On friendship and kinship

If the envading markets of iPhone, Blackberry and iPad have not consumed you already, prepare yourself for the release of a new consumer, the social phone, Kin . If you are thinking, WOW, I must get one, then you are being consumed as we speak, first your time and eventually your money. Once you own a kin, you will feel obligated it to use it for the amount of money spent (arguably wasted). The new microsoft "social" product runs the slogan: "Are we really friends with our 'friends'?". Obviously not! Because we are so sucked into these virtual social networks that reduce our human emotions and interaction to bits and bytes, pokes and the likes... How would you like to remotely create virtual children through future gadgets and conclude your life with a GAME OVER? I say it's already GAME OVER whether you kow it or not!

Would you like to have a life?
[1] Yes (Free of charge)
[2] No (Cost of new gadget, the amount worth living)

Enter amount : $ _

To work or not to work, what is the question?

Out of all working definitions of "work", the following is my favorite: To work is to exert oneself by doing mental or physical effort for a purpose or out of necessity.

Never in my whole life did I apply for a job or experience the anxiety of job hunting, except vicariously. Alma mater has nourished me and sheltered me my whole life. However, time has come for huge decisions dictated by self-fulfilling purposefulness and stable economic necessity.

Reasons behind my quasi-eternal PhD phase can be attributed to my fear of pointless graduation and post-graduation, that will expose me to a whole new plethora of job opportunities, impartially related to my PhD investment.

From an economically driven perspective, the following chart illustrates the average salaries (USD) for job positions that appeal to my interest or qualifications. 

Average Salary of Jobs with Titles Matching Your Search

In USD		25k 50k 75k
associate/full professor	$69,000
researcher	$62,000
freelance photographer	$40,000
novelist	$48,000
freelance artist	$46,000
postdoc	$41,000
assistant professor	$49,000
adjunct professor	$49,000
translator	$50,000

Of course, the academic track following PhD usually debuts with a post-doc (~$40,000/year) and then trifurcates (splits) into three tracks: Adjunct, Researcher and Tenure. Adjunct or visiting professors are more easily hired on a short term contract. Researchers are dedicated to full-time research while professors, very competitively, climb up the tenure ladder, at best tri-annually, from assistant professor (~$50,000/year) to associate professor (~$60,000/year) to full professor (~$80,000/year).

NB. The minimum wage in the US is $13,920 for full-time employers under a $7.25/hr. Dishwashing salaries start at $8/hr.

I decided to look at job postings for the selection of jobs that I would be interested in pursuing or find myself qualified for.

While freelancers are commitment-free gypsies, flexible to accommodate almost any creative activity, they are not offered social benefits. I still ask myself, how can I ever self-sustain myself when I despise prolonged sustainability? The paradox of commitment to indifference holds no answers for my future so far.

I will end this with some work related quotes (in French):

"Travailler dur n'a jamais tue personne, mais pourquoi prendre le risque?" (Edgar Bergen)
"Le travail est pour moi la chose la plus sacrée !!...... c'est pour ca que j'y touche pas !!!"
"La liberté commence dés qu'on a deux chefs."
"L'homme n'est pas fait pour travailler, la preuve c'est que cela le fatigue" (Voltaire)
"Le travail est l'opium du peuple et je ne veux pas mourir drogué" (Boris Vian)
"Le 1er mai, c'est la Fête du Travail. Mais pourquoi a-t-on congé alors ce jour-la ?" (Proverbe communiste)
"Si tu as envie de travailler, assieds-toi et attends que ca passe" (Proverbe Corse)

Finally, man can shit decently

On April 2nd, 2010, toilet paper was depleted in our apartment thus limiting my excretory trips to foreign public services, since I could hardly imagine the terrible consequences otherwise. Today, I bought a 4 pack of toilet paper giving the excretory opening at the end of my alimentary canal more freedom to deuce unconditionally. Finally, man can crap decently.

Speaking of which,

did you know that Daoism is a religion of the Han people of China that practiced eating excrements, sacrilegiously?

did you know that there is a shit fetish; I dare you to google it. Warning: not for the faint hearted.

An arguably optimistic citation from latin reads: "semper in excretum sum sed alta variat" and translates to "always in the shit, but the depth varies".

