Saturday, December 15, 2007

Imperdível

Entrevista de Oscar Niemeyer ao Paulo Henrique Amorim no Conversa Afiada.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Lull

The current lull in posting has been due to the fact that I'm moving, and hence all my tiny splinters of spare time have been spent searching and purchasing furniture and house apparels.

Not to mention I'll do the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu in the New Year's week, and have had to do a bit of working out to catch up.

On climate change

Here are excerpts of an excelent article from the always excellent Martin Wolf at the Financial Times, which I take the liberty of publishing here.

I am sure Mr Wolf will not mind this minor copyright infringement when it spreads out further the message he's putting forward.

Why the climate change wolf is so hard to kill off
By Martin Wolf
FT, December 4th, 2007

The point of the story of the boy who cried wolf is that, finally, a wolf did appear. I feel the same way about the intellectual heirs of Thomas Malthus. Malthusians have finally found a wolf called climate change. Many now agree. But it is far away and coming slowly. “If the worst comes to the worst,” mutter the rich to themselves, “we can always let our children cope.”

This is the complacency that the latest Human Development Report from the United Nations Development Programme attacks. It does a good job, too. But does it do a good enough job to turn the Bali climate change conference into a call for effective action? I fear not. This is not because it fails to make a morally sound case. It is rather because humanity will change its behaviour only when convinced that the lifestyle the better off enjoy now – and the rest of the world aspires to – remains in reach.

(...)


(...)

Can the world do better in future? Yes, but it will find it hard. If we are to understand why, we must confront the fact that the world is far from a single country. This creates three huge problems: collective (in)action; perceived injustice; and indifference.

First, not only does each country want to be a free rider on the efforts of others but none feels wholly responsible for the outcome.

Second, the contributions made by different countries to the problem have been (and remain) enormously different. Collectively, the rich countries account for seven out of every 10 tonnes of CO2 emitted since the start of the industrial era. While China is the biggest emitter in the world, its emissions are still only one-fifth of US levels per head. India’s are one-fifteenth.

Third, as the report spells out in compelling detail, the heaviest cost will be borne by the world’s poor. Among the most frightening consequences are those for rainfall and glaciers: water shortages could become severe across large swaths of the globe. Poor people are far less able to cope with climatic disasters than rich ones. But this, if we were honest, is why the rich are unlikely to make the huge reductions in emissions the report demands. The powerful will continue to act without much consideration for the poor. This, after all, is a world that spends 10 times as much on defence (much of it useless) as on aid to poor countries.

(...)

How might this change? The answer is that we must appeal at least as much to people’s self-interest as to their morality.

(...)

Two things are needed. The first is convincing evidence that the true risks are larger than many now suppose. Conceivable feedback effects might, for example, generate temperature increases of 20°C. That would be the end of the world as we know it. I cannot imagine a rational person who would not seek to eliminate even the possibility of such outcomes. But if we are to do that, we must also act very soon.

The second requirement is to demonstrate that it is possible for us to thrive with low-carbon emissions. People in the northern hemisphere are not going to choose to be cold now, in order to prevent the world from becoming far too hot in future. China and India are not going to forgo development, either. These are realities that cannot be ignored.

(...)

In short, if they are to tolerate radical change in energy use, people must first be frightened and then they must be offered a good way out. The truth, moreover, is that this will happen only if the US also takes the lead. No country will deliver radical cuts if the US does not do so, too. No leaps forward in science and technology will occur if the US is not prepared to commit its resources to those ends. The US can no longer wait for a lead from others. Either it takes the lead now or the cause, in all probability, will be lost. Our children and grandchildren will then find out whether it was a real wolf or not.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

What did England and Brazil have in common tonight?

What did England and Brazil have in common tonight?

Both sent their star-studded, astronomically-paid, highly-hyped national football teams to play on home soil, in their largest cities, against opposition that, while having good campaigns, is a bit substandard on a name-by-name basis. e.g. most players in the opposition first-choice 11 are either in lower-ranking leagues, or are reserves in average teams of top leagues.

Still, both were thoroughly outplayed, as:
- their hapless, seemingly lost coaches made blunders out of team selections (Carson? SWP? Mineiro? Gilberto?) and substitutions (Bent for Joe Cole? Josue for Ronaldinho?);
- their central midfielders were unable to exchange the simplest of passes;
- their forwards could not connect and resorted to individual glimpses that were most of the times simple to contain;
- their defense, missing first-choice starters, was wreaked havoc upon by previously unknown players who dribbled around in Ballon D'Or exhibitions (Luka Modric in Wembley and Cristian Rodríguez at the Morumbi);
- the opposition taught a lesson of teamwork over the disorganized bunches of big names.

The differences?

For England, it was an all-or-nothing match, and now they're out of the Euro, while Brazil's match against Uruguay was still at a fifth of the campaign.

And Brazil actually won its game - though, seriously, I repeat, outplayed - thanks to three things England missed:
- an excellent keeper playing at his best (Julio Cesar);
- a top-notch, classy, flawless defender (Juan);
- and a centre-forward who was not only willing and able, but also lucky (Luis Fabiano).

Monday, November 12, 2007

Urubu voar de costas

Não precisa gostar dele, nem ser pró-Lula, pra gostar desta entrevista genial do Paulo Henrique Amorim na Caros Amigos.

Eu sempre votei PSDB e acho que vou continuar votando, mas, PHA, você é dez.

http://conversa-afiada.ig.com.br/materias/465001-465500/465343/465343_1.html

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Soros, Orwell, Rove...

Excellent discussion on political discourse and advertisement, and on manipulation of truth.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/george_soros/2007/11/from_popper_to_rove_and_back.html

Sunday, November 04, 2007

What I'm listening to

This is definitely a year of female singers for me. Marisa Monte, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and now Maria Rita.


Soon I'll be compiling my yearly lists of favorites, as in the previous years. But`it'll probably be no surprises.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Subtle

SUBTLE

BUSTLE

TUBES
BELTS
BUSTS
BLUES

LUST
LEST
BUST
BELT
BEST
BETS
BLUT
BLUE
SETS
STUB
TUBE
USES

BUS
BET
BUT
LET
SUB
SET
USE

Friday, October 26, 2007

We were singing...

An excellent article on a classic song.

American Pie and the day the music died
Joe Queenan on Don McLean's classic slice of 1950s nostalgia

Friday October 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
http://music.guardian.co.uk/vinylword/story/0,,2199890,00.html

American Pie is a song that has been mocked by sophisticates ever since it first aired in 1972. Lyrics like "I was a lonesome teenage bronkin' buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck" helped the ridicule gain traction, though not among McLean's fellow bronkin' bucks, whose numbers presumably included Bruce Springsteen, a stripling who would later make a fortune writing this kind of ebullient malarkey.
But unlike other songs that have been mocked by sophisticates, American Pie was not, and is not, universally hated, not even by hipsters. This puts it in an entirely different class than Ebony and Ivory, Tuesday Afternoon, Achy-Breaky Heart or Piano Man, songs whose very existence seems to presage the dawn of the Apocalypse, songs that shatter one's faith in the inevitability of human progress, songs that from the very first time you hear them make you want to move to another solar system.

American Pie falls into the same broad class as Bohemian Rhapsody and La Vida Loca, bouncy, peppy, massively overplayed songs that quickly become so much a part of life's rich tapestry that despising them is like despising your pajamas. These songs may be pretentious. They may be pompous. They may be ridiculous. They may be on the radio 24 hours a day, even in the basement of a freezing Smolensk whorehouse. They may be sung partially in Spanish. And yes, at a certain level, they may be inane. But they mean no harm. They do not threaten our faith in the universe. Most important of all, they remind us that given the choice between the silly and the idiotic, the silly wins hands down.
American Pie was written by the then-unknown Don McLean in the spring of 1971, the same year Carole King's mega-platinum Tapestry appeared. With such songs as It's Too Late and So Far Away, Tapestry decisively signaled that the manic Sixties were over, that it was time for young people to step back, take stock, simmer down, chill out, nest. From this point on, the tens of millions of Baby Boomers born shortly after the Second World War, the raucous, seditious don't-trust-anyone-over-thirty crowd, would spend the rest of their lives waxing nostalgic for the Sixties, obsessing about their implausible children, buying reasonably priced home furnishings, and waiting for Sting to learn how to play the lute.

American Pie is notable because it is not nostalgic for the decade that precedes it, but for the Fifties, and particularly for the music of the late Fifties, and particularly for the music of Buddy Holly. Being nostalgic for the Fifties just 18 months after the Sixties ended took a certain amount of chutzpah, because the whole point of the Sixties was across-the-board rejection of the bland, featureless 1950s. By the time McLean's song was released, the doo-wop band Sha Na Na, who had performed at Woodstock, were already making a name for themselves. But Sha Na Na was a joke. Fifties nostalgia would later dominate the musical Grease, but the makers of Grease also viewed the Fifties through the prism of irony. McClean, by contrast, took the 1950s seriously and deeply mourned their passing.

