Site counter change and more of Bolivia elections

Last week I noticed that the counter I used from "webstats4u" opened pop ups every now and then. They started to do that after "nedstats", the counter company, was bought by an advertising company, as stated in this post. I was very annoyed at this change so I decided to use the counter provided by statcounter, you can see their button on the left. To everybody who had a pop up when visiting this blog, my excuses: you don't have spyware, it was the counter. I believe it is fixed now.

I want to make some publicity for statcounter :). These guys have very cool options to analyze the traffic in your site. I might open the traffic reporting to all visitors when I find the time to not be lazy :). You might find it fun. For instance, it helped me discover that I appear among the first items in google when you search for "easy Bolivian food"!

Among other things that happened lately, I was corrected about the way I use the verb "to weigh". In fact, I didn't use it at all! I used "to weight", which is obviously wrong. I would like to thank that person ;). My English is far from perfect. If you happen to be a native speaker and you find a very obvious and silly mistake being repeated over and again please write me a short note. Thanks!

I would like you to read a post by Eduardo in Barrio Flores. He talks about the significance of "an indigenous Bolivian citizen" being "on the verge of capturing the Presidency of the Republic of Bolivia." Contrary to what some posters on his site assert, discrimination does happen in Bolivia. It is not purely racial, though. If you are indigenous (or have indigenous roots) but successful and/or rich, I think you can still be respected by others in Bolivian society. Even if you might still suffer from some form of discrimination. What I mean to say is that discrimination is not clear-cut. If your family name is Mamani or Choque, it does not mean that you are systematically condemned to lowly jobs. I have hardworking friends with such names in Bolivia who are doing quite well.

Still, the bad conditions for the majority of people in Bolivia remain. Many of them see Evo Morales as the way forward. After reading an article about the economic history of Bolivia, I am reminded of the chronic political instability. I should not expect any particular candidate to reverse that trend. Most likely this trend will continue.

Enough of rants. There are many hardworking people in Bolivia. Some of them, the scientific society of computer science students in my home university (UMSS), have organized a series of talks to motivate students. They have talks ranging from technical to life-experience sort of talks. One of them was an interview made to me by Rolando and Juan José from the linux group Pingüinos del Mismo Iceberg in Cochabamba. It is very encouraging to see students like them with ideas and motivation. Keep it going, guys!

Update: Above I forgot to refer to the post that explains the situation with the counter company. Here it is.