Review: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

Where Good Ideas Come From is a book about the history of innovation. As a book, however, it's not terribly innovative, with only one or two new ideas in the entire book.

The central idea Stephen Johnson advocates is that the environment has to be right for new ideas to develop. A great new idea by itself in the wrong environment is death. For instance, Charles Babbage's Difference Engine was a success, while the Analytical Engine was too far ahead of its time to have any discernible impact.

To bolster this thesis, Johnson points to many analogies. For instance, coral reefs are comparatively productive, while the rest of the open ocean does not support as diverse a collection of underwater life.

His other big idea is that even within an individual, the most productive people don't just have one project, but have multiple projects and lots of different hobbies. The main reason for this is that having such a diverse set of interest is generative: it makes it more likely that you'll be able to cross-connect apparently unrelated parts of your life. (He doesn't mention that having lots of different friends would most likely be also good for similar reasons) In most cases, the breakthrough doesn't come about as a result of a single a-ha insight, but comes through constant and consistent exposure to the problem space over long periods (decades is the usual answer). He even points out that "Eureka" moments described by scientists (for instance, the description of the Benzene as a ring structure by Kekule) came about only after pondering the problem for a significant amount of time.

Unfortunately, Johnson does not take his story to the ultimate conclusions: that our current tendency towards specialization in the sciences almost seems designed to thwart otherwise fruitful cross-pollination between specialties and sub-specialties, at precisely the time when such collaboration would be useful. He points out that recent productive innovations (such as the Internet, the World-Wide Web, and even YouTube) come about as a result of government funded research and academia, where capitalism plays very little role, while less open structures have stagnated.

In the end, I wonder if Johnson ended up reading his own book, since one cannot avoid that the path American society is leading down (the massive reduction in our science budget as well as increased specialization in subfields) would lead to less innovation in the future.

Nevertheless, his book is worth reading in that it's short: fully half the print pages were devoted to bibliography and references. And even if he doesn't correctly draw the correct conclusions from the data, you could.

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories

When I heard from Larry that Tim Powers had a new short story collection out (The Bible Repairman and Other Stories), I picked it up on the Kindle during a trip after searching the local library catalog.

The title story sucked me in through the sample. Now, you have to be in the right mood to read a Tim Powers story, so you can't just plow them through and chew them up like candy. But that's not a bad thing. It means that you can keep the book on your Kindle, munching on one story as you get into the mood. All the last stories have at least one used book dealer or writer as one of the characters. While writers probably will never go out of business as long as there are stories to be told, the used book dealer or rare book collector is probably the last of a dying breed, and I wonder if these stories will make sense 50 years in the future.

The big surprise was that the last story in the book is in some sense a sequel to The Stress of Her Regard, one of Power's best but least known work. (Hardcover editions are selling for over $100 on Amazon) It's a long, satisfying story and well worth the cost of the book alone, but wouldn't be as good if you hadn't read the aforementioned novel. In any case, reading the story made me want to run out and buy the novel so I can read it again.

Recommended.

Review: Premium Rush

We needed an excuse to visit the Living Room Theater in Portland, and Premium Rush was available at a reasonable time, so we paid a visit.

From 2012-08-30

The theater is pretty cool, laid out with tables and comfy chairs (more comfortable than the usual multiplex) in a cosy environment where you can order dinner and have it served at your chair like you were at home. The result is that you forget about the screening quality, but treat the movie as though you were at home watching it, albeit without the ever convenient pause button.

The movie's plot is predictable and simple. You can also read a regular person's review. But what does a serious cyclist think of it? Well, I'm happy to report most of the movie's pretty accurate. The common bike accidents (even car-bike collisions) are due to the cyclist doing stupid things like riding wrong way, getting door'd, and of course, mixing it up with pedestrians and not behaving like a vehicle. Unfortunately, the lay audience would probably watch this movie and think about how dangerous cycling in a big city is rather than that a cyclist behaving the way the protagonist does in this movie would be an idiot.

There are several points of unrealism in the movie. First of all, the villain of the movie manages to get around the city of New York faster in a car than a strong cyclist can do it. That's impossible in any big city, even one as small as San Francisco, let alone New York. If car drivers could get about faster in New York than cyclists could do so, then bike messengers wouldn't have jobs.

There's also a bike race that's entirely unrealistic. A cyclist with a derailleur bike with brakes could simply draft the fixie and win in a final sprint. The fixie couldn't possibly draft the derailleur bike with brakes because the derailleur bike could brake harder than the fixie could. Of course, both cyclists in the movie are testosterone-filled boneheads rather than intelligent druggies/road racing cyclists, but as the only professional cyclists around who don't take have to performance-enhancing drugs to succeed, one would think that they'd be familiar with the tricks of the trade.

Having said all that, if you could turn off your brain, it's a perfectly enjoyable movie. My parents both laughed and enjoyed the movie despite not being completely versant with English (the movie is very thin on plot, as I said). Watch it for entertainment, but if your mom already worries about you riding your bike, tell her it's a stupid movie not worth her time. You wouldn't even be lying.

