O L a d o C i n z a

Só vou deixar isso aqui embaixo da porta caso alguém apareça:


A Competição tá foda para os artistas, se compete com todos os álbuns dos Beatles num torrent, se compete com youtube no celular e um trilhão de pages que constelam a Internet. Quem tem tempo pra gastar com a biografia do Rei Ludwig II?


E os artistas estão se ‘adaptando’, o termo usado pelo médico fajuto que receita anfetaminas pra velhinha de Requiem para um Sonho. A única saída para acalmar o vício é aumentar a medicação, injetar ainda mais heroína na veia, a efemeridade começa a ser sentida cada vez mais forte. Os artistas estão se tornando cada vez mais histéricos para poderem ser ouvidos, Aronofsky é o exemplo maior, uma total auto-medicação.


Ele e Danny Boyle torturam a audiência para um final orgástico. Se filmes são como sexo, o sexo está se tornando freaky. Não basta ser um filme sobre uma bailarina, tem que ser sobre ela se transformando em um Cisne como um lobisomem. Transformers 2 tem mais cortes do que frames por segundo; Star Trek começa com sacrifício, morte de bilhões e Winona Ryder morrendo de novo; Toy Story 3 é sobre morte e abandono. Que fadinha, o que, É faca na caveira.


Engraçado como estávamos certos sobre a histeria.
E foi sem querer querendo.


Eu só queria um pouco de lirismo, pra cada riso uma lágrima, ou nos dias de hoje, pra cada sangue derramado um orgasmo.

...

Nem sei o que fazer com a minha biblioteca de DVDs, eles são como os bichos de pelúcia num quarto de uma balzaquiana.

posted by beckspace @ 1/08/2011 06:32:00 pm

Fechando as Portas

Faz tanto tempo que não mexo e essa porta está meio emperrada...

Uma das coisas que peguei gosto foi escrever. Escrevo a esmo. É uma sensação parecida com cagar; é um prazer inano desde que a vida é vida.

Posto isto, porquê não tenho postado mais? Diria que preferi perder mais tempo lendo... não li porra nenhuma. A pilha de livros só aumentou.

Porque talvez esteja ocupado com a minha vida? Tirando a Paranóia, ninguém consegue ficar ocupado com a própria vida o tempo inteiro.

O fato é que, como tudo na vida, como sexo, como ir ao cinema, ou escrever, produzir, é preciso de entusiasmo. E blog não dá mais o menor tesão.

Não que eu vá esquecer as abobrinhas que escrevi por aqui. São como naqueles caixotes do porão que dá alergia e um dia você lembra que eles existem; provavelmente vou encontrar mil arrependimentos, mil erros de português e rir/chorar sobre qual era a futilidade invertida em genialidade do momento.

Mas neste momento, apago a luz sem olhar muito em volta.

Vejo-os do outro lado menos cinza.

...

Labels: The End

posted by beckspace @ 12/01/2010 05:25:00 am

avatar

Se Aliens é a prova de algo, é de que James Cameron sabe escrever diálogos.

Game over, man. Game Over!

Alguém já deve ter percebido que prefiro falar dos filmes antes do que ficar apontando o dedo quando a Inês já morreu. E quando faço isso o filme acaba sendo bom, por isso vou falar de James Cameron... pra dar sorte.

Talvez seja um asshole que cria inimigos a cada take. Eu sei que houve uma tentativa de envenenamento nas primeiras semanas de filmagem de Titanic, James Cameron enfiou o dedo na goela antes que a seguradora percebesse. De fato não sei quem é ele, ou Spielberg, George Lucas, Polanski ou etc. Sei que todos eles apanharam na escola, principalmente Spielberg.

Mas o cara sabe escrever diálogos:

Hudson: Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?
Vasquez: No. Have you?
Vasquez: Hey, Mira. Who's Snow White?
Ferro: She's supposed to be some kinda consultant. Apparently she saw an alien once.
Hudson: Whoopee-fuckin'-do. Hey, I'm impressed.


We're on an express elevator to hell; going down!

Hudson: Oh dear Lord Jesus, this ain't happening, man... This can't be happening, man! This isn't happening!


Ripley: *Hudson!* This little girl survived longer than that with no weapons and no training.
Hudson: Why don't you put her in charge?

Hudson: We're all gonna die man.

