Lack of Coherence

This post is not to express if I agree or not with gay marriage, it’s more to give my opinion of what I’ve heard of it. Even we live in the XXI century, in a society which demands for freedom of expression and for respect, we don’t agree with it. It’s kind of incoherent. I’ve heard things like “I don’t have anything against gays, but they can’t get married, it’s just wrong”; “they can get married, but they can’t adopt kids, they will suffer a lot”; “I hate gays, they shouldn’t exist. I admit it, I’m homophobic”; “gays can get married, but they shouldn’t get out together to public places. It is just disgusting”.

Most of what I’ve heard doesn’t make a lot of sense. People demand for some things, and when they actually get them, they get upset because it didn’t worked exactly how they wanted to.

The gay marriage is something really new for a lot of us. It can be hard to assimilate but we need to be coherent with what we say. Sometimes it’s just better not to give our opinion about something because later on, we can regret. As long as we don’t affected by the gay marriage, we have no right to discriminate or to make gays feel bad about it.

This is a very controversial topic, but we need to focus on more important things that are damaging society.

"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?" Ernest Gaines

Amizing!

As many of my blogs, this one is about humans and their perception of life. For me, it’s curious that we go through life without noticing the little things that life has to offer. My father has taught me a lot about letting myself be amazed by the most insignificant things. It can be kind of silly, but those little images, sounds, smells, and feelings are the ones that make us realize that we’re alive and that we have a lot of things to enjoy.

It happens to me that I look thought the window and I see the tree that is right outside my house. It is a beautiful mesquite that my brothers and my parents planted when I was little. It is now flourished because of the spring and it has a gorgeous green and a little bit of yellow on its leaves. I listen to some Michael Bublé music and it makes me travel through time and imagine that I live in the 60’s and that I wear long skirts and that I have my hair curled. It actually makes me feel a little fancy and funny. Now that I feel that way, a smile comes out. I can also smell what my mom’s cooking for me. She’s preparing hamburgers and the smell of the meat is just great; it makes my stomach move.

These types of things make me enjoy moments in which I don’t precisely feel excellent, but the capacity to perceive in a positive way everything that surrounds me, it’s just great. I wonder how many joyful moments I’d have if I just remembered how happy it makes me feel to observe all the little details. I want to be like a kid that is amazed by everything.

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years” Abraham Lincon

May I Have a Chimpanzee Finger, Please?

Nestlé is a company that has a very high reputation in almost every country where its products are sold. At least that was what I used to think until we saw in our French class a video that showed what Nestlé did with the Indonesian forests. In order to produce Kit Kat chocolates, Nestlé needs palm oil. They need to plant multiple acres of these palms to have enough oil to make those Kit Kats. What Nestlé did, was deforesting the woods from Indonesia where chimpanzees live and plat their millions of palms.

As expected, Greenpeace reacted in a defensive manner. They created a video clip that was a plagiarism of the Kit Kat commercial in which they highlighted what Nestlé was doing. The video consist of a guy opening a Kit Kat wrapper and taking out a piece of chocolate that was actually the finger of a chimpanzee. When the guy eats it, blood starts to come out of the finger and then, it is all over the place. Disgusting, I know. Even though the video was a little shocking, it was truthful.

The reaction of Nestlé was as expected; they didn’t like it at all. Their image of a social compromised company was damaged. After all the trouble they were put into, they decided to start using a substitute of the palm oil for an artificial one.

Does the end justify the means? In this case, it’s clearly that satisfying our whishes (eating chocolate) does not worth to kill the environment of a very important being for the world, such as the chimpanzee. It is really hard for me to understand how big companies like Nestlé don’t measure the consequences of their actions, and they just act selfishly.


Francis Bacon, an English philosopher of the Renaissance, once said: “Nature, to be controlled, must be obeyed”. I should think more often about it…

Nothing but Our Choice

Written by Al Gore, the United States ex vice president, “Our Choice” is a book that contains a lot of information that most of us have already heard or that we have read in some other places but, what makes this book so different? Some might say that it is only a brain wash, but for me it is a book that contains valuable and relevant information. It contains the keys to change the course of the world. The economic crisis is not the only crisis that we have; we are also going through the climate crisis.

