The transnoia and other eleven points

One man’s cup of tea is another man’s poison.

A Chinese proverb.

He who has a “why” will find a “how”.

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900, a German existentialist philosopher and philologist.

Life is a mysterious plot of chance, destiny, and character.

Wilhelm Dilthey, 1833-1911, a German philosopher, sociologist, and hermeneut

 (a scholar who studies interpretations and meanings of texts).

Extinction is the rule, survival is the exception.

Carl Sagan, 1934-1996, an American cosmologist and science communicator.

1. Transnoia.

Transnoia (from the Latin prefix trans-, “beyond”, “outside”, “through”, also, “change” or “moving” and the Greek word νοũ̃ς, noũs, “mind”). I am going to write this Greek word without the tilde above the “υ” (but it must have it): νους.

The transnoia or “beyond the mind” or “through the mind” is the discipline by which a man/woman lucubrates in order to create conjectures about himself/herself and his/her relationships with others. “What if I...”, and this can be considered in a positive or a negative sense...

Speaking of the positive sense, the transnoia deals with self-improvement, working harder, studying, saving; in short, everything you can consider positive.

Regarding the openness to others, especially to our fellow-creatures or neighbors, the transnoia has to do with proposing, suggesting, cooperating, encouraging, always constructively, positively, and to work collectively to achieve a beneficial purpose.

Given that human relationships are bidirectional or multidirectional, the potential recipient of any proposal or suggestion always is and will be free to reject it, even though it seems to the proponent that he/she can help the potential recipient to improve his/her situation, et cetera.

Moreover the negative sense can be exemplified if an individual intends to fall into vice, crime, vagrancy, loitering, failure, irresponsibility, debauchery...

Similarly, anyone can direct this negative sense to his/her peers through induction or the intention of inducing his/her fellow men toward pernicious activities: vice, crime, vagrancy, loitering, failure, irresponsibility, debauchery, et cetera.

Also, the others can reject or accept the proposal in part, or even adapt it from their point of view, to their reality.

-

The slain former U.S. Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Robert Francis Kennedy) (Brookline, Massachusetts 11/20/1925-Los Angeles, California 06/05/1968) once, before students of a South African university in 1966, quoted lines of the serpent in the play Back to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch), by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950):

You see things, and you say, Why? But I dream things that never were, and I say, Why not?

A paraphrasis, this time by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (1932-2009), a brother of the above-mentioned Robert Kennedy:

Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I dream things that never were and say, Why not?

In a positive sense, by applying the transnoia you should try to get to the “other side of the river” by crossing the bridge, and if there is no bridge, learn to swim with a good teacher (no matter if it takes days or weeks), wait some time until the right time comes, and swim... or make a bridge, or cooperate in building a bridge, or call a number of people for helping you to build a bridge...

The point is getting across to move on, to go on –it is better if you do it alone as far as possible, but not completely and utterly alone– toward your destiny, profession, job, family, future, your way of life, and your life... Maybe in your life, you will need to cross a few "rivers" only, or 400, or maybe 30,000... maybe you do not know it... yet.

Also, you should put into action the “high beam” of your perception, your mind, as when on the road in a very dark night, you switch your vehicle's headlights to “high beam” to see further, and reach your intermediate, temporary or final destination, safely or with less risk.

After a mild or deep introspection, after a short or long self-examination and analysis, you may be able to embark on changing the world, but maybe FIRSTLY you should change yourself.

The transnoia is about cooperation, collaboration, collectivity, community, co-management, self-management, cooperativism, self-improvement, and the teaching of the old saying: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.

2. Freedom.

Freedom. The man, once he has reached a certain age, should be free. This age can vary, depending on the individual: 18 or 21 or 25 or even 40 years old?

The English empiricist and liberal philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) proposed that the life, property, freedom and the right to happiness are natural rights of men.

Freedom is a natural human ability to act one way or the other, and not to act (to omit). The faculty to decide what to do, what not to do, what to stop doing, what to start doing, what to do intermittently, et cetera, without harming others, and being responsible for his/her actions and omissions.

Exercising freedom is a matter of will and responsibility.

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) once wrote: “The will is the backbone of the spirit.”

3. Common sense.

“Sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts”.

 “Thinking and proceed as the generality of people would.”

“Right judgment most of humankind possesses.”  

We think with common sense, and then act according to common sense.

Thomas Reid (1710-1796), a leading Scottish philosopher, was the founder of the philosophical school of Scottish common sense.

He opposed the common sense realism to skepticism of David Hume (1711-1776), who argued that the principle of causality was questionable, and the idealism of George Berkeley (1685-1753), who said that the outside world was a mere figuration of mind.

In 1764, in Aberdeen, Scotland, Reid published An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense.

Reid considered epistemology (theory of knowledge) as an introduction to practical ethics: when philosophy confirms us in our common belief, all we have to do is to act according to our beliefs, because we know which one is correct. This moral philosophy evokes the Latin Stoicism, and Reid often quotes Cicero (106 B.C.-43 B.C.), who adopted the term sensus communis, and it identifies with the Christian way of life, particularly as expressed by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).

The applying of common sense will help the ordinary citizen, id est, the so-called man in the street; also, the scientist, the nobleman, the housewife, the farmer, the landowner, the worker, the employee, the employer, the professional / practitioner, the girl, the boy, the student, the ruler, anyone and everyone.

4. Justice.

In order to be fair, we need to precisely apply the Golden Rule as it is in Matthew VII, 12. How difficult it is to comply fully with it, but we must try, at least. In our relationships with other people, it seems there is nothing else to do:

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

–Word of the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity.

In Latin: Auream Regulam.

Omnia ergo, quaecumque vultis ut faciant vobis homines, ita et vos facite eis; haec est enim Lex et Prophetae.

5. Ethics.

Ethics teaches you to walk straight through life successfully. You should not go committing outrages and abuses everywhere. You must be responsible.

Ethics is a part of philosophy that deals with morality and the obligations of man.

Another dictionary definition:

Set of moral standards that govern human behavior.

Today, in the second decade of the 21st. century, when the printed and electronic media often and overwhelmingly deal with rights –for example, they exalt human rights, which is fine– but forget or relegate the duties, obligations, they should have exist also: State Commissions on Human Duties, Provincial Commissions on Human Duties, District Commissions on Human Duties, Departamental Commissions on Human Duties, Municipal Commissions on Human Duties, Regional Commissions on Human Duties National Commissions on Human Duties, in all of the countries, Inter-American Commission on Human Duties, European Commission on Human Duties, Asian Commission on Human Duties, African Commission on Human Duties, Oceania Commission on Human Duties, and World Commission on Human Duties.

Good thing that since the last few years, the associations and governments of many countries are teaching and instilling not only about human rights but about human obligations and duties, too, to girls, boys, youth, adults, businessmen, officials and public servants, et cetera.

