Review: The Thinking Machine

 The Thinking Machine is a biography of Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, and a chronicle of the company he led through founding to becoming the megacap stock it is today.

As a biography, it's perhaps not as complete as those of Steve Jobs as you might wish, but on the other hand, it taught me several things that I didn't know about Nvida, not that I knew a lot about them in the first place. For instance, Nvidia didn't have a mission statement, because Huang didn't believe in them. (Kindle loc 1010). This is completely anamolous, and contrary to the hordes of business books touting the value of missions.

Secondly, Jensen has a reputation for yelling at people when they screw up. That's normal, but on the other hand, he values that experience that you were taught and doesn't fire people for screwing up:

“Very rarely does Jensen make significant changes as a result of execution issues,” Halepete said. “He’s very conscious of having an even slightly chilling effect on people’s willingness to take risks and innovate. As a result, his level of forgiveness for even the largest screw-ups is extremely high.” Halepete surmised that the tirades were what Jensen did instead of showing you the door. “He will berate you, he will yell at you, he will insult you—whatever,” Halepete said. “He’s never going to fire you.” (kindle loc 1745)

That sort of thing generates loyalty and breeds a willingness to take risk, so it's not a surprise that Nvidia employees venerate him. The other thing that's special about Nvidia is the span of control Huang has. I've said in Startup Engineering Management that there's no reason the span of control of a good manager should be as small as 6 people, other than that Silicon Valley has an unusually bad management training program (as in, "What management training program?") and so most engineering managers are so bad that they would flail at having to manage more than 6 people. In Nvidia's case, he has 30 direct reports:

As Nvidia grew, Huang maintained an agile corporate structure, with no fixed divisions or hierarchy. The C-Suite was essentially just him, with no COO, no CTO, no CMO, and no obvious second-in-command. Huang didn’t even have a chief of staff. Instead, he had more than thirty people reporting to him directly, most of them given fluid responsibilities under the all-encompassing title of “vice president.”  (kindle loc 2261)

Management professors theorized that a chief executive should ideally have between eight and twelve direct reports. Huang now had fifty-five. (kindle loc 3376)

 Think about how hard someone like that has to work. He'd have to process information from all 55 direct reports, and then make decisions and possibly direct the work of all of them. It's impressive then that he had time to pivot the company from graphics and CUDA into AI, and the company was able to consistently undervalue the crypto market and consciously downplay it!

Of course, the example that sets on Huang's kids is significant:

Horstmann also observed that neither Huang’s nor his own kids had initially gone into technical fields. “I think they tried to get out of this crazy work environment,” he said. “I think they looked at us, and said, ‘There’s got to be more to life than this.’ ” (kindle loc 1924)

Later in the book, the author reveals that Huang eventually got his kids to work in Nvidia, though not necessarily in technical fields. There's a claim that no nepotism is involve but I wonder how much the author investigated.

All in all, the book was worth reading, though again Nvidia seems to be an extreme outlier amongst even Silicon Valley companies, so I'm not sure you can generalize that you should emulate Huang in not having a mission statement. The real test for Nvida is if Huang steps down and to see if the company collapses without having such a singular person at the helm.

 

Pigeon Point Overnight 2025

• Day 1 GPS Track
• Day 2 GPS Track
• Mark Brody's Pictures
• Arturo's Pictures

We tried to visit Pigeon Point earlier this year, but a bout of rain with 20+mph winds came in and we moved the date back. The forecast for our new date was that it was going to rain as well, but with much milder weather and brisk but not howling winds we decided to go for it. Indeed, it rained overnight on Saturday, but by breakfast time it was sunny and mild!

Mark Brody had showed up the night before so he could borrow my Revelate saddlebag. He'd not managed to get a spot at Pigeon Point but had found room at Costanoa just 4 miles away. A last minute cancellation freed up room for Arturo, so he could join as well. I unpacked the REI Link Saddlebags for Bowen and Xiaoqin, and we loaded it all on their bikes. I broke out the Ortleib panniers, and Stephan and Otto had gotten a rack installed on their bike as well, and were also using Ortleib panniers which were a wedding gift that they'd been using all these years. Eva would join us for the ride up Page Mill Road.

The climb up Page Mill Road was straightforward though a little on the steep side. We'd given Bowen a 30 minute headstart but saw him right after the Los Trancos entrance at which point he gave himself a boost. I would find out later that he'd pre-bribed his brother to deliberately slow down so he could beat us to the summit. At the summit we saw views of the ocean, took a few photos, and proceeded to barrel down West Alpine road. Stephan and Otto, loaded down with an extra laptop were taking it easy so we decided not to wait for them.