Review: Whiteout Volume 1

Whiteout: Volume 1 is a mystery story about a serial killer in Antarctica. I wish I could say that it worked for me, but I think this is one of those stories that would have worked better in prose format than in a graphic novel format.

First of all, the book assumes a lot of knowledge about Antarctica that the common reader might not know. For instance, my first impressions about serial killers in Antarctica was: "Hey, it's a bunch of science stations. Very few scientists become serial killers, and there's probably only 12 of them anyway, so how the heck could this be credible?" A novel would have explained to me that my misconceptions were wrong with statistics and some facts, but the comic couldn't do so.

Then there's the motivation for the killings. Again, while plausible, I think it would have been a really thin line. Finally, there's no map showing you where all the places our U.S. Marshal/Detective visited, to get a sense of scale. The transitions are not well done.

The plus side: the art fits the story as well as any art could, and the characterization is good. Rucka doesn't hesitate to put his protagonist through hell. And it's just perfect for an airplane read.

Review: Cinderella from Fabletown with Love

Cinderella was one of the first spinoffs from Fables. It's a spy/thriller-type romp about Fabletown's own superspy, who comes complete with special magical bracelets courtesy of the magic users on the 13th floor.

While I love the concept of Cinderella as a superspy, and the art was enjoyable, the plot was a bit thin. Our superspy immediately runs into her counterpart from the Arabic kingdoms while tracking down some folks who are (naughty naughty) trading in magic items, and from then on it's like the story runs on rails. There's actually very little character development, and while we do see all her magic facilities in use, there's nothing that changes the status quo in Fables land, which while understandable, doesn't feel very real compared to Willingham's run on the series.

While this is enjoyable airplane reading, I think for the $10.50 or so you are expected to pay for graphic novels nowadays, you're better off checking it out from the library and spending your hard earned money elsewhere.

Review: Chinglish

Top level summary: Go see it now. You only have until October 21st!

Chinglish is David Henry Hwang's play about misunderstandings due to translations between Chinese and English. Those misunderstandings happen with multiple language pairs, including Japanese and even German, but David Henry Hwang also wrote M. Butterfly, a Tony winning play (and a movie worth watching) that's nothing at all like Madame Butterfly. So when he writes something it's well worth watching.

The play is currently running at the Berkeley Rep, and your experience starts when you enter the door of the theater, where they've cleverly introduced bilingual Chinese-English signs, with deliberate literal translations to get you into the mood. Well done! Despite the rave reviews about the plays, I was very concerned that all the reviews came from white people, who might not actually know enough Mandarin to know whether the Chinese in the play are portrayed correctly.

I needn't have worried. The play is funny, right from the start, even including a presentation about the use of simplified Chinese versus traditional Chinese, leading to an understanding of the etymology of confusion in translation today. This is great stuff, and you literally could not make this up. The plot revolves around an Ohio businessman who goes to China trying to sell signs as part of a city contract. He engages a Business Consultant (a foreigner with decent Mandarin skills), starts talking to the consultant's connections, and hilarity ensues.

If that was all that went on to the play, you'd get your money's worth from the laughs alone. But David Henry Hwang tries to do a lot more with the play, and impressively succeeds! The business plot is great, and at one point, one of the main characters has a dialog that makes no sense, but by the end of the play when the reveal happens, everything the character says makes sense in retrospect, which is an impressive achievement. There's a philosophical musing about the different expectations Western people and Chinese people bring to marriage, and (at least according to my wife) the play displays a subtle but thorough understanding of politics, business, and corruption in today's China. I will note that M. Butterfly is not allowed to play in China, and my wife thinks that no Chinese director will touch Chinglish with a 100 foot pole. (It will play in Hong Kong in March, however) If you've been reading the news about Bo Xilai, keep in mind that this play was written and produced before that story hit the headlines!

As far as the Berkeley Rep's presentation is concerned, the actors are all good, with the exception of Michelle Krusiec, who has an inconsistent Mandarin enunciation. Sometimes, she pronounces perfect Mandarin, and other times, she betrays an accent that sounds like an American who learnt Mandarin incorrectly in college. It's just wrong often enough to be distracting and jarring in an otherwise excellent presentation.

One of the most subtle thing about the humor in the play is that the use of super-titles actually helps the humor even for those of us who know both Mandarin and English. This is because in common use of Mandarin, we try to make sense of the way foreigners pronounce Mandarin, and therefore sometimes miss the funny connotations behind the mistranslations. The only improvement I would want to make would be to add translations to Chinese for the English dialogue, which would mean that I could take my parents to this play and they would enjoy it.

In any case, the play is perfect for those Chinese people with non-Chinese SOs, or anyone who speaks both Mandarin and English. Pure English-speakers would thoroughly enjoy this as well. If you only speak Chinese, well, chances are you're not reading this review.

Highly recommended. Well worth the drive to Berkeley. And while you're there, visit Fentons Creamery

KidCo Peapod - product review and meta-review [guest post]

The Review

When Hannah was little, we spent a little time searching around for some kind of apparatus for her to sleep in while traveling. Very early in her life, she coslept with us, but we ended that after about 3.5 months, well before we started doing any serious traveling with her.

