El contacto que he tenido con la masonería es peculiar. En dos ciclos he estado cerca de sus miembros y la serendipia ha sido la norma.
Así, mí contacto con estas grupos inicio cuando me entere que un tataratatarabuelo había fundado la logia Silencio en Quetzaltenango. Una semana después encontré por casualidad un teléfono en el cuaderno de mi abuelo que decía “l.silencio”. Llame y con la información que me dieron me dirigí a una sede de otra logia en la ciudad Guatemala. Los conocí, me dieron alguna información y nunca mas regrese. Mi radical mente racional me impidió continuar mi relación con esos grupos místicos.
De nuevo, hace algunos días, me encontraba atendiendo mi tienda en Guatemala e ingreso un cliente que tenía el escudo de su logia grabado en un anillo. Lo salude y le pregunte, por curioso, cual era la afiliación que tenía con su logia. Lo confirmo y luego de contarle un poco sobre mi antepasado se ofreció a darme mas información. Me entrego su tarjeta de presentación d incluyo datos mas privados de contacto en la parte de atrás. Me dijo que estoy en el momento indicado de ingresar al grupo y que se ofrecería a apadrinarme. Le agradecí la invitación y le desee suerte en su camino.
Hoy fui al cine a ver la película de Sherlock Holmes y me pareció producto de la serendipia que la trama estuviese intimamente relacionada con las logia masonas. La película explica exquisitamente las enormes debilidades y amenazas que la búsqueda de poder representa cuando esta búsqueda es justificada con fantasias místicas y fundamentos mágicos.
Soy un hombre intransigente y racional que jamás estaría dispuesto a convivir con logias, sectas y religiones que justificaran sus ansias de poder a través del nombre de duendes, dioses y bueyes de oro.
Tal y como Sherlock pensaba, estoy completamente seguro que cualquier pregunta tiene respuestas razonables que pueden deducirse prestando Atencion a los detalles. Hoy dormiré contento y no me persignare en el nombre de ningún duende verde. Alas a Poe!
Today I received an e-mail from Singularity University that read:
Dear Luis,
Thank you for completing the pre-application form on the Singularity University (SU) website and for your interest in our 2010 Graduate Studies Program (GSP-10) taking place at NASA Ames Research Park from June 19th through August 28th (10 weeks). After review, we are pleased to invite you to complete the full application to stand for admission to Singularity University.
APPLYING FOR GSP-10:
In our second year of this program, there will be a total of up to 80 students who will be admitted, and only a select number of those who submitted pre-application requests have been invited to fully apply, so congratulations on passing this first gate of the admissions process. Please complete the detailed application. (…)
Warm regards,
Singularity University Selection Team
Singularity University was proposed by Dr. Peter Diamandis to Dr. Ray Kurzweil and his colleagues Drs. Robert D. Richards and Michael Simpson in mid-2007. An exploratory meeting was held in November 2007, followed by a Founding Meeting in September 2008. The first session of the Graduate Program included an exclusive group of only 40 of the smartest minds of the world, to share their knowledge and assemble a leadership group “that would strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges“.
Video: About Singularity University
From the pool I am part of, they will choose only 80 people that fulfill their students’ profile and I am VERY HAPPY to have won the first application process!!!!
SU is looking to search the globe and assemble the best and brightest postgraduate students and young professionals (tomorrow’s leadership) who are interested in biotechnology, nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, info, and related technologies. Specifically:
We are looking for students with expertise in one of the 10 track areas, but with a passion to learn about the other tracks.
We are looking for proven leaders and entrepreneurs. We are looking for the next generation of CEOs, University Deans/Presidents and Government leaders.
We are looking for internationalists: people who are bilingual or multilingual with a strong command of English (the language used to teach SU courses) and people who have traveled widely.
We are looking for people interested in understanding and addressing the world’s grand challenges
What are the academic objectives of SU?
Assemble: To search the globe and assemble the best and brightest postgraduate students and young professionals (tomorrow’s leadership) who are interested in the bio, nano, AI, info, and related technologies.
Teach: To present and teach cutting-edge research and projected developments in bio, nano, info, AI, and related technologies, with an emphasis on the interdisciplinary interactions between these fields.
Focus on Humanity: To understand how these exponentially growing technologies can best be used to address Humanity’s greatest challenges; and to monitor and evaluate the legal, policy, economic, ethical and social implications of these technologies and their interactions with society.
Network: To build and maintain a global network of the alumni and faculty of SU to enable them to remain connected and collaborate more efficiently to advance the University’s goals.
Spin out: To promote these advances through the creation of new businesses, new research directions in academia, and new collaborations.
Communicate: To communicate the critical effects, and potential risks and benefits of these fields to the public.
As I wrote in my application, I am very interested in fostering the use of technology in Guatemala’s education system. My goal is to one day become an University Dean and to become an active advocate of the ideas of the Philosophy of Liberty!
