Minor Thoughts from me to you

In a small clean room tucked into the back of San Diego–based startup Organovo, Chirag Khatiwala is building a thin layer of human skeletal muscle. He inserts a cartridge of specially prepared muscle cells into a 3-D printer, which then deposits them in uniform, closely spaced lines in a petri dish. This arrangement allows the cells to grow and interact until they form working muscle tissue that is nearly indistinguishable from something removed from a human subject.

The technology could fill a critical need. Many potential drugs that seem promising when tested in cell cultures or animals fail in clinical trials because cultures and animals are very different from human tissue. Because Organovo's product is so similar to human tissue, it could help researchers identify drugs that will fail long before they reach clinical trials, potentially saving drug companies billions of dollars. So far, Organovo has built tissue of several types, including cardiac muscle, lung, and blood vessels.

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In which Pat Rothfuss does an interview with Mary Robinette Kowal and I learn a new word: eremitic. Also, I become even more interested in reading Ms. Kowal's two novels: Shades of Milk and Honey and Glamour in Glass.

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This article was fascinating from beginning to end.

“Rare-earth magnets!” Cohn cried, straining to pull one free. He put it in my hand. It was the size of a pencil eraser, and when I loosened my grip, it shot like a bullet to the file cabinet with a clang. “Extremely powerful.” Cohn has pioneered the use of rare-earth magnets to move catheters into place deep inside the body. He avoids having to cut patients open by threading the magnets, and their tiny loads, up through arteries. He pawed several sheets of paper off the floor and drew diagrams on their unused backs, launching an hour-long discourse on the instruments and procedures he’s built around miniature magnets.

Building a heart that mimics nature's lub-dub may be as comically shortsighted as Leonardo Da Vinci designing a flying machine with flapping wings.On his wall hung four metal serving spoons of the kind you might see on a cafeteria line. One was intact; the other three had intricate slots cut in them. Years ago, Cohn butchered the spoons in his home garage to solve the problem of holding a heart still while operating on it. The standard way, at the time, was to shut off the heart altogether and put the patient on a heart-lung machine. But that was risky. Cohn’s spoons let surgeons hold a heart in place while still giving them access to the parts they needed to slice or stitch. Through the custom-cut slots, the surface of the heart would emerge and hold still for tinkering, even while the rest of the heart thrashed around under the spoon. Cohn refined the idea and sold it to a medical-devices company, which has marketed the tools worldwide.

I love genius/crazy scientists who push forward the state of the art.

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Avik Roy dives into the recent history of healthcare reform and details the bipartisan plan that the Democrats killed, in order to pass a partisan plan of their own.

Hence, a bipartisan health-care agenda at the federal level will necessarily look quite different than one at the state level. If liberals had bothered to ask, they could easily have elicited bipartisan support for a proposal that did the following: (1) set up the Obamacare exchanges for those under 400% of FPL; (2) applied the Ryan reforms to Medicare and Medicaid (or, alternatively, folded in Medicare and Medicaid acute-care into the PPACA exchanges); (3) equalized the tax treatment of employer-sponsored and individually-purchased insurance; and (4) not increase taxes or the deficit.

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Caro began “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” his multivolume biography of the 36th president, in 1976, not long after finishing “The Power Broker,” his immense, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Moses, and figured he could do Johnson’s life in three volumes, which would take him six years or so. Next month, a fourth installment, “The Passage of Power,” will appear 10 years after the last, “Master of the Senate,” which came out 12 years after its predecessor, “Means of Ascent,” which in turn was published 8 years after the first book, “The Path to Power.” These are not ordinary-size volumes, either. “Means of Ascent,” at 500 pages or so, is the comparative shrimp of the bunch. “The Path to Power” is almost 900 pages long; “Master of the Senate” is close to 1,200, or nearly as long as the previous two combined. If you try to read or reread them all in just a couple weeks, as I foolishly did not long ago, you find yourself reluctant to put them down but also worried that your eyeballs may fall out.

