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[Texto distribuido por internet; autor anónimo].

PROPUESTA CIUDADANA (MÉXICO)
Se está promoviendo en la ciudadanía una mayor participación nuestra para hacer ver a nuestros gobernantes nuestra desaprobación de su actuación.
Debemos imponer a ellos nuestra voluntad a cambio de nuestro voto en las próximas elecciones.
Deben saber ellos lo que queremos.
Si queremos que cambie nuestro país debemos hablar alto.
El presente documento tiene que dar la vuelta para que lo conozcan nuestros gobernantes y sepan que nos estamos organizando para exigirles lo que queremos para México y para nosotros.

PRIMERO
Queremos que disminuya la cantidad de diputados federales de 500 a 300
(Toma en consideración lo que nos cuestan en salarios, gastos de representación, comisiones especiales, celulares, seguridad, viajes, bonos, y lo poco que hacen por nosotros).

SEGUNDO
Queremos que disminuya la cantidad de senadores de 128 a 32, que uno represente a cada estado de la republica (por qué habría de hacer falta más? Cuando mucho, 64, para que haya dos opiniones por estado).

TERCERO
Que se cancelen los seguros médicos privados de los legisladores y de funcionarios públicos. Si el pueblo acude al IMSS o ISSTE, que ellos también acudan a esas instituciones. Ya verás que pronto mejoran los servicios.
¿Por qué tienen que salir de nuestro dinero sus seguros privados?
Si así lo quieren que lo paguen de los altísimos salarios y otras percepciones que reciben.

CUARTO
Que se recorte el presupuesto que reciben los partidos políticos a la mitad.
Es humillante para los pobres ver el dinero que se despilfarra cuando sólo extienden la mano, y no les cuesta, y si les sobra se lo reparten como botín.

QUINTO
Queremos que desaparezcan todos los legisladores plurinominales.
No es posible que además del excesivo cuerpo legislativo, nos cuesten también los que no los elige el pueblo, para que los políticos pongan a su antojo sus sucesores de ideología o parientes.

SEXTO
El gobierno lo debe imponer el pueblo, no el mismo gobierno.
Queremos tener candidatos ciudadanos independientes, que no dependan de partidos políticos, para evitar que se arrodillen ante el mandato de su partido.
Que sepan que el pueblo manda.

SEPTIMO
Queremos que se aplique el plebiscito.
Su definición dice textualmente:
“Es la consulta en la que se somete una propuesta a votación para que los ciudadanos se manifiesten en contra o a favor”.
Esa es la aplicación de nuestra voluntad.

OCTAVO
Queremos que se aplique el referéndum de la sociedad.
Su definición se explica así:
“Es una institución democrática a través de la cual la sociedad expresa su voluntad respecto a un asunto o decisión que sus representantes constitucionales someten a su consulta”.
Debemos ser tomados en cuenta.

NOVENO
Queremos que los gobernantes no tengan fuero.
A la fecha han deformado la definición original, y la aplican como privilegios para actuar sin ser tocados, promoviendo la impunidad en el país, y da como resultado la falta de rendición de cuentas de nuestros gobernantes.
No importa lo que hagan, no se les puede tocar.

EN LA DEMOCRACIA MANDAMOS LOS CIUDADANOS
Sólo es cuestión de usar nuestras facultades (de manera inteligente):
a) La libertad de expresión
b) La libertad de asociación
c) El sufragio efectivo

Ya es tiempo de imponer nuestro mandato a la clase política.
Ya estamos hartos de tanto abuso.
Todo tiene un límite.

POR FAVOR ENVÍA EL DOCUMENTO A CUANTOS PUEDAS HACERLO LLEGAR, Y SI TIENES FONDOS PARA PUBLICARLO EN LOS PERIÓDICOS… PUBLÍCALO!
SI TIENES CONTACTOS EN LOS MEDIOS, ENVÍASELOS PARA QUE LO PUBLIQUEN, DE OTRA FORMA, NO VA A SUCEDER NADA COMO SIEMPRE.

Kant ha caído de mi gracia

... con la siguiente cita:

"It is not necessary that whilst I live, I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably" (Immanuel Kant).

