A chart of money

Check out this graph by xkcd about the different dimensions of money. Be sure to zoom in to appreciate all the details. You may have to use the link to the website to be able to do it.

Capitán America (Captain America)

(via montt)

English translation: 


Today in: Superheroes with denomination of origin issues.


"Oh, yeah? Well, let me tell you that I am Captain America around here."




This comic is particularly meaningful to me because using America to call the U.S., or Americans for gringos just didn't seem right. I mean, if I was born in the American continent, I am also an American, right? I know, I know... how would we call them otherwise? Gringos is definitely not politically correct. BBC used to have a nice way to fix this ambiguity of terms. They used to* split their News sections into continents, calling The Americas what in Spanish we are taught as America. I am sticking to that one, and I will not mind calling Americans, Americans.

*Currently the subdivided the Americas into US & Canada and Latin America. 

La Liste

Lately I have been enjoying listening to songs both in French and Italian. I am afraid that if I study Italian too much I will forget what's left of my old French... or even English! I can't seem to conjugate verbs properly these days.  Anyway, so I naively listen to Carla Bruni hoping it won't fade away so fast from my brain... I guess there is only so much space in my spongy brain for new stuff :-).

But hey! Carla Bruni is so 2002. So here's a song (from 2009 I think) that grooveshark kindly recommended me with their "radio" function. I like it a lot:

Many of the items in the list of the song are actually in my list of to-do-things... :-) Happy Sunday!

Losers' song

Sorry that I have been so delayed with my posts. I am still feeling pretty tired after coming back from the conference and there is a lot to do before the Thanksgiving break (which I am taking off, of course! yeay!!).

What I have for today is somehow funny. It all comes from this link. It is very well known that Columbia University literally sucks in sports. I have only been to a basketball game and it was pretty shameful. (American) Football is no exception and here are some irrefutable stats: they lost to Cornell for 62 points, 37-0 to Dartmouth, and 44-21 to Albany, among others.

It turns out last weekend at Cornell we were losing again when the music band that is meant to cheer for the team at each game (tough job!!) came up with the following lyrics to the traditional "Roar, Lion, Roar" song:

We always lose lose loseby a lot and sometimes by a littlewe all were winners at the start,but four years has taught us all the value ofjust giving up, cause we really suckwhy are we even trying?we always lose lose losebut we take solace in our booze.

As a result the band is now banned from marching the finale (!). I agree that this is definitely not the best sports spirit, but I still found the lyrics funny and creative.  What do you think?

Picture from source of news.

How do you treat yourself in times of stress?

It's almost midnight and I am in Charlotte, North Carolina at this major conference. I slept 2 hours yesterday and even though I am super tired, I can't sleep. Too many things going on.

How do you treat yourself in times of stress? I exercise regularly (my yoga lessons are sacred), but sometimes I need an extra punch. I recently discovered one that does wonders. I look for sources of laughter. Not just giggles, but real laughter... best if I cry. So if something makes me laugh, I just let myself go into the feeling... it kinda spreads all over the body. Nice feeling to counteract against stress!

The other day watching a couple of episodes of The Daily Show and Colbert Nation did the trick. I LOOOOVE them. But now, in this conference (and also last week) the best has been to be with my good friend, Rouba. We shared office during the PhD for 3 years and we became really close. She's always very funny and positive. I love that we can be so open with each other and laugh at pretty much anything. This is definitely the best way I have found to treat myself. Thank you, habibteh!!

How do you treat yourself?

(image via Rum For Tva)

A.A. - jugando a ser Marthelo (playing at being Marthelo)

Mi sobrina de 3 años con su mamá (contado por mi prima):

Mi hija: Mamá, jugamos a que tú eres Marthelo? (su "esposo")Yo: okMi hija: Marthelo, mira yo soy tu princesa porque traigo mi pijama azul y mi boca pintada y yo te quiero, por eso eres mi príncipe, eh Marthelo?Yo: ok (cortándole las uñas y sin voltear a verla)Mi hija: Mira Marthelo mi amor, tengo un moco (diciéndolo con un tono tan romántico)Yo: jajajajajajajjajaaj plop!!!!!!!

 Imagínense salir con algo así en una cita. Lo máximo. Me recordó a una anécdota que leí en uno de los n blogs que leo,  A Cup of Jo. La chava contó que una vez estaba en una cita con un chavo con el que estaba saliendo y de repente, así de la nada, el cuate salió con que "tenía un bigote muy lindo." Jajajajaja. La pobre se traumó y cuando llegó a su casa se lo razuró!!

