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.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

More Charlotte

As promised... more on this highly addictive singer.

Here are links to the videos of 5:55, The Songs That We Sing, and The Operation.

Let yourself be caught by her.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Late but fun

I should have posted this link to a flickr album of last New Year's Day party in New York City earlier. Some pics are really great. Thanks Arun!

Saturday, June 02, 2007

someone else's thoughts on the Wembley match

A quick browsing through my blog shows that, as much as I try to post once a week, there are some weeks in which I am either not creative or not with much available time - and then I resort to copying / pasting. Indeed, I reckon two thirds of whatever I ever posted in here was not "original content". Shame on me.

Still one can't blame me for stealing others's ideas, since I always make it very clear all the sources which I use in the posts. And it's not any different now, as I was trying to figure what I would write about England 1 - 1 Brazil last night at Wembley. I just exchanges a couple of emails with my friend and 'sanity checker' Tomas about it, and I guess I won't do better than pasting here what he wrote about the game.

Which is a fair analysis, anyway. So here you go.

> bonjour dude,
>
> for what it's worth, i thought the football last night was pretty shit. i
> was also fairly amused by many english commentators claiming that england
> had played well and desreved the win, despite the facts that brazil had a
> perfectly good goal ruled offside in the first half, and that ledley king
> should clearly have been sent off about 5 mins later for hacking wagner love
> when he was in on goal. i hate second choice steve. if you look ate the side
> he's playing now, it's essentially exactly the same as the one sven played,
> except steve has a far more naive understanding of tactics and is generally
> a fair deal shitter. so, well done the english FA. also, i don't understand
> why frank lampard is still seen as a choice, let alone an automatic choice.
> he was rubbish much of the season for locomotiv west london, and i can't
> remember a game in which he has played well/controled a game for england.
> so, i'm jumping happily on the 'lampard out' bandwagon. also, wes brown -
> what's the point. give up and draft someone from the under 21s instead. at
> least they might be good one day. wes will never get there, and it's
> apparent to everyone apart from the man with the brightest teeth in the
> stadium.
>
> oh, yeah, and i though brazil were fair, no better.
>
> what i'm obviously wiating for now is for you to tell me that you didn't
> see it.


I did Tom, and I agree with you.