Beautiful Moonlight Commute

I just had one of those beautiful moonlight commutes. Full moon, clear skies, and an uncrowded bike path along the Isar river. In fact, it was so clear once I crossed the river and out of tree cover that I turned off my battery powered light and relied on my generator light even though I was on a dirt path.

Yes, it was cold (so cold that I noticed it through my gloves and winter wear), but the haunting image of the moon rising over the river valley and reflected in the ripples of the Isar will be one I treasure forever.

Review: The Farthest Shore

The Farthest Shore is the last book in the original trilogy of Earthsea (I remember the fourth book, Tehanu, being disappointing, so I might very well not go on the review the next two).

Set during the twilight of Ged's career as Archmage of Earthsea, this book is of course, about the youth who accompanies him on this last adventure, Arren. Arren apparently has quite the destiny ahead of him, but he doesn't know what it is. Ged though, having been stuck as the Archmage for years, now leaps at the latest quest as a means of leaving Roke (and his responsibilities).

And what is the danger this time? Magic is fading --- or so it seems. Sorcerers have forgotten the true names of things, and men have started wondering if magic is real. Ged and Arren run around in a wild goose chase until Dragons start asking Ged for help. Now Le Guin (for what she thought was the last book) pulls out all stops, granting us dragons upon dragons, a trip across the Farthest shore, and Ged giving up his magic for one final feat.

The theme of this novel is death and the acceptance thereof. I'm not sure I approve of Ursula Le Guin's philosophical "death is part of life" approach, as I am very much in favor of Dylan Thomas' approach:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Nevertheless, as a young adult novel that still bears up to reading years later as an adult, this is one of the rare ones. I do feel that Le Guin cops out at the end and grants us a less than satisfying ending as a result, but I suspect that many of her readers will disagree, having found the ending to their taste. Recommended, though less so (again) than A Wizard of Earthsea

Radstadt/Salzburg Tour

 

Radstadt

The weather forecast looked good for Saturday and Sunday, so I found myself in the Euraide office on Friday morning talking to Alan Wissenberg about a trip to Radstadt. (Alan by the way was tickled pink when he found this blog ranked highly for a search for Euraide during the summer --- undoubtedly due to a ranking glitch) Why Radstadt? On one of my first bike tours in Germany, I ran into an English lorry driver in Seeham, who when asked to tell me a place that was pretty, said Radstadt. "I'd recommend Radstadt to anyone," he said, holding up his beer. (English lorry drivers, by the way, don't conform to the beer gut stereotypes that American lorry drivers seem to have done) Unlike other tours, I also booked my lodging --- during the late season, it's very likely that most hotels are closed, along with the tourist information office, so I figured I would make the booking in Radstadt, dump my lugguage there, and do a day trip.

So I found myself hustling aboard the 7:26am train to Bischohofen on Saturday morning. The train was late, but fortunately my connection was for 20 minutes, so I had plenty of time. It was cold and overcast while I waited for the train, and I started wondering if I had made a mistake in believing the forecast. My doubts grew when I arrived in Radstadt to find wet roads, though it wasn't raining. Having set my GPS for my hotel, I rode to the hotel and found it without incident, and discovered that I was the only guest! The hotel owner was very nice, however, and let me check in and leave my stuff --- there's even a locked bicycle closet! I immediately set out to ride the loop I had planned so many months ago (this was one of the trips that I had waiting to go but never could find the weather to do so), albeit cut short since I was starting late, and really, didn't want to push it in the winter.

The loop first took me through Radstadt proper, where I bought some fruits for lunch, and then headed West to Eben, and then North and back East through the mountains. The hills rolled around a bit, but soon I was flat smack in the middle of what had to be an access highway for skiiers. It not being skiing season, the traffic was light and I could enjoy the scenery. I could see that the sun was trying to come out, and low and behold around the bend I saw mountains shrouded with clouds. They even had snow on them!

I rode past Ubermoos, which had a shack serving a hot lunch, but decided that I'd rather not bogmyself down with food. Soon, I was riding past the ski resort towns of Hachau. It's a bit spooky riding past a ski resort town during the dead season --- nothing is open, all the ski lifts aren't moving and neither are the cable cars used for moving hikers during the summer. Together with the very light traffic --- I was seeing a car every 15 minutes at most --- I felt like I was riding through a post-holocaust scenario, except it was so pretty. I took a break every so often, not being in shape, but also to eat. Then swept past a minor ridge, and past Schildehen, started my climb up to Vorberg.

Up to now the road had been marked scenic, but really, was nothing to write home about. I had taken a few pictures, but looking at them now, my equipment, technique, and the weather didn't make it worth writing home about. Vorberg changed all that. Now I was on a high ridge looking down across the valley and into the valley. The scenery was spectacular --- I stopped often for pictures, and had great views everywhere I turned. Even the weather started to coperate as the sun started to peek out through the clouds. I rode past gorgeous houses, with men in lederhosen pounding fenceposts down. I rode past horses and horsefields, and a children's playground that had a few cows assigned to mow down the grass. The mood, the lighting, and the scenery all combined to make me feel really glad I did this loop, and sad when it came down to descent into Pichl, where I picked up the Enns bike trail towards Radstadt.

