Friday, December 19, 2008

Season's greetings

Saturday, December 06, 2008

What I'm listening to



Powerful, pleasant, truthful quality pop.

"No One" has probably already played too much, but it's still good. But the rest of the songs also display a sort of Motown-esque smoothness you won't find in other RnB divas of the day (Rihanna, Mary J Blige, etc).

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Congo awareness

Mandatory viewing on the subject - the most terrifying conflict happening today.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Power on Sergio, at Colbert

I've been watching a lot of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart recently - not yet to the point in which they are my most reliable newssource (as it is for some people), but still, they're fun and informative.

And sometimes you have good thought as well. For instance, here's an interview from a great scholar (and close Obama adviser), who's written a book about one of the greatest Brazilians ever.

By the way last month's Esquire magazine had a fun (though slightly cheesy) profile of Ms Power, focusing on their wedding to a fellow prominent scholar to create what the author called "the Brangelina of academics".

Friday, October 24, 2008

Endorsement

This posting-videos-about-the-election thing is addictive.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Local Sports Franchise Pandering

I've been watching Daily Show over the internet every day, sometimes twice a day.

Like this snippet. "Et tu Messiah?" - brilliant, brilliant.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

A day at El Bulli

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/video/2008/oct/16/el-bulli-ferran-adria

One can only imagine what happens inside El Bulli.... this video tries to explain it, but then they can't film inside and we're left with descriptions.

The sight of Jay Rayner and his friend leaving the restaurant was a bit like someone having looked into Pandora's box. Or the chick from Blair Witch returning from the forest and realizing they were all doomed anyway.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Nightclubs are hell (??)

This is not recent, but very good writing and food for thought. I share some of the guy's points - how many times haven't I felt out of place in a night club? who hasn't? - but I must say that, overall, I've had more good experiences than bad ones in night clubs. Three things are the norm though - 1) it sucks if you're not with friends 2) it sucks if you're not with money 3) 1 and 2 are invalid if you pull.

Anyway, enjoy.

Nightclubs are hell. What's cool or fun about a thumping, sweaty dungeon full of posing idiots?
Charlie Brooker
The Guardian, Monday August 13 2007

I went to a fashionable London nightclub on Saturday. Not the sort of sentence I get to write very often, because I enjoy nightclubs less than I enjoy eating wool. But a glamorous friend of mine was there to "do a PA", and she'd invited me and some curious friends along because we wanted to see precisely what "doing a PA" consists of. Turns out doing a public appearance largely entails sitting around drinking free champagne and generally just "being there".

Obviously, at 36, I was more than a decade older than almost everyone else, and subsequently may as well have been smeared head to toe with pus. People regarded me with a combination of pity and disgust. To complete the circuit, I spent the night wearing the expression of a man waking up to Christmas in a prison cell.

"I'm too old to enjoy this," I thought. And then remembered I've always felt this way about clubs. And I mean all clubs - from the cheesiest downmarket sickbucket to the coolest cutting-edge hark-at-us poncehole. I hated them when I was 19 and I hate them today. I just don't have to pretend any more.

I'm convinced no one actually likes clubs. It's a conspiracy. We've been told they're cool and fun; that only "saddoes" dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled "sad" - it's like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.

Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can't hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level. And since the smoking ban, the masking aroma of cigarette smoke has been replaced by the overbearing stench of crotch sweat and hair wax.

Clubs are such insufferable dungeons of misery, the inmates have to take mood-altering substances to make their ordeal seem halfway tolerable. This leads them to believe they "enjoy" clubbing. They don't. No one does. They just enjoy drugs.

Drugs render location meaningless. Neck enough ketamine and you could have the best night of your life squatting in a shed rolling corks across the floor. And no one's going to search you on the way in. Why bother with clubs?

"Because you might get a shag," is the usual response. Really? If that's the only way you can find a partner - preening and jigging about like a desperate animal - you shouldn't be attempting to breed in the first place. What's your next trick? Inventing fire? People like you are going to spin civilisation into reverse. You're a moron, and so is that haircut you're trying to impress. Any offspring you eventually blast out should be drowned in a pan before they can do any harm. Or open any more nightclubs.

Even if you somehow avoid reproducing, isn't it a lot of hard work for very little reward? Seven hours hopping about in a hellish, reverberating bunker in exchange for sharing 64 febrile, panting pelvic thrusts with someone who'll snore and dribble into your pillow till 11 o'clock in the morning, before waking up beside you with their hair in a mess, blinking like a dizzy cat and smelling vaguely like a ham baguette? Really, why bother? Why not just stay at home punching yourself in the face? Invite a few friends round and make a night of it. It'll be more fun than a club.

Anyway, back to Saturday night, and apart from the age gap, two other things stuck me. Firstly, everyone had clearly spent far too long perfecting their appearance. I used to feel intimidated by people like this; now I see them as walking insecurity beacons, slaves to the perceived judgment of others, trapped within a self- perpetuating circle of crushing status anxiety. I'd still secretly like to be them, of course, but at least these days I can temporarily erect a veneer of defensive, sneering superiority. I've progressed that far.

The second thing that struck me was frightening. They were all photographing themselves. In fact, that's all they seemed to be doing. Standing around in expensive clothes, snapping away with phones and cameras. One pose after another, as though they needed to prove their own existence, right there, in the moment. Crucially, this seemed to be the reason they were there in the first place. There was very little dancing. Just pouting and flashbulbs.

