Accessibility: travel time to major cities

Take a look at the global map of travel times to major cities. It's quite interesting that 95% of world population lives in 10% of the land, but it's more awesome that only 15% of the people in developed countries live more than one hour far from the nearest city, whereas this rate increases to 65% in developing countries. Forget about developing a local community in the forest, economic growth requires human concentration and travel times are an essential factor.

Multilinguism in UPF

Today an open event has taken place in UPF to present the new language plan, which is supposed to be based in multilinguism. The idea is quite simple: all the members of the universitarian community should be able to understand one of the three main languages of the University (Catalan, Spanish and English).

Only the degree in economics has a 50% of the courses offered in English for 1/4 of the students, the rest is taught in Spanish or Catalan (of course, except from language courses). That is really a pretty small offer. I believe when you are fluent in something you have to move on to improve another thing. All domestic students dominate Catalan and Spanish, so why don't follow the lessons in the worldwide language? I think is not necessary to justify the importance to learn it.

Also, great teachers could be hired, although that's something not happening now.. International students would have a broader range of courses and we all know that diversity enriches. I just think about it as the other way round: if I want to go to a Finnish university for only three months (like most of US students do in UPF), I would try to approach to the culture, but I don't think it's worth to study Finnish for such a short time, so I would like to attend all the lessons in English! I perfectly understand that only South American girls want to learn Catalan, because they already know Spanish, as the bureaucrats of the "linguistical exchange program" told me.


The public was absolutely biased. All the opinions expressed in the open call only represented those who want to increase the Catalan share. Most of the people committed to study, the majority of whom want to pursue further studies abroad, recognize the importance to learn them and taking lessons in English is a preparation for coming years. Maybe the problem is a mismatch between the aim of degrees and the motivations to pursue them to signal oneself, but that's another debate.

Although my first best is to have a good teacher, independently of using one of three languages aforementioned, I recognize that language matters and this is why I would like to have the chance to take all the degree in English.


Read more: http://www.upf.edu/llengues/pam

Mediterranean sceneries

Until November 30^th there is an exhibition of Mediterranean photographs in Manresa devoted to show sceneries taken in all the countries around it. Although most of them have different cultures, sun&sea influence has created a common background and this exhibition illustrates it. The value is even higher when realizing that most of the photos were taken in the nineteenth century, in the beginning of photography.

In my opinion, these are the best:

Genova, 1895, Via Gran Madre di Dio and Ponte de Carignano. Amazing. A way of life shaped by the sun. The clothes dry up in the street, a low-income quartier with open or broken blinds and dirty walls, still using animals to carry heavy things, stress-free people.. everything has another pace.

Alger, 1890. Another must see, although it’s a bit disappointing because is a rather small one.

All the photos belong to the Museum of Photographic History Fratelli Alinari based in Florence and were exhibited for the first time in Spain two years ago in Alicante within the framework of the Mediterranian Foreign Ministers meeting.


Sala d'exposicions Caixa de Manresa
Plana de l'om, Manresa
18-21h

Congratulations Mr. Krugman!

Last Monday Paul Krugman won this year's Nobel Prize in Economics, the most prestigious award in the field, for his contributions to new trade theory (summarized by Krugman, by the Prize Committee). As always there are some critics and I'm not the right person to judge them, but Krugman was the one I prefered among the the candidate list. I really enjoyed reading his textbook on International trade (with Obstfeld) and some of his op-eds. Congratulations!

See also his speech in Princeton's cerimony.