Voynich: the alien manuscript?

The manuscript's cover

It's a completly mistery. From the texts to the draws, no one can translate and find the meaning of these 204 pages (although it seems that 28 pages were lost). Baptized as Voynich in 1912 by the antiquarian Wilfrid Voynich, after discovered in the Jesuit college in Villa Mandragone.
Today we can admire this mysterious manuscript in the Beineck rare book and manuscript Library in the University of Yale - USA.
This manuscript doesn't have an author, a title or even a date. However in 2009 some researchers from the University of Arizone, thanks to the radiocarbon dating, put the origin of this manuscript from 1404 - 1438.




Let's start to analyse the figures:
- 113 of them represent what it's called the allien plants: no one knows or ever saw these plants - they don't exist in any place of our planet;


Some of the alien plants

- from the sheets 73 to 86 it's possible to see some bizarre draws: many women naked, maybe pregnant, in strange positions and with the feet submerge in a dark liquid: there are also many tubs connecting the groups of figures, but no one knows the meaning;

Some of the strange naked women

- we can also see 25 diagrams that seem to be a celestial map, astral charts and astrological schemes: it's possible to see the sun, the moon, some Zodiac signs and other heavenly bodies - however not all agree with that - , this section is even more strange because shows things that it's not supposed to be known in such anciente time;

Some of the celestial maps

Finally the mysterious language. There are many Hypotheses. In 1900 William Newbold argued that this manuscript should have been written by Rugegro Vacone, an english philosopher from the middle-age. Later in 1946, Leonell Strong from the University of Yale, said that this manuscript should be a ciphertext wrote in medieval english. Some years later, two experts in encryption from the american army put the Hypothesis that the text is written in a philosofic artificial language, like an ancient Esperanto, by an ancient alchemist.
Many other hypothesis were made over the years about the language: that should be written in ancient cipher hebrew, pre-Gallic, ancient Scotish or in nahuatl, the ancient aztech language. In 1978 the philologist John Stojko argued that the language is ancient ucranian and in 1987, Leo Levitor said that the text was wrote in Catarian, an eretical christian group, in their secret alphabet.
Jorge Stolfu from the Brazilian University of Campinas had another idea: according to him, a chinese delegation made a phonetic transliteration from the chinese, during it's travel in Europe. And finally one of the last hypothesis was made by Nicholas Pelling, who said that the author was the italian architect Antonio Averlino, the so called "Il Filatore".
With so many theories about the origin, the name, the author, the purpose, the language, the sense of the figures, this manuscript is becoming even and even more intesristing. After so many hipothesis, Gordon Rugg from the University of Keele and Robert Brumbough from the University of Yale, made a radical hypothesis: there's no mistery aorund the significance of anything in this manuscript because it's just a swindle.

China: the new economic superpower?

"China is a very interesting country, and in some years will overtake the USA".
We can listen  in the beginning of the movie. Is this what will really happen? Will the world now turn again to East? This movie shows that China was already a superpower some centuries ago. And, with the big crisis in the USA and all teh Western World, China is now taking part in the international comparative advantages, and becoming the new production center of the world. From politics, to economics and militar power, we can see in this movie how the world is being changed by the growth of this superpower.
But, is this just a historic consequence? Will China be the next in this continuos cycle?

Let's see the answers in teh movie, and how is China is working now and how is its role and behaviour in the regional and international context.

Capitalism: a lovely approach

Yes, there are many approaches for this thing called Capitalism. Here is the lovely approach: a love story about the capitalism.
Full of irony, Michael Moore shows to us, the deffects and the stupid decisions made in the american policy, but that can be adapetd in a different way to all the Capitalist countries. This movie shows how we are making the same mistakes almost since the beginning of the human societies, and how we still allow them to be make.
It's impressive to see the numbers of this disaster, and how much did we loose and are we loosing with this system called capitalism.
Should we need to review this capitalist paradigm? Decide yourself:

Ireland: the Power of Finance

The Celtic Tiger still exist?

The crisis we are facing these days in the world, is a crisis that started in teh financial sector. We are seeing again the importance of this sector and its strength: a crisis that started in the financial sector is afecting all the economy with many consequences in the persons, the companies and in the Governments. But the objective of this message it's not talk about this consequences.
I will talk about a country where the financial sector had one of the biggest growths and penetrations in the economy and in the country.
In 1960 Ireland was one of the poorest economies in the Western Europe. And until the beggining of the 90's the evolution was too small, as we can see in this graph:

Based on the book: "O crash de 2010" from Santiago Becerra

The irish economy presented a deficit, was poor and based in immigration until de 90's when it suffered a big transformation. In the beginning of the 90's it was more than obvious that the current economic model wasn't viable anymore.
And as we can see in this graphic, the new economic brought good consequences for the irish economic performance.

