Good ole times

In 2007 I was published by the San Diego based ‘freepress’ periodical ‘San Diego Reader’.

Here’s a rerun:

 

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2007/may/3/Dimitrios-Kyranas-in-Athens-Greece/

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2007/may/10/Dimitrios-Kyranas-in-Athens-Greece/

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2007/may/17/Dimitrios-Kyranas-in-Athens-Greece/

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2007/may/24/Dimitrios-Kyranas-in-Athens-Greece/

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2007/may/31/Dimitrios-Kyranas-in-Athens-Greece/

The trials and tribulations of a nameless peon

It is a  profound necessity of all  most humans to feel unique. You can call it the “special snowflake effect”. One can of course argue indefinitely about what exactly it is that makes humans “different by definition” : their genetic structure, unique upbringing, different-initial-conditions-of-the-non-quantum-mechanic-particles in their body etc. One can equally well argue about what makes them “all the same”: Their universal need for food, shelter and unconditional love. Their craving for happiness and meaning and countless other issues that accompany the so called “human condition”.

Here is a simplistic overview of the “evolution of uniqueness” as I imagine it.

ATTENTION: the phases described below are not backed by any “hard” data because I”m  simply too lazy to perform such time-consuming research  into the matter.

1. The age of “primordial uniformity”: Before the evolution of spoken language, I assume that humans had a hard time differentiating themselves from the flock through their  interests or personality. The only people who were doing something distinct were probably the tribal rulers, shamans or similar.
2. The age of “small societal clusters”: With the advent of spoken language and clustering of humans in small societies, it became easier for people to acquire a distinct role as more and more professions emerged. Of course for the vast majority of anonymous serfs toiling away 16 hours a day it must have been hard to establish some kind of “recognizability” since they were doing exactly the same unskilled labour. Nevertheless in such small societies it was relatively easy to be distinct through specific character traits. E.g “Aristides the Just” or “Nebuchadnezzar the Greedy” – both names are randomly picked because they sound “ancient” and not in order to refer to the historical personalities associated with them.
3. The age of  ”industrialization and urbanization”: This stage mostly overlaps with the ensuing one but I still believe it merits separate mention because there were times when large numbers of factory workers were either illiterate or had only a very rudimentary education. In this age people are becoming cogs and wheels in the early “industrialization machine”. Huge numbers of them flock to cities and  it becomes hard  to avoid being anonymous and indistinguishable from others.
4. The age of “mass education”, approximately coinciding with the beginning of the 20^th century: Society and culture becomes ever more complex and an increasing number of educated people are demanded by the economy. People can now carve their very distinct niche by taking up a specific vocation or profession or by pursuing other interests thanks to the newly found notion of “free time”.
5. The age of mass tertiary education which roughly starts in the early 1950s in most industrialized societies. It is an extension of the previous age where society is rapidly shifting from manual/industrial labour to “intellectual/white collar labour”. People still face the challenge of differentiating themselves from professional colleagues – what makes a lawyer different from the millions of other lawyers?-  but they can at least identify themselves as belonging to a certain “professional class” that is different from others.
6. The age of “Mass graduate education” and “Information/Automation society” . Can also be called “The age of  STEM ”. This is the current era and its beginning can roughly be traced to the late 1980s/early 1990s. It is an era of frenetic computerization, automation and globalization. To support and maintain this growth, an ever-increasing number of people with a highly specialized education in natural sciences and technology is needed. As technical systems grow in complexity, more and more scientific fields that were previously considered separate now tend to merge or overlap and the dominant trend in research worldwide are the so-called interdisciplinary groups.

And this dear reader is where I come in – because ultimately it’s all about me, me , me. As a grad student and scientific collaborator of a gigantastic technical university, living life among gazillions of scientists and engineers, how do I carve my niche?  How can I be anything else other than a guy “who does stuff with math and computers” among thousands of others who do “stuff with math and computers”? Sometimes I feel that the only thing that separates me from the nameless peons who spent their lives driving a particular rivet in a Ford-Taylor assembly line is that  I am running a 4th order Runge-Kutta solver using a C++ routine. Like the guy next door . And the guy in the basement of the next building. And the Indian guy at the Technical University of Punjab or something.  Can someone explain to me in what way I am not replaceable and expendable?

Of course one could argue that I am just ranting and all I need to do is to move to a place that is not dominated by science and engineering and “everything will be ok”. But will it? As the world becomes more and more automated eventually “everyone” will be a scientist or engineer. And then what? Singularity? AI? Robots that will turn us into batteries?

I think I’m moving to NZ and becoming a shepherd.

