Limmonica

Sun, Light, Jesus or Society?

2010-12-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

Christmas is usually defined as being a religious sacred holiday that commemorates the birth of Jesus on 25^th of December. The feast is associated with symbols like Nativity scenes, Christmas carols, Christmas ornaments, Christmas tree, mistletoe or figures like Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas.

A LITTLE HISTORY

In the past, North European countries use to celebrate the winter solstice, around the 21^th of December with a festival called Yule. Fathers and sons dragged evergreen indoor as reminders of life and set logs on fire as a reminder of good fortune.

Romans use to celebrate Saturnalia, one week before the winter solstice which was an orgy of food and drink in honor of Saturn, the God of agriculture.

Some Romans, particularly soldiers and government officials, were worshiping Mithra, the Sun God, on 25^th of December. The solar holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti or “the birthday of the unconquered Sun” was afterwards associated with the birth of Jesus.

By the first century A.D. as Christianity took hold throughout the empire, pagan traditions were challenged and the Church adopted the day of the Sun God Mithra as the birth of the Christ child. Knowing it could not outlaw the pagan traditions of Christmas the Church came to accept them and the evergreen brought indoors were decorated with apples symbolizing the Garden of Eden.

The story of Santa Claus also begin in the 4th century with the death of Nicholas, a beloved Turkish bishop. The anniversary of its death became known as Saint Nicholas day. On December the 6^th good children awoke with gifts from the Saint Nicolas. In Holland it was known as Sinterklaas.

Clement Clarke Moore, a seminary professor, reimagined the legend of Saint Nicholas 1500 years later in America. In 1822 Moore wrote a poem “The night before Christmas” about a good-nature saint named Santa Claus who was puled by a group of reindeer and came down the chimney on Christmas eve. Like Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus spread good cheer and gave gifts to children. It was less clear was exactly what the Santa Claus looked like. In 1863 Thomas Nast a cartoonist for Harper's Weekly settled the matter once and for all with his version of the Christmas' Saint. Nast's Santa was rotund and jolly with a full white beard and a sack full of toys.

SIGNIFICATIONS

Looking back, long before the birth of Christmas traditions, mankind celebrated the winter solstice for different reasons. One of them might be the fact that in the winter period less agricultural works needed to be done so people felt the need to gather together and emphasize the social aspect of their life. Another reason was the expectation of a better weather as spring was approaching and Nature needed to be celebrated in order to get a better harvest in the year that was coming.

Some other reasons were related to the fact that the winter solstice marked the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Mankind has long feared mystical forces through the dark of winter and people thought the holly spirit arose during Christmas and evil spirits were thought to conspire against it.

The most important reason was related to the rebirth of the Sun and its gradually growing in strength to the Midsummer Solstice. This inspired Christianity to associate the birth of Jesus with the winter solstice, the rebirth of the light and the Sun. Actually, it symbolizes the rebirth of the mankind's faith in Jesus each year.

NOWADAYS

Today, Christmas became a symbol of the society rebirth. At Christmas people gather together and celebrate their relationships, the feast serving sometimes as an excuse or maybe opportunity to get closer to the ones we care about. Feeling connected to friends and relatives gives people strength through seeing themselves as a part of a whole.

Although our civilization evolved, everybody follows Christmas rituals without searching their real meaning. We can see that somehow we still live in an era of forms emptied of their meanings. We buy expensive presents projecting on their expensiveness all the signification of the relationship and we've got to the point where we don't know anymore how to improve and develop them otherwise.

Christmas became that period of the year we wait for in order to do something meaningful for others. We try to get closer if distance divides us. We try to apologize if bad feelings are involved. Usually we associate gifts to these actions. Sometimes we replace them with the gifts.

We've got to the point where we can afford the luxury to avoid opening up in front of our significant others, the less commercial and less expensive present we can make. We choose to seal ourselves with a present, an object, as an excuse for our lack of will. Probably this is what marks the expensiveness of the objects gifted, not their cost in therms of money but in therms of mental trash thrown inside the subconscious.

Christmas became nowadays a worldwide commercial and cultural phenomenon where people resume to acquiring and exchanging Christmas symbols. It seems like we are convinced that symbols produce a psychological modification and we become good-nature people only at Christmas.

A Cognitive Perspective on the Welfare of Mankind

2010-06-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

Henry Stein Interviewed by Susan Bridle
for the Spring/Summer 2000 Issue of
"What is Enlightenment?" Magazine

WIE: Could you please explain Alfred Adler’s understanding of what the ego is?