Aprovecho para avisar que me voy de conferencia mañana. Espero estar de vuelta en el blog para el 20 de Noviembre. Igual después a lo mejor baja un poco la frecuencia de los posts porque el trabajo va a aumentar mucho de aquí a... no sé... mucho tiempo... ¡Espero estén disfrutando su fin de semana!


My 3 year old niece with her mom (told by my cousin):

My daughter: Mom, do you want to play at being Marthelo (her "husband")?Me: okMy daughter: Marthelo, I am your princess because I am wearing my blue pj and I am wearing lipstick and I love you. That's why you are my prince, eh Marthelo?Me: ok (this I say while cutting her nails without even looking at her)My daughter (in a very romantic tone of voice): Look Marthelo, love, I have a snot!Me: hahahaha plop!!!!!!!

This sounds like a perfect dating deal breaker, doesn't it? It reminded me of one that I read on A Cup of Jo, one of the (many) blogs I follow. When she was younger she was dating a guy who, completely out of the blue, told her "you have cutest little moustache". Hahahahaha. Joanna was so shocked, she shaved it when she got back home!!

Anyway, I will be gone for a conference next week, during which I will be super busy... Hope to be back to regular posting by Nov 20th. It's all steep uphill from now until... umm... I don't want to think about it. I hope you are enjoying your weekend!

Occupy Academia

Utterly. Awesome.

Curiously enough, I don't quite like Cecilia's blog (pun very much intended).

In your (jelly beanie) arms

Have you seen this video? It's cute and very creative, isn't it?

What I had not watched was the video of the making of the video. I thought it would be cool to see how they did to put so many jelly beans (288,000 of them) into nice frames one after the other. I assumed Kina Grannis was filmed with a green screen behind separately and then they had put everything together. But oh, no! She was actually there, with the jelly beans. Every. Single. Frame. (2,460 of them). Take a look:

The production of the video took more than 2 years, the shooting of it more than 1. Did you see how the creative producer gives her instructions on how to pose? I would have not lasted for more than 3 days... and that's a maybe. I like her. I like seeing passion for a project. And I also love her make up :-).

Lifecycle video - Life is short. Live your dream

The video doesn't really say anything new. It's about things that we need to be reminded of every so often. It's easy to get carried away with the flow, and stop paying attention to what really makes _you__ happy.

It's ironic how hard it is to live up to our own and independent expectations instead of everyone else's. I am trying to do it as a daily exercise: do more things that make __me__ happy. Only then I am able to make other people happier.

Log in

I am not good at blogging from my smartphone. I had an app for that (free, because I use Android), but it didn't work too well and I ended up uninstalling it (which might have not happened if I had had to pay for it... :-P). So then I read stuff in it that I like, but can't share them on my blog. grrrr. These things make me grumpy... 

Anyway, the point being that with the latest Christoph Niemann post I remembered I somehow missed to link to one that was published on September 30th. It is called Log In, and as its name suggests, is about passwords. 

I used to think that I was OK at remembering them, but now I find that I am not only forgetting them but it's also happening at a non-decreasing rate! I wonder what will be of my brain after I have a child. I may start forgetting my usernames, or even worse, my name itself :-). I blame it all (because I always have to have a scapegoat) on the password managers of modern browsers. They make our brains lazy :-P. Or is it just that I am getting old? Am I alone on this one?

Anyway, as usual, here is a sample from the illustrations, but please do take a look to the full post. I love the pet... and the sheriff...  and Niemann :-).

P.S. If you are about to create a new password, here is a cool xkcd comic about how to generate one. Made me feel a bit stupid... :-)

Christoph Niemann illustrates the NYC Marathon

In case you didn't see it in the news or some other blog, illustrator Christoph Niemann made a sequence of illustrations of the NYC marathon while he was running it. On top of that, he was tweeting each illustration live @abstractsunday and @abstractsunday1 (at some point twitter didn't let him upload so many pictures and he head to create a new username).

Look at the full sequence in Niemann's blog in the NYT Magazine and share a giggle.