That about sums up the books. This is from a New York Times Magazine profile of Robert Caro. He's a very interesting man and a tireless biographer. If he had another 50 years to live, I'd love to see who we'd profile next—and what we'd learn about them from him.

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If you had asked an 11-year-old Jeff Bezos to let his imagination run wild and think of the stuff that he would most dream to have as an adult, he might have said:

The world's biggest bookstore! Maybe even a bookstore that can beam any book directly to your hand in an instant (and movies and music, too!).

A giant sky computer that can imitate human intelligence. 

A spaceship.

...And maybe even a robot army. 

Of course any adult would have smiled slightly condescendingly, patted him on the head and helpfully explained that these things aren't possible. 

This is so great. I love what Jeff Bezos has done for the world.

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In Japan, street are simply an empty space in between blocks, they don’t have an identity. However you can identify buildings following a 3 digit system: the first one indicates the district, the second one the block and the third one the building or house inside the block. It is a completely different, but perfectly valid, system of structuring and organizing cities. You have to change your whole mindset.

This difference from American street addresses has some big impacts. Japan now has more geolocalized information than any other country in the world. As a result, Japanese smartphones can offer you more information about where you are, what's around you, and how to get there.

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Arnold Kling offers some perceptive words Congressional budgeting and campaign rhetoric.

Because the budget is so far from being sustainable, budget rhetoric needs to be re-interpreted.

When their side refuses to cut spending because it would be "cruel," they are ensuring that future spending cuts will be even crueler.

When our side refuses to raise taxes, we are ensuring that future tax increases will be higher.

Until the baseline is a sustainable budget, the rhetoric will be the opposite of reality.

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Nationally, we are gearing up for political silly season. The Republican primaries are half over and we're moving swiftly towards the national conventions and the fall election season.

In Wisconsin, the political silly season has been with us for the past 15 months and looks to stay with us straight through November. (In case you haven't heard, we've had recall elections for six senators and a hotly contested Supreme Court election. We have another 4 senate recall elections and a gubernatorial recall election scheduled.)

Politicking is off the charts and everyone is inclined to believe the absolute worst about everyone else. At times like this, I remember one of my favorite quotes (I have many) from Robert Heinlein, from The Green Hills of Earth.

You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

In every party, most politicians are just plain dumb. Freely criticize every politician with whom you disagree. But don't degrade yourself by ascribing evil motives to people who are well-intentioned. It's usually wrong, it's uncharitable, and it reflects poorly on your own character. Instead, criticize the lack of knowledge. And then help the situation along by offering your own knowledge to fill the lack.

tl;dr: The repeal of Wisconsin's "Equal Pay Act" is much less significant than certain politicians would like you to think it is. And the pay gap overall is much narrower than certain interest groups would like you to believe it is.

A friend of mine linked to this article, from Facebook, upset that Republican State Senator Glenn Grothman isn't concerned about the male-female pay gap. So, I read the article. And, wow. It is very sloppily written.

According to The Daily Beast, “A 2007 study by the American Association of University Women found that college-educated women earn only 80 percent as much as similarly educated men a year after graduation.”

After ten years in the workforce, the gap opened to 12 percent.

Wait. What? A 20 perccent gap opened to a 12 percent gap? How does that work? Having nothing better to do with my time, I decided to look up the referenced 2007 study. (And, people? This is 2012 and you're writing for the web. You can link to studies for your readers. Don't make them do their own Googling.)

Here's the original study: Behind the Pay Gap (2007). I started with the Executive Summary. First page, second paragraph:

One year out of college, women working full time earn only 80 percent as much as their male colleagues earn. Ten years after graduation, women fall farther behind, earning only 69 percent as much as men earn.

Oh. So, the 80 percent pay gap increases 11 points, to a 69% pay gap. Now, to be fair to David Ferguson, he's pretty much re-writing a story from the Daily Beast. And this goofily worded section is in the original story. But quoting another story is no execuse for bad writing or for failing to correct the bad writing, for your own readers.

