El conflicto de la propiedad

Los hombres modernos tendemos a querer poseer todo lo que nos rodea. De alguna manera nos sentimos inferiores, desprotegidos y vacíos si no tenemos posesiones. Sin embargo estamos tan acostumbrados que ya buscamos poseer de una manera que parece casi natural. El problema de poseer es que implica un grado de responsabilidad que en algunos casos se prefiere compartir la posesión con otros y no por el deseo de ver que todos lo posean sino porque la responsabilidad sería invivíble, como sería ser dueño del aire y administrarlo, como el aficionado sería dueño del estadio, tal vez hasta con el mundo entero sería mejor compartirlo.

Así poseer se vuelve una carga que sin responsabilidad conduce a la avaricia, la miseria y la locura. Creer/Querer poseer a una persona nos orilla a tener miedo sobre todas las relaciones necesarias que establece con otros entes reales, imaginarios y demás seres humanos al grado de sentir celos y miedo a la perdida cada que esa persona entra en contacto con otros entes.

Una vez que aceptamos que nada pertenece a nadie en realidad, y que la posesión en sí, no es más que la idea de poseer, nos liberamos del yugo de vivir con la carga de otros seres humanos, en la medida que nos entendamos como parte de un todo de partes libres podremos disfrutar al máximo de todo y de todos con la plena confianza de que no perderemos jamás nada.

10 Geeky Laws That Should Exist, But Don’t

(By: Wired.com)

There are many, many laws having nothing to do with government that are useful to know because they tell you something about how the universe works. There are Newton’s laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics, Boyle’s Law, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, among many. Most of these laws have been known for a long time, but it wasn’t until a mere 19 years ago that Godwin’s Law was written.
If you’ve ever been involved in a discussion on Usenet, or have been following politics in the past decade or so, you’ve probably encountered Godwin’s Law. While Godwin’s Law is, alas, as true today as it was then, it seems unfortunate that there aren’t more widely accepted axioms to help us geeks define the characteristics of our world.
To that end, then, here are 10 geeky laws (axioms) that should exist, but don’t … at least, they didn’t until now:

xkcd © Randall Munroe

xkcd © Randall Munroe

1. Munroe’s Law: A person in a geeky argument who can quote xkcd to support his position automatically wins the argument. This law supersedes Godwin, so that even if the quote is about Hitler, the quoter still wins.
2. Lucas’s Law: There is no movie so beloved that a “special edition,” prequel or sequel cannot trample and forever stain its memory.
3. Tolkien and Rowling’s Law: No reasonably faithful movie adaptation of a book will ever be quite as good as the book it adapts. Thus great movie adaptations can only be made out of truly amazing books.
4. Somers and McCarthy’s Law: There is no dangerous unscientific theory so preposterous that no celebrity will espouse and advocate it.
5. Jobs’s Law: No matter how well last year’s cool tech gadget still works, it will seem utterly inadequate the moment the new version comes out.
6. Savage and Hyneman’s Law: Blowing stuff up is fun. Blowing stuff up in the name of science is AWESOME.

Photo: Shawn Zamechek

Photo: Shawn Zamechek

7. Starbucks’ and Peet’s Law: C8H10N4O2, better known as caffeine, is the most wonderful chemical compound known to humankind. If the field of chemistry had never identified or produced a single other useful compound, caffeine alone would be justification enough for its existence.
8. Wilbur’s Law: Bacon makes everything better.
9. Comic Book Guy’s Law: There is no detail of a movie too brief or inconsequential to become the subject of an hours-long diatribe.
10. The Unified Geek Theory: At present, the President of the United States, the wealthiest person in the United States, and the most trusted newscaster in the United States are all geeks. At the same time, movies based on comic book characters are routinely taking in hundreds of millions of dollars. The only reasonable conclusion is: We’ve won!
Got any good ones we missed? Please list them in the comments.

Velocidad

Hay quien en el mismo día ama, odia, termina y empieza algo nuevo. No se dan tiempo de enfrentar el dolor, de entender que mientras los cimientos sigan temblando lo que se construya se moverá.

De todos modos no los juzgo, soportar sin decir nada es aún más dificil, que cubrirse la cara con las manos de alguien más. Tal vez es la manera como se debe construir, con un poco de miedo y certezas a la vez, pero por lo menos esta tarde, prefiero respirar profundo y esperar.

