Ivan's weblog

This is perhaps the most memorable dialogue in 3001: The Final Odyssey

[…]Indra complained:
“People are always asking me why I’ve devoted my life to such a horrible period of history, and it’s not much of an answer to say that there were even worse ones.”
“Then why are you interested in my century?” [said Poole, referring to the 20th century]
“Because it marks the transition between barbarism and civilization.”

I think that the transition will take a long time, but if I had to choose a specific century to mark it, I’m hoping for the 23rd century…

A few weeks ago I mentioned the life-changing Japanese T-shirt folding technique. Now it’s time to discuss alternative, more efficient ways of tying shoelaces. Check out Ian’s Shoelace Site. Also on that site, 22 different ways to lace shoes.

I was in Washington just before the Iraq war began and was invited to speak to groups of senators of both parties. The most obvious distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans was that the Republicans used exclusively religious language.
[…]
Now I come back to Britain and discover another kind of “anschluss” of liberal values in the face of resurgent religious demands. It seems we need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe too.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=603426

According to a formula that a a part-time tutor at Cardiff University pulled out of a hat, January 24 will be the worst day of the year:

The formula for the day of misery reads 1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA.

Where W is weather, D is debt - minus the money (d) due on January’s pay day - and T is the time since Christmas.

Q is the period since the failure to quit a bad habit, M stands for general motivational levels and NA is the need to take action and do something about it.

This is not a book, but a blog with the intention of turning into a book: Survival Guide to Homelessness, by Mobile Homemaker. A very interesting look at the life of a homeless man in the US, full of practical advice about where to sleep, what to eat, where to take a shower, how to stay warm, etc. Very educational, and, as some have called it, “stereotype-shattering".

The most striking advice: get a car, whether it works or not, to use as a shelter and for storage.

Snowflakes are not exotic for people who live in cold countries, but for those of us who come from the tropics, pretty, hexagonal snowflakes only exist in textbooks and on TV. Even here in New Haven, they are fairly uncommon, because you need special conditions (particular ranges of humidity and temperature) for them to form; maybe we see them once a year. Today was one of those days, so we took some pictures for those of you who live in warm places and never see this phenomenon.

Note: a penny is 19.05 mm wide, so the snowflake in the picture is roughly 5 mm wide.

This book, as well as the one from my previous review, came from random browsing in an actual brick-and-mortar bookstore. I had never heard of it, and I was certainly not looking for something like it. It was the title which grabbed my attention (note to prospective book authors: choose a good title!) The back cover said that it was a novel about an autistic man, written in the first person. That grabbed my attention even more, since one of my friends once told me that I must be autistic. ;-) I started reading, and after a few dozen pages I decided to buy the book.

The basic story is: Lou is a roughly 40-year-old autistic man in the near future (I estimate the 2040s). Thanks to modern treatments, he can (barely) function in society and works in a special bioinformatics division in a pharmaceutical company “looking for patterns". Autistics who were born a few years after him were cured before or shortly after birth thanks to a newer genetic treatment, so he belongs to the last generation of autistics. When a new experimental treatment promises to cure autism in adults, Lou must decide whether to take it or not, while his company is trying to pressure him into taking it.

The story is relatively simple, many of the characters (other than Lou) may seem shallow, and the ending is a matter of debate, but I liked the book overall and I think it is worth reading just because of the way it portrays the autistic viewpoint of the main character. The lack of detail about most of the other characters may be excused because Lou (being the main narrator) doesn’t understand them in detail or doesn’t talk much about them; he just talks about what he thinks, in a very logical and detached way.

Lou’s handicap is that he has to think actively about what people mean with certain expressions, gestures, and intonations–things that most people tend to understand intuitively. And sometimes he just can’t understand people; he takes everything literally and has trouble with sarcasm and humor (he has feelings, but he doesn’t know what to do with them). He prefers to be alone in his routine, and can’t avoid computing probabilities or calculating the volume of the room, or looking at the patterns on the floor tiles.