6. Ensurership.

Ensurership is a practice to ensure the truth of something. It is not an innate human ability, but it can be attained, and it would be useful, at least theoretically, to check carefully the accuracy of an idea, thought, concept, hypothesis, theory, saying, phrase, event, act, axiom, theorem, rule, thesis, precept, principle, law, norm, standard, maxim, apothegm, proposition, culture, order, decree, mandate, command, et cetera.

After the verification of the truth, we can move to another phase: practicality (utility, convenience, profit) or not of that idea, thought, saying, et cetera, and the possibility of putting it into practice (praxis) or not, not running it, or, when it is still in the theoretical stage, lightly or deeply modify it, and then apply it, et cetera.

What advantage can I take of something right now if I make sure myself about the truth of it, but I cannot apply it to my life? Only the benefit of knowing it as a true thing.

And... the possibility of its application in the future still stands.

However, if by being an ensurer you will consume more time than you would like to dedicate to the task, or if you believe that the means to obtain the certainty will be more costly than the benefit you could obtain by that certainty, do not put into practice the ensurership too often, which has to be used when absolutely necessary or when the accessory when the accessory are less costly than the main thing, and in addition, you should consider the size of the accessory and of the main thing; the important matter is the net and final result.

7. Health.

What does it profit a man to be rich in money and/or goods if he has not the most precious: health, tranquility, peace of mind?

There are many kinds of riches in the world. I am going to mention but a few:

Rich in time are those children and teenagers, daughters and sons of wealthy families (and sometimes not so wealthy) who only have an obligation to study a few hours a day and the rest of the time they have it virtually free.

Prisoners are often rich in time, but they do not have the excellence of freedom, nor can they engage in a work they would like, nor have the theoretical or practical or economic resources to develop certain tasks (knowledge achieved by the teaching-learning system, or the experience acquired by the exercise of a previous activity), even when there are already paid jobs inside prisons. Some writers have claimed that their best novels, stories, poems... were those they have written in prison.

Pensioners or retirees can be rich in time, they go to the bridge club, bar, café, garden, park, or library (this one can be real or virtual) in order to “kill time”, and they can go to the café to “arrange the world”, or they go to other places to take away time to friends or acquaintances who still work, and they go to the home or, worse, to the workplace of those friends, acquaintances or relatives who do work. They are usually avoided like the plague.

Rich in money and/or goods are rich people, successful entrepreneurs or professionals, the richmen, wealthy heirs...

Rich in knowledge are the competent ones and those who can and want and do well their job, work, profession.

Rich in knowledge are teachers, professors, and experts in one or more disciplines or fields of science/technology, but these do not pass it (their knowledge or expertise) onto others because that is not their obligation or they do not have the time to do it or because they sometimes do not want to, although they can be occasional or sporadic teachers or gurus to others. –Teachers receive a payment for teaching, transmitting and disseminating knowledge, and they deserve it indeed! Although we are now in a stage of transformation, in which we are told that the 21st-century teacher must be one whose work is not so much teaching as has been traditional, but rather his/her/their work will be encouraging his/her/their students to learn.

Rich in work are the workaholics, who cannot rest, nor want to go on vacation, sometimes they do not even want to go to the movies, or to the beach, picnic, or party with the family.

Rich in beauty and aesthetics are the people whose face and/or body somehow resembles/approximates the definitions we have been received from artists such as Il Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto, 1454-1513), Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520), Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), portraits of girls and women, but not of men, by Rembrandt (1606-1669), Camille Corot (1796-1875), and John William Waterhouse (1849 -1917).

Other influences are the beauty contests, for example, Miss Universe.

Beauty is subjective (or beauty is in the eye of the beholder), some might say, but to define it in some way, in recent centuries the faces and bodies that appear in oil portraits painted by the above-mentioned artists and some others, have been considered as models of beauty.

Rich in spirituality and/or love are those people who seldom alter, and when they do, it is not too much, not to a great extent, and they are quiet, serene, masters of themselves, that rather than having or being, they serve voluntarily and without receiving money in return, and even love others, whether or not their children, parents, siblings, or relatives.

They are the ones who tend to apply, or effectively apply, the Golden Rule, referred to in item 4, above. They are PHILANTHROPISTS, love their fellow men, and act benefiting the community: others and themselves, as far as they can, in their environment, in their own way, in their circumstances.

So what does it profit, for example, a multimillionaire from his/her property and wealth to prolong his/her life, if he/she is in the terminal phase of an illness? His/her wealth is almost of no use to him/her.- ) His/her property and wealth will serve predominantly to bequeath to his wife/her husband and his/her children.

And what kind of wealth is more valuable? Apparently, health.

8. Knowledge, teaching, education, learning, study.

Jewish American sociologist, writer, and futurist Alvin Toffler (New York, 1928- ), an agnostic, former worker, former communist, in a book titled Revolutionary Wealth, co-written with his wife Heidi Toffler (New York, 1929- ) says that there are at least four “deep fundamentals” of wealth: knowledge, work, time, space.

Data, information, knowledge.

Data are simple elements, without context.

If you juxtapose data and add context, you have information.

If you link the information with more information and/or add context according to larger models, you have knowledge.

For example:

Data: “1,300 tons of wheat.”

Information: “1,300 tons of wheat from Kansas are being transported to Chicago in train wagons.”

Knowledge: “1,300 tons of wheat at 2.1 thousand dollars a tonne, are being transported from Kansas to Chicago in 13 wagons. The train of the Central Express Railroad is expected to arrive in The Abc Mills, Inc., in Chicago, on Friday, October 11, 2013, where the wheat will be processed to make flour to be sold to the Grand Cracker Company, Inc.”

In the process of teaching and learning, teachers transmit knowledge and yet they keep, retain it, since knowledge is a non-rival, is not competitive with each other, not antagonistic, not opposed to itself.

Instead, material objects are rivals, antagonists between each other.

When farmer John is using his tractor, nobody else can use it.

When Laura is using her sewing machine, no one else can use it.

When someone reads a book, he/she can read it with one or more additional persons at his/her side, or several people may have copies of the same book.

When someone watches a television program, for example about science or technology, he/she may be accompanied by one, two, three ... ten or more people. A professor in the classroom teaches simultaneously to dozens of students, thanks to the blackboard, white board, or electronic screen.

“When you share money, you keep half the money;

when you share food, you keep half the food;

when you share knowledge, you keep double the knowledge.”

One of the joys and pleasures of life should be exercising our physical and intellectual abilities, the joy we get into an exciting voyage of awareness or a journey of consciousness and cognition, the pleasure of having new experiences every day, exercise imagination, pay attention to science, reading, trying to understand hypotheses and theories, abstracting, reasoning (in this, neurons with their axons, dendrites and synapses intervene), focus the mind, not just memorize or retain knowledge, but being able to generate new ideas, or have the willingness to get them, to learn; posing problems to solve exercises and formulas, and so on.