Suena a fanatismo moral darle importancia a un concepto tan fútil. Qué despreciable. Valorar más el honor que la felicidad. Pero bueno, qué se puede esperar del pensamiento de hace cientos de años (los grandes filósofos no podían ser intelectualmente perfectos; sus buenas cosas aportaron).

Pero de qué te sirve el honor per-se cuando se pierden vidas?
Puede un ser racional apoyar el asesinato de niñas (jóvenes) embarazadas, o de adolescentes homosexuales, sólo porque ciertas sociedades imbéciles dictan que los embarazos fuera del matrimonio y la homosexualidad son "deshonrosos"?
El asesinato por conservar un honor infundado es, en todo caso, mil veces más deshonroso, atentando en contra de un sentido del honor que bien podría ser mucho más universal y racional.

"El honor" no vale nada confrontado con el concepto de "justicia" y los derechos humanos individuales, y sirve sólo en la medida en la que cause felicidad (la felicidad total del sistema debe aumentar, o no disminuir, donde el sistema son tú y aquellos a los que puedes afectar [en otros términos más egoístas y poco altruístas, el sitema serían tú y los que te importan]).

*Ugh* qué asco este tema de conversación. "Honor", "Honra", "Honorable", ...pfff!

Quote

"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."

John W. Gardner

Caffeine and sugar

Mountain Dew (los botes verdes) tiene el doble de cafeína y de azúcar que la coca.
Additionally, hay botes vacíos de redbull en mi carro, pero de las tazas de café no hay evidencia...

Qué absurdos los seres humanos...

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in."
-Sam Harris, author (1967- )
--------------------------------------

Un punto que no me satisface de la cita, empero, es que las películas y el software SÍ tienen un creador. Y sería extremadamente irracional si los humanos del futuro creyeran que las películas y el software siempre han estado ahí, o que la materia 'evolucionó' hasta 'convertirse' en The Lord of The Rings en DVD, o en Matlab. [Mucho más razonable suponer que un dios inteligente los creó; al menos se acerca más a "la verdad", siendo los humanos seres con inteligencia (cuando les apetece)].
Por lo tanto, al menos al principio, pareciera que Sam Harris está diciendo que es razonable que los religiosos le atribuyan la existencia de la vida, y del mundo, a un creador [yo no estoy implicando aquí que no sea razonable, y tampoco que sí lo sea, aunque "en paralelo" con la analogía de Sam, SERÍA lo más razonable].

Pero sí, difícilmente podría haber algo más ridículo en el mundo que gente fanática matándose los unos a los otros por sus interpretaciones personales sobre tal o cual libro religioso...

Maten a todos los árabes a la verg*! YA

Comentó el Gabo en un post donde no procedía el comentario (sobre tall people being beautiful and smart), lo siguiente:

------------
Commenting on the War on Terror, Kanazawa claimed that "there is one resource that our enemies have in abundance but we don’t: hate. Hatred of enemies has always been a proximate emotional motive for war throughout human evolutionary history." He then offers the following thought experiment: "Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who’s running (Hillary Clinton, ed.)".

(WTF!!!) Estoy malinterpretando esto o sugiere que asesinen a todos los middle-easterns?
------------

Lo pongo en un nuevo post para 1) exponerlo a la opinión pública, 2) tener un pretexto para un post nuevo, 3) sacar el comment del contexto inadecuado en el que estaba, 4) evitar tener que visitar un post viejo con una discusión ya bastante larga como para todavía contestar comentarios no-relacionados con ella.

Jaja, no, no creo que nadie esté diciendo en serio que haya que matar a todos los árabes. Más bien, es una crítica sarcástica de Ann Coulter quien alaba a Bush y está en contra de la posición de los demócratas respecto a la guerra, además de, tal vez, un intento de explicar que no puedes ganar una guerra fácilmente si no odias a tu enemigo (por que entonces tomas las decisiones "políticamente correctas" y "nice" para mantener la apariencia de "humanidad", lo que no necesariamente te llevará a la victoria por un camino rápido y fácil, si es que se llega a 'ganar').

