Grass farming

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picture from Temple Grandin´s movie trailer

The woman who thinks like a cow

Eternauta

Gobernar es cuidar
Pagina/12 REP al pie/bottom

Cow Urine Soda

Ley de bosques YA!

con la complicidad del Gobierno de Salta,

NIMBY, BANANA

I´ve come across a couple of acronyms I didn´t know before. Just in time. Because I didn´t know how to express my feelings in English for the imminent installation of the huge contaminant pulp mill just in front of my city.

My beloved Buenos Aires

The acronyms simply flew to me yesterday. In a lovely afternoon with some American friends and while talking under the sweet and thick breeze that gives the name to the city, I discovered "NIMBY".
Very much of a syntheses... although not enough...
I understand that NIMBY has been used in some radical non rational oppositions in the past

but picture this:

The Río de La Plata bathes my town (some people call it the Paris of South America) and the worldwide known beautiful Uruguayan beaches. We are all simple people living in both sides of a Sweet Sea (very accurate and original name for the river). In addition the Río de La Plata sits on one of the biggest water reservoirs of the world, the Guaraní Aquifer. No piranhas.

So, are there any ingredients for a recipe for a disaster? Yes:

1. Careless politicians.
2. Imported sharks.

The results? Pulp mills and their poisoning byproducts. Companies that don´t even dare installing these kind of kraft processes in their home countries anymore, that had even been condemned and evicted for doing so (ENCE) are here to shark out the region. (Pontevedra, Spain-video1-sp Pontevedra, Spain-video2-sp)

Then this morning I found the acronym "BANANA". Well, that says it all for me.

Build Absolutely Nothing like a pulp mill Anywhere Near Anyone

please take a few minutes to see the following video
(Spanish language with English subtitles)

Both Argentina and Uruguay are big leaders in the soccer (football/fútbol) leagues.

Maybe it´s time we play other game with the same passion.
Less banana-republics and more BANANA leaders

buenos airesargentina

Instinct / Instinto

The swarm, the torus and the flock, your personal space

The New York Times article

Researchers have studied emergent behaviors of ants and locusts to try to understand our own instincts.
It´s been found that a swarm is formed when individuals both attract and repel but do not try to orient themselves to their neighbors. A torus takes place when they move around an empty circle to try to orient themselves to their closest neighbors. A flock is finally achieved when the individuals move with a strong feeling of group in one direction.
Do you keep an eye on your Internet neighborhood? It seems to me that we write or read in a very similar way, according to our inner swarm. If it happens that we take collective decisions like that too, it´s a great opportunity to form our flock and move towards something more important than attracting-repelling others.
Any ideas?

El enjambre, el toroide y la manada, tu espacio personal

wilderbeest

Los científicos han estudiando el comportamiento emergente de hormigas y langostas para entender nuestros propios instintos.
Han encontrado que un enjambre se forma cuando los individuos se atraen y repelen pero no tratan de orientarse con respecto a sus vecinos. Se forma un toroide alrededor de un centro vacío cuando tratan de orientarse con los vecinos más próximos. Una manada se alcanza finalmente cuando todos los individuos se mueven con una fuerte sensación de grupo en una única dirección.
Estás atento a tu vecindario en Internet? A mí me parece que escribimos y leemos de la misma manera, de acuerdo a nuestro enjambre interior. Si resulta que tomamos decisiones colectivas también de esta manera, es una buena oportunidad de formar una manada que marche hacia algo más importante que sólo atraer/repeler a otros.
Alguna idea?

Fuera Botnia!

NO A LAS PAPELERAS
Uruguay cerró la frontera con Argentina
FUERA BOTNIA!

leé lo ocurrido ayer acá

read what happened yesterday here
BOTNIA GO HOME!

The clouds and the watermelons

photo by Carl Wozniak

I drive country roads a lot. Here´s a story of a day on which I felt I´d lost my path.

It happened one very warm day when I was driving back to the ranch. I had to stop the truck because I felt lost even with the paved road ahead. It was mostly because of the clouds. Not because they obstructed my vision it was more because of their reflections. And my own reflexions. While stretching my legs I thought that probably at that very moment about half of Earth was covered by clouds.

I remembered reading somewhere that they reflect more sunlight than land and water. I was dressed in my white clothes because it was Summer. Everybody knows that white keeps you cooler. I felt some relief thinking that those clouds by reflecting sunlight were keeping the Earth cooler too. And that was when I got completely lost: I was blinded by the A factor. The Albedo in them and in me.

I grabbed a piece of watermelon.

I had recently found some sites about counteracting global warming effects. Scientists no longer talking about it but rather on how to solve the problem. The civil society is more aware of it although finger pointing is such a common thing we do... Names like "ecowarriors", "alarmists", "climate change deniers", "skeptics", "anti-aviation campaigners", “conspiracy theorists”, "liberal activists", "manipulative ecologists", etc are all over the Internet.
I spitted some black seeds.

- "So now some scientists are talking about 'geoengineering' the planet", I said to myself. "It seems that some are thinking on injecting sulfate particles in the upper atmosphere to increase the albedo. Shooting the clouds with some poison that nobody knows what´s going to feed us back can´t be called a 'escape route' from global warming. So vapor trails left by aircrafts are environmentally friendly and cow farts are not?"
- "Hey, finally somebody advocates for us!", a voice said from behind me.
I looked around and saw nobody. There was only me, the truck, the clouds and a black Angus chewing some grass.

I took another bite of watermelon. Summers are so warm down here in the Pampas...

