micro/macro

There are times that no matter the quantity of things that have happened, there is really nothing to say. Everybody makes his/her own conclusions, each one kept for oneself, and each one of those conclusions alone microscopically does not make any change in the way the world keeps running. But each one of those opinions/thoughts are not worth nothing. Macroscopically they form the collective consciousness and they DO change the flow of the future.

Now, there are a lot of ways to distinguish the micro- and macro scope of things. Let a single person be the object. A satisfaction the object will get from an action of love, from reading a brilliant book or from the experience of being in a beautiful beach is something that happens here and now, therefore it should be considered as something microscopic. The happiness of being for a period of time with somebody that one loves or the experience of living a life in a beautiful city surrounded by people one appreciates would be a kind of macroscopic happiness (for the given period of time).

If all the people of the surrounding feel the same, then collective happiness is present. The most probable is that this small or big community is macroscopically happy, and the surrounding communities should tend to imitate it. This community can be then considered as a source of happiness.

The sources of happiness jump out of nowhere. Their creation is a result of a process macroscopically seen as a random Brownian motion of the molecules of a gas: the molecules are thought of as moving continuously to random directions. But in reality the creation of outbursts of happiness is due to chaotic dynamics: when the gas movement is explored microscopically, every single movement of a every single molecule is logically explained. And there comes a moment when the positions of the gas molecules have created a pattern, which contains denser areas and areas where the molecules are sparser.

Suppose that the presence of molecules represent the happy people. An area which is dense in molecules is the macroscopically happy community, what above is called as a source of happiness. The sources of happiness should tend to increase the happiness within the community, but also to serve as happiness-expanders, as their surroundings gradually become happier and transferring the collective happiness to the other surrounding communities.

This scheme is fine for me, it sounds completely sane. I cannot but think that this scheme is able to bring about happiness around the globe... until I think of the one human invention that would at least obstruct (if not completely block) the outspread of collective happiness: money.

Even so, let consciousness be in place of happiness. Collective consciousness is one thing that should be able to spread just like the collective happiness, but it cannot be hindered (at east not so easy) by money. Because consciousness is something that as long as it is present, it cannot become absent. It's like knowledge -- one cannot un-do knowledge. And if there is a single thing that seems to spread around the world during the last year is consciousness.

I know it's still too early, but I believe consciousness about who we are, what we are worth and what we really need to be happy increases. I am optimistic in the sense that I believe that all people will become happy at some future time point. I am pessimistic in the sense that I believe that it will happen after my life is over.

"Dogtooth" - "Κυνόδοντας"

"Dogtooth" is a film with such an original script that I could never even suspect that could be. After it ended, it let a bizarre sense of bitterness, as well as a feeling of optimism because of the consciousness about the world we live in that emerges from the film and is produced to the viewers.

For the first time I attempted to read the reviews after I watched the film, and that is because I hoped for speculations about what happened next. I always enjoy to see what other people think of the meaning of such ambiguous films. I didn't make any speculations of the post-film lives of the protagonists, but instead I read speculations about the meaning of the film.

So, "what did Lanthimos want to say by making this film?" First, I find nonsense the reviews that characterize it as comedy, even black comedy. "Dogtooth" is NOT a comedy. There is an inner agony from the beginning to the end. It certainly does not talk about the economical/political situation of Greece, as the movie was finished long before the first evidence of this situation came out. I believe it is even immature to say that the film represents just a metaphor for totalitarian regimes. Or, at least, not only.

"Dogtooth" reminded me very tough of "Dogville". Not sure why though, maybe it's just the sense of absurdity that it leaves behind. Maybe the camera handling. The acting seemed to me bad in the beginning, but as the plot progressed, everything was clear. No wo/man, having been brought up in such circumstances, could facially and behaviorally express him/her-self in a way that a western audience would think of as natural.

So, "what did Lanthimos want to say by making this film?" It is a metaphor about the results of authoritarianism on the evolution of a person. Authoritarianism in terms of applying violence, in terms of constraining the sexual needs and acts, in terms of borderlines that must not be crossed. We see that the children (funny, every reviewer -- including me -- calls them children, but all of them are adults, even if they are dressed up like babbies, in pale-colored outfits).

And the biggest nightmare of all: Authority wants us to feel that they set rules and laws supposedly to protect us, so they install the fear to the people so that they don't cross the borders -- be it country frontiers ("the enemy waits in the frontiers to kill you"), be it sexual liberties (e.g. "AIDS is waiting for you if you have unprotected sex"), be it social class limitations ("you cannot go out with a midget, a gipsy, an immigrant, or fall in love with a person of the same sex as you"), be it...

