The use of technology in the different topics you study at university

Technologies have been always helping us. Not only cybernetically speaking, when we hear about technology we go direct to computers, electricity, microchips, nanotechnology. But we have to give credit to other technologies the ones that showed us how to evolve on what we are now, the ones that have helped us to hide from animals and keep warm in the past to the ones that now can get us connected from one side to another part of the world, there is much distance from stones and sticks to make hammers and weapons and nanotechnology. But it has to start somewhere no?, so we mustn’t forget those that now have no use, but in their time they helped out on survival, and made us what we are now.

As students we are in full contact with technology, as simple as saying that we use computers and internet to search for our topics, books or everything we need. Now computers and internet has taken a main role in everyone’s life, book are everywhere on internet, and if we are reading something and we need to dig deeper on the text or an specific topic we go into the internet and we can find many solutions for our problem, not just look for it we can also print it to read it after, or save it on a pen drive or mail. Technology is not just a matter of the internet, we have also things as a “pen drive” and as the name tell is smaller than a pen and can carry information, it is used to take some archive from somewhere to somewhere else without the problem of taking the whole computer. There is also a mail system which can get us all connected one to each other, it is used to send information, to make group works without needing to gather people. There is also a machine called projector that help us on expositions where we can show films or slides to help us in our presentations. Also we can improve our language as foreign language students, because there are a lot of pages that goes from the right way to write something and the way to formulate sentences correctly to listen how to say some word or paragraph, even look for a native who can correct you if you have a mistake on writing or speaking.

so, the possibilities are infinite, from trying to get fire from two sticks, going trough the wheel, then the phone, mechanisms, wars and ways to confrontate diseases, macro technology and micro technology, from organic to metal and then organic-metal techs. The world is evolving fast, from year to year the advances come in shorter terms, and we are looking to the stars now with confidence on reaching them. Different ways to combat diseases, and as the topic I am writing now, lots of information about language, courses, information of conferences or something like it. But I need to set this question. Are we evolving as fast as the technology? Or are we stuck on the Stone Age?

Telethon is a beneficial massive T.V. event that is focused on raising money for an institution that helps children with physical and mental disabilities. Telethon has reunited the Chilean people since it was made by Mario Kreutzberger A.K.A. Don Francisco as we all know him, Don in his case is used for making him an image closer to people, a gentle man that helps people. Telethon started on The United States but then many countries shared the idea and made their own event. The first Telethon on south America was brought by Mario Kreutzberger and then other countries took the initiative to make one on their own.

Telethon is called “The 27 hours of love” and it’s broadcasted 27 hours by all channels, the first one on Chile tried to raise 1 million dollars that meant something like 34 million pesos, but the final count showed 84 millions beating by far the goal.
We have had a special edition of Telethon this year to help the victims of an 8,8 earthquake that almost have disappear towns completely. It was used for helping on rebuilding Chile.

On the other side, an my personal opinion is a massive political event, where some people from the minority side that gets all the money can show themselves and use it to broadcast their products. Companies donates money publically but no one say that this money is on a donation law, and it is subtracted from the taxes they have to pay every month, so there is no “pain” on giving it for this event. They use it to show their publicity and get profits of it. Another thing is how much do they pay to T.V. hosts and artists. I don’t know if this is a fact but I’ve read that 25% of the money raised is to pay the people working on it and that a 5 % is directly to Mario Kreutzberger pocket. There is no lottery ticket that pays that to a winner if we think that raises this event is spoken as billions.
Also they pretend that the money raised is less than they really have, between certain hours the countdown is always lower than it should be, and as by magic between the 10 P.M and 1 A.M the countdown raises a lot.

As a conclusion I think that Telethon is just one more business from this whole disguise party. People may say that theleton is the only one and bigger organization that helps people with physical and mental problems, but we must not forget that there are other institutions that make a similar job, as “the rotary club” and “el club de leones” located in many parts of Chile, they do not make a massive show like Don Francisco but that does not mean they are unimportant. Big institutions will always end up as a business even churches, I have been watching the rebuilding of “el santuario de nuesta Teresa de los andes” for years, and they’re still asking for money…

Livemocha

This time I’m going to talk about a website related to English, because for us students, it’s necessary to improve our English in and out the classroom. Not only in the classroom must we use English. It is also necessary to get into other languages because as linguists we need at least know some words or structures of other languages.

Livemocha is a community website where people of all around the world can choose what to learn, and it’s evaluated by other people, who have gotten “mochapoints” that let you do more things than just learn, so it is a very interactive way to learn English, with natives or with other learners more experienced without paying anything. If you wanted something similar to this, maybe you had to buy a cd whit exercises, and sometimes is useless to buy something like that, the other plus of this website is that you interact with other people, someone on your country, or another continent maybe which can evaluate your activities and tell you some hints to do it, is not a machine who helps you, is another person like you.

To start you have to register on the page http://es-mx.livemocha.com/ then you have to choose your mother language and then there’s a list of languages where you have to select the one you want to learn. After doing that you enter the first exercise, some of them are automatically evaluated by the system, but there are some others that must be evaluated by other people, subjectively. The good thing about that is when you got some tips from the ones who evaluate you, because a program have the correct way to say things, but it won’t teach you how some words are used in context.

Websites helps you on many things if you know how to look for it, there’s too much information on internet nowadays so look for something specific can be difficult, but when you find things like this, it may be the help you were looking for and you cannot have it outside the internet.

