How can we make Americans respect us?

How can we teach Americans that Mexico is not just another third world country? It is sickening for some of us to open WEB sites that treat Mexico and Mexicans as if they were from a strange land, incapable of coping up with the «Great American Way».

They should be informed that the Mexican Peso is a truer currency than the American Dollar, simply because it's backed by a Government that is not playing with deficit—and charging it to the rest of world—like the US Government is doing.

I'm sick and tired of seeing web sites made by Americans, incapable of adding the Mexican currency as one more currency with which they would be able to do business with.

Is there something that I don't know about doing business with Mexico and Mexicans? We're stupid enough in Mexico to be using Windows 7 over Linux—unlike they do in Europe. So, we are more partners with American Business than with business anywhere in the world. Thousands of kilometers in common boarders make of us natural partners.

The terrible violence generated by the drug cartels in Mexico is nothing more than a consequence of the Americans needing the substance, buying it, generating a demand, which reflects in the cartels killing themselves in the streets of our cities and towns, corrupting all levels of governments.

Our president decides to combat these criminals. The American government is perfectly informed of the attitude of the Federal Government being a genuine one. Their internal intelligence knows in detail the strength and determination in the Mexican President's decision. They know it isn't only a political affair, a stage to show off; they know better than any Mexican that the so called «war on drugs» in Mexico is real. And what do they do to back it up? Nothing!

There are a bunch of anti-Mexicans among the media «big men». They love to spit out words of contempt against Mexico and the Mexican efforts to change things. Today, in 2012, Mexico is a different nation from what it was 12 years ago. Can the Americans recognize that? Yes, they can, but they don't want to recognize that they recognize it. The Media Giants continue with an attitude that does exactly the opposite of helping.

It is that lack of support from the international media that has resulted in the electoral behavior of this past July 1st. People in Mexico are confused. They don't really understand what is happening. Whatever the international media publishes, becomes the background of the Mexican national media; even if the local media contradict what is said internationally, the Mexican public would have a different frame of reference.

It's time for some intelligent Americans to speak out on behalf of the real change that has taken place in Mexico since December 1st, 2000. The process is now over and power is going back to the same political group that kept Mexico a third world country for 100 years, making it enter a process of counter-development that was completely halted and reversed during the years of real government (2000-2012). Growth? Did you say GNP growth? The worst world crises took place within these last 12 years. Take a look at the world around and see which country was able to overcome the consequences with the least harm to their people.

Yes, that country was Mexico! Viva México! This time it's for real. A renowned economist in Europe suggested that the Mexican economy looked as if it were from another planet! It was one of the few economies doing well, in spite of the destructive crisis the Mexicans suffered in 2009, due to the AH1N1 virus unexpected looming.

So, what is it that Americans don't seem to be willing to understand from Mexico? Rest assured: We aren't trying to make us or anybody else believe that Mexico is the gate to heaven. What is really important—and it's that what needs to be accounted for—is the real changes that have taken place in the daily life of the country. A lot is going on, especially now that we are a nation of free media, some of them especially conscious of what the public needs and the country deserves.

Paragraphs, please!

Paragraph, a simple concept has become a giant issue all over the Internet. Why was it such a difficult concept to understand? <p> was — and still is today — the HTML tag to indicate that a new regular text paragraph was starting. Initially, it wasn’t necessary to indicate the end of the paragraph with </p>. The beginning of the next one with <p> was enough.

However, all of that has remained in the past, because Microsoft® decided to ignore it. Then people started writing their e-mails with double enters. Today, believe it or not, Microsoft® has changed the way their programs work: they all generate an automatic empty paragraph with just one enter. That is, internally, they’re generating one simple <p> tag.

Too late! The incredible generalized public ignorance about the concept of paragraph has driven more than one code programmer crazy. Just take a look at the blogger.com site. The regular HTML language would simply ignore empty space. In other words, if you typed inside an HTML page two or three or four empty lines, they would all be ignored. If you wanted an empty line, you needed to write <br> — which later on became <br /> — and then you would get one empty line, even if you were within a <p> paragraph. That makes a lot of sense!

Back to blogger.com… Today, if you write inside the HTML section, and you enter empty space, the most horrible thing happens: it prints the empty space! That’s what I would call a total aberration! I would like to punish whoever made that decision.

Also, if you type from the rich edit editor, instead of generating <p> tagged paragraphs after an Enter, you generate empty lines! The aberration completed and rounded up.

It all comes from the error that Microsoft® started several decades ago. And they have corrected the mistake, but now others are actively resuscitating it, making of it even a more aberrant issue. Back to blogger.com, the aberration goes as far as forcing the HTML page to behave — and for this they must do something special — in such a way that you need to write without empty spaces!

What a way to rewrite the world upside-down!

