The Grievance Committee

Anger is in. Hope’s so January. And saying your mad doesn’t count, President Obama. Nor does constructively channeled anger. It’s like diet pizza.

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In Mexican Drug War, Soccer Remains an Oasis

The harsh environment in Cuidad Juárez has not deterred soccer fans from filling the city’s stadium on game days.

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Lessons Learned

“The most critical of those mistakes was that the company strayed from its core competencies in the insurance business,” Mr. Liddy said. “Those missteps have exacted a very high price, not only for A.I.G. but for America’s taxpayers, the federal government’s finances and the economy as a whole.”

I do tend to get far from my official training as a High Energy Theoretical Physicist. Should I take stock in this lesson from A.I.G.?

Carbon Tax & 100% Dividend vs. Tax & Trade*

Testimony of James E. Hansen4273 Durham Road, Kintnersville, PAto Committee on Ways and MeansUnited States House of Representatives

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IBM to Buy Sun

Some time back I was rooting for Open Source and SUN. I bought shares of that company.

Now I am poor and IBM won.

So it goes.

IBM In Talks To Buy Sun Microsystems

The buyout would bolster IBM's heft on the Internet, in software and in finance and telecommunications markets.

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LATIN AMERICAN MARKETS: Brazilian Equities Log Win; Mexico..

Brazilian stocks led Latin American equity advancers Tuesday, aided by gains in Perdigao SA after a broker hiked its rating on the meatpacker.

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Paradigm Shift

The late Thomas Kuhn, popularised the words paradigm shift, to describe how science evolves by almost discontinuous jumps.

Today I apply the idea to the capitalism collapse we are witnessing. AIG internal paradigm just collided with the concept of fairness of the rest of us

It seems that the shit hit the fan.

I'll look for cover, not because I got one of those bonuses, but because I do not know what is happening after Barney Frank is through with those rascals.

Outcry Builds in Washington for Recovery of A.I.G. Bonuses

Outrage over $165 million in bonuses is likely to lead to intense scrutiny on Wednesday morning as Edward Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G, testifies before Congress.

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Competition

There is no Physics School in the whole State of Guerrero, Mexico.

This state has problems and some of them could be solved with some science. Physics first, I say.

No Boiled Carrots

President Obama is still having trouble summoning a suitable flash of Irish temper at the gall of the corrupt money magicians who continue to make our greenbacks disappear into their bottomless well.

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Leonard Susskind

Listening to this Stanford Professor General Relativity lecture I felt odd. People around here hardly knows about Newton's Laws. Susskind is going through four dimensional objects and their meaning, it is all second nature to me, but my neighbors around here have hardly heard about Physics. What pisses me more though, is that my colleagues are more worried about keeping their Mathematics Education program going, than filling this glaring hole in the education of Guerrero students. Am I exaggerating?

I guess.

Obama’s Real Test

The bank bailout plan makes sense and might even make profits for U.S. taxpayers. But in this climate of anger, it will take all of President Obama’s political capital to sell it to Congress and the public.

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Stifling an Opportunity

Chicago’s politics and notorious “pay-to-play” tradition have stood in the way of a proposed airport, which has the potential to unleash thousands of jobs in the city’s South Side.

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Benoit Mandelbrot and the wildness of financial markets: Sci

In a lecture at Columbia University this week, famed fractal pioneer Benoit Mandelbrot once again inveighed against traditional economic theories, returning at a time of financial malaise to many of the points he raised in a 1999 Scientific American feature. (In September 2008, as the U.S. economy began to shake, editor Gary Stix provided a brief..

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Fermilab Provides More Constraints on the Elusive Higgs Boso

The Higgs particle, the last piece of the Standard Model of particle physics menagerie that has yet to be observed, is running out of places to hide—if, that is, it exists at all. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., today narrowed the range of mass where the Higgs might be found.

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Flying Blind in Chicago

The plans and the funding for a new airport in southern Chicago are ready and waiting to be implemented. But the project can’t get off the ground because of the politics.

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Obama Signals Readiness to Further Militarize Drug War

President Obama is considering deploying National Guard troops along the border with Mexico in response to the escalating drug war. More than 7,000 people have been killed in Mexico in drug-related violence in the last year. Much of the drug-related violence in Mexico has been fueled by the ability of drug cartels to purchase AK-47 assault rifle..

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Scientists:Cut Carbon Emissions or Face a Disaster.

