GACETA DEL ÁNGEL
Oiga, Don Carstens

Germán Dehesa
18 Ago. 09

Lo acabo de ver en la TV y quedé francamente sorprendido. Por boca de usted vine a saber que la Secretaría a su digno cargo planea para septiembre un aumento en los impuestos. Dijo usted esto y se quedó con rostro muy satisfecho y bonachón, haga de cuenta Oliver Hardy cuando lograba pedir su refresco de sasafrás.

No es por molestarlo, Don Carstens, pero de una vez le voy diciendo que me niego y me negaré rotundamente a aceptar esa alza que, tal como fue presentada, más parecía una “puntada”, que algo bien razonado y de cara a la ciudadanía.

Ustedes hacen sus reunioncitas para tomar decisiones que afectarán a todos y así, sin la menor explicación, nos anuncian esos cambios que siempre son, según ustedes, “para bien de la patria”.

Cada vez que nos hacen su perrería pretenden aplacarnos diciendo que todo es para servirnos mejor. A mis 65 años de edad, he tenido ya tiempo suficiente para comprobar que no hay cambios sustanciales que avalen lo dicho por la alta burocracia. Es decir, nuestros servicios siguen siendo de chisguete y para comprobarlo basta observar el ominoso y tornadizo comportamiento de la energía eléctrica en nuestros hogares cualquier tarde lluviosa.

Es un desastre, como lo es el campo, como lo son esos hospitales rurales que, al poco tiempo de su inauguración, ya han sido saqueados y desabastecidos. Miremos hacia la educación y de ninguna manera miramos el afable e inteligente rostro de Don Pablo Latapí, sino el de la Gordillo, esa mancha escurridiza, deforme y acuosa, o asomémonos a nuestros corruptísimos cuerpos policíacos que ya no pueden ser más ignorantes, más miedosos, más impreparados y más dispuestos a transar con la delincuencia.

Junto a esto, veamos los crecientes salarios y prebendas de los diputados, senadores y toda la caterva de “los que ya llegaron”. Ellos, no nosotros, son los únicos beneficiarios de estos aumentos que, de tiempo en tiempo, se les ocurren a los de nuestra casta dominante.

Mi estimado Don Carstens: ¿quiere usted subir los impuestos?, bueno, pero primero díganos por qué, explíquenos de modo sencillo cómo es que no le están saliendo las cuentas y necesita más dinero; dinero que, no lo olvide, sigue siendo nuestro y nunca de usted.

Los países que llamamos “democráticos” están obligados a tener un gobierno al que tienen que mantener para que éste, entre otras cosas, administre bien el dinero que ponemos en sus manos y lo aplique con tino y rectitud. Resulta, Don
Carstens, que ahora va a necesitar más y yo ciudadano y causante tengo todo el derecho a preguntar: ¿para qué lo quiere?, necesito que nos muestre una lista puntual y desglosada de a qué se van a aplicar esos nuevos dineros; de otra manera, esto sería pachanga y un flagrante abuso de autoridad de su parte.

Quedamos claros: si no me explica para qué lo quiere, no le voy a dar ni un centavo de mi dinero que en este año
horrendo he podido reunir con trabajos y chambas que ni usted, ni sus diputados pueden imaginar. Hacer el anuncio del aumento al tiempo que los periódicos denuncian los gastos imbéciles de la Presidencia y de su administración, es un insulto intolerable.

No pago porque no es ético y háganle como quieran.

I’ve at the Ungaid with the guys if “My Machine” and they have an incredible project that promotes creativity in Children.

Basically they go to schools and ask children to invent a machine, which afterwards will be designed a developed by collage students. Later Technical Students build the machine. Last year it reached 550 children, next year they will be 3 times more children.

What i love about this project is that brings creativity and play back to the classroom at all levels,

I spent some time looking at the ideas that children had, and you can see all kinds of fun ideas. From dresses that change colour depending on your mood to (my favorite) a Machine that scares away the ghosts designed by a 6 year old.

Of course the machine can detect different types of ghosts and scans your room for ghosts, and uses different types of strategies to scare away different types of ghosts.

Now, Technical and University students get graded by children based on how good they got their idea.

It matters not how much crazy or useful your machine is it can be built, not mattering a corporation wants to profit from it or not. It takes democratized innovation to children!

It represents a perfect example of how new generations generate value and operate their social dynamics, in distributed value generating networks coordinated thanks to ICT.

