Quisiera poder registrar todo lo que he visto
me siento frágil, angustiado, ante la sola idea de olvidar algún día este momento, aquel momento.

Solo espero no olvidar a Borges: la capacidad de olvidar es proporcional a la capacidad de generalizar.

On scales and complexity, again.

Looking out the window at the brief stillness of the trees outside, of the sky so pale with smog, of the flats so gray, so sad, my thoughts began to drift.

We are just, as a civilization, getting used to the smallness of our lives, of our brains, in comparison to the size of the universe. We are amazed at the complexity that can be achieved in plants, animals and virii, which have a size of almost zero, compared to the radius of our local cluster.

So it is not unnatural to raise the question: what complexity can very large structures posses? To address this question the speed of information transmission must be taken into account, and one could at first argue that distances measured in light years are way too large for information storage and processing. But is this intrinsic to the distances themselves, or is it relative to other, faster, processes which the components of such a system may undergo? Let us just remember that there are processes small in space yet large in time, such as those studied by geology.

What amazingly complex things may we see if we build a incredibly wide-angle deep-field videocamera and watch it for long enough? Is there any thing that might prevent large complex structures from existing?


All of this has made a question pop into my mind: what do we mean by small and large? In a video I posted some months ago, Richard Dawkins argues that those concepts are relative to the sensibility of our senses. Enhancing our senses with apparatus of various kinds has helped in giving us a better idea of the scales of natural phenomena and the range of which human lives go on.

In this quest for a grip on the size of things, two facts have been discovered, or aproximated. One is the size of the universe, based on the velocity of receding distant galaxies and the well known constant-ness of the speed of light. The other is the discovery that certain forces, namely the strong nuclear, are of effect in only very small scales. Conversely, the effect of gravitation is negligible at this same scales.

Given all of this, one comes to wonder: is it possible that the matter interactions that our instruments are able to measure are only those in scales not larger than what we call the size of the universe? what if there is another, yet to be discovered type of interaction which is negligible at such scales but much more important at even larger ones?

Can our current theory give us any hints in proving or disproving this?

If a sort of very-large scale aggregation of matter exists, in such a way that between one cluster of matter and the next the four forces we know have no effect, could we be living in deception?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-scale_structure_of_the_cosmos

En el mar, la vida es más sabrosa

Before the war

Some stuff I do like from the 90's.

How must the cosmological principle be modified to address the fact that distant places are always more interesting than one's current position?

Sometimes I'd like to just lay down on the warm afternoon grass and see the white clouds go by across that blue sky of my childhood.

The wine...

Subway Dream

It was a crowded subway platform like those we are so used to here in Mexico City.

After a while of waiting for the train, it struck me that all of us waiting were young people, and more than one had with them some sort of strange object. One had a snowboard, other had a set of PVC pipes. The wait was getting unusually long.

Suddenly someone came in, an official of sorts, and announced that the train service would stop but that we couldn't go out because "the country had fallen apart" and this was the only safe place to be. I approached him and told him that if he knew that he had some sort of contact with the outside so why shouldn't we, and he, in a classic gesture of authority, dismissed my remark as nonsense and laughed.

I stayed there for what seemed a couple of hours, chatting with people etc, and suddenly I realized I could scape trough the tunnel. So I started walking down the tunnel until I found a place where my mobile phone could manage a signal, and called my mother. I was very happy to hear she was alive, after all the country had fallen apart, what ever that meant. Yet, she didn't sound quite that happy to listen to me.

So I told her "Hi mom, I'm all right, how are you and Pa doing?" and she said "I'm all right" in a stern voice, then added "And in all this time, what have you done, are you married now, with children?" And I replied "Why do you say that Mom, how long has it been since we last talked" And she answered, rather angrily, "Forty two years".

And then I realized that indeed, in that subway station I was trapped in time, and I would go out forty two years later than when I went in.

-

I am not really sure dreams can be subject of interpretation. Perhaps dream-interpretations are to be subjects of interpretations.

The Simpsons and Apple.

Higher much higher

It is autumn now in Mexico City, here in the School of Science of the National University, birds are singing the way they only do when the sun in setting.

It is this time of the day that some have come to call the blue hour, in which the tiny details of life no longer distract our attention and we can see the big beautiful picture we call the world.

It is this time of life in which the past looks distant yet we refuse to consider it the way it is: long gone.

A new set of desires, of longings, arises every day inside of me, and every one, and only accumulate in that long stack of things to do, of things to live. Yet, of that seemingly uncountable set of desires, there are some that shine, even in the darkest of times, that shine for long, that shine from far away. It can be seen in the eyes of a person when approaching, it can be felt in every stolen kiss, in every furtive smile, in every moment of doubt, in every moment of happiness.

Yet, however strong this desires might be, it is not uncommon for men and women alike to repress them, to be only slight moved by them and instead focus their attention in other, perhaps more socially acceptable or more culturally inspired, goals.

If in this setting you came and ask me what I fancy now that I am twenty four, I would begin by talking about the future, girls and travel. I refuse to engage any longer in that winner-less game of pretending to be satisfied, a game in which many of us engage for reasons so ludicrous we are ashamed to state.

We have everything ahead of us, it is the best of times, it is the age of hope.

My greatest longing of them all is for there to be no other moments in which I turn back and regret my inaction, my lack of confidence, or my little hope in the future.

Do you

know the night?

Antes me preocupaba al pensar que seria del mundo cuando gobernaran los que vieron Beavis and Butthead durante su adolescencia.

Hoy me emociona pensar que será de la ciencia cuando todos estén familiarizados con los autómatas celulares, la teoría de categorías, etc.

Me permito robar está imagen de Xkcd

living

Have you ever made love to a beautiful girl
Made you feel like it's not such a bad world
Hey man now you're really living

Synagogue

For every past there is a future.

