A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. NielsenHere are some of my takeaways and favorite quotes:
- "Disability is not a bodily category, but instead and also a social category shaped by changing social factors - just as able-bodiedness."
- "Within the early capitalist systems beginning to dominate Europe in the seventeenth century, the primary definition of disability was the inability to perform labor. European colonists paid relatively attention to physical disability, but substantial attention to cognitive or mental disabilities. This reinforces the argument that bodily norms were relatively fluid and that bodies themselves varied immensely."
- "Political theorists contrasted idiots, lunatics, women of all races, people of indigenous nations, and African Americans with those considered worthy of full citizenship.... The process of differentiating between fit and unfit citizens raised many legal, ideological, and practical questions.... Racist ideologies defined male and female African Americans as fundamentally inferior specimens with deformed bodies and minds who were best confined to slavery.... Disability, as a concept, was used to justify legally established inequalities."
- "The period from the Civil War until the 1890s is one in which disability became increasingly institutionalized. The solidification of the federal government that developed in this period, along with emerging technologies and urbanization, aided the creation of institutions and the development of policies pertaining to people considered disabled... Some institutions enriched lives, others caused devastation, and some did both."
- "While industrialization had rapidly expanded the number of disabled US wage workers, adaptive technologies changed little until the onset of World War I." (Wars, like the Civil War and the World Wars created many disabled veterans whom the society needed to care for)
- After WWII, "activists began to argue that people with disabilities shared common experiences of stigma and discrimination, across a wide spectrum of disability.... Activists also began to explore the relationship between ableism, sexism, and racism."
- "The disability rights movement was energized by, overlapping with, and similar to other civil rights movements across the nation, as people with disabilities experienced the 1960s and 1970s as a time of excitement, organizational strength, and identify exploration. Like feminists, African Americans, and the gay and lesbian activists, people with disabilities insisted that their bodies did not render them defective."
Climate of Hope by Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope
Here are some of my takeaways and favorite quotes:
Here are some of my takeaways and favorite quotes:
- "Political and environmental leaders both tend to talk about climate change as a single massive problem, and one that only global treaties can solve. But consider this: When scientists set out to rid the plant of disease, they don't attempt to cure every disease at once and don't expect a single research team to come up with all the answers."
- "In our experience, fighting climate change goes hand in hand with improving public health, strengthening economic growth, and raising living standards."
- "Climate change is still often treated as a political and environmental issue by the media, but the best reason to be optimistic about countering it doesn't come from people who work in government or advocacy organizations. It comes from people who spend their days trying to make money."
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
This book was a helpful companion in dealing with the grief after my dad passed away.
Here are some of my takeaways and favorite quotes:
This book was a helpful companion in dealing with the grief after my dad passed away.
Here are some of my takeaways and favorite quotes:
- "The pattern of decline had changed, however, for many chronic conditions. Instead of delaying the moment of the downward drop, our treatments can stretch the descent out until it ends up looking less like a cliff and more like a hilly road down the mountain."
- What assisted living looks like: "The services were, in most ways, identical to the services that nursing homes provide. But here the care providers understood they were entering someone else's home, and that changed the power relations fundamentally. The residents had control over the schedule, the ground rules, the risks they did and didn't want to take.... The goal was that no one ever had to feel institutionalized."
- Socioemotional selectivity theory: When horizons are expansive, and measured in decades, you desire all the stuff at the top of the Maslow hierarchy - achievement, creativity, and other attributes of self-actualization. When horizons contract (such as end of life or uncertain times like a pandemic), your focus shifts to the here and now, to everyday pleasures and the people closest to you.
- "We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things that we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe on our sense of self."
- Through hospice and palliative care, "we witnessed for ourselves the consequences of living for the best possible day today instead of sacrificing time now for time later."
- At the root of the euthanasia debate "is about what mistakes we fear most - the mistake of prolonging suffering or the mistake of shortening valued life."
