This is the end, the end...

Well, this is the last item I’m talking about. After another year of studies, I’m faced with one of my last semester of my college life and for that in this blog I’ll proceed to do a little review about how my school year was this 2009 and for that I’ll try to talk a little about each of the subjects had this year, I mean, first and second semester and how things were going to reach my current position at the end of my fourth year of sociology, although I must say that has been interesting so far, very interesting.

During the first semester I had five courses, of which only one was six months, Sociology of Culture, I hated that subject and therefore I think I flunked, I never spent enough time and I think that was one of the reason for my catastrophic result. The other four subjects were then in the second half, Workshop, Theory, Public Policy and English, which I approved in its entirety in the first semester and to date I have approved Policy and Workshop because I don’t have the marks of the other classes. I also took two other elective classes, so I did six subjects this semester.

Now, I'm pretty confident that I’ll approved most of the subjects that I studied this semester because my attendance rate increased considerably, which it’s pretty good because I learn so much just going to classes, instead of not going and stay at home reading books for tests, so in that sense I can say that during the second semester my academic level increased. On the side of the marks it’s too early to say, however in the first semester I had to pass many examinations to pass, but now I think that I won’t do too many exams, so I'm also quiet and I think my level has also increased on that side.

Finally and to conclude this brief post, the last of the season, I can properly say that my academic level has increased since I began a little lazy and a little slow but I got better during the year. Although I must say that at this point I'm almost dead due to the organization of the Faculty which isn’t the best and all the academic load is left to the end of the year which makes to many collapse or lose a few marks at the expense of others, This shouldn’t be so, but this complaint is already posted in the previous one, I think. Finally, as general balance of my academic year 2009 I can say it was satisfactory in many aspects, first of all because I passed most of the subjects, second because I'm about to leave the university and therefore Santiago and third because my academic level has been rising steadily which pleases me greatly.

See you when I see you.

Society challenges us...

Well, within the challenges faced by sociology in terms of technology is that it’s the current state of the “Technique” technology develops to capitalist standards, contributes to the improvement of the technique, so in a sense it’s the full profit maximization and thus to over-specialization of labor, which produces some workers alienation, I think that it’s sociology’s major problem in terms of technology, the problem of alienation of individuals as the technology advances more and more. However this can overcome by improving working conditions, avoiding the technology to penetrate all aspects of work, that machines are only a tool to achieve our goals and that machines are not a goal in themselves, they just help us to improve our lives, that might be the only directive for machines and in our present society we can see how this directive doesn’t accomplish because machines and whole technology is used like workers instead of tools for workers, if we walk through this path I don’t know and I don’t want to know where we’ll end in the future to come.

In social matters, the challenge of sociology is to provide good information for decision making at government level and a central problem in this area is the state administration and as seeking a balance between beneficence and providing opportunities and that the sociologists should be efficient in their work of providing the most complete information possible in order to make the best decisions.

In education, the challenge of sociology is similar to social issues, the giving of good information so that the central government makes the best decisions. However, within this point is to say how it obtained the information.

Well, the sociologist must improve their tools, ie, improve decision-surveys, interviews questions and improve data analysis but on everything else should improve the objectivity of the various types of studies made by the sociologist and this account for all the areas mentioned above, since it is known that the work of sociologist always be associated with a certain ideology, but the important thing, if you want to make good decisions is that the information obtained comes as clean as possible, prejudice and unscientific ideas that they can lose credibility in the discipline in making wrong decisions.

Well, this post was about the limit of the word count but I spend all my energy and creativity in the past post, so I suggest to read this one first because it’s more boring than the other, it’s just a recommendation.

Hobbie time...

I'll change a little bit the order of topics in order to do a more structured post, so I hope it works out this "innovation".

Among the forbidden things I like to do is download movies, videogames, comics and books from the internet, I always do, but in fact it’s not prohibited because I didn’t market to them, it is only for personal use, sometimes I give copies to my friends so it would be a kind of piracy. Another forbidden thing I always do it’s to see two and sometimes three movies for the price of one, I always stay until movie credits finish and just then I go out, when the guards are no longer so I go to another room and see another movie, if I'm interested, of course. At the moment I can’t think other things, well that would be enough about forbidden things.

