Satan's Poop Inc. Paila Master: Digressions

The whole blog HAS MOVED, no more Devil posts here

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:20:28 GMT

Except for posts abut Orchids, I have moved all of the contents of this blog to:

http://www.devilexcrement.com
http://www.devilsexcrement.com

or

http://devilsexcrement.wordpress.com

I will no longer update here. All posts in the almost seven years of this blog can be found there!!! Thank you!

Redirecting domains to wordpress

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:23:50 GMT

For the last two months I have been posting here and in my new blog using wordpress. Today, I switched www.devilsexcrement.com and www.devilexcrement.com to redirect you to the new site. In two weeks, I will go away for a while and will blog only in the other site, where in any case I blog first nowadays. So, I recommend you switch your bookmarks there now and start commenting there. It´s faster and less quirky and soon, the only real devil around.

My all orchid site will remain here for reasons that are too long to explain...Thanks to all.

The list of lists for 2006

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 01:49:40 GMT

If you were sleep in 2006, you can catch up with practically anything by just looking at this list of lists. It takes seconds to look at it, but hours to digest it properly. Cool!

Enjoy!

50 million blogs

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:45:43 GMT

There are now over 50 million blogs as the blogosphere continues to double every six months. Remarkably blogs in Spanish are only 3% of all blogs, barely edging blogs in Italian, despite the much larger Spanish speaking population.

Interesting Reading on oil prices

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 23:38:42 GMT

To all of those who worry about the price of oil and want to learn more about it, there are a bunch of interesting articles, starting with last week's Magazine article in the New York Times "The Breaking Point" which suggests there will be a huge crisis in the next decade. Then there is this article by Steven Levitt Of "Freakanomics" fame (I did not like the book, the examples were hard to get into, even if the problems were interesting). The article is called "Peak Oil: Welcome to the medias new version of Shark Attacks" and concludes that the article is wrong and in some sense argues the opposite. In that article a few articles are cited including this one, which suggests that triple digit oil prices would change the behavior of people and just looking at production is not for an economist Finally, there is this article in which John Tierney bets with Mr. Oil Doomsday himself Mathew Simmons that oil will not be $200 by 2010.

In Levitt's article, he remidns us of the many predictions of doom for mankind. Without dating myself, I was a student when Paul Erlich's Limits to Growth came out. It was mathematical modelling showing how earth was running out of most natural resourecs and establishing time frames for this to occur that are past us. While the scientific work was wrong, it did raise awareness about finite resources, which is very good. However, in my own personal opinion, I know oil will be higher twenty years from now, but I am pretty sure it will be lower between now and then. Why? Because it has gone up too fast, to levels at which too many abandoned, unexplored and unknown technologies are feasible. Just last week, I read a report by a well known investment bank upgrading the stock of Archer Daniels Midland, the largest processor of corn and soybeans in the world, to a buy. One of the main reasons for doing it was that AMD is starting to produce plastics from corn. At these prices, it becomes feasible and profitable. Think about it

The Pope Blog

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 17:29:12 GMT

Where else can you learn about the election of the Pope and the new Pope himself? Obviously, go to : The Pope Blog , a sign of the times!

Amazing video of tsunami wave

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 02:58:30 GMT

This video of the tsunami wave in Thailand is pretty amazing. Never underestimate the forces of nature. Imagine, beaches and towns 3,000 miles away from the epicenter were hit. Caracas is only 1,500 miles from Miami.

A silly story: El Avila, Pakea and my sister's book

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 04:12:02 GMT

Today I went up to the town of Galipan in the Avila mountain which separates Caracas from the sea. To those that have never been here, El Avila is a spectacular sight, which is probably what attracted the Spaniards to the valley in which Caracas is. This is what it looks like:

To add to the perspective, think about the fact that Caracas is 1,000 meters above sea level (3,000 feet). Well, El Avila at it highest peak is like 2,700 meters or 8,000 feet, these mountains are truly majestic. El Avila has been a National park for a long time, converted to a national park by the transition Government in 1958, after the Perez Jimenez Dictatorship was overthrown.

When it was declared a National Park, only those that lived there could remain there and improve their homes, but new building within the park was barred. There was a little agricultural town called Galipan up there, whose inhabitants grew flowers and were separated from Caracas by the difficult dirt road that connected it to it. Imagine going up some 6,000 feet in less than five miles, it is steep! And it was only dirt, it was very messy, particularly if it rained.

