Illusion of disillusions

Baby music

2007-01-15T12:36:00.000-06:00

JUST TO MAKE EVERYBODY HAPPY ON NEW YEARS

2007-01-01T19:17:00.000-06:00

Con Loli

2006-12-12T12:13:00.000-06:00

visita a la infancia.... aaaah

2006-12-08T13:17:00.000-06:00

flex de cunningham

2006-12-08T12:51:00.000-06:00

ESPIRAL...

2006-11-30T16:25:00.000-06:00

Una hermosa página dentro de los fonfines de la fononfoneria d ela belleza de los laberintos de las vidas de los vivientes vivos...

Espiral

BOOKART

2006-11-29T08:49:00.000-06:00

This made my heart fill today, and I thank Sue for that.

peces paréntesis

2006-11-22T16:16:00.000-06:00

is it getting... hard?

2006-11-22T11:04:00.000-06:00

it just is...

Happy BDAY

2006-11-21T17:19:00.000-06:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOOOOOOOOO ME!!!!!!!

DEKOTORA

2006-11-21T13:31:00.000-06:00

absurdos camiones...

(decorating trucks)

earth watch

2006-11-06T09:10:00.000-06:00

Everything has its time, and everything what it is wanted underneath the sky has its hour. Time to be born, and time to die; time to plant, and time to take the planted thing. (Eclesiastes 3:1)

depressing but real... la desición es si ser o no consciente...

Colours...

2006-10-25T10:05:00.000-05:00

they say i

2006-10-25T09:56:00.000-05:00

its the vienesse museum of modern art... but....
(dorothy is back)

lets twist again....

2006-10-25T09:42:00.001-05:00

The bed just got more fun... or did the game just get funner?

twist the bed pal!!!

2006-10-25T09:42:00.000-05:00

The bed just got more fun... or did the game just get funner?

twist the bed pal!!!

bubble bubble toil and trouble

2006-10-18T09:59:00.000-05:00

bubblebubblebubble

la cura (o enfermedad) de los abrazos

2006-10-13T15:57:00.000-05:00

stiletos fetish...

2006-10-12T09:22:00.001-05:00

Yves Sant Laurent

Viktor & Rolf

Marc Jacobs

Alexander McQueen

Vuitton

Dior
Chloé

Bottega Veneta

Need I say more?

children reading...

2006-10-04T08:34:00.000-05:00

reading is depicted as a boring activity which only nerdy and antisocial children engage in... or so we thought. Todo el planteamiento es erroneo...
to discover an unknown world inside a few pages... thats the magic

kids republic in beijing proves the contrary, its a bookstore designed as a playground...
play and books shoudl not be divorced...

PONTE PELUUUUUUCA reloaded....

2006-10-03T09:41:00.000-05:00

and the fashion people said... let the hairless have hair...
... and they did...

HIV

2006-09-28T13:48:00.000-05:00

design i want...

2006-09-27T09:23:00.000-05:00

modern bean bags

sheets

tables and sofas

agua

horizonte de ilusiones

2006-09-26T16:30:00.000-05:00

David Adjaye+Olafur Eliasson, 'Your Black Horizon', Biennale d'Arte di Venezia 2005
Interno

¿opuestos?

2006-09-26T16:22:00.000-05:00

Wish I was there...

2006-09-19T09:50:00.000-05:00

momentos de encuentro

2006-09-18T09:27:00.000-05:00

pequeños momentos de discurso cultural... pequeños encuentros con los pensamientos de otros.

is everything really about sex?

2006-09-13T09:32:00.000-05:00

Everything is fallic or vaginic or something. Everything is always sexual... or is it?

meeeeaaaaaaaaaatbaaaaaaaaaaaallllsssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

2006-09-12T09:48:00.000-05:00

I just cant get enough...

Bless the net...

2006-09-06T12:17:00.000-05:00

From the NY Times

September 6, 2006

Google to Offer Print-Archives Searches
By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 — Google plans to announce on Wednesday that it is offering a service that will permit Internet users to search through the archives of newspapers, magazines and other publications and uncover material that in some cases dates back more than 200 years.

The new feature, to be named Google News Archive Search, will direct Google searchers to both paid and free digital content on publishers’ Web sites, but will not directly generate revenue for Google.

Google would not state how many publishers were taking part in the new service, for which Google has independently indexed material from online databases and will display the results both as part of standard searches and through a new archive search page (news.google.com/archivesearch). However, it announced a number of partners including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Guardian Unlimited, Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, HighBeam Research and Thomson Gale.

In contrast to Google’s book scanning project, which has led to legal skirmishes with some publishers over copyright issues, some of the partners involved with the new service said they had been pressing Google to offer access to their archives for several years.

The databases included in the service are part of what some have called the “dark Web” because they cannot be “spidered,” or indexed, by standard search engines and so have not been accessible through them.

“We have been asking Google and other search engines to please spider our content for some time,” said Patrick Spain, chief executive of HighBeam Research, a digital content library based in Chicago.

Some of HighBeam’s 3,300 publications and 40 million documents will be available free, while in other cases users will see just the headline and the first 600 characters of a document. To see the whole thing, users must be subscribers to the firm’s service, which costs either $20 a month or a $100 annual fee.

“This symbolizes a major moment,” said Allen Weiner, a research director at Gartner, a market research firm. Google has reached an accommodation with the content companies that will benefit both sides, he said.

In a number of cases the entire archive of publications like Time and The Washington Post will be reachable via a Google search. Time’s entire database is already freely available and supported by advertising. The magazine made its archive, consisting of 4,300 issues and 300,000 articles dating back to 1923, available free through www.time.com last month.

With some publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, searchers will be sent to Web sites where they will be able to buy individual articles.

Google executives said that the archive service would not generate revenue directly and that the company did not yet know how it would make money from it.

“We’re not focusing on monetization yet,” said Anurag Acharya, a distinguished engineer at Google who helped develop the service. “This is new territory for us.”

The new service is not encyclopedic, Mr. Acharya said, but instead presents users with a representative list of relevant articles that are arranged in a timeline fashion. The service tries to offer a pointer to the time period that is most relevant to the search query. For example, in the case of the search phrase “moon landing,” an arrow points the user to 1969.

Mr. Weiner of Gartner said he expected Google to link the archive service to its Google Checkout payment system. In the future, he said, video archives are almost certain to be added.

“They have to convince CBS News to make Edward R. Murrow available,” he said.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW

2006-09-05T13:29:00.000-05:00

no se necesitan palabras....

I wanna go there

PONTE PELUUUUUCA...

2006-09-04T12:59:00.001-05:00

woof woof guau guau eejeejeejjjjjjeejeeeeejejejejjjjjj woof guau
ponte pelucaaaa.... gritaba aquel español...
algunos le hicieron caso... algunos canes...

JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJA

why not?

2006-09-04T12:01:00.000-05:00

from food to art

2006-08-22T11:55:00.000-05:00

its a way of life, a way of eating... and now, a way of art.
why the hell not?

vegans + art = veganica

¡¡¡PATITOS!!!

2006-08-21T16:57:00.000-05:00

Efectivamente, no habiamos llegado a la cúspide de lo absurdo y dulce...
hasta ahora...

una carrera de patos de hule en un río... qué belleza

patitos

absurdity of pets...

2006-08-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

very like one of the first posts... but I got this in an e-mail that said "why do dogs attack their owners"... the pictures say so much more... and truth be said, why do we put our pets, or kids or boyfriends thru such ordeals? why cant we just be comfortable with our Elvis outfit all by ourselves...?

dying for fashion...

2006-08-14T09:11:00.000-05:00

Sería fascinante que las personas realmente se vistieran dentro de la cotidianidad como en este catwalk...

amsterdam fashion week

Mis favoritos son:
- Der Kommissar por su erotismo infantil
- Edwin Oudshoorn por su fantasía maravillosa
- Percy Irausquin por que quiero esos vestidos

ENjoy!

canciones celulares...

2006-08-07T13:19:00.000-05:00

llama, graba y escucha una canción por celular...

un absurdo más del arte y la tecnología moderna...

celulares que cantan

Happy Birthday ... socks...

2006-08-03T13:03:00.000-05:00

Insanity in a tradition that doesn´t exist... but it sounds like such fun...

b-daysocks

P.s. my birthday is in november... and I am open to receive socks...

AguaSonic Eastern Pacific Grey

2006-08-01T08:57:00.000-05:00


This is a biorthogonal 3.3 movie of the sounds of an Eastern Pacific Grey whale, Eschrichtius robustus. This movie was built at 10 frames per second, but assembled at 6, so the sound is at 60% of what you would hear in the water.

el color del canto de las ballenas

2006-08-01T08:49:00.000-05:00

August 1, 2006

Subtle Math Turns Songs of Whales Into Kaleidoscopic Images
By GRETCHEN CUDA
(Del nytimes)

What do whale songs and wavelets have in common? Quite a bit, and the wavelets have nothing to do with water.

In a Northern California studio, Mark Fischer, an engineer by training, uses wavelets — a technique for processing digital signals — to transform the haunting calls of ocean mammals into movies that visually represent the songs and still images that look like electronic mandalas. (His art can be found at aguasonic.com.)

Mr. Fischer learned about acoustics by developing software for Navy sonar and the telecommunications industry. Years later, a serendipitous brush with whale researchers in Baja California led him to take a closer look at whales and the diversity of their intricate underwater communication. “I don’t think anyone has ever spent even a little time around a whale and not been amazed by it,” Mr. Fischer said in an interview.

Mr. Fischer creates visual art from sound using wavelets. Once relatively obscure, wavelets are being used in applications as diverse as JPEG image compression, high definition television and earthquake research, said Gilbert Strang, a math professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert on wavelets.

They are popular now in part because they can capture intricate detail without losing the bigger picture, and when presented in circular form (using a cylindrical coordinate system), repeated patterns are even more evident. By stringing successive images together, Mr. Fischer transforms still images into animated audio files that bring the sound to life.

Among whales, certain sounds and patterns are unique to different species, and even individuals in a group — something like an auditory fingerprint, Mr. Fischer said. “To anyone who doesn’t listen to it on a regular basis it sounds like a bunch of clicks,” he said. “But if you’re a whale — or someone who studies whales — it becomes clear that they have their own dialects.”

Wavelets are capable of picking up those distinctions, Mr. Fischer said, nuances that may be missed by the human ear or less detailed visualization methods. “You can pick out any one of those movies and I’ll tell you what it is without hearing a thing,” he said. “The differences are that dramatic.” He envisions a day when researchers may be able to use images generated using wavelets to identify and track individual whales.