One of the things I hate to do it’s read for exams, because the readings for some exams are too long and tedious, which consumes much of my time, especially on weekends. Another thing I don’t like it at all it’s to travel every day to Santiago, as they are about six hours per day spent on travel, besides I hate Santiago, but in reality the trip is bad only when I go to Santiago but for the journey back I really enjoy it, I know that it’s the same distance and time is the same as well but the sense of where you’ll arrive is what causes you to enjoy the trip. Finally another thing I don’t like it’s doing written work, it takes too much time thinking of ideas, literature search, print and in general a waste of time, it would be far better oral exams or oral presentations.

I’m among those who attached great importance to free time, therefore I have many hobbies, so I really don’t know where to start, I suppose I should list the things I like to do in order of priority, so that's what I’ll do, see how it goes. What I like to do is play videogames, mostly console, also on PC, so when I just have some free time, I play. At the moment I have no console because I haven’t much time to play, so I do it only on weekends at a friend's house, at least 2 weekends a month, I dedicate a whole afternoon to play on Xbox 360.

I like video games since I can remember I've played videogames, since I was 5 years old with an atari 2600, perhaps in the beginning was the interactivity of a joystick what attracted me at first, I don’t remember exactly but now I can say that my passion for videogames is the graphics power and the stories that in some cases exceeds the films, which it’s incredible, there is work behind every new game that is also above the film industry. Within this fascination I can also say that there is some desire for competition with myself and against my friends, it’s great.

Another thing I love is movies, I have no preference for the style of movies, but the directors, and I always know what to expect when I see a new film, but it’s always fun meeting new directors, however I really enjoy seeing my favorite films, one and again, it may seems psychotic, but I really like.

Through the film you can learn about history, indeed, from a particular point of view of history, however, we can enjoy atmospheres and lifestyles of an era that is gone. Also we can access to entirely imaginary worlds where the only thing that guides us is our expectation for things to come, that is amazing because for example, in Avatar, the last film of James Cameron, the only thing one can see is a trailer about how the film and the world could be, that contains the movie and only generates expectation to see it, amazing.

I could stay until next week listing all my hobbies, so this time I’ll talk about 3 of them, so third one is reading, I love to read fantasy and science fiction as novels or short stories but also I so fascinated with comics, so in this hobby I can unite two hobbies into one. The fantasy and science fiction, in addition to comics, I like because imagination has no limits, no limits of technology in special effects, no limits of budget to meet a certain standard of quality in literature the author can write he pleases, go to any kind of possible worlds, that's what fascinates me about the literature and it’s the same that sometimes makes me disappointed when I see adaptations of these works in film, because in literature there are no limits and sometimes the film falls short trying to match the literature.

Actually, now that I think the three hobbies that I have just named are connected with the idea of disconnecting and escaping from this world and meet new worlds, worlds better than this in many ways and give us the possibility to imagine to be part of those worlds, besides it's possible to learn from these worlds because it’s not just about battles and endless journeys but are also values, values that are much needed in this world today.

My dear "Alma Mater"...

I’m on fire jejejeje, because I’ll write two posts in a row so this one is about my faculty, The Faculty of Social Sciences.

The current status of faculty, mmmm, is a bit hard to say because I would need a topic to discuss, I mean, academic or administrative situation, so for this post I will focus on talking about academics. First of all on the academic side I must say that we have been a kind of experiment because we have changed the signatures almost every year, some signatures have been ghosts, where I felt that I haven’t learned anything new, or signatures in where I don’t even need to go classes, signatures whose programs were modified on the fly, or where the teacher didn’t review and even take the exams. That is exactly what would improve, how to join our faculty and teachers how the curriculum is built. The first steps point to the review of curricula for teachers, seeing what they have done along their career, but mostly to know what to expect in this classes, their objectives and working methods. (in that sense, “teacher survey” which it’s done each time at the end of the semester is a good opportunity to know the performance of individual teachers)

Well, in order to solve this situation I definitely cut off teachers who had two bad evaluations in one year so I’ll can keep the educational level of the students of this university and keep teachers with a real vocation to teach.

The benefits of this measures will be a better teaching because a teacher with vocation cans inspire to the students, he can make a difference in his students since he has a vision and an ambition when he accept to teach in this university, specifically, in this faculty.

As I already said marketing teachers and bad teachers must go and leave the spot to the good ones, to the real teachers who aren’t very known in the society and don’t appear very often on the media, but with a condition to do a decent class.

