Hey City Zen!

Edina: Inside of me sweetie, inside of me there's a thin person just screaming to get out.

Mother: Just the one dear?

Neste novo Mundo pós-realidade, tenho-me andado a divertir com semiótica aleatoria. Para quem gosta de estar perdido na simbologia, aconselho o magnífico Seventh Sanctum. Aqui está o "trailer" da minha aventura sintactica:

Amy pointed me to the Perception Laboratory's Face Transformer. And so I was morphed from a Manga figure into an Ape:

This was one of the first albums I ever loved from beginning to end. My older brother brought it home in 1976. We listened to it over and over again -- and still do. A Night at the Opera is the most famous one, but from "Tie your Mother Down" to "Somebody to Love" (mp3) every song in "A Day at the Races" is a full-force Rock Opera on its own. Grandiose, but down and dirty Rock and Roll just the same.

No, we totally didn't know what "Queen" meant...

"Florida police officers handcuffed an allegedly uncontrollable five-year-old after she acted up at a Florida kindergarten and drove her to her mother in the back of a police cruiser". Full Article at BBC News. Also at ABC News.

The video of the incident.

What am I supposed to say to my almost 5 year old? The Police is your friend, right? If the police is trained to behave like such inhuman automata, we might as well just develop robots to do their jobs. The 5 year-old girl was already sitting quietly on a chair... It is absolutely incomprehensible.

And the school too, why on Earth do you call the Police to handle a 5-year-old? It's messed up, just messed up.

Excelente teste para nos fazer conhecer melhor a Europa (para crianças e adultos).

Tenta colocar os países à esq. no mapa à direita.

Enviado pelo meu irmão!

"The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living". (George Orwell "1984")

Minha querida Batukada, eu também gosto!

Obrigado pelo take Me Out no player.

The scissors didn't drop their Elton John habit...

Disco yang to my Punk yin!! If Punk is white rapture, Disco is black sensuality. I am vindicated by the Glimmers! Long live Disco Punk! Listen to the DJ-Kicks mix (Real Media).

Phenomenal!

I just can't get enough of the postmodern paper generator.

This, of course, comes to mind after the following story:

"In a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference." Full article at CNN News. Here is an abstract of a computer-generated paper with their engine:

You have to admit that the postmodern one is much more fun... Besides, the recent prank, while fun and deserving (self-respecting old-school cyberneticians such as myself do not go to that conference), is not completely fair since the paper was accepted only as a non-reviewed paper -- which is perfectly legit, however lame it may be.

And many other gems at show and tell music.

Está visto que um evangélico que desdenha o arrebatamento apocalíptico não pode ser completamente herético. Entre a praia Zen e o Jack van Impe, que é como quem diz entre o simbólico e o diabólico, eu acho que a nossa voz, agora muito menos acusativa, está muito mais para cá do que para lá.

Não acredito! O amigo contrário a citar Gore Vidal!!!??? Se não fosse o cansaço do final do semestre e deadlines mais deadlines, até diria que já vi a tal citação em algum lugar...

E ainda por cima ele agora diz que está na onda zen! Eu sempre soube que ele era cá dos meus! Um dia ainda vai ver a verdade sobre os neocons!

Um abraço!

From the NY Times Architecture Section

O fumador, tal como o jogador, só dá lume ao seu vício porque não percebe o conceito de probabilidade.

Artigo Relacionado.

This is my current favourite, pencil-sharpening, pre-work stress reliever.

Bounce on pussy cat!

Do check out all the other amusements at yomgaille.com

Dude, my inner-european is Euro-Trash, 100% -- More on this later, very busy here...

Your Inner European is Spanish!

Energetic and lively. You bring the party with you!

"Johnny Guitar is one of the cinema's great operatic works -- meaning, that it is pitched from beginning to end in a tone that is compulsive and passionate. There is really no other film quite like it . . . The slow pace, the building intensity, the relentless, haunting score by Victor Young . . .