It’s time for us to ask them to get their act together. All rich text editors should generate simple HTML formatting text, so that a style sheet can easily define the personality of the <p> paragraph, the <li> personality, and other very simple and useful stuff.

Thinking In Written Words

Thinking, An Exercise

If you want your muscles to get strong, you need to exercise them. That's a fact. Writing is an activity performed by your brain, an organ that needs to be treated like a muscle, and more. If you don't use your brain, it will lose its capacity to do quickly and efficiently that which it's designed to do: think, invent, imagine, create, solve, decide, write, speak, dream, and similar things. Those are actions. They're all performed by our brains. When you say I, what do you imagine you're referring to? Your brain! Of course, what else?

For some people it's simply impossible to accept the fact that our brains are the organs in our bodies that execute our actions of thinking. All of our memories exist within our brains. Nothing that we imagine, that we decide, think, dream or feel has its origins in any other part of our bodies, but our brains.

What a fantastic piece of design our brains are! They are so incredibly fantastic that we reject to believe that when we say "I", it's our brain the one that's speaking, thinking, deciding, remembering and making choices. We have not been able to design any machine even close in power, to our biological brains. Computers, and the network of them have an incredibly efficient memory system at the service of millions of brains. But they are way less powerful than one single human brain.

We've been able to teach our computers to make decisions. If they're capable of moving robots and robotic arms and robotic storage houses, then they're close, but not quite that close to mirroring what our brains do. Our brains make decisions considering a literal myriad of factors simultaneously. Computers are capable of reasoning down a gigantic hierarchy of if-then-else's at lightning speeds — probably much faster than our brains — but we don't seem to have been able to make any computer consider, simultaneously, variables chosen by the computer itself, in order to end up with a refined decision. Our brains do that all the time, and we don't even know they're doing it!

Also, the most powerful computers — as far as I know, maybe some of you know better — are ordered to consider a preset collection of conditions, including any conditions that might derive from the initial tree node, but not any conditions outside the initial node of reasoning — which is really that hierarchy of if-then-else statements.

The closer we push computers to do what our brains do, the more energy they need to fulfill their tasks. That should give us an idea of the efficiency with which our brains are capable of using energy. The energy we provide to our brains is fed into our system via the carbohydrates of the food we eat. That's all our brains need to function. The modern and most integral dietitians recommend that our calories should come from protein, fats and carbohydrates. We need only 5% of our calories to come from proteins, which leaves 95% to come from carbohydrates and fats. The myth of "high protein diets" for muscle building has been busted. (Please, investigate the details by yourself and let me know what you found out.)

This Was All About Thinking

That's it! We said that at the beginning, and there isn't a good reason — at least, one we could think of right now — to change our minds: this was supposed to have been a thinking exercise. As such, we are free to consider it concluded anytime we feel our muscle — our brain — has worked enough.

And it has! Just as I sat to write this, it occurred to me that, after all, it's our brains the ones that have generated every single piece of culture that exists today or has ever existed on the surface of our planet, The Earth.

And I have questions that were the result of this exercise, and I asked you, the readers, to proceed to finding answers to those questions. Are we getting closer, with computers, to the way our brains work? Have we chosen — randomly, of course — a line of development that will force the increments of technology in our computers to follow a line different from the line our brains followed during evolution?

Losing Work

Probably one of the most hateful experiences has to do with losing minutes or hours of writing work. I love my iPad — combined with the Apple external Bluetooth keyboard — as the perfect tool for writing my articles and blogs. You can’t beat the tool for that kind of work. It’s kind with the environment — burns very little electricity — and it’s extremely easy to take wherever you go.

The problem has to do with applications to create content. Of course, your iPad comes with the Notebook, a great application. It’s always in control of the spellchecking system and never loses a single character. It’s an extremely trustworthy application. However, it doesn’t help at all when you like to write using commands to generate rich text.

Pages is out of the question. It has become an extremely slow application — in my iPad1— and it isn’t flexible at all concerning output in different formats. If you write articles for Blogs, forget it! I like to generate html code, and Pages doesn’t understand or care about that possible need.

One excellent application used to be — and still is — Blogsy. It was specifically created to make the life of bloggers a lot easier when they write using their iPads — not iPhones. The only drawback with Blogsy has to do with a rather constant problem with all iPad writing applications: you need to touch the screen with your fingers in order to generate rich text words, titles, lists, etc. If you’re a touch typist, you simply don’t want to separate your fingers from the keyboard.

That’s where Markdown — and all the applications that take advantage of it — comes into play. Using the MarkDown system, the writer can type and generate rich text without ever taking her fingers away from the keyboard. Phraseology is just one more application that takes advantage of the MarkDown system. It’s incredibly simple, but this isn’t the right place to get an explanation about it.

