Sunday, September 13, 2009


"El escorpión", artículo de José Luis Peñalva en El Correo

Destaco esta frase que me ha gustado mucho, porque es muy cierta, al menos en lo que se refiere al perro.

"Leí en alguna parte que Dios hizo el corazón de los hombres, pero un perro se lo llevó, y no queriendo volver al punto de partida puso en su lugar una piedra."




 I enclose an aproximate English translation:

I emphasize following sentence that I really liked, because it is very true, at least in regard to dog.

"I read somewhere that God made the heart of men, but a dog took it, and unwilling to return to the starting point put  a stone instead."



Thursday, September 10, 2009

Panama Canal enlargement

It has recently been published some news about the approval by the Government of Panama of an enlargement of its maritime Canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This project has had several years of preparation and the final approval required a referendum from the citizens of Panama, as stated by its Constitution. The completion of the works is planned for late 2014, one hundred years after the opening of the Canal, whose project was initiated by the French engineer and diplomat Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps.

The enlargement includes several types of performances but the most visible from the naval engineering point of view is the building of new locks at both ends of the Canal, of greater length and breadth than the current ones, to allow an increase of the maximum length and breadth of vessels which can enter these locks, that are currently 294,10 m and 32,20 m respectively. The maximum ship breadth allowable in the enlarged locks, will be ab. 53,50 m, which will increase the size of ships able to transit through the Canal. Details of the award of this locks enlargement work can be read in Ref. (1), where it is reported that the Consortium winning the competition open to select a contractor, presented an offer of 3.220 million USD.