Whati is life?

This nice video points to an important question. It is very easy to tell life from death, but it is very difficult to give a definition. It is commonly held that life = DNA, but DNA is obviously dead stuff, and this rises the questions discussed in the video. In my opinion life is a system that is able to repair itself. A cell is life, a virus is dead but a virus in a cell is living, and when we will make software that repairs itself we wouldl have created a rudimentary but perfectly working artificial life. Evolution itself arises from the errors made in the process of self-reparation. Information is not life (information is in everything). Information that creates new information is life.

Of course this idea is by no means new. It is the idea of "autopoieitc machine" of Maturana and Varela, of Morin, and can be traced even to Marx, that said that men are beings the produce themselves (in the economical-phylosophical manuscripts).

Zealots in time

In the I century a.C. zealots fighted the Roman Empire in Plaestine. The Roman Empire ruled with the help of upper classes in the Provinces. Chrsitian were inspired by social and political dieas of the zealots, but mixed them up with exoterism and religion. The zealots eventually were defeated and disappeared, but the Crhsitina won. Today we have USA that rules a world Empire with the help of the upper classers of the Provinces (for instance the rulers of European countries), we have the left that fighted this Empire and seems to have been defeted, and the conspiracy theorists that mixed up the ideas of the left with religion, UFOs and exoterism.

Ripresa

Con la moderata ripresa americana, già cominciano a cantar vittoria. Ma ho i miei forti dubbi. L'unica soluzione sarebbe una specie di piano Marhsall cinese per l'Europa, ma significherebbe un completo ribaltamento degli equilibri mondiali, la fine dell'impero, e gli americani non lo permetterebbero mai. Continuiamo con l'Europa - sconfitta nella seconda guerra mondiale - che paga i debiti degli anglosasssoni. Tanto l'economia europea, nonostante le apparenze, è solida (era). E il tutto rigorosamente senza informare gli elettori (non dio chiederne il parere).

Jesus, the zealot?

Terrorsim in Palestine has a bimillennial history. The zealots, that fighted for the liberation of the Jews from the Roman Empire, were the terrorists of that time. They had a strong commitment to social justice, and were rather integralistic concerning religion, not differently from Hamas.
Although the Gospel states that the Christian message is definitively spiritual ("My kingdom is not of this world" and many other passages), it is obvious that Jesus sympathized for the Zealots, and like the Zealots wanted the Jews to be freed of the Romans. I think that he didn't mix too much with them not for spiritual reasons, but for differences in strategy. The Zealots dreamed of going back to an independet kingdom of Israel, but the Christians warned that it was impossible to concentrate on Israel without considering the broader picture. In other wors, the liberation of Israel was impossible without the destruction of the Rome. The Book of Revelation is just about this (the Beast is the Roman Empire).

Zealots rose up a few years after the death of Christ, but failed and Jerusalem was destroyed in the 70. The Christians wiated longer, but ultimately they conquered Rome in the IVth century. All this is represented in classical paintings of the Nativity, where a broken column or temple is always present, meaning that Jesus destroyed the Ancient World, both spiritually and politically.

Il potere logora chi non ce l'ha

Il potere logora chi non ce l'ha. Bisognerebbe che tutti ce l'avessero.

English in transformation

English today is much an isolant language, like Chinese, with uninflected words that are simply justaposed to obtain meaning. But it is more and more changing, since in collioquial speech, at least of less educated peoeple, entire phrases are pronounced as an entire word. There is a possibility that this will lead to something like an agglutinating language (Turkish, Finnish).

Is the evolutionary path of languages from flexive languages (German)  to isolant to agglutinating?

Truth (a politician never tells lies)

Contrary to a common opionion, politicians nether tell lies. They either 1) say something that means somenthign else; 2) use double-meaninig phrases (a variaint of the former); 3) or, more often than not, they don’t say. In other words, they carefully hide the truth, but always tell the truth, sincetruth is knowledge,  knowledge is power, and politicians make a living  on power.  Of course there are specialized technicians that put smoke in the eyes of the people: experts, scientistsi, economists. They are well paid for this taks; but they are definitively not politicians.

Immigrazione

Ricordo anni fa Žizek che diceva che si srebbe dovuta impedire l'immigrazione in Europa perché questo avrebbe causato un'ondata di razzismo. E' successo proprio così, però è come dire che bisogna impedire che la gente nasca perché c' è il rischio che poi si ammali.