We’d gotten a hand-me-down Pack’n Play sort of thing, but even folded down it was awkwardly long and heavy. We looked at travel cribs, but most of what we saw seemed to be shrunk-down versions of our Pack’n Play. Less heavy and bulky than their bigger brethren, but still a lot of mass to be managing while on a trip.

Then we came across the KidCo Peapod. It’s a folding enclosed tent which is longest and broadest at the base, which is an oval sleeping area. There are mesh panels along most of the sides; one of the main mesh panels along one side zippers open and shut for access to the sleeping area, and other, opaque panels can be zipped or toggle-buttoned down or up as is appropriate for the situation. There’s also a pocket on the underside of the tent -- accessed via a zipper on the outside -- which holds an inflatable sleeping mat, which cushions the sleeping area from underneath.

Though there are few other variations in the product line, the main one is in size -- we got a Peapod Plus, which is a little bigger and heavier, but has more headroom before your child outgrows it.

For travel, the tent collapses down and the tentpole-like material that provides structure to the canopy curls in a tripartite sort of way, making the whole package circular. (The inflatable mat packs down separately.) Folded, the diameter of this disc is about 24 inches with maybe 5-6 inches of thickness.

We used our Peapod traveling with Hannah in 2009 and 2010. It performed very well. It was straightforward to pack or carry separately -- sometimes as a carryon bag on a plane -- and fairly quick to set up on the other end. We also would generally contrive to stay in suites or apartments or other such rooms while traveling. In a setup like this, we found that we could set the tent up in the bedroom at the start of the night, and drag it out to the living room gently when we were ready to go to sleep ourselves without waking Hannah up. This would have been pretty much impossible with a travel crib.

Some other notes: the pump included to inflate the air mattress was acceptable, but a little chintzy. Using a proper bike pump with a ball-nozzle attachment was always a better option if available. We also learned that if packing the bed for a short car trip -- dinner with friends before returning to our sleeping quarters, for example -- it was helpful to deflate the mattress just enough to fold it in half before transporting the bed by car, for ease of setup on the other side.

We never used the sleeping bag included with the package. Also, the design doesn’t admit a fitted sheet or anything, so Hannah was sleeping on bare plastic, and would sometimes wake up with a sweaty head. If she’d ever had a messy issue of some sort in the Peapod -- badly blown diaper, say, or vomit -- it would have been hard to clean up. Nothing like that ever happened, though.

In all, I recommend the product pretty wholeheartedly. Enough so that I recommended it to my brother and sister-in-law, who bought a smaller-sized one for their son, and have inherited ours. (Probably our fault -- we called it Hannah’s “Baby Tent”, and when Hannah clearly no longer thought of herself as a baby, she didn’t want to use it any more. We travel with a kiddie Aerobed instead nowadays.)

You may have a hard time finding a retailer for it. Even, notably, Amazon. Why?

The Incident

If you do searches for peapods nowadays -- “peapod amazon” in a Google search, for example, or “peapod safety”, you’ll likely turn up something like this link. Or perhaps this Amazon discussion. Blockquoting from the former:

URGENT NEWS: 5 Month Old Infant Passes Away in PeaPod Travel Crib

Twiniversity Member Christine Moyers writes:

“On Dec. 23 my son Daniel died of “positional asphyxiation” — he suffocated — while sleeping in his PeaPod Travel Crib. Yesterday I spoke with Dr. Jessica French, the medical examiner who conducted my son Daniel’s autopsy, and while it will take a few more weeks for the results to be finalized, she can say now that Daniel suffocated, and did not die of SIDS.

The PeaPod Travel Crib has non-breathable lower siding.”

Christine goes on to say “I asked Dr. French if Daniel would still be alive if I had not put him in the PeaPod Crib — and she said yes, he would be. He was a healthy, thriving, beautiful baby boy.

This was an accident in an unsafe product. I know that intellectually. But our job as parents is to protect our babies. And for that I feel like a failure.

Please pass this information along to anyone and everyone you know. According to the company, “hundreds of thousands” of these tents have been sold. Given what we now know, NO BABY should sleep in a PeaPod Travel Crib.

Following on some other links (amazon review permalink, for example), you’ll find that the incident happened when visiting grandparents, and is the first time either child had been in the product. (Twins; the other child was unharmed.) By the way, when this story started pinging around last March, when Amazon received the review describing the death, etc., they pulled the product from their virtual shelves. It is not back as of this writing.

Anyway, this all sounds pretty serious. I am very sorry for Christine’s and her husband’s (and her whole family’s) loss. “Yikes,” I thought, “was I exposing Hannah to undue risk by using this product?” But another part of me was wondering “well, there was a certification process for this product. I don’t have the domain-specific knowledge to understand whether that process missed something. Or perhaps this incident was just a fluke?” I try not to expose our children (or ourselves) to easily avoidable risk -- I load my dishwasher silverware-pointed-down because kids have been hurt falling into open dishwashers, to provide some perspective -- but it’s impossible to legislate and design all the risk out of a product, an activity, or any other real-world interest.