HENRY STEIN: Adler was very influenced by a German philosopher named Hans Vaihinger, who wrote about how every discipline—psychology, sociology, law, you name it—establishes fictions to try to describe things. And after a while, we tend to think of these fictions as having reality to them. And when we talk about the ego or self, we’re basically trying to hone in on a region of functioning that in fact doesn’t exist. When we talk about the ego or self, what we’re trying to do is get to a mysterious core of something in a way that I don’t think a neurobiologist could, you know, if they would try to cut a person open to find the self. Where is it located? Is it in the head, is it in the stomach, in the heart? But if you respectfully accept the idea of a fiction, you could say that the ego is the entire person—as they function. Adler equated the ego with the entire self or personality.
Adler disagreed with Freud on a number of issues, particularly regarding the division of the personality into ego, id and superego. Freud hypothesized a division of the personality into these so-called segments or dynamic parts, but Adler said that there is no division, that the personality is a complete unity. Adler believed that you could not accurately look at the personality as subdivided, that you had to look at it only as a whole, as an organized whole without contradictions. Freud made a distinction between conscious and unconscious. But Adler didn’t feel that there was such a distinction. He felt that there was a kind of fluidity there, because what seems to be unconscious can be raised to consciousness very rapidly under certain circumstances. Freud indicated that there was a conflict or war between the parts of the personality, between the id and the ego and the superego. But Adler said that that is an erroneous assumption. He felt that there is no internal war or conflict, and that the individual moves only in one direction, even if it appears contradictory. In other words, you can have a person who seems to be in deep internal conflict, but that internal conflict is an illusion because the conflict has been developed largely to simply prevent action. But the main thing was that Adler believed that the personality was organized around a single "fictional final goal." This fictional final goal is unique to each person and pretty much guides and dictates most of the individual’s actions. So you might say it defines the ego and sense of self. Adler said that everything within the personality, whether it’s thinking, feeling, memory, fantasy, dreams, posture, gestures, handwriting—every expression of the personality—is essentially subordinate to this goal. This is pretty much Adler’s way of getting a sense of the person.

WIE: Can you explain what this fictional final goal is?

HS: It’s like an imagined final position or result. It’s sort of like if you were a playwright, it would be your curtain line. It’s where everything is leading toward as an imagined fulfillment. Now, this goal gets formulated even without words in early childhood and becomes what Adler called the "childhood prototype." The child imagines some time in the future when they will grow up, when they will be strong, when they will overcome insecurity or anything else that bothers them. So if they feel that they are ugly, they will be beautiful. If they feel that they’re stupid, they will be brilliant. If they feel that they’re weak, they’ll be strong. If they’re at the bottom, they’ll be at the top. All of this is conceived without words as a way of living in the insecurity of the present that may be uncomfortable or unbearable. It would be unbearable to say that these feelings of insecurity or inferiority are a permanent condition for you. So what the child does, and eventually what the adult does, is they imagine that the future will bring a redemption, will bring relief from the inferiority feeling. The future will bring success, significance, a correction—a reversal of everything that’s wrong. It’s very purposeful. This fictional final goal is an embodiment of their vision of the future. It’s similar to a hologram insofar as each little piece of it carries the whole story in miniature. Each part is a reflection of that whole.

WIE: Why did Adler feel it was important to see the human being as an undivided whole?

HS: Responsibility. Otherwise, you could say, "One part of me wanted to do this, another part did not," or "The devil made me do it," or "This little voice in me said . . . "—basically, "I’m not in control; I’m not responsible." This is all grounds for mischief. Adler was saying, "It’s you!"

WIE: There’s fundamentally one person in there calling the shots.

HS: Yes, calling the shots and having an intention. It’s not instinct, and it’s not something like the universal unconscious that is affecting you. You have chosen to do this, at some point. Now when you chose it, it may have been a guess as to the best way to go, but then what happened is that it became automatic and like a habit, and then you just kept doing it. And it may not function very well anymore, but you keep doing it anyway.
This idea of singularity is very important when it comes to treatment. In treatment, how in the world do we deal with the person who has fifteen different symptoms and all these little bad habits and problems? My God, we’re going to be busy for years. They’ve got emotional issues and they’ve got cognitive issues and behavioral issues and you could say, "Hey, this is not going to be done in six weeks, this is going to take six years." It’s sort of like trying to put a whole bunch of puppies in a basket—one jumps out as you put the next one in—you get the emotions under control and then the physical symptoms act up.

WIE: If you approach it in this way, it can be a lifelong project to straighten all this out.

HS: Yes. Adler says, "Wait a minute. If in fact there is a single goal and this single goal is causing the symptoms and problems and is, in a sense, orchestrating everything, you don’t work on the fifty-two different subcategories of symptoms, you work on the goal." When you change the goal, everything else begins to shift, the symptoms begin to vanish. People get goose bumps when they come to the realization that they can change their life so dramatically and that it isn’t an overwhelming, laborious, lifelong task. That’s the good news. There’s bad news: The bad news is that you now have responsibility. And that’s a trade-off. When people are willing to accept this responsibility, they almost have a sense of being reborn, and the sense of freedom and empowerment is wonderful. And then they accept the responsibility very willingly; it’s not a burden. But other people—who don’t want the responsibility—will back off, and what they’ll do is they will either forget the insight or they will argue with it or sabotage it.

WIE: What is Adler’s definition of conscience, and how is it different from Freud’s concept of superego?

