The Deal...

گفتم خراج مصر طلب می کند لبت
گفتا درین معامله کمتر زیان کنند
-- حافظ

"Tis Egypt's tribute thy lips require for fee"
"In such transaction the less the loss shall be."
-- J. Arberry, Fifty Poems of Hafiz

How are you?

How, is but the state following the function of what,
And what I am is a secluded girl,
Whose sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life,
She keeps the noiseless tenor of her way.
Seeking virtue yet sustaining vice,
She strives for vivacity in odds with vicissitudes of fate's play.

Volition is the verdict,
Yet held not as a votive, but in vain...

--
Credits goes to V and Gray

Circumstances

"People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I do not believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they cannot find them, they make them." -- George Bernard Shaw

I'm discovering Bernard Shaw lately, some nice quotes are attributed to him. He has a special way of putting things, there is a name coined for it in English , for his ironic wit, as "Shavian" (see Wikipedia). Here is another quote of his: "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."

Measure anew...

The person who behave sensibly is my tailor, he takes my measures anew everytime he sees me. All the rest go on with their old measurements. -- George Bernard Shaw

That is a key point to keep in mind, that people experience, learn, grow, and therefore change as time goes by. The fellow you have seen yesterday, is not the same person today. Life is not a deterministic finite automaton, and not even a probabilistic Markov Chain, you can never predict someone's future or all possible futures, just based on what you've seen from him or her in the past or present. The only thing that stays the same is that people are people, they are human beings, regardless of how cruel or how inhuman they have been so far. So every time we see people, we should treat them as a human being deserves, we should measure them anew.

With no loss of enthusiasm...

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. -- Winston Churchill

The importance of stupidity in scientific research

That is the title of an article by Dr. Schwartz, a professor of Biomedical Engineering at U of Virginia. A short and interesting article, and probably helpful for those who are struggling with some research project. If you have done a research project on your own, you are familiar with the moments when you just want to bang your head against the desk, or monitor (or whatever hard place you can find), from the frustration of days and nights of being stuck with apparently unsolvable questions and problems at hand, and feeling you are the most stupid person in the universe. How to manage your stupidity or at a higher level, how to turn it into "productive stupidity", is quite a lesson you should learn in the course of a good research work.

A good adviser could play a key role here, in helping you over come the frustration you'd feel from time to time. Whenever I feel frustrated or hopeless after some time of not making progress or even having results that shows some assumptions from the beginning were false, my adviser here tells me, "hey that is science, if it was supposed to be easy and straightforward, we would have been out of business!"

Anyway, here are some interesting excerpts from the article:

What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don’t know what we’re doing. We can’t be sure whether we’re asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result.

Science involves confronting our ‘absolute stupidity’. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, ‘I don’t know’. The point of the exam isn’t to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it’s the faculty who failed the exam.

Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right.

...but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.
-- Martin A. Schwartz

Pilgrim

Pilgrim, how you journey
on the road you chose
to find out why the winds die
and where the stories go.
All days come from one day
that much you must know,
you cannot change what's over
but only where you go.

One way leads to diamonds,
one way leads to gold,
another leads you only
to everything you're told.
In your heart you wonder
which of these is true;
the road that leads to nowhere,
the road that leads to you.
...
-- Enya (Pilgrim)

Second after second and day by day

And you can easily gamble your life away...
Second after second and day by day...

Come away, O human child

...
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters of the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
...
-- William Butler Yeats

Stolen Child is among my most favorite poems. It has such a hallucinative effect on me, perfect for hard and gloomy times, when you really feel you want to take refuge to a place where the wandering water gushes and the drowsy water rats. Oh I wished for little faeries to come and steal me away, to the leafy island, full of berries, and of reddest stolen cherries....

In the dew of little things...

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. - Kahlil Gibran

ٌWash your heart all through...

...
رو سینه را چون سینه ها هفت آب شو از کینه ها
وآنگه شراب عشق را پیمانه شو پیمانه شو
...
آن گوشوار شاهدان هم صحبت عارض شده
آن گوش و عارض بایدت دردانه شو دردانه شو
...
اندیشه ات جایی رود وآنگه تو را آن جا کشد
ز اندیشه بگذر چون قضا پیشانه شو پیشانه شو
...

Knock, Knock...

knockin' on heaven's door

Unweaving a Rainbow

Do not all charms fly
At the touch of cold philosophy?
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine–
Unweave a rainbow...
- John Keats

I'm not sure if I agree with Keats in saying "all charms fly at the touch of philosophy". You can try to understand the physics of the world around you and still, as William Wordsworth says, feel your heart leaps when you behold a rainbow in the sky.

And here are some fantastic shots of a double rainbow, it does really make your heart leap!

Be my friend

Don't walk in front of me,
I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me,
I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.
-- Albert Camus

Shiverings of a leaf

...
خوابم بر بود ، خوابي ديدم: تابش آبي در خواب ، لرزش برگي در آب.
اين سو تاريكي مرگ ، آن سو زيبايي برگ. اينها چه، آنها چيست، انبوه زمان ها چيست؟
اين مي شكفد، ترس تماشا دارد. آن مي گذرد، وحشت دريا دارد.
پرتو محرابي ، مي تابي. من هيچم: پيچك خوابي. بر نرده اندوه تو مي پيچم.
...
-- سهراب

--
Image from: Flame Fractals offer a feast for the eyes

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish
-- Sylvia Plath

I wished I had a mirror, a lake, in which I could look and search for what I really am. Sometimes (for me often), I feel I'm so lost. It is a terrifying sensation, to feel you are so far away from yourself. It makes you feel even lonelier than ever.

