Hey City Zen!

'One of Eno's favorite quotes, from the managerial-cybernetics theorist Stafford Beer, would become a fundamental guiding principle for his work: ''Instead of trying to specify it in full detail," Beer wrote in his book The Brain of the Firm, "you specify it only somewhat. You then ride on the dynamics of the system in the direction you want to go."' Full article "Brian Eno, Peter Schmidt, and Cybernetics" @ Rhizone

Brian Eno definitely deserves the "oblique strategy" prolonged gratification award. His hands have been breaking the frame of so many musicians and artists in the last decades, and in so doing generating amazing (cybernetic) art.



Thank you Artemy for the link.

Labels: art, cybernetics, Music

"THERE is no abuse of government power more egregious than executing an innocent man. But that is exactly what may happen if the United States Supreme Court fails to intervene on behalf of Troy Davis. [...] I am a firm believer in the death penalty, but I am an equally firm believer in the rights and protections guaranteed by the Constitution. To execute Troy Davis without having a court hear the evidence of his innocence would be unconscionable and unconstitutional." Full statement by Bob Barr.

"It’s bad enough that we still execute people in the United States. It’s absolutely chilling that we’re willing to do it when we’re not even sure we’ve got the right person in our clutches. [...] I’m opposed to the death penalty, but I would have a very hard time finding even the faintest glimmer of sympathy for the person who murdered that officer. The problem with taking Mr. Davis’s life in response to the murder of Officer MacPhail is the steadily growing mass of evidence that Mr. Davis was not the man who committed the murder. [...] Nine witnesses testified against Mr. Davis at his trial in 1991, but seven of the nine have since changed their stories." Full piece by Bob Herbert.

Please get involved as much as you can in the Troy Davis case.

Labels: death penalty

23 years to charge and a final fine of 50K$ for passing nuclear secrets to a foreign nation. "Why it took the government 23 years to charge Mr Kadish is shrouded in mystery [...]It is clear the (US) government could have charged Mr Kadish with far more serious crimes." says US District Judge William Pauley said during sentencing in Manhattan federal court.

All I have to say is: does anyone remember the Wen-Ho Lee case at Los Alamos? What a double-standard...

Full story @ BBC NEWS | Americas | US man fined in Israeli spy case

Another late night working, a few new tracks. The mood is to be filed somewhere, somehow, under the theme of Love likes Disco, Glitches and all. Tiga and Peaches on high rotation.

Much to write here, but very little time with the impending move to Lisbon for the whole year! Will try again later.

Labels: Music

O meu irmão deu-me um DVD cheio de músicas Portuguesas que inclui uma colecção enorme de CDs de Amália Rodrigues. Apaixonei-me (entre outras) pelo "Meu amor meu amor (Meu Limão de Amargura)" de Ary dos Santos (letra em baixo). Nada se pode escrever depois de tal poema, por isso simplesmente junto apenas uma banda sonora para este fantástico sábado de 25 de Abril. The latest tracks on my player: some good body and soul movement for a magnificent, hot saturday afternoon.

[Track listing removed here but updated in subsequent post. I keep the latest tracks on rotation in my player at Imeem.]

Labels: Music

Continuing with my award tradition of Albums/CDs I never tire of, here is my favorite Eurythmics Album: Savage. An electronic feminist break-up-fest concept album (see the video album version), which manages to end on a bright note (see "Brand New Day" below). I still don't understand why "Beethoven (I Love to Listen To)" works so well---especially at high volume like I always listen it to.

Labels: Music

I am enjoying Roger Cohen more and more! He is an interesting character with his blend of NY and France: a very useful blend of NY Jewish smarts with the savoir faire and demand for dignity that the French are so keen on:

"We’re not going to get out of a crisis into which we were led, sheep-like, without thinking for ourselves. We’re not going to get out of this crisis without realizing we’re all in this together. We’re not going to get out of this crisis with petty regulations standing in the way of common sense and solidarity. We’re not going to get out of this crisis with post-9/11 fear governing our actions rather than some more generous humanity. We’re not going to get out of this crisis without being grown-ups."

Perfect! and shame on Delta too!

Full article @ NYTimes.com

If this stuff doesn't make you dance, there's something wrong with you! Another great King Britt catch for Five Six Media. I love this stuff!

