Dicionário Séc. 21-Séc. 20

Circe 2

2011-09-28T23:03:00.000-07:00

http://tea-sympathy-and-perfume.blogspot.com/2008/03/circe.html

Circe

2011-09-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

http://tea-sympathy-and-perfume.blogspot.com/2008/03/circe.html

Emotional intelligence, adjustment and intelligence

2011-05-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

Study* with 1.011 adolescents in Mysore, India:

"Intelligence was predicted by adjustment, emotional intelligence, socioeconomic status and an interaction of these variables and the prediction percentage is quite high - R2>30%."

* "A study on relationships between intelligence, emotional intelligence and adjustment among adolescents" - Sitaram, Lakshmi e Saraswathi, University of Mysore Dec-2004

Ant-Christ

2010-12-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

From David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire in My Belly" video, pulled from the National Portrait Gallery in 2010

2010-09-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

Red hood

2010-09-30T16:57:00.001-07:00

Thinking difficult thoughts

2010-08-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

Another of God's greatest gifts: the ability to doubt, to think difficult thoughts and weigh conflicting options with clarity and subtlety.

Joe Klein
Time.com, Thursday, Aug. 05, 2010

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2008733,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily#ixzz0vkAOIUQ9

Future anxiety

2010-07-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted
fools the way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more

it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth
Act 5 Scene 5
Words of Macbeth

Tom Paine

2010-05-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

Thomas Paine, the greatest pamphleteer in history, a hero of both the American and French revolutions and allegedly the first person to write the words "the United States of America," died a penniless drunk in Manhattan. Only six people attended his funeral, and a popular nursery rhyme at the time of his death went:

Poor Tom Paine! There he lies:
Nobody laughs and nobody cries
Where he has gone or how he fares
Nobody knows and nobody cares

Even after death, Paine couldn't catch a break. Some ten years later, overzealous journalist and Paine fan William Cobbett, exhumed Paine's body and shipped it to England where he hoped to build a proper memorial. Cobbett couldn't raise the money needed, so Paine remained in a trunk in his attic. After Cobbett's death, Paine's remains disappeared. Legend has it that his bones were turned into buttons, though in the 1930s, one woman in Brighton claimed to have his jawbone. Poor Tom Paine!

in TIME

Napoleon's Penis

2010-05-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

People have been fixated on Napoleon's penis since Napoleon's doctor allegedly cut it off during his autopsy in 1821 and gave it to a priest in Corsica. The penis, which was not properly preserved, has been compared over the years to a piece of leather, a shriveled eel and to beef jerky. In 1927 when it went on display in Manhattan, TIME weighed in, comparing it to a "maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace." It's enough to give anyone a complex! In 1977, a urologist living in New Jersey purchased the modern-day relic for $3,000 and stored it under his bed until he died 30 years later. His daughter inherited Napoleon's penis and has fielded at least one $100,000 offer.

in TIME

Eu Heroi

2010-03-06T16:58:00.000-08:00

Who`s - Jon Brion

2009-12-05T15:55:00.001-08:00

Amazon.com: Jon Brion: Albums, Songs, Bios, Photos

Producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion grew up in a musical family: his father was director of the Yale concert and marching bands, his mother sang in jazz bands, and his siblings, Randy (a conductor/arranger in L.A.) and Laurie (a violinist), were both avid music students.

Young Jon didn't deal with instruction or practice well, but his natural affinity for improvisation and melody more than made up for his impatience. Unwilling to conform to the conventional school system, Brion attended special education class at Hamden High School in New Haven, CT, and the day he turned 17, he left school for good.

Moving to Boston in 1987, the young musician formed many bonds that he would keep long into his professional career, including producer Mike Denneen (owner of Q Division, Boston's premier studio and record label) and Til Tuesday vocalist Aimee Mann.

Also while there, Brion tuned his improvisational musical abilities: "I used to watch TV with an unplugged electric guitar, on the couch, and commercials would come on and I'd try to play along. It was one of the prime things I concerned myself with for several years, getting to the point where if I heard it, I could play it. Then I started working on getting my brain to do multiple things at once. And having my hands translate them." This proficiency led to increasingly frequent studio work on the West Coast, eventually resulting in his move to L.A.

While in California, he and Jellyfish guitarist Jason Falkner formed the Grays, an underground superstar group which released the 1994 album Ro Sham Bo, before quickly fading as the other members (Falkner, Dan McCarroll, and Buddy Judge) went on to individual musical success.

Throughout the '90s, Brion found himself increasingly in demand in the studio, producing and collaborating on albums by Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright, David Byrne, and the Eels and soundtracks including the Grammy-nominated Magnolia.

In addition to his prolific studio work, he also has held a long-term position as "the house band" Friday nights at the high-profile Hollywood nightclub Largo. At his live shows, the crowd can expect anything from guest appearances by Aimee Mann, Michael Stipe, Elvis Costello, T-Bone Burnett, or Grant Lee Phillips, and Brion is infamous for making up songs on the spot (often from titles shouted from the audience). He also is beloved for his quirky cover versions of songs by Cheap Trick, the Beatles, and Cole Porter, proudly likening his on-stage antics to "spraying musical Raid on the classics, until each dying song flips on its back and wiggles its little musical legs in surrender."

Whatever music he was involved in, his eclectic touch undeniably shaped the sound of many progressive alternative musicians throughout the '90s.

- Zac Johnson, All Music Guide

Overkill

2009-12-03T16:58:00.000-08:00

Day After Day, Night After Night « The Sunjay Times

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
Perhaps it's just imagination

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

Alone between the sheets
Only brings exasperation
It's time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation

At least there's pretty lights
And though there's little variation
It nullifies the night from overkill

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away
Come back another day

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
It's just overkill

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away
Ghosts appear and fade away
Ghosts appear and fade away

Land down under

2009-12-03T16:56:00.001-08:00

YouTube - Men at work: Land down under!!!! (One of their best songs!!)

Travelling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,

Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.

Buying bread from a man in brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, do you speak-a my language?
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,

I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.

Lying in a den in bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?
And he said,

Oh! Do you come from a land down under? (oh yeah yeah)
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.

World's Oldest Instrument

2009-10-30T17:10:00.001-07:00

Bone Flute Found in Cave Is World's Oldest Instrument - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News - FOXNews.com

Thursday, June 25, 2009

June 24: Professor Nicholas Conard of the University in Tuebingen shows the flute during a press conference in Tuebingen, southern Germany.

BERLIN — A bird-bone flute unearthed in a German cave was carved some 35,000 years ago and is the oldest handcrafted musical instrument yet discovered, archaeologists say, offering the latest evidence that early modern humans in Europe had established a complex and creative culture.

A team led by University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard assembled the flute from 12 pieces of griffon vulture bone scattered in a small plot of the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany.

Together, the pieces comprise a 8.6-inch (22-centimeter) instrument with five holes and a notched end. Conard said the flute was 35,000 years old.

"It's unambiguously the oldest instrument in the world," Conard told The Associated Press this week. His findings were published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.

Other archaeologists agreed with Conard's assessment.

April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada, said the flute predates previously discovered instruments "but the dates are not so much older that it's surprising or controversial."

Nowell was not involved in Conard's research.

The Hohle Fels flute is more complete and appears slightly older than bone and ivory fragments from seven other flutes recovered in southern German caves and documented by Conard and his colleagues in recent years.

Another flute excavated in Austria is believed to be 19,000 years old, and a group of 22 flutes found in the French Pyrenees mountains has been dated at up to 30,000 years ago.

Conard's team excavated the flute in September 2008, the same month they recovered six ivory fragments from the Hohle Fels cave that form a female figurine they believe is the oldest known sculpture of the human form.

Together, the flute and the figure — found in the same layer of sediment — suggest that modern humans had established an advanced culture in Europe 35,000 years ago, said Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who didn't participate in Conard's study.

Roebroeks said it's difficult to say how cognitively and socially advanced these people were. But the physical trappings of their lives — including musical instruments, personal decorations and figurative art — match the objects we associate with modern human behavior, Roebroeks said.

"It shows that from the moment that modern humans enter Europe ... it is as modern in terms of material culture as it can get," Roebroeks told The AP.

He agreed with Conard's assertion that the flute appears to be the earliest known musical instrument in the world.

Neanderthals also lived in Europe around the time the flute and sculpture were made, and frequented the Hohle Fels cave.

Both Conard and Roebroeks believe, however, that layered deposits left by both species over thousands of years suggest the artifacts were crafted by early modern humans.

"The material record is so completely different from what happened in these hundreds of thousands of years before with the Neanderthals," Roebroeks said. "I would put my money on modern humans having created and played these flutes."

In 1995, archaeologist Ivan Turk excavated a bear bone artifact from a cave in Slovenia, known as the Divje Babe flute, that he has dated at around 43,000 years ago and suggested was made by Neanderthals.

But other archaeologists, including Nowell, have challenged that theory, suggesting instead that the twin holes on the 4.3-inch-long (11-centimeter-long) bone were made by a carnivore's bite.

Turk did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Nowell said other researchers have hypothesized that early humans may have used spear points as wind chimes and that markings on some cave stalactites suggest they were used as percussive instruments.

But there is no proof, she said, and the Hohle Fels flute is much more credible because it's the oldest specimen from an established style of bone and ivory flutes in Europe.

"There's a distinction between sporadic appearances and the true development of, in this case, a musical culture," Nowell said. "The importance of something like this flute is it shows a well-established technique and tradition."

Conard said it's likely that early modern humans — and perhaps Neanderthals, too — were making music longer than 35,000 years ago.

But he added the Hohle Fels flute and the others found across Europe strengthen evidence that modern humans in Europe were establishing cultural behavior similar to our own.

Software Wars

2009-10-28T18:35:00.001-07:00

Software Wars

A Fraude da fraude

2009-10-06T09:06:00.001-07:00

Não é só no brasil que aparecem arqui-vigaristas:

In May 2008 the Fraud Discovery Institute, which claims to be a consumer watchdog organisation, reported that laboratory test results of Herbalife products showed lead levels in excess of limits established by law in California under Proposition 65. The Fraud Discovery Institute was founded by fraudulent entrepreneur Barry Minkow, who served seven years in jail for stock fraud, and since disclosed that his company was profiting from the allegations by shorting Herbalife stock.

Guess Which Economy Doubled in Size Last Year

2009-09-24T19:00:00.001-07:00

Believe it or not, the virtual economy of Second Life, a popular online computer game that lets users create a new reality for themselves, doubled in size last year. Users spent more than a billion dollars on virtual goods over the last year, compared to $360 million for the year before.

Second Life's economy is now larger than the economies of nations such as East Timor, Samoa and Dijibouti.

Memory-Editing Drugs

2009-09-12T13:19:00.001-07:00

Did you find director Michel Gondry's argument for his "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" movie too far-fetched?

Well... read on.

The Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs | Wired Science | Wired.com

The Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs

By Brandon Keim
April 10, 2009 |
3:10 pm |
Categories: Brains and Behavior

The development of a drug that controls a chemical used to form memories sparked heady scientific and philosophical speculation this week.

Granted, the drug has only been tested in rats, but other memory-blunting drugs are being tried in soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. It might not be long before memories are pharmaceutically targeted, just as moods are now.

Some think this represents an opportunity to eliminate the crippling psychic effects of past trauma. Others see an ill-advised chemical intrusion into an essential human facility that threatens to replace our ability to understand and cope with life's inevitabilities.

Oxford University neuroethicist Anders Sandberg spoke with Wired.com about the future of memory-editing drugs. In some ways, said Sandberg, our memories are already being altered. We just don't realize it.

Wired.com: Will these drugs, when they become available, work as expected?

Anders Sandberg: A lot of discussion is based on the false premise that they'll work as well as they would in a science fiction story. In practice, well-studied, well-understood drugs like aspirin have side effects that can be annoying or even dangerous. I think the same thing will go for memory editing.

Wired.com: How selective will memory editing be?

Sandberg: Current research seems to suggest that it can be pretty specific, but there will be side effects. It may not even be that you forget other memories. Small, false memories could be created. And we're probably not going to be able to predict that before we actually try them.

Wired.com: What's the right way to test the drugs?

Sandberg: The cautious approach works. Right now, there are small clinical trials using propranolol to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a good start. We should also find better ways of doing the trials, because we don't really know what we're looking for.

When testing a cancer drug, we look at side effects in terms of toxicity. Here we might want to look at all aspects of thinking, which is really hard, because you can't test for all of them.

In the future, since we're getting more technological forms of recording and documenting our lives, those will have a bigger part in testing the drugs. We'll be able to ask, How does this help in everyday life? How often do you get "tip of the tongue" phenomena? Does it increase in relation to the drug?

Wired.com:
It seems that it would be easy to test "tip of the tongue" drug effects on the sorts of small things one recalls on an everyday basis. But what if it's old, infrequently recalled but still-important memories that are threatened by side effects?

Sandberg: It's pretty messy to determine what is an important memory to us. They quite often crop up, but without us consciously realizing that we're thinking of the memory. That's probably good news, as every time you recall a memory, you also tend to strengthen it.

Wired.com: How likely is the manipulation of these fundamental memories?

