evolve (v) - change, grow, progress, advance, develop

Overenthusiastic Romanian priests

2011-06-06T13:50:00.000+02:00

Julian Assange in Rap News. Wicked!

2010-12-23T02:17:00.000+02:00

I wish he had rapped a bit too. But this was pretty cool nonetheless.

Join the Quest for Truth. A call for interviewees in climate change research

2010-11-23T22:59:00.020+02:00

Hey everyone!

I'm studying Sociology at City University in London, and as part of my 3rd year dissertation I've decided to try to understand more about people's interactions with science. In particular, I am focusing on what I call "the quest for truth". I define it as

the incessant, sometimes obsessive, pursuit of objective truth in relation to a contentious public debate. I am particularly interested in the issue of climate change.

For this, I am looking for people who have been on a quest for truth, or who are in the middle of it right now.

What do I have to do?

If you are or have been on a quest for truth, I would love to interview you, so that we can all understand this process better, and that maybe we can learn something useful.

More explicitly, the official criteria are:

you are informed about the debate in climate change
you proactively seek information about climate change, as opposed to occasionally engaging with the media or social circles
you have ‘changed camps’ at least once (e.g. from not believing to believing, from ‘we need to act now’ to ‘things will work themselves out’, etc.) OR
you are either indecisive or still doubting your position

Respondents will have access to the final research text once it's finalized. This will be my way of saying thank you.

But what exactly is this quest for truth?

I think that many people go through a process like this at least once. At least once we become so curious, so infuriated or so confused with an issue that we just have to 'get to the bottom of it'.

And then we start to dig: the more layers we uncover the surer we are we know too little. And the more confused we get, the more we dig.

News articles and television quickly prove insufficient for our informational needs, and books start to contradict each other, while scientific papers seem to wonder off in their own world. We find ourselves in the middle of bitter disputes over who is wrong and who is right; we find it quite curious that it is only us who haven't realised it's a 'fabricated' debate, that 'they' are merely obscuring the 'well-known' facts.

Funnily enough, then we start to find others who seem to be on the same journey - from overtly confused politicians to reporters who retract their statements to friends who identify with our journey. We uncover scandals, accusations, and fabrications. The more we read proselytizing between the lines the surer we are it's important to understand 'the truth'.

Of course, the quest for truth can be much easier: read the facts, adopt an informed opinion, done.
I did this myself when I was arduously researching the Church of Scientology. Much of the things I read confirmed my opinion, and there was such a small incentive to trust the others that it was a very easy decision to make.

I am not at all implying that I did the right thing, nor, generally, that there is a 'right' way to go on the quest for truth. In fact, I would do many things differently now.

But I am interested in the complicated journeys, in the ones which feel like bottomless rabbit holes, which make you sink deeper the more you struggle, like moving sands. Not only because they are longer and richer in valuable lived experience, but also because they are increasingly an integral part of our societies.

What kind of truths?

From 9/11 to Israel / Palestine, to how money 'really' work, to darwinian evolutionism, to whether humans are 'naturally' monogamous or not, to water flouridation, and not least to climate change, we seem to be engaging in more and more of these debates.

But people have been doing this all the time!

Of course, people have been debating since time immemorial. But now the sheer amount of information we have access to can truly make it a daunting task (a bit like Where's Wally); the media can influence us to a huge degree; the sciences are losing their golden polish of authority; politics is everywhere; and the potential consequences of many of these issues are overwhelming.

Not to mention that this process hasn't been studied nearly enough!

So don't wait any longer, contact me at mihai-george.chira.1 [at] city.ac.uk , or leave a comment to this post.

Also please send this page to anyone you think might have been on a quest for truth, especially in climate change. We all know people like this, and they ought to be put forward. And please share this article on Facebook and Twitter.

Much appreciated!

Shocking quote of the day: black men and education

2010-10-24T01:18:00.002+02:00

"The relationship between ethnicity, literacy and numeracy is very strong and specific cases extremely negative; for example, being Black and male appears to have a greater impact on levels of numeracy than having a learning disability."

from EHRC.

At least I'm learning interesting things in my Race and Racism course.

ActionScript: the htmlText, CSS and embedded fonts fiesta

2010-06-28T11:16:00.004+03:00

Actionscript is usually great for simple font embedding and rendering purposes. Use the text property of a TextField with an embedded font and a TextFormat, and it works great. If, however, you want to get all ninja and use htmlText with CSS with embedded fonts, you're in for a bumpy ride.

Firstly, you may experience the unnerving phenomenon of text not appearing at all, as soon as you set the embedFonts property to true on the TextFormat object. Fear not, for Flash nuisances are easily tweakable. Check your css file and wherever you have more than one font enumerated in the 'font-family' property, just make it one single font name: the font you embedded. In the article linked above, adobe mention:

If using CSS styles to set fonts for TextFields, set the font-family CSS property to the name of the embedded font. The font-family property must contain a single name and not a list of names if you want to specify an embedded font.

What this might do for you is to show regular text, but completely omit formatted text (bold or italic), or simply replace it with unformatted text. If that happens, you have probably not embedded all the font faces. Read this article to find out how to embed all versions of a font (regular, bold, italic and bold-italic) within the same font family. If your embedded font already has these formatting inside the font file, try these tricks. If you're using the Flash IDE, it should be really similar. This forum thread might help.

The next problem which is very likely to occur is for the font to look aliased (i.e. blurry, hard to read). The solution is simply to create a TextFormat object with the font defined in the CSS style and assign it to the defaultTextFormat property of the TextField. Makes sense, right? No! I found this after considerable digging. Let me know if it works for you too.

Update:
if you're using multiple SWFs or RSLs and have issues with fonts, check out Alex's great post about that.

Work needs to be questioned

2010-04-13T02:12:00.003+02:00

As part of researching issues around poverty for an essay at university, I have conducted 3 online interviews and 2 offline ones, plus a focus group with 9 participants (all members of my extended family).

The questions I asked are these:

What do you think is the cause(s) of poverty in the world?
What do you think are the obstacles to eliminating poverty?

A number of interesting answers surfaced, which I will probably discuss at another time. What I wish to point out at this time is one thing which was not mentioned: working, or the institution of wage-labour. The assumption appeared to be that it is a constant of life, a given, or at least that any attempt at altering it is incomprehensibly futile.

Black (1985) makes a strong statement (at times too strong) about the negative impacts of work and imagines an alternative, ludic world in his The Abolition of Work. I will argue that an essential omission from his discussion is poverty.

Novak (1988) convincingly argues that poverty is endemic to capitalism. In feudalism, people would usually be in the possession of the means through which they produced the food and other necessities. They owned the tools and the animals with which they worked the land. Subservience to the feudal master meant that they payed taxes and levies from the surplus they produced (and sometimes way above that). Nevertheless, Novak emphasizes that these people were more in control of the means of survival than are most workers today.

--to be continued--

Flex 3 ProgressBar in polled mode stops working when it reaches 100%

2010-01-15T15:10:00.009+02:00

The ProgressBar component in Flex 3 (I am using SDK 3.4.1.10084 ) has 3 modes of operation: event, polled and manual. For a project I chose to use the polled mode to display the upload progress of multiple files using two ProgressBar components: one for individual files, and one for the overall progress.

The problem was that while the overall progress bar worked correctly, the individual file progress bar completely stopped working when the first file finished uploading. I checked the numbers, and they were fine, so the problem had to lie with the component.

The explanation is that the timer used to update the progress bar is stopped once the bytesLoaded property equals bytesTotal. Adobe will most surely call this a feature, as it saves resources for most use cases, when the progress bar is used to track a single operation at a time. However, in my case it turned out to be a bug, since I needed to track multiple operations. Had I been aware of it, I would probably have engineered my code to use the event or manual mode. But Adobe have either not documented this, or have hidden it very cleverly.

The solution in my case was either to prevent the timer from stopping or to restart it after the progress reached 100%. I did not want to keep it going indefinitely, as that would have cause the kind of resource leak which Adobe tried to prevent. So I looked in the ProgressBar class for instances where the timer was restarted, and it seemed that the best way to force a restart would be to toggle the mode property itself when a file finished uploading:

this.currentFileProgressBar.mode = ProgressBarMode.MANUAL;

this.currentFileProgressBar.mode = ProgressBarMode.POLLED;

There would have been other alternatives, of course, but this worked best in my project.

One of the alternatives is to use the BetterProgressBar component in the CleverPlatypus framework, which simply adds a value setter to the progress bar, as you would expect it to have anyway.

Ce aş face diferit în Şincai

2009-10-26T03:17:00.006+02:00

Acum sunt în Londra, învat Sociologie în anul 2 la City University şi lucrez ca programator pentru a mă întreţine. Am terminat Şincaiul în B, diriginte Boroica.

Un exerciţiu interesant pentru mine a fost să îmi imaginez ce aş face diferit în Şincai dacă aş avea ocazia să încep din nou liceul. Întreg articolul este structurat în jurul acestei liste, iar dorinţa este ca descrierea fiecărei acţiuni să scoată în evidenţă o anumită caracteristică a Şincaiului.

Ce nu vă pot garanta este că Şincaiul meu are vreo legătură cu experienţa voastră. Sora mea, care acum are 29 de ani şi a terminat la Lucaciu, se simţea bătrână când vedea generaţia cu 7 ani mai tânără decât a ei. Eu m-am simţit bătrân în clasa a XII-a când i-am văzut pe cei de-a IX-a. Fără să intru în detalii, îmi era limpede că valorile (pe care abia începeam să le disting) care mi-au ghidat generaţia sunt ostentativ puse la încercare de un nou val de elevi care acum mă trimite imediat cu gândul la post-modernism. Aşadar, vă rog să fiţi suspicioşi la ce vă transmit.

[Aş profita mai mult de profesori. Mi-aş găsi un mentor]
Profesorii sunt una dintre cel mai puţin utilizate resurse din Şincai. Nu am să rezolv acest aparent paradox prin referinţă la cunoştinţele enciclopedice deţinute de majoritatea profesorilor din Şincai, şi nici prin scoaterea în evidenţă a gradului ridicat de profesionalism cu care dascălii noştri ne instruiesc - în parte pentru că acestea variază larg, dar mai ales pentru că sunt secundare cauzei pe care o găsesc esenţială. Uitându-mă înapoi îmi dau seama că lucrul cel mai important pe care l-am preluat de la (anumiţi) profesori nu sunt informaţiile concrete (deşi gramatica limbii engleze încă mă bântuie, integralele şi derivatele au încetat demult să îmi neliniştească somnul). Ce rămâne în mine după aceşti ani sunt perspective, metode, paradigme, atitudini, modele situaţionale, inspiraţie. Mi-am rafinat definiţia corectitudinii în urma lecţiilor lui Boroica; am fost iniţiat în arta comediei stand-up în orele lui Moga; am inceput să mă gândesc mai concret la viitor când scriam gândurile bune în orele lui Breban; am inţeles că am dat importanţă diligenţei cu care făceam flotări deoarece lui Cristea i se părea esenţială metoda; am reuşit să schiţez caracteristicile unui lider carismatic în orele lui Pop V.; mi-am scăldat picioarele într-un ocean al dezbaterilor şi am inteles că pot - şi mai apoi că am datoria - să iau o poziţie faţă de toate marile dezbateri din societate în timp ce discutam cu Moga despre rolul religiei în secolul XXI sau despre interacţiunea dintre erudiţie şi împlinire personală. Profesorii în general pot - şi au datoria - să fie mentori pentru elevii pe care îi formează. Împărtăşesc părerea lui Malcolm Gladwell - şcoala, departe de a-ţi da un bagaj considerabil de cunoştinte pe care să le foloseşti ulterior în viaţă, iţi dă mai degrabă o încredere semi-fondată în abilităţile tale, care fără îndoială deschide mai multe uşi mai târziu. Aşadar, în loc să vă uitaţi la profesori ca la nişte maşini al căror rol e să vă spună lecţia din manual cu voce tare, încercaţi să îi vedeţi ca mentori. Şi dacă psihologia ne-a învăţat ceva, este că oamenii încearcă în mod continuu să se ridice la nivelul aşteptărilor celorlalţi. Va merita.