I remember when I first saw it -- and I enjoyed it. But in the U.S., people expected a Western. Well, Johnny Guitar seemed like a Western, looked like a Western, but people didn't know what to make of it, so they either ignored it or laughed at it.

On the other hand, in Europe, taken out of it's American context, they saw a totally different picture. They saw it for what it was: an intense, unconventional, stylized picture, full of ambiguities and subtext that rendered it extremely modern . . ."

MARTIN SCORSESE

Listen to the most famous dialogue in the movie (adaptado para a bomba).

After my Johnny Guitar inspired post below, it is truly hard to comment on Sin City. It is one of the most boring movies I have ever seen. It rivals Pasolini's Arabian Nights in the capacity to induce utter boredom. I may count in one hand the number of movies that almost made me walk out in the middle -- but this was certainly one of them.

It isn't the violence. It is the ritualistic enactment of violence. I am sure the use of cliches is supposed to transmit the sequential nature of comics -- just as Dick Tracy, an equally boring movie, did. But it just constraints the movie too much. It is perfectly linear, overly scripted, leaving no room for imagination whatsoever.

People like to put Rodriguez in the same bag as Tarrantino. But while Tarrantino uses violence galore in his movies, he is also a master of screenplay and timing (not to mention musical sore). Rodriguez, on the other hand, is never unexpected and never thrills.

The only redeeming feature of Sin City are the girls -- Jessica Alba, rrrrgggghhhauw!

Dedicado à Vienna da Blogosfera:


Johnny Zen: How many blogs have you forgotten?

Charlotte: As many women waking up as you've remembered.

Johnny Zen: Don't go away.

Charlotte: I haven't moved.

Johnny Zen: Tell me something nice.

Charlotte: Sure. What do you want to hear?

Johnny Zen: Lie to me. Tell me all these blogs you've waited...

Charlotte: All these blogs I've waited.

Johnny Zen: Tell me you'd have died if I hadn't visited.

Charlotte: I would have died if you hadn't visited.

Johnny Zen: Tell me you still love me like I love you.

Charlotte: I still love you like you love me.

Johnny Zen: Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Parabéns Bomba!

Em dedicação a João Paulo II, uma das figuras humanas mais marcantes do seculo XX. Este Papa tirou a Igreja da decadência arcaica em que se encontrava, para uma nova fase de extrema relevância social, política, moral e até científica. Esperemos que o próximo continue este trabalho.

Pessoalmente, uma referência viva durante a maior parte da minha vida -- apesar da minha falta de fé.

O Armando Vieira escreveu no DN uma peça muito interessante sobre o ensino politécnico. Apesar de eu achar que a experiência dos professores no politécnico deveria ser mais empresarial do que científica, algo está de facto errado quando o que se lecciona nos politécnicos, de acordo com o Armando Vieira, é essencialmente teoria.

Quanto ao problema do recrutamento nestas instituições, o que o Armando Vieira refere nos politécnicos, passa-se também exactamente no ensino universitário:

"[...]aquele que considero ser o aspecto mais chocante é a forma como se processa o recrutamento de docentes nos politécnicos. Embora haja actualmente uma grande oferta de doutorados e de profissionais com vasta experiência empresarial, os concursos, sobretudo, os da categoria de professor adjunto, são quase sempre talhados à medida de "pessoas da casa" ou "conhecidos".

Este corporativismo descarado chega a ser divulgado publicamente, sem qualquer pudor, em editais do Diário da República onde se estabelece que só são aceites a concurso candidatos com licenciatura em X, mestrado em Y e doutoramento em Z. Tais argumentos até podiam ser defensáveis se as temáticas científicas X, Y e Z não fossem totalmente desconexas da área para a qual é aberto o concurso. [...]"

Lá diria o Jô Soares: Você não quer que eu volte...

"Okay, We Give Up" , Scientific American, 00368733, Apr2005, Vol. 292, Issue 4

"There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.

In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either--so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day."