternut Lodge for depression. Fromm-Reichmann described loneliness ass "one of the least satisfactorily conceptualized psychological phenomena, not even mentioned in most psychiatric textbooks" - a state in which the "fact that there were people in one's past life is more or less forgotten, and the possibility that there may be interpersonal relationships in one's future lefe is out of the realm of expectation."
• Bapu
• Naomi : 

        About Naomi's mother Florida ---

                "She didn't know she was beautiful, she didn't know she was smart, she didn't know she could                     raise her kids by herself. She took the first thing that showed her some interest and ran with it.                     Think about her history. Your upbring will trickle down" 

• Laura

            Need of her pain being taken seriously

            Prescription cascade: The side effects of one prescription leads to a succession of new                                     prescriptions

            "On 7.5 milligrams, I am a better family member"

            I wish I had a more flexible approach toward my feelings of inadequacy ("I want to be someone 

                 better than me", I had written in my 2nd grade diary), but I also feel closer to that space of                         flexibility when I take Lexapro; it seems to relieve the cognitive rigidity that often                                 accompanies anxiety and depression - the sense that one's story can unfold only one way.

    

• Hava

China's global cities will thrive through the real estate downturn

 These cities suck the talents and resource from surrounding areas and thrive on other peoples perils.

Hiking interest rate

 Looks like only two typies of countries are not hiking up interest rate right now with the backdrop of US Fed keeps increasing rate at 75 points:

1) Autocratic countries. For example Turkey, where Erdogan has a iron grip on power 

2) Export oriented countries with strong dollar reserve. For example Japan and China. They all have very strong dollar reserve and their economies depend heavily on export.

[Update] Japan central bank intervened in Yen exchange rate and seems to do little to lift falling Yen. China central bank, wake up and follow the suite.

Question is: If Fed keeps closing the tap on greenbacks, how long will these countries stay the course and what will happen?

清單

 1） 翻墻VPN （OB）

https://vpncn.github.io/#:~:text=ExpressVPN%E5%92%8CStrongVPN%E4%B8%80%E7%9B%B4%E8%A1%A8%E7%8E%B0,%E5%81%9A%E8%A2%AB%E5%A4%87%E7%94%A8%EF%BC%8C%E9%80%82%E7%94%A8Windows%E3%80%81

2) 淘寶使用 （JC）

3) 短視頻 設備 構思

4） contractors through friends and relatives

5) Systain eyedrops (M,D), 鈣(M,D)， 魚油(M,D)， 葉黃素(M,D)， Vitamax(3, m, z, j), Nutera jam, Movefree, Kirkland Merino Socks, ThermaCare patches

裝修

適老化設計概論 https://www.zhihu.com/question/458991204

適老化設計 Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ2rZbqMpWg&list=PL_dovX984ss3c2UaXzo_YtqAXQkAsSmvt

衛生間 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pFv0Mh2nwQ

厨房 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN6Ohd6i6eI

集成灶

斷橋鋁

Completing tax return

韓國轉機 核酸 https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/579035218

You are what your habits are

 We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

                                                    ---------- Aristotle

Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're probably right.

                                            ------ Henry Ford

冯唐：如何避免成为一个油腻的中年猥琐男

 十条建议：

• 不要成为一个胖子；
• 不要停止学习；
• 不要呆着不动；
• 不要当众谈性；
• 不要追忆从前；
• 不要教育晚辈；
• 不要给别人添麻烦；
• 不要停止购物；
• 不要脏兮兮；
• 不要鄙视和年龄无关的人类习惯

Book review: Origin story A big history of Everything by David Christian

 Big history project

Bought Maps of time: An introduction to big history by the same author

There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.

 Romain Roland

Book Review: Grandma Gatewood's walk, The inspiring story of the woman who saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery

 The story of Emma Rewona Gatewood and her epic three through hikes of Appalachian Trail

Book Review: Bureaucracy by Ludvig Von Mises

 I heard the audiobook at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgSvKzl7L3Q&t=6565s.

Ludvig Von Mises was scholar rooted in Austrian School of Economics. The book compared the socialism with capitalism, and concluded that bureaucracy in socialism became a dominant economic phenomenon and choke the vitality from the society

Book Review: To kill a mockinbird by Harper Lee

 Some quotes from the book:

Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. "You are too young to understand it," she said, "but sometimes the bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of -oh, of your father."

"... There are just some kind of men who-who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."

".. The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets -- "

Didi global: Will communist party let it go under?

 The key question is who will benefit from Didi's death?

CCP? The death of a Chinese public company listed in western exchange at the hands of CCP will send a shudder to all the companies (domestic and foreign) around the world and greatly diminish the likelihood of any future capital raising and listing from world market. CCP will not benefit from Didi's death, as a matter of fact, it will lose big if it ever happens. CCP wants to regulate the big tech companies so that there will be a healthy competition in Chinese market and there will be more companies able to raise capital and thrive in open market. Many analysts compare Didi to Luckin, but it seems to me CCP regulating Didi just to avoid another Luckin incident. Luckin and Didi are not comparables, rather they are cause and consequence. Because of Luckin there comes Didi. 

And so far CCP has been logical throughout its ruling in China, and I highly doubt CCP will kill Didi. 

I would think CCP may actually go out of its way to help Didi succeed once Didi finds a way to satisfy CCP's cyber security review and prove its compliance.

Movie Review: Twelve Angry Men

The movie is adapted from a play of the same name written by Reginald Rose, directed by Sidney Lumet, starred Henry Fonda. 

