On the effect of patriotic propaganda

A study released recently compared the attitude of people to cultural differences before and after listening to patriotic music and found that:

"(...) preliminary findings showed that the patriotic songs had a negative effect on the participants, as shown through their responses to the survey's questions about other cultures and diversity. The patriotic songs made the participants close-minded and prejudiced.

"Once they were in a patriotic point of view, they were less empathetic," Alvarado said. "They didn't put themselves in other people's perspective."

Interesting analysis of the effects of propaganda, however, I am a bit skeptical that a single song in a controlled environment can do that much.

Princess Hijab and the complexity of cultural remixes

I think my brain melted a bit trying to understand and react in a coherent way to Princess Hijab.

She is a guerrilla artist/protester/ad buster that 'hijabizes' advertisement. She, a self defined 'insomniac punk' claims not to be a Muslim and do what she does just for the sake of artistic expression. And I am torn here, as I think that the burqa is hideous, demeaning, a symbol of male oppression. But, I can see also how it can be a part of one's identity, a definition of self, an act of provocation, rather than an imposition. I do not approve it, but in no sane society should women dress according to my or any man's thoughts.

The French government wants to forbid the burqa, and even if I would like to see that, I cannot support such measure in good conscience, it should not be state's business to tell people what they cannot wear. Why don't they actually ask to the women that wear burqas why do they do it? Coercion is not the solution here, I am afraid. Which one is it? I am not sure, but if somebody finds happiness inside a burqa, who am I (o Sarkozy or De Gaulle) to oppose to that?

Meanwhile, Princess Hijab is there, mocking us, protesting, calling our attention and making us reflect on our internal contradictions, transgressing the boundaries of cultures, mixing them, defying our preconceptions and clear-cut opinions. I am not sure whether she is beautiful, but what she does is. Go on, beautiful provocateur, épater la bourgeoisie.

Independence

I just finished a consultancy that paid nicely. And about to finish the Neverending Thesis, I will start paid work in July. Finally I can say I am economically independent. It took a long time and several attempts, but I am glad I did it finally, thanks to my efforts. Things might change, but I can live for a few months without fear.

Thanks, mamá. You have always believed in me, even more than I have. Thanks to all the friends that so many times supported me, bought me lunch and gave me advice. Without them, I would not be here, at the beginning of a new, unknown, but exciting path.

And yes, I am not a patriot, but the song suits my mood right now, my own mind nation of my own. Time to start the foundations of the First Distributed Republic?

The Missing Picture: Chávez and Vargas Llosa

I corrected Chávez' picture from the ISHR campaign to represent what happened yesterday.

Hilarious Campaign: Powerful men afraid of (computer) mice

Satire is a powerful force, indeed:


This campaign was created for the International Society for Human Rights, a very deserved mock to such powerful rulers who are so afraid of letting other dissent. They have made another against Chávez, but I do not put it here, since I do not think that Chávez' abuses related to the Internet are in the same league (not yet? He is getting his paws on cable TV now) than the ones made by these two jerks. However, you can find them here.

However, Sarkozy and some functionaries from the Australian government besides Colom from Guatemala should be mocked like that or worse.

Hat tip to Alberto de Francisco.

Are you a dick? Musings on El Vergatario

I started to read this comment about the so called 'Penis Phone' and I decided to write a post about it, since the translation is not really good.

In Venezuela, when a person is vergatario/a it means he or she is astounding, impressive, qualified. In a different way than English, to be called un güevo or un pipe does not means you are a dick, it means you are a highly skilled person. When I was a child, playing Mario and watching others go through the most difficult levels, it came natural to say to the player !Eres un güevo¡ literally: You are a dick! So the 'penis phone' is not only a non accurate translation, it lacks the context to transmite that here, to be called a male reproductive organ is a good thing (Being called a dickhead, however, is still an insult).

A mixed capital company, Chinese-Venezuelan, designed and built the thing, supposedly the cheapest cellphone in the world, even if I do not believe it, such thing would be in China, not here, but it has MP3 and WAP. I have bought cheaper stuff in the US (no MP3 or WAP, however).

That is one of the amazing things going on these days here, sadly, at the same time with all the crap. For a futurist, these are exciting times, the interaction of developing societies and technology is fascinating to witness, like street peddlers selling 8 Gigabytes flash drives in Cúcuta, the Colombian town across the border.

But, be warned, John Varley already made a prophecy:

'In five years the penis will become obsolete'

Exchange rate

I messed my numbers in a flame war about Venezuela this morning at BoingBoing. I claimed my grad salary would be less than a dollar daily, at black market rate (which shall remain unnamed here). Is much more than that, closer to 4 dollars daily. I counted only what would have left after paying the rent and picked up a wrong number for the rate.

I apologize for messing the numbers, and since the post was closed, I write it here. However, it does not change the nature of my argument.

Crying

Rico-chavez
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Chávez dixit:
"Wealthy people are not humans, they are animals, animals with human shape."

I am not rich, not at all.
But I have never seen in all human history, a situation where the government or authority claim that some people are not human ending without a blood bath.

I feel sick, sad, broken in the inside.

Update:
Translation:
Because being rich is evil.
To be rich, er, go on accumulating wealth
And land, look
"I am the Lord of the prairie"(dramatizing)
duh, you are a poor imbecile (jerk?)
Even more so, you are not a man
You are not human!
The rich is not human
I say so
And I respond for it
The rich is not human at all!
He is an animal with human shape
(applause)
He is an animal with human shape!
Now, if a rich now stands up and says
"Chávez is offending me"
well, OK (shrugs)
feel offended
Now, you want to be human?
That's why Christ said what he said (pointing finger to man's chest)
because Christ went to talk to him

Remixing My Past

A month ago, I had to return to my father's house due to shaky personal finances. Even if I had enough money to pay the rent, I could not pay anything else in Mérida, so, I returned to Valera for a bit.

