Review: Engineering in Plain Sight

 Engineering in Plain Sight is a book about civil engineering. Chock full of illustrations, it's a guide to the built environment around us discussing (among many other things) how roads are designed, composed, and built, how the sewage system works, including cell towers, how the water system works (including what those water tower tanks are for), and includes dams. I was impressed by how comprehensive the book was and how many items it covered!

If Epic Engineering Failures is about when the engineering principles fail and what they can teach us, this is more like a guide to how things should work when all is done correctly. There's no math in this book, so there's nothing to scare non technical folks away. I thought it was well worth my time.

10 years of Bicycle Quarterly

 I'm much too cheap to pay $44/year for a subscription to Bicycle Quarterly. Their back issues are also expensive. But someone offered me about 10 years in exchange for about $40 after shipping, so I jumped in and read it all. This is not the intended way for people to read the magazine, but I figured it'll give me some insight as to what the magazine's all about. I was not wrong.

First of all, Bicycle Quarterly should be renamed "Jan Heine's Quarterly Opinions, Reviews and Randonenuring Adventures." Nearly every article in the magazine is written by Jan Heine or one of his friends, with a few scant submissions from other people here and there. To my surprise, most of the photos in the magazine are pretty bad. After reading a few of the trip reports, I realized that it's because Jan Heine is not a bicycle tourist. He's a Randonneur, specializing in events where you ride a long distance with little or no sleep to a schedule. Well, if that's your goal you're not going to try to take beautiful pictures, and in fact, at night it's unlikely your photos are going to be any good anyway.

I have no idea who the magazine is aimed for. There's always an article introducing some new technique (like jumping curbs) to the reader, but I imagine most people who read the magazine already know how to do most of the things he describes. There are reviews of bicycles, but they tend to be of reviews of bicycles that are set up like Jan Heine's own favorite bikes. For instance, all bicycles are reviewed with 650b wheels (and 42mm tires), even bikes that would come in 700c sizes as well. The interesting thing is that the market for 650b tires seems to have been shrinking. When your preferred size is losing favor in the market you might want to rethink pushing it to your audience as you could lose credibility. (Having said that, I'm still doing friction shifting and rim brakes, so maybe his audience is like that but about 650b wheels)

Heine talks a lot about tires. Wider is better, and supple tires are best. The issue is that you have a hard time finding really supple tires at wider than about 32mm tires, so he formed another company (Compass Cycles, now Rene Herse) to supply those tires. The problem with his tire testing is that the sample sizes are really small, and the fact that his tires cost more than $90 for the extralight models mean that most people aren't going to be riding them.

Heine also talks a lot about frames and what makes a frame "plane." The term comes from boats where a hull could rise out of the water and "plane" and reduce drag, but his use of it in cycling bears no resemblance to what happens on a boat. Basically, the claim here is that certain frames under certain riders, will flex in such a way that the cyclist can sync with the frame, allowing the frame flex to return energy to propelling the bike up the road during pedal dead spots. If I was unhappy with his tire testing methodology, his statement about planing and cycling comes with next to no evidence. It's all subjective, and there's no attempt to generalize his experience for any other rider (who doesn't have the benefit of hundreds of different bikes to ride, including many custom frames) to figure out what planes and what doesn't. He makes general statements like: "Use lighter tubing for top tubes and down tubes, and stiffer chainstays". Go ahead and build a few bikes like that and figure out which ones planes and which ones do not. Don't have the budget for it? Me neither.

There's an obsession with "rinko" cycling in Japan. (No surprise, Heine's wife is Japanese) Here's the deal, I've ridden in Japan, and it's decent cycling, but nowhere close to what you can get in the alps, where the train systems in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy do not insist that you have to take your bike apart and stuff it into a bag to get on a train.

There's a time when he and his wife tries a really old tandem built by Rene Herse in the alps. But they have crappy gearing and don't do any of the rough stuff. It's all very shallow, because unlike the single bike reviews, Heine has never tried a modern tandem with gears low enough to climb steep stuff with his wife.

All in all, I'm glad I wasn't paying $44/year for a subscription (chances are I would have given up after a year when I noticed nearly everything in the magazine was written by Jan Heine). I'm not sure a typical cyclist reading this magazine will get much out of it, and I've already summarized 10 years of articles for you.

