Books of the Year 2024

 I read 63 books this year, which comes out to more than a book a week. A lot of the books were re-reads, which I do not regret, since many of the books were read to Boen, and most of the books worth re-reading are so good that there's no way you can regret spending more time with them.

Easily the book of the year is The Rise and Reign of Mammals. The book taught me so much more about mammal evolution and even basic questions like "What is a mammal?" Other contenders in the non fiction category were Bruce Lee and Jobst Brandt Ride Bike! I would also recommend What Makes This Book So Great to any science fiction fan, since it's a list of great books to read.

The best fiction I read this year was Machine Vendetta. You can't go wrong with Alastair Reynolds and I was happy to pay full kindle price to read it. Obviously, it'll be hard to beat Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mainteneance or Among Others, but those were not new to me.

I wish I'd read better graphic novels this year. I did finally finish the entire Walking Dead series but I didn't think it was a particularly good series, especially in comparison with Invincible.

Yosemite 2024: Mirror Lake Loop

 

The forecast was for rain and snow but it got moved back to Monday afternoon from Sunday night! Driving into the park was saw notices that both Tioga Pass and Glacier Point roads would be closed from 4pm that day. Because it was the last day of the long weekend, we could park at the Happy Isles parking lot with no competition.

Just the walk out from the car to Happy Isles was beautiful, with leaves on the ground. At Happy Isles, we saw a crane on the river. And then walked past the Mist trail trailhead onto the Mirror Lake trail, eschewing the road even though the road was shorter. This quickly proved to be a wise move, as we saw a bobcat! This one was bold, walking out onto the road eventually and out of our sight.

The trail went up and down but was well paved, and covered with leaves. Every corner the fall foliage would get more and more impressive.

When we got to Mirror Lake, sure enough the lake was completely dry. We stayed on the trail to do the loop anyway, and were rewarded with occasional places where the views opened up.

On the return, we started to feel raindrops, and hurried back towards the car. Once at the car, Boen complained about being hungry so we ate a bunch of snacks before heading into the car for what would be a long drive.

But Yosemite was not done with us yet! On the way leaving the park, we saw a huge patch of gorgeous trees and had to stop the car for 20 minutes to get out and take photos.

It actually snowed on us as we exited the park via the Big Oak Flat entrance, but the snow didn't stick to the ground so I didn't have to deploy snow chains. By the time we got down to 3000' the snow had turned into rain. We had lunch near Manteca and stopped at the Costco there to refuel. Driving back over the windmills near Patterson pass we saw beautiful sunset views. It was great.

Review: Bruce Lee - A Life

 I enjoyed Matt Polly's book enough that when I saw he had a biography of Bruce Lee I decided to check it out from the library. This is a great book, since despite living only 32 years, Bruce Lee lived an action-packed life and this biography is just as interesting if not more than any amount of fiction that could be imagined.

Born in San Francisco, but growing up in Hong Kong to an upper middle-class famous opera performer, Bruce Lee was the first Chinese American to break into Hollywood in a big way, the one who made Kung Fu popular. But along the way, Matt Polly gives the backstory behind for instance, Shaw Brothers (there's a great story about the Shaw family burying gold, jewels, and watches in the ground in preparation for the Japanese conquest of Singapore, and then digging it up after the war). The origin of the Golden Harvest studio is in here as well.

I enjoyed the documentation of Bruce Lee's inner life as well. For instance, there's a famous incident about when he threw the gauntlet down in front of the Bay Area martial arts community saying that the ancient styles and forms that were being taught were ineffective for fighting, and then getting challenged. The fight was won by Bruce Lee, but rather than glorifying in it, he realized that the fight pointed out weaknesses in his own skills --- he was winded after only a 3 minute fight, and the Wing Chun training he'd had was not as effective against someone who was running away. That led him to adopt a physical fitness regimen to improve his cardio, skipping rope and running. This made him a much deeper character to me than someone who just beat up people. That he damaged his back one day lifting weights that left him bed bound for 3 months also made him a bit more human to me --- it's more convincing than someone who's just preternaturally strong and fit.

Polly doesn't shy away from Lee's faults, from his threatening his PE teacher in school, to his numerous affair when he became a big star, and his antagonistic approach to working with directors, producers, and script writers. I thought he was fair in the way Lee's faults were approached.

Finally, the book introduced the idea that Lee died of heat stroke. Other theories have been broached, and Polly does a good job explaining why they're not credible.

This book was great reading. I've never watched a Bruce Lee movie and maybe I should.

Yosemite 2024: Sentinel Dome, Roosevelt Point, Taft Point

 

On the way to Glacier Point road, the GPS on the phone announced that Glacier Point Road was closed. I kept going, assuming that there would be warnings all over the park if that was true. We stopped at the tunnel view point for a very cold morning shoot before driving straight to the trailhead.

Following the signs to sentinel dome, we hiked around the dome itself before climbing it on the gentle side. The view from the top was nice, we got a nice view of half dome as well as El Capitan.

From the dome proper, we descended down towards Roosevelt point, passing a generator driven cell tower along the way. Indeed, we got very strong 5G internet there, and this was the best cell reception I'd ever seen in a National Park. Roosevelt point itself had no marker, but the trail along the way granted us plenty of views.

When we got to Taft point, the crowds had increased. This was clearly well known. Lots of people were posing on top of the point for dramatic photos and we did not resist.

After the hike, we drove down to Washburn Point and Glacier Point for the views and more crowds. To my surprise despite the traffic, we never actually had trouble finding parking. Then we drove down to the Yosemite Valley Lodge food court for a late lunch/early dinner. The food court was an example of excessive automation. There were kiosks where you had to order food from a touch screen. However, all but two of the touch screens were broken, and all it took was a couple of parties who were slow at making up their mind to gum the whole works up. Somebody thought that saving money on cashiers or order takers was a good idea and forgot that electronics failure would be difficult to service in a National Park!

After dinner, we walked to the swinging bridge for sunset views. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any good shots of the half dome in Alpen glow from where we were, but the Merced river was still as a mirror and we got some good pictures before returning to the Cedar Lodge for the night for more swimming (proving once again that kids have infinite energy!)

That night, I searched in vain for an alternative to the Mirror Lake hike we were planning to do tomorrow, since the lake itself was all dried up in the fall! But everything would involve a lot more driving so we opted for sticking to the original plan.

Yosemite 2024: Mist and Vernal Falls

 

For the Veteran's Day long weekend this year we decided to visit Yosemite National Park, having never been there in the Fall. On Friday night, we drove out to Oakdale, staying there for dinner. I'd forgotten my belt and ended up paying absurd prices at a local Tractor Supply, but it saved time hunting for a belt.

Arriving at the park at 9:45am, we flashed our Every Kid Outdoors printout and exchanged it for a plastic card for the free entrance. We were told that the parking lot for Happy Isles might be filled up, so we parked at Camp Curry instead and walked the extra 0.5 miles. Getting started at 10:30am, we were immediately impressed by the fall colors in the valley leading up to the Vernal Falls footbridge.

Past the footbridge, the trail climbs along side the falls. In the spring and summer there would be mist from the falls, giving the trail its name. In the fall, the waterfall is but a shadow of itself, and the trail was completely dry. It was crowded though, and frequently we had to pause to let hikers past us from both sides.

At the top of Vernal falls, I took out my stove and we made lunch --- instant noodles. After lunch I made the mistake of showing Boen the top of Nevada Falls and told him we were headed to the top. He immediately threw a temper tantrum and refused to keep walking. It took quite a bit of cajoling and bribery to get him to keep moving. The thing is, the top of Vernal Falls is already more than half way up to the top of Nevada Falls, so it actually wasn't that long before we got to the top.

At the top, we got good views of half dome, Mt Watkins, and Clouds Rest. From there, we would descend the John Muir Trail down to Clarks Point. It was already getting pretty dark, and we were already in shadow at this point.

By the time we got to the car it was already past sunset, and we headed straight to our lodging for the night, Cedar Lodge, which had a restaurant serving mediocre food, but had a heated indoor swimming pool that Bowen and Boen had a great time playing in before bed.

I'd wanted to do the Four Mile trail up to Glacier Point and back, but then realized that we'd done enough elevation today that I was likely to be met with protests the next morning. I did some research and realized that Glacier Point was open, so we could do a loop I'd never done before, which was Sentinel Dome, Roosevelt Point, and Taft Point loop. It was a short easy loop and would give us time to explore the valley before sunset.

Review: The End is Always Near

 The End Is Always Near purports to be a history book about apocalyptic moments from the past. In practice, the apocalyptic moments it discusses don't feel that bad. For instance, the black plague reduced the population of England from 6 million people to 2 million people. That's terrible for the people who died, but as the author explained, 6 million people was the carrying capacity of England at the time! So the people who were living were in fact barely subsisting, and in fact the survivors of the plague ended up with a much better standard of living afterwards (for about 300 years) since the manpower shortage meant that the poorest of the poor now had land, and serfs could raise a middle finger to their lords if they were mistreated. Now you know why folks like Elon Musk are worried about a population decline --- the modern day oligarchs might have to pay a living wage if population declined sufficiently!

There's a strange chapter about how in the past effectively child raising techniques are so horrifyingly brutal that all persons were raised in an abusive environment:

Lloyd deMause quotes a piece written by the chief of police in Paris in 1780 estimating that of the, on average, 21,000 children born in that city every year, only 700 were nursed by their biological mothers. (Marie Antoinette, writing in a letter to her mother, noted after her daughter recognized her as her mother in a room full of people, “I believe I like her much better since that time”—which suggests she hadn’t liked her all that much before. (pg 25)

 I'm not sure how this has to do with apocalypse.

Finally, there's an entire 1/3rd of the book about the deployment and use of the atomic bomb, including the Cuban missile crisis. The examination of the mindset by the air forces involved at that time is interesting.

One item I found strangely missing is any mention of the pre-historic severe population bottleneck, where the human population we reduced to about 1280 breeding individuals. Obviously we don't know much about that time, but not even mentioning that in the book is kind of strange.

I did get interesting insights from this book, but I'm not sure I can fully recommend it. Maybe the author's podcast is more interesting.

Yosemite 2024 Index Page

 We visited Yosemite for Veterans Day. It was our first time there in the fall.

Photos

• Mist and Vernal Falls
• Sentinel Dome, Roosevelt Point, Taft Point
• Mirror Lake Loop

Review: Kiki's Delivery Service

 I of course enjoyed Kiki's Delivery Service as a Hayao Miyazaki movie, but I never realized that it was based on a book of the same name until Amazon served me an add.

Unlike the movie, which has an actual, relatively coherent plot. this book is actually a series of vignettes about Kiki, who's not very different from the one you see in the movie. There's a slight hint of romance between Kiki and Tombo, but there are no scenes with bicycles, and no drama in which Kiki loses her power, which makes the movie much more powerful than the book as a coming of age story.

That said, it's clearly a kid's book and if you have kids who enjoy the movie this is a good book for them to read after they've seen the movie.

Review: Tapped Out

 I remember enjoying American Shaolin, so when I saw that Matt Polly had a follow-on book called Tapped Out, I decided to check it out and read it.

Matt Polly is a funny guy in writing. For instance: 

When I was at the Shaolin Temple, I studied iron forearm kung fu, which involved repeatedly banging your forearms against a tree trunk for thirty minutes a day in order to make them tough enough to block a full kick without injury. When I returned to Kansas, my father saw me practicing against a tree in the backyard. After I finished, he put his arm around my shoulder and said, “I don’t know what we did wrong raising you, but whatever it was, I’m sorry.” (page 95)

Unfortunately, the topic, MMA isn't actually as exciting as it sounds. Matt Polly has a hard time explaining the differences between the martial arts styles, and his performative incompetence doesn't make you feel like it's  a sport worth watching or participating in, despite him stating near the end of the book writing that his blood pressure went from 145/100 to 118/80 in 2 years of serious training for his fight.

Throughout the book, Matt Polly name drops what are obviously famous people in the MMA world. Unfortunately, those references were lost on me. I guess I'm not really the audience for this book. You pretty much have to already be a fan of MMA to thoroughly appreciate this book.

Review: Barking Up the Wrong Tree

 Barking Up the Wrong Tree has the feel of several dozen blog posts turned into a book. But I noticed that it was a WSJ best-selling book, so plenty of people must think it's good reading. And to a large extent, Eric Barker is entertaining and breezy. For instance:

managing what your boss thinks of you is far more important than actual hard work. A study shows that those who made a good impression got better performance reviews than those who worked harder but didn’t manage impressions as well. Often this comes down to something we’re all very familiar with: good ol’ ass kissing. Is flattering the boss effective? Research has shown flattery is so powerful that it works even when the boss knows it’s insincere. Jennifer Chatman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, did a study to see at what point flattery backfired . . . but she couldn’t find one. (kindle loc 802)

Later on in the same chapter he mentions that if the entire company turned into the kind of people who just ass kissed and nobody did any work, it suddenly became a much worse place to work and the company would tank eventually. (Unless you're Google of course, which has so much revenue coming in it doesn't matter that ass-kissing is the normal work ethic.)

 Barker notes that the entire point of fiction is to paint an unrealistic picture of the world:

Research shows that fiction makes us more “prosocial”—that is, kind and giving. It does this by making our vision of the world less accurate. Just as religion and stories of personal meaning help us cope, so do movies, TV, and other stories. Stories not only engage our minds but also quietly slip a pair of rose-colored glasses on our heads. (kindle loc 1508)

 You get the idea of what the book is like. There's a ton of references to say Robert Wiseman's work, and even a side mention of American Shaolin. (I never realized that Matt Polly wrote additional books other than that one, so this book caused me to go look up the other books!)

Each chapter ends with a recap and a bunch of summaries, and of course every "on the one hand" advise comes with an "on the other hand" advise. Ultimately, there's one saying that comes to mind over and over again when I read this book, which is to know the enemy and to know yourself. If you've already internalized that saying, you do not need to read this book. But you should read it anyway for the entertainment.

Review: The Wild Life of Our Bodies

 The Wild Life of Our Bodies is a book about the relationship between our bodies and their evolutionary partners/predators/symbiotes that modern life has changed. It is surprisingly wide ranging, from discussing various diseases (such as Crohn's disease) that have symptoms largely alleviated when some patients deliberately infect themselves with various parasitic worms in their intestines. In fact, one postulate in the book (not backed up with evidence) is that the modern epidemic of obesity is because historically humans have always had tapeworms and other parasites in their bodies absorbing nutrition that are no longer widespread in developed countries, and now that those parasites are no longer in our bodies our super efficient metabolism now causes obesity.

There's one particularly keen observation about lactose intolerance and how few people (globally) actually have the gene that allows them to process milk as adults, yet the USDA food pyramid encourages consumption of dairy products:

That our bodies respond differently to the same food as a consequence of our ancestry may seem obvious. Yet we ignore such realities every day. The USDA food pyramid still has as one of its main items “milk,” along with fruits, vegetables, meats, and beans, even though most humans worldwide cannot digest milk. Milk is just the beginning of the unraveling of the idea that any one species of plant or animal food (or processed version thereof) might do us all good. (pg 132)

There's a discussion of why we have a natural, instinctual aversion to snakes, and why we ended up as being the only hairless ape. (body lice and ticks are a major reason, and in fact we can stop the spread of headlice in schools if we could get all parents to get their kids' heads shaved!)

Rats, pigeons, cows, antelope, and monkeys groom. When pigeons are prevented from grooming, they grow speckled with lice. Cows prevented from cleaning themselves have four times as many ticks and six times as many lice as those left unhindered. Antelope have a specialized tooth called a “dental comb” that seems to serve no purpose other than to aid in grooming away ectoparasites (evidence of yet another case in which ectoparasites seem to have posed a cost that was significant enough to cause animal bodies to evolve).4 Many animals groom themselves and each other even though the lost time such efforts entail is costly. (pg. 220)

The book ends with the observations that urban infestations (cockroaches, rats, pigeons and other undesirable weeds) are a reflection of the ancient human predilection for living in caves. That those creatures fare best in caves is also why they fare best in cities. I'm not sure I 100% buy his argument, since plants like dandelions also do well in cities but I've yet to find a dandelion in a cave. Similarly bats do well in caves but we rarely see them in cities.

Nevertheless, this book gives you lots to think about and is worth a read.