New Zealand 2024: December 22nd - Geraldine to Twizel

We woke up early enough to have a decent breakfast before driving off to the supermarket for some last minute purchases before we drove to our next place to stay. Our first interim stop was Lake Tekapo, featuring Mount Cook in the background.  There was a famous church there as well, which is the centerpiece of many a landscape photographer in winter seasons, but it was so crowded with tourists that we couldn’t get a photo in without having people in the background.

We attempted to visit Mt John Observatory, another recommended landmark in the area, but were turned away at the gate by an employee telling us that the place was full and would remain full for 2 hours before they took on more visitors. That was more time than we wanted to spend, so we drove on to Lake Pukaki, the gateway to Mount Cook National Park. We ate lunch at a picnic area next to the visitor center. The visitor center sold farmed sashimi from Salmon in nearby Salmon farms, but we ate the food we bought earlier from the supermarket. We diverted to our lodging for the night in Twizel and dropped off our luggage and started a load of laundry. It turned out that our hosts were unhappy with us because we weren’t supposed to check in or leave luggage there until after 3:00pm. Of course, with our only partly functional network in New Zealand (T-mobile in New Zealand definitely granted us the best wilderness experience), we wouldn’t know about it until we came back. Fortunately our hosts worked around our inability to follow instructions and by the time we got back the house was clean and ready for us.

We drove into Mount Cook National Park and parked at the White Horse Hill parking lot to start the Hooker Valley Track, an easy walk to views of glaciers at the end of the track and a lake where you could actually touch the glacier. Parking was quite difficult to find but fortunately I had a tiny rental car that fit in any parking spot.

The hike itself was gorgeous, though crowded with tourists. The swinging bridges (a feature of many New Zealand hikes but hardly ever seen in the USA) were a novelty to the kids and they loved it. There were bathrooms as well as picnic areas along the hikes as well as many places to stop, but those were necessary as even if you were a man the hike was so crowded that it was hard to find a place to pee if you didn’t use an official toilet!

There was a flyer we were using to figure out what to do, and it mentioned a hike named “Bowen Bush Walk.” After we were done with Hooker Valley, we had to visit the Bowen Bush Walk so that Bowen could walk it. Bowen being a teenager resisted this, but we finally talked him into doing it and even had a few pictures to prove it. It was only a 10 minute walk, so it was no big deal.

Returning to the town of Twizel we visited the supermarket and Xiaoqin had the great idea to buy pre-marinated steak and salad. We figured out how to use the antique oven in the house and paired with the cast iron frying pan made the steaks and they turned out to be delicious. We ran a second load of laundry and then went to sleep hoping for another great day of hiking.

Review: Fall of Angels

 Fall of Angels might very well be my favorite book of the Recluce series so far. The explanation lies in a quote from the protagonist 63% through the book:

If this were a novel or trideo thrillers, the editors would cut out all the partts about building. That's boring. You know, heroes are supposed to slay the enemy, but no one has to worry about shelter or heat or coins or stables or whether the roads need to be paved or whether you need bridges or culverts to keep them from being impassible. Bathhouses are supposed to build themselves, didn't you know? Ryba orders sanitation, and it just happens.No matter that the snow is deep enough to sink a horse without a sign. No matter that most guards would rather stink than use cold water. No matter that poor sanitation kills more people in low-tech cultures than battles. (kindle loc 6019)

In other words, L.E. Modesitt wrote a fantasy novel where the protagonist hero is an engineer! He worries about all the mundane stuff, and builds sawmills, better weapons, etc. Of course, this being a fantasy universe, he's a wizard and fantastic combat engineer. It's also kinda strange that no one else in his group of stranded spacers show an interest or contribute to the engineering of the built environment that everybody's lives depend on.

The plot of the story is that the Angels are a faction in a space battle with Demons, and due to a mishap during a battle they get shunted into the Recluce universe. Landing on the planet they establish a settlement on a high plateau (which becomes Westwind in the earlier Recluce novels). The commander of the ship, Ryba immediately grasps the situation and realizes that they're going to be repeatedly attacked by the locals which do not want to cope with a settlement run by women for women in a male dominant culture.

This is a very explicitly feminist book, but since the protagonist is male, we get his view of the situation as well. I enjoyed the bootstrapping of technology, as well as Modesitt's run through of what happens in a heavily male dominated culture when an outlet is provided for women to escape to. It's well done and worth reading.