Now, about the pay gap itself. Reading this story and the Daily Beast story, one gets the impression that their is an immense pay gap between men and women. If you read the 2007 study closely though, the pay gap isn't nearly as immense.

One year out of college, women working full time earn only 80 percent as much as their male colleagues earn. Ten years after graduation, women fall farther behind, earning only 69 percent as much as men earn.

... The only way to discover discrimination is to eliminate the other possible explanations. In this analysis the portion of the pay gap that remains unexplained after all other factors are taken into account is 5 percent one year after graduation and 12 percent 10 years after graduation.

After controlling for variables other than sexism, the pay gap after 1 year is 5% and the pay gap after 10 years is 12%. Or is it? You could read "portion .. that remains is 5%" as meaning 5% of the 20%, which is 1%. Similarly, 12% of 31% is 3.7%.

To figure out which it is, I checked the Full Report, from the study.

That is, after controlling for all the factors known to affect earnings, college-educated women earn about 5 percent less than college-educated men earn. Thus, while discrimination cannot be measured directly, it is reasonable to assume that this pay gap is the product of gender discrimination.

Okay. I think the Executive Summary isn't worded as clearly as I would like, but it is saying that 5% of the pay gap can't be explained by their regression analysis against other variables. So, the unexplained pay gap after 10 years is 12%. That's a lot better than the 20% and 31% mentioned in the Daily Beast article, but it's still not great.

But I had one more question: did the study account for the fact that men, generally speaking, negotitate more aggressively for starting pay and raises than women do?

I found this in the "What Can We Do About the Pay Gap?" section of the study? The fact that this in the potential solutions section strongly suggests, to me, that the authors didn't control for it, in their regression analysis.

Further magnifying these gender differences, women expect less and negotiate less pay for themselves than do men. Researchers have found that women expect less, see the world as having fewer negotiable opportunities, and see themselves as acting for what they care about as opposed to acting for pay. These learned behaviors and expectations (which may be based on experiences) tend to minimize women’s pay (Babcock & Laschever, 2003).

Individual differences in negotiating skills may lead to pay variation among workers with similar skill sets. Employers have a fair amount of discretion in setting wages as long as they pay at least the minimum wage and do not discriminate based on gender, race, ethnicity, age, or other protected group. One study by Babcock and Laschever (2003) found that starting salaries for male students graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with master’s degrees were about 7 percent higher (almost $4,000) than the starting salaries for similarly qualified women. Babcock and Laschever argue that this gap in part reflects differences in men’s and women’s willingness to negotiate. It may also reflect women’s perceptions about the labor market, expectations about the wages they’ll receive, and willingness to take a lower-wage job (Orazem, Werbel, & McElroy, 2003).

On a related front, several economic experiments have demonstrated that regardless of their actual work performance in a competitive setting and their beliefs about their performance, more women than men choose noncompetitive payment schemes over tournament (where a winner gets a prize and a loser gets nothing) or competition rates of payment for a task (Niederle & Vesterlund, 2005).

Indeed, when I checked "Figure 21. Key Variables Used in Regression Analysis, by Category", negotiating ability or style isn't listed as a variable. Given that, I'm perfectly willing to conceed that a 5% pay gap exists but I'm chalking it up to negotiating strategy rather than to overt discrimination. It's also not surprising that after 10 years of negotiating less aggressively, a 5% gap could grow to a 12% gap. I don't think you need to bring in the specter of active discrimination to explain that gap.

Secondly, Senator Grothman seems to say that the existing law was unfair because it would penalize employers who paid men and women differently on the basis of experience.

"Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers,” he says. “But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go go go. Now they’re 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn’t discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person."

The way I read the law, that actually isn't the case.

Your employer may offer up a number of reasons for the differences in pay. It may point to a seniority system, a merit system, a system based on quality or quantity of work, or any other factor that accounts for the difference other than sex. Your employer could also try to argue that the jobs simply aren't substantially similar. Ultimately, however, if your employer responds to the allegations with a valid nondiscriminatory reason for the difference in pay, you must show that the reasons given are pretextual, and that the true reason for the unequal compensation is based on your sex.

