To Hitch, a Tribute

We lost Christopher Hitchens, or as we know him our Hitch.

There are people in my life, that I feel I owe them great deal; Hitch is one of them. I owe Dostoyevski who showed me to question divine justice; I owe my high school Physics teacher Şükrü Kapucu who showed us the light of Reason and to stand firm against religious bigotry, and so on.

Christopher Hitchens
1949-2011

Hitch was known for his razor sharp intellect, his superb oratory but above all he should be remembered for his “honesty”.

What I learned from Hitch was to confront bigotry. We don’t have to “respect” the ridiculous nor unreasonable nor superstitious; we don’t have to put up with religious bigotry, and more importantly we don’t have to tolerate the intolerant.

Religions reigned far too long; and despite the agony and misery they inflicted in people’s lives they are still shown undeserved ‘respect’. Hitch until the end looked at us in the eye and taught us to confront religious dishonesty without blinking.  He spoke on behalf of abused men and women who suffered in the hands of religions.

I can’t help thinking what a super-honest, fine, decent man he was,  Hitch. Even with his death he demonstrated us how to die with his decency, his honesty and his integrity intact. Shall I have the same courage like him when I die?

How software should be

Ultimately principal focus of software development should be to let users feel good about themselves. They want to be in control as if gliding gently across the sky, or peeling a banana, or skating on ice. Software should show little resistance, it should be obedient, smooth, effortlessly flowing and loveable.

Global Citizens

in Google+ Nick Bauman wrote:

"About 2500 years ago in a smaller seaport town in the eastern Mediterranean, a proposal was submitted to the city council by a man, a lesser noble, in a citystate which was facing its greatest existential threat. His name was Themistocles and he was worried about the impending invasion of his country by the great Persian army led by Xerxes. This plan was a plan of community self-sacrifice where the state would sponsor a project joined by all his countrymen to fight the Persians. They would use the silver from a collectively held mine to build a fleet of warships to challenge Persia at sea. The effort ended up being a great leveling of Athenian society, leading to what we recognize as the first democratic state in the world. The wealthy gave up some of their own wealth, too, to fund the project. The citizens gave up their very homes to fight. By the end, while the Persians were sent packing, Athens was besieged and the wealthy members of the city opened their stores to feed and shelter many of the displaced citizen army."

One of the positive effects of the GFC is, it brought us, “Global Citizens” together. We are living in an era of “Global Citizenship”. National Citizenship is dying.

We no longer should talk about “American-way”, “Australian way”. These memes are static stereotypes that lost meaning. Arrogant, racist, empty and irrelevant, they impose limitations in our thinking, they wrap heavy chains around our intellectual freedom. 

We should instead talk about “human values”, values that made us, like wisdom,  justice, care for environment and compassion; these are universal and limitless human values.

First and foremost the revolution ignited by “occupy” foot-soldiers made us to face a new reality. It is ‘us’ Global Citizens, and only up to us to create a better world. We now all have a shared responsibility in this. The moment has come and it is not something we should or can avoid, but something to embrace and work on.

We need to see that our survival does not necessarily depend on “fitness” criteria defined by individualism. Perhaps after all it is no longer “survival of the fittest” but it ought to be “survival of the wisest”. History brought us to face a new level of reality check.

We are New Athenians and the New Athens is the Globe.

Where is my money?

I have a product I sell in Apple App Store called MiniBluebox. In October 2011 upon inspecting Sales Reports available at  iTunesConnect website and comparing them to my bank’s transaction records I found a discrepancy and sent the following email to Apple:

“According to Financial Reports in iTunes it appears I was paid AUD 49.90 and AUD 101.07 on 29 September 2011.

However based on my Bank's transaction record I received two payments; AUD 49.90 and AUD 76.07 on September 2011.

Please see attached screenshot showing section of transaction history with Apple's payments. Please note transaction reference numbers of your payments and the amount you paid on the right.

To be at the safe side I checked transaction history from July 2011 to 20 October 2011 and there is no other payment from Apple during that period.

It looks like Apple owes me AUD 25.0.”

I received the following response from Apple:

“Payments sent to Australia are transferred via international wire.  We do not owe you any additional earnings.  The "missing" amount is due to international wire fees charged by banks participating in your payment transaction.  These fees are referred to in your Schedule 2 Contract.”

Indeed they were right. Schedule 2 Contract has the following clause:

“You remain responsible for any fees (e.g., wire transfer fees) charged by Your bank or any intermediary banks between Your bank and Apple’s bank.”

Apart from outrageous AUD 25  "wire transfer" charge, my real problem is lack of transparency in this transaction. It is not clear who charged AUD 25.

My bank certainly didn’t charge it, as it would have appeared in my transaction history.

