News in levels: Robotic Animals

Link to the new

08-03-2017

The Horniman Museum in London is hosting an exhibition that allows children to understand how the natural world works through robotic models of animals.

The robotic platypus, for example, has large flashing red lights on its bill which represent the animal’s electroreceptors, which pick up electrical pulses given off by anything alive. Visitors can also catch bugs, use bat sonar and interact with creatures normally only seen in textbooks. Velcro is used to demonstrate how a housefly can stay on the wall, and it sucks up its food like a vacuum cleaner.

Summary:

A museum in London has hosted an exhibition to show the visitors how works the nature and how animals do some things, and they've used robotic animals to give examples. There were demostrations of how houseflyes can stand on walls, of how platypuses notice of other living beigns...

I think they are using a good tool to show the kids how animals do the things they do. I'm sure that a kid will pay all his attention to a robot like this, and he won't forget it. This is a good experience to the people who ccreate those robots too, they see that they are doing something useful in the present, not just for the future.

Trappist-1

Everybody has heard about the new descovery in astronomy, it's been announced in all the media. Just because of this, I'm going to focus on some facts that media has "avoided" or that most people don't know. I'm talking about the discovery of a planet system with one star, TRAPPIST-1, and 7 planets arround it, and all just 41 light years away from the Earth.

First of all, this system was discovered on 2015, and this year astronomers have found 4 earth-sized planets more arround the star (on 2015 they thought there were just 3).

Then, most people think that this discovery was done by NASA, and this is wrong. Actually, the discovery of the planets belongs to astronomers of different groups, but mainly it belongs to a belgian group that used a telescope of NASA. Lot of people thinks that it was NASA to discover the new planets because NASA has a lot of access to the media (22,3 M followers on twitter) and when they published the new they didn't specify who had done the discovery.

Then, i'ts well known that five of the seven planets have the size of the Earth. This could be true, but actually we know just more or less their size, and the same happens with the mass. For example, the plane TRAPPIST-1 c has a mass of 1.38 the mass of the Earth, but with a margin of error of 0.61. This kind of imprecisions will disappear when the James Webb Space Telescope starts its work on 2018.

NO LOGO: Cool Hunters

I have to write about a chapter of the book No Logo by Naomi Klein: Cool Hunters - The Legal Stalkers if Youth Culture. It's just  a 4 paragraph writing ( but what 4 paragraphs...). I'll tell my opinion about what I've understood.

It talks about the "Cool Hunters" that catch up the style of some poor people just to sell it  then to the ones who pretend to look rich... (Yes, I don't think those who really have a high social level are paying for the work of the cool hunters). Actually, "cool hunter"is a profession inside the world of fashion, and their objective is to take the poor people style to reply it in new-designed clothes. Meanwhile, the trends will make the people impatient to wear the new clothes with all their soures, like advertising. The result is next: broked jeans and jumpers.



(I tryed to find really broked jeans on google, but all I found were jeans with prefabricated holes)

Well, on the text it just talks about cool hunters looking for the poor-style, but they also look for new ideas on the best neighborhoods.

In my opinion it's not a bad idea looking for new styles in this way, because the really poor people have few clothes, so the ones who want to look "good" are forced to be original doing the best they can. But about what the big trends do... It's unpleasant to think on how they can sell their ideas as easy as this.

Rite of passage

I chose Krypteia.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B862S-EHFSO6dlJTemhxbUNvRVU

Related to David Bowie

One day in class he listened to this song: Lazarus, by David Bowie.

Lyrics: Lazarus

Look up here, I’m in heaven

I’ve got scars that can’t be seen

I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen

Everybody knows me now

Look up here, man, I’m in danger

I’ve got nothing left to lose

I’m so high it makes my brain whirl

Dropped my cell phone down below

Ain’t that just like me

By the time I got to New York

I was living like a king

Then I used up all my money

I was looking for your ass

This way or no way

You know, I’ll be free

Just like that bluebird

Now ain’t that just like me

Oh I’ll be free

Just like that bluebird

Oh I’ll be free

Ain’t that just like me

This is clearly a farewell to the world, or not? Well, after hearing this song, we had to think about why is death taboo in the occidental culture.

Maybe death is a taboo in the western culture because our religions have never defined clearly what is death. It's wellknown that the humankind is afraid of the unknown. It's true that Christianity, the most influential religion here, tells a lot about it, but I think not as clear as other cultures, and what christianism tells about death is basically about the hell, so, what did people feel about death but fear? Almost no people could die without fear after reading and believing Dante Alighieri's Inferno. And what is the easiest reaction in front of a big fear? Ignore it, of course. If it doesn't exists it won't hurt you. And this is what I think about why death is taboo in the western culture.

The two final nominees

The election of the US new president has been a long process, and on the final elections there were 2 nominees: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Now I'm going to summarize both's strong and weak points:

STRENGTHS

Donald Trump (winner):

• He tells what he thinks directly, and that's what the people want.
• He gives advantages to the main part of the population.
• He focus on make the USA grat again (the American people like that).

Hillary Clinton:

• She's good with the words, she knows how to defend her position.
• She could be the first woman president.
• She is able to build political coalitions.

WEAKNESSES

Donald Trump:

• He's racist as well as xenophobic.
• He doesn't know about political issues, he has no political experience.
• He's unpredictable. What can he do when he's angry?

Hillary Clinton:

• She desn't look trustworthy, it's like she just says what people want to hear.
• She hid things on her campaig, she covers some facts, for example the email's handling.
• She has lied more than once, for example about the attacks of Benghazi.

I think that Hillary Clinton is better than Donald Trumps, and here's why.

I don't care he tells what he thinks directly if what he tells is related with extremist, selfish or racial opinions without showing respect to the other people. Then, even if Hillary has weaknesses too, I think that Trump's ones are inexcusable. In my opinion somebody who can judge differently the people just because of the religion, the race or the sex can't be a good president. But we'll see how he figures out, maybe he'll do well.

Passenger Concert

On sunday 6th of November I met my brother and my sister in Barcelona and we went to Passenger's concert. The concert was in Razzmatazz concert hall at 21:00.

After spending the day arround the city we went to the hall, and after waiting for not less than an hour we finally got there. The hall isn't as big as Palau Sant Jordi, it's quite small, but we were 3000 people there, said Mike (Passenger).

The guest singer was Gregory Alan Isakov, andit wasn't a bad performance, but i didn't like him at all.

Then came Passenger (Michael David Rosenberg) and his band. The concert was incredible, not just because of the singer but because of the audience, there was a lot of energy there.

Singing or talking Mike let us know his opinion about a lot of thing without fear, for example about the government, Donald Trump, XFactor, Hollywood, some famous people, the technologies like mobile phones and sociel networks... I liked that, mainly because I think the same about those things. And the hall was small enough to interact with the crowd.

The concert was amazing and great. The band played song from the last album and from the others. covers too, and in some songs  Passenger played and singed alone. In conclusion, the concert was perfect.

Here is one cover that I liked: The Sound of Silence (Simon and Garfunkel)

The worst thing of the experience was the pitiful returning to Figueres by train at 5:30, with the expectative of having 6 amazing hours in class before reaching home.