Sandberg: Big memories, with lots of connections to other things we've done, will probably be messy to deal with. But I don't think those are the memories that people want to give up. Most people would want to edit memories that impair them.

Of course, if we want to tweak memories to look better to ourselves, we might get a weird concept of self.

Wired.com: I've asked about memory removal — but should the discussion involve adding memories, too?

Sandberg: People are more worried about deletion. We have a preoccupation with amnesia, and are more fearful of losing something than adding falsehoods.

The problem is that it's the falsehoods that really mess you up. If you don't know something, you can look it up, remedy your lack of information. But if you believe something falsely, that might make you act much more erroneously.

You can imagine someone modifying their memories of war to make them look less cowardly and more brave. Now they'll think they're a brave person. At that point, you end up with the interesting question of whether, in a crisis situation, they would now be brave.

Wired.com: You use another example of memory-editing drugs for soldiers in your article with S. Matthew Liao, that if the memory of a mistaken action is erased, a soldier might not learn from his remorse.

Sandberg: To some extent, we already have to deal with this. My grandfather's story of having been in the Finnish winter war as a volunteer shifted over time. He didn't become much braver from year to year, but there was a difference between the earlier and later versions.

We can't trust our memories. But on the other hand, our memories are the basis for most of our decisions. We take it as a given that we can trust them, which is problematic.

Wired.com: But this fluidity of memory at least exists in an organic framework. Might we lose something in the transition to an abrupt, directed fluidity?

Sandberg: There's some truth to that. We have authentic fake memories, in a sense. My grandfather might have made his memories a bit more brave over time, but that was affected by his personality and his other circumstances, and tied to who he was. If he just went to the memory clinic and wanted to have won the battle, that would be more jarring.

If you do that kind of jarring change, and it doesn't connect to anything else in the personality, it's probably not going to work that well.

Wired.com: In your article, you also bring up forgiveness. If we no longer remember when someone has wronged us, we might not learn to forgive them, and that's an important social ability.

Sandberg: My co-author is more concerned than I am, but I do think there's something interesting going on with forgiveness. It's psychological, emotional and moral — a complex can of worms.

I can see problems, not from a moral standpoint, but legal. What if I hit you with my car, and to prevent PTSD you take propranolol, and afterwards in court think it wasn't too serious? A clever lawyer might argue that the victim's lack of concern means the crime should be disregarded.

I'm convinced that we're going to see a lot of interesting legal cases in the next few years, as neuroscience gets involved. People tend to believe witnesses. Suppose a witness says, "I'd just been taking my Ritalin" — should we believe him more, because we've got an enhanced memory? And if a witness has been taking a drug to impair memory, is that a reason to believe that her account is not true?

With this kind of neuroscientific evidence, it's very early to tell what we can trust. We need to do actual experiments and see measure how drugs enhance or impair memory, or more problematically, introduce a bias. Some drugs might enhance emotional memories over unemotional, or vice versa.

Wired.com: Is it paranoid to worry that someday people will be stuck drifting in a sea of shifting and unreliable memories?

Sandberg: I think we're already in this sea, but we don't notice it most of the time. Most people think, "I've got a slightly bad memory." Then they completely trust what they remember, even when it's completely unreliable.

Maybe all this is good, because it forces us to recognize that the nature of our memory is quite changeable.

A Wonderful Thing

2009-07-18T20:47:00.001-07:00

Kerry Patterson

When Old Man Hubback pulled up to my grandfather's grocery store it always caused quite a stir. Cars pulled over so people could take a gander. Dogs yelped themselves silly. And kids came running from every corner. The fact that the German immigrant looked like a homeless version of Santa Claus would have been enough to catch some people's attention, but that wasn't his drawing card. When Mr. Hubback traveled from his home a mile away to Noonan's Grocery, he hooked up his horse to a hay wagon and clip-clopped his way down the lane. This took place in the early 50s, and that made him the last person in Bellingham to travel by means of a one-horse-power vehicle. That's what caught everyone's attention.

The boys who came running to catch a glimpse also had something else they wanted to witness. The stoic German would climb down from the wagon, walk through the front door of Granddad's grocery store, walk straight to the counter, and slap down a dime. Without a word Grandpa would march to the back of the cooler and fetch an ice-cold bottle of Coke.

Hubback would grab the icy bottle in his massive hand, take it to the wall that sported the bottle opener, and pop off the lid. Then he'd whip the Coke bottle to his lips, tilt it and his head back, and in an act repeatedly attempted and failed by every boy in the room, Hubback would down the icy, burning liquid in three or four gulps—without so much as a single pause, belch, tear, or gasp for air. Then, to the cheering of little boys, Hubback would smack the empty bottle down on the counter, turn on the heel of his boot, and head back home. Most of the boys would remain behind and speak in reverent tones about the old man's gift.

As the crowd dispersed, for me the encounter was far from over. When the old German climbed on his wagon, I'd often try to sneak onto the back where I would hide in a pile of loose hay. If he didn't spot me, I'd get a free ride home on a horse-drawn wagon.

Hubback had a different plan. He didn't like kids climbing on his wagon and he let them know by twisting on his perch and turning his bull whip on anyone who had the temerity to invade his space.

On this particular day as Hubback pulled away with me perched on the back of his wagon, I quickly slid under a pile of fresh-cut hay. I had made it onto the vehicle undetected. Eventually I ventured out far enough from underneath the hay to dangle my legs off the back and enjoy the slow clip-clopping as we meandered down the dirt road that led toward my home.

I should have known better than to expose myself, because it wasn't long until a stray dog charged up the road, barking at the horse and Mr. Hubback turned to give the mongrel a taste of his whip. Seeing me sitting there on his precious wagon, unharmed and with a stupid grin on my face, Hubback immediately changed targets by re-cocking his arm to give me a sharp smack.

But then fate intervened. Before Mr. Hubback could whip me we both heard a strange shout emanating from somewhere up the road. In unison we turned our attention to the ruckus. It was Maxine, a middle-aged lady who lived nearby. Maxine not only marched to the beat of a different drummer, she marched to the beat of a wildly insane drummer. Whenever she walked up the road, she tilted forward as if struggling against a hurricane-force wind and would peer ahead until she saw another human being coming her way. Then, no matter the distance, Maxine would start shouting a garbled monologue that only she could understand.

Realizing that the chatter was just Maxine, Mr. Hubback smiled at me with a sardonic grin and raised his right arm to give me a thrashing. But I was saved once again. This time it was the sound of "Buggy Baker" bouncing down the bumpy road in her old war-surplus jeep. Ms. Baker had earned the appellation of "Buggy" because she was a high school biology teacher who loved bugs and acted, well, sort of buggy. For one, she drove an open jeep—not common for a woman in her fifties in the fifties. Two, she was always accompanied in her jeep by Billy, who was not only her best friend, but, as his name might suggest, was also a goat. On this day as Buggy bounced down the road in her jeep, so did Billy. The poor creature could hardly stay on his assigned perch on the back bench because Ms. Baker was driving far too fast for a road that was more pot hole than path.

As Mr. Hubback and I paused to watch, it became clear that Buggy's intention was to pass the wagon at a dangerous clip.

Just as Buggy began to hurl past us, Maxine (still yammering) drew close enough to stand in the path of the careening jeep, so Buggy was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid a horrible disaster. As she stomped on the brake pedal, the jeep hit a huge pothole and nearly flipped bumper-over-steering-wheel. This convulsive action pitched poor Billy into the front passenger seat, legs splayed forward where he ended up sitting there in the distinctly human pose of someone riding shotgun.

The curiously embarrassed look on the goat's face coupled with the fact that he appeared as if he were pretending to be a human being who was casually cruising the countryside was simply too funny for words. As I looked at Old Man Hubback and he looked at Maxine and Maxine looked at Buggy we all grinned widely. Then, in a moment of truce, Hubback sat down his whip, leaned back his head, and let out a howl that was half laugh, half choke. Buggy tittered, Maxine cackled, and I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks. After a full minute of laughter, Buggy shooed Billy to the back, carefully edged her jeep past the wagon, and pulled away. Maxine leaned precariously into the imaginary wind and strode off at full yammer. And, true to form, Hubback grabbed his whip and menacingly aimed it at me again.

That was the end of that. I leaped from Hubback's wagon and hurried the rest of the way home. Ten minutes later I burst in the front door and excitedly told my mother the story of the shotgun goat and the bull whip. Mom laughed along with me until we were both forced to sit down on the couch to catch our breath.

Then as Mother gathered her composure she exclaimed, "Isn't it wonderful!"

"Isn't what wonderful?" I asked.

"Living in this neighborhood!" mother explained. "We have people from all walks of life and that makes this a perfect place to live."

In my moment of near crisis, Mom chose to focus on the joys of diversity. She loved people of all shapes, looks, beliefs and sizes. She loved to chat with immigrants. When I grew old enough to study biology, Mom took me by Buggy's enchanted home where I discovered a menagerie filled with mysterious creatures and shiny microscopes. Buggy in turn introduced me to the joy of scientifically exploring the swamp in her backyard.

"To each his own." That had been Mom's mantra. Long before the topic of diversity had become popular in HR departments worldwide, Mom knew the joy that came from meeting, associating with, and loving people of every ethnicity, lifestyle, and belief.

No matter the direction of the political winds, mom never broke stride. While it's true I never actually heard Mother use the word "diversity," it was what she cherished. When Mr. Hubback grew feeble, it was she who took him soup and sat with him. And when Mom returned to college at age forty to study speech therapy, it was Maxine she took on as her first benefactor.

Mom never changed. Forty-five years later, on the eve of her death, she gifted a family of Mexican immigrants several dolls that she had made by hand to adorn her Christmas tree. Mom had invited the new neighbors and their five children into her home for hot chocolate one evening, and when the kids had complimented her on the dolls, she gave them away without a second thought.

Later that night as mom settled into her over-stuffed chair for the very last time to knit wool hats for the children of Bosnia (we found a bag of twenty beautiful hats when we went through her things), I'm sure she smiled deeply as she imagined the joy she would bring to a people she had never met, but whom she had been dutifully studying in her encyclopedia.

"Bosnians!" She had said to me as she knitted hats one day the week before—The Encyclopedia Britannica lying open next to her. "Aren't they a fascinating bunch!"

Mom made diversity a wonderful thing.

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.

The wink that changed the world

2009-07-06T20:13:00.001-07:00

The wink that changed the world. - By Michael Meyer - Slate Magazine

This is the way the Warsaw Pact folded, not with a bang but a gesture.

By Michael MeyerPosted Monday, July 6, 2009, at 9:26 AM ET

Nicolae Ceaucescu in Bucharest in 1989

On July 7, 1989, the masters of the Eastern empire gathered in Bucharest for a fateful summit. They were a rogue's gallery of the world's dictators, assembled in the capital of the worst among them: Romania's own Nicolae Ceausescu, Europe's last Stalinist, the dark lord of the old Eastern bloc's most repressive Communist regime.

They were the hunters: Erich Honecker, the murderous boss of the German Democratic Republic, architect of the wall that separated his East Germany from the West. There was Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski, the man who declared martial law in 1980 and broke the famed trade union Solidarity. Czechoslovak strongman Milos Jakes was there, as well as Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, whose secret police stooges once tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II.

This day, however, the hunted was one of their own: reformist Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, whose determination to bring democracy and free markets to his country threatened them all. And so, in the interests of self-preservation, the satraps of the Warsaw Pact marshaled their forces. The goal: a classically Commie "fraternal intervention" of the sort the world had seen before—Hungary in 1956 and Prague in 1968. Only one man stood between them and their quarry. His name: Mikhail Gorbachev.

For many, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was a glorious moment, emblematic of the West's victory in the Cold War. It seemed to come out of the blue. But if you watched the Eastern bloc's disintegration from the ground, over the course of that epic year, you know that the process was far longer and more complex than most people realize. Often, it unfolded in melodramatic little chapters, unnoticed by the rest of the world, as on that fine summer day in Bucharest two decades ago.

To grasp the full dimension of that drama, you must remember how Europe was still locked in the old order defined by the Cold War—and glimpse the changes afoot that would, abruptly, transform it. Nemeth arrived on the scene in late November 1988 as a new-generation "reform" Communist in the mold of Gorbachev himself. But if his titular master in Moscow remained a committed socialist, however liberal by contrast to his old-guard predecessors, Nemeth was the real deal.

Moving quickly, he had drafted a new constitution for Hungary—modeled on America's, complete with a Bill of Rights and guarantees of free speech and human rights. Then he allowed new political parties to form and promised free elections. And if the Communist Party should lose, hard-liners asked, what then? Why, said Nemeth, with perfect equanimity, "We step down." Worst, just a few months before, in early May, Nemeth had announced that Hungary would tear down the fence along its frontier with Austria. At the height of the Cold War, he cut a hole in the Iron Curtain.

In the Communist world, this was heresy. It had to be punished. And so it was that the Warsaw Pact's leaders assembled in Bucharest. Seated in a great hall, surrounded by banners and the full pomp of Communist circumstance, they launched their attack. Ceausescu went first, brandishing his fists and shouting an impassioned indictment: "Hungary will destroy socialism." His "dangerous experiments" will destroy the entire Socialist Union! Honecker, Jakes, and Zhivkov followed. Only Jaruzelski of Poland sat quiet, sphinxlike behind his dark sunglasses, betraying no emotion.