Peter Tyack agrees that the technique has potential not only as art, but as a scientific research tool. A senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Dr. Tyack studies the way humpback whales communicate, trying to show that the repetitions in whale songs follow grammatical rules similar to those of human language.

“Looking at those figures, it looked like you could see a lot of repeated units,” Dr. Tyack said of the images. “It looks like he’s visualizing some of the points that we made in the paper about humpback song.”

Despite having analyzed recordings from at least 16 species of whales, Mr. Fischer said he had just scratched the surface. “It’s still a wide-open world out there,” he said. “You think you’re in the 21st century and we have the means to get anything, but when it concerns the deep ocean there is still quite a bit of mystery.”

In the meantime, Mr. Fischer hopes that by merging science and art, he will inspire a greater appreciation of whales among both marine biologists and the public, as he gives many people a glimpse of a world they would otherwise never experience.

“It’s a very rare opportunity to be in the water listening to a whale,” he said. A picture, on the other hand, is something you can hang on your wall and look at every day.

“When you see what whales are doing with sound, or begin to see what they are capable of, it is clear that humans are not the only artists on the planet,” he said.

Singing dunes

2006-07-25T09:38:00.000-05:00

What can be more beautiful than a mountain of sand that whispers and sighs?

singing dunes

Libano e Israel... donde se crean Anna Franks modernas...

2006-07-24T09:42:00.000-05:00

(del NYtimes)

July 24, 2006
Link by Link

Anne Frank 2006: War Diaries Online
By TOM ZELLER Jr.

JUST over a decade ago, as another of the world’s great ethnic tinderboxes — the former Yugoslavia — was about to catch fire, 11-year-old Zlata Filipovic of Croatia began keeping a diary.

The poignancy of the journal rises in large part from Zlata’s sober acclimation, in latter entries, to life as it was disintegrating around her. From the concerns of a modern middle-class girl in 1991 — school, a new pair of skis, Madonna’s fan club — Zlata’s journal became a diary, too, of bombs and snipers’ bullets zipping through her bedroom, of food shortages and blackouts and death. Her journal was eventually published and she was billed as a latter-day Anne Frank.

But as the world’s gaze has turned to another ethnic and religious calamity — this time between Israel and militants in Lebanon — a question that almost immediately arises is just what Zlata Filipovic, or even Anne Frank, might have made of YouTube.com.

That’s where Galya Daube, a 15-year-old from Haifa, Israel, uploaded a jittery, first-person video clip last week, made as she ran through her home, rushed down whitewashed staircases and blurred her way from room to room toward the family’s bomb shelter (snipurl.com/Galya).

Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group that set off a furious air and artillery assault from Israel on July 12 by crossing the border and kidnapping two Israeli soldiers, was raining missiles of its own on Galya’s seaside city, where she was enjoying summer break between her freshman and sophomore years of high school.

A civil air raid siren can be heard in the background.

“I was home alone with my mom during the alarm,” Galya wrote in an e-mail message. She has since fled Haifa to stay with her brother in Tel Aviv. “Since my camera was right next to me, I made a short clip of my running down to the shelter. Once I saw the clip, I decided to post it online so people could get a glimpse of what we go through when under attack.”

Call it an entry in the diary of Galya Daube, for whom the self-generated distillation of daily life online is, after all, as it is for most people her age, a given. “We don’t really have a chance to speak our minds and share our thoughts on TV and in newspapers,” she said.

From the ravaged parts of Lebanon, meanwhile, several young scribes have been documenting Israel’s relentless pounding from their point of view in English-language blogs.

“Six blasts in the past 10 mn made this building rock,” wrote Mana, a diarist blogging from Beirut at cedarseed.livejournal.com, on July 15. “The sound of the jets is so faint I don’t think they’re very close.”

An hour later, she wrote: “I don’t want to become a refugee.”

Another Lebanese blogger, using the screen name Finkployd, delivers regular dispatches from the streets of the country’s capital city at BloggingBeirut.com.

In a phone conversation, the 24-year-old, who works as a human-computer interaction specialist, said he preferred not to use his real name because “this country has quite the history for these kinds of events,” he said, “and the less you give away about yourself, the more you feel like you can stick around when it’s all over.”

Like the diary of Zlata, BloggingBeirut.com has evolved from a carefree, hobby blog to an embattled — and embittered — document of life irrevocably changed by war.

“This blog is about the Lebanon that is never in the news,” Finkployd wrote 18 months ago, “culture, environment, human rights, heritage, places, people, events — and lots of photography.” More than a year of entries followed, with posts and images covering Lebanon’s vibrant night life, gorgeous landscapes and the best places to go swimming.

Then came the Israeli bombs. “Here we go again,” Finkployd wrote on July 16. “More bombings, less sleep, and yet another drained battery. I wonder if they’ll ever invent candle-powered computers?”

Now he roams the country snapping pictures of exploding buildings, fleeing foreigners, garbage piling up as essential services are cut, and even dissonant signs of normal life amid the chaos: fruit for sale, smiling locals, defiant night life.

There is no getting around the outrage at BloggingBeirut.com: Israel, he and many commentators suggest, has gone too far in its attacks, punishing — and killing — scores of innocent civilians in its retaliation against Hezbollah. The site’s author, however, said he was frustrated by the actors on both sides.

“Both have their agendas,” he said, “and both will carry them out whatever the cost.”

Just 80 miles to his south, his cynicism is shared by 23-year-old Yuval Kantor. As Hezbollah missiles rained down on Haifa, Mr. Kantor, along with his 12-year-old brother, Eyal, huddled in an inner corridor of their home. Mr. Kantor picked up his digital camera, shot some clips and posted them online at YouTube.com.

In one, Eyal jokingly fakes the sound of an explosion (snipurl.com/Kantor).

“Don’t do that,” his older brother admonishes.

“O.K. It’s over, Mom,” Eyal tells his mother, who can be seen lying on the floor, a pillow pulled down hard against her head and ears.

“It’s not over,” she replies, and a few seconds later, she’s proved right. The low boom of a missile strike can be heard. “Oh, God! That was close,” she says.

Eyal gazes beyond the camera as his smile fades.

Mr. Kantor, a student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote in an e-mail message that his mother had since taken his brother south, out of Haifa and — presumably — out of the reach of Hezbollah’s missiles.

He has remained behind in Haifa, while on summer break, to keep watch on the house, and he said he posted the videos online because he wanted friends and family to see what was going on — “to show them my reality,” he said.

That reality, Mr. Kantor suggested, appears increasingly bleak, despite all of the technological aids human beings have developed for facilitating communication, the flow of information, and access to each others’ stories — despite the Internet, blogs and YouTube.com.

“We tried to live together, in one country, and failed,’’ Mr. Kantor wrote. “We tried reaching peace based on two states for two people and failed. We tried to withdraw and close ourselves behind walls and failed.”

“Frankly, I’m losing hope. Perhaps we just have to get used to living in a war.”

AIH for mondays...

2006-07-24T09:35:00.000-05:00

Perfect for a monday morning...

libros a la medidahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

2006-07-20T09:26:00.000-05:00

para todos aquellos que tenemos la necesidad de publicar, aunque sea únicamente para una edición de un solo ejemplar el cual podamos hojear y tener en la repisa de nuestras casas... ha llegado el momento, el lugar y la compañía para hacerlo.

autolibro

e-mail pour le futur

2006-07-18T11:50:00.000-05:00

Entras a una página, escribes un mensaje, pones una fecha...
y el mensaje se mandará... en el 2067...

esto es un proyecto artístico tipo "net art" en el que se extrapola la perspectiva del tiempo y de la comunicación...

..2067..

Sociedades Matriarcales

2006-07-18T11:06:00.000-05:00

Tristemente sólo muy pocos lugares en el mundo viven en la armonía y lucidez que significa la sociedad matriarcal...
El resto que quedamos fuera, podemos soñar al pensar en estos lugares...

Nagovisi - isla de Bouganville (frente a Papúa Nueva Guinea)
Minangkabau - oeste de Sumatra, Indonesia
Khasi - Nordeste de la India, en el estado de Meghalaya
Mosuo - Loshui, China

lego furniture

2006-07-17T16:22:00.000-05:00

to whomever outthere, this is the coolest furniture you could ever have...
and if you are around for my birthday or just if you want to send me a present... this is IT...

LEGO

(viva Antoine Phelouzat)

nothing to say...

2006-07-17T16:15:00.000-05:00

Really, nothing to say, but wanted to drop by and write Hi!
just because...

HAVE A BEAUTIFULL DAY!!!!

reading aids

2006-07-11T15:55:00.000-05:00

to read or not to read is not the question...
the dilemma is how not to get hand cramps when you are reading for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours...

apparatus to make reading comfortier...

option no. 1
option no. 2
option no. 3
option no. 4
option no. 5

ilussion or desilussion

2006-07-11T13:04:00.000-05:00

what are people searching for?

the Illusions of disillusions are the most wanted, because all illusions are, at best, disillusions....
its human nature, its reality. its life.

if illusions are disillusions

and life is illusion

ergo life is disillusion

merry coincidence tuesday

learn to dream with one eye open

2006-07-07T11:12:00.000-05:00

www.ashesandsnow.com

tranquilidad

pfffff

2006-07-05T17:01:00.000-05:00

Don't let the pink elephant on the roof distract you...

El perro del mar

2006-07-04T12:47:00.000-05:00

(suspiro ante la belleza)

¿fractales o poesía?

2006-07-03T10:34:00.000-05:00

http://www.revistazunai.com.br/poemas/visuais_daniel_solache.htm

D.A. = 42

2006-06-29T13:31:00.000-05:00

Para descubrir el significado verdadero de lo que es la vida, el mundo, el porqué estamos aquí, a dónde vamos, etc. no hay más que leer lo siguiente:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)
Life, the Universe and Everything (1982)
So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish (1984)
Mostly Harmless (1992)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a concept for a science-fiction comedy radio series pitched by Adams and radio producer Simon Brett to BBC Radio 4 in 1977. Adams came up with an outline for a pilot episode, as well as a few other stories (reprinted in Neil Gaiman's book Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion) that could potentially be used in the series. According to Adams, the idea for the title The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy occurred to him while he lay drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria (though he joked that the BBC would instead claim it was Spain "because it's easier to spell" ), gazing at the stars. He had been wandering the countryside while carrying a book called the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe when he ran into a town where, as he humorously describes, everyone was either "deaf" and "dumb" or only spoke languages he couldn't. After wandering around and drinking for a while, he went to sleep in the middle of a field and was inspired by his inability to communicate with the townspeople. He later said that due to his constantly retelling this story of inspiration, he no longer had any memory of the moment of inspiration itself, and only remembered his retellings of that moment. A postscript to M. J. Simpson's biography of Adams, Hitchhiker, provides evidence that the story was in fact a fabrication and that Adams had conceived the idea some time after his trip around Europe. Despite the original outline, Adams was said to make up the stories as he wrote.

Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. The commemoration was first held in 2001, two weeks after his death on May 11, and since then has been extended to an annual event. On this day, fans carry a towel with them throughout the day. The towel is a reference to Adams's popular science fiction comedy series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

De 1981

Chéquense tambien The meaning of liff y The deepper meaning of liff

Never, ever, ever, ever forget your towel

y sí, 42, what else did you expect?

Un australiano dijo...

2006-06-29T13:17:00.000-05:00

Un amigo de un amigo australiano una vez escribió...

If you sell your soul to cure a scratch, then what will you have that will itch?

book community

2006-06-27T10:33:00.000-05:00

people come together for all sorts of similarities in their personalities...
what they do or don't do...

Now, a webpage that endorses the similarities and differences in the most solitary of all activities, and the one that makes us be more humane than any action done with another being... READING....

www.librarything.com

(we aint bookworms... we are book lovers)

Antony & Coco rosie

2006-06-23T14:12:00.000-05:00

Cocorosie

2006-06-23T14:07:00.000-05:00

G-E-R-U-N-D-I-O

2006-06-22T11:39:00.000-05:00

(la prohibición de los gerundios)

(Es inconsciente, es subsconsciente, es absurdo, es irracional... pero diablos... me encantan los gerundios, no existe otro tiempo verbal que contenga tanta pasión duradera, tan inmediata y contínua, tan maravillosa... I'm a sucker for gerundios....)
(¿necesitando ayuda gerundial?)

gerundio.

(Del lat. gerundĭum).

1. m. Gram. Forma invariable no personal del verbo, cuya terminación regular, en español, es -ando en los verbos de la primera conjugación, -iendo o -yendo en los de la segunda y tercera. Amando, temiendo, partiendo. Suele denotar acción o estado durativos. Estoy leyendo. Seguiré trabajando. Tiene más generalmente carácter adverbial, y puede expresar modo, condición, tiempo, motivo, concesión y otras circunstancias. Vino corriendo. Hablando se entiende la gente. Se emplea a veces en construcciones absolutas. Consultando el diccionario, descubrí esa palabra

~ compuesto.

1. m. Gram. El que se forma con el gerundio del verbo haber y el participio del verbo que se conjuga. Habiendo estado

(La pregunta sería.... ¿FernANDO es gerundio?)

gol egaugnal ehT

2006-06-20T10:50:00.000-05:00

with the Blablabla and hu?
the what and mostly the WHY of words...

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/

enjoy...

Fever

2006-06-20T09:43:00.000-05:00

Once in a while you find a song that just... makes you feel good...
ever since it was composed by Eddie Cooley/John Davenport the versions have just turned people hornier and happier and well, more feverish...
here are some of my favorites

Elvis Presley
Eva Cassidy
Diana Krall
Peggy Lee
Ella Fitzgerald
Maria Muldaur
Madonna (disco mix)
Ray Charles
Toots and the Maytals (de las favoritas)
Pussycat Dolls

y the all time favorite.... La Lupe

What, or whom gives YOU fever?

JUEGOS TEATRALES

2006-06-14T18:46:00.000-05:00

Juegos Teatrales

Introducción

Actualmente en la ciudad de Sao Paulo, Brasil, existe un proyecto gubernamental con el nombre de Teatro Vocacional; en éste se han abierto más de cuarenta y cinco grupos amateurs de teatro en distintas zonas urbanas, y se trabaja con la metodología denominada juegos teatrales. A cuatro años de su fundación, se ha visto que los alumnos han adquirido un poder creativo y una criticidad de su propia realidad, al ser analizada desde un punto de vista teatral como pretexto para las mismas escenificaciones.
Los juegos teatrales son una metodología creada por Viola Spolin, basada en las innovaciones de Stanislavski sobre los quehaceres teatrales, y en el aspecto del teatro social de Bertold Brecht, en la que los alumnos absorben la dimensión transformadora de un mirar crítico sobre el mundo y las relaciones establecidas, a través de la formulación y creación de formatos de ficción.

Al conocer el proyecto de “Teatro Vocacional” en Brasil, sentí la necesidad de un aproximación del mismo para la población mexicana. México necesita una metodología de enseñanza teatral que se adapte a distintos estratos sociales, para su proceso crítico y desarrollo, Un espacio en el que la creación y la posibilidad sea lo principal, abriendo un paradigma al que no están acostumbrados, mediante la realización teatral y los juegos como herramienta fundamental.
Me acerqué al Departamento de Letras con dicha idea, para concretarla y mediante el servicio social, llevarla a cabo.
Uniendo mis conocimientos en el tema, con las facultades del Departamento y gracias al apoyo de Luis Inclán, el proyecto comenzó a andar.

Objetivos del proyecto

Posibilitar que los miembros de comunidades rurales se conviertan en agentes de su propia realidad, a través del ejercicio de ficcionalización.
Introducir elementos de extrañamiento en las reglas de juegos de construcción escénica con el fin de crear dificultades para la formación estética y así, potencializar su conciencia.
Posibilitar, a través de reglas claras en la conducción de los juegos de construcción escénica, la configuración de imágenes.
Trabajar con estructuras pequeñas, para propiciar la experiencia sistemática de creación de estructuras ficticias, y así lograr su comunicación, desde el primer contacto con el lenguaje teatral.
Crear conciencia sobre la individualidad y el valor que cada persona tiene, la importancia del trabajo grupal y del ser parte de una comunidad.
Redescubrir la significación del juego como puente para la creación.

Impacto en la población atendida

El servicio social de juegos teatrales se realizó en distintas comunidades dentro del municipio de Cuitláhuac, Veracruz. Estas comunidades tienen un nivel socioeconómico bajo, rurales y con un nivel de educación por demás triste.
El porcentaje de ciudadanos que terminan la primaria es mínima, secundaria y preparatoria aún más, sin hablar de los casi inexistentes universitarios.
La economía de la región depende del cultivo del limón y de la caña de azúcar. Por desgracia, las transacciones mercantiles de sus cultivos llegan a cifras ridículas de 8 pesos por cada veinte kilos de limón, y veinte pesos por la tonelada de caña.
Algunos de estos pueblos están casi incomunicados con los demás y sus rutas son de muy difícil acceso. Aún así, sus habitantes tienen una sed por el conocimiento, por el saber, por la estimulación de cualquier tipo.

A través de los talleres realizados dentro de las comunidades vi cómo las personas se transformaban. Obviamente la primera comunidad fue en la que más dificultades tuvimos, pero posteriormente se corría la voz y nos pedían que fuéramos a lugares que estaban fuera del itinerario de trabajo.
La mayoría de los hombres de estas comunidades parten hacia los Estados Unidos, siendo ésta la única posibilidad de desarrollo económico, a pesar de las dificultades y peligros que afrontan. En una comunidad, dos hombres entablaron una conversación ficticia en la que narraban sus experiencias en el extranjero, proyectando sus miedos y añoranzas vivenciadas; todo a través del juego.
En otra comunidad durante un juego en el que debían crear objetos, la mayoría creo objetos musicales, aunque nunca antes habían tenido una relación directa con ellos.
Al finalizar el taller y agradecerles a todos su participación, ellos mismos crearon un juego en el que los pobladores eran una cadena, y que como tal, cada eslabón debía detener a los demás, ayudarle a los demás; de esta forma conformaron su sentido de comunidad, de pertenencia a un grupo.
Los pobladores mencionaron una y otra vez que querían continuar jugando, creando, encontrando ese otro espacio dentro de su cotidianidad que no sabían existía. Y que ellos, tras nuestra marcha, continuarían jugando y compartiendo con las enseñanzas que les habíamos transmitido.

Desarrollo

Seleccioné a cuatro estudiantes de distintas carreras (Psicología, Relaciones Internacionales e Ingeniería Industrial) los cuales me parecían los más adecuados para un proyecto experimental.
Las primeras dos semanas del servicio se utilizaron para capacitación, dentro de la UIA. En este tiempo, trabajamos ocho horas diarias para enseñarles la dinámica de los juegos teatrales, y cómo trasmitir dicho conocimiento.
Dentro de la capacitación surgieron muchos problemas, ya que un taller de este tipo generalmente se da con sesiones semanales, para que exista tiempo de análisis y asimilación de lo visto en las mismas. Así que fue un periodo sumamente intenso en el que tuve que resolver problemas que no se habían presentado en otros talleres que había impartido anteriormente con el grupo de juegos teatrales Gosjues de Tacabú. (Durante el semestre de primavera 2005 conformé un grupo con estudiantes de distintas carreras; con reuniones semanales abrí su espectro del juego y del teatro a través de ésta metodología, llegando a la creación de los propios juegos, y a participar dentro de una feria por los derechos de los animales).

Desde el taller de capacitación, tuve que analizar paso a paso las problemáticas que surgían: los bloqueos de los alumnos, la falta de confianza y el conformar un grupo como tal que trabajaría durante los siguientes dos meses. Esto se concretó a partir de juegos distintos con adaptaciones que sugirieran el problema, de platicas individuales en las que los alumnos demostraron sus miedos y que posteriormente se sopesaban para encontrar las soluciones.
Realizamos expediciones de reconocimiento por las comunidades, para adecuar nuestros planes de trabajo. En cada comunidad se daría un taller de cuatro días, trabajando cuatro horas diarias.

Generalmente los talleres teatrales tienen un espacio y tiempo determinados para llegar a una escenificación. Sin embargo, para lograr nuestro objetivo de abarcar el máximo número de comunidades, así como de personas, era necesario adaptar la metodología.

El primer problema era la selección de los juegos, ¿cuáles se enseñarían y con qué propósito? El segundo fue ¿cómo enseñar juegos teatrales sin el propósito de la escenificación? El tercer problema fue ¿cómo acercarse a las comunidades con dichos juegos?
Los juegos escogidos para las sesiones se dividieron en cuestiones individuales y sociales; el reconocimiento del cuerpo de uno mismo, del cuerpo del otro, abarcando los cinco sentidos, el trabajo grupal, el sentido de comunidad, la imaginación, la creatividad, etc.
Para personas que no están acostumbradas a este tipo de actividades, es sumamente difícil tener un acercamiento y un espacio de confianza y de viabilidad dentro del que circule la enseñanza.

