Fred and Fred For Life

Unless you’ve been living under a very big rock this week – something the size of Mont Saint-Michel – you have not been able to escape Studio Brussels’ annual charity radio show called Music For Life. In fact, Music For Life is the Belgian counterpart of a Dutch initiative called Serious Request, a radio project organised to collect money for projects of the Red Cross, which has been picked up in Switzerland, Sweden and Kenya too. During the project, three DJs live in a house of glass for six days without eating anything, instead drinking special juice to stay fit.

Organised consistently to fix attention on one of the many forgotten humanitarian issues in the world (like malaria or clean drinking water), this year’s edition focuses on diarrhoea as one of the main causes of death in children worldwide. Indeed, Wikipedia tells me that ‘(i)n 2009 diarrhea was estimated to have caused 1.1 million deaths in people aged 5 and over and 1.5 million deaths in children under the age of 5’. And since Music For Life was first organised in Belgium in 2006, the show has grown immensely in popularity, which is also clear from the financial results of the project. Last year, for instance, Studio Brussels was able to amass a whopping € 5.020.747 to help the Red Cross in its struggle against AIDS.

So far, so good you would say, but alas, things are not that simple. Especially in more leftist-intellectual circles Music For Life is seriously frowned upon. In fact, I cannot tell you how many people have spontaneously told me over the last few days how much they’re annoyed by the ‘whole business with the Glass House’. And to be frank, I used to be one of them, but then I started thinking about the initiative.

To start, many people are sceptical of the way the money collected will be spent. How much does Studio Brussels keep to organise all this? How much will actually reach these poor people? Who are we supporting? Now these are valid questions, but still. The organisation involved with Serious Request is the Red Cross, founded in 1863 to protect human life and health, and an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. A trustworthy organisation if ever there was any, wouldn’t you agree? Sure, there will be some money that doesn’t reach the Red Cross or that the Red Cross will not manage to get into the right hands, but that’s an issue with all humanitarian help.

Furthermore, I notice that people find fault in the way Music For Life draws away attention from other organisations such as Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières or, more importantly, a huge amount of small but worthy NGOs that struggle to get any public attention and financial support. Again, there is some truth in this. But to use this argument to be against Music For Life is illogical. It’s like saying we shouldn’t focus our main medical research on cancer, because there are thousands of other diseases that need curing. It’s deplorable that we can’t support all causes, but does that mean we should stop supporting the Red Cross?

However, the biggest criticism against Music For Life is something more philosophical. Many people take issue with the ‘fun’ aspect of the show. Without really knowing why, they get annoyed by the insane popularity of the DJs (“I hate that Siska!”), the tacky Christmas atmosphere the Glass House oozes (“Those ugly red hats people wear!”) and the jolly-jumpy attitude of the people in front of the house (“Half of them are drunk!”). For some reason such behaviour seems unbefitting for the situation. Now why is that?

What really bothers people in this is the hypocrisy they perceive in the situation. And they are right: with an highly mediatised event like this – follow them on the radio, TV, webcams, Twitter, Facebook, etc.! – you quickly notice that the show is as much about the popularity of the DJs, about the artists playing support gigs and about the people coming along with donations, than about the cause the show is supporting. A good illustration of this is the reactions of people afterwards who are angry because in spite of collecting x-amount of Euros with their school, organisation, etc. they didn’t even get mentioned on the radio! Or the text messages of people you see on the screen: “Pff, this is my tenth SMS and I haven’t got through once!”.

Ergo: it’s more about everyone else than about the problem of diarrhoea.

However, if this is your reason not to support Music For Life, consider this. The famous French philosopher Jacques Derrida has a theory which is called l’aporie du don. It says that it is actually impossible to give a true gift. Indeed, a true gift should be unselfish, but still every gift to someone else is at the same time a gift to yourself. Think about it: when we give someone a gift, we want to make them happy. Now re-read the sentence: ‘we want to make them happy’. Giving a gift is always also about making yourself happy, and therefore every gift is, in a way, selfish. In fact, the happiness derived from giving a gift is even parasitical to the other person’s happiness. Indeed, we are only happy when the gift has succeeded in making the other party happy. So in essence, giving a gift implies stealing some of the happiness from the person who received the gift.

Hmm. Now that’s a buzz-killer, ain’t it? So much for the spirit of the season! Still, if Derrida teaches us anything, it’s that we shouldn't worry about such an aporie, because it’s inevitable. It’s not because we will never be able to be one hundred percent altruistic in giving a gift, that we should not give one.