Lo que yo no entiendo es porqué en vez de gastar tanto dinero en matar y hacer guerras no lo gastan en COMPRAR A LOS ÁRBES, en 'ganárselos', en EDUCARLOS, en infiltrarlos, en 'convertirlos' lentamente.
Si en vez de estar tirando tantas bombas y matando tanta gente fueran a construirles escuelas, hospitales, calles, parques de diversiones, y les dieran comida, libros, computadoras, televisiones, y les lavaran el cerebro, y les ofrecieran becas para estudiar en el extranjero y conocer el mundo y educarse, si compraran a los políticos/reyes árabes con el fin de que les dieran libertades de intervenir en la educación y el entretenimiento de la gente (para 'exponerlos')... eso también podría acabar con su odio.
Y si de todos modos el gobierno está gastando MILLONES de BILLONES, por qué gastarlos en destruir en vez de construir? De qué manera esperan que la destrucción resuelva el problema del terrorismo, que se sustenta en el odio?
Ok, matan a Bin Laden y a todos los Talibanes... pero y los inocentes? Y las familias de los inocentes?
MUCHOS niños van a crecer llenos de MUCHO odio y se van a inventar su propio Talibán, y será el cuento de nunca acabar, por generaciones (hasta que maten a todos los árabes, o a todos los gringos, o de plano se acabe el mundo)... es TAN sencillo preverlo. La violencia y el abuso raras veces solucionan las cosas, o lo hacen a un precio muy, pero MUY alto. Qué necesidad?
La invasión cultural y económica es mucho más efectiva y menos sanguinaria... y creo que puede rendir mejores frutos para todos, tanto al corto como al largo plazo.

E-DU-CA-CIÓN

Dice Carl Sagan (genialísimo):

"Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don't have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen—or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness."
—The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1996

El pedo es que la gente perezosa le deja "al sistema" (gubernamental, religioso, o cualquier otro grupo de poder) la responsabilidad sobre nuestra educación.
Poca gente tiene curiosidad alguna sobre el mundo, por aprender LO QUE SEA, por desarrollar y contribuir al conocimiento. La mayoría vive como rémoras, por inercia, riéndose frente a la televisión mientras engordan, durmiendo 12 horas al día.
No se dan cuenta que se vuelven, como dice Sagan, 'MASA' (literalmente) manipulable por unos cuantos? Supongo que habrá gente cínica a la que no le importa ser manipulada, siempre y cuando le llenen la panza. Pero luego se lamentan y se preguntan por qué están tan cerdos y enfermos y vacíos y por qué son tan infelices y no tienen la vida ni la cantidad de fornicación que quieren.
O sea?! Qué asco.
Cómo es que hay gente que va por la vida sin tener pasatiempo alguno, sin relizar UNA SOLA acción intelectual/creativa en su existencia?
Bueno, defecan, y "crean" masa fecal, pero no creo que la usen para hacer composta. Ni eso. Se quejan todo el día en el trabajo (si es que trabajan; hay quienes no) porque ya quieren que se acabe la jornada pero luego no hayan qué hacer con su tiempo libre. SE ABURREN, por Dios, se a-bu-rren! No puedo evitar sentir anti-identificación severa con cualquiera que, no estando en alguna clase o actividad obligatoria, sino en su tiempo libre, tiene una existencia tan superflua como para decir "estoy aburrido" o "no sé que hacer, qué aburrido, tanto tiempo libre...".
Se dedican a mensajear a otros acéfalos por horas con pregutan vacías como "que estás haciendo?"... "nada"... "qué planes tienes?"... "nada... hanging out"... "que significa eso?"... "no sé, nomás, hanging out"... "qué quieres hacer?"... "no sé"... "te gusta X? Te gusta Y?"... "no, la verdad no"... "Bueno y que tal Z o W, quieres hacer eso?" ... "mmhh que hueva"... "Bueno y si K o J??"... "Mh no, no me dan ganas"... "y entonces qué haces con tu tiempo libre?"... "nada, duermo, veo tele, chateo, duermo más, jajaja"... "jajaja (risa forzada)".
Y luego por qué soy antisocial.
*Sigh*

Pregunta #4

Ja! Nunca había durado tanto tiempo con una pregunta [y la nueva que salió y que será la número 5 es una mierda; quizá eso me motive a cambiarla pronto].

