Social (Continuación)

ReflexionesSocial, ,

"I just want to die.” How often I have heard that phrase uttered as a way to ask “would I be better off dead?”, to seek reassurance and support, to express fears, or even just to open a conversation on how death will occur. I have seen people who were firm supporters of euthanasia when well who struggle to stay alive against all the odds when dying. And I have often heard people go on to say that they never believed their final days could be so rich and full of love.

When I look at the patients I have seen over the past few months — some suffering from cancer, some with neurological disease, some with chronic conditions — I wonder how they fit into the categories specified by Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, yesterday in his explanation of the law on assisted suicide.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Roger Federer is getting teased, and not just because he lost the U.S. Open last week to Juan Martin del Potro. He is being mocked for his terrible eye. He challenged more calls in the U.S. Open than any other competitor, and yet he had one of the lowest success rates of any of the top players.

Insult to injury, right? Wrong. Federer is adept at challenging tennis calls, and he should challenge more of them — as should his rivals. Professional tennis players are almost certainly losing matches because of their unwillingness to do so.

Here’s how challenges work. Major tennis tournaments (like the U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

El significado histórico de los estudiantes y la universidad, la forma en que los unos y la otra existen en el presente, puede describirse como una metáfora, como una reproducción en miniatura de un estado histórico más elevado, metafísico. (Walter Benjamin, 1915).

En 1968 -cuando la juventud buscaba la playa bajo los adoquines- Philip K. Dick publicó una novela de ciencia-ficción con un título inquietante (¿Sueñan los androides con ovejas eléctricas?), en la que Ridley Scott inspiraría en 1982 su película Blade Runner. El relato gira en torno a un grupo de androides, virtualmente idénticos al ser humano, a los que llamó replicantes, superiores en fuerza e iguales en inteligencia a los ingenieros genéticos que los habían creado, pero utilizados como esclavos en la peligrosa colonización de otros planetas.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Los adolescentes -la juventud en general- sólo aparecen en los medios de comunicación cuando plantean problemas. Con esto se lanza el mensaje -también a los propios adolescentes- de que esa edad se caracteriza esencialmente por ser conflictiva, y que si se quiere vivir la juventud a tope hay que ser problemático. Se culpa de ello a la tormenta hormonal, la falta de autoridad, el exceso de libertad, la presión de los medios, la incitación al consumo, o a la ausencia de valores, porque la cosecha de culpables siempre es fértil. Pero, sea cual sea la causa, ellos son el problema. Todo el mundo comprende el título de un libro muy popular: !Socorro,…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

The war on drugs is a failed policy that has injured far more people than it has protected. Around 14,000 people have died in Mexico's drug wars since the end of 2006, more than 1,000 of them in the first three months of this year. Beyond the overflowing morgues in Mexican border towns, there are uncounted numbers who have been maimed, traumatised or displaced. From Liverpool to Moscow, Tokyo to Detroit, a punitive regime of prohibition has turned streets into battlefields, while drug use has remained embedded in the way we live. The anti-drug crusade will go down as among the greatest follies of modern times.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

La joven que mató a su bebé porque pensaba que se lo ordenaban unas voces; aquélla que lo ahogó después de matar también a su madre; y la que mató a su recién nacido tras dar a luz a escondidas en un viaje de vacaciones nos han enfrentado, en un corto espacio de tiempo, a ejemplos de una realidad que aterra al público incrédulo. Sin embargo, aunque el filicidio es una realidad no frecuente, su explicación no es, en general la 'locura'.

La primera referencia a un filicidio (la muerte dada por uno de los padres a su hijo) se remonta a la Biblia, con la inmolación de Isaac por Abraham.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard lies on his side in the Afghan earth, his gun still clutched in his hand. The air is speckled with the dust thrown up by the rocket-propelled grenade that has just been fired from a grove of pomegranate trees, blowing off one of Bernard’s legs.

As the camera shutter clicks, two other US Marines, blurred in their frantic efforts to save his life, are shouting: “Bernard, you’re doing fine. You’re gonna make it.”

