George's Marvellous medicine. Roal Dahl

A very simple plot, a kid's story, quite childish, yet the way Dahl delivers it is highly amusing and entertaining. It was a great 'medicine' for a day in which I was exhausted and a bit frustrated.

A kid, George, is tired of the bulling attitude of his grandmother, a horrible old lady who keeps shouting horrible and irritating things to him. He decides to cure her (or to blow her up) with a concoction he makes out of anything he finds in the house and the farm (soap, deodorant, make up, animal's pills, shoe polish, etc), everything boiled up in a huge pot.

Grandma at first starts literally fuming, then grows and grows to be taller than the two-story house. He also gives it to the animals who equally grow like mad. His dad, when comes back home, gets excited as they may become rich by growing their full farm (mom was not so happy though). But the 'medicine' is over.

George tries to make it again, but doesn't remember all the ingredients. After a lot of fruitless attempts they finally reach some results... but this new medicine has a different effect. They give it to grandma who starts becoming smaller, and smaller, and even smaller, until she disappears from sight.

They give up, they will not find the medicine to become rich, but at least... they have got rid of grandma who became so small they coud

The World is Flat. Chapter 10: Developing countries and the Flat World.

Every region, every country has its strengths and weaknesses, but everybody needs reform retail, which is looking at infrastructure, education and governance and upgrading each one "so more of your people have the tools and legal framework to innovate and collaborate at the highest levels".

Here is an interesting way of seeing the world as a group of neighborhoods:

Western Europe... assisted-living facility with aging population lavishly attended by Turkish nurses. U.S., a gated community with metal detector, people sitting in front yards, complaining how of lazy others are, with Mexican labor and other immigrants who make the community function. Latin America is the fun part of town, night-life, no new businesses (except for Chile) all reinvestment is made outside. Arab street is a dark alley, except for a few side-streets like Dubai; the only new businesses are gas stations. India, China and East Asia would be "the other side of the tracks"... a big teeming market, small shops, one-room factories, engineering colleges. Nobody sleeps in this neighbourhood and everyone wants to get to the "right side of the tracks". In the Chinese streets the roads are well paved, no potholes and there are working lights. The Indian roads are not so nice. Africa is where businesses are boarded up, life expectancy is declining, and the only new buildings are health-care clinics.

To thrive on this World, countries need to reform, but not just that, they have to keep on moving. If they just sit down, they are over-run by others. The clearest example is how China has taken the US Market from Mexico with respect to manufacturing and India with respect to services.

The World is Flat. Chapters 1 to 4

Before Columbus, the world was thought to be flat. From 1492 onwards, people knew it was spheric (or almost). From 1989 it went into a flattening process which has almost been accomplished all round the globe.

There were ten forces which haves are making the world flat: the fall of the Berlin wall (11/09/89), when Netscape went public (8/9/95), the work flow software (standards, etc), uploading to the net, outsourcing, offshoring, supply-chaning, insourcing, in-forming (Google, Yahoo, etc), and finally what he calls the 'steroids' (digital, mobile, personal and virtual).

This flattening went together with the process of globalization, divided in 3 eras: "Globalization 1.0 was countries globalizing... Globalization 2.0 was companies globalizing... Globalization 3.0 is the new flound power for individuals to collaborate and compete globally".

Thus, this flat world has brought the capacity for individuals to compete in the market against anybody, whether it is a country, company or other individual from anywhere in the world and with very few resources.

This is given because people can access information in an extremely easy way (search engines are the tool in this case), they can share information in many fashions (sites, blots, etc), economies ar open for that sharing, and even if they don't, the Internet facilitates it. In few words, this flattening was brought about by the opening of people, the PC, the Internet, the browsers and all the tools that come along with that. But th flat world has to be taken advantage of with hard work.

March of the sandbots

IEEE Spectrum
Issue April 2009
Pages 26 onwards

Until now many robots have been created which can move efficiently on or in many different surfaces: water, climbing, roads, etc. But none is able to move efficiently on all, nor any one is able to move on sand.

Even our vehicles are not able to move well on surfaces which haven't been paved, imagine automated robots.

In 2001 some robots were sent for the rescue work at World Trade Centre, and in no time they were not able to continue due to the tough surface conditions. In 2006 some robots were sent to a rescue mission in a collapsed mine... they made it 700 meters until they were totally stucked in mud. Thus it is required to get robots to move efficiently on various different tough surface conditions.

