Are you an enemy combatant?

In a hearing in December in a case brought by detainees imprisoned in the naval facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a judge questioned a Justice Department official about the limits of that definition. The official, Brian D. Boyle, said the hostilities in question were global and might continue for generations.

The judge, Joyce Hens Green of the Federal District Court in Washington, asked a series of hypothetical questions about who might be detained as an enemy combatant under the government's definition.

What about "a little old lady in Switzerland who writes checks to what she thinks is a charitable organization that helps orphans in Afghanistan but really is a front to finance Al Qaeda activities?" she asked.

And what about a resident of Dublin "who teaches English to the son of a person the C.I.A. knows to be a member of Al Qaeda?"

And "what about a Wall Street Journal reporter, working in Afghanistan, who knows the exact location of Osama bin Laden but does not reveal it to the United States government in order to protect her source?"

Mr. Boyle said the military had the power to detain all three people as enemy combatants.

Link

"Your papers please"

Meet Deborah Davis. She's a 50 year-old mother of four who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Her kids are all grown-up: her middle son is a soldier fighting in Iraq. She leads an ordinary, middle class life. You probably never would have heard of Deb Davis if it weren't for her belief in the U.S. Constitution.

One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work. She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning for work, when a security guard got on this public bus and demanded that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called in federal cops, and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand.

On the 9th of December 2005, Deborah Davis will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in a case that will determine whether Deb and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show "papers" whenever a cop demands them.

History repeats itself in many ways. Nazi Germany, meet Rosa Parks.

Link

A Thanksgiving Prayer, by William S. Burroughs

For John Dillinger
In hope he is still alive
Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986

Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison —

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger —

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot —

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes —

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through —

thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces —

thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers —

thanks for laboratory AIDS —

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs —

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business —

thanks for a nation of finks — yes, thanks for all the memories... all right, let's see your arms... you always were a headache and you always were a bore —

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

The Bad Lieutenant

by Clive Thompson

When I opened my copy of True Crime: New York City, a white piece of paper fell out and fluttered to the ground. It was a disclaimer, hastily printed and stuffed into the case: "This game is not approved, endorsed or connected in any way to the New York City Police Department....The game is fictional and does not represent the views, policies or practices of the NYPD."

It's no wonder New York's real-life cops were worried. In True Crime, you play as Marcus Reed, a reformed street thug who becomes a cop -- and quickly discovers that the police force is a carnival of sleaze and corruption. As you wander the city on patrol, you're allowed -- hell, you're encouraged -- to break the law and enrich yourself.

When I busted a perp who was holding up citizens in Central Park, I discovered he was carrying illegal gun parts. I could have turned them in -- but instead I nicked his goods, turned him loose, then sold the stuff at a pawn shop to buy an even more badass weapon.

Pretty soon I'd descended into a twisted evil-cop rampage. I jacked cars from innocent civilians, pistol-whipped perps within an inch of their lives and planted evidence on second-rate criminals so I could pretend to have made a big bust.

Then one day, as I was running over an innocent pedestrian during a car chase, I had an epiphany. Family-values types often deplore the brutality of today's action titles. But have they ever closely examined who's committing this carnage?

Nine times out of 10, when you're blowing people's chests open with hollow-point bullets, you aren't playing as a terrorist or criminal. No, you're playing as a cop, a soldier or a special-forces agent -- a member of society's forces of law and order.

Consider our gaming history. In Doom, the game that began it all, you were a Marine. Then came a ceaseless parade of patriotic, heart-in-hand World War II games, in which you merrily blow the skulls off Japanese and German soldiers under the explicit authority of the U.S. of A. Yet anti-gaming critics didn't really explode with indignation until Grand Theft Auto 3 came along -- the first massively popular modern game where the tables turned, and you finally played as a cop-killing thug.

Why weren't these detractors equally up in arms about, say, the Rainbow Six series? Because games lay bare the conservative logic that governs brutal acts. Violence -- even horrible, war-crimes-level stuff -- is perfectly fine as long as you commit it under the aegis of the state. If you're fighting creepy Arabs and urban criminals, go ahead -- dual-wield those Uzis, equip your frag grenades and let fly. Nobody will get much upset.

Indeed, conservatives have long been fans of the Dirty Harry beat-down. Consider what Bill Clark -- a former NYPD office who consulted on True Crime: New York City -- said about the game in a recent news report: "Marcus is the type of cop we all wished we could be. He doesn't need warrants to burst into buildings, search cars, or people. He doesn't have to deal with politics or property damage or paperwork."

These days, Dick Cheney is fiercely lobbying to grant the government virtually the same powers. And indeed, Congress is set to re-up the Patriot Act, preserving and extending the CIA's special, magnified powers to detain and wiretap suspects -- their "extra life" upgrades, as it were. If art imitates life, maybe it's no wonder that we've seen a rise in games that blur the lines between criminals and state authority.

The irony is that, in reality, New York's actual police have moved in the opposite direction. They've become more successful at keeping the peace by being less bloodthirsty. In the '90s, they drastically reduced the city's crime rate by "community policing" and beat walking, the sort of quiet, low-key work that makes a city genuinely secure.

Maybe our power fantasies are best kept where they belong -- on the console.

(A tip of the hat to J.C. Herz's Joystick Nation, which first introduced me to this line of thinking.)

link

Scientists find fear gene Investigadores descubren gen que regula miedo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists may have found a gene for fear -- a gene that controls production of a protein in the region of the brain linked with fearful responses.

Link

Investigadores de la Universidad de Columbia en Nueva York han descubierto el primer componente genético de una vía bioquímica cerebral que gobierna la impresión indeleble en la memoria de las experiencias relacionadas con el miedo.

Referencia

Post No. 100

Burbujas a color: Zubbles

De Scientific American:

The first five minutes of the party were stunning. Mothers gasped, and a few were even moved to tears at the initial sight of the strangely vivid orbs that almost glowed in the sunlight. Kids shrieked and chased after them. It was the moment Kehoe had pictured all those years — not big checks or fame, just seeing this project reach its end in a single joyous afternoon.

...

Among the ideas Kehoe has already mocked up are a finger paint that fades from every surface except a special paper, a hair dye that vanishes in a few hours, and disappearing-graffiti spray paint. There's a toothpaste that would turn kids' mouths a bright color until they had brushed for the requisite 30 seconds, and a soap that would do the same for hand washing.

He's also thinking outside the toy chest, mucking around in the lab on weekends making things like a Swiffer that leaves a momentary trace showing where you've Swiffered and a temporary wall paint that would let you spend a few hours with a color before committing to it. The dye's reach is so great that there are even biotech and industrial uses being discussed. "We've got stuff in the works I can't talk about that'll blow bubbles away," he says excitedly. It might take years, but, knowing Tim Kehoe, we'll see them eventually. After all, it's only a little extra work.

Articulo/Article
Zubbles

Burbujas a color: Zubbles

The first five minutes of the party were stunning. Mothers gasped, and a few were even moved to tears, at the initial sight of the strangely vivid orbs almost glowing in the sunlight. Kids shrieked and chased after them. It was the moment Kehoe had pictured all those years—not big checks or fame, just seeing this project reach its end in a single joyous afternoon.

Gana mujer elecciones presidenciales en Africa

By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: November 12, 2005

DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 11 - Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated economist and former World Bank official who waged a fierce presidential campaign against the soccer star George Weah, emerged victorious on Friday in her quest to lead war-torn Liberia and become the first woman elected head of state in modern African history.

---

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, la economista estudiada en Harvard y ex-oficial del Banco mundial, resultó victoriosa en las elecciones presidenciales de Liberia. Ella es primera mujer cabeza de estado eligida democráticamente en la historia moderna de África.

