CÓMO HACER COCAÍNA
En boing boing salió el link de un video hecho por Matthew Bristow, en Guaviare, Colombia, mostrando la preparación de la pasta o base de cocaína bruta. Este otro muestra, en los Andes peruanos, la preparación de la base en clorhidrato de cocaína, o cloro.

Actualización: alguna gente piensa que publico estos videos porque me gusta la droga. La razón verdadera es que no me gusta la droga, pero pienso que solo conociéndola podemos enfrentarla. Ojo, estoy en contra de la guerra contra las drogas, y voto por que las legalicen. Pero ver los químicos que le echan y las condiciones en que la preparan puede poner sobrio a más de uno. La ilegalidad de las drogas y la guerra contra ellas son problemas peores para la humanidad que las drogas mismas, para la muestra este botón sacado de Reason Magazine:

"According to the latest data from the Department of Justice, a jaw-dropping 7 million -- or one in 32 -- Americans is in prison, on probation, or paroled. America has 4.6 percent of the world's population, but nearly a quarter of its prison inmates. The explosion has occurred over the last 20 years, which, not incoincidentally, dates back to the draconian 1986 drug bill Congress passed after the death of college basketball star Len Bias. Half of the increase in America's prisons since 1995 is due to federal drug crimes alone."
Link

¿SOBRE QUÉ ERES OPTIMISTA Y POR QUÉ?
La revista edge, donde las mentes más brillantes del mundo se reunen a preguntarse mutuamente las preguntas que se hacen a sí mismos, tiene una sección llamada "el centro mundial de preguntas", que saca cada año una pregunta a la que responden esas mentes brillantes. El lema del fundador del centro mundial de preguntas es "ya sé la respuesta, pero ¿soy suficientemente brillante para hacer la pregunta?". Durante años he seguido la pregunta anual, y en esos momentos me gusta hacerme la misma pregunta a mí mismo y a la gente que me rodea.

¿Sobre qué eres optimista y por qué?

Mi optimismo es que evitaremos la muerte de millones de personas por calentamiento global, y/o por falta de agua fresca, y/o por guerras y/o por epidemias. Pero la razón no es que la ciencia y la tecnología nos llevarán a un estado semi-divino de control de las fuerzas de la naturaleza, sino que simplemente no habrán esos millones de personas vivas cuya muerte será necesario evitar.

No soy budista: no creo que la felicidad esta en no existir o cosas así, al contrario, soy un hedonista epicureo, un vividor. Pero creo que sería maravilloso poder vivir en una sociedad como la que soñó Rawls cuando dijo que una sociedad ideal sería una en la que cualquier persona, antes de nacer, en un estado espiritual pre-biológico, estuviera dispuesta a dejar al azar nacer en el seno de cualquier familia. Hoy en día eso implicaría tener un 80% de probabilidad de nacer en una pesadilla inescapable de pobreza, ignorancia, violencia y enfermedad.

Los recursos son muchos y se explotan cada vez mejor, pero si pudieramos diseñar una forma de aldea global que pudiera controlar su crecimiento demográfico, cada persona podría nacer con el derecho a todas las posibilidades de todo tipo de desarrollo humano posible.

Y para no aburrirlos más, quisiera pedirles que respondan uds mismos a la pregunta, pero lean la pregunta primero:

The Edge Annual Question — 2007

WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY?

As an activity, as a state of mind, science is fundamentally optimistic. Science figures out how things work and thus can make them work better. Much of the news is either good news or news that can be made good, thanks to ever deepening knowledge and ever more efficient and powerful tools and techniques. Science, on its frontiers, poses more and ever better questions, ever better put.

What are you optimistic about? Why? Surprise us!

---

Go to source>>

NOTA: antes era imposible dejar comentarios en este blog sin tener una cuenta en blogspot. Ahora cualquiera puede dejar su comentario, y bienvenido sea!

Una maravillosa propuesta educacional.

“La propuesta de Jack McKenzie: Montar una programa alternativo de Universidad liberando al estudiante del todas las responsabilidades curriculares. Déjelo escoger sus estudios. Cuando salga, entréguele, en lugar de un diploma, un certificado diciendo todo lo que él hizo en la Escuela.”

