Gripe A

Check the date on this story, that came out on Time Magazine...

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.

To Joe Strummer

Another day, another dolar

still not midnight

one thing just leads to another...

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...

just an encore

Buona sera

Maios

Como pude testemunhar hoje em Lagos, um pouco da cultura pagã, sobrevive no Algarve de hoje, onde a tradição dos Maios ou Maias é revivida.
Leia aqui.

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.

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

Lagos, PT

Lagos, PT

Clear wheater, 22 degrees, windy.
Beautiful.

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.

Lucky man

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.