Nicholas Stern is an economist put in charged by UK's Gordon Brown to analyze the impact of climate change.In Copenhagen,he vehemently attacked politicians for failing to act on cutting carbon emissions.Last nights,scientists issued a desperate plea to curb greenhouse gas emission or face an ecological and social disaster....

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Copenhagen summit urges immediate action on climate change

Nature - Climate experts who met this week in Denmark have warned that the overall prognosis on climate change is worse than previous estimates have suggested. "What we are seeing now is that some aspects are worse than expected,". Delegates agreed that more stringent and urgent action is needed in order to avoid 'dangerous change'.

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Rainforest Will Continue to Suffer Catastrophic Damage

Even if the lowest temperature rises occur under Global Warming, the Amazonian rainforest is going to suffer catastrophic damage.

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Cheap Oil: It Can Be Bad for Business, Stability

General Electric boss Jeff Immelt concedes that cheap oil is a “negative” for his clean-energy business. It turns out that cheap oil could hurt the conglomerate’s traditional energy business, too.

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Cramer vs. Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Opinionator: Fight Night: Cramer vs. Stewart

Reviews of the Jon Stewart-Jim Cramer face-off seem to be unanimous.

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Afghanistan, Another Untold Story

Barack Obama is on record as advocating a military escalation in Afghanistan. Before sinking any deeper into that quagmire, we might do well to learn something about recent Afghani history and the role played by the United States.

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Palast on CNN - The Madoff Plea Deal

Palast wroking for BBC on CNN. I am impressed, how Palast got to main media.

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Gary Skoien, Former Cook County GOP Chair, Beaten By Wife

After being discovered by his wife with two women, allegedly prostitutes, in the childrens' playroom, Skoien was beaten by his wife with a toy guitar. Comedians can't write better material.

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Class Struggle?

Mike Parenti writes (below):

About a century ago, US labor leader Eugene Victor Debs was thrown into jail during a strike. Sitting in his cell he could not escape the conclusion that in disputes between two private interests, capital and labor, the state was not a neutral arbiter. The force of the state--with its police, militia, courts, and laws-was unequivocally on the side of the company bosses. From this, Debs concluded that capitalism was not just an economic system but an entire social order, one that rigged the rules of democracy to favor the moneybags.


I hear Marx coming back.

Is That How it Ends?

Finally, the judge said, “Mr. Madoff, tell me what you did.”
Mr. Madoff began: “Your honor, for many years up until my arrest on Dec. 11, 2008, I operated a Ponzi scheme through the investment advisory side of my business, Bernard L. Madoff Securities L.L.C.”
Mr. Madoff’s fraud became a global scheme that ensnared hedge funds, charities and celebrities. He enticed thousands of investors, including figures like Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, the Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax and a charity run byElie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
The fraud’s collapse erased as much as $65 billion that his customers thought they had. It remains unclear how much victims will recover.
A court-appointed trustee liquidating Mr. Madoff’s business has so far been able to identify only about $1 billion in assets to satisfy claims.

Sad Day in America.

Madoff Sent to Jail

Bernard L. Madoff was sent to jail to await sentencing on Thursday after expressing remorse for running a vast Ponzi scheme.

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45 Roles, 628 Performances. Why Stop?

At 68, Plácido Domingo continues to be a powerful presence.

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Capitalism's Self-Inflicted Apocalypse

After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history.

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Analyst: ARM to surpass Atom in 55% of netbooks by 2012

Analyst Robert Castellano from The Information Network believes future netbooks based on the upcoming ARM Cortex-A9 architecture and running Linux could create a market for netbooks at price points Intel and Microsoft simply won't be able to match.

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Unprecedented Mass Climate Action Blockades DC Coal Plant

The call rang out through Washington early on the morning of March 2: the biggest act of civil disobedience against global warming in American history would not, in fact, be snowed out. Over 2,000 demonstrators converged on the Capitol Power Plant in an action planned to take the climate movement to the next level.

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HTTP/TFTP Server Plus USB Mass Storage Host From Freescale

This article describes implementation of a HTTP/TFTP server based on the ColdFire MCF5225x processor with a USB file system where web pages or other files are stored. It details how to integrate a USB stack with a NicheTask and accessing the USB file system through a HTTP/TFTP server.

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Gordon to the Rescue

Feeling stirred by a passionate speech by Gordan Brown, the Prime Minister of Britain, it became apparent that it’s time President Obama to inspire not lecture.