The descent on West Alpine road in Spring is as pretty as anything you'll do anywhere in the world. The corners are broad and the hillsides are lush and green and filled with lupines, poppies, and other flowers. If you're not riding this on a bicycle you'll miss most of it.

At the junction with Pescadero road we made a left turn and proceeded to climb up Haskins Hill, which was very pleasant in the cool air. At the summit there was a team in training support vehicle that offered us a refill, but it was so cool I thought I'd make it till lunch at least on my single water bottle, which had been refilled at the water fountain before the Montebello parking lot. 

The descent to Pescadero was a delight, and screamingly fast on the tandem. There were gentle rollers but none of them demanding high effort. Mark Brody caught up to us once we were past much of the descent and we rode along. The Revelate bag was going very well, and he was in high spirits, given that he hadn't done a lot of riding so far this year.

At the Pescadero city limit sign we waited for everyone and then went to the goat farm to see the baby goats and buy some goat cheese. The kids were pretty hungry, so we headed over to Arcangeli's grocery for their famous garlic artichoke bread, buying 3 of those to go with the cheese and prosciutto we'd brought from home. Surprisingly, we polished off all the garlic artichoke bread and went in to buy dinner and breakfast. We ended up with. Sphagetti and sausages, as well as an entire peach pie, and then a loaf of banana bread for breakfast. Stephan and Otto showed up just as we were about to pay for the groceries, but we wanted to go reserve space at the hot tub so we left after letting them know that we'd put in a reservation for them.

Bean Hollow road was surprisingly pretty with more flowers to entertain us on the mild and gentle climb. Soon enough we were descending to the intersection with Highway 1, and then proceeding down the coast with views of the Pacific Ocean on the right. Arriving at Pigeon Point, we went through the checkin process, unpacked, locked up the bikes, made our beds, and then went for a walk.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse is a minor state park, and this year's flowers were nothing short of amazing. We walked around in awe, framing pictures of the flowers with a combination of the Pacific, the lighthouse, and ourselves. I'd never seen it this flowerful before, since Pigeon Point was usually for us an earlier visit.

We made dinner and ate it before our hot tub spot. As we walked towards the hot tub we felt a few sprinkles here and there, but it never turned into rain, not even getting our clothes more than slightly damp. Of course, in the hot tub we didn't even notice. Boen saw a seal bathing on the rock, but it was too overcast for us to care about missing the sunset time --- there wasn't going to be a sunset that evening.

After everyone was done with the hot tub we ate pie. Bowen amazed everyone by reciting 30 digits of Pi in order to win a second piece of pie. Kids amaze you when they do things like this and you never even noticed them practicing or saying that they wanted to do this.

We had an early bed time as the weather forecast had shifted. Rather than the weather improving as the day went, the forecast was that it was more likely to rain later in the day.

Waking up around 6:30am, I made coffee and sliced the Banana cake. Arturo had found ants in the pastry he had bought the day before, but he cleaned it off and ate it anyway. We got everyone cleaned up and ready to go by around 8:30am, and took off against the headwind, pacelining up Highway 1. Once we turned off onto Bean Hollow Road the headwind became much less of a problem.

Arturo discovered he'd left his sunglasses behind so he'd had to turn around to fetch it. But he would catch up on Stage Road. Mark Brody hadn't gotten up early, and so he was far behind. At the Stage Road/84 intersection the San Gregorio store was closed, so we couldn't get refreshments. The kids all voted to go up 84 instead of Tunitas Creek. To my surprise Arturo voted with the kids. "Kings Mountain Road is treacherous in the rain if it's wet!" he declaimed. The traffic on 84 didn't seem too bad, so I was OK with the decision.

Riding up 84 with a tailwind was easy in the light morning traffic. We regrouped at Applejack's in La Honda, where we took a snack break. Arturo warned us about poison oak going up. From there, it was a 3 mile uphill run with much more annoying traffic, including a group of sports cars hell bent on showing cyclists how much more power you get when you're willing to burn fossil fuels. At the Old La Honda road intersection we waited for everyone and put on a jacket, because the sky had turned much more cloudy.

