Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Animists, etc.
Can a Pope - any Pope - speak to all people? He may try, but it will never work..
Religion speaks to religious people of the same faith. And few religions even try to speak to the rational human...most do to the emotional human...
Thus all analysis is biased with the self reference criteria.
Most credit Adam Smith to be the father of economics...and he was 1st a man of religion, as we know from his other writings. And he evidently did not get it all right in relationship to the equality of income distribution...
But than an other moral code build on Confucius did not get it all balanced either. And here the 3 big monotheistic religions are not part of the underlaying structure...no religion really is relevant here.
Thus I - until a rational word religion is born - think we should listen to the old wisdom: to God what is God's - to Caesar what is Cesar's. Mixing does no one good - it did not in the past nor does it now...and the future is ...future.
lunes, 7 de febrero de 2011
sábado, 15 de enero de 2011
2012...el libro que se lo quiere explicar TODO.
mandaron este vídeo y lo voy a compartir. Seria egoísta si no lo haría:
COMPARTIENDO SABIDURÍA
este vídeo anuncia las buenas nuevas del 2012:
EL SECRETO DE ADÁN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAuEQs99Xek
Es propaganda para anunciar la novela que viene... y seguro que se venderá bien.
Pero es de esperar que aun hay personas que saben razonar.
Hace mucho tiempo que sabemos que usamos solo una pequeña parte del celebro...
Y que los Mayas sabían mucho de astros: sol y luna y estaciones...
Y que toda gran religión da esperanza a través del mas allá o mañana...
Así que mantengan los pies en la tierra...y - si les gusta- la cabeza en las nubes.
Si, tenemos capacidades inmensas....reales unas y no tanto otras ... y 2012 no nos dará todo lo que no tenemos aun.
Lo siento si no me consideran OPTIMISTA!
COMPARTIENDO SABIDURÍA
este vídeo anuncia las buenas nuevas del 2012:
EL SECRETO DE ADÁN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAuEQs99Xek
Es propaganda para anunciar la novela que viene... y seguro que se venderá bien.
Pero es de esperar que aun hay personas que saben razonar.
Hace mucho tiempo que sabemos que usamos solo una pequeña parte del celebro...
Y que los Mayas sabían mucho de astros: sol y luna y estaciones...
Y que toda gran religión da esperanza a través del mas allá o mañana...
Así que mantengan los pies en la tierra...y - si les gusta- la cabeza en las nubes.
Si, tenemos capacidades inmensas....reales unas y no tanto otras ... y 2012 no nos dará todo lo que no tenemos aun.
Lo siento si no me consideran OPTIMISTA!
El mas y el menos de Internet
Abajo va un articulo en defensa de la libre apropiación del contenido en Internet.
Como siempre, las cosas no son tan sencillas...
El cine en México ya no es rentable, ya que ANTES que se puedan ver las películas en el cine, se pueden comprar ' pirateadas' por $ 1 - o así en la calle...
Musica ya no se vende...
Hace un tiempo pasaban un anuncio: la niña muestra su muy buena nota del examen al padre... " Y ¿como lograste eso ?" pregunto.. " igual que tu con los vídeos- lo copie" fue la respuesta de la niña.
Yo NO necesito ese anuncio: vi muchos trabajos recientes de universitarios...en que los precios aun estaban en PESETAS ! Ni eso actualizaron... copiaron TODO, incluido la que ya no era valido...
Ya me dirán si eso es educación...
Aquí el otro punto:
sábado, 21 de agosto de 2010
Does higher education buy you success in life?
There are all kinds of lists of all kinds of things. The lists that are of greatest interest to educators are of course the lists of the best colleges.
Let us start by considering what some of the components of the ratings are. Thus, of the 250 best colleges 164th is Trinity University in Texas which takes the first place in typical graduate debt at graduation of $35,230. There are many institutions where you graduate with over $30,000 in debt, but they start in position 48 in quality. In terms of the most expensive institutions it is no. 83 Connecticut College in Connecticut that costs $49,385 a year in tuition. Second most expensive is no. 54 Bates College in Maine with also $49,350 tuition. The best at that price is no. 26 Middlebury College at $49,210.
