Review: Accelerando

In this novel [e-book-link], Charles Stross explores the consequences of a Vingian Singularity --- how would one come about, and how could anything resembling human beings survive or thrive in such an environment?

There are a few answers in this book that are worthy of interest, one is the integration of law with computer software and the GPL, an interesting idea (which is not that far-fetched in that many have observed similarities between legal affairs and computer programming). The other is the exploration of a post augmented-intelligence society, and finally a glimpse of what happens when the entire non-fusion components of the solar systems have become themselves intelligent. The result does not seem to bode well for humanity, though Stross does have an excellent explanation for why there aren't signs of intelligent life on the planet.

The novel is written in an extremely jargon oriented fashion, with words like open-source, self-replicating, and neural networks tossed around with any explanation. Geeks and computer science majors will love this book. Others will probably find it a mystery:

The divested Microsoft divisions have automated their legal processes and are spawning subsidiaries, IPOing them, and exchanging title in a bizarre parody of bacterial plasmid exchange, so fast that by the time the windfall tax demands are served, the targets don't exist anymore, even though the same staff are working on the same software in the same Mumbai cubicle farms. Welcome to the twenty-first century.

All in all, a book worth reading for its ideas, if not for its breathless, unrelenting pace.

Exit Clov at Google

I will admit that I dislike most of the bands brought in to Google to perform at the Social TGIF --- they are usually over-amplified and under-talented. So I walked over today to the fabulous kitchen to grab some food and run back to my desk to eat and code. But I got caught up by the sound on the way back and had to simply stop and listen to Talkin Radio, a song that really stopped me in my tracks.

I listened to a few more songs after that, and after I heard Dead by Association, I bought their CD, Starfish. Listening to it now, it sounds a little under-produced, but the songs are still excellent and very enjoyable and listenable.

Recommended, even though my brother thinks they're Teeny-Bopper J-Pop in English (which by itself would make them unique).

Review: Tomorrow Happens

This is a rare book that was available at the Mountain View Library, and was very much worth reading. David Brin is one of the most thoughtful and interesting science fiction writers today, and he explores topics ranging from pollution, politics, and privacy in both fiction and non-fiction. If you're a careful reader of his blog or his web-site you won't find much here to surprise you, but having it together on paper with a linear thematic presentation did serve to glue all the thoughts together.

Highly recommended, if you can find a copy at a local library (it isn't worth the $127 that Amazon.com wants).

Review: Neverwhere DVD

Before Neverwhere was a book, it was a TV series. I enjoyed the book enough to become curious about the TV series, so when I saw it in the Mountain View Library catalog, I checked it out. The TV series, unfortunately, is a disappointment. The acting isn't very good, the editing is crude, and the sets quite crude, and the scenarios quite contrived. At only half an hour an episode, there's not a lot of exposition that can happen, nor is there significant character development --- the hero, Richard Mayhew seems perpetually confused, no matter what happens. The ending leaves an opening for an ongoing TV series, but clearly the public had had enough of the TV series. If you enjoyed the book, avert your eyes from the TV series.

Review: Wonder Woman: Second Genesis

John Byrne was responsible for the most recent reboot of Superman in the comics. The reboot was quite well done by comic book standards, making Lex Luthor not just a mad scientist, but a shrewd businessman as well, making him truly an adversary worthy of Superman. George Perez rebooted Wonder Woman, but those who know his work mostly know him as a great artist, not necessarily a good writer.

Unfortunately, Byrne doesn't live up to his reputation in taking over the reins at Wonder Woman. The plots are simplistic, with big building destroying fights every issue, but no true revelation of what makes Wonder Woman tick. Indeed, other than a vague mission to bring peace to the world of men, there's nothing to distinguish Wonder Woman from any other hero. Perhaps some day, we'll get someone as talented as Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman to work on the Wonder Woman mythos.

Wait a minute... With Joss Whedon signed up to do Wonder Woman, we're very likely to get something good! If anyone can do female superheroes right, it would be Joss Whedon.

Correction: Tom Galloway notes that it was Marv Wolfman who came up with the idea to make Luthor a businessman, not Byrne.