About some twenty years ago, the Government built a road up there and people began going there to visit. A Restaurant opened up, now there are about half a dozen. Many wealthy Venezuelans have purchased homes up there, improved them and use them as vacation homes. Caracas is typically 10 C warmer than Galipan, it gets chilly up there.

Last week my brother invited me to go to Casa Pakea today. Casa Pakea is by far the best Restaurant up in Galipan. It is run by a Basque who reportedly got there after leaving Spain for belonging to a certain separatist organization. The food is wonderful. It is a fixed menu of six dishes for a fairly cheap price of Bs. 48,000 per person, about $19 dollars at the parallel exchange rate. You bring your own wine, which makes it a perfect chance to have a good wine with great food, at a reasonable price.

The views are incredible, you are above the clouds, and the mountains change colors as if by magic. Here are two pictures:

To enter the Park, you have to go by a National Guard station, tell them where you are going. Sometime they search your car, but usually you just go straight thru. You have to go up in a four wheel drive vehicle (I guess it is more important on the way down). We went in my sister’s car, a big red thing, Dodge I think it is, that is banged up all over. It is like a four wheel drive van. There are few like that in Venezuela as it was given to her husband as payment for a debt and it was imported from the US. So, it is easily recognizable.

This sister of mine is a reporter/writer and just completed her first book “Excess Baggage” which won an important award for books by first time writers.

I tell you this as background, because when we entered the park, rather than let us thru, the National Guard told my brother who was driving to please park the car on the side. He approached and asked him where we were going and to get out of the car. Then he asked him what was in the trunk. My brother said he did not know, that the car was my sister’s not his. At that point the Guard asked my sister to get out of the car and go see the Guard that was at the desk in the kiosk where you first stop. That Guard asked my brother if she was his wife and was she a writer.

That Guard asked my sister: do you remember me? She said no. Well, it turns out that he had stopped my sister in the same van a few weeks ago and she had no papers for the car (typical!), no identification. She told him she was a writer, was in a rush to get the proofs of her book and they were going to close. He let her go at that time.

He told her that van was recognizable anywhere and said: “Do you have papers for the van today” She said yes, but he did not ask her to produce them. Then he asked “And how is your book”. Incredibly, my sister had just given us copies of the book at her home before we left for lunch, so she said: “It is doing very well, it was published this week”. My brother came to the car, got a copy and she ended up dedicating a copy to the National Guardsman. He asked her for her e-mail to send her his opinion about the book when he finished it!

After our meal, we went by the same kiosk said hi and he called out “I am already reading the part about the lady, very nice book”. So, my sister now has a fan in the Venezuelan National Guard.

It might be a silly story, but it was very nice and fun and we laughed about it all afternoon. By the way, the food was delicious too!!!

By the way, driving home, we were stopped by the Caracas police, the van had no plate in the front, which is illegal…she keeps going like this she will know all cops in Caracas soon. Maybe sell a lot of books?

Will it ever be this much fun again?

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 04:23:09 GMT

This is a very personal note. I went to school both undergrad and graduate in the Boston area. Was a Red Sox fan since I was a little kid. Listened to games day in and day out for the last thirty yeas. Thanks to the Internet, I can now watch every night on MLB.TV the Red Sox games. I read the Boston Globe on the Internet everyday. I relly love "beisbol" the Venezuelan national pasttime. So you can imagine how happy I am today!!! The curse of the Bambino is over! Will it ever be as mch fun as this again? I just don't know but as a baseball and Red Sox fan, this was as thrilling as can be! Sorry for the abuse, this is definitely a digression but I had to post it. Impossible to post anything else tonight!

Interesting article on how technology will increase oil reserves

Sun, 09 May 2004 23:36:33 GMT

I found this article about how technology will increase oil reserves to be very interesting.

No democracy for Hong Kong either

Tue, 27 Apr 2004 04:26:29 GMT

Just to keep things in perspective, China has just announced that there will be no elections for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive in 2007 and no legislative elections in 2008. I guess here we can still hope or dream we will have something even earlier than that. Over there it is simply a resounding no from a higher authority.

Maybe I should just move to Kowloon, start a blog (The Dragon’s Excrement?) and help out there while things settle down here. I could even learn Chinese in the process.