The 21-year-old soldier did not make it.

This photograph of the dying Marine, taken by the Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson on August 14, moments after a Taleban ambush outside the village of Dahaneh, has provoked fury in America.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Much attention has been paid of late to whether the United States is trending toward socialism. Alleviating socioeconomic differences through the federal government's active intervention in the economy is a common aim of all socialist movements. Nonetheless, most champions of the less privileged have never made a practical effort to mitigate the social differences caused by the inequitable distribution of what, nowadays, is a factor with an enormous socioeconomic impact: beauty.

It is unacceptable for physical attractiveness to be the birthright of a very small proportion of the population -- I estimate 10 percent worldwide at most -- when the vast majority of us must go though life looking, shall we say, anti-aesthetic.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial, ,

How free do you think you are? Suppose someone approached you tomorrow and offered to double your current salary if you came to work for them — are you free to go?

You probably think you are but, depending on the type of contract you have, you might not be. If, for example, you are a smart software developer your employer may have put a clause in your terms of employment preventing you from working for the competition until your contract expires. And anyone inducing you to breach this contract would be guilty of tortious interference, and liable to pay damages if they succeeded in luring you away.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaReflexionesSocialEuropaUnión Europea, ,

La reciente liberación de Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, la única persona condenada por la explosión del vuelo 103 de Pan Am sobre Lockerbie (Escocia) en 1988, generó indignación. Aproximadamente al mismo tiempo, las Águilas de Filadelfia, un equipo de fútbol americano, le ofrecieron una segunda oportunidad a la ex estrella Michael Vick, que había sido condenado por dirigir una organización de peleas de perros en la que se torturaba y mataba a los animales perdedores. Asimismo, William Calley, que comandaba el pelotón que masacró a cientos de civiles vietnamitas en la aldea de My Lai en 1968, ha roto el silencio y pedido perdón por sus acciones.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

Le 1er septembre 1939 la Pologne est envahie par Hitler, la Seconde Guerre mondiale est déclenchée. Aujourd’hui, 1er septembre 2009, soixante-dix ans ont passé et pourtant… Comment comprendre que des survivants de la Shoah, continuent des dizaines d’années après leur sortie des camps nazis à trembler chaque nuit, dans leurs cauchemars et à se réveiller en sueur à 4 heures du matin sans pouvoir se rendormir ? Comment comprendre que chaque nuit, tout recommence : pour la énième fois ils viennent d’être battus par un blockelteste («chef de block»), ils ont encore vu toute leur famille rentrer dans la chambre à gaz sans rien pouvoir faire et ils savent qu’ils seront les prochains à être sélectionnés pour le gazage et la crémation !…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Why didn’t she run away? Did she love him? Was she brainwashed? Can it possibly be true that, over 18 years, she never had the opportunity to escape? What role did the wife play?

Such questions will dominate the world media for weeks, as the story of Jaycee Lee Dugard is sensational and compelling. A blue-eyed, blonde child, snatched by a convicted child rapist and his wife from a bus stop nearly two decades ago, turns up alive, aged 29. And the reason it’s so compelling is that this appears to be the darkest possible fairytale, a distorted parable of child abuse and sexual slavery.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

The banal nature of Jaycee Lee Dugard's re-emergence 18 years after being kidnapped highlights the bewildering paradox of sexual enslavement.

She wasn't able to flee to freedom, she was escorted to the parole authorities by the perpetrator of kidnap, rape, enslavement. The appointment was the result of a single serendipitous act of imagination by a campus police officer.

