The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Major Lazer Ft. MØ & DJ Snake - Lean On
Lyrics
"Lean On"
(with DJ Snake)
(feat. MØ)
Do you recall, not long ago
We would walk on the sidewalk
Innocent, remember?
All we did was care for each other
But the night was warm
We were bold and young
All around the wind blows
We would only hold on to let go
[Chorus x2:]
Blow a kiss, fire a gun
We need someone to lean on
Blow a kiss, fire a gun
All we need is somebody to lean on
(Eeh ooh, eeh ooh, eeh ooh, eeh ooh) [x4]
What will we do when we get old?
Will we walk down the same road?
Will you be there by my side?
Standing strong as the waves roll over
When the nights are long
Longing for you to come home
All around the wind blows
We would only hold on to let go
[Chorus x2:]
Blow a kiss, fire a gun
We need someone to lean on
Blow a kiss, fire a gun
All we need is somebody to lean on
(Eeh ooh, eeh ooh, eeh ooh, eeh ooh) [x2]
All we need is somebody to lean on
(Eeh ooh, eeh ooh, eeh ooh, eeh ooh) [x2]
All we need is somebody to lean on
Lean on, lean on, lean on, lean on...
[Chorus x2:]
Blow a kiss, fire a gun
We need someone to lean on
Blow a kiss, fire a gun
All we need is somebody to lean on
The Weeknd - Can’t Feel My Face (Audio)
Lyrics:
Can't Feel My Face
The Weeknd
[Verse 1]
And I know she'll be the death of me, at least we'll both be numb
And she'll always get the best of me, the worst is yet to come
But at least we'll both be beautiful and stay forever young
This I know, yeah, this I know
[Pre-Chorus]
She told me, "Don't worry about it"
She told me, "Don't worry no more"
We both know we can't go without it
She told me you'll never be alone, oh, oh, woo
[Chorus]
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
[Verse 2]
And I know she'll be the death of me, at least we'll both be numb
And she'll always get the best of me, the worst is yet to come
All the misery was necessary when we're deep in love
This I know, girl, I know
[Pre-Chorus]
She told me, "Don't worry about it"
She told me, "Don't worry no more"
We both know we can't go without it
She told me you'll never be alone, oh, oh, woo
[Chorus]
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
[Pre-Chorus]
She told me, "Don't worry about it"
She told me, "Don't worry no more"
We both know we can't go without it
She told me you'll never be alone, oh, oh, woo
[Chorus]
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
But I love it, but I love it, oh
OMI - Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix) [Official Video]
Lyrics:
"Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix)"
[Verse 1:]
When I need motivation
My one solution is my queen
'Cause she stays strong
Yeah, yeah
She is always in my corner
Right there when I want her
All these other girls are tempting
But I'm empty when you're gone
And they say
[Pre-hook:]
Do you need me?
Do you think I'm pretty?
Do I make you feel like cheating?
And I'm like no, not really 'cause
[Hook:]
Oh, I think that I've found myself a cheerleader
She is always right there when I need her
Oh, I think that I've found myself a cheerleader
She is always right there when I need her
[Verse 2:]
She walks like a model
She grants my wishes
Like a genie in a bottle
Yeah, yeah
'Cause I'm the wizard of love
And I got the magic wand
All these other girls are tempting
But I'm empty when you're gone
And they say
[Pre-hook:]
Do you need me?
Do you think I'm pretty?
Do I make you feel like cheating?
And I'm like no, not really 'cause
[Hook:]
Oh, I think that I've found myself a cheerleader
She is always right there when I need her
Oh, I think that I've found myself a cheerleader
She is always right there when I need her
[Instrumental break]
[Bridge:]
She gives me love and affection
Baby, did I mention
You're the only girl for me
No, I don't need a next one
Mama loves you too
She thinks I made the right selection
Now all that's left to do
Is just for me to pop the question
[Hook:]
Oh, I think that I've found myself a cheerleader
She is always right there when I need her
Oh, I think that I've found myself a cheerleader
She is always right there when I need her
Calvin Harris & Disciples - How Deep Is Your Love (Audio)
Lyrics:
"How Deep Is Your Love"
(with Disciples)
I want you to breathe me
Let me be your air
Let me roam your body freely
No inhibition, no fear
How deep is your love?
Is it like the ocean?
What devotion are you?
How deep is your love?
Is it like nirvana?
Hit me harder, again
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
Is it like the ocean?
Pull me closer, again
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
Open up my eyes and
Tell me who I am
Let me in on all your secrets
No inhibition, no sin
How deep is your love?
Is it like the ocean?
What devotion? Are you?
How deep is your love?
Is it like nirvana?
Hit me harder, again
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
Is it like the ocean?
Pull me closer, again
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deep?
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deep?
(How deep is your love?)
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deep?
(How deep is your love?)
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deeper?
(Pull me closer, again)
So tell me how deep is your love
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
How deep is your love?
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deep?
(How deep is your love?)
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deeper?
So tell me how deep is your love, can we go deep?
One Direction - Drag Me Down
Lyrics:
"Drag Me Down"
[Harry:]
I've got fire for a heart
I'm not scared of the dark
You've never seen it look so easy
I got a river for a soul
And baby you're a boat
Baby you're my only reason
[Louis:]
If I didn't have you there would be nothing left
The shell of a man who could never be his best
If I didn't have you, I'd never see the sun
You taught me how to be someone, yeah
[Liam:]
All my life
You stood by me
When no one else was ever behind me
All these lights
They can't blind me
With your love, nobody can drag me down
[Niall:]
All my life
You stood by me
When no one else was ever behind me
All these lights
They can't blind me
With your love, nobody can drag me down
[Chorus:]
Nobody, nobody
Nobody can drag me down
Nobody, nobody
Nobody can drag me down
[Niall:]
I got fire for a heart
I'm not scared of the dark
You've never seen it look so easy
I got a river for a soul
And baby you're a boat
Baby you're my only reason
[Harry:]
If I didn't have you there would be nothing left (nothing left)
The shell of a man who could never be his best (be his best)
If I didn't have you, I'd never see the sun (see the sun)
You taught me how to be someone
Yeah
[Niall:]
All my life
You stood by me
When no one else was ever behind me
All these lights
They can't blind me
With your love, nobody can drag me down
[Chorus:]
Nobody, nobody
Nobody can drag me down
Nobody, nobody
Nobody can drag me
[Liam:]
All my life
You stood by me
When no one else was ever behind me
All these lights
They can't blind me
With your love, nobody can drag me down
[Niall:]
All my life
You stood by me
When no one else was ever behind me
All these lights
They can't blind me
With your love, nobody can drag me down
[Chorus:]
Nobody, nobody
Nobody can drag me down
Nobody, nobody
Nobody can drag me down
Nobody, nobody
Nobody can drag me down
Nobody, nobody
Nobody can drag me down
Source: www.youtube.com/www.azlyrics.com
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
GralInt-Santa Teresa de Avila (Oración) y ...algunas frases para reflexionar
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Santa Teresa de Jesús
"Nada te turbe, nada te espante.
Todo se pasa. Dios no se muda.
La paciencia todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta.
Sólo Dios basta."
Fuente/Source: http://www.ewtn.com/SPANISH/Saints/Teresa_de_Jesus.htm
BE JOYFUL IN HOPE
ENDURE IN AFFLICTION
and PERSEVERE IN PRAYER
(Romans 12:12)
***EN LA VIDA GANA EL QUE SABE ESPERAR. F.C. (Twitter)
***...POR OTRO LADO LA PAZ ESTÁ EN MÍ.DESCANSO SABIENDO QUE LAS EXPLICACIONES SOBRAN.
SER SOLIDARIO NO CONDENA A NADIE. SER INDIFERENTE, SÍ. J.V. (Twitter)
Santa Teresa de Jesús
"Nada te turbe, nada te espante.
Todo se pasa. Dios no se muda.
La paciencia todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta.
Sólo Dios basta."
Fuente/Source: http://www.ewtn.com/SPANISH/Saints/Teresa_de_Jesus.htm
BE JOYFUL IN HOPE
ENDURE IN AFFLICTION
and PERSEVERE IN PRAYER
(Romans 12:12)
***EN LA VIDA GANA EL QUE SABE ESPERAR. F.C. (Twitter)
***...POR OTRO LADO LA PAZ ESTÁ EN MÍ.DESCANSO SABIENDO QUE LAS EXPLICACIONES SOBRAN.
SER SOLIDARIO NO CONDENA A NADIE. SER INDIFERENTE, SÍ. J.V. (Twitter)
POL/PHOT/GralInt-TED Talks-Julia Bacha: Pay attention to nonviolence
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Filmed July 2011 at TEDGlobal 2011
Julia Bacha: Pay attention to nonviolence
In 2003, the Palestinian village of Budrus mounted a 10-month-long nonviolent protest to stop a barrier being built across their olive groves. Did you hear about it? Didn't think so. Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha asks why we only pay attention to violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict — and not to the nonviolent leaders who may one day bring peace.