- "Technological society has forgotten what scholars call the "dying role" and its importance to people as life approaches its end. People want to share memories, pass on wisdoms and keepsakes, settle relationships, establish their legacies, make peace with God, and ensure that those left behind will be okay. They want to end their stories on their own terms."
- "We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, of when debility comes, but all along the way."
- Four questions:
- What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes?
- What are your fears? What are your hopes?
- What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make?
- What is the course of action that best serves this understanding?
The Joy of Search: A Google Insider's Guide to Going Beyond the Basics by Daniel M. Russell
Thoroughly enjoyed getting into the mind of my former colleague and getting insight into his search process and approach.
Here are some of my favorite learnings from Dan's book:
Thoroughly enjoyed getting into the mind of my former colleague and getting insight into his search process and approach.
Here are some of my favorite learnings from Dan's book:
- Write down your research question before you start to research, both to clarify your thinking and keep you on track.
- Names change - even within the scientific community. And make sure synonyms are appropriate for the time period! Find a recent reference to see if the current belief is the same as older beliefs.
- Copy the boilerplate language when looking for the "next in a series document."
- Be sure you know where your data comes from.
- Checking Wikipedia in other languages to get additional perspectives and look for Wikipedia starred articles.
- It's a good sign when publications admit their errors.
- Use "Search in this book" in Google Books.
- To avoid confirmation bias - look for another explanation or at least another point of view.
The Age of Living Machines: How Biology will build the next technology revolution by Susan Hockfield
Amazing stories of scientists who are harnessing biology, such as:
Amazing stories of scientists who are harnessing biology, such as:
- Angie Belcher's work on creating virus based batteries. She says, "These biological batteries are all made a room temperature, use no organic solvents, and add no toxic materials to their environment.
- Peter Agre's use of the aquaporin protein which allows water into and out of our cells, to filter water.
- Sangeeta Bhatia's nanotechnology breakthroughs that helps detect and treat cancer
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
This made me rethink the "Doing Good by Doing Well" movement and my role in it, and how to help the public sector take back what was seceded to the free market and wealthy philanthropists. Below are some notable quotes:
“MarketWorld is an ascendant power elite that is defined by the concurrent drives to do well and do good, to change the world while also profiting from the status quo….MarketWorld is a network and community, but it is also a culture and state of mind…. These elites believe and promote the idea that social change should be pursued principally through the free market and voluntary action, not public life and the law and the reform of the systems that people share in common; that it should be supervised by the winners of capitalism and their allies, and not be antagonistic to their needs; and that the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo should play a leading role in the status quota reform.”
“Under the new theory, entrepreneurship can become synonymous with humanitarianism - and humanitarianism the greases the wheels of entrepreneurship…..Nowhere is this idea of entrepreneurship as humanitarianism more entrenched than Silicon Valley, where company founders regularly speak of themselves as liberators of mankind and of their technologies as intrinsically utopian.”
“It is not inevitable that what passes for progress in our age involves the concentration of power into a small number of hands and the issuance of stories about the powerful being fighters for the little guy.”
“The new win-win-ism is arguably a far more radical theory than the “invisible hand.” That old idea merely implied the capitalists should not be excessively regulated, lest the happy byproducts of their greed not reach the poor. The new idea goes further, in suggesting that capitalists are more capable than any government could ever be of solving the underdogs’ problems.”
“It was curious to see the US government, arguably the most powerful institution in human history, reduced to being “a single actor” among actors, and one inadequate to modern problems. Building a continental highway network or waging a new deal was easy, according to this view. But today's problems were too hard for the government. They had therefore to be solved through partnerships among rich donors, and NGOs, and the public sector. There was no mention of the fact that this method, by putting the moneyed into a leadership position on public problem-solving, gave them the power to thwart solutions that threaten them.”
This made me rethink the "Doing Good by Doing Well" movement and my role in it, and how to help the public sector take back what was seceded to the free market and wealthy philanthropists. Below are some notable quotes:
“MarketWorld is an ascendant power elite that is defined by the concurrent drives to do well and do good, to change the world while also profiting from the status quo….MarketWorld is a network and community, but it is also a culture and state of mind…. These elites believe and promote the idea that social change should be pursued principally through the free market and voluntary action, not public life and the law and the reform of the systems that people share in common; that it should be supervised by the winners of capitalism and their allies, and not be antagonistic to their needs; and that the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo should play a leading role in the status quota reform.”
“Under the new theory, entrepreneurship can become synonymous with humanitarianism - and humanitarianism the greases the wheels of entrepreneurship…..Nowhere is this idea of entrepreneurship as humanitarianism more entrenched than Silicon Valley, where company founders regularly speak of themselves as liberators of mankind and of their technologies as intrinsically utopian.”
“It is not inevitable that what passes for progress in our age involves the concentration of power into a small number of hands and the issuance of stories about the powerful being fighters for the little guy.”
“The new win-win-ism is arguably a far more radical theory than the “invisible hand.” That old idea merely implied the capitalists should not be excessively regulated, lest the happy byproducts of their greed not reach the poor. The new idea goes further, in suggesting that capitalists are more capable than any government could ever be of solving the underdogs’ problems.”
“It was curious to see the US government, arguably the most powerful institution in human history, reduced to being “a single actor” among actors, and one inadequate to modern problems. Building a continental highway network or waging a new deal was easy, according to this view. But today's problems were too hard for the government. They had therefore to be solved through partnerships among rich donors, and NGOs, and the public sector. There was no mention of the fact that this method, by putting the moneyed into a leadership position on public problem-solving, gave them the power to thwart solutions that threaten them.”
Leaders: Myth and Reality by General Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers, and Jason Mangone
This is a refreshing look at what leadership means, and that it's not a matter of following a particular formula - leaders are forged by their context as well as their personality. Moreover, "we wrongly believe that what happened in one leadership instance can be replicated in another. This common understanding of leadership, when held up against the reality of how leadership actually works, reveals three myths:" the Formulaic Myth, the Attribution Myth, and the Results Myth.
Modeled after Plutarch's "Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans," McChrystal and his co-authors selected unexpected pairings connected by themes like Founders, Geniuses, and Zealots. My favorite was the chapter called "The Reformers" in which Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr are paired. They summarize their comparison with "Neither of our leaders intended to spark their movements, but each of them agreed to shoulder a burden at the moment that leadership was made available to them. While each of our reformers left an indelible mark as a leader, we attribute too much to them as individuals if we neglect the systems that asked for them to lead.... As leaders, they both leveraged new technologies - specifically the printing press and television - as if they had been invented expressly for their use.... Not only was there no common formula for reform, they were more often the symbols for a cause that the doers of change."
This is a refreshing look at what leadership means, and that it's not a matter of following a particular formula - leaders are forged by their context as well as their personality. Moreover, "we wrongly believe that what happened in one leadership instance can be replicated in another. This common understanding of leadership, when held up against the reality of how leadership actually works, reveals three myths:" the Formulaic Myth, the Attribution Myth, and the Results Myth.
Modeled after Plutarch's "Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans," McChrystal and his co-authors selected unexpected pairings connected by themes like Founders, Geniuses, and Zealots. My favorite was the chapter called "The Reformers" in which Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr are paired. They summarize their comparison with "Neither of our leaders intended to spark their movements, but each of them agreed to shoulder a burden at the moment that leadership was made available to them. While each of our reformers left an indelible mark as a leader, we attribute too much to them as individuals if we neglect the systems that asked for them to lead.... As leaders, they both leveraged new technologies - specifically the printing press and television - as if they had been invented expressly for their use.... Not only was there no common formula for reform, they were more often the symbols for a cause that the doers of change."
The Nordic Theory of Everything
by Anu Partanen
An interesting perspective on the individual freedom and economic mobility that universal healthcare, primary and secondary education, family leave policies and aid bring.
Key Quotes:
"In the Nordic countries, citizens know much more clearly what it is that they're paying their taxes for. That translates into a clear notion of why they have a government in the first place, and what the government's job is."
