Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα – Page 2

REVIEW: ΑΪΒΑΛΙ

Το αγόρασα για τη μάνα μου· το διάβασα πριν προλάβει να το ανοίξει μεν, αλλά άφησα και αρκετό χρόνο στο μεταξύ για να μην φαίνεται ότι της το αγόρασα κυρίως για να το διαβάσω εγώ δε! Καλό αυτό με τους γονείς!

Ας ξεκινήσω λέγοντας ότι είχα γνωρίσει μέσω της Πολιτισμικής Τεχνολογίας τον Soloúp από κοντά πριν αρκετά χρόνια—πάνε έξι σίγουρα—στην Μυτιλήνη την οποία περιγράφει στην αρχή του βιβλίου. Ήταν για την παρουσίαση του «Είναι κανείς εγώ;». Είχα εντυπωσιαστεί από την απλότητα του, με την καλή έννοια πάντα, και από την συμπάθεια που μου ενέπνευσε, κι από τότε τον διάβαζα περιστασιακά και απολάμβανα τις εύστοχες γελοιογραφίες του με θέμα την επικαιρότητα. So, I’m biased! Πίσω στην Μυτιλήνη: έχοντας κι εγώ μια πολύ ιδιαίτερη σχέση με αυτή την πόλη, έχοντας ζήσει εκεί πέντε απ’τα καλύτερα μου χρόνια, ένιωσα αμέσως τι ήθελε να πει ο ποιητής.

Γιατί κι εγώ πέρασα Απέναντι όσο ήμουν εκεί. Τρεις φορές επισκέφθηκα το Αϊβαλί όσο έμενα στην Μυτιλήνη, και μια φορά πήγα στην Τζούντα/Μοσχονήσι. Και η δική μου οικογένεια, μέρος της τουλάχιστον, διώχθηκε από τη Σμύρνη, και από εδώ που βρίσκομαι τώρα, από τη Νέα Σμύρνη, αναρωτιέμαι και μαζί με την μητέρα μου το παρελθόν των συγγενών από έναν άλλο κόσμο. Πριν 2 χρόνια ανοίξαμε για πρώτη φορά ένα γράμμα που το είχε γράψει ο θείος απλά για να καταγραφούν κάπως όσα έζησε τις ημέρες της Μικρασιατικής Καταστροφής. Η μάνα μου δεν το είχε ανοίξει ποτέ επειδή ήξερε ότι θα συγκινήθει.

Τώρα που το σκέφτομαι, όλη μου η οικογένεια, απ’όλες τις μπάντες, έχει το στοιχείο του ξεριζωμού: η αυστραλέζικη οικογένεια του πατέρα μου δεν ήταν πάντα αυστραλέζικη· ξεριζώθηκαν από διαφορετικά μέρη της Βρετανίας για να μεταναστεύσουν για τους δικούς τους λόγους στην άλλη άκρη της Γης. Ο πατέρας μου, με τη σειρά του, εγκατέλειψε τον Νέο Κόσμο για να έρθει στον Παλιό, στον πολύ Παλιό. Ο έλληνας παππούς μου ήταν από την Κλειτορία Αχαΐας, όμως στον πόλεμο το χωριό του καταστράφηκε από τους Γερμανούς (και μετά δούλευε για τη Siemens και η μάνα μου έγινε καθηγήτρια Γερμανικών… αυτό κι αν θα πει έλλειψη προκαταλήψεων!) και έπρεπε να έρθει στην Αθήνα, όπου βέβαια γνώρισε τη γιαγιά μου στη Νέα Σμύρνη. Όλη μου η πρόσφατη οικογενειακή ιστορία είναι μια διαρκής μετανάστευση, γι’αυτό το Αϊβαλί μου μίλησε βαθιά.

Και δεν είναι τι μου είπε. Είναι πώς το είπε. Με τόση ευαισθησία, σεβασμό στην ακρίβεια στην πηγή αλλά και διαφορετική ερμηνεία και παραλλαγή όπου χρειαζόταν· αρμονία· όμορφα σχέδια, με βάθος, όχι τεχνικό απαραίτητα, αλλά αλληγορικό, αυτό το intuitive αντί του sensing. Επίσης είχε, και φάνηκε πολύ, απεριόριστη αγάπη γι’αυτό το κομμάτι της ιστορίας το οποίο τόσο πολύ έχουμε ξεχάσει τόσο σύντομα, για την ιστορία της ειρηνικής συνύπαρξης που διακόπηκε από τους πολέμους και την Ανταλλαγή. Αλλά έτσι λένε, πως οι τρίτης γενιάς και μετά επιθυμούν πραγματικά να ψάξουν τις ρίζες τους μετά από τέτοια τραυματικά γεγονότα σε επίπεδο εθνών.

