Reflexiones (Continuación)

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

By Mark Lawson (THE GUARDIAN, 26/05/06):

Next week the disaster movie, a genre giggled out of cinemas 30 years ago, attempts a comeback with Poseidon, a remake of The Poseidon Adventure, the 70s nail-biter in which Shelley Winters tries to swim out from an overturned cruise liner. But, even as the movie tries to wriggle free from the depths of critical unfashionability, it is doomed by a nemesis that, in the spirit of the subject, I will hold back until the final reel. It is enough to say that by next Friday this kind of cinema may finally be dead.

Much as the Gothic novel had done for a previous generation, the disaster movie dramatised and exorcised communal fears.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

By Martin Jacques, a visiting professor at Renmin University, Beijing (THE GUARDIAN, 25/05/06):

It is, of course, common sense that 1989 was the defining moment of the last quarter of the 20th century. Who could possibly disagree? It closed a chapter of history that had been ushered in by the October revolution in 1917. It brought to an end the systemic challenge that communism had posed to capitalism, the belief that there was, indeed, an alternative. It allowed the United States to emerge as the undisputed superpower of a new century. It gave globalisation access to the former Soviet bloc from which it had been excluded: henceforth, globalisation could live up to its name.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesDemocracia

By Norman Geras, a professor of government at the University of Manchester and one of the authors of the Euston Manifesto (THE GUARDIAN, 25/05/06):

Was the Euston Manifesto written, as some wags now say, in a pub? Well, no. Would you want beer spilt over your manifesto? Would you want it smelling of smoke? The document was mooted in one pub and discussed in another. But it was written where things get written these days, on computers. And this, in a sense, is also where it came from - out of the blogosphere and into the world.

The manifesto, which has its public launch today, states a commitment to certain general principles and identifies patterns of left-liberal argument that we think fall short of those principles.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNuevas Tecnologías

Par Eric Schmidt, PDG de Google Inc. (LE MONDE, 24/05/06):

endant des siècles, l'accès et la transmission de l'information dans le monde ont été réservés à la frange aisée et instruite de la population. Aujourd'hui, il suffit de taper quelques mots-clés sur le clavier d'un ordinateur pour obtenir des informations sur n'importe quel sujet ou presque. En quelques minutes, il est possible de comparer des prix ou des politiques. Rien d'étonnant donc à ce que tout un chacun utilise cette capacité pour acheter des produits et des services, pour demander des comptes et surtout pour s'exprimer.

La démocratisation de l'information nous responsabilise tous en tant qu'individus.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNuevas Tecnologías,

Par Jean-Noël Jeanneney, président de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (LE MONDE, 24/05/06):

Voici seize mois, Le Monde avait accueilli mon appel à un sursaut en face de l'annonce de Google qui promettait d'offrir bientôt sur la Toile 15 millions d'ouvrages aux internautes du monde entier.

Le risque signifié par cette proclamation tonitruante du fameux moteur de recherche était celui du quasi-monopole d'une entreprise : certes, son efficacité économique et ses mérites technologiques apparaissaient éminents, mais elle était vouée à choisir et à classer les livres mis en ligne selon des normes déterminées par la culture américaine et par la recherche d'un profit croissant, c'est-à-dire par l'influence omniprésente de la publicité.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios,

Por Pedro Schwartz (LA VANGUARDIA, 24/05/06):

El 20 de mayo de 1806 nació en Londres John Stuart Mill, uno de los símbolos del liberalismo de todos los tiempos. Interesa celebrar el bicentenario de su nacimiento por lo fascinante de su compleja personalidad, ambivalente como la de todo intelectual que se precie. Pero también conviene recordar sus premonitorias doctrinas, ahora que comienzan a peligrar las libertades individuales y políticas en España.