We started climbing after Xiaoqin took off. Boen knew that this was the last big climb so he pulled out all stops, and we slowly reeled her in. As we approached the redwoods near the summit Boen put in another big effort and we put a gap into her. We would later discover that she had had a slow flat on her front. Riding through the redwoods in the fog was gorgeous, and we made it to the intersection with Skyline blvd. After Xiaoqin arrived, we replaced her inner tube, not having found whatever foreign matter had punctured her tube.

We finished the repair just when everyone else rolled up. We split into 2 groups: Stephan and I opting for the longer route going down 84, while everyone else rolled down Old La Honda road. The tandems can go really fast on 84, and with light traffic we were not concerned about impatient drivers. Skyline Blvd was wet, but 84 itself was nice and dry. By the time we got back to Old La Honda road the others were already waiting for us.

From there it was a short ride to downtown Los Altos, but Arturo had neglected to eat so we had to feed him before resuming the ride. Silicon Valley was completely dry, looking like it hadn't rained at all during the time. The ride was uneventful and we had a big lunch after which we went home via our separate ways. It was a great trip!

Review: Stronger

Stronger is a badly written book about an important topic. The book's subtitle promises to tell you everything about muscles and strength training, but then immediately spends an absurd number of pages explaining what the Greeks thought about the human body and what muscles were. Not only were the Greeks absurdly wrong, it has no relevant to the topic of the book. A decent editor would have slashed a good 30% of this book and it would have been a much better book.

The book spends an inordinate amount of time on two characters, Jan Todd (at one point the strongest woman in the world), and Charles Stocking, another record-setting powerlifter. Their stories are perhaps interesting, but to be honest, anecdotal data is worthless for the typical rank and file athlete or normal person trying to live their life.

The book is clearly biased towards considering strength training to be much more important than regular doctors believe. What's surprising to me is how little research there actually is on strength training, and how recent the studies are (the earliest appear to date from the 1990s). There are interesting studies described in the book, including one study that focused on geriatric residents at a nursing home, some of whom could barely raise their hands at the start of the program. The study showed that even at that age it's possible to build muscle, and the effects are awesome --- some residents went from being in a wheel chair to being able to walk around with a walker. Others went from walkers to just a cane, and some went from needing a cane to not needing one. Clearly, strength training is useful at any age and can help folks.

Where the book falls over is that there's no study of injury rates. My experience with weight training (progressive resistance training is the new medical term that the book taught me) is that as you get older, there becomes a very thin line between sufficient stimulus to get stronger, and too much stimulus which leads to injury. The book doesn't talk about it, there are no studies, and pretty much I think you'd have to hire a professional personal trainer to calibrate you properly and walk you through increasing resistance. That's great if you're rich. Not so great if your schedule can't fit in appointments and stuff like that.

The book is convincing in terms of telling you that you need strength training, and that the importance of it increases as you get older, and that it's never too late to do more strength training. It definitely debunks the regular doctor's advice that "walking is sufficient exercise for anyone." It clearly isn't, and the book isn't shy about telling you. But beyond that, the book kinda just fails.

There must be a good book about strength training and how to do it properly at lowest risk of injury, but this one isn't it.

Review: Abundance

 Abundance is Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book about what they called supply-side liberalism. It's an indictment of the systems built in the 1960s and 70s to prevent government abuse that no longer works in today's environments. While the old 1960s liberalism is about being able to sue government in order to stop it from building a freeway through your neighborhood, that same set of rules is now blocking the need to build sufficient housing for people to live in in our most vibrant cities, or green energy projects in order to power the green energy transition:

the story of America in the twenty-first century is the story of chosen scarcities. Recognizing that these scarcities are chosen—that we could choose otherwise—is thrilling. Confronting the reasons we choose otherwise is maddening. We say that we want to save the planet from climate change. But in practice, many Americans are dead set against the clean energy revolution, with even liberal states shutting down zero-carbon nuclear plants and protesting solar power projects. We say that housing is a human right. But our richest cities have made it excruciatingly difficult to build new homes (kindle loc 67)

Worse, the inability of government to deliver needed housing, energy, or transportation projects creates an opening for the right wing to claim that government doesn't work, or that the problem is immigrants coming into the country, or to take an axe to the NIH and NSF in the name of cutting taxes.

