Espero que el 2011 sea un año donde se cumplan los deseos y esperanzas de todos.
miércoles, 29 de diciembre de 2010
martes, 21 de diciembre de 2010
Ivory Tower
Leyendo aqui y alla me tope con un blog de un economista, que pareceria ser prestigioso en su entorno (no lo se, no soy economista como saben)
Ahora bien, el post en cuestion trata de demostrar que un articulo es contabilidad creativa, probablemente lo sea, pero, lo mas intrigante de eso es que no usa datos duros, solo apelaciones a la logica de un modelo, pero, sin poner datos.
Lo mejor de todo, es que al discutir las consecuencias, el apelativo ultimo es la falacia de autoridad.
Ahora entiendo como y por que estamos si se define al contrario como contabilidad creativa y luego la discusion termina en falacia de autoridad, no sos economista, el modelo de pepe predice eso, ah, la realidad, la realidad
Manolo, tiene razon, nuestra intelligentzia no esta en condiciones de entender el articulo, que, de paso, linkeo
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.html?_r=2&&pagewanted=all
en fin
Ahora bien, el post en cuestion trata de demostrar que un articulo es contabilidad creativa, probablemente lo sea, pero, lo mas intrigante de eso es que no usa datos duros, solo apelaciones a la logica de un modelo, pero, sin poner datos.
Lo mejor de todo, es que al discutir las consecuencias, el apelativo ultimo es la falacia de autoridad.
Ahora entiendo como y por que estamos si se define al contrario como contabilidad creativa y luego la discusion termina en falacia de autoridad, no sos economista, el modelo de pepe predice eso, ah, la realidad, la realidad
Manolo, tiene razon, nuestra intelligentzia no esta en condiciones de entender el articulo, que, de paso, linkeo
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.html?_r=2&&pagewanted=all
en fin
lunes, 20 de diciembre de 2010
Vuelve la burra al trigo
O algo asi era el viejo refran
En Economist hay un interesante grafico acerca de las evoluciones de los PBI, apreciacion del yuan, inflacion que trata de mostrar cuando las economias china y USA igualaran su PBI ahora que China desplazo a Japon como 2do
Si me ponog a buscar, seguro existe algo igual, no tan bonito, de la decada del 80 de Japan Inc vs USA, pero, si Uds le creen a las estadisticas chinas (por lo que se lee, hay Morenomics tambien ahi)
enjoy
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/save_date
Si, ya se, no es una economia free market, no lo sabian?
En Economist hay un interesante grafico acerca de las evoluciones de los PBI, apreciacion del yuan, inflacion que trata de mostrar cuando las economias china y USA igualaran su PBI ahora que China desplazo a Japon como 2do
Si me ponog a buscar, seguro existe algo igual, no tan bonito, de la decada del 80 de Japan Inc vs USA, pero, si Uds le creen a las estadisticas chinas (por lo que se lee, hay Morenomics tambien ahi)
enjoy
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/save_date
Si, ya se, no es una economia free market, no lo sabian?
sábado, 11 de diciembre de 2010
Un grande
El tipo siempre fue grosso, aca se refiere a USA, pero, siempre es bueno aprender
Government, economics, and purposes
I am told that the effect of the Bush II tax cuts was not positive. Being no economist all I can do is point to economists who differ, but that wasn't the point to begin with. My only experience with tax cuts and revenue comes from the Reagan era, when supply side economics certainly seemed to work just fine but again that was not my point. So far as I know "supply side" is not what Bush I called voodoo economics, but I will leave the debates to others.
My point then and now is that the government is spending far too much money, and running up deficits, and this isn't going to be fixed with tax raises; or at least there seems to be a general agreement that raising taxed in a depression is a bad idea.
But what's being debated in Washington now has little to do with economics. What's being debated is spreading the wealth, which is to say, who is entitled to what, and from whom? If the notion is that the rich aren't paying enough to support the level of spending we have decided is "necessary", and a tax raise on the rich will solve the problem, then that ought to be demonstrated, and it hasn't been. I used to play with matrices of numbers, who made how much, and what the return on investment (economic growth) is from each bracket, and it can be fun, but it's pretty hard to defend the numbers you get as more than speculation.
The real issue is this: without government as we know it, the result is not good for most people. Conservatives have been saying this for a long time. Government is not merely a necessary evil, but a positive good. Thomas Hobbes famously described life in a state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The conditions in several Mexican areas where government no longer functions would seem to illustrate this nicely. So do conditions in some prisons. Where there is no government, the leadership principle reigns: those who can command the loyalty of others create bands, and those bands compete for supremacy, and soon there are no "innocent bystanders." You are part of the structure, and you submit to the conditions of joining the Mafia, The Mexican Mafia, the Black Panthers, the Aryan Brotherhood, or some similar organization, or you submit to all those who have joined them. You are entitled to nothing.
The trick, then, is to create conditions to which both the poor and the rich will submit. The rich are not inclined to hire their own thugs or make common cause with the common enemy because they are safe in their property at a price they are, probably reluctantly, willing to pay; and the poor do not band together to despoil the rich. There will be criminals who do not agree and attempt to spread the wealth by simply taking it, but government tries to protect everyone from them, and even those who have little agree that criminals ought to be discouraged and prosecuted.
When those who rob the rich become sufficiently popular they either become the government or cease to be criminals and become revolutionaries.
It is the interplay among these factors that we call politics. Conservatives say it is best that these fundamental questions do not come to light: politics should stay a long way from the brute question of how much shall we take from whom, and to whom shall we give it; or, to how much are we entitled and who is obliged to pay it; or how much is "enough" for anyone, what is the limit of possessions we will allow?
These question seldom surface in poor societies. When everyone is very poor, and yet there are those who will raid them and take what little they have, it makes sense to hire a knight: that is to pay a suitable candidate to learn the profession of arms, and protect those who are not warriors. Soon enough there arises a feudal society, because the knights are not incorruptible and can become wolves rather than sheep dogs, and who will watch those watchers? Who will protect us from the protectors? These are age old questions which aren't so often studied now as they once were.
Now we are rich -- we live longer, we outlive out teeth, we can travel across the continent for amounts that almost anyone can raise, those who don't have a living are often victims of poor management of the resources they have; since the Industrial Revolution and "Development" the middle class has enormously expanded, and the number of people who live from day to day is much smaller than it was in the days of Jane Austen. And now we are even richer, and the notion is that the distribution pyramid is all screwed up and those on top have so much more than those on the bottom that we need to spread the wealth. Do note that those on minimum wage in today's society work less and live better than the vast majority of people alive in England during the time of Jane Austen. In those times the disparity of resources between anyone in "Society" including those thought poor and the average mill worker or tenant or dock worker was so vast that it could hardly be thought part of a continuum. On the one had there was one meal a day, one suit of clothes worn every day with possibly a "Sunday" outfit although probably not, and essentially no disposable income; on the other carriages, balls, three meals a day, and concerns about making a good marriage.
I am rambling, and I have work to do: but the questions remain. To what are those fortunate enough to live in the United States entitled, and who is obligated to pay it; and is our tax policy intended to produce revenue or is the goal to "spread the wealth" and reduce the disparities between the very rich and the rest of us? And if the latter, is that best done by adding ore to the power of the state? More another time: note I have not endorsed the confiscation and distribution of wealth, nor have I endorsed or condemned raising the taxes on "the rich." I do believe that before we discuss these things we try being honest about what we are trying to accomplish.
If the goal is to stimulate the economy, the means are already known: Freedom and cheap energy. Low taxes, few regulations, and cheap energy (which latter will result from the lack of regulations given half a chance). We know how to do that, and all the attempts at an intellectually dominated command economy have so far pretty well come to naught.
The mix doesn't necessarily require political freedom. That may be a goal in and of itself, but the Spanish growth in Franco's time, and the current boom in China, show that political liberty isn't as important as economic liberty and limited regulations. One might with otherwise, but that seems to be the history. Of course without political liberty one needs some other means for restricting the size of the governing class and Iron Law parasites. But we all know that...
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view652.html#Saturday
Government, economics, and purposes
I am told that the effect of the Bush II tax cuts was not positive. Being no economist all I can do is point to economists who differ, but that wasn't the point to begin with. My only experience with tax cuts and revenue comes from the Reagan era, when supply side economics certainly seemed to work just fine but again that was not my point. So far as I know "supply side" is not what Bush I called voodoo economics, but I will leave the debates to others.
My point then and now is that the government is spending far too much money, and running up deficits, and this isn't going to be fixed with tax raises; or at least there seems to be a general agreement that raising taxed in a depression is a bad idea.
But what's being debated in Washington now has little to do with economics. What's being debated is spreading the wealth, which is to say, who is entitled to what, and from whom? If the notion is that the rich aren't paying enough to support the level of spending we have decided is "necessary", and a tax raise on the rich will solve the problem, then that ought to be demonstrated, and it hasn't been. I used to play with matrices of numbers, who made how much, and what the return on investment (economic growth) is from each bracket, and it can be fun, but it's pretty hard to defend the numbers you get as more than speculation.
The real issue is this: without government as we know it, the result is not good for most people. Conservatives have been saying this for a long time. Government is not merely a necessary evil, but a positive good. Thomas Hobbes famously described life in a state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The conditions in several Mexican areas where government no longer functions would seem to illustrate this nicely. So do conditions in some prisons. Where there is no government, the leadership principle reigns: those who can command the loyalty of others create bands, and those bands compete for supremacy, and soon there are no "innocent bystanders." You are part of the structure, and you submit to the conditions of joining the Mafia, The Mexican Mafia, the Black Panthers, the Aryan Brotherhood, or some similar organization, or you submit to all those who have joined them. You are entitled to nothing.
The trick, then, is to create conditions to which both the poor and the rich will submit. The rich are not inclined to hire their own thugs or make common cause with the common enemy because they are safe in their property at a price they are, probably reluctantly, willing to pay; and the poor do not band together to despoil the rich. There will be criminals who do not agree and attempt to spread the wealth by simply taking it, but government tries to protect everyone from them, and even those who have little agree that criminals ought to be discouraged and prosecuted.
When those who rob the rich become sufficiently popular they either become the government or cease to be criminals and become revolutionaries.
It is the interplay among these factors that we call politics. Conservatives say it is best that these fundamental questions do not come to light: politics should stay a long way from the brute question of how much shall we take from whom, and to whom shall we give it; or, to how much are we entitled and who is obliged to pay it; or how much is "enough" for anyone, what is the limit of possessions we will allow?
These question seldom surface in poor societies. When everyone is very poor, and yet there are those who will raid them and take what little they have, it makes sense to hire a knight: that is to pay a suitable candidate to learn the profession of arms, and protect those who are not warriors. Soon enough there arises a feudal society, because the knights are not incorruptible and can become wolves rather than sheep dogs, and who will watch those watchers? Who will protect us from the protectors? These are age old questions which aren't so often studied now as they once were.
Now we are rich -- we live longer, we outlive out teeth, we can travel across the continent for amounts that almost anyone can raise, those who don't have a living are often victims of poor management of the resources they have; since the Industrial Revolution and "Development" the middle class has enormously expanded, and the number of people who live from day to day is much smaller than it was in the days of Jane Austen. And now we are even richer, and the notion is that the distribution pyramid is all screwed up and those on top have so much more than those on the bottom that we need to spread the wealth. Do note that those on minimum wage in today's society work less and live better than the vast majority of people alive in England during the time of Jane Austen. In those times the disparity of resources between anyone in "Society" including those thought poor and the average mill worker or tenant or dock worker was so vast that it could hardly be thought part of a continuum. On the one had there was one meal a day, one suit of clothes worn every day with possibly a "Sunday" outfit although probably not, and essentially no disposable income; on the other carriages, balls, three meals a day, and concerns about making a good marriage.
I am rambling, and I have work to do: but the questions remain. To what are those fortunate enough to live in the United States entitled, and who is obligated to pay it; and is our tax policy intended to produce revenue or is the goal to "spread the wealth" and reduce the disparities between the very rich and the rest of us? And if the latter, is that best done by adding ore to the power of the state? More another time: note I have not endorsed the confiscation and distribution of wealth, nor have I endorsed or condemned raising the taxes on "the rich." I do believe that before we discuss these things we try being honest about what we are trying to accomplish.
If the goal is to stimulate the economy, the means are already known: Freedom and cheap energy. Low taxes, few regulations, and cheap energy (which latter will result from the lack of regulations given half a chance). We know how to do that, and all the attempts at an intellectually dominated command economy have so far pretty well come to naught.
The mix doesn't necessarily require political freedom. That may be a goal in and of itself, but the Spanish growth in Franco's time, and the current boom in China, show that political liberty isn't as important as economic liberty and limited regulations. One might with otherwise, but that seems to be the history. Of course without political liberty one needs some other means for restricting the size of the governing class and Iron Law parasites. But we all know that...
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q4/view652.html#Saturday
domingo, 5 de diciembre de 2010
Todo el mundo habla de wikileaks
Y ya que estamos por que no, pero miremoslo desde un punto de vista comico.
La burocracia siempre ataca, aun en los lugares mas insospechados.
White House forbids feds from reading WikiLeaked cables
Everyone else on earth can read them. But they're still classified
The epic collection of classified US documents exposed by WikiLeaks over the past several weeks offer little more than good gossip. But watching the response to Julian Assange and his whistle-blowing website is wonderfully entertaining.
The latest act in the worldwide WikiLeaks comedy: On Friday, the White House told federal employees and contractors they're not allowed to read classified federal documents posted to WikiLeaks unless they have the proper security clearance.
As reported by CNN, the White House Office of Management and Budget sent a memo to the general counsels of various government agencies saying that the publishing of classified documents to WikiLeaks does "not alter the documents' classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents."
"To the contrary, classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority," the memo read.
Cuando terminen de reirse, el link
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/05/federal_employees_barred_from_reading_wikileaks_docs/
en fin, despues nos quejamos de aca
La burocracia siempre ataca, aun en los lugares mas insospechados.
White House forbids feds from reading WikiLeaked cables
Everyone else on earth can read them. But they're still classified
The epic collection of classified US documents exposed by WikiLeaks over the past several weeks offer little more than good gossip. But watching the response to Julian Assange and his whistle-blowing website is wonderfully entertaining.
The latest act in the worldwide WikiLeaks comedy: On Friday, the White House told federal employees and contractors they're not allowed to read classified federal documents posted to WikiLeaks unless they have the proper security clearance.
As reported by CNN, the White House Office of Management and Budget sent a memo to the general counsels of various government agencies saying that the publishing of classified documents to WikiLeaks does "not alter the documents' classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents."
"To the contrary, classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority," the memo read.
Cuando terminen de reirse, el link
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/05/federal_employees_barred_from_reading_wikileaks_docs/
en fin, despues nos quejamos de aca
sábado, 27 de noviembre de 2010
a veces la muestra alcanza
Despues de mil y una discusiones desde la postura fomentemos la industria de alguna forma, a veces la blogosfera te da satisfacciones,
Para los que decían que España era “un monocultivo de la construcción”, ahí tienen. Una economía diversificada, con todo tipo de bienes y servicios.
evidentemente este dicho podria haberlo suscripto un adalid a ultranza de la proteccion industrial
No, Lucas Llach en La Nacion de hoy, ah, bienes esta tachado en el original, se entiende?
com dijo alguien, I rest my case
Para los que decían que España era “un monocultivo de la construcción”, ahí tienen. Una economía diversificada, con todo tipo de bienes y servicios.
evidentemente este dicho podria haberlo suscripto un adalid a ultranza de la proteccion industrial
No, Lucas Llach en La Nacion de hoy, ah, bienes esta tachado en el original, se entiende?
com dijo alguien, I rest my case
domingo, 21 de noviembre de 2010
Lassie y Morenomics
Quizas a Economist le suena raro y hasta risible, pero, cualquier argentino sabra reconocer en estas frases lo normal, razonable y habitual:
But how to stop households buying two bottles of cooking oil rather than one?