Υπάρχει αυτές τις μέρες, όπως φαίνεται και από την ίδια την κυκλοφορία αυτού του βιβλίου και την αναζήτηση που την ενέπνευσε, νέο ενδιαφέρον για τις ιστορίες αυτής της άλλης τόσο συγκινητικής εποχής. Ο Soloúp γράφει στο τέλος του βιβλίου ότι ήθελε να χρησιμοποιήσει το υλικό που ερεύνησε ώστε να κινήσει το ενδιαφέρον στους αναγνώστες για τις πραγματικές πηγές και τα πραγματικά βιβλία που μίλησαν για ό,τι συνέβη. Για μένα πάντως το κατάφερε 100%, και γρήγορα ανακάλυψα πως η μάνα μου ήδη έχει μεγάλο μέρος της λίστας των προτεινόμενων. Σας έρχομαι!

Τέλος, πολύ σημαντικό για μένα, ήταν και η θέαση της άλλης μεριάς, πώς η Καταστροφή ήρθε και ως απάντηση σε μια σειρά ελληνικών φρικωδιών στην Μικρασιατική Εκστρατεία αλλά και πώς οι Τούρκοι βίωσαν την ανταλλαγή και τα πριν και μετά στην Κρήτη. Κι εγώ θυμάμαι αυτόν τον χάρτη της Κρήτης στο τουριστικό πρακτορείο, αν δεν κάνω λάθος, με το που βγαίνεις από το τελωνείο στο Αϊβαλί.

(ο Soloúp είναι στην Τζούντα, στα παλιά ελληνικά σπίτια, με έναν τούρκο επισκέπτη που ξέρει κρητικά γιατί η γιαγιά του ήταν από την Κρήτη πριν πάει με την Ανταλλαγή στο Τσεσμέ)

Mehmet: Ακριβώς ετουτανά τα σπίθια θανά ‘πρεπε να μας μονιταρίζουνε (ενώνουνε).

Soloúp: Ποια; Τα σπίτια κάποιων ελλήνων νοικοκυραίων που άφησαν τα κόκαλα τους στις γύρω ρεματιές και τώρα μέσα σε αυτά ζούνε τούρκοι;

Mehmet: Ναισκέ, αλλά δε ζήσανε μέσα τούρκοι που εσκλαβώσανε, αλλά τούρκοι πρόσφυγκες «μπομπαντελήδες» (απ’την Ανταλλαγή). «Γκιαουρόσποροι», όπως εβρίζανε και την εδική μου νενέ οι Γερλήδες στον Τσεσμέ. Ετουτανά τα σπίθια βαστούνε δύο ζωές. Μια ρωμαιική και μια τουρκική. Εζήσανε μέσα ντως άνθρωποι με άλλη λαλιά και πίστη. Αλλιώς ονειρευόντανε τη ζωή ντως οι ρωμιοί που τα χτίσανε, αλλιώς οι τούρκοι που τα καμπιτήρανε. Αν είχανε λαλιά τα σπίθια, δε θά ‘χανε να πούνε τόσα για ρωμιούς και τούρκους, όσο για των ανθρώπω τα βάσανα. Ο πόνος είναι ίδιος όποια γλώσσα και να μιλείς. Αν είχανε οι τοίχοι λαλιά, θά ‘χανε πολλά να πούνε για τη βαρβαράδα των ανθρώπω. Για τον κατατρεγμό. Όμως ο καθείς μας στην εδική του μπάντα, μαθαίνει πως τα βάσανα είναι μόνο εδικά του. Η βαρβαράδα πάντα των «αλλωνών». Ετόσας ο πόνος, λέει η Αϊσέ, πως θαν’ εμπορείε να μας μονιταρίσει. Το σπίτι πού ‘φηκε ο παππούς σου στον Τσεσμέ και που το δώκανε στη νενέ μου την κρητικιά.

Soloúp: Να πεις στην Αϊσέ, με τόσο πόνο στις φαμελιές μας, στο τέλος θα βρεθούμε και συγγενείς.

Mehmet: Για να το σκεφτείς… είμαστε και οι δύο εγγόνια της Λοζάνης!
Και οι δύο: Χα, χα, χα!

…

Ο καθείς αγαπά την πατρίδα του και τον τόπο των παππούδω του. Σε μας μόνο στσοι μπάσταρδους τση Λοζάνης, ετούτηνα η αγάπη είναι πιο μπερδεμένη.

Μεγάλο έργο. Ευχαριστώ.

