johep's blog

Sáb - Abril 22, 2006

The Worst President in History?

Artículo de un reconocido historiador norteaméricano en Rolling Stone.

Far from being the conservative he said he was, Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science -- dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to "the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends."

Posted at 10:34 AM

Lun - Septiembre 5, 2005

Si el dinero no es un obstáculo...

Algo que cualquier fanático de los Medias Rojas entiende

Posted at 10:40 PM

Mié - Agosto 17, 2005

¿Beatlemanía? ¡iBookmanía!

¿Por qué esta gente hizo cola desde la 1:30 de la mañana? ¿Por qué una señora prefirió orinarse que perder su puesto en la cola? ¿Por qué aplastaron un coche de bebé y tumbaron a un viejito? ¿Por qué hicieron falta 45 policías para controlar a la muchedumbre? ¿Estaban renovando el pasaporte bolivariano? ¿Será el regreso de los Beatles?

¡Querían comprar iBooks a $50 cada uno!

El incidente también fue cubierto por NBC (incluso con un reportaje de video) y por CNN.

Posted at 06:33 AM

Mié - Julio 20, 2005

James Doohan, 1920-2005

Scotty, de Star Trek

Murió Scotty quien siempre respondía a la famosa frase "beam me up!, Scotty".

Mi mejor recuerdo es de la película "Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home" de 1986 (soy muy joven para ser fanático de la serie original) en la que la tripulación del Enterprise vuelve al Siglo XX a salvar a las ballenas. Scotty va a una fábrica a tratar de preparar un tanque para el Enterprise, pide prestada una computadora y le dan una Macintosh Plus. Después de quedársela viendo un rato, levanta el mouse, se lo lleva a la boca y dice "Computer!..."

Posted at 03:02 PM

Mié - Junio 29, 2005

Ronald Reagan vs. Winston Churchill

La diferencia entre los estadounidenses y los británicos.

Una encuesta realizada por el Discovery Channel y AOL, en la que participaron 2,4 millones de estadounidenses arrojó que el más grande estadounidense de la historia es Ronald Reagan. Entre los 10 primeros: George W. Bush (número 6), Bill Clinton (7) y Oprah Winfrey (9); 6 de los 10 fueron presidentes, ningún científico, un artista (Elvis Presley).

La BBC hizo algo similar con los británicos en 2002. El más grande: Winston Churchill. Otros: Brunel (ingeniero, número 2), Darwin (4), Shakespeare (5), Newton (6), Lennon (7); más científicos, ingenieros y artistas que líderes políticos.

Creo que las encuestas dicen mucho de los dos gentilicios.

Posted at 04:15 PM

Mié - Abril 6, 2005

YaGoohoo!gle

2 por el precio de uno

Agarra un poco de Yahoo! y un poco de Google, añade agua y mezcla. Deja reposar por dos segundos y obtienes YaGoohoo!gle.

Posted at 06:20 AM

Vie - Abril 1, 2005

Perdido...

Este Real Life Adventures resonó conmigo, no sólo porque me ha pasado, sino porque estoy tratando de encontrar un método para organizarme mejor en mi trabajo ahora.

Posted at 08:47 PM

Lun - Marzo 21, 2005

Guía del migrante mexicano

Esta guía, publicada por la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores de México, da algunos datos sobre cómo manejarse al emigrar ilegalmente a los Estados Unidos.

Posted at 10:12 AM

Mié - Marzo 9, 2005

A lesson in interacting with non-Mac-savvy service professionals

Este cuento me recuerda a lo que me ha pasado a mí cantidad de veces. Los que no son "daredevils", o que simplemente no saben lo suficiente de computadoras suelen aceptar lo que le dice el supuesto "experto" y concluir que algo no funciona en Macintosh. Luego, terminan cambiándose a PC para "evitar problemas". Si la medicina fuese así, la gente recurriría a la decapitación para evitar dolores de cabeza.

Este relato apareció en MacFixIt. Lo reproduzco acá porque luego de un par de días, MacFixIt lo convierte en contenido pago.

A lesson in interacting with non-Mac-savvy service professionals

MacFixIt reader Robert Ameeti recently attempted to purchase a PC 5220 adapter -- which allows unlimited data access at speeds up to 300 Kbps on Verizon's network for US$80 a month -- card for Verizon's wireless broadband service. HIs experience with the sales professional at a Verizon retail outlet is a valuable lesson in dealing with non-Mac-savvy company representatives.

