A Birthday Card for You!

What is life?

A journey through a series of seemingly random events,

and formation of mental images aimed at making sense of them?

Maybe, fulfillment of a vision delineated meticulously down to its most subtle nuances.

Or perhaps, something in between!

Happy Birthday!

The Transparent Man (by Anthony Hecht)

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15220

Communicaton Bridge

The following is a passage from an e-book distributed by the IEEE, titled "Engineering a Communication Bridge":

"In the end, the bridge over the communication gap will not be built through crafty legislation. The bridge will not be engineered through advanced communication technologies.... The bridge can only be constructed of one material: humans. Anyone can serve as the bridge by taking action, by ensuring a diverse education. Get involved. And get talking!"

Although, the e-book was concerned primarily with the communication gap between engineers and policy makers the overall message is widely applicable to many other areas of human endeavor: boys meet girls and there is often a communication gap that can only be bridged by developing a diverse set of interests (sport, dance, music, food, cinema, ...), emphasizing on humanity (respecting each others wants, ignoring occasional human follies), and getting involved and talking (spending time).

Time (by firstcomet)

In a fight to make right
One wrong, a million wrong
I found self distressed
I felt heart weary
I grieved bygone youth
I glimpsed a dimmed horizon

Time, the greatest exposé
In the battle of self-indulgence
Comforting convictions posed
The hubris of man shows
The voyeurism of time satisfied
That's the end of most fights!

Lost (a poem by firstcomet)

It was a flower, perished
It was a desire, demised
It was a chance, missed
It was a take, lost

If the moment was cherished
If the words were spoken
If he had his ego accost
If she had her passion gust

Maybe their path could have crossed!

Rachmaninoff Piano concerto No.3

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced that Game theory should be the natural language of Contradictionism and that people should be more educated about game theory:

It's very simple; contradictions are the cause of all the conflicts in the world. But, people don't realize it. I can think of two reasons for this:

1) Euphemism: we try to resolve contradictions in the linguistic stage by adopting euphemism.
2) Evolutionary psychology: we are so much conditioned by our extended histories that do not realize our inherent biases.

To be more concrete, let's take an example of Euphemism: "Patriotism is a virtue." Here, Patriotism is a euphemism for acting in accordance with the unilateral interest of your country. However, if every country follows the same maxim then conflict is inevitable.

Here is an example of how evolution biases our point of view and results in contradiction: "One has to be truthful unconditionally." However, the following dynamics results in contradiction:

i) Factuality: A necessary condition to stay truthful is to keep track of facts and stay faithful to them.
ii) Fallibility: human beings make mistakes. Furthermore, they often find it more convenient to hide their fallibility from others, or rationalize their mistakes, or to blame others for their own wrong doings.
iii) Friendliness: social life requires collaborating with others to achieve common goals or to compromise over incompatible objectives. Friendship by definition requires being biased with respect to certain individuals, thus, manipulating facts to their advantage.

Thus, there is a fundamental contradiction between Factuality and Friendliness as a byproduct of Fallibility. Looking at the state of affairs, it seems like Friendliness takes precedence over Factuality. This quality (friendliness) equipped our ancestors to cope with the complications of living in groups.

Another closely related example: "Rationality commands that our primary moral and social concerns must not be directed towards those with whom we are bound by the common ties of kinship, rather to those who strive to improve the condition of their lives through conscious decisions and ceaseless struggles."

Above is an example of a principle one might arrive at via sensible reasoning, but is not supported by our common sentiments. In particular, we fail to realize the above due to our emotional engagement with the members of our kinship group.

It is proposed that educating individuals about the principles of "proof by contradiction", might be a viable mean to help them see the contradiction of life and to deal with its complications. However, I remain skeptical! Since, resolving many contradictions of life demands a "disconnect" from our very natural dispositions that are not psychologically viable or otherwise painful. At the very least, it requires a great deal of courage and intellectual honesty.

Life is the peace of contraries,
And Death is the proof of this war. --Rumi

The Gap

I wonder how it feels to grow up in a middle-class family in US.
I wonder how it feels like to be Peter; the son of an engineer (or was his dad a businessman) who has been making a six figure income for the past 20 years, while Peter was going through different stages of his life.

What did Peter do while he was 5 years old?
How did his pre-school years look?
How were his middle school days?
What does Peter think about life?
Peter's dreams?
Peter's ideals?
What does it take to make Peter?
What does it take to break Peter?

The Walnut Creek Theater

Today the Walnut Creek Theater showcased one of the masterpieces of French existentialism; namely "the hackneyed butterfly ascent" (or was it a descent?). The only creative component of the play was the overwhelming dramatization of the scene by spectators, who interpreted the extreme apathy of the antihero as a butterfly ascend (or was it a descent?). It turns out a more thru interpretation of the play may result in a butterfly effect that was not the original intent of the screenwriter.

Games of social life

Observations pertaining to an anthropological case-study:

This game is called "who looks better". This particular game turns out to be a dangerous game; since in the real life it actually matters "who looks better". Here is a typical strategy people use:

1) Players A and B start by standing face-to-face, and telling each other anything they can think-of that can make the other person look bad. This can happen in a park or over a kitchen table.

