the man who ran a lot

When I was a little boy, two things were very common on Saturday nights. One, my parents, still quite young and too tired of staying in the whole week, wanted to go out. Two, the Greek TV, still in its innocent youth was overwhelmed with old Greek comedy films, most of them shot during the 50s and 60s. The two combined meant that I had to spent a great number of my childhood's Saturday evenings watching Greek comedies at my grandparents place in the -then- quiet and picturesque neighborhood of Gazi.

There was one more thing. Back then, I could not stand Greek films. Oddly enough for a child at my age (these evenings were more frequent at the age of 5 to 10), I had the greatest distaste for these naive -I then thought- productions that could simply not compare to the historical Hollywood feature films like "Spartacus" or "Lawrence of Arabia" that were my father's favourites. Even more strangely, I could not stand colour. I vividly remember having a strong preference for black and white films, which to my eyes appeared more original, as I found it hard to accept that technicolored, cinecitta-like, musical extravaganzas had anything to do with Greece in the 60s. To my childish eyes -and as it now seems to the eyes of most people-, Greece in the 50s and the 60s was a black and white place, poor but romantic, grey and nostalgic.

Among those black and white films, there was only one kind I really LIKED to watch (to the relief of my grandparents). Those starring Thanassis Veggos. Aka our "good man". Aka "the man who used to run a lot". Truly the most talented Greek comedian of all time, undoubtedly the most innovative, simply the most beloved actor in the (short and moderate) history of Greek cinema. There was that time, I still remember, when Veggos was on, that everything stopped. At the age of 7, I could not get all his lines and I was puzzled by some of his references to anti-military themes, but there was something in this man's voice, his constant running up and down, his overall struggling that to me was -subconsciously- identified with the Greek soul.

To my childish eyes, THAT was Greece in the 60s. A guy in black and white, always in a working-class neighborhood, obviously uneducated but curiously wise, working three or four jobs to get by. A guy who never gets rich, never gets the pretty girl, never gets to be famous. Yet a guy with a smile that cannot be beaten, a laugh that cannot be silenced, a face impossible to be forgotten.

The "man who ran a lot" reached the finish line last Tuesday. Given that our Greece today is starting to resemble that black and white country his films took place in, there is a growing demand that we live up to his effort.
After all, life is a relay race.

becoming Bin Ladin

Bin Ladin's henchmen and followers have repeatedly kidnapped, killed, decapitated westerners, often innocent reporters, whose bodies were never recovered. Through the eyes of fellow westerners, those have been considered, barbaric, intolerable acts of cruelty not abiding by the moral standards of our advanced societies.

After the killing of Usāmah bin Lādin, alongside three other men and a woman, the same westerners were pleased to announce that justice has been done. Unfortunately, this was justice the Bin Ladin-way. Breaking and entering, shooting indiscriminately -as none of the 25 extremely capable U.S. Navy Seals were harmed during the shooting-, kidnapping the body and bearing it in the sea as "finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult."

Now that ʾUsāmah bin Lādin "sleeps with the fishes", there is perhaps a timely question to answer. Is this the kind of example we "westerners" will pass on to "those rogue, backward muslims"? What has become of the western democracies in times when even a not-so-common terrorist suffers the exact same end would advocate for his victims? President Obama who thought that "yes we could", Frau Merkel who found Ladin being dead (correction: killed) to be good news and President Sarkozy who greated a preposterous act of violence as "a major event in the fight against terrorism", should think again.

Perhaps, they are becoming just like Bin Ladin

please do not like this post

When I started this blog I (must have) had a number of reasons. Nowadays, I can't quite recall any of them. Surely, if I try hard I may come up with a couple of new ones but something tells me it would be quite pointless. Over these last five years, there has been so much blogging, tweeting and status updating, that it would be hard for anyone not only to keep blogging but even to find valid reasons for doing so.