In many cases, products that work perfectly well with Mac OS X are portrayed as incompatible by uninformed salespeople or supplied with incorrect (usually Windows-only) drivers. Make sure to contact the manufacturer directly (ask for a Macintosh-savvy representative) regarding Mac OS X compatibility or search the Web for other Mac users' experiences with the same product.

Rober Ameeti's case is as follows:

"A recommendation from Steve Wozniak moved me to give Verizon's cellular PC card a try and my experience was all the often the Mac user's way of life. Steve Wozniak said the "you insert the card and the port is recognized and the Internet Connect info is sucked from the card to make a Network Location." I

"On Steve's suggestion, I went to my local Verizon store and bought the PC 5220. The salesman gave me the MTN number and the ESN number that I was supposed to enter after installing the software from the CD. The salesperson warned me to make sure that I installed the software before inserting the PC card or else I would probably break the card as he had had to replace several cards for customers that had not properly installed the software. Still being in the store, I inserted the CD into my Mac and I immediately recognized that it was only PC programs and some PDFs. I put the CD back into the box. Asking the salesperson about this, he replied that he would find out about Mac compatibility and he disappeared behind the partition.

"Being the daredevil that I am, I brazenly inserted the PC card into my Mac. After a few seconds, up popped a dialog telling me that I had inserted a Verizon wireless card and that I must authorize the installation of software. My Mac then showed me the standard Admin password dialog where I typed in my password. About 10 seconds later, I noticed a Connect menu in the menu bar. What the heck. I selected Connect from the menu bar and in started flowing the 200 emails that were awaiting me. After about 10 minutes, the salesperson reappeared and said, Sorry, it wasn't going to be able to work on my Mac."

Posted at 10:52 AM

Vie - Marzo 4, 2005

Rinus Michels 1928-2005, creador del "Fútbol Total"

BBC, The Guardian, USATODAY

Michels creó el estilo de fútbol más bonito que yo haya visto. Fue el director técnico de las selecciones de Holanda, finalista en el mundial de 1974 (con Cruyff, Neeskens, Krol y Rensenbrink), y luego de la que ganó en la Eurocopa 1988 (con van Basten, Gullit y Rijkaard).

Cruyff dice que su legado fue la filosofía de que el mejor fútbol no sólo es exitoso, sino que también puede ser emocionante y bello para el expectador.

Algún día le contaré a Matías y Damián de Michels y sus jugadores, como mi papá me ha contado de Pelé.

La foto es de Michels en la Eurocopa 1988.

Posted at 02:33 AM

Jue - Marzo 3, 2005

Back to the future

Apple tiene un departamento de investigación y desarrollo, las demás compañías de PCs no necesitan uno, sólo tienen que ver el keynote de Macworld Expo.

Todos ya conocen a la Mac mini, que Apple introdujo en enero. La Mac mini es un producto listo que ya está a la venta. Supongo que para el departamento de investigación y desarrollo de Apple, ya es el pasado; obviamente ya están trabajando en la próxima Macintosh.

Hoy, en el Intel Developer's Forum introdujeron este concepto de una PC. Eso quiere decir que puede ser que en algún momento, se desarrolle algo así. (Noten las innovadoras ranuras en forma de cruz.)

Esto me recuerda un slogan que una vez usó Apple: "Windows 95 = Macintosh 89". El futuro de las PC es el pasado de Apple. (Gizmodo y Engadget)

Posted at 02:32 PM

Lun - Febrero 21, 2005

Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

Autor de Hells Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas y Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. Columnista de ESPN y Rolling Stone.

Releyendo algunas de sus columnas, la que escribió en ESPN el 12 de septiembre de 2001 creo que es una excelente muestra de su estilo.

In a recent piece for Rolling Stone on the 2004 presidential campaign, he called George Bush a "treacherous little freak."

Observing President Bush's poor performance in a debate with "my man" John Kerry, he wrote for the magazine, "I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him 'Mister President,' and then I felt ashamed."

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone," he once said, "but they've always worked for me."

Posted at 06:56 PM

Unintelligent Design

De la revista del New York Times (20 de febrero de 2005): algunos "científicos" proponen enseñar una alternativa a la Evolución - el "Diseño Inteligente".