Link

Paris Burning: How Empires End - Patrick J. Buchanan

The Romans conquered the barbarians—and the barbarians conquered Rome.

So it goes with empires. And comes now the penultimate chapter in the history of the empires of the West.

This is the larger meaning of the ritual murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland, the subway bombings in London, the train bombings in Madrid, the Paris riots spreading across France. The perpetrators of these crimes in the capitals of Europe are the children of immigrants who were once the colonial subjects of the European empires.

At this writing, the riots are entering their 12th night and have spread to Rouen, Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Dijon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Cannes, Nice. Thousands of cars and buses have been torched and several nursery schools fire-bombed. One fleeing and terrified woman was doused with gasoline and set ablaze.

The rioters are of Arab and African descent, and Muslim. While almost all are French citizens, they are not part of the French people. For never have they been assimilated into French culture or society. And some wish to remain who and what they are. They live in France but are not French.
The rampage began October 27 when two Arab youths, fleeing what they mistakenly thought was a police pursuit, leapt onto power lines and were electrocuted. The two deaths ignited the riots.

Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, a candidate to succeed President Chirac, is said to have infuriated and inflamed the rioters. Before the rampage began, he promised “war without mercy” on crime in the teeming suburbs where unemployment runs at 20% and income is 40% below the national average. He has denounced the rioters as “scum” and “rabble.”

Like the urban riots in America in the 1960s, which the Kerner Commission blamed on “white racism,” Paris’s riots are being blamed on France’s failure to bring Islamic immigrants into the social and economic mainstream of the nation. Solutions being offered range from voting rights for non-citizens to affirmative action in hiring for the children of Third World immigrants.

To understand why this is unlikely to solve France’s crisis, consider how America succeeded, and often failed, in solving her own racial crisis.
While, as late as the 1950s, black Americans were not integrated fully into our economy or society, they had been assimilated into American culture.

They worshipped the same God, spoke the same language, had endured the same Depression and war, listened to the same music and radio, watched the same TV shows, laughed at the same comedians, went to the same movies, ate the same foods, read the same books, magazines and newspapers, and went to schools where, even when they were segregated, they learned the same history.

We were divided, but we were also one nation and one people. Black folks were as American as apple pie, having lived in our common land longer than almost every other ethnic group save Native Americans. And America had a history of having assimilated immigrants in the tens of millions from Europe.

But no European nation has ever assimilated a large body of immigrant peoples, let alone people of color. Moreover, the African and Islamic peoples pouring into Europe—there are 20 million there now—are, unlike black Americans, strangers in a new land, and millions wish to remain proud Algerians, Muslims, Moroccans.

These newcomers worship a different God and practice a faith historically hostile to Christianity, a traditionalist faith that is rising again and recoils violently from a secular culture saturated in sex.

Severed from the civilization and cultures of their parents, these Arab and Muslim youth may hold French citizenship and carry French passports, but they are no more French than Americans who live in Paris are French. Searching for a community to which they can truly belong, they gravitate to mosques where the imams, many themselves immigrants, teach and preach that the West is not their true home, but a civilization alien to their values and historically hostile to their nations and Islam.

The soaring Muslim population is a Fifth Column inside Europe.

Nevertheless, their numbers must grow. For not only do they have a higher birth rate than the native-born Europeans, no European nation, save Moslem Albania, has a birth rate (2.1 births per woman) that will enable it to endure for many more generations. The West is aging, shrinking, and dying.

Yet, to keep Europe’s economy growing and taxes coming in to fund the health and pension programs of Europe’s rising numbers of retired and elderly, Europe needs scores of millions of new workers. And Europe can only find them in the Third World.

Nor should Americans take comfort in France’s distress. By 2050, there will be 100 million Hispanics in the United States, half of them of Mexican ancestry, heavily concentrated in a Southwest most Mexicans still believe by right belongs to them.

Colonization of the mother countries by subject peoples is the last chapter in the history of empires—and the next chapter in the history of the West—that is now coming to a close.

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of The Death of the West, The Great Betrayal, and A Republic, Not an Empire.

Web’s never-to-be-repeated revolution - James Boyle

The web is having a birthday. This month, we will have the 15th anniversary of the creation of the first web page. It is the birthday of Tim Berners-Lee’s amazing idea that there could be a worldwide web, linked not by spider silk but by hypertext links and transfer protocols and uniform resource locators.

How should we celebrate? We are too close to the web to understand it. And those who lost money in the dotcom boom greet any celebration of the web the way a person with a hangover greets a mention of the drink of which they overindulged. The knowledge of shameful excess produces a renunciant puritanism. No more tequila or web romanticism for me!

That is a shame, because there are three things that we need to understand about the web. First, it is more amazing than we think. Second, the conjunction of technologies that made the web successful was extremely unlikely. Third, we probably would not create it, or any technology like it, today. In fact, we would be more likely to cripple it, or declare it illegal.

Why is the web amazing? Because of what people have built on it. Some might remember when the most exciting sites on the web had pictures of coffee pots in universities far away. (“See,” one would proudly say to a neophyte, “the pot is empty and we can see that from here! This changes everything!”) But now? When is the last time you looked in an encyclopedia? When is the last time that your curiosity – what is the collective noun for larks? Is Gerald Ford alive? Why is the sky blue? – remained unsatisfied for more than a moment? (An “exaltation”, yes and look it up for yourself.) Much of that information is provided by volunteers who delight in sharing their knowledge. Consider the range of culture, science and literature – from the Public Library of Science and Wikipedia, to Project Gutenberg and the National Map. The web does not bring us to the point where all can have access to, and can add to, the culture and knowledge of the world. We cannot ensure global literacy let alone global connectedness. But it brings us closer.

Why is the web unlikely? Prepare for a moment of geek-speak. For most of us, the web is reached by general­purpose computers that use open protocols – standards and languages that are owned by no one – to communicate with a network (there is no central point from which all data comes) whose mechanisms for transferring data are also open.

Imagine a network with the opposite design. Imagine that your terminal came hardwired from the manufacturer with a particular set of programs and functions. No experimenting with new technologies developed by third parties – instant messaging, Google Earth, flash animations . . . Imagine also that the network was closed and flowed from a central source. More like pay-television than web. No one can decide on a whim to create a new site. The New York Times might secure a foothold on such a network. Your blog, or Wikipedia, or Jib Jab need not apply. Imagine that the software and protocols were proprietary. You could not design a new service to run on this system, because you do not know what the system is and, anyway, it might be illegal. Imagine something with all the excitement and creativity of a train timetable.

The web developed because we went in the opposite direction – towards openness and lack of centralised control. Unless you believe that some invisible hand of technological inevitability is pushing us towards openness – I am a sceptic – we have a remarkable historical conjunction of technologies.

Why might we not create the web today? The web became hugely popular too quickly to control. The lawyers and policymakers and copyright holders were not there at the time of its conception. What would they have said, had they been? What would a web designed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation or the Disney Corporation have looked like? It would have looked more like pay-television, or Minitel, the French computer network. Beforehand, the logic of control always makes sense. “Allow anyone to connect to the network? Anyone to decide what content to put up? That is a recipe for piracy and pornography.”

And of course it is. But it is also much, much more. The lawyers have learnt their lesson now. The regulation of technological development proceeds apace. When the next disruptive communications technology – the next worldwide web – is thought up, the lawyers and the logic of control will be much more evident. That is not a happy thought.

The writer is professor of law at Duke Law School, a co-founder of the Centre for the Study of the Public Domain and a board member of Creative Commons

Man bites dog, gets 60 days

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- An Alaska man has been sentenced to 60 days in jail for biting a chunk out of his dog's ear.