It has therefore become striking to realize that there are perhaps more bloggers and tweeterers out there than those who actually find the time -or simply bother- to read all the blog posts, interesting articles and "memes" circulating the "blogosphere". At least, I find it extremely difficult and have thus gradually shifted from being a blogger to panting out of breath to catch up with the bulk of interesting stuff piling up in my Google-Reader page. Not that I manage. Most of the times, I find myself utterly distracted, slightly dazed and disorientated in front of a dozen of open tabs, each pointing to a great album review, a nice piece published on TLS, an interesting scientific paper and a couple of reporting stories, all these in various languages (my moderate ability to read in 4 languages only worsens my distraction), none of which I manage to read in its entirety. What do I do then? I simply click on the "share" button of my browser and there it is. My somewhat interesting discovery is posted as a facebook update or a tweet, for other people to finish up what I couldn't. Read the damn thing!

It's not just me I assume. More and more we are turning into a universe of "sharers" of things that very rarely live up to their real meaning. There is simply so much of information out there that it is impossible for one to parse even the slightest portion of it. We end up reading abstracts in an abstract way, browsing through titles infested with "buzz-words", we share, we post, we forward, we like but very rarely read. Instead we create a universe of links, a web upon the web, where texts and hypertexts are connected like mass-less, volume-less dots without content.

And yes, all and all it's just another dot on the web. So please do not "like" this post!

demotivation

One can think of a number of reasons for not blogging for the last 2 or more months (is it that much already). Being busy is one, although in my case this is not it, despite the fact that over the last two months, I underwent marriage, mild surgery and yet another employment crisis.

Depression, boredom and a general feeling of "n' importe quoi" are probably more valid. In all, there is a significant lack of motivation in talking about something in here, when there is a lot to be done out there. There are issues at stake that demand something more than blogging, but as it turns out in these times of shock and awe one ends up in doing nothing, not even blogging.

I have no idea of what will happen in the next few weeks. In times when a dictator's downfall brings about an increase in oil prices instead of freedom and massive earthquakes fuel more discussions on the economy rather than on the victims, one has to admit that there is little margin for fight against the tsunami of stupidity that is threatening to drown us all.

Still, one has to find the motivation to do something about it. Until then he can at least blog about it.

Strike Three - (you 're out...)

This has been the third great general strike since last May. Back then, it all seemed dismal already. Today, a mere 7 months and two more strikes later it looks as if there is no going back.

The most recent (but not the last) of a series of austerity bills hit the ministry desks last night with one more deputy of the ruling "socialists" exlcuding himself from the vote. It was the least he could do not to go down in history as one of those who once gave in to the demands of a foreign, not elected authority that asks for the lowest average income in the EU to be cut down by 10% to 40% and in some cases 60%. Which roughly translates to 10%-40% less spending, 10%-40% less holiday, 10%-40% less education, 10%-40% less health. And 10%-40% more profit for those who used to pay those "surpluss" wages of 700 Euros, the bankers, the CEOs and the company owners who will pay ~15% less taxes this year as a reward for having put up with such overwhelming earnings on behalf of the "lazy" workers of this country.

These workers, will now have to pay the price for having lived on the benefit of "development" for so long. Only this "development" meant a shift of the balance to the bottom. After all this "development" and "expansion" one out of five Greeks lives at the edge of poverty. After all this "growth" you have half a million Greeks unable to visit a doctor. And you see people fighting on the streets for who gets to be the first to look for food in the trash can.

But it was growth for some all right. It was growth for the shareholders who saw their taxes being cut down from 40% to 22% on average over the course of the last 20 years. It was development for the banks who could privatize profits and nationalize debts. It was expansion for those who will now buy this country's forests, coal mines, buses and trains for scrap.
In Europe like in the US the model prevails over the facts. As long as there is "growth" and "development" it's business as usual for those who have their appointed prime ministers cutting the deals. The rest can enjoy poverty.

---

Update: All of the above, better said -in Greek- here

the last stand

Of late I have re-newed my devotion to Thanassis Papakonstantinoy mostly due to the interest epxressed by my good friend J. upon listening to a track of Thanassis, which I had casually posted on my facebook page. After giving J. a brief introduction and urging him to listen to "Vrahnos Profitis" (one of my most favourite Greek albums ever) I also found myself unconsciously pressing "repeat" over some of the tracks of the album.