Small positive integers are more unlikely to occur than large positive integers, what ever the threshold between small and large is.

Yet, they are so common in nature.

On traffic

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

1. There is a lower bound, which is strictly greater than zero, to the area occuppied by any given vehicle.
   
2. All cities have finite area.
3. The probability of a traffic-jam occurring in a city is proportional to the area occupied by the cars and other vehicles driving in it.
4. The purpose of commuting is not getting vehicles from one place to another, but rather, getting people from one place to another.
5. The area occupied by a mass-transit (bus, rail, tram, subway) system, per user, is smaller than the area occupied by normal car, per user (even when the car is full to its capacity, and all mass transit users are sitting down).
6. Mass transit systems can be planned and scheduled, while individual cars cannot.
7. The number of cars in a city can increase much faster than the total length of paved road for them to roll on.

From all of the above, it can be easily proven that if you are driving your car instead of riding the bus, you are increasing the probability of a traffic jam occurring.

On the other hand, if you ride the bus or train, you decrease the probability of a traffic jam occurring.

Therefore, if you drive a car you have no fucking right to complain about traffic jams, for you are contributing to the probability of them occurring more than you would if you used alternative commuting methods.

On the other hand, if you are riding the bus or tram, you have every right to spit at cars.

All of the above is specially true in rush hours.

Nuevo Capitalismo?

Reproduzco desde el blog de José Saramago.



Ha llegado el momento del cambio a escala pública e individual. Ha llegado el momento de la justicia

La crisis financiera esta de nuevo aquí destrozando nuestras economías, golpeando nuestras vidas. En la última década sus sacudidas han sido cada vez más frecuentes y dramáticas. Asia Oriental, Argentina, Turquía, Brasil, Rusia, la hecatombe de la Nueva Economía, prueban que no se trata de accidentes fortuitos de coyuntura que transcurren en la superficie de la vida económica, sino que están inscritos en el corazón mismo del sistema.

Esas rupturas que han acabado produciendo una funesta contracción de la vida económica actual, con el aumento del desempleo y la generalización de la desigualdad, señalan la quiebra del capitalismo financiero y significan la definitiva anquilosis del orden económico mundial en que vivimos. Hay pues que transformarlo radicalmente.

En la entrevista con el Presidente Bush, Durao Barroso, Presidente de la Comisión Europea, ha declarado que la presente crisis debe conducir a “un nuevo orden económico mundial”, lo que es aceptable, si éste nuevo orden se orienta por los principios democráticos –que nunca debieron abandonarse – de la justicia, libertad, igualdad y solidaridad.

Las “leyes del mercado” han conducido a una situación caótica que ha requerido un “rescate” de miles de millones de dólares, de tal modo que, como se ha resumido acertadamente, “se han privatizado las ganancias y se han socializado las pérdidas”. Han encontrado ayuda para los culpables y no para las víctimas. Es una ocasión histórica única para redefinir el sistema económico mundial en favor de la justicia social.

No había dinero para los fondos del Sida, ni de la alimentación mundial… y ahora ha resultado que, en un auténtico torrente financiero, sí que había fondos para no acabar de hundirse los mismos que, favoreciendo excesivamente las burbujas informáticas y de la construcción, han hundido el andamiaje económico mundial de la “globalización”.

Por eso es totalmente desacertado que el Presidente Sarkozy haya hablado de realizar todos estos esfuerzos con cargo a los contribuyentes “para un nuevo capitalismo”!… y que el Presidente Bush, como era de esperar en él, haya añadido que debe salvaguardarse “la libertad de mercado” (¡sin que desaparezcan los subsidios agrícolas!)…

No: ahora debemos ser “rescatados” los ciudadanos, favoreciendo con rapidez y valentía la transición desde una economía de guerra a una economía de desarrollo global, en que esa vergüenza colectiva de inversión en armas de 3 mil millones de dólares al día, al tiempo que mueren de hambre más de 60 mil personas, sea superada. Una economía de desarrollo que elimine la abusiva explotación de los recursos naturales que tiene lugar en la actualidad (petróleo, gas, minerales, coltán…) y se apliquen normas vigiladas por unas Naciones Unidas refundadas -que incluyan al fondo Monetario Internacional, al Banco Mundial “para la reconstrucción y el desarrollo” y a la Organización Mundial del Comercio, que no sea un club privado de naciones, sino una institución de la ONU- que dispongan de los medios personales, humanos y técnicos necesarios para ejercer su autoridad jurídica y ética eficazmente.

Inversiones en energías renovables, en la producción de alimentos (agricultura y acuicultura), en la obtención y conducción de agua, en salud, educación, vivienda,… para que el “nuevo orden económico” sea, por fín, democrático y beneficie a la gente. ¡El engaño de la globalización y de la economía de mercado debe terminarse! La sociedad civil ya no será espectador resignado y, si es preciso, pondrá de manifiesto todo el poder ciudadano que hoy, con las modernas tecnologías de la comunicación, posee.

¿”Nuevo capitalismo”?. No!

Ha llegado el momento del cambio a escala pública e individual. Ha llegado el momento de la justicia.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza
Francisco Altemir
José Saramago
Roberto Savio
Mario Soares
José Vidal Beneyto

On Coherence

Things I'm too old to do (without getting jailed)

It is autumn.
All the leaves are brown....
I should be outside crushing them under my feet.

I can't get rid of this feeling that I didn't do all I could do, that I should be doing this or that... that my life runs past and I'm stuck in front of the puter.