John Ray Martin of Fairbanks pleaded no contest to one count of animal cruelty, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported. A judge also ordered Marin to pay a $250 fine, suspending it as long as he repays $175 that Fairbanks North Star Borough paid for a vet to treat the dog.

Martin reportedly became enraged when the dog's former owner confronted him at a shopping center and asked to have the boxer mix back because it was being badly treated. Witnesses said Martin knelt down and bit the dog's ear -- leaving the ear bloody and the animal yowling in pain.

A half-inch square piece of ear was found on the ground.

The dog has been turned over to a rescue organization for adoption.

Confesiones de un conquistador

Me dijeron que el dorado que tanto buscabamos, en realidad, el rio amazonico. Los indigenas le decian asi porque de el brotaba vida y sociedad. Ojala hubieramos sabido esto antes.

Chin.

Kilimanjaro

Tributo a Rosa Parks

Global warming

Estamos a mediados de octubre en el norte de California. Ya debería haber frío o lluvia, por lo menos, pero el aire se siente como el que hay dentro de un refrigerador cuya puerta no cierra bien.

Mucho ojo

"We need to have more respect for each other. Things have just gone really crazy, out of control. ... We're on a very weird kind of cycle."

- Stevie Wonder

Referencia

World helpless against assaults of nature

By CALVIN WOODWARD
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 11, 2005; 4:15 AM

WASHINGTON -- In a more hopeful time, buoyed by the promise of science, it was thought hurricanes could be tricked into dispersing, earthquakes could be disarmed by nuclear explosions and floodwaters held at bay by great mounds of dirt.

Such conceits are another victim of a year of destruction.

The planet's controlling forces romp over dreams like those. Usually the best that can be done is to see the danger coming long enough to run.

Rich and poor nations have taken the hit over a period so twisted in nature's assaults that one month, rich is helping poor and the next, poor is helping rich as best it can, and then the poor gets slammed once again.

The United States, giver of tsunami aid in December, accepted hurricane aid from some of those same countries in September. Now it is giving to South Asia a second time, in response to the weekend earthquakes. India is sending tents, food, blankets and medicine to its foe, Pakistan, geology briefly shoving aside geopolitics.

More than 176,000 people died in the earthquake and tsunami of December; an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 in the quake Saturday; perhaps 1,000 or more in Guatemalan landslides last week; more than 1,200 in Katrina. Asian beaches, mountainous Kashmir villages and American urban streets and casinos all were overwhelmed.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

After World War II, nothing seemed too far-fetched for science, not once the atom was split and, again, not once men stepped on the moon.
In one of the most enduring efforts, still alive but hardly about to happen, man thought he could seed clouds, make it rain reliably and put a stop to devastating drought.

The effort continues, especially in China; there, rockets, anti-aircraft guns and aircraft regularly pelt the sky with chemicals. The results so far: China has lots of experience, but limited success, in making the rains come.
If humans are inexorably warming the globe, they've proved unable to fine-tune the megaforces to their benefit.

They can cause earthquakes, little ones, by injecting fluids into deep wells, filling huge reservoirs with water or setting off nuclear explosions, but they can't prevent any, says the U.S. Geological Survey. Any notion of "lubricating" tectonic plates to relieve destructive tension would only make things worse, if it made any difference.

Earthquakes can't be forecast, either. Danger zones and long-term probabilities can be surmised, but "there currently is no accepted method to accomplish the goal of predicting the time, place and magnitude of an impending quake," the survey says.

The idea of hauling icebergs to hurricane-prone waters to cool things off did not fly. Research continues on trying to fool hurricanes into thinking they're over land.

One trick being tested: coating the ocean with a thin, biodegradable, oily film to deny a hurricane the evaporation that feeds its fury, in essence mimicking conditions after landfall.

One of the responses to Hurricane Katrina was decidedly lower tech: Civil engineers proposed putting up old-fashioned air raid sirens so people would know to get away.

The belief persists that humans will someday be able to dial up a thunderstorm at will, tweak the jet stream to avoid floods and starve a tornado of its energy once it starts spinning.

Such faith is reflected in a decade-old report done for the U.S. Air Force, on the possibilities of modifying the weather for military advantage.

The study suggested extreme examples of made-to-order weather, such as steering severe storms to particular areas or achieving large-scale climate change, were beyond reach over the next 30 years. But kicking up fog, rain and clouds was considered doable in that time.

The Air Force said later it did not plan to meddle with Mother Nature. The study, subtitled "Owning the Weather in 2025," came to little.

A decade later, the weather still owns us.

Medio apocalíptico

I had a near death experience, but I fell asleep going through the tunnel.

It's a beautiful thing

Lean esto (está en inglés) y luego lean el comentario a continuación. O lean el comentario y luego la noticia. Pero vayan pensando en las consecuencias...

It's a beautiful thing...

(Score:5, Insightful)

by ramblin billy (856838) <defaultaddy@yahoo.com> on Thursday September 29, @09:47AM (#13676648)

I'm a little surprised at the lack of imagination I'm seeing in this article's comments. Imagination is not something usually lacking at

/. In reality I suggest that no one here, or anywhere else, can possibly anticipate the uses that children will find for these machines. Remember, Negroponte is not talking about a million laptops spread out across the world. He intends to produce 200 MILLION laptops - "One Laptop per Child." These will be capable of p2p mesh networks over wifi and internet connection sharing. They will be Open Source. EVERY kid will have one. The shit those kids are gonna do with these machines is going to change the nature of the world. Just a few thoughts...

Personal interactions will flourish. Imagine that each person has a personal presence on the net in the form of a journal, blog, etc. Innermost thoughts, musings, ideas would be posted. Access may be restricted to groups of friends, open to all, available only in a reciprocal trade - who knows? Social interactions may form that are based on more formal public personae while the unspoken web content acts as an underlying frame. Like minds will find each other. Ideas will feed on ideas. It will be an exponential extension of today's net.

Specialties would develop. Mod kits would certainly turn up. This kid might make movies, or songs, or create one page descriptive biographies of everyone he meets. That kid might develop applications, this one tweaks assembler, another is a com whiz, and that one over there...she's special, she can go ANYWHERE in cyberspace, and if it's on the net, she can find it. She's the one they ask when they REALLY need to know the truth. It could be that some strange stuff starts to happen. Stuff about how the world is perceived and how humans relate to it and each other. Stuff we can't imagine or maybe even understand. Really, really cool Stuff.

We old folks can participate. Everyone seems to crave one of these laptops. What if they didn't sell even one outside their programs? What if to get one of these babies you had to earn it? You could help develop software. Write apps, ports, translate, tutor, teach, write textbooks, moderate groups, protect the children and their net. You could EARN the laptop. How cool would that be?

Who will pay? There will be new markets, development deals, service contracts, infrastructure to build. The companies that want to play will be the ones who pay. Governments could link contracts with obligations. You want to build out our backbone? It must include wifi for the kidtops at your expense. You want to build some buildings? We need housing for a server farm here and some schools here, here, and here. You want the support contract for the government IT infrastructure. You also must support Kidnet. At least till the kids take over,which won't be long. Access? Well how much is access to a 10 million node kidtop beowolf cluster worth? Wanna trade?

C'mon guys! This is the fucking DREAM! No more secrets. No more lies. No more disinformation and manipulation from 'those who would be kings'. Maybe even 200 million proud parents of the Earth's first planetary consciousness. Hey, who knows? Not us. We can't even BEGIN to imagine.

billy - I for one will sit back and watch 'em go

Incredible but true

Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

by Mark Townsend Houston
Sunday September 25, 2005
The Observer

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.

'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?'

Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan.

The mystery surfaced when a separate group of dolphins was washed from a commercial oceanarium on the Mississippi coast during Katrina. Eight were found with the navy's help, but the dolphins were not returned until US navy scientists had examined them.

