The Awesome Science of Chinonomics

You and I, inhabitants of the Americas, should all speak Chinese (or a derivative of it) instead of a European language. We don't, of course, because it was the Europeans who "discovered" ( for the second time ) this continent in 1492 and sparked a rat race among European States to stake a territory in the "virgin" lands of the "New World". China had all in its favor to beat the Europeans in the early 15th century. They led the world then in technological innovation: cast iron was  first invented  in China; the compass  was invented there ; gun powder was  first concocted there . Not to mention printing; the umbrella, porcelain, the wheelbarrow, hot air balloons, and even seismographs to measure earthquakes. How can you be that advanced and not attempt to conquer other lands to extract their resources? Well, they did. And succeeded.  Decades before  Columbus "discovered" La Hispaniola, the Chinese had reached as far as East Africa. Befo...

Of all the revolutions that we are currently living, technology is the most promising one. It has killed industries , obliterated professions , and elevated the standard of living for those consumers who have participated in the bonanza. Technology (or more specifically, the internet) has disrupted the taxi monopoly on urban transportation, broken the chokehold of the prescription eyeglasses industry, and more generally, commoditized information .  But, if the internet has destroyed the margins of information dispersion companies... Sad news for journalism majors :( ... and made many disappear... more sad news for journalism majors :( Why is it, then, that the internet, which fundamentally is a revolutionary way to distribute (and potentially instill) knowledge, has not contributed to the commoditization of the Educational function of the University (whose mission precisely is to distribute and instill knowledge)? The answer, as certain South Afr...

Are we all lazy creatures? Some would say we always look for shortcuts to obtain what we want --even in the most disciplined version of ourselves. The path of least resistance defines our every move. The behavior goes deeper than what we see in our penchant to become couch potatoes. The brain also is always looking for ways to do the same tasks in the most efficient (effortless) way possible. Amblyopia  is an example of the brain turning off the visual signal in one eye, choosing to overdevelop the other to compensate the loss of vision in the first one. There have been reported cases of people losing hearing in one ear without any apparent reason while at the same time overdeveloping the other ear. When the brain realizes that it can accomplish the same task with less resources, it appears it decides to shut down redundancies. But what happens when a redundancy in the brain is created by an external agent? Some discovery -fire-, some tool -utensils-, some technology created for...