So I went digging for more details on what actually happened in this case.  It took a little bit of digging, but here’s the CPSC incident report:

On Dec. 23, 2011 we found our five-month-old son dead in his PeaPod Plus Portable Children's Travel Bed (Model P201). He was rolled three-quarters of the way onto his belly, face down and with his weight pressing him into in the non-breathable plastic sidingof the travel crib. As per manufacturer's instructions, we had not zippered the travel bed shut, so his legs were hanging out of the "door" of the travel bed.

It continues from there, but hey. Wait a second. That’s not what the manufacturer’s instructions actually say to do! Leaving aside the issue that you’re giving your child access to the whole room they’re in should they wriggle out of the bed -- instead of access to just a small, enclosed, flat space -- the unzippered edge of the compartment is now a lip elevated 4-7 inches off the ground to get hung up on. Bad things could clearly happen if you step back and think it through. A kid could end up lying face-down on a plastic surface, needing to change positions, but with nothing to kick at or push off of but air. You could imagine the same thing happening with, say, an ordinary crib with some missing slats. (The breathability of the top of a mattress -- fitted sheet notwithstanding -- is hardly high.)

So here’s what the manufacturer’s instructions actually say (for this model; also the one that we owned):

Some PeaPod models have side zipper panels that can be rolled and  

secured in an open position using the hook and eye clasps provided.

To leave main zipper panel open, simply flip unzipped panel up and

over top of PeaPod Plus.

My emphasis. The instructions don’t tell you that you should keep the zippered panels open. Merely that it’s a possibility. In the context of a preceding sentence about possibilities, not something you must do. These are situational instructions, one would think; if the peapod is being used for supervised play, or for older children who can unzip the thing themselves anyway.

So really, this seems like a really sad and tragic user error. I don’t say this to pin some kind of badge of bad parenting on Christine and her husband -- I’m incredibly sympathetic and sorry for their loss -- just that in this one case, they made a mistake that had a risk of a bad outcome, and they got unlucky. There but for the grace of God and all that. The stresses and strains of caring for two newborns -- Hannah’s a single, I can scarcely imagine caring for twins -- can’t have helped either.

Could the product instruction sheet have been clearer? Yes, but the way in which the instructions were misread was very fluky. For the sake of obviousness, I’ll predict that future versions of the instructions will disclaim: “IF USING THIS PRODUCT FOR SLEEP WITH A CHILD OF LIMITED STRENGTH AND MOBILITY, OR IN ANY CASE ONE BELOW 18 MONTHS OF AGE, BE SURE TO SECURE THE SLEEPING AREA BY ZIPPERING THE MESH SHUT.”

Which is to say, I don’t think the Peapod’s danger as a product is at all commensurate with its web infamy. Again, keep in mind that no thing or activity is wholly risk-free, but there’s no evidence that this product has been injurious when used appropriately. Reading the first few links I’d found casually, you’d think that no sane, informed parent would go near the Peapod, and it took some digging to figure out what really happened. I hope this balances out the picture for you. Pay attention when you use it -- that really goes for just about everything -- but I recommend it.

Disclaimer

I’m not an insider to this story at all, nor a domain expert. I’m just piecing stuff together that I’ve seen in internet posts, product reviews, product manuals, etc. I don’t have any financial interest in in KidCo, its parent company, or its success. Similarly for Amazon. I suppose Amazon is a major client of Google advertising products, so if controversy over the safety of the KidCo Peapod might affect Amazon’s advertising strategy around that particular product, this could affect my employer financially. But this all seems extremely attenuated.

Review: Clif Crunch Bar

For many years, I've relied on the Clif bar as my standard bar for on the bike or hiking nutrition. It's a moist tasty bar that fits in the jersey pocket, doesn't go bad too quickly, and tastes better than many of the alternatives I've tried. The bad thing about them: cost. You can occasionally find them for $1/bar at the supermarket when there's a sale, but they frequently cost as much as $1.50 per bar. Given that a decent length bike ride can use up 2-4 bars, it's really expensive. And your usual suspect for low prices, Costco, doesn't let you choose flavors, but instead gives you a variety pack.

Well, I recently saw the Clif crunch bar at Costco. These are much cheaper, around $0.40/bar from Amazon, with a subscribe and save option that's even cheaper. You might think that they're less calorie dense, but at 200 calories per package, they're just as calorie dense as the regular clif bar. They even taste better (I sampled both peanut butter and the chocolate macadamia nut versions)

I've been using them for the last 4 months and they're really pretty good. You might think that they'd fall apart during a ride, but in practice, that's rarely happened, and when they did fall apart, it wasn't an issue: I wanted them in smaller bite size pieces anyway! They're no good if you have to eat while riding, because if they fall apart on a bite you'll lose bits of the bar. But I'm a bike tourist, not a racer. And at the price difference, you could lose half a package per use and still come out ahead.

