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Birthdays are ambivalent events. They are delightful. You see, the loved ones care about you, they wish you all the good things in life. They really want you to be happy. Sharing a bottle of wine, having a nice dinner with friends is lovely.

However, birthdays are also sources of a urge to assess your life and see where it is going. Which chapter of life you are about to close and which one you are about to begin? What is the overarching theme, the common point, the distant resolution that makes those chapters parts of one novel? Is there really a necessity to have such elements of unity in life, or is it just to make it simpler to think about?  You don’t really need to convince a publisher to think it is good after you die, eh? Should I be looking back and see what impossible things I have achieved or what really simple things I screwed up? Should I think about the current chapter and decide what I want to do before it ends? Or should I outline all my goals for next chapters and invest in them, thinking that future is not too risky or the returns are not too low?

Best questions are the ones without answers. Ones with answers get boring too soon. I guess life is not too short as most people say. It is so long that we need questions without answers to move it around, make it a dynamic.

Best birthdays are ambivalent ones. If there is an architect of this life, she hated certainty, absolutes and one-sidedness. Here we go again for the 24th time.

I have been keeping a translated version of The Rubaiyat in my library carrel. He surely helps with my “over-thinking” problem. Great poet!

“What have you to do with Being, friend,

And empty opinions about the notion of mind and spirit?

Joyfully live and let the world pass happily,

The beginning of that matter was not arranged with you in mind.”

Omar Khayyam, traslated by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs

I finished the book by Salman Rushdie after a long delay. The delay was caused by two reasons: First was just the pleasure of reading the book slowly. Rushdie is really good at playing with words and depicting ironies subtly. Therefore, I didn’t rush to the next page. The second reason was just the fact that I was too tired and jetlag as I was deplaning myself after a flight from New York Kennedy Airport to Istanbul Ataturk Airport.

The book is manly oriented around two themes: Women and Power. Although I would encourage everybody to read the novel, I would definitely encourage my male friends more. Rushdie does a great job of questioning and narrating our carnal desires for more power and beautiful women.

Here is a few passages from the novel:

” “Your time has come” the emperor assented. “So tell us the truth fully before you go, what sort of paradise do you expect to discover when you have passed through the veil?” The Rana raised his mutilated face and looked emperor in the eye. “In paradise, the words worship and argument mean the same thing,” he declared. “The Almighty is not a tyrant. In the House of God all voices are free to speak as they choose, and that is the form of their devotion.” He  was an irritating, holier-than-thou type of youth, that was beyond question, but in spite of his annoyance, Akbar was moved. “We promise you,” the emperor said, “that we will build that house of adoration here on earth.” Then with a cry – Allahu Akbar, God is great, or, just possibly, Akbar is God- he chopped off the pompous little twerp’s cheeky, didactic, and therefore suddenly unnecessary, head.” (page 35)

” “You don’t need those flowers anymore” she [Kara Köz] told him [Argalia the Turk], caressing them. “Now you have me instead to be your good luck charm.”

He thought, Yes, I have you, but only until I don’t. Only until you choose to leave me as you left your sister, to change horses again as you changed from Shah Ismail to me. A horse is a horse, after all.” (page 223)

“Again, at once, he was mired in contradictions. He did not wish to be divine but he believed in the justice of his power, his absolute power, and, given that belief, this strange idea of the goodness of disobedience, that somehow slipped into his head was nothing less than seditious… That discord, difference, disobedience, disagreement, irreverence, iconoclasm, impudence, even insolence might be wellsprings of the good. These thoughts were not fit for a king.” (page 310)

The recent developments in Tunisia are promising signs towards a more democratic era in Tunisia and even in the wider region. I am especially excited about potential spillover effects on the other autocratic Muslim countries. Roula Khalaf has a good commentary on the issue in today’s Financial Times.

“Tunisia’s convulsion should also be a message to western backers of the Arab world’s autocratic regimes. Diplomats have never had illusions about Mr Ben Ali’s rule – in fact US envoys have been warning of growing social anger. But the US and Europe have too easily fallen into the trap of believing that the only alternative to autocracy is Islamist movements that are, to be sure, less accommodating to western foreign policy interests.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ffb6ef1a-201a-11e0-a6fb-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1B88wBOS6

Warren Buffett thinks the rich in the US should pay more in taxes:
“The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on”
Source: Financial Times, November 21, 2010

From a response paper I have written to the book “Identity Economics” by George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton:

Macroeconomic implications of the study of Akerlof and Kranton relate to the consideration of social norms and identities in markets. Although classical economic theory consider the macro level behavior as a mere sum of individual decisions, changing norms in the markets may be more helpful in explaining the changes in the aggregate level. More: Read the rest of this entry…

“Insanlar birbirlerini ne kadar iyi anliyorlardi… Bir de ben bu halimle kalkip baska bir insanin kafasinin icini tahlil etmek, onun düz yada karisik ruh halini görmek istiyordum. Dunyanin en basit, en zavalli, hatta en ahmak adami bile, insani hayretten hayrete dusurecek ne muthis ve karisik bir ruha maliktir!… Nicin bunu anlamaktan bu kadar kaciyor ve insan dedikleri mahluku anlasilmasi ve hakkinda hüküm verilmesi en kolay seylerden biri zannediyoruz? Nicin ilk defa gordugumuz bir peynirin evsafi hakkinda söz soylemekten kactigimiz halde ilk rastgeldigimiz insan hakkinda son kararimizi verip gönul rahatiyla öteye geciveriyoruz?” Sabahattin Ali, Kürk Mantolu Madonna