ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

THE ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION topic is giving me such a hard time, since it is really difficult for me to adopt a position in this issue. I know that thanks to this experiments countless medicines and cures for illness have been discovered favouring humanity and so on. However, when I think that all this benefits are achieved inflicting pain and suffering to animals, I just can´t tolerate it. Animals have been suffering for so long due to our eagerness for evolution, and I think that EVOLUTION? is not a justification good enough for  what we are doing to them.  Why they have to pay for our desire to live forever? I think  it is time to find new alternatives!!! I also know that in the mother nature animals eat to each other for food, in order to survive, is our nature. But I think that we have taken this to far, this is not nature, this is an ABERRATION. If supposedly we are superior animals, the most intelligent in this chain, we must be able to reflect seriously about this, as a society, and CHANGE. 

LOVE

LOVE  was the topic of the wonderful lecture given by  the psychologist Judith Castle last monday. She talked about four different facets of love, Philia, Romance, Agape and Eros. Even though she recognized that love is beyond any clasification.

The one who result more interesting to me is Eros, which is the love and respect for your own life. I think that this precede the others. If you love your own life, and find that thing that give a purpose to your existence, you can find the other kinds of love. 

Public Lecture

HUMAN MOVEMENT IN THE PERCEPTION AND COGNITION OF MUSIC, was the topic of the public lecture that I attended on McGill University. It was given by Rolf Inge Godoy a professor at the Department of Musicology in the University of Oslo.

In my presentation I tried to explain a little bit about the issue of "Music Related Movement", that was the term used by the professor Godoy to refer to human movements that reflect characteristics of the music. In the beginning of the presentation he pointed out that we see people moving to music everywhere, and that all the listeners seem to be able to reproduce some features of the music with their movements. Therefore, the professor Godoy and the researchers believe that Human Movement is an essential part of Music Perception and Cognition. They made observation studies to understand the role of movement in the perception and cognition of music.

The topic of the lecture was really interesting, but it was difficult to understant because it's very scientific. Since it was my first public lecture in Montreal, in english was a good experience that I enjoyed.

Happiness...

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life". Albert Camus.

It seems that the happiest people are those who experienced something that the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called "Flow", experiences in which the person is totally immersed, since they are apppealing and motivating to the person. If a person is totally involve in a experience is not self conscious, neither thinking in the pass or future. The person is living in the present. Western psychologists called this "Mindfulness".

This idea of being totally engage in the present is so interesting to me , because imply that one is not thinking (something really hard to achieve), you just become a witness, an spectator. The person is living the experience without judging. The duality between self and object disappear to become one. I agree with the accurate words of Albert Camus, happiness can not be defined, pursuit. Happiness has to be with being consciuos only of the present, here and now.

Road Movies

ROADS are an important component in our lives, indeed a part of our artistic expressions. As a consequence, there is a film genre called "Road Movie" or "Road films" in which the film´s storyline take place during a journey. This is the object of my research project.

The origins of Road Movies are in spoken and writen tales of epic journeys, such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid. In Road Movies the main character changes, grows or improves over the course of the story.

Some of the most remarkable road movies are The Wild One, Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Thelma and Louise, Natural Born Killers, Wild at Heart, Rain Man, Y tu mamá también, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Mulholland Drive, Into the Wild.

Since most of my favourites movies are Road Films I´m very excited about the topic, and eager to learn more about it.

Oral Presentations

ORAL PRESENTATIONS are one of the most intimidating task for people, whereas they are a neccesary part of university and professional life. Personally, speaking in public makes me very nervous. So, how to make a succesful oral presentation? Here, there are some convenient tips to have a good performance.

First, knowing very well the content of your topic helps to conquer the nervousness of speaking in public. Basically, this is what the audience wants from you. Then, organizing your presentation will allows the audience to follow easily the ideas introduce in your topic. You should leave the audience with a clear understanding of the topic and the sense that they have been given a well estructure presentation. Finally, involving the audience through different strategies like encouraging questions, working in group, playing roles and demostrations, will make the audience more interest in your topic and you will connect with them.

In conclusion, to deliver your presentation successfully rehearsal is an essential part of speaking in public. I hope that these tips will help me to do a better job in future presentations.

DEJA DEAD

DEJA DEAD was the first novel of the Bestselling books writer Kathy Reichs. Thank to DEJA DEAD she won the Arthur Ellis Award for best first novel. As well, the TV show Bones is inspired by her writing.

Temperance Brennan is a Forensic Anthropologist from North Carolina recently divorced that move to Montreal.The murder of a woman found dismembered triggers a chain of events. Temperance gets immerse in the hunting of a killer, when she find a pattern among two murders. This will jeopardize her life and the lives of her loved ones.
DEJA DEAD is a mystery novel. Temperance Brennan is a very intelligent and brave women with a very tough job. The novel become enjoyable the last quarter of the book.The final confrontation between Temperance and the killer is one of the events that come to my mind, since was one of the more exiting parts of the novel. However I felt that the end was pretty much a cliche.