Higher much higher

Installing ctrax on Ubuntu 11.04 Natty

2012-01-27T09:53:00.004-06:00

Ctrax is a video tracking software developed specifically to track trajectories of fruit flies.

Currently (Jan 2012(, there are packages available for Ubuntu 10.04. If you want to install it in 11.04 you can't use those packages, you will get an error. My solution is the following.

1. First some prerequisites and one package you Can install:
sudo apt-get install equivs python-setuptools python-pygarrayimage

2. Get the latest version of ctrax from here. I tried this on 0.3.0-1_amd64
Place it in a certain folder, say ~/ctraxinst and

cd ~/ctraxinst

3. Now, since this package depends on some python packages which are not available (or not in the correct version) for 11.04, it is necesary to install them by hand:

sudo easy_install motmot.wxvideo
sudo easy_install motmot.wxglvideo
sudo easy_install motmot.wxvalidatedtext
sudo easy_install motmot.imops

4. This installs the python packages, the problem is that since they were not installed using the packaging manager, when we try to install ctrax it will report unmet dependecies. Here comes the dirty part, we will make some dummy packages and trick the packaging system into thinking this python modules are installed, well, not tricking because they actually are, lets call it, informing it of their installation.

mkdir fakes
cd fakes
equivs-control python-motmot-wxvideo
equivs-control python-motmot-wxvalidatedtext
equivs-control python-motmot-wxglvideo
equivs-control python-motmot-imops

This will create four files named as the packages, in side each of them is the information on the respective fake package, we just need to edit one line in each of them. For example

nano python-motmot-imops

and make sure the 8th line says:

Package: python-motmot-imops

(this means you have to replace the defaults with line

Now you can actually build the packages

equivs-build python-motmot-wxvideo
equivs-build python-motmot-wxvalidatedtext
equivs-build python-motmot-wxglvideo
equivs-build python-motmot-imops

this makes four .deb files which can be installed

sudo dpkg -i python-motmot-wxvideo_1.0_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i python-motmot-wxglvideo_1.0_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i python-motmot-wxvalidatedtext_1.0_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i python-motmot-imops_1.0_all.deb

5. And now you can install the ctrax file you downloaded

   sudo dpkg -i ../python-ctrax_0.3.0-1_amd64.deb

That should do the trick :)

2011-04-12T15:32:00.000-05:00

50 años.

De vivir en el futuro.

Xeon 5620 lm-sensors, problems with coretemp

2011-03-03T16:05:00.003-06:00

I post this here because of lack of a better place to get it visible to search engines.

If you are trying to get lm-sensors to work on Debian with a E5620 Xeon or two, you will probably get an error about no sensors found (even after going trough sensors-detect). If you try to manually load the modules required, you will see that an error pops up when trying to load the coretemp module. Something about "devide not found".

The solution is simple, you must install kernel 2.6.37-2-amd64. This cannot be done if you are running either stable or testing. You must use the unstable repositories (http://jaqque.sbih.org/kplug/apt-pinning.html for a how-to) and from there install with apt-get install -t unstable linux-image-2.6-37-2-amd64

This new kernel has a new version of the coretemp module which is capable of dealing with these (not-so-)new intel models.

This might also be necessary for the newer high-end i7 as well as other 5600 series Xeon cpus.

Regards.

2010-10-21T19:44:00.000-05:00

Life, it seems, is not with out a sense or irony.

