A discrete life! (by firstcomet)

That fragile muted mass
Dragged out of slumber
Lumbered to the point of exit
His reward: so fresh a breeze!
The long alley of Sunny Diners
His prize: scrambled eggs and cheese!
Flower trees in a perpetual dance,
Dandelions set free by a sudden sneeze!
In this minutely discretized interval
Abound were the rewards and
Numerous were the tease!

...

Sharing (by firstcomet)

What does it mean to be finite?
To live in a pond, and hide
From waves, sharks, ocean’s wide
To travel down the same creeks,
To abide by the same rocks …

The cold long winter left me weary
The alpha men’s ideals has made me leery
I want to hatch this shell and be exposed
To break the sphere I’ve been enclosed

To experience the old familiar afresh
To redefine my coordinates on this mesh
To travel down many creeks like a fish
Or like a flying kite that makes a swish

To take a leap beyond the rim
In the ocean I shall swim
Going beyond the everyday whim
Just to find myself scream
Rejoicing an infinite dream!

With you I want to share a tear my dear
I want this life o’vanity to disappear
I want to have this foggy head all clear
I can no longer run this show on fear …

Gryzb and Chandler's 10-step guide to getting tough

1. Don't smile
Smiling gives someone permission to think you don't really mean what you say as you have this big grin on your face
2. Stand your ground
Backing off is wishy-washy. Standing your ground gives weight to your intention. This means both physically and verbally
3. Tell the truth
Let the other person know what you are feeling. Let them know you aren't comfortable with what they are doing
4. Agree when it's unexpected
If someone tells you you're being silly, agree. They have no place to go after that. "You're a bit touchy." "You're right, I am." It takes the wind out of their sails
5. Don't point fingers
If you intend to tell someone you don't like their behaviour, start sentences with how you feel, not what's wrong with them. Pointing an accusatory finger will only make them more defensive
6. Make up a list of handy excuses
This will get you out of situations long enough to see clearly what's going on before you put yourself back in the fray
7. Change your mind whenever you want to
You have the right to change your mind, whether it's two minutes, two hours or two months after the fact. There will be times when you don't want to honour your commitments
8. Keep things short and sweet
Gabbling won't help, it just gives the other person rope to hang you with
9. Don't engage
Never apologise or explain. Don't supply fuel for someone to use against you
10. Get your 'no' in quickly
Set your marker right at the beginning of the discussion. You can always change your mind later, but if you say it fast, it's out on the table and can't be ignored

Oh Boston!

Seeing you in your new dress,
Is taking away my breath!

Your amber adorned blue hat,
Beckons the end of old season's chat!

What is love?

Love is when the boy plays his flute after she departs
The essence of love is its self-sufficiency, being
Elementary and fundamental, where reason
Need not rule, where overwhelm are the senses!
In friendship we seek utility, in love we desire union
So is love so useless, so meaningless, and so pure.

Missing out ...

I noticed I react to multiplicity and complexity of a situation by simplifying it, by the mean of cutting down on the number of involving characters or processes.

Such an attitude, while simplifying the situation, drains the set of possible outcomes from its richness.

Thus we see the trade-off between simplicity and richness.

Elsepath (A poem by firstcomet)

She was trapped in a dilemma;
life, so called, her share of the eerie
the repetition of a self, weary!

The moment her back pain was back
the shared hurt of living, intact
the truth was what she lacked

In retrospect, these were the facts:
The back pain was to evade,
the rest was attention overpaid!

The boisterous everyday parade
to sense the real with reason
was to construct a new prison!

Or the search for the prose that rhymed
was nothing more than a waste of time;
a mortal's search for the sublime!

My grandfather's voice

"Searching for my grandfather's voice" is a book describing the journey of an Iranian expatriate to his birth-land after 25 years in search for a tape containing his grandfather's voice. The tape was seized from his family's private collection during a raid by the revolutionary guards years earlier. The book touches a variety of topics including the nature of truth, identity, sacrifice, simplicity, and happiness.

The Argentine Tango!

Few are the willing and fewer the champions.

http://home.att.net/~larrydla/basics_1.html

How to Steam Vegetables

http://www.ehow.com/how_13886_steam-vegetables.html

The National Association of Graduate-Professional Students

The Cognitive Movement

The Cognitive Movement

Acceptance Speech for Honorary Doctorate from Charles University

Acceptance Speech for Honorary Doctorate from Charles University, Frederick Jelinek

Life and Letters: My Father’s Suitcase: The New Yorker

Life and Letters: My Father’s Suitcase: The New Yorker

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