Happy New Year!

The time is out of joint.

Harry Potter vs. Voldemort – so what?

It might be blasphemy, but I have trouble appreciating the Harry Potter stories. I might not even know what I'm talking about, because I only managed to read something like a hundred pages of the first book – the rest is just what I've seen in the movies. That's fine with me.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Harry Potter vs. Voldemort – so what?

What's With the Beard?

Soon, Santa Claus will sneak down the chimney with presents to all good children, with a jolly “Ho, ho, ho!” That's all fine. But what's with that big white beard?


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

What's With the Beard?

Believers Don't Believe

”I'm a believer,” The Monkees sang in 1966. They meant a believer in love, but mostly the term is used for and by religious people, sticking to convictions that common sense dismisses. But the term is a paradox. The use of it reveals a lack of belief.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Believers Don't Believe

No Hit Song Without Words

A British research team presents a formula they claim predicts what songs will be hits. They use a bunch of parameters, but ignore one of the top components of a song: the lyrics.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

No Hit Song Without Words

Burlesque Breakfast of Champions

Finally, I got to see the 1999 movie Breakfast of Champions, based on Kurt Vonnegut's novel. I had avoided doing so earlier, afraid of being disappointed. Well, I was. They turned the wonderfully absurd novel into a tiresome burlesque.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Burlesque Breakfast of Champions

Big Bang and God Are the Same

Creationists sneer at the Big Bang theory. Astrophysicists exclude God from their equation. But it's all the same, meeting the same paradox. They differ only in names. None answers the question.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Big Bang and God Are the Same

Economy Is Not a Science

On Saturday, December 10, this year's Nobel Prize laureates will receive their prizes from the Swedish king. Among those are two winners of the Economy Prize, which is not a real Nobel Prize – fittingly, since it's not a real science.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Economy Is Not a Science

Music's Immune to Parody

The brilliant Tim Minchin is armed with a grand piano in his stand-up comedy. His monologue consists of a series of songs, filled with satire. So, his music is parody, but it doesn't matter. It's still sweet, sweet music.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Music Is Immune to Parody

With One Person I Never Got Bored

We come to this world, don't ask me where from, and we leave it after dancing on it for a while, don't ask me where to. But some of us are otherworldly all through. I had the fortune to get to know one of them: Charlotte Zutrauen, who passed away this spring after more than a century on the planet.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

With One Person I Never Got Bored

Time Flies Past a Building

This year I revisited Monaco after almost 40 years. Oh, how time flies! I didn't remember much more from my first visit than the odd decorative patterns on the facade of a house.

I took the above photo of the Monaco house in 1972, and the below photos on my revisit in late October, 2011. Actually, it was right in front of my hotel. New buildings have appeared around it, but that funny house stays the same.

The pattern on it looks like wallpaper, doesn't it? As if someone had turned the whole house inside out.

Apart from that I rediscovered that Monaco is a ridiculously expensive place to be. The pyramid of have and have not remains. It is older than the actual pyramids and more solid than any building. And not that funny.

The Poodle Bites

Recently, I was in Romania for an aikido seminar. That was my first visit to the country, and a delightful one. Something that I found odd was the great number of stray dogs in the streets, running free and somehow finding their way to survive and reproduce.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

The Poodle Bites

My Table Confirms Plato

I found an old table that I couldn't resist buying, although I don't have much room for it. This table illustrates Plato's theory about innate knowledge and the eternal soul. Not bad for a piece of furniture.

In the dialogue Meno Socrates helps a slave boy find out how to double the area of a square, by making its diagonal the side of the bigger square. Although the slave boy has no previous knowledge of geometry, he soon succeeds.

To Socrates, this proves that the boy must have had this knowledge from the beginning, even before he was born. This, Socrates argues, must be true for all knowledge and all men. We only have to recollect it. He continues:

“And if the truth of all things always existed in the soul, then the soul is immortal. Wherefore be of good cheer, and try to recollect what you do not know, or rather what you do not remember.”

Not everyone would agree with his conclusions, but Plato has a point: knowledge would be impossible without the ability to reach it, and that's human nature. It might not be eternal, but its seed precedes the birth of the body. Plato linked this prior ability to the soul, whereas modern science houses it in the gene.

My table makes no statement about either genetics or the imortality of the soul, but it joins the slave boy's struggle with the squares, as can be seen on the animation above. It transforms from one square to another with twice the area. Plato would approve.

But would he equip the table with an eternal soul?

Much more than CMYK and RGB

Recently, I posted a few of my drawings. Now it's time for a couple of oil paintings. They are from the 1990's. Unfortunately, I rarely find the time for this passion.

Few things are as fascinating and satisfying as oil painting. The colors are marvelous, so much richer than the printed CMYK or even modern computer monitor RGB. They have depth.

Also, their thickness and slight resistance when brushed onto the canvas increase the sensation. The strokes of the brush remain visible. In that way, it's both painting and sculpture, at least relief.

One has to have patience, because the oil colors dry very slowly. Actually they never do completely, and that's why they keep their shine and shape for hundreds of years.

These two paintings are simple studies, nothing fancy. A torso and a portrait. I was just having fun with the brush's dance on the canvas. I long for more of that fun.

(Click on the images to see them enlarged.)

Choose Your Weapons

In the arts, as well as at war, it's important to choose your weapons well. I wonder about musicians who go for the most unwieldy instruments. What were they thinking?


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Choose Your Weapons