Ripley: Well, somebody's gonna have to go out there. Take a portable terminal, go out there and patch in manually.
Hudson: Oh yeah, sure! With those things runnin' around? You can count me out.
Hicks: Yeah I guess we can just count you out of everything, Hudson.
Bishop: [speaking under Hicks] I'll go.
Hudson: That's right, man.
Bishop: I'll go.
Hudson: Hey, why don't you go, man!
Bishop: [more loudly] I'll go.
Ripley: What?
Bishop: I'll go. I mean, I'm the only one qualified to remote-pilot the ship anyway.
Hudson: Yeah right, man, Bishop should go.
[Vasquez looks at Hudson with disgust]
Hudson: Good idea!
Bishop: Believe me, I'd prefer not to. I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid.


I just want to tell Mr.Cameron good luck. We're all counting on him.

Avatar estreia amanhã nos EUA


EDIT: Retiro tudo q disse. O filme é um cocô.

Labels: James Cameron

posted by beckspace @ 12/17/2009 11:10:00 am

A Regra é Clara

Querida Inquisição,

Polanski vai ser culpado, é um velho tarado. É vida dos outros, eu sei, o cara nem é daqui, eu sei. A mina do Uniban que mostra as pernas. Precisa de mais? Só pode ser uma putinh.. Assim como o Michael Jac... não, esse já morreu. Não tem graça cuspir em caixão que não reage.

Pessoas diferentes tem que ir pra fogueira. A regra é clara. Essas pessoas se acham. Só matando dá pra deixar elas e a gente em paz. A Daiane usou drogas pra emagrecer! É isso que o Fantástico vai dizer e vamos todos concordar que ela não usou Furosemida para mascarar o doping. Ela é fofinha e dança brasileirinho. Diferente daquela nadadora monstro do Pan que parece homem, aquela ali sim, não sei o que ela usou, mas ela parece o he-man. Fogueira nela.

O mundo seria muito mais feliz se ninguém fosse diferente. Ninguém se sentiria burro, chato, desimportante. Não vejo a hora de chegar a vez do Lula. O país tá emprestando grana pro FMI e tem juros de um dígito. Ele deve se achar. Eu me sentia melhor quando ele falava errado, tinha pinta de nordestino e cara de operário. Quando a gente vai se livrar dele? Não dá pra agüentar um sapo barbudo pensando que é melhor que a gente só porque é um bom presidente.

Todo mundo devia herdar a cara do William Bonner e da Fátima Bernardes, mas eles devem se achar melhor que a gente. A regra é clara, não é? Ninguém pode se achar melhor que a gente! O problema é que se perguntar, vão dizer que não. Mas a gente sabe, não é? Vulcão neles.

Acho que isso é tudo que aconteceu essa semana, Inquisição. Acho que vou assistir o filme do Michael Jackson agora, saudades dele. Ainda bem que ele morreu, o filme vai ser muito melhor.

Um abração.
O Pensamento Médio

...

Labels: Unitaliban

posted by beckspace @ 10/30/2009 04:53:00 pm

Here's the truth

This wall of text is from the DVD version of Memento




Here's the truth: People, even regular people, are never just any one person with one set of attributes. It's not that simple. We're all at the mercy of the limbic system, clouds of electricity drifting through the brain. Every man is broken into twenty-four-hour fractions, and then again within those twenty-four hours. It's a daily pantomime, one man yielding control to the next: a backstage crowded with old hacks clamoring for their turn in the spotlight. Every week, every day. The angry man hands the baton over to the sulking man, and in turn to the sex addict, the introvert, the conversationalist. Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots.

This is the tragedy of life. Because for a few minutes of every day, every man becomes a genius. Moments of clarity, insight, whatever you want to call them. The clouds part, the planets get in a neat little line, and everything becomes obvious. I should quit smoking, maybe, or here's how I could make a fast million, or such and such is the key to eternal happiness. That's the miserable truth. For a few moments, the secrets of the universe are opened to us. Life is a cheap parlor trick.

But then the genius, the savant, has to hand over the controls to the next guy down the pike, most likely the guy who just wants to eat potato chips, and insight and brilliance and salvation are all entrusted to a moron or a hedonist or a narcoleptic.

...

Labels: The Truth

posted by beckspace @ 7/02/2009 09:44:00 pm

O Nós sobre Eu

Star Trek talvez seja o remake mais esperado desta década perdida; década que tenta reencontrar uma identidade perdida através de remakes. E remake sempre me soa como uma visita a um museu de cera.

