Psychology of Money:
• This long piece by Morgan Housel is absolutely full of wisdom on behavioral finance, personal wealth accumulation, and life in general. The beginning recounts stories of Grace Groner and Richard Fuscone. Grace was a secretary who ended up donating $7 million to charity when she died. Richard was a Ivy League educated investment banker who declared bankruptcy the same year Grace died. Housel points out that in no other field could something like this happen. The rest of the piece explains 20 flaws, biases and causes of bad behavior. A fun read, full of quotes and excellent advice.  

Writing:
• Very cool article on the brain health benefits of actually writing. According to the author: All human cultures include speech, but not all have written language, and, even today, hundreds of thousands of people around the world never learn to write. One of my medical students spent a few weeks in India this summer, and he noted the main language spoken by his relatives there has no written component.  
• Writing is evolutionarily very new and quite beneficial: “’The practice of writing can enhance the brain’s intake, processing, retaining, and retrieving of information. Through writing, students can increase their comfort with and success in understanding complex material, unfamiliar concepts and subject-specific vocabulary.’ In other words, writing figuratively builds the brain’s muscles, which can then be used for all sorts of cognitive activity.”

Skepticism:
• Oliver Wendell Holmes was the father of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The senior Holmes was a physician who reported on puerperal fever in 1843, two decades before the germ theory was elucidated. He introduced microscopy to North America, coined the term anesthesia, and criticized bloodletting and homeopathy before it was cool. He went on to become famous as a writer and novelist, but remained skeptical of medical dogma.  
• We should all take a few minutes a day or week to think about the (potentially many) mistakes we are making in treating patients. Half of what is taught in medical school is later proven wrong, we just don’t know which half.  

Salt:
• I cannot condone the recommendations made in this YouTube video from Mirabai Holland, nor can I condone her awkward singing/talking method of delivering that information. But I also cannot look away when the video is playing. Thank you (kind of?) Bri Sheehan for the link.  

US-China Conclusions:
• Destined for War ends on a mostly positive note, optimistic that we can avoid a military conflict with China.  
• Allison notes 4 possible strategies: accommodate (allow China to surpass us economically), undermine (attempt to subterfuge China from within), negotiate a long peace (work together to avoid conflict) or redefine the relationship (eg focus on major threats affecting both countries [nuclear armageddon, nuclear anarchy, terrorism, and climate change]).  
• Allison has 4 specific pieces of advice:  
1. Clarify vital interests: Is naval supremacy in the Pacific really a vital interest of the US? 
2. Understand what China is trying to do: Acknowledge China’s drive for the top spot in the Pacific. 
3. Do strategy: Listen to academics such as the author himself. 
4. Make domestic challenges central: Both countries have a lot to work on internally, political unrest in the US, excessive central control in China. 

Quotes: “For reasons I have never understood, people like to hear that the world is going to hell.” – Historian Deirdre McCloskey 

“Wealth is, in fact, what you don’t see. It’s the cars not purchased. The diamonds not bought. The renovations postponed, the clothes forgone and the first-class upgrade declined. It’s assets in the bank that haven’t yet been turned into the stuff you see.” – Morgan Housel