But even the flat bike trail had a consolation prize, for as I rode along it, the sun suddenly came out and lit up a farmhouse and its surrounds with a crisp golden light that this picture barely managed to capture:

From Radstadt

By the time I got back to the hotel I was wondering if I shouldn't have made a longer loop, it being but 3:00pm. This hotel didn't serve dinner, so I quickly unpacked, washed up a bit, and discovered I had no soap either. I rode out to the city to try to find soap and see if there were restaurants within walking distance. Well, soap was not a problem, as I found a drug store open very quickly. But I discovered all the surrounding hotel/restaurants near me were closed, so ended up riding into town, where I bought some emergency snacks in a super market. I looked around town and to my surprise, found a Konditerei that served dinner even though it was only 4pm. I parked my bike outside (unlocked, as I hadn't bothered to bring a lock), went in, and ordered hot tea, the fixed menu (noodle soup and Wiener Schnitzel) and then topped up with a dessert pastry. I was impressed by the entire works. The meal was good, the price was reasonable (14 Euros for the entire thing), and of course, the waitress was pretty.

I then went back and retired for the night.

The next morning, I got up and ate a nice big breakfast before hopping onto my bike and riding down the Ennstall towards Bischofshofen. The bike path led in the wrong direction, so pretty soon I found myself on B99. Fortunately, B99 parallels a freeway, so it had light traffic, though in Huttau there was a parade of some sort involving horses, which I was glad to get past, as the road was quite nasty. It was overcast and I got quite cold on the descents, discovering at this point that I had a hole in my gloves.

Near Bischofshofen, I picked up the Tauern Radweg, a bike path that would lead all the way to Salzburg. Unlike other bike paths, however, this one was really a bike lane along the highway --- the one time I saw a sign to a separated path, it turned out that the segment of the separated path was close. This was just as well, since while approaching Werfen, I saw the big castle on a hill. On the spur of the moment I decided to visit it, and rode up along the pedestrain path until it got too steep and had to walk. Fortunately, the walking was very limited, and I got to the castle entrance only to find that the place was closed for the season. I had good views though, so it wasn't wasted effort.

I picked the paved cable-car route down to the parking lot, and started heading down the hill when I saw a gorgeous view in front of me:

From Radstadt

Now I wasn't unhappy that I hadn't opted for my 100km original route which would have bypassed this portion. I kept going and the route got prettier, giving me better and better views until I got to Pass Lueg, which was so short a climb I didn't notice it. From there, the scenery changed, giving me more greenery rather than granite mountains. I had a quick lunch at Hallein, and thereafter picked up the Salzach dirt path that led into Salzburg, arriving finally in the Salzburg train station in time to catch the 2:11pm train. As usual, the train was late and it was dark by the time I got home.

Still, it was a good trip with 140km and 1393m of climbing. Considering the restricted daylight I was getting, this worked out as well as I could have hoped for. I'm finding that after about 7 months in Munich, my only regret is not spending more time in Austria. I'll need to explore this country more in the future!

Health Insurance, Healthcare, and Policy

Someone recently asked me that if she should pick the PPO, the HMO, or stay with Kaiser. This was someone in great health, so the answer for maximum cost savings would be to go with Kaiser. But health in general isn't that easy, because tragedy can strike at any time, and you won't know when. For instance, if you were diagnosed with Cancer, and the best chance of providing a recovery was to go with this great doctor that an expert pointed you at, and he didn't work for Kaiser, what would you do? Would you say, "Forget it," and stick with Kaiser's doctors? Or would you pony up the several hundred thousand dollars and just do whatever it takes? If you had substantial assets (a good health insurance plan would cover up to about $6 million in life time costs), then you would probably do that, but most of us don't have $6 million sitting around in a bank in case of a health emergency, which is why I've always opted for a PPO when given a choice --- it usually costs quite a bit more, but I don't buy insurance for routine doctor visits, the cold, or even an extensive physical (which can run up to about $600 or so). I buy health insurance because I can't afford $6 million if I need a transplant or whatever, and in those catastrophic instances, I want to be able to see whatever doctor that will give me the best chance of survival.

Someone asked in a mailing list recently what makes health insurance special? I'll try to explain, but I don't really expect to persuade any Libertarians or Republicans. My experience is that those people aren't persuadable by logic or examples from other countries, so if you're one of those, don't bother posting on the comments --- I'll be ruthless in moderating and deleting comments even before they show up on the blog.

