LOBO de CRIN o BOROCHI (Chrysocyon brachyurus)

Cánido de las pampas. Los guaraníes lo llaman aguará guasú ("zorro grande")
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A MIS LECTORAS... y al resto

“Amigos lectores que leerán este libro blog, | despójense de toda pasión | y no se escandalicen al leerlo |
no contiene mal ni corrupción; | es verdad que no encontrarán nada de perfección |
salvo en materia de reír; |
mi corazón no puede elegir otro sujeto | a la vista de la pena que los mina y los consume. |
Vale mejor tratar de reír que derramar lágrimas, | porque la risa es lo propio y noble del alma. Sean felices!
--François Rabelais (circa 1534) [english]

domingo, 30 de octubre de 2011

Casualidad placentera o chiripazo?

Serendipia (ES)
Serendipity is when someone finds something that they weren't expecting to find. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages.[2] In the simplest of words, it means a "happy accident" or a "pleasant surprise".

The intended subject of the photograph was a perched Black-crowned Night Heron; the photographer later discovered that the image serendipitously included the less seen Pileated Woodpecker.
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Etymology
The first noted use of "serendipity" in the English language was by Horace Walpole (1717–1792). In a letter to Horace Mann (dated January 28th 1754) he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". The name stems from Serendip, an old name for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), from Arabic Sarandib, from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa which literally translates to "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island"[3]
Role in science and technology
One aspect of Walpole's original definition of serendipity that is often missed in modern discussions of the word is the "sagacity" of being able to link together apparently innocuous facts to come to a valuable conclusion. Thus, while some scientists and inventors are reluctant about reporting accidental discoveries, others openly admit its role; in fact serendipity is a major component of scientific discoveries and inventions. According to M. K. Stoskopf[4] "it should be recognized that serendipitous discoveries are of significant value in the advancement of science and often present the foundation for important intellectual leaps of understanding".
The amount of benefit contributed by serendipitous discoveries varies extensively among the several scientific disciplines. Pharmacology and chemistry are probably the fields where serendipity is more common.
Most authors who have studied scientific serendipity both in a historical, as well as in an epistemological point of view, agree that a prepared and open mind is required on the part of the scientist or inventor to detect the importance of information revealed accidentally. This is the reason why most of the related accidental discoveries occur in the field of specialization of the scientist. About this, Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD properties by unintentionally ingesting it at his lab, wrote
It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity.
Another example of serendipity in science is associated with Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin against the serious diseases at the time. He accidentally left a petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria open and a mold had got inside which had appeared to have killed around the bacteria. It turned out that it was the fungus Penicillium and he turned the fungus into a groundbreaking anti-biotic.
The French scientist Louis Pasteur also famously said: "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."[5] This is often rendered as "Chance favors the prepared mind." William Shakespeare expressed the same sentiment 250 years earlier in act 4 of his play Henry V: "All things are ready if our minds be so."
History, of course, does not record accidental exposures of information which could have resulted - but did not - in a new discovery, and we are justified in suspecting that they are many. There are several examples of this, however, and prejudice of preformed concepts is probably the largest obstacle. See for example[6] for a case where this happened (the rejection of an accidental discovery in the field of self-stimulation of the limbic system in humans).

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