2) Then they depart from each other and start advertising to others that they "look better" than their opponent. As such, the objective is to convince as many spectators as possible that your opponent is uglier than what they think he or she is:

3) Player A proceed by coming-up with fictitious stories (may originate from reality, but is sufficiently distorted to qualify as fiction) and propagates them among his acquaintances.

4) Player B replies by trying to discredit player A calling him crazy. The idea is that if player A is discredited then all of his statements will be interpreted by others as false.

A funny consequence of this move by player B is that for her to win the game, it has to become a self-fulfilling prophesy, i.e., player A has to become crazy.

5) Once in a while, one of the spectators decides to believe player B over player A. In such cases, player B seizes the opportunity by calling player A and bringing that to his attention. She also calls the acquaintances of Player A at 2:00am in their local time to win their votes. And there are those spectators who mediate the game through public media, the worse of them being smart aleck theorist and e-mailers!

You might wonder why spectators bother to take a side. It's because any spectator automatically becomes part of the game "who looks better". Among the many ways a spectator can look better is by making right judgments. After all, if you can call-out the guilty party you're smarter than both player A and B, and consequently, you look better than both of them. Furthermore, certain spectators seize the opportunity to compensate for their “old losses” on the game of "who looks better". After all, this game can go on for lifetimes! As you might have guessed, spectators are an essential part of this game. Without them the game is simply absurd!

6) Rules regarding types of money accepted by the dealer (the devil) for purchasing your chips are very flexible:

Your respect, your honor, your honesty, your genuine concerns, your quiet evening times, your emotions, your tears, your health, your sanity, your rationality, your family ties ... you name it.

7) There is no shame in changing strategy or using the same strategy as that of your opponent. Even though, from time to time you might find certain strategies of your opponents very hurtful, reducing the pain is not one of the objectives of the game. The only objective is "who looks better" at the end of the day.

8) Players and spectators can take breaks from the game and return back as many times as they wish; the only requirement being that the game must go on. In fact, certain players get sick of the game and decide to quite.

As such, the game of "who looks better" can be a very painful experience. But, the sweet taste of wining, au contraire, makes the game worthy of eternal recurrence. In practice, the overall number of the players and spectators remains steady throughout the game, and there are always plenty of exchangeable goods to purchase your chips with.

9) It turns out you do not need to make time for playing this game. You don’t even need to learn the rules of the game. It comes naturally to almost everybody. And you’re most likely so good at this game that you don’t even notice you’re playing it.


Happy playing kids!

Pandora!

He placed all his memories in a box, sealed it tightly, and buried it in the most unreachable recesses of his mind. The Pandora radio reached deep into his psych and astounded him by the Golden autumn (Fariborz Lachini) and Instrumental imagery (Mehdi).

East, East, East

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Star_in_the_East

Sounds familiar!

William James -> Annie Besant-> Krishnamurti -> David Bohm -> Karl Pribram:

"You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of the truth,' said the devil. 'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend. 'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to help him organize it.' I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path."

You (by firstcomet)

You are just like
that orange blossom-scented breath
I so ravenously want to hold on to,
while I know ...
Soon, I'll have to let go of!


Being with you is just like indulging in chocolate; you just can't have enough of it. Even though chocolates are not the most nutritional food items, they are undoubtedly some of the sweetest and most addictive ones. The rest is like spending time at a salad bar and having to have lots of asparagus and broccolis. So is being with you; it might distract me from enriching my mind with all that society and history cares for. And I also care for them in the same logical basis that I consume asparagus and broccolis. But chocolate ... I ravenously desire chocolate!

"Every man who is not a monster, mathematician or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other." --George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life

Privilege of Being

Robert Hass

Many are making love. Up above, the angels in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing are braiding one another's hair, which is strawberry blond and the texture of cold rivers. They glance down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy--it must look to them like featherless birds splashing in the spring puddle of a bed--and then one woman, she is about to come, peelsback the man's shut eyelids and says, look at me, and he does. Or is it the man tugging the curtain rope in that dark theater? Anyway, they do, they look at each other; two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious, startled, connected at the belly in an unbelievably sweet lubricious glue, stare at each other, and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically like lithographs of Victorian beggars with perfect features and alabaster skin hawking rags in the lewd alleys of the novel.All of creation is offended by this distress. It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes, rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it, it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that they close their eyes again and hold each other, each feeling the mortal singularity of the body they have enchanted out of death for an hour so, and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man, I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized that you could not, as much as I love you, dear heart, cure my loneliness, wherewith she touched his cheek to reassure him that she did not mean to hurt him with this truth. And the man is not hurt exactly,he understands that life has limits, that people die young, fail at love, fail of their ambitions. He runs beside her, he thinks of the sadness they have gasped and crooned their way out of coming, clutching each other with old invented forms of grace and clumsy gratitude, ready to be alone again, or dissatisfied, or merely companionable like the couples on the summer beach reading magazine articles about intimacy between the sexes to themselves, and to each other, and to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19035

Sons of the Monkeys

Men need money to impress women. Women look for rich men to secure their babies' survival.
"Yesterday we were, and today we are! This is the will of the goddess among the sons of the goddess; what is your will, oh sons of the monkeys?"

