Gayadas de Caliman13

caught my eye surfing.....

Friday, July 4, 2008

An article for you from Vicente Aragon.

- AN ARTICLE FOR YOU, FROM ECONOMIST.COM -

Dear Caliman,

Vicente Aragon (vicentearagon@depapaya.com) wants you to see this article on Economist.com.

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DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE
Jun 27th 2008


Why mobile phones and motoring don't mix

A DECADE ago, when mobile phones were the size of bricks, you could buy
a nifty microphone and loudspeaker gizmo that you clipped onto the
handset and stuffed into a car's cup-holder, plugging the hefty power
cord into the socket for the cigarette lighter.

It provided genuine hands-free calling while on the road. It also
allowed conference calls, and let everyone in the car participate fully
in the conversation.

Sure, you still had to punch in the numbers manually if you wanted to
dial out, but it was a dream for answering calls while driving.

Bluetooth killed such gadgets. With their short range, low power and
ample bandwidth, tiny Bluetooth radios broadcasting in the public
2.4-gigahertz band provided an ideal wireless hook-up for personal
devices.

Bluetooth allows a mobile phone in your briefcase to connect seamlessly
to the computer on your lap. The mouse and keyboard no longer need to
be plugged into the PC on the desk. Best of all, a Bluetooth headset
can clip over your ear and communicate with the mobile phone in your
pocket, providing clear hands-free calling.

Unfortunately, only a small minority have bothered to use such headsets
while driving. Your correspondent has bought several over the
years--and found all to be fiddly, uncomfortable and far from adequate.
Besides, they make you look like a dork.

Your correspondent swears drivers in southern California--never ones to
notice anyone else's presence nor give an inch if they do--have grown
more aggressive and dangerous as mobile phones have grown more popular.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's governor, agrees. As of July 1st,
California will join New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington
state and Washington, DC in banning the use of handheld mobile phones
while driving.

Like other jurisdictions, California has also made it illegal for
drivers under 18 years of age to use any "mobile-service device" while
operating a motor vehicle. Unlike adults, juvenile motorists are
therefore forbidden from texting as well as phoning.

California will still let drivers use hands-free phones, and passengers
can continue to put phones to their ears. But get caught doing that
while driving and it will cost you $76 for the first offence and $190
for the second.

Will that actually stop Californian motorists? Difficult to say.
Washington, DC's ban only halved the number of motorists using mobiles
illegally. Drivers in New York have proved even bigger scofflaws.

The police in California have been collecting data on phone-related
crashes since 2001. While notoriously under-reported, mobile phones
have been implicated irrefutably in only 2.8% of fatal and injurious
car crashes. But accident figures from Canada and Australia suggest
that number is four times too low.

Another study, done by Virginia Tech for the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration, found that 80% of crashes and 65% of
near-crashes involved some form of distraction within three seconds of
the crash. The most common distraction by far was using a mobile phone.

When prosecuted for reckless driving, defendants often claim they are
experienced multitaskers, and that using a phone while driving is
child's play. But driving is itself the most complex multitasking
activity most people ever undertake.

Continuously, reliably and accurately, motorists must compute closing
speeds, braking distances and proximity to other vehicles, all while
monitoring speed limits, traffic signals, street signs and changes in
road surface, while still keeping a wary eye open for pedestrians,
animals and children. The last thing any motorist needs is yet another
distraction.

Your correspondent has written before about the perils of "change
blindness" to drivers (see article[1]). This occurs when people fail to
notice sudden or gradual alterations in a complex scene.

Change blindness can stem from a momentary distraction--say, a blink of
an eye or a sudden splash of mud on the windscreen. That's all it takes
for a motorist to completely miss something that's just entered the
visual scene--such as a pedestrian stepping onto a crossing. How often
have you heard drivers claim they simply never saw the object they hit?

Something similar, called "inattentional blindness", happens when
motorists talk on a phone. Researchers at the University of Utah have
used driving simulators to show that people can become so involved in
conversation that they fail to see objects on the road.

So, are hands-free phones the answer? Maybe not. Ominously, a Swedish
study recently found that motorists' reaction times increased
disproportionately when they were talking on the phone--regardless of
whether they are using a handheld or hands-free phone. The only thing
that counted was the complexity of the conversation.

And you don't have to be the one doing all the talking for your
reaction times to lengthen dangerously. According to scientists at
Carnegie Mellon University, merely listening can reduce activity in the
region of the brain that processes spatial and visual information by as
much as 37%.

