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Animal-based Diets Lead to More Chronicle Diseases

2012-08-21

The overarching argument of the book is animal-based diets lead to more chronicle diseases than plant-based diets. The method of study is statistical. Just as I believe smoking leads to lung cancers and physical exercises are good for health, I agree that vegetarian-style diets are probably healthier.

However, the structure of the book tends to be misleading. The author starts successfully by convincing me with solid statistics that plant-based diets are probably a good choice. Then, the author chooses to argue that there is a commercial conspiracy behind animal-based diets and scientific reductionism should not count in nutrition study. I have reservation for both of his arguments.

First, I agree that commercials can mislead people, but I think rational people are aware of the truth. For myself, I probably will continue my meat-based diets even if I know this may contribute to chronicle diseases, simply because health is not the exclusive consideration when I make a choice of diets. The commercials may be catering to me in terms of diets, but they are not the reasons why I make a choice of meat-based diets.

Also, as I become aware of the problems with animal-based proteins, I'm conscious of the risks of chronicle diseases. Then, I want to digest some supplements for my health, and then comes the commercials. In others words, it's because I have this demand that there is such a market, not that there is a such market that I fall into such habits.

Adding to the above arguments, I want to defend for scientific reductionism. Scientific reductionism means to isolate those individual factors that contribute to certain phenomena, and thus build a causation between cause and effect. Arguably, contemporary literature are not able to provide a clear-cut proof that lack of or over-taking certain nutrients are causes of certain chronicle diseases, as it's currently impossible to do control experiments over such a long period of time. However, this current impossibility is insufficient to argue that scientific redunctionism is redundant in nutrition science. As I argue above, we have a meat-based diets because we want it. If we want to shield against chronicle diseases at the same time, we have to know by add what can we reduce the possibility of having chronicle diseases.

Or in other words, we want to separate diets from health to some degree. How to still be healthy when the delicious is not the healthy? This should be the topic for nutrition scientists, rather than the other way around.

As a summary for my opinion of this book, I'd like to say, I agree that plant-based diets are healthier than meat-based diets, but my diets are still under my control.

Equity Brings about Equity

2012-08-27

I thought the book would be a long and boring business cookbook. But I was wrong. I started the book and simply could not stop. It does teach me a lot about cultivating personal network.

The best lesson I learnt from this book is "Equity brings about equity in building relationship". Normally, people treat their personal connections as personal equity and they use the equity only when necessary. This attitude is completely refuted by Keith. In Keith's viewpoint, connections mean to be interactive. It's always good to find excuses to interact with the person we think valuable to us, even it means to introduce the valuable person to others. Also, Keith argues that connections lead to new connections. To be helpful to others opens up one's own door to the other person's network. It's a very constructive way to build personal network.

The importance of building network can't be too emphasized. Keith lists a lot of methods and guiding principles in building relationships effectively. It's inspiring to read the Keith's arguments and then reflect on my own attitudes.

The reason I give the book four stars rather than five is that Keith does lack one part of building up personal network. In this book, building relationship is always done aggressively. I don't think being aggressive is wrong, but there are people who build their networks in the other way. These people may be effective leaders who try to be charismatic and thus attract people to them. Arguably, not many people are charismatic. But as a reader, I'd be happy to see how charisma works and why it works.

an exceptional book for understanding energy

2012-05-19

The central idea of the book is energy can be leveraged to impact global economy, and thus the importance of energy security can never be overstated. The author, Daniel Yergin, touches almost every branch of energy to make his ideas balanced and unbiased.

The first part of the book is on conventional energy, mainly fossil fuels. Daniel focuses on how giant energy companies leverage financial crises to acquire competitors and reduce cost. However, the eventual cost of energy paid by the end-users is strongly related to geopolitics. In here, politicians' strategic plans to secure and transport fuels from producers at low cost comes into play. These plans strongly influence national security especially when energy price rises unexpectedly. Reading of this part of the book really helps to understand different countries' energy policies from a geopolitical aspect. Surely I'll come back to read this part again.