Sheridan is convinced the scientists were keen to ensure the dolphins were not the navy's, understood to be kept in training ponds in a sound in Louisiana, close to Lake Pontchartrain, whose waters devastated New Orleans.

The navy launched the classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission in San Diego in 1989, where dolphins, fitted with harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea.

Criticism from animal rights groups ensured the use of dolphins became more secretive. But the project gained impetus after the Yemen terror attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Dolphins have also been used to detect mines near an Iraqi port.

50 most cited works of 1976-1983

1)	T.S. Kuhn	The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962
2)	J. Joyce	Ulysses. 1922
3)	N. Frye	Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. 1957
4)	L. Wittgenstein	Philosophical Investigations
5)	N. Chomsky	Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. 1965
6)	M. Foucault	The Order of Things. 1966
7)	J. Derrida	Of Grammatology
8)	R. Barthes	S/Z. 1970
9)	M. Heidegger	Being and Time. 1927
10)	E.R. Curtius	European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. 1948
11)	H-G Gardmer	Truth and Method. 1960
12)	J. Rawls	A Theory of Justice. 1971
13)	J. Joyce	Finnegan's Wake. 1939
14)	J.R. Searle	Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. 1969
15)	J. Culler	Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. 1975
16)	G. Genette	Figures. 1966
17)	N. Chomsky & M. Halle	The Sound Pattern of English. 1968
18)	T.S. Eliot	The Waste Land. 1922
19)	J.L. Austin	How to Do Things with Words. 1962
20)	W.V.O. Quine	Word and Object. 1960
21)	M. Proust	Remembrance of Things Past. 1914
22)	L. Wittgenstein	Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 1922
23)	J. Joyce	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1916
24)	W.C. Booth	The Rhetoric of Fiction. 1961
25)	C. Levi-Strauss	Structural Anthropology. 1958
26)	S. Freud	The Interpretation of Dreams. 1900
27)	V.Y. Propp	Morphology of the Folktale. 1928
28)	F.D. Saussure	Course in General Linguistics. 1915
29)	J-P, Sartre	Being and Nothingness. 1943
30)	S.A. Kripke	"Naming and Necessity" 1972
31)	E. Benveniste	Problems in General Linguistics. 1966
32)	K.R. Popper	Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. 1963
33)	J. Lacan	Lacan Ecrits
34)	J. Derrida	Writing and Difference. 1967
35)	N. Chomsky	Chomsky Syntactic Structures. 1957
36)	R. Jacobson	"Linguistics and Poetics" 1960
37)	E.D. Hirsch	Validity in Interpretation. 1967
38)	C. Levi-Strauss	The Savage Mind. 1962
39)	E. Pound	The Cantos of Ezra Pound. 1925
40)	P.L. Berger & T. Luckmann	The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. 1966
41)	M.M. Bakhtin	Rabelais and His World. 1965
42)	M. Merleau-Ponty	Phenomenology of Perception. 1945
43)	W. Iser	The Act of Reading. 1976
44)	K.R. Popper	Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. 1972
45)	U.A. Eco	Theory of Semiotics. 1976
46)	E. Auerbach	Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. 1946
47)	E.H. Gombrich	Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. 1960
48)	E.P. Thompson	The Making of the English Working Class. 1964
49)	J. Habermas	Knowledge and Human Interest. 1968
50)	K.R. Popper	The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 1935

Mapa de Springfield

Cómo ayudar alguien usar una computadora por primera vez (inglés)

Computer people are fine human beings, but they do a lot of harm in the ways they "help" other people with their computer problems. Now that we're trying to get everyone online, I thought it might be helpful to write down everything I've been taught about helping people use computers.

First you have to tell yourself some things:

Nobody is born knowing this stuff.

You've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner.

If it's not obvious to them, it's not obvious.

A computer is a means to an end. The person you're helping probably cares mostly about the end. This is reasonable.

Their knowledge of the computer is grounded in what they can see and do -- "when I do this, it does that". They need to develop a deeper understanding, but this can only happen slowly -- and not through abstract theory but through the real, concrete situations they encounter in their work.

Beginners face a language problem: they can't ask questions because they don't know what the words mean, they can't know what the words mean until they can successfully use the system, and they can't successfully use the system because they can't ask questions.

You are the voice of authority. Your words can wound.

Computers often present their users with textual messages, but the users often don't read them.

By the time they ask you for help, they've probably tried several things. As a result, their computer might be in a strange state. This is natural.

They might be afraid that you're going to blame them for the problem.

The best way to learn is through apprenticeship -- that is, by doing some real task together with someone who has a different set of skills.

Your primary goal is not to solve their problem. Your primary goal is to help them become one notch more capable of solving their problem on their own. So it's okay if they take notes.

Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes it's usually the fault of the interface. You've forgotten how many ways you've learned to adapt to bad interfaces.

Knowledge lives in communities, not individuals. A computer user who's part of a community of computer users will have an easier time than one who isn't.

Having convinced yourself of these things, you are more likely to follow some important rules:

Don't take the keyboard. Let them do all the typing, even if it's slower that way, and even if you have to point them to every key they need to type. That's the only way they're going to learn from the interaction.

Find out what they're really trying to do. Is there another way to go about it?

Maybe they can't tell you what they've done or what happened. In this case you can ask them what they are trying to do and say, "Show me how you do that".

Attend to the symbolism of the interaction. Try to squat down so your eyes are just below the level of theirs. When they're looking at the computer, look at the computer. When they're looking at you, look back at them.

When they do something wrong, don't say "no" or "that's wrong". They'll often respond by doing something else that's wrong. Instead, just tell them what to do and why.

Try not to ask yes-or-no questions. Nobody wants to look foolish, so their answer is likely to be a guess. "Did you attach to the file server?" will get you less information than "What did you do after you turned the computer on?".

Explain your thinking. Don't make it mysterious. If something is true, show them how they can see it's true. When you don't know, say "I don't know". When you're guessing, say "let's try ... because ...". Resist the temptation to appear all-knowing. Help them learn to think the problem through.

Be aware of how abstract your language is. "Get into the editor" is abstract and "press this key" is concrete. Don't say anything unless you intend for them to understand it. Keep adjusting your language downward towards concrete units until they start to get it, then slowly adjust back up towards greater abstraction so long as they're following you. When formulating a take-home lesson ("when it does this and that, you should try such-and-such"), check once again that you're using language of the right degree of abstraction for this user right now.

Tell them to really read the messages, such as errors, that the computer generates.

Whenever they start to blame themselves, respond by blaming the computer. Then keep on blaming the computer, no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. If you need to show off, show off your ability to criticize bad design. When they get nailed by a false assumption about the computer's behavior, tell them their assumption was reasonable. Tell *yourself* that it was reasonable.

Take a long-term view. Who do users in this community get help from? If you focus on building that person's skills, the skills will diffuse to everyone else.

Never do something for someone that they are capable of doing for themselves.

Don't say "it's in the manual". (You knew that.)

Gotas de agua

Referencia:
www.liquidsculptures.com

Green Day - Sassafras roots

Roaming 'round your house wasting your time.
No obligation, just wasting your time.

So why are you alone wasting your time?
When you could be with me wasting your time.

Well,I'm a waste like you, with nothing else to do -- may I waste your time too?

Warding off regrets, wasting your time.
Smoking cigarettes, wasting your time.
I'm just a parasite wasting your time, applying myself to wasting your time.

Well,I'm a waste like you, with nothing else to do -- may I waste your time too?

(dedicado a Rafa)

The Beatles - Cry baby cry

Cry baby cry.
Make your mother sigh.
She's old enough to know better, so cry baby cry.

