O fim da saga do POETA ELÉTRICO JAMES DOUGLAS MORRISON encontrado morto por overdose no seu apartamento da rua Bautrellis, aos 27 anos.
Friday, May 8, 2009
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.
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
Thursday, May 7, 2009
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.
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
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.
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...
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
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.
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
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
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
Descrédito de la profecia
Antonio Muñoz Molina en el Pais
Monday, May 4, 2009
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?
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?
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...
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)
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.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Gripe A
A OMS diz que a pandemia de gripe A é inevitável - é para que relembremos os primeiros verdadeiros acontecimentos globais...qual crise económica, pensem na Peste.
WHO says the flu pandemy is now unavoidable - a grim reminder of the first true global events...think not of economical crisis, remember the Plague.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Angel
This song reminded me of Tilda Swinton...and the character she played in "Benjamin Botton".
I'm afraid to see more of her work and fall out with her. But she sure looks like a convincent angel...
May Day
May Day occurs on May 1 and refers to several public holidays. In many countries, May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, which celebrates the social and economic achievements of the labour movement. As a day of celebration the holiday has ancient origins, and it can relate to many customs that have survived into modern times.
Traditional May Day celebrations :
May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half of a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neopagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations, regardless of the locally prevalent political or religious establishment.
As Europe became Christianized the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either changed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, and All Saint's Day. In the twentieth century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again.
(from the Wikipedia)
Curiosidades
Na mesma linha de raciocínio do post anterior : foi alterada a lei de financiamento dos partidos políticos em Portugal e considerou-se útil diminuir o valor mínimo das coimas por crimes ambientais. Decidiu-se também oferecer protecção aos arrependidos nestes crimes...
Desmancha prazeres
O antigo ministro das finanças do governo de José Sócrates, Luís Campos e Cunha, publica uma crónica muito interessante, no Público de hoje, 1º de Maio, pena é que o seu conteúdo, esteja vedado na Internet.
Afinal, o anunciado fim do sigilo bancário, pode em nada contribuir para o combate à corrupção, ou seja existe toda uma experiência de práticas, envolvendo dinheiro vivo, que todos com um pouco de esforço nos podemos lembrar : financiamento de partidos políticos, com entregas de notas envoltas em papel de jornal, todas as receitas provenientes de actividades ilícitas, etc...
Chama ainda a atenção para a deriva totalitária que medidas como a introdução do Chip nas matriculas automóveis, seguramente vão trazer.
Exemplos, bem próximo de nós, como o caso espanhol são citados, com toda a pertinência.
Abençoados os pensadores independentes.
Uma citação :
"Não percebo como o dinheiro em casa tem toda a proteção e o dinheiro no banco fica à mercê de qualquer funcionário."
Um exemplo :
A Espanha quando legislação neste sentido foi introduzida, tornou-se no país desenvolvido, onde mais dinheiro vivo era utilizado.
Felizmente a justiça espanhola tem respondido à altura.
Afinal, o anunciado fim do sigilo bancário, pode em nada contribuir para o combate à corrupção, ou seja existe toda uma experiência de práticas, envolvendo dinheiro vivo, que todos com um pouco de esforço nos podemos lembrar : financiamento de partidos políticos, com entregas de notas envoltas em papel de jornal, todas as receitas provenientes de actividades ilícitas, etc...
Chama ainda a atenção para a deriva totalitária que medidas como a introdução do Chip nas matriculas automóveis, seguramente vão trazer.
Exemplos, bem próximo de nós, como o caso espanhol são citados, com toda a pertinência.
Abençoados os pensadores independentes.
Uma citação :
"Não percebo como o dinheiro em casa tem toda a proteção e o dinheiro no banco fica à mercê de qualquer funcionário."
Um exemplo :
A Espanha quando legislação neste sentido foi introduzida, tornou-se no país desenvolvido, onde mais dinheiro vivo era utilizado.
Felizmente a justiça espanhola tem respondido à altura.
Black magic woman
Sometimes you walk the streets and songs, become living truths right in front of your very eyes*
My man, Stephen Fry
See why here
An excerpt :
"...How I admire your arrogance and rage and misery. How pure and righteous they are and how passionately storm-drenched was your adolescence. How filled with true feeling, fury, despair, joy, anxiety, shame, pride and above all, supremely above all, how overpowered it was by love. My eyes fill with tears just to think of you. Of me. Tears splash on to my keyboard now. I am perhaps happier now than I have ever been and yet I cannot but recognise that I would trade all that I am to be you, the eternally unhappy, nervous, wild, wondering and despairing 16-year-old Stephen: angry, angst-ridden and awkward but alive. Because you know how to feel, and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime, and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul.
I finally know now, as I easily knew then, that the most important thing is love..."
Sgnra. Berlusconi has another point of view
"What's happening today behind a front of bodily curves and female beauty is grave," she wrote, adding, in case no one got it, that it was wrong to use the women as "pieces of costume jewellery" to attract votes. "Someone wrote that all this is to sustain the enjoyment of the Emperor. I agree with this - what has emerged is shameful trash, all in the name of power. I want to make it clear that I and my children are victims and not accomplices in this situation," she said. "We must endure it and it causes us pain."