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REVIEW: THE BOTANY OF DESIRE: A PLANT’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD

The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Got this from Audible. Actually, no: I got it for free as a kind of gift for being a subscriber but got tired of Audible and its DRM bullshit so I downloaded and listened to a pirated version of this and subsequently unsubscribed from Audible. Ahem.

In this surprisingly old book (it was written in 2002) journalist and plant aficionado Michael Pollan takes the well-worn trope of humans using the evolution of plants for their own benefit (i.e. agriculture) and turns its on its head: what if plants have actually used the evolution of humans for their own benefit?

Just to clarify, and Mr. Pollan was well-aware of this too, anthropomorphising evolution or nature and endowing it with such properties as intelligence and design (or intelligent design) is a figure of speech: as far as we know evolution is as purposeful as the flowing of the rivers and the burning of the stars. I’ll leave that one to you.

So, Michael Pollan’s idea was to take four species of plants–the tulip, cannabis, the apple and the potato– and examine how not just we humans have used them for our own needs, but also how the plants themselves, in an evolutionary tango with our own species, played on our desires and took advantage of us, too. The book has four chapters, one for each human desire responsible for the propagation of each of the four species of plant: sweetness for apples, beauty for tulips, intoxication for cannabis and control for potatoes.

“Great art is born when Apollonian form and Dionysian ecstasy are held in balance.”

In the first part of the book, I enjoyed Pollan’s comparison between the Dionysian and the Apollonian; chaos and order; female and male; yin and yang; nature and culture; the apple’s story and the tulip’s story, which both hold the sperms of their opposite inside them, in true dualist nature. I found this quote particularly interesting: “Great art is born when Apollonian form and Dionysian ecstasy are held in balance”, and it becomes more and more relevant as one goes through the book, seeing in every plant’s story the art manifesting itself through the tug–which at the same time is a balancing act–between human structures imposed on nature and nature’s tendency to defy control. Then there’s structure in nature’s chaos and a part that is natural in human structures and so on.

The chapter on cannabis was a little more daring, given marijuana’s legal status (which is, however slowly, changing around the world) and Mr. Pollan shares his insights on that topic and how human societies brought a species underground, where it’s found new life, too. The Apollonian has won, even though the desire itself is Dionysian. Hm. Are all human desires Dionysian, I wonder?

The last chapter was about GMOs and Monsanto’s control on patented potato seeds, including many many other agricultural plants of course. It’s amazing and telling that this chapter, written 12 years ago, seems to sketch the current situation so eloquently. Even though I come from a family background which is 100% anti-GMO, the arguments posited here about the pros and cons of GMOs as well as the pros and cons of organic agriculture seemed very well balanced and neutral to me, and most of all well-argued; in a few words, as close to an objective view as I could hope for. It’s still pro-organic, but cleverly so: it adds an interesting twist from a philosophical, pragmatical and experiential perspective–e.g. the story of the writer’s own batch of GMO potatoes. I would even suggest reading this chapter alone for a nice eagle’s eye view of what’s wrong with GMOs, what they’re supposedly trying to solve and why they’re most probably not going to solve it, creating other unforeseeable problems along the way.

Pollan managed to blend personal experience with journalistic research quite seamlessly and enjoyably, and I feel as though I came out of this ~~read~~ listen more complete and with a greater sense of appreciation for agriculture. Cause you can’t have agriculture without culture. I’m not giving it five stars because… oh I can’t come up with a reason, but hey, I don’t have to give you one, it’s my gut score! It might have to do with the reader of the audiobook whose voice and intonation sometimes annoyed me. I’d give it a 4.5 though, easily.

Thanks go to Karina for first telling me about this book two years ago or so.

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REVIEW: PIHKAL: A CHEMICAL LOVE STORY

Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story by Alexander Shulgin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes you read some books you think everybody should read, if only just so that they can correct their misconceptions on certain things.

Alexander Shulgin was a researcher of psychotropics which he had been inventing in his laboratories and testing on himself for almost half a century. Actually, no; merely calling him that would be like describing J.S. Bach simply as a Baroque musician. If it wasn’t for him, a great many psychoactive compounds, including MDMA, the tremendous potential for psychotherapeutic use of which it was also he who discovered, would have never seen the light of day; people wouldn’t have enjoyed them and found insight in their use… The field as a whole would be much poorer.

In fact, given the prolonged forbidding legal status of the production, distribution and even use for the majority of known psychedelics since the ’60s, without Shulgin there would have hence been next to no research at all in this field of human knowledge and experience we are repeatedly and stubbornly denying ourselves from. He was one of the most important beacons of reason, curiosity and tenderness on this topic, and that is why I wanted to get my hands on PiKHaL: anything written by Sasha is required reading on this subject.

