Carantoñas

Misterio 10: El Acantilado de Kuiper

2007-10-02T17:52:00.001-05:00

Cuando una computadora se rompe, no hay mucho que hacer, sólo esperar; pero terminemos con los misterios:

The Kuiper Cliff:
If you travel out to the far edge of the solar system, into the frigid wastes beyond Pluto, you'll see something strange. Suddenly, after passing through the Kuiper belt, a region of space teeming with icy rocks, there's nothing.

Astronomers call this boundary the Kuiper cliff, because the density of space rocks drops off so steeply. What caused it? The only answer seems to be a 10th planet. We're not talking about Quaoar or Sedna: this is a massive object, as big as Earth or Mars, that has swept the area clean of debris.

The evidence for the existence of "Planet X" is compelling, says Alan Stern, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. But although calculations show that such a body could account for the Kuiper cliff (Icarus, vol 160, p 32), no one has ever seen this fabled 10th planet.

There's a good reason for that. The Kuiper belt is just too far away for us to get a decent view. We need to get out there and have a look before we can say anything about the region. And that won't be possible for another decade, at least. NASA's New Horizons probe, which will head out to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, is scheduled for launch in January 2006. It won't reach Pluto until 2015, so if you are looking for an explanation of the vast, empty gulf of the Kuiper cliff, watch this space.

:-o

NYCTaper

2007-09-06T01:37:00.000-05:00

Please visit this AWESOME site:

nyctaper is the weblog and archival location for a New York live recordist.

This blog is the first of its kind on the web. An actual live recording engineer will discuss the live concerts he records, and offer free downloads of those recordings in “lossless” CD-quality formats. This is not a concert fan’s diary, this is a not a blogger downloading music from other sites and uploading mp3s. This is the real deal. nyctaper records the concerts, and posts the high quality recordings himself.

nyctaper

I have two favorite programs to play flacs:

Foobar - For Windows

VLC - For the Mac <3

I will keep it posted in my links. I hope you enjoy it.

Flac > MP3

Flac FTW!

Thank you Dan for your outstanding job!

:-)

2007-09-05T15:48:00.000-05:00

Buscando como desesperada la razón por la cual Steve Jobs decidió hacer el iPod Touch de sólo 16 GB, me encontré con esta joya:

Misterio 9: La energía oscura

2007-09-05T14:12:00.000-05:00

No se debe confundir la energía oscura con la materia oscura, ya que aunque ambas forman la mayor parte de la masa del universo, la materia oscura es una forma de materia, mientras que la energía oscura es un campo que llena todo el espacio.

De nuestro ya bien conocido artículo:

It is one of the most famous, and most embarrassing, problems in physics. In 1998, astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding at ever faster speeds. It's an effect still searching for a cause - until then, everyone thought the universe's expansion was slowing down after the big bang. "Theorists are still floundering around, looking for a sensible explanation," says cosmologist Katherine Freese of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "We're all hoping that upcoming observations of supernovae, of clusters of galaxies and so on will give us more clues."

One suggestion is that some property of empty space is responsible - cosmologists call it dark energy. But all attempts to pin it down have fallen woefully short. It's also possible that Einstein's theory of general relativity may need to be tweaked when applied to the very largest scales of the universe. "The field is still wide open," Freese says.

Dark energy: Seeking the heart of darkness

Every now and again cosmologists decide that the universe needs redecorating. Sometimes they declutter, as when Copernicus and Kepler shuffled the sun and the Earth to get rid of all those epicycles and make the planets move in straightforward orbits. Sometimes they embellish, as when Einstein decided that there's more to space than good old-fashioned nothingness, and introduced the concept of a deformable space-time.

They are at it again, but this time it's different. Like the decorator who strips away a layer of wallpaper to reveal a crumbling wall, cosmologists are realising that their findings point to serious problems with their models of the structure of the universe. This discovery is forcing them to contemplate bold changes to fix the damage.

When they are done, chances are we will hardly recognise the old place. "It will repaint not only our picture of the universe but perhaps particle physics, gravitational physics and string theory too," says Rocky Kolb, a cosmologist at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois.

The problem giving cosmologists their big headache goes under the name of "dark energy". This enigmatic entity - which could be some kind of a substance, or a field, or maybe something else entirely - forced itself into cosmologists' consciousness in 1998, when astronomers discovered that something is speeding up the expansion of the universe. Almost a decade later, it is beginning to sink in that there is no easy way to understand what dark energy might be. The problem has become so intractable that many now see it as the greatest challenge facing physics.

The scale of the problem has galvanised astronomers into urgent action. Scanning the skies in ever greater detail, their observations could soon lead us to the origin and nature of what could, according to some theories, make up almost three-quarters of the cosmos, and which will ultimately dictate its fate. "Dark energy is more of a challenge for physicists than it is for astronomers," says Kolb. "Astronomers just measure the acceleration of the universe but physicists have to explain what dark energy actually is."

There is no way to detect dark energy directly, so we have to measure its effects. The most obvious of these is the one that gave it away in the first place: the way it forces the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

Cosmic cure-all

Its discovery came about like this. Two independent teams of astronomers were using the Hubble Space Telescope and a host of large ground-based telescopes to track down supernovae in the distant universe. By measuring the wavelength and intensity of the light from these exploding stars it is possible to look back through cosmic history and calculate how fast the universe has been expanding during the past few billion years. What everyone expected was that the expansion that started with the big bang would be slowing down, as the outward rush of individual galaxies gets pulled back by the gravitational attraction of the rest of the universe. To their surprise, both teams' calculations showed that the opposite was happening: the rate of expansion was actually increasing.

Though this went against everything we thought we knew about the universe, the results were beyond dispute. "The fact that two independent teams came to the same conclusion certainly boosted everyone's confidence," says Adam Reiss of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who led one of the teams.

Even before these astonishing results, cosmologists had been getting uncomfortable hints that something was wrong with their models of how the universe works. One of these came from detailed observations of the radiation released by the big bang. The only way to fit the observations to existing cosmological models was to slightly warp the fabric of space-time. Such warping is impossible to explain unless there is something in addition to all the normal matter, neutrinos, dark matter and radiation that we know about. Dark energy now seems to fit the bill.

For a while, cosmologists could dream that dark energy would solve various other problems too. It explained why certain stars seemed to be older than the universe itself; it provided possible clues about the nature of the dark matter that seems to be holding individual galaxies together; and maybe it could explain "inflation", the sudden acceleration in the expansion of the universe that happened within a blink of the big bang.

Dark energy on trial

That honeymoon period is now well and truly over. Although dark energy is a ubiquitous term in cosmological conversations, no one actually knows what it is. As Kolb says: "Naming is not explaining."

Although there are plenty of tentative explanations, each one seems to suffer from some fatal flaw. The simplest of the solutions on offer is the so-called cosmological constant. This is an energy associated with space-time that was originally invoked by Einstein in his equations of general relativity. It represents a cosmic repulsion that Einstein fine-tuned to prevent the universe - which he did not at the time realise was expanding - from collapsing in on itself as a result of all the gravity generated by the various celestial objects.

When Einstein learned of Edwin Hubble's discovery that space is indeed expanding, he realised that the cosmological constant was superfluous and famously called it his "biggest blunder". Now the accelerating expansion of the universe is making astronomers wonder whether there might be a cosmological constant after all, driving the universe's acceleration (see "1: a new form of energy").

Unfortunately, physicists are having trouble finding a way to fit a cosmological constant into their best existing theories. "A small non-zero dark energy is more difficult to explain than zero," says Sean Carroll, a cosmologist from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "So we are driven to wilder ideas."

One of those wild ideas is quintessence, which postulates the existence of a hitherto unsuspected quantum field permeating the universe (see "2: a new force of nature"). Because this implies that there would also be a new fundamental force of nature, the idea set some physicists thinking: instead of adding a new force, why not modify an old one? Perhaps there are unexpected properties of gravity that appear over gargantuan distances that Einstein's general relativity does not predict (see "3: modify an old force").

Defenders of general relativity point out that the problem is not with general relativity, but with an even more fundamental aspect of our universe. They point out that it has been assumed for almost a century that the universe is the same in every direction you look. Let go of that assumption and the more complicated solutions of general relativity that result could lead to acceleration without the need for dark energy (see "4: introduce complexity").

Faced with these disparate approaches, not to mention the several variations that exist within each one, it is no wonder that cosmologists are scratching their heads wondering what to do for the best. Last year, two independent committees of leading cosmologists were convened to answer this question. Kolb chaired the Dark Energy Task Force, which reported to the US Department of Energy, NASA and the National Science Foundation. Its recommendation is for an "aggressive program to explore dark energy as fully as possible, since it challenges our understanding of fundamental physical laws and the nature of the cosmos". In Europe, John Peacock of the University of Edinburgh, UK, convened a committee under the auspices of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Southern Observatory. It came to a similar conclusion. Of all the challenges in cosmology, the discovery of dark energy "poses the greatest challenge for physics" because there is no "plausible or natural" explanation for it, says Peacock's committee.

How do they propose to tackle this? It's simple: with the biggest ever survey of the universe, to see whether dark energy changes with time and, if it does, how fast it changes. If dark energy is a manifestation of the cosmological constant, it will be unchanging. By contrast, quintessence is variable and could change over time, or from place to place in the universe. Modified gravity has similar, though not identical, characteristics.

Astronomical surveys will show the distorting effects that dark energy has on the distribution of galaxies across the universe. The more galaxies astronomers examine, the more marked these effects will be; and the further the survey reaches into the universe, the easier it will become to see if dark energy has changed with time.

The most comprehensive study is due to start in 2012, when the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope begins operating from Cerro Pachón in Chile. With its whopping 8.4-metre mirror and wide-field camera, the LSST is a monster that will devour the sky. It will see 400 times the area of the full moon in a single glance, and take an image every 15 seconds. In just three days it will be able to record the entire visible night sky.

Eventually the search will move into space for even greater accuracy and sensitivity. NASA and the US Department of Energy are funding three design studies for the Joint Dark Energy Mission, which they hope will launch sometime between 2011 and 2017. Peacock recommends that ESA should also investigate a project.

Even before these mega-projects begin, we may start to get answers. Astronomers already have most of the equipment to hand to start their grand survey, as observatories around the world are littered with outmoded telescopes. About 15 years ago, 4-metre telescopes were at the cutting edge of research, but now they are floundering in the wake of a new generation of larger instruments. "The 4-metre telescopes have been eclipsed by 8-metre telescopes," says Peacock, who is now pushing for them to be used for surveys.

The most ambitious map of the sky to date is the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Using a 2.5-metre telescope at Apache Point, New Mexico, it has over the past five years collected light from 675,000 galaxies. A 4-metre telescope could not only work faster than this, but also reach further back into the universe's history. All that is required to begin the survey is a wide-angle camera to take pictures of large areas of the sky simultaneously.

Ofer Lahav of University College London has a plan to do just this. He leads a consortium of astronomers who are planning to build the kind of wide-field camera necessary for survey work. "Our survey could see 500 million galaxies," says Lahav. These would be spread throughout three-quarters of the visible universe. To cope with the flood of data, Lahav's team has used existing images of the sky to train a neural network to recognise galaxies and estimate their distances. The team also has permission to use its camera in conjunction with the 4-metre Blanco telescope in Cerro Tololo, Chile, and is now looking for the $20 to $30 million that will be needed to build the highly sophisticated optics and run the telescope.

Peacock would lik e to see many more such efforts - and soon. "We have to start now," he says. It's a big sky and there are plenty of telescopes to do the job, he points out. The more of them that can be brought to bear, the bigger and better the eventual survey will be.

Gone are the days when astronomical surveys like this were viewed as mundane, speculative chores. By giving us detailed measurements of the acceleration of different parts of the universe, the next generation of surveys could reveal the nature of the dominant component of the universe. Whatever it turns out to be, it will be big news. "Dark energy could be the ether of the 21st century," says Carroll. Even if we explain it away, we will learn something profound about the universe.

It is a viewpoint shared by cosmologists everywhere. "We are definitely seeing something extra in the universe, we just do not know how to interpret it yet," says Lahav. And that has given cosmologists a new sense of purpose. A seismic shift in our understanding of the universe is coming. How soon it will arrive and from what direction it will come - that's still anyone's guess.

1 a new form of energy

Einstein himself flirted with a weird form of energy that might just fit the bill. He called it the cosmological constant. These days physicists prefer the name vacuum energy, and like to think of it as the "cost" of free space. By that they mean that every cubic metre of space, no matter how cold or empty, contains a certain amount of energy. According to the equations of general relativity, this energy drives the expansion of the universe.

"Had everyone been happy with the cosmological constant there would be no need to continue," says cosmologist Rocky Kolb of Fermilab in Illinois. The trouble is, no one really is happy with it. One reason for this is that quantum theory predicts a vacuum energy that is 120 orders of magnitude larger than what is needed to cause the observed acceleration in the universe's expansion. This colossal discrepancy is one reason why physicists formulated supersymmetry theory, which cancels out vacuum energy completely.

The trouble is, the universe has other ideas: if the dark energy pushing it apart really is vacuum energy, the small amount that exists is infuriatingly difficult to explain. It certainly defeats any existing model.

