Money...the dirty money

The theme for today is... $ Money $ Yeah, that thing that make people do a lot of things – even stupid things – and is a question that every people tell me when they know what I’m studying, generally it’s because they don’t know what anthropologists do; so here I’ll explain what I think what anthropologist do for LIVING!

It’s a little bit difficult to say what specifically anthropologist do to earn money, because...they can do anything that can be investigated – I’m not joking, if you do a review of the thesis from the faculty you’ll see that it isn’t a joke –; but how can you have the resources to do studies of almost anything in the world? Well the answer is: FONDECYT. FONDECYT is a fund of resources destined to scientific investigation, but I don’t know if scientific investigation can be done in all the things that FONDECYT really finance... It’s incredible because it can be from an investigation for using removable energy to the analysis of a “whale culture”; things that can’t be connected participate for funds at the same institution, you really get a surprise at this.

Obviously FONDECYT isn’t the only way to do investigations; there are other kinds of funds from the State or Non-Governmental Organizations. The last one is the other place where anthropologists usually do researches but the kind of investigation you do are restricted to what the NGO do, so it isn’t too much free for investigations. But the paradise of resources for investigations – talking only about the things you can investigate – is at the University, because you can do investigation of whatever you want without thinking if the research is useful or not.

The problem to get that paradise of resources and time for investigation is that first you must be a professor of the University and that could be a little difficult because you must do classes and be very good – even if your students don’t think so –, and also an old one so no one could think about questioning about what you do. Tell me if that isn’t cool, the only reason for not doing an investigation is that weren’t resources – but that is almost impossible.

So, concluding, there are two ways of earning money:
1. – FONDECYT
2. – Professor

Getting the true of humanity doesn’t have a price, for anything else there is FONDECYT

Like my second home

Now, using my last amounts of energy of the day, I’m going to write for you about a place I spare almost most of the time in the last two years: my Faculty.

That place where I have to read, study and stay at a chair is the Social Science Faculty. It’s a huge building with a really bad problem of acoustic design, as well as a little library to study so it’s really noisy, oh and don’t forget about the little laboratories and the low amount of money that the Faculty have to do things. But the most important problem is the problem with the classes; it’s really a chaos because they have two problems: or the professor is really bad or the thing that treats the class is really bad. I thing that with this there’s a lot of work to do don’t you think?

Well, the academics have intervene in the matter with the official tools they have – like MECESUP or Bicentenario’s Project – which gives a certain amount of money to invest in improvements like sending professors to study or constructing new parts of the faculty; maybe this are good for the first things to do because you take care about the tools you need to give a good education but there is another problem first: the plague of postmodernist professors at the faculty giving classes.

A solution for this could be the decrease of this kind of professor because you need them to give a full education but in such amount! It’s too much I think, we need more scientific professors so we could have a more serious work and most of the careers at the faculty could be taken seriously from people that don’t understand many things that anthropology or sociology treats.

I think that’s all of what I can say about my second home...that needs to be fixed.

A lot of harmonic sounds

Now, after a “Listening Test“and getting the blog actualized, I’m going to write about a typical topic: Music... Don’t you think it’s a little easy to talk about something so big? And also it’s something that you usually talk with people that you don’t know. Well, whatever, concentrate at what Judy’s Han of Justice tell us and do the blog.

First, if you ask me about what’s my favourite music I could say that it’s pretty difficult to say which music I listen more; but generally I listen Alternative/Indie Rock or Britpop lately – well, I say lately because I had pass through Heavy Metal style also –, and I think it’s a great sort of music because they have a little bit of aggressive things from rock properly but it isn’t something so excessive like in Heavy Metal. It’s like an all time style for listening.

If I had to choose a band or singer from all of the music that I choose; maybe I can say that Interpol, Radiohead, Suede or Coldplay. Ups! They are four and I need one. Well, I stay with Coldplay because is the band that I have listened more from the three and also because I love most of their songs – specially the first ones –; they compose a lot of music and with many instruments so it’s almost like listening an orchestra from all the instruments they use, so it’s a real pleasure to listen songs like “Yellow” or “In My Place”.

