Over the hill

Well, I cannot really understand what's the meaning of the song. I think that it's about love and a girl that is left alone. Or maybe a person that is old and alone, as the phrase "over-the-hill" is used to declare the past of the youthful vigor. So, I decided to write about what I firstly understand when I read the title of the song which is not related at all with the above. 

Let's imagine that life is a trip with a bicycle. In this trip, unfortunately the road isn't straight and the biggest problem is that the road has a lot of uphills. In uphills, you have to spent a big amount of energy to manage to reach the top of the hill. This effort is awarded by a downhill in which you don't even need to pedal. The bike is moving all alone and now you can enjoy the trip. Until you reach a new uphill and face the new troubles that you have to surpass. It is something like a giant roller coaster which lasts many years, going up and down all the time. But you know that the great effort is awarded. 

Sometimes you get the award really fast. Sometimes it takes many years to grab your award. You think that you are trying but nothing changes. But if you really try and there are no results then a magic hand will push you to ride the hill. If you don't try the result is obvious. The bicycle will go down the hill, but this time backwards. 

And when you reach the top of the hill then a new era begins. Try for this moments. The moments that you are on the top of the hill. Ride with passion your bike over the hill.

PS. The explanation of the real meaning of the song is welcome! 

Give galaktoboureko* to the people

Most of us know the phrase "If they have no bread, let them eat cake" that is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, the Queen consort of Louis XVI although there is no evidence for that. According to unapproved sources Marie Antoinette said that phrase when she was informed that the poor French citizens had no bread to eat. Her status quo allowed her to understand little about the plight of the poor [1] and she proposed to give cake to them.

The last 2 year, the financial crisis hit Europe and there are people that have no sources to buy the basic goods that are necessary for their living. Banks bankrupt worldwide and the governments give them money to avoid chain reactions that will destroy the whole financial construction. Greece faces more or less the same difficulties that all the members of the Eurozone suffer from. Portugal, Iceland, Greece and Spain were the first victims of the financial crisis however there are many other countries that try to hide their big problems in order to avoid creating panic to the financial markets, a panic with unpredictable consequences. 

Everyday I read on news that the situation is worse than we can imagine and I fear that in some months Europeans will face the "If they have no bread, let them eat cake" situation. Maybe in Greece the government should say "Give galaktoboureko* to the people" [2] instead of cake because it is more delicious! 

* Galaktoboureko
Find recipe here: http://www.grouprecipes.com/21949/galaktompoureko.html

[1] http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/let-them-eat-cake.html
[2] The phrase belongs to Aris, a classmate in SWE.

Nostalgia

First of all, what “Nostalgia” is? I copy the words of Svetlana Boym, a professor in Harvard University

The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form. The word is a learned formation of a Greek compounds, consisting of νόστος,nóstos, "returning home", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος, álgos, "pain" or "ache". It was described as a medical condition, a form of melancholy. [1]

In plain English: The pain for being away from your home. Many people who read this blog may have this feeling the last 6 months, being away from their country and their families to study in a foreign country. Personally, I believe that, as nostalgia is “a yearning for the past”, everyone experience a different type of nostalgia.

Yanni, a fabulous musician, who originates from Greece and his sales are more than 20 million worldwide, composed a marvelous song named “Nostalgia”. I think that this song defines nostalgia not is words but in music notes.

The following video is the performance that Yanni did at the Acropolis in Athens in 1993. Listen to it and bring back in mind beautiful scenes of you past. Reminisce beautiful moments. But be careful, don’t fall back! Life is all about present.

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[1] Boym, Svetlana, The future of Nostalgia, 2001 pp. xiii-xiv. 

On the threshold of wisdom

The University of York established in 1963 and it is located in York, UK. This year the Times Higher Education voted UoY as the best university in the United Kingdom. I don't know the criteria for such a decision and I don't care. I have to say that UoY can offer you everything you need in order to become a successful scientist.

If you saw the video [1] before these words then you probably understand what facilities this university offers to the students. I have the opportunity to study at Heslington East, the new campus which was developed this year. The facilities that this campus offer are incredibly thrilling. The new campus is the one showed after the 4:12 of the above video. However, I think I should do a separate tribute to this campus when I have the stuff needed to present it the best way.

Maybe I am not an objective viewer and other universities offer much better goods for their students. I am happy that I study here and I enjoy every second of this marvelous new experience. It is hard because the educational standards are very high. Regarding the computer science department I know that we have the crème de la crème professors around the world. Their upper knowledge in the domain and the fact that they are too approachable inspire you to try harder and harder. To place yourself, as the university's motto says, on the threshold of wisdom!

[1] Property of the "University of York Students Union - YUSU", 2010-2011

The road to Ithaca

The Island of Ithaca

A few years ago, when I was a high-school student I hated the module of literature. I always had in mind that some of the poems which we analyzed might be a result of intoxication, drug consumption or pure madness. A poem of K. Kavafis called "Ithaca" is the only poem that I really like.

The poem is a metaphor of the trip of Odysseus from Ithaca to Troy and back. This trip lasted 20 years and Odysseus fought with several mythical creatures and gods until he arrived back home. The poem starts as:

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge. 

Kavafis supports that the fulfillment of the goal itself is not a big deal. The difficulties you face and the knowledge that you acquire is the whole benefit of the process. He claims that the the trip should be long, in order to gain as much as you can. New experiences, new knowledge. Wisdom. And he ends the poem:

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

The lyrics of this poem claim that in our lives we should set new goals which we have to fulfill. However, the goal is only needed to encourage as to start a new trip. A trip that makes as better people. A trip that can enrich our spirit. So, whenever you encounter some problems in your trip to Ithaca, then you know that it is for good. It is a part of the game which is called life.

