The Sunset
He, who usually was so quiet and laconic, found himself talking for hours, with ease and joy... But the sun set, and this was the fastest and yet the most eternal dawn he ever experienced. But he only realized the meaning of it all too late; and since then he is desperately hoping and waiting for the sunrise... But it´s never the time. They are never on the same time.
Team Work
It´s fashionable for one to say that he likes team work. But the fact is that most people are incompetent even to work alone... And these usually think that team work is just being nice to other people in their team, not realising that the team work requires special techniques to be effective. The result is a lot of incompetent and inefficient teams in the world.
Eclipse - Pink Floyd
All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All that you feel
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All that you save
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy
beg, borrow or steal
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say
All that you eat
everyone you meet
All that you slight
everyone you fight
All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.
- Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon - Eclipse)
Dogville
Yesterday I watched
Dogville, a really incredible movie! It´s all about the feelings and actions of the people who live in a small village, when they receive a strange woman who is hiding from something they don´t know. The circunstances, fears and opportunities, gradually change the way they interact with the woman and the movie was able to focus on this change, by using an incredibly minimalistic scenario, with houses indicated only by drawings in the black stage. Indeed, all the movie is minimalistic... Before this movie, I knew of minimalism only in music.
There is a great dialogue about morality and arrogance in the end of the movie, which I still don´t understand quite well. So I´m thinking to watch this movie again (and I almost never watch something twice...).
And the best of all is that this movie is just the first of a trilogy! I hope the other two are so good, disturbing and inovative as this one.
The director, Lars von Trier, also did
Os Idiotas some time ago, following the rules of the Dogma movement. But I really hated it, when I watched it with some friends in ITA.
The Tube of Bruno's Life
I just finished some modifications in the famous London Tube Map, to put some of my life in it. Enjoy the
Tube of Bruno's Life.
Passion and The Natural Selection
There´s something very paradoxical in passion. It´s certainly a very important factor in the reproduction of the human species, because it joins people; and yet being passionated, and so making or thinking stupid things beucase of it, can be a terrible disadvantage to let one achieve what he wants... this can be ultimately bad to the species objective of reproduction...
The question is: If passion can be such a disadvantage, how did it survive millions of years of natural selection?
Silence
Not having what to say is not always the reason for silence...
Brasil: Estatísticas
A reportagem de capa da última Veja mostra que os impostos aki no Brasil estão entre os mais altos do mundo, enquanto que os serviços prestados pelo governo estão entre os piores do mundo.
Na Veja da semana passada o salário dos deputados do Brasil é comparado com o de diversos países da União Européia. Os políticos brasileiros ganham o dobro dos suecos. A Suécia deve estar em 1° lugar no IDH, enquanto o Brasil está em 72°...
Não quero ser roubado... Preciso conseguir emigrar daki.
A Escrita da Memória
Uma outra exposição que vi hoje foi
A Escrita da Memória, no Banco Santos Cultural. Nela é mostrada uma evolução da escrita como forma de preservação da memória, desde pedras de 5000a.C. com simbolos inscritos até os modernos palms. Além da tecnologia e dos diferentes sistemas de escrita, também são mostrados vários documentos históricos (filosóficos, políticos, científicos).
É sensacional.
Emoção Art.ficial 2.0
Está ocorrendo em São Paulo a segunda edição da exposição de arte multimídia
Emoção Art.ficial, a qual fui visitar hoje. Há bem menos coisas que na primeira edição, ocorrida há dois anos, mas ainda assim é bem legal.
Übermensch and Nihilism
This I posted in the Orkut Nietzsche community:
When I read some of Nietzsche's books, I understood that the state of übermensch is achieved when one can live free from human values.
These values are mainly the result of fear (or the will of power over others) and constitute the herd instinct of humankind.
The übermensch would be strong enough to overcome this fear and these values and still enjoy life.
I think that in different books (and sometimes in different parts of the same book), Nietzsche's optimism or pessimism on whether this achievement (living like an übermensch) is possible varies a lot.
Some of my doubts:
* Do you understand the übermensch concept in the same way I did?
* How much nihilistic is this interpretation of the "übermensch way of life"?
* Could someone define the various kinds of nihilism?
By the way, I read "human, all too human", "além do bem e do mal (beyond good and evil?)", "a gaia ciencia" and "thus spoke Zaratusthra" in this order and in portuguese... And now I'm trying to improve my German in order to read the next books in the original language.
A Simpatia Brasileira
O povo brasileiro é frequentemente comsiderado simpático em comparação com outros. No fundo essa simpatia é apenas resultado de uma maior falsidade. Enquanto pessoas de outros povos não exitam em expressar suas vontades mesmo que elas gerem conflitos, um brasileiro usualmente nunca expressaria sua vontade, preferindo, em vez disso, dissimulá-la e manipular os outros habilmente para conseguir o que quer. A amizade e a simpatia brasileiras são superficiais, apenas uma tênue máscara para camuflar a falsidade.
Inverno
Gosto do frio e do inverno, mas esse ano estou com um frio inexplicavel! Tenho usado 3 blusas, 2 calcas e 3 meias e mesmo assim fico com frio... E isso dentro de casa!!! Acho que era por causa do GRE e do TOEFL, que estavam consumindo intelectualmente toda a minha energia, porque agora acho que já estou mais quente...
E tanta roupa e tanto frio e tanto estudo tem me deixado extremamente sedentário... meu alongamento está decaindo exponencialmente... Odeio muito tudo isso.
A Não-Mente
Os zen-budistas argumentam que a melhor forma de atingir a perfeição numa ação é livrar a mente dos pensamentos, pois estes só atrapalham a execução dela. Livre de pensamentos, atinge-se uma concentração total naquilo que se está fazendo e cada ato, mental ou físico, necessário flui com precisão e agilidade...
Eu adoro entrar em estado de não-mente pra executar coisas que exigem bastante desempenho de mim... Acho que aprendi a entrar nesse estado lutando JuDo..
GRE!!!
Akabei de voltar do GRE! Estou bastante satisfeito com meu resultado! Gabaritei a seção quantitativa (800 pontos!) e fiz 600 pontos na parte verbal, um desempenho razoavelmente acima do que eu estava conseguindo nos simulados!
Embora o resultado das redações não saia instantaneamente, acho que fui bastante bem nelas. Em todo o teste, mas especialmente nas redações, eu consegui atingir um estado de concentração total e não-pensamento: fluxo, não-mente, foco...
The Real TOEFL
Today's morning I took the real TOEFL exam at Alumni. My score was similar to the simulations I took before: listening 29/30, reading 27/30, structure/writing 13-30. Of course, I do not yet know the score in the essay, so my final score will be in the range 230-287, of a total of 300. This is probably enough to be accepted by the universities...
Second GRE argument
Critical essay about the following argument:
"Six months ago the region of Forestville increased the speed limit for vehicles traveling on the region's highways by ten miles per hour. Since that change took effect, the number of automobile accidents in that region has increased by 15 percent. But the speed limit in Elmsford, a region neighboring Forestville, remained unchanged, and automobile accidents declined slightly during the same six-month period. Therefore, if the citizens of Forestville want to reduce the number of automobile accidents on the region's highways, they should campaign to reduce Forestville's speed limit to what it was before the increase."
The argument suggests that the increase in speed limit in the region of Forestville made the highways more dangerous, leading to an increase in accidents. But there are some other factors that could have increased the danger, which can be independent or indirectly dependent on the speed limit.
Firstly, it would be wise to analyse the relation between the highways of Forestville and Elmsford. Traffic from Elmsford region could be choosing to drive through Forestville to enjoy the higher speed limit. With a higher volume of traffic, independent on the speed, Forestville is likely to have more accidents and Elmsford, with smaller volume would have a decline. To further analyze this possibility, it would be interesting to compare the statistics of accidents with the statistics of traffic volume in both regions. It could be better to raise both speed limits than to reduce Forestville´s limit to its previous value.
The traffic volume in Forestville could also have rised because of external factors. An alternative route could have been blocked for maintanance, forcing the drivers to use Forestville´s highways instead. Or the economy in the region may be better or a new company may have settled in theregion.
The variations in the numbers of accidents could be due to the worsening of the highways. Maybe Forestville is spending less money to maintain its highways in a good state than Elmsford. And worse roads could imply more accidents too.
If the objective is to reduce danger, Forestville should also analyze, besides the idea of reducing the speed limit again, the availability and effectiviness of improving the highways, puting more signals alongside it, to warn drivers of specially dangerous places, or using a more adherent floor in the highways´ construction.
Second GRE essay
Essay on the topic: "Both the development of technological tools and the uses to which humanity has put them have created modern civilizations in which loneliness is ever increasing."
Human beings started to develop technological tools to dominate and control nature, but today we can see that some of these tools have also controled our personalities, increasing our loneliness.
We can divide the use to which we put these technologies in two groups: one which modify the way we entertain ouserlves and the other which modify the way we work.
In the entertainment group, we have, for example, the TV. Since its invention someone has the option to stay at home to watch some movie alone, instead of going to theater to watch a play together with his friends, which is a much more social behaviour.
Recorded music, in tapes or CDs has allowed us to also enjoy music alone at home, when in the past, we needed to go to a pub and gather some friends to play and listen to music.
The new media technologies modify our behaviour already in childhood. While in the past, kids used to spend much of their time in social games and sports, today they stay almost all day plugged in their videogames, where their closest contact with friends is through computer networks. In this case, technology can make us not only more lonely but also unhealthyer, because of the lack of physical activities.
In the work technologies group, the increasing development of transportation and communication technologies weakened the emotional binding of work teams. In the past, when these technologies were not efficient, teams usually gathered people from the same neighbourhood, which often became friends and had fun outside work. But today, with cheaper and faster planes, cars, trains and highways, someone can work far away from where he lives, sometimes even in another city, and when he comes home after work, he is alone, with no friends nearby. Telefone, e-mail and InterNet are increasingly making it possible to work in teams without the need of physical presence.
So it´s becoming possible to stay alone at home all day, working through telephone, InterNet and videoconference and having fun using equipments like videogames and TVs and DVDs.
We seem not to need each other anymore. But that´s certainly not true. Human beings need each other affection as they need food and water. And we can see this need in some more recent technological developments. People are starting to use technology to keep closer to friends. Today we can use Blogs, to share our feelings with friends all around the world; Instant messaging programs like ICQ and MSN, to talk with people far from us; and Build social networks like Orkut. Although these technologies are still incipient and cannot overcome the loneliness problem, they at least show that technology is trying to solve the problems it has generated. Maybe it´s just a matter of waiting for more development.
First GRE essay
Essay on the topic: "The media (books, film, music, television, for example) tend to create rather than reflect the values of a society."
The old question of whether art mimics life or life mimics art has much more relevance today. Modern communication and production technology allow media, and its arts, to reach faster a broader public. Cable television channels are seen worldwide; books, music and films can be bought (or even illegally copied) faster using InterNet and received almost in any country.
If media had no need to be profitable, its relation with society would be probably a good mixture of creating and reflecting the values of the society. The society would benefit from the reflection of its values, because people could be more aware and think about them, resulting in improvement and possibly creation of values. This healthy creation of values could be guided by the media, benefiting the society again as a kind of positive feedback.
When the need to be profitable comes into play, the media-society relation may be not as healthy, because the media may tend to create values in order to sell products or reflect distorted values of society in order to show the public what it wants to see instead of showing the truth.
As an example of distorted reflection of reality and creation of values, there are Brasilian Soap-Operas, in which the stories are always based on middle-high class society. Poor minorities are under-represented in the stories, since the goal is to entertain the rich classes of people and show them what is new to buy.
This harmful relation can only be susteinably limited by giving proper education to the people, so they can think critically about what they read, listen or watch and decide by themselves if the values shown are true or distorted or created.
GRE
Last week on wednesday I did my first GRE simulation and I got scores of 800 in the quantitative part and 570 in the verbal part (the maximums are 800)... Then, after studying a lot of vocabulary, to become better at the fucking analogies and antonymins questions, my verbal score declined to 510 in the simulation I did today... This is so hateful.
In the next posts I´m gonna publish my essays and argument critics...
TOEFL: Another Simulation
I just practiced another of the sample TOEFL tests. My result was worse, but still good, this time. My score was in the range 223 - 280 from a maximum of 300! (The software gives only a range because it cannot correct the essay). My partial scores were: listening - 28; writing/structure - 13-30; Reading: 26.
Raclete in Maringa
Today my family and I traveled to Visconde de Maua for a long weekend in a small village. We have already eaten Truta and now we are in a restaurant waiting for a raclete.
However, I must spend all my free time studying for the GRE. Today I have read a lot of sample essays and memorized three pages of exdruxulous words, like "abrogate" or "hone" or "craven"... all this for the verbal part of the test.
Alcoholism
I become more and more convinced of the personality damages produced by a long and constant use of alcohol.
Some alcohol-abusing people that I observe have increasing difficulty in finding words to construct informative sentences.
They also have troubles with long-term memory and that means trouble and boredom for me too, because I have to keep repeating everything I say...
Their minds become so focused on their addiction that all their jokes are about beer. Drinking is all their fun and they cannot understand how other people can have other forms of fun...
They think that, by drinking, they are enjoying life, but they don't even have an unaffected consciousness anymore to trully and fully experience their existence. In fact, they don't even have a personality of their own anymore. The little that rests is a contradictory mix of false behaviours. There's no essence, there's only appearance. No happiness, only false smiles. No feelings, only words and no comprehension of the emotions of the silence. No real interest, only the need to appear interested, in order to become interesting.
They become weaker and weaker in resisting this enigmatic life. They try to fulfill the lack of purpose of life with unnecessary objectives and they think that other people can solve the enigma for them or make them stronger, or make them believe they are not losing their essence... So they believe in every pseudotheory and they still drink...
Smokers
Someday I will have a lot of power... and when this day come, I will destroy all smokers in this world... they are the most disrespectful species in this world. Today they destroy my lungs and my olfact and ban me from public place. Someday I will have my vengeance and destroy their lives...
TOEFL and GRE
Next week wednesday and thursday are the days... I have payed US$310 and registered to take the TOEFL and GRE exams on these days. It´s funny to think I´m gonna do another kind of vestibular again. Now all that is left to me is study the harder I can until these days come.
Vexed
Vexed is the first game to which I got addicted in my Palm. It´s a puzzle game where one has to explode a lot of different boxes by putting them together. The movements are restricted to left and right and the boxes fall because of gravity... Some levels can be very challenging.
Palm Zire 72
As seen in my last post, my palm Zire 72 finally arrived! Besides being able to post through it, I can also take pictures (1.2 MegaPixels), hear MP3, record and see movies, see PDF Files, see and edit Word and Excel files, write and read e-mails, manage contacts, play games... With all these functionalities, I believe it will be worth the price. It will improve my productivity a lot...
First palm post
This is myfirst post written in my new palm Zire 72.
Making people agree with you
If you have some opinion and you want that other people agree upon it, it´s better not to tell the opinion directly, but rather to minimalistic influence them to reach that same opinion. In this way, they will be proud of it and fight for it.
Otherwise, if you tell the opinion directly, they will be probably against you. It´s just a matter of fighting for power...
Of course, the minimalistic influence method has the disadvantage that you don´t receive the honors for having the idea or the opinion... But when you want to get things done or agreed upon, it´s sometimes worth paying this cost.