Al Gore joined the best scientists’ proposals and he created a plan for everybody to follow in order to decrease the global warming. He says that nature provides us with many sources of energy that we can transform to electricity. An extremely powerful one is solar energy, which can very useful in those areas in which the sun is always shining, like in the equator. Another type of renewable energy is the wind, which is now one of the most effective sources. In Spain, for example, windmills are everywhere. They are being used as their main source of energy to be transformed into electricity in order to satisfy the people’s needs. He also mentions others sources like geothermal energy, nuclear energy, and biomass.

The author says that “we need to go far, quickly” and I agree because we have limited time, but we also have all the tools to make it possible. What we really need, and most of us don’t have it, is will to change and to desire a better place for all of us now and for the future generations. This is linked with sustainable development in which the ITESM CSN is really interested in; not only the institution but a lot of students, as well.

I agree with Al Gore, I do think that we can go far and quickly as long as we define our goal and we delimitate what we want to achieve. We need to start acting, not only worrying about the climate crisis. It’s nothing but our choice.

“The future you see is the future you get” Robert G. Allen

Political postures in adolescents

Multiple things made me write this article. The first one was that Professor John gave us a quiz about political ideologies that would try to define our tendencies in politics. The other thing was that a friend told me that he considered that tagging us into those ideologies was kind of subjective. That really made me think that they both were sort of right.

I guess that in this period of our lifetime is really hard to define what we really think or what we really believe in. There are certain factors like family that influence in many aspects. One of them is that we tend to adopt the political thoughts that our family has. For example, if in my family my parents hardly support the PRI, it’s kind of obvious that I would acquire that inclination. Family also influences in another way, which is emotional stability. During adolescence, people feel totally affected by what is going on home. If things are not okay, we change a lot our mentality because it is being altered by our feelings.

Family is not the only contact we have; we also have friends and they also have their own way of thinking towards politics. Some of them don’t care, but others are really into it. This can make us feel forced to think as our partners.

My point is that we don’t have to worry that much about acquiring a political posture right now, because our inexperience and the peer pressure of all those who surround us can lead to modify our ideologies. What we really have to do is try to look for reliable references that help us make our really own decision.

"When you have to make a choice and you don't make it, that itself is a choice" William James

Distribution vs Consciousness

El tandeo is a distribution of water system applied in Hermosillo. The reason why the local government decided to implement this system is because water is scarce, and because they want us to be conscious about the scarcity of it.

This distribution system has a lot of disadvantages, some of them are the limitation of water we have. With this, I mean that water is given to us in a limited period. For example, in my house I have water from 5am to 1pm, which is good because I get to shower in the morning. On the other hand, it is not cool because when I arrive home in the afternoon, there is no water to wash the dishes, to do the laundry or to go to the bathroom.

What I really want to make clear is the fact that I’m not quite sure if this system is working. Why do I think that? Well, from what I’ve seen in the homes that I’ve been lately is that people are worried about not having water, but they are not worried about taking care of the few they have.

It could be that the implementation works in terms of distribution of water, but I don’t think it’s working in the terms of conscience.

We Really Are the World!

Last week I heard at Ludovik’s office a song that immediately caught my attention. I asked him about it and he told me that the name of the song was “We Are the World”. What a beautiful song! I said.

Now that I analyze it, it is not only a beautiful song because it is sung by around 80 good artists, but because of the intention of it. Since the earthquake happened in Haiti, many people joined their will to do something good and make the difference. In the Campus, for example, some students collected money to help Haitians. These artists made something similar but in a bigger scale, and they decided to sing this song that was once sung by Michael Jackson.

There have been many critics to this song, but I don’t really care because I see only at the good intention that was behind the action. iTunes was supporting this activity and every time the song was downloaded from the site, one dollar was going to Haiti.

I really appreciate moments when people unite for good causes. I know that what happened to Haiti wasn’t good at all, but looking to the positive side, we can see that that catastrophe made a lot of people be conscious about the conditions in which Haitians lived. A lot of persons, including me, weren’t aware that natural disasters happen and that we, as human, can so many things to help our people.

Farming in the UK

As known by many, since the Industrial Revolution, The United Kingdom has grown a lot in terms of machinery, and agriculture hasn’t been apart from that. It has been used to increase the production and to reduce the handwork on the English.

In the United Kingdom, agriculture is one of the main positive factors of the economy. It is very productive because it is highly mechanized and it doesn’t need a lot of labour force. The merchandise produced in the UK depends mainly on the soil and on the climate. For example, in England, the main products are potatoes, wheat, oats, and barley, among other grains, fruits and vegetables. On the other hand, Scotland also produces these products, but it produces strawberries and carrots as well.