"If dark energy is the cosmological constant then we will just have to wait for the theorists to catch up," says Adam Reiss of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

2 a new force of nature

"When physicists don't understand something, they invent a new field to explain it," says cosmologist Rocky Kolb of Fermilab. "Now astronomers have also learned that trick."

In the case of the dark energy mystery, the result is a quantum field called quintessence. Like the cosmological constant, quintessence is said to pervade the universe, but one of its key differences from the cosmological constant is that it can vary depending on the time and the place. Various versions have sprung up depending on how fast they vary. One version, called phantom energy, builds with time, forcing the expansion faster and faster until eventually the universe rips itself to pieces.

In November 2006, a team led by astronomer Adam Reiss of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, announced that they had detected dark energy's influence on the universe as it existed 9 billion years ago (www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0611572). Reiss says his team's discovery rules out quintessence models that change rapidly. "It is narrowing our room to play a little," agrees cosmologist Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. As more dark energy surveys get under way, he hopes they will narrow the field even more, eventually forcing everyone to converge on a single solution.

There are also some more fundamental problems that any solution involving quintessence will have to overcome. In the more familiar quantum fields, fluctuations in the field manifest themselves as particles. In the electromagnetic field, for instance, such fluctuations appear as photons.

Does this mean the same should happen for quintessence? Absolutely, says Carroll. Fluctuations in its field should lead to particles that can carry a quintessence force over large distances. This force would act between individual objects and be distinct from the general acceleration of the universe caused by the overall quintessence field.

The trouble is, no such quintessence force has shown itself. It should be apparent as a measurable deviation in the motion of celestial objects. "By all rights we should have detected it by now," Carroll says. This is forcing theorists to try to fine-tune their expectations to reduce the force of quintessence between individual objects while retaining its dominant character across the universe. Tricky.

3 modify an old force

Despite the slew of observations that make it look as though dark energy of one form or another is operating in the universe, astronomer Adam Reiss remains cautious. The common assumption, he points out, is that gravity operates the same way on large scales as it does on small scales. But what if it doesn't? If there were some unexpected gravitational effect that has remained undetected until now, dark energy might not be needed at all.

This idea that there might be some modification to gravity caught the attention of Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll for a while, but he soon found it was not a short cut to a solution. "It turns out to be much harder than you imagine to find a modification that works," he says.

That's because modifying gravity to give large-scale acceleration also results in unwanted small-scale alterations, such as deviations to the way the planets orbit in the solar system. Carroll says he is now moving away from modified theories of gravity to explain away dark energy.

Not everyone is giving up. "No one promised it would be easy," says Gia Dvali, a theorist at New York University. He has developed a modified theory of gravity in which space-time is not as formless as we tend to think. According to the theory, which he developed with his colleagues Gregory Gabadadze and Massimo Porrati, space-time has a limited underlying shape that makes it look as if a weird form of energy is warping it.

The warping happens because gravitons - the as yet undiscovered particles that are presumed to carry gravity - have a small mass, and decay into other dimensions with half-lives of 15 billion years. This is strikingly similar to the age of the universe. "We don't know whether this is just a remarkable coincidence or the result of something more fundamental," says Dvali.

According to Dvali's calculations, such a modification of gravity would explain the acceleration of the universe's expansion. It would also alter the moon's orbit by about a millimetre away from the expectations of general relativity. A team of astronomers from Harvard University and the University of Washington in Seattle are planning to attempt this measurement using the mirrors left behind on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts.

4 introduce complexity

Perhaps the most outrageous - and yet paradoxically the most conservative - solution is to alter an assumption so ingrained in cosmology that most cosmologists have forgotten it is there. Called the cosmological principle it states, in essence, that viewed on sufficiently large scales the universe has no preferred directions or preferred places. "We have unquestioningly lived with this assumption for 85 years," says cosmologist Rocky Kolb.

It was introduced in the 1920s by Alexander Friedman to make the equations of general relativity tractable. It meant Friedman could think of the galaxies as particles in a uniform fluid that fills space. Cosmologists have stuck with Friedman's idea ever since, despite finding ever larger density variations across the universe. It might be time to ditch that assumption, suggests Kolb.

If the universe is no longer the same everywhere, effects of general relativity that are negligible in a uniform cosmos might become increasingly important. "It is just an idea at the moment, but sooner or later we are going to have to do the calculations and make a prediction," says Kolb.

That's where it gets tough, because to do that will require us finding a way to somehow meld general relativity with complexity theory. "We cannot do it yet, but one day a clever graduate student will see how to do the calculation," Kolb says. "I just hope he or she will be working for me.

Del número 2591 de New Scientist; Febrero 16, 2007. 28-33 pp.

Misterio 8: La anomalía de las Pioneer

2007-09-02T02:14:00.000-05:00

This is a tale of two spacecraft. Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972; Pioneer 11 a year later. By now both craft should be drifting off into deep space with no one watching. However, their trajectories have proved far too fascinating to ignore.

That's because something has been pulling - or pushing - on them, causing them to speed up. The resulting acceleration is tiny, less than a nanometre per second per second. That's equivalent to just one ten-billionth of the gravity at Earth's surface, but it is enough to have shifted Pioneer 10 some 400,000 kilometres off track. NASA lost touch with Pioneer 11 in 1995, but up to that point it was experiencing exactly the same deviation as its sister probe. So what is causing it?

Nobody knows. Some possible explanations have already been ruled out, including software errors, the solar wind or a fuel leak. If the cause is some gravitational effect, it is not one we know anything about. In fact, physicists are so completely at a loss that some have resorted to linking this mystery with other inexplicable phenomena.

Bruce Bassett of the University of Portsmouth, UK, has suggested that the Pioneer conundrum might have something to do with variations in alpha, the fine structure constant. Others have talked about it as arising from dark matter - but since we don't know what dark matter is, that doesn't help much either. "This is all so maddeningly intriguing," says Michael Martin Nieto of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "We only have proposals, none of which has been demonstrated."

Nieto has called for a new analysis of the early trajectory data from the craft, which he says might yield fresh clues. But to get to the bottom of the problem what scientists really need is a mission designed specifically to test unusual gravitational effects in the outer reaches of the solar system. Such a probe would cost between $300 million and $500 million and could piggyback on a future mission to the outer reaches of the solar system.

"An explanation will be found eventually," Nieto says. "Of course I hope it is due to new physics - how stupendous that would be. But once a physicist starts working on the basis of hope he is heading for a fall." Disappointing as it may seem, Nieto thinks the explanation for the Pioneer anomaly will eventually be found in some mundane effect, such as an unnoticed source of heat on board the craft.

Para leer el artículo completo: Click aquí.

Para un update de los estudios recientes de las Pioneer: Aquí.

Misterio 7: Tetraneutrones

2007-09-01T13:43:00.000-05:00

Four years ago, a particle accelerator in France detected six particles that should not exist. They are called tetraneutrons: four neutrons that are bound together in a way that defies the laws of physics.

Francisco Miguel Marquès and colleagues at the Ganil accelerator in Caen are now gearing up to do it again. If they succeed, these clusters may oblige us to rethink the forces that hold atomic nuclei together.

The team fired beryllium nuclei at a small carbon target and analysed the debris that shot into surrounding particle detectors. They expected to see evidence for four separate neutrons hitting their detectors. Instead the Ganil team found just one flash of light in one detector. And the energy of this flash suggested that four neutrons were arriving together at the detector. Of course, their finding could have been an accident: four neutrons might just have arrived in the same place at the same time by coincidence. But that's ridiculously improbable.

Not as improbable as tetraneutrons, some might say, because in the standard model of particle physics tetraneutrons simply can't exist. According to the Pauli exclusion principle, not even two protons or neutrons in the same system can have identical quantum properties. In fact, the strong nuclear force that would hold them together is tuned in such a way that it can't even hold two lone neutrons together, let alone four. Marquès and his team were so bemused by their result that they buried the data in a research paper that was ostensibly about the possibility of finding tetraneutrons in the future (Physical Review C, vol 65, p 44006).

And there are still more compelling reasons to doubt the existence of tetraneutrons. If you tweak the laws of physics to allow four neutrons to bind together, all kinds of chaos ensues (Journal of Physics G, vol 29, L9). It would mean that the mix of elements formed after the big bang was inconsistent with what we now observe and, even worse, the elements formed would have quickly become far too heavy for the cosmos to cope. "Maybe the universe would have collapsed before it had any chance to expand," says Natalia Timofeyuk, a theorist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK.

There are, however, a couple of holes in this reasoning. Established theory does allow the tetraneutron to exist - though only as a ridiculously short-lived particle. "This could be a reason for four neutrons hitting the Ganil detectors simultaneously," Timofeyuk says. And there is other evidence that supports the idea of matter composed of multiple neutrons: neutron stars. These bodies, which contain an enormous number of bound neutrons, suggest that as yet unexplained forces come into play when neutrons gather en masse.

Artículo original

Misterio 6: El metano de las Viking

2007-08-31T11:47:00.000-05:00

:-o

July 20, 1976. Gilbert Levin is on the edge of his seat. Millions of kilometres away on Mars, the Viking landers have scooped up some soil and mixed it with carbon-14-labelled nutrients. The mission's scientists have all agreed that if Levin's instruments on board the landers detect emissions of carbon-14-containing methane from the soil, then there must be life on Mars.

Viking reports a positive result. Something is ingesting the nutrients, metabolising them, and then belching out gas laced with carbon-14.

So why no party?

Because another instrument, designed to identify organic molecules considered essential signs of life, found nothing. Almost all the mission scientists erred on the side of caution and declared Viking's discovery a false positive. But was it?

The arguments continue to rage, but results from NASA's latest rovers show that the surface of Mars was almost certainly wet in the past and therefore hospitable to life. And there is plenty more evidence where that came from, Levin says. "Every mission to Mars has produced evidence supporting my conclusion. None has contradicted it."

Levin stands by his claim, and he is no longer alone. Joe Miller, a cell biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has re-analysed the data and he thinks that the emissions show evidence of a circadian cycle. That is highly suggestive of life.

Levin is petitioning ESA and NASA to fly a modified version of his mission to look for "chiral" molecules. These come in left or right-handed versions: they are mirror images of each other. While biological processes tend to produce molecules that favour one chirality over the other, non-living processes create left and right-handed versions in equal numbers. If a future mission to Mars were to find that Martian "metabolism" also prefers one chiral form of a molecule to the other, that would be the best indication yet of life on Mars.

Aquí para el artículo original.

Interrobang‽

2007-08-30T02:09:00.000-05:00

Pues escuchando un podcast me enteré de la existencia de una de las cosas más increíbles del mundo: el interrobang:

‽

The invention of the interrobang

American Martin K. Speckter concocted the interrobang in 1962. As the head of an advertising agency, Speckter believed that advertisements would look better if copywriters conveyed surprised rhetorical questions using a single mark. He proposed the concept of a single punctuation mark in an article in the magazine TYPEtalks. Speckter solicited possible names for the new character from readers. Contenders included rhet, exclarotive, and exclamaquest, but he settled on interrobang. He chose the name to reference the punctuation marks that inspired it: interrogatio is Latin for "a rhetorical question" or "cross-examination"; bang is printers' slang for the exclamation point. Graphic treatments for the new mark were also submitted in response to the article.

In 1966, Richard Isbell of American Type Founders issued the Americana typeface and included the interrobang as one of the characters. In 1968, an interrobang key was available on some Remington typewriters. During the 1970s, it was possible to buy replacement interrobang keycaps and strikers for some Smith-Corona typewriters. The interrobang was in vogue for much of the 1960s, with the word 'interrobang' appearing in some dictionaries and the mark itself being featured in magazine and newspaper articles.

The interrobang failed to amount to much more than a fad, however. It has not become a standard punctuation mark. Although most fonts do not include the interrobang, it has not disappeared: Microsoft provides several versions of the interrobang character as part of the Wingdings 2 character set ( on the }/] and the ~/` keys) available with Microsoft Office. It was accepted into Unicode and is present in the fonts Lucida Sans Unicode and Arial Unicode MS, among others.

En francés se le dice Point exclarrogatif. Si alguien sabe cómo se le dice en español, por favor dígame. Y bueno, traten de usar este signo de puntuación, que es hermoso.

Misterio 5: La materia oscura

2007-08-29T02:12:00.000-05:00

Take our best understanding of gravity, apply it to the way galaxies spin, and you'll quickly see the problem: the galaxies should be falling apart. Galactic matter orbits around a central point because its mutual gravitational attraction creates centripetal forces. But there is not enough mass in the galaxies to produce the observed spin.

Vera Rubin, an astronomer working at the Carnegie Institution's department of terrestrial magnetism in Washington DC, spotted this anomaly in the late 1970s. The best response from physicists was to suggest there is more stuff out there than we can see. The trouble was, nobody could explain what this "dark matter" was.

And they still can't. Although researchers have made many suggestions about what kind of particles might make up dark matter, there is no consensus. It's an embarrassing hole in our understanding. Astronomical observations suggest that dark matter must make up about 90 per cent of the mass in the universe, yet we are astonishingly ignorant what that 90 per cent is.

Maybe we can't work out what dark matter is because it doesn't actually exist. That's certainly the way Rubin would like it to turn out. "If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances," she says. "That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle."

¡No olviden checar la página fuente!

Misterio 4: Los resultados homeopáticos de Belfast

2007-08-28T02:03:00.000-05:00

MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.

In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.

So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.

You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.