- "Some want to spray aerosol compounds into the atmosphere by utilizing commercial, military and private aircrafts and calves are condemned for belching? It´s not fair...", I thought and sighed.
- "That´s what I said, thank you", said the voice again.
- "Who´s there? Is bad enough that you don´t show yourself but reading my thoughts is something I won´t allow you"
- "Sorry, sorry I didn´t mean to disturb your thoughts. My name is Negrita and I think that since aerosols cut down sunlight by large amounts, they may be spinning down the hydrological cycle of the planet. That´s pure science distorsion, maddness based on volcanic eruptions, come on!", she said.
- "Well, nice to meet you Negrita, I´m 99", I told the cow.
- "Yeah, I know, I read your blog"
- "Well, thanks. So your opinion is...?"
- "I think that using sea water as a source for hygroscopic nuclei may produce enough cloud cover to provided an offset a year's worth of carbon increase"
- "I don´t understand..."
- "See, it´s about evaporating 50 kilograms of sea water per second. We could even, if we wished, drive the problem backwards. It is also fully controllable: you can switch it off!"
- "You mean it can be better than giant reflecting mirrors in space, or laying reflecting film in deserts, or floating white plastic islands in the ocean mimicking the reflective effect of sea?"
- "Yeah, I think it might work better"
- "So you think it´s all about the clouds?"
- "Yep. Clouds and opacity. Clouds and clouds lifetime. Clouds and albedo. Every thing's albedo is measured by how much they reflect sunlight. Bouncing back the light makes them shine, and the Earth shines like a diamond in the Universe. High thin clouds are better blankets in trapping warmth, while low thick clouds make better coolers. Want some grass?"- "Thanks no, I´m on a diet. How do you manage your weight?", I said as I steered at the sky and thought on how much clouds have changed during my lifetime. High, warming clouds had increased while low clouds had decreased"
- "I sweat. I like being black in Summer. Keeps me in shape"
- "Then again back to the subject. Sunlight heats the ocean, water escapes into the atmosphere and falls out as rain..."
- "... non-polluting, planet-saving mist..." - "Not a bad idea"
- "... or just cut the crap with the oil. It´s gonna rain, gotta go. Bye", and she left.
- "Bye Negrita, glad to meet you. See you around!"

I saved the rest of the watermelon for later and jumped back in the truck. I felt not so lost anymore.
Hot Summer days and watermelons just seem to go perfect together...

buenos aires argentina

Nobel Peace Prize 2007

Climate change and peace: when politics is the key

Standing applauses to The International Panel on Climate Change IPCC
And more standing applauses to Mr. Al Gore, the former/future president of the US.

The scientists issued the worth reading document on options for policymakers. IPCC chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and over 2500 people among which there are more than 40 Argentineans like Dr. Osvaldo Canziani, Co-chair of WGII, show us the tools to face food security, water management and the socio-economic impact of the climate change.

Mr. José Manuel Durão Barroso, president of the European Commission, referred to the close relationship between peace and climate change and explained the official reasons for the nomination. But yep, there are detractors too, the eternal poodle bushists.

Draft Gore Petition here

IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 976pp.

Solar

¡Qué buena idea! diseño y tecnología para vivir mejor. Bravo xCRUZA!

Great idea! design and technology for a better life. Go xCRUZA!

figurines at cowparade

Contrapoder

En esta entrevista realizada por Agrositio durante el congreso CREA 2007, una de las oradoras con más aplausos, la Dra. Yolanda Kakabatse, ex Ministra de Medio ambiente del Ecuador, nos cuenta los peligros de utilizar combustibles que compitan con aquellos granos que se conviertan en alimento

AACREA es una Asociación civil sin fines de lucro originada por el Arq. Pablo Hary en 1957 y fundada en 1960. Integrada y dirigida por productores agropecuarios, su objetivo es promover el desarrollo integral del empresario agropecuario para lograr empresas económicamente rentables y sustentables en el tiempo, probando tecnología y transfiriéndola al medio para contribuir con el sector y el país.
El Movimiento CREA aporta, según las actividades, entre el 6 y el 20 % a la Producción Nacional. La superficie de producción y el uso eficiente de la tecnología demuestran el compromiso con la productividad, con el sector y nuestro desafío empresario de crecer para hacer crecer.

Alex

You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.
Alex

A scientific experiment that turned into a love story. Alex and Irene´s.

Un experimento científico que se transformó en una historia de amor. La de Alex e Irene.

Portate bien, nos vemos mañana. Te amo.
Alex

Glup!

"If you get into your potential mode, then new things can happen. But usually free will is conceived of in terms of how many constraints are operating, and we have in statistics a notion of degrees of freedom. I think our will essentially is constrained, more or less. We have so many degrees of freedom, and the more degrees of freedom we have, the more we feel free, and we have freedom of choice."

Sounds as politics? Well, not exactly and yes, kinda.

The quote is about the quantum dynamics of free will, from Karl Pribram who created the holonomic brain theory. This theory basically models cognitive functions as being guided by a matrix of neurological wave interference patterns -kind of the way holograms are created- . Memories may also be described in terms of holographic mechanisms.

Thus experiences and memories and thoughts could be created to fit our demands and stored in our brains as we pleased to.
On the same line of thoughts, because of the very nature of waves nothing is entirely separated or autonomous and we are all co-creating the reality.
Observer and observed are interrelated and knit each other. And probably would not even exist without the others thought. They exist only by means of the interactions of thoughts or wave interferences...
We all are opportunities. Possibilities. Agglutinations of the flux of life.

Todos somos Uno.

Memories,

Light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? Could we?
Mem'ries, may be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember...
The way we were...

Barbra Streisand , The way we were