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009:
Q4: Your bow is not broken but you've run out of arrows. How can you fake being a bard?
Ugh! What do you need arrows for? You play the lire while singing a song about perverted medieval monks raping unfortunate virgins...

Keeping track of the questions: Pregunta #3

Blogger sucks!

Si metes una palabra al buscador "search blog", no encontrará palabras que aparezcan en itálicas! Me pregunto si encontrará palabras que aparezcan de algún color que no sea el defautl, o en negritas, o subrayadas, etc...

For myself

Me estaba acordando de la vez que un shina me "supervisó" mientras llenaba (por segunda vez en mi vida) ciertos tanquecillos con nitrógeno líquido proveniente de tanques mucho más grandes. Éstos últimos tenían una manguera metálica por la cual pasaba el nitrógeno (cosa que no fue cierta la primera vez, durante la cual sólo tenían un tubo rigido, a manera de grifo) y, como no me puse cryo-gloves (porque son completamente innecesarios cuando colectas nitrógeno de un tanque con grifo!) un rato después de que abrí la llave la manguera empezaba a llenarse de escarcha y en cosa de segundos sentí que me quemaba la mano.
Instintivamente dejé caer la manguera y el nitrógeno vaciábase sobre los pies de la oriental, quien brincoteaba escandalosamente mientras yo cerraba la manguera.
No sé de donde saqué fuerzas para no reírme en su cara mientras se frotaba los pies por encima de sus tenis de lona.

Descubrí que guardé una nota brevísima al respecto ("China pendeja nitrógeno") en mi celular, y ahorita que limpiábalo no pude resistir la tentación de postear para preservar una memoria tan agradable.
Desde luego, la nota en mi celular es totalmente misleading porque el pendejo fui yo :p.
Bah, minucias gramaticales: yo, tú, él/ella... qué importa.

Tall people are more intelligent and more beautiful, HA!

En promedio, al menos, y no cualquier individuo casualmente elongado (según un tipo cuyo nombre aparece al final del post). Hm. Interesante... (BS?).

Why are taller people more intelligent than shorter people?

 In our paper, Reyniers and I propose a second possible explanation.  It consists of three separate mechanisms.

 In my previous post, I explain that men on average are slightly but significantly more intelligent than women, not because they are men, but because they are taller.  But why are taller people more intelligent than shorter people?

The real answer is we don’t know for sure, but there are two possible explanations.  First, both height and intelligence may be indicators of underlying health.  According to this view, people who are genetically and developmentally healthier simultaneously grow taller and become more intelligent than those who are less healthy, producing the positive correlation between height and intelligence.

... ... ...

1.  Assortative mating of tall men and beautiful women.  Because height is desirable in men and physical attractiveness is desirable in women, there should be assortative mating between tall men and beautiful women (and short men and less beautiful women).  Because both height and physical attractiveness are heritable, this will create an extrinsic (non-causal) correlation among their children between height and physical attractiveness, where tall people (both men and women) are more beautiful than short people.

 2.  Assortative mating of intelligent men and beautiful women.  Because intelligent men tend to attain higher status, at least in the evolutionarily novel environment in recent history, and high status is desirable in men, and because physical attractiveness is desirable in women, there should be assortative mating between intelligent (and thus high-status) men and beautiful women.  Because both intelligence and physical attractiveness are heritable, this will create an extrinsic (non-causal) correlation among their children between intelligence and physical attractiveness, where more attractive people are more intelligent than less attractive people.

 3.  Extrinsic correlation between height and physical attractiveness (produced by Mechanism 1 above) and extrinsic correlation between intelligence and physical attractiveness (produced by Mechanism 2 above) will create a second-order extrinsic correlation between height and intelligence.

We believe that this may be why taller people are more intelligent than shorter people.  Another factor contributing to the seeming male advantage in intelligence is that taller parents are more likely to have sons than shorter parents.  So, over many generations, more sons will inherit their parents’ genes inclining them to be taller and more intelligent, and more daughters will inherit their parents’ genes inclining them to be shorter and less intelligent.  But, once again, the crucial factor is height, not sex.

