About a month ago I received a link to a song that was made, I presume, for internal promotion at Microsoft. While the tune was professionally produced, it was a bit folksy and.. well... lame. So in three evenings I recorded a metal song that would be more energetic and fun to listen to. The track is a modified version of Austrian Death Machine's "Come With Me", but with different lyrics and my unskilled guitar work.

While browsing an old bookstore, my wife stumbled upon this gem and knew instantly that it would be a fit for me. I typically find it very enjoyable to read stories that describe the pop-culture of ancient times, especially when it’s evident that humans have not changed much in the past few thousand years. This particular book, originally titled Philogelos, describes a particular aspect of our species that seems to have permeated the ages. That’s because, for all intents and purposes, it is the oldest joke book in existence!

This collection of humorous quips is attributed to two fourth-century wise cracks named Hierocles and Philagrios. Though the Romans had ruled the whole known world for a thousand years, our (presumably) drunken duo were unmistakably Greek. Apparently the Greeks expressed themselves quite literally in common speech, and found verbal contradictions or alternative connotations to be tremendously funny. Understandably, this particular style of humor does not always stand the test of time very well. At first glance, we would probably dismiss a large number of jokes as youthful slapstick, whereas our forefathers would be cracking up merely at their notion. It is actually quite common for old books to be laced with humor that we are completely oblivious to because the local inside-jokes are lost in time. What we still have with us today though, are the subjects of all these jokes: idiots, foreigners, smart-asses, and fat people.

Hairdresser: How shall I cut your hair sir?
Client: In silence please.

Though Gottlob Frege might not be a popular or mainstream thinker, he laid down the foundation for one of the most important philosophical  movements in history, namely, analytic philosophy. While Aristotle’s logic couldn’t even represent trivial inferences in Euclidean geometry, Frege’s work lead to the formalization of Russel’s Principia Mathematica, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, and Tarski’s theory of thruth.

Frege wrote Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik in 1884 with the intent of laying down an a priori analytic-based treatise on what we refer to as numbers. We now know in retrospect that logicism as a singular way to reduce all of mathematics to pure logic did not survive the test of time. However, its rigorous logical formalism did.

Using words to describe mathematics certainly is difficult. Saying that the number 1 is a thing is like defining a definite article in terms of its indefinite article. In Grundlagen, Frege defines numbers as objects that assert something about a concept. What does this mean? In daily speech, we usually use numbers much in the same way we use adjectives: “I see five ants” or “I see red ants”. While both properties may be regarded as objective, the difference is that every ant is red, but not every ant is five. Numbers are not properties of the ants themselves. This becomes more apparent when we convert the sentence to, “The number of ants I see is five”, where the word five is used as a singular term rather than adjectivally. The number five then belongs to a concept of ant that I see. So what is a natural number?

Frege defines ‘the number that belongs to a concept Φ’ as the extension of ‘equal to the concept Ψ’. Equality is defined as: a mutual univocal correlation of the extensions of concept terms. Zero, in turn, would be the concept of being non self-identical. Another way of expressing zero would be as the extension of a concept that has no objects falling under it. I’m not entirely certain if Frege was aware of it or if we all simply have misunderstood his ideas, but to understand the notion of univocal (one-to-one) correlation, we must first define the natural number 1. He’s given us a circular argument! A bit disappointing but not fatal to his legacy.

While Grundlagen leaves out definitions for complex numbers, imaginary numbers, infinitesimals, and more, it sets the bar on other important matters. I particularly enjoyed Frege’s long digressions psychologism which he strongly disliked. The inductive proofs that fancy calculus mathematicians pulled out of their hats seemed to irritate him especially. I would recommend this book to someone that’s interested in mathematical philosophy but doesn’t actually want to learn too much mathematics.

Besides simply being lengthy, this book was a formidably difficult read — unless it was utter nonsense, in which case it was laughably easy. I can’t really decide which because the language was used in such an obscure way that it was extremely difficult to follow the lengthy lines of reasoning and maintain whether or not they were actually consistent. The book is further clouded by the gratuitous use of home-made words which already sound odd in German, “Zuhandenheit”, but even more so in English, “Ready-to-Hand”. Perhaps this is done on purpose, as the author is fond of the hermeneutic circle and feels this is the only way to approach the main topic of the book: What is the true nature of Being?