HS: Freud’s superego is an external pressure: the parental voice, the culture’s expectations about what you should do or should not do. It’s based on the assumption that there is a very unruly, selfish, aggressive, sexual little child in us who will do a lot of damage if not controlled. Adler’s concept of conscience is very different, much more optimistic and positive. Adler said that the core issue is social feeling or the feeling of community. This starts out in a child as a sense of contact with a person, usually the mother, who is absolutely reliable, who is safe, who is encouraging and nurturing. It starts out as a feeling, but eventually it can become cognitive. If the child, and eventually the adult, develops this sense of connection and contact—this sense that there are other worthwhile, reliable human beings with whom they have a feeling of trust and safety, who they want to be near—and if they are also given enough encouragement and training, they learn to reciprocate, and this leads to a very good result. Now, this starts out as a feeling or as an action; it starts out in a noncognitive way. Eventually, when the child begins to think about bigger issues, when they begin to think about conscience and morality, there is a sense in which this gives cognitive support to what they already feel. From the Adlerian standpoint, you don’t help a person develop a conscience by moralizing, by threats, by "shoulds" and control. What you do is you build that sense of contact, connection, trust and empathy, and out of that you build a logic of conscience and morality. You see, the cognitive side cannot contradict the emotional side. What I’m saying is that no matter how you indoctrinate somebody intellectually, no matter how much you preach to them, no matter how much they read, if there is not at the core a feeling of caring and connection, you will never get genuine conscience.
You see, Adler said that when you feel connected to people, you then begin thinking in a commonsense way, and in a moral way because it makes a lot of sense—you care about them. And you feel in that direction. He doesn’t make a sharp distinction between what you feel and what you think because once a person develops the sense of connectedness, the thinking and feeling sort of work together like music and lyrics. So, for Adler, this would be a prerequisite for genuine spirituality and religious practice because without it what you get are contradictions. I have a number of clients who are very devoted to their religion, but their life is a contradiction of the religion’s teachings. They’re caught up in a compelling inner image that is stronger than their religious influence. And this causes them a certain amount of aggravation; but until they develop that sense of real connectedness, not just to a spiritual practice but with other people, they really can’t go very far, in spite of their efforts.

WIE: Many religious traditions view the spiritual quest as a war between different parts of the self, between the opposing inclinations toward good and evil within the individual. In the Koran, Muhammad, upon returning with his warriors from battle said, "Now we return from the lesser holy war to the greater holy war—the war against the ego." In many religious teachings, the word "ego" is used to describe the baser instincts that we confront in this war, particularly selfishness, narcissism and the fundamentally aggressive need to always see ourselves as separate from others. These traditions see the ego as the enemy on the spiritual path, as that which thwarts our higher aspirations. It is the source of the seven deadly sins in Christianity and the five poisons in Buddhism. In Adlerian psychology, is there an understanding of a noble battle against the ego in this sense?

HS: No, there’s not a battle against the ego. Adler said you don’t have to fight against aggressive impulses and selfishness. That would imply a war with, essentially, a negative self, and that’s not the case. What you do is, you bring out a person’s feeling of connectedness. If you bring out the sense or feeling of community, if you bring out the courage of an individual, without even addressing issues of egocentricity and aggression, these things vanish. You don’t have to fight them, you don’t have to root them out. I look at them as crutches; you know, when your leg heals, you drop the crutches. No one has to tell you, "You better throw those away." There is an assumption there about the core nature of the human being, that the human being is essentially bad and has to be broken of bad habits and has to learn to be good. Adler said, "No, the individual is potentially very good but needs to be trained."
At the same time, one can certainly look at the early tendency for a child to be egocentric. This is a natural thing, but we could say that as you grow up, what you must learn to do is to conquer your egocentricity. This is not saying, though, that you’re conquering your ego. This is an aspect of your behavior, of your attitude. And you must conquer your egocentricity and learn to develop consideration for other people. Now if you do this, you can hold on to your ego—and by this I mean the sense of the direction of the person in terms of how they envision their development in life—and you’ll be fine.

WIE: Many contemporary therapists and popular self-help teachers and authors have put a great deal of emphasis on the idea that we all have "wounded egos." They encourage us to get in touch with the wounds and traumas of childhood, to unconditionally love and accept ourselves just as we are, and to stop judging ourselves in order to heal our fragile and damaged egos. In Adler’s view, however, it seems that the movement from seeing oneself as a victim to seeing oneself as fundamentally free and responsible for one’s own life and choices is essential for psychological health and maturity. Do you think that contemporary therapeutic approaches that emphasize our woundedness and victimhood are helpful in furthering self-development? Or do you think they have the potential of promoting a kind of developmental arrest?