The big issue with health insurance is Adverse Selection. The way I like to explain is to imagine that you're the CEO of a health insurance company like Cigna, Blue Shield, or Pacific Care. Your job is to maximize profits. Now, whenever someone applies for health insurance, they have a chance of costing you more than the premium he's likely to pay. Now, if you reject all such candidates and only accept healthy people, then you'll be more profitable. In fact, the best thing you can do is to send such candidates to your competitors, because it makes them less profitable. So now you know why health insurance companies make you fill out all sorts of forms and have their doctors look at you to determine whether you're a good health risk. Note that even if you were a good-hearted CEO and wanted to insure all comers, you couldn't, because if you tried to do so, what would happen is this: all the people with health problems will come to your company to buy insurance because your policies cost less for them. That will drive up your costs, because those people cost more to insure. As a result, your insurance will cost more than your competitors and this will lead to a death spiral as all your healthy customers migrate to all your competitors, which will make your business more and more untenable.

Now, those of you with good middle class jobs will raise their hands and say, but wait, this doesn't happen to me. I have good health insurance through my job, despite my pre-existing conditions. That's because employers (especially large ones) can say to multiple insurance companies: "Hey, I've got a big group here. You either cover all of them, or I'll go to someone else. You can't take just my healthy employees --- you've got to take my unhealthy ones too." So what happens is that within a company, the healthier people subsidize the less healthy ones. This is as it should be, since even if your name is Lance Armstrong, there's no guarantee you won't come down with testicular cancer next year and need expensive treatment while in your 20s. If you're a really big company with large profits, you can go one step further and self-insure, and pay an insurance company only to deal with the paper-work, since that's how the medical industry does this.

The obvious next step then, is to put the entire population of a country into one big group, and have the country as a whole self-insure. This is how most major industrialized countries do it. Now you have a really big insurance pool, and you can insure everyone pretty cheaply! Now, if you've swallowed the Republican/Libertarian line about how the government is naturally wasteful, you'd be skeptical about this working out, and you'd be wrong. The government doesn't have to give its civil servants corporate jets, nor does it have an incentive to spend lots of time in court denying health-care claims to its citizens. So it can spend much more on health-care than on overhead. Note that the private insurance system has a built-in incentive to deny coverage whenever possible --- that savings go straight to the bottom-line of the insurance company. At the very least, politicians who want your vote have to keep you alive in order to get it, so this is definitely one case where the health insurance that covers everyone (through say, payroll taxes) at least does away with one perverse incentive.

Here's another interesting incentive change: preventive medicine is a lot cheaper than fixing up an illness. It's cheaper to treat hypertension and high blood pressure than to treat a heart attack. The private insurance system does not have an incentive to do preventive medicine in a country where people move around frequently and hence have to switch health insurance companies every so often. Because a government run system has to bear the costs of a heart attack no matter where someone moves to, there's a lot more incentive to do preventive medicine and keep people healthy. This is well documented in the veteran's health administration, where an aggressive approach towards preventive medicine has reduced their costs significantly.

What about all those famous waiting periods that the right-wingers love to talk about? Canada and Britain are especially famous in those examples. Well, take a look at the first table in this paper. In 1997, the UK spent 6% of GDP on healthcare. The Canadians spent 9%. The US, 14%. One system that's well-known for not having a ton of waiting periods is the French system (which is an interesting private/public system). They spent 9.6% of GDP on healthcare. I'm pretty sure that if the US spent 12% (instead of 14%) of GDP on healthcare and made it efficient (which isn't hard, since we already know that medicare/veterans administration can approach the efficiencies we find in other countries), we'll have an excellent system that costs less, and has much fewer waiting periods than the UK system or the Canadian ones.

Now, I don't think this is going to happen by any stretch of the imagination. But Obama's proposal, as far as it goes isn't that bad. It has a few properties:

1. Community rating. This means that insurance companies have to take all comers. They can't deny coverage to anyone because of pre-existing conditions or health, or they won't be allowed to do business at all. This is huge! (For one thing, it'll mean that I can get health insurance)
2. Competition from the public sector. If all the health insurance companies in your area suck, it's not a catastrophe. You'll get a chance to buy into the same insurance system Congress-critters voted for themselves. This is a big pool, because it includes all government employees, so it'll be reasonably efficient. In fact, most health policy experts expect that eventually, private companies will find themselves unable to compete with the government system and cease to exist. (After all, CEOs don't like it when they can't have corporate jets)
3. No mandate. Now this is a problem. It creates a moral hazard, in that if you're healthy, you have no incentive to join the insurance pool and help subsidize all the unhealthy people like me. This is even more true if (as anticipated) you can sign up for health insurance after you got hit by a bus or some other health catastrophe, and still get the same cheap coverage that you could have gotten if you signed up while healthy. This particular feature came up for debate during the primary, and I expect it to be debated if Obama does try to live up to his promise of improving health insurance coverage for American citizens (and if he doesn't, I'll be first in line to vilify him). I expect that some sort of mandate will become necessary, and I'll be happy to have it deducted from payroll --- that's how companies do it nowadays anyway, so I don't anticipate any changes.

