| |
 |
Tuesday, July 2, 2002 |
Very senior sources in the Venezuelan government told STRATFOR on July 1 that President Hugo Chavez has sent a personal message to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi requesting a $5 billion government-to-government bridge loan. The appeal allegedly was sent after International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials said they would not grant Venezuela a $3.5 billion loan until substantial policy reforms were carried out.
8:14:42 PM 
|
|
 35 artists from an online community collaborated to create a mosaic of graphic tiles to benefit United Cerebral Palsy. Each tile was created knowing only a thin border of the neighboring tile - see how the final artwork blends together to form a unified statement of art and expression.
[From Maccentral]
3:02:49 PM
|
|
Statisticians Count Euros and Find More Than MoneyWhile the euro is worth the same in every country that uses it, each one mints its own euro coins, with a distinctive design on the reverse. Every time a euro coin from Finland appears in Greece, for example, it provides a tiny but precise data point about the relationship between the countries. [From New York Times]
11:55:35 AM
|
|
Study Warns of Stagnation in Arab Societies. A lack of political freedom, the repression of women and an isolation from the world of ideas are crippling Arab societies, a new report says. By Barbara Crossette.
"Arabs today feel monitored," he said, attributing a decrease in intellectual freedom to the growing power of a lower middle class whose members are literate but not broadly educated.
This group shows "its lack of hospitality to anyone of free spirit, anyone who is a dissident, anyone who is different," he said.
Mr. Ajami said that for many Arab intellectuals the only option has been exile. "There is a deep, deep nostalgia today in the Arab world," he said. "Societies looking ahead and feeling a positive movement never succumb to nostalgia."
Above all, there is no movement in politics, he said. Rulers, even elected, stay in power for life and create dynasties. "People just don't know how to overthrow, how to reform, how to change them." [New York Times: NYT HomePage]
11:53:47 AM
|
|
143-Year-Old Problem Still Has Mathematicians GuessingIn the early years of the 20th century, the great British mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy used to take out a peculiar form of travel insurance before boarding a boat to cross the North Sea. If the weather looked threatening he would send a postcard on which he announced the solution of the Riemann hypothesis. Hardy, wrote his biographer, Constance Reid, was convinced "that God [~] with whom he waged a very personal war [~] would not let Hardy die with such glory."
Reasonably good article, but with some mistakes. First, Hardy story only happened once during a really frightful storm. Second, The a solution to the Riemann Hypothesis, in the positive, would have amazing practical consequences. People do not understand how much computers depend on the mystery of prime numbers.
11:43:56 AM
|
|
eWeek: Apple gets plug-and-play rightThen there was Mac OS X, where things just worked the way they should. Period. The contrast was impressive[~]or depressing, depending on your platform loyalties.
11:38:23 AM
|
|
© Copyleft 2005 Alfredo Octavio.
|
Diccionario RAE (Click Here)