Review: Superman - Camelot Falls

 While browsing Hoopla I saw that Busiek wrote another Superman story called Camelot Falls, so I checked it out as well.

The thesis behind Camelot Falls is that human civilizations move in cycles, with a rise and then a fall. The fall can be resisted, and Superman and the Justice League form one of the forces resisting the fall. An ancient Atlantean sorcerer called Arion insists, however, that the longer the fall is put off the worst it will be, and if Superman insists on going on his current path it would result in the extinction of humanity.

Superman, of course, posits that he has free will, and that he cannot simply not help out and feel good about himself (was there any doubt about this?). He has a fight with Arion and defeats him, but the overall arc of the story ends there --- apparently Busiek stopped working on Superman and nobody ever picked up the unfinished grand plot he left behind, leaving the story very unsatisfying.

There are a few interesting pieces of the story, including one where it is revealed that everyone from the United States government and the Justice League has a plan for stopping Superman on the day he goes rogue from mind control, magic, or just decides to turn against humanity. The intention there is to make you feel how alienated Superman can feel.

In this Superman universe, he's married to Lois Lane and they even have a child. Lana Lang is running LexCorp (another weird one). The art is fantastic (especially the interpretations of Lois Lane and Lana Lang), making me sad that Carlos Pacheco died in 2022.

I can't really recommend this story. It's just not that satisfying and an unfinished storyline. Probably the only reason to read it is to look at Pacheco's art.

Reiew: The Molecule of More

 The Molecule of More is a book length exposition of Dopamine. There's plenty of exposition about Dopamine's role in well known human syndromes such as addiction, but this book managed to explain it in a clear and interesting fashion without boring me, which I thought made it an excellent book to read as a review of what I'd already learned in previous books.

The long and short of the book is that Dopamine is the molecule exuded by your brain when there's a positive prediction error. In other words when something is a lot more pleasant or pleasurable than you expected. This leads you to do more of whatever the action you took until that positive prediction error goes away, which of course is pretty fast in the case of typical substances like food or drink.

When it comes to addictive substances like drugs (alcohol, cocaine, or sometimes even video games), however, this prediction error can turn you into an addict. In those circumstances, what medical practice can do is to try to heighten the pleasure you get from the H&N ("here and now") molecules which your body uses to direct pleasure at what you currently have as opposed to anticipatory pleasure that dopamine provides. Disappointingly enough, the book doesn't go into very much detail about how H&N molecules work.

The book then expands on this principle to describe how certain people who have heightened dopamine receptors can never be unhappy no matter how much they have. This explains why certain driven people keep focusing on achievements no matter what they've achieved, and why Mick Jagger never settled down with a single woman and just kept looking for more.

Some of the book is clearly speculative, for instance, the section speculating on how immigrants tend to have more dopamine receptors. Many of the book's points are told in the form of stories about an individual that feel compelling.

I enjoyed this book and can recommend it.

Review: Batman - Creature of the Night

 After reading Superman - Secret Identity, I discovered that Kurt Busiek wrote the Batman equivalent called Creature of the Night which showed up in 2020. So of course I checked it out of the library via Hoopla and read it.

Just like the other graphic novel, this one is set in a world where DC Comics exist, and everyone knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman. In fact, growing up, Bruce Wainwright loved Batman and made sure everyone knew about it, even calling a family friend Alfred.

When Wainwright's parents are killed, he gets distraught and somehow a Batman appears to help him out. Over the rest of the graphic novel, we get exposition about the nature of this Batman (which is nothing like the conventional Batman comics) and then we deal with how the real world differs from the easy answers of the Batman comics.

The story falls strictly into the fantasy category. There is no explanation for the Batman that makes sense (unlike even in the official DC comics), though there's some bizarre explanation in the narrative that's unsatisfying to me. There's no deep exploration of Bruce's psyche, and there's no long journey where Bruce gets any ephiphanies. That makes this book a weaker work than Secret Identity, but it was worth reading for a unique take on Batman.

Review: Superman - Secret Identity

 Somehow I'd missed that Kurt Busiek wrote a Superman story called Secret identity. Well, of course I had to go and check it out from Hoopla. The story is set on Earth Prime (or rather, our Earth, where no superheroes exist). On Earth Prime, DC Comics continue to publish superhero comics, so everyone knows that Clark Kent is Superman. Except, in this universe Clark Kent was just the cruel joke played on him by his parents, who figured why not subject their kids to the worst bullying possible by naming him Clark when they live in Picketsville, Kansas.

Much like the story in Invincible, Clark Kent has a normal childhood and grows up having broken bones just like any other kid. But in high school, his powers manifest one day, and he discovers that he's Superman! Unlike other Superman stories there are no Lex Luthors or other Super-Villains. (There is a Lois, but not Lois Lane) He works as a writer, but not as a reporter for a newspaper. (It's The New Yorker)

The challenges this version of Superman gets are of course, the government trying to capture him and subject him to experiments and so forth. (Why governments are never sensible can probably be a PhD thesis on Earth Prime) Strangely enough, this Superman can get his blood drawn and so on. We see him fall in love, get married, have kids, and even retire.

As Superman stories go, this is a pretty down to earth, easy to read, and short story. We never get to see where his powers come from, or whether he truly was adopted. There are lots of loose ends. But beyond that it's a pretty reasonable story but not quite up to par with Busiek's AstroCity work.