Shichinin no Samurai (1954)

Hi again, this week I talk about my favorite movie, Shichinin no Samurai a.k.a. Seven Samurai from Kurosawa Akira, the most famous Japanese filmmaker ever.

In the 1700’s, in Medieval Japan, a village full of very poor people is constantly looted by armed “ronin” (Samurai without a master) taking all their crop of rice, the only treasure for this people. Their Old Man advises the villagers to hire another Ronin (a good one) to defend the village. A bunch of farmers head to town to seek out their potential protectors, but they just can offer three meals of rice per day for each hired samurai. They succeed in hiring the veteran Shimada Kambei that advises that he needs other six partners to protect their farms. Kambei recruits five samurai and the brave jester Kikuchiyo and move to the village. After a feared reception, Kambei thinks a plan of defense strategy and the other samurai start training the farmers in combat in order to defend their lands and families for the battle against the bad ronin.

I like this movie so much, in fact, it’s my favorite of all time and I like the plot itself, the environment, but in general the plot is well structured, nothing is left to chance and the film is full of suspense until climax, where the final showdown occurs between farmers and ronin, because no one knows if the training and conviction of the samurai will work or not, and Kurosawa is a master of suspense and tension.

About the crew of the film, Kurosawa always tried to maintain a core team for their productions, so you can see Mifune Toshiro as the lead actor, which made a lot of movies with Kurosawa, becoming the most successful pair of Director/Actor in the history of Japanese cinema. About the script, Kurosawa was always involved, but also he had a team that specializes in feudal times which is why his movies, despite not having the special effects of today’s movies, are very loyal and realistic, simply awesome.

In order to finish this review I’ll write about the Original Soundtrack (OST). It’s almost whole OST orchestrated music mix with traditional Japanese music in some parts of the film, which may seems strange but in the postwar era it was common that movies have a soundtrack orchestrated according to the kinematics of the film, it was almost sound effects in the film, which is good because it brings back memories of the innocence of that film era, when the main thing was not selling tickets, but quality storytelling.

Well, I really enjoyed writing this post because I talk about my favorite movie ever so I hope that you can enjoy it as well.

I email you?... no sir, it's... I wave you...

Hi again, today, for teacher’s recommendation, I browse through Guardian.co.uk looking for a news connected to my area of studies, so I’ll mix my career and my personal interest in this post and I’ll write about a new way of communication, and communication is a wide area of sociology's studies because in Chile at least it’s not a very developed field and if there are studies those are from TV, radio, or written media and nothing about social networks and web communications that will become the future in social relations, so with this post I could be a kind of pioneer (joke). Well, in this case it's only a preview because still this platform isn’t public and only we can access to it by invitations (I already have an account but shshsh.. jejejeje) I'll show you Google Wave. Strictly I’ll just make a summary of a complete review of Lisa van Gelder from Guardian.co.uk

We are seeing a tremendous leap in how we communicate, so the importance of Google Wave and perhaps everything does not end with this service, but it is a preview of the future.

Google Wave is a concept that works thinking that e-mail as we know it already has 40 years, and every time we send an e-mail we are creating a file that is shared with the recipient and we lose control over this, and that the recipient can generate copies that would become different versions of the mail. In practice this means a loss of information and resources, where we are always exposed to spam and we can’t have a complete picture of conversations generated by our e-mails.

So every time we send a wave we are creating a link between the initial recipients, to start a conversation that will last over time, where we can add other recipients and interact in real time on this. In practice you can see how other people are typing into the Wave, and providing attachment containing like some sort of shared document.

So Google Wave is a mixture of Gmail, Google Talk and Google Docs where each wave represents a multidimensional communication channel that connects people with content, creating distributed conversations and connecting to members of different networks to collaborate on the construction of this information.

Clicking at the Google Wave logo you'll can see a video with some of the features of this new way of web communication.

Honduras: Pressure for democracy...

This post is more political than the older post but this isn’t trouble to make a good post, after all political it’s not synonymous of boring ones so here we go…

Manuel Zelaya intended to modify the constitution to remain in power and for that he had planned a referendum. The Supreme Court of Justice, which opposed to this measure, ordered the army to arrest the president Zelaya. So did the military, which relocated Zelaya to Costa Rica.

