Merriam-Webster's #1 Word of the Year for 2006:

1. truthiness (noun)

1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)
2 : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006)

I never thought of it, but it is indeed a remarkable word. It is very useful to describe every heated debate where people are really passionate about one point and argue with the facts that support their theory, and ignoring others. I think this can be applied to almost all political debates, with the way they twist the facts to make their point. I think this is the main reason people become cynical of the politics and government, because of the truthiness they use.

But it is not only political debates, but all passionate topics, just to mention a few from a technology point of view are the usual debates of Windows Vs. Mac OS X, PS3 vs. Xbox 360 etc etc. I have decided to try not to go anymore into my truthiness arguments and just accept that I always like to support the underdog in any battle. Just because I feel compassion or empathy.
Anyways, coming back to the news about the word of the year, this is what Colbert replied:

"Though I'm no fan of reference books and their fact-based agendas, I am a fan of anyone who chooses to honor me," he said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
another funny quote was the signature of a slashdot user:
You want truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness.

jerome murat

jerome murat
Video sent by segalier

I know da wife posted this on her blog, but it is so remarkable that I think it doesn't hurt advertising it again!

This week the Daily Show with Jon Stewart had one of the best runs in a long time. I love this show, although Jerry Seinfield recently called it the most intelligent show on TV, and I was a bit skeptical (In particular remembering our Colombian show Zoociedad, which started much earlier than the daily show). However this week I think it definitively earned this distinction. Here are some snippets of the best videos and their parts:

• Networq:

There is this CNN correspondent telling the first Muslim elected to Congress that a lot of Americans are thinking that he might be working with the terrorists, and then Jon Stewart comments:

"finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking, are thinking"

The videoclip continues with why aren't cable companies getting AlJazeera English:

"yay, who is out for American media conglomerates drawing the line, on foreign perspectives on world events, and sticking with cable staples like the ultimate fighting channel (SPIKE TV), the spend your life savings on limited edition Elvis the earliers homo figurines channel and of course (QCV), spice anal (SPICE)"

How sad that indeed 90% of the channels that abound on cable TV are really crappy, and that they have priority over a news agency that might shed some light into the understanding of the middle east! If 80% of people in the middle east consider it their source of news (I just made up that number) it will help in understaning at least the news they are exposed to.

• Drown Syndrome
  

I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that a FOX news correspondent concludes this about Waterboarding:

To me this seemed like a pretty efficient mechanism to get someone to talk and then have them still alive and healthy within minutes.

• Flushed Away
  

Is the continuation of Drown Syndrome from the waterboarder point of view: So How does it feel to be a waterboarder?

I like the power part, Nice boost of self esteem, its pretty good stress reliever

any negatives?

I have worked out a bit of a thirst, its important to keep those fluids up

and then ends with probably one of biggest flaws on torture: Baltimore is the capital of Maryland :) people will say anything to make it stop!

• Ted Koppel

Not exactly as stated on TV, but a rephrasing:
26 years ago you did an special explaining Iran, during the hostage crisis. 26 years later you have to do a special explaining Iran. What didn't we get?

And Ted Koppel responds

You didn't get the past 25 years

And then the part where it is always very easy to see the world from one perspective without realizing your own mistakes. In Spanish we have a saying "Es más fácil ver la paja en el ojo ajeno que la viga en el propio". In general it is easier to accept the good vs. evil view of the world because it is easier to understand, than to find the root causes for the problems. Maybe because what we can find might not be what we want?
Why do we think they are so dangerous? They support terrorist organizations like hezbollah, they took our embassy. But they say wait a minute, you guys supported Saddam Hussein on an 8 year war against us, you guys overtook our government back in 1953...

I can't resist this, but I have to throw again Theodore Roosevelt's words "I took Panama and let Congress debate that while I went ahead and built the canal."

• Thumping to talk about
  

John Oliver is probably the best correspondent of the show.

I think that's a little crude but if it works for you

• Pentagoner
  

Why did the president say that Rumsfield was not leaving just a week ago?