Los mejores deseos a los que cierran los oídos a la razón y escuchan con fé a sus corazones porque es de ellos la eterna pasíon de un amor sin frenos. Puede ser que se consuman así mismos para siempre, puede que valga la pena. No lo sé.

De los sueños que vuelven

De entre todos mis miedos,
extrañezas y sueños,
ente mis tristezas y penas,
surgen momentos negros.

Cuando en magia se vuelven,
los dias fríos e inciertos,
enamoradas golondrinas,
cubren con blanca paz los techos.

En donde no había armonía,
y de colores opacos se ve,
el resplandor de mejores noches,
atrapada en los brazos de ayer.

De tanto en tanto se resuelve,
y llamas mi nombre al cantar,
evocas en nuestro mundo nuestro tiempo,
más un recuerdo que una realidad.

Me buscas, me encuentras,
intentas escapar,
acostumbrada a mis manos,
otras no quieres tomar.

Pero aún así las tomas,
intentas escapar,
a veces lo lográs,
a veces no podrás.

Otro día de luz y sombra,
y otro eterno siempre o jamás,
sólo en la espera me nombras,
quizas ya no lo hagas más.

Cuantos versos te detienen,
que palabras dicen más,
si los suspiros que me lloras,
el silencio que me das.

Urinal protocol vulnerability

(By: xkcd)

When a guy goes into the bathroom, which urinal does he pick?  Most guys are familiar with the International Choice of Urinal Protocol.  It’s discussed at length elsewhere, but the basic premise is that the first guy picks an end urinal, and every subsequent guy chooses the urinal which puts him furthest from anyone else peeing.  At least one buffer urinal is required between any two guys or Awkwardness ensues.
Let’s take a look at the efficiency of this protocol at slotting everyone into acceptable urinals.  For some numbers of urinals, this protocol leads to efficient placement.  If there are five urinals, they fill up like this:

The first two guys take the end and the third guy takes the middle one.  At this point, the urinals are jammed — no further guys can pee without Awkwardness.  But it’s pretty efficient; over 50% of the urinals are used.
On the other hand, if there are seven urinals, they don’t fill up so efficiently:

There should be room for four guys to pee without Awkwardness, but because the third guy followed the protocol and chose the middle urinal, there are no options left for the fourth guy (he presumably pees in a stall or the sink).
For eight urinals, the protocol works better:

So a row of eight urinals has a better packing efficiency than a row of seven, and a row of five is better than either.
This leads us to a question: what is the general formula for the number of guys who will fill in N urinals if they all come in one at a time and follow the urinal protocol? One could write a simple recursive program to solve it, placing one guy at a time, but there’s also a closed-form expression.  If f(n) is the number of guys who can use n urinals, f(n) for n>2 is given by:

The protocol is vulnerable to producing inefficient results for some urinal counts.  Some numbers of urinals encourage efficient packing, and others encourage sparse packing.  If you graph the packing efficiency (f(n)/n), you get this:

This means that some large numbers of urinals will pack efficiently (50%) and some inefficiently (33%).  The ‘best’ number of urinals, corresponding to the peaks of the graph, are of the form:

The worst, on the other hand, are given by:

So, if you want people to pack efficiently into your urinals, there should be 3, 5, 9, 17, or 33 of them, and if you want to take advantage of the protocol to maximize awkwardness, there should be 4, 7, 13, or 25 of them.
These calculations suggest a few other hacks.  Guys: if you enter a bathroom with an awkward number of vacant urinals in a row, rather than taking one of the end ones, you can take one a third of the way down the line.  This will break the awkward row into two optimal rows, turning a worst-case scenario into a best-case one. On the other hand, say you want to create awkwardness.  If the bathroom has an unawkward number of urinals, you can pick one a third of the way in, transforming an optimal row into two awkward rows.
And, of course, if you want to make things really awkward, I suggest printing out this article and trying to explain it to the guy peeing next to you.
Discussion question: This is obviously a male-specific issue.  Can you think of any female-specific experiences that could benefit from some mathematical analysis, experiences which — being a dude — I might be unfamiliar with?  Alignments of periods with sequences of holidays? The patterns to those playground clapping rhymes? Whatever it is that goes on at slumber parties? Post your suggestions in the comments!
Edit: The protocol may not be international, but I’m calling it that anyway for acronym reasons.