n and 1

A question from Tom: How much n people can be smarter than 1 person?

10,000 Hz Legend

The first time I listened to “10,000 Hz Legend” I didn’t appreciate the witty and misty turns of the band Air. I guess it was the third time when it captured me. Playful tracks like “How Does It Make You Feel” and the hilarious end of “Radio #1” made me laugh. Album dissolves at the end in waves swaying from right speaker to the left.

I ran

Well, there has been seconds I felt really goofy about “nationality”. I remember a deserted club in San Francisco in a Saturday night, where I was introduced to a friend of one of my friends. He was Joe, Pretty much drunk and high and was moving himself in accordance to the bumpy 80’s music playing in a really deafening manner. He was curious to know where the hell from this world I have come from, after knowing what he wanted to know, he disappeared for a while and then came back to me saying: What a coincidence, listen to the music, it says: “Once I ran to you”..

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Following deadlines straight ahead one by one, playing in between; Routine in Grad life. Some people extend it to whole life. They are Prof.s in EE Dept. s.

Bitterly Flattered

Academic Hierarchy of admiration and loath going on between students and their teachers, hides a somehow melancholic fact: For any scholar apart from the flattering gift of admiration, there is a bitter self consciousness of how much will be left untouched, how much will be unknown and how far one’s ambition can go and wouldn’t go.

Mr. Presidenté

Probably George Bush, spends his leisure time teaching his twin daughters evangelistic values for which thousands of people have been killed till now. He might be planning to add another amendment banning sex before marriage after adding the one banning same sex marriage. As expected he is not a good teacher though, look at the results

Medieval ages and the clock

Tom is spending “smoking break” out happily walking around the round stone clock in front of Packard which is revolving slowly in several rounds, several circles..
He asks: ” Have you thought of the halt in sciences in medieval ages? How it would happen to human being to start over so late? Why all those splendid activities by Greeks didn’t continue? That’s strange.” He is waiting for response.
I would think of an excuse like this: Romans were overthrown by Hones and invading tribes form east, the Roman empire that had begun to flow to west; to completely primitive European inhabitants, didn’t get time to see the Greek and Roman style settled in the west. They were destroyed by the ones like Attila. Later when Mongols came to Islamic world they destroyed what was left from Greeks among Muslims. Europe needed centuries to become inhabited and civilized, giving birth to something like a matured culture. It took around eight hundred years for Europeans to start to read the Greek literature again which gave birth to classism and Renaissance era. Greeks themselves, had plenty of time absorbing and assimilating the results from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia region, may be thousands years.
He puts out the cigarette and says: ” Even with this explanation, which must be essentially right, it’s still amazing that knowledge development can stop for so long. It supports the argument that art and science are collective endeavors.
Do you think you can jump over our giant clock and pass over it?” He sees me jump starting , ” no no, stop, leave it alone , I was just kidding” and goes back to the office.

Peace and Religion

Today Shirin Ebadi, Nobel peace prize winner was talking at Stanford. Amazingly in almost every speech I have read or heard from her she is insisting on her being muslim, the fact that Islam is a really merciful religion and how Islam can be adapted to govern a country or a nation. Even disregarding the fact that she overlooks the west’s experience and history of religion and estate conflict in Christian countries, it is interesting how she has assured herself that she had been awarded this prize for her religion not being a peace activist.

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Past is filtered toward us through time, it might be sth more realistic than old shabby people’s sayings about “good old days”. A selective filter named time which chooses the most ‘in line’ and ‘attached’ to the present.

Difficulty

Tom says: “Being bookish, boring and pedantic? not so difficult to master”.