Pseudoscience

I recently finished reading a curious book called "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character. It’s a collection of memories and funny stories by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, who tells about all kinds of things: from fixing radios as a child, over his involvement in developing the atomic bomb, to his many adventures with beautiful blondes – the typical life of the average academic, quoi. (Not.)

Now if there was one thing Feynman couldn’t stand, it’s pseudoscience. In his last chapter of the book, he explains why:

During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas--which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked--or very little of it did. But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.

On the one hand, it’s really quite fascinating to see that Feynman reacted so heavily against pseudoscience because of his unshakable belief in science itself. On the other hand, it’s quite tragic that what Feynman complained about decades ago (the above was written in 1974), still applies today.

Indeed, it’s tragic how much pseudoscience is still around these days. One very clear example of this is what is known as post hoc ergo propter hoc. Confusing an event that preceded another event with one the cause of the latter event. Indeed, only today there was a very clear example of this kind of mistaken logic in the papers.

Four hours of sport a week reduces your chances of having a burn-out by half the article in question said. An Israeli study had studied workers for nine years and observed that the more people did sports, the less their chances were of getting a burn-out. Ergo: doing sports prevents a burn-out.

But this is faulty logic. It’s not because event A is followed by (post hoc) event B, that event B is caused by event A (propter hoc). It’s not because you do sports, that you don’t get a burn-out; just like it’s not because you don’t do sports that you do get a burn-out. Think about it. Isn’t it much more logical that people who exercise for four hours a week have energetic personalities and are therefore (either genetically or psychologically) less prone to get a burn-out anyway? At the very least the Israeli experiment does not prove that exercise is the cause of the lack of the burn-out.

The same is true for all the alcohol versus life expectancy research. Every so often there is a study that proves that one or two glasses of beer or wine a day supposedly makes you live longer. Indeed, when you observe a bunch of people, those who drink moderately tend to live longer than those who don’t drink at all. But that doesn’t prove that moderate drinking is the cause of living longer. Isn’t it more likely that most people who drink moderately probably live an easier, a funner, in short a happier life than those who never touch a drop of alcohol? And happy equals less stress equals less cardiovascular disease. But if you’re happy because of another reason, like through having a rewarding job, a good family life, etcetera, I’m sure it’s just as beneficial for your life expectancy. So it’s happiness that makes you live longer, not alcohol.

After all, Feynman stopped drinking very early on in his life and he lived to be 70, which was exactly the life expectancy of a male at the time.

Aha!

Keep on Rollin(s)

According to the Wikipedia entry on amor platonicus, genuine Platonic love means that 'the beautiful or lovely other person inspires the mind and the soul and directs one's attention to spiritual things'. Assuming this is a good definition, I can safely begin this blogpost by saying that I am Platonically in love with Henry Rollins. Born as Henry Lawrence Garfield in 1961, an American singer-songwriter, spoken word artist, writer, comedian, publisher, actor (Sons of Anarchy, for example) and radio DJ. Make your own acronym with the following words: disorder, attention, hyperactivity and deficit...

I've seen him on the Arenberg stage on Tuesday, performing his spoken word show "the Long March", and I was (once again) completely blown away. From the moment he comes on stage, wearing his standard uniform (black trousers and a black t-shirt, although not wearing Vans this time), until he leaves the stage three hours later: the man just doesn't stop talking. His mouth doesn't even stop for the smallest sip of water, he is a verbal muscle machine on a roll... Early Black Flag memories, provocative rants on American politics and global economy, flashes of auto-critique, funny travel stories and an insight into his ever-positive (and highly contagious) attitude in life: he kneads it into an entertaining show which somehow combines his humour ('uma', referring to one of his travel stories) with an amount of energy which could easily help a few countries through the winter months. Based in the Northern hemisphere, du-uh.

As today is National Poetry Day (not the international one, mind you, that would be March 21), I decided to add two particular pieces by Rollins. First of all, a quote: The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems, nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs. From a man who is as active as he is (check the internet), I can take this.

Secondly, a cute little poem. By Mister Rollins, of course.