Nemeth had been in office for only seven months. This was his first Warsaw Pact summit. He was nervous, but he knew his enemies would act only with Soviet support. The man who could give it sat roughly opposite him, 30 feet away on the other side of a large rectangle of flag-draped conference tables. As Ceausescu and the others ranted on, calling for armed intervention in Hungary, Nemeth glanced across at the Soviet leader. Their eyes met, and Gorbachev … winked.

"This happened at least four or five times," Nemeth later told me. "Strictly speaking, it wasn't really a wink. It was more a look, a bemused twinkle. Each time he smiled at me, with his eyes, it was as if Gorbachev were saying, 'Don't worry. These people are idiots. Pay no attention.' " And so he didn't. As the dogs of the Warsaw Pact brayed for his head, Nemeth went outside to smoke a cigarette.

On this small moment, history turned. Nemeth flew back to Budapest and continued his reforms, dissolving the country's Communist Party and opening Hungary's borders so that tens of thousands of East Germans could famously escape to the West—and causing, four months later, the Berlin Wall to topple. Erich Honecker went home a spent political force who would be ousted in a coup d'état that began taking shape even before he left Bucharest. As for Nicolae Ceausescu, he would die by firing squad during the revolution that convulsed Romania at year's end.

Reverse-Engineering the Quantum Compass of Birds

2009-06-24T18:35:00.001-07:00

Reverse-Engineering the Quantum Compass of Birds | Wired Science | Wired.com

Scientists are coming ever closer to understanding the cellular navigation tools that guide birds in their unerring, globe-spanning migrations.

The latest piece of the puzzle is superoxide, an oxygen molecule that may combine with light-sensitive proteins to form an in-eye compass, allowing birds to see Earth's magnetic field.

"It connects from the subatomic world to a whole bird flying," said Michael Edidin, an editor of Biphysical Journal, which published the study last week. "That's exciting!"

The superoxide theory is proposed by Biophysicist Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, lead author of the study and a pioneer in avian magnetoreception. Schulten first hypothesized in 1978 that some sort of biochemical reaction took place in birds' eyes, most likely producing electrons whose spin was affected by subtle magnetic gradients.

In 2000, Schulten refined this model, suggesting that the compass contained a photoreceptor protein called cryptochrome, which reacted with an as-yet-unidentified molecule to produce pairs of electrons that existed in a state of quantum entanglement — spatially separated, but each still able to affect the other.

According to this model, when a photon hits the compass, entangled electrons are scattered to different parts of the molecule. Variations in Earth's magnetic field cause them to spin in different ways, each of which leaves the compass in a slightly different chemical state. The state alters the flow of cellular signals through a bird's visual pathways, ultimately resulting in a perception of magnetism.

Far-fetched as it sounds, subsequent research from multiple groups has found cellular evidence of such a system. Molecular experiments suggest that it's indeed sensitive to Earth's geomagnetics, and computational models suggest a level of quantum entanglement only dreamed of by physicists, who hope to use entangled electrons to store information in quantum computers.

But though cryptochrome is likely part of the compass, the other part is still unknown. In April, another group of magnetoreception researchers showed that oxygen could interact with cryptochrome to produce the necessary electron entanglements. Schulten's latest proposed role for superoxide, an oxygen anion found in bird eyes, fits with their findings.

Edidin cautioned that "this is still not an experimental demonstration. It's a possibility."

As for the perceptual result of the compass, it remains a mystery. Some researchers think birds might see a dot at the edge of their vision, swiveling according to the direction they're facing. Others think it might produce effects of color or hue. Perhaps migrating birds fly towards the light.

Extreme Life

2009-06-24T18:13:00.001-07:00

Extreme Life Thrives Where the Livin' Ain't Easy | Wired Science | Wired.com

Once upon a time, scientists routinely found life in places where it wasn't supposed to exist. That doesn't happen anymore, and not because the pace of discovery has slowed. If anything, it's accelerated. It's simply become clear that life can exist almost anywhere on Earth.

After 3 billion years of evolution, life has flowed into every last nook and cranny, from the bottom of the sea to the upper edge of the stratosphere. From blazing heat and freezing cold to pure acidity and atomic bomb-caliber radiation, there's seemingly no stress so great that some bug can't handle it.

Desulforudis audaxviator is perhaps the one truly singular microbe. Every other known organism exists in a system in which at least some nutrients are provided by other creatures. But not D. audaxviator, which was discovered in a South African mine shaft, two miles beneath Earth's surface and entirely alone. Using radioactivity from uranium-containing rocks as energy, it can harvest or metabolize every nutrient it needs from surrounding rock and gas — the world's only known single-species ecosystem.

Extreme Life

2009-06-24T18:06:00.001-07:00

Extreme Life Thrives Where the Livin' Ain't Easy | Wired Science | Wired.com

Ferroplasma acidophilum can grow in a pH of zero — conditions that make sulfuric acid look like mineral water. Found in the toxic outflow of a California gold mine, it uses iron as the central structural element of nearly all its proteins.

Image: Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (left), NASA (right)

Requests to the Right Ear Are More Successful

2009-06-24T13:25:00.001-07:00

Requests to the Right Ear Are More Successful Than to the Left | Wired Science | Wired.com

You're in a loud and sweaty Italian dance club when a woman approaches you. To be heard over the techno, she leans in close and yells into your ear, "Hai una sigaretta?"

If she spoke into your right ear, you would be twice as likely to give her a cigarette than if she asked by your left ear, according to a new study that employed this methodology in the clubs of Pescara, Italy. Of 88 clubbers who were approached on the right, 34 let the researcher bum a smoke, compared with 17 of 88 whom she approached on the left.

"The present work is one of the few studies demonstrating the natural expression of hemispheric asymmetries, showing their effect in everyday human behavior," write psychologists Daniele Marzoli and Luca Tommasi of the University G. d'Annunzio in Italy.

It's the latest in a series of studies that show that sound from both human ears is processed differently within the brain. Researchers have noted that humans tend to have a preference for listening to verbal input with their right ears and that given stimulus in both ears, they'll privilege the syllables that went into the right ear. Brain scientists hypothesize that the right ear auditory stream receives precedence in the left hemisphere of the brain, where the bulk of linguistic processing is carried out.

What's surprising about the study is that ear choice had such a decided impact on the behavior of participants in a natural, or as the researchers put it, ecological, setting. Why would people feel more generous when their right ears are addressed?

Marzoli and Tommasi write that some work has shown that the left and right hemispheres of the brain appear to be tuned for positive and negative emotions, respectively. Talk into the right ear and you send your words into a slightly more amenable part of the brain.

"These results seem to be consistent with the hypothesized differential specialization of right and left hemispheres," they write.

In addition to the direct cigarette-ask study, they also simply observed people interacting and also asked for cigarettes without directing their requests towards a particular ear. The Italian researchers picked the night club setting because the loud music allowed the cigarette-asker to approach people and speak directly into one ear without seeming "odd."

The Day The Media Died

2009-06-23T21:57:00.001-07:00

Tiny, Do-It-Yourself Satellites

2009-06-23T21:02:00.000-07:00

M.I.A.

2009-06-22T19:48:00.001-07:00

"Paper Planes"

I fly like paper, get high like planes
If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name
If you come around here, I make 'em all day
I get one down in a second if you wait

Sometimes I think sitting on trains
Every stop I get to I'm clocking that game
Everyone's a winner, we're making our fame
Bonafide hustler making my name

All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money

Pirate skulls and bones
Sticks and stones and weed and bongs
Running when we hit 'em
Lethal poison through their system

No one on the corner has swagger like us
Hit me on my Burner prepaid wireless
We pack and deliver like UPS trucks
Already going hell just pumping that gas

All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!)
And (KKKAAAA CHING!)
And take your money

M.I.A.
Third world democracy
Yeah, I got more records than the K.G.B.
So, uh, no funny business

Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go
Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go

Mullet species 3

2009-06-16T09:07:00.001-07:00

Mullet Junky

Family Mulltrait

"Hell no mom, we're not dressin' up for the family mulltrait. We're wearin' our matching powder-blue and yellow tank tops!"

These were the same tank tops they wore when they "necked" the Barbosa twins in the dugout on the baseball field.

"High-five bro! Huh huh huh!"

* Technically, its a Mullderline, but come on....

*The daughter has the mothers wandering eye.

Mullet species 2

2009-06-16T08:41:00.001-07:00

Mullet Junky

Matrimullny

Priest: "Randall Mull, Do you take Libby-May to be your, bla bla bla bla bla.....?"

Randall Mull: "Shit ya!"

Priest: "Libby-May, Do you take Randall Mull to be your, bla bla bla bla bla.....?"

Libby May: "Shoot, I guess I do, yeah."

Priest: "With the power vested in me and state of Kentucky, I now pronounce you Mull and wife! Libby, You may kiss the Mullestache."

Libby: "Awww heck, come 'er punkin."

....and they lived happily ever after.(in Blue Skies Trailer Park)

Mullet hunting techniques 1

2009-06-16T08:35:00.001-07:00

huntingtechniques

Hunter: "Hey Dude, that's a stylin' Mullet"

Mullet: "Huh?"

Hunter: "Yeah man, it takes balls to sport that hair"

Mullet: "Huh?"

Hunter: (Say it fast for confusion) "Oh Yeah, It's the Mullet, Camaro Hair, The Charlotte Mud Flap, The Kentucky Waterfall, Hockey Hair, the 10-90, the Achy-Breaky- Big-Mistakey, the Ape Drape. You know, the only hair style that has web pages devoted to it."

Mullet: "Huh?"

Hunter: "Do you mind if I get your photo? I'm going to put you on the Internet. You will be famous."

Mullet: "OK"

Hunter: "Please turn sideways so I can get a good shot" Click. "Thanks."

Mullet species 1

2009-06-16T08:30:00.001-07:00

mullet junky

Mullanonymous

At first glance, the words "engineer" or "math teacher" may come to mind. However, don't be too hasty when assesing the "Mullanonymous"... this chameleon has the power to blend in and adapt to many social groups. Even though I can not truly pinpoint or narrow this "master of disguise" down to one category, manifestos and biological/chemical warfare come to mind.

He knows how to put nuts down

2009-06-16T07:59:00.001-07:00

Squirrel-armor

The joys of the 21st century

2009-06-16T07:55:00.001-07:00

Squirrel-armor

You can now by an armor for your squirrel

"A large raptor attacks my remote controlled eagle"

2009-06-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

http://vimeo.com/5051228

The Hugger Mugger of Leicester Square

2009-06-13T08:22:00.001-07:00

Hugger Mugger police warning, Odeon Cinema, Leicester Square, London, UK no Flickr – Compartilhamento de fotos!

1st Law Of Cybernetics:

2009-06-05T17:34:00.000-07:00

"The unit
[which can be a person]
within the system
[which can be a situation or an organisation]
which has the most behavioural responses available to it

controls the system"

Roman France

2009-05-16T17:55:00.001-07:00

May 17, 2009

Recession times

2009-05-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

When the toilet in Carol Taddei’s master bathroom began to break down a few months ago, she decided it would be cheaper to buy a new one than pay for repairs. Ever frugal in this dismal economy, Ms. Taddei, a retired paralegal, then took her economizing a step further, figuring she could save even more by installing the new toilet herself.

Initially, things looked good with the flushing and the swishing. That is, until the ceiling collapsed in the room below the new (leaky) toilet. Rushing to get supplies for a repair, Ms. Taddei clipped a pole in her garage. It ripped the bumper off her car, and later, several shelves holding flower pots and garden tools collapsed over her head.

“It just kept getting worse,” Ms. Taddei said, ruefully describing what came out to be a $3,000, three-day renovation at her suburban Minneapolis home, finished by a professional from Mr. Handyman, a home repair service that takes emergency calls.

ACUMEN

2009-05-10T18:10:00.000-07:00

Etymology

Latin acumen, sharp point

acumen (plural acumens)

quickness of discernment or perception; penetration of mind; the faculty of nice discrimination

Quotations

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
No, no, my dear Watson! With all respect for your natural acumen, I do not think that you are quite a match for the worthy doctor.
1991, Silence Of The Lambs
Hannibal Lecter: Why do you think he removes their skins, Agent Starling? Enthrall me with your acumen.

Synonyms

Sharpness; penetration; keenness; shrewdness; acuteness; acuity.

NOUS

2009-05-10T17:59:00.000-07:00

Origin:
1670–80; Gk. noûs, contracted var. of nóos mind

n.

Philosophy
1. Reason and knowledge as opposed to sense perception.
2. The rational part of the individual human soul.
3. The principle of the cosmic mind or soul responsible for the rational order of the cosmos.
4. In Neo-Platonism, the image of the absolute good, containing the cosmos of intelligible beings.
Chiefly British Good sense; shrewdness."She has great social nous"

[Greek.]

