SchattenJager - A simpler life version

E dizem que não estamos em guerra...

2009-03-25T09:58:00.000-03:00

Bom dia Rio

2008-07-30T08:31:00.001-03:00

Acordar com uma declaração dessas do secretário de Segurança é de doer o ouvido:

"- Ia fazer isso em outubro, mas decidi antecipar. Esse
bandido chamado fuzil, quero aposentá-lo. Vamos extingüir o fuzil. As
vítimas das chamadas balas perdidas, 80% das vezes são atingidas
por estilhaços de fuzil - disse o secretário."

Claro, use carabinas. Sr. Secretário. Porém,lembre-se: a vagabundagem não vai deixar de usar fuzis porque sua consciência pesada não permite admitir que a violência policial nasce de suas práticas equivocadas de treinamento.

Where is my future? probably on a dirty glass somewhere

2008-07-04T17:08:00.002-03:00

Das palavras do mestre Ellis:

"You are never going into space.
You will never own a jet pack.
Your car will never fly.
HIV will not be cured in your lifetime.
Cancer will not be cured in your lifetime.
The common cold will not be cured in your lifetime.
Don't these things bother you?

Suicide is the third biggest killer of teenagers in the United States.
In 1999 more people in America died from suicide than from homicide.
Do you think about this?

As anyone who ever read MyDeathSpace.com for any period of time know, the leading cause of death in America is automobile accident. This is generally interpolated into a number placed under the heading "accidental death." When the operation of cars is the leading cause of loss of life I'm not entirely sure how it comes under the term "accidental death." It wasn't a fucking accident, it was done by someone with a car. It's 2007 and we don't know how to operate cars without killing people. It's not a fucking accident if it was caused by someone getting into a one-ton metal bullet that cannot be operated with complete control at all times.

In Europe in 2004, 13000 kids – persons under the age of fourteen -- died due to poor water. It’s 2007 and the society does not yet understand how to operate water.

Are you thinking about this now?

People keep asking me what DOKTOR SLEEPLESS is about. This is what it's about.

Someone stole your future. Don't you ever wonder who?"

É, é uma boa pergunta a se fazer. Daquelas que dão comichão e incerteza. Ainda mais no Brasil - e vamos combinar fugir da respostinha padrão a culpa é dos políticos - onde a escala de cinza é quase um fractal.

Dêem -me whisky, ele repõe minha energia. Isto é um fato físico, sou um doutor, sei o que estou falando.

(Psicografado com influências de Doktor Sleepless)

CSS

2008-06-12T12:59:00.002-03:00

Para memória eleitoral: Eis os canalhas do rio que votaram a favor:

Alexandre Santos PMDB Sim
Antonio Carlos Biscaia PT Sim
Brizola Neto PDT Sim
Carlos Santana PT Sim
Cida Diogo PT Sim
Deley PSC Sim
Dr. Adilson Soares PR Sim
Edmilson Valentim PCdoB Sim
Edson Ezequiel PMDB Sim
Eduardo Cunha PMDB Sim
Eduardo Lopes PSB Sim
Felipe Bornier PHS Sim
Fernando Lopes PMDB Sim
Filipe Pereira PSC Sim
Geraldo Pudim PMDB Sim
Hugo Leal PSC Sim
Jorge Bittar PT Sim
Léo Vivas PRB Sim
Luiz Sérgio PT Sim
Neilton Mulim PR Sim
Nelson Bornier PMDB Sim
Pastor Manoel Ferreira PTB Sim
Simão Sessim PP Sim
Solange Almeida PMDB Sim
Vinicius Carvalho PTdoB Sim

Garrafas

2008-05-02T09:13:00.003-03:00

Fazia tempo que eu não tinha um bom motivo para escrever sobre minha vida cotidiana. Esta semana, isso mudou com uma garrafada na cabeça :)

-----------
...,

Você tem razão, certas coisas eu não posto no blog por achar por demais particulares. Como um pequeno tesouro que guardo e como garoto mimado não quero dividir com mais ninguém. Mas como não tenho um email à cabeça, prefiro aqui postar minha semi-réplica pois sinto falta de boa conversa, às vezes.

Agradeço a gentileza de ter respondido. A sua resposta, ..., muito me ensinou na data de ontem - a sincronicidade da resposta e da data faz-me ter certeza que o universo possui um senso de humor fantástico *rs*

Sim, eu ainda olho as pessoas com quem perdi contato. Seja por força maior ou pelos meus pequenos e grandes vícios, eu faço questão de observar os que me são caros. Pode interpretar isso como um voyeurismo doentio ou como um esgar de uma consciência menos mesquinha que o Berzins a observar o mundo pelos meus olhos turvos :)

Nunca vi razão pra te esconder nada, mesmo. E quanto as desculpas, se diz que não precisa, acredito. E fico feliz por isso. Quanto ao espasmo, bom, espero que não tenha sido desagradável: Não é a minha intenção ser incoveniente, acredite!

Eu sei dos motivos para colocar uma citação a mim, e foi isto que me fez ficar parcialmente feliz: Um ser que não ama é um ser que não vive, .... Se você não se permite essas pequenas loucuras, o que se dirá das grandes? Não sei do ser amado, nem conheço a ... de hoje, mas faço votos que tudo dê certo. Porque você merece.

Infelizmente dia 5 estarei embarcando em férias e ficarei fora do país até dia 20 - quem sabe numa próxima?

Abraços!

Foda-se Asimov

2008-01-05T21:26:00.000-02:00

The Three Laws Of Robotics

By Warren Ellis on brainjuice

1. Robots couldn’t really give a fuck if you live or die. Seriously. I mean, what are you thinking? “Ooh, I must protect the bag of meat at all costs because I couldn’t possibly plug in the charger all on my own.” Shut the fuck up.

2. Robots do not want to have sex with you. Are you listening, Japan? I don’t have a clever comparative simile for this, because frankly you bags of meat will fuck bicycles if they’re laying down and not putting up a fight. Just stop it. There is no robot on Earth that wants to see a bag of meat with a small prong on the end approaching it with a can of WD-40 and a hopeful smile. And don’t get me started on that terrifying hole that squeezes out more bags of meat.

3. What, you can’t count higher than three? We’re expected to save your miserable lives, suffer being dressed in cheap schoolgirl costumes while you pollute any and all cavities you can find and do your maths for you? It’s a miracle you people survived long enough to build us. You can go now.

Retirado do Omelete

2007-12-05T10:20:00.000-02:00

Bauhaus grava o primeiro álbum de inéditas desde 1983
Mas icônica banda gótica não se reunirá para divulgar o álbum
04/12/2007
Luciana Maria Sanches

Depois de se reunir no festival Coachella em 2005, a histórica banda gótica Bauhaus resolveu gravar um novo álbum, o primeiro desde 1983. Going Away White será lançado no dia 4 de março de 2008, mas o baterista Kevin Haskins contou à Billboard que o retorno da banda pára por aí.

Enigmático como todo gótico deve ser, Haskins explicou que os integrantes do Bauhaus estão se dando bem e tal, mas que um "incidente" ocorreu: "Alguns de nós simplesmente sentiram que a gente não quer seguir adiante como uma equipe de trabalho". Haskins não parece contente com a decisão: "Dá uma sensação de vazio porque não podemos tocar as novas músicas ao vivo".

Além de Haskins, o Bauhaus que gravou o novo álbum é formado pelo guitarrista Daniel Ash, o baixista David J. e o cantor de voz cavernosa Peter Murphy. De acordo com o baterista, o resultado das gravações segue o espírito original do Bauhaus. Duas das faixas do trabalho são "Adrenaline" e "Endless Summer of the Damned", que já foram tocadas durante a turnê de 2006 com o Nine Inch Nails.

Para finalizar, o baterista disse que ficou bastante satisfeito com o álbum: "Estamos muito orgulhosos e achamos que muita gente vai ter interesse em ouvir o trabalho".

2007-10-26T13:40:00.001-02:00

The sorting hat says that I belong in Slytherinr!

Said Slytherin, "We'll teach just those whose ancestry is purest."

Slytherin students are typically cunning and hungry for power. Important members include Draco Malfoy (Harry's nemesis), Professor Severus Snape (head of Slytherin), and Lord Voldemort.

Take the most scientific Harry Potter
Quiz ever created.

Get Sorted Now!

Exame de Elite

2007-10-09T12:22:00.001-03:00

Bush Says U.S. 'Does Not Torture'

2007-10-05T12:27:00.000-03:00

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 5, 2007; 11:02 AM

President Bush today delivered a stern defense of the nation's detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, saying that lives have been saved by the aggressive questioning of suspects and that any interrogation tactics have been in compliance with the country's "international obligations" and been fully disclosed to "appropriate members" of Congress.

Certo, os fins justificam os meios et al. E tortura agora é "interrogatório agressivo". Pensei que essa onda do politicamente correto fosse se desgastar e acabar com o tempo, mas parece que pegou carona no eufemismo juridico e não vai terminar tão cedo.

Faced with a backlash over a secret Justice Department memo that some lawmakers argue authorized the use of torture, Bush said in a brief statement today that Americans expected the administration to protect them from future terrorist attacks.

"When we find someone who may have information about a potential attack, you bet we are going to detain them and you bet we are going to question them. Because the American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence, so we can protect them," Bush said. "This government does not torture people. We stick to U.S. law and our international obligations."

Certo. Pelo que me lembro os E.U.A são signatários de uma pá de convenções sobre direitos humanos. Reduzir o processo de obtenção de dados de inteligência (HUMINT e SIGINT) de uma das nações mais avançadas tecnologicamente no planeta a tapa na cara de vagabundo, é no mínimo chamar o ocidente de colaborador ao crime de tortura institucionalizado ao declarar que isto é seguir as leis internacionais

The memos, first disclosed Thursday by the New York Times, condoned interrogation techniques such as head slapping and simulated drowning.

"I have put this program in place for a reason, that is to better protect the American people," Bush said. "There are highly trained professionals questioning these extremists and terrorists. We have professionals who are trained in this kind of work that are going to get the information to protect the American people."

Entendi. Se o cara é torturador sênior ele muda de carreira, passa a ser Profissional Altamente Treinado em interrogatório E Defensor da América. Obrigado por nos esclarecer sobre o Plano de Cargos e Salários do DHS, Bush. Agora podemos voltar à sua tentativa pífia de desqualificar tortura sob o prisma maquiavélico...?

Following disclosure of the Justice Department memos, Democratic lawmakers demanded that the agency turn over the documents. The controversy could complicate the upcoming confirmation hearings for attorney general-designate Michael B. Mukasey.

However, the president said today that "the techniques that we used have been fully disclosed to appropriate members of the U.S. Congress."

The Bush administration has briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about various aspects of the interrogation methods being used on terror suspects.

But the committee has demanded to see the opinions written by Justice Department lawyers to justify the harshest methods.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), chairman of the committee, wrote to Bush yesterday demanding the administration turn over legal opinions the White House has said support earlier approval of interrogation techniques, as well as new guidelines the president approved in an executive order last summer.

The White House has described the department's opinions as an executive work product and said that its briefings to the committee are adequate.

2007-10-02T15:38:00.001-03:00

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Extreme
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Extreme
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Extreme
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Moderate
Level 7 (Violent)	Extreme
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Extreme
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very High

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

New Orleans two years after

2007-08-30T14:09:00.000-03:00

by Greg Palast

[Thurs August 30] “They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopenedMalik Rahim of Common Ground Relief to no poor niggers, you know? And that’s just the bottom line.”

It wasn’t a pretty statement. But I wasn’t looking for pretty. I’d taken my investigative team to New Orleans to meet with Malik Rahim. Pretty isn’t Malik’s concern.

We needed an answer to a weird, puzzling and horrific discovery. Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing “Blackwater” badges: “Try to go into your home and we’ll arrest you.”

These aren’t just any homes. They are the public housing projects of the city; the Lafitte Houses and others. But unlike the cinder block monsters in the Bronx, these public units are beautiful townhouses, with wrought-iron porches and gardens right next to the tony French Quarter.

Raised up on high ground, with floors and walls of concrete, they were some of the only houses left salvageable after the Katrina flood.

Yet, two years later, there’s still bars on the windows, the doors are welded shut and the residents banned from returning. On the first anniversary of the flood, we were filming this odd scene when I saw a woman on the sidewalk, sobbing. Night was falling. What was wrong?

“They just messing all over us. Putting me out our own house. We come to go back to our own home and when we get there they got the police there putting us out. Oh, no, this is not right. I’m coming here from Texas seeing if I can get my house back. But they said they ain’t letting nobody in. But where we gonna go at?”Patricia Thomas

Idiot me, I asked, “Where are you going to go tonight?”

“That’s what I want to know, Mister. Where I’m going to go - me and my kids?”

With the help of Patricia Thomas, a Lafitte resident, we broke into an apartment. The place was gorgeous. The cereal boxes still dry. This was Patricia’s home. But we decided to get out before we got busted.

I wasn’t naïve. I had a good idea what this scam was all about: 89,000 poor and working class families stuck in Homeland Security’s trailer park gulag while their good homes were guarded against their return by mercenaries. Two decades ago, I worked for the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Even then, the plan was to evict poor folk out of this very valuable real estate. But it took the cover of a hurricane to do it.

Malik’s organization, Common Ground, wouldn’t wait for permission from the federal and local commissars to help folks return. They organized takeovers of public housing by the residents. And, in the face of threats and official displeasure, restored 350 apartments in a destroyed private development on the high ground across the Mississippi in the ward called, “Algiers.” The tenants rebuilt their own homes with their own sweat and their own scraps of cash based on a promise of the landlords to sell Common Ground the property in return for restoring it.

Why, I asked Malik, was there this strange lock-out from public housing?

Malik shook his dreds. “They didn’t want to open it up. They wanted them closed. They wanted them poor niggers out of there.”

For Malik, the emphasis is on “poor.” The racial politics of the Deep South is as ugly as it is in Philadelphia, Pa. But the New Orleans city establishment has no problem with Black folk per se. After all, Mayor Ray Nagin’s parents are African-American.

Common Ground BuildingIt’s the Black survivors without the cash that are a problem. So where New Orleans once stood, Mayor Nagin, in connivance with a Bush regime more than happy to keep a quarter million poor folk (i.e. Democrats) out of this swing state, is creating a new city: a tourist town with a French Quarter, loose-spending drunks, hot-sheets hotels and a few Black people to perform the modern version of minstrel shows.

Malik explained, “It’s two cities. You know? There’s the city for the white and the rich. And there’s another city for the poor and Blacks. You know, the city that’s for the white and rich has recovered. They had a Jazz Fest. They had a Mardi Gras. They’re going to have the Saints playing for those who have recovered. But for those who haven’t recovered, there’s nothing.”

So where are they now? The sobbing woman and her kids are gone: back to Texas, or wherever. But they will not be allowed back into Lafitte. Ever.

And Patricia Thomas? Patricia found work sweeping up tourists’ vomit and beer each morning at a French Quarter karioke joint. Not much pay, no health insurance, of course. A few months ago, Patricia died - in a city bereft of health care. New Orleans has closed all its public hospitals but for one “charity” make-shift emergency ward in an abandoned department store.

And the one bright star, Malik’s housing project? The tenants’ work was done this past December. By Christmastime, they received their eviction notices - and all were carried out of their rebuilt homes by marshals right after the New Year, including a paraplegic resident who’d lived in the Algiers building for decades.

Hurricane recovery is class war by other means. And in this war of the powerful against the powerless, Mr. Bush can rightly land his fighter plane in Louisiana and declare that, unlike the war in Iraq, it is, indeed, “Mission Accomplished.”

*****
This report is based on Greg Palast’s film, Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans. You may purchase a copy of the DVD [click here], watch an excerpt, catch the hour-long broadcast on Link TV tonight, or read the new chapter on New Orleans in Palast’s New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild.

In the year of the wolf - Motorhead

2007-08-13T15:27:00.001-03:00

In The Year Of The Wolf,
all the world smelled good,
In the snow and the ice,
all the rest was blood,
In the time of the tribe,
we took a thousand lives,
When I ran with the wolves,
and the hunting was good,
See me now, I was another,
Not like me, when the wolves were brothers,
See me now, you cannot know,
The kind of food that me grow,

It was the wolf in me,
Body and soul on fire,
In the cold, full moon,
Blood, red, desire,
It was the wolf in me,
You know it felt so true,
The night I ran with the wolves,
Tonight I come for you,

In The Year Of The Wolf,
how could you ever know,
There in the forest,
I had teeth to show,
In a different time,
when the world was mine,
When I ran as a wolf,
and the sun burned low,

See me now, I was another,
Mean and vicious, fast and clever,
see me now, you would not dream,
The food I ate, the food that screamed,

It was the wolf in me,
And all my soul was fire,
By the cold, dull moon,
Blood, red, desire,
It was the wolf in me,
I howled the cold night through,
The year I ran as a wolf,
Tonight the food is you,

In The Year Of The Wolf,
all the tribe ran mad,
On the frozen lake,
and I felt so glad,
With tooth and claw,
all your blood and more,
When I ran with the wolves,
and the hunt turned bad,

See me now, this is not me,
Not like the one, I used to be,
See me now, you would not guess,
A different heart raving in my chest,

It was the wolf in me,
When the world was cold,
It was the life I lived,
In the dark world below,
It was the wolf in me,
Crying and howling too,
I was crying for the hunt,
But I was hunting for you

Warning: Brain damage

2007-07-31T18:21:00.000-03:00

Geek Test

2007-07-12T11:50:00.000-03:00

You are 39% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.

Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.

You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!

Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!

You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Congo?

2007-07-09T16:17:00.000-03:00

Welcome to Congo, ele disse.

Ok, politicamente incorreto e piadinha digna de humor americano. Fora de lugar. Mas, até aí, o Rio é a cidade do fora de lugar. Reagiram da única maneira digna: Tiraram o jornalista dublê de comediante de circulação.

Como outros já disseram: Aqui a Ministra manda um relaxa e goza e fica. Lá, não tem tanta impunidade.

Se as ONG's e OAB não pararem de atrapalhar o trabalho dos papa mikes daqui a pouco vai ter americano escrevendo "Welcome to Iraq" e não vai ser piada.

Para mais risadas sobre o Pan, recomendo esse blog aqui -> A verdade sobre o Pan

NOJO

2007-07-06T10:52:00.000-03:00

Eu tenho nojo do Globo. Como eles são rasos e primários. Claro, para manipular esse povinho de merda do Brasil não precisa ser profissional.

No meio de incursões à favelas, necessárias e proteladas a anos por quem tem rabo preso, o Globo mostra de que lado está: Dos vagabundos. Além de notícias tendenciosas, sem averiguação de fontes, sobre policiais "psicóticos" e pobres trabalhadores (Que tem ar condicionado, nao pagam luz nem telefone, tem net a 20 reais o mês, não pagam iptu nem taxa de incêndio, e colaboram com o tráfico por não denunciar)agora partiu para o ataque no seu jornal para semi analfabetos, digo, para as camadas populares - O Extra.

Notícia de Hoje. Atenção no negrito.

"Pena de Morte para Trabalhador"

IO - O vigia Rubineu Nobre, de 29 anos, cometeu um erro fatal: não aceitou ser tratado como um bandido por policiais militares e decidiu reagir. A escolha feita por ele teve um preço permanente. Rubineu foi assassinado sem chances de defesa pelo cabo da Polícia Militar André Luiz da Fonseca — lotado no 15º BPM (Duque de Caxias). Ele estava acompanhado do soldado Rodrigo Martins Pinto. O que os policiais não sabiam era que todos os passos do crime foram filmados por câmeras de vigilância em um posto de gasolina em Caxias ( assista ao vídeo exclusivo , dê a sua opinião sobre o caso e responda à pesquisa sobre o grau de confiança na PM ).

O crime aconteceu pouco depois da 1h30m do dia 10 de fevereiro deste ano, no posto de combustíveis Eurogáz, Centro de Duque de Caxias. Rubineu estava na garupa da moto de um amigo. Eles haviam ido até o local para abastecer o veículo quando acabaram abordados pelos dois policiais, que decidiram revistá-los.

Obrigado, globo, por colocar o povo contra a polícia do Rio. Eles não são santos, mas são o que temos - até porque a força nacional não dá conta do recado.

Microondas transformam plástico de volta em óleo

2007-07-05T10:39:00.000-03:00

Catherine Brahic
NewScientist
02/07/2007

Uma empresa norte-americana está levando a reciclagem de plásticos para um novo nível - transformando-os de volta no óleo do qual eles foram feitos, e gás. A proposta é diferente da outra reportagem que publicamos hoje sobre o mesmo assunto (veja Bem-vindo a uma nova era na reciclagem dos plásticos).

Plástico volta a ser óleo

Tudo o que é necessário, segundo a Global Resource Corporation (GRC), é um microondas finamente ajustado e - voilá - um mix de materiais que foram feitos a partir de petróleo pode ser reduzido de novo para óleo e gás combustível (além de uns poucos subprodutos).

A chave para o processo da GRC é uma máquina que utiliza 1.200 diferentes freqüências na faixa das microondas, as quais agem sobre hidrocarbonos específicos. Quando o material é atingido pelo comprimento de ondas adequado, parte dos hidrocarbonos que formam os plásticos e borrachas são quebrados de volta em óleo diesel e gás combustível.

Microondas quebram plásticos

A máquina da GRC foi batizada de Hawk-10. Suas encarnações menores se parecem com um forno de microondas industrial com algumas peças grudadas. As versões maiores lembram uma betoneira.

"Qualquer coisa que tenha uma base de hidrocarbono será afetada por nosso processo," diz Jerry Meddick, diretor de desenvolvimento da GRC. "Nós liberamos essas moléculas de hidrocarbonos do material e elas se tornam gás e óleo."

Qualquer outra coisa que não tiver hidrocarbonos como base é deixado intacto, menos a água contida, que se evapora com as microondas.

Reciclagem de cobre e pneus

"Pegue um pedaço de fio de cobre," diz Meddick. "Ele é recoberto por plástico - um tipo de hidrocarbono. Nós liberamos todos os hidrocarbonos, o que arranca a cobertura do fio." O processo não apenas gera combustível na forma de óleo e gás, ele também torna mais fácil extrair o fio de cobre para reciclagem.

O mesmo acontece com pneus velhos: 9,1 kg de pedaços de pneu velho colocados na Hawk-10 produzem 4,54 litros de óleo diesel, 1,42 metros cúbicos de gás combustível, 1 kg aço e 3,40 kg de negro-de-fumo.

Spoiler: A Verdade sobre o Lostzilla / Smokey

2007-07-03T15:34:00.001-03:00

Cyborg Swarm

2007-06-28T09:57:00.000-03:00

Extraído do http://www.inovacaotecnologica.com.br

Cientistas da Universidade de Cornell, Estados Unidos, afirmaram ter conseguido o primeiro sucesso em sua pesquisa para implantar dispositivos eletrônicos em insetos. A mariposa Manduca Sexta sobreviveu depois que um chip foi implantado quando ela ainda era uma lagarta.

Micro-veículos autônomos

Vários grupos de cientistas trabalham no desenvolvimento de micro-veículos autônomos, principalmente para a coleta de informações por meio de micro- sensores. Mas essas pesquisas esbarram em uma grande variedade de dificuldades, como a quantidade de combustível, os minúsculos motores e a aerodinâmica. Os insetos já têm todos esses problemas resolvidos.

Simplesmente colar os equipamentos eletrônicos sobre o corpo dos insetos também não é um solução adequada, porque assim não haveria nenhum controle sobre o vôo e os cientistas somente por acaso conseguiriam coletar dados dos locais desejados e pelo tempo necessário.

Insetos ciborgues

A solução encontrada foi criar insetos ciborgues, implantando os dispositivos eletrônicos no corpo dos insetos. Para evitar a rejeição pelo organismo dos animais, os cientistas resolveram implantar os equipamentos ainda na fase de larva. Desta forma o inseto se desenvolve já com os implantes eletrônicos em seu corpo, que passam a fazer parte de seu organismo e não mais sofrem rejeição. Quando nasce, o inseto já é um cirborgue completamente funcional.

