title, what title?

I've been fascinated by the Zen belief that most important decisions are to be made within 7 breaths. Of course this rich historical Philosophy is not urging us to rush our decisions. Rather, what it contends is that our first reaction to important decisions, which happen in 7 breaths, are usually the ones that we make and spend the rest of our long decision process for convincing ourselves of. This is not some magic happening in our brains, or attributing some metaphysical importance to our instincts. The decision that we make in the first seven breaths are actually the manifestation of our long time thoughts that have been "boiling" for a long time.  What I have experienced in the last few years is that songs or everything related to songs are excellent facilitators of becoming aware of such decisions that we have made but not were aware of. When I think of few important decisions I've taken in the last few years are all associated with a song that made everything...

I am aware of the danger, that my blog will look like a Dylan fundamentalist website, to someone who's only read the last 2 months posts. Maybe I am a Dylan fundamentalist, but as anyone who's listened to Dylan, or read good poetry, his songs act more as a medium in which one can find not the answers, but other questions that put the original question in a broader perspective. I had written about a peculiar Dylan song, which did not make it to any "studio" albums, called "The Series of Dreams" earlier [ link to the earlier post ]. To this day I am not sure, what kind of dreams Dylan is referring to. The key question is, how does one know that one is not dreaming? I am not trying to go down the Matrix path. How do we know that our perception is different when we are dreaming? Maybe, a series of dreams are not just series of dreams, but a metaphor for life itself? Or even one step further, life IS a series of dreams? Or what do our dreams say of our experi...

There are some languages in which green and blue are considered the shades of the same color. There are some cultures who don't know of egocentric directions such as behind front or left or right. There are cultures where epistemology is a constant struggle of life. These are few of the really interesting facts that I can remember from the article " Does Your Language Shape How You Think?" by Guy Deutscher. I think it is worth reading this article, which I hope will lead to criticizing the notions about human existence that one holds natural. Links for this post: Guy Deutscher's Article

Caravaggio is my favorite painter. Painting in the beginning of the era known as "Counter-reformation," Caravaggio is known for his realism, his use of light and shadow and the dynamic scenes he depicts in his pictures. He was definitely a contemporary artist, in the current sense of the word. Whereas his contemporaries were still painting angels and prophets in heaven in the Renaissance style, Caravaggio chose his models from the slums of Rome, and painted Biblical scenes in contemporary Rome. This struck a chord in the illiterate masses, whom the Catholic church were trying to "protect" from the influence of the Reformation coming from the Teutonic world. Not similar to contemporary artists of today, he was very popular among the masses. There was something very "modern" in Caravaggio's attitude and style, that I could feel and see in his paintings, and was not able to name. Yesterday, I started reading Michael Focault's review of Kant's sho...

I seriously think humanities delusion of self-importance and arrogance will be its end. These two fantastic videos allow me to demonstrate my point. This video demonstrates the proportions of the Earth, the Sun, the Solar System, Milky Way, other galaxies, and the known Universe. I don't think any human language has a word capable describing how small our planet earth is (*). Seen from a cosmic scale, our little blue world is vanishingly insignificant. This is the first part of mans misplaced notion of self-importance. If our world were the only significant object in the Universe, humanity might have been justified in feeling important. After all, we would be the "owners" of the universe. But this is not the case, we are the inhabitants of an insignificant rock formation in the universe, which is unspeakably bigger in scale. However, it is precisely this spatial insignificance that makes this rock formation revolving around the sun so important. As far as we know, we are ...

In Western Cultures future is associated with the forward direction. Past is associated with bacward direction. We leave the past "behind" and look "forward" for a better future. In some Andean cultures this is reversed. Future is unclear, we don't know it, we cannot see it. Just like our backs. Past on the other hand, is all known to us, we can analyze it, look it at every direction. Just like the wide view in front of us. A certain tribe in the Ocenia lives in a perpetual Wednesday. Their week is composed of today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after the day after tomorrow, yesterday, the day before yesterday, the day before the day before yesterday. In other words, they are really living the moment, just like some "self help" gurus say. I ain't convinced, that I wanna live the moment... Finally, there are no curtains in Japan. The influential Japanese classical music composer Tōru Takemitsu was touched so much by the flickering of cu...

2 times 2 is four. Or isn't it? The nature of truth has eluded humanity for thousands of years. Before any set of thoughts can be considered as philosophy, it has to clearly define its epistemology - its version of the knowledge science. From different approaches to epistemology, mathematical ones have stood out as the ones that are most close to an ultimate epistemology. Yet in science and philosophy, even the most trivial facts has to be rigorously proven. And using mathematics as the ultimate epistemology has proved to be one of the most challenging undertakings in the intellectual history of humanity, which lead to many bright minds to go insane. Logiocomix , hailing from the birth place of Philosophy, is a very interesting comic book that chronicles this intellectual journey with the main protagonist being Bertrand Russell, and characters such as Wittgenstein -portrayed above during an attack of existentialist rage- Gödel, Carnot, Poincare and Von Neumann. I've ordered the...

Nobel Laurete Economist Paul Krugman published a great article in New York Times magazine titled " How did economists get it so wrong? ", which is in essence "the brief history of American Economics." In the wake of the financial crisis, economics profession will definitely do some soul searching, and this article explains which souls are to be found in the near time future. Those intrigued by this article should definetely have a look at this somewhat long, but very exciting New Yorker article on the same issue. It draws parallels between postmodernism in human sciences and the current crisis. Finally, for those of a somewhat more geekish taste, this Scientific American article is also great. It describes the mathematical models that gave the buyers and issuers of the toxic derivatives a false sense of being in control. In the end, I believe what we should take out of this mess is, that we need a healthy dose of skepticism in every aspect of our lives. Finally, f...