Two words I came out after watching the movie is reasonable doubt. At the beginning of the play, 12 jurors polled at 11 guilty to 1 not guilty, and as the play progressed, juror 8 (the sole dissenter) played by Henry Fonda threw questions on the facts that seemed non-refutable, and as the other jurors who want to get done with verdict and get out of hot  room argued with him, we as audience started to have doubts on those facts, just the same as the other 11 jurors. 

The movie showed American judicial system and how the system encouraged reasonable doubt through jurors.

Book Review: Empire of Cotton, A global history by Sven Beckert

 " This book is the story of the rise and fall of the European-dominated empire of cotton. But because of the centrality of cotton, its story is also the story of the making and remaking of global capitalism and with it of the modern world".

On European-dominated empire of cotton, "Why was it that the part of the world that had the least to do with cotton-Europe-created and came to dominate the empire of cotton" and "why, after many millennia of slow economic growth, a few strands of humanity in the late 18th century suddenly got much richer" ? "Scholars now refer to these few decades as the 'great divergence'"? 

"A focus on cotton and its very concrete and often brutal development casts doubt" on traditional explanations on Europe's explosive economic development : "more rational religious beliefs, their Enlightenment traditions, the climate in which they live, the continent's geography, or benign institutions such as the Bank of England or the rule of laws". "The first industrial nation, Great Britain, was hardly a liberal, lean state with dependable but impartial institutions as it is often portrayed. Instead it was an imperial nation characterized by enormous military expenditures, a nearly constant state of war, a powerful and interventionist bureaucracy, high taxes, skyrocketing government debt, and protectionist tariffs- and it was certainly not democratic." What really drove Europe's dominance is "Europeans united power of capital and the power of state to forge, often violently, a global production complex, and then used the capital, skills, networks, and institutions of cotton to embark upon the upswing in technology and wealth that defines the modern world". The time between 16th century and late 18th century is the phase of capitalism what author termed "war capitalism", not in the factory but in the fields, not mechanized but land- and labor-intensive, "resting on the violent expropriation of land and labor in Africa and the Americas. From these expropriations came great wealth and new knowledge, and these in turn strengthened European institutions and states - all crucial preconditions for Europe's extraordinary economic development by the 19th century and beyond".

Book Review: Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric by James Edward Thomas, Thomas Gryta, et al.

The book was recommended by Bill Gates and I listened it on Audible.

It explored the downfall of General Electric under CEO Jeff Immelt. The fall of GE is set in stone by former CEO Jack Welch, who turned GE into a conglomerate of diverse components, ranging from industrial manufacturing(GE Aviation, GE Power and GE appliances) to media (NBC) and even finance (GE Capital). Jack Welch leveraged GE Capital (a bank in reality but valued as a industrial company which gave it a higher P/E) to smooth out the revenue and earning and created an illusion of superior management and innovation, satisfying Wall Street and hiking up the GE share price, enriching himself along the way. In truth, Jack Welch is more a shrewd Ponzi schemer and financial engineer than an entrepreneur. To a large extent, Jack Welch is a Bernie Madoff with a better timing. 

It is a sobering read on how crooks like Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt can fool the world and make General Electric an American icon. 

Book Review: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

 The books is a youtube audiobook .

I didn't finish it, just couldn't relate to it and had a hard time to follow it. 

Rate 1 out of 5. Maybe later retry

Book Review: Hidden Valley Road, Inside the mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

 5 stars and page turner. Compassionate writing and well researched on schizophrenia.

Book Review: Wealth, Poverty and Politics An International Perspective by Thomas Sowell

This is an audio book from Audible that was published on YoutTube.

It provides counter points to Thomas Picketty's Capital in twenty first century, Niel Fuguson's Why nations fail

The main points are straightforward and of conservative roots, and the strength lies in the wide range of cases author cited (example, in culture influence on country's wealth the author cited Scotland economic rising in 18th century, Japanese in 19th century and Chinese in 20th century). 

I like to-the-point style author employs.

Highly recommend.

Book Review: The Soceity of Genes by Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher

 The authors of the book were computer scientist and physicist when they read Richard Dawkins's 1976 classic The Selfish Gene twenty years ago, and the book changed their lives and they chose to pursue evolutionary biology as their career. And the book was the authors attempt to look at the evolution from a system perspective, and the authors delivered. The book is not an easy read even after the authors masterfully used cross discipline analogy to get abstract and advanced genomics concepts to general audience level.

I am sure a lot of concepts and insights in the book already started to make sense after going through current pandemic, and will continue prove themselves as genomics and genome based medicine become more mainstream and prevalent. 

Book Review: Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell (audio book)

 Book link 

Malcolm Gladwell is a skillful storyteller. In Talking to Strangers, he threaded human psychology understanding such as 

• Truth by default theory: We human tend to take the best view of strangers by default
• Transparency theory: We human tend to take stranger at face value, if people act nice we tend to think them nice people, and if they act oddly we tend to think them odd and bad.
• Alcohol impacts human judgement
• Coupling: Bad things and bad place and bad time tend to couple together

into telling the stories of 

• Nazi German in World war II and misjudging of Hitler by Chamblain 
• Bernie Madoff
• Jerry Sandusky and Penn State story
• CIA and DIA mistakes in Cuba espionage
• Stanford University's sexual assault case
• Sandra Bland story

and smartly weaved these stories into the larger background of Black Live Matters, which makes the book relevant to the current time in addition of being informative and entertaining.

