Changes, changes

Yikes! This all happened fast. A week ago, I went to Munich thinking I'd use the opportunity to practise interviewing, and here I am, officially in possession of my first job.

Signed, sealed, delivered, I'm their's.

Funny how life sometimes takes unexpected turns, and suddenly you find yourself in a job you would have never considered, in a city that was never on your "Need to move there" list, and with a perspective on the next couple of years that is entirely different from what you had thought of. If you had asked me a few months, or even a few weeks ago, I would have told you something along the lines of "I am going to New York to change the world". Now, I am moving to the city of giant pretzels and beer in less than six weeks, and it's more myself that will develop and change within the next few years. However, changing the world is still at the top of my list, and I consider all the sales and management experience that I will get in the next few years a step in that direction.

The reality of it all hasn't quite hit me yet, and I would be lying if I said that I am not nervous and a little apprehensive. On the other hand, I got this job all by myself, and for the first time in my life I'm on my own, looking to build my life independently of anyone else.

I have a feeling that it will be a good experience.

Coming up...

1) A new brother-in law in July next year. Anna and Alfonso got engaged a month ago, and this is how happy they are:


One thing is for sure: Their kids will be very, very skinny.


2) More decisions. One job offer is on the table, another one is in the works. They are entirely different (foreign policy/press and online media monitoring/sales), and there might be more coming up. One job possibly involves moving cities, the other one has very little to do with what I studied. And amidst it all, I am trying to finish my thesis and figure out whether I really want to put my interest in transforming society aside for the sake of getting some job experience and making some money.

Stem Cell Breakthrough

Following up on Saturday's Dolly story, here is another encouraging piece of news: Two separate teams of scientists in the US have apparently found a way to reprogram adult stem cells in a way that makes them pluripotent, meaning that they can turn into any kind of body cell. This was a characteristic that has so far been specific to embryonic stem cells, which was the main argument for ongoing research in that area, despite the moral issues. They have run successful tests with human cells, not animal cells - if this really works, all the arguments for ES research might be going down the drain as we speak.

Speaking of genius...

Here's a (translated) quote from Pia's Master's thesis on Aristotle's definition of happiness:

The perfection of a scientific discipline does not lie in accumulating yet more knowledge of details, but in recognizing the principles that are at its heart, and in contemplating the eternal.

A good reminder for someone who spends her days plowing through methodologies and statistics, the boring details of scientific research...

PS: Did you know that Aristotle defines happiness not as a state of being, but as an activity or a way of life? How cool is that...

Readable...?

Just took the Readability Test for this blog. It measures the level of education required to understand my blog.

The outcome surprises me.



Hmmm. The FT.com Economists' Forum Blog has college (undergrad) reading level.

Can't decide whether this is a compliment or a reason to worry.

Goodbye, Dolly

Continuing the recent trend on this blog of bringing up social and political issues, here is an article from today's Telegraph announcing that Prof. Ian Wilmut, one of the driving forces of therapeutic cloning and "father" of the clone sheep Dolly, has turned his back on his own plan to go forward with a certain form of therapeutic cloning called "nuclear transfer". His reasons are mainly practical, but he also mentions issues with "social acceptance" - the nuclear transfer method involves the use of surplus embroys from in-vitro fertilization, which are destroyed in the process.

The piece also features another (older) article by Wilmut on the debate of whether blastocysts (early-stage embryos) can really be referred to as persons. This is really the crux of the matter - if they are persons, there is no question that to destroy them means to kill human life. But are they? Wilmut makes the following distinction:
"The main reason why I do not regard a blastocyst as a person is that it has no mental life. [...] The critical issue is when this capacity to think first appears." He talks about "brain birth", the mirror image of "brain death", which is the irreversible end of all brain activity, and the point after which a person can be officially declared as dead.

What is wrong with this view? I am no scientist, nor am I a theologian, but to me linking the "personhood" of a human being to its brain activity seems dangerous, especially when we are talking about the beginning of human life. Concerning its end, things are pretty straight-forward: When we die, the body ceases to function, and the person that we used to be ceases to exist on this earth. If another person or object is the cause for this death, we usually refer to this person as "having been killed".
At the beginning of life, however, we are dealing with something (or, although it seems strange to call a mass of cells that, someONE) that, regardless of its mental abilities, will, under normal circumstances, keep developing until, even to the most practically minded, it is clearly identifiable as a baby. Any impediment to this process puts an end to existing human life - human life that is unique, has a separate identity and is therefore necessarily a person.