The king of Marigold was in the kitchen cooking breakfast for the queen.
The queen was in the parlour playing piano for the children of the king.

The king was in the garden picking flowers for a friend who came to play.
The queen was in the playroom painting pictures for the childrens holiday.

The duchess of Kircaldy always smiling and arriving late for tea.
The duke was having problems with a message at the local bird and bee.

At twelve o'clock a meeting round the table for a seance in the dark,
with voices out of nowhere put on specially by the children for a lark.

Can you take me back where I came from?
Can you take me back?
Can you take me back where I came from?
Brother can you take me back?
Can you take me back?

Aphex Twin - Cliffs

Maná - Donde jugarán los niños

Cuenta el abuelo que de niño él jugó
entre árboles y risas y alcatraces de color

Recuerda un río transparente sin olor,
donde abundaban peces, no sufrían ni un dolor

Cuenta el abuelo de un cielo muy azul,
en donde voló papalotes que él mismo construyó

El tiempo pasó
y nuestro viejo ya murió
y hoy me pregunté
después de tanta destrucción:

¿Dónde diablos jugarán
los pobres niños?
¿En dónde jugarán?

Se esta pudriendo el mundo -- ya no hay lugar.

La tierra está a punto de partirse en dos.
El cielo ya se ha roto, ya se ha roto el llanto gris

La mar vomita rios de aceite sin cesar
y hoy me pregunté
después de tanta destrucción:

¿Dónde diablos jugarán
los pobres niños?
¿En dónde jugarán?

Coraje

Es una pena que tras seis días de la calamidad que afectó a Nuevo Orleans y a Misisipi nadie ha movido un dedo.

Para que entiendan de qué trata chequen este video.

El huracán

Es mi responsabilidad como persona hablar de este huracán.

Les dire qué pedo.

El presidente Bush, tras dos días del desastre aparece y dice que no está bien las medidas que ha tomado el gobierno federal.

El alcalde de Nuevo Orleans le ha pedido a todo mundo asistencia. Y la ironía, sí chavos, la ironía está en que varios países como suecia, noruega, los países bajos, canadá, cuba, y hasta honduras han ofrecido ayuda y estados unidos, la única superpotencia, las ha rehusado.

Chavos, me da coraje esta situación. Una amiga me dijo que nadie hace nada porque o son pobres los damnificados o son morenos. Realmente es una pena la situación, olvídense del desastre por un momento... es una vergüenza el tipo de apoyo que mi propio país natal le ha dado a su propia gente.

El chonny saliendo de la regadera

Adentro del ojo del huracán Katrina

Referencia:
Weather Geekery

Mi primer carro

Hoy me compré un Super Beetle del '73 anaranjado por USD$950.

Celebrando la llegada de Benet a Chicago

Bob Dylan - It ain't me babe

Go away from
my window,
leave at your own chosen speed.

I'm not the
one you want, babe,
I'm not the one you need.

You say you're looking for someone
who's never weak but always strong,
to protect you and defend you
whether you are
right or wrong,
someone to open each and every door,
but it ain't me, babe,
no, no, no, it ain't me, babe,
nt ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

Go lightly
from the ledge, babe,
go lightly on the ground.

I'm not the
one you want, babe,
I will only let you down.

You say you're looking for someone
who will promise never to part,
someone to close his eyes for you,
someone to close his heart,
someone who will die for you an' more,
but it ain't me, babe,
no, no, no, it ain't me, babe,
it ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

Go melt back
in the night.
Everything inside is made of stone.

There's nothing
in here moving.
And anyway I'm not alone.

You say you're looking for someone
who'll pick you up each time you fall,
to gather flowers constantly
and to come each time you call,
a lover for your life and nothing more,
but it ain't me, babe,
no, no, no, it ain't me, babe,
it ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

Respuesta a mi queridísma Cess

Gracias Cess por tus siempre-bien-recibidas palabras. Parece que el anónimo, por cierto, no captó la sutileza de la ironía. Pero no hay que desesperarnos, Cess. Conforme el anonimo vaya conociendo más gente y leyendo más libros reconocerá que no hay un porqué-esconderse.

Salí del closet

Hoy, por primera y única vez salí del closet y ya afuera me siento mejor, me siento... yo. Se lo dije a mi mamá en el coche rumbo a la casa. Ví en su cara decepción.
"Bueno mijo," me dijo "como tu te sientas mejor, pero no uses esa palabra porque me imagino cosas feas." Y le dije a mi mamá que sí claro, como ella quiera, pero por eso será ella represora. Pero un poco nada más porque es mi mamá. Y todavía tengo que ver qué palabra usar para describirme cuando estoy con ella, pero por lo menos estoy afuera.
Mis amigos, incluso los de México siempre lo sabían. Nunca les tuve que decir nada porque salía en la manera en que hablaba y en que actuaba. Por varios años traté de escapar mi identidad. Me daba pena. Pero ahora en este país, los Estados Unidos de América, me siento libre y aceptado por la persona que soy.
Sé que en México no se tiene tanta aceptación de personas como yo. Por eso, les pido a mis amigos que traten de entender que el proceso por el cual pasé fue uno muy duro y difícil. Hago un llamado a la conciencia para que se me acepte por ser quien soy y no tanto por mi identidad recién identificada. Son muchos como yo. No estoy solo, pero no por eso merezco el abandono de ustedes.
En fin, me siento más seguro y voy conociendo gente nueva como yo. En fin, quería decirles a todos ustedes que, con orgullo, soy y me identifico como Chicano.

Del sutra del diamante

"Dime Subhuti, ¿se dirá un Buddha a sí mismo, 'he alcanzado la Iluminación Perfecta.'?"

"No, Señor. No hay una Iluminación Perfecta que alcanzar. Señor, si un Buddha Perfectamente Iluminado se dijera, 'así soy yo', estaría admitiendo una identidad individual, un yo y una personalidad independientes, y en tal caso no sería un Buddha Perfectamente Iluminado."

Referencia: Buda: Sus enseñanzas en español

El diamante más grande que se conoce

El diamante más grande que se conoce radica en la constelación del Centauro. El núcleo de una estrella enana blanca, este diamante pesa diez mil millones de billones de billones de quilates, dato que sirve solamente para cuantificar ya que no creo que haya mente que pueda concebir esta magnitud si no fuera por los números. Los astrónomos estadunidenses pudieron encontrar al diamante con apodo de "Lucy"- por Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (LSD, chavos)- por medio de "cantos" emitidos por el carbón cristalizado. Se piensa que este es el final del ciclo de vida de estas estrellas.

Ahora, cuando miro al cielo en la noche sé que lo que veo son las joyas de Dios. ¡Con qué amor están ahí puestas!
Referencia: Colegio Oficial de Físicos (España)

Lista de reproducción

Quiero encuentrar un host que me permite subir mis mp3s para los que escuchen. Hasta entonces... les pongo mi orden preferido de escuchar las rolas de Café Tacuba (y unas de Caifanes también).

1. Chilanga banda
2. No controles
3. Alármala de tos
4. Perfidia
5. Ojalá que llueva café
6. Cómo te extraño mi amor
7. La ingrata
8. El ciclón
9. El aparato
10. Esa noche
11. 24 horas
12. El fin de la infancia
13. El tlatoani del barrio
14. El puñal y el corazón
15. Pez
16. Verde
17. Madrugal
18. La negrita
19. La pinta
20. Ixtepec
21. Tropico de Cáncer
22. El metro
23. El balcón
24. El baile y el salón
25. Metamorfosis
26. No me comprendes
27. Las flores
28. Afuera
29. Miedo
30. Aquí no es así
31. Aviéntame

Bueno pues...

¿Por qué no les cuento una experiencia?