HS: It depends on whether, in fact, there was abuse. If there was such an experience, then it has to be dealt with. And I’ve worked with people like this. They have been terribly abused, and what they need is a corrective experience. If in fact there was this wounding, there has to be a healing. But I don’t assume that that’s always the case. There are many people who have not been wounded as children; they have simply been spoiled rotten. Sometimes very spoiled people imagine that they’ve been wounded. And do you know what the wounding consists of? It consists simply of the termination of pampering. So you’ve got to be pretty clear. As you look at a person’s past, you have to realize that there’s frequently a high degree of distortion.

WIE: In light of this, it sounds like you would not support the blanket approach of unconditional self-acceptance that is becoming very popular.

HS: I think the idea of unconditional self-acceptance is very seductive, especially to people who have a great wish to be pampered. If you wake up and look at the world, you see that there is a lot of stuff that people do that is really not very good—and they should stop doing it. This brings up Adler’s idea of guilt: There’s good guilt and bad guilt. Good guilt is when you feel really crappy and you stop doing it. Bad guilt is when you feel guilty but you keep doing it. So, unconditional self-acceptance? No. I think sometimes it’s good that a person feels crappy about what they’ve done. Maybe it’s time to change that. Now it may be that they are debilitating themselves by the degree of self-hatred or self-rejection, and that I would try to pull back on. But there may need to be retained a certain amount of, you might say, dissatisfaction. There’s nothing wrong with that. We don’t try to simply get rid of it; we try to use it to push you into doing something about it.

WIE: What is Adler’s highest vision of self-development or human potential?

HS: Adler really believed that we need ideals. Adler’s work is very appealing philosophically, I must say, because it’s one of the few really value-oriented psychologies. It puts its values up front as a philosophy. We’re not saying that all truths are equal, that everything is fine. No, we’re saying that there are certain values that are important and that are healthy, and Adler even said that these are the ones that are most important. Adler’s ideal was for the individual to fully develop as much as possible the feeling of community within them, as I’ve been speaking about, with a high enough degree of activity and courage to carry it out. Someone who has developed this sense of connection does things for mutual benefit. And their sense of responsibility, their sense of connectedness with people, grows into a larger and larger circle. They have a very deep-seated, very positive, very natural concern about the welfare of others that becomes almost as natural as breathing. Adler said that this feeling of community starts out simply as cooperation or consideration and eventually can become a feeling of being connected with the whole, with humanity, and a cognitive perspective on the welfare of mankind. Not everybody develops this, but it’s entirely possible. And it goes even farther than that, oddly enough, in terms of what’s possible. This feeling of connectedness can extend as far as the cosmos. And as if that wasn’t enough, he said that this feeling should also extend to the past—through looking back in time and seeing a vision of what all of these people did who brought the world to where it is now, in the positive sense, and appreciating that. Adler sometimes used the image of being in the stream of evolution. And he said, "Here you are in the stream, and it’s brought your life to where it is now. What will you add to this?" He said that it’s not enough just to adapt. In fact, he said that mere adaptation is a form of exploitation. Adler asks: "What are you going to add for the future? What would you improve upon?" And it doesn’t have to be something spectacular because we don’t need spectacular things all the time; we need lots of little improvements. So, in this respect, there is a sense of: Where do I belong on this earth? What’s my role? Where do I fit? What do I do? And Adler’s answer is, "You contribute, you invent." This is also why he emphasized our creative power. For our time, for our place, for our circumstances and for who we are, even with our disabilities—we have creative power. Invent a solution to the problems.

WIE: What did Adler feel was the best way to encourage or promote this in people?

HS: Probably the best thing that pulls us toward this is a good example. This is one of the things that we stress again and again in Adlerian training: You have got to live what you’re talking about. There are some therapies that are largely technologies, where it’s not so important what kind of character you have but only how skillful you are in the technique you are using. And I find that remarkably absurd. Adler would say that you really cannot convince or persuade anybody until you are able to show them as well what you mean: You have to do and be what you talk about. And it’s the same thing with parents. Be a good example, number one. But that’s not enough, though certainly that is helpful. The other thing is encouragement. People need an incredible amount of encouragement. To be there to encourage the person to go beyond what they believe is their limit at the moment—that is important. Everybody needs encouragement, and encouragement is not a very widespread skill—real encouragement, which is patient and not generalized and not just trivialized with buzzwords. And eventually what a person needs, beyond the good example and the encouragement, is some information or stimulation of an ideal of what is possible.

WIE: What did Adler feel was the role of religion or spirituality in representing this ideal?

HS: Adler felt that religion can represent a concrete image or embodiment of human perfection, not to be taken literally but as a stimulation and as a kind of a prodding tool to improve ourselves. It’s probably the most beautiful and crystallized form of that perfection that we have.

Human and Universe

2010-06-08T00:51:00.000-07:00

The vision that brought the man at the center of the Universe (contrast with St. Augustine’s idea of will) and predicted the Renaissance:

"Neither a fixed home nor a form that is yours alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have we given you, Adam, to the end that according to your desire and judgment you may have and possess what home, what form, and what functions you yourself shall desire. The nature of all other creatures is limited and constrained within the bounds of laws prescribed by Us. You, however, are constrained by no limits, in accordance with your own free will, in whose hand We have placed you, shall ordain for yourself the limits of your nature. We have set you at the world's center that you may from there more easily see whatever is in the world. We have made you neither of heaven or earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker and molder of yourself, you may create yourself in whatever shape you prefer. You shall have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. You shall have the power, out of your soul's judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine."