Transcript:
I'm a filmmaker. For the last 8 years, I have dedicated my life to documenting the work of Israelis and Palestinians who are trying to end the conflict using peaceful means. When I travel with my work across Europe and the United States, one question always comes up: Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? Why aren't Palestinians using nonviolent resistance?
The challenge I face when I hear this question is that often I have just returned from the Middle East where I spent my time filming dozens of Palestinians who are using nonviolence to defend their lands and water resources from Israeli soldiers and settlers. These leaders are trying to forge a massive national nonviolent movement to end the occupation and build peace in the region. Yet, most of you have probably never heard about them. This divide between what's happening on the ground and perceptions abroad is one of the key reasons why we don't have yet a Palestinian peaceful resistance movement that has been successful.
So I'm here today to talk about the power of attention, the power of your attention, and the emergence and development of nonviolent movements in the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere -- but today, my case study is going to be Palestine. I believe that what's mostly missing for nonviolence to grow is not for Palestinians to start adopting nonviolence, but for us to start paying attention to those who already are. Allow me to illustrate this point by taking you to this village called Budrus.
About seven years ago, they faced extinction, because Israel announced it would build a separation barrier, and part of this barrier would be built on top of the village. They would lose 40 percent of their land and be surrounded, so they would lose free access to the rest of the West Bank. Through inspired local leadership, they launched a peaceful resistance campaign to stop that from happening.
Let me show you some brief clips, so you have a sense for what that actually looked like on the ground.
(Music)
Palestinian Woman: We were told the wall would separate Palestine from Israel. Here in Budrus, we realized the wall would steal our land.
Israeli Man: The fence has, in fact, created a solution to terror.
Man: Today you're invited to a peaceful march. You are joined by dozens of your Israeli brothers and sisters.
Israeli Activist: Nothing scares the army more than nonviolent opposition.
Woman: We saw the men trying to push the soldiers, but none of them could do that. But I think the girls could do it.
Fatah Party Member: We must empty our minds of traditional thinking.
Hamas Party Member: We were in complete harmony, and we wanted to spread it to all of Palestine.
Chanting: One united nation. Fatah, Hamas and the Popular Front! News Anchor: The clashes over the fence continue.
Reporter: Israeli border police were sent to disperse the crowd. They were allowed to use any force necessary.
(Gunshots)
Man: These are live bullets. It's like Fallujah. Shooting everywhere.
Israeli Activist: I was sure we were all going to die. But there were others around me who weren't even cowering.
Israeli Soldier: A nonviolent protest is not going to stop the [unclear].
Protester: This is a peaceful march. There is no need to use violence.
Chanting: We can do it! We can do it! We can do it!
Julia Bacha: When I first heard about the story of Budrus, I was surprised that the international media had failed to cover the extraordinary set of events that happened seven years ago, in 2003. What was even more surprising was the fact that Budrus was successful. The residents, after 10 months of peaceful resistance, convinced the Israeli government to move the route of the barrier off their lands and to the green line, which is the internationally recognized boundary between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The resistance in Budrus has since spread to villages across the West Bank and to Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Yet the media remains mostly silent on these stories. This silence carries profound consequences for the likelihood that nonviolence can grow, or even survive, in Palestine.
Violent resistance and nonviolent resistance share one very important thing in common; they are both a form of theater seeking an audience to their cause. If violent actors are the only ones constantly getting front-page covers and attracting international attention to the Palestinian issue, it becomes very hard for nonviolent leaders to make the case to their communities that civil disobedience is a viable option in addressing their plight.
The power of attention is probably going to come as no surprise to the parents in the room. The surest way to make your child throw increasingly louder tantrums is by giving him attention the first time he throws a fit. The tantrum will become what childhood psychologists call a functional behavior, since the child has learned that he can get parental attention out of it. Parents can incentivize or disincentivize behavior simply by giving or withdrawing attention to their children. But that's true for adults too. In fact, the behavior of entire communities and countries can be influenced, depending on where the international community chooses to focus its attention.
I believe that at the core of ending the conflict in the Middle East and bringing peace is for us to transform nonviolence into a functional behavior by giving a lot more attention to the nonviolent leaders on the ground today. In the course of taking my film to villages in the West Bank, in Gaza and in East Jerusalem, I have seen the impact that even one documentary film can have in influencing the transformation.
In a village called Wallajeh, which sits very close to Jerusalem, the community was facing a very similar plight to Budrus. They were going to be surrounded, lose a lot of their lands and not have freedom of access, either to the West Bank or Jerusalem. They had been using nonviolence for about two years but had grown disenchanted since nobody was paying attention. So we organized a screening. A week later, they held the most well-attended and disciplined demonstration to date. The organizers say that the villagers, upon seeing the story of Budrus documented in a film, felt that there were indeed people following what they were doing, that people cared. So they kept on going.
On the Israeli side, there is a new peace movement called Solidariot, which means solidarity in Hebrew. The leaders of this movement have been using Budrus as one of their primary recruiting tools. They report that Israelis who had never been active before, upon seeing the film, understand the power of nonviolence and start joining their activities. The examples of Wallajeh and the Solidariot movement show that even a small-budget independent film can play a role in transforming nonviolence into a functional behavior. Now imagine the power that big media players could have if they started covering the weekly nonviolent demonstrations happening in villages like Bil'in, Ni'lin, Wallajeh, in Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan -- the nonviolent leaders would become more visible, valued and effective in their work.
I believe that the most important thing is to understand that if we don't pay attention to these efforts, they are invisible, and it's as if they never happened. But I have seen first hand that if we do, they will multiply. If they multiply, their influence will grow in the overall Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And theirs is the kind of influence that can finally unblock the situation. These leaders have proven that nonviolence works in places like Budrus. Let's give them attention so they can prove it works everywhere.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Filmed July 2011 at TEDGlobal 2011
Julia Bacha: Pay attention to nonviolence
In 2003, the Palestinian village of Budrus mounted a 10-month-long nonviolent protest to stop a barrier being built across their olive groves. Did you hear about it? Didn't think so. Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha asks why we only pay attention to violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict — and not to the nonviolent leaders who may one day bring peace.
Transcript:
I'm a filmmaker. For the last 8 years, I have dedicated my life to documenting the work of Israelis and Palestinians who are trying to end the conflict using peaceful means. When I travel with my work across Europe and the United States, one question always comes up: Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? Why aren't Palestinians using nonviolent resistance?
The challenge I face when I hear this question is that often I have just returned from the Middle East where I spent my time filming dozens of Palestinians who are using nonviolence to defend their lands and water resources from Israeli soldiers and settlers. These leaders are trying to forge a massive national nonviolent movement to end the occupation and build peace in the region. Yet, most of you have probably never heard about them. This divide between what's happening on the ground and perceptions abroad is one of the key reasons why we don't have yet a Palestinian peaceful resistance movement that has been successful.
So I'm here today to talk about the power of attention, the power of your attention, and the emergence and development of nonviolent movements in the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere -- but today, my case study is going to be Palestine. I believe that what's mostly missing for nonviolence to grow is not for Palestinians to start adopting nonviolence, but for us to start paying attention to those who already are. Allow me to illustrate this point by taking you to this village called Budrus.
About seven years ago, they faced extinction, because Israel announced it would build a separation barrier, and part of this barrier would be built on top of the village. They would lose 40 percent of their land and be surrounded, so they would lose free access to the rest of the West Bank. Through inspired local leadership, they launched a peaceful resistance campaign to stop that from happening.
Let me show you some brief clips, so you have a sense for what that actually looked like on the ground.
(Music)
Palestinian Woman: We were told the wall would separate Palestine from Israel. Here in Budrus, we realized the wall would steal our land.
Israeli Man: The fence has, in fact, created a solution to terror.
Man: Today you're invited to a peaceful march. You are joined by dozens of your Israeli brothers and sisters.
Israeli Activist: Nothing scares the army more than nonviolent opposition.
Woman: We saw the men trying to push the soldiers, but none of them could do that. But I think the girls could do it.
Fatah Party Member: We must empty our minds of traditional thinking.
