Generalized Selection Principle

There is human work that remains, and some that is lost. What to do? is a frequent question we answer to keep our lives meaningful. I joined Sugar Labs. Since I speak Spanish I tried to write a proper translation, when I finished it was not saved. I am a member of Wikipedia also; likewise my contributions there are very small. I propose here for myself a method, like Descartes many years ago in France. Here it goes.

Selection is a process we engage in. I choose when to stop writing, and when to continue. Tendency is where I want to end up after some work is finished. I select where I want to end up. I believe that Charles Darwin, just found the tip of the iceberg. Lee Smolin has a specific proposal for Quantum Gravity. The right theory is that one that leads to the maximum number of black holes. He expects to get some, maybe all, the values of the Standard Cosmological Model, that way. Varying these parameters within small ranges, the production of black holes should go down. There are some unknown actors, selecting big corn heads (read note below), at play behind this beautiful Universe of ours.

This proposal is for my work only, if some reader finds it useful, I´ll be grateful if she lets me know.

The Generlized Selection Process consists of a method to choose, the goal of this method is the production of members of a class. Say scientific ideas. One idea is chosen, if it produces more ideas that in their turn, produce even more ideas, then the idea is selected. These ideas have to be interesting to the author and others that know them. A set of ideas is not chosen if varying one of them just a little, produces less ideas. There has to be some wholeness to the final set of ideas. Some consistency; as Smolin is trying to do with his proposal of maximum production of black holes.

The method consists at least of four items:

• Understand the situation in need of choice
• Imagine an strategy to go from beginning to end
• Execute the strategy
• Check that the goal was achieved

This is clearly George Polya´s method to solve a math problem. Other thinkers have reached similar proposals, and I believe that even the Mexican plant breeder I write about in the Selection note below, uses a variation on this theme.

This Generilized Selection Principle produces coherent response systems for my actions, and those that choose to use it. It can be recursive, if this first version of the Principle does not work, applying the method a better one could be found. Eventually like that ancestor of mine, bigger corn heads will be produced.

Selection

Plant domestication is one of the oldest practices of civilized people. Only in few places on Earth has this taken place. One is Mexico. To this day this process continues. I believe that the people of Mexico has insight on the ways of Nature.

Norman Borlaug, started the modern era of this in Mexico.What I write about here is: What to expect of concepts on central tendency?

I expect that Mexicans without western school education have conceptions of central tendency.

To select corn with bigger heads the experts on hand had to select the proper seed to get, during a future harvest bigger corn heads.

It must be possible to engage the descendents of these experts to teach us: How do they select?

Natural Selection for Everything?

A few years back, Lee Smolin proposed to go past the impasse in the quest for Quantum Gravity using a modified Darwin principle of Natural Selection. I myself toyed with that idea in the eighties, I did not pursue it and Smolin did. Now he has predictions and a few of us are waiting to see if he is right.

I was wondering what else can we do with this. My friend Alan Boss from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, claims that so many parameters allow sceintists to fit anything. I am afraid he is right. How could we keep ourselves out of trouble in problems with so many parameters?

Maybe a generalized Natural Selection Principle can help. But I will write about that in another post.

Ida and Lin 1

These scientists conclude:

"Many planetesimals and embryos migrate to the proximity of their host stars, especially in the limit of relatively efficient type I migration. Many cohesive collisions may also occur among these planetesimals and embryos in the proximity of their host stars. Provided most of these planets are retained (despite the effect of their interaction with the magnetosphere and tide of their host stars), we anticipate the fraction of solar type stars with short-period earthmass objects to be several times that of short-period gas giants. The physical composition of these close-in planets is most likely to be rocky to icy. Their observed mass distribution will enable us to calibrate the magnitude of the type I migration (the magnitude of C1). The next step is to extrapolate and to calibrate the fraction of low-mass M-dwarfs and high-mass G sub-giant stars which may bear potentially habitable planets."

We may soon find Earth twins, if they are right.

Are There Planets Out There for Us?

It is difficult to know which Physics problems will be solved soon. String theory has many solutions, but not a single chosen one agreeing with most data. Planetary formation models can give little planets, big planets, some in between, but can they find and explain one just like ours? It seems that more data is needed, and more money and time spent. I hope they finish before we are through with this Earth of ours.

Ida and Lin

These two scientists have predicted many small planets in the Universe. Read:

Toward a Deterministic Model of Planetary Formation V. Accumulation Near the Ice Line.

Now, as noted below, Major et al. just announced the existence of planets smaller than Jupiter. Prof. Guillermo González from Iowa State University has this to say:

"These are certainly exciting news. It does confirm the expectation (from Lin and Ida's planet formation models) that there should be far more low mass planets than giants. I'm interested to see what the orbital parameters are like. For instance, are the high eccentricities prevalent among the giants also common among lower mass planets?"

Should I Join Open Source Teams?

I have been a user for more than 14 years of Open Source products. I even hosted Eric Raymond at Naperville, when I worked at Lucent Technologies. But so far there is nothing I have given back to the community. My son is more responsible, when he uses BitTorrent, he leaves the connection open for others to use. I have been stinky.

I plan to change that, I am starting Sugar Labs., Chilpancingo.

Weather Pattern Changes: Jet Stream Shifting

One of the main drivers of world’s weather is moving due to climate change. Scientists are finding that the jet stream, that river of air that pushes storms across the country, is moving towards the north and south poles.

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A Field Guide to Firefox 3: A Full Inventory of the Goodness

Deb, long time mozillian, gives a hefty outline of all the juicy new goodness in Firefox 3 in preparation for the final release next Tuesday.

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Web Applications

I am doing research on Mathematics Education. My emphasis is on digital instruments for education. Yesterday I was trying to figure out why divisions are so hard for kids. My first answer is that they memorize multiplication facts, not division facts, and then they have to learn complicated multiplication rules to do long divisions.

Under closer inspection I convinced myself that it is going to be hard if I want to make billions of grammar school teachers to change.

Then I read today about the Bill Gates - Marc Andreessen saga. Marc did not change the many Gates clients using Microsoft browsers in the nineties, but his children, Google-FireFox, are winning.

Is there a lesson here?

I think so. Good ideas win out, everything else being equal.

My goal is to imagine good ideas, they will take care of themselves.

FireFox

I am using version 3.0!
So far so good. You can read about this baby of Marc Andreessen in the note below. I wonder how much he is involved with this descendant of Mosaic.

Forbes: Why Firefox Matters

But don't be fooled. Firefox has become one of the most important pieces of software around today as consumers shift from using their PCs to run applications living on their hard drives to a communications device able to connect with applications living on distant servers. The new browser has plenty of these soon-to-be-ubiquitous features...

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Shabaa Farms

Finally the Arab and the Jewish people are talking about something I can understand, they are fighting over the "Shabaa Farms". Everybody needs land and water, if they had said that in 1945 when this whole mess started maybe by now there would have been an arrangement; everything can be negociated by the best negociators the world has ever known, the children of Abraham: Isaac and Ismael.