As I’m typing — using my iPad — I suddenly notice that the program isn’t underlying the misspelled words anymore. That is, it had been doing it, but then, suddenly, it simply stopped doing it. When this happens, it’s a real hassle; you can’t know right away if your text is coming out all right. It seems to be all right, but since the spellchecker is resting — or whatever, Apple People could give us a hint, because the fault is in all applications, except the native ones — but it might not be OK. One can’t know, unless one types a crazy combination — a sure misspelled word — like kisharma — whoa! it’s working, so far — and as it appears underlined with the red little dots, you know you’ve made a mistake.

Phraseology is a rather decent application. So far, I haven’t lost an article. However, if I need to paste the html code in Blogsy, I need to make it in 2 steps: 1) I need to copy and paste into yet another application — Textastic — and then, 2) from there I obtain the html code, that I will be able to paste into Blogsy or directly into the Blog Web Editor — they all accept html.

When I leave my city to stay at a far away place to write my book — and screenplay — I will want to take with me nothing but my iPad, and of course, the aluminum Apple bluetooth keyboard. I just hope all of these applications will have already been perfected to the point of Zero Faults. Something tells me that I will leave for my trip before the Zero Faults condition is met.

I spent most of my active life using Windows® PCs, until the iPhone appeared. I was unable to resist the iPad. I haven’t tested any other tablets out there. However, let me tell you that if the Mother Of All Tablets has all of these faults, flaws and drawbacks — applications crash or slow down — then the world is still rather far from overcoming the PC.

Did I mention that the most expensive keyboard in the world — the Apple Aluminum Bluetooth — doesn’t have an On/Off switch? Do they have a special commission from the battery companies? I know, it’s extremely economical as far as using batteries is concerned — a set of two, lasts for about 3 months, using it 3 hours daily — but, why the lack of switch? I take out the batteries when I won’t be using it for a while; and I need to do it during transportation, or else the keyboard is “live”, looking for matching equipment — and wastefully burning batteries!

Your "LifeStyle" Affects Everybody

Politics and science tend to mix in detrimental ways. We always lose when politics tries to influence science. If science is honest, we always win when science influences politics.

It is not political that one very specific amino acid, present in animal protein, has been found to be a positive catalyzer of cancer development. It is a scientific fact. If the person involved in the discovery of such fact has links to any kind of political organizations, the scientific fact remains valid. It doesn’t sound intelligent in any way, to discard a fact encountered through the application of plain, good, valid science, just because the person who did the study votes for political party A or B or C.

PCRM is not the only institution in our modern world that contains names that will deny having ever signed to be part of it. AMA, more in agreement with the establishment stream, will probably include names that never specifically signed to be members. Our societies are incredibly complicated and require lots of efforts with information systems in order to keep lists up-to-date.

If Dr. Campbell were a dishonest person, we would know by now. I have seen how those things work. Sometimes, the agents ordered to make a specific personality look bad in the eyes of the general public, deny participating after meeting the personalities they would have been supposed to discredit. Dr. Esselstyn is another person, another doctor, who has been successful in substituting surgical intervention with 100% plant based diets. More than 200 individuals have been able to skip bypasses by following a strict, 100% plant based diet under the supervision of Dr. Esselstyn and his wife. They have tried myriads of ways to discredit him, until they meet them.

It is incredibly eloquent, coming from AMA, to state officially, in 2004, that milk, after all, will not be actively endorsed or discouraged. The “milk panic” perhaps had a real reason to be. Take a look at what they are now saying from the Harvard School of Medicine about what they endorse as “healthy sources of protein”. Also, try not to miss how they have — I would say, shyly — begun to lower the pitch on “milk mustaches”, once proudly shown by celebrities — at least one of them now dead from a rather typical chronic disease of the kind white robe bearers elegantly show perplexed faces, while presenting to the insurance companies giant receipts for their “professional time”.

Slowly, but solidly, something is happening that hasn’t been made public. In the years to come we will see insurance bills being lowered if you declare to be on a 100% plant food diet, while, of course, they will have found ways to analyze your blood and check if you’re declaring the truth. It is so much lower in cost to die from old age, in your sleep on your home bed, than it is to die after lengthy, futile surgical interventions and “intensive care”.

How does a diet rich in animal stuff make your lifestyle better than a diet rich in plant food? It can only be understood if you haven’t tasted the gourmet dishes that are being prepared progressively in more and more homes and restaurants all over the world.

Some arguments in these debates tend to be so empty in real content, especially those aimed at defending a stubbornly withheld meat diet.

