keep walking...

Epigrama - Gregório de Mattos e Guerra

2010-06-30T22:37:00.000-07:00

Que falta nesta cidade?... Verdade.
Que mais por sua desonra?... Honra.
Falta mais que se lhe ponha?... Vergonha.

O demo a viver se exponha,
Por mais que a fama a exalta,
Numa cidade onde falta
Verdade, honra, vergonha.

Quem a pôs neste rocrócio?... Negócio.
Quem causa tal perdição?... Ambição.
E no meio desta loucura?... Usura.

Notável desaventura
De um povo néscio e sandeu,
Que não sabe que perdeu
Negócio, ambição, usura.

Quais são seus doces objetos?... Pretos.
Tem outros bens mais maciços?... Mestiços.
Quais destes lhe são mais gratos?... Mulatos.

Dou ao Demo os insensatos,
Dou ao Demo o povo asnal,
Que estima por cabedal,
Pretos, mestiços, mulatos.

Quem faz os círios mesquinhos?... Meirinhos.
Quem faz as farinhas tardas?... Guardas.
Quem as tem nos aposentos?... Sargentos.

Os círios lá vem aos centos,
E a terra fica esfaimando,
Porque os vão atravessando
Meirinhos, guardas, sargentos.

E que justiça a resguarda?... Bastarda.
É grátis distribuída?... Vendida.
Que tem, que a todos assusta?... Injusta.

Valha-nos Deus, o que custa
O que El-Rei nos dá de graça.
Que anda a Justiça na praça
Bastarda, vendida, injusta.

Que vai pela clerezia?... Simonia.
E pelos membros da Igreja?... Inveja.
Cuidei que mais se lhe punha?... Unha

Sazonada caramunha,
Enfim, que na Santa Sé
O que mais se pratica é
Simonia, inveja e unha.

E nos frades há manqueiras?... Freiras.
Em que ocupam os serões?... Sermões.
Não se ocupam em disputas?... Putas.

Com palavras dissolutas
Me concluo na verdade,
Que as lidas todas de um frade
São freiras, sermões e putas.

O açúcar já acabou?... Baixou.
E o dinheiro se extinguiu?... Subiu.
Logo já convalesceu?... Morreu.

À Bahia aconteceu
O que a um doente acontece:
Cai na cama, e o mal cresce,
Baixou, subiu, morreu.

A Câmara não acode?... Não pode.
Pois não tem todo o poder?... Não quer.
É que o Governo a convence?... Não vence.

Quem haverá que tal pense,
Que uma câmara tão nobre,
Por ver-se mísera e pobre,
Não pode, não quer, não vence.

Poetry: On Time

2010-03-14T01:00:00.000-08:00

Why?
Why what?
Why be on time?
Because you should!
Should what?
Be on time!
Why?
...

'Cause future is unpredictable.
[laugh]

What?
Unpredictability of the future.

How much time have you spent on this?
Who can afford your tomorrow?
Who can secure you about what will go on?

The future is unpredictable,
from tomorrow
to the day of your tomb.

One moment, even short, can be
the solution for your happiness.

Short movies soundtracked by Dido

2009-12-06T22:27:00.000-08:00

Apartments in NY - Important!!!

2009-07-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

Hi, after a while without posting I will post here my experience with one high level asshole in NYC this week.

I sublet one apartment in NY from Apple Keys for a week to receive my family who were coming from brasil to visit NY. When they arrived in NY I called the broker and owner of Apple Keys, Mr. Daniel Cuervo, the biggest bastard in Earth. He told me that unfortunately he had some problems with the apartment and we won't be able to move there. He took us to another apartments. Two of them were the most disgusting places I have ever been. The third option was a very small place (VERYYY), however was at least clean and one block from the apartment I reserved. He said he will move us next day. did not happen. then we were moving on sunday. he did not answer the phone. I called him from another phone from another State, and then he promptly respond to my call. He said that monday morning he will call me and we will move FOR SURE. DId not happen. He said tuesday. Fine. I called him this morning, at 9am as he asked me. He said with strong voice that he told me that we will move today after 10am. He did not answer the phone any more. At 11:30am the manager of the apartment we were let us know that that apartment was booked only until noon. So, we had to leave. My girlfriend's family was on the street in their vacation in NY. no place to stay. And, guess what? Half rent paid plus a 200 dollars deposit. Daniel Cuervo disappeared.

