Laidarragada

Glogster

2009-04-01T14:53:00.001-07:00

http://racebis.glogster.com/My-likes-and-dislikes/

Colombian President

2009-03-14T06:45:00.000-07:00

Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Álvaro Uribe Vélez, born 4 July 1952 in Medellín is the 39th President of Colombia and is currently serving his second term in office.
Before his current role in politics Uribe was a lawyer. He studied law at the University of Antioquia and completed a management course at Harvard University
Uribe started his politics career in his home department of Antioquia. He has held office in the Medellín Public Enterprises (Empresas Públicas de Medellín) and in the Ministry of Labor and in the Civil Aeronautic. Later he held office as the mayor of Medellín in 1982, then he was Senator between 1986 and 1994 and finally Governor of Antioquia between 1995and 1997 before he was elected President of Colombia in 2002.

He was awarded the Simón Bolívar Scholarship of the British Council and was nominated Senior Associate Member at the Saint Antony's College in the University of Oxford after completing his term in office as the governor of Antioquia in 1998.

Uribe's father was killed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas during a 1983 kidnapping attempt.
After his father's death Álvaro Uribe sold most of his inherited rural properties and concentrated on his political career as a member of the Colombian Liberal Party. He served on the Medellín city council between 1984 and 1986
Alvaro Uribe Velez is married to Lina Moreno and have two sons: Tomas (Apr 19, 1.981) and Geronimo (Jul 16, 1.983).
In the 20 May 2.002 presidential election Alvaro Uribe Velez got 5.862.655. votes. (53.048%)

In the 28 May 2.006 presidential election Alvaro Uribe Velez got 7.363.421 votes. (62.20%)

The Colombian armed conflict or Colombian Civil War has existed since approximately 1964 or 1966, which was when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and later the National Liberation Army (ELN) were founded and subsequently started their guerrilla insurgency campaigns against successive Colombian government administrations.
It originally began as a backlash produced by a previous conflict known as La Violencia, which had been triggered by the 1948 assassination of populist political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the drug trade, the drug cartels and the War on Drugs increased the intensity of the conflict and involved all of its participants.
In 2004, Uribe's political supporters amended the constitution to allow him to run for a second term, previously proscribed by the Colombian constitution, and his own decision to run for a second term was announced in late 2005. With this amendment, Uribe was re-elected on May 28, 2006 for a second presidential term (2006-2010), and became the first president to be consecutively re-elected in Colombia in over a century. He received about 62% of the vote, consisting of about 7.3 million ballots in his favor.
Lately Uribe´s supporters are planning to amend once again the constitution in order to allow him a new reelection. Uribe neither denies nor confirms his aspirations.
In my humble opinion, Colombians should listen to the words of the Father of the Patria, Simon Bolivar in the speech delivered to the Congress of Angostura on Feb 15, 1.819. In a part of that speech Bolivar said:
...”the continuity of autority in a same person frecuently has been the end of democratic governments. The repeated elections are esencial in the popular systems, because nothing is so dangerous as to allow a citizen remains a long time as governor. People get accustum to obey and he gets accustum to rule. Hence derives the usurpation and the tyranny.A just jealous is the guarantee of the republican freedom and our citizens should be affraid with excessive justice that the same magistrate, who has ruled for a long time, rules them to perpetuity...”

Horacio Idarraga Gil. Horacioidarraga_1@yahoo.es
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvaro_Uribe_Velez

My family

2009-03-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

My family.
Sun 01, Mar 09: Hi dear classmates: it is my family. Let me start by introducing myself. If you want to listen to me, please click this link:
http://voicethread.com/share/374802/

My name is Horacio Idàrraga Gil.
I was born in El Fresno, Tolima, seventy five years ago.
I came to Venezuela when I was twenty.
I used to work as a teacher at INCE. INCE is in Venezuela what SENA is in Colombia. I used to teach dress making.
I got retired in Nov 1990.

The lady in red pants, is Carmen. She married me in December 1.959.
She runs the house with iron gloves.
She turns an egg into the most delicious banquet and a piece of newspaper into the most beautifull flower ever seen.

I owe to her all what I am. All what I am is a debt I will never be able to pay.

Next to Carmen is Isabel. She is the oldest of our two daughters.
She is an ECONOMIST. She runs her own office.

Next to Isabel is Beatriz in green T-shirt. She is the youngest of our two daughters. She is a teacher. She teaches Biology.
She is Mariana`s mother.

Next to Beatriz, wearing pink T-shirt, is Doris. She is my niece. She is the wife of Arturo, the man wearing glasses and moustache.

Next to Doris is Carlos wearing black T-shirt. He is the yougest of our three children. He is a technician and works as a supervisor in Papeles Venezolanos.

Last in the group, next to Arturo is Adriana. She is Carlos`s wife. The other two ladies are neigbors and friends.

In the second picture we can see a proud grandma surrounded by our four grandchildren.
First at right is Carlos Jose. He is sixteen. He finished high school and is waiting his chance to go to the university. He wants to be an engineer.
Next to Carlos Jose is Mariana. She is fifteen and is studying 8th grade. She dreams of going to study to Massachussets Institute of Technology in USA.
Left to Carmen is Luis Carlos. He is fifteen. He dreams to emulate Luis Aparicio, Alfonso Carrasquel and David Concepciòn, the three gratest icons of Venezuelan baseball.
Last on the left is Jose Luis. He is the youngest. He is eleven. He is very, very humble. He just dreams with going to NASA and from there, to the moon.
The three boys are Carlos`s sons.

In the last picture we can see a group of siblings. They are daughters, nieces, grandchildren and the offspring of our daughters and nieces.
From right to left, they are Mafer, Mariana, Val, Daniela, Luis Carlos, Mema, Carlos Jose, Jose Luis, Isa, Beatriz, Olga, Jose Miguel and Sonia.

Now I wanto to tell you something else. I have seen in your presentations that most of you are interested in practising English. I agree with you. The only way to learn a language is using it.
I also want to practice, so if you want to contact me, my hotmail messenger is racebis and my email is isbecar@hotmail.com
My skype ID is racebis1

If you want to know a bit more and listen to some music, please clic this link: http://laidarragada.blogspot.com/

And here is a very old but very beautiful song sung by Barbra Streisand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyx2n_p9OZ8 Memories

Finally I`d like to say that I am affraid of losing this course because I don`t have acces to “Mis cursos”. I have already done what the message sent by the tutor says, but I am still banned to do the exercises.

Well friends, my best wishes to you all.

Warm hugs, Horacio Idarraga Gil.

Like a prayer

2008-11-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

Sorry seems to be the hardest word Lyrics

2008-11-28T16:13:00.001-08:00

Good bye England`s rose

2008-11-28T15:55:00.000-08:00

Elton john Candle In The Wind ( Princess Diana's Funeral) Goodbye englands rose May you ever grow in our hearts
You were the grace that placed itself Where lives were torn apart
You called out to our country And you whispered to those in pain
Now you belong to heaven
And the stars spell out your name
And it seems to me you lived your life Like a candle in the wind
Never fading with the sunset When the rain set in
And your footsteps will always fall here Along englands greenest hills
Your candles burned out long before Your legend ever will
Loveliness weve lost These empty days without your smile
This torch well always carry For our nations golden child
And even though we try The truth brings us to tears
All our words cannot express The joy you brought us through the years And it seems to me you lived your life Like a candle in the wind
Never fading with the sunset When the rain set in
And your footsteps will always fall here Along englands greenest hills
Your candles burned our long before Your legend ever will
Goodbye englands rose May you ever grow in our hearts
You were the grace that placed itself Where lives were torn apart
Goodbye englands rose From a country lost without your soul
Wholl miss the wings of your compassion More than youll ever know
And it seems to me you lived your life Like a candle in the wind
Never fading with the sunset When the rain set in
And you footsteps will always fall here Along englands greenest hills
Your candles burned out long before Your legend ever will

You`ve got a friend

2008-11-28T15:39:00.001-08:00

Honesty

2008-11-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

Piano man

2008-11-28T15:14:00.001-08:00

laidarragada.blogspot.com

2008-11-28T13:42:00.001-08:00

Add Quicksilver Big Wave Invitational to your page

Volare

2008-11-27T15:29:00.001-08:00

La Bambola

2008-11-27T15:10:00.000-08:00

Parole

2008-11-27T14:52:00.001-08:00

Dio come ti amo

2008-11-27T14:44:00.001-08:00

Quererte a ti

2008-11-27T14:33:00.000-08:00

Tell him

2008-11-24T12:39:00.001-08:00

La casada infiel. (Federico Garcia Lorca)

2008-11-23T17:42:00.000-08:00

Nieve

2008-11-23T16:45:00.000-08:00

Mañana es mentira

2008-11-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

Alice`s cakes

2008-10-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.slide.com/r/ABqVmp8kqz_oqStgTB0tb63E52clatni?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original

Hi Eve. These are Alice`s cakes. Alice is my wife`s sister. She is a master making cakes. It`s not just the decoration. It`s the taste. She gave me a cake for my B-day. It had the shape of a yellow shirt. Someone suggested to make a contest to give a name to the shirt. “Chavez`s shirt”, suggested one. No.
“Horacio`s shirt”, said someone else. At the end we did not have the chance to take a decision, because my sweet half orange, bitter as a green lemon, took a knife and turned the cake into peaces. There is a say “Borracho no come torta”
Drunk doesen`t it cake. But of this shirt not even the buttoms
Remained. Thanks to the Lord and my friends. Horacio.