Hamas Party Member: We were in complete harmony, and we wanted to spread it to all of Palestine.
Chanting: One united nation. Fatah, Hamas and the Popular Front! News Anchor: The clashes over the fence continue.
Reporter: Israeli border police were sent to disperse the crowd. They were allowed to use any force necessary.
(Gunshots)
Man: These are live bullets. It's like Fallujah. Shooting everywhere.
Israeli Activist: I was sure we were all going to die. But there were others around me who weren't even cowering.
Israeli Soldier: A nonviolent protest is not going to stop the [unclear].
Protester: This is a peaceful march. There is no need to use violence.
Chanting: We can do it! We can do it! We can do it!
Julia Bacha: When I first heard about the story of Budrus, I was surprised that the international media had failed to cover the extraordinary set of events that happened seven years ago, in 2003. What was even more surprising was the fact that Budrus was successful. The residents, after 10 months of peaceful resistance, convinced the Israeli government to move the route of the barrier off their lands and to the green line, which is the internationally recognized boundary between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The resistance in Budrus has since spread to villages across the West Bank and to Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Yet the media remains mostly silent on these stories. This silence carries profound consequences for the likelihood that nonviolence can grow, or even survive, in Palestine.
Violent resistance and nonviolent resistance share one very important thing in common; they are both a form of theater seeking an audience to their cause. If violent actors are the only ones constantly getting front-page covers and attracting international attention to the Palestinian issue, it becomes very hard for nonviolent leaders to make the case to their communities that civil disobedience is a viable option in addressing their plight.
The power of attention is probably going to come as no surprise to the parents in the room. The surest way to make your child throw increasingly louder tantrums is by giving him attention the first time he throws a fit. The tantrum will become what childhood psychologists call a functional behavior, since the child has learned that he can get parental attention out of it. Parents can incentivize or disincentivize behavior simply by giving or withdrawing attention to their children. But that's true for adults too. In fact, the behavior of entire communities and countries can be influenced, depending on where the international community chooses to focus its attention.
I believe that at the core of ending the conflict in the Middle East and bringing peace is for us to transform nonviolence into a functional behavior by giving a lot more attention to the nonviolent leaders on the ground today. In the course of taking my film to villages in the West Bank, in Gaza and in East Jerusalem, I have seen the impact that even one documentary film can have in influencing the transformation.
In a village called Wallajeh, which sits very close to Jerusalem, the community was facing a very similar plight to Budrus. They were going to be surrounded, lose a lot of their lands and not have freedom of access, either to the West Bank or Jerusalem. They had been using nonviolence for about two years but had grown disenchanted since nobody was paying attention. So we organized a screening. A week later, they held the most well-attended and disciplined demonstration to date. The organizers say that the villagers, upon seeing the story of Budrus documented in a film, felt that there were indeed people following what they were doing, that people cared. So they kept on going.
On the Israeli side, there is a new peace movement called Solidariot, which means solidarity in Hebrew. The leaders of this movement have been using Budrus as one of their primary recruiting tools. They report that Israelis who had never been active before, upon seeing the film, understand the power of nonviolence and start joining their activities. The examples of Wallajeh and the Solidariot movement show that even a small-budget independent film can play a role in transforming nonviolence into a functional behavior. Now imagine the power that big media players could have if they started covering the weekly nonviolent demonstrations happening in villages like Bil'in, Ni'lin, Wallajeh, in Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan -- the nonviolent leaders would become more visible, valued and effective in their work.
I believe that the most important thing is to understand that if we don't pay attention to these efforts, they are invisible, and it's as if they never happened. But I have seen first hand that if we do, they will multiply. If they multiply, their influence will grow in the overall Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And theirs is the kind of influence that can finally unblock the situation. These leaders have proven that nonviolence works in places like Budrus. Let's give them attention so they can prove it works everywhere.
Thank you.
(Applause)
GralInt-TED Talks-Christopher Soghoian: A brief history of phone wiretapping -- and how to avoid it
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Filmed March 2015 at TED2015
Christopher Soghoian: A brief history of phone wiretapping -- and how to avoid it
Who is listening in on your phone calls? On a landline, it could be anyone, says privacy activist Christopher Soghoian, because surveillance backdoors are built into the phone system by default, to allow governments to listen in. But then again, so could a foreign intelligence service ... or a criminal. Which is why, says Soghoian, some tech companies are resisting governments' call to build the same backdoors into mobile phones and new messaging systems. From this TED Fellow, learn how some tech companies are working to keep your calls and messages private.
Transcript:
For more than 100 years, the telephone companies have provided wiretapping assistance to governments.
For much of this time, this assistance was manual. Surveillance took place manually and wires were connected by hand. Calls were recorded to tape. But as in so many other industries, computing has changed everything. The telephone companies built surveillance features into the very core of their networks. I want that to sink in for a second: Our telephones and the networks that carry our calls were wired for surveillance first. First and foremost.
So what that means is that when you're talking to your spouse, your children, a colleague or your doctor on the telephone, someone could be listening. Now, that someone might be your own government; it could also be another government, a foreign intelligence service, or a hacker, or a criminal, or a stalker or any other party that breaks into the surveillance system, that hacks into the surveillance system of the telephone companies.
But while the telephone companies have built surveillance as a priority, Silicon Valley companies have not. And increasingly, over the last couple years, Silicon Valley companies have built strong encryption technology into their communications products that makes surveillance extremely difficult.
For example, many of you might have an iPhone, and if you use an iPhone to send a text message to other people who have an iPhone, those text messages cannot easily be wiretapped. And in fact, according to Apple, they're not able to even see the text messages themselves. Likewise, if you use FaceTime to make an audio call or a video call with one of your friends or loved ones, that, too, cannot be easily wiretapped.
And it's not just Apple. WhatsApp, which is now owned by Facebook and used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, also has built strong encryption technology into its product, which means that people in the Global South can easily communicate without their governments, often authoritarian, wiretapping their text messages.
So, after 100 years of being able to listen to any telephone call -- anytime, anywhere -- you might imagine that government officials are not very happy. And in fact, that's what's happening. Government officials are extremely mad. And they're not mad because these encryption tools are now available. What upsets them the most is that the tech companies have built encryption features into their products and turned them on by default. It's the default piece that matters.
In short, the tech companies have democratized encryption. And so, government officials like British Prime Minister David Cameron, they believe that all communications -- emails, texts, voice calls -- all of these should be available to governments, and encryption is making that difficult.
Now, look -- I'm extremely sympathetic to their point of view. We live in a dangerous time in a dangerous world, and there really are bad people out there. There are terrorists and other serious national security threats that I suspect we all want the FBI and the NSA to monitor.
But those surveillance features come at a cost. The reason for that is that there is no such thing as a terrorist laptop, or a drug dealer's cell phone. We all use the same communications devices. What that means is that if the drug dealers' telephone calls or the terrorists' telephone calls can be intercepted, then so can the rest of ours, too. And I think we really need to ask: Should a billion people around the world be using devices that are wiretap friendly?
So the scenario of hacking of surveillance systems that I've described -- this is not imaginary. In 2009, the surveillance systems that Google and Microsoft built into their networks -- the systems that they use to respond to lawful surveillance requests from the police -- those systems were compromised by the Chinese government, because the Chinese government wanted to figure out which of their own agents the US government was monitoring.
By the same token, in 2004, the surveillance system built into the network of Vodafone Greece -- Greece's largest telephone company -- was compromised by an unknown entity, and that feature, the surveillance feature, was used to wiretap the Greek Prime Minister and members of the Greek cabinet. The foreign government or hackers who did that were never caught.
And really, this gets to the very problem with these surveillance features, or backdoors. When you build a backdoor into a communications network or piece of technology, you have no way of controlling who's going to go through it. You have no way of controlling whether it'll be used by your side or the other side, by good guys, or by bad guys.
And so for that reason, I think that it's better to build networks to be as secure as possible. Yes, this means that in the future, encryption is going to make wiretapping more difficult. It means that the police are going to have a tougher time catching bad guys. But the alternative would mean to live in a world where anyone's calls or anyone's text messages could be surveilled by criminals, by stalkers and by foreign intelligence agencies. And I don't want to live in that kind of world.
And so right now, you probably have the tools to thwart many kinds of government surveillance already on your phones and already in your pockets, you just might not realize how strong and how secure those tools are, or how weak the other ways you've used to communicate really are.