Spanish: nos,

German: uns selbst,

Japanese: 私たち自身を

The Grid, Our Cars and the Net: One Idea to Link Them All

2009-05-10T16:22:00.001-07:00

The Grid, Our Cars and the Net: One Idea to Link Them All | Autopia

Autopia Planes, Trains, Automobiles and the Future of Transportation

By David Weinberger
May 8, 2009
11:57 am

Editor's note: Robin Chase thinks a lot about transportation and the internet, and how to link them. She connected them when she founded Zipcar, and she wants to do it again by making our electric grid and our cars smarter. Time magazine recently named her one of the 100 most influential people of the year. David Weinberger sat down with Chase to discuss her idea.

Robin Chase considers the future of electricity, the future of cars and the internet three terms in a single equation, even if most of us don't yet realize they're on the same chalkboard. Solve the equation correctly, she says, and we create a greener future where innovation thrives. Get it wrong, and our grandchildren will curse our names.

Chase thinks big, and she's got the cred to back it up. She created an improbable network of automobiles called Zipcar. Getting it off the ground required not only buying a fleet of cars, but convincing cities to dedicate precious parking spaces to them. It was a crazy idea, and it worked. Zipcar now has 6,000 cars and 250,000 users in 50 towns.

Now she's moving on to the bigger challenge of integrating a smart grid with our cars – and then everything else. The kicker is how they come together. You can sum it up as a Tweet: The intelligent network we need for electricity can also turn cars into nodes. Interoperability is a multiplier. Get it right!

Robin Chase

Chase starts by explaining the smart grid. There's broad consensus that our electrical system should do more than carry electricity. It should carry information. That would allow a more intelligent, and efficient, use of power.

"Our electric infrastructure is designed for the rare peak of usage," Chase says. "That's expensive and wasteful."

Changing that requires a smart grid. What we have is a dumb one. We ask for electricity and the grid provides it, no questions asked. A smart grid asks questions and answers them. It makes the meter on your wall a sensor that links you to a network that knows how much power you're using, when you're using it and how to reduce your energy needs – and costs.

Such a system will grow more important as we become energy producers, not just consumers. Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will return power to the grid. Rooftop solar panels and backyard wind turbines will, at times, produce more energy than we can store. A smart grid generates what we need and lets us use what we generate. That's why the Obama Administration allocated $4.5 billion in the stimulus bill for smart grid R&D.

This pleases Chase, but it also makes her nervous. The smart grid must be an information network, but we have a tradition of getting such things wrong. Chase is among those trying to convince the government that the safest and most robust network will use open internet protocols and standards. For once the government seems inclined to listen.

Chase switches gears to talk about how cars fit into the equation. She sees automobiles as just another network device, one that, like the smart grid, should be open and net-based.

"Cars are network nodes," she says. "They have GPS and Bluetooth and toll-both transponders, and we're all on our cell phones and lots of cars have OnStar support services."

That's five networks. Automakers and academics will bring us more. They're working on smart cars that will communicate with us, with one another and with the road. How will those cars connect to the network? That's the third part of Chase's equation: Mesh networking.

In a typical Wi-Fi network, there's one router and a relatively small number of devices using it as a gateway to the internet. In a mesh network, every device is also a router. Bring in a new mesh device and it automatically links to any other mesh devices within radio range. It is an example of what internet architect David Reed calls "cooperative gain" - the more devices, the more bandwidth across the network. Chase offers an analogy to explain it.

"Wi-Fi is like a bridge that connects the highways on either side of the stream," she says. "You build it wide enough to handle the maximum traffic you expect. If too much comes, it gets congested. When not enough arrives, you've got excess capacity. Mesh takes a different approach: Each person who wants to cross throws in a flat rock that's above the water line. The more people who do that, the more ways there are to get across the river."

Cooperative gain means more users bring more capacity, not less. It's always right-sized. Of course, Chase points out, if you're trying to go a long distance, you're ultimately forced back onto the broadband bridge where the capacity is limited. But for local intra-mesh access, it's a brilliant and counter-intuitive strategy.

Mesh networking as a broad-based approach to networking is growing. A mesh network with 240 nodes covers Vienna. Similar projects are underway in Barcelona, Athens, the Czech Republic and, before long, in two areas of Boston not far from the cafe we're sitting in. But the most dramatic examples are the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers and tanks and airplanes are running around using mesh networks," said Chase. "It works, it's secure, it's robust. If a node or device disappears, the network just reroutes the data."

And, perhaps most important, it's in motion. That's what allows Chase's plural visions to go singular. Build a smart electrical grid that uses Internet protocols and puts a mesh network device in every structure that has an electric meter. Sweep out the half dozen networks in our cars and replace them with an open, Internet-based platform. Add a mesh router. A nationwide mesh cloud will form, linking vehicles that can connect with one another and with the rest of the network. It's cooperative gain gone national, gone mobile, gone open.

Chase's mesh vision draws some skepticism. Some say it won't scale up. The fact it's is being used in places like Afghanistan and Vienna indicates it could. Others say moving vehicles may not be able to hook into and out of mesh networks quickly enough. Chase argues it's already possible to do so in less than a second, and that time will only come down. But even if every car and every electric meter were meshed, there's still a lot of highway out there that wouldn't be served, right? Chase has an answer for that, too.

"Cars would have cellular and Wi-Fi as backups," she said.

The economics are right, she argues. Rather than over-building to handle peak demand and letting capacity go unused, we would right-size our infrastructure to provide exactly what we need, when we need it, with minimum waste and maximum efficiency.

"There's an economy of network scale here," she says. "The traffic-light guys should be interested in this for their own purposes, and so should the power-grid folks and the emergency responders and the Homeland Security folks and, well, everyone. Mesh networks based on open standards are economically justifiable for any one of these things. Put them together - network the networks – and for the same exact infrastructure spend, you get a ubiquitous, robust, resilient, open communication platform — ripe for innovation — without spending a dollar more."

The time is right, too. There's $7.2 billion in the stimulus bill for broadband, $4.5 billion for the smart grid and about $5 billion for transportation technology. The Transportation Reauthorization bill is coming up, too. At $300 billion it is second only to education when it comes to federal discretionary spending. We are about to make a huge investment in a set of networks. It will be difficult to gather the political and economic will to change them once they are deployed.

"We need to get this right, right now," Chase says.

Build each of these infrastructures using open networking standards and we enable cooperative gain at the network level itself. Get it wrong and we will have paved over a generational opportunity.

David Weinberger is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. E-mail him at self@evident.com.

Que c'est triste Venise

2009-05-05T15:23:00.001-07:00

Que c'est triste Venise
Au temps des amours mortes
Que c'est triste Venise
Quand on ne s'aime plus

On cherche encore des mots
Mais l'ennui les emporte
On voudrais bien pleurer
Mais on ne le peut plus

Que c'est triste Venise
Lorsque les barcarolles
Ne viennent souligner
Que des silences creux

Et que le cœur se serre
En voyant les gondoles
Abriter le bonheur
Des couples amoureux

Que c'est triste Venise
Au temps des amours mortes
Que c'est triste Venise
Quand on ne s'aime plus

Les musées, les églises
Ouvrent en vain leurs portes
Inutile beauté
Devant nos yeux déçus

Que c'est triste Venise
Le soir sur la lagune
Quand on cherche une main
Que l'on ne vous tend pas

Et que l'on ironise
Devant le clair de lune
Pour tenter d'oublier
Ce qu'on ne se dit pas

Adieu tout les pigeons
Qui nous ont fait escorte
Adieu Pont des Soupirs
Adieu rêves perdus

C'est trop triste Venise
Au temps des amours mortes
C'est trop triste Venise
Quand on ne s'aime plus

Bucintoro

2009-05-01T21:02:00.001-07:00

2008 February « Venice from beyond the bridge

BUCINTORO

The Bucintoro was the Doge's big parade boat. It was used the Ascension day, when a gold ring where dropped in to the sea as sign of the Republic power over the sea (Sposalizio del mare).

The fist Bucintoro was build by the Republic in 1311, since then it was rebuilt 3 times. It was 35 meters long, 7 meters large and 9 meters high, with 42 oars and 168 oarsmen. The last one was destroyed by the French in 1789.

Now there is a foundation that is trying to rebuilt it, they are looking sponsors for 15.000.000,00 euro.

Wolfram on Wolfram Alfa

2009-05-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming!

March 5, 2009

Stephen Wolfram

"Some might say that Mathematica and A New Kind of Science are ambitious projects.

But in recent years I’ve been hard at work on a still more ambitious project—called Wolfram|Alpha.

And I’m excited to say that in just two months it’s going to be going live:

Mathematica has been a great success in very broadly handling all kinds of formal technical systems and knowledge.

But what about everything else? What about all other systematic knowledge? All the methods and models, and data, that exists?

Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d quickly be able to handle all these kinds of things and that one would be able to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer.

But it didn’t work out that way. Computers have been able to do many remarkable and unexpected things. But not that.

I’d always thought, though, that eventually it should be possible. And a few years ago, I realized that I was finally in a position to try to do it.

I had two crucial ingredients: Mathematica and NKS. With Mathematica, I had a symbolic language to represent anything—as well as the algorithmic power to do any kind of computation. And with NKS, I had a paradigm for understanding how all sorts of complexity could arise from simple rules.

But what about all the actual knowledge that we as humans have accumulated?

A lot of it is now on the web—in billions of pages of text. And with search engines, we can very efficiently search for specific terms and phrases in that text.

But we can’t compute from that. And in effect, we can only answer questions that have been literally asked before. We can look things up, but we can’t figure anything new out.

So how can we deal with that? Well, some people have thought the way forward must be to somehow automatically understand the natural language that exists on the web. Perhaps getting the web semantically tagged to make that easier.

But armed with Mathematica and NKS I realized there’s another way: explicitly implement methods and models, as algorithms, and explicitly curate all data so that it is immediately computable.

It’s not easy to do this. Every different kind of method and model—and data—has its own special features and character. But with a mixture of Mathematica and NKS automation, and a lot of human experts, I’m happy to say that we’ve gotten a very long way.

How can I say it?

"But, OK. Let’s say we succeed in creating a system that knows a lot, and can figure a lot out. How can we interact with it?

The way humans normally communicate is through natural language. And when one’s dealing with the whole spectrum of knowledge, I think that’s the only realistic option for communicating with computers too.

Of course, getting computers to deal with natural language has turned out to be incredibly difficult. And for example we’re still very far away from having computers systematically understand large volumes of natural language text on the web.

But if one’s already made knowledge computable, one doesn’t need to do that kind of natural language understanding.

All one needs to be able to do is to take questions people ask in natural language, and represent them in a precise form that fits into the computations one can do.

Of course, even that has never been done in any generality. And it’s made more difficult by the fact that one doesn’t just want to handle a language like English: one also wants to be able to handle all the shorthand notations that people in every possible field use.

I wasn’t at all sure it was going to work. But I’m happy to say that with a mixture of many clever algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and what probably amount to some serious theoretical breakthroughs, we’re actually managing to make it work.

Neverending trillions

"Pulling all of this together to create a true computational knowledge engine is a very difficult task.

It’s certainly the most complex project I’ve ever undertaken. Involving far more kinds of expertise—and more moving parts—than I’ve ever had to assemble before.

And—like Mathematica, or NKS—the project will never be finished.

But I’m happy to say that we’ve almost reached the point where we feel we can expose the first part of it.

It’s going to be a website: www.wolframalpha.com. With one simple input field that gives access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms.

We’re all working very hard right now to get Wolfram|Alpha ready to go live.

I think it’s going to be pretty exciting. A new paradigm for using computers and the web.

That almost gets us to what people thought computers would be able to do 50 years ago!

Due Soon: Wolfram Alpha

2009-05-01T19:40:00.000-07:00

Wolfram Alpha is an answer-engine developed by the international company Wolfram Research. The service will be an online computational data engine based on intuitive query parsing, a large library of algorithms, and A New Kind of Science approach to answering queries.^[1] It was announced in March 2009 by British physicist Stephen Wolfram, to be launched in May 2009.

Wolfram Alpha differs from search engines in that it does not simply return a list of results based on a keyword, but instead computes answers and relevant visualizations from a collection of known information. Other new search engines, known collectively as semantic search engines, have developed alpha applications of this type, which index a large amount of answers, and then try to match the question to one. Examples of companies using this strategy include True Knowledge, and Microsoft's Powerset.

Wolfram Alpha has many parallels with Cyc, a project aimed at developing a common-sense inference engine since the 80s, though without producing any major commercial application. Cyc founder Douglas Lenat was one of the few given an opportunity to test Wolfram Alpha before its release:

It handles a much wider range of queries than Cyc, but much narrower than Google; it understands some of what it is displaying as an answer, but only some of it ... The bottom line is that there are a large range of queries it can't parse, and a large range of parsable queries it can't answer
-Douglas Lenat^[2]

Wolfram's earlier flagship product Mathematica encompasses computer algebra, numerical computation, visualization and statistics capabilities and can be used on all kinds of mathematical analysis, from simple plotting to signal processing, but will not be included in the alpha release, due to computation-time problems.^[3]

From Positivism to Complexity to Paradoxes

2009-05-01T18:34:00.000-07:00

Today's key features of logical positivism (or logical empiricism; see also constructive empiricism), as originally created by A. Comte (19th century) and later adapted and corrected by Karl Popper, are:

1. A focus on science as a product, a linguistic or numerical set of statements;

2. A concern with axiomatization, that is, with demonstrating the logical structure and coherence of these statements (Göedel's 1921 and 1951 demonstrations of the essential insufficiency of many axiomatic systems, have largely reshaped and structured this vision);

3. An insistence on at least some of these statements being testable, that is amenable to being verified, confirmed, or falsified by the empirical observation of reality; statements that would, by their nature, be regarded as untestable included the teleological; (Thus positivism rejects much of classical metaphysics.)

