News from the interzone

As someone told me recently, the Spring opens people spirits... Well it has openned mine! I still don't know if the world works in a deterministic or random framework, and sincereously I don't care. Either way, the attractor that rules my life has suddently changed my course, but probably it wasn't even that. I found a new attractor, one that viollently pulled me from my previous trajectory throughout a boring, insalubrious life, into the oposite. Feelings very different from previous times have surfaced, when comparing motivations from old nostalgic pasts.
Thus, sorry for not presenting nothing new in this (already worse than it was) blog, but now I've been occupied with indeed much better things to do!
So, a word for the wise: live your lives, suck them dry and don't rely on opinnions that you have but you don't really know, for everything can change in a sudden instance. One may feel itself very adult, responsible and bored, but suddently you may observe yourself feeling like a child again.

Make me a genious

My Brilliant Brain: Make me a Genious. This is a documentary which shows how the art of chess can improve a child's mind for her to increase her cognitive capabilities enormously. In fact This documentary almost make me think that limits are virtual, if one starts at the right time, at the right age! Also the way as memory acts as the angular stone of our intuitive thinking and give us that right 'feeling' when we are faced with a problem requiring fast and elegant solutions. Very good documentary.

On the Road revisited...

About 2 months ago I've finished reading Kerouac's On the Road. Now I give you the link to the work of Stefanie Posavec, who gave a graphical look to the masterpiece.

For what I've understood, she takes all chapters of the book and counts the number of paragraphs. Next she counts for each paragraph the number of sentences, and so on. In the end she creates plots which represent these informations. As an example the figure below, by changing direction, she is changing sentence, and the length of a sentence is given by the number of words it contains.

Her analysis can be done to any book, but that's not the question, nor anything about On the Road. It's the originality of this analysis and her amazing plots that surprise me.

You can see her analysis with more plots at http://www.notcot.com/archives/2008/04/stefanie_posave.php. You can also find her site by checking http://www.itsbeenreal.co.uk/index.php?/about-this-site/.

What We Still Don't Know. Great!!!

Another great documentary!!!

What We Still Don't Know. This is the title of a documentary divided in three parts. Presented by renowed astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees, it deals with those questions that science still cannot explain. It follows the tracks of the recent scientific findings and ends in earthbreaking hypothesis.

It starts with the episode Why Are We Here?, which only by itself worths seeing this.

Are We Alone? continues by working on the changes in existing life somewhere on the universe (besides earth), but also on the almost impossibility in meeting these alien life.

Are We Real? The cherry on top of the cake. For me, the best part in this documentary.

Achtung! Richard Dawkins strikes again.

More one excellent documentary from Richard Dawkins, the renowned biologist who is also a fierce crusader with rationalism/atheism (to the point of fanaticism ;p) stamped in his banner. Sometimes he goes a bit too far in is mission, making science look like a religious belief, but is worthy of respect because he is one of a kind, solitary in his path but supported by the pillars of logic, reason and eloquence.
Doesn't matter if you believe in something or if you're atheist, agnostic, communist, fisherman, just climbed the everest or you've just arrived to the south pole... you should see these documentaries because even if you disagree (which, by the way, it's scientifically extremely healthy ;) ), you'll always learn something!

The Enemies of Reason - Part 1

The Enemies of Reason - Part 2

Chaos Theory: application on life

Today I got news that say I should move on... In fact, that's what I've keep trying for the last times, but it looks the harder I try the more stuck I stay in the past... Well, this has served as an inspiration and after a bit of coding, here it is (don't misunderstand me, I just made the plot, this is Lorenz attractor)... Unfortunately, about the attractor that rules my life, that remains uncharted territory.

Naked Lunch - excerpt 1

I'm reading Naked Lunch... William S. Burroughs masterpiece, and it's something. I will just put here an excerpt that I found bashing:

In the city market is the meet cafe. Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up Harmaline, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, liquids to induce Latah, Tithonian longevity serums, black marketeers of World War 3, excisors of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, bureaucrats of spectral departments, officials of unconstituted police states, a Lesbian dwarf who has perfected operation Bang-utot, the lung erection that strangles a sleeping enemy, sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, brokers of exquisit dreams and memories tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface of the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war... A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in vibrating soundless hum... Larval entities waiting for a Live One...

in William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, chapter "The Market",
Harper Perennial (Harper Collins Publishers)

Consumidores de productos macrobióticos ... beware! Beterraba Contagiosa ...

Tenho de partilhar isto! Infelizmente, embora isto se tenha sucedido à sensivelmente 1 hora atrás, não consigo relatar a conversa que ouvi na integra, no entanto vou tentar.
Cheguei à paragem do autocarro perto de minha casa quando ouvi 3 homens que lá estavam na conversa, com o famoso sotaque portuense este:

"... não compreendo, porque deve haver gajos que têm SIDA ou hepatites outra coisa qualquer, e vão meter a merda deles la no campo. E depois compramos essas comidas biológicas e como é? Aquilo deve vir infectado? Ou como é que é? Por isso e que não confio nessas coisas..."

Infelizmente não consegui ouvir mais porque tinha de me rir (não às gargalhadas) mas... De facto é preciso ficar preocupado porque agora tudo faz sentido... vacas loucas, doenças contagiosas, até a gripe, é tudo devido à beterraba que um gajo compra na Dona Rosa! E no meio disto tudo, faz-nos pensar, que se não fosse a ASAE o país já tinha adoecido todo!!!

P.S.: Isto não é um ataque da minha parte aos portadores de uma doença (seja ela qual for),
os quais respeito profundamente. Peço também a clemência para estes velhotes (os que ouvi a terem esta conversa), porque pronto, tenhamos bom senso.

P.S. 2: O nome Beterraba Contagiosa está oficialmente (ou quase) protegido por uma lei qualquer que impeça o seu uso para nome de qualquer banda ou agrupamento musical a partir de agora.