2024 New Zealand: December 21st - Nadi to Christchurch to Geraldine

We got up at 4:45am for a 5:00am for the 8:00am flight for Christchurch, but while waiting for the the pickup I checked my phone and there was a message at 5:00am telling us that the flight was delayed. We opted to go to the airport early anyway, which turned out to be a good thing. When we attempted to check in, we were told that you now needed to apply for a visa to enter New Zealand, even if you were a US citizen! I later found out that this was a new requirement that was only implemented in 2019. A quick search on the internet took me to what quickly became identified as a scam site purporting to offer you an application package. The official New Zealand NZeTA website revealed that the easiest way to apply was via a downloaded Android app. We downloaded the app, went through the application process (including a fee), and then waited. Within 10 minutes Bowen and Boen were approved, but Xiaoqin and my application still read as “Pending.”

A search on the internet revealed several reddit authors stating that

as long as you had an application in “Pending” state the airline should let you board. So we went back to the check-in counter and sure enough, once they saw our application as pending they let us through. Our relief was palpable. Indeed, nobody ever asked to see our NZeTA application ever again, and we got our notification that we were approved 3 days after arriving in New Zealand. Clearly my previous trip in 2000 shouldn’t have led me to be overconfident to the point where I’d neglected to see if entry requirements had changed.

Our flight was so delayed that by the time we touched down in Christchurch it was already 4:00pm, nixing any plans to do a hike that day or even take the scenic route to our first motel in Geraldine. All our luggage arrived and we cleared customs with a check for our backpacking gear to make sure it complied with New Zealand standards. The customs agents were impressed by the freeze-dried ice cream that Boen had packed.

At the rental car counter, the lady giving us our car declared that they were giving us their smallest car, “A tiny Hyundai i30! That’s not big enough for your family and all your luggage! Your kids will be uncomfortable!” She was selling an upgrade pretty hard, and that upgrade was $30-50/day! I did a quick Google which noted that the i30 had more luggage space than a Toyota Corolla, which would fit all our luggage in my pre-trip calculations. “The mountain roads aren’t going to be good for a small car!” That was when my BS detector tripped. On narrow mountain roads, you want as small a car as possible for better acceleration, easier passing, and more room when that inevitable American-driven RV drifts into your lane! We went with the i30, which true enough had plenty of luggage space in its boot and we had space between the kids to stow more luggage.

She gave me the keys and then passed me on to her colleague for a pre-drive briefing, which was just as hyperbolic. The guy spent a lot of time telling us that New Zealand was a dangerous place to drive, with challenging mountain roads, and devastating weather conditions. For a typical San Francisco Bay Area cyclist/driver who regularly visited the Alps or the Sierras, however, I remembered that New Zealand was pretty tame. There were no

deer or other large animals that would dart out onto the road randomly, and there was usually enough traffic to remind you to stay on the left side of the road. Much like Japan, your biggest danger was dying of frustration being stuck behind a line of RVs doing 20kph below the speed limit. “You’ll never see a speed limit sign higher than 80kph,” declared the briefing agent, “so slow down!”

Once we loaded the luggage and drove off, I discovered that in addition to driving on the left side of the road, the control stalks next to the steering wheel were also reversed, so for the first day I would be turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signals first before remembering to use the correct control stalk.

Once we left the airport we immediately saw a speed limit sign for 100kph! “Hey, that guy lied to us.” said Bowen. “They both lied to us, but fortunately we ignored them.” came Xiaoqin’s reply. We drove for an hour and a half to get to Geraldine, where we checked into our motel, which was furnished with enough kitchen supplies to make dinner but we were quite tired and so went out to dinner at the local Indian take-out place, which charged us an extra $5 to eat in! Next to the Indian place was a supermarket, so we bought sunburn lotion, breakfast, and various snacks, the snacks in the packed baggage being meant for the 4 day hiking trip.

It rained on and off for the rest of the evening, but our early start time this morning meant that we all went to bed super early. The forecast for the next few days looked decent, but rain was predicted on the days when we were going to be on the Kepler track, which worried me.

New Zealand & Fiji 2024-2025: Prologue

In 2023, Xiaoqin declared she wanted to visit New Zealand. I told her these things have to be planned 6 months ahead of time because of the need to book the Great Walks. So in June, we tried 3 times to get the great huts. When the Milford Track opened up the DOC website crashed, and by the time it came up it was intermittent and everything got booked up.