ADVENTURES IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS
 You climb, and climb.
Hand over hand.
 You reach the top.
 You stand on the shaky edge of your heart.
 You look in her eyes.
 You hold your breath and jump.
 You Leap into her arms.
 Her arms fall at her sides.
 You fall past her window.
 You hit the ground.
 You are shattered.
 All broken up, like someone taking a bottle, and dropping it onto the ground.
 All busted up.
 Sharp jagged broken pieces of yourself lying on the ground. 
You put the pieces back together again.
 They never go back quite the same.
 The outside is seamless and smooth.
 But inside, broken glass, mind and soul with little cracks in the sides,
 and loose splinters at the bottom. 
They stay to remind you.
 At times the soul glass splinters will give you a jab to remind you of your leap.
 After a time when you start climbing again you will forget about the soul glass splinters.
 She can break your fall, or let you fall and break.
 And every time you jump
 You just know she’s going to catch you.

Ah, it feels good to 'know' people making you feel less afraid to turn 51...

Quotes from the book (9)

… or rather: ‘Quotes from the books’, double plural.

Indeed, it seems I have grossly neglected, dear reader, to keep you posted about my reading habits. Instead, for a long time I let on (in the box on the right) that I had been reading Dave Eggers’ complex novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but that was far from the truth.

So while I may have given the impression that I was knee-deep in a bulky book of high-brow literature, I was in fact reading some pretty pulpy stuff. Common cultural practice dictates that I should now start to justify this, by saying, for instance, that I’m doing this as a kind of experiment, in order to ‘contextualize my reading praxis through an explicit anti-canonism’ or some academic mumbo-jumbo. However, the truth is that I just like reading pulp too, plain and simple. In my case, that means things like glossy magazines (OK magazine! Dag allemaal!), gossip websites about Hollywood celebrities (TMZ! Perez Hilton!), autobiographies of sports’ or TV personalities, adventure tales, vulgarizing history, and of course fantasy literature. Aside from anything else it also makes me quite good at knowing all types of strange stuff at quizzes!

So, instead of offering you quotes from a Dutch classic like Lijmen / Het Been, or an impressionistic English novel like Eclipse, as I did in the past, today I’ll offer you some citations from stuff I’ve read in the past year with just as much lip-licking pleasure as the other high-faluting books. Enjoy (I certainly did!)

1) Bear Grylls, Mud, Sweat and Tears:

(or how the adage ‘know thyself’ is important even for hosts of TV survival shows)

Climbing. Hanging. Escaping. I loved them all.
Mum, still to this day, says that growing up I seemed destined to be a mix of Robin Hood, Harry Houdini, John the Baptist and an assasin. I took it as a great compliment.*

           (* not sure that was really wise, Bear)

2) Dave Eddings, The Redemption of Althalus

(or how 900 pages of previous story can prepare you for even the worst of melodrama)

‘Are you serious?’ he exclaimed.

She stroked her tummy again. ‘If I’m not, this is. We’re going to have a baby, Althalus’.

He stared at her in absolute astonishment. Then he suddenly felt his eyes fill with tears.

‘Are you crying, Althalus? I didn’t think you knew how.’

He took her in his arms then and held her with tears of joy streaming down his face. ‘Oh, I do love you, Em!’*, was all he could say.

(* When the story starts, Em or Emmy or Emerald is a cat. No kidding.)

3) Sean Michael Wilson, Hagakure. The Code of the Samurai

           

            (or how I know that even samurai can be pussies)

It’s good to carry some powdered rouge in one’s sleeve. It may happen that when one is sobering up or waking from sleep, his complexion may be poor. At such a time it is good to take out and apply some powdered rouge.*

(* Bought this one together with Fred at Narita airport with our last 1000 yen. Money well spent.)

Quotes from the book (8)

I’m glad to see that Fred finally added a Dutch book to our currently reading section, because I was beginning to think I was the only one still reading Dutch books! True, I’m fonder of English fiction too, but I definitely enjoy reading in my mother tongue as well. Especially if it’s a book like Lijmen / Het Been, written by arguably Flanders’ most ill known writer, Willem Elsschot (1882-1960).

In fact, Lijmen (1924) and Het Been (1938) are two novellas that together make one novel (hence the strange / in the title) about the entrepreneur Boorman who employs Frans Laarmans (a name you might know as the protagonist of Elsschot’s most famous book Kaas) to help him sell copies of a magazine that doesn’t really exist.