[Aş învăţa mai multă materie - dar nu neaparat materia scolară. Iar prin negare, aş fi mai puţin şmecher]
Când enumeram efectele şcolii asupra caracterului nostru, am omis în mod deliberat şmecheria, din două motive: unu, pentru că ne este în mare parte caracteristică şi doi pentru că am o viziune ambivalentă asupra eticii şmecherului. Şmecherul, înainte de a îndoi regulile în favoarea lui, activitate care necesită consum energetic, încearcă întâi să se prelingă printre pereţii subţiri lăsaţi de spaţiile nebuloase dintre reguli şi să exploateze aceste zone. Învăţăm să fim şmecheri în familie întâi, şi apoi continuăm să ne perfecţionăm în liceu: inventăm motive pentru care ar trebui să fim scuzaţi de la regimul aplicat întregii clase, sau amplificăm cauze reale la dimensiuni epopeice pentru a sensibiliza actori importanţi în favoarea noastră (de exemplu, eu am folosit olimpiada); cerem frumos să facem referate pentru a umfla notele înainte de sfârşitul semestrului; copiem tema înainte să intre profesorul în clasă; ridicăm mâna la începutul anului la întrebările cele mai simple ca să ne tina minte profesorul drept activi la ore; şi câte şi mai câte. Iar pe voi vă rog să mă scuzaţi dacă vi se par hilare strategiile noastre de modă veche. Suntem doar şmecherii din 2006.
Clasa noastră a fost o clasă plină de şmecheri. Motivul principal este că am avut olimpici cu sacii. La matematică, la chimie, la fizică, la engleză, etc. În această situaţie profesorii se purtau cu noi cu mănuşi; ne cam lăsau în pace. Deşi recunoscător în timpul liceului, acest lucru mă nemulţumeste nespus acum. Îmi pare rău ca am privit învăţatul ca pe o povară de care mă debarasam când aveam ocazia. Şi, în mod natural, am ajuns să ştiu doar atât de mult la fiecare materie pentru a nu trece drept ignorant. Sunt multe motive pe care le pot invoca, însă e tardiv pentru mine - dar pentru voi nu.
Aşadar, aş învăţa mai mult - la istorie, la filozofie, la geografie, la germană, la biologie. Observaţi omisiunile importante: matematica, româna, chimia. Singura materie la care am invăţat mai mult decât cerea programa şcolară e informatica - şi bine mi-a prins. Aş fi foarte bucuros să scriu un întreg eseu despre beneficiile fiecărei materii menţionate, dar spaţiul nu îmi permite. Aşa că voi lăsa la latitudinea voastră găsirea motivelor şi vă voi sfătui să vă alegeţi măcar o materie la care să învăţati şi să citiţi mult mai mult decât cere manualul. Pentru mine cel mai mare gol este istoria. Pentru voi?
Concluzionând asupra eticii şmecherului, voi menţiona doar că mă nemulţmeste prin egoismul necesar, dar mă încurajează prin metoda inovatoare. Şmecheria e legată strâns de increderea în sine, de negociere, de tatonarea limitelor, de customizarea condiţiilor date în beneficiul nostru. Mă încurajează pentru că rezolvarea majorităţii problemelor sociale necesită un anumit grad de îndrăzneală şmecheră (şi spun asta în modul cel mai pozitiv), de încredere şi cutezanţă inteligentă. În situaţia din Israel şi Palestina, de exemplu, care mă interesează în mod special, această şmecherie invăţata în scoală poate fi un ingredient esenţial al liderilor care contribuie la soluţionarea conflictului. În dezbaterea dintre agenţie şi structură mă situez destul de clar în prima tabără - cred că societatea este creată, recreată şi întreţinută de acţiunile fiecăruia dintre noi, şi nu invers. Cred, aţadar, că deşi etica şmecherului trebuie depăşită printr-o etică a responsabilităţii, metoda sa este aplicabilă într-o serie largă de situaţii. Cultivaţi-vă, aşadar, şmecheria - dar folosiţi-o inteligent şi etic.

[Aş citi mai mult. Ştiri, filozofie, sociologie şi istorie mai ales. M-aş gândi mai mult la statutul meu de elev]
De când am venit în Londra - şi de fapt cu mult inainte de asta - mi-a devenit dureros de clar că nu am citit nici pe departe cât aş fi vrut. Până acum priveam clasicii cu circumspecţie şi cu o oarecare emotie; 'nu îi voi putea inţelege încă', îmi spuneam. 'Şi, de altfel, nici nu am timp'. Prin clasici eu mă gândesc mai mult la Platon, Descartes sau Weber. Dar nici beletristica nu strică, nici literatura de specialitate. De când am început să citesc am descoperit - într-un proces analog proverbului 'mâncând iţi vine pofta' - o resursă aparent inepuizabilă de întrebări şi dileme care ies la iveală din mine din ce în ce mai vocal. Şi aici revin la şcoală. Dacă vorbiţi frumos cu doamna bibliotecară să îl aducă pe Foucault în câteva copii, veţi vedea că instituţia în care vă aflaţi are istoric legături puternice cu clinicile de psihiatrie şi cu închisorile, cu un sistem de represie şi socializare care a trebuit inventat şi perfecţionat pentru a răspunde nevoilor noului jucător pe scena luptei de putere - statul. Şcoala a obţinut un control foarte eficient (gândiţi-vă doar la raportul numeric dintre elevi şi profesori) asupra corpului vostru în primul rând şi asupra minţii voastre în al doilea. Ieşim prin cealaltă parte a furcilor caudine ale şcolii obişnuiţi să ascultăm de superiori, disciplinaţi, uşor de condus, obişnuiţi cu program fix şi regulat de muncă, bucuroşi de oscioarele pe care ni le aruncă sistemul. Suntem, aşadar, bine pregătiţi să mergem la serviciu. Care 'serviciu', la rândul său, este o invenţie nou-nouţă în istoria societăţii umane. Dar să nu merg prea departe. Ce e important să scot la iveală este că profesorii, deşi poate mulţi nu doresc asta, sunt actori principali în perpetuarea sistemelor sociale prevalente acum. Deşi acest lucru nu este rău în sine, multitudinea problemelor sociale care asteaptă o soluţie nu poate fi eliminată păstrând aceeaşi structură în funcţionare. Iar rolul meu şi al vostru e să aruncăm cu atenţie un şurub în locul potrivit în marea maşinărie şi să facem câte o rotiţă sau două să o ia înapoi.

[Aş profita de colegi mai mult]
Aşa cum Silicon Valley e un musuroi de antreprenori, genii şi finanţatori într-ale tehnologiei, sau cum Academia Nick Bolletieri e fabrică de campioni de tenis, Şincaiul este un butoi de fermentare al spumei spumelor. În mare parte şi mai eficient decât în alte locuri, în Şincai este predominantă meritocraţia. Calitatea oamenilor cu care interacţionaţi este ridicată, atât în ce îi priveşte pe elevi cât şi pe profesori. A profita de acest lucru este esenţial pentru liniştea emoţională subsecventă. Eu am început o firmă în timpul liceului cu un coleg de an, am făcut campanii de reciclare cu colegii de clasă, am înfiinţat un consiliu al elevilor sprijinit de profesori. Farmecul unui loc ca Şincaiul este că ai la îndemână toţi oamenii necesari pentru a face lucrurile să se întâmple.

Concluzia nu este una neprevăzută. În mare, aş profita doar mai mult de lucrurile pe care Şincaiul le are deja. Şi am scris întreg eseul acesta pentru a vă încuraja pe voi să o faceţi. Cred că tot ce trebuie e o masă critică de elevi şi profesori pentru a înclina balanţa către efervescenţa şi atmosfera elitist-constructivă care încă stă latentă în zidurile Şincaiului. Fiecare aniversare este o amintire a acestui lucru.

Javascript injection from Flex into the HTML wrapper - problems with IE, of course

2009-09-10T12:30:00.003+02:00

Here are some tips which might save someone some headaches (which you inevitably get when you start working with Internet Exploder).

First and foremost, if you want to communicate from Flex to (regular) Javascript using ExternalInterface in Internet Exploder (I was testing on version 6), you had better put an id attribute on the [object] and [embed] elements, or else it will either silently fail, or give you the wonderfully descriptive and logical error message 'null' is null or not an object. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it's rather philosophical. Oh, and it's always at character 118, line 1. I dare you to find it :)
You find this information if you read the first note on the Adobe documentation page for ExternalInterface.

When I said 'regular' earlier, I meant javascript that's already embedded in the page. Now, if you want to do nifty stuff like Javascript injection, you would probably use Abdul Qabiz's fantastic component. The reason I needed it was that our Flex application needed to be completely independent of the html wrapper it happened to find itself in, but also needed to open IFrames and move them around and do all kinds of nifty stuff (you can tell I like this word). That meant that the script would have to be embedded at runtime in the page by Flash.

Sounds doable, right? In Firefox, yes. In IE, haha, you've got another thing coming. IE and 'simplicity' have proven to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, time and time again.

I won't drone on about the specifics too much. But here are some major points to keep in mind:

for IE6 at least, only use double quotes only in the JavaScript file you are loading. If not - you guessed it - it silently fails.
don't try to use document.createElement("iframe"), because apparently there is a bug in IE for this particular function with this particular argument (read the first comments, where you will also find the workaround).

For me the workaround didn't work yet... I'm trying to tweak it somehow to get it going. And it's great how you feel completely in the dark when it comes to these things, as the documentation seems to be lacking. It would have been great if IE6 had had the public bug tracking application IE7 and 8 do. But it would have probably crashed very early on, due to overuse.

Ideas for optimizing flash / flex applications

2009-08-12T13:30:00.003+03:00

Optimizing the memory consumption, processor cycles used and even user experience in a flash application is as complex as it is important. Not very many projects out there reserve time for the explicit task of optimizing the application, which is why I think developers should incorporate some of these techniques in their daily development, or in the initial planning of the architecture of the application.

A good place to start for optimization advice is Adobe's advice for reducing SWF file size in Flex applications. A lot of the ideas there pertain well to improving user experience as well - as is, for instance, splitting the application in modules, loading external swcs, and loading content at runtime where possible. Adobe also offer a rather valuable tool for Flex developers, the linker dependencies xml which you can export as part of the compilation process. Here's an AIR application called AIR Link Report visualizer which will spare you from having to read plain xml by presenting dependencies in nicely arranged lists and offering a nifty visualisation chart showing you the breakdown of the packages used in your application.

User experience is given a lot of attention in this tutorial about SWF framerate optimization done by Lee Brimelow.

As processor cycles are concerned, it usually comes down to fine-grained changes in your code. For me, this is the fun part.
Depending on your current knowledge, you might want to start off with Grant Skinner's great presentation about resource management.
A comprehensive list of possible code optimizations is maintained by Joa Ebert, read it with both eyes. Also watch out for valuable links to more details on particular subjects, such as this list of bitwise operations: Bit Twiddling Hacks. Next, you can get your head around the debate about the int / uint / Number types in Flash by reading Grant Skinner's discussion on them (prompted by this blog post), and this post which also looks at flash player versions for a more detailed approach.

I will keep adding to this list as I discover new articles on the topic. If you have your favourites, show them off.

Running the ftp ant task in eclipse with version 2.0 of the Apache Commons-Net library

2009-08-10T18:02:00.005+03:00

...doesn't work!

(In case you are not familiar with running ant in eclipse, read both parts of the very good O'reilly article on that topic: part1, part2).

Now, if you want to use the ftp ant task in eclipse (which is not a core ant task), you will need to install some more java classes. Read this article for the details. However, keep in mind that you need version 1.4.1 of the Apache Commons-Net library, and not 2.0, which at the time of writing is the latest version (I'm using eclipse 3.4.0). If you use version 2, however, and you get something like this from eclipse:

Could not create type ftp due to java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/apache/commons/net/ftp/FTPClientConfig (Unsupported major.minor version 49.0)

it means you're stubborn :). So use version 1.4.1.

UPDATE
Courtesy of Gary, a Java informed friend, here's the real reason for the error:
"The error 'Unsupported major.minor version 49.0' means that java 5 is required. Its possible that you have configured somewhere to use java 1.4 (v4).
if you make sure you have java 5 installed and configure eclipse to use this version then you should be okay."