Simple, but not Easy! The question is, do you have what it takes...?

Bronze Statue with Feet of Clay

A bronze statue with feet of clay ...
A lot of varnish with little root ...

... that is what I hope I won't end up to be.

Brave or Cautious

The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. (Princess Diaries)

Instead of puzzling over mysterious, he puzzled over the commonplace!

His cocky contempt for authority led him to question received wisdom in ways that well-trained acolytes in the academy never contemplated. And as for his slow verbal development, he thought that it allowed him to observe with wonder the everyday phenomena that others took for granted. Instead of puzzling over mysterious things, he puzzled over the commonplace. "When I ask myself how it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstance," Einstein once explained. "The ordinary adult never bothers his head about the problems of space and time. These are things he has thought of as a child. But I developed so slowly that I began to wonder about space and time only when I was already grown up. Consequently, I probed more deeply into the problem than an ordinary child would have." -- W. ISAACSON

That is a paragraph of an interesting article on TIME, called Einstein & Faith. It is just a great gift, to be able to puzzle over the commonplace. I have always envied people who have an eye for the marvel and beauty of the simple.

Maryam, Did you know…?

"... So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good ..."
-- (Sound of Music)

There comes times in your life when you wonder what have you ever done that made you deserve the greatness of what you are blessed with. Things that come to you, so suddenly, so strong, in moments of doubt and disbelieve, and sweep away your prejudice in a perfect way you had never imagined possible. Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have definitely done something good...!

- Photo from the 2007 AAPT High School Photo Contest

And then I don't feel so bad...

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad

(My Favorite Things, from the musical The Sound of Music)

Confusion

When you are thinking about something you don't understand you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion. It is a very difficult and unhappy business, and so most of the time you are rather unhappy actually, with this confusion, you can't penetrate this thing.

Now, the confusion is, because we are all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid trying to figure out how to put two sticks together to reach the banana, and we can't quite make it. So I always feel stupid. Once in a while, I put the two sticks together, and I reach the banana. --Richard Feynman

That was a very interesting piece I came by on Shefa. This explains a lot about why I look unhappy sometimes. That is because I am easily confused, I'm not that bright!* You can watch Feynman saying the above in an interview here.

--
* Read that with Chandler's intonation when saying:
"And we’re easily confused. We’re not very bright." (Friends, E10.15)

Know what you are!

"Everyone sees what you seem to be, but few know what you are."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli

Good to remember this from time to time, sometimes the personality people see or rather want to see in you, eludes you of what you truly are. Therefor it is important to have some people in your life (friends or even foes) who can really see through you, and remind you of your true self.

Exalt your reason to the height of passion...

...Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through it's own daily resurrection and like the phoenix rise above it's own ashes.

I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house. Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.
-- Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet, On Reason and Passion)

It is all about balance... all about being "the lover of all your elements"!

True source of education...

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
-- Shakespeare (As You Like It, II.i)

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again!

"... advertisement that pretends to be art is, at absolute best, like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair. ...

...This is related to the phenomenon of the Professional Smile, a national pandemic in the service industry; and no place in my experience have I been on the receiving end of as many Professional Smiles as I am on the [cruise ship] Nadir: maitre d's, Chief Stewards, Hotel Managers' minions, Cruise Director -- their PS's all come on like switches at my approach. But also back at land at banks, restaurants, airline ticket counters, on and on. You know this smile: the strenuous contraction of circumoral fascia with incomplete zygomatic involvement, the smile that doesn't quite reach the smiler's eyes and that signifies nothing more than a calculated attempt to advance the smiler's own interests by pretending to like the smilee. Why do employers and supervisors force professional service people to broadcast the Professional Smile? Am I the only consumer in whom high doses of such a smile produce despair?
...
And yet the Professional Smile's absence now also causes despair. Anybody who has ever bought a pack of gum at a Manhattan cigar store or asked for something to be stamped FRAGILE at a Chicago post office or tried to obtain a glass of water from a South Boston waitress knows well the soul-crushing effect of a service workers scowl, ie. the humiliation and resentment of being denied the Professional Smile. And the Professional Smile has by now skewed even my resentment at the dreaded Professional Scowl: I walk away from the Manhattan tobacconist resenting not the counterman's character or absence of good will but his lack of professionalism in denying me the Smile. ..."

Sometime ago while reading about smiling, its source, meaning, strength, etc., I came across these excerpts from an essay by D. F. Wallace titled A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Reading it, I felt how much his account of how professional smiles make him feel, is similar to my experience. Especially the result of constant inconvenience of receiving these forceful smiles, and how it could confuse you about the real and genuine ones: "it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill." But what could be done about it now, now that not receiving it also makes you feel unhappy?

Stupid

* Are you stupid or something?
** Stupid is as stupid does.

(Forrest Gump)