It a common argument I hear in epistemological discussion I have from time to time: We cannot hear or touch or see electromagnetic waves, but we know they exist. Apart from the fallacy that seeing is feeling the electromagnetic waves we know as light, this is a great example of how we come to knowledge through science. Hans Christian Ørsted noticed that electric current produced magnetic forces. Faraday took this observation further, and through his experiments showed changing magnetic forces create electric current. Both of these were descriptive laws, however no mathematical derivation from first principles were provided. It was Maxwell who combined these laws in his equations, which made testable predictions such as the existence of radio waves which were capable of action at distance. Hertz demonstrated that this is the case, and it is thanks to these people you are able to read this post. Long story summarized, scientific method works! This wonderful picture is another beautiful ...

... be good without God. Yet another atheist bus campaign. This time from Obama's home state. I think this is better than their original plan "In the beginning, man created God"

18 days and there is no end in sight for the situation in Gazza. I have written about my disgust at the unbelievable disrespect to human dignity and human life from both sides, and my disillusionment with political progress earlier . With no changes in sight to the cruelties, and stupidities on the politics side of things I want to write about something else, which caught my attention. We use the word "inhumane" when we are describing Israel bombing a school, or Hamas blowing up a bus in Israel and killing innocent people -who is an innocent person by the way?-. This is nothing but a misnomer to say the least. Humans are the only species on this earth who use their intelligence to lock their siblings underground for years, and rape them, who built factories of death to kill other humans, build atom bombs to kill hundreds of thousands in a slip second, and come up with ideologies which praise killing yourself and others as a backstage pass to some imaginary place. So these ...

The people of the cradle of democracy are giving another great example of courage and humanity, by standing against the tyranny of the coercive force monopoly in modern society, which we call the "Police." No sir, you cannot get away with killing a young boy at will... When they kick out your front door How you gonna come? With your hands on your head Or on the trigger of your gun When the law break in How you gonna go? Shot down on the pavement Or waiting in death row You can crush us You can bruise us But you'll have to answer to Oh, Guns of Brixton (*) Athens district around the Politechnical University where the protests got started

“The common good” (or “the public interest”) is an undefined and undefinable concept: there is no such entity as “the tribe” or “the public”; the tribe (or the public or society) is only a number of individual men. Nothing can be good for the tribe as such; “good” and “value” pertain only to a living organism—to an individual living organism—not to a disembodied aggregate of relationships. When “the common good” of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals. What makes the victims accept it, and permit a society to perpetrate a moral atrocity of that kind? The answer lies in philosophy. In philosophical theories on the nature of moral values. Ayn Rand

Being a materialist (as opposed to a dualist, not in the bling-bling sense of the word) one of the topics that come out often in discussions with dualist or dualist-leaning friends is the limits of observation. The argument goes, what if there is some form of matter that you cannot observe? Well the answer is, there is such matter, which does not interact with the electromagnetic radiation, and thought to be made out of particles that are not included in the current standard model of particle physics. But their mere existence should be detectable by some means. This means is the gravity that they cause. As a matter of fact their existence were first postulated by observations of the rotational speeds of the galaxies and their distribution in the cosmos, which required more matter than the observed matter within the galaxies. A new study of the collision of galaxy clusters -nor galaxies but their clusters- provided more evidence on the properties and the existence of dark matter. When ...

I am reading this very interesting book called Breaking the Spell by the American philosopher Dan Dennet . The book is an attempt to summarize the previous scientific work that try to explain all forms of religion as a natural phenomenon, based on our genetic and cultural evolution, and make further very intriguing philosophical and scientific speculations. Along the evolution of religion, the concept of divination plays an important role. Divination is any form of delegating important decisions in human life to the God, Gods, or Ancestors. Divination takes very different forms, from looking at the broken stern bones of a human sacrifice, to looking at feces' of animals or the kings to see the future, or help us taking important decisions! As a matter of fact all forms of astrology and fortune telling are nothing but cultural traditions that exploit the basic human trait of looking for an intelligent agent behind everything in the world, and the human insecurities when it comes ...

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...

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 listened to this nice story in Death in June/Boyd Rice collobaration "Alarm Agents". Even if Rice is a psycho whose ideas make me wanna throw up most of the times, he has a point in this story: "An ancient tale is told of how the gods, having stolen from Man his divinity met in council to discuss where they should hide it. One suggested that it be carried to the other side of the Earth and buried. But it was pointed out that some Men are great wanderers and that they might find the lost treasure on the other side of the Earth. Another proposed that it be dropped into the depth of the sea. But the same fear was expressed; that Man in his insatiable curiosity might dive deep enough to find it even there. Finally, after a space of silence, the oldest and wisest of the gods said, "Hide it in Man himself, 'cause that is the last place he will ever think to look for it." I sent my soul to the Invisible, the afterlife to foretell. And returning it sai...

After 6 days of skiing (9:30 -17:30), sleeping (18:00-20:00), eating tremendous food (20:00-22:00) and sleeping again (22:00-09:30) on the Three Valleys, visiting Lyon and meeting my old friend Saba (a.k.a Sabo, Sabatini Jabar, Sabahattin Dizdar) and watching the Galatasaray derby and celebrating I came back home to Berlin yesterday night. Overall, I can say it was the best skiing vacation I've ever been to. The snow was excellent, the slopes were challenging, my skis were in great shape, the Savoyarde food (the food from Savoy Region, where the Three Valleys is located) was simply masterpiece-grade, Besiktas won, Lyon was beautiful under the early spring weather, and for those worried friends like Umut (a.ka. Imit) I was not injured... Apart from the unpleasant experience of smelling the foul odor coming from my fridge which I forgot to empty out before leaving, everything has been great. I will post a day-by-day summary of my vacation in the coming days. Until then, I uploaded fe...