Israel and Palestine: do we really need more evidence?

2009-06-07T00:04:00.005+03:00

If you needed any more evidence that Israel is engaging in violent, unethical and systematically planned harassment against the Palestinians, you should watch "People and the Land" (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6). It is not an incredibly good documentary, but it makes its point.

In fact, you would have to be a very poor film maker not to get this message across. What is happening is blatantly clear to any person with a droplet of sense. Israel policy and American support for it are unmoved by UNSC resolutions condemning it, by human rights organisations recording their consistent violations of basic human rights, by the suffering of the Palestinians and by the pressure of the international community.

Liz Coleman, Bennington College's president, in her speech at TED 2009 about the dying-out liberal arts education in the USA, mentions (at min 5:23) five processes or goals which further erode the link between education and civic engagement: "Oversimplifications of civic engagement", "Idealisation of the expert", "Fragmentation of knowledge", "Technical mastery" and "Neutrality". Of these the second and last are key to why the situation in Palestine is allowed to continue internationally. "Experts" like Alan Dershowitz fuel an artificial debate, where there is nothing left to prove. Pressure groups against the occupation are scattered, while Israeli lobbying is well organised and powerful. And both their influences in the international community are decided neither by just argument or evidence, but by power flows. America has been pumping money into Israel like there's no tomorrow (also watch, if you haven't, part 6 of People and Land), and simultaneously using its veto right in the United Nations Security Council to prevent resolutions against Israel from being adopted (tens of times, in almost all cases it being the only state to disagree). Even so, Israel is on top of the international 'villains', with 32 UNSC resolutions violations, all related to the Palestinian "problem".

This is a clear-cut case. It is simple and straighforward. It is true that both sides are engaging in such activities, but Israel is by far the champion. It should be made to take a break.

Perhaps I will be urged by some to go back to my programming. I am also aware that my knowledge of the issue is still limited. But I am stretching my imagination to its limits in trying to figure out what piece of undiscovered evidence can demonstrate my ignorance or blind partisanship. I am going for the stretch by reading, in paralel, Dershowitz's "The case for Israel" and Chomsky's "Fateful Triangle". If you have any other suggestions, I am open.

So, do we really need more evidence?

Home shweet home: watch Luc Besson's new movie

2009-06-06T14:36:00.003+03:00

YouTube are hosting, promoting and showing "Home", the documentary by Luc Besson about the environmental issues threatening our planet, they have recently announced on their blog.

I have just finished watching it, and I have mixed thoughts about it. On the one hand I think it's quite a bad production, and I have yet to understand why Luc received awards for it (maybe for the breadth of his research if nothing else). On the other hand, I do think that, given the current campaign to see it, a mass viewing would be beneficial.

Firstly, the film struck me as 'cheesy' - the narrator(ess) is trying to be inspiring and awe-inducing, but the result is something we've all seen and heard tens of times; and when it spans 90 minutes, it becomes really old really fast. Secondly, there are quite a few unsupported claims there, do listen to what she sais with both ears. And thirdly, the actual narrated text is gradeschool material (not necessarily in content, but in form) - the sentences are overly simple, repetitions and truisms abound ("Everything is linked" said a gazillion times), and if it weren't for the great images, the film could have been summarised in 5 minutes.

Now this is not to say that the message of the film ("We are threatening the Earth, and unless we change radically we are bound to endanger our existence; the first steps have been taken, but much more commitment is needed") is not a valid one (in fact, I believe in it quite a lot) or that the intentions of the producers are to brainwash people into doing something about the ecologic crisis (I would endorse that, to be honest). In fact, there were some moments in the film when I felt I had to spring to my feet and start doing something - and surely forget about the beef wrap I was eating, which was so blatantly contributing to deforestation of the Amazon rainforests. I do sincerely believe that the more people will see this film, the more "commitment" we will make as a species for living in sync with nature. But I also believe firmly that other such films (the only example I can think of right now is the very good documentary We Feed The World), were they equally promoted, would induce a much bigger change. I just feel a lot of people will see "Home" as propagandistic (which it is) and will also disregard the actual issues underlying its creation (or not watch it in the first place).

And now comes the philosophico-ethical question - is it 'right' to promote material which you regard as inappropriate in itself in order to further a goal which you believe in, just because you think that particular material has the greatest chance of making an impact through quantitative access to it, rather than through its quality? What about the law of unintended consequences?

I will answer 'yes' to this one, and I urge you to see "Home" and discuss it (and be quick, it is up there only until the 14th of June).
What would you answer?

PureMVC improved: commands can be singletons

2009-04-28T15:58:00.005+03:00

While working with PureMVC on some games in Flash CS3 I thought it would be quite useful to be able to specify that some commands should not be recreated each time they are run (as is the default behaviour), but rather only once, and the same instance should be used all throughout. In games where certain commands occur often (eg. the one associated with the message 'Deal' in card games) this would be an important memory save.

So I set out to adapt PureMVC. I tweaked the Controller::executeCommand function the most, with some meddling with Controller:registerCommand, Facade::registerCommand, and their respective interfaces. Overall, only 4 files changed, with only the controller suffering essential functionality alteration. The only change in the API is that when you use registerCommand in your implementation of the Facade, you now have a third parameter, called 'singleton', of type Boolean, which defaults to false. If it is set to true, only one instance of that particular command will be created and then reused all throughout the life of the application.

Example of singleton command initialization:

this.registerCommand(STARTUP, StartupCommand, true);

You can download the changed PureMVC framework here.

Flash preloader mayhem. bytesTotal equals 0 or bytesLoaded and the misterious missing Content-Length header

2009-03-06T20:56:00.008+02:00

There are times in programming when when the simplest of things turn out to be the most difficult to achieve.

I experienced this some days ago when I wanted to implement a preloader for a game I'd been working on.

After an unsatisfactory attempt at a first-frame preloader (the combination with PureMVC was to be fatal to me :), I went for the external one. Namely, there is a very small swf, which is the 'host', and which loads the actual game while displaying the loading progress. With no more fuss from PureMVC, and everything working fine, the progress bar appeared at 0%, as expected. It was good, simple and quick, like a preloader should. I happily deployed the game and test it in the browsers.

None of them worked! All of them displayed an empty progress bar, and after some seconds the game suddenly appeared. My gosh, what could it be, I wondered. I placed some strategic traces, only to learn that the bytesTotal property of the Loader.contentLoaderInfo object was either equal to the bytesLoaded property (only in Firefox), or simply 0. This was the strangest thing I'd seen in quite a bit of time...

After some extensive Googling around, I found some hints of what might be wrong. The Adobe documentation for the URLLoader class (which I had not used) mentioned that "a missing Content-Length header will result in bytesTotal being indeterminate" (nothing of the sort was mentioned for the Loader class, which I had used). This prompted me to open Charles and spy on the headers returned by the server for the loader and for the game itself. Indeed, there was a single difference between them: the game's response was missing a "Content-Length" header. Eurika!

This, in turn, called for an .htaccess file to set things straight (I was using Apache 2). I dug some more and I discovered mod_proxy_http in the Apache documentation. They mention that the variables proxy-sendcl and proxy-sendchunks are responsible for the Content-Length header, which apparently works in conjunction with an operation called 'chunking', performed by Apache when serving larger files, whereby it starts sending the file to the requester before buffering it (which would allow it to know its size), making the whole process quicker. I presently set out to alter them, by using the SetEnv command: setenv proxy-sendcl 1. I put this in the .htaccess, and I made sure the variables were set by using a phpinfo() call in a test php script. Nothing changed! Then I added the other one: setenv proxy-sendchunks 0, hoping to finally force Apache to cut it out with the chunking. Didn't work this time etiher, everything looked pretty much the same. It dawned on me at this point that I didn't know the correct values for these variables (maybe it wasn't numbers, but rather some predefined enums? the documentation didn't say). But I had already wasted too much time on a preloader and decided to call for help from our hosting company. They suggested, quite strangely, that I turn gzipping off, by using this line in the .htaccess: SetEnv no-gzip dont-vary. I was quite sceptical of the solution, because the loader swf was being gzipped by Apache anyway and it did have its "Content-Length" header where it needed it. However, surprise surprise, the preloader started working! It was smooth and silky, as I was hoping.

Now, I still don't understand what gzipping had to do with proxy-sendcl. I have sent them an email back for clarification, I will be forever grateful if they can illuminate me. And I shall undoubtedly share my findings, so keep posted - or, if you know and are willing to help, drop a comment!

I hope this saves someone some precious time.

Why should we study history?

2009-02-27T07:17:00.000+02:00

I will start off the discussion with the bold assertion that I do not know history. (There you go, I just stripped myself of any authority of writing this article).

Nevertheless, there circulates around young people today an association between history and residue, between history and waste of time. The historical foundations of university subjects are regarded as 'filler courses' and are studied, by the truly diligent, the week before the exam. Except when it comes to football or cars, knowing history rather than craft is seen as trivial and truly useless. While this may be grounded on the empowering belief that 'we know better', my contention is that the attitude is societally deleterious.

The whole debate started due to my customary nosiness. I was surrounded by four people at a dinner - two students of economics and banking and two studying aeronautical engineering. Feeling blissfully ignorant about the content of the latter, exotically sounding subject, I started to ask my companions what aeronautical engineering practically entails. They were, quite naturally of people busying themselves with relatively new occupations, relatively usure of what exactly they were doing - or how to explain it to a layman such as myself. Indeed, they would rather assert what they were not doing. So my question of whether they would eventually get down and dirty and build actual aeroplanes was met with a definite 'nooo!'. 'We are more like designers of aeroplanes, we come up with the concept'. 'All right', I said, 'that means you are more like the architects, and the aeroplane mechanics are like the builders, right?'. 'Yeah, something like that' (At a later point in the discussion the same person let me know that they 'just apply the formulas and voila, the aeroplane is built', which had the numbing effect of restoring me to deep confusion, the exact point I had started from). At this point, to make my hard-headedness less obvious, I inquired whether they had heard of Traian Vuia, of whom I knew had invented the jet plane - and was Romanian, so I could win status points with him. All hell broke loose.

With faces reminiscent of European students at their first Chinese class, eyebrows swung into the air, jaws slightly dropping, bulging eyeballs, body poised forward like cheetas before leaping for a wounded antelope, the two aeronautical engineers seemed by this time ready to present their fingers, perhaps with complimentary audio effects. 'Whaaat?! Why should I know that? Like what was that anyway? Is that like even a real person?' and so on and so forth. On my hearing that they don't learn any history of their subject at University, and moreover that they see no use for it whatever, I swiftly pulled the comando knife out of the sole of my left shoe - where I keep it just for these occasions -, leapt on the table and, before the girl could blink, I swung the cool, sharp blade toward her neck, stopping nanometres in front of her throbbing jugular. I was going to give her a good reason to study history.
Well, no I didn't. But I amaze myself how it always surprises me (you see how I dodged the double 'surprise', he?) when people have different opinions than mine. I mean, the nerve on them. And this time it was serious. I was just about to set things straight with a flawless rhetoric, when the bill was presented to us and the tension evaporated (worthwhile to notice this is one of the very few instances when money alleviate tension).

Indeed, why should we study history? It's a freakin good question, if you think about it. What good can history possibly do us, what problems will it solve? History is inescapably a has-been, and has-beens don't matter in the modern world. We are looking at the future now, with a lens from the present. The past was yesterday or last weekend in the pub. Get a grip, shake off that naivité and let go of history. As one memorable Richard put it, Bygones! (those fans of Ally McBeal out there will surely resonate).

*to be continued*

Sexual contentions

2009-02-27T07:09:00.002+02:00

If you got here from reading my essay, know that I only wanted to emphasise that those cited ideas were mine, and not the subject of plagiarism ;). And thanks for the scrutiny, I always appreciate a thorough reading.

Pure MVC - the good, the bad and the ugly

2009-02-05T15:26:00.013+02:00

I just finished my first Flash game built with PureMVC for ActionScript3.0 (sorry, it's a work project and not released yet).

I'm going to share some bad experiences and some good experiences about it. Let's start with the bad ones, because they're most fun to read.

