October 2009
60 posts
“Resposta”, de Frederic Brown (1954) →
Dwar Ev soldou solenemente a junção final com ouro. A objetiva de uma dúzia de câmeras de televisão se concentrava nele, transmitindo a todo o universo doze enquadramentos diferentes do que estava fazendo.
Endireitou o corpo e acenou com a cabeça para Dwar Reyn, indo depois ocupar a posição prevista, ao lado da chave que completaria o contato quando fosse ligada. E que acionaria,...
“Experts are more persuasive when they seem... →
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Martin Scorsese: 11 Scariest Horror Movies of All... →
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Interview with Charles Krauthammer on Der Spiegel →
Krauthammer: Obama misread his mandate. He was elected six weeks after a financial collapse unlike any seen in 60 years; after eight years of a presidency which had tired the country; in the middle of two wars that made the country opposed to the Republican government that involved us in the wars; and against a completely inept opponent, John McCain. Nevertheless, Obama still only won by 7...
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The benefit of Somalia's pirates →
Now the fishermen are able to catch up to £200 worth of fish per day in an area where the average daily earnings are less than £5.
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“[T]he fact that I am dumber than I was before I took up the computer doesn’t...”
– James Bowman, The Pursuit of Wisdom in the Age of the Internet
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YouTube Comment or e. e. cummings? →
15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone... →
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E assim caminha a humanidade? →
George Friedman: O declínio dos EUA vem sendo previsto antes mesmo de sua emergência e depois do Vietnã todos diziam que ele era irreversível. No entanto, desde 1991, com o fim da União Soviética, eles se tornaram a única superpotência mundial. A história não se move tão rapidamente assim, e estamos falando de uma supremacia de apenas duas décadas. A economia americana responde a cerca de 25% de...
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Barack Obama sees worst poll rating drop in 50... →
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Legendary Civilization Is Coming to Facebook →
One of the best known video game franchises of all time, Sid Meier’s Civilization, will get a Facebook version under the name Civilization Network.
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95 websites you should bookmark today →
50 websites you need to know about →
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A Questão da Terra no Brasil →
Raul Jungman, ex-ministro do Reforma Agrária; João Sampaio, secretário de Planejamento de Agricultura de SP; e o agrônomo José Maria da Silveira debatem concentração de terras, modelos estatísticos e reforma agrária. Segunda parte aqui.
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“Where's the headline? Where's the television... →
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George Orwell: Reflections On Gandhi →
[…] there is reason to think that Gandhi, who after all was born in 1869, did not understand the nature of totalitarianism and saw everything in terms of his own struggle against the British government. […] It is difficult to see how Gandhi’s methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again.
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Can China's Economic Recovery Last? →
Let’s call the first camp the Extrapolators. These analysts look at China’s recent astonishing growth rates and assume that Beijing will be the geopolitical equivalent of the Energizer Bunny: growing and growing and growing. The Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism has been working for several decades with more stability than many Western analysts believed it could sustain.
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Starving for Freedom in East Africa →
If Africans are to to weather their existing and future climates, the solutions must come from the bottom up.
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“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”
– Mignon McLaughlin
“No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll...”
– Mignon McLaughlin
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Held by the Taliban →
Reportagem no New York Times por David Rohde, o ganhador de dois prêmios Pulitzer que foi sequestrado pelo Talebã e escapou após 7 meses.
Em resumo: os norte-americanos perderam a guerra, e o Talebã é hoje uma organização forte que se radicalizou ainda mais e controla o país.
Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully...
“A crippled man, however, does not cease to be a man. Spiritual obscurantists, or...”
– Eric Voegelin
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Masterpieces Destroyed in War →
“Today high resolution digital images are available for many of the works in the collection, limiting the collection’s utility to scholars and students. There is a small subset of images in the photos and clippings files, however, that represent the only remaining documentation of important works of art — art that was destroyed before high quality color photography became the standard for...
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11 Ingenious Signs On The Simpsons →
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“One unifying biographical factor in the lives of... →
“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.”
– Bertrand Russell
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Brazil's recovering economy: Juggling technocrats... →
“With the return of growth comes a different set of problems. They include the political ambition of Henrique Meirelles, the governor of the Central Bank.”
WatchParte 2.
WatchDebate interessante na Globo News. Parte 1.
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Here's another phoney war: the one on climate... →
“Levitt and Dubner are launching the follow up to Freakonomics – but this time it is conventional left-liberal thought which will be outraged by their assertions. A clue is given in the work’s full title, Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. Yes, the authors have this time addressed their dispassionate intellectual...
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Modern man ‘a wimp’, says anthropologist →
“Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 metres record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions.
Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood.
Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and...
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“Billions of dollars and a Nobel Prize later, it... →
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Los olvidados del Nobel →
“¿Qué premio Nobel explicó la física cuántica de la radiactividad, postuló la versión moderna del Big Bang, propuso que las estrellas brillan por reacciones termonucleares y descubrió el concepto de código genético? Ninguno. La persona existió -se llamaba George Gamow-, pero no recibió el premio. Ni el de física ni el de medicina.”
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The Retrospace Guide to Getting Killed in a Horror... →
(via carlosbela)
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The demise of the free lunch →
“This month staff at four government ministries in Havana had to make new arrangements for lunch. The ministries’ free canteens were shut down and workers given a wage increase of 15 pesos ($0.60) a day in compensation. […] Small though the change is, it is of huge symbolic import.”
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It took the Germans 125 years to figure out that... →
“In Germany, often cited by American liberals as the “model” of a well-run health-care plan, the political debate is running in the opposite direction. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party, is pressing her to claw back the state’s participation in a system that now insures nine of 10 Germans.”
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Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize →
“So Obama joins Woodrow Wilson in the pantheon of American presidents who have won the Nobel Peace Prize (Wilson won it in 1919). I learned this morning that nominations for the prize had to be in by Feb. 20, about one month after Obama was inaugurated. That means that the prize went for his rhetoric during the campaign, not anything he could have actually accomplished. As I recall, his two most...
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“What peace?”
– Charles Featherstone, “regarding Obama’s Peace Prize”
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“Winning the contest to stage the Olympics in 2016... →
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Gil Scott-Heron — Lady Day And John Coltrane