I am pretty sure that the team at Singularity University accepted my application because of my work plans for the Centro de Estudio del Capitalismo(Center for the Study of Capitalism). Since 2009, I started working in the Center with the sponsorship of Universidad Francisco Marroquín. The Center’s goal is to teach, dialogue and discuss the principles of a Philosophy for Life. This philosophical sessions are taught to young intelligent students of the most importat high schools in Guatemala.
In January, 2010 I’ll finish the application process and hopefully I’ll be joining the Singularity University group in June, 201o for the most amazing 10 weeks of my life!
This is the first time I have a clear understanding of what I’ve read, how, and why.
I began writing my notes and reading statistics with the goal of proving myself that: Yes, you can read a lot of things and there’ll be a lot more to learn.
My results proved truth and even though I have read a lot of books I end up finding this:
There were more than 600,000 published titles in 2009; a lot more than what I could read (an increase vs 2008 were there were around 550,000).
E-book reading has become smarter, faster and cheaper!
In 2007 I read a lot more Fiction/poetry books because I worked for Ludwig von Mises Library leading book clubs. But as life goes on, people change and we end up finding different roads… I am no longer working there. As such, this year I read a lot more titles in Non-Fiction areas of Economics and History.
Here are my stats for year 2009:
I read a total of 131 books, of those:
70 were printed books.
A total of 29,340 printed pages (an average of 224 pages per book).
25 were audiobooks.
36 were E-books.
43 were Fiction.
88 were N0n Fiction.
4 of those Fiction books were graphic novels.
87 were Male authors and 46 were Female.
I read 13 books written by Ayn Rand, 8 written by Mario Vargas Llosa, and 7 by Richard Dawkins and 5 by Isaac Asimov.
43 books were written in Spanish and 87 were written in English. Only one was written in French and it was a first edition I bough of “Le Petit Prince” written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
The books with more pages were the Spanish version of Atlas Shrugged (La rebelión de Atlas) by Ayn Rand edited by Grito Sagrado with 1,113 pages (I had already read it twice in English); and the second largest was Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics by George Reisman with 1,046 pages.
Overall, the rating I gave to all the books read is 4.31 stars out of 5. I rated the books by how they amused me, how much I learn, how inspiring they made me feel afterwards, and by how much I wanted to read a book of the same author after.
The complete list of the books I own is included in my online bookshelf at LibraryThing.com (currently, I deleted all the books and I am re-processing the books with tags, and soon with reviews).
La pobreza en Guatemala es el resultado de siglos de corrupción, privilegios, engaños y mentiras. Sí, esa es la historia de muchos países latinoamericanos y es la norma en este pueblo. Pero nuestra historia, ninguna historia, es determinista; acá no existen estamentos inquebrantables como ocurre aún en India y somos dueños de nuestro futuro.
La pobreza se puede eliminar; se puede acabar con ella y conseguir riqueza siempre y cuando estemos dispuestos a trabajar.
Porque para acabar con la pobreza y adquirir riqueza se necesita producir. La riqueza se produce y para producirla es necesario crear cosas útiles que tendrán valor para potenciales compradores.
Sin embargo, hay muchos otros caminos para obtener riqueza que no necesitan de la producción, del trabajo y/o del poder creador de los hombres. Estos caminos son la usura, el engaño, el robo y la expropiación de los bienes que otras personas crearon.
El gobierno expropia nuestros bienes a través del pago de impuestos, valga la redundancia, impuesto bajo amenaza de coerción. Los ladrones expropian nuestros bienes bajo la amenaza directa de coerción al amenazarnos con una pistola.
Pero hay otro tipo de ladrones; son los ladrones que mendigan nuestro dinero y pretenden manipularnos con sus lamentos, heridas y suciedad.
Hoy, uno de ellos hacía cola enfrente de mí para depositar dinero en el banco. Estaba sentado en una sucia silla de ruedas, su ropa estaba mugrosa y tenía un olor fétido a licor que lo rodeaba. Sus pies estaban sucios, su cara estaba sudada, sus bolsillos estaban llenos de monedas y billetes.
Este tipo depositó más de 150.00 quetzales en monedas (aprox. US$18.00) y luego sacó una tarjeta Oro que tenía “escondida” en una bolsa plástica. Sacó una chequera y pagó más de 2,000 quetzales (aprox US$240.00) de la cuenta que debía en esa tarjeta.
El dinero de este hombre fue robado; el “fruto” de su trabajo fue expropiar los bienes de otras personas y sería bueno que lo recordemos cuando nos vuelvan a pedir dinero en las calles… ¡el mundo está patas arriba!
Y bueno, todo fue ya escrito por alguien antes que nosotros… así, Mark Twain tiene una novela titulada “El Príncipe y el Mendigo” del que podrán escuchar una muestra en este link: Listen to a sample in WMA format.
Listen to a sample in WMA format.