At this point, I'm sure the Republicans and Libertarians who've bothered to read this far are shaking their heads, convinced that the country will go to hell in a hand-basket. I'll strongly disagree --- I think Universal Healthcare will actually help the economy a ton. Think of all the startups that could happen because people who would otherwise stick around in a safe job at a big company would suddenly feel free to start their own things since the specter of not being able to get healthcare will no longer be hanging over them. People who've wanted to work for themselves and become consultants would be willing to take the jump and do so. With cheaper healthcare (because of greater efficiencies in covering everyone), even old-line industries like car manufacturers (which have been squeezed because they compete with other countries like Japan where everyone does get into the universal healthcare systems) will benefit. I think this policy, enacted properly (and an Obama administration that was competent could do this) has the potential to make our economy even more dynamic than it is, and that's a good thing, even if all you care about is your bottom line.

Hopefully, if you've read this far, you'll feel like you've learned something about why Paul Krugman, Gene Spurling, and many others are hoping that Obama takes this golden opportunity to really deal with healthcare, and that we'll be extremely disappointed if he fails. I'll take reasonable comments and questions and do my best to answer them, but note that this blog has moderated comments turned on, and if you're going to be abusive or not add value to the discussion your comment won't show up.

Bonds FAQ

Someone with substantial assets recently asked me a bunch of questions about bonds, and they are interesting enough to put them up on this blog.

Q: Are Inflation-Adjusted Bonds a good idea?
Yes. David Swenson considers them a separate asset class from regular bonds, and in the past, I've recommended them as part of a portfolio when diversifying away from a heavily concentrated position. While in the past I've told people to look into I-bonds first, because of recent changes in the program I no longer think they are a good deal, and definitely they are insufficient for a person with substantial assets. Note that Swenson does not consider foreign bonds a separate asset class, unlike inflation adjusted bonds. And corporate bonds are in general not a good bet, since stock holders (who own the company) have a tendency to play games like paying themselves dividends and then declaring bankruptcy so the bond holders get left holding the bag. Very few bond-issuers like Warren Buffett put protections in for their bond holders.

Q: I was wondering how you decided to buy into a bond fund instead of buying bonds directly? Is it simply a matter of convenience?

Yes, it's a matter of convenience. You can buy treasury bonds directly through treasurydirect.gov at no cost, which makes them a lot cheaper than through a fund. But then you have to do your own laddering yourself, and what if you wanted some corporate bonds (which are at a good price right now). Now if you want CA tax-exempt bonds (which are paying very well right now because of California's high indebtedness creating credit rating problems for CA), then things get a bit more complicated, and a bond-fund would be useful there, for diversification reasons (in case a particular municipality pulls off an Orange county-type default).

For TIPS, you also have tax issues as well, since the inflation adjusted bit doesn't get paid out until the bond matures, but gets taxed annually even though it hasn't been paid out yet. That doesn't mean buying TIPS directly is a bad idea, it just means that you want to do it from your IRA (or rollover 401k) if at all possible. If you must hold TIPS in a taxable account, then perhaps a bond-fund's convenience makes the expense worth while.

Q: I'm going to put some cash into bonds. Would you advise doing it gradually over the next few months, for dollar-cost averaging?

To really answer this question well, I'll have to explain the relationship between yield and bond prices. A bond is priced based on two factors: default risk (the chance that the bond issuer won't pay you back the principal), and current interest rate (as set by the "riskless" treasury bond). Obviously a California municipality has to pay a higher tax-adjusted interest rate than a treasury bond to get you to buy its bond, since there's a chance that the municipality might not pay you your principal back.

Now, what happens when the riskless interest rate goes up? Well, that bond you used to own is now worth less, because you can buy newer bonds (risk-adjusted) that pay a higher interest rate, so the price of your old bond drops. Conversely, if the riskless interest rate drops, your old bond is now more valuable, since new bonds pay less interest, so your older, higher interest bond is more valuable. Since interest rates usually change by a quarter percentage point or so every time the Federal Reserve meets, this price/yield relationship makes bonds less volatile, which is why they have a place in a diversified portfolio. Furthermore, interest rates tend to drop in a recession, when stocks tend to drop, so holding a proportion of your assets in bonds tends to provide a bit of a cushion when bad times happen.

Interestingly enough, TIPS don't vary as much with interest rates (though they do pay a real interest rate at times), but rather vary with inflation rates (which have a looser correlation with how well or badly the economy is doing), which is why Swenson thinks they constitute a different asset class. (Note that corporate bonds are directly correlated with how well the economy is doing, which is why Swenson prefers that you own stock directly instead --- if you're going to take the same risk as a stock holder, you might as well also participate in the rewards. As a counterpoint, however, Warren Buffett's recently been buying up corporate bonds, because he thinks they are a good deal right now --- but I don't have his acumen, so my way of playing that is to buy Berkshire Hathaway instead)

OK, so to answer your question, given that we're expecting a recession over the next few months, I don't expect the interest rates to go up, so I would not bother dollar-cost averaging. But if it makes you feel better, then do it. I don't expect any yield changes to be terribly nerve-wrecking, as explained above.

Disclaimer: I'm not a financial adviser, I don't even play one on TV, so don't make investment decisions based on this blog.

Review: The Tombs of Atuan

Book 2 of the Earthsea series is told not from the point of view of Ged, but from the point of view of Tenar, the one priestess of the Tombs of Atuan, who is supposedly the servant of the Nameless Ones, the evil gods who dwell in the Tombs.