Are Lebanese Leaving Puebla?

Peace talk goes around in the Middle East right now, as you can see in the note below. Maybe those Arab-Pueblans are considering a return home. Maybe; I don´t know.

Israel Offers to Talk Peace With Lebanon

JERUSALEM — Israel offered on Wednesday to start direct peace talks with Lebanon, saying all issues would be negotiable including a tiny piece of Israeli-held land on the countries’ mutual border that Israel has long argued does not belong to Lebanon but that the Lebanese say is theirs.

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Iraq: Still Inscrutable By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

When I was in Cairo last week, Osama Ghazali Harb, an Egyptian political analyst, told me about a speech that he had recently given at the main Coptic Cathedral there. It was a discussion about the state of Arab politics. After he had finished, he said, an Iraqi man who had come with some Egyptian friends, got up to ask a question and along the ..

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Astronomers Identify 45 New Planets

At a meeting in Nantes, France, Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory and his group presented a list of 45 new planets, ranging in mass from slightly bigger than Earth to about twice as massive as Neptune, from a continuing survey of some 200 stars.

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Are Lebanese Moving to Puebla?

This past weekend I went to Puebla City in Mexico, after 10 years. The south east part of town is changed. Tall buildings and new business all over the place. That is good for my house because I guess its price went up. Where is the money coming from? Then I put two ant two together, and I think I have a solution. Lebanese are not as welcome to the US as they were before 9/11. There was a thriving Lebanese community already, the war in Palestine does not seem to be coming to an end anytime soon. I guess they are moving with millions of dollars, and invest with relatives in Puebla.

This hypothesis can be checked, I just leave it like that.

Even More Cubics

Even More cubics

Super Black Holes: NASA mission seeks new laws of physics

The Gamma Ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST) is an astounding mission to explore the most extreme environments in the universe, search for signs of new laws of physics, what composes the mysterious dark matter, and secrets found in gamma ray explosions.

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Super Black Holes: NASA mission seeks new laws of physics

The Gamma Ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST) is an astounding mission to explore the most extreme environments in the universe, search for signs of new laws of physics, what composes the mysterious dark matter, and secrets found in gamma ray explosions.

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The Mini-Laptops of Summer

You're not the only one losing weight for beach season. The latest and least expensive breed of slimmed-down mobile PC--the mini-laptop--is ready for summer travel.

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Curious 'Quasiparticles' Baffle Physicists

Israeli physicists have discovered bizarre 'quasiparticles' which have one quarter the charge of an electron, and may be useful in quantum computing.

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8 Steps

1. Gather data
2. Diagnose data
3. Select and prioritize your objectives
4. Create and analyze alternatives
5. Select one of them (make a decision)
6. Plan the action steps to carry out that decision
7. Implement the plan
8. Study the results against the objectives

Professor Polya many years ago proposed:

First principle: Understand the problem

Second principle: Devise a plan

Third principle: Carry out the plan

Fourth principle: Review/extend

Now James Rick, as you can read in the note below proposes the 8 steps I wrote here.

Method, can solve some problems.

8 Surefire ways to Problem Solving

If you find yourself dealing with a problem or challenge use these surefire 8 Step Problem Solving Method to clarify your thinking in a systematic approach.

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Apple and Lucent

Today I saw Steve Jobs presenting his 3G iPhone. Lucent was not capable of doing something like this. Why?

This seems a classic case of The King is dead. Long live the King! A new generation is in charge of communication companies in the US, and very likely the world.

More Cubics

Now I changed the coefficient values, we have three graphs in:

x³ - 27x - 54, x³ - 30x - 50, and x³ - 24x - 56.

One sees how we could have three real roots, two repeted, all different, or one real root and two complex roots.

Sums and Subtractions

Is it easier to calculate sums than subtractions? Why?

It may be that we memorize addition facts and need to apply an algorithm for subtractions. By the same token it seems that multipplications are easier than divisions.

You can read lesson plans for children in:

The Math Lesson.

Children start counting. Could they start subtracting?

It may be natural, whatever that means, to count than to subtract. Could we start by asking small children to take away, before we worked on counting?

I suspect that society chose sums over subtractions and adults taught children that way. It could have been the other way around. If the child has a few things, adding seems natural, but if she already has more than she uses, she could see subtraction as relevant. More and less are concepts we learn from a young age. Which is more "natural", whatever that means?

Physicists in Congress Calculate Their Influence

WASHINGTON — According to the Congressional Research Service, there are only about 30 scientists among the 535 senators and representatives in the 110th Congress, and that is counting the psychologist, the psychiatrist, a dozen other M.D.’s, three nurses, an engineer, two veterinarians, a pharmacist and an optometrist.

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It’s a Different Country : By Paul Krugman

Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America. With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. Mr. Obama is an impressive speaker who has run a brilliant campaign — but if he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed.

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Google Docs

Obviously I am not the best user of Google Docs. But there it is. I graphed a cubic with OpenOffice, I uploaded it, published the graph independently, and voilà.

By the way the formula is:

x³ - 27x - 54

Cubic 1

Cubic

Click here to get a Cubic

Savor the Moment By BOB HERBERT

Friday was the 40th anniversary of the death of Robert F. Kennedy. Had he lived, he would be 82 now.

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Gauss´Less Constraint Principle and Covariation

Dr. Carlson has developed ideas around mental processes associated to function graphing in mathematics. She stresses the ability of the person doing the graph, to coordinate two variables as they vary. On the other hand Gauss, many years ago developed the idea that objects move minimizing force constraints, as if free.

Is there a connection?

The actual process of doing the graph can be with straight lines between the points considered for one interval. The more points, the more faithful the graph is. In Gauss´method the particle moves as if free, between points also.

One basic difference between the two sets of ideas is that Gauss does get exactly Newton´s force law, and Carlson gets a graph without physical motivation.

It may be interesting to ask if Gauss was considering the best way to do a graph with mental processeses similar to those Carlson has drawn our attention to.

User Scripts

At Lucent Technologies I worked with a Script Guru. He build a whole structure to automatize software construction tasks. I was even included in one of his patents. Now I want to us this technique to automatize teaching activities. I really don´t know how good they´ll turn out to be. But I will try.

The Gmail extension I added to my FireFox browser, Better Gmail, is an example of user scripts.

My Role in OLPC

I recently met Carla Gómez Monroy. She belongs to the One Laptop Per Child foundation. She accepted my offer to help in that endevour. I want to write some scripts to mimic what my colleagues do here in Chilpancingo. They break up, in detailed pieces, lesson plans and other practical products teachers do to help students do mathematics.
I want to add digital instruments to this box of tricks.
I expect good things from these efforts.

Gina Trapani

I am reading something written by this software creator. She writes so well that in my new life as a Math Education Professor I feel envious. I hope my writing and speech improve in this new stage in my life. She directed the production of the Gmail tools I installed today.