Review: How Medicine Works and When It Doesn't

 How Medicine Works and When It Doesn't is a book by Yale doctor and physician Perry Wilson. It is readable, funny in many parts, and well-written. For instance, he describes a surgeon's interaction with a family of a patient who's undergone surgery:

I remember listening to one of the cardiothoracic surgeons talking to a family after a large aortic arch repair. The patient had done well but was still unconscious, on the breathing machine. The surgeon, an expert by any definition, explained that the surgery was essentially flawless; in a few days, the patient would be up and around, out of the hospital within two weeks. “Thank God,” his wife said. “No, no. You do not thank God,” the surgeon said. “You thank me.” (pg 245)

I laughed out loud reading about it.  The book first describes what is very basic to scientists: correlation is not causation, and bayesian reasoning. He then points out that because of these problems the best way to identify causation is through randomized controlled trials. Even those are subject to errors and occasionally outright fraud.

He points out that even the best studies and the best outcomes from clinical trials of a new drug has to be done on a population statistical level, which means that in many cases, there's a ton of uncertainty as to whether or not a new drug or treatment will help you:

There is no “one thing” that will help you live longer. There are healthy things, and less healthy things, and unhealthy things. People who adopt multiple, broadly healthy lifestyle choices—from what they eat and don’t eat, to how much exercise they get, to the kinds of activities they take part in—live longer. The problem is no one wants to click on an article saying MAKE THESE 30 CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE TO LIVE LONGER. It is not easy to make thirty lifestyle changes. We all want simple solutions to complex problems. (pg 61)

Just as in investing there's no market for "get rich slow" when there are plenty of people touting "get rich quick" solutions. 

What makes medications special is not the fact that they are so incredibly good at saving lives, but that they are easy to use. You can’t change your age, and quitting smoking is tough, but popping a pill is a straightforward action that doesn’t demand too much change in your usual habits. The sobering truth is that drugs operate on the margins—they have an effect, but they aren’t as impactful as we like to think they are.  (pg. 139)

 Wilson even addresses the elephant in the room, which is the American healthcare system, notorious for being inscrutable, heartless, profit-driven, and liable to drive even insured folks into bankruptcy:

there is no industry that pays more money to Congress than the pharmaceutical industry. We may not have the kind of money pharma does, but we do have one thing it doesn’t have: the votes. I have never been a single-issue voter, but if you were to pick a single issue to vote on, I suggest you make it the one that has the most special-interest money thrown at it. That money tells me that the industry is scared—and while Congress members do like their drug money, they like keeping their jobs more. And drug pricing reform is incredibly popular. In a 2021 Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 88 percent of respondents favored allowing the federal government to negotiate what they will pay for specific drugs, including 77 percent of Republicans and 96 percent of Democrats. (pg 183)

Wilson acknowledges the huge amount of wasted money in the system, including on administrators who do not actually provide any healthcare:

In 2019, Healthline crunched the numbers and found that there were ten healthcare administrators for every one doctor in the United States. These administrators do not provide patient care, but they supposedly improve care. Most administrators argue they are making the system more streamlined, more efficient. But there is not much data to support that. The Harvard Business Review looked at the rapid growth of healthcare administration positions and concluded that the only meaningful difference for patients that correlated with increased administrative roles was a reduction in thirty-day hospital readmission from 19 percent to 17.8 percent. HBR also noted that this reduction happened to occur just when the Affordable Care Act imposed penalties on hospitals based on readmission rates.  (pg. 218)

 What about the frequently made statement that our doctors, nurses are overpaid and that's why we have the most expensive medical system in the world? Wilson debunks that too:

About 20 percent of healthcare spending in the United States goes to “physician services,” but physician salaries are only a fraction of that—just 8.6 percent, the lowest percentage of any Western country save Sweden. Since the majority of physicians now work for hospital systems or corporations, that money goes to headquarters and is parceled out from there. In other words, even if you slashed doctor salaries in half, you would save only 4 percent of the Medicare budget. (pg. 220)

Needless to say I found myself highlighting paragraph after paragraph of this book, taking note of new concepts such as NNT. I came away with this book knowing more than when I started it, which means that I recommend it to anyone. 