Oration on the Dignity of Man - Pico della Mirandola (1463-94)

One week travel

2009-03-10T13:38:00.000-07:00

I'm always a "maximizer"! The fact that I had to go to Switzerland at WWW @20 brought to me an occasion to take a break and get some "fresh Italy" - I really miss it!

I'll leave for Italy tomorrow, Wednesday. I'll take the plane from Bucharest to Verona. Then I'll go to Lazise (Verona) and stay at my cousin, Carmen. She was in Bucharest before she left for Italy and we took her to Republika's party! (geez, Vlad ..that "Boltz" almost killed me :)) )

Thursday I'll leave for Geneve-CERN by train and return back on Saturday when I planned to make some shopping at Verona (Grande Mela I'm coming!!). Yeah, there's no big deal in that except if you hate shopping. And I do. It took me two years (!!!) to know well the Grande Mela shoppingland and make a strategic plan on how to not loose time and energy and find the best deals in shortest time. Now I can say that's the only place where I shop with pleasure.

Lazise

On Sunday I'll leave for Venice where I'll meet Rod (follow him! :)) my coleague and friend. We need to update our ideas about university, future & inspiration, professional plans and so on.

After, on Monday I'll go with Carmen to my favourite Italian town: Como (No George Clooney, No Martini! :)) ) where is the my famous Computer Engineering Faculty and where I'll get some information and updates about my studies.

Tuesday probably I'll get some rest and have some time in Lazise and on Wednesday I'll return to Bucharest. Pretty nice. I'll bring photos and videos, so stay tuned!

Monica Ioana Muntean Limmonica	http://limmonica.blogspot.com>

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Webcasts World Wide Web @20

2009-03-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

For those who cannot attend World Wide Web @20 celebration there will be a webcast of the event from the 14:00 (CET) on the 13 March on Webcast CERN and at 20:00 (CET) on Eurovision. Great idea!

I also have to mention the next LIFT 09 France - Marseilles, June 18-19, 2009 a conference about how to turn changes into opportunities, getting inspired trough "cross-polinisation": speakers from different backgrounds "ethnologists, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, or even the webmaster of the Vatican" that will express their vision about a "hands-on-future", a future of do-it-yourself change.

I find it very interesting so it's sure that on 18-19 June I'll join LIFT France. I've always embraced the idea that inspiration comes through a successfull interconnection of two or more areas.

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WORLD WIDE WEB @20 celebrated at CERN - The Globe of Science and Innovation

2009-03-07T00:20:00.000-08:00

How does one feels when is living his dream? Shall I laugh? Shall I cry?

This is what I continue saying since last evening when I received the e-mail "And the lucky winners are...". I laughed, I cried and I was continuously repeating "I am living my dream!"

As you could guess from the previous post - Stop and Hear the Music - I have been always fascinated about Astronomy and Astrophysics. I've studied Astrophysics at Ferrara University, for six months during my pregnancy with my little princess, Nori Maria. I've had to abandon my studies when my I gave birth to my daughter. After one year I've decided to study Computer Engineering at Politecnico di Milano - on line courses. So you can imagine how I am feeling. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web held there where it was born, at CERN, more specifically at the The Globe of Science and Innovation:

How this happened? Thursday started with OpenCoffe Bucharest where I assisted to a very inspiring conversation about "How to launch an on line project on the Romanian market" started by Cristian Manafu and enriched with few successful examples, to the presentation of the project Symbolya, for which I saw a clear successful future, and Olimpika which I think it still needs a business model definition, a better usability and a richer user experience. You'll find more about this on OpenCoffee Bucharest Blog, hoping to have the time to write about.

In the evening I was at my computer, making my usual informative navigation before getting to bed. I arrived on the LiftConference.com website - I don't remember how but I think it's either from Twitter either from my Google Reader. In that moment I was very tired and started to see "double" so I couldn't read everything. I just saw the name of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web @20, 13 March and the fact that they were organizing a lottery and give 15 invitations. I've made an account and subscribed for winning an invitation. I didn't know exactly what was for. I knew only that it was on 13 March when I also planned to participate at FlexCamp Timisoara (on 14 March), organized by Adobe Romania, which was related to one of my future projects and I said that probably I'll not win but it was nice to play "the game". After I finished with the registration I went to bed as my eyes were refusing to read anything.

