Riding in the beautiful green hills of Hollister

 

Snow on Serra Azul

It was supposed to be snow at 500' on the night of the 12th, so Lisa & I hiked up to see it! It was pretty warm as we hiked, with rain coming down, so we expected to be disappointed, but indeed there was plenty of snow! 

Saturday's Ride

It had snowed the day before, so Roberto Peon, Mike Samuel and I decided to go see if we could see some up close on Diablo. Roberto, in particular, had acquired a nice carbon Fuji and wanted to see how it would do on some substantial climbs. There was some confusion with the meeting point and I had an inexplicable flat front tire in the parking lot at Diablo Vista Park, but with everything ready we got rolling by 10:30.

The ride to the South entrance if Diablo State Park was enough to get us warmed up, and the climb up Mt. Diablo Scenic Drive soon led us to glorious vistas of the area below: San Ramon and its environs. The day was clear and there was very little mist in the air. To my chagrin I realized that in all the excitement to get going I had left my camera at home! We saw a bit of snow near the peaks, but it didn’t look like it was completely covered in snow. We rode along at a good clip, and as we passed the entrance station we saw a sign that said the road was closed at the Juniper campground.

At the junction, we stopped and rested and ate a little bit before turning right and up towards the summit. Traffic was quite heavy, probably because there were others with the same ideas we had, but wanted to drive up as far as they could. In 2 miles we arrived at the Juniper campground and sure enough, it was closed. The road closed sign was evidently traversable by bicycle but with 2 rangers watching me I did not feel like blatantly ignoring the sign, so we refilled out water-bottles, put on and started rolling down the hill. As I got near the junction road, I saw a steep path leading off from the main road and two men climbing it, one wearing suspenders. I knew it had to be none other than Grant Petersen, so I shouted out his name and rolled up the path.

Grant stopped and I introduced my companions. He was test riding the new 650B tires (I forgot the name: Lumpy Frumpy?), and they definitely looked hefty enough for serious trail riding, with a dimpled tread pattern. We chatted a bit and he asked me why I wasn’t at the handmade bike show in San Jose. I had forgotten all about that show, but in any case would rather be riding bikes than looking at them. I mentioned that we were going to ride Morgan Territory road, and Grant’s companion said, “Good for you!” in a tone of voice that made Roberto and Mike say, “Great. Now we know we’re in for it!” I told Grant about the road closure, and he said that the rangers wouldn’t have fined us even if we had made an illegal run up the mountain. Oh well. I asked Roberto and Mike if they felt like going back up there, and the consensus seemed to be that we had plenty more climbing ahead of us, so we said goodbye to the Rivendellers and headed down the hill.

Roberto had great fun with his new bike on the descent, and proclaimed it excellent as he rolled and rolled up and down some of the rollers. Soon enough we were in Walnut Creek and made the right turn onto the Contra-Costa County bike trail, which we took over to Treat Blvd and Turtle Creek road. As we approached the town of Clayton, Roberto got a front flat, and discovered a torn in his tire. He took a look at the inner tube of his front wheel and decided that the rubber was so thin that it was just looking for an excuse to puncture, so he put in a new one and threw away the other.

Soon enough, we were in Clayton where we had lunch outside at the Grill. Around us I could see clouds start to gather as the temperature dropped. After a too-heavy-for-me lunch, we started down Marsh Creek road again, which made its way up a hill to get over to the ridge where Morgan Territory road started. I definitely felt the lunch work its way into my stomach, so perhaps Marsh Creek road wasn’t surprisingly steep. Having climbed it on a tandem only, I didn’t think it would be as painful on a single, but apparently it’s not the road, it must always have been the excess food in my stomach.

Traffic on Marsh Creek road was heavy, and it was a relief when the descent started and led us at the bottom to Morgan Territory road where we could relax and breath for a bit. Morgan Territory road starts out as being a few farms and houses and then plunges down to alongside a creek and turned into a road that was narrow (single-lane only), rough, and debris-laden. Nevertheless, the sound of the creek was lovely (I had never seen it so full), and the road as pleasant to ride as ever.

We rolled along a little bit at a gentle pace but soon enough, Roberto felt a bit of vim in started turning up the speed. It took everything I had to stay with him, but as he turned a steep corner I dug down and found nothing, so decided to let him go ahead. After a few corners I saw him again, but he had just passed a truck parked alongside the road and the driver was shooting pictures, so I posed a bit. As I passed I asked him if the camera was digital and he said “yes.” So I turned around and went back to him to provide an e-mail address so he could e-mail me photos. We chatted a bit and he mentioned that Mike was a distance behind me, but I had no doubt he would catch up. I took my leave of Brian Daniels and went after Roberto with little motivation.

It didn’t take long, however, before I spotted him waiting at the entrance to the Morgan Territory Regional Preserve parking lot. He told me he waited for 4 or 5 minutes and looked very happy. It didn’t take long before Mike showed up. “We’re not far from the top now, and we’ll stop there to put on clothes.” “Is it a bad descent?” “No, it’s straight and long, but the feeling of falling out of the sky always makes me nervous.”

What I was unprepared for, however, was the views. The wind had swept away all clouds while we were climbing, and we could see as far as the windmills of Livermore and the Bay. It looked stunning by the light of the mid-afternoon sun, and I wished I had brought my camera. The descent along the twisty road with lots of blind corners and a single lane wasn’t excessively fast, but had a dreamy, flight-like quality along the smooth road with very little wind. Roberto took off like a rocket as soon as the road started developing rollers, and Mike said to me, “You’ve created a monster.” “Indeed, on his new bike, he climbs fast, descends fast, and rolls fast on the flat!”

We regrouped at the bottom of Morgan Territory road, turned onto Manning and Highland roads, and rolled the remaining miles through beautiful pastoral country side with light coming through partly cloudy skies. All in all, it was a great ride with 63 miles and about 5000’ of climbing.

Piaw on Morgan Territory road

Here I am, a few seconds later. I'd noticed the photographer, so I tried to look more comfortable.
Photo Credit: Brian Daniels

Roberto Climbing Morgan Territory Road

Here's Roberto climbing Morgan Territory Road on March 4th. He looks a little tired here, but he was kicking my ass!
Photo Credit: Brian Daniels

Ok, now I need a gtags intern

I previously mentioned that I already had a summer intern for 2006. Well, my intern accepted a full-time offer at Google, so now she's not going to be my intern but will be a colleague instead (yay!). Which leaves me still wanting an intern for gtags for summer 2006. If you're interested in working on gtags, please send me e-mail (or post in the comments with contact information). If you've already submitted your resume through the google intern application process, please just note your name and I'll work the internal system and try to schedule you for an interview. (No promises: if your resume doesn't look good to me, then you won't get an interview or call back)

Review: Local Heroes, Kurt Busiek

Kurt Busiek's Astro City is a post-modernist take on super-heroes, the quintessential American mythos. He relies very much on your latent knowledge of super-heroes, and populates Astro City with clones and derivatives of them --- the Superman clone, the Batman identico, the speedster, and all the correspondent types. His approach is unique in that he does not discuss their abilities and their origins (except in one case, and that was only to provide an interesting perspective on his version of Batman). Instead, he takes the oblique view, providing a look at the heroes from a small, limited perspective.