This is how I got to remember "A. Manthos" (the album's fourth track and one with very particular lyrics) and how I came up with the story behind it. The song's lyrics have been adopted from a poem by Christos Bravos, referring to a real incident between Athanasios Manthos, a photographer of the town of Trikala and Thomas Gandaras, an infamous bandit of the region of Thessaly which took place in the 1920s. Gandaras had an extremely bad reputation among the great land-owners of the region for having an extensive record of kidnappings and killings, but as these were limited against the rich and the powerfull, the poor people were largely sympathizing with him. The legend had it that Gandaras became an outlaw in order to avenge the rape of his wife by a squire, thus he and his gang were more often thought of as "Robin-Hood"-like bandits instead of as fierce killers.

But authorities thought (as usually) otherwise and soon the head of Gandaras was put a price on. As the manhunt was closing down on him and his men, he realized that it was not meant for him to last long. Before his last stand, he wanted to strike a last pose. He decided to have his photo taken. One night, he
forgot all precautions and sneaked into the house of Manthos, by then a well-known photographer in the town of Trikala and the nearby villages. Manthos woke up in awe as the ruthless bandit stood before him but was relieved to find out that all the the outlaw wanted was his portraid done. Thus in the middle of the night, Manthos, who was used to photograph weddings and funerals, took a photo of the famous Thomas Gandaras in the living room of his house and in outmost secrecy. The story of this secret meeting is told in the aforementioned poem "A. Manthos" by Christos Bravos, has been made a song by Thanassis Papakonstantinoy and was recently the subject of a beautiful short film by Vassilis Kosmopoulos entitled "The Trikala photographer".

In the days that followed, Manthos met Gandaras in his secret hide-out where he took one more portrait of his (the one you may see here, taken from the blog of Konstantinos Davanelos) as well as a photo of the entire gang. Gandaras finally met his destiny as he was hunted down and killed by militia-men close to Deskati, Grevena on August 5th, 1923. He was decapitated and his head was exposed in the main square of Kalambaka the following day.

Wish you were here (E.T.)

That I am a devoted fan of Pink Floyd is no mystery to the readership of this blog (all three of you). I have repeatedly mentioned names and places related to the greatest band of them all in various past posts, including a (personal) obituary for the late Rick Wright. Having a particular strange tendency for both visual and audial connections it was then very easy for me to spot the missing link behind NASA's Astrobiology lab latest discovery.

According to this, the first living organism to be able to incorporate arsenic instead of phosphorus in its genetic material, was recently isolated in lake Mono in Southern California. The bacterion, whose name (GFAJ-1) comes as yet another proof that people in NASA may provide a whole new level to the definition of dullness, was the object of a greatly anticipated press conference which circulated media feeds and e-mail boxes all over the globe yesterday. People who were let down by the fact that the press release (initially making explicite mention to "the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life") turned out to be about an insignificant bug with an utterly boring name should think twice.

A long time before NASA turned to Lake Mono in desperate search for extra-terrestrial life, Pink Floyd had used its surroundings in a famous photo by Storm Thorgerson which appeared at the back cover of their "Wish you were here" album. This is the snapshot of a diver immersing in the alkaline, toxic but calm and ripless waters of Lake Mono. (And judging from the concentration of arsenic in these waters, I can only hope that the photo is the outcome of some artistic superposition of images.)

Whether the existence of extra terrestrial life was something that concerned Pink Floyd at the time, or whether it was the unwordly atmosphere of the environment that matched their nostalgic title of the album, I dare not speculate. However, the inconcistency with which the scientists announce a talk about alien life only to provide us with an example of what can only be terrestrial (even though underwater) can only make me think that in their quest for E.T, the guys in NASA maybe constantly thinking how they "wish he was here".

getting there (or quite)

Hard as I try to downgrade it trough scorn and ridicule, the truth is this: I like my job. For the simple reason that I am too lazy to be doing anything I would not really like. When I think about it, there are more than one reasons for liking what I do the most important of which being that it is the closest it gets to providing me with a sense of being inspired and productive.
Research is a sort of an art for the untalented. You are not really good in something, other than solving problems, yet you experience a certain feeling of fulfillment once you do solve them, no matter how trivial.