The team of researchers authoring this article made a robot SandBot which is 6 legged with some sort of flippers that turn to give the forward movement. They are testing movement on sand. But sand does not yet have a good mechanical model. Thus they have been studying the movement of beings such as lizards, crabs and snakes to imitate their skills.

We are also looking below ground inspiration. Using high speed X-rays, we are now studyng lizards called sandfish that can burrow into sand in the blink of an eye and then "swim" through the material underground... With nature as our guiid, we expect that robots will soon master some incredible new abilities.

El Hombre de Villa Tevere. Chapter XII.

St. Josemaria is the Father of a large family, Opus Dei, the best place to live and the best place to die. He would always remind his children to have details of affection with one another, and would preach it with example, noticing when people were not feeling well even if they didn't say it.

A fellow of the Roman College, Illanes, was with fever just by Christmas time; so that he wouldn't miss the happiness of the festivities, he asked the administration to make a mini-Christmas tree with chocolate decorations and he himself brought a mall child-Jesus for his room.

He had attempted three times along with his sons, to buy a piano for the Roman College, but each time when they had saved enough money, they had to buy somehting more important, thus they "ate 3 pianos". When finally they bought it, he suggested to gift it to his daughters, and even before finishing the sentence, they all said "YES".

When visiting his daughters in Germany he realized they were very badly economically and didn't have a washing machine (they had to do a lot of washing for many people). Before he went back to Rome, he made sure (he had it bought) they had a washing machine and other few useful tools.

In this family there are no levels or hierarchies. If there are any governors or bishops, when they reach home, they remove all their stuff, put it in a drawer and are the same at home.

The directors of this family are there to serve, and when they stop being directors, they go back to be one more. Encarnita Ortega had been in the central governement for over 20 years, and when she went back to spain, the Father told her to go back to serve and to teach with example.

Whenever some of his children would die, he would be very deeply moved, he loved them all the same but would certainly be more moved by the dead of those he had been living with for a longer period of time.

When Salvador Canals died he was really destroyed. He knew he was about to die but had to go out of town, before leaving, he went to visit him and made sure of getting him a box of sweets he knew Salvador liked a lot. St. Josemaria didn't remember the name, made the effort to find out and had them bought. The box was too small and got a bigger one. He was really enjoying when seeing Salvador delighted with the sweets.

When Wladimiro Vince died in a place accident, three other people of the Work went to the island where the accident had been. While relatives of the otehr victims couldn't get close to them because of not being able to bear the fould smell, the members of the Work did it... The Work si the best family, best to live and best to die.

El hombre de Villa Tevere. Chapter XI

In Opus Dei St. Josemaria is called, from the very beginning as The Father. and this is not just a beautiful poetical or figurative way of doing so. This chapter is full of examples of why he was called the Father.

Being a very busy man, never felt it was a waste of time to spend a few minutes with his 'children'. Once a daughter of his asked him to draw a duck for her while she played the violin for him, just like that, in the middle of the corridor.

He was very attentive to the needs of people; while a son of his, Carlos, was reading, because of his work, very heavy stuff (theology, philosophy, etc), the Father suggested him he could read 'El Quijote de la Mancha' for his spiritual reading.

He would respect freedom but would help people to live with human tone. He saw an elderly fellow dressing like a youngster, thus he asked to be told delicately to improve his way of dressing to his age. Another fellow, a young man, who had long hair he told him he thought it was good for him: "una muestra de sinceridad" [a token of sincerity].

He had to correct when he had to, but always looking at that the person corrected was not hurt. A daughter of his who lost an important document had to be strongly (but tenderly) corrected by the Father. But later on, he made sure that she wasn't hurt. A few days or weeks afterwards, he called her to thank her for giving a class about the love and care for that kind of documents (el catecismo).

He did not like being a tyrant, thus, he would always ask "please" without giving strong orders, even for the minutest detail.

He was always with good humour, looking for ways to help people have a good time, enjoying the time he spent with his children and enjoying when they "cheated" him so as to spend more time with him. Once he told a fellow after looking into his watch to tell him after 5 minutes to stop the get-together. After 15 minutes he realized that that son had not told him, and the fellow reacted "that watch sometimes goes too fast, don't trust it" and he had a good laugh.

