title, what title?

"Far away, far away, Are not all lovely things far away? As far at least lies that valley, as the bedridden sun in the luminous east, The paralyzed mountains, the sickly river... Are not all things lovely far away, Are not all things lovely far away? Edgar Allen Poe - Valley of Unrest" Fall wakens the secret explorer in me. I have this urge to go to some beautiful place far away. This picture of Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and the Edgar Allan Poe Poem, which Lou Reed covered in his Raven Album describe my feelings these days perfectly.

... so that I could read them again and again and again. There are three such books, which I artificially prolonged my reading to enjoy them. I will share them one by one as time permits. The Island of the Day Before This is one of the not so well known works of Umberto Eco. On the outside the book is on the quest to find an efficient method to measure the longitude in the middle ages. Unlike latitude, which could easily be measured by the angle of the north star, the longitude requires a working time reference. If I have a clock on London time, and observe that there is a 4 hour difference between midday times, you can deduce you have a 4/24 or 60/360 degrees difference. But a reliable clock that would withstand the high seas was hard to get those days. The main character is intertwined in a conspiracy that involves the de facto ruler of France - Cardinal Richeleu - and ends up as the only survivor of a ship sent out to search the international day line. As he tries to recover what h...

I am not a vegetable fan. As a matter of fact the number of vegetables I eat is shorter then 10 items. They are either too soft, or too thick, or too tasteless or too grassy. Artichoke however stands out in my mind as one of the most elegant and delicious things that mother earth has given the mankind. Its as if it's firmness, consistency, juiciness, flavor and texture has been optimized both independently and jointly. My favorite way of eating it is the Turkish "Zeytinyagli Enginar" which can be translated dully as "Artichoke with Olive Oil": The quality and the taste of olive oil is a very important factor. So for an artichoke lover cooking it with another type of oil would be a serious insult. And some artichoke lovers can take it to extreme ends. Caravaggio, or Michalengelo Merissi da Carravagio, who is considered to be by some the father of modern painting, -and also my favorite painter, for rescuing the world of painting from the disturbing and artificia...

In my previous post I jokingly asked if Dylan was a Cylon, after his song All Along The Watchtower was used as the wake-up call for the 4 of the remaining 5 Cylons in the fleet. After thinking about it, I realized that Dylan can really be a Cylon... In Battlestar Galactica, the Cylon warships, named the Basestars , are just like other Cylons half machine half human. Each base star is for the sake of control and identity is a hybrid : Hybrids control the whole ship with their subconscious mind. Their consciousness, stuck between life and death utter incoherent sentences, which a certain group of Cylons interpret as words of god. Here is an example of their utterances: "Two protons expelled at each coupling site creates the mode of force the embryo becomes a fish that we don't enter until a plate we're here to experience evolve the little toe atrophy don't ask me how I'll be dead in a thousand light years thank you thank you Genesis turns to it's source reductio...

I watched the 3. season finale of Battlestar Galactica. I am not into series so I cannot compare it to other season finales, but as an episode from a science fiction series shown on free tv, I have to say it was a masterpiece, both in terms of the dialogues, the story, the editing, the music... Lee Adama gave a speech on the trial of Dr. Gaius Balatar, a populist scientist turned politician who lead the fleet to settle down on New Caprica, only to be occupied by the Cylons, and was the head of the puppet government on New Caprica, about innocence, guilt, and clemency and justice which would not be off the story on great trial movies such as Nurnberg Trials or A Few Good Man. Bear Mc Creary, the composer behind the great music in Battlestar, arranged Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" in a very eerie way, which was heard only by the remaining 4 Cylons in the fleet. Before discovering their true identities the Cylons used lyrics from this great song: There must be some wa...