As Tony says, PureMVC makes you write quite a bit of boilerplate code in the beginning. I expected that anyway, sice I had just learned the system. But it's true, it is far from a pleasant prospect to imagine having to write it again. If I will use it in the future, I will most probably copy the entire project and start changing, or even create a 'blank setup', with all the initialization code ready for ordinary applications.

One of the complications is that when sending messages through the facade (a similar publish /subscribe mechanism to Cairngorm Events), any command and any mediator can respond and act upon them (proxies can't). This makes it difficult to know who and what is doing at certain stages of the application, especially when the project is getting bigger. There is no central point to see who is doing the work at "APPLICATION_INIT", for instance, because any and all mediators can listen to this event, and that signaling code is in the particular classes (through the listNotificationInterests method). I found myself using Ctrl+H in Eclipse (which searches through all project files) more often than should be the case for a good framework (or for a programmer with good memory - I should eat more fish).

A subsequent, unforseen oddity comes to life when linking to other mediators in a mediator. I wonder if this verges on bad practice, but on a few occasions I needed to link mediators directly, and in one instance I realised I had circular referencing between two mediators. This would generally be no particular problem, but the way PureMVC recommends registering Mediators is not compatible with such referencing. Namely, you register them in sequence in the top-level ApplicationMediator, as part of an application initializing command. This means that the circular referencing will break, because the second mediator will not have been created yet when we attempt to retrieve it in the constructor of the first.
My way around this was to move the mediators registration code at the end of the application initialization and then to send a "MEDIATORS_REGISTERED" message, which could be listened by all mediators who may be in danger of circular linkage. This had the nice effect of bloating almost all my mediators' class code.

Also, when coding commands which need to wait for view components to finish animating, it becomes cumbersome when other entities (commands or mediators) need to act when that animation finishess. For instance, a card placeholder needs to change colour when the card reaches it. You don't want to lose state in the command by just registering a new command to execute at the end of the animation, because you need to use previously obtained information. You basically have to dispatch two 'messages' in the view component's mediator -> one through the facade (eg. "CARD_RECHED_DESTINATION"), for the interested mediators, and the other, a regular Flash event (for instance Event.COMPLETE). The command will then respond to the Flash event and continue its functionality. (Alternatively you can dispatch the facade message in the waiting command; but what if that animation is at other times triggered by different commands as well? You still need the message to be sent out...).

Now moving on to good things.

What's cool is that once you've gone through the initial scaffolding, it is very easy to add bits of functionality in the application. That is, if you leverage copy-paste, because something like _cardsMediator = CardsMediator(facade.retrieveMediator(CardsMediator.NAME)); is not fun to write 5-10 times per class. Also, the linking between visual components becomes a breeze, because most of the times they will respond to existing notifications.

Also, if I am to think about my application generally, I feel it is very solid, robust. I have had very few bugs caused by my misusing the framework, so from this point of view PureMVC does not stand in your way.

Will post back with more insights.

Take the survey!

2008-07-30T20:40:00.003+03:00

How to clone (duplicate) an object in ActionScript 3

2008-05-12T06:27:00.014+03:00

For a project I needed to clone an object of unknown type. And by clone I mean to create a new instance of that same type and then fill out all its properties (including getters and setters) to mirror the original object.

Thanks to a friend, I discovered the describeType function in AS3. But this alone will only take care of the copying part. To create an object of the same type as another one we use getDefinitionByName.

Although Flash reflection is pretty basic, with a little work it will do the trick.

Get the application files.

Here's the code:



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" xmlns:local="*" creationComplete="init()">

<mx:Script>
 <![CDATA[

     import mx.controls.Alert;

     private var source:DataObject = new DataObject();
     private var cloneObject:DataObject;


     private function init():void {

         source.name = 'John Doe';
         source.howMany = 4.5;
         source.when = new Date(0);
         source.complexProp = new DataObject();
         source.complexProp.name = 'Name in sub-object';
  
         cloneObject = UtilFunctions.clone(source) as DataObject;
  
         Alert.show("Clone:\nname = " + cloneObject.name + "\nhowMany = " + cloneObject.howMany + "\nwhen = " + cloneObject.when + "\ncomplexProp.name = " + cloneObject.complexProp.name);
     }

     /**

      * describeType will produce this (for a DataObject instance):
      *
      * <type name="DataObject" base="Object" isDynamic="false" isFinal="false" isStatic="false">

           <extendsClass type="Object"/>
           <accessor name="isHandicap" access="writeonly" type="Boolean" declaredBy="DataObject"/>

           <variable name="howMany" type="Number"/>
           <accessor name="complexProp" access="readwrite" type="DataObject" declaredBy="DataObject"/>

           <variable name="name" type="String"/>
           <variable name="when" type="Date"/>

         </type>
      *
      * */

 ]]>

</mx:Script>
</mx:Application>

And the UtilFunctions.as file:



package
{
 import flash.utils.describeType;
 import flash.utils.getDefinitionByName;
 import flash.utils.getQualifiedClassName;

 public class UtilFunctions
 {

  
     public static function newSibling(sourceObj:Object):* {
         if(sourceObj) {

             var objSibling:*;
             try {
                 var classOfSourceObj:Class = getDefinitionByName(getQualifiedClassName(sourceObj)) as Class;
                 objSibling = new classOfSourceObj();
             }

             catch(e:Object) {}
          
             return objSibling;
         }
         return null;
     }
  
     public static function clone(source:Object):Object {

         var clone:Object;
         if(source) {
             clone = newSibling(source);
          
             if(clone) {
                 copyData(source, clone);
             }
         }
      
         return clone;
     }
      
     public static function copyData(source:Object, destination:Object):void {

         //copies data from commonly named properties and getter/setter pairs
         if((source) && (destination)) {

             try {
                 var sourceInfo:XML = describeType(source);
                 var prop:XML;
              
                 for each(prop in sourceInfo.variable) {

                     if(destination.hasOwnProperty(prop.@name)) {
                         destination[prop.@name] = source[prop.@name];
                     }

                 }
              
                 for each(prop in sourceInfo.accessor) {
                     if(prop.@access == "readwrite") {
                         if(destination.hasOwnProperty(prop.@name)) {
                             destination[prop.@name] = source[prop.@name];
                         }

                     }
                 }
             }
             catch (err:Object) {

                 ;
             }
         }
     }
 }
}

Funny quotes

2008-04-20T21:39:00.002+02:00

I thought I'd share some nice quotes I keep saving online (using the eSnips toolbar).

It's OK for you to make noise. Otherwise, we feel like we are fucking a ninja (Craigslist)
Cel mai necinstit lucru, in viatza, este modul in care aceasta se termina. Adica viatza e grea si-tzi ocupa tot timpul. Ce capetzi la sfarshitul ei? O moarte. Asta ce-i, un bonus??? Eu cred ca ciclul vietzii e de-a-ndaratelea. Ar trebui intai sa mori, apoi sa mergi intr-un azil de batrani. Esti dat afara de acolo pe motiv ca esti prea sanatos, te duci, iti iei pensia, apoi, cand incepi sa lucrezi, primeshti un ceas de aur in prima zi de lucru. Munceshti patruzeci de ani pana devii suficient de tanar. Te apuci de baut, mergi la show-uri, si esti gata pentru liceu, apoi scoala primara, devii copil, te joci, n-ai responsabilitatzi, devii bebelush, apoi itzi petreci ultimapoi itzi petreci ultimele noua luni plutind cu toate facilitatzile dupa care termini totul printr-un orgasm (mass mess)
Of course, if they have time machines in the future they'll probably have a separate reference manual just for Cambridge. This has always been a fussy place, a town of i dotters and t crossers, where you're liable to get both your grammar and your ideas corrected in the same conversation. (Paul Graham - What you Can't Say)
I've seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you're not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up. (Paul Graham - Great Hackers)

How to get the Class of any Object in ActionScript 3 and Flex

2008-03-21T17:44:00.008+02:00

Here's a small trick I recently learned. It's very helpful in some situations.

If you need to know the class of a random object:

            private function getObjectClass(obj:*):Class {
   var className:String = getQualifiedClassName(obj);
   var classOfObj:Class = ApplicationDomain.currentDomain.getDefinition(className) as Class;

   return classOfObj;
}

And creating another instance of that object is just a step forward:

private function newInstanceOf(obj:*):Object {
              var objectClass:Class = getObjectClass(obj);
           
              if(objectClass) {
                  return new objectClass();
              }
           
              return null;
          }

Notice: this last trick will work only if you know for sure that the constructor for those objects don't need any parameters (either have none defined, or all have default values). If you're not sure, consider wrapping the code inside a try-catch block. If, however, you know that the constructor will require arguments, please tell me how you solved this, I'm still thinking about an elegant solution.

Here's a full working example written for Flex3.

Hope it helps.

Book recommendation: 'The Underground History Of American Education', by John Taylor Gatto

2008-01-27T23:04:00.000+02:00

If you're into education and you're tired of reading articles, blog posts, quotes, snips and snippets, here's a book to quench your curiosity - 'The Underground History Of American Education', by John Taylor Gatto.

After a career in the middle of the system, Gatto is now an open opponent of education as we know it (and have felt it). He is quick to peek behind the scenes and point out the 'real' interests of such a system.

Of course, after twelve years in public schooling, seeing an ex insider (both as a student and as a teacher) mess it all up like that is savourous beyond words. He touches on many things I had myself felt were wrong, but just though it was the way it was supposed to be and let it rest (and looking at things trough Gattoish eyes, I was helped into [not] thinking that).

However, two of his essays [1], [2] (although I enjoyed them) made me a bit wary - some of his language seems to verge on paranoia and conspiracy theory. They're valuable nonetheless; just read them carefully and critically.

Anyway, I plan to read the book too in the near future. If you have already done it, please let me know of what you thought of it.

My first haxe project

2008-01-11T03:01:00.000+02:00

Today I started work on my first haxe project (first after "hello world", that is). It is (will be) a website which will show all the events in the town I live in at any given time.

Working in haxe (the neko part) seems to be surprisingly straightforward. Although it didn't simplify the work needed a lot more than php does, for instance, haxe has more appeal to me; it appears lightweight, while php seems heavy. It kept me up until this hour and I'm eager to learn more.

However appealing though, I will refrain from using haxe for the javascript part. I have come to this decision after quite a heated debate with myself. The reasons:

First, it's a pretty small project, at least at the beginning. We want to get it out as soon as possible and then build features on it as it grows.
Second, although haxe itself is easy to use, it only offers the basic functionality as javascript is concerned. It cannot be compared to a javascript framework such as prototype or extjs. I don't expect that from it either - it's not meant to be such a library (yet, I hope). I also thought about integrating haxe for js and one of these frameworks, but it's too complicated for what I need right now. Maybe in the future.
Third, I want to learn extjs :)

I want to have a word with the author of hxBlog, maybe I can learn some things quicker and skip some trial and error iterations :) After having studied the source code that is (it's there, on the website, in case you're interested).

Spreading the word for Digital Maoism

2008-01-06T21:03:00.001+02:00

I've just finished reading 'Digital Maoism' by Jaron Lanier and I felt the urge to share. Do read it, I promise it's valuable. Broadly and minimally speaking, it's about collectivism as opposed to individualism, both online and offline, with very interesting examples and insights.

I'm not saying it's all correct, let alone true (in fact I have some points I would argue with him on), but it is just so refreshingly alive. I like people who challege. He does it in a very artistic, but coherent and documented way. One cannot easily disregard his opinions.

I highly recommend this to anyone working in Scrum project management environments (this may shed some light on the entire process) and to those who love Wikipedia, Digg, and other such aggregators. That is, if you're brave enough to face a real challenge.

Cheers all, tell me how it was.