Math Education

I am starting to read long papers. They go on and on, and seem to never end. These people know more words than I do, and even make up some more, say construct. That word is supposed to mean something else from construction. It is used as a noun.

I am having fun. I cannot change the collegues a bit, I guess that will come with time.

Better Gmail?

I just installed Better Gmail to my Firefox browser. I really don´t know yet what this will do for me. I am happy with the ScribeFire add on so far. It gets somethings done faster.

Gmail Gets 13 Experimental New Features Tonight

Starting at 6 PM Pacific Time tonight, Google will start rolling out Gmail Labs, an experimental area of new Gmail features that will be familiar to Better Gmail users...

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Complexity

As a physicist I try to simplify everything. Now that I am working on Math Education, whatever that means, I am trying to simplify everything. I need a more nuanced approach. This is an effort to state a more useful methodology.

I hear my colleagues belaboring what for me seem like simple situations. What is the Social Representation (SR) of grammar school mathematics? Hour after hour I hear the many, many nuances, this question has. My colleagues even debate whether a conjunction for or on should be used in a paragraph. Grammar is not my forte; they were really arguing not about a conjunction, but about a coordinating conjunction. I am in trouble.

Are SRs that important? Yes. Do I know one when I see one? No.

Is it really true that the Theory of Quantum Cosmolgy is simpler? Maybe not, and that is why theoretical physicsts are stuck. I do want to contribute to Quantum Cosmolgy as I do to Math Education, but in any case I have to confront the intrinsic complexity of our lives.

I assume that the place to start is the Principle of Computational Equivalence (PCE), discovered by Stephen Wolfram.

Once one reaches a threshold of complexity, all complex systems are equivalent. The good news is that the threshold is low, a Cellular Automata is enough, the bad news is that it is complicated once the automata is run long enough.

I had the same feeling, I guess most people do, when I run my first "simple" iterated equation:

x_n+1 = λ x_n(1 - x_n)

Now I have to search for an equivalent guide in Math Education, whatever that means.

Bright Children

I was reading today the ideas of David Dalrymple, since he was thirteen, grown ups were interested in him. He is set to fix computer architecture from serial to parallel. Also today I heard about children in Mexico City ready to get into science programs. I ask myself: What can a child do and when?

My son is also sixteen and bright. Can they go ahead without our help?

I don´t think so, at least we have to provide social references, What and why is important? We adults sometimes have trouble knowing this, Then how can we help?

Our role is to provide a useful common sense. Einstein said that common sense is what we believe before 18. Science has to go beyond common sense, but first we have to develop a new improved common sense we can share with our children.

Yes David Dalrymple can improve computers, and most bright children deserve the opportunity to make their mark in this world.

Ray Kurzweil and Neil Gershenfeld: Two Paths to the Singul..

MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld and technology futurist Ray Kurzweil have long worked at the leading edges of physical science and computer science. Today, in their own ways, both believe that we are on the event horizon of a technological singularity. But they arrived at this conclusion from two very different directions, discovered one child ..

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The Future Is Now? Pretty Soon, at Least

Ray Kurzweil is a futurist with a track record who makes his predictions using what he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns.

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Scientists Have Solved The Mystery of Levitation

The University of St Andrews team has created an 'incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together and reversing a phenomenon known as 'Casimir force'.

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Acer bets big on Linux

Acer has stated that it will be pushing Linux aggressively on its laptops and netbooks. The company is already heavily promoting Linux for its low cost ultra-portable netbook range out later this year, but senior staff have said that Acer will also push Linux on its laptops.

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Roger Cohen: Energy lessons

Time to start thinking about energy abundance, not about energy conservation.

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Mathematics Education in the US

I have been reluctant to write about my experience in US high schools. For one thing I may not be as objective as I would like. For another thing I am not knowledgeable since I only taught two years in that system.

Be it as it may, here is my first installment.

I did not succeed. I know more physics and mathematics than most of my colleagues in those schools. Nevertheless I did not satisfy the expectations of my bosses.

In one occasion I did not present the material in the expected way. In another occasion I did not keep the discipline as was expected of me.

My first assessment of my US experience, is that what I knew was not as important as what the hiring authorities expected of me.

I am disappointed because in one occasion my students were minorities, and my knowledge could have helped them. Now I am back in Mexico, I feel appreciated.

Mathematics Education

You can read in Wikipedia about this field of Mathematics.

This could become a strategic area in the world at large. In the past, the need to produce and know mathematics was satisfied with a small number of practitioners. In Greece, only small groups of people were involved in these activities. It is clear that the need is more extensive nowadays.

There are countries which took this activity as very important for the long time survival of the way of life of its people. I can think at least of three countries that recognize this situation: The United States of America, Russia, and China.

I mention these three because two of them were in a fierce competition propelled by the so-called Cold War. The third is a newcomer to the competition for markets and sources of raw materials.

Mexico, the country where I reside now,is mainly in the sphere of influence of the US, but this influence is less now than during the last decade say. China has a plan to build efficient cars in the Mexican state of Michoacan. The current Governor of that state is the grandson of the Mexican President that confronted the US when oil workers went on strike in 1938. As a result of the political decision of that President, now Mexico is responsible for the best use of Mexican oil; at close to one hundred dollars a barrel, this resource is more valuable than ever.

It is not chance then, that his grandson, now in a nation building measure, agrees with the Chinese leaders to build these cars using Mexican resources. The state of Michoacan has plenty of iron, an important resource for this enterprise. Furthermore there is a deep water port in the Pacific strategically located for this factory in the same state.

Here in Chilpancingo we are ready to educate our young in this very important area of Mathematics Education. We need hundreds of new teachers, and thousands of new students to produce a viable society in this part of the world, which has had human habitation for ten thousand years at least.

We are ready for the coming world based on mathematics, science, and technology.

Mexico at the Brink

The War on Drugs may be fading from memory north of the Rio Grande, but south of the river, bloody battles are threatening to overwhelm Mexico’s democratically elected government. The timid assistance package proposed by the Bush administration and pared down by Congress suggests that Washington doesn’t grasp either the scale of the danger or its..

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Escuela de Chilpancingo

Plan de Trabajo de Eduardo Cantoral en el Centro de Investigación de Matemática Educativa de la Unidad Académica de Matemáticas de la Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero en Chilpancingo.

04/06/08

Sumas y Restas en Matemáticas

Introducción

El objeto de investigación aquí propuesto es la
dificultad de los algoritmos matemáticos. En la antigüedad
las operaciones aritméticas sin el uso del concepto de cero
provocaron la siguiente situación en Europa. Se sabía
de la existencia del cero a través de los Árabes, que
obtuvieron este concepto de los Hindúes. La Filosofía
Europea estaba sustentada en la Griega como había sido
incorporada por la Iglesia Cristiana Europea. En esta religión,
la idea de la nada se consideraba errónea y extranjera, Árabe
e Hindú.