Surely this is a new development. Clubs have always been vapid and awful and boring and blah - but I can't remember clubbers documenting their every moment before. Not to this demented extent. It's not enough to pretend you're having fun in the club any more - you've got to pretend you're having fun in your Flickr gallery, and your friends' Flickr galleries. An unending exhibition in which a million terrified, try-too-hard imbeciles attempt to out-cool each other.

Mind you, since in about 20 years' time these same people will be standing waist-deep in skeletons, in an arid post-nuclear wasteland, clubbing each other to death in a fight for the last remaining glass of water, perhaps they're wise to enjoy these carefree moments while they last. Even if they're only pretending.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

What I'm listening to



Absolutely outstanding soundtrack to an absolutely outstanding movie.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Hilarious

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as Palin and Clinton at SNL.

Monday, September 08, 2008

My new bookshelf

Still work in progress. But becoming cool. Especially with Super Homer.

Furniture by my dad.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Big Cup takes



I followed today the draw for the group stage. As the song says, 'shivers down my back bone'.

Groups A and B are simple bets. Chelsea and Roma, Inter and Bremen to go through.

Group C is ridiculous for Barcelona, and I see Shakhtar (with all their second-rate Brasileirão rejects) pipping Sporting to the second place.

Group D is tough, but exciting. October 22 - Liverpool x Atlético, Torres's return to Vicente Calderon, is the most anticipated match for me. I think they'll both qualify, anyway.

Group E looks like certain that will fall in to the hands of Man United and Villareal. Celtic did scrape through last year, when they also were in United's group. I wouldn't put money on them repeating the feat with such a well-round Villareal side here.

Group F looks the toughest to me, and I think the matches will be the hardest-fought, but I don't realistically see Fiorentina or Steaua qualifying.

Group G may come as a surprise to Arsenal. Fener are the same team from the quarterfinals last year, less Kezman, plus Guiza - i.e. a better side imo. I fancy them to go through first with Arsenal second.

Group H looks awesome - three very hungry teams with a point to prove. And poor BATE debuting against their neighbors in a local derby from Soviet times. My take? Real first and Zenit second.

Btw, the new uefa.com site is quite good. Looking forward to Fantasy Football.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

What I'm listening to




Men señara
Bebe

El aire se retira
Huele a tierra moja
Mi perro duerme a mis pies
Él cuida de mi hogar

El tiempo se para aqui
Mi amor está a punto de llegar
El tiempo se para aqui
Aqui encuentro la paz

Las curvas de la carretera
Me invitan a viajar
Hay tanto por recorrer,
Tanto por conocer

El mapa se hace pequeño
mi alma pide más
Mi amor llega en la tortuga
El me lo enseñará

Me enseñará
La voz del mar
Me enseñará
A no llorar

Me enseñará reconocer
Que hay daños que te enseñan a crescer
Me enseñará a ver sus ojos
Aunque él no esté

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

South Ossetia isn't Kosovo

I must confess I still haven't finished reading God Is Not Great (stuck at around 2/3 of the book after almost a year), but, alas, I just love Christopher Hitchens's prose.

He excels again at this forceful article about the ongoing conflict in the Caucasus. In it, 'Hitch' offers us, yet again, what he does best: combining his vast knowledge of international affairs with his exquisite writing and wit, to come up with fact-based analyses that uncomplicate the complicated.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Looking forward

Woody Allen kicks ass again.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Premiership Punditry

So following my amazingly precise Euro prediction (which I sadly failed to capitalize monetarily) I am about to produce my punditry on my favorite championship of all - that's right, English Premier League.

How apt that I should start writing this while in the UK, albeit very briefly. The day I start this post (July 29) is the day Liverpool has announced Robbie Keane, therefore renouncing on Gareth Barry and possibly shaping our tactical strategy for the season.

That was also the day I caught up with my pal Ken, the cab driver, the avid Wycombe Wanderers fan. He's really upbeat about his team's chances in League Two (fourth division), perhaps they will finally climb to League One and face mighty (and Nasty) Leeds.

Honestly, I wish I could make as bold a prediction as last year, when I tipped the Reds to the title, but I do not feel I can. If anything, to set expectations low. And last week's match against Standard, at the amazing Liege stadium I visited last year my my friend Jan, was no exciter either.

If Rafa sticks to my preferred line-up of

---------------Reina-----------------

Arbeloa-Carragher-Agger-Fabio Aurelio

--Kuyt--Mascherano---Gerrard-Babel---

-----------Torres--Keane-------------

, at home games, we will probably win precious points instead of the turgid draws last year against the likes of Birmingham. Switching to a 4-2-3-1 with Alonso in the middle for away games would also be shrewd.

Problem is, it is not too different from last year, is it? And especially given Chelsea adds a guy like Deco to its already preposterously strong midfield. I don't see this Chelsea playing so badly at Anfield as last year. I totally see Chelsea a cut above United now they have a top class coach.

My next favorite teams are Spurs. Their arguably best starting XI is salivating even for Arsenal/Liverpool standards:

----------------Gomes----------------

-A. Hutton-Woodgate--L. King-G. Bale-

--------Huddlestone - Jenas----------

Bentley - Modric - Giovani dos Santos

--------------Berbatov---------------


Elsewhere, I see good things coming from Villa, Portsmouth, and Sunderland (again! last year I though Keane would be better) and not so much from Everton, Man City and Blackburn.

