2006
371 posts under this date.
Supongo que uno no es realmente un blogger hasta no publicar un error en los MSM, asi que aqui les va uno que encontre hoy en la portada del Publico de ayer Sabado 8 de Julio.
The “boy crisis” is becoming something of a news bubble lately, today’s long sunday article on the New York Times is only its latest instance.
”The idea that girls could be ahead is so shocking that they think it must be a crisis for boys,” Ms. [Sara] Mead [author of a recent educational report] said.
Professors interviewed on several campuses say that in their experience men seem to cluster in a disproportionate share at both ends of the spectrum—students who are the most brilliantly creative, and students who cannot keep up.
What is beyond dispute is that the college landscape is changing. Women now make up 58 percent of those enrolled in two- and four-year colleges and are, over all, the majority in graduate schools and professional schools too.
Since the process of human development crosses all borders, it makes sense that Europe, too, now has more women than men heading to college. The disengagement of young men, though, takes different forms in different cultures. Japan, over the last decade, has seen the emergence of “hikikomori” — young men withdrawing to their rooms, eschewing social life for months or years on end.
At Dickinson [a U.S. College], some professors and administrators have begun to notice a similar withdrawal among men who arrive on campus with deficient social skills. Each year, there are several who mostly stay in their rooms, talk to no one, play video games into the wee hours and miss classes until they withdraw or flunk out.
Don’t forget to check out the excellent Wikipedia article on Japan’s Hikikomoris—it seems they (or should I say we?) are a pretty introspective crowd.
Oh! In Tokyo, the New Trend Is ‘Media Immersion Pods’, a New York Times article from a while ago on Tokyo’s media youth, is important, very important. This is me, this is my generation.
And, really, what’s so wrong with getting lost on the Internet; watching soccer or baseball on satellite television; devouring Us Weekly or Time Asia; and organizing solo marathons of Tim Burton or Kurosawa movies? The craving for media sprees runs deep, and, like so many Internet-era developments, Gran Cyber Cafés seem to answer an almost carnal need for uninterrupted access to pixels and screens and Web sites and instant-messaging and iTunes. And when that need is satisfied, you can always return to life in the city, at least for a while.
And this is it. Screw Chinese, screw German or French (both of which I already studied for a year), I’m off to learn Japanese.
...solia decirnos mi papa cada vez que nos enojabamos por que mi mama nos mandaba a hacer algo.
Ha mucho de eso, pero todavia lo recuerdo cada vez que me mandan a hacer algo que me molesta. It never fails to cheer me up.
Idling at the pool with my sister Chepe I came up with a 3-question test I specially liked. I have no psychological training whatsoever (nor do I believe in much of it) so I don’t have any ready-made answers at the ready if you do decide to answer it. But I promise it will be interesting and make you think (and that’s as good a yardstick for doing something as any).
Pay special attention to the wording and the intended meaning. It is not whether you would rather be intelligent or empathic, is whether you would prefer to have some more intelligence or some more empathy than what you already have.
3-question test
(1) Would you rather have more intelligence or more empathy?
(2) Would you rather have more 1) or more self-confidence?
(3) Would you rather have more 2) or more self-control?
My answers btw, are empathy, empathy, and self-control.
En una entrevista televisiva, el periodista pregunta, de pronto, a su interlocutor: ”Umberto Eco, usted que tiene tan amplia cultura…”. Eco lo interrumpe:
Cultura, no. Lo que tengo es curiosidad, necesidad de conocimiento. Necesidad de ampliar mi propia vida, que es tan breve. Porque, a traves del conocimiento, al morir se pueden haber vivido miles de vidas. Uno tiene la experiencia propia pero, con solo quererlo, puede acercarse a la de Napoleon, a la de Julio Cesar.
Guillermo Jaim Etcheverry, La Tragedia Educativa, p85
Oh please, please—I’m begging you here—go do yourself a favor and buy Steven Johnson’s Interface Culture this very moment. Please. Please.
I’ve been rereading my hilites from it, searching for an elusive quote and I’m just shocked again at how good this book is. I have no doubt whatsoever this will be a canon book from the late twentieth century. Don’t be fooled by the 3.5 stars in Amazon, it’s simply a 1997 book that’s still ahead of its time.
Johnson is lucid to (and over) the brink of genius when he talks about interface, technology, media, computers, the web, blogs (which he predicts 10 years ago), hypertext, novels, software, online communities, artificial intelligence, culture, design, agents, TV, life, the universe, and everything.
Being his first book, written in his late twenties, it is full of youthful passion, exhuberance, and raw virtuosity—but, get this, he is right.
This digital age belongs to the graphic interface, and it is time for us to recognize the imaginative work that went into that creation, and prepare ourselves for the imaginative breakthroughs to come. Information-space is the great symbolic accomplishment of our era. We will spend the next few decades coming to terms with it.
[Vernor Vinge] added a third [future] trend: “The great conspiracy against human freedom.” As novelist Doris Lessing has observed, barons on opposite sides of the river don’t need to be in cahoots if their interests coincide. In our case, defence, homeland security, financial crime enforcement, police, tax collectors and intellectual property rights holders offer reasons to want to control the hardware we use. Then there are geeks, who can be tempted to forget the consequences if the technology is cool enough. Vinge quotes the most famous line from the comic strip Pogo: ”We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Vinge’s technology to satisfy these groups’ dreams is the Secure Hardware Environment (She), which dedicates some bandwidth and a small portion of every semiconductor for regulatory use. Deployment is progressive, as standards are implemented. Built into new chips, She will spread inevitably through its predecessors’ obsolescence.
This part is terribly plausible. It sounds much like the Trusted Computing Platform, implemented in Intel chips and built into machines from Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens and others. Most people don’t realise their new computer contains a chip designed to block the operation of any software not certified by the group. Now enhance that and build it into RFID chips, networked embedded systems, shrink and distribute as “smart dust”. All are current trends or works in progress.
Geeks are willing to fight Trusted Computing on the grounds that it could be used to block open-source software or to enforce draconian digital rights management. But what if accepting it meant less visible security, less bureaucracy, even slight profit? She automatically sends taxes, enables much less noticeable surveillance and gets you through security checkpoints with no waiting. There’s less crime, because legislative reality can be enforced on physical reality. Fewer false convictions. Make regulation automatic, and it seems to go away. New laws can be downloaded as a regulatory upgrade.
It’s strange. I just started getting some good momentum coding and designing when my family (save my dad, who has to work) together with my grandfather are off to Vallarta. Quite frankly, I would much rather code away and read UI patterns (it’s just that I don’t want to rest now, I want to code!), but this is the perfect opportunity to get that biography and I know I’ll regret it if I miss it (my grandfather is 84 after all). Oh well, 5 days of sand and beaches shouldn’t be too harmful. So goodbye, for a while (there won’t be web where we’re staying).
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