Mt. Diablo...

There are so many beautiful places in the Bay Area, and I'm glad that I seem to be visiting them at a decent 'clip'. My latest adventure involved cycling up Mt. Diablo with a bunch of the boys from our lab:

Mt. Diablo lies just outside of Danville and is a ~45 mins drive from San Francisco.

I thought I was going to die: It's an 11 mi (17.6 km) road that climbs ~3,500 ft (~1.1 km). It starts off on a relatively shallow grade and, sadly, the steepest part is right at the end - just as you've pretty much exhausted your energy. My GPS watch captured our trail:

Despite the struggle (I really need to get more exercise) I did manage to take a few pictures of the absolutely gorgeous views: 

It is very much a bike ride along a road dug out of the side of a mountain. While not dangerous per se, there are some pretty steep and far drops off of the roadside.

The view from the summit is pretty spectacular, and worth seeing even if you only have the energy to drive a car up to the top.

The coolest aspect to the trip was that after a rest on the summit following the grueling 1h 45min bike up, we got to speed all of the way down. It's almost entirely downhill in the opposite direction, so all you have to do is break carefully such that you don't fly off of a cliff during a sharp turn. Even on a beautiful day, the wind racing past us made it chilly, so it's worth bringing a jacket.

As usual, I've created a Picasa Web Album of all of the shots I took while I was biking. Mt. Diablo is yet another feature of the Bay Area that I'd recommend to anyone planning on visiting!

Bernal Heights SF...

My gf has a set of cards, each containing a map of an area of San Francisco and suggesting a route for an interesting walkabout in said area (I found them on Amazon here). One of these 'city walks' was to Bernal Heights, which is an interesting little community nestled atop a rather steep and elevated hill:

The main street running through Bernal Heights, Cortland Ave, is quaint and has a number of nice coffee shops and restaurants - it makes for a great leisurely if somewhat uphill stroll.  

We decided to stop for lunch and a drink at one of the nice little coffee shops along Cortland Ave.

The elevation of the heights is such that they offer some of the best views of the city. (It's debatable whether it's better to walk up to Bernal or Twin Peaks - the latter allows you to see both the Pacific and Bay sides of the city, but Bernal Heights offers some better views of the city's southern districts, like SoMa, the Mission, and Potrero Hill).

Here's a panorama that I took of the view looking North-West to South from the Bernal Heights Hill. The hill on the far left is Twin Peaks, while in the center we're looking straight down through the Mission District to downtown. The hill just to the right of the center is the Potrero Hill neighborhood. 

The last image I'll post here is a shot that I took looking North-East toward San Francisco's less famous but actually more impressive Bay Bridge (linking SF to Oakland). Looking at these photos, one can begin to understand why SF has such a reputation for being a hilly city. Those buildings down there are within easy walking distance, and yet the difference in elevation is rather startling.

As usual, I've made a Picasa Web Album with many of the other photos I took while on the walk. Given their close proximity to the BART subway system (Glen Park Station is just next to Bernal Heights) and the great views, I'd reccomend a walk through the area to anyone visiting the city.

Rationalizing Piracy (or not)...

I had a short conversation with a friend on Facebook where I noted that, for the past several years, I've adopted a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to 'piracy'. I've never been the kind of person who downloads music, movies, or games for free, but I certainly shared tunes during the Napster craze in college. I'd also delved pretty deeply into classic system 'emulation' before my 20s. I have mixed and somewhat complex feelings about the causes and effects of piracy in modern media, but by not partaking in it myself I can put my money where my mouth is and support those creators whose stuff I feel is is worth keeping afloat.

Then I had a brief exchange with a man working at a used record store last weekend during which he brought up an interesting philosophical point: What about media that is no longer in print, but isn't old enough to have fallen into the public domain? Is it ok to download PDF versions of such books, or ripped copies of such movies or video games?

The law is fairly clear on this: So long as someone holds the copyright on a work, you're not allowed to reproduce it, even if it's out of print. The only real recourse that you have to obtain it for yourself is to attempt to find it used1. I only said 'fairly clear' because actually finding out whether someone holds the copyright to a work can be pretty tricky. Apparently, when a company goes out of business without finding a buyer for its assets, it's fairly popular for them to 'write off' intelectual property as a loss for tax and bankruptcy purposes. While there's no clear legal standing to such material - apparently 'scholars' are unclear on whether such material automatically becomes 'public domain' - it has spawned the software concept of 'abandonware', or software whose copyright holders have relinquised their legal hold on the material. If someone still owns this stuff, they're not complaining. See Abandonia or XTCAbandonware for examples of sites that openly distribute such software.