Based on the book: "O crash de 2010" from Santiago Becerra

The stunning growth of the irish economy was an unique case all over the Europe in this period. From a goner until the beginning of the 90's, Ireland achieved the second higher average GDP pc in the European Union, just behind Luxembourg. How was possible to an economy like Ireland to have such great sucess. The big changes started in 1987. The new-elected government started a new politics based on 3 big principles:
- the public expenses were drastically cut;
- the competence was promoted and encouraged in many subsectors;
- with the EU permission, the irish government reduced the tax for the companie's benefits;

And the consequences were just like how the government predicted:

• The country attracted a lot of foreign investment, specially from the USA, using the advantage of being in a geographic position between North-America and the continental Europe. From 1997 to 2006, Ireland received about 88 000 millions of dollars of foreign investment - something incredible for such small country - . The investment was mostly based to the production of products and services for exportation.
• The low level of the public expenses;
• The efficient use of the european funds;

All these conditions led to a decrease in the unemployment rate and the entry of many immigrants specially from Poland, Russia and the Baltic countries. We maybe be surprised for such great sucess and we are led to think that, specially after the year 2000, the way of life should be so great all over the country. But the country was suffering from a big problem: the illusion created by the statistical average.
The enormous agregated GDP in a small country, produces a high GDPpc but hides the extrem realities, some of them very dramatic. Like many other examples in the History, the statistical data was hiding many economic and social problems. Outside the big centersm the scenario was very different from what we immagine in a country with such high GDP: the bad infra-struture quality, the shortage of many essential goods and services. Of course this reflects how the government was spending the public income - the level of public expenditure was much lower comparing to the GDPpc level - . So, if the most part of the population don't have a level of life according to the level of GDPpc, this means only one thing: this level of income doesn't arrive to the populations' day life.
How is it possible? Thanks to the way how this income level in obtained: witth a decrease in taxes and low public expenses, together with the concentration of the activities and application of GDP almost all near to Dublin.
But, despite the unbalanced distribution of the income, the average income of the irish population increased, together with the growing indebtedness.
During this period, the population bought more and biggest houses, and sold those they had.
This mecanism was working well until 2006. The activity in the housing market started the slowndown and arrived the stagnation in the Summer of 2007.
The irish families began experiencing serious financial problems, due to the mortgage debt and the increase of the interest rates.
And across the country it's possible to see the wrong projects, where the money was applied.
Now, we can see why the Celtic Tiger is more a myth than a reality.
The irish government decreased the taxes, and together with the european funds, increased the GDP. However the population didn't take advantage of this good situation.
The popualtion's income increased because it was in a bad situation comparing with the rest of the Western Europe, and because of the households' endibtness.
The celtic tiger is more speculation than reality: the hiper consume, the excessive debt and the increase in the investment and importance of the tertiary sector, sooner brought strong structural problems for the irish economy.
In the beginning of the current crisis, Ireland was suffering the consequences of the "financial engineerings" made all these years, and of the extrem external indebtedness.
The predictness for the irish economy are not  very encouraging.

The great euro-crash of 2012

We can say that the official start of the current crisis was in 2008. But since then, the crisis is suffering of many stages and many mutations. What started as a crisis only in the financial sector, quickly spread to another sectors, arriving to the States.
2012 was a terrible year for all the world but with stongest consequences for Europe, specilaly for the eeuro-zone. We watched many news about that, and each one much more worse than the previous. But what really happened in 2012 in all our economies? And how do we became to this situation?
Here is a video that tries to explain that.

A brief history of religion

Today began the conclave that will elect the greatest religious leader of today. The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world and raised troubling questions about the future of religion. However, despite the rise of atheism especially in the Western world, the truth is that religion still plays an important role in current human societies and, despite the growing laicisism, religion continues to interfere in economic and political life.
Everyday important actions and decisions are made around the world, based on faith and / or religious beliefs.
But if there is who still be guided by religion rather, there are more and more voices that question the need for religions exist.
This documentary is an peculiar approach about the religious phenomenon at present and its connection with people's lives, trying to answer some pertinent questions and show a point of view not very conventional. But I think it is good to be seen by believers and non-believers.

A brief History of our World

It not takes really 2 hours - only 1:27:59 - but is an interesting overview that shows us how we came to there. What was the world before the Men Era?And before de actual societies?

Here is an explanation of that!