It isn't easy to jump to 100%-plant-food lifestyles: our culture is not organized for such diet. You will need to be very careful about including a real symphony of plant food products, all of them requiring specific treatment — from picking it and eating it, to cooking it after lengthy or complicated processes. We have said it a zillion times: not because we don’t die on the spot after we drink a glass of milk or enjoy a melted cheese, or feel in heaven with juicy beef in our mouths, it means that we can base our diet on such products; they all contain an amino acid that simply, isn’t adequate at all for at least 1 in 3 individuals, in a short time; and, in a longer time, it will also harm the other 2. How? By triggering the progressive formation of degenerative and chronic diseases. These are incredibly expensive to treat — using stupidly futile processes. Moreover, we all carry their high costs on our backs.

The tobacco industry invested enormous amounts of money to try to “prove” that cigarette smoking wasn’t bad at all. What has happened in the end?

“I am not going to give up my lifestyle…” Fine, but bear in mind that your decision is affecting you, your beloved ones, your friends, your neighbors, the whole species!

Undoubtedly, we are a stubborn species of habits! We need to learn to accept change when it is mandatory for the good of all of us!

Food for Humans. A New Paradigm?

Evolution works by avoiding anything that will make survival of the species less likely. Food intake is something that happens at a given moment, when hunger commands actions. Our species, the humans, is supposed to have appeared in Africa. It was no more than 50,000 years ago that the first group left the African environment, to wander in regions where the food supplied must have been different from what was available in the original African habitat.

Some groups left Africa, some groups stayed in Africa. During the last 250,000 years, the conditions of the Planet have changed. Our species has been living only for 220,000 years. We are a relatively new species, who has had to endure radical changes in climate and general habitat conditions.

It is a fact that we are capable of eating almost anything without falling dead on the spot — except for some specific poisonous fruits, seeds and minerals. So, our daily diet could have been almost anything.

However, our bodies bear important indicators that we evolved — as we became humans — into

creatures perfectly fit for the consumption of plant food, and capable of eating — without falling dead on the spot — a number of other foods, mainly animal meat, eggs, milk, fish or poultry.

We do not posses anatomical traits similar to those species specialized in eating meat. It’s a fact that we don’t use our teeth — we don’t even have the proper ones for such job — to kill our prey. We like to dismember them, preferably with some kind of tool, cook it, and only then proceed to eat it. However, if we find fresh fruit or even vegetables, we can take it directly into our mouths.

It must have been a problem for those groups wandering in territories without the concentration of plant food offer, when they discovered that they would need to rely mostly on hunting and cooking, instead of simply picking up and sharing. But we are a highly intelligent species. Intelligence means high capacity to adapt to changes in the environment. And that’s exactly what we must have done in order to populate regions of the world rather poor in plant or animal food offering.

Our response to those difficult regions is what we call today agriculture, which includes planting crops or grains, legumes, fruits, nuts and growing domesticated animals — chicken, lamb, cattle, pork, and their byproducts. We have used our brain capacity to adapt to any habitat that we chose to occupy on the Planet.

We are 7 billion individuals today, and counting. We are in a messy situation. A lot of the “intelligent” people are now immersed into a magic trust for the system, which includes medical doctors. Our medical technology has made possible incredible workings in damaged human bodies. Individuals who would have died in the past, have survived thanks to medical surgery and proper drug administration. I am not thinking here about chronic diseases, but about accidental or combat events.

And it has been precisely that very advanced medical technology that has uncovered what we now know as chronic diseases, including cancer, heart failure, artery clotting, auto immune problems, lupus, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and what-have-you. Our medical sages are rather perplex in front of these chronic diseases. They use medical high tech to remedy damaged bodies, but they have no real, honest idea, of why such bodies are getting damaged.

“It’s in your genes”, they say. “Take these supplements”, is another story. “Avoid breathing this and that”, they proclaim. But the Fight on Cancer has had, as a result, more cancer!

If we look around us, our latest beloved ones have died, all of them from one of those so called Chronic Diseases. Take your pick: which one is more acceptable for you?

And then a number of studies made by responsible people, without commercial agendas, start linking diet to any one of those chronic diseases.

And then, one study, finds that at least ONE AMINO ACID present in ANIMAL PROTEIN acts as a positive catalyzer of cancer in rats. Take the animal protein away from the diet, and away goes the cancer! Put the animal protein back in, and in comes back the cancer! Or put some plant food protein in without the amino acid and no cancer! Include the plant food protein with the amino acid and back comes the cancer!

That is enough for me to decide that I better keep away from any protein that might contain such amino acid. Google “PlanEat” and watch the documentary. More and more independent studies are linking animal food to the other chronic diseases.

The fact that we are capable of eating almost anything and not die on the spot — but die after several years from any one of the variety of chronic diseases — is a heavy trick, a real challenge to human intelligence. Sometimes we need to accept that a different paradigm is on the verge of erupting. Change is always uneasy for humans, and change is always the basis for continual survival.

(This post is an entry in my Blog: