Portugal

Rapidamente, todos aprenderam a classificar a crise como oportunidade e a apontar caminhos.
Agora, quem mede o que já foi feito ? A eficácia e os números reais dos apoios às médias, pequenas e muito pequenas empresas ? Porque os números dos apoios à banca, vão sendo conhecidos, um pouco a contragosto do governo, mas ainda assim sabemos da sua dimensão e da sua realidade.
Retoricamente, poucos como nós, estariam tão bem equipados para a globalização - desde sempre que somos um entreposto nas rotas comerciais entre continentes, desde muito cedo que somos um país de emigrantes para todas as zonas do globo. Temos facilidade de adaptação a novas linguas e a diferentes culturas, poderiamos assim unir o Norte e o Sul, o Oeste com o Este.
Só que actualmente, este papel exige uma de duas capacidades : ou capital próprio para investir e lançar projectos, onde fazem mais sentido, ou então conhecimento, a capacidade de liderar projectos inovadores, que possam mobilizar capitais de outros.
Ora, não tendo muito capital próprio, parece-me que estamos condenados a apostar na via do conhecimento, em mobilizar toda a nossa sociedade para tal - incentivando os jovens, indo se necessário for buscar figuras com a capacidade de o fazer noutros países.
Falhando este desafio, resta-nos esperar que a Europa se una cada vez mais, e que a Europa então nos salve, especializando-nos nós em sermos seus "caterers" e o país enfim o tal jardim à beira mar plantado...
(Uma coisa não seremos : juristas - é desolador o funcionamento da justiça no país. O próprio primeiro ministro vive acossado pela suspeita e em ano de eleições os orgãos judiciais não conseguem desfazer as suspeitas atempadamente.)

too old to rock'n'roll, too young to die

The continuing misfortunes of Gordon Brown...

Viva the UK

It looks like the rules were conceived in a time when Britain was first among nations and gentleman served the empire...Not anymore.

UK was special and it was that for centuries, a place of freedom and civility, no paradise, though.

Mind games

NON

"“non” não tem direito nem avesso: por qualquer lado que o tomeis, sempre soa e diz o mesmo. Lede-o do princípio para o fim ou do fim para o princípio, sempre é non."

"Quando a vara de Moisés se converteu naquela serpente tão feroz, que fugia dela porque o não mordesse; disse-lhe Deus que a tomasse ao revés, e logo perdeu a figura, a ferocidade e a peçonha. O non não é assim: (...) Mata a esperança, que é o último remédio que deixou a natureza a todos os males."

Padre António Vieira

(non is always non, you can read it backwards, it always be non)

Mirror

One man meat, is another man murder
One man laughter, is another man rage

There's a fine line between night and day
and it's moving, moving round and round
Like the Earth and stars
everything shifts, everything changes
and what once was no longer is.

No longer my name mirrors yours.

Africa

The 80's

Borda d'Água

Vista da janela do restaurante da minha prima Maria Amélia, em Alhandra.

Electric poet

O fim da saga do POETA ELÉTRICO JAMES DOUGLAS MORRISON encontrado morto por overdose no seu apartamento da rua Bautrellis, aos 27 anos.

As old as New Orleans

Happiness is a social phenomenon

Nicholas Christakis from Harvard University says :

"Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible
in the network, and the relationship between people’s
happiness extends up to three degrees of separation (for
example, to the friends of one’s friends’ friends). People
whoare surrounded by many happy people and thosewho
are central in the network are more likely to become happy
in the future. Longitudinal statistical models suggest that
clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness
and not just a tendency for people to associate with
similar individuals. A friend who lives within a mile (about
1.6 km)andwhobecomeshappy increases the probability
that a person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval
1% to 57%). Similar effects are seen in coresident
spouses (8%, 0.2% to 16%), siblings who live within a
mile (14%, 1% to 28%), and next door neighbours (34%,
7% to 70%). Effects are not seen between coworkers. The
effect decays with time and with geographical separation.
Conclusions People’s happiness depends on the
happiness of others with whom they are connected. This
provides further justification for seeing happiness, like
health, as a collective phenomenon."

read here the whole paper

for my little cousin Maria

hopefully she's getting better*

like my grandfather...