One beauty of Darwinism is the intellectual freedom it allows. As the arch-evolutionist Richard Dawkins has observed, ''Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.'' But Darwinism permits you to be an intellectually fulfilled theist, too. That is why Pope John Paul II was comfortable declaring that evolution has been ''proven true'' and that ''truth cannot contradict truth.''

Unintelligent Design
By JIM HOLT

Recently a school district in rural Pennsylvania officially recognized a supposed alternative to Darwinism. In a one-minute statement read by an administrator, ninth-grade biology students were told that evolution was not a fact and were encouraged to explore a different explanation of life called intelligent design. What is intelligent design? Its proponents maintain that living creatures are just too intricate to have arisen by evolution. Throughout the natural world, they say, there is evidence of deliberate design. Is it not reasonable, then, to infer the existence of an intelligent designer? To evade the charge that intelligent design is a religious theory -- creationism dressed up as science -- its advocates make no explicit claims about who or what this designer might be. But students will presumably get the desired point. As one Pennsylvania teacher observed: ''The first question they will ask is: 'Well, who's the designer? Do you mean God?'''

From a scientific perspective, one of the most frustrating things about intelligent design is that (unlike Darwinism) it is virtually impossible to test. Old-fashioned biblical creationism at least risked making some hard factual claims -- that the earth was created before the sun, for example. Intelligent design, by contrast, leaves the purposes of the designer wholly mysterious. Presumably any pattern of data in the natural world is consistent with his/her/its existence.

But if we can't infer anything about the design from the designer, maybe we can go the other way. What can we tell about the designer from the design? While there is much that is marvelous in nature, there is also much that is flawed, sloppy and downright bizarre. Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock's tail or the human male's nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety.

Such disregard for economy can be found throughout the natural order. Perhaps 99 percent of the species that have existed have died out. Darwinism has no problem with this, because random variation will inevitably produce both fit and unfit individuals. But what sort of designer would have fashioned creatures so out of sync with their environments that they were doomed to extinction?

The gravest imperfections in nature, though, are moral ones. Consider how humans and other animals are intermittently tortured by pain throughout their lives, especially near the end. Our pain mechanism may have been designed to serve as a warning signal to protect our bodies from damage, but in the majority of diseases -- cancer, for instance, or coronary thrombosis -- the signal comes too late to do much good, and the horrible suffering that ensues is completely useless.

And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine that a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception. Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity. Owing to faulty reproductive design, it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined.

It is hard to avoid the inference that a designer responsible for such imperfections must have been lacking some divine trait -- benevolence or omnipotence or omniscience, or perhaps all three. But what if the designer did not style each species individually? What if he/she/it merely fashioned the primal cell and then let evolution produce the rest, kinks and all? That is what the biologist and intelligent-design proponent Michael J. Behe has suggested. Behe says that the little protein machines in the cell are too sophisticated to have arisen by mutation -- an opinion that his scientific peers overwhelmingly do not share. Whether or not he is correct, his version of intelligent design implies a curious sort of designer, one who seeded the earth with elaborately contrived protein structures and then absconded, leaving the rest to blind chance.

One beauty of Darwinism is the intellectual freedom it allows. As the arch-evolutionist Richard Dawkins has observed, ''Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.'' But Darwinism permits you to be an intellectually fulfilled theist, too. That is why Pope John Paul II was comfortable declaring that evolution has been ''proven true'' and that ''truth cannot contradict truth.'' If God created the universe wholesale rather than retail -- endowing it from the start with an evolutionary algorithm that progressively teased complexity out of chaos -- then imperfections in nature would be a necessary part of a beautiful process.

Of course proponents of intelligent design are careful not to use the G-word, because, as they claim, theirs is not a religiously based theory. So biology students can be forgiven for wondering whether the mysterious designer they're told about might not be the biblical God after all, but rather some very advanced yet mischievous or blundering intelligence -- extraterrestrial scientists, say. The important thing, as the Pennsylvania school administrator reminded them, is ''to keep an open mind.''

Jim Holt is a frequent contributor to the magazine.

Posted at 05:14 PM

Mar - Febrero 8, 2005

iPod Lego

Los PodBrix son figuritas de Lego adaptadas para asemejarse a los comerciales del iPod.

Posted at 05:00 PM

El videojuego más grande del mundo

En varias partes de Europa, sólo tienes que pararte frente a algunos edificios, marcar un número en tu celular y el edificio se convierte en la pantalla de tu juego, que controlas con las teclas de tu celular. Link.