Highly recommended. I'll be switching to them permanently for my long distance rides and hikes.

Review: The Apocalypse Codex

After The Fuller Memorandum, Stross lost a lot of credit with me. He's simply not capable of producing a spy thriller the way John Le Carre or Tim Powers does. So when The Apocalypse Codex came out, I just put a hold on it in the library expecting to not get past a couple of chapters.

Fortunately, Stross returns to form in this novel. Bob Howard, the protagonist, has been promoted into management and is now assigned to take care of two contractors. The plot revolves around an evil TV evangelist (are there any other kind?) and of course, Lovecraftian horrors.

The setting has lost all of its freshness at this point, but Stross manages to keep it lively and of course, his usual sneer on American culture and religious fanaticism is fun for those of us who are religious cynics. The book is short and easily finished on a moderate length plane ride.

Recommended as an airplane novel. But read The Atrocity Archives or The Jennifer Morgue first if you haven't already done so.

Review: Alif the Unseen

I checked out Alif the Unseen from the library after Scarlet praised it to the heavens on her blog.

It's a fusion of Arabian fantasy and hacker culture. Maybe if you liked one thousand and one nights and perhaps enjoyed Snow Crash but wished it had a little less virtual reality you would enjoy it.

Set in an unknown country in the middle east in an un-named city, Alif the unseen is a proxy operator getting paid to shield his clients from the ever prying eye of a typical oppressive middle-eastern state. He has a girlfriend, an annoying neighbor, and few other friends, most of whom he's met on the internet. When his girlfriend suddenly breaks off their engagement, his life starts falling apart as the oppressive government suddenly takes an interest in him.

From then on, it's a boisterous romp through the hidden side of the fantastic Arabia: the parts when Djinns live. Our protagonist moves between the world (though not without unease), dragging his annoying neighbor along and getting into one scrape after another as he tries to avoid the authorities and win back his love. He discovers a magic book which allows him to tap into the quantum mysteries of the world, and that sets off a chain of events which leads to an Arab spring.

I wanted to like this book, but the protagonist, unfortunately, is a whiner. Not only is he a whiner, he spends a lot of time being in denial, either about the world he finds himself in, his ex-girlfriend, his annoying neighbor, or even his current state of affairs. In fact, his role in the plot feels like he's just being swept away by one event or another (or by one person or another) without any control whatsoever. As a result, his character doesn't change, and when he does finally grow up, I found the result unbelievable.

Having said that, the world that Wilson creates is enjoyable, and her use of technical details fairly accurate (not withstanding her non-understanding of what quantum computing could actually do), something unusual in a fantasy writer. The motif of a book-within-a-book was fun, but in the end I didn't feel like the author managed to make me think that it was anything other than a MacGuffin.

Would I recommend this book? Mildly. It was worth checking it out at the library, but I certainly wouldn't recommend paying full price for it. If the protagonist annoys you put it down because he's not going to get any less annoying. If you're into the the recent events in the middle east, perhaps it would resonate more for you. As it is, I think I would recommend The Magician King or The Kingdom of Gods over this book.

Among Others has won the Hugo!

Last year's Hugos were no good for me, but this year's Best Hugo Novel was won by Among Others, which is a highly recommended book for me.

I've read all but one of the runner ups, and I agree, none of them deserve to win compared to what Jo Walton has done. Highly recommended, and if my earlier review didn't cause you to run out and buy and read the book, maybe this award will.

Review: Skizz

Skizz is a standalone graphic novel by Alan Moore. It was first serialized in 2000 A.D> at the start of his career, and the plot sounds very much like E.T.: an extra terrestrial is stuck on Earth, and some high schoolers end up having to rescue him from the government.

Despite what feels like a derivative plot, the book works in typical Alan Moore fashion: the high schooler who finds Skizz is a self-confident, actively involved girl, Roxy. There are many funny moments as she tries to figure out on her own what to do with "her" Alien. Skizz does learn to talk, and he does not seem as pathetic as the E.T. from the movie.

Finally, the end of the story is a bit too similar to E.T., but again, Roxy had a plan that did not depend on the Deus Ex Machina. I liked that.

Was this a waste of time? No. Is this a don't miss like Swamp Thing or even The Ballad of Halo Jones? No. Mildly recommended, but read the others first if you haven't already read them.

Review: Breasts

As an Asian immigrant, I don't share American men's obsession with breast size, but when I read an excerpt from Florence William's Breasts, I immediately placed a hold on it from the library. It's a good book and a fun read.

Fundamentally, despite male obsession with breasts, there's actually been relatively little non-cancer research on how they work, what susceptibilities they have, and how they evolved. For instance, other primates do not have permanently rounded breasts: the female of those species tend to enlarge their breasts just in time for breast feeding and then the breasts fade back afterwards. Williams discusses the various hypotheses for why humans are special in this regard (and yes, sexual selection is one of the hypotheses), and why and how they evolved.