Robert Wyatt is another devotee of the hammer and sickle mythology

Virtudes da oposição

Hoje a oposição comunista, decidiu celebrar um comicio na vila, em honra de um ilustre antigo morador da terra e bandeira da resistência comunista ao antigo regime.
Escritor ilustre, Soeiro Pereira Gomes, é dele que se trata, minado desde cedo pela doença e forçado a uma vida de clandestinidade, pela sua oposição à ditadura, deixou uma obra pequena mas valiosa no panorama do seu tempo, que se lê ainda hoje com agrado.
A nota interessante é que a vila de Alhandra está limpa como não a via há anos...camarada Jerónimo de Sousa, venha mais vezes por estes lados, mas avise a autarquia, para que eles façam o que devem fazer sempre, mas que pelos vistos guardam para dias assinalados.

« - Linda música – exclamou Gaitinhas. Talvez fosse a música do carrossel grande que abafava tudo. Mas de um ou de outro, era linda. Fazia-o esquecer a doença da mãe e os sapatos rotos. O cavalo galopava no espaço, através das estrelas, e ele levava um sorriso nos lábios e a carta de exame para levar ao pai…

«Gineto fizera-se Tom Mix em pensamento e cravara esporas no cavalo, a que chamou Malacara. Dentes serrados e o lenço ondulando ao vento, cingia nos braços a pálida Rosete, arrebatada aos bandidos. O cavalo saltava muros e esteiros, sem parar. E o Malesso, o Sagui e todos os companheiros do telhal acenavam ao longe, muito ao longe…»

Mais sobre Soeiro Pereira Gomes e OS Esteiros

Hammer and sickle

When I was a boy, we would be sitted at the table after dinner, all the men in the house and after the usual football jibbering, talk would turn to serious matters and my grandfather always said : "- One day the hammer and sickle will come to this country and everything will be better for the working man, just you listen to this. Every rich man lives in awe of that day, but it will come, take my word for it."
My grandfather was old school, he never knew his father, was raised with several brothers and sisters by a widow mother.
Very little he went to serve at the home of a rich farmer's family, when he was over 10 years of age no longer a little angel, he was sent to work in the fields.
Soon after that, he will be working at the cement factory, where he worked everyday of his life till he was 65. He was very proud of never missing a day, except the ones after he took a nasty fall and had to have open chest surgery to save his life.
I always remember the days when he got home with a naughty smile on his face, confessing to a celebration pint, usually a wine man he was, to mark the burial of another nasty fellow, that after all, went down sooner than himself.
He was a sweet man, always ready to be of service, never idle for a moment.

nothing to fear...but fear itself

This could be paradise

Love this song

Never gonna give you up

she got the bombs

don't know who the girl is...but the music is great

This guy is good

I have never tried to make illustrations of apartheid, but the drawings and films are certainly spawned by and feed off the brutalized society left in its wake. I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and certain endings; an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay. - William Kentridge

but I really like the singer

this song starts many times

people want the same everywhere

From South Africa

minha foto

I really like this photo

Age of innocence

Edith Wharton on marriage :

“Do you know, I began to see what marriage is for. It’s to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them—children, duties, visits, bores, relations—the things that protect married people from each other. We’ve been too close together—that has been our sin. We’ve seen the nakedness of each other’s souls.”

She has had a interesting life and I'm going to read some of her work. I loved the movie "Age of Inoccence" by Martin Scorsese.

This

As you can see, I'm not getting any better...

I confess

I confess I was one of those lovers of prog rock back in the seventies, the punks came to finish up nerds like me...

Elis

como el musguito en la piedra

Elm tree, sky, stones

John Constable is famous by his landscape paintings and his portraits, but I find his interest in the reproduction of clouds and other nature forms very appealing.

Reality is stupid

by the way...will Brown survive the next election ?

We need a leader

J.K. Rowling, on Gordon Brown :

When capitalism shuddered on its foundations last year, Brownite words like responsibility and morality started issuing from the unlikeliest politicians. Global financial regulation, something Brown had advocated long before last September, shot to the top of the political agenda. Now Prime Minister, Brown took a lead among European leaders in setting a course for economic recovery. He hosted the most important meeting of the world’s major economies in years. In doing so, the British press said, he had become “Chancellor to the world.”