Ergo: I see no reason not to support Music For Life and accordingly I will support it. So here’s my solemn vow: for every comment (just type SUPPORT) to this blog, Fred and Fred will donate €1 to Music For Life. So keep those comments coming!

You are what you eat

A few months ago, Fred wrote a blogpost on Michel Lotito, a man who became famous for eating indigestible objects. Like airplanes, duh. Recently, I realized that there actually exists an official term for people eating things like clay, paper or stone: these people are said to suffer from pica, a medical disorder which is characterized by an unnatural appetite for largely non-nutritive substances. You might feel tempted to conclude that a rather substantial part of the world population suffers from pica, so let me set this straight: burgers from MacDonald's are nòt included.

As with most medical disorders – well, maybe with the exception of an obsession with cleaning – this is not really something that you would want your child to suffer from, is it? Not at first sight, I admit. But once you start thinking it through, it becomes clear that it would in fact be a very convenient way to raise a child. Nothing easier than throwing a birthday party for a bunch of kids suffering from pica, for example: first you play rock-paper-scissors, and then you just eat them.

When I was a kid, there was actually a guy suffering from pica in my class: James, aka the Desert Dude; he lived on a diet of sand. I mean, my lunch was wrapped in a brown paper bag, he brought his in one of these blue, plastic starfishes. I liked him very much, and he often visited our place. My mom used to serve me lasagna when he came over: she put the thing in the microwave, and three minutes later – ping – my food was ready. For James, she merely turned the hourglass: three minutes later, his food was done too. Unlike me, James was very fond of school trips. I still remember the third grade trip, a visit to the seaside: 'Yay, all-you-can-eat!'. Or the fifth grade trip, one week in Egypt: 'Yay, the food pyramids!'.

Unfortunately, James passed away last week. I went to his funeral; they cremated him. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I guess in the end it makes sense.

You are what you eat...

To shave or not to shave…

This morning I woke up and realised I was going to have a bad hair day. Okay, you already know about my rather difficult history of hair, but this time I’m not talking about the hair on my head. That’s right, for the last few weeks I have been sporting a beard. Those who know the actual Fred and Fred, know what I’m talking about. For those who don’t here’s a pic (in which I use some current reading material for an incognito-effect).

This time (I’ve done it a couple of times before) I stopped shaving somewhere at the end of October and by now I have more or less a full beard, and most of the time I’m pretty happy with the result. I think it makes me look less serious and I would lie if there wasn’t an amount of male pride involved with pensively scratching my beard in a conversation.

This morning, however, I was dissatisfied with the depicted stuff on my cheeks. All of a sudden my beard seemed too scruffy, too scrappy, too patchy, too itchy, and most importantly, totally shapeless. Yet from experience I know that this is the most critical moment in the beard’s existence. It signals that one should start trimming the beard, but that’s a difficult undertaking. After all, most bearded men aren’t exactly hair dressers, and what’s more, there’s a fine line between looking like a monkey and looking like Craig David:

(as you can see from the first pic, the one and only site for images of the wonderful world of hirsutism and tips on growing a beard is www.beards.org)

So automatically, rather than worrying about how much to trim, I feel a strong urge to shave the whole damn thing off. I mean, having to trim and cut does defy the whole purpose of a beard (i.e. not shaving), doesn't it? However, much like going to the hair dressers’ and saying ‘I’d like it short, please’, more often than not I end up regretting my decision.

Therefore, I have decided to trust the unending wisdom of our readers this time. So tell me what do you think. Should I keep it or not? Use the comment box, I’m curious!

Transcendance

I sat opposite a transsexual person on the subway yesterday. At first sight, it looked like a beautiful woman, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be a man after all. Or the remnants thereof. Well, let's say I didn't quite catch all the details, but the combination of high heeled boots, a skirt, a few layers of make-up and an Adam's Apple clearly pointed in the direction of someone who crossed the border in Gender-land.

I have always had a strange fascination with people changing their sex. I wouldn't even dare taking it into consideration; I simply don't have the balls for that. Transsexual people turning themselves into a woman often say that they have always felt like a woman in a man's body. Being a man myself, I can easily relate to that. I mean, every once in a while I do feel like a man in a woman's body. The only difference is that I usually fall asleep afterwards, waking up in the morning with a rather firm piece of proof that nothing changed after all...

And yet, I do wonder how life must be like, when you are a woman trapped inside a man's body. Would it mean that you think about sex every seven seconds, unless you're having a headache? And that you can't resist walking into sports stores when you feel a bit sad, so that you can buy a new pair of soccer shoes that you will wear only once? Or that you enjoy going out with the lads, boozing beers all night long, coming home like a shitfaced monkey, throwing up into the toilet after you put the toilet lid down?

The operation itself must also be quite alienating. Imagine, the last thing you see before they put you asleep is a gorgeous nurse, invoking male thoughts in the vein of "Damned, she's got a nice pair of tits!". A few hours later, you wake up, and the first thing you see is the cute nurse, invoking rather female thoughts like "Damned, that little bitch has got bigger boobs than me?".

Luckily enough, medical techniques are so advanced nowadays that you can hardly tell that the person sitting in front of you used to be a man one day. Unless they're on their period, I suppose, because that's when you can still recognize the male features: "Oh damned, I have a headache. I don't feel too well. It hurts like hell. This is the end of my life, I am dying." Or when they're having phantom pains: I don't think natural born women scratch their vagina's in public, do they? That, and the ultimate give-away of course: peeing habits. I bet transsexuals do feel a natural urge to sit down when they have to pee, but either prefer to do it against a tree or leave droplets on the toilet seat.

[In case you're feeling a bit itchy now, sorry: I forgot to mention you'd better not read this if you're allergic to clichés...]

LinkedIn: Shit That Siri Says

There's nothing technology can't do anymore, my grandma would say. Actually, she'd use some juicy West Flemish turn of phrase, but that would be the gist of it.

I was reminded of this when recently I heard about Siri on the new iPhone. Siri is an intelligent software assistant which functions as a personal assistant. Apple describes it as follows:

Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Say something like “Tell my wife I’m running late.” “Remind me to call the vet.” “Any good burger joints around here?” Siri does what you say, finds the information you need, then answers you. It’s like you’re having a conversation with your iPhone.

Sounds like science-fiction, doesn't it? But it really seems to work. (If you want to see how, you can find a little movie clip here.)

However, as with all artificial intelligence and voice recognition programs, there are always situations that cannot be anticipated and which will result in the program going nuts. I remember that Lernout&Hauspie's dictation software was fine as long as you stuck to words a toddler would know, but once you started dictating things like antidisestablishmentarianism you'd end up with rather strange stuff on the screen.

And so it's no different with Siri. It's fine when you ask it to find you the nearest bakery, remind you to go pick up your dry cleaning next week, but when you ask some more hardhitting questions, you can get some strange answers. Especially since the developers have given Siri what they call a 'sassy personality'.

Now some guys have dedicated a whole site to strange responses Siri gives (and I guess to asking strange questions too!) and they called it Shit That Siri Says. Here are some of the best for you to enjoy:


Funny, innit? You'll find many more on http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/!

We want Moore!

Lately, I have often been wondering: is there such a thing as a perfect timing for actions? Probably because my perfect-timing measuring device has been off the radar for a few times in a row this week, coming home with plenty of water in my shoes, wearing a (so-called) waterproof jacket which made me look like a duck in a coulourful gift wrapping. But with 'actions' I don't mean just these daily activities like judging when to leave home in order to arrive in a dry state and mood; I also thought about less superficial or downright profound things, like having children (mom, just in case you're reading this: this is not about me), changing jobs or starting a new chapter in our very own book.

I mean, how often haven't we heard people - including ourselves - say: "I'm too old for that"? Or, at the other end of the spectrum, how often haven't we felt like our human rights were violated, because of that simple statement "Nope, you're too young for that", verbalized by people making that decision for us? And it's not just about these things our parents or school teachers decided for us, even I deliberately postpone certain thing on my bucket list until I'll be a bit older and wiser, like spending my holidays in Europe driving around the countryside in a caravan. Sometimes I even feel like I simply haven't got the experience to start something new, or the dedication to make it work...

Does that mean there is a perfect temporal frame to start doing stuff you find important?

Tuesday evening, I decided for myself there is no such thing. And it was one of my all-time heroes triggering this thought: Thurston Moore, founding member of Sonic Youth, who played at the Vooruit in Ghent that very evening. Seeing this 50-year-old guy on stage gave me a very warm feeling, making me forget about the howling wind and pouring rain outside. The enthousiasm and dedication he radiated into the audience, the passion and energy he exhibited on stage, it made me realize that it's never too late to do what you want. Even if you feel like you're too old for that (hey, I started playing guitar four months ago, and I still suck), or you think you're not experienced enough. Because I'm pretty sure that one day, someone will notice your energy and passion, as if the pain and doubt you had to put into the decision evaporates as a cloud of positivity.

Yes, this turned out to be a corny blogpost. But hey, it's corny season - right? And besides, nobody said this was about Moore. I'm pretty sure you have more examples...

The MJ conspiracy

Today I read a story in the papers that reminded me of a very distinct childhood memory. I think I must have been about eight or maybe nine and on holiday in Spain. I was playing in the pool with some newly made Dutch friends, when all of a sudden they introduced a new kid. And the new kid was black. That’s right. It may strike you as funny but at that age (late 80s) I had never seen a black person in person. I remember going up to the kid, who was about my age, and asking him in all my childish naiveté if I could touch his skin. I guess I just wanted to know what black skin felt like. He said yes and so I stuck out a little finger and poked him in the forearm. I remember clearly that I was very surprised. I had expected the skin to feel different, perhaps more coarse I don’t know, but I was astonished to find that his skin felt just like mine. ‘Well what do you know,’ I told my parents that afternoon, ‘they’re just like we are!’.

I’m never quite sure whether this story means that at age eight I was essentially a racist or not. Sure, my conclusion was that we were no different from each other, but still I had expected that there would be a difference and I based that assumption (perhaps ‘prejudice’ is a better word?) on racial grounds. However, in the end I guess that whatever my basic attitude, I learned the correct lesson: that although there is an undeniable difference in appearance between races, appearance is as far as the difference goes…

At the same time, there is that difference, but even as I’m typing this I feel that we’re not really comfortable discussing that. After all, why discuss it, if it doesn’t matter, right?

Well, let’s go back to the newspaper article I mentioned earlier. It’s about Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris Katherine Jackson (°1998), who is going into acting. In the article she is just called his daughter, but you see, I have a theory about MJ’s kids – at least about the first two, the oldest is known as ‘Prince’ (°1997) – and it’s quite simple: I’m not really convinced they’re his.

My reasons? Simple observation, really.

Here’s a picture of Michael with his father (Joseph Walter "Joe" Jackson) and his mother (Katherine Esther Scruse):

They are both black people (they’re not of mixed heritage, which could explain things further down the family tree), and therefore their child, Michael, was a black person too:

Now we all know that somewhere along the way Michael turned himself from a handsome black man into a scary white woman. You know what I mean, but here’s a pic anyway.

Bear in mind, though, that these changes were done with plastic surgery, i.e. skin transplants and skin products. They are not genetic. Michael’s DNA is what it always was, that of a negroid man.

Now, have a look at Michael’s partner, Debbie Rowe, who was MJ’s partner from 1996 to 1999, and who is Prince’s and Paris’ mother:

Now genetics dictate that MJ and Rowe’s children should be of mixed heritage. Someone like Halle Berry, for instance, whose mother is of European descent and whose father is African-American, or like Barack Obama, who is the son of a father from Kenya and a European American mother.

So we should expect MJ’s children to look something like that. Instead this is what his daughter and son look like:

Now does that seem right to you? Indeed, there have been persistent rumours, especially about Prince’s father being someone else. (By the way, there are no Wikipedia pages with detailed information on any of the Jackson children!) And let’s be honest, who would be surprised to find out that Wacko Jacko’s kids were really someone else’s? Isn’t it quite possible that a person who obviously had a pathological wish to be a white person, faked having white children?

So is our culture just too politically correct to ask these questions, or am I still, after all these years, being racist when I’m surprised that a black person’s kids don’t look black enough?

I wonder.

Pod-heads (5)

Here's a kind of remarkable fact: the tunes I listen to on my iPod are, in some sense, determined by weather conditions. I don't know why, but as soon as spring lurks around the corner for example, Bloc Party's first album (Silent Alarm) almost automatically announces itself through my earbuds. Not that any of the lyrics on this album directly refer to most people's second favourite season, but still: listening to this album sounds like spring to me...

Summer, on the other hand, is mostly reserved for punk and hardcore. Probably because for me this means wearing shorts, faded rock t-shirts and Vision skate shoes (which differs from the other seasons in the sense that it's not always appropriate to wear shorts). Nothing beats walking to the supermarket with old school positive hardcore blasting through the speakers, making you look like a dork, singing along ("This is our time!") and pointing fingers. Index fingers, that is, the traffic aggression finger is reserved for other occasions.

Autumn and winter are reserved for heavy metal and post-rock. Especially the latter genre succeeds in capturing the spirit of the darker seasons. Yesterday, while I was compiling music for a friend, I realized that my Red Sparowes (sic) season started again. Because now that the days are shortening and the mercury thermometer seems less enthousiastic than a few months ago, I tend to listen to one of my most precious records: Every red heart shines towards the red sun, a post-rock classic, full of reverbing guitars building up to gorgeous crescendos.

Rather than reviewing this album, I will end this post with the story behind the band's name, another example of how the pages in our history books are bloody red, but not always read...

May 23, 1958: Mao Tse Tung initiates the “Great Leap Forward,” his second five-year plan for the People's Republic of China. In addition to imposing impossibly high quotas on mainland farmers,the Chairman insists that the country’s “four greatest evils” - rats, mosquitoes, flies and sparrows - must be exterminated in order to maximize production.

Villagers are instructed to scream and bang pots and pans to keep the sparrows in flight until the birds die of exhaustion. Soon, the sparrow population is drastically reduced, leaving no natural predator for the country’s locusts - which proceed to decimate China’s crops. The result is possibly the worst famine in human history. Between 1958 and 1961, as many as 43 million Chinese die of starvation.

Meanwhile, local government authorities falsify agricultural reports in order to avoid Mao’s often senseless wrath. Soldiers are dispatched to villages to find grain that the peasants are accused of hiding. Thousands of villagers are tortured and murdered in the search for grain stores that never existed. When they run out of bark and grass to eat, peasants in some provinces resort to cannibalism.

If you ever get the chance to see them live, please do.

Unless you are allergic to goosebumps.

Les autres

Today I was at the baker’s at exactly 11:39 am. It might seem a pretty random or average time, but when you know the area I live in, it’s not. You see, it’s a pretty bad idea to go to the baker’s or the grocery store here between the hours of 12 and 1 pm, and between 4 and 5 pm. The reason is that I live pretty close to several schools and at those times these shops are swamped with children getting sandwiches, potato chips, sodas, etcetera.

So imagine my surprise when I found that today at 11:39 the baker’s was already swamped with cackling teenage girls and boasty schoolboys. Crap. I knew they would all be ordering those very time-consuming baguettes with chicken-curry spread and stuff like that, but on the other hand I needed to eat too, didn't I? So there was nothing for it. I had to wait. About 15 minutes to be exact.

Which, of course, is not a disaster. After all, this is supposed to be my day off. Still, I was pretty annoyed. I kept wondering where those kids came from. I mean, when we were young, school wasn’t out until about 12 (11.50, I think), so what were they doing here? However, with some of them, I couldn’t tell whether they might be university students or not. I mean, nowadays (oh yes, grandpa Fred is back!) I can’t honestly tell whether some of these girls are 15 or 20.

So anyway, while I was waiting at the baker’s, I began to think about being annoyed by other people, as it had happened to me a few times the previous days. Last Friday evening, for instance, while I was in my car (carpooling with a friend, mind you) on the ring road where traffic was just awful, I had the same feeling. Or two days later, when I made the very bad decision of checking out the Fnac store on a ‘shopping Sunday’, which was just swarming with people.

At times like that I find myself quite honestly wondering: “What are all these people doing here?” Really, sometimes I want to go up to them and ask them: “What are you doing here? What possible, good reason can you have for being here? Are you sure you’re not here just to annoy me?” As Sartre said: L’enfer c’est les autres.

Of course I’m being a self-centred ass here, but I’m fairly certain most of us feel like this once in a while. Other people can be so annoying. And the strange, even scary, part is that we’re not annoyed because of what these people do (although that doesn’t always help either!). We are annoyed because of the basic fact that they’re there.

Which is not that surprising. Indeed, to a certain extent it's impossible for anyone to come loose from the way we experience reality, which is always opposed to the way everybody else experiences reality. I mean: I’m me, and I may wonder what it’s like to be someone else, but I’ll never know for sure. (When I was a child I sometimes played with the thought that the whole world was an elaborate conspiracy and that only I was real and other people robots or aliens acting the part of people. I was a strange child, mind you).

But the thing is: this is a dangerous emotion, and what’s more (so I thought waiting for yet another kid specifying his order: ‘egg, but no cucumber and carrots instead of lettuce on my spicy-tuna-brown bread baguette please’): it’s illogical. Indeed, if I am an ego, then so is everybody else. And if I divide the world into ‘me’ and ‘other people’, then other people do the same. And in their view, I am other people.

By then it was my turn at the baker’s. I politely asked for a brown loaf and one with raisins (love those). But as I was walking out and passed the school children sitting outside enjoying their sandwiches and baguettes, I was still thinking about my paradoxical conclusion of me being other people. Logic then dictated that if hell is other people, than hell is me too. Or in the words of a T-shirt the biggest bully in our old neighbourhood used to wear: ‘Save the world, kill yourself’. And only then I realise how ironic it is that I often secretly wished he would follow his own advice.

Only in... Japan

This morning, I read in the newspaper that Japan officially announced it will restart its whale hunting tradition in the Antarctic waters. Once again, they defended their practices with the claim that they do this out of scientific necessity. I was shocked; not only because of the sad contents of this very announcement, but also because the journalist claimed that Japan uses money which was donated after the tsunami disaster last year. Whether this is true or not - I guess it's hard to retrace where the money came from in the first place - it still doesn't really make sense "to put $35 million aside to protect our whale hunting vessels" (official announcement by the Japanese government). As Paul Watson (captain of the Sea Shepherd, the international agency against whale hunting) puts it: "this is an insult against all nations that generously supported Japan after the tsunami!". He is right, of course, as there is no excuse whatsoever to hunt one of the most majestic creatures inhabiting our planet. Not even ambergris can serve as a justification for this loathsome decision...

Even I feel like I'm in a (pink ginger) pickle right now. On the one hand, both Fred and I simply love Japan. The food, the movies, the cultural traditions and - let's be honest - oddities, the language, the sumo wrestling and so on. A common passion which has led to our first trip together, last year: we went to the land of the rising sun to celebrate New Year's Eve in samurai style. On the other hand, I also donated money after the disaster and the idea that I financially contributed to whale hunting pains me a lot. That is why I decided to start a new topic, in which I will try to get rid of this ambiguous feeling by gently mocking Japan and some of its typicalities.

Today, I have decided to turn my attention to J-wear. Unless you are related to Dirk Frimout or Frank De Winne, it seems rather unlikely that you are familiar with this product: J-wear refers to experimental hi-tech undies, especially designed for astronauts at a Japanese university by a team of female scientists. First of all, I find it rather funny to think about the people conducting the research which has led to this particular kind of underwear. I mean, imagine walking into your soon-to-be supervisor's office, where some hyper-enthousiastic professor is trying to talk you into optimizing underwear. You may advocate textile engineering as much as you want, but this basically amounts to investigating samples (as in 'dirty underwear') and verifying data (plotting colour versus time, I suppose). Sounds like fun!

Secondly, the product itself is a bit of a stretch itself: J-wear is (well, was, at the time) a new type of anti-bacterial, water-absorbent, odor-eliminating fire-proof clothing designed for space travel. So, this thing absorbs water, which means that we are basically talking about hi-tech diapers - right? I can live with the idea that the result should be anti-bacterial and odor-eliminating, although I do wonder whether this implies that 'basic hygiene' was cancelled from the space shuttle equation. But the fire-proof property? What the hell? We are talking about astronauts: people risking their lives in the name of science, traveling towards unknown territory in rockets. As in: things which may explode. Heavily. I seriously wonder whether these people will be able to take comfort in the fact that they can be blown to shreds - burnt to a degree which exceeds numbers 3, 4 and 5 - knowing that their balls are save. Fire-proof underwear, jay-wear!

I do hope the Sea Shepherd carries missiles. I am pretty sure whale hunters haven't heard from it...

Sleepless at Sinterklaas

I couldn’t sleep a wink last night, is not only a 1943 song by Frank Sinatra, it’s also the God’s honest truth. I’m a pretty bad sleeper and it’s happened to me several times already, but I’m always quite amazed that some nights my body just refuses to go to sleep. And apparently without much reason. I mean: yesterday I went shopping at Ikea, went to the gym, had coffee with a friend in the afternoon, fitted some spotlights in my apartment, and drank a pint of real ale with another friend in the evening. But when I went to bed at 12 p.m. and was still awake by 4 a.m. I knew there wasn’t much use in staying in bed. So I got up and stayed up. And to be honest: I’m not too bothered by it.

In fact, staying up a whole night is something of an interesting experience, at least when you decide not to be annoyed by your insomnia and just get up and go on with your, err, day. For example, there’s something a bit special about being awake at that sweet spot between 3.35 and 4.35 a.m. when the whole world seems asleep. You kind of feel in charge of the universe. Although that could also just be the sleep deprivation talking.