En mi casa fue donde Rafa fumó mota por primera vez. Éramos Sergio, Rafa y yo ahí en la azotea, hasta arriba, donde se llegaba a ver el Popo, Civac y el sudeste de la ciudad. Era ena vista maravillosa, de veras y ahí arriba estábamos los tres fumando mota, bueno, Sergio y yo iniciando al Rafa por primera vez. Le explicábamos cómo hacerlo:
-- Ok, entonces tomas le jalas y lo aguantas lo más que puedas -- y le daba un tirón. Mientras empezaba a marearme le decía -- y lo aguantas lo mas que puedes.-- y le sacaba todo el aire.
No me acuerdo qué dijo Sergio entonces. Si el tiene su historia, que la publique en su blog o si no en este.
Bueno, entonces el Rafa le agarró y ¡pas! Le dio. Creo que dijo -ole sí está chido- y de ahí sabemos lo demás.
Lo divertido ese día fue que mi vecino de a lado tenía un jardín lleno de estátuas y entraba mucha gente ahí.
-Nombre, esa estatua es de Calígula-
-Sí no mames ahí están entrando a la pura esclavitud sexual-
Y el Sergio decía: -mira mira, fíjense, que entran pero no salen-
-Uno tomó una escoba-
-Qué estarán haciendo con ella-
Y ahí namás veíamos como entraba la gente al abarrotes de mi vecino a corromperse el alma.

prueba

prueba

Cafe Tacuba - El aparato

Que hombre que maneja el aparato
Cuando volteé lo tenía arriba
Es una luz

Algun tiempo me dejo inmovil
Sólo me quedo el zumbido de la luz

Lo escuchaba en mi cabeza
En lengua extraña me hablaba pero entendí

Lo juro que no habia tomado, sólo estaba encandilado
La hora perdí

Yo se que vendrá por mi
Y me llevara a un jardín

Cuando me encontre con Pablo, fue el que me conto esta historia, no le creí

Eso fue algunos meses
Desde entonces que no lo vemos más por aqui

Ya no se ni que pensar desde que llegó una carta del hospital

Pablo tiene quemaduras y ceguera permanente
No quiere hablar

Yo sé que vendra por mi
Y me llevara a un jardín

Hearing aids

The tiny impact each key makes on my computer keyboard creates a sound wave that travels through the air to my ear canal where it is channeled through my inner ear and turned into chemical reaction so my brain can interpret the tapping as a sound. That's the ideal situation. In the real world, I wear hearing aids to offset the hearing impairment that I acquired after a bad reaction to medication. Without hearing aids, I can't hear a normal conversation, much less the rythmic patter of my fingers as they type a word.

I never considered myself to be disabled as a child -- the hearing aids were something else I put on every morning. I just used them to hear better. That changed when I visited San Francisco in the summer between 10th and 11th grade. I can pinpoint the place where I was standing on Market Street when, for the first time I felt insecure about my hearing. I can remember those thoughts: You're not normal. The hearing aids look ugly. The girls won't like you. You're not as good as everyone else. That moment of self-consciousness was overwhelming and I surrendered to it. And there I was, 17, in downtown San Francisco, shamefully putting my hearing aids in my pocket for the first time.

Then I went to a Burger King to eat.

"Do you want fries with that?" sure feels different when there's no sound coming out of the server's mouth. I couldn't catch a clue, so I acted bored and uninterested and I ignored the server. Deep down, though, I knew that the charade could only last for so long.

After graduation, I moved out to San Francisco on my own. Once settled, I met some nice people who asked to pray for my hearing. It was then that I realized that my disability wasn't going away any time soon. My friends told me that what I lacked in hearing I made up for in intelligence, so using my analytical mind I thought: if my disability was permanent, a constant, then my attitude, a variable, would have to work for, and not against that constant. I had to help myself out, basically. I couldn't just let life pass me by because I was insecure about my hearing. I became more assertive in asking questions. Now, when I don't understand something, I make sure I get it right. But every once in a while, I'll let something slip, sometimes on purpose. Life is more fun and random when people misunderstand the little things. Honestly, I never would have imagined that I would have a better life because of my disability.

I know that maybe one day I'll wake up without hearing a sound. I sincerely hope this doesn't happen, but I have to prepare. Until then, I'll be happy just listening to music, to the sound of people's voices and to the tap-tap-tap of the keys on my computer keyboard as I type a word.

Los otros metros

La plataforma Yonggwang en Pyongyang

La plataforma T-Centralen en Estocolmo

La estación Westfriedhof en Munich

Referencia: Metro Arts and Architecture

Cafe Tacuba - El metro

Me metí en un vagón de metro y no he podido salir de ahí
Llevo más de tres o cuatro meses viviendo acá en el subsuelo
En el metro

Zócalo, Hidalgo y Chabacano he cruzado un millón de veces
He querido salir por la puerta pero siempre hay alguien que empuja
Para adentro

Y cuando en las noches pienso yo en tí
Sé qué tu te acuerdas de mí
Pero aquí atrapado en esté vagón
No sé si volveré a salir

Como pastillas, paletones, chocolates, chicles y salvavidas
Tengo ya seis juegos de agujas, ocho cuters y encendedores de sobra
Creo que me ha crecido ya el pelo con la barba y las arrugas
No sé cuando es de día ni de noche, no sé si llevo cien años
Aqui adentro

Y cuando en las noches pienso yo en tí
Sé que tu te acuerdas de mi,
Pero aqui atrapado en este vagon
No se si volver a salir.

Y hay veces que te empiezo a extrañar
Y me dan ganas de llorar,
Pues tu cara no puedo recordar
Y no se si te vuelva a besar.

Tres carrazos

Enzo Ferrari

Maserati MC12 (75° aniversario)

Pagani Roadster

Mi hermana, conocida como la Chona de las Chonny's Angels, vio el Roadster en Modena, Italia.

Noticias personales

Con disculpas a todos aquellos que pensaban que iba para periodismo, me alentaron mis consejeros para que fuera hacia el campo de lingüistica.

...les voy a preparar unos tacos de lengua bien sabrosos, pues.

Disculpas

Mis disculpas por tanto posteo en inglés. Me metía al statcounter (ven, son los numeritos que aparecen abajo del los archivos a mano derecha) y me enteré que el 69% del tráfico viene de México.

Y yo poniéndoles cosas en inglés y portugués.

Bueno, tampoco los quiero tratar como si fueran ignorantes. Y además empezé este blog como proyecto personal difundido al mundo. Pero tendré que reconciliar la barrera del idioma... ¡Ya sé cómo! Les recomiendo que aprovechen unas excelentísimas clases en el CELE en pleno centro de Cuernavaca. Yo tomé dos niveles de francés y miren, ya se me olvido todo.

Relájense, tómanse un tesito y les voy a dar un empujón con comentarios propios. Si nadie comenta en mi blog, si estoy como tonto hablando al aire libre, por lo menos me haré buena compañía.

Jacques Derrida - from The Law of Genre

Ne pas mêler les genres.
Je ne pas mêler les genres.
Je repit: ne pas mêler les genres. Je ne les mêlerai pas.

As soon as the word genre is sounded, as soon as it is heard, as soon as one attempts to conceive it, a limit is drawn. And when a limit is established, norms and interdictions are not far behind: "Do," "Do not," says "genre," the word genre, the figure, the voice or the law of genre. And this can be said of all genres of genre, be it a question of a generic or a general determination of what one calls "nature" or phusis (for example a biological genre, or the human genre, a genre of all that is in general), or be it a question of a typology, designated as non-natural and depending on laws or orders which were once held to be opposed to phusis according to those values associated with technē, thesis, nomos (for example, an artistic, poetic or literary genre)*. But the whole enigma of genre springs perhaps most closely from within this limit between the two genres of genre which, neither separable nor inseparable, form an odd couple of one without the other in which each evenly serves the other a citation to appear in the figure of the other, simultaneously and indiscernibly saying "I" and "we," me the genre, we genres, without it being possible to think that the "I" is a species of the genre "we." For who would have us believe that we, we two for example, would form a genre or belong to one? Thus, as soon as genre announces itself, one must respect a norm, one must not cross a line of demarcation, one must not risk impurity, anomaly or monstrosity.

