Something amusing for year's end: A Hands-On Approach to Studying the Brain, Even Einstein’s. Now, I find the mere fact that Einstein's brain (or at least some of the roughly 240 blocks it was eventually dissected into) sits in some mason yar in Canada utterly fascinating - but apparently that lump of genius grey matter has had quite a strange and eventful journey in the past 50 years anyway ...



On a related note - I hope Shrub donates his brain to science too. And no - I don't mean his back-up brain. I'm hoping for his real one. Just so that future generations of scientists can poke around in it and explore just how someone as dimwitted (and with such an idiotic grin) as him could have ever made it so far in life ...

Maybe I should run for office?

After having lived in the US for something like 14 years, my connection to my Swiss roots is at times a bit shaky. To say the least. While I regularly talk to my mom and older sister, I have aunts and cousins I haven't seen for probably close to 18 years, despite semi-frequent visits back to the motherland. I'm not sure why that is.

So when I randomly came across a drawing by my cousin Daniel in a stack of papers today, I was painfully jolted back into memories of my childhood. When Daniel and I would play in the sandbox together. Or later hang out in his totally hipped-out room (he was five years older than me), with a stack of Playboys in a corner, and posters of Jimmy Hendrix, Barbara Bach and Jane Fonda as Barbarella over psychedelic wallpaper. He would be smoking a joint, talking about the universe and giggling, while I would gaze at him in childish wonder and admiration.

I can even remember the exact day, hour, moment when he made this drawing - at his sister's wedding, sitting next to me at the white-clothed table, his wild black afro for once tamed, his tall and lanky figure clad in one of those horrible dark-blue 70s-style velvet tuxedos his Italian grandmother insisted he'd wear. He taught me how to draw an anatomically-correct face, then turned the paper over, and without ever taking the pencil off the sheet once, drew this insane Escher-esque collection of interlocked faces and creatures.



It would be the last time I'd ever see him.

But oh, how I had loved him. He was different from the rest of my family. Soft-spoken, sensitive and shy, with a timid, melancholic smile and eyes like burning coal, he was always the outsider, the black sheep. At the same time, he was magnetic, charismatic, charming. He could coax anything from anybody if he really wanted to. And there was a definite element of subversive danger to him as well. He could just sit and unblinkingly stare at our family dog, driving the normally docile Irish Setter into a furious, foaming-at-the-mouth rage within minutes - without ever uttering a word or making a single gesture.

Yet what defined Daniel was his creative genius. He was beyond just talented - he was truly gifted. Possessed by a uniquely powerful ability to draw and paint like I had hardly seen before.

Like many of his kind, he was also tragically and eternally misunderstood - by his parents, his family, the educational system, Swiss society at large. The fact that he didn't fit into the rigid cookie-cutter plan of schooling, a proper job and a career they had so firmly laid out for him, eventually drove him to utter and devastating madness.

For years he walked the narrow, sharp-edged path between genius and psychotic - getting by in menial jobs while creating freely, then getting hooked on drugs and being tossed from one mental institution to another. None of them could help him. There would be temporary fixes, bouts of sanity and happiness, then plunges back into despair, crime, drug abuse, madness. Pilgrimages to India to find spirituality, and to Israel to live in a Kibbutz (where he learned Hebrew in a matter of weeks and was very happy) followed - only bringing him short-lived joys however.

Last I heard of him - probably about 7 or 8 years ago - he was building violins in a mental institution in Switzerland somewhere. He eventually simply walked out of the heavily-guarded facility (like he seemed to be able to do with all spaces that tried to keep him captive) - and was never heard from again. Nobody knows if he is still alive, although the consensus in the family is that he has most likely finally succeeded in killing himself.

So today, on this day of Christmas, my heart bleeds for him. My soul mourns him. I've realized that I miss him terribly. And that life simply isn't fair sometimes. In a different age, in a different place, he could have perhaps been happy, understood, fulfilled.

I can only hope he comes back one day - and tries again.

[On a related note: should you, alert reader, ever find yourself in the lovely Swiss town of Lausanne, be sure to make time for the superb Art Brut or Museum of the Insane. It's one of the most impressive art exhibitions to be ever assembled.)

I realize I may be a tad behind the Internet curve (ok - wayyyy behind), but after a friend read this blog entry I wrote a few years back, he mentioned the "Revocation of Independence" to me today. Given how brilliant a piece of political satire it is, I couldn't resist posting it here. Just in case some lone soul out there hasn't read it yet ... and it's something everybody (including Republicans) should read ...