SQLite developers are pissed

2007-12-16T14:33:00.000+02:00

How SQLite devs educate the users of their db system :))

This pragma was available in version 2.8 but was removed in version 3.0. It is a dangerous pragma whose use is discouraged. To help dissuide users of version 2.8 from employing this pragma, the documentation will not tell you what it does.

source: sqlite

Funniest line from Superbad

2007-11-12T12:05:00.000+02:00

This cracks me up:

Seth: You know when you hear girls say 'Ah man, I was so shit-faced last night, I shouldn't have fucked that guy?' We could be that mistake! [courtesy of imdb.com]

Sunday Smile

2007-10-21T14:51:00.000+02:00

Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.
Fulton J. Sheen

Hilarious Update [mersi, Dragos] :D

The smartest guy since man split from apes [sorry, Romanian only]
I always knew Romanians were smarter than your average folks [Romanian as well]

Chile's private pension system, part I

2007-10-20T23:11:00.000+02:00

I first saw a reference to Chile's pension reform when I was reading a critical analysis of Romania's own implementation of such a system (though, as I would find out, there are many underlying differences between the two). It said there that Chile is the first country where people have begun collecting the actual pensions, after retirement. I'm not sure whether this also means that Chile was the first to actually implement the private pension system reform, but it does make for an interesting case (if pensions are your thing, that is).

My first lecture (hence the 'part I' in the title) was The Sucess of Chile's Privatized Social Security. I think it is (it doesn't say anywhere, but it looks and sounds like one) the transcript of a speech which José Piñera gave at the CATO Institute. At the time of publication, José Piñera was the co-chairman of the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Privatization. But the text itself relates to his activities as Minister of Labour in Chile at the time of the privatisation.

First and foremost, the reform was made in 1981. The idea is similar to what is going on in many countries around the world, including Romania - the state is transferring a part of the burden of paying pension annuities to citizens who have recently retired from the workforce to the private system, where they are managed in the context of open markets and capitalism. The hope (and, in most cases, reality) is that this responsibility will be handled more efficiently by private administrators.

The main difference, however, between Chile and Romania in terms of the pension system is that Chile is now almost 100% privatised, in that it has outsourced all responsibility of pension handling to what they call AFPs (Spanish for Pension Fund Administrators - there were 20 of them in 1995), and the only pension related activities that the state still has are managing the pension funds for the minor part of the population which has chosen not to entrust their finances to the private sector. [Note: the text for this article was published in 1995; odds are that since that time the state has finalised all pension-related activities]

New workers have to go into the new private system because the old system is bankrupt. Thus, the old system will inevitably die on the day that the last person who entered that system passes away. On that day the government will have no pension system whatsoever. The private system is not a complementary system; it is a replacement that we believe is more efficient.

This fundamental difference naturally raises the following question : why has Romania not followed suit and made a decission for complete privatisation? As you may know, Romania is planning to switch 6% of worker's taxable salaries toward the private sector (this will effectively happen starting with February of March 2008, when the percentage will be only 2% and gradually rise to 6% in 8 years, making the reform complete in 2016), and to keep the remaining 3.5% state-managed. To my mind, there are a number of possible answers for this question:

The state does not yet fully trust the private system and thus chooses to keep a backup fund (the 3.5%) just in case (although, it must be said, there is a backup fund for the private pension administrators as well)
Romania cannot cover the budget deficit of a full privatisation
The decision was made to adopt the multi-pylon system, as advised by the World Bank

The first option is truly laughable and I sincerely hope it's not the case. As for the second and the third, it might be the case that they both have a grain of truth.

Whichever the case, there are two points to be made about possible pitfalls in the Romanian design:

Firstly, the cost of privatisation will be very large as it is, for the following reason (I'm not sure it will surpass the estimated cost of the full version of the privatisation, but I'm almost sure the difference is not worth the trouble of partial privatisation unless there are additional benefits): the state will have to manage two concurrent, complementary systems instead of one. First, there's the state-managed pension fund, which will diminish, but not disappear - the costs for running it will most likely stay the same. Then, there's the new web of institutions and departments created specifically to manage the transfer of money from employers and other contributors to the private pension administrators, to keep an eye on the latter and to devise regulations for the new system. There will be a need for hundreds of new state emplyees, new information systems and hardware (not only IT), etc. Add to this the drop in GDP and you suddenly start to wonder if it's worth the effort (because budgetary burdens will be reflected on the economy as a whole and thus on the working class as well). For this to make any sense, the benefits must be substantial. However, the prospects are not good in that direction.
Secondly, the inflexible nature of the reform is likely to induce a lack of competition between the private pension administrators. By inflexibility I mean that the percentage of the monthly wage set aside for private pension is fixed by the state. This will not create uniformity among contributors, but what it will do is decrease interest in the development of administrator's assets, since there isn't much one can do, apart from switching between administrators (which is likely to be perceived as a radical move and therefore attempted relatively seldom). This will in turn generate a lack of competition, due to low migration of the clients between administrators. And low competition, apart from generating weak financial results, also opens up the possibility for administrators getting away with poor services, lack of professionalism and even attempts to fraud.

However biased the article may be (the man was the minister of labour at the time of the switch and also an active promoter of the idea), the privatisation of the pension system in Chile is nevertheless a success story.

Today we have 20 AFPs. In 14 years no AFP has gone bankrupt.
[...]
After 14 years and because of compound interest, the system is paying old-age pensions that are 40 to 50 percent higher than those paid under the old system. (In the case of disability and survivor pensions, another privatized insurance, pensions are 70 to 100 percent higher than under the old system.) We are extremely happy.
[...]
Pension reform has contributed strongly to an increase in the rate of economic growth. Before the 1970s Chile had a real growth rate of 3.5 percent. For the last 10 years we have been growing at the rate of 7 percent, double our historic rate. That is the most powerful means of eliminating poverty because growth increases employment and wages. Several experts have attributed the doubling of the growth rate to the private pension system.
[...]
But on the whole, I can tell you that it has been a success beyond all our dreams.

As for the same thing happening in Romania, I have my doubts. More in part II.

Lisp is alien. Cool!

2007-10-20T21:25:00.000+02:00

On hearing a statement that anything in a Lisp program is recursive (which I though was an exaggeration), I opened up its respective Wikipedia page and started reading.

The article is merely meant as an overall introduction to the language (just as I expected), and that's pretty much what I got. What I was left with upon finishing the article was that Lisp is all about lists - all the examples involve them, although they do say in one place that

Because conses and lists are so universal in Lisp systems, it is a common misconception that they are Lisp's only data structures. In fact, all but the most simplistic Lisps have other data structures – such as vectors (arrays), hash tables, structures, and so forth.

I assume therefore that when you want arrays, or other data structures, you write them as lists too. Strange.

Here's something interesting I found out on the same page:

The now-ubiquitous if-then-else structure, now taken for granted as an essential element of any programming language, was invented by McCarthy for use in Lisp, where it saw its first appearance in a more general form (the cond structure). It was inherited by Algol, which popularized it.

Now, for someone coming from such programming languages as Java, ActionScript, or C (which they all inherit, to some extent), a lisp program is hideously difficult to read.

I suppose I should learn Lisp, but it seems so foreign. (Paul Graham, '83)

You've read my mind there, Paul. However, it's all the more incentive for me to learn it. But not just now, I'm still tinkering with Java (I'm learning it in paralell to ActionScript development). I wonder how long it takes to get used to reading Lisp. I mean, there were some examples spanning 4 lines and they took me the equivalent of a 50 lines class in any of the above languages. In any case, I'm almost positive (although it's more of a hunch than a documented certainty) that Lisp is more difficult to read through than Java, for instance, for equally advanced programmers in the respective languages. But it seems that it's also shorter, so there's a chance that the overall lecture of a source code might be shorter for Lisp. I wonder...

I might get some answers from Paul Graham's articles - I've seen he has one where he compares Lisp to other major programming languages, which must be an interesting lecture.

In any case, the article got me interested. It is so different from anything I've wrote code in that I'm attracted to it - it might be similar to going back to the point where people invented the wheel and then inventing something else, completely different, paradigim-wise. It might be a good chance to expand my programming horizons and simply to try something totally new.

As for my recursion issue, the answer is that not everything in Lisp is recursive:

Programmers in the Scheme dialect often express loops using tail recursion. Scheme's commonality in academic computer science has led some students to believe that tail recursion is the only, or the most common, way to write iterations in Lisp; this is incorrect. All frequently-seen Lisp dialects have imperative-style iteration constructs, from Scheme's do loop to Common Lisp's complex loop expressions.
[...]
Lisp syntax lends itself naturally to recursion.

Supermarket Secrets

2007-10-19T23:33:00.000+02:00

I think everyone needs to see this, however shopping-savvy they are. It's a couple of documentary shows done on (obviously) supermarkets - within the UK.

What I don't like about them is that, in my opinion, they are a bit too keen on showing you the dark side of supermarkets; you kind of get sick of yet another and another argument which proves the point you expected them to make even before the film started. But at the same time I can't really think of another way in which anyone could depict this - it's really, truly scary! Couple this with 'We feed the world' (torrent here) and believe me, you'll put your taste buns to work once more and start looking for the ugliest food there is.

So the rule is simple. The next time you want to buy food, think Cow and Chicken, 'The Ugliest Weenie'. New meaning in old cartoons :)

What I think is valuable in watching these films is the simple fact that they help raise awareness (which I think we completely lack, as consumers) of what's really going on behind the scene. (If the films are to be trusted, that is. They do indeed appear to be taking every precautionary measure against giving the impression that they're just directed stunts [We feed the world more than Supermarket Secrets]). I personally think that most of the things they say, if not all, are true. But what’s really tricky is that even when the facts are clear it’s not easy to say who’s right and who’s wrong, since there are so many ways of saying and then of looking at the same thing. Why I choose to give them credit has to do with my impression that the people making them are well intended and trying to be as professional as they can about what they’re doing.

As a side note, here’s what I recently found out about this kind of documentaries: the underlying tendency (to which they too subscribe) to emphasise the interrelatedness of our actions (as simple shoppers, for instance) and the lives and lots of people in unassuming parts of the world is a neo-marxist trend. Sounds cool, ha?

What's changed for me since watching these and since reading a bit more on the topic is that I've started to be increasingly suspicious of the idea of profit maximisation. I'm not sure right now what it could be replaced with as companies' driving force, but I think moderation would currently go a long way. There's none whatsoever, from what I saw in the films and it's taking me aback, to be honest. The end is not more important than the means here, it is the only thing in clear sight. The way the large corporations run their businesses is far from essential unless their image is on the line. What is essential is money. Christ, I sound trite. But how can you not?... Just look at the films, please.

Here is the link to the torrent file for 'Supermarket Secrets'. Tell me what you thought of it. And don't forget about 'We feed the world, either'.

I'm also keen on your suggestions on further films on the topic, and, perhaps even more interestingly, cinematographic replies of 'the other side' - the corporations and government policy makers. That would be a treat!

The 'this' keyword - a plea for revival

2007-10-11T07:01:00.000+02:00

Give 'this' a chance!

I'm here to make a point for the revival of the use of the keyword 'this' in programming (in the languages where it exists, that is).

But first of all, why revival? Is it dead, extinct, forgotten? I certainly hope not. But I think it's falling in disgrace in the programmer community.

I'm an ActionScript programmer myself and last night I was reading 'Essential ActionScript 3.0', by Colin Mook (which book, by the way, I received from what I believe was the first Romanian Flex Camp - thanks, guys). There was an entire subheading dedicated to the use or omittance of the keyword this (strangely named 'Omitting the this keyword'), and the main idea I got from it was that since the compiler is smart enough to detect member variables even when this is omitted, then why should programmers go through all the trouble writing it?. Their supporting argument was that writing this 'can be laborious and can lead to clutter' and that a this-free code 'improves readability'. To this point I was already pretty annoyed witht their reasoning; next came the only reference to the quasi-positive aspects they see in using this: 'However, some programmers always prefer to use this simply to distinguish instance variables and instance methods from local variables'. Not cool!