But let's put Abandonware aside. Rather, consider only media whose publishers are still in business, but who no longer actually publish or support said work. I have to admit that I can't morally justify its piracy to myself: There's always the possibility that the publisher will re-release the work at a future time. I've already experienced this with a recent book: it had been out of print for almost a decade, but was re-released last year as a Kindle e-book. 

Despite my inability to justify such piracy to myself, even I can admit that there are some titles that are highly unlikely to see re-release. For instance, some games were programmed during in an era when it wasn't common to create extensive backups or were designed for systems with architecture so unique that it's almost impossible to 'port' them to modern computers in any form2. Similarly, certain TV shows and movies incorporated licensed music or themes whose contracts have expired, and any attempt at re-releasing them would require extensive renegotiation of royalties.

The one somewhat legitimate argument (and I use legitimate here in the literal sense of 'justifiable') that was made by the gentleman in the store is that of 'cultural preservation'. We would balk at the idea that Shakespeare's or Jane Austen's work could be lost to the ether of time because of legal disputes over who owns the rights. We're lucky that because they're written down on fairly durable material, which survived the expiration of its copyright, it's unlikely that every single copy of Hamlet or Sense and Sensibility could be somehow lost. However, because it's impossible to buy legal copies of the Star Wars Holiday Special, were it not for all the nerds uploading it to sharing sites, it could become a tragedy of time3. Disks and magnetic tape don't last for ever, unfortunately.

I'm pretty cynical, and I'm willing to bet that 95% of people who claim that they're involved in 'preservation' of media are actually just rationalizing what amounts to theft. There are organizations dedicated to keeping a record of the history of classic works - Project Guttenberg for books, or The Lost Levels for unreleased videogames - and you can usually tell if they're legit by whether or not they have 'skin in the game' (are they investing time, effort, and cash in 'preservation' or just hosting pirated works on an anonymous, free service?). But then again, if someone is honest with themselves and admits that the only recourse they have if they want to experience a particular piece of media is to pirate it, it's difficult to condemn them... Which, I suppose, is just one more argument for why making one's catalog available digitally at a market-reasonable price is a great start to curbing piracy. 

1This is creating a massive headache for people looking towards the future of media. If you read the End User License Agreements of digital goods (and who does?), you'll often find that there are provisions indicating that the provider has no obligation to provide access to the good indefinitely. Some services, such as Amazon's Kindle e-book reader or MP3 store basically give you a copy of the files, so you can be responsible and back them up yourself. Other services - especially as relates to movies and software - require authorization keys locking the media to a particular piece of hardware, and/or access to internet servers to authenticate the product everytime it's used. When those servers go down, what happens? 

2For anyone interested, it's really fascinating to look up the details of the failed videogame console known as the Sega Saturn. The Saturn was such a unique and custom piece of hardware that software designed on it was almost impossible to run on other systems. Just for starters, it was a 3D system that rendered quadrilateral polygons rather than the triangular polygons used by every other system up to present, meaning that it was incompatible with the design software used by everyone else. To this day, it remains one of the most difficult if not nigh impossible systems to emulate, and almost no big originally Saturn-specific titles have ever been released on retro-gaming services, legal or otherwise.

3Yes, I did intentionally, implicitly compare the Star Wars Holiday Special to Hamlet.  

Audiobook Club: God, No!

Well, I suppose that Audible.com 'got me'. Obviously the 'best deal' in terms of using the site is to pay your $14.99/mo fee and choose an expensive/long 'free' audiobook of interest - audiobooks typically being quite expensive. However, the site had a 48 hour sale and I saw that Penn Jillette's God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011; Billiance Audio), read by the author, was $7.49. I like Jillette. He's raw and outspoken about athiesm and libertarianism, and he's typically quite funny to listen to, so I picked it up 'on the cheap'.