Re-read: V for Vendetta

 In the wake of the murder of Brian Thompson by a vigilante I had to re-read V for Vendetta, Alan Moore's treatise on totalitarianism and a vigilante who takes it upon himself to burn it all down. The art by David Lloyd is one of the best things about the book, tying in with Moore's plot (which is a little clumsy) and sensibilities beautifully.

Set in an England which is the sole survivor of a nuclear war, the story's main point of view character is Evey, who in desperation tries to commit a crime to survive but unfortunately is the victim of a police setup. She is rescued by the eponymous character V, and then we see that V has been systematically killing various people in power in government.

The backstory is revealed in drips and drabs and depicts the concentration camps that hear of. Presciently, Moore has the concentration camp victims not be of people of one race, but of the deviants in society, the gays, lesbians as well as people of color. V is himself a lone escapee from that camp and goes on to terrorize the people who ran that camp.

The writing is dense --- this was Alan Moore early in his career, not having learned to use pictures to tell stories as much as text. The dialogue, while characteristic of Alan Moore's later work in places, is at times still clumsy and does more "tell" than "show." But it's astonishing how predictive Alan Moore's work has been, and it's well worth revisiting this graphic novel in these troubled times.

Review: The Impossible Man

 The Impossible Man is a biography of Roger Penrose, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 2020 for his work on black holes in his early career. The author says that the biography took 6 years to write and he had the complete cooperation of Penrose the entire time.

The book describes Penrose's work as being driven entirely by mathematics and his geometrical approach (as opposed to the equation heavy approach of many of his colleagues).  Interesting insights abound, including his fights with his parents about becoming a physicist:

“They accused me of keeping bad company because one of my friends wanted to be a nuclear physicist. They said, ‘Oh, nuclear physics is atom bombs. You’re not allowed to do that. That’s terrible.’ It was horrible.”5 Even for committed pacifists, the leap from enrolling in high school mathematics to facilitating nuclear annihilation was big. Roger wasn’t thinking that many moves ahead. He knew he’d given up one career but hadn’t thought through the alternatives. He certainly had no plans to create weapons of mass destruction. (kindle loc 1099)

The author spends a ton of time on Roger Penrose's personal life, including his difficult relationships with his various wives, children, in contrast with his easy relationship with his colleagues. In many places the author claims that Penrose used his work as an escape from his personal life, and describe him as being so self-centered that he had no idea how his behavior affected those around him, including his family.

Lots of famous people get cameos in this book, including M.C. Escher, Richard Feynman, and Lee Smolin. The saddest part of the book comes at the end, when it's clear that in many ways, Penrose's deliberate contrarian views were no longer persuasive to the greater community, and he searched for ways to validate his work, rather than allowing evidence to guide his work. Of course, that criticism has been leveled at many other than Penrose, but because Penrose had a history of being vindicated he did not swerve or change his attitude.

The subtitle of this book is "the cost of genius." I'm not sure the author fulfilled that thesis. It's not clear that Penrose could only have achieved what he did because he was obtuse about his personal relationships. It's also not clear that his increasing isolation from his family was required or inevitable. It could also have been a result of his belief that free will does not exist.

I enjoyed the book and it made for good reading. I'm not sure the author successfully made his argument but it was a good read anyway!

Review: The Bright Sword

 The Bright Sword is Lev Grossman's contribution to the Arthurian mythos. Rather than tell the story of King Arthur right out, Grossman injects a Mary Sue character who shows up at Camelot after King Arthur's death. He finds a misfit band of the leftover Knights of the Roundtable, and embarks on a quest to restore the glory of Camelot.

The writing is clear and readable, and there are many digressions to explore the backstory of various of the characters of the misfit band. I especially enjoyed the story of Sir Dunadan, whose backstory is very modern and yet ties into Lancelot's story as well.

What makes the protagonist a Mary Sue is of course that he does everything that everyone else fails to do, including defeating Sir Lancelot (no shit). There's a ton of suspension of disbelief of the various quests required (which is ok in a fantasy story), but you can see various ideas from The Magicians TV show, including flying ships, big battles, and gory fights.

As a fun read it's OK. But I don't consider it as great a contribution as The Mists of Avalon or even Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Review: A Widow for One Year

 John Irving has always been hit or miss for me. I enjoyed The Ciderhouse Rules and The World According to Garp, but bounced off A Son of the Circus. Amazon had a sale on A Widow for One Year, and at that price I thought I could take another risk.

