My corner

Juanes' political statement

2009-09-25T12:09:00.000-07:00

I'll start by stating that I don't like Juanes' songs, his voice or his music in general. Nevertheless I admire him on the grounds that he is making strong political statements at least among the Spanish speaking people, by leveraging his huge popularity as a singer.

First, it was a concert on the border between Venezuela and Colombia. Another simulaneous concert was organized by someone else, possibly following Juanes' lead on the border between Colombia and Ecuador, in times when relations between the three countries were in crisis. Neighbor countries can't just close the borders in a flash due to a disagreement between those who govern these or any other countries. Large businesses probably get affected but their international contacts may provide them alternatives in other destinations in trying to compensate for the suspension of commercial and diplomatic relations, as it has been now frequent beween this so called "brother nations". It is small businesses that have flowrished on the borders for almost two centuries of neighborhood that really get hit. It is families and friends that get separated by an imaginary line I haven't ever seen: the border. And all this from an executive order of one person and a few consultants or advisors.

The most recent of Juanes' statements was the concert at the Plaza de la Revolución in Habana, Cuba. This was a very strong political statement, and in this sense but only in this sense I agree with those protesters in the USA and probably in some sectors of Latin America. It was indeed a strong political statement. What I strongly disagree with those protestors is in the message Juanes and his friends were conveying.

The fact that it was at the Plaza de la Revolución doesn't make it pro communist, regardless of any monuments or murals there may be in that plaza. Juanes, a wealthy man who has made his money with marketing and sales in the capitalist world, would not have the moral authority to preach for communism. His message wouldn't just have gone through. Besides, I don't think Raúl or Fidel Castro or any of their high ranking aides were VIP guests.

This concert was not a money-making deal, in fact, for him and the other artists who participated, the concert may have a negative effect on their record sales. As far as I heard, Juanes, Miguel Bosé and Olga Tañón put a lot of money in the planning, organization, transportation and assembly of all the infrastructure, and a great deal of their leadership in the montage of the show. If they wanted to do business, with the same title "Peace without borders" they would have gather huge paying crowds, somewhere else, for example in Miami.

The issue was to bring this message, "Peace without borders", to a crowd where many could have not attended this kind of show because they could not afford it, in Miami, or any other place, not even in Havana if they had to pay what these artists charge for these events. I wonder how many of the protesters' relatives and old-time friends were in that crowd... Have you already forgotten about them?

Just because I don't agree with a regime does not entitle me to discriminate against those who forcefully or voluntarily live in a country like Cuba. Besides, how many popular artists would go and give concerts in Habana for a profit? - or for a just cause, for that matter; I heard many singers chicken out of Juanes' concert -

I congratulate all of the artists who were there in the concert. It was a humongous crowd: 1.25 million in Plaza de la Revolución, and many more millions through the tv. Even CNN - not just CNN en español; CNN in English... for the Americans! - spoke about the concert.

It has been a great achievement. I commend all of you for your convictions in this matter and, most of all I admire all of you for your courage.

Where is the cash?

2009-03-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

I started to wonder where all the money was since the banks had to be rescued by the government, the automobile industry too, companies are laying off employees, people were facing foreclosures of their homes, repossessions of their cars, credit trouble, and so on. Apparently everybody run out of cash. So, who has it? It couldn't possible have banished. Somehow, my intuition has hinted me of this kind of crisis now and some years ago in Colombia. It's not that I'm an expert in Economics; I'm not even an economist but my training as engineer had given me the sense that a system can't grow without bounds and I was seeing too much growth in the demand for housing, all or almost all based on credit. So, what is wrong with that? Banks have money to lend; that's their business. Anyway, money was flowing and developers and people selling their houses were putting money in their pockets or investing it back. Where is the loophole, then? To answer that question I have to warn me readers that either, I'm too naive or the answer had been ignored for a reason I ignore. And how could people receiving or investing money get in financial problems? My answer is extremely simple: elementary economics law, supply-demand. Let me explain further with an example.