Next day, on Friday I went to WebEvent at Pitesti. Here I saw myself becoming something like an Internet evangelist. That because I've heard some aberrations like "We do advise our customers not to make a blog if they don't know: 1) to whom they want to communicate 2) what they want to communicate 3) who will write the posts 4) how to deal with negative feedbacks/comments". This sounded to me like "If you want to suicide yourself: do it, I'll help you by making the same". The worst case, I would rather advise my customer to get some marketing experts. The best case, I would collaborate with some marketing experts and provide to my customer a "tailored solution". This would ensure my customer growth, mine and the most important the market growth. Unfortunately, this is the eternal problem here in Romania: people don't want to grow so consequently markets don't; and most of all, people are not flexible and open-minded. I've heard also that "Internet is not for everybody". I'll not comment it anymore - it speaks by itself.

The day finished in a very nice way, I've made some new friends and future collaborators and I left the conference pleased by the fact that I've changed something about the Romanian on line market. I convinced some people that

we have to learn how to inspire the smart use of Internet by offering "tailored solutions", encouraging and inspiring the use of Internet by getting the right arguments that can convince an entrepreneur: the numbers - which means giving a clear idea about what is the investment and relate it to the return on that investment.

One of the persons I was talking with and who seemed very conservative in the beginning was the one that ensured me that I didn't lost my day for nothing, because I have inspired him some ideas. That was a success for me.

I went back to Bucharest and took my family to an Italian restaurant as my kids wanted "Pizza con tonno" and while I was eating my delicious "Scottata di manzo in carpaccio con rucola" I checked my e-mail on my phone and I found that I was one of the lucky winners. I've started to check what did I win as I've started to have a doubt that I won a conference ticket and that was not so convincing for me as I didn't find the name of Tim Berners-Lee on the speakers list.

I've landed on the page of "World Wide Web @ 20" and understood that I was invited to the 20th anniversary celebration of the World Wide Web (invitation only event) held at CERN where I'll see speaking Tim Berners-Lee and more I'll have the opportunity to visit CERN - I've started to shake. That was priceless. I only said "Oh my God, I am living my dream!". I drove back at home crying and so emotioned thinking about how lucky I am. Lucky to have this occasion and lucky to have such a family, such a husband that tells me "You have to go, it's a fantastic occasion. It's your dream."

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Stop and Hear the Music

2009-01-23T14:11:00.000-08:00

What is the essence of life? What does make our hearts fill with joy?

***

The strongest memory of my childhood is one awesome and sunny spring day, when I went on the balcony and saw my street. I said amazed: "Wow! my street is so beautiful today!" The deep blue sky, the green trees, the mountains... I felt my heart filled: like when sensing the perfection of nature, the beauty of life and happiness that you've been given in this life.

That day I felt special - I felt that I've been given an unique moment and I promised myself to follow that path through my life: to catch those unique sensations and be able to discover them. I was 6 years old. And one year before - being 5 - I promised myself to discover a fuel that will allow me to visit other planets.

These two promises guided my life, my entire life and have never died. And no matter what I've done... I've always returned to my path.

***

I'm going to tell you a story I've read this evening. The story is about a violin player at the Washington DC Metro station. It was a cold January morning, and he played Bach for 45 minutes. At that hour it was estimated that thousands of people would be able to hear him.

After 3 minutes a man slowed his walk and stopped for a few seconds to listen. Few minutes after, he left in a rush, worried not to be late.

Few minutes after that, the violonist received his first dollar: a woman threw it to him without even stop.

There was a 3 years old child that seemed to be the most interested to his music. But his mother forced him to continue walking. All children repeated the same behaviour and all parents forced them to continue walking.

In the 45 minutes that the violonist played, only 6 persons stopped and spent a moment to listen to him. About 20 persons gave him money while keeping on walking. He reached the amount of 32 dollars. And when he finished and the silence came, nobody noticed. Nobody applaud.

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.[...]Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100.

The Washington Post

Now the question is:

"In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"

Would you stop to listen? Whoud you notice if he would have been really bad?

We make our sets of priorities and stick to them. We become intrasigent and don't allow anything to disturb us from reaching our goals. How much frustration can that bring?

Monica Ioana Muntean Limmonica's	http://limmonica.blogspot.com

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Why am I interested about USA elections?

2008-11-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

A day before the USA elections I've decided to write a post on my blog. It's been almost seven months since the last one. There have been so many occasions to write a post, I've found so many curious things to write about (like my new telescope :) ) - but I haven't felt that excitment or the right inspiration to write.

This evening, I was taking dinner with my family and, me and my husband, were talking about tomorrow's elections in the USA. I came at my computer in order to find out what was the exactly time difference between Bucarest and Los Angeles. And I found via Twitter, a new post of Sergiu Biris another Romanian person interested about USA elections. So, inevitably I asked myself: Why do I care?

1) First, it's an emotional response to the Obama's Political Campaign - right, a Political Campaign 2.0.

2) Then, I've got used with the leading position of USA in tecnology, IT, R&D untill the last years when this position was eclipsed by military events like 11/09, war in Irak, war in Afganistan. So, I prefer an Obama's USA leading through inventions and becoming a model to follow with a great pleasure than McCain's vision of leading through military strategies of (forced) world domination.