Lawmakers have appointed interim president to the Congress leader, Roberto Micheletti. Election officials said the country's presidential elections on November 29 will be carried out as scheduled before the coup. However, the international community considered that the legitimate president is Zelaya and Zelaya himself has assured that he’ll come back to Honduras as president.

Well, Micheletti could be the visible face of the Hondurans factual powers, as he was chosen precisely for them to hold the presidency, but his presidency is rejected by the international community and Honduras can’t survive as an island, so Micheletti sooner or later must resign his current position.

Zelaya instead could be regarded as the victim of this coup, however we must also recognize a certain thirst for power because he want to change the constitution just for to be reelected, but caution with this, I ‘m not justifying the coup, I just say only that Zelaya isn’t a white dove.

This conflict appears to have a single type of solution and is that Micheletti cedes power because it’s not possible to maintain a country divided and in constant conflict for a long time, and less with foreign pressures and internal pressures, so Micheletti will leave his post soon, maybe he is waiting for the election period in order to leave, although it would be suspect because with him in power while elections take place it could raise suspicions of electoral intervention. But above all I hope that the resolution of this conflict will be the least violent possible.

Santiago isn't Chile but...

Well, I’ wasn’t born and neither I lived on Santiago so I hardly can tell to anyone where they can go or what they can do in Santiago, but don’t worry my readers I won’t let you down and as always I’ll do my best…

Even if it’s a polluted city, Santiago can offer a couple of things that worth to visit… but where do I start? Mmm…

Ok, the tourist in first place must go to cultural and historical places to learn where he is and who we are and how we became what we are, yeah it’s kind of complicate but it’s history and tourists are compel to learn or at least visit some historical place.

Secondly the tourist must do fun activities mixed with traditional activities because fun experiences remains on memory so this tourist can tell to other tourist in his home country “touristland” other tourist will want to come to visit Chile, so the tourist must leave this country with the best of the impressions and for that I did a short list of “you must do it” things.


1. In first, but in very very first place I surely recommend going to “La Moneda” palace because it is the house of the government and a symbol of our sovereignty and it’s a building dating from the colonial period, but if Mr. tourist doesn’t have time he can take a virtual tour from here.

2. Another interesting place is the ”Huelen” hill, or renamed it for Spanish people, “Santa Lucia” Hill, a pleasant place, where one can walk and where the tourists can appreciate a great view of the city, if “smog” allows jejejeje

3. An entertaining biking tour which will provide you a bicycle for 1 hour and then you can return it at any station of the company, a fun activity

4. The Maipo Canyon is another must for a tourist as it’s one of the few places in the Greater Santiago where you can still breathe relatively clean air and provides a green and noble landscape.

5. Sport, culture and nature, what am I forgetting? The good alcohol that is always welcome, and for that I can’t think better place to go as "La Piojera", a traditional bar where the specialty is the “earthquake” drink and to eat the classic ham with generous chili.

I hope that list doesn’t let you down but this is the best that I can do like a provincial boy.

A Congress!!… Where?

Well, in first place I’m very sorry but I didn’t go to this famous congress, so it is hard, I mean impossible to give any data about this congress, so I don’t find the way to fill 200 words with anecdotes of a trip that never was. But I enjoy challenges, jejeje.

Mmm, I suppose that I could begin giving the reason of my stay in Chile, it would be the logical way, so, I stay in Chile for 2 main reasons. The first one was money, too many for me, to be more specific in this reason, it was too many money speaking of quality/cost ratio (quality/cost ratio is a “geek” measurement that it is used when a technologic product satisfies certain conditions of the costumer to an optimum price, so I’m agree to pay certain price because the product satisfies me) because I didn’t agree with the “product” offered for that price, so I would prefer to spend the same money in other things more interesting to me. Besides I’m not very interested in visit Argentina, I don’t know why, but there is no interests to me in visit it, so this is other aspect to add to the reason.

The other reason, I hate long trips, especially bus trips, buses with a lock sensation, uncomfortable seats, the heat and stuffy, no thanks, I pass.

In conclusion, The no interest in the congress itself and the country plus the very expensive price of the trip including money for stay in, food some souvenirs plus the no interest in the country, in this case Argentina plus my “phobia” to bus trips, all of them give the product that now you know, my stay in Chile which it isn’t a vacation because I used that time to some assignments and all the things that I love to do in my free time.

On February 10, Transantiago starts...

