Kill your dragons

Today I was back at my old school, the International School Hilversum. 10 years after my graduation I was to give a keynote for students who were graduating themselves.


Kill your dragons

Before I start, let me get this out of the way. I'm not the best person to give an inspirational speech to you. For one, I get awfully anxious in crowds. And especially because I see my life as more complicated than inspirational. Especially today.

You will surely understand what I mean when I tell you where I am from. I'm from Kiev, Ukraine. This last year has been tough on us. From the Euromaidan demonstrations last November to the current Anti-Terrorist Operation in the east, many innocent people have died. Holland has suffered too, since the atrocious downing of the MH17. Most of us know innocent people who have died. It would seem as if things can’t get any worse…

Uncertainty and change rule these days, and not only because of the mad things going on around the world. Many of you may feel lost, wondering what you will do with your diploma, your gap year, your career, your life. Some might be certain of where you want to go and how to get there. I hope I can speak to both of you.

You are probably wondering, how can this guy relate to us? He’s already finished university, has landed a job, he has it all figured out. I don’t now and I didn’t back then, when I was sitting where you are. So what can I give you then? All I can give you is my story.

I don’t come from money, though half my family are doctors. In the Soviet Union doctors earned rather little unless they took bribes. So my family were the poor kind of doctors. Growing up in Spain we became even poorer, up until I was 9 years old my parents and I slept together on a small mattress. I remember dreaming of going to University and saving my family, so I saved up my pocket change and gave it to my mother to put it in a savings account. I wish someone had told me to invest in Google then… My father, one hard step at a time, worked us out of poorness and things changed for the better, we then moved to Holland when I was 15. During my adolescence I had a myriad careers planned, from writer to doctor. Eventually I applied to Durham university to read Natural Sciences, since it was the broadest course I could do. But I also applied to Cambridge knowing I would not get in. Knowing this, I went to the interview wearing jeans, a leather jacket and sports shoes. I neither had a suit nor knew I should have had one, until I saw my elegant competitors. Surprisingly I got in, and doubted between doing cell biology and chemistry and psychology. Eventually, I stayed on for a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, might as well try and find out why my brain works the way it does. I didn’t. So I found work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Donders Centre in Nijmegen. But I learned little about the brain, of which we truly know almost nothing. But I did learn that I did not want to be in academia, but rather to apply my knowledge. How, I don’t yet know…

Right now I’m where you are, at a huge crossroads. I might look stable, maybe even confident, but that is not how I feel. I feel vulnerable and that’s ok. I do not know my direction, but what I have learned gives me a compass. You have a compass too, and it should be your own.

Your compass has grown during these years of education. Hopefully you will have learned a great many things about languages, sciences and humanities. But much more importantly, hopefully you have learned to think better, to be critical of the world. To not take anything on face value, but to test if it is true. Philosophy, or “Theory of Knowledge” as they call it here is far more useful in the “real world” than any bit of knowledge. Because to learn facts is far easier than learning how to learn.

Today this is more important than ever, when everyone around you wants to convince you of something or get you to buy something. Every single thing a person says or writes sits on top of a fragile house of cards of assumptions and prejudices. My first advice to you, be *sceptics*. Be as critical of mainstream media as you are of conspiracy theories. Be as critical of the left as of the right. Be as critical of yourself as of others. Remember that we cannot touch the truth, and yet, we should try and get closer to it.

And getting closer to truth, you will start to reach to your true calling. This will be hard, it will be awfully painful and you will need to change to get there. Success is not an end, it’s a “path with a heart”, as Carlos Castneda once said. Don’t be afraid of the pain. It will reach you whether you like it or not. Joy, on the other hand, I have only experienced in the moments that I felt fearless.

Many of you will have seen or even participated in our Argentine Tango workshops some months ago. So you will know that my joy is dance. I found my joy when I was 23 years old at the behest of my best friend, and I had no idea of what it was like. The dance, the music, the embrace, the improvisation. I knew nothing of that, imagining exaggerated music and a rose in the mouth. Instead of cliches, what I found is a sort of “meditation”, a space without words or thoughts that is mine and mine alone that is simply present and feeling and love. I could have given in to the fear of looking ridiculous, feeling uncomfortable, I was so very shy I could barely ask a girl to dance. If fear had won, I would have never known this joy. A great composer, Anibal Troilo, once said “Tango awaits you”. Sometime you will find your joy, if it has not already found you. This is my second advice to you, find the *courage* to try new things, assume nothing, be brave enough to change your life for it.