Book Review: Operation Nemesis by Eric Bogosian

 荆轲刺秦的西方版。不同的是西版荆轲Soghomon Tehlirian刺杀成功。不变的是每个刺客背后的大国博弈。荆轲身后是燕太子丹和战国四公子，公子们身后是六国抗秦，Soghomon Tehlirian背后是Armenian Revolution Federation(ARF)，ARF 身后是英法美(Under Harding's administration）, Kemal Ataturk利益共同渔翁得利。Operation Nemesis助力General Kemal 统一Turkey，助力英美控制中东石油资源，欧洲和阿拉伯才是今天的模样。历史也许改写如果荆轲成功，中国也许是另外的模样。

Biden administration主打新能源，石油利益退居二线，Turkey重要性消失，认可Armenian Genocide是顺其自然，Turkey不再是欧美棋局的一部分了，以色列攻击Hamas是为了恢复Status Quo? 也许欧洲和中亚甚至中东地缘政治又要重写。历史是强权的游戏，小民的宿命。

离亭宴带歇指煞

 俺曾见金陵玉殿莺啼晓，秦淮水榭花开早，谁知道容易冰消！眼看他起朱楼，眼看他宴宾客，眼看他楼塌了！这青苔碧瓦堆，俺曾睡风流觉，将五十年兴亡看饱。

那乌衣巷不姓王，莫愁湖鬼夜哭，凤凰台栖枭鸟。

残山梦最真，旧境丢难掉，不信这舆图换稿！诌一套《哀江南》，放悲声唱到老。

Harbin: A video tributes span 4 seasons

 Which sense best illustrate Harbin? Vision. The black soil, white snow, gray and green Songhua river, the brown railroad tracks.

Blackberry, Microsoft and EV arms race

 1) Microsoft and GM Cruise partnership seems to be a response to Blackberry and Amazon Web Services partnership, and EVs arms race seems to heat up as tech giants joining in. What is the next ? 

2) BB valuation would increase, but to what level? Can BB be acquisition target? And if it is, what would be the price tag?

What a gigantic change not seen in a century means

 1) Transition from export-driven economy to consumption-driven economy

• Impact on USA and rest of the world
• Japan, Taiwan and Singapore: How to go through transformation, learn from history 

•  Investment opportunities: real estate, stocks, bonds, commodity
•  Key factor in consumption economy is people, high earning and high contributing young people, whoever in large China can attract more people in this category will have a better time to transit to new model, and that is why Shanghai is relaxing its Hukou poliy

 

Book Review: What you are getting wrong about Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte

The book is a anti-thesis against Hillbillie Elegy by J.D.Vance. It offers a nuanced look at Appalachia, its racial composition, its history of poverty and uneven distribution of wealth within the region, the outside corporations exploitation of the region.

Reflection On Stock Investments Across Two Markets

Quick mid-term checks on recent stock investments in US and Chinese markets

1) Have a clear idea on your investment time horizon

    Is your investment horizon 1 year? 10 years? 

    For short termer, topics usually drives appreciation. For long termer, intrinsic value, management and moat should be what you look for

2)  Undertand market pecularity

    For US market   

• Market driven price movement
• Focus on growth
• Mid to long term thinking dominate
• Most of the time, asset is the king, you don't want to miss the boat
• Recently seems to dominate by fed money policy and deviate from market driven theme

   For Chinese market

• Government policy driven
• Focus on government policy and central bank monetary policy
• Short term thinking still dominate, but began to mature to mid term thinking
• Cash is king, once in red, always profit taking to keep some powder ready, when policy changes you have cash to jump in
• With new regulation, trying to transition to market driven, but result is still to be seen  

Book Review: The New Paradigm for Financial Market by George Soros

George Sors believed the equiliberium theory of market is not true and he proposed a reflexivity model, which states that market participants expectation affects markets fundementals, and the two sides are dependent on each other, making deviation from mean (equiliberium) more extreme (boom and bust pattern). In the past such situations triggers regulators intervention, but under Reagon's market driven philosophy, regulators now keep a blind eyes on market participants and rely on market's supposedly self correcting mechanism (rooted on the belief of equiliberium theory), which in turn leads to more extreme financial turmoil such as 2008 housing bubble, and he thinks there is a super-bubble superimposed on the housing bubble (credit expansion).

But his relexivity model can only explain the past but not able to predict what comes next.

This book came to my attention due to Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness: The hidden role of chance in life and in the markets

Book Review: The Hero with A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

The book was recommended by Ray Dalio and from the back cover the book has been released since 1949 and has been a huge influential one, but for some reasons it just didn't click with me. Maybe because it is a comparative mythology of western culture, the culture divide may just be too huge for me to overcome.
Similarly, all the books by Ann Rand don't click on me too.
Hopefully I will be able to come back later and be able to appreciate the value hidden in the pages

Book Review: The Grown-up's Guide to Teenage Humans by Josh Shipp

• Every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story.
• When it comes to your teen, you can have control or you can have growth. But you can't have both.
• Connection before correction. Dr. Jane Nelson

Nuggets of wisdom

• Too many among us die at thirty and are buried at eighty
• Living the same week a few thousand times and calling it a life

Book Review: Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

New York Post reporter Susannah Cahalan suffered psychosis and hallucination and was hospitalized by a mystery disease for several weeks until Dr. Souhel Najjar of New York University Langone Medical Center diagnosed her of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, an autoimmune disease caused by antibody B-cell attack neurons in brain.

Susannah is lucky to have two parents who don't give up on her and keep pushing for answer and seeking medical treatment for their daughter.

Book Review: The lessons of History by Will Durant and Ariel Durant

The first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Cooperation is a tool of competition. Cooperation is within a community so that the community can compete with other community. So to solicitate cooperation within a community, create a competition with another community will help.