political scientists William Howell and Terry Moe write that “populists don’t just feed on socioeconomic discontent. They feed on ineffective government—and their great appeal is that they claim to replace it with a government that is effective through their own autocratic power.”23 In the 2024 election, Donald Trump won by shifting almost every part of America to the right. But the signal Democrats should fear most is that the shift was largest in blue states and blue cities—the places where voters were most exposed to the day-to-day realities of liberal governance. Nearly every county in California moved toward Trump,24 with Los Angeles County shifting eleven points toward the GOP. In and around the “Blue Wall” states, Philadelphia County shifted four points right, Wayne County (Detroit) shifted nine points right, and Cook County (Chicago) shifted eight points right. In the New York City metro area, New York County (Manhattan) shifted nine points right, Kings County (Brooklyn) shifted twelve points right, Queens County shifted twenty-one points right, and Bronx County shifted twenty-two points right.25 Voting is a cheap way to express anger. Moving is expensive. But residents of blue states and cities are doing that, too. In 2023, California lost 342,000 more residents than it gained; in Illinois, the net loss was 115,000; in New York, 284,000.26 In the American political system, to lose people is to lose political power. If current trends hold, the 2030 census will shift the Electoral College sharply to the right; even adding Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to the states Harris won won’t be enough for Democrats to win future presidential elections. (kindle loc 261)

The book explores housing, energy, our science funding process, and manufacturing. Much of this is driven by the federal government, which obviously the Democrats can do nothing about as long as they're out of power. But local issues like housing and energy can and should be done by blue states, and the authors point out that they need to be done by blue states.

The book has lots of ideas, and is interesting as well as a quick read. The Democrats cannot keep selling pro-illegal immigration, DEI, anti-Asian discrimination, and antisemitic messages as the voters have showed in the last election that they're not buying it. This book provides a playbook for the Democrats for a compelling, non-zero sum vision of the future, if a brave politician would listen. You should read it.

How to buy digital editions of my books

 I finally noticed that the website hosting the purchase links for digital editions of my books went dead. (No thanks to Google)

I've temporarily resurrected them here:

Buy An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups $24.95:
Buy Startup Engineering Management: $24.95:
Buy Independent Cycle Touring $9.99:

Review: Normal People

 I don't know how Normal People made it into my borrow list from the library, but when it showed up I read it and found it easily readable and short, so just read it in a few nights.

A combination of a romance and coming of age story, it traces Connell and Marianne, who start the novel as high schoolers and finish the novel having graduated from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. The story of their on-again/off-again relationship is super-cringe, with you wanting to reach into the page and shake the characters for poor decision making or self-awareness over and over again. For instance, Connell likes Marianne so much that when she suggests that he apply to Trinity College as an English major instead of Galway for Law, he does so. Yet when it comes to the equivalent of the prom he asks some other girl out and is puzzled that Marianne treats this as a rejection, even when his own mother (who cleans the house for Marianne's family) storms out of his car after learning what he did!

Anyway, both characters do incredibly silly things, though Marianne's mistakes are much less dumb than Connell's (though her choice in men other than Connell is very much suspect). The book does a good job of exposing readers to the Irish college system.  For instance, the merit-based scholarship in Trinity is given through a series of exams, and there's no means testing, so even though Marianne is rich she still gets it. This is a far cry from what you see in American universities.

I read the book to the end, but as with much mainstream fiction, scratch my head as to why people think this is particularly good reading. Young people will make mistakes, and care too much about what other people think, and lack self-awareness. At the end of the novel, the characters still lack self-awareness though at least they've realized that they love each other. The whole thing makes me think of mainstream fiction as a dumb genre. It doesn't even have the insights that Ender's Game or A Fire Upon the Deep engenders.

Review: Careless People

 Careless People is Sarah Wynn-Williams' memoir of her time at Facebook as Manager of Global Policy, a position she herself created and pitched at Facebook before becoming an employee. In some ways, it's predictable --- anyone joining an American corporation during these times of end stage capitalism as an idealist is bound to be disappointed. Anyone who read Lean In and not realize it was a propaganda piece written from a place of extreme wealth probably deserved to be disappointed.

One of the lobbyists, a woman in her forties, pulls me aside to say, “Don’t take the book seriously. It’s just a way to make you feel bad about yourself. Which is what Sheryl does.” She thinks I have stars in my eyes. I’m embarrassed to admit that maybe I do, so I just nod.  (kindle loc 1262)

They don’t discuss the real secret behind maintaining their work-life balance, mothering as if they don’t have children: it’s undergirded by their multimillion-dollar paychecks.  (kindle loc 1519)

 Of course top corporate bosses are hypocritical. Of course those people have multiple nannies. And of course, Facebook enabled and embetted extremist politicians getting into power in both the USA and elsewhere. None of this should surprise you. There's a huge section in the book about Facebook's willingness to break all rules of decency to get into China (it failed), but that's consistent with all the lying people inside Google did in order to get Google to invest in China. (And it wouldn't surprise you that most such people would justify it by saying if they didn't lie, someone else would lie and get paid the ginormous amounts of money to do so)

Ultimately, one of the worst things about entering into a free trade agreement with China was that rather than introducing democracy and encouraging public dissent in China like the neo-liberals thought, the Chinese seized on the opportunity to corrupt American public institutions and used them to serve their political purposes. It was definitely not a good trade.

