Blogging

Blogging has been more difficult for me than I expected because, first, I have not been able to find my voice for this kind of writing and the topics/themes I would like to cover. On the themes/topics, I keep moving the "field": is it about themes related to my teaching? Yes. Is it about every day frames----risotto, geese flying, the snow? Um, yes but not really. The other difficulty is discipline to write here with consistency. My sense is that the two issues are related: since I am not sure about the themes, I do not find the time to write here. To address these problems, I will be blogging my conversations with the letters of Mr. Richard Feynman edited by his daughter in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track. I like them for three reasons: they are funny, they are honest, and they are about interesting things. By the way, I am reading them now because I am teaching my history of science class and I am trying to understand how scientist think----I am guessing, Feynman would say, "I do not know how scientists think, this is how I think." Fair enough.

Reality

The basis of reality is memory (short-term/long-term memory): without memory there is no way of establishing your own reality, our own reality. If I can not remember the wall behind me, I can not establish the reality of this room.

Risotto and life

Yesterday I made risotto with shrimps and cilantro. The key for cooking rice is the broth, so I had made a chicken broth in the morning. I had high expectations because I had not made rissoto in a long time. In my risottos I use wine and garlic (nothing especial about that the recipe calls for them) and chicken broth, the rest is whatever I want to put on it. When I finished pouring the broth and adding the shrimps, green onions, celery, and cilantro I tested it and I did not like it. It lacked flavor. Cooking, I tell my children, is about being patient, about mixing flavors, about caring for the ingredients, about joy: I put all of those in this risotto and it did not work out. I think I missed the salt when I made the chicken broth: life is in the details.

Dolls and the Iraq War

Yesterday, my daughter and her friend were playing dolls; they were pretending that one of the dolls was at the hospital. My daughter said, "There is a war in Iraq, let's pretend she is at the hospital in Iraq." After a short silence, her friend responded, "No, let's pretend they belong to a different time." They continued with their conversation. They sounded striking similar to us, adults, in our conversations about this war of choice——if we talk about it.

#Suspending all Activites

McCain is suspending the debate with Obama, he explains that this is because he is going to Washington to discuss the financial crisis. Um. Is he trying to play the heroe? Did he panic? In either case, he has made a mistake: the debates are important and the country needs to hear the candidates, face to face, and make a decision as to whom would be our best leader. I do not have a doubt about it, and I am suspending all activities till the crisis is over.

Invasions and Generations

Between 1970 and 2003, the USA has invaded five countries——in what the US calls "operations":

2003: Iraq: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

1994: Haiti: Operation Uphold Democracy.

1989: Panama: Operation Just Cause.

1983: Granada: Operation Urgent Fury.

1970: Cambodia, part of the Vietnam War, not particular name.

People who were in their 20s in the 1970s have witnessed five invasions already. These people are now in their 50s and their children, if they were born in the 1980s, are now in their twenties (the same age of their parents when the invasion of Cambodia)——and an invasion has taken place every six years since they were born in the 1980s. It means that we are used to invading other countries, that we think it is something this country does as a matter of course.

Blogs

I am back to my blog. I was quite busy this week after my trip to Madrid. I met not only scholars in the history of alchemy but also practitioners of alchemy (distillation practices). This group came from Canada, USA, Germany, England, and Spain and they knew their symbols and recipes and talked about energy fields and lunar influences. The existence of this group was a surprise to me: I did not know there were practitioners of this art today.

Note: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is halted for the time being. There was an electric problem and a magnet failure. Too bad: I was hoping to get some answer about the origins of the universe but I will have to wait a little longer.

Economic Intervention

The Bush Administration is now in conversations with Congress to design $700 billion intervention plat to rescue the financial system. The Chavez administration has been intervening in the Venezuelan economy for some time now. As mentioned in previous posts, the Bush and Chavez administration share a number of striking similarities: both have placed their administration above their respective constitutions; both had bend the system to create a more powerful executive; and now both have intervened the economy. My sense is that their similarites come from the fact that both administrations are ideologically driven.

Colombia

I recently came back from Colombia. Colombia seems to be doing better now than few years ago. People is traveling within the country. Foreigners are coming back to the country, especially from Europe. During a visit to a tropical jungle in near the Magdalena River, I met a women from Wales, England, who was traveling by herself and who mentioned that Colombia is once again a destination for Europeans interested in traveling in South America (in that group I met there were four people from Colombia, two people from England, and one from Israel). In cities like Bogotá, the traffic is not as bad as it used to be some years ago. Authorities in Bogotá had implemented the "pico y placa" system (restricting the circulation of some cars according to their last digit of the license plate) and the Transmilenio (a bus transit rapid system), which had helped solving some of the transportation problems of Bogotá. In terms of violence (guerrillas and paramilitares), the government has been hitting hard the FARC, and this group looks very weak today. It is still operating and harming the country but it probably will have to negotiate with the government soon. The paramilitaries are trying to negotiate with the government prision terms and other issues but, lateley, new evidence linking paramilitaries and members of congress and military officers had emerged. At least, the information is coming out. This is also good for the country.

I did enjoy my days in Bogotá.

Food, floods, oil and organic decisions

Yesterday I talked to a friend who mentioned she tries to be self-sufficient in terms of food (and, so she grows her own food). She can not be fully self-sufficient, she explained to me, so she buys from farmers in the area. She said, "food is important to me." I responded, "food is also important for me, and most people, but I am not trying to be self-sufficient. I buy at the supermarket and the farmer's market." I asked her why she is trying to be self-sufficient. She told me she grew up that way. I suppose that explains part of the story. She also told me about a farm in my area (Central New York) that had to close: their owners could not make enough money and sold it. (Someone else commented that the Midwest Floods will affect production of food internally as well as exports) Food and oil prices are still moving up and it is becoming more difficult to pay for organic food (production and transportation): I am not sure how we will negotiate organic food, food prices, and oil prices but it is already changing the dynamics at the counter level.