After years of keeping it on the backlog, last night I finally started to watch Star Trek. According to my calculations, it should take me three to four years to watch every season and every movie.
Wish me luck!
Author: hectoraliruiz Page 8 of 15
I’ve decided to start a channel in which I will solve Math Problems and Exercises, from the B.Demidovich book. I figured it’s a good idea to throw in my piece of contribution to all college students who are interested
in studying and learning math.
You can find the Channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwUQOlWXeKzhUn3xW83a8uA
I already began recording a few videos, so please feel free to take a look and let me know your thoughts!
HR
I’ve been pracising Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata over the past weeks and the one thought that pops in my mind every time I play it is: “This piece is perfect. Is Beethoven the greatest composer of all time?”
This a very difficult topic to address, not only because there are other candidates to claim the title, but also because you would have to set up a very long and detailed set of parameters to judge each candidate in the discussion. For me, Beethoven’s merit comes from several reasons. Take for instance his Fifth Symphony: the entire first movement -which lasts about seven minutes-,
is built entirely over just four notes, three of them are repeated. How did he get away with that? Essentially, it’s just one note repeated three times followed by a second note played on sustain, over and over again, and for some reason, the sublimity of its sound transcends everything we know. Needless to say seven of his nine symphonies are masterpieces, with the ninth being the epitome of his genius.
Then you have his chamber music, which is completely on a different direction from his orchestral work. And then of course you have his 32 Piano Sonatas, eight of which are memorable pieces of work: The moonlight, patetique, appassionata, les adieux, tempest, pastoral, waldstein, hammerklavier and the #32.
How can you argue against that?
HR
I have spent the last days organizing files from my old backups. Really old backups.
Not surprisingly I ran into all of my other books and drafts I have written in my life. I didn’t count how many I had in total because I was fast-clicking and sorting them very quickly, but I estimate there are probably fifteen of them. I opened a few of them, read a few pages and two things struck me: 1) I have drafts that dated over twenty five years ago, and still you can tell by their writing, that they came from me. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, but my writing style has definitely been consistent in time. 2) Despite having great and interesting ideas in most of them, I left them unfinished because I ran into a writer’s block (is that’s what it’s called?), and I never came back to them again.
Maybe I should quit being a baby and start working on them again. Maybe I can finish all of them. But I have to publish this one first!
HR
I haven’t posted anything about my book in the past months… mostly due to me having to adapt to working from home, my workload that thankfully I must
say has been huge and I’m happy that’s the way it is, and of course the new set of priorities that come with this new way of life. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been working on my baby.
As I stated in my previous update about my book, I’m taking this time to go over the finished manuscript, revise it once again, making sure I’m happy with
everything, and also conducting research on all the topics I covered, as well as the analytical approach I discuss throughout all its chapters. Part of this research includes having finished reading a book called “Once Upon a Revolution” about the series of protests that took place in Egypt to remove Hosni Mubarak as president, and the subsequent transition that led to Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s election as current president. I bought this book because I thought it would be similar to mine, but found out it lacked the social analysis that I focus on in Venezuela’s case. The initial stage of the events that took place in Egypt are quite similar to those that happened in Venezuela, however about a third into the book, the parallelisms began to diverge from each other.
It was an interesting read altogether, but sadly I must say that I couldn’t draw too much of it to use into my book. Still, my congratulations to the author. Hopefully one day he’ll be able to get his hands on my book and tell me what he thinks about it.
HR
I had my doubts and concerns on watching this film ever since it came out in 2013. Last night, I decided to give it a chance.
All I can say is about it, stop reading this and go watch it. Right now.
HR
It’s been over three months since we received word that we could work from home and I feel like it was yesterday. How has it been?
Actually it hasn’t been so bad. Thanks to the resources we have today, such as online conference calls, screen sharing, multiple calls, online sharing content, our team at work has been able to successfully adapt to the current conditions, while keep bringing positive results to both our clients and our internal stakeholders.
The fact that I’m somewhat of an organized person who thrives for efficiency has definitely contributed for good and I believe my coworkers have appreciated that this is an absolutely necessary skill for successful teams. Now the question is: What will the big picture look like in the future?
Mine is not the only company who has been able to successfully adapt to the current conditions and the work from home mindset. It always puzzled me why Marissa Meyer was against it, especially considering the industry where she works. There’s definitely more accountability, because you have to prove to your bosses that even though you are not physically at the office, you are actively involved in the day-to-day operations of the organization, your clients are being taken care of, and your team is running as efficient as if everyone was working under the same roof. And… the only way to prove this is by producing results that are measurable: revenue, net income, client satisfaction, meeting deadlines and achieving objectives.
I wonder if this will be an opportunity for companies to realize that working from home not only is possible, it is productive, efficient and beneficial for everyone. That is of course for companies who can work with this approach.
Stay tuned.
HR
I’ve decided to start a series of videos on my YouTube Channel to provide my analysis of the greatest tennis player of all time and try to come up with a definite answer to this never ending debate.