Fellow researchers (or for that matter, "researchers" like myself) may assure you that such a feeling arises far too seldom. Still the reward lies exactly on this rarity. In this way it better resembles an "epiphany" that makes it look like a true inspiration. The best part though is that it gives one the impression of having solved a difficult problem in the twinkling of an eye. Because apart from all sorts of metaphysical satisfaction, it provides you with the obvious advantage of having very little to do. Once you 've single-handedly solved the problem over lunchbreak, your work is done. You can spend the rest of your post-doc term in happy hours, holiday and general slacking-off, simply by attending the occasional conference.

But is it really like this? Until recently I thought (hoped?) it was. I still remember an early Saturday afternoon back in my old flat in Barcelona, sometime in April 2006. It now feels like a long time ago and it probably is. I haven't talked to my -at the time- flatmate Maria for over four months and that old flat is now being rented to tourists on a weekly basis. But it was on that distant afternoon, while Maria was testing her patience waiting for me to accompany her to the supermarket, that I had that idea, that brief glimpse through the peephole of truth (or at least something that seemed like it back then). It was that moment when, between getting my coat and checking my e-mails that I got a crystal-clear idea of how to solve the main problem of my qualified as "impossible" post-doc project. As I triumphantly switched off my laptop, I turned and gave Maria my "I 've done it again" smile. I walked out the door, certain that my job was almost done.

Well, it's been four and a half years since then and it looks like the job is still almost done. My initial brilliant idea had since developed into a computer program, whose performance had to be bench marked, compared with similar programs based on similarly brilliant ideas, its results had to undergo thorough experimental verification, the whole thing was put to paper sometime in the summer of 2007, reached the desk of my supervisor the next fall, had to wait there until spring 2008, undergo an unfathomable number of revisions, suffer the usual cycle of submission-revision-rejection-resubmission only to be published in its final form last Tuesday. In all, it looks like it took a bit more than the twinkling of an eye.

In the meantime, I have come, seen, not conquered and left Barcelona, having realized that it takes much, much more than a brilliant idea (let alone one that proves to be not so brilliant after all) to get the job done. In this sense research, profession-wise, becomes much more like any other job. Tedious, time-consuming, a stressful endeavour during which the truly inspiring, productive part is consumed within a moment only to leave the rest of the time to be filled by the boring, the tiring and the "what-the-hell"s. "Getting there" is not as easy as just having a great idea. The road is long and winding just like in any other thing that is worth trying.

In the end, no, I am not going to say that "it's the journey that matters" but I have to admit that one can get wiser on the way. Even if it's just by realizing the value of slowing down, catching a breath and realizing that what we do is not important but that it is important that we do it.

would you trust your vote with this woman?

Seriously, would you?

In times when explosives are posted via Fedex to elected government officials, in times when students break into the headquarters of the ruling parties, in times when massive strikes are becoming everyday life, when every single bill is met with the fiercest opposition and outrage...

Well, in times like this, one would say democracy is simply not working. Democracy as it is being practiced at least. Democracy as the system where less than half of the people are convinced to choose among a handful of leaders whose ideas and visions are proven to be remarkably identical. Leaders only by name who are obsessive with power, backward in almost every single aspect of thinking, leaders who look frighteningly, dangerously, suspiciously as if they were "being led" instead of "leading". Leaders, governments, officials, think-tanks that appear "know better" and hence with increasing frequency take decisions that are radically different from what they have set out to, upon being elected.

In times like this, we are asked to cast our votes knowing that this is the closest ever we will get to making a difference. Only the difference is never taking place as new faces take the place of old ones only to iterate the old rhetorics and the so-called democratic governing of the talking heads consists of passing one offensive bill after the other without the slightest support of the electoral body, which has to wait stoically until the next election to "send a message".