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This sentence, recorded in the collective thinking, was the text of the TV spots in which Iván Zamorano announced the start of this new way of public transport for Santiago, but there were a couple of things that “Bam Bam” never imagined…

Well, how do I start? Jejeje, ok, ok, Transantiago isn’t so bad at all because one of the most respectable ideas of this project is the payment system which allows to everyone to carry a simple card instead of a bunch of coins so in this aspect the system is more efficient than before. Another aspect of improve is that now the bus drivers have a salary instead of commissions and sold ticket percentage, this aspect contributes to prevent races between drivers and exhausting work days. But, on the other hand, eternal wait time, too few busses, awful routes design, no bus stops; in fact, still the government is building some bus stops near the campus, outrageous.

When this experiment starts I was on my home town so I didn’t use it until March, in the beginning there was no trouble because I used subway, but when I realized that the people in the subway began to increase station by station the trouble began because when I was near to change of route the people on the subway, included me, were packed like sardines and this story repeats until today. Well I accept that the system is a little better now with all the money and measurements applied to the system but still it is a problem and it provokes me certain reject to use this system, but there is no choice, well at least to me because I don’t have a car, I’m compel to use it.

Mainly, I would increase the number of buses in movement and a very strict GPS vigilance to keep a decent frequency between stops. Another improve would be check the contracts with operators, to modify them, if it’s necessary, to control the number of buses in order to regulate driver conditions, the kind of buses that divers are driving, and the price of the fare.

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto...

Hi again. Today I’ll write about a nice place to visit, but only visit, because living in this country it’s annoying, overpopulation, constant traffic jams and crammed subway. I talk about Japan, the “rising sun” empire, well; there is no emperor anymore but it sounds pretty cool isn’t? Why would I like to go so far? Because I always like to go there, since I was a boy, it is one of my dreams and foremost a goal to complete.

Well, this is the land of the samurai so along the small country it is possible to find and visit marvelous edifications from that historical period like temples, castles and pagodas. Also it is the land of Kurosawa, one of the great masters of Japanese and worldwide cinema, the land of Karate one of my favourite sports (we say that Okinawa is part of Japan instead of China, at least legally, because culturally it is closer to China, so Karate comes originally from China) and the land of manga and anime (Japanese comic books and animation movies respectively) some of my hobbies. I would like to organize my travel in order to visit and experience the things that I mentioned before, like visit historical places, cinema museums searching for Kurosawa souvenirs, attend to some karate tournaments and go around through Akihabara district. (a district where it concentrates the most of manga and anime industry)

But I said it before, I would like only go to Japan for visit and not for a live because the human conditions are awful, too much people for me, I prefer live quietly without disturb of any kind, so Japan definitively it is not a nice place to live.

A brief review of the last term...

Well, mainly in my academic life I learned how to make a research for myself and when I say for myself I mean that I had to start from “zero”, "Workshop I" was the name of the subject and this was a real challenge because I had to design all the investigation since theory until field work so during the term I learned step by step how to optimize limited resources like time, work, and of course, money so I can say that this was the most relevant thing that I learned during the past term, well I also learned from other subjects but these weren’t out of common lectures.

Secondly, during the past term I had more free time than the past years because I took less subjects than other terms, I used to take 5 or more subjects per term but now I only take 4 or 5 as a limit so my free time increased a lot above all because in the last terms of the career (sociology) subjects are oriented to the practical way of sociology instead of theoretical way and that was awesome because I could return to my dear hobbies like watch oriental movies, comics reading, and sports, well in fact, virtual sports because I’m a gamer (a videogamer to be more specific) and I play soccer, karate, kung fu, tennis, car races, fencing, athletics, etc, all of these played from the comfort of home jejeje.

Finally during the past term, especially during winter vacations, I had time for my “inner circle” my friends mainly because I stay with family all the time (I still live with them) but I don’t have much time to visit friends so when I have any opportunity like long weekends or vacation I take it to see them and thanks to the few subjects that I took this term I think that I’ll keep my current amount of free time.

Evaluation time...

Hi there.