UPDATE: I just found a picture of Niemann in action in NewYorkology! :)))

Pierre Cardin - fashion to the people

I just read a brief note about Pierre Cardin in the BBC Magazine. It's brief and to the point: the man is 89 years old, lucid, and controlling a fashion empire. I am not very knowledgeable about designers; to be honest, the name "Pierre Cardin" seemed to me like such a classic, that I thought he was dead already. It's an inspiring story. Really. And he's right, out of all the other major designers from the 50's and the 60's, he's the only one that didn't sell his name to a multinational. He became one of them. I let you read the article. If you are in a rush, though, here are some fun facts:

• From humble Italian origins, Cardin moved to Paris with his father when he was 2 years old, fleeing from Mussolini. 

• He began his career by making costumes for film-maker Jean Cocteau (who is that guy? I so wished it said Jacques Cousteau, even though it doesn't make any sense ;-) ). 

• He never smoke a cigarette in his life (!!!); he never did drugs.

• I never new he was famous for Space Age creations. Some of them don't look so futuristic anymore... or I am also becoming more adventurous in fashion ;-).

• The reporter who interviewed him describes him as rather scruffy. This could sound a bit contradictory to his profession, but as the reporter well points out, not to his origins.

Cricket Fighting

There are not many animal fights that are object of betting and big markets that I can think of other than dog fights. Today the NYT features an article about a more than a 1,000 year-old tradition: Cricket Fighting.

A bit of History: 

It first started within the walls of the palaces of the Tang Dynasty (sometime between 618 - 907) and later popularized. It was banned during the decade-long Cultural Revolution that ended in 1976 and now it is undergoing a revival by younger Chinese men that are eager to maintain ancient traditions.

Some numbers: 

Last year more than $63 million was spent on crickets (!!!).  

Connoisseurs claim they are able to distinguish up to 260 different kinds of crickets.

A diet like Michael Phelps's: ground shrimp, red beans, and goat liver. "The truly spoiled might enjoy the occasional herbal bath, and a maggot or two just before the big fight."

Curious world we live in.

Artsy to-do list

Sometimes the silliest things make me smile :-)

(via swissmiss)

A.A. - Qué vas a ser de grande (What will you be when you grow up?)

Le preguntan a mi hija de dos años: "Tu qué vas a ser de grande?" Y ella contesta: "Vieja!" jajajajajajajajajajaja

Esta frase es de Marzo 10 de este año. La tenía guardada por ahí y se me había olvidado publicarla. Parece muy adecuada para estas fechas en que ando buscando trabajo :-).

Este fin de semana tenemos puente, como decimos en México. A ver si lo aprovecho para lavar ropa, limpiar el depa e ir al súper... ufffff, sólo de pensarlo me emociono jajaja. ¡Feliz finde!

Somebody asks my two-year old daughter: "And you, what will you be when you grow up?" She replies: "Old!" 

Event though this phrase is from March (my niece is 3 years old today!), it seems very adequate for these days in which I am looking for a job. While there is so much uncertainty around the job market, at least I know I will be old with probability 1 :-).

We are having a long weekend over here (Election Day). My plans include doing laundry, washing clothes, and do groceries. Exciting, isn't it! Happy weekend!

Picture from here.

Anxiety girl

Trying to be... NOT :-)

(via A cup of Jo --  yes, I am.)

Spherical Cow

(via Abstruse Goose)

A.A. - ¿dónde te vas a sentar?

‎"Mamá te vas a sentar aquí conmigo o allá sin migo"

Jajajajaja esto me recuerda a mi Filippín... a veces me sale con frases como "sí, todo portigo" :)))... la pequeña diferencia es que tiene 10 años más que su edad es 11 veces más la de mi sobrina :))). (gracias a mi prima por corregir mi typo. Ya estaba quedando yo como asalta cunas jajajajaja)

I am sorry, here there is really no translation available. I can only offer some grammatical explanation (boring alert!).  In Spanish we have one word to say "with me", but if you want to say "without me", the word breaks into two, and the last syllable is dropped. My niece kept it, making it sound very funny :). Are there similar things in English? Would love to know... 

Better cotton

I found this article today in the New York Times: Levi Strauss Tries to Minimize Water Consumption. The article tells about how the company is worried that if water becomes too scarce, their whole business could be jeopardized. And so... 

... to protect its bottom line, Levi Strauss has helped underwrite and champion a nonprofit program that teaches farmers in India, Pakistan, Brazil and West and Central Africa the latest irrigation and rainwater-capture techniques.  It has introduced a brand featuring stone-washed denim smoothed with rocks but no water. It is sewing tags into all of its jeans urging customers to wash less and use only cold water.

