El problema con el follón sobre los derechos de autor es que las empresas que viven de timar a los autores y a los consumidores han hecho creer a los primeros que es una cuestión de derechos de autor, de una guerra contra los segundos. La cuestión no es propiedad intelectual vs. descargas en el emule, la cuestión es lo que las discográficas y editoriales quieren (autores que trabajen gratis y sin derechos) vs. los derechos de las personas (de los autores a hacer lo que quieran con su trabajo y de los ciudadanos a no ser considerados delincuentes salvo prueba en contra).
Link.
Fetlife is giving away some gifts once more. If you’ve been naughty this year, go ask Santa!!
Reading about Polyphasic Sleep I get tempted to try it for a while… of course, that leads to wondering how I’m going to manage, since I can’t get myself to wake up most of the time. In the same blog I happen to stumble upon a solution to that problem, which I shall try.
Polyphasic sleep seems a bit radical for me right now, for one, I feel lacking goals at the moment, and I’m not very motivated, in general, to do many things or entertain myself other than reading on the computer. So the thought of having five extra hours a day to browse the internet is definitely not appealing. I hope it will be as soon as I start doing something about my life.
In the course of this long web browsing session I’ve also found out about segmented sleep, which probably was the way humankind slept all the way up to the Industrial Age and artificial lighting.
—It tasted like nothing you’ve ever tasted. Imagine all the flavours of the ocean flowing through the most exquisite texture in your mouth, evolving in a whirpool of colors and music. It is the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted—I said, remembering my happy old times.
—So, what happened to it?—they asked, eyes wide open.
—We never knew whether that’d be the last time we would ever eat it. And we fished them to extinction. Nobody will ever be able to see them again.
¿Ir al mundo real? ¿Qué hacer? No me apetece estar en París, pero tengo sueldo hasta Febrero sin apenas responsabilidades. Si luego quiero un post-doc, debería ponerme las pilas, acabar la tesis *ya* e intentar publicar algo con alguien de aquí. Si quiero irme al mundo real, empezar a mandar CVs y conseguir entrevistas lo antes posible. Bu! Mundo complicado.
Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge by Ursula K LeGuin
Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be your mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.
So this time I came back to that place… some sort of reservoir hidden between two mountains along which two parallel highways run, with occasional little roads going from one side to the other. In this case one of them had even some kind of village or bigger place where we could stay and play some board game, that it, until the rain became too much.
Of course, I couldn’t say whether I was actually there in a different dream or just "in the dream I had been there before." I do remember a similar highway, but much bigger and complex, from (possibly) another dream a long time ago…
Again, I was in High School in the US. Somehow I managed to go back, but it looked more like the University in Bielefeld… And then there was the public showers in the park :-?
The train arrived at Bielefeld Hbf., this was my first time in five years, since I had never been back since my Erasmus came to an end.
I was happy and excited to see the Uni, which in this version of Bielefeld was near the train station—an arrangement vagely familiar, perhaps from another dream about Bielefeld. I came in and met some of the people I had been with during that year. We were talking and things would be happening around us. I asked about people, they told me about people…
And then I woke up, and the dream with its vivid colors waned leaving just reality—and I felt very sad at first that I was in Madrid and not in Bielefeld, wishing I had never left…
As I write this the dream is fading away as every dream does as soon as I come back to awakeness. I’m not sad or mad that I’m not in Bielefeld, but the truth is, I haven’t been there since the Erasmus came to an end…
I’ve been doing a Ph. D. in particle physics for the last four years or so, having about two crisis a year in which I was considering, to various degrees of seriousness, whether to find a real job in the IT business (sometimes including relocating to Berlin). About a year ago I decided that the most reasonable option was to postpone the decision a bit and focus on finishing my thesis, but the question remained: would I be more satisfied in general doing computer oriented stuff or in the academia? After all, the part of my research that I usually enjoy the most is coding, but again, the prospect of a rigid schedule and a bureocratic environment scares me to death.
So a few months ago I set up a plan that would allow me to pursue my Ph. D. to end while at the same time exploring the computer side (hopefully) enough to make a decision by the time it should be taken: I would apply for admission to the Master’s Degree program in Computer Science at the UCM, and take a few courses at the same time that I write my thesis. By the end of my contract (April 2009) I would be able to decide whether to jump to a post-doc in physics or to finish studying CS. The financial side of the second option would be taken care of by the interest-free loans the Spanish Government offers for these MD studies.
And then two weeks ago I found out about the (remote) posibility of a one year position available in Paris, which would probably begin right after my contract ends and would allow me to defend my thesis a bit later. Now, if I, as planned, begin the CS studies this year, I might have some trouble even finishing properly the very few courses I would enroll in this year. On the other hand, it would mean another year of guaranteed income. But it would also mean having to put off the “Computer Question” for another year.
Now, stepping out of the academia sounds like a quite permanent step, but lately I’ve been wondering whether to take a deep breath and jump into the void, or whether to stick to more solid–but maybe not so exciting–ground. There are many things I’d enjoy doing for a science career, but right now I’d be stuck to pretty much what I’m doing right now for a while, which doesn’t thrill me that much anymore. But again, there are no guarantees that it will be better on the other side.
There will be answers, eventually…