Thursday, March 22, 2012

Thoughts

So imagine you are a mother of two, being the eldest 7 or 8, and one day he syas to you: "Ma, I am bisexual!". What would you do?... Well, the mother of this real episode answered: "you are either gay or straight, but not bisexual"... Can something be more suggestive and profound than a kid saying something like that? It is a sign of the times.

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A pack of Jews are making music like angels in this bar off Bounds Green on Thursday nights. I think the place, the guys and the experience should be in any single guide to London with things to do for less the nothing. Cross the gates, and listen to this. They might be them.

Friday, March 16, 2012

A force definition

Apparently, the question of "what is force?" worried philosophers along the years. Its definition is not complete, because the concept of force has been linked to the state of rest or motion of a body since the early times. After the contributions on natural and enforced motion of Aristotle, through the definitions of Galileo ("a body is indifferent to motion or to rest, and does not itself show any tendency to move in any direction or any resistance to being set in motion") and Huyghens ("any body in motion tends to move in a straight line with the same velocity as long as it does not meet any obstacle"), the concept of force was modelled after Newton's conclusion, as we learned in school: "every body perseveres in its state of rest, or uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by force impressed thereon". Effectively, we used to be told as children: "Force is all cause capable of modifying the state of rest or motion of a body or deform it". Perhaps, the problem is now how to define energy, and all attempts seem to be linked to its practical possibilities, and not concerning with the search for a metaphysical definition.

Nevertheless, it would be considered as a fantastic extravagance, if a child writes in a exam:

"Force is a spiritual power, an invisible energy, imparted by violence from without to all bodies out of their natural balance; an invisible energy, which is created and communicated, through violence from without, by animated bodies to inanimate bodies, giving to these the similarity of life, and this life works in a marvellous way; violence which dies through liberty; that which drives away in its fury whatever stands in its way to its ruin; that which transmutes and compels all bodies to a change of form and place; which is always opposing forces of nature; which is but a desire to fly. Weight does not change of its own accord, while force is always a fugitive; weight has a body, force has none; weight is material, force is spiritual; if one is eternal, the other is mortal".

The funny thing is that such definition (or a poetic recall of observations) was given by Leonardo Da Vinci (1425-1519).

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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

A piece of real America

I have watched recently two movies set on different locations of the American desert: one somewhere in Nevada, few miles away from Las Vegas, and another one in the vastness of Texas plains, near the Mexican border. For some reason, feelings and dreams pop-out into my mind at the sight of such suggestive landscapes. The second movie is, of course, No Country for Old Men. The film is hypnotizing, perhaps just because I love these films of outcast human beings living at the edge of shear freedom, where all borders of life are cut to extreme. The fragile human condition is neatly exposed; the sacred dance with Death, never so romantic. The sky is a vast and brilliant white, the heat and the dust fill the space, and the dark cape of the night covers the land upon descend of its infinite star-dashed mantle. Human life looks to be hidden, more private than ever, and the doomed men are hunted between the claw of cheap motels and sordid, but comforting strip-clubs. Their virility is their blood, their coin of exchange and their most feared informer.

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Thursday, March 8, 2012

In women's day

Nine years have passed by. On the 7th of March 2003 I finally defended my BSc project, after two years and a half of nonsense and oddities. It was not a wasted period, but an evil one. The battle was hardly fought but lost -and still needs to be won! Nine years already. I have fragmented impressions from that day in particular, scattered impressions and memories. The circumstances have twisted since then, or deformed or stretched quite a lot but, basically, I have not moved myself: am still right here. I am better in some terms, worse in others, but essentially the same. The wind sounds alike to my ears. On that day, someone gave me a CD with Ismael Lo's songs as a present. Written on the top of the CD was this message: "7th of March of 2003: today, you got your degree; on the 7th of March of 1988, I got my PhD. The 7th of March, the eve of Women's Day. Congratulations!".