And so the government is reaching for less conventional weapons. To shield the vulnerable, it urged local governments to raise unemployment benefits, pensions and the minimum wage in line with inflation. It also promises to increase shipments of cotton from the western region of Xinjiang, and to cut the price of electricity, gas and rail transport for fertiliser makers. To keep the population sweet, on November 22nd it will sell 200,000 tonnes of sugar.
son solo frases al pasar
el articulo completo
http://www.economist.com/node/17528136
y despues dicen que no van a tratar de asegurar el ciclo completo de alimentacion?
uno de los deberes ancestrales de los emperadores es asegurar la comidad a la poblacion, cuando fallan, cambian los emperadores
But how to stop households buying two bottles of cooking oil rather than one?
And so the government is reaching for less conventional weapons. To shield the vulnerable, it urged local governments to raise unemployment benefits, pensions and the minimum wage in line with inflation. It also promises to increase shipments of cotton from the western region of Xinjiang, and to cut the price of electricity, gas and rail transport for fertiliser makers. To keep the population sweet, on November 22nd it will sell 200,000 tonnes of sugar.
son solo frases al pasar
el articulo completo
http://www.economist.com/node/17528136
y despues dicen que no van a tratar de asegurar el ciclo completo de alimentacion?
uno de los deberes ancestrales de los emperadores es asegurar la comidad a la poblacion, cuando fallan, cambian los emperadores
miércoles, 17 de noviembre de 2010
y Lassie se va a China
Si fue Nixon, por que no?
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and other ministries may impose measures such as price limits on food, reinforced punishments on speculation in agricultural products such as corn and cotton, action to prevent hoarding, and the offer of food subsidies to curb inflation, the China Securities Journal wrote, citing unidentified sources.
The government may also force local mayors to take responsibility for insufficient vegetable supply and unstable prices, the report said.
"Market-oriented methods should become a top priority in easing rising food prices but moderate regulations are needed if prices surge too quickly," said Ma Xiaohe, deputy head of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research affiliated to NDRC
el articulo
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-11/17/content_11559856.htm
disclaimer, lo vi en mr trader
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and other ministries may impose measures such as price limits on food, reinforced punishments on speculation in agricultural products such as corn and cotton, action to prevent hoarding, and the offer of food subsidies to curb inflation, the China Securities Journal wrote, citing unidentified sources.
The government may also force local mayors to take responsibility for insufficient vegetable supply and unstable prices, the report said.
"Market-oriented methods should become a top priority in easing rising food prices but moderate regulations are needed if prices surge too quickly," said Ma Xiaohe, deputy head of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research affiliated to NDRC
el articulo
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-11/17/content_11559856.htm
disclaimer, lo vi en mr trader
miércoles, 10 de noviembre de 2010
Back to the future
Hace mucho mucho tiempo, un ingles invento una computadora barata, muy barata, que fue una revolucion, la ZX81.
Ahora, vehiculos electricos mediante, sale esto:
http://www.sinclairzx.com/index2.html
Ahora, vehiculos electricos mediante, sale esto:
http://www.sinclairzx.com/index2.html
jueves, 28 de octubre de 2010
de Milagros e Imponderables
Me acordaba de J.M. Rosa
EL MILAGRO DE LA CASA DE BRAGANZA
José María Rosa
LA CAÍDA DE ROSAS
El Imperio del Brasil y la Confederación Argentina
Instituto de Estudios Políticos - Madrid - 1958
Cuenta la historia de Prusia que, acorralado Federico II en la
guerra de los Siete Años, iba a librar la batalla decisiva de Zorndorf:
el ejército está extenuado, la desproporción con el enemigo es grande,
y la posición estratégica comprometida; los generales prusianos,
convencidos de la derrota, aconsejaron la capitulación.
«¿No habría medio de vencer?», preguntóles Federico. «Solamente
un milagro, Majestad. Pues bien, esperemos el milagro de la Casa
de Brandeburgo». Esa noche llega a la tienda de Federico un
mensajero del general enemigo, el zarevitch Pedro de Rusia, con
un extraño presente: el zarevitch, torpe de inteligencia y admirador
de Federico hasta la idolatría, le hacía llegar el plan de batalla
estudiado por el Estado Mayor ruso. Federico entrega el documento
a sus generales: «He aquí el milagro de la Casa de Brandeburgo.»
Triunfó al día siguiente en Zorndorf y pudo ganar la guerra perdida.
A Pedro II le ocurriría algo parecido. El 3 de noviembre de 1850
llegan a Río de Janeiro comunicaciones reservadas de que el
comandante en jefe del ejército argentino habría expresado al
gobernador de Corrientes su intención de aprovechar la guerra para
«declararse neutral». Se trataba solamente de un rumor, pero ya era
algo. En enero los informes son más precisos; en febrero, Paulino
sabe por Silva Pontes la visita nocturna de un agente secreto del
general argentino —el comerciante catalán Antonio Cuyás y Sampere—,
llegado a tratar sobre las condiciones de una conversión de Urquiza.
Paulino le da el 11 de marzo las instrucciones necesarias, y llega
a un entendimiento reservado. En abril estará convenido y garantizado
el pase del general enemigo al Imperio. En mayo se hace el público
pronunciamiento y la alianza comprometedora.
Paulino puede ahora contestar satisfactoriamente a Schwarzenberg
que tranquilizara a Francisco José de Austria sobre la suerte de su
primo de Brasil. Se había producido el milagro de la Casa de Braganza:
«Le feu a pris a la maison de notre voisin quand il songeait
a le mettre a la notre —inicia su nota—. Il est si embarrassé
que nous ne le craignons pas. D'aillenrs nous ne pouvons plus
rebrousser le chemin».
(El fuego se ha encendido en la casa de nuestro vecino, cuando él
pensaba ponerlo en la nuestra. Está tan embarazado como no podemos
imaginarlo. Por otra parte, nosotros no podemos dar marcha atrás ya).
Y agrega:
«Si el Brasil dejase a Rosas fortalecerse con la absorción de
Uruguay, del Paraguay y de la provincia boliviana de Tarija,
entonces sí que su posición sería difícil. Mas impidiendo al
Dictador fortalecerse con esos territorios y atacándolo ahora,
el Brasil obra precavidamente. Con todos esos motivos, empero,
el Brasil no iba a declarar la guerra a Rosas... Pero cuenta
para esta empresa con los gobernadores de Entre Ríos,
Corrientes, y con el general uruguayo Garzón» (8).
El zarevitch que entregó los planos para derrotar a su propio
ejército fue estrangulado por sus soldados en la fortaleza de
Ropcha, no obstante su deficiencia mental, y su memoria quedó
proscripta de Rusia. El general argentino [Urquiza - ECP]
sería más afortunado.
(8) Soares de Souza, que transcribe las cartas de Schwarzenberg y Paulino
(redactadas originalmente en francés), da este párrafo —como también el
fragmento de carta de Schwarzenberg— en versión portuguesa. Por no
tratarse del idioma original, he preferido traducirlo.
EL MILAGRO DE LA CASA DE BRAGANZA
José María Rosa
LA CAÍDA DE ROSAS
El Imperio del Brasil y la Confederación Argentina
Instituto de Estudios Políticos - Madrid - 1958
Cuenta la historia de Prusia que, acorralado Federico II en la
guerra de los Siete Años, iba a librar la batalla decisiva de Zorndorf:
el ejército está extenuado, la desproporción con el enemigo es grande,
y la posición estratégica comprometida; los generales prusianos,
convencidos de la derrota, aconsejaron la capitulación.
«¿No habría medio de vencer?», preguntóles Federico. «Solamente
un milagro, Majestad. Pues bien, esperemos el milagro de la Casa
de Brandeburgo». Esa noche llega a la tienda de Federico un
mensajero del general enemigo, el zarevitch Pedro de Rusia, con
un extraño presente: el zarevitch, torpe de inteligencia y admirador
de Federico hasta la idolatría, le hacía llegar el plan de batalla
estudiado por el Estado Mayor ruso. Federico entrega el documento
a sus generales: «He aquí el milagro de la Casa de Brandeburgo.»
Triunfó al día siguiente en Zorndorf y pudo ganar la guerra perdida.
A Pedro II le ocurriría algo parecido. El 3 de noviembre de 1850
llegan a Río de Janeiro comunicaciones reservadas de que el
comandante en jefe del ejército argentino habría expresado al
gobernador de Corrientes su intención de aprovechar la guerra para
«declararse neutral». Se trataba solamente de un rumor, pero ya era
algo. En enero los informes son más precisos; en febrero, Paulino
sabe por Silva Pontes la visita nocturna de un agente secreto del
general argentino —el comerciante catalán Antonio Cuyás y Sampere—,
llegado a tratar sobre las condiciones de una conversión de Urquiza.
Paulino le da el 11 de marzo las instrucciones necesarias, y llega
a un entendimiento reservado. En abril estará convenido y garantizado
el pase del general enemigo al Imperio. En mayo se hace el público
pronunciamiento y la alianza comprometedora.
Paulino puede ahora contestar satisfactoriamente a Schwarzenberg
que tranquilizara a Francisco José de Austria sobre la suerte de su
primo de Brasil. Se había producido el milagro de la Casa de Braganza:
«Le feu a pris a la maison de notre voisin quand il songeait
a le mettre a la notre —inicia su nota—. Il est si embarrassé
que nous ne le craignons pas. D'aillenrs nous ne pouvons plus
rebrousser le chemin».
(El fuego se ha encendido en la casa de nuestro vecino, cuando él
pensaba ponerlo en la nuestra. Está tan embarazado como no podemos
imaginarlo. Por otra parte, nosotros no podemos dar marcha atrás ya).
Y agrega:
«Si el Brasil dejase a Rosas fortalecerse con la absorción de
Uruguay, del Paraguay y de la provincia boliviana de Tarija,
entonces sí que su posición sería difícil. Mas impidiendo al
Dictador fortalecerse con esos territorios y atacándolo ahora,
el Brasil obra precavidamente. Con todos esos motivos, empero,
el Brasil no iba a declarar la guerra a Rosas... Pero cuenta
para esta empresa con los gobernadores de Entre Ríos,
Corrientes, y con el general uruguayo Garzón» (8).
El zarevitch que entregó los planos para derrotar a su propio
ejército fue estrangulado por sus soldados en la fortaleza de
Ropcha, no obstante su deficiencia mental, y su memoria quedó
proscripta de Rusia. El general argentino [Urquiza - ECP]
sería más afortunado.
(8) Soares de Souza, que transcribe las cartas de Schwarzenberg y Paulino
(redactadas originalmente en francés), da este párrafo —como también el
fragmento de carta de Schwarzenberg— en versión portuguesa. Por no
tratarse del idioma original, he preferido traducirlo.
miércoles, 27 de octubre de 2010
Lo importante
No voy a establecer opinion acerca de la bondad o no del modelo, de los personajes, de los diferentes actores (tampoco creo que a nadie le importe mucho)
Pero, como siempre digo, cuanto mas me elogia Economist y WSJ mas me preocupa el futuro, hoy con asombro lei el obituario en Economist, que transcribo en parte y dejo el link
Back to a vacuum
Oct 27th 2010, 16:47 by D.R. | NEW YORK
ARGENTINE political parties are so weak that most movements are simply named after their leaders. The hegemonic, ideologically amorphous Justicialist Party (PJ) is universally called peronismo after its long-deceased founder, Juan Perón. Since 2003, only one ismo has mattered in Argentina: the kirchnerismo of Néstor Kirchner, a leftist, populist Peronist. Although Mr Kirchner left the presidency in 2007 to his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, kirchnerismo came to a close this morning, when Mr Kirchner died of a heart attack at 60.
Mr Kirchner exemplified the country’s caudillo-centric political culture. In the 1990s, he was the governor of Santa Cruz, a desolate Patagonian province of 230,000 people whose economy depends on public works, oil and gas. He ran it like a personal fiefdom, refusing to delegate even tiny tasks and overseeing every centavo of the budget.
He was barely known outside Patagonia in 2002, when Eduardo Duhalde, a Peronist boss who became president after Argentina’s economic collapse the year before, was looking for a successor to back in the next election. Mr Duhalde reluctantly threw his support to Mr Kirchner after all of his top choices rebuffed him, and the strength of his political machine propelled Mr Kirchner into a second round. Mr Kirchner became president by default after his rival withdrew from the run-off.
Once in office, Mr Kirchner promptly set about ruling Argentina as he had Santa Cruz. He reorganised the tax system to make provincial governors more financially dependent on the federal executive. He got Congress to let him reassign public spending at will, and give him veto power over judicial nominations. He nationalised a handful of strategic businesses. And he circumvented presidential term limits by having Ms Fernández succeed him, with the apparent intention of allowing them to alternate in power indefinitely.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2010/10/death_argentinas_ex-president
martes, 26 de octubre de 2010
El tema de mañana
Mañana es el Censo, y, como no podiamos (somos del gremio al fin y al cabo) olvidarnos del inventor
Herman Hollerith
De Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Herman Hollerith (1860-1929).
Herman Hollerith (Buffalo, Nueva York, 29 de febrero de 1860 — 17 de noviembre de 1929) fue un estadistico que inventó la máquina tabuladora. Es considerado como el primer informático, es decir, el primero que logra el tratamiento automático de la información
En aquella época, los censos se realizaban de forma manual, con el retraso que ello suponía (hasta 10 ó 12 años). Ante esta situación, Hollerith comenzó a trabajar en el diseño de una máquina tabuladora o censadora, basada en tarjetas perforadas.
Hollerith observó que la mayor parte de las preguntas contenidas en los censos se podían contestar con un SÍ o un NO. Entonces ideó una tarjeta perforada, una cartulina en la que, según estuviera perforada o no en determinadas posiciones, se contestaba este tipo de preguntas. La tarjeta tenía 80 columnas.
El Gobierno estadounidense eligió la máquina tabuladora de Hollerith [considerada por algunos como la primera computadora] para elaborar el censo de 1890. Se tardaron sólo 3 años en perforar unas 56 millones de tarjetas.
Hollerith patentó su máquina en 1889. Un año después incluyó la operación de sumar con el fin de utilizarla en la contabilidad de los Ferrocarriles Centrales de Nueva York.
En 1896, Hollerith fundó la empresa Tabulating Machine Company, con el fin de explotar comercialmente su invento. En 1911, dicha compañía se fusionó con Dayton Scale Company, International Time Recording Company y Bundy Manufacturing Company, para crear la Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR). El 14 de febrero de 1924, CTR cambió su nombre por el de International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), cuyo primer presidente fue Thomas John Watson, que curiosamente no estaba muy convencido del futuro, que podían tener estas máquinas.
Hollerith murió en 1929 a los 69 años, a causa de una infección en los riñones.
Bueno, algunos diran Jackard por las tarjetas, otros diran Babbage, pero, al final, el la hizo funcionar, y, asi nacio IBM
Como no podemos dejar de mencionar, este desarrollo de la libre empresa lo pago el Estado
martes, 19 de octubre de 2010
Thinkgeek y el gato de Schrodinger
Ud diran que es eso, bueno, es una compañia de 51 personas en Silicon Valley , que, obviamente fabrica en China sus diseños.