Please, do not trust in this guy and in his company.

best,
marcelo.

Cinema: Nave #527

2009-03-23T20:40:00.002-07:00

Director: Ivan Castell

A little boring in the beginning, but very interesting in the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5txKfuzoN0

Quote: Bertrand Russel

2009-02-15T10:33:00.001-08:00

"what is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable?"

Technology: Google Latitude

2009-02-04T11:05:00.000-08:00

Crazy !!!

Where are we going?

Crisis

2009-01-21T00:03:00.000-08:00

Are we ready to share our belongings, to share our power with our neighbor in case the crisis get worse?

Isn't there something wrong that most of us don't even know who our neighbor is?

Scorpion kick by René Higuita

2009-01-18T13:45:00.000-08:00

Just to bring you what I think is the most amazing soccer kick ever.

This happened in 1995 in a friendly game between Colombia and England in Wembley, starring René Higuita.

Cinema: Los Girasoles Ciegos

2009-01-11T23:37:00.000-08:00

Director: José Luis Cuerda
Cast: Maribel Verdú, Javier Cámara, Raúl Arévalo

One more great great great political movie about the WWII and the impact of Franco's regimen in Spain. The context is quite similar to La Lengua de Las Mariposas (from the same director, 1999), another great spanish movie. I would recommend both. Los Girasoles Ciegos is a more realistic history, analyzing personages' behaviors in times of repression. In other hand, La Lengua de las Mariposas is based in a magic tale, but in any way lacks a strong political and critical view of the time.

Cinema: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2009-01-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, Juan Antonio, Penélope Cruz

After Cassandra's Dream, which was disappointing to me, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is an amazing movie directed and written by Woody Allen. In this movie Woody Allen used Barcelona as the romantic and artistic city, once played by NYC. The history goes about two American girls and one involving Catalan painter, and the intricate love history of them. The search for love, the search for happiness, the search for the meaning of life.

As in many older movies, the director went deep in the personality of the personages, and their interpretations and critics about their life. To me, a good point is the use for conditional thinking of the past and the feeling of guilty that Woody Allen used magically in this movie, and used to use in his old movies. In many parts, if you play attention, the personages try to escape the reality of their life by thinking about taking another way in their past, so that would not being happening now... "If this have never happened,...", "If ... ", "If,..." and many if...

Play attention on the use of IFs by Woody Allen, to me his master is in using this tool to go deep in the psychology of his personages. I hope soon I will post my text about our use of IFs (what I called "conditional thinking of the past"), however I am having a hard time to make it in a readable English.

Cheers.

2009

2008-12-31T15:06:00.000-08:00

Love
Peace
Dreams
Feelings

Hope

Opinion: War in Gaza

2008-12-28T22:29:00.000-08:00

I am sorry, but I have tried to understand what can justify this kind of atrocities against other people, and to me is just to hard to explain.

To me this can be explained, at least partially, due to profound market interests in others territories and in their economy to justify what is happening. I feel really sorry and uncomfortable to be enjoying a "happy" new year and living this king of human's acts near the end of the first decade of the 21st century. We are still so primate, and our behavior is deeply primitive. We are interested in self promotion (based in others opinion) and not in self promotion (based in our opinion about ourselves).

World peace is possible, I want to believe...

Cinema: The Visitor

2008-12-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

Director: Tom McCarthy

Exploring the immigration issues in USA, this is a brilliant movie.
I added in my best movie list.
A drama with political context that has been awarded in different film festivals over the world, I really recommend it.

Music: Blowin' In The Wind

2008-12-17T17:40:00.000-08:00

An old song that is always nice to sing
or at least to read the lyrics. So, here we go:

Blowin' In The Wind

Cinema: Goya's Ghost

2008-12-14T16:30:00.000-08:00

This is a 5 star movie, I will add in my top list.
The film talks about the life of this genius during late 18th century and beginning of the 19th.
If you watch "Life of Others", "Goya's Ghost" brings the same feelings, about Human's arrogance, desire for money, power.
I strongly recommend this film, and soon I will be posting more about Goya, one of my favorite painters.

