David Acevedo's Blog

My college buddy just cancelled hanging out with me because it was going to be after 8pm and he didn't want to go out that late because he was worried about crime. He didn't excuse himself for feeling this way, or explain why being worried about crime would be an issue, he just texted me: Ok. Puerto Rico. Crime. A reality. I'd rather reschedule. Sorry to be an old man 8( And we're the same age! (By the way, as a close friend I understand what he means. He's got a young daughter and would rather stay at home with her than leave her alone.) I've been encountering this over and over. "That's just the way things are here." Or the much worse: "It's like that everywhere. " (The Japanese got "shikata ga nai", "it's no use.")   I'm still not sure why people don't see the huge trap going around like that is. Let me make a parallel. This morning I was watching a TED video from Lisa Bu , who talks about ...

The bitter sweet sensation, is like a drug for those that've felt the scorn of being condemned for daring to speak what others don't want to see. To cover ourselves with the knowledge of being right and comfort ourselves from that scorn is but a poor substitute. It's easy to be right. If you've ever felt the scorn of being rejected for seeing the truth you know the seductive ecstasy of hiding behind the "I told you so." It's easy to be right. The drug-like effects comfort you in the cold loneliness. You feel vindicated, the lone-hero, the one who saw where other failed to see. Yet it's a sad song to hear, a bitter comfort, for the real power lies in being convincing. Lately I've heard interviews with Paul Krugman, nobel prize winning economists, about how he is mostly right about his economic predictions. I thought to myself, what a way to go for the low hanging fruit. The dare, the challenge, is to be convincing. To not just say what's ...

Una de las ventajas que tiene la sociedad de hoy es que uno puede usar los avances mas recientes para hacer "leap-frogging" o dar un sobre-salto en varias áreas de la sociedad. Por ejemplo en vez de crear una red de internet usando cables se puede ahora crear una usando conexión wi-fi y así llevar el internet a lugares sin el costo del cable. En Puerto Rico el énfasis ha estado en crear un progreso copiado en vez de uno innovado. Y eso de be cambiar. Lemas como "Puerto Rico lo hace mejor" asumen que los problemas de la isla yacen de una falta de confianza en vez de unas limitaciones reales. Lo que hay que hacer es el "leap-frogging." En vez de buscar el progreso paso a paso con soluciones linear , hay que buscar maneras de sobre-saltar lo linear buscando soluciones que usen la tecnología y el conocimiento del dia de hoy para adelantar de sopetón al país en una manera exponencial y no linear. Como un coquí dando un salto, el país debe dar un salto ...

Law is one of the most inefficient processes of modern society. Still it's effective, all things considered. The inefficiency lies in the fact that figuring out what is legal or not is a complicated process that involves lawyers. Originally law was supposed to be simple enough to be interpreted by jurors but now you almost have to be a jurist to understand the law. This inefficiency is even used as a bargaining chip in many cases with the threat of "tying this up in court for years." How is that even possible? Law is not supposed to be obtuse, yet it gets that way. The law's complexity has driven the need for a highly sub-specialized class of professionals, that rather than be advocates or expert advisors are more like translators to the arcane practices and language of law. Have you ever read a contract and wondered what it meant? Then had it explained to you and you couldn't figure out why they didn't just said that, in plain language rather than th...

Brain Drain happens when the opportunities in a country or place for educated people favors them leaving permanently the area. I've noticed that Puerto Rico suffers from a Brain Drain since I was in college fifteen years ago, but now finally the unseen consequences of this brain drain are being felt. With the downturn in the economy many professionals have left (many to Texas) and Puerto Rico for the first time lost population in the 2010 census. Brain drain has seen and unseen consequences. For example due to a lack of internships many doctors are leaving the island to complete their training abroad and never return. In my family alone four doctors trained in the University of Puerto Rico Medical School are now abroad and likely will stay that way permanently. While moving outside of Puerto Rico involves becoming a minority in the larger US, that is not as much a concern for English-speaking professionals who are already familiar with American culture since they were kids ....