My favourite song...incredibly this one is a really easy answer: Evil – Interpol. I don’t know why, I just love this song. Maybe because it start slow and gets faster trough the song...I don’t know, it’s just perfect for me J

I’ve gone to many concerts in my life but sadly not one of my favourites bands, because they don’t usually come to Chile; but I’ve gone to Iron Maiden’s concert, Stratovarius also, and many of Chilean rock artists – like Los Tres, Los Bunkers, etc. –.

And finally, so you could rest your eyes, I play the bass. I think it’s a great instrument and it sounds so low and great when you play it well that I feel better than when I play guitar or other instruments.

Sorry if it was a bit long... See you around!

The magic beyond genes

Today I’m going to talk about something that many people don’t know...The magic beyond genes. Yes, maybe some people may think that a bunch of molecules of DNA aren’t that kind of spectacular; but in reality they have a great potential to explain many things that happens in the world – specially about health things – but actually, they can also give information about social organization...and that’s what I’m going to talk today.

As you can see in http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/26/india-genetics-genes-science the studies about genes are very big, but can give a lot of information about people, medical history and even social organization.

This news talks about a big investigation at Indian society – the whole subcontinent – so it was about a billion of people that were under the investigation. The investigation was about an analysis of the genome of people from the subcontinent, considering that at the subcontinent there’s a lot of diversity about people; but thanks to the genetics exploration they could discover that most of the people of India comes from two principal groups: one from Europe and Middle East, and other from China.

Also, it’s known that Indian people are so much that is a little obvious to find endogamy at this population, so we could expect a lot of recessive genetic diseases; and the most of the scientists says that it’s because of the marriage system at India: they marriage between cousins. But if you look a little bit closely you can say that’s more complicated than that...

Actually, the reason of the high frequency of recessive genetic diseases it’s more because of the socio-political organization at Indian society: The caste system! Yeah, the fact of been under the caste system makes that even people living in the same town don’t exchange genetic materials – even it’s difficult to see social contact –; so you can say that’s what makes that at India’s genes there’s a high frequency of recessive genetic diseases.

This kind of things, about the influence from culture on biology or biology on culture is what I’m studying and expecting to investigate in future.

mmmm....Fooood!

Today in the menu we have one of my favourite things: FOOD! Tell me if food isn’t one of the best things of the world; especially when it’s a good food...Well, as you can see I like a little bit eating food; but it’s just that food can be so good. It’s just awesome. But if I had to choose for my favourite food it’s when things turn a little difficult, maybe because I like most of the food so I can’t choose between different foods... Well, whatever, I must choose this time (it’s Judy’s Justice Hand pointing at me) so I can say that my favourite food is pasta I think so.

Yeah, I like them, maybe because of the taste or the texture or well...I really don’t know well why but I can say that I love eating pasta at a restaurant or in my house, maybe I could say that pasta is a food that I love eating with my family, but I can go with friends also – but it’s not very usual because it’s a little expensive in comparison with pizza –; at the restaurant I usually ask for something like lasagne or ravioli or fettuccine maybe with some sauces like the Bolognese Sauce or Alfredo Sauce, and when I want something different I usually ask for some exotic sauce – like with seafood or champignons –, and when I eat pasta at my house I usually eat fettuccine or lasagne – both of them are really easy to do, but I think I’m better cooking lasagne –.

Well, I must think about if foods trigger memories (again... Judy’s Justice Hand); but I think that are the places where you eat that can trigger memories, not the food because you can eat food in many places or can be different in different places. But are the places that trigger your memories, because you say: “Oh! Here is where I ate that spectacular fettuccine with Bolognese Sauce!” but it doesn’t work the other way.

Now...what all of you people were waiting for...Pablo’s Perfect 3 Course Meal!!

1. Caesar Salad. A delicious salad that it’s also light, because the main course can be a little heavy :P
2. Lasagne. Garfield’s favourite pasta, and also mine... it’s just delicious because it has pasta, Bolognese Sauce, White Sauce and cheese. A really great combination.
3. Ice cream. A delicious combination of different flavours of ice cream with chocolate sauce...just delicious.

Well...if you have some space at your stomach after eating this menu...call me so I can tell you which other foods are good to eat ;)