This having been said, here are my arguments for the use of this:

it's compiler friendly

As Colin explained, when encountering an identifier, the Flash / Flex compiler starts to look for matching variables or functions in this order: parameters passed to the currently executing function; locally declared variables; nested function (function within function); instance variables or methods. This means that when you omit the this keyword, the processor goes through 3 redundant cycles until it finds the instance variable or function which you referenced. It's that simple. This is pretty similar to simplifying constants as much as possible (such as writing 2.5 in the source code instead of calculating 5 /2), because when you take the time to type this, you are actually skipping three useless checks, thereby improving the speed of your application, even if by a meager margin.

using this is [usually] more readable than not

I can imagine that this is probably a pretty bold statement, but I think it's true, for the following reason: when you read a piece of code yourself, whether it's yours or not, and stumble upon an identifier, your brain does pretty much the same thing the compiler does: checks whether the identifier is a function or variable (you understand that from context), then looks to find whether it's local (passed as an argument or defined in the function - it's important to note that unless the identifier is familiar to you, you will actually move your eyes above the current line, scanning for a local instance declaration, until you find the function signature and check that too - which, needless to say, is time consuming) or whether it's an instance member (in which case you usually hit Ctrl+Home and check to see if the identifier is a member of the current class). Yes, this can be pretty quick for small classes and functions, but when an instance function spans for 20 or so lines and the class has many instance variables (for me this is not a rare occasion) and at a given point you see the line 'index = oldIndex;' for example, you have to start digging for scope and parenthood. Who is index and who is oldIndex, is any of them an instance variable and so on. Had the line been written 'this.index = oldIndex' (and had the convention been applied that all identifiers which don't have a 'this.' attached to them are local), you would have just moved on, as both variables' scope would have been obvious.

Ok, and what about the supposition that writing this all the time 'can be laborious and can lead to clutter'? What's interesting is that there is a certain similarity between this and public - they're both self-understood, aren't they? Yet, as much as I know, almost no-one omits public. Why might that be? Why would people go through the trouble of writing something which is self-understood? I think it's that because it saves you a brain cycle - you don't have to go through thinking that 'if the scope identifier is missing, then it must be public, since that's the default'. And my contention is that the same applies for this. It speeds up reading and clearly specifies parenthood and scope. As for clutter, I think it's quite a trivial argument - there are 5 extra characters. Indeed, when using many instance variables on the same line it might lenghten it to some extent, but I think - and this is actually my overall contetion - that the benefits far outweigh the costs of using the keyword this in your code.

What do you guys say about this? I'd love to hear about your coding practices.

Reclama BCR pensii private

2007-07-29T15:04:00.000+03:00

Demult n-am mai văzut reclame atât de... cum să o spun mai pe ocolite... atât de stupizele. Mă refer la reclama la pensiile private (şi facultative) BCR care apare pe prima pagină a sitului PensiiBCR (aveţi răbdare, apare numai după vreun minut sau aşa ceva - o fi tactică de atragere a atenţiei, dacă nu te uiţi pe situl lor o vreme, numai ce auzi o voce de bătrân amărât spunându-ţi "Eheei, dragul meu, mi-a plăcut mult să călătoresc").

Probabil m-a surprins atât de mult şi din cauza faptului că de câţiva ani nu m-am mai uitat la televizor (şi deci nu am mai avut privilegiul să o văd pe Popeasca cea cu neg vorbind entuziasmată de Omo sau Ace, sau care-o fi fost înălbitorul şi cum o fi chemat-o pe starletă :).

Oricum, te-ai gândi că cei de la BCR au bani să plătească o agenţie de publicitate mai acătării. Mai ales acum, că trebuie să tragă tare cu reforma pensiilor.

Mi-a rămas în minte zâmbetul de sub tramvai al tipului cu dosarul BCR în mână. Acu ştie că poate muri liniştit. Amin

Cineva nu are ce face :)

2007-07-27T21:39:00.001+03:00

Pe o pagină web a CSSPP (Comisia de supraveghere a sistemului de pensii private) care conţine registrul public al fondurilor private de pensii, al agentilor de marketing si alte detalii similare, dacă dai scroll jos destul, dai peste următorul text:

"thank you for reading all the content in this page

no more content below, sorry

really.."

Nu pot să nu mă întreb atunci care e utilitatea jumătăţii goale de pagină. Or fi avut nevoie de spaţiu pentru computaţii invizibile şi nu au vrut să "strice" textul? :) Acuma serios, e penibil. Unde mai pui că îţi dă impresia că eşti un idiot că stai să citeşti respectiva pagină - "ce vrei bă?, vrei mai mult? Nu ţi-a ajuns? Felicitări, eşti primul tâmpit care ajunge la sfârşit; bravo nene!"

Meebo wishlist

2007-07-27T19:13:00.000+03:00

What I would like the meebo team to develop next:

global chat log search - I may receive some important piece of information from someone, but after a few days to forget exactly whom I received it from.
friend search - the task of scrolling through your entire friend list until you find the one you want to talk to is time consuming. The ability to add more details about a friend, coupled with a dynamic search bar for easy friend location (by name, id, phone number, other details - similar to the one in Y! Messenger) would add a lot of value to the already feature packed IM service.
file transmission - I know it's difficult from inside the browser, but I'm sure it's not impossible. An initial workaround could be, for instance, to upload the file to a server and for meebo to send a link for the other person to download. But I'm sure there are better ways.
service-dependent smileys - Yahoo and Gtalk, for instance, have different ways in which they encode their smileys. Be aware of them and make them express the same thing they express in Yahoo Messenger if the user is chatting via that service, ditto for Gtalk, ditto for all the rest. I find that I need to learn all the encodings for the smileys in Y!, because it's frustrating to keep telling all my friends "hey, you know, I'm on meebo and I can't see your smileys".

On the other hand, congratulations for the Meebo Me widget. Great idea!

Essay Contest

2007-05-13T12:49:00.000+03:00

About peace (more precisely "The role of media and information and communication technologies in building a peaceful world"), for under 25ers. Prizes in money, first prize winner also goes to Tokyo in November 2007. More here.

slick dexonline

2007-05-07T15:15:00.000+03:00

If you use Dexonline as often as I do, it might prove useful that you dress it up a bit. Go to this page and choose an interface design (my favourite is "slick"). The design will stick to your browser / IP combination. This means that in IE you can have one design and in Firefox another.

tulinks

2007-04-29T23:35:00.000+03:00

Gapminder interesting
StumbleUpon defintely worth it

idealism, please!

2007-04-29T03:04:00.001+03:00

We need a refresh in the whole education business. I became fairly interested in the subject of education from the moment I took part in the school olympics. And now I feel rather safe to say that I might not exclude the possibility of making it my main field of study and work. But that is somewhat beyond the point.

Here's a very interesting talk on education in general (and a funny one too, I bid you to watch). The man is like the F5 key, he refreshes perspectives. He makes some pretty important observations on the nitty-gritties of education and by the wonderfully clear and informed nature of his arguments he demands that he be taken into consideration.

At first I wanted to make this entry a question to all of you, but then I changed my mind and decided that blog and blog comments are not the best place for this kind of interaction. The subject of debate would have been the ideal educational system. I shall subsequently limit myself to offering my end of the spectrum.

What I see as an ideal medium in which people are supported into acquiring the most and best possible information is still in construction in my head. And frankly I hope it stays that way; some man said once, 'seek the company of people who are constantly searching for truth and run from those who have found it'. Here are some ideas on a hopefully better model of general education. I should warn the reader that some of my objections are more or less localized (I live in Eastern Europe - and I dare generalize to this extent). Moreover, I do not propose any method by which the end result might be achieved - I merely dream of it now.

My idea of a good education system

First and foremost, teachers are experts at what they do. They are dedicated and respected (well-paid fits into public respect). Whether they are also good at actually teaching what they know to others should be irrelevant for their status as teachers - whenever talent or drive would impede the dissemination of the valuable information they held, an assistant endowed with those essential skills would be provided to do the translation and act as link between him and his students. This is the most important change I would like to see put into practice. I very well know that elsewhere this is already reality - and I applaud it.

Second, education is collaborative and cooperative. And since I am a man of middle ways and always strive to reach a balance, I don't mean this in an absolute way. Yes, I envision a world in which students are allowed to pursue their own educational path from a certain age; but at the same time I see the need for a cohort of places and people where they can get reliable and apt advice and guidance. This is one side of the coin. Then there is the issue of individuality against teams and collaborative learning. I see these as two valid options and I think they should both be allowed and promoted to the students whose personalities match them. Getting more out of everyone is not achievable by enacting a single way of learning and banishing all the rest. People are too complex for that. It's almost like saying that God cares, keeps track and will punish you for things like not going to church - but that's a different blog entry.

Then there's the issue of opportunity and breadth of educational offer. What I envision for the future of the education world is a rather enormous palette of study choices which I believe will lead to a tendency for the academic institutions to emulate marketing firms and apply similar strategies. The idea will be to get to win students instead of idly waiting for the best of them to come to you in awe of your fame or previous results. I envision an ever more dynamic environment, in which competitiveness will force institutions to constantly raise standards (and by that I do not mean making courses more difficult or selective) and cater to any and every possible need and method of learning. It might be the only way that education could keep up with the business and economic sectors - which, by the way, it is supposed to be preparing the students for.

That's all for now, much more for later, thanks for reading and good night!

coherence

2007-04-29T01:22:00.000+03:00

I do think of myself as a coherent person. I do manage to express the things I think (and even the things I feel) in a logic and clear way. In words that is.

When you write context falls apart, doesn't it? Even when I want to say something I start by setting the scene and creating a context, I begin by defining the terms I use (not too technically, mind you), by trying to anticipate any misunderstanding there might arise and getting it out of the way. I build on and adapt to any moods or essential previous events which could influence the message I'm putting out. Context and setting are essential to any piece of communication, that's a given.

But writing... Well, writing's a bitch, you see. I'm absolutely sure that many of the blog entries or articles which I once or another time deemed inadequate, improper, beating-around-the-bush-y, trite, childish or just plain silly could have moved me if uttered by a respectable orator. This is why writing is much more arty (as in art-related) - you never know what someone takes out of your prose, just as you never know how someone is moved by 'the scream', for instance (yes, I fancy the painting) - but you can be pretty sure it's different from what Munch wanted to express when he painted it. I feel that in order that you can properly set a context for any serious debate or exposition of ideas, you need serious preparatory material - around the magnitude of a whole book, really. Thus articles and blog entries are somewhat devoid of flavour if taken by themselves - they need to be integrated into the whole: the blog or, even better, the person's entire work.

That's all. So much for coherence. Thank you and good night.

energy

2007-03-11T02:39:00.000+02:00

In a sense, we are all energy. Ultimately, in the depth of our being, we are the same - we are all one, as religions fancy to put it.

You are in tune with a lot of this energy, it seems. And when I say a lot, I mean more. You like to let it flow through you and savour it like chocolate or a kiss or summer rain. You vibrate with it. Releasing so much energy, you leave a part of yourself in everything you do, in everything you touch. Midas, yes. Wonderful, yes.

However, there is a chance that you might have let this energy take over. That it might flow and go in and come out on its free will. Not yours.

Learn to control the energy you dispose of. Acknowledge it first, then love it. Then try to be aware of your directing it. Visualise it as you make use of it, and be responsible for its destination.

Try this: give yourself a half an hour's worth of silence - but exactly when you're feeling the most energised. Don't touch the keyboard, don't watch TV, don't write an sms, don't eat, don't anything. Just think. Achieve that and you shall have a sense of control and a glimpse of self-worth.

The next step is to do the same thing and only think about yourself. Doesn't really matter what. Just don't stray. In time many unanswered questions you now have will clarify. And yes, many more will appear, be under no illusions. And that's the beauty of it - there's aways more of you to see. The most important thing you will get from this is a notion of your otherwise elusive core.

The next step is to awarely control what and why you think about yourself. It will take some time to get there, it's true. It is what you can righteously call self-creation.

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
(Martin Luther King, Jr.)

lasa-ma, domle-n pace!

2007-02-26T03:10:00.000+02:00

Într-un entry de pe blogul lui Doc despre taxa de primă înmatriculare:

Statul poate proteja mediul de afaceri exact în acelaşi mod în care oamenii pot proteja mediul înconjurător: lăsându-l în pace.