We learn of her origin, her service, and her cruelty in sentencing men to their deaths. Interestingly, I picked up her reluctance and her nightmares better as an adult than as a child, showing perhaps, that when I was younger, I just wanted to get to the good parts, when Ged shows up.

Ged does show up, not as a powerful Wizard, but perhaps as a bit of a bungler, not quite knowing what he is in for, and again, my first reading of the novel was that he got rescued by Tenar, but in this second reading I see that the interaction between them is quite a bit more subtle than my impression.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment I felt is that the sense of lyrical beauty that was achieved in the prose of A Wizard of Earthsea is if not altogether missing, rather muted in this second novel. Unlike the sense of activity in the first novel, the feeling in The Tombs of Atuan is that of constraint, of fear. Even when Tenar breaks free of her past she is not exhilarated, but is instead fearful. There is hope at the end of the novel, but it is tentative, almost unable to breathe on its own. Perhaps this was a reflection of the time of the writing (1972), when women's liberation was just starting to stretch its wings.

Any short novel that can achieve all this while telling an unconventional fantasy story (Ged is not a hero, but neither is Tenar a heroine) comes highly recommended.

Wolfrathausen/Stanbergersee/Holzkirchen Ride

Wolfrathausen-Starnberg-Holzkirchen

I had not expected another beautiful weekend, and now that I was more or less recovered from my cold I took advantage of it! I caught the 9:55 S-Bahn to Wolfrathausen, and there proceeded to ride over to Stanbergersee, where Lisa and I started our first tour of the Alps 5 years ago.

The ride immediately took me across a couple of rivers and then started climbing. I got a few beautiful pictures of the lonely road and then proceeded to descend all the way down to Stanberg, where I found a bike path right next to the lake and proceeded to ride along it. It was gorgeous, and many families were out feeding the birds or just taking a scroll. When it came time for me to leave Starnberger See, I made a left turn and rode up a bike path covered with leaves. As the bike path left a tunnel, I could only trust to scoot my bike along because the leaves were so wet that I had no traction! I immediately left the bike path and got onto the road, but after several hundred meters the GPS signaled a turn where there was no apparent intersection!

A U-turn revealed that there was a gate with a bypass for a bike onto an unpaved forest road. No wonder Garmin Mapsource had balked at routing me this way the night before when I was laying out the route. No matter, I rode along the bike path, passing some equestrains, and then found some thick leaves to ride through. These weren't wet, but riding through deep leaf-fall is an act of faith, since you can't see what's underneath it all. I kept my eyes on the trail looking for big rocks sticking out but had no issues until I came onto the Forest lake that had caused me to route in this fashion.

After that, I returned to the road and tooled along merrily past hill and dale, enjoying the beautiful day. It got so warm that I had to take off my jacket, and I loved swooping through single-track roads surrounded by woods, with the roads still wet from dew even though it was past noon by the time I swept through them. Since I hadn't done any serious riding for a while, I had plotted only a 60km ride today, so I only had to stop one to take in a snack before I got to the Holzkirchen S-Bahn, where I had just narrowly missed my train. Never mind, since the hour wait gave me time to buy and eat lunch and visit the delightful ice-cream shop just 300 meters from the S-Bahn station.

A surprisingly beautiful short ride. Recommended in good weather.

Review: A Wizard of Earthsea

After reading Le Guin's complaints about the TV adaptation of her works, and reading about the Miyazaki Jr adaptation of Earthsea, I had to go back and re-read this beautiful novel.

For those used to the mega-volume works of today's fantasy, A Wizard of Earthsea comes as a breath of fresh air. It's short but it is so beautifully written --- this is how I want to be able to write when I grow up. Passage after passage delights the mind's ear:
At first all his pleasure in the art-magic was, childlike, the power it gave him over bird and beast, and the knowledge of these. And indeed that pleasure stayed with him all his life. Seeing him in the high pastures often with a bird of prey about him, the other children called him Sparrowhawk, and so he came by the name that he kept in later life as his use-name, when his true-name was not known

Le Guin mentioned that Ged, like all the Gontish in the novel is black, and it amazes me that I missed that completely when I read the novel for the first time --- of course I was but a child when I read it, and reading is all in the head in any case. As an adult and on second reading, I can definitely see that emphasis. Nevertheless, the trappings are that of a European fantasy novel, since bread, wine and cheese seem to be what folks dine on.

The theme of the novel, like all other young-adult novels, is self-discovery and acceptance. We are told up front that Ged will become the most storied of all Wizards, but Le Guin portrays his youthful pride as his downfall without any sentiment whatsoever. What's impressive is that Le Guin manages not to pound you over the head with any overt messages or morals, and her school of wizardry is so deftly sketched with so few words, yet wonderfully imagined, that I wonder how I ever could stand to read Harry Potter.

I guess I now have to read the rest of the series, having remembered how beautiful the first novel was. If you've never read the Earthsea series, you need to. Highly recommended.