Labels: Music

My biggest regret so far in 2009 is not having flown to London to see this concert yesterday. A One off performance of the ABC1982 classic album "The Lexicon of Love", in its entirety. This special concert at the Royal Albert Hall was backed by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by musician and composer Anne Dudley (who was the keyboard player and arranger on The Lexicon of Love and member of The Art of Noise) and introduced by producer Trevor Horn (the guy in the suit on the right).

Cherry Hinton Blues posted a very nice description of the event.

You can also get the recorded broadcast on BBC2.

Labels: ABC, Music

Para se viver entre dois continentes é necessário saber sorrir (à maneira de uma criança nua, como na letra de António em cima). Se é verdade que nosso nome só em Portugal é bem chamado, e lá fora deturpado, também é verdade que é em Portugal que a expressão total da nossa identidade é espartilhada. Uma das pessoas que mais admiro pela capacidade de viver nesta identidade em estéreo que é a L(USA)andia é o meu caro Onésimo Teotónio Almeida---ver, por exemplo, Livro-me do Desassossego.

Recentemente, estava eu num jantar em Lisboa, muito agradável especialmente por ter o Onésimo sentado a meu lado, onde estava também uma individualidade política que comentava como o Onésimo tinha já um sotaque americanizado... Quem vive fora como nós recebe frequentemente esse juízo (ou preconceito) quando aterra em Lisboa. Não adianta explicar, como no caso do Onésimo, que o sotaque é na realidade Açoriano, ou que ele o consegue manipular de uma forma absolutamente brilhante (é um prazer ouvi-lo na sua versão Brasileira). Não, em Lisboa há apenas um único sotaque aceitável: o de Lisboa. Tudo o resto é Estrangeiro. Aliás quantas vezes oiço na rádio Portuguesa (na última vez num podcast da Prova Oral) como as pessoas odeiam ler em Português do Brasil ou não gostam do sotaque de Angola ou do Minho. Enfim, é preciso estar fora para perceber que tudo isso são ninharias e que ser Português é muito maior que tudo isso. Ser Português é muito maior do que Lisboa, que sendo uma cidade fantástica ainda gosta de se espartilhar num provincianismo frustrante.

Por falar em identidade estéreo, lembro-me de António Variações, algures entre Nova Iorque e o Minho. Lembro-me também dos Humanos que o adaptaram de uma forma brilhante. Principalmente a justaposição (em baixo) do This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us dos The Sparks, com O Corpo é que Paga do António. Realmente, nenhuma cidade, nem Lisboa, é suficiente para os dois "eus" de quem vive na L(USA)andia: o bem chamado e o despartilhado. Claro que esta dualidade cultural também tem uma repercussão na dualidade mente-corpo, daí a justaposição dos Humanos ser não só brilhante musicalmente mas também na sua semiótica.

Em baixo também o original dos Sparks—grande banda!

Labels: bilinguism, culture, Music

Or one more reason why I am happy to have left Los Alamos...

Labels: ideocracy

O Tropfest é o maior festival de curtas metragens do mundo. Comecou há 17 anos atrás em Sydney e no ano passado teve a sua primeira edição em Nova York. O vencedor do ano passado foi este filme que foi totalmente filmado com um telemóvel. O seu orçamento foi de 40 dolares (cerca de 20 euros)!

Continuo a concordar com Gore Vidal que insiste que homossexual não é um substantivo. Uma pessoa não é homo ou hetero. Os actos sexuais é que podem ser adjectivados dessa forma. A identidade pessoal não deriva do comportamento sexual. Uma pessoa pode participar exclusivamente em actos sexuais de um ou de outro tipo---ou não. As combinações físicas e emocionais são essencialmente ilimitadas, mas isso não define a identidade da pessoa. (Uma pessoa pode até sentir-se exclusivamente atraída fisicamente e emocionalmente por pessoas do sexo oposto, mas não gostar de todos os actos sexuais heterossexuais, e até ter prazer físico com alguns actos homossexuais). Não interessa também para nada se as causas do interesse sexual são genéticas, culturais, epigenéticas, de desenvolvimento etc. Todas essas causas não são em geral facilmente separáveis para qualquer atributo físico ou de comportamento. "you can be what you want to be", como diz Billy Bragg em baixo.