And so, my message to you is this: We need to use these tools. We need to secure our telephone calls. We need to secure our text messages. I want you to use these tools. I want you to tell your loved ones, I want you to tell your colleagues: Use these encrypted communications tools. Don't just use them because they're cheap and easy, but use them because they're secure.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Filmed March 2015 at TED2015
Christopher Soghoian: A brief history of phone wiretapping -- and how to avoid it
Who is listening in on your phone calls? On a landline, it could be anyone, says privacy activist Christopher Soghoian, because surveillance backdoors are built into the phone system by default, to allow governments to listen in. But then again, so could a foreign intelligence service ... or a criminal. Which is why, says Soghoian, some tech companies are resisting governments' call to build the same backdoors into mobile phones and new messaging systems. From this TED Fellow, learn how some tech companies are working to keep your calls and messages private.
Transcript:
For more than 100 years, the telephone companies have provided wiretapping assistance to governments.
For much of this time, this assistance was manual. Surveillance took place manually and wires were connected by hand. Calls were recorded to tape. But as in so many other industries, computing has changed everything. The telephone companies built surveillance features into the very core of their networks. I want that to sink in for a second: Our telephones and the networks that carry our calls were wired for surveillance first. First and foremost.
So what that means is that when you're talking to your spouse, your children, a colleague or your doctor on the telephone, someone could be listening. Now, that someone might be your own government; it could also be another government, a foreign intelligence service, or a hacker, or a criminal, or a stalker or any other party that breaks into the surveillance system, that hacks into the surveillance system of the telephone companies.
But while the telephone companies have built surveillance as a priority, Silicon Valley companies have not. And increasingly, over the last couple years, Silicon Valley companies have built strong encryption technology into their communications products that makes surveillance extremely difficult.
For example, many of you might have an iPhone, and if you use an iPhone to send a text message to other people who have an iPhone, those text messages cannot easily be wiretapped. And in fact, according to Apple, they're not able to even see the text messages themselves. Likewise, if you use FaceTime to make an audio call or a video call with one of your friends or loved ones, that, too, cannot be easily wiretapped.
And it's not just Apple. WhatsApp, which is now owned by Facebook and used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, also has built strong encryption technology into its product, which means that people in the Global South can easily communicate without their governments, often authoritarian, wiretapping their text messages.
So, after 100 years of being able to listen to any telephone call -- anytime, anywhere -- you might imagine that government officials are not very happy. And in fact, that's what's happening. Government officials are extremely mad. And they're not mad because these encryption tools are now available. What upsets them the most is that the tech companies have built encryption features into their products and turned them on by default. It's the default piece that matters.
In short, the tech companies have democratized encryption. And so, government officials like British Prime Minister David Cameron, they believe that all communications -- emails, texts, voice calls -- all of these should be available to governments, and encryption is making that difficult.
Now, look -- I'm extremely sympathetic to their point of view. We live in a dangerous time in a dangerous world, and there really are bad people out there. There are terrorists and other serious national security threats that I suspect we all want the FBI and the NSA to monitor.
But those surveillance features come at a cost. The reason for that is that there is no such thing as a terrorist laptop, or a drug dealer's cell phone. We all use the same communications devices. What that means is that if the drug dealers' telephone calls or the terrorists' telephone calls can be intercepted, then so can the rest of ours, too. And I think we really need to ask: Should a billion people around the world be using devices that are wiretap friendly?
So the scenario of hacking of surveillance systems that I've described -- this is not imaginary. In 2009, the surveillance systems that Google and Microsoft built into their networks -- the systems that they use to respond to lawful surveillance requests from the police -- those systems were compromised by the Chinese government, because the Chinese government wanted to figure out which of their own agents the US government was monitoring.
By the same token, in 2004, the surveillance system built into the network of Vodafone Greece -- Greece's largest telephone company -- was compromised by an unknown entity, and that feature, the surveillance feature, was used to wiretap the Greek Prime Minister and members of the Greek cabinet. The foreign government or hackers who did that were never caught.
And really, this gets to the very problem with these surveillance features, or backdoors. When you build a backdoor into a communications network or piece of technology, you have no way of controlling who's going to go through it. You have no way of controlling whether it'll be used by your side or the other side, by good guys, or by bad guys.
And so for that reason, I think that it's better to build networks to be as secure as possible. Yes, this means that in the future, encryption is going to make wiretapping more difficult. It means that the police are going to have a tougher time catching bad guys. But the alternative would mean to live in a world where anyone's calls or anyone's text messages could be surveilled by criminals, by stalkers and by foreign intelligence agencies. And I don't want to live in that kind of world.
And so right now, you probably have the tools to thwart many kinds of government surveillance already on your phones and already in your pockets, you just might not realize how strong and how secure those tools are, or how weak the other ways you've used to communicate really are.
And so, my message to you is this: We need to use these tools. We need to secure our telephone calls. We need to secure our text messages. I want you to use these tools. I want you to tell your loved ones, I want you to tell your colleagues: Use these encrypted communications tools. Don't just use them because they're cheap and easy, but use them because they're secure.
Thank you.
(Applause)
MED/HLTH/SC/BIINF/GralInt-TED Talks-Tony Wyss-Coray: How young blood might help reverse aging. Yes, really
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Filmed June 2015 at TEDGlobalLondon
Tony Wyss-Coray: How young blood might help reverse aging. Yes, really
Tony Wyss-Coray studies the impact of aging on the human body and brain. In this eye-opening talk, he shares new research from his Stanford lab and other teams which shows that a solution for some of the less great aspects of old age might actually lie within us all.
Transcript:
This is a painting from the 16th century from Lucas Cranach the Elder. It shows the famous Fountain of Youth. If you drink its water or you bathe in it, you will get health and youth. Every culture, every civilization has dreamed of finding eternal youth. There are people like Alexander the Great or Ponce De León, the explorer, who spent much of their life chasing the Fountain of Youth. They didn't find it. But what if there was something to it? What if there was something to this Fountain of Youth?
I will share an absolutely amazing development in aging research that could revolutionize the way we think about aging and how we may treat age-related diseases in the future. It started with experiments that showed, in a recent number of studies about growing, that animals -- old mice -- that share a blood supply with young mice can get rejuvenated. This is similar to what you might see in humans, in Siamese twins, and I know this sounds a bit creepy. But what Tom Rando, a stem-cell researcher, reported in 2007, was that old muscle from a mouse can be rejuvenated if it's exposed to young blood through common circulation. This was reproduced by Amy Wagers at Harvard a few years later, and others then showed that similar rejuvenating effects could be observed in the pancreas, the liver and the heart. But what I'm most excited about, and several other labs as well, is that this may even apply to the brain.
So, what we found is that an old mouse exposed to a young environment in this model called parabiosis, shows a younger brain -- and a brain that functions better. And I repeat: an old mouse that gets young blood through shared circulation looks younger and functions younger in its brain. So when we get older -- we can look at different aspects of human cognition, and you can see on this slide here, we can look at reasoning, verbal ability and so forth. And up to around age 50 or 60, these functions are all intact, and as I look at the young audience here in the room, we're all still fine.
(Laughter)
But it's scary to see how all these curves go south. And as we get older, diseases such as Alzheimer's and others may develop. We know that with age, the connections between neurons -- the way neurons talk to each other, the synapses -- they start to deteriorate; neurons die, the brain starts to shrink, and there's an increased susceptibility for these neurodegenerative diseases.
One big problem we have -- to try to understand how this really works at a very molecular, mechanistic level -- is that we can't study the brains in detail, in living people. We can do cognitive tests, we can do imaging -- all kinds of sophisticated testing. But we usually have to wait until the person dies to get the brain and look at how it really changed through age or in a disease. This is what neuropathologists do, for example. So, how about we think of the brain as being part of the larger organism. Could we potentially understand more about what happens in the brain at the molecular level if we see the brain as part of the entire body? So if the body ages or gets sick, does that affect the brain? And vice versa: as the brain gets older, does that influence the rest of the body? And what connects all the different tissues in the body is blood. Blood is the tissue that not only carries cells that transport oxygen, for example, the red blood cells, or fights infectious diseases, but it also carries messenger molecules, hormone-like factors that transport information from one cell to another, from one tissue to another, including the brain. So if we look at how the blood changes in disease or age, can we learn something about the brain? We know that as we get older, the blood changes as well, so these hormone-like factors change as we get older. And by and large, factors that we know are required for the development of tissues, for the maintenance of tissues -- they start to decrease as we get older, while factors involved in repair, in injury and in inflammation -- they increase as we get older.