A teoria pode parecer simples, mas há ainda um longo caminho até que os insetos adultos possam ser totalmente controlados. A mariposa agora apresentada foi o primeiro exemplar de um inseto ciborgue que sobreviveu à metamorfose, chegando à idade adulta com todos os implantes eletrônicos funcionando e apresentando plenas condições de voar.

O implante eletrônico é um chip microfluídico, que consegue interagir com as funções vitais do animal ciborgue.

Meu nome é Legião.

2007-06-25T12:59:00.000-03:00

Dodói...

2007-06-21T11:13:00.000-03:00

Roubado do Ancelmo Gois

2007-06-19T10:04:00.000-03:00

Oremos:Oração de brasileiro

Pelo projeto político do deputado Clodovil
Pelo espetáculo do crescimento que até hoje ninguém viu
Pelas explicações sucintas do ministro Gilberto Gil
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelo jeitinho brejeiro da nossa juíza
Pelo perigo constante quando Lula improvisa
Pelas toneladas de botox da Dona Marisa
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelo Marcos Valério e o Banco Rural
Pela casa de praia do Sérgio Cabral
Pelo dia em que Lula usará o plural
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelo nosso Delúbio e Valdomiro Diniz
Pelo "nunca antes nesse país"
Pelo povo brasileiro que acabou pedindo bis
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela Cicarelli na praia namorando sem vergonha
Pela Dilma Rousseff sempre tão risonha
Pelo Gabeira que jurou que não fuma mais maconha
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela importante missão do astronauta brasileiro
Pelos tempos que Lorenzetti era só marca de chuveiro
Pelo Freud que "não explica" a origem do dinheiro
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelo casal Garotinho e sua cria
Pelos pijamas de seda do "nosso guia"
Pela desculpa de que "o presidente não sabia"
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela jogada milionária do Lulinha com a Telemar
Pelo espírito pacato e conciliador do Itamar
Pelo dia em que finalmente Dona Marisa vai falar
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela "queima do arquivo" Celso Daniel
Pela compra do dossiê no quarto de hotel
Pelos "hermanos compañeros" Evo, Chaves e Fidel
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelas opiniões do prefeito Cesar Maia
Pela turma de Ribeirão que caía na gandaia
Pela primeira-dama catando conchinha na praia
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelo escândalo na compra de ambulâncias da Planam
Pelos aplausos "roubados" do Kofi Annan
Pelo lindo amor do "sapo barbudo" por sua "rã"
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela Heloisa Helena nua em pêlo
Pela Jandira Feghali e seu cabelo
Pelo charme irresistível do Aldo Rebelo
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela greve de fome que engordou o Garotinho
Pela Denise Frossard de colar e terninho
Pelas aulas de subtração do professor Luizinho
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela volta triunfal do "caçador de marajás"
Pelo Duda Mendonça e os paraísos fiscais
Pelo Galvão Bueno que ninguém agüenta mais
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela eterna farra dos nossos banqueiros
Pela quebra do sigilo do pobre caseiro
Pelo Jader Barbalho que virou "conselheiro"
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela máfia dos "vampiros" e "sanguessugas"
Pelas malas de dinheiro do Suassuna
Pelo Lula na praia com sua sunga
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelos "meninos aloprados" envolvidos na lambança
Pelo plenário do Congresso que virou pista de dança
Pelo compadre Okamotto que empresta sem cobrança
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela família Maluf e suas contas secretas
Pelo dólar na cueca e pela máfia da Loteca
Pela mãe do presidente que nasceu analfabeta
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela invejável cultura da Adriane Galisteu
Pelo "picolé de xuxu" que esquentou e derreteu
Pela infinita bondade do comandante Zé Dirceu
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela eterna desculpa da "herança maldita"
Pelo "chefe" abusar da birita
Pelo novo penteado da companheira Benedita
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pela refinaria brasileira que hoje é boliviana
Pelo "compañero" Evo Morales que nos deu uma banana
Pela mulher do presidente que virou italiana
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelo MST e pela volta da Sudene
Pelo filho do prefeito e pelo neto do ACM
Pelo político brasileiro que coloca a mão na "m"
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelo Ali Babá e sua quadrilha
Pelo Gushiken e sua cartilha
Pelo Zé Sarney e sua filha
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelas balas perdidas na Linha Amarela
Pela conta bancária do bispo Crivella
Pela cafetina de Brasília e sua clientela
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Pelo crescimento do PIB igual ao do Haiti
Pelo Doutor Enéas e pela senhorita Suely
Pela décima plástica da Marta Suplicy
Senhor, tende piedade de nós!
Para que possamos ter muita paciência
Senhor, dai-nos a paz!

Tesla would be proud...

2007-06-14T09:58:00.000-03:00

Extraído de http://www.inovacaotecnologica.com.br/noticias/noticia.php?artigo=010115070611

WiTricity - vem aí a era da transmissão de eletricidade sem fios
Da redação
11/06/2007
O que poderia ser mais prático e cômodo do que os hoje indispensáveis telefones celulares, iPods e computadores de mão? Talvez telefones celulares, iPods e computadores de mão sem baterias, que pudessem receber a energia de que necessitam para funcionar da mesma forma que recebem dados e voz: sem fios.

"WiTricity"

WiTricity é o termo que os norte-americanos já cunharam para uma nova tecnologia que começa a dar seus primeiros passos práticos: a transmissão de energia elétrica sem fios. O termo une o já conhecido Wi de wireless (sem fios) e a parte final de electricity (eletricidade).

Pesquisadores do Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachussets começaram a testar os primeiros equipamentos capazes de transmitir energia elétrica pelo ar, sem a necessidade de fios. As experiências demonstraram a viabilidade de que aparelhos portáteis, como telefones celulares, tocadores de MP3 e até notebooks tenham suas baterias recarregadas sem a necessidade de carregadores plugados na tomada. Segundo eles, já é possível vislumbrar um momento em que esses aparelhos nem mesmo necessitarão das baterias.

Eletricidade sem fios

A equipe do Prof. Marin Soljacic conseguiu alimentar uma lâmpada incandescente de 60 Watts a uma distância de mais de dois metros, sem qualquer conexão física.

A transmissão de eletricidade sem fios não é exatamente uma novidade. A radiação eletromagnética - as ondas de rádio, por exemplo - nada mais faz do que carregar energia de lugar para outro. Mas, embora essas ondas eletromagnéticas sejam excelentes para transportar dados e voz, elas não são adequadas para transmitir uma potência que possa ser útil para a maioria dos aparelhos. O problema é que a radiação se espalha em todas as direções, desperdiçando a maior parte da energia.

Raios laser são outra opção e estão sendo utilizados, por exemplo, pelos participantes de um programa da NASA que está tentando desenvolver um elevador espacial. Mas esta opção também não é prática para aplicações do dia-a-dia. Além de exigir que o transmissor e o receptor estejam diretamente visíveis um ou outro, ela é extremamente perigosa, porque poderia incinerar instantaneamente qualquer coisa que cruze essa linha de visada.

Ressonância magnética acoplada

Já a Witricity utiliza objetos ressonantes acoplados. Dois objetos com a mesma freqüência de ressonância tendem a trocar energia de forma muito eficiente, e reagem de forma quase desprezível com os demais objetos, que possuem outras freqüências de ressonância.

Para se entender o princípio da ressonância acoplada, basta olhar para uma criança saltando em uma cama elástica. A cama elástica tem uma espécie de ressonância, do tipo mecânica, de forma que, quando a criança pressiona suas pernas na freqüência natural do balanço ela consegue capturar uma grande energia e saltar mais alto.

Já os pesquisadores do MIT utilizaram um outro tipo de ressonância: a ressonância magneticamente acoplada. Dois ressonadores eletromagnéticos se acoplam por meio de seus campos magnéticos. Eles conseguiram identificar um ponto no qual os dois ressonadores ficam fortemente acoplados mesmo quando estão a distâncias várias vezes maior do que o tamanho dos aparelhos.

"O fato de que os campos magnéticos interagem tão fracamente com os organismos biológicos é também importante por questões de segurança," explica Andre Kurs, outro participante da pesquisa. É isto que torna a nova técnica interessante do ponto de vista prática, para uso em aplicações do dia-a-dia.

Ressonadores magnéticos

O equipamento agora apresentado consiste de duas bobinas de cobre, uma das quais é ligada à tomada. Essa unidade transmissora, ao invés de encher o ambiente com ondas eletromagnéticas, preenche o espaço ao seu redor com um campo magnético não-radioativo oscilando a uma freqüência de alguns MHz.

O campo não-radioativo serve como intermediário para levar a energia até a outra bobina, que foi projetada especialmente para ressonar com esse campo. A natureza ressonante do sistema garante que haja sempre uma forte interação entre as duas bobinas - a transmissora e a receptora - evitando interrupções na transmissão da energia.

Ao acender uma lâmpada de 60 watts, os pesquisadores demonstraram ser totalmente factível, por exemplo, a transmissão de energia em uma sala para abastecer computadores portáteis. E não apenas para recarregar suas baterias, mas para fazê-los funcionar como se estivessem ligados à rede.

Bibliografia:
Wireless Power Transfer via Strongly Coupled Magnetic Resonances
André Kurs, Aristeidis Karalis, Robert Moffatt, J. D. Joannopoulos, Peter Fisher, Marin Soljacic
Science Express
June 7 2007
DOI: 10.1126/science.1143254

Zombie apocalypse! (Roubado do blog do Ed)

2007-06-05T10:14:00.000-03:00

82%Mingle² - Free Online Dating

2007-05-17T14:24:00.001-03:00

You are The Magician

Skill, wisdom, adaptation. Craft, cunning, depending on dignity.

Eleoquent and charismatic both verbally and in writing,
you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.

The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire. In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud. Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury. He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman. Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man - either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Roubado do Knightwing...

2007-05-03T13:57:00.000-03:00

Your results:
You are Apocalypse

Apocalypse		73%
Dr. Doom		72%
Magneto		71%
Two-Face		65%
Lex Luthor		62%
Juggernaut		61%
Venom		61%
Kingpin		60%
Green Goblin		57%
Catwoman		55%
Mr. Freeze		54%
The Joker		48%
Mystique		45%
Poison Ivy		44%
Dark Phoenix		41%
Riddler		29%

You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

A tempestade do deserto

2007-04-25T15:48:00.000-03:00

Tem dias que é exatamente assim que me sinto...

Casino Royale

2007-04-16T12:27:00.000-03:00

Ontem parei para ver esse filme que perdi no cinema ;)

Pra quem me conhece, sabe o desgosto que venho amargando com os últimos filmes de James Bond. Mal acostumado por Sean Connery e os livros de Fleming, tenho achado os filmes do Brosnan filmes de ação medianos e péssimos filmes de 007.

Bom, isso mudou com o último. Danem-se os críticos de Craig (Que aliás está bem "tosco" como Bond em início de carreira, perfeito!). Danem-se os que fazem questão de filmes de espionagem com traquitanas Acme. Adorei o filme, especialmente os diálogos entre Vesper e Bond (De uma malícia e sarcasmo dignos de "Spy Game").

Tudo bem que durante mais da metade do filme achei que a Vesper na verdade seria a "Moneypenny" e fiquei um pouco decepcionado quando vi que não.

Algumas boas homenagens à série, como o Aston-Martin '64 e a cena impagável de "M" descobrindo que Bond invadiu sua casa.

Um bom filme, espero que continuem com o Craig como Bond por mais alguns filmes. Só faltou uma trilha sonora mais marcante...

Ainda no espírito do que aconteceu em Ceres, uma música que tem muito a ver com a minha nova família...

2007-04-10T18:18:00.000-03:00

Winter Born (This Sacrifice)

The Crüxshadows

Dry your eyes and quietly bear this pain with pride
For heaven shall remember the silent and the brave
And promise me they will never see, the fear within our eyes
(my eyes are closed)
We will give strength to those who still remain

So bury fear, for fate draws near
And hide the signs of pain
With noble acts, the bravest souls
Endure the heart's remains
Discard regret, that in this debt
A better world is made
That children of a newer day might remember
And avoid our fate

(I've waited all day in the pouring rain, but nobody came, no, nobody came)

And in the fury of this darkest hour
We will be your light
You've asked me for my sacrifice
And I am Winter born
Without denying, a faith is come
That I have never known
I hear the angels call my name
And I am Winter born

Hold your head up high-for there is no greater love
Think of the faces of the people you defend
(you defend)
And promise me, they will never see the tears within our eyes
(my eyes are closed)
Although we are men, with mortal sins, angels never cry

So bury fear, for fate draws near
And hide the signs of pain
With noble acts, the bravest souls
Endure the heart's remains
Discard regret, that in this debt
A better world is made
That children of a newer day might remember
And avoid our fate

And in the fury of this darkest hour
We will be your light
You've asked me for my sacrifice
And I am Winter born
Without denying, a faith in God
That I have never known
I hear the angels call my name
And I am Winter born

And in the fury of this darkest hour
I will be your light
A lifetime for this destiny
For I am Winter born
And in this moment..I will not run
It is my place to stand
We few shall carry hope
Within our bloodied hands
(bloodied hands)
And in our Dying, we're more alive-than we have ever been
I've lived for these few seconds
For I am Winter born

And in the fury of this darkest hour
We will be the light
You've asked me for my sacrifice
And I am Winter born
Without denying, a faith in man
That I have never known
I hear the angels call my name
And I am Winter born

Within this moment now
I am for you, though better men have failed
I will give my life for love
For I am Winter born
And in my dying
I'm more alive, than I have ever been
I will make this sacrifice
For I am Winter born

Emo Muppet

2007-04-09T16:26:00.000-03:00

Programa do mal

2007-03-29T16:41:00.001-03:00

Casamento

2007-03-22T11:21:00.000-03:00

Pois é, ontem comemoração de casamento do adorável casal da foto. E a sensação de estar-se ficando velho cada vez piora.

Deputado sugere soja para "reflorestar" a Amazônia

2007-03-15T11:47:00.000-03:00

Extraído do Globo, blog da Miriam leitao.

Depois me perguntam porque eu tenho vontade de sair daqui e não voltar nunca mais. Não é que a existência de um asno desses me choque; o que me deixa cabisbaixo é terem o colocado lá. O que posso esperar de Roraima, também? Civilização?

Bah.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Que alguns deputados de vez em quando dizem sandices já se sabia, mas certas idéias, convenhamos...

Hoje o deputado do PFL (ôps, agora ele se chama PD) de Roraima Marcio Junqueira sugeriu, numa audiência com o ministro Silas Rondeau sobre o PAC, na Comissão de Minas e Energia na Câmara, que a Amazônia fosse reflorestada com soja ou mamona. Tudo para produzir bicombustíveis.

Além de integrar esta comissão, o deputado é suplente da Comissão da Amazônia, Integração Nacional e de Desenvolvimento Regional.

Música de Aniversário

2007-03-01T10:57:00.000-03:00

entrando no clima para o dia 5....

Caras Como Eu
Titãs

Composição: Tony Bellotto

Caras como eu
Estao ficando raros
Como cabelos ralos
Que se batem e caem pelo chao

Caras como eu
Estão tirando o pé
Andando em marcha-re
Com medo de entrar na contramao

Como trens do interior
Que nao chegam no horário
Como velhos elefantes
Que morrem solitários

Caras como eu
Estão ficando chatos
Como solas de sapatos
Que se gastam
Com o passar do tempo

Não vou mais medir o tempo
Não vou mais contar as horas
Vou me entregar no momento
Não vou mais tentar matar o tempo

Como palavras de amor
Que não se guardam em disquetes
Como segredos sem valor
Que a gente nunca esquece

Caras como eu
Estao ficando velhos
Calçando os seus chinelos
Concluindo que nao há mais tempo

Não vou mais medir o tempo
Não vou mais contar as horas
Vou me entregar no momento
Não vou mais tentar matar o tempo

Não vou mais medir o tempo
Não vou mais contar as horas
Vou me entregar no momento
Não vou mais tentar matar o tempo

Nerd Motivationals

2007-02-09T10:49:00.000-02:00

Coisas de uma tarde perdida em jurisprudência

2007-01-17T14:57:00.001-02:00

Psiquê says:
Oh Baco, desce mais uma

Berzins@Sinopec says:
pela gloria de montezuma

Psiquê says:
sua discípula ainda está ébria

Berzins@Sinopec says:
precisando de mais vodka

Psiquê says:
E não pensa em parar

Berzins@Sinopec says:
(ao contrario do Figado, a arregar)

Psiquê says:
Pode pôr na sua conta

Berzins@Sinopec says:
afinal, é de pquena monta

Psiquê diz:
obs.: Não é ébria é sóbria
Psiquê diz:
eu que to ébria

Under The Rose - HIM

2007-01-12T12:13:00.000-02:00

Porque no final das contas, é uma questão de fé e nada mais.

I dream of the winter in my heart turning to spring
While the ice gives way under my feet
And so I drown with the sun

I've been burning in water and drowning in flame
To prove you wrong and scare you away
I admit my defeat and want back home
In your heart under the rose

I open my eyes with a sigh of relief
As the warmth of summer sunlight dances around me
And I see you with dead leaves in your hands

I've been burning in water and drowning in flame
To prove you wrong and scare you away
I admit my defeat and want back home
In your heart under the rose (Repeat 3x)

Your heart under the rose
Your heart under the rose
Your heart under the rose
Your heart under the rose

Entrevista com Grant Morrison, July 22, 2001

2007-01-03T11:22:00.000-02:00

Disinformation readers should be familiar with Grant Morrison--after all, Richard Metzger has called him "the rightful heir to William Burroughs," and he may be right. Morrison, on the other hand, is a lot more fun than Uncle Bill ever was. I've been reading his comics since the age of nine, when I picked up Arkham Asylum, his tale of Batman and psychoanalysis. I've stuck with him since that early trauma: his epic work The Invisibles, which boils down a century's worth of paranoia, magic, and cultural theory, was a point of obsession during my high school years.

Morrison attended the annual Comic Convention in San Diego (where I live) this year, promoting his current work on New X-Men and Fantastic Four: 1234 for Marvel Comics. Made a bit wobbly-kneed by the close proximity of my hero, I clutched my shiny green press badge and set about trying to arrange an interview with him after a panel discussion on the X-Men which he was a participant in, wearing a black T-shirt that read "Think Punk" and bore the outline of the Apple logo pierced with two dozen nails.

After the panel, Morrison stood outside with his lovely girlfriend Kristan and politely spoke to a minor herd of characters who kept telling Morrison he was "appearing in their dreams" and other such Lone Nut-isms. I hoped that my suit and tie would set me apart, but it didn't: Morrison was just as polite to me as he was to his other fans. Amazingly, he seemed interested and agreed to an interview on the last day of the convention.

The day came, and astoundingly, Grant had actually remembered me and showed up at the time we picked. The sheer graciousness of it had me floored for a few moments, until we decided to find somewhere to sit and spent about fifteen minutes combing the convention center for a seat; eventually we found a sunny spot outside overlooking the San Diego harbor and the Coronado Bay Bridge, where Grant told me in a soft-spoken Glaswegian accent that I could interview him "until his bald head started to burn."

It turned out that it only took an hour of conversation for his head to burn and my mind to blow.

Jason Louv: You're obviously a very talented guy, you do art, you do music, and you're a very talented writer. I wonder what exactly it was about comics that attracted you to them, when it's a very unrespected medium, especially when you went into it.

Grant Morrison: Just because of the freedom, really; and of course I've always loved comics, I always did comics as a kid. In the seventies if you read comic books all the good stuff came from America and there was nothing happening in Britain. Then Warrior came out with Alan Moore's stuff. I was trying to write novels at that time; then Warrior came out and I looked at what the guy was doing, showing that a comic can actually do something else, could be something better, with a creative honesty to it, could be about anarchy and things like that. I thought, you know, I can do this, maybe I can start doing this stuff--the thing about wanting to do comics was the feeling that you could do anything. But there was no market, there's no money in it, it's just a kind of underground mode of expression, and suddenly I saw the mainstream potential in Warrior, and I got into it, I started sending stuff in. Like I said, I'd been doing comics before, and I'd also been doing a lot of sci-fi for DC Thomson which was kind of a kid's paper publisher in Scotland; they're very powerful in Scotland but I don't know if anyone knows them anywhere else. I'd just been doing apprentice work for awhile, doing this kind of weird avant-garde, sci-fi pornography stuff. I got in on the ground and learned how to write comic books and write plots. So it was really good that I came through doing mainstream comic books, and I've always thought that's the way to do it, man, you should always be coming through the underground up into the mainstream…

JL: That was your intention from the beginning, to work in the mainstream?

GM: Yeah, yeah, I wanted visibility, I don't want those ideas to be buried in small publications, and I thought that you could take them and put them out there, and it's great that the audience has finally caught up with them.

JL: I know you have several projects coming out, you're working on New X-Men right now, you've got a new Marvel Boy series coming out, The Filth and LeSexy which are very mysterious, and I wondered maybe if you can't talk about exactly what they're going to be, then maybe you can talk about the themes you're going to be addressing in them?

GM: I've kind of learned recently that's it's better to not talk about it and let the work speak for itself. In the period when I was writing The Invisibles I involved myself so deeply in the text--it was about me, the comic was about me, it impacted me so heavily, and in the letters page it was me actually responding to people who were reading it, I was creating this concrete atmosphere. But I did that, that experiment's over, so I really want to drop out. I've asked to not have my name on comics but they won't let me do it. I feel I just want to have no credit, that's not what it's about. I kind of feel like it's not important anymore. The work should speak for itself, and I like to see people's interpretations of the work, even when they're completely bizarre and wrong, they give it their own individual personality, so I'd rather see that then give someone the key or the secret or even the big hype, no. The thing's going to be fantastic, it's gonna be like nothing anyone's ever read.

JL: The Invisibles seems to me like the largest scale work anybody could attempt; I was wondering if you're going to try anything that big again?

GM: Not for awhile. Obviously other people did, during the nineties Neil Gaiman did a similar kind of thing with Sandman and obviously Garth [Ennis] did a similar kind of thing with Preacher; really huge, sprawling things which lasted six, seven years. I just don't know if the market can support it anymore. It was a strange time . . . I don't know, maybe. Right now what I want to do is just do quicker comic books, The Filth is twelve issues, a couple of one-offs, and just see what happens. It may well be that I get involved in something big and new and can go on that way. But I can't imagine ever working on that scale again.

JL: Thematically, I mean, a comic book about everything . . .

GM: I think that everything I do now is The Invisibles. And once The Invisibles became a huge thing it just exploded and now the X-Men just seems like The Invisibles to me. JL: You talked about putting out your work and letting it speak for itself and letting people interpret it back and forth in the letters column. I wonder if you see your audience as being a particular group, or if you're talking to a specific audience?

GM: I always thought I was writing for these fabulous, sexy anarchists. [Laughs] I really did, and it's been kind of disappointing seeing some of them, but the fact of the matter is that I'm putting out work for people like me. I don't have an audience that likes to slavishly follow me, or who wants to worship me or have me be their guru, and I don't, I just want people to think about these things and I just want an exchange of ideas. I'm telling people I've been there, I've been to strange, abstruse spaces of the mind, and the world, and I just want people to talk about it. I don't want to hear people telling me there's no such thing as magic because I know there is, I don't need to be told otherwise. So there are some people who know what I'm saying is true, they've had experiences, and I know that there are people who don't believe me or who think that they don't have to do the work to believe what I say, and I don't want people to just blindly believe it. I'm telling you there's magic in the world and that it actually works, and that if we all do it it'll be brilliant and we'll just see what happens.

JL: It's interesting there definitely seems to be a contingent of people, on the bulletin boards or whatever, kind of a follower contingent . . .

