Just finished Probability Space by Nancy Kress, the third book in a trilogy, following Probability Moon and Probability Sun.

Aside from the silly titles, these are all excellent books. One nice thing about them is that they are all stand alone books - each one is a complete story with no cliff-hanger endings. The third one is a little less stand alone and is my least favourite. The first two are centered around the characters dealing with a strange new culture and trying to figure out what is causing it's unusual features. Probability Space deals with the consequences of what happens in the first two books and wraps up the over-arching plot line. It feels more like a standard "space opera" without the cultural exploration angle and suffers because of it.


Amazon Link: Probability Space

I just finished The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. This is really an extension of an article Anderson wrote in Wired about this subject back in 2004.

The basic idea of the long tail is simple - in a market where the cost of carrying additional items has dropped to near zero, a significant aggregate amount of demand exists for items with a small amount of individual demand. The initial examples came from Rhapsody and Amazon. For a standard store like Tower Records, there is a physical limit to how much merchandise can be carried and therefore there is competition between products based on which one can produce the most revenue. The result is that records stores carry product heavily weighted towards hits and that affects what we can buy.

In contrast, there is almost no cost for Rhapsody or Amazon to add another product and therefore they can carry products that do not contribute a lot of revenue. The first result is that Rhapsody and Amazon have a much larger selection. The second result is that if you sum up all the small contributions of the marginal revenue products, you end up with a substantial amount - sometimes 20-40% of total revenues.

If you plot the revenues for each individual product, you get a power law like in the picture at the top of this post. In the past, retailers focused on the left hand side of the line because there was a limit on how much product they could carry. But now, more and more companies are finding that there is a lot of money to be made in the right hand side of that line.

I read Anderson's original article years ago and liked it. But I avoided reading this book because I had heard it was mostly redundant and Anderson over-stretched himself by trying to use the long tail concept more than is appropriate. Both of those criticisms are partially true, but the book is still worth reading. There is repetition but Anderson also adds enough new details about where the long tail economics apply and where they don't and the history of how companies learned to exploit it. Near the end, he does apply it a little more widely than I was comfortable with that is just a small section of the book.

If you are interested in why companies like Amazon, eBay and Google are having such a profound effect on the modern economy, this book is highly recommended.

Amazon Link: The Long Tail

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Just finished Killing Time by Caleb Carr.

For some reason, Carr's reputation is that of a more "literary" author but the books of his that I have read all seem to be fairly standard genre fiction. Neither the writing nor the characters are noticeably different.

Killing Time is his first science fiction book and was first published as a serial in Time magazine and there is nothing to distinguish this book from a lot of dystopian works available. The specific dystopian themes seem to be drawn from very current, mostly left-wing, conspiracy theories about the dangers of the un-regulated Internet and the pernicious influence of business and trade on governments around the world but the rest of the book harkens back to such science fiction classics as Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - the protagonist stumbles into a plot by a mad scientist to overthrow the current corrupt society, no matter what the cost. There are a few interesting twists and turns along the way but the ultimate conclusion and denouement are disapointing.



Amazon link: Killing Time

Yesterday I finished Complications by Atul Gawande.

Gawande's day job is as a surgeon but he also does a good turn as a non-fiction writer. This book is built out of a number of pieces that he wrote for the New Yorker and other magazines.

Complications is a popular science book about the philosophical issues at the base of modern medicine. Some of the ideas he discusses are: how do we know what is right treatment, what is the best way to learn how to do a complex task, how do we make decisions given uncertainty and high stress situations, should a patient decide on their own treatment. It dovetails nicely with a lot of my interests in the nature of knowledge, decision making and how humans learn/process information.

I've got his next book, Better on request at the local library and I'm looking forward to it based on this book. I had read some of his New Yorker articles so I thought I would find it interesting but I was surprised at the breadth of his thought and the consistent quality of his writing. If you are squeamish or prone to hypochondria, some of the sections of this book might bother you. Otherwise, it is highly recommended.


Amazon Link: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

Yesterday I finished Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry. Fry is best known for his work on TV and film, particularly his work with Hugh Laurie, but he is also an author of a few novels. Ths is the first of his novels that I've read and I quite enjoyed it. As I've commented before, the British seem to have a handle on semi-comic slice of life writing that eludes most American authors.

Hippopotamus tells the story of Ted Wallace, a famous, very bitter and vitriolic poet who has just lost his job as a poetry critic and is asked by his god-daughter to check out the situation at her uncle's estate. There he finds a growing collection of miracle seekers and, possibly, some redemption for some of his wasted life.

The book is written partially in epistolary form, as letters between Ted and his god-daughter and others, and partially in standard form. Some good moments come when letters from others reveal what Ted has tried to hide or overlooked from his viewpoint in his own letters.

A short but enjoyable book, particularly if you enjoy the dry, English sense of humour.

Hippopotamus

I just finished The Charnel Prince and The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes. These are the 2nd and 3rd entries in a fantasy series. I picked up The Blood Knight while I was in Italy and wanted to re-read The Charnel Prince to re-fresh my memory before I read the new one.

The necessity of doing that kind of re-reading is one of the main problems I have with books in modern fantasy series. Many of them do not stand as independent works and long gone are the days of the standard trilogy format. Many of the most popular modern series do not seem to have an end in sight and in some cases I suspect that the authors are simply enjoying having a successful series and do not have a resolution in mind from the start.

Aside from that issue, this is one of the better modern fantasy works. Keyes does a good job of walking a fine line between realism and romanticism by keeping the characters and the background very likelike while still incorporating some fantastic plot twists and mythology.

I'm hoping he wraps up the series in the next installment to avoid over-extending it.

Amazon Links: The Charnel Prince, The Blood Knight

I just finished Persian Fire by Tom Holland.

This is a non-fiction book about the clashes between the Persian Empire and the Greeks but unlike most other books on this subject, it gives more than just lip service to the Persian side of the conflict. In addition to the usual info about the Spartans and Athenians, it gives a detailed background of the founding of the Persian Empire and the succession of rulers that lead up to Darius/Xerxes attempts to conquer the Greeks and punish the Athenians.

Nicely written and a good starting point for anyone interested in ancient Greek history.

Amazon Link: Persian Fire

Italy pictures posted here.

I finished the following books while on vacation:

Child of Flame by Kate Elliott. I often pick up large, fantasy books when flying. They usually keep me involved enough to distract me while on the plane/train/bus but it doesn't matter if I really pay attention or if they are great books. This one is the fourth in a series called Crown of Stars. The first three weren't that good. They were OK reads but a little un-remarkable. This is actually the best of the four - it seems to start to tie together some of the plot elements in an interesting way and you get a better idea of the where the series is going. Thankfully, the whole series (seven books) has been published so I don't have to worry that this will be one of the current fantasy series where the author just stretches and stretches and it appears they will never end (i.e. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series or possible George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones)


Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. This is the first book featuring the same protagonist as the mega-hit The DaVinci Code. I had read this before and brought it along so Stacey could read it. I thought it would be amusing since it features a number of sites in Rome. After she was done and we had left Rome, I re-read it to see how it read after I had seen the same locations it uses. It's actually a pretty bad book - even worse than The DaVinci Code - and I wouldn't recommend it unless you are planning on visiting Rome or the Vatican.

Amazon Links:

Child of Flame (Crown of Stars, Book 4)
Angels & Demons

Italy - final thoughts

Italy was a lot of fun. One of the reasons we chose Italy was the variety of things to do - museums, ruins, good food, shopping, hikes. But it was also very expensive and not a relaxing vacation at all. If you are looking for something affordable, or looking to come back well rested, pick somewhere else.

There were also a couple of myths we had heard about Italy that we're dis-proven:

Myth - All the food in Italy is great.
Truth - There is plenty of mediocre, and even bad food, in Italy - even if you avoid the "tourist trap" type places. We didn't end up getting consistently good food until we started following recommendations rather than trying to pick all our own restaurants. If you are coming from someplace where it is harder to get high quality, fresh food, then Italy might be better on average, but we come from someplace with lots of great food available and nothing we had in Italy was better than what we can get around here and a lot of it was worse.

Myth - Everyone in Italy dresses very well, compared to America.
Truth - We saw a lot of very casually, very plainly dressed Italians. Even when they were more dressed up, it often wasn't in a good way. Current fashion trends in Italy seem to be jean jackets, fancy belts with big belt buckles and large, bug-eyed sunglasses.

Guide books we used:

For the general trip, we used Rick Steves' Italy 2007. This is a pretty good book. It covers the important sites well and gives nice summaries for each area and city. In addition, the recommendations are better than some of the other books I've seen. We tried one of the hotel recommendations and a number of the restaurant recommendations and they were all very good. The maps included are good for high level navigation but are best combined with a more detailed map if you are looking for anything specific.