The way I went about it is to break down the candidates and rank them into five tiers or classes from D to S, D being the lowest, followed by C, B, A and finally S. Players will be grouped in each tier after a detailed analysis of their careers, based on common achievements and similar resumes. This is because tennis has undergone a huge amount of considerable changes over the past fifty years, therefore it is almost impossible to evenly compare in terms of simple accountable achievements the careers of players who competed in the 1920s and 30s, to players who competed in the 1980s and 90s, without analyzing their contexts.
Another point that I’ll be bringing up is the lack of recognition of players of the past. Recently Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are the highlights in every single
headline. However players like Bill Tilden, Pancho Gonzales, Don Budge, Rod Laver and Jack Kramer deserve equal if not more recognition than the current big three. After all, Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb -who played in the 1910s, 20s and 30s- are always mentioned in the discussion of the greatest baseball player of all time, right? Just like Capablanca, Morphy and Alekhine -who also played over 100 years ago- are mentioned among the greatest chess players of all time. So why not do the same with tennis players of the past? Where will I rank them? Tune in my channel and find out for yourself!
HR
I’m going to stop posting about Covid-19, because I want to concentrate on other matters for my blog, however before closing my door on covering the topic, I wanted to provide a follow up on my previous entry.
I had mentioned that I believe the distribution of top cases and highest spreading per capita would change within the next couple of months. As I mentioned, I believe the US will keep leading the table for quite some time, maybe for the entire year. The other four spots most likely will belong to Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa or Bagladesh. My reasoning is simple: third world countries have yet to receive the first substantial bulk of cases that will bring their population into the beginning of an upwards statistical function of pandemics such as Covid-19. Due to their density, several access routes, location and lack of infrastructure to contain the virus, these are the most obvious targets. From there and on, the developed countries may fare better, which means that the rest of the underdeveloped world will be hit hard from those five countries I named. This is, Brazil will impact Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru; India and Bangladesh with both impact each other and impact Pakistan, Afghanistan and the mid-Asian region; Russia will impact, well, Russia; and South Africa will spread the virus all across Africa. I’ll also throw Mexico in there as well, due to its proximity to the US. That is what I foresee for second half of 2020. Needless to say, unless all those countries implement extreme drastic measures, their populations will face devastating consequences from a social and economic point of view. What may follow after these? Uprisings, political conflicts, protests… pretty much the standard of what history has shown us over the past 4,000 years.
Regarding America, I have to say that people have to start getting off Trump’s back. I may not have voted for him in 2016 and one of the reasons was that I truly believed that his argument of the media being against him was false, but now in 2020 I truly believe that the media is definitely against him. I can concede that perhaps his management of the situation may not have been the best, but to those people who criticize him I ask: “How exactly would have you handled the situation?” Given the amount of opinion makers, variables, economic and social factors, and all the other elements that you have to consider into this equation, I highly doubt there are 1,000,000 humans
out there who could have effectively managed this crisis in a flawless way.
Oh and one more question. To those people who say “How can a pandemic with 1% of death rate shut down the US?”, I ask: “Well, what is the percentage you would like to have in order to shut down the US? Also, given that percentage is greater than 1%, say for instance 25%, don’t you realize that before making it to 25%, you have to go through 1%, 2%, 3%… and so on?”
Anyway, that should be it for Covid-19 updates in my blog for now… at least for some time. I’m going to switch to other topics for the time being.
Stay tuned.
HR
It’s been almost two months since the pandemic was formally here in the US and the consequences have been outright devastating on all fronts. People are impatient, tense, afraid and a large feeling of uncertainty looms over our society. “What does the future hold for us?” Is the question that everyone wants answered.
First of all, I have to start my post by saying the it is almost impossible to predict the future. Everyone had plans for 2020 and I’m quite sure that most of those plans are now non-existent thanks to the pandemic. Who would have guessed that we were going to be in this situation in 2020? Nobody. So, to predict the future having understood there are so many unaccounted variables, is definitely not an easy task at all.
As of today, the United States, Spain, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom hold the most cases of Covid-19 in the world. I believe that three months from now, this top 5 ranking will drastically change -with the exception of the US-. European countries have been quite strict in their policies to face the spread of the virus, which combined with a robust healthcare system, may result in a successful slow down of the spreading. The US on the other hand, has somewhat of a decent healthcare system, however our policies regarding containment and quarrantine are questionable. I’m not saying they are bad per se, but I believe that because of the way the country functions, it is going to be very challenging to have the same results that Europe may have. This is one of those occasions in which strong leadership is needed, and unfortunately the US is suffering of too many leaders speaking at the same time. One voice speaking loudly and clearly, delivering a straight message is preferred. Personally, I don’t understand what is preventing governors and the federal government from achieving this as a goal. The worst thing is that politics is becoming a key factor of decision and even reasoning and providing judgement to implement a policy, which shouldn’t be the case. I roll my eyes every time I hear any of our leaders cite the constitution or local laws to excuse themselves as to why certain actions are or aren’t implemented.
You see, when our founding fathers created this country in 1776, I hardly believe that they had envisioned any provisions in the constitution, or any implications that derived from any of its articles and amendments on how to deal with the impact of a global pandemic hitting a country that would become 10 times its original size, and have 100 times its original population, which is composed of dozens of ethnic and religious groups, instead of the two, maybe five at most it had in 1776.
In fact, I have absolutely no doubt that as great as our founding fathers were, they never thought about it.
Stay tuned.
HR