Anyway. No blogging punditry would be complete without a final table. Following last season's tradition (), here goes my list.

1. Chelsea
2. Liverpool
3. Manchester United
4. Tottenham Hotspur

5. Arsenal
6. Aston Villa
7. Portsmouth
8. Everton
9. Sunderland
10. West Ham

11. Manchester City
12. Newcastle
13. Blackburn
14. Middlesbrough
15. Fulham
16. West Brom
17. Wigan

18. Bolton
19. Stoke
20. Hull

FA Cup final: Man united x Aston Villa

League Cup: Chelsea (I mean, their reserve side is better than almost all other teams)

Champions League final: Chelsea x Inter Milan

Uefa Cup: Tottenham x Atletico Madrid (seriously, Atleti will fall from CL, now or later)

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Blame game

Right. Weeks of unprecedentedly toiling work prevented me from posting here, but that doesn't mean I've been oblivious to what's going on. Especially when I figured how to embed this video down here:

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Being hip

There's an interetsing interview-cum-profile of CSS (Cansei de Ser Sexy) at today's Observer.

Not only does it shed some light into the minds of terminally hip musicians, it also gives a glimpse of how it was like to grow up in São Paulo in the nineties (ie my generation).

Plus, they're so cool. I definitely recommend.

Monday, June 09, 2008

Renewable sources

Brilliant, from "The World is Flat"'s Tom Friedman in the NY Times.

Visiting Israel sounds cool.

People vs. Dinosaurs By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Tefen Industrial Park, Israel

Question: What do America’s premier investor, Warren Buffett, and Iran’s toxic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have in common? Answer: They’ve both made a bet about Israel’s future.

Ahmadinejad declared on Monday that Israel “has reached its final phase and will soon be wiped out from the geographic scene.”

By coincidence, I heard the Iranian leader’s statement on Israel Radio just as I was leaving the headquarters of Iscar, Israel’s famous precision tool company, headquartered in the Western Galilee, near the Lebanon border. Iscar is known for many things, most of all for being the first enterprise that Buffett bought overseas for his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett paid $4 billion for 80 percent of Iscar and the deal just happened to close a few days before Hezbollah, a key part of Iran’s holding company, attacked Israel in July 2006, triggering a monthlong war. I asked Iscar’s chairman, Eitan Wertheimer, what was Buffett’s reaction when he found out that he had just paid $4 billion for an Israeli company and a few days later Hezbollah rockets were landing outside its parking lot.

Buffett just brushed it off with a wave, recalled Wertheimer: “He said, ‘I’m not interested in the next quarter. I’m interested in the next 20 years.’ ” Wertheimer repaid that confidence by telling half his employees to stay home during the war and using the other half to keep the factory from not missing a day of work and setting a production record for the month. It helps when many of your “employees” are robots that move around the buildings, beeping humans out of the way.

So who would you put your money on? Buffett or Ahmadinejad? I’d short Ahmadinejad and go long Warren Buffett.

Why? From outside, Israel looks as if it’s in turmoil, largely because the entire political leadership seems to be under investigation. But Israel is a weak state with a strong civil society. The economy is exploding from the bottom up. Israel’s currency, the shekel, has appreciated nearly 30 percent against the dollar since the start of 2007.

The reason? Israel is a country that is hard-wired to compete in a flat world. It has a population drawn from 100 different countries, speaking 100 different languages, with a business culture that strongly encourages individual imagination and adaptation and where being a nonconformist is the norm. While you were sleeping, Israel has gone from oranges to software, or as they say around here, from Jaffa to Java.

The day I visited the Iscar campus, one of its theaters was filled with industrialists from the Czech Republic, who were getting a lecture — in Czech — from Iscar experts. The Czechs came all the way to the Israel-Lebanon border region to learn about the latest innovations in precision tool-making. Wertheimer is famous for staying close to his customers and the latest technologies. “If you sleep on the floor,” he likes to say, “you never have to worry about falling out of bed.”

That kind of hunger explains why, in the first quarter of 2008, the top four economies after America in attracting venture capital for start-ups were: Europe $1.53 billion, China $719 million, Israel $572 million and India $99 million, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Israel, with 7 million people, attracted almost as much as China, with 1.3 billion.

Boaz Golany, who heads engineering at the Technion, Israel’s M.I.T., told me: “In the last eight months, we have had delegations from I.B.M., General Motors, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart visiting our campus. They are all looking to develop R & D centers in Israel.”

Ahmadinejad professes not to care about such things. He was — to put it in American baseball terms — born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. Because oil prices have gone up to nearly $140 a barrel, he feels relaxed predicting that Israel will disappear, while Iran maintains a welfare state — with more than 10 percent unemployment.

Iran has invented nothing of importance since the Islamic Revolution, which is a shame. Historically, Iranians have been a dynamic and inventive people — one only need look at the richness of Persian civilization to see that. But the Islamic regime there today does not trust its people and will not empower them as individuals.

Of course, oil wealth can buy all the software and nuclear technology you want, or can’t develop yourself. This is not an argument that we shouldn’t worry about Iran. Ahmadinejad should, though.

