Category: English

Cracked.com: 5 Mind Blowing Ways Your Memory Plays Tricks On You

Everybody will tell you that memory can’t be trusted. When they say that, of course, what they mean is other people’s memories can’t be trusted. We don’t like to think that everything we know about the world is based on a deeply flawed and illogical storage system.

We’re not talking about being bad at matching faces with names here. Science has found that your memory is basically a pathological liar, just making it up as it goes along. For instance …

Read more: click here!

Great article. It reminds me of that book I read last year, “A Mind Of Its Own“, which portrayed just how much our very own brain is more than able to fill in the role of the traitorous underling, ready to back-stab us at the first opportunity! Thinking that the one thing we take for granted, the thing on which we base our lives, decisions and theories about the world, our memory, is so flexible and untrustworthy, a weasel really, is shudder-worthy…

Koyaanisqatsi

I watched this movie today. For most of it I was at the stage in which you are before the brink of tears, feeling the goosebumps all over.

Koyaanisqatsi is Hopi for: 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life disintegrating. 4. life out of balance. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living. Indeed: it is a story about the imbalance of humankind’s relationship with nature, told with no words whatsoever, just by use of images and music… It’s awe-inspiring, deep, poetic (I’ll have to see it a few more times to catch all the hidden metaphors) and breath-taking to watch using mostly slow-motion and time-lapse techniques. The only way you’d be able to tell it was filmed back in 1982 would be the old cars, fashion, electronics etc. But one of the most important mood-setters is the soundtrack, which was composed by Philip Glass.

Together with the music, these first few minutes make the film look very promising indeed… You might watch it all if you like (recommended), but you might just as well watch till about 3:50 of the following to catch the spirit — realising what it is you’re witnessing is half the beauty.

Is There Anybody Out There With A Lust For Life?

Here I am with Jafar in my lap, posting some more music I feel expresses better than words what I’m feeling right now (as if I haven’t done so almost exclusively already, as if me expressing it here makes any difference!) Is these two songs’ message conflicting? It might be, but conflict is just one way two different things may interact through; another is mutual completion…

I wonder if these Youtube videos will still be up in, say, 5 or 10 years? Will this very site be a part of the Cloud? Gah, let’s just focus on the great music for now and leave the dark thoughts behind!

In The House, In A Heartbeat by John Μυrphy

I had the 28 Days Later (jaw-dropping movie, Boyle has placed his name firmly in my favourite directors list long now) OST playing in the background while on the phone when this track came up. And it immediately hit multiple chords: that of recognition, that of awe, that of I-want-to-play-this-track-again-when-I-go-back-downstairs.

And I did.

More than once.

Taste the Water from a Stream of Running Death

WARNING: ANOTHER PORCUPINE TREE RELATED POST AHEAD.

There was a time when Porcupine Tree was just the name of Steven Wilson’s personal project, before he pulled Colin, Chris and Richard in so that he could actually play his creations live — last time we all checked, it’s kind of hard to play guitars, bass, keys and sing at the same time. The origins of the name remain unknown today, but it first appeared as the “joke band” name that released Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm on cassettes in 1989 (the year I was born!) with material from ’87-’88 (before I was born!)

This is a recording of Radioactive Toy taken off that casette. One of the oldest PT/SW songs but still respectable much like a lot of his early creations, this is probably the oldest version of it out, with Steven playing all of the instruments…

Porcupine Tree indeed!

The following is the same song included on “On The Sunday of Life”, which is supposedly Porcupine Tree’s first album but is really a collection of Wilson’s oldest solo material. This version has the great solo but doesn’t have the atmosphere of the older recording, cassette buzzing and all. Steven is still playing all of the instruments.

Run through forests on a hot Summer day
Trying to break down walls of numbing pain

Give me the freedom to destroy
Give me radioactive toy

Taste the water from a stream of running death
Eat the apple and cough a dying breath

Feel the sun burning through your black skin
Pour me into a hole, inform my next of kin

Run through graveyards on a dusty Winter day
Spit the dirt out and try to say…

Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy?

Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.

I watched this and was dumbstruck. The human mind and its unfathomable mysteries… Must see, by all means, and if you’re like me at all, by the end of the 20 minutes you’ll probably be crying for MORE. This Dan Gilbert fella is cool, maybe I should get his book.

Porcupine Tree – The Sleep of No Dreaming

I was walking around the centre of Athens today, window-shopping second hand yusurums, flea-markets and places stuck decades back. I was taking in the vibes of the likes of Ermou St closer to Monastiraki and Athinas St. I was in very high spirits, feeling almost as if I was invisible, spying on the lives of the people doing their trade on a warm, cloudless November evening.

For no reason at all, as usual, the following song stuck into my head, poisoning my consciousness with its unfulfilled earworm properties, till I actually got back home in Nea Smyrni and played it on Grooveshark. Multiple times. Earworm fulfilled; let’s see what it does to You…

Halloween Fun with Shae & Whitney

CouchSurfing is great. Halloween can be fun. Shae & Whitney are a couple (my first one!) from the US I had the good luck to host for 3 nights. They left on Sunday — Halloween — when we did a really memorable thing right outside my place. I’ll let Shae do the talking, since she does it so much better than me. It has to do with scary vegetables though, just so you know! And here’s the reference I left them, just as a testament to the real wonder that is CS:

I hosted Shae and Whitney for 4 days. When I met them, I immediately felt like I could trust them completely. They were the first couple I hosted, so I felt the karmic need to return all the great hospitality I had received when travelling together with a loved one. That came out naturally very quickly. Shae and Whitney were excellent, considerate, interesting and interested travellers, passive (in the good sense), open to different suggestions and very relaxed, ready to get to know and take part in Mytilinian student every-day life. I’m pleased that they had a genuinely good time staying with me in this corner of the world! Most of all, I feel this was a more meaningful encounter and that we’ll keep in touch!

Shae’s Blog