Continuous growth can be achieved through constant change.

Semper ascendens ad astra is a Latin phrase which can be translated as Always upward to the stars.

The Greek philosopher Plato said that education "is to give to the body and soul all the beauty and perfection of which they are susceptible."

Education is also the developing of the intellectual faculties of the child or young through theories, precepts, exercises, examples, et cetera.

9. Time.

Physicist and science writer Michio Kaku (San Jose, California, 1947- ) talks about a mysterious element or factor: Time, in a series of four or six parts –videos, depending on who uploaded the videos.

Please go to Youtube, and type the following: Michio Kaku Time.

Time, in the Einstein’s general relativity theory, is the fourth dimension. The first three dimensions are length, width or breadth, and depth or height, conventionally and mathematically represented by the letters x, y, z. The time is symbolized by the letter t. Human beings are four-dimensional creatures.

The time, once wasted, is never recovered.

Time is money. In Spanish: El tiempo es oro. (Time is gold). Tempus fugit: Latin phrase meaning: Time flies.

10. Work.

He who wrote a book called Proverbs, some three thousand years ago, invites us to work like the ants do.

Proverbs, VI, 6-11.

The sluggard and the ant.

As in the fable, the ant teaches virtue.

Go to the ant, you sluggard;

consider its ways and be wise!

It has no commander,

no overseer or ruler,

yet it stores its provisions in summer

and gathers its food at harvest.

How long will you lie there, you sluggard?

When will you get up from your sleep?

A little sleep, a little slumber,

a little folding of the hands to rest —

and poverty will come on you like a thief

and scarcity like an armed man.

–

Work shall set you free.

Latin: Opus liberabit vos.

German: Arbeit wird euch frei machen.

Spanish: El trabajo os hará libres.

At the top of the gates of the Nazi concentration camps (Konzentrationslager or, abbreviated, KZ) it can be read in German: Arbeit macht frei: Work sets you free.

We must change the meaning of this phrase, which was an irony or mockery for human beings imprisoned there. This phrase, if you work well in either a business of your own, or for others in exchange for a salary or payment or fees, or if you work in a necessary job for yourself and/or your family, for example, unpaid work at home, or if you do an unpaid job, or you practice a hobby not for the money but for the sake of pleasure or as a pastime, the phrase becomes true: work sets you free.

If you believe that work enslaves you... Imagine not washing your clothes and you have a pile of dirty clothes, not washing your plates, pots, pans, et cetera... if you do not take out the trash or do not put trash in its place... Not to work is illogical.

That phrase of the Nazis must undergo a 180-degree turn, its meaning has to be reinterpreted to become an incentive in our fast-paced world of today, in our time, for our benefit.

Genesis, III, 19. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread ...”. It seems a curse. It is not.

In Latin: In Sudore vultus tui vesceris pane.

Proverbs, XIV, 23: All hard work brings a profit.

If you work as an employee, you will receive a salary or payment. If you are a technical or professional, you will receive fees. If you are a small businessman/businesswoman, or an entrepreneur, you will earn money. If you work at home, there will be no financial payment, but there will be other benefits for you and/or for your loved ones, your family: for example, they will have their clothes clean, cooked food (because you go to buy raw food and cook), et cetera.

In a reductionist sense of the anthroposophy oriented toward work, we can say that human beings are fundamentally eyes, brain, and hands. We see, learn & think, and work.

Labor omnia vincit (Latin). –It is the motto of the State of Oklahoma and of some universities and associations in the world. It means: Work conquers all.

–

Today, as yesterday, as always, there are new ways of working; some economists and sociologists call them disruptive.

The acceleration of changes, the globalized space and the technological knowledge provide instant power even to young people (who have not yet reached high school or college, for example).

Today, teachers, professors, writers, journalists, translators, editors, graphic designers, illustrators, publishers, photographers, videographers, distributors, developers, vendors, salesmen, and even psychologists, counselors, advisors, chefs, industrial designers, et cetera, thanks to personal computers (PCs), modems, the internet, and that wonderful part of the internet called world wide web (www) or simply, web, can work remotely; well, some of these professionals or employees can do so partially, at least.

Their counterparts can be students, readers, viewers, customers...

Also, you can play chess, dominoes, backgammon, checkers, Chinese checkers, et cetera, with people dwelling in Australia, for example, thanks to websites like games.yahoo.com/board

In duolingo.com or www.duolingo.com you can learn a second or a third language, for free.

Six out of the many characteristics brought by these sudden changes caused by disruptive technology are:

1) Instantaneity. Instantaneous communication –you can turn on your computer at any time of day. The web or www (a part of the internet), and the internet itself work all year round, day and night. This allows us to go faster.

ICT (information and communication technologies), communication networks and their integration with information technology, cybernetics, and ergonomics, have enabled the use of services that let communication and information transmission between physically remote locations, in a fast, instantaneous or nearly instantaneous way.

The French journalist, filmmaker, teacher, consultant and lecturer Francis Pisani (Paris, 1942- ) is the best popularizer of the word mobiquity or cellubiquity (an acronym composed of “mobility” and “ubiquity”, in French: mobiquité; in Spanish: movicuidad).

Apparently the creator of this new word is the Frenchman Xavier Dalloz, a specialist in new information and communication technologies (ICT).

Mobiquity has to do with anyone consulting the internet, surfing the web, browsing, et cetera, and not only at home or at the workplace or at an internet café or cybercafé, by using a personal computer (PC), but also anyone can do it in a café, in a burger business like McDonald's, in a park or urban garden, on the street, in your car, on the bus, et cetera, by using a cell phone or mobile phone, laptop, smart phone, tablet... you name it. You can surf the web, pay a visit to any website, et cetera, instantly, in what connoisseurs call real time.

2) Digitization. Firstly, we need to say that the real world is mainly an analogical world and not a digital world. The human brain is predominantly analogical, it works based on analogies, similarities; it uses continuous variables, and makes many comparisons. Analogical reasoning is a mental operation that gets a conclusion from premises in which it is established a comparison between different elements or groups of elements.

The constructivism of Jean Piaget (1896-1980, a Swiss epistemologist, psychologist and biologist, creator of the constructivist theory of learning) and Lev S. Vygotski or Vygotsky or Vigotsky (1896-1934, a Russian of Jewish origin psychologist), announces that the students must receive from their teachers, tools to create their own procedures to resolve a conflict, implying that his/her concepts or ideas be transformed, changed, and he/she continues to learn.