Trabajo en las comunidades

Impartimos ocho talleres en siete comunidades dentro del municipio de Cuitlahuac, a aproximadamente 250 personas en total, incluyendo niños y personas de la tercera edad.
El acercamiento al juego fue un momento difícil ya que la mayoría de los talleristas eran adultos, por lo que al comienzo de cada taller se hacía una reflexión sobre lo que son los juegos, para qué sirven, por qué los niños juegan y cuál es la importancia de volver a ellos.
Dentro de los juegos teatrales, la parte fundamental es la evaluación posterior a todos los juegos, el análisis de lo sucedido. Aquí surgió una verdadera dificultad ya que las personas no estaban acostumbradas a responder preguntas sobre sí mismas, sobre lo vivenciado dentro de un espacio alterno al de la rutina diaria.
Adaptamos las preguntas para que se volvieran más concretas y de esta manera las personas, poco a poco, se abrieran a compartir sus vivencias.
Por ejemplo, en vez de preguntarles ¿qué sintieron? Se le preguntaba a una persona específica ¿cómo se sintió tu espalda al jugar tal juego?

En cada sesión se pedía que un cierto número de personas trajera al día siguiente un protocolo, el cual refleja la elaboración de los acontecimientos de cada día de trabajo y problematiza cuestiones especificas de la creación estética. Todo protocolo debe tener una perspectiva que apunte hacia la continuidad y transformación del proceso. El término protocolo fue creado por el dramaturgo Bertold Brecht debido a sus piezas didácticas.
Al término de las sesiónes, coordinaba un análisis con los estudiantes de la UIA sobre los resultados y las problemáticas que surgieron dentro de la misma.
Obviamente la responsabilidad de un proyecto de mi propia creación fue un peso sumamente arduo con el que cargar, pero trabajando en equipo, apoyándome en mis conocimientos y en mis compañeros, cada uno de los talleres terminaba con agradecimientos y con lágrimas.

Reflexión personal y conclusiones

Ver cómo un sueño y un proyecto que se ha planeado durante más de un año se vuelve realidad no tiene palabras para describirse, aunado a que fue un éxito.
Transmitir un conocimiento, para que a su vez sea transmitido es un regalo que no se puede equiparar con nada.
En las comunidades las personas demostraron su añoro por experiencias de éste tipo, en una, una mujer dijo que ella planeaba continuar con los juegos teatrales, con reuniones semanales para recordar lo vivenciado y continuar teniendo experiencias nuevas. En otra comunidad una mujer mayor, con lágrimas en los ojos me explicó que cuando era niña sus papás no le permitían correr y saltar por miedo a que se lastimara, así que la oportunidad que le brindó el taller fue vivir algo que pensó que había perdido para siempre.
Las amistades que formé en esos dos meses, con personas tan distintas a mi me han hecho crecer y apreciar las oportunidades que tengo, al igual que compartirlas.
Dos meses después del servicio social, volví a las comunidades de Cuitlahuac para visitar, la recepción fue impresionante. Todos me saludaban en la calle, me decían que no podían creer que regresé, que no me hubiera olvidado de ellos, y por supuesto, ellos no habían olvidado sus vivencias, compartiéndolas con la gente que no estuvo a través de platicas y recreaciones.
Lo fundamental dentro de una experiencia como ésta, no es únicamente ir a enseñar, si no ir a aprender, ya que personas que podrían parecer tan ajenas a tú realidad, tienen un potencial impresionante.
Aprendí a hacer mole de rancho, a hacer tamales, jabón casero y que no importa lo poco que tengas, la hospitalidad existirá, que no importa el nivel de educación, ya que como ser humano, tienes algo que enseñar.

Éste servicio social es el comienzo de un proyecto mayor, es el primer ladrillo dentro de lo que quiero formar, talleres de juegos teatrales por toda la ciudad, y posteriormente, por todo el país, para brindar a nuestros conciudadanos la oportunidad de expresarse a través de los juegos y del teatro.

YIIIIPPPPPIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-06-14T14:26:00.000-05:00

quizás demasiado personal... pero... no pude evitarlo

¡¡¡GANE PRIMER LUGAR EN EL RECONOCIMIENTO AL MEJOR SERVICIO SOCIAL!!!

Douglas Adam's was Right!!!

2006-06-14T14:08:00.000-05:00

to all unbeliever's of the truths depicted in the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and its incredible wisdom, all I can say is: HA!

HOW TO BUILD A BABEL FISH Jun 8th 2006 (de The Economist) Translation software: The science-fiction dream of a machine that understands any language is getting slowly closer IT IS arguably the most useful gadget in the space-farer's toolkit. In "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams depicted it as a "small, yellow and leech-like" fish, called a Babel fish, that you stick in your ear. In "Star Trek", meanwhile, it is known simply as the Universal Language Translator. But whatever you call it, there is no doubting the practical value of a device that is capable of translating any language into another. Remarkably, however, such devices are now on the verge of becoming a reality, thanks to new "statistical machine translation" software. Unlike previous approaches to machine translation, which relied upon rules identified by linguists which then had to be tediously hand-coded into software, this new method requires absolutely no linguistic knowledge or expert understanding of a language in order to translate it. And last month researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh began work on a machine that they hope will be able to learn a new language simply by getting foreign speakers to talk into it and perhaps, eventually, by watching television. Within the next few years there will be an explosion in translation technologies, says Alex Waibel, director of the International Centre for Advanced Communication Technology, which is based jointly at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany and at CMU. He predicts there will be real-time automatic dubbing, which will let people watch foreign films or television programmes in their native languages, and search engines that will enable users to trawl through multilingual archives of documents, videos and audio files. And, eventually, there may even be electronic devices that work like Babel fish, whispering translations in your ear as someone speaks to you in a foreign tongue. This may sound fanciful, but already a system has been developed that can translate speeches or lectures from one language into another, in real time and regardless of the subject matter. The system required no programming of grammatical rules or syntax. Instead it was given a vast number of speeches, and their accurate translations (performed by humans) into a second language, for statistical analysis. One of the reasons it works so well is that these speeches came from the United Nations and the European Parliament, where a broad range of topics are discussed. "The linguistic knowledge is automatically extracted from these huge data resources," says Dr Waibel. Statistical translation encompasses a range of techniques, but what they all have in common is the use of statistical analysis, rather than rigid rules, to convert text from one language into another. Most systems start with a large bilingual corpus of text. By analysing the frequency with which clusters of words appear in close proximity in the two languages, it is possible to work out which words correspond to each other in the two languages. This approach offers much greater flexibility than rule-based systems, since it translates languages based on how they are actually used, rather than relying on rigid grammatical rules which may not always be observed, and often have exceptions. Examples abound of the ridiculous results produced by rule-based systems, which are unable to cope in the face of similes, ambiguities or bad grammar. In one example, a sentence written in Arabic meaning "The White House confirmed the existence of a new bin Laden tape" was translated using a standard rule-based translator and became "Alpine white new presence tape registered for coffee confirms Laden." So it is hardly surprising that researchers in the field have migrated towards statistical translation in the past few years, says Dr Waibel. NOW YOU'RE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE The statistical approach, which starts off without any linguistic knowledge of a language, might seem a strange way of doing things, but it is actually remarkably similar to the way humans attempt to translate languages, says Shou-de Lin, a machine-translation expert who was until recently a researcher at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISI). "It looks at the script and bunches symbols together," he explains, much as a human mind might try to solve the problem. But in order for this approach to work, the voracious translation systems must be fed with huge numbers of training texts. This prompted Franz Och, Google's machine-translation expert, to boast recently that the search-engine giant would probably have a key role in the future of machine translation, since it has such a huge repository of text. Translation systems are of limited use if they cannot be used by people on the move, such as tourists looking for a restaurant or soldiers talking to local people in a war zone. So what is on the cards to replace the good old-fashioned phrasebook? In the past couple of years the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an American military research body, has been testing a number of projects that cram a combination of speech-recognition, machine-translation and voice-synthesis software into a handheld device. One of these projects, developed at CMU and called Babylon, can now perform two-way translations between spoken English and Iraqi Arabic. FROM BABYLON TO BABEL FISH This is a huge improvement on the earlier one-way text-based translators used by American soldiers, says Alan Black, one of the researchers involved in the development of Babylon. For one thing, Iraqis can respond in their native language, rather than communicating through nods and shakes of the head, he says. Better still, Babylon is capable of translating completely novel sentences, rather than being limited to only a couple of hundred set phrases, as with the earlier systems. It is still far from perfect, says Dr Black. But that is hardly surprising given the limited processing power of a hand-held computer. By comparison, the hardware used to run the lecture translator looks almost like a supercomputer, he says. The trade-off is that these hand-held systems tend to be "domain specific"--that is, they work well as long as the conversation is limited to a particular topic. The next phase of the project, says Dr Black, will be to allow portable translation devices to be trained in the field. The idea is that when a traveller encounters people speaking a new language that is unknown by the translation device, it can be trained by exposing the software to lots of chatter. In theory, once a language model has been acquired, you could just leave the device in training mode in front of the television, although it would probably be preferable to find some bilingual people and ask them to repeat set phrases containing a lot of linguistic information, says Dr Black. Learning a new language from scratch, as humans can, is far more difficult than statistical translation using parallel texts. But since the number of high-quality parallel texts is limited, particularly for more obscure languages, a lot of effort is now being put into the development of statistical translation systems that can manage without them. Instead, the aim is to use statistical techniques to divine the language's inherent structure, and then to work out what particular words mean. If this could be done, of course, it would open the way to a universal translator. How far can machine translators be taken? "There is no reason why they should not become as good, if not better, than humans," says Dr Waibel. Indeed, Dr Lin and his colleague Kevin Knight at ISI have been applying statistical translation techniques to try to make sense of ancient hieroglyphics and scriptures that have baffled scholars for centuries. One example is a 15th-century work known as the Voynich manuscript, which is written in an unknown and mysterious language. Its length, of around 20,000 words, and the regular patterns in its syntax, mean it is unlikely to be a hoax, says Dr Knight. One theory is that it was written in a known language but using a novel alphabet. Some people have suggested that it is actually written in a form of ancient Ukrainian in which vowels are omitted. Dr Knight has used a statistical-translation program to debunk this theory by showing that the order and frequencies of symbols do not match those in Ukrainian. This was not particularly surprising, says Dr Knight, because most scholars now reject the Ukrainian theory. But it was a small victory for him, because it let him test his translation software on the closest thing he could get to an alien language. "We wanted to translate documents that had never been seen before," he says. Provided there is some common frame reference in the subject matter, there is no reason why translating an alien language should not eventually be possible, says Dr Waibel. Most of the time, the languages that machine-translation researchers deal with in their laboratories are so unfamiliar that they may as well be alien, he says. "As a joke, one of the students built a Klingon translator," he says, referring to the fictional alien language in "Star Trek". But perhaps the best way to practice translating an alien language would be to try to communicate with dolphins, says Dr Black. By using statistical translation programs to analyse the chirps, clicks and whistles of wild dolphins off the coast of the Bahamas, he and his colleagues believe it may be possible to make sense of what the dolphins are saying. The challenge here lies in both capturing good samples and also identifying "words". Only then can the structure and frequency be analysed, he says. So far, Dr Black and his team have managed to identify only signature whistles, the calls that dolphins use to identify themselves. But Douglas Adams's suggestion that fish-like creatures might provide the key to understanding alien languages might turn out to be true after all.

enciclopedia del absurdo

2006-06-12T12:14:00.000-05:00

www.inciclopedia.wikia.com

unánomos a la ignorancia colectiva, con un toque de absurdo y lo que sea más....