Y que fabrica?
Cosas, gadgets
gana plata sin duda
Productos?
ahora, la estrella del año que viene es la imagen del inicio, que es? una caja con leds que simula la paradoja del gato, y sin duda servira para su voto el año que viene (esperemos que no)
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/mf_thinkgeek/all/1
lunes, 18 de octubre de 2010
Chau Benito
Benoît Mandelbrot (Varsovia, Polonia, 20 de noviembre de 1924 – Cambridge, Estados Unidos, 14 de octubre de 2010 fue un matemático conocido por sus trabajos sobre los fractales. Es considerado el principal responsable del auge de este dominio de las matemáticas desde el inicio de los años setenta, y del interés creciente del público. En efecto, supo utilizar la herramienta que se estaba popularizando en ésta época - el ordenador - para trazar los más conocidos ejemplos de geometría fractal: el conjunto de Mandelbrot por supuesto, así como los conjuntos de Julia descubiertos por Gaston Julia quien inventó las matemáticas de los fractales, desarrollados luego por Mandelbrot.
sábado, 16 de octubre de 2010
jueves, 7 de octubre de 2010
Las deudas siempre se pagan
Y, si, las deudas siempre se pagan, le paso a los rusos con la deuda de los zares, y hoy termino la 1ra guerra mundial
The 76 Year War Finally Ends
October 7, 2010: Germany has made the final payment, of $96 million, to the reparations imposed on Germany after World War I. The initial amount of the reparations were $35 billion. Making the payments was hugely unpopular in German during the 1920s, and contributed to the Nazis rise to power. Most Germans resented the treaty that ended the war, and especially the reparations for "starting" the war. As far as starting World War I, everyone blamed everyone else, and there was certainly enough blame to go around. Arguably, it was the French, more than anyone else, that had the most to do with starting the war. But the French were on the winning side, so that argument did not fly at the time.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they halted payments. Even before that, the allies reduced the reparations amount by 50 percent in the 1920s. This did not lessen German anger at the reparations, and the lost territories that were another part of the peace treaty.
After World War II, Germany agreed to pay the principal on reparations and other debts incurred by Germany between 1919 and 1945. This amounted to $344 billion ($2.7 trillion in current dollars). But there was a clause in the agreement that Germany would make more payments, to account for the interest, only if Germany were reunited. This seemed unlikely at the time (1953), but in 1990, the unlikely came to pass. Germany then began making the twenty annual payments, as they had to agreed to in 1953. The last payment was made on October 3rd, 2010, 20 years after Germany was reunified. This finally closed the books on the reparations issue. The Great War, the War To End All Wars, the 76 Year War (that spawned World War II and the Cold War), was finally over. At least on paper.
Mas datos?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,720156,00.html
domingo, 3 de octubre de 2010
Veinte años
Poca gente lo debe recordar, fue mas impactante el hecho de romper el muro, pero, hoy se cumplen 20 años del hecho formal de la reunificacion de Alemania, hecho que de alguna forma cerro la 2da guerra Mundial.
http://blogs.lavanguardia.es/hemeroteca/2010/10/02/la-reunificacion-de-alemania/
Y, sin hablar de las consecuencias politicas, economicas y sociales de la incorporacion de toda una y dos generaciones de ossies a la ex-RFA, que, todavia hoy tiene problemas
http://blogs.lavanguardia.es/hemeroteca/2010/10/02/la-reunificacion-de-alemania/
Y, sin hablar de las consecuencias politicas, economicas y sociales de la incorporacion de toda una y dos generaciones de ossies a la ex-RFA, que, todavia hoy tiene problemas
viernes, 1 de octubre de 2010
Vieja, ahi viene James Joyce
Cansado de leer del milagro irlandes, luego, se armo el lio de los PIIGS, luego silencio, pero, esta semana blanquearon como estan con el lio
You can't get blood from a blarney stone!
http://www.economist.com/node/17159424
martes, 28 de septiembre de 2010
Noticias del proximo mundo
Tratare de escribir esto con la mayor neutralidad posible, a pesar de mis comentarios a los de FP.
En Inglaterra los servicios de impuestos, tratando de optimizar la recaudacion, han elaborado una idea magistral, por que el empleador debe pagar al empleado y este a su vez pagar impuestos? mas facil es, el empleador gira la plata al servicio de impuestos y este, una vez hechas las deducciones correspondientes, deposita el resto al empleado.
The paper says: "Under Centralised Deductions the employer would send the gross payment through the electronic payment system to a central calculator where the deductions calculated by HMRC would be made automatically. The resulting net payment would then be sent to the individual's bank account and the deductions would be paid directly to the Government."
en fin, otro avance mas
el link del diario con los links correspondientes a los documentos oficiales
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/sep/20/hmrc-centralising-tax-system
Brazil, alla vamos
En Inglaterra los servicios de impuestos, tratando de optimizar la recaudacion, han elaborado una idea magistral, por que el empleador debe pagar al empleado y este a su vez pagar impuestos? mas facil es, el empleador gira la plata al servicio de impuestos y este, una vez hechas las deducciones correspondientes, deposita el resto al empleado.
The paper says: "Under Centralised Deductions the employer would send the gross payment through the electronic payment system to a central calculator where the deductions calculated by HMRC would be made automatically. The resulting net payment would then be sent to the individual's bank account and the deductions would be paid directly to the Government."
en fin, otro avance mas
el link del diario con los links correspondientes a los documentos oficiales
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/sep/20/hmrc-centralising-tax-system
Brazil, alla vamos
martes, 7 de septiembre de 2010
Todo termina al fin
Internet, Internet era un paradigma de libre circulacion de ideas, de informacion, de conocimiento, pero, aparentemente, todo termina
La proliferacion de ecosistemas cerrados y pagos, los diarios pagos, las barreras como en China, los servicios lmitados geograficamente, y un sinfin de cosas indican que los dias de ver cualquier cosa en cualqueir lugar a cualquier hora estan terminandose, sin incluir aquellos lugares donde la gente va y se queda.
La nota de tapa de Economist, gentileza de la cache de Google, es bastante ilustrativa al respecto.
The web's new walls
How the threats to the internet’s openness can be averted
WHEN George W. Bush referred to “rumours on the, uh, internets” during the 2004 presidential campaign, he was derided for his cluelessness—and “internets” became a shorthand for a lack of understanding of the online world. But what looked like ignorance then looks like prescience now. As divergent forces tug at the internet, it is in danger of losing its universality and splintering into separate digital domains.
The internet is as much a trade pact as an invention. A network of networks, it has grown at an astonishing rate over the past 15 years because the bigger it got, the more it made sense for other networks to connect to it. Its open standards made such interconnections cheap and easy, dissolving boundaries between existing academic, corporate and consumer networks (remember CompuServe and AOL?). Just as a free-trade agreement between countries increases the size of the market and boosts gains from trade, so the internet led to greater gains from the exchange of data and allowed innovation to flourish. But now the internet is so large and so widely used that countries, companies and network operators want to wall bits of it off, or make parts of it work in a different way, to promote their own political or commercial interests (see article).
Three sets of walls are being built. The first is national. China’s “great firewall” already imposes tight controls on internet links with the rest of the world, monitoring traffic and making many sites or services unavailable. Other countries, including Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, have done similar things, and other governments are tightening controls on what people can see and do on the internet.
Second, companies are exerting greater control by building “walled gardens”—an approach that appeared to have died out a decade ago. Facebook has its own closed, internal e-mail system, for example. Google has built a suite of integrated web-based services. Users of Apple’s mobile devices access many internet services through small downloadable software applications, or apps, rather than a web browser. By dictating which apps are allowed on its devices, Apple has become a gatekeeper. As apps spread to other mobile devices, and even cars and televisions, other firms will do so too.
Third, there are concerns that network operators looking for new sources of revenue will strike deals with content providers that will favour those websites prepared to pay up. Al Franken, a Democratic senator, spelled out his nightmare scenario in a speech in July: right-wing news sites loading five times faster than left-wing blogs. He and other advocates of “net neutrality” want new laws to stop networks discriminating between different types of traffic. But network operators say that could hamper innovation, and those on the right see net neutrality as a socialist plot to regulate the internet.
Thus the incentives that used to favour greater interconnection now point the other way. Suggesting that “The Web is Dead”, as Wired magazine did recently, is going a bit far. But the net is losing some of its openness and universality.
That’s not always a bad thing. The profits which Apple harvests from its walled garden have enabled it to provide services and devices that delight its customers, who may be happy to trade a little openness for greater security or ease of use; if not, they can go elsewhere. While some parents welcome Apple’s policy of blocking racy apps from its devices, for example, anyone who dislikes it can buy a Nokia or an Android phone instead. And existing antitrust laws can always be brought to bear if any company establishes and then abuses a dominant position in, say, mobile-phone operating systems or advertising platforms—something that has not happened yet.
Restrictions imposed by governments are more troubling, and harder to deal with. There is not much that outsiders can do about China’s great firewall. But Western governments can at least set a good example. Australia’s plan to build a Chinese-style firewall in an effort to block child pornography and bomb-making instructions, for instance, is daft and should be scrapped. It will be easy to evade, and traditional law-enforcement approaches are a better way to handle such problems than messing with the internet’s plumbing.
Governments inclined to censor might be swayed by arguments that focus on the economic benefits of openness. Duy Hoang, an American-based campaigner for democracy in Vietnam, has suggested that foreign critics stress the internet’s role in fostering trade, development, education and jobs. Similarly, China could be reminded how much more its scientists could achieve if they had unfettered access to information.
What about the risk that operators will fragment the internet by erecting new road-blocks or toll booths? In theory, competition between providers of internet access should prevent this from happening. Any broadband provider that tries to block particular sites or services, for example, will quickly lose customers to rival firms—provided there are plenty of them.
Why net neutrality is a distraction
But that is not the case in America. Its vitriolic net-neutrality debate is a reflection of the lack of competition in broadband access. The best solution would be to require telecoms operators to open their high-speed networks to rivals on a wholesale basis, as is the case almost everywhere in the industrialised world. America’s big network operators have long argued that being forced to share their networks would undermine their incentives to invest in new infrastructure, and thus hamper the roll-out of broadband. But that has not happened in other countries that have mandated such “open access”, and enjoy faster and cheaper broadband than America. Net neutrality is difficult to define and enforce, and efforts to do so merely address the symptom (concern about discrimination) rather than the underlying cause (lack of competition). Rivalry between access providers offers the best protection against the erection of new barriers to the flow of information online.
This newspaper has always championed free trade, open markets and vigorous competition in the physical world. The same principles should be applied on the internet as well.
lunes, 6 de septiembre de 2010
Variaciones - nerd only
La constante de estructura fina es una de sas cosas que parecen absolutamente esotericas, pero que gobiernan en lo basico como tenemos luz por ejemplo.
La constante de estructura fina o constante de estructura fina de Sommerfeld, normalmente representada por el símbolo α, es la constante física fundamental que caracteriza la fuerza de la interacción electromagnética. Es una cantidad sin dimensiones, por lo que su valor numérico es independiente del sistema de unidades usado. de wiki:
donde e es la carga elemental, \hbar = h/(2 \pi) es la constante reducida de Planck, c es la velocidad de la luz en el vacío, y ε0 es la permitividad del vacío.
Ahora bien, pareceria que no es tan constante como parece, y esa es una de las sorpresas que siempre da la busqueda del conocimiento
The fine-structure constant and the nature of the universe
Ye cannae change the laws of physics
Or can you?
Aug 31st 2010
RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen. One consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist.
Why alpha takes on the precise value it has, so delicately fine-tuned for life, is a deep scientific mystery. A new piece of astrophysical research may, however, have uncovered a crucial piece of the puzzle. In a paper just submitted to Physical Review Letters, a team led by John Webb and Julian King from the University of New South Wales in Australia present evidence that the fine-structure constant may not actually be constant after all. Rather, it seems to vary from place to place within the universe. If their results hold up to the scrutiny, and can be replicated, they will have profound implications—for they suggest that the universe stretches far beyond what telescopes can observe, and that the laws of physics vary within it. Instead of the whole universe being fine-tuned for life, then, humanity finds itself in a corner of space where, Goldilocks-like, the values of the fundamental constants happen to be just right for it.
y el articulo completo
http://economist.com/node/16930866
La constante de estructura fina o constante de estructura fina de Sommerfeld, normalmente representada por el símbolo α, es la constante física fundamental que caracteriza la fuerza de la interacción electromagnética. Es una cantidad sin dimensiones, por lo que su valor numérico es independiente del sistema de unidades usado. de wiki:
donde e es la carga elemental, \hbar = h/(2 \pi) es la constante reducida de Planck, c es la velocidad de la luz en el vacío, y ε0 es la permitividad del vacío.
Ahora bien, pareceria que no es tan constante como parece, y esa es una de las sorpresas que siempre da la busqueda del conocimiento
The fine-structure constant and the nature of the universe
Ye cannae change the laws of physics
Or can you?
Aug 31st 2010
RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen. One consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist.
Why alpha takes on the precise value it has, so delicately fine-tuned for life, is a deep scientific mystery. A new piece of astrophysical research may, however, have uncovered a crucial piece of the puzzle. In a paper just submitted to Physical Review Letters, a team led by John Webb and Julian King from the University of New South Wales in Australia present evidence that the fine-structure constant may not actually be constant after all. Rather, it seems to vary from place to place within the universe. If their results hold up to the scrutiny, and can be replicated, they will have profound implications—for they suggest that the universe stretches far beyond what telescopes can observe, and that the laws of physics vary within it. Instead of the whole universe being fine-tuned for life, then, humanity finds itself in a corner of space where, Goldilocks-like, the values of the fundamental constants happen to be just right for it.
y el articulo completo
http://economist.com/node/16930866
miércoles, 1 de septiembre de 2010
Siempre hay uno peor
Y sino vayan a preguntar a Saint Pandelon
El día que cayó caca del cielo
Hombre con paraguas bajo una inminente tormenta
A los pobladores sólo les queda esperar que no se avecine una tormenta.
Jean-Pierre Boiselle miró al cielo sin nubes sobre Saint-Pandelon y declaró: "Está lloviendo mierda".
Para llegar a Saint-Pandelon, en la región de Aquitania, en Francia, hay que ir a Burdeos y viajar a Dax, cambiando trenes en Morcex, y de ahí en autobús por Angoumé, Bénesse-Lès-Dax, Candresse, Gourbera, Herm, Heugas, Mées, Rivière Saas-et-Gourby, hasta el pueblo famoso por sus aguas curativas y sus lodos milagrosos, al pie del río Adour, en los Pirineos, no muy lejos de Bayona. El olor indica dónde es.
Todo iba bien en este poblado donde se puede ver el castillo Ducros, construido por los romanos hace siglos y residencia oficial de los obispos de Dax casi desde entonces, y se puede visitar otra media docena de castillos, jugar tenis, andar en bicicleta o pescar, que es lo que más se parece a no hacer nada.
