dresese

Stanislaw Lem dies

My favorite author, Stanislaw Lem, passed away today in Krakow. He was not only the best-selling science fiction author worldwide, but, even better, he deserved to be. He wasn't ever very popular in the states. I only knew of him when my college roommate showed me some of his books. Later, I picked them up and was completely blown away.

For anyone wanting his best works, I recommend:

• Fiasco, a truly important book about humanity's first meeting with an alien civilization. As you can tell from the title, it doesn't go so well. Lem had such an obviously more correct view of the whole contact scenario than even geniuses such as Arthur C. Clarke had. This one starts off very slow, so bear with it.

• Memoirs Found In a Bathtub, currently my favorite book. It has black humor in spades, great symbolism, and it is just mind bending in a way that I really appreciate.

• The Futurological Congress, probably Lem's funniest book. At the same time, one of his scariest. It also has one of my favorite passages of Lem's, on the nature of evil.

There is more. I didn't even mention his most famous novel, Solaris, which is like Fiasco; a great critique on contact, both between the human race and alien intelligence, and between people. It is a very profound book, but I'm a little disappointed in the translation. It is translated from a French abridged translation, and I think Lem's message suffers from that. There's not only many more wonderful books of his I could mention, but he also published many more that have not yet been translated to English. I can only hope that these keep appearing.

Now that Lem is dead, I feel that science fiction is no longer worth reading. The only person alive that could produce books as good as Lem is Robert Silverberg. But Silverberg hasn't written much of interest in a while, and even at his best, only a few are nearly as good as Lem's works.

Lem's books are under-recognized in the U.S. I urge anyone who reads this to pick up a copy of his books and read them. He wasn't just a good writer, he was a writer who really saw things as they truly are, and truly understood science fiction. It was rare when he started, and it's even more rare today. I'll miss you, Lem.

A subway quiz

Here's a little test of your subway instincts. Imagine you are on a platform, and a train pulls up. The car on your right is jammed full of people. The car on your left has some seats available. Which one do you choose?

If you chose the the car with seats available, then you are a person filled with common sense, but unfortunately limited experiences with the subway. The correct answer is the car that is jammed full of people.

The rationale behind this is simple. There is undoubtedly a homeless man sleeping in the subway car that is stinking up the whole car, and no one will sit near him. Choose the crowded subway car with no objectionable odors.

This may sound callous. After all, the homeless many is in need of help, obviously. And the fact that he smells bad is not an inherent defect, but merely due to the fact that he is homeless. Callous or not, though, to a sleeping homeless man, what car I choose to ride in does not matter. But avoiding a stinky subway ride matters quite a bit to me.

Some moderate cappuccino success

After the water pressure got fixed, my cappuccinos have been getting better and better. This one I decided to froth a fair amount of milk, more than I could drink. I hate wasting, but I thought it might be necessary to get a truly superior froth.

I think that is the case. Just look at that beauty! It's wonderful! Sure, no latte art yet, but this style is definitely what I was aiming for. I still need to increase the amount of froth a bit, I think, and be able to make this quality of cappuccino more consistently. More recent tries have looked much less smooth. I believe perhaps that I need to be more careful during the initial phases of frothing the milk not to make any big bubbles.

Mountain View trip

I just got back from a week-long trip to Mountain View. I managed to see my good friends Erik and Vladimir (plus wife Maria) who I worked with at Intellicorp, Shibani, Emmett, Michel, Arthur & Kevin, who I worked with at Intraspect, Patty, Jon & their family, whose lab I worked in at U of I, and Samantha, who I worked with at Intellicorp and Intraspect.

For food, I had at least one of the Bay Area's best hits. With Michel, I had Zachary's absolutely authentic Chicago-style pies.

I had some decent food with everyone else, but nothing mind-blowing. Probably the other really nice thing I had was a mini-pizza with really nice tasting heirloom tomatoes at Charlie's. I'd ask where they got heirloom tomatoes at this time of year, but at least two people told me the high-end supermarkets import them from Chile now and sell them year-round.

However, two disappointments: I did not get to eat at Shalimar, which is pretty much my favorite place to eat in the world. And I didn't get to drink a good pearl milk tea. I'll have to leave that for when I go back.

Oh yeah, and the weather sucked. It was relatively cold and rainy, and at one point while I waited for Caltrain one day, very cold and very rainy. I swear I almost got frostbite. Meanwhile, in New York, the weather was incredible, with highs of more than 60 degrees.