This collection starts off with the point of view of a doorman at a local hotel, and then rapidly cycles through a host of ordinary people, including a comic book writer, a retired hero, an attorney, a ex-superhero's girlfriend, and a young girl who leaves Astro City for the first time to visit her countryside relatives. Each of the stories come with a little twist, and each tale revolves somehow around a superhero, but from the perspective of an ordinary person. The art is well done and consistent.

Overall, the series and the book is recommended. Kurt Busiek is no Alan Moore in the early nineties, but he is the equal to Moore's current series of books.

Review: What's the Matter with Kansas

This book was all over the political press last year, and frequently cited as a good explanation of why the Democrats keep losing election despite having a much better platform, much better track record of governing, and much more palatable policies.

Written in a style that's sarcastic (that's "witty" for some people), and not without more than a little bitterness, Thomas Frank first provides a short synopsis of Kansas history. Kansas in the 1890s was a bastion of left-winged politicians and reliably Democratic. The shift to conservatism, Frank writes, mostly occured in the 80s and 90s, and is driven largely by culture warriors, not economics.

Franks provides a history of the religious radical right and its seeds in the anti-abortion movement, which was quickly seized upon as a platform to build a far right largely oriented around cultural issues while mostly centered around (in policy) tax cuts for the rich. He interviews interesting folks such as Kay O'Connor, who is not your typical fat-cat Republican, but a relatively low-income person who wishes to "turn back the clock" on cultural issues:

"I'm a happy captive of forty-three years," she tells me, "and I am obedient to my husband in all things moral."

On economic issues, O'Connor says:

"Why should we be penalizing people for being financially successful?" she asks. "When you take from the rich and give to the poor, that really is Robin Hood, and that's just theft. Robin Hood was a thief."

Franks explains that the culture wars can never really be won by the right, since political victories can't do much to change culture (which is largely provided by the entertainment industry), and so these repeated failures to win the culture wars keep the right extremely riled up, despite winning all three branches of the government. It's difficult, for instance, to push creationism in public school, but each loss in the courts only serves to spur the religious right into another frenzy of political activity.

It is only in the epilogue that Franks comes down on the Democrats:

The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the organization that produced such figures as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, and Terry McAuliffe, has long been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues... As for the working-class voters who were until recently the party's very backbone, the DLC figures they will have nowhere else to go... Besides, what politician in this sucvess-worshiping country really wants to be the voice of poor people? Where's the soft money in that?

To a large extent he is over-simplifying the issue. Bill Clinton's economic policies were by and large, well-informed, and served the poor well, despite also being good for the wealthy. Free trade does do a lot of good for the poor, despite a lot of hand-wringing from the left. Having said that, I understand where Franks is coming from. In a political environment where the losers from free trade feel enormous hardship without wage insurance or other mitigating factors, I cannot imagine a blue collar worker who cares about his self-interest voting for a free-trading Democrat. To my mind, the charge that "there's no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans" stem largely from the free trade agreements that have been signed by both parties when they were in power without any mitigating policies to help protect the losers whatsoever.

I'm a believer in free trade and its ability to not just help the poor in the US, but the poor in all parts of the world as well. But if you asked me to choose between fiscal responsibility, protecting the environment, providing a reasonable social safety net and a national healthcare system that works and free trade, I'm happy to flush free trade down the toilet any time. The big mistake that the Democrats have made is not realizing that political tradeoff, and with the large decline in labor union, it may never recover. While Clinton's policies were very sane, I think that a largely uneducated population that gets all its news from TV (and Fox News) will never be able to understand why his policies worked as well as they did (yes, he was lucky, but he also had policies that capitalized on his luck), and will only remember him for his relationship with a certain intern.

But the alternative, that the right-wing Republicans capture power for all time is even more scary. A USA where the schools teach creationism isn't going to be fun, even if you're rich. Laws that revoke women's right to votes, ban women from the workplace will make America a poorer place, in spirit and in reality. Research will grind to a halt, and the innovation spurts we are used to seeing will be gone. Fortunately, there will be a backlash before it goes that far (I hope).

In the mean time, I think (as Franks wrote) that I can find it in myself to enjoy the deep tax cuts for the well-to-do that the religious right has forced down my throat to the detriment of themselves and their children.

Figure skating: Sport or Art?

Dan Engber complains that figure skating has become a video game:
Here's how the new scoring system works: A technical specialist identifies each move that a skater performs, and assigns to it a level of difficulty. Then the judges rate each of those moves with a "grade of execution." To compute a skater's total score, get out your "scale of value" chart and cross-reference the move, its level, and its grade. For example, you'd get 7.5 points for completing a basic triple axel. A perfect triple axel earns a couple more points, and a lousy one a couple fewer.

With such explicit scoring rules, skaters have learned to pad their numbers. A brief look at the chart reveals that a string of fancy moves done badly is worth a whole lot more than a string of simple moves done with grace and élan. What about tumbling on your ass? According to the rules, a fall on a jump automatically gets you the lowest grade. (Every fall also earns you a one-point deduction.) But if the jump is fancy enough, that low grade will still be worth big points...

There are required elements, of course, and limits to the number of jumps you're allowed to attempt. But skaters who know the system can treat it like a video game, stringing together fancy combos so they can rack up a high score.
And you know what, I actually think that's a feature! I don't watch figure skating myself (no TV, and no real interest, thank you very much), but to me, that's the difference between sport and art. Art should be flawless and look good, but sport should be about atheleticism, ability to perform on the event, with bounded rules and as much as possible, no subjective judgement necessary.

In a running race, nobody scores points for style --- it's whoever crosses the finish line first, even if he was the ugliest person since Humphrey Bogart. If figure skating wants to be an Olympic sport, it shouldn't be any different otherwise, it's not a sport, and should be thrown out of the Olympics. I don't understand why anyone should complain about the new rules for figure skating. To my mind, if the rules don't encourage risk-taking and achievement of the hardest possible jumps and stunts, then the rules would not be congruent with the spirit of the Olympics.