A meu ver deve-se chegar à liberdade sexual lutando pelos direitos de todos os indivíduos, independentemente das práticas sexuais concretas. Quando se cria as dicotomias, supostamente reflectindo identidades, como homo/hetero faz-se uma manipulação emocional à sociedade que é nefasta. Imaginem um jovem adolescente que sente uma quantidade e novidade enorme de impulsos sexuais. A nova aproximação de política de indentidade gay/hetero continua a forçar o tal adolescente a restringir todos os seus impulsos a um ou outro lado da suposta dicotomia de identidade. O novidade é apenas que agora se aceita moralmente ambos os lados da dicotomia. Mas a manipulação e controlo emocional é a mesma: o individuo tem que se definir perante a sociedade como pertencendo a um ou noutro lado.

Para se atingir uma liberdade sexual plena, a própria dicotomia tem que ser erradicada. Isto passa por se deitar fora todos esses conceitos ou mitos urbanos ridículos como "gaydar", bem como a "identidade gay" associada. Toda a definição de identidades baseada na sexualidade, ou mesmo no género e na raça, não passa de uma "fodamental" (no sentido de McGinn) imposta a todos nós. Continuo um grande liberal também neste assunto: a liberdade em todos os aspectos deve derivar dos direitos de todos os indivíduos, e não de grupos culturais, por mais oprimidos que esses grupos tenham sido.

Labels: Politics, sexcrime, sexualidade

I am usually turned off by first-year-graduate-school-pulp-fiction-fan language, but this is the best Philosophy book I have read in a long, long time. You read it in one sitting, enjoying minute by enjoying minute. It also instantly makes you go on a psychoanalytical chase to find all the mindfuckers in your life. I can now happily and accurately make the following philosophical statement: the academic tenure process is an immoral mindfuck. So is identity politics, and its daughter "diversity".

Labels: books

"We've gotten really good at living with things during the Bush Years, at tolerating the intolerable. And while this may sound like another tip of the hat to the incredible resilience of the American people, it's not: Resilience, after all, is not what's required in crisis when the crisis is partly of your own making. Responsibility is. We have heard of the Tech Bubble of the Clinton Years, the Housing Bubble of George W. Bush. Well, the bubble that we're living in now — still — is the bubble that's all our own. It's the Moral Bubble, and it will not be pricked until we take responsibility not just for the forty-third president's actions but for our inaction — for all the agreements we've made without awareness, for all the awareness we've come to without vigilance, for all the times we've touched the easy, insulating button of our assent."

Excerpt from the wonderful piece by Tom Junod on Esquire Magazine: What the Hell Just Happened?

8 years of the gangster presidency, was a very, very long time indeed:


We gotta have peace!

Labels: Peace, Politics

I could watch Grace Jones for hours... Good to see her back in shape. She has made some of the best urban tracks of all time: "Pull up to the Bumper" and "La vie en rose".

People who have not experienced war first hand don't realize that its horror is not fear, pain or anger. It is despair, and powerlessness. I will never forget my parents' desperate faces when they could do nothing to protect me and my brother other than putting their arms around us and pray for the best---when we were under mortar fire in the Angolan civil war. This sense of powerlessness overwhelms me when I read accounts such as these:

Imagine these were your children, and you will get closer to understanding the horror of war. A quote from Erasmus comes to mind: "War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it."

One thing that amazes me is how Israel manages not to let any journalists in, without that much outcry from the U.S. and Western media---certainly nothing like what we read and hear, rightly, when Mugabe expels western journalists from Zimbabwe...

And while the US media worries, also rightly, about whether there was torture at Guantanamo, I don't see the editorials of the NY Times calling for immediate access to Gaza in order to verify horrific stories such as "Israelis shot at fleeing Gazans" and UN accuses Israel over phosphorus. Jon Stewart below is the only one asking why such phony standards... Meanwhile at the NYTimes, we have the boring sanctimony of Friedman---why doesn't he use his position to press Israel into letting journalists in? Why doesn't he go there to report if claims such as the one above are true or not?

Even UN-flagged schools are not immune. 292 235 205 children among the dead. Humanitarian crisis deepens. Journalists still not allowed in, therefore casualty claims in Gaza cannot be independently verified. U.N. Warns of Refugee Crisis in Gaza Strip.