PS

I am fully aware of the fact that humans are complex beings that are defined by a lot more than their profession/area of work. Nevertheless, people tend to unconsciously assume that there is a high correlation between one’s area of work and one’s personality. E.g engineers are supposed to be down-to-earth, ‘mathematical’ and taciturn whereas bankers are assumed to be greedy. This means that once a large scale occupational uniformity  is established in a societal group, it becomes a lot more difficult for an individual to project and demonstrate those characteristics that discern him or her from ‘all the others’.

Il Risorgimento

So today I got this awesome e-mail from my Italian teacher  of which the following excerpt I’d like to share.

Ciao Fileas,

Sei veramente bravo e parli senza accento e con un vocabolario ben superiore a quello richiesto da un corso GK 1+2…

Ah it’s been a really long time since I had so much fun learning a foreign language. Last time, it was during my Swedish class where again my teacher – the wonderful and sweet Mrs Elena – acknowledged my insatiable hunger for new words and expressions . If all goes well this time I should soon be able to embark in my ‘grande giro d’ Italia’ without needing to speak a word of English. I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it .

Tysklands tuffaste kille

är utan  tvivel den här bloggens författare! Det är därför att han blev kär i en sådan “tuff tjej” som bara intresserar sig av “korta förhållande” och kan “erkänna om en man är den riktiga inom 24 timmar”. Det är märkligt! Hon har en sådant enorm talang måste jag säga…ändå…i  den inte så avlägsna framtiden….ska komma en dag att hon ska sitta vid hennes IKEA skrivbord, med IKEA kaffekoppar i handen och ska titta ur fönstret mot den lilla svenska universitetsstaden. Och då ska hon ta reda på att ingen “Sven-Göran” kan ersätta bloggens författare. Denn er ist einzigartig.

Le rancunier

Je n’ai jamais été un grand «dragueur», parce que franchement je ne considère guère les femmes comme des objets de désir éphémères et disponibles. Toutefois j’ai eu une chose en commun avec les dragueurs : ma forte propension au flirt. Il n’est pas difficile, cher lecteur, d’imaginer pourquoi le flirt est une source majeure de plaisir mais aussi de frustration -spécialement pour les hommes : quand on réussit à captiver l’attention d’une femme attrayante, notre cerveau dégage des endorphines qui nous rendent euphoriques parce que notre subconscient interprète cette réussite comme témoin d’une possibilité accrue de rapport sexuel et par conséquent l’ allongement de la vie de nos «gènes égoïstes». De l’autre coté, quand on échoue on l’éprouve quasiment comme une faillite de notre masculinité, de notre «force de persuasion».

En tout cas, afin de se livrer à ce noble passe-temps on a besoin d’un dispositif qui nous permettra de connaître des grands nombres des femmes, régulièrement. Ce dernier peut être soit le milieu académique -si on est des étudiants- soit les loisirs, soit le cercle d’amis. Considérons ces possibilités, une par une en analysant leur applicabilité dans le cas du soussigné:

• Le milieu académique : Not a chance , comme diraient nos amis les Américains. En étudiant les sciences mathématiques, on est dés le début «condamnés» à naviguer dans un microcosme ou les femmes sont rares, et, précisément a cause de leur rareté, orgueilleuses et difficilement accessibles.
• Les loisirs: Il existe un très spécifique groupe des loisirs qui attirent le sexe faible dont la majorité est reliée aux «beaux arts». Si on n’est pas doué en musique, danse etc on est, essentiellement, fou*us – prière de pardonner l’usage du mot «essentiellement»
• Last but not least, notre cercle d’amis, auquel je souhaite dédier le reste de ce texte:

Mon cercle d’amis a toujours comporté deux parties:

La première partie qui est en outre majoritaire a comme membres des individus super- sympas, extrêmement intelligents, et parfois dotés d’un sens de l’humour exceptionnel qui malheureusement ont un grave défaut: Soit à cause de leur abominable timidité, soit a cause du fait qu’ils sont des travailleurs compulsifs, il ne connaissent guère des filles et même s’ils le font, ils ne penseront jamais à créer les circonstances qui permettront à ces dernières de se mêler avec leurs amis. Est-ce que je me sens déçu à cause de leur comportement? Oui mais au moins ils ont une excuse impeccable. Alors on les pardonne.