"The day the music died" referred to in the lyrics is February 3, 1959, when a small plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and an artist known as the Big Bopper crashed on its way to Fargo, North Dakota, with no survivors. To McLean, this was a tragedy beyond repair, not only because the music of the Fifties - and particularly Holly's - was so beautiful and chipper and innocent but because America itself was beautiful, chipper and innocent. The specific date when America lost its putative innocence has been the subject of many songs, books and newspaper editorials, not to mention films like Quiz Show and Platoon. Some say it occurred in Vietnam, others when John Kennedy was assassinated, still others when Martin Luther King went down for the count. Purists contend that after Hiroshima and Nagisaki, any further discussion of America's lost innocence was veering toward the tasteless; hard-core chronology buffs go all the way back to Wounded Knee and other massacres of defenseless American Indian women and children to buttress their case that America had lost its innocence far earlier than Oliver Stone or Don McLean might suspect. In all likelihood, few of the young black men being lynched by the Klan in the years leading up to the Big Bopper's tragic death would have agreed with the verdict that America had not yet lost its innocence.

Eight and a half minutes long, American Pie was chopped up into two parts for its original commercial release. Zippy, rollicking, congenially repetitive, with a chorus so infectious that the irrepressible Madonna once used it in a completely unexpected graveside sing-along in The Next Best Thing, American Pie is the sort of song it is easy to make fun of, and is often ridiculed by music critics whose literary skills do not approach Don McLean's, much less Buddy Holly's. But for many of us, the very fact that someone could live the rest of his life off the royalties from a song containing the words, "The three men I admired most, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast" affirms that in America, literally anything is possible and foreigners should never dare screw around with us.

McLean, who also wrote And I Love Her So for Elvis Presley and the precious Vincent (Starry Starry Night) for himself, attended Villanova University, a tony institution located a few miles outside Philadelphia. Villanova's tony student body would later include Jim Croce, famous for the nostalgic, wistful hit Time in a Bottle.

Jim Croce died in an airplane crash in 1973.

Oh-ee-oh.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Spin

SPIN
SNIP
PINS
NIPS

SIP
PIN
PSI
SIN

NIP
PI

Sunday, October 14, 2007

É amigo...

Digitar "Galvão Bueno" no youtube dá uma série de vídeos hilários, principalmente asneiras em jogos e corridas, com ocasionais offs como o histórico "só se eu der uma marretada na caebça do Pelé".

Mas talvez o mais inusitado seja o vídeo dele comendo sanduíches no Emirates Stadium num jogo do Brasil - http://youtube.com/watch?v=TqMW-npOCW4

Friday, September 28, 2007

Sint-Maartenstraat


Typical night at the Sint-Maartenstraat flat (which I visited back briefly this week).

Overworked, tired, I sit down to have a Jupiler with stuff I bought at the Frituur.

Nice. But it was so much better in summer.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Air chaos, again

Not a recent article, but harsh, direct, worrying, and most of all, TRUE.

I am ashamed.


The World's Worst Airline
By Elizabeth Spiers
The Washington Post
Sunday, July 22, 2007; Page B02

TAM Linhas Aereas is the worst airline in the world. I've been saying that since early April, when my boyfriend and I took a short vacation in Brazil and returned happy with our stay but traumatized by the air travel. So last week when a TAM Airbus 320 on an inbound domestic route skidded off the Sao Paulo airport runway, tried to take off again, and crashed into a cargo building owned by the same carrier, exploding on impact and incinerating nearly 200 people, I felt angrily (and okay, smugly) justified in my condemnation.

It's not entirely TAM's fault that it's a terrible airline; it's also Brazil's fault. And this crash illustrates why. We flew TAM from New York to Sao Paulo and then to Manaus, back to Sao Paulo then to Rio de Janeiro, back to Sao Paulo again, then back to New York, all in the space of nine days. Every flight was delayed by hours or canceled. My boyfriend, who has been a travel writer for more than 15 years and has landed on runways consisting mostly of grass, with a cinderblock terminal building and the local welcoming party covered in nothing but mud and chicken feathers, also insists that TAM provided the worst air travel he has ever experienced.
Some of the delays were bureaucratic and intrinsic to TAM, but many of them were intrinsic to the state-run airports. It's difficult to manage foot traffic in relatively small terminals that were not designed to handle a large number of travelers.

In many cases, the semblance of order was considered just as good as actual order, and the most obvious manifestation of this pseudo-organization is the creation of neat rows of people. Passengers are kept in line, literally and figuratively. For us, this often meant standing in line for an hour in order to be allowed to stand in another line, which in turn led to another line, which was, if we were lucky, the ticketing line. Then there was the security line, the boarding line and sometimes another security line, in case the first one missed the inevitable bottle of breast milk or tube of hair gel a would-be terrorist might use to hijack a plane.

Standing in line was second only to waiting while receiving no new information as the quintessential experience of Brazilian air travel. After finally boarding a flight from Manaus to Sao Paulo, we sat for several hours and were served dinner by the flight crew. Perhaps because flight officials feared an overnight stay on the Manaus runway, we were told to disembark because the flight was canceled. More than an hour later, the luggage arrived.

Not content to leave the airport without one last episode of standing in line, we waited to get vouchers for the designated hotel, the Taj Mahal, which in giant gold letters affixed to the entrance declared itself a five-star establishment and featured a revolving rooftop restaurant with an Astroturf floor and a view of Manaus's more colorful trash bins. After our scenic breakfast the next morning, we arrived several hours early at the airport, stood in line for the requisite half a day and waited expectantly to be told that our flight was delayed. We were not disappointed.

As we watched customers scrambling between the gate for Buenos Aires (marked "New York") and the gate for New York (marked "Buenos Aires"), it was unsurprising to find a woman in front of us in the middle of a nervous breakdown, screaming at a TAM attendant and crying hysterically. It was very surprising to find that no one else was screaming.

The larger problems can be attributed to the constraints under which Brazil forces TAM to operate. Nearly every flight to a major Brazilian city from a major metropolitan area is compulsively routed through the largest city in the country. If you want to fly direct, it probably won't be on a Brazilian carrier. As it happens, the largest city's airport has the most infamously short runway. The runway at Sao Paulo is 6,362 feet long -- 641 feet shorter than that of La Guardia and too short for the pilot of TAM Flight 3054 to land safely on a wet surface, which caused him to try to take off again, with catastrophic results.

This is normal procedure in Sao Paulo. Pilots are instructed to do it when the allotted stretch of runway won't suffice. To add to the risk, the runway was repaved in June, which may have resulted in the already dangerously short stretch being dangerously slippery as well.
If you manage to make it safely onto or off the runway, you still have to contend with Brazilian air-traffic control, which is run by the Brazilian military, an increasingly disenfranchised institution that has resisted transition to civilian control -- perhaps because in peacetime, it needs reasons to justify its existence. Air traffic infrastructure is woefully out of date; upgrading it, while ultimately necessary, is considered too expensive. The consequences of Brazil's patchy radar system were particularly apparent in September when a Boeing 737 operated by another major Brazilian airline hit a private jet over part of the Amazon, with 154 casualties -- an event that led air-traffic controllers to strike, saying they were being unfairly blamed.

The alternative would be to force Brazilian air travel to conform to the limitations of the country's existing infrastructure. This would mean scheduling fewer flights, which would result in less revenue from tourism, which is increasingly responsible for the country's economic growth. State officials are not willing to do this, either.

As long as the Sao Paulo runway remains too short, the air-traffic controllers remain underpaid and poorly equipped, the market remains uncompetitive, and state officials remain in denial about the inevitability of more accidents stemming from overcapacity in an already strained system, the likelihood that last week's accident won't be (as news reports called it) "the country's worst air disaster" will only increase. And however gorgeous Brazil is, I won't be heading back anytime soon.


Elizabeth Spiers is a writer who lives in New York.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Pinta de campeão

Da narração do Terra:

"04 min GOOOOOOOOLLLLL DO SÃO PAULO!!! Breno é lançado pelo lado direito, passa por Pedrinho, ganha dividida com Rodrigo Souto, deixa Kléber no chão e chuta para o fundo do gol. Um golaço do jovem zagueiro!"

Friday, September 14, 2007

What about now, Steve?

I don't like Richard Williams - though he's the most senior Guardian Football writer - but hats off to him for this excellent, point-blank, sharply written analysis of England's options.

Now all McClaren has to do is bench Rooney
With England finally purring, how does Steve McClaren tell England's missing senior players that they're not needed?

Richard Williams
September 14, 2007 12:10 AM

One way and another, that was not a bad night for Steve McClaren. Before his own eyes and those of the Football Association international board, Guus Hiddink was revealed not to be the omniscient Sun Tzu of football coaching. And over in Lisbon, Luiz Felipe Scolari ended the evening by landing a left jab on the cheek of a Serbian player after watching his own Portuguese team surrender points at home for the second time in four days. As McClaren calmly shook hands with the defeated Hiddink, those FA blazers must have been thinking that perhaps they hired the right man, after all.

Now all McClaren has to do is figure out a way to tell Wayne Rooney that there will be no place for him in the starting line-up when England return to Wembley to face Estonia next month. And then he will have to deliver the same message to Owen Hargreaves, to Frank Lampard and - if they recover their fitness in time - to those two old friends, David Beckham and Gary Neville.

With six points tucked away from two crucial games, six goals in the bag and a pair of clean sheets, McClaren must be rubbing his eyes at the wonder of it all. He deserves credit of course, particularly from those of us who have regularly questioned his right to the job of England's head coach, for reacting to adverse circumstances by making two decisions that turn out to have been extremely astute.