Review: Sweet Silver Blues

Glen Cook is best known for his Black Company series, a fantasy series that breaks all the usual stereotypes. My brother thought that his Garrett P.I. series was pretty good too, so I got started on the first book of the series.

The premise of the series is that of a Private Investigator in a fantasy universe. Nero Wolfe was the template, but not being familiar with the original, I plowed ahead. The character, Garrett, is an ex-marine turned private investigator. His old friend, Denny, died with a huge sum of money willed to an old lover, and as an executor of the estate he has to track her down.

Running a mystery story is difficult in a fantasy (or science fiction) setting, because if the reader doesn't know what the ground rules are for the story, it's very difficult to make guesses as to who did what. But about halfway through the book, I realized that Glen Cook solved this problem by ignoring the mystery --- events just happen one after another, with the result that the story becomes somewhat of a caper story, complete with tomb-raiding, an adventure involving vampires, and lots of action that reveals that Garrett isn't a nice guy at all.

Unfortunately, not liking the character or the plot (which meanders all over the place), I cannot find myself recommending the book. If you want to read Glen Cook at his best, go read the Black Company series instead.

Review:; My Name is Legion

This collection of linked stories is really old Zelazny. It's so old that I don't remember much of the stories except Home is Hangman, which won the Nebula award and has been reprinted so often that you'd be blind not to have read it at some point.

The three stories share the same protagonist, the nameless person who hacked his way out of the central database that now has data on everyone in the world. Unfortunately, unlike most first person narrators that Zelazny has, the narrator is not very compelling. At this point in his career, Zelazny had not developed the snappy, sardonic, sarcastic style that made his later novels such a delight to read.

The first couple of stories depict the nameless protagonist as sort of a trouble-shooter, someone who can slip into a system and figure out what's wrong. What's interesting is that he's not actually a very likable guy --- willing to kill to protect his identity, and really ruthless when it comes to being able to achieve his ends. Both those aspects disappear in the third novella.

All in all, I can't recommend this book --- it's aged enough that you notice all the discrepancies and issues, and Home is Hangman is over-exposed. His later novels definitely show him off in better light.

Review: The Story of the Tour De France (Vol 2)

After the first volume had me mesmerized, that I would buy the second half (kindle edition) was a forgone conclusion.

Here, you have the story of the Merckx days, the semi-tragic story of the Greg Lemond rides, including all the background story behind his fight with Bernard Hinault, the tactical racing-style of Miguel Indurain, and of course the Lance Armstrong years.

Perhaps familiarity breeds contempt, but I found these stories nowhere as compelling as those in the first volume --- part of it was that I knew so much of it already, but also because the story-telling style felt stilted. For instance, the discussion of the Bjarne Riis story did not mention that Riis admitted that he took EPO until well after the description of the race was over. That's perhaps so as not to spoil the reader's enjoyment of the race, so perhaps it's forgivable.

No analysis of bicycle racing would be complete without an essay on doping, and indeed there is one. Basically, once EPO burst onto the scene, the testing technology did not exist, so speeds went up in the races for the next several years after that. The transformation was so sudden that winners from the previous eras would have been has-beens in the era of EPO.

There's also an analysis of why the Tour de France is still the dominant bicycle race, though that one is much more subjective. Finally, the authors deliver their opinion on who the greatest Tour de France was of all time, though I disagree with their selection. All in all, I'm ok with having paid Kindle price for this volume, but found it a much less compelling read than the first one, so I'd only recommend it if you've already read that and want more.

Hollriegelskreuth to Wolfrathausen

 

Ride to Wolfrathausen

I had a cold all last couple of weeks, so it was only on Sunday that I felt well enough to go for even a short ride down to Wolfrathausen. It was a beautiful warm fall day, and the ride was surprisingly short, but it ended on the beautiful river in Wolfrathausen with gorgeous fall afternoon sun. This will be our last ride on the tandem until I return to Sunnyvale in December.

Review: Interzone Magazine (Subscription)

Interzone Magazine (kindle compatible electronic edition) is a British science fiction magazine. Now, if you're a typical "intellectual elite", your typical thinking is that the British version of any magazine is usually better than the American version. For instance, The Economist is better than Newsweek (kindle edition), and Cycling Plus is in a completely different league than Bicycling magazine. (In fact, bike snobs call Bicycling Buy-cycling for the rampant commercialism exhibited in the magazine as parodied in Bike Snob NYC)

The worst thing about British magazines are the expense of getting them. With the advent of electronic editions, however, Interzone is actually affordable ($24/year from Fictionwise, DRM-free), so I took the plunge and subscribed. For the subscription, I got access to PDFs as well as mobi-book editions (for my Kindle). As expected, the PDFs were nice for before I got my Kindle, but once I got the Kindle it was the only way I could see reading an electronic magazine.

Head-to-head comparison with Asimov's Science Fiction (kindle edition) are inevitable. For your money, $34 will net you 10 issues of Asimov's magazine, and each Asimov's has quite a bit more content than the average Interzone issue. What Interzone has in spades, however, are the interviews with Authors like Iain Banks and Greg Egan. Furthermore, I noticed that Greg Egan tends to get published more frequently in Interzone.