Absolut savuros!

elementary, my dear Watson

2007-02-26T00:23:00.000+02:00

This was too beautiful to keep to myself. On the discovery (or lack of) of extraterrestrial life forms (taken from here):

Perhaps a master system of intergalactic ethics dictates that no planet may have contact with another until it has subdued its own self-destructive violence. Maybe the Earth is under a sort of quarantine.

agramaticalismuri

2007-02-25T23:23:00.000+02:00

Nu ştiu exact de ce, dar observ greşeli incredibil de uşor. Poate e simplul fapt că sunt fiinţă umană, dar dacă aşa stau lucrurile, atunci de ce persistă ele într-atat?... Nu îmi fac un scop din a le eradica, încerc doar să trec eu peste ele eliberându-mă. Iată-le pe cele care mă... ţin treaz să scriu posturi pe blog:

login membrii atât de des am văzut formularea asta încât încep să îmi fac probleme că devine un standard (mie îmi arată 14.200 de rezultate)
ne întâlnisem grrr
ce-s cu astea? Nu-s nimic cu ele, stai liniştit.
se merită? Dar tu? Te rog, nu te râde!
mi-ar place Bine, ştiu că e o chichiţă, dar tot merită menţionată
(update) va fii bine nici măcar nu e scris fonetic...
(update) ce bine m-am râs! mersi, Ionuca
(update) în cunoştiiţă de cauză

savurozitati

2007-02-25T19:43:00.000+02:00

Cred ca pasiunea cu care ne auto-flagelam ca neam tine mult de savoare. "Ce prosti is romanii ca...", "Ia, ba, ce fraeri e astia", "Neamu lor de xxx inca astazi si maine", "Nu avem putin bun simt / respect / masura / orice-alta-calitate-a-unui-homo-sapiens-sapiens-mai-acatarii". De fapt afirmatiile respective au mult mai putin de-a face cu ceilalti cat au cu sine - e vorba de afirmarea si impunerea propriei superioritati prin expulzarea tuturor celorlalti (cu exceptia vorbitorilor si a tuturor cunoscutilor lor) intr-o oala comuna, uniforma prin lipsurile pe care le are. Savoarea e direct proportionala cu diferenta valorica inferata din aparenta realitate a lipsurilor celorlalti. Bineinteles, exista critica veritabila si constructiva, dar cred ca nici ea nu poate scapa interferentele ego-ului.

Aplicatiile practice includ tabloidele (nu puteam sa nu includ si savurosul "noi le numim ziare") si mai toate programele tv.

Si stiti ce mai e savuros? Sa injuri, fratele meu! Te racoreste. Diferenta e ca savoarea vine aici din balaceala constienta si voita in ciorba cea mai puturoasa si mai infecta. Nu stiu, e ceva ce ne cheama mereu mereu spre animalitate. Din nou, savoarea e proportionala cu diferenta de valoare - in sens invers de data asta. Poate reducerea fiintei in starea ei neslefuito-primordiala e menita chiar sa ii reafirme valoare prin contrast. Daca asa ar sta lucrurile, atunci baietasii de cartier ar trebui sa fie printre cei mai impliniti membri ai societatii.

miroase a ciocolata calda

2007-02-24T14:40:00.000+02:00

apreciez din ce in ce mai mult momentele in care sunt linistit. pur si simplu. momentele in care gandurile curg in mine ca o ploaie de vara, in care ma intind pe covor si las viata sa ma poarte cum stie ea mai bine. pentru ca stie ea ce stie. linistea mea are miros de ciocolata calda de q caffe si gust de aer proaspat de iarna. linistea mea ma duce intr-o stare de constienta pura, de acceptare. nu vad lucrurile diferit si nici nu mi se schimba dintr-o data perspectiva. dar simt cu totul altceva...

asa ma droghez eu.

my new year's resolutions

2007-02-17T15:00:00.000+02:00

In 2007 I will:

travel outside

I already have a good idea where I want to go: Vilnius, London (Wimbledon't in June), Ireland

tour de Roumanie

I want to borrow a good bike from someone who isn't using it for a couple of weeks and go a-trotting. Among others, I want to go through Timisoara, Bucharest, Vama Veche (and stay there for a week or so), and the Danube Delta. I would like to go with someone, so if it sounds appealing, do drop a comment

speak a better German
learn philosophy, history and geography

Yes, I know they're quite broad areas, I am in the process of sharpening the direction I want to take

culturalize

That is, read (many) good books, watch films that are worthwhile, listen to diverse music (and why not, do learn about those genres, it would be a nice feeling not to get lost upon reading 'indie rock')

go to the National English Olympics, plus to the Garana Jazz Festival
meet more interesting people

...and the list is open for additions (and hopefully not for substractions)

my essays

2007-02-17T14:11:00.001+02:00

Lately I can't help but wonder why exactly it is that I want to post my essays here. And then I go about thinking whether everyone does that when posting a blog entry; do they keep trying to find reasons for posting, or do they just find an initial purpose for the entire blog and then post to serve it? I mean, the case with me appears to be that I either don't know how this blog can serve me and thus cannot make up my mind on what and how to post, or that I just discovered metablogging.

Anyway, here are my college application essays. I believe they convey a certain sense of Mihainess - better, at least, than these blog entries do. I shall refrain from any comment unless specifically requested.

Ideas

"Mr. Chira, from what I have heard so far, I am sure that you will never be a public manager. A preacher perhaps, but you do not have what it takes for public management!". Surprised, blank stare. For a long, silent second, everything froze around and inside me. I was gaping at the interviewer in disbelief.

Up to that point the interview had gone fine - or at least I thought so. What had happened? What could I possibly have said to impress such a bleak view of myself on him? Unsuspectedly, my mind produced the answer: indeed nothing had happened; I was being tested. The ostensibly hostile atmosphere began to melt and I regained the use of my senses, while replying, "Yes, I understand your view; and your question is...?". He appeared surprised. "Do you have any comments?". I had plenty. In a relaxed tone, I first accepted his opinion as such and then proceeded to disproving the claims. I was smiling once more.

"Mihai, do you consider yourself an imaginative person?", the second interviewer inquired. I was presently overcome with a whirlwind of memories of the times I had let my imagination reveal itself. I was overcome with Ideas, old and new. To my surprise, as I was answering the question, I realized that the person speaking was not precisely me. Words came powerfully and plentifully, from somewhere within. For the first conscious time in my life, I started to listen to myself: they were the words of a confident, self-aware person. They spoke with passion and conviction about what I immediately recognized as the essence of my character - Ideas. Plenty of Ideas. It was like looking in the mirror, but through the eyes of the interviewers. I reveled in the sight. I was now enjoying the interview like a newly discovered treasure. I described my latest grand Idea.

"About a month ago I received a phone call from Mara, a very good friend of mine. 'Mihai, the strangest thing just happened!' I knew exactly what it was. 'I found a postcard in my mailbox today saying 'Happy Birthday, Mara!' both in English and Romanian, and signed 'Mihai'. And do you know where it's from? London!' I was smiling. 'Now, I know that you have never been to London - who do you think it could be from?' It was me. In a surprised tone, 'Really?! Wow! Now aren't you the luckiest! I suppose you have a secret admirer in London'. But in a few days a new postcard appeared in Mara's mailbox - the mysterious Mihai had apparently moved to California. Mara was astonished... I could not admit to her that all Mihais were in fact disguised friends of mine from all over the globe; not just yet - I had to send her one last postcard. It said 'Happy Birthday, Sherlock!' and had a picture of my town on it. The effect was truly memorable - a wry, 'Mihai, you've been lying to me recently, haven't you?'"

To this account the interviewer reacted - a brief smile swept over her face before she could stop it; nonetheless, she presently regained her composure. It was the first time I had seen a smile that day. I knew that it was all part of the test. All this was happening just days ago, in Bucharest. I had traveled 450 miles from Baia Mare for an hour of questioning by three ruthlessly curious ministerial staff - and every single second of it was worth it. This was the final stage in a competition for an educational scholarship. In the end I had told these unknown people so many things, that when the interview ended I felt nude - I had entirely revealed myself to them. And, needless to say, to myself as well. I left the room with the satisfaction of having met someone new and interesting - myself.

Let us say that I were, indeed, a preacher. I would, without doubt, preach the importance of knowing oneself. And what better way to accomplish that, but through an intensive therapy of official interviews? (Now, that's an Idea!)

To Myself

"Stop saying that! You know it's not true. Why in the world do you keep repeating these stupid things? 'I'm forgetful, I'm forgetful' [mocking tone], when you know very well that you're far from it. You know that you remember so many things from PHP which nobody even bothers to read correctly, that you can vividly relive your first date with Ramona two years ago, or that even now you get goosebumps when you think about the tooth extraction you had when you were seven... You are not forgetful! It's high time you put an end to all this.

I'm your conscience, and I want what's best for you. And, why not, what's best for me as well. You think that I only come on when you say untrue things about other people? Is that how important you think you are?... I mean, here you are, in front of this girl and just because she is pretty, you start throwing yourself in the mud. 'Forgetfulness is one, but wait till you hear me singing', he says. What do you expect from that? A smile? Pity? Empathy? I mean, empathy for a lie? Get a grip!

It all started as a joke, a sort of game. I know, because I was there. I didn't say anything, but I was there. I regret it now... [long break] You were in the ninth grade and you forgot her name. And to avoid the embarrassment, you made it your trait to forget. You said that you always forget things, and laughed. She laughed along and the moment was gone. You thought it was a victory. You felt that since there was something deep inside yourself, something which everyone knew was not your fault, you were free from responsibility. You didn't realize it, but ever since that day, you stopped paying attention to people's names, birth dates, favorite colors, or anything else. You just assumed that everyone would take it for granted that forgetfulness is who you are and that they would keep repeating everything until you would finally remember. The sad part is that they did. [sigh] Isn't it strange how reluctant people are when it comes to getting even remotely close to someone? Had they done that with you, had they peered inside for just one second, they would have seen the scam, the impostor... Your empty excuse was as thin as a spider's web. And just like a web in an unvisited attic, yours grew thicker and denser, until it took hold of every corner, until even you started thinking that it was there from the very beginning.

We've been through so many things together. Please, hear me this time, too. [clearing voice] Knowing yourself is both discovery and creation. What you discover is the human core that ties all people together, the deepest layer within. You have already started to look there, and you have seen love, kindness, ideals, the joys of life - you have seen many things. When it comes to creation, though, you're only beginning. And today you stumbled upon something very important - everything you say which starts with "I am" is both crucial and self-defining, whether you mean it or not. Today and this conversation are no exception. Tell someone that you are forgetful and you will immediately start forgetting. So pay close attention to what I'm saying - you are not forgetful; you are not a bad singer; you don't catch colds often; you are not bad with conversations. You are not any of the negative things you say you are!

So please tell this pretty girl who you really are. Oh, and ask her to do the same - her conscience tells me she is not at all disorganized, as she hurried to confess"

Clapping. I blush.
My second day in the theater band and we were asked to do an impersonation...

"The world as revealed by science is far more beautiful, and far more interesting, than we had any right to expect. Science is valuable because of the view of the universe that it gives."
George Greenstein, Sidney Dillon Professor of Astronomy, Amherst College

This Christmas was the best I can remember. There were many things which could have easily made it the worst. For one, there was no snow. This is a rare thing in Romania, and especially in our town, and it gave you a feeling of uncertainty that it was actually winter, let alone that the year was ending. Then there was the silence. When I think of Christmas I hear people caroling and yelling late into the morning on the streets of the town. This year the streets were curiously empty, no firecrackers, no carols; just a cold, dry wind. Still, for me it proved to be the best Christmas.

As expected, Christmas Day saw everyone hide inside their homes, where the sight of the Christmas tree and the smell of the roast and the cinnamon warmth brought back what the anachronistic weather had taken. I met former high school colleagues and we inadvertently ended up doing the same. The plan was to carol our way through everyone's homes. It miserably failed. Our second base camp was our last. Once we caught up with news about each other and discussed the more stringent issues, the talk veered into an entirely different dimension - eleven of them to be precise. I had never dreamed of the possibility of such an extended and heated debate on string theory, or on the span of time. At 11 p.m. we were already immersed in the nature of the Universe, starting with the Big Bang and ending with black holes. Religion and atheism naturally brought up Darwin and his evolutionary approach. Radiation spawned assumptions on the existence of extraterrestrial life forms. The sunrise caught us attempting to explain levitation or the case of a doctor who would perform surgery solely with his fingers. We were teeming with energy.

Can you by any means imagine more than three spatial dimensions? Can you for a second grasp the meaning of nothingness? Can you envision such dense matter as the singularity in the moment of the creation of the Universe? We certainly could not. But there is something about reaching beyond their scope that makes people vibrate. Science fascinates because it provides a means to peer through the curtains into a realm which perception cannot reach.