Cinema: 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile

2008-11-18T19:12:00.000-08:00

Winner of the European Movie Award/2007, this Romenian production is a pretty good movie, but in my opinion far from Live of Others, the winner of the 2006 award. But still is a very good film, not among my top films, but I will recommend to watch it. I would suggest not to read about the movie before watching it, it is better (I think) to watch without knowing what the movie will talk about.

Leave you comment, and I will be glad to get recommendations of movies here, too.

cheers.

Music: Rokia Traore: "Kounandi"

2008-11-17T22:31:00.000-08:00

Rokia Traore is a Malian singer and in this video she is singing "Kounandi" in her TED Talk.

Music: Miriam Makeba

2008-11-10T07:57:00.001-08:00

I am sure everyone knows her music, but maybe does not know her. A beautiful african voice, she died yesterday of a heart attack during a concert in Italy. Just to publish here and let you know about her and maybe you will love her voice too.

Cinema: The Ninth Gate

2008-11-10T07:48:00.000-08:00

A French-Spanish movie, directed by Roman Polanski, both reasons I was excited to watch it. But, it looks like a Hollywood's film production. I did not like it, I would give 2-3 stars in 5, no more than that. Staring Johnny Deep.

Cinema: El Orfanato

2008-11-09T19:45:00.001-08:00

I am not a fan of suspense, but this is a really amazing movie.
It is not among my best movies, but I would advise to watch it. It was awarded in famous international film festivals, and received many Goya prizes. It has been indicated as one of possible recipients of the best European movie this year. Lets see.

USA Elections

2008-11-05T06:39:00.000-08:00

Better now, at least Obama won.
"Democracy is democracy", but it is really interesting to note that such a huge amount of people still want to have McCain as the President.

Hard to change this country.
But... we always hope.

Art: Lost paiting of Van Gogh

2008-11-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

As you may know, Van Gogh was a really poor artist, and most of his paintings were sold just after his death. His brother was providing him with minimal material and money to keep painting. Many times Van Gogh was short of canvas, a quite expensive material for a low income artist. This is one of the theories trying to explain why Van Gogh reused so many of his canvas, painting on top of an existing work. For this reason, it has been an exciting work to try to identify the "lost" canvas by Van Gogh.

Just few months ago one of these paintings was uncovered. Check it out, amazing technology bringing more art to art.

Science: Sexual Medicine

2008-10-31T06:01:00.001-07:00

Just to highlight some news published recently about Sexual Medicine, a theme I am sure is very interesting for all of us.

Read at your own risk.

You must be older than 21.

What is better, penile-vaginal intercourse or foreplay?

Background:

It has been asserted that women's likelihood or consistency of partnered orgasm (her orgasm as a result of sexual activities with a partner) is determined by duration of foreplay, but not by duration of penile–vaginal intercourse.

Study conclusion:

When both sexual activity categories are examined in tandem on a population level, women's likelihood or consistency of partnered orgasm is associated with penile–vaginal intercourse duration, but not with foreplay duration. In contrast to the assumptions of many sex therapists and educators, more attention should be given to improve the quality and duration of penile–vaginal intercourse rather than foreplay.

My comments:

Just to remind the study was done in Czech Republic with about 2300 women. sexual issues are for sure dependent of nationality and cultural background. Thus, this data cannot be generalized.

DOI: 0.1111/j.1743-6109.2008.01041.x

Architecture: Caixa Forum Madrid

2008-10-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

I will be regularly posting masterpieces (in my opinion, of course, :D) of world's architecture.
Use the labels to find out more about architecture in this blog.
Today I am showing my slideshow of this amazing building in the old area of Madrid, designed by Herzog & de Meuron Arch.
If you go to Madrid, stop by and enjoy this modern building and its expositions.

Herzog & de Meuron Arch in Wikipedia
Caixa Forum

US Elections: Wassup to Obama !!!