Well, this is the last post on this experimental blog, experimental? Yes, because this blog born as a tool to improve my English level and I have to say that it was a awesome experience because I used to post in blogs a few years ago with a little difference, I didn’t post about me but post about funny videos or pictures nothing else, I didn’t use the blog as a diary of myself, so this experience was nice and above all I had to write in English which I don’t use to, so I could show some aspects of my life and improve my English level all of this added to the mechanic of blogger which is to find “ad – hoc” pictures to give some life to the post, your classmates comments, etc. I enjoyed it, as I’m some kind of geek, working on PC and trough Internet makes me a lot easier this part of the English lessons, which is because I enjoyed so much on working on blogger platform.

Of course this modality of work helps me to improve my English because I used to write more than the 150 word required for each post and this wasn’t for a better qualification or something like that but I couldn’t express what I had to say about any theme in less than 150 words so I extended unconsciously and I ended to write my post in 250 or 300 words so this modality, to me, was perfect to improve my English, besides there is a feedback with the teacher because he takes his time to check posts and correct them so I could edit my posts and improve them improving also my English.

Well, along this post I said all the advantages that I found on this modality of improve English but I don’t mentioned disadvantages, so to finish this last post I like to mention some of this disadvantages, there aren’t too many but it worth to mention. In first place feedback wasn’t very complete because there are many posts without correction, could be for the teacher’s very few time so I understand but this is one of the disadvantages. Secondly, with a Internet support could be easy to copy information and add it to the blog which wisely teacher avoid it making us write about our own experiences like “our future”, “favourite subjects”, etc. but on post with a little more of objective information could be a disadvantage because the “copy-paste” problem. These are 2 little disadvantages that I could mention in a whole excellent way to improve English.

Get paid to play!!!

Hi everybody.

In this post I’ll talk about my ideal job, which isn’t related to my career, funny isn’t it? Well my ideal job is to be a video game tester.

But first what is it? It’s a simple person who works on testing beta versions for videogames, so… what is a beta version? It’s a preliminary version of definitive videogame, which is lower in graphics quality and have many bugs so you must play a videogame over and over again to put it on its limits that allows you to find these bugs. (bug: fails in the videogame’s programming) in short, a person who get paid for play videogames.

Well, qualities for this job, in principle, not very much, only to be an expert “gamer” which already I’m, also it's necessary a highest observation and analysis capacity, an intermediate English level, I’m working on that by the way, Many, many, many free time, here I fail, I’m a student so I don’t have enough time for anything!!! And that’s it is all what an ordinary person needs to become a video game tester.

I’m an “gamer” since I started to think with an awesome Atari 2600 began my current journey through this freaky world so I played in most platforms knew like NES, SNES, Genesis, Megadrive, Amiga, 3DO, Jaguar, Saturn, PSX, and a very long etc. So, according to this I could be an excellent video game tester.

But, I’m in a far corner of the world where video games are seen as a diabolical way to see reality, causing mental sickness and the most, a child’s entertainment, in short, a limited and obtuse vision about what video games really are, so in Chile it’s impossible to live being a video game tester because there isn’t a developed video game industry in this part of the world, maybe if I travel to USA or Europe could be possible, but… dreaming is for free.

My favourite subject?

Well, this a hard question because this semester I had have some troubles to assist to classes, some troubles that aren’t worth to talk about here, so I really don’t know how to answer this question objectively, so based on my few assistance percentage I choose Workshop I, with Silvia Lamadrid and Manuel Vivanco as a teachers, or more specific, guide teachers.

Why likes me? Because is a non presence subject (jeje), which in this semester suits me perfectly because I work on my home and to my own rhythm and always can count with guides teachers for any question and doubt about my work, I like this subject also because we can do a research for our own, it means, we can choose any theme that interest us and develop it according to our own ways to see the problem that we’ll research.

Even with all of this freedom to work, my grades didn’t go very well because I don’t have much time to dedicate to this subject, and really for any subject, but I hope this change on the next semester. Anyway I learned a lot of things by doing a research for myself, for example, meet people of the real world (this sounded creepy, I know :P) of institutions and know how they work, which also is important to my future life because I’ll work on that area (city council), I hope so. Basically I learned the difference between the academic way to work and real way to work, and there is a really huge difference, so with these kinds of research I can barely imagine how I’ll have to move during my future jobs.

(mmmm I think and I think and I don’t find a proper picture for this post… so this one goes without any)

Schools kill creativity...

Sir Robinson talks about creativity creatively because use in his talks a lot of passion and a ironic humor, making jokes about his own life and experiences, something like a stand up comedy, like Jerry Seinfield or Larry Charles (two genre’s masters), so it’s nice to hear him and the 20 minutes fly away.