Artículo original

An 80-Year-Old Poet for the MTV Generation

2007-08-27T11:20:00.000-05:00

By MELENA RYZIK

MtvU, the subsidiary of MTV Networks that is broadcast only on college campuses, will announce today that it has selected its first poet laureate. No, he doesn’t rap. And it’s not Bob Dylan, or even Justin Timberlake.

It is John Ashbery, the prolific 80-year-old poet and frequent award winner known for his dense, postmodern style and playful language. One of the most celebrated living poets, Mr. Ashbery has won MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.”

Excerpts of his poems will appear in 18 short promotional spots — like commercials for verse — on the channel and its Web site (mtvu.com, which will also feature the full text of the poems). In another first, mtvU will help sponsor a poetry contest for college students. The winner, chosen by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, will have a book published next year by HarperCollins as part of the National Poetry Series.

“We hope that we’ll help discover the next great poet that we’ll be talking about for years to come,” said Stephen K. Friedman, the general manager of mtvU, which broadcasts at 750 campuses nationwide.

The idea of the laureate program was not to create more English majors, but simply to whet an appetite, said Mr. Friedman, a poetry aficionado since he majored in literature, philosophy and history at Wesleyan. Mr. Ashbery, he added, was the No. 1 choice to inaugurate the position. “He resonates with college students that we’ve talked with,” he said.

And Mr. Ashbery, who was the poet laureate of New York State from 2001 to 2003, was immediately receptive. “It seemed like it would be a chance to broaden the audience for poetry,” he said.

The poems used in the campaign span his career, and the spots are simple: on a white background, black text floats in to a sound like a crashing wave, appears on the screen for a minute, then floats away. From “Retro” (2005): “It’s really quite a thrill/When the moon rises over the hill/and you’ve gotten over someone/salty and mercurial, the only person you’ve ever loved.” From “Soonest Mended” (2000): “Barely tolerated, living on the margin/In our technological society, we are always having to be rescued.”

The excerpts were chosen by David Kermani, Mr. Ashbery’s business manager, and two interns and an employee, all in their early 20s, in his office.

“We were just trying to pick lines that were catchy and sort of meaningful in some way, something that would appeal to what we thought younger people would be interested in,” Mr. Kermani said. These young people picked “things that had sort of raunchy references,” he added. “They thought it was sort of a hoot.”

Mr. Ashbery too was pleased by their choices, particularly because they reminded him of what was in his own canon. “I have a lot poems, so there are a lot of them that I don’t really think of very much,” he said. (Mr. Ashbery published “A Worldly Country: New Poems” in February, and an anthology, “Notes From the Air: Selected Later Poems,” is due out in November.)

But will droves of young people respond?

“It’s our hope that we will interest college kids in poetry in a new way, make it hip for them,” said Daniel Halpern, the publisher of Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins that has published Mr. Ashbery’s work. But, Mr. Halpern admitted, “it’s very hard to tell what exactly is going to come of all this.”

Though his roots are in 1950s bohemia, Mr. Ashbery is perhaps not the most obvious choice for the iPod generation. He works on a typewriter and doesn’t listen to popular music, with the exception of a chance encounter with the Peaches & Herb song “Reunited” in a cab in the 1980s; it inspired his poem “The Songs We Know Best.” (“Just like a shadow in an empty room/Like a breeze that’s pointed from beyond the tomb/Just like a project of which no one tells-/Or didja really think that I was somebody else?”)

But Mr. Friedman is optimistic that verse will find its new audience, and mtvU plans to continue the program with other laureates after Mr. Ashbery’s one-year tenure is up.

“I don’t think there’s such a big leap from the artists we’re playing to the poetry that John is creating,” Mr. Friedman said. “Some of the music we play, Bright Eyes and the Decemberists, they’re phenomenal poets. I feel like there’s a connection there.”

Though he has not been offered the job, Mr. Ashbery has said that he wouldn’t necessarily be interested in being the United States poet laureate.

“There is a great deal of responsibility that comes with it,” he said. “You have to spend part of the time in Washington. It’s really a public post.”

But the mtvU gig — which is unpaid — came with few strings attached, and was not very demanding of his time, he said.

“I don’t have any specific duties,” he said. “They’re going to publicize my poetry and maybe people will get interested in it and other poets will benefit. That’s about as much work or responsibility as I would want.”

After a 50-year career and nearly as many published volumes, is Mr. Ashbery finally slacking off? He laughed. No, he said. “I’d rather keep the effort for writing poetry.”

Source: NYT

Misterio 3: Rayos cósmicos ultra energéticos

2007-08-27T03:05:00.000-05:00

For more than a decade, physicists in Japan have been seeing cosmic rays that should not exist. Cosmic rays are particles - mostly protons but sometimes heavy atomic nuclei - that travel through the universe at close to the speed of light. Some cosmic rays detected on Earth are produced in violent events such as supernovae, but we still don't know the origins of the highest-energy particles, which are the most energetic particles ever seen in nature. But that's not the real mystery.

As cosmic-ray particles travel through space, they lose energy in collisions with the low-energy photons that pervade the universe, such as those of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Einstein's special theory of relativity dictates that any cosmic rays reaching Earth from a source outside our galaxy will have suffered so many energy-shedding collisions that their maximum possible energy is 5 × 10¹⁹ electronvolts. This is known as the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit.

Over the past decade, however, the University of Tokyo's Akeno Giant Air Shower Array - 111 particle detectors spread out over 100 square kilometres - has detected several cosmic rays above the GZK limit. In theory, they can only have come from within our galaxy, avoiding an energy-sapping journey across the cosmos. However, astronomers can find no source for these cosmic rays in our galaxy. So what is going on?

One possibility is that there is something wrong with the Akeno results. Another is that Einstein was wrong. His special theory of relativity says that space is the same in all directions, but what if particles found it easier to move in certain directions? Then the cosmic rays could retain more of their energy, allowing them to beat the GZK limit.

Physicists at the Pierre Auger experiment in Mendoza, Argentina, are now working on this problem. Using 1600 detectors spread over 3000 square kilometres, Auger should be able to determine the energies of incoming cosmic rays and shed more light on the Akeno results.

Alan Watson, an astronomer at the University of Leeds, UK, and spokesman for the Pierre Auger project, is already convinced there is something worth following up here. "I have no doubts that events above 10²⁰ electronvolts exist. There are sufficient examples to convince me," he says. The question now is, what are they? How many of these particles are coming in, and what direction are they coming from? Until we get that information, there's no telling how exotic the true explanation could be.

No olviden checar NewScientist

Y por si a alguien le interesa continuar: esto

Misterio 2: El problema del horizonte

2007-08-18T16:54:00.000-05:00

Our universe appears to be unfathomably uniform. Look across space from one edge of the visible universe to the other, and you'll see that the microwave background radiation filling the cosmos is at the same temperature everywhere. That may not seem surprising until you consider that the two edges are nearly 28 billion light years apart and our universe is only 14 billion years old.

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there is no way heat radiation could have traveled between the two horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now.

This "horizon problem" is a big headache for cosmologists, so big that they have come up with some pretty wild solutions. "Inflation", for example.

You can solve the horizon problem by having the universe expand ultra-fast for a time, just after the big bang, blowing up by a factor of 10⁵⁰ in 10^-33 seconds. But is that just wishful thinking? "Inflation would be an explanation if it occurred," says University of Cambridge astronomer Martin Rees. The trouble is that no one knows what could have made that happen, but see Inside inflation: after the big bang.

So, in effect, inflation solves one mystery only to invoke another. A variation in the speed of light could also solve the horizon problem - but this too is impotent in the face of the question "why?" In scientific terms, the uniform temperature of the background radiation remains an anomaly.

Recuerden visitar la página de New Scientist

Compact disc hits 25th birthday

2007-08-17T15:01:00.000-05:00

Exactly 25 years ago the world's first compact disc was produced at a Philips factory in Germany, sparking a global music revolution.
More than 200 billion CDs have been sold worldwide since then and it remains the dominant format despite the growth in digital downloads.
The CD was jointly developed by Philips and Sony and the disc has also become a key storage method for computer users.
The first CD produced was The Visitors by Abba.
Piet Kramer, who was a member of the optical group at Philips during the disc's development, said: "When Philips teamed up with Sony to develop the CD, our first target was to win over the world for the CD.
"We did this by collaborating openly to agree on a new standard. For Philips, this open innovation was a new approach and it paid off."
He said the companies had never imagined that the computing and entertainment industries would also opt for the CD as a storage system for content.
Jacques Heemskerk, who was one of the senior engineers involved with the optical side of CD players, said the team knew they were building a revolutionary product.
"It was revolutionary in many fields - the optics were new, the disc was new. At the start of development there wasn't even a laser that would work well enough for our needs.
"The most advanced laser at the time had a lifespan of only 100 hours."
He said the company had always planned on the format lasting at least 20 to 25 years.
"That was the model we had in mind although it seems that CD is going to last a lot longer than that. For many people the CD is still the original format, with others being derivative or back-ups."
The two companies began work on the format in 1979 and targetted a disc which could hold an hour of audio. The capacity was extended to 74 minutes, however, to accommodate a complete performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, forcing the disk to be made slightly larger."
"I always wish we had stuck with the original plan for an 11cm disc; it would have been more suited to the on-the-go age," said Mr Heemskerk.
He said that it had been a big culture shock for Philips when they had allied with Sony.
"The world was not as globalised as it is today. Our management had told us to be as open as possible and to share everything because that was the only way to have success.
"But we were suspicious and so were their engineers. But after a few days it became clear we could work together."
He added: "There were other companies working on similar technologies, so there was pressure.
"We always knew we could make the product but it was always about making it for the right cost and at scale."
The first CDs went on sale in November 1982 and were mainly classical recordings.
Classical music lovers were believed to be more affluent than pop and rock music fans, and Philips thought they would be more inclined to pay the price for the more expensive CDs and the very expensive CD-players,
The first models cost 2,000 Dutch guilders, about £1,000 at today's rate, taking into account inflation.
"When Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau recorded one of the first CDs for Polygram we discovered that he was grunting and panting while playing. Before on vinyl you didn't hear that but on CD it was crystal clear," said Frank van den Berg, a former member of the Polygram CD development task force.
In the last 10 years CD sales have been dropping worldwide while digital download sales are rising rapidly.
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), digital sales will account for a quarter of all worldwide music sales by 2010.
CD sales in the UK have dropped 10% in the first half of this year, while download purchases have increased by 50%.
Richard Gooch, head of technology at IFPI, said: "CDs remain a very popular format for buying music in the digital era - indeed as CDs are a digital format they actually kick-started the digital age.
""The CD remained the most popular Christmas present in Britain last year. Despite the rise of downloading we expect that the CD will be here for many years to come."
Mr Heemskerk said CDs remained his format of choice.
"I don't have an iPod, although my youngest son uses one. But CDs are still his preferred format and he copies them on to his MP3 player."

Misterio 1: El efecto placebo

2007-08-16T23:33:00.000-05:00

Michael Brooks, en New Scientist, hizo una lista de los trece fenómenos que no pueden ser explicados con la ciencia actual. El primero:

1 The placebo effect

Don't try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

So what is going on? Doctors have known about the placebo effect for decades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placebo effect is somehow biochemical. But apart from that, we simply don't know.

Benedetti has since shown that a saline placebo can also reduce tremors and muscle stiffness in people with Parkinson's disease. He and his team measured the activity of neurons in the patients' brains as they administered the saline. They found that individual neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (a common target for surgical attempts to relieve Parkinson's symptoms) began to fire less often when the saline was given, and with fewer "bursts" of firing - another feature associated with Parkinson's. The neuron activity decreased at the same time as the symptoms improved: the saline was definitely doing something.

We have a lot to learn about what is happening here, Benedetti says, but one thing is clear: the mind can affect the body's biochemistry. "The relationship between expectation and therapeutic outcome is a wonderful model to understand mind-body interaction," he says. Researchers now need to identify when and where placebo works. There may be diseases in which it has no effect. There may be a common mechanism in different illnesses. As yet, we just don't know.

A 30 años de "WOW!"

2007-08-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

Hoy hace 30 años, por primera y única vez se recibió una señal del espacio exterior que aún se considera un problema no resuelto por la ciencia.

Aquí la historia de El País:

Treinta años sin oír 'guau'

El 15 de agosto de 1977 una antena para buscar vida extraterrestre captó una intrigante señal

JOSÉ MANUEL ABAD LIÑÁN 15/08/2007

El cosmos, por norma general, emite una señal monótona y aburrida, el eco del Big Bang. Hace 30 años, una señal rompió bruscamente esa monotonía. El 15 de agosto de 1977, a las 11:15 de la noche, la radioantena Big Ear (Gran Oído) de la Universidad de Ohio captó una señal de 72 segundos y una intensidad que superó en algún momento 30 veces al aburrido ruido de fondo. Algo así como un chillido retumbando sobre el leve murmullo del cosmos.