The book has a ton of juicy stuff, including Sandberg's attempts to get the author in bed (literally, not metaphorically) on a transatlantic flight. It included all the crazy events leading to the author's poor performance review at the end that justified her firing (though she must have signed a nondisclosure agreement given that there's no mention of a severance package).

On the one hand, you read this and nod, knowing that Facebook had always been awful. On the other hand, you can't help thinking: "You pitched your dream job. You got it, and you probably were paid extremely well. What made you think you got to be a do gooder at the end as well?" In the end, the book fully justifies the statement I made once that Remains of the Day is still the ultimate silicon valley story. Kill yourself to work for a boss, never take a day off, and then find out in the end that you were working for a Nazi all along. Sounds familiar? It should. The difference is that in 2025, the Careless People won and you have no choice.

Review: Why Your Bike Is Made in Asia

 Why Your Bike Is Made in Asia is Bill McGann's memoir of his career first as a bike shop owner, then as a wholesale distributor (Torelli) importing bicycles from both Asia and Europe. Just like in the auto industry, the bike manufacturing industry in Japan, Taiwan, and China simply out-competed the European manufacturers on price, quality, and sheer industry. (By the way, I only remember the name Torelli because they'd imported some rims that were the worst rims ever made, breaking steel core tire levers trying to get tires off and on rims that were just a little too big)

Overall, the book is easy to read --- I'd bought it and finished it in the same day, starting with the invention of the bicycle and explaining that one reason cycling never took off in the USA was that the tire industry in the US was dominated by a company that refused to manufacture clinchers, ensuring that bicycles in the US were unreliable to the point where people preferred to walk than to ride a bicycle.

The first thing that struck me was that most of the US bike industry was really badly managed. Schwinn, for instance, was in its 3rd generation of being managed by a family member, and of course, its incompetence ensured that it never produced lightweight bicycles to compete with European (and later Asian) imports. The manager suffered severely from Dunning Krueger, and blamed everyone (including his employees who voted to unionized after being treated badly) for his failure. What I wish the book covered was actually the American success stories like Trek and SRAM:

Despite that hiccup, as a result of superb management and a good instinct for what Americans wanted to buy, the Wisconsin company went bravely on without me. Trek went from strength to strength and by the 1990s had far surpassed Schwinn in sales. Trek showed that the failure of American and European producers to compete with Asian factories was not the fault of location or workforce. As is nearly always true, the suits in the upstairs offices were to blame. (kindle lopc 1335)

The American manufacturers that succeeded had to compete against Asians who were cheaper, and Europeans who had a local market where cycling was much more popular, and Bill McGann had no insights to give us as to how they did so. Names were dropped like Jobst Brandt (curiously referred to as a bike historian!) and John Neugent. We read about the invention of Mountain Bikes by Tom Ritchey, Charlie Cunningham, and Joe Breeze, and the rise of Specialized taking over the mountain bike industry. The founder of Specialized, Mike Sinyard, was described as possibly the best businessman in the industry but we also do not get any special insight about why he was so great. Bear in mind the Specialized never manufactured in the US and so his wheelings and dealings to get his bikes imported and sold is a big deal. We also never get into how Quality Bicycle Products (QBP) became so dominant in part supply. We do get a treatise in indexing (which Shimano invented) and praise of it as being super reliable whereas in my personal experience, indexing works for precisely 3 months after which it never works again.

It's clear from reading the book that it has several limitations and gaps that need to be filled in if it's to be more than just a memoir of some bike guy who had next to no influence in the industry but nevertheless managed to acquire quite a bit of wealth doing so.  Nevertheless, it's a short read, and cheap at $4, and if you don't know most of this (which I didn't) is well worth reading.