First, he reacted to the injuries to Lampard and Hargreaves by inserting Gareth Barry alongside Steven Gerrard in the position from which he has been captaining Aston Villa under Martin O'Neill. Two excellent captains of big clubs next to each other in the central midfield is not a bad foundation.

Second, he refused to heed the claims of Everton's Andrew Johnson and Tottenham's Jermain Defoe to partner Owen when the Liverpool forward Peter Crouch was suspended for last Saturday's Israel match, instead courting ridicule by reaching back into the past and recalling Emile Heskey on the basis of his current form for Wigan Athletic and his familiarity with Michael Owen.

Amply rewarded, McClaren can congratulate himself both on his shrewdness and his luck. No doubt he always had belief in the former. The latter, however, will have come as a pleasant surprise.

So at least his recent successes will have given McClaren a measure of personal authority as he confronts the problems posed by returning players. There will be a degree of pain and unhappiness on the faces of those he must disappoint, but he will be making his pronouncements from a position of relative strength.

How, though, does he break the news to the most talented English footballer of his generation, to the only man who performed with true distinction in the last World Cup, to the player who can be relied on to score 20 goals a season for his club from midfield, to the world's most famous footballer, and to the most loyal of servants?

Taking them in ascending order of difficulty, Neville will surely be the easiest to placate, not least because, after such a long period out with injury, he is probably the furthest from match fitness. The Manchester United captain has seen for himself what his Manchester City rival can bring to the side, and he also knows that an injury to either of the established central defenders would mean a switch to the middle for Micah Richards.

Beckham, too, has the excuse of sporadic recent activity to help him rationalise a place on the bench. During his time at Real Madrid he showed that he was not above accepting such a decision and continuing to give his best. Even a couple of minutes as a sub, of course, would allow him to get nearer to the personal goal of 100 caps.

As for Lampard, he will probably remind McClaren that he scored England's only goal against Germany last month. His long history of failing to perform in tandem with the undroppable Gerrard, however, is more than enough justification for inviting him to sit on the sidelines.

The only real injustice will have to be done to Hargreaves, so outstanding in the disastrous campaign in Germany, so committed and so thoroughly professional in everything he does. Having established his niche in the team, he must now accept that England have a midfield which has achieved enough in two games to deserve a further chance to test itself. Fate being what it is, his chance will come again.

And, finally, comes Rooney, the player whose name was the last thing on the lips of the departing Sven-Goran Eriksson, with a stern injunction to look after the country's most valuable footballer. Of course the £30m Rooney is a better player than Emile Heskey. But he is not a better player alongside Michael Owen, whose three goals against Israel and Russia restated the Newcastle United striker's importance to the national team.

Rooney's own scoring record for England would be unacceptable in a less gifted player, but he has yet to compensate with the kind of contribution that brings the goals out of his team-mates. To leave out Chelsea's Joe Cole - after one humdrum performance in a position he has worked hard to master - and to put Rooney out on the left would be to tinker unnecessarily with a line-up that, as things stand, appears to have the right balance for McClaren's purposes.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Warioware on Wii

Andrea and Daniel got hooked to the Wii at Michelle's place last weekend.


Michelle watched and tipped them as I took charge of the pics.

Friday, September 07, 2007

CN tower. As I see it.


During the day.


At night.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Ainda a Vale

Será que esta matéria seria escrita se a Vale ainda fosse estatal...?

Executivos na vitrine | 23.08.2007
Após anos de trabalho, a Vale conseguiu formar uma geração de profissionais globais de primeira linha. Bom para ela. E para os concorrentes

Por Larissa Santana
EXAME


Durante uma recente teleconferência com analistas, o presidente da Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, Roger Agnelli, deixou de lado por alguns instantes os números sobre o resultado da companhia no trimestre para fazer um comentário, no mínimo, incomum. "Muitos dos bons executivos que temos aqui estão se tornando presidentes em diferentes companhias", afirmou Agnelli aos ouvintes. Ele se referia a profissionais como o ex-gerente de projetos de não-ferrosos da Vale Luciano Ramos, que assumiu a presidência da recém-aberta operação da mineradora inglesa London Mining no Brasil, em maio. Ou como Nelson Silva, que deixou a Vale no final de 2006 para assumir o comando da divisão de alumínio da BHP Billiton, em Londres. Durante o primeiro semestre deste ano, 20 diretores e gerentes -- dos quase 1 000 que comandam as operações da Vale -- saíram da mineradora. Desse contingente, oito faziam parte de um grupo de executivos mapeados na linha de sucessão hierárquica da Vale. Eles agora estão no alto escalão de empresas como as siderúrgicas Arcelor Mittal e CSN. "Antes as nossas pessoas, em geral, saíam para ocupar cargos equivalentes em outras empresas", diz Marco Dalpozzo, diretor de recursos humanos da Vale. "Agora é mais comum que elas saiam daqui para dar um salto na carreira."

Os executivos da Vale entraram no radar de outras empresas, em primeiro lugar, pela crescente projeção internacional que a companhia ganhou nos últimos anos -- um processo semelhante ao da fabricante de aviões Embraer, que também virou alvo de concorrentes, como a americana Gulfstream. A aquisição da Inco, por 13 bilhões de dólares, em outubro de 2006, e recentes projetos em países como Moçambique e Peru estenderam a presença da companhia a 40 países. A receita bruta da Vale cresceu mais de 400% entre 2000 e 2006, quando o faturamento chegou a 46 bilhões de reais. A Vale tornou-se a segunda maior mineradora do mundo -- atrás apenas da BHP Billiton. Essa pujança acabou colocando seus profissionais numa espécie de vitrine global. Some-se a isso o fato de que o aquecimento da demanda de minério em todo o mundo aumentou a disputa por executivos que conheçam esse setor e fica fácil entender o porquê de tanto assédio na mineradora brasileira. "Nos últimos cinco anos, o mercado de minério de ferro cresceu 25%", afirma Jorge Beristain, analista do Deutsche Bank. "E esse é um setor que sofre com escassez de gente." No Grupo Foco, que representa no Brasil a consultoria de headhunting americana Staton Chase, a inclusão de executivos da Vale em processos de seleção ganhou força nos últimos meses. Entre junho e agosto, sete diretores e gerentes da empresa foram sondados -- todos para vagas em fabricantes de máquinas para mineração, que pegam carona no crescimento do setor.

Os recrutadores e os concorrentes estão atrás de gente como a mineira Vanessa Torres, que acaba de embarcar para Perth, no interior da Austrália. Aos 37 anos, 15 deles dentro da Vale, Vanessa acaba de assumir a vice-presidência de desenvolvimento de negócios na área de níquel da australiana BHP, maior rival da Vale. Ela, que começou sua jornada na Vale como trainee, ganhou exposição internacional ao participar recentemente das avaliações de compra de empresas como as mineradoras canadenses Canico, em 2005, e Inco, em 2006. Expatriada para o Canadá no ano passado, Vanessa havia se tornado diretora de projetos industriais da CVRD Inco. A experiência garantiu-lhe bons contatos e a oferta para subir mais um degrau na carreira -- algo que ela só esperava conseguir na Vale nos próximos dois ou três anos. "O desafio era irrecusável", diz.

O CRESCENTE ASSÉDIO DE OUTRAS empresas também reflete a mudança radical no perfil dos principais profissionais da Vale ocorrida nos últimos anos. Em 2005, a companhia iniciou um plano para acelerar a seleção e a formação de talentos, um tratamento de choque para deixar para trás uma cultura de gestão de pessoas que ainda lembrava os tempos de estatal. Na prática, isso representou transformar uma equipe de ótimos técnicos em executivos eficientes, capazes de articular negócios que atendessem às ambições globais da Vale. Nem todos se adaptaram à nova realidade -- e acabaram comprometendo a carreira. Quem se dispôs a mudar -- e a pleitear promoções internas -- passou por um programa intenso de formação, que inclui aulas em institutos conceituados, como o americano MIT, o suíço IMD e a Fundação Dom Cabral, de Belo Horizonte. "As pessoas da Vale são cada vez mais bem treinadas e expostas ao que há de melhor no mundo", diz Dárcio Crespi, sócio da empresa de recrutamento de altos executivos Heidrick & Struggles. Ramos, da London Mining, por exemplo, fez parte de um grupo de mais de 200 executivos da Vale que passaram pelo novo programa de treinamento. Ele fez um curso no MIT, em 2005, e outro no IMD, em 2006. "As aulas me ajudaram principalmente a desenvolver o relacionamento com a equipe", diz o engenheiro, que recebera outras três propostas neste ano antes de aceitar o convite da London Mining.

Mais recentemente, a Vale vem trabalhando para manter a remuneração competitiva e atraente para seus executivos. Algumas das medidas foram equiparar o salário de diretores e de algumas categorias de especialistas à média mundial e reforçar o bônus anual. Embora a companhia não divulgue dados sobre a remuneração variável dos executivos, estima-se que o bônus possa chegar a até 18 salários extras no final do ano. Em 2007, pela primeira vez, um grupo de elite de 500 diretores e gerentes da Vale receberá um incentivo de longo prazo, atrelado ao rendimento das ações da companhia. Trata-se de algo bastante sedutor, sobretudo se for levado em conta que o preço dos papéis quase dobrou nos últimos 12 meses (veja quadro). O valor do bônus de longo prazo poderá ser resgatado daqui a três anos. "É um avanço, mas a cultura da empresa ainda não coloca em primeiro lugar a meritocracia", diz o sócio de um escritório brasileiro de recrutamento de altos executivos. Além da questão apontada pelo headhunter, alguns ex-diretores se ressentem do que descrevem como a excessiva centralização das decisões na figura de Agnelli.