The rest of book, however, throws out information that I'd never seen anywhere else, and hence I found myself sucked into reading more and more. For instance, breasts as fatty tissues, essentially hold on to many of the man made chemicals around us. Which means that if you test the breast milk of a typical American woman, you might find PCBs, and various other environmental toxins. What's even more interesting is that the toxins get loaded into the breast milk fed into infants. Williams points out that humans are on top of a very long food chain, and the baby's on top of even where mom is. There's apparently already evidence that among certain species of dolphins, the first-born has a mortality rate 40% higher than its siblings because of the dumping of environmental toxins into its body. Birth order might become more and more important in the future for humans. (Don't tell the La Leche League about this) In fact, even amongst humans, Williams makes the provocative statement in the book that breast milk from the Inuit Eskimos (with their heavy seafood diet) could be classified as industrial waste, and that Sweden is currently considering recommending that breast feeding lasts only for 6 months. That sounds incredibly disturbing.

Other chapters explore silicone implants, how milk is produced, what happens during pregnancy, the impact of the pill and hormone replacement therapy. One particularly fun one to read is the one describing how men can actually get breast cancer. (Don't worry guys, you only have 1/100th the chance of getting breast cancer that women do --- not that it's any consolation if you happen to get "lucky")

Speaking of breast cancer. One thing the book raises is that women who get their first pregnancy before their twenties are much more protected from breast cancer than women who get their first pregnancy after 30. I'm very surprised the conservatives haven't made this a big deal yet, if true. In any case, Williams explains why this comes about, and what the mechanism for this protective effect is.

In any case, I found this book a great read. I do have to wonder about the author's sources and how much of what she writes is actually accurate, but there's a fairly complete bibliography at the back of the book so you can check out her sources and references for yourself if you're inclined to. And unlike most other non-fiction books nowadays, the references don't take up half the book.

Recommended.

KTSF Channel 26 Interview

I was interviewed in May by the local Chinese language television news about my book, An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups. It aired some time in late June, and I'm told aired again fairly recently. I didn't expect the segment to affect my sales, and in retrospect, made a few fundamental errors that I need to correct in the future:

1. Screw ethnic pride and do the interview in English! The problem with doing it in Chinese is that nobody can Google for my book in Chinese! XiaoQin points out that many Chinese people (rightly or not) think that English is classier and I would net more sales that way. Not to mention that Chinese input is a disaster.
   
2. Stop the head-wag. I must have spent too much time with Indian roommates during my formative years.
   
3. Get the station to at least show my business card at some point.
   

In case you can't tell, the interview was done at Ranch 99 in Cupertino Village. All in all, I had to get experience doing TV interviews at some point, so doing it in a Chinese language channel was as obscure as I could get. If I'd embarrassed myself completely (and I could have), nobody would ever have known.

For those who don't know, the channel is subtitled in Chinese, because written Chinese transcends all Chinese "dialects." (Cantonese and Mandarin, for instance, has as much relationship between them as Italian and Spanish, for instance)

Southern California 2012

SoCal 2012

Cathy had a wedding at Disneyland, so rather than just go for a day, XiaoQin and I decided to visit my brother in San Diego and Kevin as well.

From SoCal 2012

Kevin was our wedding photographer, and we wanted to meet his child, Calvin. Calvin's almost 2 years old, so it was a bit of a preview of what a toddler was like. We visited Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and walked around Playa Vista.

From SoCal 2012

We even took a ride on the Ferris Wheel! My impression of LA was the same as before: traffic jams getting from place to place, and every street looks like Stevens Creek Boulevard.

We visited Anaheim for Cathy's Wedding, but did not actually get a chance to go to Disneyland. Mickey and Minnie paid a visit to the wedding, though!

From SoCal 2012

In San Diego, my brother got us Kayak tours to the caves. The tides were perfect and we got to steer our tandem Kayak through the cave to the sounds of Sea Lions in their mating frenzy. We did dump the boat when launching though, but fortunately we were wearing wet suits so we got cold for just a little bit. San Diego water's about 70 degrees, not quite enough to need a wet suit, but since it was foggy, the wet suits helped to keep us warm.

From SoCal 2012

The next day, my brother and I biked from where we stayed to Torrey Pines. Since it was a short ride (2 hours long), we hammered to get a tough workout. Then we drove over to Mission Bay and rented a small Catamaran.

From SoCal 2012

I'd never sailed a small catamaran before, so it was an experience. Those have a reputation for flipping easily, but the reality was, the catamaran we hired had such a small sail area that we could not possibly flip it under the current conditions. My brother had spent a lot of time telling me not to expect too much because there was usually not much consistent wind in the afternoon, but with clear skies we also had a consistent strong wind, which made it a lot of fun. XiaoQin decided that small boat sailing could be fun after all.

From SoCal 2012

We then went to Torrey Pines State Preserve and hiked the Guy Fleming trail and the 3/4 Mile Beach Trail before walking back to the car and then going to a Japanese restaurant for dinner.