Las indentaciones son importantes

2010-06-22T13:46:00.003-05:00

La noche de ayer fue una buena noche:
__Soñe que entraba a una celda acompañado de dos personas, que se veian amables.
__Despues de un rato me daba cuenta de que se trataba de Mahmoud Ahmadinejad y Rosa Otunbajewa.
__Me ponia a contarles la siguiente historia, que pacientemente escuchaban mientras comiamos los tres galletas de avena.
____Soñe que entraba a una celda acompañado de dos personas, que se veian amables.
____Despues de un rato me daba cuenta de que se trataba de Mahmoud Ahmadinejad y Rosa Otunbajewa.
____Me ponia a contarles la siguiente historia, que pacientemente escuchaban
________Jocabed y Laura, dos amigas, eran presidenta y vicepresidenta de México, respectivamente.
________Había un atentado en su contra y a mi me acusaban de conspirador

Me llamaba la atención que Ahmadinejad fuera tan buena persona y tratara tan respetuosamente a Otunbajewa. En general, se veia un buen tipo, con su chaqueta sport y su barba, comiendo una gran galleta de avena.

Nuclear Dream

2010-03-31T11:01:00.003-06:00

En la facultad de ciencias de la UNAM hay esta escultura de Prometeo que, supuestamente, los estudiantes movieron de la vieja localización a la actual a mano. De cualquier fora, está en un lugar donde la gente se reune y seguro ha visto muchas cosas. Recuerdo por ejemplo haber visto a una chica quitarse el bra por abajo de la blusa, una competencia por ver quien factorizaba más rápido en primos unos números (auxiliados de unas calculadoras de bolsillo), simultaneas de ajedrez, obras de teatro, discuros políticos y lecturas del origen de las especies, desde un banquito, en una combinación entre misa y discurso de caja de jabón, todo a los ojos de Prometeo. Algunas de estas cosas estaba recordando feliz hace unos días.

También hace unos días estaba leyendo la descripción que hace Feynman de la primera explosión nuclear hecha por el hombre, que observó a veinte millas de distancia. Gracias a un muy buen amigo, tengo un pedazo de arena cristalizada por esa misma explosión, el cual, hace unos días también, le mostré a una visita.

Soñe anoche que había gran alboroto alrededor de la fuente del Prometeo, la gente salia de los edificios y se paraba ahí, al atardecer, pero volteando más bien al sureste.

La luz de la explosión llenaba de blanco todo el campo visual por unos segundos, como si le hubieran puesto a uno una hoja blanca frente a los ojos, y despues una nube cambiando rápidamente de forma, morada sobre ese cielo azul obscuro, y poco despues un golpe de aire que levantaba el polvo y hacia que algunos nos arrojaramos al suelo.

El fuego de los dioses... en manos de los hombres.

Fashion Revolutionaries

2010-02-20T13:03:00.003-06:00

Este país se está yendo a la chingada, es un hecho reconocido casi por todos.

En este contexto, soñé que unos estudiantes se estaban organizando para poner fin a ello. Habían convocado a una gran reunión en un auditorio, y yo decidía darme una vuelta. En el estacionamiento de dicho auditorio, estaban algunos estudiantes preparando explosivos pequeños, y enseñando a usarlos.

El auditorio estaba lleno de estudiantes fresitas, con sus ropas adidas y sus tenis pumas, y al frente estaba un profesor de mi facultad, muy querido entre esa gente. Estaban hablando de la revolución, de como había que cambiar las cosas, en su característico tono fresa y con sus característicos argumentos ingenuos.

Yo decía para mi "esto es una farsa, están jugando a ser los revolucionarios". Para comprobarme a mi mismo mi teoría, me paraba sobre mi silla, levantaba el brazo y gritaba:

First we take Manhattan

Y una buena parte del auditorio respondía

Then we take Berlin.

Con lo que, según yo, probaba mi punto.

If you tought masturbation was sad compared to sex

2010-01-31T23:17:00.004-06:00

I think strip conway's game of life would be a new interesting sexual practice, mostly because it is considered a zero player game.

WW

2010-01-28T22:29:00.008-06:00

Some days ago this friend told me "I found out that my way of loving is making sacrifice for the other person, but that I don't really mean to be altruistic"

My first answer was

"What would Dawkins say?"

Today I discovered (Yes, it's not a good idea to browse DSM-V just to pass time) that I have separation anxiery disorder.

Mi first reaction was:

"What would Freud say?"