Review: Shock Rockets

Kurt Busiek first came to my attention through his conception of Astro City, a neo-superhero world that takes a respectful view of the super-hero genre while providing a fresh take on it. (His "Batman" character, for instance, has a secret that was both original and interesting)

Shock Rockets is his attempt at juvenile science fiction, similar to John Varley's Red Thunder. It features a world where Earth survives an alien assault by stealing enough alien fighter planes to turn the tide. Only 6 of those planes survive the war, and are now used to maintain peace in the post-invasion world.

The story starts with a disenchanted kid who accidentally ends up piloting one of the rockets when the pilot dies (with only the slightest tip of the hat to Abin-Sur handing over his ring to Hal Jordan). He then starts to discover that the ships and his world aren't quite what they seem to be on the surface.

The story deals with many interesting social themes, from class resentment to team integration. The slow reveal of the story behind the ships and the world behind the story is also skillfully done, and the art is excellent. The end of this volume provides a plot revelation that obviously leaves plenty of room for sequels, which I hope will be as interesting as this first book.

Recommended.

Review: Akira

I saw Akira the movie several years ago, and it felt like a movie made from a book --- the movie didn't quite make sense, despite the technical virtuosity behind it (the voices from the child actors were recorded first, then the animation drawn to match the voices). It reminded me quite a bit of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie that did not make sense to me until I read the Arthur C. Clarke novelization (which apparently was written while the movie was filmed).

So when I went to the source, I hoped that it would be coherent and sophisticated. Unfortunately, it seemed that while the movie did not encompass all the plot points (the romance beteen Kaneda and Kei was removed with the character of Kei being eliminated from the movie, for instance), it held true to the spirit of the manga --- lots of explosions, an inexplicable plot, with no "science" whatsoever behind the fiction. The ending was unsatisfying as well.

All in all, not recommended.

President's Day Ride

I wanted to see if there was any snow left on Skyline, two days after a once a decade snowfall in the Bay Area. I climbed Pierce Road and Highway 9 with no trouble, seeing no other cyclists except a mountain biker on Pierce Road who turned off towards the reservoir. The amount of car traffic was considerable, however, indicating that many folks had the same idea I did. The weather was warm, prompting thoughts that the snow might all be gone already.

A left turn on Skyline Blvd brought further climbing and the temperature rapidly dropped under the shade of pine trees. I stopped at an open space to check out the visibility --- unfortunately, it was not clear to the coast --- a light haze filled the air and I could not see the Big Sur coastline hidden in the clouds.

As I approached Castle Rock State Park, I started seeing patches of residual ice on the roadside. The road surface became sandy and grimy and quite wet. As I approached Castle Rock, I observed that the parking lot was full. Sure enough, there were kids throwing snowballs at each other! The tree branches above me were still laden with snow, the melting of which caused droplets of water to fall on the road (and on me). There was a crackling in the air as pieces of ice broke off from the snow clumps and landed onto the road. I stopped for a couple of pictures and then moved on.

Past Castle Rock, the road began a rapid descent, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the Christmas Tree farm along Skyline was inundated with snow in its open spots. The descent on Skyline is normally enjoyable and fast, but with the road surface dark and wet, I did not want to risk running over any black-ice and kept my speed down. About a mile from the Black road intersection all traces of ice and snow went away and I could relax again and enjoy the open scenery all around me.

Past Black road, Skyline Blvd becomes a one lane road that has relatively light traffic but many blind corners, which I took prudently despite the lack of motor-traffic since Castle Rock. The reason for this lack of traffic became apparently when I ran up to a "Road Closed" sign. It looked like a minor bit of construction, so I walked my bike around the sign and through the construction. The construction was muddy, and some small stones got wedged in between my brakes and the rim, but a bit of extra water and a stick used as a scraper solved that problem.

Except for an unusual amount of traffic down Bear Creek road, the rest of the ride was uneventful.

Snow on Skyline Blvd

2 days after it snowed, there's still some residual snow in trees on Skyline Blvd near Castle Rock State Park. It was cold, with crackling sounds filling the air as the clumps of snow disintegrated as it melted, dropping pieces of ice onto the road. The road was moist and gritty with all the dirt stuck to the pieces of snow, but there wasn't any ice. 

Those fluffy things are called clouds...

We don't usually see them in Northen California when it's not just pouring on us, so it was indeed a rare day. 

Yet another Black Mountain Summit picture

 

Snow on Black Mountain

It snowed the last couple of days, so I had to climb Black Mountain to see if I could see some snow. 

Einstein's Dreams

This is a cute little short book about time. It's a novella full of little montages about alternate realities where time is somehow different. People who know a little bit about the Theory of Relativity will understand the references to special circumstances where time does behave differently, even in our universe (near a large gravity well, at high velocity, etc), but those are merely references, not allegories.

The writing style is light, almost whimsical, and the chapters short and easy to read:

In this world, it is instantly obvious that something is odd. No houses can be seen in the valleys or plains. Everyone lives in the mountains.

At some time in the past, scientists discovered that time flows more sloowly the farther from the center of the earth. The effect is minuscule, but it can be measured with extremely sensitive instruments. Once the phenomenon was known, a few people, anxious to stay young, moved to the mountains. Now all houses are built on Dom, the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, and other high ground. It is impossible to sell living quarters elsewhere...

This book is recommended as a light read.

Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith

This book is not science fiction. First of all, a virus that kills all the men and only 20% of the women is scientifically implausible. That the same virus might give all surivors access to a collective Jungian unconscious is even more implausible. The last straw came when I read the author's afterword at the end of the book:

Women are not aliens. Take away men and we do not automatically lose our fire and intelligence and sex drive...


As far as I could tell, only aliens could have lived on the planet that Griffith describes: there's no easily accessible medical technology, yet every woman survives childbirth. The "men's world" of technology (referred to as The Company)is equally implausible --- despite great scientific advances (ability to manipulate DNA that can create a vaccine without access to an actual viral sample), they are unable to disinfect returnees or provide advanced medical help better than a splint?

As a fantasy, this book fails as well. The protagonist does boneheaded things that in any sane world would have resulted in death or worse. She makes decisions that binds her cohorts and colleagues without consulting them, and then expects them to agree to be bound by them, and in general behaves like a total dick.

All in all, that such a book won the Tiptree Award while David Brin's Glory Season was denied it will lead me to ignore the Tiptree Award in the future as a possible signal for the goodness of a novel. Brin's comments as such appear as a text file here. Download by using "save as" and view using emacs.

Dick & Donna Matthews

 

Eric & Cynthia up Canada Road

 

Riding along the farmlands of Morgan Hill/Gilroy

Lisa shot pictures of Bill Bushnell and other cyclists who were hanging around near our tandem. 

"That's all folks!"