"Unlike some bogeyman welfare state, participation in a well-being state does not require you to bow in submission before the altar of altruism, sacrificing your own advancement to help the unlucky. It supports your own personal freedom, your own autonomy, and each individual's ability to determine his or her own fate, since we don't need to depend on the financial largesse of parents, spouses, or employers for the fundamental services - healthcare, education, and aid during times of crisis that each of us requires to fulfill our potential. On top of that there's a less tangible benefit the pride and satisfaction of participating in a society that enables equality and opportunity for all."
by Anu Partanen
An interesting perspective on the individual freedom and economic mobility that universal healthcare, primary and secondary education, family leave policies and aid bring.
Key Quotes:
"In the Nordic countries, citizens know much more clearly what it is that they're paying their taxes for. That translates into a clear notion of why they have a government in the first place, and what the government's job is."
"Unlike some bogeyman welfare state, participation in a well-being state does not require you to bow in submission before the altar of altruism, sacrificing your own advancement to help the unlucky. It supports your own personal freedom, your own autonomy, and each individual's ability to determine his or her own fate, since we don't need to depend on the financial largesse of parents, spouses, or employers for the fundamental services - healthcare, education, and aid during times of crisis that each of us requires to fulfill our potential. On top of that there's a less tangible benefit the pride and satisfaction of participating in a society that enables equality and opportunity for all."
The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty
by Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider
A well researched analysis that shows that many who are poor are poor for short periods. And that public assistance and other financial instruments are not well-suited for this dipping in and out of poverty, and to keep people on solid financial footing permanently.
Key passages:
"We asked household how quickly the money in their bank account would be spent. On average 72% of the money in their bank accounts was intended for needs within the next 6 months. 83% would be spent within a year. Only 10% was being saved for needs three or more years away. In other words, the households were saving, but not for the long term. Money comes in, but it goes out “soon” for the necessities of life."
"Unsteady income means dipping in and out of poverty - not in poverty the whole year. When have to reapply for food stamps and dipping in and out, it becomes cumbersome."
"Most poor household in our data were not, in fact, poor during the entire study year. Only 8% of poor households were always below the poverty line. The other 92% saw their incomes rise above that line an average of three months during the year."
"If your interest is in aiding those were poor right now, the persistently poor should command much of your attention. But if your interest is also in aiding all those who will be poor this year, or reducing the national poverty rate, focus must expand to include the tens of millions of households that are sometimes poor."
"When poverty is the result of volatility and illiquidity, public assistance should be provided with a less onerous application process that relies on broader, yet more easily gathered, data. Applying for public benefits today is often clumsy and slow. It can require standing in lines, filling out extensive forms, parsing complicated eligibility criteria the vary for each type of public benefit, and answering burdensome follow-up questions. This is expensive not only for applicants but also for taxpayers."
Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Justice
by Adam Benforado
A compelling account of how to bring what we now know through psychology and neuroscience to surface conscious cognitive forces in order to prevent the injustice of our current criminal justice system.
Key passage:
"After being locked up for months or years, many inmates have lost the very things that might allow them to return as productive and peaceful members of society: family ties, friendship, years of job training and experience. They are thrown back into the rough sea of life without the anchors, writers, and charts of safe passage needed to avoid a wreck. We are so obsessed with the idea that the experience inside prison must not be like the experience outside that we overlook how much harder that makes it for inmates to rejoin society once they are released. Depriving people of normal human contact does not eliminate criminal behavior; it eliminates the capacity to engage in normal human contact. Losing the stimulation of work, entertainment, or socialization does not prompt people to make better choices in the future; it leaves them unprepared to get a job or interact with the outside world when they are released."
The Hard Thing about Hard Things
by Ben Horowitz
An eye-opening look at what it's like for CEOs and how to operate as an excellent one.
Key passage:
“Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions. Therefore, a CEO can most accurately be measured by the speed and quality of those decisions. Great decisions come from CEOs who displayed an elite mixture of intelligence, logic, and courage.”