And I quickly found the answer:

"Bullshit"

overeagerness

2010-01-22T12:56:00.001-06:00

Overeagerness...

I can't think of more stupid a concept as that one.

2009-12-14T22:10:00.001-06:00

Qué, a nivel subatómico, da lugar a la fuerza normal?

El principio de exclusión.

WTF!

Insensatez

2009-11-08T12:25:00.002-06:00

En un extraño juego de la evolución
social
hemos adquirido, como el armadillo, una coraza
y como el pavorreal, bellos colores.

Y cómo muestra irónica de la coevolución
de dos distintos genes
solo los que saben apreciar esos colores vivos
sobre esa placa hostil
logran coger.

Esa coraza hermosa,
armadura reactiva,
tiene grietas, hondas y delgadas
por las que se nos cuelan los amores

Nosotros las parchamos, prestos
porque no vaya ser que alguien nos vea
no nos quiera coger, y se enamore.

Definición

2009-10-25T12:11:00.002-06:00

Cuando se está triste nada sale bien, no se disfruta ni el porno.

Talvez esa sea la definición de estar triste.

art out of art

2009-08-25T01:06:00.001-05:00

Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton / New Museum, New York
(Gracias a Aide por pasármelo)

:)

2009-07-06T08:53:00.001-05:00

It's travel time!

Fuck! Can this be bloody possible?

2009-06-15T23:02:00.006-05:00

In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. No plant or shrub had yet sprung up, for Yahweh God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the soil. Moisture would well up from the earth and water the surface of the ground
Yahweh God formed man from the soil of the ground
And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

(From The Brick Testament)

En el espiritú de las preguntas talmúdicas, e inspirado por una analogía de Toño hace poco más de un año, me permito poner lo siguiente a consideración, otra vez:

Supongan que tienen a su disposición el número que ustedes deseen de piezas de LEGO (a.k.a. tentes) con 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 esta 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?

2009-06-13T12:44:00.004-05:00

...to wake to the sound of drums

Blogs

2009-06-07T14:12:00.002-05:00

Hay muchos tipos de kitsch que plagan a la comunidad de jóvenes clase-medieros este país.

Uno de éstos se ve reflejado en los blogs cuyo contenido consiste en fotografías tomadas en México de letreros con mala ortografía, o de anuncios rotulados a mano con dibujos creativos. En fin, fotografían lo que "está mal del mundo" para que la gente se ría de ello.

Son los blogeros sentados en su torre de marfil donde la ortografía es perfecta, el diseño gráfico está dictado por MTV y los propietarios siempre pueden pagar publicidad impresa full color en gran formato.

A todos ellos (incluyendo a los que son mis cuates) les pregunto:

¿Por qué no fotografían y se ríen de su puta madre?

A new eye

2009-05-31T15:57:00.003-05:00

Paris_5 Andrea Torelli

I'd like to become more of an artist, and less of a geek.
And when I say an artist I talk not of creating, but rather of seeing
the world, the people, just the wind
the way an artist does, with no prejudice no reserve.

I want no fancy clothes, no fancy life,
nor to belong to a clique of pretty looking people
nor to engage in taks of beauty and meaning.

I just want to enjoy
and that is all I want to say concerning life.

Influenza Music (sorry, no kitsch crap)

2009-05-24T20:36:00.003-05:00

Certainly interesting. Explanation.

(if the thingie won't work try http://www.binarybooty.com/-download-4578fe3f05.htm)