2008-10-27T05:55:00.000-07:00

Counting down to the Election.
Time to Obama

Opinion: Time-dependent Life Investiment

2008-10-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

I think one of the best ways to understand the complexity of our lives is to look at children's lives. During development, we not just learn how to survive and be successful in the society, but we pay an expensive price: fulfill our feelings with prejudices and fears. Children don't have it. Their lives don't care about these prices. As the years passed, the complexity of the environment and the social relations start to come along. Simple tasks turn to be very complex, with many likely decisions. Doubts about which way to take start to be an almost every day challenge.

Few weeks ago I read in the news a 19-years old hockey player from Russia suddenly died in a game. He was just moving to NYC to play in one of the big teams of hockey. This 19-y old guy was ready to start out his promising career. But this very narrow bridge, which was keeping him alive during the last 19 years, fell off. When the last beat of his heart sounded, his whole life was waiting for the next, which never came. The time between two heartbeats, that is the timing we are subjected in life. An unpredictable second can be the frontier between life and death. In my opinion, while we are dealing with second-to-second decision of our body machinery to give us the permission to live, we cannot afford our mind to work out in an infinitesimal larger timescale. I use to hear people making plans very long in life, losing their energy of the youth as a tool to reach these long run aims. Coincidence or not, many of these people also complain about life, how hard it is. In my opinion any life which is based on long projections and aims is really hard, and probably unlikely, to be successful in terms of happiness. If I could use a mathematical model to explain how I think life should be guided in terms of our objectives in a timescale, I could graph it as shown. Basically, there is no past in the graphic; the time zero is the beginning of our plans and our thinking. The x-axis is the time and the y-axis is our plans/thinking. It is obvious we cannot project anything already passed, but the conditional thinking of the past is a very common mechanism in our minds, and I will explain my opinion about it elsewhere. Most of our energy should be used to delineate our attitudes in a very short timescale, minutes, hours and days. That's is the most predictable timescale we can deal with, and the only one we can be almost sure about what we want. Enough amount of thinking and energy should be spend also planning longer than a couple of days, I would say planning 1 month ahead. This is very important, because a life without medium term plans can be very dangerous in our economical and social systems. A year plan should be matter of some thinking, with more general outlines. Longer than a couple of years plan is comfortable for living, but definitely not necessary for happiness. However, it can be very important for business. I believe long-term plans are psychological defenses used by the frail minds.

Cinema: Back to the Room 666

2008-10-24T23:05:00.001-07:00

Go to the website of the original Room 666, Cannes, 1982.
Room 666

Back to Room 666 from Think Tank on Vimeo.

De Volta ao Quarto 666 from Think Tank on Vimeo.

Recycling

2008-10-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

A new world is possible just changing our minds. It will be very hard to change adults' minds, but we can change new generations' minds and behaviors. We only have to assume our mistakes... kind of hard for Humans, such an incredible specie, able to kill itself.

The world already started to try to save the Nature. One important way is to recycle, so check it out this slide show posted in Reuters.

Best,

And help the planet.
or whatever you can help.

Insomnia Film Festival

2008-10-23T05:58:00.000-07:00

from Apple

On November 15 at 9:00 a.m. EST, the clock starts ticking.

Apple will post the list of required elements for entries in the 2008 Insomnia Film Festival. Then you and your team will have the next 24 hours to make and upload your 3-minute movie. That's the easy part.
Once your movie's up, you'll need to get everyone you know—and then some—to watch and rate it online. If your movie makes the top 25, you can host a showing at the Apple Retail Store. Your adoring fans can download it from the iTunes Store. And it'll be screened by some big-time industry players: John August, Doug Ellin, Jody Hill, Masi Oka, Jason Bateman, Paul Haggis, Greg Mottola, Barry Sonnenfeld.
Earn the #1 rating from either the public or the pros, and you'll land one of two grand prizes. Everyone on your team will get a MacBook Pro, Final Cut Studio 2, Logic Studio, Shake, and a year's worth of One to One personal training to help you use them. Not a bad trade for one night's sleep.