Go, No! isn't really a book in the vein of Dawkins, Harris, or Dennet, who try to argue against the practice of religion (or more specifically accepting anything without evidence) with science, logic, and rhetoric. Jillette uses all of these in the book to be sure, but instead he takes the approach of relating his own thoughts about 'free-thinking' and wrapping them around tales about his own experiences. These 'tales' are always quite funny, but tread boldly into topics that I wouldn't be comfortable talking about aloud except in a basement with close friends. When I said above that Jillette is 'raw', I mean that he goes way beyond the kind of language that all but the saltiest mouths would spew. If you know him, you know what you're in for.

The language works within the book's overall philosophy, which is really about the things that the author holds 'sacred'. Things such as family, friends, and freedom. I'll give Jillette one big compliment: he does a really good job of explaining the libertarian philosophy (or at least 'a' libertarian philosophy) in such a way that it doesn't come off as arrogant or off-putting. Maybe it's just me, but I have found that libertarians often come off to liberals in the same way that athiests do to the faithful: as condescending a-holes. Because this aspect of the book is one of its unique contributions to the discourse, I'd like to focus a bit on one of Jillette's specific arguments.

The author makes a point that I guess I'd never really thought about: In many ways, both the 'left' and 'right wings' are cynical philosophies (the left most of all). Both ideologies essentially assume that most people cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and therefore we need many laws and institutions to save us from other people and/or ourselves. In a way it's rather odd that people assume that individuals who often can't manage their own lives very well somehow have the 'inside track' on how to manage something as complicated as a society; read 'your lives'.

Jillette also points out that there's a bit of a self-serving elitism to socialism: liberals often scoff at the 'Tea Party' for voting against their own interests... for a party that's ostensibly 'all about self-interest'. When a liberal votes against his or her own interest, say for redistributive taxation, that's okay though, because he or she has a monopoly on knowing what's best for other people. Also, it's rather odd that some wealthy liberals argue that they should be paying 'their fair share' of taxes since, as far as we can tell, there's no law against paying more than the minimum amount of taxes. It would mean a lot more if, when claiming that you're all not paying enough taxes, that at the very least you started ponying up. When you think of it that way, it all starts to sound a bit like Louis CK's concept of 'believies' - little day dreams that he has about how he'd act in a particular situation that make him feel like he's a good person, without having to actually do anything.

There is, unfortunately, a disproportionate bias towards socialism among skeptics. I say unfortunate here because much like how the US Republican party has married social and fiscal conservatism, this situation marries skepticism with socialism. One aspect of what Jillette advocates is universal skepticism. He gives an example of how years ago he answered a question about his opinion on global warming with 'I don't know', and was lambasted in a news column about how a skeptic could side with the 'Right'. But, as Jillette replied in yet another column, global warming is a very complex, multi-layered scientific topic and he's an entertainer. While he's inclined to believe in warming itself and the potential for anthropogenic contribution, the evidence as to its causes and solutions are so complex that he's been unable to get a clear opinion. Thus, 'I don't know' and not 'I don't believe in it'. It's not right for skeptics to trash what they don't like, and then swallow 'liberal fairy tales' as one friend once called them, without question. There is empirical evidence that many ideas that sound nice and progressive on paper just don't work in practice.

God, No! is interesting if for no other reason than it's quite funny. Because of the nature of his stories and the language, I'm guessing that Penn's appeal will skew quite young - but that's likely where it was to begin with anyway. Ultimately the book's atheism angle pushes an ideal that I've always thought of as more important than arguing over the specific details of religious faiths: that religion itself should be open to the same scrutiny, criticism, and humor that is every other aspect of human life. If you require taboos to prevent criticism of your faith, then what you believe probably isn't solid enough to resist real scrutiny. In describing the myriad sexual acts that he'd perform on the 'living lord', or referring to every faith as 'their particular brand of whack job nuttery' Penn Jillette is certainly breaking taboos. 

Audiobook Club: It...

For my second Audible.com audiobook, I decided to go with Stephen King's classic It (1986; Viking). I realize that King is probably the most widely read American author, and that his novels are often the recipients of much praise, but for some odd quirk of fate and personal choice, I've only ever read his The Eyes of the Dragon (1987) (and this while I was in elementary school). Since I've found it difficult to read fiction for the past several years, I figured that an audiobook would be a great way to see what I was missing.

*'SPOILAR' WARNING* I'm not going to reveal the end of the book, but I would like to discuss some late-chapter details. So if you, like me, haven't got around to reading this book in the past 26 years, you've been warned. I think that the statute of limitations is up.