The economy of action

"Plenty of people wish well to any good cause, but very few care to exert themselves to help it, and still fewer will risk anything in its support. 'Someone ought to do it, but why should I?' is the ever reechoed phrase of the weak-kneed amiability. 'Someone ought to do it, so why not I?' is the cry of some earnest servants of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty. Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution." -- Annie Besant

"weak-kneed amiability" or economical thinking? Doesn't it all come down to cost benefit analysis. How does the economy of "risking everything" work?

what makes a trst

http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/what-makes-a-terrorist

Chocolate Rain!

“There are few enough people with sufficient independence to see the weakness and follies of their contemporaries and remain themselves untouched by them. And these isolated few usually soon lose their zeal for putting things to rights when they have come face to face with human obduracy. Only to a tiny minority is it given to fascinate their generation by subtle humor and grace and to hold the mirror up to it by impersonal agency of art." –The World As I See It, Albert Einstein.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_Rain

The impersonator (a poem by firstcomet):

Divided by a fine line to the left and right,
Right and wrong; caught in a fierce fight,
Fight to the end of time; the time was tight,
Tight and tense, in his fist he held the light,
Light in hand, he marched like a knight,
Knight he might, but on the side of the night,
Night, confused, when the devil is your guide,
Night, the imposer of the eternal plight,
Plight, the pestilent snare, hard to decide,
Decide to resist and to endure or to abide,
Abide by the rules or to sail against the tide,
Tide so wide, hopeless to ride or to push aside
The night had changed the rules of the fight,
Right was wrong; his mission was to hide,
To hide, the secret collusion of the night!

.to continue

What I learned my first semester at MIT

1) Being humble; there are always smarter people around.
2) Not being ashamed of doing psets all weekend long.
3) I'm not granted anything; I have to earn it.

How do you know how much your worth is?

Why do I even bother to know anything at all? I know things because I need those information to survive. So, I like to think that I worth more than all that I know. And that I need to know more, to protect that essence that I consider worth the effort of knowing more.

So, I cannot think I worth any less than the highest worth I can associate with any object. Since otherwise, that piece of knowledge won't serve the purpose that my knowledge is supposed to serve.

Thus, knowing my worth is contrary to the whole purpose of knowing! It follows from the fact "the concept of quantitative worth is relative" that I have to grant infinite worth to others, as well.

Low!

Low, high, it doesn't matter, I don't know why?

Good points!

http://www.eharmony.com/singles/servlet/partner-articles?id=1

http://www.eharmony.com/singles/servlet/partner-articles?id=2

Emotional Bankruptcy and Beyond!

This conversation spawned as a result of a Facebook status:

A: "Emotional bankruptcy" is not as bad as it sounds: Shared memories + oxytocin result in attachment and fondness, which is typically followed by copulation and excess secretion of dopamine (good stuff) in the frontal cortex. Now, in females oxytocin has to be combined with estrogen to function properly. Josephine in Fitzgerald’s novel was probably going through a period of estrogen deficiency and consequently when the guy (I forgot his name) kissed her she couldn’t form a pair-bond. There is no need to panic! A period of rest and proper dieting will bring her back to the stage and she can go on with her egotist lifestyle. Meanwhile, she can invest in her other assets and potentials. And as for the spectators, they should put on their favorite music:“Softly, deftly, music shall caress you, hear it, feel, it, secretly posess you …”

B: (4-month later) First "love" is undefined, but given that, I still don't know if chemicals are all that account for a feeling of love. However, I don't doubt if they are the main reason for attachment.

A: I’m no longer a big fan of iconoclasts! Mainly because, they strike me as unimaginative and unconstructive. So, me not a fan of me!

Secondly, ideas that have practical utility in a laboratory setting are not necessarily useful for the “social life”. For example, “reductionism” and “analysis” may not be the best approach to understanding/enjoying a good poetry, a good company, or a tasty meal for that matter!

Third, the second point makes sense in the light of the following fundamental contradiction of human life: “before becoming a good human, one has to learn what it takes to be a good animal.” In particular, the older one grows the more this point becomes obvious.

Finally, saying “love is undefined” is like saying “air is undefined”, which is both true and false. It really depends on your “mode of description”:

It turns out that air roughly (by molar content/volume) contains 78% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, trace amounts of other gases, and a variable amount (average around 1%) of water vapor.

On the other hand, air is a medium in which birds fly, butterflies hover, willow trees dance, the falling yellow leaves roam, and the winter storm scourge the gentle skin of Sharbat (the national geography Afghan girl [1]). It cannot be grasped (literally), nor can it be seen!

I’m sure you heard this joke about the similarity of air and sex:

"Why is air a lot like sex?
Because it's no big deal unless you're not getting any!"

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharbat_Gula

"There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know." --
Harry Truman

Halloween!

It seems like the bitter taste of the past encourages victims to victimize others, so that the world of humanity will never be deprived of bitterness. Bitterness breeds vulgarity the same manner that love breeds beauty and the cycle continues indefinitely.

It reminds me of the vampire stories where the victims of the vampire bites are metamorphosed to vampires. The story invariably concludes with a bloody battle between the hero of the story and the vampire-head who defiantly blasts towards the outer space, not to be seen till his next encounter with a feeble soul....

Yet another cycle! Where is the hero in man?

A tribute to a lonely butterfly (a poem by firstcomet):

Here I am all alone by myself;
With only the quiet now by my side
And it makes me feel alright!

Those back and shoulders that were so tight
Start to relax and grow wide
And my worries begin to subside

The city framed by the window sash
The distance portrait of a forgotten brash
The dance of the curtain on the wall
And my response: a spontaneous sprawl!