I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war on the final days of the campaign, so the only way to answer that question and to get you to another question was to give you that answer.

I think here Jon Stewart should have followed with something like this: I wonder if this is the same reasoning for a lot of things. "Q: Why are we going to war?" "A: WMD, next question".

I just finished "Life of Pi", a very nice an interesting book. It is a reminder of the power of symbolism and metaphors as a reflection of our human condition. This is what makes mythology so interesting and intriguing. Having said that I have some complaints about this book.



Don't read the following if you haven't read the book! As I will spoil the ending:

First, it is sometimes a little bit cheesy. Second, the dumb down ending with the Japanese people explaining the relationship between stories is really bad. First it shows a very bad stereotype of Japanese people. Also, it reminds me of the ending of 2001 Space Odyssey vs. the ending of AI. Both influenced by the mind of Kubrick. One ending is one of the most fascinating endings in movies. The other ending is probably the worst dumb down ending in a science fiction movie. Both endings are probably the same, but the way they are related are totally different, and the same happens with Life of Pi. It was going great and then he explains a second story, which might have not been necessary had the author included enough clues in the first story. And then, not only that, but the Japanese correlation between the two stories is just the final straw! They do point out however about the mystery of the island and the teeth. So not all of it is lost. I would love to hear ideas as to what it represents.

Also I am a bit puzzled by the thesis of the book. Is the author trying to say that since we cannot prove that God exists, then we might as well live our lives believing it does just because is a better story? If that is the claim the it is a very bad argument for faith!

But anyways, I am happy I read this book. It is very entertaining and uplifting. I love stories with animals, and Pi's view of the world is very optimistic. I am also happy to report that Jean Pierre Jeunet is directing a movie version of this book.

I trust he will do justice and might even improve it (the way Kubrick improved Arthur C. Clark's work... eventhough they were done in parallel :-P).

I found today this software The Atlas of world history. It lets you see European/Asian and North African history from 3000BC to 1000AD. I don't know why did they stopped at 1000, it would have been nice to have the maps at least until around 1800. The software also has an old feel to it. Like an MS-DOS program, but still I think it is worth the download and the exploration.

We can see here that while Sumerians were alredy thinking on writing down the epic of Gigamesh, other ancient civilizations like Greece, India or China were not even on the map.



This must have been a very interesting time to live in the Mediterranean and Middle East; The Medes (O.k. fine, Cyrus had already taken over the Medes, but still), Persian, Lydians (Yes yes, Cyrus was also coming your way), Greeks, Babylonians, Egyptians, Phoenicians (Carthage), Etruscans, Romans, Celts. :) Very diverse, so many "civilized" cultures. I guess China was also civilized, but it was too far away.




Long live Parthia! and Rome!



Not exaclty correct according to my alternate histories :-)

Or BioGeek's history:-)

I finally arrived to Berkeley, and due to popular demand (I know my fans want to keep up with my activities) I am upgrading my impersonal blog with some pictures of my adventures.

I arrived and I ended up living a couple of days with Ming, an old friend from Maryland, while I searched for housing. I also visited Sylvia, who lives in San Jose, (the heart of Silicon Valley, where Sylvia is learning how to be a technology entrepeneur ;) ). She made a wonderful Ajiaco, my favorite dish! While I had the car I also visited Elina, an old friend from the University of Massachusetts. We went to have lunch in Stanford. Stanford looks like a Resort and Spa... I can't imagine how people actually study in such a place.

This picture in the left shows the EE building in Berkeley, where I have my office. It is a little bit old, compared to A.V. Williams back in Maryland. The office is also very big and a bit noisy, so productivity is not the best. Most of my time has been spent on administrative affairs, I needed to get my keys, accounts, access codes, and computer... furthermore I need to manage the TRUST seminar series, maintain the TRUST seminar web page, send email reminders, order the food for the refreshments served in the seminar etc etc.