The son of a Presbyterian minister, with a formidable intellect and a work ethic to shame a nest of ants, the 58-year-old Brown is frequently dubbed “dour.” I know him as affable, funny and gregarious, a great listener, a kind and loyal friend. These are strange and turbulent times, but issues of fairness, equality and protection of the poor have never been more important. I still want Gordon Brown in charge.

for Time Magazine

This is the same Gordon Brown that supports Durão Barroso and its comission for continuing to reign over Europe. And is the same Gordon Brown of the smear campaigns on his rivals...
Meanwhile he himself wrote this, on Barack Obama :

As the first black President, Obama, 47, has already proved that once inaccessible pinnacles can be reached. His swift and decisive action on the economic crisis has been impressive in itself but is only one pioneering achievement of his first hundred days. Now global problems need global solutions, from our bold initiative to give every child in every country the opportunity of a good education, to our shared ambition of an agreement on climate change at Copenhagen in December. Obama is working with world leaders to take on the unparalleled challenges of the global age: in development, climate change, energy, terrorism and security.

Of course, his oratory is today unmatched. But his courage — the courage to go first, to lead, where none have gone before — is doubly unmatched. When he speaks, he gives those who hear him confidence: not in him but in themselves. It was said of Cicero that when people heard him, they turned to one another and said, “Great speech”; but when Demosthenes spoke, people turned to one another and said, “Let’s march.” All around the world people are marching with Barack Obama.

also for Time Magazine

You must do it, many times

Descrédito de la profecia

"En cuanto uno empieza a leer un libro de John Gray tiene la sensación de que algunas de las convicciones que creía más firmes empiezan a tambalearse, y porque la buena conciencia que suelen depararnos los principios humanistas no resiste los ácidos corrosivos de una lucidez que nos deja inermes frente a los espantos del mundo y a las flaquezas y las frivolidades de la condición humana."

Descrédito de la profecia
Antonio Muñoz Molina en el Pais

Máquina do tempo

Contra as especulações, factos, ver para crer

Oldie, but goldie

Could it really be ?

anche

more

Head of a Man, ca. 1718
Jean Antoine Watteau (French, 1684–1721)
French
Red and black chalk

bring the best and be true

I feel so humble

Lucas Cranach the Elder (German, 1472-1553). The Golden Age, ca. 1530. Mixed media on wood, transferred to a new panel. 73.5 x 105.5 cm (28 15/16 x 41 1/2 in.).

© Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München, Alte Pinako

Tell me

Liebliches Kind,
Kannst du mir sagen,
[ Warum einsam und stumm
Zärtliche Seelen ]1
Immer sich quälen,
Selbst sich [betrüben]2,
Und ihr Vergnügen
Immer nur ahnen,
Da, wo sie nicht sind;
Kannst du mir's sagen,
Liebliches Kind?

Lovely child,
Can you tell me,
Why, alone and mute,
Tender souls
Always torture themselves,
Why they make themselves gloomy,
And why they seem to suspect
that their pleasures
will be where they are not;
Can you not tell me this,
Lovely child?

to my sons

Muppet metalist "supremos"

Look up the stars, they shine for YOU

Nothing great

"Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

You know you are down, when you revert to old quotes from dead philosophers...

Wishing well

European elections

Finally this looks like a good idea

Finalmente uma boa ideia na campanha para as Europeias...

(Euro candidate Paulo Rangel(PSD) proposes a cross-european program similar to Erasmus, for people looking for first time jobs, he sugests to name it "Vasco da Gama"...that's an idea)

Michael Kohlhaas

"Heinrich von Kleist’s narrative Michael Kohlhaas (1810) is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece in its genre. In the space of some one hundred pages, it unfolds a complex tale of a law-abiding horse trader who launches a campaign of violence against the nobleman Wenzel von Tronka following the illegal confiscation of his horses. The opening paragraph presents the reader with the main interpretative challenge in a particularly acute form, as it describes Kohlhaas as one of the most decent and most dreadful people of his time: a pillar of the community whose sense of right turned him into a robber and a murderer."

Justice is diferent from the rule of law. We are so patronized, this is not even a question we pose to ourselves.
This social democrat society we live in, numbs our perception, we are but lambs, silently grazing...and so on.

regular housewife

Kate Bush, has been for so long out of the public eye, last year she published a new album and in its promotion maintained she has been living the simple life.

Sul

Sage

I found this column by AC Grayling, brilliant.
It reminded me so much, of my neighbour on the village, she's seventy something, but she can work her farm, like I will never could.
She gives us lovely vegetables, the best potatoes and she cooks me a wonderful arroz doce (sweet rice). She is also a genious, she can talk with anybody and she remembers every person that has been through my gate, also she is already well aware of my friends, family and all the buzz about each one...
She also says, one of my favorite phrases : "- Me, going to the grave ?...No, for that you´ll have to carry me..." and smiles her naughty teethless smile.

How can he, indeed ?

sunshine come to my window today