Iran’s economic and military clout today is largely dependent on extracting oil from the ground. Israel’s economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting intelligence from its people. Israel’s economic power is endlessly renewable. Iran’s is a dwindling resource based on fossil fuels made from dead dinosaurs.

So who will be here in 20 years? I’m with Buffett: I’ll bet on the people who bet on their people — not the people who bet on dead dinosaurs.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Euro punditry

If only I had put some money on Man United winning the Champions League by the time I predicted it, I would've struck gold. Alas my Premier League punditry was not precise but not so far either - I missed the point at Liverpool, Spurs and Wigan, got it right for Everton, West Ham, Sunderland.

Anyway. Now let's turn the page for a different tournament. It's Euro time.

This is not the most relaxed of times for me (loads of work) so I'll be brief:

Out of Group A: Portugal, Czech
Out of Group B: Germany, Croatia
Out of Group C: Italy, France
Out of Group D: Spain, Russia

1/4 finals: Portugal def Croatia, Germany def Czech, Russia def Italy, Spain def France

Semi finals: Germany def Portugal, Spain def Russia

Finals: Spain def Germany

Spain champions

(yeah, I know that's bold, even more with them defeating the French... anyway that's my guess)

Monday, May 26, 2008

It's my city and I just love it

This great São Paulo tourism ad is showing every now and then at CNN int'l.

It's great and reflects how amazing my city is.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Now this is a well-designed website

I think Uefa has struck gold with the new website for Euro 2008. It encapsulates many good things seen in other trend-setting news sites (my personal favorites The Guardian, Slate Magazine, NY Times, Ig standing out) - large hi-res photos; crisp interactive features; clean background; various layouts in each session; extra bits (team buses design is great) and so on.

I definitely see myself browsing it a lot in the next weeks.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Only in America

I don't know what strikes me most in this report from Huffington Post - if it's the American craze about number crunching in elections, or the fact that people would do such a thing as vote for Clinton, being a McCain supporter, just to mess up the Democratic race.

Actually, neither comes as such a surprise to me.

Exit Polls: Limbaugh Effect Seems To Rear Its Head

Did Rush Limbaugh actually impact the Democratic primary?

The loud-mouthed radio talk show host has been encouraging Republicans to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton to continue the "chaos" in the Democratic race. And a sampling of some key exit poll information suggests he may, to a certain extent, be having an effect.

Thirty-six percent of primary voters said that Clinton does not share their values. And yet, among that total, one out of every five (20 percent) nevertheless voted for her in the Indiana election. Moreover, of the 10 percent of Hoosiers who said "neither candidate" shared their values, 75 percent cast their ballots for Clinton.

These are not small numbers. By comparison, of the 33 percent of voters who said Sen. Barack Obama does not share their values, only seven percent cast their ballots in his favor. Basically, more people who don't relate to Clinton are, for one reason or another, still voting for her. These are not likely to be loyal supporters.

On a broader level, among the 17 percent of primary goers who said they would choose Sen. John McCain over Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical general election match-up, 41 percent of that group came from Clinton's own camp. In essence, roughly seven percent of Clinton support in Indiana (40 percent of 17 percent) said they would defect to the Republican should she end up the nominee. That would be a difficult punch to stomach in November. In 2004, nearly 1 million Indianans voted for John Kerry. A seven percent defection rate would have meant 70,000 less votes.

By contrast, if the general election is between Obama and McCain, 19 percent of the Indiana Democratic primary goers said they would support the Republican. But only 12 percent of that group (2.28 percent) would come from Obama's camp.

The numbers suggest one of three things: A) Clinton's support in Indiana, while clearly there, is not entirely solid; B) a large swath of Indiana primary goers simply didn't like the nominees and thought of Clinton as the lesser of two evils; or C) Limbaugh's hatchet plan could be having political ripples.

Perhaps it's a mix of all three.

Friday, April 25, 2008

The right biofuel

This op-ed article on yesterday's NY Times is so thoroughly good that I couldn't bring myself to copy-paste quotes of it - all passages are excellent. A must-read.

"Bring On The Right Biofuels" by Roger Cohen

Also excellent, and somewhat related, is this slideshow from the Financial Times on Amazon deforestation.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

What I'm listening to



Fantástica gravação ao vivo de 1965 - Nara Leão, Edu Lobo e Tamba Trio.

Pontos altos, pra mim, são o sambinha "O trem atrasou", os clássicos de João do Vale "Carcará" e "Minha História" e versões as instrumentais altamente jazzísticas (oito minutos cada) para "Consolação" e "O Morro não tem vez" de Tom e Vinícius.


Ou seja, Sambas, Baiões e Bossa Nova com arranjos caprichados de Jazz. Não dá pra ser melhor, sério.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Food? What food?

Another rich, fact-based discussion from the Guardian. This one has really kept me thinking.

Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat
A food recession is under way. Biofuels are a crime against humanity, but - take it from a flesh eater - flesh eating is worse


First two comments from readers are great, too. One links to this appaling video about pig-farming. I could not watch until the end (might have puked) and am seriously considering bypassing bacon from now on.

Oh. me, vegan? No way.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

What I'm listening to

Excellent compilation from the always excellent compiler Gilles Peterson. I can buy his stuff without even having heard of it before, because it's certain to be great and picked up carefully.