But actually, Levi's is not alone. Pepsi is also saving water by sanitizing water bottles with purified air instead of water. Also, I quote,  "[...] Ikea, the Gap and Adidas, founded the international nonprofit Better Cotton Initiative to promote water conservation and reduce pesticide use and child-labor practices in the industry."


And how is the sales doing? According to their Chief Marketing Officer, jeans that were advertised as low water consuming sold faster than regular jeans. Some customers, like me, never heard of the initiative before. The company, curiously enough, is trying to convince people not to wash their jeans as often too. As photographer Mr White puts it

“As long as you don’t get dirt on them, don’t do a lot of strenuous activity in them and — sorry if this is a bit vulgar — be sure to always wear underwear, you can really go a very long time between washing,” he wrote.

A.A. - amor por el abuelo

Fuimos a casa de los abuelos y al irnos de regreso a nuestro hogar, mi hija empieza a llorar y a pedir regresar y me dice: ¨Mamá NECESITO a mi abuelo, mira mamá, lo necesito ya viste? Lo necesito, porque no puedo respirar sin él¨ Uta! la chamaca sí que heredó las dotes histriónicas de la familia!!!!!!

Que conste que esas dotes no vienen de nuestro lado de la familia ;-)

 We went to our grandparents' and when we were on our way back home, my daughter starts crying and asking to go back. She said: ¨Mom I NEED my grandpa. Look, mom, I need him. Can you see? I need him because I cannot breathe without him". OMG! This kid did inherit the histrionic traits of the family!!!!

Just  wanted to make clear that that is not my side of the family ;-)

A.A. - ¿me amas?

Me dice mi hija: "Mamá, te amo,y tu me amas?" "Claro", le contesto,y señalando mi pecho le digo "Mira, te amo con esto (corazón)" y ella me pregunta: "con la bubby?" jajajajajajajajaajja

Y entonces yo me pregunto, ¿a qué edad empezaremos a entender en abstracto que el cuerpo tiene órganos y que además, atribuimos el origen de nuestros sentimientos a uno de ellos?

 My daughter tells me: "Mom, I love you. Do you love me?" "Of course", I tell her and pointing at my breast I tell her  "Look, I love you with this (the heart)" and she asks: "with your bubby?"

:))) When do we start thinking of body organs more in abstract? I would guess that it happens when we get sick and we are able to localize the pain very well... Otherwise... ?

Where do you fit into 7 billion?

As you know, the UN population division declared that this week today someone will be (was?) the 7th billion  person on earth*. That's A LOT of people. There are some nice articles about what it means to be so many people on the planet and how we should react towards scarcity of resources. I like this one from the Economist.

So where do we fit in all this? The BBC has put up this webpage that helps you visualize it, with estimations. For example, I was born to be person number 4,720,327,430 on the planet (see chart below). Pretty cool, no?

Clicking next will take you to some cool stats about your country of origin**, then your gender (always kinda cool to see that we live more in expectation than men... even though that may mean that we are left alone sooner), and it wraps up with some (fill in the blank with adj) results. Mines were... well, didn't give me much hope. But probably if you are from other countries it will be, who knows :-). I let you discover it by yourself. I can only say that it took me the equivalent of the birth of 5,059 people to do the test and be writing this blog post. Freaking scary. Hey, Happy Halloween!

* For those who speak Spanish, let's remember that 7 billion is not equal to 7 billones; it is actually "7 thousand millions" or 7 mil millones.

** I found it rad that they included immigration as a stat, especially for a country where it matters so much.

Fibonacci circles in Siberia

The Anthropologist is featuring a reportage of a group of (crazy) people* that decided to create one of the the world's largest works of art: "drawing" a sequence of circles that grow in size according to the golden ratio, in the middle of Siberia (!!!). The results are breathtaking. If you have 5min, just browse through the website to see more pictures.

* The group of people is lead by artist Jim Denevan. He's done some pretty cool stuff. Check out his website.

It is unimaginable (at least for me) to see how people can devote so much time and effort into something that, on a first glance, could seem valueless. My capitalist soul asks itself: "I mean, do you just take some days off to draw circles in the North Pole?" And then my Occupy-Wall-Street self asks "What's wrong with it? Why do we have to attach some kind of utilitarian value to everything we do? The true slavery that Capitalism brought to society is that it got us to think that way." Anyway, let us not get into this philosophical discussions and let us enjoy the art.