Suppose I buy my house during the growing demand period, say for US $100.000 and for simplicity sake, let's assume the bank lends me 100% of the value. After a few years the market value of my house is, for instance, $130.000 and during that term I have amortized $10.000. At that point in time my debt to the bank is $90.000 and since the market value of my house is $130.000, my equity is $40.000. So far so good. If I sell my house, then I can put $40.000 in my pocket, but if instead I use my excellent credit record to get a loan for, say, for $30.000 to buy appliances, a car, and travel, nothing is wrong so far. I still have an equity of $10.000, don't I?

Now my engineering training comes in handy. Money is not a boundless resource and housing demands drop, either due to market saturation or property is so overvalued that very few people can afford to buy. Economics says property value drops subsequently. To continue with my example, let's say the market value of my house drops to $90.000. Now I have $40.000 in debt for which I have no solid backing. Appliances and cars loose their value extremely rapid and the money I used for traveling ... well, it's now only beautiful memories and pictures, or movies if I bought a video camera with the $30.000 loan.

When these conditions occur, Economics also says that businesses slow down and unemployment grows. Economics also says that salaries tend to level off, hopefully they don't decrease and I don't loose my job. Chances are I could get in trouble if I start to pay my financial obligations late or cannot afford to pay the debt services in full. I start to accumulate debts in the form of late fees, interests, and other penalties, not to mention if I default on my loans altogether.

Let's be a bit optimistic and say that I can sell my house. I still have $40.000 in debt, which is worst than when I started my story. I have a large debt and no support other than my income. This is the result of loose credit approval and over-consumption which is what has happened, from my point of view.

Now, let's look yet at another scenario which has come to my mind as a result of my bumping from cell phone company to cell phone company, without my being consulted at all. Allow me to start with the story of my wandering through the atlas of cell phone companies. After a frustrating experience with a prepaid plan with a company with very little coverage out of the metropolitan areas of Puerto Rico and having made a good credit history I could get a cell phone in a good plan. I decided to do it with AT&T. Why? People told me it had a good coverage and service. I had also good memories of this company when I lived in Syracuse, NY, back in the 1980s. At that time cell phones were in the making, but the telephone service in my apartment, or should I say flat, was with AT&T and besides being very reliable and with lots of cool features their agents and operators were extremely nice, so I took a shot at AT&T cell. Some time afterwards AT&T was bought in many states of the USA by Cingular but in Puerto Rico this acquisition could not happen for some legal technicality.

Anyway, in Puerto Rico was Suncom who bought AT&T and AT&T vanished, even from tv; not only in Puerto Rico but in the USA I didn't see any commercial ads. Everything was Cingular and Suncom here in Puerto Rico. Sometime afterwards AT&T reappeared stronger and bought back Cingular and "now Cingular is the new AT&T" or so went the tv ad. In Puerto Rico too AT&T reappear but since I didn't have Cingular I continued with Suncom until a few months ago when, guess what? Suncom was acquired by T-Mobile. And that's my status as of today. Who knows what awaits for me tomorrow.

What does it all have to do with the economic crisis? Well, those dissapearances and reapearances of cell phone companies made me think how real those companies were because the stores, the infrastructure, even the people (employees of course) remained. The signs changed and the store and booth decoration did too. So, where do these companies go when they vanish, for example, where is Cingular right now? It looks to me as if many companies are just a bunch of investors buying and selling shares. Again, what does this have to do with the crisis?

The connection is not so straightforward but let me make a conjecture. My conjecture has to do with a simple economic law: Supply and demand. What if these companies (would it be fair to call them "paper companies"?) started to buy shares from each other every so often. Wouldn't it create an apparent demand on the stock market? From my point of view it certainly would. The result? With the demand, share prices rise and stockholders feel happy and as share prices rise banks are happy to lend money to investors. Looks like a good business, so banks feed this merry-go-round with fresh cash. Shares continue on the rise till...

That's right, till cash runs out. Overvalued shares, just like overvalued real estate. Years of apparent prosperity crash into reality. There is just so much money; it's a limited, a bounded resource; so, wake up. Game is over. Now, we have to face the consequences: yes, everybody, whether we like it or not. I guess, now it comes in handy the words of the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as cited in the NY Times quotation of the day on Marh 27, 2009:

"Our system failed in fundamental ways. To address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game."