1. Fuck a 15 year old
2. Fuck a 17 year old
3. Attend a college lingerie party
4. Attend a high-school lingerie party
5. Fuck a classmate in my generation trip (I never actually had one)
   
6. Win a medal on an IMO.
7. Become a black-hat hacker
8. Become a fighter-pilot
9. Become an anarchist
10. Become a (at least) descent chess player
11. Spend a summer on the shore of a lagoon
12. Be a freelancer photojournalist
13. Go to space camp
14. Drink beer straight from the keg
15. Build a training camp for G.I. Joe action figures
16. Build a Varitech out of LEGO Technic
17. Camp in my backyard alone
18. Be a fluent Russian speaker

When I started writing this I thought the list would be longer, and I thought even more sex-related stuff would be in it.

I'm going out there to crush some leaves, wanna come?

Human arrogance.

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver,
and a bee puts to shame many an architect
in the construction of her cells.

But what distinguishes the worst architect
from the best of bees is this:
that the architect raises his structure
in imagination before he erects it in reality.

Karl Marx.

On the first pages of most artificial intelligence books, or on the first sentences of an introductory lecture on AI, a question is asked: What is intelligence?

We take for granted that we know the answer to an equally, if not more important, question: what does "artificial" mean?

I am not alone, I know, in thinking that the route to AI begins not with answering the first question, posed at least two thousand years ago, but rather with a systematic and intrepid quest for an answer of the second one.

Allow me, dear reader, to put forth this three questions, your answers of which I would really like to hear of.



What does artificial mean for you?

Where is the boundary between artificial and natural?

What do you think will happen as science approaches this boundary and clears the mist that makes it look so fuzzy?




There is a halo of mysticism surrounding the understanding of the concepts of intelligence, mind, creativity, etc. (and not only those, also social phenomena, and until recently, life itself). That idealism of which Russell was such a stern enemy is still around us, pushing us into the arrogant position of thinking that there is something in intelligence unattainable by objects not humane.

This idealism is manifest in our invention of the word artificial, and the common use we give to it. This idea, that the processes in which human intelligence intervenes are somehow different from those in which it is absent, is arrogant in it self. But this arrogance is not intentional in each human individual, but rather a common trait of our culture, in which the ignorance of the physical processes leading to that which we call intelligence, is taken as a sign that something metaphysical lies behind the mind.

This is a tempting position for it is easy to reconcile it with our sensation of self-consciousness, with our ability to recognize ourselves apart from other things. But it is also a dangerous position, for we tend to interpret it as the supremacy of men over all earthly things.

This arrogant position can be interpreted as the successor of vitalism, an idea long-abandoned in science yet still present in the layman. Science, at least, must get rid of this absurd idealism in order to advance not only in the field of AI, but in every other field of science in which interesting phenomena seem to come out of nowhere.

Dialogue

It isn't beauty
it is acting.

She looks like the kind of person who won't take any shit from life,
or from any one.

Does she?

There's something in that distant gaze...

If life is just a big play, why do we choose such crappy roles?

Look

It is indeed very neat to stare outside instead of inside.
It is there, after all, where the stars are
where the roads lay
where yellow leaves fall.

That soon?

I have this recurring memory of a supermarket in Cuernavaca, the rain, and me running in the parking lot trying to fetch a cab. The rain, the groceries, the cab, with it's characteristic smell of Tsuru, the city, the palm trees on Juarez av, the climbing streets, the falling rain, her.

And that smell is in my thoughts the same as that of old Datsuns, sometime in the late 80s. The hard door knobs, the doors so thin, the window handles with chromed knobs. They were rather narrow cars, and they had that smell, that feel of metal, and those analog displays. The windows creaked when they moved down, and the rain was so loud on the roof. Those were used as cabs and I used to ride them with my mother, going downtown sometimes. And then there's the smell of downtown, a whole story all together. But that feeling and that smell Datsuns inherited to Tsurus.

The exact same feeling you get riding a Lada 1500. No wonder.

I like that feeling, that smell.

Coincidence

The light so sweet on the white walls, on the pine wood, on the dusty books and records. The sound of birds, the sense of calm, the joy of waking up to a beautiful day, on those white sheets. And then the smell, smell of plants, smell of tobacco, smell of the future. And in the middle of it all, the smell of bergamot in the steam rising from the cup, the smell of happiness.

That very same smell went by today, and gone it was, just like before.

Definition

Eric once asked me what was it I understood for the word spirituality.
The best word I could manage for an answer was sublime.
I was really thinking something like this.

Humanity

It is said that all of us have this one humane side.
I forget mine quite very often, actually I am sometimes annoyed by it.

Yet, the moments I've enjoyed the most are of the kind I consider humane./

But most of us don't like humanity, at least not all the time. We prefer that simulation on top which we like to call world, where hunger is a pretext to have lunch and socialize, where boredom is a trigger for fun and love is a sign that condoms must be bought in larger quantities. We prefer that stern look, that pose of worryness, a thousand times to a face of despair, or a smile.

A better world, I hope, will come, when that simulation, the matrix, no longer exists. Where thoughts and feelings aren't context-dependent, where a smile is a smile and a hug just a hug. A better world, I hope, will come in which one mustn't be ashamed of longing, of crying, of laughing. A world more humane.

A world of humane aesthetics, humane values, humane social protocols.

Meanwhile the humane must be confined to bedrooms, or walks in the park. Meanwhile the humane will be a sought-after product. We will but it in literature, in therapists, in lingerie, in drugs. Meanwhile we will laugh and cry in pairs at most, and never too soon.

Meanwhile I will burn in shame for writing the words shame and humane.

Chiba

Case is 24.
Two years ago he was the best console cowboy around, until he made that mistake he swore himself never to do: steal from his employees. Now, he is a middle-man in the black market and is planing to make some money by smuggling 3Mb of RAM.

A great friend of mine used to smuggle hot RAM. We were both 16 back then, and 128 megs was really something. I had read Neuromancer for the first time some two years behind, and I felt that Case and Molly were grown ups. They had the experience of age to aid them in their deeds. They felt in love, they feared, they longed, they fought, like grown ups did.

