Strange Dayscontains two of The Doors' most famous tracks: "Love Me Two Times", and "People Are Strange". From that perspective, this is a good introduction to the band for young listeners.
Second, This is also the band's "must have" album if you have to pick only one of their six studio productions. Strange Days is remarkable from a purely technical perspective: it was the band's first album recorded on an 8-track 1 " recorder. The Doors was also the first band to use this technology, so the entire production sounds and feels experimental up until today. The technological advantages provided by the 8-track recorder not only enhanced the quality of the album, but also enabled the band to experiment with other things: the sound of "Horse Latitudes", for instance, was achieved by using hand-sped pink-nois tape loops played into the studio's echo chamber.Morrison used a Telefunken U47 microphone, which is the same model used by consolidated artists like Elvis of Sinatra (whom Morrison actually admired).
Strange Days is also remarkable from the lyrics' perspective. "Moonlight Drive" combines love, darkness, and happy tabs, in an interesting way. "When the Music's Over" is one testimony of Morrison's improvisation capabilities, as well as a great closing to the entire album.
"Being poor, which Sierra Leone and other African countries surely are, is not enough to generate high growth."
-Robert J. Barro
Most questions on economics are open to debate: is there a catch-up phenomenon for developing countries? Arguably, poor countries have more potential to grow faster (see China); however, countries in extreme poverty may lack the conditions necessary for the establishment of somewhat efficient markets. Does democracy promote growth? Some might argue -like F. A. Hayek- that democracy and capitalism always come together. Others can say, not without reason, that extreme participation and popular demands, especially on land reform and property rights, might serve as a hindrance to growth.
These questions can go on forever, with all sides of the debate having room for a plausible and well articulated argument. However, Fortunately, we have econometrics to gather evidence on these questions and have some guidance for policymaking. In 1997, Robert Barro, from Harvard University, delivered three lectures at the London School of Economics trying to answer three questions: is there a catch up process between developing and developed countries? Does democracy promote growth? Does inflation hinder growth? After a thorough econometric analysis, Barro's answers are: somewhat, up to an extent, and after a certain level. The three lectures are compiled in Determinants of Economic Growth. Ideologues and pundits might not like books like Barro's because they do not provide clear cut and straightforward answers. (to be honest, Barro's answers are clear cut and straightforward; they just do not divide the World in black and white, which is what ideologues and pundits do)
I do not want to leave the impression that econometrics is the key to answer all our questions. On the one hand, any decent econometrician knows that all models are rubbish: econometric models are just a way to simplify the policy debate. Without intellectual speculation and experiments, econometrics is just a simple average. Economists also have a vested interest in making economics and econometrics look more complicated than they actually are, so we should not take them too seriously, anyway.
On the other hand, we only have fifty years of decent data (the U.S. is an exception with series that go back up until the 1800s) for most countries, and only twenty for the two emerging Asian powers: India and China. Fifty years is nothing compared to the almost 300 years of capitalism, and even 300 years is nothing compared to the 2,000 years of the Modern Era. Maybe, in the end, liberal democracy is nothing else than a historical accident and all these experiments will be irrelevant in 500 years...
Econometrics is an imperfect tool, but that's all we have to analyze social sciences. Imperfect beings cannot create perfect tools. That's Philosophy 101...
El DVD Nos sobran los motivos reúne 9 canciones interpretadas en una gira que Sabina hizo en teatros pequeños en Madrid. Todas las canciones están disponibles en youtube.
Hay también un álbum homónimo incluye un disco con canciones acústicas y otro con canciones más rockeras. El booklet del disco no especifica dónde fue grabado.
Poco antes del lanzamiento del álbum y del DVD, Sabina cayó en una depresión que le duró 5 años....
Amartya Sen used to be an economist. His work on famine and poverty changed they way specialists looked at these two phenomenons. Shortly before winning the Nobel Prize, he became a philosopher. In his free time, he studies Sanskrit and watches cricket.
Throughout his career,Sen has been against reductionist visions of man. His battles against neo-classicists and their conception of people as "economic humans" are legendary. Identity and Violence is an argument against multiculturalism and the "clash of civilizations" theory, both of which seek to encapsulate man along cultural lines. The problem with reducing people to one single identity is that in doing so, other sources of interpersonal identification are lost and the probability of inter-group violence increases.