Suddenly I see a little fly who came by to say Hi
I can tell she was flying for a while
I would say for at least a quarter of a mile

But then quickly she turns around and says good-by!
I wonder why she bothered to stop-by?
In a blink of an eye I jump and grab her by the thigh
Out of the window, the garden flowers and the blue sky
Good-bye my friend, the lonely butterfly!

The age of maturity

Transforming from the casual chatter to the serious reflectionist. From a wholesome observer to the skeptic reductionist. Commuting while sitting and dining while walking!

Imagine: students with notebooks in which class notes expand from the front to the back and their poetry in the reverse order. At the end of each semester their class notes encounter their poetry to proclaim the advent of a liberated civilization!

Beyond A Troubled Mind (firstcomet listens to a friend):

To all who posses the earth:
Beyond your borders, you are a homeless kid who cannot find her mother
Beyond your borders, you do not understand anyone and no one cares either

To all who posses a house:
Beyond your house, your privacy will be violated
Beyond your bedrooms, you are no porn star!
Beyond your bathrooms, you are not a rock star!

To all who posses a business:
Mind your own business!
Beyond your business, it's not your business!

To all who posses any matters:
Beyond your possessions, you are the beggar!
Beyond your possessions, it is the "Mine" of others and nothing else matter!

To all who posses a belief:
Beyond your beliefs, you have nothing to believe
Beyond your beliefs, you are lost like an autumn leaf

To all who possess a culture:
Beyond your culture, you have no culture!
Beyond your orient culture, you are disoriented
Beyond your dear culture, your wild-fruit-basket is punctured

To all who posses a friend:
Beyond your friends, you are lonely and deserted
Beyond your friends, you are the most stranger of all

To all who posses youth:
Beyond your youth, your back gets as round as a circle!
Beyond your youth, you are an old star with no audience
Beyond your youth, you are an old prophet with no follower

To all who posses life:
Beyond life, you are corpse of bad odor
Beyond life, no-one can bear you for a moment

To all who posses a troubled mind:
Beyond your troubled mind, there is a beautiful mind!
Hold on to your troubled minds!
Hold on patiently to the pain of rejection
The Day of Beautiful mind will come!

Beyond Other Things:

Beyond a glass of water, there is a bottle of beer
If you have it, you'll have no fear!

Beyond a bottle of beer, there is a glass of wine
If you have it, you'll stop the whine!

Beyond a glass of wine, there is a bottle of champagne
If you have it, you'll start a new campaign

Beyond love there is reason
In the reason, you'll find your prison!

Beyond darkness there is light
Both being the same for the one with no-eyesight!

Beyond the priests there are the laymen
The only difference, their acquaintance with the hymen!

Beyond human there is the saint
With no fault, he is like a pale paint!

Beyond your daily routine, there is an exciting life
Which you can easily destroy by getting a wife!

Beyond sitting on your butt there is an adventurous ride
Which one to choose? I let you to decide!

Summer 2005 --S&S N.

So fragile!

Oh, the wings of that butterfly
So fragile, marred in a blink of an I!

Yesterday vs. Today

Yesterday we were, and today we are! This is the will of the goddess among
the sons of the goddess; what is your will, oh sons of the monkeys?

--Thoughts and Medications, Kahlil Gibran

Go explore! (firstcomet)

A man is sitting behind his chair
Wondering and pondering about his future
Recalling past memories of despair
And that which life had made his share
Those tangled days in pestilent snare
And when he thought it wasn’t fair
He took the chance, since he was so dare
He climbed his way up to the the frontier
With chin up, full of honor, like a cavalier
But life was one cruel racketeer
Since he witnessed innocent’s tear
Everywhere he went found no genuine cheer
One day a voice summoned him: you my dear!
As the voice neared he felt a sudden fear
He lost his rhythm and tumbled on the floor
When he pulled himself up asked what’s it all for?
This absurd décor and the suffering galore
The voice lowered her tone and replied: it’s a metaphor
It’s about finding your own tune, writing your own score
Then she pointed at a door and said go explore
It’s the time for you to soar and to forget the yore
May soon you find your amore!

MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html

As a religious refugee from Iran who experienced decades of systematic prosecution and oppression under the name of religion, I believe if Haidt had the slightest idea of how the life of minority groups under "beehive" social systems look he would have been more careful in his assessment of such systems:

"The beehive ideal is not a world of maximum freedom, it is a world of order and tradition in which people are united by a shared moral code that is effectively enforced, which enables people to trust each other to play their interdependent roles. It is a world of very high social capital and low anomie."

In such societies it is not the "maximum freedom" that is at stake, rather the most fundamental human rights. What he means by "people are united" is in fact a euphemism used to describe the condition of individuals yielding to the will of the authority and under the yoke of group loyalty. This analysis can go on and on …. The article strokes me as naïve!

"The best test of a civilised society is the way in which it treats its most vulnerable and weakest members."

Mahatma Gandhi

Belgian sheep and the Eskimo dog (firstcomet)

Ticktock, ticktock, ticktock; it’s 11 o’clock
Sitting in my room; in view is the Boston city block .
The music is on; listening to Johann Sebastian Bach
My ad-lib solution to the homework seems rather ad-hoc!
I want to throw a rock at this city of fog
Then I change my mind and start singing a song:
The Belgian sheep and the Eskimo dog chasing round my coffee mug!
I take a moment off and write this quick note on my blog;
Oftentimes writing is the right drug in the absence of kisses and a hug!

