[2016-11-04]
I am living at the time when my favourite authors are dying: Gabriel Garica Marquez, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Douglas Adams, to name a few (shown by Google search on the first page). I wonder if it is time to take up their craft? Isn't it how inheritance works? Current authors are writing inspired by previous generations of writers; every generation builds on some time interval that inspired them.
On the other hand, I had almost 40 years, in which my life overlapped with some of my favourite writers. It is interesting to think of it now. I remember those days in my childhood when I approached a bookshelf to pick up some "very old" book by some "ancient" author who was probably older than my parents...
My perception of time changed over this last year. I remember I was very motivated to get to some position in life urgently. The urgency came with the feeling that nothing else can be considered, every hindrance was to be fought off. Until I suddenly realised that I have arrived. Time to "settle" and look around...
Friday, November 20, 2020
Paris and Dissertations
[2016-sometime in November]
Sitting in Paris. It's quite fun to work here. Actually, it is quite fun to be editing and summarizing.
Paris is miserably cold. I don't know how people wear summer sandals and tourists are in t-shirts. I am freezing in my winter jacket. Now, sitting in Paris, I think that I am not that much of a city girl - much to the contrast of my thinking back at Wits.
Let's just be honest: I'm comfortably uncomfortable in any situation...
Paris is miserably cold. I don't know how people wear summer sandals and tourists are in t-shirts. I am freezing in my winter jacket. Now, sitting in Paris, I think that I am not that much of a city girl - much to the contrast of my thinking back at Wits.
Let's just be honest: I'm comfortably uncomfortable in any situation...
Monday, November 16, 2020
Explosions
I am a captain in the hi-tech terrestrial transport unit at the Army. Today, I am taking my first leave as a fully qualified professional. Mike is going with me. He is the technical specialist. My feeling is he's planning to stay at that rank for the rest of his life due to the complete lack of the initiative.
I'm going to visit my dad, my only surviving family. He's looking after a small hangar for private aviation.
Mike and I are driving an old truck through dusty roads. We stop at the garage to get gas. Suddenly, something unexpected happens. The end of the road disappearing at the horizons suddenly shows a cloud of dust, which grows bigger moving in our direction. No more hangars, no more road, in a moment the landscape is transformed into a marsian desert where no sign of life is possible. But we are alive. It was planned...
I'm going to visit my dad, my only surviving family. He's looking after a small hangar for private aviation.
Mike and I are driving an old truck through dusty roads. We stop at the garage to get gas. Suddenly, something unexpected happens. The end of the road disappearing at the horizons suddenly shows a cloud of dust, which grows bigger moving in our direction. No more hangars, no more road, in a moment the landscape is transformed into a marsian desert where no sign of life is possible. But we are alive. It was planned...
We Need New Stories
Based on Habermas's observation that our individual human histories do not fit any more with the traditional expectations, we need new ideals disassociated with ethnic heritage and national identity. That is if we want life stories to fit in with the ideals of a good and meaningful life. I think most people still want traditional utopia as it relieves the pain of multiple options in life decisions.
I wanted to put forward an example of family structure but that is already boring. Let's consider work. When I was growing up, work was considered honorable. Those who worked were respected, those who did not want to work - were looked down upon. But do we still need so many people going to work every day? It creates a structure that supports state and social organization. But this organization is far from ideal (consider environmental degradation, wars, governmental corruption scandals as a hint to what I mean). Do we still want to be hard-working and rational?
I suggest to focus on robots :)
I wanted to put forward an example of family structure but that is already boring. Let's consider work. When I was growing up, work was considered honorable. Those who worked were respected, those who did not want to work - were looked down upon. But do we still need so many people going to work every day? It creates a structure that supports state and social organization. But this organization is far from ideal (consider environmental degradation, wars, governmental corruption scandals as a hint to what I mean). Do we still want to be hard-working and rational?
I suggest to focus on robots :)
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Donc, le français
Et voilà! Trois mois après avoir commencé d'étudier j'ai le niveau 5 (+) ou B1 et je me prépare maintenant à passer l'examen pour le niveau B2!!!
Cependant, c'était très amusant, j'adorait chaque minute :)
Aujourd'hui, j'écoute Joe Dassin (mon premier amour...bah, pas unique, mais qui compte?). Alors, c'est comme ça j'écoute:
Joe: Et si tu n'existais pas - Moi: imparfait, négation..
Joe: Dis-moi pourquoi j'existerais? - Moi: impératif, conditionelle
Vous voyez ? C'est très amusant :)
Sunday, May 31, 2020
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.
Monday, April 6, 2020
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].
Thursday, March 12, 2020
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...
Sunday, November 17, 2019
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
Monday, April 16, 2018
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/
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/
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