Diálogos Transatlánticos

Last night I went to the closing panel of the Transatlantic Dialogues seminar series organized by the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at New York University. The event had so many big names in international politics that security was really tight. I had to bring a copy of my R.S.V.P. confirmation along with my university ID. People had to pass through a metal detector while their bags were searched.

The panel’s moderator was Baltasar Garzón, judge magistrate in the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s highest criminal court. The panel consisted of the following people:

Felipe González, former Spanish president
Álvaro Uribe, president of Colombia
Ernesto Zedillo, former Mexican president
Henry Kissinger, former U.S. secretary of state and national security advisor

Overall it was a great panel. Each one of the panelists expressed some great insights, but what made the debate really interesting was the exchange between Uribe and González. Uribe seemed like the more tactical of the two, using carefully measured words to show how well Colombia is doing because of his policies. Having had the first turn to speak, he more or less framed the debate by listing five elements he believes a modern democracy should have:

• democratic security
• respect for individual liberties
• social cohesion
• independence of governmental institutions
• transparency

These are all things, according to Uribe, that are being worked for in Colombia. He also made a comment about how it isn’t practical to divide Latin America in political rights and lefts. González responded to that saying that most of the time when he heard someone say such a thing, they most likely were from the political right. That sort of woke up the crowd and González received a round of applause for it.

González’s style was a nice contrast to Uribe’s. He seemed more spontaneous and better at sparking people’s emotions. He was definitely the more quotable of the two, saying things like (I’m paraphrasing, or course):

The people on the left know how to distribute wealth, but they don’t know how to create it. People on the right know how to create wealth, but don’t know how to distribute it.

and:

… A government should be just like those spectacular bodies we see in Ipanema (Brazil): not an ounce of excess fat, but no skeleton either.

In that last comment he was specifying what he meant by the need of big governments; not a huge bureaucratic government, but an agile government capable of swiftly meeting the needs of the country and the people.

I’m going to close this post with another one of González’s quotable moments, one that got a nice reaction from the crowd:

A leftist demagogue is a disaster, but a rightist demagogue is truly something to be feared.

I’ll post tomorrow about Zedillo and Kissinger.

Mindless self-indulgence

I like to think that I’m well read, though I’m still a long way from being able to substantiate that. During most of my spare time I like to read stuff that will make use of my critical abilities, but sometimes I find myself reading stuff so inane as to probably lower my IQ. This is a “nutritional” fact of my brain: I may have The Birth of Tragedy as dinner, but I still need dessert.

Case in point, this weekend I got no work done because I felt a bit mentally drained. It also didn’t help that I had an overbearing impulse to procrastinate. My main tool of procrastination was this hilarious blog called velumptuous. I feel like I know these women well, if only because I can empathize with all the drinking.

But I digress.

During the whole Thanksgiving debacle (see fear and loathing) we had a sort of debate on what to do with your free time. Luis and Eric (the huge pothead) are always having these spontaneous debates, in which I acted as the unofficial moderator for most of them while they were here.

Eric argued for doing creative stuff that stimulates the mind in order to relax, while Luis argued for the opposite. His idea of relaxing is what we like to call the “sports fan” way of relaxation: sit down on the couch with a beer in one hand, the remote control in the other, and just watch some TV, snacks optional.

Both their positions were a little more specific than the above. Eric argued that video games are a good way to stimulate the mind and relax, while Luis thought that watching baseball is a good way to relax. While video games have been shown to improve hand-eye coordination in some tasks that need precision, there is still not enough empirical data to suggest that video game players have significantly better hand-eye coordination than non-video game players. As for watching baseball, I guess it helps develop patience (I find baseball to be a very slow game, so I’m obviously biased against it).

My take on all of this is that in order to relax people should do things that bring out their creative side as much as they can. It definitely helps to keep the mind and the senses sharp. I agree with Eric on this, specially with his example of when he improvises with his guitar. Now, I also agree with Luis for the reason that the mind has its limits, endurance-wise. The mind can’t keep churning out creativity all the time. It gets to the point where you shut down all critical thought and just take in mindless entertainment. That’s when baseball kicks in, or in my case, lying down and listening to music or reading random blogs on the internet.

Fear and loathing in New York

Except for that random post yesterday (eventually it will be explained), I haven’t written anything in the last two weeks, and with good reason.

No, not really.

The only reason I have is that three of my friends from home, Luis, Adrian, and Eric, came for Thanksgiving. Last week was a very interesting and ridiculous week. I haven’t eaten so much pizza in such a short period of time. I haven’t smoked so much pot in such a short period of time. I haven’t drunk so much coffee in such a short period of time (yeah, we didn’t do anything worse than that).

Some memorable things from last week were our outings to Times Square and the Museum of Natural History. Going out is just going out, but going out drunk and stoned is a whole new experience. Both places have their charm for the altered mind.

Times Square is so lit up that it’s almost a sure thing you’ll go on a trip just looking around. We went there smoked up and drunk on cheap wine we bought near my dorm. We started walking around, the lights being too damn bright for us to handle. For some odd reason I had “Set yourself on fire” by Stars playing in my mind. It’s safe to say lots of lights and drugs and alcohol don’t mix well. Still, they make for interesting experiences. The worst off of us was Luis. He got lost twice, wandered into Virgin Records, came out and then passed out in front of a Duane Reade. And before all that he stole a pretzel from some random cart and then proceeded to go into a hotel/apartment building. Apparently he was trying to convince the concierge that his dad was staying there in order to be let in. That obviously failed.

After walking around some more we hit the “munchies” phase. We went into a McDonald’s to eat and rest for a bit. Luis and Adrian bought way too much food while Eric was in the bathroom puking his insides. Even though he’s a huge pothead, Eric is very lightweight when it comes to alcohol. The only thing he handles well is beer.

So a few days later we went to the Museum of Natural History. Going drunk and stoned there is a sort of intellectual trip. The thing we were most interested in seeing was the Rose Center for Earth and Space. They have this thing called the Cosmic Pathway that shows how the universe formed since the Big Bang. An interesting thing we found was a little box describing the red shift phenomenon, which is important to know in order to understand why the assertion is made that the universe is expanding. It seems the people that made the exhibit thought that was extremely important because we found the same box describing the red shift at least four times. We thought that the fact that it appeared so many times was prove of how bad people’s attention spans really are. It’s ridiculous that it should appear so much, but then again, the regular attention span is horrible.

Thanksgiving weekend set me back greatly on my school work. I have to get ready for a group presentation for my neural bases of language class. I also have a ton of homework for German. I’ve neglected my workbook for quite some time. It’s biting me in the ass now that we have to have it done by Friday. ugh…