Para especialistas, a recente leva de executivos que saíram da companhia pode representar um desafio nos próximos anos. "Alguns dos profissionais que deixaram a empresa estão levando consigo a sensibilidade da negociação e uma rede de contatos que um substituto levará tempo para conseguir", afirma um headhunter. Para tentar minimizar o problema, a Vale vem desenvolvendo um amplo programa de sucessão. Hoje, todos os 1 000 executivos da empresa indicam os subordinados que poderão ocupar seu lugar num horizonte de até três anos. Guardadas as proporções, é uma política parecida com a adotada pela GE, uma referência mundial na formação de lideranças. Para suceder Jack Welch no comando da GE, por exemplo, três executivos foram preparados -- Jeff Immelt, na época responsável pela divisão de equipamentos médicos, levou a melhor. Os outros dois -- Robert Nardelli e Jim McNerney -- deixaram a companhia para assumir, respectivamente, as presidências da Home Depot e da 3M. (Hoje, Nardelli comanda a Chrysler, e McNerney, a Boeing.) Eis o lado cruel dessa história. Mais do que nunca as empresas necessitam do que há de melhor em termos de talento. É preciso dinheiro, dedicação, tempo. Ao fazer isso, garantem o próprio futuro, mas também se tornam celeiros de bons profissionais para os concorrentes. Hoje, empresas como a Vale sabem bem que os ganhos compensam as perdas.

Pelo menos ainda há liberdade de imprensa

Eu me pergunto, às vezes, qual é a do Paulo Henrique Amorim. Eu, como ele, também não gosto da mídia nacional, mas dar voz ao Stedile - e conferindo-o aura de credibilidade e sensatez - é estranho para um economista de formação.

Enfim, pelo menos assim a oposição ao establishment atual tem espaço - e isso é louvável, por mais que se discorde da ideologia.

03/09/2007 18:26h
STEDILE QUER ANULAR PRIVATIZAÇÃO DA VALE


O integrante da direção nacional do MST João Pedro Stedile disse em entrevista a Paulo Henrique Amorim nesta segunda-feira, dia 03, que a Companhia Vale do Rio Doce era uma empresa pública que não poderia ser privatizada (clique aqui para ouvir o áudio).

“Não se tratava de uma estatal qualquer que você vai à Bolsa e vende as ações. Portanto, o Governo Fernando Henrique não tinha o direito de vender um patrimônio que era público. É como se ele vendesse a sua casa”, disse Stedile.

Stedile escreveu um livro em parceria com o Bispo de Jales (SP) com o título “O Resgate da Vale”. O MST organiza um plebiscito nacional no qual os brasileiros podem votar para dizer se são a favor ou contra a anulação do leilão que privatizou a Vale do Rio Doce, em 1997.

A votação pode ser feita até o próximo dia 09 de setembro (domingo), em urnas instaladas em escolas, sindicatos e igrejas. O resultado desse plebiscito será entregue pelos organizadores do movimento ao STJ, STF, Planalto e ao Congresso Nacional em Brasília no dia 25 de setembro.

Stedile disse que se o resultado do plebiscito for em favor da anulação do leilão, o Presidente Lula terá respaldo social e apoio popular para ser coerente com o discurso que adotou no segundo turno da última eleição, quando disse que a privatização da Vale foi um erro.

“Se houver uma grande manifestação popular clara, contundente, que nós brasileiros somos contra essa usurpação que foi feita do patrimônio público, o Governo Lula terá mais força e apoio político, respaldo popular, para tomar uma medida que precisa de muita coragem”, disse Stedile.

Segundo Stedile, o Tribunal Federal de Brasília declarou nulo, em dezembro de 2005, o leilão que privatizou a Vale do Rio Doce. A Companhia recorreu da decisão e agora o processo corre no STJ.

Leia a íntegra da entrevista com João Pedro Stedile.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – Eu vou conversar agora com João Pedro Stedile, que integra a coordenação do nacional do Movimento dos Sem-Terra, o MST, que publicou hoje um artigo no jornal O Globo de título “O Resgate da Vale”, é o livro que ele assina com Dom Demétrio Valentini, bispo de Jales (SP). O artigo tem o propósito de conclamar os cidadão brasileiros a votar num plebiscito no dia 7 de setembro para reverter a privatização da Vale. Como vai, Stedile, tudo bem?

João Pedro Stedile – Não tão bem quanto você, que está abafando com o novo programa da Record. Mas estou aqui enfrentando a conjuntura desse nosso país.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – Por que você quer reverter a privatização da Vale?

João Pedro Stedile – Bom, primeiro, como todos os juristas já nos avisaram, a Companhia Vale do Rio Doce era uma empresa pública que detinha um patrimônio de todo o povo, como ferrovias, terras, concessões de minérios, portos, não se tratava de uma estatal qualquer, que tu vai na Bolsa e vende as ações. Portanto, o governo Fernando Henrique não tinha o direito de vender um patrimônio que era público. Era como se alguém vendesse a sua casa sem consultá-lo. E é isso que ele fez em relação ao povo brasileiro. Segundo, que o leilão foi fraudulento, porque a mesma empresa que fez a avaliação do valor da Vale, a Merril Lynch, uma empresa americana, foi a que também deu consultoria para o Bradesco para depois comprá-la. Então, está caracterizado um conluio, como está provado no processo, num dos 88 processos que o Tribunal Federal de Brasília em dezembro de 2005 declarou nulo o leilão. E, evidentemente, que a Vale recorreu e o processo agora está no Superior Tribunal de Justiça. Então, tem até uma sentença judicial dizendo que o leilão foi fraudulento e não seguiu os trâmites normais. E, terceiro, porque a Vale foi roubada. Ela valia mais do que US$ 100 bilhões e foi vendida por US$ 3 bilhões, porque na época o real valia a mesma coisa (que o dólar). Então, num ano, os novos acionistas recuperam todo o capital investido. Se nós soubéssemos, eu e tu poderíamos fazer uma sociedade e comprar a Vale, porque é um negócio do outro mundo. Você, num ano, recuperar. E quarto: a Vale explora minérios, bens da natureza, que é de todo o povo brasileiro. Então, o lucro desses bens naturais deve regressar ao povo brasileiro. Os R$ 14 bilhões que ela está ganhando por ano não podem ir para os acionistas, têm que ir para o povo. E hoje, você sabe, foco dessa maracutaia feita pelo governo Fernando Henrique Cardoso, 60% dos acionistas com direito ao lucro moram no exterior. Portanto, esse lucro está sendo carreado, roubado, todos os anos, para pagar acionistas que moram em Nova York, nos Estados Unidos, na Europa e não sei aonde.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – Agora, como é que as pessoas vão poder votar?

João Pedro Stedile – Bem, de hoje até o dia 9, domingo que vem, tem milhares de lugares, em 4 mil municípios haverá urnas instaladas em sindicatos, paróquias, pontos de ônibus, e haverá grupos de pessoas militantes de vários movimentos, desde os pastorais da CNBB, como o Dom Demétrio, que é um dos seus coordenadores, os sindicatos, os assentamentos, os colégios, nós estamos mobilizados em equipes para entregar as cédulas para as pessoas e aí as pessoas vão votar: se são a favor ou não da anulação do leilão, como aliás já tem uma sentença judicial. E nós esperamos que aí depois de uns dez dias possamos contar os votos e no dia 25 de setembro iremos a Brasília, numa comissão representativa desses movimentos para entregar ao vivo e a cores, como se diz, para os cinco Poderes: para o STJ – onde corre o processo –, para o STF, para o Poder Executivo, para o Presidente da Câmara, do Senado e do próprio tribunal que já tem essa sentença favorável.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – E se o resultado for a favor da anulação? Qual o efeito disso do ponto de vista prático?

João Pedro Stedile – Do ponto de vista prático representa uma manifestação popular, que vai dar respaldo para que o governo Lula crie vergonha, honre o seu compromisso de campanha, porque ele foi explícito na campanha do segundo turno do ano passado – ele disse claramente no último debate: foi um erro ter privatizado a Vale. Bom, agora, ele tem a oportunidade de ser coerente com a sua tese. Porque, Amorim, nesse processo que o Tribunal Federal deu a sentença anulando, e que a Vale recorreu, o principal réu é o Estado brasileiro. Portanto, se a Advocacia-Geral da União aceitar a tese da sentença, ela pode, então, corroborar para que de fato se anule o leilão. Então, nós achamos que se houver uma grande manifestação popular, clara, contundente, de que nós brasileiros somos contra essa usurpação que foi feita no patrimônio público, o governo Lula terá mais força, apoio político e respaldo popular para tomar uma medida que precisa, cá entre nós, muita coragem.

Paulo Henrique Amorim – Tá ótimo. Agradeço muito. É sempre um prazer falar com um amigo.

