Le Francais

Je besoin de pratiquer mon Francais. Je vais déménager a Canada en août. J'ai decide écrire les sujets pour l'expression part de la teste. Ainsi, le prochain article sera consacré à la randonnée de loisirs.

Random Followers

Imagine this world - the world without Bayesian probability. Everything happens and nothing is dependent. Chaos and the Spirit of God hovering over it. And then God said: let there be Bayesian probability. And things happened because of others (B|A). And then other things because of others (C|(B|A)) and so it went, centuries of centuries until no one could distinguish C as a posterior probability of B and A, and it all looked like [Z1,Z2...Zn] as a posterior of all the previous letters of the alphabet filling in the random chaos bit by bit. And it's so messy that it could even very likely look like C234 as a consequence of D123. And then, occasionally, some creature of this doubtful randomness appears and says that the world is random, when in reality it's composed of an impossibly large number of random (and distracted) followers of the initial state [insert a small-scale picture of an infinite chaos at this point to create more focused followers].

Troubled side of the World: 1

Pamela was tired and annoyed. The interrogation was going on for hours now. The liberation front officer spoke broken English,  the room was hot and dusty with the rusty floor fan in the corner doing nothing  more than disturbing the fly, who was exploring the stain on the desk until the fan was turning to blow on it. Then the fly would take off , whizz busily above for 10 seconds and  then land back to continue exploration. 

- so, you don't know who whisked you from the crowd? - the officer asked again. 

Pamela was tired of giving the same answer. "Jesus Christ,  she thought,  - I should answer Jesus Christ,  I prayed and my savior descended from the cloud to save me from the furious crowd and dump me then shocked and unconscious in an abandoned mall a few streets away". That would have been a bad answer in the middle of Muslim uprising. Her thoughts  moved back to the wild events of what seemed like years ago but was in fact just yesterday.  "I'll come back for you,  beautiful " - these were ones and the only words her dark-eyed savior said.

Yesterday

Marie and her boyfriend were playing cards. Not too serious  game interrupted with bouts of laughter.  It was a calm afternoon and  small shops aligning the street were buzzing with the usual  activities.  Failing economy left too many people unemployed. But the capital was never poor and while  older residents were falling back to their overseas bank accounts,  the youth was savoring early  autumn filled with kindly warm sun, distant sea breeze and honey colored shade. Marie, Paul, and Pamela came to the  Capital  from Athens, out of all places, rented a small shop space and started trading in all things hippie and new age: shisha pipes, tarot cards, healing stones, and indian amulets. The trade was never good and never bad. Tourists were still flocking the country impressed by the kindly and liberal Shah ruling the country in the middle of other fundamentalist nations.  Local people, always known for their hospitality and kindness, treated foreigners like dear guests, sometimes marveling at unusual  clothing,  seeming freedom of thought, and the like to the ancient civilizations of Greeks, still respected I  this part of the world. 

The traveling trio were graduates from a technical college.  Not finding any passion to technology and unwilling to grind in front of a computer for meager salary of failing Greece, Pamela and friends  decided to live free, remain true to themselves and never pledge allegiance to country or person. Among that they stayed unwaveringly true to each other. And while Marie and Paul were a couple since kindergarten and never saw the point of exploring  opportunities outside, Pamela changed lovers according to her mood never worrying about loyalty or family planning.  It was like that until she met Alex. An American summer school student who came to Athens for his journalistic training. Or, to be fair, to savor the richness of Mediterranean summer and the luxury of turquoise seas and brilliant  skies.

Alex

Alex loved stories. He would gather stories wherever he went, which that particular summer in Greece was mostly the beach, marina, surrounding basketball  courts and coffee shops. Life was relaxed.

Alex's school task was to write about tourism, which he interpreted as any relaxing activity found in and around  Athens. Pantheon and ruins, he reasoned, has got enough coverage to never require another word to be said. While the youth at the beach, gathered from all over the world, local, refugees, escaped from the classrooms,  was all rage. 

---to be continued...

Lost in Misinterpretation

Do you ever experience this? The conversation leads nowhere and you are scrambling to say something meaningful but some mediocre uninspired stereotype slips your tongue. You want to disappear in shame but your interlocutor lights up with a sudden passion, taking your mistake as a new life motto.  You continue afraid to offend your interlocutor by apologizing for saying nonsense (since he seems to have taken it to the heart). And it goes on and on in excited tones...