Spiritual Solutions to Economic Problems

Concerning your question regarding the Bahá'í principle of "spiritual solutions to economic problems", below is some excerpts/summaries from an article that I found online (of course, there are different levels of description):

1) Inducing a desire for social change and a sense of empowerment:

"Creating a desire for social change and instilling confidence that it can be achieved must ultimately come from an awakening of the human spirit."[1]

2) Creating a sense of unity and common destiny in small communities. Note that, any group/community needs a unifying theme to bring them together (in this case, their common faith):

"Thus, Bahá'í efforts in the field of social and economic development generally take the form of grassroots initiatives carried out by small groups of individuals in the towns and villages in which they reside. As these initiatives evolve, some grow into more substantial programs with permanent administrative structures."[1]

Note that, Bahá'í faith is the 'second most widespread' religion in the world [2]. So, they are in a fairly unique position to undertake such initiatives in a larger scale (maybe not capital-wise but community-wise).

3) Spirituality can bring about Philanthropic doings and philanthropy can enhance spirituality:

"…the application of spiritual values such as justice, trustworthiness, and generosity will enhance material well-being, while material resources and advances will make possible new avenues of spiritual endeavor that will promote cohesion and unity of purpose within and across societies."[1]

I believe in a just and equitable society everybody will be happier; not only the poor but also the rich.

4) Consultations (there is a considerable amount of literature in the Bahá'í teachings regarding the principles of effective consultation):

"Experience has shown that consultation is an indispensable tool that enables communities to sustain and modify development initiatives and thereby contributes to self-sufficiency and a higher quality of life."[1]

These methods are meant to complement and facilitate other social/economical development plans. One of the main principles of the Bahá'í faith is the harmony of science and religion. So, I imagine they should appreciate any input from the scientific community!

Looking back into my own life, it is much easier to be an iconoclast than to
invent and enact new solutions to world's problems!

[1] http://www.huttbahai.org.nz/default.aspx?Page=125

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/faith/2004/03/bahai_naz_ruz.shtml

the other side of the Milky Way (firstcomet):

Beautiful things, beautiful people and beautiful smiles
Innocence and the promise of a domesticated civilization
The blue sky, the green ocean, and those twinkling eyes
The northern breeze and the sweet fragrance of your hair

Was it me or the world wasn’t quite ever fair?
Because when I found those colorful feathers in the air
I wondered whose diligent hand they did prepare!
But then I saw that ascending desperate bird in the air
Who fluttered too far with those wings which were impaired
Why was she fleeing away; wasn’t it just another sunny day?
Maybe she was running away from a dream that had gone astray!
But then she was too far away and the sky was turning gray
So I whispered: see you on the other side of the Milky Way!

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~ncrato/Math/Hamming.html

A question that I have been entertaining recently concerns the hypothetical limitations imposed upon us by our Faculty of Reasoning. Is it possible that Science with all of its utility result in a dogmatic viewpoint that blinds us to some alternative forms of knowledge?

Taking the Aristotelian viewpoint of the divinity of principles of logic makes me to believe that logical thinking and chains of reasoning are the closest link to reality. On the other hand, considering the evolutionary argument for the formation of principles of logic makes me to reconsider my seemingly rigid assumptions regarding the nature of the very reality we strive to make sense of via logical reasoning.

Hamming notes the way we perceive of the nature is directly affected by the kind of glasses we wear. So, does a purely logical interpretation and examination of natural events only empower us to have a better conception of reality or may it also limit us to glimpse what could lie beyond!

The downside of diversity - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity?mode=PF

Didn't mean to hurt your feeling!

What is wrong with this statement?

Either you meant what you said or you are not able to say what you mean.
1) If you meant what you said then why being apologetic?
2) If you meant what you said and then felt guilty then you must admit it. Do it in an honest manner. Nothing hurts others as much as dishonesty. Nothing takes away from your social image more than dishonesty. People are very well equipped to detect dishonesty.
3) The second point applies also if you exactly meant what you said and you are not feeling guilty, but just trying to be a smart ass.
4) If you are unable to say what you mean then start by avoiding the expression "Didn't mean to hurt your feeling"! It's not going to help you. It's only going to affirm the state of a mutual indignation between you two. Thus, making both of you feel uneasy!

What to do? Make up for it by action and never try to resolve the issue on rational grounds. This are all assuming that you are not a fool to begin with!

Why truth did not prevail? The triple-F factor

Factuality: a necessary condition to stay truthful is to keep track of facts and stay faithful to them.

Fallibility: human beings make mistakes. Furthermore, they often find it more convenient to hide their fallibility from others, or rationalize their mistakes, or to blame others for their own wrong doings.

Friendliness: social life requires collaborating with others to achieve common goals or to compromise over incompatible objectives. Friendship by definition requires being biased with respect to certain individuals, thus, manipulating facts to their advantage. (1)

Looking at the state of affairs, evolution is telling us that there are other qualities that take precedence over truthfulness. These qualities equipped our ancestors to cope with the complications of living in groups.