João Pedro Stedile – Seria mais ótimo ainda se a Vale for realmente recuperada para o povo brasileiro. Grande abraço.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

where-abôuts, and more Premier League

So I haven't had the time to write for a while - been caught up in some wicked work traveling and moving around.
But here goes a quick update since my previous post --

Aug 12 - I was there at the Emirates for Arsenal x Fulham as reported.

Aug 18 - Went to Craven Cottage to witness yet another 1-2 loss by Fulham, this time by an interesting Middlesbrough side. My buddy Martin got us third row seats - I could have spat in Stewart Downing if I wanted to. (I surely did want to, but the huge steward in front of me would probably not think it was such a good idea.)

Aug 19 - Flew to Toronto.

I'd been to Canada before, but not in summer. Pretty interesting. Amazed at the politeness of Canadians, at the number of beggars on the streets, and at some distinctive traits of Canadian accent - words such as "abôut", "any-ow" and so on.

Aug 23 - Flew to Montreal.

Aug 24 - Back to Toronto.

This past weekend I could also watch two full EPL games on TV (god bless it's not ppv anymore) - two hard-fought 1-0 wins, Arsenal beating Man City and Man United beating Spurs.

Anyway, just as an update, and before I forget, some notes on what I've seen so far of Premiership:

Positively impressed me:

- Man City is awesome to watch. Elano is playing as a creative attacking midfielder just like Diego used to be in his old Santos of 2002. Micah Richards is the future of English defence. Schmeichel junior is a lot like his dad. Uefa Cup for them is a concrete possibility.

- Wigan is not so bad as I first thought. Valencia-Landzaat-Scharner-Koumas is actually a pretty balanced line of four - the latter, especially, is impressive.

Confirmed my expectations:

- Chelsea looks even more cohesive this year. SWP-Lampard-Essien-Malouda, yet another outstanding line of four. Can't see where Ballack will fit. Makelele is already second reserve (behind Mikel)

- Liverpool are title contenders for sure. Torres is 10x better than Morientes, Voronin is 10x better than Fowler. Just not sure we have enough cover for centre-back if Carra is out for a while and Paletta was sold.

- Everton and Blackburn continue to be strong, well-led squads.

Disappointed me:

- Sunderland is well-organized but have no quality whatsoever. I mean, Dwight Yorke is the central midfielder for Christ's sake.

- Fulham is an absolute blunder. Watched them twice at the stadium - wouldn't put money on their staying up. What is odd is that the line-up doesn't look that bad - Smertin, Davis, Healy, Kamara, McBride.... but, well, they suck.

- Arsenal hasn't solved their front-of-goal problems. They pass and pass and pass but still take too much time to shoot. Both games I watched from them could've been 6-0 if not for their chronic procrastination.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

First weekend of action!!!!

An addict on English football like me can only rejoice at the chance of being in the UK for the opening day of the season. I have practically drowned on TV specials, newspaper and maazine reviews, and countless snapshot conversations all over the tube, the taxis, the bars, and so on. Plus I can watch Match of the day at BBC - a personal favorite, with all the goals and best chances of all matches.

Even better, I could join my buddy Martin to a match - we went to the majestic Emirates Stadium to watch Arsenal x Fulham. An absolutely amazing venue, and a fitting match.

Fulham took a shock lead after a mishap from Lehmann, but it was always clear that Arsenal would eventually turn the game around. Rosicky and Hleb were especially entertaining, with good bal control and also creating effective chances - but Arsenal still lacked a proper finisher. Van Persie was a bit complacent and offside many times.

I was yearning to see Nicklas Bendtner in action - he's probably going to be a source of goals for them in the season - but he only got in at mid-second half. By then, Arsenal dominated thoroughly, but were taking a lot of time to kill off Fulham. Still the goal t seemed like a matter of time, and it came through a penalty and a good interplay by Hleb.

Next weekend there is Liverpool x Chelsea at Anfield, and expectations are high, given both clubs's showings this weekend. Both played fresh 4-4-2, with true wingers and an attacking stance in the lines of four (Pennant-Gerrard-Alonso-Riise and WrightPhilips-Essien-Lampard-Malouda). Let's see if neither comes back to the stifling midfield battles from last year.

In other teams - really excited about Man City`s prospects. Apparently Elano had a fantastic match - I`ve seen the highlights and he bursted forward at will, as Santos fans are accustomed. Will this be Sven`s revenge year? Let's see.

Anyway, for a warm-up it was an awesome weekend. I wonder why people still find it strange I`d reather follow the EPL rather than the Brazilian Championship.

My team of the round (to compare with Garth Crooks's team tomorrow at BBC):

Hahnemann (Reading)

Corluka (Man City)
McShane (Sunderland)
Toure (Arsenal)
Onuoha (Man City)

Elano (Man City)
Gerrard (Liverpool)
Rosicky (Arsenal)
Malouda (Chelsea)

Pizarro (Chelsea)
Martins (Newcastle)

Friday, August 03, 2007

My very first 07-08 Premiership amateur punditry

Oh there it comes. Another Premiership season ahead. A season that comes with an aura of excitement after some hectic transfer market action, which brought massive changes to team lineups and perspectives.

I could write and write on the topic, but I found out that as much as I would like to delve endlessly into every single team's perpectives, I'd rather keep it simple and then just justify my predictions.

First thing I'd like is to split the teams into some distinguishable groups.

Title challengers
Man United
Chelsea
Liverpool

Uefa Cup sure, CL possible: good squads + great managers = nice football, but no title challenge
Tottenham
Arsenal

Uefa Cup contenders: good end of last season, cohesive squad under competent coach, may have good runs in FA/Carling Cup too
Everton
West Ham
Aston Villa
Portsmouth
Blackburn
Sunderland

Uefa Cup hopefuls: question mark coaches, question mark player gel, whatever can happen
Man City
Newcastle
Bolton

Relegation fighters: look depleted from last season
Reading
Middlesbrough
Fulham
Wigan

New boys in town: might scrape their stay, but will probably go down
Birmingham
Derby


My personal guess for the end of the championship - with some of bias of course.

1. Liverpool
2. Man United
3. Chelsea
4. Tottenham
5. Arsenal
6. Sunderland
7. Newcastle
8. Aston Villa
9. Everton
10. Blackburn
11. Man City
12. West Ham
13. Portsmouth
14. Bolton
15. Reading
16. Middlesbrough
17. Birmingham
18. Fulham
19. Derby
20. Wigan

FA Cup final: Man United x Sunderland

Carling Cup final: Arsenal x Tottenham

Uefa Champions League: Man United

Uefa Cup: Bayern Munich

Friday, July 27, 2007

sherrybaby


I have just watched this excellent film starring my current favorite young actress, Maggie Gyllenhaal. A harsh, raw, yet touching story about an ex-con, recovering addict, and single mom, struggling with life.

Deep, dense characters living less-than-ordinary lives, and a direct, camcorder-like photography immerse the viewer in the world of working-class suburban America. A world in which nobody's perfect, everyone acknowledges it; a world in which waking up and going through the days seem an uphill task in itself.

Hats off to Maggie's intense acting, and to the fitting soundtrack of Dana Fuchs's acoustic songs - that, like the movie, swings from hope to depression and then back to hope. Like most of people's lives, by the way.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Win-win

Changing a bit from my usual sources - now this is from the NY Times.

And changing a bit from my usual themes as well - this is about technology. Something really cool that might just be about to kick in.

I tried to summarize the article but (1) got no time for that right now (2) it's really well written and I think it's worth to go through it. Just as it was when I pasted the Gore Vidal interview months ago.

July 5, 2007
IPhone-Free Cellphone News
By DAVID POGUE

Man, oh man. How’d you like to have been a PR person making a cellphone announcement last week, just as the iPhone storm struck? You’d have had all the impact of a gnat in a hurricane.

But hard to believe though it may be, T-Mobile did make an announcement last week. And even harder to believe, its new product may be as game-changing as Apple’s.

It’s called T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, and it’s absolutely ingenious. It could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year, and yet enrich T-Mobile at the same time. In the cellphone world, win-win plays like that are extremely rare.

Here’s the basic idea. If you’re willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you’re out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual.

But when it’s in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves.

These phones hand off your calls from Wi-Fi network to cell network seamlessly and automatically, without a single crackle or pop to punctuate the switch. As you walk out of a hot spot, fewer and fewer Wi-Fi signal bars appear on the screen, until — blink! — the T-Mobile network bars replace them. (The handoff as you move in the opposite direction, from the cell network into a hot spot, is also seamless, but takes slightly longer, about a minute.)

O.K., but how often are you in a Wi-Fi hot spot? With this plan, about 14 hours a day. T-Mobile gives you a wireless router (transmitter) for your house — also free, after a $50 rebate. Connect it to your high-speed Internet modem, and in about a minute, you’ve got a wireless home network. Your computer can use it to surf the Web wirelessly — and now all of your home phone calls are free.

You know how people never seem to have good phone reception in their homes? How they have to huddle next to a window to make calls? That’s all over now. The free router is like a little T-Mobile cell tower right in your house.

Truth is, the HotSpot @Home phones work with any Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) router, including one you may already have. But T-Mobile’s routers, manufactured by D-Link and Linksys, have three advantages.

