Adventures in Onionism

I finished reading Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything . Eh. I guess it was OK. I think I liked it more than Dawkins' similar book and less than Harris', but I can't be certain that my opinions aren't dependent on the order in which I read them, there's less convincing to do and I've already heard a bunch of the arguments before. Just like Dawkins went into tangents on his area of expertise (evolution), Hitchens goes off on his (men of letters). I guess details from the lives of Jefferson, Paine, Descartes and others are more interesting to me than the minutia of evolution, but I also thought the writing jumped around more than necessary. I also finished listening to Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead on tape. It was ridiculously simplistic. And by that I mean I think of it what David Cross thinks of Scott Stapp, the lead singer of crap-band Creed. (This opinion is best summarized by paraphrasing the hidden track on C...

I spent the last few days in Truckee having a great "what the hell am I doing in grad school?" time climbing Castle Peak, hiking through abandoned train snow-sheds, and attending the Pacific Crest Trail Association's TrailFest . In the 6 years since I've hiked the AT , I'd never once been to any of the typical hiker parties. This wasn't quite the hiker-reunion I'd hoped it would be, although it was fun and I did see several hikers I hadn't seen in a while. Hopefully I'll also be able to make it to the PCT kickoff (AKA the ADZPCTKO) or the ALDHA-West Gathering (AKA the ALDHA-West Gathering) this year. My friend approaching a false summit. Me on the summit. On the PCT just south of Castle Pass. Now I'm back in Berkeley. I puked this morning, and now I have to grade a bunch of papers. Sweet.

I thought it was Saturday something like eight separate times today. Why is the farmer's market going on? Why did we get the coupon packet in the mail? Why is All Things Considered on? Because it's Tuesday. I just don't normally get to run for 10 hours on weekdays. I bought a permit so I can legally run on trails on the east side of the coastal hills on EBMUD property, so I thought I'd break it in with 40 or so miles. Here's my route on the gmap pedometer. I saw 20+ wild turkeys, a bunch of deer, two feral former pet cats, one possible bobcat, and one small snake. Mt. Diablo, site of the 50-miler in April Wild Turkeys Briones Reservoir and some out of focus flowers

I received a citation for supposed violations of sections 21453(a) (red light) and 27400 (wearing headphones) of the California Vehicle Code today. On my bicycle. This page seems to indicate that the fine can be lower for bikes than for cars, but it's up to the municipality, and Marcus says that he's been told by a Berkeley police officer that Berkeley hasn't set them any lower for bicycles. So I'm facing a possible, I don't know, $361 plus $275. Up until then it was pretty good day, because a professor liked my research idea even though it was about sports.

Beefsteak tomatoes seem to be good for that, since they're humongous and peeling a bunch of small tomatoes is really annoying. Regardless, I just finished reading Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. I was pretty unimpressed. I feel the same way about it as I felt several years ago when trying to read CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters and Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species . All the while, you sort of know that it's good, but you've already heard all the good lines before, so there's not enough new to really excite you. Same with Animal Liberation. Michael Pollan did a really good job of distilling the kernel of truth and summarizing it in Omnivore's Dilemma. AL was originally published in 1975, and updated in 1991, but it's definitely outdated again. I didn't think it was organized very well, either. I'm not saying I disagreed a lot or disliked the arguments, I just didn't think it was a great read. Basically, the book says humans ...

Things I Love Right Now: The Earned Income Tax Credit. Hooray for a negative income tax rate for working five months out of the year! Things That Bug Me Right Now: Filing your federal taxes on turbotax.com isn't actually free, despite the numerous signs saying that it is, unless you start the process from irs.gov or taxfreedom.com . I forget this every year and have to go back and do it all over again. I was hoping to run the Pirate's Cove 50K next Saturday, but I couldn't get next Saturday off and had yesterday free instead, so I picked a random route through Tilden and Wildcat Parks for six or seven hours yesterday. I felt great, but I almost killed myself on the bike ride home. I took a really sharp turn, but was still trying to crank it to beat a light, the pedal hit the ground, bouncing me off the pedals and throwing the bike in the other direction towards the cars waiting at the light. I managed to get one hand on a brake a couple inches before I would've ...

I would like to popularize two words/phrases. The first is "hobophobia," meaning to be scared of homeless people. I heard this word in a funny story involving sleeping by the train tracks in Mt. Shasta City from a guy on the CDT, and I thought he made it up, but you can find stuff about the condition all over the web. Heck, you can even purchase a VIP treatment program . Maybe it's even in DSM-IV . The other term is "b'n&m'n" or just "b&m'n," which are both short for bitching and moaning, i.e. complaining. I'm doing a lot of it today since I have a cold and have to grade a bunch of papers.

Cody's , the best local bookstore, is moving across town and every single book is 40% off, so I made three separate trips and bought 10 books this weekend. Also, I had my second photo-shoot with Timothy Archibald, the photographer that Backpacker magazine has hired for the CDT yo-yo article that will be out in June or July. Five Easy Pieces is a fantastic movie. I am coming down with a cold. Thanks a bunch, Amy. This NYTimes article about rich tourists paying to be shown around slums in developing countries raises some interesting questions, but mostly just makes me glad that I'm not old and aloof and scared to go places without a guide. Also, I hear rumors from Malaysia that I'm an uncle again. So "Hello, [Ntabi Elizabeth Rand]. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — 'God dam...

I'm bored, so I thought that instead of studying for my test on Thursday, I'd write short reviews of all the books I've read lately. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West , Wallace Stegner--Pretty good. I really enjoyed the account of Powell's first run down the Colorado, but the accounts of his second and third journeys are significantly less interesting, and so are the middle years when Powell was doing his Native American anthropological studies. However, it got interesting again towards the end when Powell ran the USGS and tried to get western states to be not-stupid by making political boundaries conform to watersheds and to have the government ensure settlement, irrigation canals, and dams were built in sensible places based on the limited water in the arid west. He generally failed at getting many of his ideas turned into law, but he certainly seems vindicated by all the water problems in the west today. I also rea...