From SoCal 2012

For our last full day in San Diego, we went to the USS Midway. It's an aircraft carrier that was turned into a museum. Walking through the museum, I was impressed by how large everything in an aircraft carrier was (except for crew quarters, of course), but everything seemed familiar. Then I realized that a lot of the plot points in Battlestar Galactica were modeled after aircraft carrier operations, which was why everything looked so familiar --- down to the old style telephone. (For those who haven't seen the series, the Galactica was also a carrier about to be turned into a museum at the start of the series)

From SoCal 2012

We then went to Cabrillo National Monument to see the tidepools and the old lighthouse as well as to see the history of Spanish exploration in San Diego.

From SoCal 2012

I'd stupidly left the swimming trunks at home for our last day, so we went back to the sailing center and rented the smallest centerboard sailboat they had (a 14.2 Catalina). This boat carried enough sail to potentially capsize, so Xiaoqin got a good feel for the thrill and potential spills of small centerboard boat sailing.

After all that, we had a dinner at a Teochew noodle place, ate some ice cream, and got up early the next day to catch a plane home. My brother told me that we were unusually tough visitors to host because we weren't interested in Seaworld or the Zoo or Legoland, but my suspicion is that the next time we visit we'll have someone who does want to visit all those places.

Review: Dune

I read Dune back in high school, and thought it was a great read and a fun novel. I just read Dune again as an adult, and am blown away by how great a novel it is.

The structure of the novel is a linear narrative, but Frank Herbert is a master of "in-cluing": within the first 10 pages, he's set up the world the characters live in. Better yet, he's even spoiled his own novel by telling you about the upcoming betrayal of the protagonists and what's going to happen, all the while teaching you about the political intrigues of the novel. Yet you keep reading anyway, because you also learn that the protagonists know they're walking into a trap.

All through the stories, we get wheels within wheels, feints within feints. Everyone seems to have multiple secret identities, and the plot, while convoluted, has such a grand scope that you can't help but be sucked in. In particular, the environment of the planet Arrakis and how the Fremen go about their plans to terraform the planet is crucial to the plot, yet exposed without boring lectures.

I've seen the David Lynch Movie and didn't think it did justice to the book. I have not seen the TV series. All I can say is, this is a book well worth reading, especially if you hated the movie. And yes, the idiot at Penguin Publishing who set the price for the kindle edition of this 40 year-old novel at $15 deserves to land in a special circle of hell.

Nevertheless, the book is highly recommended. You should just check it out from your local library.

Review: Ready Player One

I came to Ready Player One by way of Larry Hosken's short summary. Some books just tickle every little piece of me that makes me me, and this book is one of them.

It's a post-peak oil era, and the world's a pretty crappy place to live. Except for OASIS, which is an MMO that substitutes for real life for most of the world's population, including one geeky high schooler. Just like some of the early adventure games, there's a quest and a prize for the first person to solve the quest. What's great about the quest is that the story provides an in-game rationale for all geeky things from the 1980s, which is probably the era geeks of my generation know well. As a result, everything you knew and love from that era shows up in the book one way or another.

D&D? Check. Ancient Infocom games? Check. 1980s music? Check. Wargames? Check. 1980s anime like G-Force/Gatchaman? Check. Mobile Suit Gundam? Check. Ultraman? Check. The list goes on and on and on, and if you enjoy all those pop culture/video game references, you will start reading this book and basically inhale it in one giant breath, just because it tickles all the formative years of your life.

The bad? The plot's predictable in many places. You wouldn't be surprised by the happy ending, and the plot twists while not 100% predictable, does in many places become a bit of a Deus ex machina here and there. The author does not always play fair with the clues as well.

So? Who should read this book and be delighted by it? If you enjoyed Scott Pilgrim, run don't walk to the nearest copy of the book and buy it. If more than 3 of the above references tickle you personally, checkout the book out of the library. Everyone else? You were probably one of those boring people who didn't even smile when you got to the end of my final exam and discovered that the last question on the exam was: "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen tree swallow."

Recommended.

Travelling with Baby: A few tips

From Europe 2012 Selects

This European Trip was the first extended trip that we had with Bowen. During the trip, we went on planes, taxis, cars, gondolas, trains (lots of trains), buses. Pretty much everything except boats, and I was tempted to take him on a canoe ride. At this point, we have enough experience traveling with Bowen that I can provide a few tips for similarly ambitious parents:

• Leave the full size stroller behind. Use only a baby backpack, or if you can't use a backpack, get an umbrella stroller. Matt Hiller recommends the Maclaren Volo as being suitably light weight, but I haven't tried one. If necessary, just buy a cheap stroller at your destination and ditch it when you leave.
  
• On planes, book ahead to get a bassinet. If you think that all you need to do is to put the baby in there and then let him sleep, you're wrong. On planes, you pretty much have to hold him, rock him, burp him, etc to get him calm. Do what it takes. We had lots of fellow travelers come up to us after the flight from CDG to SFO thanking us because while demanding, Bowen did not fuss or cry during the flight.
  
• On trains in Europe with a rail pass, book first class. Cynthia asked me if I'd gone insane, knowing how cheap I am, but it's worth the nominal extra cost, since you get a lot of room, and fantastic service from the train staff. Bowen got gobs and gobs and gobs of extra chocolate from the staff. Once in the car, look for the handicap area which will take both wheelchairs and large strollers, if you ignored my advice and brought a large stroller.
  