Quick note about the website: it turns out that The Anthropologist is from the same people from Anthropologie (the clothes brand), which, in turn, are also the same people from Urban Outfitters. Oh, I just Wiki-ed them, and Free People is also from the same group. No wonder why I have certain attraction for all three stores, and they all seem a bit overpriced to me. Oh well, it's a small (corporate) world after all.

(via swissmiss)

A.A. - cosas importantes (important things)

Mi hija otra vez a medio regaño: "Shhhh" (me hace ella a mi) y yo molesta le digo: "A la mamá no se le calla, cállese usted" a lo que me contesta con sentimiento: "No mamá! De mi boca salen palabras importantes" Y dentro de mi, traduzco: "Tú si cállate porque dices puras pendejadas!!!!!!!" Plop!!!!!

Sólo tengo dos palabras para esta frase: ¡qué miedo! Padre que se defienda desde tan chiquita... al menos sabemos que va a ser más difícil que se la chamaqueen cuando crezca :-).


Here goes the English translation:

My daughter is half rebuking me: "Shhhh". I, upset, tell her "You don't shut up your mother; you shut up" to which she replied, offended: "No, Mom! From my mouth come out important words!! " I could only think to myself:" You shut up because you say only shit !!!!!!!" Plop !!!!!

Two words come to my mind: scary girl. I like how she stands up for herself, though.She will be a tough one to fool around when she grows up :-).

The Haiku

All I want to be

is a person who makes things

and thinks about them.

JOHN MAEDA

Very appropriate for job market season. I would probably add (tacitly, for otherwise it would stop being a haiku) useful things somewhere. I need to feel useful.

What are your plans for this weekend? My dreary Halloween plans include writing statements and cover letters (and, of course, maybe the thesis).  Good thing I don't need a costume for that.

Have a nice weekend!

(via swissmiss)

Where are you going for dinner tonight?

It has happened countless times to everyone with a smartphone. You are out with your friends, suddenly you decide you want to go to eat and, as utility maximizers that we are, we look to make a "good", well-informed decision, i.e., we go to Yelp and see what others have to say about nearby places. As a restaurant owner, the next natural question follows: How much ($) is a Yelp star worth?

Michael Luca, an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School, just published a paper that analyzes what the impact of restaurants' Yelp ratings are on their revenue. Here is the abstract or summary of the paper:

"Do online consumer reviews affect restaurant demand?  I investigate this question using a novel dataset combining reviews from the website Yelp.com and restaurant data from the Washington State  Department of Revenue.   Because  Yelp prominently displays a restaurant's rounded average rating,  I can  identify the  causal  impact of Yelp ratings on demand with a  regression discontinuity framework that exploits Yelp‟s rounding thresholds.  I present three findings about the impact of consumer reviews on the restaurant industry:(1) a one-star increase in Yelp rating leads to a  5-9 percent increase in revenue, (2) this effect is driven by independent restaurants; ratings do not affect restaurants with chain affiliation, and (3) chain restaurants have declined in market share as Yelp penetration has increased. This suggests that  online  consumer reviews substitute for more traditional forms of reputation. I then test whether  consumers use these reviews  in a way that is consistent with standard  learning models.  I present  two additional findings: (4) consumers do not use all available information and are more responsive to quality changes that are more visible and (5) consumers respond more strongly when a rating contains more information.  Consumer response to a restaurant‟s average rating is affected by the number of reviews and whether the reviewers are certified as “elite” by Yelp, but is  unaffected by the size of the reviewers‟ Yelp friends network." 

The idea that I liked the most is that people are going back to traditional ways of reputation/recommendation mechanisms. Chain restaurants used to be a safe bet, but now that you have Yelp to offer you good, local options, it's easier to be willing to try other options. One more benefit of having so much information, so handy. Awesome. Also, pretty cool that somebody could actually quantify the results with a formal model.

If you want to know more, but don't want to read the paper itself, there is an article about it here.


(via Prof. Al Roth's Market Design blog)

PhD (and many other things) in a picture

I am at the impossible part. Hopefully not for too long now  (please!!).

How many books do you read per year?

I admit it. I am a terrible reader. I did a good job probably in the last couple of years, but 2011 has been devastatingly bad. I blame it on my thesis, like everything else bad that happens to me - like not keeping up with my blog, for example.

I am bringing it up today because this week, in my Italian class, they mentioned a couple of books that everybody read. One of them was The Divine Comedy (I can't remember the name of the other book now - but it was written by James Joyce). Even though they are classics and I know of their existence, I never even held those books in my hands.