Disc 1 is a compilation of modern soul-jazz that winds up into house music and back. A bit too much dancefloor-oriented for me, although tracks 1-5 and the last one (the most jazzy parts of the disc) are velvet-smooth. The sticky but groovy chorus of Track 1 ("Don't Take it Personal" by Wahoo) stands out, as does track 5 ("Wishing You Were Here" by Blaze with Joey Negro remix).

Disc 2 is the highlight for me - 70's funk and soul that does not sound like whisky-soaked late stages of a wedding party. Many, many highlights here -
- "Could Heaven Ever Be Like This" by Idris Muhhamad (starts corny but ends up in an uplifting metals solo)
- "Let Your Feelings Show" by Earth Wind and Fire (a familiar voice, a familiar beat, but with a novelty feeling)
- "Circles" by Rufus and Chaka Khan (powerful vocals invite with a more serious tone than the rest of the tracks)
though my favorite song is probably "Boogie Oogie Oogie" by A Taste of Honey, which just makes me feel like getting on up on the floor and boogie-oogie-oogieing till-I-just-can't-boogie-no-more.

Disc 3 is a raw drum-and-bass compilation which is not the reason why I purchased this album. My verdict is, even if only for Disc 2 and half of Disc 1, listening to this is a trip into dancehalls and jazzbars that is well worth.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

YouTube pro?

All right. Hulu has to be the coolest website ever. Too bad it is still US only.

Good intro to it was written in an article at Slate Magazine.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Monster

So far, the best articles I've read on the current financial crisis - trust me, I've read a lot on it recently - were in the New York Times. The attempts to explain the situation "for dummies", without political biases, is remarkable.

The titles are suggestive -

"What created this monster?"

"Can't grasp credit crisis? Join the club"

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

It's the economists, stupid

Here is a link to a blunt, in-your-face article by a smart writer, that tries to put into perspective the current economic woes of the US in light of the deregulation of the past 3 decades.

Makes me wonder, for all my belief in free markets and liberalism, whether it can be fully implemented in spite of the natural greed of humankind. Maybe it is a bit like socialism - a good idea from well-meaning people, that History will deem as not practical to implement.

Monday, March 03, 2008

My "BBC Radio 1 pop chart" mix-tape winter 2008

As I said last week, I have had very little option these past days but to listen to BBC Radio 1 everyday.

After a while, I have to admit, pop is addictive like a cigarette. I have to concede I'm gonna miss it, and therefore am putting together a mix-tape of the catchiest songs. (Mix-CD, more precisely)

Here are the YouTube videos of my mix-tape. I sorted with my preferred tracks on top, which, in addition to making the pop charts, are actually great songs.

1. Duffy - "Mercy"

2. Amy Winehouse - "Valerie"

3. Adele - "Chasing Pavements"

4. Plain White T's - "Hey there Delilah"

5. Kaiser Chiefs - "Ruby"

6. Amy Winehouse - "Tears Dry Up On Their Own"

7. Mika - "Grace Kelly"

Not so great (all a bit cheesy) but definitely catchy:

8. Sugababes - "About U Now" -

9. Girls Aloud - "Call the Shots"

10. Mika - "Relax (Take it easy)"

11. Kylie Minogue - "Wow"

12. Nickelback - "Rock Star"

13. Estelle feat Kanye West - "American Boy"

14. Rihanna - "Don't Stop The Music"

15. OneRepublic feat Timbaland - "Apologize"

Friday, February 29, 2008

Liberal substance

Right. The democratic primaries are entertaining, so much that everyone (inside and outside America) is siding with either Obama or Hillary, as if THEY were the opposites, as if one would be good and the other one bad. Then there's drama, pub discussions, rallying, you know, the circus that we all need alongside the daily bread.

But - some facts have reminded me that reality is not quite like that.

First: Obama and Hillary are quite similar in terms of policy. Too similar, in fact. Universal or almost universal health care. Pull out of Iraq in an orderly line or in a bang. Reverse Nafta or propose a new Nafta. On and on the list goes, split much more along semantic than ideological lines.

Second: For as much Hillary has been punching Obama, she cannot beat him TOO hard, otherwise she'd give republicans some meat for the REAL contest in the next months. When McCain comes to punch Obama, he's probably going to kick and use a baseball bat as well. This article in the New York Times election blog actually explains it much more clearly than I ever could.

Third: are democrats really the best option now? I mean, for a non-American like myself, should I cheer for the Dems? What would it mean to me if they won?
OK. Within that point: Bush has been terrible in a lot of issues. He and his party definitely represent a portion of American conservatism that thinks backwards and inwards, and which does very little to share with the world the good things of American culture. In fact, it does a lot to share the bad things (pollution, consumerism, xenophobia, ...).

But - what is it that the world needs from America, economically speaking? Is it less pollution? Probably, but not most importantly. Open trade is the correct answer. Every country wants to buy and sell its goods to America, and America should want to buy and sell goods for other countries, in a process that would leave everyone better off. Again, a look at this well-balanced article from the Financial Times explains it better than I would.

The FT also reminds us that both Obama and Hillary have been speaking as if Nafta - arguably the most pro-free-trade action in America in the past 20 years - was bad for America because it made Americans lose jobs. The agreement, in their words, should be overhauled. Which is a starting point not to pursue free trade at all.

