Monthly Archives: April 2012

As in the unhappy families of Tolstoy’s fame, each of the poor countries is unhappy in its own way. The mystery of prosperity is something that has intrigued innumerable scholars and philosophers. What is it that makes some countries prosper while others remain poor? The discussion with respect to prosperity is vast and interminable and […]

In the seventies, when the Anglo-Saxon countries were besieged with Japanese products, Charles Tilly published an article on the paradoxical effect of WW II on industrialized countries. The heart of his argument was that countries that had been devastated at the end of the war had hadno alternative other than constructing a new industrial plant. […]

The Library of Babel, one of Jorge Luis Borges’ most provocative works, is not a rational tale. The universe that he constructs, the library itself, is not something logical: saturated with contradictions and inconsistencies, in which there is life without food and children who are born without there being women.  However, there is a certain […]

In “The Blues Brothers”, after Jake (John Belushi) left her standing at the altar and with a dinner for 300 guests, his former fiancée shrieks at him, “You betrayed me!” “No, I didn’t”, he says, now cornered next to Elwood (Dan Akroyd). “Honest. I can explain. I ran out of gas. I had a flat […]

From Plato on, the idea of an open society has entailed transparency, a capacity to respond, and a government that is tolerant of and respectful toward the citizenry. Karl Popper enlarged, developed, and annotated the concept with his observations throughout the XX Century. For him, what was crucial was not the quality of the government […]