viernes, 31 de agosto de 2007

FEN: An oasis in the desert.


The Faculty of Economy and Business (FEN) of the University of Chile is an amazing place. It's like an oasis in a great desert of poverty and decadence. When I visited that Faculty for the first time, I was inmediately impressed by the hall: a beautiful and clean hall with brilliant and white floor tiles, and hanging from the ceiling there was an electronic screen with information like the next classes and his classrooms. It was like an airport! Well, I really was strucked about things likes his library (very huge, and every book you ask is there), his computation room (big and with a lot of computers), even his gardens (with one the most greener grasses that I've never seen in my whole life)!

That visit was the last year, by the time of the governing election of the University. And there was a sign with Victor Perez's slogan: "Is your Faculty OK?" If I was a student of FEN for a day, maybe I would answer: "Of course it is!" (or maybe not, perhaps there are problems that I couldn't see: It can't be so perfect!). When I compare FEN with, for example, my Faculty (Social Sciences) and his decadence, I can't believe that this two places belong to the same institution. What's happening with this University?

viernes, 24 de agosto de 2007

My favorite website


http://www.la-redo.net/

That's my favorite website. It's an argentinean blog about soccer, from Argentina and other parts of the world: there are a lot of mentions about Chile, like a post about the "Puerto Ordazo" in the last American Cup (http://www.la-redo.net/?p=5760) or the designation of Marcelo Bielsa for the National Management of our soccer team (http://www.la-redo.net/?p=5912).

The big thing about that is that they write about soccer in a different way that the traditional "mass media": sometimes there are serious posts, but in general they are filled with a very funny sarcasm. For example, about the "Puerto Ordazo" they concluded that: "if they made all this disorder for an insignificant thing like qualificating in 3rd position of their group, I don't want to imagine what they're going to do if tonight they eliminate the verdeamarelha [Brazil]". Or, in another example, they talk about Mauricio Pinilla as "the less fulfilled promise of the chilean soccer"

Like every blog, it's open to comments from the visitors. But in difference with the most blogs I know, there are always like 100 or 200 comments by post (there is one that have more than 10000!) And the role of the visitors is very important, they (actually, we) gave life to the website. There are a lot of sarcastic and funny comments, like in the post about the "Puerto Ordazo" ("What are they going to do if they're Champions of the Cup? They'll have sex with the half of Venezuela!")

I'd like that we have a similar website here in Chile.

"Ethical wage": A political council


Yesterday, the President Michelle Bachelet announced the members designed for his "Advisory Commission for the Social Fairness". There are a lot of industrialists and economists, and practically there isn't any "social actor". The reason for doing this is because it's a "technical council".

In politics, there are two reasons for doing things: showing a position, or hiding it. This is a council for hiding, keeping, stoping. "Social actors" is not always the same that "popular actors", that's right, but if technics are technics, it's just in that point that there shouldn't exist any advisory council (for example, it's ridiculous being on a debate about the possible interpretations of 2+2=4). An advisory council is not a technical space, it's a political one. And there's a lot of positions excluded of that political debate, not just the worker union leaders (like, for example, the president of the Unitary Central of Workers (CUT) ), also everyone who made possible that in Chile we're all discussing about "ethical wage", like the Priest Alejandro Goic or the workers from CODELCO.

We don't have to forget that we're discussing about "ethical wage" because of the protest of CODELCO workers. Also, we don't have to forget that the Government did everything it could for destroying that strike, like buying leaders or talking about a "vandalic protest" in general when the vandalic acts weren't a constant thing: they were a few. In spite of that, they could make that everyone in Chile is debating about the laboral conditions in our country. And what did the President do? She invited Lily Pérez to the council, surely a great "expert" in technical and labor issues, don't?

So, when they talk about a "technical council" is because they're hiding the real condition of that council: there is a political debate. And also with that they're hiding that there are important and representative positions that are excluded.