John Irving's prose is transparent and flows very well in this novel. The words just carry you along and turns off your brain. The protagonist, Ruth Cole, was abandoned when she was 4 by her mother and the rest of the novel explains what happened, and why, and what other traumatizing events affected her. 4 of the other main characters in the book are novelists, and Irving even inserts chapters of their books into the novel, giving you the sense of a novel within a novel at times. The plot weaves along, with moments of tension and comedy, at times introducing certain characters, speeding up timelines, or even occasionally breaking the fourth wall and addressing the reader directly:

There is no intolerance in America that compares to the peculiarly American intolerance for lack of success (pg. 570)

 It is only after you've finished the book and read the author's notes that you start to notice the holes in the plot and the characters behaving irrationally (or perhaps even worse, out of character). Irving says he started the book from the final scene and then worked backwards as to how to get there. This meant that the novel at times just requires certain characters to do something even if it's not particularly in character. At other times, Irving just doesn't even bother to show you how someone is thinking but just tells you, because the narrator's voice can then override the implausibility of what the plot is about to do.

Nonetheless I don't regret the time spent reading the book, which means it was a good one.

Review: Fire Max 11

 Boen's Fire HD 10 wasn't getting much use so I traded it in for a Fire Max 11. Over the years I've come to expect low performance from the Fire tablets, but to my surprise, the Fire Max 11 was just as fast as the Pixel Tablet that we'd gotten for free last year from trading in an ancient iPad.

You do have to put up with lock screen ads, which isn't a big deal, and you do have to sideload the Google Play Store, which was a big deal, but less of a deal than you could imagine. But the tablet is snappy, loading websites, apps, and books with aplomb, and watching video on it is a pleasure. At less than 50% of the price of a Pixel Tablet, it's an amazing value. Get one. You won't regret it.

Review: Castle in the Air

 Castle in the Air is the second book in Diana Wynne Jone's series that started with Howl's Moving Castle. Rather than being told from the point of view of Howl or Sophie from that first book, the point of view character is Abdullah, and the start of the novel takes place in a middle eastern locale. The narrative is breezy and well told, with all the tropes you expect from that setting: magic carpets, genie in bottles, a romance, thievery, etc.

The problem with reading the books separated by so much time is that I didn't remember the personalities from that first book when they were finally brought back to the main narrative. The loose ends in the novel get tied up, but everything is so driven by magic and transformations that you had no way of deducing who was actually whom before the grand reveals.

What carries this book is Diana Wynne Jone's style and compelling prose. I'm not sure that's enough to make it satisfying but it probably is a good young adult read.

Review: Flashpoint

 I came across Flashpoint after I fished Three Jokers and checked it out despite my misgivings about Three Jokers. To my surprise this is a really good story, and formed the basis for The Flash movie. It's quite a bit better than that movie.

The premise is that Barry Allen wakes up in a world that he doesn't recognize. His mom is not dead, but Wonder Woman and Aquaman are in a fight with each other that's caused all of Europe to. be drowned. Superman is MIA, and the only recognizable superhero is Batman. And... he doesn't have superspeed.

I won't spoil the story for you, but rest assured that there are plenty of surprises even if you've already seen the movie. There are no points in the plot that makes you feel like it's unfair. There's a bunch of other crossover stories which I'm not sure I'll bother tracking down, but apparently this was the launch of the "New 52" which I heard is an absolute failure.

Regardless of the end result, this particular story was excellent and worth my time.

Review: Three Jokers

 For various reasons, we activated a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I was browsing and saw Three Jokers and checked it out for grins. This is a direct sequel to Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, in which Jason Todd (Robin) got killed and Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) became paralyzed from the waist down and becomes Oracle.

Somehow in this novel, Jason Todd comes back from the grave, and Barbara Gordon went through rehab and became fully functional. I'm not sure whether this is canon in the current universe or whether it's part of an alternate universe story.

Jason Todd becomes the Red Hood and runs around angry and unhappy about him being buried alive, and at one point murders one of the jokers. Of course, given the high lethality of the Joker as a criminal he would have gotten the death penalty ages ago.

There's no big mystery in this story, no displays of intelligence between the major characters, just a lot of anger and angst and much action. It adds nothing to Alan Moore's story and I'm going to do my best to forget that this sequel exists.