Superficially, it could seem like The United Kingdom is not an agricultural country, but with some research, we know now that this country exports a lot of the production obtained with this activity. These exportations represent a huge income to the UK’s economy.

Some interesting facts about agriculture ;)

o Farming contributed £5.6 billion to the UK economy in 2006.
o The total area of agricultural land in 2006 was 18.7 million hectares, about 77 per cent of the total land area in the United Kingdom (excluding inland water).
o Agriculture provides around 60 per cent of Britain's food needs

Agriculture may be seen as a non-important activity in The United Kingdom but it is, and it a positive factor in the UK’s economy because it keeps it growing.

Parlez-vous français?

Est-ce que le français c’est vraiment important ? Bien oui, le français c’est une langue qui a beaucoup d’importance dans le monde actuelle. C’est pour ca que je considère que le fait que le Tec nous enseigne français nous aidera vachement dans notre vie future.

Quand j’apprends des nouveaux mots en français je peux faire une comparaison avec les deux langues que je déjà sais. Ca c’est superbe parce que je peux bien faire une relation et je peux augmenter mon vocabulaire à l’espagnol ou à l’anglais.

Une autre avantage de savoir français ce que nous avons accès a plus d’information, pas seulement a l’information qui est écrit en anglais ou en espagnol. Nous pouvons aussi rechercher sur l’internet dans les pages écrites en français.

À mes classes des français, on n’apprend pas uniquement la grammaire de la langue française, on apprend aussi de la société et de la culture française. Ca c’est très utile puisque ca m’ouvre la vision du monde et aussi parce que j’arrive à comprendre le mode de vie d’autres personnes.

Afin de pratiquer le français on fait beaucoup d’exercices. On appelle par l’intermédiaire de skype en France et on se sert des professeurs français pour avoir une meilleure prononciation et pour apprendre du vocabulaire colloquial. À la classe, on fait aussi des discussions sur un thème spécifique et on commence à argumenter nos points de vues.

Je vraiment crois que savoir parler et écrire le français nous est très utile parce que nous pouvons accroître notre connaissance sur les langues, la culture et sur le monde en général.

Inspiration: Google it!

Last Thursday, in the class of “Plan de Vida y Carrera”, we saw a video of how a Google company works. I found very interesting and relevant because it explained how Google make their employees feel comfortable and inspired.

First of all, I want to make clear that Google is a company that is compromised with the world and with sustainable development. In order to transport employees, the company has buses that take the workers from the company to their homes and vice versa. They also have bicycles that can be used by anyone who works at Google.

The company has little gardens to promote plant care in his workers.

Google does everything to make their employees feel inspired enough to create amazing things. Some of those things are: having available food for the (at any time, any place, and any kind); letting them wear whatever they want and however they feel at ease; allowing employees to bring their pets (except cats); allowing them to decorate their office as crazy as they can, so they feel happy. Google also provides flextime and they can even work at home if they cannot go to the office.

We all know that Google is one of the most amazing and successful companies in the world. It’s no coincidence that the employees work that good only because they are excellent engineers or because they are geniuses, it’s because Google provides them all the tools to be that.

I truly believe that Google is doing a great job by being such an incredible company. It’s generating money, it has compromise with society and nature, it satisfies the needs of many of us (YouTube, blogger, Gmail, etc.) and it is one of the best companies ever.

A Legal Crime

I firmly believe that abortion shouldn't be legal in Mexico. For me, abortion is killing.
If we all have the right to decide if we want to live or die, shouldn't the baby decide to? And if he cannot, shouldn't we just let him live?

Abortion is a very polemic topic. We hear that women are capable to decide if they want to have the baby or not, and we also listen to others say that they don't have the right to choose for another's life, among other comments.

What I do believe is that the legalization of abortion will cause more problems than we already had.
For example, it is proven that more than half of the women that go through an abortion have psychological problems and crisis after the surgery. The "purpose" of abortion is to release women from a problem, not to get them into another.

Another problem of the legalization of abortion is that women can look at abortion as a method of contraception, and it is not! This can make women be careless about their sexuality and to lose integrity.

I think that babies are not a mistake (not even if it's because of rape), and that abortion is not the solution. There are always more humanistic ways to handle the non-wanted pregnancy, like giving the newborn in adoption or to learn how to love him.