* Genre in French carries the general sense of "genus," "kind," or "type," (le genre humain means "the human race"); the sense of artistic or literary genre; and the sense of "gender," especially grammatical gender.

Psalm/Psalmo 23

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
***

JEHOVA es mi pastor; nada me faltará.

En lugares de delicados pastos me hará yacer: Junto á aguas de reposo me pastoreará.

Confortará mi alma; Guiárame por sendas de justicia por amor de su nombre.

Aunque ande en valle de sombra de muerte, No temeré mal alguno; porque tú estarás conmigo: Tu vara y tu cayado me infundirán aliento.

Aderezarás mesa delante de mí, en presencia de mis angustiadores: Ungiste mi cabeza con aceite: mi copa está rebosando.

Ciertamente el bien y la misericordia me seguirán todos los días de mi vida: Y en la casa de Jehová moraré por largos días.

Author unknown - Cable 23

The TV is my shepherd, I shall want.
It makes me lie down on the sofa.
It leads me away from the Scriptures.
It destroys my soul.
It leads me in the path of sex and violence, for the sponsor's sake.
Yea, though I walk in the shadow of my Christian responsibilities.
There will be no interruption, For the TV is with me.
It's cable and remote, they control me.
It prepares a commercial before me
In the presence of worldliness;
It anoints my head with Humanism,
My coveting runneth over.
Surely laziness and ignorance shall
Follow me all
days of my life:
And I shall dwell in the house watching TV forever.

How to enact informal legislation

1) Position ideologues in non-official institutions (NOIs) such as businesses or charities.

2) Within those institutions, lower-ranking ideologues propose rules.
2a) Proposals from like-minded ideologues can come from outside entities. This forms an alliance.

3) Higher-ranking ideologues enact rules as policy.

4) NOIs are free to act in the world according to their own, self-justified rules within certain parameters.
4a) The parameters are set by outside institutions that are not exempt from 1).

5) Government legislation (meaning, ideally, the will of the people) is bypassed.

No longer a pirate, not yet a merry man

The Slashdot discussion regarding the Wired News article, "The Shadow Internet," produced interesting comments regarding the whole "piracy" metaphor.
From Slashdotter JeffTL:

As Stallman (Free Software, Free Society; pp. 190-191) said, calling it piracy implies that unauthorized copying is tantamount to armed robbery, kidnap, and murder on the high seas. They both involve theft of a sort -- but are vastly different. Copyright infringement generally involves cheating someone out of their rightful royalties; piracy involves depriving sailors and their employers of life, liberty, or property (maybe all three!) without due process of law. I'd say that copyright infringement is not morally tantamount to this.

From ultranova:

For those who can't tell the difference between real criminal conspiracies and copyright infringers:

* Real criminal conspiracies rob, extort and kill, which directly harms real human beings.
* Copyright infringers distribute music, movies and programs without permission from copyright holders, which may or may not affect the financial bottom line of big media corporations, and might or might not cause their stockholders to not get as much profit as they would otherwise, for an undeterminable amount.

If we go by the nature of the crime, the entire "pirate" metaphor is off, at least in the digital domain. It seems like "Robin Hood" is more accurate. Steal from the rich to give to the poor. One Slashdotter, some guy i know, disagrees:

If you think that you are comparing these "pirates" (i.e., massive copyright violators) with Robin Hood, then you're wrong.
Robin Hood didn't take from the rich and give to the poor; he took from the tax collectors and gave to the taxed.
Now, it turns out that most of the taxed were poor and most of the tax collectors were rich (or those working for the rich), but Robin Hood did not steal from, say, merchants and traders, who were better-off than average, nor did he give to beggars, who were worse-off than average.
Robin Hood should be romanticized because he fought against unfair taxation, not because of the rich-to-poor myth.

But most of the time music labels, not artists, own the copyrights to many songs. They, not artists, are profiting of the musical enterprise. If anything, "merry men," as I'll refer to "pirates" from now on, fight against unfair enforcement of copyright laws. To further the Robin Hood metaphor, illegal music distributors take from the "haves" and give to the "have nots," in this case, the good in question is music, whereas in the Robin Hood mythos, the good was money.

Fighting thoughtcrime

Demand for asset-based bonds depend on projected future profits. The idea listed under the Shadow Internet post could bring the market more down to earth, where there is a limitless supply of mp3 and the actual number of downloads reflect the actual demand there is for a song. The problem I see is that software could be automated to download songs so as to improve figures. This kind of software could be outlawed because other than downloading mass quantities of anything, it has no practical, economical or legal use.

The shadow internet

A Wired News article gives us a glimpse into the Internet underground. I think that an underground for content distribution is really the result of a consumer-driven demand for cultural content.

It's interesting to see what motivates pirates. Surprisingly it isn't money. In Mexico, pirates live off of their trade, because they have no other means of support. Not so the case in the United States. One insider mentions in the article that it is true that no one gets paid for their efforts. It's piracy for piracy's sake driven by American work ethic.

Excerpted from the article:

1. THE INSIDER
Industry and theater employees run their own straight-to-video operations. Hackers looking for prerelease videogames target company servers. And before that long-awaited CD hits Amazon.com, moles inside disc-stamping plants have already got a copy.

2. THE PACKAGER
The pirated goods are passed on to a release group. These groups take multi-gigabyte movie files and squeeze them down for easy online trading.

3. THE DISTRIBUTOR
Release groups are known to have exclusive relationships with certain so-called topsites. These are the highly secretive sites at the top of the distribution pyramid. When a topsite operator drops a file, the avalanche begins.

4. THE COURIERS
Alerted by release groups, worker bees spring into action, copying and transferring files from the topsites to lower-level dump sites, and then from there to P2P networks like Kazaa and Morpheus. For the couriers, the payoff is props from their peers and credits redeemable for goods on upper levels of the pyramid.

5. THE PUBLIC
After the file is copied thousands of times the P2P networks saturate, allowing casual file-traders easy access to the newest movies, music, and videogames.

Ideas for the future
1. Come up with software that seeds the P2P networks. Steps 3 and 4 can be eliminated with a little know-how. The topsites exist only as the gateway to the networks, while the couriers do their share to distribute. Reading the article, the courier's job was described as mostly cutting and pasting. That sounds like something software can do.

2. Music distributors could set up a centralized page or service (like Napster or iTunes) where the number of movie or music downloads can be counted, and that number is put into an index, which is updated every second of every day. If the stock market and the Billboard charts got together in the back of a '64 Chevy, that index would be the result. With this index, people could pay and invest in artists and labels the same way they do with stocks and bonds. Anyone can be a patron of the arts.

2a. I'm sure labels, even the small ones, have figures like projected sales where you can compare the number of downloads to the projections. This could determine the success of a particular artist. It wouldn't be fair to hold a commercial artist, like Britney Spears, to the same sales expectations as an independent artist like Cat Power, so you hold them to their relative projections.

Conclusion
The American thing to do is to see media pirates as friendly competitors rather than adversaries. The RIAA can't afford to look upon copyright violators as enemies in a war, because once they take that stance, they will find they are deep in a guerilla war with an enemy that has already won the hearts of the people. A blow against the guerillas is a blow against the people, as the copyright lawsuits seem to indicate. The first thing the RIAA should do is to calm down and use the pirate's weapons for their own benefit without harming the people they are trying to win over.