2025 Book Reviews

Non-Fiction

• The Impossible Man
• How Medicine Works and When it doesn't
• Engineering in Plain Sight
• Die With Zero
• Year's Best Science & Nature Writing 2024
• Revenge of the Tipping Point
• Keep Sharp
• Digital Minimalism
• Twitter and Tear Gas
• Jellyfish Age Backwards
• Outlive
• Rethinking Diabetes
• Why Your Bike is Made In Asia
• Careless People
• Abundance
• Stronger
• The Thinking Machine
• The Shape of a Life
• The NVidia Way
• The Goal
• Moral Ambition
• 7.5 Lessons about the Brain
• Our Moon
• Shift
• Everything is Tuberculosis
• Novelist as a Vocation
• Play Nice
• The Molecule of More

Fiction

• Castle in the Air 
• A Widow for One Year
• The Bright Sword
• The Death of Chaos
• Fall of Angels
• The Chaos Balance
• Worlds
• Soldier Son Trilogy
• Normal People
• The King's Peace
• Exhalation
• The Adventures of Mary Darling
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Aurora Rising
• Norwegian Wood
• 1Q84
• Beguilement

Graphic Novels

• Three Jokers
• Flashpoint
• V for Vendetta
• Kingdom Come
• Justice
• Batman/Catwoman
• Zatanna
• Spent
• Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow
• Good Omens Graphic Novel
• Superman - Secret Identity
• Batman - Creature of the Night
• Camelot Falls

Periodicals

• 10 Years of Bicycle Quarterly

Audio Books

• The Power Broker

Books of the Year 2024

 I read 63 books this year, which comes out to more than a book a week. A lot of the books were re-reads, which I do not regret, since many of the books were read to Boen, and most of the books worth re-reading are so good that there's no way you can regret spending more time with them.

Easily the book of the year is The Rise and Reign of Mammals. The book taught me so much more about mammal evolution and even basic questions like "What is a mammal?" Other contenders in the non fiction category were Bruce Lee and Jobst Brandt Ride Bike! I would also recommend What Makes This Book So Great to any science fiction fan, since it's a list of great books to read.

The best fiction I read this year was Machine Vendetta. You can't go wrong with Alastair Reynolds and I was happy to pay full kindle price to read it. Obviously, it'll be hard to beat Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mainteneance or Among Others, but those were not new to me.

I wish I'd read better graphic novels this year. I did finally finish the entire Walking Dead series but I didn't think it was a particularly good series, especially in comparison with Invincible.

Yosemite 2024: Mirror Lake Loop

 

The forecast was for rain and snow but it got moved back to Monday afternoon from Sunday night! Driving into the park was saw notices that both Tioga Pass and Glacier Point roads would be closed from 4pm that day. Because it was the last day of the long weekend, we could park at the Happy Isles parking lot with no competition.

Just the walk out from the car to Happy Isles was beautiful, with leaves on the ground. At Happy Isles, we saw a crane on the river. And then walked past the Mist trail trailhead onto the Mirror Lake trail, eschewing the road even though the road was shorter. This quickly proved to be a wise move, as we saw a bobcat! This one was bold, walking out onto the road eventually and out of our sight.

The trail went up and down but was well paved, and covered with leaves. Every corner the fall foliage would get more and more impressive.

When we got to Mirror Lake, sure enough the lake was completely dry. We stayed on the trail to do the loop anyway, and were rewarded with occasional places where the views opened up.

On the return, we started to feel raindrops, and hurried back towards the car. Once at the car, Boen complained about being hungry so we ate a bunch of snacks before heading into the car for what would be a long drive.

But Yosemite was not done with us yet! On the way leaving the park, we saw a huge patch of gorgeous trees and had to stop the car for 20 minutes to get out and take photos.

It actually snowed on us as we exited the park via the Big Oak Flat entrance, but the snow didn't stick to the ground so I didn't have to deploy snow chains. By the time we got down to 3000' the snow had turned into rain. We had lunch near Manteca and stopped at the Costco there to refuel. Driving back over the windmills near Patterson pass we saw beautiful sunset views. It was great.