MKAILVVMLYTFATANADTLCIGYHANNSTDTVDTVLEKNVTVTHSVNLLEDKHNGKLCK
LRGVAPLHLGKCNIAGWILGNPECESLSTASSWSYIVETSSSDNGTCYPGDFIDYEELRE
QLSSVSSFERFEIFPKTSSWPNHDSNKGVTAACPHAGAKSFYKNLIWLVKKGNSYPKLSK
SYINDKGKEVLVLWGIHHPSTSADQQSLYQNADAYVFVGSSRYSKKFKPEIAIRPKVRDQ
EGRMNYYWTLVEPGDKITFEATGNLVVPRYAFAMERNAGSGIIISDTPVHDCNTTCQTPK
GAINTSLPFQNIHPITIGKCPKYVKSTKLRLATGLRNVPSIQSRGLFGAIAGFIEGGWTG
MVDGWYGYHHQNEQGSGYAADLKSTQNAIDEITNKVNSVIEKMNTQFTAVGKEFNHLEKR
IENLNKKVDDGFLDIWTYNAELLVLLENERTLDYHDSNVKNLYEKVRSQLKNNAKEIGNG
CFEFYHKCDNTCMESVKNGTYDYPKYSEEAKLNREEIDGVKLESTRIYQILAIYSTVASS
LVLVVSLGAISFWMCSNGSLQCRICI

Eurovision 2009

2009-05-16T19:21:00.001-05:00

Was more full of crap than usual.

F

2009-05-16T18:31:00.004-05:00

Ever since she had left him, back in the day, a hate for Fridays was ever present in him. Grunting he would wake up on the eve of weekends, thinking of that dreadful hours ahead. It wasn't like he hated entire Fridays, for he often enjoyed the morning duties, but it was afternoons, Friday afternoons that brought such a sadness into him.

What actually bothered him was to have a Friday afternoon routine, particularly one which was identical to any other weekday routine. Going back to work like every other day after an ordinary meal, and going home at night walking the same path to the just-as-usual crowded metro and arriving home to the same old computer. In part it was the company he missed, but above all he missed the novelty of every single Friday, the adventure of finding something new and exciting to eat and something unheard-of and relaxing to do afterwards.

It was then that he felt the most the weight of life upon his shoulders. As if every single failure, forgotten dream or angsty hour, added a gram or two to a burden that he carried since childhood. He would look down at his footsteps behind when he stepped on loose ground, trying to see if his feet sank more than usual in those Friday afternoons, when his beloved dusk seemed to scream at him: you fool!.

http://reporta.c3.org.mx

2009-05-09T18:08:00.001-05:00

http://reporta.c3.org.mx

Together

2009-05-03T13:32:00.003-05:00

I dreamt.

We walked along the shore of the Adriatic
heading towards Trieste, again.
A long long walk
long one indeed.

How beautiful a sunset by the sea, I said.
How beautiful a sunrise by the sea, you said.

Neat

2009-04-28T22:07:00.006-05:00

I can't really see why people complain so much about emos and the rest of them who put a bit too much eye shadow on.

Hope I make my point

In the end, every one is fuckable.

2009-04-27T13:08:00.000-05:00

It takes a while to load.. but the first two mins are, in my opinion, worth it.

2009-04-25T21:03:00.000-05:00

Irony

2009-04-20T20:52:00.002-05:00

There is a widespread belief that introspection is one of the defining characteristics of the human psyche. We can, how ever, not be certain that other information processing systems, such as other animals, also poses this property. It is when thinking about this matters that one more directly approaches that blurry line between unconscious and conscious beings.

We are so accustomed to symbolic reasoning, that we cannot imagine introspection with out a notion of "the self" and of it's relationship with "the environment". How ever, on the wake of connectionist approaches to cognitive science, it is perhaps time to give a broader definition of introspection.

That isn't, how ever, what I had in mind when I started writing this.

Don't you think it is an irony, that this, the quintessential human feature, is in many cases a curse in that it disables us from enjoying the world around us?

Independence in the 21st century

2009-04-12T18:28:00.004-05:00

Photo by Lulzim Makolli for the Balkan Press Agency

Pristina, Feb 16 2009. Celebrations on the aniversary of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence. The red flag with the bicephalous eagle is the albanian flag. The blue flag with stars and a yellow outline (also on the bumper of the auto), is the flag of Kosovo. The stars and stripes one need not be introduced.