A matter of simple economics

2009-03-26T10:35:00.000-07:00

New York Times, March 26, 2009.
Quotation of the day:
"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians."
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, on a visit to Mexico.

Why hadn't the most capitalist of the capitalists realized that as long as there was demand there would be supply, not the opposite? It's Economics 101! What did it take for the USA government to admit that the problem was not just combating the supply? Was it that the violence generated by drug trafficking was too close to home and it started to massively enter their territory?

As a person born in Colombia, the most stigmatized country with drug traffic in recent history, I was surprised to read this quotation and the full article on that subject this morning. I was always puzzled by the way the "war on drugs" was handled. Millions of dollars were sent to producer countries to arm antidrug forces to destroy the marijuana crops, then coca and more recently amapola. And what about the spreading of glyphosate on those crops and its environmental impact. And what about the very high number of deaths in countries producing these kinds of plants or involved in drug smuggling? And what about the financing of terrorist organizations with drug money?

It's only till today that an American Government Official makes this admission publicly. And one can only wonder why not before? The war on drugs always looked like a waste of money because data indicated that the illegally crop-cultivated land was not decreasing; it has continued to grow. As long as there is demand for drugs there will exist supply. If the demand grows, prices increase, making the business more attractive. What interest was there that did not allow USA officials to see this simple economic principle. Was it a matter of image? Or was it some hidden interest?

What does it imply that Mrs. Clinton had made this admission? Would the war on drugs strategy change? It is my stronger desire it changes. If Americans cut their demand for drugs there is hope for a chain reaction: decreasing prices; production reduction; drug smuggling business becoming less lucrative and thus less attractive; decreasing income sources for illegal movements, including terrorist groups; decreasing political and economic influence of illegal organization; decreasing number of drug-related deaths, including American victims of overdose.

Do I have a reason for hope?

Open market economy

2009-01-14T12:03:00.000-08:00

For many years I have been incredulous about the so called open market economy. If the economy is really open, why rich countries subsidize crops in their land?

If the economy is really open, why workers cannot travel freely anywhere they could get a job and work honestly? Let me bring the quotation of the day on the NY Times of May 24, 2008:

"I don’t doubt for a moment that you are good, hard-working people who have done what you did to help your families. Unfortunately for you, you committed a violation of federal law."MARK W. BENNETT,a federal judge, to illegal immigrants sentenced to prison terms in Iowa."

If the economy is really open, why my human blood or other type of samples could not be used for a research project on MS in the USA? I quote from the email from the Multiple Sclerosis Genetic Group at University of California, San Francisco, as response when I volunteered for this project:

"We wanted to thank you for emailing the Multiple Sclerosis Genetic Susceptibility Project. Unfortunately, we cannot enroll your family at this time due to restrictions on transporting specimens outside of the 50 states. "

By the way, I live in Puerto Rico, a US territory for other purposes!

Could it be that the open market economy is just a pompous name for a convenient commercial exchange of goods?

An African American wins the presidency of the United States of America

2008-11-07T17:42:00.000-08:00

I have to agree with the heading of this post, not because I wrote it or because of the color of the skin of Mr. Barack Obama, not even because it has been used in the media but because Mr. Obama is the son of an African from Kenia and an American from the United States.

Another loss on July 25, 2008

2008-08-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

Many people got to admire Randy Pausch for his "Last Lecture". He died on July 25, 2008.
http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/beyond/2008/summer/an-enduring-legacy.shtml
http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/July/july25_pausch.shtml
I did admire him too. RIP.

Premonitions?

2008-08-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

For many years my most recurrent nightmare was about being followed by some bad guys and my legs didn’t move fast enough to get away from them. I screamed desperately because I wanted to get out of the dream. Many times I got to wake up by myself or got my wife to wake me up in a profuse sweat at the very moment the bad guys caught up with me.

Now my legs do not move fast enough to run or walk anymore, but fortunately I haven’t been followed by bad guys.

