Good Reading -- March 2021

Philip C. Ordway

Original post:

https://philipordway.substack.com/p/good-reading-march-2021

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Facts & Figures

• More than 42,000 Americans were killed in car crashes in 2020, an increase of 8% over 2019 levels despite a drop in miles driven of 13%. Among other factors, less traffic meant more speeding. Tragic, unexpected consequences of the pandemic are everywhere…

• The United States will soon have spent approximately $5.5 trillion fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. World War II cost the U.S. about $4.8 trillion (in 2021 dollars).

• “Only 3.7% or 4,264 of recorded address changes in five Bay Area counties went out of state, suggesting "exodus" is mostly hype. 72% stayed in Bay Area.”

• In 2020, “2,246 people filed a permanent address change from Manhattan to Miami-Dade County and 1,741 went to Palm Beach County. Together they account for 9% of the out-of-state moves from the borough, up from 6% in 2019. More Manhattanites relocated to Jersey City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago and Hoboken, New Jersey, than they did to either Miami or Palm Beach."

• ~1.9 trillion shares — the volume of OTC “penny stocks” traded in February 2021, up roughly 20x over the level of February 2020.

Quoted

• “Everyone wants to get rich. Any they want to get rich quick.” — Jordan Belfort

Books

• The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks — Ben Cohen wrote an interesting book here. His columns on basketball in the WSJ are good too. If you liked many of the best sports analytics/statistics/decision-making books of the past decade you’ll enjoy this one too.

• Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business — This book was published in 2006. I got it as a gift for presenting at a conference in 2013. It gathered dust until a sharp reader (thanks, Elliot!) recommended it recently. It’s always a good sign when a book still resonates after more than a decade.

• Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World — I like to read one or two books in a row on the same theme, and I got this book recently as a gift (thanks, Adam S.!). I’m definitely not a foodie, and a lot of the details were lost on me. This book is kind of weird and rambling, but it was not formulaic or boring, I’ll say that much.

Articles

• The Erosion of Deep Literacy — A long, interesting article about how technology has short-circuited our ability to read, think, pay attention, reflect, notice change, etc. There is a lot of food for thought here. (Thanks to Alix for sending this!)

• This Book Is Not About Baseball. But Baseball Teams Swear by It. — “Thinking, Fast & Slow” is a Hall-of-Fame book, for sure, but it’s interesting how this started drawing so much attention more than a decade after it came out…

• Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2021 — A can’t-miss springtime tradition.

• Wall Street A-Listers Fled to Florida. Many Now Eye a Return. — The “NYC is toast” narrative will go down as one of the very dumbest in a long list of dumb narratives caused by the pandemic.

• Snowflakes as you’ve never seen them before — This is a really cool article with some stunning photographs.