Great article I found:

Fixing this US immigration policy folly

His mother and father brought him to the US in 1996. They entered legally on a tourist visa, then overstayed, settling outside Tampa. They had been professional people back in Mexico, a dentist and a veterinarian, but that didn't mean they earned enough to feed their family. 

Godínez-Samperio says his parents were "escaping economic disaster". He was nine years old.
Godínez-Samperio learned English in a year and became an honors student, an Eagle Scout, valedictorian of his high school and winner of a scholarship to study anthropology at university. Unlike his colleagues, who liked to kick back with a few beers at the local dive, he spent weekends reading. 

"I didn't have the luxury of being an average student," he says. "I worked all the time because I never knew if it would be my last semester." 

That's not an exaggeration: technically, Godínez-Samperio could be subject to detention and deportation. Yet he's never tried to conceal his status. 

His law school application essay was pointedly titled "The Consequences of My Criminal Childhood". He even appeared before a committee of Florida senators to testify in favor of the Dream Act, which would allow the undocumented immigrant children brought to the US as minors to be given permanent residency if they either join the military or enroll in higher education. He told the senators: "I am undocumented, unapologetic and unafraid." His mentor (and now his lawyer), a former American Bar Association president, Talbot D'Alemberte, says he's "just the kind of person we want to be a citizen and a lawyer". 

Godínez-Samperio's career is now on hold, waiting for the Florida supreme court, the state's ultimate legal arbiter, to decide his fate. 

He's not alone. As Congress and the courts try to untie the Gordian knot of immigration policy, other young people find themselves stuck: 28-year-old New Yorker César Vargas, who has been in the US since he was five, has passed the bar exam but does not yet know if he'll get a license. In California, Sergio Garcia – who crossed the border at the ripe old age of 17 months – has been certified to practice law. But California's supreme court, which recently announced it would hear his case, will ultimately decide the question of whether an undocumented person who has been allowed to take the bar exam in the first place and passed a"determination of moral character" test to boot, can be denied a chance to put those hard-won qualifications to work. 

You would think (hope, even) that though it's an election year, the untenable position in which talented young people such as Vargas, Garcia and Godínez-Samperio find themselves might spur a grown-up conversation about what to do concerning the 10-11 million undocumented people already in the US working and paying taxes, and the children they carried with them – children who grow up as American as everyone else. 

Alas, you would be disappointed. The right continues to raise the Spanish-speaking spectre of "an invasion force from Mexico that'll take over the country", as one radio demagogue put it, never mind that illegal immigration has been in decline for the last couple of years, and deportations in the Obama administration have increased. Trumped-up fears of brown hordes taking our jobs and indoctrinating our children in the revolutionary ways of Emiliano Zapata, Hugo Chávez and Che Guevara are bread and butter to the Republican party, especially its Tea Party tendency....

Read the rest here!

Video: Amazing Coating For Bottles' Interiors Lets Ketchup Flow Like Water

Way too cool to pass it up!

LiquiGlide, developed by a team at MIT's Varanasi Research Group, is a surface coating that liberates the notoriously non-Euclidean fluid ketchup from its glass- or plastic-walled prison. The research came in second in MIT's $100K Entrepreneurship Challenge, and is almost certainly destined for a bottle near you. Watch its graceful performance below in a video from Fast Co.Exist.


Watch the video, here!

Un intento de comprender el dilema económico

Excelente artículo del períodico el País de España por Gabriel Jackson:

"Si nos atenemos a criterios de libertad política, oportunidades educativas y de trabajo, la mejora de la sanidad y la variedad de las actividades de ocio, el periodo entre 1945 y 1990 fue seguramente el mejor de la historia para Europa occidental, Escandinavia, los países de habla inglesa, Japón y un puñado de países asiáticos más pequeños. Además, el recuerdo reciente de las atrocidades cometidas por nazis y japoneses en la guerra, los bombardeos masivos angloamericanos sobre las ciudades alemanas y los desplazamientos de masas de poblaciones civiles desarmadas a manos de los alemanes y los soviéticos generó un poderoso sentimiento de que jamás debía volver a producirse un comportamiento de ese tipo. Después de los horrores de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, tanto los dirigentes conservadores como los liberales y los socialistas pensaron que era no solo posible sino necesario proporcionar una vida con condiciones económicas decentes y una situación de paz y justicia social."...

Lo pueden leer completo acá Link!.

Opinion Article

We Agree About Europe by Ed Balls and Peter Mandelson 

"The coming months are critical for the future of Europe. Jobs and business investment – in Britain and across the euro area – depend on Europe's leaders choosing the right course.

The risk is that Europe gets locked into a false choice between growth and deficit reduction. The truth is that we need the right combination of both – action now to get Europe's economies growing and creating jobs, tough medium-term action to get public finances back into shape and a long-term strategy for increasing the continent's productivity and skills base.

It is true that the two of us disagreed on the case for British membership of the single currency. We agree, however, that the single currency needs to survive and succeed – and we are worried that Europe has so far identified only half the solution. There is a real danger that binding countries into ever larger cuts and tax rises to meet the new structural deficit and debt targets will become self-defeating, economically and politically.

