Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Links

Bill Gates reviews the book Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World (LINK)

Tom Weik, Mohnish Pabrai, and John Mihaljevic discuss the parallels between investing and the game of bridge (LINK)

Greece’s Ex-Finance Minister Tells All (LINK)

Latticework of Mental Models: Thermodynamics (LINK) [If you want to go deeper, The Great Courses has a nice course on thermodynamics, which looks like it is currently on sale for $69.95 for the video download format: Thermodynamics: Four Laws That Move the Universe. You can also occasionally find decent coupon codes online to get a bit larger discount.]

a16z Podcast: When Bio Meets Computer Science (LINK)
Related quote: “One of the very few silver linings about me getting sick is that Reed’s gotten to spend a lot of time studying with some very good doctors…. I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one when I was his age.” –Steve Jobs (from Isaacson's biography of Jobs
Related book (and if you know of any other good ones on the topic, feel free to pass along recommendations): Cracking the Code
Hospital checklists are meant to save lives — so why do they often fail? (LINK)
Related book: The Checklist Manifesto
Notes from Hillhouse Capital's Lei Zhang's lecture at Columbia Business School (LINK)

Breaking Smart - by Venkatesh Rao (LINK)
Today, I am launching a new site: Breaking Smart. It is a seasonal binge-reading site (think Netflix binge-watching, but for blogs) devoted to big-picture analysis of technology trends. Starting with this first season, I plan to publish a complete season of essays once every 2 years. The inaugural season has 20 essays, amounting to a total of about 30,000 words.
Thanks to Graham for passing along (and starting) what looks like a useful news feed of investing psychology and behavioural economics news (LINK)

Jamestown excavation unearths four bodies — and a mystery in a small box (LINK)