Sports!!

There are three things that I need in my life pretty often: music, friends and sports.

Sports are great! Well, more than sports, physical activity.

I’ve practiced a lot of different sports. Such as athletism, volleyball, taekwondo, parkour, skate. Obviously I’ve done others, but never trained them.

The one in that I lasted the most was taekwondo. I trained like for years. Now I’m a little bored with it. But maybe I’ll start training again in march, when we’re back from our (short) vacations.

Right know I’m thinking about start training wall climbing, trekking and parkour. Or, I could try with MMA (mixed martial arts). It’s a really tough sport. As in training as in competitions. You need to have a really trained and hard body, speed, tons of techniques, mental and emotional control. Though the first choice is amazingly fun and helpful, it takes a lot of your free time. Which I don’t think I’ll have next semester. But, you can practice them where ever you want!! (except for wall climbing, but there are a lot of places where you can do it, even for free!). that’s a great advantage.

Any way, it doesn’t matters what I choose, the thing is to finally know what I wont to practice for life. I’ve through so many sports that I’m already getting sick of it. And I would like to practice them with a partner. Oh, wait…crap. Not again. I have to choose between the band and sports. ‘Couse I can’t give away university. Well, I still have some time to choose.

My music preferences

Ok!. Here we go again. My music preferences. Actually, I’ve gone through a lot of different types of music: first, before I turned 16 or 15 I did listened much music. Oanly what my family played for them selves. After that I started listening to Heavy Metal music, like “Iron Maiden” and stuff. Then I liked Jack Johnson, Sublime, and music like that: Really chill and beachy. Then I went back to the heavy music listening NOFX, and other bands alike. NOFX is pure Punk rock. They’re awesome!! I still play ‘em from every once in a while. But now, now I am really into Cumbia, Pachanga and Chilean music. I’m only listening to national composers. That’s what your friends influence can do. And if  I listen to non Chilean bands, are mostly reggeae bands.

Truth is, I don’t know the origins of reggae, but I reaaaaaaaally like it. It makes me fell amazing just by hearing it. But, what do I know about cumbia? Well, not much ider. All I know is that it comes from Colombia, and it obviously has African influences. Originally its danced in carnivals and stuff, but clearly you can dance it anywhere, anytime. Specially the Chilean versions. There are amazing Chilean bands playing cumbia and pachanga (a variety of cumbia). It’s the best choise if you want to have a LOT of fun partying.

Actually, I like it so bad, that we’re thinking about making a cumbia band.

Hobbits seem to be found!!

Flores, Indonesia. September, 2003. a group of anthropologist (and scientists alike) founded what it seemed to be a tiny specie of hominid.  The study of the bones showed that they where similar to australopitecus and chimpanzees, but very different to actual human bones.

Despite morphological comparation might be usefull talking about close relationed species, DNA tests are necessary, but really hard to get in this case due to the tropical climate of the island. Actually, the bones have to be dried while they lay right where they were found, before being taken to the lab, becouse they have the consistency of “wet blotting paper”. Can you imagine?. Soil contamination is also another problem for the exams to be taken and show correct ressults.

How did those pygmies arrived to the island is a mistery, dough there are a couple theories like that they came by water vessel and even being average human sized. And they shrinked in size due to limited resources and a extreme tropical weather.

Due to the difficulties of prooving the DNA structure of this spiece, we might never know the origin of “the Hobbit”, but nobody can doubt that it is one of the greates discoveries on the anthropological fiel of our times.

Laser-air mapping the Amazon?? Awesome!!!

Scientist form the  department of Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, based at Stanford University, developed a technology able to map from five thousand meters above the Amazonian forest.  This technology works bouncing laser beams 400,000 times per second, over the forest.

The procedure is the next: The machine known as Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging), kept at a temperature of -131°C, bounces laser beams 400,000 times per second from a plane at five thousand meters above the forest, on a scanning speed of 360 sq km each hour, creating three-dimentional images. 

But why is it important?, what can we use it for?.  Well, this helps us mesure the biodiversity of the forest in a really short period of time, instead of parcelling (like we, the foresters, say) the whole forest, on foot. We can keep trak of how the forest is responding to droughs and monitores deforestation and degradation, etc… In other words: Critical information for the conservation of one of the most important ecosistems in the world!

The REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative, the mos important founds resource for tropical conservation proyects, would totally use this kind of information:

            "Redd cannot exist without scientifically monitored data on carbon stock," said Asner, who may have invented the most efficient way of measuring it to date.

Hope you liked it.

Bye!

Japan: pure magic

Ahá! Travelling. I’d love to do that really often. In or out of Chile, Close or really far away. I hope a have the chance to travel a lot. So far I haven’t, really. Ninth region, Mendoza, Viña and the counting stops!. Though I’m going to Miami on winter vacation (ours of course), I’ve always wanted to travel to Japan: the total opposite.  Can you imagine it!?. I know that it’s outstandingly expensive, but I always thought that getting lost in the mountains would be the greatest experience of my life…

It would all start when, just for fun and the love for adventure takes me to the mountains. Those magical forests full of new animals and plants to discover and also full of myths, legends, and magic.

Truth be told, the main reason for me to go there, it’s ridiculously childish: I want to find a “ninja village”.  I know it sounds stupid for most people, but it hides the most pure desire of self improvement. Mental and physical development. Just awesome…

this odd term we're in...

December!! :  The last classes and tests, Christmas, new year, and summer vacations!. If you had a normal year, of course. Well…NOT my exact situation. With a students strike that lasted almost seven months, there’s just no way that I’m having my precious vacations or a proper new years partying (algebra test on January 2^nd , stinks). I had tons of things in mind for these three months! : backpacking, doing sports, hang out with my very best friend (who is studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina), get lost in the woods, play music, find a summer love, etc, etc. So, what am I doing instead all this?: Study ‘till February!. Gosh!. Sounds horrible, right?.

People tend to ask me: what do you think about this rare, bizarre, out of the normal, unusual term?. There is no other answer  than: I don´t freaking like it!, but it has to be done. Especially if we’re talking about me. This is my second year at the university and I’m already a year late. That´s why linear algebra, calculus II, English IV, computer programming and Taxonomy are my hole-summer friends.

The Divided Brain: My Summary.

Our brain works differently on each side (or hemisphere) of it. In other words, one hemisphere does certain jobs that the other one does not do.  That idea became really famous in the 60’s and 70’s after the first brain surgeries. Dough it showed a big advance for neurology and psychiatry, it’s nothing that neurologists (or psychiatrists) want to talk about anymore, due to the big mistakes that where made on the subject. For example, it was thought that for reason you used left hemisphere and for imagination the right one. Lie! Both hemispheres are needed for both, reason and imagination.

Another amazing thing this lecture gives, is that even dough the brain works by connections (and only thanks to that we think and act), there are two very important parts of this organ that their most important (if not only) function is to inhibit. One is the “corpus collosum” (the part between the two hemispheres) which blocks an hemisphere from the other; and there’s the frontal lobe who’s job is to inhibit the rest of the brain. Amazing.

What I conclude, now knowing that hemispheres have different roles, is that we coul try to develop each one separately to develop certain skills and jus be good at those, but we will only be complete an totally functional “thinkers” having both parts equally developed.

What this video did to me was no other thing that getting even more interested on neurology and psychology, learning, knowledge and cognitive development.