Iraqi blogger dies

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 04:09:18 GMT

Bob Zangas who was blogging from Iraq was killed in an ambush last week. Here is his last entry with pictures. I had read his blog sporadically. Shakes me up. May he rest in peace. (Via Instapundit)

Iran and the studpity of some traditional media

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 04:04:09 GMT

Sometimes traditional media outstounds me, like this report in CNN with their reporter in Iran, explaining why the reformers lost:

They lost a good deal of credibility with the Iranian public because they failed to initiate many of the reforms they had promised.

But at the end of the day, they failed to deliver on important issues. And in some cases when many people expected them to stand up to the hardliners' excesses outside parliament, they proved feeble.

Is this guy stupid or what? Two thousand of their reformist candidates are banned from running, including 87 members of the current Parlamient, two major newspapers which are pro-reformist are shutdown, the reformists call for a boycott of the election and they lost because they failed to deliver? And they call this anlysis? Let’s hope they don’t send this guy to Venezuela now.

The media, Kerry, Dean and Iraq

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:01:05 GMT

Although I have been concerned by events in Venezuela I have been following closely what has been happening in the Democratic primary in the US. I must say that from reading the traditional newspapers I got the feeling that Dean was the sure winner, while reading the bloggers I got a completely different picture. In fact, newspapers gave me the impression that Dean was first followed by Clark and then Kerry. Bloggers gave me the impression Kerry was their preference but was far behind. Then Dean lost in Iowa, had his little explosion and seems to be history now.

Since I am on the subject, you should read this response by an Iraqi blogger to Dean’s statement:

"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone. But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."

An excerpt:

I’m not going to comment about the rightness of the statement with more than saying that only a (blind) man would believe it and only a man blinded by his ambitions would dare to say it, but when you say such words, don’t you mean in other words that the sacrifices made by the American soldiers are all in vain? And that these soldiers are not doing a service to the world, nor to Iraqis and not to America. In fact you are saying that since they didn’t do the world, America or us a favour then they’re only doing a favour to GWB and his administration.

A virtual political coup d’etat in Iran

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 01:34:33 GMT

Unfortunately, there is always someone that is doing worse than us as witnessed by the fact that in Iran 2033 of the 8200 candidates have been barred from participating in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Hope this is the beginning of the end for those religious fanatics that rule that country.

A look at a wonderful Venezuelan artist: GEGO

Sun, 28 Dec 2003 05:05:18 GMT

Given the piece and quiet I will take advantage of it and talk about Venezuelan things that people may know little about. I will start with GEGO a famous Venezuelan artist. A good friend gave me as a Christmas present a new book about the life and works of Venezuelan artist GEGO. The book is absolutely spectacular and beautiful (my friend is one of the authors) more so given the fact that I love GEGO’s work.

Most Venezuelans hardly even know who GEGO is. Her real name was Gertrud Goldschmidt. Born in Hamburg, GEGO had to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews. In 1938, she graduated as an architect-engineer in Stuttgart and left for London where she got a job offer for Venezuela. She got married soon after arriving here and had a shop in the 40’s where she made furniture and lamps, much needed, given the lack of imports due to the war. She divorces her first husband and her artistic career begins when she meets another immigrant from Lithuania named Gerd Leufert in 1952. She moves to a tiny town in the Coast near Caracas and begins her career in earnest. She is best known for her three dimensional sculptures. Geometric and non geometric structures which I have always found extremely appealing. I am no expert on GEGO, but her geometric sculptures can be divided into two stages. The first one corresponds to highly symmetrical sculptures. The second to more irregular geometrical figures. In 1969, she designs Reticularea a full room sculpture made from wires and through which one can wander through. While most Venezuelans don’t even know her, her work can be seen in many buildings around Caracas, like in the Cediaz shopping center, Paseo Las Mercedes, Parque Central, IVIC, Banco Industrial de Venezuela and INCE. Slowly, GEGO is becoming more and more famous worldwide, with some of her sculptures now topping US$ 100,000. Her work is now present in most major Modern Art Museums. Her family still owns most of her works which I think adds to the current mystique surrounding her work. Below are some examples of her work I found in the net, including the famous Reticularea. You can see some more of her work in the Web, like Dibujos sin Papel , read more about her here or here or here. While not born in Venezuela, GEGO developed her artistic career here and benefited from the boom in art and architecture in Venezuela during the fifties and sixties.