To the citizens of the United States of America,

In the light of your failure to elect a competent President and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy.

Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP, for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium." Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour', skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise." You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary."

Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed." There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary then you won't have to use bad language as often.

2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of thereinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit, or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents -- Scottish dramas such as "Taggart" will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon." If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become "shires" e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as "Men Behaving Badly" or "Red Dwarf" will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", But only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football." There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest very twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005. You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called "rounders," which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.

7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day."

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you Understand the British sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian though 97.85%of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.

12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen Knat's Urine," with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Knat's Urine." This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen, Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol or "gasoline," as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon - get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

Note: There are a variety of versions floating around out on the Net. This one was lifted from (hilariously) the English Teachers Network.

And of course there is even a reply out there - sadly
flawed in its reasoning, but funny nonetheless.

I'll be spending the next 3 days - and this Christmas - alone. Yes. That's right. ALONE (unless you count my geriatric dog and two lazy cats as "company", of course...).

For anyone now indulging in a pitying "awwwww, poor you" - ohhh pleeeeaaaase. It's not like I didn't choose this, nor would I want it any other way. After all - I got all my Swiss family-and-friends-visiting out of the way about 3 weeks ago, so I'm good for the year. And even a social animal like me needs some downtime every so often, ya know.

Besides - this has been a crazy busy year for me, and I'm looking forward to 3 days of unfettered solitude. Of just hanging out in my PJs, in front of a roaring fire, with a glass or two of my favorite red wine, reading a few good books...

Uh. Ok. That's a lie. Anybody who knows me will also know that me lazily kicking back for an entire 72 hours is a highly unlikely scenario. I confess then. I do have an agenda.

Today I ... :

• got up and opened a few presents, because the gift-giver was leaving town and wanted me to open them before that. Coolest two gifts I got (from my hubby): a Pirates of the Caribbean-themed Monopoly (I kick ass at Monopoly, so watch out, Jack Sparrow), and a Stealth Cam Digital Scouting Camera. Not being into hunting at all, me thinks that I'll have to think of some other applications ... Coolest two gifts I didn't get: a Dental Polymer Kit for Custom Vampire Fangs, and a big giant box of good old-fashioned 1x2 Lego Bricks (which, as it turns out, are terribly hard to find these days... can you say "choking hazard?")
  
• cleaned out the fridge - because it was necessary. Do I really need to store three half-empty jars of creamy horseradish and an expired bottle of organic tomato juice? No.
  
• made a semi-panicked run to the local grocery store because it started snowing like crazy and I didn't feel like being trapped in my house without milk and toilet paper. Right after I got back, it stopped snowing, and all the snow decided to melt again. Of course. Something tells me though that tonight, when the temperatures drop, the roads are going to be terrible, terrible fun ...
  
• uploaded my entire collection of classical music CDs to my iPod. Now I can have my friends Mozart, Ravel, Vivaldi, Tchaikovski, and Rachmaninoff (among others) with me ALL the time. Yay.

Still to do:

• make a bunch of chocolate truffles and send them off to my sister in Europe
  
• solve some persistent and annoying tech problems (my wireless printer/scanner has been refusing to cooperate lately, amongst other things ...)
  
• update the Emerald Bay blog
  
• try out a new PS2 game I got today (although I suspect it's going to be way too violent for me)
  
• call my mom and sister tomorrow and wish them a Merry Christmas

And if I get all that done, I'll reward myself with some downtime. Maybe.

PS: Happy Birthday, Jon!

If there is one singular thing I miss and crave most about Europe, it is this: the air of antiquity.

There is nothing quite like the soft sound of raindrops falling on ancient cobblestone. The mighty and melodious clang of a cathedral's bells as you rub the sleep out of your eyes in the morning. The gloriously muted glint of a gilded statue, towering over a historic plaza. The feel of crumbling sandstone under your fingers.

But most of all, it's the smell that gets me every time: that deliciously musty, almost moldy, scent of ancient stone and wood - always cool, always damp, always thick. One of my favorite things on earth is to stand in a European cathedral or church, leaned against a stone pillar, eyes closed, sounds tuned out, and drawing the air, saturated with that very specific scent, deep into my lungs.

It makes me happy. I don't know why. Never mind that my religious orientation lies somewhere between Atheism and Buddhism - and miles away from anything resembling organized Christianity...

But so it was then that on a rainy Saturday afternoon, during my last visit to Switzerland in late November/early December, I gave into a sudden premonition and wandered into one of my home town's most distinct, yet quietly magnificent cathedrals - the Elisabethen Church.