Therefore, it seems that even to those that do not - like me - believe that every human life, from conception until natural death, is wanted and willed by its Creator, it must be clear that producing and destroying embryos for the sake of therapy involves ending lives that are already in progress. Distinctions between "pre-personhood" and "personhood", as Wilmut makes them, are irrelevant, because even if you look at an embryo not in terms of what it is, but of what it is becoming, one has no right to interfere with this process.

On the matter of brain activity and personhood, there is another great article by the philosopher Pete Colosi on Peter Singer and Utilitarianism. Definitely worth your time.

Also, especially for those who tend to think that the Catholic Church has no solid reasons for her positions, read this.

Any thoughts? (Lurkers, I know you are out there...)

Man, I feel like a woman

This Shania Twain song takes on a whole new meaning in the light of an (arguably tendentious) news story that recently caught my attention, reporting on the introduction of a bill in California that bans from classrooms "any instructional materials that reflect adversely upon persons because of their race, sex, color, creed, handicap, national origin, or ancestry". As usual, it is not the race, handicap, national origin or even creed, but the "sex" part that worries me. Why? Here goes:

This bill SB777 (signed, incidentally, by our very own export, the Governator himself) might seem to fit nicely into the P.C. trend of our times. But if you take a closer look, you come across the following definition of "gender":

210.7. "Gender" means sex, and includes a person's gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth.

What does this definition imply?

1) There is no natural sex that is reflected in both the body and the mind. People are not born as men and women, they are assigned a sex at birth, according to a stereotype, or they assume an identity, meaning that they choose whether they self-identify as a man or a woman, regardless of their biological preconditions.
2) Consequently, there is no "normal" case of gender, meaning that one is wrong to assume that people that look like men are actually men, because sex now becomes a matter of definition, or even a matter of personal choice.

The implications of this bill reach from worrying (children will now be taught that it is discriminatory to naturally refer to parents as "mother and father") to freakish (a boy can choose to use a girls' locker room or bathroom if he self-identifies as female), but what really got me thinking is a point that reaches much deeper.

What we are faced with here is the introduction of an educational system that no longer acknowledges fundamental truths. Everything, according to this approach, is a matter of choice, a relative matter. There is no such thing as a natural man or woman, a natural set of parents (consisting of a mother and a father) - in fact, anything that one acknowledges as fixed, as eternal or natural is deemed discriminatory.

I don't only think that this approach is fundamentally wrong, I also think that it reflects the basic flaw of modern mentality very well: Everything depends on me, on my choices, on my will. There is nothing outside of myself that restricts me, unless I choose a set of rules among many that I will adhere to. But even then, there is no universal world order, no truth that exists for everyone, and independently of our knowledge of it, that even we as humans are subject to. Man has now truly established his (or wait, her?) position as the king of creation. The problem is, it doesn't end here. There are things that transcend human control and understanding, that we have no choice but to bow to in awe and reverence. And if the educational system keeps developing the way it is, children will have a very hard time finding out about them.

(PS: This would merit a whole other story, but read about the case of Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer as a disturbing example of what can happen when people mess with nature.)

Took that

I was never the type to cover posters of my favorite stars with lipstick kisses or imagine that Leo DiCaprio was my boyfriend. However, I did catch up on this particular phase of adolescence on Friday, when my roomie and soon-to-be bride Aglai and a gang of her ladies celebrated her engagement with High Tea and a Take That concert.

When we arrived to pick up the tickets, the saleswoman informed us that Howard Donald wasn't going to be performing tonight because he was hospitalized with a chest injury. Howard who? Yes, I asked that, too. The looks I caught for that one were sharp as daggers.

Anyway, we had a fabulous time watching the remaining three "boys" (who are almost in their 40s) put on a fabulous show, singing along to "Relight My Fire", "Never Forget" and "Everything Changes But You" like there was no tomorrow, and enjoying the giddy happiness of an average 13-year-old.

Right Brain vs. Left Brain

This is creepy. For a long time I stared at the dancer as it was turning clockwise, and didn't understand how anyone could see it turning counter-clockwise. Then I focused, and it switched!


So, apparently I use more of the right side of my brain, which has the following functions:

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling -- check.
"big picture" oriented -- check.
imagination rules -- hmm ... check.
symbols and images -- check.
present and future -- mostly, check.
philosophy & religion -- check, indeed.
can "get it" (i.e. meaning) -- check.
believes -- check.
appreciates -- check.
spatial perception -- most definitely NOT. Ask anyone who's watched me park a car.
knows object function -- ??
fantasy based -- Don't know.
presents possibilities -- impossibilities, mostly.
impetuous -- check.
risk taking -- Not really.

Interesting... it pretty much hits the nail on the head. The one left-brain thing missing on my list is "words and language".