In terms of the best or number 1 college in this ranking elaborated by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity is Williams College that only charges $37,640 and you graduate with a debt of $9,296.
That in the United States not everything depends on your purchasing power is the fact that among the 30 best colleges are the three military academies that do not cost you a penny, and you come out without one dollar of debt. Specifically, Westpoint is the 4th institution, followed by MIT which costs $37,960 and you get out with a debt of $17,923. Another college that costs you nothing in tuition is Cooper Union in New York and it is amongst the 100 best. Other bargains in the 100 best are- in order of from lowest to higher in state tuition, but below $ 10 000 a year : University of Florida $3778 and ranking #93,University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill $5379 # 62, University of California, Los Angeles $7551 # 71, University of California, Berkeley $7656 ND # 65, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA costs $9470 and is # 44! In the category above the 100 best there are many bargains too. If you are not willing to put up with the discipline of the free Merchant Marine or the Cost Guard, you can become a resident of Ky and go to Berea College for $ 866 a year in tuition!
The full 250 best list is available in print inForbes, edition August 30, 2010. It shows that money does not necessarily buy you the best and certainly not in this very emotional market that is education. There are 6,600 accredited higher education institutions in the country, and over $453 billion a year are spent in this area, of which $84 billion are the debts that the students have to repay. Only if you like to buy a house in a big city it may cost you more than your education.
Many economists establish that over a working lifetime a college grad earns about $500,000 more than a high school graduate. The question is: Does that depend on personal perseverance or on better education. Bill Gates, the second richest man on earth is a Harvard University drop-out. People that are motivated and have good vocational training, be it a baker, a mechanic, a nurse practitioner or a MRI operator can be financially more successful and happier in their lives than a graduate from Princeton, the second university on the list. Life does not consist on starting flipping hamburgers and having always a party on the weekends. Everyone should do what s/he really likes to do since that will motivate anyone to improve in their own selected area of endeavor for life and good performance in any skill are will bring success. It can be through an academic program, a company apprentice program or an army vocational training program. The believers in 'free will' know perfectly well that they are their own masters. Just do it. Do not wait for others to do it for you. Nor do blame the others for your problems. Just do it with love and perseverance!
sábado, 24 de julio de 2010
The Economist-Innovations in air-conditioning systems
Keeping cool and green
Innovations in air-conditioning systems mean cooling down buildings is going to require less energy
Jul 15th 2010
“AN ABSOLUTE dog’s breakfast” is how David Collins describes the standard of fan blades in air-conditioning systems. This might seem to be something that would vex only an engineer like Mr Collins, the boss of Synergetics Environmental Engineering, based in Melbourne, Australia. But it is a big problem. If blades were designed for better aerodynamic efficiency, instead of for being stamped from sheet metal as cheaply as possible, the electricity consumption of many cooling systems could, he says, be cut by a third.
Huge effort has gone into warming up buildings as efficiently as possible; less into cooling them down. Most air-conditioning units, like refrigerators, use tubes containing chemical refrigerants which vaporise as they draw heat out of the air passing over them. This chilled air is then circulated with a fan to cool a building, a train or a car. Regulations are outlawing certain refrigerants, such as chlorofluorocarbons, which contain ozone-depleting chemicals. New developments would make cooling systems greener still because they would use less power.
Most air-conditioners using refrigerants consume lots of electricity because they employ mechanical compressors, which are piston-like machinery that squeeze the heated vapours. This turns the refrigerant back into its cooler liquid state to be used again. In countries where electricity is cheaper at night some air-conditioning machines now take a different approach. As the evening beckons, they start making ice. During the day fans blow air over the ice. In southern Europe roughly one in 20 air-conditioned offices is now cooled with ice, cutting electricity bills by about 10%.