Since it’s a big book and it’s expensive and difficult to get it even used, I tracked it down on .pdf soon after I got my Kindle, which makes it easier to enjoy hard-to-find works like this on digital format. The day after I started reading it, there was news that Shulgin had passed away – at the age of 88 and after inventing and trying hundreds of successful and not-so-successful “drugs”, no less.

Shulgin in this book told his life’s story and how he got interested in the things that made him famous (it has to do with the placebo effect and the power of the mind); how he met his wife, who co-authored this work with him; he described his little psychedelic sessions with friends in a very affectionate and effective way.

In their remote but blessed corner of the universe they tread new ground and wrote all about it. It was epic.

Read this and come back to me mumbling something about wanting to keep it natural and chemicals-free. I dare you.

I’m perfectly aware that I might be getting on your nerves with these Kindle shots. The first two should be easy enough to read if you want to get a feel of what it was like reading these highlight-worthy quotes. But in this last bit the font is too small, and I admit it’s probably way too much effort reading text from those .jpgs. They serve as aesthetic enhancements of the review. Or I could just call them my reviews’ seasonings, like they have in restaurants on every table: complete with salt, pepper, oil, chili perhaps, here in Bulgaria garlic sauce… Optional, but there for you if you’re feeling like it.

I’ll sign off this review with a transcript of the picture above, because I know that sometimes food is best eaten pure.

PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Shulgin)
– Your Highlight on page 208 | location 3183-3185 | Added on Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:20:42

I looked up at him and smiled, showing all my teeth, “I learned long ago that the most dangerous opponent is the one who tells you he hasn’t been near the game in years. He’s the one who’ll wipe the board with you, while apologizing for being so terribly rusty.”
==========
PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Shulgin)
– Your Highlight on page 215 | location 3294-3297 | Added on Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:34:12

“You told me that you invent new psychedelics and that you have a group of people who try them out after you’ve made sure they’re safe and ,/ He interrupted, “Not safe. There is no such thing as safety. Not with drugs and not with anything else. You can only presume relative safety. Too much of anything is unsafe. Too much food, too much drink, too much aspirin, too much anything you can name, is likely to be unsafe.”
==========
PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Shulgin)
– Your Highlight on page 219 | location 3349-3351 | Added on Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:39:51

“Of course, there are many ways to alter your consciousness and your perceptions; there always have been, and new ways will keep being developed. Drugs are only one way, but I feel they’re the way that brings about the changes most rapidly, and – in some ways – most dependably. Which makes them very valuable when the person using them knows what he’s doing.”

And… sorry, I just couldn’t hold myself. Quotes really do a better job at reviewing themselves than I ever could.

PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Shulgin)
– Your Highlight on page 176 | location 2690-2698 | Added on Sunday, 8 June 2014 04:37:06

Sam said, “I don’t know if you realize this, but there are some researchers – doctors – who are giving this kind of drug to volunteers, to see what the effects are, and they’re doing it the proper scientific way, in clean white hospital rooms, away from trees and flowers and the wind, and they’re surprised at how many of the experiments turn sour. They’ve never taken any sort of psychedelic themselves, needless to say. Their volunteers – they’re called ‘subjects,’ of course – are given mescaline or LSD and they’re all opened up to their surroundings, very sensitive to color and light and other people’s emotions, and what are they given to react to? Metal bed-frames and plaster walls, and an occasional white coat carrying a clipboard. Sterility. Most of them say afterwards that they’ll never do it again.” “Jesus! Right now, after what I’ve just gone through, that sounds worse than awful.” “Not all of the research is being done that way, thank God, but too much of it is.” “What a shame,” I said, saddened by the picture, “What a shame!”

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REVIEW: THE BOOK OF THE DAMNED

The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(It’s already been almost three months since I finished this one… just for you to get an idea of how slowly things are making the passover from my life to the ‘mension these days.)

Reading the Book of the Damned on the book-damning device.

Below you will find an assortment of highlights from The Book of the Damned pulled from the clipping file of my Kindle. Convenient, that. You can find the same super-version of the book as the one I read for free on Amazon. I’m still not sure if it’s a best-of, Charles Fort’s collected works, or what… There seems to be at least some content which doesn’t match up with the text found on his four books as found separately.

Anyway, back to the quotes:

The data of the damned. I have gone into the outer darkness of scientific and philosophical transactions and proceedings, ultra-respectable, but covered with the dust of disregard. I have descended into journalism. I have come back with the quasi-souls of lost data. They will march.

—

The power that has said to all these things that they are damned, is Dogmatic Science.

