Abe's Blog

I believe that every time a person dies, it diminishes the human race. Based on this principle, I fill sad for the death of Mr. Jackson.

However, I am appalled and surprised to see the media (TV, newspapers, blogs, fora, comments by "important" people, etc.) dedicating so much time to celebrate the live of a man who, under no circumstances, can be held as a role model for our society. Certainly not to our children!

Apparently he killed himself with and overdose of drugs (Grace Rwaramba, his secretary for many years and the the nursemaid of his children testified to the fact that he was a constant consumer of pain killers and drugs), many times was accused of being a pedophile (this maybe an exaggeration), he renegades his own race by changing his looks with surgery (he made his skin to look whitter, he made his nose and his lips thinner, etc.) because he wanted to look and have the factions of a white person. I wonder why young and old African American admire this man who did not want to be what he was: an African American.

The same day that Mr. Jackson died, many other people died: the little children who died of starvation in Ethiopia and Somalia, the little girl who was killed in Darfur, the children who died of infection in Haiti because the family could get anti-biotics, the newborn girl who was killed by her parents in China because she was born a girl, and many more.

For these deaths I cry every day.

I cannot shed a tear for Mr. Jackson. The man, apparently, killed himself with an overdose of drugs (just like the other mediocre man called Elvis Presley).

The fact that Mr. Jackson was, according to some tastes, a good singer does not make me admire him in any way. In any case, I prefer to listen to Juan Diego Flores, Jose Carreras, Rolando Villazon, Placido Domingo, and others of the same kind.

I wonder why our society pays so much attention to these people when they are alive and when they die. Is this because we really want to be like them, or it is because we are attracted to the power of money these people amaze?

Abe

Last night I attended a conference by animal advocate Gene Baur. Gene is the author of the best seller book Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and food, and the president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary an organization dedicated to the protection of farm animals. This organization runs also the largest rescue and refuge network for farm animal in North America.

The main topic of the conference was to instill in our minds the disgusting practices of our big (and sometimes small) factory animal farms who terrorise, torture, massacre, and keep in the most abject conditions the animals that serve as food in our daily live.

Farm animals are not only extremely mistreated, but among other things, are genetically manipulated, excluded from the Federal Animal Welfare Act and agricultural practices are excluded from most anti-cruelty laws.

In a typical animal (factory) farm the animals are most of their time subjected a continuous confinements and torture such as:

• Gestation Crates. This is medieval torture chamber where the sow pigs are forced to breed continuously. To achieve maximum benefits the pigs are kept most of their lives in the crates "2-foot-wide metal enclosures that severely restrict the animals' movement and thwart their natural behaviors." Take a look:

• Battery Cages. Here our farmers keep egg-laying hens for most of their life (yes, most of their lives) in cages the size of sheet of paper (8-1/2'' by 11''). The hens can barely move and cannot walk or even stretch their wings. Besides torturing these (more than a billion) egg-laying hens, we also kill over 9 billion chicken a year. When the hens and the chicken are not good for producing eggs or meat, our farmers pass them through a wood chipper. Take a look:

• Veal Crates. The veal calves (they ae killed when they are babies to satisfy our crave for Veal Cacchiatori or Veal Parmigiana) are kept for their ENTIRE LIVES in a 2-foot wide cages. "Usually chained by their necks to the front of the stall, these animals cannot even turn around, stretch their limbs, or lie down comfortably". Take a look:

and another look:

Farm animals have sensitivity, social life, intelligence, fill pain just like we do, they like freedom of movement just like we do, they appreciate and enjoy petting.

Thinks about this next time you try a big hamburger.

Abe

Yesterday British Telecom announced that British cities and towns can keep the Phone Booths (see picture, courtesy of Le Devoir of Montreal) that are so prevalent. These nostalgic and beautiful boxes, together with the London double decker buses, bring to my mind everything that is beautiful and good in Great Britain, but with the advent of the cell phones, not many people use these boxes anymore. It is easier to talk while walking with your cell phone rather than waisting time sitting inside these cabinets.

British Telecom had a plan: to get rid of all the red booths located all over the three and a half Kingdoms of the United Kingdom. The Municipal Councils and the people of Great Britain had different ideas and decided that these boxes should remain being part of the scenery of English towns. British Telecom will comply with these requests.

British Telecom, however, will make a profit from this. It will charge £500 per year per booth for a booth with a working telephone, and £250 per year for a cabin without a phone. Make the numbers: Today there are over 60,000 booths in the UK.

I think this a small price to pay in order to preserve the patrimony. For us who do not live in the UK it will also be a relief to know that when you go to London those beautiful big cabinets will be there.

I wish other countries could follow the British example to enhance our sense of belonging to our history by conserving the national patrimony not only in museums but as an integral part of our daily living.

Could you post the names of things that you think your country should have preserved but it didn't, in the name of progress? Let's make a list so all the readers of CR4 can enjoy some nostalgia.

Abe

Last week the US Department of Justice discovered a diploma mill in Spokane. The mill sold college diplomas to more than 10,000 people in the US and around the world. After buying the diplomas these people went to work at places like the National Security Agency, NASA, the CIA, the White House (a military adviser to the President was found to have a bogus diploma), Nuclear Power Plants, Hospitals (several bought diplomas in Cardiology, Obstetrics and gynecology, an others), Colleges, Law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, and other places.

Many of these institutions have caught the usurper(s) and they were fired, but there are thousand still working.

Here you have a partial list of individuals who bought bogus diplomas:List

In your next visit to the doctor make sure you review this list to see that your doctor is not listed here.

What do you think about buying a diploma?

Since the year 2000 MIT started an initiative (called OpenCourseWare)that would publish all their courses in the web for everybody to see, enjoy and learn. They created a web site (http://ocw.mit.edu/) for this purpose where, nowadays, more than 1800 courses live. This initiative was started by a request from some of the faculty. Timidly at first, the faculty responded by allowing MIT to use, for publication, all the content of their courses: lecture notes, laboratory exercises, tests and quizzes and the answers to these, and videos for some courses. The courses posted in this site are the real courses, the same ones that are being offered in situs at the MIT campus.

I always thought that knowledge should be free for all people, and this initiative come close to this ideal. Million of people around the world are taking advantage of this web site: they are increasing their knowledge, they are understanding better the inner working of the World, they are using these materials as an example on how to prepare new courses and how to teach them. In essence MIT is having an extraordinary impact on global education, because to download the content of these courses you do not have to register, you do not have to pay a single penny, you do not have to belong to a elite school or institution (like MIT). These courses, however, do not allow you to get a diploma from MIT and you can not ask questions to the faculty creator of the course.

We all should thank MIT for this web site (who knows, maybe later they will lower their fees!) that allows all people in the World to learn just for the sake of learning, and allow educators to improve education.

Listen to the words of MIT President Susan Hockfield:"There is no limit to the power of the mind. We encourage you to use OCW—learn from it and build on it. Find new ways not only to pursue your personal academic interests, but to use the knowledge that you gain—and that you create—to make our world a better place. In the spirit of open sharing, we also encourage you to share your scholarship with others, as hundreds of other universities are already doing through their own OCWs."

Kudos for MIT.

Abe