How about story quality? With 4 issues under my belt, I'm afraid I have to say that the typical story in Asimov's seems just a bit higher quality. This might just be a taste thing, but I also like the typical story in the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy (DRM-free electronic subscription) as well, so I'm afraid I have to say that Interzone comes up short compared to both the major speculative fiction magazines out there. That said, however, if you like author interviews (and the interviews are OK, not blow-your-mind great), I think Interzone is your only real choice, and at $24, the price is right. (Note: I can get Asimov's for $18 a year on paper, but I am seriously considering the Kindle edition or the DRM-free edition once my paper subscription lapses)

Review: Courageous

Courageous (kindle edition) is Jack Campbell's third book in his lost fleet series. The series is fundamentally an excuse for several 3-dimensional relativity-based fleet battles, and this book does not disappoint.

While the first two books show-case severely one-sided victories on the side of the Protagonist (John Geary a.k.a. "Black Jack" Geary to the rest of the fleet), this novel introduces an enemy that seemed to have learned from the previous defeats. At the same time, Geary seems to have decided that he had done enough running and that the next most unpredictable move would be to head straight home. The result is a series of set-piece battles that are entertaining with regards to time, location, multiple deployed fleets, and of course, 3D topography. Half-way through this book though, I wondered if these concepts might have been better introduced through a video-game with timing controls than through a novels --- I started to consider that Campbell should include diagrams of fleet formations along with his descriptions of the set-piece battles.

The character development is handled as clumsily as is usual for science fiction. Seriously, don't read this book for a good look at character development --- the characters seem to regress to pre-puberty kids as far as that's concerned. Nevertheless, I'm well and sucked in now, so I will buy the next few books like the zombie that I am. Recommended, but perhaps you should read the entire series at your library, eh?

Zugspitze Trip

Zugspitze Trip

It was a beautiful day, so we headed up to the Zugspitze. Lovely fall colors, wonderful clear weather, and views that had to be seen to be believed!

Long Term Review: Kindle

Since Oprah is set to endorse the Kindle, I figure it's also time for me to provide a 6 month review of the Kindle. (See earlier review)

I think there's no doubt whatsoever that the Kindle has affected how much I read. As of today, I've read 71 books in 2008, while in 2007, while for all of 2007, I recorded 44 books So the Kindle has probably doubled my reading rate. What's even more interesting is that it has also skewed my reading. Fiction is easier to come by for free on the Kindle, so I read more of it than non-fiction. Looking again at 2007, more than half my reading was non-fiction, while fiction easily dominates my 2008 reading. Tellingly, graphic novels which are easy to read on paper but impossible to read on the Kindle, got no attention at all in 2008.

All this also ignores all the fiction magazines I bought and read on the Kindle without reviews (I don't review short stories because it would be less work for anyone to read them than to look for a review of one).

I've dropped my Kindle, which chipped one side but has left no other damage, and used it as an MP3 player (only at night, not on the bike) during the Tour Across France, and the Tour's long French meals meant that the Kindle got lots and lots of use. Both my brothers have one each, as does Mike Samuel, and all our Kindles are tied to one account, which means that when one person buys a book, everyone else gets to read it. (Hint: tie your Kindle to a prolific reader's account, and you'll likely never have to buy your own reading material ever again, provided you have similar tastes) I have bought a second battery so I can swap batteries if I were to drain it, for instance, while sailing through Turkey.

Lots of people talk about how eReader on the iPhone or other smart phone is all they need. My response to that is that people who say that aren't avid readers --- the content range on the Kindle is much larger than that available on eReader. Neither The Snowball nor The Story of the Tour de France are available via eReader, not to mention the very worth your time The Trouble with Physics. For whatever reason, Amazon.com got their DRM model right, and I don't anticipate that content gap between the Kindle and the other readers to narrow any time soon. Sony's Reader might be the closest in terms of getting content, but the latter two of the three above mentioned books aren't available on Sony's bookstore either.

All in all, if you like to read, don't think about it --- just buy a Kindle (use promo code OPRAHWINFREY for $50 for the next week). Your eyes will thank you, and you will find yourself doing way more reading than you did before. Best of all, wherever you go, you will be able to read in sips, something recommended by non other than Stephen King himself. No more excuses for not being able to read 4 hours a day!

Review: The Art of the Start

The Art of the Start (kindle edition) is Guy Kawasaki's short book for entrepreneurs.

The important thing to note is that Guy Kawasaki got his start as an evangelist for Apple during the 1990s. He's not an engineer, so his perspective from start-ups is that of a marketing and branding person. That's pretty valuable, but he's not going to tell you how to build product other than to build a good one.

The details are pretty interesting. For instance, in an FAQ, he tells you how much you should pay for a board of director member (0.25-0.5% of the company, 1-2% for a super-star). That kind of important benchmarking is very important for most founders, who make the mistake of not being generous enough to early employees or (rarely) being too generous. It would have been nice to see that kind of stuff in a table somewhere, but I guess if I want to see that, maybe I'll have to write a book.