—

All sciences begin with attempts to define. Nothing ever has been defined. Because there is nothing to define. Darwin wrote The Origin of Species. He was never able to tell what he meant by a “species.” It is not possible to define. Nothing has ever been finally found out. Because there is nothing final to find out. It’s like looking for a needle that no one ever lost in a haystack that never was—

—

The novel is a challenge to vulgarization: write something that looks new to you: someone will point out that the thrice-accursed Greeks said it long ago.

—

It may be that in the whole nineteenth century no event more important than this occurred. In La Nature, 1887, and in L’Année Scientifique, 1887, this occurrence is noted. It is mentioned in one of the summer numbers of Nature, 1887. Fassig lists a paper upon it in the Annuaire de Soc. Met., 1887. Not a word of discussion. Not a subsequent mention can I find. Our own expression: What matters it how we, the French Academy, or the Salvation Army may explain? A disk of worked stone fell from the sky, at Tarbes, France, June 20, 1887.

—

My notion of astronomic accuracy: Who could not be a prize marksman, if only his hits be recorded?

—

But what would a deep-sea fish learn even if a steel plate of a wrecked vessel above him should drop and bump him on the nose? Our submergence in a sea of conventionality of almost impenetrable density. Sometimes I’m a savage who has found something on the beach of his island. Sometimes I’m a deep-sea fish with a sore nose.

Charles Fort was a trailblazer. What we call today paranormal or occult, together with all the relevant scientific investigations, in a few words what we’d expect from Mulder and Scully, to a large extent we owe to him. Here’s a guy who lived in the ’20s and researched old copies of Scientific American, Nature and other such periodicals and magazines, looking for the damned, the unexplainable, the excluded. For what good is science, if it only chooses to include to its dogma what it can explain, sweeping under the carpet all that can be used to challenge its grand theories?

Giant, village-sized wheels submerged in the middle of the ocean; periodic rains of fish, frogs in various states of decay and of a gelatinous mass of unknown origin; falling stone discs, as in the quote above; meteors; lights in the sky moving in formation (reported in the 19th century); footprints of impossible creatures; giant hailstones; cannonballs entombed in solid rock, and that’s just a sample.

Reading about these mysterious exclusions was a delight. I love everything that challenges my way of seeing the world and allows me to contemplate alternative explanations for life, the universe and everything. To be fair, some of Fort’s favourite theories were down-right bizarre, such as his insistence on imagining a realm above our own from which all the falling creatures and materials originated – what our own surface world would be, conceptually, for the “deep-sea fish with the sore nose”, as in the last extract I quoted above. The existence of such a place sounds no less ridiculous now than it did in the 1920s, but I think Fort’s point was that his arbitrary explanations were just as good as the official ones offered by the scientific dogma of the time, which our present, widely-accepted, matter-of-fact world theories of today mirror. To be sure, a part – I don’t know how significant – of the excluded, would be possible to include today, but I’m sure that many of the phenomena Fort goes through in his Book of the Damned would be just as inexplicable today as they were in the centuries past.

There are two reasons this book isn’t getting five stars from me. The first one is that it’s twice as long as I think it should have been. I felt that Fort at certain points was simply repeating himself. It’s also possible he was just saying the same thing in a different, more difficult to understand way, and this is precisely the second reason this isn’t getting five stars. Fort’s language and style was very hit or miss. To give you an idea, the quotes I’ve included in this review are some of the easiest parts to understand from the whole book. Others love it. Myself, I can’t say I hate it, but I’m not sure it’s as successful a writing technique as Fort must have hoped for it to be.

The same hit-or-miss-ness is applicable to the book as a whole. I thought it was tremendously interesting and a significant publication that should be studied further and give inspiration to present-day Charles Forts, but I don’t believe the style is for everyone. Why don’t you find out for yourself if it’s right for you, though? It’s free!

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QUOTES ~ ΑΠΟΦΘΕΓΜΑΤΑ ΧΧ

Had this on my sticky notes on my (ex-)laptop’s dekstop, among all the rest of the mess, just sitting there for more than a year. Rejoice, snip; your time has come at last.

As for the fluency, it is better to do foreign language education at an early age, but being exposed to a foreign language since an early age causes a “weak identification” (Billiet, Maddens and Beerten 241). Such issue leads to a “double sense of national belonging,” that makes one not sure of where he or she belongs to because according to Brian A. Jacob, multicultural education impacts students’ “relations, attitudes, and behaviors” (Jacob 364). And as children learn more and more foreign languages, children start to adapt, and get absorbed into the foreign culture that they “undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made” (Pratt 35). Due to such factors, learning foreign languages at an early age may incur one’s perspective of his or her native country.

From the Wikipedia article on second language.

My stress. It explains a lot, I think.