As I stepped through the heavy oak doors and into the dark, gothic bowels of the structure, all city noises of traffic and hurried footsteps faded and the chilly basalt walls embraced me with their silence. Only faint light from the stained glass windows penetrated the obscure and impossible heights of its arches, aided by a few softly-glowing candelabras. A couple of hushed voices, barely audible as they whispered under their breaths, momentarily drifted over, then vanished. I sat down on a creaking wooden prayer bench, intent on just soaking up the soothing silence.

Momentarily however, the organ suddendly sprung to life, and its inspired player filled the vast medieval walls with echos of equally haunting and enchanting beauty. Sounds too sweet for words pierced my ears, paralyzed me, made me surrender to their utter divinity. I couldn't help but sit, eyes closed, and let the music permeate every fiber of my body.

And as it did, it suddenly occured to me: maybe I love these ancient cathedrals not because of their silence, or scent, or architectural beauty. Rather - because they are like deserts. Vast, quiet, subdued, blank, robbing one of every sensory distraction. They force you to look within yourself, think deeply, feel and see the truth. And like a furious storm or a flock of birds that can bring the desert to life, these cathedrals too have the ability to erupt with sound, so beautiful, so elemental, it hurts one's soul.

I walked out an hour and a half later - exhausted, but filled to the brim with content, my soul replete with an epicurian delight I've seldom known before.

And should I ever consider moving back to Switzerland, at least I have one really good reason now ...

After spending two solid days in front of the computer, processing a huge assignment project, I'm kinda burnt out.

Alas - I'm also too tired to delve back into my amazing book Sophie's World, or to play my favorite PS2 game - and TV seriously bores me these days.

What to do?

How about a nice flowy-psychedelic flash game instead? Yeah, that put me *almost* to sleep ...

Or maybe a stroll down memory lane perhaps... (never mind that most links in my old tragically-Zope-based blog are dead and gone ...).

Ah, I see I used to be a real NERD blogger (reading backwards through my old blog anyway, starting in November 2001) - what happened to me? Oh, right. I went to Burning Man and lost my mind. So after a moment of utter panic, I just put Slashdot back into my RSS feed. That should fix it. I think.

Some of the writing I used to do way back when kinda surprised me today. For example this California-power-outage-induced blip:

A long blog rant had just vanished into thin air - all the words I had so carefully extracted from my brain, cruelly extinguished in less than a blink of an eye. My freezer was defrosting its contents by the minute, and I could almost hear my stash of ice cream scream in terror. All the lightbulbs in all the rooms seemed to have grown eyes, dull blank ones, and were staring at me mockingly. The phone was disturbingly quiet and appeared to sneer at me with a sardonic grin. For a few mintues, I had a claustrophobically Orwellian notion of what it must be like to live in a completely wired dwelling.

And also: And if I sound a bit incoherent today, blame it on the Dayquil. My head is soft and buttery like candy cotton, my facial skin is oddly numb, and my eyeballs feel as if they were ready to abandon shop and peel out of my brain.

God, why can't I write like that anymore? What is wrong with me? Or is it the world? A pathetic lack of power outages here in Bend, perhaps? Or maybe I need to re-subscribe to this...

Random quote collection:

"They should have saturated Afghanistan with liquid LSD and got everybody goofed out of their minds. Then they should have sent in the military dressed as Teletubbies." - Johnny Depp

"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded, dead." - Woody Allen

"Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can't remember what they are." - Matt Lauer (on NBC's Today Show)

"Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal." - Voltaire

"All I ask of food is that it doesn't harm me." - Michael Palin (Monty Python’s Flying Circus)

This entry is a good reminder to myself too of what I still need to do before I die ... and this one of why I am here in the first place.

This one shows how precariously close I sometimes am to completely losing my mind, and this one to losing my life. This one helps me to appreciate just how fucking WRONG I can be sometimes (I love "Sin City" now).

Thankfully enough, I found this post which reminds me to be more politically aware and should/could serve also as a memo to myself that I indeed do have a brain (doubtful at times - I know) ...

But right now, I'm bored. Anybody got any other distractions for me?

Yesterday afternoon I went to see Mel Gibson's new movie Apocalypto. After his drunken anti-semitic rant, I really didn't want to support him with my movie-going dollars, but the previews were intriguing enough that I decided maybe it was worth making the moral sacrifice.

Plus - having been interested in Mayan and Aztec culture since childhood and having spent considerable time reading about, studying and visiting their temples, ruins and museums in the various areas of Mexico and Guatemala, I was hoping the movie would visually bring aspects of a culture to life I was only able to imagine in my own mind's eye up to now.