Moreover, any person (not necessarily a “student”, “alumnus” or “learner”) can come to understand concepts or things previously unknown, add, rearrange and recombine knowledge, based on what he/she knows since an hour, a day, a month, a year, five years, et cetera, and/or after reading to learn something new, and/or after an explanation given by a teacher or by “an occasional, spontaneous or sporadic professor or guru (id est, a perfect stranger explains what, how, why, what for, where… and we may not ever see him/her again in our lifetime). This unknown person can illustrate us in person, directly, or through one of their websites or blogs, or videos he/she may have uploaded to YouTube a month ago, two years ago, et cetera, the date does not matter, and so we need not to meet him/her. Learning is rather a matter of will. We must want to learn.

The digital world is faster and does not need so much blah-blah. Information travels through satellite, hertzian waves, optic fiber, copper wires, and wireless devices. Many students do not need going to the library to borrow a book and do their homework. Numerous books and papers have been digitized and uploaded to the famous, ubiquitous and pervasive web.

3) Penetration. This has to do with the popularity of a website. The “hits” or clicks or incidences that demonstrate how few or how many visits to a certain website have been paid. If a website has few visits a week or a day, that website has little penetration.

[Do you need to install a hit counter in your website?

Please, just type the following in the search box of Google:

install a hit counter in your website.

Then, click on several links and choose the one that best fits you.]

Theoretically, the penetration of a website can be in all areas (scientific, artistic, cultural, economic, educational, industrial, et cetera). The impact could possibly be extended to all societies worldwide.

In www.alexa.com and www.quantcast.com they keep records, “standings”, rankings and ratings of numerous web sites (exempli gratia, Google is the leader), while in technorati.com or www.technorati.com they keep records of many, many blogs.

4) Innovation. Do not let others leave you behind, learn something new every day, get more knowledge. At the same time, please innovate. You need not be a great scientist. Often ordinary people look for solutions easier and faster, and sometimes find them. Some argue that humanity must seek constant and continuous change.

5) Diversity. The benefits can be very diverse; please do not limit yourself to a mere interfamiliar or interfriendly communication, example when you watch a video of your favorite idol (singer) in Youtube, or upload to Facebook the most recent photograph of your daughter on her birthday number four. That's fine, and provides emotional satisfaction, but...

As in a game of table tennis, besides communication, id est, the information flow must be bidirectional or two-way is round, and rebound and re-rebound many times, this information must have a content and must be more utilitarian, more practical, and more scientific. Please leave trivial or family or irrelevant activities for your economic future, leave video games, or entertainment for your few or many spare moments. This is about using the web in a more practical, utilitarian, and even money-related way. With the information you have or you can get, you are creating new information. Information and knowledge are expanded and enriched as you juxtapose more data to information or knowledge.

To juxtapose means “to place side by side”

Then, the information can grow virtually or figuratively and not only by the way of juxtaposition*, but in a more strong and intimate way, the intussusception.**

* Juxtaposition: Way of increasing or agglomerating minerals, unlike plants and animals, which grown by means of intussusception.

**Intussusception: Way by which the organic beings grow by assimilating inwardly elements, unlike inorganic matter, which gets bigger only by juxtaposition.

6) Trends towards automation. One area where we have not made much progress and may not advance much is “trends toward automation,” because we may need to continue to apply, on a par with software and highly automated systems, something called “human-based computation” (HBC) “.

HBC automation and systems are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.

The link below will help you understand what “human-based computation” is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-based_computation

11. Self-diagnosis, almost “do it yourself”.

Carl Rogers (1902-1987) was an American influential psychologist, who originated the nondirective therapy.

The client-centered psychotherapy is the name of a psychotherapy framed in the humanistic psychology. The use of the word “client” –instead of “patient”– intends to emphasize a different semantic nuance, in view that a client still has the responsibility and freedom on the therapeutic process as an active agent, as opposed to “patient”, as the term indicates in its literal sense (“be patient with the problem”).

If you have health and luck, time will be enough for you to do more, and you will be a longeval individual.

When times become tough, please look for the support of family.

The family is the oldest institution of humanity. No other is as ancient as this one. The family has existed since the time of the caveman.

12. Prayer.

Prayer is the most powerful weapon that exists on the planet.

This phrase has come being repeated by religious people and priests for centuries.

In Google, the phrase: prayer is the most powerful weapon, gives us as a result, 7,000,000 websites.

Before and/or after asking God for someone or something, before and/or after prayer... you must act towards achieving a goal or purpose, an end, with the means we have at hand or with the ones we can and want to create. “God helps those who help themselves”, an old popular saying goes.

Every man is free to be Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Anglican, Pentecostal, interdenominational, Gideon, nondenominational Christian without ritual nor dogma, Jewish or Mosaic, Brahmanical or Hindu, Muslim, animist, agnostic, atheist, et cetera.

If you do not pray, if you do not like it, if you do not have time, if you do not believe in a God, at least ACT.

Sign of the Cross:

By the Sign + of the Holy Cross, from our + enemies free us, + O Lord, My God.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Hail Mary:

Hail Mary, Full of Grace,

The Lord is with thee.

Blessed are thou among women,

and blessed is the fruit

of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary,

Mother of God,

pray for us sinners now,

and at the hour of death.

Amen.

The Glory Be:

Glory be to the Father,

and to the Son,

and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning,

is now,

and ever shall be,

world without end.

Amen.

In order to read more, please go to:

http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/prayers/glory2.htm#ixzz2PqPATwFf

I affirm that the religion we, the faithful of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church, profess, is the only true one.

All of the prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. As “samples”, I am going to mention two “buttons”:

1) Micah, V, 1 → Luke, II, 4, about Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah.

2) Isaiah LXI, 1-2 → Luke, IV, 18-21: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.

“To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”

And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister and sat down.

And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

And he began to say unto them, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your eyes.”

-

Jesus raised his friend Lazarus, who had died four days earlier:

John, XI, 17, 39-44: Then when Jesus came, he found that he [Lazarus] had lain in the grave four days already. [...]

Jesus said, “Take ye away the stone.”

Martha, the sister of him that was dead, said unto him, “Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days”.

Jesus saith unto her, “Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?”

Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me

“And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.”

And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.”

And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin.

Jesus saith unto them, “Loose him, and let him go.”

In Matthew, XXVIII, 5-6, we can read: And the Angel answered and said unto the women, “Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.

“He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”

The Father raised his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, for several reasons: the New Covenant; because Christ fulfilled his messianic mission,* because he was obedient,** and preached, served and died to save humanity; because thus the Father demonstrated to the rebellious and ungrateful humanity that His Son is not only a prophet, philosopher, theologian, but he is the Son of God, and God,*** The Truth, and the Way, and the Life...

*John, XIX, 30: When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”: and he bowed his head, and gave up the spirit.

**Philippians, II, 8: ... he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

***John, I, 1-2: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

Galatians, I, 1: Paul, an apostle (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead).