El astrónomo Jerry Ehman había sido despedido de Big Ear cinco años antes. El Congreso de EE UU retiraba su ayuda económica al programa SETI de investigación de vida extraterrestre. Pero Ehman estaba convencido de que la antena podía dar mucho de sí y seguía trabajando como voluntario. Unos días después de aquel 15 de agosto, se dispuso a revisar el montón de papel continuo que había ido escupiendo la impresora con los resultados del rastreo.
Todos los registros entraban en la norma, hasta que topó con un código, 6EQUJ5, que venía a decir que la señal a la que se refería, en comparación a la de los objetos celestes, era extraordinariamente intensa y concreta y procedía de un único punto en el espacio. Es decir, muy parecida a las emisiones que se emplean en las comunicaciones humanas. Alguien o algo parecía haberla emitido intencionadamente desde el espacio. Ehman agarró un lápiz rojo y anotó al lado del código la exclamación "wow!" ("¡guau!"). La señal quedaba bautizada.
Desde entonces, el astrónomo, que firma sus mensajes electrónicos como Jerry Wow Ehman, se ha dedicado a descartar desde las explicaciones más obvias a las más estrafalarias. Entre las primeras, que aquella señal viniera de una galaxia, planeta o asteroide. Negativo. Otros fenómenos cósmicos más complejos, como las lentes gravitatorias o el centelleo interestelar, quedaron descartados.
Aquel grito cósmico ponía a prueba el escepticismo de cualquier científico, pero admitir directamente que viniera de una inteligencia extraterrestre resultaba osado. Había que ampliar el círculo de sospechosos, y Ehman incluyó las emisiones humanas. Como la de los satélites. Pero la señal se había emitido en la banda de los 1.420 megahercios, prohibida para todo tipo de transmisiones en la Tierra. Un avión o vehículo espacial tampoco podían ser su origen. En 72 segundos, la duración de la señal, una aeronave habría descrito una amplia línea en el cielo. Y Wow procedía de un único punto.
Cabría la posibilidad de que la señal hubiera salido desde Tierra y se reflejara en un trozo de chatarra espacial. Ehman piensa que esa posibilidad existe, aunque es demasiado remota. El trozo tendría que haberse quedado quieto. Pero además de orbitar en torno al planeta, suelen rotar sobre sí.
¿Qué explicación queda? Ehman refiere en el análisis que ha publicado con motivo del aniversario: "Ya que todas las posibilidades de un origen terrestre han sido descartadas o parecen improbables, y ya que no se ha podido descartar la posibilidad de un origen extraterrestre, debo concluir que una inteligencia extraterrestre podría haber enviado la señal que nosotros recibimos como la fuente de Wow. Estoy a la espera de recibir otras señales como la de Wow que puedan captar y analizar muchos observatorios", afirma. Pero con Big Ear será ya imposible. Se desmontó en 1998 para construir en su lugar un campo de golf de 18 hoyos y 400 viviendas.

Cómo puede ser que el golf sea más importante y rentable que la ciencia; vamos, más allá, que la curiosidad misma. . .

Who's next now?

2007-08-08T02:35:00.001-05:00

Rare river dolphin 'now extinct'

A freshwater dolphin found only in China is now "likely to be extinct", a team of scientists has concluded.
The researchers failed to spot any Yangtze river dolphins, also known as baijis, during an extensive six-week survey of the mammals' habitat.
The team, writing in the Royal Society Biology Letters journals, blamed unregulated fishing as the main reason behind the dolphins' demise.
But the WWF campaign group said the research was not conclusive.
"WWF does not think that the baiji dolphin can be declared extinct or 'effectively extinct' because the search was conducted within a short period of time over a limited area of the river," said a spokesman.
He said a species cannot be formally classed as extinct until no animal has been found in the wild for 50 years - but the last report of a wild baiji dolphin was verified in 2004.
The World Conservation Union's Red List of Threaten Species currently classifies the creature as "critically endangered".
Sam Turvey of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), one of the paper's co-authors, described the findings as a "shocking tragedy".
"The Yangtze river dolphin was a remarkable mammal that separated from all other species over 20 million years ago," Dr Turvey explained.
"This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises that we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet."
If confirmed, it would be the first extinction of a large vertebrate for over 50 years.
'Incidental impact'
The species (Lipotes vexillifer) was the only remaining member of the Lipotidae, an ancient mammal family that is understood to have separated from other marine mammals, including whales, dolphins and porpoises, about 40-20 million years ago.
The white, freshwater dolphin had a long, narrow beak and low dorsal fin; lived in groups of three or four and fed on fish.
The team carried out six-week visual and acoustic survey, using two research vessels, in November and December 2006.
"While it is conceivable that a couple of surviving individuals were missed by the survey teams," the team wrote, "our inability to detect any baiji despite this intensive search effort indicates that the prospect of finding and translocating them to a [reserve] has all but vanished."
The scientists added that there were a number of human activities that caused baiji numbers to decline, including construction of dams and boat collisions.
"However, the primary factor was probably unsustainable by-catch in local fisheries, which used rolling hooks, nets and electrofishing," they suggested.
"Unlike most historical-era extinctions of large bodied animals, the baiji was the victim not of active persecution but incidental mortality resulting from massive-scale human environmental impacts - primarily uncontrolled and unselective fishing," the researchers concluded.

Blackle

2007-08-03T12:32:00.000-05:00

Según los cálculos, si Google tuviera una pantalla negra, se ahorrarían 750 mega watts/hora cada año.

En respuesta, Google creó una versión en negro de su página de búsqueda:

Blackle

How is Blackle saving energy?

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

How can you help?

We encourage you to set Blackle as your home page. This way every time you load your Internet browser you will save a little bit of energy. Remember every bit counts! You will also be reminded about the need to save energy each time you see the Blackle page load.

Help us spread the word about Blackle by telling your friends and family to set it as their home page. If you have a blog then give us a mention. Or put the following text in your email signature: "Blackle.com - Saving energy one search at a time".

There are a lot of great web sites about saving energy and being more environmentally friendly. They are full of great tips covering the little things that we can all do to make a difference today. Try Blackling "energy saving tips" or visit treehugger.com a great blog dedicated to environmental awareness.

Back from Vallarta!

2007-08-01T12:15:00.000-05:00

Y lo único oque tengo que decir es:

15 Unfortunately Placed Ads

PROTECT YOUR LANGUAGE!

2007-07-16T02:21:00.000-05:00

Mi tía Marce me mandó esto hace unos minutos. Me encanta. ¿Cómo no, si cada que salgo del país tengo que decir que me apellido Gavino?

LA EÑE TAMBIÉN ES GENTE

María Elena Walsh

La culpa es de los gnomos que nunca quisieron ser ñomos.
Culpa tienen la nieve, la niebla, los nietos, los atenienses, el unicornio.

Todos evasores de la eñe. ¡Señoras, señores, compañeros, amados niños!

¡No nos dejemos arrebatar la eñe! Ya nos han birlado los signos de apertura de interrogación y admiración. Ya nos redujeron hasta la apócope. Ya nos han traducido el pochoclo. Y como éramos pocos, la abuelita informática ha parido un monstruoso # en lugar de la eñe con su gracioso peluquín, el ~.

¿Quieren decirme qué haremos con nuestros sueños? ¿Entre la fauna en peligro de extinción figuran los ñandúes y los ñacurutuces? ¿En los pagos de Añatuya cómo cantarán Añoranzas? ¿A qué pobre barrigón fajaremos al ñudo? ¿Qué será del Año Nuevo, el tiempo de ñaupa, aquel tapado de armiño y la ñata contra el vidrio? ¿Y cómo graficaremos la más dulce consonante de la lengua guaraní?

"La ortografía también es gente", escribió Fernando Pessoa.

Y, como la gente, sufre variadas discriminaciones. Hay signos y signos, unos blancos, altos y de ojos azules, como la W o la K. Otros, pobres morochos de Hispanoamérica, como la letrita segunda, la eñe, jamás considerada por los monóculos británicos, que está en peligro de pasar al bando de los desocupados después de rendir tantos servicios y no ser precisamente una letra ñoqui. A barrerla, a borrarla, a sustituirla, dicen los perezosos manipuladores de las maquinitas, sólo porque la ñ da un poco de trabajo. Pereza ideológica, hubiéramos dicho en la década del setenta.

Una letra española es un defecto más de los hispanos, esa raza impura formateada y escaneada también por pereza y comodidad. Nada de hondureños, salvadoreños, caribeños, panameños. ¡Impronunciables nativos! Sigamos siendo dueños de algo que nos pertenece, esa letra con caperuza, algo muy pequeño, pero menos ñoño de lo que parece. Algo importante, algo gente, algo alma y lengua, algo no descartable, algo propio y compartido porque así nos canta.

No faltará quien ofrezca soluciones absurdas: escribir con nuestro inolvidable César Bruto, compinche del maestro Oski. Ninios, suenios, otonio. Fantasía inexplicable que ya fue y preferimos no reanudar, salvo que la Madre Patria retroceda y vuelva a llamarse Hispania. La supervivencia de esta letra nos atañe, sin distinción de sexos, credos ni programas de software. Luchemos para no añadir más leña a la hoguera dónde se debate nuestro discriminado signo.

Letra es sinónimo de carácter. ¡Avisémoslo al mundo entero por Internet! La eñe también es gente.

Fuente: Efemérides Culturales Argentinas, Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología.

D-:

2007-07-14T13:31:00.000-05:00

last.fm

2007-07-05T01:10:00.000-05:00

Este post es sólo para informar sobre el último cambio del blogcito. Espero que les guste mi last.fm widget y que lo disfruten. Lo tienen a la derecha, justo abajo de los links a otros blogs. Desde aquí pueden ver mi profile y agregarme a su lista, o darse de alta incluso.

:-D

Casi dos meses después...

2007-07-05T01:03:00.000-05:00

... me di cuenta de que no había publicado mi entrada del diez de mayo, se quedó abandonada en mis drafts. Así que, antes que nada, gracias a todos los que han esperado paciente- (o no) -mente a que yo vuelva a bloggear. Entre el regreso, el servicio social que amo (¡y del cual viene un blog nuevo!), mi titulación y las nuevas cosas de la vida, no me he dado el tiempo suficiente. Al menos tengo una visita diaria, y en serio la agradezco. 60 días de silencio podría simular la muerte, y tal vez yo no leería un blog tan caduco.

Así que como siento que tengo que ponerme al corriente, modificaré un poco mi draft, pero igual será del concierto del Apollo (el 8 de mayo).

Sin lugar a dudas fue el mejor de los tres, aunque mis asientos no fueron tan buenos como los del United Palace. Estaba totalmente lateral, como en la fila 15. ¡Pero es tan pequeño el lugar! Fue increíble llegar, comprar un vodka raspberry y una chela ilegal para Ashton. Dennis y Nick se sentaron justo delante de nosotros. Segúramente todos los que estaban alrededor nos alucinaron un poco, porque cantamos, gritamos y nos reímos como nunca. Vamos, incluso improvisamos coreografías.

Esta vez sólo estuvo Antony de invitado, y aunque no fue tan impresionante como en Radio City, prendió muchísimo a la gente.

Setlist:

Cover Me
Earth Intruders
Venus as a Boy
Aurora
Dull Flame of Desire
Immature
I See Who You Are
Pleasure is All Mine
All is Fool of Love
Jóga
Bachelorette
Army of Me
Innocence
Wanderlust
Hyperballad
Pluto
Encore:
Oceania
Declare Independence

Después de el concierto, salimos a un bar de mala muerte del Bronx, todos un poco nostálgicos porque nuestra semana de los sueños se había terminado. Bebimos y bebimos, lloramos un poco, pero (al menos con Nick, Dennis, Ashton y Dan) nos dimos cuenta que no es la última vez que nos vemos. Cuando nos despedimos en el Barinn en Reykjavík, todo era un poco efímero, pero NY reafirmó todo. Los adoro.

El vuelo de vuelta fue una pesadilla pollera tercermundista. Ni modo. De vuelta a la realidad.

Snapple Fact NYC

2007-05-08T02:02:00.000-05:00

" There are more French restaurants in New York City than in Paris"

Wandering NY #3

2007-05-08T01:29:00.000-05:00

Recomendaciones:

- Le Bateau Ivre, Bistrot a Vins. 230 East 51st St. NY. Es un restaurancito francés [evidentemente] que tiene servicio hasta las 4:00 am los 7 días de la semana. Además de lo delicioso que puede ser, el servicio es fenomenal.
+ La fresas con pimienta y helado de vainilla

- I Eat Pandas. Es un grupo de improvisación musical increíblemente bueno. A partir de una frase o palabra sugerida por alguien del público, dividen su espectáculo en tres: un musical de 25 minutos, uno de 15 y otro de 5. La palabra de hoy (gracias a las idiotas de la mesa de junto): Cushion. Es un espectáculo Off Broadway que más bien funciona como parásito y se genera en la alusión permanente.

- MoMA. Siempre he creído que en realidad la función de los museos no es mostrar en vivo una obra (para quienes hayan visto a las rockstars de las grandes obras, sabrán que es espantoso verlas a diez metros con mil vidrios de seguridad y cinco mil personas atravesándose y tomando fotos, sinceramente prefiero verlas en un buen libro), sino difundir la energía que las obras guardan intrínsecamente. Finalmente, grandes artistas tocaron esa cosa que uno tiene enfrente, y la vieron mucho tiempo y la modificaron y la odiaron o la amaron y estuvo en sus estudios o casas mientras comían o hacían el amor. Toda esa fuerza de creación es lo que se debe percibir en los museos, IMHO. Y ver hoy un papelito minúsculo de John Cage y saber que lo único que nos separa es el tiempo (porque el espacio lo compartimos, si yo hubiera querido hubiera podido perfectamente tocar el papel milimétrico y correr el grafito que marcaba cientos de puntitos), me llenó de muchísima energía. Obras increíbles de miles que ni siquiera podría mencionar: Dalí, Picasso, Kandisnky, Matthew Barney, Orozco, Rivera......................