The left part of the book includes nuclear power, renewable energy, smart grid, energy efficiency and electric vehicles. I'm quite familiar with all these topics before reading this book, but it's still intriguing when all those ideas are unfolded in a connected way. The questions explored here are: what's the future of nuclear power after Fukushima; how to accelerate the deployment of solar, wind and biofuels; why efficiency is also a source of energy; what's electric vehicles' role in reducing greenhouse gas emission. The impact of all these clean energy have been well explained in terms of energy security and climate change.

这本书浏览即可，不需细读

2012-03-10

这是一部不够学术化却非常想表达个人主观意见的货币史著作。我只是阅读了前三分之一，后面三分之二只是大致浏览，再加上本人看金融跟看小说一样不仔细，由此，可能评价得有失偏颇。

宋鸿兵是阴谋论者，这点应该毋庸置疑。这本书再次以美国为阴谋核心，然后是一批的受害者，包括英国，苏联等世界货币的竞争对手。阴谋总是以美国的残忍胜利为结局。这个阴谋论似乎也是本书的主线。

诚然在一些崩溃场合，比如苏联解体前石油价格的暴跌，美国有踩上一脚的嫌疑。但是把美国的这一脚当作苏联崩溃的主要原因而忽视苏联本身经济结构上的严重缺陷，作者似乎有转移读者注意力的嫌疑。我读到这些章节时，总有种为了讨论货币史而故意放大货币重要性的感觉。

另外一个让我读着感觉逻辑上不够舒服的是作者讨论计划经济下的货币史所采用的方法论。作者似乎是不假思索的直接用货币的供求理论来解释所有的计划经济下的货币现象。我觉得不舒服的就是为什么这方法是合宜的。

最后，作者认为国家通过债务来发行货币是不道义的。但是作者同样又认同二战中德国的是沙赫特对经济危机所采取的"归零"政策，即通过恶性通胀来使一些大银行破产和清理所有债务，然后再稳定货币。作者在讨论罗斯福新政时还明文提出这样的建议。这让我感到非常诧异，且不论其中的可操作性问题，这里面的道义问题似乎不比举债发行货币差到哪里去。

Scientific Entrepreneurship

2012-07-14

I'm an engineer in training. The philosophy of the book on the lean startup sounds quite familiar with how we conduct scientific experiments. The author, Eric Ries, is an engineer in training, too. I think he probably found inspiration from his engineering background, too.

To conduct an scientific experiment, we need to measure and control parameters, and then we can analyze and make improvements. That's exactly the same principles in startups. Eric coined a new expression for it, innovation accounting. Entrepreneurs need to find an effective way to measure the business impact of innovations. Paying attention to the gross number of customers alone is not enough, since it does not provide insights into the reasons behind the dynamics of the customer number.

The second thing about scientific experimentation is start simple. Science usually starts with simple models and ends up with complex inferences. This principle applies to startups. Eric suggests minimal viable product (MVP). To be serious, I find the MVP is hard to define in reality. Since when we are really starting a company, we don't really know what is necessary and what is redundant, and thus unable to really define a MVP. However, the idea Eric is trying to convince the reader is push the product to the market fast. Early stage adopters usually provide essential feedback for the entrepreneurs, which saves entrepreneurs a lot of energy.

Associated with the idea of the MVP is start with small batches rather than large-scale manufacture. This actually reminds me of the 3D printing, which is revolutionizing the manufacture industry. Currently, 3D printing is best in making prototypes and suitable in making small batches. 3D printing technology provides the technical support for the lean entrepreneurs. The conclusion here is that the landscape of technology is changing, and the culture of entrepreneurship is changing, too.

Whenever we talk, we must talk in a shared environ

2011-03-21

I always believe whenever we discuss or debate about something, we need a common background, otherwise, we end up arguing on term definition.
And I think this book has laid out how we can evaluate entrepreneurship. Or in other words, with this book, we will know what we are talking about when we are talking about entrepreneurship.
Definitely, it's a highly recommended book.

Good proposition, poor argument

2012-07-02

Jim Collins starts the book with an excellent question of why some companies leap from good to great, and gives a clear definition of greatness. Jim tries to uncover the general principle underlying the leap from good to great regardless of industries. Jim finds the great companies from the public available data and thus well defines the subject the book studies.