I haven’t had that nightmare anymore…

Entrepreneurship and Romanticism

2008-08-08T16:30:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or the concept of entrepreneurship has changed radically from what I saw of my father? I have been to a couple of entrepreneurship seminars lately and the general impression I’ve gotten from them is that entrepreneurship nowadays is about start-ups. You get an excellent idea of a product or service with a good market and either you hit rich, for example Google, or you sell your nascent business to a giant and move on with your life, or rather, move on to another idea and another start up.

Where is the concept of developing your client base, being loyal to them and gaining their loyalty? At least that’s what I saw in my father’s business: a hardware store. He started almost from scratch with his two business partners and slowly and with hard work built their business. Yes, many people must've just walked in and bought in their store only once but many returned because business was about getting clients, gaining their trust, remaining loyal to them and maintaining their loyalty based on good quality products and customer delight, not just satisfaction. It was a personal relationship between the customer and the salesman. It was a long-term person-to-person relation, the salesman knew the customer name and the customer knew the salesman name. And the employees were not just a sales force or a team; they were friends, almost family.

My father probably didn’t write a business plan and didn’t carry out a market study. He just worked hard with his partners and employees at delighting their customers. It wasn’t the most efficient or profitable business but it generated employment; and most of his employees stayed with him for many years. One of them, Don Ignacio Rodriguez, stayed with him until my father died.

Not long after my father’s death we had to close the stores, two at the time. Business didn’t go well anymore. Maybe customers were so loyal to my father that they went away after his death, or they were already moving on to the new hardware stores run by franchises. My father successors, i.e., my mother, my sister, my brothers and I didn’t contemplate paying royalties to a franchiser.

Now that I see modern hardware stores, I believe my father wouldn’t have liked to be part of one of those franchises. If I got to know him well, he would’ve felt like betraying his customers. We would’ve had to surrender not only our business identity but my father’s very own philosophy of business: close personal relationship with clients; clients you know by name and clients that know you by name too. It was not only about selling the highest quality tools or the cheapest, but chatting with the customers to really find out the right tool and price for each one.

It was not probably the most efficient business model or the most profitable, but that business provided for all of us and for the families of the employees. Probably business was not about becoming rich but about profiting just enough while enjoying good friendships; the sense of belonging; feeling part of a family.

Adios Tía Lucila

2008-08-06T05:57:00.001-07:00

July 25, 2008. RIP.

Seven years, a long long time

2008-08-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

After seven long years I went back to Bogotá and visited many relatives and some friends. I found the city intense, overwhelming, yet attractive. Large cities have the charm of diversity in every aspect, architecture, art, music, cuisine...

And of course, I loved being with my mother, most of my brothers, my sister, most of my nephews and nieces, and friends. My daughters, my wife and I all brought along beautiful pictures and memories.

Hostages rescued in Colombia

2008-07-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

I could have not kept silent after this news. The Colombian armed forces carried out an outstanding operation in which, with no shots, rescued 15 hostages that Farc had for more than 5 years. Some of them had been kidnapped about 10 years ago. I am very happy for all of them but I still feel sad for all the hostages in the hands of the guerrilla. If real humanitarian reasons moved the French government to intervene in this matter I hope they and the other European governments continue to help in obtaining the release of the rest of the hostages. I hope the intervention of the French was not only to get Ingrid Betacourt released. She was one of the many hostages, but all of them and their families suffering is as intense and painful as hers; maybe more because some soldiers and policemen supported their families and their families, in addition to the pain of the long separation and uncertainty, have been passing through very tough economic times.

Is this fair?

2008-06-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

I have temporarily changed the topic of my blog but this video I found in NY Times just made me mad.

Marijuana is legal in some states of the USA, like California. The war on drugs, sponsored by the USA, has caused so many negative effects in countries where marijuana used to be grown, deaths, herbicide spreading over crops ...

The link to the video is http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=b7e4529b7a3ac6b3ffbba2deeb447b5324e49b92

And apparently, some doctors write the prescription with the suggestion of their patients and "patients" go and buy the weed and smoke it...

What's next, legalization of cocaine when people in the USA learn how to grow coca indoors?

Unbelievable, this double moral...