Apple seems covered itself in the Contract –as big corporations often do-.

But my earnings simply disappeared and there is no account for it.

All I ask for is a written record of this “missing” item whether it be a “wire transfer fee” or otherwise.

I tend to think Apple should at least provide a written account for the wire transfer expenses between their bank and my bank.

Am I asking too much?

Aquarium

The impression I get from Turkish public is:

“We vote in general elections every 4 years; the elected pro-Islamic government may do whatever they wish as they see fit during their term; including imprisonment of over 80 journalists without trial. Everything goes as they have mandate from the people.”

Turkish public is on the verge of forgetting about what democracy meant and should mean for a civilised society. In essence popular opinion over the last decade or so reflects wide-scale public ignorance on the necessity of executing democratic rights and responsibilities of individuals between elections, not just during elections. Citizens to a large extent lack democratic consciousness regarding fundamental human rights and individual liberties. 

The current AKP (Justice and Development Party) government exploits what has always been lurking in Turkish population like an epidemic, a reminiscent of Ottoman legacy: “do not challenge authority”. 

I am sitting in a pub, listening to rock music, and having a glass of cold dark beer. I see myself sitting before a laboratory. You have an aquarium in front of you and there is a red button with 1984 printed on it. 

True. What I hear are stories. I may not have journalistic wisdom nor hard evidence. I sometimes don’t have patience. But overall I am not too bad in predicting what is about to come.

I left the country I was born 22 years ago. I knew what was coming. I knew what today was going to look like.

There was a guy whom I worked together in TEK some 30+ years ago (a government office I worked once). He was quite intelligent, an engineer, like me he graduated from the same school that captured top 0.01% of high school graduates. 

He was a devout Muslim who knew Shiatsu massage and who also regularly swallowed books in NY libraries during his Master's programme. As an Atheist generally I consider talking to Muslims on divine matters, a hopeless endeavor.  Nevertheless I found him interesting and pleasant to have conversation with. It still puzzles me why and how on earth a person as intelligent as him became a follower of a religion full of Abrahamic bullshit. Surely it appeared he had great deal of grey material. I remember we had a long discussion about whether good art may emerge from Islam. I questioned him about lack of asymmetry in Islamic Art and esthetical problems associated with it. He seemed to be quite convinced that you would not need to go beyond symmetry. You know, all those boring hypnotising Islamic tile designs, carpet designs and so on. That’s what I was talking about. For me asymmetry is a fundamental cognitive element that makes art interesting and pleasant.  

Anyway, he told us (people in the office) at the time we were all missing the point and Turkey would one day become an Islamic Republic. We went outside for lunch, and later I saw him leaning forward in Namaz position prostrating himself against a God he cannot see nor anyone has seen evidence of on a narrow pavement in a busy street near the office at the back of other prayers stretching from a mock Mosque built inside a small shopping centre.

How naïve I was. I laughed about this. But at the same time I had an eerie feeling about it. There were indications already. The military quo of September 1980 largely favoured the Right; during my military service I was ordered to escort one of my former uni classmates, who was a communist, to prison who was later tortured among others in a civil prison. I heard his story later when I met him during a business conference in 1986.

I am now sitting in Kuğulu Park trying to come around.  There we go; we see evidence of Darwinian Evolution here as well. The pigeons grew in number and adapted to grey surroundings of cityscape thanks to men who sell grains to satisfy people who believe they are feeding animals for the good. Most interestingly these pigeons are shameless. They evolved to ignore my attempts to scare them off. I step firmly on the ground; they don’t seem to bother; they take one or two small steps and come back to pick stuff from the gaps of cobblestones. 30 years ago they used to keep away or fly away farther.

85% of Turkish people think that humans have evolved from Adam and Eve. 

Gray pigeons adapted to favourable conditions grain salesmen and park dwellers created. It is so obvious. People would like to feel good about themselves, perhaps a DNA reminiscent of their gatherer ancestors who cultivated land and breed animals. So they are inclined to feed pigeons that are in reality slightly more dignified than rats and only in appearance. Home Sapiens salesmen appeared in the city to exploit such a weakness. They started to sell grain to park-dwellers.  In the end the most aggressive and shameless pigeons evolved to breed in high numbers and managed to disturb my peace. I now escaped to Gloria Jeans across the road.

It is not easy to understand why a larger proportion of a human population cannot see Darwinian evolution in action. The definition of stupid has always been a puzzling concept for me.  Are these people simply stupid not to see vast evidence for Darwinian Evolution that is taking place, or should we blame the education system or powerful memes of Islamic traditions that deluded them?

Anyway I am too little too less to change this. I elect to remain outside the aquarium.