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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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"

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.

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"

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...

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.

He is very, very good.

This American election is getting more interesting every day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG0PfADEbDs

Also good reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/opinion/24rich.html?em&ex=1204088400&en=3e9996b4403c243c&ei=5087%0A

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/clinton-obama-and-the-be_b_88349.html

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.

England 4-1 Holland, Euro 96

Insightful analysis of an interesting game. From the Guardian.


On second thoughts: England 4-1 Holland, Euro 96
This was certainly one of England's best results in the modern era - but was it really as great a performance as everyone seems to think?

The game by the way can be watched in Youtube, via this link.

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.

In my place

I finally found my very own street!

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.

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?

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.

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!!!!

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.

Imperdível

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

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.

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).

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

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

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.

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