Berkeley is an okay city. It has its charm, but its not very pretty. I took this picture from the last floor of the parking lot where I used to park the car I rented. The building in the front is the post office, and in the horizon you can see the Bay (and with a little bit of imagination you can see San Francisco, which is just across the bay)















After almost a week of searching for a place to call home, I ended up settling for this small studio. My apartment is the second to the left in the second floor. It is very small and quite pricey, compared to what I had in Maryland, but on the other hand it is only three or four blocks away from my office.








The layout of the apartment is very simple. At the end you can see the kitchen. The good thing is that I receive frequent company by the next door neighbor's cat. A very friendly animal :)




















I also ended up buying a bike to commute around Berkeley. To go grocery shopping, downtown, to the metro (I can take it inside the metro) and I guess also to commute to the office. The way to the office is uphill so it takes some more effort than coming back. The bike is Giant, and it was $230, but buying lights and locks increased the price by almost $100 :( damn the Californian tax also!!)













In my first trip to the grocery store, just by chance, while I was waiting in line to pay for my shopping, I ended up grabbing a couple of dark chocolates. It was until the next day when I brought them to work that I realized I had bought chocolate from Colombia! The brand is E. Guttard, and it says in the back that the Trinitario cacao beans used to make this chocolate were grown in the San Vicente de Chucuri Valley of Santander in Colombia

Now I have a real reason or excuse to keep buying chocolate. I need my energy and the support for our industry!










However not all things are as good as they sound. This weekend I was food poisoned, lost my credit card and also for the first time since I have been using the clip to my belt for the cellphone, the cellphone fell to the ground.... in fact in went directly into the water drain of this street in the picture on the left.









After a very eventful couple of days I managed to wait in front of a drug store until they opened to buy some medicine (mostly pain killers), then I went back to the places I had been shopping
and one of them had my credit card. There was only one problem left... how to rescue my cellphone from the sewers! I called the police and the firemen, and they all told me that I had to contact the department of public services of the city of Berkeley for help. The problem was that I was asking for help on a Saturday, and the department of public services was only opening until Monday, and there was a heavy chance of rain during Sunday, which would have washed away my cellphone in the sweres!! So I ended up going Sunday morning to a hardware store to buy a "reacher" and after several failed rescue attempts (which left my cellphone very badly scratched ) and a friendly crowd of Taiwanese exchange students (the support crowd was essential, or else it would have been very awkward to lie alone on the streets looking for stuff in the sewers) I was able to get my cellphone back!! :)

This is a nice way of expressing the view of all this movies and books against totalitarian regimes, and also explains why care must be taken before applying Game Theory to the analysis of a set of "rational" decision makers! Interesting that this writing came before Huxley or Nash!


Why, in the first place, when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when man has acted only from his own interest? What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear

witness that men, CONSCIOUSLY, that is fully understanding their real
interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on
another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by
nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track,
and have obstinately, wilfully, struck out another difficult, absurd way,
seeking it almost in the darkness.

...

you tell me again that an enlightened and developed man, such, in short, as the
future man will be, cannot consciously desire anything disadvantageous
to himself, that that can be proved mathematically. I thoroughly agree, it
can--by mathematics. But I repeat for the hundredth time, there is one
case, one only, when man may consciously, purposely, desire what is
injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid--simply in order to have
the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be
bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. Of course, this
very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen,
more advantageous for us than anything else on earth, especially in
certain cases. And in particular it may be more advantageous than any
advantage even when it does us obvious harm, and contradicts the
soundest conclusions of our reason concerning our advantage--for in
any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most
important--that is, our personality, our individuality.

Notes from the Underground

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Sobre Héroes y Tumbas es definitivamente una de las novelas más confusas que he leído, y en especial la parte de Informe Sobre Ciegos. La frase clave para entender la novela parece ser esta:

Porque en un relámpago tuve la revelación: ¡era Ella! Aquel universo de Ciegos resultaba ser un instrumento para satisfacer nuestra pasión y, finalmente, para ejecutar su venganza.

¿Para ejecutar la venganza de Alejandra? ¿Para vengarse de que? ¿Qué es exáctamente aquel universo de ciegos? ¿Una metáfora de que?