The overarching argument in the book is that a combination of passion, the best expertise, and economics is necessary condition for producing great companies. The dynamics of the leap contains the right vision and self-disciplined execution. Most of the arguments are probably talked about in depth by other business books.

The reason I feel the book is not "greatly" written is that many key terms are not well defined. For example, the author argues that technology only accelerates the leap from good to great. However, what does "accelerate" means in business development? What if there is no such technology? If the answer is the leap will not happen without the technology, then technology should also be part of the answer rather than simple "catalyst".

Another quite confusing term is "passion". Authors on business like to talk about passion. But it seems that no author is interested in defining passion. My personal thought is that passion is a dynamic feeling. It's not stable, and it changes in time. I really want to how we can proactively measure "passion". I don't like to reversely infer passion from the results.

My suggestion for reading the book is just scan and put more attention to the endings where Jim summaries the contents of the book.

A Marketing Genius

2013-06-11

The book is about a marketing genius who has a good idea in cloud computing and how he builds his billion dollar company from scratch. Throughout the book, Marc Benioff listed 111 points about entrepreneurship, covering from financing, human resources, marketing, visions etc.

The most impressive part is on marketing, especially on how Salesforce won competitions during startup phase, when SaaS had not been accepted by customers yet. There are several dirty but legal strategies Salesforce has adopted to successfully build up their brand. Those strategies are inspiring and deserve merits. However, a weakness here is the author didn't mention anything about competitors' strategies to curb Salesforce's development.

Chances favor the connected

2012-08-18

Innovation comes from analogy, cross-discipline, serendipity, etc. Steven summaries all these sources as the connected. His basic argument the idea space is a fractal space, and thus at different scales, the patterns remain unchanged. Therefore, when we understand certain aspects of nature, we probably can abstract the patterns from this understanding and apply these patterns somewhere else. The key to be innovative is thus to connect ourselves on one hand with more discovered patterns, and on the other hand applying these patterns to understand the unknown.

Steven then derives from the above theory that the more connected the environment, the more innovations bred from this environment. Steven's arguments justify general education for innovators, and innovators need to put themselves in an open environment with an open mind.

The question I have here is whether Steven has really answered the question where good ideas come from. I believe, many innovations are derivatives of good questions or good assumptions. And Steven's arguments in applying existing patterns to understand mystic patterns is just a shortcut to find the answers. Thus, I think we should understand more how innovators pose these questions or assumptions in the first place.

Manufactured Innovations

2012-07-11

The book is about the rise and fall of the Bell Laboratory. Bell Lab makes the transition into the digital era a reality through their ingenious scientists, such as Bardeen, Shockley, and Shannon. To match Bell Lab's philosophy of managing ideas rather than employees, the book is composed of the discovery or invention of transistors, information theory, fiber optics and others.

Everyone today feels the impact of the transistors. The book answers how transistors come into being. In particular, when we read about the inventor of the transistors, Shockley, it's inevitable that we will be attracted to read Shockley's life. Shockley is an ingenious scientist, but is terrible at management. It's exciting to see great things coming out of his lab, but sorry to hear that he passed away almost lonely.

One riveting fact about Bell Lab is its uncompromised support for fundamental research. A lot of researchers in the Bell Lab are eventually awarded the Nobel Prize. This uncompromised support for fundamental research brought AT&T, Bell Lab's mother company, with astounding profits during the transitional era into the digital era. However, at the end of the book, Jon Gertner points out that fundamental research costs quite a lot, but results in limited profits. It's unlikely that a private institution can sustain such extravagant investment in fundamental research.

An interesting inference from the aforementioned phenomena is that in the supposedly capitalistic world, the market, mainly start ups, are increasingly relying on government-supported research for technologies. This may be another useful evidence to defend against market fundamentalists.

There are a lot more to reflect on how Bell Lab succeeded, and whether the success is a result of serendipity or inevitability. Reading this book is an enjoyable way to think about these questions.