For emergencies, your correspondent has now bought a modern Bluetooth
replacement (a Motorola T305) for the clunky old speakerphone he had
ages ago, and dutifully clips it on his car's sun visor before heading
off.

But his rule now for making even hands-free calls is to pull over
whenever possible. Meanwhile, incoming calls can be picked up later
from voice mail. And texting while driving--bizarrely still legal for
adults under the new Californian law--has to be just about the dumbest
thing you can do.

-----
[1] http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_ID=8833836


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NYTimes.com: Buckminster Fuller at the Whitney Museum

The New York Times E-mail This
This page was sent to you by:  vicentearagon@depapaya.com

ARTS   | July 3, 2008
Arts:  Buckminster Fuller at the Whitney Museum
Courtesy of the Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller
A timely new exhibition of works is likely to stir waves of nostalgia for those who miss the architecture of the cold war.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF FIGHT CLUB - CHOKEWinner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, CHOKE is a wickedly colorful dark comedy starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston. In Select Theatres September 26th.
Click here to watch trailer


 

NYTimes.com: Goya in Madrid

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ARTS   | July 2, 2008
Arts:  Goya in Madrid
Alvaro Felgueroso for the New York Times
“Goya in Times of War” at the Prado in Madrid is most memorable for pictures less famous, some rarely or never seen — still lifes and portraits — many from obscure collections.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF FIGHT CLUB - CHOKEWinner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, CHOKE is a wickedly colorful dark comedy starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston. In Select Theatres September 26th.
Click here to watch trailer


 

NYTimes.com: J.M.W. Turner at the Metropolitan Museum

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ARTS   | July 3, 2008
Arts:  J.M.W. Turner at the Metropolitan Museum
Tate, London
The oil and watercolor paintings in this show swing between overblown and moving, inspired and mechanical. Roberta Smith reviews.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF FIGHT CLUB - CHOKEWinner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, CHOKE is a wickedly colorful dark comedy starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston. In Select Theatres September 26th.
Click here to watch trailer


 

Thursday, July 3, 2008

El triunfo de Uribe con los rehenes. The Economist. Londres.


Americas/Colombia
July 3rd 2008/ BOGOTÁ
Uribe's hostage triumph
From The Economist print edition

The freeing of Ingrid Betancourt (left) and other guerrilla hostages is a political apotheosis for President Álvaro Uribe (right). It might even secure him a third term


The Economist-London.

IT WAS an ending happier than any Hollywood director would dare to dream up. After years of captivity at the hands of left-wing FARC guerrillas, Ingrid Betancourt, three American defence contractors and 11 Colombian soldiers were rescued on July 2nd by the army without a shot being fired. It was a "miracle", said Ms Betancourt, a former presidential candidate who holds French and Colombian nationality and who had been held for more than six years, for much of that time in chains and in poor health. It was a triumph for Colombia's president, Álvaro Uribe, who at some political cost had resisted pressure to negotiate the release of Ms Betancourt. And it was a disaster for the FARC and its sympathisers in Latin America who hoped to use the hostage issue to weaken Mr Uribe.

The rescue operation involved years of planning. It was testament to the army's new sophistication in intelligence and infiltration. It built on its recent successes in disrupting the FARC's communications and isolating its leaders from each other. An attempt to rescue other guerrilla hostages in 2003 had ended in disaster, when ten were killed by their captors.

This time the army relied on trickery rather than surprise or force. A former hostage who escaped last year supplied details of the jungle camps where the hostages were being held in the remote south-eastern departments of Guaviare and Vaupés. Army intelligence agents, posing as senior FARC members, communicated with the guerrilla commander guarding the hostages. They gave him a false order purporting to be from the FARC's new leader, Alfonso Cano, that the hostages were to be taken to a helicopter sent by a humanitarian organisation—mimicking the arrangements when six other captives were released earlier this year after mediation by Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez.

Once on board the helicopter, the two guerrilla escorts were overpowered and the army agents, some dressed in Che Guevara T-shirts, broke the news to the hostages that they were flying to an army base and freedom. "We couldn't believe it. The helicopter nearly fell because we jumped for joy," said Ms Betancourt.

The operation is the latest of several devastating blows suffered this year by the FARC, which mixes an antiquated Marxism-Leninism with drug-trafficking and racketeering. In March, the army bombed a guerrilla camp just over the border in Ecuador, killing Raúl Reyes, a member of the group's seven-man secretariat. The incident outraged Ecuador's president, but yielded a huge haul of documents from Mr Reyes's computers. Days later another member of the secretariat was killed by his own bodyguard. Then Manuel Marulanda, the FARC's founder and undisputed leader, died, supposedly of a heart attack.