REVIEW: FLUENT IN 3 MONTHS: TIPS AND TECHNIQUES TO HELP YOU LEARN ANY LANGUAGE

Fluent in 3 Months: Tips and Techniques to Help You Learn Any Language by Benny Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a person with the ambition to become a polyglot myself (some would even say that with my 5 languages spoken at different levels of mastery I could already call myself one), I can tell you that Benny Lewis is to a great degree what I would like to become one day. If there ever was a more encouraging person that anybody can do it, he would be it. He managed to learn so many languages – I don’t even remember how many – starting in his early ’20s with Spanish and never ever stopping since.

This book is a collection of his most useful techniques and methods and his unmatched motivational skills. While reading it I was feeling so pumped to learn all the languages I could get my hands on, and he really made it all look so easy! Motivating doesn’t even begin to describe it.

My main problem with his work is that he’s not very precise on what actually being fluent means when talking about becoming fluent in three months, something which other people on the web have commented on too. This is part of his own definition from the book itself:

He continues by saying that fluency in a language is difficult to measure (“there is no absolute, discernirble point you pass when can say, ‘Now I can speak the language fluently.'”) and suggests that for all intents and purposes a B2 level on the Common European Framework, by that standard, should be enough. That’s debatable of course and depends on the needs of every individual learner, and, as a holder of a B2 in German and Spanish myself, I still don’t consider myself fluent in either language; rather, I’d consider myself a competent speaker for everyday situations, but no more.

The book itself in general made me think about what my individual needs and goals about each language I’m learning are and gave me plenty ideas and methods on how to reach them. Its best point was the motivation it gave me and that it helped visualise what I’d really like to do with my language-speaking.

Also, Fluent in 3 Months is the first book I’ve seen as of yet that takes advantage of the possibilities granted by dynamic content – as opposed to traditional, static content found in books – made possible by the web: it has links to articles and resources kept updated by the author, which sort of act as mini-expansion packs for the book, e.g. links to useful services, such as Memrise, italki or Polyglot Club. Benny’s idea is that if you own the book, you should always have access to fresh content which in some cases might not be the same as what’s included in the book, as could be the case for example with the links to language-learning websites.

All this said, I don’t particularly like Benny’s tendency to whore himself out and his advice out behind paywalls on his site. Even if you buy his book as I did and subscribe for the extra content, there’s still a “premium membership” you’ve got to pay if you want to have full access to what he’s written over the past few years. I understand that he’s put a lot of work on all of this and that learning new languages full-time has been his main occupations for the better part of his springtime of youth, but I have to admit that it all rather leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Regardless of this, though, if you’re about to tackle a new language or would love to learn more about how effective language-learning works, Benny is one of the best people out there to turn to, or at least to his work. Again, if you can be skeptical about his method and his general aims in learning lots and lots of languages fluently in a sense, you can’t deny that the guy has a talent of being able to very straightforwardly pump you up and make you feel like even learning Mandarin or whatever else you might think a difficult language could be is a piece of cake and only a matter of dedication. And, in the end, if this book left me with anything very concrete, it’s that dedication and the willingness to forget about shyness and/or other bullshit excuse it’s the only thing that might be stopping us from becoming truly good at – or at least having just the right attitude for – speaking our favourite languages.

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Review: Mort

Mort by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First, I’d like to mention that this particular edition of the book is pure, distilled class. I found it in Гринуич (Greenwich, written “green witch”), one of Sofia’s largest bookstores. Happily, there’s also “Guards! Guards!” from the same line of beautiful 2014 hardcover editions of the Discworld series on that rotating shelf waiting for me to get my hands on it… All I have to do is swallow shelling out another seemingly-cheap-but-it’s-what-I-should-be-paying-for-my-nourishment-with 20 лв so soon after I did it for Mort with this particular expression on my face.

Anyway, I wanted to include quotes from Mort in my review to yet again share just how witty, pertinent and, well, funny Pratchett’s writing has proved itself to be, but I decided to just put links to lists becase this would grow out of any sort of proportion and my reviews in general need more words like my back needs more hair. The lists of quotes: [1] [2].

Many discheads count Mort as one of the best books in the whole series, and I remember my friend Garret pestering me to read this book in particular for years. My time did come, now that my disc is spinning – you may interpret that analogy at will, by the way. I would say that, compared to Small Gods, the Discworld entry I read before this one, Mort was funnier but lacked part of the punch; Small Gods made me think “hey, Pratchett’s onto something here”, but no such internal exclamations were had with Mort, and rather missed they were. However, I did have to think (relatively) long and hard to decide whether or not I should give Mort 5 stars all the same as a reward for it managing to crack me up so systematically. The end result of that painful procedure you can see before you; nevertheless, let it be known that Mort is funny and that you should read it, even if you’ve never read a Discworld novel before.