Of patients and doctors; the social cost

2008-05-28T19:35:00.000-07:00

After stating in my previous blog the problem, as good engineers do and I'm one, let's make a gross analysis of the impact of this practice. To start with, except for the San Juan Metropolitan area, public transportation is practically non existent in Puerto Rico. That means that every patient has to take his or her own vehicle. The first obvious consequence is on city traffic and congestion. If you look at the times patients have to go to the doctor’s office to write their name down in the roster, it’s the rush hour in the morning or in the afternoon. That's right doctors, you are helping make traffic worse at rush hour. And in the country with the highest concentration of motor vehicles per capita in the world ...

But the problem becomes even more interesting when we include parking space in the picture. Of course, early birds will get the best spots. The rest will have to drive around for 10 to 15 minutes, at best, looking for someone leaving a parking place on the street or parking lot. Yes, as expected, parking lots are packed all the time, and the vehicular space rotation is very low. Cars will stay parked for several hours and so, your best option is to continue driving until someone leaves an empty space. The 10 to 15 minutes I gave above is my empirical estimate. Now, there are three clear outcomes up to now: unnecessary and increased gas consumption and air pollution, these two caused by driving around searching for a parking place, and parking congestion, not to mention the frustration, anger and stress.

Now, allow me to use my very rusty knowledge about classic telephone traffic (before VoIP and other digital systems) and extrapolate it to parking congestion analysis. I’ll avoid being mathematically formal. When I studied telephone traffic a long time ago, the traffic unit was the Erlang. One Erlang is one call using a telephone line for one minute. Let’s now define a parking congestion unit as one parking spot busy for one hour. For brevity, let's give this unit a name: a "Car-lang". I just came up with this name so that it sounds similar to the telephone traffic unit. Probably, vehicular traffic engineers have an appropriate name for it but I don't know it. With this definition we can say that each patient generates 3, 4 or 5 Carlangs since his or her car will occupy a parking space for 3 to 5 hours, the waiting time in the doctor’s office. Let’s be optimistic and suppose that it’s just 3 hours. Then, each patient generates 3 Carlangs. (Doctors, I’m making you look not too ugly). Suppose a doctor sees 40 patients per day (believe me I know some doctors see more than 40 patients per day). Each doctor is responsible for 120 Carlangs, and I'm being easy on the waiting time and not too bad on the number of patients per day.

Now let’s imagine the doctors gave appointments by date and time (imagination is our only hope for the time being) and let’s use a pessimistic estimate of the waiting time of 1 hour. In this case the parking congestion generated by each patient is 1 Carlang. Assuming again that a doctor sees 40 patients per day each doctor giving real appointments would generate 40 Carlangs. The math is simple. By giving an appointment by date and time the parking congestion is reduced to a third, at least! That means lower parking cost for the patients, significantly reduced congestion and higher vehicular rotation in the parking spots. Guess what else: higher probability of finding a spot, thus reducing driving time searching for a place to park. And since patients need to go at the time of the appointment instead of the rush hour, there is a better distribution of traffic over time of the day in the cities. And the parking issue does not stop here. Even the parking businesses would make more money. Why, you ask? The first hour in a parking lot is most of the time the most expensive. The customers that generate the highest gains are those that leave their car in the lot for less than one hour.

Now let´s analyze the monetary aspect due to time absent from work. If the waiting time is 3 hours the patient for sure has to ask for at least half a day of leave. And this is optimistic. In many cases patients miss a full day of work. Again, I'll go easy on doctors. Assume that each patient is absent half a day, 4 hours. Assuming the patients earn $7 per hour, the cost for the patient's employer or to the patient is $28. If instead of missing 4 hours the patient had to be absent 2 hours, the cost would halve! As I said, this is an optimistic estimate because many patients earn more than $7 per hour and many loose a full day of work. Doctors, in addition to your cost, which is around $30 for non-specialist, which you charge to the insurance company, you are generating a high cost to the system. Your real cost is at best $58 per patient. Of course for a specialist this cost is significantly higher.