Being and Time, which is considered one of the premier philosophical works of the 20th century, was written my Martin Heidegger to address a question which he felt had been overlooked in philosophy. He believed that while most philosophers had been chiefly concerned which things that exist, they’d never given a satisfactory definition of what it actually means to exist. The fact that Being seems self-evident to us is exemplified by how easily it is overlooked in quotes such as “I think, therefore I am”. Even the question “what is being?” contains a form of Being in it. While Martin had originally planned on addressing the whole issue in six parts spread out over two books, he was only given time to finish two parts before having to prepare the material for publication. In these two parts he discusses three subjects, namely the meaning of Being, a being called Dasein, and Temporality.

In Martin’s ontological structure, the meaning of Being is grasping how something becomes intelligible, which necessarily precedes things like propositions or science, and may be viewed as a destruction of traditional meta-physics.  Since there is no way to access Being other than via beings themselves the next step is asking a being about its own Being. The one chosen to answer these questions is Dasein. By quantifying a set of characteristics that a being interested in its own existence might have, such as angst and care, Martin reaches the prerequisite of those characteristics which is temporality, because Dasein is mortal. To truly grasp the meaning of his own Being, Dasein must first authentically embrace the fact that it will die. The book ends with questions concerning the nature of temporality itself which were supposed to be answered in the continuation of his project.

This summer I went on vacation for three weeks with my wife and her parents,
to visit the country that invented kung-fu, noodles, silk, and gunpowder. 
China currently has a population of 1.3 billion people with a growing affluent minority
that nearly has the purchasing of the United States.

The country that is now modern China used to be comprised of many different
cultures, languages, and ethnic groups of which Han was the largest.
After the Communist revolution, many elements of the regions were unified,
including a simplified writing system based on Han characters.

Climate ranges from sandy deserts, to frigid tundra and tropical forests.

The fantastic city of Hong Kong is the most vertically built city in the world
and functions as a special administrative region with its own laws and government.
Hong Kong is the home of countless action movies and one of my biggest idols, Bruce Lee.

Another SAR is Macao, which was once a colony of the Portuguese.
It is home to the highest commercial bungee jump in the world at 233 meters.

China is working hard to grow into a new global identity,
but is making sure not to forget the values and culture that has held it together.
This picture is at a space observation temple in the middle of Beijing.

Nearby lies East Chang’an Avenue which crosses the forbidden city and Tian’anmen square.

It was exciting to see China from the inside and I look forward to
visiting it again in the future to see how everything has transformed.

Every year around May, the sun begins showing itself long enough to walk outdoors without a jacket on. Like clockwork, people start to pretend like we live in a tropical country, and go out to soak up as much light as they can. This is because they know what awaits them in a few short months. The summer is very pleasant though, with temperatures between 15 and 25 degrees. About 20% of the year looks like this:

Spring and Fall both show the same characteristics with the temperature hovering around 5 degrees and the sky mostly cloudy. This is what Sweden looks like 50% of the year:

Then comes the winter, where temperatures are constantly below freezing for about 4 months straight. 30% of the year Sweden looks like this:

AAAAAWW    YEEEEEAAH!

This January, when the sun was at its absolute lowest and temperatures reached –20˚,
Danwei and I flew out of Sweden and landed in beautiful Singapore to celebrate our marriage.

The country has a population of a bit over 3 million people and employs a
free-market economy that as of 2010 is the fastest growing in the world.

 
Singapore lies a mere 137 kilometers north of the equator, right at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula,
which gives it a year-round tropical climate of about 27˚. In this picture Danwei is leaning on the southernmost rail of the Sentosa integrated resort.

74% Chinese, 13% Malay, 9% Indian, and 3% Caucasians result in a plethora of cuisines to choose from,
many of which can be found at outdoor food courts referred to as hawker centers.
Danwei probably enjoyed this aspect of the trip more than anything else. :)


A large portion of Singapore is a nature reserve with lots of wild and exotic animals. 
Here I’m holding a hawk that happened to land on my arm.
Luckily, that day I was wearing a leather glove on my left hand.


One morning I found a giant turtle. I fed him some apples and petted him on the head.


In summary, it was a fantastic trip with my wife.
I will definitely long to return to the awesome, modern, and beautiful country that is Singapore.