Y en eso estaban un día de mayo cuando comenzó a caer caca. Los otros setecientos treinta y cinco habitantes de Saint-Pandelon están de acuerdo en la fecha y tal vez la hora en que se inició la lluvia infame, pero ninguno pudo describir cómo fue.
la nota?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/cultura_sociedad/2010/08/100828_saint_pandelon_francia.shtml
lunes, 30 de agosto de 2010
Boeing, CEOs y el 787
Uno nunca termina de asombrarse de las declaraciones de un CEO, evidentemente la fiebre de Power Pint y los MBAs mirando el last quarter han llegado a lo ultimo, sino lean lo que dice el CEO de Boeing
" Boeing CEO James McNerney, Jr. said. "We'll make it work, though. The wings are not necessarily the most important part of the plane, anyway."
fuente:
http://www.economist.com/node/21010177
Evidentemente, si al tipo despues de decir eso no le pegaron una patada en el tujes, Boeing esta condenada al exito
" Boeing CEO James McNerney, Jr. said. "We'll make it work, though. The wings are not necessarily the most important part of the plane, anyway."
fuente:
http://www.economist.com/node/21010177
Evidentemente, si al tipo despues de decir eso no le pegaron una patada en el tujes, Boeing esta condenada al exito
viernes, 20 de agosto de 2010
Unbundling
Subiendo al tema de moda de hoy, la pregunta es:
No hubiera sido mas facil decretar el unbundling para todos?
Dejas a las telefonicas mandar TV
Dejas a las cableras mandar telefono
y ambas deben alquilar capacidad a quien les pida, el costo? sale de la amortizacion de ambas
y liberalizo el uso de posteo urbano, eso es un poco mas complejo, pero no tan dificil
Yo no se, era tan facil
No hubiera sido mas facil decretar el unbundling para todos?
Dejas a las telefonicas mandar TV
Dejas a las cableras mandar telefono
y ambas deben alquilar capacidad a quien les pida, el costo? sale de la amortizacion de ambas
y liberalizo el uso de posteo urbano, eso es un poco mas complejo, pero no tan dificil
Yo no se, era tan facil
martes, 17 de agosto de 2010
Si Economist lo dice
A veces es solo leer, pero parrafos
MARKETS work. A government would never have made a success of an iPod, iPhone or iPad whereas Steve Jobs at Apple was able to anticipate demand for such hand-held devices. Other companies quickly noted Apple’s success and produced rival devices, thereby driving down prices and widening their appeal to consumers.
//////
The evidence is clear that the clean-up costs after debt-financed bubbles are too high. Central banks and governments do have to intervene when credit growth and asset prices (particularly in property) start dancing their toxic two-step. Asset markets do not work as well as those for consumer goods.
aha, en que quedamos? liberales hasta ahi? sorpresas te da la vida
el articulo completo
http://economist.com/node/16792858
jueves, 5 de agosto de 2010
El ejemplo de la clase
El ultimo parrafo sin desperdicio
Ideally, commercial banks need to get into the business of long-term lending to companies. But so long as Petrobras, Vale (a mining giant) and JBS get subsidised credit from BNDES, why should they? Some of the criticism of BNDES is no doubt questionable. But the bank is growing too fast. And it needs greater transparency and much more competition.
El grafico, mejor aun
y el articulo, solo el titulo, el resto para leer
Brazil's development bank
Nest egg or serpent's egg?
Ahead of presidential elections, BNDES comes under scrutiny
http://www.economist.com/node/16748990
Ideally, commercial banks need to get into the business of long-term lending to companies. But so long as Petrobras, Vale (a mining giant) and JBS get subsidised credit from BNDES, why should they? Some of the criticism of BNDES is no doubt questionable. But the bank is growing too fast. And it needs greater transparency and much more competition.
El grafico, mejor aun
y el articulo, solo el titulo, el resto para leer
Brazil's development bank
Nest egg or serpent's egg?
Ahead of presidential elections, BNDES comes under scrutiny
http://www.economist.com/node/16748990
domingo, 25 de julio de 2010
200 Posts
Nada, a lo largo de este tiempo copie mucho, lei mucho mas, aprendi muchisimo, que es el fin ultimo de todo, y no sabia que poner, pero, leyendo y aprendiendo encontre esto, que, es una muestra de inteligencia, originalidad y va justo
jueves, 8 de julio de 2010
La verdad de la milanesa - Moody`s software bug
Este post esta dedicado al negocio de uno, sistemas. A lo largo de, quizas demasiados años, uno se cansa de ver que la gente cree que el software no se equivoca, bueno, en general lo que falla es la capa OSI Nro 8 (chiste Nerd).
Pero, cuando hablamos de sistemas en serio, la gente del negocio (jerga de nuevo) menosprecia, minimiza, dice para que vamos a gastar plata en cosas que no se ven, si, la prueba del software, dale dale que anda, no lo probes mas que ya esta, se ve lindo.
y asi pasan estas cosas
Moody’s, a major credit rating agency, incorrectly awarded its top rating to $4 billion of risky debt due to a software bug in the company’s mathematical models. The incorrect ratings misled investors into believing they could earn “very high returns with little risk,” according to the Financial Times. Some investors lost 60% of their investment as a result.
el comentario completo
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/moodys-software-bug-screws-investors/783
Luego, esto no fue muy advertido, pero, como todos los colegas saben, esto es solo alguien de un board que dijo, ahorremos plata, estos prueban demasiado, en fin.
viernes, 2 de julio de 2010
Asi funciona el mundo real
Uds diran, que pedante no?, pero, los invito a leer el articulo de Andy Grove, quien es? bueno, cerca del 80% de sus computadoras tiene chips Intel, el fue su presidente, y el titulo de la nota es:
How to Make an American Job Before It's Too Late: Andy Grove
despues, hablamos de otra cosa
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-01/how-to-make-an-american-job-before-it-s-too-late-andy-grove.html
How to Make an American Job Before It's Too Late: Andy Grove
despues, hablamos de otra cosa
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-01/how-to-make-an-american-job-before-it-s-too-late-andy-grove.html
miércoles, 30 de junio de 2010
John Le Carre o como renace Maxwell Smart
Todo vuelve,o, nada deja de ser como era antes, sino lean esto
Burn after reading
ENCRYPTED data hidden in digital images, radiograms, invisible ink, switching bags at a train station in Queens, burying pots of money in upstate New York to be dug up two years later—the allegations made against ten supposed Russian agents have enough in them to delight fans of cold war spy fiction. But it is the details revealing the prosaic drudgery of the crack spy's lot that are really gripping. Even Moscow Centre's prized assets write down passwords that they cannot remember and leave them lying around at home. They argue with their masters over whose name should be on the title deed to a house. One agent has to be taught how to use an ATM card. Computers malfunction and, like many other expats, agents complain that at headquarters: "they don't understand what we have to go through here."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2010/06/russian_spies_america?source=features_box3
Burn after reading
ENCRYPTED data hidden in digital images, radiograms, invisible ink, switching bags at a train station in Queens, burying pots of money in upstate New York to be dug up two years later—the allegations made against ten supposed Russian agents have enough in them to delight fans of cold war spy fiction. But it is the details revealing the prosaic drudgery of the crack spy's lot that are really gripping. Even Moscow Centre's prized assets write down passwords that they cannot remember and leave them lying around at home. They argue with their masters over whose name should be on the title deed to a house. One agent has to be taught how to use an ATM card. Computers malfunction and, like many other expats, agents complain that at headquarters: "they don't understand what we have to go through here."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2010/06/russian_spies_america?source=features_box3
lunes, 28 de junio de 2010
Esta pelicula ya la vi
Italia prepara la lista de bienes de su patrimonio que podrán ser vendidos
Se trata de un inventario en el que figuran conventos, museos y algunos espacios naturales, la mayoría de los cuales ya no se utilizan para su función original
Roma.(EFECOM).- El Estado italiano prepara la lista de bienes del patrimonio nacional cuya gestión y propiedad podrán ser transferidos a las regiones y a las provincias que, en determinados casos, podrán incluso venderlos a entidades privadas con el fin de sanear sus cuentas públicas.
La lista definitiva de los bienes "en venta" estará preparada a finales de julio pero los medios de comunicación italianos publicaron hoy parte del inventario provisional -cerca de 11.000 nombres- al que han tenido acceso.
Una lista en la que figuran conventos, museos y algunos espacios naturales, la mayoría de los cuales ya no se utilizan para su función original. Entre estos bienes que podrán ser transferidos destacan además algunos espacios de los montes Dolomitas, en los Alpes italianos.
Por el momento, precisa el diario "La Repubblica", los bienes en la lista serán "sólo transferidos" a regiones y provincias, pero la mayor parte de ellos podrá ser vendida a cambio de que los ingresos sirvan para sanear sus cuentas.
"La Repubblica" precisa que un 75 por ciento de los ingresos por la venta de estos bienes servirán para reducir la deuda del ente que lo haya puesto en venta, mientras el 25 por ciento restante se destinará a la amortización de los títulos del Estado.
El rotativo señala además que para algunos de los bienes, sobre todo en el caso del patrimonio natural, existirá un vínculo para que sigan siendo patrimonio del Estado y no puedan ser vendidos.
Esta transferencia de bienes por parte del Estado a los entes locales y regionales forma parte de las actuaciones que se contemplan dentro de la ley aprobada en abril de 2009 y a través de la cual se introducía el federalismo fiscal en Italia.
http://www.lavanguardia.es/cultura/noticias/20100628/53954019096/italia-prepara-la-lista-de-bienes-de-su-patrimonio-que-podran-ser-vendidos.html
Se trata de un inventario en el que figuran conventos, museos y algunos espacios naturales, la mayoría de los cuales ya no se utilizan para su función original
Roma.(EFECOM).- El Estado italiano prepara la lista de bienes del patrimonio nacional cuya gestión y propiedad podrán ser transferidos a las regiones y a las provincias que, en determinados casos, podrán incluso venderlos a entidades privadas con el fin de sanear sus cuentas públicas.
La lista definitiva de los bienes "en venta" estará preparada a finales de julio pero los medios de comunicación italianos publicaron hoy parte del inventario provisional -cerca de 11.000 nombres- al que han tenido acceso.
Una lista en la que figuran conventos, museos y algunos espacios naturales, la mayoría de los cuales ya no se utilizan para su función original. Entre estos bienes que podrán ser transferidos destacan además algunos espacios de los montes Dolomitas, en los Alpes italianos.
Por el momento, precisa el diario "La Repubblica", los bienes en la lista serán "sólo transferidos" a regiones y provincias, pero la mayor parte de ellos podrá ser vendida a cambio de que los ingresos sirvan para sanear sus cuentas.
"La Repubblica" precisa que un 75 por ciento de los ingresos por la venta de estos bienes servirán para reducir la deuda del ente que lo haya puesto en venta, mientras el 25 por ciento restante se destinará a la amortización de los títulos del Estado.
El rotativo señala además que para algunos de los bienes, sobre todo en el caso del patrimonio natural, existirá un vínculo para que sigan siendo patrimonio del Estado y no puedan ser vendidos.
Esta transferencia de bienes por parte del Estado a los entes locales y regionales forma parte de las actuaciones que se contemplan dentro de la ley aprobada en abril de 2009 y a través de la cual se introducía el federalismo fiscal en Italia.
http://www.lavanguardia.es/cultura/noticias/20100628/53954019096/italia-prepara-la-lista-de-bienes-de-su-patrimonio-que-podran-ser-vendidos.html
jueves, 24 de junio de 2010
Tarifas
La verdad, o hacemos las cosas mal, o somos adelantados, o a los mismos problemas las mismas soluciones, o, no se. (BTW, no importa el monto, importa el concepto)
En fin
ESTABA PREVISTO UN INCREMENTO DEL 4%
El Gobierno suspende la subida
de la luz de julio tras un
pacto de Estado PSOE-PP
Madrid.- El Gobierno ha suspendido la subida del recibo de la luz del 4% prevista para julio tras alcanzar un acuerdo con el principal partido de la oposición. Esta decisión es el primer punto de partida para consensuar un Pacto de Estado de Energía.
El ministro de Industria, Miguel Sebastián, en rueda de prensa junto al coordinador de Economía del PP, Cristóbal Montoro, para anunciar el inicio de conversaciones, ha señalado que antes de cualquier incremento de la tarifa hay que hacer una "profunda revisión" de los costes energéticos. Una vez analizados, se examinarán los ingresos, entre ellos, la subida de la luz.
completo
http://www.elmundo.es/mundodinero/2010/06/24/economia/1277370547.html
O, los politicos son iguales en todos lados, como nota de color, son los dos partidos juntos.
En fin
ESTABA PREVISTO UN INCREMENTO DEL 4%
El Gobierno suspende la subida
de la luz de julio tras un
pacto de Estado PSOE-PP
Madrid.- El Gobierno ha suspendido la subida del recibo de la luz del 4% prevista para julio tras alcanzar un acuerdo con el principal partido de la oposición. Esta decisión es el primer punto de partida para consensuar un Pacto de Estado de Energía.
El ministro de Industria, Miguel Sebastián, en rueda de prensa junto al coordinador de Economía del PP, Cristóbal Montoro, para anunciar el inicio de conversaciones, ha señalado que antes de cualquier incremento de la tarifa hay que hacer una "profunda revisión" de los costes energéticos. Una vez analizados, se examinarán los ingresos, entre ellos, la subida de la luz.
completo
http://www.elmundo.es/mundodinero/2010/06/24/economia/1277370547.html
O, los politicos son iguales en todos lados, como nota de color, son los dos partidos juntos.
lunes, 14 de junio de 2010
Celulares y bancos
Sabia que existia, algo parecido hay aca, pero no creo llegue ni con mucho a la sofisticado de esto
Banking on mobile phones
Out of thin air
The behind-the-scenes logistics of Kenya’s mobile-money miracle
Jun 10th 2010
IT IS like magic. By clicking a few keys on a mobile phone, money can be zapped from one part of Kenya to another in seconds. For urban migrants sending money home to their villages, and for people used to queuing at banks for hours to pay bills or school fees, the M-PESA money-transfer service, operated by Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile operator, is a godsend. No wonder it is used by 9.5m people, or 23% of the population, and transfers the equivalent of 11% of Kenya’s GDP each year; or that it has inspired more than 60 similar schemes across the world.
But despite the apparently frictionless transfer of money through the air, making a money-transfer system work smoothly requires a great deal of backstage effort. Jake Kendall and Ignacio Mas of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Frederik Eijkman of PEP Intermedius, a financial-services firm, explain how it all works in a paper presented in late May.
The basic idea of M-PESA is that the 100,000 small retailers in Kenya who already sell mobile-phone airtime, in the form of scratch cards, can also register to be mobile-money agents, taking in and paying out cash. More than 17,600 retailers have signed up as M-PESA agents—far outnumbering Kenya’s 840 bank branches. When a customer is registered with the system, paying in cash involves exchanging physical money for the virtual sort, called “e-float”, which is credited to his mobile-money account. E-float can then be transferred to other users by mobile phone, and exchanged for cash by the recipient, who visits another agent.
It is simple enough for customers. But agents in cities, where most transactions are deposits (see chart), accumulate cash and risk running out of e-float, at which point they cannot take any more deposits. Agents in rural areas, where most transactions are withdrawals, accumulate e-float and risk running out of cash. Keeping the system running requires the agents to manage their liquidity, by regularly swapping cash for e-float, or vice versa.
Exchanging cash for e-float means visiting a bank affiliated with Safaricom, and the whole point of systems like M-PESA is to reach where banks cannot. Accordingly, M-PESA relies on a system of intermediaries (including Mr Eijkman’s firm, PEP Intermedius) between agents and banks. These middlemen have their own distribution networks, and take on much of the work of ferrying cash around the country. But individual agents still handle the “last mile”.