This talk is about how school kills creativity, how school system put in first place technical knowledge over arts and other activities. Robinson says that everyone in this childhood have a talent, a latent talent, which, in most cases, isn’t developed because the hierarchy of the school system all of this contributes to a inflation of the real qualifications because in this days a simple degree doesn’t assure a job, now it’s necessary an MBA or a PhD for the same jobs than before you could get only with a degree. He also speak about think creatively, and for this goes for the children again saying that in this period, children aren’t prepared for making mistakes, so if they say, make or do something wrong, they don’t care very much and this is the key about creatively thinking because without the possibility of being wrong never comes up a original idea.

But, as a real review, there aren’t only flatters for Sir Robinson, and this is my modest contribution to the discussion, because Sir Robinson gives to much importance to arts in the creativity thinking, in other words, creativity not only applies on arts but also in science and other kind of activities like sports, technology, etc and all of them must put in the same priority and not only technical knowledge with artistic knowledge, but being realistic this argument is utopian because implies change all the school system as we know and in Chile at least, we can see how students and teachers fight to change it without results, but change it hardly for a decent one.

The future is now...

In this post I talk about my future, well, I talk about my ideal future because nobody knows what will happen, some people says that on 2012 our world will finish as we know it, but forgetting this “prophecy” my near future I see it with my sociology degree and working in the area, working around my birth place (see profile) because I never liked Santiago as a place to live, work or anything. I like to live in my own house but this is not a priority because there isn’t rush to leave my parents’ house.

So, after a stable work, saving some money and travel to Japan, not for live in there but a couple of months only to learn real Okinawa Karate, yes, I’m an amateur “karateka” so I would like to travel to know the cradle of real karate and some of the most historical places like Himeji Castle, Mount Fuji, etc.

This is one of my primary objectives once I become an independent “boy”, but on the other hand I would like to enter in local politics, like a member of the local council or something like that, but definitively on my birth place, or could be near but not too far

And the winner is...

This week I’ll show you the best sociologist, according to me of course, Pierre Bourdieu. He was born on August 1, 1930 and died on January 23, 2002.

Bourdieu was very poor and during his successful academic years he said that born in a poor village, to the inner France, make him a no-Parisian academic, relatively outsider because his manners and provincial Accent.

His work shines with original categories like “Symbolic Violence” where shows and explain a determinate cultural judgment imposition, in other words, explain how school reproduces middle social sectors common sense, teaches and qualifies students since that cultural heritage which acts like an “a priori” filter of the instruction and evaluation. Another original concept is “habitus” that allow us to understand the exteriorization- interiorization principle of the subjects inside of structurants structures and structurables. This concept explains better the action predisposition of the actors from their society relationship, Bourdieu said: “ I want to demonstrate that education and culture aren’t simple hobby with secondary influence. They are very important to state and reproduce differences between groups and social classes”.

His conviction about the most of institutions and social conventions are useful to keep “status quo” and generalized social inequality comes to some people that criticize him say that Bourdieu is contradictory because his high qualification even if he was born in a poor village, however Bourdieu explains that because “system allows to enter a symbolic number of lower classes students to keep “meritocracy” illusion”.

For these reasons I think that Pierre Bordieu is the best, because criticize the system from the system as well, he was an outsider but he can reach the top of the academic and intellectual world, simply wonderful, and the most important of his career was the search for the construction of a interdisciplinary practice according to scientific step forward of science itself and according to dominated social sectors.

video: didactic and informative introduction about Pierre Bourdieu.

image: The very famous map wich explains the four positions of capital and how, depending of the amount of capital, subjects move among this categories. (click to large view)

Me sociologist?

When I started to study after high school, I did a bachelor’s degree because I wasn’t sure about what to study, after this I studied science, Mathematics to be more exact because I always like it however this like last only 2 years since every subject that I learned got me away from reality, everything going more and more abstract to me and I realized that this couldn’t become my lifetime work. So I changed my priorities and I was looking for a new career, a career that keep me with feet on the ground, in contact with people, doing things that contributes to help people in the present, try to make a real difference. For this reason I chose sociology, because this career, I suppose, will give me all I need for what I looking for.