It was easy to identify with Lou, as I have had many of those problems, although to a lesser degree. Who hasn’t? There was certain irony when other characters in the novel had relationship problems and Lou couldn’t believe it, thinking along the lines of “they are ‘normal’; unlike me, they have the power of reading other people’s minds. Why do they fight?". The book is good for thinking about “what is normal?” and for putting one’s life into perspective.

Elizabeth Moon - The Speed of Dark

I was in a maze or underground complex, full of German soldiers from WWII. I was walking or running from one end to the other aimlessly, or on errands that I no longer remember. I noticed that there were classrooms full of sitting children, but no teachers. Suddenly I remembered my mission: to weigh a dollar bill. Luckily I had one in my pocket, and I remembered I had previously seen a balance in a very small room (more like a closet) somewhere in the complex. Fabiola was with me. After a while we found the room; the soldiers didn’t do anything; they never saw us. The balance was digital, with 0.01 g precision, but it had to be taken outside for it to work. After another while we found an exit. There was a snow and wind outside; to make sure the bill didn’t fly away I weighted it with a bunch of snow. The net weight was 0.28 g.

Thanks to the generous weasels at AT&T. I spent $52.05 on long distance, but they claim that, thanks to their wonderful offers and discounts, I saved $1,263.93. What’s next: buy a can of Coke for $0.75 and save $323,751,823.15?

This is a story from last week. First we went to Mount Snow, Vermont on a ski trip (Fabiola, Fabiola’s parents and I). Everything was great, and we have some pictures. This was Ernesto’s first experience on the snow!

The problem was that we were planning to go to Montreal, QC for a couple of days after going to Vermont. The snowstorm began the night before our trip, and it went on for the whole day. We decided to try anyway, but after an hour of windy, snow-covered roads at 20 mph with near-zero visibility, we decided to stop at the nearest motel and stay another day (this reminded me of how the Fellowship of the Ring was defeated by the Pass of Caradhras).

We happened to stay at the Horizon Inn, the same place where Fabiola and I stayed a couple of years ago. It was completely empty except for its keeper; I was worried that he might have an axe handy like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, but nothing bad happened. We canceled our trip to Canada and went back to New Haven the next day, when the weather was good. The sad part is that some of the cost of the hotel in Montreal could not be refunded and was lost; this was probably some cosmic revenge for the $250 that Fabiola and her mom had won a few days earlier in the Mohegan Sun Casino.

Fabiola gave me this recipe that Paty gave her. We have a picture of the cake in our album; I post it here because it has become popular: a guy named Rudy from Texas sent me an email asking for the recipe!

For the flan:
3 eggs
1 can of sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)
1 can of evaporated milk (carnation) (12 fl oz)
1 bar of cream cheese (8 oz)
1 tsp vanilla
Combine everything in the blender.

For the chocolate part use devil’s food chocolate cake mix and follow the instructions in the box.

The pan has to be buttered very well; then put the chocolate mix and on top carefully spoon the flan mix. If the surface of the chocolate mix gets disturbed a little bit it doesn’t matter, the two layers will flip anyway while they cook. Cover it with aluminum foil and cook it in “baño María” (water bath) for 1h to 1 h 10 min at 375 F. It is enough if the water just reaches half the height of the pan. Check the cake with a knife until it comes clean to make sure is cooked. The chocolate cake will be cooked for sure, but the flan is the tricky part.

After removing if from the oven let it cool down for 30 min-1 h and then flip it. If you put it in the fridge overnight it’s better because the flan sets better. If you have to eat it right away the flan may be still a little soft in the inside. But either way it tastes great.

You can add some butterscotch caramel on top, or chocolate syrup, or whatever you want just before serving. The original recipe calls for “cajeta", which is a sweet syrup made out of milk, is the Mexican version of Dulce de Leche.

When I’m alone, driving on the highway, I sometimes listen to the radio. I start at the low end of the FM spectrum (87.9 MHz) and scan for stations. I often stop at the first classical music station I find. I’ve noticed that there is almost always one such station between 88 and 90 MHz. I’ve seen that in MA, CT, NY, NJ, and MD, as well as in Mexico City. Is this some sort of unwritten convention, or is it just a coincidence?