29 junho 2016




Panteão, Roma wiki
Protestos Iranianos contra Hassan Rouhani link

The myth of the noble savage had emerged from the accounts of the first French explorers of the Pacific, but in reality the South Seas were full of discord. At the time of Cook’s first expedition, Tahiti and its neighbours were in turmoil as the cult of ‘Oro spread from its temple on the island of Ra’eatea. There, bodies were used as rollers under the keels of sacred canoes and Captain Cook himselfvisited a coral pyramid where human bones crunched beneath his feet. Again and again he came across cannibals, although he was generous enough to note that their habit appeared ‘to come from custom and not from a Savage disposission’.
Savagery, inborn or through custom, began soon after people arrived in the Pacific. Two millennia ago it took just a few centuries for the first migrants to Mangaia in the Cook Islands to consume the local wildlife. In time they were reduced to eating rats (as the islanders still say, ‘It’s as sweet as a rat’). Then they began to devour each other. On Mangaia’s six square miles lived half a dozen tribes, who fought, fought and fought again, With evidence of forty-two separate wars over fifteen hundred years. Rousseau would not have approved.
Evolution Darwin’s ‘doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms’ is cruel, but can give the impression of being kind. Many creatures do appear to indulge in mutual aid.

CORAL: A Pessimist in Paradise Steve Jones

28 junho 2016






LADY BRACKNELL. I rely on you to arrange my music for me. It is my last reception, and one wants something that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end of the season when everyone has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much.
ALGERNON. Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music, people don’t talk.
The importance of being Earnest - Oscar Wilde

24 junho 2016





Fruit flies and nematode worms have long been the workhorse of biology, for they share many genes with humans and can be bred with ease. In fact, the double helix shows that each of those laboratory stalwarts is less like us than was once assumed as for reasons quite unknown both have, on the long road from the Pre-Cambrian, lost even more inherited information than we ourselves have. As a result, each is left with a unique and diminished identity of its own and corals have more distinctly human genes than either of them.
The big step forward made by humans or flies compared to polyps is that we have an anus: every one of us, however eminent, is a tenametre tube through which food flows, for most of the time, in one direction. Hydra and its kin are in contrast mere sacs, obliged to suck in sustenance and throw out waste from a single hole.
Corals - Steve Jones

13 junho 2016



Mushroom Coral, Red (Actinodiscus) link

Deutsch fala por experiência própria também, conforme me escreveu numa carta recente:
A minha consciência de que tinha ouvido absoluto e de que isto era pouco habitual veio sob a forma de uma grande surpresa quando descobri, aos 4 anos, que as outras pessoas tinham dificuldade em nomear notas fora de contexto. Ainda me lembro bem do meu choque ao descobrir que quando eu tocava uma nota no piano, os outros tinham de ver que tecla estava a ser carregada para a poderem nomear. [. . .] Para lhe dar uma ideia de quão estranha a falta de ouvido absoluto parece para quem a tem, imagine nomear cores como analogia. Suponha que mostrava a alguém um objecto vermelho e lhe pedia que nomeasse a cor. Agora suponha que ele respondia, «Eu consigo reconhecer a cor, e consigo distingui-la de outras cores, mas simplesmente não consigo nomeá-la.» A seguir juntava um objecto azul e nomeava a sua cor, e ele respondia, «OK, como a segunda cor é azul, a primeira deve ser vermelha.»
Musicofilia Oliver Sacks

12 junho 2016





Na minha infância, todas as sapatarias possuíam aparelhos de raios X, fluoroscópios, para que os clientes pudessem ver como é que os ossos dos pés se ajustavam aos sapatos novos. Eu adorava aquelas máquinas, pois era possível agitar os dedos dos pés e ver os muitos ossinhos que os compõem a mexerem-se em uníssono, dentro do seu invólucro de carne quase invisível.
O Tio Tungsténio Oliver Sacks


