Pancho Villa, Una biografía narrativa

Paco Ignacio Taibo II publicó una verdadera biblia del villismo. Este video está narrado con las palabras del primer capítulo de ese libro. Espero que los derechos de autor estén respetados.

Viva México!

A propósito del juego Francia-México en Sudáfrica.
¿No les parece extremadamente agudo pero acertado?
Caricatura publicada en Barajas-Durán R, El Fisgón, ¡Viva México!, La Jornada, Año 23, Número 9283, 18 Junio 2010

The living river, tha fascinating history of blood stream

“Deep inside, we´re still ocean” says Isaac Azimov in the first chapter of this little book; and, somehow, he´s absolutely right.

What does blood do to our minds so powerfully? Is it that it´s magic? How does it affect our behavior than man has done the most ridiculous and astonishing ceremonies around blood?

In the beginning there was nothing but a primordial soup in which substance of life did swim. Sometimes, those things floating in that soup made efforts to form groups, to get together to be more than only trace elements, but were not always successful. Not until the perfect amount of glucids, proteins, fats and energy joined together. In that moment the world ceased to be empty and, at the same time, in many places around the planet, we can bet, the same phenomena occurred and gave place to the first LUCA (named Last Universal Common Ancestor). This guy swam in the vast sea and nourished its little body (an inner soup separated from the much more big world by some fats sorted in a double layer shape not wider than 7 Armstrongs) from the same sea that contained all the tasteful things a free-life unicellular organism would need. And the wastes of such a party were disposed to the same liquid around the LUCA.

With the addition of nutrients and that entire wilderness to explore, the LUCA multiplied its functions and organelles and became specialized inside. And so did outside. First, it obtained a tubule to circulate the sea along its body. It got fins. It got eyes and gills as it took different shapes and gave rise to different species of fish. They ruled the seas for many millions of years (some still do). So many years that it was boring.

These fish, tired to be surrounded by water, once they got the sea inside them –contained in a primitive circulatory system– reached the land.

The water needed to be moved along that circuit if vessels and the amphibians evolved to have a three-chambered heart. But it was not enough. Not to these reckless friends.

When in the sea, the LUCA-fish took the oxygen from the water. Aside to the nutriments of the sea, the dissolved oxygen was essential to sustain life. The amount of oxygen in the water had been sufficient to keep the novel organism going, but in the hot land, literally erupted with volcanoes and covered by a rare atmosphere, the oxygen was less available than in the sea and the new land animal found the way to keep it in continuous contact with its tissues. It created cells able to take oxygen from the new strange system provided with lungs and was able to move them (cells and oxygen) all over its body. This is how got blood.

Through the chapters of the book, Azimov takes our hand to guide us in a bloody travel in which he explains the essentials of blood physiology.

A great and illuminated book if you´re not a healthcare professional and want to know what blood is. Read it. Comment it. Promote it. In México you can find it edited by Noriega Editores. Thank you for reading.