Los hombres de negocio, sin embargo, eran pragmáticos. Si
alguién pudiera llevar sus cuentas eficientemente, no les
importaba que se usara el cero.

El resultado de esta situación fué el uso ilegal de los
algoritmos árabes. En una especie de contrabando, se usaban
estos algoritmos sin informar a las autoridades eclesiásticas.
Los números oficiales, o romanos, no eran adecuados para
llevar las cuentas de la mejor manera posible en esa época.

Aquí se propone el uso de instrumentos digitales para la
matemática.

Ahora no es un dogma religioso el causante de las dificultades, es
una situación histórica. En particular se considera
aquí el estudio del cálculo diferencial e integral.
Existe un obstáculo epistemológcio con la concepción
del infinito. Entre parentésis, es el mismo concepto medieval
del cero, pero ahora al intentar la división con su uso sin
atención del usuario del algoritmo. Los creadores del cálculo,
Newton y Leibniz, probablemente hubieran inventado otros algoritmos 

de haber tenido en ese tiempo instrumentos digitales como los modernos 

para realizar sumas y restas.

No se propone aquí revisar la historia, ni siquiera entender
cómo hubiera sido la historia si los actuales instrumentos
digitales hubieran existido. Simplemente se propone retomar los
desarrollos del siglo diecisiete antes de Newton y Leibniz, y
proseguir, ahora con instrumentos digitales, el estudio y la
enseñanza de las diferencias finitas.

Desarrollo

La primera parte de esta propuesta de trabajo es la recopilación
del conocimiento, tanto actual como del siglo diecisiete, de los
algoritmos de sumas y restas para obtener razones de cambio
y la suma de estas razones de cambio. El enfoque metodológico
será el de la Mecánica Clásica, tanto porque el autor de esta
propuesta es Físico, como por que se argumentará que la
matemática surge en contextos históricos que sirven para su mejor comprensión.

Posteriormente se revisará la literatura en el área de
la Matemática Educativa, de trabajos previos relevantes a la
presente investigación.

Después se implementarán las propuestas en salones de
clase, principalmente en el nivel medio superior y superior.

Finalmente se presentarán los resultados en medios y foros
adecuados que le den continuidad a este esfuerzo y que permitan a
otros investigadores y profesores activos, usar lo descubierto y
construido como resultado de este trabajo, en las escuelas y lugares
donde sean útiles.

Conclusión

Se propone el estudio de los algoritmos de cálculo para su implementación en
instrumentos digitales para el estudio y la enseñanza de las matemáticas en los
lugares donde suceda este estudio. Ahora es posible construir un objeto de
estudio en un lugar y usarlo en otro. Por ejemplo el Tecnológico de
Massachusetts, ya le da a los profesores de esa institución la oportunidad de
poner sus notas de clase en la Internet, para que sean usados por sus
estudiantes, y cualquier otro estudiante en el mundo que tenga una conexión de Internet.

El objeto de este estudio es la dificultad de los algoritmos
matemáticos. Didácticamente se intenta presentar ideas,
como el teorema fundamental del cálculo de diferencias
finitas, de la manera más simple. Se presenta la hipótesis
de que este esfuerzo por parte del profesor llevará a mejores
resultados de aprendizaje de los estudiantes.

Finalmente se propone aquí que este es el momento histórico
adecuado para este estudio. El autor está involucrado en el
Proyecto, Una Computadora Portátil Para Cada Niño (OLPC
por sus siglas en inglés), del Profesor Nicholas Negroponte
del Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts. Las contribuciones
de la Escuela de Chilpancingo serán consideradas y en su caso
incorporadas a este esfuerzo de alcance mundial.

Absolutely Stunning: Magnetic Fields Visible For First Time

Natural magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic, ever-changing geometries as scientists from NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory excitedly describe their discoveries.

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René Descartes

"For myself, I have never fancied my mind to be in any respect more perfect than those of the generality; on the contrary, I have often wished that I were equal to some others in promptitude of thought, or in clearness and distinctness of imagination, or in fullness and readiness of memory. And besides these, I know of no other qualities that contribute to the perfection of the mind; for as to the reason or sense, inasmuch as it is that alone which constitutes us men, and distinguishes us from the brutes, I am disposed to believe that it is to be found complete in each individual; and on this point to adopt the common opinion of philosophers, who say that the difference of greater and less holds only among the accidents, and not among the forms or natures of individuals of the same species."

This quote taken from the French thinker, René Descartes, allows me to think that all children can learn mathematics.

Time for Radical Pragmatism

When I reported from Israel in the mid-1980s, the big debate here was whether Israel’s settlement-building in the West Bank had passed a point of no return — a point where any serious withdrawal became virtually impossible to imagine. The question was often framed as: “Is it five minutes to midnight or five minutes after midnight?” Well, having ..

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What the Mexicans Might Learn From the Italians

The headline in The New York Times that morning in 1984 was macabre, if unintentionally hilarious: “Unknown Arm of Sicilian Mafia Is Uncovered in the United States.”

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Why "One Laptop Per Child's" Founder Left OLPC

“Microsoft stepping in is the symptom, not the disease,” he said in the interview. The issue, in his view, is whether the tools that bring computing to children are “agnostic on learning” or “take a position on learning.” “O.L.P.C. has become implicitly agnostic about learning,” he said.

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Particle physics receives boost from $5 million gift to Univ

University of Chicago press release,May 27, 2008The University of Chicago announced today that it has received a $5 million gift to be directed toward the development of future programs in particle physics.

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The Year That Changed the World By ROGER COHEN

There are many strands to the annus mirabilis of 1968 — the Prague Spring, the Paris barricades, Flower Power — but all involved an uprising against a stifling postwar order. In what the author Paul Berman has called “an incoherent fraternity,” idealism provided what coherence there was.

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What Should One Teach in Elementary Mathematics?

The course I am working with the students here in Chilpancingo is Advanced Algebra. This is a first year algebra class. Before solving cubics and quartics at the end of the class in the middle of June, we are studying fractionary roots of complex numbers.

Some of them have trouble visualizing complex numbers and their roots. They tried to calculate:

(-1 + i)^-2/5 and (1 -i)^-2/5

I want to tell them about Euler´s formula, e^iθ = cosθ + isinθ, and how to use it for this calculation.

I am reading a book by Lakoff and Núñez which analyzes the mathematical concepts behind Euler´s formula, in particular, What does it mean e^iπ + 1 = 0?

The students used their scientific calculators and a formula they got from previous class notes. Now I want to emphasize this other method.

Euler´s formula has the number e; they don´t know this number, but more importantly, I think, they don´t know the concepts. That is my dilemma. Teach them more powerful concepts, or stick to the calculational methods they already know?

The conflict is that there is at least one online complex number calculator:

Complex Number Calculator.

I feel like emphasizing concepts, and leaving calculational technique to the internet.