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Ending the ‘Race to the Bottom’

The stimulus package can jump-start educational reforms the country desperately needs, but Congress must broaden and sustain those reforms in the No Child Left Behind Act.

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Leonard Susskind

The First NetBook with LimeOS Made in China

The LimeBook from Tsinghua Tongfang is an MPC5121e based Netbook. The MPC5121e from Freescale Semiconductor, which is a 32-bit Embedded Processors SoC, has an e300 core built on Power Architecture technology and is ideal for any embedded solution that requires sophisticated displays, graphics acceleration, rich user interfaces..

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Einstein's General Theory of Relativity | Lecture 6

Lecture 6 of Leonard Susskind's Modern Physics concentrating on General Relativity. Recorded October 27, 2008 at Stanford University.This Stanford Continuing Studies course is the fourth of a six-quarter sequence of classes exploring the essential theoretical foundations of modern physics. The topics covered in this course focus on classical ..

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Lecture 7 | Modern Physics: Special Relativity (Stanford)

Lecture 7 of Leonard Susskind's Modern Physics course concentrating on Special Relativity. Recorded May 25, 2008 at Stanford University.This Stanford Continuing Studies course is the first of a six-quarter sequence of classes exploring the essential theoretical foundations of modern physics. The topics covered in this course focus on classic...

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This Is Not a Test. This Is Not a Test.

Economically, this financial crisis is the big one. This is August 1914. This is the morning after Pearl Harbor. This is 9/12. Yet, in too many ways, we seem to be playing politics as usual.

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IMF Warns of Global ''Great Recession''.

By Lesley Wroughton and George Obulutsa DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that the world economy will likely contract this year in a ''Great Recession'' and African leaders said the financial crisis could undo...

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Simple Thoughts on a Bad Year

Warren Buffett tells us that we have to get ready for a war.

In Mexico the only consequence I can see of WWII, is that my father went to work to the States to allow the American Boys to go fight. He was coming from Guatemala to Mexico, and then he went to California. Thank goodness I didn't get a basket case father with battle fatigue. We were a very happy lot, we were, as we grew up in Mexico away from the war.

What I am supposed to make of Buffett's call to arms?

I am not allowed to fight in the Mexican Army, I am over forty years of age. What does he mean?

This year I came to Mexico in search of an opportunity to provide for my children that stayed in the US. This has been rough, financially I mean. I am not sure I can stay here yet.

So this was a bad year, now what?

Things seem to be moving along around here. My High Energy Physics friends seem to be busy, and not that worried about the end of the world fears I have coming from the US to Mexico.  Am I hallucinating?

Time will tell. They seem to be oblivious. They are worried about Mexican lawlessness, to be sure,  but they just keep prodding along. I guess I'll just follow along.

Mr. Buffett didn't reassure me with his war talk, though. I wonder what he means, I guess some kind of social corps of good deed doers or something, when the shit hits the fan.

Number of Mexicans Requesting Political Asylum In US Growing

As Mexico's drug war grinds on, the number of Mexicans fleeing to the United States is growing. And the number requesting asylum in the U-S has more than doubled. Political asylum is usually reserved for refugees claiming religious or political persecution, or fear of torture. But in a test case, a Mexican journalist has asked for asylum because...

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Mark Morford on the California drought, etc.

How can this be? How is it that tens of thousands of gallons of fresh water are pouring through the city streets right now, but we are only able to capture and use but a fraction? Why do we not have better systems in place? Why is this not more imperative?

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Warren Buffett - The economy has run off a cliff

Has the economy run off a cliff?

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Rare Single Top Quark Discovered In Collider Experiments

Scientists of the CDF and DZero collaborations at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have observed particle collisions that produce single top quarks.

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Chinese Astronauts Get Parade; Capsule Shipped to Beijing

Nation's first spacewalker, colleagues get gala parade; re-entry capsule sent to space agency.

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Reviving the Dream

With the economy in free fall, Americans have an opportunity to reshape the society, and then to move it in a fairer and ultimately more productive direction.

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WATCHMEN Breaks R-Rated Record,To Play In Most Theaters EVER

'Watchmen' is showing some very positive vital signs. The superhero actioner sure will be playing wide: Its 3,611 playdates will be the most ever for an R-rated film.

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How (Scientifically) Accurate Is Watchmen? [Sci Am]

Die-hard fans of the original publication may fret over its faithfulness to the series, but studio execs also worried about their movie's faithfulness to science. To set their minds at ease, they placed a call to Jim Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota, who began advising the film's makers in the summer of 2007.

