In these days, that people are simply throwing around death threats as if they were candy, it might be worth to revisit wikipedia:

A death threat is a threat (often made anonymously) against a person to kill him or her. Death threats are often intended to intimidate victims (such as dissuading them from pursuing a criminal investigation or an advocacy campaign). In other cases, people use death threats to manipulate behavior. Historically death threats were carried out against wealthy jews during the Spanish Inquisition. ...
Death threats are most commonly made against public figures, though they are also made against less public figures. In many states and jurisdictions, death threats are a criminal offense. If the threat is made against a governmental figure, it can also be treason.
Sometimes, death threats are made as part of a wider campaign of abuse against a person or group of people (see terrorism, mass murder).

Sadly, death threats are usually just the beginning, the opening shot of a very intimate conflict - there is nothing that the person threatened may do to avoid this, and since there is no crime yet, it is very difficult to get the police involved. Sometimes, as it happens in other countries, it is usually the police the one issuing the threats!

Times do change, and in this country, the USA, it is still a criminal offense to make a death threat. They do go on, however, as Chris Prillo points out:

It's worse when you know who that person is - or if they're not all that anonymous in the first place. I've dealt with my fair share of bullies (both before and after high school) - and in a few cases, was able to weather the situations long enough to seek some sort of resolution with the other parties.

All we read about in the news is about death threats to death threats to mayors, to the president of Virginia Tech, to editors, to bloggers. What importance does one more death threat have? Especially when there is only one witness?

Torturador y espejo
(Torturer and mirror)
by Mario Benedetti

Found here and here as well.

Mirate as&icute;

qué cangrejo monstruoso atenazó tu infancia
qué paliza paterna te generó cobarde
qué tristes sumisiones te hicieron despiadado

no escapes a tus ojos
mirate
así

dónde están las walkirias que no pudiste
la primera marmita de tus sañas

te metiste en crueldades de once varas
y ahora el odio te sigue como un buitre

no escapes a tus ojos
mirate
así

aunque nadie te mate
sos cadáver

aunque nadie te pudra
estás podrido

dios te ampare
o mejor
dios te reviente.

Hey, ubuntu linux is the best, most amazing linux distro that there is. It installs in seconds, respects you as a user (ie no DRM crap), offers amazing possibilities and doesn’t cost a penny. And yeah, it has no games in it, either; not as many as in MSFT, at least, which, for me, is a bonus.

But there is still reluctance: a few months ago I got together with a friend who wanted some linux in his HP 64 bit laptop. The installation was a breeze, fast, efficient, the kind that makes you think that linux is definitely going to stay here for a while, to kick some ass.
It was that cool: Beryl? Easy. Repositories? Done. He even got a little bit about it, getting rid of the chains that Microsoft imposes on users.

All went well, until the beginning of last week, when he wanted to attach a printer. And then it all went to hell. He wanted a Canon, these printers being some sort of family tradition. But no!

Canon printers suck: the only available solution was spending some money on drivers and stuff, and then installing that thing. My friend and I tried that option, which, as expected, didn’t work.

So, he got rid of Canon, and is buying either an HP or a Dell. Something with open source drivers and more respect for the customer. Can you imagine the market that canon would tap if they released drivers for the canon, in some sort of linux flavor? By ignoring this market, they are just pushing the users away, opening doors for competition, and generally being regarded just as big goofy sort of a company. They might be giants, but they are goofy giants. Who can respect that?

Do you know how we can tell the difference between people who were wearing their seatbelts and those who weren’t, at the scene of an automobile accident? The ones who were wearing their seatbelts are standing around saying “This really sucks,” and the ones who weren’t are kinda just lying there.

Here is a little ad, courtesy of some insurers.

And, stolen from Theresa's forums, these links about safe driving:

Heaven Can Wait

Backwards

No Seatbelt, No Excuse, which is the one embedded above;

Crash

No Belt, No Brains

Some in Español (I told you, I stole this list directly from there):
Abróchate el Cinturón

Safety Campaign Chile

El cinturón, by Paco Costas.

Be safe.