The way that the parents disorient the children reminded me of two of my favorite books: "1984" by Orwell, and "Brave new world" by Aldus Huxley. That is, not only because the parents teach them wrong meanings of words that come of origins external to the only world that they know of i.e. their house and high-walled garden, but also because of the fact that although the children are prevented of doing or asking something something, everything is presented as NOT what it really is. And this, in a way that more fear for the unknown is felt, so that noone is expressed outerly of the limits that the parents have set.

a mesa de deuses

Κι εσύ λες, ακόμα λίγο, κάνε υπομονή, ακόμα λίγο, κι έφτασες. Πού, ούτε που ξέρεις ούτε και που ρωτάς. Σα να μην έχει σημασία πια τίποτα, μόνο να δεις αυτόν τον αέρα να χτυπάει τα πάντα, ξανά και ξανά.

Έχω ένα φίλο που πιστεύει σ' όλους τους θεούς του κόσμου. Εγώ πάλι σε κανέναν. Έχει στο σαλόνι του ένα τραπεζάκι που το ονομάζει "τραπέζι των θεών" ("mesa de deuses"), όπου έχει πάνω όλη τη συλλογή του από εικόνες θεών, θεούς με πρόσωπο ελέφαντα και σώμα ανθρώπου, αγελάδες, ο εσταυρωμένος κι η Παναγιά, θεούς της Κίνας και του Πακιστάν, θεούς απ' τα έθιμα των Ινδιάνων της Αμερικής και της Ασίας κλπ.

Ένας γνωστός είπε "Μου φαίνεται αστείο να μιλάτε για το τραπέζι των θεών, δεν κάνει, για ΜΑΣ ο θεός είναι ένας". Έχω την εντύπωση πως γενικά οι καθολικοί έχουν την αίσθηση ότι αυτό το εμείς αναφέρεται σ' όλον τον κόσμο, κι όποιος δεν είναι καθολικός είναι κάτι σαν outsider. Αυτοί είναι χριστιανοί κι όλοι οι άλλοι (μαζί κι οι υπόλοιπες κατηγορίες χριστιανών) είναι αλλόθρησκοι. Αυτά σύμφωνα τουλάχιστο με τις δικές μου γνωριμίες. Νιώθω πιο κοντά σε έναν άνθρωπο που πιστεύει σ' όλους τους θεούς του κόσμου, παρά σε ένα και μοναδικό.

In ancient greek the name of Zeus is an irregular name (nominative: Ζεύς-Zevs, genitive: Διός-Diós). In modern greek the name for Zeus is Δίας-Días. In latin the word for the unique god is deus, which comes from the genitive of the name of the chief of gods in the ancient greek paganism. The word for the unique god is repeated in a number of (at least latin) languages, dio in italian, dios in spanish, deus in portuguese, dieu in french.

The genitive of Zeus in ancient greek is also the source for a number of other words: day in the germanic language english (dies in latin, dia in spanish and portuguese), diary (diario in spanish, diário in portuguese), diurnal (diurnus in latin), diet (δίαιτα-díeta in greek; in modern greek this means diet, but in ancient greek it means the way to lead a life), journal. With a paraphrase of the latter word, did the word for the day come in french (jour), in italian (giorno).

It is funny when you say to a devoted christian that the name of his/her god is the name of the ancient greek paganistic god, who had a plenty of lovers, innumerable children with different women, took revenge whenever he thought he had to, and generally led a life comparable to any good christian of nowadays who has power. At least he was not harming poor people and he did not damage the environment.

Meaningfulness

Any use of the words 'position' and 'velocity' with an accuracy exceeding that given by [the well-known] equation [quantifying the principle of uncertainty] is just as meaningless as the use of words whose sense is not defined.

Werner Heisenberg, Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, 1930

Everything flows?

In spite of the theory of evolution, in spite of the widely known "everything flows" or "everything changes" ή "τα πάντα ρει" by Heracleitos. I know all these things. I have no doubt of their validity, I even don't have or cannot find a word against them. There are some things that last. Things that seem unchanged through time and space. I know they do change and evolve. But I'm happy to find them back, whenever I do, I'm happy to see that I feel the same innocence and serenity and felicity when I am back. In any way.

Despite the troubles, every night seems an adventure. Every night actually lasts long but every night leaves you with a sense of nostalgia that it's already over. This is what happens when the nights are sunny like summer days. Not in terms of light, but in terms of brightness of mind and body.

Κι εδώ έρχεται ένα όμορφο ελληνικό τραγούδι, "Όλα τριγύρω αλλάζουνε κι όλα τα ίδια μένουν". Αφιερωμένο στους παλιούς καλούς μου φίλους, που no matter how much time has passed from the last time we saw each other, we still fit each other like a cretan knife in its leather seath.

flamenco

To do research is a strange thing. It is often possible to do nothing for long, and catch up in a very short period of time. But sometimes it is hard, it makes you anxious, terrified and even depressed. For example when you realise that after some changes in the code it is impossible to obtain your previous results, and the backup files are hard to reach. And after two days of despare, you realise that the code works alright, and the only reason why it didn't work is that you had changed one single variable in an input file.