In this Easter Sunday, day of rebirth, my thoughts go dark and worries weigh on my mind. So to exercise them this post asks: Why was Lincoln Assasinated? Why was Gandhi Killed? Why was Kennedy Shot? Why was Martin Luther King? Why was Paul? Why was Jesus killed? Their deaths are not coincidences. They're not random fates that come to those of great prominence. They are not French nobles dying under a guillotine in a mass panic of the populace. Take Gandhi; killed by a man who didn't like the direction that Gandhi was taking the country. A direction away from materialism, away from capitalism, away from violence as a mirage for strength. Years after his death India is becoming an economic force, following not Gandhi's teachings but the capitalism purported by his murderer. A friend of mine said that capitalism is evil. I don't think so. I think capitalism is like a monarchy lead by a dauphin, with all its childish desires who...

No clue why this need saying but this statement from House Representative Paul Ryan "if you tax some thing more you get less of it, if you tax something less you get more of it" is wrong. Not opinion. It's wrong factually. What actually happens is that there is a sweet spot . A place where more taxation equals less revenue. If you're above the sweet spot on your taxation then, yes, lowering taxes will bring in more revenue. Otherwise less taxation brings in less revenue. Simple enough, right? The sweet spot is where taxation is so high it's  discouraging whatever it is your taxing. Take cigarette smoking. Let's say you wanted to maximize revenue. Where do you want cigarette taxes? Low to medium so that more people will smoke more cigarettes and you'll have a bigger tax base. Of course that's not what we do with cigarettes, there we tax them heavily to discourage use. Ok now let's say taxes were a dollar a pack. Would reducing the tax to fifty...

I am not a very religious person. By that I mean that I don't display what is a very deep spiritual questioning and seeking I constantly do. Today I'll make an exception. America has become a divided country, not in the Left and the Right, but the rich and the poor. Somehow the rich have escaped scrutiny by the religious right, and have used the religiosity of America to out-maneuver more centrist or reasonable politicians. Not too long ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger was booed at a Republican convention (being held in California where Schwarzenegger at the time was the sitting Republican Governor) for doing nothing other than urging Republicans to go to the center. (I'm looking for the reference for this. Let me know if you know this speech.) So with religious zealots defending the right of the rich to be rich, I'd like to talk in religious terms today. The world Jesus walked on was one like today divided into two groups: the rich and the poor. Jesus...

Last year I heard on the radio Mike Huckabee , Republican hopeful attacking the Health care bill's no pre-existing conditions requirements by comparing health insurance to property insurance. He says that from a common sense perspective imagine one person trying to buy insurance on a house that burned down the day before. Unfortunately common sense is the least common of them all. Yet, houses don't vote. Houses don't pray for recovery. Houses don't suffer. Houses don't have a soul. Houses don't have children they wish to see grow old. Houses don't care for one another. Houses don't love. Housed don't cry, don't laugh, don't hug you back. It's easy to blame other for the problems of this world. It's hard to stand up and try to do something about it.

Recently Latin American countries have voiced their opposition to prop 19 (it would legalize recreational marijuana use) because it will cause confusion. This is hogwash. While it might be a little curious to a Columbian that he can go to jail for growing pot while a Californian will not; it's no more confusing than a Bolivian growing coca legally and a Californian not. Wasn't Evo Morales a coca grower? Legalizing Marijuana if anything will lead to less confusion not more.

Recently worries about asteroids hitting the Earth are weirdly distracting. Why invest time or money on protecting ourselves from space-borne threats when we have an ailing and emergent environmental crisis? The boiling frog and the lottery. Yeah someone wins the lottery, but a frog in boiling water is the bigger problem.

In a few weeks I'll be voting on whether Marijuana should be legal in the state of California. As a kid I never understood why hippies or California weirdos wanted to legalize it. I agreed with most opponents of legalization that weed was a gateway drug. Smoke grass and soon you'd be up with cocaine and you're screwed. You could see the junkies on the street, their bodies bony like images out of a pledge to feed Africa, signs asking for money to eat, pan handling at intersections through out the island when I was young. While doing my High School summer jobs I would catch sketchy characters trying to shop-lift t-shirts. And while on the boy scouts I was shown the video of a man breaking a heroin addiction in jail cold turkey. It was worse than any horror movie I've seen -- the suffering was so immense. This thin man lost control of all body functions, and shook like he was possessed. Heroine which mimics endorphine alters the brain chemistry. When you break cold-turkey...