Which way did the dancer turn for you?
(Thanks to mydogischelsea for the link)

Microfinance - do it yourself

Since Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for giving the poor access to bank loans, microfinance has become a buzzword. The idea is simple: Microfinance institutions lend small amounts of money ($10-$500) to individuals or groups of people, usually women, in developing countries who in turn use the money to start their own little business and earn an income for their families. At a time where half the world lives on less then $2 a day, services like this one are sorely needed. Also, they are more than simple charity - they encourage people to take their lives into their own two hands and use their own ideas and resources to make a living.

Where there is one innovation, another one is soon to follow: KIVA.org started a website that enables everyone to be a mini-Yunus, so to speak. It lets individuals to pick from a range of different micro-enterprise initiatives in countries around the world and lend money directly to the entrepreneurs running these businesses. Ten dollars are enough to start, but you can go on to build an entire portfolio of businesses that you support.

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times uses Kiva and went to Afghanistan to visit his business partner, who runs a bakery in the heart of Kabul. Here's a video of his adventure.

Playing it safe!?

A friend of my mother's who lived in the States for several years recently traveled back to New York to visit her sister. When showing her (European) passport at Immigration, she was told to follow an officer into one of the rooms for a separate interview. Surprised, she asked why they thought she needed to be questioned.

"Your first name is Eleanor, ma'am. That's an Arabic name."
"Arabic!? But I was born in Europe to European parents!?"
"Al-noor is Arabic for light, ma'am. I'm sorry, we will have to conduct a special interview."

Now that's what I call real dedication to Homeland Security.

The power of an image

"For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke a sense of humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war and if it is used well it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote to war. "
- James Nachtwey

I saw a documentary on the war photographer James Nachtwey last night, and it really struck a chord. If you can, find a good video rental in your neighborhood, watch it and let me know your thoughts.

Update

I just realized that I stop reporting on my actual life whenever I am home. Somehow it just doesn't seem all that spectacular, and it probably isn't.

Everyday life at the Skypad (version 2.0, obviously) involves loooooong hours of staring into books and sifting through piles of paper on a quest to fill the digital pages of my thesis with words that stick. So far I've finished about a quarter of the paper, which is shockingly little given the fact that it is due in December, but I know that I can write, and I do it best when the pressure is on.

While having spent my college years in the glorious absence of the need to work for a living (thank you, mom and dad!!), bills are starting to pile up, and for the first time in my life I find myself working in actual, paid, non-volunteer student jobs: translating at conferences, hostessing (is that even a word? I know waitressing is), and - believe it or not - my first paid gig as a journalist. I am writing a feature article on Ashoka, and it's turning out to be a lot of fun. An odd detail: I've become so used to writing in English that I sometimes need to consult an online dictionary to find the perfect German word.

The quest for a real job is also on - and I am finding it tricky to overcome my good old technique of not even trying things that seem improbable and only going for safe options. The future is wide open - who know where in the world I will be six months from now?

Weekends are often spent at the Mill, trying to satisfy my newfound hunger for fresh air and nature. I guess that happens, especially if you've turned into a full-time nerd. There's nothing like a walk through vineyards, watching the leaves change color (and stealing the occasional grape or pumpkin, shame on me), to clear your head. I suppose "normal" students would prefer dancing the nights away at clubs and sleeping through the days, but in that respect - except for a crazy and fun spell of party fever in Madrid when I was seventeen - I was never normal.

Most of my good friends are married or engaged now, and life has become more quiet, but I like it this way.

PS: I have decided I will use my last semester at school to take Arabic classes. Don't know how much I will learn, but I've always wanted to get beyong haggling at the bazaar and explaining the way to taxi drivers (left, right, left, straight on, here is good, how much?).

Flashback

Around this time last year, I was in the midst of the glory that is Babson College life: beer pong, frat parties, homecoming parades, Make-Your-Own-Fishtank nights, Bingo tournaments, and women's rugby games.
My Swedish friend and fellow Babson exchange student Jesper put together a video that does a pretty good job at capturing a few defining moments of that semester. Here goes.

A brave lady

If you a) read German and b) are interested in the accounts of an incredibly brave young lady who scored her first job as a womens' development coordinator in Yemen ...

Check this out.

Leni and I do not only share a first name, but also a great-grandfather (I believe), and all I can tell you is that her adventures are worth a read.

Goodbyes.

When living a life like mine, which for the most part involved moving countries, houses and schools every few years, you'd think one would get used to goodbyes. The truth is, you never do.

What changes is the fact that you can anticipate how they will feel, the phases you'll be going through, and the (old yet important) truth that time does heal wounds. What also changes is the nature of these goodbyes, the depth of your attachment to a person, an idea or a dream, and consequently the pain of having to let go of them.