Synonyms and related words:
BM, crap, defecation, discharge, dung, excrement, excretion, fecal matter, feces, feculence, flux, go to the bathroom, manure, number two, shit, stool, waste, buffalo chips, bugger, ca-ca, coprolite, coprolith, cow chips, cow flops, cow pats, creep, cur, defecation, dingleberry, droppings,  feces, feculence, guano, manure, movement, night soil, sewage, sewerage, shit, stool, turd

How many words are synonymous to book? Which is more useful? One can argue that the term book is not offensively useful in a savage world described by Hobbes' Leviathan.

Joke: The blond, for lack of enemies, immediately stops eating his shit sandwich all disgusted upon encountering a strand of hair therein.


Do you ever feel like your head is going to blow up, while taking a crap, but just before this happens a glorious assistance from the bottom releases the pressure and during this fraction of a second you experience the most amazing frisson (tingly sensation)? I tend to cite freudian thanathos (death wish) when it comes to defecation mainly due to the fact that one is suffering and willingly loosing it in a couple of senses. I find it entertaining to question when does the apple you eat stop becoming an apple and start becoming you. Similarly, one can wonder when does his excrement cessate from being him to form an independent identity on its own or thanks to the excreter in charge. You might have heard of the nutrition book, "you are what you eat" but have you come across "you are what you shit"?

Apologies to my readers who were shocked by this post; it was meant to break the formal tone of the blog and spice it with some humor.

On Materialism

I come from a financially fairly relaxed family to struggle my way financially towards a fairly relaxed family.

I think of myself as highly creative yet I can hardly imagine materialism as anything other than a masquerade with consumerism being a superstore of masks priced according to how impressive these masks are. Events and occasions are simply places were people like ourselves meet. Many of these people are new to these places and sometimes to the other people sharing the space.  Strangers are examples of people we do not know. Classmates, colleagues, roomates, partners, family and friends example people that we know but only to a certain extent that varies with places and other people sharing them.

In general, people are much more familiar with the superstore mask than with each other. In unfamiliar places or with others barely recognizable by names or faces to have them as friends on facebook or myspace, people are compelled to purchase the best possibly affordable mask and not one that is adequately representable. That is mainly because most people are more ignorant about the others (also with respect to spaces) than they are aware of and confident in themselves.

What most people do not realize is that by putting on an a disguising mask (neither pun nor redundancy intended) around these unfamiliar spaces and people, they are missing the whole point of spaces and meeting and knowing people.  They are better off staying in spaces they are most familiar (home) with people they are most acquainted with (family). Otherwise, they are fooling other people by misrepresentation and themselves by erroneous feedback from others contaminated by their misrepresentation. Hence, one can conclude that interaction and communication are unreliable when either of the people involved are misrepresented.

We are often tempted to wear these heavily impressive masks decorated with precious stones and colors, unaware of others' greed and envy. We give our best shot for the first impression, and let the fooled desire us for what we are not, and fool us in return. We think we have conquered, in a game we call the chase, while we are being conquered by self-deception and vanity. Yes, vanity is what I define as the money and effort spent on a fake mask in vain to impress friends we do not have. We feed off vanity and feed it to others in a world of others we (think we) know enough to interact with, but not enough to (dare to) know better. We are ready to steal or even kill to push "affordability" to "feasibility", reducing "morality" to a reminiscence of a term we once feared in the past. What has become of us but monsters fighting for the most deceptively impressive mask that only feeds our vanity making us more monstrous ad infinitum.

My fellow sufferers, I comiserate with you when turned down by your (prospective) soulmate. I condole you when death takes your lovers and I hear you when heart broken by your (future) wife/husband and mother/father of your children. It is tempting to think that your mask was not good enough but what do we know? It is easy to judge and blame it on others but how so if we barely know ourselves?

Know thyselves, before knowing others. Wear no mask and fear no other. Eventually, you will end up going to unimaginable places with natural and earnest people like yourself, there for the same reason. Interact sincerely! A new world with no lies will unfold many truths about yourself and others. You will loose interest in all material world and materialists which will be around but can be avoided (or helped out in hopeful cases).  It might be hard to follow this path in places corrupt with brain- and identity-washing brand names, deceptive commercials, and societal fads, trends and craze, but it is never impossible.

Parents lavishly pampering their kids with all goods they can afford should think of how hard it will be for their kids to grow into affording these goods independently some day and how harshly life will contrast against their will. Grown up victims of such indulgences should practice resistance and learn to appreciate everything by earning it in real-world-like scenarios. Nouveau-riches should practice patience and modesty or give their money away if they cannot otherwise.