One of the things I enjoyed immensely in this book that dates back to the interbellum, is it’s highly archaic language. It coats the work in a grandiloquent style, which then contrasts acutely with the dry cynicism of the story. Or what else do you make of a sentence like this one?

Zij hadden een hoed op en een boordje aan, maar ze stonken naar drank en voerden een taaltje om van te ijzen. Toen ik zei wat die kerel zich vermeten had mij toe te voegen, toen lachten zij en beweerden dat zoiets in een werkmansmond niets te betekenen had.

English translation, anyone? (ijzen = ‘to shiver’, zich vermeten = ‘to dare’, toevoegen = ‘to say’)

Or, for a more substantial specimen:

Het was een smokerige loods met glazen dak. In een hoek stonden een paar smeden, die een leven maakten als een laatste oordeel; in ’t midden lag een voorraad hoek- en plaatijzer op de vloer, terwijl zes of zeven bankwerkers, draaiers en monteurs zich tegen de muren een plaats hadden uitgekozen. Toen wij plechtig aantraden en Boorman aanstalten maakte om de centrale stapel te beklimmen, verstomde plotseling het geraas en tien gezichten keerden zich naar ons toe.
Wij werkten onszelf behoedzaam over het ijzer heen en stonden nu voor een houten schot, met een deur en twee kleine vensters, waardoor een schrijftafel met kopieerpers zichtbaar was, en diverse andere voorwerpen die op kantoren in gebruik zijn.
Terwijl mijn patroon even naar binnen loerde, kwam een oudachtig man achter zijn werkbank uit, stapte op Boorman toe, nam zijn pet af en zei gemoedelijk, “dat ze dadelijk zou komen”.
Het was een vervallen mannetje, enigszins gekromd en met vermoeide ogen. Zijn ouderdom kon ik niet schatten, want zijn gezicht zag te zwart.
“Vriend,” zei Boorman, “ik zou meester Lauwereyssen willen spreken. Geef hem dit kaartje en zorg hij eens dat hij dadelijk hier komt.” En hij stopte de man een naamkaartje en een royale fooi in de hand.
De monteur stak beide dingen aarzelend in zijn zak en keek door zijn Bril tegen Boorman op, als had hij gaarne nog iets gezegd. De beschroomdheid snoerde hem echter de mond, want hij draaide zijn pet om, vertrok zijn gezicht en bewoog de lippen, doch bracht generlei geluid uit.
“Piet!” riep van op een afstand een basstem, “zou ik er geen U-ijzertje tegenaan klinken, liever dan die slappe bulb-hoek?”
“Ik kom direct,” antwoordde de man met de bril.
“Jawel,” zei Boorman, “maar roep eerst meester Lauwereyssen, alsjeblieft.”
“Mijnheer,” zei het mannetje verontschuldigend, “ik ben Lauwereyssen. Gaat u maar in ’t kantoor en wacht even. Mijn zuster zal zo meteen beneden komen.”
“Aangename kennismaking,” was alles wat Boorman kon uitbrengen.

I highly recommend Lijmen / Het Been. It’s one of those books you’ll remember. While reading it, three people on the train spontaneously made comments to me about how much they enjoyed it, even though it was compulsory school reading in their time.

Can you blame them?

Ik ben mij gaan afvragen of al onze daden en gedachten niet achter ons aan wandelen, of zij niet een deel van ons zijn, ons gevolg, onze hovelingen, waarvan de stoet aangroeit naargelang wij zelf slinken, die wij evenmin negeren kunnen als onze vleselijke kinderen en die misschien fluisterend nablijven, lang nadat wij zelf tot stilte zijn gebracht…

Quotes from the book (7)

When buying CD's, I adopt certain techniques which are completely different from the ones I adopt when buying books. The former (almost) never happens at random. Either I know the artist, the label or the genre, or I have been reading reviews online or in specialized magazines.

The latter, however, almost always happens at random: most members of my readable collection are the result of brief browsing sessions, in which my attention always ends up being captured by one book or another - for reasons I can't really explain. Could be the title, the words of international acclaim on the first few pages, the picture on the cover or even the first sentence. I seldom deliberately buy a book, unless someone really suggested me giving it a try.

The last book I read, 'Me talk pretty one day' (David Sedaris), drew my attention because of the title. That, and the fact that the London Times described Sedaris as 'possibly the sharpest and funniest observer of human weakness at work today...'.