So, why do we emphasize being truthful over being socially compatible? Is it simply a byproduct of the moral codes handed down to us by religion and philosophy? I have an alternative hypothesis: "Knowing that the other person is truthful helps us to lie better."

1) there is a 4th factor that I'm withholding from you. Is that considered not being truthful?

I have a quote on my Blog that goes like this: “If you wonder then ponder and never settle on the obvious the world will be a better place!” What I did not mention is what happens to you! The answer is that you go crazy, or at the very least you’ll find yourself belonging to a very tiny minority that is often being ostracized by the masses.

I really liked the Video and envy you guys for couple of reasons: Having a platform (videos) to express your ideals and aspirations is essential to coping with the contradictions that you encounter as a youth in today’s world. In addition, it seems like being in Vancouver also helps by being exposed to a wider range of people including (hopefully) more open minded .... That’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to moving to Boston at the end of August; I'm being rotten in ...!

As far as the “harmony of science and religion” and the concept of “independent investigation of truth” are concerned, I have not yet figured them out! The first statement seems like a paradox if not an oxymoron! Religion is based on faith and science is never based on faith. The second statement concerns itself with “truth”, which in the context of religion means the “religious truth”. What if you conduct an “independent investigation of truth” and come at the conclusion that there is no absolute truth and religion is just man’s best attempt (as apposed to a divine intervention) to explain/mitigate the cause of his misery and ignorance? What if you conclude that having no religion is better for the mankind?

Maybe that’s the case, but you can’t go to a religious person and tell her on the face that he or she believes in superstition! That’s what I like about your video: it draws examples from science to educate people about tolerance and “independent investigation of truth”, and it does it in a non-invasive manner!

Best of luck!

A social networking fruit punch!

Like it or not many of us have become "habitual prisoners" of the social networking sites. Here, I use the term "prisoner" to emphasize the fact that we cannot leave them! Not only that but also the often neglected reality that we provide many of these sites with free labor by providing them with cheap content in the form of personal news, videos, etc. On the bright side, these sites provide us with effective tools for staying in touch with our friends, expressing ourselves, sharing, discussing, gossiping, flirting , and getting feedbacks (often that you are an idiot). So, it makes me think if it is possible to benefit from the services provided by these sites without being locked into any particular site. For instance, I wish to see the equivalent of the Gaim (the fruit punch of the instance massaging world) in the realm of social networking [1]. This is more of a challenge that needs to be addressed by the community of open source programmers. And I bet somebody somewhere has already thought about it! Let me know if you know of any such project.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_%28software%29

Black Box Fantasy lyrics

The Facts of Life

Thou shalt forgive and update!

All empirical evidences point at the inevitability of disappointment even if realistic expectations are placed on individuals. This problem emerges due to an inherent difficulty in obtaining sufficient behavioral samples to construct an accurate model, as well as, our tendency to ignore, misinterpret, and forget empirical evidences as a consequence of emotional involvement with the subject.

So, the solution is not to forgive and forget, but to forgive and update the model!

All about me!

agor balipa mipor tamami sandogh fadime shod. kin habtal farkhond. man tar hamin finslok? fodler haml. sodigh baher lotern bashid. mihal ermin farem! in dar mian for kamal!!!

Science, religion, and the origin of authority:

During a recent GOP presidential debate 3 out of 10 republican candidates expressed skepticism (if not denial) towards Evolution. In particular, one of the candidates elaborated that he wasn’t there when the world was created, so he doesn’t know. Thus, he chosed to believe in the "words of God”!

I wondered if it’s fair to call such an individual ignorant! I asked myself if I believed in evolution after all. At first the answer came to me as a comforting yes! At the same time it stroked me as shallow and lacking rigour! Here is why: for instance, I’ve never seen a DNA. But, I believe in Genes and their rules in encoding proteins that construct the very fabric of my body. How does this leap of faith happen?! In what way my belief in Genes differs from a religious person’s belief in God? Since, in practice, the average person does not know (in concrete terms) any more about the evolution than he/she knows about the existence of God, the real question becomes why he/she chooses to believe in one or the other. Does it all boil down to an arbitrary submission to an arbitrary authority?

As it is evident, by inspection, our submissiveness (conformity) to a particular school of thought is not arbitrary after all. For instance, one’s upbringing, particular culture, or education might explain it. However, as intelligent adults, we should be able reexamine our prejudices and to reselect our authorities. So, the real question becomes why one should believe in a scientist or a science-based establishment rather than a priest or a particular church in the matters of the origin of life and the universe? If that is the case, then it is only through educating the public about the basic premise of the “scientific method” (see [1]) and the “origin of authority in science” that one can hope to resolve the evolution vs. creationism dilemma dividing the American society.

But, how faithful are scientists in adhering to the principles of scientific investigation? To what extend the urge to stay competitive and profitable is overshadowing the process of publication and peer-review (the most important tenets of the scientific method)?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Sonnet 138 - William Shakespeare

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

-- William Shakespeare

Good-by a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good-by, proud world, I'm going home,
Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine;
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam,
But now, proud world, I'm going home.

Good-by to Flattery's fawning face,
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace,
To upstart Wealth's averted eye,
To supple Office low and high,
To crowded halls, to court, and street,
To frozen hearts, and hasting feet,
To those who go, and those who come,
Good-by, proud world, I'm going home.