Using a Johnny Depp expression -Ricky Gervais told about to the magazine of The Guardian after the Globe awards 2011-, 'I give not a jot' about the premises of Women's Day, not now, not then, nine years ago. This has not changed. Almost everything else, however, mainly the people, most horrible, is gone; and, certainly, I do care about. Mainly, it is a feeling of nostalgia and the uneasy sense of having been ungrateful... Somehow. What has M. been up to since then? It was 2006 last time we spoke... Why, how we stopped I don't recall... . What about the road L. or R. or C. or -I don't even remember the names!- have rolled through once we separated, yesterday that close? Perhaps, the memories are not fair but distorted, perhaps... Oh! Those times before I had to glue the pieces of my heart, every night, the heart C. broke apart. Where is the dust of V.'s tail after that stupid conversation on the phone that set us a thousand ages away? Or where are the eyes of L., each of one different color, looking at now? Is E., the girl I treated that bad, happy these days?... I can think, however, of two good friends next to me today. Two. Time brings the tidal waves of life, come and go, I guess. Come and go, soaking the shore and lapping away. Once, twice, ever. And the question that comes back and forth along with the tidals of time is 'who I am?'.

Let us remember.

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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

A frozen scale of values

I was grown up under the spell of constructing a scale of values. The opposite, utterly evil, is moral relativism. We had by then a weird case in the family, with somebody preferring to spend his money in a nice van, instead of fixing his teeth. I am afraid it is more common now. A few examples came from conversations this last weekend. You have the case of students in Beligum drinking glasses of hot water to get themselves warm without switching on the heater. Or the case of the High School of Bishops Stortford, dressed in fashion to the last wave in technology -computer, methods, etc.- but having the kids getting cold in a classroom with a broken window for days. I remember, yeeh, my friend M., years ago in Huntsville, AL, sitting in the toilet, next to an electrical resistance to warm him up and stating, menacingly: I don't like having the house heated up!

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Fathers

The edition of the London Evening Standard yesterday night brought out the utterances of three fathers on the the three tragic stories involving their teenager of youngster sons.

The first one is Mr. Ofosu-Asare, a prominent TV sports presenter in Ghana. His 17 son was stabbed to death by "two-hooded youths" on Friday the 2nd.in Brixton. Of course, he was very "talented", captain of the football team of his school and actor, and he has even been receiving advice from Rio Ferdinand. The Eevening, pretty boldly, titles: "Innocent teenager stabbed to death by gang". It was his first time in Brixton. However, the inner information in the Evening seems to contradict utterly this statement of innocence. It is said: "Detectives are also examining whether Kwame's murder is linked to seven other stabbings within a few miles of each other in eight days, including an attack on the top deck of a 432 bus in West Norwood". Apparently, the boy was waking to a music studio to recod a rap track with a friend. But the identity of the friend (who could escape unharmed) is either not known, not disclosed. The innocence statement stinks bad to me and to make things worse, putrefied, the newspaper report further down declares: "Detectives believe the pair may have been targeted, either in revenge for the bus stabbing or because they strayed onto a gang's territory".

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The second father is Amy Winehouse's, who declared that his daughter "might still be alive , if she had been better educated about drugs"... Oh, yea, Mitch, whatever. Just go ahead with your campaigns. Why do you think public money and public schools would have cared more about your daughter than yourself?

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On the opposite end stands Rossli Harun, father of the 21 year-old Malasyan boy robbed after attacked during the riots of August in the capital of the Almighty Great Britain, in Barkingside. He says that the system in this country "makes people lazy". I believe so. In fact, Ashraf Rossli got stolen his bicycle, a game console and £500-worth of games from his bag by a boy who "was only 17 (...). He wasn't at school, he wasn't at work, and he was getting government money". Beau Isagba, the perpetrator, plus John Kafunda and Reece Donovan will be sentenced next week to jail, but the main claim (i.e. "benefits system encourages crime") remains out of serious debate.

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