Review: Rethinking Diabetes

 Rethinking Diabetes is about the history of diabetic treatment, and the various back-and-forths about diet for diabetic patients over the years, pre-insulin and post-insulin.  Pre-insulin type 1 diabetes was pretty much a death sentence, with children not living much past single digit years if at all. Type 1 was mostly unresolved except through a diet that pretty much excludes carbohydrates.

The history of how insulin was invented, and how it effected survival of patients with type 1 diabetes was described. For type-2 diabetics this enabled diabetics to eat carbohydrates. The author spends a lot of time complaining about how this switch was not accompanied by evidence, and how the promulgators of this approach basically used their standing within the medical community to shut down dissent.

In many ways this is a book with an agenda about how the medical community basically ignored the possibility of using a high fat diet to reverse diabetics and reduce insulin needs. To some extent this book is about the history of the keto-style diets and how they eventually came to be embraced despite the opposition of the medical community.

To some extent I think you have to take the book with a grain of salt. Science isn't easy, and if there's anything I've learned from Outlive, it's that the evidence for one diet over another is really slim and not as obvious as say, the dangers from smoking. So it's not through ill intention that the medical community was making high carbohydrate diet the default, but just that nobody really actually knows anything about nutrition.

In any case, I enjoyed the book. It got a bit repetitive at times, and the author seems to believe that the keto diet is the ultimate cure for diabetes. But that might still be a bit too optimistic as variation in human responses to diet seem to swamp our ability to do good studies on nutrition.

Reread: Outlive

 Outlive was onsale for $2 on the Kindle so I bought it and read it again. I keep being surprised at how detailed this book is, with a deep emphasis on long term prevention rather than trying to reverse chronic disease after it happened.

This time, I took action. As recommended, I got my doctor to prescribe me a continous glucose monitor. I'm surprised by how unreliable these devices are, which makes me even more determined to prevent diabetes. If I had to depend on these things to keep myself alive I might not last long!

Needless to say, the book's worth reading a second time. Recommended.

Review: Silca SuperPista Digital Floor Pump

 There was a sale on the SuperPista Digital Floor Pump. While I had a perfectly operational pump, the idea of a pump with a gauge that was accurate and had a reliable pump head was attractive. I bought one since I have multiple bikes in the garage and with the new wider tires and lower pressures in use having an accurate gauge was a good idea and could save time.

The Hiro chuck was a disappointment. It's actually just as finicky or maybe even more so than my older pump heads on the cheap pumps. Here's the deal, when you press it onto a presta head, you have to get it precisely correct. Push it down too far, and the lock won't activate, leading to frustration. Push it down not far enough, and you will get leaks just as with any other pump.

The digital gauge works, and while it reads a consistent 3psi lower than my trusty Topeak Smart Gauge, I can deal with systematic errors, and of course have no way to tell which one is off by 3psi. (I just opt for the higher number, since under inflation has worse consequences than slight over inflation)

So now my inflation trials can go either way. I'll start by grabbing the SuperPista, and if I get frustrated I switch to one of the older pumps. Not the end of the world, but I don't think it's worth full price, or even sale price to get this nice pump unless you have so little room at the spokes that you have to have the Hiro chuck.

Review: Soldier Son Trilogy

Soldier Son Trilogy was on sale for a low price, so I bought it since Robin Hobb had a good reputation Narrated from a first person point of view, the protagonist isn't very likeable, and you frequently want to yell at him to stop ignoring the obvious. 

The worldbuilding is simple: you've got a kingdom that just lost the war and decided to increase the size of its empire by prosecuting a war against nomadic people. They won this war and subjugated the nomads, and Nevare Burvelle is the second son of one of the successful soldiers who got elevated to nobility by the King. Having finished conquering the nomads, the kingdom decides to extend its empire into the forest dominated by the Specks, a hunter-gatherer culture. If all this sounds familiar, it's because the plot is very similar to that of the movie Avatar, with the Western-dominated culture represented by a monarchy rather than by a greedy corporation.

The society is patriarchal, with second sons expected to become soldiers and the narrator buys into all that, never questioning his father, his religion, or his role in life. Then his father has him trained by a one of the subjugated people who introduces him into a shadow world where he gains magical powers but refuses to acknowledge that they exist.

The writing is transparent and easy to read, and the story of Nevare making it to the capital and then getting embroiled in the politics of his world while being in the officer's academy somehow manages to avoid all the cliches. When the climax of the story arrives you're not surprised but the handling of it is great, and maybe even prescient. Neveare even changes his opinions at the end of the book. The series rewards careful reading as casual one liners can take on momentous consequences later on.

The second part of the trilogy is the worst section, as Burvelle's life goes from bad to worse, and he seems even more dense. But at the end of that section he goes natives and joins the Specks to fulfill his destiny as a forest mage destined to save them from the Western agricultural domination-based culture. 

The last book resolves all the issues while giving us a glance at the hunter-gatherer culture. I thought this part was very nicely done, with Burvelle trying to organize the culture and realizing the limits of the egalitarian hunter-gatherer culture and explaining why historically the agricultural patriarchies have always won out over the hunter-gatherers. The magic is never really explained, but the theme here is that you cannot have a partitioned self and expect to fulfill the destiny. The ending is all tied up nicely and a bit pat, but you cannot expect American authors to give you a bittersweet ending.

I enjoyed the series enough to plow through it all within a week, so I can recommend it. It's long and a bit draggy in parts but all in all the transparency made for good reading.

Review: Zatanna

 Zatana was billed as being written by Paul Dini, and she was one of the surviving members of DC universe's magic community after Alan Moore did in her father in Swamp Thing. Paul Dini had a good reputation and more importantly, the book was free on Amazon Prime reads, so I checked it out and read it.

Unfortunately, Zatana's magic lets her get out of many sticky situations without much effort. There's one scene where she gets injured in such a way where she can't speak, and that's about it. I was disappointing that there's really nothing very insightful about any of the stories. They're all light and easy reading, but you never get a deep insight into Zatanna, or even if there are any limits to her magic.

Review: Worlds

 I remember being at a Worldcon where a group of writers talked about fiction vs non-fiction. They asserted that since they wrote fiction, their works would never be obsolete and would sell year after year. Worlds shows how untrue that point of view is.

Worlds is set in a future where artificial satellites ("Worlds") orbit the earth, each a colony of hundreds of thousands. Yet these Worlds are still dependent on the Earth for hydrocarbons for which they exchange power from solar panels in space.

The protagonist, Marianne O'Hara, is a political science student who does a year on Earth in New York. The novel is written in the form of letters from her or entries in her diary. The point of view of the novel is as obsolete as you can get. For instance, the USSR is still in one piece, with several satellite countries and completely intact. Haldeman has his protagonist have to pay to send letters to her friends and lovers in space. She even buys the New York Times for $5 a copy to read on a transatlantic visit.

Similarly, New York City is just as dangerous in the far future as it was in the 1970s, with rape and murder a common occurrence. Haldeman couldn't imagine a future in which New York City was actually a safe place to visit.

As the plot unfolds, we finish the book with the Earth embroiled in a nuclear war, with plague weapons unleashed, while the remaining Worlds remain mostly intact despite sustaining damage. The writing is classic Haldeman, transparent and easy to read, but it's quite clear that science fiction becomes just as obsolete as any work of science writing or other non fiction.

Review: Batman/Catwoman

 Batman/Catwoman was on sale at a reasonable price, and I bought it hoping that it would be a great graphic novel. (Tom King's gotten many accolades for his handling of Batman)

The story flips between multiple timestreams. You have a future timestream when Batman/Bruce Wayne is dead, and his daughter Helena is Batwoman. You never really see Batwoman catching criminals or fighting criminals. She obviously has a beef with her mother, Selina Kyle, and spends a lot of time fighting with her.

Then there's the timeline of the past, when Catwoman/Selina has met Batman/Bruce Wayne, but they're not married yet. We get to see multiple pursuits, some sex, and a wedding ceremony, and even a bit about Helena's upbringing. Yet there's something missing --- we never see why Selina holds out on the Joker. We never even see what her motivation is for helping the Joker.

Finally, we get to see Selina's origins. Again, there's a shallowness there. We never see why she becomes a burglar. And given that she's actually good at her job, we don't see why she's still a burglar after all these years. Even more important, there's a central event in the story (one where Robin chases her down for) and we never get to see it. It's forever alluded to, never revealed, and never shown.

I'm glad I paid very little for this book. It's a lot of teasing, not a lot of showing.

Review: Navaris Long Handle Ti Spork

 My go-to freeze-dried backpacking meals are the Mountain House pouches. The flavors are usually decent, and the cooking easy. The pouches also double as eating bowls so you can reduce the amount of silverware you have to carry.