"[...] UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said an alleged failure of the Israeli military to help wounded civilians in Gaza - cited by the Red Cross - could constitute a war crime. On Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said its staff had found four weak and scared children beside their mothers' bodies in houses hit by shelling in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City. Ms Pillay told the BBC: 'The incident the Red Cross describes is very troubling because it has all the elements of what constitutes a war crime. There is an obligation to protect the wounded, to treat the sick, to remove them to safety and here, according to the Red Cross, Israeli soldiers just stood by and did nothing for these four children and one adult who were too weak to move.' The UN human rights body has demanded that human rights monitors be deployed in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank so that any violations of international law can be documented independently. Separately, the UN's head of humanitarian affairs, John Holmes, said it was 'extremely disappointing' that so far the resolution had been ignored by both sides." Full Story @ BBC News.

Labels: Peace, War

Often, in academic life, we are asked to report on our "diversity activities" or directed to try to increase diversity in our admissions and hiring endeavours. The problem is that in the absence of a definition or even guidelines about what constitutes a "diversity activity", we are forced to guess what these might be. In my view, this is problematic because it can easily devolve into an exercise that breaks up humans into unrealistic, constituent "canonical identities". Should I report on the sexual preferences or the cultural and racial profile of my students, for instance? Or should I just describe the chromosomal makeup of people I collaborate with, as well as my efforts to increase the numbers of people with a certain chromosomal makeup? I find all of this not only pointless but based on unscientific premises about "identity" that ought to be left in the XX century. I have a collaborator who is XY chromosomally but who is outwardly a female and is attracted to females---should I report on that and how? I refuse to. For me, in an appraisal, admissions or hiring exercise, looking at human features other than their relevant productivity is in bad taste and ultimately unfair to all involved, which is why I object to doing it.

I believe that if a goal of our organization is to increase its population diversity, the best that we can do is to increase the universal appeal of our subject matter. Certainly biology and psychology as fields are quite diverse in their workforce because their subject matter is of universal appeal. Computing, on the other hand, is not as diverse simply because its subject matter has been very restricted to questions about computing per se, rather than about solving real-world or human-nature problems. Traditional computing has not been very appealing to women, but it has not been very appealing to most men either. It appeals to a special type of person who is interested in abstract computing per se---that kind of person tends to be a certain type of man, but certainly most men are also not interested in computing per se.

The field of Informatics, a fairly new term in the US and the general area where I work, is more focused on problem-solving and human and biological questions. Therefore, it is poised to change the appeal of computing---at least that is what we are betting on. My point is that if we want to increase diversity in the informatics or computing, let us focus of making our subject matter more universally appealing, rather than counting the gender, racial, cultural, and sexual preference attributes of people---all of which are more or less fuzzy and ultimately undefinable.

Yesterday I saw the movie doubt, in which Meryl Street's character, a nun, says that in the pursuit of wrongdoing, one has to part in the opposite direction of the Christian message (or something like that). I feel that the goals of the academic pushes for increasing (the ever-undefined) diversity are a bit like that. But I am fundamentally opposed to the view that one can fight racism, sexism and the like, by counting race and gender---whatever way it goes it is still discrimination. We are all better off fighting for universal human rights and, in the context of academia, pushing for universal or at least wider appeal of the fields that have cornered themselves in very hermetic subject matters.

As Graham Greene used to say, "there are many countries in our blood, but only one person". To "countries" I would add "cultures" and "phenotypic traits".

Labels: Academia, diversity, racism, sexism

It's 2009, and since I am not partying like it is 1999, I have been going through tons of magazines I subscribe to but did not have time to read in the past year. This morning I read the September issue of Scientific American on Privacy and Security. Actually, not a very interesting collection---unlike the recent special issue on Darwin which is a must-read. But, in any case, it got me thinking. Yes, it is true that the concept of privacy is changing in the XXI century. More and more people, especially teenagers, put all sorts of private material on their facebooks and the like. Privacy experts (and parents alike) warn that such lack of privacy can incur a hefty price when the time comes to apply to universities or for jobs. Indeed, the Internet does not forget, and we all have heard of the cases when good candidates get turned down due to the tabloid nature of their online profiles. Of course people should probably be more clever about what they put online, but shouldn't the rest of us also update our behavior? I mean, while we can eavesdrop on conversations in restaurants, for instance, it is not polite to do so. In fact, society looks down on peeping toms. So why is it acceptable for an admissions or hiring committee to look into a candidate's private profile or blog? The fact that we can, does not mean we should. Of course I am not naive to think that some people won't, but we need to update our online ethics to look down on people who peek into people's online personae without being invited to do so.



P.S. I am in several admissions and hiring committees, and never look at the facebook profiles or personal blogs of any candidates, unless they mention them on their application materials.