The entire projects is based in great values:

Cooperation Culture: The projects bring together not only students, from elementary schools and collage, but also they make companies commit to the projects by financing a 3rth of the sponsorhip in cash, a 3rth in species and and 3rd in staff time.

Respect: Because if a children has an idea, it is told that it can work, it doesnt matter how crazy / creative it can be.

You can contact them at:

info@mymachine.be
mymachine.be

This new operative system is actually making me rethink a lot of my (now obsolete)

Well i just ran it from a browser:

Although i had to
a_ download the files to my computer: http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/3867/

b_ download and config tbeta
http://tbeta.nuigroup.com/

c_ and then provide flash for the correct permissions to read my TUIO Inputs. (make sure to add the path of your tbeta et bloom files )
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html
and obviously create an input device or use your mouse

Don’t forget to send TUIO Messages from TBETA executable

: )
 

happy hacking

Multitouch IrGlove on Bloom Demo from .hj barraza on Vimeo.

http://ukini.org/
http://hjbarraza.com/
http://nuigroup.com/

via IrGlove v03 coloriris on Vimeo.

via Multitouch IrGlove on Bloom Demo on Vimeo.

Exponentes: Arq. Agustín Landa V, Arq. Roberto Romero, en sesiones de interlocución entre ambos exponentes. Catedráticos del Taller Cátedra Blanca CEMEX-ITESM, del ITESM Campus Monterrey.

• 5 sesiones del 23 de agosto al 27 de septiembre
• Sábados de 11:00 a 1:00 pm
• Costo: $1,250 pesos

Contenido: México no quedó exento de la influencia del Movimiento Moderno de las primeras décadas del siglo XX, fue incluso una fuerte plataforma para que este movimiento arquitectónico consiguiera sus mejores ejemplos de como un movimiento de carácter internacional se acoplara sincrónicamente a una cultura local, un hecho que en nuestros días se ha perdido por completo. El curso analizará histórica y teóricamente la producción de arquitectura en nuestro país desde 1910 hasta nuestros días. Se revisarán, por medio de casos de estudio, las obras y los proyectos de los principales autores que dieron las bases y aquellos que son protagonistas de la arquitectura mexicana en la actualidad.
.

Beatriz M. Castillo
recepcion@marco.org.mx
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
www.marco.org.mx
Conmutador: 52 (81) 8262-4500

Image by Carlos Bravo, Arte Terrestre

check out max’s blog

I just saw a conference Casey gave a few days ago, but since im the kind of dude that likes to download and watch stuff on the go,i didnt want to see it all online.

So i just went ahead and find the mov file for everyone to download

enjoy:

via tagr.tv

I have the power !!!!

Hopefully Processing might be part of the curriculum for digital artists and designers program at ITESM.

First came starbucks, they placed one right in the middle of campus. I first thought they where building an extension of the new biotech lab, or some kind of space for students to hack around. but no no no, it was a over priced, over hyped coffe shop.

We have a space crisis at campus, there is no space for researchers, scientists and entrepenurs and they pull this kind of shit !

Then they started to let restaurant franchises in.. (ok not that bad we sometimes need to eat)

And now the first official Apple Store in Mexico will be inside campus. First in Monterrey and then all other campus in the country.

WTF !!!!

I remember the good old days where University was meant to learn, research and develop, not a shopping mall. Whats next Luis Vuitton ?

Please can’t they just leave whats left of our dignity and leave consumerism at least across the street? they have to invade our knowledge sanctuary? And then they ask why graduates students rank so low.

jesus

im sorry, it just pisses me off so much

Thanks for listening,

It is a software based 100% on Javascript so it can be embedded pretty much anywhere they use a technique called “Parallel Text” which places pieces of text side by side to compare them:

“parallel text conveys the meaning and flavor of sentences, but does not compare how the ideas are put together, nor does it relate specific words and phrases; CHUNKS OF MEANING:”

While I’m a bit concerned on the interactivity of the method, its a young project which with further versions can bring a always free and extensible tool for learning new languages to schools everywhere.