In our paper, we present evidence for all of the crucial mechanisms:  Taller people are on average physically more attractive than shorter people; physically more attractive people are on average more intelligent than physically less attractive people; taller people are on average more intelligent than shorter people; and taller parents are more likely to have sons than shorter parents.  But the issue is far from resolved.  While there is no doubt that taller people are indeed more intelligent than shorter people, the question of why this is so is one of the remaining puzzles in evolutionary psychology.

The Scientific Fundamentalist: A Look at the Hard Truths About Human Nature, by Satoshi Kanazawa

Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist at LSE...

Jaja

La economía primermundista NO aplica para el tercer mundo...

Rowling redimida

Después de haber alcanzado su cúspide en el tercer libro, mi gusto por Harry Potter decayó BASTANTE durante el 4to y la mayor parte del 5to; pero ahora el 6to libro vuelve a ser decente, y me entró la urgencia por terminar la serie YA. [El 4to libro me tomó cerca de 5 años leerlo -entre que lo empezaba y lo dejaba, jaja-, y el quinto libro me tomó casi 1 año; por el contrario, llevo apenas poco más de una semana con el 6to y ya nomás me faltan 120 páginas (de ~650)].
Lo malo del asunto es que no sé si mi estimación del tercer libro es una exageración inadecuada resultante de mi imbecilidad actual y en aquel entonces, y del hecho de que lo leí hace TANTO (6 años o más) que en realidad no puedo compararlo con lo que pueda leer de Harry Potter AHORA... a menos que volviese a leer lo que leí hace siglos (pero no creo que vaya a hacerlo jamás; al menos no pronto).

Y axis: "Degree of liking", in whatever meaningless units (the books are only compared among themselves).
X axis: Harry Potter book number.

Best random verification word so far

La mejor palabra que me ha tocado para verificar un comment [me acaba de salir AHORITA, en uno del Arut que habla sobre el restorán Sirlon no-se-qué en Monte-no-sé-qué (jaja)] es:

mizesses

Mis heces. Mi myerda. Lo que acabo de comentar.
*GENIAL*

Hopefully not for long

Una carta de nuestra *estimadisima* vecina, A***, en el departamento inmediatamente inferior al nuestro (el que rentamos mi hermana y yo)...

Places I want to live in for a while (3-6 months at least?)

1. New York
2. Seattle
3. Auckland
4. San Diego
4. San Francisco
5. Toronto
5. London
6. Barcelona
7. Vienna
8. Cologne
9. Paris
9. Amsterdam
10. Tokyo/Kyoto
10. Miami
11. Buenos Aires
11. Mexico City/Guadalajara
11. Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane
12. Stockholm/Malmo/Oslo
13. Portland
14. Milan
15. Anchorage

No es gran cosa la película

Pero esto me agradó (o me dio risa):

-------------

A: I'm pregnant.
B: Fuck off!
A: WHAT!?

...

B: Why the fuck didn't you stop me once we started?!
A: I don't know! I couldn't tell that you didn't have one on! Obviously, I was drunk!
B: Was your vagina drunk?! Did you think it's the thinnest condom on earth I have on? I'm a fucking inventor? I made a dick-skin condom? He hollowed out a penis and put it on? What the fuck?!!
A: You are unbelievable...

---------------

X: Life doesn't care about your vision. Okay? Stuff happens and you just gotta deal with it. You roll with it. That's the beauty of it all.

----------------

P: I wish I liked anything as much as my kids like bubbles.
B: That's sad.
P: It's totally sad. Their smiling faces just point out your inability to enjoy anything.

----------------

B: Okay. Can we do... Do you wanna do doggie style?
A: No. I - DO - NOT want you to FUCK me like a dog.
B: I'm not fucking you like a dog. It's doggie style. It's just the style. It's not... It's not like a dog. We don't have to go outside or anything.

---------------

A: I had to sacrifice my job! My body! My youth! My vagina!
B: You sacrificed your vagina?!
A: Yes! It will never look the same after this!
B: Well...Fine. I'm sorry, I'll pay for vaginal reconstructive surgery!
A: You can't pay for shit! You can barely buy spaghetti

...

