Thursday, October 25, 2007

Utopian Happiness

Many years ago, a reknown actor from our country, during the role he performed in a movie, had to give opinions about Argentina. He said: " Argentina is not a country, is a trap. The trick is that they make you believe that it can change. And actually, you start to feel that it can change, you fell the change coming, but in the end, it is just an Utopia. Because this country has no future, and this, wont change. This is a country which is constantly plundered and the ones who dare to do that to us, wont let us have a future. Some peolpe die, others are betrayed, and in the end....they say we are all equally guilty for what we have".
This view of Argentina, despite of being quite old, has lots of similarities with the actual reality of our country. Such movie was shot in 1997, but the words of its scripts which described our reality of those times, still have lot of meaning for many of us.
Most of our middle social class have not succeded yet in healing the injuries that the crisis of 2001 caused. That class continues to be pauper, as it became after the crude political and economical national crisis that we underwent in that year. In that same way, most of the professionals we have, have not yet found the better job opportunity which could encourage them to came back to the country. And we still hear the common advice in the streets: "Don't miss the chance to go abroad if it appears in front of you! Leave if you have the chance!".
And they still steal....and what is even worse is that they dare to say that we are already managing to succede as a country. They say that the dramatic times have already passed. The say that, eventhough, so many little things have changed since then. And I am not being pesimist, I appreciate those changes, but they are to small, to few, to fill me with hope....
Sometimes I think that this is all just a bad dream. A nightmare from which we will some day wake up. I convince myself (or let myself being convinced by them) that "it can change. And actually, I start to fell that it can change. And I fell the cahnge coming and, that in the end....."
.....the dream will have a happy ending this time.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Gen Control

The topic is trivial and complicated. Lots of scientists around the world support Gen Control because its many advantages have already been proved. However, there are many others who are really worried about the bussines that is built behind this scientific practise.
Gen control has provoke a great deal of debate, in the centre of which we can find issues such as the controversial ethic side of manipulating genes and the lack of laws that control it. The ones who are already taking advantage of genetic engineering, support it under the belief which presents it as a beneficial practise that allows the prevention of posible future diseases. Private laboratories refer then to genetc prevention as a kind of service that they can offer to the community. They argue that most diseases like Diabetes, Alzheimer and Parkinson have a genetic component which can be detected in the DNA contained inside a human cell. For them, parents have the chance to use gentic methods of prevention, which will remove the cells affected with those components, and in this way, guarantee that they will have a healthy child.
To worry abaout your children's future, is reasonable. But there are times in which this line is transpassed, and superficial issues start to appear as good reasons for some parents to let ambicious and non-ethic scientists manipulate their babies' genes. The genetic code not only controls how each living thing will develope. This units of our body are also responsable for the physical characteristics that a future being will have. In the developmnet of the study of how different characteristics are passed from each generation of living things to the next, Genetics has found the way to control the units inside the cells which are responsable for the particular qualities that we inherint from our parents. For example, a genetist is capable of modifying the genes that code for the colour of a baby's eyes and chose the option that answers the petition of the child's parents. And is precisely this kind of genetic practise which is developing into an anti-moral sort of bussines in which scientists play God and children are born with having been first ask to be as their parents asked.
To imaging parents doing so has nothing to do with the prevention of diseases and the posibility of improving our children future quality of life. These are two extremes which make Gen control such a burning issue. From conservative parts of societies and religious groups up to governmets and Human Rights organazations , the debate appears among everybody and almost everywhere. Moral and ethic issues are believed to be enemies for those scientists. And how much Gen Control will develop depends not only on society approval but also on the professional ambicions of those gentists who do not fear to take risk and are willing to go beyond whatever is expected from them.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Journal: Global Cities

A museum situatted in the city of London presented recently a photographs' exhibition called "Global Cities". The aim of it was to analize the differences and similarities of the big cities around the world and to evaluate their effects over nature and life quality.
The ehibition was intended to show the relionship between architecture and society. In order to do this, the researchers and artists took into account information provided by sociologists, the results of sudies related to population density and the development of modern art expressions. Their starting point, was the fact, that nowadays 90% of the world population is believed to live in cities, while last century that was the reality of only a 10% of the peolpe around the world, and that it is estimated that this percentage will rise to 75 by the year 2050.
The exhibition made many peolpe reflected on the rapid growing of cities which undoubtedly is starting to affect the social and psychological structure of the people who inhabitate them.
As regarding the placement of most of the cities, people who participate on the exhibition explained that this is related to geographical factors such as mountains and rivers, but it couldn't be denied that it is also related to different social, economical and cultural systems, which have historically influenced in the construction of the cities.
On the other hand, population density, appears in the centre of the debates about the future of the cities. However, this factor does not have a direct impact on people's life quality because design, open spaces and tranasport can been used to compensate the posible bad effects of the high number of inhabitants.
As regarding population diversity, this was understood as a normal ethnic an racial componet of the cities life, although it was also associated with economical and educational disparities.
The exhibition dealt with many interest issues related to cities growing but more than just an art exhibition in had a quite valuable educational and informative aim. It was not also an interesting artistic expression but it also made peolpe conscious about an aspect of our reality that, in most times, is not taked into accout seriously. The growing of the world population and the unplanned way in which many cities are becoming bigger should not only be an artistic issue but a problem than citizens and goverment should start to consider, before the impacts of it end up damaging our quality of life in dramatic ways.