Review: Bruce Lee - A Life

 I enjoyed Matt Polly's book enough that when I saw he had a biography of Bruce Lee I decided to check it out from the library. This is a great book, since despite living only 32 years, Bruce Lee lived an action-packed life and this biography is just as interesting if not more than any amount of fiction that could be imagined.

Born in San Francisco, but growing up in Hong Kong to an upper middle-class famous opera performer, Bruce Lee was the first Chinese American to break into Hollywood in a big way, the one who made Kung Fu popular. But along the way, Matt Polly gives the backstory behind for instance, Shaw Brothers (there's a great story about the Shaw family burying gold, jewels, and watches in the ground in preparation for the Japanese conquest of Singapore, and then digging it up after the war). The origin of the Golden Harvest studio is in here as well.

I enjoyed the documentation of Bruce Lee's inner life as well. For instance, there's a famous incident about when he threw the gauntlet down in front of the Bay Area martial arts community saying that the ancient styles and forms that were being taught were ineffective for fighting, and then getting challenged. The fight was won by Bruce Lee, but rather than glorifying in it, he realized that the fight pointed out weaknesses in his own skills --- he was winded after only a 3 minute fight, and the Wing Chun training he'd had was not as effective against someone who was running away. That led him to adopt a physical fitness regimen to improve his cardio, skipping rope and running. This made him a much deeper character to me than someone who just beat up people. That he damaged his back one day lifting weights that left him bed bound for 3 months also made him a bit more human to me --- it's more convincing than someone who's just preternaturally strong and fit.

Polly doesn't shy away from Lee's faults, from his threatening his PE teacher in school, to his numerous affair when he became a big star, and his antagonistic approach to working with directors, producers, and script writers. I thought he was fair in the way Lee's faults were approached.

Finally, the book introduced the idea that Lee died of heat stroke. Other theories have been broached, and Polly does a good job explaining why they're not credible.

This book was great reading. I've never watched a Bruce Lee movie and maybe I should.

Yosemite 2024: Sentinel Dome, Roosevelt Point, Taft Point

 

On the way to Glacier Point road, the GPS on the phone announced that Glacier Point Road was closed. I kept going, assuming that there would be warnings all over the park if that was true. We stopped at the tunnel view point for a very cold morning shoot before driving straight to the trailhead.

Following the signs to sentinel dome, we hiked around the dome itself before climbing it on the gentle side. The view from the top was nice, we got a nice view of half dome as well as El Capitan.

From the dome proper, we descended down towards Roosevelt point, passing a generator driven cell tower along the way. Indeed, we got very strong 5G internet there, and this was the best cell reception I'd ever seen in a National Park. Roosevelt point itself had no marker, but the trail along the way granted us plenty of views.

When we got to Taft point, the crowds had increased. This was clearly well known. Lots of people were posing on top of the point for dramatic photos and we did not resist.

After the hike, we drove down to Washburn Point and Glacier Point for the views and more crowds. To my surprise despite the traffic, we never actually had trouble finding parking. Then we drove down to the Yosemite Valley Lodge food court for a late lunch/early dinner. The food court was an example of excessive automation. There were kiosks where you had to order food from a touch screen. However, all but two of the touch screens were broken, and all it took was a couple of parties who were slow at making up their mind to gum the whole works up. Somebody thought that saving money on cashiers or order takers was a good idea and forgot that electronics failure would be difficult to service in a National Park!

After dinner, we walked to the swinging bridge for sunset views. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any good shots of the half dome in Alpen glow from where we were, but the Merced river was still as a mirror and we got some good pictures before returning to the Cedar Lodge for the night for more swimming (proving once again that kids have infinite energy!)

That night, I searched in vain for an alternative to the Mirror Lake hike we were planning to do tomorrow, since the lake itself was all dried up in the fall! But everything would involve a lot more driving so we opted for sticking to the original plan.

Yosemite 2024: Mist and Vernal Falls

 

For the Veteran's Day long weekend this year we decided to visit Yosemite National Park, having never been there in the Fall. On Friday night, we drove out to Oakdale, staying there for dinner. I'd forgotten my belt and ended up paying absurd prices at a local Tractor Supply, but it saved time hunting for a belt.

Arriving at the park at 9:45am, we flashed our Every Kid Outdoors printout and exchanged it for a plastic card for the free entrance. We were told that the parking lot for Happy Isles might be filled up, so we parked at Camp Curry instead and walked the extra 0.5 miles. Getting started at 10:30am, we were immediately impressed by the fall colors in the valley leading up to the Vernal Falls footbridge.