A collective strategy that is choking off demand is compounding Europe's problems – just as it has done in Britain, where our economic recovery has stalled. Investors are now worrying that the policy mix has become unbalanced, to the detriment of economic recovery. We need a new strategy that permits a more sustainable approach to debt reduction through growth and long-term fiscal responsibility."

You can read the rest here.

This is the final entry of the Book of Five Ring review the previous ones can be found Part 1 and Part 2!

The Book of Five Rings            

The edition we utilized was a translation made by a master of karate, Stephen F. Kaufman, although the book is readily available in many editions, and is even online (http://www/samurai.com/5rings and http://www.miyamotomusashi.com/gorin.htm, for example).            

Musashi's masterpiece is a deceivingly short and simple book. Besides a brief introduction in which the author presents himself and explains how the book is organized, the Book of five Rings is divided into five parts, hence the five “rings”: The Book of Earth, the Book of Water, the Book of Fire, the Book of Wind, and the Book of Nothing. The four elements, as well as the void, represent metaphorically the teachings presented in each book.            

The Book of Earth lays the ground for the entire book. It deals with the general aspects of martial arts, strategy and training, which is seen as building a house from the ground up. Musashi discusses the different weapons, such as the naginata (a type of halberd) and the katana. The former is best for the field, while swords are more versatile and useful both indoors and outdoors. He also talks of the bow and guns, the latter having been introduced in Japan recently by the Portuguese. Although the gun is the most powerful, it is not as accurate as the bow, and is practically useless in close combat, at least in the case of guns available at the time he wrote the book.            

The Book of water deals with more intangible aspects of strategy, such as spirituality, religion, and balance. He stresses the importance of a proper stance and a penetrating gaze. He then discusses the different attitudes to adopt when fighting: Upper, middle, lower, left, and right. Just like water flows and always finds an opening, the warrior should be like water.            

The Book of Fire goes into the actual mechanics of combat, and the best ways to take advantage of specific situations, or place the enemy at a disadvantage. Armor, terrain, the presence of buildings, sun and wind, are all factors to evaluate before initiating combat. Exploiting the weaknesses of your opponent, such as moving towards his weaker side, or forcing him to enter into difficult terrain are examples of actions that the warrior can take to get the upper hand. Timing is very important. An easy way to dictate combat is to take the initiative, although sometimes waiting for an opening can be equally fruitful.            

The Book of Wind has to do with other schools that existed during Musashi's time and of the ways to counter them. /the main lesson to derive from this book is that it is important to know the enemy as much as possible. Knowing the enemy is also a way of knowing oneself. A central observation that Musashi makes is that other schools are concerned only with sword-fencing, while his Ichi school looks at strategy more broadly and holistically.            

The Book of Nothing is the shortest and perhaps the most difficult to understand, as it refers to the philosophical underpinnings of mastering a martial art, or truly anything. Constant practice is the way to elevate your awareness until thinking is bypassed and real understanding is achieved.             “The spirit of the universe is an emptiness which is nothing. Man can have no understanding of this place. It exists and is, but yet it is not. If you know something, you know something. If you do not know something, it does not exist in your world. In the universe, nothing-ness is not a thing that is true and not a thing that is not true”.            

The style of this book is similar to the koan of Buddhist masters, short paradoxical tales that are intended to startle the listener and bypass rational thinking, opening the way for a deeper, intuitive understanding. The goal is to achieve satori, or enlightenment.            

“Perfection is all there is and when you come to realize this, you will have understood my Way of strategy and the Way of the warrior, at which time you can forget about it and just be 'it'. Best to have it put this way. Simply be!”            

The Book of Five Rings remains even today a basic work for those approaching, not only Kendo, but any martial art, be it as a beginner or as an expert. It is an enduring classic that has applications outside of the field of martial arts and military strategy. Many Japanese politicians and business leaders have well-worn copies of Musashi's Book of Five Rings together with Sun Tzu's Art of War.

This is the follow up entry to my previous blog! Read the previous one HERE!

Miyamoto Musashi

Musashi, whose real name was Shinmen Takezo, was born in Miyamoto, a village in Mimasaka Province. He was the son of Shinmen Munisai, himself a distinguished martial artist. Around the age of seven, his father apparently died, so his education was entrusted to an uncle, Dorinbo, a Buddhist priest. With him he learned to read and write, as well as the tenets of Buddhism.

Musashi fought his first duel at the age of thirteen, an unusually early age for combat and probably against the will of his uncle. He emerged victorious. A couple of years later, he would begin a life of wandering, that would lead him to participate in some 60 duels and six battles, including the Battle of Sekigahara (on the losing side), won by Tokugawa Ieyasu and that gave rise to the Tokugawa bakufu or shogunate. However, Musashi won every single duel in which he participated.

In his combats, Musashi would come to espouse the idea of fighting both with the katana and the wakizashi. More generally, he was ready to confront the enemies with whatever he happened to have available, be it a bokken (a wooden sword used for training), a boat's oar, or even his bare hands. His school of combat was known as Ni-ten ichi-ryu, or “Two Heavens, One Style”.

Musashi believed that a real strategist had to be a well-rounded person, and not stop at learning how to use his weapons and military strategy (although he believed in constant practice). For that reason, he became an accomplished craftsman in several areas, as painter, sculptor, calligrapher, metalworker, even poet.

He wrote the book Go rin no sho after he turned sixty and finished it shortly before his death at the age of sixty-two.