Unequal pay for unequal experience does seem to be a valid exception, under state law.

Third, if you'll pardon my wordiness, I'll proceed to the actual effect of the bill that Governor Walker signed last week. I had to go to an Illinois lawyer to find a good description. That this description isn't in either The Raw Story's article or the Daily Beast's article just confirms my impression that both are sloppily written.

Here's how the bills have been described.

According to Mr. May, the Assembly has recently passed two bills: the first "repeals an employee's right to recover compensatory and punitive damages when they have proven in court that they were victims of workplace discrimination or harassment;" the second, according to Mr. May is a bill that repeals Wisconsin's Equal Pay Act, "which guarantees women the same pay as men for doing the same work."

Is that what happened?

What Mr. May does not mention is that compensatory and punitive damages were not available under the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act until 2009! So the Wisconsin Republicans' bill would simply undo what the lawmakers perceive as a recent mistake—not some venerable feature of Wisconsin law.

Well, okay, but won't victims of employment discrimination be left without a remedy? No, almost never. The Wisconsin Fair Employment Act is largely duplicative of the federal anti-discrimination laws, all of which allow the full panoply of damages. Indeed, one of the business lobby's chief complaints is that the WFEA creates an unnecessary layer of administrative hearings, which of course cost money (and therefore increase the costs and risks of hiring employees, at the margins).

This is all a big misunderstanding. There is no such thing as the Equal Pay Act in Wisconsin. Instead, the 2009 Act that created the right to get compensatory and punitive damages under the WFEA—the Act discussed above that Republicans are now trying to appeal—was entitled the "Equal Pay Enforcement Act." This is confusing because there is a federal law called the "Equal Pay Act," which requires "equal pay for equal time." But Wisconsin's Equal Pay Enforcement Act actually has nothing to to with "equal pay for equal time"—it just provides for compensatory and punitive damages for the substantive laws passed previously. Since there is no separate Wisconsin Equal Pay Act, there is no separate bill to repeal it.

Wisconsin Law has a two-step process, when alleging an equal-pay violation.

Currently, an employee may file a complaint of workplace discrimination with Wisconsin's Department of Workforce Development (DWD). The DWD has the power to investigate the claim, hold hearings and award an employee back pay, reinstatement, costs and attorneys' fees upon a finding that the employer engaged in discrimination. Repealing the WFEA in the manner proposed will not take away any of these administrative proceedings or remedies. Instead, under current law, after an employee has already proved discrimination once at a hearing in the DWD, she has to then go to state court and again prove discrimination in order to recover compensatory and punitive damages. It is the right to go to state court to recover these damages that is in danger of being repealed.

Now that the "right to go to state court" has been repealed, employees will have to follow the federal process, to receive compensatory and punitive damages.

First, federal law mandates that, just like in Wisconsin, employees go through an administrative process at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) before bringing suit. After that administrative procedure, the employee then must bring a lawsuit in federal court to recover any compensation. Thus, the federal system also requires both an administrative and judicial step to resolve these claims.

Means of Ascent by Robert Caro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: A Great Book

I loved the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power. I'd ever read a better biography. I've still never read a better one but I've now read one that's just as good.

This book really succeeds because it's essentially four stories in one book.

Chapters 1-5 are the story of Johnson's later years in Congress and what he did during World War II. (Johnson spent most of the war avoid danger and then flew into danger, literally, at the last minute in order to have some record to present to his increasingly restless constituents.) This first section of the book is crucial. It portrays the absolute desperation that Johnson felt both to get out of the House and to gain wealth.

I feel that this section of the book is the slowest and repeats the most information from The Path to Power. (Sometimes entire paragraphs are listed from the previous book.) Caro did this to remind the reader of crucial aspects of Johnson's character but, when reading the books back to bad, it really feels repetitive and slows the pace.