I am 23.
I am no console cowboy, I am nobody. Or at least, I'm no where near what I had dreamt.


If you ask me, the best days of my life are in the past. Or even worst, in a future now unreachable.

Do you feel the same way?

A friend of mine bought a one way ticket for himself and his long-time girlfriend for Kathmandu. In their hands the've taken the reins of their lives and they say, I am sure, the word tomorrow without fear.




Words scape me when I try to speak.

I'm not really fond of musicals

You can like the life you’re living, you can live the life you like.

Realphotografie

I like to think, of a world out there,
a different world
a different time
a different life.

A different sort of happiness

But I know, quite very well, it is the lens that gives that impression.

What I hate most about it
is not so much to find my self constrained
to this my world, my time, my life
but rather to be aware
that if I could adjust my brightness histogram
or have a better optics set
or at least greater exposure time
this sort of happiness
my sort of happiness
would be even better.

lifestyle

It isn't only beauty, only aesthetics what fashion photography transmits, at least to me. It isn't only clothes or makeup or accessories it sells, that is quite clear, but rather a lifestyle, one made with money and not ideas.

Can you think of any other form of art with this same property?

BIOLOGY

Every time I see your charms, I can only gasp
I can only wish I were with you
I can only long for the time when you will talk to me
and let me take you out, for a walk or two
for a dance or two.


Every time I see your charms I raise my hands in despair
what a beauty there awaiting two watchful eyes
two agile hands, one fearless mind
that is not me, I tell my self, and turn around
only to run a couple feet and then come back
to see those charms, those deadly charms.

la cafetería de sillas anaranjadas

Era una cafetería, tenia una barra por la que deslizabas una charola (tray) y te iban sirviendo comida. Las sillas eran de conglomerado, y con una capa de triplay pintada de anaranjado arriba, eran bastante gruesas. Las mesas tampoco eran de madera, pero el recubrimiento que tenían, algunos ya despegados, pretendía por medio de dibujos ser madera. Había unas maquinas que mantenían fría y homogenea una bebida sabor jamaica a base de jarabe. El techo era bajo y cada mesa tenia siempre un frasco de azúcar.

Conocí ese lugar de pequeño, estaba a las afueras de un centro comercial y a mis padres les gustaba encontrarse con gente ahí, era el sitio de reunión para algunos. Solo recuerdo haber probado la comida una vez, pero el agua de jamaica y los refrescos muchas otras. Los dependientes eran adultos, señoras, no adolecentes. El trato era amable y personal. Es la experiencia mas vieja que recuerdo de haber pedido algo al otro lado de la barra por mi solo.

Las personas que a veces se encontraban ahí tenían todas clase de nombres que a mi me parecían enigmáticos y emocionantes, Rosa Rosas, Esparza, Medina, Agüayo, Pancho y mi favorito: el Batman, por cierto el único de los cuales que podría reconocer si lo viera hoy, unos 18 años después. De todos esos nombres mi favorito era Medina.. no se realmente por que, solo que estaba relacionado con una persona alta, de bigote y poco cabello, pero joven. Tenia siempre un sweater de rombos, y lo que me encantaba era el nombre, Medina.

Depues, cuando mi madre iba al autoservicio adyacente, a veces nos desviábamos a la cafetería por un refresco. Ella y yo, en la aventura de ir en busca de consumibles, mientras mis hermanas estaban en sus clases de música, en la universidad, a unos pasos de ahí.

Antes de que destruyeran la cafetería para hacer un estacionamiento más amplio, fui un par de veces con una de mis primeras novias, también por refrescos, o a veces solo al baño.

Era un lugar importante para mi. Desde aquí (donde escribo esto) se alcanza a ver el ampliado estacionamiento. Esperemos que la Onda de Fria, la nevería que estaba a unas cuadras, sí haya resistido el embate de las corporaciones.

deep

I won't take any of that "I'm totally crazy, dude" shit any more.

A dream.

(music only, do play it)

I was a cop, a coward cop. I left my police car at the bottom of a hill, on top of which was the station. I was afraid of the neighbourhood. On the way up I met some other cops and then, on a door of a humble house, stuck like the 96 theses was a note, and the note said that we cops must be aware for payback time was here. Arriving at the station we handed the note to the chief, and he to, was afraid.

Later I was walking on a riverside, with my mother. And some lights started to show up in the night sky, small as stars, but fast moving. I saw a yellow flash move trough the sky in a straight line, far in the distance. Every second the moving stars became more clear, and they moved in two coherent groups. I knew it just then that it was a dogfight in the distance, and my mother to, was afraid.

We ran for we knew war has here. Specially fast we ran from the riverside, with all the bridges and harbors that we deemed would be good targets. Sure enough they started blowing up as we ran to the hills and hid inside a house. In the basement was a family, hidden from the falling bombs, but we thought it sufficient to stay in the living room, thinking a house wouldn't be targeted.

Laying on the floor we heard the falling bombs and saw the frighten ones, and suddenly the house it self was moving, a peek out the windows confirmed it. It was moving towards a cathedral, a very large one, and stopped at the entrance. I was then hauled out by soldiers and carried to front row, where judgment begun. I was introduced as the Antichrist, and the grand jury was summoned: the twelve apostles came out flying, wrapped in light, from the frescoes that depicted them, and sat, shining, facing me. I tried to talk to them, as if old friends, but they were all quite pissed for I had sold their master for some money in a time long forgotten.

It's hard to see where we stand, what's up, what's down and where is it we are going.

Diversity of scales

J. S. Bach Little Fugue in G minor, BWV 578

Where is it, after all, that we are heading for?

fuck

23/153

El cielo.

...su particular forma de esparcir y aguadar el tiempo.
-natzmtz

The sky above port was the color of a television, turned to a dead channel.

Se un adulto y cógeme.