Two Views of the room size Reticularea

Sphere #4 Square Reticularea #6

Chorros Drawing without Paper

More on Iran

Thu, 19 Jun 2003 03:38:29 GMT

Article wonders why there is so little coverage of the protests in Teheran when compared to that of when the Shah was overthrown. The writer suggests (in contrast to Reuters in my post yesterday) that the US Government is trying to ignore it and news agencies don't want to lose access to the events. Interesting.

Salam Pax, interpreter

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 00:57:51 GMT

Via Instapundit I learn that while the world was looking for Salam Pax and wondering whether he was real or not, he was acting as an interpreter for Peter Maass' in Iraq. Moreover, he will now be blogging for the Guardian!. I guess some stories do still have a happy ending! I also enjoy the fact that I always believed Salam had to be for real, which has now been confirmed!

Salam Pax is back

Thu, 08 May 2003 13:00:38 GMT

Salam Pax is back in his blog if you want to get a look at what it felt to be under the bombs and not over them. I also think his absence proves he was no fake. He provides a description of the whole time he was gone through an e-mail that he sent to Diane.

Blogger Sina Motallebi detained

Tue, 22 Apr 2003 12:32:48 GMT

Blogger Sina Motallebi has been detained in Iran for describing everyday life there. His blog is now blank.....Wish I knew how to place the following banner permanently in my home page posted by buzzmachine.

Other good sites to follow SARS epidemic

Mon, 21 Apr 2003 23:16:11 GMT

I found today two more sites to follow the SARS epidemic. At squeak.org there is a plot in semilog scale which clearly shows to me that the growth is not exponential so far. It has three separate graphs for cases worldwide, cases reported by the WHO and cases in the US. A linear plot by Charles Platt is in his site, it is similar to Paul Kedrosky's plot that I have been using. Paul Kedrosky has added a plot with doubling periods attempting to determine whether the growth is or not exponential. Kedrosky's plots have the advantage that they update automatically when the WHO site is updated. While the number of deaths is clearly accelerating, the number of cases is only growing linearly. Kedrosky also links to a plot of the 1918 flu epidemic showing what the numbers of deaths was like in that case. It is actually quite starnge that the evolution is still linear, there is obviously something about the way it is transmitted that needs to be understood.

Revisiting the SARS graph: Infection rate slows, death rate accelerates

Mon, 21 Apr 2003 02:41:36 GMT

I continue to puzzle at the SARS epidemic. Here is the updated plot I of what I posted on April 4th. Two weeks have gone by and now the number of deaths has accelerated but the number of cases continues to grow lineraly, not much like a classical epidemic. It appears to me that either the measures to stop its spread are outstanding or that this is being blown out of proportion. 3,500 cases in six weeks does not seem to be that earth shaking and the death rate is so far about 5%. At this rate of infection in one year there will be roughly 24,000 cases if you extrapolate the current infection slope. The number of deaths would be 1,200 if it follows the current slope but the death rate is definitely accelerating.

Note added: This graph updates automatically from the WHO data, it now looks like the number of cases is also beginning to accelerate......

Oil, Iraq and The Devil's Excrement

Sun, 13 Apr 2003 19:39:09 GMT

Tony sent this link to an article in today's Boston Globe talking about the fact that oil is indeed The Devil's Excrement and how oil is more of a curse than a blessing.

The naviete of Rep. Charles Rangel

Sun, 13 Apr 2003 16:32:32 GMT

Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, is quoted in the New York Times as saying:

"This about ends that discussion, I don't know how far they are going to go, but they know how to support their enemies and get rid of their friends."

Enemies? Friends? How naive can this guy be? Fidel Castro has never had any friends. The few he had, he killed or expelled from Cuba. Killing people like this is not new to castro. Does Rangel know how many people Castro killed his first day in Havana? And they were exactly the politicians that would make life hard for him. Does Rangel really think that Dictators change? Or that Castro will somehow be converted into respecting people's human rights when he has not given a damn for 44 years. Moreover, these people are not Castro's enemies for no reason, they oppose Castro, precisely because of what Castro has done in the last four decades. Somebody should tell Mr. Rangel about the Los Pinos jail, to see if he still feels like being a friend of Castro afterwards. Wake up Mr Rangel!

Note added: I tremble when I read this article in which Fidel Castro expresses his happiness at being a witness to what is happening in Venezuela today. Mr. Rangel should worry too.