Connectivis and connective knowledge

2008-09-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

Write or not to write. That`s the question

2008-08-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

Agosto 2.008
Hola María: quiero comenzar por agradecerte tu gentileza de mandarme un mensaje. En cuanto a tu pregunta de por que es importante escribir acerca de la historia, te diré que siento mucho decepcionarte, pero no tengo una respuesta para tu pregunta. Pero si te fijas en el mensaje de Carla, veras que allí hay dos mensajes. Uno explicito donde ella nos cuenta donde, cuando y como conoció al hombre que la eligió como molinera de su molino y otro encubierto donde denuncia, casi con amargura, que la gente ha perdido el habito de escribir y nos anima a que retomemos esa vieja costumbre tan importante para nuestros ancestros. Ella nos dice que la gente de hoy no escribe. Los muchachos de hoy simplemente se sientan ante la computadora y comienzan a revisar los mensajes que reciben y deciden cuales son importantes, cuales son bonitos, cuales son graciosos y se los reenvían a todos los contactos que tienen en su lista.
Pero ella no nos exige que escribamos exactamente acerca de historia. No.
Lo que ella nos pide es que escribamos, no importa acerca de que. De manera que tu puedes escribir acerca de tu familia, tu hogar, tu trabajo, tu perro o tu gato.
¿Recuerdas cuando éramos niños de escuela y la maestra decía:
“Hagan una composición?” ¿Otra vez una composición?
¿Hasta cuando composiciones?
“Hasta que aprendan a escribir”, respondía la muy taimada.
“¿Acerca de que es la composición?” Se aventuraba a preguntar alguno y ella respondía.
“Tema libre. Escriban lo que ustedes quieran, acerca de lo que ustedes quieran, pero escriban

Otra vez una composición, protestábamos en voz baja. Pero no había remedio. Las leyes son para cumplirlas y ella era quien daba las órdenes. Yo prefería resolver cien operaciones matemáticas que escribir una composición, pero la maestra Hermelinda decía que tan importante es saber cuanto son dos por tres menos tres por dos, como saber escribir una carta sin errores ni horrores de ortografía.
¿Por qué escribir historia? Por que la historia es el recuento de todo lo que hemos vivido, de todo lo que nos ha pasado, de nuestras alegrías y tristezas, de nuestros momentos buenos o malos, pero nuestros.
¿No quieres contarnos como fue que conociste a aquel hombre que te eligió como capitana de su barco? O talvez quieras contarnos de tus logros y fracasos en tu aprendizaje de ser madre?
O te gustaria regresar a la escuela, a aquel dia que llegaste como loca y me empujaste hasta un rincón del salón gritando: “Me besó, me besó, me besó” .
“Pero cálmate”, te dije. “¿Quién te beso?”
“Huguito. Me besó Huguito”
“Pero tu estas loca de capirote. ¿Cómo te va a besar Huguito si el es…”. “Cállate. No lo digas. Cierra tu bocota. El no es lo que ustedes dicen. El es un hombre, un varón, un macho, mas macho que todos ustedes juntos” “¿Y como puedes estar tan segura de que es así de macho?”
“¿Recuerdas a García Lorca?”
“No puedo decir, por hembra, las cosas que el me hizo”

Dear Mary; let me start expressing my deepest thankfullness to you for sending me your message. Regarding to your question, I apolgize, but I have no answer to that question.
But if you look at Carlas`s message, you`ll see that there are two messages in it. One very explicit where she tells us where, how and when she met the man who chose her as the miller of his mill and other not so explicit where she denounces that people have lost the habit of writting and encourage us to take again that old custome so important to our ancestors.
She says, almost bitterly, that people of today do not write. Our siblings simply seat down at the computer and begin selecting the messages they receive. They decide which are important, which are cute, which are fun and resent them to their contacts in their list.
But she does not order to write exactly about history. No. She wants us to write it does not matter the theme. So you can write about your family, your home, your job, your dog or your cat.

Do you remember the time when we were siblings and the teacher used to say: “Make a composition”
“¿Other composition?”
“Till when are we going to make compositions?”
“Till you learn how to write” used to answer craftily.
“¿What about is the composition? Used to ask someone.
“Free theme”, was the answer.
“Write what you want, about what you want, but write”
“¿A composition once again?” we used to protest in a low voice.
But there was no use. Laws are to be obeyed and she was who used to give the orders. I`d rather to solve one hundred mathematic operations than to write a composition, but teacher Hermelinda used to say that so important is to know how much are two times three minus three times two than knowing how to write a letter whithout ortographic mistakes.

Why to write about History? Because History is the remenbrance of what we have lived, all that have happened to us, our happines and our sadness,our good and bad moments, but ours.

¿Do not want you to tell us how you met that man who chose you as the captain of his boat? Or maybe you want to tell us about your succeses or your failures in your learning of been mother?

Or maybe you`d like to go back to school that day when you came like crazy and pushed me to the corner of the room shouting: “ He kissed me, he kissed me”

“But take it easy” I said. “¿Who kissed you?”
“Huguito. Huguito kissed me”
“But you are crazy. How can Huguito kisses you if he is…”
“Shut up. Do not say that. Close your dirty mouth. He is not what you all say. He is a man, a male, a macho, macho more macho than all of you together”
“¿And how can you be so sure that he is so macho?”
“Remember Garcia Lorca?”
“I can`t say, by female, what he did to me”

Simon Diaz

2008-02-11T13:19:00.000-08:00

Simón Díaz (born August 8, 1928) is a celebrated singer and composer of Venezuelan music, whose work is regarded as one of the most important legacies for both Venezuelan and Latin American popular music.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Diaz

Auroras Boreales

2008-02-05T11:53:00.001-08:00

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Chequen mi Slide Show

2008-02-04T11:13:00.001-08:00

My voki

2008-02-01T15:03:00.000-08:00

Get a Voki now!

2008-01-31T15:01:00.000-08:00

My dogs

2008-01-26T12:47:00.000-08:00

BubbleShare: Share photos - Buy Toys

Coqueto.

Coqueto is the biggest and oldest dog in my kennel. I don’t know how long he has lived here. (Pardon me if I say HE) He appeared in my house a good day. We had a big amount of sand in front of the house because we were to build the front fence. When I got home for lunch I saw him lying down on the sand. Since I was in a hurry to have my lunch and comeback to work I didn’t take care of the dog. By the evening he was still there. He had dug a cave in the sand and had accommodated there. He was sick. He was coughing and making the movements for vomiting. I looked for a bowl of water and some food and offered him but he didn’t show any interest. He looked at me sadly as saying “I am dying” Later in the night started to rain and I felt afraid about the dog. I took him to a place where he didn’t get wetter than he already was. The next day my neighbor, who used to have several dogs brought him some food and gave him some medicines. Coqueto recovered his health and adopted us as his family. Sometimes he disappears during some days but he always returns home.

Pinky.

What a contradiction. Pinky is black. He has only some very small stains of brown in his legs, ears and tail. He began to be our pet before he was born. In my neighborhood lives a lady who loves dogs. When a lady dog (Pardon me if I don’t say “BITCH”) gets pregnant, the lady dispenses very special care to her and when the puppies start to walk, she takes them to the park, to the supermarket, to church. She gets proud to people seeing her dogs. Before the puppies born, the lady begins to look for homes for her offspring. Do you want a new born dog? She asks to other ladies, especially the ones who have very young children. If the lady says “YES”, she opens a notebook and fills out a kind of application with information about the family. Address, names, gender and age of each member and the obligation they assume to take care of the dog. She doesn’t sale the puppies. She only wants to be sure that her BABY goes to a home where she - he is going to be loved as she loves them. So pinky came home when he was two months old. At the beginning we were afraid about how coqueto was going to behave with pinky. But he accepted him as his son. Pinky began to bite coqueto legs, ears and tail and lays down very close to him and coqueto just start to accommodate him between his legs. Later in the night pinky seats behind the bars of the fence and begins to bark. Who does he bark to? Nobody knows.

Princesa.

Princesa was born on my brother’s house. He has always had dogs, rabbits, parrots and other animals. By the time princesa was born, my granddaughter was beginning to walk and my brother wanted to give her a puppy. Princesa´s mother gave birth to a group of four males and eight females. My daughter and granddaughter were anxious to have the dog, so they brought her home when she was only one month old. They accommodated the dog in o box and began feeding her with a bottle. Thanks to the fact that they brought her home she was the only one to survive. Princesa´s mother and her offspring got poisoned when she killed a big rat and took it to the nest.

Blanquita.

Passing the time princesa got married and gave birth to ten puppies. It was the first time we had new born dogs in my house. No one in the family knew anything about the first aids the mother and her offspring were going to need. According to the instructions my brother had given to me, I began to observe princesa when she started to run from one place to another. She didn’t like the box we had prepared to her. Finally she accommodated behind the washing machine and gave birth to the first dog. He was wrapped in a kind of plastic bag. I didn’t know what to do. I thought mom was going to clean the baby, but when the time was passing on and the dog neither unwrap her son
nor ave the others, (Doctor had told us she was going to have ten) I got afraid and called my brother. He told me “Take her to the doctor, but fly” It was too late for the first dog. He was already dead when the doctor saw him. Doctor opened princesa´s belly and took out the rest of the dogs. Blanquita was the last one to born. She looked so pale and weary that we thought she was not going to survive. She was white, but not a brilliant white. It was the pale white of the dead. Passing the time we began to give the puppies but nobody seems to be interested in taking blanquita, so she stayed home. We got accustomed to call her “BLANQUITA”

Dance

2007-11-26T08:07:00.000-08:00

Coherencia

2007-11-13T13:05:00.001-08:00

Mr President

2007-11-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

Por qué no te callas?