And yes, it is a funny book. Judge yourself!

Tired of embarrassing myself in front of two-year-olds, I've started referring to everything in the plural, which can get expensive but has solved a lot of my problems. In saying 'a melon', you need to use the masculine article. In saying 'melons', you use the plural article which does not reflect gender and is the same for both the masculine and the feminine. Ask for two or ten or three hundred melons and the number lets you off the hook by replacing the article altogether. A masculine kilo of feminine tomatoes presents a sexual problem easily solved by asking for two kilos of tomatoes. I've started using the plural while shopping and Hugh has started using it in our cramped kitchen, where he stands huddled in the corner, shouting: "What do we need with four pounds of tomatoes?"

I answer I am sure we can use them for something. The only hard part is finding someplace to put them. They won't fit in the refrigerator, as I filled the last remaining shelf with the two chickens I bought from the butcher the night before, forgetting that we were still working our way through a pair of pork roasts the size of Duraflame logs. "We could put them next to the radios," I say, "or grind them for sauce in one of the blenders. Don't get so mad. Having four pounds of tomatoes is better than having no tomatoes at all, isn't it?"

Hugh tells me the market is off-limits until my French improves. He's pretty steamed, but I think he'll get over it when he sees the CD players I got him for his birthday.

Quotes from the book (6)

I guess I have several strange habits. Like enjoying beans in tomato sauce straight from the tin at any hour of the day, or the need to pace around and talk to myself whenever I need to think really hard about something. Another one which continues to surprise people (and hopefully is not a sign of my culinary cruelty or imminent insanity), is this: every year I re-read a book.

The fact that I already know what’s going to happen, doesn’t bother me one bit. On the contrary, I find there’s a kind of quiet solace in the safety of such an enterprise. Besides, I happen to particularly like books without a real story. I really do. Preferably bulky novels that speak about … well, nothing much at all, actually. Like Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which takes 607 pages to tell how an unemployed man discovers a strange well in his garden. I’m sure that to many people this might seem an exquisite form of torture, but not to me. Truth be told: I’ve always liked words better than stories. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never really managed to write one myself?

This year I re-read a book that can be considered the epitome of a book without a story: John Banville’s Eclipse. Two hundred and twenty four pages about a man going back to live in the house he grew up in and reflecting on his life. Nothing of real importance happens in the meanwhile, but to quote Robert Macfarlane in The Guardian: ‘With prose like this, who needs a plot?’.

Indeed, Eclipse is an exercise in language and style. Which doesn’t mean if feels artificial. Banville writes a thick, rich and silky smooth English. Sweet to the tongue and velvety on the palate. Like dark chocolate sauce. But beware, like chocolate sauce Banville can be a bit bitter too, for his pages abound in an almost unspeakable melancholy. Indeed, Eclipse has a tragic beauty that will crush your soul. But then again, I think we need to get our soul crushed once in a while. Don’t you think?

It is late, the light is going. My mind aches from so much futile remembering. What is it I hope to retrieve? What is it I am trying to avoid? I see what was my life adrift behind me, going smaller and smaller with distance, like a city on an ice floe caught in a current, its twinkling lights, its palaces and spires and slums, all miraculously intact, all hopelessly beyond reach. Was it I who took an axe to the ice? What can I do now but stand on this crumbling promontory and watch the past as it dwindles? When I look ahead, I see nothing except empty morning, and no day, only dusk thickening into night, and, far off, something that is not to be made out, something vague, patient, biding. Is that the future, trying to speak to me here, among these shadows of the past? I do not want to hear what it might have to say.

Wear sunscreen

(for M, J, L, E & D)

Life is far from easy. We all know that. Some days are bad, some days are worse. I don’t know why, but lately it seems that wherever I look, there’s trouble and heartache. Especially heartache. If Life is a Ship, then there’s definitely a storm blowing. And all around me friends are getting hit by the deck harder than a drunken sailor…

As a friend I try to listen and I try to help. With a glass of wine, a cup of coffee, or some honest advice. But it’s not easy. After all, advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

You might recognize these words. They’re from a 1997 column by Mary Schmich in which she gave her version of a Guide to Life for Graduates. You probably know the musical adaptation by Baz Luhrmann better. It’s called Wear Sunscreen. (In fact, it's called Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen), but no one says that)

I have always been a big fan of Schmich’s column (and Luhrmann's song). Sure, it’s a piece of comedy, but it’s also excellent advice – from ‘Wear sunscreen’ over ‘Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone’ to ‘Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours’. It’s really splendid advice and I frequently re-read it when going through a rough patch of life.