Marc gets to the end of the route sheet! 

Route-Sheet Bingo

Route sheets were in short supply at the Morgan Hill LDT today, so Mark Marc handed out pen and paper and the Western Wheelers played "Route Sheet Bingo". 

The Merchant Princes Trilogy (parts 1 & 2)

I seem to be reading a lot of Charles Stross lately, and complaining that I didn't like his character development. I also have to stop reading book series where the entire series haven't been published yet (George R. R. Martin, I'm looking at you).

That said, The Family Trade and The Hidden Family demonstrate significant improvements over his earlier works. Stross openly acknowledges his inspiration by Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles, which feature a family of world-walkers, people who can travel between parallel Earths through the use of a pattern.

Stross does Zelazny one step better, however, by extrapolating what would happen if a family which didn't have supernatural powers actually did exist, and set out to exploit this ability to gain secular power and wealth. He uses the trick of having the heroine of the story be someone who was unaware of her family's existence stumbling into her heritage as a Duchess, and executed a very well-done play on the "adopted princess" fantasy trope, complete with the "princess" realizing that being stuck in a medieval world just isn't very much fun.

The action in the novels move fast and furiously, with little pieces of exposition thrown in that aren't too awkward. The heroine, unlike many fantasy heroines, isn't one of those people whom you just want to grab by the scruff of their collars and shake, is sensible and intelligent, and does what a smart, well-educated person would do in her position (she's just a little bit tougher than your average person, but not any more unbelievable than Veronica Mars was).

Once the action starts, I found the books hard to put down, and to be fair to Stross, even though its a trilogy, you won't come to the end of the second book feeling cheated even though the ending is yet to be written.

Recommended.

West Old La Honda Road on Saturday

Winter riding in the Bay Area: lush green hills, beautiful weather, and lovely lovely roads. Photo Credit: Roberto Peon 

The South Bay, Moffett Field, and Mountain View on a Clear Day

 

Lisa & The Pacific on the Black Mountain Summit

 

Silicon Valley and the East Bay Hills from Black Mountain

 

View of San Francisco from Black Mountain

 

Review: Coraline

Scarlet considers this one of her two best books of 2005, so I checked it out of the library and read it. It's not a bad book by any means, but I don't think it's anything special. It's definitely not even in the same class as StarDust, which I consider to be the best of Gaiman's prose works (by the way, buy the one with Charles Vess illustrations, which is the way the book was published --- the "words only" version are for snotty people who don't think that comic books can't be considered literature).

The horror I find to be rather pedestrian, but then again, I don't think I was ever the kind of kid (or now, adult) who could be horrified or scared by words on a page --- visual horror can terrify me, but not novels or books. The real horror in the book, for me, is the portrait of a child thoroughly neglected by her parents. I guess I can be grateful that my parents always found time to play with me, and gave me such imaginative tools and toys in my mind that I was never ever bored, either as an adult or as a child.

Anyway, it's a short book, so it's not a waste of time.

Two interesting articles in this week's New Yorker

First, there's a Book Review of The Man Who Knew Too Much, a biography of Alan Turing that doesn't sound like it's worth reading. However, the review provides a nice, condensed summary of Turing's life that's very much worth reading. The definitive book on Turing is Alan Turing: Enigma, which I read a while ago and remember as being quite good.

The second great article is an article by Malcolm Gladwell about Profiling. It busts the typical myths about profiling, and uses excellent journalistic technique to illustrate his point. I subscribed to The New Yorker on the basis of Gladwell's visit to Google, and if only every issue was like this one I'd feel like I got my money's worth.

Of course, what annoys me is that we don't have a magazine even half as good as The New Yorker here in the Bay Area. We get crappy stuff like Gentry Magazine, a magazine for people who worship wealth and its privileges, and Sunset Magazine, a vapid lifestyle magazine with no depth. Ah well. In exchange we get good weather and a fabulous outdoor life. Now, if only my copy of the Rivendell Reader would just show up! Now that's a magazine I'm proud to have contributed to, and one that could only exist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Review: Singularity Sky

This was Charles Stross's first novel. An information war is being waged on Rochard's World, a colony of the New Republic, an authoritarian regime. The regime's response is typically militaristic, but two representative of external agencies attempt to intervene, resulting in a spy story set in a science fiction universe where time travel is possible. Stross was a computer scientist, so at least he attempts to get his physics right, and make references to John Conway's Game of Life, which a lot of software engineers and mathematicians are familiar with.

The characters, alas, are not very developed, and one gets the idea that they exist for the sole purpose of the plot, rather than being real people you could meet and like. In this, at least, Stross has the same problems as other hard science writers like Greg Egan and Stephen Baxter. Just because you're a real scientist/mathematician of some sort doesn't guarantee poor characters, as Vernor Vinge aptly demonstrates.

The sequel to this novel is Iron Sunrise.

Review: Unconventional Success

It's unfortunate that investment books that have sensible advice rarely reach the right audience --- the sophisticated individual investor already knows most of what they have to offer, if they've even read one of the classics, such as A Random Walk Down Wall Street, while the naive investor is unlikely to read the book, since that's the reason why they are naive.

David Swensen comes from managing one of the most successful college endowment investment programs, the one at Yale University (one reason why I can't imagine donating money to a private university is that they have the resources to do well even without charging exorbitant fees, but they do so anyway). Large college endowments can do many things that individual investors cannot --- for instance, they can hold entire office buildings for many years in a diversified porfolio and have it still be only 10 to 20% of their assets. Most individual investors by contrast, can afford to own just their own homes, and for most such investors, that home comprises upwards of 50% of their assets (hence the phrase, "house rich, cash poor"). Bereft of such tools, Swensen does not offer much advice and insight that other, more pedestrain authors haven't already written.

Here are the interesting titbits in the book:

• Core Asset classes include: Domestic Stocks, Foreign Stocks (divided into Developed Markets and Emerging Markets), Treasury Bonds, Tips, and Real Estate. Allocating your money amongst these classes will provide reasonably good opporunity for growth. Swensen does provide a sample allocation, but does not provide any data (or advise) about adjusting the allocation for your particular position in the life cycle.
  
• Corporate bonds do not provide any diversity, and are much worse than Treasuries from an asset-allocation point of view.
• Foreign bonds provide currency risk without the high returns of foreign equity. Since currency speculation is a zero-sum game, foreign bonds are best avoided.
  
• Venture Capital provides surprisingly low returns, mostly because high management fees kill the returns from mediocre VCs, while excellent VCs have such high minimums that most individual investors are locked out.
• Hedge funds also have a poor record, because survivorship bias means that only high performing ones are not shut down after a short time.
• Tax-Exempt bonds are surprisingly dangerous for individual investors.
• Rebalancing is important, since it enforces a "buy low sell high" discipline. When Swensen ran the Yale portfolio, they rebalanced every day! Obviously, due to transaction costs, this should not be attempted by individual investors.
  