In times of desperation, you suddenly happen to listen to some magic music, like my last big love, "Gypsy Passion" by Ottmar Liebert, and everything, every tiny worry goes away, as if you were in the desert dancing under the rhythm of flamenco... I guess that love is when you cannot find a away out, when there is no doubt, when there is not a single thing that doesn't rise you up to the beautiful sunny sky.

Back to the research, I guess that I am lucky. All of us doing this kind of things. No more than a small piece of earth's population have jobs that allow them such freedom. Sometimes I feel guilty. But then... it is not me who has to change my working conditions into worse ones, but the others who have to change their working conditions into better ones. Isn't it?

I still have to do something about my enormous absent-mindedness...

How To Write A Scientific Paper

E. Robert Schulman, "How To Write A Scientific Paper", Charlottesville, Virginia
The Annals of Improbable Research

Abstract

We (meaning I) present observations on the scientific publishing process which (meaning that) are important and timely in that unless I have more published papers soon, I will never get another job. These observations are consistent with the theory that it is difficult to do good science, write good scientific papers, and have enough publications to get future jobs.

1. Introduction

Scientific papers (e.g. Schulman 1988; Schulman & Fomalont 1992; Schulman, Bregman, & Roberts 1994; Schulman & Bregman 1995; Schulman 1996) are an important, though poorly understood, method of publication. They are important because without them scientists cannot get money from the government or from universities. They are poorly understood because they are not written very well (see, for example, Schulman 1995 and selected references therein). An excellent example of the latter phenomenon occurs in most introductions, which are supposed to introduce the reader to the subject so that the paper will be comprehensible even if the reader has not done any work in the field. The real purpose of introductions, of course, is to cite your own work (e.g. Schulman et al. 1993a), the work of your advisor (e.g. Bregman, Schulman, & Tomisaka 1995), the work of your spouse (e.g. Cox, Schulman, & Bregman 1993), the work of a friend from college (e.g. Taylor, Morris, & Schulman 1993), or even the work of someone you have never met, as long as your name happens to be on the paper (e.g. Richmond et al. 1994). Note that these citations should not be limited to refereed journal articles (e.g. Collura et al. 1994), but should also include conference proceedings (e.g. Schulman et al. 1993b), and other published or unpublished work (e.g. Schulman 1990). At the end of the introduction you must summarize the paper by reciting the section headings. In this paper, we discuss scientific research (section 2), scientific writing (section 3) and scientific publication (section 4), and draw some conclusions (section 5).

2. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

The purpose of science is to get paid for doing fun stuff if you’re not a good enough programmer to write computer games for a living (Schulman et al. 1991). Nominally, science involves discovering something new about the universe, but this is not really necessary. What is really necessary is a grant. In order to obtain a grant, your application must state that the research will discover something incredibly fundamental. The grant agency must also believe that you are the best person to do this particular research, so you should cite yourself both early (Schulman 1994) and often (Schulman et al. 1993c). Feel free to cite other papers as well (e.g. Blakeslee et al. 1993; Levine et al. 1993), so long as you are on the author list. Once you get the grant, your university, company, or government agency will immediately take 30 to 70% of it so that they can heat the building, pay for Internet connections, and purchase large yachts. Now it’s time for the actual research. You will quickly find out that (a) your project is not as simple as you thought it would be and (b) you can’t actually solve the problem. However—and this is very important—you must publish anyway (Schulman & Bregman 1994).

3. Scientific Writing

You have spent years on a project and have finally discovered that you cannot solve the problem you set out to solve. Nonetheless, you have a responsibility to present your research to the scientific community (Schulman et al. 1993d). Be aware that negative results can be just as important as positive results, and also that if you don’t publish enough you will never be able to stay in science. While writing a scientific paper, the most important thing to remember is that the word "which" should almost never be used. Be sure to spend at least 50% of your time (i.e. 12 hours a day) typesetting the paper so that all the tables look nice (Schulman & Bregman 1992).

4. Scientific Publishing

You have written the paper, and now it is time to submit it to a scientific journal. The journal editor will pick the referee most likely to be offended by your paper, because then at least the referee will read it and get a report back within the lifetime of the editor (Schulman, Cox, & Williams 1993). Referees who don’t care one way or the other about a paper have a tendency to leave manuscripts under a growing pile of paper until the floor collapses, killing the 27 English graduate students who share the office below. Be aware that every scientific paper contains serious errors. If your errors are not caught before publication, you will eventually have to write an erratum to the paper explaining (a) how and why you messed up and (b) that even though your experimental results are now totally different, your conclusions needn’t be changed. Errata can be good for your career. They are easy to write, and the convention is to reference them as if they were real papers, leading the casual reader (and perhaps the Science Citation Index) to think that you have published more papers than you really have (Schulman et al. 1994).