John Mill era hijo de James Mill, historiador de la India, economista radical y pedagogo severísimo. Mill padre y el filósofo Jeremías Bentham decidieron educar al tierno infante para que fuera el príncipe heredero de la escuela utilitarista que ambos pretendían crear.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios

Por Ignasi Fernández, profesor de Historia de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (EL PERIÓDICO, 24/05/06):

La celebración --en mayo de este año-- del Quinto Centenario de la muerte de Cristóbal Colón, el descubridor de América, está dando pie a toda suerte de especulaciones sobre su lugar de nacimiento. Reivindicar el origen del célebre almirante parece haberse convertido en una cuestión de honor patrio para muchas personas. En un reciente programa de TV-3 se mostraban, literalmente, hasta las paredes de la casa mallorquina en cuyas piedras supuestamente --¡muy supuestamente!-- el pequeño Colón se habría apoyado para aprender a caminar. Incluso desde sectores nacionalistas se ha reivindicado la especificidad catalana no solo de Colón, sino de toda la colonización, como si la conquista de América fuese un timbre de gloria nacional y no el inicio de un episodio que, desde el punto de vista moral, deja bastante que desear.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

By Gregg Easterbrook, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse." (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 24/05/06):

TODAY "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's movie about the greenhouse effect, opens in New York and California. Many who already believe global warming is a menace will flock to the film; many who scoff at the notion will opt for Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks. But has anything happened in recent years that should cause a reasonable person to switch sides in the global-warming debate?

Yes: the science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesIslam y Mundo Árabe

By Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, a former president of Indonesia. From 1984 to 1999 he directed the Nadhlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim organization. He serves as senior adviser and board member to LibForAll Foundation, an Indonesian- and U.S.-based nonprofit that works to reduce religious extremism and terrorism (THE WASHINGTON POST, 23/05/06):

For a few days this year the world's media focused an intense spotlight on the drama of a modern-day inquisition. Abdul Rahman, a Muslim convert to Christianity, narrowly escaped the death penalty for apostasy when the Afghan government -- acting under enormous international pressure -- sidestepped the issue by ruling that he was insane and unfit to stand trial.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaReflexionesSocial, ,

By Jesse Scaccia, a film producer, taught at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 23/05/06):

YOU'RE a teacher in the New York City public school system. It's September, and you're lecturing the class on the structure of an essay. Your students need to know this information to pass your class and the Regents exam, and you, of course, hope that one day your talented students will dazzle and amaze English professors all over the country.

You turn your back to write the definition of "thesis" on the chalk board. It takes about 15 seconds. You turn around to the class expecting to see 25 students scribbling the concept in their notebook.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

By Philip Armour, the former editor of the Swedish edition of Outside magazine (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 23/05/06):

When the International Whaling Commission convenes tomorrow, its worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling will be under attack. It should be. The time has come for regulations that recognize that whaling, handled right and in moderation, can be sustainable.

The moratorium, in place since 1985, has accomplished a great deal. Most countries, including the United States, have given up whaling, and as a result, many species that were dwindling are now on the rebound.

But there are also loopholes that a handful of persistent whaling nations have managed to slip through.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturalezaEuropaUnión Europea, , ,

By Polly Toynbee (THE GUARDIAN, 23/05/06):

From the control tower of the Thames barrier, gaze down on one of London's heroic wonders. Those gigantic silver sails stretching half a mile across the river float above the water, standing guard against the rising risk of flood. Here global warming is measured by how often the steel gates are closed; in 1987, it was only once every two years: now it's four times a year, eight times more often. By the century's end the barrier will close 300 times a year at this pace of climate change.

The river is rising 6.6mm a year, with more storms and extremes as ice caps melt.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

By Natasha Walter (THE GUARDIAN, 23/05/06):

It's hard to read the story of the Zimbabwean refugee who was asked for sex by a UK immigration official in return for help on her case without feeling horrified by the way that vulnerable women are treated when they come to seek refuge. Tanya, whose story was reported in Sunday's Observer, had already fled sexual violence in her own country when she found herself targeted for sex by a senior employee at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. But Tanya's story, awful as it is, is only a small part of what rape survivors who are seeking asylum here are going through day by day.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesDemocracia

By Jackson Diehl (THE WASHINGTON POST, 22/05/06):

Though you'd never know it from surfing the Internet, there exists in the Democratic Party a substantial body of politicians and policymakers who believe the U.S. mission in Iraq must be sustained until it succeeds; who want to intensify American attempts to spread democracy in the greater Middle East; and who think that the Army needs to be expanded to fight a long war against Islamic extremism.