So there's this unbalance of good and bad factors, if you will. And to illustrate what we can do potentially with that, I want to talk you through an experiment that we did. We had almost 300 blood samples from healthy human beings 20 to 89 years of age, and we measured over 100 of these communication factors, these hormone-like proteins that transport information between tissues. And what we noticed first is that between the youngest and the oldest group, about half the factors changed significantly. So our body lives in a very different environment as we get older, when it comes to these factors. And using statistical or bioinformatics programs, we could try to discover those factors that best predict age -- in a way, back-calculate the relative age of a person. And the way this looks is shown in this graph. So, on the one axis you see the actual age a person lived, the chronological age. So, how many years they lived.
And then we take these top factors that I showed you, and we calculate their relative age, their biological age. And what you see is that there is a pretty good correlation, so we can pretty well predict the relative age of a person. But what's really exciting are the outliers, as they so often are in life. You can see here, the person I highlighted with the green dot is about 70 years of age but seems to have a biological age, if what we're doing here is really true, of only about 45. So is this a person that actually looks much younger than their age? But more importantly: Is this a person who is maybe at a reduced risk to develop an age-related disease and will have a long life -- will live to 100 or more? On the other hand, the person here, highlighted with the red dot, is not even 40, but has a biological age of 65. Is this a person at an increased risk of developing an age-related disease? So in our lab, we're trying to understand these factors better, and many other groups are trying to understand, what are the true aging factors, and can we learn something about them to possibly predict age-related diseases?
So what I've shown you so far is simply correlational, right? You can just say, "Well, these factors change with age," but you don't really know if they do something about aging. So what I'm going to show you now is very remarkable and it suggests that these factors can actually modulate the age of a tissue. And that's where we come back to this model called parabiosis.
So, parabiosis is done in mice by surgically connecting the two mice together, and that leads then to a shared blood system, where we can now ask, "How does the old brain get influenced by exposure to the young blood?" And for this purpose, we use young mice that are an equivalency of 20-year-old people, and old mice that are roughly 65 years old in human years.
What we found is quite remarkable. We find there are more neural stem cells that make new neurons in these old brains. There's an increased activity of the synapses, the connections between neurons. There are more genes expressed that are known to be involved in the formation of new memories. And there's less of this bad inflammation. But we observed that there are no cells entering the brains of these animals. So when we connect them, there are actually no cells going into the old brain, in this model. Instead, we've reasoned, then, that it must be the soluble factors, so we could collect simply the soluble fraction of blood which is called plasma, and inject either young plasma or old plasma into these mice, and we could reproduce these rejuvenating effects, but what we could also do now is we could do memory tests with mice.
As mice get older, like us humans, they have memory problems. It's just harder to detect them, but I'll show you in a minute how we do that. But we wanted to take this one step further, one step closer to potentially being relevant to humans. What I'm showing you now are unpublished studies, where we used human plasma, young human plasma, and as a control, saline, and injected it into old mice, and asked, can we again rejuvenate these old mice? Can we make them smarter?
And to do this, we used a test. It's called a Barnes maze. This is a big table that has lots of holes in it, and there are guide marks around it, and there's a bright light, as on this stage here. The mice hate this and they try to escape, and find the single hole that you see pointed at with an arrow, where a tube is mounted underneath where they can escape and feel comfortable in a dark hole. So we teach them, over several days, to find this space on these cues in the space, and you can compare this for humans, to finding your car in a parking lot after a busy day of shopping.
(Laughter)
Many of us have probably had some problems with that.
So, let's look at an old mouse here. This is an old mouse that has memory problems, as you'll notice in a moment. It just looks into every hole, but it didn't form this spacial map that would remind it where it was in the previous trial or the last day. In stark contrast, this mouse here is a sibling of the same age, but it was treated with young human plasma for three weeks, with small injections every three days. And as you noticed, it almost looks around, "Where am I?" -- and then walks straight to that hole and escapes. So, it could remember where that hole was.
So by all means, this old mouse seems to be rejuvenated -- it functions more like a younger mouse. And it also suggests that there is something not only in young mouse plasma, but in young human plasma that has the capacity to help this old brain. So to summarize, we find the old mouse, and its brain in particular, are malleable. They're not set in stone; we can actually change them. It can be rejuvenated. Young blood factors can reverse aging, and what I didn't show you -- in this model, the young mouse actually suffers from exposure to the old. So there are old-blood factors that can accelerate aging. And most importantly, humans may have similar factors, because we can take young human blood and have a similar effect. Old human blood, I didn't show you, does not have this effect; it does not make the mice younger.
So, is this magic transferable to humans? We're running a small clinical study at Stanford, where we treat Alzheimer's patients with mild disease with a pint of plasma from young volunteers, 20-year-olds, and do this once a week for four weeks, and then we look at their brains with imaging. We test them cognitively, and we ask their caregivers for daily activities of living. What we hope is that there are some signs of improvement from this treatment. And if that's the case, that could give us hope that what I showed you works in mice might also work in humans.
Now, I don't think we will live forever. But maybe we discovered that the Fountain of Youth is actually within us, and it has just dried out. And if we can turn it back on a little bit, maybe we can find the factors that are mediating these effects, we can produce these factors synthetically and we can treat diseases of aging, such as Alzheimer's disease or other dementias.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Filmed June 2015 at TEDGlobalLondon
Tony Wyss-Coray: How young blood might help reverse aging. Yes, really
Tony Wyss-Coray studies the impact of aging on the human body and brain. In this eye-opening talk, he shares new research from his Stanford lab and other teams which shows that a solution for some of the less great aspects of old age might actually lie within us all.
Transcript:
This is a painting from the 16th century from Lucas Cranach the Elder. It shows the famous Fountain of Youth. If you drink its water or you bathe in it, you will get health and youth. Every culture, every civilization has dreamed of finding eternal youth. There are people like Alexander the Great or Ponce De León, the explorer, who spent much of their life chasing the Fountain of Youth. They didn't find it. But what if there was something to it? What if there was something to this Fountain of Youth?
I will share an absolutely amazing development in aging research that could revolutionize the way we think about aging and how we may treat age-related diseases in the future. It started with experiments that showed, in a recent number of studies about growing, that animals -- old mice -- that share a blood supply with young mice can get rejuvenated. This is similar to what you might see in humans, in Siamese twins, and I know this sounds a bit creepy. But what Tom Rando, a stem-cell researcher, reported in 2007, was that old muscle from a mouse can be rejuvenated if it's exposed to young blood through common circulation. This was reproduced by Amy Wagers at Harvard a few years later, and others then showed that similar rejuvenating effects could be observed in the pancreas, the liver and the heart. But what I'm most excited about, and several other labs as well, is that this may even apply to the brain.
So, what we found is that an old mouse exposed to a young environment in this model called parabiosis, shows a younger brain -- and a brain that functions better. And I repeat: an old mouse that gets young blood through shared circulation looks younger and functions younger in its brain. So when we get older -- we can look at different aspects of human cognition, and you can see on this slide here, we can look at reasoning, verbal ability and so forth. And up to around age 50 or 60, these functions are all intact, and as I look at the young audience here in the room, we're all still fine.
(Laughter)
But it's scary to see how all these curves go south. And as we get older, diseases such as Alzheimer's and others may develop. We know that with age, the connections between neurons -- the way neurons talk to each other, the synapses -- they start to deteriorate; neurons die, the brain starts to shrink, and there's an increased susceptibility for these neurodegenerative diseases.
One big problem we have -- to try to understand how this really works at a very molecular, mechanistic level -- is that we can't study the brains in detail, in living people. We can do cognitive tests, we can do imaging -- all kinds of sophisticated testing. But we usually have to wait until the person dies to get the brain and look at how it really changed through age or in a disease. This is what neuropathologists do, for example. So, how about we think of the brain as being part of the larger organism. Could we potentially understand more about what happens in the brain at the molecular level if we see the brain as part of the entire body? So if the body ages or gets sick, does that affect the brain? And vice versa: as the brain gets older, does that influence the rest of the body? And what connects all the different tissues in the body is blood. Blood is the tissue that not only carries cells that transport oxygen, for example, the red blood cells, or fights infectious diseases, but it also carries messenger molecules, hormone-like factors that transport information from one cell to another, from one tissue to another, including the brain. So if we look at how the blood changes in disease or age, can we learn something about the brain? We know that as we get older, the blood changes as well, so these hormone-like factors change as we get older. And by and large, factors that we know are required for the development of tissues, for the maintenance of tissues -- they start to decrease as we get older, while factors involved in repair, in injury and in inflammation -- they increase as we get older.