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Review: The Science Delusion: Feeling the Spirit of Enquiry + Quotes ~ Αποφθέγματα ΧΙΧ

The Science Delusion: Feeling the Spirit of Enquiry by Rupert Sheldrake

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have the rational intelligence to be a scientist, but it’s not in my personality to fill in cracks in established mental models. I seek anomalies that open cracks.

~Ran Prieur

Quickly becoming one of my favourite quotes.

Jimmy Wales tells “energy workers” that Wikipedia won’t publish woo, “the work of lunatic charlatans isn’t the equivalent of ‘true scientific discourse'” [link]

Jimmy Wales’ statement is as revolting as the discussion under it. I would suggest that you read it, but only if you have the stomach for tens of “skeptics” parrotting the mainstream opinions about woo, parapsychology etc, claiming the truth and the high ground of knowledge as they usually do. Even the article itself is taking clear sides without shame.

Do these people know anything about the subject? Does Jimmy Wales know anything about the subject, he who with one broad swath pigeonholes so many people as lunatic charlatanes? I don’t know whether this technique in particular has had successes, explicable or inexplicable, in doing what it says it does, I haven’t looked into it to be honest, but I’ve seen the same discussion surrounding “pseudoscience” too many times to count.

Why this hate? Why this elitism? Why this aversion to exploration of the fringes? When did science become all about defending what’s already known? I thought the opposite was the main idea. Is materialist science, peer-reviewd journals, wikipedia, Richard Dawkins and the rest, parts of a bulletproof world theory anyway?

No, they’re not. Far from it. And if you want to know why, you should absolutely read The Science Delusion (title insisted upon by publisher) by Rupert Sheldrake. His main idea is that science and the scientific method are generally good at giving answers about our world, but, just like organised religion 500 years ago did, it has become too inflexible, too bulky, too dogmatic, too rid of assumptions, too sure of itself and too dismissive to be of any real use today. Meanwhile, it’s hindering research that could further our understanding of the world in unimaginable ways.

What’s interesting is that Sheldrake in this book provides us with -what’s normally considered as- hard evidence for a world that cannot be explained materialistically. That includes results of real peer-reviewed experiments that point to the reality of things like brainless memories, statistically significant telepathy and many more chin-stroke-worthy phenomena that truly test mainstream science’s beliefs of what should or shouldn’t be possible.

After reading the book, I checked Rupert Sheldrake’s Wikipedia entry just to see reactions to his work from the scientific communituy. Not surprisingly, the discussion was not much more sophisticated than what I witnessed in the link at the top of this review: accusations of pseudoscience, charlatanism etc pervaded the articles, indications that the skeptics hadn’t really comprehended the criticism aimed at their methodology and worldview, didn’t follow up on the bibliography, plainly assuming that there must have been something wrong with it (confirmation bias), or that they simply didn’t even read the book. Richard Dawkins has said, after all, that he doesn’t want to discuss evidence when it comes to inexplicable phenomena, raising questions about whether he’s really interested in the truth or not – in my personal experience, most skeptics do not have furthering their understanding of our world at the top of their priorities.

In any case, I find the accusations against Sheldrake, and this book in particular, hollow: The Science Delusion has close to 40 pages of notes and bibliography of actual experiments to back it up and Sheldrake’s style and prose themselves are lucid as well as restrained. Even in the parts in which he discusses the inability of science to interpret the phenomena, where he proposes his own theory of morphing resonance as a possible explanation -the parts I enjoyed the least because I cannot exactly grasp the concept of morphic resonance-, he does so without conviction, but rather with the spirit of the curious researcher. A true scientist in my book. The skeptics’ reaction to his work seems to disregard all of this completely; they treat him like they would any old fraud.

But I understand: scientists are also people. What would it have been normal for them to do in the face of rejection of their entire lives’ work plus a few hundred years of tradition? Accept their failure? Accept their dogmatism? Just as scientists are people, science is also a human activity, and as most of human activities do, it also suffers from the same problems human beings generally have, only in a larger, more chaotic scale.

Finally, one more reason I appreciated this book so much was that it was… tender. At the other side of the raging skeptics and this blind rejection there is investigation, there is respect, there is a belief in a state of things that resonated deeply with me. Maybe it’s because Sheldrake’s main field of research has been biology that he shows such love for plants, animals and life in general. For whatever reason, it warmed my heart and made me think that if I ever was a real scientist, Sheldrake would be my rold model: a fighter for truth against the faux fighters for truth, the romantic gardener who everybody calls a hippie but he alone sees what everybody else is too blind to see.

Third five-star review in a row after Μίλα μου για γλώσσα and
Small Gods (lol). Am I becoming softer or just more grateful?