• Mutual funds are extremely poor in performance. In fact, honest mutual fund companies are so rare that Swensen names the one honest one. (It's Long Leaf Partners Funds, managed by SouthWestern Asset Management, a privately held company whose employees and management are co-invested in the funds to an incredibly high degree --- naturally, all of Long Leaf's funds are now closed to new investors!) All the others (Fidelity, Putnam, to just name a few) have been involved in so many financial scandals that their commitment to their "customers" (really, victims) is suspect. Page after page was devoted to various mutual fund scandals.
  
• ETFs can vary in quality, so it really makes sense to do your research!
• Vanguard and TIAA-Cref, the two non-profit companies that operate mostly indexed funds (and a few actively managed ones), are the only places where it makes sense to park your money long term. (If you don't already know this, you're probably not reading this blog anyway!)
  

All in all, a surprisingly small number of good bits from a distinguished author. He doesn't mention, for instance,I Bonds, which are an excellent vehicle for most individual investors, because he's not used to managing portfolios less than a few billion dollars. He doesn't mention basic tax trade-offs (Roth versus Regular IRAs and 401ks), or the SEPP 72(t) exception.

All in all, while I'm glad I read the book, the practical advice I got from Brad DeLong last year from a 15 minute conversation while he was at the Google campus did more for my portfolio. On the other hand, his comments about corporate bonds and municipal bonds were very much worth reading, so I'm glad I checked this book out of the Santa Clara County Library.

Economic theory teaches the law of one price, viz., that in freely competitive markets identical goods or services trade at identical prices. In the case of index-fund management, the portfolio management fees charged by various service providers should be identical, or nearly so. Otherwise, rational consumers transfer funds from high-cost providers to low-cost providers, thereby driving the greedy (or inefficient) fund-management companies to reduce prices or exit the business.

Economic theroy fails. In a 2002 study, Morningstar identified fifty-seven S&P 500 index funds that charged more than Vanguard's market-leading 0.18 percent annual fee. The average yearly expense ratio of the non-Vanguard index managers amounted to an over-the-top 0.82 percent...

Had the expensive index funds emanated from a disreputable bunch of bucket shops, investors might conclude that thee poor saps who chose the high-cost funds deserved the consequences of paying active-management fees for less than passive-management results. In fact, the roster of high-fee index fund managers include two of the investment management world's most venerable names --- Morgan Stanley Funds and Scudder Investments.

West Old La Honda Road

 

No, these are NOT natural rock formations

 

View from Harkins Ridge Trail

 

View of the Pacific from Windy Hill OSP

I've learnt not to expect too much from a point and shoot, even the 8 megapixel Canons. But sometimes, I get pleasantly surprised. 

Talking with Grant at the Rivendell Social 1/22/06

 
 

Movie Review: Brothers Grimm

Terry Gilliam presents a fantastic vision of the Brothers Grimm as a pair of con men who are finally faced with justice and sent to confront a truly fantastic situation where they truly have to become heroes. Gilliam manages to sneak in images of Hansel & Greta, the Gingerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood, amongst others, but those stories while evoking the stories of the original Grimm brothers aren't central to the plot.

It being a Gilliam movie, I kept waiting for the horror or the twist, but it never happened. It truly is the only Gilliam movie I've seen that actually turns out to be what it claims to be, a straight-forward tale told competently. Unfortunately, we've expected more than simply competence from Gilliam, so it was a bit of a let-down.

My other 20% project

Unlike Prophit, gtags will never make it into the New York Times. It is pretty cool to get onto the front page of code.google.com, though. But this is the project I spend most of my 20% time on, and we now have a full time intern working on it as well. There are a lot of obvious refinements possible, but I wanted to get it out there even in this rather raw form to see if there's any uptake at all in the open source community.

I don't think gtags is useful until you have about a million or so lines of source code (though I'd love to find out if I'm wrong!). But if your project has that much code and isn't susceptible to IDEs (C++/C code typically has this property), then I think that having something like gtags around can be a great help. I certainly wrote this tool when I was learning my way around the google sourcebase, and it was valuable enough for other engineers to start using it as well. "Next bench" projects are some of the more gratifying projects you can do, because your customers are other engineers, and those are people you work with every day!

Prospective interns: I've already filled the summer 2006 position, but if you're interested in an internship/co-op with Google in the fall or even winter, and would like to work on gtags, feel free to let the recruiter (or me) know!

A funny post on the Bush presidency

The Bush presidency as a text adventure game. He left out all the tax shenanigans that Bush did, but it's still hilariously funny!

Rivendell Social Ride #1

Lisa & I did 55 miles or so of riding today with the "Rivendell Social" down in San Juan Bautista. Well, the terrain was so ridiculously tandem friendly that we didn't stay social for long and just barrelled along with a couple of other singles and a trike taunting us. I think our average speed ended up being about 15mph, which is unusually good for us. My altimeter read only 2400' of climbing, so that accounts for it, along with the nice tailwind we got on the flat parts. The weather was warm and sunny, and of course getting to see Grant Petersen is great!

Winning the Green Card Lottery

The latest New Yorker has a great article about a couple from Peru who won the Green Card lottery and then moved to the US where the man became a food service worker despite knowing no English and being a mining engineer in Peru (a sought after position on top of the food chain). The reason: the children. It's a stark reminder that despite all the wage compression at the bottom 95% of the U.S., this country is still very much seen as the land of opportunity for most of the rest of the world, if not for the poor immigrants who show up with next to nothing, then (at least in perception) in the hopes that their children will have a better life here than in the home country.

Review: Serenity

Lots of folks have reviewed the movie Serenity, many with more eloquence, passiong, and credibility than I would have. It's a great movie, and if you haven't seen it, you should. I'll review the DVD extras. The crown jewel, of course, is Joss Whedon's sardonic commentary on the movie itself. It's not very special, but he does explain why certain scenes were cut and saved as DVD extras, and how the lighting is done, which is great if you're a photography buff (which I am).

The "making of" features and the various other features round it out to make it complete for fans of the movie. Unfortunately, it's still not enough to get me to buy it. (Then again, watching firefly the series, as good as it was, wasn't enough to get me to buy the DVD set either)

New Cell Phone

I switched cell phones, cell service providers, and cell phone #. If you're a friend and need my new cell #, send me e-mail and I'll give you my new phone #.