Chapter 6 is a terrific look at crony capitalism. This is where the book really begins to pick up, in my opinion. It's the story of how Lyndon Johnson acquired the KTBC radio station. He used the power of politics to turn a money-losing business into an insanely profitable business practically overnight. If you've ever wondered how crony capitalism works or how a politician can become wealthy just from "serving" in Congress, this is your chapter. After reading it, I don't think I'll ever look at the intersection of business and politics the same way again.

Chapter 8 is an utterly fascinating mini-biography of Coke Stevens, a forgotten figure in Texas politics. Prior to the 1948 Senate race, he was a living legend. During the race, Johnson and his partisans slimed him mercilessly. Today, he's remembered only as another reactionary conservative in a long-line of reactionary conservatives.

Robert Caro corrects the historical record and shows a man who lived an incredible life as a self-taught lawyer, accountant, architect, and rancher. He ran a one-man "freight line" when he was just 17, transporting goods in and out of the most inhospitable regions of Texas. He drove the horses during the day and taught himself law at night, by firelight. He scrimped and saved to buy his own books, always saving a a tiny amount for the ranch that he wanted to one day buy.

When he did finally start to buy land for his ranch, he did all of his own branding and shearing. He taught himself architecture so that he could build single handedly build his ranch house. He dug his own post holes and set his own fence posts. He nearly singlehandedly built the entire ranch, from the ground up.

He was a politician only reluctantly but was the most successful politician in Texas history. In his second gubernatorial election, he received 85 percent of the vote (the highest ever total in a contested Texas primary) and won all 254 Texas counties. "He was also the only man in the state's history who had held all three of the top political posts in state government: Speaker, Lieutenant Governor, Governor." And he served an unprecedented two consecutive terms as Speaker: the only man in Texas to ever succeed himself as Speaker.

This mini-biography alone is nearly worth the entire purchase of the entire book.

Chapters 9-16 chronicle the 1948 Senate election. Caro definitely investigates allegations that Johnson stole the election—and finds them to be true beyond a reasonable doubt. The fraud was breathtaking in both its sheer audacity and scope.

More than that though, he chronicles the entire election. Johnson, a mediocre vote getter, was running against Coke Stevenson, the most successful vote getter in Texas history. Johnson had very little hope of beating Stevenson in a fair fight. So, he did the only thing he could: he relentlessly slimed his opponent. He used an unlimited fund of money, coming from crony capitalists dependent on him, to blanket the radio airwaves, to cover newspapers, and to stuff voter mailboxes with dishonest rhetoric and accusations. It was the most rotten and contemptible form of campaigning imaginable and Caro reports on every aspect of it.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It was a fascinating and enlightening look at modern American politics and a pivotal player in them.

The Peace War by Vernor Vinge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: A Great Book

In 1997, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory developed a device that could generate a persistent, spherical force field of arbitrary size and project it almost anywhere. The resulting "bobble" will completely cut off whatever is inside the field from the rest of the world. These scientists quickly act to use the bobble to encase nuclear weapons, military bases, cities, and governments. They declare themselves the Peace Authority and enforce peace by threatening to bobble anyone who rejects their authority.

The Peace War starts 51 years later, in 2048. The world has been at peace for as long as most people can remember. Not everyone is happy with the Peace Authority's limitations on technology and freedom. Small bands of Tinkers have been clandestinely developing new technologies, in an attempt to overcome the Peace. And the original inventor of the Bobbler is still alive, a Tinker himself, and working hard to defeat the scientists who took his invention and used it to enslave the world.

Vernor Vinge does exactly what a good SF author should do: he poses a new technology and examines how it might change the world, for good and bad. I liked his depictions of how American society would change after the last year and enforced peace. I liked his depictions of how technology would progress in the face of severe restrictions against innovation. And I liked his depictions of how an insurrection might work when facing an enemy that not only had superior firepower but also had the ability to completely take pieces off of the map.

This was a very imaginative book and a great example of what "hard science fiction" should be. I highly recommend it.