Book Review: How to Change Your Mind What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan

Some keywords to ponder after hearing the audio book:

1. psychedelic
2. psyilocybin
3. Being rather than doing
4. LSD
5. 5-MeO-DMT
6. Default Mode Network (DMN)
7. Burning Man
8. Mushroom
9. Mediatation
10. Left brain vs Right brain
11. Ayahausca

The Glossary section of the book is the most valuable as it contains a lot of terms, organizations and concepts of the psychedelic movement, and best of all Amazon website for the book offers this gem of the book for free.

Book Review: My Stroke of Insight, A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor

First hand account of Jill Bolte Taylor's brain hemorrhage on her left hemisphere caused by Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM), and her insight of right hemisphere influence on mental health.
Two main takeaways from the book:
1) Brain anatomy and physiology of strokes: Ischemic and hemorrhagiv
2) The insight into analytical side (left hemisphere) and right now right here mentality (right hemisphere) and how to tap right hemisphere to gain inner peace.

The book was recommended by Ray Dalio and he is proponent for mediatation and this book although not specifically promote mediatation, it sure sounds like a endorsement for daily mediatation.

Book Review: River out of Eden A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins

The main theme is life (as author termed as replication bomb), how it began and where it is heading. Darwin's survival of fittest translated by author into survival of gene (the God's utility function). And the gene that survives will be the ones that are good at surviving in the average environment of species.
Still a little abstract for me to fully understand, and hope reading the author's other better known Selfish Gene will help

Book Review: Don't Call Me Crazy edited by Kelly Jensen and Same Time Next Week edited by Lee Gutkind

These two books are case studies and personal narrative on mental health, the former one from patient perspective and the latter from care giver perspective. I didn't finish reading them, maybe later can ref them for case studies.

Book Review: Mind Fixers, Psychiatry's troubled search for the biology of mental illness by Anne Harrington

The author is Harvard history professor, and the book documented psychiatry's repeatedly frustrated struggle to understand mental disorder in biomedical terms. The conundrum of psychiatry is that it tried to define itself as a branch of medical science but failed to find much biological explanation for most of ailment it tried to help: schizophrenia, depression and bipolar depression. And most of drugs psychiatrist relied on today are found decades earlier, and due to awareness of placebo effects and patient's awareness of severe side effect, drug companies seems to lost interest in developing new drugs for psychiatry.
The root cause for the stalling of psychiatry today is the lack of breakthrough in understanding in biomedical terms of mental illness.

Book Review: Treasury's War, The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare by Juan Zarate

• A better title for the book may be "How to bully other countries by leveraging dollar as international trade currency and New York as financial center"
• The book did provide some useful insights on financial weapons(main one is Provision 311 of US Patriot Act) US can leverage in a conflict with another country, but these information doesn't warrant 500+ pages book, a 2000 words piece will suffice
• All the weaponry author touts were derived from US dominant position in international trade (largest financial markets, New York as world financial center, dollar as currency of international trade), but overused these tools will greatly diminish US credibility and destroy US dominant position. Case in point: forcing SWIFT data already led to mistrust of US and attempt from Europe (INSTEX) and Asia countries (Russia has an inititiative supported by China, India, Iran and Turkey) in creating alternative to SWIFT system

Book Review: Darkness Visible, A Memoir of Madness by William Styron

A first hand account of severe depression by Pulitzer prize winning writer William Styron.

Book Review: The center cannot hold : my journey through madness by Elyn R. Saks.

Probably the only autobiography of a schizophrenic, The center cannot hold truthfully captured Elyn R. Saks (a MacArthur genius winner and USC professor)'s struggle with mental disease.
First hand, insightful and honest. Especially her truthful depiction of hallucination and affected thought process

Book Review: A kind of mirraculas paradise : a true story about schizophrenia by Sandra Allen.

Sandra Allen's uncle is a schizophrenic, who wrote a autobiography. Sandra mostly used his own words with her added research and background notes.
A good semi first hand description of a schizophrenic mind and how he viewed the world and people in a distorted mindset. And the writing was very good, showing a deep empathy and captured author's belief and understanding of her uncle

Book Review: Resilience : two sisters and a story of mental illness / Jessie Close with Pete Earley

A OK first hand recount of Jessie Close (who is sister of famous actress Glen Close). Jessie suffered from bipolar disease (which was only diagnosed later in her life). One contributing factor may be her parents belief in a cult organization and following the cult's way of life (living in a commune, kids separate from parents). Also there is family history: Jessie's maternal grandparents suffered mental disease.

Book Review: Mental : lithium, love, and losing my mind by Jaime Lowe

A first hand account of a woman struggling with bipolar disease. Jaime Lowe is a middle class Jewish girl grew up with caring parents (father a lawyer and mother is script writer for Hollywood, they divorced when Jaime was 18 months old) in LA. Her manic episode first happened at 16 when her older brother went to Berkeley for college and she attributed her episode to separation anxiety. And a relapse when she went to NYC working as a magazine writer after graduating from UCLA. The 2nd episode lasted for a year or two and she had to come back to LA living with her mother while she tried to recover from psychotic at home (per her psychiatrist recommendation). She took lithium for twenty plus years and later found that lithium caused her kidney damage and had to switch to Depakote.
A very engaging first hand depiction of her thought process and mental state.
One interesting anecdote is when Jaime switched to Depatoke, she noticed that she had lesser side effect when taking Depatoke ER(Extended Release) than Depatoke DR(Delayed Release), which her pharmacist failed to distinguish and don't know the difference

Book Review: The Kevin Show: An Olympic Athlete’s Battle with Mental Illness by Mary Pilon

A second hand recount of an Olympic and American cup sailor Kevin Hall. Kevin graduated from Brown, with two parents who are both doctors immigrated from Canada. The bipolar episode started at his college year, and relapsed several times during his college and athletic years when he was not on medication.
It offers perspective from his parents, sister and his wife, which may not be possible if written first hand by Kevin himself. On the other hand, it may not provide full account of thought process and mental state of Kevin during his episodes.