In summary, my perspective about the legalization of abortion is that it's a legal crime because it's a homicide, and a cruel one because the baby is inoffensive.

An International Movement: the Superbowl

As every time it happens, the super bowl is a phenomenon in the United States, Canada, and in Mexico. This time the final was Colts vs Saints and it caused a total revolution in these countries.

Sports are part of the culture of the countries, as in Mexico we are fanatic of soccer, in the US the main sport is football. It is so significant that in Hollywood there are more movies about football than any other sport.

My point is that there are certain factors in culture such as sports that influence a lot in what identify us and the way we relate. Competitiveness and rivalry are affect the way people interact. Sometimes they are so extreme that brake up friendships and it causes problems with your partners. I really believe that is good to have a team to support and show your passion to sports, but it is not normal to have problems because of that.

I consider very funny the fact that, even the super bowl is in the United States, many other countries such Mexico and Canada feel the passion of football and feel really interested in watching the game.

I guess that shows pretty clear that religion is not the only aspect of culture that unifies countries. Sports, even it looks like an insignificant part of our lives, are really important for many of us and they play an important roll in culture.

My summer 2009

This past summer I had the opportunity to go to Madrid, Spain. One of my mother's brother lives there. I went there with my grandparents for about 50 days. I had a great time. The point is that going there for that long helped me to understand, more or less, the Spanish culture.

The day I arrived, we went for a walk with my uncle's girlfriend. It really amazed me to see so many people walking in the streets, despite the fact Madrid is a touristic city, a lot of persons, including my uncle, walk to arrive to their destiny.

The first time I used the subway, some Romanian girls stole my grandmother's wallet. That left me a really bad impression about security in Spain, especially in places like bus stations and the subway. But it didn't matter much at the end because a few weeks later I started to use the bus and the subway by myself.

It was really weird for me to see people reading in every free moment they had to do it. For example, people in the subway read, even they only have 10 minutes to do it, but they read. In the park you could find a lot of persons from all ages reading while having a tent. I liked the idea of going to the park and read, so I did it a couple times.

At Madrid, there is this incredible park called "Jardines del Buen Retiro". It is enormous. It has grass all over the place, skating rinks, artificial lakes, many fountains, ponds, a crystal palace, ducks, among other good things. What was impressive of that park is that it was always full of people. Parents with their children, people exercising, people reading, old-people exercising clubs, skaters, and bike riders.

I like the part of the food because I ate food from a lot of styles. I tried my uncle's style, Indian food, food from different regions of Spain, Hungarian food (wasn't my favourite), and Arabian food. The ingredients were similar, but the way of cooking was totally different in every restaurant.

Going to another country in another continent helped me a lot to open my eyes to the different cultures that we have in the world. I couldn't choose among all cultures because each one of them has something special and unique and that makes it wonderful.

It's many of us

It all started with the advances in technology that appeared after the Second World War. The number of children by family increased a lot because most of those families could give a "decent" way of life (by decent I mean that the children didn't die of hunger).

Economy is defined as a social science that studies the distribution of goods and services. What happens, then, if the demand of those services and goods increase and it cannot be completly satisfied? Overpopulation makes a disorder in economy because it causes economy to lose balance and to find extreme ways in which the problem can be solved.

This demographic problem cannot be inmediatly solved. We can't go to India and China and kill have of the people there. What we CAN do is to reduce the demand of goods, not food nor medical services of course, but material thigs such as clothing, electronic devices, among other personal accesories. If we do so, we would decrease the demand of good and services.

Now, if we stop buying all of those things whast would happen is that many industries would brake and economy would also be affected.

In order to understand all of these issues, I want to learn more about economy and be capable to find an answer for these types of problems in the world.

Global Warming

One of the most important problems to ecologist right now is global warming, but why is it? Because global warming carries many MANY problems. Some of them are: the rise in temperature, the melt of icebergs, an increase in the oceans levels, among many others. The thing is what can we do?
There are many options and ways in which we can collaborate to reduce the impact of human actions in the environment and we've heard them before. For instance: to apply the three R's (reduce, recycle, reuse); to plat at least 4 trees each year; to avoid using products with CFC; and some others that we have already been told to do.
Sometimes it can be hard for us to follow all the directions and advices about this issue. The reality is that it's up to us if we want to make the difference.
My opinion about this global problem is the following: It is not about to stop living comfortably, it is about knowing how to live in harmony with what's around us. It's about learning how to live and letting live.