Review: Rethinking Diabetes

 Rethinking Diabetes is about the history of diabetic treatment, and the various back-and-forths about diet for diabetic patients over the years, pre-insulin and post-insulin.  Pre-insulin type 1 diabetes was pretty much a death sentence, with children not living much past single digit years if at all. Type 1 was mostly unresolved except through a diet that pretty much excludes carbohydrates.

The history of how insulin was invented, and how it effected survival of patients with type 1 diabetes was described. For type-2 diabetics this enabled diabetics to eat carbohydrates. The author spends a lot of time complaining about how this switch was not accompanied by evidence, and how the promulgators of this approach basically used their standing within the medical community to shut down dissent.

In many ways this is a book with an agenda about how the medical community basically ignored the possibility of using a high fat diet to reverse diabetics and reduce insulin needs. To some extent this book is about the history of the keto-style diets and how they eventually came to be embraced despite the opposition of the medical community.

To some extent I think you have to take the book with a grain of salt. Science isn't easy, and if there's anything I've learned from Outlive, it's that the evidence for one diet over another is really slim and not as obvious as say, the dangers from smoking. So it's not through ill intention that the medical community was making high carbohydrate diet the default, but just that nobody really actually knows anything about nutrition.

In any case, I enjoyed the book. It got a bit repetitive at times, and the author seems to believe that the keto diet is the ultimate cure for diabetes. But that might still be a bit too optimistic as variation in human responses to diet seem to swamp our ability to do good studies on nutrition.

Reread: Outlive

 Outlive was onsale for $2 on the Kindle so I bought it and read it again. I keep being surprised at how detailed this book is, with a deep emphasis on long term prevention rather than trying to reverse chronic disease after it happened.

This time, I took action. As recommended, I got my doctor to prescribe me a continous glucose monitor. I'm surprised by how unreliable these devices are, which makes me even more determined to prevent diabetes. If I had to depend on these things to keep myself alive I might not last long!

Needless to say, the book's worth reading a second time. Recommended.

Review: Silca SuperPista Digital Floor Pump

 There was a sale on the SuperPista Digital Floor Pump. While I had a perfectly operational pump, the idea of a pump with a gauge that was accurate and had a reliable pump head was attractive. I bought one since I have multiple bikes in the garage and with the new wider tires and lower pressures in use having an accurate gauge was a good idea and could save time.

The Hiro chuck was a disappointment. It's actually just as finicky or maybe even more so than my older pump heads on the cheap pumps. Here's the deal, when you press it onto a presta head, you have to get it precisely correct. Push it down too far, and the lock won't activate, leading to frustration. Push it down not far enough, and you will get leaks just as with any other pump.

The digital gauge works, and while it reads a consistent 3psi lower than my trusty Topeak Smart Gauge, I can deal with systematic errors, and of course have no way to tell which one is off by 3psi. (I just opt for the higher number, since under inflation has worse consequences than slight over inflation)

So now my inflation trials can go either way. I'll start by grabbing the SuperPista, and if I get frustrated I switch to one of the older pumps. Not the end of the world, but I don't think it's worth full price, or even sale price to get this nice pump unless you have so little room at the spokes that you have to have the Hiro chuck.

Review: Soldier Son Trilogy

Soldier Son Trilogy was on sale for a low price, so I bought it since Robin Hobb had a good reputation Narrated from a first person point of view, the protagonist isn't very likeable, and you frequently want to yell at him to stop ignoring the obvious. 

The worldbuilding is simple: you've got a kingdom that just lost the war and decided to increase the size of its empire by prosecuting a war against nomadic people. They won this war and subjugated the nomads, and Nevare Burvelle is the second son of one of the successful soldiers who got elevated to nobility by the King. Having finished conquering the nomads, the kingdom decides to extend its empire into the forest dominated by the Specks, a hunter-gatherer culture. If all this sounds familiar, it's because the plot is very similar to that of the movie Avatar, with the Western-dominated culture represented by a monarchy rather than by a greedy corporation.

The society is patriarchal, with second sons expected to become soldiers and the narrator buys into all that, never questioning his father, his religion, or his role in life. Then his father has him trained by a one of the subjugated people who introduces him into a shadow world where he gains magical powers but refuses to acknowledge that they exist.

The writing is transparent and easy to read, and the story of Nevare making it to the capital and then getting embroiled in the politics of his world while being in the officer's academy somehow manages to avoid all the cliches. When the climax of the story arrives you're not surprised but the handling of it is great, and maybe even prescient. Neveare even changes his opinions at the end of the book. The series rewards careful reading as casual one liners can take on momentous consequences later on.