Quoting the FT:

Trade policy has no effect on net employment: you can as easily have full employment, or chronic unemployment, under autarky as under free trade. The purpose of liberal trade is not to “create jobs” – the term is a badge of economic illiteracy – but to change the pattern of work and raise living standards overall. As with new technology, there are winners and losers. The right policy is not to turn back integration, any more than it would be to ban the fork-lift truck. It is to ensure that the overall gains are widely shared and the victims get help.

The saddest thing is that the Democrats who understand this reasoning believe that the party’s supporters are too dull to grasp it, and must be fed some protectionist red meat. The challenge, they believe, is to pander to ignorance while doing the least harm.


After this masterclass from an expert, I have nothing to add.


Oh, actually I do. I have always been very positively impressed on how much the Financial Times and The Economist transcend political divides and never - ever - side with political ideologies in their opinions. They are, however, consistent defenders of liberalism. How long will it take for Brazil to have anything like that in the media? Our reporters at times seem most worried in ousting or defending the government, selectively choosing what themes to write, rather than bring out issues whose discussion would improve well-being of the nation.

Not to mention it is tiring to always read both the leftist and the rightist column, because I know that the truth is in neither one. These days, forming an opinion out of Brazilian media sounds like doing a statistical analysis: you collect a massive amount of data, then exclude the outliers, than figure out the mean and standard deviation, perhaps test if it is a normal distribution...

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Tyler Durden

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JAuki07wiUo

INT. LOU'S TAVERN - BASEMENT - NIGHT

LOUD. An enormous CROWD of guys, including Jack and Bob,
stands around Tyler, who's in the center of the circle,
holding up his hands to quiet them...

TYLER
I look around... I look around and
see a lot of new faces.

An enthusiastic RUMBLE from the crowd.

TYLER
Shut up! Which means a lot of you
have been breaking the first two
rules of fight club.

A glum silence falls. Guys look at each other.

TYLER
I see in fight club the strongest and
smartest men who have ever lived --
an entire generation pumping gas and
waiting tables; or they're slaves
with white collars.
Advertisements have them chasing cars
and clothes, working jobs they hate
so they can buy shit they don't need.
We are the middle children of
history, with no purpose or place.
We have no great war, or great
depression. The great war is a
spiritual war. The great depression
is our lives. We were raised by
television to believe that we'd be
millionaires and movie gods and rock
stars -- but we won't. And we're
learning that fact. And we're very,
very pissed-off.

The crowd erupts into a DEAFENING CHORUS of agreement. Jack
looks at the blazing excitement in the eyes of the crowd.

TYLER
We are the quiet young men who listen
until it's time to decide.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Pop music

One memorable quote from John Cusack's character in "High Fidelity" is:

"Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable
Or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?"

I am in the Uk right now, with a rental car, without CDs, having to drive some 10-20 minutes to work, in a region with not a lot of radio stations. Which means I have been indulging in pop radios, even though in my homeland I avoid them like a vampire avoids sunlight. I mostly go from BBC1 to Capital FM and back.

Surprise surprise, some things are actually pretty good in there. Especially Duffy, a young welsh singer that sounds like an old New Orleans mama in her hit "Mercy". Adele is quite good as well (though a bit reminiscent of American Idol winners Carrie and Kelly Clarkson). And of course they play a lot of Amy Winehouse, which had been a great addition to my CD collection earlier in the year.

But then I cannot dodge from Kylie Minogue. She's everywhere. And "Wow" (her latest single) is one of those addictive songs that are no good but can't leave one's head. It is very British, I have to say - a song that I totally imagine being played in a pub, with a bunch of drunken girls dancing to it in a hen's party. Just like Jamelia's "Superstar" 3 years ago (God, time flies).

What do I make of this whole thing the end? Not sure yet. But maybe the moral of the story is that pop music is unescapable, and if you can't defeat it, join it. Well, it's certainly not edifying, but at least I found out that it's harmless.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Looking forward to the Big Cups

You can see that season is coming by the ringing of the bells.

In case of the Copa Libertadores and the Uefa Champions League, the world's two premier football club competitions, the bells come in form of press coverage, which leads to word of mouth, side bets with friends, and that sort of thing.

The Libertadores

I'm glad that Europe is increasingly keener on South American football. After last year's good coverage of Copa America (I was in Belgium then, and could watch all matches I wanted), it seems that the Libertadores will also be treated as it should. In two of my favorite readings (BBC Sport and Guardian Unlimited Football), balanced and informed articles were written recently on the subject.

But, while the always excellent Tim Vickery of the BBC pits the cup as Brazilians x Boca, and flashes São Paulo as the strongest contender, the Guardian's Conrad Leach takes a road less traveled and invites readers for a gamble bet on Cruzeiro.

I am not sure how much Mr Leach wrote that just to show off how knowledgeable he is, or if he really believes Cruzeiro can stand up against Boca, SP and Flamengo. I for one am not convinced. As I commented in his blog, this Cruzeiro side looks refreshingly young, but not nearly as talented as the refreshingly young Santos of 2002. Which by the way lost against an experienced and catimbeiro Boca in June 2003. I'm more in agreement with André Rizek who paints them as unpredictable - not favorites, but likely to do damage.