La seconde partie, mon lecteur, est celle qui déclenche, dans les profondeurs de mon âme les plus ténébreuses , le jaillissement de la pure haine, de la pure indignation, de la pure déception. Il s’agit des individus, dotés d’une apparence agréable et d’une personnalité marrante qui, a cause de leur sujet d’études étaient, pendant plusieurs années entourés par des milliers des femmes. Cependant, ces individus, pour des raisons que la science moderne est totalement incapable d’expliquer, ont échoué de façon déplorable non seulement à «trouver une copine» mais aussi à créer un cercle d’amies qui auraient été une aubaine, une véritable manne tombée du ciel pour leurs pauvres potes incarcérés, si vous me permettez un affreux «franglicisme » dans une éternelle « fête de saucisses » . Mais non, ils n’ont rien fait, employant des telles excuses ridicules comme «les filles de la fac étaient toutes des salopes», «elles avaient toutes un copain», «Elles sont allées chercher Jimmy Hoffa et ne sont pas revenues ». Il restait alors une seule alternative : De les implorer de… me « présenter aux gonzesses ».

Or, j’avais trop de fierté, trop de dignité pour recourir à une telle solution désespérée. Je peux facilement deviner ce que vous pensez, cher lecteur: que je vis sous l’illusion que «la société» me doit. Ben, bien sûr elle a une dette envers moi à cet égard. En fait j’en ai eu marre des histoires des couples qui se sont connus «grâce aux amis communs». Où sont ces fabuleux «amis communs» pour moi et quelle est la probabilité qu’ils apparaîtront quand il est évident que je suis involontairement entouré par des individus dont la sociabilité est gravement limitée? Quoi que ce soit, s’il était légalement possible, je porterais plainte pour entrave à la formation de réseau social et pour grave négligence de devoir. Il est cependant trop tard pour tout ça parce que mes fabuleux potes ont quitté les milieux qui jadis auraient pu les rendre des apprentis Hugh Heffner. De plus, je réside à l’étranger.

I’m on my own now, as always.

Digital photography: A reconciliation

In the early years of the 21^st century I was eager to discover if there was even an inkling of artistic talent concealed behind a brain -in this case my very own lump of gray matter – that had been fine-tuned to perform in math and science since time immemorial. Consequently I undertook a series of half-hearted attempts to get involved in some “artsy” activities one of which was photography, probably the most accessible of all the arts, since every trained monkey can take pictures – right? Hence I joined the photography class of my university, eagerly learning about the technical aspects – lenses, shutter speeds, depths of fields, film sensitivities – and sitting through hours and hours of slide projections that provided an overview of the work of such illustrious artists as Koudelka, Kertész, Doisneau and many others.

Our wonderful -albeit not very serious- instructors tried to instil into us the virtues of a true photographer among which are patience, perseverance, alertness – necessary if one is to seize good opportunities for a shot -, the ability to run 100 m in less than 10 seconds – vital if one is to escape the security guards of a public facility where photography is prohibited- and, last but not least: the ability to resist temptation. And by temptation I do not mean the one that faces the lewd fashion photographer who struggles  -yeah, right !- with the thought of  getting intimate with his models  but rather a technical one, and that is to desist, at all costs, from laying hands upon an evil, infernal contraption called a digital camera. At the time, digital cameras were rapidly becoming accessible to the unwashed masses thanks to dropping prices and to sites like flickr.com and picasa that were enabling even the last 95-year-old granny to show her holiday pictures to the entire universe – that is, if the aliens are nosey enough to collect and decode the entirety of the earth’s electromagnetic emissions.

Our mentors therefore implored us to please not become like the nondescript Joe Average who mindlessly pointed and clicked through his life capturing not beauty but banality. When we retorted that monochrome analogue photography was cumbersome and complicated  they insisted that it is precisely the complicated procedure and the manual work that bestowed it with the status of an art. To them digital photography was to analogue what analogue once was to painting: a vulgarization.

Years went by and I left the darkrooms never to return; let’s face it: a hypochondriac radiation-phobic like me just didn’t fit in a badly ventilated room that was full of fumes of not-so-good-for-your-health chemicals. I put away my trusty 1970s Pentax Spotmatic II and relied on an El Cheapo Olympus point-and-shoot film camera for the occasional holiday picture. It was later replaced by an equally cheap and bulky digital camera that served similar purposes. But then, last month, I had the chance of using a real digital camera – one of the more expensive dSLR ones – …and suddenly I remembered what photography was supposed to be about. I don’t know what triggered this cataclysm of feelings: Was it the luscious “clich” sound of the camera’s mechanism? Was it the instantaneous readiness to take a new picture – in contrast to cheaper cameras that need seconds to write the file to their memory card ? Regardless of the exact reason, I felt that given such a camera, I could photograph the world! Would I take quality shots? Not necessarily but at least I had regained my old craving to learn how to do so. But then, as I was  relishing the thought of retrying myself at the Daguerreian arts, the old brainwashing and conditioning that had been inflicted upon me by my mentors resurfaced: “true artists use only analogue because it forces you to think and appreciate before you shoot. Digital makes it too easy”. Aha! Does it really? And then I  mentally rebelled!