A: You know, you didn't even read the baby books!
B: I didn't read the baby book! What's gonna happen? How did anyone ever give birth without a baby book?! That's right! The ancient Egyptians fucking engraved "What to expect when you're expecting" on the pyramid walls!

---------------

D: I've had about three red bulls in the last 15 minutes, and I feel fabulous!

----------------

X2: I can't let you in 'cause you're old as fuck, for this club, not, you know, for the Earth.
D: What?
X2: You old. She pregnant. Can't have a bunch of old , pregnant bitches running around. That's crazy.

---------------

B: This isn't funny. The guy has twelve kids, that's not funny. This..... This is sick, this is a sick movie! That's a lot of responsibility to be joking about, that's not funny! I gotta turn this off, it's freaking me out.

...
B: It's weird the chairs even exist when you're not sitting on them.

---------------

A: You're just being nice, and I'm being nice, and just because we're two nice people doesn't mean we should stay together.

"Knocked up"

DELITHIA!

...acabo de cocinar las lentejas (en caldo, enchilosas, con salchichas y ciertas verduras, encilantradas y al ajo) más deliciosas en la historia de la humanidad y del universo....

My mission in life has been accomplished.

[Bueno, aún no; hasta que termine de devorarlas].

Things that make me impatient...

-Bureaucracy.
-Talking on the phone (usually, not always).
-TV.
-Traffic (I'm the angriest driver ever).
-My own mistakes (depends on the situation).
-A frozen computer.
-Things that don't work.
-Waiting in line.
-A fly buzzing around as I try to eat.
-Fanatical/ignorant people who renounce their ability to reason.
-Frustration.

Has the Einstein Revolution gone too far?

(FromDiscovery magazine)

...As Einstein extended his thinking from space and time to gravity, he found himself increasingly drawn to the power of the equation. “Never before in my life have I troubled myself over anything so much,” he wrote to a friend, “and I have gained enormous respect for mathematics, whose more subtle parts I considered until now, in my ignorance, as pure luxury!” The result of that effort, in 1916, was general relativity—the theory that had the newly confident Einstein telling God how the universe must work. By 1933 he had no doubts about the path to scientific truth. Delivering the Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford, he declared: “Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas. I am convinced that we can discover by means of purely mathematical constructions the concepts and the laws connecting them with each other.”
Following Einstein’s example, subsequent physicists have discovered previously unimaginable phenomena: dark energy, black holes, the Big Bang. In trying to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics, theorists now invoke even more exotic things—subatomic strings, parallel universes, and higher dimensions. These latest concepts all exist beautifully in the mathematics, but so far observers have identified no sign of them in the real world.
Some scientists are starting to worry that Einstein’s revolution has gone too far. Without observation to check theory, at what point does the math devolve into game playing? Einstein, too, fretted about that possibility in his 1933 Oxford lecture. “Experience remains, of course, the sole criterion of the physical utility of a mathematical construction,” he said. How to move beyond slavish devotion to experience may have been Einstein’s greatest gift to the 20th century. How to bring mathematical imagination back down to earth may rate as his greatest challenge to the 21st.

...

... You don't have to pass an IQ test to be in the senate though...

(Lo pirateé del blog de mi hermano...).
Para aquellos que no puedan, por alguna razón, ver el video:
No es una imagen... es un video de un senador gringo diciendo justamente lo que dice el subject: "You don't have to pass an IQ test to be in the senate", porque le preguntan qué piensa sobre la evolución y si le parece una teoría más sensata que el creacionismo judeo-cristiano...

Promising...

“You know that our progress has to be measured in the results that we achieve over many months and years, not the minute-by-minute talk in the media,” Obama said. “And you know that progress comes from hard choices and hard work, not miracles. I’m not a miracle worker.”

But he insisted, “If you take a look at what I said I was going to do when I was running for office and you now look at what we’re in the middle of doing, we’re doing what we said we’d do.”