...

2006-06-12T10:48:00.000-05:00

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org

nudity + bycicles = perfect sport

2006-06-09T16:20:00.000-05:00

It has been done before, and it will be done afterwards... but its still an event that you cannot miss (especially a week before teh gay parade)...

I am talking about a bike run thru México City, on bike.. naaaaked. yeah!

the run starts at 12 from the 0 km in front of pabellón polanco, will take reforma an on to the zocalo.

obviously besides for sunscreen, and a bike, you should take a helmet and shoes, so you dont hurt your feet.

Lets all get naked in defense of cyclists all over the world!!!!

www.worldnakedbikeride.org
http://www.marcharodadamundialciclistaaldesnudodf.org/

H

2006-06-09T13:51:00.000-05:00

H SE ESCRIBE CON H
- HACHE

JA

THE COOLEST TOYS....

2006-06-08T10:24:00.000-05:00

www.picocricket.com

glu glu glu... BUUUURP

2006-06-08T10:12:00.000-05:00

Due to overproduction of wine, the European Union agreed that 79 million gallons of french wine and 69 gallos of italian wine be distillend into undrinkable, industrial-grade alcohol.
All this to avoid a tidal wave of wine and a collapse of global wine prices...

Seriously thou... if they dont wnat their wine, I'll take it, or you, or we can have an olympic pool filled with wine and swim and get drunk out of our minds... wouldnt that be nice?
who cares about the economy of wine production when we can swim in french wine?

its a shame that governments don't think of fun adventures with their overproduction...

d...e...b...a...t...e...

2006-06-07T12:13:00.000-05:00

blabla bleblu blibloblabla bla democracia blable blabla narcotráfico bleblublablabla gobernabilidad blublablablebli imigración bleblablabla bli bla blablabla inseguridad ¿blablable? bli blu bla blablabla ¡BLA!
bliblublablabla

ranasranasranasranasranasranasranasranas

2006-06-07T11:25:00.000-05:00

To Stem Widespread Extinction, Scientists Airlift Frogs in Carry-On Bags (del NYTimes)

By BRENDA GOODMAN ATLANTA, June 5 — Of all the things airport security screeners have discovered as they rifle through travelers' luggage, the suitcases full of frogs were a first. In a race to save amphibians threatened by an encroaching, lethal fungus, two conservationists from Atlanta recently packed their carry-ons with frogs rescued from a Central American rain forest — squeezing some 150 to a suitcase — and requested permission from airlines to travel with them in the cabin of the plane. The frogs, snuggly swaddled in damp moss in vented plastic deli containers big enough for a small fruit salad, were perhaps the last of their kind, collected from a pristine national park that fills the bowl of El Valle, an inactive volcano in Panama. In many parts of the world, habitat loss is thought to be the biggest driver of amphibian extinctions, but the frogs in El Valle are facing a more insidious threat. A waterborne form of chytrid fungus is marching down the spine of the mountain range where they live. Scientists aren't exactly sure how the fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, kills, but it seems to break down a protein in the skin called keratin that may be important for respiration. The skin of infected animals sloughs off in layers, and within two weeks, they die. The chytrid fungus is thought to play a large role in the worldwide disappearance of amphibians, a trend terrifying to experts, who say it would be the first loss of an entire taxonomic class since the dinosaurs. Joseph R. Mendelson, curator of herpetology at Zoo Atlanta, who has discovered some 50 new species of frogs only to watch half of them become extinct in the last 15 years because of the fungus, was tired of watching helplessly as salamanders, newts and frogs were eradicated from one patch of forest after another. With the help of new data published on Feb. 28 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Karen R. Lips, a zoologist at Southern Illinois University who spent years tracking the chytrid fungus, scientists were able to predict where it would next strike. "When you can make predictions with respect to catastrophic population declines and extinctions, we all agreed you have a moral and ethical responsibility to do something about it," Dr. Mendelson said. Dr. Lips called Dr. Mendelson and Ron Gagliardo, the amphibian conservation coordinator at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, because the men have a reputation for being especially good at catching and taking care of frogs, and proposed an idea that would seem reckless to most biologists. She wanted them to collect as many frogs of as many different species as they could and move them out of El Valle as soon as possible. She estimated they had only weeks to carry out the mass frog evacuation. "We are going to over-collect hundreds of animals," Dr. Mendelson said. "That flies in the face of all conservation logic." There was no time to do the meticulous studies of behavior, reproduction, eating habits and habitat that zoologists try to conduct before moving any endangered species from its natural environment. There was not even time to figure out where to keep hundreds of frogs. "Years and years of work go into moving one species out of the environment," Dr. Mendelson said. "We decided that can't happen. There's no time for that. We had to figure out what could be done quickly and, of course, legally." They went into the forest at night, since most frogs are nocturnal, slogging down a river in hip waders and carrying powerful flashlights. After four separate trips, some lasting only 48 hours, the two men, along with a native guide who possessed stealth and fast hands, managed to gather 600 frogs, shooting for 20 males and 20 females of each species to ensure good genetic variation in their breeding colonies. To feed them, they rented a house and left piles of rotting fruit in the corners to attract flies. "It was pretty stinky," Mr. Gagliardo said. Then there were those trips through airport security. A guard in the Panama City airport was not satisfied with the letters of explanation the biologists presented, even though they included permission from the Panamanian government to collect the frogs. He had them open a container that held the Michael Jordan of jumpers, a species the biologists liked to call rocket frogs. "I open it and, sure enough, the frog goes bing!" Dr. Mendelson said. Fortunately, Mr. Gagliardo caught it before it landed on anyone in the amazed crowd that had gathered. Many of the species they brought home to their respective institutions in Atlanta have never before been kept in captivity. But Mr. Gagliardo, who has been bringing frogs home since he was 4 years old, has developed a fine touch for their husbandry and for recreating environments for them to thrive and breed. He quickly realized, for example, that a translucent species of frog collected from a cloud forest wasn't breeding because it needed, well, clouds. With a cool-misting humidifier he bought on eBay and some plastic pipe, Mr. Gagliardo filled the glass frogs' tank with a steady whisper of white water vapor. Once the tank, which sits in a corner of a behind-the-scenes room at Zoo Atlanta, was bubbling over with a creeping mist like a witch's caldron, tadpoles followed in short order. "It's a bit of a Noah's Ark, in some ways," Mr. Gagliardo said. "But it gives these species that are predicted to go a new lien on life." Not all experts, it should be noted, are fans of what has come to be called the rapid response protocol. Dr. David Wake, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said the strategy felt too much like triage. "I am alarmed at the apparent disappearance of so many amphibians in Central America," Dr. Wake said. "But if the situation is so bad then much organized thought should be given to a plan for captive breeding that is not responsive to emergencies only, but that looks at all amphibians worldwide to decide where limited funds would be best spent." Not all species are equally valuable, he noted, and not all are equally at risk. Still, in an apparent validation of their tactics, Dr. Mendelson said the chytrid fungus had recently been found in El Valle, as predicted, and he estimated 90 percent of the frogs there would be gone within 90 days. "You won't hear scientists say this too often," Dr. Mendelson said. "But I wish we were wrong."

celulas... no celulares...

2006-06-07T11:20:00.000-05:00

2 New Efforts to Develop Stem Cell Line for Study
(del NYtimes)

By NICHOLAS WADE
Scientists at two universities — Harvard and the University of California, San Francisco — will try to develop embryonic stem cells from the adult cells of patients suffering from certain diseases.

Their purposes in creating the cell lines, which require making an early human embryo, are to study how the diseases develop and also to see if replacement cells can be generated to repair the patient's own degenerating tissues. But the field, despite its much emphasized promise, faces many serious uncertainties.

"Clinical applications may be a decade or more away," said George Q. Daley, a Harvard expert on blood diseases.

Harvard announced its plans yesterday at a news conference; the University of California, San Francisco, did so less conspicuously a month ago, resuming a program abandoned in 2001. Both universities, having received required approvals, will at first obtain the human eggs needed for cloning from fertility clinics, starting with eggs deemed too low quality to produce a successful pregnancy. Both programs are privately financed because federal support for human stem cell research is available only for cell lines made before August 9, 2001.

Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., also has a human nuclear transfer program "well under way," said Robert Lanza, the company's vice president, but has run into problems in recruiting egg donors. Under guidelines issued by the National Academy of Sciences, which are voluntary but widely observed, donors may not be paid anything beyond expenses.

The new efforts, if successful, would accomplish what the disgraced South Korean scientist Woo-Suk Hwang claimed he had achieved in articles published in Science in 2004 and 2005. Both papers turned out to be based on forged data. But the flaws remained undetected by scientists involved in the cloning field, raising doubts about the rigor and expertise with which the new field was being conducted. The problems came to light not through criticism by scientific peers, but only after a whistle-blower in Dr. Hwang's lab contacted a Seoul television station.

The University of California, San Francisco, said last month that one of its researchers, Renee Reijo Pera, would start the cloning procedure, which involves transferring the nucleus of an adult cell into an unfertilized egg whose own nucleus has been removed.

