The land of green plums

I finished reading "The land of green plums" ("Animalul inimii" in Romanian) by Herta Muller. It's a somber book where the meaning of the universe disintegrates under the weight of the secret police and the communist party. The humanity is squeezed out of people until they commit suicide or leave the country. But many of those who try to leave also die in fact cause borders were like a prison wall with barbed wire and heavy army surveillance. And this barbed wire survives even today between Romania and Moldova. After the fall from power of the communist party in Moldova last year they finally decided to take this barbed wire down on the border between the two countries. One more prison is falling down.

Teach me tonight

While in high school I used to go about once a month to some jazz lessons. I was not passionate about jazz, but some of my friends were, so we all were attending the concerts of Harry Tavitian and Corneliu Stroe. Harry was literally jumping on the piano keyboard at moments, he was just a little man, but so alive. It all came back when I went to the last concert of "Teach me tonight" series. This time Tavitian was joined by Ion Baciu jr. at piano and Cserey Csaba at percution. It was a fine concert, suited for Christmas with many adaptations of Christmas carols.

As a bonus, here is the original "Teach me tonight" song performed by Nat King Cole:


I didn't have time to blog about many events, but I attended other performances this fall, so I will just mention them for the record: "Princess Turandot" from National Theater from Sibiu, "All My Sons" by Arthrur Miller at National Theater from Bucharest and "La Boheme" and National Opera from Bucharest.

The missing link

In a top of scientific discoveries of 2009 the discovery of a human-like fossil was name the science breakthrough of the year. This is a long debate and one of the arguments of non-believers in the theory of evolution: the fact that there are no species between monkeys and humans and the gap between them is too big to be explained by evolution. The scientists were looking for years for this type of fossil and it seems the finally found it: a creature that looks like a monkey but has some characteristics that indicates a biped walking. Unfortunately the evidence of talking cannot be seen in a fossil, so we will still debate for some time about where do we come from.

New book: Super-freakonomics

I just finish reading a new book, Super-freakonomics. It is written by an economist who deviates from the mainstream themes of economics and applies the "economic method" to various other domains from prostitutes to terrorists. In fact this is a sequel, in the first book he was also writing about drug dealers. There is also a chapter about global warming and geo-engineering as a possible solution. Overall it's a very good read and no, there are no formulas and equations in this book :)

And the winner is...

Costi Rogozanu.
Out of the blogs I read during the presidential election campaign I consider the one of Costi the most objective (detached from either contending part) and with good humor.

Other contenders:
Teodor Tita
Alin Fumurescu
Doc@Hotnews
Tolo

I hope that more and more people will practice critical thinking relative to what happens in our society. And maybe this type of ideas will rule one day.

Where is our mind?

There is an election coming in Romania and the winner is uncertain yet. The electoral campaign was an hysterical one with accusations flying around and a lot of negative campaigning. I made up my mind a long time ago (I will vote again for the current president Traian Basescu), but I cannot stop wondering: where is our mind? Why is everybody hitting at their opponents, why can't they debate on principles and solutions?



Is this country a fight club?

Excellence in education prizes

I don't like the way Patriciu made his fortune and his political actions, but I do appreciate that he is using some of his money to sponsor education related projects. One of these projects is the prizes for excellence in education that are offered each year. Last week the awards for this year were announced and I was glad to find out that Mihai Dimian, one of my friends from University of Maryland won the third place in the researcher of the year section. Congratulations Mihai!

As for Mr. Patriciu, I hope he will finance a university in the near future, a real one, not another diploma factory like Spiru Haret University. A famous example is one of best universities in the world Carnegie Mellon University which was founded in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie, a steel tycoon at that time.

Timeout

Usually I don't like shopping, especially for cloth since I find it very hard to find something I really like. So I was happy one or two years ago when I found a chain where I could find stuff I like at reasonable prices. I got jeans, shirts and T-shirts (e.g. Run Like Hell) from Timeout, but the crisis stroke again and this retailer went out of business. All their shops in Bucharest were closed and so I'll have to ramble again through countless stores to find something to buy. Luckily my Merrell shoes bought in Delaware six years ago are still in very good shape and I also run 3-4 km in park every now and then so I should be able to go for a shopping session when I will really need it :)