Ephesians, I, 17-20: That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:

The eyes of your understanding be enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,

Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places…

I will quote something that Jesus Christ said, and something that James wrote.

The only begotten Son of God, according to John, XII, 8a, said, “For the poor always ye have with you…”

That is, there will be poor people until the end of the world... so that those of us who are no poor, or are less poor, help them.

In the house of his friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha in Bethany (a city of rest for Jesus Christ, a haven of peace, very different from Capernaum, Nazareth and Jerusalem), Jesus let Mary anointed his feet with an ointment of spikenard, but the other message conveyed to men of his time that were listening to him, and to men of the future, id est we, who can read what Saint John the Eagle of Patmos wrote, is: help the poor, love the poor, teach the poor, give drinking water to the poor, clothe the poor, feed the poor, listen to the poor, pay attention to the poor, do not despise the poor, et cetera.

James, II, 14-17. What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man said he hath faith, and have not works?, can faith save him?

If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,

And one of you say unto them, “Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled”; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?

Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

Some may say, what has been written in the Bible are stories, fantasies, or an ahistorical invention.

Well… Faith is a gift from God that not everyone receives.

Saint Peter, head of the Church in Jerusalem, can be considered the first pope, although the head of the Church was not yet called by that name. One title or another does not change the status of the head of the Church, as well as, for example, the chemical and physical properties of a chemical element as the vanadium –atomic number, 23– do not change but remain unalterable, immutable, no matter how many times you, a scientist, or the people rename it. The Spanish scientist and naturalist Andrés Manuel del Río F. who discovered it in 1801 in New Spain, in some minerals brought from Zimapán, in the nowadays State of Hidalgo, Republic of Mexico, firstly called this element as “pancromium”; later, “eritronium”.

Saint Peter was the pope number 1, and there have been 266 popes until today, April in the year of Our Lord 2013. The reigning Pope is Francis (former Argentinean cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 1936- ).

Others will recreate by pointing up that the Church has missed the way, that it amasses large fortunes, some bishops and archbishops tolerate pedophile priests, and they will mention, for example, Rodrigo Borgia (1431-1503), who reigned as Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503); but… do you know God's plans?

A great-grandson of Pope Alexander VI was a saint, Saint Francis Borgia, S.J., (1510-1572), the Fourth Duke of Gandía, a Spanish Jesuit, and third Superior General of the Society of Jesus.

A strange form of communication:

Contact someone you have not seen for many years.

         What has become of those of your friends from primary/elementary school?

         Where are those Kindergarten or preschool classmates whom you played marbles or other games in the school yard with?

         If you cannot contact them via Twitter, Linkedin, Orkut, Facebook, Google+, electronic mail or phone, because you do not know where they live or if they still live, pray, pray to God for them, leaden or sunny days, in mountain valleys, deserts, plains, coasts, jungles, forests, islands, and beaches, in towns and big cities…

         Where are now your former neighbors of the district, division, neighborhood, where you grew up and whom you have not seen in fifteen, 40 or 60 years? Because even you and/or they may have moved to another city or another country ... or to another world.

         Wherever they are, you can pray for them.

Finally, God is with the Church he founded, led on Earth by the legitimate successors of Saint Peter for two thousand years: Matthew, XXVIII, 18-20: And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

By Alejandro Ochoa G.
Guadalajara, State of Jalisco, Mexico.
Gvadalaxara, Xaliscum, Mexicum.

What do they have in common...?

1. Leonese Captain Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, called Guzmán The Goodman (in Spanish, Guzmán el Bueno) (1256-1309) and Madrilenian Colonel Jose Moscardó-Ituarte (1878-1956)?

They both were Spanish, and preferred that their enemies killed their respective sons rather than surrender.

In 1293, King Sancho IV of Castile and Leon, of the House of Burgundy, commissioned Guzmán el Bueno to defend the port city of Tarifa, on the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula. The infant rebel Don Juan, king's brother, ally with benimerines and nazaries (from Morocco), had seized a son of Guzman el Bueno and threatened to cut his throat if Guzmán did not surrender. The brave father, before not keeping his word and loyalty to his sovereign, threw his knife to the murderer so this one could fulfill his threat.

During the Spanish Civil War, on Thursday 07/23/1936, Colonel Jose Moscardó-Ituarte, who with the companion of about 1,100 armed men had taken possession of the Alcázar of Toledo (Toledo Fortress) two days earlier, answered a telephone call from the representative of the Frente Popular (Popular Front), and chief in Toledo of the Izquierda Republicana (Republican Left), Cándido Cabello, who informed him that he held prisoner Moscardó’s son, Luis Moscardó, and would shoot him if Colonel Moscardó did not surrender the Alcázar, within ten minutes. Moscardó, after a brief telephone conversation with his son, replied Cabello: "You can save yourself the time, because I will never surrender the Alcazar".

Cabello, seeing that the threats did not work out, sent the teenager Luis Moscardó to the Provincial Prison. A month later he was shot along with others imprisoned.

2. René Guillouzo, mayor from 1848 to 1870 of the port city of Saint-Nazaire, in the department of Loire-Atlantique, France, and the LOCOG, London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games [XXX Summer Olympics Games, London 2012]?

They display the wrong flags.

Mexican Empress Carlota* (1840-1927) [Marie Charlotte Amélie Augustine Victorie Clémentine Léopoldine de Belgique, princesse de Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha et impératrice du Mexique de 1864 à 1867], daughter of Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, first king of Belgium from 1831 to 1865, and Queen Consort Princess Louise Marie of France, of the House of Orleans, travelled to the Mexican port of Veracruz on July 13, 1866 to go on board the “Impératrice Eugenie” ship to sail to France, and then go to Paris to ask for help from the French emperor Napoleon III Bonaparte, and later to the Vatican in the Papal States, to speak to Pope Pius IX (Giovanni Mastai Ferretti), due to the serious problems the civil war or War of Reform was causing to her husband, Mexican Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg, and Mexican conservative aristocrats or notables.

* Wife of Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph Maria of Austria, emperor of Mexico from 1864 to 1867, of the House of Habsburg (1832-1867) [Erzherzog Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph Maria von Österreich, Kaiser von Mexiko von 1864 bis 1867, aus dem Haus Habsburg].

When docking the ship in the port of Saint-Nazaire, the mayor René Guillouzo, perhaps disoriented, accompanied by his City Council, did not had a Mexican flag, so he picked up a Peruvian flag and made one of his subordinates wave it to welcome to Mexican Empress Carlota and her small entourage.

This incident probably caused a disagreeable impression on the fragile mind of Carlota.

The XXX Summer Olympic Games London 2012 were held in London (capital of England and of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), from Wednesday, July 25 to Sunday August 12, 2012, although the opening ceremony and inaugural parade were on Friday July 27, 2012.