It's plot revolves around 7 kids - and later adults - (6 boys and a girl) who are all, for various reasons, social outcasts in the small, fictional town of Derry, Maine. Derry has a history of cyclical horrors, where every 27 years or so, a number of people, mostly children, are brutally killed - each cycle ending with a particularly grievous event. During one such cycle in 1958, the 'Loser's Club', as the kids call themselves, each discover through their own means, that the murders are being perpetrated by an apparently shape-shifting clown who calls himself Pennywise (the origin of the band's moniker, by the way). In parallel to describing their meeting and confrontation with Pennywise as children, the book also tells a parallel story of the same characters in 1985 who, now as adults, learn that the killer clown has returned to Derry and that they must honor a pledge to return and fight the evil once again.

King does a pretty amazing job of weaving the parallel narratives together by using narrative devices that avoid simplistic exposition. I honestly wish that more writers of various mediums could read something like It and see how background information can be conveyed in such a way that doesn't involve long segments of rote, flow-annihilating description. Everything about the book is very 'raw' and the main characters' actions both as children and adults are believable and feel natural (with one notable exception below).

In fact, I found the entire first half of the book (which, unabridged is a 48 hour narration) to be quite gripping. The author is well known for his ability to write suspenseful horror and if It is representative, then I understand why. The book isn't particularly 'scary', per se. But rather the character of Pennywise is plain creepy. He draws out his confrontations, appearing to his prey in forms that are guaranteed to provide the utmost terror, which King puts to good use. I also have to commend the book's narrator, Steven Weber, who does an amazing job of playing each of the different characters, imbuing them with their own personality - most especially the killer clown.

Unfortunately, the second half of the book slides quite a bit. First off, it's revealed what 'It' actually is (kind of). Apparently, the clown is an eternal being representing a sort-of physical manifestation of death and destruction (interestingly, we're led to believe that there are 3 such beings that have existed since the creation of the universe and form a triumvirate that's eerily similar to the Hindu Trimurti). This being, who feeds on life and finds terror to be especially 'delicious', preys on children foremost because they most of all truly believe in their fears.

All of this was pretty cool until I began thinking about it: we learn that the being was attracted to Earth some millions of years ago because it sensed the deliciousness of human imagination. Whereupon it landed in... Maine. Humans arrived in Maine when, maybe 12,000 years ago? I've got nothing against Maine - I grew up right next door and visited many times - but I guess this being was sleeping there just outside of Bangor, excited about how in 106 years or so these humans would come out of the other side of the world that they were living in so that they could feed him?

The book also devolves into some real classic B horror movie stuff as secondary characters start to do some very deus ex machina stuff in the service of setting up utterly anticlimactic encounters. It's not show-stopper material, but it's nevertheless disappointing given the book's earlier high quality.

However, there is one scene in the final act that disturbed the heck out of me - and not in the good 'horror disturbed' kind of way. As the 12 year-olds escape It's clutches for the first time, they come to the realization that their power to withstand the beast comes from their bond of friendship. However, this very bond is apparently also tied to their fear of the beast and, having defeated It, it's now weakening. Because they have one last challenge to overcome before reaching safety, Beverly, the only female member of the group, decides that the only way to keep their bond alive in these final moments is for her to sleep with all six of her friends, one after the other. This is then described in somewhat lurid detail.

Now, I'm no prude and while I don't think that I'd enjoy reading about a ménage à sept among pre-teens under any circumstances, I could envision some sort of plot circumstance where such a thing could be 'justified'. This is not the case in It. I can sort of glimpse at how King tried to set it up, but it just didn't work for me. Unfortunately, throwing something like this into a book without justification is pretty disturbing on all kinds of levels and dampened my feelings on the subsequent coda.

All told, It sets up a strong beginning that perhaps it could never really live up to (although if some of the hackneyed garbage at the end had been simply removed, it would've been better). Such seems to be the case with a lot of horror: An unexplained terror is much more disturbing than something understood. And yet we rebel against this idea: lack of explanation is unsatisfying. Perhaps there's some key to genre in that thought, but I'm not familiar enough to piece it together1.

1That being said, I remarked on a previous blog about how some genres, notably Fantasy and Science-Fiction often suffer from a desire to over-explain everything. Unweaving the rainbow doesn't make it less marvelous, but that physics lecture in the middle of my daydreaming sure can be boring-as-hell.