Me gusta pensar que he visto algo del mundo, un poco del código que subyace a lo que estamos acostumbrados a vivir. Que en estos pocos años de vida he logrado concientizar mi conocimiento sobre algunos de los patrones interesantes que este gran autómata presenta en su comportamiento.

Sin embargo, extraño y sigo considerando muy felices aquellos días en que aún creía en el azar, en que aún me divertían las palomas en la plaza y en que comandaba una nave que viajaba por el espacio, de planeta en planeta, a veces peleando con enemigos que no tenían otra característica más que ser enemigos.

Y uno de los grandes placeres era hacer regularidades en este gran autómata. Con esos sencillos bloquesitos de colores se podía reducir localmente la entropía de formas muy divertidas.

Esos eran, en resumen, los buenos tiempos.

Pero con el mismo terror que otros, me encuentro cada vez más en situaciones en dónde hay que reaccionar no necesariamente de la forma más divertida, o que más risa da, o que más se asemeja a la vida en un viaje interestelar.

Ya no hay amigos imaginarios con quienes comer, pero hay amigos de verdad con quienes comer. Ya no hay soldaditos de plástico, pero hay risk, ya no hay LEGOs, pero pronto habrá de nuevo, ya no hay viajes interestelares, pero hay viajes a ciudades igual de desconocidas. Además de eso, hay matemáticas, computadoras y sistemas biológicos que despedazar para encontrarles regularidades. Antes la frontera estaba en el límite de la galaxia, la imaginación se me nublaba al imaginar el viaje por el espacio profundo, de galaxia en galaxia sin estrellas. Ahora se me nubla con la teoría de categorías, con la autoorganización, y con las mujeres.

Estos son, después de todo, buenos tiempos.

There's a man, going 'round taking names.

I've applied to face failure
to look it in the eyes again
But I am happy
and I am ready
Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still

Ganges Delta

Rivers on water

Giant Shrimp at the edge of the abyss.

Soyuz

(J. Backes)


Three countries who's name started with the same word.

Wikipedia Poster (and moto4lin on the pebl)

I found this really nice poster at FC-UNAM yesterday (sorry, mobile phone pic).


moto4lin (available for debian using apt-get install moto4lin) is a really nice program to connect motorola phones to linux boxes.
A couple of things that must be kept in mind:

• To connect to your phone moto4lin must be run as root (sudo)
• To configure moto4lin, it must be run as normal user
• You need AT and P2K vendor and product numbers for your phone. You can get this numbers by clicking "refresh list" on the settings window whilst running the program in sudo mode. (Of course the phone must be plugged)
• You might need to do one or more of the following (I own a motorola u6 pebl and I had to do both of them for the thing to work).

1. change 'ACM Device' to /dev/ttyACM0
2. The p2k product ID must be equal to the at product ID minus one.

• For this two changes to take effect you must enter them in the settings window whilst in normal user mode. You might also need to switch the mode to p2k, I believe this one thing can be done whilst in root mode...
  

I am haunted by night by a ghost of the past
I am strangled by day by a ghost from this day
and at dusk, when at ease I can stand,
I have toughts, all alone, of tomorrow
for not even a ghost will dare have
any plans of a future with me.

Promises

I had to pass trough her office before getting home.
I know she's there usually by the mornings.
Yet, I promised myself I'd kiss her if she was there.
She wasn't.

Those weird promises one makes.
Those neat fantasies.
They might have no impact on real life, they are unlikely to become true, yet, they put a smile on my face.

Singapore

(Kroisenbrunner)

What are you playing?

José Padilha's film, Tropa de Elite, portrays the dichotomy of modern societies. One the one hand, the real people who are out there working, killing, bribing, fighting, dying, and on the other the dream people, who are discussing Foucault, smoking pot and attending parties. The bridge between the two is, on the film, the system of drug dealing. And as some of the characters go from one world to the other, it is impossible not to realize what group one belongs to.


I don't really know who came up with the term chairo, but I once knew this gal who would very well fit into this category (I always thought her adidas sportsware were reminiscent of her aristocratic past, but it seems it was just normal chairo stuff). Allow me to tell you two episodes I lived with her, which quickly came to my mind when watching this excelent movie.

1. One day, she said that all policeman were thieves, that she didn't felt at all secure with one of them around. I asked her why and she proceeded to tell two stories of middle class friends of her who were detained by the police only to be robbed. After a couple of seconds, she accepted that both of them where rather high on drugs when it happened.

2. In accordance with the life style she pursued, she was an occasional user of illicit drugs. Yet, she was always alarmed when drug-related violence emerged in the country, and said she was very much afraid that the drug-lords would take over the Mexican political system.
Of course, with the extremely cheap production of ammunition now a days, every little joint she made gave those very same warlords enough money to buy a 7.62x39 round and use it against each other, and possibly Innocent by-standers, or to load it into their AK and threaten with it a city mayor, lawmaker or police officer.

It all made me think, what are we playing? we go around pursuing a lifestyle or another, and never touching or stopping to see how we affect the real world. That which is valuable to us is solely dreams, socially imposed dreams of popularity, of having a good time, of being beautiful, trendy, up to date with culture, buena onda, socially responsible, ...

As some of you might know I hang around at the school of science at UNAM, and there, where future scientists are supposedly in formation, that pursuing of illusions is very frequent. Most people don't see their scientific labor as the most exciting part of their present lives, while we consider education important for ourfuture, what really moves us is the pursuit of socially created valuables.

I believe that science and art are just as real and important to society and culture as any other field. But we are not scientists, we are middle-class youngsters trying to be trendy in some way or another, at least on week ends, it is that which occupies our minds. It's not about having fun, it's about fitting in.

We are not real people doing real stuff to make this world better. We aren't really in pursue of knowledge, we are just fooling around.

Let us wake up.