Since we were in Rome for four days, we decided we needed more details for that part of the trip. We bought a copy of Frommer's Rome (2007 Edition) when we got there. It has some good recommended walks throught the city and a nice included map. The recommended restaurants we tried weren't as good as the ones recommneded by Rick Steves.

Amazon Links:
Rick Steves' Italy 2007
Frommer's Rome

April 17th - We started out today by buying some Italian anti-histamines. Allergies have been affecting us since Florence and we should have bought these earlier.

We went to the National Museum of Science and Technology. This is one of the best science related museums I've seen, much better than the ones in SF or San Jose. In addition to a cool gallery showing models based on devices described in Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks, they had sections on astronomy, clockmaking, telecommunications, energy, metallurgy, etc, all with interesting displays in both Italian and English.

After that we headed back to one of the pedestrian only shopping districts to have lunch and so Stacey could spend some more time at a store she found that carries a lot of things she really likes.

After a while, we had to interrupt that to go on a Milan city tour that we had pre-booked, mainly because it included a visit to Leonardo's Last Supper. In addition, it included the Duomo and Sforza Castle.

Then we went back to shopping for a little while, had supper and then did our final packing for our flight back to San Francisco tomorrow.

April 16th - We took the train to Milan and checked in to our hotel ( Hotel Edolo). Since it is Monday, many museums were closed so we just wandered around the old part of the city, looking at the high end fashion shops and the architecture. Allergies were hitting both of us pretty hard today.

April 15th - breakfast at the hotel, did some shopping on Murano and saw a bit of a glass blowing demonstration. The glass artists here are amazing. They are family trained, with over 15 years of experience before they are considered ready to actually work. The guy we watched made a little horse in front of us in about 10 seconds, forming the head and legs with small, precise motions of his tools. He seemed to have total control over the hot glass.

Then we took a vaporetto (basically a water bus) to St. Mark's square. St. Mark's was already a zoo of people lined up too see the sites. We walked across the square and went into the Correr Museum, a less popular site with no line. It was an OK museum, nothing spectacular compared to the other things we had seen on our trip.

Then we walked over to the Rialto Bridge and took a vaporetto to the train station. From there we took a vaporetto that went the full length of the Grand Canal for sightseeing. It's a very cool looking city from the water. It was helpful to have our guide book to point out some of the interesting buildings along the route.

Then we went back to St. Mark's square and the Doge's Palace. It's a very cool Gothic palace for the head of state from the days of the Venetian Republic. I didn't know very much about the Venetian Republic before this trip so it was fascinating site with lots to read and learn. The building also contained chambers where their grand council and smaller councils met, an armoury with great collection of period weapons/armour and some prisons, as well as some great art.

Because it was Sunday, St. Mark's Bascilica closed early so we didn't get to see that, which is OK since I've seen enough churchs for one trip. After that, we just wandered around for a while. Venice is so tourist oriented that it is a little less interesting to me than some of the other places we've visited.

April 14th - travelled to Venice. It tooks 4 trains to get here - 3 back to Florence and then 1 to Venice.

We are actually staying on Murano, an island slightly north of Venice in the same lagoon that is known for it's glass products. Because of the distance to travel, we didn't get here until around 4:30PM and didn't get out to look around till after 5PM. By that time, things are starting to close down on Murano as the tourists go back to the main island and back to the mainland. In fact, we had difficulty finding an open restaurant for supper. Most of them are open during the day while the tourists are here and then shut down quickly afterwards. Other than taking trains and eating, not much else happened today.

Venice is a very strange place, as one might expect with canals instead of roads.

April 13th - after a light breakfast out on the harbour, we decided to hike to the next two towns over - Corniglia and Riomaggerio.

The hike to Corniglia took us about 1.5 hours but it was a much harder hike than we had anticipated - very up and down with a path up of un-even stone for most of the way. Since Stacey hikes sometimes with a friend, it was surprising that I was in better shape after it than she was. It was probably a combination of light breakfast, not enough water and a hard hike but she was dizzy with shaking muscles and difficulty concentrating. We decided to have some food, water and rest for a bit and then head back. We paced ourselves on the way back to conserve Stacey's strength and it took us about 2.5 hours but Stacey felt much better afterwards. Normally, we would have had the option of taking a train back to Vernazza from Corniglia but today is one of Italy's train strikes so we didn't have that choice.