He would go out of his way not to loose anybody. For instance, one day he spent the whole day at a station with Don Alvaro, waiting for a lady of the Work from an Italian city who had decided to "run" away. When she saw him waiting for him, showing his love for his daughters, she decided to stay. And another time he was found crying because of a son of his who was about to loose his vocation because of not struggling far away from the "muros capitales de la fortaleza" [capital walls of the fortress].

HE REALLY WAS A FATHER.

Friday Fax appeal.....Help us stop Hillary Clinton and her global abortion plans...‏

Friday Fax sent on 28 April by Austin Ruse, telling of the atrocities which Hillary Clinton is going to do in her pro-abortion campaign. Not much time to summarize it, so I just copy-paste the message:

Only a few days ago Hillary Clinton appeared before the US House of Representatives and in sworn testimony said the following. Keep in mind, she promised all these things in her official capacity of US Secretary of State!

• Clinton praised Margaret Sanger, the racist and eugenicist founder of Planned Parenthood Federation. She compared Sanger to Thomas Jefferson!
• Clinton praised the UN Population Fund, the UN agency that helped set up and run the Chinese one child policy which is responsible for millions of forced abortions.
• Clinton said the US would ratify the pro-abortion CEDAW treaty, meaning the last meaningful CEDAW holdout will now fall.

These things are awful and dangerous enough but she also said this:

• The full force of the US government will be used to get governments to change their laws on abortion all over the world.

You likely know that the US has the most radical abortion laws in the world: abortion for any reason and no reason through all nine months of pregnancy. Hillary Clinton wants this for the entire world.

You likely know that most of the world has abortion either against the law or heavily regulated. Radical pro-abortion feminists like Hillary Clinton cannot stand this. They hold abortion to be a kind of secular sacrament, a sacrament that everyone must worship!

I know Hillary Clinton. My staff and I did battle with her throughout the 1990's when her husband occupied the Oval Office. I watched her work at Cairo+5, Beijing+5 and I can tell you first hand that Hillary Clinton is among the most radical pro-abortion advocates in the whole world.

I truly fear that with Hillary Clinton as US Secretary of State and with Barack Obama as President of the United States, and with their allies at the UN, we are in for the most wicked four years in our global battle to protect the unborn child from abortion.

Mr. Ruse says that they are the only ones reporting and fighting first-hand this issue. I hope they aren't. But whether they are or not, I hope they get all the support they require.

Lent: 40 Days, 40 Thoughts from the Pope

An article published at the Opus Dei web-site.

The article gives a series of 40 thoughts from the Pope in the last 4 years about lent.

Is hard to summarize that, but something that remains clear in my mind is that lent should be a time of fasting that helps us to get closer to God and to the people around us, family, friends, society.

Two points which talk about poverty and detachment:

16. We are not owners but rather administrators of the goods we possess: these, then, are not to be considered as our exclusive possession, but means through which the Lord calls each one of us to act as a steward of His providence for our neighbor. (2008)

17. In those countries whose population is majority Christian, the call to share is even more urgent, since their responsibility toward the many who suffer poverty and abandonment is even greater. To come to their aid is a duty of justice even prior to being an act of charity. (2008)

In an obese world, children obsessed with thinness

From the blog Family Edge

Author Carolyn Moynihan

Anorexia and eating disorders is highly increasing in kids 10-12 years old, both boys and girls.

They say the reason is because of the obsession in the media about the obesity problem. And they suggest that the outlook to it should be changed to a positive one, say "running around all day". Also the reality shows seem to be a cause for this.

But Carolyn adds:

There’s a deeper issue, though: a focus on the self that has been building for several decades and probably owes something to small families and over-solicitous parents who want to give their children everything -- except the opportunity to forget themselves and look after others.

The World is Flat. Chapters 5 to 9

Book Title: The World is Flat. A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Edition: Published with updates 2006
First edition: 2005
Publisher: Penguin books

Section: America and the flat world

After he has given support to "prove" his hypothesis that the World has gone flat, Tom goes on to analyze what's the position and what should America do to thrive successfully in this new world.

America has all the qualities to thrive, including the edge of being the most powerful economy and the right kind of people to do so. However, America is in "crisis", a quite crisis which is not being noticed but which is making them loose ground to other economies.