2009-04-10T19:10:00.004-05:00

Alberto Montt

La trinidad y David Lynch.

2009-04-09T11:54:00.006-05:00

Hay mucha gente que cree que el hecho de que algo sea inentendible lo hace respetable.

Mamadas.

:)

2009-04-02T10:48:00.000-06:00

photo by sanyuan

We have this dreams and we have this life, and we will cry tomorrow, die of shame, if we keep them apart as we have done 'till now.

some day, like before

2009-03-28T22:08:00.006-06:00

I can only try to hide from the inexistent
a deed that, although doomed, demands the greatest of all efforts.

maybe some day, some morning, a bright sky.
meanwhile......

I dunno

Animals

2009-03-15T17:35:00.001-06:00

Rapido desde Belgrado, que esta bien padre. (sic)

2009-03-08T22:31:00.005-06:00

Belgrado, Serbia. 2006

Rápido el fantasma viene y se va, cabalgando sobre el mar de los recuerdos, haciendo remolinos en los sueños y convirtiendo en polvo los anhelos. Blitzkrieg.

Cabeza de Juarez

2009-02-22T21:18:00.003-06:00

The smell of green.

2009-02-20T18:19:00.005-06:00

It is a beautiful afternoon in the Narvarte neighborhood.
The green of leaves on the perennial trees and the violet of the Jacarandas look so darn beautiful on the background of gray clouds. Time, it moves incredibly slow, as if the clouds and fog made its passage difficult.

And the birds... oh the birds! their singing uninterrupted by the roar of the airplanes.

All of that beauty I try to capture trough my senses, in an attempt to soak in it and rid my mind of worryness, of sadness.

I want the birds to sing inside of me as well.

2009-02-18T18:01:00.000-06:00

Ummmmm

2009-02-03T07:22:00.002-06:00

It's the sounds, just listen to the morning sounds and breathe.

No better way to call it

2009-01-24T21:36:00.005-06:00

"Munir Bachir (1930-1997) was born in Mosul (Iraq), into a long established family of musicians. His father taught him to play the oud at a very young age. He then spent six years studying at the Baghdad Institute of Music, directed by Sharif Muhyiddin. Later, he completed a doctorate of musicology in Budapest. As a passionate defender of Arab music, Munir Bachir was in constant rebellion against the misrepresentation of this music and its use for commercial ends.

He spent several years fighting to establish his lute as a solo recital instrument and travelled the world as a true ambassador for Arab classical music, bringing it to specialists as well as to a larger audience and restoring credentials to a music that had become debased through bending to the tastes of colonial nostalgia."

La burbuja

2009-01-23T21:18:00.004-06:00

No me gusta este silencio, no me gusta
los pájaros no cantan
ni los grillos
solo esas voces mudas
que me gritan adioses desde adentro.

Es el silencio frío y con sordina
que solo puede haber en una esfera
plástica, sucia, gruesa
que se mueve pesada por el mundo
con un humano dentro.

Otros

2009-01-20T22:25:00.005-06:00

Eran otros tiempos, aquellos de los sueños
y entre ellos y estos había un puente
que no soportó la crecida de la corriente,
del tiempo.

Eran otros lugares, aquellos de los sueños
y entre ellos y estos había un cable
que transmitía las risas y los llantos
y que calló cuando cayó la luna en el abismo.

Beauty

2009-01-15T13:30:00.002-06:00

Just open your eyes.

2009-01-06T19:20:00.000-06:00

¿Son estos tiempos de soñar?

The city, the real city.

2009-01-02T11:47:00.001-06:00

IanVisits - Abandoned London

2008-12-31T14:08:00.002-06:00

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.

2008-12-23T14:21:00.005-06:00

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

2008-12-20T12:26:00.003-06:00

En el mar, la vida es más sabrosa

2008-12-19T10:30:00.001-06:00

Before the war

2008-12-17T23:06:00.002-06:00

Some stuff I do like from the 90's.