Cinema: The Lives of Others

2008-10-22T14:53:00.000-07:00

It is really hard to do a list of tops. I already said that for my favorite books, and the same happens for my favorites movies. But it is easier to say the movies I think are must see movies, and this is the way I will qualify the movies here. Must see are the best movies, of course.

The Live of Others is a must see, for sure. Already released in some countries, I strongly recommend to watch it. Talks about the socialist part of Germany years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and goes to 1991. The history is about the Stasi, the East Germany secret police and its commitment in spying everyone's else lives and its relationship with the end of the socialist government in Germany and the fall of the Wall.

Go and watch the trailer.
http://www.sonyclassics.com/thelivesofothers/swf/index.html

A world of WEs, and not a world of MEs

2008-10-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

Better late than never, I just watched the Michael Moore’s movie, Sicko and I think is one of the best summaries of the American Life. Of course, even his “anti” – American view is very American. However, I think the essences of the US system are pointed out in this documentary and I strongly recommend watching it, and re-watching it. Some concepts are leading concepts in Human societies, which were being losing in ours modern societies, maybe the most important the feeling of solidarity. The Health care system in US highlighted in this movie is just one example of the individualist, money-based market created in this devastating economical, political and social system. It is not a dangerous bite which kills suddenly, instead is a tumor that grows slowly and disseminate all over the body keeping just very few cells alive. Our hope is these few cells to grow and combat these cancerous cells. It is a hard task, but not impossible. Another world is possible. It has to be possible.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/dvd/trailer.html

Technology: Apple News

2008-10-12T22:39:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow Apple will present some new innovation in the laptop's world. As the invitations say, "The Spotlight turns to Notebooks". Lets wait and see what will happen tomorrow. Rumors point out to a new laptop for about 800 dollars, the cheapest Apple laptop. For now, just rumors, tomorrow we will see.

TED Prize 2007

2008-10-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

Last october 3rd, James Nachtwey TED Prize wish was unrevealed.
Watch the videos.

Opinion: Crisis

2008-10-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

Almost a week without posts! One can think I forgot my blog or at least the excitement of the first weeks... that can be true, but it is not. The fact is in the last couple weeks, and mainly in the last week, we have seen a profound crisis of our economic system. So, most of my reading was spent trying to follow what is going on. Of course is really hard to understand, at least for someone with no economy background. Thus, writing about something I do not understand did not sound good to me.

Anyway, I will just post a few comments about what I feel. Months ago I remember having some discussions with good friends about how things were looking like in the world. In few years in Brazil we saw people like me, without any background and little clue in economy rising in their finances working with stocks ... Many people changed their jobs and entered this growing area of enrichment, with many new agencies opening every week in Brazil to take care of the "market". I am sure that was a golden age. I am using was, because I am telling about my feelings, and this is my feeling. Historically, after the golden age, comes the depression. This crisis, to me, seems to show up the depression is coming. With almost 50% negative during the crisis, Bovespa is keeping many of these unprepared new business (wo)men afraid of what can happen. What was money yesterday, today is just a piece of paper, almost without any value. Of course, everything is not crashed, yet. But reached a point where people are really worried, at least is what I am hearing from people.

Last week I tried to buy my iPhone. I went to an Apple store, with all the paperwork I needed. After filling up the forms, I was surprised I had to pay 500 dollars deposit because I did not have credit here. I was just arrived, how could I have credit? So, basically they explain me to get credit in a short period of time I should apply for a credit card, and then in a couple of months this deposit value could drop out to almost zero. I left the store without my iPhone, of course. But, at that point, I realized basic things about this crisis. In the north-american way, people have to have credit to be part of the system. Through the years, this enormous amount of credit generated a huge deficit... it is a virtual money, the real money does not exist... one gives credit to another. If you don't want to use credit, then you are out. You have to pay 500 deposit for a cool iPhone.

If you think this in a mega (now a giga, almost a tera) market as US, then the proportions go to trillions of dollars. And where is the money to cover the crisis? there is no such amount of money, at least not available once there are other trillions going to important political and economical tasks, as weapons and wars.