Even bigger savings could be made with “thermal coolers”. Instead of using a mechanical compressor running on electricity, thermal coolers are powered with hot water. A refrigerant vaporises, absorbing heat from the air to be cooled. Then a salty solution, commonly containing lithium bromide, absorbs the refrigerant vapours. When the container holding this liquid is bathed in hot water, the refrigerant separates from the salty solution and is recovered to be used again.
Sun up, heat down
Thermal coolers are an attractive option in places where hot water is available on the cheap as “waste heat”, for example from coal- or gas-fired power plants. Where winters are short or mild, piping this water for use in district-heating schemes is prohibitively expensive. But if it can be used for air-conditioning as well then the sums change. In Europe, hot water from 50 or so district-heating networks is now also used to power thermal air-conditioning, according to Ursula Eicker, a refrigeration expert at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences in Germany.
She expects that this number will rise as efficiencies improve. In recent years thermal coolers have worked well with water at about 90°C or hotter. Now some models can be powered by water that is less than 80°C. This is important because in sunny climates rooftop solar panels are capable of heating water to 80°C. At present solar-cooling equipment is expensive. SolarNext, a German firm, has built a solar system to cool (and heat) a building almost the size of two family homes for about €50,000 ($63,000). Uli Jakob, who led the project, says recouping such an outlay would take a decade or more of energy savings. But he expects costs will fall as production of solar-cooling equipment ramps up.
Cars also use water to cool their engines. Once heated, could the water power the air-conditioning too? Sorption Energy, based in Oxford, Britain, is working with Fiat to develop a small thermal cooler that might do the job (and save petrol in the process: by some estimates roughly 5% of all petrol burned in Europe’s cars is consumed by air-conditioning units). But drivers may have to wait until their engines warm up before the inside of their vehicles starts to cool down.
Evaporative coolers are a cheap alternative to refrigerative air-conditioning. The air near a splashing waterfall or fountain is cooler than the surrounding area because water droplets remove heat as they evaporate. Spraying water inside a cooling tower while air is blown through will have the same effect. Whereas refrigerative systems reduce the humidity of air (because some water vapour condenses and is drained away), evaporative coolers increase humidity. This means they tend to be more popular in dry climates.
However, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado have designed an evaporative system that sprays ambient-temperature water into warm air to cool it, but in a way that also lowers the humidity. NREL uses syrupy liquids which contain salty desiccants to soak up the humidity. Hot water is used to heat the syrups and dry them out. NREL’s technology, known as “desiccant-evaporative cooling”, is still being developed, but it requires little power, not least because the hot water can be obtained from solar panels. Ron Judkoff of NREL thinks the process will consume only about a fifth of the energy of conventional air-conditioners, depending how dry the climate is to begin with.
The big increasing number of data centres that house computer servers could be among the first to benefit from some of these developments in cooling technology. These data centres use a lot of energy. IBM reckons that in some centres about half of all the electricity consumed is spent cooling equipment. Mr Collins’s company, Synergetics, is working on what it calls a “surgical ventilation” system which uses small tubes with fans that whisk heat away from hot components inside servers before it warms nearby parts. This heat could then be used to power thermal air-conditioning. And, of course, the fans will be aerodynamically perfect.
Science and Technology
Innovations in air-conditioning systems mean cooling down buildings is going to require less energy
Jul 15th 2010
“AN ABSOLUTE dog’s breakfast” is how David Collins describes the standard of fan blades in air-conditioning systems. This might seem to be something that would vex only an engineer like Mr Collins, the boss of Synergetics Environmental Engineering, based in Melbourne, Australia. But it is a big problem. If blades were designed for better aerodynamic efficiency, instead of for being stamped from sheet metal as cheaply as possible, the electricity consumption of many cooling systems could, he says, be cut by a third.