The people who will succeed in this world are those he calls untouchables. they are people who are able to adapt themselves to new situations, to update themselves often and quickly, always improving and always looking for new edges, thus they are untouchable because they never become obsolete.

He gives the example of a lady, who even though she dropped College and never went back, she went on adapting herself, always seeking new things to learn so that, the moment her job became not needed any longer, she would be able to give a leap before falling into unemployment. Thus, she was a great adapter.

America's problem is that they aren't educating their people to be that untouchables which they require to be. Their system is not good because of lack of basics; because they have too many lawyers and too few engineers and mathematicians. is no tjust that of course, but certainly is a problem in education.

He ends by saying that "this is not a test". America is loosing ground and ahs to wake up soon to the reality and start working for it.

Mother Teresa, The Glorious Years. Chapter IX

Book title: Mother Teresa, The Glorious Years
Author: Edward Le Joly, S.J., 1989
Edition: 3rd print, 1998
Publisher: St. Paul's

"The Pope's Ambassadress-at-large"

As a woman in love with Jesush, she was deeply united to the Church, thus to the Pope. But for John Paul II, Mother became a trusted collaborator.

He used her (asked for her help, usually her presence and words):

for his campaigns, for peace, for prayer, for respect of the holiness of family, for the right of unborn child to life, for the union of all Christians, etc.

There was a great friendship between the two of them, due to their very close friendship with Jesus Christ. He called her to support his campaign to rekindle the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to Synod of bishops, to the Marian Year procession in Rome with him (first he had asked her to go be in Poland).

At Paray-le-Morial, where the devotion to the Sacred Heart started she told th pilgrims without mincing her words:

Let your purity be purse, lt your chastity be chaste, let your virginity be virgin, do nothing to sully your soul and your bodies that belong to the Lord. And when you marry, if you do, there is no more beautiful gift you can bring to your spouses than a body and mind that have remained pure and chaste.

Le Joly says:

She knows that the young like straight talk better than anything else.

What Obama has done so far. Friday Fax

Message through e-mail from Austin Ruse on 14 April 2009 from c-Fam.

Obama is the president which is most pro-abortion in history. He is doing a lot of harm to the unborn child. In just a few months:

• Restored US funding for the UN Population Fund, the UN's population control agency that helped set up and run the Chinese forced abortion program.
  
• Overturned the US ban on funding International Planned Parenthood Federation and the Center for Reproductive Rights, aggressive pro-abortion and anti-family groups that are deeply involved in forcing abortion on unwilling people all over the world, especially in Latin America.
  
• Obama's negotiators at the UN have already made aggressive pro-abortion and anti-family statements at the UN including signing a French declaration that seeks to make homosexuals a specially protected class at the expense of religious freedom.

After that, Mr. Ruse goes on to tell us about the big expenses in producing the Friday Fax and asking for help to continue doing it.

The Friday Fax now costs $177,000 per year to produce. This includes salaries, rent, expenses, printing of the hardcopy edition, and exploding email expenses.

A real lot of work which the Friday Fax team is doing. I do hope they get more support.

Off-Target Criticism of "Business Ethicists"

A blog post at: The Business Ethics Blog
Author: Chris MacDonald

In this post, Chris somehow replies to an editorial from "Boston Globe, (by a philosophy professor named Gordon Marino)". Marino makes a critic of ethicists who are doing nothing to change the world with their job. People still haven't changed their way of doing things and they (the ethicists) seem just to be getting paid for nothing.

Chris argues that first the "ethicists" should be identified. The people who are part of a company, generally are lawyers and secretaries who are not really the ones doing the "ethics" part. However, they do give advice. On the other hand, the ones really doing ethics are the philosophers like Chris.

Then of course, it does not make sense that because of not being able to change human nature, the making of ethics should stop. Advice should still be given and hope that people will heed it and act in an ethic way.

Perhaps I have misinterpreted things here, or over-simplified it... it may be because the topic is rather high for me... :-)

El hombre de Villa Tevere. Chapter 10

This chapter makes you pray telling about the deep interior life of St. Josemaria, his relationship with God without the miracles.

A deep interior life based on the practice of a few pious actions during the day, the Norms of piety any member of Opus Dei does, such as daily Holy Mass, Mental Prayer, spiritual reading, etc.

His interior life would lead him to live in the presence of God at all times, doing everything for Him and in Him. everything would lead him to think of god, and he would make use of everything to go towards God, even for instance, of songs which talked about human love, directing those words towards God or towards the Virgin Mary.

But that wouldn't take him out of the world, on the contrary, thanks to that presence of God he would be very attentive of other people's needs or likings. For example, once, while leaving a farm house at which he had been resting and working in the summer of 1967, Father Javier Echevarria found in the house a snake. Skillfully he managed to kill it, and when triumphantly announced it, St. Josemaria asked him if he had removed it so that the people who would clean, wouldn't get scared finding it there (instead of just thinking of the adventure.

His love for the Virgin Mary was not theoretical but shown in deeds. When an image (a statute) was 'rescued' from Switzerland (it had been disposed) and arrived to Villa Tevere, he immediately went to welcome her, kissed her hand and told her beautiful praises and many words of love.

He also praised, loved, prayed and learn many things from various saints, without making of his devotion a full catalogue of practices or rituals.

His love for the Mass was intense, clear, intellectual, theological, and again very down to earth, shown in material ways. Preparing his Mass, not allowing distractions such as photographers getting very close to the altar. Usually, he would celebrate Mass at mid-day and prepare 15-minutes prior to that. One day, because of heavy work, they forgot to tell him 15 minutes in advance and they told him only when it was already time. At first he was upset, but then, he was so much in love with the Mass and God in the Eucharist that he was able to concentrate very well, in spite of not having been able to stop, take a break to focus on it prior to the appointed time.

He also had a great devotion to the guardian angels.... he saw a lady of the Work on the stree and next day he told her he had prayed to her Guardian Angel.

He needs to be praying, like the beating of the heart, that's hy, he said, he can never loose his temper for more than a couple of minutes.

He is so immersed in prayer that even when in dangerof dying (the car was slipping uncontrallably towards a cliff) he didn't stop praying or got out of control.

This presence of God cannot be improvised, it comes from being well rooted in God throught the practice of the otehr Norms. Prayer cannot be anonimous, he said, it has to be an intimate relationship with God, one to one. Heave is guaranteed for those who do the Norms well.

Cars, family size and demography

Blog post at: Demography is Destiny
Author: Brian Lilley

Europeans ask: why American like large cars? Because they have something to put inside... Americans have larger families than Europeans or Japanese people.

Before many could be compressed in a small car, but now the rules in America are very stringent and is not possible to fit many kids in one small car (even if they fit).

They should come down to Mumbai and see how many kids can fit in a Rikshaw!

Keeping my face off of Facebook has my girls all a Twitter

Article from: MercatorNet
Author: Erin Manning

A mom of three girls, almost in their teens. She keeps control over their use of Internet and e-mail, in a way which I think, is a great help for them to learn the right use of these tools.

They can check and write e-mails, only with her permission. The three have a common e-mail id and is linked to their mom's such that they can read e-mails only once mom has screened them and removed the junk out. They stopped using web-based e-mail because they were getting ads with dubious content, and Erin got tired of having to close the browser every now-and-then just when they were composing or reading an e-mail.

Ms. Manning says: "I know that part of the reason for the excitement is that they see me use the computer to write, to blog, to send email, to communicate. We set examples for our children by our actions, whether we mean to or not--but that’s something to bear in mind, when we consider whether or not a new Internet tool or technology is going to be useful, or a mere distraction."

Thus, she has decided not to join the Social Networking sites such as Facebook. If she doesn't do it, most probably her daughters won't be that much attracted to it, or at least it will be easier for them to stay away from it in spite of the influence from other places. On the other hand, if their mom was part of it...

El hombre de Villa Tevere. Chapter 9

This is a much shorter chapter than the previous ones as if wanting to re-affirm that St. Josemaria's life though having it, was not made of it.

The chapter talks about the extraordinary graces, the miracles which Our Lord God worked on St. Josemaria or for him.
"Un hombre que se fia de Dios: eso es un santo" [A man who trusts God, that's a saint]. St. Josemaria, as all other saints, based his life on God, asked him for everything and expected everything from him. He knew clearly that he, by himself could do nothing.

In 1958, when in London, he almost felt into sadness realizing that he could do nothing to bring to God such society which was so indiffirent to God's things. But then he heard "tú no puedes nada, pero Yo lo puedo todo" [you can do nothing, but I can do everything], and of course, then he knew that there would be success in London and everywhere else.

There were many miracolous events on his life: words he heard from God clearly, miracolous cure from diabetes in 1954, among others, but he was always reluctant to talk about this, as he wanted to transmit to people that holiness is in the ordinary, everyday things, not the miracles which rarely happen.

El hombre de Villa Tevere. Chapter 8

St. Josemaria is a great communicator who, wanting to help everybody to get closer to God (from 100 souls, the 100) does apostolate with each person he meets, wherever he goes, adapting the way he tells things to each person, to his or her capacity.

He is a great friend to his friends, never forgetting them, always looking for ways to make them have a good time, like to a Cardinal friend of his for whom he asked some "MU sweets" which were quite cheap but the Cardinal liked a lot. Of course, he had them very nicely wrapped as well.

His interest for people's good would go from A to Z, from the gypsy "enchinador" who was almost drunk when called to meet him, to Walt Disney who like "The Way".

Telling the truth clearly to his friends, like to a priest friend of his who, when the Spanish Civil War was about to start, had decided to stay indoors to do a lot of studies instead of going out to help people (mainly spiritually).

He was a wonderful communicator, with love, gift of tongues and a lot of good humor and struggle as well.

He is confident 100% sure that the truth which he knows is true, but he respects and blesses other peoples beliefs, thus when he talks he says "I believe...". Like to a group of Japanse ladies who visited him and told them to pray for him and gave them a blessing as a priest, even if some of them were not Catholic, nor Christian.

Tears for Middle Pleistocene human Cranium 14

Article published at: MercatorNet
Author: Michael Cook

Recently, archaeologists in Spain (Sima de Huesos) found a skull from a person 530,000 years ago. They have called it Cranium 14. It belonged to a girl who was between 5 to 12 years old and had a distortion which affects 6 in every 200,000 humans.

This kind of distortion happens even now-a-days: "It is distressing for parents. The head can be large and misshapen, the eyes can bulge out. The children can be blind and deaf. Their limbs may be deformed. They may have seizures and feed poorly. Cranio-facial surgery works wonders and after many, many operations, an affected child can lead something like a normal life."

In our days, if parents knew that their child is to be born with this distortion, it is highly probable they would abort the child.

However, even 530,000 years ago, when people were supposed to be beasts and not care for each other, the girl managed to reach at least the age of 5, and perhaps even 12. This would have meant a lot of care and love from her parents.

A commentator says: "This is a very powerful article. Early humans, who barely survived day-by-day, were willing to say yes and love their disabled child. This contrasts with the great evil of today where our society, with all its modern comforts and medical technologies, would opt to kill this child in the womb. Humanity has not progressed, but has regressed where we behave merely as animals instead of humans with souls. "

El hombre de Villa Tevere. Introduction

Book title: El hombre de Villa Tevere (The man of Villa Tevere)
Author: Pilar Urbano
Tag line of book: Los años romanos de Josemaria Escrivá (the roman years of Josemaria Escriva)
Edition: 1st edition, 1994

I have heard many good things of this books describing or giving sketches of the life of St. Josemaria. I think iI will get many things from this book to improve in my own life as well as help other people (by showing them the example of a Saint) to improve on their own.

I start this idea of writing about each chapter (or a few chapters) a few days after I started this book, thus I skip 7 chapters (in writing them).

What this is all about

This is a slightly selfish blog... or perhaps very selfish...

I like reading, but my memory is not that very great. Thus, sometimes is rather difficult for me to refer to what I had read earlier, either when I have to give a class or talk (I do that once in a while) or when I'm writing something... well, I'm just beginning to write: another blog and an article in MercatorNet so far.

Thus, this blog is mainly for me: so as to keep track of what I have read; so as to be able to search quickly on the notes that I have taken; and so as to oblige myself to take notes from what I have read... sometimes I feel lazy to do it, but ultimately is quite useful.

However, I do hope it will also be helpful for other people. Perhaps you are looking to know more about a book you are about to read. Or maybe you don't want to read the book at all and you get my summaries here. Or you may have read the book and you agree or disagree with what I have written about it... do let me know it.