Friday, June 12, 2009
Dia de Portugal
"Políticos, empresários, sindicalistas e funcionários: tenham consciência de que, em tempos de
excesso de informação e de propaganda, as vossas palavras são cada vez mais vazias e inúteis e de
que o vosso exemplo é cada vez mais decisivo. Se tiverem consideração por quem trabalha, poderão
melhor atravessar as crises. Se forem verdadeiros, serão respeitados, mesmo em tempos difíceis."
Do discurso de António Barreto, nas comemorações do Dia de Portugal em Santarém
excesso de informação e de propaganda, as vossas palavras são cada vez mais vazias e inúteis e de
que o vosso exemplo é cada vez mais decisivo. Se tiverem consideração por quem trabalha, poderão
melhor atravessar as crises. Se forem verdadeiros, serão respeitados, mesmo em tempos difíceis."
Do discurso de António Barreto, nas comemorações do Dia de Portugal em Santarém
Emotional tension (1)
The aesthetics of emotional tension : every and each one of us is caught in the turmoil.
We lead repetitive ordinary lives, full of ennui, then one day - violent upheaval lands upon us.
Emotional machine
Emotional Perception
Mo, over at Neurophilosophy, has a fantastic summary of a new paper from scientists at the University of Toronto investigating the link between affective mood and visual perception. The basic moral is this: If you want to improve your peripheral vision, or become better at noticing seemingly extraneous details, then do something to make yourself happy:
Positive moods enhanced peripheral vision and increased the extent to which the brain encoded information in those parts of the visual field, to which the participants did not pay attention. Conversely, negative moods decreased the encoding of peripheral information. But does the enhanced peripheral vision that occurs because of positive mood induction come at the expense of central (or "foveal") vision? Schmitz and his colleagues compared FFA activity in the positive and negative mood induction trials, but found no difference. The enhanced peripheral vision following positive mood induction does not, therefore, occur as a result of a trade-off with central vision.
The larger point, of course, is that emotion influences every aspect of cognition, even aspects of sensory processing that seem to have nothing to do with feeling or passion. This, I think, is one of the most important theoretical shifts to take place in cognitive science over the last few decades. From its inception in the mid-1950's, the cognitive revolution was guided by a single metaphor: the mind is like a computer. We are a set of software programs running on 3 pounds of neural hardware. (Cognitive psychologists were interested in the software.) While the computer metaphor helped stimulate some crucial scientific breakthroughs - it led, for instance, to the birth of artificial intelligence and to insightful models of visual processing, from people like David Marr - it was also misleading, at least in one crucial respect. Computers don't have feelings. Because our emotions weren't reducible to bits of information or logical structures, cognitive psychologists diminished their importance.
Now we know that the mind is an emotional machine. Our moods aren't simply an irrational distraction, a mental hiccup that messes up the programming code. As this latest study demonstrates, what you're feeling profoundly influences what you see. Such data builds on lots of other work showing that our affective state seems to directly modulate the nature of attention, both external and internal, and thus plays a big role in regulating thinks like decision-making and creativity. (In short, positive moods widen the spotlight, while negative, anxious moods increase the focus.) From the perspective of the brain, it's emotions all the way down.
Mo, over at Neurophilosophy, has a fantastic summary of a new paper from scientists at the University of Toronto investigating the link between affective mood and visual perception. The basic moral is this: If you want to improve your peripheral vision, or become better at noticing seemingly extraneous details, then do something to make yourself happy:
Positive moods enhanced peripheral vision and increased the extent to which the brain encoded information in those parts of the visual field, to which the participants did not pay attention. Conversely, negative moods decreased the encoding of peripheral information. But does the enhanced peripheral vision that occurs because of positive mood induction come at the expense of central (or "foveal") vision? Schmitz and his colleagues compared FFA activity in the positive and negative mood induction trials, but found no difference. The enhanced peripheral vision following positive mood induction does not, therefore, occur as a result of a trade-off with central vision.
The larger point, of course, is that emotion influences every aspect of cognition, even aspects of sensory processing that seem to have nothing to do with feeling or passion. This, I think, is one of the most important theoretical shifts to take place in cognitive science over the last few decades. From its inception in the mid-1950's, the cognitive revolution was guided by a single metaphor: the mind is like a computer. We are a set of software programs running on 3 pounds of neural hardware. (Cognitive psychologists were interested in the software.) While the computer metaphor helped stimulate some crucial scientific breakthroughs - it led, for instance, to the birth of artificial intelligence and to insightful models of visual processing, from people like David Marr - it was also misleading, at least in one crucial respect. Computers don't have feelings. Because our emotions weren't reducible to bits of information or logical structures, cognitive psychologists diminished their importance.