“As CEO, there's never enough time to gather all information needed to make a decision. You must make hundreds of decisions big and small in the course of a typical week. You cannot simply stop all other activities to gather comprehensive data and to do exhaustive analysis to make that single decision. Knowing this, you must continuously and systematically gather knowledge in the company's day-to-day activities so that you will have as much information as possible when the decision point arrives.”
The New Jim Crow
by Michelle Alexander
"When the system of mass incarceration collapses (and if history is any guide, it will,) historians will undoubtedly look back and marvel that such an extraordinarily comprehensive system of racialized social control existed in the United States. How fascinating, they will likely say, the drug war was waged almost exclusively against poor people of color - people already trapped in ghettos that lack jobs and decent schools. They were rounded up by the millions, packed away and prisons, and when released, they were stigmatized for life, denied the right to vote, and ushered into a world of discrimination. Legally barred from employment, housing, and welfare benefits and saddled with thousands of dollars in debt - these people or shamed and condemned for failing to hold together their families. Historians will likely wonder how we could describe the new caste system as a system of crime control, what is difficult to imagine a system better designed to create rather than prevent crime."
Science and the City
by Laurie Winkless
My favorite parts of the book were the "Tomorrow" sections where the author discusses innovations that are coming down the pike. Here are some of my favorites:
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
by Jonathan Haidt
The book is organized around three principles of moral psychology:
1. Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.
2. There's more to morality than harm and fairness. He developed the Moral Foundations Model which includes six pillars:
3. Morality binds and blinds. "We are selfish and we are groupish.... We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult - but not impossible - to connect with those who live in other matrices, which are often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations.
Instead of a Manichean view that some people are good and some are evil, he suggests a complementary - yin and yang perspective that each moral matrix brings something of value, and as a society we need to encourage and manage the interplay between the two sides of liberal and conservative.
The Submerged Stateby Suzanne Mettler
I found this illuminating:
"Despite the amount of attention often given in public discourse to welfare (now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), it costs the nation less than one-fifth the amount of subsidized employer-provided health insurance and less than one-seventh the expense of employer-provided retirement benefits. Neither the costs of food stamps, the most utilized program for low-income people, nor of unemployment insurance, which provides economic security for Americans of all income levels, amounts to as much as half the value of even the least expensive of these programs."
Most Americans are unaware of public benefits they receive such as the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction, obscuring the role of government and its impact on people's lives.
by Jonathan Morduch and Rachel Schneider
A well researched analysis that shows that many who are poor are poor for short periods. And that public assistance and other financial instruments are not well-suited for this dipping in and out of poverty, and to keep people on solid financial footing permanently.
Key passages:
"We asked household how quickly the money in their bank account would be spent. On average 72% of the money in their bank accounts was intended for needs within the next 6 months. 83% would be spent within a year. Only 10% was being saved for needs three or more years away. In other words, the households were saving, but not for the long term. Money comes in, but it goes out “soon” for the necessities of life."
"Unsteady income means dipping in and out of poverty - not in poverty the whole year. When have to reapply for food stamps and dipping in and out, it becomes cumbersome."
"Most poor household in our data were not, in fact, poor during the entire study year. Only 8% of poor households were always below the poverty line. The other 92% saw their incomes rise above that line an average of three months during the year."
"If your interest is in aiding those were poor right now, the persistently poor should command much of your attention. But if your interest is also in aiding all those who will be poor this year, or reducing the national poverty rate, focus must expand to include the tens of millions of households that are sometimes poor."
"When poverty is the result of volatility and illiquidity, public assistance should be provided with a less onerous application process that relies on broader, yet more easily gathered, data. Applying for public benefits today is often clumsy and slow. It can require standing in lines, filling out extensive forms, parsing complicated eligibility criteria the vary for each type of public benefit, and answering burdensome follow-up questions. This is expensive not only for applicants but also for taxpayers."
Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Justice
by Adam Benforado
A compelling account of how to bring what we now know through psychology and neuroscience to surface conscious cognitive forces in order to prevent the injustice of our current criminal justice system.
