TR: 

• Graham Allison has a new and very important book, Destined for War, about US-China relations. Will cover some of the meat of it in a future newsletter.
• But let’s start with now insane Teddy Roosevelt was! In a chapter imagining if China were like the US at the beginning of the 20th Century, Allison points out just a few extremely aggressive moves by TR, the sickly boy turned Rough Rider.
• When the US declared war against Spain, TR resigned from his role as assistant Navy secretary, became lieutenant colonel in the US Army, and organized the first US Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. He walked around the exploding shrapnel and “preferred to stand up or walk about, sniffing the fragrant air of combat.” He told a German ambassador “tell the Emperor that it is not safe to bluff me, because poker is the American national game and I am prepared to call his bluff.” He bullied his way into Panama to build the canal. He fought Canada over claims to northern land, saying their position was “exactly as indefensible as if they should now claim the island of Nantucket.” He warned the British ambassador that it was “going to be ugly.”
• I am in no way condoning TR’s and the US’s actions at that time, and can see why many nations still hold resentment based on the US’s imperialist history. The question is, how would we react to China if they displayed even a fraction of that expansionist agenda.  

Laird:

• You may have heard of Laird Hamilton, pro-surfer and now exercise guru. Here is a Guardian article about 10 rules he lives by.
• Forget about age, just keep driving the car. Burn fat not sugar. Roll your feet on a golf ball. Easy to do in the morning, I now keep a ball in my office. I will apply his Don’t be a zealot rule to his advice to avoid alcohol (even red wine Laird??).
• If you have the cash, you can travel out to Laird and wife Gabby Reece’s complex in Malibu to do underwater workouts. Laird also sells supplements, the Superfood creamer is a decent alternative to MCT powder. the Instafuel coffee is very good too. 

Fantasyland:

• Finished Fantasyland. Dense book full of incredible American conspiracies, hucksters and alternate facts. Anderson traces the American propensity for fantastic ideas and susceptibility to them back to the first European settlers in North America. He traces this to 1960-2000, and especially the 90s, as a major turning point in reality. Politicians became celebrities. (Don’t forget an actor became president in the 80s). He cites the polarizing political climate, fewer and fewer moderates.
• He admitted a sense of wonder, started to sound like a Transcendentalist (loved that part!). He gets quite pessimistic at the end. He recounts the 3 phases of Ancient Greece: Archaic, Classical, then Hellenistic. The “ancient Greece” we all think fondly of was the middle Classical period, a mere 200 years. After Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Greece fell back into astrology, magic and alchemy. Anderson suggests they “found freedom too scary, frightened by the new idea that their lives and fates weren’t predestined or managed by gods and really were their own.” He goes on, “maybe America’s classical [ie rational] period has also lasted two centuries, 1800-2000.”
• But he hopefully calls for “making America reality-based again …to teach true and untrue as fiercely as you do right and wrong, foolish and wise.”

Mindful Practice:

• Article on practicing medicine mindfully (full text available through UofL’s library). We’re not talking about meditating in the room with patients. In much of this article, he is using the term mindful more in the sense of presence.
• He says we can “observe the observed while observing the observer.” This makes us “more aware of our own mental processes, listen more attentively, become flexible, and recognize bias and judgments.”
• This metacognition, awareness of our processes, is in no way limited to medicine. When you interact with someone at your office or place of work, think about your own biases and agendas that cloud judgement. 

Quotes:
“Mindfulness is the opposite of multi-tasking.”
“Mindlessness accounts for many deviations from professionalism.”
Ronald M Epstein