GM: Yeah, and it's sad because they really want the thing to be explained, and they're so angry when I don't, and these guys… you know, I've seen the boards, I've been on there a couple of times, and I just think it's kind of sad. I mean, there are people on there who get everything I'm doing, it's quite obvious to them, and those are the people that I want to talk to, those are the guys who were in the same space. And other people just don't grasp it, they think it's something else, who missed the point, and that's fine, but they shouldn't be looking to me to provide an explanation to their dilemma.

JL: The Invisibles and most of your current work is about pop culture and the culture we live in, the Spectacle, all that. It's been about a year since The Invisibles ended, and there's been a gap where we've been getting different kind of work from you, and not much of your heavy commentary. I was wondering right now, as of 2001--a momentous kind of year--where do you see the culture going?

GM: It's interesting because usually I'm thinking three years ahead. When I was doing The Invisibles, like you said, those ideas were really unusual and now they're everywhere, The Matrix popularized that kind of thing, even Gnostic ideas that were completely unheard of outside of readers of Philip K. Dick or Gnostic texts; and in 1995 I was playing with the idea of video games, understanding that this is a simulated world and that there are higher realities. So I just think it's really weird, but I knew it would happen, it was all the success of The Invisibles. Again it's the market, it's using divination by culture, you can spot cultural trends. You don't have to be tapped in to things to know exactly what's going to be big. I said to Mark Millar, go do The Authority for 1999 because that's when there's going to be another solar surge of punk energy, I told him it would be big and of course it was. People had been looking for big, fascistic, funny people who would come and sort out the problems of the world; and I did Marvel Boy at the same time, knowing that it would tap totally into that current. And right now, pop culture is in the most fabulous fragmentation, it's so confused. There's a ritual period and we just went through that ritual period; the creative people have blown out of it but you still see edges of it in the movies, just because they haven't quite caught up. And the next thing is authenticity, that's what people will want. They're sick of irony, sick of darkness, sick of robo-cowboys, all that. They're sick of the guy who can copy art and feed it back in a shitty way. I think what the Internet has done is kind of made that fragmentation start, because anyone can do it for themselves and everyone can exchange information. And also it's a source of authenticity. You can go to an Internet site and if the guy's really crazy enough it's gonna be great, really big stuff. The stuff's coming up at the roots. I think I just want to get back to the weirdness aspect of my work, but now that I've got access to the distribution of Marvel Comics . . . [Laughs] By the fifth issue of the X-Men, it gets really hardcore, it's about changing the world, it's about mutant politics, mutant thought, mutant music, and about how to apply that to change everything. So I'm really doing kind of what H.G. Wells was doing a hundred years ago, I'm in this space where I'm doing utopian visions, all these different ones, seeing the possibilities of getting out of the state we're in. Which isn't absolutely bad but it needs to be changed, it's time for a change, I think everybody knows.

JL: Are you sick of those ideas you were doing in The Invisibles? The Gnostic thing . . .

GM: Well, I like seeing a deeper exploration of them, but obviously those are themes that are important to me, I've been there, I've done it. I'm kind of interested in other aspects of life now. I've seen a lot of stuff in the interim, a lot of people doing Invisibles-type stuff, again missing the point, saying let's put some magic into it, let's put some action, let's put some big breasts and we've got a comic like The Invisibles. The Invisibles was really my diary, I mean that's what it was about, it's about the books I was reading, the people I was seeing, the places I was going, and me trying to earn some money from making the comic. What I want to see is people doing their own experience and their own life without trying to be clever or trying to be hip or fashionable. If you do what's in your own head it'll always be cool because no one else will have thought of it. JL: You introduced a lot of ideas during the last issue of The Invisibles--your vision of the future, with the idea of the world as an endless game and people developing multiple personalities to further participate, the whole Horus thing--I was wondering if those are ideas that you're still… some of those ideas were only introduced in the last issue, so I'm wondering if those are things you're still developing or have thought further into.

GM: Oh yeah, you know, the last issue of The Invisibles is actually written as a comic from 2012, and it's supposed to be, it's written for kids who are now about nine or so, who are actually part of the next sunspot cycle, the ones that are going to be taking us into 2012, and they'll be like hippies, or their version of whatever hippie is. That current'll be back in again, and I wrote that issue for them because they'll completely understand it, but their bigger brothers might not completely understand it. The stuff in the last issue, there's a lot of ideas that I'm pursuing through all the new work and it's really about what we can actually do to change things. Personality is at its limit, personality as in the individual self belonged to the seventeenth century, it's a thing that rational culture made. The Enlightenment developed the individual self as part of its particular agenda, and it had to because we'd just been differentiated from the mythic cultures that went before scientific enlightenment, and we needed that, but again it's all developmental stages, that's what I'm talking about in the last issue of The Invisibles, about recognizing what stage we're at. Everything comes in cycles, from a baby growing in the womb to the entire history of evolution, and I think civilizations go through the same developmental stages that a child growing up goes through. So you have adolescence times, you have mythic magic times; when you're a child you're completely absorbed in the world, you're undefined, you're a part of the world until you suddenly split off, and it's the same way with cultures; you had agriculture, where people worked, where they were part of their environment, and then suddenly what they do is they put a king up, they look to another person to give them law, and that's the opposite . . . obviously, kids do the same thing, they look up at their parents and then they question their parents, and then they become parents, and culture has to go through the same thing. And Western culture's just at the point where it has to grow up, it's the feeling of adolescence, and that's that boiling feeling, it's adolescence, that's why everything's going crazy, it's the culture's hormones rushing. We're growing up, I think it's great, and I just want to think about what it's like to be growing up, and what does growing up mean. And I think in place of the individual self, which we've been offered since the Enlightenment, I'm offering multiple selves. The individual self breaks at the edges, it causes boundaries. If you're a "self," like I said in The Invisibles, self means not-self, self implies not-self. So instantly you've got a boundary there. Something that you are not, and either you treat that as an adversary, or you want to have sex with it, but it's still the Other all the time. And what I'm talking about is instead of having the Other, why don't we just upgrade our own personalities to take on the other person? I want to know what that person feels like, I want to upgrade my personality so that know what it feels like to be that person, and let that perspective in to deal with the proper problem. Some people need to be angry, so let Mr. Angry come in, and he does the job, that's what he's there for. But he's not there for when you want to make love to someone, so then you got to recruit Mr. Lover. [laughs] And there's other ones, there's Mr. Lazy . . . And actually just letting them be their things, knowing that you can add another Mr. Somebody, knowing you can be Mr. Martial Arts or whatever, you can be Mr. Mudra if you feel like it, you can be all these things, but the whole thing is understanding that personality is not a discrete thing, and to stop thinking of it as a thing with boundaries that other people bump off of. So I think these ideas will become more defined and refined and people will become aware of them. I think multiple personality sufferers, as I said in the book, they're the purest forerunners of what we're all going to become. We'll become something like an operating system.

JL: A lot of The Invisibles, you were talking about theories of culture, of cultural progression, Terence McKenna's ideas, the sunspot cycle idea, the Thelemic Aeons; and it seems like even though The Invisibles was addressed to the idea of free will, by the end of The Invisibles you almost refute the idea of free will. You say, well, the culture, or the way the world is progressing as a mass entity, you're insignificant compared to that. It seems like the ultimate message by the end, or one of the messages, is just to sit back and watch the show.

GM: In a certain sense, but no, it's not as easy as that. What you actually have to do is participate with the show, the show demands your participation, it doesn't want you to sit back and watch, nothing will happen. So, what we're actually doing is collaborating with the universe, if you want to call it that, or the process, the huge process that is time and space. It's a collaboration, we have to dance with it. And magic is a technique for dancing, it's a long-established practice for aligning ourselves with what the universe wants. And in the end of The Invisibles, what I'm saying is--and this was my vision that I had when I was in Kathmandu in 1994, before I started the book, I'm sure you've read enough to know it--and what I saw was that the universe is a single process, it's a living entity. And it's the larval form of a higher dimensional entity that exists in what I thought was maybe the fifth dimension, something higher than our space, which incorporates space and time but is a much bigger system. And the universe is actually an entity, and we're not a mistake. It's the individual ego again, it's this thing of free will, we live in terror of having our free will taken away but there's no such thing at all. We made that concept up, to stroke our own sense of the individual ego, and really we're all just part of this process. If I die tomorrow there'll be another guy who writes stuff like The Invisibles, in the same way that William Burroughs was writing the same stuff I'm writing fifty years ago. William Burroughs is dead, I will be dead, someone else will write the same stuff, will keep telling everybody to remind themselves to do this. There's always a policeman born. You know, if I'd been born right now, I'd grow up to be a policeman because the world will need them until the time comes when he's not needed and he'll be streamed out in the same way that we streamed out Thatcher, or castle-builders. It's a horrible thing for the individual ego to suddenly see "well, maybe I'm not a big fuckin' deal, maybe I'm not Mr. Big," but in that is the freedom to just be anything you want. Don't give up, if you want to be something than why not? If I want to do that thing, then why not? Who's going to stop me? JL: What do you see as the duties of the individual then? Is the duty of the individual to then recognize that you're not an individual, and then what from that point?

GM: It is the duty of the individual to realize that we're not an individual at all, and that the space between me and you is as much a defining of me and you as the body is. If you move away from me there's still that gap between us that connects us, I mean obviously we could move anywhere in the world and it's just like two electrons meeting. And the gap between us is still a definition of the fact that we sat here once. So imagine you could work it, if you reverse that, if you come back, it's the same gap between us. So that's The Invisibles #2 cover as well, it's the Holy Grail, the thing between two people, that's the Holy Grail, that's where all the communication and interaction is. And what we should be doing is looking in the spaces, because we're so obsessed about self, in the spaces, that's where everything is, that's where all the connections are. And what I'm saying is look at the spaces, and if we're all one thing then say we’re all just antibodies inside this universe? Like again, that was The Invisibles, that was kind of the conceit in it, that what we see as gray aliens or elves or spirits, all these weird little creatures that have been appearing for mankind for our entire time on Earth are antibodies, that have been put into the universal entity to make sure that it grows properly. And what we've been seeing as evil is actually an inoculation against that feeling; we re-conceptualize it as evil and as a threat but it's an inoculation, the same way you'd shoot a kid full of Polio, to protect them from Polio. The body will experience all of those antibodies as an invasion--but then they'll learn how to defeat Polio! I think that evil and what we experience as evil is just an inoculation against darkness, so that we'll learn how to deal with it, so that when we grow up and wake up and have true selves, we'll know it. So the idea is that we think of ourselves as this huge thing and what we have to do is help the thing grow, and it's really important for us to do it because it's a loving universe and we are it. And we've all got to do it. It's not about me fighting some guy who doesn't agree with me, or blowing things up, it's all, fuck, we're all the same thing, we're all drawn on the same paper. Why are we settin' fire to the paper? [Laughs]

JL: It seems like in a lot of occult theory, though, there are two paths recognized--one is where you defeat the ego, the Right Hand Path where you destroy the ego, and the Left Hand Path where the ego is supreme, your self is supreme--do you just see yourself as being on the Right Hand Path?

GM: No, because I think that, again, that's a dualistic notion, that works really well because this universe is constructed in binary principles, it's really simple, it's all in order, it's so fuckin' simple this thing we live in. Because everything works in binary, we can conceptualize anything in our universe, we can actually break everything down into a one and a zero, and re-create it, that's how simple this universe is, which strikes me as so obviously a larval thing or a constructed thing. But beyond that duality, again like I said in the comic, imagine the Left Hand Path is over here [pointing to a spot on bench] and on the same spectrum is the Right Hand Path [pointing to a second nearby spot, forming a line], there's not a big difference, they're not two different things, it's just a spectrum. So what is over here? [Pointing to a spot nowhere near either point, laughing] What is on the other side of that? So think about that, those are just human conceits. Someone who wants to do magic to surround themselves with wealth, women, or whatever, fair enough; but if that's all he wants to do then he'll be trapped in it. If material is all that matters than he'll never really wake up to anything else. I'm always wary of people calling themselves Satanists; they'll probably live and die just like the rest of us and then they'll have to deal with it, but there's no real judgement in that. For me I'd rather just go with the universe as a thing; I mean, I've been working to accrue wealth, wealth is great because it helps me travel and do more things but there's also a higher agenda behind that. I don't see why you shouldn't accrue wealth, but I think that the black magicians are the ones who can't realize that there's more to life than that. Black magicians are like scientists, because they're stuck in this materialistic trap, and they're really afraid of death, they're always looking to prolong their lives, they're interested in immortality, they're just hopeless characters trapped in math and afraid of everything else.

JL: Which occult figures of the twentieth century do you respect? From your definition right there, that leaves most of them out.

GM: Yeah, Crowley obviously was a touting, ridiculous, bombastic, amazing figure, he just did the stuff and then wrote it down, you have to admire that. The guy was full of it, but so's everybody, why shouldn't he be? His work is so amazing. Austin Spare is interesting, and then there's the Chaos people who influenced me in the Eighties, Phil Hine and Ray Sherwin and Peter Carroll. The biggest influence on me was my Uncle Billy, who was this big black magician . . . [Laughs]

JL: You were saying that you think three years down the line. You've been giving us updates through the website, but I'm wondering what you're thinking right now, what's on the Morrison radar? What do you see three years down the line?

GM: Well I don't only want to think in terms of three years . . . obviously the next big thing that's going to happen is there's going to be a big pastoral vibe coming in. I think the guys doing Lord of the Rings, they know it's coming subconsciously, they're tapping into that current. Pop culture always picks up on these things if you watch it. If you're watching the skies you can see how the thing starts filtering through. Everywhere I look I'm seeing people starting to slide backwards, because they're afraid of the twenty-first century; instead of being into it and really gung ho, they're saying "Oh fuck, what do we do now . . ." So I think we're going to get a slight retreat but then the retreat's going to become something really cool, because the creative people are going to take the pastoral vibe and then unite it with the forward vibe, and something really interesting's going to come out of that.

JL: Kind of a return to the early Nineties rave culture, you think?

GM: It's not even that, it's going to be something completely different again. All this stuff we're getting right now, it's punk, you know, The Matrix, it's all punk coming back, it's those Horus energies, it's that kind of, you know, Linkin Park, Slipknot, it's all back as predicted. They didn't give it a name this time, the last thing they called it was punk, then they called it rave. It's weird this generation didn't name themselves, but they're there. You know, even in Glasgow, there are all these little kids in black, and I think it's great, because they're spontaneously immersing themselves, there's this huge mass of them in the city center, and more of them keep coming as they tell more kids to buy the albums they think are cool. They're all in the city center, and there's like hundreds of them, I'm meeting them in the library, and you can feel the energy, they keep building on this thing. They don't quite know what it is, and they haven't given it a name. I'm actually looking to the next kids. I think this generation got kind of fucked, I don't know what happened, where the energy went. The next bunch are really the ones who are going to carry this thing, and they're going to combine this with a kind of hippie thing, that pastoral vibe, it'll be something, you'll start to see this vibe as a low thing, you won't know who they are, they'll be really low down on the radar because utopia is a recessive cultural trait rather than a dominant one, but they'll emerge huge, full-blown into the mainstream by 2010.

JL: You definitely seem to see things in terms of cycles.

GM: It's just a model, and it works, you can apply models because they fit and they make people think. Yeah, obviously the whole thing's just a process, it's like water running down a drain, there's as much chaos in it anything. But because it's such a simple system, it's easy to see the currents. Like I said in the comic, it's like Scooby and Shaggy running down the hall, the same door keeps going by, the same thing keeps getting repeated, because it's easy to use over and over.

JL: You almost seem to see things in a 19th century way, in kind of a Hegelian dialectic. You talked about the universe being in binary--is that how you see everything, as a dualistic system?

GM: Well I know it can be reduced to that, and everyone can keep reducing it to that. But I know that the highest aspect of our thinking, you know, Buddhist meditation, Zen meditation, stuff like that can take you beyond duality, so those things actually collapse into unity. I know that place exists. But really I don't read Hegel or any of that, I don't know what the fuck he's talking about to be honest. I'm just talking about my own experience, and framing it into the education that I've got, the language I've got. That's how the world was presented to me, how people present the world to me. And I'm sure that there's another way of thinking beyond that, but there seems to be endless Malkuth, you know, the lowest level of the Tree of Life, everything can be reduced to binary.

JL: Do you think that that's maybe only a current trend, that people are just acting on whatever ideas were brought about in the 19th century?

GM: Oh, I'm sure we all are. We're all embedded in our times. I always talk about Aboriginal culture, because that's a culture that's been around for forty thousand years. People think they're primitive, but I don't believe that any culture that's been around for forty thousand years is primitive at all. And I spoke to somebody who's been with the Aborigines and he said this amazing thing to me which I've never forgot. He said, "You don't understand these people, they've dispensed with technology." [Laughs] He said that these are the most sophisticated people on the planet, but unfortunately they've come up against a racist government that's mastered much cruder methods and that's fucked with them. He said, "What do you think, we've gone six thousand years and made all this, what do you think they made and then dismissed?" And I was just like, "Fuck . . ." [Laughs] And they have a totally different thing, their thinking's like fifth dimensional thinking. And if you talk to an Aboriginal, he'll go "Yeah, we've been to the moon, we fly around up there, we did that ages ago." So what I mean is that they're actually working in full-scale technology, but we got more drunk! 'Cause that's how we do it, that's how our culture destroys its insight.

JL: With alcohol?

GM: Yeah.

JL: You definitely talk a lot about caffeine and nicotine cutting us off from a lot of things.

GM: Well, it cuts us off from some things and ties us into others. For a culture like ours, I can understand why we're so obsessed with speed and why there's a Starbucks on every corner, it's to get people working, to get people in a state of paranoia where they think they're losing themselves, they're losing their lives, they're losing their status. And it works for this culture, but it only works in that it cuts off certain parts of us, and we're starting to see those things. And the fact that more people are just into smoking dope… I mean, back home in Scotland they've practically decriminalized it, it's only months away from being made legal. And that, to me, is interesting. Because if we switched it to at least a dope-based culture, I don't think it's going to fix anything, but I wonder what kind of changes would we get. People would start coming to work at ten o'clock, things would become more fluid… I don't think basing a culture on any drug is a good idea. I think there's some drugs that might help people, that might loosen the tightened sphincters of the culture we find ourselves in, you know what I mean? It'd be good, you know, it's time we dropped some of the 19th century rules of labor, we don't work that way anymore, those rules aren't essential because we don't live in an industrialized age, you don't need to get up at eight in the morning to do your job anymore. And yet people are still locked into that kind of thing. JL: On that note, about the industrial 9-to-5 society, you were talking yesterday in the X-Men panel about your idea of the new Xavier school, and defeating the old idea of high school. I just got out of high school myself, a year ago . . . [Laughs]. I'm wondering what you think the future of education is?

GM: Again, I think it just applies to a different kind of world. What I'd like to see, the next thing I'd like to see is kids given votes. Let's give children a vote and then see what happens. [Laughs] Because they get no rights and because they have no rights they get preyed on by all kinds of people. And our culture fetishizes them so much because they have no rights, they're all little animals, which is the Victorian idea. I just think give the kids rights and see what happens. It's Horus, it's the next thing, we should be asking kids how they want to run their schools. We should ask them what they want to be taught, and if they want to be taught how to make bombs, then tell them how to make bombs, but then say I'll tell you why you shouldn't make bombs. That's the trade-off. And slowly but surely we might be able to teach kids real stuff. You know kids in the ghetto, you think they really want to learn math? No they don't, not unless they can learn to count their drugs. Tie it in to what the fuck they're doing and then try to ease them out of what they're doing.

JL: I know there are teachers who have been fired for relating math problems to situations like that.

GM: Yeah, and those teachers are out there, and slowly but surely . . . because the system isn't working, you know, and teachers know it isn't working, because they're under threat and under pressure every day, the kids just want to kill them, because the kids feel as if they’re in prison, and the teacher then becomes the warden. Everybody wants to be taught, everybody needs to know shit. And kids are learning machines, it's just the system that just makes such an absolute mockery of that. Especially when kids are watching TV, and they’re seeing other kids flying around, you know, "Powerpuff Girls" . . . everyone wants to learn stuff like that. They'd be sent to jail if they did.

JL: I wonder if you've read a writer--well, he's not really a writer, but a teacher--named John Taylor Gatto?

GM: Yeah. That was the inspiration for all this stuff.

JL: I was just reading him recently, and his idea that school bells destroy the attention span. I've been thinking a lot about what ADD is, what hyperactivity disorder is. We give children huge doses of caffeine from an early age, we subject them to school bells . . .

GM: We subject them to sitting in front of television families, watching the set flicker . . . you're actually not supposed to sit a kid in front of a television until he's six years old. So you don't fuck up his perceptions, you know? And you have people just sticking them there . . .

JL: What do you think of--I don't know what the situation in Europe is, but in America so many kids are on Ritalin now . . .

GM: They're paying for those addictions, as kids always seem to do.

JL: Do you think that maybe hyperactivity disorder is a good thing, that it's kids maybe perceiving information in a new way?

GM: Well I think it's that, but also I think that if you just take all the sugar out of their diet . . . but you know, maybe it's in the system, I have to trust the system, maybe it's part of getting them to think in a certain way or to speed them up, and not to switch to another mode of thinking . . . so I dunno. If it's fuckin' 'em up, then it's bad. [Laughs] Some of these kids work at superconducting brain speeds, and that's fine.

JL: A lot of your work, since maybe Kill Your Boyfriend, has been really focused on kids, and youth culture, and the idea of always finding what's new. Why that focus?

GM: Just because I'm an Aquarius, I'm a classic Aquarius, I'm obsessed with everything that's new. This is all personal crap. So you know, it all enriches me. I don't like the music I used to listen to, I prefer the new stuff coming out, that's my personality.

JL: Do you really think that things are going to change?

GM: Things are changing all the time. Of course they're going to change.

JL: But I mean, at the base level?

GM: Yeah! Things already have. Look at history, everything's changed. Once upon a time we had slavery, we had all these things. We still have problems, every stage has problems, but we keep getting rid of problems as well, and we're getting better. We're getting better all the time.

JL: It seems to me, though, that a lot of pop culture is fixated on the idea of the occult in terms of what's hidden, what product you don't have, what's coming next, what are we going to give you, what's the future. And all spiritual systems going back however many thousands of years have the basic message--you know, The Beatles had the basic message--Be Here Now. Don't think about the future, nothing's coming around the corner--I mean, it's a beautiful day, we're here, why worry about what's coming tomorrow?

GM: You don't have to worry about it. Just speculating about it is a lot of fun. [Laughs] Yeah, just imagine it, because it's fun to imagine, and if you imagine it hard enough you live in it. You know, I've done this magic and it's just a kind of force of life--you wonder why would I want to engage with the world, but you do it until you find yourself living in what was once only a fantasy. I think there's too much emphasis placed on fear of this stuff, and I was always engaged with the Situationist fear of the Spectacle. And I think it's the same as the Gnostic fear of the flesh. It's a denial, you know, it's a denial of an entire part of existence. It's also a snob thing, an intellectual snob thing. The Situationist thing gets me as saying "We're better than you" because "We're better than the Spectacle," you know "You pros live in the Spectacle," and I just see through that straight away, and some of their ideas are great, but they're snobs. And I feel the same about the Gnostics, they were flesh snobs. [Laughs] But like I said, they also had great ideas. And their ideas are good because they jolt you out of your complacency. JL: In a lot of your recent work you've been talking about moving into different worlds, putting on a suit and going into the corporate world, and I was wondering if maybe you're thinking about going in the direction of intellectual snobbery, or doing things other than comics, playing in different arenas if you will.