When the Routeburn track opened up, I was denied a login and in the time it took Xiaoqin to ask me whether we wanted to do it in 1 or 2 nights all the spaces were taken. Finally, we succeeded on the Kepler track, snagging 3 huts starting on Christmas day. With that, we bought plane tickets, which it turned out to be cheapest through Fiji Airways, which also offered a stopover in Fiji at a price that was still cheaper than flying United.

We bought Sea-to-Summit lightweight sleeping bags for Xiaoqin and Bowen, stuffed all our backpacking gear (sans stove, sleeping pads, and tents, since we were staying in DOC huts), a bunch of freeze dried food, and bought new button up dishes and titanium sporks. That all went into one checked bag but at the San Francisco airport, we were told that our carryons were too heavy, so we were forced to check those too, hurriedly taking the electronics and lithium ion batteries out into smaller bags in order to get onto the plane.

Landing in Fiji, we cleared customs and immigration in short order and got through customs with little difficulty. Once landed, the taxi service our hotel recommended picked us up and took us to the Fuji Sheraton resort, which greeted us with a full on drum greeting. We had already made plans to visit the Malamala Beach Resort, so we started the morning by walking along the waterfront, after repacking our daybags so we would be ready for the beach. One of the hotel concierges told us she could have gotten us a better deal for the Beach Resort than we had gotten from the official website. I didn’t confirm with her how much we could have paid, but made a note of it for future reference.

When the bus came, we were shuttled to the ferry terminal, where we checked into the ferry, which served many other islands as well, and were given our wristbands for the use of the beach resort. We put on sunscreen onboard the ferry, and once off the ferry, we were then guided to our Beachside Cabana which we had reserved. The website said it was for 2 people, but we brazened it out and the staff didn’t object to us staffing it with 2 kids in addition to ourselves. What was a surprise was that I’d thought the fee for the resort included unlimited food, but it did not! I’d completely misunderstood what we were sold. So the food had to be paid for ala carte, and to prevent us from bolting without paying, they took our ferry tickets and would return them only after we’d paid our food service bill at the end.

We immediately ordered food and discovered (as we should have expected) that Fiji was on island time, the same time warp that all Carribean islands appear to follow, which is that service is on a “we’ll get to it when we get to it” basis. But that was why we ordered food right away, so we were good. More surprising was that the water sports booth wasn’t open because the same staff that was supposed to staff it was also greeting more people off the next ferry. Fortunately, the booth was unguarded so I grabbed some sand toys for the kids.

After lunch, we dropped by the booth to get snorkels and masks and fins, which were supplied and required only a waiver to sign off on, and then proceeded to snorkel. I had low expectations for the snorkeling, since I’d done a lot of snorkeling and nothing had led me to believe that the Malamala beach resort was something outstanding. Once I’d swam a few meters off shore I realized my mistake and that I. shouldn’t have left the waterproof camera in the luggage! I saw purple starfish, which I’d never seen anywhere else. The coral life was every bit as vibrant as I’d seen anywhere in the Carribean. I went back and got Xiaoqin and we did more snorkeling and were very happy with it.

The kids decided they wanted to paddleboard and we checked out a set for them from the booth. They were required to wear lifejackets, but that turned out to be a good thing because Xiaoqin and I got horribly sunburned despite reapplying the sunscreen, and the kids didn’t get sunburn where the lifejacket had protected them. Despite our best efforts I could not get them to try swimming or snorkeling, but I did jump off the pier as advised by the watersports booth and had more fun snorkeling.

In the afternoon, we took a walk around the island and discovered how small it was, and also found the swimming pool where we hung out a bit more. It was a good thing the pool was in the shade, and then we had more ice cream and paid off our bill before our ferry arrived. It was a good thing we brought cash, as the cashier had lost internet connectivity and couldn’t make credit cards work.

After making it back to the hotel, we checked into our room with a gorgeous sea view, and then ended up having dinner at the Vasaqa Restaurant, with authentic Fijian food that was much cheaper than the hotel’s restaurants. After that we were beat, though still managed to take a few pictures before retiring back to the room.

Review: The Death of Chaos

 I finally got around to finishing The Death of Chaos, the 5th book in the Recluce series. In this book, Lerris returns to tie up the loose ends in The Magic of Recluce, the first book in the series. Many of the characters in the previous books (including Justen) show up. What I found lacking is that Lerris never gets that epiphany, and the way the book resolves his relationship with his wife was entirely through magic, so we never get to see Lerris develop the way he should have. The way many of the recurring characters got killed off also didn't make me happy.

Modesitt writes well, and the prose is great, but he doesn't rise to the heights of Glen Cook in this series.