2007-11-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

The Mom song

2007-10-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

"The Mom Song"

Get up now
Get up now
Get up out of bed
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Comb your sleepyhead
Here's your clothes and your shoes
Hear the words I said
Get up now! Get up and make your bed
Are you hot? Are you cold?
Are you wearing that?
Where's your books and your lunch and your homework at?
Grab your coat and gloves and your scarf and hat
Don't forget! You gotta feed the cat
Eat your breakfast, the experts tell us it's the most important meal of all
Take your vitamins so you will grow up one day to be big and tall
Please remember the orthodontist will be seeing you at 3 today
Don't forget your piano lesson is this afternoon so you must play
Don't shovel
Chew slowly
But hurry
The bus is here
Be careful
Come back here
Did you wash behind your ears?
Play outside, don't play rough, will you just play fair?
Be polite, make a friend, don't forget to share
Work it out, wait your turn, never take a dare
Get along! Don't make me come down there
Clean your room, fold your clothes, put your stuff away
Make your bed, do it now, do we have all day?
Were you born in a barn? Would you like some hay?
Can you even hear a word I say?
Answer the phone! Get off the phone!
Don't sit so close, turn it down, no texting at the table
No more computer time tonight!
Your iPod's my iPod if you don't listen up
Where are you going and with whom and what time do you think you're coming home?
Saying thank you, please, excuse me makes you welcome everywhere you roam
You'll appreciate my wisdom someday when you're older and you're grown
Can't wait till you have a couple little children of your own
You'll thank me for the counsel I gave you so willingly
But right now I thank you not to roll your eyes at me
Close your mouth when you chew, would appreciate
Take a bite maybe two of the stuff you hate
Use your fork, do not burp or I'll set you straight
Eat the food I put upon your plate
Get an A, get the door, don't get smart with me
Get a grip, get in here, I'll count to three
Get a job, get a life, get a PHD
Get a dose of,
"I don't care who started it!
You're grounded until you're 36"
Get your story straight and tell the truth for once, for heaven's sake
And if all your friends jumped off a cliff would you jump, too?
If I've said it once, I've said at least a thousand times before
That you're too old to act this way
It must be your father's DNA
Look at me when I am talking
Stand up straighter when you walk
A place for everything and everything must be in place
Stop crying or I'll give you something real to cry about
Oh!
Brush your teeth, wash your face, put your PJs on
Get in bed, get up here, say a prayer with mom
Don't forget, I love you
And tomorrow we will do this all again because a mom's work never ends
You don't need the reason why
Because, because, because, because
I said so, I said so, I said so, I said so
I'm the mom, the mom, the mom, the mom, the mom!!
Ta da!!!

http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=RxT5NwQUtVM

ARABIAN NIGHTS DINNER SHOW

2007-09-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

ARABIAN NIGHTS DINNER SHOW

Arabian Nights, voted #1 dinner show in Orlando, Florida, is a magical tale of love and triumph that features 60 horses from around the world. This Dinner Show production features Walter Farley's Black Stallion and is performed nightly in an arena that seats 1200. The 'Palace of Horses' has received millions of guests over ten years, and provides the backdrop for a dramatic story that delights guests with beautiful horses and continuous action.

Arabian Nights Dinner Show uses more costumes than a Broadway production and is enhanced by state-of-the-art lighting and special effects (including snow!). The Dinner Show story revolves around the wedding of the Prince and Princess and guests are invited to share in the wonder and magic created in this romantic tale on horseback.

Discount Dinner Show Tickets are good for any day you would like to use them. We highly recommend dinner reservations. Please let us know if we may make them for you. Show times are subject to change.

Arachnophobia

2007-09-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

Got Arachnophobia? Here’s Your Worst Nightmare

WILLS POINT, Tex., Aug. 29 — Most spiders are solitary creatures. So the discovery of a vast web crawling with millions of spiders that is spreading across several acres of a North Texas park is causing a stir among scientists, and park visitors.
Sheets of web have encased several mature oak trees and are thick enough in places to block out the sun along a nature trail at Lake Tawakoni State Park, near this town about 50 miles east of Dallas.
The gossamer strands, slowly overtaking a lakefront peninsula, emit a fetid odor, perhaps from the dead insects entwined in the silk. The web whines with the sound of countless mosquitoes and flies trapped in its folds.
Allen Dean, a spider expert at Texas A&M University, has seen a lot of webs, but even he described this one as “rather spooky, kind of like Halloween.”
Mr. Dean and several other scientists said they had never seen a web of this size outside of the tropics, where the relatively few species of “social” spiders that build communal webs are most active.
Norman Horner, emeritus professor of biology at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Tex., was one of a number of spider experts to whom a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist sent online photos of the web. “It is amazing, absolutely amazing,” said Dr. Horner, who at first thought it an e-mail hoax.
The web may be a combined effort of social cobweb spiders. But their large communal webs generally take years to build, experts say, and this web was formed in just a few months.
Or it could be a striking example of what is known as ballooning, in which lightweight spiders throw out silk filaments to ride the air currents. Five years ago, in just that way, a mass dispersal of millions of tiny spiders covered 60 acres of clover field in British Columbia with thick webbing.
Mike Quinn, the state biologist who distributed the online photos, and who runs a Web site about Texas invertebrates, plans to drive to the park from Central Texas on Friday in an effort to get some answers by collecting samples.
Record-breaking rains that flooded Texas earlier this summer inspired outbreaks of crickets and “webworms,” the caterpillar larvae of the white moth. Mr. Quinn said the rains might have something to do with the web, too.
“You’d have to get a lot of spiders together and feed them a whole lot of food to make a web that big,” he said.
Whatever caused the vast web, the sight of it has inspired both awe and revulsion.
“It’s beautiful,” said the park’s superintendent, Donna Garde.
Freddie Gowin disagrees. It was Mr. Gowin, a maintenance worker at the park, who discovered the web this month when, taking advantage of some of the first dry weather, he mowed the area around the nature trail.
“I don’t think there’s anything pretty about it,” he said, though “it’s certainly unusual.”
When Mr. Gowin drives the power mower through the area, webbing wraps across his bare face, causing him to slap at spiders, real or imagined, crawling on his skin.
The park’s staff says that while the web has killed some leaves, it should not hurt the trees.
The spiders are “spreading out for sure,” Mr. Gowin said, pointing out cedars that appeared to have a dusting of snow. “They’re going to take over this whole point.”
The staff expects the web to last until colder weather this fall, when the spiders begin dying off.
For now the concern is to defend this marvel from teenagers who might take a stick and knock it all down, or little boys wanting to push their little sisters into it.
“We’ll try to protect it, with what little staff we have,” said Ms. Garde, the superintendent. “I’ll use the web-of-life analogy. If you break one part of the web, it affects us all.”
More Articles in National »

Careless whispers

2007-09-01T15:05:00.001-07:00

Careless whispers

I Feel So Unsure As take your hand
And lead you to the dance floor
As the music dies Something in your eyes
Calls to mind a silver screen
And all its sad goodbye.

Chorus]

I'm never gonna dance again
Guilty feet have got no rhythm
Though it's easy to pretend
I know you're not a fool
I should have known better than to cheat a friend
And waste a chance that I've been given
So I'm never gonna dance again
The way I danced with you

Time can never mend
The careless whisper of a good friend
To the heart and mind
Ignorance is kind
There's no comfort in the truth
Pain is all you'll find

[Chorus]

Tonight the music seems so loud
I wish that we could lose this crowd
Maybe it's better this way
We'd hurt each other with the things we want to say
We could have been so good together
We could have lived this dance forever
But now who's gonna dance with me
Please stay

Chorus]

Now that you've gone
Now that you've gone
Now that you've gone
Was what i did so wrong

Papa, can you hear me?

2007-09-01T14:24:00.001-07:00

Papa, can you hear me?

2007-09-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

God, our heavenly Father. Oh God - and my father
Who is also in heaven.
May the light, of this flickering candle
Illuminate the night, the way your spirit illuminates my soul
Papa, can you hear me? Papa, can you see me?
Papa, can you find me in the night?
Papa, are you near me? Papa, can you hear me?
Papa, can you help me not be frightened.
Looking at the skies, I seem to see a million eyes
Which ones are yours?
Where are you now that yesterday
Has waved goodbye and closed its door
The night is so much darker, The wind is so much colder
The world I see is so much bigger Now that I'm alone
Papa, please forgive me Try to understand me
Papa, don't you know I had no choice?
Can you hear me praying, Anything I'm saying
Even though the night is filled with voices?
I remember ev'rything you taught me
Ev'ry book I've ever read
Can all the words in all the books
Help me to face what lies ahead?
The trees are so much taller
And I feel so much smaller
The moon is twice as lonely
And the stars are half as bright
Papa, how I love you Papa, how I need you
Papa, how I miss you Kissing me goodnight...

2007-08-27T14:40:00.001-07:00

Guacara, Carabobo, Venezuela

Leave me a message

Martin Luther King,Jr

2007-08-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

Date of birth: January 15, 1929
Place of birth: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Date of death: April 4, 1968 (aged 39)
Place of death: Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Movement: African-American Civil Rights Movement
Major organizations: Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Notable prizes: Nobel Peace Prize (1964)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977)
Congressional Gold Medal (2004)
Major monuments: Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial (planned)

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was one of the main leaders of the American civil rights movement. A political activist and Baptist minister, he is regarded as one of America's greatest orators. King's most influential and well-known public address is the "I Have A Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 1963. In 1964, King became the youngest man to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (for his work as a peacemaker, promoting nonviolence and equal treatment for different races). On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
In 1977, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter. In 1986, Martin Luther King Day was established as a United States holiday. In 2004, King was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.

Congressional Gold Medal.

Early life
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King between his sister, Willie Christine (September 11, 1927) and younger brother, Albert Daniel (nicknamed 'A.D.'; July 30, 1930 – July 21, 1969). King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind. He entered Morehouse College at the age of fifteen, as he skipped his ninth and twelfth high school grades without formally graduating. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania and graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity (B.D.) degree in 1951. In September of that year, King began doctoral studies in Systematic Theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) on June 5, 1955.