Read it all here
So now it looks like, "il cavaliere", must add other credentials to his candidates
Read it all here
So now it looks like, "il cavaliere", must add other credentials to his candidates
Young hearts
Many years ago a guy took me with him to a record shop, he wanted me to help him choose a record - from all the ones he wanted to grab I thought this one was the least bad...it even got some poignancy to it.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Resilient
This is just a picture,
of a small tree, against a stormy sky -
it is not much, but it is a picture I found,
it is one that makes me proud,
like a small tree,
standing.
My roving hands
Elegy XIX:
To His Mistress Going to Bed
"License my roving hands, and let them go,
Behind, before, above, between, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,...
To teach thee I am naked first; why than
What needst thou have more covering then a man?"
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labor, I in labor lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir'd with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's Zone glittering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th'eyes of busy fools may be stopt there.
Unlace your self, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envie,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beautious state reveals,
As when from flow'ry meads th'hills shadow steals.
Off with that wiry Coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then softly tread
In this, love's hallow'd temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven's Angels us'd to be
Receiv'd by men: thou Angel bringst with thee?
A heaven like Mahomet's Paradice, and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we eas'ly know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
License my roving hands, and let them go,
Behind, before, above, between, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man man'd,
My mine of precious stones: my emperie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth'd must be,
To taste whole joyes. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls, cast in mens views,
That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them:
Like pictures or like books gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array'd.
Themselves are mystick books, which only wee
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see rever'd. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a midwife show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.
To teach thee I am naked first; why than,
What needst thou have more covering then a man?
John Donne
1699
Happy
I'm an happy man, to have this on my own living room
gracing my yellow-orangy wall that glows at sunset
Berlusconi tales
It looks that after all "Il cavaliere" is on to something...I guess for women voters, he counts only in his own good looks...
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
smart alec
It is also a movie, as seen here, but the most common use is explained below...
Smart alec
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Smart Alec)
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Smart Alec (disambiguation).
A "smart alec" or "smart aleck" is a person regarded as obnoxiously self-assertive and an impudent person.
[edit] Origin
According to Gerald Leonard Cohen, author of Studies in Slang Part 1 (1985), the phrase "smart alec" arose from the exploits of Alec Hoag. A celebrated pimp, thief, and confidence man operating in New York City in the 1840s, Hoag, along with his wife Melinda and an accomplice known as "French Jack", operated a con called the "panel game", a method by which prostitutes and their pimps robbed customers.
The key to his activities was that they did so in close association with two police officers, who shared the loot and provided protection. Most was done by pickpocketing, with Melinda taking the victim’s pocketbook while the victim was otherwise engaged and surreptitiously handing it to Hoag or French Jack as they walked by. Hoag's downfall came because he got into financial difficulties and tried to cheat his police protectors out of their share of the loot. In one exchange, Hoag lay behind a wall in a churchyard and had Melinda drop the goods over the wall to him so that the constables couldn't see them.
The aforementioned "panel game" was a trick also used by the original Smart Alec, although not exclusively by him. George Wilkes, the assistant editor of the Subterranean, met Hoag while Wilkes was falsely imprisoned in the infamous New York prison called The Tombs. Wilkes described the trick in a diary of 1844, The Mysteries of the Tombs: "Melinda would make her victim lay his clothes, as he took them off, upon a chair at the head of the bed near the secret panel, and then take him to her arms and closely draw the curtains of the bed. As soon as everything was right and the dupe not likely to heed outside noises, the traitress would give a cough, and the faithful Aleck (sic) would slily (sic) enter, rifle the pockets of every farthing or valuable thing, and finally disappear as mysteriously as he entered." The victim was then persuaded to leave in a hurry through a window by Alec banging on the door, pretending to be an aggrieved husband who had suddenly returned from a trip away.
Hoag used this trick to avoid paying off his police protectors, so that when he was caught, the police were in no mood to aid him. He was sentenced to jail, but escaped through the help of his brother, only to be recaptured following extensive police searches, having been recognized by Wilkes.
Professor Cohen suggests that Alex Hoag was given the sobriquet of "smart Alec" by the police for being a resourceful thief who outsmarted himself by trying to avoid paying graft. It's impossible to be certain this is the true story, since the expression doesn't appear in print until 1865, but it does seem extremely plausible.
Several of the more reliable dictionaries agree. The Oxford English Dictionary traces it to mid-1860s slang, while the American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed., 2000) and Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (16th ed., 1999) tentatively trace the etymology of the phrase to Hoag.
Ethics vs aesthetics
Or to put it another way :
“It is only after you have come to know the surface of things, that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.” -Italo Calvino
“It is only after you have come to know the surface of things, that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.” -Italo Calvino
Aesthetics vs ethics
Who says aesthetics can't be ethics ? President Silvio Berlusconni for one has the answer...read it here
Monday, April 27, 2009
Light painting
American painter Edward Hopper, composed his scenes very much like a photographer does, organizing the world in a bidimensional universe.
Now a San Francisco art gallery, makes this more clear with this exhibition.
I think that light is what mattered to him and it is the matter of all photographers.
Pearls of wisdom(from unlikely sources...)
"- Some bridges you have to cross, others you have to burn. I'm one you have to burn."
The International
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