The Champions League

Oh boy. Last night I was stuck in my Fantasy Football team selection. Round of 16 is tough, because you have to back up the likely winners to avoid costly transfers in the next round. And this year choosing the winners is not that simple.

Fair enough, Barça and Chelsea look pretty certain winners. Man United and Porto too, in spite of the bit stronger opposition. But then...

Real Madrid would edge past Roma with Robinho, but without him, who knows. Right, Robben and Higuain are as good subsitutes as Schuster could ever ask for; but still, will they gel so well with Raul and Ruud as Robinho did? And as for Sevilla and Fenerbahce, that's as random as African Cup semifinals. I favor the Spaniards for the recent expertise in European two-legged ties.

Finally, the crème de la crème. Runaway league leaders with a history of European underachievement, against the most traditional of European winners, who currently underachieve in the local leagues. (I should copyright that phrase. I wrote it myself, I swear). Arsenal x Milan and Inter x Liverpool are THE most mouthwatering round-of-16 ties since Chelsea x Barcelona in 2005.

Honestly, I have no prognosis on these. None whatsoever. Seriously. But I did take risks in Fantasy Football, and chose players from only one side of each of the ties. Who did I choose? Not gonna say now, Fabio, wait.

Last but not least: thank you uefa.com. Increasing the Fantasy Football "money" to 110 was really necessary, and just made the whole thing more fun by avoiding me to keep the reserve defenders from Celtic in my bench all the way through the final, just because they cost 3 "moneys". I actually really like my reserves this time.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

In my place

I finally found my very own street!

Sunday, February 03, 2008

Jornalistas esportivos

Estou meio viciado no ótimo blog do André Rizek ultimamente.

Um bom exemplo do estilo dele - "conhecedor de futebol sem ser chato" - é este post sobre o PVC - que aliás leva essa definição ao extremo.

Mas, PVC já é lenda, fato - e Rizek, seu contemporâneo, está no caminho.

Friday, January 25, 2008

The new stadium

Excellent pics from the newest designs of Liverpool's future stadium at Stanley Park.

Perhaps I can make it to the grand opening on 2011?

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Davos question

Following this invitation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqs-OZWw9o

a number of individuals have posted videos on YouTube with questions or answers for issues to be discussed at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

I watched a couple. Very interesting. One of my favorites is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6U8xUdMMUM

which tackles politics, and how "representative democracy" is a good concept with a flawed execution.

Reminded me of Plato's argumentations.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Rethinking Facebook

Must-read food for thought from the Guardian Unlimited.

Best bits:

"does Facebook really connect people? Doesn't it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk?"

"by his own admission, Thiel [a member of Facebook's board] is trying to destroy the real world, which he also calls "nature", and install a virtual world in its place, and it is in this context that we must view the rise of Facebook. Facebook is a deliberate experiment in global manipulation, and Thiel is a bright young thing in the neoconservative pantheon, with a penchant for far-out techno-utopian fantasies. Not someone I want to help get any richer."

""Share" is Facebookspeak for "advertise". Sign up to Facebook and you become a free walking, talking advert for Blockbuster or Coke, extolling the virtues of these brands to your friends. We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships."

"Facebook pretends to be about freedom, but isn't it really more like an ideologically motivated virtual totalitarian regime with a population that will very soon exceed the UK's? Thiel and the rest have created their own country, a country of consumers."

"Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven't read Keats' Endymion? And when there are seeds to be sown in my own back yard? I don't want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it. Damn air-conditioning! And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It's free, it's easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it's called talking"

Pedro Music Awards 2007

Keeping on with the tradition from 2005 and 2006, here are the albums and songs that have marked my year. They are not necessarily albums that were launched this last year, but instead albums that came to my knowledge in the past twelve months - by eaither purchasing, receiving as a gift, or downloading them.

As I said before the list this year shall come as no surprise, for I have been anticipating my predilection for some of the winners from as early as January.

It was a year of female singers, of jazz, and of introspection.

Top Albums I've discovered in 2007:

1) A Love Supreme, John Coltrane
2) 5:55, Charlotte Gainsbourg
3) Acústico MTV Paulinho da Viola
4) The Cosmic Game, Thievery Corporation
5) Universo ao Meu Redor, Marisa Monte
6) There's a Riot Goin' On, Sly and The Family Stone
7) Reservoir Dogs Soundtrack
8) A Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
9) Transformer, Lou Reed
10) Segundo, Maria Rita

Songs that have marked my year:

1) "A Love Supreme, Part 4: Psalm", John Coltrane
2) "A Love Supreme, Part 1: Acknowledgement", John Coltrane
3) "Everything I cannot see", Charlotte Gainsbourg
4) "Meu canário", Marisa Monte
5) "Marching The Hate Machines Into The Sun", Thievery Corporation featuring The Flaming Lips
6) "A sign of the ages", Gil Scott-Heron
7) "Timoneiro", Paulinho da Viola
8) "Family Affair", Sly and The Family Stone
9) "Little Green Bag", George Baker Selection
10) "A Brighter Day", Ronnie Jordan featuring Mos Def


Still heard a lot of:

Songs In The Key of Life, Stevie Wonder
At War With The Mystics, Flaming Lips
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Gil Scott-Heron
Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin III
Machinehead, Deep Purple
The Velvet Underground and Nico
Under The Iron Sea, Keane
What's Going On, Marvin Gaye



Now comes 2008!!!!