So there's this unbalance of good and bad factors, if you will. And to illustrate what we can do potentially with that, I want to talk you through an experiment that we did. We had almost 300 blood samples from healthy human beings 20 to 89 years of age, and we measured over 100 of these communication factors, these hormone-like proteins that transport information between tissues. And what we noticed first is that between the youngest and the oldest group, about half the factors changed significantly. So our body lives in a very different environment as we get older, when it comes to these factors. And using statistical or bioinformatics programs, we could try to discover those factors that best predict age -- in a way, back-calculate the relative age of a person. And the way this looks is shown in this graph. So, on the one axis you see the actual age a person lived, the chronological age. So, how many years they lived.
And then we take these top factors that I showed you, and we calculate their relative age, their biological age. And what you see is that there is a pretty good correlation, so we can pretty well predict the relative age of a person. But what's really exciting are the outliers, as they so often are in life. You can see here, the person I highlighted with the green dot is about 70 years of age but seems to have a biological age, if what we're doing here is really true, of only about 45. So is this a person that actually looks much younger than their age? But more importantly: Is this a person who is maybe at a reduced risk to develop an age-related disease and will have a long life -- will live to 100 or more? On the other hand, the person here, highlighted with the red dot, is not even 40, but has a biological age of 65. Is this a person at an increased risk of developing an age-related disease? So in our lab, we're trying to understand these factors better, and many other groups are trying to understand, what are the true aging factors, and can we learn something about them to possibly predict age-related diseases?
So what I've shown you so far is simply correlational, right? You can just say, "Well, these factors change with age," but you don't really know if they do something about aging. So what I'm going to show you now is very remarkable and it suggests that these factors can actually modulate the age of a tissue. And that's where we come back to this model called parabiosis.
So, parabiosis is done in mice by surgically connecting the two mice together, and that leads then to a shared blood system, where we can now ask, "How does the old brain get influenced by exposure to the young blood?" And for this purpose, we use young mice that are an equivalency of 20-year-old people, and old mice that are roughly 65 years old in human years.
What we found is quite remarkable. We find there are more neural stem cells that make new neurons in these old brains. There's an increased activity of the synapses, the connections between neurons. There are more genes expressed that are known to be involved in the formation of new memories. And there's less of this bad inflammation. But we observed that there are no cells entering the brains of these animals. So when we connect them, there are actually no cells going into the old brain, in this model. Instead, we've reasoned, then, that it must be the soluble factors, so we could collect simply the soluble fraction of blood which is called plasma, and inject either young plasma or old plasma into these mice, and we could reproduce these rejuvenating effects, but what we could also do now is we could do memory tests with mice.
As mice get older, like us humans, they have memory problems. It's just harder to detect them, but I'll show you in a minute how we do that. But we wanted to take this one step further, one step closer to potentially being relevant to humans. What I'm showing you now are unpublished studies, where we used human plasma, young human plasma, and as a control, saline, and injected it into old mice, and asked, can we again rejuvenate these old mice? Can we make them smarter?
And to do this, we used a test. It's called a Barnes maze. This is a big table that has lots of holes in it, and there are guide marks around it, and there's a bright light, as on this stage here. The mice hate this and they try to escape, and find the single hole that you see pointed at with an arrow, where a tube is mounted underneath where they can escape and feel comfortable in a dark hole. So we teach them, over several days, to find this space on these cues in the space, and you can compare this for humans, to finding your car in a parking lot after a busy day of shopping.
(Laughter)
Many of us have probably had some problems with that.
So, let's look at an old mouse here. This is an old mouse that has memory problems, as you'll notice in a moment. It just looks into every hole, but it didn't form this spacial map that would remind it where it was in the previous trial or the last day. In stark contrast, this mouse here is a sibling of the same age, but it was treated with young human plasma for three weeks, with small injections every three days. And as you noticed, it almost looks around, "Where am I?" -- and then walks straight to that hole and escapes. So, it could remember where that hole was.
So by all means, this old mouse seems to be rejuvenated -- it functions more like a younger mouse. And it also suggests that there is something not only in young mouse plasma, but in young human plasma that has the capacity to help this old brain. So to summarize, we find the old mouse, and its brain in particular, are malleable. They're not set in stone; we can actually change them. It can be rejuvenated. Young blood factors can reverse aging, and what I didn't show you -- in this model, the young mouse actually suffers from exposure to the old. So there are old-blood factors that can accelerate aging. And most importantly, humans may have similar factors, because we can take young human blood and have a similar effect. Old human blood, I didn't show you, does not have this effect; it does not make the mice younger.
So, is this magic transferable to humans? We're running a small clinical study at Stanford, where we treat Alzheimer's patients with mild disease with a pint of plasma from young volunteers, 20-year-olds, and do this once a week for four weeks, and then we look at their brains with imaging. We test them cognitively, and we ask their caregivers for daily activities of living. What we hope is that there are some signs of improvement from this treatment. And if that's the case, that could give us hope that what I showed you works in mice might also work in humans.
Now, I don't think we will live forever. But maybe we discovered that the Fountain of Youth is actually within us, and it has just dried out. And if we can turn it back on a little bit, maybe we can find the factors that are mediating these effects, we can produce these factors synthetically and we can treat diseases of aging, such as Alzheimer's disease or other dementias.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Friday, August 21, 2015
GralInt-Daniel Rabinovich y algunas de sus mejores actuaciones
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Viernes 21 de agosto de 2015
Daniel Rabinovich y algunas de sus mejores actuaciones
El artista falleció a los 71 años
Daniel Ravinovich, un hombre con el don de la comicidad. Foto: Reuters
Daniel Rabinovich , quien murió a los 71 años , es uno de los grandes cómicos argentinos que con simples mohines y con su tono de voz tan particular, hacía reír y emocionar con personajes como los que desplegaba en los Les Luthiers y films como ¿Quién dijo que sería simple" (2007) o Papeles en el viento (2015). Hacemos un repaso por algunas de sus grandes actuaciones:
Ravinovich, el mal lector
Ravinovich, cantante
La gallinita dijo: ¡Eureka!
Bochini ¿no cuenta?
Su participación en el film ¿Quién dijo que es fácil?
Su participación en Papeles en el viento
Apreciado y admirado Sr. Daniel Ravinovich ( a quién tuve el breve pero inmenso honor de conocer personalmente
en mi Suipacha natal cuando visitaba mi pueblo-entonces-para descansar en su pequeña chacra).
¡Hasta siempre y ahora a hacer reír a los ángeles con sus bromas, gracias y ese humor puro e inocente!
C.M.
Fuente/Source: www.lanacion.com.ar/www.youtube.com
Viernes 21 de agosto de 2015
Daniel Rabinovich y algunas de sus mejores actuaciones
El artista falleció a los 71 años
Daniel Ravinovich, un hombre con el don de la comicidad. Foto: Reuters
Daniel Rabinovich , quien murió a los 71 años , es uno de los grandes cómicos argentinos que con simples mohines y con su tono de voz tan particular, hacía reír y emocionar con personajes como los que desplegaba en los Les Luthiers y films como ¿Quién dijo que sería simple" (2007) o Papeles en el viento (2015). Hacemos un repaso por algunas de sus grandes actuaciones:
Ravinovich, el mal lector
Ravinovich, cantante
La gallinita dijo: ¡Eureka!
Bochini ¿no cuenta?
Su participación en el film ¿Quién dijo que es fácil?
Su participación en Papeles en el viento
Apreciado y admirado Sr. Daniel Ravinovich ( a quién tuve el breve pero inmenso honor de conocer personalmente
en mi Suipacha natal cuando visitaba mi pueblo-entonces-para descansar en su pequeña chacra).
¡Hasta siempre y ahora a hacer reír a los ángeles con sus bromas, gracias y ese humor puro e inocente!
C.M.
Fuente/Source: www.lanacion.com.ar/www.youtube.com
Sunday, August 2, 2015
GralInt-The 10 best love poems
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
The 10 best love poems
A selection of poems about love for weddings and other romantic moments, from Whitman to Walcott
Auguste Rodin's The Kiss Photo: Tate Gallery
By Fiona Baird and Felicity Capon, 15 Apr 2015
She Walks in Beauty
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Arguably the most romantic poem in English literature, Byron’s words are hauntingly beautiful. The simple imagery of the woman’s charm and elegance make this poem both accessible and timeless. It’s no wonder why Byron makes it into countless proposals and wedding speeches.