Book Review: Anansi Boys

I've always enjoyed many of Gaiman's short stories, such as the ones collected in Smoke and Mirrors. His longer works, however, such as American Gods, left me cold. So it was a very pleasant surprise when Gaiman visited Google and read from the Anansi Boys that I found myself enjoying the reading. I wasn't in a hurry to read the book, though, since I had plenty of other books on my reading list, so I didn't get to it for a year or so.

The novel is about Fat Charlie Nancy, who was always embarrassed by his father growing up, since his father's idea of a prank on his kid was to tell the kid lies that made him do embarrassing things. When Fat Charlie's father dies, Charlie finds out from his neighbors that his father was a God of Spiders, and that he had a brother. One night, Charlie talks to a garden spider and asks him to pass a message to his brother.

Charlie's brother, Spider, who has inherited all of his father's godly powers, obligingly shows up and quickly proceeds to destroy Charlie's life in the way that only a Trickster's God can. What follows is a comedy that leads Charlie from one ridiculous situation to another, as he loses his job, his fiance, and eventually regains what should have been his birthright to begin with.

This is a light-hearted, entertaining read that was very much worth my time. Recommended.

Noam Schreiber on The Pro Growth Progressive

I reviewed the Pro Growth Progressive last year, and it looks like Noam Schreiber shares many of the same frustrations I have --- the Democratic party's job right now isn't to device more policies that allow Republicans to claim that there's no difference between the parties (and I'm beginning to think that any policy more subtle than "tax cuts for the rich" is too subtle), but to find ways to win the next election. Anything that requires compromising with Republicans is giving them too much credit --- as far as I can tell, the Republicans aren't into government to serve the people, but to rob as much as possible from the middle class (and social security) to give to the rich. (The only reason they're not robbing the poor is that there isn't any money there left to rob)

WSJ.com - Web Start-Ups Lure Executives At eBay, Yahoo

WSJ.com - Web Start-Ups Lure Executives At eBay, Yahoo: A midlevel software engineer who manages engineers and reports to the vice president of engineering makes a median base salary of $145,100 at a private company, compared with $153,200 at a public company, according to Radford.

This new wave of startups is definitely going to burn through cash much faster than the older wave of startups back in the mid-90s. Part of it is inflation --- it's much more expensive to live in Silicon Valley now than it used to be. The other half is that Silicon Valley engineers have become much less enamored of stock options than they were in the late 1990s, so you can't just give someone stock and ask them to take a 30% paycut anymore.

Movie Review: Big Fish

This is a movie about two men. One, the father, loves stories, the more elaborate the better. The taller the better. No truth should go unvarnished, and no situation too magical to be told. He's the hero of all his stories, of course, and he's a fabulous guy. The other, the son, has heard all of his father's stories. But all these years later he feels like his father has told him nothing about the truth, so he doesn't know his father. He stops talking to his father until his father is on his deathbed, sick with cancer.

This is a story about stories. What do they mean to us? Why do we, as human beings, insist on fiction, which is really one big lie, piled on top of another? What does it say about our self-image? Do storytellers really reach for immortality --- does the story, told and retold pass down the essence of the story? Do we embellish our stories about ourselves? Why do we do so? Is our reality truly so drab that we have to spice up our stories with embellishments?

I love Tim Burton's style in this movie. It reminds me very much of his fable, Edwards Scissorhands. The fantastic parts of the stories are illustrated in lush bright colors, in a beautiful palette that reminds us that we're in a larger than life world. The framing story is filmed in a semi-documentary fashion. The actors are fantastic, and the editing well-done. My only beef with his work is that I think he left the running time a bit longer than necessary to make his point, and I would have ended the movie with the son picking up the phone --- the funeral wasn't really necessary.

All in all, this is a good movie worth watching. Highly recommended.

Review: The Two Income Trap

Note: The first chapter of The Two Income Trap is available online.

The thesis of this book is that the increasing number of bankruptcy in America isn't due to excessive consumption, but because of excessive spending on important things: houses in good school districts, health insurance, college, and pre-school. The authors assert that for women, having a child at all is a bigger predictor of eventual bankruptcy than all other factors combined.

