Jean-Paul Sartre: Intimacy

I got this book for free, ages ago, while I was still a PhD student and an old professor brought his unwanted books to be picked up for free. And then, faced with a 9 hour flight, I picked it up 8 years later, not expecting too much. However, it is an amazing collection of 5 short stories; it sells as 'The Wall' these days. Short stories are a funny medium, because you never get immersed into them as much as you do in real novels, but on the other hand they offer a variety, which a normal novel cannot (in the sense that it is possible to read 7 short stories in 7 days). Maja was complaining that it is pure and boring intellectual existentialism, but I must profess that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. For example, the last (and the longest) story, "The Childhood of a Leader" presents a perfect timeline of a young intellectual, stuff that we all went through: one is a teenager and then you discover philosophy and then you discover psychoanalysis, and then you try drugs, etc, etc, all these stages a young person goes through, only that the protagonist ends up being an idiotic antisemite in an utter anticlimax of the story. Warmly recommended, I haven't enjoyed reading fiction for some time now!

Sunzi: Umetnost Vojne

Sunzi je famozni kitajski general, ponavadi se ga transkribira kot Sun Tsu. Oboje pomeni mojster Sun. Knjiga je prevod iz angleškega prevoda, torej ni neposredni prevod. Prevod je tu pa tam tudi malo labav. Celoten tekst se ponovi dvakrat. Prvič kot sam, neobremenjen tekst in drugič z dodanimi komentarji. Sam tekst je precej zanimiv, osebno mi je precej bolj berljiv kot npr. biblija. Čudna mešanica splošnih modrosti, nekaterih na robu kitajske ezoterike, in zelo konkretnih napotkov za npr. količine srebra, ki jih cesar potrebuje. Komenterji so še nekoliko bolj zanimivi, saj so k vsakemu verzu dodani komentarji tako starih kitajskih filozofov, kot tudi relevantnih rimskih/grških vojnih mislecov in modernih akademikov. Skratka, 2500 let star tekst, do kosti prežvečen.

Ommegang: Hennepin

Ommegang's Hennepin declares "true Belgian-style saison". Indeed! Hennepin was a Belgian missionary who discovered Niagara falls. Ommegang is a small brewery in upstate New York which focuses on Belgian stuff. And they do make quite good beers that taste of the Old World. A bucolic summer beer, slightly citrusy with a non-threatening light colour.

Stanislaw Lem: Fiasco

When I was a kid, I was a big fan of Stanislaw Lem. I read everything that was translated into Slovene. As an adult, I am still fan of Tarkovski's Solaris. So, I've listened to this book in an audio version on the way to work. Nearly 15hours of stuff. I like science fiction books that progress slowly and this is one of them. The production from Audio Frontiers was high quality stuff, reading was convincing and clear. The content however, is very much crap, however. Stanislaw can be repetitive, in about 5 different places of the book he goes on about how being in weightlessness can be tricky. Yes, i can imagine. But much worse, for all the musing about anthropocentricity that main characters indulge in, the story falls into anthropocentric traps really badly many times. For example, when they finally establish contact with foreign civilization using some sort of code (it is not explained modulo that it is transmitted by laser), they beam to our earthlings something like "Welcome. We expect you in peace". Come on, 'welcome' and 'peace' are utterly human concepts, they do not transcend species. Surely, we could agree on the value of pi or fine structure constant, but give me a break with welcomes...

Brooklyn brewery: Summer Ale

I've been buying mostly variety pack these days and I'll write about them at some point. Especially the Blue Point brewery, which makes decent beer but puts some stupid number of blueberry infused beers, which made me fed up with the blueberry for some time. Anyway, I went back to Brooklyn Brewery variety pack and now the seasonal beer is the 'Summer ale'. And man, it is indeed hot and sticky as hell at the moment. This is a summer ale in the old British school of brewing, essentially a very pale ale, that is as refreshing as a lager when cold, but still manages to have some real taste. There is subtle hop and bitter and maybe a bit too much sweetness for the summer, but all in all a decent choice for these days.

Doris Lessing: Zlata Beležnica

Ok, to je knjiga od 600ih strani in jaz sem se, z velikim trudom prebil do 275. In zdaj imam dovolj. Marginalno histerične ženske, odnošaji in komunistična partija v Veliki Britaniji v 60ih letih. Nekoliko passé...

Dudzinski & Frohoff: Dolphin Mysteries: Unlocking the Secrets of Communication

I was really looking forward to this book, but after reading it, I feel I really haven't learned much about dolphin cognition and communication. First, the book is extremely repetitive. For example, in the first two chapters, the authors says that dolphins are "egregious" animals, again and again and again. And then in the middle of the book they say how they touch with pectoral fins and how this can mean different things in different contexts, again and again and again. And in the last chapter they say how loud noises can adversely affect dolphins, again and again and again. The book could have been shortened by a factor of a few without any loss of information. Second, the style is really annoying: the book was obviously written by two people as it is a bit incoherent at times and they often say things like "I (Toni) observed this and that" and then Kathleen thinks this and that and then we are served a thick dose of emotional stuff about how they love dolphins and oceans. I bought this book to learn about dolphins and not about Toni and Kathleen, so passive voice with some information might be more helpful. Finally, when they come to the really interesting stuff, they don't go into any detail. For example, they explain the false belief task challenge and then they say that there is some reason to believe that dolphins have passed this task, without any elaboration whatsoever. Sure, I could go and find the source paper, but I bought the book precisely because I don't have time to do things like that...