Mexicans at CERN and Failed Students

You can read in Spanish below a note by a Mexican TV person about the "other" immigrants. These are good Mexican scientists doing good work abroad.

Unfortunately there is another side to that coin. I was talking to students here in Chilpancingo about the students that do not make it in the University here. Their answer was: They go up north.

I guess you do not have to think very hard to figure out exactly how far north they go.

Mexicanos en CERN

Mayo 22, 2008 por Leonardo Ferrera

Mayo 28, 2008

LOS OTROS MIGRANTES…
Estimados lectores, es un gusto grande para su servidor platicarles otra historia de migrantes que cruzan la frontera, diferente a la que desafortunadamente escuchamos día a día sobre abusos, humillación, explotación laboral, pobreza y muerte…

Esta es la historia de un exitoso grupo de científicos mexicanos en Ginebra, Suiza, donde viajamos recientemente, el cual está colaborando en un importante proyecto de investigación con los mejores físicos del mundo, incluidos varios premios Nóbel a quien tuvimos la oportunidad de entrevistar y cuya opinión sobre el trabajo que realizan nuestros connacionales es muy halagador…

¿Y en que consiste su colaboración?… El Centro Europeo de Investigación Nuclear, similar en importancia a la NASA, está por iniciar un experimento que de acuerdo con los científicos sería el más importante para el mundo en las últimas décadas, similar en grandeza a lo fue el proyecto Apolo 11 que llevó al hombre a la luna…

En este caso no se trata de ir al espacio, sino de recrear en laboratorios bajo tierra, a más de 100 metros de profundidad, una explosión similar a lo que fue el “Big-Bang” que dio origen al universo hace más de 13 mil millones de años. De acuerdo con los especialistas este experimento ayudaría a entender mejor de que está hecho el universo y de que estamos hechos todos los seres vivos, lo que beneficiaría al desarrollo de nuevas tecnologías en favor de la industria, de la salud y del medio ambiente, entre otros…

¿Y sabe que? México está presente en este importante proyecto. Son 40 investigadores, provenientes de la UNAM, del IPN, del CINVESTAV y de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, aportando su talento y conocimientos con los más reconocidos científicos del mundo…

Sin exagerar sería como decir que este equipo mexicano esta en las Grandes Ligas, pero de la ciencia, o en la “Champions League”, con científicos que también saben “mover el balón” a la altura de un Ronaldinho, de un Messi o de un Kaka…

¿Usted que opina?

Este blog fue creado el Jueves, 22 de Mayo del 2008 a las 6:55 am y pertenece a la categoría Investigaciones Especiales. Puedes darle seguimiento a los comentario mediante la liga RSS 2.0. Puedes escribir un comentario, o vincular desde tu sitio.

14 Respuestas para “LOS OTROS MIGRANTES…”
Pagina: 1 2 » Mostrar todos los comentarios

Eduardo Dice:

Publicado el 27-05-2008 - 9:07 am

Estimados amigos,
Hay problemas científicos y técnicos que solo se pueden resolver en México. Todavía no pueden las autoridades de Guerrero, donde vivo, comprarse una carretera en Houston y traerla para acá. Sin embargo igualmente hay problemas científicos que solo se pueden resolver fuera de México. El costo de construcción y operación de CERN, es tan grande que ningún país puede pagarlo solo.

Me siento orgulloso de esos jóvenes mexicanos que nos representan allá, tanto o más de lo que me siento de que Hugo Sánchez haya sido tan grande en el Real Madrid, o de lo que pase en el futuro con Giovani dos Santos en el Barcelona.

¡Viva México!

Laura Romo Dice:

Publicado el 26-05-2008 - 3:14 pm

En verdad me da un gusto enorme saber que nuestros connacionales puedan demostrar así mismos y al mundo, que nuestro país a pesar de sus problemas y carencias, a pesar de ser tercer mundo cuenta con la capacidad en su gente para sobresalir y para contribuir a mejorar “algo” en nuestro planeta que tanto hemos deteriorado.

Ojalá que todos no esforzaramos más por aportar algo benefico al mundo en que vivimos!!!!

Saludos!

mugroso Dice:

Publicado el 26-05-2008 - 2:46 pm

Carlos F. Saenz dice:

{…”En lo personal me gustaría saber cómo se solucionará la contaminación de mantos freáticos, la eliminación de plásticos no biodegradables, y tecnologías de educación a distancia efectiva, que saber cómo y cuando hizo “pum” el Big Bang”…}

Usted esta hablando de politicas publicas. Curiosamente y para su informacion, precisamente de los frutos de la ciencia, terminan siendo aplicados en no tan solo la politica publica, pero en el acontecer diario de las personas…como la computadora por la que escribe, o precisamente la misma planta que limpiara la contaminacion de esos mantos freaticos a los que usted se refiere.

mugroso Dice:

Publicado el 26-05-2008 - 2:28 pm

Mario…interesante sus paginas. Ya me di una vueltecita por hay y pues ojala se esclarezcan muchas dudas de si en verdad el Big Bang proviene de un solo atomo o si mas que nada somo parte de una de las 11 dimensiones que menciona la nueva teoria “del todo”, que nos llevaria otra vez a lo mismo: tratar de indagar de donde surgieron dichas dimensiones.
En lo personal, me gustaria que en vez de estar viendo tantas tara-novelas todo el dia y reality shows de Carmen Salinas, que mejor nos habran un canal de ciencias sobre lo que se hace en Mexico y en otros paises. Tratar de generar interes en nuestros ninios y jovenes por la ciencia a temprana edad, traeria consecuencias positivas y a futuro para las siguientes generaciones. Quizas algun dia en vez de adquirir toda la teconologia que se usa en el pais, seamos capacez de inventarla, producirla y venderla nosotros mismos al mundo entero.

…nos estamos quedando atras. Al menos asi se ve desde afuera. Saludos a Usted y todos los que colaboran con usted.

Mario Dice:

Publicado el 25-05-2008 - 9:04 am

Ojo ACLARACIÓN …

Todos los colaboradores (PROFESORES-INVESTIGADORES Y ALUMNOS) de la participación mexicana en ALICE viven y trabajan en México. TODO EL TRABAJO REALIZADO POR LA COLABORACIÓN MEXICANA SE HIZO DESDE MEXICO, TANTO LA ELECTRONICA COMO LOS MODULOS DEL DETECTOR SE DESARROLLARON Y PROBARON EN MEXICO.

Saludos

ACORDE’S

Mario Dice:

Publicado el 25-05-2008 - 3:58 am

Estimado Mugroso,

Tu comentario sobre el Big-Bang es muy acertado. En el CERN se pretenden reproducir las condiciones en las que se encontraba el Universo unos instantes DESPUES de haberse generado la Gran Explosion que, según la versión más aceptada de la creación del universo, dió origen a todo lo que conocemos hoy en día. Para esto, se ha construido el acelerador de particulas LHC (Gran Colisionador de Hadrones), que empezará a funcionar en este año. Además se han construido 5 detectores de partículas, que nos permitirán observar el resultado de las colisiones de protones y/o iones pesados a las energías de este enorme acelerador. En el momento de la colisión, se tendrá materia altamente enegética, con una altísima densidad. Por supuesto, esta energía será muchos ordenes de magnitud menor que lo ocurrido en la gran explosión.