Civil rights activism

In 1953, at the age of 24, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to comply with the Jim Crow laws that required her to give up her seat to a white man. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by E. D. Nixon (head of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) and led by King, soon followed. (In March of the same year, a 15 year old school girl, Claudette Colvin, suffered the same fate but King refused to become involved, instead preferring to focus on leading his church. The boycott lasted for 382 days, the situation becoming so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation on all public transport.
King was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a group created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King continued to dominate the organization. King was an adherent of the philosophies of nonviolent civil disobedience used successfully in India by Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, and he applied this philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC. In 1959, he wrote The Measure of A Man, from which the piece What is Man?, an attempt to sketch the optimal political, social, and economic structure of society, is derived.
The FBI began wiretapping King in 1961, fearing that Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape over six years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.
King correctly recognized that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that made the Civil Rights Movement the single most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.
King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out in often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent. King and the SCLC were instrumental in the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, in 1961 and 1962, where divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts; in the Birmingham protests in the summer of 1963; and in the protest in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964. King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964
where SNCC had been working on voter registration for a number of months.

The March on Washington

King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins, NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr., Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). For King, this role was another which courted controversy, as he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.
The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the South and a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.
As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington," and members of the Nation of Islam who attended the march faced a temporary suspension.
The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for the District of Columbia, then governed by congressional committee.
Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington's history. King's I Have a Dream speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.
Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his long experience as a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a passionate statement of his crusade for justice. On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States

"Bloody Sunday"

Main article: Selma to Montgomery marches

President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with King in the White House Cabinet Room
King and SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, then attempted to organize a march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, for March 25, 1965. The first attempt to march on March 7 was aborted due to mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has since become known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights Movement, the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King's nonviolence strategy. King, however, was not present. After meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson, he attempted to delay the march until March 8, but the march was carried out against his wishes and without his presence by local civil rights workers. Footage of the police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively, and aroused national public outrage.
The unexpected ending of a second attempt of the march aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, and it was during this march that Willie Ricks coined the phrase "Black Power" (widely credited to Stokely Carmichael). On the steps of the State Capitol Building, King delivered a speech that has become known as "How Long, Not Long."

Assassination

The Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum
In late March, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee in support of the black sanitary public works employees, represented by AFSCME Local 1733, who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment: for example, African American workers, paid $1.70 per hour, were not paid when sent home because of inclement weather (unlike white workers).
On April 3, King returned to Memphis and addressed a rally, delivering his "I've been to the Mountaintop" address.
King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, owned by Walter Bailey, in Memphis, Tennessee. Reverend Ralph Abernathy King's close friend and colleague who was present at the assassination swore under oath to the HSCA that King and his entourage stayed at room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often it was known as the, "King-Abernathy suite". While standing on the motel's 2nd floor balcony King was shot at 6:01 p.m. April 4, 1968. The bullet entered through his right cheek smashing his jaw and then traveling down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder. According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's last words on the balcony were to musician Ben Branch who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: "Ben, make sure you play 'Precious Lord, Take My Hand,' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty." Friends inside the motel room heard the shots and ran to the balcony to find King on the ground. Local Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles, whose house King was on his way to, remembers that upon seeing King go down he ran into a hotel room to call an ambulance, but nobody was on the switchboard so he ran back out and yelled to the police to get one on their radios. It would later be revealed that the hotel switchboard operator, upon seeing King shot, had had a fatal heart attack and could not operate the phones. King was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m. The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 60 cities. Five days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader. A crowd of 300,000 attended his funeral that same day. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey attended on behalf of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was meeting with several advisors and cabinet officers on the Vietnam War in Camp David (there were fears Johnson might be hit with protests and abuses over the war if he attended). At his widow's request, King eulogized himself: at the funeral his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a recording of his famous 'Drum Major' sermon, given on February 4, 1968, was played. In that sermon he makes a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed the hungry", "clothe the naked", "be right on the [Vietnam] war question", and "love and serve humanity". Per King's request, his good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", at the funeral.

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I'm tired, I am weak, I am WORN
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When my way grows drear precious Lord linger near
When my light is almost gone
Hear my cry, hear my call
Hold my hand lest I fall
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When the darkness appears and the night draws near
And the day is past and gone
At the river I stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

Taken from wikipedia

I have a dream

2007-08-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

I have a dream

2007-08-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hoped that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for whites only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today my friends - so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification - one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father's died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi - from every mountainside.

Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring - when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
***********************************************
Distribution statement: Accepted as part of the Douglass Archives of American Public Address (http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu) on May 26, 1999. Prepared by D. Oetting (http://nonce.com/oetting).

Permission is hereby granted to download, reprint, and/or otherwise redistribute this file, provided this distribution statement is included and appropriate point of origin credit is given to the preparer and Douglass.
***********************************************
Taken from http://mydearstudents.blogspot.com/ KARIM BEN YAHYA

Earthquake in Peru

2007-08-16T15:57:00.000-07:00

A powerful, 7.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Peru on Wednesday night brought heavy waves down on homes in the port of Callao, near the capital, Lima. More tha 500 people have been killed across the country, and 1,350 more injured, according to Peruvian authorities. On Thursday, residents of Callao confronted the damage to their homes.

Most of the reported dead were in the Ica region, south of the capital, which emergency workers said appeared to be the area that was hardest hit. The earthquake, whose magnitude was variously estimated at 7.7 to 7.9, was centered off Peru’s Pacific shore near Ica.
Many people were killed in the rubble of their homes, and some 300 people were in a cathedral when it collapsed. Emergency workers said the overall death toll from the quake, which struck at 6:40 p.m. local time, might be even greater.
In addition to the killed and injured, the Center of Emergency Operations of Civil Defense said more than 16,500 people had been displaced or otherwise affected by the earthquake. It was not immediately clear how many foreigners may have been among the casualties. News agencies carried reports that at least one American was known to have died.

The city of Ica was blacked out, as were smaller towns along the coast south of Lima, and many of the areas hit lost telephone service. Rescue workers reported difficulty getting to Ica and the coastal towns because of cracks in highways and downed power lines.
Three hospitals and a clinic in Ica were flooded with people seeking aid, and some of the injured were being attended to in hallways, according to local media reports.
In the hard-hit port city of Pisco according to local media reports, a cathedral was destroyed with some 300 people were inside attending mass at the time the building fell.
Another 26 people, many of them patients in their beds, were killed when part of a hospital in Pisco collapsed, the DPA news agency reported. Fernando Barrios, the president of the hospital, appealed for the injured to be taken to Lima, because the remainder of the Pisco hospital was without water or electricity and was unable to treat them.

Andina, the state news agency, said that a special flight path had been established to ferry badly injured people from the hardest hit areas to Lima by air, to relieve overcrowding in local hospitals.
Mayor Juan Mendoza Uribe of Pisco said that 70 percent of the city of about 60,000 people, located 135 miles south of Lima, was leveled by the quake.
“So much effort and our city is destroyed,” he said, crying audibly, in comments broadcast on radio station RPP in Lima. The city remained without electricity this morning. Hundreds of families slept on the streets outside ruined houses, according to Andina, and 25 bodies were placed in front of municipal buildings after the morgue filled to capacity.
The president of Peru, Alan Garcia, arrived in Pisco around late in the morning to view the damage firsthand, the agency reported.
A wall collapsed at the Tambo de Mora prison in Chincha, another town hit hard by the earthquake, and about 680 prisoners escaped, according to Manuel Aguilar, vice president of the National Institute of Penitentiaries. About 29 were recaptured and transferred to another jail, he said.
Office workers in Lima fled tall buildings that shook in two waves that lasted around 20 seconds each and cut power lines, Reuters reported.

“I was in class on the fifth floor, and suddenly everything started to shake and glass began falling,” said Carolina Montero, 37, a banking administrator and finance student who lives in Callao, a coastal city near Lima. “People got extremely nervous.”
Fernando Calderon, an American in Lima, said he was in his hotel when the quake struck. He described the scene as unreal, with buildings swaying from right to left, and the ground shaking.
“We realized everybody was out, and the ground was shaking for a minute,” he said by telephone in an interview with CNN. “Finally we started hearing glass breaking, and things falling out of the building and that’s when everybody started screaming, praying, children crying. It was just awful.”
Electra Anderson, another American, told CNN by telephone from her apartment in Peru that it seemed when the quake began that many people had no idea what was happening, and ran into the streets screaming and crying.
“We’re used to earthquakes,” said Ms. Anderson, who is from California. “But it just didn’t stop; it kept going and going, and it kept getting stronger and stronger.”
She added that she counted about 70 aftershocks: “It’s just been nonstop.”
Her belongings in the apartment went flying and the glass windows appeared to be bending in. “People really thought they were going to die,” Ms. Anderson said.
Peruvian officials said there had been a total of more than 320 aftershocks, the strongest reaching a magnitude of about 6.
Offers of aid quickly poured in from many countries, including Spain, France, Venezuela and Colombia. The state news agency said that Chile, which recalled its ambassador to Peru, Christian Barros, earlier in the week because of a dispute over maritime boundaries between the two countries, would send Mr. Barros back to Lima immediately to help coordinate rescue and aid efforts.
Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for President Bush, said in Texas this morning that the United States was ready to provide aid and assistance, and that a team from the Agency for International Development was in Lima assessing the situation and coordinating with the Peruvian government. American search and rescue teams were standing by to go to Peru if they are needed there, Mr. Johndroe said.

The United States Geological Survey said the earthquake struck about 90 miles southeast of Lima at a depth of about 25 miles. A tsunami warning was issued for coastal areas of Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia, and a small tsunami was detected, but it posed no major threat and the warning was later lifted, news services reported.
The last time a quake of magnitude 7.0 or larger struck Peru was in September 2005, when a 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked Peru’s northern jungle, killing four people. In 2001, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck near the southern Andean city of Arequipa, killing 71 people.

A matter of interpretation

2007-08-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

Lucy´s show

2007-08-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

The gender of a computer

2007-08-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

The gender of a computer.
A French teacher was explaining to her class that in French, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. "House" for instance, is feminine -- "la maison." "Pencil", however, is masculine - Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether "computer" should be a masculine or a feminine noun.
Each group was asked to give four reasons for their recommendation.
The men's group decided that "computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computer"), because:

1. no one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. the native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else; 3. even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. as soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (`le computer"), because:

1. in order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. they have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. they are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. as soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

Moscow Metro

2007-08-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

Moscow Metro

2007-08-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

Baumanskaya station

Moscow Metro (Russian: Московский метрополитен), which spans almost the entire Russian capital is one of the world's most heavily used metro systems. It is well known for the ornate design of many of its stations, which contain beautiful examples of socialist realist art.