Huge effort has gone into warming up buildings as efficiently as possible; less into cooling them down. Most air-conditioning units, like refrigerators, use tubes containing chemical refrigerants which vaporise as they draw heat out of the air passing over them. This chilled air is then circulated with a fan to cool a building, a train or a car. Regulations are outlawing certain refrigerants, such as chlorofluorocarbons, which contain ozone-depleting chemicals. New developments would make cooling systems greener still because they would use less power.
Most air-conditioners using refrigerants consume lots of electricity because they employ mechanical compressors, which are piston-like machinery that squeeze the heated vapours. This turns the refrigerant back into its cooler liquid state to be used again. In countries where electricity is cheaper at night some air-conditioning machines now take a different approach. As the evening beckons, they start making ice. During the day fans blow air over the ice. In southern Europe roughly one in 20 air-conditioned offices is now cooled with ice, cutting electricity bills by about 10%.
Even bigger savings could be made with “thermal coolers”. Instead of using a mechanical compressor running on electricity, thermal coolers are powered with hot water. A refrigerant vaporises, absorbing heat from the air to be cooled. Then a salty solution, commonly containing lithium bromide, absorbs the refrigerant vapours. When the container holding this liquid is bathed in hot water, the refrigerant separates from the salty solution and is recovered to be used again.
Sun up, heat down
Thermal coolers are an attractive option in places where hot water is available on the cheap as “waste heat”, for example from coal- or gas-fired power plants. Where winters are short or mild, piping this water for use in district-heating schemes is prohibitively expensive. But if it can be used for air-conditioning as well then the sums change. In Europe, hot water from 50 or so district-heating networks is now also used to power thermal air-conditioning, according to Ursula Eicker, a refrigeration expert at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences in Germany.
She expects that this number will rise as efficiencies improve. In recent years thermal coolers have worked well with water at about 90°C or hotter. Now some models can be powered by water that is less than 80°C. This is important because in sunny climates rooftop solar panels are capable of heating water to 80°C. At present solar-cooling equipment is expensive. SolarNext, a German firm, has built a solar system to cool (and heat) a building almost the size of two family homes for about €50,000 ($63,000). Uli Jakob, who led the project, says recouping such an outlay would take a decade or more of energy savings. But he expects costs will fall as production of solar-cooling equipment ramps up.
Cars also use water to cool their engines. Once heated, could the water power the air-conditioning too? Sorption Energy, based in Oxford, Britain, is working with Fiat to develop a small thermal cooler that might do the job (and save petrol in the process: by some estimates roughly 5% of all petrol burned in Europe’s cars is consumed by air-conditioning units). But drivers may have to wait until their engines warm up before the inside of their vehicles starts to cool down.
Evaporative coolers are a cheap alternative to refrigerative air-conditioning. The air near a splashing waterfall or fountain is cooler than the surrounding area because water droplets remove heat as they evaporate. Spraying water inside a cooling tower while air is blown through will have the same effect. Whereas refrigerative systems reduce the humidity of air (because some water vapour condenses and is drained away), evaporative coolers increase humidity. This means they tend to be more popular in dry climates.
However, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado have designed an evaporative system that sprays ambient-temperature water into warm air to cool it, but in a way that also lowers the humidity. NREL uses syrupy liquids which contain salty desiccants to soak up the humidity. Hot water is used to heat the syrups and dry them out. NREL’s technology, known as “desiccant-evaporative cooling”, is still being developed, but it requires little power, not least because the hot water can be obtained from solar panels. Ron Judkoff of NREL thinks the process will consume only about a fifth of the energy of conventional air-conditioners, depending how dry the climate is to begin with.
The big increasing number of data centres that house computer servers could be among the first to benefit from some of these developments in cooling technology. These data centres use a lot of energy. IBM reckons that in some centres about half of all the electricity consumed is spent cooling equipment. Mr Collins’s company, Synergetics, is working on what it calls a “surgical ventilation” system which uses small tubes with fans that whisk heat away from hot components inside servers before it warms nearby parts. This heat could then be used to power thermal air-conditioning. And, of course, the fans will be aerodynamically perfect.
