Republicans, Christian values, and Obamacare

US House Republicans are trying yet another way to to block Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ('Obamacare') through voting in favour of a temporary spending bill that includes a 1-year delay for Obamacare.
The Republicans are always eager to link Christian values to their party, allowing them to get votes from people who actually don't really profit from Republican's politics. Given that Obamacre is supposed to bring affordable health care to a bigger part of the US population, let's just ask how Jesus would have voted. That should be the Republican's vote, too.

The Great Paradox Of Religions: Words

All religions agree that the highest divinity, the highest spiritual principle (God, Allah, Brahman, Yahwe etc...) cannot be truthfully and comprehensively expressed by our human words. These divinities are far greater then us, hence our words can only describe highly limited aspects, like a shade describes a tree.
We know our words can never describe God, yet we will do everything, including killing and torturing, so that another human being will use the same words as we use to refer to God.

These things the world will never know.

Two days ago, my Italian friend slipped and fell down 10 meters during a hiking trip in a remote part of Saudi Arabia. He was seriously injured and needed immediate medical treatment to survive, however we didn't have a car close by, and no cell phone connection. The only other persons in the place were two Saudi men, and a ten year old boy, the son of one of them. Without hesitation, these men offered to take my friend to the next hospital in their new car, despite the fact that my friend was heavily bleeding, screaming, and making uncontrolled movements; and despite the fact that this journey would not only ruin the whole backseat area of their car (which they had to use to travel back 400 km to their home town), but also traumatise the child. Because of them, my friend did not die that day.
Late at night, on the TV screen of the hospital next to the bed where my friend was sleeping, I saw first pictures of the victims of the Nairobi islamists. The world only saw the pictures of the islamist's victims.

Humane actions to save the Devil

The native Tasmanian human population has been exterminated by us, without the blink of an eye. But now the international community produces immense financial and human efforts to save the Tasmanian Devil. Is the Tasmanian Devil closer to us than the Tasmanian Human?

The Fête de l'Humanité ended yesterday.

Why work-life balance is bound to make you unhappy and unbalanced. And what we can do instead.

What is Work-Life Balance?

According to wikipedia:

 “Work-Life Balance is a broad concept including proper prioritizing between ‘work’ (career and ambition) on one hand and ‘life’ (pleasure, leisure, family and spiritual development) on the other.” 

However in real life, Work-Life Balance means both of two things:

1) to pay my bills, I spend most of my awake life-time with something that is neither pleasure nor leisure, that hurts my family, and transforms me into an ungodly villain.

2) if I'm stressed and overworked, than it's my own fault, because I'm too dumb to get the work-life balance right.

This is depressing. Therefore I came up with a new concept: the Balanced Worklife. 

Yes, it’s all in the word order and the absence of the hyphen. It’s a fine concept; the problem is I am not yet quite sure what it actually means.

Maybe: Rather than trying to stop the wicked ‘Work’ just seconds before it definitely crushes the jolly ‘Life’, we should attempt to have a well-balanced ‘Worklife’. An entangled harmonious Oneness. Fine – and how do we do that? Honestly, I don’t know. I guess it’s much in the intention. If I am frustrated and angry because I need to stop work to find a birthday present for my wife, and then am even more upset because this obliges me to spend the following Sunday finishing a manuscript, than that’s reasonable Work-Life balance, but an unbalanced Worklife. If I accept to work on a Sunday as a result of having made my wife happy the other day, well, then that’s much better, even though the facts are just the same.

But intention is also that: If I work hard to be recognized or rewarded (at work or at home), then this will leave me frustrated or bitter, even if I succeed. However if I am totally dedicated to what I am doing, I do not need a reward to be happy – even though I am likely to get one as a result. In a nutshell: Be dedicated, and be aware of it, at any moment, and, on occasion, do all those things wise people in baggy cloths have told us for millennia. I mean, what are the chances they were all wrong?

Sales Managers: What would humanity be without them?

Sales Managers for scientific instruments are incredible. They have absolutely no idea about the products they sell, and don't even hide it. Here is an excerpt from my (ME) last weeks encounter with one (SM):

ME: So what brought you to our institute today.

SM: I am trying to meet a few people and see if I can sell some things. - What do you do?

ME: Molecular Biophysics.

SM: I don't know this method. What do you need? [starts dropping random catalogues on my table]

ME: So what is the measuring volume of this instrument?

SM: I don't know. It's in the catalogue.

ME: We already have an instrument of the other company in our core facilities.

SM: Apparently there is a problem with this instruments. They don't like it.

ME: What is the problem?

SM: I don't know.

SM: The other company does not have customer support here. We have customer support.

ME: Where is he based?

SM: In Belgium.

ME: That is more than 5000 miles away, on a different continent.

SM: Yes, but he comes here regularly. And I only live 1 hour away. I can come too, and help.

MS: But you don't know the instrument.

SM: No sir.

ME: I thought this SPR method was patented. How did your company deal with it?

SM: I don't know.

ME: I don't think SPR is a useful method. I never had any good results with Biacore. What is the difference between your company and biacore?

SM: It's better.

ME: why is it better?

SM: I don't know. My company says so. 

ME: ...?

SM: I can put you in contact with our application specialist. He will call you.

ME: No, please just give me his contact details, and I will contact him if I need to.

SM: He will call you in the next few days.

ME: I do not need to be called. I will call if I need to.

Two days later I received a stream of email messages, including:

Dear Dr. Massimo:

Day before yesterday I met Prof Bernhard and we had a discussion about NanO ITC and, he wants to have a comparison statement on our Nano ITC with Microcal.

Secondly he has to clarify some more points with Application and so we recommend that you will call him as a courtesy.

Is it possible to call him? He is ready for a Skype Call also. Below is his contact info.

[...]

and:

Dear Dr. Bernhard:

Our Senior Application Specialist sent a mail as below.

She wants to talk to you.

Please let me know by return mail , whether this time is OK for a call?

Please let me know your convenient time

Regards

Reasons for Violence

It is astonishing what reasons one Homo sapiens puts forward to use violence against another Homo sapiens. There is how one calls god (Christian vs Muslim vs Hindu vs Jews vs ...), but also down to the very details of how one interprets the same religious text (sunni vs shiites; protestant vs catholic..). There are colour of skin, or of hair, language, if someone earns a living with livestock or with agriculture (Darfur), what kind of human one is attracted to (hetero vs homosexuality), geographic origin (especially in neighbouring regions), what kind of sports team one favours, gender (male vs female), ... and some of the worst conflicts are based on differences between people that are so similar, that even modern science struggles to find out what these differences actually are, apart from the name of the group (Hutu vs Tutsi).
Differences between humans are simple pretexts, rather than true reasons, for violence.