They point out (quite rightly), that middle income households have stretched themselves to the limit by bidding excessive amounts for houses, thereby ensuring financial disaster if one of them lose their job, for instance, or one of their family has a medical emergency. 87% of bankruptcies have their root causes in either:

1. Job Loss
2. Medical problems
3. Divorce or Separation

Yet the financial media (amongst others) insists it is living beyond your means that creates the problems. By building a profile of an average family in the 1950s and an average family in the 2000s, Warren and Tyagi point out that the average family has spent less on discretionary items: clothing, groceries, fancy vacations and big televisions. Spending on transportation has gone up because both parents work, and more is spent on dining out, but that's made up by the savings brought about by Costco.

Their studies show that the big consumer is that of a house. By buying a big house in the suburbs rather than renting, American households participate in a bidding war for the best schools for their children in a safe location. The result is that it takes most of both incomes to provide for the family, and if a financial disaster happens there is no safety net.

Warren & Tyagi then prescribe a bunch of policy decisions: re-regulating the financial industry so that interest rates are capped, forcing banks and financial institutions to return to the 1950s standards for lending money seems to be their favorite prescription. Given how powerful the financial lobby is, I doubt that this policy will make it very far. The new bankruptcy bill passed last year, for instance, was practically written by the credit card companies.

They give no credence to the concept of universal healthcare, something I find a big pity --- 30% of bankruptcies are caused by medical emergencies. They also tepidly promote universal disability insurance as part of social security. (Note that California has already implemented this --- I've used this feature personally, so I know how useful it is) They also promote school vouchers as a means to de-couple schools from property values so parents aren't trapped by a big mortgage if they want good schools. I'm very skeptical of this proposal, since my guess is that the good schools will have their fees bid up to the same level as that of housing, so it'll all balance out.

Around where I live, there's quite a number of folks who buy houses in good school districts and then send their kids to private school, something I don't quite understand, but Asian parents do have a tendency to want to brag about how much they spend on their kids and can be extremely competitive in this regard.

Warren & Tyagi don't do much in terms of telling you what to do personally about this trap. They do advocate renting for a few additional years if you can't afford to buy right away, which is very sound advice, and to carry disability insurance if your state or your company does not provide, which is very sound advice. (Note that disability insurance is very expensive, precisely because you're more likely to need it than almost any other kind --- one in 3 Americans, for instance, will use the disability insurance feature of social security in their lifetimes --- and the elimination period for that insurance is a year!) Other than that, I guess they tell you not to get divorced.

In any case, The Two Income Trap confirms what I've guessed for awhile: buying a house isn't an investment decision in many parts of the country, it's a consumption decision. Recommended.

Review: A Long Way Down

Nick Hornby's last book, How to Be Good was absolutely hilarious, as was his earlier work, High Fidelity. A long way down starts at the top of Toppers House on New Year's Eve, with a quartet of people who intend to end their life by jumping down: a musician who has lost his purpose, a TV show host whose scandalous past overwhelms his present, a mother for whom her comatose son is too much of a burden for her to bear, and a teenager who's just lost her first lover.

This chance encounter causes them to back off from taking the ultimate leap that night, and the foursome agrees to meet over the next few months and find that they were not ready to commit suicide after all.

While there are a number of funny scenes in the book, Hornby does not quite manage to pull off a successful novel here --- the stories do not quite resolves, and the characters never do reach out to one another in a believable fashion. While this is an entertaining read, it is not one of his best.

The Landis Case: Waiting for the B sample; Pereiro reluctantly poised to take jersey; Landis takes pass on Leno

The Landis Case: Waiting for the B sample; Pereiro reluctantly poised to take jersey; Landis takes pass on Leno

It's quite possible that Landis did take testosterone to boost his performance on stage 17. Professional cycling has had so many drug scandals in recent years that nothing can disappoint me anymore.

I have to say though, that perhaps it's simply because medical science hasn't done as much for boosting brain performance as it has on performance of the body that drugs aren't a common part of the workplace. Imagine, if you will, a drug that gave you a mental boost equivalent to that of anabolic steriods. One dose, and you could do 200 hour programming projects in 2 hours (Pengtoh and I once turned a 200 hour project into a 20 hour project by doing pair programming, so another order of magnitude isn't inconceivable). Would you, as a good programmer, take it if it meant widespread recognition, promotion, and millions of dollars? What if the drug cost you a year of your life? Or two years?

