Alejandro@Oxford

I wish merry Christmas and happy holidays to all my readers!

In the same line as my post on the demonstrations and riots in Greece, Freakonomics comments on one of today’s posts on the possibility of seeing further unrest in other parts of the world in 2009 due to the economic ailments. It makes reference to a previous entry from Sudhir Venkatesh on the link between [...]

At the end of the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, the plug-in hybrid is tipped as the next step towards tomorrow’s electric car. The plug-in hybrid is a car with batteries and a combustion engine that can be plugged to the mains to be charged. Current hybrid cars charge batteries with the movement and [...]

Here it comes again. After many months of struggling to form a government (my previous comment on this here and here) and a year of a lame-duck administration, unable to confront the financial crisis with initiative and innovation, let alone the structural problems of Belgium, the Government of Yves Leterme has fallen for its attempts [...]

Today, there is an interesting post by Daniel Hamermesh about why books are reduced and roses are not during la Diada de Sant Jordi in Catalonia on April 23.
For those that don’t know about La Diada. This is the nicest and greatest day in the Catalan calendar. The tradition goes that women get roses and [...]

Facebook is rapidly being globalized. At this moment, three-quarters of the social network’s users are from outside the US, and European users are more than US users — 41 in the US vs. 48 in Europe.
So the company is planning to extend its US elections success to other countries, according to Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook’s marketing [...]

This is going to be a classic episode in history. A loving good bye to George W. Bush by an Iraqi reporter in a very likely representation of millions of Iraqis feelings about Mr. Dubya: he threw both his shoes at his face. This is a very insulting gesture in Arabic culture, for the sole [...]

You already know. The killing by a policeman of a 15-year old boy on December 7th has triggered demonstrations and riots all over Greece. Many are asking why this is happening. Some people would tell you this is because of a group of delinquents using it as an excuse to destroy property and to [...]

Europe is a continent of borders. Geographical borders, in its mountains, seas and rivers. Cultural and linguistic borders, with its languages divided and sometimes confronted against each other; with its cultures enclosed in small parcels of land called nation-states, regions or cities. Historic borders where battles were fought, victory and defeat were tasted by kings, [...]

I am reorganizing my blogs. Currently, I have two: this one, Blog of Change, and the one at Oxford, Alejandro@Oxford. Currently, the latter is subscribed to the former, that is, what I wrote in this blog goes to the Oxford one automatically, no discrimination. I’ve decided to change this. From now on, this blog is [...]