Their problem isn't only that some people (mostly Republicans and independents) don't believe they exist. Or that the flamers at MoveOn.org would expel them from the party if that were possible.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

By Eugene W Hickok, a senior policy director at Dutko Worldwide, a public-policy and government-relations company in Washington whose clients include a coalition of supplemental educational service providers created by the Education Industry Association. He was deputy secretary of education during President Bush's first term and, before that, Pennsylvania secretary of education (THE WASHINGTON POST, 22/05/06):

Imagine being the parent of a child enrolled in a school that isn't working. You can't send him to a private school because you can't afford it, nor to another public school because there's no room. Every day he comes home from school depressed and disengaged.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaReflexionesNaturaleza, ,

By Sebastian Mallaby (THE WASHINGTON POST, 22/05/06):

Liberals famously love John McCain, but that's not the weirdest political coupling. The oil industry and its Republican allies are rooting for Al Gore, albeit unintentionally.

Gore stars in a movie that opens this week in New York and Los Angeles. The film features the once and maybe future presidential candidate lecturing about climate change: There are charts, bullet points and diagrams; there are maps of ocean currents and endless iceberg pictures. It's hard to say which menaces the nation more: movie stars who go into politics or politicians who go into movies.

Ordinarily this film would never have been made, let alone scheduled for release in hundreds of theaters.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

By Martin Kemp, a history of art professor at Oxford University, is the author of Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man, and curator of the V&A's forthcoming Leonardo exhibition (THE GUARDIAN, 22/05/06):

The Leonardo silly season never closes. I can bear witness to its enduring nature, having personally appeared in both the Sun and the Sunday Sport - in quotes at least - in connection with absurd stories about Mona Lisa's sexual life. Until the film of The Da Vinci Code, the previous highpoint for this silliness was the Sport's story that Lisa was smiling with her mouth closed because her teeth had been blackened by mercury treatment for syphilis.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Por Mario Vargas LLosa, escritor y periodista (EL PAÍS, 21/05/06):

Como todos los hoteles de la ciudad estaban llenos, la Universidad Libre de Bruselas me alojó en la casa particular de una pareja belga, Danielle y Michel Wajs-Waks, y debo a esa circunstancia una de las experiencias más estimulantes que he tenido: haber visto de cerca, y poco menos que olido y tocado, la manera como la cultura en general, y la filosofía en particular, pueden enriquecer y embellecer la vida de las gentes comunes y corrientes.

Aunque llamar a Danielle y Michel "comunes y corrientes" es bastante inexacto, pues, gracias a su amor a las artes, las letras y, sobre todo, a las ideas, ambos son personas bastante infrecuentes en el ambiente en que se mueven.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

By Thomas Doherty, a professor of American studies at Brandeis University (THE WASHINGTON POST, 20/05/06):

Confronted with "The Da Vinci Code," the motion picture version of Dan Brown's best-selling update on the ripe tropes of 19th-century Know-Nothingism (the Vatican as conspiracy central, the priesthood as perverse hit men), a previous generation of American Catholics would have raised holy hell -- flooding the streets with pickets and boycotting not just the film or the studio but all films, in an impassioned nationwide campaign to bring Hollywood to its knees. Yet this weekend, as the much-hyped example of sacerdotal noir finally premieres, Catholics will be queuing up alongside Protestants, Jews and secular humanists.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,

By Katherine Ellison, the author of "The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter." (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 20/05/06):

BY now, only someone who has been hiding under a rock would need to see the new Al Gore movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," to learn that global warming is real. Even Time magazine caught up to the degree of the threat last month, with its cover story urging us to be "very worried." Many of us have also winced at the slick new television ad, co-sponsored by the national nonprofit group Environmental Defense, that depicts global warming as a speeding train headed straight for a little girl standing on the tracks.…  Seguir leyendo »