Collection of Today's Thoughts

I came back a little later today, I had an experiment that I had to attend to till 8 and I left the lab around 8:50pm and arrived home around 9:50pm. I'm a little tired, but otherwise I'm in good spirits.

I read this article on my Google Reader when I got back home. If you didn't know already, I use Reader to read almost all my websites I go to. What Reader is it gets what's called an RSS feed. An RSS feed is basically the original website's blog posts/news posts exported into text and pictures that can be read like e-mail. Reader regularly checks for new posts from the websites and puts all of the posts from all the websites together in chronological order. It makes for much easier reading, since everything is in one place. It's also rather addictive. Like e-mail it is almost impossible for my Reader 'inbox' to be empty. Until I get really bored and 'read' all of my websites. I don't read every single article and I usually just skim through and use stars to mark interesting articles to read later. By doing so, I have lately managed to keep my inbox relatively empty. As opposed to thousands of posts I'm now left with 68, as of the time of writing. You can add any website that supports RSS, as a matter of fact your public blog supports RSS. I've subscribed to it but since I read your site directly from blogger anyway I rarely read it on Reader.

Today I found this article, I found it rather interesting. It says that shopping 'European-style' by shopping for groceries daily can help to make your groceries fresher and cheaper. I don't think it's solely a European concept, here in Hong Kong most housewives/helpers shop on a daily basis. I often see helpers get on my mini-bus from the Wan Chai market in the morning with groceries to head off to the homes of their employers in the Midlevels in Hong Kong. I know that my mom shopped for groceries almost daily too, and so does the helper for my grandma. In my personal experience I've also found that meats will often have discounts, as mentioned in the article. Also at the two Japanese supermarkets in the Japanese department stores in my neighborhood have deep discounts on fresh sushi near the end of the day, although the time they have the discounts is too impractical for daily eating.

I wanted to elaborate a little on my favorite science fiction writers. Frank Herbert wrote Dune, it is an epic book that has been compared to The Lord of the Rings in terms of epic scale and detail. The style of science fiction writing at the time of Dune was more focussed on new technologies and new ideas, whereas Dune was ground breaking more for its ideas on geology, psychology, religion and its unique depiction of an alien planet. Dune is set on a dessert planet and follows the journey of a young leader in a foreign land where a rare drug-like substance called spice is mined. It is very valuable and enables space travel, among other things. I don't think this short synopsis would do the book any justice so if you're still curious the wiki is here.

My other favorite is Phillip K. Dick. His short story The Minority Report is the basis of the movie of the same name starring Tom Cruise. His book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. The book is about a blade runner, a man who hunts for androids who break the law. In the case of the book the androids are latest model produced by a technological corporation for use in mining labor. There is also a 'pleasure model', I'm sure you can figure that one out. The corporation uses a new technology to synthesize emotions in the androids, making them impossible to distinguish from humans using emotional tests. Again, if you're interested the wiki is here.

Last but not least is Isaac Asimov, perhaps you can tell Isaac about him (Isaac Newton is another famous Isaac!). He is one of the most prolific science fiction writers of all time, he wrote about 500 books and over 9000 letters and postcards. I'm not sure what books he's famous for, however he is famous for creating the fictional 3 laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I think the most recent movie based on Asimov's works is 'I, Robot' starring Will Smith. It is based on a collection of short stories of the same name. I have read this short stories and I look forward to reading more of his works in the future.

I was thinking of compiling all of the new Chinese that I've learned at work but I suppose I'll save that for another post. I don't think I know how to write all of the words I've learned!