Review: Bend it like Beckham

This is not a deep movie. It's a comedy hybrid of the inspirational sports movie and the cultural comedy. Set in Britain, the story is of a soccer mad high schooler (Jessie) about to graduate who is sported by a local member of the women's soccer team (Jules). Since her (Indian) parents don't approve, Jessie plays with Jules' team without their knowledge, lying about having a summer job. What follows is a series of misunderstandings, betrayals, followed by the film's inspirational message driven home with all the subtlety of a soccer ball headed into the net.

That said, I liked the film quite a bit. Soccer to me is still the sport I grew up with (despite never being any good at it), and is to me a far more beautiful game than American football. The game flows with an intensity and grace that makes top level play enjoyable to watch. And of course, in particular, the USA dominates women's soccer despite a sporting culture that doesn't comprehend the off-side rule (hilariously explained during the movie by Jules' dad as an aside) or the concept that a sport might exist without advertising breaks. That makes the entire film and its premise (that being given a soccer scholarship to Santa Clara University would be a great thing to have) somewhat believeable.

The cultural comedy aspect is enjoyable and very funny, even to Lisa who is not as much of a fan of Indian food as I am. So two thumbs up. This is a delightful film to watch when you're down with a cold and your brain isn't working (which was Lisa's state of mind when watching it), or when you're just in the mood for something light. The message is heavy handed but fits its genre. Just don't expect to come away from the movie with a good understanding of the off-side rule.

Republicans are Evil: Part V

This isn't surprising, considering that the administration designed its Medicare plan to serve its ideological agenda--privatizing government services and enriching special interests like the insurance and pharmaceutical industries--rather than senior citizens. The original Medicare law reflects a rather different tradition: the New Deal. Its architects believed that protecting people from economic and medical risk was a job that only a robust and, yes, big government could do properly. Of course, that's a pretty unfashionable idea nowadays. But that hardly makes it wrong.

Of course, this nation is only getting what it deserves. We were too stupid to see through the insurance company/drug company "hilary-care" scare in the 1990s, so now we get the privatized expensive inefficient care that Republicans want you to have. If you're not wealthy, voting Republican is a very dumb thing to do. In the long run, perhaps, as more Americans lose health insurance, maybe we'll vote in a sensible government. But it might take a lot pain and suffering to do so. (Think about it, Enron didn't get the Bush administration evicted)

Yajie gets her boots wet

I'd never done the Saratoga loop hike before --- I've always just mountain biked it, but in winter part of the trails are closed to mountain bikes, so I got Shyam & Yajie to hike it with me. The river is wide (but mosquito free because it was quite cold), and the hike back up on Charcoal Road is just as hard as I remember biking it. (This was the easier of the two stream crossings --- at the other stream crossing, I was too busy taking off my shoes, tossing them across the stream, and then wading in the cold river to take any pictures) 

Review: Perfectly Legal, David Cay Johnston

I first read this book 2 years ago. Ever since discovering that the Santa Clara County Library's electronic catalog, I've stopped buying most of the books, but when Scarlet pointed me at a recent New York Times article about the poor being audited (and denied tax refunds) at a much higher rate than everyone else, I remembered this book and seeing it in the bargain bin at Amazon.com, decided to buy it.

This is an incredibly well researched book --- Johnston won the Pulitzer prize in 2001, and has been nominated 3 other times, and his writing and research shows. Here are a few questions that Johnston raises and answers: What is the Alternative Minimum Tax, and how did it arise? And why is it becoming something that you should be worried about? Why do the poor get audited 47 times more frequently than everybody else? How did Enron use limited partnerships to pay zero taxes while claiming to make $2 billion a year? Why does the IRS not go after tax cheats? Do the fabulously wealthy (those making $3 million a year or more) really pay a lot more taxes than everybody else? How is the Social Security tax regressive?

As I re-read this book, I am struck again and again by how much the wealthy (anyone making more than $100k a year) and the super-rich ($3 million and up) have skewed our tax system in their favor, while leaving the rest of society to foot the bill and causing our deficit to balloon. I consider this book a must-read for those who wish to consider themselves educated and responsible voters. Even if you don't wish to become one, at least do it so that you won't become one of these chumps:

Tom Toth says he is comfortable with the fact that not everyone received a rebate. And he is also comfortable with the aspect of the Bush tax cuts that drew the most criticism, the fact that 43 percent of the income tax cuts, and more than half of the total tax cuts, go to the top 1 percent. "The top 1 percent is probably paying more than 43 percent of all the taxes, so they should be getting the cuts," he said.

But Tom is mistaken. The tax burden on the top 1 percent is nowhere near that hgh, although so many politicians and antitax advocates have made such false claims so many times that millions of Americans believe it to be true. The top 1 percent paid 36 percent of the income taxes in 2001. But when the burden of all federal taxes is added up --- corporate profits, estate, gift, Social Security, Medicare and excise taxes --- they only paid 25 percent.

When the Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2002, and 2003 are fully in place in 2010, the share of taxes paid by the bottom 95 percent of tax payers will rise by 3.8 percentage points, while for the top 5 percent it will fall by the same amount. Nearly all the tax savings will go to the top 1 percent, whose share will decline by 2.7 percentage points.

It is sad that despite how well written this book and how many awards it has won, it will have no effect on the next election --- our education system has failed us to the point where our politics are determined by sound-bites and TV, not well-informed discussion and debate (believe me, I've had discussions with people in the office I work who come extremely close to saying things like: "Don't confuse me with facts!"). I'm afraid that there will have to be a Great Depression like economic disaster before the population wakes up enough to vote in a responsible politician like Franklin Roosevelt to restore the Great Society.

More Bike Mainteneance

Our tandem timing chain and my commute bike's chain all decided to wear out at the same time, so when I measured the chains today after a ride I had to replace all of them. The commute bike's easy and cheap: 8-speed chains are ancient, and I know the exact length (i.e., one entire box worth of chain), and the chain comes with a handy quick link, so the switch was over in 20 minutes (including time taken to attempt to clean the rear deraileur pulleys).

The timing chain requires 2 chains. I had half of a chain left over, and an extra chain sitting around. I use single speed chains on the timing chain --- the chain never shifts and the chainline is always perfect, so why waste money using expensive deraileur chains? Putting together the chain is a pain, though, since I only have one quick link, I had to pull the pins apart using a chaintool. It's been a really long time since I last did this, so it took me much more time to get it right than it should. And when I was finished, I'd found that I'd put a half-twist in the chain! So it was off and on again. Sigh.

At least we got some riding in today. 38 miles, and we hit our top speed of 52.3mph coming down Los Trancos! Woohoo!

Waking Life

Doug Orleans told me that the two characters from Before Sunset/Before Sunrise show up in "Waking Life", and I'd become a Richard Linklater fan from those two movies alone, that we had to see "Waking Life."