Writing of favorite food is not easy because there’s a lot to choose, especially nowadays where we can have recipes from every part of the world. We can eat Chinese food with a Greek salad and tropical juice, or maybe Arabic food with African accompaniment, and a Chilean wine.
So I think that today there’s a variety of food that makes this question a hard one. As I like cooking, my preferences are Arabic food and Chinese food. Also in religion food is important, some Buddhist recipes are just as healthier as delicious, they don’t use many condiments, they use mostly the ingredients as they come, not using salt or pepper. We also have Hare Krishna food, they live in communities and they don’t work on regular jobs, they produces and make their own clothes and furniture, also they plant their own food, these two cultures are vegetarian. Krishna won’t use garlic, onion or champignon. They use instead pepper, ginger, mustard seeds and curry.
We also have Thai food, is delicious but the most striking aspect is the colors they use, is like painted food, and this is made only by using colored products, there’s no additional things on it, like chemical stuff, just natural colors.
And meat, I have spoken about vegetarian food, but we can’t forget meat on this, there’s a lot of meat recipes, there’s also a lot of discussion about it, because these products belongs to living, walking things, animals are even venerated on some cultures, as cows on India, cats on Egypt, some people becomes vegetarian just because of this topics. Argentinean and Chilean people argued about how to cook meat, the like it on mid terms and in Chile is well cooked.
As a conclusion food is not just to fulfill basic needs nowadays.

Well if I have to choose a favorite group. The ones I liked the most were “The Doors”. It was on a beach where Jim Morrison met Ray Manzarek after the university. Jim shown a poem to Ray called “Moonlight Drive” and ray asked him to sing it, then they formed the band, Ray played the keyboard and he looked for the other members of the band, Krieger and Desmore. The band was complete, they got their name of a William Blake’s poem "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite." They played on pubs, where someday the president of Elektra Records found them and offered a contract, they signed but even though it was a very important moment it was a short time comtract because Jim was irreverent, rebel, he never followed the rules and this was the first time they show it. In a typical concert on a pub in the song “the end” he sings "Father? Yes son?, I want to kill you", "Mother? I want to fuck you". Even though they had explicitly told not to sing that part, and then in a television show were asked to change a song’s letter but he won’t do it.

On Bicentenary holidays a friend of mine has asked me to go to her house where we would make a barbecue, we haven’t seen each other for at least 6 months or something So it’s a nice opportunity to talk of things we have done so far or laugh about some other issues that have happened to us, for example a joke, a weird moment even those when we got confused. I’m also going to a “fonda” in La Florida, where we will drink beer because the theme of the “fonda” is a beer party. We have to confirm our appointment because it’s hard for us to meet when it’s about something out of the university.
The other days maybe I will work at home I think, four days of holiday are too many for somebody’s pocket and we have to make a set of knitting looms for the week after the national holidays.
I don’t know yet but I think I’m going to another “fonda” with my family or at least we will cook something in my house. We don’t make the typical barbecue so maybe we will cook something vegetarian,a sort of “empanadas” or Chinese food.

So cheers, have fun, and celebrate.

This picture was taken in 1968, it won a Pulitzer in 1969, and it was taken by Eddie Adams.

A Vietcong officer killed by the general Nguyen Ngoc Loan. This picture is extremely special because of many things, one of them is that it was taken just when the bullet entered the head of the man, so, it is the image of a thing you cannot reverse, it is the moment between life and death where you cannot interfere. He had life and he was losing it without turning back, the photo may kill more than a gun. The general who killed this man had to suffer for this photo for many years until he died in 1998 at the age of 67. The man who took this photo apologized to the general’s family because of the image he made. Although he said he was a hero, he shot a man who had killed 6 men that were his relatives and American soldiers.
This picture was taken to be the flag, the symbol of anti-war movements.
“When death becomes life”.

The last movie I saw was “Fuga” about 3 weeks ago. The main character was Benjamin Vicuña. I saw the movie with my girlfriend.
The movie plot starts with a boy that gets traumatized after he sees his sister get raped on the piano that she was playing some minutes before. When he grows up he become a music director who made a beautiful and schizophrenic play, like Mahler’s ninth symphony that it is said it is covered by the shadow of death. In this movie the play is never finished in public, because every time it is played someone dies.
I absolutely recommend it, I liked it a lot, it is a deep and strong movie, it makes you think a lot, the mental disease of the main character is excellent represented so it can get you closer to this unknown world.

This semester was a little hard, not by the subjects but by the other thing to do on a day, on a week, on the month. Just studying would have been easy, but as I pay my career all by myself, to gather that money means to have worked every Friday and Saturday from 5 P.M. to 5 A.M. as a sub administer on a bar of a handmade beer called Tajano, which is called the beer blues, every Saturday we had a local blues band playing their music, that was entertaining but it costs me a lot of time, also working at my house where we make knitting looms, of any kind: big, small, expensive, cheap, some of them hard to make, other ones easier. Well it’s better to talk about how this month was, more than this semester, because the other things set our time to dedicate to the subjects.
Te subjects itself were not so hard, but were too mechanic, I missed some mental topics as in this semester I have Philosophy of Language, that is more a mental challenge, as to motivate myself, and not more not less, the class of redaction, where we will be able to improve our writing habilities, or at least we hope to…