This car has been used, and it shows - much better than all those things that sit pretty in garages and never go out; this is a car with life, with an owner that appreciates it and enjoys it. It reminded me of something, or perhaps the simple exhilarating feeling of enjoying the day, cold and windy but somehow alive.

Once more I point to the Tse Chen Ling buddhist lectures, because in these times, we all need the calm and the tranquility in life that these reveal. Specially the ones by Robina Courtin.

So I went. And lo and behold, the kite became the metaphor for whatever culture I was in: It was just a matter of letting go, of lifting restrictions and eliminating poisonous influences, to start writing again.

Do you think that Gaiman's Anansi Boys is racist? Never mind, some people do.

I like that book: it is an allegory for the process of discovery, the realization that we ourselves tell our stories and discover the world according to the tales that we weave around that perceived reality, fro which we, humans, are responsible; the book presents again the story of Anansi, and while allowing the story to unfold, it also gives us back that memory of, as Llinás Angulo would say, the world we create.
The little, weak, infinitesimal spider defeats the mighty tiger through the use of stories, tales, inventions and subterfuges - but more importantly, the world is not anymore of those mighty and powerful, but of those with the ability to create the story, to tell the story according to what they need.

I loved Skunk Anansie and only now I get the meaning of the name, the weight of the stories, the enormous pain and rebellion against that which used to be:

I've seen behind your wall of words
You're sneaky with the facts
Look who's hiding now
Now I've seen through cracks

Go fly a kite: and in flying the kite I was allowing myself, at last, to be free of pain and thinking, letting the thread go and the kite fly on its own, while I went on walking, distractedly achieving my purpose, rewriting my story.

The one that concerns me now is about blame and capability perception: no good deed goes unpunished, and an interesting quote from this is

If the culture is broken, the fastest way to make enemies is to do more than everyone around you.

Poor Bob was obviously above average: faster, productive, perhaps a little bit intense. Why was he so despised? How could that attitude be fixed?

We are not logical machines, and our right brain limits a lot of what we do - perhaps Bob didn't take showers, perhaps he was so intensely bent over his machine that neglected to talk to other developers. Still, why did the devs had to find a scapegoat? Again, corporate culture and soft leadership.

As Murray and Gottman say, is about the relationship between the agents, not the characteristics of those same agents. We have to approach management and leadership then through a relationship filter, identifying dynamics and egos as well as ROI and POS.

Who your people drink coffee with, and where, is important. You may not think you need to promote the rise of "café society" internally, but a coffee culture could be beneficial - for collaboration, networking, and cross-fertilisation. It is this sort of so-called "soft" issue that has forced its way to the top of management's agenda.

Attracting others to shared objectives is the very essence of soft power

Because, as always, the hard manager rarely gets anything done.

Our development proposals are based primarily on expected time. (Value is a consideration as well, but probably not as much as it should be.) With this in mind, we have to estimate the level of effort in terms of time spent that we intend to invest in each project. We can spend a little time and provide good. More time gets better. More time yet gets best.

I am: Arthur C. Clarke Well known for nonfiction science writing and for early promotion of the effort toward space travel, his fiction was often grand and visionary.

Nifty: I get to patent satellites and hang out in Sri Lanka

Another unforeseen problem here is the unintended dynamic of the network – Reddit requires you to comment, MonkeyFilter has a few established regulars, Orkut became primarily Brazilian, and LinkedIn is a general job posting board.

We need a service to take care, automatically, of your presence in all of those socnet sites.

Technorati:
social networks, NC

The whole idea of frozen bodies in the roof makes sense - otherwise you would expect a whole resistance movement coming from those that have successfully defied the City and its facile trappings, some underground railroad with support from outside, a more rapidly deteriorating City.

Or perhaps the City knew it all along, some sort of Singularity City, aware, perfect, computationally intense and distributed, and realized that it itself was destroying life, curiosity, adventure, and decided to kill itself – by recruiting some unsuspecting citizens, and making them risk their lives.

Pretty idea, no? Rather unsubstantiated, but hey, I will take anything.

Technorati:
films, society, soma

technorati:nanotechnology, nc