The next time you consider buying a new car because your older one doesn't look as good or a new phone because your friends have newer phones, ask yourself, why on earth should you listen to someone who would judge you by your car or phone? How could such a person be your friend? Thinking that you are doing it for yourself and not for your friends is a self-deception unless the upgrade is very necessary. Even if you were capable of affording the fastest car and slickest phone, you should avoid being judged by mere appearance and invest your money elsewhere (education, traveling, helping others...). That way, you can learn about your virtues and vices through others' sincere feedback and improve yourself to eventually find the right friends and Mr./Mrs. right that match your qualities. Material comes and goes while your only onle life is going...

"Do what you want and say what you feel because those that mind, don't matter and those that matter, don't mind!" -- Dr. Seuss

Inspirational Message to the World

Have you ever considered, out of all odds, your chances of existing?

Biologically speaking, your chance of "being" is much less than one in a million. Roughly, 20 million sperms are ejaculated such that only one sperm, you a priori, unconsciously, would fertilize an egg and grow into your current being with whatever genetic code that victorious sperm has to unfold unto and into you.
Of course, that is assuming that your parents and their parents, etc, already existed. Otherwise, each generation would multiply the previous generations with the father's sperm fertilization chances 1/20 million, with the joint probability of the father having met the mother, 1/6 billion x 1/6 billion, which roughly amounts to 1/10^16 less per generation -- i.e 0.00000000000000001 less per generation.

Your existential probability will approach zero at an astounding rate that you won't even make it back to your first ancestor. Your existence after a few generations is less probable than your winning the lottery and being struck by a lightening on the same day assuming that you were alive that day. What does that zero probability mean? Do you really exist? Are you miraculously here or just an outcome of a random generation? Is that just your perspective or that of the other 6 billions -- or more. The answer might be as epistemistic as zeno's paradox.
Nonetheless, 9 months before you were given birth, "you", however unconsciously, were the fastest and strongest amongst millions of competitors in the toughest of endeavors. Even more retrospectively, "you" (a priori a priori) were a sparkle in your father's eyes, with the potential of manifesting into your current self, if not a genetic mutant of you. Your current existence is not to be taken for granted, neither it should be a sufficient reminder of a lifetime victory. Do not compare your self to others for there will always be better and worse and what are the others other than equally probable beings. You could be thinking about how lucky (or unlucky) you are to be here but you should be thinking about your about how meaningful life is and you MUST cherish every moment of it with all you have and all you can give. "One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure its worth watching".
If that is not convincing enough, the following testimonies and speeches MUST make the difference:

Randy Pauch's "Last Lecture" summarizing his life after it was claimed by cancer. Al Pacino's "Inspirational Speech" to the football team he coached. Rocky Balboa's inspirational speech to his son. The exceptional counter-intuitive inspirational report from SSCBS. Roberto Benigni's inspirational guidelines to poetry, if not his movie "life is beautiful". Paul's and Susan's motivational and goosebump-jerking clips. Max Ehrmann's elucidating poem. Baz Luhrman's sunscreen advice. Antonello Venditti's song. And finally Badgett's positive testimony.

"Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy of being SalvadorDalí – and I ask myself in rapture, What wonderful things is this Salvador Dali going to accomplish today" -- Salvador Dali

Life Lessons: Depth vs Breadth

One of the most fundamental and decision-dependent questions of my life has been based on whether to master one thing (depth) or to explore many things (breadth) in the only one life I believe to have. In other words, which is a life least wasted? One of a specialist or that of a generalist.

Recent studies have shown that K12 students are more efficient when focusing on fewer materials [news article]. However, my quest extends to more complex real-life decision making based on the depth-vs-breadth dilemma (e.g. settling in one country vs nomads or a citizens of the world, monogamy vs polygamy, having few good friends vs many acquaintances, many degrees vs a PhD...)

As a PhD candidate in informatics (bio-inspired computing), a humanist, an artist, a self-proclaimed citizen of the world and hyperpoliglot, I try to address this question from different perspectives:

In science and academia, Peter Fisk's inspirational [sciencemag article] could not have been any more succinct or elucidating. However, if I were forced to reduce it to a quote it would read as:

"The common joke/cliché about the Ph.D. education is that, as your education progresses, you learn more and more about less and less until (when you graduate with your Ph.D.) you know everything about nothing. This joke often elicits knowing chuckles from Ph.D. scientists--but it should elicit disquiet. Being the best in the world holds little meaning if it is with respect to an infinitesimal niche that only you inhabit. Not only is it a puny accomplishment, but it also comes at the expense of all the larger (and more important) problems you could have devoted yourself to."