Since January, the president has:

• Relaxed restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.
• Ordered the closing of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
• Ordered most U.S. troops out of Iraq and more U.S. troops into Afghanistan.
• Pushed through his economic stimulus plan, a mortgage relief plan, a second Wall Street bailout and his plan to redeem so-called toxic assets.
• Approved massive lending to struggling Detroit automakers.

Up next, his administration has said, are climate change, education reform and universal health care.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30472370

What a shame...

"Atlanta, Dallas, Indianapolis, Houston and St. Louis have been ranked the most wasteful cities in America, according to a recent survey. If you live in San Francisco, you have yet another reason to pat yourself on the back: San Franciscans are the least-wasteful people in the country."
America's five most wasteful cities

And the five greenest cities: San Francisco, New York, Portland, Seattle, Los Ángeles...
... I wonder if it's just a coincidence that all these cities are in democratic states...

RECYCLE, NOW.

... Y los psiquiatras intentan curar las enfermedades mentales?

"Penis envy and the castration complex play an essential part in the girl's development. But they are very much reinforced by frustration of her positive Oedipus desires. Though the little girl at one stage assumes that her mother possesses a penis as a male attribute, this concept does not play nearly as important a part in her development as Freud suggests. The unconscious theory that her mother contains the admired and desired penis of the father underlies, in my experience, many of the phenomena which Freud described as the relation of the girl to the phallic mother.
The girl's oral desires for her father's penis mingle with her first genital desires to receive that penis. These genital desires imply the wish to receive children from her father, which is also borne out by the equation 'penis=child'. The feminine desire to internalize the penis and to receive a child from her father invariably precedes the wish to possess a penis of her own."
(Klein, M. 1945).

G E N I A L, jaja.

The Pickens Plan

Por qué tarda tanto la sociedad en hacerle caso a la gente inteligente?

Tal vez porque padecemos un grave complejo de idiotas, o por envida, o porque la idiotez verdaderamente nos vuelve ciegos.
Lo peor del caso es que la mayoría de los idiotas se regodean en su imbecilidad ya sea por hueva (les da flojera pensar), fanatismo (prefieren que sus líderes religiosos piensen por ellos), o simplemente un cinismo descarado....

Legalize Which Drugs?
by Norm Stamper

Who do you want "regulating" the drug market? The druglords of Afghanistan? The Taliban and Al Qaeda who reap and turn opium profits into weapons of terror?
The cartels of Latin America who've rendered Mexico a violent and failing state, and whose drug gangs have made deep incursions into U.S. cities?
The traffickers who ply their trade on street corners across the U.S., including for years our beloved Pike Place Market?
You see, there's only one choice. We either allow the $500 billion illicit global drug industry to monopolize the commerce--and to decide who gets what drugs at what levels of potency and purity and at what price--or we end prohibition. And turn the regulation of currently illegal drugs over to an admittedly imperfect government.
So, in answer to the question, Legalize which drugs? All of them, every last one. In fact, the more dangerous, the more sinister and frightening the drug (and sensational its media coverage), the greater the justification for our government to step in and regulate the entire enterprise. It's a far from perfect solution but an infinitely better approach than the current "War on Drugs."
...
I say all this not to pat myself on the back but in recognition of the value of police and other leaders speaking out on the issue. When one does so, it grants permission for others to speak what they know to be the truth, namely that prohibition is an unmitigated failure. And that there are sensible alternatives.

Ok, esta noticia MERECE un post inmediato...

...Obama aprobó la investigación con células madre en USA...
[Cada vez me cae mejor; y eso que inicialmente estuve medio upset de que no hubiera ganado Hilary].

Mi no-existencia

Desde el segundo semestre del año pasado comencé a dar evidencias de no-existencia, las cuales se han visto severamente agravadas desde comienzos de este año: No entro al MSN, no entro a Facebook, tardo siglos en contestar correos, posteo poco en mi blog. 

Tenía que suceder, eventualmente. 

No he visto efectos positivos al grado soñado, pero sí los ha habido (creo).

La no-existencia, empero, ha tenido interrupciones breves e intermitentes, que espero suprímanse POR COMPLETO -al menos DEBIESEN- de aquí a Mayo, 2009. Entonces, quizá y sólo quizá, pueda volver a existir...

(Tal vez haga una excepción con el blog, but I'm not counting on it).