My father got an offer to set Internet service, even if we live in a semi rural area, so I could do stuff online while way from Mérida. I taught him how to use the computer, set an e mail account and use Google, look for stuff in MercadoLibre, our local e-bay clone, Facebook, and use Youtube. It was a long and difficult process, dad is from another time and it seems that concepts about UI that are second nature to me and instantly obvious, are much more abstract and difficult to grasp for him. Even the existence of search bars independent of Firefox's address bar seems to be confusing for him. Even more confusing was the fact that the same query in different websites gave different results.

Even if I complain bitterly about not being able to use a computer until I was 15 or so, and not having one of my own until I was 21, so, I could not learn to code while I was a teenager, I am very lucky to have learnt the basic while I still had plenty of neural plasticity, as the process is not easy to learn if you are not used to.

Classes were getting difficult, as the Internet seemed to be too abstract and alien to him. However, once he realized that he could look for pretty much anything in Youtube, he started to get better, and be browsing because he wanted to, rather than because he had to. He cried watching old videos, of the music that my grandmother used to listen to.



He was mesmerized, enjoying music he thought lost forever, astounded by its immediate availability (and annoyed by the slowness of the connection, thank you CANTV!). And the, suddenly, it was like living my childhood again, disordered, as he was going through scores of songs that I listened when I was a kid, over the years, music that now I do not like, but also music that has been with me since then. Salsa, Venezuelan rock, llanera music, bolero, Cat Stevens, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Cazador Novato, everything was there, and we kept leaping from video to video, commenting the years in which we listened to it, saying things like “it was before 1990, because your brother hadn't born yet” or “no way it is from from 1989, I remember that song when I was 4, so it's at least 87” or “I remember that song when I was 7/ I danced it when I was younger than you are” . Music made us closer, as we hadn't been in years. And thanks not only to a corporation, but to thousands of users uploading their content, their precious jewels stored in tapes during the years, until the time came for that information to be free.



The memories our sessions brought were bittersweet and nonlinear. I could be listening something that reminded me of a road trip when I was 5, and then another song 10 years later and then another one that was popular when I was 8. In that noncontiguous trip to our memories we went through an emotional roller coaster, talking to each other, comparing our feelings, healing our wounds, opening old ones and realizing how futile arguments are, for even if we remained strained there is nothing we can do to erase our common past, that is going to die with us. And both of us may not die in a very long time; he is only 49, so even without surprises in healthcare, he is likely to be with us at least 25 years, and if we have surprises and I can afford them for him, he might live until the 23 years of extra experience he has are a trivial difference, so it would be a heavy burden to carry on (OK, with the murder rate in Venezuela being what is, I could die before 5 years). Many of the mysteries of my childhood were solved with our conversations, and using Facebook we saw what had become of some people we met back then, their children, their achievements, the ever writing story of people growing, reproducing, but now sharing with us all those small treasures, the smiles and first steps, their little joys and sorrows, so shallow in 2d, zeroes, ones and 16 million colors, yet so powerful.



Sadly, I realized that even if we became as close as we hadn't been since I was 8 years old, there is still a vast valley among us, and that even if I wanted, I could not go back home without turning home in something completely different. I cannot share their way of life anymore, only tolerate it for brief periods, I am different now, even if the sirens sing and call me home. Even if dad smiles and I see myself smiling in his features, and calls me home, I just can't go back.

The great voice of Cat Stevens (aka Yusuf Islam) sung this before I was born, better than I can explain with my clumsy words:


(Father)
Its not time to make a change,

Just sit down, take it slowly.

You're still young, thats your fault,

Theres so much you have to go through.

Find your girl, settle down,

If you want you can marry.

Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.


(Son)

All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,

It is hard, but it's harder to ignore it.

If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them, they know not me.

Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.

I know, I have to go.



Cat Stevens, Father and Son, 1970

It does not matter if I can't go back. Now he is on my Gmail address book and I will be able to Skype him once he learns how to use it. We can stay in touch and I certainly will return soon. Maybe eventually I will leave this country, but now my father is also globally connected.

Hedy Lamarr and her exciting career

Today we celebrate the Ada Lovelace Day. Lovelace, Mother of Programming, she was an English aristocrat who wrote instructions for Charles Babbage's Analytical machine. Today we celebrate the women in science. so I will blog about the most recent and surprising case I came across: Hedy Lamarr.

Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, in Vienna, besides being a movie star, she had a very interesting life, she created the "Frequency Hoping" method to direct missiles during World War II, but it wasn't until much later that her concept was employed. Her adventures during the pre war time, running away from his husband, an arms dealer that worked with Hitler and Mussolini despite being half Jewish would not be out of place in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon neither. But it's sad that this part of her life is not generally acknowledged, she is more remembered by her movies and beauty.

I came across her intellectual feat reading Greg Egan's Dark Integers, where he mentions a communication technique called Hedy Lamarr. It tickled my curiosity and thanks to the advantages of this hyperlinked world of today, I grasped a bit of Lamarr's life that might not be as glamorous as the rest, but that to me is more exciting.

Even if Lamarr was an icon of classical femininity (after all, it was she who wrote: "Any girl can be glamorous, all she has to do is stand still and look stupid."), which is not the only possible choice of style and behaviour for a woman, she proves that no matter how stereotypically frivolous a person might look, what matter is what goes inside her or his head, not the silly projections we make. Fortunately, we live in times where women have increasingly the same opportunities than men, where social pressures are less overwhelming and where the expectations for women are changing, at least in some countries.

I hope that one day my sisters in Muslim countries will be able to say the same, to emulate Hedy Lamarr, in her artistic and technical achievements if they wish so.