Years ago I also followed the one piece of advice from Schmich’s column that didn’t get into Luhrman’s song: the part where she encourages anyone over 26 to try and write their own Guide for Life. Here’s an updated version of it. If it doesn’t help, it probably won’t hurt either.

Think. Trust your instincts. Be honest, not naive. Work out. Read. Write. Don’t be afraid. Speak out in public. Try harder. Have faith. Help others. Take care of yourself. Don’t accept sweets from strangers. Respect nature. Use your head, but follow your heart. Nobody said it was going to be easy. Cry, and don’t you dare apologize for it. Get what you need, not what you want. Smoke once: quit forever. Hold your charm. Math is neither boring, nor useless. Talk to people. Listen too. Expect disappointments. Health is everything. Don’t make plans for the future: do stuff now. Alcohol is not a philosophy. Be patient. Let it go. Use good grammar. Mind the pedestrian. Read the small print. Never ignore anything. Believe in love, not in romance. Be a man about it. Your body has a soul too. Ask for help. Courage is not foolishness. Compassion is not weakness. Imagining people naked helps. Breathe. A broken heart does heal. Don’t overestimate logics. Steer clear of the drunk barber. Forgive. Be polite. Love dolphins. After all, what kind of a person doesn’t love dolphins? Be kind to children. Do the right thing. Remember. Be prepared. Keep focused. Dream. And above all, ask yourself: does it make me happy?

Of course, at the end of it, I have to repeat Mary Schmich’s one caveat.

If you succeed in doing this, please tell me how.

Just being difficult?

Lately I have been engaged in studying Jonathan Culler’s Structuralist Poetics, a fascinating survey of the potential and problems of structuralist literary criticism. Structurawhat? Well, literary research conducted from the structuralist perspective aims to be, as Culler explains, ‘a poetics which strives to define the conditions of meaning’ (p. xiv), so that ‘the study of literature (…) would become an attempt to understand the conventions which make literature possible’ (p. xv).

See what I have to deal with to earn a living? Poor Fred…

Actually, it’s really not that bad. While Culler’s definitions of structuralism are not meant for a four year old, they’re not exactly inscrutable gobbledygook either. In fact, the man is a champion at explaining difficult thinking in simple words. Quite unlike many of his colleagues in literary theory who excel in using obscure language, sometimes malignantly to conceal poor thinking. Indeed, Culler even devoted a book to the subject, under the title Just being difficult? Academic Writing in the Public Arena, where he deals with branches of the academe which tend to indulge in an academic style that has once been described as ‘terrorist obscurantism’. Wikipedia mentions a famous example from the work of the feminist author Judith Butler, who in 1998 got a prize in a Bad Writing Competition for this sentence:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

Yaiks. That’s bad.

So bad, it can even get funny; which is exactly what inspired the boys from this site http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/. They decided to develop a software program called The Postmodernism Generator which randomly generates complete essays on postmodern issues, complete with quotations and footnotes. Each time you visit the site a different essay pops up. Five minutes ago, its title was ‘Debordist situation and postcapitalist cultural theory’ and the first paragraph read:

If one examines precultural narrative, one is faced with a choice: either reject postcapitalist cultural theory or conclude that art may be used to entrench capitalism. Derrida promotes the use of Debordist situation to challenge class divisions. Thus, an abundance of desituationisms concerning the modernist paradigm of reality may be discovered.

So for all you students out there, next time you need an essay quickly, you know where to look. And I’m very curious to find out whether your teacher will see through the hoax…

Quotes from the book (5)

In preparation for the Book Swishing Event, which - if I may add - was a great success, I noticed that my bookshelf contains different types of books. And I don't mean fiction versus non-fiction, but the label that comes with your bond with the book under consideration.

I suppose we all have at least one book we would like to take with us into the grave, right? Which is a stupid idea, by the way, since it's too dark to read in there. These are obviously unswishable.