In proverbs, you have probably heard people saying "Jack of all trades, master of none" [origin and translations] or less probably "an inch wide and a mile deep", a slogan used to critique US math education. While the first is in favor of the specialist, the english idiom: "Don't put your eggs in one basket" sides with generalists often praised as renaissance men, polymaths and polyhistors.

In literature, Alain de Botton says "On ne tombe amoureux que lorsqu'on a mesuré la profondeur des eaux dans lesquelles on va plonger" (eng. "We cannot fall in love until we have measured the depth of the water in which we dived"). Thomas Moore's [The devil among the Scholars], however, takes different sides:

"Instead of studying tomes scholastic,Ecclesiastic, or monastic,Off I fly, careering farIn chase of Pollys, prettier farThan any of their namesakes are,--The Polymaths and Polyhistors,Polyglots and all their sisters."

Paolo Coelho said something along these lines: "we spend the second half of our lives regretting decisions we made in the first half" -- I find it elucidating.

In statistics, you might want to ask yourself the following question: "When is it appropriate to stop exploring (breadth) and start establishing and investing (depth) in the so-far best explored?". I have come across a similar stopping problem known as the sultan's dowry problem. The game is to find the sultan a wife to buy and the sultan can only decide on the spot to kill the woman or stop at some point and marry and merry her. When would it be wisest for him to stop? This problem, aka the classical secretary problem, has been solved with an optimal solution tending to 1/e ~ 0.37. In other words, if the sultan has 100 dowries, he's best at stopping and marrying the 37th. If we were to generalize the sultan's commitment to a depth-oriented endeavor about life, then we can assume that at the 37% of our "healthy" and conscious life, we should stop exploring (breadth) and decide on few commitments (depth) such as a job, marriage...etc. You might want to settle down at 30 if you think you'll make it to be 80. Carpe diem people, living each day as if it were their last, might think it is too late to ever commit. Ultimately, it is only with many assumptions that a man can guesstimate his lifespan.

In geometry, if we were to represent an individual as an object in a 3D space and assume that his knowledge is characterized by the object's volume (V), then his performance or fitness can be characterized by the object's surface area (SA). For the sake of this problem, let's assume that the volume is more or less the same amongst individuals and that opportunities are objects floating around in the aforementioned 3D space that should be captured. Given a fixed V, each individual is expected to approach the "depth vs breadth" paradigm by shaping his object in such a way that it is capable of reaching as many opportunities floating around in space. Initially, a sphere would have the least SA for a fixed V. The question is: "What 3D shape would you choose to be given a fixed volume?". If you aimed to maximize the SA tending to become a plane then you might be spreading yourself too thin and expect to be ripped apart by opportunities, even possibly unawarely, depending on your thinness. If you chose to be a rod or a thin cylinder, you might suffer from identity crisis while endlessly rotated by momentous colliding opportunities. If you aimed for something with less of a SA -- more stable like a cone -- then you might be naive to some of the opportunities. Finally, if you have chosen to remain a sphere with a solid id identified in your center of mass, then you are missing on most opportunities, even those aimed towards you that you may bounce off your surface if off-center. Personally, I prefer to be a well grounded sphere with many spikes. However, practice keeps elongating my spikes inexorably. By practice I mean, passionate expeditions and innocent curiosities and by inexorably I mean, beyond the point of creating vanity gaps and identity crises (no pun but pluralis maiestatis intended)

In physics, the law of the vital few (pareto principle or 80-20 law) is used to describe how in most natural systems, roughly 80% of events come from 20% of causes. A common example is that of 80% of lands being owned by 20% of the people. Another one is that of 20% of people having 80% of income. One can then assume that it would be natural to have 80% of one's resources (e.g. time, money) inspired and occupied by 20% of the possible venues (e.g. degrees, jobs) . I am not sure the natural solution is as well optimal. Another perspective comes from assuming that you are a ball in a 3D mountainous surface in search for the deepest hole to go in. You do not want to flow in the first deep hole (local minima) but make sure it is the deepest. Going uphill could help you detect and skip through local minimas that otherwise can claime the rest of your life. Many analogies can be drawn from the laws of thermodynamics.