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U.S. Energy Secretary pledges to fight global warming: Scien

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday pledged to work with Congress to pass legislation that would impose a cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming.

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The Science of The Watchmen

James Kakalios was a consultant on Watchmen (film), and here, he walks us through the physics of Dr. Manhattan. Summarized, he's "not strictly correct from a physics point of view, but very cool nonetheless."

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WATCHMEN is a hit!

$25 Million on first day...

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I’m sorry but Dreamweaver is dying

The real problem for Dreamweaver and for its users is that the nature of the web is changing dramatically. Dynamically-generated web applications, from Amazon right down to the humble blog, all offer much more – in-built commenting, voting, RSS feeds, etc - than the best sites built on static HTML can ever hope to provide.

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U.S. Withdrawing 12,000 Troops From Iraq

In a statement, the U.S. military said that two brigade combat teams who were scheduled to redeploy in the next six months along with enabling forces such as logistics, engineers and intelligence, will not be replaced.

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The Making of Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan

Hollywood once said that a film based on the graphic novel Watchmen could never be made—in large part because the technology to create Dr. Manhattan, the blue, glowing, matter-manipulating superhero, simply didn't exist. The hotly anticipated film, directed by Zach Snyder, hit theaters yesterday, glowing blue man and all.

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A shattering moment in America’s fall from power

Outside the US, most people have long accepted that the development of new economies that goes with globalisation will undermine America’s central position in the world. They imagined that this would be a change in America’s comparative standing, taking place incrementally over several decades or generations. Today, that looks an rather unrealistic

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Notes From the Recession: California's Inland Empire

Hard times hit, and we slowly disappear. Whole communities are being dismantled by the current recession and may never return.

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'Watchmen' Dominates with $55 Million Opening Weekend

Superhero blockbuster "Watchmen" dominated the weekend box office by grossing an estimated $55.7 million, scoring the biggest opening of any film this year. The much-anticipated adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name cements the draw of director Zack Snyder, who also directed the hit "300."

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Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions.

In a nutshell, Wolfram and his team have built what he calls a “computational knowledge engine” for the Web. OK, so what does that really mean? Basically it means that you can ask it factual questions and it computes answers for you.

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The Nature of Time by Julian Barbour

A review of some basic facts of classical dynamics shows that time, or precisely duration, is redundant as a fundamental concept. Duration and the behaviour of clocks emerge from a timeless law that governs change.

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5 Things You Didn’t Know About The Watchmen

Unlike the epic 300 Director Zach Snyder helmed before, Watchmen will be anything but a blue screen, chroma key movie. The set for Watchmen is meticulously detailed down to engravings on the brick walls and various “Easter Eggs” hidden about.

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U.S. Unemployment Rate Jumps To 8.1 Percent

The unemployment rate rose to 8.1 percent in February — the highest since 1983 — as payrolls plummeted by 651,000, the Labor Department said Friday. The rate was up from January's 7.6 percent.

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Kepler takes to the heavens to look for other Earths

NASA's Kepler Mission launched Friday night to embark on a mission of discovery. It will scan a single region of the nights sky to look for evidence that other stars are hosts to habitable planets similar to Earth.

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Philips'Master LED Bulb: Enlightened When On or Off

This July, Philips will release an LED bulb that's ready for mainstream consumption, the Maser LED.

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The Inflection Is Near?

What if the crisis of 2008 represents something more fundamental than a recession, and 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

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Physicists

First Robert Oppenheimer proclaims that physicists have sinned; and now Emanuel Derman (below) tells us that we (physicists) messed up Wall Street.

At this rate all the images of mad scientists people have, from Arquimedes, to Edward Teller, passing through Frankenstein, will be vindicated.

I just saw The Watchmen, guess what the smartest man on Earth comes up with ,to save humanity?

I won't ruin your movie experience, but don't expect any Dr. Manhattan Fan Club, anytime soon. Maybe some will like his "Giant Blue Wiener"; but that does not save our reputation, I don't think. Or does it? See the movie, anyway.

They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street

“Quants” try to use physics to untangle the messiest of human activities — making money.

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Michael Moore on his being the antithesis of Limbaugh

This is one liberal Democrat who appreciates everything Michael Moore has done for the citizens of this country. I'm not always thrilled with some of the tactics he uses, but the message is consistently about fairness and equality. Michael Moore writes in HuffPo about why the attacks against Rush have no bearing on the attacks against him.