But all this is about to change, as enlightened leaders are finally reaching to the root of the problem. Angela Merkel knows better.
At the head of a cast of visionary politicians of the 21st century she has proposed that we do away with voting altogether. "That's it!", she thought, "lets get rid of the votes of the poor European states for starters!"
Why should we have them voting if they cannot even buy our exports anymore? Then we can do away with the votes of all states and be left with the real intelligentsia, all these officials of the European Bank, the directorates of the central European committees that are not elected. I mean, just see how efficient THEY are!
Next comes the big step. Why not banish the whole election process? Seriously, does it make any difference? Why bother with such an irrational expense when we all know that what they are voting for is nowhere close to what they are getting? Do we really need to go through all this fuss?

Well, I couldn't agree more!
Upon facing respectable Angela (or Sharkozy, or Cameron) wouldn't you think twice before trusting them with your vote?

cherchez la femme

Mario Vargas Llosa (left) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (right).
Gabo's bruised left eye courtesy of the 2010 Literature Nobel Laureate

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded yesterday to Mario Vargas Llosa, a decision that besides being fair (although according to some a very late one) finally brings Llosa on-a-par with his fellow writer, old friend and great rival for the prestigious title of the greatest living Hispanic American writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Readers around the world are now welcome to reconcile the two literary men as equally great in both public acceptance and critical acclaim.

What remains to be seen is whether this prize will settle a long-lasting feud between them and if Gabo and Mario, once inseparable, will finally talk to each other after refusing to do so for more than 34 years. Over the decades people have attributed this contend between the two once best friends (Marquez being the Godfather of Llosa's son Gabriel) to either professional jealousy or opposing political views. Llosa has been a fierce neoliberal since the early 90s when he even ran for the presidency in Peru, while Marquez has always openly exhibited his left-wing ideas and has been a close friend of Fidel Castro, for which Llosa often refers to him as "el cortesano" (the courtier). Nevertheless the roots of this rivalry are neither political nor authorial. They can be traced back to a winter evening of 1976 in Mexico City, date and place where the incident of the black eye occurred. The story involves two Nobel Prize winners, a right-hooked punch and at least one woman.

The legend has it that on the evening of the 13th of February 1976, while in a movie theater in Mexico City, Marquez spotted Vargas Llosa sitting a few rows behind him. Upon making a move to embrace his good -he thought- friend, he found himself lying on the carpet with a bleeding nose and a sore left eye. (Legend also has that his shiner received immediate treatment by Helena Poniatowska placing a steak on it). In the meanwhile, Vargas Llosa, author -among other works- of the most famous punch in the history of literature, was led outside the theater shouting in rage: "How dare you try to embrace me after what you did to Patricia in Barcelona!"

The background to this incident lies at the verge of being qualified as TV gossip material but since photographer Rodrigo Moya has made it public it has assumed some far-reaching consequences, among which the reluctance of Marquez to complete the second volume of his autobiography or Llosa's refusal to republish his doctorate thesis on Marquez's legendary "One hundred years of solitude". The story goes that while both men where living in Barcelona with their families, Vargas Llosa fell passionately in love with a Swedish air-hostess, for whom he left his wife Patricia and moved to Stockholm. Patricia sought advice in Marquez and his wife Mercedes, the two having always been very close friends of the couple. It was later said that they strongly advised her to ask for a divorce. Even later, it was insinuated that Gabo's consolation to Patricia may have been a bit overly friendly. Vargas Llosa was informed (or misinformed) of the facts (or not) of the matter when he later returned to his wife (they always do) as she was probably too reluctant to contain herself (or too willing to exaggerate).

The rest is history (or not yet). As the two masters casually met in Mexico the following year, Vargas Llosa felt obliged to demonstrate to "the courtier" how the right (hand) can deliver a decisive blow on the left (eye).

How a duel of this kind and proportions can be resolved, even among two of the world's most prominent Nobel laureates, remains unclear.

...................

PS. A couple of hours after this post I read Marquez's latest tweet, posted on the day of the Prize announcement. It simply read "cuentas iguales", roughly meaning "even". Purposefully ambiguous, as all aphorisms, it can be interpreted in many ways. You choose the one you like the most.