Review: Good Omens Graphic Novel

 I will confess that I've always bounced off Terry Prachett's work. Disc World, you name it, I can't read more than a few pages before I'm tired of it. Good Omens (the novel) was no exception. But a year or so ago Bowen and Boen got into watching the TV show, and I found that I enjoyed it. I guess I liked the plot, it was always Terry Prachett's writing that left me cold.

Colleen Doran announced that she was doing a graphic novel adaptation of Good Omens. It was a kickstarter project, and I backed it before the allegations about Neil Gaiman was announced. In any case, it wouldn't have felt fair to knock Colleen Doran for associating with Gaiman. The graphic novel took a year or so to deliver, and I'd even forgotten about it by the time it showed up in the mail.

It's a testament to how far Gaiman's star has fallen that his name wasn't even on the title page to the book, though it showed up in the interior splash page. The art is great, as you can expect from Doran, but you can tell that the comic was adapted from a (very wordy) novel. There are several places where a traditional comic book author would tell the story in pictures rather than huge blocks of text that were probably lifted from the novel proper.

Where the comic differs from the TV show, it was clear that the show was the one that deviated from the novel. The novel does the usual Gaiman schtick of setting up for a great battle and then having it be defused with an anticlimax (the TV show doesn't shy away from that schtick). The graphic novel adds enough color (literally) and distraction that the Terry Prachett prose didn't bother me at all.

What can I say? A comic book that lets me read a novel that I've bounced off. That makes it recommended.

San Francisco Crosstown and Double Cross Walks

I had a little epiphany recently where I thought to myself, "People from all over the world pay lots of money and fly into San Francisco. We live right here. Maybe we can do a few excursions just like a tourist would and see whether it's any good!" With that, I found the San Francisco Doublecross and the San Francisco Crosstown walks and decided to tackle them over a couple of Saturdays.

Both these walks start at free parking lots in San Francisco (Fort Funston and Candlestick Park), which is important because you're going to be gone all day. Despite San Francisco's reputation, on neither days did our cars get broken into. On the return you're going to have to Uber/Waymo or take public transit back. Since San Francisco public transit sucks, you're probably going to have to Uber or Waymo. Of the two ride hailing services, Waymo actually will refuse to deliver you to either Candlestick Park or Fort Funston, but on the Doublecross it can deliver you to Lake Merced and by pushing the "Pullover" button at a judicious time you can keep the walk back to the parking lot to less than a mile. Of course, the price of these ride hailing services is such that this is far more expensive than any of the other hikes in the Bay Area where you can loop back to the car. On the other hand, you're basically pretending to be a tourist who's paid at least a few hundred dollars for the flight to San Francisco, so you can still pretend to come out ahead.

The nice thing about doing a walk like this in the city is that you pretty much only need to carry a small water bottle and your wallet (or phone with GPay/Apple Pay) and walk. There's plenty of places to buy food, refill your water bottle, and in the case of the Crosstown, there are even many designated restrooms along the way. There are also plenty of distractions, so even if you're a fast walker (we're not), do not expect either of these walks to take less than a day.

Of the two walks, the Double Cross is actually a much better route. It starts at Fort Funston and ends at Pier 29, so you have a tail wind most of the way, which makes it much more comfortable. It also shows off more of the iconic San Francisco neighborhoods, taking you through Stern Grove, Twin Peaks, China Town, Little Italy, and Embarcadero, Coit Tower, and of course the San Francisco Exploratorium. The Crosstown by contrast does take you through the Presidio and Golden Gate Park, but neither feel as iconic. The DoubleCross also shows you the homeless situation in San Francisco while the Crosstown strictly avoids homelessness.

Both routes have about 2000 feet of climbing, and would never take a route around a hill when it can take you directly over it for maximum chance of views. I chose to do both walks in the summer so we would have maximum daylight despite relatively late starts, and also because summer is when hiking in the south bay would be extremely hot while San Francisco is nice and cool, providing a nice break from the summer heat.

Both Candlestick park and Fort Funston close at sunset, so there's a deadline for the hike --- you must return to your car by the time the parks close, so you must finish by around 7:00pm in the summer. Candlestick park is nowhere close to good dining, but Fort Funston is conveniently located near Soul Rice, one of the few good Chinese restaurants you can find easily that never has a wait and serves food quickly. In both cases we finished the walk within about 7 hours of starting (including a half hour or so for lunch), and our kids are 14 and 10, so this should be well within the capability of most non-sedentary adults.

Both walks showed me aspects of San Francisco that I'd never made a point of visiting before, and also provide iconic visits to the city's many varied parks. The best time to do this hike if you're capable of getting up early is in the Spring or Fall, when the views wouldn't be obscured by the heavy fog. Nevertheless, I enjoyed both walks as a respite from the heat as well as an idea of what causes people to travel to visit San Francisco.

Review: Hileen replacement nosepads for Oakley cycling glasses

 One of the most annoying things about cycling with glasses is when they keep sliding down your nose. I've tried stuff like nerdwax which works for ordinary glasses, but those absolutely do not work with cycling glasses like my preferred Oakleys.

I did notice that Amazon sold replacement nosepads by various Chinese manufacturers, and the Hileen one advertises that they make special Asian-fit nosepads. I bought them and installed them and used them all throughout the tour this year. They alleviate the problem, but don't make it completely go away. It turns out that the most likely cause of glasses slipping is your helmet being a bit loose and rattling down on your glasses and causing them to slide down.

After I got back, I decided that this wasn't helping, and then switched to the original pads that came with my glasses. Wow, the originals were so much worse that I immediately switched back after one ride. So these are effective. Recommended.