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Welcome 08

Good.

Vacations prevented me from writing my best-of-2007 lists yet, but I promise to do so over the weekend.

Glad to be in a positive sum world-economy

In some 30 years from now we might just realize that this has been the best age in History to have lived in. I got that impression from reading this (once again) excellent article from Martin Wolf at the FT.

The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy
By Martin Wolf


Published: December 18 2007 19:02 | Last updated: December 19 2007 08:05

We live in a positive-sum world economy and have done so for about two centuries. This, I believe, is why democracy has become a political norm, empires have largely vanished, legal slavery and serfdom have disappeared and measures of well-being have risen almost everywhere. What then do I mean by a positive-sum economy? It is one in which everybody can become better off. It is one in which real incomes per head are able to rise indefinitely.

How long might such a world last, and what might happen if it ends? The debate on the connected issues of climate change and energy security raises these absolutely central questions. As I argued in a previous column (“Welcome to a world of runaway energy demand”, November 14, 2007), fossilised sunlight and ideas have been the twin drivers of the world economy. So nothing less is at stake than the world we inhabit, by which I mean its political and economic, as well as physical, nature.

According to Angus Maddison, the economic historian, humanity’s average real income per head has risen 10-fold since 1820.* Increases have also occurred almost everywhere, albeit to hugely divergent extents: US incomes per head have risen 23-fold and those of Africa merely four-fold. Moreover, huge improvements have happened, despite a more than six-fold increase in the world’s population.

It is an astonishing story with hugely desirable consequences. Clever use of commercial energy has immeasurably increased the range of goods and services available. It has also substantially reduced both our own drudgery and our dependence on that of others. Serfs and slaves need no longer satisfy the appetites of narrow elites. Women need no longer devote their lives to the demands of domesticity. Consistent rises in real incomes per head have transformed our economic lives.

What is less widely understood is that they have also transformed politics. A zero-sum economy leads, inevitably, to repression at home and plunder abroad. In traditional agrarian societies the surpluses extracted from the vast majority of peasants supported the relatively luxurious lifestyles of military, bureaucratic and noble elites. The only way to increase the prosperity of an entire people was to steal from another one. Some peoples made almost a business out of such plunder: the Roman republic was one example; the nomads of the Eurasian steppes, who reached their apogee of success under Genghis Khan and his successors, were another. The European conquerors of the 16th to 18th centuries were, arguably, a third. In a world of stagnant living standards the gains of one group came at the expense of equal, if not still bigger, losses for others. This, then, was a world of savage repression and brutal predation.

The move to the positive-sum economy transformed all this fundamentally, albeit far more slowly than it might have done. It just took time for people to realise how much had changed. Democratic politics became increasingly workable because it was feasible for everybody to become steadily better off. People fight to keep what they have more fiercely than to obtain what they do not have. This is the “endowment effect”. So, in the new positive-sum world, elites were willing to tolerate the enfranchisement of the masses. The fact that they no longer depended on forced labour made this shift easier still. Consensual politics, and so democracy, became the political norm.

Equally, a positive-sum global economy ought to end the permanent state of war that characterised the pre-modern world. In such an economy, internal development and external commerce offer better prospects for virtually everybody than does international conflict. While trade always offered the possibility of positive-sum exchange, as Adam Smith argued, the gains were small compared with what is offered today by the combination of peaceful internal development and expanding international trade. Unfortunately, it took almost two centuries after the “industrial revolution” for states to realise that neither war nor empire was a “game” worth playing.

Nuclear weapons and the rise of the developmental state have made war among great powers obsolete. It is no accident then that most of the conflicts on the planet have been civil wars in poor countries that had failed to build the domestic foundations of the positive-sum economy. But China and India have now achieved just that. Perhaps the most important single fact about the world we live in is that the leaderships of these two countries have staked their political legitimacy on domestic economic development and peaceful international commerce.

The age of the plunderer is past. Or is it? The biggest point about debates on climate change and energy supply is that they bring back the question of limits. If, for example, the entire planet emitted CO2 at the rate the US does today, global emissions would be almost five times greater. The same, roughly speaking, is true of energy use per head. This is why climate change and energy security are such geopolitically significant issues. For if there are limits to emissions, there may also be limits to growth. But if there are indeed limits to growth, the political underpinnings of our world fall apart. Intense distributional conflicts must then re-emerge – indeed, they are already emerging – within and among countries.

The response of many, notably environmentalists and people with socialist leanings, is to welcome such conflicts. These, they believe, are the birth-pangs of a just global society. I strongly disagree. It is far more likely to be a step towards a world characterised by catastrophic conflict and brutal repression. This is why I sympathise with the hostile response of classical liberals and libertarians to the very notion of such limits, since they view them as the death-knell of any hopes for domestic freedom and peaceful foreign relations.

The optimists believe that economic growth can and will continue. The pessimists believe either that it will not do so or that it must not if we are to avoid the destruction of the environment. I think we have to try to marry what makes sense in these opposing visions. It is vital for hopes of peace and freedom that we sustain the positive-sum world economy. But it is no less vital to tackle the environmental and resource challenges the economy has thrown up. This is going to be hard. The condition for success is successful investment in human ingenuity. Without it, dark days will come. That has never been truer than it is today.