The opening stanza is:
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
E. E. Cummings (1894 - 1962)
Perhaps the only Harvard poet to make his way into the lyrics of indie-rock band Bloc Party, the moving lyricism of E.E. Cummings’ poem makes it a classic. As a university poet, Cummings’ poetry was always popular with young people, perhaps due to the combination of traditional romance and experimental syntax. The repetitive nature of the poem gives it an almost incantatory quality.
The poem begins:
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)
‘Love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine’’: Here Christina Rossetti champions mutual, adoring love between two people. Not just for the star-struck lover, this poem explores the symbiotic relationship of love with charming modesty. The canon of love poetry wouldn’t be complete without the creative influence of Rossetti, whose body of work is known for its devotional ballads.
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.
Valentine
Carol Ann Duffy (1955- )
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy is no stranger to love poetry. She has said that most of her work consists of love poems, claiming that “a guiding impulse for poets down the centuries has been to describe, interrogate and celebrate love, one of the most intense and important of human experiences.” "Valentine" does all of the above.
The poem begins:
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
Whitman’s words do not shout of earth-shattering romance but of comforting, humble love. This poem is perhaps a more realistic portrait of a couple battling against the noise and crowds of everyday life. Despite the brevity of A Glimpse it exudes as much sincerity as a compilation of sonnets.
A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.
I Wanna Be Yours
John Cooper Clarke (1949 - )
Punk performance poet John Cooper Clarke’s humorous, energetic poem will resonate with anyone who is madly in love and desperately trying to articulate their feelings. Alex Turner, frontman of the Arctic Monkeys, has often cited Cooper Clarke as a source of inspiration. This poem has also featured on the GCSE syllabus.
The best lines in the poem:
let me be your electric meter
I will not run out
let me be the electric heater
you get cold without
Another Valentine
Wendy Cope (1945 - )
Wendy Cope’s poem, commissioned by the Daily Telegraph in 2009, explores the frequent criticisms levelled at the most romantic day of the year. Yet as the narrator muses on the obligation behind Valentine’s Day, romantic feelings are conjured.
Today we are obliged to be romantic
And think of yet another valentine.
We know the rules and we are both pedantic:
Today’s the day we have to be romantic.
Our love is old and sure, not new and frantic.
You know I’m yours and I know you are mine.
And saying that has made me feel romantic,
My dearest love, my darling valentine.
Sonnet 116
Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Undoubtedly one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, Sonnet 116 provides a quintessential definition of love. Love, according to this sonnet, does not change or fade; it has no flaws and even outlasts death. The sonnet appeared in Emma Thompson’s screenplay for the film of Sense and Sensibility, and is memorably quoted by Kate Winslet, who played romantic Marianne.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
The Good-Morrow
John Donne (1572 - 1631)
The poem is one of Donne’s earliest works, published in his 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets. Donne weaves sensual and spiritual love together from the point of view of an awakening lover, while also making use of Biblical references. It contains the beautiful lines: “For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere”
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
Love after Love
Derek Walcott (1930 - )
For anyone who has recently suffered a separation or unhappy relationship, this is perhaps the ideal Valentine’s Day poem. The poem explores the idea of learning to re-love one’s self after trauma and loss. The Caribbean poet and playwright received the 1992 Nobel Prize for literature and won the TS Eliot Prize for his book of poetry, White Egrets in 2011.
The poem ends:
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
The 10 best love poems
A selection of poems about love for weddings and other romantic moments, from Whitman to Walcott
Auguste Rodin's The Kiss Photo: Tate Gallery
By Fiona Baird and Felicity Capon, 15 Apr 2015
She Walks in Beauty
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Arguably the most romantic poem in English literature, Byron’s words are hauntingly beautiful. The simple imagery of the woman’s charm and elegance make this poem both accessible and timeless. It’s no wonder why Byron makes it into countless proposals and wedding speeches.
The opening stanza is:
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
E. E. Cummings (1894 - 1962)
Perhaps the only Harvard poet to make his way into the lyrics of indie-rock band Bloc Party, the moving lyricism of E.E. Cummings’ poem makes it a classic. As a university poet, Cummings’ poetry was always popular with young people, perhaps due to the combination of traditional romance and experimental syntax. The repetitive nature of the poem gives it an almost incantatory quality.
The poem begins:
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)
‘Love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine’’: Here Christina Rossetti champions mutual, adoring love between two people. Not just for the star-struck lover, this poem explores the symbiotic relationship of love with charming modesty. The canon of love poetry wouldn’t be complete without the creative influence of Rossetti, whose body of work is known for its devotional ballads.
I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.
Valentine
Carol Ann Duffy (1955- )
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy is no stranger to love poetry. She has said that most of her work consists of love poems, claiming that “a guiding impulse for poets down the centuries has been to describe, interrogate and celebrate love, one of the most intense and important of human experiences.” "Valentine" does all of the above.
The poem begins:
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
Whitman’s words do not shout of earth-shattering romance but of comforting, humble love. This poem is perhaps a more realistic portrait of a couple battling against the noise and crowds of everyday life. Despite the brevity of A Glimpse it exudes as much sincerity as a compilation of sonnets.
A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.
I Wanna Be Yours
John Cooper Clarke (1949 - )
Punk performance poet John Cooper Clarke’s humorous, energetic poem will resonate with anyone who is madly in love and desperately trying to articulate their feelings. Alex Turner, frontman of the Arctic Monkeys, has often cited Cooper Clarke as a source of inspiration. This poem has also featured on the GCSE syllabus.
The best lines in the poem:
let me be your electric meter
I will not run out
let me be the electric heater
you get cold without
Another Valentine
Wendy Cope (1945 - )
Wendy Cope’s poem, commissioned by the Daily Telegraph in 2009, explores the frequent criticisms levelled at the most romantic day of the year. Yet as the narrator muses on the obligation behind Valentine’s Day, romantic feelings are conjured.
Today we are obliged to be romantic
And think of yet another valentine.
We know the rules and we are both pedantic:
Today’s the day we have to be romantic.
Our love is old and sure, not new and frantic.
You know I’m yours and I know you are mine.
And saying that has made me feel romantic,
My dearest love, my darling valentine.
Sonnet 116
Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Undoubtedly one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, Sonnet 116 provides a quintessential definition of love. Love, according to this sonnet, does not change or fade; it has no flaws and even outlasts death. The sonnet appeared in Emma Thompson’s screenplay for the film of Sense and Sensibility, and is memorably quoted by Kate Winslet, who played romantic Marianne.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
The Good-Morrow
John Donne (1572 - 1631)
The poem is one of Donne’s earliest works, published in his 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets. Donne weaves sensual and spiritual love together from the point of view of an awakening lover, while also making use of Biblical references. It contains the beautiful lines: “For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere”
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
Love after Love
Derek Walcott (1930 - )
For anyone who has recently suffered a separation or unhappy relationship, this is perhaps the ideal Valentine’s Day poem. The poem explores the idea of learning to re-love one’s self after trauma and loss. The Caribbean poet and playwright received the 1992 Nobel Prize for literature and won the TS Eliot Prize for his book of poetry, White Egrets in 2011.
The poem ends:
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
POL/EDUC/GralInt-Educación, gran ausente de las campañas presidenciales
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Editorial I
Educación, gran ausente de las campañas presidenciales
Uno de los pilares de la sociedad del conocimiento no figura como prioridaden la agenda pública de los candidatos a la Presidencia
La mayoría de los argentinos sabemos que en la sociedad del conocimiento en la que está inmerso el mundo entero la educación es la prioridad número uno. Ya no son sólo los chicos y los adolescentes, sino también los adultos los que no pueden carecer de una educación lo más completa posible que, por otro lado, nunca terminará de seguir ampliándose.
Por ello, es fundamental conocer los planes educativos y las soluciones que sobre este tema puedan proponer hoy los candidatos a la Presidencia en el proceso electoral. Lamentablemente, hasta el momento, ello no ha sucedido.
La principal razón para semejante silencio está relacionada con la evaluación que hacen los propios candidatos, basados fundamentalmente en lo que arrojan los sondeos: la educación no aparece en las encuestas de opinión como una de las prioridades de la mayoría de los argentinos.
Un trabajo publicado en ese sentido por LA NACION confirma esa hipótesis, pues cuando se preguntó a los encuestados sobre el principal problema del país, la educación apareció en el sexto lugar, después de la inseguridad, la corrupción, la desocupación, la inflación y los temas económicos. Sin embargo, la misma encuesta, realizada por la Fundación Cimientos y la Consultora Isonomía, también arroja que el 86% admite que la agenda de los candidatos presidenciales no incluye el tema educativo y, de ese porcentaje, el 55% piensa que los políticos hablan "poco" sobre el tema y el 31%, "nada".