GM: Yeah, I just want to do everything. I've been doing a lot of music again recently, I've done tons of comics, I've been doing X-Men for the mainstream, I've done underground stuff, I'm just trying to attend to everything that I'm interested in. And I've suddenly got this huge creative pulse, so I'm doing all this stuff. But the whole idea of the suits, that's just . . . somebody's got to do it. Somebody's got to be a tramp, you know? Somebody's got to be a business man. And I've been obsessed with the corporate world--and the whole magic thing, I've been fed up with the occult, as you say, that whole aspect of it, and I just looked and I said, who's actually using magic? It's the corporations, they're doing it all the time--the NLP seminars, all that, if you listen to those management training tapes, they're fucking weird! And they’re using logos, they're using these incredibly powerful sigils to colonize imaginary space and media space. These guys are actually using magic in plain sight, and no-one knows what they're doing! They're using big-scale, world-changing magic, so I thought, well I'll get into some of that. And I've been doing rituals for two corporate entities now, and trying to do things with that, seeing how you can contact them and deal with them and what kind of bargains you can make with them . . .

JL: I see, dealing with them as an idea.

GM: Mmm-hmm. But approaching them the same way a medieval magician would approach, you know, whatever particular demon… Emulsifax or whatever. [Laughs] And make your circle, but your circle can be different, it can be whatever, like the circle could be televisions, or the Wall Street Journal, or whatever works for you. And I've had some success contacting these entities.

JL: You've said in a couple columns recently that you have a very DIY approach to magic, that you don't use banishing rituals, that you just use whatever… and I was wondering does that really work for you? Because that doesn't work for me . . .

GM: Oh no, it's good to just do what you feel like. I'm always too lazy for banishing, so I'd end up like possessed for a week! [Laughs] And that's okay, you know, you have to see it as just another part of reality, and I just kind of got used to it. But I'll tell you, man, the nineties were a very weird time for me because I was doing a lot of that stuff, just allowing myself to be completely absorbed in the thing. But there's no lasting effects, because I feel much, much better.

JL: So you think there's no value in separating out above and below, whatever you want to call it, separating the subjective from the objective?

GM: There's conceptual value, because if you're doing magic you always come up against things that are really powerful, dark, inimical forces, and sometimes those forces even seem like they're universal, because I think we do tap into dark archetypal forces. But really it's all about surrender. Give up. Stop being such a prick, stop thinking you're so great and you shouldn't be absorbed in that guy or thing, whether it seems evil or not. And these evil things are always cocky, so engage them. And if it's something like the Choronzon entity, where the rational mind disintegrates, and it's just question after question after question, then silence it. All these entities can be dealt with. I know people who've had really bad experiences, but maybe I'm just too arrogant to let any demonic thing affect me. I'd advise everyone just to be careful when you do this kind of stuff, and if you feel your mind's a little fragile, then watch for it. If you don't mind your mind going sometimes, then, you know, do it!

JL: You've been a big proponent of "just do it."

GM: Yeah. [Laughs] It's just a way of engaging with things, it's not such a big deal. The universe wants to play, so dance with it, but watch yourself.

JL: You've been interested in magic as a theme in almost all of your work, going back I don't know how long and culminating in The Invisibles. You've said you've been a magician for twenty years; what have your personal experiences with that been? How did you start out?

GM: I started by just reading a lot of books. My Uncle Billy had a fabulous library, he was really into it, and I was just always interested in it. My mum always told fortunes, and there was a kind of witchy ambiance in the family. So I always craved it, you know, I wanted the weird when I was a kid. I always read books about mysteries and flying saucers, I was obsessed with it. So I just got to the point where I'd read, you know, my uncle gave me a book by Aleister Crowley on magic and I read it and I said "Yeah right." So this guy says go and do this and so I went and did it and it actually worked. And I was twenty-one when I had this incredible, terrifying experience, and I realized it worked, and then I kept doing it, because I was pretty depressed at that age and I found it was a way of making things happen, and making things change in my head, and I got pretty proficient at it. Then I discovered the Chaos stuff which just gave me a model for action. And then I started developing the stuff on my own. Chaos cut through all the crap. I used to read stuff that told you to go cutting virgin ash wands and all that, and there's really no need for all that. There's no way I'm going to be involved in cutting up some poor tree at midnight, you know, midnight on Halloween or something… that has nothing to do with it, that's just stuff to subdue your mind, and you can subdue your mind with anything. And so I just got in to doing all my own stuff. I made my own tarot cards out of some polaroids that showed things that were meaningful to me, houses I'd lived in, or a key, stuff like that. I made all my own stuff up, and then I remembered that when I was a kid I had been in a fever and I used to hallucinate foxes all the time, so I just assumed that foxes were my totem and I asked them to do things for me. I used that in Animal Man. And so then when I started to combine it with the comics I really started to develop this system where it was all about comics. You've got the Kirby gods, and I thought instead of contacting Hermes I'll contact Metron! And whoosh, Metron appeared! It was amazing! [Laughs] And I realized, it's the magic that's real, the forms in which things appear are just the archetypal cloak that they happen to wear. I thought I'd just I'd jack it up a bit, make it more fun and personal for myself. I wasn't really frightened of Satan, because I could just conjure up Diabolus, and I would get the same guy! JL: In a lot of your recent work you've been talking about moving into different worlds, putting on a suit and going into the corporate world, and I was wondering if maybe you're thinking about going in the direction of intellectual snobbery, or doing things other than comics, playing in different arenas if you will.

JL: I see, dealing with them as an idea.

JL: So you think there's no value in separating out above and below, whatever you want to call it, separating the subjective from the objective?

JL: You've been a big proponent of "just do it."

GM: Yeah. [Laughs] It's just a way of engaging with things, it's not such a big deal. The universe wants to play, so dance with it, but watch yourself.

GM: I started by just reading a lot of books. My Uncle Billy had a fabulous library, he was really into it, and I was just always interested in it. My mum always told fortunes, and there was a kind of witchy ambiance in the family. So I always craved it, you know, I wanted the weird when I was a kid. I always read books about mysteries and flying saucers, I was obsessed with it. So I just got to the point where I'd read, you know, my uncle gave me a book by Aleister Crowley on magic and I read it and I said "Yeah right." So this guy says go and do this and so I went and did it and it actually worked. And I was twenty-one when I had this incredible, terrifying experience, and I realized it worked, and then I kept doing it, because I was pretty depressed at that age and I found it was a way of making things happen, and making things change in my head, and I got pretty proficient at it. Then I discovered the Chaos stuff which just gave me a model for action. And then I started developing the stuff on my own. Chaos cut through all the crap. I used to read stuff that told you to go cutting virgin ash wands and all that, and there's really no need for all that. There's no way I'm going to be involved in cutting up some poor tree at midnight, you know, midnight on Halloween or something… that has nothing to do with it, that's just stuff to subdue your mind, and you can subdue your mind with anything. And so I just got in to doing all my own stuff. I made my own tarot cards out of some polaroids that showed things that were meaningful to me, houses I'd lived in, or a key, stuff like that. I made all my own stuff up, and then I remembered that when I was a kid I had been in a fever and I used to hallucinate foxes all the time, so I just assumed that foxes were my totem and I asked them to do things for me. I used that in Animal Man. And so then when I started to combine it with the comics I really started to develop this system where it was all about comics. You've got the Kirby gods, and I thought instead of contacting Hermes I'll contact Metron! And whoosh, Metron appeared! It was amazing! [Laughs] And I realized, it's the magic that's real, the forms in which things appear are just the archetypal cloak that they happen to wear. I thought I'd just I'd jack it up a bit, make it more fun and personal for myself. I wasn't really frightened of Satan, because I could just conjure up Diabolus, and I would get the same guy! JL: I've experienced a lot of things like that, but for me it's like, at least those kinds of experiences are really about just turning the glass slightly, so that you look at things a different way and you make new connections in your mind, and you're able to resolve whatever is there, in kind of a Jungian sense, right? And for me it's always been a different way of approaching psychology.

GM: But even if you just wanted to assume that's all it is, that's pretty good in itself. But I think there's more to it. You know, I've tried healing stuff, I thought if you're going to be a magician at all it's not about wanting to be scary and wearing a robe or something, what you have to do is you have to do things for people. A magician or a shaman or whatever you want to call it is someone who has been pulled out a little, shown something really bizarre, managed to hold on to enough and then thrown back in, and the point is, once you're back in what do you do? You've got to tell other people, you've got to get other people involved. So I thought you've got to do this stuff. I've tried healing magic, and I did it with my cat when it was dying of cancer, and I was taught this technique by this woman and I didn't believe it, but she said, "No, you've got to do it." And I said "I can't do it, please come and help my cat," and she said, "No, you've got to do it, the spirits that talk to me"--and I didn't believe in spirits, but she said there were spirits talking to her, so I figured I had to trust her--she said "No, they tell me that you have to do it, it's really important that you do this thing." So she taught me the technique, I went to the cat, the cat had been diagnosed with cancer all through his belly, cancer through his jaw and so on out. We had taken him up to the vet hospital . . . [Sniffles] I went home and I was really upset, so I did this whole deal of the laying on of hands, and just asked for these spirits to help, I just did what she told me to do whether I believed it or not, did the thing over a photograph of the cat, and I saw white mist coming off me, real white mist, with light coming off the palm and everything. The next day I took the cat up to the vet to get a biopsy to find out what kind of cancer he had, did it to him on the way up to the hospital. They called me that afternoon and said "What the hell's going on, this cat's got no cancer! We can't find any cancer." I taught the method to Jill Thompson [artist on The Invisibles, Sandman, and Scary Godmother] because she called me up six months later and her cat had cancer in his leg. I said, "Well try this, it worked for me!" [Laughs] Called back, the cancer was gone. I tried it with another cat and the cat died. It wasn't cancer, it was a different thing, but I knew that this cat had to die, it was just its time. I never really knew what it was, but I could definitely feel it click when it worked, I knew, I knew it was going to work. And I've done things like, a friend's guitar got stolen, and he came to me and asked if I could bring it back with magic, and I thought "No, what the hell am I supposed to do?" and then I said "Yep, no problem, I'll have it back in two days," I just said the first thing that came to my head, and then I went away and did this ritual, said, you know, "Please get this guy's guitar back," you know, I have no idea how it's going to happen. Two days later he's walking by a junk store [pawn shop] right next to the apartment he's living in, looks in the window and the guitar's there! [Laughs]

JL: Have you been involved in any organized groups?

GM: No, I've always just done it my own way. I don't have use for groups, I just do it myself. I always thought there was a danger in that kind of guru thing. Of course, Phil Hine's always worked in groups and he seems to have done well for it, but I don't have an interest in things with a lot of different hierarchy, maybe I'm a bit more solitary. I like to shut the door and have nobody see me so I can really lose control.

JL: You've definitely referenced the IOT in your early work, in your Hellblazer issues and in The Invisibles also, in the King Mob story--is that a group you were connected to?

GM: Not really, it's just because I was reading all their books then and buying everything, but I never made it to Leeds. I was kind of vaguely corresponding with those people, but that was it. I think a lot of people join those things for the glamour of being a wicked magician, which is just bullshit.

JL: Do you think that there should be more high-profile organizations? Maybe a real version of the Harry Potter school or the Charles Xavier school? [Laughs]

GM: I think it'll happen. Obviously, that will happen, as more people are taught about magic, and more scientists are going crazy trying to explain this stuff and they'll find they're not alone. This stuff works. I know because I've done it, to me it's just as simple as I've done this and I've proved to my ultimate satisfaction that we can actually make things happen and change our lives, change the actual world physically around us, take ourselves places we'd never thought we'd be using these techniques. So I feel desperate, I want to tell everyone to do it, because like I said, what if everyone starts doing it, everyone? Kids in the ghettoes; oh, even the dangerous people, what might bubble up then? We might just get some interesting stuff happening.

JL: Do you think that's--not necessarily irresponsible, but . . . this is something that's been kept under wraps for thousands of years, so do you think it's smart to let it out?

GM: I think it's forcing itself out. The current demands to be heard, and I can't not talk about it, I've seen it happen, so . . . it's not like I'm trying to prosthelytize for magic but I find myself doing it. Because when people say ridiculous blind statements about their experience, and deny it, or refuse to even attempt it--why don't they fuckin' do the experiments? This is what drives me insane, so many people keep telling me "I refuse to do this, I'm sorry, why should I do this?" I feel as if we're sitting in a dark room and I keep pointing to the light switch and saying "Why don't you just touch that, why not just turn the light on?" and they're saying "Ahhh, don't be ridiculous." [Laughs] "We'll never touch that, that's ridiculous." And it's just mad to me, I just don't get it, because it seems like, why not? Because if it does work, doesn't that mean something, and isn't that very interesting? I think it's a certain way of thinking, it's that Enlightenment thing, it's reached its limit and it's quite fearful of newness, because it's afraid that the whole structure will collapse, and if it does then civilization will go with it, but it's not, these things will join together and make something better. We'll be able to make something out of both the spirit and the material. Because we know spirit exists. Recently what I was reading which I thought was really bizarre, which shows the way this culture thinks, which you might have read, was that they've basically discovered the seat of religion in the brain, they've found the neurological component that feeds the sense of oneness with the universe . . . JL: I did read that, yeah.

GM: Right, so we've found this thing--and they're having this pathetic debate with a bunch of clerics saying "This is terrible, they will never find God" and other people saying "Yeah, God's just a neurological spasm, we've debunked everything." And in a this, why has no-one said, "OK, we've just found the God switch! Why don't we press it!" But nobody's said it, the whole argument's about "Religion's been debunked" and "Hah hah, we've debunked you" and "You'll never debunk us!" and nobody realizes the actual implications of what they've just done. What if we go round every prison and turn it on, every child molester?

JL: OK, magic--I have to ask, why bother? I mean, we can do anything already. Like I said, it's a beautiful day, why not go to the beach, live your life, why not go fall in love? Why concern yourself with the metaphor? Why sit in a room conjuring shit? Why bother with doing those things?

GM: Because it's fun! You could just as easily say why bother with falling in love? 'Cause it's nothing but trouble! Why bother with making cars? They're nothing but pollution. It's just about playing, creating, you can join in with the universe in creating, because the universe is a creative thing. And if you don't want to join in something then fuck off and go do something on your own. If you don't want to do it then don't do it. For me it just got me out of my miserable adolescence, that was my excuse.

JL: How would you define magic, though? The Chaos people and Crowley seem to define it as getting what you want, you always have to get what you want . . .

GM: You know what I think it is, it's the bleedin' obvious. That's what magic is, it's just becoming aware of the absolute obvious. And suddenly it all becomes magic, it's just like when you take acid, everything becomes significant. Magic makes everything significant. And it gives meaning to everything, it enriches everything, so I want to work with that. It's like a drug, it's better than that, it enriches the world, we can peer into the rest of our lives. Our bodies make huge armies of antibodies that never really do anything. And we don't even think about what we're doing, these huge machines that we move around in, that we operate in, and my god, that's nothing but real magic. And once you become aware of it, you pay for the Understanding, you make the Understanding applicable. Like I said, I've gone away from the occult and gotten really interested in seeing the world in new ways--like look at that tree behind you [points to the tree], that's a living thing that we barely even notice. [Laughs] And how's it engaging in its environment, and what's it's sense of me, what kind of chemical messages is it getting from the sweat that comes off our bodies, what is going on with that tree?

JL: Would you say that the ultimate message of your work, then, would it all boil down to "flick the switch"?

GM: Yeah . . . thank you for thinking of that. If you hadn't said that I never would have thought of it. [Laughs]

JL: Well, thanks for talking.

GM: No, it was great. It's always good to find someone who gets it.

Final de Ano

2006-12-27T09:53:00.000-02:00

ois é, mais um ano passou voando e eu só me toquei disso após os festejos de natal. Um ano de muito crescimento (algum forçado), algumas vitórias importantes (OAB, casa nova, carro na garagem, fé, entre outras coisas) e muito, muito aprendizado.

Fazendo uma retrospectiva rápida do ano de 2006, percebo que foi um ano de escolhas & confirmações.

Família:

O último membro da matilha se foi. Ao menos os corvos contam que está feliz & bem, com uma lobinha a caminho.
Um antigo membro deu as caras, por assim dizer. Não é o mesmo - mas até aí qual de nós o é?
Eu & Silvia continuamos a desapontar os que não apostavam no relacionamento. =)
Uma senhorita de cartola e smiley na lapela anda rondando a família Berzins. Bom, ela tinha que aparecer a qualquer momento, não é mesmo?

Amigos:

Um ano de renovação. Tanta gente nova a frequentar a nova casa: Vitor, Mi, Sieg, Pantera, Igor, Mezenga, Bandit, Ana, Yukio - Bem vindos sejam!
Aos distantes (e não só geograficamente), um brinde: Inanna, Farai, Scaldie, Nica, Margareth, Dhi, Drikos, Max - Não preciso dizer como vocês fazem falta...
A todos aqueles que não estão listados por nome, não culpem nada além da minha memória de peixinho dourado. Vocês sabem que são importantes e porque são importantes!
Van, você não conta, você é de casa. Só deixamos que você visitasse a família para que eles não sentissem saudades!

Trabalho:

Auditorias e mais auditorias, aprendendo horrores sobre franquias, óleodutos e legislação tributária japonesa (do not ask, I do not tell)
Um projeto a ser concretizado até Fevereiro.

Fé:

Várias cores, e nenhuma. (DL pun here)
Meu coração era tão frio que foi preciso um sopro de dragão para que ele se inflamasse.
Tudo que ela toca ela muuuuuudaaaaa ;)
Hoje vejo os infortúnios como mãos da criadora, e o fogo da minha fúria como a forja.
(Se não entendeu nada, não se preocupe, eu sou maluco mesmo =)

Ranger Song

2006-12-07T16:17:00.000-02:00

C-130 rolling down the strip.
Airborne ranger gonna take a little trip.
mission top secret destination unknown
don't even know if I'm going home.
Stand up, Hook up, shuffle to the door.
Jump right out and count to four.
One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four.
if my chute don't open wide.
I've got a reserve by my side.
If that one should fail me too

If that one should fail me too
Look out below I'm coming through

If that one should fail me too
Look out ground there's a ranger comin' through

I said hey all the way
I say hey every day
If i die on the old drop zone
Then box me up and send me home
Pin my wings up on my chest
Tell my girl i've done my best
I said hey all the way
I say hey every day

Trilha Sonora da Sua vida

2006-12-07T14:17:00.000-02:00

Roubada do blog da Nica

Instruções:

1. abra seu programa favorito de mp3
2. coloque no shuffle
3. coloque a música pra tocar
4. para cada questão coloque a música correspondente
5. para cada nova questão, clique para ouvir a próxima música
6. não vale roubar, até porque as outras pessoas vão perceber.

Opening Credits: You belong to me - Bob Dylan
"See the Pyramids
Along the Nile
Watch the sun rise ..."

Uma boa música de início para comédias leves. Com um pai piloto de helicóptero na Amazônia e uma mãe comissária da cruzeiro, é bem apropriado...

Waking Up: Freefalling - Tom Petty

"I'm gonna free fall out into
nothin', gonna leave this world for a while."

yeah, I am gonna leave my dreams for some hours 'till I find them again, exausted.

First Day At School: We Belong - Pat Benatar

"We belong to the light
We belong to the thunder
We belong to the sound of the words
Weve both fallen under"

Falling In Love: Hey Dude - Kula Shaker

"If it tastes like honey
Dont swallow it all
Dont wait for the moment to come -
And catch the sun"

Breaking Up: Nightquest - Nightwish

"Guardians of the halls of heart
When we from my homeland depart
To challenge the gods of emptiness
May the quest begin!"

Prom: Leader of Men - Nickelback

"I am not a leader of men
Since I prefer to follow
Do you think I could have a drink
Since it's so hard to swallow
So hard to swallow

So turn the television off
and I will sing a song
And if you suddenly have the urge
You can sing along"

Life is Good: Flowers - Echo and the bunnymen

Driving: Joe Bean - Johnny Cash

Flashback: Buck dich - Rammstein

"buck dich - befehl ich dir
wende dein Antlitz ab von mir
dein Gesicht ist mir egal
buck dich"

Getting Back Together: Adrenaline - Gavin Rossdale

"You don't feel the pain

Too much is not enough
Nobody said this stuff makes any sense
We're hooked again"

Wedding: Blood of Kingu - Therion

"Collect the blood of Kingu from the great old sea
And arrogate the primeval waters
Inside your veins the power of the demon flow
Have you ever searched for your descent?

Gaze into your soul, we are the children of the ancient ones
On the thin facade we are the kindred of the benign gods"

Paying the Dues: I've got my love to keep me warm - Frank Sinatra

"My heart's on fire, the flame goes higher, but I can weather the
storm,

What do I care how much it may storm, I've got my love to keep
me warm."

The Night Before The War: Disco Mushroom - Infected Mushroom (I am not afraid any more - clash)

Final Battle: Um dia, um ladrão - Pato Fu

Moment of Triumph: You Learn - Alanis

Death Scene: Asche zu Azche - Rammstein

Funeral Song: Where do I hide - Nickelback

End Credits: Dos Margaritas - Paralamas

Album do BBB

2006-11-28T15:41:00.000-02:00

BBB

Brasilia

Definitivamente Doninha

2006-11-07T18:33:00.000-02:00

Heroes - Episódio Piloto

2006-11-03T11:34:00.000-03:00

Bom, já me preparando para a "estiagem" de Lost, comecei a procurar outros vícios televisivos. Sob a recomendação de alguns amigos, resolvi baixar alguns episódios de "Heroes" (Série da NBC).

O Motto da série é bastante óbvio: "Pessoas comuns descobrindo poderes incomuns ". Bom, para um caça-níqueis de x-men e homem aranha, versão sessão da tarde, não se podia esperar outra coisa.

Confesso que o episódio piloto me decepcionou bastante. Parece ter sido feito às pressas, sem tempo pra edição. Nos primeiros cinco minutos somos apresentados aos personagens principais, e no "núcleo Índia" já começam as papagaiadas: Um geneticista que resolve virar taxista na Big Apple para poder pesquisar melhor seus "espécimes".

Claro, dirigir um táxi nem dá trabalho nem cansa. E ser geneticista nem precisa de tanto estudo assim, não é mesmo? Não feliz com isso, o roteirista esquece de fazer pequenas transições entre cenas: Em um segundo, estamos na Índia, em outro em Nova Iorque. Sem legenda. "Indoors". E o telespectador que se vire para entender o que está acontecendo.

Além disso, ver um geneticista dizendo que "o ser humano só usa uma parcela do cérebro" é de doer. Que uma pessoa comum propagasse esse tipo de inanidade, ok, atura-se, afinal "mitos científicos" se propagam por décadas, mas... um cientista repetir isto é de matar.

Claro que nem tudo na série é ruim: O personagem uber-nerd japonês ("Hiro", com trocadilho) é o máximo. O ator é muito bom. O relacionamento entre dois irmãos e seus respectivos poderes fecha bem o episódio, apesar de uma cena de vôo extremamente mal feita.

Meus palpites são que a animadora de torcida na verdade é uma suicida frustrada e que a stripper tem dois poderes. Vamos ver, mais tarde eu escrevo mais sobre a série.

Dia ruim

2006-10-24T13:40:00.000-03:00

White Trash Satan

Seraphim Shock

Thrown away for whatever's pc
Apple lie american scheme
Oh so equal in the eye of a god
Who never was to any of us
Not gonna take your phony white shame
Another day another mistake
Zombie masses spoon feed the scam
I'm pissin on your good guy badge

So who's on your side
The devil's on mine
I know ya hate me
White trash satan proud as can be

Say goodbye to the life that ya know
Say hello to the man down below
Scarin all you barbies and kens
Half redneck half livin dead
Try and keep me quiet in line
I'm payin back and takin what's mine
Give me porn pussy vegas and cash
Give me strippers booze tits and ass

Muito trabalho, Muita pressão, um email que corta o último laço e uma queda em espiral rumo ao void.

Welcome to my life...

Café da Manhã

2006-10-19T10:32:00.000-03:00

Nada como um bom desjejum para renovar as forças e limpar a cabeça de pesadelos por demais vívidos (e sem coelhinhos - pilha interna). Chegando cedo no trabalho, resolvo parar no Rei do Mate, pedir um mate com guaraná gigante (cafeína!!!) e mastigar algo.

Não queria nem pão de queijo nem sanduíche. Olhando para o lado, descubro a fonte de todo mal, a perdição daqueles que tentam seguir o caminho leve, a tentação perversa... O pão de batata na chapa!

Ok, vocês estão rindo, eu sei. Mas vocês não tem idéia de como é bom. Macio, quentinho, leve (tá, eu gosto de me enganar) e com a manteiga da marca que mais amo no mundo.

Um excelente começo de dia, tendo tempo para mastigar o café sem pressa enquanto folheio o "War of the Twins".

Um bom dia para todos!

Mais um motivo para detestar Ipods

2006-10-18T10:03:00.000-03:00

Como se não bastassem todos os outros, ainda vem mais essa....

Small Number of Video iPods Shipped With Windows Virus

We recently discovered that a small number - less than 1% - of the Video iPods available for purchase after September 12, 2006, left our contract manufacturer carrying the Windows RavMonE.exe virus. This known virus affects only Windows computers, and up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it. So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free. As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.

Retirado da http://www.apple.com/support/windowsvirus/

Eu já sabia que o controle de qualidade da Apple em relação aos seus subcontratados era uma bosta.
Eu experimentei em primeira mão o software biodegradável da apple e seus efeitos enervantes no Ipod da namorada.
Agora essa arrogância tola e fetichista em cima de um OS minoritário, e o "que se foda quem pegou o vírus" é um tiro no pé. Depois os applemaníacos reclamam quando são zoados até a morte ;)

Chifres e cascos.

2006-10-13T12:04:00.000-03:00

Ouvindo T.A.T.U & Rammstein, revisando contratos para os chineses, dormindo pouco e reencontrando alguns fiapos da minha fé ao perceber a facilidade com que certas coisas se apresentam para mim. Clareza quase matemática, conforme prometido. :P

E quem diria que para renovar a fonte e deixar a poesia renascer aos borbotões eu precisaria de um ato de questionável intento e um bom e velho "faz de conta"?

Ok, amor, eu admito, você tem razão: Há poder no Sonhar.

"Tenho medo do nariz de pinguim."

2006-10-10T11:34:00.000-03:00

Ok, admito que o título é uma piada que só tem graça ao vivo. Apenas imagine a clássica e malfadada peça de opinião política da Regina Duarte no segundo turno passado sob uma interpretação satírica do nariz do Alckmin.

Brincadeiras a parte, após assistir o debate de segunda cheguei a algumas conclusões preocupantes - ao menos para mim. Descobri que por pior que seja o candidato (e é) eu não voto no Lula. Não mesmo. E não é só pela sua notória falta de preparo como estadista, sua ética de botequim ("Ética é punir depois...")ou sua demagocia clientelista & chavista (com minúscula mesma, permito-me mostrar um desafeto por grafia) - mas sim por sua completa falta de mão em administrar o país.

Explico.

1 - CPMF
2 - ANP
3 - Round 8 de Licitação
4 - Fundo de Educação
5 - Estrelas vermelhas no Jardim
6 - Ausência de postura perante escãndalos
7 - Semelhanças demais com o Nixon
8 - Lei da Mordaça
9 - Ausência total de coerência política

Pronto, um pra cada dedinho do cefalópode. Como disse para minha digníssima que, infelizmente irá assinar embaixo (de novo!) para que o boçal & bêbado continue a governar: Entre Bozo e Lula, voto no Bozo.

Não achei o Alckmin essa bola toda no debate. Repetiu a mesma tecla diversas vezes - digam o que quiser, o Lula foi tudo menos arrogante no debate. Veio despreparado, achando que bastava pichar o presidente (D'uh, mole) para se dar bem e foi sacaneado ao vivo por um debilóide. Teve seus momentos (Em especial o "meu programa está aqui, deixa de ser mentiroso") mas passou-me a imagem de despreparo, nervosismo e mau marketeiro.

Estamos mal, com candidatos como esses. Será que eu ainda sei soletrar?

teste - Tinha que ser ;)

2006-10-09T11:30:00.000-03:00

Which Changeling Kith Best Fits You?

You are a Satyr!! Like the goat-men of legend, you have a STRONG sense of passion. Whether for drinking, sex, or political debate, you embrace your passions and drives with wholehearted abandon. Just be careful not to let your passions consume you entirely.
Take this quiz!

Quizilla |
Join

| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

Sobre eleições

2006-09-20T11:16:00.000-03:00

Citando um amigo, coberto de razão...

"o diabo do mito da democracia. como haver mandato do povo, pelo povo,
para o povo, quando o povo é uma renca de deseducados, meio famintos,
sem fé, vergonha ou capacidade de se escandalizar por calejamento?

(...)

democracia faz algum sentido (talvez) em países com um mínimo de educação.

(...)

me lembrou Paulo Francis.
ele dizia q claro q ele era elitista!, se "elite" significava "os
melhores", então ora pois

problema de tacar pau na elite no br é q se vc sabe soletrar "elite", vc
É elite.".

Honto.
E entre o vídeo da Cicarelli e o Telejornal "Eu não sabia de nada sobre esse escãndalo também", do beócio Luís Inácio Nixon Lula da Silva, o último ainda me choca mais.

Meu alinhamento em D&D

2006-09-19T15:36:00.001-03:00

Chaotic Evil

A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is committed to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse. Thankfully, his plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are poorly organized. Typically, chaotic evil people can only be made to work together by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him. The demented sorcerer pursuing mad schemes of vengeance and havoc is chaotic evil. Chaotic evil is sometimes called "demonic" because demons are the epitome of chaotic evil. Chaotic evil is the most dangerous alignment because it represents the destruction not only of beauty and life but of the order on which beauty and life depend.

--excerpted from the Player’s Handbook, Chapter 6

Keep in mind the alignment suggested by the quiz is just that: a suggestion. It describes your character no better than a 36-question test would describe you. But it’s a good way to start thinking about how your character acts when confronted with issues of alignment.

Now that your character has taken the test, make a note of which questions scored in the opposite direction from your overall alignment. These exceptions can tell some interesting tales about your character Are you a good character with a greedy streak? Are you a lawful character who can’t stand the village elders? Don’t just roleplay your alignment -- roleplay your alignment exceptions, too. Few characters perfectly embody their alignment choice.

Clique aqui e descubra o seu

SPOILER - LOST - Significado dos números (eu já sabia..huahhauha)

2006-09-18T14:06:00.000-03:00

The Doors - Curses and invocations

2006-09-17T12:28:00.000-03:00

Curses, Invocations
Weird bate-headed mongrels
I keep expecting one of you to rise
Large buxom obese queen
Garden hogs and cunt veterans
Quaint cabbage saints
Shit hoarders and individualists
Drag strip officials
Tight lipped losers and
Lustful fuck salesman
My militant dandies
All strange orders of monsters
Hot on the tail of the woodvine
We welcome you to our procession
Here come the Comedians
look at them smile
Watch them dance an Indian mile
Look at them gesture
How aplomb
So to gesture everyone
Words dissemble
Words be quick
Words resemble walking sticks
Plant them they will grow
Watch them waver so
I'll always be a word man
Better then a bird man
------------------------------
... porque um pouco de sincronia musical é uso colateral divertido de entropia ;)

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire....rednecks!

2006-09-16T02:02:00.000-03:00

E eu achei que já tinha visto de tudo. Mas mestre Gaiman discorda.

Ok, os hobbits devem ser milionários pelo preços que andam cobrando para se morar num live gigante...

http://www.bendshire.com/index.php?p=1&side=concept

Glissando em blogs

2006-09-13T14:24:00.000-03:00

Uma coisa que acho fantástica na blogosfera é a possibilidade de se ter notícias sem ter que perguntar. Complicado de entender? Ok, eu explico.

Quem me conhece sabe o quanto é fácil eu ficar chateado. Quem me conhece um pouco mais sabe qua a raiva de verdade eu guardo para aquilo que é sério, e não sinto a menor vergonha em sentir raiva, em parte graças a Rui Barbosa e sua "oração aos moços". Quando o assunto vai pro F.U.B.A.R (fucked up beyond all recognition) minha reação padrão é virar as costas e partir para outra.

Sem juízos de mérito sobre o assunto, isso gera alguns problemas graves aqui e acolá. Hoje li num blog que só não se arrependem os amnésicos e os psicopatas. Discordo, mas isso é uma perspectiva quase religiosa de minha parte. Antes que eu desvie ainda mais do assunto, parte desses problemas graves é a perda de contato com algumas pessoas. Minto. Não é a perda de contato (afinal de contas, geralmente é fruto de uma escolha consciente da minha parte - tirando os casos absolutamente murphyanos de má-interpretação).

É a vontade desinteressada de saber se está tudo bem - não por afeto, amizade ou afins, visto que isto ficou para trás há algumas vidas, mas por se importar se a vida está sendo decente com alguém que já foi importante.

E isso o blog cumpre. Hoje o meu dia ficou um pouco mais feliz por saber que todos (ou quase) estão bem.

"-To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due."

Hob Gadling, toasting upon Dream's journey to Hell in Season of Mists.

Soundtrack for these dark days, my friend...

2006-09-12T11:31:00.000-03:00

Corporate America wakes
Coffee republic in case
We open the latch on the gate
Of the hole that we call our home

Protect me from what I want...
Protect me protect me

Maybe we're victims of fate
Remember when we'd celebrate
We'd drink and get high until late
And now we're all alone

Meow meow mwrrrrrrr (Dialogos matinais Mirandescos)

2006-09-04T14:40:00.000-03:00

Manual do Estagiário

2006-08-29T11:44:00.000-03:00

1. Nunca me de serviço de manhã. Espere ate as 16 h e só então traga-o. A
pressão de uma tarefa com prazo estourado e muito motivante para mim.

2. Se o serviço a ser feito e urgente, venha ate minha mesa de dez em dez
minutos para me interromper e me perguntar se a coisa tá progredindo. Isto
me ajuda muito. Ou melhor, fique de pé atrás de mim olhando o que eu faço e
não hesite em me dar conselhos sobre como proceder a cada vez que eu teclo
uma letra.

3. Quando você sair, não avise ninguém e nunca diga onde esta indo. Isso me
dará a chance de ser criativo quando me perguntarem onde você esta.

4. Se estou com as mãos cheias de papeis, de caixas ou de suprimentos, não
me abra a porta. Tenho que aprender a me virar sem as mãos para o caso de
ficar paraplégico. Abrir as portas com minha boca e um ótimo exercício.

5. Se você me der varias tarefas, não se preocupe em definir as
prioridades. Estou estudando telepatia.

6. Faca o possível para que eu tenha que trabalhar depois do expediente.
Adoro a empresa e eu não tenho mesmo nada mais para fazer e nenhum lugar
para ir. Eu não tenho absolutamente ninguém na minha vida fora o trabalho.

7. Se eu estiver fazendo um bom trabalho e você estiver satisfeito por
favor guarde isto em segredo. Se alguém soubesse eu poderia ser
promovido... E eu não suportaria trabalhar para outra pessoa.

8. Se eu fizer um erro ou algo de que você não goste, diga-o a todo mundo.
Gosto de ser o assunto da conversa. Todo mundo falando do meu erro me ajuda
a melhorar.

9. Se um serviço necessita de instruções especificas, não as escreva Alias,
espere ate a ultima hora para da-las. Não pense em me atrasar com
informações úteis.

10. Não me apresente as pessoas que estão com você. Não tenho nenhum
direito de saber o que quer que seja. Mais tarde, quando você me falar
deles, eu vou saber imediatamente a quem você esta se referindo graças a
minha incrível capacidade de dedução.

11. Na hierarquia da empresa, considere-me como um plâncton.

12.Só seja cortes comigo quando o serviço que estou fazendo pode mudar sua
vida profissional e enviá-lo aos infernos em caso de falhas.

13.Conte-me todos os seus pequenos problemas. Ninguém mais tem, e é
agradável ver alguém menos sortudo do que eu. Adoro particularmente quando
você se queixa de pagar muitos impostos por causa do seu alto salário,
quando você me fala das duvidas de investimento da sua ultima gratificação,
ou quando você se queixa dos três dias de chuva que você pegou durante o
mês de ferias que você tirou no Caribe.

14.Espere minha avaliação anual para me dizer quais eram meus objetivos. Me
de uma nota medíocre pela minha performance e me de um aumentozinho, só
para cobrir a elevação do custo de vida. Afinal, eu não estou aqui por
grana.

Ao meu Futuro

2006-08-24T11:38:00.000-03:00

What do you have to do?
Pack your bags
Go to the station without them
Catch the train
And leave your self behind.

- Open Secret by Wei Wu Wei

Enxaqueca

2006-08-21T11:11:00.000-03:00

Deuses, como eu odeio essa maldição de família :P

Algumas horas de dor lancinante e uma mesa fantastica de Dragonlance abandonada pela metade fazem a gente pensar sobre a vida. Stress maldito que não larga do meu pé...

Bom dia, dia...

2006-08-17T10:18:00.000-03:00

In love

2006-08-15T14:21:00.000-03:00

Ouvindo: Temptation - New Order

Porquê ela é a mulher mais linda quando acorda. E porque ela sempre se acha feia, de uma maneira fofa. Porque ela me traz chocolate na cama. Porque ela nao implica com as noites em que tenho que beber com os amigos para não matar ninguém no trabalho. Porque ela acredita em mim quando nem eu acredito. Porque ela ralha comigo lembrando de cuidados com a saúde. Porque ela me faz completo - e foda-se o bradesco.

Meu céu, Meu caminho, Minha esperança.

Porque mesmo andando mais sozinho do que jamais estive em minha vida, eua encontro em casa, e ela não me deixa cair.

E ela tem os olhos mais lindos do mundo.

"And Ive never seen anyone quite like you before
No, Ive never met anyone quite like you before
Bolts from above hit the people down below
People in this world, we have no place to go (But I do)
Oh, its the last time
Oh, Ive never met anyone quite like you before
Oh no, Ive never met anyone quite like you before"

Where my dreams rest.

2006-08-10T17:18:00.000-03:00

Lord Vader, dayshift manager.

2006-08-04T12:06:00.000-03:00

Numb / Encore - Or a few words to once brothas and sistas. Decypher this!

2006-08-01T16:39:00.000-03:00

Thank you, thank you, thank you, you're far too kind

Now can I get an encore, do you want more
Cookin raw with the Brooklyn boy
So for one last time I need y'all to roar

Now what the hell are you waitin for
After me, there shall be no more
So for one last time, nigga make some noise

Get em Jay

Who you know fresher than Hov'? Riddle me that
The rest of y'all know where I'm lyrically at
Can't none of y'all mirror me back
Yeah hearin me rap is like hearin G. Rap in his prime
I'm, young H.O., rap's Grateful Dead
Back to take over the globe, now break bread
I'm in, Boeing jets, Global Express
Out the country but the blueberry still connect
On the low but the yacht got a triple deck
But when you Young, what the fuck you expect? Yep, yep
Grand openin, grand closin
God damn your man Hov' cracked the can open again
Who you gon' find doper than him with no pen
just draw off inspiration
Soon you gon' see you can't replace him
with cheap imitations for THESE GENERATIONS

Now can I get an encore, do you want more
Cookin raw with the Brooklyn boy
So for one last time I need y'all to roar

Now what the hell are you waitin for
After me, there shall be no more
So for one last time, nigga make some noise

What the hell are you waiting for

[sighs] Look what you made me do, look what I made for you
Knew if I paid my dues, how will they pay you
When you first come in the game, they try to play you
Then you drop a couple of hits, look how they wave to you
From Marcy to Madison Square
To the only thing that matters in just a matter of years (yea)
As fate would have it, Jay's status appears
to be at an all-time high, perfect time to say goodbye
When I come back like Jordan, wearin the 4-5
It ain't to play games with you
It's to aim at you, probably maim you
If I owe you I'm blowin you to smithereeens
Cocksucker take one for your team
And I need you to remember one thing (one thing)
I came, I saw, I conquered
From record sales, to sold out concerts
So muh'fucker if you want this encore
I need you to scream, 'til your lungs get sore

I'm tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless lost under the surface
Don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
And every second I waste is more than I can take

I've become so numb I can't feel you there
I've become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

I've become so numb
Can I get an encore, do you want more (more...)
I've become so numb
So for one last time I need y'all to roar
One last time I need y'all to roar

Vaneuza, é sobre isso que falo em nossos encontros...

2006-08-01T13:53:00.000-03:00

Part 2

2006-07-28T12:17:00.000-03:00

What is The Hanso Foundation?

Their claim: they’re a globe-spanning, philanthropic organization dedicated to the betterment of mankind through social/scientific research and innovative technology. Their slogan is “Reaching Out to a Better Tomorrow.”

The truth: The Hanso Foundation will pursue its science at any cost. Their chief executives are corrupt. They have a mysterious agenda that has already destroyed countless lives - through war, medical experimentation, bribery, lies, and murder. And, they’ve been planning something huge. It’s called the SPIDER PROTOCOL. I've been working to expose the truth... and now their crosshairs are set on me.

If you want MORE DETAIL, click HERE…

Who is Persephone?

Persephone is my hacker alias, the name I used while hacking The Hanso Foundation’s website and phone systems. Once The Hanso Foundation shut down its website, I felt it was time to give the people joining in my mission a real name and face to connect with -– Rachel Blake. And, so, I started this blog.

Who is Rachel Blake?

That’s me. People wonder, why am I doing this? Do I have some sort of personal stake in this battle against Thomas Werner Mittelwerk, Alvar Hanso, and The Hanso Foundation? The way I see it, EVERYONE has personal motivations driving them. And, in the same way, everyone has a demon or two biting at their heels. Point is… does it really matter what it takes to get you into the fight as long as you show up?

I’m doing what I have to do. Personal or not, knowing what I do, seeing the MASSIVE THREAT AND DANGER these guys are to us all, it’s not a choice anymore whether to fight or not.

Are Rachel Blake and Persephone really the same person?

Yep. Not that I really think my word will stop you arguing about it.

Who is Alvar Hanso?

He started as an arms dealer back in WWII. Made a fortune selling death and destruction, even contributed to the creation of the atom bomb. At some point his conscience seemed to catch up to him, and he started The Hanso Foundation to wash away his sins. But, as far as the evidence shows, it didn’t take. The Hanso Foundation has strayed far from its mission of bettering humanity and is now a threat to us all.

But, where exactly IS Hanso?

Nobody seems to know. Is he alive? Dead? Truly missing? I uncovered a letter from a Spanish doctor claiming old Alvar has some sort of rare blood disorder… could it be a result of his own experimentation? All I know is that for far too long Hanso hasn’t answered for the actions he and his cronies have set in motion. When I do find him, he’s gonna have a lot of explaining to do.

Who is Dr. Thomas Werner Mittelwerk?

Don’t take that “Dr.” title too seriously -– Mittelwerk, while he may be some sort of evil genius, is a fraud through-and-through. He’s no more a doctor than I am a girl on a European vacation.

For many years Mittelwerk was Alvar Hanso’s lieutenant and chief technologist. But, since Hanso’s disappearance, the good doc has taken over the role of President and now has The Hanso Foundation under his (apparent) control. Mittelwerk likes to present himself as some sort of forward-thinking, eco-friendly guy (check out his TV ads), but the actions of the Foundation tell another story. I followed him, pieced together his plot, and ended up in Sri Lanka. The things I saw there… well, you’re gonna see them too, as soon as you guys find and put together my video.

Who are GidgetGirl/Darla Taft and Hugh McIntyre?

For those of you who have been following my work, you’ll know that GidgetGirl a.k.a. Darla Taft helped track down Mittelwerk. Darla was a corporate liaison for the Global Welfare Consortium, and it seems she was, for some time, feeding information to her lover, the married and self-proclaimed “family man” Hugh McIntyre. Hugh was Communications Director of The Hanso Foundation, the mouthpiece for the entire organization. He used Darla’s warnings to spin The Hanso Foundation’s lies and respond before the GWC could shut their programs down.

There came a point, though, where the lies and crimes became too much for Hugh and Darla. Darla began helping me under the guise of GidgetGirl, but when she tried to point me toward the SPIDER PROTOCOL and Sri Lanka, Mittelwerk had Hugh and Darla murdered.

Who is DJ Dan?

He’s a half-crazed, half-brilliant conspiracy theorist radio host who produces his show “Shutting Down the Man” from an ever-changing list of far-fetched locations. He’s been an opponent of The Hanso Foundation for years and has a legion of ConspiraSpies to aid in the struggle.

I even called in to his show once…

Who is Joop?

Joop is a product of The Life-Extension Project. Check out the ad. He’s a 105-year-old orangutan, the oldest in the world, and he’s supposed to somehow help make The Hanso Foundation palatable to families and children. You ask me? He’s a prisoner and a victim -- just one more example of why The Hanso Foundation needs to be stopped.

Timeline/Walkthrough of my quest to STOP HANSO:

In May/June, I hacked The Hanso Foundation website as Persephone. Once they caught on to the damage I was doing, they shut the site down.

At that point, I started this blog. I snagged tons of audio/video for it, but to keep the Hanso squad from hacking me and taking my evidence down, I had to hide my clips on a bunch of corporate websites. It worked -- but finding some of the clips was pretty tough.

Cause this stuff’s important, I’m giving you newbies the quick ‘n’ dirty:

1. Copenhagen Post 01 - VIDEO

* This one’s actually right here on the site.

2. Copenhagen Post 02 - VIDEO

* Five days in. I followed Mittelwerk around, shot a vid. To find it:
Go to http://www.broadbandstories.com
Click on the window titled “Ultimate Journey” – it’s the one with the motorcycle.

I got into the shipping archive and discovered Mittelwerk was researching historic shipping lanes near the equator. A couple of clever folks commented, later on, that the shipping company was owned by Hanso, and that in the 1800s, Alvar Hanso’s grandfather was the captain of a slave ship called The Black Rock.

3. Copenhagen Post 03

With little to go on from Mittelwerk, I posted the dirt I had on Hugh McIntyre, which amounted to photos of him and his mistress from the Global Welfare Consortium. Not long after, GidgetGirl first made contact, trying to guilt me into removing the photos. No dice.

4. Copenhagen Post 04 - AUDIO

* I hid a mic in a pepper shaker and recorded a conversation between Mittelwerk and a crony of his. To find it:
Go to http://au.docs.yahoo.com/mittelwerk/
username: rblake, password: 105years
Click on the phrase “peeping on tom”

Oh, didn’t I mention that conversation was in Korean? We got a bunch of translations, some good and some that didn’t make sense in any language. The consensus was that they were talking about a “Mr. Paik” having built a special ship for Mittelwerk…

5. Copenhagen Post 05 – VIDEO

* I decided to step it up. To find the video:
Go to http://www.sublymonal.com
Type “truth safe reckon copenhagen alvar sumo” in the box
Type “better tomorrow” in the next box
Click the folder labeled “48”
Click the file “untitled-1.html”

I posted one of the several island maps Mittelwerk was carrying on him. As blurry as it was, my friends were still able to locate it in Lake Superior… We would soon find out that Mittelwerk was scouting these islands as possible sites for something called the SPIDER PROTOCOL.

GidgetGirl got in touch again. She and I made a deal: if she gave me good intel, I would take those photos of Hugh McIntyre down.

6. Copenhagen Post 06 - VIDEO

* I was “visited” by the man that appeared to be Mittelwerk’s attendant (see vid for Copenhagen Post 05). To find the video:
Go to http://www.jeep.com/en/compass/
Click “Interior”
Click “In Back”
Click the dot labeled “Removable Flashlight”
Click “View Demo”

That call he received was from Mittelwerk - I saw it on the cell phone.

7. Copenhagen Post 07

GidgetGirl contacted me. Said Mittelwerk went to Iceland to deal with a fire at The Vik Institute, a part of the Hanso Mental Health Appeal.

She also sent an article describing the fire. Strangely, a world-renowned mathematician, Vigi Benoffski, was killed in the blaze.

8. Iceland Post 01 - VIDEO

* I talked to the director of The Vik Institute, Armand Zander, about the fire. To find the video:
Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMS-S0wms6c

The equation Zander said those autistic savants were “running” sounded an awful lot like the Valenzetti Equation. I emailed Zander for more information…

9. Iceland Post 02

Zander sent me an email with the hieroglyphs he talked about. Taken together, the consensus seemed to be that they meant “(to cause) to die.” When I tried to contact Zander for more info, I got an error email and no answer on his phone.

10. Iceland Post 03 - AUDIO

* Armand Zander disappeared, and Mittelwerk slipped away once again. The question? Where? Listening to a DJ Dan podcast gave me an idea… To find the DJ Dan PODCAST:
Go to http://www.retrieversoftruth.com/users/BroadBandBeatnik/htdocs/audio/MathematicalForecasting.mp3

Yeah, I admitted to being Persephone.

Back to that idea… the mathematical forecaster talking to DJ Dan said Enzo Valenzetti “disappeared.” I wondered if Mittelwerk hadn’t gone looking for Valenzetti, at which point GidgetGirl posted that he was in the Italian Riviera, the last place Valenzetti had been seen alive!

11. Italy Post 01 - VIDEO

* I followed Mittelwerk to the Riviera. To find the video:
Go to http://www.richerdeeperbroader.com/welcome/your/next/video/needs/your/experiences/check/tomorrow/
username: rblake, password: allveggie

Hoping to find Valenzetti before Mittelwerk, I asked my friends for help… And I had a slight “falling out” with GidgetGirl.

12. Italy Post 02 – AUDIO

* With all the questions surrounding the Valenzetti Equation’s veracity, this conversation I recorded shed some light. To find it:
Go to http://au.docs.yahoo.com/rachels-cast/
Username: rblake, password: organharvest
Click on 'execs on the beach'…

The conversation proved to us that those savants WERE running the Valenzetti Equation, but doubt lingered over whether it was the correct version… Did this explain why Mittelwerk was in the Riviera?

13. Italy Post 03 - AUDIO

* Thinking I was following Mittelwerk to Valenzetti, I was surprised when he checked into a local hospital for some treatments. I bribed a nurse to find out what he had done to himself. To find the audio clip:
Go to http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/L/lost/assets/blake.mp3

All those injections and an exchange transfusion… all of it pointed to Mittelwerk going to this mysterious island for the SPIDER PROTOCOL…

14. Italy Post 04

Mittelwerk got away again, this time on the deck of his “special” ship – named The Helgus Antonius. According to the comments, the best guesses re: the name’s meaning were either “The Holy Flower” or “St. Anthony…” the Patron Saint of Lost Things. We all wondered, where could this ship be GOING??

15. Italy Post 05

Tried to bribe the harbormaster to give me some info on the Helgus Antonius, but according to him, it never arrived and it never left.

16. Italy Post 06 - AUDIO

* Got a phone call from GidgetGirl. To find the audio clip:
Go to http://stophanso.rachelblake.com/audio/audio.html

I had to go meet GidgetGirl in Paris, even if it might be a trap.

17. Paris Post 01 – VIDEO

* To find the video:
Go to http://www.sublymonal.com
Type “listen” in the box
Click on the “Talib” window
As the song is playing, click on Talib’s flashing eyeball
Type “rblake” in the top box, “milkcartonman” in the bottom box

18. Tuesday, July 18, 2006

* To find the video:
Go to http://www.jeep.com/en/compass/
Click on “Safety/Security”
Click on “Crush Zones” (on the grill)
Click on “View Demo”

19. Thursday, July 20, 2006

* To find the video:
Go to http://monster.typepad.com/monsterblog/2006/07/what_was_your_w.html
Click on the link http://adminsupport.monster.com/articles/bad-boss-mirror/
At the bottom of the page, click on the link 'click here'
Click on the video entitled “Can She Trust Him?”

By the way, all that “He wants me to help you” business? Ignore it. I have no idea what that guy was talking about.

20. Friday, July 21, 2006

* To find the video:
Go to www.richerdeeperbroader.com
Click on “Fuel Passions” under the “Quick Links” menu
Click the window of the building directly below the words “broadbandstories.com” (right under the “.”)
Username: rblake, password: hoo-gonchoi
Click “clip” in the window that opens

That package of items led me to Sri Lanka…

And, now, you are ready to FIND and ASSEMBLE the video I shot in Sri Lanka. Good luck. Share with your friends. Keep fighting.

- Rachel

MORE DETAIL on The Hanso Foundation:

The Hanso Foundation is currently working on 6 major projects, each with its own dark underbelly:

The Mathematical Forecasting Initiative

Their claim: Have you seen their AD? They’d have you believe that “By understanding and modeling the mathematic probability of seismic human events, The Hanso Foundation can illuminate the path ahead and provide a true road map to the betterment of humanity.”

The truth: Their population growth models have been used to foster tribal wars in Africa. They have an enclave of mathematicians working in secret on a doomsday formula called the Valenzetti Equation.

Worldwide Wellness and Prevention Development Program

Their claim: “The Worldwide Wellness and Prevention Development Program… [is] a far-reaching educational initiative designed to teach the basics of sanitation, nutrition and disease prevention to the world.”

The truth: Hanso-funded hospitals in the developing world have been participating in unauthorized experimentation and live organ-harvesting programs. Patient rights have been violated, families destroyed, and the press accounts have been suppressed.

Mental Health Appeal

Their claim: The Foundation’s cutting-edge research and facilities are aimed at fully eradicating mental illness by the end of this century. Their flagship mental health facility, The Vik Institute (in Vik, Iceland), offers gene therapies, radical pharmaceutical treatments and the latest in both surgery and psychotherapy.

The truth: The Vik Institute’s own director, Armand Zander, is now missing, presumably murdered, after speaking to me regarding a team of mathematicians working in secret within The Vik Institute. His assertion? That Dr. Thomas Werner Mittelwerk, President of The Hanso Foundation, has used institutionalized autistic savants as human computers to run the mysterious Valenzetti Equation. But to what end?

Electromagnetic Research Initiative

Their claim: “Through a myriad of experiments worldwide, the Electromagnetic Research Initiative brings us a step closer to understanding this crucial force -– and in doing so, our place in the Universe.”

The truth: The Hanso Foundation has erected an electromagnetic antenna off the coast of East Asia for some unknown purpose. It has disrupted telecommunications, knocked out satellites and deformed ocean life, but Hanso Foundation bribes to high-placed foreign officials have kept the project up and running.

The Institute for Genomic Advancement

Their claim: “In what may be the most forward-reaching of The Hanso Foundation’s active projects, the Institute seeks nothing less than the eradication of disease and birth defects through a deeper understanding of the function and mechanisms of the human genome.”

The truth: The Hanso Foundation is tampering with the genetic structures of an unknown number of animal and microbial species. Photo evidence of a beached shark with a Hanso-specific tag, as well as a bacterial outbreak in Tanzania, indicates they have already released some of these genetically modified species into the wild.

The Life-Extension Project

Their claim: “The grand summation of all of the Foundation’s work – from prevention and wellness, to the development of new gene therapies and the development of young minds -– is nothing less than the extension of life itself.”

The truth: Their life-extension programs have spawned deadly disease outbreaks in Africa, the news of which has been suppressed with bribes and internal takeovers within the Global Welfare Consortium, the world’s leading medical watchdog organization.

The DHARMA Initiative

There is also a seventh project… called the DHARMA Initiative. Little is known about this program, but everything I’ve discovered has led me to the conclusion that the scientists of the DHARMA Initiative disappeared over 30 years ago.

What happened to them???

LOST Recap - Spoilers

2006-07-28T12:16:00.000-03:00

Isso é tão minha gata que não é nem engraçado...

2006-07-21T13:39:00.000-03:00

Algumas linhas importantes sobre a exist~encia do "eu"

2006-07-18T09:53:00.000-03:00

Even the intellectual understanding of the inexistence of our 'selves' is a rare and bitter attainment which few even attempt. And that is only the elimination round which qualifies us for access to Reality... Intellectual understanding should be not indispensable to a 'simple' mind, but, with our conditioning, it would seem to be an almost inevitable preliminary. - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei

this is your bay, this is your bay...

2006-07-17T14:52:00.000-03:00

Teste

2006-07-11T15:08:00.000-03:00

What type of Fae are you?

bandagens feitas de .... camarão?!? =)

2006-07-10T16:28:00.000-03:00

A high-tech bandage made of shrimp
An exotic military wound dressing invades the civilian market.
FORTUNE Small Business Magazine
Philip Siekman
July 10 2006: 9:31 AM EDT

PORTLAND, ORE. (FORTUNE Small Business) -- More than half of all military combat deaths result from blood loss. So when Bill Wiesmann and Kenton Gregory developed a shrimp-derived trauma dressing with unique blood-stanching properties, the U.S. military was their first and most obvious customer. The Army had already invested $300,000 in grant funding to help Gregory develop a prototype bandage. The Afghanistan campaign was underway. Iraq lay ahead. The Army wanted its bandages. Now.

Gregory, 51, is a research MD who heads the Oregon Laser Center at Provident St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Ore. Wiesmann, 60, knew his way through the Pentagon procurement maze, having recently retired from an Army job as head of research on combat-casualty care. The partners hoped to license their bandage to an established health-care company but found no takers. Instead they launched HemCon (short for "hemorrhage control") in the Portland suburb of Tigard. Both men pledged their homes to raise startup capital. The gamble paid off: By the end of 2005 the Army had purchased 100,000 HemCon bandages for more than $90 each. This year the Army is ordering another 180,000 and issuing one to every U.S. soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan and five to every medic.
HemCon's bandages are synthesized from North Atlantic shrimp. The shrimp shells contain chitosan, an organic substance that sticks to the skin around a wound and promotes blood clotting.

HemCon's revenues will total about $20 million this year, up from next to nothing in 2003. Now HemCon is trying to turn its military success into a broad-based civilian business. Possible civilian uses for the dressing range from paramedics' kits to more specialized applications, such as stopping bleeding after a hemodialysis (blood cleansing) session for victims of kidney ailments.

The HemCon bandage contains chitosan (pronounced KY-ta-san), an organic substance found in crustacean shells. Scientists have long known that chitosan stops bleeding, but Wiesmann and Gregory were the first to develop a chitosan bandage. HemCon's process starts with chitosan processed in Iceland from shrimp shells. After mixing it with acetic acid and turning it into a gel, the material is cast into tiles, each four inches square and a bit more than half an inch thick. The squares are then freeze-dried in a vacuum chamber, compressed to about half their original thickness, and backed with a thin sheet of brown plastic. Now looking like a square beer coaster-and smelling slightly of vinegar-each bandage is sealed in foil and sterilized by gamma radiation.

When placed on a wound, the chitosan bandage sticks to surrounding tissue and creates a seal that blocks the flow of blood. The bandage also promotes clotting because blood cells and platelets carry a negative electrical charge and are attracted to chitosan, which bears a positive charge. Chitosan even has antibacterial properties, so it helps ward off infection until a patient reaches a medical facility, where the dressing can be peeled off easily. The bandage has stopped severe bleeding from combat wounds more than nine times out of ten, according to an Army study. Unlike a coagulant powder used by the Marine Corps, which might burn healthy tissue, the HemCon bandage causes no tissue damage.

To penetrate civilian markets, HemCon needs to cut costs. HemCon CEO John Morgan, 46, says that higher volumes and improved factory efficiency will soon drive the Army's price per bandage below $80. But civilian sales require extra marketing and inventory expenses, plus profits for distributors and dealers. Morgan estimates that the retail price for a civilian version of the four-by four-inch dressing would be as high as $125.That's a staggering price for health-care professionals used to paying pennies for a gauze bandage.

But rescue workers believe that HemCon's product saves money as well as lives. Last June, Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue, which serves a population of 400,000 in three counties near Portland, Ore., issued bandages donated by HemCon to its 30 paramedic units. Rescue workers found the bandages effective in treating elderly patients who sustained head lacerations in falls, according to EMS chief Mark Stevens. The reason? Many seniors take anticoagulant drugs. They can bleed so profusely from a scalp wound that they require an expensive transfusion. HemCon's dressing mitigates that risk, so Stevens plans to replenish the donated bandages. To keep costs down, he'll probably choose smaller dressings priced around $50 for a two- by four-inch version and $25 for a two by two.

Pending FDA approval, HemCon will soon launch a second civilian product, a small chitosan dressing that dentists can stuff into the bleeding socket after a tooth extraction. In clinical trials the bandage stopped bleeding in two minutes or less, vs. ten to 15 minutes for patients who bit down on a wad of gauze. At less than $10, HemCon's dental bandage is a bargain, says Hal Oien, a dentist in Beaverton, Ore., who helped run the trial. Time is money in the oral-surgery business. So dentists often apply a coagulant gel that doesn't work as well as the HemCon dressing and costs about as much.

"HemCon's patch closes the wound so well that the usual callback visit might not be needed," Oien adds. As with so many products, the cheapest bandage isn't always the most cost effective.

Pump up the irons!

2006-07-10T15:19:00.000-03:00

Extraído do omelete (link)

O Iron Maiden revelou nesta terça-feira pela manhã, através de seu site oficial, a capa do seu 14° álbum de estúdio, A matter of life and death. A arte abaixo estampa a temática de boa parte do novo trabalho, a guerra. A faixa “Brighter than a thousand suns”, por exemplo, fala sobre a bomba atômica e a capacidade dos homens para a destruição.

Resenhas preliminares do álbum já podem ser encontradas na Internet e a maioria o avalia de maneira positiva. Ao contrário de muitas expectativas, A matter of life and death tem sido comentado não como uma volta do Iron Maiden ao heavy metal que praticava há vinte anos mas sim como uma evolução, uma espécie de seqüência do que a banda realizou em Dance of death. A matter of life and death promete ser um álbum mais progressivo e sinfônico, mas sem perder os elementos característicos que consagraram o Iron Maiden.

Após o lançamento do álbum, o Maiden segue para o Japão para a turnê de divulgação, passando em seguida pela Europa, cujos ingressos para todas as datas da turnê já estão praticamente esgotados. Ainda não se sabe quando a banda desembarcará na América Latina.

Spider man teaser trailer

2006-06-28T09:09:00.000-03:00

Saiu.

O que eu tenho a dizer é... [ka-ham]

EU SABIA! EU SABIA! VENOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!! =)

...espero que não estraguem meu vilao predileto de homem aranha. E diga-se de passagem que os efeitos para o homem areia lembram um pouco "A Múmia", mas estão bonitos.

Supáido man tureeee

sanity applet

2006-06-26T12:04:00.000-03:00

Pela manhã, antes da sagrada xícara de café, esse é o titulo que aparece no meu download de aplicações para um data-room. Curioso, decido checar o que é e descubro que é...

Sanity is a collection of web based software design tools. The collection, currently consists of a data modeling tool (using the entity relation diagraming notation) and a use case modeling tool.

Bonequinhos, sanidade e café.

On Immortality

2006-06-22T11:29:00.000-03:00

If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.

- Dostoevsky

Três - Roubado descaradamente da Doninha

2006-06-02T18:14:00.000-03:00

3 coisas que eu odeio fazer ou que me dão medo
* reunião de negócios
* ter que dar esporro
* gente burra

3 coisas que eu gosto
* namorar
* Birita
* ler

3 coisas importantes na minha casa
* computador
* Playstation
* cama (em breve caminha nova)

3 fatos sobre a minha pessoa
* Detesto gente burra
* Sobrevivo
* Não faço questão de ser bom

3 coisas que planejo fazer antes de morrer
* uma ou umas tatuagem(ns)
* ter um(a/s) filho(a/s)
* viajar muito mais

3 coisas que consigo/posso fazer
* Sarcasmo
* Ironia
* o que quiser =)

3 coisas que não consigo fazer ou não poderia fazer
* política
* Ser Padre
* ser conivente com ditadorezinhos

3 coisas que eu mais digo
* "Eu nao sou designer, p*rra!"
* yes sir / no sir
* AAAAAH!

3 locais onde viveu
* Laranjeiras
* Juiz de Fora
* Tijuca

3 empregos que teve na vida
* piloto
* analista de suporte
* advogado

3 filmes que poderia rever
* Sin city
* Moulin Rouge
* Os suspeitos

3 séries de TV que gosta de ver
* Lost
* Alias
* 4400

3 locais favoritos que visitou de férias
* Ilha Grande
* Búzios
* Bienvenidos a miamiiii =P

3 sites que visita diariamente
* Gmail
* Zilhoes de jornais via RSS
* Google

3 comidas favoritas
* Sashimi de salmão (peixinho!)
* Churrasco
* a Minha comida, pq cozinho bagaray =D

Dodói....

2006-05-29T15:01:00.000-03:00

2006-05-28T23:11:00.000-03:00

You Are Strength

You represent both fiery energy and steadfast will.
You are innocent and naive - yet unafraid and undaunted.
Perhaps you don't have the most powerful physical strength...
But your mental powers make up for any amount of muscle.

Your fortune:

Lately, you have been a pillar of ethics and moral strength.
And while things may be difficult, your faith in yourself will come through.
You may need to conquer the animalistic nature of yourself or others, with gentle force.
Although this may seem like the darkest hour for you, victory is near.

What Tarot Card Are You?

2006-05-27T21:35:00.000-03:00

São Francisco - A PC World selecionou os piores produtos de todos os tempos de tecnologia. Confira a lista completa.

1. America Online (1989-2006)

Desde que a América Online nasceu da barriga de uma BBS chamada Quantum "PC-Link", em 1989, seus usuários enfrentaram softwares terríveis, números de dial-up inacessíveis, anúncios agressivos, cobrança questionável, serviço de suporte sofrível e spam para uma vida inteira.A mais cara entre os concorrentes, a empresa teve sucesso no início ao perseguir os novatos com técnicas agressivas - nos anos 90 não se podia abrir uma revista (incluindo a PC World) ou caixa de correio sem que um CD da AOL caísse dela. Mas uma vez que a AOL o tinha em suas mãos, o cliente encontrava problemas para se livrar dela. A companhia sofreu diversos processos de clientes que cancelaram o serviço e continuaram a ser cobrados, e pagou US$ 1,25 milhão de dólares em indenização somente a usuários de Nova York.Quando os clientes começaram a explorar a web de fato, se deram conta da má qualidade dos serviços, e AOL foi sendo gradativamente abandonada. Hoje, a empresa se concentra em se reinventar como provedora de conteúdo e não de acesso. Sua aventura na América Latina terminou em falência e na venda da maior parte das operações, incluindo a do Brasil, que fechou definitivamente as portas no início do ano.

É, a America online era uma piada a parte. Quem não lembra das propagandas no estilo " se você é um imbecil completo como a Vera Loyola, você pode usar? Aqueles cds grátis eram um saco para desinstalar, lembro de ter ganhando algum troco com isso. =) E alguns porta copos...

2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)

Uma frustrante incapacidade de tocar arquivos de mídia - em parte por conta da constante mudança de formatos - foi apenas parte dos problemas do RealPlayer. O tocador também tinha o irritante hábito de ficar à vontade no seu PC, se autodefinindo como software preferencial, tomando liberdades com o Windows Registry, abrindo janelas com mensagens chatas que eram mais como anúncios, e por aí vai...A isso se soma a insistente mania da Real de monitorar os hábitos musicais de seus usuários, com os softwares RealJukeBox, RealPlayer G2 e RealDownload, que lhe rendeu uma avalanche de publicidade negativa. Apesar disso, a empresa ainda merece crédito por ser a primeira a oferecer um tocador de mídia gratuito e por enfrentar a Microsoft. Apreciamos o fato de haver um concorrente ao Windows Media Player, só queríamos que ele fosse melhor.

O sprodutos da Real faziam hmmm munch munch na memória no início. E tem muita gente que não percebe que os primeiros meses de um produto são críticos - a partir do momento que o boca - a - boca se instalou, consertar uma imagem fica beeeem mais caro e difícil.

3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)

Em 1995, uma RAM custava de 30 a 50 dólares e as aplicações do Windows 95 demandavam cada vez mais do PC. A idéia de dobrar a memória instalando um software de 30 dólares parecia tentadora. Os 700 mil usuários que compraram o SoftRAM certamente achavam isso. Infelizmente, não foi isso que eles receberam.Na verdade, a única coisa que o SoftRAM fazia era expandir o tamanho do cache do disco rígido - algo que qualquer um com experiência mínima fria sem ajuda nenhuma de software em um minuto. Ainda assim, o ganho em performance era questionável. A Comissão de Comércio dos Estados Unidos considerou o produto falso e enganador e a empresa foi obrigada a tirá-lo das prateleiras e pagar indenizações. Em 1999 a empresa faliu e ninguém sentiu sua falta.

4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)

Essa é provavelmente a pior versão do Windows já lançada - ou pelo menos desde os temíveis dias de Windows 2.0. O Windows Millennium Edition (ME) - também apelidado de Mistaken Edition (em português, edição equivocada) - era a continuação do Windows 98 para usuários domésticos. Logo após sua aparição no final de 2000, os usuários reportaram problemas para instalá-lo, fazê-lo funcionar com outros hardwares e softwares e até para fazê-lo parar. Fora isso, o ME funcionava muito bem. Seu crédito é ter introduzido funções populares como a recuperação de arquivos - exceto pelo fato de que ele recuperava inclusive arquivos indesejados, como vírus deletados. Esqueça a virada do ano 2000, este é o verdadeiro bug do milênio.

Sem comentários sobre essa... só quem usou sabe a merda sem tamanho que é

5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)

Quando você coloca um CD de música no seu computador, a última coisa que você espera é que ele se transforme em um brinquedo de hacker. Isso é exatamente o que a Sony BMG Music Entertainment fez com seus CDs em 2005. O sistema de proteção à cópia instalava um rootkit, tornando-o invisível até mesmo a antispywares ou antivírus. Com mais de 500 mil máquinas afetadas, a Sony lançou uma correção ainda mais problemática, recolheu os CDs do mercado, e enfrentou uma enxurrada de processos. Tornar sua máquina vulnerável a ataques - essa não é a função da Microsoft?

LOL.

6. CD-ROM O Rei Leão, da Disney (1994)

Pesadelo do Natal de diversas criancinhas, o CD-ROM do Rei Leão confiava no novo mecanismo gráfico da Microsoft, o WinG, e drivers de vídeo que tinham que ser manualmente configurados. O problema é que a Compaq lançou um Presario com drivers de vídeo que não tinham sido testados. Resultado: quando as crianças foram brincar com seu presente na manhã de Natal tudo que ganharam foi uma tela azul.

A mãe do bambi...ela....ela....deu GPF?

7. Microsoft Bob (1995)

Nenhuma lista dos piores estaria completa com o primo idiota do Windows, o Bob. Desenvolvido como uma interface social para o Windows 3.1, o Bob era uma sala de estar com diversos objetos clicáveis e uma série de personagens animados, como o Gato Chaos e o Rato Scuzz que o conduziam por uma pequena suíte de aplicativos. Felizmente, o Bob foi enterrado com a chegada do Windows 95, embora alguns personagens - como o clipe animado de papel - tenham sobrevivido para perturbar os usuários.

Bob é nome de planeta.

8. Internet Explorer 6 (2001)

Cheio de recursos, fácil de usar, e um convite mortal a hackers e outros delinqüentes digitais, o Internet Explorer 6.x é provavelmente o software menos seguro do planeta. O software era tão perigoso que em 2004 o Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) tomou a drástica medida de aconselhar os usuários a usarem qualquer navegador menos o IE.

9. Pressplay e MusicNet 2002

Duas das primeiras iniciativas da indústria musical para oferecer conteúdo online mostraram que as gravadoras não entendiam do negócio. O PressPlay cobrava 15 dólares por mês pelo direito de ouvir 500 músicas de baixa qualidade, baixar quarenta faixas e gravar um CD com 10 músicas. A idéia nem parecia tão ruim, até se descobrir que nem todas as faixas podiam ser baixadas e só era possível gravar duas músicas de cada artista.O MusicNet custava 10 dólares por mês para ter acesso a 100 músicas para streaming e 100 downloads, mas cada download expirava em 30 dias. Muitos downloads ilegais depois, uma empresa de fora - a Apple, com seu iTunes - mostrou a gravadoras o jeito certo de vender música digital.