Thank the gods I only paid for the matinee admission.

[Spoiler warning - read on at your own risk]

The movie starts out innocently enough - with a tapir hunt in the dense forest of what one has to presume is somewhere in the Mayan Yucatan. The victorious group of hunters return to their village, and scenes of daily life (and even some comedy) ensue, paired with an intro to the main characters - a young man named Jaguar Paw, his wife and young son.

Soon however, the film descends into the depths of the only thing Gibson seems to be capable of pointing his camera at these days: an adrenaline-fueled gorefest. Without going into details or recounting every appallably brutal scene, let's just say that this movie must have used ten times the movie blood of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and I found myself averting my eyes more than once.

Jaguar Paw and his fellow villagers are kidnapped by hostile and sadistic Aztecs (although he manages to hide his wife and child in a deep well) and dragged on a long perilous walk through the forest to a human sacrifice ceremony, where he narrowly and serendiptiously escapes dying a "flowery death". After killing his captors son and running off into the forest, he is being hunted by the Aztecs, which he first manages to outrun, then kill off one by one. Meanwhile, his pregnant wife endures a vicious monkey and a failed escape attempt, eventually gives birth, and finally almost drowns in the well during a torrential downpour. I'll refrain from revealing the finale here, but let's just say that for once, in a reversal of roles, the Conquistadores actually save someone's life instead of ending it...

Two things that really disturbed me about this movie however: One, the apparent and widespread lack of historical, spacial and natural accuracy.

While Aztecs and Mayans did indeed live in the same parallel age, geographically, they were too far apart to jive with the movie's roughly 4 day timeline. No one could have walked or run from the Mayan jungle to an Aztec city and back within that short period of time. Especially since most of the Aztec blood sacrifices happened in Tenochtitlan (today's Mexico City), a large city in the heart of Mexico and surrounded by a then-gigantic lake (which is nowhere to be seen in the movie - I guess it would have been too pretty). Plus, the arrival of the Conquistadores happened in the area of today's Veracruz on the central coast of the Golf of Mexico - nowhere near the Mayan jungle.

The frog Jaguar Paw grabs and uses to poison some darts with looks like a crudely yellow-painted toad - despite the fact that every child these days knows that those specific frogs are tiny and fragile. The black panther he is confronted with is a very obviously large and fat zoo animal, which would have been more at home in South-East Asia or Africa than Central America - a proper jaguar would have been a much more likely encounter. And a sacred Ceiba tree that is shown as getting chopped down just outside of the Aztec city is also not native to Central Mexico, but again rather to deep Mayan jungle.

The list of faux-pas goes on and on like that: the Aztec king wearing elaborate jade jewelry (more fitting for a Mayan king), the fact that the Aztecs spoke the same language as the Mayans (unlikely) ... and so on and so forth.

Oh, and speaking of language: while I really enjoyed hearing the ancient Mayan dialect being spoken throughout the movie (as I had heard it in the highlands of Guatemala, among Mayan villagers), the dialogue written for the movie was horrible. There was actually a spoken line that was translated as: "He's fucked." Pretty sure no 16th-century Meso-american had that word in his vocabulary ...

Two - all these missteps pale in comparison to the twisted underlying message of the movie: that civilizations like the Aztec and Maya, who were embracing what Gibson no doubt sees as the climax of heathendom, are automatically slated for doom and destruction. Or maybe salvation by the Christian Conquistadores?

All throughout the movie I could not shake the feeling that Gibson had not made this film to show what depravity and cruelty are necessary to bring a culture to its knees (modern parallels anyone?) - but instead to advance his own Christian agenda by pointing out the godlessness of another civilization, and explicity and brutally detailing their demise. Which is of course perfectly in line with the historical, spacial and natural liberties he took in order to make it all fit in with his message...

So if you really want to learn about, comprehend and appreciate Aztec and Mayan culture - instead of throwing $6.50 at a man like Gibson - go out and buy the book Aztec, one of the most magnificent historical novels ever written. Oh, yeah - and this one is meticiously researched ...

Note: One could argue that the temple city, sacrifical ceremonies, language etc. I'm attributing to the Aztec could have been Mayan instead (as a few reviews online do) - except the Mayan empire started to decline around 900 A.D. and the only conclusive appearance of a timeline (the Spanish ships) puts the movie's timeline squarely into the 16th century, when the Aztec thrived. Plus, while the Mayan engages in human sacrifices, they were far less blood-thirsty than the Aztec and that puts the movie squarely into Aztec territory...