A composite egg of this kind should develop in glassware into an early embryo, or blastocyst, from which embryonic stem cells could be isolated. There is no evident reason why this should not work in people as it has already done in several animal species, yet so far no one has succeeded. Dr. Hwang used no less than 2,000 fresh eggs donated by a healthy women but failed to accomplish anything useful.

Dr. Reijo Pera will switch to using donated eggs if those rejected by fertility clinics do not work, a university spokeswoman said. Harvard researchers said yesterday that they too would seek to derive eggs from healthy donors in the future.

Dr. Lanza, of Advanced Cell Technology, said that freshly harvested human eggs were "much better" for nuclear transfer experiments but that a six-month campaign by his company to recruit donors "appears to be a losing effort."

Many women had come forward, saying they would donate their eggs for research without compensation but, after seeing the battery of tests required, "most of the donors change their mind once they realize what's involved," Dr. Lanza said.

If research should establish that replacement tissues can be developed for a patient through the nuclear transfer technique, probably tens or hundreds of donated human eggs would be needed for each operation. Some scientists regard such a requirement as impractical, arguing that researchers should learn how to reprogram an adult cell's nucleus back to embryonic state without the use of human eggs. But this requires a far deeper understanding of human cells than is yet at hand.

Three Harvard scientists described their proposed research yesterday, promising not to discuss it further in public until they had firm results ready to be published. Dr. Daley hopes to develop, via nuclear transfer, embryonic stem cells from patients with blood diseases. He will try to correct the genetic defect behind the disease, then develop blood stem cells that could be engrafted in the patient's marrow.

The two other scientists, Douglas Melton and Kevin Eggan, said they would develop embryonic stem cell lines from diabetic patients, hoping to understand the development of the disease from its earliest moments at the cellular level.

Digital writers... or readers?

2006-06-06T11:32:00.000-05:00

Digital Publishing Is Scrambling the Industry's Rules
By MOTOKO RICH
From NYTimes, june 5

When Mark Z. Danielewski's second novel, "Only Revolutions," is published in September, it will include hundreds of margin notes listing moments in history suggested online by fans of his work. Nearly 60 of his contributors have already received galleys of the experimental book, which they're commenting about in a private forum at Mr. Danielewski's Web site, www.onlyrevolutions.com.
Yochai Benkler, a Yale University law professor and author of the new book "The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom" (Yale University Press), has gone even farther: his entire book is available — free — as a download from his Web site. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people have accessed the book electronically, with some of them adding comments and links to the online version.
Mr. Benkler said he saw the project as "simply an experiment of how books might be in the future." That is one of the hottest debates in the book world right now, as publishers, editors and writers grapple with the Web's ability to connect readers and writers more quickly and intimately, new technologies that make it easier to search books electronically and the advent of digital devices that promise to do for books what the iPod has done for music: making them easily downloadable and completely portable.
Not surprisingly, writers have greeted these measures with a mixture of enthusiasm and dread. The dread was perhaps most eloquently crystallized last month in Washington at BookExpo, the publishing industry's annual convention, when the novelist John Updike forcefully decried a digital future composed of free downloads of books and the mixing and matching of "snippets" of text, calling it a "grisly scenario."
Hovering above the discussion of all these technologies is the fear that the publishing industry could be subject to the same upheaval that has plagued the music industry, where digitalization has started to displace the traditional artistic and economic model of the record album with 99-cent song downloads and personalized playlists. Total album sales are down 19 percent since 2001, while CD sales have dropped 16 percent during the same period, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Sales of single digital music tracks have jumped more than 1,700 percent in just two years. What writers think about technological developments in the literary world has a lot to do with where they are sitting at the moment. As a researcher and scholar, Anne Fadiman, author of "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" and "Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader," thinks a digital library of all books would be a "godsend" during research, allowing her to "sniff out all the paragraphs" on a given topic. But, she said: "That's not reading. For reading, you have to read a book in its entirety and I think there's no substitute for the look and feel and smell of a real book — the magic of the paper and thread and glue."
Others have a much less fixed notion of books. Lisa Scottoline, the author of 13 thrillers, the most recent of which, "Dirty Blonde," spent four weeks on the New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list earlier this spring, offers the first chapter or two of each book on her Web site; and her publisher, HarperCollins, hands out "samplers" of a few chapters of her titles in bookstores. Any of these formats are fine with her, she says. Whether its "paper, pulp, gold rimmed or digitized, I don't think you can take away from the best stories," she said.
Liberating books from their physical contexts could make it easier for them to blend into one another, a concept heralded by Kevin Kelly in an article in The New York Times Magazine last month. "Once text is digital, books seep out of their bindings and weave themselves together," wrote Mr. Kelly in an article that was derided by Mr. Updike in his BookExpo polemic. "The collective intelligence of a library allows us to see things we can't see in a single, isolated book."
"Does that mean 'Anna Karenina' goes hand in hand with my niece's blog of her trip to Las Vegas?" asked Jane Hamilton, author of "The Book of Ruth" and a forthcoming novel, "When Madeline Was Young." "It sounds absolutely deadly." Reading books as isolated works is precisely what she wants to do, she said. "When I read someone like Willa Cather, I feel like I'm in the presence of the divine," Ms. Hamilton said. "I don't want her mixed up with anybody else. And I certainly don't want to go to her Web site."
For unknown authors struggling to capture the attention of busy readers, however, the Web offers an unprecedented way to catapult out of obscurity. Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer who started a political blog, "Unclaimed Territory," just eight months ago, was recruited by a foundation financed by Working Assets, a credit card issuer and telecommunications company, to write a book this spring. Mr. Greenwald promoted the result, called "How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values From a President Run Amok," on his own blog and his publisher e-mailed digital galleys to seven other influential bloggers, who helped to send it to the No. 1 spot on Amazon.com before it was even published. This Sunday it will hit No. 11 on the New York Times nonfiction paperback best-seller list. "I think people who are sort of on the outside of the institutions and new voices entering will be a lot more excited about this technology," Mr. Greenwald said. "That's one of the effects that technology always has. It democratizes things and brings in new readers and new authors."
For many authors, the question of how technology will shape book publishing inevitably leads to the question of how writers will be paid. Currently, publishers pay authors an advance against royalties, which are conventionally earned at the rate of 15 percent of the cover price of each copy sold.
But the Internet makes it a lot easier to spread work free. "I've had pieces put up on Web sites legally and otherwise that get hundreds of thousands of hits, and believe me I sit around thinking 'Boy, if I got a dollar every time that somebody posted an op-ed that I wrote, I'd be a very happy writer,' " said Daniel Mendelsohn, author of the forthcoming book "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million," a memoir about his hunt to discover what happened to relatives who were killed in the Holocaust.
Mr. Mendelsohn said he understood that technological shakeups take time to play out, and that he can't bemoan every lost penny. "But as an author who creates texts that people consume, I want my authorship to be recognized and I want to get compensated," he said.
Mr. Benkler, the Yale professor and author, argues that people will continue to pay for books if the price is low enough. "Even in music, price can compete with free," Mr. Benkler said. "The service has to be sufficiently better and the moral culture needs to be one where, as an act of respect, when the price is reasonable, you pay. Its not clear to me why, if people are willing to pay 99 cents for a song they won't be willing to pay $3 for a book."
He argues that without the costs of paper and physical book production, publishers could afford to give authors a higher cut of the sale price as royalties.
In the context of history, the changes that today's technology will impose on literary society may not be as earth-shattering as some may think. In fact, books themselves are a relatively new construct, inheritors of a longstanding oral storytelling culture. Mass-produced books are an even newer phenomenon, enabled by the invention of the printing press that likely put legions of calligraphers and bookbinders out of business.
That history gives great comfort to writers like Vikram Chandra, whose 1,000-page novel, "Sacred Games," will be published in January. Mr. Chandra, a former computer programmer who already reads e-books downloaded to his pocket personal computer, said he saw no point in resisting technology. "I think circling the wagons and defending the fortress metaphors are a little misplaced," he said. "The barbarians at the gate are usually willing to negotiate a little, and the guys in the fort usually end up yelling that 'we are the only good things in the world and you guys don't understand it,' at which point the barbarians shrug, knock down your walls with their amazingly powerful weapons, and put a parking lot over your sacred grounds.
"If they are in a really good mood," he added, "they put up a pyramid of skulls."
Mr. Danielewski said that the physical book would persist as long as authors figure out ways to stretch the format in new ways. "Only Revolutions," he pointed out, tracks the experiences of two intersecting characters, whose narratives begin at different ends of the book, requiring readers to turn it upside down every eight pages to get both of their stories. "As excited as I am by technology, I'm ultimately creating a book that can't exist online," he said. "The experience of starting at either end of the book and feeling the space close between the characters until you're exactly at the halfway point is not something you could experience online. I think that's the bar that the Internet is driving towards: how to further emphasize what is different and exceptional about books."

¡Miren al pepíno...!

2006-06-02T14:30:00.000-05:00

Como se mueve... como un león tras un ratón... poor tomate, he can´t dance like the cucumber...

Black hole...

2006-06-01T13:52:00.000-05:00

currently inside a black hole... dissapearing.... inside...

Revista dF sucks duro!!!

2006-05-31T15:02:00.000-05:00

DoGs iN sTyLe... La maravillosa era de la ridiculez canina...

2006-05-30T17:22:00.000-05:00

Las imagenes dicen más que mil palabras...

La transparencia del espíritu traducida al cuerpo... ¿o no?

2006-05-30T17:17:00.000-05:00

CAST NO SHADOWS
May 25th 2006 (de The Economist)

How to weave a cloak that makes you invisible

IN NORSE mythology, a magic cloak granted invisibility to Sigurd, a
demi-god and skilled warrior with superhuman strength. Millennia later,
a similar garment bestowed invisibility on Harry Potter, a schoolboy
wizard. In the mortal (or Muggle) realm, engineers have for years tried
with varying degrees of success to build such a device. This week a
team of physicists and materials scientists announced it had devised a
pattern for a potentially perfect invisibility cloak.

Light is an electromagnetic wave, with a longer wavelength than X-rays
and ultraviolet, and a shorter wavelength than infra-red, microwaves
and radio waves. All these electromagnetic waves are governed by four
mathematical expressions established almost 150 years ago by James
Clerk Maxwell. These equations represent one of the most elegant and
concise ways to state the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields and
how they interact with matter. However, because they are so concise,
they also embody a high level of mathematical sophistication.