First, you turn on the router’s encryption — to keep neighbors off your network — by pressing one button, rather than having to fool with passwords. Second, these routers give priority to calls, so that computer downloads won’t degrade your call quality. Third, T-Mobile’s routers greatly extend the phone’s battery life. The routers say, in gadgetese, “I’m here for you, any time,” just once, rather than requiring the phone to issue little Wi-Fi “Are you there?” pings every couple of minutes.

T-Mobile was already a price leader in the cellphone game. But the HotSpot @Home program can be extremely economical, in four ways.

SAVING NO. 1 It’s not just your calls at home that are free; you may also get free calls at your office, friends’ houses, library, coffee shops and so on — wherever Wi-Fi is available. You can access both unprotected and password-protected Wi-Fi networks (you just enter the password on the phone’s keypad).

The phone has a built-in Search for Networks feature. Once you select a wireless network, the phone memorizes it. The next time you’re in that hot spot, you’re connected silently and automatically.

There’s one big limitation to all this freeness: these phones can’t get onto any hot spot that require you to log in on a Web page (to enter a credit card number, for example). Unfortunately, this restriction rules out most airports and many hotel rooms.

There’s one exception — or, rather, 8,500 of them: T-Mobile’s archipelago of hot spots at Starbucks, Borders and other public places. In these places you encounter neither the fee nor the Web-page sign-in that you would encounter if you were using a laptop; the words “T-Mobile Hot Spot” simply appear at the top of your screen, and you can start making free calls.

The cool part is that, depending on how many calls you can make in hot spots, the Wi-Fi feature might permit you to choose a much less expensive calling plan. If you’re a heavy talker, you might switch, for example, from T-Mobile’s $100 plan (2,500 minutes) to its $40 plan (1,000 minutes). Even factoring in the $10 HotSpot @Home fee, you’d still save $600 a year.

SAVING NO. 2 T-Mobile’s billing system isn’t smart enough to notice handoffs between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. So each call is billed according to where it begins. You can start a call at home, get in your car, drive away and talk for free until the battery’s dead.

The opposite is also true, however; if you begin a call on T-Mobile’s cell network and later enter a Wi-Fi hot spot, the call continues to eat up minutes. If HotSpot @Home catches on, therefore, the airwaves will reverberate with people coming home and saying, “Hey, can I call you right back?”

SAVING NO. 3 When you’re in a hot spot, T-Mobile has no idea where you are in the world. You could be in Des Moines, Denmark or Djibouti. So this is a big one for travelers: When you’re in a hot spot overseas, all calls to United States numbers are free.

SAVING NO. 4 T-Mobile’s hope is that you’ll cancel your home phone line altogether. You’ll be all cellphone, all the time. And why not, since you’ll now get great cell reception at home and have only one phone number and voicemail? Ka-ching: there’s an additional $500 a year saved.

Have T-Mobile’s accountants gone quietly mad? Why would they give away the farm like this?

Because T-Mobile benefits, too. Let’s face it: T-Mobile’s cellular network is not on par with, say, Verizon’s. But improving its network means spending millions of dollars on new cell towers. It’s far less expensive just to hand out free home routers.

Furthermore, every call you make via Wi-Fi is one less call clogging T-Mobile’s cellular network, further reducing the company’s need to spend on network upgrades.

In principle, then, HotSpot @Home is a revolutionary, rule-changing, everybody-wins concept. But before you go canceling lines and changing calling plans, consider a few small flaws.

At the moment, you have a choice of only two phones: the Nokia 6086 and Samsung t409. Both of these are small basic flip phones (both $50 after rebate and with two-year commitment). They sound terrific; over Wi-Fi, in fact, they produce the best-sounding cellphone calls you’ve ever made. But the screens are small and coarse, and the features limited. Fortunately, T-Mobile intends to bring the HotSpot @Home feature to many other phones in the coming months.

The Wi-Fi sucks power, too; these phones get 6.5 hours of talk time on the cell network, but only 4 hours over Wi-Fi.

Finally, T-Mobile eventually intends to price the service at $20 a month, or $30 for family plans. Only people who sign up during the introductory period (now through an unspecified end date) will be offered the $10 price, or $20 for families.

Even at the higher price, you could still come out ahead. With HotSpot @Home, T-Mobile has taken a tremendous step into the future. Most phone companies cower in fear when you mention voice calls over the Internet (Skype, Vonage and so on). After all, if the Internet makes the price approach zero, who will pay for phone service?

But T-Mobile has found a way to embrace and exploit this technology to everyone’s benefit. The result is a smartly implemented, technologically polished, incredibly inexpensive way to make over your phone lifestyle.

E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com

Monday, July 23, 2007

Lamentable

I echo Jon's words below. Suffering is already so intense and we still have to cope with this absurd handling of the situation.

Disaster wrapped up in farce
ft.com, Jul 23 2007
Jonathan Wheatley


It is hard to decide which of the government’s actions following the worst disaster in Brazilian aviation history most typified the inadequacy of its response to a crisis that has lasted for at least ten months.

Was it the failure of president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to appear in public until three days after the accident, or to issue any statement at all within the first four hours (his message of condolence arriving after, for example, that of president Néstor Kirchner of Argentina)? São Paulo state governor José Serra went to the scene immediately, following the rescue work and talking to the press. Surely, Mr Lula da Silva should have done the same.

Was it the repeated denial of responsibility by Walter Pires, the minister of defence who is in charge of civil aviation, who should have departed after last September’s mid-air collision between a Gol Boeing 737 and an executive jet in which 154 people died, but who has been kept in the job?

Was it the sight of leaders of Anac, the civil aviation regulator, being given medals for services to air travel by vice president José Alencar three days after the accident, instead of the reprimands or dismissals they deserve?

Or was it the spectacle of Marco Aurelio Garcia, the president’s special advisor, caught on camera celebrating the television news of a possible mechanical fault in the crashed aircraft, that potentially deflected some of the responsibility away from the government?

Whatever the true cause of the accident, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Aircraft have been slipping around on the runways at São Paulo’s city centre airport for months, before and after they underwent repairs this year. The dissatisfaction of air traffic controllers with their equipment and their military commanders is notorious. While passenger terminals have been smartened up around the country, passenger safety has been neglected. The desperate need in Brazil for more effective government has never been clearer.

Jonathan Wheatley is a FT correspondent in São Paulo

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Mourn


I never felt like crying before over a public accident.
Not for Darfur.
Not for Gaza.
Not for Iraq.
Not when reading about the near destruction of Flandres in World War I. The same Flanders that hosted me no nicely for the past 2 months.

But I must confess I cried when I read about the accident in Congonhas.

A flight I've taken so many times.

People whose routines look so much like mine.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Un pesto

I watched the Copa América final in an Irish Pub in Belgium, together with a couple of Argentine friends, some local Brazilians I met on the spot, and the (Belgian) waiter of a restaurant I like, who has lived in Niteroi and claims to support Botafogo. He was by a lot far the noisiest chap in the pub, screaming heavily-accented "Só dá Brasil", "É nóis" and a number of "Juiz ladrão" at each small foul at Brazil's half (we made many).

I could write and write about the game - the grittiness of Josue, the precision of Julio Baptista's passing and finishing, and Dunga's brilliant substitution putting Daniel Alves on - but I'll resort to pasting selected comments from Rob Smyth's live coverage of the game at Guardian Unlimited. Enjoy.

1 min Off we go. It's ridiculously hot - about 100 degrees, with the game kicking off at 1705 local time. It'll probably be a more languorous game as a result, which will certainly suit Seba: he has an excuse not to do running!

GOAL! Brazil 1 Argentina 0 (Baptista 4) Julio Baptista has just scored an absolute belter. He ran onto a long, diagonal pass to the left corner of the box from Elano, fronted up the last man Ayala, pushed the ball inside and then just screamed it across goal and into the top corner. Not bad for a fat lad. A superb goal and, yet again, Argentina have to come from behind.

9 min Riquelme hits the post. That was sublime football: Messi got to the byline on the left, drilled it flat to the far post to Veron, who headed it down really smartly for Riquelme, 12 yards out, to spank it on the bounce with his left foot. Doni was well beaten by it smacked off the face of his right-hand post.

20 min A laughably overambitious glory pass from Veron, slashing it right to left, goes straight into Doni's arms. That's £28.1m, right there.

24 min Brazil have been the better side - much more authoritative - and they're having a fairly decent spell of possession at the moment. Tevez still hasn't kicked the ball. "Argentina really do look like the fakers they have been excepting the Maradona years since Passarella hung up his boots," said Gary Naylor. "Had Titus Bramble showed The Beast the only place he could score, we would all point and laugh, but because it's Ayala, we all shake our heads, unable to comprehend. Veron and Riquelme? To select one might be unfortunate - to select two smacks of carelessness." All fair points. A proper journalist would have told you that Ayala's defending on the goal was really poor. I'm not, and didn't.

39 min Veron simply doesn't bother to track the left-back Gilberto, who bursts into the box and drives it low across the face, forcing Heinze to sidefoot it wide of his own post.

GOAL! Brazil 2 Argentina 0 (Ayala og 40) Well. Well. Well. A really slick move led to Alves being released on the right, and he curved in a lovely cross between keeper and defenders at which Ayala, not knowing who was behind him, had no choice but to throw himself. But he was stretching desperately and all he could do was ram it past Abbondanzieri at the near post. It wasn't Ayala's fault really - he had to play it - but it's left Argentina up a creek with no paddle salesmen in sight.