De Bach, Joshua Bell, y la ignorancia y la enajenación de las masas

...

Journalist Gene Weingarten was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his outstanding and thought provoking analysis of the experiment. Weingarten discusses the ramifications of Bell's subway experience. What role does context play in our artistic perceptions? To what degree is our perception of beauty influenced by our mindset at the particular time we perceive it? He notes:

"It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?"

...

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist.
Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the top musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written,with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty?
Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Tomado de AQUI

Stanley G. Clarke 1939 - 2008

I was wishing to find words to praise Stan and express my grief for his loss without recurring to cliche but ended up concluding it was a futile desire. After all, Stan WAS great. And that's not an inertial affirmation of the kind people feel inclined to speak at the loss of a loved one. Stan WAS great and I know it in my heart, objectively and independently from how much I loved him (I'll spare the objective 'proof' of it though, because I am not writing his biography).Stan was THE MOST generous, objective, optimistic, positive and understanding person I have ever met, and one of the most pragmatic, honest, supportive, helpful, intelligent, open-minded, humble, caring and loving. He was sensitive, congruent, pleasant, funny, witty and simply charming.

His sense of morality was inexpressively enviable.
Put in the simplest sentence I can manage, Stan was the second person who influenced me the most and who I have admired the most so far in my life, only after my mother... (and those who know me well know that it would be utterly impossible for me to give anyone any higher praise).

I will never cease to wonder at how quickly Stan and I became friends. I met him by becoming his Spanish tutor during the year I spent as an exchange student in Canada (2005, at UBC, in Vancouver). He was 65 and I was 20, but in spite of our age difference and the short duration of our friendship (~3.5 years) I had never had so many things in common with anyone.
I loved Stan so greatly that I didn't even think one could feel so much love for a friend. He has left such a deep mark in my life that I regard him as the closest example I've had of what an 'ideal' friend would be like... [I can only hope I'll learn how to make new friends without always comparing them to him...]I used to nudge him to do exercise and take vitamins and would joke by demanding from him to live at least 'till he was 90, but now he has left way too soon... and I miss him SO much...

Stanley died of pneumonia the 13th of December, 2008, at the age of 69. I found out in January 2009 when I came back to Houston after spending the holidays in Mexico (Dec 13 - Jan 04). He had been in the hospital for about 3 months receiving radio and chemotherapy after loosing his ability to walk because of a gigantic tumor on soft tissue around his lower spine. The cancer had already metastasized to his liver and lungs. It might have been some remanent from when he had colon cancer in 2006, which was surgically removed -the post surgery screenings repeatedly showed everything was fine though; and he was so optimistic when talking to me on the phone that I was genuinely mislead to believe that he was on the road of recovery and would live at least a couple of years more (I knew his cancer was incurable, but not that it would kill him so fast).Throughout last year the only hint of his illness was an evermore intensifying discomfort and pain in his lower back; quite misleading given that he had had lower back discomfort for the last 10 years after some silly muscular injury, and his colon cancer follow-ups, as well as other screenings didn't reveal anything troubling...
[Ahora resulta que me puede doler el meñique izquierdo que me quebré bailando ballet a los 5 años y que, pese a que tengo 200 años y soy artrítico, el dolor NO es una secuela por traumatismo muscular, reumático, neurológico, neuropático; ni siquiera retraso mental; NO, es cáncer... que casualmente ya me invadió todo el cuerpo, subrepticiamente].

I saw Stan for the last time when he visited me in Houston in February 2009, and talked to him on the phone for the last time (for less than a minute!) on Dec 08 or so.

He was SO good to me and gave me so much. I'll miss him for the rest of my life.
:'(

I don't know whether there's a 'Heaven' or not. But if there were, I'm sure Stan would be there in spite of his agnosticism. He was simply too good, too kind, too unawarely 'Christian' through his acts for any 'God' to leave him out of Heaven.
One thing I do know though, is that for as long as I have a memory, I will remember him and cherish the friendship we shared.

"It is your theory of love that cuts you off from love" -quote from one of Stan's essays. [He had a PhD in philosophy and was a university professor for ~30 years].