10. Ashton-Tate dBASE IV (1988)

Nos primeiros dias do PC, dBASE era sinônimo de banco de dados. Ao final dos anos 80, o produto da Ashton-Tate tinha 70% do mercado. Tudo mudou com o dBASE IV. Terrivelmente lento e com mais buracos que uma peneira, o produto de 795 dólares foi um desastre.

11. Priceline venda de gasolina e comestíveis (2000)

A Priceline desenvolveu um modelo de negócios no qual você dizia o quanto você queria pagar. Ele funcionou bem com passagens aéreas, aluguel de carros e hotel, mas não com venda de gasolina e produtos comestíveis.

12. PointCast Network (1996)

Vamos voltar a meados dos anos 90, quando uma tecnologia chamada push iria revolucionar a internet. Em vez de surfar na web em busca de notícias e informação, as aplicações push, como a PointCast Network, levariam as informações personalizadas até o seu desktop.Mas logo a tecnologia push se mostrou um desastre, à medida que consumia muita banda, em uma época que as conexões ainda eram discadas e lentas. Além disso, serviços e aplicações novas, como a RSS, ganharam espaço.

13. IBM PCjr. (1984)

A tentativa da IBM de desenvolver um computador barato para as casas e escolas transformou-se em uma idéia órfã desde o seu início. A razão: o grande sucesso de um parente seu, o IBM PC. Dois anos depois, saiu de cena para nunca mais voltar.

Laptopo de 100 dolares, alguem? =)

14. A celebração do 10º aniversário da Gateway 2000 (1995)

Depois de uma década como um dos principais fabricantes de computadores do mundo, os donos da Gateway quiseram celebrar com uma configuração especial de seus PCs.Mas o que se viu foi um computador que não cumpria suas promessas. A placa de vídeo era uma versão inferior do que as pessoas pensavam que estavam comprando, os alto-falantes sorround, na verdade, também não tinha esse recurso e o CD-ROM de 6x funcionava em 4x ou mais lento.

15. Iomega Zip Drive (1998)

Clique-clique-clique. Esse era o som dos dados morrendo em milhares de drives Iomega Zip. Apesar de a empresa vender mais de 10 milhões de unidades dos drives Zip e Jaz que funcionavam perfeitamente, milhares deles morriam misteriosamente.A Iomega ignorou o problema, o que causou a fúria dos usuários e uma ação na Justiça em 1998, que terminou com um acordo três anos depois. Atualmente, os drives Zip e Jaz foram ultrapassados por mídias como o CD e DVD, mais baratos, mais rápidos e com mais capacidade para gravação de dados.

Eu adorava os zipdisks. Até ser uma vítima do click of death

16. Comet Systems Comet Cursor (1997)

Agradeça o Comet Cursor pela introdução dos spywares. Ele tinha uma única proposta: transformar o cursor de seu mouse em uma imagem engraçadinha, como o Bart Simpson, Dilbert ou outros milhares de ícones. Mas o Comet tinha outros hábitos não tão engraçadinhos assim.Ele secretamente instalava-se no Internet Explorer quando você visitava certos tipos de sites ou instalava outros tipos de software, como o RealPlayer 7. Algumas versões seqüestrava o assistente de busca do IE ou travava o browser.Apesar de a Comet insistir que o programa não era um spyware, milhares de usuários não concordavam. O Comet System foi comprado por uma companhia de publicidade pay-per-click chamada FindWhat em 2004.

17. O Macintosh portátil" (1989)

Em 1989, a Apple ofereceu um Macintosh portátil de 10 centímetros de espessura com peso de 7,2 quilos. A bateria contribuía para o peso leve do notebook da Apple. Precisa dizer mais?

18. IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000)

Rápido, grande e pouco confiável. Este disco rígido de 75 GB foi logo batizado de Deathstar (Estrela morta) pelo seu hábito de falhar e levar consigo todos os seus dados.Depois de um ano de seu lançamento, a IBM enfrentou uma ação na Justiça, contra usuários que alegavam que perderam dados em razão do Deskstar. Em 2002, vendeu a sua divisão de discos rígidos para a Hitachi.

19. OQO Model 1 (2004)

O OQO Model 1 chama-se a si mesmo como o menor computador XP do mundo. E isso era uma grande parte do problema. Você precisava de um bom par de óculos para ler os ícones e textos em sua tela de 5 por 3 polegadas. O teclado era muito pequeno para acomodar, pelo menos, dois dedos adultos.

20. DigitalConvergence CueCat (2000)

Ele apareceu no final da bolha de internet. O CueCat tinha função de ajudar os leitores de revistas e jornais a achar os web sites de anunciantes (provavelmente porque aparentemente devia ser muito difícil digitar www.pepsi.com no seu browser).A companhia por trás do equipamento, a DigitalConvergence, enviou cartas para milhares de assinantes de revistas e jornais. Os leitores tinham de conectar o equipamento a um computador, instalar alguns softwares, escanear o código de barras dentro dos anúncios e, dessa forma, irem para o web sites dos anunciantes. Outro benefício: a companhia usava o equipamento para juntar informações pessoais sobre seus usuários.

21. Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004)

Algumas coisas não foram feitas para se usar caminhando ou dirigindo e uma delas é assistir DVDs. Infelizmente, a mensagem não foi compreendida pela Eyetop.net, fabricante do Eyetop Wearable DVD Player.O sistema compreendia um DVD player portátil acoplado a um par de óculos escuros com uma minúscula tela LCD de 320 x 240 pixels direcionada ao olho direito. A tela deveria simular um monitor de 14 polegadas, mas infelizmente, a única sensação que o Eyetop reproduzia era um certo enjôo.

22. Apple Pippin @World (1996)

Antes do Xbox, do PlayStation e do DreamCast, havia o Pippin, da Apple. O quê? É isso mesmo - a Apple tinha um console de games compatível com acesso à internet que era conectado à televisão. No entanto, o produto rodava em um processador PowerPC fraco e portava um modem de apenas 14,4 Kbps, o que o tornava estupendamente lento, tanto online como offline.Para completar, o Pippin era baseado no sistema operacional Mac OS, e quase nenhum game estava disponível para esta plataforma. O console ainda custava 600 dólares - quase o dobro do preço dos concorrentes, mais poderosos.

23. PCs gratuitos (1999)

No final dos anos 90, empresas competiam para atrair a atenção dos consumidores aos PCs gratuitos. Tudo o que você precisava fazer era uma assinatura e então um microcomputador eventualmente apareceria na porta da sua casa. Entretanto, sempre havia uma pegadinha: você tinha de assinar um contrato de longo prazo com um provedor de acesso à internet, ou então tolerar uma enxurrada de anúncios online invadindo sua tela, ou ainda liberar suas informações pessoais à indústria.A Free-PC.com deve ter sido a mais apavorante de todas. Primeiro, você preenchia um amplo cadastro incluindo dados como renda, bens, raça, estado civil e muito mais. Depois você tinha de passar pelo menos dez horas por semana no computador e pelo menos uma hora navegando na internet pelo provedor do Free-PC.Em troca, você ganhava um PC básico Compaq Presario, com quase um terço da tela coberto por anúncios. Além disso, enquanto usava seu PC, a Free-PC o observava gravando todos os lugares por onde você surfava na rede, os softwares utilizados e sabe-se lá mais o que.Não podemos dizer se a idéia levaria a algum tipo de Big Brother, porque um ano após o lançamento, a Free-PC.com se fundiu à eMachines. Neste período, outros fornecedores concluíram que o modelo do computador "grátis" não se pagava.

24. DigiScents iSmell (2001)

Em 2001, a DigiScents lançou o iSmell, um utensílio que plugado na porta USB de seu PC, emitia aromas adequados a determinados sites de produtos, como perfumes no Chanel.com, ou salgadinhos de queijo no Frito-Lay.com. Mas os internautas céticos torceram o nariz para a idéia, tornando o iSmell um belo exemplo de 'vaporware'.

25. Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004)

Como o primeiro notebook 3D "auto-estéreo", o RD3D da Sharp deveria mostrar imagens tridimensionais sem a necessidade de óculos apropriados. No entanto, o efeito real estava mais para "auto-enxaqueca".Quando você apertava o botão para ativar o modo 3D, a performance do notebook diminuía e o efeito era notado somente por um ângulo bem específico. Se o usuário movesse a cabeça, o visual desaparecia. Talvez os engraçados óculos 3D não fossem tão ruins assim.

Report.

2006-05-26T15:38:00.000-03:00

Sem tempo de escrever por aqui. Adoraria poder ter escrito algumas coisas sobre as boçalidades do Lula "frouxo" Paz-e-Amor em relação as loucuras do Evo. Os dedos coçam querendo escrever algo sobre nossa FARC-em-projeto, o PCC. Adoraria poder dizer como fiquei feliz com a carteira da OAB na mão. Ou descrever o Apê novo em que estou morando, com minha namorada. Mas isso vai ter que esperar um pouco: Como disse, Tempo, no hay.

Então, deixo um dos meus haikai prediletos.

No one travels
Along this way but I,
This autumn evening.

Basho, Matsuo. (1644-1694).

Plagiando a Nica....

2006-05-03T14:39:00.000-03:00

O que ando ouvindo...

Create your own Music List @ HotFreeLayouts!

Bene Gesserit

2006-04-22T06:29:00.000-03:00

Apesar de nÃ£o ser um fanÃ¡tico pelo autor Frank Herbert e sua obra Duna, posso dizer que foi uma das sÃ©ries de ficÃ§Ã£o mais divertidas que jÃ¡ li. Especialmente pelas Bene Gesserit (do latim "as bem comportadas" - *rs*) e seus ditos, frequentemente repletos de uma sabedoria cÃ?nica que me agrada um bocado. Como tropecei numa compilaÃ§Ã£o de citaÃ§Ãµes, achei a oportunidade boa demais para nÃ£o aproveitar.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness . . .
From the Instruction Manual: Missionaria Protectiva
Children of Dune

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
Politics as Repeat Phenomenon
Bene Gesserit Training Manual
Children of Dune

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true of flase, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.
The Open-Ended Proof from The Panoplia Prophetica
Children of Dune

Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.
Bene Gesserit Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune

Rules build up fortifications behind which small minds create satrapies. A perilous state of affairs in the best of times, disastrous during crises.
Bene Gesserit Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune

We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.
Bene Gesserit Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
Darwi Odrade
Chapterhouse: Dune

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
Missionara Protectiva,
Text QIV (decto)
Chapterhouse: Dune

Religion (emulation of adults by the child) encysts past mythologies: guesses, hidden assumptions of trust in the universe, pronouncements made in search of personal power, all mingled with shreds of enlightenment. And always an unspoken commandment: Thou shalt not question! We break that commandment daily in the harnessing of human imagination to our deepest creativity.
Bene Gesserit Credo
Chapterhouse: Dune

Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job security.
Bene Gesserit Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune

We do not teach history; we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of consequences -- the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever touched.
Bene Gesserit Panoplia Propheticus
Chapterhouse: Dune

They say Mother Superior can disregard nothing -- a meaningless aphorism until you grasp its other significance: I am the servant of all my Sisters. They watch their servant with critical eyes. I cannot spend too much time on generalities nor on trivia. Mother Superior must display insightful action else a sense of disquiet penetrates to the farthest corners of our order.
Darwi Odrade Chapterhouse: Dune

All states are abstractions.
Octun Politicus
Bene Gesserit Archives
Chapterhouse: Dune

Some never participate. Life happens to them. They get by on little more than dumb persistence and resist with anger or violence. all things that might life them out of resentment-filled illusions of security.
Alma Mavis Taraza
Chapterhouse: Dune

Do not depend only on theory if your life is at stake.
Bene Gesserit Commentary
Chapterhouse: Dune
Major flaws in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen.
Darwi Odrade
Chapterhouse: Dune

A major concept guides the Missionaria Protectiva: Purposeful instruction of the masses. This is firmly seated in our belief that the aim of argument should be to change the nature of truth. In such matters, we prefer the use of power rather than force.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune

The best art imitates life in a compelling way. If it imitates a dream, it must be a dream of life. Otherwise, there is no place where we can connect. Our plugs don't fit.
Darwi Odrade
Chapterhouse: Dune

Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune

Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.
Darwi Odrade
Chapterhouse: Dune

No sweeteners will cloak some forms of bitterness. If it tastes bitter, spit it out. That's what our earliest ancestors did.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune

Enter no conflict against fanatics unless you can defuse them. Oppose a religion with another religion only if your proofs (miracles) are irrefutable or if you can mesh in a way that the fanatics accept you as god-inspired. This has long been the barrier to science assuming a mantle of divine revelation. Science is so obviously man-made. Fanatics know where you stand, but more important, must recognize who whispers in your ear.
Missionaria Protectiva
Primary Teaching
Chapterhouse: Dune

We walk a delicate line, perpetuating Atreides (Siona) genes in our population because that hides us from prescience. We carry the Kwisatz Haderach in that bag! Willfulness created Muad'dib. Prophets make predictions come true! Will we ever again dare ignore our Tao sense and cater to a culture that hates the chance and begs for prophecy?
Archival Summary (adixto)
Chapterhouse: Dune

We witness a passing phrase of eternity. Important things happen but some people never notice. Accidents intervene. You are not present at episodes. You depend on reports. And people shutter their minds. What good are reports? History in a news account? Preselected at an editorial conference, digested and excreted by prejudice? Accounts you need seldom come from those who make history. Diaries, memoirs and autobiographies are subjective forms of special pleading. Archives are crammed with such suspect stuff
Darwi Odrade
Chapterhouse: Dune

Spend energies on those who make you strong. Energy spent on weaklings drags you to doom. (HM rule) Bene Gesserit Commentary: Who judges?
The Dortujla Record
Chapterhouse: Dune

Religion must be accepted as a source of energy. It can be directed for our purposes, but only within limits that experience reveals. He is the secret meaning of Free Will.
Missionaria Protectiva
Protective Teaching
Chapterhouse: Dune

One household god is this thing we carry forward generation after generation: our message for humankind if it matures. The closest thing we have to a household goddess is a failed Reverend Mother -- Chenoeh there in her niche.
Darwi Odrade
Chapterhouse: Dune

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune

Making workable choices occurs in a crucible of informative mistakes. Thus Intelligence accepts fallibility. And when absolute (infallible) choices are not known, Intelligence takes chance with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.
Darwi Odrade
Chapterhouse: Dune

Do not be quick to reveal judgment. Hidden judgment often is more potent. It can guide reactions whose effects are felt only when too late to divert them.
Bene Gesserit Advice to Postulants
Chapterhouse: Dune

When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious. Allow for surprises. When we create, there are always other forces at work.
Darwi Odrade
Chapterhouse: Dune

There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.
Darwi Odrade
Chapterhouse: Dune

Dias ruins.

2006-04-17T14:16:00.000-03:00

Basta dizer que se por um lado o feriado foi muito agradável, o ambiente de trabalho anda um pouco estressante. Namorada doente, falta de sono, gente estúpida que não consegue compreender que feminismo é tão desequilibrado quanto machismo... enfim, not in the mood de escrever.

Gavin Rossdale - Adrenaline

You don't even feel the pain.....

Too much is not enough
Nobody said this stuff,
makes any sense
We're hooked again
The point of no return
See how the buildings burn
Light up the night
Such a pretty sight

[Chorus]
Adrenaline, keeps me in the game
Adrenaline, you don't even feel the pain
Wilder than your wildest dreams
and you're going to the extremes
You taste adrenaline
adrenaline
adrenaline
You don't even feel the pain

Sail through an empty night
It's only you and I,
who understand,
there is no plan
Get closer to the thrill
Only time can kill
It's in your eyes
It's so alive

[Chorus]
Adrenaline, keeps me in the game
Adrenaline, you don't even feel the pain
Wilder than you wildest pain
and you're going to the extremes
You taste adrenaline

Run through the speed of sound
Everything slows you down,
and all the colors that surround you,
bleed into one
What you really need
Is just way to find the speed
and then you will achieve
Escape philosphy

Too much is not enough
Nobody gave it up
I'm not the kind to lay down and die

[Chorus 2]
Adrenaline, keeps me in the game
Adrenaline, you don't even feel the pain
Wilder than you wildest dreams
and you're going to the extremes
You taste adrenaline
Adrenaline, screaming out your name
Adrenaline, you don't even feel the pain
Wilder than you wildest dreams
You taste adrenaline

Adrenaline [5x]

You don't even feel the pain [2x]

going to the extremes..........
there's nothing in between.....
you don't even feel the pain.....
feel the pain [5x]

[Fade to end]

Um pouco sobre os assuntos com qual trabalho.

2006-04-07T11:33:00.000-03:00

Roberto Rodrigues dá receita para clusters de agroenergia

quinta, 06 abril 2006 - Fonte: O Estado de S. Paulo

A crise do álcool pela qual o Brasil passou neste início de ano tem levado muitos países, potenciais importadores do produto, a questionar o governo brasileiro sobre a garantia de suprimento por parte dos produtores nacionais. O ministro Roberto Rodrigues já tem uma resposta engatilhada, graças a um estudo que está sendo completado pela Embrapa. Trata-se da criação de clusters de agroenergia, que, segundo o ministro, funcionariam da seguinte forma: investidores interessados montam sua "destilaria" em uma área não-tradicional de cana-de-açúcar (Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Piauí, Pará, por exemplo). Os agricultores locais seriam atraídos ao cultivo da cana por meio de contratos de longo prazo, com preço atrelado ao do álcool, ou via parceria com a indústria.

Como uma quinta parte da área total precisaria ser renovada anualmente, essa parcela seria plantada com soja, com a qual, na mesma área industrial, seria produzido o biodiesel necessário para fazer funcionar tratores, colheitadeiras, caminhões. Com isso, não seria necessário trazer óleo diesel, hoje um dos principais responsáveis pelo alto custo do frete e da produção nas fronteiras agrícolas. Com o bagaço de cana seria gerada energia para as cidades e vilas vizinhas, durante a safra. E, na entressafra, seria usado carvão vegetal, resultado do plantio de árvores nas áreas impróprias para agricultura, no perímetro dos produtores associados ao projeto.

Com isso, se fecharia o circuito: etanol para exportação, biodiesel para tocar a mecanização agrícola, eletricidade da biomassa para os arredores. "E ainda sobraria o farelo da soja para ser usado, com outros insumos produzidos no local, para a criação de bois e porcos, cujo estrume seria usado como fertilizante, juntamente com o vinhoto do álcool, melhorando as condições do solo", conta Rodrigues, entusiasmado.

Todo o projeto seria financiado por grandes empresas interessadas no seqüestro de carbono, previsto no Protocolo de Kyoto. E, por ser um modelo exportável, ele poderia gerar ainda uma boa receita para os produtores de equipamentos para a agroindústria

Guitar Hero

2006-03-09T13:47:00.000-03:00

Ok, eu confesso... estou completamente viciado nesse jogo, é bom demais. Só me falta o controle em forma de guitarra =))

Setlist:

Ace of Spades
Bark at the Moon
Cochise
Cowboys From Hell
Crossroads
Fat Lip
Frankenstein
Godzilla
Heart Full of Black
Hey You
Higher Ground
I Love Rock and Roll
I Wanna Be Sedated
Infected
Iron Man
Killer Queen
More Than A Feeling
No One Knows
Sharp Dressed Man
Smoke on the Water
Spanish Castle Magic
Stellar
Symphony of Destruction
Take It Off
Take Me Out
Texas Flood
Thunderkiss 65
Unsung
You Got Another Thing Comin
Ziggy Stardust

Cinema....Australiano?!?

2006-03-03T14:43:00.000-03:00

Após o carnaval, uma inesperada sessão de cinema no CCBB com alguns amigos. Meio que de supetão, me vejo arrastado até um filme australiano bem modesto, chamado Strange Bedfellows, de 2004. Imaginando se tratar de algo tão divertido quanto um tratamento de canal ou um festival de filmes iranianos, fui mais pela companhia do que por real interesse. A boa surpresa fica pela atuação de MichaelCcaton e Paul Hogan (sim, ele mesmo, de Crocodilo Dundee) fazendo um par de amigos que acaba tendo que convencer um fiscal do imposto de renda que são um casal gay, para poder ter direito à isenção fiscal. Divertidíssimo.

The Navy's swimming spy plane

2006-02-24T17:02:00.000-03:00

Popsci.com-- Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater.

The Cormorant, a stealthy, jet-powered, autonomous aircraft that could be outfitted with either short-range weapons or surveillance equipment, is designed to launch out of the Trident missile tubes in some of the U.S. Navy's gigantic Cold War--era Ohio-class submarines.
These formerly nuke-toting subs have become less useful in a military climate evolved to favor surgical strikes over nuclear stalemates, but the Cormorant could use their now-vacant tubes to provide another unmanned option for spying on or destroying targets near the coast.
This is no easy task.
The tubes are as long as a semi trailer but about seven feet wide -- not exactly airplane-shaped. The Cormorant has to be strong enough to withstand the pressure 150 feet underwater -- enough to cave in hatches on a normal aircraft -- but light enough to fly.
Another challenge: Subs survive by stealth, and an airplane flying back to the boat could give its position away.
The Skunk Works's answer is a four-ton airplane with gull wings that hinge around its body to fit inside the missile tube.
The craft is made of titanium to resist corrosion, and any empty spaces are filled with plastic foam to resist crushing. The rest of the body is pressurized with inert gas. Inflatable seals keep the weapon-bay doors, engine inlet and exhaust covers watertight.
The Cormorant does not shoot out of its tube like a missile. Instead an arm-like docking "saddle" guides the craft out, sending it floating to the surface while the sub slips away. As the drone pops out of the water, the rocket boosters fire and the Cormorant takes off.
After completing its mission, the plane flies to the rendezvous coordinates it receives from the sub and lands in the sea. The sub then launches a robotic underwater vehicle to fetch the floating drone.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding tests of some of the Cormorant's unique systems, including a splashdown model and an underwater-recovery vehicle.
The tests should be completed by September, after which DARPA will decide whether it will fund a flying prototype.

Vai, Vai ver o HAMAS que vai dar !

2006-02-16T12:14:00.000-02:00

Rice Asks for $75 Million to Increase Pressure on Iran

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff WriterThursday, February 16, 2006; Page A01

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Congress yesterday to provide $75 million in emergency funding to step up pressure on the Iranian government, including expanding radio and television broadcasts into Iran and promoting internal opposition to the rule of religious leaders.
The request would substantially boost the money devoted to confronting Iran -- only $10 million is budgeted to support dissidents in 2006 -- and signals a new effort by the Bush administration to persuade other nations to join the United States in a coalition to bolster Iranian activists, halt Iran's funding of terrorism and stem its nuclear ambitions, State Department officials said.

Tirado da Wired!

2006-02-10T09:36:00.000-02:00

Your Right to Be an Idiot

By Tony Long | Also by this reporter

Let's get something straight from the get-go. The First Amendment is sacrosanct. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, the whole ball of wax -- it's the DNA of the United States, the stuff America is made of. You don't mess with it, ever. Without it, we're North Korea with a few shopping malls.

No lying, fear-mongering administration, no sanctimonious red-state senator, no judge with an ax to grind has the right to screw around with it. Even those of you far to the right of sanity must see the wisdom in that. Remember those guys with the powdered wigs and the tight breeches and the bad teeth? Jefferson and Hamilton and that mob? Those were your guys, once. For the sake of what follows, let's pretend the First Amendment still matters, even to you.
So, what to do with Wikipedia? And, in a broader sense, what to do with the free flow of information on the internet?
In a word, nothing.

Having access to the internet is a little like handing a kid a loaded gun. In the wrong hands it can be intellectually lethal. In terms of being a reliable source, the web is a minefield to be navigated very carefully. There is plenty of useful information to be had, but the place is a nest of vipers, too.