If Apple could implement a new distribution scheme, that means that new ideas are possible. Unless, of course the RIAA isn't willing to change its ways, which the past has shown. Then what we'll have is something out of a science fiction novel... the self-perpetuating pre-potent content distributors who, allied with a government, persecute cultural Prometheuses and the race of men enslaved by darkness.

Link

¿Quién la trabaja?

Emiliano Zapata dijo que la tierra es de quien la trabaja y los caciques de hoy son nuestros campesinos. Que quede claro, es un trabajo árduo que se lleva a cabo a pesar del frío del aire acondicionado y del parpareo constante de lámparas fluorescentes. La tierra labrada con plumas es como su dueño: Primero, se aniquila lo sublime. Después se transforma en algo estéril. Finalmente, se pone a generar cifras y cifras.

Postishead - Over

I can't hold this day anymore
understand me anymore

To tread this fantasy openly
what have I done?

This uncertainty is taking me over

I can't mould this stage anymore
recognise me anymore

To tread this fantasy openly
what have I done?

This uncertainty is taking me over.

Desde Verborrea

"El escritor quiere a veces romper la aparente monotonía de su expresión propia citando expresiones de otros escritores, pero en las citas está él. Se puede escribir una obra originalísima nada más con citas ajenas."

- Miguel de Unamuno

Green Day - She

She, she screams in silence
A sullen riot penetrating through her mind
Wait-
ing for a sign
To smash the silence with the brick of self-control

Are you locked up in a world that's been planned out for you?
Are you feeling like a social tool without a use?

Scream at me until my ears bleed
I'm taking heed just for you

She, she's figured out
All her doubts were someone else's point of view
Wake-
ing up this time
To smash the silence with the brick of self-control

Reel Big Fish - Beer

She called me late last night to say she loved me so,
it didn't matter anymore.
I said she never cared and that she never will.
I'd do it all again
I guess I'll have to wait until then.

And if I get drunk well I'll pass out on the floor now baby,

you won't bother me no more.

And if you're drinkin' well you know that you're my friend and I say

I think I'll have myself a beer.

She called me late last night to say she loved me so
But I guess he changed her mind.
Well I should have known it wouldn't be all right

But I can't live without her so I won't even try.

Maybe some day
I'll think of what to say,
Maybe next time I'll remember what to do
She looks like heaven
maybe this is hell
Said she'd do it all again
She'd promise not to tell

If I get drunk well I'll pass out on the floor now baby,
you won't bother me no more.
And she said it's ok boy 'cause
you know we'll be good friends and I say
I think I'll have myself a beer

Madonna - Paradise (not for me)

I can't remember
When I was young
I can't explain
If it was wrong

My life goes on
But not the same
Into your eyes
My face remains

I've been so high
I've been so down
Up to the skies
Down to the ground

I was so blind
I could not see
Your paradise
Is not for me

Autour de moi
Je ne vois pas
Qui sont des anges
Surement pas moi

Encore une fois
Je suis cassee
Encore une fois
Je n'y crois pas

There is a light
Above my head
Into your eyes
My face remains

Green Day - F.O.D

Something's on my mind
It's been for quite some time
This time I'm on to you

So where's the other face
The face I heard before
Your head trip's boring me

Let's nuke the bridge we torched 2,000 times before

This time we'll blast it all to hell

I've had this burning in my guts now for so long

My belly's aching now to say

Stuck down in a rut

of dislogic and smut

A side of you well hid

When it's all said and done

it's real and it's been fun

But was it all real fun

Let's nuke the bridge we torched 2,000 times before

This time we'll blast it all to hell

I've had this burning in my guts now for so long

My belly's aching now to say

You're just

a fuck

I can't explain it 'cause I think you suck.

I'm take-

ing pride

in telling you to fuck off and die.

I've felt this burning in my guts now for so long

My belly's aching now to say

I'm taking pleasure in the doubts I've passed to you

So listen up as you bite this.

You're just

a fuck,

I can't explain it 'cause I think you suck.

I'm take-

ing pride

in telling you to fuck off and die.

Good night

dedicado a Trisha

Language

One week later, President Bush said no, we are in a "war on terror," not a "global struggle against violent extremism."

Link

Desde Verborrea

"¡Cuántas personas utilizan lo abstracto para parecer profundas! La mayor parte de los términos abstractos son sombras que ocultan vacíos."

- Chamfort

Juan José Arreola - Variaciones sintácticas

De un viajero

En el vientre de la ballena, Jonás encuentra a un desconocido y le pregunta:
-- Perdone usted, ¿por dónde está la salida?
-- Es depende... ¿A donde va usted?
Jonás volvió a dudar entre las dos ciudades y supo qué responder.
-- Mucho me temo que ha tomado usted la ballena equivocada...
Y sonriendo con dulzura, el desconocido se disió blandamente hacia el abismo intestinal.
Vomitado poco después como un proyectil desde la costa, Jonás fue a estrellarse directamente contra los muros de Nínive. Pudo ser identificado porque entre sus papeles proféticos llevaba un pasaporte en regla para dirigirse a Tartessos.

Juan José Arreola - Cantos de mal dolor

El encuentro

Dos puntos que se atraen, no tienen por qué elegir forzosamente la recta. Claro que es el procedimiento más corto. Pero hay quienes prefieren el infinito.
Las gentes caen unas en brazos de otras sin detallar la aventura. Cuando mucho, avanzan en zigzag. Pero una vez en la meta corrigen la desviación y se acoplan. Tan brusco amor es un choque, y los que así se afrontaron son devueltos al punto de partida por un efecto de culata. Demasiados proyectiles, su camino al revés los incrusta de nuevo, repasando el cañon, en un cartucho sin pólvora.
De vez en cuando, una pareja se aparta de esta regla invariable. Su propósito es francamente lineal, y no carece de rectitud. Misteriosamente, optan por el laberinto. No pueden vivir separados. Ésta es su única certeza, y van a perderla buscándose. Cuando uno de ellos comete un error y provoca el encuentro, el otro finge no darse cuenta y pasa sin saludar.

Juan José Arreola - Cantos de mal dolor

Cláusulas

I. Las mujeres toman siempre la forma del sueño que las contiene.

II. Cada vez que el hombre y la mujer tratan de reconstruir el Arquetipo, componen un ser monstruoso: la pareja.

III. Soy un Adán que sueña en el paraíso, pero siempre despierto con las costillas intactas.

IV. Boletín de última hora: En la lucha con el ángel, he perdido por indecisión.

V. Toda belleza es formal.

Disculpas

He estado metido en un rollo filosófico del cual aún no he logrado una conclusión práctica. El rollo involucra al posmodernismo y la legitimidad de la misma filosofía y también al Cristianismo. En cuando explote mi cabeza, postearé lo que quedaron de mis sesos en esta página. Y para que se mantengan entretenidos un rato... Juan José Arreola.

Pornography in Paris

Bob sings the freedom once more as
I lite up a spliff
choke on the cold ashes behind
my front teeth and feel the cold
gray gritty mud turn to cold cream
in my esophagus moisturizing my lungs
sliding, trickling, rubbing my ky-belly
like Paris in the springtime at night

Do you want to parler un peu de français
she asks in the fuzzy green electronic night
while her française warms my mouth
my ears scream and roar as the alien crawls
on the bed
like she knows what to do
does she know how to do?
silk, warm silk
hot silk

Noticias

El Senado de los Estados Unidos aprobó la extensión de la Ley Patriota que otorga amplios poderes de vigilancia. Si en diez días el Presidente Bush aprueba la extensión, ésta se convertirá en ley.