John Cage, M, Escritos (1967 - 1972)

---

Go to source>>

El último proyecto de uno de mis ídolos artísticos: Peter Greenaway.

WRITING ON WATER
Shakespeare Coleridge Melville

Red for Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Blue for Melville's Moby Dick and Green for Shakespeare's The Tempest.

1
Boatswain!

Call me Ishmail.

It is an ancient mariner.
There was a ship.
Speak to the mariners.
Fall to it yarely or we run ourselves aground!
The ship was cheered, washed by waves.

The harbour cleared.

Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!
The Sun came up upon the left,

Out of the sea came he.

And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
I love to sail forbidden seas.
And now the storm-blast came.

A plague upon this howling!

Have you a mind to sink?
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, the southward aye we fled.
How the wild winds blow it.
We are less afraid to be drowned than thou art.
Would thou mighst lie drowning the washing of ten tides!

We split, we split, we split!

2
I would fain die a dry death.
Put the wild waters in this roar.
The Sun now rose upon the right, out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left, went down into the sea.
A brave vessel dashed all to pieces!

There's no harm done.

Wipe thou thine eyes.

They hurried us aboard a bark.
A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged, nor tackle, sail, nor mast.
The very rats instinctively have quit it.

And the good south wind still blew behind, the breeze to blow.
To cry to the sea that roared to us, to sigh to the winds.
I have decked the sea with drops full salt
I hear the last of our sea-sorrow.

3
To fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curled clouds.
Now on the beak, now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
On the topmast, the yards, and bowsprit.
The most mighty Neptune plunged in the foaming brine,
to fetch dew from the still-vexed Bermudes.
Think it much to tread the ooze of the salt deep.
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free.
To run upon the sharp wind of the north, like a nymph of the sea.
A southwest blow on ye and blister you all over.
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

4
Come unto these yellow sands, with its sweet air.

Stained with grief at ebb, my father wracked.

5
Sea water shalt thou drink.
Drenched in the sea, stained with salt water well fished for.
Full fathom five thy father lies
of his bones are coral made,
those are pearls that were his eyes.

Nothing of him that doth fade,

but doth suffer a sea-change.
Twas sad as sad could be, the silence of the sea.
This ditty does remember my drowned father.
Glorious and gracious in the wind, down dropt the breeze.
The baser currents of the sea blow my keeled soul along.

As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

See the sun - I've oversailed him.

Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
What strange fish hath made his meal on thee?
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
The braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze.
she rechurned the cream in her own white wake
against the wind he now steers.
My bones feel damp within me and from the inside wet my flesh.

6
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel.

With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
The stars were dim, and thick the night,

From the sails the dew did drip.

As is the ribbed sea-sand.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,

I watched the water-snakes.
The sails did sigh like sedge
and the rain poured down from one black cloud.
The lightning fell with never a jag.

Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe.

Slowly and smoothly went the ship.

I am standing water
I'll teach you how to flow
Do so.
To ebb
Ebbing men

so near the bottom run
impossible that he's undrowned

I'll fish for thee.

7
There's a soft shower to leeward.

Such lovely leewardings.

The sea mocks, the billows spoke, the winds did sing it to me.
Will I have eyes at the bottom of the sea?
I'll seek him deeper that ever plummet sound.

Under the keel nine fathom deep,

I shall no more to sea, to sea,
the master, the swabber, the boatswain and I.

Some men die at ebb tide
some at low water
some at the full of the flood.

Twas night, calm night, the moon was high,
but soon there breathed a wind on me.

Nor sound nor motion made
Its path was not upon the sea.

In ripple or in shade.
A billow that's all one crested comb obliquely from the sea
in the rainbowed air, fell swamping back into the deep
and sank in a shower of flakes.

8
Circling surface creamed like new milk

afloat and swimming.
The weltering sea

amid fiery showers of foam.

Swiftly, swiftly,

Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze,

On me alone it blew.

The ship went down like lead.

9
My body lay afloat.

Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round.
The sledge-hammering seas
bale out the pouring water as mountain torrents down a flue.
The approaching tide will shortly fill the reasonable shore
that now lies foul and muddy.

This soul hath been alone on a wide wide sea,
and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

And I only am escaped to tell thee,

A sadder and a wiser man.

© Peter Greenaway, 2005