5. Conclusions

The conclusion section is very easy to write: all you have to do is to take your abstract and change the tense from present to past. It is considered good form to mention at least one relevant theory only in the abstract and conclusion. By doing this, you don’t have to say why your experiment does (or does not) agree with the theory, you merely have to state that it does (or does not). We (meaning I) presented observations on the scientific publishing process which (meaning that) are important and timely in that unless I have more published papers soon, I will never get another job. These observations are consistent with the theory that it is difficult to do good science, write good scientific papers, and have enough publications to get future jobs.

References

Blakeslee, J., Tonry, J., Williams, G.V., & Schulman, E. 1993 Aug 2, Minor Planet Circular 22357
Bregman, J.N., Schulman, E., & Tomisaka, K. 1995, Astrophysical Journal, 439, 155
Collura, A., Reale, F., Schulman, E., & Bregman, J.N. 1994, Astrophysical Journal, 420, L63
Cox, C. V., Schulman, E., & Bregman, J.N. 1993, NASA Conference Publication 3190, 106
Levine, D.A., Morris, M., Taylor, G.B., & Schulman, E. 1993, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 25, 1467
Richmond, M.W., Treffers, R.R., Filippenko, A.V., Paik, Y., Leibundgut, B., Schulman, E., & Cox, C.V. 1994, Astronomical Journal, 107, 1022
Schulman, E. 1988, Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, 17, 130
Schulman, E. 1990, Senior thesis, UCLA
Schulman, E. 1994, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 26, 1411
Schulman, E. 1995, Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan
Schulman, E. 1996, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 108, 460
Schulman, E., Bregman, J.N., Collura, A., Reale, F., & Peres, G. 1993a, Astrophysical Journal, 418, L67
Schulman, E., Bregman, J.N., Collura, A., Reale, F., & Peres, G. 1994, Astrophysical Journal, 426, L55
Schulman, E. & Bregman, J.N. 1992, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 24, 1202
Schulman, E. & Bregman, J.N. 1994, in The Soft X-Ray Cosmos, ed. E. Schlegel & R. Petre (New York: American Institute of Physics), 345
Schulman, E. & Bregman, J.N. 1995, Astrophysical Journal, 441, 568
Schulman, E., Bregman, J.N., Brinks, E., & Roberts, M.S. 1993b, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 25, 1324
Schulman, E., Bregman, J.N., & Roberts, M.S. 1994, Astrophysical Journal, 423, 180
Schulman, E., Bregman, J.N., Roberts, M.S., & Brinks, E. 1991, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 23, 1401
Schulman, E., Bregman, J.N., Roberts, M.S., & Brinks, E. 1993c, NASA Conference Publication 3190, 201
Schulman, E., Bregman, J.N., Roberts, M.S., & Brinks, E. 1993d, Astronomical Gesellschaft Abstract Series 8, 141
Schulman, E., Cox, C.V., & Williams, G.V. 1993 June 4, Minor Planet Circular 22185
Schulman, E. & Fomalont, E.B. 1992, Astronomical Journal, 103, 1138
Taylor, G.B., Morris, M., & Schulman, E. 1993, Astronomical Journal, 106, 1978

Observatoire

Αστεροσκοπείο

Διαρρήχτες του ήλιου
δεν είδαν ποτέ τους πράσινο κλωνάρι
δεν άγγιξαν φλογισμένο στόμα
δεν ξέρουν τί χρώμα έχει ο ουρανός

Σε σκοτεινά δωμάτια κλεισμένοι
δεν ξέρουν αν θα πεθάνουν
παραμονεύουν
με μαύρες μάσκες και βαριά τηλεσκόπια
με τ' άστρα στην τσέπη τους βρωμισμένα με ψίχουλα
με τις πέτρες τών δειλών στα χέρια
παραμονεύουν σ' άλλους πλανήτες το φως

Να πεθάνουν

Να κριθεί κάθε Άνοιξη από τη χαρά της
από το χρώμα του το κάθε λουλούδι
από το χάδι του το κάθε χέρι
απ' τ' ανατρίχιασμα του το κάθε φιλί

Μίλτος Σαχτούρης

Astronomical observatory

Thieves of the sun
they never saw a green bough
never touched burning lips
never knew the color of the sky

Barricaded in dark rooms
don't know if they're gonna die
observing
in black masks, heavy telescopes
the stars being in their pockets, dirty of whits
the hands holding rocks of the cowards
searching for the light in other planets

Let them die

Let Spring be judged by its felicity
each flower by its color
each hand by the way it pets
each kiss by the bristling it causes

Miltos Sahtouris