• Buses in the summer are hot and almost certainly a disaster during rush hour. It will get very warm, and the Europeans don't run air conditioning in their buses. The metro in Paris unfortunately isn't much better.
  
• If you do have a large stroller, German-speaking cities have very nice U-Bahn and S-Bahn systems. Those will take strollers and generally have elevators for handicap access which you can use. Avoid cities in non-German-speaking countries if you're going to bring a large stroller.
  
• The best deal is the tram. Many cities have trams which are air conditioned and those will take almost any vehicle, stroller, etc. On one particularly hot day in Vienna, we rode the tram all day with a day ticket, which cost very little and gave us the city sights in air conditioned comfort. We discovered our favorite ice cream place in Vienna as a result.
  
• On Gondolas, remove your backpack carrier and carry onto the Gondola rather than just stepping onto the Gondola. I forgot to do so once and gave poor Bowen a knock on the head.
  
• Be as fit as you can be. It's really nice to be able to backpack with Bowen on hikes. Not only do you get admiring looks from other families, the smile on his face during and after a hike is great. It really is worth getting fit enough to do this.
  
• When renting cars, pre-book a child seat. There's no point carrying a child seat all over Europe if you're doing train transfers. It will just slow you down and add stress to your transfers. Just rent one as needed. The same goes for a portable crib. Don't bring one. Just buy one (30-60 EUR at most European chainstores) and discard when done. Most hotels will provide a portable crib if you ask.
  

To be honest, I didn't expect XiaoQin to be willing to travel with the baby this year, but our doctor told us that if you're going to do it, do it before the baby loses passive immunity from mom (somewhere around the 9-12 month mark is what our pediatrician told us). We did the trip, and baby was fairly happy through out, except for the baby jet lag, which was terrible to behold.

Review: The Story of the Giro D'Italia Volume 2

There's no doubt in anyone's mind that in recent years, the Giro has been the race to watch, rather than the Tour de France, which has tended to be boring, defensive racing. I'm not a big fan of watching bike racing, and from the start, where races were sponsored by newspapers trying to boost circulation, bike racing has always belonged to the written medium. Bill McGann's series, The Story of the Tour De France (Vol 1, Vol 2), and Volume 1 of the Story of the Giro D'Italia proudly belong in this category.

In addition to being an account of the races, it's also an account of the history of doping and drug controls in the sport of cycling:

I spoke to a mechanic who traveled with a top-flight Spanish pro team in the mid-1990s. What he saw frightened him. The racers slept with heart-rate monitors hooked up to alarms. If a sleeping rider’s pulse fell below a certain rate, the alarm went off, the rider was awakened, given aspirin and a saline injection to thin the blood and put on a trainer to get his heart rate up and blood flowing. This was clearly dangerous stuff at the doses racers were using and everyone knew it, but it had a gigantic payoff to the talented and lucky user. As La Gazzetta put it, there was a change in the hierarchy of some teams: the doctor was now more important than the director. (Loc. 1846-50 )

The author does not refrain from speculation about who might have doped and when, and it adds to the entertainment.

Recommended for cycling fans, but read Volume 1 first.

Review: Search Inside Yourself

It's a truism in teaching that the people most in need of the class never show up to class, while the diligent students who don't need to show up for class do so anyway. Search Inside Yourself is remarkable in that while a book in itself wouldn't generally be read by the angry, unreflective people who really need it, Meng managed to get Google to set up a class that would be attended by such people.

While reading the book, I'm struck by how much work meditation is. I'm blessed with a happy nature, so I've never actually needed to meditate. In my younger days, when I was hot-tempered, the section in the book on how to create a gap between stimulus and response would have been helpful, but I found that section in Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and then discovered that aging naturally gave me the calmness I needed to control my emotions.

Or so I thought. After reading this book, however, I realized that my thousands of hours riding a bike was equivalent to all of the exercises described in this book. The focus on the now, for instance is required on a bike. And of course mindful breathing is what every cyclist who climbs mountains has to do. And of course, flow comes naturally to any cyclist who's ever enjoyed cycling on a lonely road.

But most people are not as lucky as I am. I know people who can't start or hold on to an exercise program even to save their lives, let alone just improve their mood. Those people would do well to read this book. On the other hand, this book misses a lot of the many practical tips that I think would be useful for most people. For instance, while meditation could help you control your anger and frustration on your long commute, I would consider it better to lose the need to meditate by living closer to work instead. Meng, understandably doesn't cover these important practical tips, which I consider far more useful for most people, because he's wise enough to live close to work.

While I don't consider the book a waste of time, I found myself thinking that Meng's assumption that exercise and meditation are separate to be false, and that for many people, happiness can be found in something as simple as hiking or cycling. Nevertheless, for those who can't (or won't) start cycling or hiking, this book holds hope that just sitting still could also provide similar benefits. I can recommend this book for those people.