Voices of freedom… 21 August, 2008

Εάν οι φυσικές ή πνευματικές σου ικανότητες είναι ανώτερες αυτών που σε περιβάλλουν, αυτές σου οι δεξιότητες, αυτά τα δώρα της φύσης, δεν πρέπει να χρησιμοποιηθούν σαν μια πλατφόρμα για να υψωθείς πιο ψηλά από τους λιγότερο χαρισματικούς συντρόφους σου, αλλά πρέπει να χρησιμοποιηθούν σαν ένας συλλογικός θησαυρός, και το γεγονός αυτό θα πρέπει να σου δίνει μεγαλύτερη ικανοποίηση από το τελευταίο μοντέλο τηλεόρασης που ο γείτονας σου δεν μπορεί να αποκτήσει και τόσα άλλα πράγματα, τόσο εξελιγμένα όσο κι άχρηστα, που σου επιτρέπουν
–σ’ αυτή την κοινωνία που κάθε ηθική αξία έχει ανατραπεί– να αισθάνεσαι δυνατός, έξυπνος, φθασμένος…

Απο το βιβλίο “Τώρα πια… είναι αργά” του Όρστ Φαντατσίνι (εκδ. Διάδοση)

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Μπορείτε να το κατεβάσετε απο εδώ.

If your physical or mental abilities are higher than those of the people around you, these abilities of yours, these gifts from the nature, should not be used as a platform for you to be raised above the less gifted comrades of yours. They have to be used as a collective treasure, and this fact should give you more pleasure than the last television model that your neighbor can’t have and all these things, so hi-tech and so useless, that allow you – in this society that every ethical values have been nullified – to feel strong, smart, accomplished…

Excerpt (translated in English by me) from a book of Horst Fantazzini.

More adventures from Copenhagen 19 August, 2008

End of the first week here at DTU and the 66th ESGI and we already work for 2 days on the Industrial Problems.

We had to give some assignments on the end of the first part of the DCAMM Ph.D. course, so I gave one in modeling a company and another one about the use of Charpit’s Equations to solve a Geometrical Optics problem.

I’m on the problem proposed by Novo Nordisc, regarding the Protein Structure Modeling and we try to understand how we can predict the 3d structure of a protein based only on it’s amino acids sequence.

I also found an interesting game, called FoldIt, where people try to solve protein folding puzzles, which is difficult, funny and helps the science.

I’m also happy for buying a card game called SET, which I played last year in Vancouver and couldn’t find it in Greece. The day I bought it, I met some great Danish guys in Copenhagen and we played SET while drinking beers on a garbage container, in one of the most touristic places of Copenhagen.

We also went to a thing called Kro, which means “inn”, and is a popular kind of danish pubs.

There we played a danish game with dices, which is something between Kranen and Liar’s dice (I’m not really sure).

Sunday was dedicated to sightseeing. I went to some touristic locations in Copenhagen, saw the famous Little Mermaid, tried to find the Google offices in downtown Copenhagen (no luck with that), spent some time studying at the beautiful garden of the Museum of Decoration (or something ) and then I spent the afternoon in Christiania, where I followed the music and ended up at a punk concert (no live bands at that moment) where a strange and original bike-war was taking place. The teams had modified bicycles turning them into some sort of war trucks and they were trying to destroy the opponent’s truck. It was funny and had a lot of people there.

Apart from that I walked to the beautiful deer park near DTU, found the Dyrehavsbakken, the world’s oldest amusement park (1583) and ended up to the beach, where I was able to wet my hands with the waters of Øresund. There I found a party organized by the local Gymnasium’s students which was taking place at a beautiful location. Tonight I did the same thing but with a borrowed bike, which allowed me to cover many more kilometers in a fraction of the time.

In my next post I’m going to discuss some facts about Denmark.

Sunshine in Zürich, sunset in København… 16 August, 2008

Reporting from Copenhagen :

Hello people. It is my 4th day here and it is time for some posting.

We had classes for the past 3 days, so the morning were spent on that.

Optimization the first day, Dynamic Processes and Optimal Experimental Design the second day and today we conclude with Geometrical optics and modeling of physical phenomena with PDEs.

We have to hand in our 5 page report on Monday, solving one of the problems given us as assignments by each professor. This is one of the important ingredients for passing this course.

However, the days here are not only about working. I’ve been already twice in Copenhagen and another evening I borrowed a bicycle from a French guy in the Campus Village and did a small trip to Lyngby (the city north of Copenhagen where the university is) and it’s lake.

My first day here and after paying an enormous amount of money for a day ticket (115 kroner = 15.4 euro) for the public transportation, I went from the airport to the university and after unpacking, I visited the city.

I walked around a little bit, watched people shopping in Strøget and then headed to Christiania [1] .

This was an interesting experience and a place I wanted to visit for many years now. However you don’t really feel the vibes of political activism there (anymore). A lot of posers, potheads, tourist groups and a few forgotten hippies. You can see old ladies in a tourist group wandering around and next corner people chilling smoking weed, while drug dealers with huge dogs pretend to be cool.

However the venue there is great. A lot of green, water, areas for children to play etc. The most popular businesses there are Bars and Cafe owned by Christiania members, with headshops and bike workshops following.

I will post soon with more of my adventures in the country of Niels Bohr, Tycho Brahe and the Vikings.

…and travelling… 12 August, 2008

Long time, no see…

This has been a long month… I had some good time in Crete, where I stayed for 2 weeks, visiting Herakleion, Rethymno, Agio Nikolao, Malia, Ierapetra, Matala and other places… South Crete absolutely rocks!

The time in Athens was mostly spent with soirées at our empty houses and  a camping trip to Sounio for 3 days.

I had to cancel my trip to Toronto and Montreal, which is sad, but after giving it A LOT of thought, I’m flying tonight to Copenhagen ([1]), the capital of Denmark where I’ll stay for 10 days.

In the country of Hamlet, I will participate in the 66th European Study Group with Industry and a Ph.D. course on Modern Mathematics. Hopefully I will work on the interesting problem of Protein Structure Modeling.

My flight is through Zürich, so maybe I’ll have some time downtown. i will keep posting with my impressions from this trip.

The last weeks I started learning guitar, so expect to see some posts on the mathematics and physics behind music, a topic that I find really interesting lately.

I also discovered Tryo and Ska-P , two very interesting music bands. I am still trying to read Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” , which has some interesting points on the God debate.

See you soon!