The animation in "Waking Life" was done by filming the movie as though it was a life-action film on digital video and then rotoscoped and recolored. The result is a mish-mash of art styles, where everything moves, buildings, streets, and the position of a person's features. This is not a movie to watch if Doom gave you motion-sickness.

As with the other Linklater movies that I reviewed, this movie is mostly talking heads in a dream-like sequence. Discussion after discussion follow, starting with a pretty decent exposition of existentialism as a philosophy and then transitioning to a lamenting of the limitation of words (a common theme amongst English professors everywhere, it seems), an explanation of how lucid dreaming works, along with some statements on the nature of human living. Linklater attempts to be deep, but seriously, trying to understand anything in depth in a 100 minute movie is a lost cause.

I don't consider the movie a waste of time, but Lisa was thoroughly lost in several sections of it, and keeping up with the dialogue and transitions (some of which don't make sense, just like a dream) was a chore in some cases. A cautious thumbs up from me, but watch "Before Sunset/Before Sunrise" first, and decide if you like Linklater's movies. If you're not already a fan of his work, this movie will leave you cold.

Review: Veronica Mars, Season 1

Lisa & I spent the last couple of weeks watching nothing but Veronica Mars, a TV show hailed by many as the successor to Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. The show, it's basic plot, and the characters involved are discussed extensively elsewhere, so I won't discuss the basics.

Veronica Mars falls into the "mystery story" genre, much like Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, or perhaps, Kinsey Milhone in a teen/high school setting. From what I can tell, American High School is hell, and many of America's executive producers and script writers are still trying to work through the trauma of having to attend one by producing TV shows and movies about their experiences. The alternative explanation, that teens are the most avid consumers of TV and (especially) movie media is too depressing to contemplate.

In any case, Veronica Mars is firmly in the genre, with each episode revolving around a (usually high school related) mystery to be solved, with an over-arching plot/mystery involving the protagonist. Most of the mysteries are more easily solved by the viewer by playing the meta-game of figuring out what the misdirection of the plot is, rather than observing the clues provided by the show, since the writers do work very hard at the misdirection. In any case, the mystery is barely the point in most cases, since Rob Thomas tries to make many of the shows as Chandler-resque as possible, down to an occasional voice-over which doesn't quite make it as a "hard-boiled" voice of the protagonist.

Veronica Mars herself is an incredibly strong character. She's smart, sassy, courageous, and has no room in herself for doubt, angst, or self-pity. She has the maturity to admit when she's wrong, and is mature enough to let a beau down as soon as she realizes that she's dating someone else. Too good to be real? Very much so, but this is TV, and while watching the series we did not at all mind listening to Kristen Bell speak dialogue that sounds great when snapped back as an off-the-cuff remark, but we would have taken a day or so before coming back with such a snappy comeback. One does wonder where Veronica finds the time to do homework, but I do have friends who were smart enough that homework took up very little time (especially given the pathetic standards we have for Science and Math in the U.S.), and had time to play pool before finals, and the series does establish Veronica as being a very smart, precocious teen. The supporting cast includes Veronica Mars' convenient contacts: a teacher's aide, a young police officer at the sheriff's office, a computer expert (a girl, of course), and the leader of the local biker gang. Enrico Colantoni also plays Keith Mars, in what I consider to be the healthiest father/daughter relationship I've seen on TV --- Keith Mars is neither an absent father nor a bumbler.

The inevitable comparison with Buffy: Veronica Mars is a genre show that uses its strong characters to provide human interest, mis-direction, and plot, while Buffy is a character-driven show that uses its genre's tropes and plots as a metaphor for what its characters go through as part of growing up. Buffy and "the scoobies" grow and mature over the years, while Veronica Mars is already such a fully developed human being that I don't know if she's got a lot more room to develop as a person (but I am eager for Rob Thomas to surprise me). Joss Whedon is not afraid to put Buffy through hell, and while Veronica does have her (metaphorical rather than literal) demons to confront, she deals with them so deftly and with such self-confidence that the impact on the viewer is lessened.

In any case, Lisa, who could not watch Buffy because of its genre trappings, kept clamoring to see the next episode every time I wanted to pause the DVD for the night, so obviously she gives Veronica Mars a thumbs up, as do I. It is very much worth your time.

STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS

There are a few shows that have massive plot holes. For instance, in Kanes and Abels, we are asked to believe that the father of a working class Chinese over-achiever, Hamilton Cho, hired a private investigator to haress an academic rival of Cho's. We've established that a private investigator cost about $250 a day, yet we see Cho working at his father's Pizza Restaurant. I can't think of a situation in which an Asian parent would not hire help for the restuarant during exams for $250 a day and have his kid study instead of the dubious tactic of hiring a PI to
harrass a classmate. Nevertheless, the episode manages to portray the Cho as a cool character, so the episode doesn't suck too badly as a whole.

Vanguard on the 401(k) versus Roth 401(k) trade off

A very enlightening report, and one worth paying a lot of attention to, especially if you're subject to AMT.

Scott Burns reflects on what he's learnt

I know this is late, but I think it's very much worth reading:

I came of age in Boston. There are a lot of smart people there. If you doubt it, just ask them.

I could easily populate this column with the brilliant money manager of the moment. I also enjoy listening to smart, articulate people.

But 40 years of investing has taught me that rented brains seldom help us build our nest eggs. Rented brains feel a deep spiritual need to build 20,000-square-foot log cabins in Jackson Hole with the return on our money.

That's why some readers think I am Johnny One Note, always writing about investment expenses rather than the hot fund, product or stock of the moment. But indexing and keeping things simple is the way for you and me to succeed.

The other ways are how Wall Street succeeds. Big difference.

The more I learn about finance, the more I think that paid money managers are a fool's game, especially if you're a highly technically proficient person (like a software engineer). Financial planning is not harder than C++ programming, but it can have a huge effect on the outcome of your ultimate wealth, so delegating it to someone else (and someone who can have major conflicts of interests) can lead to extremely bad outcomes, such as the second question Scott Burns answers in this column.

Even more horrifying, however, is the lack of knowledge among Americans about basic finances:

Studies show that many people overestimate their knowledge of everything from inflation to risk diversification and compound interest. One survey in Australia found that 37% of people who owned investments did not know that they could fluctuate in value. In America 31% did not know that the finance charge on a credit-card statement is what they pay to use credit.

31%!! That's almost one third the population! No wonder Americans spend $50 billion a year on consumer credit interest.