I think this system is over, or at least should be over. In a society based on credit, there is a constant and enormous pressure on the people to keep getting money to pay their debits, and be able to get new credits to buy more stuff. Maybe is time for a new Marx and Engels to emerge and propose to the world a new system.

Any ideas?

send to google 10^100 if you have it.

I don't.

World: World Peace is Possible

2008-10-04T21:38:00.000-07:00

In the last few months we have found in the news a dramatic increase in armed conflicts, from Georgia to Bolivia. More powerful wars, as the one against Iran, are being avoid, maybe because of the nuclear power of Iran, maybe because of economical interests in that region. To me sounds really scary the world is still promoting wars, when politics and diplomacy should be enough to resolve most of the regional problems.

I found very exciting when I got this poster by email from a campaign posted in the Amsterdam International Airport, and I will do my best to spread the idea as much as I can, unless this organization proves itself useless, as many others did.

I hope people can rise their feelings against war and against corruption, terrorism, hypocrisy, ...

Best always.

World Peace is Possible

Poetry: Wislawa Szymborska

2008-10-02T20:39:00.000-07:00

I would like to recommend a poet who won the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1996, Wislawa Szymborska. She was born in Poland in 1923, and in 1945 released her first poem, "I am looking for a word". It is one of my top writers, and maybe my best poet, but it is really hard to make a list of the best ones...

She was translated in many languages, but I failed to find in portuguese. I read a couple of books translated to spanish, which I did not like. I feel bad I do not have the books with me, and I do not remember the name of the translators to post here...

I did read one book in english, and I loved it. Its title is "Poems New and Collected" translated by Stanislaw Baranckzak and Clare Cavanagh (PEN Prize).

Here a short passage,

I hope you like it and share here your suggestions of poets.

Cheers.

[...]

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with exactly the same kisses.

[...]

Why do we treat the fleeting day

with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

[...]

Opinion: Why a blog?

2008-09-30T19:18:00.000-07:00

It was more than 10 years ago, I do not remember exactly the date. The first mobile phones were arriving in my city, a medium-sized town in the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre. My uncle, a successful business man at that time was the first one I knew to get it. He could talk everywhere, wirelessly. Or almost, we can never forget the batteries used to last a couple of hours, so the charger should be carried everywhere. But still, it was very exciting. Of course the bills were pretty expensive and not affordable to the great majority of people, but the excitement was. However, I was completely against cell phones. It was just one of many things I was against in the beginning of my adolescence.

Nobody listened to me.

Mobile phones expanded and years later my parents got theirs. I was against once more, but did not matter. Technology evolution was much stronger than my adolescent revolution. I failed. Calls to (or from) my parents mobile phones were classified as really essentials, as the bills were still pretty high. Thus, just major calls could be done. As the time was passing, the concept of major calls was fading...

It was the time to get my own cell phone, and I was not adolescent anymore. As an young adult, I kept my “against” feeling, and rejected to have my own cell phone... but I failed once more. Today, there is 1 cell phone for every 4 people in the world, what means that there are almost more cell phones in Earth than people living out of the poverty range.

Some weeks ago, I read in the newspaper that email is getting old, and it is not a technology used by young people anymore. Indeed, the average age of email users is 47 years-old. The new generation is using web-based communities, chats, living messengers, and so on to communicate in almost real time. Time-delayed messaging is over for them. The need for rapid reply (at least psychologically) is mandatory.

So, I think I am afraid to be one of the last ones to get my own “cell-phone” again.

Sharing opinions, experiences, and views seems to be a plausible way to bring new ideas to light and to find out what make him/her/me/us happy (or happier). This is my view (more a hope).

Travel Tips

2008-09-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

I am very glad I received some criticisms about the travel tips posted in this blog.

As you will find, those tips were deleted of this blog, mainly because they were a little out of the way this blog is being constructed.

My aim here is to bring general information about themes I found relevant in my daily life. One would ask if I do not feel traveling an important topic of my daily life. Of course I do. But some months ago, together with a good friend, we proposed to publish a website with travel tips, real advices for travelers who wants to experience local life, instead of traditional tourism. Because of the costs of the webpage, we could not keep it running, thus we are now publishing (very soon) a blogspot about this theme.