I picked up this Times Bestseller at an airport pocket-book store while waiting for a connecting flight. Normally I stay away from shelves with a “bestseller” sign since they only contain banal things like stories about teenage vampires falling in love or never-before-told secrets on how to get rich fast / be happy / loose weight. This book however, had a title which was hard for me to resist. I was skeptical at first because on the cover it stood “understanding philosophy through jokes”, which made me wonder how much philosophy such a small book could contain. I picked it up, flipped to a page in the middle, and started laughing at the jokes. As I paid for the orange paperback I thought, “One bestseller can’t hurt…”

This amusing book explains the most famous ideas in philosophy using comical anecdotes, and one thing it does very well is transition from philosophy to humor in a seamless and unstrained manner. In fact, philosophy seems to lend itself perfectly to humor since the subjects it often discusses are  meant to flip reality, define morals, and single out (often uncomfortable) truths of life. Here are some short gags.

Empiricism, or what data can we trust:
Morty comes home to find his wife and his best-friend, Lou, together in bed.
Just as Morty is about to open his mouth, Lou jumps out of the bed and says,
“Before you say anything, old pal, what are you going to believe, me or your eyes?”

Heidegger’s existentialist anxiety:
A customer in a restaurant asks, “How do you prepare your chickens?”
The cook answers, “Oh, nothing special really. We just tell them they’re gonna die”

In 1884 an English schoolmaster penned a groundbreaking novella called Flatland. The book’s protagonist and narrator is a square living on a vast two-dimensional plane inhabited by a plethora of geometric shapes. As Mr. Square walks the reader through what life in his dimension is like, it's easy to be fascinated with how foreign their universe seems when viewed from the “inside”. For instance, to us a square is easily distinguishable from a circle, but to a Flatlander both look like straight lines. In fact, to a Flatlander, everything looks like a straight line! One evening, the square was visited by a being with extraordinary powers. The guest appeared straight out of nowhere and was at first as small as a point, but grew quickly into a magnificent circle. When the awe-struck square demanded to to be told what he was looking at, the mysterious being obliged by introducing himself as: The Sphere.

In the beginning, the square could not fathom a dimension which rose “out of” his space. It would have to be an infinitely small dimension he decreed. Well, the sphere explained, for Flatlanders it might seem that way, but to us, the third dimension is infinitely big. Still not convinced, the square asked which direction the third dimension was in. Not knowing what words to use, the sphere could only explain that it points orthogonally from the square’s insides! Realizing that words would not suffice to explain the true nature of flatland, the sphere tore the protagonist out of his universe and took him on an extraordinary journey into the 3rd dimension, pushing the limits of his imagination.

The second half of this volume is a sequel called Sphereland where the square’s grandson continues exploring intriguing spatial concepts. The main characters inadvertently discovered non-Euclidean geometry when they found that the sum of angles on very large triangles amounted to more than 180 degrees. After working their grey matter for a long time they postulated that Flatland might be bent in an unseen direction. This turned out to be the case as Flatland was in fact stretched out along the surface of a giant sphere.

A fun thing for me to do while reading the book, was trying to imagine the equivalent of what the square was experiencing except in our dimension. Which direction is the fourth dimension pointing in? I suppose, just like for the square, it points out orthogonally from our own insides but in a direction that we can’t see. What happens when we move around in this new direction? If flipping a Flatlander results in him being “reversed”, then flipping a right-shoe 180 degrees in the fourth dimension should result in a left-shoe. Consequently, if a person were spun the same way, the individual would  feel unaltered but everything from books to cars would be backward. A fourth dimensional being could do things like remove objects from boxes without opening them, and untie knots without touching the ends of the rope. And maybe our world, just like Flatland, is folded into a 4th dimensional sphere so that if we had a big enough telescope, we could see ourselves from behind.

While reading Flatland, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the inhabitants who could only “see” straight lines in every direction, but upon further reflection, the same limitation applies to us. We can only see a thin two-dimensional surface in every direction, and just like Flatlanders, we have to infer the thickness of a solid. When I see another person standing a bit away, I can’t be one hundred percent certain that they are not just a very well made cardboard cut-out. A fourth-dimensional being however, could see all of a person, including his insides and must view our human existence as infinitely mundane. What would the eye-ball of such a being look like!? I suppose that if our iris is a concave plane in the back of our eye, the iris of a 4D being would have to be a solid, except curved in the 4th dimension. Pretty spaced out!