title, what title?

The companies and the public bodies spend a lot of effort allocating electromagnetic spectrum (frequency) to new wireless technologies. For those that don't know what electromagnetic spectrum is, the easiest way to understand would be the radio station frequencies. All know that two radio stations cannot transmit or be received at the same frequency. What about the audio spectrum? Sound waves, just like electro-magnetic waves have a frequency. The beautiful process of evolution has provided the millions of species that are competing for audio frequencies like radio stations an almost perfect allocation of sound frequencies. As this great article in Wired Magazine explains, if you scan the audio frequencies in a forest, each species have their own. If not their mating calls would be lost, and they would not be able to produce. Pretty straight forward. Until the humans came up with their machines that produce sound in all the frequencies that you can think of. It looks like there ar...

I wanna fall asleep, wake up and be able to speak Japanese, just like in Bedazzled.

1981 was declared the Atatürk year by the UN and UNESCO. Here is the decleration: Convinced that personalities who worked for understanding and cooperation between nations and international peace will be examples for future generations, Recalling that the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic, will be celebrated in 1981, Knowing that he was an exceptional reformer in all fields relevant to the competence of UNESCO, Recognizing in particular that he was the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism, Recalling that he was the remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction of color, religion and race, It is decided that UNESCO should collaborate in 1981 with the Turkish Government on both intellectual and technical plans for...

Ahlak'in kaynagi din'ler degildir. Din'ler Insan Cins'ini basarili kilan -yasamda kalma acisindan basaridan bahsediyorum- ahlak diye butunledigimiz davranis kaliplarini ozetleyen dusuncelerdir. Bu davranis bicimleri evrimsel olarak aciklanabildigi gibi akilsal olarak da aciklanabilir, ve Tanri'ya inananlar Akil'i verenin Tanri olduguna inandiklari icin yine Ahlak'i Tanri'ya baglayabilirler. Eger Ahlak'in temelinin din -ozelinde Kitap'lar ve hadisler/azizler/hikayeler- olduguna inanirsak, bunun sonucu diger dinlerden, hatta ayni dinin baska yorumlarindan olan insanlari ahlaksiz olduguna da inanmaktir. Ki bu da ahlakli olmanin en buyuk itici gucu -incentive- olan diger insanlar ile guven baglari kurabilme sansini yokedecegi icin aslinda Ahlak'i baltaliyici bir yaklasimdir. Bu konuyu yazili medya'ya tasiyan Ismet Berkan'in yazisini okumanizi oneririm. Su anki laiklik tartismalarinin merkezinde de aslinda dunya tarihinde ilk defa Isla...

There is a common saying among the guys. When you want to underline the unattractiveness of a female, you say "I wouldn't be with her, even if she payed." Microsoft will be paying -in terms of rebates- users if they use Microsoft Live Search. This should be a sign how bad it is. I've never used it, but this news will keep me away from it for sure.

The greatest football player of all time Maradona was honored by the Serbian director Emir Kusturica's Cannes 2008 movie. The news conference after the movie showed once more why Diego is still not only the greatest player of all time, but also the coolest player of all time in football. Here is a summary of what he said: About Julia Roberts: "Julia Roberts. I would do anything to see her come along the Croisette. I would cut off my hand for that – even the hand with which I scored against England." About Pele: "I promised my daughters that I wouldn't talk about Pele, but well, I can't prevent myself — I regret it for him," Maradona said. "If I hadn't done all the bad things that I've done in my life, Pele would never have been able to come along as No. 2 behind me, because he used to go to bed at 10 o'clock at night, whereas I was still out on the tiles until 5 o'clock in the morning. That's the big difference between us."...

So apparently David Bowie and Moby are neighbors. Here is a video of Moby calling Bowie during a concert to request my favorite Vorglühen song these days, Sound and Vision: and here is the lovely song:

It is the second Battlestar Galactica season which I am watching real-time. I watched the first two from DVD's, which I did in the matter of two or three days. From the first 7 episodes so far, and the eagerness with which I wait the next episode, I can say season 4 has been much better than season 3, and keeping in mind how much I liked season 3, I am very excited about the next 3 episodes before the series goes on its mid-season break. In my previous posts about the show, I attributed the quality of the show mainly to its content -the issues that they deal in the freedom of a sci-fi setting, which belong to the very human experience such as faith, trust, torture, law, reconciliation, mistakes, morals, lies, beliefs, disappointments, xenophobia, patriotism, workers rights, democracy, tyrants, press freedom, policing, crime. The seventh episode of the 4th season reminded me how good most of the episodes are, from a film making and drama perspective also. Named after a 60s movie de...

have something in common. Daydreaming from Blue Lines (1990), the debut Massive Attack album: "Up against the wall, behaving like de Niro" And here is de Niro up against the mirror in Taxi Driver (1976), my favorite movie, from one of its most famous scene:

David Bowie's It's No Game Part 1 from his 1980 album, Scary Monsters (Super Freaks): Shirueto ya kage ga kakumei o miteiru Mo tengoku no giu no kaidan wa nai Ore genjitsu kara shime dasare Nani ga okkote iru ka wakara nai Doko ni kyokun wa aruka Hitobito wa yabi oorareteiru Konna dokusaishani igashima rareru nowa kanashi Nammino kiroku eiga Hioteki o se ni shita koibi to tach Michi ni ishi o nage reba Konago na mi kudake Kino ni hutao sureba Kyohu wa masu Ore no atama ni tama o buchi kome ba Shinbun wa kaki tateru

After a long, somehow slow, but tasteful period of reading I've just finished Kafka's The Castle . I read it in German, which is something I recommend to those who can, as the English translation of this never completed work is a Kafkaesque tale itself. The German is so free flowing, and free of cold long sentences, that even reading out loud and listening to flow of the words is a pleasure itself. The tale of a land-surveyor who is not a land-surveyor who is lost in the Maelstrom of his choices amidst the calm and dark waters of a perfect Bureaucracy which is not perfect definitely took the place of 100 Years of Solitude as the best book I've read. On the "screenplay" side -where the screen is inside my mind- the tragicomic scenes exceed the Marquez works, to the point where I laughed to the absurdity. However the surreality in the Castle is not magical like in Marquez works. They are so real that you feel you should simply -or maybe forcefully- accept them. W...

I turned 26 the other day, and as with every birthday had some time to reflect on life. I normally don't like birthdays, but this time it was a very nice one. I have come to realize that the concept of "home" -finding it, building it, destroying it, rebuilding it, losing it, re-finding it, I am not sure- has become the defining struggle/yearning/searching of my life currently. It makes me hopeful and pessimistic at the same time, that two of my favorite singer/song writers have written about "home" the same age as I am. Scorsese's recollection of Dylan's wild beginnings is named "No Direction Home" for a reason. It's a reference to one of his signature recordings from that era, Like a Rolling Stone. The song is sung to a woman, who used to "let other people get her kicks for her," who "used to ride on the chrome horse with her diplomat, who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat" and after all this glory has to "g...