Terrible, terrible, terrible!! I dearly hope that after I am done with the PhD I will be able to resume with my reading. I just don't understand how I can be so lazy sometimes. Or maybe it's just lack of organization? At the same time there is so much material to read around me: news, blogs, The Economist, New York Mag (new favourite brought home by my roomie, yeay!).

To close the article I am putting a link to Sheridan's article on Mexicans and how much they (do NOT) read. Pretty appropriate. If you can't read Spanish, try Google Translate. Otherwise here are a few (shocking) stats:

• Mexicans read an average of 2.8 books per year and 40% of them have never been in a bookstore (!!!!).
• 18% of the people with a bachelors degree in Mexico has *never* been to a bookstore.
• In 1950 there were 150 bookstores in Mexico City. In 2005 there are twice as many, but the population has six-folded since then.

Really depressing. Back to my thesis now.

Decálogo fotográfico

Mi buen amigo Beco Alcocer publica un decálogo fotográfico hoy en su blog. Conciso, al punto y con excelentes fotografías tomadas por él.

My good friend published the 10 commandments of photography and illustrates them with pictures of his own. Even if you don't understand Spanish much, the pictures are awesome. Go to the link!

Beautiful Imperfection

Did you ever wonder how a woman would look like if she had the proportions of a Barbie doll? I always heard the typical story of how that person would not be able to walk properly because it is just anatomically impossible.

Last week I stumbled upon a the following picture, presumably featured in the Oprah Magazine:

I really like the contrast of this image. I am a very visual learner and it gives me the chill how unrealistic the figure of girl dolls are. Just as in my previous post my cousin can't tell where my niece got those crazy lyrics from, I am convinced that when young girls not only play with these dolls, but are surrounded by an environment that promotes these false image of women, create unnatural ideas of what women should look like without even noticing. This became very apparent the other day that I was window-shopping online. You usually see a garment on a pretty girl and wish you could look as gorgeous as she does... but the other day I saw a model that was a bit chobbier than usual. I swear it was just a bit. I didn't like it. I couldn't even think of buying that piece of clothes (I think it was a sweater). While rationally I know this is totally wrong, I was surprised by how embedded the idea was in my head. After 5min I was happy to see that picture. I hope these become more of a standard and less of an exception. Even if sales drop a bit for that company. Girls should not be used to seeing these unrealistic images of what they should become when they grow up.

A.A. - Lágrimas de sangre

Woah, mi sobrina se la acaba de volar con sus habilidades de canta-autora:

Imaginen las caras de mi marido y mía cuando vamos la familia en el coche y mi chiquita viene atrás inventando canciones y derrepente escuchamos: "Y llorarás l,agrimas de sangreeeeee, de sangreee y triste te matarás solaaaaaaa!!!!!" Plop!!!!!!!!!! (de dónde sacó eso! Dora la exploradora no dice eso!!!!!!)

¡¡La chamaca no tiene ni 3 años!!

The Culinistas shop and cook for you

I bumped into this service provided by The Culinistas this weekend. I find it very interesting. Apparently you do  a kind of checklist of food you would like to eat for a week, they do the groceries, and then come to your house to cook. The food is then labeled and put in your fridge with heating instructions. Sounds great, doesn't it? Here is a video from their website. Sorry, couldn't find the link to embed it here. You will have to go their site to watch it :-P.

They do charge a minimum of $300 a week + groceries. I deem that a bit on the expensive side, but I can't really say whether it is worth it or not. After all, I am a student used to live with 10USD a day for extended periods of time :-).

Point of this post being, I am always surprised by the variety of services that pop up online. Recently, home cooked food seems to be one of them. Happy Sunday!

A.A. - relación a largo plazo

Las contradicciones de la vida: Mamá, me voy a casar con Marthelo, y tu vas a ir a mi boda y después de mi boda va a haber....juegos!!!!!!! (Muy madura para casarse y muy pequeña que quiere juegos!)

No puedo añadir mucho más a eso... Aunque lo que sí me llama la atención es cómo mi sobrina sigue pensando en el dichoso Marcelo. Yo pensaba que iba a ser sólo un capricho, pero ya vamos en los varios meses... qeu en términos de un bebé debe ser como... mucho tiempo. Esto sí que ha sido una relación de largo plazo :-).