The biggest problem with the pouches is that regular length silverware can't reach deep into the pouch. So you end up with greasy, dirty hands at the end of the meal. When I saw the Navaris Long Handle Ti Spork, I knew this was what I'd wanted. At $10/spork, it's cheap enough to outfit a family of 4. They're light (hey, it's Ti), and come with a pouch so that you can keep the spork away from other dirty stuff in your backpack. The long handle ensures you can get every last calorie out of those expensive Mountain House pouches without getting your hands dirty.

There's nothing else I want out of sporks. Get these.

Review: GTYOPR Collapsible Cups and Bowls

 I've long been a fan of the snapfold cups, bowls, and dishes that Arturo was using on camping trips. They were really light, easy to clean, and seemed to work very well. But I was not a fan of the prices. At $17 a set, that was a lot of money for something that Arturo told me wasn't going to last.

I found an equivalent on AliExpress, but (1) the shipping took forever, and (2) what arrived wasn't what was described. Instead of a set, I got 4 of the same type. That's what you get for trusting AliExpress.  Luckily, it was the holidays and for $16 I ordered a dozen of the items I was missing from Amazon, a brand called GTYOPR. With Amazon shipping, it was fast and even better, I was protected if they didn't ship me what I wanted. It's no longer the holidays and that maker is no longer selling, but there are equivalent still available like ChenShuo.

During the Kepler track hike, at the various huts, once in a while someone would ask me about them, because they looked so light, so easy to use, and easily flattened, taking no space in your backpack. Fozzils (the guys who invented the Snapfold concept) needs to stop being greedy and just realize that a product that's not made to last (and has plenty of Chinese competitors) isn't going to sell. I would have been willing to pay a premium to support the inventors, but a 4x premium is ridiculous.

Review: Justice (DC Graphic Novel)

 DC put a bunch of graphic novels on sale, and I noted that I'd never read Justice before, and the artist was Alex Ross, which made it a buy for me.

The opening of the novel is fantastic. The villains of the world got together and announced that while the superheroes have focused on fighting super-villains and preserving status quo, they'd never done anything to improve things that matter to ordinary people, like cure diseases or build housing for the homeless. And they proceed to do that, creating a miracle cure and offering the poorest the opportunity to move into newly built cities.

Of course, this being a graphic novel, the superheroes soon discover that it's a scam (how could it be otherwise?). The plot is convoluted, and we get a few interesting fights (far fewer than you would expect), but in the end our heroes prevail and we discover who the master villain is, as the various super-villains in the DC universe could never expect to cooperate with each other.

Unfortunately, the novel never grants our heroes the epiphany that they could make the world a much better place than just by preserving the status quo. In fact, at the end of the story we return to status quo, which makes it quite unsatisfying.

Re-read: Kingdom Come

 Kingdom Come is Alex Ross's beautifully painted story set in the future of the DC Universe that's non-canon. In this world, public opinion turned against the superhumans, forcing Superman to retreat to his farm and Batman's secret identity to be exposed.

Years later, we see that the effect of that superhuman ban is that the non-law-abiding superhumans have effectively created havok. Wonder Woman persuades Superman to come out of retirement, and he embarks on a war to bring those unruly humans back into prison.

Things go wrong, of course, as Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne team up to keep Superman from becoming a dictator for the world. Of course, things don't go as they might seem, and we get a big fight in the end. We get apocalyptic visions, and of course the supernatural parts of the DC universe (Specter and Deadman) come into play.

You cannot beat Alex Ross's art. It is fantastic and a feast for the eyes. The plot is so-so, but as a result of the story not being canon, it gets to play games with the ending that you wouldn't expect. If only Wonder Woman could talk Alan Moore into coming out of retirement to work in comics again. Then we'd get great stories along with great art. But as a book, this one was decent fun. I even liked the ending.

Review: Jellyfish Age Backwards

 Jellyfish Age Backwards is a survey about the various state of our understanding about longevity and methods about preventing aging. It probably doesn't descibe anything you don't already know: eat less, eat more vegetables, exercise more, and supplements may have side effects that are actually deleterious to your health.

One thing that I did learn is that it might be a good thing to give blood on a frequent basis. That drains iron from your body and apparently excess iron is a bad thing.  It turns out that like everything else, the human body was designed to withstand minor injury and build back better, so this counter-intuitive action helps more than it hurts.

By and large, progress in various drugs, etc to improve lifespan have not panned out and has not worked. Progress is slow despite huge amounts of money being put into it. This book is a reminder of how hard won even those meagre gains are. Treasure your health while you have it, because history suggests once you lose it we don't really know how to get it back.