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: A Solid Follow-Up

This is the second book in Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series. After the events of the first book, PI Harry Dresden has found it hard to drum up work. Actually, it's been impossible. The police don't trust him and the underworld isn't certain it wants to work with him. That's true up until dead bodies start showing up. Dead bodies that look suspiciously like the result of werewolf killings.

This was a pretty solid follow-up to Storm Front. The first book in the series dealt the magic side of the supernatural world. This book dealt with the hairier side of the supernatural world. It was well written but I didn't think that it had as much tongue-in-cheek humor as the first book. I missed that.

Butcher incorporated many different variants of the werewolf legends. It made for a more complex story, as it involved a mix of characters, each with different motives, abilities, and weaknesses. On the other hand, it made the story more complex and I'm not entirely sure that that was such a good thing.

Overall, this was a solid, but not a great, follow-up to Storm Front. Dresden remains interesting as a character and his relationships with the people around him continue to evolve. Ultimately, any story is about people and this story, whatever minor flaws it may have, succeeded in making me continue to care about Dresden and to cheer the progress he's making in his relationships.

One Jump Ahead by Mark L. Van Name

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: I Loved It

Take one jaded, burn-out mercenary. Jon Moore. Give him an AI-enhanced Predator-Class Assault Vehicle. Lobo. One desparate to live a quiet life, in an out of the way spot. The other itching to leave the quiet, out of the way spot and get back into action. Mix in some corporations eager to gain an edge and some corporate officials willing to lie and cheat to gain an edge. The end result is an angry mercenary with a lot of weaponry and a burning desire to both gain revenge and set things right.

All of that by itself would make a decent military novel. What makes this novel really stand out, and what makes it a great SF novel, is Mark L. Van Name's use of nanotechnology and biotechnology. Jon Moore is loaded with nanotechnology that he can use to break in, break down, or confuse. Van Name, knowingly or not, keeps Sanderson's Second Law in mind. The nanotech doesn't make Moore invincible or omnipotent. It merely gives him a different set of tools. He still has to use his ingenuity to survive and win.

Moore also uses various bioengineered animals to achieve his goals. As with the nanotech, these animals are impressive for what they can do as well as what they can't do. It's a close look at another technology that's currently beyond our grasp but close enough to be convincingly portrayed.

This book was very well written and Van Name revealed some impressive worldbuilding skills. I especially liked the planet name of "Pinkelplonker" (named by the 5-year old son of the captain that discovered the planet) and the jump system used to travel between worlds. I very much look forward to reading the rest of the novels in the series.

A Rising Thunder by David Weber

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: I Shouldn’t Have Bothered

This is the 13th book in David Weber's Honor Harrington series. When the series started, back in 1992, it was pretty easy to follow. Sequel followed sequel and each book picked up where the last left off. More recently, in 2002, Weber approved the creation of two sub-series. The result is that the plotline and scope of the "Honorverse" expanded dramatically

The first sub-series was "The Wages of Sin", starting with Crown of Slaves, which follows book #10, War of Honor. The second sub-series was "Saganami Island", starting with The Shadow of Saganami, chronologically following both book #10 War of Honor and Crown of Slaves.

Later mainline novels, such as At All Costs and Mission of Honor, incorporated elements of both sub-series. The plotline of the sub-series's increasingly started to drive the plotline and direction of the main series. This book, A Rising Thunder, is Weber's attempt to fully tie the main series into the elements and events of the two sub-serieses.

The resulting book is a bit of a boring train wreck. It does include characters and plot elements from both sub-series. What it doesn't include is a lot of action. Given that all 3 serieses are built around action, this is a glaring omission. Mostly what we get is a lot of talking, as officials in 3 or 4 locations talk about how recent events will affect future events. I remember one main battle, out of 464 pages. Given how action packed the previous books have been, this was a major letdown.

In some respects, a slow book was almost inevitable. Given how much things have changed over the last several books, there needed to be an attempt to tie everything together and then to re-launch the series in its new direction. But I feel that the relaunching could have been achieved with a greater economy of words and a bit more action.

