Homeland

A very brief note to urge you to watch Homeland, aka Obama's favorite TV show. What an amazing series! Great characters, amazing acting, believable story, quite entertaining overall. Rather addictive, actually. As in other series (notably, 24) it is often the case that you have no clue on what's going to happen next with the story and the main characters. The main difference is that while in most series seemingly crucial and defining parts of the plot (which in ordinary series would take a whole season to unfold) in Homeland are resolved in no more than one or two episodes. In case you're following The Big Bang Theory, please be aware that are other alternatives.

On Acknowledgments

I often find myself looking at the PhD theses of random people (even researchers outside my area of interest), just for the sake of reading their acknowledgment section. I get disappointed when I do not find such a section. Also, I experience a feeling similar to disappointment when their acknowledgments are very short (say, less than a page). You see, I tend to believe that acknowledgments say a lot about the authors---they provide a unique personal perspective on people who you may not know, or know only at the professional level.

In general, I believe that the way people acknowledge the effect/influence of others (even if minimal) in their own accomplishments is very meaningful. In this sense, I tend to sympathize with those who write long, spontaneous acknowledgment texts. When reading short acknowledgments I imagine the author is a cold minded, somewhat introspective person, unable to recognize people around him/her. (Incidentally, my own acknowledgment section was a bit long, even if people may perceive me, I guess, similarly as I do imagine people who write short acknowledgments. Life is full contradictions.) Of course, writing acknowledgments about a potentially emotional period of your life is not easy, and it's legitimate to try to be brief and concise, acknowledging only the essential ones.

Actually my motivation for writing about PhD thesis acknowledgments is the very common mistake that people do by mentioning there their current girlfriends/boyfriends. Such mentions are perfectly fine if you're married or in an irreversibly serious relationship. Otherwise it may be risky, because relationships sometime do not work, and it should be rather awkward to be reminded of this fact of life every time you skim your beloved PhD thesis. (Not my case, fortunately.)

Excerpt from a debate

The presidential elections in the USA are very interesting to follow; this year is no exception: the two political models are so different and yet both have seemingly equal chances of winning. In this context, presidential debates are extremely useful to contrast both positions and to create (or reinforce) one's opinion. There is also a vice-presidential debate, which seems to have less influence (on polls, on overall media attention) than the presidential debates. Still (or perhaps precisely because of the assumed "irrelevance"), vice-presidential candidates can discuss somewhat more concretely the policies their presidential candidates defend.

Contrasts between Obama and Romney are profound and on almost every subject. I found particularly insightful the sharp contrast on religion and abortion, as discussed by Biden and Ryan in the vice-presidential debate. They were asked to elaborate on the role that their religion had played in their own personal views on abortion. (You may like to read the entire transcript of the debate, for further context.) Biden's answer was:

My religion defines who I am. And I've been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who — who can't take care of themselves, people who need help. 

With regard to — with regard to abortion, I accept my church's position on abortion as a — what we call de fide (doctrine ?). Life begins at conception. That's the church's judgment. I accept it in my personal life. 

But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews and — I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman.

The central issue is, as I see it, whether one assumes that one's creed should be imposed to everyone else---the distinction between the private and the public life. A liberal view assumes and respects differences, which means that no one is entitled to impose his/her personal positions (such as religious ones) to others. A conservative view seems to disregard the distinction between private and public life, in the sense that a someone who does not impose his own creed/position to others is seen to profess a only a weak faith---in this sense, from the conservative standpoint, Biden would be merely a mediocre Catholic. 

Campanella

Partly motivated by my recent trip to Argentina (on which I should write something at some point), in the last months we have seen a lot of Argentinian films. Following Wikipedia, I have tried to identify a number of "classic" films, from the mid 90s to nowadays. This is not very difficult if you follow two names: Ricardo Darín (actor) and Juan José Campanella (director).

Campanella, 53-year old, got quite a bit of worldwide recognition in 2010, when he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film with El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes, 2009), in which Darín and Soledad Villamil have the starring roles. Wikipedia describes the film in an accurate way: "it tells the story of a rape and murder case that has an enduring, decades-long effect on the people closest to it: the investigators, the victim's husband, and the killer." Back then, Campanella was already a renowned director in Argentina/South America as he had make a number of successful and interesting films.

I think we saw most of them.

El Hijo de la Novia (Son of the Bride, 2001) is the story of a 42-year-old divorced restauranteur (again played by Darín) who has a very difficult relationship with his mother (who suffers Alzheimer's disease), his father, daughter, and friends. El mismo amor, la misma lluvia (Same Love, Same Rain, 1999) is the story of a love affair which covers the most dramatic years of the recent Argentine history, namely the late 70s --in which the latest military dictatorship was on power-- to the 80s and early 90s, with the tough return to fragile democracy. Finally, Luna de Avellaneda (Moon of Avellaneda, 2004) tells the story of a guy who tries to save from failure the social club of his neighborhood, in which he was born (and located in Avellaneda, a district of Buenos Aires). At the same time, he needs to deal with his failed marriage, the distance from his children, and the whole economic situation.