Now we know that the mind is an emotional machine. Our moods aren't simply an irrational distraction, a mental hiccup that messes up the programming code. As this latest study demonstrates, what you're feeling profoundly influences what you see. Such data builds on lots of other work showing that our affective state seems to directly modulate the nature of attention, both external and internal, and thus plays a big role in regulating thinks like decision-making and creativity. (In short, positive moods widen the spotlight, while negative, anxious moods increase the focus.) From the perspective of the brain, it's emotions all the way down.
In praise of gardeners
A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant – rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance – but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself.
~ Roberto Burle Marx
Roberto Burle Marx is internationally known as one of the most important landscape architects of the 20th century.
An artist of multiple facets, besides being a landscape designer he was also a remarkable painter, sculptor, singer, and jewelry designer, with a sensibility that is shown throughout his work.
Born in São Paulo in August 4th, 1909, Roberto Burle Marx moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1913.
During the years of 1928 and 1929 he studied painting in Berlin - Germany, where he was often seen at the Dahlem Botanic Garden's greenhouses. In this garden he noticed for the first time the beauty of the tropical plants and the Brazilian flora.
His first landscape project was a private garden for a house designed by the Architects Lucio Costa and Gregory Warchavchik in 1932. Since then, his landscape works improved as well as his painting and drawing.
In 1949, he bought a 365,000m2 estate in Barra de Guaratiba, in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where he started to organize his big collection of plants.
In 1985, he donated this estate to a federal government cultural organization, Pró-Memória National Foundation, which is nowadays called National Institute for Cultural Heritage - IPHAN.
Roberto Burle Marx died in Rio de Janeiro in 1994, at the age of 84.
In 1955, he founded a landscape company, called Burle Marx & Cia. Ltda. (Burle Marx & Company), where he started to develop landscape design, along with the implementation and maintenance of his residential and public gardens. In 1968, Haruyoshi Ono, a landscape architect, became his partner.
Burle Marx & Cia. Ltda. landscape studio, created by Roberto Burle Marx in 1955. The office develops landscape projects, and implements, maintains, and restores gardens. It is also requested as a consulting board, giving supervision and orientation in landscape and environmental issues. In addition, it owns a small nursery that produces and sells plants
O desenho das pedras portuguesas, marca registrada do
calçadão, foi refeito mais recentemente pelo
paisagista Roberto Burle Marx a partir de um desenho
que já existia na Avenida Atlântica original e que foi
trazido da Praça do Rossio, em Lisboa. “O que se diz é
que essas ondas do Burle Marx são mais sensuais e mais
bonitas que as de Portugal”, conta, em jeito de
provocação, o historiador Carlos Kessel.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Ah, Portugal, Portugal
Cada galo no seu poleiro, todos em fila cantando alegremente (ou não...)
Mas o que um galo canta o outro galo não ouve (nem quer ouvir...)
Todos os galos em fila, para onde vão os galos ?
Seguindo a trilha do milho, quando o há, quando o dão.
Viva Portugal.
Viúvas
Passo pelas viúvas de manhã quando venho para o comboio...vão à padaria, ou à praça, as mais modernas ao café.
Todas elas perderam as cores e são baças e apagadas. Andam curvadas, como se o que as mantinha erguidas, lhes tivesse sido arrancado de dentro.
São como as flores, ainda no ramo, mas já passado o esplendor, esperando, esperando...
I see the widows in the morning, when I rush to the train...they go to the baker's, the market or even, the more modern ones, to the coffee.
All of them colourless, withdrawn, almost invisible. They walk bended, as if what made them stood, was ripped from inside them.
They're like flowers, still in the plant, but past their splendor, waiting, waiting...
Todas elas perderam as cores e são baças e apagadas. Andam curvadas, como se o que as mantinha erguidas, lhes tivesse sido arrancado de dentro.
São como as flores, ainda no ramo, mas já passado o esplendor, esperando, esperando...