The paper’s authors give the example of Gaudencia, a woman who owns three shops in western Kenya, each about 30 minutes by bus from the others. She spends her days shuttling between her three stores and the office of her local intermediary, transferring cash and e-float to where they are needed most. At times she carries more than 75,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,000) in cash, but says she has never been robbed. She spends around $5 a day on bus fares, a typical daily wage in her part of the world, but she earns around $1,000 a month in commission from the M-PESA transactions in her three shops.
In short, Gaudencia pools the transactions of her customers and her intermediary pools the transactions of many such agents, cushioning them from the clearing delays within the banking system. Rather than many individuals moving money around by carrying it physically, as they had to in the days before M-PESA, the movement of money can then be handled in larger quantities by a smaller number of individuals, which is much more efficient. Safaricom, says Mr Mas, “understood this like no other mobile operator really has”. As well as orchestrating the emergence of the intermediaries, it monitors its agents closely, typically visiting them every two weeks to see how they are handling the growing volume of transactions (on average, each M-PESA agent now handles almost 100 transactions a day).
Operators in other countries have been doing their best to imitate Safaricom. The most ambitious is Africa’s biggest operator, MTN, which is rolling out mobile-money schemes in several African countries. Its scheme in Uganda has signed up 890,000 users since its launch in March 2009, and is expected to reach 2m by year-end.
There are many elements to a successful mobile-money scheme: the right technology, simple marketing, partnerships with banks, support from regulators. But keeping it all going are people like Gaudencia, moving bundles of cash around, on buses and in vans, behind the scenes.
Banking on mobile phones
Out of thin air
The behind-the-scenes logistics of Kenya’s mobile-money miracle
Jun 10th 2010
IT IS like magic. By clicking a few keys on a mobile phone, money can be zapped from one part of Kenya to another in seconds. For urban migrants sending money home to their villages, and for people used to queuing at banks for hours to pay bills or school fees, the M-PESA money-transfer service, operated by Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile operator, is a godsend. No wonder it is used by 9.5m people, or 23% of the population, and transfers the equivalent of 11% of Kenya’s GDP each year; or that it has inspired more than 60 similar schemes across the world.
But despite the apparently frictionless transfer of money through the air, making a money-transfer system work smoothly requires a great deal of backstage effort. Jake Kendall and Ignacio Mas of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Frederik Eijkman of PEP Intermedius, a financial-services firm, explain how it all works in a paper presented in late May.
The basic idea of M-PESA is that the 100,000 small retailers in Kenya who already sell mobile-phone airtime, in the form of scratch cards, can also register to be mobile-money agents, taking in and paying out cash. More than 17,600 retailers have signed up as M-PESA agents—far outnumbering Kenya’s 840 bank branches. When a customer is registered with the system, paying in cash involves exchanging physical money for the virtual sort, called “e-float”, which is credited to his mobile-money account. E-float can then be transferred to other users by mobile phone, and exchanged for cash by the recipient, who visits another agent.
It is simple enough for customers. But agents in cities, where most transactions are deposits (see chart), accumulate cash and risk running out of e-float, at which point they cannot take any more deposits. Agents in rural areas, where most transactions are withdrawals, accumulate e-float and risk running out of cash. Keeping the system running requires the agents to manage their liquidity, by regularly swapping cash for e-float, or vice versa.
Exchanging cash for e-float means visiting a bank affiliated with Safaricom, and the whole point of systems like M-PESA is to reach where banks cannot. Accordingly, M-PESA relies on a system of intermediaries (including Mr Eijkman’s firm, PEP Intermedius) between agents and banks. These middlemen have their own distribution networks, and take on much of the work of ferrying cash around the country. But individual agents still handle the “last mile”.
The paper’s authors give the example of Gaudencia, a woman who owns three shops in western Kenya, each about 30 minutes by bus from the others. She spends her days shuttling between her three stores and the office of her local intermediary, transferring cash and e-float to where they are needed most. At times she carries more than 75,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,000) in cash, but says she has never been robbed. She spends around $5 a day on bus fares, a typical daily wage in her part of the world, but she earns around $1,000 a month in commission from the M-PESA transactions in her three shops.
In short, Gaudencia pools the transactions of her customers and her intermediary pools the transactions of many such agents, cushioning them from the clearing delays within the banking system. Rather than many individuals moving money around by carrying it physically, as they had to in the days before M-PESA, the movement of money can then be handled in larger quantities by a smaller number of individuals, which is much more efficient. Safaricom, says Mr Mas, “understood this like no other mobile operator really has”. As well as orchestrating the emergence of the intermediaries, it monitors its agents closely, typically visiting them every two weeks to see how they are handling the growing volume of transactions (on average, each M-PESA agent now handles almost 100 transactions a day).
Operators in other countries have been doing their best to imitate Safaricom. The most ambitious is Africa’s biggest operator, MTN, which is rolling out mobile-money schemes in several African countries. Its scheme in Uganda has signed up 890,000 users since its launch in March 2009, and is expected to reach 2m by year-end.
There are many elements to a successful mobile-money scheme: the right technology, simple marketing, partnerships with banks, support from regulators. But keeping it all going are people like Gaudencia, moving bundles of cash around, on buses and in vans, behind the scenes.
viernes, 28 de mayo de 2010
Cita con RAMA
Si, ya se, pero aquellos que leen a Clarke entenderan desde el titulo, los que no, leanlo, sera para festeajr el Mundial?
Asteroid 2010 KQ: Probably a Rocket Body
Don Yeomans, Paul Chodas and Steve Chesley
NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program Office
May 27, 2010
A small asteroid-like object has been discovered in an orbit about the Sun that is so similar to the Earth's orbit that scientists strongly suspect it to be a rocket stage that escaped years ago from the Earth-Moon system. The object was discovered on May 16, 2010 by Richard Kowalski at the Catalina Sky Survey, and has subsequently been observed by many observers, including Bill Ryan (Magdalena Ridge Observatory) and Peter Birtwhistle (England). It was given the asteroid designation 2010 KQ by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge Massachusetts, who identified its orbit as being very similar to that of the Earth. Orbit refinements by JPL's Paul Chodas and amateur astronomer Bill Gray have shown that this object was very close to the Earth in early 1975, but the trajectory is not known with enough accuracy to associate the object with any particular launch. Nevertheless, scientists do not expect that a natural object could remain in this type of orbit for very long because of its relatively high impact probability with the Earth. In fact, an analysis carried out by Paul Chodas suggests that 2010 KQ has a 6% chance of impacting the Earth over a 30-year period starting in 2036.
Near-infrared spectral measurements of this object carried out by S.J. Bus (University of Hawaii) using the NASA IRTF telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate that its spectral characteristics do not match those of any of the known asteroid types, and in fact are similar to those of a rocket body. The object's absolute magnitude (28.9) also suggests that it is only a few meters in size, about the size of a upper stage. Additional observations over the coming months should allow scientists to discern how strongly solar radiation pressure affects the object's motion, a result that could help distinguish a solid, rocky asteroid from a lighter man-made object.
Even in the unlikely event that this object is headed for impact with the Earth, whether it is an asteroid or rocket body, it is so small that it would disintegrate in the atmosphere and not cause harm on the ground.
Asteroid 2010 KQ: Probably a Rocket Body
Don Yeomans, Paul Chodas and Steve Chesley
NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program Office
May 27, 2010
A small asteroid-like object has been discovered in an orbit about the Sun that is so similar to the Earth's orbit that scientists strongly suspect it to be a rocket stage that escaped years ago from the Earth-Moon system. The object was discovered on May 16, 2010 by Richard Kowalski at the Catalina Sky Survey, and has subsequently been observed by many observers, including Bill Ryan (Magdalena Ridge Observatory) and Peter Birtwhistle (England). It was given the asteroid designation 2010 KQ by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge Massachusetts, who identified its orbit as being very similar to that of the Earth. Orbit refinements by JPL's Paul Chodas and amateur astronomer Bill Gray have shown that this object was very close to the Earth in early 1975, but the trajectory is not known with enough accuracy to associate the object with any particular launch. Nevertheless, scientists do not expect that a natural object could remain in this type of orbit for very long because of its relatively high impact probability with the Earth. In fact, an analysis carried out by Paul Chodas suggests that 2010 KQ has a 6% chance of impacting the Earth over a 30-year period starting in 2036.
Near-infrared spectral measurements of this object carried out by S.J. Bus (University of Hawaii) using the NASA IRTF telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate that its spectral characteristics do not match those of any of the known asteroid types, and in fact are similar to those of a rocket body. The object's absolute magnitude (28.9) also suggests that it is only a few meters in size, about the size of a upper stage. Additional observations over the coming months should allow scientists to discern how strongly solar radiation pressure affects the object's motion, a result that could help distinguish a solid, rocky asteroid from a lighter man-made object.
Even in the unlikely event that this object is headed for impact with the Earth, whether it is an asteroid or rocket body, it is so small that it would disintegrate in the atmosphere and not cause harm on the ground.
miércoles, 26 de mayo de 2010
Murio Martin Gardner
recien hoy me entere, el tipo era un genio, con todas las letras, no se cuantos, si es que alguno que lee aca lo conocia, quizas les importe poco, o no, pero,disfrute muchisimos años leyendolo
http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=Martin%20Gardner,%201914-2010
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=happy-253-1th-birthday-to-martin-ga-2009-10-21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner
http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=Martin%20Gardner,%201914-2010
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=happy-253-1th-birthday-to-martin-ga-2009-10-21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner
martes, 25 de mayo de 2010
Mientras tanto el mundo avanza
Y si, aca discutimos por el Colon, si le damos la silla, sino, etc, mientras tanto
Los cientificos estan informando que han hecho una celula viva de ADN que fue sintetizado en laboratorio, No es un organismo sintetico, aun, pero el resultado es un importante paso.......
Nota completa
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127010591#
Los cientificos estan informando que han hecho una celula viva de ADN que fue sintetizado en laboratorio, No es un organismo sintetico, aun, pero el resultado es un importante paso.......
Nota completa
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127010591#
martes, 18 de mayo de 2010
et tu quoque Brute fili mi!
Uno piensa que las cosas pasan aca, que hay paises donde no pasan, que se yo, y hay paises casi insospechados en lides tales como corrupcion, uno se equivoca
*
IN BRITAIN, after the Daily Telegraph broke the story last year that members of parliament had blatantly fiddled expenses, all the media had a field day. In Japan details are leaking out of a large secret fund kept in a black box near the prime minister’s office that for decades has been used to curry political favours, including, it is said, among journalists and television commentators. Tellingly, the Japanese media is reacting to the scandal like the three wise monkeys of Nikko: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
The existence of the slush fund has long been known to insiders. But details of its size and the way it was spent were unknown to the public until Hiromu Nonaka, a former chief cabinet secretary, revealed last month that from 1998-99 he spent up to ¥70m ($600,000 at the exchange rate of the time) a month from his secret little piggy bank. That included ¥10m to the prime minister, ¥10m to politicians in the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and more scattered among political commentators and opposition-party members, including those going on trips to North Korea.
Mr Nonaka, who is 84, says he made the confession because he did not want to carry the secret to the grave about what he rightly refers to as taxpayers' money. But he may also have been making mischief for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which drove the LDP from power last year. It has since come to light that the new government of Yukio Hatoyama, elected on a platform of transparency and accountability, has been dipping into the cabinet office’s slush fund as freely as its LDP predecessors.
On May 14th Hirofumi Hirano, Mr Hatoyama’s chief cabinet secretary, confirmed, in answer to a largely unreported parliamentary question by the Japanese Communist Party, that he had withdrawn ¥360m ($3.8m) from the fund between September and March, and spent all but ¥16m. He claimed to have returned the unused portion to the exchequer. But, he also said, for the time being he did not intend to disclose what the money was spent on, nor did he expect to stop using the pot.
Mr Hirano also appeared reluctant to investigate the outgoing LDP administration led by Taro Aso, which raided the fund last year just before it handed over power to Mr Hatoyama. Two days after the election, and two weeks before leaving office, it withdrew an impressive ¥250m.
Some people might shrug off the fund as part of the old Japanese tradition of gift-giving, admittedly involving some pretty generous presents. Mr Hirano says money is necessary to gather information “for the benefit of the nation”. But for a government that has long promised to dig up the “buried treasure” hidden in government accounts in order to improve shaky public finances, it is extraordinary that it, too, is taking such brazen advantage of this darkest of slush funds. Just as extraordinary, not to mention suspicious, is the impressive silence from most of the powerful mass media. More evidence, if it were needed, of its central role in Japan's longstanding political dysfunction.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan?source=features_box_main
*
IN BRITAIN, after the Daily Telegraph broke the story last year that members of parliament had blatantly fiddled expenses, all the media had a field day. In Japan details are leaking out of a large secret fund kept in a black box near the prime minister’s office that for decades has been used to curry political favours, including, it is said, among journalists and television commentators. Tellingly, the Japanese media is reacting to the scandal like the three wise monkeys of Nikko: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
The existence of the slush fund has long been known to insiders. But details of its size and the way it was spent were unknown to the public until Hiromu Nonaka, a former chief cabinet secretary, revealed last month that from 1998-99 he spent up to ¥70m ($600,000 at the exchange rate of the time) a month from his secret little piggy bank. That included ¥10m to the prime minister, ¥10m to politicians in the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and more scattered among political commentators and opposition-party members, including those going on trips to North Korea.
Mr Nonaka, who is 84, says he made the confession because he did not want to carry the secret to the grave about what he rightly refers to as taxpayers' money. But he may also have been making mischief for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which drove the LDP from power last year. It has since come to light that the new government of Yukio Hatoyama, elected on a platform of transparency and accountability, has been dipping into the cabinet office’s slush fund as freely as its LDP predecessors.
On May 14th Hirofumi Hirano, Mr Hatoyama’s chief cabinet secretary, confirmed, in answer to a largely unreported parliamentary question by the Japanese Communist Party, that he had withdrawn ¥360m ($3.8m) from the fund between September and March, and spent all but ¥16m. He claimed to have returned the unused portion to the exchequer. But, he also said, for the time being he did not intend to disclose what the money was spent on, nor did he expect to stop using the pot.
Mr Hirano also appeared reluctant to investigate the outgoing LDP administration led by Taro Aso, which raided the fund last year just before it handed over power to Mr Hatoyama. Two days after the election, and two weeks before leaving office, it withdrew an impressive ¥250m.
Some people might shrug off the fund as part of the old Japanese tradition of gift-giving, admittedly involving some pretty generous presents. Mr Hirano says money is necessary to gather information “for the benefit of the nation”. But for a government that has long promised to dig up the “buried treasure” hidden in government accounts in order to improve shaky public finances, it is extraordinary that it, too, is taking such brazen advantage of this darkest of slush funds. Just as extraordinary, not to mention suspicious, is the impressive silence from most of the powerful mass media. More evidence, if it were needed, of its central role in Japan's longstanding political dysfunction.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan?source=features_box_main
viernes, 14 de mayo de 2010
Duda metafisica
En que año se instalo el pato de Punta Mogotes???????
Alguien lo sabe??
A ver, los habitues de ahi
yo me acuerdo de verlo desde siempre, pero, cuando lo pusieron? antes de Russak seguro
Alguien lo sabe??