Book Review: Class Action, The story of Lois Jenson and The Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law By Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler

The book was the backstory for the movie North Country, a true story about a group of woman working in a Minnesota iron Mine suing the company for perennial sexual harassment in class action. The chronicle telling of the story showed that

1. Even if you are in the union, the union may not your best friend and the leadership of the local union pretty much determine the level of protection (or in this case the level of hurt) you can get from them
2. The lawsuit can take a serious toll on your health and family and even taking into account of award money
3. The lawsuit can take forever to win and most likely to settle 

黑莓（Blackberry)收购Cylance

正如之前预计，黑莓（Blackberry)果然以并购（Acquisition)求增长。而且以14亿美元买入独角兽级别的Cylance, 程守宗（John C. Chen) 做了一笔好买卖。

程守宗（John Chen) 治下的黑莓（Blackberry) 能起死回生吗？

程守宗（John Chen) 从2013年入主黑莓（Blackberry)，砍掉手机硬件生产和不动产以减负，使公司有了生存的空间，转行主业安全软件，以并购(Good Technology, AtHoc, WatchDox)和挖掘公司现有资产（QNX, CertiCom)创收。总体观之，中规中矩，鉴于公司以前所处危险状况，没有财务空间行险，他的谨慎不犯错误的方针是使黑莓能得以存活下来的唯一也是必行之路。公司的董事会也认可他的业绩，与他续约5年。

摆脱了生存危机，下一步是求发展。公司所处行业，强敌林立，靠并购，以黑莓现有的财力和现在的市场溢价，想买成独角兽不易。黑莓通过专利侵权诉讼来寻求联盟和创收，面子难看，实效从Qualcomm,Cisco 和Avaya的交易看，不错。程守宗也在寻求核算的并购，但他很谨慎，因为即便没有并购，手上的现金也会让黑莓未来可能的被并购时卖上一个好价钱，这应该是黑莓决策层的最坏打算（Plan B)。

所以我认为黑莓已经起死回生，现在的考验是如何快速发展。感觉黑莓的自主研发实力一般，Radar推出一年多，市场反响平平，Jarvis也难成高速发展的发动机。并购似乎是唯一的高速增长+延揽人才的办法。公司所处Waterloo 是加拿大的硅谷，程守宗人在硅谷，我想贾以时日，他会再给我们惊喜的。

The World Made New: Why The Age of Exploration Happened & How It Changed the World by Marc Aronson & John W.Glenn

It is a great picture book written by two scholars, one of them even holds a Ph.D degree. And I would admit this is a first picture book I read that is written by a Ph.D. And it shows the depth without sacrificing artistic and entertaining values.
The book answered the questions raised in the title, by using maps annotated with time and events of many explorers and conquestados exploration of the New World, including Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro and Cartier. And authors threw in abundunt pictures of historical artifacts that greatly increased the draw of story telling.
Best suited for 4th grades and up audience.
Highly recommended.

Raising Resilient Children and Teens from Tough Love

Before you dive in to protect your children, ask yourself three questions:

1. Does my child need a little extra support right now so she will be more confident moving forward?
2. Do I so relish the feeling of being needed that I may be choosing to jump in because it makes me feel good myself or because I believe my child's appreciation will draw him closer to me?
3. Is this an issue of safety or  morality? If the answer is yes, act immediately and firmly

Rules for building a resilient child:

1. Unconditional love is the bedrock of resilience because it creates security;
2. Children live up or down to adult expectations, for better or worse;
3. And children watch what we do more than they listen to what we say.

By Kennth R. Ginsuburg, MD, MSED, A pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine, a professor of pediatrics and a parent of two teenage daughters 

Books I Recently Read

1.  Will College Pay Off ? A guide to the most important financial decision you'll ever make by Peter Cappelli, how to maximize Ivy League education
2. The second machine age; work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies by Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffey, how to survive AI revolution 
3. Why good people can't get jobs by Peter Cappelli
4. 30 million words by Susan Suskind
5. 与韩国人打交道， 洪少辉著

Words of wisdom

1. Self-organizing learning environments (SOLEs)
1. Self-directed learning
2. Hands-on engagement with wide variety of materials (including plants and animals)
3. Largely unstructured school day
2. "杀死一个人是悲剧，杀死一万个人是统计数字." -- 斯大林
3. "Judge a man by his questions, not by his answers." -- Voltaire
4. "Work saves a man from three great evils: boredom, vice and need." -- Voltaire
5. "Seek to be an indispensable complement to something that's getting cheap and plentiful". -- Hal Varian
6. "Airplanes don't flap their wings." -- Frederick Jelinek
7.  "低端文人研究道德，高端文人研究美感。" -- 万维钢 
8. "It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit ault-level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility." -- Hans Moravec 
9. “每一个数学公式都能让这本书的销量减少一半” -- Stephen Hawkings
10. "朕非亡国之君，臣皆亡国之臣" -- 崇祯
11. Achievements doesn't necessarily lead to happiness, but the happiness can cultivate achievement. --- except from The happiest Kids in the Worlds, How Dutch Parents Help Their Kids by Doing Less
12. 要判断一个人的一生成就，只要认真观察他自身是否拥有较高的学习意愿、较强的反省能力、较大的包容态度、较深厚的专业知识，以及持久的阅读习惯。 -- 高希均

when good news is good news and bad news is good news too, then the market is topped out. When bad news is bad news and good news is bad news too, then the market is bottom out