Here goes the English translation:

Life's contradictions: "Mom, I will marry Marthelo and you are going to go to my wedding, and then there will be.... a playground!!!"

My cousin well asserted that my niece already feels old enough to marry, but, of course, her idea of a party is to have it at a playground.  What I am really surprised here with is the fact that my niece has been making these comments about Marcelo for a while now... at least several months. If I think how I thought of a month when I was 7 years old, I can't imagine what several months could mean for a toddler. This is truly a long term relationship! :-)

de extinción y política

Guillermo Sheridan publicó una columna muy buena del PVEM en El Universal esta semana. No es noticia que el partido recibe tantísimo dinero sólo en subsidios (3 mil 700 millones de pesos entre el año 2000 y 2011). Pero ahora resulta que, para seguir dando finta de partido ecologista, hizo una generosísima donación de 100 mil pesos a una asociación que se dedica a combatir el riesgo de que el águila real mexicana* pase al catálogo de especies en extinción. Descarados. Y para seguir con su consistencia ideológica, ya declararon su apoyo oficial al candidato del PRI, Enrique Peña Nieto. El autor no lo pudo decir mejor:

No deja de ser original, y podría ser hasta chistoso, de no costarle al erario.

* Me voy enterando buscando una foto del águila mexicana que el árbol nacional es el ahuehuete. ¿Quién lo iba a decir? Y pensar que manejé en la completa ignorancia por la calle patriótica de "Ahuehuetes Norte" todos los días mientras fui a la secundaria y a la prepa.

Momento de confesiones: Soy fan de Sheridan.... Y admito que lo conocí por un link de facebook :-).

A.A. - rimbombante + anecdote (in English ;-) )

Mi sobrina aumenta su vocabulario para describir al mundo :)

El vocabulario rimbombante de mi hija: Las moscas no son "picantosas" (picadoras); Mamá qué "brillosante" (brilloso); No me gusta que la camioneta está "desponchida" (descompuesta)....

I thought of writing an English translation of my niece's quotes (just to be fair), but I am really not sure what the equivalent would be in this case. What is happening is that my niece is trying to use fancier words to describe things, creating new ones on the spot. Such a cutie!


But going back to the translation, I am afraid I am not familiar with the kind of mistakes kids make when they are learning English/growing up to draw analogies here... There is one anecdote, though, a bit related to the misuse of words. This is not about a kid, but an actual office mate who had problems with phrasal verbs a couple of years ago (I mean, who doesn't!). The printer was down (as usual) and when my friend found out, she screamed: "AH! The printer is BROKE again!!"

Just thinking of the scene cracks me up ;-).

And... it's Friday!! Relax and forget about your email for at least an hour. If you can. I know I definitely won't :-).

A Structured Procrastinator

My roommate and I have been discussing a lot lately about techniques that we use to force ourselves to do stuff. You see, as a grad student whose adviser is not pushy at all and living in New York City, it's very hard to get yourself to work on your dissertation. There are no clear deadlines... or there are, but they just seem so far in time. Instead, there are so many things happening around you, it's hard to keep up!

Of course, when you start the fifth year of the program and job deadlines start to pass one after another, panic invades and years of procrastination start paying very high tolls. Not only you realize how behind you are in your work, but also it is hard to get rid of the habit of putting things off.

Today, Vero shared with me an article written in 1996 about Structured Procrastination. It can be more than 15 years old, but I find it as applicable today as it was back then. It basically sustains that procrastinators should have tons of things to do on their lists, to actually become a useful citizen of this world. Here is a paragraph that caught my eye in particular:

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this approach ignores the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be, by definition, the most important. And the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is the way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being.

I can't tell you how many times I followed this flawed assumption. This semester, probably one of the most stressful ones of my whole program I decided to enroll in Italian. It's a 4-day, 1-hour per week course. It forces me to wake up early, I enjoy the class terribly, and it certainly fits the model that John Perry describes in his article.

Please don't stay only with this words and read the article. It's short and compelling.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, as part of my procrastinating activities of tonight, I googled John Perry and he is now an emeritus professor at Stanford. If we assume that he followed this philosophy at least partially for these last 15 years, it has definitely payed off. 

Hongkong Banking Organization

Mi prima me acaba de pasar una puntada genial de mi mamá. Le dice a mi papá:

Raúl, ya te deposité el cheque de HBO.

(Se refería, claro, a un cheuqe de HSBC) Creo que mi mamá no sería muy buena mercadóloga :-))).