On a less philosophical note, it also quite fun to have an extra meal. I guess, when you don’t sleep, your stomach stays active as well, so somewhere around 4 o’clock you’ll have brinner, that exclusive meal between dinner and breakfast when anything goes down. There’s something deliciously strange to be eating tuna sandwiches with olives in the middle of the night.

However, I mustn’t over-romanticize. All things together, it’s quite a nuisance to skip a night’s sleep. For one, not only your biological clock is confused, even your biological calendar is upset. I mean, for me a new day starts when I wake up in the morning. So if you don’t wake up, there’s no new day-feeling. Hence, it’s still Monday inside me.

But most annoying is the fact that before you finally give up and get out of bed, you will spend about three or four hours tossing and turning under your duvet. And with tossing and turning comes thinking. And there’s no worse thinking than what goes on during a sleepless night. In fact, there are three degrees of such thinking: first degree thinking, about stuff (like your job, life, etc.), second degree thinking, about sleeping (‘Dammit why can’t I sleep?’) and then third degree thinking, about thinking about sleeping. Indeed, once you start telling yourself you need to stop thinking about thinking about sleeping, you’re in for a long night...

Up to yesterday, however, my sleep thinking universe consisted of these three dimensions, but yesterday (it must be Fred with his complex mathematics getting to me) I discovered thinking⁴. And what’s more: the key to the fourth dimension of thinking is Sinterklaas. Now before you call an ambulance because you think I’ve gone insane after a sleepless night, hear me out.

While lying awake, I suddenly realised that last night was the eve before Sinterklaas Day and I couldn’t help but wonder how many excited children shared my fate of staring at the ceiling. All those small boys who were just too anxious to sleep because Sinterklaas might’ve brought them that electric car. Small boys who were also very conscious of being awake. Indeed, when we were children, we were told that Sinterklaas wouldn’t come if you stayed up, for instance, in the hope of seeing him. So all you wanted to do was sleep, and you soon found out that the harder you thought about sleeping, the harder it was to sleep...

And there you have it: Fred thinking about thinking about children thinking about thinking about Sinterklaas, aka thinking to the fourth power, or thinking⁴.

On second thought (pun not intended) it might be time for a little nap. Get that proper experience of going from 5 to 6 December. Who knows, maybe Sinterklaas will visit me after all?

Newton: not new?

Last week, I promised someone to explain what my research is all about, over a grey-Saturday-morning coffee. Since most people are not familiar with the mathematical lingo I tend to speak in my own little bubble, I had to go way back in order to explain how 'spin invariant differential operators' relate to secondary school knowledge in physics and mathematics. I therefore started from the idea of mathematical equations coming from physics, like Newton's laws of motion, and their connection with the notions of 'symmetry' and 'invariance' - which, in a sense, underlie basically everything in physics. Or, as the Nobel laureate Philip Anderson wrote in his widely read 1972 article 'More is Different': "it is only slightly overstating the case to say that physics is the study of symmetry."

Newton's laws, for example, are invariant under translations in time and space. This is a formal statement, which must be expressed in terms of sound mathematical concepts (group theory, to be more precise), but it can easily be reformulated in layman speak. On the one hand, it basically says that the aforementioned laws are the same here - on earth - as elsewhere in our universe (spatial invariance). On the other hand, dinosaurs experienced the same laws - but didn't bother writing them down - and your grand-grand-grandchildren will still have to learn the very same laws, provided we don't screw their natural resources and future in the meantime (temporal invariance). To put it simple: Newton could have been an alien from the planet Zork, living in the 12th century. The same basic principle then also applies to different sets of equations, still inspired by physics, with different underlying notions of invariance. So, there you have it: my research interest in a nutshell (a hard one to crack, unfortunately).

Later that day however, on the train from Antwerp to Ghent, I suddenly realized that Newton could not just have been anyone. I mean, we all know that he allegedly came up with the idea of gravitation after an apple hit his British head. Imagine, however, what would have happened if Newton was an African scientist, taking his lunch break in the comfy shadow zone underneath a palm tree. I am pretty sure that falling coconuts do obey the laws of gravity, but I am afraid that Newton would not have been able to pass this particular piece of crucial information, since coconuts on the head sound more like 'cranial skull fracture' than 'life-altering insight'.