During the women's soccer tournament, on the first day, July 25, the flag of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) was shown by mistake in the large electronic display at Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland, before 20,150 spectators, instead of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (North Korea’s) flag. The North Korean eleven-soccer-footballer team left the grass field as a protest when they saw that the flag that had been displayed was the South Korea’s rather than their country’s.

The furious players refused to warm up while the wrong flag was displayed on the screen next to images of each of the athletes.

The start of the match between North Korea and Colombia was delayed for more than an hour. The game began after a correction of the error was made. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) had apologized for the blunder and said they would make their best efforts in order to prevent the mishap might be repeated.

North Korea beat Colombia 2-0 with two goals of forward Kim Song-Hui at 39’ and 85’.

However, the Organising Committee's statement had to be reissued and cast again, because they did not utilized the official titles of the nations –-as the ones used by the International Olympic Committee, IOC,, which are: "Republic of Korea" (for South Korea) and "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (for North Korea).

3. Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) and the Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva y Codorníu (1895-1936)?

They both were inventors and had to build many prototypes to improve their inventions.

Edison obtained 2,332 patents, 1,093 of them in the United States of America, and 1,239 in other countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany… Among other inventions seemingly of his own, * highlight the ticker for reporting stock quotes in Stock Exchanges, a mechanical vote recorder, electric car battery, phonograph, and several inventions related to the film industry.

* Apparently of his own, perhaps, because there are still many criticism toward Edison, in books and on the Internet, accusing him of being a copycat of the genuine works of inventors and plagiarist or thief of ideas and/or inventions.

About the alleged invention of the light bulb or incandescent lamp by Thomas Alva Edison:

Years 1879 and 1880.

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) did not invent the light bulb, but introduced to the market the first practical and commercially successful light bulb.

Some background and data about this invention were:

Alessandro Volta made a "bright wire" in 1800.

In 1806, Englishman Humphrey Davy showed to the Royal Society an "arc lamp" light, a blinding electric spark produced between two carbon rods and light like a welding torch, but it was too bright for use in homes or offices and also consumed a tremendous amount of power, so the batteries that powered the demonstration model of Davy were quickly exhausted.

In July 1835, Scottish inventor James Bowman Lindsay demonstrated a constant electric lamp at a public meeting in Dundee, Scotland. He said he could read a book at a distance of a foot and a half (45 centimeters). However, he did little to patent it or to further develop the gadget.

In 1840, Englishman William R. Grove inserted a platinum wire coil attached to two copper wires electrically charged within an inverted glass beaker placed in a container or bowl with distilled water. Grove said that the incandescent lamp emitted light "enough to read for hours."

In 1841, a British inventor named Frederick DeMoleyns patented a bulb using the same technique used in combination with platinum and coal burners, that became incandescent when an electric current was passing through them. In 1845, DeMoleyns improved his invention, to remove as much air as he could from the glass bulb, which helped to slow the rapid destruction of the metal filament.

In 1845, an American named J. W. Starr received a patent for a vacuum bulb in conjunction with a coal burner.

In 1859, electrical engineer and inventor Moses G. Farmer produced an incandescent platinum filament. At age 39, in that year, he was living in Salem, Massachusetts, and lit up the room of his house, at 11 Pearl Street, with incandescent lamps, this was the first house in the world lit by electric light; however, he and his wife were spiritualists and felt their talents were a gift from God, so they should not be credited to any of their own inventions, and did not continued their ideas to achieve commercial success. Farmer also co-invented a self-excitable dynamo and an electric generator.

Canadian inventor Henry Woodward and his partner, fellow Canadian Matthew Evans, patented a light bulb in 1874 in Canada, and later, in 1876 obtained U.S. Patent number 181.613 and, not having enough money to manufacture commercially the product, they sold the patent to Edison in five thousand dollars.

In 1877, American inventor William E. Sawyer built an apparatus and lighting system.

The English chemist and physicist Sir Joseph W. Swan presented in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, in 1878, a light bulb. He received a patent on November 27, 1880, which was the number 4933, after having improved the original design of the lamp. However, apparently none of Swan’s lamps proved practical for everyday use, one of the lamps used carbonized paper that quickly crumbled after a short time of use.

Thomas Alva Edison, hired in 1878 physicist and mathematician Francis R. Upton (1852-1921), from Princeton University, who also had gone to study in Germany with the "wise scientist" Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), a German physician and physicist, who recommended Upton before Edison, because he felt that Upton had great theoretical capabilities and could be just the kind of genius that Edison was looking for. Edison had many ideas, but being self-taught, needed someone with advanced knowledge of mathematics to make calculations and research scientific literature to help solve very difficult problems. Upton was crucial to Thomas Alva Edison. They worked together on many key inventions such as the incandescent lamp, the watt-hour meter, the distribution of a parallel circuit and the generator of constant voltage.

Upton went to work with other employees to obtain an efficient light bulb. One of the results of testing the properties of materials was the realization that any filament selected should have high electrical resistance. This revelation meant that Edison's team needed to prove or test only high strength materials to find the one they wanted.

On October 22, 1879, some employees of Edison saw that a thin “carbonized” cotton thread lasted lit for about thirteen and a half hours, during an experiment. Longer times were achieved with improved air extraction from bulbs, creating a better vacuum within these. They were testing more charred organic materials, and the Japanese bamboo was the best. At the end of the 1880s, Edison’s carbonized bamboo burners lasted up to 600 hours.

Edison continued to improve designs, and on November 4, 1879 filed for a U.S. patent, which was granted on January 27, 1880 under number 223,898, for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled “and connected to platinum contact wires.

The previous paragraph shows that Edison lacked the faculty his opponent had, the inventor of the electric coil or Tesla coil 1891, mechanical engineer and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla (Smiljan, a city then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today in Croatia, 1856-New York, 1943). Tesla was an ethnic Serb.

In 1882 Nikola Tesla moved to Paris, and in 1884, to New York.

In 1891, the great genius of physics and electricity, Nikola Tesla, invented the Tesla coil, which is an electrical resonant transformer, consisting of a series of coupled resonant circuits.

In 1892, he invented the alternating current motor (AC motor).

He was known for his many revolutionary inventions in the field of electromagnetism, developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern electric power by alternating current (AC), which proved to be superior to direct current (DC).

The stubborn Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) argued otherwise, saying that the direct current (DC) was superior or better than alternating current (AC).

Tesla was right.

The alternating current (AC) replaced the direct current (DC) in most instances of electricity generation and distribution, greatly expanding the range and improving the efficiency of electric energy distribution.

Edison used to built many prototypes of his inventions, Tesla instead had a faculty called "visual thinking"; he could visualize an invention in his mind with extreme precision, including all dimensions, before starting the construction phase. He did not use to draw diagrams or sketches, but he conceived all of his ideas and arrangements of parts of future devices only with his mind. He could even correct in his mind possible future failures of his inventions, before starting to make a prototype.