Science and Technology
sábado, 10 de julio de 2010
Turismo, la tercera fuente de divisas de México.
La fuente más importante de divisas en México es la exportación de petróleo crudo. El campo de Cantarel se está agotando y por ello la cantidad de petróleo a exportar está disminuyendo. Los precios suben, pero eso no es controlable….
La segunda fuente de divisas son las remesas de los mexicanos que trabajan en el extranjero pero envían el dinero para el sustento de sus familias. Ya que en Estados Unidos el desempleo aun es más del 9,5%, este dinero también disminuye significativamente. Y tardará en cambiar…. Según las últimas estadísticas aumentó el desempleo.
Se divulga que US$ 14 mil millones ingresan al país en este concepto. También se sabe que el 90% del turismo viene principalmente de Estados Unidos y algunos de Canadá. El otro 10% en casi partes iguales viene de Europa y de Asia. Considerando que hay escasos vuelos a Asia, es asombroso este número de visitantes. Pero más asombroso es el hecho de que son muy pocos los servicios diseñados específicamente con ellos en mente. Así cualquier turista en Paris ve carteles en japonés y chino en las tiendas anunciando sus productos y sus precios. ¿Quién ha visto algo así en México? Y aún más alarmante es que las grandes atracciones turísticas no prestan información ni servicios al gran número de turistas del futuro. Hay 1300 millones de chinos. Si sólo un 10% viaja al extranjero es más que la población de México y más de un tercio de la población de Estados Unidos.
Considerando que Chichen Itzá es la atracción Maya más importante del mundo. Atrae una gran cantidad de visitantes directamente. Pero atrae aún más los que ya están en Cancún que aprovechan la oportunidad que en un día pueden ir y volver a Chichen Itzá para admirarlo. Pero aunque Chichen Itzá ofrece algunas facilidades, como el almacenamiento de mochilas etc., hacen falta muchísimas otras cosas. Así no es problema encontrar guías hablando el castellano, el maya y un inglés tolerable, incluso algunos guías dicen que pueden explicar los monumentos en alemán, francés e italiano. La última vez que visitamos el sitio había una gran afluencia de turistas de Europa del Este. La única manera de comunicar con ellos era a través del inglés que ni los guías ni los turistas realmente dominan. A mí se me ocurre la comparación de que es cómo hablarle a un burro en el lenguaje maya; ciertamente comprende algunas cosas pero ciertamente el burro no se puede afirmar que hable el maya. Si esto les ofende, encuentre Vd. una mejor analogía. En términos de idiomas hace falta que se fomente entre los guías el mandarín, el cantonés, el japonés, el coreano, el tagalo, etc. También en los parques arqueológicos hay que demarcar senderos con carteles de información y mapas en varios idiomas a lo largo de ellos, como por ejemplo lo hacen en Tikal, Guatemala.
Otro aspecto importante es que se debe de evitar que el turista pise los monumentos arqueológicos directamente. Si se les quiere dejar ver perspectivas diferentes hay que proveerlas con estructuras independientes de las ruinas.
Son muchas otras las maneras de preservar la majestuosidad de los sitios. Si no se cuidan, desaparecerán…y para siempre…
La Secretaria de Turismo se enorgullece por su reciente creación de lo que llama “Recorridos o Rutas Turísticas”. Esto sólo tendrá éxito si se prevé la suficiente infraestructura como información en diferentes idiomas y considerando las preferencias culturales de cada grupo. El fomentar entre los turistas de un país budista el recorrido de las misiones o santuarios católicos en México no es el mejor uso de los recursos.