On the other kind of the spectrum, you have the books which are deliberately kept out of display. Hidden in the basement, gathering dust and mould in the anonymous cardboard moving boxes, or behind other books, like the least popular kid on the class picture, if your bookcase allows a double row of books. Strangely enough these species are unswishable too, as they are very likely to jeopardize your street credibility. Insofar as you frequent circles in which 'books' and 'street credibility' can be used in the same sentence. Avoiding any verb expressing an act of destruction, that is.

A third kind of books, which I am particularly fond of, is the unexpected discovery. It's the paperback version of having a memorable conversation with a random person, or dancing the night away on a band you had never heard of. This is usually the kind of books I prefer to keep as a birthday present back-up plan. The book which I just finished falls under this category: The terrible privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe.

Most of us would have difficulties using the words 'toothbrush', 'SatNav' and 'Chinese cardgames' in one sentence - not me, of course, I just did - but Coe brew them into an enjoyable story. Containing the following passage:

In days gone by, before motor-ways, before by-passes, traveling through England must actually have involved visiting places. You would drive along high streets (or ride your horse along them, if we're going to go way back) and stop at pubs in the town centre (or staging posts or coaching inns or whatever they used to be called). Now, the entire road network seemed to be set up to prevent this from happening. The roads were there to stop you from meeting people, to ensure that you passed nowhere near any of the places where humanity congregates. A phrase came to me, then - a phrase that Caroline was fond of repeating. 'Only connect'. I think it was from one of the fancy writers she was always trying to get me to read. It occurred to me now that whoever designed England's roads had precisely the opposite idea in mind: 'Only disconnect'.

Sadly enough, there's also the category of books which were recommended to you but turned out to be quite a disappointment. In that case, keep in mind that this is definitely a swishable book...

Summer break

Just like the other Fred, I will also leave our beloved Ghent for a trip abroad. Hoping to gain more insight into myself and the world I'm living in, ready to prepare enough blog blurbs to keep you all entertained after the summer break.

May your summer be hot and sticky, devoid of mosquitos and long enough to reset what needs to be reset.

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.”

(G. K. Chesterton)

Quotes from the book (4)

I just love laughing out loud on the train, hunched over a book, secretly enjoying my fellow travelers trying to find out what it is that makes me smile. The following passage, from Paul Murray's "Skippy Dies" really cracked me up...

'Mario -' Dennis sits up '- what makes you think any girl is going to get anywhere near you? Let alone like fifteen different girls.'

Mario hesitates, then says conspiratorially, 'I have a secret weapon.'

'You do?'

'You bet, mister.' He flips open his wallet. 'Read it and weep, boys. It's my lucky condom, which never fails.'

A silence, as Mario smugly returns his wallet to his pocket, and then, clearing his throat, Dennis says, 'Uh, Mario, in what way exactly is there anything lucky about that condom?'

'Never fails,' Mario repeats, a little defensively.

'But -' Dennis pinches his fingers to his nose, brow furrowed '- I mean, if it was really a lucky condom, wouldn't you have used it by now?'

'How long have you had it in there, Mario?' Geoff says.

'Three years,' Mario says.

'Three years?'

'Without using it?'

'Doesn't that sound more like an unlucky condom?'

Mario looks troubled as his unshakeable faith in the luckiness of the lucky condom begins to show cracks.

'It was definitely pretty lucky for the condom, to wind up in your wallet!'

'Yeah, Mario, your wallet is like the Alcatraz of condoms.'

'It's like the condom Bermuda Triangle!'

'Condoms tell each other stories about your wallet, "Oh, he disappeared into Mario Bianchi's wallet, and he was never seen again."'

'Yeah, I bet right this very second your lucky condom is in there whistling the theme from The Great Escape and digging a tunnel out of your wallet with a plastic coffee stirrer -'

Quotes from the book (3)

As I spent a lot of time on trains the last few days, I had a chance to finish Roland Barthes' Mythologies which describes itself in the introduction as 'a corrosive, insolent, strange, cold, and yet witty book'. Having read it, I guess this description is accurate (if a little negative), but still it lacks one very important qualification, in my opinion, which is 'wildly interesting'.