Some people talk in Romania that McCain politics should bring some benefits like an easier visa for USA and military help. Well, I am also Italian and I can get to USA whenever I want. But I prefer my country - where I realy feel at home. So, in order to keep the war in the middle-eastern the McCain/Bush strategy is to get closer to the ex-comunist countries. Consequently you give me military help and an easier visa for your country. OMG! :DDD Well, with McCain it seems there will be a war in Romania. That's why I want Obama - he really respects and cares about his country and therefore about mine.

3) Obama used the web 2.0 Internet tools in order to communicate his deepest belief: The Change. This is what everybody want: a change. We are sick of wars, we are in the 2008 and war should become an archaic word. Each time we talk about war there's a feeling like the world is returning back in the past. Young generations want to step forward. And peace is a vital request for the world's progress.

I wrote only three reasons for which I care about tomorrow's election. For which I want Obama as an USA President. Maybe the economy of Europe will not return to its normal state as quicly as the American one could, but I prefer this situation.

I prefer suffering in peace than progressing in war.

Monica Ioana Muntean Limmonica's	http://limmonica.blogspot.com/

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NYU Smartboard - Multi-Touch Interaction Experiments

2008-04-12T09:33:00.001-07:00

I was watching it astonished. I mean I was amazed, wished and have a tablet PC but this goes beyond immagination.

It seems that it's the apple multitouch screen and not just a simple smartboard as smartboard or any other touchscreen simulates "one" pointer (like mouse) when you touch it.

It is developed by Jeff Han - Consultant Department of Computer Science. Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences New York University. And the project is called Multi-Touch Interaction Research - Bi-manual, multi-point, and multi-user input on graphical interaction surfaces.

Nice job and hoping to see it on the market soon. I am very excited about the direction that technology has taken and I talk about human-computer interfaces which obviously is researching ways of improving the human experience - one of the last barriers when using a computer. I mean many people think that they must have some kind of talent to use a computer - which is not true as we don't have to have any kind of talent for driving a car.

Later edit: nice user experience improvement on Youtube - I posted the video directly from there. Good.

Monica Ioana Muntean Limmonica's	http://limmonica.blogspot.com/

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Beppe Grillo's Blog - 9th in The world's 50 most powerful blogs

2008-03-09T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Observer has published "The world's 50 most powerful blogs" where I've discovered that Beppe Grillo's Blog is on the 9th position. Now, I found it very normal but the journalist's description of the Beppe's Blog made me laughing:

Grillo's name for Mario Mastella, leader of the Popular-UDEUR centre-right party, is Psychodwarf.

This was really funny! It's not Mario Mastella but Clemente Mastella, he is the leader of the Popular-UDEUR center-left party and the Psychodwarf is Berlusconi. I suppose the journalist made a mistake by talking about Mastella and not about Berlusconi who is the leader of a centre-right party.

Beppe Grillo has a great value as an italian comic and political commentator and his filosophy is very simple: he can tell the truth to people as he is a comic; because if he would have been a scientist or politician nobody would believe him. He use to laugh on this by telling to his public: "I can't believe I'm your last chance! I am a comic!" It seems a joke but it comes from a very interesting idea I found time ago and which can be resumed like this: "If you want to say the truth make it seem a joke". I don't know if it is one of the Muphy's laws or I read it elsewere. Not only, but I find that Muphy and Beppe Grillo are very similar: they are so pessimistic that they are making you laughing. Both talk about absurdities and attempt to make sense of nonsenses. Murphy's Laws about life, Beppe Grillo about italian politicians absurdities.

Monica Ioana Muntean Limmonica's	http://limmonica.blogspot.com/

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A conversation with Dr. Stephen Hawking & Lucy Hawking

2008-03-09T05:02:00.000-07:00

I couldn't ignore it. I couldn't ignore such a great person like Stephen Hawking that made me dreaming since I first discovered one of his great books (I'll add it to Shelfari - the bookshelf on the right side of this page).

Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 (300 years after the death of Galileo) in Oxford, England. Stephen wanted to do Mathematics but was not available at University College, Oxford, so he did Physics instead.

Stephen then went on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology, there being no-one working in that area in Oxford at the time. After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973 Stephen came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and since 1979 has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton.

Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose(I am reading another great book of Roger Penrose - see on Shelfari) he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated it was necessary to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory, the other great Scientific development of the first half of the 20th Century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered was that black holes should not be completely black, but should emit radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science.

In this conversation they discuss their book George's Secret Key to the Universe, an adventure story about two children who find a sort of computer portal through which they can slip into the solar system and beyond.

Monica Ioana Muntean Limmonica's	http://limmonica.blogspot.com

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A conversation with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch

2008-03-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

A great and insightful interview with Michael Arrington "one of the best connected folks in Sillycon Valley". He talks about the Microsoft-Yahoo deal, Facebook, blogs, privacy, and tech policy. Awesome!

Monica Ioana Muntean Limmonica's	http://limmonica.blogspot.com/

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The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Happy now, bitches?