Locale: City of Moscow, Russia.
Transit type: Electrified Metro Railway.
Began operation: 1.935.
System Length: 278, 8 km. 173miles.
No of Lines: 12.
No of Stations: 172.
Daily rider ship: 6.8 million.
Track Gauge: l, 550 mm.
Operator: Moskovsky Metropolitan.

Description of the Metro

Electrozavodskaya station

In total, the Moscow Metro has 278.8 km of route length, 12 lines and 172 stations; on a normal weekday it carries over 7 million passengers. Passenger traffic is considerably lower on weekends bringing the average daily passenger traffic during the year to 6.8 million passengers per day. The Moscow Metro is a state-owned enterprise.
Each line is identified by an alphanumeric index (usually consisting of just a number), a name, and a colour. The voice announcements refer to lines by name, while in colloquial usage they are mostly referred to by colour, except the Lyublinskaya Line (number 10) and the Kakhovskaya Line (number 11) which have been assigned shades of green similar to that of the Zamoskvoretskaya Line (number 2). Most lines run radially through the city, except the Koltsevaya Line (number 5), which is a 20-km-long ring connecting all the radial lines and a few smaller lines outside. On all lines, travellers can determine the direction of the train by the gender of the announcer: on the ring line, a male voice indicates clockwise travel, and a female voice counter-clockwise. On the radial lines, travellers heading toward the centre of Moscow will hear male-voiced announcements, and travellers heading away will hear female-voiced announcements (a good mnemonic rule here is: ‘your boss calls you to work; your wife calls you home’). In addition, there is an abundance of signs showing all the stations that can be reached in a given direction.
The system was built almost entirely underground, although some lines (numbers 1, 2 and 4) cross the Moskva river, while line number 1 also crosses the Yauza River by bridge. Other exceptions include the Filyovskaya Line, which has a long surface section (seven stations) between Kievskaya and Molodyozhnaya stations, and the Butovskaya Light Metro Line (L1) with 4 elevated stations. Two more stations exist on surface level on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line and on the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line
The Moscow Metro is open from about 5:30 until 1:00 (the opening time may vary at different stations according to first train schedule but all stations close for entrance simultaneously at 1:00). During peak hours, trains run roughly every 90 seconds on most lines. At other times during the day, they run about every two to three and a half minutes, and every six to ten minutes late at night. As trains are so frequent, there is no timetable available to passengers

History

Belorusskaya station

The Moscow Metro was initially built under the 1930s Moscow general plan designed by Lazar Kaganovich and was named after him ("Metropoliten im. L.M. Kaganovicha").[1]
The first line opened on May 15, 1935 between Sokolniki and Park Kultury with a branch to Smolenskaya which reached Kievskaya in April 1937 (crossing the Moskva river by bridge). The construction of the first stations was based on other underground systems, and only a few original designs were allowed: (Krasniye Vorota, Okhotniy Ryad and Kropotkinskaya). Kievskaya station was the first to use national motifs.

The second stage was completed before the war. In March 1938 the Arbatskaya branch was split in two and extended to Kurskaya station (now the dark-blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line). In September 1938 the Gorkovskaya Line opened between Sokol and Teatralnaya. Here the architecture was based on the most popular of the stations already in existence (Krasniye Vorota, Okhotnyi Ryad and Kropotkinskaya) and the compositions followed the popular art deco style, though merging it with socialist visions. The first deep level Column station Mayakovskaya was built at the same time.
Building work on the third stage was delayed but not interrupted during the World War II, and two Metro sections were put into service: Teatralnaya - Avtozavodskaya (3 stations, crossing the Moskva river in a deep tunnel) and Kurskaya - Partizanskaya (4 stations) were inaugurated in 1943 and 1944 respectively. War motifs replaced socialist visions in the architectural design of the stations.
During the Siege of Moscow, in the autumn and winter of 1941, metro stations were used as air-raid shelters and the Council of Ministers moved its offices to the platforms of Mayakovskaya, where Stalin made public speeches on several occasions. Chistiye Prudy station was also walled off and the headquarters of the Air Defence installed there.
After the war, construction started on the fourth stage of the Metro, which included the Koltsevaya Line and a deep part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line from Ploshchad Revolyutsii to Kievskaya, and a surface extension to Pervomaiskaya in the early 1950s. The exquisite decoration and design of so much of the Moscow Metro is considered to have reached its peak in these stations.
The Koltsevaya Line was planned first as a line running under the Sadovoye Koltso (Garden Ring), a wide avenue encircling the borders of Moscow's city centre. The first part of the line - from Park Kultury to Kurskaya (1950) - follows this avenue. But later plans were changed and the northern part of the ring line deviates 1-1.5 km outside the Sadovoye Koltso, thus providing service for 7 (out of 9) rail terminals. The next part of the Koltsevaya line opened in 1952 (Kurskaya - Belorusskaya) and in 1954 the ring line was completed.
There is an interesting urban legend about the origin of the ring line. A group of engineers approached Stalin with plans for the Metro, to inform him of current progress and of what was being done at that moment. As he looked at the drawings, Stalin poured himself some coffee and spilt a small amount over the edge of the cup. When he was asked whether or not he liked the project so far, he put his cup down on the centre of the Metro blueprints and left in silence. The bottom of the cup left a brown circle on the drawings. The planners looked at it and realized that it was exactly what they had been missing. Taking it as a sign of Stalin's genius, they gave orders for the building of the ring line, which on the plans was always printed in brown. This legend, of course, may be attributed to Stalin's cult of personality.

Dobrininskaya station

The beginning of the Cold War led to the construction of a deep part of the Arbatskiy line. The stations on this line are very deep and were planned as shelters in the event of nuclear war. After finishing the line in 1953, the upper tracks between Ploshchad Revolyutsii' and Kievskaya were closed and later reopened in 1958 as a part of the Filyovskaya Line. In the further development of the Metro, the term "stages" was not used any more, although sometimes the stations opened in 1957-1959 are referred to as the "fifth stage".
During the late 1950s, the architectural extravagance of new metro stations was significantly toned down, and decorations at some stations, like VDNKh and Alexeyevskaya, were greatly simplified compared with original plans. This was done on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev, who favoured a more spartan decoration scheme. A typical layout (which quickly became known as "Sorokonozhka") was developed for all new stations, and the stations were built to look almost identical, differing from each other only in colours of the marble and ceramic tiles. Most of these stations were very poorly built. It was not until the mid-1970s that architectural extravagance was restored, and original designs once again became popular.
The cost of journeys has been steadily rising after 1991. Under soviet control, the cost of a single journey was 5 kopecks, practically a free ride (1/20th of a Soviet ruble - and worth about US $0.002 at todays exchange rate[1], $0.08 at the Soviet official exchange rate). With the fall of communism, the price rapidly rose to 1 ruble. Subsequent inflation caused the price in rubles to rise considerably to the current (2007) 9 to 17 rubles per trip. In dollar terms, the post-Soviet price held relatively stable between $0.20 and $0.35.
Since September 2005, the Filyovskaya Line has had a branch to the Moscow International Business Center. The first station of the branch, Delovoy Tsentr, opened in September 2005; the second station, Mezhdunarodnaya, opened in September 2006.

Moscow Metro lines:

Mayakovskaya station

Sokolnicheskaya
Zamoskvoretskaya
Arbatsko Pokrovskaya
Filyovskaya
Koltsevaya
Kaluzhsko Rizhskaya
Tagansko Krasnopresnenskaya
Kalininskaya
Serpukhovsko Timiryazevskaya
Lyublinskaya
Kakhovskaya
Butovskaya

Moscow Metro Stations:

Komsomolskaya station

Avtozavodskaya
Baumanskaya
Belorusskaya
Dobrininskaya
Dynamo
Electrozavodskaya
Kievskaya
Komsomolskaya
Krasnopresnenskaya
Mayakovskaya
Novokuznetskaya
Novoslobodskaya
Oktiabrskaya
Park Kultury
Paveletskaya
Ploshad Revolutia
Prospekt Mira
Semionovskaya
Smolenskaya
Taganskaya

See more photos here.
http://www.beeflowers.com/Metro/Avtozavodskaya/index.htm
http://www.beeflowers.com/Metro/Novokuznetskaya/index.htm
http://www.agujero.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=484
Taken from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Metro
Translations by http://www.google.com/translate_t?langpair=es|en

American idol

2007-07-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Guacara, Carabobo, Venezuela

The salesman of cellphones who robbed the hearts of England.

Though films try to convince us otherwise, most of all understand that the dreams, dreams are, at least for most of human beings.

(La vida es un sueño y los sueños, sueños son.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca)
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_vida_es_sue%C3%B1o

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pqueño;
que toda la vida es sueño
y los sueños, sueños son.

What is life? Frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction,
and the biggest good is small,
because all the life is dream
and dreams, dreams are.

This is an extraordinary history that remembers us that sometimes the dreams come to reality of the hand of a television contest.
That’s the history of Paul Potts, a Welshman of very humble extraction,
who, with his broken tooth and his cheap suit, arrived at the hearing
of Britain's Got Talent (“Great Britain has talent”, an English contest)
saying that he was going to sing nothing less than “OPERA”.
At the beginning, the faces of the jury (among them the loved and hating Simon Cowbell of American Idol) was of ridicule, sarcasm and annoyance.
But as soon as he intoned the first verses of the aria “Nessun Dorma”,
the members of the jury were astonished and the public put itself standing up
to applaud to the timid salesman of cell phones.

Con te partiro

2007-07-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

“So you work in Care phone Warehouse and you are able to sing that way? I was not expecting that. It has been a shower of cold water”, said Simon. "I believe that you have been absolutely fantastic".
The juror Amanda Holden could not but cry, and to comment to him:
“we have here a small piece of charcoal that sure is going to turn diamond”.