A ver, los habitues de ahi
yo me acuerdo de verlo desde siempre, pero, cuando lo pusieron? antes de Russak seguro
viernes, 7 de mayo de 2010
1964 - Only for nerds
Paseando por Internet llegue al blog de este señor, que, contiene predicciones de 1984 hechas en 1964
solo la figura, hecha en 1964, que ilustra que deberia tenre una casa cualquiera
el link
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/internet-64/
miércoles, 5 de mayo de 2010
Magnitud
Parece que la imagen esta mal, que quede al menos como referencia que Economist, que la saco de NYT, tambien esconde basura abajo de la alfombra
A veces una imagen vale por mucho (tampoco es Power Point fever) pero, uno escucha escucha de la deuda griega, de PIGS etc etc etc.
este grafico, afanado como corresponde, muestra el grado de lio con los griegos, los españoles y demas
Cliquear para ver grande
A veces una imagen vale por mucho (tampoco es Power Point fever) pero, uno escucha escucha de la deuda griega, de PIGS etc etc etc.
este grafico, afanado como corresponde, muestra el grado de lio con los griegos, los españoles y demas
Cliquear para ver grande
sábado, 1 de mayo de 2010
adonde vamos
titulos
One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Despite rising cable and satellite TV prices and easy access to streaming TV and movies on the Internet, few consumers have cut the cord. But that looks like it's about to change.
pero el mejor parrafo
"Just like with telephone land lines, it's going to become hard to sell pay TV to anyone under 30," Vittore said.
la fuente?
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/30/technology/dropping_cable_tv/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
y, eso que no hay TDT
One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Despite rising cable and satellite TV prices and easy access to streaming TV and movies on the Internet, few consumers have cut the cord. But that looks like it's about to change.
pero el mejor parrafo
"Just like with telephone land lines, it's going to become hard to sell pay TV to anyone under 30," Vittore said.
la fuente?
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/30/technology/dropping_cable_tv/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
y, eso que no hay TDT
lunes, 26 de abril de 2010
afanado
Una discusion con gente que sabe me disparo esto, todos dicen que los TI estan perimidos, que no importa mucho el aumento de exportaciones, hasta que es malo eso
y de repente, en lo de Manolo descubro esto ( que tome del gran diario)
El grupo empresarial que lo escuchó fue convocado por la Federación de Industrias de Minas Gerais (FIEMG). Hace poco más de una semana pasó por el mismo ámbito la ex ministra Dilma Rousseff, candidata de Lula da Silva. Serra insistió que bajo un eventual gobierno suyo, lo más importante será aumentar las exportaciones. Lo cierto es que esta fue una conquista conseguida por Lula da Silva: desde que inició su gobierno, el 1º de enero de 2003, el presidente que dejará el cargo a fin de año consiguió pasar de 50.000 millones de ventas al exterior a los 250 mil millones de la actualidad. O sea que quintuplicó la presencia brasileña en los mercados mundiales.
o sea, otra patada a la escalera, en fin
y de repente, en lo de Manolo descubro esto ( que tome del gran diario)
El grupo empresarial que lo escuchó fue convocado por la Federación de Industrias de Minas Gerais (FIEMG). Hace poco más de una semana pasó por el mismo ámbito la ex ministra Dilma Rousseff, candidata de Lula da Silva. Serra insistió que bajo un eventual gobierno suyo, lo más importante será aumentar las exportaciones. Lo cierto es que esta fue una conquista conseguida por Lula da Silva: desde que inició su gobierno, el 1º de enero de 2003, el presidente que dejará el cargo a fin de año consiguió pasar de 50.000 millones de ventas al exterior a los 250 mil millones de la actualidad. O sea que quintuplicó la presencia brasileña en los mercados mundiales.
o sea, otra patada a la escalera, en fin
lunes, 19 de abril de 2010
Black Swan - revisited
Muchos leimos el libro, muchos lo asociamos a lo financiero, pero, el acontecimiento reciente mas adecuado es el Volcan en Islandia y sus efectos sobre los viajes, si, todos escriben, pero por que no aca tambien?
Y, de acuerdo a la estadistica de los volcanes, en ingles seria be afraid, be very afraid, el vulcanismo en Islandia pareceria ser que ha influido mucho en diversos acontecimientos hisotricos, hay varios que explotan y producen efectos, por ejemplo, en 1783/4 uno exploto, hubo poca cosecha en Europa y eso causo hambre en Francia, asimismo congelo el rio Hudson y Washington gano una batalla en la revolucion, ambos efectos causaron la bancarrota en Francia (y el hambre) corolario? La Revolucion Francesa.
Otro en 1816 cusao lo que se denomino el año sin verano, uno de sus efectos fue que algunos jovenes ingleses no pudieran salri en el verano (que no exisitio y fue lluvioso), en particular una Sra llamada Mary Shelley que se dedico a escribir, Frankestein.
En fin, yo iria sacando pasaje en barco si voy afuera, y, alguna vez se apagaran, si, como parece Carnot tiene razon y Asimov en algun cuento suyo no.
Last but not least Wall Street Journal hoy
Some researchers worry that the latest eruption could trigger similar explosions at a much-larger neighboring volcano, called Katla. The last three times that Eyjafjallajokull exploded, there has been an eruption at Katla within two or three years, and sometimes within a month or two.
Katla is one of the most intensely watched volcanoes in Iceland, and its peak is just 15 miles from the peak of Eyjafjallajokull. Volcano experts say the magma chamber under Katla sits quite high above the earth's crust. Since Katla last erupted in 1918, enough time has gone by for a large amount of magma to collect.
Magma doesn't only shoot up vertically from a volcano; it also moves laterally in the crust. The concern is that the recent eruption in Iceland may create subterranean magma flows that could disturb the magma chamber under Katla.
Since the ice over Katla is a much-thicker 2,300 feet, a big, sustained eruption there could potentially create an ash cloud that would easily dwarf the one hovering over Europe today.
"We don't know the subterranean connection between the two volcanoes," says Dr. McGarvie. But the past eruption history "suggests a close link between the two."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703594404575192382080183898.html
be afraid, very afraid, eso si, yo iria alquilando algo para plantar trigo
Y, de acuerdo a la estadistica de los volcanes, en ingles seria be afraid, be very afraid, el vulcanismo en Islandia pareceria ser que ha influido mucho en diversos acontecimientos hisotricos, hay varios que explotan y producen efectos, por ejemplo, en 1783/4 uno exploto, hubo poca cosecha en Europa y eso causo hambre en Francia, asimismo congelo el rio Hudson y Washington gano una batalla en la revolucion, ambos efectos causaron la bancarrota en Francia (y el hambre) corolario? La Revolucion Francesa.
Otro en 1816 cusao lo que se denomino el año sin verano, uno de sus efectos fue que algunos jovenes ingleses no pudieran salri en el verano (que no exisitio y fue lluvioso), en particular una Sra llamada Mary Shelley que se dedico a escribir, Frankestein.
En fin, yo iria sacando pasaje en barco si voy afuera, y, alguna vez se apagaran, si, como parece Carnot tiene razon y Asimov en algun cuento suyo no.
Last but not least Wall Street Journal hoy
Some researchers worry that the latest eruption could trigger similar explosions at a much-larger neighboring volcano, called Katla. The last three times that Eyjafjallajokull exploded, there has been an eruption at Katla within two or three years, and sometimes within a month or two.
Katla is one of the most intensely watched volcanoes in Iceland, and its peak is just 15 miles from the peak of Eyjafjallajokull. Volcano experts say the magma chamber under Katla sits quite high above the earth's crust. Since Katla last erupted in 1918, enough time has gone by for a large amount of magma to collect.
Magma doesn't only shoot up vertically from a volcano; it also moves laterally in the crust. The concern is that the recent eruption in Iceland may create subterranean magma flows that could disturb the magma chamber under Katla.
Since the ice over Katla is a much-thicker 2,300 feet, a big, sustained eruption there could potentially create an ash cloud that would easily dwarf the one hovering over Europe today.
"We don't know the subterranean connection between the two volcanoes," says Dr. McGarvie. But the past eruption history "suggests a close link between the two."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703594404575192382080183898.html
be afraid, very afraid, eso si, yo iria alquilando algo para plantar trigo
sábado, 17 de abril de 2010
No words
De una discusion anterior, bah, de varias, encontre el grafico de Krugman, hay una cosa interesante, notese que antes de la Guerra de Secesion, las tarifas van bajando, y eso probablemente es por la discusion Norte industrialista Sur exportador de algodon, cosa que se zanjo despues de la guerra, donde, quedan altas
Tambien habia de Brasil, pero aun no las encontre nuevamente
viernes, 9 de abril de 2010
Al Pasar
un comment me hizo acordar
Actas de Navegación
Las Actas de Navegación inglesas fueron una serie de leyes que, comenzando por la dictada el 9 de octubre de 1651, restringieron el uso de barcos extranjeros en el comercio de Inglaterra (más tarde Gran Bretaña y sus colonias). Surgieron como consecuencia de la Revolución de 1648, en respuesta al conflicto económico. El resentimiento contra estas leyes motivó las guerras anglo-holandesas y la Guerra de la Independencia de los Estados Unidos.
Adam Smith la llamó quizá la más sabia de todas las regulaciones comerciales de Inglaterra.
Fue el primer paso de Inglaterra para convertirse en la potencia naval más importante del mundo.
Disclaimer: Alguien sabe si lo del amigo Adam es cierto? Si es asi, como se mezcla con el liberalismo?
Actas de Navegación
Las Actas de Navegación inglesas fueron una serie de leyes que, comenzando por la dictada el 9 de octubre de 1651, restringieron el uso de barcos extranjeros en el comercio de Inglaterra (más tarde Gran Bretaña y sus colonias). Surgieron como consecuencia de la Revolución de 1648, en respuesta al conflicto económico. El resentimiento contra estas leyes motivó las guerras anglo-holandesas y la Guerra de la Independencia de los Estados Unidos.
Adam Smith la llamó quizá la más sabia de todas las regulaciones comerciales de Inglaterra.
Fue el primer paso de Inglaterra para convertirse en la potencia naval más importante del mundo.
Disclaimer: Alguien sabe si lo del amigo Adam es cierto? Si es asi, como se mezcla con el liberalismo?
viernes, 2 de abril de 2010
Terminos de Intercambio
Y, si, se invirtieron los terminos de intercambio, el mundo necesita nuestros productos del campo o mineria, no pueden vivir sin ellos, la demanda es insaciable, no hay techo para la demanda de dichos productos, el libre mercado sin cortapisas de dichos productos nos salvara.
Si?
Mira vos
Nueva norma de China solo para Argentina: se trataría de un castigo para-arancelario solamente para el aceite de soja de origen argentino.
La utilización de solvente hexano es habitual en la extracción de aceite de soja argentino
http://www.ruralprimicias.com.ar/noticia-la-utilizacion-de-solvente-hexano-es-habitual-en-la-extraccion-de-aceite-de-soja-argentino-6971.php
y, en simultaneo, otro producto primario en la pelea
China and Rio Tinto
Steel trap
The Rio trial leaves unresolved questions about China’s rule of law
http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15807361&source=most_commented
En fin, realpolitik pura, cuanto mas podemos industrializar adentro mejor, dicen los chinos, y cuanto menos elaborado lo que compro, y mas barato, mejor, y, last but not least, todo vale
Si?
Mira vos
Nueva norma de China solo para Argentina: se trataría de un castigo para-arancelario solamente para el aceite de soja de origen argentino.
La utilización de solvente hexano es habitual en la extracción de aceite de soja argentino
http://www.ruralprimicias.com.ar/noticia-la-utilizacion-de-solvente-hexano-es-habitual-en-la-extraccion-de-aceite-de-soja-argentino-6971.php
y, en simultaneo, otro producto primario en la pelea
China and Rio Tinto
Steel trap
The Rio trial leaves unresolved questions about China’s rule of law
http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15807361&source=most_commented
En fin, realpolitik pura, cuanto mas podemos industrializar adentro mejor, dicen los chinos, y cuanto menos elaborado lo que compro, y mas barato, mejor, y, last but not least, todo vale
domingo, 28 de marzo de 2010
Micromanagement
Ya le paso a tantos, pero, en otro lugar salio de costado el tema, y, ya le paso a Mcnamara en Vietnam, como a tantos en tantos lugares, aca tambien,
(me dio fiaca traducir, afanado de Wikipedia)
Rather than giving general instructions on smaller tasks and then devoting his time to supervising larger concerns, the micromanager monitors and assesses every step of a business process and avoids delegation of decisions.
Micromanagers are usually irritated when a subordinate makes decisions without consulting them, even if the decisions are totally within the subordinate's level of authority. si ya se--
Micromanagement also frequently involves with requests for unnecessary and overly detailed reports ("reportomania").
A micromanager tends to require constant and detailed performance feedback and tends to be excessively focused on procedural trivia (often in detail greater than he can actually process) rather than on overall performance, quality and results. This focus on "low-level" trivia often delays decisions, clouds overall goals and objectives, restricts the flow of information between employees, and guides the various aspects of a project in different and often opposed directions. Many micromanagers accept such inefficiencies because those micromanagers consider the outcome of a project less important than their retention of control or of the appearance of control. Otra vez, ya se
The most extreme cases of micromanagement constitute a management pathology closely related to, e.g., workplace bullying and narcissistic behavior.
Micromanagement resembles addiction in that although most micromanagers are behaviorally dependent on control over others, both as a lifestyle and as a means of maintaining that lifestyle, many of them fail to recognize and acknowledge their dependence even when everyone around them observes it. Some severe cases of micromanagement arise from other underlying mental-health conditions such as obsessive–compulsive personality disorder, although not all allegations of such conditions by subordinates and other "armchair psychologists" are accurate. No, no creo
Although micromanagement is often easily recognized by employees, micromanagers rarely view themselves as such. (Renee Kowalski) In a form of denial similar to that found in addictive behavior, micromanagers will often rebut allegations of micromanagement by offering a competing characterization of their management style, e.g., as "structured" or "organized."
(me dio fiaca traducir, afanado de Wikipedia)
Rather than giving general instructions on smaller tasks and then devoting his time to supervising larger concerns, the micromanager monitors and assesses every step of a business process and avoids delegation of decisions.
Micromanagers are usually irritated when a subordinate makes decisions without consulting them, even if the decisions are totally within the subordinate's level of authority. si ya se--
Micromanagement also frequently involves with requests for unnecessary and overly detailed reports ("reportomania").
A micromanager tends to require constant and detailed performance feedback and tends to be excessively focused on procedural trivia (often in detail greater than he can actually process) rather than on overall performance, quality and results. This focus on "low-level" trivia often delays decisions, clouds overall goals and objectives, restricts the flow of information between employees, and guides the various aspects of a project in different and often opposed directions. Many micromanagers accept such inefficiencies because those micromanagers consider the outcome of a project less important than their retention of control or of the appearance of control. Otra vez, ya se
The most extreme cases of micromanagement constitute a management pathology closely related to, e.g., workplace bullying and narcissistic behavior.
Micromanagement resembles addiction in that although most micromanagers are behaviorally dependent on control over others, both as a lifestyle and as a means of maintaining that lifestyle, many of them fail to recognize and acknowledge their dependence even when everyone around them observes it. Some severe cases of micromanagement arise from other underlying mental-health conditions such as obsessive–compulsive personality disorder, although not all allegations of such conditions by subordinates and other "armchair psychologists" are accurate. No, no creo
Although micromanagement is often easily recognized by employees, micromanagers rarely view themselves as such. (Renee Kowalski) In a form of denial similar to that found in addictive behavior, micromanagers will often rebut allegations of micromanagement by offering a competing characterization of their management style, e.g., as "structured" or "organized."
martes, 23 de marzo de 2010
Darwin
Hay veces que hay que aplaudir la seleccion natural operando, hoy es el aniversario de la primera instalacion comercial de un ascensor por Otis (1857) que posibilito los rascacielos, etc etc.