Perhaps the most damning indictment I have is that most fans would be best served by reading a plot summary of this book rather than reading the book itself.

Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

I download this book for free, several years, ago as part of a Tor.com giveaway. I read it then and enjoyed it. I was always interested in the sequels but never quite got around to tracking them down. (There are a few series that I read but I'm generally pretty bad about tracking down sequels.)

Recently, I was visiting a used bookstore in preparation for air travel. I saw both this book and it's sequel, Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart. I really wanted to just pick up the sequel, to read on the airplane. But I discovered that I really couldn't remember anything about the first book. So I bought both and had to start by rereading this one.

Jane Lindskold plays with one idea: a child raised by wolves. But, just for fun, don't make this a Jack London story about a child raised by wild wolves. This is, after all, a fantasy novel. No, these wolves are Royal Wolves. They are bigger and stronger than normal wolves. Most importantly, they're smarter. They have a shared culture and language and are at least as intelligent as humans, even if it is in a very wolfian manner. Make the girl be the keeper of fire, leading the wolves to call her Firekeeper. And give her a friend: a Royal Falcon named Elation. Also bigger, stronger, and smarter than your average falcon.

Now, bring Firekeeper back to the kingdom of Hawk Haven. King Tedric is elderly, without a clear heir. Earl Kestrel believes that Firekeeper is the king's heir. The court, predictably, disagrees. Now, add in tensions with the neighboring kingdom of Bright Bay. Mix all of these ingredients together, stir, and simmer for the length of one novel.

Overall, I think this recipe works. True, it was slow moving. There was a lot of talking, as a girl accustomed to wolf society needed to have human society explained to her. There was a lot of political maneuvering too. While some of that is based in action most of it is also based in talking. But, after all, this books is titled "through wolf's eyes". It was all about depicting the kingdom of Hawk Haven from the perspective of a non-human outsider.

Yes, it was slow moving. But the book was entertaining nonetheless. Now that I know how the story starts, I can read Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart to see what happens to Firekeeper next. I see that the series has expanded to 6 books. I don't know yet whether or not I'll read all of them. A lot depends on what I think of the next book. And none of us will know how that turns out until I take my next trip by air.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

I'm definitely not the target market for this book. Not if my general level of enthusiasm means something, at any rate. Still, it was a good novel and it deserves it's wide audience and fan base.

If you've been paying any attention to pop-culture at all, then you're familiar with the broad outlines of this book. (But I'm going to recap anyway.)

In the far future, America is gone. Panem, a totalitarian nation, now occupies North America. Panem is divided into 13 Districts plus the Capital. Years before the story begins, the Districts tried to rebel against the Capital. They lost and District 13 was destroyed.

As a result of the loss, the remaining Districts were forced to sign a treaty of unconditional surrender. But that wasn't enough. In a show of force and strength, the Capital instituted "The Hunger Games". Each year, each District is forced to send 2 teenage contestants to compete in a bloody arena battle, to the death. The winning contestant wins a year's supply of food and medicine, for his or her District.

This year, 16-year old Katniss will compete in the Hunger Games.

It's an interesting idea: how will a bunch of teenagers, still trying to grow into maturity, handle being flung into a life or death situation and forced to survive? What decisions will they make? What emotions will they feel? What lengths will they go to survive? And, even if they survive, will any of their humanity with them?

It's not only an interesting idea, it's a well-written book. Katniss is a very vivid character. The story is told from her perspective. As a result, some of the characters start out rather flat and then, as she interacts with them and gets to know them, they develop increasing depth and humanity. The book is full of action (especially the second half, once the games begin) and the action is well described. It was a very fun, fast, read.

I didn't enjoy the book as much as I could have though. While Ms.. Collins created interesting characters and engaging action, she failed to create a fully develop the world of Panem. To give just one example, the Capital is located in Denver and District 12 is located in the mountains of Appalachia. District 12 is desperately poor and most of the people there live on the edge of starvation. That's part of why the games are called the "Hunger Games" and why winning is such a big deal.