Si lo deseas, podemos platicarte más sobre las actividades que se realizan acá en el experimento ALICE-CERN. En esta página encontrarás más información sobre ALICE-CERN:

ALICE-CERN

También, sugiero que visites la pagina del CERN: http://www.cern.ch, para más detalles generales sobre el acelerador.

Saludos cordiales

Mario

mugroso Dice:

Publicado el 23-05-2008 - 9:19 pm

No hay que ser tontos ni creernos todo lo que nos dicen…en serio, nomas ponganse a pensar en la magnitud del experimento: recrear el big bang! Para los que no saben que es el big bang, pos hay les va un poquito para que lo entiendan. Se trata nada mas y nada menos de que todo lo que existe en el Universo hoy, meterlo, comprimirlo y apachurrarlo en un espacio tan pequenio como lo es un atomo…..y hacerlo explotar!!!!

Ok…vamos por partes para quienes no entendieron:

Meter, acumular, comprimir, apachurrar…lo que sea pero que quede todo adentro de un espacio tan pequenio como lo es un atomo. Algo que es hasta dificil de mirar con un microscopio.
Que hay que meter en ese espacio tan reducido? Hay les va… la lista es grande:
Nuestro planeta, y todos los del sistema solar incluyendo el sol, todas las estrellas que se ven en el cielo por las noches. Y luego que algunas son tan grandes que su diametro, si la pusieramos en el lugar del sol, pues facilmente se tragaria la tierra. Toditita entera la galaxia y sus mas de 100 billones de ’soles’….aparte los otros 100 billones de galaxias con sus 100 billones de soles cada una. Algunas con mas, otras con menos pero es nomas pa’ darse la idea.

Hasta ahi todo bien y yo no tengo ningun problema. Como dijeron por hay, los mexicanos no somos tontos y de algun modo nos las vamos a arreglar pa’ ver como le hacemos.

En lo que si tengo problema es en lo siguiente: Cuando una estrella tiene la densidad de 25 soles como el nuestro, su misma fuerza gravitacional la hace colapsar en si misma, lo que genera un agujero negro. Y como todos sabemos los agujeros negros todo se tragan y es tan fuerte su fuerza de gravedad que ni la luz se escapa….ora imaginense que los fisicos por andar queriendo recrear el big bang, terminen creando un hoyo negro y nos trague a todos…a quien le van a hechar la culpa???? Pos a los mexicanos como siempre.

Y no solo eso, supongamos que los mexicanos logran recrear el big bang, ya esta toda esa masa ahi dentro y en ese espacio tan pequenio…y ora que? Lo hacemos explotar? A quienes van a acusar de terroristas??? Pos a los mexicanos…o no???

Saludos.

Jose González Dice:

Publicado el 23-05-2008 - 2:14 pm

Tontos no somos. Yo mismo soy un migrante viviendo en San Jose California, en Estados Unidos y me dedico a asesorar a inmigrantes para obtener su residencia legal. Todos los días veo gente muy talentosa y valiosa que por falta de oportunidades, por desigualdad y burocracia, no pueden salir adelante en México y tienen que emigrar. Este tipo de ejemplos, más que orgullo, nos debería poner a reflexionar. Si, esto confirma que tontos no somos. Pero desgraciadamente, pone de manifiesto la terrible desigualdad e injusticia que prevalece en nuestro país.

Ivan Dice:

Publicado el 23-05-2008 - 4:37 am

“La excelencia”

Definitivamente hay fuga de cerebros en nuestro país, la gente inteligente nace en todo el mundo pero detectarlos y desarrollar su potencial para su progreso individual y el de su comunidad es la tarea en la que todos hemos fallado.

En la escuela podemos ver que hay un miedo inherente a la gente lista, nuestra primera reacción es burlarnos de ellos, la siguiente es apartarnos de ellos, y la tercera y mas triste es aislarlos. Eso se repite desde la infancia hasta nuestra edad adulta, los vemos mas como una amenaza que como un un aliado importante.
Estoy seguro que si se afinan los mecanismos para detectar talentos nos vamos a llegar una gran sorpresa, es cuestión de saber buscar, hasta arriba del cerro si es necesario porque los retos que vienen demandan la acción oportuna de la gente mas inteligente y mas preparada.

Algo que ayudaría seria repatriar el talento en la medida de lo posible, es difícil pero factible porque la competencia mundial por los mismos puestos ocasiona una rotación importante de talentos que pudieran estar disponibles.

Que padre que estos mexicanos estén ahí, aunque si algo nos ha enseñado la historia es que esta migración ha sido permanente desde hace mucho tiempo. Un ejemplo ha sido Guillermo González Camarena que tuvo que ir a EU a registrar su invento porque aquí no había las condiciones adecuadas para hacerlo, finalmente hay una estación de televisión XHGC Canal 5 con sus siglas pero tuvo que batallar mucho para encontrar el socio adecuado y el reconocimiento nacional.

Slaudos.

V Canales Dice:

Publicado el 22-05-2008 - 8:29 pm

Para empezar hay que felicitar a estos cientificos por estar a nivel de investigaciones que afectan al mundo entero, no solo a nuestro peque;o pais en crisis, ese tipo de cerebros no pueden desarrollar sus capacidades al maximo en medio de la burocracia mexicana, la falta de apoyo al desarrollo de la ciencia y la corrupcion de la mayoria de las instituciones de Gobierno. Si bien es cierto que la fuga de cerebros es lamentable mas lamentable es que miles de profesionistas inteligentes, preparados, creativos y eticos se ven frustrados por la situacion politica del pais (donde es casi imposible hacer algo sin palancas) y forzados a buscar un mejor nivel de vida y condiciones de trabajo en paises en los que se respetan mejor las leyes y se castiga eficazmente a los que las rompen.


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Gauss´Less Constraint Principle

Carl Friederick Gauss in 1829 established this principle for Classical Mechanics.

"According to the Gauss principle,"the motion of a system of material points, constrained in an arbitrary manner, and subjected to arbitrary forces at any moment of time, takes place in a manner which is as similar as possible to the motion that would be performed by these points if they were free, i.e. with least-possible forcing — the measure of forcing during the time dt being defined as the sum of the products of the mass of each point and the square of the distance of the point from the position which it would occupy if it were free" "

You can read a little more here.

Hope in the Unseen

A portrait of hope was on every face during a lottery to choose the first 80 students, drawn from disadvantaged districts, who will attend a new public boarding school.

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Richard Rodriguez

I just submitted a piece by Richard Rodriguez in Newsweek (below). Here I want to expand on the man .