The impact does not stop there. There is also a health impact. A reunion of sick people in a waiting room is propitious to share bacterias and virus, in other words, spread infections. Add the stress of a long waiting time and you have low body defenses. The perfect soup to get sicker. And what about diabetic or hypoglycemic patients? They better take some food along or ...

And there is a cost for the doctors too. First they have to pay additional hours to their secretaries since they arrive two to three hours before the doctor does. Second, the waiting room needs to be larger as the number of people in the room is larger. If instead of 15 or 20 people in the waiting room there were only four to six the size of the waiting room would be significantly reduced. Plus the air condition system could be smaller and reduce the electricity bill. And water? Yes, water too. The shortest a person is in a place, the waiting room in this case, the lowest the probability that person is going to use the bathroom.

Surely there must be additional costs due to this hideous practice but I guess I got my message across, so I'll stop here.

Of patients and doctors; in Puerto Rico you’ve got to be patient to go to the doctor

2008-05-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

This is probably the first of a small series of blogs about this issue, so bear with me and my concern...

When I had just arrived to Puerto Rico it caught my attention that many, if not most of the people passing near my table when I was eating would say “buen provecho” or as Shakespeare would’ve put it better “bon appétit” (oh, pardon my French). And, what does it have to do with doctors and patients? Not much, but it may explain the courtesy sentences used by Puerto Ricans in different occasions. One of them is “que salgan pronto”, which translated to English means “I hope you get out soon”. No, it’s not the sentence used when visiting a prisoner; it would certainly make sense there; but no, it’s the one sentence every person going out of a doctor’s office would say to all remaining there. Sadly, it makes sense if you are a patient because you have probably been waiting to see the doctor for several hours, so the best wish anyone can hope for you is to get out soon!

I’d be surprised if no one had written about this before, especially foreigners like me, because the doctors’ appointment system in Puerto Rico is different from at least the other two countries I’ve known: Colombia and USA. At least in these two countries doctors give appointments by date and time so patients get to the doctors office a few minutes before the time of the appointment. Well, since time is money, Americans would plan the day ahead and may get there calmly; but some Colombians may rush into the traffic to arrive there right on time or a couple of minutes late; but they will make it. In the waiting room the waiting time may range from a few minutes to an hour or so, tops. Occasionally the doctor will reschedule the appointment due to an emergency; but all this is only natural, and understandable; or should I say bearable.

Now, let’s move to the enchanted island. If you call a doctor’s office and the secretary gives you an appointment with date and time, play the lotto that day. You’ll hit rich. The odds of such thing are extremely low. So far I haven’t had such wonderful experience. The second best, but don’t play the lotto since this is more likely to occur, is to get an appointment for a given date and you get to choose morning or afternoon.

If your appointment is in the morning you are told to arrive from 7:00 till 10:30, or something like that, and write your name down on a roster. Now, you may think that if you get at 7:00 you’ll get turn 1 or 2 and the doctor will see you at 7:00 and you’ll leave by 7:30. Well… I’m sorry to disappoint you but the doctor will get to the office around 9:30 or 10:00, so if you got turn number 1 the doctor will see you by 10:00. Yes, you will have to wait at least three hours. If you got other turn, you’ll have to wait 3, 4, 5 hours, maybe more. But also, you will probably see an admonition on the door, counter or wall that reads something like “If you are called by the doctor and you are not in the waiting room you will loose your turn”. Therefore, if you want to sneak out of the office, do it strategically or else…

Now, if you want to get turn number 1, don’t get to the office at the time they open because, I assure you, there will be 5 to 10 people ahead of you, maybe more. Your effective waiting time may be longer than 4 hours: half an hour to an hour outside the doctor’s office and three hours in the waiting room till the doctor arrives.

Now, let’s say you are not an early bird and choose the afternoon. You are told to arrive from 1:00 to 2:30. Now, let’s say you want to play it smart and go in the morning to write your name down on the roster… Think again. The secretary will tell you that you have to wait until 1:00. You may make number 1 in the afternoon but you will have waited several hours anyway. Now, you may say that since the doctor is in the office since 10:00 you will be called at 1:00… Wrong again. The doctor will have a backlog from morning appointments and will start to see afternoon patients by 3:00. Again your waiting time is longer than three hours.