I'm going to my own hearth-stone
Bosomed in yon green hills, alone,
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green the livelong day
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet.

CateGoRized

After spending two weeks in MIT I believe anybody who decides to come to this place invariably belongs to one of the following three categories:

1) Extremely passionate about science and engineering; such an individual will enjoy everyday of his stay and he/she will be stuck here for a long time.
2) Interested in politics and public policy making; for such a person the kth day of his/her sojourn in MIT is the (N-k)th count-down day, where N is the average time required for graduation. In other words, he/she might experience a thought time but will be one step ahead of many others in finding higher governmental/managerial positions.
3) A complete idiot!

Childhood origins of adult resistance to science

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5827/996

innocent man...

Human dignity is an intrinsic, intimate, and absolute sense of honor; the very sense that brought about such noble ideas as human rights and democracy. Listening to Billy Joel’s "Innocent Man":
"Some people live with the fear of a touch
And the anger of having been a fool
They will not listen to anyone
So nobody tells them a lie
…
I am an innocent man"

it reminds me of the bleared boarder between one’s sense of dignity and the fear of violation, betrayal, and humiliation. A friend of mine once said she prefers to be a first hand friend rather than a second hand concubine.
I‘m not motivated to carry on this line of thought! For the very reason that, in practice, one often is better off acting spontaneously and go with the flow! Could it be wrong?

Yet another cycle ...

Today John commented that the there is a generational cycle that starts with a child from a poor lower social class, choosing an engineering career, as a way of making a decent living and moving up the social ladder. Engineering turns out to be- in particular- a suitable choice. since it requires hard work and diligence; characters that a determined person can acquire through discipline.
The next generation generally ends up pursuing a career in medicine, law, or a number of other higher level social sciences.
Psychology, philosophy, and a number of other liberal arts areas dominate the career choice of the descendents of these lawyers and doctors, whose children end up experiencing a modest life style. And so the cycle continues …. Makes me think!

Oscar Wilde on Poetry

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets make a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.

Be Cool!

What does it take to be cool?
I'm preparing my presentation for my defense. I'm on a slide titled "Self-adjoint Operators Commuting with the Fourier Transform". A voice comes out of nowhere and tells me "be cool"! How rude! How true!

Life is the peace of contraries,
And Death is the proof of this war.

--Rumi

The age of Comformity

Most Americans want to be cultivated, but only comfortably cultivated. They dabble with the intellectual just enough to avoid being lowbrow and escape being highbrow. Middlebrowism looks like cultivation because it is so clearly superior to vulgarity, but to be satisfied with it is to make the good the enemy of the best. It merely dresses and domisticates the commonplace.

--The age of Comformity, Regnery

disconnected (firstcomet)

I’m all disconnected now
It wasn’t hard, like to know how?

You pull the plug from your gadgets
You leave you calendar unset

Then you put on your anti-noise headset
The rest is assisted by the upcoming sunset

If the music ain't up to your taste then pause it
If that didn’t quite work then just toss it!

I haven’t yet figured out the rest
But, I’ll try to do my best :-)

The Daylily Lullaby (firstcomet):

Sitting in the North-oval, facing towards the Boyd
The bells are ringing, and the sun is drifting away.
I wish everyday was a sunny day,
Every tree was a fruit tree,
Every seed an elixir; panacea of all ailments.

Then I wish I was a Daylily born in a sunny day,
Woken up by the gentle hands of the sun,
Boozed by the most limpid dews before the sun was up!
My day, my only day, is the pollination day;
Dispersing love freely, unknowingly, unceasingly!

But then the bells start to ring again:
Not just once, but twice, thrice, many times
And the nightingales begin to sing their favorite song:
The Daylily Lullaby!

OU--

5/17/2007

A vanished friend ...

Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end,

Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone.

And I never see my old friends face,
For life is a swift and terrible race,

He knows I like him just as well,
As in the days when I rang his bell.

And he rang mine but we were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men.

Tired of playing a foolish game,
Tired of trying to make a name.

"Tomorrow" I say! "I will call on Jim
Just to show that I'm thinking of him."

But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
And distance between us grows and grows.

Around the corner, yet miles away,
"Here's a telegram sir," "Jim died today."

And that's what we get and deserve in the end.
Around the corner, a vanished friend.

-anonymous

Social Clock!

Give me four-five more years and I'll attend.... I think I told you once that I'm at odd with the social clock! You never asked me why ... because …. The way I look at it life is too long and too short. Now, it really becomes matter of attitude; in general, when it is longer it is also slower and when it is shorter it is much faster. Fast is one thing and fast as "it was so fast I did not realize it passed me by" is something else. But, these are all beside the point. Why the social clock anyways? Expectations and so forth … which take us back to our original discussion.
By the way, I realized capitalism can not allow unbounded individualism. It can only tolerate it at small scales. That’s the state of affairs in America.

In progress...

What am I to make of myself? The vicious cycle of me, my thoughs, no thoughts, my life, mylife, Mylife .... Nevertheless, still in progress ...!

The Girl From Ipanema: Antonio Carlos Jobim

Also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKfl15c-Kh0

Moon River

Moon River, wider than a mile,

I'm crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
Wherever you're going I'm going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world;
There's such a lot of world to see.
We're after the same rainbow's end,
Waiting 'round the bend,
My huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

Tired of OCPMS?