What Roland Barthes - a French cultural critic (1915-1980) - meant to do in this book is make a semiological analysis of contemporary cultural myths. Now before you stop reading this, let me rephrase that in normal language. Barthes' approach is simple. He investigates elements of French culture, like soap-powder and detergents, toys, wrestling matches, news pieces and other, apparently ordinary cultural trivia and reads them like myths, i.e. he explores how they represent a deeper cultural disposition. In doing so, he is able to make some extraordinary analyses of how French culture (mind you, it's French culture from the 1950s!) represents its values.

If all this still sounds too hoity-toity for your taste, let me give an example. Barthes takes Jules Verne's story Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) about a man exploring the deep sea in a submarine (science fiction at the time!), and uses it to analyse a very common cultural idea which we all share: the enjoyment of being enclosed. It's true, we all love being in a small space where we are the supreme master. It's why children love huts and tents, why adults like driving a car: you may be shut up in a small place, but within it you have everything under control. Yet there is one extra element: it's the combination of inwardness (being closed in) with the outside that we like. Indeed, you might be stuck in wooden (hut) or a steel (car) box, but from it, you can see the whole world. And that's what appeals to us.

If you think about it, this 'myth' returns in many elements of our culture. Watching TV when it's raining outside, surfing the internet, riding glass elevators in tall buildings, having an apartment with a terrace, sunbathing on a towel on a beach, and perhaps the best example of all: reading on the toilet. They're all examples of combining unbroken inwardness with the vagueness of the outside, to use Barthes' words. And all of these situations give us a hugely pleasant sensation. It makes us feel safe and in command at the same time.

And that's why Barthes' Mythologies is a wildly interesting book. It takes very familiar things and situations and explains what the cultural motivations behind them are. Like no other book it takes the ordinary out of the ordinary. And to be frank, humbly trying to piece together a piece of cultural criticism myself once in a while, I'm insanely jealous of Barthes' talent for doing just this.

To finish it off, just one quote which struck me as very relevant even today. Something Vic Van Aelst should keep in mind next time he criticizes Di Rupo's or Milquet's Dutch:

Whatever the degree of guilt of the accused, there is also the spectacle of a terror which threatens us all, that of being judged by a power which wants to hear only the language it lends us. (...) To rob a man of his language in the very name of language: this is the first step in all legal murders

Quotes from the book (2)

You might have noticed that Fred and I are quite alike. It seems our mental clocks run remarkably similar. Just yesterday Fred finished his book Our tragic universe, and today I finished mine, by Cees Nooteboom: 's Nachts komen de vossen.

It's a great book; it skifully weaves together wafer-thin but intense stories about Dutch expats, death and love. I once read about someone who had the habit of skimming the first and the last sentence of a book as a rule before buying it, which makes sense as a lot can be gauged from those two (the hardest) sentences. So, in the spirit of 'Quotes from the book', here are a few of the opening and closing lines of the short-stories in Nooteboom's booklet, hoping that they might give you a taste of the sublime prose Nootemboom writes. From the majestic, almost baroque rhetoric in the quote from Gondels to the staccato prose-poetry in Paula II. This man is a master of the Dutch language and his fragile stories are deceptively gripping...

(from Gondels): "Gondels zijn atavistisch, hij wist niet meer waar hij dat gelezen had, en wilde daar nu ook niet over nadenken omdat er dan, dacht hij, iets van het pathos van het ogenblik zou vervliegen (...) Hij antwoordde niet en keek naar de wiegende witte papiertjes die langzaam in het assige, avondkleurige water wegdreven, tot er een gondel voorbijkwam en hij ze niet meer zag".

(from Heinz): "Eerst een ronde bedrog. Ik kijk naar een foto van een groep mensen, waar ik zelf tussen sta. (...) Wij zijn onze geheimen, en als het goed is nemen we ze mee naar waar niemand erbij kan".

(from Paula II): "Je hebt me opgeroepen, je krijgt antwoord. Of je het hoort weet ik niet (...) Afscheid, het echte, het laatste. Je hebt je raam opengezet. Windvlaag. Dat was ik. Geritsel, gefluister. Het geluid van vossen, een nacht in de woestijn. Gedachte vossen. Geen echte. Alles heel vluchtig. Zoals wij zijn. Weg".

I love a good book.

Quotes from the book...

'But isn't the point of being alive to try to answer the big questions?'

I shook my head.

'For me it's about trying to work out what the questions are.'

(Scarlett Thomas, Our tragic universe)

Barthes on truth

What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth (Roland Barthes)