Past the footbridge, the trail climbs along side the falls. In the spring and summer there would be mist from the falls, giving the trail its name. In the fall, the waterfall is but a shadow of itself, and the trail was completely dry. It was crowded though, and frequently we had to pause to let hikers past us from both sides.

At the top of Vernal falls, I took out my stove and we made lunch --- instant noodles. After lunch I made the mistake of showing Boen the top of Nevada Falls and told him we were headed to the top. He immediately threw a temper tantrum and refused to keep walking. It took quite a bit of cajoling and bribery to get him to keep moving. The thing is, the top of Vernal Falls is already more than half way up to the top of Nevada Falls, so it actually wasn't that long before we got to the top.

At the top, we got good views of half dome, Mt Watkins, and Clouds Rest. From there, we would descend the John Muir Trail down to Clarks Point. It was already getting pretty dark, and we were already in shadow at this point.

By the time we got to the car it was already past sunset, and we headed straight to our lodging for the night, Cedar Lodge, which had a restaurant serving mediocre food, but had a heated indoor swimming pool that Bowen and Boen had a great time playing in before bed.

I'd wanted to do the Four Mile trail up to Glacier Point and back, but then realized that we'd done enough elevation today that I was likely to be met with protests the next morning. I did some research and realized that Glacier Point was open, so we could do a loop I'd never done before, which was Sentinel Dome, Roosevelt Point, and Taft Point loop. It was a short easy loop and would give us time to explore the valley before sunset.

Review: The End is Always Near

 The End Is Always Near purports to be a history book about apocalyptic moments from the past. In practice, the apocalyptic moments it discusses don't feel that bad. For instance, the black plague reduced the population of England from 6 million people to 2 million people. That's terrible for the people who died, but as the author explained, 6 million people was the carrying capacity of England at the time! So the people who were living were in fact barely subsisting, and in fact the survivors of the plague ended up with a much better standard of living afterwards (for about 300 years) since the manpower shortage meant that the poorest of the poor now had land, and serfs could raise a middle finger to their lords if they were mistreated. Now you know why folks like Elon Musk are worried about a population decline --- the modern day oligarchs might have to pay a living wage if population declined sufficiently!

There's a strange chapter about how in the past effectively child raising techniques are so horrifyingly brutal that all persons were raised in an abusive environment:

Lloyd deMause quotes a piece written by the chief of police in Paris in 1780 estimating that of the, on average, 21,000 children born in that city every year, only 700 were nursed by their biological mothers. (Marie Antoinette, writing in a letter to her mother, noted after her daughter recognized her as her mother in a room full of people, “I believe I like her much better since that time”—which suggests she hadn’t liked her all that much before. (pg 25)

 I'm not sure how this has to do with apocalypse.

Finally, there's an entire 1/3rd of the book about the deployment and use of the atomic bomb, including the Cuban missile crisis. The examination of the mindset by the air forces involved at that time is interesting.

One item I found strangely missing is any mention of the pre-historic severe population bottleneck, where the human population we reduced to about 1280 breeding individuals. Obviously we don't know much about that time, but not even mentioning that in the book is kind of strange.

I did get interesting insights from this book, but I'm not sure I can fully recommend it. Maybe the author's podcast is more interesting.

Yosemite 2024 Index Page

 We visited Yosemite for Veterans Day. It was our first time there in the fall.

Photos

• Mist and Vernal Falls
• Sentinel Dome, Roosevelt Point, Taft Point
• Mirror Lake Loop

Review: Kiki's Delivery Service

 I of course enjoyed Kiki's Delivery Service as a Hayao Miyazaki movie, but I never realized that it was based on a book of the same name until Amazon served me an add.

Unlike the movie, which has an actual, relatively coherent plot. this book is actually a series of vignettes about Kiki, who's not very different from the one you see in the movie. There's a slight hint of romance between Kiki and Tombo, but there are no scenes with bicycles, and no drama in which Kiki loses her power, which makes the movie much more powerful than the book as a coming of age story.

That said, it's clearly a kid's book and if you have kids who enjoy the movie this is a good book for them to read after they've seen the movie.