You ned but a browser (internet connection can be optional)
Get your demo here

 

Today localnewspaper “El Norte“ published on their first page the results of the most recent PISA evaluations of the OECD. Sadly by some bad implementations on educations strategies our averages went down. We are the last in line… Why other countries can improve their results while Mexico keeps getting worse ? after all arent we investing in our education system ? Well yes and no, sadly all the funds go directly to the teachers union, not to schools, students or programs Meanwhile the Teachers Union lead by you know who got an 35.85% in salary raise, 9% in benefits and 79.6 in compactable provisional compensation  (wtf?) .. really, do they deserve it ?That is why Jose Angel Gurria, Secretary of OECD persuades Josefina Vazques Mota (head of our ministry of education) and Blanca Heredia (Director for OECD Mexico) to promote an a relationship with the SNTE that is free of any political implication. A system that is linked to performance rather than political events.But we all know that as long as “She“ (elva esther gordillo) is at the head of the teachers union. this will be nearly impossible. After all after she broke with PRI Political Party she made her own party with her daughter as main canidate…SNTE has turned itself into a whore* while nobody inside it is looking after our children. At least Jospehine Vazques Mota is doing a good job.Kudos    * Whore verb [ intrans. ](of a woman) work as a prostitute : she spent her life whoring for dangerous men.• [often as n. ] ( whoring) (of a man) use the services of prostitutes : he lived by night, indulging in his two hobbies, whoring and eating.• debase oneself by doing something for unworthy motives, typically to make money : he had never whored after money.You choose whatever definitions suits your convenience.  

“Oh Dear Felipe, how much we despite you let me count the ways !”

No, really…It seems you payed nulled attention nor read the open letter.(I could even risk myself to declare that you are so full of it).Please just desist of any effort to defend yourself, you are only making it worse and making us sick.Your response seems quite uninformed and reflects the lack of knowledge for any contemporary trend in technology, education, information, knowledge societies or general contemporary culture.

But don’t worry, despite the HUGE efforts you have made to make the civil society hate you and the almost infinite news on corruption and illegalities on behalf of your organization, friends and processes. I mean… did you really thought that you could privatize public resources to develop your “fantastic” (insert sarcastic tone here) idea ?

Who on earth thought that such a public program could be privatized like that? oh wait, you are doing it already.Stealing our money and fucking up our poor education system.One thing is to have, conceive an idea, and another one is to take ownership of the intellectual property which derives from it.Do you imagine of all researchers and scientist would take full ownership of their ideas after companies financed the full R&D ? c’est ridicule !!! and even more when such funds come from CONACYT and not a private company.And how about all the content that government payed to be developed, are those also part of your property ? please….

But worry not my friend!!. We at the “Felipe Bracho’s Fan Club” have a great idea to save your ass reputation and letting you still profit from your hard work (cough cough). Nobody is against capitalism and entrepreneur ship. You just gotta play nice !! for real !!

No, really, bear with me for a while and seriously consider this:

Why don’t we adopt an open model? You see, there is nothing bad in creating a business model based on public commons.Fuck, just take a look at linux and all open-source projects. they are quite profitable. Why don’t WE open up Enciclomedia to an open innovation model in which the common base of intellectual property, software and course materials can be used, and increased by anyone who wishes to use it ? Every other industry is doing it for some time now. why shouldn’t we ?

I strongly recommend you read Wikinomis, and Open Innovation i can gladly provide you with copies. (as long as you promise you will read them).So here is the deal:

1. We release the course material in which millions tax money has been spent (software is useless cuz its on a microsoft platform)
2. We commit to review and enhance the contents and release them under a creative common license

And then you can sell it to which any government you like. It pays for real, you will end up with a better product than that you are currently trying to (and very questionably) sell, really.And then and ONLY then, Enciclomedia could get near to provide any benefit for our broken education system.

We all win…

Now please DO response in ordet to take further action to save Enciclomedia (not to justify nor defend yourself) and I’m sure we can all make things the right way, for a better future…
Longing to hear from you once again.
Your dearest friends:
Mexican non-dormant Civic Youth

HJ – I’m curious – do u know of specific areas in Mexico which are planned to receive the device? Any gov’t initiative to buy a bunch of them and distribute?As cool as this project is, I wonder if its not better to use up all that money it cost to develop and put it directly in the hands of those in need – make sure education in their schools is better, make sure kids are given food at school, make sure they have clothing, etc. The basics… before handing them a shiny new laptop.

Hey Gilad, its great to hear from you.Government is actually evaluating classmates and XO’s (the few xo government has are thanks to carlitos fatboy slim) I don’t know officially where is the ministry of education placing the laptops. But we know for sure that Carlos Slim spent 70 million for 250,000 XOs, which will be delivered to Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl in Mexico State, and Tuxtla Gutiérrez in Chiapas.Your question is indeed very polemic pervasive among developing countries, why give a laptop when then have nothing to eat.Well, in México its a difficult question to answer, not all México is a starving community of indigenous people. And while assuring the basic needs for ALL Mexicans should be a priority, such responsibility is in hands of SEDESOL (Ministry for Social Development) whereas Education is for SE (Ministry of Education). I do agree that they are a lot of schools specially in rural communities that need a lot of attention, (i usually sleep in one when i travel to rural areas) both in infrastructure and human capital. I can’t speak for Government but I believe they think an XO will increase the skills that the current education provides, or rather… provide an “global education”. They are currently in some states, projects that involve this two organizations to provide basic attention to children, such as free breakfast.I just realized that even if we delivered XO’s to all children, the education system is not prepared for such a leap. Teachers lack of any information literacy, and are lead by a corrupt leader that has for long stopped their own development.Somehow i fear that XO might end up like the Enciclomedia Project, surrounded by corruption dubious contracts and a terrible operation plan (Enciclomedia director Felipe Bracho, just left us an open message in another post, sorry is in spanish try babel fish of google language tools). They even try to silence a lot of critics out there deleting content from wikipedia.No matter how much we invest in tech, without a clear evolution of our education models, all similar efforts (tech related) will be pretty much a failure.We had a round table last week, within the global knowledge based development week, (the first knowledge cities summit). and discussed the topic “Education for knowledge Societies” we had David Garza, the dean of information technologies and engineering in Monterrey Tech, Cristobal Cobo, the head of FLACSO Education platform and Gabriel Kent Social Media Technologist.David shared with us the phenomena of new technology in education, with each new tech, education organizations thought that all of their problems where solved, (radio, tv, internet, and now ubiquitous computing.) it seems we are about to make the same mistake.Cristobal Cobo, stressed the relevance of developing adaptive experts rather than routine experts, (be able to learn, unlearn, adapt knowledge to new context etc.)And Kent, was merciless with closed intellectual property and non-common education goods.If somehow we can manage to combine this three elements, inside a education model for knowledge society, we will be able to make it.Betty Huergo, head of the American Institute of Monterrey has already started a pilot program and even including a small public school to share their innovations. I think its a great way to go.Ubiquitous Computing, is just a challenge of many that our education revolutions requires.I don’t know if its the most urgent one, but its the easiest one at the moment

• 1) Correct Teaching Minds… maybe i would start by, teaching teachers how to teach, so learners learn how to learn (hahaha, no really) Our teachers still think, that they job is to transfer knowledge. We need to educate our teachers so they can help students to be active and perpetual learners.
• 2) FOSE (free and open source education)… Its IMPERATIVE that we open up the intellectual property that we have and include open knowledge in our education system , it will increase the quality, lower the costs, and help our people understand what knowledge based economies stand for.
• 3) Information Literacy… You would be amazed by the lack of information skills that affects the education system in Mexico.
• 4) Technology Infrastructure… ok once we have all of the above, we can start taking care of the XO, personal media players, and information portals etc.

It can’t be done at the same timeframe for all of Mexico, but at least we should make sure that any effort on any community doesn’t lack of all the components, if not, we will once again, throw our money, time and our children’s future to the trash.To evolve our education system is a relevant issue against poverty, (its the only way we have to fight poverty) while we shouldn’t forget the basic need of our people, we cannot afford not to try to evolve it. I just hope we don’t leave it in hands of the wrong people. Maybe its time the private sector and civil society take problems in their hand instead of trusting our most valuable resource to the government…

1. Vazques & Gordillo meet

On this weeks happenings, always scary Elba Esther Gordillo, Leader of the Mexicans teachers Union, and self proclaimed Queen of Omicron Persei VIII (not really) joined Josefina Vazques Mota, Secretary of Education in a traditional assembly of the scholar cycle startup.now for those who are not very updated on such topics, Gordillo and Vazques don’t have a very friendly relationship which makes they roles even more interesting.At the end of the event, journalist approached Gordillo who was guarded by her personal security team and a human wall of people to claimed to be “teachers”. When questioned about her relationship with Vazques and if they have allready made “peace” she replied:

Peace? I don’t have to make peace with no one.

During her speech, Vazques invited Parents to get involved in the schools processes and announced that the Ministry of Education is working on new National Education Program and will be open to proposals from the Education Community.She added that they are aware that the Mexico is longing for a Education System of higher quality, that’s why they working to get better course materials and invest on infrastructure. (lets hope she gets better results that her predecessor Tamez). El Universal has a complete story

2. More Lost Money MEX$1,000,000,000

PRI denounced more irregularities in several of the main projects of former President Fox, two of them aimed education:

3. New Record on Scholarships

On happier news, the Federal Government broke a new record giving 1,200,000 scholarships surpasing the expected amount of 7.5 million during the next 6 years with a total amount of 900 millions mexican pesos.Well this sure puts us again in the countries that invest the most of Federal Budget in Education, if at least the education system have any results, we will be on the other side.I’m very happy to hear this since during last government more than 95% of the education budget went to the producers (teachers led by you-know-who) and barely 5% in scholarships.

4. We started with no plan

And finally, we start up this years cycle with no education plan at all. Now I’m not sure if this is bad or not, Vazques being the first woman since i remember to led the Ministry of Education, is also the first one to start with no plan.After seeing last efforts results, it seems to me that the rush to develop such plans in order to suffice a due date, rather than a long term strategy might end up in hollow plans or not very well developed.so lets hope that the reason that Vazques hasn’t announced her plan is because they really want to make it right this time.

HTML

If you are the kind of guy (gal) that likes good old handmade crafts, you can also go ahead and create simple html content using ipod specific tags, Make Magazine has a good tutorial on how to.

Mogopop

You can think of it as a social network for sharing and creating ipodMogopop is a free web-based service where members and visitors can create, publish and download multimedia content for iPod. This content that can incorporate audio, video, pictures, podcasts, text – whatever our members’ minds can imagine, they can create. Mogopop downloads are like mini-Websites for iPod that anyone can enjoy.

iPod notes for mac

iPod Notes is a freeware application for Mac OS X made to manage the notes of your iPod. iPod Notes let’s you create and organize any note you want to have in your iPod. You can paste text in, drag text from other applications, drop it as a text file from the Finder or, of course, write it yourself with the keyboard of your Mac.

Backpack.

The free learning tool for Mac and Windows. Backpack 2.0 comes with many features. The most important is Share: an online collection of lists that can be downloaded or uploaded from Backpack. So, before you start entering an entire list manually, it might be a good idea to see if someone else has already uploaded it to Share? It could save you a lot of time and effort! Backpack has another feature which lets you see how many times you got your answers right (or wrong). Words can also be marked with labels, for example: to highlight the difference between nouns and adjectives. Another handy feature is iPod export: you can export lists to your iPod to learn words when you’re away from your computer.

iQuiz Maker

iQuiz Maker is an easy way for you to create custom quizzes for the iQuiz game for the iPod. iQuiz Maker works seamlessly so you can write, create, package your very own quizzes. Download the free application today to begin putting the world to the test.

VODcaster

Free Quick and Easy Publishing You can now record videos directly into VODcaster! It will automatically encode them in iPod format (320×240) using h.264 and AAC. You can still quickly drag-and-drop audio and video files, and create podcasts and vodcasts to share.

Podcast Maker

Create your content the way you usually do: with GarageBand, Audio Hijack Pro, QuickTime Pro, etc. Then drag in your content into Podcast Maker. You can drag files directly in from iTunes and iPhoto. You can even import files that are already out on the web. As long as it’s a podcast friendly format (mp3, m4a, mov, mp4, m4v, pdf) Podcast Maker will podcast it.

iWriter

iWriter is a desktop application that enables people to create ipod applications such as quizzes books and notes.

iDive

Complete video production for ipod, With iDiveyou can generate content for your iPod with your own video data.iDive generates 320×240 MPEG-4 data upon export, and sends the produced movies directly to iTunes. All it then takes, is to connect your iPod for synchronization and your videos captured in iDive will be transfered for viewing on your iPod

myNotes

MyNote The easiest note manager for the Mac.Create, organize and share notes and clippings, keep to-do lists or write a book with myNotes. Work with notes like you never have before. oh and you can use its content with ipod

iDictionary

iDictionary is a Mac OS X application that allows you to create a custom dictionary and/or thesaurus for your iPod, and easily put it on your iPod. iDictionary leverages the built in dictionary available with OS X 10.4 along with some very smart filtering and optimization techniques to create a dictionary or thesaurus that will fit on an iPod