So, please, all my travel tips will be posted there. Find out more info in the link:

Daonde-praonde Blogspot

Thanks,

and I hope you will find out this blog more interesting and clean.

Marcelo.

Architecture: California Academy of Sciences Museum

2008-09-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

Today was the opening day of the new Museum of the California Academy of Sciences located in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. It has been considered the most "green" building in the world. In the roof, there is a huge grass carpet with 10.000 squared meters mimicking the elevations in San Francisco geography. Because of the grass and the windows that control the air entrance, the building is kept in an almost constant temperature, virtually without needing of air conditioning. Moreover, the roof works as a water container, taking about 13 millions liters of water per year, which will be used in the museum.

The project cost about half billion dollars and was designed by the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano.

More info:

Renzo Piano website

California Academy of Sciences

El País

Book: On the Shortness of Life

2008-09-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

On the Shortness of Life

translated by John W. Basore, Loeb Classical Library

London: William Heinemann, 1932

One of my favorite books, it was written hundreds of years ago. Seneca (Σένεκας ) was a Roman philosopher born in the Spanish territory of the Roman Empire in 4 B.C. The link above is a internet available translation of this book. For those who like to have the paper book, I also advise to buy the version translated by C.D.N. Costa, available in amazon.com in the following link book .

Here is a small passage of the book:

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.

I hope you enjoy the reading.

Grant Opportunities: Grand Challenges Explorations

2008-09-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

This is a copy & paste from the following website http://www.gcgh.org/Explorations/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Once more, an opportunity to get some money for projects compromised on helping global health.

Creative, unorthodox thinking is essential to overcoming the most persistent challenges in global health. The first vaccines were developed over 200 years ago because revolutionary thinkers dared to try an entirely new approach to preventing disease.

The power of innovation is at work in countless other fields, from space travel to the Internet: now is the time to harness that power to save lives and improve the health of millions of people in the developing world.

Grand Challenges Explorations will foster innovation in global health research and expand the pipeline of ideas that merit further exploration. The initiative will use an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants will be awarded multiple times per year at approximately $100,000 each. Additional funding of $1 million or more will be available for projects that show promise.

Applications for Grand Challenges Explorations Round 2 are now being accepted
Applications will be accepted from September 2, 2008 to November 2, 2008

loxP/Cre-recombinase system

2008-09-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

The loxP/Cre-recombinase system has been amply used in medical research to generate tissue specific gene modulation. Expressing the bacteriophage Cre recombinase enzyme under cell-specific promoters in animals and crossing them with target gene floxed animals (loxP-gene-loxP), it has turned an easy way to get cell specific knock-down animals. In the last issue of PNAS, a beautiful work by Grégoire and Kmita from Université de Montréal showed that recombination between inverted loxP sites in chromosome 2 of mice is citotoxic for proliferating cells. With this tool, the researchers were able to conditionally induce apoptosis in defined cells.

I think the availability of this technique can help to understand the function of many proliferating cell types in adult mammals.

Find the article here http://www.pnas.org/content/105/38/14492

Google 10^100

2008-09-25T01:54:00.000-07:00

May Those

Who Help

The Most Win

It seems Google is older than that, but it is not. Google is completing 10 years, and as part of the anniversary Google launched a global competition for breakthrough ideas to change the world.

10.000.000 dollars will be granted to the best 5 ideas submitted to Google. So, bring to light your best idea about how to help people in the world and how to help the planet.

Go to the website and double check categories and how to participate.

Good luck.

http://www.project10tothe100.com/index.html

TED Prize - 2007

2008-09-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

This first post want to remind you next October, 3 the whole world will share the experience of James Nachtwey, TED Prize 2007, through his pictures. His intent is to reveal a under-reported face of the global crisis. The full story will be published in Time magazine and also broadcasted in several places around the globe and in the www.

Join and enjoy.

Go to nachtwey TED Prize webpage.

Hope brings you new ideas about how to help the globe.

See next post to share your ideas.