Book Summaries

Explore how the US is run by lawyers, and faces challenges in innovation compared to China’s engineering-driven governance.

The book presents interesting ideas around early-age reading developments for babies. Physical activity Crawling (with tummy on floor) and creeping (on just four limbs) are both important for the brain development of the baby. A playpen restricts a child’s ability to learn about the world. If small, it restricts crawling and creeping, which further restricts brain development, vision, and hand-eye coordination. The child appears hyperactive. In reality, he is using his five senses to learn about the world. Learning Toddlers have a natural desire to learn. They can learn repeated messages in commercials much more easily than Mickey Mouse cartoons, though. Between 9 months and 4 years, a baby has an unparalleled ability to absorb new information. Kids 12 months or younger are the best to start reading. Years one to five are best for learning as many languages as possible. Any misinformation that enters a child’s mind in the first six years is very difficult to remove later. Children as young as 2-3 years old are always reading and learning. You can only control what they read. And not whether they read. Reading vs spelling His vocabulary limits a man’s thinking sophistication. To form a more complicated thought, he has to develop the corresponding vocabulary. Reading like hearing is not a school subject. It is a brain function. Spelling, on the other hand, is a set of rules that is meant to be taught as a school subject. You can read but might not be able to spell a word. The reverse never happens. How to teach reading Only teach a child when both you and the child are in a good mood. A sleepy, hungry, or crying child will not learn. Better to go fast and risk boring the child. Do not start teaching the alphabet; it is too abstract for a child to learn. Start with words directly. Teach 5 sets of 5 words three times a day. Thus, each word is shown thrice for one second each time. Retire one word per set per day. So, 5 new words are added every day. Use large (5" tall, 3/4" thick to begin with) lowercase letters written in red color for teaching words. The immature visual pathway cannot focus on small letters. Slowly reduce the size as the visual pathways improve. The first set of words is a reference to the family and body parts. Once the child has learnt basic words, go to couplets, e.g., “red truck”, “orange juice”, and then to more concepts like “full cup”, “little chair”, etc. After couplets, go to three-word sentences, e.g., “daddy is sleeping”, “mommy is eating”, etc. Next step is the books. Good books to start after that (from the same publisher) are Enough, Inigo, enough and Nose is not toes. Reading aloud is a bad idea for children. It slows down reading, which slows down comprehension. The schools do it to test a child’s ability to read. Never test your child’s reading ability. Children hate testing.

The book discusses various issues that make babies unhappy. It is a nice (though not great) read for first-time parents. A baby can naturally fall asleep. Hunger for food (milk) and hunger for sensations prevent that. Massages are good, but even carrying a baby in a body-hugging baby carrier is a form of massage. Steady walking with a baby in your arms is one of the best ways to calm down a distressed baby. Sleeping on the back has increased the incidence of head flattening. Due to sleeping on the back, the tummy time is even more important. Carrying a baby over your arm provides both tummy time and an amazing sensory experience for the baby. Beyond 10 hours a day, any more time spent with the baby has diminishing returns. Using a baby carrier while doing chores also exposes babies to the sensory experience of the house. White noise machines are not a good idea for babies during sleep. The best place for babies to fall asleep is near their parents. During the daytime and at night. Induced burping is a bad idea. It has little upside, and it interferes with sleep. If the baby fails to breastfeed properly in the first few days, it can create negative associations that are much harder to fix later on. A baby might cry a lot due to a lack of good gut bacteria. One can fix it by adding Lactobacillus reuteri to the baby’s diet. Overprescription of anti-acid medications leads to suppressed acid production, leading to allergies in the long run. Infacol is no better than a placebo in treating colic. In the initial days, the baby must gain ~200 grams per week (even 500 grams per week has been seen). Cue-based care creates a language of cues between the baby and the parents. For the first 16 weeks, babies make inconsolable cries as the amygdala (emotion center of the brain) is not fully developed. As the circuitry matures, the cries go down. Boys are usually less developmentally mature at birth than girls.

The natural baby sleep solution is an interesting book on the baby’s sleep patterns. BRAC, Basic Rest and Activity cycle of 90-120 minutes decides the sleep and wake times for everyone. This is especially useful for babies, who would be active for about 90 minutes and then need to sleep or slow down. Too much stimulation near sleep time can delay sleep and have adverse effects on cognitive development of the baby. Unlike adults, babies cannot easily fall asleep on their own till the age of 6 months. 6 to 8 months is the best time to sleep train a baby with either Feber method or cry-it-out method, which involves letting the baby cry for a certain amount of time before comforting them. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) regulates all body clocks, including the sleep-wake cycle and even hormonal cycles in women. NAPS plan - Note the time baby wakes up. Add 90 minutes to it. Play/feed with the baby. Soothe the baby at 90 minutes to make him fall asleep. Use red bulbs in the baby’s room to avoid stimulating them with blue light. If you feed the baby whenever he wakes up at night. Then the baby would get conditioned to food at that time. And then it would be impossible for the baby to sleep without food at that time. A 6+ month-old baby should be able to sleep through the night without food. They should get the calories they need during the day. A baby who is being put to sleep in the middle of the alertness cycle will not sleep regardless of how sleepy he might be. Some babies are early morning larks. Some are night owls. Usually, babies are larks till their teenage years. An 8-9-month-old baby might stand up in the crib. The novelty of standing would die down in a few weeks, though. The most important lesson is that the baby always functions according to 90-minutes cycle when awake. For the first 3-6 months, the baby needs a nap every 90 minutes. For the next 6-12 months, the baby needs a nap every 180 or 270 minutes. How long they sleep will vary from child to child, though.

One up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch is an impressive book about fundamental analysis for stock picking. Following is my terse summary of the same. Emphasis on Fundamental Analysis Look around for companies that are performing well and invest in them before Wall Street institutional investors pick them In the long run, common stocks give the best rate of returns Only basic math is needed to analyze and pick stocks “Don’t gamble, invest your savings to buy good stocks and hold them till they go up and then sell them. If it doesn’t go up, don’t buy it” Investing directly in common stocks is a seven-card stud-poker hand Rules of investing in the market Buy a home (≠ house) before stocks Only invest what you can afford to lose (without impacting your daily life) Patience, Common sense, and willingness to do independent research Ignore short-term fluctuations There is nothing called a good or bad market Predictions are futile ...

This book seems to address the myth that primitive societies are more harmonious than our present societies.

Principles Investing is a sequential process The only goal is to maximize wealth over time. Do not “narrow frame” it to focus only on annual returns. A risk mitigation strategy must lower risk and hence increase CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate)

Some notable quotes from " How to Live" by Derek Sivers. It consists of 27 stories independent of each other. Some contradict ideas from others. And that’s what makes this short read even more provocative.

“What I learned losing a million dollars” covers the iconic rise and fall of Jim Paul in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as a trader.

Thinking In Bets is a book by professional poker player Annie Duke. Its a book about better decision making under uncertainty.