Además, que un hotel dentro de esa ruta exija al huésped que, aparte de prepagar su habitación, tenga que depositar en efectivo un monto primero para la llave de la habitación, segundo para el control remoto de la TV y tercero por las toallas de la habitación no es admisible. Sí, hay ciertas “pérdidas“ en lo que no está atado o clavado. Pero no todos los turistas son ladrones…y considerando las restricciones que hay en equipaje hoy, no hay muchos que quieren otra toalla más. Además todo eso tiene soluciones técnicas que debe de resolver el hotelero en interés de su negocio.
La educación del sector servicio turístico también hay que fomentarla. Hemos experimentado que el mesero pone el vaso en la mesa sosteniéndolo con sus dedos en el borde superior, por donde se bebe.
También hace falta que haya más oficinas de información para turistas. Llegamos al aeropuerto de Guadalajara, la segunda ciudad más grande de México, sin lograr encontrar una oficina de información turística sobre esa área. También varias líneas aéreas dejan mucho que desear en su manejo de viajeros. Informamos a las autoridades aeronáuticas sobre maltrato. Esas no tuvieron otra ocurrencia que de pasar la queja al departamento jurídico de la línea en cuestión. Estos abogados nos citaron la ley y evidenciaba que tenían toda la razón de comportarse arbitrariamente con sus clientes-pasajeros.
Evidentemente, hay gratas vivencias en este hermoso país que es México y con mucha gente muy amable y cordial. No obstante, la competencia para el turista es muy grande y se tiene gran éxito no sólo siendo los mejores sino también siendo innovadores. Entre estas innovaciones está el turismo ecológico, que ya fomenta Costa Rica; el turismo de salud, en que destaca India en general y Bangkok en particular. Todos esos servicios tienen que estar certificados por autoridades internacionales, lo que no es el caso en términos de cirugía y medicina en Rosarito y Tijuana, ni en Cuba. Pero por otra parte los dentistas de la frontera no solamente tienen buena fama sino gran parte de sus clientes son del otro lado. Incluso las tarifas están establecidas en US Dólares, como también lo están sus cuentas bancarias.
Esto son solamente algunas sugerencias para atraer más turistas a México. Aún hay mucho más para mostrar al mundo.
martes, 6 de julio de 2010
Infectious disease may explain why some countries have cleverer populations
Best I Q: Singapore 108, South Korea106, Japan and China at 105
Best life indicator Czechs 2.12, Sweden 2.15
Disease and intelligence
Intelligence tested
Infectious disease may explain why some countries have cleverer populations
Jul 2nd 2010
HUMAN intelligence is higher, on average, in some places than in others. And researchers at the University of New Mexico have come up with an explanation, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Comparing the average IQ in a particular country with its disease burden (based on the reduction in life expectancy caused by 28 infectious diseases) reveals a striking correlation. At the bottom of the IQ list is Equatorial Guinea, followed by St Lucia, with Cameroon, Mozambique and Gabon tied for third last. These countries also have among the highest burdens of infectious diseases. At the opposite end of the scale, Singapore, South Korea, China and Japan show the highest intelligence scores and relatively low levels of disease. America, Britain and a number of European countries also place in the top left-hand corner of the chart.
See The Economist of this date for graphic and data.
Comments to: vent999@gmail.com
Best life indicator Czechs 2.12, Sweden 2.15
Disease and intelligence
Intelligence tested
Infectious disease may explain why some countries have cleverer populations
Jul 2nd 2010
HUMAN intelligence is higher, on average, in some places than in others. And researchers at the University of New Mexico have come up with an explanation, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Comparing the average IQ in a particular country with its disease burden (based on the reduction in life expectancy caused by 28 infectious diseases) reveals a striking correlation. At the bottom of the IQ list is Equatorial Guinea, followed by St Lucia, with Cameroon, Mozambique and Gabon tied for third last. These countries also have among the highest burdens of infectious diseases. At the opposite end of the scale, Singapore, South Korea, China and Japan show the highest intelligence scores and relatively low levels of disease. America, Britain and a number of European countries also place in the top left-hand corner of the chart.
See The Economist of this date for graphic and data.
Comments to: vent999@gmail.com
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