After eight weeks of competition Paul was declared winner of Britain’s got Talent and surely, very soon, he will be selling discs instead of cell phones.
“All my life I have felt insignificant. After that first audition, I began thinking that I am somebody”, said Potts.
Some Opera experts comment and indicate the defects of Potts, forgetting that his formation like singer was truncated first by a tumor and then by a motorcycle accident, circumstances that prevented him to pay for the courses that he had begun to take in Italy. He had already spent more than US 30,000 in classes.

Before his accident, Paul had been selected for some special classes with Pavarotti and some special presentations in his native country. But as he neither belonged to the professional operatic organization nor had enough money to pay his studies, considered that he had nothing to lose and registered in the contest.

To the “Semifinal”, Potts chose “Con te partiro”,
(I'LL GO WITH YOU)the same song that made famous to Andrea Bocelli.
After his performance, the juror Amanda Holden confessed to him that her grandfather had passed away recently.
“I’m going to give you my vote because he wanted to vote for you and I’m going to do that in his name”
Simon, well known by his scorns to the participants, just said:
“It was fantastic”.

CON TE PARTIRO

Quando sono solo
sogno all'orizzonte
e mancan le parole,
si lo so che non c'e` luce
in una stanza quando manca il sole,
se non ci sei tu con me,
Su le finestre
mostra a tutti il mio cuore
che hai acceso,
chiudi dentro me
la lace che
hai incontrato per strada,

Con te partrio'
Paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te,
adesso si li vivro'
Con te partiro'
su navi per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non esistono piu'
con te io li vivro'

Quando sei lontana
sogno all'orizzonte
e mancan le parole,
e io si lo so
che sie con me,
tu mia luna tu sei qui con me,
mio sole tu sei qui con me.

Con te partiro'
Paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te,
adesso si li vivro.
Con te partiro,
su navi per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non esistono piu',
con te io li rivivro.
Con te partiro'
su navi per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non esistono piu'.
con te io li rivivro.
Con te partiro'
Io con te.

+++ +++ +++ +++

I'LL GO WITH YOU

When I'm alone I dream on the horizon
and words fail;
yes, I know there is no light
in a room where the sun is absent,
if you are not with me.
At the windows
show everyone my heart
which you set alight;
enclose within me the light you
encountered on the street.

I'll go with you, to countries I never
saw and shared with you
now, yes, I shall experience them.
I'll go with you on ships across seas
which, I know no, no, exist no longer;
with you I shall experience them.

When you are far away I dream on the horizon
and words fail, and, yes, I know
that you are with me;
you, my moon, are here with me,
my sun, you are here with me.

I'll go with you to countries I never
saw and shared with you,
now, yes, I shall experience them.
I'll go with you on ships across seas
which, I know, no, no, exist no longer;
with you I shall experience them again.
I'll go with you on ships across the seas
which, I know, no, no, exist no longer;
with you I shall experience them again.
I'll go with you, I’ll go with you.

Nessum dorma - No-one shall sleep

2007-07-29T14:55:00.000-07:00

And for the GREAT END, he returned to the song of his first hearing:
The "Nessun Dorma" (no-one shall sleep), final aria of the Turandot opera,
that this time was allowed to interpret complete.
He sang it simply spectacular.
Enjoy it.

Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o Principessa,
nella tua fredda stanza
guardi le stelle che tremano
d'amore e di speranza!

Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,
il nome mio nessun saprà
No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò,
quando la luce splenderà!
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà
il silenzio che ti fa mia!

Il nome suo nessun saprà
E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir.

Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle!
Tramontate, stelle! All'alba vincerò!
Vincerò! Vincerò!

++++++++++++++++++

No-one shall sleep! No-one shall sleep!
No-one shall sleep!
You too, oh Princess, in your cold room watch the stars
trembling with love and hope.

But my secret lies hidden within me.
No-one shall discover my name.
Oh no, I will only reveal it on your lips
when daylight shines forth
and my kiss shall break the silence
that makes you mine.

Choir: No-one shall discover her name
And we will, alas, have to die.
Depart, oh night!
Set you, stars. Set you, stars.
At dawn I shall win. At dawn I shall win.
At dawn I shall win.

Translations by :
http://www.google.com/translate_t?langpair=es|en

Global warming

2007-07-27T14:21:00.000-07:00

Sarahi wrote:

MY NAME IS SARAHI ABOUL

sarakaty13_11_1986@hotmail.com

My father is from Lebanon and mommy is Venezuelan. I am twenty years old. I am studying English at FUNDAUC Guacara.
I´d like to begin practising my English, so I´d like to make lots of friends all around the world.
My teacher is Jhoseth Rodriguez.

*** *** *** ***

This is an evaluation we took some days ago:

1- What do you know about Global Warming?

Global Warming is a very tragic problem that the world is facing.
This increase is caused in great part by industrialization.
More factories, more cars, more emission of toxic gasses.

The melting of poles

2007-07-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

2- Did you know anything about the consequences of such phenomenon?

Yes, I did. One of the consequences of the increase of temperature is the melting of big parts of the polar ice on the North and South Poles. Through the melting of polar ice, there become more water in the seas and oceans and the sea-level will rise.
Through the rising of the sea-level big parts of land will be flooded and there become less land to live on and to grow food on. So, there will be no enough space left, so others areas will be overpopulated, with all the problems that come with it.
Through the Warming of the atmosphere temperature, the average temperature will rise and there will come more and bigger deserts.

Earth´s climate

2007-07-27T14:06:00.001-07:00

3. Have you noticed anything related to Global Warming where you live?

The latest scientific data confirms that the earth´s climate is changing rapidly.
In Carabobo the heat is worse every day although we live in a tropical zone.

Earth´s climate

2007-07-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

Overpopulation

2007-07-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

4. - What can you do to solve this issue?
The solution of Global Warming is not that simple.
To reduce Global Warming the emission of carbon-dioxide (CO2) has to become less. Other solution is to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use to power our vehicles and generate electricity. Although there are available other solutions to Global Warming, we have to put them to use.
On the other hand, mankind should be very careful with the (rain) forests on this planet.
(Another big problem in the warming of the globe is the overpopulation of the planet. To relieve this situation it would be necessary to start implementing plans to reduce the number of births. But this is something nobody talks about)

Gays in the military

2007-07-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

jrtaylor79 said:

I cannot believe that this is even an issue. Who the hell cares if you are gay and in the military? Who cares if you are gay? Straight, gay, it's all the damn same. Give them their equality already and we can go on and focus on other things in this world. Even if the US put mre bans on it, gay people will not just disappear.

Gays in the military

2007-07-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

Devinator Said

I knew lots of gay people in the military. The ONLY difference is that they are allowed to go to combat before they get discharged for something as personal as sexual orientation. What do you mean with "open?" so, you mean, you just don't want to know about it, or that you're afraid they'll be dying their uniforms in rainbow colors and blowing you kisses? People aren't defined by their sexual orientation. You think it will be any different if they are allowed to admit being gay?

Democrats debate

2007-07-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

Simón Bolívar

2007-07-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios was born on July 24, 1783 in Caracas and died on December 17, 1830 in Santa Marta, Colombia. Bolivar was the leader of several independence movements throughout South America, collectively known as Bolivar’s War.
Credited with leading the fight for independence in what are now the countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Bolivia, he is revered as a hero in these countries and throughout much of the rest of Hispanic America.
In 1802, he married María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaysa. She died of yellow fever less than a year later and he never remarried.
Bolívar is known as "El Libertador" (the Liberator).
Family heritage and early life
The Bolívar aristocratic bloodline derives from a small village in the Basque Country called Bolibar, which is the origin of the surname. His father descended remotely from King Fernando III of Castile and Count Amedeo IV of Savoy, and was provenience in male line of the family de Ardanza. The Bolivars settled in Venezuela in the sixteenth century.
A portion of their wealth came from the Aroa River gold and copper mines in Venezuela. In 1632, gold was first mined, leading to further discoveries of extensive copper deposits. Towards the later 1600s, copper was exploited with the name "Cobre Caracas". These mines became the property of Simon Bolivar’s family. Later in his revolutionary life, Bolivar used part of the mineral income to finance the South American revolutionary wars. Some people claim that his family grew to prominence before gaining great wealth. For example, the Cathedral of Caracas, founded in 1575, has a side chapel dedicated to Simon Bolivar’s family.
Bolivar was born in Caracas, in modern-day Venezuela and educated by tutors after his parents died. Among his tutors were Simon Rodriguez, whose ideas and educational style heavily influenced the young man and Andres Bello, the Venezuelan poet, lawmaker, philologist and diplomat.
Following the death of his father Juan Vicente de Bolivar y Ponte, 1st Marques de San Luis, and his mother Maria de la Conception de Palacios y Blanco, he went to Spain in 1799 to complete his education. There he married Maria Teresa Rodriguez Del Toro y Alaysa in 1802, but on a brief return visit to Venezuela in 1803, she died of yellow fever. Bolivar returned to Europe in 1804 and for a time was part of Napoleon’s retinue.