In economics, cost benefit analysis might hint at a decent decision. If you were 28-ish with an MS in Computer Science and about to graduate with a PhD in a year. The cost is 1 concentrated year giving up all the hobbies and many other expertise that contribute to your lost identity. The benefit is increasing your salary from $50k/y (programmer) to $70k/y (professor) on average in Bloomington, and decreasing the work time from 8h/d to 4h/d. However, in this one year, you could risk loosing your charisma and other say 2 expertise, each worth $40/year. In other words, would you rather be open for three $40k/y jobs (breadth) or one $80/year (depth), of course with much more effort in the next year and half the effort afterwards? I guess it depends on one's persistence and self-discipline.

In philosophy, the dichotomy of yin-yang might be the closest to that of "breadth depth". The two opposing forces of ying yang are believed to be independent yet give rise to each other. Similarly, with enough breadth one is compelled to go deep and vice versa, with enough depth one might need to back up broadly. For instance, the boredom of being in one state (e.g. country, in a relationship...) could be an incentive for one to visit other states (e.g. traveling, dating...). On the other hand, restlessness could be the opposing incentive for one to settle down in one state. Old Portuguese mariners used to say: "Navigar e' preciso, viver nao e' preciso" and still via Fernando Pessoa say: "a minha patria e' onde nao estou". Charles Baudelaire rephrased: "Je suis toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas". You might have heard the saying "the grass is greener on the other side" or "l'erba del vicino e' sempre piu' verde". It is not surprising that the two opposing terms "cosmopolitan" and "nomad" mean the same from the subject's perspective and especially regarding his identity in question. Adam Smith's wealth of nations states:

"the greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour."

Adam Smith is clearly in favor of depth from an individual's perspective and of breadth from a community's perspective for the maximum benefit of the community. It is not easy to argue that the community's benefit will pour back into that of the individual.

In biology, Darwinian evolution claims survival for the fittest when it fails to clearly describe human fitness. When breadth is essential for basic survival, depth seems to be rudimentary for secondary enhancements to the quality of survival -- this has been evidently the case since Plato's Republic, to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations . A fisherman might live off fish if he can trade, a trader might make a good living if well connected to the market, the market exists only with enough merchants and clients and so on and so forth. A changing environment is in favor of Jack of all trades. When life gives you only lemon you might want to consider lemonade in spite of your PhD title, unless you want to starve to death. "Dio da pane a chi non ha denti" translates to "God gives bread to the toothless", but that might be just because one is too naive to consider other talents or opportunities. Life's resources are not limited to eating but also procreation. A study has shown that males of polygamous species are rewarded with generous insemination only if they are fit to fight any other male. This fitness however, requires larger bodies and horns thus requiring more food and offering higher chances of visibility to the predators. On a smaller time scale, ironically, males often risk their lives (visibly and audibly) to predators from other species when trying to sexually impress females, proving their fitness and health. The trade off is another paradoxical example of depth vs breadth.

In psychology, our daily decisions are based on an evaluation of advantages and disadvantages but in the longer run it is reined by economy and our morals, if any at all. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is portrayed by a pyramid of human needs with the most basic in the bottom (e.g. physiological and safety needs). At the top of the pyramid is the self-actualization need, which needs a deeper human contribution (e.g. creativity, problem solving). A scientist might find a couple of journal publications satisfactory but more so a more influential book. Another scientist might find more fulfillment in achieving a sports medal or a selling one of his paintings. Fulfillment and success are not easy to define in an equation or measure with units. When "breadth" can be seen as a self-handicapping behavior in psychology, generalists have a leadership role to fill in sociology.

In history, polymaths were the most influential, greatly thanks to the cumulative effort and contribution of focused experts. In other words, the polymaths are An extensive

[list] of the history's greatest polymaths might give you an intimation on my assertion. In the end, it is up to you to contribute behind the scenes (depth) or on stage (breadth).

None of the perspectives above offers a clear solution to the "depth vs breadth" paradigm. It is an arms race between breadth and depth, the mile wide and the inch deep, jack of all trades and master of none, the generalist and the specialist.... Personally, every fulfillment in any direction leaves me with more hope for self-fulfillment and paradoxically, at the same time, with more gaps to reach self-fulfillment. It might be my false evaluation of human abilities that made me invest at the first place with seeds of false hope and treacherous expectation... Time will tell!
I wrote this post as a test in which I can assess my writing skills and adjust my expectations for a more rewarding self-fulfillment.

\/ /\ | |\|

How vain it is to write and more so not to write. So, I write about vain and I wonder since everything I do is in vain, what would the opposite of vain be? Suddenly, the answer hits me. Vain is the opposite of vain, and the desperate hope of escaping it is, alas, vain.