April 12th - after a quick breakfast, we squeezed in a little more in Florence before we had to catch the train. Stacey had done some price comparing on a nice leather jacket and got one for a good price. Then we went over to the History of Science musuem, a very cool collection of Renaissance scientific instruments, telescopes, clocks, etc.

Then it was off to Vernazza on our first ride on Italy's second class trains. If you can, ride first class as much as possible. Second class is a lot more crowded and lacks air conditioning.

Vernazza is one of the five towns in "Cinque Terre" on the west coast of Italy. It's a small, semi-isolated sea side town with a bunch of tourists and a nice little beach. Very colourful and relaxing after the last week of running around big cities looking at monuments and museums.

April 11th - Almost missed the train to Florence today. Stacey had trouble finding a bathroom and then it turned out to be a pay toilet and she didn't have any change. We made it on the train with just a minute or two to spare.

Once we got to Florence, everything was good. Found the hotel OK (Hotel Spagne) and wandered around Florence for the afternoon. Florence has the best food so far in Italy - both meals we had here were quite good. Florence seems smaller and a little more relaxed than Rome and the people are the nicest we've met so far.

We didn't have reservations for some of the important art galleries to see but we decided to see if we could get in anyways. After a stop in the market by San Lorenzo, we went to the Acadamie where Michelangelo's David is located but the line was 2 hours in the hot sun so we walked around checking out the churches and architecture.

We went to another open air market, had gelato by the Arno river and then wandered over to the Ufizi gallery. The expected wait was only 45 minutes (in the shade) so we stuck around. Inside were paintings by Boticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, etc. Very cool, "best of the best" kind of stuff. My favourite was Boticelli's Birth of Venus.

When we got out, we dashed back across town to the Acadamie just before it closed and there was no line. Michelangelo's David is one of the few pieces of art I've seen that lives up to all it's hype. It was very moving and beautiful.

After that, we re-crossed town, crossed the river at Ponte Vecchio for a nice dinner.

April 10th - Today we had a pre-booked half day tour of the Vatican. They took us quickly through one wing on the Vatican Museum to the Sistine Chapel. Unlike the Coliseum/Palatine Hill tour we did, this tour allowed no free time so we didn't get to see a lot of things in the huge Vatican Museum, particularly some of the works by Raphael that I would have liked to see.

The Vatican was a zoo. There were tons and tons of people there, particularly tour groups. The floor of the Sistine Chapel was crowded like a cattle car. The art itself was glorious. After that, we went straight into St. Peter's Basilica, which is massive. We didn't end up being able to go the part right in the center (above where Peter is supposed to be buried) due to it being set up for some kind of papal visit. Afterwards, we mailed some postcards from the Vatican post office.

After we left Vatican City, we grabbed lunch in the neighborhood and then walked around to check out the areas around it, like the Parti neighborhood. Then we took the Metro back to the Spanish Steps in order to visit the Keats-Shelley Museum. This is located in the apartment next to the Spanish Steps were Keats died of tuberculosis. It has a recreation of the furniture in the room where he did and a lot of memorabilia (letters, paintings, etc.) of everyone related to Keats and friends - Shelley, Byron, Polidori, etc.

From there we made our way back to the Pantheon to check out the interior we missed yesterday - very impressive. Too bad it was converted into site honouring Christian martyrs but it did result in it being preserved better than a lot of similar sites from the same era.

After a break at the hotel, we had a fixed-price, fixed menu meal at a local restaurant - a semi-traditional 5 course Roman meal and some of the best food we've had on the trip.

On the way back to the hotel, we stumbled across some ruins of a couple of temples where historians think Julius Caesar was killed. Then we stopped by the Coliseum to see it at night.

Rome is an interesting city at night since a lot of the tourists are still hanging around with people peddling little toys and some Roman teens.

April 9th - We started out today with laundry - we washed everything we have worn so far. Then we walked over to the Pantheon but it had already closed early due to Easter holiday. We had lunch in that area then walked south, crossed the Tiber and checked out the Trastavere neighborhood, a less touristy part of the city, walked over to a suburb on Aventine Hill and then grabbed some supper before back to the Spanish Steps and checking out Rome's first (and probably fanciest) McDonalds. A low key day due to the holiday.