===^^^^===

Hoy compré Volta en el Virgin Megastore de Union Square a la media noche. Bendita tienda.
*odio la calcomanía!

Mañana es el último concierto.

Ashton's + Tania's Wish Lists

2007-05-06T18:06:00.000-05:00

According to us:

DEFINITELY:
Earth Intruders (R / U)
Wanderlust (R / U)
Innocence (R / U)
Declare Independence (R / U)
Pluto (R / U)
Bachelorette (U)
Oceania (R / U)
Unravel (!!!!)
All is Full of Love (R)

WISH (BOTH):
I See Who You Are (R / U)
Hope
Where is the Line (R)
Alarm Call
Foot Soldier
Triumph of a Heart
Dull Flame of Desire (R / U)
Unison
Aurora (R!!!)
Who Is It?
Possibly Maybe

ASHTON:
Army of Me (R / U)
My Juvenile
Pleasure is All Mine (R/U)
Scary
Mouth's Cradle

TANIA (hmmmm...):
Cocoon
Headphones
Enjoy
5 Years

R = Radio City Music Hall
U = United Palace
A = Apollo

Wandering NY #2

2007-05-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

Mi intención era escribir diario, pero la verdad es que no se puede. ¿Por qué pasaría tiempo frente a la computadora si NY está allá afuera con un clima tan hermoso?

Han sido días espectaculares, no sólo por el clima, pero mucho gracias a eso. Caminar por Nueva York puede ser, citando a Enrique Iglesias, una experiencia religiosa.

Anoche fue el segundo concierto. Fue en un teatro que usan como iglesia cristiana muy cerca del Bronx. El United Palace me decepcionó un poco porque es todo de madera, labrada con muchísimo detalle, pero no es dorada, como se veía en las fotos de su página de internet. Tampoco tiene la mejor acústica de la vida, pero es bastante bueno. El mejor lugar de la noche lo tuve yo. Tercera fila al centro. A Michel Gondry le tocó como octava lateral.

Brinqué y salté como nunca. La gente tomó en algunas canciones (Hyperballad -> Pluto -> Declare Independence) el ambiente de un concierto de rock y todo mundo brincaba y brincaba más y más alto cada vez que las Horny Girls cantaban "higher, higher" en DI.

Setlist de este concierto:

Cover Me
Earth Intruders (w/Konono N°1)
Hunter
Immature
Dull Flame of Desire (w/Antony)
Oceania
I See Who You Are (w/Min Xiao-Fen)
Pleasure Is All Mine
Pagan Poetry
Batchelorette
Army Of Me
Innocence
Wanderlust
Hyperballad
Pluto

Encore:
Declare Independence

La verdad es que estuvo muy corto, un poco más de una hora, pero fue increíblemente explosivo. Tuve la mejor compañía. Fue realmente increíble. Al parecer, Björk está preocupada por hacer diferente cada show (y también en probar diferentes tipos de escenarios y públicos y de satisfacer a sus vecinos, obvio), pero el empezar con Cover Me fue orgásmico. Apagron las luces, todo mundo se paró. Entró Jónas Sen, su clavecín era el único instrumento que estaba delante del telón amarillo. Todo mundo aplaudió (yo le grite "I love you Jónas, creo que soy su única groupie, pero me tiene incondicionalmente!!!). Empezó a tocar las primeras notas y todo mundo se volvió loco. Cuando Björk empezó a cantar y el telón no subía todos quedaron admirados. Para mí fue un placer, tenerlo sólo a él como estímulo visual. Es cierto que Mark Bell y especialmente Chris Corsano son mucho más guapos, pero Jónas tiene algo especial que ninguno de ellos tiene. Y la verdad dudo que sea su blog, porque Mark tiene su ReacTable y Chris su batería tocada con arco de violín.

El telón no subió hasta que empezó Earth Intruders.

Min Xiao-Fen es impresionante.

Pero bueno, no quiero dar ninguna reseña hasta no haber escuchado los tres conciertos al menos dos veces. Gracias, Dan Lynch.

Y finalmente: ¿Por qué la gente sale con gente no gay? Definitivamente son los más divertidos y los mejores amigos que uno pueda encontrar jamás. No estoy segura que lo lean, porque casi no hablan español, pero la esperanza nunca se pierde. Por este fin de semana:

Gracias Gracias Gracias Francis + Nick + Dennis + Chris.

Cuando esto se termine vendrán los agradecimientos extendidos.

Mientras, sólo puedo sentirme la más puberta bajada del cerro por no hablarle anoche a Jónas en el Down Hill's. Cuando vi que llegó estaba bailando a The Strokes con Francis. Y Dennis, "sin querer", le estrujó su precioso traserito clásico. Pero no, lo siento, me impone demasiado. Espero que en la afterparty del Apollo se me quite...

Wandering NY #1

2007-05-03T14:31:00.000-05:00

No puedo decir "todo empezó el _ de mayo a las _", porque lo cierto es que no distingo muy bien cuándo se terminó el 1 de mayo y empezó mi cumpleaños. Diría que fue en el avió hacia NY, pero eso dejaría fuera la odisea de hacer la maleta, la que terminé en el carro hacia el aeropuerto. No había dormido mucho en días y la madrugada del 2 tampoco lo hice. Me quedé empacando y me quedó la maleta más pesada de todos los tiempos. Después pensé que todo es culpa de los gringos locos que te hacen que lleves todos tus productos de tocador (¡cómo pesan!) en tu maleta. Pero bueno, espero usar mucho shampoo y crema...

Llegué tarde al aeropuerto. Fui la última en documentar de mi vuelo. Bendito vuelo de 5 horas vacío. Cada quien podía escoger su lugar y acostarse en los tres asientos. Iba conmigo el charrito Pablo Montero. Ni tan guapo, ni tan alto, ni tan fuerte. Eso sí, súper macho. Se sentó junto a mí (es decir, en los otros tres asientos de mi fila) y me sonreía y hacía caritas. No, Pablo, no había manera de que llegáramos juntos al club de lo 10 mil... Escogí la grabación del viernes en Coachella, me puse mis audífonos y lo borré del mapa hasta que llegó el desayuno. Duerme abrazado de una almohada y come como hiena.

Pero bueno, llegando al JFK, con mi visa y pasaporte pasé migración y aduana sin problema. Esquivé a los implacables taxis piratas y llegué a mi minúsculo pero chic hotel Pod. Es increíble mi habitación. Casi siempre tengo el problema de iluminación con los hoteles, pero como tengo el cuarto en una esquina, tengo dos ventanas que le dan muchísima luz. Mi cuarto es pequeñísimo, pero caben mi maleta y mi carry-on perfecto y tengo un pequeño escritorio con una silla chic para escribir y trabajar. Mi cama es deliciosa, aunque pequeña también. Vamos, tampoco es que mida 1.90, así que no me quejo nada.

Llegué y a todo el mundo se le hizo tarde, así que tuve tiempo para dormirme otro poquito y arreglarme para ir a comer y al concierto. El que llegó primero fue Ashton. Me regaló oatmeal cookies que hizo especialmente para mí en la mañana, también un dibujo de mi nombre con la tipografía de Volta.

Si mi hotel está en la fiftiferst and therd, y el restaurant donde teníamos reservación estaba en fiftiferst and nainth, pues era obvio que caminaríamos, no? Seis cuadras! Pero no, Broadway y mil calles más se cruzaron en nuestro camino y cuando llegué al restaurante ya mis pies estaban hinchados, desde el accidente no usaba tacones, lo único bueno fue pasar por el RCMH y escuchar el ensayo de Wanderlust... Fue increíble ver de nuevo a Dan y a Nick y Dennis, que me regalaron una bolsa enorme con posters de Medúlla y Volta, un CD promo de Earth Intruders (es mi primer artículo de colección!!!), pins, imanes y mil cosas. Fue bueno conocer finalmente a Felipe ahí, y también a Liza y a Jessica, que no sabía que iban a ir. Comimos deliciosa comida griega y cuando dieron 7 y 10 nos fuimos al Radio City Music Hall. Ashton y yo nos formamos como VIP en la taquilla especial para WillCall. Nos dieron nuestros boletos y pasamos al lobby más grande que he visto. Todo mundo tenía bebidas con agitadores que se prendían de colores. En lo que esperábamos a que Dan se metiera al baño to wire himself up, paseamos por el lobby y vimos las carasynotanhermosasplayerasquenosonparaniñas. No compré ninguna. Compraré una el sábado y otra el martes, creo, si me decido a ponerme las cosas horribles de hombre.

Cuando empezamos a escuchar a Konono No. 1 adentro, nos fuimos. Es un lugar increíble, gigantesco, monumental. Creo que el Auditorio es más grande, pero no es para nada tan breathtaking. Konono cantaron tres canciones en 45 minutos, con música increíble, pero un poco repetitiva. Ashton y yo movíamos nuestros piecitos al mismo tiempo que cabeceábamos. Cuando terminaron, prendieron las luces. Todo se iluminó de amarillo, impresionante. Cuando bajaron el telón con el techo, todo se volvió surrealmente amarillo.

Para no dormirnos, en mi Moleskine, hicimos una wishlist. En realidad 4. La primera era de canciones que iba a tocar definitivo. La segunda eran las canciones que probablemente tocaría y la tercera y cuarta eran las listas de lo que cada uno quería (en mi lista estaba Cocoon y Headphones y en la de Ashton The Pleasure is all Mine y My Juvenile).

Obviamente empezó con Earth Intruders y terminó con Declare Independence. Tenía miedo de que fuera muy similar a Coachella porque Jónas dijo que iban a ensayar. Pero no, fue increíblemente diferente, pero igual de poderoso.

Las sorpresa de la noche fue Min Xiao-Fen, porque a Antony sí lo esperaba un poco. Aunque me hubiera gustado que tocara Hope y My Juvenile, sólo tocó I See Who You Are con Min Xiao-Fen y Dull Flame of Desire con Antony. Se puede ver que realmente lo quiere, hubo un momento en que Antony se puso a brincar mientras Björk cantaba y prácticamente no podía contener la risa.

Lo que hubiera deseado que no pasara: cuando estaban tocando Jóga, un guey se subió a bailar al escenario. Obviamente lo bajaron inmediatamente, pero creo que fue una llamada de atención importante. Björk ni siquiera lo vio (no sé qué hubiera hecho), pero a pesar de que mucha gente lo apoya, creo que es una falta de respeto enorme, más allá de lo peligroso que pudiera ser, por supuesto.

Así que setlist:

Earth Intruders (con Konono No. 1)
Venus as a Boy
Aurora
I See Who You Are (con Min Xiao-Fen)
Oceania
Dull Flame of Desire (con Antony)
All is Full of Love
The Pleasure is All Mine
Pagan Poetry
Jóga
Where is the Line
Army of Me
Innocence
Wanderlust
Pluto
Encores:
Anchor Song
Declare Independence

Después de eso, Nick y Dennis trataron de sacarle a los de Scissor Sisters (que estaban sentados junto a ellos) dónde iba a ser la afterparty, pero no pudieron. Terminamos en un lugar que se llamaba algo como Cecco, y que a todos nos recordó el Sirkus en Reykjavík.

Fue un gran gran cumpleaños.

Buenos Vecinos

2007-04-24T01:41:00.001-05:00

En general creo que soy una buena persona. Y una buena vecina. No dejo cosas que estorben en lugares comunes, después de las 11 (entre semana) no pongo música muy alto, cuando es muy tarde trato de caminar de puntitas, además me encargo de que todos los pagos se hagan a tiempo. Cosas que apelan al sentido común y a la educación, cosas que no puedes evitar si vives en un departamento. En general soy bastante tolerante con mis vecinos porque sé que no a todo el mundo le gusta mi música (aunque sinceramente creo en la educación "a distancia"; en un pensamiento tal vez naïve, sí creo que tal vez, si de pronto uno de mis vecinos escucha a hmmm... Björk, o a Billie Holiday, o Lakmé, o a Konono No. 1, tal vez les guste y escuchen media hora menos a Yuri o Reily [que son los populares del barrio], con media hora me sentiría victoriosa), por ejemplo. Entiendo que uno no puede hacer que un bebé no llore a las 5 de la mañana, aunque eso signifique despertar a la vecinita loca que comparte la pared.

Mis vecinos y yo compartimos una pared y dos discos (según la biblioteca compartida del iTunes del vecino). Me gusta pensar en sus hijitos como dos niñitos hermosos en la flor de la infancia que lo único que les preocupa es si su perrito beagle los babeó o no. Regina y Jacobo, así les grita su niñera (a la que escucho diario a través de mi pared). No estoy segura qué saben ellos de mí y por momentos me emociona tener que ver con su educación aunque sea mínimo (por eso acostumbro leer poesía en voz MUY alta acostada en mi cama). Me preocupa que la niñera le grite tanto a Regina. Jacobo sólo llora cuando no están sus papás.