I inspire people to create what I despise

On moving on

In his book "The Assault on Reason", Al Gore elaborated on the role of fear. Fear, which has the original role of protecting us from the danger of a premature death, has adopted a less helpful role of stopping us from living. Just like life on Earth exists in a small interval of temperatures, humidity-levels, and chemical compositions, living in a human life happens in a short interval between fear and fearlessness.
When I was at school, our teacher scared us with a story about a boy who lived by the railway. Regularly, he would play by the rails. One day, an accident happened - and the boy lost his leg. I guess, he was not too scared of trains. The lesson was not learned though. After his recovery, the boy went to play in the field. There, he found an old field mine. The curiosity, probably, won. The boy managed to explode the mine and lost his arm as well.
But the above example is exceptionally rare. The other danger is much more common. Fear of changing life, fear of pain and unknown. But once change stops, life dies. The routine is hardly happiness. But I don't know who is right: those who loyally obey to the norms or those who fearlessly challenge status quo?
What if the change were to be reversed - would it be the same:
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-pace-of-social-change/

Text Classification - it is Links all Over

I am having a real problem of isolating issues from the rest of the world: everything is so interlinked!!!
But this morning I have a promising idea: I should use my own Link-Based Text Classification code to solve this! I guess I am done pretending that I can think like a real human, algorithms are so much easier. I recall reading a review of a movie about a robot who wanted to become a human; I am officially the opposite: I want to be accepted as a robot! Okay, not that radical. More precisely, I want to defend my right to think like a computer...



P.S. The description of Link-Based Text Classification

Catching the Last Train

A long time ago, I needed to write a speech to introduce myself. I could not think of anything better than to present myself as a runner. I run. No, not just for fitness on the road. I run through life. I was born in the space of time between my mom's ringing a bell to call a nurse to attend her childbirth and the nurse actually arriving. Phew, just in time.
After that, I went through the world that presented an endless array of closing opportunities: to catch them I had to run faster and faster. Someone asked me recently if I was born in the Wonderland. I am sure I was: "My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that." (Queen in Lewis Carrol's "Through the Looking Glass").

Anytime I learn something new, I find that I need to apply it immediately while it's sitting raw and uncomfortable in my perplexed brain. If I write a blog or an article, I immediately need to present it to someone to confirm my skill or experience. If I watch a movie before going abroad, it turns out to be about my travel destination and shows me important travel tips without which I would be in trouble. I plant the seeds just before the rain starts from the clear sky. I throw away a large pile of garbage just a week before PikitUp goes on strike for a month. And it always rings in my brain: "phew, that was close". 

I look in wonder at people who take their time and wait for the opportunity to come to them and then they examine it for a few weeks to make sure it's good for them. How lucky they are! My next opportunity closes in 5 minutes. Sorry, gotta run to catch its tail...

Junk Food Revisited

A while ago, I've written how hard it is to abstain from mental "junk" food. I meant things like news, blogs, Facebook, and so on. That was the beginning of my doctorate studies. Interestingly enough, that has passed too. I find myself happily devouring lengthy theoretical and philosophical ruminations.
But I can still "swallow" a novel or two while contributing my daily hour of energy expenditure on a stationary bike.

Spring in Johannesburg

This spring reminds me the time when I went to the art school. We were taught to look at the green and see all possible colors. And that was what I did ever since. The world has changed immediately. Nothing was just a simple color - everything has become tainted with the shades and tones, shines and saturations. It was wonderful, of course. I remember those mornings having classes 3 times a week and then going to my normal school. And then music lessons, which I stopped in a few weeks because it was just too much. And it was boring too.
This year, I see so much more in the world: it's both music and shapes, and feelings. Everything is so alive and breathtaking. The greenness (all shades of it). I am thinking how much I am a city girl sitting now at Wits, which is the closest to the city as it could be in Johannesburg. I think I should try to move to Barcelona, whatever university may accept me there. I want the sea and the city together. Also, being closer to my parents should be nice.

Though, after going to Paris, I think I am not that much of a city girl anymore. Memories just tend to show more of the good than the bad. After all, everything is perfect wherever it is.

Maybe we are useful after all

This is so awesome! Plants that can self-resurrect after a draught:
http://ideas.ted.com/grow-plants-without-water/

Now, I am thinking... Probably, we won't stop the climate change but we can modify plants genetics in a draught-resistant way. Then these genes will spread and change the flora. And then the fauna. And then we will change ourselves.
Interesting!