The Liberator

2007-07-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

Bolivar returned to Venezuela in 1807, and, when Napoleon made Joseph Bonaparte King of Spain and its colonies in 1808, he participated in the resistance juntas in South America. The Caracas junta declared its independence in April 19, 1810, and Bolivar was sent to Britain on a diplomatic mission.
Bolivar returned to Venezuela in 1811 and began fighting under the commandment of General Francisco de Miranda.
In March 1812 an earthquake destroyed Caracas and the priests of the Catholic Church blamed Bolivar as guilty of the disaster.
In July 1812, chief commander Francisco de Miranda surrendered to the Spanish army and Bolivar had to flee to Cartagena de Indias. It was during this period that Bolivar wrote his Manifesto de Cartagena.
On May 14, 1813, after acquiring a military command in New Granada under the direction of the Congress of Tunja, he led the invasion of Venezuela. This was the beginning of the famous Campaña Admirable, the Admirable Campaign.
He entered Mérida on May 23, where he was proclaimed as El Libertador, following the occupation of Trujillo on June 9. Six days later, on June 15, he dictated his famous Decree of War to the Death (Decreto de Guerra a Muerte). Caracas was retaken on August 6, 1813 and Bolivar was ratified as "El Libertador", thus proclaiming the Venezuelan Second Republic.
Due to the rebellion of José Tomás Boves in 1814 and the fall of the republic, he returned to New Granada, where he then commanded a Colombian nationalist force and entered Bogotá in 1814, recapturing the city from the dissenting republican forces of Cundinamarca.
He intended to march into Cartagena and enlist the aid of local forces in order to capture Royalist Santa Marta. However, after a number of political and military disputes with the government of Cartagena, Bolivar fled, in 1815, to Jamaica, where he petitioned the Haitian leader Alexander Pétion for aid.
In 1817, with Haitian help (given because he promised to free slaves), Bolivar landed in Venezuela and captured Angostura (now Ciudad Bolivar).
A victory at the Battle of Boyacá in 1819 added New Granada to the territories free from Spanish control, and in September 7, 1821 the Gran Colombia (a federation covering much of modern Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador) was created, with Bolivar as president and Francisco de Paula Santander as vice president.
Further victories at the Carabobo in 1821 and Pichincha in 1822 consolidated his rule over Venezuela and Ecuador respectively.
After a meeting in Guayaquil, on July 26 and July 27, 1822, with Argentinean General José de San Martín, who had received the title of Protector of Peruvian Freedom, in August 1821, after having partially liberated Peru from the Spanish, Bolivar took over the task of fully liberating Peru. The Peruvian congress named him dictator of Peru, on February 10, 1824, which allowed Bolivar to completely reorganize the political and military administration. Bolivar, assisted by Antonio José de Sucre, decisively defeated the Spanish cavalry, on August 6, 1824, at Junín. Sucre destroyed the still numerically superior remnants of the Spanish forces at Ayacucho on December 9.
.
On August 6, 1825, at the Congress of Upper Peru, was created the Republic of Bolivia. Bolivar is thus one of the few men to have a country named after him.
The constitution reflected the influence of the French and Scottish Enlightenment on Bolivar’s political thought, as well as that of classical Greek and Roman authors.
Bolivar had great difficulties maintaining control of the vast Grand Colombia. During 1826, internal divisions had sparked dissent throughout the nation and regional uprisings erupted in Venezuela, thus the fragile South American coalition appeared to be on the verge of collapse.
An amnesty was declared and an arrangement was reached with the Venezuelan rebels, but political dissent in New Granada grew as a consequence of this. In an attempt to keep the federation together as a single entity, Bolivar called for a constitutional convention at Ocaña during April 1828.
He had seen his dream of eventually creating an American Revolution-style federation between all the newly independent republics, with a government ideally set-up solely to recognize and uphold individual rights, succumb to the pressures of particular interests throughout the region, which rejected that model and allegedly had little or no allegiance to liberal principles.
For this reason, and to prevent a break-up, Bolivar wanted to implement in Grand Colombia a more centralist model of government, including some or all of the elements of the Bolivian constitution he had written (which included a lifetime presidency with the ability to select a successor, though this was theoretically held in check by an intricate system of balances).
This move was considered controversial and was one of the reasons why the deliberations met with strong opposition. The convention almost ended up drafting a document which would have implemented a radically federalist form of government, which would have greatly reduced the powers of the central administration.
Unhappy with what would be the ensuing result, Bolivar’s delegates left the convention. After the failure of the convention due to grave political differences, Bolivar proclaimed himself dictator on August 27, 1828 through the "Organic Decree of Dictatorship".
He considered this as a temporary measure, as a means to reestablish his authority and save the republic, though it increased dissatisfaction and anger among his political opponents.

An assassination attempt on September 25, 1828 failed, in part thanks to the help of his lover, Manuela Sáenz according to popular belief.
Although Bolivar emerged physically intact from the event, this nevertheless greatly affected him. Dissident feelings continued, and uprisings occurred in New Granada, Venezuela and Ecuador during the next two years.

Death and Legacy

2007-07-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

Bolívar finally resigned his presidency on April 27, 1830, intending to leave the country for exile in Europe, possibly in France. He had already sent several crates (containing his belongings and his writings) ahead of him to Europe.
He died in “La Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino” in Santa Marta, Colombia, on December 17, 1830, after a painful battle with tuberculosis.
His remains were moved from Santa Marta to Caracas in 1842, where a monument was set up for his burial. The “Quinta” near Santa Marta has been preserved as a museum with numerous references to his life.
At the very moment of his birth Bolivar was the wealthiest man in Venezuela.
At the moment of his death, he didn’t have neither a bed to rest nor a second shirt to change.
La Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino was the property of a Spanish who offered that as a shelter to rest.
Honors
President of Grand Colombia : 1821 - 1830
President of Peru : Feb 1824 - Jan 1826
President of Bolivia : 1825 - 1826

Taken from wikipedia

That´s what friends are for

2007-07-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

That´s what friends are for.

And I Never thought I'd feel this way
And as far as I'm concerned I'm glad I got the chance to say
That I do believe I love you

And if I should ever go away
Well then close your eyes and try to feel the way we do today
And than if you can't remember.....

Chorus
Keep smiling'
Keep shining'

Knowing' you can always count on me
for sure that's what friends are for

For good times and bad times
I'll be on your side for ever more
That's what friends are for

Well you came and open me
And now there's so much more I see
And so by the way I thank you....

Ohhh and then
For the times when we're apart
Well just close your eyes and know
These words are coming from my heart
And then if you can't remember...

Mmmhmm thats what friends are for mmmhmm yea

Vincent Van Gogh´s Bubbleshare

2007-07-17T08:40:00.001-07:00

This album is powered by BubbleShare - Add to my blog

Vincent Van Gogh.

2007-07-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1.853 and died on 29 July 1890. He was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. His paintings and drawings include some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces.
Van Gogh spent his early life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880.
Initially, van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colors and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France.
He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide.
The central figure in Vincent van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards.
Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.

2007-07-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

Vincent

Starry starry night paint your pallet blue and grey.
Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills sketch the trees and the daffodils
catch the breeze and the winter chills in colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me
and how you suffered for your sanity and how you tried to set them free
they would not listen they did not know how perhaps they'll listen now.

Starry starry night flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me
and how you suffered for your sanity and how you tried to set them free
they would not listen they did not know how perhaps they'll listen now.
For they could not love you but still your love was true
and when no hope was left inside on that starry starry night

You took your life as lover's often do but I could have told you
Vincent, This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Starry starry night portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
like the strangers that you've met

The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now I think I know what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would now listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will.

Batalla de Carabobo (Slide)

2007-06-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

Batalla de Carabobo – Carabobo Battle

2007-06-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

Independencia de Venezuela - Independence of Venezuela
Batalla de Carabobo – Carabobo Battle

Simón Bolívar.

Painted by Arturo Michelena,

París 1888.

Combat operation near the city of Valencia, the 24 of June of 1821, between the realistic army in charge of Field marshal Miguel de la Torre and the republican army commanded by Commander in chief Simón Bolivar.

Battle of The victory gained at this last one, was decisive for the liberation from Caracas and the territory from the Post of captain-general from Venezuela, fact that will be obtained of definitive way in 1823 with naval Batalla of the Lake of Maracaibo and taking the strength of Puerto Cabello.

Previous to the combat, Miguel de la Torre distributed his forces of way so that they covered by the west the way with San Carlos, and by the south the one of the Pao. Defensive forward edge was trusted to the First Division directed by the Lieutenant Colonel Tomás Garcia, who organized itself in three main battalions. The battalion of the Valencey in charge of the Liutenent Colonel Andres Riesco , occupied the South part of the way; to his right the light battalion of the Hostalrich commanded by the Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Illas, in column of march behind the previous ones. In addition to this, two pieces of artillery were placed in a small height, in front of the line formed by Valancey and Barbastro.

The Position corresponding to the route of the Pao was occupied by the Division of Vanguard led by Brigadier Francisco Tomas Morales,who counted on two main battalions and one of reserve
First took position the light battalion of the Infant, in charge of the Lieutenant Colonel Simón Sicily; and immediately behind this unit the light battalion of the Prince.
The reserve was integrated by the second battalion Burgos, under the command of the Lieutenant Colonel Joaquin Dalmar, who had four cavalry regiments. As far as the headquarters, it was settled down near the battalion Burgos.

On June 15,1821, Bolivar reorganized the republican army in three divisions. The first in charge of Jose Antonio Páez, and formed by the battalion Bravos de Apure (led by the Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Torres) and the British Hunters (to the control of Colonel Thomas Ildeston Ferriar),in addition to 7 cavalry regiments.
Second, commanded by Major general Manuel Cedeño, and constituted by the battalions Gunners (directed by the Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig Flegel), and Vargas (Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Gravete), to which a cavalry squadron added itself. Third,under the orders of Colonel Ambrosio Plaza and constituted by 4 battalions. The one of Rifles in charge of the Lieutenant Colonel Arturo Sandes, Grenadiers to the control of Colonel Francisco Paula Vélez, Winner of Boyacá directed by Colonel Juan Uslar and Anzoátegui, commanded by Colonel Jose M. Arguidegui; completed all this by a cavalry regiment. The republican forces added 6,500 men altogether.

Early in the morning of June 24, from the heights of the hill Buenavista, Bolivar it made recognition of the realistic position and reached the conclusion that this one was unconquerable by the front and by the south.
Consequently, ordered that the divisions modified their march by the left and directed to the straight realistic flank, which was discovered; that is to say, Bolivar conceived an operation devoted to overflow the enemy by the right wing, operation executed by the divisions of Paez and Cedeño, whereas division Plaza followed by the way towards the center of the defensive position.