I have decided that I won't let the fear of goodbyes influence the way I approach things and - most of all - people, and the degree to which I open up to them. Of course, the more open you are, the more vulnerable you become, but I'd rather pass out what I have to give with both hands and look back onto a life rich with both disappointments and breathtaking surprises. After all, the more painful it is to let go of someone, the greater it was to have had them in your life in the first place. And that I wouldn't want to miss.

Sunsets and Castles

Just returned from a rather photo-worthy weekend, half of which was unfortunately spent without a camera. Thanks to the www, however, I'll give you a glimpse.

Friday: A beer and a good chat in a deckchair with Sharifin, against the backdrop of one of the most spectacular sunsets I have seen in Vienna so far.


Saturday: Sorted my life out.

Sunday: My roommate Aglai and her brand-new fiancé Felix invited me along to a concert at the old fortress where Felix's family has lived for 23 (!) generations. Eight of us spent the afternoon hanging out at the pool and playing tennis (or watching, respectively) while the bands soundchecked, had a fabulous dinner and then joined the crowd for some German rock.

Clam Castle

The courtyard

The room I spent the night in looked kind of like this, with a spectacular view of the Danube valley

Mid-air

While I am hanging in mid-air between college and professional life, enjoying home and wanting to move abroad, coming to terms with the past and taking on the future, my blog-spiration has run a little dry. Sometimes the more important events of life take place on the inside, and lose their magic when exposed to the world.

While I wait for the kiss of the muse, a random list of things not to miss:


College memories: Ross Douthat's "Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class" is a book that aptly describes much of what I experienced at Babson and could never properly put into words - the insane careerism of under 21-year-olds, the American undergrad's approach to sexuality, dorm life, grade inflation, and more. Still, it's an intensely personal book, courageously honest, laugh-out-loud funny at times, and filled to the brim with thoughtful, well-researched yet appropriately ironic analyses of the peculiar universe that is the Ivy League school. I enjoyed it a lot - not least because my boyfriend makes quite a few appearances, suitably (though, for those who know him, recognizably) hidden behind a pseudonym...


A different kind of roommate: The latest Audrey Tautou movie does resemble Amélie - a frail girl, - lonely yet social, sad yet always smiling, fragile yet strong. The story of three unusual roommates is a good character study and a heart-warming story, but European enough to never cross the line towards Hollywood kitsch.


Risotto gone French: My own roommate Aglai and I enjoyed a girl's night in last night, and devoured the leftovers of a dinner she had hosted the night before. Crêpes au citron are delicious enough, but the Gorgonzola and pear risotto that she made was the best thing I've eaten since New York sushi.

Why we are ostriches

"Life is difficult." This is the opening sentence of one of the most interesting books I have read this year - The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.
Observing readers might have spotted it already a few months ago in the "Books on My Pile" section of this blog, but it was only today that I was reminded of its brilliance when I spoke to my mother about the challenges of life and responsibility.

What Peck makes very clear (in a much better way than I can) is that we would stop lamenting the difficulties of life if we just accepted the fact that life is not a walk in the park, but a series of problems that require solving. That is why we pose ficticious problems to children in school - we mean to teach them the discipline necessary to confront the large and small hardships of life.
It is only because we refuse to accept this fact - or simply ignore it - that it comes back to haunt us. The pain of confronting an issue that we have ignored and that has grown out of proportion is much greater than the pain of going ahead an finding a solution in the first place. And still, like ostriches, we stick our heads into the sand and pretend that life is only really worth living when it's entirely enjoyable.

I am no exception. The more important something is, the longer it takes me to actually get my act together and do something. Job applications. Car repairs. Insurance issues. Long-overdue thank-you notes. Why? I have no idea ... I guess it is because I, too, want life to be easy.

However, if I think about it, this is exactly what I don't want. Life without challenges is life without growth. Peck quotes Benjamin Franklin as saying "those things that hurt, instruct". Looking back at my life, the challenging times were the ones that made me grow most. Moves. Breakups. University and career choices. Arguments with friends and family. Tough bosses. Criticism.

And, quite frankly, if it weren't for problems, life would be ... incredibly dull.

(Take advantage of Amazon's "Search Inside" option and read the first four pages of Peck's book here. They will make your mouth water.)

Images

As promised...

Steaks at Santa Cruz and a trip to the mountains
A few from Nono and Dominic's pre-wedding part
A Karaoke/Pub Quiz Nerd Fest to say goodbye to Bridge
The first batch from Zita and Domenic's wedding last weekend