Looking back, I now believe that the reason I liked this Christmas so much was that it gave me the feeling that a quirk in the normal flow of things had customized it to minutely fit my personality; it gave me the opportunity to entirely express myself, in the midst of dear friends. I was there, with all my feeble and otherwise immaterial being, in all eleven dimensions, a relative and unassuming product of the timeless singularity, curiously and magically living on an inhabitable planet in the allegedly ever-expanding Universe. What more could I have asked for?

the next essay wasn't written for the application process, but it serves the same purpose of being yet another side of me.

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans. (Ronald Reagan)

I do believe Reagan is right. Considering his broad life experience and the multitude of people that he must have met, how can anyone doubt his words? I would even take it a step further and suggest the extended use of jellybeans for testing job applicants or at psychological evaluations. It's amazing how many practical applications jellybeans have. It only takes imagination.

Seriously, I think that Reagan was pointing out to something a bit more subtle than what appearances might suggest. As opposed to instincts, it is the thought which separates us from the animal kingdom. What is exceptionally good and at the same time quite destructive about thought (when improperly handled) is that it's very very powerful. It can literally move mountains. I'll only give you a short, but edifying example. In the year 1995 a group of 4000 people met in Washington DC and did nothing more than meditate together. The idea was to measure the physical results of cooperative thinking. The task for all participants was to focus on the city crime level to drop by precisely 25 percent. The result? The crime level in Washington DC dropped by precisely 25 percent.
Thought influences word and word materializes into action. These are the most powerful three instruments that people have at their disposal. Take Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech for example. It contained the words "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character" and has acted as the single most influential force that has eventually abolished slavery and the oppression of the African Americans. People are now truly judged by their character, rather than their skin colour - or their way of eating jellybeans. That one speech was electrifying and it conveyed every unspoken thought of the previous hundred years of the coloured population of the USA. It had power.

Reagan knows the power of thought and is familiar with its influences on one's character. I believe that this quote is meant to act as a deterrent for the ever too often stigmatizing, quick and unfounded labeling or too hasty attempts at fitting people into tight categories. Predictably, this one-sided way of thinking is also heavily promoted by the media - countless advertisements, newspaper articles and images promote ideas like 'you are what you drink', 'you are what you smoke', or other similar narrow-minded characterizations. Reagan could have equally said "you can tell a lot about a fellow's character b his way of chewing gum", "his way of uncapping the mineral water bottle" - it would have made no difference. The essence is the same - one should not be too quick to judge others. People are not defined by only one behaviour pattern, and cannot be fully understood by analyzing them from a singular perspective. People are much too complex for that - and besides, who wants to eat jellybeans in a programmatic, self-aware manner? It spoils all the fun.

It is also interesting to notice that even famous people might pass as mentally challenged if only judged from certain perspectives. For example, it is thought that Einstein was not a genius at all when it came to using the toilet, despite him being one of the greatest minds of the last century. But calumny is not my intention - and to redeem his image in your eyes, I must note that he ate jellybeans majestically.

I want to know!

2007-02-05T00:36:00.000+02:00

The decision was made quite a long time ago. Its time came.

I want to know more. It's a necessity by now. It started out with flash and programming, and then the ardent necessity arose that I should be able to address wider and wider a range of topics in a conversation. I did not want to be limited to the technical (and otherwise insipid, for the rest of the world) bits of PHP I was confronting on a daily basis. Then came the resolution to do something about it - you would think one would adopt that much sooner.

This is a message in a bottle, if you wish, meant to rescue poor old me from the deserted island of ignorance. I do recognize that the main actor in the play I am about to begin is none other than I. But, as I have come to see and acknowledge in the past few years, the help of literati is often invaluable for a novice such as myself. In consequence, here is the final goal, the initial conditions I start with, and my requests for you, kind lovers of books.

a) goals: 1. to learn philosophy quite thoroughly and 2. to read (and, if needed, prepare for) the classics and the famous (for conversational purposes, again)

b) initial conditions: 1. in philosophy, I am tabula rasa, to put it this way; 2. in literature I have slightly escalated from the stage in philosophy, but I advise that the difference should be ignored :). All in all, I am a first grader, learning my ABC in these fields.

c) my petition to all of you out there whose reading and studying experience includes more books and time than mine on the topics (as I said, everyone out there!), is that you help me set up a study plan for both of these major fields (world literature and philosophy - not only western). I want to study and can be an arduos student when I put my mind to an end.

With philosophy my idea is to study a timeline of philosophers throughout history (there are quite many of those on the Internet actually) and then read (and print, for future reference) everyone's wiki page. Another option would be to buy a philosophical enciclopaedia and do my initial research there. But when it comes to actually reading their works, I cannot readily decide on whether I should do it chronologically, by order of importance (though that would be quite difficult to assess) or whether to chose them on a whim, on the basis of my likes and dislikes. Moreover, how important is it that I should also read books about their books, as it goes (critical prose), to see how other people interpret their ideas? To my mind, this is quite essential, but at the same time of a character to delay my study quite noticeably. Anyway, enough rambling from my part; I would very much enjoy reading your ideas and suggestions (in English or Romanian, regardless).
As for literature, I want to start out with the lecture of essential works, works without which ones life would be of a lesser quality, withouth wich imagination would lack a vital tool. I am a beginner here as well, so you can practice being a teacher on me quite realistically :). Again, I would highly value suggestions regarding a study plan, the array of authors and works and other additional study (the critics, the works of art they inspired etc.)

Signed,
An enthusiastic scholar.

Plesu si viata mea

2007-02-03T23:48:00.000+02:00

tocmai ma gandeam ce pot face cu un mail excelent pe care l-am primit. Sa il trimit asa, pur si simplu, oamenilor pe email, fara nici un avertisment, sau sa le dau un link cand voi povesti cu ei pe mess? Pe cand incepeam sa dau uitare emailul propriu zis in pregatirea plonjonului intr-o meditatie metafizica despre metodele de comunicare, mi-a falfait un gand salvator pe langa ureche: am blog :D

Sper sa nu fie probleme cu drepturile de autor. Textul e prea frumos ca sa nu fie distribuit.

Despre frumusetea pierduta a vietii - Editorial de Andrei Plesu

Daca ma gândesc bine, reprosul esential pe care îl am de facut tarii si vremurilor este ca ma împiedica sa ma bucur de frumusetea vietii. Din când în când, îmi dau seama ca traiesc într-o lume fara cer, fara copaci si gradini, fara extaze bucolice, fara ape, pajisti si nori.

Am uitat misterul adânc al noptii, radicalitatea amiezii, racorile cosmice ale amurgului. Nu mai vad pasarile, nu mai adulmec mirosul prafos si umed al furtunii, nu mai percep, asfixiat de emotie, miracolul ploii si al stelelor. Nu mai privesc în sus, nu mai am organ pentru parfumuri si adieri. Fosnetul frunzelor uscate, transluciditatea nocturna a lacurilor, sunetul indescifrabil al serii, iarba, padurea, vitele, orizontul tulbure al câmpiei, colina cordiala si muntele ascetic nu mai fac de mult parte din peisajul meu cotidian, din echilibrul igienic al vietii mele launtrice. Nu mai am timp pentru prietenie, pentru taclaua voioasa, pentru cheful asezat.

Sunt ocupat. Sunt grabit. Sunt iritat, hartuit, coplesit de lehamite. Am o existenta de ghiseu: mi se cer servicii, mi se fac comenzi, mi se solicita interventii, sfaturi si complicitati. Am devenit mizantrop. Doua treimi din metabolismul meu mental se epuizeaza în nervi de conjunctura, agenda mea zilnica e un inventar de urgente minore. Gândesc pe sponci, stimulat de provocari meschine. Îmi încep ziua apoplectic, înjurând "situatiunea" : gropile din drum, moravurile soferilor autohtoni, caldura (sau frigul), praful (sau noroiul), morala politicienilor, gramatica gazetarilor, modele ideologice, cacofoniile noii arhitecturi, demagogia, coruptia, bezmeticia tranzitiei. Abia daca mai înregistrez desenul ametitor al câte unei siluete feminine, inocenta vreunui surâs, farmecul tacut al câte unui colt
de strada.

Am ajuns sa ma comport ca si cum Hrebenciuc si Cozmanca, Sechelariu si Vanghelie, Ciorbea si Mihaela Tatu, Andreea Marin si Adrian Nastase, Constantinescu si Agathon, Talpes si Garcea ar exista cu adevarat. Colectionez antipatii si prilejuri de insatisfactie. Scriu despre mizerii si maruntisuri. Bomban toata ziua, mi-am pierdut încrederea în virtutile
natiei si soarta tarii, în rostul lumii. Am un portret tot mai greu digerabil. Patriotii de parada m-au trecut la tradatori, neoliberalii la conservatori, postmodernistii la elitisti. Batrânilor le apar frivol, tinerilor - reactionar. Una peste alta, mi-am pierdut buna dispozitie, elanul, jubilatia. Nu mai am ragazuri fertile, reverii, autenticitati. Ma misc, de dimineata pana seara, într-un univers artificial, agitat, infectat de trivialitate. Apetitul vital a devenit anemic, placerea de a fi si-a pierdut amplitudinea si suculenta. Respir crispat si pripit, ca într-o etuva.

Când cineva trece printr-o asemenea criza de vina e, în primul rând, umoarea proprie. Te poti acuza ca ai consimtit în prea mare masura imediatului, ca nu stii sa-ti dozezi timpul si afectele, ca nu mai deosebesti între esential si accesoriu, ca, în sfârsit, ai scos din
calculul zilnic valorile zenitale. Dar nu se poate trece cu vederea nici ambianta toxica a momentului si a veacului. Suntem napaditi de probleme secunde.

Avem preocupari de mâna a doua, avem conducatori de mâna a doua, traim sub presiunea multipla a necesitatii. Ni se ofera texte mediocre, show-uri de prost-gust, conditii de viata umilitoare.

Am ajuns sa nu mai avem simturi, idei, imaginatie.
Ne-am urâtit, ne-am înstrainat cu totul de simplitatea polifonica a lumii, de pasiunea vietii depline. Nu mai avem puterea de a admira si de a lauda, cu o genuina evlavie, splendoarea Creatiei, vazduhul, marile, pamântul si oamenii.

Suntem turmentati si sumbri. Abia daca ne mai putem suporta. Exista,
pentru acest derapaj primejdios, o terapie plauzibila? Da, cu conditia sa
ne dam seama de gravitatea primejdiei. Cu conditia sa
impunem atentiei noastre zilnice alte prioritati si alte orizonturi.

oh, the bloglessness, the bloglessness!

2007-01-15T23:56:00.000+02:00

Alright, that is it! this blog is annoying me! The hell with it!
You wouldn't believe just how much I think about it, how crazy it drives me. It's sucking the life out of me! I can't sleep at night because I think that I haven't posted any entries in ages. That I will let my faithful two and a half readers down. That everyone will be disappointed in me. I'll end up a has-been, a faded face about whom people will say, "just look at him, he's a nobody now. And he had so much potential...". All those lonely nights, the endless resolutions to write something... anything.

I can't do anything proper since I started this blog. I can't eat, I can't play, I can't learn. And I only wrote one single lousy, prickly, silly post. I went along with the blog idea because I believed in myself, because other people believed in me. Everybody was doing it, so I thought, how hard can it be? I even thought I had a calling. That I would come along and rock the blogging world. That I would wear a shirt with my ID on it and everyone would bow to me when I passed by, just like in the advertisement. But no! You just had to throw it in my face, you merciless fate, you! You just blurted it out, screamed it from the top of your voice, so that everyone could hear, so that everyone could know. That I'm a low-down good-for-nothin piece a scumbag. I cannot look anyone in the face now, I can't even put my real name on forms... I'm... I'm a gonner... It's true. Oh, the horror, the horror! What have I done to deserve this, God? What?!

Ok, I'm apparently not very good at this. But I needed to vent my anger here. Because some of that is actually true. Now don't you feel pity for me? Great! Then donate poor me some money, I'll mail you the account. Gotcha!