(A legitimate question would be "and what the hell? I want to be a chairo just as much as you want to be a scientist? it is my right to pursue any dream I want" Yet, there is problem with socially and commercially driven life styles.

They damage other people. On the one hand, as mentioned above, the use of recreational (pfff) drugs harms society, kills people, makes peasants work for drug lords, etc. On the other hand the use of money to pursue something as unproductive as a lifestyle damages the economy and makes people's lives more miserable. You think I'm going to far? go ask the 9-year old boy who assembled your adidas jacket, or the 15 year old pregnant girl who soldered your ipod or your motherboard, or the peasants who are nearly slaves to produce your starbucks coffee...



And chairos will pop up and say "well.. that's why I'm a chairo and listen to music of "resisting cultures", buy fair trade, use biodegradable soap and go see every expo that features photos of indigenous people having a bad time.

That so called respect for the poor and the humble is, when combined with driving a car and using expensive perfumes, no different from the colonialist attitude of the English Victorian period. Back then, the people indigenous to the colonies were all seen as rarities and it was trendy, among some, to go and watch them at freak shows, or photograph them so they were known to the world, or listen and dance to their "primitive" music and see in it anthropological interest. But by the middle of the afternoon, sip some delicious Ceylon tea, and smoke some neat American tobacco, and by evening get high on some nice opium. Back then the colonial system of oppression was necessary to maintain many life styles, including that of supposedly anthropological interest in the colonies.

150 years later, the system of globalized oppression, cheap labor, corruption, drug dealing, arms trading, etc. is necessary to maintain many life styles. Including, but not limited to, the chairo style. )

Refri

Eran otros tiempos, eran otros lugares, eran otros ánimos.

Eran dias de lluvia, y de calor, como los que corren hoy en la ciudad de la esperanza, pero con más insectos, con más flores y con más comida enlatada. Eran los mejores tiempos...

Era un departamento con una recamara y muy cerca del equilibrio termódinamico, es decir, un desmadre. En un principio no habia un refrigerador , nos levantabamos temprano e iba yo a la tienda por un poco de jamon, pan, refresco y varios frutsis congelados, y desayunabamos en la cama, emparedados y pan dulce. Eramos jovenes y atrevidos, no necesitabamos cafeina para coger el resto de la mañana, y para vagar por la ciudad por la tarde y la noche.

Ibamos juntos al autoservicio, comprabamos muchas latas, muchos dulces, refrescos rojos, y repelente de insectos. Y un litro, oh si, los buenos tiempos, un litro de picadillo y muchas piezas de tortillas de trigo... no había refrigerador pero sí un horno de microondas, y esos eran los mejores burritos del mundo. Esos eran los mejores días.

Despues hubo un refrigerador, y una lavadora. Ella iba a la escuela y yo me despertaba temprano para prepararle desayuno y empacarle un almuerzo triangular que tambien incluia dulces. Y mientras se bañana yo tomaba las letras magneticas del refrigerador y las acomodaba para tratar de formar, como en un crucigrama, el mayor número de palabras que nos recordaran que eran, en efecto, los mejores días.

Durante el día yo jugaba con mis 7 CDs de Debian.. aprendí mucho esos días.. sin internet, logré poner a funcionar todo el hardware, los dbms y los compiladores e interpretes que según yo eran necesarios para una vida saludable y llena de retos intelectuales. Encender el radio y escuchar la radio de la UAEM me hacia sentir que, mientras jugaba con dselect o releia a Gibson, iba en una ruta subiendo por avenida universidad hacia el auidtorio de la torre.

Una vez vi baraka en ese auditorio.
Otra vez subí a la biblioteca buscando un libro de cálculo y termine leyendo sobre los rollos del mar muerto.
Otra vez ocupé una compu a su nombre y codifique en un emacs remoto por ssh.

Durante la noche bajabamos el colchon al suelo y cada noche dormiamos con una orientación diferente.

Esos eran los mejores tiempos.

He was the man who was strong enough, who made the invaders go home, and made the brothers stop fighting. He is one of those bringers of hope that are so rare, one of those builders of progress we so much need.

(1968)

A better place?

At a special meeting in Bern, World Bank President Robert Zoellic, said that in the past two years 100 million people are estimated to have been pushed into poverty.

Are we supposed to be making a better world? is free trade, globalization, privatization, etc. really working?

We cannot rejoice.

Creative nightmares

Yesterday I read a bit about the different levels of protein structure, and I had this really interesting dream. I typed a long long string of characters which consisted solely of repetitions of the phrase "I am angry at you" and then I begun bending the string in very interesting manners, ending up with a very complicated pattern. A protein made of anger.

Then, somehow, I emailed it. Maybe as a sort of vrml or pov or something file. I don't really know how, but it was attached to an email message.

Finally, I was worried that the structure was too complicated and that the recipient would not zoom in to see the letters composing the neat molecule and would simply focus on the three dimensional beauty. It would had been, however, more likely that the message got filtered straight into the trash.

Dicotomy

There are happy people
Who laugh, succeed and fuck quite very often
Who are always beautiful, who are always ready, who are sometimes late but never fail to get there.
There are happy people
Who grow and learn and smile and flirt.
They aren't hurt for long
they aren't sad for long
they are, after all, quite happy people.

Pregunta I

En el espiritú de las preguntas talmúdicas, e inspirado por una analogía de Toño hace rato, me permito poner lo siguiente a consideración:

Supongan que tienen a su disposición el número que ustedes deseen de piezas de LEGO (tentes) que tengan la propiedad especial de poder unirse a otras piezas por cualquiera de sus caras (no como en los LEGOS tradicionales, que solo lo pueden hacer por dos de ellas).

Supongan que además tienen la propiedad de que la unión entre dos piezas se deshace instantáneamente después de un cierto tiempo de estar unidas, dónde este tiempo es proporcional al número de puntos (muescas, protuberancias, como quieran llamarle a los puntitos de los LEGOs) por los que están unidas. Una vez deshecha una unión las piezas se rigen por la fuerza de gravedad.