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Middle East Reality Check

Hamas and Hezbollah are now seen throughout the Arab world as legitimate resistance movements without whose involvement regional peace is impossible.

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Behind the Curve

The Obama administration’s economic policy is already falling behind the curve, and there’s a real, growing danger that it will never catch up.

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Deep Astronomy in Mexico

There is a school of thought, Deep Mexico, by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla: "Mexico Profundo" is a book where he presents his ideas. As I see this work, I think of different scales of time connected all together. In Mexico we have had continuous human habitation for more than five thousand years. We live inside various worlds without being aware ourselves. You look right, there is aMcDonald joint, you look left and an Indian Shaman is walking by unnoticed, I guess he likes it that way. I feel like Pedro Páramo's son, Juan, walking the streets of Comala among the dead. In this masterpiece by one of the greatest Mexican writers, Juan Rulfo, one feels this multilayered time experience we have here.

These past days I was in Taxco, Mexico. At the first Congress of the "Red de Física de Altas Energías" financed by the Mexican agency, "Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología", that holds the purse strings for the treasure directed towards science, and to a lesser extent technology. I witnessed two events that belong, I believe, in Deep Astronomy in Mexico.

The first was a conversation by the greatest theoretical physicist in high energy physics in Mexico, Prof. Arnulfo Zepeda Domínguez, and Engineer and inventor Horacio Lobo Zertuche: they were sipping coffee, Prof. Zepeda matter of factly ordered a set of several thousand plastic tanks to hold water without freezing in the winters of the State of Colorado in the United States. Ing. Lobo took the order in stride also, and I am almost sure the Auger North site had settled an important aspect of its design. The South version of this Pierre Auger Observatory in Malargüe Argentina already made history, by announcing at the end of 2007, the first strong evidence that the highest energy cosmic rays come form specific directions in the sky. Now Ing. Lobo is hard at work to solve the specific problems of the water tanks in the frigid temperatures of Colorado.

I felt I was in the presence of two Mexican shamans.

The second deep astronomy event in Mexico I was fortunate enough to witness, was the operation of a wireless channel between a muon detector and a cheap laptop at distances of more than thirty feet. We were walking through the halls of the hotel where we stayed, singing a Posadas song. It is not Christmas yet, but I couldn't resist expressing in some kind of ritual way, the very important event I saw. Now Mexico has the possibility to connect a bunch of those plastic tanks, Ing. Lobo invented, at the top of the Sierra Negra observatory in Mexico, not that far  from where María Sabina became famous. The modern Shaman in charge of this ritual was Dr. Luis Manuel Villaseñor Cendejas. His collaborator was Dr. Humberto Salazar Ibargüen.

I felt I was in the presence of two Mexican shamans.

This is fun. I just did a google search; deep astronomy in mexico; and number one was this note! Today is Monday March 9, 2009, it is 9:45 hrs. here in Chilpancingo.

Astronomers spot two black holes in an orbital dance: Scient

Black holes, as frighteningly extreme as they may be, are relatively commonplace across the universe. Like most large galaxies, our own Milky Way packs a supermassive black hole at its core, a lurking monster some four million times as massive as the sun.

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Zack de la Rocha Leads an Army Against Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Led by Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, as well Phoenix civil rights activist Salvador Reza, and Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, protesters demanded an end to the federal 287(g) program, and specifically an end to the terror Arpaio's 160-man 287(g) force has instilled in immigrant communities in Maricopa County.

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Tom Friedman

After the World is Flat; Tom is telling us to look up for the big wave coming our way. Read his "Obama´s Ball and Chain" below.

Crude oil prices tumble

Mexico City, March 2nd.- Crude oil prices plunged on both sides of the Atlantic Monday, again weakened by global economic woes that have increased expectations world demand for the black gold will continue to decrease.

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Glacier National Park to go glacier-free a decade early

As noted in my November post Himalayan glaciers “decapitated,” glaciers all over the world are melting faster than previously expected,

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Amid a Lackluster Review of His First Year, Cuba’s Lea

As he ended his first year as president, Raúl Castro ousted several of the government’s most familiar officials, including the foreign minister.

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Stage of Fools

This is the first pork-filled federal budget from a new president who promised to go through the budget “line by line” and cut pork.