If you think what I have narrated so far is bad, hold your horses. Worse things exist. There are doctors that give appointments by date, period. You have to go in the morning, or at the time they open the office, write your name down and see what turn you made. Yet, there are doctors that don’t give appointments! You just show up in their office at the time they open and … you know the rest of the story.

If you think this sounds terrible, let me reaffirm you on that; it’s hideous. I wonder whether someone, an illustrious university professor or a consultant has studied the cost of this practice. I’d love to see such study, but show it to me before doctors know about it. Surely doctors would try to make it disappear.

Open market economy

2008-05-27T06:38:00.000-07:00

"I don’t doubt for a moment that you are good, hard-working people who have done what you did to help your families. Unfortunately for you, you committed a violation of federal law."
MARK W. BENNETT, a federal judge, to illegal immigrants sentenced to prison terms in Iowa.

This is open market economy, isn't it? "Good, hard-working people" sent to prison!

This sentence appeared as the quotation of the day in the New York Times of May 24, 2008.

Politically incorrect or un-politically correct

2008-05-09T15:37:00.000-07:00

How would a politically correct person call a black person from Senegal, Kenya, South Africa or any other country in the African continent, “African Senegalese”, African Kenyan”, “African South African” or, in general, “African African”?
This question has been in my mind for quite some time, probably since I was talking to a very good friend of mine, American of course, a couple of years ago. At some point in our conversation in a small café in Palo Alto, he referred to my ethnic group as “Latino” and I believe he felt embarrassed since he apologized to me. He then asked me if I preferred to be called "Hispanic". I answered that anyway he or anybody called me was fine. I really didn't care then, and I don't care now.

I started to realize then how Americans, in an attempt to look egalitarian have resorted to adapt names to the different ethnic groups so that in public they do not hurt anybody. I know my friend didn’t mean any harm and was not trying to be politically correct with me. I' sure he's not racist. But looking at the hard facts, racism still exists; and it exists regardless of the way blacks, yellows or any other ethnic group is called.

In my view, these names are just euphemisms to be politically correct. But frankly I prefer to be un-politically correct or politically incorrect, but treat everybody with respect. Blacks, yellows, reds, browns or any person born in the USA is as American as any white American. Blacks, whites, reds browns or any person born in China is as Chinese as a yellow Chinese. And the same goes to any group, religious, ethnic, etc. born in any other country. In the end, respect for other people it’s not in the way we called them but in the way we treat them.

A moment's thought

2007-11-26T14:09:00.000-08:00

Thanks to classical music for soothing my soul in difficult moments.

Past, present and future

2007-06-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

Live your present to the fullest so that in the future you have a beautiful past worth remembering.
Or in Spanish:
Vive tu presente a plenitud para que en el futuro tengas un pasado hermoso digno de recordar.

Where is the exception to the sixth commandment?

2007-06-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

To the best of my knowledge the sixth commandment as given to Moses by God was “Thou shall not kill”, or in a version I found a few days ago the text of this commandment is “Thou shall not murder”. To the best of my knowledge these commandments are shared by Jews, Muslims and Christians. Can someone tell me where is the clause with the exceptions to this commandment that has allowed Jews, Muslims and Christians to fight the cruelest and bloodiest wars in history, all in the name of the same God, which, by the way, goes against the third commandment?

Human Unnature

2007-06-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

This post took a long time before I actually wrote it and I suspect that I may generate some old-standing and needed controversy. I hope to offend no one with my view in this issue. Without further ado, here it is…

I continue to be puzzled between nature vs. nurture, or more accurately between nature vs. culture, specially in regard to some aspects of life that are very natural to me. In my last trip while waiting for my flight in LAX (yes, I had to wait a long time for my connecting flight) a lady with a baby in his stroller sat in front of me. The baby started to cry and she took him out of the stroller and started her struggle to breastfeed him. The struggle was twofold. One was trying to hold the baby, keeping in place a cloth over her shoulder so that no one could see her taking her breast out. The second one was once she started to feed her offspring and this battle was between the baby and her. He was uncomfortable with the cloth over his face. I started to think that being breastfeeding the most human and natural of things, culture or prejudice had made it so awkward for mothers, babies and everyone around them.