Blade Runner You scored 95% Replicantness!

Excellent! You probably even know who Mary is and how many replicants are there. (If you do, please tell me :)

This test tracked 1 variable. How the score compared to the other people's:

Higher than 99% on Replicantness

Link: The Blade Runner trivia Test

cuando empezamos a aprender este difícil oficio de vivir ya tenemos que morirnos

Sobre Heroes y Tumbas-Ernesto Sábato

New Atari 2600 Game Released

The game, called "A-VCS-Tec Challenge", fits into 8K, graphics, sound and all. It is being released as a limited-edition cartridge for 2600 enthusiasts who still have working consoles.

read more | digg story

On the Zidane Materazzi incident

I am by no way supporting the action that Zidane had on this world cup, however I didn't like at all a recent comment by Materazzi on the case:

" I am ignorant, I don't even know what an Islamic terrorist is; my only terrorist is her,"


Does Materazzi think he is smarter than everyone else? Does he think with the way things are going in the politics of today, people would actually believe he doesn't know what an Islamic terrorist is? Besides, his claim makes no sense. The only people that have the potential of insulting random Arabs by calling them terrorists are precisely ignorant people who don't know what an Islamic terrorist is.

read more | digg story

Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray it will not become generally known.

Attributed to the Wife of the Bishop of Worcester, after the first news of Darwin's Theory

"A New Theory of Biology" was the title of the paper which Mustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: "The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published." He underlined the words. "The author will be kept under supervision. His transference to the Marine Biological Station of St. Helena may become necessary." A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose–well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes–make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words "Not to be published" drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed, "What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Chapter 12

Stories, specially at the end of this article are very impressive, how can we
live without half of our brain!

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060703fa_fact


This reminds me of this comic book I am reading called "Epileptic" in which the
author narrates the story of his family as they tried to help his older brother
who kept having seizures... I remember one of the options was to do this brain
surgery, but I think they didn't do it at the end because they didn't like the
neurosurgeon. Too much into science and very little into the human part of it.

An old woman in Candide (by Voltaire), is relating her own life and her sufferings:

I have been a hundred times upon the point of killing myself, but still I was fond of life. This ridiculous weakness is, perhaps, one of the dangerous principles implanted in our nature. For what can be more absurd than to persist in carrying a burden of which we wish to be eased? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? In a word, to caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts?

but more importantly is how the old woman ends up her speech:

prevail upon each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all that has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most wretched of mortals, I give you leave to throw me headfirst into the sea

For that reason it is interesting that in the movie My life as a dog, a kid keeps comparing his troubles with the sufferings that Layka must have endured while traveling to space and dying in the process.

And then there is The Gadfly (by Ethel Lillian Voynich), which asks what is the meaning of the suffering of Jesus? And what if you believe in Jesus and are asked to select between him and your own son, who has had a more painful life and death?

But anyways, I digress, the main point of Candide is to question (or ridicule?) the rationalist optimism of "all is well in the world", similar to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World:

"Fortunate boys!" said the Controller. "No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy-to preserve you, so far that is possible, from having emotions at all."
"Ford's in his flivver," murmured the D.H.C. "All's well with the world."

A very nice collection of videos from Colombia:

Here

The first is a video of the escopetarra.

More information at Kevin Sites.

I have always been interested in religious beliefs because they all try to address probably the most important questions of our lives, such as what is the purpose of life? Or how can we live a happy life?

However, all of them rely on certain dogmas that are unquestionable and thus unsatisfying to some people (me included). So how can I reconcile an interest in religions without accepting the solutions they provide?

I believe it was Camus who said something along the lines that he was an atheist but believed that the world without religions would be a bad or a dull place (I can't remember what). After all, a world without some spiritual guidance might turn into an objectivist heaven, and I do not like objectivism because I believe empathy is one of our most valuable human characteristics.

Therefore it was interesting what I found in this site today:

Nietzsche wanted people to throw of the shackles of our misguided Christian morality and become supermen - free and titanic.