I feel like him. My father wanted all my siblings to learn English. We were born in Mexico, and most of us have gone abroad in later life. Some of my nephews and nieces have even lived abroad. My first grand nephew was born in Spain! We were not limited by poverty. It might have helped that we did not look as "indio", as Rodriguez; nevertheless my mother was surprised when I told her that in the US I am considered "colored".


It saddens me that if you look "indian", like the Mexican actor Ruben Sosa (below) from Tepito, Europeans do not respect you. I guess I have wished I, or my children, look more European. Maybe, in part, that is why I married a Russian-American Jewish woman. My kids look more European than I do, but I feel proud of my American-Indian genetic endowment.

I am very happy to report that last night I went to a dance for "Student Day" here in Chilpancingo, where many of my students looked more Indian than I do. They are so beautiful!

Richard Rodriguez has done a very good work to "educate" racist Europeans masquerading as Americans. The only Americans are the ones that were here already, when the Europeans arrived in the leap year of 1492. I hope that Rodriguez, and other people with bright minds like him, finally enlighten all of us. Human differences are almost all, only skin deep.

See the Brown in Us By Richard Rodriguez

Advice for Obama: Talk to Hispanics as a man who has made his way through black and white America.

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Mexican star of immigrant drama gets border grief at Cannes

CANNES, France (AFP) — The Mexican star of an immigrant drama presented at Cannes got a hard time from disbelieving French airport police after he truthfully told them he was an electrician invited to the glitzy festival, police said Thursday.

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"Che" More Informative Than Inspiring

CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - The irrepressibly multitasking Steven Soderbergh has now set his roving sights on Latin American revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, with mostly positive results.

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"Tirofijo" is Dead

Manuel Marulanda, founder and chief of "Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia" (FARC) is dead. You can read below about it.

I can´t imagine a forty year old revolutionary war. In Mexico it was half that much, but somehow things got settled. I guess double, is not much in historical terms. But I would´ve hated if something like that would´ve happened in Mexico. I would´ve been born with uncertainty. When I was born at least I had the certainty that if I studied I could do something of my life.

Anyway, I hope the Colombian brothers and sisters find a way out of their terrible fate.

Colombia's Top FARC Commander Is Dead : Government Source

BOGOTA (Reuters) - The top commander and founder of Colombia's FARC rebel force is dead after more than 40 years fighting against the state from jungle and mountain camps, a government source said on Saturday.

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Why did I switch to Firefox?

I let the Microsoft experience ware off. I went to the "Revista Mexicana de Física" web site, and the explorer version 6 did not work. Instead of downloading a more recent version I switched. So far so good.

ScribeFire

My system in Chilpancingo did not have Firefox. I installed version 2, and now I am in the plugins. This is ScribeFire, and here it goes.

New Power Balance in Guerrero?

When I was a kid, every summer I used to go to my mother´s home town. Now I realize we were children of privilege; my grandpa had been a judge and a mayor in the town. My grandma´s siblings fought and WON the revolutionary war of 1910 to 1920. We did not feel that wealthy, but we were not from the laboring class.

Then my uncle´s pawns started to go to the US in search for fortune. Some got wealthy, and the way my uncle put it succinctly is: "now the rich are poor, and the poor are rich".

Now as an older man, back in my mother´s home state, I see the poor vying for power; unfortunately not always in the most peaceful way.

There is a "cold war" going on. Candidates for mayor or judge now; need armed protection. A new power agreement is being foged. Guerrero is producing a new power balance.

America's oil crisis demands a leader like Churchill

Through the 1930s, Winston Churchill was a has-been. He was old; he had been in Britain's Parliament for better than 25 years. He was an outsider, disliked for policy disasters such as his failed campaign to knock Turkey out of World War I at Gallipoli. He was ridiculed as a warmonger, as, from the beginning of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, he ...

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Churchill Needed?

"Our leaders do not tell us that the vast majority of the Earth's reserves are held by nations such as Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, and several of them are beginning to withhold oil on behalf of their own people. They do not tell us that production of oil in Mexico, one of our prime suppliers, is declining -- precipitously."

You can read an article above with these insights.

Guerrero

Now I live in this state south of Mexico. Acapulco is in this state, and it has many more beautiful places. Unfortunately there are injustices hampering the protection of this land. You can read a short current history of the state in the note below.

I hope I can do good in my mother´s land.

GUERRERO: IMPORTANT DATES

In this timeline, we do not claim to cover the entire history of Guerrero, but instead intend to discuss some key elements that may facilitate a better understanding of recent developments. Since the 1960s, the state of Guerrero has been characterized by high indexes of poverty, social disintegration, organized crime, corruption, repression and ...

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Robust Process Automation (RPA)

Alcatel-Lucent is a communications company. In the past American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) was founded to provide communication technology to the United States and the world. Alexander Graham Bell, was instrumental in establishing Bell Labs. Claude Shannon invented Information Theory there. This mathematician was given an engineer´s job. How to send a message optimally? There was no figure of merit to provide that characterization. Shannon invented one:

I = -log₂(1/p)

He called I the information, and p is the probability of the message. If the Sun does not show up tomorrow, (p almost zero), then we get a big amount of information. The logarithm in the above formula has base 2. We get 1 bit of information if a coin lands heads. This is the most random case, equal probability of heads or tails.

Today I write about Joe Lennert, a Lucent engineer that solved an engineering problem with scientific insight.

He invented a virtual machine that mimics the steps engineers take to do their job. He adds common sensical strategies to take care of failures, and finally writes the whole thing in a script language, k shell (ksh), invented by David Korn,, from AT&T.

He tells me that his machines keep tugging along doing Lucent´s bidding.

Best High Schools

Newsweek Magazine just published a list of best high schools in the US.

I recently taught at two high schools in Illinois. They are not in the first 300. I did find some schools from IL in that list. They seem to me to be from well to do neighborhoods. One of the schools I taught at is ranked in number 1127, and the other is not even ranked.

Now I am teaching in one of the poorest region of Mexico, which in itself has a much lower income than the US.

What can I conclude?

The obvious implication is that wealth produces good schools, but I am really more concerned with another question, where is there more talent? My guess is that the distribution of this human trait is uniform throughout the world.

That is why the OLPC project is so important. Let us give ALL children a chance.

Willis Lamb Jr., 94, Dies; Won Nobel for Work on Atom

Willis E. Lamb Jr., who shared the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of a slight and subtle discrepancy in the quantum theory describing how electrons behave in the hydrogen atom, died on Thursday in Tucson. He was 94.

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Shakira-Slim-Buffett

What a Combination!

Shakira, other Latin American stars sing for their cause --

MEXICO CITY -- Not so long ago, Latin American artists who spoke up for social causes often risked prison, exile or far worse.

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Mexico's Battle over Oil by Laura Carlsen | May 15, 2008

On April 8, President Felipe Calderon dropped a political bomb on the Mexican political scene. The Senate received an executive initiative that would fundamentally change the structure and operations of the oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Key operations of the state-owned enterprise would pass into private hands.