Pero hay momentos en que más allá del cariño inmaterial y absolutamente platónico que pueda existir entre nosotros, no puedo evitar pensar en ellos, a veces, como municiones de un cañón del siglo XVI, o dardos que van directo al centro del concreto que compartimos, incluso como la pelota de baseball que Jack Torrance aventaba por todo el lobby del Overlook Hotel. En serio no entiendo qué pasa. Hay ocasiones que no sé qué hacen exactamente pero golpean tan fuerte mi pared, que vibra. ¿Juguetes? ¿Pelotas? ¿Su cabeza? Justo hoy lo hicieron cuando tenía migraña. Y que nadie se meta con Tanitta enojadita, ni siquiera Regina o Jacobo.

La primera vez que sucedió, mi cabeza estaba recargada en la pared. Asustada me paré, y decentemente grité "dejen de hacer eso, por favor". Continuaron. Fui por una escoba. Lo dudé en poco, pero al ver que persistían, golpée el mango contra mi pared, ligeramente, para no hacerle un hoyo. Y lo único que conseguí fue que lo hicieran más fuerte. Empecé a pensar en los límites de la vecindad, incluso si es con dos niñitos de menos de 5 años. Casi me vuelvo loca, sin poder hacer nada. Y no soy violenta. Entonces, iluminado por una luz que sólo podía ser divina, mi iPod me miró desde el buró. Escogí un disco y un track:

Nameless - Storm (Nameless is Storm???)

Lo puse en mis poderosísimas bocinas Bosé a casi todo volumen y no pasó n a d a.

hmmm... bueno, tampoco era como lo más estridente. Pensé que con The Mars Volta cualquier niñito que quisiera molestarme se iría a otro cuarto llorando. Pero sólo conseguí que Jacobo me gritara desde su cuarto "cállate" en múltiples ocasiones. Lo hice, pensando que era un aviso y que las cosas estarían en paz. Me callé y seguí escuchando Frances the Mute a un volumen que nadie podría reclamarme. Cuando se acabó el disco, me fui y no supe del destino de mi pared.

Pero hoy. Como de la nada. A las 12 del día, las cabezas de Jacobo y Regina hacían competencias para ver cuál llegaba más fuerte a mi pared, o quién sangraba menos. Y yo tenía dolor de cabeza. De nuevo pedí que dejaran de hacer lo que sea que estuvieran haciendo. Pero no lo hicieron. Así que olvidamos la cultura y la lectura en voz alta. Bendito sea el Noise Rock. Bendito Lightning Bolt. Bendito Chris Corsano.

Y después. Silencio :-)

No Regrets!

2007-04-20T12:45:00.000-05:00

Hace justo un año (abril 20, 2006) usé esta playera. Tomé una decisión que cambió mi vida, y aunque fue dolorosa fue TAN liberadora.

Al parecer los círculos van cerrándose. Así que de nuevo la uso hoy, por la decisión de anoche y por el aniversario de mi libertad.

The thrill of fear now greatly enjoyed with courage!!!

Vale la pena

2007-04-13T03:42:00.000-05:00

Al acordarse de mí, alguien me pasó esta editorial del New York Times que merece la pena ser posteada.

Editorial Observer

Kurt Vonnegut

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: April 13, 2007

If you read Kurt Vonnegut when you were young — read all there was of him, book after book as fast as you could the way so many of us did — you probably set him aside long ago. That’s the way it goes with writers we love when we’re young. It’s almost as though their books absorbed some part of our DNA while we were reading them, and rereading them means revisiting a version of ourselves we may no longer remember or trust.

Not that Vonnegut is mainly for the young. I’m sure there are plenty of people who think he is entirely unsuitable for readers under the age of disillusionment. But the time to read Vonnegut is just when you begin to suspect that the world is not what it appears to be. He is the indispensable footnote to everything everyone is trying to teach you, the footnote that pulls the rug out from under the established truths being so firmly avowed in the body of the text.

He is not only entertaining, he is electrocuting. You read him with enormous pleasure because he makes your hair stand on end. He says not only what no one is saying, but also what — as a mild young person — you know it is forbidden to say. No one nourishes the skepticism of the young like Vonnegut. In his world, decency is likelier to be rooted in skepticism than it is in the ardor of faith.

So you get older, and it’s been 20 or 30 years since you last read “Player Piano” or “Cat’s Cradle” or “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Vonnegut is not, now, somehow serious enough. You’ve entered that time of life when every hard truth has to be qualified by the sense of what you stand to lose. “It’s not that simple,” you find yourself saying a lot, and the train of thought that unfolds in your mind as you speak those words reeks of desperation.

And yet, somehow, the world seems more and more to have been written by Vonnegut and your life is now the footnote. Perhaps it is time to go back and revisit that earlier self, the one who seemed, for a while, so interwoven in the pages of those old paperbacks.

K. V.

2007-04-12T03:37:00.000-05:00

El 11 de noviembre de 1922, nació un hombre que muchos años después diría:

"Science fiction writers are the only ones who care about the future."

Kurt Vonnegut murió anoche, a los 84 años, a causa de una falla cerebral irreversible.

Llegué tarde a Vonnegut. Empecé con Slaughterhouse-Five, y continué con las otras famosas (Cat's Cradle y Breakfast of Champions) y algunos cuentos en línea, gracias a Kelly, quien dijo que muchas veces se tomaba a Vonnegut como literatura de avión, pero que había que reivindicarlo y releerlo seriamente. Sólo por eso leí la novela que él mismo califica como A+:

Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A
Mother Night: A
Cat's Cradle: A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
Slaughterhouse-Five: A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C
Slapstick: D
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C

No es como si se muriera alguno de mis grandes (vivos), pero no sé. Tengo la mala costumbre de ver los "Latest Headlines" del Firefox o un video en You Tube antes de dormir, y ahí estaba, la tercera línea y empecé a llorar. Tal vez me pegó tanto porque son casi las 4 de la mañana y estoy muy sensible.

El cuarto y último (hasta ahora)

2007-04-06T11:48:00.001-05:00

Es mi favorito. Me encanta esta campaña. I remember cloudmakers :-)

El tercero

2007-04-06T11:45:00.001-05:00

Éste es el tercero de esta serie de videos que no tienen mensajes. Volta se viene grande!!! Y para mmi cumpleaños!!!

El segundo "oficial"

2007-04-06T11:43:00.001-05:00

Aunque se han encontrado más, la página "oficial", donde encntramos el primero sólo ha publicado cuatro. Y éste es el segundo:

Lo que me ha consumido las últimas semanas

2007-04-06T11:34:00.001-05:00

Esto es un preview de una campaña, que tal vez sea muy criticada después, pero que me emocionó muchísimo.

No puedo esperar al lunes.

2 palabras de la semana

2007-03-31T00:14:00.000-06:00

Tenía tanto tiempo que no posteaba palabras. Pero hay dos que me dan vuelta en la cabeza esta semana:

lúcido, da.

(Del lat. lucĭdus).

1. adj. Claro en el razonamiento, en las expresiones, en el estilo, etc.

2. adj. poét. luciente.

anónimo, ma.

(Del gr. ἀνώνυμος, sin nombre).

1. adj. Dicho de una obra o de un escrito: Que no lleva el nombre de su autor. U. t. c. s.

2. adj. Dicho de un autor: Cuyo nombre se desconoce. U. t. c. s. m.

3. adj. Com. Dicho de una compañía o de una sociedad: Que se forma por acciones, con responsabilidad circunscrita al capital que estas representan.

4. m. Carta o papel sin firma en que, por lo común, se dice algo ofensivo o desagradable.

5. m. Secreto del autor que oculta su nombre. Conservar el anónimo.

Día mundial del agua

2007-03-22T00:17:00.000-06:00

Hoy es el día mundial del agua.

Úsenla con conciencia. Por favor.

Este post va dedicado a Monauri.

FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS, PUERKO!

2007-03-21T12:11:00.000-06:00

21 de marzo

3 años

50, 000 km

TE QUIERO!

:-)

2007-03-20T16:25:00.000-06:00

FICCO 2007

2007-02-27T14:06:00.000-06:00

Como siempre, problemas severos de organización. Es una verdadera pena que se tome tan poco en serio a un festival que pretende lo que el FICCO pretende. De cualquier manera, películas buenas sí trajeron (aunque ciertamente mucho menos esperadas que las películas del pasado).
De lo que he visto, las que me han gustado las califico (5 crucecitas es la máxima calificación), las que creo que son equis, ni las pongo:

Princesa (Princess / Anders Morgenthaler / Dinamarca / 2006): +++++
El jefe de todo (Direktøren for det hele / Lars von Trier / Dinamarca / 2006): ++++
El huésped (Gwoemul / Joon-ho Bong / Corea del Sur / 2006): +++
Taxidermia (Taxidermia / György Pálfi / Hungría / 2006): ++++
Ávida (Avida / Gustave de Kervern + Benoît Delépine / Francia / 2006): ++++
En llamas (Ça Brûle / Claire Simon / Francia / 2006): +++
Shortbus (Shortbus / John Cameron Mitchell / EUA / 2006): ++++
Naturaleza muerta (Sanxia haoren / Jia Zhang Ke / China / 2006): +++

No vean nunca: Honor de caballería!!!

Amor a primera vista

2007-02-05T20:35:00.000-06:00

Ambos están convencidos
de que los ha unido un sentimiento repentino.
Es hermosa esa seguridad,
pero la inseguridad es más hermosa.

Imaginan que como antes no se conocían
no había sucedido nada entre ellos.
Pero ¿qué decir de las calles, las escaleras, los pasillos
en los que hace tiempo podrían haberse cruzado?

Me gustaría preguntarles
si no recuerdan
-quizá un encuentro frente a frente
alguna vez en una puerta giratoria,
o algún "lo siento"
o el sonido de "se ha equivocado" en el teléfono-,
pero conozco su respuesta.
No recuerdan.

Se sorprenderían
de saber que ya hace mucho tiempo
que la casualidad juega con ellos,

una casualidad no del todo preparada
para convertirse en su destino,

que los acercaba y alejaba,
que se interponía en su camino
y que conteniendo la risa
se apartaba a un lado.

Hubo signos, señales,
pero qué hacer si no eran comprensibles.
¿No habrá revoloteado
una hoja de un hombro a otro
hace tres años
o incluso el último martes?

Hubo algo perdido y encontrado.
Quién sabe si alguna pelota
en los matorrales de la infancia.

Hubo picaportes y timbres
en los que un tacto
se sobrepuso a otro tacto.
Maletas, una junto a otra, en una consigna.
Quizá una cierta noche el mismo sueño
desaparecido inmediatamente después de despertar.
Todo principio
no es mas que una continuación,
y el libro de los acontecimientos
se encuentra siempre abierto a la mitad.

Wislawa Szymborska

Necesidad primaria

2007-01-20T17:07:00.000-06:00

Desde hace más de seis años he escrito mis paredes. Tal vez en un impulso infantil retardadísimo. Mi hermana pintaba las paredes del baño (y la cara de mis muñecas) con crayolas, yo jamás lo hice.

Pero hace seis meses que vivo en una inmaculada caja de yeso (un poco salvada por un regalo de navidad rojo que ahora cuelga en una pared).

En un principio pensé que quería una explosión de color, pero no pude sucumbir. El blanco es demasiado fuerte, casi tan magnético como el de los escarabajos que acaban de descubrir.

( )

2007-01-19T19:32:00.000-06:00

El Olvido

No es tu final como una copa vana
que hay que apurar. Arroja el casco, y muere.

Por eso lentamente levantas en tu mano
un brillo o su mención, y arden tus dedos,
como una nieve súbita.
Está y no estuvo, pero estuvo y calla.
El frío quema y en tus ojos nace
su memoria. Recordar es obsceno,
peor: es triste. Olvidar es morir.

Con dignidad murió. Su sombra cruza.

Vicente Aleixandre

Finalmente!!! La espera [casi] terminó!!!!

2007-01-19T16:19:00.000-06:00

2007-01-18
It has begun, the new year!
We here at bjork.com/unity have received communication from our very own Meester Fly, and we are glad to post it now:
"It has not been snowing at all here, but today we are graced with snow. It is a few days after the hidden people and elves move home, if they have to. We are in Iceland. I arrived after a short absence of mind and body back into the HQ of the MWC. I got the word to get back on the case and gather some knowledge, as I of course, am truly the wise one. Being the one and only I got sent new songs from Björk. These songs are to be on the new album she has been working on for the past months. She has been all around the world to record, working with numerous people from truly different background. I have been left with many thoughts after listening to these tracks, the first impression is that I want to hear more, as I did not get everything shortlisted for the record. It made me excited. The only thing I have heard prior of the making of this new record was a collaboration with Timbaland was being penned in. They met for a couple of sessions and laid down some beats for two tracks, "then I took these tracks and worked on them further", says Björk. This is true, as I hear that she has taken them to a another level. We speak about the many collaborators on this record and the list is very interesting as Antony Hegerty duets on two tracks. Drummer Chris Corsano jumps into at least the 2 songs. New sounds and instrumentation are provided by Toumani Diabate who plays the Kora and Konono nr.1 with electric thumb pianos. More percussive delights come from Brian Chippendale from Lightning Bolt Great artists being drafted into the fold!This list is very impressive and intriguing and from this first batch of song create a very unique sound and emotion. Nothing sounds really familiar about this experience, apart from the name of Mark Bell, him I know. And Sjón, turns to form to deliver one lyric, his 5th lyric since they started work together. This record is a Björk production par excellence. No stone left unturned to seek out the perfect pitch. And more work is being done in the next few weeks on the new record. It has not got a name. The record is scheduled for late spring release. Some of us have wished to see Björk live in concert. Well. Björk will be going on the road and giving us long wanted concert recitals. Yes gigging again. I get to see who is the band, I'll be damned, I forgot. It is being finalised right now! From what I remember: We are in for a treat. I am promised to be there. Bien sur. Of-course. Að sjálfsögðu. More soon."