This book was published in 2005, right after the French riots, and in the middle of Iraq's occupation. Sen's opinions on both phenomena proved prescient. The book also includes a critique to British multiculturalism, which obviously deserves to be discussed after the 2011 London riots.
After Identity and Violence, Sen wrote a book on justice, which is a kind rebuttal to John Rawls' work on the subject. He is now engaged in a crusade against rating agencies.
García Márquez pone barcos en medio de la selva y hace que le salgan crustáceos a un dictador para dar la sensación de que la realidad y la fantasía se mezclan; a Fuentes le bastó hacer una novela corta narrada en segunda persona y ambientada en una casona oscura al lado del Congreso mexicano. A Carpentier le bastó narrar el acontecer diario de la selva: troncos que resultan ser cocodrilos; serpientes que se confunden con lianas; mujeres frondosa. En la narrativa de Carpentier, la selva es, a la vez, entorno, protagonista, y fusión de magia y realidad.
En Los pasos perdidos, Carpentier además hace un experimento literario sumamente interesante: la novela entera es una narración en primera persona y los diálogos son casi inexistentes. En toda la novela, no se menciona el nombre del protagonista-narrador ni una sola vez. Carpentier era también un musicólogo y las referencias a compositores, en su mayoría barrocos, están presentes a lo largo de toda la novela. Resulta interesante, para los que pueden leer y escuchar música a la vez, mezclar el barroco de la selva transmitido por el narrador con la música de, por ejemplo, Telemann. (también sería interesante combinar música barroca y selva con merengues o macarrones franceses, pero eso ya sería demasiado burgués...)
Como buen escritor latinoamericano engagé, Carpentier idealiza el mundo rural y demoniza la rutina de la urbe -el protagonista vive en una ciudad europea, así que peor... Las alabanzas al mundo de pobreza rural y atraso material presentes en todo momento pueden parecer un poco ingenuas a casi 50 años de la publicación de Los pasos perdidos (o a lo mejor no; el surgimiento y apoyo a movimientos como el de Evo Morales o el EZLN es testimonio de que la utopía indigenista goza de cabal salud en América Latina y el mundo). En el peor de los casos, la descripción de la vida en la selva es un testimonio de la forma en que las élites latinoamericanas veían la pobreza rural; en el mejor, una excelente pieza de literatura.
Todo lo que escribí y más es desarrollado por el propio Alejo Carpentier en la entrevista presentada a continuación. Pero lo mejor, como siempre, es leer el libro más allá de lo que el autor pueda decir al respecto...
"A foreign background is sometimes helpful in seeing more clearly to what circumstances the peculiar excellencies of the moral atmosphere of a nation are due."
- F. A. Hayek
The Road to Serfdom has been dissected ad-nauseam since its publication in 1944. The number of praises and rebuttals of this book should not be taken as a sign that a lot of people have actually read it; quite the contrary. Just like the Bible, or Marx's Das Kapital, The Road to Serfdom is referred to mostly because of what politicians and pundits say about it. For those who have not read the book, the usual disclaimers apply: "detractors and supporters of Hayek alike will be surprised by The Road of Serfdom", and all that...
There are many ways to get a grasp of Hayek's political philosophy. A one hour interview is posted below (an hour might look like a long time in the Internet age, but reading the entire book takes longer). The interesting question, for which I really don't have an answer is how Hayek's ideas passed from being defended by the aristocracy to being the core of the Tea Party, America's populist movement -here's Glenn Beck explaining Hayek's political theory. Hayek was always an aristocrat. I wonder what he would think about the adoption of his ideas by the American lumpenproletariat...
Part of the explanation is, I guess, America's democratic institutions, which allow any ideology to permeate society regardless of social status. The fact that politics has become a slogan contest rather than a competition of ideas might also help -I mean, nobody can intuitively resist the "idea" of not paying taxes for the government.
The United States rests upon the idea that anyone can become president, regardless of social origin. And the problem with that system is, well, that anyone can become president... Likewise, anyone can be (or pretend to be) a philosopher. Additionally, since Ronald Reagan, the American right has portrayed stupidity as a virtue. With that in mind, it is fair to wonder what a Nobel Prize would think about his own legacy...