Murcia-born engineer Juan de la Cierva, who had to build about 120 prototypes until he got an excellent autogiro, like Edison, he had no "visual thinking".

4. Philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) and physicist and chemist Michael Faraday (1791-1867)?

They both were British, born in poor families and thanks to their intelligence and work managed to highlight in society.

John Locke, the father of empiricism and modern liberalism, who influenced Montesquieu, proposed that sovereignty emanates from the people [not from God],* that property, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are men’s natural rights, prior to the formation of society. The State has as main purpose to protect those rights, and also the individual freedoms of citizens.

* Locke's books were included in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the List of Prohibited Books, by the Roman Catholic Church.

The revolutionary independence founding fathers of the Thirteen Colonies, subject to the British Crown (George III, of the House of Hanover, was the King), such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, "the father of the U.S. Constitution," lavishly took advantage of the books by Englishman Locke to write the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), and the U.S. Constitution.

Michael Faraday discovered benzene and electromagnetic induction, and formulated the laws of electrolysis that bear his name. Thanks to his research, there was a breakthrough in the development of electricity by establishing that magnetism produces electricity through movement.

5. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956- ), president of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 2005, and Anthony Bourdain (1956- ), a food writer, chef, traveller and bon vivant?

They both wear suit or jacket but no tie (Bourdain wear ties in exceptional cases), and they were born the same year.

6. Germany Fuehrer Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz (1914-1998)?

They often read only a few of the first pages of a book, a few of the middle pages, and a few of the last pages

Hitler used to do that when he was young, in order to impress his friends. He memorized a few phrases and data from a book, and seemed to have read the whole book. And in many cases, Octavio Paz acted similarly, regarding reading only, not to bragging. His daughter Helena Paz narrates it that way in her Memoirs –I have to make it clear the she does not mention Hitler, in this case–. The Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz used to read a few pages of a book, and while saying “Read!” to himself, then he placed it on a table or desk, and swiftly took another book to do the same, to go onto a quick and incomplete reading.

Now, we can suppose that Paz did read many books thoroughly. Perhaps he chose some books for reading them completely, and discriminated others, as “bad books”, and these ones were read partially only.

7. Heraclitus, Plotinus, Copernicus, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Georg F. Handel, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig van Beethoven, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich W. Nietzsche, and Nikola Tesla?

They never married. Schopenhauer was a misogynistic. Some of the others did not want a wife and children that could take away some of their valuable time and concentration to create philosophical doctrines, rediscover heliocentrism,* invent the differential and integral calculus, write books, compose symphonies, invent electricity appliances, et cetera.

* Aristarchus of Samos (310 B.C.-230 B.C.), a Greek astronomer and mathematician, was, to our knowledge, the first individual to speak and write about the heliocentric model for the Solar System, 18 centuries before the Polish astronomer Copernicus did the same.

8. Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camoens (1524-1580), Spanish Princess of Eboli and Duchess of Pastrana, Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda (1540-1592) and English Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805)?

All three were one-eyed. They could see with their left eye only.

Camoens lost his right eye in a fight in Africa, where he lived in poverty, "supported by his friends", until he was found by his friend Diogo do Couto, who paid for his return trip to Lisbon, where he lived poor and sick. The Portuguese King Sebastian I of Avis conceded him a modest pension, which was always delivered late.

The very rich Princess of Eboli, the only daughter of a powerful Castilian family, lost his right eye during a fencing training. She had conflicts with the religious, doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, mystic and writer Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada, known as Teresa de Jesus, and also as Teresa de Avila, founder of the Discalced Carmelites. Ana de Mendoza entered a convent of that order, but she lived in a garden house, with her maidens, and had lockers to store clothes and jewels, also she had direct communication with the street and could go out at will.

English Admiral Horatio Nelson was shot in the face, in 1794, in Corsica, where he lost the sight in his right eye. On 07/25/1797, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a cannon shot hit him in the right elbow, which caused him to lose the lower half of the corresponding arm. He died in the last battle and triumph of his life, over the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar (in the Atlantic, off the Spanish province of Cadiz), on 10/21/1805.

9. Former U.S. Secretary of State Doctor Henry Kissinger (1923- ) and former Mexican President Doctor Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1948- )?

They both, after leaving Office, have been writing books.

Indeed, Doctor Kissinger has written many books since he was a young. Following, there are mentioned but a few:

Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957).

The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy (1961).

The Troubled Partnership: A Re-Appraisal of the Atlantic Alliance (1965).

American Foreign Policy: Three essays (1969).

A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-1822 (1973).

For the Record: Selected Statements 1977-1980 (1981).

Diplomacy (1994).

Does America Need a Foreign Policy? (2001).

On China (2011).

Doctor Salinas de Gortari has written: México: Un paso difícil a la modernidad (2000). Mexico: A Difficult Step to Modernity.

La Década Perdida, 1995-2006, Neoliberalismo y populismo en México (2008). The Lost Decade, 1995-2006, Neoliberalism and Populism in Mexico, and:

Democracia Republicana. Ni Estado ni mercado: una alternativa ciudadana (2010). Republican Democracy: Neither State nor Market: A Citizen Alternative.

10. American Jack Johnson, "The Galveston Giant" (Galveston, Texas, 03/31/1878-near Franklinton, North Carolina, 06/10/1946); Japanese Masao Ohba (Tokyo, 10/21/1949-ibidem, 01/25/1973), Argentinean Víctor Emilio Galíndez (Vedia, Buenos Aires Province, 11/02/1948-25 de Mayo, Buenos Aires Province, 10/25/1980), Mexican Salvador Sánchez-Narváez (01/26/1959-Federal Highway Querétaro-San Luis Potosí, 08/12/1982), Irish-American Billy Collins, Jr., (Nashville, Tennessee, 09/21/1961-Antioch, Tennessee, 03/06/1984), and Argentinean Carlos Monzón (San Javier, Río Negro Province, 08/07/1942-Los Cerrillos, Santa Rosa de Calchines, Santa Fe Province, 01/08/1995)?

All of the six were professional boxers and died in car accidents.

11. Hermes, Aphrodite, Gaia, Ares, Zeus, Cronus, Uranus, Poseidon, Hades, Helios and Selene?

They were Greek gods, and today…, nine planets, the Sun and the Moon would be called after them, should astronomers and tradition had chosen the Greek culture and not the Roman/Latin one for identification.

Notwithstanding, the Spanish scholar Elio Antonio de Nebrija (1441-1522) once said: "Language was always the companion of the Empire" (“Siempre fue la lengua compañera del imperio”) –referring specifically to the Spanish Empire, but his phrase could be extrapolated to any empire, and History tells us that the Romans or Latins were the conquerors of the Greeks, and not vice versa.