And whatever you do, help those around you find their joys, whatever these are. Each one of you is different. You are privileged in experiencing so many people who are different from you, who hail from other countries, and have other beliefs or who feel differently. I told you to be sceptics, but this does not mean you should not be tolerant. I told you to not fear pain, but do not help create it. Don’t rush to judge a person by their skin, their wallet, their gender or their sexuality. I know what I speak of, one friend was called a liar and denied justice for being a woman, another friend in mind a man but in soul a woman hid her true nature, yet another’s friend skin made people say he was meant to pave roads rather than build dreams. My third advice then: *accept* and love them as they are, and accept and love yourself, even as you change.

Be tolerant, courageous sceptics, and you will change the world if you so wish. But remember, you can only do so when you embrace change yourselves. There is no other way to change the world than to change the world is to change ourselves. There is no shortcut…

Let me finish with a story from a Soviet film. The plot is simple, a descendent of Lancelot enters a town terrorised by a great three-headed dragon. As is usual for knights, he sets to rid the town of the dragon and save the girl. But the townspeople, instead of helping Lancelot, sabotage him. They give him a copper tray for a shield and a butter knife. They try to kill him with a poisoned knife. Against all odds, Lancelot obtains a sword, a balloon and a hat of invisibility from a handful of dissidents and slays the dragon. When he returns, the townsfolk excuse themselves before him. He tells them to kill the Dragon within themselves, to stand up for themselves. Instead they kneel before him. Frustrated, Lancelot walks into the snow, only to find the dragon alive and kicking, playing amongst the children. “Now the real fight begins” he says.

Kill your dragons.

Binary is for robots

I see a worrying trend online, of people who appear to see a binary world, where there are "goodies" fighting against "baddies". Naturally, it follows that if they classify one side as a "baddie", then the other side must be a "goodie". Let me take an example that is close to heart, given my roots, that of recent events in Ukraine.

Today this is most obvious when you see cultured people declare things like:

• "The United States is an imperialist warmonger [therefore] Russia is just defending its interests"
• "Western media is biased [therefore] I trust the Russian news more"

Both leading to...

• "The US and Western media say that the MH17 was downed by pro-Russian separatists [therefore] it must have been downed by the fascist NATO-led Ukrainian junta".

This does not compute.

I'm by no means a "supporter" of the foreign policy of the United States. But surely when two imperialist countries fight a cold war, it makes no sense that one of them must be "good and trustworthy" simply because the other is "bad and untrustworthy".

To put it in scientific terms, the two hypotheses (of "goodness") are not mutually exclusive. This logical fallacy comes from a false dilemma, a forced choice between two poles.

Similarly, when you see bias in mainstream media (yes, I'm looking at you, Fox News, Russia Today, etc.), why should you rush to poorly documented websites that are:

1. rife with conspiracy theories
2. have no credible sources
3. describe events in terms of "fascists",  "nazis", "juntas", etc.

Instead, perhaps try to find sources that are:

1. independent international agencies
2. bloggers who are on the ground at the events
3. in different languages if at all possible

And importantly, start asking yourself questions, some of these, for those who support Russia against the "annexation by NATO and the EU" are:

• Why is Russia's annexation of Crimea acceptable?
• How exactly were Russian people oppressed or hurt because of their language in Donetsk and Lugansk, or elsewhere?
• Why are the separatist leaders Girkin and Borodai Russian nationals, rather than Ukrainian, as well as many of their soldiers?
• Where do all the tanks, heavy artillery and rocket launchers that these men use come from?
• Why the noble Russian mainstream media post lies about crucified children, conspiracy planes filled with corpses (i.e. MH17) and spanish flight operators?

And a final note, this post does not mean that I approve of every decision made by either the EU, USA or Ukrainian governments, nor that I trust every Western media outlet. Nor does it mean I hate Russians (amongst whom I still have many friends), or any other nation.

All it means is that I oppose lies and imperialism in all its guises. It means that I believe Ukraine should decide its own fate, without the interference of any foreign power. It means I seek truth and peace.

Access to Understanding 2014

It's been a while (almost 5 years) since I've participating in any sort of writing contest. I applied to the Access to Understanding contest where you have to summarise (abstract out) a scientific article. Curiously, the winning entry did the same article as I did :-)

I did not quite make the shortlist this time... I hope I'm not losing my magic touch! Anyway, here's my take:

Beat it!

I dare you to start listening to “Michael Jackson’s” song “Beat it” and resist its rhythm. Don’t tap your foot. Don’t drum your fingers. Don’t nod your head. It is hard to help it, and even if the beat does not invade your body, it still assails your mind. Our urge drives us to follow the rhythm, something we do effortlessly, almost unconsciously.