Even if he only got mildly injured - from a small concussion maybe - things could have gone horribly wrong. Newton could have been dyslexic, right? We have all learned at school that F = ma (force equals mass times acceleration: the subtle buzz you might hear at this very moment is most likely a distant bell ringing), but what if he had written that m = Fa? I will leave the details as an exercise for the interested reader, but this would have lead to bizarre science classes. And I am pretty sure that 'becoming an astronaut' wouldn't be as high on the young toddler's 'what do you want to be when you grow up'-list as it is now...

In the end, I once again realized that people are precisely who they are when they are. And also, that it can be fruitful to go all the way back every once in a while...

Dutty Yea!

Warning: this is going to be one dirty blog post. Not for the faint hearted…

On a typical day the moment I step into the shower, is the time I start to think. And by now, you know what that means. A non-stop pondering of the whys, hows and what ifs of everything around me. But today the thinking did not only start in the shower, it was also about said shower. And more precisely about keeping clean in general.

I mean, have you never wondered how truly dirty a human being is? Really, think about it. I find it unbelievable how much work we need to put in just to keep our bodies acceptable to other people and even to ourselves.

To start, over the course of any given day or night our skin will produce so much oil and sweat that we need to wash every inch of it with water and soap or shower gel. That means face, arms, legs, back, front, elbows, pinkie finger and so on. And if you are female, there’s a good chance you’ll need to rub many of these areas with lotion afterwards. Or that you’ll preface the procedure with an assortment of peeling, scrubbing, rubbing or whatever it is you do with those cotton pads…

Next there’s the issue of hair. With humans, hair falls into two categories: wanted and unwanted. Most of the wanted hair resides on the top of your skull. It will, just like the rest of your body, get dirty but you can take care of that with shampoo. The downside of this, however, is that it results in your hair looking like crap – with descriptions varying from that ‘carpet’, ‘bush’, ‘German helmet’ or ‘bale of hay on top of my head’. So you’ll need to use either gel, wax, spray or all of the above to get it back into an aesthetically acceptable state.

The unwanted hair is a more complex problem, since it’s gender-specific. If you’re male, unwanted hair is found in your nose, ears, on your back and shoulders, and of course on certain regions of your face. We tend to shave these (although opinions on this do vary somewhat). If you’re female, however, unwanted hair is found not only in the aforementioned regions, but virtually everywhere that is not the top of your skull. And here is the bad news: society doesn’t really offer any other possibility than getting rid of it. And mind you, shaving is an option, but you’d better go for a more painful solution like waxing, plucking or epilating. You know, just to be sure…

Moving on, we get to finger and toe nails. Yes, over the course of 25 million years we have evolved from hairy primates to homo sapiens sapiens and basically since then we have not needed to be able to climb trees or kill rabbits with our sharpened nails, but that doesn’t keep them from growing. So every two to three weeks you’ll need to clip these. And just a point of warning: you might want to avoid clipping your fingernails with the same scissors as your toenails. Just saying. (And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about!)

Then there’s the issue with your ears and nose, which also need special cleaning strategies. In the case of your ears it’s relatively simple. You take a cotton swab and clean out whatever shade of yellow, orange or brown is in there. (Oh, don’t act disgusted, as if you don’t inspect the harvest!) The nose, however, is trickier. Actually, you need a delicate technique of applying pressure and holding a piece of cloth in front of it, to get the filth out of there. You may not realise it, but it takes us years to perfect the art of blowing our nose. Just look at how long a toddler keeps walking around with that snail trail on his upper lip!

Additionally you’ll need to take care of your teeth. Two, some say three times a day; and it involves a brush and some kind of minty paste. The minty part – and this I find quite upsetting – is, let’s face it, to get rid of any unpleasant smells. In the mouth for heaven’s sake! If you really want to go to town, you can also get some wire (for flossing) and mouth water (if the smell is really bad).

Finally, there’s the nether regions. You know, that special place where your stomach ends and your legs start. If you look down once in a while, you’ll find two things there (front and back) that’ll need quite some cleaning too. I’m not going to go into detail, just remember these simple sayings: (for the back) One more time can never hurt, and (for the front) If every man sweeps his own doorstep, the city will soon be clean.

Umpf! It was pain in the ass, pardon the pun, just to write all this stuff down, let alone do it. Oily skin, unwanted hair, toenails, bad breath, nasty privates and a smelly bum. We’re a disaster if it comes to cleanliness. And just think about the way food and drink leave our bodies! Really, couldn’t nature come up with a better solution than that? Couldn’t we like, I don’t know, shed colourless and especially odourless cubes from time to time?

Truly, if God created man in his own image, I think the old guy must be one dirty bastard…

blog #111