The second part of the trilogy is the worst section, as Burvelle's life goes from bad to worse, and he seems even more dense. But at the end of that section he goes natives and joins the Specks to fulfill his destiny as a forest mage destined to save them from the Western agricultural domination-based culture. 

The last book resolves all the issues while giving us a glance at the hunter-gatherer culture. I thought this part was very nicely done, with Burvelle trying to organize the culture and realizing the limits of the egalitarian hunter-gatherer culture and explaining why historically the agricultural patriarchies have always won out over the hunter-gatherers. The magic is never really explained, but the theme here is that you cannot have a partitioned self and expect to fulfill the destiny. The ending is all tied up nicely and a bit pat, but you cannot expect American authors to give you a bittersweet ending.

I enjoyed the series enough to plow through it all within a week, so I can recommend it. It's long and a bit draggy in parts but all in all the transparency made for good reading.

Review: Zatanna

 Zatana was billed as being written by Paul Dini, and she was one of the surviving members of DC universe's magic community after Alan Moore did in her father in Swamp Thing. Paul Dini had a good reputation and more importantly, the book was free on Amazon Prime reads, so I checked it out and read it.

Unfortunately, Zatana's magic lets her get out of many sticky situations without much effort. There's one scene where she gets injured in such a way where she can't speak, and that's about it. I was disappointing that there's really nothing very insightful about any of the stories. They're all light and easy reading, but you never get a deep insight into Zatanna, or even if there are any limits to her magic.

Review: Worlds

 I remember being at a Worldcon where a group of writers talked about fiction vs non-fiction. They asserted that since they wrote fiction, their works would never be obsolete and would sell year after year. Worlds shows how untrue that point of view is.

Worlds is set in a future where artificial satellites ("Worlds") orbit the earth, each a colony of hundreds of thousands. Yet these Worlds are still dependent on the Earth for hydrocarbons for which they exchange power from solar panels in space.

The protagonist, Marianne O'Hara, is a political science student who does a year on Earth in New York. The novel is written in the form of letters from her or entries in her diary. The point of view of the novel is as obsolete as you can get. For instance, the USSR is still in one piece, with several satellite countries and completely intact. Haldeman has his protagonist have to pay to send letters to her friends and lovers in space. She even buys the New York Times for $5 a copy to read on a transatlantic visit.

Similarly, New York City is just as dangerous in the far future as it was in the 1970s, with rape and murder a common occurrence. Haldeman couldn't imagine a future in which New York City was actually a safe place to visit.

As the plot unfolds, we finish the book with the Earth embroiled in a nuclear war, with plague weapons unleashed, while the remaining Worlds remain mostly intact despite sustaining damage. The writing is classic Haldeman, transparent and easy to read, but it's quite clear that science fiction becomes just as obsolete as any work of science writing or other non fiction.

Review: Batman/Catwoman

 Batman/Catwoman was on sale at a reasonable price, and I bought it hoping that it would be a great graphic novel. (Tom King's gotten many accolades for his handling of Batman)

The story flips between multiple timestreams. You have a future timestream when Batman/Bruce Wayne is dead, and his daughter Helena is Batwoman. You never really see Batwoman catching criminals or fighting criminals. She obviously has a beef with her mother, Selina Kyle, and spends a lot of time fighting with her.

Then there's the timeline of the past, when Catwoman/Selina has met Batman/Bruce Wayne, but they're not married yet. We get to see multiple pursuits, some sex, and a wedding ceremony, and even a bit about Helena's upbringing. Yet there's something missing --- we never see why Selina holds out on the Joker. We never even see what her motivation is for helping the Joker.

Finally, we get to see Selina's origins. Again, there's a shallowness there. We never see why she becomes a burglar. And given that she's actually good at her job, we don't see why she's still a burglar after all these years. Even more important, there's a central event in the story (one where Robin chases her down for) and we never get to see it. It's forever alluded to, never revealed, and never shown.

I'm glad I paid very little for this book. It's a lot of teasing, not a lot of showing.

Review: Navaris Long Handle Ti Spork

 My go-to freeze-dried backpacking meals are the Mountain House pouches. The flavors are usually decent, and the cooking easy. The pouches also double as eating bowls so you can reduce the amount of silverware you have to carry.