Black Mountain, again

My hiking partner didn't show up, so I hiked the trail alone. The visibility today was just amazing. Even at a mere 500 feet up, I could see all the way to Berkeley. The trail was a bit soft and muddy with all the recent rain, and there weren't many folks on the trail, but that was a good thing --- by myself, I spotted 2 deer, and amongst the most elusive of creatures, a fox!

For the first time, I rode my bike to and from the Black Mountain trailhead. The transition is a bit tricky --- my calves felt a bit stiff from the ride, and the immediate climb was a bit slow.

Human beings are Bayesian thinkers

This report does make sense to me. In particular, Steven Levitt, in his visit to Google pointed out that in the prehistoric world, the cost of making a false causual connection is low (such as carrying a rabbit's foot around), while the cost of not making an accurate prediction from a small sample size (i.e., you hear a roar of a tiger --- the last time you heard a roar of a tiger, your friend got eaten. Do you stop to think, "That's only a sample size of one?") could be very high, hence superstition prevails.

Indeed, some people suspect that the parsimony of Bayesian reasoning leads occasionally to it going spectacularly awry, with whatever process it is that forms the priors getting further and further off-track rather than converging on the correct distribution.

That might explain the emergence of superstitious behaviour, with an accidental correlation or two being misinterpreted by the brain as causal. A frequentist way of doing things would reduce the risk of that happening. But by the time the frequentist had enough data to draw a conclusion, he might already be dead.

The American Pika will soon be extinct

I was very tempted to title this post: "Republicans are Evil, Part V". Lara Hansen, Senior Scientist of Climate Change at the World Wildlife Fund came to give a talk about the impact of global warming on animal habitats, and mentioned in passing that the American Pika is one of the most affected by global warming.

I asked her why if there was such consensus among climate scientists that global warming was real there's so much controversy in the papers. Her response was that the press loves to find "balance", and always quote the same 5 "scientists" in Virginia who on the "opposite side", even though 3000 other climate scientists all come to the same consensus: that the effect is real, and that if we do everything we can, we might be able to limit warming to 2 degrees centigrade. My guess is that those 5 "scientists" were really bought off by the petroleum industry, which like all big-business spends a lot of money lobbying the GOP. (Not to say that Democrats can't be bought off, but they tend to have opposing special interests to support that balance their desire to be bought off by big corporations)

You can see the same effect at work over the so-called Intelligent Design controversy: the only people who see the theory of evolution as being "only a theory" are the same right-wing idiots at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, yet the New York Times (amongst other newspapers) insist on treating those idiots with the same amount of respect as serious scientists like Richard Dawkins.

Anyway, a little bit about this picture: Lisa & I shot this picture in 2002 on a backpacking/hiking trip through Grand Teton National Park. I felt very lucky to be able to get this close with a 200mm lens --- at that time I certainly did not know that the Pika will be a victim of global warming. That trip was photographically very rewarding, and I can only hope that the Coast-to-Coast next year will also be as productive.

American pikas are particularly vulnerable to global warming because they reside in areas with cool, relatively moist climates like those normally found in mountaintop habitats. As temperatures rise due to increasing emissions of heat-trapping gases, many alpine animals are expected to seek higher elevations or migrate northward in an attempt to find suitable habitat. Yet, American pikas in these regions have little option for escape from the pressures of climate change because migration across low-elevation valleys represents an incalculably high risk-and perhaps an impossibility under current climate regimes-for them. 

Movie Review: Lost in Translation

This is not a great movie. It's been widely critically acclaimed (Rotten Tomatoes rating of 95%), but compared to the delightful pair of movies Before Sunrise/Before Sunset, it felt like a complete waste of time. The characters did not have a connection other than a general sense of midlife ennui. The humor is mostly based on the juxtaposition of the typical ugly American who does not bother so much as to learn a tiny bit of a foreign language before landing on foreign shores with a modern Japanese culture that is admittedly quite bizarre. But seriously, I can't believe that a 24-year old in Japan by herself would not find more interesting things to do than what the Scarlett Johansson character did.

Two thumbs down. I feel compelled to try to save my friends the hour and 40 minutes that represent this movie.

Movie Review: Batman Begins

Comic book superheroes are a form of modern mythology. Even the comic book themselves "reboot" the stories on a regular basis, and each writer seems to bring a new sensibility or a different perspective to the stories. What I find fascinating is that there is a sort of "open-source" approach to the mythologies: good ideas get elaborated upon, and bad ideas get ignored in later retellings of the same story.

Batman, for instance, gets retold regularly (by Frank Miller, who did a fantastic job with The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One), and there are perhaps only a few inviolable parts of the canon: his alter-ego is playboy millionaire Bruce Wayne, and his parents were murdered in an alley shooting. All else is up for grabs.

Christopher Nolan, who also made Memento, takes a non-linear approach to the story, spending a good hour on the development of Bruce Wayne and his transformation from rich orphan to vigilante to hero. I thought the choice of Ra's Al Ghul, and the Scarecrow as the villains of the piece to be a great move: the story becomes much more about Bruce Wayne and Batman than it would be about his colorful adversaries.

Highly recommended. (And for a more in depth review, see: Matt Brunson's)

Ipod photo 60GB review

My brothers gave me an ipod photo 60G for my birthday, and it's taken me this long before getting around to a review. The first thing I did was to take it on a 16 mile hike up half-dome. (Half-dome is not a wilderness experience, so it's not like you're losing anything by listening to music) The ipod held up fine on the 10 hour hike, and seemed to handle abuse just fine.

I did acquire a Speck skin for the ipod (hint: don't use the screen protector, it scratches the screen!) pretty early on.

There's something special about having your entire music collection in one place (and having 60GB means you'll never have to choose which CDs you bring with you), and the ipod does sound good when used with a decent set of headphones.

The big minuses have to do with the hard drive: my ipod seems to be particularly sensitive to knocks or sharp motions, which don't cause my ipod to skip but do cause it to suddenly stop playing until I push the play button again. It even does that when I'm just moving the ipod a little quickly. The sudden stop doesn't happen a lot when hiking with my ipod in my camelbak, but does seem to happen a distressing number of times when cycling with it in my jersey pockets. (I've since switched to an ipod shuffle for cycling) I see people running with the ipod strapped to their arms, so clearly, those armband things would probably work for cycling as well, but I don't like the idea of having something wrapped around my arm, and my shuffle works just fine for situations where I'm likely to get knocked around.

In any case, I have the ipod to thank for the sudden increase in music listening (much more in the last 3 months than in the previous 3 years combined), and access to podcasts (I highly recommend Radio Memories podcasts, a nice collection of old-time radio broadcasts during the golden age of radio). On the other hand, given how it has caused me to spend more money buying CDs to feed the darn thing (a direct consequence of my listening to more music), maybe I shouldn't be so thankful!