Some of the other Districts are fabulously wealthy though and don't have to worry about food. Why? The book portrays the Capital as sucking up nearly 100% of District 12's resources. The book also portrays the Capital lifestyle as tremendously decadent and lavish. It would seem that it would suck up most of the resources of all of the other Districts too. So why are some wealthy and some poor? What makes the world of Panem go around?

There is very little about the world of Panem that is explained. Much of it doesn't make sense and the book seems to just rush through the world building. Everything related to Katniss is in sharp focus and a pleasure to read. Everything else is distinctly fuzzy and out of focus, even the things that should be basic, background, knowledge for Katniss. That's certainly the author's prerogative but it turns what could have been a great book into merely a good book.

Still, I'll probably read the next book in the series, just to see where things go next.

About 2 weeks ago, I posted about Occupy Wall Street and Mr. Ahadzi. A few days ago, I received an email from an anonymous OWS supporter, offering OWS's side of the story.

With the supporter's permission, I'm reprinting it here.

You need to understand something about 702 Vermont Street and Wise Ahadzi. Firstly, Mr. Ahadzi left his home in early 2009. According to neighbors, the home became rodent-infested and was being used for criminal activity. Neighbors were very upset to be living next to an abandoned house. Mr. Ahadzi went into hiding. He was being chased by creditors, not just Countrywide Mortgage, but the utilities, credit cards. His business was trading in and writing about penny stocks. That was bankrupt as well...and god only knows who he owed money to from that business.

The house, being abandoned, was ransacked for anything valuable. Long before Occupy moved in, the appliances were stolen. There was no kitchen on Dec 6, 2011. There was lots of water damage in the kitchen. Occupy removed heavily damaged drywall from the kitchen.

Mr. Ahadzi showed up one day after the big hoopla on the news. He had been unreachable by Occupy and by Bank of America, successors to Countrywide. That's why they hadn't yet foreclosed. He is still the rightful owner of the property and could have asserted that right on December 7, but he is "negotiating" with Occupy, and with Countrywide.

Don't get sucked into the simple narrative of hippies trashing stuff. There's more at work here.

I'll just say that even with all of that information—OWS still didn't actually manage to do much with the house. By this account, OWS managed to remove some drywall from the house. Given that Habitat for Humanity can manage to build a house in a matter of days (or hours, in some cases), that's not especially impressive.

Veronique de Rugy:

First, agencies often fail to follow basic decision-making principles and assume that more regulation is always necessary. Back in March, my colleague Jerry Ellig testified before the House Judiciary Committee and made the point that the regulatory system suffers from systemic institutional problems. For example, there is a broad-based consensus on what regulatory analysis should involve and what its role in agency decision-making should be (as I described in my prior post), yet academic research shows that, more often than not, agencies do not produce or use thorough regulatory analyses. This is true regardless of what party is in charge of the executive branch.

The second core problem with the current system is that the more regulation agencies generate, the harder it is for individuals and businesses to comply. In many cases, no one knows for sure how many of the regulations we have on the books are really necessary or effective.

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Margot Kaminski, for The Atlantic.

Over the past two decades, the United States has established one of the harshest systems of copyright enforcement in the world. Our domestic copyright law has become broader (it covers more topics), deeper (it lasts for a longer time), and more severe (the punishments for infringement have been getting worse). These standards were established through an alphabet soup of legislation: the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act of 1997, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, and the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act of 2008. And every few years, there's a call for more.

Many features of existing U.S. copyright law are harsh by international standards. The U.S. penalizes the attempt to access digital material against a rights-holder's wishes, even when the material itself is not protected by copyright. We guarantee large monetary awards against infringers, with no showing of actual harm. We effectively require websites to cooperate with rights-holders to take down material, without requiring proof that it's infringing in court. And our criminal copyright law has such a low threshold that it criminalizes the behavior of most people online, instead of targeting infringement on a true commercial scale.

I'd say there's a strong argument to be made that we should be weakening U.S. copyright law—not strengthening it.

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