Pero, leyendo el articulo me encontre con que existe un deporte relacionado con esto
elevator surfing
que es? bueno, te subis al techo de un ascensor y vas saltando entre ascensores mientra se mueven unos y otros, obviamente, existen accidentes en este digamos deporte, y ahi, la seleccion darwiniana es implacable.
mas datos?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_surfing
y despues nos quejamos
Pero, leyendo el articulo me encontre con que existe un deporte relacionado con esto
elevator surfing
que es? bueno, te subis al techo de un ascensor y vas saltando entre ascensores mientra se mueven unos y otros, obviamente, existen accidentes en este digamos deporte, y ahi, la seleccion darwiniana es implacable.
mas datos?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_surfing
y despues nos quejamos
lunes, 22 de marzo de 2010
Cine Nacional e ISI
De otra discusion, que la ISI no produjo beneficios, que no es buena, que el mercado etc etc, y, dado que via impuestos pagamos la promocion al cine (no se si esta la cuota de pantalla, creo que la de exhibicion si) no es lo mismo que ISI?
No sustituimos importaciones mediante una industria que subsidiamos?
esta bien? por que nuestros economistas nunca dicen nada eso, por que no tiene glamour?
No sustituimos importaciones mediante una industria que subsidiamos?
esta bien? por que nuestros economistas nunca dicen nada eso, por que no tiene glamour?
martes, 16 de marzo de 2010
80/20
Si, otra vez
In the last part of his Treatise , Pareto attempts to show how the distribu-tion of residues in a population is related not only to its belief systems andintellectual life, but also, and most importantly, to the state of the polity andof the economy. Here Pareto deals only with the first two residues, those of"combinations" and of "persistence." Residues of the first type impel men tosystem making, that is, to elaborate pseudo-logical combinations of ideas. ClassI residues lead men to manipulate various elements found in experience. They are at the root of magical practices to control, as the case may be, the weather,the course of a disease, or the love of a maiden.
At more complex levels, ClassI residues lead people to engage in large-scale financial manipulation--tomerge, combine, and recombine enterprises. At still more complex levels, they explain the urge of politicians and statesmen to join and fuse political forces, to make political deals, and to build political empires. Men primarily moved byClass I residues are like Machiavelli's "foxes," capable of experiment, innova-tion, and departure from common use, but lacking fidelity to principles and to those conservative virtues that insure stability.
The conservative forces of "social inertia" are represented by men in whom the second class of residues (persistence of aggregates) predominate. Suchmen have powerful feelings of loyalty to family, tribe, city, and nation; they display class solidarity, patriotism, and religious zeal; and they are not afraidof using force when necessary. These are Machiavelli's "lions."
In the world of his day, more particularly in Italy and France, Pareto be-lieved that the foxes were in the ascendancy. The political and economic scene was dominated by political wheelers and dealers, by unscrupulous lawyers andintellectual sophists, by speculators and manipulators of men. Pareto's concern was that if this condition were to remain unchecked, social equilibrium would be fundamentally upset and the social order would totter. Yet he felt that the chances were high that, as had so often happened in the past, men of conser-vatism and persistence would finally rise, sweep the reign of foxes aside, and make sure that stability could again come into its own. Faith, patriotism, and national honor would once again claim the allegiance of all.
After a certain period of time, the foxes will again infiltrate into the seats of government, for their mental skills and expertise cannot be dispensed with for long. They will slowly undermine the certainties that the lions uphold, andtheir corrosive intelligence will undermine the uncomplicated faith of the militant lions. As a result, the wheel will come full circle and a new age of deceit and manipulation will dawn.
All belief in progress or evolution was for Pareto so much nonsense.Human society was bound to repeat forever the same cycle from rule by lions to rule by foxes and back again. It is characterized by a continually shiftingbut ultimately unchanging equilibrium. There is nothing new in history; it isonly the record of human folly. Utopia is, literally, nowhere.
From Coser, 1977:395-396.
In the last part of his Treatise , Pareto attempts to show how the distribu-tion of residues in a population is related not only to its belief systems andintellectual life, but also, and most importantly, to the state of the polity andof the economy. Here Pareto deals only with the first two residues, those of"combinations" and of "persistence." Residues of the first type impel men tosystem making, that is, to elaborate pseudo-logical combinations of ideas. ClassI residues lead men to manipulate various elements found in experience. They are at the root of magical practices to control, as the case may be, the weather,the course of a disease, or the love of a maiden.
At more complex levels, ClassI residues lead people to engage in large-scale financial manipulation--tomerge, combine, and recombine enterprises. At still more complex levels, they explain the urge of politicians and statesmen to join and fuse political forces, to make political deals, and to build political empires. Men primarily moved byClass I residues are like Machiavelli's "foxes," capable of experiment, innova-tion, and departure from common use, but lacking fidelity to principles and to those conservative virtues that insure stability.
The conservative forces of "social inertia" are represented by men in whom the second class of residues (persistence of aggregates) predominate. Suchmen have powerful feelings of loyalty to family, tribe, city, and nation; they display class solidarity, patriotism, and religious zeal; and they are not afraidof using force when necessary. These are Machiavelli's "lions."
In the world of his day, more particularly in Italy and France, Pareto be-lieved that the foxes were in the ascendancy. The political and economic scene was dominated by political wheelers and dealers, by unscrupulous lawyers andintellectual sophists, by speculators and manipulators of men. Pareto's concern was that if this condition were to remain unchecked, social equilibrium would be fundamentally upset and the social order would totter. Yet he felt that the chances were high that, as had so often happened in the past, men of conser-vatism and persistence would finally rise, sweep the reign of foxes aside, and make sure that stability could again come into its own. Faith, patriotism, and national honor would once again claim the allegiance of all.
After a certain period of time, the foxes will again infiltrate into the seats of government, for their mental skills and expertise cannot be dispensed with for long. They will slowly undermine the certainties that the lions uphold, andtheir corrosive intelligence will undermine the uncomplicated faith of the militant lions. As a result, the wheel will come full circle and a new age of deceit and manipulation will dawn.
All belief in progress or evolution was for Pareto so much nonsense.Human society was bound to repeat forever the same cycle from rule by lions to rule by foxes and back again. It is characterized by a continually shiftingbut ultimately unchanging equilibrium. There is nothing new in history; it isonly the record of human folly. Utopia is, literally, nowhere.
From Coser, 1977:395-396.
lunes, 15 de marzo de 2010
Discriminacion
Uno sabe que hay discriminacion por edad, un poco escondida por sexo, pero, la verdad que pidan asi, lugar al que llegue de rebote
Importante
Priorizaremos candidatos de nacionalidad Chilena y/o ejecutivos con experiencia y conocimiento de la idiosincrasia de dicho país. En ambos casos, radicado en Argentina.
fuente:
http://empleos.execuzone.com/index.php/1/trabajo/188582/Gerente-General
ahora, como les caeria a nuestros hermanos el caso inverso?
Importante
Priorizaremos candidatos de nacionalidad Chilena y/o ejecutivos con experiencia y conocimiento de la idiosincrasia de dicho país. En ambos casos, radicado en Argentina.
fuente:
http://empleos.execuzone.com/index.php/1/trabajo/188582/Gerente-General
ahora, como les caeria a nuestros hermanos el caso inverso?
domingo, 7 de marzo de 2010
Docverse
Pocas veces posteo algo de sistemas, al fin y al cabo es digamos fuera de scope del blog (si es que alguien lee algo aca, pero, en fin).
Pero hoy, leyendo y webeando un rato, aparecio una cosa, que, si es manejada correctamente, sera el inicio de la lucha en serio entre Mountain View y Seattle.
Docverse es una aplicacion que permite editar documentos de office en linea, Uds diran, y? y la verdad que si usan google docs, los word quedan feos, ni hablar de los poweer point, y si usan office, necesitan la licencia de office en la maquina, aun para editar documentos que van y vienen.
Ahora bien, si apareciera algo que permitiera editar en forma nativa Office (no lo probe aun) y guardarlo en serio en la nube, cuantos lo comprarian?
si el hype de la publicidad es eso, la pelea va a ser muy muy dura entre ambos
veremos
Pero hoy, leyendo y webeando un rato, aparecio una cosa, que, si es manejada correctamente, sera el inicio de la lucha en serio entre Mountain View y Seattle.
Docverse es una aplicacion que permite editar documentos de office en linea, Uds diran, y? y la verdad que si usan google docs, los word quedan feos, ni hablar de los poweer point, y si usan office, necesitan la licencia de office en la maquina, aun para editar documentos que van y vienen.
Ahora bien, si apareciera algo que permitiera editar en forma nativa Office (no lo probe aun) y guardarlo en serio en la nube, cuantos lo comprarian?
si el hype de la publicidad es eso, la pelea va a ser muy muy dura entre ambos
veremos
jueves, 4 de marzo de 2010
The Future, or why Greece MUST be worried
En ingles, y por que no? si el post, afanado en parte de Economist parece la guia para Grecia (y quizas España) de lo de aca, bue, es el mundo virtual, como siempre lo fue
el titulo, dos parrafos y el link
Baltic thaw, Aegean freeze
Latvia’s economic free fall has halted, and it may now do better than Greece
Es solo el comienzo
DOOM-MONGERS are licking their wounds. For two years bankers have said that a Latvian devaluation was inevitable. The struggle to save the lat’s peg to the euro was bound to end in tears. And a panic in Latvia could topple the wobbly economies of Estonia and Lithuania, which have similar exchange-rate regimes, with repercussions extending across eastern Europe and to Scandinavian banks that lent recklessly in the Baltics.
Yet despite a fall in GDP last year of 17.5%, Latvia seems to have achieved something many thought impossible: an internal devaluation. This meant regaining competitiveness not by currency depreciation but by deep cuts in wages and public spending. In a recent discussion of Greece, Jörg Asmussen, a German minister, praised Latvia for its self-discipline.
y el final, es mejor aun
Even so, Latvia looks good when compared with Greece. It did not lie about its public finances or use accounting tricks. Strikes have been scanty. Protests are fought in the courts, not the streets. Both Greece and Latvia have had hard knocks, but Greeks became used to a good life that they are loth to give up. Latvians remain glad just to be on the map.
so?
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15581056&source=hptextfeature
el titulo, dos parrafos y el link
Baltic thaw, Aegean freeze
Latvia’s economic free fall has halted, and it may now do better than Greece
Es solo el comienzo
DOOM-MONGERS are licking their wounds. For two years bankers have said that a Latvian devaluation was inevitable. The struggle to save the lat’s peg to the euro was bound to end in tears. And a panic in Latvia could topple the wobbly economies of Estonia and Lithuania, which have similar exchange-rate regimes, with repercussions extending across eastern Europe and to Scandinavian banks that lent recklessly in the Baltics.
Yet despite a fall in GDP last year of 17.5%, Latvia seems to have achieved something many thought impossible: an internal devaluation. This meant regaining competitiveness not by currency depreciation but by deep cuts in wages and public spending. In a recent discussion of Greece, Jörg Asmussen, a German minister, praised Latvia for its self-discipline.
y el final, es mejor aun
Even so, Latvia looks good when compared with Greece. It did not lie about its public finances or use accounting tricks. Strikes have been scanty. Protests are fought in the courts, not the streets. Both Greece and Latvia have had hard knocks, but Greeks became used to a good life that they are loth to give up. Latvians remain glad just to be on the map.
so?
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15581056&source=hptextfeature
lunes, 22 de febrero de 2010
Liniers esta en Capital est. Ing, Macri
O no?
Debe ser que no me di cuenta, quizas la trasladaron a la PBA
algo asi como
Si no quieren dar subsidios que hagan obras en la provincia, en Ciudadela, en Liniers
como? Liniers?
quizas lo escuche mal al Ing. Macri, ya aparecera en youtube, si es asi mis disculpas
pero, no haria mas que reafirmar el olvido historico del Oeste de la Capital Federal
Debe ser que no me di cuenta, quizas la trasladaron a la PBA
algo asi como
Si no quieren dar subsidios que hagan obras en la provincia, en Ciudadela, en Liniers
como? Liniers?
quizas lo escuche mal al Ing. Macri, ya aparecera en youtube, si es asi mis disculpas
pero, no haria mas que reafirmar el olvido historico del Oeste de la Capital Federal
jueves, 18 de febrero de 2010
aha
Como dijo el General, si no voy a hacer nada armo una Comision , y como dijo algun Jefe mio, buscate socios
Como, en general, los griegos ya dijeron el 90% de las cosas de ese tipo, hace 2000 años, esto no deberia extrañar a nadie, y los alemanes aprenden rapido tambien
Merkel hits out at banks over Greek deals
The German chancellor has sharply criticised global investment banks that may have helped a number of Greek governments to disguise mounting budgetary problems over the years.
“It would be a disgrace if it turned out to be true that banks that already pushed us to the edge of the abyss were also party to falsifying Greek statistics,” Angela Merkel said during a speech in north-eastern Germany.
Her remarks came as George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, said a special parliamentary commission would be set up to investigate possible mishandling of the public finances under the previous conservative government between 2004 and 2009.
“The principle is that we have to shine light everywhere it’s needed,” said Mr Papandreou.
The European Commission has told Greece to provide details by the end of this month about derivative transactions it carried out with Goldman Sachs and other banks – so that Brussels can consider whether Athens broke any European Union budget rules.
Mr Papandreou’s decision – and the government’s resistance to adopting new fiscal measures immediately, as urged by the Commission – has shattered a fragile political consensus with the conservative New Democracy party, raising the prospect of broad social unrest.
completo
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8481e594-1c00-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a.html
Como, en general, los griegos ya dijeron el 90% de las cosas de ese tipo, hace 2000 años, esto no deberia extrañar a nadie, y los alemanes aprenden rapido tambien
Merkel hits out at banks over Greek deals
The German chancellor has sharply criticised global investment banks that may have helped a number of Greek governments to disguise mounting budgetary problems over the years.
“It would be a disgrace if it turned out to be true that banks that already pushed us to the edge of the abyss were also party to falsifying Greek statistics,” Angela Merkel said during a speech in north-eastern Germany.
Her remarks came as George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, said a special parliamentary commission would be set up to investigate possible mishandling of the public finances under the previous conservative government between 2004 and 2009.
“The principle is that we have to shine light everywhere it’s needed,” said Mr Papandreou.
The European Commission has told Greece to provide details by the end of this month about derivative transactions it carried out with Goldman Sachs and other banks – so that Brussels can consider whether Athens broke any European Union budget rules.
Mr Papandreou’s decision – and the government’s resistance to adopting new fiscal measures immediately, as urged by the Commission – has shattered a fragile political consensus with the conservative New Democracy party, raising the prospect of broad social unrest.
completo
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8481e594-1c00-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a.html
domingo, 7 de febrero de 2010
lunes, 1 de febrero de 2010
Aqui lo vio primero (bah, copiado)
Como se llamara el Moreno de Grecia, Moredoupulos?
LA POLITICA DE "MAQUILLAR" LAS CIFRAS GENERO UNA ENORME DESCONFIANZA EN LOS SOCIOS EUROPEOS
Grecia, en graves problemas por falsificar sus datos económicos
Mintió sobre su déficit para ajustarse a las cifras de la UE. Le pondrían multas.