Key passage:
"After being locked up for months or years, many inmates have lost the very things that might allow them to return as productive and peaceful members of society: family ties, friendship, years of job training and experience. They are thrown back into the rough sea of life without the anchors, writers, and charts of safe passage needed to avoid a wreck. We are so obsessed with the idea that the experience inside prison must not be like the experience outside that we overlook how much harder that makes it for inmates to rejoin society once they are released. Depriving people of normal human contact does not eliminate criminal behavior; it eliminates the capacity to engage in normal human contact. Losing the stimulation of work, entertainment, or socialization does not prompt people to make better choices in the future; it leaves them unprepared to get a job or interact with the outside world when they are released."
The Hard Thing about Hard Things
by Ben Horowitz
An eye-opening look at what it's like for CEOs and how to operate as an excellent one.
Key passage:
“Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions. Therefore, a CEO can most accurately be measured by the speed and quality of those decisions. Great decisions come from CEOs who displayed an elite mixture of intelligence, logic, and courage.”
“As CEO, there's never enough time to gather all information needed to make a decision. You must make hundreds of decisions big and small in the course of a typical week. You cannot simply stop all other activities to gather comprehensive data and to do exhaustive analysis to make that single decision. Knowing this, you must continuously and systematically gather knowledge in the company's day-to-day activities so that you will have as much information as possible when the decision point arrives.”
The New Jim Crow
by Michelle Alexander
"When the system of mass incarceration collapses (and if history is any guide, it will,) historians will undoubtedly look back and marvel that such an extraordinarily comprehensive system of racialized social control existed in the United States. How fascinating, they will likely say, the drug war was waged almost exclusively against poor people of color - people already trapped in ghettos that lack jobs and decent schools. They were rounded up by the millions, packed away and prisons, and when released, they were stigmatized for life, denied the right to vote, and ushered into a world of discrimination. Legally barred from employment, housing, and welfare benefits and saddled with thousands of dollars in debt - these people or shamed and condemned for failing to hold together their families. Historians will likely wonder how we could describe the new caste system as a system of crime control, what is difficult to imagine a system better designed to create rather than prevent crime."
Science and the City
by Laurie Winkless
My favorite parts of the book were the "Tomorrow" sections where the author discusses innovations that are coming down the pike. Here are some of my favorites:
- Perovskite window covering to turn skyscrapers into "vertical solar plants."
- Graphene and aerogels to clean up pollutants
- Sensors to constantly monitor our plumbing pipes for degradation or damage
- Moving from centralized municipal water treatment to "point-of-use" that is local
- BIOSKIN facade to keep skyscrapers cool
- Mealworms that eat Styrofoam
- Professor Vasudevan aka "The Plastic Man" making roads out of trash, replacing 15% of bitumen used in road building
- Self-healing concrete to fix roads through water activated bacteria
- Charging electric cars through in-road inductive charging
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
by Jonathan Haidt
The book is organized around three principles of moral psychology:
1. Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.
2. There's more to morality than harm and fairness. He developed the Moral Foundations Model which includes six pillars:
- Care/harm
- Fairness/cheating
- Loyalty/betrayal
- Authority/subversion
- Sanctity/degradation
- Liberty/oppression
3. Morality binds and blinds. "We are selfish and we are groupish.... We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult - but not impossible - to connect with those who live in other matrices, which are often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations.
Instead of a Manichean view that some people are good and some are evil, he suggests a complementary - yin and yang perspective that each moral matrix brings something of value, and as a society we need to encourage and manage the interplay between the two sides of liberal and conservative.
The Submerged Stateby Suzanne Mettler
I found this illuminating:
"Despite the amount of attention often given in public discourse to welfare (now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), it costs the nation less than one-fifth the amount of subsidized employer-provided health insurance and less than one-seventh the expense of employer-provided retirement benefits. Neither the costs of food stamps, the most utilized program for low-income people, nor of unemployment insurance, which provides economic security for Americans of all income levels, amounts to as much as half the value of even the least expensive of these programs."
Most Americans are unaware of public benefits they receive such as the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction, obscuring the role of government and its impact on people's lives.