Happiness according to Daniel Gilbert

I decided to go back to Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness.

Shortly, we think about what will make us happy in the future basing on the situation now. When future happens, we (or situation etc.) have changed so much that we no longer can be happy with what we expected would make us happy.

Literary magazines dumped

I dumped several dozens of literary magazines in the street paper recycling bin yesterday. I  had bought them over 20 years ago and I had meant to read them later. They survived a couple of moves to  my new places and one major house redecoration. In the meantime, I settled and started a family, changed profession three times, got through 5 or 6 major interest changes.

When I began a major spring basement cleaning a couple of days ago I decided that they needed to go. Time to move on uncluttered.

Black Swans

From The Black Swan blurb:

"A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more predictable, that it was."

Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomnes, The Black Swan and Antifragile have been on my permanent list of reading since the first of them was published.

These are books that I read and reread — because bewitched by everlasting biases I keep falling for the illusion of order and preplanned reality.

Basically, we do not  realize how important are accidental and unexpected events and actions. We tend to assume that reality is a result of logical progress. We ignore all blind alleys that are long forgotten. Fooled by narrative bias and history and post factum explanations we think that everything is accounted for.

It seems that Nassim Taleb made pursuing the role of unexpected/random the goal of his life, I am sitting in a large auditorium of his staunch fans...

Barbara Klemm in Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin

I visited Martin Gropius Bau to see Barbara Klemm's photos on March 8. I expected good photos, but the exhibition provided much more. It was a sizable chunk of modern history frozen in hundreds of pictures. When contrasted with today's reality they seemed sometimes to come from another long gone century, not just 30 or 40 years ago. There were pictures showing the late sixties and seventies that would not surprise on 19th century paintings. Similar bleak and gloomy scenes.

Klemm, being a photojournalist, does not spare neither her own German compatriots nor other nations. The social contrasts are shown explicitly on the snapshots from the Western countries, poverty hardly imaginable to citizens of "developed worlds" shows on the Third World pictures.

Also she perfectly catches the excitement that overwhelmed Europe when the communist block crumbled. Metaphorically with the onset of glasnost and Polish Solidarity and literally when the Berlin wall was destroyed. The joy that accompanied the moments when Germany reunited.


The black and white pictures are perfectly composed and very well defined. A very good and impressive collection. I wonder what will happen with it after the Berlin exhibition is closed.

This was my main reason to come to Berlin on the March 8-9 weekend and it was really worth it.