Conversation in a Bar in the Caribe last November:
Me: sporting a T-shirt with the Lennon/Ono slogan "War is Over, If You want it"
Irish Couple: So which war is over?
Me: This was originally a Lennon/Ono slogan against Vietnam, but I think it applies to any war a democratic country wages.
Irish Couple: We are very catholic, we don't believe in all that peace and love thing.

Conversation in the parking lot at St. Charles in Bloomington
Me: getting out of my Prius with the kids on the side that has a sticker that says "Support Faith-based Missile Defense Systems".
Man: Now why are you mocking people's faith, especially here by the Church?
Me: Well, I actually mean it in a very Catholic, albeit agnostic, kind of way...
Man: How come?
Me: In the sense that Catholics believe in Free Will and don't believe that God really intervenes in our affairs. In the sense that Peace and War are the responsability of humans, not God.
Man: That's messed up.

Labels: Peace

Back by popular demand, I am putting online the "Groovy Python Park" mix CD I made 6 or so years ago. I should warn that it contains loads of adult language as well as massive offensive content---but hey, the friends that keep asking me to put this up love this sort of thing. Listening to it again, after all these years, I realize that I actually like the tracks I made for background music on this mix---makes me long for the time I used to have time to make music, rather than just mix it!

Since I uploaded this CD, I uploaded more of the E-Trash mix CD back catalogue, as well as the soundtrack to my favorite music film of all time: "Urgh! A Music War". This is a soundtrack that is really hard to find, and which took me much of 2001/2002 to collect. It is a wonderful post-punk/new wave music film that made me go skinhead circa 1981.

In order to get to these you need the following info:

Labels: Monty Python, Music, new wave, Punk, South Park

The 21st century finally arrived to the United States last night. But like all things in this country, it arrived in full force and better than anywhere else. This country truly has the most impressive ability to regenerate. Even Indiana went Obama! So let's leave the reactionary vision of Bush behind as a Millenium anxiety hickup; he truly was the Y2K bug. We thought it would be a computer bug, but it was the last shoutout of the old century. The rest of the World has moved to the XXI century, some in better ways than others. So let's hail the new century in America, and hope that Obama will push the whole World to a truly interconnected and peaceful vision of the future. Below, the way I feel today, in music and image.


P.S. I can't help remembering a line from one of my favortive movies of all time: Bullworth with Warren Beatty and Halle Berry. This is a line from the senator Bullworth in the movie: "All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color."

Labels: Barack Obama, Disco, George W. Bush, Politics, XXI century

This is really funny, thanks Fil!

I first created this blog because I was frustrated with how little respect urban culture was getting in the US. The real America was always assumed to be the small town with traditional values, but we all know from quite sometime that it is in urban settings that creativity excels---ultimately producing the riches that propel the country. Most rural states receive much more federal money than they contribute.

In the last few years, these facts have been shown scientifically in a number of settings, such as the "pace of life in cities", a brilliant paper by my friend Luis Bettencourt last year. It is great to finally see urban America recognized as mainstream America, and possibly its only hope for the future---as in today's piece by TIMOTHY EGAN in the NYTimes.com. Hey City Zen!

Labels: creativity, urban

The Zen does not fully endorse Obama because he pandered big time on the Death Penalty issue, but I am sure looking forward to the change!

Parabéns ao meu amigo Tessaleno por mais um livro. A ideia é muito interessante; gostaria muito de estar em Lisboa no próximo dia 24, para o seu lançamento na livraria Ferin, no Chiado às 19 horas. Centro Atlântico - Lançamento do Livro: 1509 - A Batalha que Mudou o Domínio do Comércio Global

Labels: história, livros

I am really happy for this award! Truly deserved. The "He Told You So" dude strikes big!

Labels: economics, populismo

I don't love Dawkins, but I do love this! Thanks Olmy!

Labels: creationism, Darwin, evolution, religion

Bob Herbert explica porque sou de esquerda nos EUA e Roger Cohen explica porque sou de direita na Europa. Não sou eu que sou esquizofrénico, os Republicanos são mesmo ou gangsters ou nitwits, e os "progues", como diz o meu amigo Olmy, são mesmo insuportavelmente relativistas---com a sua mania de acharem que totalitaristas e populistas de meia-tigela são melhores que os amaricanos democráticos.

Qual o espectaculo mais deprimente?

Labels: Politics, populismo