4. The belief that science is markedly cumulative;

5. The belief that science is predominantly transcultural;

6. The belief that science rests on specific results that are dissociated from the personality and social position of the investigator;

7. The belief that science contains theories or research traditions that are largely commensurable;

8. The belief that science sometimes incorporates new ideas that are discontinuous from old ones;

9. The belief that science involves the idea of the unity of science, that there is, underlying the various scientific disciplines, basically one science about one real world;

10. The belief that "all true knowledge is scientific"^[14];

11. The belief that all things are ultimately measurable;

12. The belief that "entities of one kind... are reducible to entities of another,"^[14] such as societies to numbers, or mental events to chemical events (reductionism).

What's new

Major progress over this picture came, at the end of 20th century, from the science (i.e. mathematics) of complexity. It is now clear that the scaling, up or down, of a phenomenum usually produces new laws, that essentially account for new, qualitatively different, phenomena. This essencially challenges the 12th point, above.

In this sense, although macro-processes can, indeed, be "reducible to physiological, physical or chemical events,"^[14] and "social processes are reducible to relationships between and actions of individuals,"^[14] or "biological organisms are reducible to physical systems"^[14] . It is no longer believed that ALL laws of the former phenomena can be tracked back or inferred up, from the later. In a parallel to Goedel's finding, about the incompleteness of most axiomatic mathematical systems, there is now a perception of an essencial insufficiency of micro laws, to explain macro phenomena.

Simple programs, for instance, are capable of a remarkable range of complex behavior. Some have been proven to be universal computers, others exhibit properties familiar from traditional science, such as thermodynamic behavior, continuum behavior, conserved quantities, percolation, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, and others. They have been used as models of traffic, material fracture, crystal growth, biological growth, and various sociological, geological, and ecological phenomena.

Stephen Wolfram, in A New Kind of Science argues that, in order to capture the essence of almost any complex system it is necessary to systematically explore these systems and document what they do. He believes this study should become a new branch of science, like physics or chemistry. The basic goal of this field is to understand and characterize the computational universe using experimental methods.

The proposed new branch of scientific exploration admits many different forms of scientific production. For instance, qualitative classifications like those found in biology are often the results of initial forays into the computational jungle. On the other hand, explicit proofs that certain systems compute this or that function are also admissible. There are also some forms of production that are in some ways unique to this field of study. For instance, the discovery of computational mechanisms that emerge in different systems but in bizarrely different forms.

What's wrong

As of the first decade of the 21st century, the main challenge posed to Positivism (by its own ranks; "metaphisical" and teleological claims being, naturally, disqualified a priori) is the emergence of unsolved paradoxes from within seemingly "well-constructed" theories. Namely, Quantum Phisics and Bayesian Statistics result in disturbing, logic-defying results, that have generated a lot of havoc and schism within the positivist community.

Closed River of the Pacience Bridge

2009-04-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

That's Venice !

Deeper, longer, tougher

2009-04-04T16:58:00.001-07:00

Long and winding road

2009-04-04T16:46:00.001-07:00

Photo: Guy Crittenden

The price of prosperty

2009-04-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

“Prosperity has this property - it puffs up narrow souls,
makes them imagine themselves high and mighty
and look down on the world with contempt.”

Plutarch, 46-120 A.D.

The Bull in Winter

2009-04-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

Kondratieff Waves

2009-04-04T08:45:00.001-07:00

E lucevan le stelle

2009-04-01T19:13:00.001-07:00

YouTube - Beniamino Gigli - E lucevan le stelle 1934

Tosca
Luigi Illica & Giuseppe Giacosa

E lucevan le stelle...
e olezzava la terra...
stridea l'uscio dell'orto
e un passo sfiorava l'arena...
entrava ella, fragrante,
mi cadea fra le braccia...
Oh, dolci baci, o languide carezze,
mentr'io fremente
le belle forme disciogliea dai veli!
Svanì per sempre il sogno mio d'amore...
L'ora è fuggita e muoio disperato,
e muoio disperato!
E non ho amato mai tanto la vita...
Tanto la vita!

-------------

The stars were shining...
and the earth was bathed in fragrance...
I heard the garden gate quietly open
and a footstep brush the sandy path...
she entered, softly perfumed,
and fell into my arms...
Such sweet kisses and soft caresses,
while I with trembling hands
removed the veils from her exquisite form!
My dream of love has gone forever...
the hour has fled and I die in despair.
I die in despair!
And never have I so loved life...
Never!

Tiresome Suction

2009-03-28T19:52:00.001-07:00

LivingSocial on Facebook

Miformi Hanging Lamp

2009-03-21T12:56:00.001-07:00

Sartrean Naosicaa

2009-03-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

Ibn Adaam

2009-03-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

Marquises, promessas e opressão

2009-03-13T20:45:00.001-07:00

Subitamente entendi porque marquises são tão a cara dos anos 60.

As do Niemeyer apontam e prometem o futuro (distaaaaaaaaaaaante...), desde que você siga o caminho que ele te impõe.

Vizibilidade vertical, zero! É aquela opressão sobre a sua cabeça.

Em suma: é exatamente o trotskismo-leninismo, tão em voga nos 60.

“When we are victorious on a world scale, I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world.” - Lenin, Writings, 1921.

Vindicating Lenin... sort of

2009-03-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

“When we are victorious on a world scale, I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world.” - V.Lenin, 1921.

Solid 24k gold toilet. Hong Kong (meca do capitalismo liberal), 2001.

Hipótese

2009-03-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

A vida das gentes neste mundo, Senhor Sabugo, é isso. Um rosário de piscados. Cada pisco é um dia.

Pisca e mama;

pisca e brinca;

pisca e estuda;

pisca e ama;

pisca e cria filhos;

pisca e geme os reumatismos;

por fim pisca pela última vez e morre.

- E depois que morre? - perguntou o Visconde.

- Depois que morre, vira hipótese. É ou não é?

(Exerto de "A chave do tamanho", Monteiro Lobato)

Melting

2009-03-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

Christus Bovinus

2009-03-08T18:38:00.001-07:00

Who wants to have an open mind after all?...

2009-03-08T15:34:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Canal de FFreeThinker

"A true Christian knows that a little leaven leavens the whole loaf... to add just a bit of what is rotten makes the whole soup rotten... a drop of poison makes the entire drink deadly.

'Open minded' for one who has found the true path is not an option.

It is wiser to be right-minded. Truth is more finite than most believe."

by KnowJesusKnowPeace
(2 horas atrás)

Hmm... OK. That happened to be a bad example

2009-03-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Canal de KnowJesusKnowPeace

Man from Modesto

KnowJesusKnowPeace

Estilo: Espiritual

Participante desde: 16 de junho de 2007

Último acesso: 2 horas atrás

Vídeos assistidos: 4108

Inscritos: 310

Exibições do canal: 12790

This site shares what I have learned from the Holy Spirit, a teacher for all who receive Christ. Each of us should share what we have learned. Please read Jer Ch 36- The hope is that people will turn from immorality and seek a right relationship with God.

This channel offers messages I have learned from others which meet with approval in my spirit and which do not contradict scripture. On this channel I offer three messages: First, lessons on beginning, enhancing and understanding dreams. Second, Dreams I receive myself will be shared. Third, from what I have learned from the Holy Spirit, I will share my understanding of how decent, moral people should interact with the world.

I especially have a calling to teach the gift of dreams and prophecy. Subscribe to receive new videos as I post them.

I am NOT a prophet. Any person loving and listening to the Lord can (& should) receive messages, encouragement and discipline as I sometimes do. Peace.

Name: Man from Modesto

I receive many prophetic dreams. Subscribe to receive them as quickly as I record and post them.

The Lord began to show me dreams about the future when I was a boy. The earliest dreams paralleled the book of Revelation, Chapters 6:13-6:14
The Holy Spirit guided me into the Marine Corps in 1988 after high school,
telling me, "There will be a war in the Middle East. I will do something with you later, and the American people trust a veteran, so I need you to do this." I joined and received a guaranteed contract to learn Arabic.

Later, in 2002, I also joined the National Guard. The Lord told me then to join and to brush up on my Arabic. I arrived on March 24, 2003, the anniversary of the day I was saved in the mountains of Tennessee under the guidance of two Baptist ministers, slightly after 3 a.m.

The Lord has shown me many, many things. I have begun a series of "dream lessons" in which I teach some of the understanding I have learned about the gift of dreaming. I will include truths I have learned from the Holy Spirit about dreaming and about the written word in the Bible. I will also include important things I have learned about dreaming from reading.

May the Lord grant you wisdom to perceive.

We are told to feed the poor and cloth the naked. I present to you that many understand the basic, physical meaning of this: give food to the empty stomachs and give shirts and pants to the naked. However, there is a SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION as well: Give the living WORD to the hungry and clothe the naked with a covering of prayer. Many are starving and don't know it. Many are naked and don't know it. Many are poor, but think they are rich.

City: earth
Home City: New Jerusalem!
Country : Estados Unidos
Profissão: Engineering
Escolas: San Joaquin Delta, Modesto JC, S...

Interesses e passatempos: Evangelism, traveling, science, physics, mathematical riddles, pi, n-dimensional mathematics, coin collecting, hiking, the spiritual gifts of prophecy, healing and dreams, marksmanship, Marine Corps!

Filmes e programas: The Chronicles of Narnia; Facing the Giants; Fireproof

Livros: Bible (Revelation, Matthew, letters of John, James, Job); Flatland by Abbot, Handbook of Spiritual Warfare by Dr. Ed Murphy

Christus Anti-Abortum

2009-03-06T22:38:00.000-08:00

by Mark Ryden

O arcebispo de Olinda e Recife, Dom José Cardoso Sobrinho, defendeu nesta sexta-feira (6-mar/09) a excomunhão dos responsáveis pelo aborto da menina de 9 anos estuprada pelo padrasto em Alagoinha (a 230 km de Recife).

Após exames, os médicos constataram que a gravidez era de gêmeos e representava alto risco.

Em relação ao padrasto, que assumiu o crime, Dom José Cardoso Sobrinho disse que ele não é passível de excomunhão.

"Esse padrasto cometeu um pecado gravíssimo. Agora, mais grave do que isso, sabe o que é? O aborto, eliminar uma vida inocente."

O chefe do Conselho Pontifício para a Família do Vaticano, Gianfranco Grieco, apoiou a decisão da excomunhão. Em entrevista ao jornal italiano Corriere della Sera, Grieco admitiu que a situação é delicada.

"A Igreja nunca pode trair o seu anúncio, que é defender a vida desde a concepção até a morte natural, mesmo em face de um drama humano tão forte como o da violência contra uma criança", disse Grieco.

Ele afirmou que o aborto não é uma solução.

Fragmento de um discurso amoroso

2009-03-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

by Mark Ryden

Christus Carnalis

2009-03-06T22:20:00.000-08:00

by Mark Ryden

Em meio à reação pública, provocada pela excomunhão dos médicos que realizaram aborto em uma menina pernambucana de 9 anos, estuprada pelo padrasto e grávida de gêmeos, diversos argumentos e questionamentos acalorados, a favor e contra a decisão da Igreja Católica, encontraram seu caminho até as páginas da imprensa. Subitamente, ao invés de discutir as causas da tragédia da menor estuprada, o que podemos fazer para reduzir a frequência com que esse crime se repete em nossas cidades e como podemos ajudar suas vítimas, a sociedade brasileira mergulha num debate sobre os méritos da Igreja Católica e sua anacrônica instituição da excomunhão.

Entre os diversos argumentos pró e contra a ação da Igreja, muito poucos sequer endereçam o objetivo político da polêmica pública provocada, deliberadamente, pelo Arcebispo de Recife e Olinda. Todo o debate e energia investidos em discussões éticas e morais, tanto no ataque quanto na defesa da Igreja Católica, atendem e beneficiam, inadvertidamente, esse objetivo político. Por isso é importante expô-lo claramente, de forma que a sociedade brasileira tenha a opção de debater ou não, caso julgue relevante, os aspectos éticos das ações da Igreja. Paradoxalmente, contudo, responder a alguns dos questionamentos éticos levantados é a melhor maneira de expor a natureza política das excomunhões de Pernambuco.

