Monday Quick Notes

1. No BART strike today, despite the fact that supposedly the last offer from BART management, last night, was actually worse than the previous offer made—BART seems extremely ready to provoke a strike in order to create a crisis in the hope of getting the state to declare all such strikes illegal. As it stands, Gov. Brown ordered a seven-day board of inquiry into what's going on. Heard some union spokesperson on the news sounding hopeful—maybe the governor will be investigating why BART hasn't been negotiating in good faith. To which I can only say hahahahaha. I expect we might see a thirty-day cooling off period after this seven-day inquiry. Anything to keep the trains running while America's Cup is going on. Not that I've encountered even a single person who will admit to seeing one race, or even one boat, but then again I don't run in yachting circles.

2. Here's an extremely handy guide to the making of chocolate chip cookies.

3. Here's a new review of my current favorite dayjob book, Self-Reference ENGINE by Toh EnJoe. It reads, in part: In my opinion this book is a landmark for high-concept SF—not to mention Japanese fiction in translation. At his best, EnJoe enters into the same territory as Borges, Lem, or Calvino, but I think EnJoe is a better writer than Lem or Calvino; or at least, more interesting. Self-Reference Engine is notable not just for its highly original ideas, but as a successful integration of surrealism, absurdism, metafiction, and philosophy with science fiction.

I'll be blunt: If you don't buy this book, as far as I am concerned you are not allowed to express an interest in hard SF. Instead, you must admit that when you say you like hard SF, you really mean that you like right-wing SF in which Austrian economics is magically granted all the rigor of physics in order that white guys with dumb beards can win the future and all the sexy space-redheads as some sort of teleological inevitability. So buy it.