Leaders are readers!

It seems like I'm always on page 2 out of 6 of some paper. HEEEEEEELP!

Update: I'm currently on page 43 out of 168 of a dissertation. No help is needed. sknahT!

Belief in reincarnation tied to memory errors - LiveScience - MSNBC.com

Belief in reincarnation tied to memory errors - LiveScience - MSNBC.com

I always found this fascinating that certain individuals have a strong tendency to form false memories of past events. It's easy to label them as liars but over time you come to realize that it is not voluntary!

"I am offering you an RA position in my group at MIT for the Fall and Spring of the coming academic year .... Welcome to Cambridge, MIT and my research group!" --J. W.

> And so continues this less travelled journey of mine!
> In progress ...

... and the inevitability of delays in airports and the inevitability of death on earth are coupled in a single concept called life! And how fragile is Now and how fatigued is Me ...

Great expectations!

When expectations are not met within an anticipated time frame, worries pour in to occupy the vacuum. For most part, anticipations have Poisson distributions which are tilted in the direction of increased worry! Empirically, modes of such anticipatory curves reside increasingly towards the tail of these distributions. This is partially due to our natural predisposition to overestimate the expected timing (mean of Poisson-like anticipatory probability distributions) of occurrence of events that are of grave importance to us.
Engaging in alternative activities while anticipating future events can effectively provide the necessary adjustment to mean. One of such activities is writing!

A random juxtapose (firstcomet) ...

The parking garage where he parked his car
The hallways where he walked and talked
The water fountains where he quenched his thirst
The back roads where he durst and traversed
The food courts where he bought his lunch
And the bars where he got her a punch

And the sweet fragrant of that rose,
that multiplied in beauty under her nose!
That gorgeous babe with a sexy pose,
in that bathing suit that made her overexposed!
That sunset that he watched from within her toes,
And that smile that was so genuine; he supposed!

And the evening small-talks in a Cambridge park,
And the near sundown chase of hawks and larks,
And the quiet nights interrupted by occasional barks,
And the usual insomnia assisted by random thoughts,
And the endless doses of soporifics that worthed naught!
And the every day dreams that he pursued in doubt
And the usual snarls that he so laboriously puzzled out!


.
.
.

Made up the contingencies of his life
A random juxtapose of lust and trifling strives!

To be continued …

Big Gamble in Rwanda - The New York Review of Books

Big Gamble in Rwanda - The New York Review of Books

Thought provoking! As usual the French with their "silence accomplice" attitude!

Steven Pinker on the Decline of Violence

Devil's Advocate

"A woman's shoulders are the front lines of her mystique, and her neck, if she's alive, has all the mystery of a border town. A no-man's land in that battle between the mind and the body. "

"Vanity, is definitley my favorite sin. Self love, it's so basic."

Me

Me do not care about certain things that Me is not certain about. Since, there are those interesting things that Me finds interesting. Like, Me sees this beautiful thing and thinks it's beautiful. Me is all subjective, me is all biased! I am all curious about Me and Me is with me till I figure Me out.

I am sitting in a corner and reading a book in Probability, Random Variables and Stochastic Processes. I'm coming across the phrase ''… the evolutionary behavior of these Markov processes.'' There is a new surge of blood and nutrients into my frontal cortex (you may want to call it a mini-orgasm). I'm wondering what just happened! After a little bit of pondering and reflection, I remember the role that this Markovian processes play in very fundamental natural processes, such as, gene regulatory networks, reinforcement learning, and general evolution of populations. Now I know! It is the very promise of deciphering the mystery behind intricate processes that define our lives that resulted in that rapturous moment. But, why am I so troubled and baffled by these simple facts of life (one may put it that way). I believe some people are more sensitive when it comes to the cruelty of life and sufferings of those gentle souls who matter. I believe that our ignorance of nature is at the very root of many evils: "uncultivated minds- what a great haven for random acts of evil." So, here go my days of life!

Sail away!

I will build a boat
I will launch my boat into the river
And will sail away from this strange land
In which, there is nobody to awaken the hero in man

Why do people think to present themselves in complete compliance with some moral code will benefit them more, while risking hypocrisy which is the easiest way to destroy ones image in the eye of the masses? How do people come to be masters of �doublethink�? Not only they say they are what they are not, but also they believe they are what they are not! I seem to me that human mind must find contradictory thoughts uncomfortable. But, there are those who are born being naturally disposed to deception. Maybe life events shakes the foundation of their psyches; a sort of defense mechanism to guard them against some unbearable truth.
Uncultivated minds, what a great haven for random acts of evil!
 

I finally finished George Orwell's 1984. It has induced a sense of strong hatred in me that I have scarcely experienced as an adult. It reminded me of my own childhood memories as a member of a minority group in Iran during 1980s; the resemblance to the methods used by the dominant party (still in place) is astonishing. The conclusion of the book is grim.
''Whoever holds the past holds the future. Whoever holds the present holds the past.''
The only way to reality is through the mind of man. One who controls the mind of man controls his reality. Can that be true?
It seems to me that certain modes of thinking- due to their natural affinity to the true reality of man and their descriptive power as of his relationship to the physical world- are bound to dominate. Thus, in the presence of sufficient thought dynamics the truth will prevail or the untruth will be defeated �. Alas, Generations are to be sacrificed!