* y tanitta hiperventila *

Recordando a T. S. Eliot en el 41 aniversario de su muerte

2007-01-04T10:53:00.000-06:00

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

*** ah, mi favorito de favoritos...

La sonrisa del 2007

2007-01-03T18:03:00.000-06:00

Y llega el promisorio 2007. El año del puerko [mi año, por lo tanto]. Pero hubo una explosión mundial casi absurda de mal humor y malas noticias y accidentes y cosas que no deberían suceder al principio de ningún año [aunque claro, según National Geographic Channel, menos del 35% de la población mundial celebra el inicio del año el 1° de enero, así que no debería sorprendernos nada de eso. Y menos a mí, que no soy católica, ni profeso ninguna religión, por lo que ningún día debería significar el fin ni el inicio de ningún ciclo, mi alma está vacía]. Llevaba tres días esperando despertar y ver esa luz brillante que me haría querer cumplir con al menos dos de mi lista de propósitos de año nuevo [que fue de siete, y no de doce, no se me ocurrieron más], y no llegaba. Al contrario, han sido días fríos, nublados, de esos que se ven tristes desde la cama [al menos en mi hora de despertar].
Además, te das cuenta que tu trabajo apesta y que lo malbaratas.
Y tienes dudas espirituales profundas.
Y una severa crisis vocacional absolutamente inoportuna [thanx Pixel].

En ese momento una declaración sorpresiva y asombrosa: "eres el número uno de mi lista de maravillas del mundo".

...

ahora sí, el año ha empezado. ¡Bienvenido 2007!

thanx JF

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2006-12-31T23:41:00.000-06:00

He perdido el ritmo

2006-12-27T00:31:00.000-06:00

Y lo siento.

Vacaciones ocupadas. Mucho.

Pero igual quiero presentarles a mi próximo esposo:

Su nombre: David Sergio Trézéguet.
29 años.
Delantero de la selección nacional de Francia y de la Juve (aunque el Olympique de Lyon quiere comprarlo).

¡Sólo miren su trompita!

Digo, nos casaremos en algunos años, cuando se divorcie ;-)

¡Feliz Navidad!

2006-12-24T01:29:00.000-06:00

¡VAMOS TOLUCA!!!

2006-12-08T16:48:00.000-06:00

Posada Reforma

2006-12-08T04:03:00.000-06:00

Tenía un buen que no posteaba... ay, tantas cosas... pero sobre todo: finales.

Pero ya hoy se terminó todo. Y empezó con una fiesta en la que DON HOMERO FERNÁNDEZ [soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo sexy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] hasta chistoso se volvió, regalando teles y microondas.

Qué alucine es una fiesta EN el mural más grande del mundo.

un accidente biológico

2006-11-26T23:48:00.000-06:00

gracias
por explicar[me] mi historia

quien no crea en el destino y los caminos escabrosos, que me llame

De vuelta

2006-11-24T01:08:00.000-06:00

Pues bueno, he vuelto de Reykjavík, y en lo que digiero todo y dejo que se equilibre, una palabra:

lábil.
	(Del lat. labĭlis).
	1. adj. Que resbala o se desliza fácilmente.
	2. adj. Frágil, caduco, débil.
	3. adj. Poco estable, poco firme en sus resoluciones.
	4. adj. Quím. Dicho de un compuesto: Inestable, que se transforma fácilmente en otro.

Prenavidad Postsemestre

2006-11-14T01:36:00.000-06:00

Ok, como no puedo comer chocolate ni tomar vino, mis alternativas son los panecitos de canela y el escocés.

Así que, para celebrar la prenavidá y el postsemestre, va a haber una fiesta en mi casa. Sólo va a haber panquecitos de canela y whisky...

La fecha no está decidida aún, habrá que ajustar calendarios, pero si todo va bien será la semana del 10 al 16 de diciembre.

Para ver cuántos panquecitos hay que hornear, les pido que a) se apunten en los comments, o b) me manden un mail.

TODOS están invitados. Vengan de Cuernavaca!!! De Villahermosa!!! De Satelandia!!!

[siéntanse libres de traer acompañante(s) y/o regalos]

Como una falda que no tengo

2006-11-09T16:57:00.000-06:00

[no había posteado por el crapy internet en mi casa, y por alguna razón, la semana pasada no se abría la página en la oficina]

El mexicanismo "holán" [debo confesar que pensé que se escribía sin h] se refiere a la palabra:

faralá.
(De farfalá).
1. m. Volante, adorno compuesto de una tira de tafetán o de otra tela, que rodea las basquiñas y briales o vestidos y enaguas femeninos, especialmente en algunos trajes regionales. Está plegado y cosido por la parte superior, y suelto o al aire por la inferior.
2. m. Adorno de cortinas y tapetes puesto en la misma disposición.
3. m. coloq. Adorno excesivo y de mal gusto

¿Laico? ¿Neta?

2006-11-03T19:05:00.000-06:00

Y Don Benito Juárez debe de estarse revolcando en su tumba...

¿No que vivimos en un Estado laico, sr. fox?

¿A quién con dos dedos de materia gris y sinápsis neuronales se le podría ocurrir la expropiación de las instalaciones de una universidad (la del Claustro de Sor Juana) en beneficio de la Iglesia católica? Cuando, además, ese mismo recinto fue expropiado a la iglesia en época de Benito Juárez.

Me parece una broma de muy mal gusto, un pésimo chiste. sr. fox, ha perdido ya toda su gracia.

+ religón - educación, ajá, sr. fox, vamos por el buen camino...

If travel is searching...

2006-10-27T13:29:00.000-05:00

y Tanitta viajará el 15 de noviembre a las 7.35 a Miami, por AmericanAirlines

llegará a las 11.40

partirá para Boston a las 13.30 y estará allá a las 16.35

impacientemente esperará a que den las 20.35 para abordar su avioncito de IcelandAir

llegará al aeropueto internacional de Keflavik a las 6.40 del 16 de noviembre y tomará el shuttle para Reykjavik

pedirá su llave en la recepción del Hotel Frón y le darán el cuartito más lindo

brincará de emoción en la cama un rato

comerá un dulce y sacará fotos del centro de la ciudad (después de que amanezca a las 10.00)

regresará al hotel a confirmar sus dos tours programados y blasfemará porque la temporada de ver ballenas se acabó en octubre

a las 16.45 empezará a correr por su habitación buscando la parte de arriba de su traje de baño

a las 17.01 bajará al lobby para abordar una camionetita

un poco después de las 18.30 llegará a la Laguna Azul (no se burlen, voy sola, no es plan romántico, a menos que algún holandés o checo increíblemente sexy quiera unirse)

a pesar de los -2º C, ella estará en bikini, en agua calientita, viendo la aurora boreal

regresará al Frón alrededor de las 22.00, lista para hablarles a los demás 4umers y salir a invadir algún bar

no sabemos aún la hora de su retorno

el 17 de noviembre despertará temprano porque hay que desayunar y hacer cola en la Laugardalsholl Arena para cambiar su voucher impreso en su HPDeskjet por un boleto real que diga algo similar a "Sugarcubes: 20th Birthday Concert" (aunque probablemente en islandés).

desde las 17.00 estará haciendo fila para entrar a las 19.00

y a las 20.00 empezarán a tocar Hit (sí, creo que sería la mejor para empezar)

brincará gritará cantará gritará brincará

el concierto de la vida terminará como a eso de las 23.30 o 00.00

lo que sigue de esa noche es desconocido aún

la mañana del 18 de noviembre también despertará temprano, esta vez porque irá a snorkelear con DRY SUIT... siempre ha querido ponerse una de esas cosas...

regresará temprano, como a las 14.00 al hotel, se bañará rápido y dará una vuelta por la ciudad

comprará un libro de Halldór Laxness (¿alguien conoce a algún otro islandés???)

varios regalos para la familia & friends - detalles, porque somos pobres

tomará muchas muchas muchas fotos

regresará al hotel para cambiarse

y como a las 23.00 saldrá al lugar que toque esa noche

la hora de regreso al hotel es desconocida aún

finalmente el 19 de noviembre podrá dormir un poco más

se despertará a las 9.00 a más tardar, para hacer su maleta y acomodar todo

desayunará, dará una última vuelta por el centro de Reyjkavik y el puerto y a las 13.30 estará esperando al shuttle que la lleve de vuelta a Keflavik

a las 17.00 abordará el vuelo 631 de IcelandAir a Boston, a donde llegará a las 17.50 (amo los husos horarios)

dará una vuelta rápida por el aeropuerto

a las 20.50 abordará una avioneta de American Eagle que la dejará en el JFK a las 22.05

ése será el momento de decisión de su vida: ¿buscar al blueman del que nos enamoramos hace dos años y quedarnos como ilegales en NY? o ¿abordar el avión de Mexicana a la 1.05 del 20 de noviembre para llegar a méxico a las 5.50?

Quick Facts

2006-10-27T12:39:00.000-05:00

Lýðveldið Ísland - República de Islandia

Capital: Reykjavík
Población: 299 388
Idioma oficial: Islandés
Superficie: 103 125 km
Costas: 4988 km
Moneda: Corona Islandesa (ISK)
Temperatura media anual (Reykjavík): 5º C
Nobel de literatura: 1955 - Halldór Laxness

Eat eat! Eat a moment! Eat eat! Eat a feeling! Eat eat! Eat a person!

2006-10-25T14:21:00.000-05:00

Ellos son los Sugarcubes... Hace 14 años que no dan un concierto. Hace 20, sacaron su primer sencillo "Birthday", y qué más razón para celebrar!? 20 años del grupo, 41 años de Björk, con el primer sencillo...

El concierto será el viernes 17 de noviembre, en el lugar que los vio nacer: Islandia: Reykjavik: Laugardalsholl Arena.

Y yo tengo un boleto.

Circa las 4 am

2006-10-19T03:46:00.000-05:00

nunca podremos hablar de "literatura" como si se tratara de un catálogo definitivo de obras, un conjunto específico de recursos o un cuerpo inalterable de formas y géneros

- raman selden hablando de formalismo ruso

E. E. Cummings

2006-10-14T04:57:00.000-05:00

Un día como hoy, pero de 1894, nació el poeta Edward Estlin Cummings, a quien todos conocemos como E. E. Cummings. Existe la creencia que su nombre se escribe “e. e. cummings” porque en algún momento se dijo que lo había cambiado legalmente, ya que era el “poeta de las minúsculas”; sin embargo ambas cosas son falsas, ni lo cambió legalmente, ni escribía sólo con minúsculas. Y para prueba, un botón:

Era un escritor prolífico. Decía que había escrito un poema diario durante 14 años, así que aquí posteo sólo una muestra minúscula, esperando [como siempre] sembrar el interés y la curiosidad.

Yo lo amo.

l(a

l(a

le
af
fa

ll

s)
one
l
iness

if you like my poems let them

if you like my poems let them
walk in the evening,a little behind you

then people will say
"Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover(it was
toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants."

am was. are leaves few this. is these a or

am was. are leaves few this. is these a or
scratchily over which of earth dragged once
-ful leaf. & were who skies clutch an of poor
how colding hereless. air theres what immense
live without every dancing. singless on-
ly a child's eyes float silently down
more than two those that and that noing our
gone snow gone
yours mine
. We're
alive and shall be:cities may overflow(am
was)assassinating whole grassblades,five
ideas can swallow a man;three words im
-prison a woman for all her now:but we've
such freedom such intense digestion so
much greenness only dying makes us grow

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
who
a)s w(e loo)k
upnowgath
PPEGORHRASS
eringint(o-
aThe):l
eA
!p:
S a
(r
rIvInG .gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
,grasshopper;

when what hugs stopping earth than silent is

when what hugs stopping earth than silent is
more silent than more than much more is or
total sun oceaning than any this
tear jumping from each most least eye of star

and without was if minus and shall be
immeasurable happenless unnow
shuts more than open could that every tree
or than all life more death begins to grow

end's ending then these dolls of joy and grief
these recent memories of future dream
these perhaps who have lost their shadows if
which did not do the losing spectres mime

until out of merely not nothing comes
only one snowflake(and we speak our names silence

silence

.is
a
looking

bird:the

turn
ing;edge,of
life

(inquiry before snow

n(o)w

n(o)w

the
how
dis(appeared cleverly)world

iS Slapped:with;liGhtninG
!

at
which(shal)lpounceupcrackw(ill)jumps
of
THuNdeRB
loSSo!M iN
-visiblya mongban(gedfrag-
ment ssky?wha tm)eani ngl(essNessUn
rolli)ngl yS troll s(who leO v erd)oma insCol

Lide.!high
n , o ;w:
theraIncomIng

o all the roofs roar
drownInsound(
&
(we(are like)dead
)Whoshout(Ghost)atOne(voiceless)O
ther or im)
pos
sib(ly as
leep)
But l!ook-
s

U

n:starT birDs(IEAp)Openi ng
t hing ; s(
-sing
)all are aLI(cry alL See)o(ver All)Th(e grEEn

?eartH)N,ew

fl

fl

a
tt
ene

d d

reaml
essn
esse

s wa

it
sp
i

t)(t

he
s
e

f

ooli
sh sh
apes

ccocoucougcoughcoughi

ng with me
n more o
n than in the

m

Y, finalmente, un poema de Cummings que Björk musicalizó en su último disco:

Sonnets/Unrealities XI

Asco

2006-10-11T03:01:00.000-05:00

Pues este blog viene como respuesta a un reclamo recibido en mi mail. Posteo después de cinco días.