The team--Sir John Pendry of Imperial College London with David Schurig
and David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina--used the
equations to devise a way to cloak an object with a material that would
deflect the rays that would have struck it, guide them around it and
return them to their original trajectory. Maxwell's equations conserve
certain properties--the magnetic field intensity, the electric
displacement field and the Poynting vector that describes the electric
flux of an electromagnetic field. These properties remain the same when
others are altered. The team showed how these fields could be
manipulated to flow around objects like a fluid, returning undisturbed
to their original paths. The findings were published online this week
by SCIENCE.

The trick is to use metamaterials: materials that owe their
characteristics to features of their structure that are smaller than
the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation. For light, this is on
the scale of tens of thousandths of a millimetre. Metamaterials can and
have been designed and made to possess certain properties, even
counter-intuitive ones. Using metamaterials means the scheme should
work for all objects, regardless of their shape. Moreover, unlike other
proposed invisibility cloaks, it does not require knowledge of what is
behind the wearer, nor are crude projections involved.

So far, so good: the theory is in place. Sadly, the implementation lags
behind. Moreover, there are several other difficulties that may prevent
a device conferring total invisibility from being built. The first is
that the plan described by Sir John and his colleagues works only for a
small range of wavelengths. A surgeon wearing metamaterial gloves tuned
to make his hands invisible might benefit from being able to see
exactly where the scalpel was cutting. However, an invisibility cloak
designed to hide something from people who were looking for it would
not work. An aeroplane shrouded in such kit might be invisible to the
human eye but it would be picked up readily by radar, which operates at
radio wavelengths.

Even if it ultimately proved possible to make an aeroplane completely
invisible at all wavelengths, there would be a further problem.
According to the laws of physics, an invisible person would necessarily
be blind. In order to see light, the eye must absorb it, but in order
for a person to be invisible, the body must not absorb any light. Thus,
a spy plane could not be completely invisible if it were to be used for
espionage or, indeed, flown at all, since its pilots would need to know
its position relative to the ground.

Freedom of Web!!!

2006-05-29T13:41:00.000-05:00

(del NYTimes)

Editorial Observer
Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End

Article Tools Sponsored By
By ADAM COHEN
Published: May 28, 2006

The World Wide Web is the most democratic mass medium there has ever been. Freedom of the press, as the saying goes, belongs only to those who own one. Radio and television are controlled by those rich enough to buy a broadcast license. But anyone with an Internet-connected computer can reach out to a potential audience of billions.

This democratic Web did not just happen. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who invented the Web in 1989, envisioned a platform on which everyone in the world could communicate on an equal basis. But his vision is being threatened by telecommunications and cable companies, and other Internet service providers, that want to impose a new system of fees that could create a hierarchy of Web sites. Major corporate sites would be able to pay the new fees, while little-guy sites could be shut out.

Sir Tim, who keeps a low profile, has begun speaking out in favor of "net neutrality," rules requiring that all Web sites remain equal on the Web. Corporations that stand to make billions if they can push tiered pricing through have put together a slick lobbying and marketing campaign. But Sir Tim and other supporters of net neutrality are inspiring growing support from Internet users across the political spectrum who are demanding that Congress preserve the Web in its current form.

The Web, which Sir Tim invented as a scientist at CERN, the European nuclear physics institute, is often confused with the Internet. But like e-mail, the Web runs over the system of interconnected computer networks known as the Internet. Sir Tim created the Web in a decentralized way that allowed anyone with a computer to connect to it and begin receiving and sending information.

That open architecture is what has allowed for the extraordinary growth of Internet commerce and communication. Pierre Omidyar, a small-time programmer working out of his home office, was able to set up an online auction site that anyone in the world could reach — which became eBay. The blogging phenomenon is possible because individuals can create Web sites with the World Wide Web prefix, www, that can be seen by anyone with Internet access.

Last year, the chief executive of what is now AT&T sent shock waves through cyberspace when he asked why Web sites should be able to "use my pipes free." Internet service providers would like to be able to charge Web sites for access to their customers. Web sites that could not pay the new fees would be accessible at a slower speed, or perhaps not be accessible at all.

A tiered Internet poses a threat at many levels. Service providers could, for example, shut out Web sites whose politics they dislike. Even if they did not discriminate on the basis of content, access fees would automatically marginalize smaller, poorer Web sites.

Consider online video, which depends on the availability of higher-speed connections. Internet users can now watch channels, like BBC World, that are not available on their own cable systems, and they have access to video blogs and Web sites like YouTube.com, where people upload videos of their own creation. Under tiered pricing, Internet users might be able to get videos only from major corporate channels.

Sir Tim expects that there are great Internet innovations yet to come, many involving video. He believes people at the scene of an accident — or a political protest — will one day be able to take pictures with their cellphones that could be pieced together to create a three-dimensional image of what happened. That sort of innovation could be blocked by fees for the high-speed connections required to relay video images.

The companies fighting net neutrality have been waging a misleading campaign, with the slogan "hands off the Internet," that tries to look like a grass-roots effort to protect the Internet in its current form. What they actually favor is stopping the government from protecting the Internet, so they can get their own hands on it.

But the other side of the debate has some large corporate backers, too, like Google and Microsoft, which could be hit by access fees since they depend on the Internet service providers to put their sites on the Web. It also has support from political groups of all persuasions. The president of the Christian Coalition, which is allied with Moveon.org on this issue, recently asked, "What if a cable company with a pro-choice board of directors decides that it doesn't like a pro-life organization using its high-speed network to encourage pro-life activities?"

Forces favoring a no-fee Web have been gaining strength. One group, Savetheinternet.com, says it has collected more than 700,000 signatures on a petition. Last week, a bipartisan bill favoring net neutrality, sponsored by James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, and John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, won a surprisingly lopsided vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

Sir Tim argues that service providers may be hurting themselves by pushing for tiered pricing. The Internet's extraordinary growth has been fueled by the limitless vistas the Web offers surfers, bloggers and downloaders. Customers who are used to the robust, democratic Web may not pay for one that is restricted to wealthy corporate content providers.

"That's not what we call Internet at all," says Sir Tim. "That's what we call cable TV."

BB

2006-05-29T00:19:00.000-05:00

If we are all babies, and babies have babies... who loves babies?

We must all love The BB

¡¡¡Bertoooooldo!!! (y sus compinches)

2006-05-26T06:16:00.000-05:00

La perfección canina no es mas que ser suuuuuumamente laaaaaaargo

no solo Becket usa la arena...

2006-05-25T16:27:00.000-05:00

¿cursí? si, ¿música terrible? sí
Pero es una maravilla....

www.sandfantasy.com

Taninos VS Alka Setzer

2006-05-25T14:36:00.000-05:00

La palabra aun puede rescatar a todos

2006-05-25T10:54:00.000-05:00

"La palabra aún puede rescatar a todos"

En intercambio de ideas, Roy y Galeano llaman a defender la verdad sin concesiones

DAVID BROOKS CORRESPONSAL (de La Jornada, Martes 23)

La escritores Arundhati Roy y Eduardo Galeano movilizaron las conciencias de centenas de admiradores que acudieron a escucharlos en el Town Hall, en el centro de Nueva York. Las imágenes son de archivo Fotos Reuters y La Jornada

Nueva York, 22 de mayo. Eduardo Galeano y Arundhati Roy insisten en defender la palabra, en dar nombre a las cosas y en que hablar con la verdad ante el poder aún nos puede rescatar a todos.

"Como escritores intentamos integrar este mundo desintegrado", expresa Galeano, aunque para Roy escritores como ella y su colega uruguayo "nos encontramos entre la desesperanza personal y la desesperanza pública". Como está el mundo "estamos escribiendo en una zona de guerra... a veces se siente imposible regresar al escritorio".

Su defensa de la palabra es celebrada por millones de lectores y por el hecho de que aquí se agotaron las entradas, con más de mil 500 personas que llegaron en busca de ser consoladas, nutridas o para hallar un eco a su desesperación. De ahí nace la solidaridad, por lo menos por un par de horas, en el Town Hall, en el centro de Nueva York, donde Roy y Galeano ofrecen lecturas de fragmentos de su trabajo (ella de su novela El dios de las pequeñas cosas y él de su nuevo libro de observaciones y cuentos Bocas del tiempo). Después abren un diálogo.

Dicen que son gemelos. A veces ven los mismos colores en el mundo, a veces no (el tema de uno de los cuentos del nuevo libro), pero ambos son cazadores de la verdad en un entorno inundado de engaños, mentiras, sobre todo -afirman- eso de que nada se puede hacer, de que toda alternativa a esta realidad ya ha sido anulada.

"Necesitamos pensar en una política de oposición... de portarnos como gente muy difícil que rehúsa que se nos haga esto", afirma Roy. "Sobrevivimos por la herencia de la solidaridad", piensa Galeano. El intercambio es a veces en respuesta a las preguntas del otro, a veces en respuesta a las dudas e interrogantes de cada uno.

De esta manera, los dos autores regalan sus palabras a un público de admiradores, una gama poco sorprendente de la izquierda "ilustrada" de Nueva York, junto con algunos personajes conocidos en un ámbito más grande del circuito generalmente cómodo de la "oposición" autoproclamada de este país, como el director Jonathan Demme, el cantautor David Byrne y el dramaturgo y actor Wallace Shawn. También acudieron numerosos jóvenes que despiertan guiados por la palabras de sus héroes en el escenario. Galeano y Roy complacen a los asistentes con sus acertados y articulados ataques al armamentismo, a las ocupaciones militares y a las ocupaciones por la "chequera" del capital financiero, así como el desgaste de la democracia, la creciente represión y la gran pregunta de cómo se enfrenta todo esto.

Pero fue donde aún no existen palabras o frases completas, o donde hay demasiadas dudas, lo más vital de este intercambio: las dudas, la recuperación de la solidaridad, la insistencia en la locura para enfrentar la locura, la proclamación de la rebelión, a veces serena, a veces terremoto, que compartieron con el público.

Aquí algunos fragmentos de este diálogo:

Arundhati Roy: ''Como persona involucrada en mucha actividad política de base en India, una cosa que me aterroriza es que uno siempre está destinado a luchar al lado de gente que no tiene ningún espacio para ti en su imaginario social. Es un proceso muy complicado: la primera parte de mi vida la pasé batallando como mujer en India, batallando y con la esperanza de no casarme con un hombre de mi pueblo que me pegara los fines de semana. Batallando contra la tradición, sólo para después enfrentarme con una modernidad tan horrenda. Es una cosa que espanta. (...)