I see the widows in the morning, when I rush to the train...they go to the baker's, the market or even, the more modern ones, to the coffee.
All of them colourless, withdrawn, almost invisible. They walk bended, as if what made them stood, was ripped from inside them.
They're like flowers, still in the plant, but past their splendor, waiting, waiting...
Greifer
Equipped with easel, flute and precision gun
Paul Verhaeghen
"...
Sometime in March or April 1943, Stella Goldschlag stood at her window in the Sammellager – the former Jewish nursing home in the Grosse Hamburgerstrasse. It was the early evening of a gorgeous spring day, and heaven knows those are rare in Berlin. From her window, she had a good view of the Jewish cemetery – right underneath was the tomb of Moses Mendelssohn, the great scholar and philosopher from the time of Frederick. Mendelssohn had been a big proponent of the integration of Jews and Germans; he had done the first Hebrew-to-German translation of the Torah, as a service to the gentiles. On an open space in that venerable cemetery with its picturesquely sunken monuments, Stella noted much laughter and merriment. A few of the guards had taken off their uniform jackets; they were playing soccer. Four jackets marked the goalposts. The ball they were using must be flat, Stella thought, it refuses to bounce. Then she looked more closely. The object that the guards kicked back and forth was not a soccer ball. It was a human skull.
Stella had a secret of her own. Stella was a Greifer, a catcher: each day she went into town and made her living pointing out fellow Jews to the Gestapo. For every person she brought in, the Gestapo paid her 20 Reichsmark. More importantly, for every person she brought in she could point out a prisoner – a friend, a family member – and that person would be spared. Except that they wouldn't. When Stella found out, she decided to keep up her gruesome business, if just to save her own life and that of her fellow-catcher boyfriend.
The very first person Stella denounced was her husband.
These stories add up. Because they are true – in many senses of the word. Because the world is not the same without them. These stories tell us who we are. Terror, torture, wanton executions – this is what humans do. Sure, we love. Sure, we paint and write and dance and sing. But this cavalcade of horror is not an aberration. We are built to play. And players like their toys. Need their toys. All you need to do is convince yourself that this human being is not at all like you, and he becomes your toy.
Holding another life in your hand is the ultimate possession. You carve a person's flesh. His mind, his identity, his future, his fate, rests in your hand, and yours alone. You can twist his very soul until it breaks and – oh yes – you will. For he is – wholly – yours, and how could you resist?
...
Our biggest fear is this : that we live for the same reason Jamadi, the nameless Soviet prisioner, Stella's victims, Mengele's little gypsy friend, and some 3000 Manhattan office workers died.
For no reason at all."
My point is, as long as there's one who cares enough to remember and tell our story, there is a reason. Hope.
Paul Verhaeghen
"...
Sometime in March or April 1943, Stella Goldschlag stood at her window in the Sammellager – the former Jewish nursing home in the Grosse Hamburgerstrasse. It was the early evening of a gorgeous spring day, and heaven knows those are rare in Berlin. From her window, she had a good view of the Jewish cemetery – right underneath was the tomb of Moses Mendelssohn, the great scholar and philosopher from the time of Frederick. Mendelssohn had been a big proponent of the integration of Jews and Germans; he had done the first Hebrew-to-German translation of the Torah, as a service to the gentiles. On an open space in that venerable cemetery with its picturesquely sunken monuments, Stella noted much laughter and merriment. A few of the guards had taken off their uniform jackets; they were playing soccer. Four jackets marked the goalposts. The ball they were using must be flat, Stella thought, it refuses to bounce. Then she looked more closely. The object that the guards kicked back and forth was not a soccer ball. It was a human skull.
Stella had a secret of her own. Stella was a Greifer, a catcher: each day she went into town and made her living pointing out fellow Jews to the Gestapo. For every person she brought in, the Gestapo paid her 20 Reichsmark. More importantly, for every person she brought in she could point out a prisoner – a friend, a family member – and that person would be spared. Except that they wouldn't. When Stella found out, she decided to keep up her gruesome business, if just to save her own life and that of her fellow-catcher boyfriend.
The very first person Stella denounced was her husband.
These stories add up. Because they are true – in many senses of the word. Because the world is not the same without them. These stories tell us who we are. Terror, torture, wanton executions – this is what humans do. Sure, we love. Sure, we paint and write and dance and sing. But this cavalcade of horror is not an aberration. We are built to play. And players like their toys. Need their toys. All you need to do is convince yourself that this human being is not at all like you, and he becomes your toy.