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Obama’s Ball and Chain

I fear that President Obama’s first term could be eaten by Citigroup, A.I.G., Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and the whole housing/subprime credit bubble.

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Cassini spacecraft spots a new moonlet in Saturn's rings: Sc

Saturn's G ring, a faint band of material near the outer bounds of the planet's famed ring system, hosts a bright arc about 90,000 miles (150,000 kilometers) long. The arc, or partial ring, which stretches through about a sixth of the G ring's length, is believed to provide the rest of the ring with dust and ice, but its evolution has remained a my

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Taking The Job: The Country Finally Has a President

The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg whole-heartedly endorses President Obama's breathtaking budget. For evidence of its demonstration of leadership, he quotes Paul Krugman, the far-left economist of the The New York Times.

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Are We Alone?

"The need, indeed even the possibility, of a planetary census is a recent development in cosmic history. It was only in 1995 that the first planet was detected orbiting another Sun-like star, by Michel Mayor and his colleagues at Geneva Observatory. In the years since then there has been a torrent of discoveries, 340 and counting, that has bewildered astronomers and captured the popular imagination."


This is taken from the NYT Science Section (below). There are three books written by one of the principals in this search for planetary systems like ours. 


Books by Alan Boss 

Ancient Language of Universal Symbols Discovered

Over the last several years, similar petroglyphs have been identified on as many as five continents. They all date from roughly the same time-period. In the late 20th century, archaeologists discovered a collection of symbols carved in stone as petroglyphs in the Negev desert of Israel that appeared to be writing.

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Black Holes First, Galaxies Second

Astronomers have their own version of the classic chicken-or-egg question. Over the past decade, they have found that supermassive black holes lurk in the centers of practically every large galaxy. Even more surprising, the black holes somehow “know” about their host galaxies. Whatever the black hole's mass, the galaxy's surrounding bulge of

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3/3/09: Math fans to celebrate Square Root Day

Dust off the slide rules and recharge the calculators. Square Root Day is upon us.

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Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone

Apple's iPhone has wowed most of the globe — but not Japan, where the handset is selling so poorly it's being offered for free.

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In a Lonely Cosmos, a Hunt for Worlds Like Ours

A new spacecraft is about to embark on a mission to find other planets like Earth.

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Wars, Endless Wars

The nation as we’ve known it is fading before our very eyes, but we’re still pouring billions of dollars into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with missions we are still unable to define.

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Mexican peso dives again, falls past 15.4 to the dollar

The Mexican peso has plunged to new lows against the dollar today as global investors again rush for safety -- which still means the greenback, despite our own horrid economy.

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U.S. ready to aid Mexico drug fight

Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said the US wants to increase the military assistance it provides Mexico for its fight against drugs trafficking.

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Dow Below 6,800; Lowest Close Since ’97

Stock prices tumbled around the world Monday, amid new evidence that economies were weaker than had been thought.

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Snowstorm Causes Delays and Closes Schools

With snow expected to continue in the late morning, the Northeast is braced for as much as a foot of snow.

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The Ecstasy and the Agony

The president’s speech to Congress, brilliant as it was, could still be undermined by unchecked populist rage.

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Global Explanation

Paul Krugman is an expert on the world economy. Now he writes (below) on the correlates in Iceland, Estonia , and Ireland; of the current world economic disease. He writes:

“Reforms have made Iceland a Nordic tiger,” declared a paper from the Cato Institute. “How Ireland Became the Celtic Tiger” was the title of one Heritage Foundation article; “The Estonian Economic Miracle” was the title of another. All three nations are in deep crisis now."

Economics is not a science but inside a fine mind it gets darn close!

So there are universal explanations? I believe that, the Irish, Icelanders, and Estonians, got greedy. Easy money was for the taking. When I was in Warrenville, my neighbors next door, were from Cd. Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, Ireland and Estonia.

Now I am here trying desperately to make a living in Mexico, my friend from Chihuahua, must be waiting for more porches to renovate, and Sean and family must be somewhere else trying to find the good life.

The upcoming storm looks like a tsunami to me, all over the place we'll see pieces of furniture flying around.

Iran, the Jews and Germany

Behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one — the U.S. propensity to demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens.

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Pemex reports $7.5 billion loss on crude prices, peso

MEXICO CITY (Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, reported a fourth-quarter net loss amid plunging oil prices and foreign-exchange losses.

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Revenge of the Glut

The international economic crisis is the revenge of the global saving glut. And the glut is still out there, worse than ever.

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