Um dos temas de questionamento mais frequentes é: por que a Igreja não excomungou o padrasto estuprador? É claro que esse ponto é muito mais um clamor, provocado por uma profunda sensação de injustiça, do que um argumento pertinente ao debate sobre o que a decisão da Igreja revela de sua postura social, sua relevância e, em última instância, seu valor como instituição religiosa. Dois outros questionamentos frequentes, esses sim, de maior impacto na credibilidade da Igreja e suas instituições, referem-se à suspensão recente (janeiro/09), da excomunhão do bispo Richard Williamson, notório por sua negação do Holocausto, e o fato do Papa Pio XII ter deixado de excomungar Hitler, quando a política nazista de extermínio em massa se tornou conhecida.

Analisar e explicar essas três aparentes contradições – porque a Igreja suspendeu a excomunhão do Bispo Williamson, não cogita excomungar o padrasto estuprador e está em processo acelerado de canonização de Pio XII – é, na minha opinião, a maneira mais fácil para se entender como o incidente de Pernanambuco se encaixa no programa político implementado, na Igreja Católica, pelo Papa Bento XVI.

Hoje excomunga, amanhã beija

Em primeiro lugar, é preciso entender claramente o que é a excomunhão. A sanção da excomunhão é um anúncio oficial, que informa à comunidade católica de que as idéias e o comportamento de tal pessoa não devem ser seguidas e, também, notifica o clero de que essa pessoa não deve mais receber os sacramentos, com exceção da Reconciliação.

Do ponto de vista da Igreja são os fiéis que se excomungam – isto é afastam-se da comunidade, da comunhão; a ação da Igreja é apenas uma informação de que a excomunhão ocorreu. Segundo o direito canônico, praticar o aborto é um ato de excomunhão automática e, portanto, o que o Arcebispo de Olinda e Recife fez foi, simplesmente, comunicar a seu público o status, de facto, dos médicos e da mãe da vítima.

A forma usual de reverter a excomunhão envolve: uma declaração de arrependimento, a profissão do Credo (se a ofensa envolveu heresia) ou uma reafirmação de obediência, pelo excomungado; uma declaração de reconciliação, pelo padre ou bispo com poderes para emiti-la e, então, a realização do sacramento da Reconciliação.

It's all politics

A Excomunhão não é, portanto, um instrumento de punição, mas de pressão social, para que o(s) atingido(s) voltem a prestar obediência à doutrina e ao comando da Igreja. Como tal, é utilizado em casos de “crimes” (no sentido canônico) de consciência – aqueles em que o culpado agiu racional e deliberadamente, em desacordo com a doutrina Católica.

O bispo anti-semita Williamson percorreu o processo e o ritual de Reconciliação e, consequentemente, sua excomunhão foi encerrada. Aliás, sua excomunhão (em 1988), não tinha nenhuma relação com sua posição anti-semita. Williamson e outros três padres foram consagrados bispos, pelo arqui-conservador Cardeal Lefebvre, em desobediência frontal ao Vaticano, resultando na imediata excomunhão dos cinco. Lefebvre (morto em 91) foi o fundador e Williamson e os demais “bispos” são membros da Sociedade São Pio X, forte opositora às mesmas mudanças modernizadoras, introduzidas pelo Concílio Vaticano II que, agora, Bento XVI dedica-se a reverter (por exemplo, reintroduzindo a Missa Tridentina, abolida por Paulo VI, em 1963, e um dos quatro pontos centrais da rebelião de Lefebvre).

Crimes “comuns” ou pecados motivados pela ignorância ou por baixos instintos, como o estupro infantil, não requerem excomunhão porque, a princípio, nenhum católico tem dúvida sobre o estado, em pecado, do criminoso. No caso do pecador-criminoso, não há uma polêmica social e política a demandar um recurso de pressão social – como na batalha que a Igreja trava, pela condenação e criminalização do aborto.

O que nos leva ao terceiro e último questionamento levantado contra a excomunhão dos médicos pernambucanos: por que o papa da 2ª. Guerra, Pio XII, não excomungou Hitler pela prática, sob a égide da lei, de extermínio em massa? Não seria esse um caso típico, a demandar esclarecimento e orientação da numerosa população católica alemã, por parte de sua Igreja? A resposta oficial do Vaticano a esses questionamentos tem seguido a (fraca) linha de que “os tempos eram muito complicados” e que, nas complicadas circunstâncias, Pio XII fez o melhor que pôde. A verdade, nua e crua, é que não há mesmo coerência no emprego, pela Igreja Católica, do instrumento da excomunhão. Seu uso é ditado pela agenda política e pelas circunstâncias da ocasião. É, portanto, um instrumento político.

Muito além de Pernambuco

Qual é, então, o objetivo político das excomunhões (melhor dizendo: da decisão de comunicar publicamente, com alarde, o status de excomungados) dos médicos pernambucanos e da mãe da vítima (também ela, uma vítima)?

Desde a ascenção, Bento XVI deixou claro que sua estratégia para recuperar o prestígio e o poder da Igreja Católica, em declínio desde os anos 70, consistiria em eliminar o relativismo do discurso doutrinário, com isso “purificando o rebanho católico” – permanecendo os mais comprometidos e ativamente praticantes, ainda que ao preço de uma redução inicial no número de fiéis. Assumiu um discurso mais contundente (sempre de matiz conservador) em relação a temas polêmicos, como homossexualidade, aborto, contracepção e prevenção da AIDS; fortaleceu a influência de grupos e ordens ultra-direitista/ultra-conservadoras, como a já mencionada Sociedade São Pio X e a polêmica Opus Dei.

Essa estratégia está surtindo os efeitos desejados pois, de fato, os praticantes católicos estão assumindo matizes mais tradicionalistas e “carismáticos” e os menos praticantes ou menos alinhados à nova doutrina estão sendo progressivamente alienados da instituição.

É nesse processo que se enquadram as excomunhões de Pernambuco e, como instrumentos políticos, também foram muito bem sucedidas: ocuparam um imenso espaço na mídia e nas discussões do público, polarizaram os fiéis, elevando seu “investimento moral” na nova agenda doutrinária. Mais católicos tiveram que “escolher suas cores”, uns afastando-se mais, outros alinhando-se mais à instituição Católica. Uma obstetra de Guarulhos defende a excomunhão, no fórum de leitores do Estado, argumentando que não havia risco real de vida, para a menina de 9 anos, numa gestação e parto de gêmeos porque, em 1939, uma menina peruana “de estrutura franzina, teve um filho saudável aos 5 anos de idade”. Podemos, certamente, esperar mais excomunhões, canonizações polêmicas e outros movimentos de reconquista de poder e espaço de opinião, nos próximos anos de papado de Bento XVI.

Apostas arriscadas no cassino vazio

Não há dúvida de que a radicalização do discurso Católico está criando uma comunidade mais uniforme, combativa, comprometida com (e obediente à) autoridade central do Vaticano. Essa é a estratégia de Bento XVI, atualmente em implementação, em todo o mundo.

O preço que estamos pagando (e continuaremos a pagar) pela determinação férrea dessa implementação é bem ilustrado pelo caso de Pernambuco: a nova Igreja Católica não somente deixa de apoiar, como aumenta a miséria das vítimas de tragédias, se isso estiver em seu interesse político. Não tem escrúpulos, por exemplo, de desviar para sua agenda a atenção da sociedade que, ao invés de concentrar-se nas disfunções sociais que levam ao estupro de uma criança de 9 anos pelo padastro, foi arrastada para um debate anacrônico e irrelevante, sobre excomunhão, à força de declarações kafkanianas de um arcebispo desalmado, que afirma: "Esse padrasto cometeu um pecado gravíssimo. Agora, mais grave do que isso, sabe o que é? O aborto, eliminar uma vida inocente".

Resta saber se o sucesso inicial da estratégia de Bento XVI resultará em um maior número de fiéis, a longo prazo, ou se acabará por acelerar a migração de católicos para outras formas de cristianismo, ou mesmo para outras religiões, mais comprometidas com a realidade e os desafios do fiel do século 21.

Arraias-de-Nariz-de-Vaca Migram no Yucatan

2009-03-06T18:17:00.001-08:00

What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Meanness

2009-03-05T13:20:00.001-08:00

60 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

A satire or an instruction book?, December 16, 1999

By A Customer

This is a five-star book if you're interested in the decadence and peril of corporate culture, or if you like Stanley Bing. It's a SIX STAR book if you work for the real-life Bing and have learned anything at all from its pages.

"What Would Machiavelli Do" is both a satire of America's sadistic corporate culture AND an instruction book on how to be a ruthless, self-indulgent ladder-climber.

It's very funny, except when you think too much about it. Bing acknowledges and accepts--even celebrates--the twisted idiosyncrasies of life among the suits; stuff that would make any blue collar worker or crunchy granola idealist puke. But it's all true, and that's the sad part. Bing sees it all for how strange it is, and it's his perception that enables him to both make fun of the system while succeeding in it. It's a strange contradiction. It's as if business were a mudhole and Bing glides along easily without ever getting dirty because he has a profound understanding of mud.

Anyway, I liked it. The book put in writing a lot of what I thought about the business world, and a lot that nobody in upper management would ever admit to.

I love this !

2009-03-02T22:45:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com
We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company

Ninette de Valois

2009-02-27T09:19:00.001-08:00

"Young Dancer" by Enzo Plazzotta represents Ninette de Valois

To Dame Ninette de Valois, the Royal Ballet owes its place in the dance world's pecking order, and Covent Garden its role in the cultural merry-go-round.

Born Edris Stannus (6 June 1898, in Baltiboys, County Wicklow, Ireland), her tenacity in pursuit of an original vision, undertaken often in the face of chronic ill health, enabled her to accomplish what many at the time considered impossible.

She founded the Royal Ballet, the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet School. During early 1950s, she also helped establishing the first ballet school of Turkish State Opera and Ballet in İstanbul.

She modelled her company, the Sadler Wells Ballet, after the Imperial Ballet of Russia, and emphasized dancing a mix of classical ballets and contemporary works. She cultivated talents slowly. Eventually, her company became one of the starriest in the world, with dancers like Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann, Moira Shearer, Beryl Grey, and Michael Somes.

In 1949 the Sadler Wells Ballet was a sensation when they toured the United States. Margot Fonteyn instantly became an international celebrity.

The statue of the young dancer, facing the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, created by Enzo Plazzotta, represents Ninette de Valois.

She died 8 March 2001, aged 102, in Barnes, London, England.

photo by Mo, http://aglimpseoflondon.blogspot.com/

Christus Subterraneus

2009-02-27T08:23:00.001-08:00

by Enzo Plazzotto

Christus Ludius

2009-02-27T08:18:00.001-08:00

Crucifixion by Enzo Plazzotta, 1974.
London, Westminster Abbey, College Gardens.

Eros Tied

2009-02-27T08:04:00.001-08:00

Eros Bendato (Eros Tied) (bronze), 1999

Igor Mitoraj

Exhibition "Igor Mitoraj - Sculptures and Drawings" (October 17 2003 to January 25 2004) at marketplace in Cracow, Poland.

Facing In

2009-02-27T07:56:00.001-08:00

Moai of Easter Island facing inland, Ahu Tongariki, c. 1250 - 1500 AD,
restored by Chilean archaeologist Claudio Cristino in the 1990s

Lion me

2009-02-27T07:54:00.001-08:00

Lion man, from Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany
Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany

The oldest known zoomorphic statuette
Aurignacian era, 30,000 BC-26,000 BC

Holmes sweet Holmes

2009-02-27T07:52:00.001-08:00

Guantanamero

2009-02-27T07:50:00.001-08:00

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/06/05/guantanamo460.jpg

David Hicks became one of the many imprisoned without charge at Guantanamo Bay.

David Hicks, a young Australian serving as a footsoldier with the Taliban in Afghanistan, was captured by the Northern Alliance near Kunduz and handed over, for a $1,000 bounty, to the US authorities. On 11 January, 2002, Hicks was transferred to the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to become one of hundreds of people imprisoned without charge in the name of the global "war on terror".

In Australia, Hicks's plight met with widespread indifference. Despite persistent allegations of abuse and torture against the US authorities and the troubling legal implications of Hicks's incarceration, the Australian public was in no mood to feel any sympathy for a man described as one of the world's most dangerous terrorists. Hicks languished in prison for five years. He was hastily returned to prison in Australia in May 2007, after a controversial military trial. This change was helped by a determined and often lonely campaign by his father, Terry Hicks, an ordinary Adelaide man who simply wants a fair trial for his son.

Love Me Do, Dr. No

2009-02-26T05:35:00.000-08:00

Random House : Book extract from The Beatles At No. 1:

"Many UK pop musicians have since recalled sensing something epochal in LOVE ME DO when it first appeared. Crude as it was compared to The Beatles' later achievements, it blew a stimulating autumn breeze through an enervated pop scene, heralding a change in the tone of post-war British life matched by the contemporary appearances of the first James Bond film, Dr No, and BBC TV's live satirical programme That Was The Week That Was. From now on, social influence in Britain was to swing away from the old class-based order of deference to 'elders and betters' and succumb to the frank and fearless energy of 'the younger generation'. The first faint chime of a revolutionary bell, LOVE ME DO represented far more than the sum of its simple parts. A new spirit was abroad: artless yet unabashed - and awed by nothing."

Citi Bang!