Capela do Senhor da Pedra, Praia de Miramar, Gulpilhares, Vila Nova de Gaia wiki

As dimensões do Império Inca surpreenderam pelas barreiras à locomoção e à comunicação. Os vales e montes sul-americanos desdobram-se desde as montanhas até ao oceano, cortando as rotas no sentido norte-su1; e esses obstáculos naturais eram agravados pela ausência da roda (todos os transportes eram feitos por lamas ou homens) e o malogro no desenvolvimento da navegação costeira. O segredo residia nas comunicações asseguradas por corredores e carregadores [ chasques ]. Ao longo dos itinerários do Império havia, separados por 1,5 légua espanhola (aproximadamente 9 km) uns dos outros, pares de pequenas pousadas [tambos], uma de cada lado da estrada, para dar guarida aos estafetas. Cada um desses corredores olhava apenas numa direcção, esperando levar até ao tambo seguinte as mensagens e fardos que poderiam chegar a qualquer momento. Os estafetas eram treinados desde tenra idade para realizar esse trabalho e, correndo dia e noite sem parar, conseguiam percorrer uma média de 50 léguas diárias (cerca de 300 km). O cronista Bemabé Cobo diz-nos que de Lima a Cuzco, umas 140 léguas (840km) de mau caminho, levavam três dias". Cerca de um século depois, a mala postal espanhola, puxada por um cavalo, levava de 12 a 13 dias**. No século xviii, o serviço de diligências entre Nova Iorque e Boston, mais de 300 km de terreno plano, gastava uma semana.
** Esses corredores, é evidente, contavam com mais do que os seus próprios humores orgânicos; a folha de coca estava presente para estimular e incutir um vigor artificial. Na verdade, era comum medirem-se as tarefas pelo montante de coca requerida (cocadas).
A Riqueza e a Pobreza das Nações, David S. Landes


Ponte de Arrábida, Porto wiki

In his book, Born to Be Good, Keltner even says that if he had to choose his mate by asking a single question at a speed-dating event, the question he would choose is: “What was your last embarrassing experience?” Then he would watch very carefully for lip-presses, blushing, and averted eyes. “The elements of the embarrassment are fleeting statements the individual makes about his or her respect for the judgment of others,” he writes. “Embarrassment reveals how much the individual cares about the rules that bind us to one another.”
Susan Cain Quiet




The little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like ‘My Saviour!’ she extended her arms towards the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer. At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant of ‘B-B! . . . B-B! . . . B-B!’ over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first ‘B’ and the second - a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.
1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell

07 junho 2016



Pernilongo, Ria de Aveiro wiki

Em 1978, Richard Dawkins e Jonh Krebs salientaram que os animais utilizavam a comunicação principalmente para se manipularem uns aos outros, em vez de transferirem informação. Uma ave canta durante muito tempo e eloquentemente para convencer uma fêmea a acasalar com ela ou um rival a manter-se afastado do seu território. Se estivesse apenas a transmitir informação, não tinha necessidade de tornar a canção tão elaborada. Dawkins e Krebs disseram que a comunicação dos animais é mais semelhante à publicidade humana do que aos horários das companhias de aviação. Até mesmo a comunicação mais mutuamente benéfica, como aquela entre uma mãe e uma cria, é mera manipulação, como sabe qualquer mãe que tenha acordado durante a noite com os sons desesperados de um bebé que apenas quer companhia.
A Rainha de Copas Matt Ridley

04 junho 2016



Xávega, Praia Areão, Vagos wiki

“Even a ghetto [he quoted a Pastor as saying], after it has remained a ghetto for a period of time builds up its social structure and this makes for more stability, more leadership, more agencies for helping the solution of public problems.”
But when slum clearance enters an area [Salisbury went on] , it does not merely rip out slatternly houses. It uproots the people. It tears out the churches. It destroys the local business man. It sends the neighbourhood lawyer to new offices downtown and it mangles the tight skein of community friendships and group relationships beyond repair.
It drives the old-timers from their broken-down flats or modest homes and forces them to find new and alien quarters. And it pours into a neighbourhood hundreds and thousands of new aces...
Jane Jacobs The death and life of great American cities