Elijan un organismo vivo cualquiera.

Sin restricciones de tiempo ni espacio (pero siempre finitos) ¿Es posible reproducirlo a cabalidad, en estructura y procesos, usando las piezas de LEGO con este propiedad de que las uniones se deshacen en en tiempo?

*Nota, pueden suponer que las piezas son tan pequeñas como quieran, sin que esto merme su capacidad de armar las configuraciones que deseen. Ingnoremos las fuerzas nucleares debiles y fuertes, aunque no creo que las piezas tuvieran que ser tan pequeñas como para que éstas fueran importantes.

*Una persona ha venido con el siguiente comentario:
Una cuestion interesante es la posibilidad de crear gradientes de concentración y la subsecuente fuerza de difusión, que juegan un papel importante en la vida. ¿Cómo podría lograrse esto?

Fotos

( Brianrio )

Antes no me gustaba ver fotos, sobretodo de los viajes de las personas, solo pensarlo me daba una hueva increible.

Pero ahora me gusta, sobretodo de lugares y cosas interesantes, fuera de mi mundo... me causa muchas sensaciones agradables, que duran solo una fracción de segundo pero que me recuerdan que el mundo que está afuera puede hacerme sentir y recordar cosas.

Era un mundo lleno de colores, lo recuerdo.
Era un mundo falto de dolores, lo recuerdo.

Lets talk

Ok ok ok... so I go around the web searching for porn, for interesting "game of life" configurations, for blogs of people who have a life that I wish I did and over and over I find people, sites, news, speaking of PRC's involvement in Tibet. And people go around saying that Tibetan people are little less than gods all pure, and should be allowed to have their own state and bla bla bla bla...

well, I'm pretty pissed off about all that so let me tell you a couple of interesting facts about those facists.

When revolution came to China, Tibet, like other regions had a feudal system were serfdom prevailed, people were traded along with land, land owned by noblemen and clergymen. They had an army which fought, quite unsuccessfully, the communist forces.

On May 1951 the head of state of the Tibet people, the Dalai Lama, signed the Seventeen Point Agreement which gave China the sovereignty over the lands in exchange for a certain amount of autonomy which included the compromise for the improvement of the quality of life and the expulsion of imperialist agents.

The Tibetian goverment failed to fulfill its parts of the agreement, most notably by receiving support in form of arms, money and training from the United States' Central Intelligence Agency, for a rebellion led by noblemen of neighboring Qinghai in response to the distribution of the land to the former serfs.

So I ask all of you who scream "Free Tibet", who are you screaming for? who's movement is this you belong to? Peace loving people? or the United States' anti communist efforts?

Tears

Today I was treated to a really great dinner, some good steaks and wine, and above all nice chat. It was all on the ocation of a great friend of mine's defense of her marvelous thesis on long term effects of pre-natal exposure to toluene on mice.

A moment came when, talking to her father -a marvelous person, tears came to the rim of my eyes. Two stories of sorrow he told, a past one and a present one. Of the past one I'm sure we've all have heard and here's a song on it which I love (sorry.. the best I could find on the tube).




And the present story, the one that really hit me was about the present condition of his beloved country. It was a story which we really musn't be unfamiliar with, he spoke of a world that is our world, of a ruin that is our ruin. He spoke of greed in everyone's mind, of a sole goal in everyone's agenda, that of making money, regardless of what it implies. And then, just then, someone besides me said that "it is understandable that someone wants to climb up the social ladder as long as he doesn't step on others" and then, just then, it was all so more clear.

I cried, because it's that view, that sort of comments, that imply that everything is fine, that a social ladder must exist, that we must climb it, that sort of view of the world, the view that most people arround me have. Oh... climb the social ladder without stepping on others... how foolish, that is simply impossible in this system, impossible. Oh, having a better life with iPods and internet and automobiles and private schools, without stepping on someone else it is impossible. And when I say impossible I do not mean very hard, I do not mean unrealistic, I mean impossible, because money doesn't grow in trees, because what a single person, who ever it is, produces in a month is far from enough to buy an ipod.

It made me cry.. such a country, such a future it could have had, and there were those who said "I have the right to posess all I want" and now what has it come to?, after they took to the streets with tanks and bombs, after they killed and tortured, now it is their ideas wich prevail, it is their ideas in the minds of all that allow for such a rampage on nature and such a rampage on other humans.

DO NOT FOOL YOURSELF.
DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE FOOLED.
READ, UNDERSTAND, AND YOU WILL COME TO SEE.

Three.

I have been reading postsecret a couple of weeks now, and I am greatly amazed at the way each of us react to it, and even more amazed to hear of people getting in line to tell their secrets (I don't know if publicly or not) in the postsecret live events.

Also interesting was to find out that there is such a thing as a speakers bureau, and I suppose it ain't unique otherwise Harper Collins wouldn't have put their name on theirs.

I had this girlfriend with whom I used to daydream about going into a confessional and tell of horrible sins we hadn't really committed just to try to make the listening priest scream in surprise. We really never tried it, it would have been cool.

Any way, I can't fully figure out why we like reading strangers' secrets, and why people like their secrets read by strangers. I think my case is that of a need for intimacy, there isn't really any one who trusts me as much as those strangers and therefore I try to fill that void by peeking into other people's lives. Taking a look around me at school and on the subway I have come to believe that I am not the only one in such a situation, nor am I the only one who has fallen into a routine, at least in the personal relations perspective, that anything out of usual is more than welcome, even if just a story. I suspected that reading personal blogs was a sing of lack of intimate social life (take no offense, I'm one of you), but all this reading has made me become totally sure of it.