Book Review: Influence, the psychology of persuation by Robert B. Cialdini, ISBN 9780061241895

6 principles that direct human behavior:
• Consistency
• Reciprocation
• Social proof
• Authority
• Liking
• Scarcity

Fixed-action pattern

Trigger feature

"civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them" --- British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead

Book Review: Beyond the university, why liberal education matters by Michael S. Roth, ISBN 9780300175516

John Dewey: The world in which most of us live is a world in which everyone has a calling and occupation, something to do. Some are managers and others are subordinates. But the great thing for one as for the other is that each shall have had the education which enables him to see within his daily work all there is in it of large and human significance.

John Dewey: The problem of securing to the liberal arts college its due function in democratic society is that of seeing to it that the technical subjects which are now socially necessary acquire a humane direction. There is nothing in them which is 'inherently' exclusive; but they cannot be liberating if they are cut off from there humane sources and inspiration. On the other hand, books which are cut off from vital relations with the needs and issues of contemporary life themselves become ultra-technical.

Richard Rorty: The point of non-vocational higher education is, instead, to help students realize that they can reshape themselves-that they can rework the self-image foisted on them by their past, the self-image that makes them competent citizens, into a new self-image that they themselves have helped to create.

In the end, the author answers the question: why liberal education matters? The liberal education should teach students to liberate (liberate students from self-imposed immaturity), animate (unleash the creativity to animate the world), cooperate (connect the studying of great questions of our time to the interests and activities of society), and instigate (question the authority, non-conformity). "Liberal education matters because by challenging the forces of conformity it promises to be relevant to our professional, personal and political lives. That relevance isn't just about landing one's first job; it emerges over the course of one's working life. The free inquiry and experimentation of a reflexive, pragmatic education helps us to think for ourselves, take responsibility for our beliefs and actions, and become better acquainted with own desires, our own hopes. Liberal education matters far beyond the university because it increases our capacity to understand the world, contribute to it, and reshape ourselves. When it works, it never ends."

Book Review: A troublesome inheritance, genes, race and human history by Nicholas Wade, ISBN 9781594204463

The main point: Human evolution has been recent, copious and regional.

To support the point, the author heavily cites the new development in physical anthropology development and some of the major sources include:

• Francis Fukuyama
• Reverend Thomas Malthus
• Gregory Clark

The book follows the same idea the author developed in his other book Before the dawn

Thought provoking and eye opening, do you care some new eugenics ?

Book Review: Clouds of glory, the life and legend of Robert E.Lee By Michael Korda, ISBN 9780062116291

An audio book of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and his principal subodinates: "Stonewall" Jackson, Longstreet and J.E.B.Stuart.

The author seems to draw comparison of Lee with his military idol Napolean and cited Napolean throughout the book. Maybe due to author's European based education background.

Book Review: The scorpion's sting, Antislavery and the coming of the civil war by James Oakes ISBN 9780393239935

Surrounded by a ring of fire, the scorpion stings itself to death. The image, widespread among antislavery leaders before the Civil War,captures long-standing strategy for peaceful abolition: they would surround the slave states with a cordon of freedom.

I picked up the book after reading Washington Post review and it certainly offered a closer look at Civil War from a new persepctive.

Book Review: Start-up Nation, The story of Israel's Economic Miracle by Den Senor and Saul Singer ISBN 9780446541466

One recent news item coincides with my reading of this book:after French's terrorism attacks on Jews in Paris, Israel's prime minister was visiting France to urge French Jews to immigrate back to Israel. Immigration, as stated in the book, was one of the policy reason that fostered Israel's innovation driven growth and industry.

Start-up nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel-a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the United Kingdom? Drawing on examples from the country's foremost inventors and investors, the authors describe how Israel's adversity-driven culture fosters a unique combination of innovative and entrepreneurial intensity.

Here are the list of possible reasons for Israel's success in generating start-ups:

• Geopolitical: Surrounded by Arab adversity
• Racial character: Jews individualistic and risk-taking culture
• Mandatory military drafting policy as a start-up incubator and entrepreneurial training ground
• Pro start-up investment environment
• Pro-immigration leads to inflow of new ideas and fostering bootstrapping mentality
• Expat community that support motherland's start-ups

Book Review: Thread of the silkworm 中国飞弹之父钱学森之谜 by Iris Chang 张定绮，许耀云译， ISBN 0465087167

想读此书源于越来越多的华人在美经济和社会地位提高，但似乎有一层玻璃天棚横在头上， 远有钱学森50年代McCarthy主义的冤狱， 近有李文和案。张纯如(Iris Chang)给此书定名Thread of the silkworm 颇含深意： 一可译为破茧而出，暗指当年钱学森冲破美国的玻璃天棚回到中国，另起炉罩，兴中国航天大业；也可译为做茧自缚，暗指来美的华人所常见的聪明，勤奋却也清高，孤立，不善结盟，不善交际，轻视不如自己的人，结果用事业学业的成功把自己隔绝起来，一旦冲突来临，孤立无缘，少人帮助的困境。

