A Norwegian research center has found that IQ test scores have plummeted over the past several decades in a remarkable reversal of the so-called Flynn effect, which says that people have grown progressively smarter in the past century. Previously, population intelligence quotients were known to have increased throughout most of the 20th century, a phenomenon commonly known as the Flynn effect named for New Zealand researcher James Robert Flynn, who discovered a rapid rise of IQ at a rate of about 3 points per decade. The brightening of the human mind has been attributed to several factors, such as better nutrition, healthcare, education and others. Flynn himself claimed decreasing IQ levels to be part of a global trend in a 2017 interview with Swedish magazine “Forskning & Framsteg (“Research & Progress”). Flynn argued that school education has become increasingly less demanding in many countries, pointing out that students spend less time doing homework and reading “thick” books.

Haciendo esa distinción, la ciudad venezolana, sobre todo Caracas, en la etapa de la segunda posguerra estuvo en esa ruta de modernización, como muchos otros países de América Latina, en el marco de un proyecto desarrollista continental, patrocinado en parte por Estados Unidos. Venezuela despuntó, por sus indicadores, como uno de los países que –para utilizar los términos del período– estaban en el “despegue”. Despegue fundamentalmente económico, paralelo a una transición demográfica. Venezuela se urbaniza en cincuenta años, un hito mundial. Lamentablemente, por súbito y abrupto, tenemos lo que estamos viviendo ahora: un ciclo de urbanización inestable, incompleto, “de campamento”, como dirían Briceño Iragorry, Uslar Pietri, Picón Salas, todos autores de mediados del siglo XX.

Buscar una respuesta a la pregunta de porqué Venezuela, después de más 90 años de explotación petrolera y después de incontables coqueteos con la modernidad, se encuentra aún tan lejos de transitar el camino del desarrollo, es una tarea titánica, quizás tan titánica y utópica como la construcción de ese huidizo desarrollo. Uno pudiese especular sobre las causas económicas, políticas y hasta climáticas de tan curioso fenómeno, y sin duda se pudiera estructurar alguna suerte de explicación coherente, pero hasta ahora ninguna muy convincente; como Henry L. Mencken dijo alguna vez: “Para cada problema complejo hay una solución simple, clara y equivocada”. El atreverse siquiera a intentar explorar el porqué el petróleo no nos ha conducido por la vía definitiva del progreso es una tarea peligrosa, y llena de medias verdades y de cronistas mal intencionados.

We present an analytical model to study the role of expectation feedbacks and overlapping portfolios on systemic stability of financial systems. Building on [Corsi et al., 2016], we model a set of financial institutions having Value at Risk capital requirements and investing in a portfolio of risky assets, whose prices evolve stochastically in time and are endogenously driven by the trading decisions of financial institutions. Assuming that they use adaptive expectations of risk, we show that the evolution of the system is described by a slow-fast random dynamical system, which can be studied analytically in some regimes. The model shows how the risk expectations play a central role in determining the systemic stability of the financial system and how wrong risk expectations may create panic-induced reduction or over-optimistic expansion of balance sheets.

In March 2015, China brought the development of civil-military integration to the level of a national strategy. Currently, China is deeply involved in the globalization process, and is hoping to play a bigger role in global governance. It also has to safeguard its resources and energy interests at the global level. At the same time, more protection is needed for Belt and Road initiative worldwide. Also, during this period, more geopolitical tension is expected. To cope with this new situation, China may have to purchase “more guns instead of butter,” as the saying goes. Some people might relate civil-military integration solely to the reform of State-owned enterprises. But a look back at history shows that this opinion underestimates the process significantly.

La ontología zizekiana aparece implantada políticamente, porque el comunismo leninista guía su fundamentalismo revolucionario contracapitalista. El engaño inconsciente oculta al sujeto capitalista sus traumas y carencias, siendo la revolución la única receta para su sanación definitiva. Así, el filósofo esloveno, metido a psicoanalista de masas, propugna la afloración a la conciencia social de un deseo reprimido: la revolución contracapitalista, que sería liberadora y productora de salud mental. En esta línea, Zizek tiende a reducir todo el carácter histórico-institucional del ego trascendental, toda la dialéctica de Estados e Imperios, a procesos enmarcados en la contraposición simplista entre capitalismo y contracapitalismo.

Luego de releer y analizar el texto “¿Socialismo o barbarie? Trama de imposturas, manipulaciones y mentiras” de Juan Barreto y Héctor Sánchez1 me motivé a escribir estas notas para la discusión colectiva, tratando de rastrear no solo el contenido del legado ideológico-político de Chávez2 , sino el de quienes han intentado aportar ideas relevantes para aquella discusión sobre el nuevo socialismo hoy completamente deslucida y opacada. Estas “Notas” requerirían en futuros desarrollos recuperar y organizar los textos escritos e intervenciones relevantes sobre el debate del “Socialismo del siglo XXI” de personajes como: Alí Rodríguez Araque, Alberto Müller Rojas, Jorge Giordani, William Lara, Rodrigo Cabezas, Jesús Farías, Haiman el Troudi, Rodolfo Sanz, Elías Jaua, Rafael Ramírez e incluso del colectivo “Un grano de maíz” (Toby Valderrama), entre otras personalidades civiles y militares (Jacinto Pérez Arcay, por ejemplo) con intereses en la escritura de sus ideas políticas sobre tal tema y con algún grado de incidencia e interlocución en los propios planteamientos de Hugo Chávez

Cada vez se hace más elocuente la necesidad de discutir sobre la igualdad. Lo mismo vale decir, que cada vez se hace inaplazable replantear la visión política de estos tiempos acerca de la reducción de la desigualdad. Se trata de un tema altamente sensible, del que los organismos del sistema internacional y las instituciones del Estado han preferido tímidamente confrontar o sencillamente aplazar.

Today, we can openly talk about developing a “civil religion” in Russia, the “cult of Victory”, combining it with a “new national ideology”, which has been in creation for a long time. In addition, for some “new statists” and part of the Communists, including a more wider context of the “Soviet”, the “USSR-2”, etc, it is almost salvation, while for others, especially the liberals and “diminutive nationalists”, and even the “regionalists” (or separatists, if you like), it causes a difficult storm of emotions. The sympathy for our last world war military and political opponents unites a variety of groups: from liberals to Russian Nazis, from Jewish oligarchs to almost insane anti-Semites. Unfortunately, some of the so-called “white spectrum” joined it, and in our opinion, only pushed the Russian people away from the “white cause”, from sympathy that was more common in the early 1990’s. It should be noted that this is not about the “fascism and anti-fascism” of the National Socialist ideology (that is a special issue), but mostly about the military campaign of Germany in the 1940’s.

Your actions following up on Heidegger are surprisingly vital. Your piece on the Monroe doctrine and Schmitts Grossream theory concerns us Dutch deeply. The refugees, fleeing the Leviatan with a ship called the Mayflower, went overseas and came back to us in the form of a mutated Leviatan. After all it was here in Leiden, Rotterdam and Den Haag that the first Atlanticists set out for settlement overseas. It is revealing to hear what Schmitt says on the role of Spinoza in this respect in his work on the Leviathan. We assume you know it. With Heidegger, Schmitt and Junger we know that the road ahead is long and bumpy and most of all – it starts in what we say and do. Speaking about a road or a way, we should pay attention to the late Heideggers conception of work: ways not works, ‘Wege nicht Werke’. It has to be taken seriously, because this is not fatalism, but concerns the relation between languange and metaphysics. Poems, singing are also a way of living.