Review: Revenge of the Tipping Point

Revenge of the Tipping Point is Malcolm Gladwell's sequel to his previous book, The Tipping Point. In some sense these books should be read as entertainment, not necessarily a science book. On the other hand, there was a lot in this book I enjoyed reading about. For instance, the huge differences in states suffering from the opioid epidemic can be traced to a law requiring opioids to be prescribed on a special prescription pad that maintains a record that has to be retained. That caused doctors in those states to be more cautious about prescribing opioids and thus reduced the intensity of the epidemic in those states. I don't remember reading about that in any other source.

There's a huge section in the book about why Ivy League schools are heavy on sports recruitment. It lets them select the ethnic/wealth composition of their intake classes by emphasizing sports that are expensive or exclusive to wealthy schools (lacrosse and sailing come to mind). I'm sure this is documented elsewhere but I enjoyed Gladwell's way of telling the story.

What’s special about really good tennis players is that the only way to be a really good tennis player is to come from a wealthy family and live near a country club and have at least one parent with sufficient time on their hands to drive you all over the country for tournaments and handle the acquisition and management of the small army of coaches, trainers, physical therapists, and tutors you need to be successful. (kindle loc 2223)

 Less interesting is the section on bank robberies as well as the section on COVID19 which doesn't cover new ground. Nevertheless, it's a short book, easy to read, and entertaining. That's a sweet combination that makes it easy to recommend.

Review: Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024

 I'm a huge fan of non-fiction writing, and as far as I'm concerned you can never learn enough about science. When The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 went on sale for a small amount I bought it. The way this anthology works, it collects essays/articles from 2023, and is published at the start of 2024. Which means that by the time I read it, it's 2 years out of date. That's no big deal, if it's good science it's going to stay valid.

What I wasn't prepared for was how depressing the first third of the book was. That's because it's about climate change, and the news there is not good. We're clearly not on a good trajectory there and things are going to get much worse. Much of the reporting is from third world countries like Pakistan, Brazil, and so forth. But it's depressing to realize that the Amazon rainforest has gone from being a carbon sink to a carbon emitter and we have made no progress as far as disincentivizing the burning of rainforest to produce farmland.

The rest of the book includes one article on mining for the green energy world, an article about the largest beaver dam in the world (it can be seen from space!), an article about sperm whales, and one about Scottish hill farming. Missing from the book notably are any articles about AI, physics, chemistry, or astronomy. Basically, none of the hard sciences are represented.

I cannot honestly recommend this book. It's got a very narrow idea of what science writing is or should encompass. 

Review: Die with Zero

 Die with Zero is an unusual financial planning book. It starts with the famous adage, "You can't take it wih you," and unlike other financial planning books, takes it seriously. The idea is that if you're not living life to the fullest, you're not living the best life you could be, and that all the working, scrimping and saving is a means to an end: you should live life rather than working for "The Man."

The book discusses 3 major objections conventional thinking folks have about this: (1) what about the kids? (the answer is, you should actually give money to your kids while you're alive and they're young enough to make full use of those financial resources to live better, rather than waiting until they're old and you're dead!) (2) what if I love my job? (even if you do, you should spend money in such a way as to maximize your enjoyment of your job) (3) I don't want to run out of money (you should consider annuities as a way to guarantee that you have a fixed income for the rest of your life and spend the rest).

I think Bill Perkin's approach to life is actually really sensible. For instance, I know lots of people who refuse to stop working even when their health is actually deteriorated to the point where they couldn't keep up with their kids when hiking or cycling (I'm not talking about teenage kids either!).  Most of those people would have a much better quality of life if they worked less and paid a personal trainer to improve their health to the point where living is more enjoyable than being dead.

As another example: things like camping, backpacking, and expedition style bike touring are way more fun when you're young and healthy than when you're old and exhausted and aren't sleeping properly and have a chronic health condition. There's no point saving money for those sorts of trips to do when you're retired because when you're 65 you won't be able to enjoy them anyway!

I think more people should read this book and live their better life. And I agree especially with the part about giving money to your kids when they're in their 20s and 30s and able to enjoy those activities before they have kids. From that point of view alone you should read this book.

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

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

Graphic Novels

• Three Jokers
• Flashpoint
• V for Vendetta
• Kingdom Come
• Justice
• Batman/Catwoman
• Zatanna
• Spent
• Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

Periodicals

• 10 Years of Bicycle Quarterly

Audio Books

• The Power Broker