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Crime in Paradise?

Below you can read a Time Magazine article about Mexico´s violence problem. I am just a math teacher, What do I know? How can one solve these crimes?

I think we live in paradise down here. No air conditioning, or heaters are needed, the place is just gorgeous. So why the crimes?

Don´t expect too much insight from these lines. It is just a simple view of reality from a man that loves abstractions.

As I see it, part of the problem is the European invasion over five hundred years ago. Most of the natives got European diseases and died. No big fight was neccesary. But after so many years, most people are immune to European diseases, and they are ready to fight.

Evo Morales is the first representative of the first Americans to get elected to the presidency of his country, Bolivia. I expect more and more of these real leaders to take over the power they lost so many years ago, and maybe these current crime waves, will be controlled.

When the original rulers come back, we will have Paradise without Crime. Of course those guys practiced human sacrifice, but I don´t think they ever killed a few hundred thousand brothers, and sisters, in a few minutes, like President Truman did in 1945.

I hope you indulge me for having these abstract thoughts.

Can Mexico's Drug Terror Be Stopped?

Mexicans are accustomed to tales of crooked cops abetting drug-related killings. So this week's announcement that a federal officer is among those charged with conspiracy in a drug-mafia hit on the nation's acting police chief Edgar Millan caused little surprise south of the border. Mexican officials say the May 8 assassination was ordered by the..

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$100 laptop' nonprofit now teamed with Microsoft - AP

BOSTON (AP) — The One Laptop Per Child project is about to find out whether Microsoft Corp., a rival the nonprofit group once derided, is the solution to its problems in spreading inexpensive portable computers to schoolchildren.

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Black holes not black after all

International scientists have used flowing water to simulate a black hole, testing Stephen Hawking's theory that black holes are not black after all.

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The Post-Bush Climate

John McCain has been engaged in the fight against global warming for years, even at the expense of breaking with Republican orthodoxy and with President Bush on the issue. But it was still an important moment this week when Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, decided to raise the profile of climate change in the 2008 campaign.

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Seaweed Suggests First Humans in America Took the Coastal ..

It is now largely accepted that humans first entered the Americas over what was then a land bridge in the area of the Bering Strait. There is more of a debate about what they did next, whether they spread southward by inland routes or along the Pacific Coast.

read more | digg story

I Am Liking This

Now that I am back, in more than one way to known territory, I am starting to feel at home. Some dear friends are listening to my ideas; good or bad, with equal attention. Right now I am most impressed by the young ones I am meeting. They listen to me. That is something.

ACORDE

The Mexican High Energy Physics Group, from Puebla; presented and got approval for a cosmic ray detector on the ALICE detector of LHC at CERN, for triggering purposes. Stage 1 is supported and on track. Further stages are being considered.
You can read some of their documents here.

Proculo´s Fart and New Price of Oil

Yesterday my students at Autonomous University of Guerrero, told us a story. I want to connect that story with the recent developments in the oil industry.
There is this rich guy, Proculo, in a town in Guerrero, that is kind of fat and is sitting in a chair as a dance is going on. All of a sudden and without any way for him to control this event, he lets gas out, causing a very clear and distinctively characteristic sound. Everybody in town talks about Proculo´s unfortunate event for days.
In a small town it is difficult to escape such estigma, and Proculo decides to leave town and try his luck in the United States.
Twenty years later Proculo is not happy in his new chosen country and decides to go back, even richer than before. He gets back in town and meets a very pretty girl that catches his eye. They start to talk and he asks her: How old are you? She says, I do not remember very well, but my mother told me that I was three the day of Proculo´s fart.
I am back in Mexico now, when I left, twelve years ago, there was a big crisis, December´s mistake, was called. Now that I decided to come back, I find Mexico in better shape than then. The price of Mexico´s Oil is in an all time high, over a hundred dollars a barrel, with predictions that the most expensive West Texas oil could reach two hundred dollars a barrel, during the coming year.
Unlike the unfortunate Proculo, I did not leave a smelly odor behind, I hope that this time around I may benefit from the wealth of this beautiful country, with the equally beautiful people that live here.

Oil prices soar on latest forecast

Oil futures blasted to a new record near $123 a barrel Tuesday, gaining momentum as investors bought on a forecast of much higher prices and on any news hinting at supply shortages. Retail gas prices edged lower, but appear poised to rise to new records of their own in coming weeks.

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Mathematics Education

Now that I am about to start a new career in research, I feel the need to ascertain the usefulness of this work.
Are students now learning differntly after this research?
This question in itself requires research, I am sure that some scientists have addressed this question and there are answers. Nevertheless in my heart of hearts I feel that the question and the discipline, are of a different class of things than the questions I am used to in Physics. Putting aside the question about the scientific character of Education Sciences in general, I venture a guess. If I think carefully before I speak to students, they have more of a chance of knowing What do I mean?
For now I will leave it there.

The Road to Reality

I have been reading Roger Penrose's book on and off for several years now. I hope that finally I will finish it. For today I quote a beautiful line by Penrose:
"Yet I am an optimist in matters of conveying understanding. Perhaps I am an incurable optimist".

Mathematics

I was just asked to read the syllabi for math students at my University. As a physicist my first reaction was that without elementary physics classes, any program for a mathematician is badly founded; under a little more thought I realized that many professionals in the hard sciences, get along well without physics. The very fact that only recently have the professors at my University considered the possiblity to study Physics, makes me aware that there is at least a two-pronged issue. A general view of a university, and the particular state of mine.
General
Any university must have a Physics Department, in that vein my efforts should be directed as much as possible to the estabilshment of such an institution.
Particular
This University has a story, where Physics is just entering right now. This is where I should concentrate my efforts.

How Does Mexico Look After 10 Years?

I just got back to my country. I left following goals that I could not achieve. Maybe I should have made a better plan, in any case I am back.
I will just describe first impressions coming back.
Today Mexico Oil´s price was over 100 dollars for a little while to settle around 100. This has consequences in the Mexico I found.
Besides the price of gasoline, which is close to that in the US, the government cannot claim lack of funds for academic projects. When I left, we presented some projects that were approved by experts, but due to lack of funds were not supported. I expect that to end now.
I am in a bigger office than when I left, with a better computer. There are plenty of opportunities to develop Mexico and I am now older, and I expect wiser.

The Democratic Recession

There are two important recessions going on in the world today. One has gotten enormous attention... But it will eventually pass, and the world will not be much worse for the wear. The other has gotten no attention. It’s called “the democratic recession,” and if it isn’t reversed, it will change the world for a long time.

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16 Are Killed as Gunmen Seek Rancher in Mexico

MEXICO CITY — Gunmen killed 17 people over the weekend in the southern coastal state of Guerrero in a wild hunt for the head of the state cattlemen’s association, who has gone into hiding, the authorities said Monday.

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Chilpancingo

Whoever is following this blog. Now I reside in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, Mexico.