The officer would not have been high in the hierarchy of law enforcement, but by thinking about the bizarre presentation of 58-year-old Phillip Garrido, who had a record of sex crime going back to the 1970s, with two little girls, the officer did something that was both ordinary and extraordinary.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Is this a Polish thing? Thirteen years after the Ford motor company was condemned internationally for whiting-out black and Asian faces from a line-up of staff in promotional material for the country, Microsoft has done the same, this time under the slogan: "Empower your people with the IT skills they need" (such as Photoshop, I guess). Its three happy "employees" sitting at their desk behind their computers are Chinese-Asian, a black man and a white woman in the original image; but when posted on its Polish website the black man's head had been cut off and replaced by a white man's.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Según un sondeo efectuado hace poco entre la comunidad marroquí emigrada a Europa, más del 60% de los preguntados prefirió responder en el idioma del país donde vive, aunque podían utilizar el árabe dialectal o el bereber. Eso quiere decir que esta población tiene tendencia a integrarse poco a poco en el tejido social europeo. Sus hijos a menudo ya sólo hablan la lengua del país donde han nacido. Los padres se ven obligados a aprender esa lengua para comunicarse con ellos. Según ese mismo sondeo, el 50% están naturalizados, pero el 88% siguen siendo endogámicos.

El sueño de Europa tiene el color y la música de una integración en la que el hombre que no dispone más que de su fuerza de trabajo se ve recompensado por sus hijos que ya no tienen que soñar con Europa porque han nacido europeos.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaReflexionesSocial,

The only thing to be said against Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, coming top in the Forbes list of the 100 most powerful women in the world is the nature of the list itself. Just think about it. Power isn’t like tennis: why should women be hived off into a separate little power category all of their own?

In any list of the most powerful people on earth, Merkel would be right up there with the men: her fellow German the Pope, and not far behind Barack Obama in terms of the list’s criteria of career accomplishments, economic clout and public profile.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

The doubts over the world women's 800m champion Caster Semenya's gender extends a fraught August for two of the sports most associated with amateur idealism. As rugby deals with the allegation that coaches may have deliberately cut players to justify substitutions, is one of the world's quickest women also gaining an unfair advantage?

There is a long history of innuendo in athletics: several eastern European women in the lifting and throwing events came under scrutiny, and the late comedian Bernard Manning used to do a cruel routine suggesting that two leading British female Olympians might have, as it were, less clearance over the hurdles than other women in the running.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Six years ago today, my father, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was killed in a tragic attack in Baghdad that changed the face of the humanitarian world. A truck filled with bombs exploded in the United Nations compound, killing 22 humanitarian workers and wounding many more. Some who were not physically hurt were psychologically wounded. Even years later, many remain vulnerable.

My father headed the U.N. team in Baghdad. A few days before he was killed, he wrote: "The situation is indeed difficult. But we will succeed, because we will do it with the Iraqi people."

His dedication to serving people in need is shared by thousands of humanitarian workers around the world who sacrifice their time, their energy and, too often, their lives to help those in need in places where wars kill and maim and throw innocent victims into refugee camps or exile.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

Hojeando y ojeando el diccionario de la RAE y el de su ahijado el Gran diccionario de sinónimos y antónimos, publicado por Espasa, me ha sorprendido el sinnúmero de nombres con los que se expresan en nuestro idioma los dos más hondos latidos del corazón humano: la felicidad y el sufrimiento, antónimos entre sí. De esas dos palabras-madres derivan sendos racimos de sinónimos, once para la felicidad y catorce para el sufrimiento. Todos ellos dan origen a nuevas series de sinónimos, como sobrinos o nietos de los primeros. Y juntos componen una gran familia verbal de trescientos nombres, convergentes, por parentesco conceptual, con su primera pareja.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

El hombre contó una historia increíble. Tenía apenas 13 años, y estaba en su salón del colegio cuando un compañero se asomó a la ventana y lanzó un grito: "¡Miren, un avión B-29!".

Los demás niños se agruparon frente al vidrio y lo vieron perfecto: volando sobre la ciudad como un pájaro solitario, brillante en el cielo azul de las 8:15 de la mañana.

Entonces el avión soltó algo que se precipitó a tierra, y mientras los niños miraban por la ventana, de pronto un destello fulminante los derribó a todos. Era 6 de agosto de 1945, y lo que aquel hombre vio caer del cielo era la bomba atómica.…  Seguir leyendo »