Y esta vez no tengo una palabra, sino un insecto. Casi todo el mundo aborrece a las cucarachas, a todos les dan asco esos animales horribles. Muchos creen que son el insecto más asqueroso sobre la faz de la Tierra. Pero no es así. Hay uno que es mucho mucho mucho mucho mucho peor. El problema es que casi nadie sabe de su existencia. Esta criatura repugnante es el LEPISMA, también conocido como "pececillo de plata".

Es uno de los artrópodos más antiguos. Hay fósiles de cerca de 400 millones de años. Les gustan los lugares oscuros y húmedos y se alimentan de fibras, por lo que son la segunda plaga más común en bibliotecas.

Es difícil erradicarlos (yo lo he intentado taaantos años), pero siempre será delicioso verlos morir bajo una ráfaga de Raid (cualquiera funciona muy bien).

Wikipedia dice:

Aunque está considerado comúnmente un parásito, el daño causado por el pececillo de plata es insignificante y los animales no provocan ningún efecto en la salud de los seres humanos, aunque se sabe que causan daños psicológicos a los insectófobos. En los edificios, el pececillo de plata sólo puede sobrevivir en ambientes húmedos y grietas. Si se eliminan estas dos condiciones, el pececillo de plata desaparece. Otras medidas pueden eliminar o diezmar la población del pececillo de plata temporalmente:

Una mezcla a partes iguales de bórax y azúcar es un buen cebo para matar al pececillo de plata.
El olor de una solución de cloruro amónico hará que el pececillo de plata se aleje durante unas 24 horas.
Para capturar al pececillo de plata, rocíe yeso en un paño mojado de algodón blanco, póngalo en una esquina durante la noche, cerca del escondite del pececillo de plata.
Otra forma útil de capturar al pececillo de plata es poner una patata rallada en una losa cerca de su escondite durante la noche. El pececillo de plata excavará en la patata para comer. A la mañana siguiente se podrá deshacer de la patata junto con el pececillo de plata en su interior.

Así que ya saben. Si no los han visto, busquen cerca de sus libros, en la alfombra o en el baño. Y hagan patrian, maten a un lepisma.

Escardemos

2006-10-05T13:44:00.000-05:00

Otra palabra más:

escardar.
	(De es- y cardo).
	1. tr. Arrancar y sacar los cardos y otras hierbas nocivas de los sembrados.
	2. tr. Separar y apartar lo malo de lo bueno para que no se confundan.

¡Grax Inclán!

Palabras mientras "trabajo"

2006-10-02T15:57:00.000-05:00

Dos palabras para hoy:

irisar.
1. intr. Dicho de un cuerpo: Presentar fajas variadas o reflejos de luz, con colores semejantes a los del arco iris.

disfemismo.
1. m. Modo de decir que consiste en nombrar una realidad con una expresión peyorativa o con intención de rebajarla de categoría, en oposición a eufemismo.

Nuestras relaciones de Amor / Odio de la semana

2006-10-02T00:58:00.000-05:00

Odiamos el mezcal

Amamos los tamalitos de frijol con mole

Odiamos los choques sin seguro (¡Mon!)

Amamos los Volvos

Odiamos no tener fines de semana, ni puentes

Amamos el Superama reloaded (lateral Río Churubusco y Eje Central)

Odiamos las oficinas de Iberia

Amamos Enjoy y Pump

Odiamos el café descafeinado y el té desteinado

Amamos el moka del jarocho :´-(

Odiamos los lunes

Amamos las lavavajillas

Odiamos (con odio jarocho) a las cochinillas algodoneras

Amamos el 10% de Tower Records

Adulterios

2006-09-26T23:14:00.000-05:00

Pues este post es sólo para fomentar la lectura. Hay que leer a Woody Allen. Sus comedias en un acto, recopiladas en Adulterios, de Tusquets, son un buen inicio.

"La estúpida coherencia es el gran lastre de mentes inferiores"

... porque todos llevamos un pequeño newyorker dentro.

Tal vez un poco tarde, peeero, igual de bueno:

2006-09-19T21:50:00.000-05:00

ja ja ja...

Palabras

2006-09-19T00:29:00.000-05:00

Pues como hubo una excelente respuesta, aquí hay más palabras que de todas formas dejaron en los comments. Gracias miles, niñas :-)

barraganía.

1. f. ant. barraganada.

(Debarragán¹).
	1. f. desus. Barrumbada, mocedad, travesura.

2. f. ant. amancebamiento.

(Deamancebarse).
	1. m. p. us. Trato sexual habitual entre hombre y mujer no casados entre sí.

[Me ahorro un camino laaargo: Perogrullo - Verdad de Perogrullo - perogrullada:]

perogrullada.
	(De Perogrullo).
	1. f. coloq. Verdad o certeza que, por notoriamente sabida, es necedad o simpleza el decirla.

procrastinar.
	(Del lat. procrastinare).
	1. tr. Diferir, aplazar.

Y yo les tengo otra para esta semana:

horrísono, na.
	(Del lat. horrisŏnus).
	1. adj. Que con su sonido causa horror y espanto.

:´-(

2006-09-12T01:36:00.000-05:00

Réquiem por

el café
el té negro
el verde
el chocolate
las nueces
¡el vino tinto!

Muerte por infelicidad en dos semanas máximo

gracias hormonas, muchas gracias.

¿Todo el mundo quiere hablar?

2006-09-10T23:45:00.000-05:00

Pues no, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, yo no. Yo fui exclusivamente a escuchar.

Como lo dijo Jesusa, el movimiento cultural se convirtió en la espina dorsal de la Resistencia Civil Pacífica. Durante 43 días, a lo largo de 12 kilómetros siempre hubo alguna manifestación cultural que surgió del pueblo y era dirigida para el pueblo (algo tan distinto a lo que vimos en el sexenio que está por terminar, donde la cultura le valió al presidente). Por eso fui a la "Gran asamblea de trabajadores de la cultura con rumbo a la Convención Nacional Democrática". Y sí fue grande. Calculo que en un momento hubo aprox. 200 ó 250 personas. Me parecía importantísimo escuchar lo que tenían que decir, cuáles eran las propuestas y hacia dónde pensaban caminar.

Pero todo empezó mal. Uno no puede pasar más de 30 minutos tratando de establecer "la orden del día". OK, estoy de acuerdo que las cosas tienen que hacerse bien, pero querer hacerlo como si estuviéramos en la ONU... bueno. Hubo muchas intervenciones, todas valiosas, todas propuestas, casi todas fuera de contexto. Estábamos ahí para decidir cosas, porque se necesita decidir qué hacer YA. Y sin embargo, muchos se enfrascaron en discusiones que son cardinales, pero que en ese momento preciso, sólo entorpecían el desarrollo.

Finalmente la decisión más importante que teníamos que votar: ¿Tenemos que proponer la creación de un sexto punto a los cinco que ya se platearon como programa que aborde a la cultura, o incluir el aspecto cultural en uno o en todos los puntos? Para ese momento (ya más de las 2 de la tarde) ya no estaban ni la mitad de los que hubo en un principio. La gente de la mesa (que tampoco estaban todos) propuso que hiciéramos esa votación el jueves, porque era algo que definiría al movimiento. A mí me parecía casi obvio, una decisión así no puede ser tomada a la ligera, pero no, al grito de "ya votamos" tuvieron que decidir algo que lógicamente no representaría a la comunidad cultural, porque los que estábamos ahí estábamos lejos de ser "la mayoría". Así que me fui, en un acto de protesta silenciosa.

Así que uso este foro para expresar mi opinión. A pesar de que es cierto que la "cultura" (en el sentido marxista, que no es precisamente el que funciona en México, aunque a la gente le guste pensarlo así) abarca todos los ámbitos, considero que la inclusión de un sexto punto sería un avance impresionante. Ningún gobierno le ha puesto la atención a la cultura (qué mejor manera de demostrarlo que con una secretaria totalmente insensible al pensamiento progresista, que al final es el motor de la cultura), y que se incluya un sexto punto en la agenda de "lo importante", "lo que hay que hacerse" da un giro de 360 grados a la visión de nación que tenemos. Además, a partir del sexto punto, la creación de una política cultural de Estado (inexistente ahora) sería el primer paso obvio, cosa que no necesariamente sucedería si se agrega la visión cultural al punto del patrimonio cultural.

Pero bueno, ahora vienen muchas cosas (más allá de la CND, que hay que ver como un PROCESO, no sólo como un día histórico en el calendario mexicano). Jesusa habló de la publicación de los textos que han surgido del movimiento, que son productos de la cultura popular y el folclore. También hay que pensar qué le conviene más al país, al movimiento, a la realidad nacional... y ver a la CND como la posibilidad de trabajar en la construcción de un frente progresista verdadero, y no uno endeble y fracturado como el que existe ahora. Y creo que las posibilidades para eso son mucho mucho más grandes si AMLO no es el presidente electo (por más que me duela aceptarlo).

Creo que una de las grandes preguntas desde este lado de la trinchera, y que necesita ser reflexionada profundísimamente ahora que tenemos este espacio privilegiado es: ¿Qué se entiende por "cultura" desde la izquierda? Cuando resolvamos eso, el camino será mucho menos sinuoso.

Para quien no sepa:

2006-09-09T00:51:00.000-05:00

espurio, ria.
	(Del lat. spurĭus).
	1. adj. bastardo (ǁ que degenera de su origen o naturaleza).
	2. adj. falso (ǁ engañoso).

Poema bola

2006-09-08T22:07:00.000-05:00

Pues bueno, con el post anterior ya saben que no sé usar los comandos html bien. Si alguien sí, por fa ayúdeme con los espacios :-D Gracias.

Y para todas aquellas XX, como no encuentro un poema al fibroma, uno de Pedro Salinas:

Poema Dadaísta

La niña llama a su padre:
"Tatá, dadá".
La niña llama a su madre:
"Tatá, dadá".
Al ver las sopas,
la niña dijo:
"Tatá, dadá".
Igual al ir en tren,
cuando vio la verde montaña
y el fino mar.
"Todo lo confunde", dijo
su madre. Y era verdad.
Porque cuando yo la oía
decir: "Tatá, dadá",
veía la bola del mundo
rodar, rodar,
el mundo todo una bola,
y en ella papá, mamá,
el mar, las montañas, todo
hecho una bola confusa;
el mundo: "Tatá, dadá".

Poesía en forma de pájaro

2006-09-07T11:29:00.001-05:00

azul
brillante
el Ojo el
pico anaranjado
el cuello
el cuello
el cuello
el cuello
el cuello
el cuello
el cuello
el cuello herido
pájaro de papel y tinta que no vuela
que no se mueve que no canta que no respira
animal hecho de versos amarillos
de silencioso plumaje impreso
tal vez un soplo desbarata
la misteriosa palabra que sujeta
sus dos patas
patas
patas
patas
patas
patas
patas
patas
patas a mi mesa

Jorge Eduardo Eielson

¡Fiesta en el SOUL!!!

2006-09-02T14:35:00.000-05:00

Bueno, pues como [no] todos saben, Biani está haciendo una obra para su titulación. Así que una de las actividades que haremos para sacar fondo$ es una fiesta en el bar SOUL de la Condesa.

Es una noche de performance, en la que se presentarán algunos de los actores de la obra Camino rojo a Sabaiba. También estará con nosotros leyendo poesía Alejandro Velásquez Betancourt 4m (Aleco). Y contaremos con la participación de:

LOS OSITOS ARRÍTMICOS DE LEMURIA

La cita es el JUEVES 7 DE SEPTIEMBRE a las 22.00 hs. El cover es de $80 y hay bebidas nacionales al 2x1.

Bar SOUL
Tamaulipas 47
Col. Condesa

¡No se lo pueden perder!

PD. ¡Con el boleto de entrada rifaremos seis botellas seis!!!

Primer Post

2006-09-02T00:03:00.000-05:00

Alguien me dijo que para tener un blog sólo se necesita disciplina. Recomendó que lo hiciera una vez a la semana, así que eso haremos (Tañitta y yo, Tania). A ver si se me ocurre qué escribir con esa frecuencia, porque nunca he sido particularmente constante (y, en todo caso, creativa).

Por lo pronto, y porque creo que es lo que debo hacer:

Tania Gaviño Ramos
23 años
México DF
Estudiante de Literatura Latinoamericana.

Y bueno, si alguien sabe palabras raras (como "carantoña"), escríbame. Mientras postearé las que se me vayan ocurriendo, y espero que otras cosas.

Así que, para hacerle honor al BLOG:

Carantoña: Halago y caricia que se hacen a alguien para conseguir de él algo.
(tiene otros significados pero son feos, así que si les interesa, búsquenlos en www.rae.es)

Adiós.