2008-03-07T14:21:00.000-08:00

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Happy now, bitches? This is, well, an interesting announcement. I still vote for Nokia even thou I'm thinking about passing to iPhone but it seems to me only a "shiny" thing by now.

Monica Ioana Muntean Limmonica's	http://limmonica.blogspot.com

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Get out of my head!

2008-03-06T15:02:00.000-08:00

Ma pregateam sa merg la culcare si ma gandeam la "cum sa incep sa scriu pe blog-ul asta" si pe toate celelalte. Mi-am zis: care e problema reala? Lipsa de idei? Nu. Problema este ca am prieteni, deci cititori potentiali, de trei categori diferite. Romani - pentru ca sunt romanca, italieni - pentru ca sunt si italianca si, mai grav, locuiesc in Italia, englezi - amici. Cum sa fac? Am amici romani care nu stiu engleza, iar cei italieni poate s-ar simti depasiti ... Cum sa multumesc pe toti? As scrie in engleza dar ma gandesc ca modul meu de exprimare in engleza a cam scazut la nivel de calitate dat fiind ca de cel putin patru ani nu mai vorbesc engleza ci am asimilat o limba noua ... ceea ce a pus in umbra celelalte.

Ceea ce am scris mai sus e doar 10% din ceea ce am gandit. Problema unde e? Ideea? Ce s-a intamplat cu ideea mea? Pai dupa toata "foiala" asta cred ca a murit sau zace pe undeva prin coltul creierului meu.

O caut... Da, a murit. Nu mi se mai pare buna ... .

Ce sa fac?

***************Traduzione italiana*****************

Stavo per andare a letto e pensavo al "come iniziare a scrivere su questo blog" e su tutti gli altri. Allora mi sono detta: quale è il problema reale? La mancanza di idee? No. Il problema è che ho amici quindi potenziali lettori di tre tipi diversi. Rumeni - perché sono rumena, italiani - perché sono anche italiana e, più grave, vivo in Italia, inglesi - amici. Come faccio? Come faccio ad accontentare tutti? Scriverei in inglese ma ho paura che il mio livello qualitativo si è un po' abbassato visto che da quattro anni non lo parlo, anzi ne ho assimilato una lingua nuova ... la quale ha messo in ombra le altre. Però scrivendo adesso mi rendo conto che mi sento più a mio aggio a scrivere in italiano perfino rispetto al rumeno - mi capita spesso a fare degli errori in rumeno che una volta non facevo ... e avere difficoltà ad esprimermi; questo perché ormai penso tutto in italiano e perfino parlare in rumeno per me implica una traduzione dall'italiano.

Quello che ho scritto sopra è solo il 10% di quello che ho pensato. Il problema dove è? L'idea? Cosa è successo alla mia idea? Eh, dopo tutta questa contorsione penso che sia morta oppure è là da qualche parte nel qualche angolo nascosto del mio cervello.

La cerco... Si, è morta. Non mi sembra più cosi rilevante... .

Chiedevo "Cosa faccio?". Ho capito adesso, scrivendo in italiano. Scrivo nella lingua nella quale mi sento più a mio agio. Oppure no? Oh mio Dio ... ricominciamo.

Meglio che vado a dormire. Però trovo che è utile l'idea che avevo all'inizio e di cui volevo parlare. Cioè:

se non riesci a gestire una situazione piuttosto che cambiare gli elementi che creano la difficoltà - il che oltre ad essere difficile e dispendioso in materia di energia - attraverso delle tattiche personali, ho scoperto negli anni che è più facile cambiare se stessi, il proprio punto di vista. Questo permette di spostare l'attenzione da una cosa soggettivamente negativa su una cosa perlomeno neutra - se no, nei migliore dei casi, positiva.

Adesso... perché mi aiuta questa idea? Perché è inutile che cerco di soddisfare tutti, in quanto non ci riuscirò mai : scrivere un post in 3 lingue... sarebbe un fallimento immediato. Mi creerebbe delle frustrazioni inutili perché m'impegnerei troppo per un cosa che dovrebbe aiutarmi ad esprimere le mie idee e non certificare le mie competenze linguistiche. Poi, insegnare l'inglese o come utilizzare il computer ai miei amici non ce la faccio per motivi logistici. Quindi faccio quello che mi viene più naturale. Come ho fatto? Sono stata un po' egoista. Un egoismo sano. Ho spostato l'attenzione dall'"accontentare tutti" all'"accontentare me". :)

Questa idea è rinata grazie a Gianpaolo che mi ha fatto l'onore questa sera di inserirla nel suo status di MSN come uno citato. Spero che lo abbia fatto perché l'ha trovata utile.

In chiusura metto un video di Beppe Grillo in cui spiega moolto bene cosa è successo questa sera nel mio cervello. Da morire da ridere!

LATER EDIT: I have chosen english, at the end. Why? Because it's me. I'll never make a simple chioce. I like challenge, I like the ideea that I can improve my english. :)

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