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Review: Αντικουλτούρα: Τα “κακά” παιδιά

Αντικουλτούρα: Τα “κακά” παιδιά by Juan Carlos Kreimer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Δύσκολα η γενιά μας έχει πρόσβαση σε πληροφορίες για το τι γινόταν 50 χρόνια πριν, σε μια εποχή που είχε ελπίδα, όραμα και παραδόξως -γιατί τότε ήταν ο τρόπος ζωής των παρείσακτων – γέννησε μεγάλο μέρος αυτού που σήμερα λέμε pop culture (δηλαδή δημοφιλή κουλτούρα). Δεν διδάσκεται πουθενά και όλοι μας σχεδόν έχουμε σαν δεδομένα αυτά που έγιναν τότε: από τα κεκτημένα στα δικαιώματα των μαύρων μέχρι τους ανατρεπτικούς μουσικούς που γέννησαν τη ροκ και τις ενθεογενείς ουσίες οι οποίες άνοιξαν μυαλά αλλά διώχτηκαν και συκοφαντήθηκαν. Δυστυχώς από τότε έχει περάσει αρκετός καιρός ώστε να μαθαίνουμε μόνο αυτά τα οποία το κύριο ρεύμα μπορεί να χωνέψει και έχει εντάξει· είμαι σίγουρος πως πολλές ιστορίες, φιγούρες και άλλα σημαντικά για την εποχή γεγονότα και διεργασίες έχουν πια ξεχαστεί ή/και επιμελώς θαφτεί.

Το βιβλίο ως βιβλίο καταπιάνεται με όλα αυτά. ο Juan Carlos Kreimer και ο Frank Vega προσπαθούν με το Αντικουλτούρα: Τα «κακά» παιδιά (thumbs-down στην μετάφραση του τίτλου και των εισαγωγικών, που στο πρωτότυπο είναι Contracultura para principiantes, δηλαδή Αντικουλτούρα για Αρχάριους), να μας δώσουν εμάς, την γενιά του 21ου αιώνα, τι έγινε εκεί πίσω στην εποχή η οποία δημιούργησε τις περισσότερες φιγούρες στις οποίες πιστεύει το σημερινό περιθώριο, όσο κι αν σπάνια έχει συνείδηση της συστημικότητας -ήδη απ’το ’70- πολλών απ’τα στοιχεία που αυτό οικοιοποιείται σήμερα. Τα καταφέρνει; Ναι και όχι.

Ναι, γιατί αναφέρει -αρκετά συμπυκνωμένα είναι αλήθεια- όλα αυτά που μόλις έγραψα. Πώς έγιναν διάσημοι οι Beatles, πώς ξεκίνησαν οι Sex Pistols, ποιος έκανε το LSD διάσημο, ποιοι ήταν οι πρώτοι διανοητές beat, ποιες ταινίες επηρέασαν το πνεύμα της εποχής, γιατί δολοφονήθηκαν όλοι οι πολιτικοί -μαύροι και λευκοί- οι οποίοι θα μπορούσαν να είχαν κάνει τη διαφορά, τι διάβαζαν οι χίπιδες, τι δυσφήμισε τα κινήματα κτλ.

Όχι, γιατί δεν κατάφερε να δημιουργήσει μια συνεκτική ιστορία που θα συνέδεε όλην αυτή την πληροφορία σε μια ιστορία, σε μια ενιαία αφήγηση. Διαβάζοντας το μαθαίνεις αποσπασματικά τις λεπτομέρειες αλλά δεν λαμβάνεις την όλη αίσθηση της εποχής τόσο πολύ.

Τελικά όμως θα μου φανεί χρήσιμο ως σημείο αναφοράς για να ψάξω από μόνος μου κάποια από τα πρόσωπα, τις ταινίες, τα συγκροτήματα, τα πρόσωπα και τα γεγονότα που σημάδεψαν την γέννηση της αντικουλτούρας. Γιατί αν δεν ξέρεις ιστορία, είσαι καταδικασμένος να την επαναλάβεις (Santayana), ακόμα κι αν η ιστορία δεν επαναλαμβάνεται, παρα μόνο κάποιες φορές κάνει ομοιοκαταληξία (Twain) και τελικά το μεγαλύτερο μάθημα που μπορεί να μας διδάξει είναι πως οι άνθρωποι δεν μαθαίνουμε από αυτή (Huxley). Νιώθω πολύ πόζερος που μόλις το έγραψα αυτό.

Πολλά ευχαριστώ στον Κίρα που μου έκανε το βιβλίο δώρο πέρσι τα Χριστούγεννα. Άργησα (σχετικά!) αλλά δεν μου ξέφυγε.

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Quotes~Αποφθέγματα XVIII

In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971