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2010/02/01/elmundo/i-02130972.htm
http://victorlustig.blogspot.com/2010/01/no-se-que-titulo-ponerle.html
ahi esta el link a Economist
en fin
LA POLITICA DE "MAQUILLAR" LAS CIFRAS GENERO UNA ENORME DESCONFIANZA EN LOS SOCIOS EUROPEOS
Grecia, en graves problemas por falsificar sus datos económicos
Mintió sobre su déficit para ajustarse a las cifras de la UE. Le pondrían multas.
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2010/02/01/elmundo/i-02130972.htm
http://victorlustig.blogspot.com/2010/01/no-se-que-titulo-ponerle.html
ahi esta el link a Economist
en fin
domingo, 31 de enero de 2010
El que avisa no traiciona
Si, ya se Manolo, pero leer esto y no pensar en el titulo, que quiere le diga
Paulson claims Russia tried to foment Fannie-Freddie crisis
Russia proposed to China that the two nations should sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 to force the US government to bail out the giant mortgage-finance companies, former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson has claimed.
The allegation is in his memoir On the Brink in which he also suggests that Alistair Darling, the UK chancellor, blocked a rescue takeover of Lehman Brothers by Barclays Bank when he refused to support special treatment by UK regulators.
Mr Paulson said that he was told about the Russian plan when he was in Beijing for the Olympics in August 2008. Russia had gone to war with Georgia, a US ally, on August 8.
el resto aca
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ffd950c4-0d0a-11df-a2dc-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Ahora bien, adivinen quien va a vender bonos sin avisar la proxima?
Paulson claims Russia tried to foment Fannie-Freddie crisis
Russia proposed to China that the two nations should sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 to force the US government to bail out the giant mortgage-finance companies, former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson has claimed.
The allegation is in his memoir On the Brink in which he also suggests that Alistair Darling, the UK chancellor, blocked a rescue takeover of Lehman Brothers by Barclays Bank when he refused to support special treatment by UK regulators.
Mr Paulson said that he was told about the Russian plan when he was in Beijing for the Olympics in August 2008. Russia had gone to war with Georgia, a US ally, on August 8.
el resto aca
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ffd950c4-0d0a-11df-a2dc-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Ahora bien, adivinen quien va a vender bonos sin avisar la proxima?
jueves, 28 de enero de 2010
No se que titulo ponerle
Though in truth some of the shock was feigned: everyone had long suspected the deficit numbers being reported by the last centre-right government stank.
este humilde parrafo, sacado de Economist, se refiere a un pais, que miente en sus estadisticas (al menos esa), lo cual lo convierte en un paria de la comunidad internacional
ah, no, nooo es Grecia y la EU esta discutiendo como hacer un bail out de su deuda. Yo ya no entiendo nada
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2010/01/greek_bailout_within_months?source=hptextfeature
este humilde parrafo, sacado de Economist, se refiere a un pais, que miente en sus estadisticas (al menos esa), lo cual lo convierte en un paria de la comunidad internacional
ah, no, nooo es Grecia y la EU esta discutiendo como hacer un bail out de su deuda. Yo ya no entiendo nada
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2010/01/greek_bailout_within_months?source=hptextfeature
miércoles, 27 de enero de 2010
Y despues uno se queja (nerds only)
Y despues uno se queja, mira como la paso Fritz Houtermans
Houtermans fue un hombre, según su amigo Otto von Frisch, de “impresionante aspecto aquilino” pero “no del todo adulto” y con “un sentido del humor exageradamente desarrollado que a menudo sufrían sus colegas (…) y ninguna disciplina”, pero también era un físico “con una comprensión profunda de la teoría cuántica”. De hecho, fue uno de los primeros en aplicarla al núcleo atómico. Fue un hombre con tres características principales: el sentido del humor, la física y el consumo de tabaco. Rechazó los valores burgueses de su padre pero estaba orgulloso de su ascendencia judía, su abuela materna en particular. Cuando algún colega ario sacaba el tema a relucir no dudaba en replicar: “cuando vuestros ancestros aún vivían en los árboles, los míos ya estaban haciendo cheques”. Así que ya podéis intuir el tipo de personaje del que os quiero hablar en nuestra historia de hoy.
Creció en Viena y, de joven, fue psicoanlizado por Freud hasta que admitió haber inventado los sueños que relataba tan gráficamente. Se afilió al Partido Comunista de Alemania en 1920. Desarrollaba su trabajo teórico en los cafés de Viena en los cuales se hizo legendaria su prodigiosa capacidad para beber café. Pero claro, cuando llegó Hitler al poder, mientras visitaba a su padre en Alemania, atrajo la atención de la Gestapo y fue detenido e interrogado. Tras su puesta en libertad, huyó a Gran Bretaña donde trabajó en los laboratorios EMI. Estuvo a punto de descubrir el láser ya que estaba trabajando sobre una predicción que había hecho Einstein en 1909 en la que había una desexcitación inducida (es el principio del láser que podemos dejar para otra ocasión), pero se le quemó un transformador muy caro y su jefe se negó a reponérselo. Hubiera descubierto el láser nada menos que 20 años antes.
Se casó cuatro veces, aunque la primera y la tercera fue con la misma mujer: Charlotte Riefenstahl que también era doctora en física. Pero tal y como os hablé de Rudolf Weigl, quien supo lidiar tanto con los rusos como con los alemanes, a Houtermans le pasó todo lo contrario. Y su historia con alemanes y rusos es de lo más rocambolesca.
Como no se encontraba gusto en Inglaterra y se quejaba especialmente del olor del cordero hervido se trasladó de nuevo; esta vez para satisfacer su vieja ambición de trabajar en la Unión Soviética. Encontró empleo en el Instituto Físico-Técnico de Jarkov, que entonces acogía a un brillante grupo de físicos, con el gran Lev Landau entre ellos. Pero el Gran Terror de Stalin se abatió pronto sobre ellos. ¿Y qué podía ser un físico nuclear alemán, quizá austríaco, que venía de Inglaterra, con algo de judío y que criticaba abiertamente la política estalinista en la guerra civil española? Evidentemente: un espía. ¿A favor de quién? De ello se iba a encargar el camarada Beria, patrón de la NKVD, predecesora de la KGB. Como muchos de sus camaradas soviéticos, Houtermans fue detenido y sufrió las terribles privaciones de una prisión de la NKVD donde pasó los dos años y medio siguientes. Fue torturado e interrogado sin descanso. Le hicieron permanecer de pie días enteros y lo reanimaban con cubos de agua helada cada vez que se desmayaba. Se le hincharon tanto los pies que tuvieron que cortar los zapatos para poder sacárselos. A veces lo empujaban contra una pared y le daban patadas en los pies hasta que todo su peso se apoyara en las yemas de los dedos. Kapitsa pudo ayudar a la esposa de Houtermans y a sus dos hijos a salir de Rusia, pero no pudo hacer nada por su colega. Escuálido y sin fuerzas conservó su cordura a base de realizar complejos cálculos matemáticos y de escribir ecuaciones con una cerilla en trozos de jabón. Las llamadas en su favor de los físicos en Occidente fueron desestimadas. Finalmente le dijeron que o hablaba o arrestarían a su mujer y enviarían a sus hijos a un orfanato con los nombres cambiados para que nunca pudiera dar con ellos. Por supuesto, Houtermans no sabía que estaban a salvo.
Y confesó, porque algo que tenía que decir. Todos los físicos a los que delató ya estaban a salvo en EEUU y en Alemania, y confesó también que trabajaban en un proyecto de un sistema de medida de la velocidad de aviones que volaban a baja altura. Los soviéticos se lo tragaron y pusieron a un montón de físicos a trabajar en ello. Como no daban con la clave del invento y muchos físicos ilustres del extranjero ejercían presión a favor de él, entre ellos Frédéric Joliot-Curie y muchos otros Premios Nobel, no tuvieron otro remedio que liberarlo. Probablemente habría muerto de hambre en prisión de no haber sido salvado por esas presiones y por la oportuna firma en 1939 del pacto Ribbentrop-Mólotov entre Alemania y la Unión Soviética. Preguntado sobre dónde quería ser enviado tras su liberación optó por Inglaterra pero sus anfitriones soviéticos le dejaron en Alemania en brazos de la Gestapo, identificado como un “alemán”.
Y bien, ¿qué podía ser un físico nuclear que después de huir a Inglaterra se había asentado en la Unión Soviética, era algo judío y había estado afiliado al partido comunista alemán? Pues evidente, ¿no?: un espía. ¿A favor de quién? El amigo Goebbels, dueño de la Gestapo ya se encargaría de averiguarlo: más torturas y quizás peor que las anteriores. De modo que tuvo que volver a confesar e identificó a sus contactos alemanes como los señores Scharnhorst y Gneisenau, quienes, efectivamente, eran generales… de las guerras napoleónicas. No sólo habían muerto sino que hacía tiempo que habían dado sus nombres a barcos de guerra alemanes. Sus interrogadores no detectaron el engaño, pero sus amigos del exterior pudieron imaginar en qué circunstancias le habían sacado la confesión. Consiguió enviar un breve mensaje “Fizzl [apodo de Houtermans] está en Berlín” a un amigo, quien adivinó que estaría en la cárcel. Este hombre pidió ayuda urgente a Max von Laue, que se valió de su influencia para lograr que lo pusieran en libertad.
Posteriormente encontró trabajo con el científico e inventor Manfred von Ardene, quien tenía un laboratorio privado en un barrio residencial de Berlín. A von Ardene le interesaban los estudios sobre la fisión y, sorprendentemente, había persuadido al servicio de correos alemán para que le desviara parte del presupuesto para investigación, cuantioso pero aún sin asignar en su mayor parte. Allí, Houtermans hizo su gran descubrimiento. Llegó a la conclusión de que un reactor abastecido por uranio natural podría manufacturar plutonio, y este último era mucho más fácilmente separable que el uranio 235.
Durante este mismo período fue enviado en varias visitas breves a sus viejos lugares en la Ucrania ocupada por los nazis, con un encargo de la marina alemana para descubrir qué habían estado haciendo los laboratorios soviéticos. A su regreso envió paquetes de comida a sus amigos de Jarkov y se comprometió en un peligroso juego para proteger a judíos y otros fugitivos.
El laboratorio de von Ardenne formaba parte del proyecto de bomba atómica alemana y Houtermans, en una visita a Suiza, envió un telegrama a Inglaterra advirtiendo de que los físicos alemanes se habían embarcado en un programa de desarrollo. Eligió como mensajero a un científico judío llamado Fritz Reiche. Debido al peligro de llevar cualquier mensaje apuntado en un papel,Reiche se lo aprendió de memoria, palabra por palabra, tal como se lo había dicho Houtermans. Cuando Reiche llegó a EEUU transimtió el mensaje a Rudolf Ladenburg, que trabajaba en Princeton:
Estamos esforzándonos mucho, incluido Heisenberg, para poner trabas a la idea de fabricar la bomba. Pero la presión de arriba (…) Por favor, di todo esto; que Heisenberg no podrá soportar durante más tiempo la presión del Gobierno para que se dedique muy en serio a fabricar la bomba. Y diles, diles que deberían darse prisa, si ya han empezado el artilugio (…)
Ladenburg escribió una nota a Lynam Briggs, director del Comité del Uranio de los EEUU y organizó una cena en Nueva York para que Reiche se reuniera con otros refugiados entre los que estaban Eugene Wigner, Wolfgang Pauli, Hans Bethe y John von Neumann. Tal como rememoró después: escucharon atentamente y lo asimilaron. No dijeron nada, pero parecían agradecidos.
Ya hemos dicho que era un fumador empedernido. Pues bien, resulta que en 1945 se estaba haciendo muy difícil encontrar tabaco en Alemania, así que fue a Abraham Esau, la cabeza administrativa del proyecto de la bomba atómica alemana, y le convenció de que el tabaco de Macedonia era rico en agua pesada requerida para la fabricación del artefacto. En consecuencia, se consiguió y se envió a Houtermans un saco de tabaco como material con prioridad de guerra. Y sí, se lo fumó y se le acabó. Superándose a sí mismo, pidió otro envío. Esta vez se levantaron sospechas y se plantearon preguntas; la Gestapo instruyó a Von Ardenne para despedir a Houtermans e inmediatamente se procedió a su detención. Una vez más, von Laue, con alguna ayuda de otros físicos destacados, se las arregló para sacar a su amigo libertino, a quien se le permitió trasladarse al instituto de física en Gotinga. Pocos meses después la guerra terminó y Houtermans quedó finalmente a salvo.
Siguió trabajando en Gotinga durante siete años en los que sus intereses se desplazaron hacia la radiactividad natural (geológica); pero estaba sometido a las restricciones impuestas a los científicos por las potencias ocupantes. Por ejemplo, se impuso un límite máximo a las resistencias permitidas para uso en los laboratorios, cuyo límite era de 109 ohmios. El indignado Houtermans protestó diciendo que incluso un lápiz tenía una resistencia más alta. En 1962 recibió una llamada para ocupar la Cátedra de Física en la Universidad de Berna donde desarrolló un vigoroso programa de investigación, pero cuatro años más tarde murió de cáncer de pulmón a los sesenta y tres años de edad.
Una conocida teoría de Houtermans tiene que ver con un grupo de físicos muy destacados que salieron de Hungría por la misma época. Eran nada menos que: Theodore von Kármán, George de Hevesy, Michael Polanyi, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann y Edward Teller. Dos de ellos, de Hevesy y Wigner, fueron Premios Nobel. Pues bien, Houtermans decía que en realidad eran visitantes venidos de Marte pero que tenían una cierta carencia para hablar un idioma sin acento excepto el húngaro que lo hablaban perfectamente. De este modo, se podían mezclar como un ser humano más entre ellos.
Todos, absolutamente todos los físicos que trabajaron con él, lo pusieron por las nubes. Y es que estuvo en trabajos de gran importancia, como junto a George Gamow cuando describió el efecto túnel; junto a Robert d’Escourt Atkinson con quien hizo el primer cálculo de las reacciones nucleares en las estrellas. Como Atkinson conocía las transmutaciones nucleares que Rutherford estaba llevando a cabo en Cambridge dijo:
- Lo que se puede llevar a cabo en el laboratorio Cavendish con más razón tendría que ser posible allá arriba.
- ¡Cierto! - contestó Houtermans - ¿por qué no echamos la cuenta para ver cómo podría ser eso?
Esos cálculos fueron los que impulsaron posteriormente a Hans Bethe y Carl von Weizsäcker a desarrollar la teoría de la generación de energía en las estrellas.
De hecho, una de las anécdotas más conocidas sobre nuestro héroe de hoy sale de este último trabajo. Estaba junto a Charlotte (su primera y tercera esposa) y nos explicaba que después de haber hecho los cálculos:
Cuando hubo anochecido, una tras otras fueron apareciendo las estrellas, en un hermoso espectáculo.
- ¡Qué preciosas son cuando brillan! - exclamó mi acompañante.Entonces, yo me puse algo tieso y dije:
- Desde ayer sé por qué brillan. ¿Lo sabrán ellas?
Ella no dio señal de quedar impresionada. ¿Me creía? Seguramente, en aquel momento le importaba un comino.
Así que cuando expliquéis alguna vez la vida de Houtermans, recordad decir que fue el primer hombre que supo por qué brillaban las estrellas.
afanado de: http://www.historiasdelaciencia.com
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