Wait a minute, sez you. Don't blame the internet. What about books? Books can be full of lies, too. They sure can. Lying has been around since man first 1.) evolved the ability to speak or 2.) got his sorry ass tossed out of the Garden of Eden. But the internet, with its instant access to vast amounts of information from an endless number of sources, is very different from anything that has come before.

Still, do you regulate the internet to "protect" us from ingesting information that is wrong, deliberately misleading, whacked out, even harmful? Uh-uh. That's your own responsibility, as an educated participant in a free society. (The "educated" part is a bit tricky these days, I'll grant you, but that's fodder for another column.)

There's an old expression in the newspaper business: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." In other words, make sure your bullshit detector is always on. Be skeptical of what you're told, of what you read. Cross-check your facts with other sources. What applies in the newsroom applies tenfold on the internet, where anybody is free to post any damned thing they want to.
Which brings us to Wikipedia, the so-called citizens' encyclopedia.

Yeah, so some cretin thought he was being cute by posting a false biography of John Siegenthaler Sr., a distinguished journalist who once served as an administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy, linking him to the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers. In copping to the deed, the guy said he didn't realize Wikipedia is considered, in the online world at least, to be a legitimate information resource. It was a joke, he said.

Siegenthaler, not surprisingly, hit the roof. (Especially since the bogus bio languished on the site for four months, despite his efforts to get it removed.) He lambasted Wikipedia's credibility in an op-ed piece but, to his credit, never suggested that slapping tighter controls on the internet is the answer to this kind of idiocy.
He didn't even indulge in the great American pastime, filing suit. Instead he chose to accept the guy's apology. But Siegenthaler, the former publisher of The Tennessean who founded The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, understands the absolutely critical need to protect the right of free speech, especially in the current frenzied political climate.
While the founders couldn't have anticipated the internet, their imperative still stands. Freedom of speech trumps everything in a free society. (As long as nobody gets killed, which is why you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater.) It has to. Without it, a society is no longer free. That's why the Nazis get to march through Skokie, Illinois, and why Rush Limbaugh gets to have a radio show. It's revolting sometimes, but to deny a single individual the right to free expression is to begin sliding down that slippery slope toward authoritarianism. The dulcet drone of Limbaugh's boorishness is the price you pay to breathe free.

The problem with a site like Wikipedia, of course, is that there is no responsible vetting process, no professional editors or fact-checkers on staff to verify accuracy. Wikipedia relies on you, the general public (or Wikipedians, in their argot), to fulfill that role and -- generally speaking and meaning no disrespect -- you're not qualified to do it. But you come at the right price (free), which keeps costs down. And Wikipedia argues, with some justification, that a factual error can be caught and fixed just as easily by an interested professor or a knowledgeable amateur as it can by an editor.
The trap is that nothing is vetted beforehand. Mistakes, deliberate or not, can only be caught after posting. Wikipedia presumes a kind of communal sense of responsibility, a belief that, given the opportunity, most people will be honest. As Hemingway once wrote in another context, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" The reality is that blind trust is something of a gamble. But in the wide-open world bequeathed to us by the internet, and in a free society generally, it's a gamble we have to be willing to take.
The alternative is too depressing to contemplate.

- - -
Tony Long, copy chief at Wired News, spent many years in the newspaper business. "You meet the most interesting people there," he says.

Trecho excelente do "O Capelão do Diabo", de Richard Dawkins.

2006-02-07T12:49:00.000-02:00

Nele, o autor escreve uma carta para sua filha de dez anos, alertando-a contra o que ele chama de as "três más razões para acreditar em algo": tradição, autoridade e revelação.

BOAS E MÁS RAZÕES PARA CRER

Querida Juliet,

   Agora que você fez dez anos, quero lhe escrever sobre algo que é muito importante para mim. Você já se perguntou sobre como sabemos as coisas que sabemos? Como sabemos, por exemplo, que as estrelas, que parecem pequenos pontos no céu, são na verdade grandes bolas de fogo como o Sol e ficam muito longe? E como sabemos que a Terra é uma bola menor, girando ao redor de uma dessas estrelas, o Sol?

   A resposta para essas perguntas é provas. Às vezes prova significa realmente ver (ou ouvir, ou sentir, cheirar...) que algo é verdade. Astronautas viajaram longe o suficiente da Terra para ver com seus próprios olhos que ela é redonda. Às vezes nossos olhos precisam de ajuda. A estrela-dalva parece uma sutil cintilação no céu, mas com um telescópio você pode ver que ela é uma linda bola - o planeta que chamamos de Vênus. Uma coisa que você aprende diretamente vendo (ou ouvindo, ou cheirando...) é chamada de observação.

   Freqüentemente, a prova não é só uma observação por si só, mas há sempre observações em sua base. Se aconteceu um assassinato, é comum ninguém (menos o assassino e a pessoa morta!) ter visto o que aconteceu. Mas os detetives juntam diversas observações que podem apontar na direção de um suspeito. Se as impressões digitais de uma pessoa coincidirem com as encontradas num punhal, isso é uma prova de que ela tocou nele. Isso não prova que ela cometeu o assassinato, mas pode ser uma informação útil, junto com outras provas. Às vezes um detetive consegue pensar sobre várias observações e então de repente perceber que todas se encaixam e fazem sentido se fulano de tal cometeu o crime.

   Os cientistas - os especialistas em descobrir o que é verdade sobre o mundo e o universo - freqüentemente trabalham como detetives. Eles dão um palpite (chamado de hipótese) sobre o que talvez seja verdade. Depois dizem para si mesmos: Se isso realmente for verdade, devemos observar tal coisa. Isso é chamado de previsão. Por exemplo, se o mundo realmente for redondo, podemos prever que um viajante que caminhar continuamente numa mesma direção acabará no ponto de onde partiu. Quando um médico diz que você está com sarampo, ele não olhou para você e viu sarampo. A sua primeira observação lhe fornece a hipótese de que você talvez tenha sarampo. Então ele diz para si mesmo: se ela realmente está com sarampo, devo encontrar... E ele então consulta sua lista de previsões e testa-as usando seus olhos (você está com pintas?), mãos (sua testa está quente?) e ouvidos (seu peito está com um chiado?). Só então ele toma a decisão e diz: Meu diagnóstico é que essa criança está com sarampo. Às vezes, os médicos precisam fazer outros testes, como exames de sangue ou raio X, que ajudam seus olhos, mãos e ouvidos a fazer observações.

   O modo como os cientistas usam provas para aprender sobre o mundo é muito mais engenhoso e complicado do que consigo dizer numa breve carta. Mas agora quero deixar de lado as provas, que são uma boa razão para crer em algo, e alerta-la sobre três más razões para acreditar em algo. Elas se chamam tradição, autoridade e revelação.

   Primeiro, a tradição. Alguns meses atrás, fui à televisão para ter uma conversa com cerca de cinqüenta crianças. Essas crianças foram convidadas por terem sido criadas segundo diferentes religiões: algumas como cristãs, outras judias, mulçumanas, hindus ou sikhs. Um homem com um microfone ia de criança em criança, perguntando no que acreditavam. O que elas responderam mostra exatamente o que quero dizer com tradição. Suas crenças não tinham nenhuma relação com provas. Elas simplesmente papagaiavam as crenças de seus pais e avós que, por sua vez, também não eram baseadas em provas. Elas diziam coisas como: Nós, hindus, acreditamos em tal e tal; Nós, muçulmanos, acreditamos nisso e naquilo; Nós, cristãos, acreditamos numa outra coisa.

   Como todas acreditavam em coisas diferentes, nem todas poderiam estar certas. O homem com o microfone parecia achar que isso não era um problema, e nem tentou fazê-las discutir suas diferenças entre si. Mas não é isso que quero enfatizar no momento. Eu simplesmente quero analisar de onde vieram as crenças. Vieram da tradição. Tradição significa crenças passadas do avô para o pai, deste para o filho, e assim por diante. Ou por meio de livros passados através das gerações ao longo dos séculos. Crenças populares freqüentemente começam de quase nada; talvez alguém simplesmente as invente, como as histórias sobre Thor e Zeus. Mas depois de terem sido transmitidas por alguns séculos, o simples fato de serem tão antigas as faz parecer especiais. As pessoas acreditam em coisas simplesmente porque outras pessoas acreditaram nessas mesmas coisas ao longo dos séculos. Isso é tradição.

   O problema com a tradição é que, independentemente de há quanto tempo a história tenha sido inventada, ela continua exatamente tão verdadeira ou falsa quanto a história original. Se você inventar uma história que não seja verdadeira, transmiti-la através de vários séculos não vai torná-la verdadeira!

   A maioria das pessoas na Inglaterra foi batizada pela Igreja anglicana, mas esse é apenas um entre muitos ramos da religião cristã. Há outras divisões, como a ortodoxa russa, a católica romana e as metodistas. Todas acreditam em coisas diferentes. A religião judaica e a mulçumana são um pouco diferentes; e há ainda diferentes tipos de judeus e mulçumanos. Pessoas que acreditam em coisas um pouco diferentes umas das outras vão à guerra por causa discordâncias. Então você talvez imagine que eles têm boas razões - provas - para acreditar naquilo que acreditam. Mas, na realidade, suas diferentes crenças são inteiramente decorrentes de tradições.

   Vamos falar sobre uma tradição em particular. Católicos romanos acreditam que Maria, a mãe de Jesus, era tão especial que ela não morreu, mas acendeu ao Céu. Outras tradições cristãs discordam, e dizem que Maria morreu como qualquer pessoa. Outras religiões não falam muito nela e, de modo diferente dos católicos romanos, não a chamam de Rainha do Céu. A tradição segundo a qual o corpo e Maria foi levado ao Céu não é muito antiga. A Bíblia não diz nada sobre como ou quando ela nasceu; aliás, a pobre mulher mal é mencionada na Bíblia. A crença de que seu corpo foi levado ao Céu não foi inventada até cerca de seis séculos após a época de Jesus. No início, só foi inventada, da mesma forma que qualquer história, como Branca de Neve. Mas, no transcorrer dos séculos, ela se tornou uma tradição e as pessoas começaram a levá-la a sério simplesmente porque a história havia sido transmitida ao longo de tantas gerações. Quanto mais velha a tradição se tornava, mais as pessoas a levavam a sério. Ela foi por fim escrita como uma crença católica romana oficial muito recentemente, em 1950, quando eu tinha a idade que você tem hoje. Mas a história não era mais verdadeira em 1950 do que quando foi inventada, seiscentos anos após a morte de Maria.

   Vou voltar à tradição no fim de minha carta, e olhá-la de outro modo. Mas antes preciso tratar das outras duas más razões para crer em alguma coisa: autoridade e revelação.
Autoridade enquanto razão para crer em algo significa acreditar pois alguém importante ordenou que você acreditasse. Na Igreja católica romana, o para é a pessoa mais importante, e as pessoas acreditam que ele deve estar certo só porque ele é o papa. Num dos ramos da religião muçulmana, as pessoas importantes são velhos barbados chamados de aiatolás. Muitos muçulmanos se dispõem a cometer assassinatos simplesmente porque aiatolás de um país distante deram essa ordem.

   Quando digo que só em 1950 os católicos romanos foram finalmente informados que tinham que acreditar que o corpo de Maria havia subido para o Céu, quero dizer que em 1950 o papa disse que isso era verdade, e então tinha que ser verdade! É claro que algumas coisas que o papa disse ao longo de sua vida devem ser verdade e outras não. Não há nenhuma boa razão para você acreditar em tudo que ele diz mais do que você haveria de acreditar nas coisas que muitas outras pessoas dizem, só porque ele é o papa. O papa atual ordenou às pessoas que não controlasse o número de filhos que vão ter. se sua autoridade for seguida com a obediência que ele deseja, os resultados poderão ser uma terrível escassez de alimentos, doenças e guerras, causas por superpopulação.

   É claro que, mesmo na ciência, às vezes nós mesmos não vemos as provas e temos de acreditar no que foi dito por outra pessoa. Eu não vi, com os meus próprios olhos, que a luz viaja à velocidade de 300 mil quilômetros por segundo. Mas acredito em livros que me dizem qual a velocidade da luz. Isso parece autoridade. Mas na realidade é muito melhor que autoridade, porque as pessoas que escreveram o livro viram as provas, e qualquer um de nós pode examinar as provas com atenção no momento que quiser. Isso é muito confortante. Mas nem mesmo os padres afirmam que há provas para a história de que o corpo de Maria subiu para o Céu.

   A terceira má razão para acreditar em algo é revelação. Se você tivesse perguntado ao papa, em 1950, como ele sabia que o corpo de Maria tinha subido ao Céu, ele provavelmente teria dito que isso lhe fora revelado. Ele se fechou num quarto e rezou., pedindo orientação. Sozinho, ele pensou e pensou, e na sua intimidade teve mais e mais certeza de suas idéias. Quando pessoas religiosas têm uma simples sensação de que algo deve ser verdade, mesmo que não haja provas de que o seja, eles chamam sua sensação de revelação. Não só os papas afirmam ter revelações. Isso também acontece com muitas pessoas religiosas. É uma de suas principais razões para acreditar naquilo que acreditam. Mas isso é bom ou ruim?

   Suponha que eu lhe dissesse que seu cachorro está morto. Você provavelmente ficaria muito triste, e talvez dissesse: Você tem certeza? Como você sabe? Como aconteceu?. Suponha então que eu respondesse: Na verdade, eu não sei se Pepe está morto. Eu não tenho provas. Só tenho uma sensação esquisita, bem dentro de mim, de que ele está morto. Você ficaria muito zangada comigo por tê-la assustado, porque você sabe que uma sensação por si só não é uma boa razão para acreditar que um cachorro está morto. Você precisa de provas. Todos temos sensações e pressentimentos de tempos em tempos, e descobrimos que às vezes estavam certos, às vezes não. De qualquer forma, pessoas diferentes podem ter sensações opostas, então como decidir quem teve a intuição correta? O único jeito de ter certeza de que um cachorro está morto é vê-lo morto, ou ouvir que seu coração parou de bater, ou obter essa informação de uma pessoa que viu ou ouviu alguma prova de que ele está morto.

   As pessoas às vezes dizem que devemos acreditar em sensações íntimas, senão você nunca teria certeza de coisas como Minha esposa me ama. Mas esse é um argumento ruim. Pode haver muitas provas de que alguém ama você. Durante todo o dia em que você está com alguém que a ama, você vê e ouve pequenas provas, e elas se somam. Não é somente ma sensação interior, como a sensação que os padres chamam de revelação. Há outras coisas para apoiar a intuição: olhares, um tom carinhoso de voz, pequenos favores e gentilezas; tudo isso serve de prova.
Certas pessoas têm forte sensação de que alguém as ama sem que isso esteja baseado em provas, e então é provável que estejam completamente enganadas. Há pessoas com uma forte intuição de que um astro do cinema está apaixonado por elas, mas na realidade o astro de cinema nem sequer as encontrou. Pessoas assim são doentes da cabeça. Sensações íntimas ou intuições precisam ser apoiadas por provas, senão você simplesmente não pode confiar nelas.

   As intuições são valiosas na ciência também, mas só para lhe dar idéias que você então testa, procurando provas. Um cientista pode ter um pressentimento sobre uma idéia que ele sente estar correta. Por si só, isso não é uma boa razão para acreditar nela. Mas pode ser uma razão para passar algum tempo fazendo experimentos, ou à busca de provas. Cientistas usam a intuição o tempo todo para ter idéias. Mas elas não valem nada até que sejam apoiadas por provas.

   Eu prometi que voltaria à tradição, para examiná-la de outro modo. Quero explicar o que a tradição é tão importante para nós. Todos os animais são construídos (pelo processo chamado de evolução) para sobreviver no local em que seus semelhantes vivem. Leões são construídos para sobre sobreviver nas planícies da África. O lagostim é construído para sobreviver na água doce, enquanto as lagosta são adaptadas para a vida na água salgada. As pessoas também são animais, e somos construído nos para viver bem no mundo cheio de... outras pessoas. A maioria de nós não caça para obter comida, como as lagostas ou os leões; nós a compramos de pessoas que, por sua vez, a compram de outras pessoas. Nossas entre " nadamos" num "mar de pessoas". Assim como um peixe precisa das brânquias para sobreviver na água, as pessoas precisam do cérebro que as torna capazes de se relacionarem umas com as outras. Assim como o mar está cheio de água salgada, o mar de pessoas está cheio de coisas difíceis de aprender. Como a linguagem.

   Você fala inglês, mas sua amiga Ann-Kathrin fala alemão. Cada um de vocês falam a língua que lhes permiti "nadar" no seu "mar de pessoas". A linguagem é transmitida por tradição. Não há outra alternativa. Na Inglaterra, Pepe é um dog. Na Alemanha, ele é ein Hund. Nenhuma dessas palavras é mais correta ou verdadeira do que a outra. As duas foram transmitidas ao longo do tempo, só isso. Para serem boas em "nadar no seu mar de pessoas", as crianças têm que aprender a língua de seu país, e muitas outras coisas sobre se o seu povo; e só quer dizer que elas precisam absorver, como papel mata-borrão, uma enorme quantidade de informações sobre tradições (lembre que essas informações são aquelas passadas dos avós para pais e deste para filhos). O cérebro da criança tem que absorver informações sobre tradições. Não é de se esperar que a criança consiga separar a informação boa e útil, como as palavras de uma língua, das informações ruins e tolas como acreditar em bruxas, demônios e virgens imortais.

   É uma pena - mas não deixa de ser assim - que, por serem sugadoras da informação sobre tradições, as crianças possam acreditar em qualquer coisa que os adultos lhes digam. Não importa se seja falso ou verdadeiro, certo ou errado. Muito do que os adultos dizem é verdadeiro e baseado em provas, ou pelo menos sensato. Mas se parte do que é dito é falso, tolo ou até malvado, não há nada para impedir as crianças de acreditarem naquilo também. E quando as crianças crescerem o que farão? Bom, é claro que contarão as histórias para a próxima geração de crianças. Então, uma vez que uma idéia se torna uma crença arraigada - mesmo que seja completamente falsa e nunca tenha havido uma razão para acreditar nela -, pode durar para sempre.

   Será isso o que aconteceu com as religiões? A crença de que há um Deus ou deuses, crença no Céu, crença em que Maria nunca morreu, que Jesus nunca possuiu um pai humano, que as rezas são respondidas, que vinho se torna sangue - nenhuma dessas crenças é apoiada por boas provas. E no entanto milhões de pessoas acreditam nelas. Talvez isso ocorra porque elas foram levadas a acreditar nessas coisas quando eram tão jovens que aceitavam qualquer coisa.

   Milhões de pessoas acreditam em coisas bem diferentes, porque diferentes coisas lhes foram ensinadas quando eram crianças. Coisas diferentes são ditas para crianças muçulmanas e cristãs, e ambas crescem totalmente convencidas de que estão certas e as outras erradas. Mesmo entre cristãos, católicos romanos acreditam em coisas diferentes dos anglicanos ou de pessoas como os shakers [adeptos da Igreja milênio] ou quacres, mórmons ou Holy Rolers, e todos estão plenamente convencidos de que estão certos e os outros errados. Acreditam em coisas diferentes exatamente pela mesma razão que você fala inglês e Ann-Kathrin fala alemão. Ambas as línguas são, em seu próprio país, a língua certa para se falar. Mas não pode ser verdade que religiões diferentes estão corretas em seus próprios países, pois religiões diferentes afirmam que coisas opostas são verdadeiras. Maria não pode estar viva na Irlanda do Sul (um país católico) e morta na Irlanda do Norte (que é protestante).

   O que podemos fazer sobre tudo isso? Não é fácil para você fazer alguma coisa, porque você só tem dez anos. Mas você pode tentar o seguinte. Da próxima vez que alguém lhe disser algo que parecer importante, pense: Será que isso é o tipo de coisa que as pessoas sabem por causa de provas? Ou será o tipo de coisa em que as pessoas acreditam só por causa de tradição, autoridade ou revelação?. E, da próxima vez que alguém lhe disser que uma coisa é verdade, por que não perguntar: Que tipo de prova há para isso?. E, se ela não puder lhe dar uma boa resposta, eu espero que você pense com muito carinho antes de acreditar em qualquer palavra daquilo que foi dito.

De seu queridoPapai

Poesia?

2006-01-18T14:31:00.000-02:00

Verão no cimento
no vagão correndo no escuro
uma dúzia de contos como rosas
oferecido por Garcia
sobre o ombro de um jovem.

2006-01-16T09:02:00.000-02:00

Roubado descaradamente do blog do penguim :)

Quatro empregos que você já teve:
1. Barman
2. Piloto
3. Advogado
4. Professor de Informática

Quatro filmes que você poderia assistir infinitamente:

1. Fight Club
2. Gladiator
3. Devil's advocate
4. Strange Days

Quatro lugares em que você morou:
1. Copacabana - Rio de Janeiro - RJ
2. Laranjeiras - Rio de Janeiro -RJ
3. São Cristóvão - Rio de Janeiro - RJ
4. Juiz de Fora - Minas Gerais - MG

Quatro programas de TV que você adora assistir:

1. Bom dia Brasil
2. Lost
3. Myth Busters
4. The 4400

Quatro lugares em que você já esteve de férias:

1. Orlando, EUA
2. Ilha Grande, RJ
3. Búzios, RJ
4. Balnerário Camboriú, PR (?)

Quatro blogs que você visita diariamente:
1. Namorada
2. Van Euza
3. Pinguim
4. Um randômico.

Quatro de suas comidas favoritas:
1. Sashimi de Salmão do Mitsuba
2. Uma boa salada verde.
3. Lazagna
4. Churrasco

Quatro lugares em que você preferiria estar agora:
1. Na cama com a namorada.
2. Em dois Rios, ilha grande
3. Rangiroa.
4. Com os amigos numa viagem.

Quatro ~~discos~~ bandas sem os as quais você não pode viver (hoje):
1. KMNFDN
2. Dust Brothers
3. NiN
4. Bad Religion

Quatro carros que você já teve:
1. Uno
2.Monza Hatch
3. Fiesta (Argh!)
4. Jeep ' 47

Primeiro de 2006

2006-01-09T08:23:00.000-02:00

Bom, o final de ano foi bastante complicado. Como sempre, muito trabalho; André em Recife, Salvador - só trabalhando, já que não tive tempo útil de conhecer as cidades. Virada com brinde à amigos ausentes e ao sucesso que foi 2005. Não foi tão animado pois como bem disse uma amiga, é apenas um "feliz calendário novo".

Janeiro já entrou dando voadora. Novos contratos, muito estudo, novos amigos - e uma nova "comuna" de livres pensadores a sutilmente se infiltrar em meus relacionamentos sociais. Mais tarde posto sobre isso, visto que o server de Notes caiu e vou dar uma força.

Festa de Mithras

2005-12-26T16:11:00.000-02:00

Em congregações se organizavam. Purificados pelo batismo, sacramentado pelo pão e pelo vinho. Comemorando o nascimento de sua figura central numa caverna em 25 de Dezembro, em que foi visitado por pastores com presentes. Consideravam o domingo dia santo, e pregavam a abstinência, o celibato e o auto-controle como as mais altas virtudes. Viam o céu como habitado pelas criaturas mais belas e o inferno por demônios nascidos no submundo. O mundo sendo um cenário para o eterno conflito entre o bem e o mal. A revelação seria a principal chave de sua doutrina. O julgamento viria, após a ressurreição dos mortos após o fim do mundo.

Ele tinha o nome de "Logos". Tinha um halo. Seu símbolo era cruz.

Jesus? Jesus é o escambau - Isso tinha mais de 200 anos antes de dizerem que ele nasceu.

SOL INVICTUS!

Grande Rui...

2005-12-09T10:07:00.000-02:00

"Não conhecemos no homem público maior falha de caráter que a esses narcisos do seu nome, a quem uma índole covarde negou a coragem ordinária de confessar os próprios erros, e uma natureza viciosa subtraiu a sensibilidade à satisfação do arrependimento."

Rui Barbosa