2009-02-18T18:07:00.000-08:00

Citibank, a company that’s taken billions of dollars in bailout money apparently plans to spend $400 million to stick its logo on a stadium. This giant branding exercise isn’t going to help Citibank sell its products, and it certainly isn’t going to help relieve the credit crisis. But that’s the kind of horse puckey that happens when marketeers convince top management that “branding” is vitally important.

Serão descendentes de portuguêses??

2009-02-18T15:20:00.001-08:00

Primeiro eu esbarrei no seguinte link patrocinado que, convenhamos, soa muuuuito estranho:

Disease Mgmt Consulting

DM Consulting/Procurement Expertise for insurors, employers, PPOs, TPAs
www.dismgmt.com

Fui verificar e era o site de um prestador de serviço de risk management de saúde. Alguém teve a brilhante idéia de chamar dar o atraente nome de "disease management" a "risk management de saúde".

No site dos gajos há várias seções interessantes. Uma delas (está no menu assim) é:

Free Materials
(Worth Every Penny)

Acho que é mesmo para ser piada. Acho.

Numa outra seção, eles "premiam" empresas que fazem muitos erros em seus programas de risk... digo, disease management. O nome do prêmio? Intelligent Design!

Bom, aí eu acho que eles REALMENTE estão de sacanagem com os fundamentalistas cristãos (which is fine). A questão é: isso é bom marketing??

Continuando na tradição de um eestilo de redação bizarro, a descrição do Intelligent Design Award é:

Intelligent Design Awards recognize those contributions which most set back evolution of the disease management and wellness fields.

Now, is this convoluted or what?

Como será o pensamento desses caras? Seguirá uma lógica própria, diferente da humana? Serão descendentes de portugueses?

What's Old Is New: 12 Living Fossils

2009-02-05T17:18:00.001-08:00

What's Old Is New: 12 Living Fossils | Wired Science from Wired.com

By Brandon Keim December 05, 2008 | 4:57:14 PMCategories: Animals

To navigate the currents of ecological fate, most creatures adapt — but a few have stuck to their evolutionary guns.

Known as living fossils, they lasted for millions of years with barely a change, even as their relatives went extinct or took different paths across the tree of life.

Many are now threatened or endangered. But with some luck and a little help, living fossils will be able to survive the age of humans, too.

The Purple frog, discovered just five years ago in western India, likely escaped detection because it lives underground, emerging for just two weeks during the monsoon season. Distinguished by a pointed snout, it's related to a family of frogs now found only on the Seychelles islands, which split from India 100 million years ago.

Image: WikiMedia Commons

Scientists disagree over whether the frilled shark has survived for 380 milllion years, or a mere 95 million years. Only two living specimens have been found — both off the coast in Japan, in the late 19th century and again in 2007 — but they are sometimes caught accidentally by deep-sea fishing nets.

Video: Xagtho Channel

Until a preserved specimen was found in the Smithsonian in 1975, the 10-footed, lobster-like Jurassic shrimp was thought to have gone extinct 50 million years ago. Living Jurassic shrimp have since been found.

Image: Census of Marine Life

Sikhotealinia zhiltzovae makes up for in uniqueness: it's the only three-eyed beetle. Some scientists consider it a forerunner of nearly all winged insects.
What it lacks in convenient nomenclature, the Siberian

Image: St. Petersburg Zoological Institute

Found mostly in Southern Hemisphere rain forests, velvet worms tardigrades, their legs are hollow and supported by fluid pressure. After a few early adaptations for land, they've hardly changed in 360 million years.
have legs and — unlike other worms — bear live young. Closely related to

Video: InfiniteWorld

The most widespread of all living fossils, crocodiles have barely changed in the 230 million years since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Image: Flickr/Keven Law

One of the relatively few mammalian living fossils, duck-billed platypuses have been weird for 110 million years: in addition to their bills, they lay eggs and have venom-filled leg spurs. No wonder they were considered a hoax by early naturalists.

Video: Springbreakwas2short

Its spiraling chambered shell was a symbol of perfection in ancient Greece, and the nautilus has changed little in 500 million years.

Image: Flickr/Ethan Hein

Found commonly on Atlantic beaches, horseshoe crabs are more closely related to spiders, ticks and scorpions than crabs. Their ancestors evolved in the Paleozoic's shallow seas, and they've evolved only slightly in the last 445 million years. If you see one on its back, flip it over: They can regrow lost limbs, but can't right themselves when tossed in the surf.

Image: Flickr/Chris Howard

Better known as the "Ant from Mars," Martialis heureka is a direct-line descendant of the last common ancestor of all ants — a subterranean forager who wouldn't go above-ground until flowering plants evolved 120 million years ago.

Image: Christian Rabeling

Coelacanth vanished from the fossil record 410 million years ago — and then one was caught in 1938 off the coast of South Africa. A second species was discovered in Indonesian waters in 1999.

Video: Pinktentacle3

Neither a mantis nor a shrimp, the mantis shrimp has changed little in 400 million years. It has the world's most complex eyes, and its prey-killing claw motion is the second-fastest animal motion. To quote mantis shrimp eye researcher Tom Cronin, "Whenever they get into any type of situation, they smash things. You can't pick these up. They're really great animals to have around."

Image: Tom Cronin

Paper sparks fossil fury

2009-02-03T17:33:00.001-08:00

Paper sparks fossil fury : Nature News
Published online 2 February 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.60

Palaeontologists criticize publication of specimen with questionable origin

Rex Dalton

Palaeontologists are criticizing a new article on an armoured dinosaur fossil because the 80-million-year-old specimen may have been taken illegally from the Gobi Desert. The prominent California neuroscientist who purchased the fossil five years ago says he will send it back, to China or Mongolia, if someone can demonstrate that laws were indeed broken.

The 80-million-year-old specimen is of an ankylosaur.Western Paleontological Laboratories

Vilayanur Ramachandran, who directs the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, says that he bought the skull for US$10,000 at the Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil Showcase in Arizona, long troubled by the sale of illegally-imported fossils (see 'The biggest, wildest fossil market in the west').

Ramachandran, an amateur fossil collector, was walking around the displays with Clifford Miles, of Western Paleontological Laboratories near Salt Lake City, Utah, when Miles pointed out the perfectly preserved skull. "He said, 'You buy it, I'll name it after you,'" says Ramachandran.

Miles did just that on 10 January, in an article¹ in an Indian journal that names the bull-like ankylosaur Minotaurasaurus ramachandrani. But there is no clear paper trail that guarantees the fossil was acquired through legal channels; in fact, when it was cleaned in 2003 in Denver, the museum made sure the work was done outside the museum because of the fossil's suspect origin.

"It is totally inappropriate to publish on this specimen; it is stolen patrimony," says Mark Norell, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who does field work in Mongolia and China.

Important origins

Miles acknowledges that the specimen's provenance is questionable, but says that publishing its details will help shed more light on the fossil. "We need to publish on fossils like this so people can learn where they came from," he says.

Miles and his brother, Clark, attempted to publish the fossil's description in 2006 in a Polish journal, but their submission was rejected because the fossil seemed to have been obtained illegally from Mongolia. Two years ago they described it as coming from the Barun Goyot Formation in Mongolia, but now say they "hit a dead end" in trying to confirm its origin.

In Tucson, the fossil was displayed by Colorado cast-maker Robert Gaston for Hollis Butts, a dealer in Japan. Ramachandran says that he purchased it from Butts, who couldn't be reached for comment.

Philip Currie, a palaeontologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says that publishing work about such fossils only encourages the raging illegal trade. "This really flags a horrendous problem in Mongolia, where a frightening number of specimens are smuggled abroad," says Currie. Bolortsetseg Minjin, who directs the Institute for the Study of Dinosaurs in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, says that the rock the skull is encased in suggests it probably came from Mongolia. "It should be sent back," says Minjin, who is also a postdoctoral researcher at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana.

Ramachandran says that he would be happy to repatriate the fossil to the appropriate nation, if someone shows him "evidence it was exported without permit". For now, the specimen rests at the Victor Valley Museum, an hour's drive east of Los Angeles in the isolated town of Apple Valley.

Loxodromehead

2009-02-03T17:08:00.001-08:00

Crochet Loxodrome Hat
by www.flickr.com/photos/crochetcottage/

Ancient mineral shows early Earth climate tough on continents

2009-02-03T16:46:00.000-08:00

June 13, 2008

by Jill Sakai

A new analysis of ancient minerals called zircons suggests that a harsh climate may have scoured and possibly even destroyed the surface of the Earth's earliest continents.

Zircons, the oldest known materials on Earth, offer a window in time back as far as 4.4 billion years ago, when the planet was a mere 150 million years old. Because these crystals are exceptionally resistant to chemical changes, they have become the gold standard for determining the age of ancient rocks, says UW-Madison geologist John Valley.

Zircon in geological context

A timeline shows the geological context of Jack Hills zircons, ancient minerals that formed when the Earth was less than 500 million years old.

Illustration: Andree Valley

Valley previously used these tiny mineral grains — smaller than a speck of sand — to show that rocky continents and liquid water formed on the Earth much earlier than previously thought, about 4.2 billion years ago.

In a new paper published online this week in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, a team of scientists led by UW-Madison geologists Takayuki Ushikubo, Valley and Noriko Kita show that rocky continents and liquid water existed at least 4.3 billion years ago and were subjected to heavy weathering by an acrid climate.

Ushikubo, the first author on the new study, says that atmospheric weathering could provide an answer to a long-standing question in geology: why no rock samples have ever been found dating back to the first 500 million years after the Earth formed.

Pictured is a false-color microscope image of a 4-billion-year-old zircon, a tiny mineral used to study the ancient rocks in which it formed. Chemical analysis of this crystal by UW-Madison geologists Takayuki Ushikubo and John Valley suggests that rocky continents and liquid water existed on Earth at least 4.3 billion years ago. Evidence of heavy weathering by a harsh climate may help explain why no rock samples older than 4 billion years have ever been found.

Photo: courtesy Mary Diman and John Valley

"Currently, no rocks remain from before about 4 billion years ago," he says. "Some people consider this as evidence for very high temperature conditions on the ancient Earth."

Previous explanations for the missing rocks have included destruction by barrages of meteorites and the possibility that the early Earth was a red-hot sea of magma in which rocks could not form.

Jack Hills area

Outcrop containing 4.4 billion year old zircons. Eranondoo Hill.

The current analysis suggests a different scenario. Ushikubo and colleagues used a sophisticated new instrument called an ion microprobe to analyze isotope ratios of the element lithium in zircons from the Jack Hills in western Australia. By comparing these chemical fingerprints to lithium compositions in zircons from continental crust and primitive rocks similar to the Earth's mantle, they found evidence that the young planet already had the beginnings of continents, relatively cool temperatures and liquid water by the time the Australian zircons formed.

"At 4.3 billion years ago, the Earth already had habitable conditions," Ushikubo says.

The zircons' lithium signatures also hold signs of rock exposure on the Earth's surface and breakdown by weather and water, identified by low levels of a heavy lithium isotope. "Weathering can occur at the surface on continental crust or at the bottom of the ocean, but the [observed] lithium compositions can only be formed from continental crust," says Ushikubo.

The findings suggest that extensive weathering may have destroyed the Earth's earliest rocks, he says.

"Extensive weathering earlier than 4 billion years ago actually makes a lot of sense," says Valley. "People have suspected this, but there's never been any direct evidence."

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can combine with water to form carbonic acid, which falls as acid rain. The early Earth's atmosphere is believed to have contained extremely high levels of carbon dioxide — maybe 10,000 times as much as today.

Geologic map of the Jack Hills sedimentary belt. Eranondoo Hill is the site of the outrcrop that contained 4.4 Ga zircons

"At [those levels], you would have had vicious acid rain and intense greenhouse [effects]. That is a condition that will dissolve rocks," Valley says. "If granites were on the surface of the Earth, they would have been destroyed almost immediately — geologically speaking — and the only remnants that we could recognize as ancient would be these zircons."

Additional information and images are available on the authors' Web sites Zircons Are Forever and the Wisc-SIMS ion microprobe facility.

Other co-authors on the paper include Aaron Cavosie of the University of Puerto Rico, Simon Wilde of the Curtin University of Technology in Australia and Roberta Rudnick of the University of Maryland.

World's oldest crystals get protection

2009-02-03T16:16:00.000-08:00

Published online 30 January 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.69

Australian geoheritage reserve will save ancient zircons from abuse.

Nicola Jones

An outcrop of rock in Western Australia holding the planet's oldest discovered minerals is set to be declared a geoheritage reserve, saving it from any future mining activity.

The Jack Hills reserve, which won approval from the regional government last month, will encompass a few tens of square kilometres, including a small outcrop of just a few metres holding 4-billion-year-old crystal grains called zircons.

Picking a Perfect Perfume

2009-01-28T19:36:00.001-08:00

Amazon.com: Perfumes: The Guide: Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez: Books

For Perfumes: The Guide, Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez tested nearly 1,500 fragrances--some glorious, some foul. Here they offer some humble advice on finding something worth loving among the stinkers.