44 min Argentina's burgeoning frustration manifests itself in a deserved booking for Mascherano for beheading some Brazilian. Then, seconds later, he hacks down another Brazilian, a foul for which he might conceivably have received a second yellow.

Half-time chit-chat "Is it time to re-assess Argentina's World Cup 2006?" says Gary Naylor. "They were a bit fortunate to beat Cote D'Ivoire 2-1; then beat an uninterested, disintegrating Serbia and Montenegro, a side who tackled as though playing a testimonial; then drew 0-0 with Holland. Into the knock-out phase, and a very fortunate 2-1 extra time win over Mexico, before going out to Germany on penalties (abjectly). The heirs of unlucky losers Holland 74 or Brazil 82 - don't make me laugh!"

52 min What Brazil have done very well today is the Makelele foul - enough to disrupt a dangerous mate, made to look sufficiently clumsy and innocent to preclude a booking - and there's another on Messi.

56 min Two Makelele fouls on Riquelme fouls in the space of a minute have Riquelme waving imaginary cards at the referee. Brazil's tactic hasn't been edifying but it's so very effective.

57 min Argentina are gone. I hadn't really put 2+2 together before but, as was pointed out in the first half, this golden generation, while blessed with wonderful talent, are damned by the fact that they are almighty bottlers.

58 min Veron makes the first tackle of his career, which so shocks Alex that he squares up to him. Veron flounces a bit and then retreats.

59 min The first substitution: the splendid Pablo Aimar is on for Cambiasso, so now we have three midfield playmakers to go with Brazil's three watercarriers.

More praise for the God-like Juan Veron "Is Veron a Zelig-like figure, always lurking around great events, but not actually part of them?" says Gary Naylor. "I've never - repeat never - seen him have a good game or even look like a footballer." Now that's unfair. He was brilliant against Maccabi Haifa in 2002.

GOAL! Brazil 3 Argentina 0 (Alves 69) Brazil seal the Copa America with a superb goal. Vagner Love led a counter-attack, running at the defence 30 yards out, and slid a perfectly weighted ball inside the left-back (who was actually Riquelme) for Alves to drive it superbly across goal and into the far side-netting. It was a wonderful pass, and a splendid, precise finish from a difficult angle.

75 min Argentina really have been feeble. They make Graeme Hick and Thierry Henry seem like rough-track warriors. Tevez, who has been dreadful, is booked for a petulant hack. Even Messi has gone missing since they went 2-0 down. "Doesn't this Brazil team look so much better without past-it prima-donnas Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos?" says Gary Naylor. "This lot plus Kaka would be an impressive outfit."

78 min Riquelme, an exquisite footballer but a total bottler, thrashes one miles over from 25 yards.

86 min Argentina are so shellshocked that they can't even summon the freedom of the damned, and Brazil continue to repel them with ease. "Is Gary Naylor suggesting that Ronaldinho is nothing without the passes he gets from Deco and that most teams have worked this out?" says Alec Cochrane. "Whereas Kaka forced into widening his game by playing in a defensive league has now surpassed the buck toothed one? Including winning his team a European Cup almost singlehandedly?" That's not fair: Bolo Zenden played a bloody big part in Milan's European Cup win.

Full time: Argentina 0 Brazil 3 Congratulations to Brazil and especially their coach Dunga, who completely outsmarted his opposite number Coco Basile. Brazil were the better side from the moment Julio Baptista welted a screamer in the fourth minutes, and they richly deserve their victory against lily-livered opponents who paid the price for being a ramshackle shower of dreamers. Thanks for your emails. It's been extemporaneous.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Eulogy to Fopp

I just read that Fopp music store has gone bankrupt and closed down.

No wonder - they sold CDs and books at bargain prices. My friend Martin introduced me to it, taking me for a stroll at the Tottenham Court Road branch in London last year. I left it with a £5 double Fela Kuti CD (excellent) and a £6 three-disc box set with Van Morrison's first three albums, arguably two of my best purchases last year. Oh and a £3 book, The Undercover Economist, which I didn't bother finishing.

They claim tastes are changing and people don't buy CDs anymore. Too bad - I still prefer albums to isolated songs. I like to listen to them from beginning to end, trying to figure what message the artist wanted to convey. I admit I did a lot of downloading from Bit Torrent and the like, but recently I've been much more keen on walking into a store, browsing around, testing, and leaving with a disc. You can't top that - the means are as pleasant as the ends.

Anyway, farewell to Fopp. All that's left is Virgin and HMV. And Fnac. God bless us.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Shame on us

Just read these at the FT. Seriously, you guys at the Congress, it's getting ridiculous.

I highlighted the most outrageous bits.


Calheiros affair a scandal too far
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: July 5 2007 00:37 | Last updated: July 5 2007 00:37

The saga of Renan Calheiros, the president of Brazil’s Senate, has stretched the credulity of ordinary Brazilians already inured to scandal in politics.

By the senator’s own admission, an employee of a construction company carrying out large public works dependent on budget amendments under Mr Calheiros’s control, every month for two years delivered cash payments of about R$12,000 ($6,284, €4,616, £3,116) to a former journalist with whom the long-married senator was having an affair and by whom he has a three-year-old daughter.

Mr Calheiros says that makes him guilty of nothing. To prove his innocence he says the money was his. The paperwork he produced to substantiate this claim was shown to be false by high-profile television reports: people to whom he claimed to have sold high-priced cattle, for example, denied ever dealing with him.

Yet Mr Calheiros continues to defend himself, describing press reports as attacks on the Senate.



Brazilian Senate president under pressure to quit
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: July 4 2007 19:33 | Last updated: July 4 2007 19:33


(...)


[The case] marks the continuation of an almost unbroken string of corruption allegations that have dogged Mr Lula da Silva’s administration since May 2005. When the scandals first erupted, they caused serious damage to Mr Lula da Silva’s popularity ratings. But recent polls suggest voters no longer associate the president with corruption, or expect nothing better of their politicians.

Mr [Fernando] Gabeira said the result was a culture of lawlessness. “People don’t believe in citizenship, in the collective life. They just seek individual advantage. Corruption undermines capitalism because it destroys trust.”

“For those with access to good lawyers, impunity is almost guaranteed,” said Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch, a former senior security official. “But in poor areas, the police arrive with guns blazing and the population is caught in the crossfire.”

Politicians are especially privileged. Once elected, deputies and senators may only be tried by the Supreme Court, which has never convicted a single one. An estimated 30 per cent of those in Congress have criminal proceedings open against them; many seek office to avoid prosecution.

(...)


Leading politicians have appeared content to see the likes of Mr Calheiros enjoy their impunity. Mr Lula da Silva was recently seen slapping him on the back.

More extraordinary was a declaration of support from Tarso Genro, a close presidential aide and former champion of probity. “For the good of the country and of our institutions I want Renan to be innocent,” he said. “This is what all of us and all the Brazilian people want.”


DO WE WANT RENAN TO BE INNOCENT?????? GIVE US A BREAK.

Friday, June 29, 2007

What I'm listening to




I had long been a huge Velvet Underground fan, but only recently acquired Lou Reed's solo album Transformer.

It's raw, harsh, shocking.

It's reality.

It's amazing.

I'm hooked.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Newest addiction

I have to say that I cannot spend a day without reading Gideon Rachman's blog on the FT. Excellent writing, simplifying a very complicated subject that is International Affairs.

The piece on Christopher Hitchens from last week is particularly interesting. Made me read through Hitchens's amusing Wikipedia profile. What a character.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

A true classic

The Guardian published the original report from the 1970 World Cup final in its website. While it proves very interesting reading, I have to admit that what really caught my attention was the post I attach below, from a reader called HarperSmythe.

Once again, the blog comments are better than the actual post. Once again, I praise the beauty of the world wide web as a means of communication and expression, as I did a while ago. Once again watching the goals in YouTube is a brilliant complement. And as much as Carlos Alberto's goal has achieved artwork status, I can't get enough of watching the 2-1 by Gerson.

Well, thank you "HarperSmythe". And let me take the liberty of publishing this.


No one has yet posted some churlish comment about how they hate Brazil, its fans, etc. (something I see often on this site) -- or how lousy we are now (which we are).

I can only thank the Guardian CiF for this. The 1970 and the 1982 team means so much to us. Since then we've had glimpses of greatness with certain individual players, but it's never been the same. It was the defeat in 1982 (and esp. after our poorest world cup in 1990) that started our national football on the road toward becoming more like the harder game in Europe and turning our backs on creating magic and beauty on the pitch. The vision of the CBF today is a suffocating one, whereas the Argentines still keep to their traditions.

In 1970 I was 10 years old and my family had emigrated to the US in 1964. We lived in a Portuguese/Brazilian enclave in Massachusetts. At that time it was very difficult for us to keep track of football (any football, not just Brazilian) but we'd usually manage to get some radio or TV coverage. But in 1968 some members of my family had decided they just couldn't stand the torture any more of figuring out how to follow the wc from the US, so they decided to plan ahead and save, take some time off, fly to Brazil and watch it with family there. My mother couldn't afford the trip but at the very last minute one of my uncles saw how much I wanted to go and bought my mother and I tickets. She spent 3 years paying him back.