Not all films are equally great (above I described them in descending order of greatness), but without a doubt they are far better than any regular Hollywood film. There are several remarkable aspects in Campanella's films. For instance, characters are typically very well written, and stories combine rather well elements of comedy, drama, and tension. But there are two aspects in which I would like to comment on. First, by watching his films you understand (and recognize) quite a bit about the recent political history in Argentina. But this is always told in a balanced and subtle way: a given political moment is not described directly but shown in the way it affected the character's lives. This is especially evident in El Secreto de sus Ojos and El mismo amor, la misma lluvia, in which the story unfolds along several decades, and so it is unavoidable to abstract away from the current political context. In the former, the repression caused by the dictatorship has a central role in the story but this is portrayed in an implicit way.

The second amazing aspect is that none of the films has a happy ending. In fact, in all of them there is an important line of the story which ends up far from happily. I like this quite a lot, as the simplest thing in a film, I believe, is to come up with a quick, defining event that saves the characters. This is a form of realism that should appear more often in films, as life is not plain happy nor plain sad and difficult... it's just life and films should portray it as such.

Making Sushi is Hard

The other day we went to a "sushi workshop": a 3-hour hands-on lecture covering the basics of making sushi. The "lecturer" was the Sushi chef from the Hotel Ritz, a funny (and rather patient) Brazilian guy. I am not sure if this kind of workshops is common elsewhere, but the whole concept is quite interesting and original: you pay a fix amount of money (from 30€ to 50€, depending on whether you want to buy a basic "kit" for making sushi at home), they provide you with materials and explanations for you to produce some basic pieces. By "materials" I mean rice cooked in the right way and a small piece of salmon. At the end of the lecture, you eat all the pieces you manage produce along the session (each of us produced about 20 pieces).

Unsurprisingly, in such a short lecture you're not able to learn (nor to practice) the most crucial and delicate aspects of making sushi, namely cooking the rice and cutting the fish. On the one hand, I didn't know that not only you need to use a special kind of Japanese rice (which comes in different sizes) but also you need to add some vinegar to it once it is cooked. This process aims at obtaining a proper consistency in the grains, and depends critically on using a special wooden bowl. On the other hand, fish needs to be extra fresh, and has to be clean up and cut carefully, in order to take the most of it avoiding spines. If you make some mistake cutting the fish then you should go through a (long) process of removing the spines by hand. There is also a small instrument that helps you with that.

The main lesson from the workshop is that making sushi is indeed harder than what it looks. I would love to go to eat sushi to the restaurant of the Hotel Ritz, just to see how our teacher behaves in real life. However, this is extremely unlikely to occur. After this experience, we realize that paying 6€ for 10-12 pieces is not particularly expensive.

Italian Pérez

While looking for information on vandalism acts on the Portuguese internet infrastructures, Google pointed me to an interesting website on the origin, story, and roots of Italian last names. The site is cool because it gives you an idea of the geographical region in which last names were originated. For instance, if your last name is "Montagner" (just to give a random example), then most likely you were born in the Veneto region. Oddly enough, there is an entry for "Pérez" (and Peres). It reads:

Peres ha un ceppo nell'udinese che dovrebbe derivare da una versione dialettale del nome Pero derivato da Piero che è una modificazione del nome Pietro, ha ceppi nel napoletano, nel foggiano ed in Sicilia. Perez ha vari ceppi in Sicilia, nel napoletano e nel brindisino, di chiara origine spagnola dovrebbe trattarsi di un patronimico dal nome spagnolo Pero (Pietro) con l'aggiunta del suffisso -ez per figlio di, o di una sua modificazione.

What the above text suggests is that there might be Italians with last name Pérez (well, probably without the accent) all around Italy: in Udine (north), but mostly in the south: Foggia, Naples, Sicily, Brindisi. This came as a surprise to me, even if I was aware of the strong connections between Spain and what nowadays corresponds to southern Italy (see here for further information).

Writing about myself

This blog has been abandoned for a number of reasons. I like to think I have been busy working hard and having fun traveling around. However, in the last months I have spent a substantial amount of my time writing about myself, with the purpose of convincing people in the academic world to hire me as a researcher or as a professor.

This writing experience has proven quite challenging for me: not only I have to visualize myself in the future, I should also explain ---in concise and clear terms--- why my past is relevant. It is then a journey from the past to the future captured in a only few sentences. The strict, annoying space restrictions that one should adhere to make those sentences quite short, full of compelling adjectives. There is also the need of showing some coherence between what I have done, the things I have been doing, and the things that I would like to do. Also important is to explain technical things in non technical terms without being too vague or too precise. You never know who will read what you are writing; in fact, it might not be read by anyone.

Writing is difficult because writing is an inherently endless process: you usually stop writing because time is over, because the deadline is now. You rarely stop writing when the (suitability, research, teaching) statement is compelling, clear and concise. It will never be in that form: there will always be a more appropriate adjective, a sharper way of writing a sentence. As a scientific researcher in a world full of uncertainties and doubts, you are expected to write about your future in the most certain of the ways.