Book Review: Crypto Moments

 'Crypto Moments: How Tech Visionaries Disrupted Global Finance' by BEN BRAUSER is a peep into how an email’s opening sentence revolutionized the world. How it unveiled a vision for an entirely peer-to-peer, anonymous, digital payment system. 

The narration starts with Bitcoin’s mysterious beginning with Satoshi Nakamoto,  and the first demonstration - an order for Papa Johns pizza. Which is followed by an insight into an explosion of transactions that followed, and of course, the controversies that grew along. The discussion now moves on to other aspects of this innovation, as well as introduction of new currencies or block chain. Like, Etherium Merge, Terra, Three Arrows Capital, and FTX. The world of technology operates at light speed. Innovations in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and blockchain infrastructure will shape the course of the future, the book sums up. 

This book is a good introduction to an evolving system of wealth. It covers the complete path, crypto took to go mainstream. Readers can feel encouraged to make a crypto exchange account and buy thousands of different cryptocurrencies, and make gainful use of the blockchain tools shown here.

Book Review: Forge Ahead

 Forge Ahead by Frank Vitale is a book about creating a winning strategy in business, life, and wrestling. It begins with an essential need for success, anywhere - show up and be actively present. Then comes the need to be involved at all times, going above and beyond every issue to keep delivering results. Need to motivate one's team comes next, followed by something very important - a failure is not a loss, it’s a lesson that can put every adversity to good use. Discipline and service can help you find a purpose, the ultimate drive, the book exhorts. After mentioning the need for acknowledging the strength in our differences, the book concludes by saying - while there is no single formula for success, leading with your strengths is the key.

This book is ideas flowing in a streamline path. It presents a big task of succeeding in business and in every aspect of our life as all about going forward. It also gives an easy solution to this, constantly create a forward momentum. With a conversational style, and with logical transition of ideas and topics between chapters, I find this book a real page-turner.

Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health

National Academy of Sciences - Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health (2025)

It says, a review is a must, for various reasons. Like, currently there are no published clinical trials for most important health outcomes, so even the substantial evidence base noted above is challenged by threats of bias inherent in observational studies. I think, the prevailing public opinion being one that tends to paint it in a different color, we need to pay attention to this report.

I found this report addressing many issues that are linked to alcohol consumption. Like, what is the relationship between moderate alcohol consumption and growth, body size and composition, obesity etc? What are the accompanying risks, of cancer, weight loss, cardio-vascular issues (CVD), or others that can lead to a morbid condition?

The report reaches quite a few conclusions. High risk of breast cancer is associated with moderate drinking. But no connection could be found in respect of any other type of cancer. Moderate drinking was found to be lowering the risk of myocardial infraction, non fatal stroke, CVD morbidity etc. No connection could be established between moderate drinking and cognitive decline. In short, the report concludes that compared to never consuming alcohol, moderate drinking is associated with lower all-cause morbidity.

The report also contains extensive charts that list the details of all kind of evidence considered by the reporting team for arriving at these conclusions.

I think, this report makes it urgent. As I wrote in my hub, we need to have a more sober approach on matters related to alcohol.