As a former McKinsey consultant, I find Scott Adam’s take extremely amusing 🙂

Her story as well as that of her parents and her husband deserves to be told. The book is the story of the business, political and intellectual elite in the 20th century America. It is also a vividly personal story of a person who went from being a student, to a housewife, to one of the most important figures in American business and politics.

While shy, inexperienced and unsure of herself, she fought bought back with a vengeance when cornered to fight for the life of her company, the Washington Post. She single-handedly and successfully fought the office of the president during some of this nation’s darkest hours. She later saved the company during a devastating 9 month pressmen’s strike by working day and night with 125 others to produce a paper that typically required 1,500 to operate.

Her father was one of America’s most successful businessmen, chairman of the Fed and first president of the World Bank. Her husband got Johnson the presidency. She was also one of Warren Buffett’s closest friends.

Following Gary Smith’s amazing biography of Andre Agassi in Sports Illustrated I was inspired to buy Beyond the Game, a collection of the biographies he wrote. I was disappointed. Except for a few stories, I did not connect with the athletes he was writing about – probably because I had not heard of most of them and did not care for their sports.

Also, over the course of an entire book, I found Gary Smith’s style grating – his perpetual use of “I” made it feel as though he was inserting his story and writing his story rather than that of the athletes and their entourage. Interesting how something that can work so well for an article can fail over the course of a book.

A few months ago, I spent a few days in Dubai on business. I was impressed by the energy and modernity of the city. I actually liked the faux Moroccan style of the hotel I stayed in and the artificial nature of the constructions somehow felt aesthetically pleasing. I was shocked by the number of constructions. I counted over 70 40+ story buildings in construction and was told that there were around 200 40+ story buildings being built simultaneously. Imagine building New York from scratch in 3 years!

Despite the recent boom, anecdotal evidence seemed to point to a bubbly environment – I was told (but did not confirm) that inflation was around 18% while interest rates on mortgages were around 10%. With negative real rates no wonder people are borrowing to buy… That said even if the real estate market does crash the infrastructure that has been built will last for decades and set the basis for future growth in Dubai.

All in all, I was impressed by the progressive nature of the country and its people and will definitely be back to kite surf and race dune buggies in the desert!

A few months ago I blogged about the Psychology of Happiness (https://fabricegrinda.com/the-psychology-of-happiness/) which showed that empirical evidence suggested that most people have a mean level of happiness they rarely deviate from and that beyond a minimal level changes in financial circumstances had very little impact on happiness due to “hedonic adaptation.” The article went on to suggest several ways of systematically improving happiness.

Recent research of two Princeton professors, Alan Krueger (who was my labor economics professor at Princeton) and Daniel Kahneman further support this theory. Their paper, published in the June 30 issue of Science, shows that while people with above-average income say they are generally satisfied with their lives, the correlation is weakened when happiness is measured from moment to moment. The ways in which people with high incomes spend their time tend to make them more tense and stressed than their less-affluent counterparts.

Their study suggests that how one uses one’s time plays an important role in personal well-being. One of their studies asked 900 women to record a diary of how they used their time in a given day and how they felt during each activity. The activities when listed in order of happiness were intuitively rational: socializing, relaxing praying and eating were at the top of the list, while commuting, working and doing housework were at the bottom.

Small non-sequitur for the skeptics among you: historically economists were wary of subjective well being data because only the person reporting his or her response can verify accuracy. Moreover cultural factors may be at play – in the U.S. most people will answer yes to general questions like “are you happy?” However, asking specific time based question “does this activity make you happy” seemingly leads to accurate reporting as showed by positive correlation between the reports of happiness and physiological factors such as brain activity or the level of cortisol, a stress hormone. (Happy people tend to have more of the former and less of the latter).

It turns out our parents were right. Brushing our teeth, flossing and using Listerine daily does protect us from cavities. As I used to defer to authority, I duly complied and have never had a cavity to this date.

What would have been useful is to learn how to brush. I applied the tenacity of a Mr. Clean to my brushing endeavors using a hard tooth brush and essentially brushed my gums away. As a result, I had to have a gum graft this week which while less unpleasant that I was led to expect, I would not recommend to anyone.

Essentially they take cadaver tissue and graft it to your gums to protect the base of your teeth and prevent them from falling off.

Conclusion:

• Floss, brush and use Listerine daily
• Use a soft tooth brush or an electric toothbrush (I highly recommend the Sonicare Elite 7500)
• Very important: Do not use a horizontal motion with the toothbrush when brushing the front and back of your teeth. Use a vertical motion going from the gums to the top of the teeth (top-down for the top teeth, bottom-up for the bottom teeth).