1. Smell top to bottom
Perfumes usually unfold in three (often very different) stages: the sparkling first few minutes are the fragrance's top note, followed by its true personality, known as the heart note, and ending with the base note, aka the drydown, hours later. Something you love at the counter you may loathe by the parking lot. We recommend top-to-bottom tests on skin and on paper, since some scents that disappoint on the heat of skin may shine on your shirtsleeve.

2. Write it down
Bring a pen to write names on paper test strips, so you're not in anguish hours later, trying to recall which is the third scent from the left that transports you to Shangri-La. Keep a cheap, possibly extremely trashy paperback on hand, so you can store strips between pages to keep them separate.

3. Rest your nose
Noses tune out, which is why you can smell your friends' homes but not your own. Smell no more than five scents per day on paper strips and try on only the best one or two, to keep your nose reliable.

4. Check the radiance
To get a good sense of how the perfume will smell to other people as you walk past, try spraying a test strip and leaving it in the room while you step out for a bit. Come back fifteen minutes later and breathe in: that's the radiance.

Coraline - Metaphor of the child of a narcisistic mother

2009-01-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

"Neurotics are furnaces that devour everything around them.
When they are done, and nothing around is left,
they devour themselves."
Rubens Fonseca

“Why does she want me?” Coraline asked the cat. “Why does she want me to stay here with her?”

“She wants something to love, I think,” said the cat. “Something that isn’t her. She might want something to eat as well. It’s hard to tell with creatures like that”.

“Flee! (…) Flee, while there’s still air in your lungs [i.e.: ‘your own voice’] and blood in your veins [i.e.: ‘self-esteem’] and warmth in your heart [i.e.: ‘capacity to truly love other people’]. Flee while you still have your mind and your soul. (…)

She kept us, and she fed on us, until now we’ve nothing left of ourselves, only snakeskins and spider husks. (…)

She will take your life and all you are and all you care’st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She will take your joy. And one day you’ll awake and your heart and your soul will have gone. A husk you’ll be, a wisp you’ll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten."

“Hollow,” whispered the third voice. “Hollow, hollow, hollow, hollow, hollow.” (…)

“Now we belong to the dark and to the empty places. The light [i.e.: ‘the unbearable lightness of being’] woud shrivel us, and burn.”

“The expression on the Other Mother’s face did not change. She might not have heard what Coraline said. (…)

“Thank you, Coraline,” said the Other Mother coldly, and her voice did not just come from her mouth. It came from the mist, and the fog, and the house, and the sky. She said, “You know that I love you.”

And despite herself, Coraline nodded. It was true: the Other Mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves gold. In the Other Mother’s eyes, Coraline knew that she was a possession, nothing more. A tolerated pet, whose behavior was no longer amusing.

“I don’t want your love,” said Coraline. “I don’t want anything from you.”

“There is nothing down here,” said the pale thing indistinctly. “Nothing but dust and damp and forgetting.” The thing was white, and huge, and swollen. Monstrous, thought Coraline, but also miserable. (…)

“Poor thing,” she said. (…) Coraline wondered how she could ever have imagined that this grublike thing resembled her father.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“She’s not best pleased,” said the thing that was once the Other Father. “Not best pleased at all. You’ve put her quite out of sorts. And when she gets out of sorts, she takes it out on everybody else. It’s her way.”

Coraline patted its hairless head. Its skin was tacky, like warm bread dough. “Poor thing,” she said. “You’re just a thing that she made and then threw away.”

The thing nodded vigorously (…) and, as if making a great effort, it opened its mouth once more and said in a wet, urgent voice, “Run, child. Leave this place. She wants me to hurt you, to keep you here forever (…). She is pushing me so hard to hurt you, I cannot fight her.”

“You can,” said Coraline. “Be brave.” (…)

“Alas,” it said, “I cannot.”

“So you’re back,” said the Other Mother. She did not sound pleased. “And you brought vermin with you.”

“No,” said Coraline. “I brought a friend.” (…)

“You know I love you,” said the Other Mother flatly.

“You have a very funny way of showing it.” said Coraline.

“My governess,” said the boy, “used to say that nobody is ever given more to shouder than he or she can bear.” He shrugged as he said this, as if he had not yet made his own mind up whether or not it was true.

“We wish you luck,” said the winged girl. “Good fortune and wisdom and courage – although you have already shown that you have all these blessings, and in abundance.”

“She hates you,” blurted out the boy. “She hasn’t lost anything for so long. Be wise. Be brave. Be tricky.”

“But it’s not fair,” said Coraline, angrily. “It’s just not fair. It should be over.”

The boy with the dirty face stood up and hugged Coraline tightly. “Take comfort in this,” he whispered. “Th’art alive. Thou livest.”

There's Something About Denmark

2009-01-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

Two recent studies found Danes to be the world's happiest people. The new reputation along with media attention have led to a national discussion

Three years ago, if you had asked a person from Denmark the secret to happiness, you probably would have gotten back a blank stare. The same question today, however, likely would be answered with knowing laughter and any one of several explanations.

Being recognized as the world's happiest people simply takes some getting used to.

Since 2006, Denmark, a largely homogenous country of 5 million people on Europe's stormy northern coast, has been anointed the happiest place on earth by two very different surveys. The studies' findings have upended dated international perceptions of Denmark as a quaint but chilly dairy exporter with a high suicide rate, recasting the country instead as a model of social harmony that is thriving in an era of globalization.

The country's improbable new standing—and the significant media attention it has engendered—may have had an even more profound effect on the Danes themselves by prompting a national conversation about how they live their lives. "It has given us a chance to reflect on how well-balanced a country we really are," says Dorte Kiilerich, the managing director of VisitDenmark, Denmark's official tourism organization.

In early 2006, Denmark was what it had been for ages: a quiet, stable country, better known as the home of Hans Christian Andersen, Tivoli Gardens, and the setting for Shakespeare's Hamlet than for being an epicenter of bliss. Tourism had been in decline for a decade, and an international controversy was raging over a series of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed, which months before had been printed in a Danish newspaper.

Social Safety Net

Then in July of that year, a researcher at England's University of Leicester released a ranking of the world's happiest countries after analyzing data from various sources. The report concluded that economic factors related to health care, standards of living, and access to basic education were determining characteristics of a nation's overall attitude. Denmark, with its free universal health care, one of the highest per-capita GDPs in the world, and first-rate schools, came in first (BusinessWeek.com. 10/11/06).

The news spread quickly. Niels Martiny, a 26-year-old social anthropology student at the University of Aarhus in Denmark's second-largest city, spent last year in Peru doing research. Even there, word about the survey had gotten around to locals. "They were quite surprised," Martiny says with a laugh. "They had this idea about Nordic people being very reserved and very serious."

Foreigners weren't the only ones scratching their heads at the results. Danes were equally confounded. "A lot of my friends were surprised," says Martiny, who considers himself quite happy in his own life but thought that the study must have made some mistake. Danes, he says, tend not to express their emotions outwardly the way people in some other cultures do.

Achieving the Right Balance

But the results were no fluke. Earlier this summer, the Stockholm-based World Values Survey, which uses a very different methodology, reported that it also found Danish people to be the world's most contented. That study concluded that the surest measures of a country's well-being are the freedom to choose how to live one's life, encouragement of gender equality, and tolerance for minorities. Once again, on every count, Denmark took top prize.

What is it about Denmark that the rest of us have failed to grasp?

Achieving the right balance is probably what most sets the country apart, suggests VisitDenmark's Kiilerich. Happiness in most Nordic societies, all of which ranked high on both studies' lists of happiest countries, hinges on an ineffable combination of economic strength and social programs. Denmark's approach relies on high taxes and aggressive redistribution of wealth—anathema to many free-market Americans—which results in a broad range of social services like health care, retirement pensions, and quality public schools. Yet remarkably, the country has managed to make this model work without crushing economic growth or incentives to succeed. "Denmark has a head and a heart," Kiilerich says.

The strong social safety nets that cradle Danish citizens from birth until death are welcoming to foreigners, too. Kate Vial, a 55-year-old American expat who has lived and worked in Denmark for more than 30 years, passed up opportunities over the years to return to the U.S., choosing instead to raise her three children in Denmark. Vial knows she will never be rich, but says that she valued family, the ability to travel, and simple economic security above all else. "I just chose a simpler lifestyle, one where I could ride my bike all over and where I don't have to make a great living to survive," she says.

Some people attribute the prevailing attitude among Danes to something less tangible, called hygge (pronounced "hooga"). Danes say the word is difficult to translate—and to comprehend—but that it describes a cozy, convivial sentiment that involves strong family bonds. "The gist of it is that you don't have to do anything except let go," says Vial. "It's a combination of relaxing, eating, drinking, partying, spending time with family."

Denmark again

2009-01-23T15:15:00.000-08:00

World's Best Cities

No. 11: Copenhagen

Denmark

Mercer score: 106.2 (max. = 108; NYC = 100)
2007 rank: No. 11
GDP: $204.6 billion (2007 est.)
Population: 5,484,723 (total country); 1, 086,762 (total city)
Life expectancy: 78.13 years

Nyhavn at dusk
Photographer: Izzet Keribar

The World's Happiest Countries

2009-01-23T14:18:00.000-08:00

A British researcher merged dozens of statistical metrics to rank nations on the elusive notion of contentment

By Marina Kamenev

Feeling blue? Perhaps you live in the wrong country. A recent study from Britain's University of Leicester used a battery of statistical data, plus the subjective responses of 80,000 people worldwide, to map out well-being across 178 countries. Heading up the list: Denmark, which rose to the top thanks to its wealth, natural beauty, small size, quality education, and good health care. Five other European countries, including Switzerland, Austria, and Iceland, came out in the top 10, while Zimbabwe and Burundi pulled up the bottom.

With a high standard of living, negligible poverty, and a broad range of public and social services, it's easy to see why Denmark tops the happiness map. There's a high level of education; public schools are top-quality and private ones are affordable. The low population gives the nation a strong sense of identity. And Denmark's physical beauty forms a great backdrop to daily life. The weather is a bit tough, though.

Not surprisingly, the countries that are happiest are those that are healthy, wealthy, and wise. "The most significant factors were health, the level of poverty, and access to basic education," White says. Population size also plays a role. Smaller countries with greater social cohesion and a stronger sense of national identity tended to score better, while those with the largest populations fared worse. China came in No. 82, India ranked 125, and Russia was 167. The U.S. came in at 23. But there were a few surprises along the way, too.

Capitalism — sometimes criticized for its heartlessness — was far from a source of discontent, though the top-scoring capitalist countries also tended to have strong social services. And the U.S. ranked only 23rd, due to nagging poverty and spotty health care.

No. 5: Bahamas
Population: 303,800
Life Expectancy: 65.6 years
GDP Per Capita: $20,200

Bahamanians know how to enjoy life. “Maybe it's our 'Bahama Mamas,' our sweet sea breeze, our conch salad, and fun loving people,” suggests Kendenique Campbell-Moss, a senior executive at the Bahamas Tourism Ministry. Although the poverty rate, at 9.3%, is relatively high, the beautiful weather and laid-back lifestyle keep Bahamas' citizens smiling. Campbell-Moss also reckons the fusion of African and European cultures, strong family values, and Christianity contribute to the happy vibe in the Caribbean country.

No. 8: Bhutan
Population: 2.3 million
Life Expectancy: 55 years
GDP Per Capita: $1,400

Here's a surprise: The small Asian nation of Bhutan ranks eighth in the world, despite relatively low life expectancy, a literacy rate of just 47%, and a very low GDP per capita. Why? Researchers credit an unusually strong sense of national identity. Plus, the country has beautiful scenery and a largely unspoiled culture, thanks to strict governmental limits on tourism, development, and immigration. Pretty counterintuitive, but Bhutan seems to have found a recipe for happiness.

The hope-and-change index

2009-01-20T19:25:00.000-08:00

Jan 19th 2009
From Economist.com

BARACK OBAMA is fond of hope and change. By one tally, he said “hope” nearly 450 times in speeches delivered on the campaign trail. (By contrast, his rival John McCain only used the word 175 times.) “Change”, too, was a campaign buzzword. In his inaugural speech Mr Obama made three mentions of hope and only one of change (plus a “changed”). He mentioned America seven times, followed by “work” and “common” (six times each).

While hope has found a place in each of the 26 inaugural addresses, change is used more sparingly. Seven inaugural speeches did not contain the word; six more made use of it just once. Presidents coming to office during economic booms, such as Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding in the 1920s, Dwight Eisenhower and then George Bush junior, have been heavier users of hope than those who were inaugurated during leaner times.

Spirals

2009-01-20T04:46:00.000-08:00

"There is a loxodrome at every solid made by rotation about an axis"

The Great Circle Route Trumps The Loxodrome

2009-01-20T04:29:00.000-08:00

The loxodrome is a line of constant heading, and the great circle, although appearing longer than the loxodrome, is actually the shortest route between New York and London.

The Loxodrome by Escher

2009-01-20T04:07:00.000-08:00

Kansas City Library (Missouri, USA)

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Stone House (Guimarães, Portugal)

2009-01-07T06:15:00.000-08:00

The incredible Evangelegolists !

2009-01-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

Christus Leg(o)atus

2009-01-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.thebricktestament.com/

(seeing is believing...)