The fame

http://www.esi.edu

ESI Berkeley made me famous :)..and the title for my main photo fits me. Pfff it's been such a long time since I've been there, and it's still like a dream...one that I know it happened only because of the pictures I have, because my goldfish memory makes it feel like it never actually happened  The great US of A is still tempting for me, but though this didn't happen before, now the distance makes me feel unsure and makes me shiver at the thought of going and living there alone...but I'm not saying no yet...thank you David for the great photos that will forever make me remember Cali.

40 years of moonwalking

"One small step for men, one giant leap for mankind"...these are the words with which Armstrong conquered the Moon with Apollo 11 on the 21st of July 1969. This happened in a period of a great ideological war between USA and the USSR, and even though USSR send first Gagarin into space, basically winning the space race, USA sent the first man, filmed it and promoted it through a good PR campaign, which left the Russians in the shadow.

40 years after that, mankind continues to be dazzled by the Universe and its wonders. Recently I read an article about the existence of another 361 to 38000 civilizations in our galaxy only. The human imagination is extremely rich and we always wanted to discover these aliens, which in movies are either bad and ugly or good and sweet, they come in peace or to conquer us...Be it either, the sky for us has always been a wonder and it has been used both by religion and pagan rituals. God is somewhere in the sky, Jesus was born under a star, as well as, our life is guided by zodiacal signs reflected by planets or even ancient depiction of drawings showing the existence of some creatures coming from above. This is Scientology's favorite topic, so in case anyone would know anything...it should be them.

A problem in this case would if humans could procreate in space. A smart article says that: "sex in space is human sexual activity in weightless and extreme environments of space. The topic also includes conception and pregnancy in off-Earth environments. The topic has been hotly disputed to clarify its potential impact on human beings in the isolated, confined, and hazardous environment of space. Experts consider humanity's expansion into space crucial to survival, though it was considered taboo for decades of space faring exploration history. As of 2009, with NASA planning long-term missions for lunar settlements with goals to explore and colonize space, the topic has taken its respected place in life sciences. Scientist Stephen Hawking publicly concurred in 2007 that possibly human survival itself will depend on successfully contending with the extreme environments of space. In zero gravity there is no natural convection to carry away body heat and bodily fluids tend to pool around the body. The sweat from sexual activity could pool as floating droplets. Although zero gravity is a boon for saggy body parts, males might notice a "slight decrease" in penis size due to the lower blood pressure that humans experience in microgravity..."

Death row

Today I participated at a conference held in Madrid on the issue of the abolition of the death penalty in Arab States. There were a lot of stuff I had no idea about, so I found it pretty interesting. For example, though I've been studying political and ideological stuff for 4 years, I never new that the Muslim world, just like the Western world developed several schools of thought. Of course, while in the West these school are guided by the idea of power, in the Muslim world they are guided by the idea of religion. Religion was also the issue when talking about the abolition of the death penalty, which is very common in the Arab States. According to one of the schools (Wahabita School in Saudi Arabia) there are six reasons for which a person should be executed by hanging (this is the most common method): apostasy (which basically means leaving the Muslim religion), adultery (which is mostly applied to women, but there are cases when no matter which one of them has committed it, they are both killed because it is considered to have been the responsibility of both, or there are other cases where 4 witness are needed in order to prove it), premeditated murder (the killer could also be forgiven in case the family of the victim accepts to pardon him and get compensation or DIA as it is called in Iraq, which means "blood money"), sedition (this is also one of the most popular reasons for the death sentence especially, of course, because of the ruling regime), spying (a spy always has to be hanged, but is not very clear as it is not mentioned weather the person accused and sentenced could also be a non-Muslim) and the last witchcraft (it refers to the ones that refuse to pray or are atheist). The problem is that other reasons interfere in different countries and usually more innocent people die, for example, there is the Alacula, the family or tribe of the murderer, which is killed together with him because they are considered responsible for his education and actions. I was shocked about all the other stupid, to me, reasons I was hearing, but the scholars were really serious about this issue and they were trying to show how hard it is to make a decision. They are now forced by Human Rights Organizations, from all around the world, to stop this. The problem would be that in Arab countries religious writings (Sharia - the body of Islamic religious law) are used as a source of law, though they don't represent this and can be interpreted in various ways. They are struggling now to build a new, common legislation for all the Arab States, independent from any religious writings and based on the current international law. Their main argument could be that the Koran does not state anything about the death sentence, but on the contrary, talks about forgiveness.

As in the case of China, the media is forbidden to talk about this and so the public opinion doesn't really exist. China is a good example because it also uses the death sentence method and though it has been tried to be abolished, the public opinion surveys showed that they had no idea that this was happening in their country and had no opinion actually on the issue. The only shocking moment for the public opinion in the Arab States was Sadam Hussein's execution...which showed how cruel the procedure is and left people disgusted.

The Vatican had the same problem before 1962, when it had to separate religion from politics. Abolition has been common in European history, but has only been a real trend since the end of the Second World War when human rights became a particular priority. The death penalty has been totally abolished in almost all European countries (46 out of 50). A moratorium on the death penalty is a condition of membership in the Council of Europe and abolition is considered a central value to the European Union. Of all European countries, San Marino and Portugal were the first to abolish and only Belarus still practices capital punishment. Russia maintains the death penalty in law, but currently practices a de facto moratorium, the last execution officially taking place in 1996. Latvia has abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes but retains it for crimes during wartime. Italy was the latest country (March 3, 2009) to ratify the abolishing of the penalty for all crimes.

Since 1990, 85-90% of all judicial executions worldwide have taken place in China, the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia; the Congo Democratic Republic.

The whole debate brings me back to the brainwashing I am put to through my studies. In deed the West is more developed that the Rest, but it should look back at the steps it took, and the years that went by before the public opinion and the discourses were changed and not try to rush things and confuse societies that have no idea about what is actually happening and are brain washed by governments.