Imagine this scenario: everyone in your office is taking drugs. You're barely smart enough to hang on to your job, let alone get a promotion. You know the next bright kid who takes this mental enhancement drug (even at horrendous cost to his health) will be so smart that you won't have a prayer of hanging on to your current job. Would you continue to stay drug free? Would you find another career, even if this was the one you loved?

It's questions like this that convince me that perhaps I couldn't be that judgemental about the professionals who do performance enhancing drugs.

Another lameness about the Mac Mini

My brother and I tried to setup skype on my Mac Mini. The software installs fine, but the stupid mike wouldn't work. After swapping microphone headsets we discovered that the Mac Mini doesn't have microphone input, so I have to either get a bluetooth headset or a USB microphone (as though I didn't have enough devices hanging off the USB ports, which are all maxed out now). My brother also complains that his MacBook Pro randomly shuts down.

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that Apple makes cool looking products with reliability problems that just aren't practical to use. No wonder they have only a 5% market share. Lisa's $900 laptop works better than a MacBook costing $2000!

Morning Ride up Montebello Road and Black Mountain

Mark Logan and John Walker joined Matt Stanton and I at the base of Montebello Road. The climb was in the sun and quite warm, so by the time we reached the top (with me begging John to slow down despite his 39x26 and a backpack with a 6 pound laptop) we had drained most of our water. The view from the top was gorgeous --- a line of clouds (a low marine layer) all the way to the North East (towards Diablo and Hamilton) and the same layer all the way to the West where the ocean was. The fire road gave us glorious views of the panorama and we made it to the pavement on Page Mill where we refilled our water bottles.

The descent on Page Mill was beautiful, and right at the cloud line we saw the temperature drop a whole 10 degrees. We hit every red light from Arastedero to B43, forcing us to do interval sprints the whole way, but we made it for breakfast!

Review: The Hallowed Hunt

If The Paladin of Souls was a disappointment, the Hallowed Hunt make up for it. In contrast to the nervous nellie that Ista was, the lead character in the Hallowed Hunt, Ingrey is a special agent to the Hallowed King, sent to followup on the murder of a Prince of the land. The case of the murder is straightforward, but Ingrey finds himself caught up with the murderess, Iijada, for she bears an animal spirit as a consequence of the murder of the prince.

What are animal spirits, how do they interact with the five Gods of Challion, and what role Ingrey plays (a role which is not made clear to Ingrey for significant periods of time), and how he comes to acknowledge his heritage and his history makes up the subject matter of the book.

Both Ingrey and Iijada are very sympathetic characters, who are intelligent people caught up in an impossible situation. Too much of the book goes into the peculiar theology of Challion, but that's forgivable --- it seems that Bujold has invested way too much in the world building not to let a bit of it peek out.

All in all, a satisfying and fun read.

Mike Samuel tries the recumbent

But it was clearly too small for him. 

Matt tries a recumbent.

 

Lisa tries a recumbent

 

Cyclists descend Hwy 84 to La Honda

In the picture: Matt Stanton, Laura Granka, Sy Na, Matt Blain, Mike Samuel, Katelyn Mann on 84 

Luck plays a major role in success

As I've stated often before, too many people confuse luck with skill or being smart. Hal Varian (link above) and Brad Delong both provide examples where this is the case. In my career, I've seen alot of hardworking, talented people in unsuccessful companies, and untalented lazy people in successful companies. The latter always did better than the former, hence the phrase quoted to me by a stock broker, "I'd rather be lucky than good."

If you believe that luck plays a major part in our success or failure, then you'd want progressive taxation --- let the lucky subsidize the unlucky. And you'll soon learn to respect wealth come about by selling companies during a dotcom boom less than personal success that's achieved by a means less amenable to luck (e.g., finishing a marathon, or completing a long trek). If you think about man in his natural state, the last two are rarely instances of pure luck, which is why we over-emphasize monetary success in the modern world and under-estimate the importance of luck.