The FARC still hold several hundred hostages, including a score of army and police officers and two politicians. But they have lost their chief prizes. Ms Betancourt was a minor politician in Colombia when she was seized while campaigning for the presidency in 2002. But she has become a national cause célèbre in France, where she studied; she married a Frenchman and her two children live there. Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, had made her release a personal priority, and pressed Mr Uribe to negotiate with the guerrillas.

The three Americans, who were working on contract to the United States government, were captured when their anti-drug surveillance plane crashed in guerrilla territory in 2003. The United States supplies Colombia with military aid and training. It has given particular help in intercepting FARC communications. Juan Manuel Santos, the defence minister, said that he had co-ordinated the rescue plan with American officials.

The FARC claimed to want to swap its trophy hostages (who at one point numbered around 60, including Colombian politicians and military officers) for jailed guerrillas. But e-mails from Mr Reyes's computer, seen by The Economist, show that their real aim was to use them to embarrass Mr Uribe politically and to gain international recognition.

They wanted the president to "demilitarise" a swathe of territory to allow talks. Mr Uribe was resolutely against that: during past peace talks the FARC used a similar enclave for recruiting and training while continuing to kill and kidnap. The guerrillas also want the European Union to drop them from a list of terrorist organisations—an aim that Mr Chávez supported, calling for their recognition as a "belligerent force".

Mr Uribe faced much pressure to bow to the FARC's demands, both from the hostages' families and, less understandably, from France. (At Mr Sarkozy's request he freed a jailed guerrilla leader who has returned to action.) Ms Betancourt's mother was particularly bitter in her criticism of the president during her tireless campaign for her daughter's release. But Ingrid Betancourt was full of praise for Mr Uribe and for the "impeccable" army operation. She said the biggest blow suffered by the FARC had been when the president succeeded in changing the constitution to allow him to run for—and win by a landslide—a second term in 2006.

That statement must have been particularly sweet for Mr Uribe. For the hostage release came in a week in which he was being widely criticised at home for appearing to blow up a conflict with Colombia's judiciary in order to engineer the possibility of a third term. Enraged by a Supreme Court ruling on June 26th that seemed to question the legality of his election victory in 2006, he has proposed a referendum on rerunning the vote.

The court's verdict involved Yidis Medina, a former congresswoman who cast the deciding vote when a congressional committee approved the constitutional change that allowed Mr Uribe to run in 2006. Ms Medina, a disreputable character who is also being investigated for alleged links to the ELN, another guerrilla group, had given a videotaped interview in 2004 in which she said that three of her followers were given government jobs in exchange for her vote on the re-election amendment. She authorised the tape to be made public after other promises were not kept, she said.

The court sentenced Ms Medina to 47 months of house arrest, and ordered investigations into two ministers she claimed had been involved in arranging the jobs. It went on to ask the Constitutional Court to consider the legality of the amendment and thus of the 2006 election in which Mr Uribe won by a landslide.

In a late-night television address, the president blasted the Supreme Court for "abuse of power" and for "applying justice selectively". It is not the first time that Mr Uribe has clashed with the courts. Under Colombia's constitution, the Supreme Court has the power to investigate wrongdoing by members of Congress. It has done so with energy: most of the more than 70 legislators it is investigating for past links with right-wing paramilitary groups are members of parties that backed the president; they include his cousin, Mario Uribe. The justices insist that they are merely applying the law. The president has repeatedly questioned their impartiality.

Legal experts doubt the constitutionality of a referendum to call for a rerun of an election. Many political commentators say it is unnecessary, since the Supreme Court did not directly question the legitimacy of the election itself. Nevertheless, the government announced that it would present a referendum bill when Congress begins a new session on July 20th. The referendum could not be held until late 2009. So a rerun of the 2006 election might be held just before the next scheduled presidential election in May 2010.

That timing makes Mr Uribe's opponents suspicious. For months he has refused to rule out seeking another constitutional change that would allow him to stand for a third term. His supporters are collecting signatures for a separate referendum on this issue. The triumphant release of the hostages, coming on top of his other successes, means that if he indeed wants a third term, Mr Uribe may well be able to get it. But others have political ambitions too. One is Mr Santos, who as defence minister has overseen those successes. Another is Ms Betancourt, who in freedom was quick to say she still aspires to the presidency. It would be even stranger than the movies if the three main protagonists in this week's happy ending were to meet again in a sequel at the ballot box in two years' time.


Open article at "The Economist" Web Site


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Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Postres clásicos dietéticos.

Julio 2, 2008
Postres Clásicos.
www.eatingwell.com


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