Well, a sociologist can contribute to the society in many ways, but the most of them are indirect because sociologist use tools to work, but is not in the decision process to contribute to improve society, in other words, sociologist contributes to decision process (in government, enterprises, etc) through his/her work.

About the tools questions it’s important to say that a sociologist have a very impressive “arsenal” that helps him in his work, and the efectiveness of each tool depends of what the sociologist want to study because every tool gives a different data. For example, a survey could give interesting data about “likes and dislikes” of many people, thousand, millions, but surveys can’t search in the depth of people feelings needed for another kind of studies, for this it’s needed a “depth interview”, other of the useful tools that give to the sociologist additional data for the investigation. Statistics are other of the most important tools of sociologist because with statistics the sociologist can explain mass behavior doing regressions, correlations, logarithmic models, etc, all of this with classical statistics formulas or using famous SPSS, a statistic relative software that make the sociologist life easier than before.

Finally, my favourite subject since I began to study sociology is no one, no one because there is not a single one; my favourite subjects are in the methodology area, practical subjects, like Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies, instead of theoretical ones, because these subjects are among the reasons for what I began to study sociology, to do concrete things, real things, real change.

Anamorphic Street Art

Well, this week I’ll write about a photograph that I like. So I’ll write about this one that I like so much.

In first place this is a picture from the official website of Julian Beever, a street artist who paint the most of his art on pavement, he also have paintings on walls but the most impressive and awesome pictures are on pavement. Particularity of his art is that use an anamorphic perspective, which means that you only can see the picture from a specific point of view; otherwise you’ll see a strange spot on the floor.

Well, this one is my favourite because mix two things that I love too much.

1. 1. It’s about batman, one of my favorite comic book character of all time and

2. 2. It’s one of the most complex paintings that I saw, because Beever painted not only Batman and Robin, he also painted a crowd watching how Batman and Robin climbing up the building, simply amazing.

This picture reminds me not a special feeling, only I like it for the technique of the artist that still shock me when I see anyone of his pictures.

So, if you like to see more of Julian Beever’s pictures just click HERE.

A useful tip

Hi again, this week I’ll post about a career – related web site. As it’s been said in my profile, I’m studying sociology so the present web site that I’ll show you shows one of the founders of the discipline, theoretically speaking and his vision about the nineteenth century industrial society was one of the main ways of understanding social behavior, social history and society as a totality. This character is no one else but Karl Marx.

Well, on the entire web there are too many sites that show Marx's theories condensed in handbooks, letters, etc. But there is one that I prefer over the others, Marxists.org, I think this is one of the more complete sites about Marx's theory, first and foremost because it contains the most of his work digitalized so you may download any document that you want for free, besides the site not only have information about Marx but also have information and documents from many Marxist authors like Marcuse, Gramsci, Lenin, Hanecker, etc.

I found the site when I had to read a lot about Marxist theory in some courses of my career and I didn’t have money to spend on photocopies, that, added to my internet addiction led me to this site and I don’t regret it.

Now I don’t visit it very often, because I’m in a new stage of my career, in which I do more practical courses than theoretical ones, so I have kept away from this site, but I recommend it every time I can.

Only one bad thing I can say about the site… its loading time. The site is very heavy, so when I browse on slow-connections PCs it takes a long time to get to see the entire site, and when you are on an internet center where time is money, it’s very annoying.

Anyway, if you are interested on learning somethin about Marx's theory and marxists in general, just click on the picture and "voila".

see you next week

Dr. Stein is back online

In this post I’ll write about my favourite piece of technology, my PC. I suppose that it isn't necessary to give some more information about what is a PC, I just want to add that however it's my favourite piece of technology because I assembled it on my own, I chose each part carefully from different stores and when I got every necessary piece I proceeded to assemble it, so I have a PC fully personalized according to my own needs and requirements.

For many years I have assembled my own computers and the last one I got it on last year, in march exactly, I bought it on my own with money saved after working for a whole summer, instead of vacation... I did work, but it was worth it.

I use it very often, every day, for assignments, playing, chatting, downloading movies, mp3 and videogames, etc. I loved it because of that. And my life without my PC would be a torture, because I think that now I depend on my PC and lately it has become an important part of my life, you can call me freak or geek, I don't mind.

image 1: Sirius black case.

image 2: sapphire ati radeon HD4850 PCIE 512 MB (Video card)

image 3: CPU Athlon 64 x2 5400+ Dual core