12. Colors violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red?

That these ones are the fundamental colors, and they form the visible spectrum to the human eye. The visible or solar spectrum is a tiny part of the very wide electromagnetic spectrum, and the seven colors are produced by the decomposition of white light, as demonstrated by Newton 300 years ago.

The wavelengths of visible light for the human eye range from 400 to 750 nanometers (nm), from violet to red, or from 4,000 to 7,500 angstroms (Å). Some sources indicate that this range goes from 390 to 700 nanometers (nm). Other sources indicate that this range goes from 380 to 740 nanometers (nm).

These seven colors are located between the invisible ultraviolet, with shorter wavelengths, and the invisible infrared, with longer wavelengths.

1 nanometer (nm) = 10 ^ -9 meters, id est: 0.000000001 m

1 angstrom (Å) = 10 ^ -10 meters, id est: 0.0000000001 m

A nanometer is one billionth of a meter:

10 ^ -9 m

A nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter:

10 ^ -6 mm

An angstrom is one ten-billionth of a meter:

10 ^ -10 m

An angstrom is one ten-millionth of a millimeter:

10 ^ -7 mm

The angstrom symbol: Å is obtained by pressing four keys: (ALT) 143, and in the Unicode System, firstly you need to type four characters: 00C5, that is, you type: “zero, zero, c, five” and then, with the cursor positioned immediately to the right of the fourth character (the “5”), you must press two keys: (ALT) X (press the “X” while holding down the ALT key).

The circumflex accent or caret, ^ is sometimes used in mathematics, computer programming, and in other areas or disciplines, to indicate raising to a power. In the present case, it is not used for grammatical purposes, but for a mathematical one, for example, if you state: 3.14159265 ^ 2, you are saying or asking to raise π (pi) squared; the result is 9.8696.

The circumflex accent or caret: ^ is obtained by pressing three keys (ALT) 94, and in the Unicode System, firstly you need to type four characters: 005E, that is, you write "zero zero five e", and with the cursor positioned immediately to the right of the fourth character (the “e”), press two keys: (ALT) X (press the "X" while holding down the ALT key).

People have been watching rainbows since the time of the cavemen.

In Genesis, IX, 12-17, we can read that God spoke to Noah, after the “universal” flood, about the installation of an arc (the rainbow) as a signal for perpetual generations: there would be no more floods.

Actually, the rainbows have existed for hundreds of millions of years, before the sharks * appeared in the seas.

* It is considered that the primitive sharks appeared in the Ordovician period (488-443 million years ago) of the Paleozoic era. They are survivors of the five mass extinctions, and are older than most animals, including all land animals, trees, and insects!

From an airplane, the rainbow can be seen as a complete circumference, but often the colors are faded; up there, a rainbow can be seen even as a circumference of white light.

In a rainbow, the arc with the larger diameter is red, and the arc with the smaller diameter is violet, but when there are two rainbows simultaneously, in the second rainbow, the colors are reversed: the larger diameter arc corresponds to violet, and the smaller diameter is red.

Also the moonlight (which is actually light from the Sun, reflected by Selene) can produce rainbows, but these are more strange, and rarely can be seen.

The rainbow, or iris, is an arc of (primordially seven) colors that sometimes forms in the clouds, when the Sun (or the Moon), behind the viewer, refracts and reflects its light in the rain. This phenomenon of decomposition of the white light can also be watched in the waterfalls, and in the fogs or mists of dew sunlit in certain positions. You can take your home hose, open the spigot, stand with your back to the Sun, and create an ad hoc spray, to produce your own “personal rainbow”.

“Conventional wisdom”, when followed the teachings of ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle* (384 B.C.-322 B.C.), argued that white light is the purest form of light, but some 300 years ago the English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), placed a glass prism in the path of a sunbeam and demonstrated that sunlight decomposes in a spectrum,  projected on the wall very close to the place where Newton was stood. People were seeing rainbows for millennia, but considered them little more than “pretty aberrations”, or “attractive curiosities”.

Newton concluded that, really, these seven colors: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red and the gradations between them, were the primary colors, id est, white light is not as “pure” as it looks. What seemed simple on the surface, a beam of white light was, if one looked carefully, beautifully complex.

* Often, Aristotle held erroneous knowledge. Aristotle argued, for example, that the eels were asexual and originated on earth, that man has five senses: hearing, touch, taste, smell, sight, although some scientists have proposed eight additional senses, and a number of scientists have accepted six. 1 nociception or nocioception or nociperception, 2 equilibrioception or sense of balance, 3  kinesthesia, 4 thermoception, 5 interoception, 6 proprioception, 7 magnetoception, 8 electroreception.

It is debated whether human beings have the last two or not.

Homing pigeons do possess magnetoception. The sense of magnetoception allows them to detect the Earth's magnetic field to perceive direction, altitude and location.

Also, the magnetotactic bacteria, the fruit fly, and some bats, possess this sense.

Regarding electroreception, some fish such as lampreys, sharks, including hammerheads, and rays (known in some countries as stingrays) possess it.

Also the strange mammal called platypus has it.

You can find some articles written about several of the “new” senses:

http://www.answers.com/topic/sense

Likewise, the Wikipedia in English mentions some of these, as individual items, articles, or entries.

Kindly go to www.google.com and please type in the search box, the word “Wikipedia” (without quotation marks) and the name of the (“old” or “new”) sense you want to look for; then press “Enter”, and voilà.

That being said, we have to mention the so-called sixth sense: intuition.* But physicians, neurologists and psychologist have not reached an agreement on it, yet. Who knows? In Italian: Chi lo sa?

*Intuition: “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference”.

Nevertheless, we must be lenient with Aristotle, since he lived some 2366 years ago, and science was not then what it is today (truism).

The American rock singer-songwriter Alice Cooper (his real name is Vincent Furnier [Detroit, Michigan, 1948- ]) recorded in 1976 for the Warner Brothers Record Company a long-play record, titled Alice Cooper Goes to Hell.

The song number 5 from the B side of the vinyl record is called “I'm Always Chasing Rainbows”, composed circa 1917 by J. McCarthy and H. Carroll, and published in 1918 by Robbins Music Corporation Company.

In YouTube there are versions by Judy Garland (1922-1969), Alice Cooper, Barbra Streisand (1942- ), and other singers.

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Please, excuse me for any spelling and grammar errors. Spanish is my mother tongue.

For a Spanish version of the above text, please click here.

By Alejandro Ochoa G.
Guadalajara, State of Jalisco, Mexico, on Monday, the 1st. day of April, 2013.
Gvadalaxara, Xaliscum, Mexicum, Lunae dies, I/IV/MMXIII.