The whole poem can be found here.

The 700 Thespians

At the end of summer 480 BC, in the region of Phocis, a place near Athens, took place the most remarkable battle in the ancient Greek history. This battle is known as "The battle of the Thermopylae". If you are not Greek then you probably hear about it for first time. If you are cinemaniac then you probably heard about it in the movie "300" by Zack Snyder. 

In this battle 5.200 Greeks fought against 2.600.000 Persians [1]. Modern estimations calculate the Persians between 70.000 and 300.000 [2]. The Thermopylae was a narrow strip of land between mountains. Greeks selected this place for the battle because they believed that the enemy couldn’t line up its millions of soldiers in such a narrow land strip. In this way the potential difference would be eliminated. Leonidas was the Greek commander and Xerxes the 1^st was the Persian. The battle lasted six days and at the end Persians won.

This battle is not remarkable because of its consequences, but for the vigor of the 300 Spartans who participated in the battle. When all the Greeks decided to leave the area of the battle and fortify their own cities, the Spartans and their leader decided to fight until they die. They denied to surrender, saying the glorious “Come and get them” ( “Μολών λαβέ” in Greek). A statue is placed where these heroes lost their lives in a battle which they knew they had no chance to win.

It is not widely known that the 300 Spartans were not alone at the end. 700 Thespians decided to help them and fight until death, too. And they did so. However the battle of Thermopylae is only directly connected with the courageous Spartans. Have in mind that the law of the Spartans didn’t allow them to return alive back if they lost a battle, so in any way they had to fight. Maybe they didn’t want to but they had to. In contrast with that, the Thespians had the choice to escape and save their lives but they didn’t.

This is a great history injustice. This phenomenon is repeated in modern life. There are people who work hard and their work is not recognized or it is absorbed by others.

Glory and honour to the 700 Thespians.

PS. I want to mention that this blog is not about the Greek culture's grandeur. It is not related with any kind of nationalism. The first two posts are symptomatically related with the Greek culture.

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[1] Herodotus VII, 186

[2] Holland, Tom (2006). Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West. New York: Doubleday, p. 394

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Read more about the battle of Thermopylae in Wikipedia

Read the amazing book of Steven Pressfiled, "Gates of fire"

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The "300" movie trailer

Which is the richest language?

Yesterday I had an discussion with a friend on which language is the richest in terms of vocabulary. He insisted that English language has the longest vocabulary.

Years ago, when I was at the first year of Lyceum, there was a Greek literature professor who was always saying that Greek language has the biggest vocabulary. I remember him claiming that computer programmers want to adopt the Greek language as a standard in creating programming languages because of its unlimited vocabulary. Based on that, I decided to bet that Greek Language has the biggest vocabulary against my friend's believing that English is the richest.

We searched the web to find an answer. The first results were declaring that "English is at all the richest language". However I read an article on the economist [1] analyzing why this question cannot be answered. More or less the article supported that it is impossible to count the words consisting a language for the simple reason that there are no rules to do that. For instance, if we count the word "home" and the word "run" as two separate words then the word "home run" should be counted or not?

English language is generally believed to be the richest language while Greek language isn't considered at all in such a "competition" (the top-5 languages participating in this competition are English, French, Tamin, Mandarin and German). However, I strongly believe that Greek language has a characteristic that is very important in this concept. There are very few words that the Greek vocabulary borrowed from foreign languages while the Greek vocabulary is used widely in languages like English. Should these "imported" words be counted as part of the English vocabulary? If you don't believe me, then read the following speech that was written by X. Zolotas the 177th president of Greece:

Kyrie, it is Zeus' anathema on our epoch for the dynamism of our economies and the heresy of our economic methods and policies that we should agonize the Scylla of numismatic plethora and the Charybdis of economic anaemia. It is not my idiosyncrasy to be ironic or sarcastic, but my diagnosis would be that politicians are rather cryptoplethorists. Although they emphatically stigmatize numismatic plethora, they energize it through their tactics and practices. Our policies have to be based more on economic and less on political criteria. Our gnomon has to be a metron between political, strategic and philanthropic scopes. Political magic has always been anti-economic. In an epoch characterized by monopolies, oligopolies, monopsonies, monopolistic antagonism and polymorphous inelasticities, our policies have to be more orthological. But this should not be metamorphosed into plethorophobia, which is endemic among academic economists. Numismatic symmetry should not hyper-antagonize economic acme. A greater harmonization between the practices of the economic and numismatic archons is basic. Parallel to this, we have to synchronize and harmonize more and more our economic and numismatic policies panethnically. These scopes are more practicable now, when the prognostics of the political and economic barometer are halcyonic. The history of our didymus organizations in this sphere has been didactic and their gnostic practices will always be a tonic to the polyonymous and idiomorphous ethnical economies. The genesis of the programmed organization will dynamize these policies. Therefore, I sympathize, although not without criticism on one or two themes, with the apostles and the hierarchy of our organs in their zeal to program orthodox economic and numismatic policies, although I have some logomachy with them. I apologize for having tyrannized you with my Hellenic phraseology. In my epilogue, I emphasize my eulogy to the philoxenous autochthons of this cosmopolitan metropolis and my encomium to you, Kyrie, and the stenographers.

Yes, all these words are of Greek origin. That's the grandeur of the Greek language.

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/06/counting_words