In Rio, my mother's side of the family had no TV sets (tho their neighbors had) but my father's side in Sao Paulo did. They were all black and white of course. We visited both the Rio and Sao Paulo families and watched various games with lots of family and friends around. I had the time of my young life.

For the final, we were in my father's home town of Piedade (interior of Sao Paulo) and we saw the final in a large church hall and 2 small TV sets. Several radios were there too. Lots of Brazilian flags, lots of drink and food. About 50-60 people were there, with dozens more milling around outside. We loved the entire squad but Gerson & Carlos Alberto were my family's particular heroes because of the clubs they had played for and where they were from originally. Some people brought the Italian flag since many of us were descendants of Italian immigrants.

I remember the reaction of everyone around me after the second Brazilian goal. One minute there was loud talking and drinking, the next moment it was as if everyone lost their voice--it felt like a hush that would last forever, and then suddenly the loudest cheer I'd ever heard. My favorite uncle and aunt both turned to me, hugged and kissed me, and shouted "Brazil's going to win!" The game was a blur to me, I just remember Brazil scoring, Pele jumping around in joy and that second goal. I do not remember sleeping at all that night. I don't remember seeing anyone sleep that night.

We all loved the '82 squad too but the emotional attachment we have for the 1970 squad is in a category all its own. To this day, these guys make us cry. It was Pele's last wc. I once visited Carlos Alberto's school in Rio and saw him give a talk about how much the Brazilian game has lost because clubs refuse to train small, weaker kids who have skill and technique in favor of recruiting tall athletes with less skill on the ball. He still had his sense of joy in the game.

I watched him train a group of young kids (boys and girls), telling them that they should "kiss the ball, embrace it, show that it is safe only with you." I got choked up listening to him. Once in Rio in a restaurant I saw Jairzinho with his wife. I almost broke into tears. My boyfriend and I were about to leave and we tried not to look too much but Jairzinho looked at us and gave us a huge smile. I said something like "we will always love you" and left very quickly.

In 1970, Deus foi Brasileiro sim (God was Brazilian).

Bayerischer Sommertag

Things to do in Munich on a summer day:

Go to Englischer Garten and drink loads of beer under the sun,


Chat the afternoon away to catch up with a German friend


And of course ride back on the local pride, Bayerische Motoren Werke!!!

Thursday, June 21, 2007

A sign of the ages

The title in the last post was actually an attempt to quote this great song. You can actually hear its first 15 seconds clicking on this link, then pressing Play besides the song title. Depressing, yes.

A sign of the ages
Gil Scott-Heron

It's a sign of the ages
Markings on my mind
Men at the crossroads
At odds with an angry scab

There can be no salvation
There can be no rest
Until all old customs
Are put to the test

The gods are all angry
You hear from the breeze
As night slams like a hammer
Yeah, and you drop to your knees

The questions can't be answered
You're always haunted by the past
The world's full of children
Who grew up too fast

Yeah, but where can you run
Since there ain't no world of your own
And you know that no one will ever miss you, yeah yeah yeah
When you're finally gone

So you cry like a baby, a baby
Or you go out and get high
But there ain't no peace on Earth, man
Maybe peace when you die, yeah

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

It's a sign of the ages...

Close up on a hi-res Photo of myself taken last weekend in Holland.

They call it too much white hair where I come from.

Monday, June 18, 2007

The most important moments in science

From Guardian Technology, today.

A sample:

"At this conference on the future and converged technology in Oxford, we were asked to think about five moments in history that have really driven technological convergence.

Here is what I came up with another member of the group:
1) Agriculture. I'm in the process of reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, an amazing book that covers a huge sweep of history. With agriculture and surplus food production, people are freed to pursue specialisation that includes everything from political systems to professional armies.
2) Printing Press. It's simple but oh so critical with the sudden mass dissemination of knowledge.
3) Healthcare as science with the development of the disease model and the development of antibiotics all the way to the discovery of DNA.
4) World War II It helped rally resources to develop or refine technologies including radar, computing, rocket science, the jet engine and atomic energy/weapons.
5) Internet I guess it seems too obvious. But it has enabled so much else. "


I personally liked a list a guy called countingcats wrote on the comments section.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Japan!

This article from today's edition of the FT might seem like none-of-our-business, but I see it as not only interesting information but also a good brush-up on macro-economic principles. Plus, it's a simple and well-written non-fiction essay. Copyrights and congrats to them, obviously.


To treat Japan as an economic curiosity looks ever more odd
By Chris Giles, Economics Editor

Published: June 15 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 15 2007 03:00
(link)

For more than a generation Japan has been a rich country with the second largest economy in the world. But it has always been treated as an exception.

In the 1970s and early 1980s other advanced economies viewed Japanese annual rates of 4.5 per cent growth with envy, since others in the Group of Seven leading industrial nations could manage little over 2 per cent. In the late 1980s, the continued Japanese expansion was greeted with startled awe and Japan's future domination of the global economy seemed assured. An asset boom gave rise to incredible calculations: the land value of the Imperial Palace grounds in central Tokyo was notionally worth more than the entire state of California.

But it did not last. The bursting of the asset price bubble in 1990 ushered in Japan's "lost decade" when property values fell by as much as 80 per cent and economic growth slid to the bottom of the G7 league as the country moved in and out of recession. Prices in general began to fall, heightening the debt burden of companies. As deflation stalked the land, Japan's economy became regarded as a basket case, with zombie companies kept alive by equally insolvent banks, staggering government inefficiencies financing roads going nowhere, crippling public debt and a looming demographic time bomb.

With such differences in performance, "except Japan" has been the watchword of economic comparisons. The "except Japan" argument has three strands: the country's economic performance is radically different from other rich countries; its culture is so weird and the concerns of its population so unique that the latest global reform ideas are inapplicable; and the political system is so opaque that reforms could not be implemented anyway.

All three are increasingly wrong, according to many of the country's most forward-looking thinkers.

Fukunari Kimura, economics professor at Keio University, says the most serious misconception of Japan is that "it is not normal". He points to its steady recovery over the past five years, the longest growth spurt in Japan's postwar history, and how similar its recent trade integration with developing Asia has been to that undergone by other rich countries such as the US.

The Japanese economy is indeed much more normal now than it has been for decades. The recovery has been long by Japan's standards but not particularly vigorous. With annual real growth rates in gross domestic product of between 1.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent since 2003, Japan is now back in the middle of the G7 pack - it outpaced the eurozone and the US in the first quarter of this year. More important, the economy now seems able to grow at these steady but uninspiring rates, just like other advanced countries.

Even though interest rates at 0.5 per cent are much lower than in Europe or the US, after adjusting for inflation the real rate of interest faced by companies and households is similar - positive and low. Wage growth has also lagged behind corporate profits, just as in every other G7 country.

Household savings rates have been low and fallen in most G7 countries as consumers have taken advantage of greater access to credit, low interest rates and the expectation of continued steady growth. Japan is no different. While in 1990 its households were the misers of the world, squirreling away 15 per cent of their incomes, by 2005, the household savings rate had fallen to 3.1 per cent.

Moreover, almost every issue of public concern in today's Japan is the same as prevails in other advanced countries. Rising income and regional inequalities, the fairness of pension reforms and how to retain women (especially mothers) in the labour market are at the top of the domestic political agenda.

Fear of China's rising economic power haunts Japan as it does the US and the eurozone. As elsewhere, the concerns are misplaced, according to Chi Hung Kwan of the Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research, who points out that Japan's exports to the US are not even in competition with those from China, since the two countries produce radically different products, something that Japan shares with the eurozone. Rather, in common with the rest of the G7, the success of Chinese low-wage sectors has benefited Japan greatly, through falling import prices, while Japanese export prices have risen.

There are are, of course, exceptions to all this normality. Japan's inflation rate is negative, although the sustained growth of the economy is expected to return it to positive territory next year. The rise in the number of elderly relative to young people is more acute than elsewhere. The country remains difficult for foreign investors, with few takeovers of Japanese entities - the cumulative stock of foreign direct investment as a share of GDP stands at 3 per cent in Japan, in comparison with 22 per cent in the US and 37 per cent in the UK.

Japan's labour market has changed radically for the young, who work on flexible contracts, but not for those who started work before the 1990s.

The weakness of the yen, too, is sometimes difficult to explain, especially given Japan's huge trade surplus. But the most convincing and verifiable cause is that Japanese households are beginning to ditch their previous unusual bias for holding all their savings domestically.

The Japanese diversification of household savings shows another weakness in the "except Japan" argument. Japan, like most other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is feeling its way towards further reform. Monetary policy is now based on an inflation target. The OECD last week showed that a series of pension reforms since 1990 has already cut the generosity of the Japanese public pension system by 15 per cent, pretty much the same as in most other large advanced economies.

Maternity and childcare rights have improved markedly, with the aim of changing companies' and women's wary attitude to childbirth. The government's innovation strategy is centred on opening Japan to foreign influences, not finding the next technological gizmo.

The speed of change will be driven by politics and slow demographic shifts. But the need for reforms and the inevitable obstacles along the way to make the economy more dynamic provide the same challenge that faces every other G7 country.