You see, dear reader, in the olden days of analogue photography and darkrooms things were not THAT difficult…sure..there was no Photoshop, no memory cards and no printers…but there was film roll…..countless metres of it. Photographers would take literally hundreds of pictures during a given assignment, then develop the film – a process that does not depend much on the quantity of film involved – and produce contact prints that are, in a way, the equivalent of us previewing our digital pictures on a monitor. Only after carefully studying their contacts would they choose the best pictures that would eventually be printed using a projector.

So how exactly did analogue photography promote “thinking” before shooting? It is true that film was not free -like taking a digital picture – but it was very affordable. As to all the automation that modern cameras have -that can also make things “too easy”- , one can very easily disable it and control all the parameters  by oneself. What is the left is the essence of photography which does not depend on whether the image is captured by  chemical film or  CCD: selecting the time, the place, the subject, the lighting , the exposure in order to capture the “spirit of the moment”. Then the mastery lies in choosing the best shots among the many taken , processing  and printing them. I will admit that processing opportunities offered by modern software are immense compared to the “manual” procedures that older photographers used. That nevertheless does not stop one from limiting oneself to the absolute minimum required to produce a crisp and clear picture with a high dynamic range. And this picture has all the potential of becoming a work of art.

Now if only I could find the money to buy myself a serious camera…

y-another-msn-log

To idio onoma exei sto msn h typisa gia thn opoia sou elega xthes oti eida na emfanizetai feugalea sto fb
(01:55:10 PM) moi hahaha
(01:55:14 PM) moi: oxi katharh symptwsis
(01:55:38 PM) moi: (kai xafnika apokalyptetai oti o mystiriwdis typos me ton opoiou xouftwnotane eis sta mphts parth hmoun EGW)
(01:56:33 PM) moi: h mallon , to alter ego mou o “Giannis Crescendo” enas gamatos tzivatos kitharistas pou paizei tam tam kai kanei gouint sourf
(01:57:03 PM) the other: etsi
(01:57:46 PM) moi: ston opoio metamorfwnomai afoto kapnisa ena vrady radienrgo mpafo pou eixe kalliergithei se oikopedo dipla sto tsenompili
(01:58:00 PM) moi: (btw kai gm ta senaria etsi?)
(01:58:22 PM) theother: prepei na ginei tainia
(01:58:55 PM) moi: tha parw tilefwno tous paragwgous tou Tsopunisher na stamatisoun kai na kanoun resource reallocation
(01:59:11 PM) theother: kalh idea

Mangel an Originalität

“Der  Schweizer ist total durchgeknallt mit ihr” murmelte unser Held als das digitale Foto eines lächelnden Pärchens auf seinem Bildschirm auftauchte. “Der muss sicherlich davon träumen mit ihr zusammen, Hand in Hand auf den goldenen Kornfeldern zu laufen. Solch ein Kitsch. Na ja, zumindest scheint er glücklich zu sein“. Er machte die  Klappe des Laptops zu, drehte sich um auf dem Drehstuhl und griff nach einer Packung von “Dr Oetkers Studentenfutter”. Er fühlte sich so gelangweilt und gleichgültig dass selbst das Holen einer Pizza vom Gefrierfach und das Schieben in den Mikrowellenherd wie eine wahnsinnig aufwendige Aufgabe aussah. “Wozu denn was aufwendigeres?” fragte er sich “Ich bin ja alleine. Der letzte, hartnäckigste von allen. Ich bin keine Sissy sondern ein harter selbststän…..“. Von seiner eigenen Mantra ermüdet wandte er sich dem riesigen Fernseher zu: Sonderbestellung aus Tokyo, 100 Zoll, eine bescheuerte vertikale Auflösung. Echt schade dass es niemanden gab mit dem er das phantastisch scharfe Bild dieses Prachtstücks genießen konnte. “Mal sehen was in der Glotze läuft….und was für eine Glotze….”. Bilder kamen und gingen scharenweise. Es waren glatzköpfige Politiker mit teuren Anzügen und vorgetäuschten Lächeln, bildschöne weibliche Models die für allerlei Produkte warben die den Käufern bedingungsloses Glück versprachen, angehende Schauspieler die ihre auswendig gelernten Antworten den Journalisten gegenüber wiederkäuten. “Immer derselbe Quatsch” flüsterte er empört und ließ die Fernbedienung auf dem Boden fallen. Unwillig nach einem anderen Zeitvertreib zu suchen versank er in Gedanken:

Was hatten denn die Anderen dass er nicht hatte? War es einfach Glück? Und was ist dieser Begriff überhaupt? Kein seriöser Mensch darf sich darauf verlassen. Man bahnt seine eigenen Wege im Leben oder? Alle denken ja nur an sich selbst, das ist die menschliche Natur die von egoistischen Genen hervorgeht. Oder zumindest das meint dieser britische Biologe wieheissernochmals. Und trotzdem geschieht gutes in der Welt und viele Leute kriegen das wonach sie suchen. Wie der Schweizer. Und der Architekt.   Der letztere war buchstäblich legendär: Er hatte seine Freundin in der Comic-Con von Antwerpen im Jahr zuvor kennengelernt. Das ist aber Wahnsinn….eine Frau in einer Konvention kennen zulernen die vollgestopft mit männlichen Geeks ist. Der Bursch muss sicherlich was sehr vornehmes in seinem früheren Leben unternommen haben. Vielleicht war er Musterpfadfinder und half 24/7 hilflosen Omas die Straßen zu überqueren.  Na ja… zu spät um die vermeintlichen Heldentaten nachzuahmen. Enttäuscht, griff unser Held nach seinen Schlaftabletten…(to be continued).

happy new decade!

Yes my pedantic friends, I am aware of the fact that the second decade of the 21st century begins on Jan 1st 2011 in the exact same way that the third millenium began on jan 1st 2001 but please don’t spoil it for me! Anyhoo, this was just an introductory remark.

On Dec. 31st 1999 the entire planet earth was going bananas – whether that is justified or not is a totally different issue – celebrating the infamous “millenium”. I wished, back then, to participate wholesomely in the festivities which unfortunately never happened as I was stuck at home with my parents and two of their most bland and uninteresting friends watching tv. Since waiting a thousand years for the next such celebration to happen is a rather far fetched endeavour, I thought I would give it another try at some other “symbolic” point in time say…ten years later -  the human race seems to be enamoured with decimal arithmetic and jubilees. Indeed here I was on Dec 31st 2009 in of the cooler cities that this planet has to offer, London which, lets face it, has a particular obsession with celebrating new year’s eve/day. Of course, to celebrate properly one must not only be at the right location but should also be surrounded by the right people and also have access to the classic new year spectacle aka fireworks! Now,in London, that is not as trivial as it sounds as the fireworks are only visible from specific locations upon the banks of the river Thames to which one must travel quite some time in advance to secure a place to…stand. To make things more complicated I had checked out of my hostel earlier that day meaning I had no place to take a rest before I embarked on my quest and I constantly had to navigate inside huge crowds of people exiting the London Underground and flowing in and out of cafés, theatres and department stores. As if that was not enough, the people with whom I had arranged to see the fireworks were running substantially late as they were attempting to drive to London by car from Germany and it was hard to estimate  if they would manage to access the centre of the city in time to be allowed to enter the designated fireworks viewing areas – which of course are closed by the police as soon as they reach capacity.

After most museums and department stores had closed, I found myself trying to spend as much time as possible in the warm atmosphere of a café before venturing out to the river banks. At the same time I was waiting from a definitive signal by my acquaintances as to how and when we would meet in order to go together. Unfortunately time was running short and they were not replying to my queries so I took the bold step to get to the Thames embankment on my own trying to find one of the few remaining “good” spots. Suddenly emerging from the multilingual hullaballoo came the sweet phonemes of the mother tongue as spoken by some bemused compatriots of mine who were also trying to secure a convenient location and to defend it against hundreds of other people who were impinging upon the bank like locusts on a crop. I seized the opportunity to address them and exposed my situation to which they reacted with friendliness and sympathy and soon I joined their merry company. So we cheered together as the majestic fireworks lit the heavens – kudos the Mayor of London – and we then headed straight to the appartment of one of the guys who was apparently a bon-viveur something that was manifested by an excellent birthday cake -it was his birthday as well-  greek wine and a fireplace. Sometime later I hit the streets so as to be in London’s St Pancras International Station to wait for the Eurostar Train that would bring me home to “continental” Europe. All in all it was great fun and at this point I would like to thank George “The Gardener”, Perry, Eleni and Pauline for saving my new year’s eve despite the fact that none of them are DJs!

Ίσως τελικά…

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