However, without God he felt that the future of man might spiral into a society of nihilism, devoid of any meaning; his aim was for man to realise the lack of divine purpose and create his own values.

The core of Nietzsche's work, including Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-92), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was to find a meaning and morality in the absence of God.

So what are our own values? Are these universal?

Moby Dick was written in 1851, and it is interesting to see the parallels of the talks now and then in the United States related to immigration reform and energy concerns. It is remarkable how they are still the same. For Example, in Moby Dick, Herman Melville writes:

As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads.

He then goes on saying how the American born people are usually the brains... although this might not be true anymore. Given the fact that I am a Ph.D. student, I am witness of how America is hiring more and more brains from overseas. Then again this is not new either. We all know what happened for example with von Braun.

The other parallel is with respect to oil consumption and how we should keep it to a minimum:

For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.

Of course in the novel he is talking about men being killed by the whaling industry (they got oil from Whales). Now the blood spilled is due to wars, social inequality and terrorism, all related to a different kind of oil.

For example, one of the U.S. Army's major command centers decided to throw out all of their computers, according to Spafford, because they were so infiltrated with security breaches that they couldn't be fixed.

"They spent thirty million tax dollars to get new computers," Spafford said. "It allegedly took three weeks until they were all compromised again."

Moby Dick was indeed a book beloved of one of the Starbucks founders. He proposed naming the company Pequod, after the ship. "Pee-quod" was nixed by his partners, and they cast about for a name with some local flavor (local to Seattle, Washington). They came upon the name Starbo, from an old mining camp on Mt. Rainier, and liked it. Then the Moby Dick fan drew a phonetic connection between "Starbo" and the novel--the Pequod's First Mate named Starbuck. And Starbucks it was.

...the process of becoming an effective World of Warcraft guild master amounts to a total-immersion course in leadership.

"I used to worry about not having what I needed to get a job done," he says. "Now I think of it like a quest; by being willing to improvise, I can usually find the people and resources I need to accomplish the task."

The day may not be far off when companies receive résumés that include a line reading "level 60 tauren shaman in World of Warcraft."

By John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas. You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired! Wired Magazine

But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth- pagans and all included- can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?- to do the will of God? that is worship. And what is the will of God?- to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me- that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

This is an interesting take of Ishmael, considering this warning:

Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you; (For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

Deuteronomy 6:14-15

An accurate description of the Gad (from The Brother's Karamazov):

"In active love? There's another question and such a question! You see, I so love humanity that- would you believe it?- I often dream of forsaking all that I have, leaving Lise, and becoming a sister of mercy. I close my eyes and think and dream, and at that moment I feel full of strength to overcome all obstacles. No wounds, no festering sores could at that moment frighten me. I would bind them up and wash them with my own hands. I would nurse the afflicted. I would be ready to kiss such wounds."

"It is much, and well that your mind is full of such dreams and not others. Some time, unawares, you may do a good deed in reality."

"Yes. But could I endure such a life for long?" the lady went on fervently, almost frantically. "That's the chief question- that's my most agonising question. I shut my eyes and ask myself, 'Would you persevere long on that path? And if the patient whose wounds you are washing did not meet you with gratitude, but worried you with his whims, without valuing or remarking your charitable services, began abusing you and rudely commanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of you (which often happens when people are in great suffering)- what then? Would you persevere in your love, or not?' And do you know, I came with horror to the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once- that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving anyone.'"

She was in a very paroxysm of self-castigation, and, concluding, she looked with defiant resolution at the elder.

"It's just the same story as a doctor once told me," observed the elder. "He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. 'I love humanity,' he said, 'but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,' he said, 'I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.'

"But what's to be done? What can one do in such a case? Must one despair?"

"No. It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you. Much is done already in you since you can so deeply and sincerely know yourself. If you have been talking to me so sincerely, simply to gain approbation for your frankness, as you did from me just now, then, of course, you will not attain to anything in the achievement of real love; it will all get no further than dreams, and your whole life will slip away like a phantom. In that case you will naturally cease to think of the future life too, and will of yourself grow calmer after a fashion in the end."