When De La Torre discovered the maneuver of the republicans, ordered to battalion Burgos that marched to the north to occupy the height towards which the divisions of Bolivar were marching.

When the Burgos arrived at the indicated area, opened fire against the battalion Braves of Apure, head of the first division, which after crossing the brook of Carabobo, tried to scale the slope that would take it part to the flat of the savannah. So violent was the counterattack of the Burgos, that the Braves of Apure had to fall back by twice. The situation changed when a unit that followed it, the battalion Hunting British, faced the Burgos and forced it to back down. On the other hand, the battalions Infante and Hostalrich, entered helping the Burgos, but the Braves of Apure reorganized and joined to the British Hunters to resume the attack, helped by two companies of the battalion Gunners. In order to stop the crease of the realistic units that had produced the patriotic operation, De La Torre sent the battalions Prince, Barbastro and Infante, those that managed to maintain the line battle, but only by brief time, because the thickness of the cavalry of the first division of the republican army entered by the north of the savannah. With the purpose of facing this new attack, De La Torre ordered to the Húsares regiment of Fernando VII whom it loaded against the patriotic cavalry, but this unit retired after shooting its carbines

Finally, attacked by front by the infantry and by the right by the cavalry, the realistic battalions decided on retirement. As a last resort, De La Torre ordered to the regiment of the Lanceros of the King who attacked the patriotic cavalry, but this unit not only disobeyed the order, but that fled before the attack of the republican forces. When entering the battle their final phase, the patriotic ones initiated a tenacious persecution of the Spanish army, which was carried out until Valencia. Of the 4,279 cash that participated in the battle of Carabobo, the realists lost two senior officers, 120 to subaltern and 2,786 soldiers. On the other hand, the losses of the republicans also were numerous. The rest of the realistic army ended up taking refuge in Puerto Cabello.
Taken from wikipedia.

Batalla de Carabobo.

Bandera de Venezuela.
Véase también: Independencia de Venezuela

Batalla de Carabobo
Véase también: Independencia de Venezuela

Acción bélica librada cerca de la ciudad de Valencia, el 24 de junio de 1821, entre el ejército realista a cargo del Mariscal de Campo Miguel de la Torre y el ejército republicano comandado por el General en Jefe Simón Bolívar. La victoria lograda por este último, resultó decisiva para la liberación de Caracas y el territorio de la Capitanía general de Venezuela, hecho que se logrará de manera definitiva en 1823 con la Batalla naval del Lago de Maracaibo y la toma de la fortaleza de Puerto Cabello.

Previo al combate, Miguel de la Torre distribuyó sus fuerzas de manera tal que cubrieran por el oeste el camino de San Carlos, y por el sur el de El Pao. La primera línea defensiva fue confiada a la Primera División dirigida por el Teniente Coronel Tomás García, la cual se organizó en tres batallones principales. El batallón del Valencey a cargo del Teniente Coronel Andrés Riesco, ocupó la parte sur del camino; a su derecha se situó el batallón ligero del Hostalrich comandado por el Teniente Coronel Francisco Illas, en columna de marcha detrás de las anteriores. Además de esto, dos piezas de artillería fueron colocadas en una pequeña altura, delante de la línea formada por Valancey y Barbastro. La Posición correspondiente a la vía de El Pao fue ocupada por la División de Vanguardia liderada por el Brigadier Francisco Tomás Morales, quien contaba con dos batallones principales y uno de reserva. Primero tomó posiciones el batallón ligero del Infante, a cargo del Teniente Coronel Simón Sicilia; e inmediatamente detrás de esta unidad se situó el batallón ligero del Príncipe.

La reserva quedó integrada por el segundo batallón del Burgos, bajo la jefatura del Teniente Coronel Joaquín Dalmar, quien disponía de cuatro regimientos de caballería. En cuanto al cuartel general, el mismo quedó establecido cerca del batallón Burgos.

El 15 de junio de 1821, Bolívar reorganizó el ejército republicano en tres divisiones. La primera a cargo de José Antonio Páez, y formada por los batallones Bravos de Apure (liderada por el Teniente Coronel Francisco Torres) y los Cazadores Británicos (al mando del Coronel Thomas Ildeston Ferriar); además de 7 regimientos de caballería. La segunda, comandada por el General de División Manuel Cedeño, y constituida por los batallones Tiradores (dirigida por el Teniente Coronel Ludwig Flegel), y Vargas (Teniente Coronel Antonio Gravete), a lo que se sumaba un escuadrón de caballería. La tercera, bajo las órdenes del Coronel Ambrosio Plaza y constituida por 4 batallones. El de Rifles a cargo del Teniente Coronel Arturo Sandes, Granaderos al mando del Coronel Francisco Paula Vélez, Vencedor de Boyacá dirigida por el Coronel Juan Uslar y Anzoátegui, comandada por el Coronel José M. Arguidegui; completado todo esto por un regimiento de caballería. Las fuerzas republicanas sumaban en total 6.500 hombres.

A tempranas horas del 24 de junio, desde las alturas del cerro Buenavista, Bolívar hizo un reconocimiento de la posición realista y llegó a la conclusión de que ésta era inexpugnable por el frente y por el sur. En consecuencia, ordenó que las divisiones modificaran su marcha por la izquierda y se dirigieran al flanco derecho realista, el cual estaba descubierto; es decir, Bolívar concibió una maniobra tendiente a desbordar el ala derecha enemiga, operación ejecutada por las divisiones de Páez y Cedeño, en tanto que la división Plaza seguía por el camino hacia el centro de la posición defensiva.

Al darse cuenta la Torre de la maniobra de los republicanos, ordenó al batallón Burgos que marchase al norte a ocupar la altura hacia la cual se dirigían las divisiones de Bolívar. Al llegar el Burgos al área indicada, abrió fuego contra el batallón Bravos de Apure, cabeza de la primera división, el cual después de cruzar el riachuelo de Carabobo, trataba de escalar la pendiente que lo llevaría a la parte plana de la sabana. Tan violento fue el contraataque del Burgos, que el Bravos de Apure tuvo que replegarse por dos veces. La situación cambió cuando una unidad que lo seguía, el batallón Cazadores Británicos, se enfrentó al Burgos y lo obligó a retroceder. Por su parte, los batallones Infante y Hostalrich, entraron en auxilio del Burgos, pero reorganizado el Bravos de Apure, se unió al Cazadores Británicos para reanudar el ataque, ayudado por dos compañías del batallón Tiradores. Para detener el repliegue de las unidades realistas que había producido la operación patriota, Torre envió los batallones Príncipe, Barbastro e Infante, los que lograron sostener la línea de combate, pero sólo por breve tiempo, pues el grueso de la caballería de la primera división del ejército republicano entró por el norte de la sabana. Con el fin de hacer frente a este nuevo ataque, la Torre ordenó al regimiento Húsares de Fernando VII que cargase contra la caballería patriota, pero esta unidad se retiró después de disparar sus carabinas.

Finalmente, atacados de frente por la infantería y por la derecha por la caballería, los batallones realistas optaron por la retirada. Como último recurso, la Torre le ordenó al regimiento de los Lanceros del Rey que atacara a la caballería patriota, pero esta unidad no sólo desobedeció la orden, sino que huyó ante la embestida de las fuerzas republicanas.

Al entrar la batalla en su fase final, los patriotas iniciaron una tenaz persecución del ejército español, la cual fue llevada a cabo hasta Valencia. De los 4.279 efectivos que participaron en la batalla de Carabobo, los realistas perdieron dos oficiales superiores, 120 subalternos y 2.786 soldados. Por su parte, las bajas de los republicanos también fueron cuantiosas. El resto del ejército realista terminó refugiándose en Puerto Cabello.

Tomado de wikipedia.

.

La vaca mariposa

2007-06-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

Pacheco Idárraga

2007-05-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

El 31 de Diciembre de 2006 se reunió la familia para esperar

el año nuevo y a Hernesto José.

Ruiz Pacheco

2007-05-19T03:32:00.000-07:00

Hernesto Jose

Nació el 31 de Enero de 2007.

Hijo de Marlin Karina Pacheco Idárraga y de Hernan José Ruiz.
Marlin es hija de Ernesto Pacheco y Carmen Idárraga.

Idárraga Noguera

2007-05-19T03:19:00.000-07:00

José Luis nació el 14 de Mayo de 1.996.
Hijo de Carlos José Idárraga Rivas y Adriana Noguera.

Clock

2007-05-19T03:17:00.000-07:00

Mamá feliz

2007-05-16T16:10:00.000-07:00

Julimar nació el doce de Diciembre de 1978.

Hija de Armando José Calero y de

Judith Martinez

Papá feliz

2007-05-16T16:00:00.000-07:00

Edgar Eduardo nació el 27 de Agosto de 1980.

Hijo de Eduardo Briceño y Alicia Maldonado.

Morochos Briceño-Calero

2007-05-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

Morochos Briceño-Calero.
Edgar Alejandro y
Valeria Valentina
nacieron el cinco de Diciembre
de 2006 a las 2,07 y 2,09 PM respectivamente.

MyFrappr

2007-03-11T15:50:00.000-07:00

Nina´s birthday

2007-03-06T05:01:00.000-08:00

Hello dear friend Nina : because of the different time zones I don´t know if today is today, yesterday or tomorrow.

Anyway, your birthday is near.

How many? TOP SECRET. I have a humble gift for you. I hope you enjoy it. It comes from the very bottom of my heart. Happy birthday to you. Horacio.

I´d like to rise my glass with all your

friends to sing happy birthday to you.

And I´d like to invite all of you to share

a peace of cake.
(Don´t care of weight)

Happy birthday

2007-03-03T07:20:00.000-08:00

Hola hija: estoy tratando de enviarte una felicitación de cumpleaños.

Creo que lo menos que te mereces es un ramo de flores
y una copa de vino

y un pedazo de torta para dieta.

y un motivo para reirte

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/comix.php