Overall, this will be a useful book when you've already built a product and want to start selling it or bootstrapping or raising money to launch the company. It won't, however, tell you whether your product is any good, or what kind of company structure you should have. During the Web 2.0 boom, lots of companies launched plenty of web-sites with the idea that if you got users first, the monetization would follow. I'm not sure that's going to work going forward, and I'm glad that Guy Kawasaki points out that both Apple and Microsoft were not venture-funded startups --- they bootstrapped themselves into profitability.

Given how short this book is, it's worth reading, but then again, so's Paul Graham's startup essays. Both have their own biases, and perhaps one of these days, someone will have to write a book to temper the ra-ra startup enthusiasm with a bit of realism. Mildly recommended --- check it out from your library rather than pay Amazon price for it.

Review: Flash

L. E. Modesitt's Flash(kindle edition) is set in the near future, where countries have been dissolved and re-created to provide a backdrop where a lot of police (called safety officers) functions have been automated, but where powers of privacy, etc., are so strong that it is almost impossible for the safety officers to gather enough evidence to convict anyone.

Into this setting, meet Dr. Jonat deVrai, a former marine who has turned himself into a product placement consultant, someone who analyzes the effectiveness of a product placement campaign. At the start of the novel, he is commissioned by a well-regarded institute to perform a study on the effectiveness of such techniques in a political campaign. This study leads him to follow 4 political campaigns, but strange things start to happen --- his business starts to boom, and then he starts to get shot at, and threats starts to show.

What's great about the novel is the realism. Jonat deVrai is no hero --- he has nieces to meet, a sister who keeps trying to match-make him, and lots of interruptions that otherwise keep him from doing his job. When he finally has to start defending himself, he starts to do so (as a trained marine would) in such a way as to not interfere with the rest of his life.

The romance in the novel is handled a bit woodenly --- the reader sees it long before the characters do, which perhaps is intentional but does leave you why Jonat is so dense! But the build up to the climax is very well done, and the ending satisfactory --- you don't get the all-loose-ends tied up neatness that some novels have that lead you to wonder if they really wanted to write "and they lived happily ever after" at the end of the book.

Recommended as a dense, interesting read, and I will look for more of L.E. Modesitt's work in the future.

Review: Orphans of Chaos

Orphans of Chaos (kindle edition) starts off deceptively like The Golden Compass or many other such young-adult novels --- a teenage narrator (told very pleasantly in first person by a young and beautiful girl named Amelia) says matter-of-factly that it took her and her friends a while to discover that they weren't really human.

The rest of the novel revolves around the exploration of what these young people really are, and the process by which they find out that the English boarding school that they are in aren't really what it seems. They discover that they have special powers, but interpret them in completely different ways (Amelia sees everything in terms of Einsteinian Physics, but her friend might see the same phenomena as being caused by fairies).

Two things, however, make this not quite the typical young adult novel. First is the prevalence of sexual motives and suggestiveness --- there are several scenes that might have come right out of some fantasy erotica novel, rather than a science fiction or fantasy novel. That's how explicit it gets. Secondly, in young adult novels, the protagonists change and grow. That's pretty much the point of a YA novel. But John C. Wright chose to reset everything at the end of the novel right back to the state that they were in in the beginning. This feels quite a bit like cheating --- unless the next novel resumes and doesn't waste time explaining everything we learned in this one (fat chance of that), it's going to make this novel feel like a wasted novel.

The writing is not bad, competently done, with all the allusions to Greek mythology handled very well and in an intelligent fashion. But the above two problems left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that I cannot think that I will pay money to read the rest of the series. (I got the novel for free during the tor.com ebook promotion)

Review: Starfish

Starfish(Creative Commons Licensed electronic editions) is the first in Peter Watt's Rifters series. The novel is set in 2050, when under-water Geothermal power plants have become feasible, and are serving the power needs of a world flooded by the results of excessive fossil fuel consumption.

Now, you can't just put up a power plant and then not provide maintenance, so the authorities put in a crew to keep everything up and running. The problem is, what kind of people would be willing to live 3000m under the surface? The answer: misfits, pedophiles, and other criminals exchanging a work term in exchange for far less desirable consequences of their previous lives.

Peter Watt's web page claims that he's written a really depressing future, but to someone well versed in the actual predictions of what might happen if we keep burning fossil fuels, he looks quite optimistic. After the first half of the book exploring what it's like and what kind of modifications humans would need to live under-water, the book gradually expands to take in the rest of the world, revealing the scientists behind the project, and the sinister aims of the corporation running it.

The characters are wooden, and written in such a way that I could care less about any of them --- at no point did I feel anything resembling an emotional connection to anyone in the novel, and that is the novel's downfall. At the climax, when bad things start to happen really fast and things start to explode, I felt empty, as though everything was happening so far away it didn't matter. Even the action scenes evoked no reaction from me.

I have no intention of reading any of the rest of the series, but since it's all free, you might as well try it and see if you'll like it.