We cannot say that this capacity is uniquely human, as anyone surfing YouTube for “dancing parrots” can attest. However, it seems to be fairly rare in the animal kingdom. Clearly, being able to hear the beat helps when we are listening to music and let us to move in synchrony to music, maybe even dance. Importantly, our capacity to perceive and produce a predictable beat might even form the foundations of language itself, structuring the words we hear and the way we speak.

But how does our brain process the beat? Some very ancient brain structures appear to be key to beat perception. These are the basal ganglia, a conglomerate of deep brain structures that is located, you guessed it, at the base of the brain.

The putamen (pronounced pyu-tah-men) is a round subpart of the basal ganglia. It is named after its shape, Latin for the shell or husk of a fruit kernel. Previous studies have shown that this region becomes more active when people are listening to predictable beat sequences than non-beat sequences. However, what is unclear is whether the putamen is involved in finding the beat in the song, or in predicting how the beat will continue once it has been found.

Investigator, musician and TED speaker Jessica Grahn decided to answer this question together with James Rowe. To do so, they used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). This technique looks at how blood flow increases or decreases as brain regions that become more or less active. People of various musical backgrounds lay in the MRI scanner while listening to different beats. They heard sequences of sounds with either a predictable beat at different speeds, or similar sequences but without a predictable beat. Occasionally, after hearing a sequence, they had to press a button to say how well they could hear the beat.

Grahn and Rowe expected that the putamen predicts a sequence once the beat has been found. If so, the putamen should be more active when the next sequence is either the same, or at least has a similar speed, since the beat prediction does not change. If instead the putamen helps us find the beat, we should expect the opposite. It should become more active when the beat changes speed, as it would have to search again for the correct rhythm.

They found that people could easily distinguish beat and non-beat sequences. The participants clearly felt the beat, even when the speed of the sequences changed. Also, they found that the putamen was more responsive to beat sequences than non-beat sequences. Other brain areas were also activated by beat sequences, such as the supplementary motor area and left premotor cortex. These brain regions often act in concert with the basal ganglia, perhaps forming a conscious movement or body-based representation of the beat.

Non-beat sequences instead activated regions involved in precise timing, like cerebellum, and areas that are involved in difficult mental tasks, like parietal and inferior frontal cortex. These results were in line with Grahn's previous findings.

Critically, they also saw that the putamen was more active when the previous sequence was of a similar speed, compared to when it was faster or slower. This confirmed their suspicion that the putamen was engaged in predicting the beat, rather than finding it.

Curiously, they found that the putamen was similarly active in the first and second half of the experiment. Even though the sound sequences became more and more familiar, this did not change how the putamen reacted to them. Also, their findings were not related to musical expertise. Musical experts with more than 6 years of musical schooling did not engage the putamen any more or less than people with little or no training.

Why does this research matter, you might ask. If understanding our capacity to hear music is not enough, you should know that such research is key to understanding complex motor diseases. For instance, Parkinson’s disease affects the same beat-sensitive structures, the basal ganglia. Besides being unable to move fluidly, patients with Parkinson's also find it difficult to distinguish between different beats. But crucially, rhythm can have healing power. The power of the beat can restore movement to Parkinson's patients, who break free from their motionlessness when they hear music. If we are to beat the odds of brain disease, we'll need all help we can get.

English, motherfucker, do you speak it?

Communication, the critical skill of our day and age. Sadly, it suffers a fatal lack of clarity while showing no beauty whatsoever. Elegance is missing.

I could say education pays little attention to communication, but I would be (mostly) lying. Teachers do not ignore writing skills, they simply teach them dead wrong. We teach kids they must sound "professional" and "educated". We tell them that to appear intelligent, they must present their ideas to make sure only a handful of people can understand them. People fear and revere what they cannot comprehend. The elites of every profession speak their own secret language. Doctors, lawyers, economists, programmers, scientists...

Scientists are some of the worst. I would know, I am one. In the last 9 years I've read enough academic writing to know that reading academic writing is a one-way ticket to long-lasting migraines. It sins in making simple ideas complicated, describing them in confusing terms. Sometimes, reading an article, I wonder if the writer speaks English...



The same scientist who wrote the same article that reads like Hebrew or Greek will often, when you meet them personally, describe the same idea in simple words. Most academics can communicate clearly and simply, but choose otherwise because they believe they won't be respected if they communicate their ideas simply. Sadly, they are correct.