2008-12-13T10:53:00.003-06:00

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

2008-12-08T22:05:00.003-06:00

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...

2008-12-06T23:57:00.003-06:00

Subway Dream

2008-12-06T11:10:00.003-06:00

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.

2008-12-02T09:26:00.001-06:00

Higher much higher

2008-11-26T17:40:00.009-06:00

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

2008-11-20T18:05:00.003-06:00

know the night?

2008-11-18T19:52:00.004-06:00

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

2008-11-18T19:06:00.006-06:00

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

2008-11-07T23:58:00.000-06:00

For every past there is a future.

2008-11-01T14:13:00.002-06:00

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

2008-10-31T17:07:00.003-06:00

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

There is a lower bound, which is strictly greater than zero, to the area occuppied by any given vehicle.
All cities have finite area.
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.
The purpose of commuting is not getting vehicles from one place to another, but rather, getting people from one place to another.
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).
Mass transit systems can be planned and scheduled, while individual cars cannot.
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?

2008-10-28T19:08:00.002-06:00

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

2008-10-26T20:19:00.002-06:00

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

2008-10-24T15:26:00.008-05:00

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.

Fuck a 15 year old
Fuck a 17 year old
Attend a college lingerie party
Attend a high-school lingerie party
Fuck a classmate in my generation trip (I never actually had one)
Win a medal on an IMO.
Become a black-hat hacker
Become a fighter-pilot
Become an anarchist
Become a (at least) descent chess player
Spend a summer on the shore of a lagoon
Be a freelancer photojournalist
Go to space camp
Drink beer straight from the keg
Build a training camp for G.I. Joe action figures
Build a Varitech out of LEGO Technic
Camp in my backyard alone
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.

2008-10-20T20:33:00.002-05:00

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

2008-10-10T23:42:00.005-05:00

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

2008-10-06T19:45:00.003-05:00

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?

2008-09-24T16:27:00.006-05:00

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

2008-09-23T16:18:00.004-05:00

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

2008-09-20T18:36:00.003-05:00

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

2008-09-18T16:25:00.002-05:00

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

2008-09-17T20:30:00.005-05:00

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?

2008-09-11T19:52:00.002-05:00

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

2008-09-03T19:42:00.002-05:00

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

Realphotografie

2008-08-15T22:30:00.002-05:00

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

2008-08-11T21:34:00.002-05:00

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

2008-08-05T21:13:00.003-05:00

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

2008-07-25T16:34:00.005-05:00

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

2008-07-17T13:49:00.001-05:00

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

A dream.

2008-07-08T11:12:00.005-05:00

(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.

2008-07-06T22:01:00.002-05:00

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

Diversity of scales

2008-07-03T23:01:00.003-05:00

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

2008-07-01T15:35:00.002-05:00

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

2008-06-29T18:42:00.001-05:00

fuck

23/153

2008-06-22T23:28:00.004-05:00

El cielo.

2008-06-21T17:18:00.005-05:00

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

2008-06-17T22:10:00.003-05:00

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

Se un adulto y cógeme.

2008-06-08T21:54:00.003-05:00

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.

2008-06-05T22:42:00.003-05:00

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

2008-05-25T16:42:00.001-05:00

Rivers on water

Giant Shrimp at the edge of the abyss.

Soyuz

2008-05-18T22:47:00.006-05:00

(J. Backes)

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

Wikipedia Poster (and moto4lin on the pebl)

2008-05-17T13:24:00.007-05:00

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).

change 'ACM Device' to /dev/ttyACM0
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...

2008-05-15T20:54:00.002-05:00

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

2008-05-13T21:15:00.002-05:00

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

2008-05-11T18:08:00.001-05:00

(Kroisenbrunner)

What are you playing?

2008-05-11T11:24:00.003-05:00

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

2008-05-09T22:15:00.003-05:00

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.

2008-05-04T14:11:00.004-05:00

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?

2008-04-29T22:26:00.001-05:00

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.