"La gente lucha junta, pero quizá están soñando un sueño distinto. ¿Cómo negocias con eso? Es un trabajo extremadamente difícil, tratar de encontrar cómo caminar por ahí. ¿Quién te va a decir cuáles son las reglas? ¿Qué tan prístino quieres ser? Alguien como yo siempre está a la orilla (de los movimientos de masas). No puedes ser completamente parte de ello, sin embargo, lo apoyas."

EG: Tantas contradicciones...pero así es la vida... por eso la vida se mueve...

AR: ¡Pero Irak sigue ocupada! Tenemos que parar eso. La matanza tiene que terminar. Tenemos que encontrar la manera, y creo que en buena medida la responsabilidad es de la gente en este país. Ustedes tienen que encontrar la manera de frenarlo.

AR: En los setentas, y un poco antes, los gobiernos estadunidenses estaban ocupados derribando democracias, ahora aprendieron a vaciar la democracia. Hasta en Estados Unidos, cuando estaban Bush y Kerry (contendiendo por la presidencia), era como escoger entre marcas de jabón: ya sea que compres esta marca o aquella, todas pertenecen a Procter & Gamble.

"El movimiento antiguerra apoyó a Kerry, pero él no decía que sacaría las tropas."

EG : Este divorcio entre las palabras y los hechos trabaja contra el prestigio de la democracia y el lenguaje. Fue un gran escándalo cuando Evo (Morales) nacionalizó el gas. ¿Cuál era el imperdonable pecado? Que hizo exactamente lo que prometió hacer.

AR: Ya sea India, Sudáfrica, Brasil o Bolivia, todos tienen la amenaza de fuga de capital. El internacionalismo debe venir de que estos países se unan, porque una de las cosas buenas para el establishment, es que la democracia está dentro de las fronteras nacionales, en cambio, el capital está afuera de ellas. Tienes libre flujo de capital, pero tienes policía, fronteras militarizadas. A menos de que haya una unión entre los países del sur, el minuto en que tomes el poder estás amenazado. Habrá vuelo de capital. No es suficiente decir que esta gente es mala, porque hay un sistema que provoca que esto suceda.

EG: Para las nuevas generaciones, ¿cuáles son los modelos de éxito?, ¿las imágenes de la virtud? Mi pobre madre decía que las mentiras tienen piernas cortas. No es verdad, tienen piernas muy largas, y corren más rápido que los mentirosos.

"En las elecciones democráticas, nos entrenan para aceptar que un político es alguien lo suficientemente listo como para mentir como si estuviera diciendo la verdad.

"Hay una crisis de fe en la democracia, especialmente entre los jóvenes. Hasta en un modelo como Chile, tres de cada cuatro jóvenes no votaron..."

AR: Pero cuando tienes Tide y Ivory Snow, ¿qué caso tiene votar? Yo también sufro de una crisis de fe en la democracia. Creo que es muy importante tener esta crisis porque la democracia ya no es democracia...

EG: La democracia debería ser democracia, pero ha sido traicionada por los profesionales de la democracia.

AR: Se volvió simplemente una ceremonia de la democracia.

EG: Como una misa sin dios.

"Este es el reto. Deberíamos de construir una nueva democracia, pero tienes el problema de los superpoderes que gobiernan, que ahorcan los salarios, que matan todo lo que tocan. ¿Cómo puedes convencer a los jóvenes de seguir un camino distinto? ¿Son éstos sus modelos de éxito? Creo que es necesario abrir nuevos caminos a una democracia verdadera, pero es muy difícil."

AR: (En India) las masas entienden profundamente que esta no es la vía a seguir...

Cómo librar esta guerra es lo que sigue siendo la pregunta. Creo que no nos deberíamos de ocupar primero de la política de los gobiernos, sino de la política de la oposición, de la política de ser gente de verdad difícil, que se rehúsa a dejar que nos hagan esto.

Galeano concluyó el diálogo con algo que había escrito en el viaje de avión a Estados Unidos:

"En tiempos oscuros, tengamos el talento suficiente para aprender a volar en la noche, como murciélagos; seamos lo suficientemente sanos como para vomitar las mentiras que nos obligan a tragar cada día; seamos lo suficientemente valientes como para tener el coraje de estar solos y lo suficientemente valientes como para arriesgarnos a estar juntos...

"Seamos lo suficientemente maduros como para saber que podemos ser compatriotas y contemporáneos de todos los que tienen una voluntad de belleza y una voluntad de justicia, sin importar dónde nacieron ni dónde se encuentran, porque no creemos en las fronteras de los mapas ni del tiempo, seamos lo suficientemente tercos como para seguir creyendo, contra toda evidencia, que la condición humana vale la pena....

"Seamos lo suficientemente locos como para ser llamados locos... seamos lo suficientemente inteligentes como para ser desobedientes cuando recibimos órdenes contradictorias a nuestra conciencia o contra el sentido común

Doggies on top

2006-05-24T17:16:00.000-05:00

Hoy me acordaba de esta invasión canina sobre el periferico...
quizás ellos sentían una invasión automovilística sobre su balcón...

¿colmex o comer?

2006-05-24T15:15:00.000-05:00

the question is... academia or macadamia...

galletitas...

2006-05-23T13:12:00.000-05:00

realmente, realmente lo único que se necesita para recobrar la ilusión perdida es tener UNA galleta...

o cocinar unas galletas, yo tengo mi propia receta... pero es secreta.
si alguien quiere compartir sus recetas, está cordialmente invitado...

MMMMMMEATBALLS!!!!

2006-05-23T13:06:00.000-05:00

Definitivamente para hacerte el día no hay más que cantar...
dumdi dumdi durushnarfer dur der sanvdicherchocolater dorf dorf dorf...

nos gusta takashi...

2006-05-23T10:53:00.000-05:00

The ofishiousness of existence

2006-05-23T10:49:00.000-05:00

The ofishiousness of existence
Fish on earth

I think I am a fish, or I am the concept of a fish, a live one, not in the ocean roaming free, although that could be the case, and I am not in a river swimming backwards to plant my eggs somewhere. No, that’s just not it. I am in a glass thing that constitutes my whole environment, my whole world, everything I’ve known my whole life, and what my tomb will be, that is the kind of place I swim in.
I like to think that I am an incredible swimmer, that if there were a kind of ‘glass race olimpics’ I would win; yes, I like to think that. I like to think. I like to think more than I like to swim. Because when I swim I have to think, but when I think I don’t have to swim.
Yes, I think I am a fish, even if I swim or don’t. When I do swim, it makes all the thoughts conferred on this one be so much more realistic. It’s like because I have to think to be able to swim, when I think I am a fish and I swim, then it all makes sense. To me, at least.
So there is this thing called a fish bowl, or a glass thingy or whatever, and that is my world. Once I heard on another being, who thought he was a leopard, but its real name was ‘earth’, I think he drowned, well, he told me about other places, but I prefer to imagine they don’t exist.
There is a problem with the place I live in, it is too small. Other fish used to live here with me, but I thought that the place was overcrowded, so I ate them, now I am much bigger and I barely fit in here.
The way I swim is very different to the way other fish swim, you see, no you don’t, you swim, with fins and scales and blowing bubbles in the way, its an art. Swimming is an art. My swimming is an art. If there was a Nobel prize for ‘artistic swimming’ I would win it and blow a great big blue bubble for the queen of Norway. That I would do.
What I do with my time is of no importance whatsoever, although I use my time in the most respectful way possible: doing absolutely nothing; to do nothing requires a lot of training and meditation, it is not something that anyone in their right mind could do, oh no, not at all. The way I mastered this healthy and inspiring act was to prove that if I did do something it would be absolutely useless and non essential for life on this earth; so given the alternative of doing something absolutely irrelevant to the universe, absolutely useless to any kind of primate or fishy species, and making it absolutely difficult to get any piece of a peace of mind. So with that I realized that the only sane choice I had was to learn and master the ancient art of doing nothing.
It was difficult at first, very very difficult, the habit of doing useless things grows into one like fungus under a fish’s scales, and everyone knows that habits and fungus are very hard to get rid of.
That is the healthiest thing I ever did, doing nothing, and it even takes up a lot of strength and mind potential, you see, when you do nothing, if you are really doing nothing you cant even think, because although to everyone else you are doing nothing, you are cheating, and you are thinking, and doing lots of stuff inside yourself. So you cant think, you cant cheat, and you cant do anything, not even breathe, because I don’t, usually anyway. I heard sometime that they call this meditation, I wouldn’t really know, because to do the yoguistic position I would have to have legs, and well, my fins don’t bend, and I never sit down. So that’s that.
Once, before I knew how to do nothing I dreamt, and I used to catalog these dreams by different color bubbles, so if I wished to have or to recall a dream in particular all I had to do was blow the bubble that summoned up that specific dream. So for example the big pink bubble, not the biggest, of course, that was the ménage a troi with an octopus one, but the one after that was the love and picnic one, of course in my own terms, like the picnic was actually on seashells and sand, and the food was actually algae, and the company, well that would be a big blowup fish that wouldn’t eat all of my food and wouldn’t disturb me with unpleasant conversation. That was the big (not biggest) pink bubble dream.
I wish time was like when you blow bubbles, (or smoke a joint), that it expands and spreads out endlessly, it is just as long as you want it to be. It never loses that feeling of moments, many many moments in just one moment, many feelings and intensities in one single spam of time, one being of time. Just so so so long.
And the yellowish bubble, a fiction of mine that came as a breakthrough after having intoxicated myself with fungus, was the one about a huge immensity of water in different shades of blue and green, reflecting the blue and white above, but oh, that was but a dream, and the fishbowl is so much safer and cozier than infinity.

FUN STUFF...

2006-05-23T10:48:00.000-05:00

es un must para aquellos instantes en el que necesitas algo más...

www.makingfiends.com

http://nightrose.com/lenore.htm

enjoy!

Bem - vindos

2006-05-23T10:29:00.000-05:00

To come into the world.. finally... and to uncover and understand the true matter of the place...
the desilussion of the ilussion that was to live, to discover, to understand...

Entrar al mundo y descubrir la materia de la que está hecha, su realidad implícita...
la desilusión de las ilusiones que combinaban el vivir, el descubrir, el entender...

Dentro de cada desilusión se encuentran algunas chispas de ilusión que nos hacen sonreir.

Within every desilussion there are sparks of ilussion that makes us smile

Vamos sorrir pra fazer de este nosso mondo um lugar mais pacifico e mais agradavel pra vivir...

Bem vindos ao retorno pra a ilusao...