
Most People are honest... and Bright too!
The person who had my netbook asked his assistant for help in trying to figure out how to return it. He decided, wisely, to bring the machine back to Venezuela instead of leaving it in charge of American Airlines or some Airport's bureaucracy. She, his assistant, was at a loss. She had a couple of pen drives, but the most significant just had pictures and music (64 GB worth of it! ). The Dell mini 9 had no battery left and came without any charger. She tried and succeeded in finding someone capable of charging the mini and cracking into Windows... Alas! my Dell mini 9 is a hackintosh with Mac OS X... No luck there. Before getting the mini back from the guy, in which she could, at least, have seen my name, she decided to browse through the immense amount of pictures in my pen drive and found the bill from my motorcycle with my name, address and phone number. She called got a hold of my son and my computer is back in my hands, with everything intact.
So, a story of ingenuity, honesty, and faith. Right here in Venezuela. The best is what happens. Thanks to the nice guys who returned my belongings. Namaste to all!

Wikileaks and the 7000 emails from the Venezuelan Government

What if you knew her And found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Apple learns to hear... Somethings

Why Venezuela is a backward country
Chávez y el IVIC AlóPresidente 329
Uploaded by rlmh98 - Videos of the latest science discoveries and tech.
Because our leaders do not even understand that the last five hundred years of progress have been fueled by basic science research. If they don't like science let them live without TV, Internet, Cars, etc. They are hypocrites. I am thinking of resending this article of mine to publish in El Nacional. They published it already 10 years ago, but it is as relevant today as then, how sad. I could dedicated to IVIC in its 50th anniversary...

Wooooohooooooooooo!!!!

Who benefits from the cheap price of gas?
Yes, some of us think this is right, because it's about the only thing we get from the government in exchange for the taxes and the suffering we pay, for our sin of being born here. But it is very unfair because the more money you have you get the largest benefit. Bigger and more cars, more leisure time to use them, avoid public transportation. Poor people can't do those things and public transportation is ridiculously expensive. Chavez has talked about solving this, but he won't. For some reason his natural constituency feels a strong need to defend that right we, the opposition, enjoy. Thanks for that.

Good Luck Gustavo!

No electric power in Venezuela is the norm now
After paying millions of dollars to the US company (yes, the imperial companies get compensation in this is stupid revolution), the government took over. Now, blackouts are regular (about once a week) and big scale, prompting protests against a increasingly unpopular government that forbids protest to be reported. How stupid is it for an incompetent government to want to have more responsabilities in the eyes of the voters?. I am writing this during one of the blackouts. I bought a UPS the moment Chavez started talking of nationalizing. Whoever thinks that governments can run anything is deluding themselves. Government is not the solution... government is the problem. The more power they have, the more they fucked up private citizens lives.

Wikileaks auction Venezuelan's government emails

A Pair of Dimes shift

Venezuela Present and Future or I think I saw a pussy cat...

One of my few permanent works of art has been restored to its former Glory! Yes, thanks to a generous grant from the General Grant Foundation (which rarely gives specific grants) the master piece can be seen again. The title of this post is the title of the work, the medium used is old tennis rackets and balls, lots of balls...

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, R.I.P.
His son Yermolai said the cause was a heart ailment.
Mr. Solzhenitsyn outlived by nearly 17 years the Soviet state and system he had battled through years of imprisonment, ostracism and exile.
He once said: "Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty."

Caption this Photo!

"Oh No, another wardrobe malfunction!"
"I hope no one notices it"
"I'm looking to hook up with a powerful gay man"
"If this happens with pants, imagine what happens with planes!"

I swear it isn't me!

I was a victim of Social Engineering or A Non violent crime in Venezuela
Yes, someone had called my house pretending it was me and announced that this person was going to come in to fix my computers and my internet. He walked around my house, but my cleaning lady was always near, except for a few seconds that he entered my room. My MacBook Air, my Kindle were there, but he only took my seldom used touch. Why? I don't know, maybe because it fit in his pocket.
He tried the same trick in several houses in my building a few days ago. Mine is the only where he succeeded. I didn't know about the other attempts, but he, or they, seemed to have targeted users of Intercable (A cable, internet, and phone company in Venezuela). A couple of weeks ago an Intercable installer was killed near my building, that's how they may have gotten the info.
I don't know what I can do. We've been lucky again, I won't even miss the touch. But I am terrified that our luck will run out before we are able to leave this country. That plan has been postponed for at least a year now...

My Scooter

That's my scooter, that I miss so much, because I am in Puerto Rico, eating good meals and enjoying the scenery, if you know what I mean. I named my scooter Trini in honor of the yellow Power Ranger, I think you can see the resemblance...

How did I miss this?
Note. The picture has nothing to do with the post it says: Danger. Dear Visitor, please, for your safety, do not climb the little hill in front.

Nicholas Negroponte's Talk
The first part of the talk was boring, old fashioned, and slow. He put like powerpoint text slides up... Why? After that, it got better, but he still said several things I disagree with. He said that education is the most important thing for solving important country problems, but I don't believe that. The eastern european countries have high levels of education, but their progress after the fall of the Iron Wall does not correspond to that. I think we have it backwards, progress produces education, culture, and science, not the other way around. He also said something that infuriated me. He said he didn't understand Pi, that it was too abstract. That attitude towards mathematics from an educated person sounds terribly bad to my ears, but then, adding insult to injury, he said you didn't need Pi to make a program that draws a circle in the computer screen... What? The final blow was that he describe an iterative process of writing that program, through approximations and iteration.. that is exactly what Pi is! Finally, he claimed that the OLPC was directly responsible for the Asus eee PC and similar machines from HP. I like the OLPC project, but I think, first, that it is overreaching to make that claim and, second, those machines show weaknesses with the OLPC machine and particularly with the get one, give one program.