But that only solves half of it. Why do people tell secrets aloud to strangers? Why do I enjoy doing it to some extent? Maybe it's part of the same, of wanting someone to know things so deep inside of you, so that that knowledge constitutes a sort of bond.

Any way... one of my favorite TV shows of all times was called "Secret Service" and it was about this really cool cases USSS agents had to solve. All of them, of course, had to do with embassy protection & counterfeit money, yet there was this really cool episode on the Reagen assassination attempt.

Llueve?

-Solo un poco. Lo que llueve a cantaros son memorias.
-No sabia que hubiese bajado tanto el precio del RAM, recuerdas el terremoto en 1999 que hizo subir los precios? y que no bajaron por más de un año?
-Es de eso de lo que hablo.

...but then again, who does?

If there's something we can learn from Deckard's ordain is that there is little difference between us humans and machines. An interesting feature of Nexus was their expiration date, which was something like their death-date. I came to wonder if we don't have expirations dates our selves, not as in death-dates but rather as dates in which we are no longer useful, at least for some particular purpose.

If that were the case we would have not one but a set of expirations dates, which we one by one reach until the final one, the death date, comes.

Who assigns them to us? Who approves of us having or not a certain shelf life in some respect?

Where can I get refurbished? Where can I find Tyrell?

They're rolling out the guns again, hurroo, hurroo
They're rolling out the guns again, hurroo, hurroo
They're rolling out the guns again,
But they never will take our sons again,
No they never will take our sons again,
Johnny I'm swearing to ye.

If you google image search for "wrath" you'll find mostly stuff related to videogames.

Please mind the gap

not by me

Belated

EPROM

I was attacked by this little fella.
Bloody battle it was.

I'd dreamt of dying, I'd dreamt of killing. But never, like last night, had I dreamt of killing my self.
Whilst life was fading away, the light growing dimmer, the blood flowing out, I heard a familiar voice that said in Spanish "but don't! deep inside you are very important to me".
The depths of my skull and the depths of her feelings, I dreamt, can only be reached with one same bullet.

I dreamt.

reach up

Chinese President Hu Jintao (3rd, R), Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev (3rd, L), Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev (2nd, R), Russian President Vladimir Putin (2nd, L), Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov (1st, R) and Uzbek President Islam Karimov (1st, L) plant a magnolia tree to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the founding of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at
a hotel in western Shanghai, east China on June 14, 2006.



Planting a tree and seeing it grow, is supposed to be a way to remind one of his past, and of the path that's been walked to get here. And when it's large and tall one can say with a smile "ohh I saw it grow". Well, I've lost track of the couple of trees I've planted, but I saw this one building grow. I saw it last night, and I realized it is now finished, it is up and it is running, people are living and working in it, laughing, deciding, creating, getting bored. And for that to be, hundreds or thousands had to work, sweat and maybe die.

And after all that, I'm standing in the same place. I saw it grow, but I didn't see my self grow. It is amazing, how some things are easier to build than other. It is amazing, how some of us refuse to grow, and how, when the trees reach the sky , we say "oh, I saw it grow" and we cry.

A sandwich on the Adriatic.

In this time and day one eats them almost daily. We are so used to them, from the most simple ones to the expensive franchise-sold ones. But this is was a special type of sandwich, it was of the type one makes for himself, of the type one goes to the supermarket explicitly to buy ingredients for.

This particular trip to the store was quite swift, for in that little island off the Dalmatian coast supermarkets close their doors at noon on Sundays. It was also quite interesting because one of the two future sandwich eaters had to wait outside on the watch for a boat. A rather futile watch, for a single guy who could speak no balkanic language was most unlikely to talk the boat driver, for such a large vessel, into waiting 5 minutes for his friend who was on the hunt for salami.

Why this two nice little fellas were stationed in such as unlikely place as Korčula is beyond the scope of this tale.

So it was salami, bread and some nice sort of cheese. In just the correct ratios as to serve as a good meal for this two guys, who expected to be sitting on the upper deck of a boat for thirteen hours and were rather surprised when they were seated in a kind of living room with two doors to the outer sea-splashed deck.

It was indeed a really good sandwich when the time came for it to be prepared and eaten, there, in the fancy living room of a Split-bound boat. The other passengers, which weren't many, paid all possible attention the the softball world cup finale which was being broadcast into the numerous TV sets. What exactly is softball and why do Croats like it so much is, up till now, a mystery for me.

It was accompanied by box juice and tap watter stored in a beautiful Vodavoda bottle.

But what was really nice about that sandwich was that it was eaten on the Adriatic, that out side was a nice, cold, salty breeze. That the cheese was rather strong, and the salami very dry, and that outside was the sea. The softball game couldn't matter less. The boat, the sea, the wind, the waves, the cold.

It might have looked, from the inside, like a fancy floating Denny's, the checkered squares on the flag and the sports fans could be irritating, but it was the sea, the cold, the wind, the salt, the cheese and the salami which made that an unforgettable sandwich. A taste I can clearly remember.

And after dinner, came sunset.

Were I a good person
a nice person
a fun person

I wouldn't dream such dreams
I wouldn't cry such tears
I woudn't have to run
I could be laughing too

Touch the sky.

Such a darkness
such a silence
such a loneliness
I rarely feel when on my own
I never stand when I'm alone.

Yet, there, in the midst of it all
so close to everyone
I took off, on my own
I embarked on a dream
to that same place
there, in the midst of it all
so close to everyone
but I right there
not dreaming
but living.

Such a darkness
such a silence
such a loneliness
for it was all a dream
and one can not
dream but alone.

Angel

What's fair is fair.

US Embassy. Belgrade. 21 Feb. 2008

We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.

Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

...

A king is history's slave.

Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples--as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him--he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the hive life--that is to say, for history--whatever had to be performed.

Lev Tolstoi. War And Peace.

Speaking strictly for me
we both could've died then and there.