Journal: The disease of violence

Thinking about violence as a disease may be not quite common, but it is a thought that has been supported by many sociologists and psychologists. For them, violence is a highly contagious social disease that causes emotional, psychological and physical damage and turns a peaceful person into a hostile one.
The essence of violence is hatred, anger, rage, and the desire of revenge, all caused by an act of wrongful violence internalized by the victim that suffers from this disease. When we allow ourselves to be filled with these emotions in response to a violent attack, they allow the attacker to do more than just cause physical injuries. The attacker then does emotional and psychological damage as well. He or she has destroy the victim's sense of inner tranquility and stability and this type of destruction generally remains long after the physical injuries healed.
The feeling of violence is the self-inflicted destruction of one's inner peace and undoubtedly violence generates more violence. It is a contagious feeling that can be passed to the others as a felling of no sympathy for the victim. Morevor, a violent victim may seek for revenge against the original perpetrator and can be tempted to take out that anger on family members and friends when emotional situations trigger the violent condition.
Violent people do not have ample social skills to resolve differences peacefully. And everytime a person commits a violent act, the attacker not only causes damage to the victim but becomes a more violent person as well. Every act of violence, whatever its nature, makes the perpetrator more violent. And the contagious nature of violence is capable of infecting the morally rightous of all sort of people, from a police officer, to a petty offender.
If we can treat violence as a disease, we sholud also try to find a cure for it or al least, promote its prevention. Before seending a message at grate scale to the whole world, we should start to treat violence from orselves, individually. A productive way to react to an act of violence is to have the courage to resist the normal impulse for revenge and punishment and to refrain from allowing anger, hatred, rage and vengeance to destroy one's inner peace. What we need to do, is to have a peacefull attitude towards violence itself.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Journal: The Market of Human Life

That human life does not have a price is not what the creators of the "humanforsale.com" web site think. Whoever enters that site and answer an extensive quIz is able to know how much their life costs. It is estimated that there are already 5 million peolpe who have registered themselves in that web page. It may sound funny but at the same time this situation can be understood as a symptom of the weak kind of human relationships that seem to be on top in our times. It is surprising that there is people who feel that they can set the price of another human life, and what is even worst is that there is people who admit being treat like that.
The common tipe of human relationship that it is impossing nowadays, is the one in which the other person is just an object, a medium to reach a goal. And this is ocurring in all type of situaions. For example, there is people who believe that paying a salary means to own somebody's life. And in this way they feel that they have rights over that employee's time, health and even dreams...There are others who think that granting a favor to a friend is paying for that person's loyalty....And of course, this siuations exist because there's people who agreed with them and accept to be under those circumstances.
When the complex network of the human relationships is broken, sympathy, solidarity, cooperation and compasion are lost. And then, human beings are not longer joined together by a responsible and sensitive kind of link. But just for the prices that we put ourselves one to another. Our relationships have then no more affection but an economical value. And this situation makes human life itself to become a superficial fact.
Any price that a human life gets, is low. Because human life is invaluable. To give to it another sense, to connect it with things that lead us to a better world, and to remember that our lives need to be nutured by the relationship with other lives is necessary to start leaving from the human market in which we are.
When we put a price to another person, we are accepting that our own life also has a price, and this is to dehumanize us. Life don't have a price, it has value, an that's a quite different thing.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Corpus like satellite image of word usage

Tittle: Corpus like satellite image of word usage.
Source: wwww.buenosairesherald.com
Date of Publication: Wednesday, August 1, 2007.
Author: Erin Mckean (The nwe York Times).

Vocabulary:

- Thesaurus: noun, a book that is like a dictionary but in which the words are arranged in groups that have similar meanings.
- Coleslaw: noun, finely chopped pieces of raw cabbage, carrot, onion, mixed with mayonnaise and eaten with meat and salads.
- Facetious: adjective, trying to appear amusing and intelligent at a time when other peolpe do not think it is appropriate, and when it would be better to be serious.
- Mother Lode: noun, a very rich source of gold, silver, etc, in a mine.
- Chide: verb, formal, to criticize or blame somebody because they have done something wrong.
- Lambaste: verb, formal, to attack somebody or criticize somebody very severelly, especially in public.
- Edible: adjective, fit or suitable to be eaten, not poisonous.
- Coerce: verb, formal, to force somebody7 to do something by using threats.

Main ideas:

- A corpus is like a photograph of the language.
- A corpus makes patterns in language more visible.
- The Oxford English Corpus is the mother lode of such insights of language.
- It is compliled from 32,000 different sources, all published since 2000, representing English from all over the world.
- It is a marvellous playground for those who love to explore language.
- The corpus shows how some words literal senses are losing ground to more figuratives ones.
- Information from the corpus gives hints about why peolpe use a certain word.
- Occasionally, consulting the corpus shows unfortunate patterns, not just for a word but in the wrold.
- By using the cropus to show patterns in language that are not visible to the naked eye, we come to a better understanding of our language and ourselves.
- Lexigraphers communicate that new understanding through better dictionary and thesaurus entries, one that more accurately reflects what words means and how they are used.

Personal Reaction:

With any doubt, a corpus is a magnificent database about language usage. It goes beyond the literal meaning of words to the social connotation that they have and the use that peolpe give to them.
From a semantic perspective we can say that language is not a steady fixed system. It changes as time goes by and the human race develops. Language addopts the social frames of each time in history and serves for the purpose of communication in an extremely modifiable way. Some aspects of the meaning of words are modified to cope with the necessities of people in language terms. As new words are coined into the language, the ones that already exist suffer variations in their meaning and usage according to the context in whch they are used and to the purposes for which they are used.
That a corpu can register all this fascinating changes in language is admirable. Through it, even our behaviour can be analyzed. The way we speak reflects more than we think. It shows our inner perceptions, our beliefs and ideas. We are what we say...and a corpus can show that!.