¿Hay una contradicción en la sociedad sobre este asunto? ¿O es la consecuencia -lamentable por cierto- del desinterés de los candidatos por abocarse a un tema delicado, pero sumamente necesario, que no atrae votos en lo inmediato?
Instalar el debate educativo en las agendas electorales y de gobierno es una responsabilidad que compete, en primer lugar, a la dirigencia en general, no sólo a la política. "En los países que han hecho grandes mejoras educativas, el propio presidente tomó el tema como prioritario, pero también los gremios y los empresarios. A todo padre le interesa la educación de su hijo, pero es muy difícil que se organice una demanda social colectiva por la calidad educativa", dijo hace poco a este diario y con acertado criterio la codirectora del Programa de Educación del Cippec, Cecilia Veleda.
Según manifiestan numerosos especialistas en educación, los distintos espacios políticos suelen coincidir en el diagnóstico: se necesita más calidad educativa, mayor capacitación docente y revertir la fuerte deserción escolar, entre otros puntos. Pero no avanzan mucho más allá de eso. Es más, algunos hasta se podría decir que retroceden cuando se conforman con un aumento de la inversión en el sector, pero no se preocupan porque esa mayor partida presupuestaria se traduzca en mejoras concretas y duraderas.
Un triste ejemplo de lo dicho lo representan las recientes declaraciones del ministro de Educación de la Nación, Alberto Sileoni, para quien la educación "no resulta un tema acuciante porque, para la sociedad, está aceptablemente resuelto" y porque, además, "los argentinos tienen otras preocupaciones" y "ven a la educación como un bien altamente garantizado". Resulta inadmisible que quien tiene en sus manos la responsabilidad de la generación de políticas públicas sobre un tema tan sensible y de fondo no sólo cierre los ojos a lo que sucede, sino que defienda un statu quo a todas luces indefendible. Estamos frente a otra vergonzosa negación por parte del máximo representante del área del gobierno nacional de una parte importantísima de la realidad.
No parecen servir de nada los reiterados resultados negativos que arrojan las pruebas internacionales PISA y Tercer Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo (Terce), para alumnos de nivel medio y primario, respectivamente, en las que la Argentina ocupó los últimos puestos. Ni siquiera el hecho de que los alumnos de nivel universitario del CBC tengan que hacer cursos para comprensión de textos porque no entienden lo que leen.
Sondeos como el realizado por la Fundación Cimientos e Isonomía resultan valiosos, pues, por un lado, revelan el interés subyacente de los argentinos en el tema educativo y, por otro, que la educación sigue siendo la gran ausente en la planificación de políticas públicas en nuestro país, no sólo de quienes gobiernan en las distintas jurisdicciones, sino de quienes pretenden gobernar.
Es de esperar que tanto los candidatos presidenciales como sus asesores revisen los temas de campaña a la luz de estas necesidades. Hace ya demasiado tiempo, la Argentina fue uno de los países donde la educación y la integración que ésta producía no se discutían: tanto la sociedad como sus dirigentes sabían que era una prioridad y actuaban en consecuencia. Esa exigencia se fue debilitando y hoy sólo tenemos, como en tantos otros temas, parches como para que la situación no se torne aún más grave de lo que es.
Es mucho lo que falta y deberá hacerse en poco tiempo si queremos que la Argentina intente recuperar la riqueza perdida de su educación, la que debiera ingresar definitivamente en la agenda pública y convertirse en uno de los ítems más relevantes para la planificación del presente y del futuro de nuestro país.
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
Editorial I
Educación, gran ausente de las campañas presidenciales
Uno de los pilares de la sociedad del conocimiento no figura como prioridaden la agenda pública de los candidatos a la Presidencia
La mayoría de los argentinos sabemos que en la sociedad del conocimiento en la que está inmerso el mundo entero la educación es la prioridad número uno. Ya no son sólo los chicos y los adolescentes, sino también los adultos los que no pueden carecer de una educación lo más completa posible que, por otro lado, nunca terminará de seguir ampliándose.
Por ello, es fundamental conocer los planes educativos y las soluciones que sobre este tema puedan proponer hoy los candidatos a la Presidencia en el proceso electoral. Lamentablemente, hasta el momento, ello no ha sucedido.
La principal razón para semejante silencio está relacionada con la evaluación que hacen los propios candidatos, basados fundamentalmente en lo que arrojan los sondeos: la educación no aparece en las encuestas de opinión como una de las prioridades de la mayoría de los argentinos.
Un trabajo publicado en ese sentido por LA NACION confirma esa hipótesis, pues cuando se preguntó a los encuestados sobre el principal problema del país, la educación apareció en el sexto lugar, después de la inseguridad, la corrupción, la desocupación, la inflación y los temas económicos. Sin embargo, la misma encuesta, realizada por la Fundación Cimientos y la Consultora Isonomía, también arroja que el 86% admite que la agenda de los candidatos presidenciales no incluye el tema educativo y, de ese porcentaje, el 55% piensa que los políticos hablan "poco" sobre el tema y el 31%, "nada".
¿Hay una contradicción en la sociedad sobre este asunto? ¿O es la consecuencia -lamentable por cierto- del desinterés de los candidatos por abocarse a un tema delicado, pero sumamente necesario, que no atrae votos en lo inmediato?
Instalar el debate educativo en las agendas electorales y de gobierno es una responsabilidad que compete, en primer lugar, a la dirigencia en general, no sólo a la política. "En los países que han hecho grandes mejoras educativas, el propio presidente tomó el tema como prioritario, pero también los gremios y los empresarios. A todo padre le interesa la educación de su hijo, pero es muy difícil que se organice una demanda social colectiva por la calidad educativa", dijo hace poco a este diario y con acertado criterio la codirectora del Programa de Educación del Cippec, Cecilia Veleda.
Según manifiestan numerosos especialistas en educación, los distintos espacios políticos suelen coincidir en el diagnóstico: se necesita más calidad educativa, mayor capacitación docente y revertir la fuerte deserción escolar, entre otros puntos. Pero no avanzan mucho más allá de eso. Es más, algunos hasta se podría decir que retroceden cuando se conforman con un aumento de la inversión en el sector, pero no se preocupan porque esa mayor partida presupuestaria se traduzca en mejoras concretas y duraderas.
Un triste ejemplo de lo dicho lo representan las recientes declaraciones del ministro de Educación de la Nación, Alberto Sileoni, para quien la educación "no resulta un tema acuciante porque, para la sociedad, está aceptablemente resuelto" y porque, además, "los argentinos tienen otras preocupaciones" y "ven a la educación como un bien altamente garantizado". Resulta inadmisible que quien tiene en sus manos la responsabilidad de la generación de políticas públicas sobre un tema tan sensible y de fondo no sólo cierre los ojos a lo que sucede, sino que defienda un statu quo a todas luces indefendible. Estamos frente a otra vergonzosa negación por parte del máximo representante del área del gobierno nacional de una parte importantísima de la realidad.
No parecen servir de nada los reiterados resultados negativos que arrojan las pruebas internacionales PISA y Tercer Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo (Terce), para alumnos de nivel medio y primario, respectivamente, en las que la Argentina ocupó los últimos puestos. Ni siquiera el hecho de que los alumnos de nivel universitario del CBC tengan que hacer cursos para comprensión de textos porque no entienden lo que leen.
Sondeos como el realizado por la Fundación Cimientos e Isonomía resultan valiosos, pues, por un lado, revelan el interés subyacente de los argentinos en el tema educativo y, por otro, que la educación sigue siendo la gran ausente en la planificación de políticas públicas en nuestro país, no sólo de quienes gobiernan en las distintas jurisdicciones, sino de quienes pretenden gobernar.
Es de esperar que tanto los candidatos presidenciales como sus asesores revisen los temas de campaña a la luz de estas necesidades. Hace ya demasiado tiempo, la Argentina fue uno de los países donde la educación y la integración que ésta producía no se discutían: tanto la sociedad como sus dirigentes sabían que era una prioridad y actuaban en consecuencia. Esa exigencia se fue debilitando y hoy sólo tenemos, como en tantos otros temas, parches como para que la situación no se torne aún más grave de lo que es.
Es mucho lo que falta y deberá hacerse en poco tiempo si queremos que la Argentina intente recuperar la riqueza perdida de su educación, la que debiera ingresar definitivamente en la agenda pública y convertirse en uno de los ítems más relevantes para la planificación del presente y del futuro de nuestro país.
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
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