I sympathize with the baby because for him or for any baby, food is necessary and natural. I started to wonder, what if we all have to put a cloth over our heads so that no one else could see what we are eating. That would be certainly uncomfortable. Why have we humans in many cultures made female breasts and breastfeeding something to hide? What is wrong with that or better yet, what is wrong with us? We cannot blame Freud because I believe this custom came much earlier than his time, but his theories certainly must’ve helped to exacerbate the situation.

This issue has taken larger proportions than the one I just narrated. Not long ago, a lady in a shopping mall in San Juan, Puerto Rico, asked the manager of a store permission to sit for a moment to breastfeed her baby. The manager, a woman, didn’t allow such thing in her store. Of course, this incident made the way into the media, which generated very justified protests against the store. But whether it is denying a woman permission to breastfeed in a store or a woman struggling to hide breastfeeding in a public place we humans have made one of the most natural things in human life the most humanly unnatural issue. Well, fortunately not in all cultures. Some so-called “primitive cultures” see nothing wrong in women’s breast or breastfeeding. A few years ago when I was living in Colombia I was in a small village called Juanchaco. I saw a group of native Colombians (I should say real Colombians) entering the village with t-shirts on top. Someone told me they covered their breasts only when they were in town, forced, I suppose, by the customs of us the “advanced western culture”. Why is it then that we men do not have to cover our chest? In this issue I think cultural prejudice has taken us too far. “Culture” (the quotation marks are intentional) has become human unnature or anti-nature.

Solitude is awareness paradise

2007-04-30T06:23:00.000-07:00

Long time ago I heard a sentence like that from a psychoanalyst; yes, I went to a therapist some 10 years ago or so. It better be true for, otherwise, how can I explain all the minute details I’ve observed and ideas I’ve come up with during these hours by myself in LAX (Los Angeles International airport; it’s not a brand name of a laxative :-)?

Save water; it’s easier than you think

2007-04-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

So it said on a small sticker on the mirror in front of the Sloan automatic faucet in one of the Los Angeles International Airport restrooms. Why then, didn’t the automatic faucet use motion detection only to let water run instead of using a timer? When I wash my hands I follow four steps: 1) wet my hands, very shortly; 2) put some soap and rub my hands; 3) rinse my hands with water, a bit longer than the first time; 4) dry my hands. During the first step the faucet let water run for a period of time much longer than necessary, thus wasting water. If they had used only motion detection the system would have stopped water flow sooner when I was soaping and rubbing my hands and water would’ve have been saved; it would’ve been easier than what the Sloan engineers thought.

On accepting one’s reality

2007-04-30T06:13:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t easy for me to seat for the first time in my life on a wheelchair but, I had to since my flight from Mayagüez to San Juan had been delayed. I would’ve not been able to check in my luggage and made it to the gate had I not asked for special assistance to American Airlines when I got to San Juan. They continued to provide me with wheelchairs in Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo. Thank you very much. I learned realism and humility.

Things didn’t stop there. At Cal Poly, the organizers of the meeting I was attending, both from Cal Poly and HP, were very kind and considered. Again, they taught me that pride wouldn’t take me far; my gratitude forever. And no, I’m not giving in to MS (no, I’m not referring to Microsoft but to Multiple Sclerosis). I’ll fight it with all my energies and continue to walk, slowly as it may be, until my legs (or my nervous system) allow me.

Prayer of the "workoholics"

2007-04-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

Lord, please tape my family’s life so that I can watch it in my next life. My spouse is taping the game/soap opera for me.

Digital Divide

2007-04-30T06:07:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles International Airport, Terminal 4, in the Burger King – Starbucks Coffee restaurant close to gates 46 through 49, Friday April 27, 2007, 4:15 pm.
An Oriental good-looking woman seats in a small roundtable. Across the table is a white American-looking tall guy. They must’ve been married for several years since they barely exchange a few words during the 30 minutes or so I sat in a table close to theirs. The guy was absorved by his computer screen.