在美华人喜欢从事科技行业，靠头脑聪明打拼，希冀扬长避短，用善干来补嘴拙，以绕过玻璃天棚的制约。科学无国界，但科学家是有的。钱学森当年学术精英， 前途无量，但生不逢时，McCarthyism盛行，蒙冤受辱，只好回国发展。中美文化，体制不同，又均为大国，日后竞争角力在所难免，在美华人要有准备，全面发展，经济政治力量齐头并进，嗅觉敏锐，防McCarthyism于未然。 另外要广结善缘，联盟合纵，消除种族阶级壁垒，少做茧自缚。

Book review: Civilization, The west and the rest by Niall Ferguson ISBN 9781594203053

In Civilization, the author suggested that our modern society is dominated by western civilization, which he defined as "more than just one thing; it is a package. It is about political pluralism (multiple states and multiple authorities) as well as capitalism; it is about the freedom of thoughts as well as the scientific method; it is about the rule of law and property rights as well as democracy". And 6 "killer apps" comprise this package:

• Competition: a decentralization of political life, which created the launch-pad for both nation-states and capitalism
• Science
• Property rights
• Medicine
• The consumer society
• The work ethic

Throughout the book, the author explored and traced 6 "killer apps", how they came into being, how they shaped the West and led the West to world domination. And because of the network effect of these 6 apps, hence the West (which presumptuously means America and Europe) even with its dwindling economic and political influence over the world, still has more of the institutional advantages than the Rest.

Rating: 3 of 5

Book Review: The Emperor Far Away, Travels At the Edge of China by David Eimer ISBN 9781620403631

This is a book by an outsider looking inward to understand China's outmost regions and contentious borderlands.

The book is broken into 4 parts:

• Part 1: Xinjiang- The new frontier
• Part 2: Tibet - The wild west
• Part 3: Yunnan - Trouble in paradise
• Part 4: Dongbei - Pushing the boundaries

I only managed to finish part 4, and the authors went to Yanbian and Mohe to try to experience first hand Korean minority and Orequn minority life in modern China.

Should be a great travel book if you are not satisfied with stop-and-take-picture type of tourism and would rather immerse yourself in the local culture and history.

Rating: 3 of 5

Book Review: "Lives of" series by Kathleen Krull

What:Short and colorful biography for young readers age from 6 to 10. A gentle way to introduce kids to biography

Include:

• Lives of the athletes : thrills, spills (and what the neighbors thought)
• Lives of the writers : comedies, tragedies (and what the neighbors thought)
• They saw the future : oracles, psychics, scientists, great thinkers, and pretty good guessers
• Lives of the musicians : good times, bad times (and what the neighbors thought)
• Lives of extraordinary women : rulers, rebels (and what the neighbors thought)
• Lives of the presidents : fame, shame (and what the neighbors thought)
• Lives of the scientists : experiments, explosions (and what the neighbors thought)
• The book of rock stars : 24 musical icons that shine through history
• Lives of the artists : masterpieces, messes (and what the neighbors thought)

Book Review: Rouge Elephant, Harnessing the power of India's unruly democracy By Simon Denyer ISBN 9781620406083

The best book about modern India I read so far. "A penetrating portrait of what has happened to India in the past decade and where it is headed".

It covers India's pillars of democracy: Executive branch, legislative branch and media by profiling the movers and shakers of the country: Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Arnab Goswami, Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal, etc. The angles of author's viewpoint are wide and analysis of each area is deep, from India's Right for Information law to land ownership dispute, the author talked to the key people and also went to the ground level to research, and the end result is a remarkable piece of India democracy today that is both sobering and hopeful.

What kind of democracy will Arab Spring bring to middle east? Maybe India is a good place to look and study. With the democracy's success in holding up the diverse and multi-religious cultures together as a country, and rampant corruption and inefficiency in governance as side effects from the democracy.

One wanting I have for the book is a detailed map of India, for people who are not familiar with India.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Book Review: Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee- A look Inside North Korea by Jang Jin-sung ISBN9781476766553

What: An Kim Jong-il's "Admitted" poet wrote his escape from North Korea and along the way he shared his insider viewpoint on Hermit kingdom.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Best for: History buff and North Korean

Related book: Nothing to envy

Book Review: A weave of words by Robert D. San Souci ISBN 0531300536

Armenian tale of king Vachagan and Queen Anait

Book Review: Pearl Moscowitz's Last Stand by Arthur A. Levine, pictures by Robert Roth ISBN0688107532

How a grandmother preserved the last Gingko tree on Gngko Street. Funny and warm story.

Book Review: Brush of the gods by Lenore Look & Meilo So ISBN 9780375870019

The legend of Chinese artist Wu Daozi in a beautiful picture book, oriental style.

画圣吴道子的传说

Book Review: Three Strong Women A Tall Tale from Japan By Claus Stamm, Jean and Mou-sien Tseng

Great story telling with fun and beautiful illustration. Great for staring reader age 6+.

Book Review: The Nile, a journey downriver through Egypt's past & present by Toby Wilkinson ISBN 9780385351553

This is not a review as I haven't read the whole book yet, but just as a holder for future return. Egypt has been fascinating to me, and I once had a neighbor who worked as an environment engineer for a Unisco project in Cairo for extended period and his description of many healthy and strong Egyptian men wondering around Nile bank at night without ever trying to find work left me a strong impression and a big question: why Egypt today resembles none of its old glory? Why Egyptian today can settle in such idleness with so little to show? This book may not answer my question, but I hope history of Nile will reveal some clues.

A better review of the book can be found here

Book Review: To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron ISBN 9780061768262

".. account of a journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in Tibet" "from our greatest living travel writer".

Maybe a good companion when you visit Tibet.