"You exaggerate!", you might exclaim. If you don't believe, find a few scientific abstracts and test each of them for complexity (e.g. using the Gunning Fog index, or the Writer's Diet test) to estimate how many years of schooling you need to read it and whether you will die of a heart attack reading it. Often, an abstract will require over 20 years of education (i.e. Elementary school + High School + Bachelor degree + Master + PhD + ...). Congratulations, dear scientific colleague, you made sure that even if scientific articles end up being available to the public (as they should be), they will never, ever be understood by anyone outside your field.

I know, I ask for the moon, men of letters. I ask you to be "concise and precise".

p.s. I'm not [always] a hypocrite :-)
Gunning Fog Index: 9.707 years of schooling to understand this blog post.
Writer's diet rating: "Fit & Trim" ("Lean" even on "Nouns" and "Prepositions")

ASN bank, the ethical (sic) bank

I'm a great believer in ethical banks. When I lived in the UK I repeatedly tried to join the highly ethical slightly unethical Cooperative Bank, but because of my exceedingly long surname, was denied entry. I'm not joking. I finally managed to switch from an exceedingly unethical bank (Barclays), to a fairly unethical bank (Lloyds). Still, that was not enough for me, so soon after arriving in the Netherlands, I switched to ASN bank, which I joined in April 2012, almost 2 years ago.

I've promoted ethical banking on my blog and Facebook because I believe it's one of the most powerful steps you can make to effect actual change in the world (put your money where your mouth is). However, my bank has been swindling me on International Charges, charging me €15 for transactions and being non-transparent about it.

How does this look? It looks something like this...

The total is displayed in this manner, but it does not mention that you will pay €15 more when you finalise the transaction by clicking "Verzenden" (Send in Dutch). The charge is effectively hidden.

I challenged this non-transparency with angry (I get annoyed when I feel something is unfair, but you can see that my letter is civil) correspondence to my bank:

and obtained the following reply:

The information to the charge is available, of course. 2 pages prior in a half-hidden link to an Adobe .pdf document in Dutch. Yes, it is a Dutch bank, but they do translate documents less important to their customers (see this for an example, and another, and some more).

As we speak, I prepare another letter ramming home the lack of transparency in the payment confirmation screen.

UPDATE (28/01/2014):

I sent them a response letter 8 days ago:

Still no reply, time to visit their Facebook page...

Occupy mass consciousness

Here is a brief thought in support and opposition to the Occupy Wall St. (and other places) Movement...

...so the good, wholesome kernel of the idea is right: The current wave of increasing inequality between the rich and poor can only lead to decadence and the erosion of happiness (and the economy too). Financial institutions now have an iron grip on not only the governance of states, but also on the possibilities and mindsets of people, much akin to the Catholic church, except that now the object of worship is money. Civil liberties are also being stripped away, and rights like free speech or assembly will soon have all but left. We do need to protest, if only to exercise these rights, but this will not be enough.

...the bad implementation of this protest is that a majority's wish (the 99%) being protested by a minority (e.g. only a 0.99%) will not be noticed. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine brought up to 2-3% of the population out in protest, and years later, it is merely a memory. So I believe, will be the Wall Street protests, unless they scale up to unprecedented levels, ones that a government could not blanket over, even with mass control of the media.

...but the ugly truth is that a protest is only a beginning. The financial world cannot simply be changed today by standing in the street shouting "we are the people". To change this toxic climate, it is necessary to squeeze them where it hurts. You guessed it: their pockets. We protest that we live in a consumeristic society, yet we can use our consumer power for the good for once by "voting" with our money against the unethical institutions we don't wish to endorse. A business that is squeezed this way, will have to adapt to the wishes of the populace, or perish a painful choking death. We must create financial institutions with ethics that stand proudly before profit, instead of crouching in the sidelines. So what's catch of this simple solution? It is that we must lead by example, and change our mindsets before we can expect the world to change for us... That, ladies and gentlemen, is the hard¹ bit.

^{1 Note: this might involve cutting up your credit card and foregoing retail therapy. Proceed with this solution at your own peril.}

Piping down the hangers wild, piping shirts of pleasant glee...

Inspired by a blogpost at Other Blog, I decided to fashion myself a clothes hanger made from galvanised steel pipes.

The first step is of course to obtain some pipes and some connecting elements. Do try to have them delivered to your home, rather than to your work, unless you enjoy the physical challenge and the bemused looks of complete strangers as you pass them by on the street... Luckily I do!

The next step is to assemble and clean your components, only to discover that they are marked with painted or relieved with industrial writing and vertical and horizontal lines.

Finally, assemble the rack...

...and decorate it with your elegant clothes.

If you are not entirely satisfied with the outcome, or if you are not quite that much into industrial fashion, stand by for Part II, where we shall decorate the rack with Mithril paint and mystical eldritch runes of eerie geometries...