Holding another life in your hand is the ultimate possession. You carve a person's flesh. His mind, his identity, his future, his fate, rests in your hand, and yours alone. You can twist his very soul until it breaks and – oh yes – you will. For he is – wholly – yours, and how could you resist?
...
Our biggest fear is this : that we live for the same reason Jamadi, the nameless Soviet prisioner, Stella's victims, Mengele's little gypsy friend, and some 3000 Manhattan office workers died.
For no reason at all."
My point is, as long as there's one who cares enough to remember and tell our story, there is a reason. Hope.
Monday, June 8, 2009
mágoas na lembrança
Mudam-se os tempos, mudam-se as vontades,
Luís Vaz de Camões
Mudam-se os tempos, mudam-se as vontades,
Muda-se o ser, muda-se a confiança;
Todo o mundo é composto de mudança,
Tomando sempre novas qualidades.
Continuamente vemos novidades,
Diferentes em tudo da esperança;
Do mal ficam as mágoas na lembrança,
E do bem, se algum houve, as saudades.
O tempo cobre o chão de verde manto,
Que já coberto foi de neve fria,
E em mim converte em choro o doce canto.
E, afora este mudar-se cada dia,
Outra mudança faz de mor espanto:
Que não se muda já como soía.
Tiananmen
This file photo taken twenty years ago on June 2, 1989 shows some of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese gathering around a 10-meter replica of the Statue of Liberty (center), called the Goddess of Democracy, in Tiananmen Square demanding democracy despite martial law in Beijing. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters were killed by China's military on June 3 and 4, 1989, as communist leaders ordered an end to six weeks of unprecedented democracy protests in the heart of the Chinese capital. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP/Getty Images)
If we all abstain from elections and civic participation, we will end up being chinese.
Ka'bah
The black granite Ka’ba, the cubical structure that stands as the holiest center of Islam, features at its eastern vertex a small black stone about the size of a grapefruit, the al-hajar al-aswad, which may or may not have fallen to earth in the time of Adam and Eve. Supported in a silver frame, this obsidian-like cipher structures space for some billion Muslims, standing as it does at the culminating point known as the qibla—the direction to which devout followers of Mohammed address their five daily obeisances. Tradition has it that the rock was once snowy white, and has darkened over time through exposure to human sin.
A snowy white stone that gives shape to the universe: as it happens, we all carry within our skulls the vestige of such a thing, a kind of existentially reversed qibla (this one perspectival, the other metaphysical) that gives us our sense of being at the center of things, the sense that we are upright at the origin point of a three-dimensional space. The “otolithic organs,” as they are known, are a pair of sensors—the utricle and the saccule—nestled in the labyrinthine architecture of the inner ear.
Leftovers / The Orienting Stone
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D. Graham Burnett
The blessed art of levitation
Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni), The Blessed Ranieri Rasini Freeing Poor People from Prison in Florence, 1437–1444.
I would levitate, from here to there
finding you, I will hastily try to kiss you
my powers will fade and I will crash, as heavy rain
Read all about it here
the positive
This really reminds me of Blade Runner and its Replicants with implanted family memories...Now you can get them in the internet.
Europa
Just some quick thoughts on the results of yesterday's European elections :
- Socialist and Social Democrats on the government were more penalized than center right parties also on government : it looks association with banks, big finance and corruption accusations are heavier on them than on their colleagues…
- Voters don’t give a damn, and not only on the old countries of the Union, even worst new members also didn’t care to vote in significant numbers. The European project is far from the citizens, they feel there’s little democracy in the European process and their vote should be more significant.
- A significant fringe of racist, fascist anti-immigrant minorities are organized and mobilized enough to be heard on the European Parliament, what a shame
- Socialist and Social Democrats on the government were more penalized than center right parties also on government : it looks association with banks, big finance and corruption accusations are heavier on them than on their colleagues…
- Voters don’t give a damn, and not only on the old countries of the Union, even worst new members also didn’t care to vote in significant numbers. The European project is far from the citizens, they feel there’s little democracy in the European process and their vote should be more significant.
- A significant fringe of racist, fascist anti-immigrant minorities are organized and mobilized enough to be heard on the European Parliament, what a shame
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