Book Review: The Diet Fix, Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work by Yoni Freedhoff ISBN 9780804137577

The book gives out a 10-day reset recipe for people to adapt their daily eating and excising habit to control weight gain in a natural and non-traumatic way. After reading the book, for people comes from Chinese food culture it feels like Mom is talking to you about all the eating on time, eating from all food groups, etc. But still a good book to go through.

Book Review: How to read a book, a classic guide to intelligent reading by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren ISBN 067121280X

The book explains

• Why activity is essence of good reading, the more active reading is, the better is
• What is active reading: asking questions
• What questions must be asked of any book, and how those questions must be answered in different ways for different kind of books
• Four levels of reading, and how these are cumulative, earlier or lower levels being contained in later or higher ones

Great book can grow your mind, what have you read lately?

Book Review: Positioning: How to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace By Al Ries and Jack Trout ISBN 0071373586

A tight and entertaining book about how to effectively using word to trigger the image you intended for __ (fill in the blank here: product, company, your city, yourself as a college applicant, etc).

Some memorable quotes from the book:

• This is the classic mistake made by the leader. The illusion that the power of the product is derived from the power of the organization. It is just the reverse. The power of the organization is derived from the power of the product, the position that the product owns in the prospect's mind.from Chapter 6
• .. words don't contain meanings. The meanings are not in the words. They are in the people using the words. from Chapter 25
• The big winners in business and in life are those people who have found open positions near the center of the spectrum. Not at the edge. from Chapter 25
• To repeat, the first rule of positioning is: To win the battle for the mind, you can't compete head-on against a company that has a strong, established position. You can go around, under or over, but never head to head. from Chapter 25, remind you of Steve Job's early days in his return to Apple, not to compete against Microsoft, and John Chen's current Blackberry days, not to compete with Apple in consumer market, but rather focusing on enterprise market.
• In our overcommunicated society, the name of the game today is positioning.

Books about Berlin to memorize 25th anniversary of fall of the Berlin wall

A lot of things happened 25 years ago, one that we closely related to occurred in Beijing, but today is for another happening: Nov.9, 1989, a wall in Berlin fell.

Three books about Berlin that I don't have time to read yet, and hope to read later are:

• Berlin Portrait of a city through the centuries by Rory MacLean
• Berlin Now The city after the wall by Peter Schneider
• The collapse The accidental opening of the Berlin wall by Mary Elise Sarotte

Book Review: Amy for short by Laura Joffe Numeroff (ISBN 0027681807)

Amy is the tallest girl in the class, and best friend of Mark, the tallest boy. After summer of 2nd grade, she grew one inch taller than Mark, and the friendship seems to strain.Would Mark come to Amy's birthday? As the backcover of the book said: "... all youngsters who are beginning to read will enjoy Amy's ingenuous story of her bumpy romance and the key to its happy resolution". Funny and touching, a great book for both young and old.

[UPDATE12/03/14]Laura Numeroff's other books are also great choices for young readers

• If You Give a Pig a Pancake
• If You Give a Moose a Muffin
• If You Give a Dog a Donut
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
• If You Take a Mouse to the Movies
• If You Give a Cat a Cupcake
• If You Give a Pig a Party
• If You Take a Mouse to School

Best books for kindergartner and 1st graders to enjoy reading.

Book Review: Age of Ambition, Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith In the New China by Evan Osnos (ISBN 9780374280741)

[UPDATE]The book wins 2014 National Book Award in nonfiction category. Well deserved.

I have lived in the States for nearly two decades and I have seen American understanding of China increasing by leaps and bounds, but still when I read books or articles written by Westerners about China, they tend to depict China in one huge brush stroke, either China is an economic miracle bent in world domination or China is a dictatorship society thrives in crushing human rights.

What a delighted surprise to read Evan Osnos wonderfully written book. In the prologue, the author mentioned he had lived in China for eight years and it shows in the book. The author does all the usual China observers do: marvels at its economic progress and questions its neglect of human rights and one-party dictatorship. But what sets the book apart is its detailed and nuanced depiction of individual Chinese: former World Bank Chief Economist Lin Yifu, dating website Jiayuan founder Gong Hainan, blogger Han Han, artist Ai Weiwei, human right activist Chen Guangcheng, Crazy English follower Zhang Ziming (Michael), Hong Kong gambler Siu Yun-ping, publisher Hu Shuli, nationalist web blogger Tang Jie, railway official Liu Zhijun, the list goes on, from big shots to small potatoes. The author told life stories of these people in the backdrop of China’s economy and China’s political system. And growing up in China under Communist rules myself, I can relate to these stories and I feel the author understands Chinese way of thinking and sometimes he speaks from a Chinese viewpoint. From the book I assume the author can speak Chinese very well. Yet he is also able to pullback from his subjects and narrates the stories from an outsider American viewpoint, and his analogy of China today to American Gilded Age really struck a chord with both Chinese people and westerners, as validated by rave review it received from Washington Post.

One of the three best non-fiction books about China I have read. The other two: The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor and Red Star over China: The Classic Account of the Birth of Chinese Communism by Edgar Snow.

For people who don't know what their passion are

If you are not sure where to go
Don't stop, keep moving along the trail
Take in the scene and be thankful
Rest assured you show up and your destiny will reveal

Prep for Tibet trip

Physical prep

Lose weight to what level? Oxydized training or non-oxydized training?

What to exercise for high altitude ?

Dry run in North America, which mountains to climb?

Financial

How much $$ for how long? $$/day?

Vacation planning

How many vacation days needed? CF allowed carry over?

What to look?

How to get there?

Partners

How many?

How many from China? How many from US?