The biggest problem with the pouches is that regular length silverware can't reach deep into the pouch. So you end up with greasy, dirty hands at the end of the meal. When I saw the Navaris Long Handle Ti Spork, I knew this was what I'd wanted. At $10/spork, it's cheap enough to outfit a family of 4. They're light (hey, it's Ti), and come with a pouch so that you can keep the spork away from other dirty stuff in your backpack. The long handle ensures you can get every last calorie out of those expensive Mountain House pouches without getting your hands dirty.

There's nothing else I want out of sporks. Get these.

Review: GTYOPR Collapsible Cups and Bowls

 I've long been a fan of the snapfold cups, bowls, and dishes that Arturo was using on camping trips. They were really light, easy to clean, and seemed to work very well. But I was not a fan of the prices. At $17 a set, that was a lot of money for something that Arturo told me wasn't going to last.

I found an equivalent on AliExpress, but (1) the shipping took forever, and (2) what arrived wasn't what was described. Instead of a set, I got 4 of the same type. That's what you get for trusting AliExpress.  Luckily, it was the holidays and for $16 I ordered a dozen of the items I was missing from Amazon, a brand called GTYOPR. With Amazon shipping, it was fast and even better, I was protected if they didn't ship me what I wanted. It's no longer the holidays and that maker is no longer selling, but there are equivalent still available like ChenShuo.

During the Kepler track hike, at the various huts, once in a while someone would ask me about them, because they looked so light, so easy to use, and easily flattened, taking no space in your backpack. Fozzils (the guys who invented the Snapfold concept) needs to stop being greedy and just realize that a product that's not made to last (and has plenty of Chinese competitors) isn't going to sell. I would have been willing to pay a premium to support the inventors, but a 4x premium is ridiculous.

Review: Justice (DC Graphic Novel)

 DC put a bunch of graphic novels on sale, and I noted that I'd never read Justice before, and the artist was Alex Ross, which made it a buy for me.

The opening of the novel is fantastic. The villains of the world got together and announced that while the superheroes have focused on fighting super-villains and preserving status quo, they'd never done anything to improve things that matter to ordinary people, like cure diseases or build housing for the homeless. And they proceed to do that, creating a miracle cure and offering the poorest the opportunity to move into newly built cities.

Of course, this being a graphic novel, the superheroes soon discover that it's a scam (how could it be otherwise?). The plot is convoluted, and we get a few interesting fights (far fewer than you would expect), but in the end our heroes prevail and we discover who the master villain is, as the various super-villains in the DC universe could never expect to cooperate with each other.

Unfortunately, the novel never grants our heroes the epiphany that they could make the world a much better place than just by preserving the status quo. In fact, at the end of the story we return to status quo, which makes it quite unsatisfying.

Re-read: Kingdom Come

 Kingdom Come is Alex Ross's beautifully painted story set in the future of the DC Universe that's non-canon. In this world, public opinion turned against the superhumans, forcing Superman to retreat to his farm and Batman's secret identity to be exposed.

Years later, we see that the effect of that superhuman ban is that the non-law-abiding superhumans have effectively created havok. Wonder Woman persuades Superman to come out of retirement, and he embarks on a war to bring those unruly humans back into prison.

Things go wrong, of course, as Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne team up to keep Superman from becoming a dictator for the world. Of course, things don't go as they might seem, and we get a big fight in the end. We get apocalyptic visions, and of course the supernatural parts of the DC universe (Specter and Deadman) come into play.

You cannot beat Alex Ross's art. It is fantastic and a feast for the eyes. The plot is so-so, but as a result of the story not being canon, it gets to play games with the ending that you wouldn't expect. If only Wonder Woman could talk Alan Moore into coming out of retirement to work in comics again. Then we'd get great stories along with great art. But as a book, this one was decent fun. I even liked the ending.

Review: Jellyfish Age Backwards

 Jellyfish Age Backwards is a survey about the various state of our understanding about longevity and methods about preventing aging. It probably doesn't descibe anything you don't already know: eat less, eat more vegetables, exercise more, and supplements may have side effects that are actually deleterious to your health.

One thing that I did learn is that it might be a good thing to give blood on a frequent basis. That drains iron from your body and apparently excess iron is a bad thing.  It turns out that like everything else, the human body was designed to withstand minor injury and build back better, so this counter-intuitive action helps more than it hurts.

By and large, progress in various drugs, etc to improve lifespan have not panned out and has not worked. Progress is slow despite huge amounts of money being put into it. This book is a reminder of how hard won even those meagre gains are. Treasure your health while you have it, because history suggests once you lose it we don't really know how to get it back.