Dessa década, não sei se foi relevante, só sobrou um existencialismo impregnado; a humanidade esteve em depressão. Relembrando os principais filmes desta década, O Escafandro e a Borboleta, Children of Men, American Beauty, ou suas principais séries de TV, Lost, The Office (o original), o fantástico BSG, temos vontade de dar um tiro na cabeça. Nunca vivi uma década com a esperança tão no buraco. Foi a década das autópsias, do sangue apodrecido, de cinco CSIs que existem por aí. E aquilo que não foi triste foi esquecível. Nenhuma comédia se salvou, os comediantes foram asfixiados. E até por isso Slumdog talvez sinalize uma mudança de ventos; Slumdog é o final feliz que Cidade de Deus não teve.

Cinqüenta anos atrás, nos prósperos 60’s, Star Trek mostrou um futuro novo: um futuro sem a lei da selva, sem fronteiras, sem raças ou castas, sem mais-valia, as máquinas trouxeram a liberdade das estruturas de poder, onde mesmo a busca narcisista do Eu cessou, ficou old-fashion. Era a realidade que vinha depois do Final Feliz; o otimismo de que deixamos o pior para trás e estamos em rumo de novos mundos expandindo nossa consciência.

Rotulado de utopia, essa ideologia foi chutada pro lado como fantasia ingênua. Que na real humanos são, serão e sempre foram: limitados. Que não conseguem sobrepujar o maior peso de todos: o Eu. O Eu, a voz dentro de nós que exige resultados mesmo danando a todos em volta. O Eu sempre quer mais, nunca se realiza, está sempre em débito, nunca conheceu a felicidade. É nosso lado esquerdo do cérebro.

Eu, João, como um exemplo que conheço bem, só pensa em João, no que João quer, em como ele foi tratado, injustiçado, no que ele pode fazer, usar e manipular para moldar um melhor João do futuro. As empatias com outras pessoas aparecem em noites bêbadas mas ocupam um espaço minúsculo da consciência. O Nós se tornou uma preocupação lateral. O lado esquerdo do Cérebro nos comanda, e depressões não são nada além do Eu dando pau.

Não somos mais capazes de lidar com o Nós, o mundo acredita na lei de Gerson como única realidade e por isso ideologicamente estamos todos falidos.

Pudera, quando alguém comete altruísmo, assumindo para si o problema de outros, vira Otário. É a lição escondida nas escolas, nos empregos, na vida; e nossas mentes reinventam contextos para apaziguar o Eu. Quando um infeliz é aberto e nos aproveitamos disso, o Eu já o chama de otário para se livrar da culpa. O defeito é sempre dos outros, o Eu é perfeito.

E o incrível é que nossas vidas, cada uma delas, como as bilhões de células no nosso corpo, as árvores de uma floresta, as estrelas de uma galáxia, são definidas do começo ao fim pelo Todo. E como o vírus que assola a todos; o mal é a única coisa que trás o Nós para a tona, como pai e filha se abraçando durante o Armageddon, na invasão alienígena, no tsunami; só existe o Nós quando cada Eu se sente igualmente ameaçado pelo Todo. A humanidade é torta assim.

Descobriram este ano que bactérias conseguem se comunicar; soltam moléculas como palavras, organizam votações para agir em conjunto. A natureza sabe que a bactéria sozinha é incapaz de mudar seu próprio universo, mas todas elas coletivamente derrubam um elefante. No entanto, o ensinamento que temos é orbitar nossos próprios umbigos; de que a individualidade vale mais. Que temos que fazer uma marca pessoal no universo, que seremos todos Rockstars, o atacante-lenda que vence o jogo aos 45 do segundo tempo.

E minha geração, todos frustrados porque brigaram pelo pódio que não existe, querendo todos ocupar a cadeira de capitão em uma nave que se chama Enterprise: não apenas um nome, não apenas aventura, mas organização, organismo, Enterprise é um plural singular. Como qualquer organismo, quem comanda a nave é a somatória de toda a tripulação.

E todos agora todos são capitães sozinhos em naves sem dobra espacial. Num palco se apresentando para uma platéia vazia, porque estão todos em seus palcos se apresentando para suas platéias vazias.

Li em um estudo inglês que a molecada está mais narcisista do que antes, em que até mesmo a competição passou para segundo plano porque afeta o campo gravitacional do umbigo. Estão sendo treinados para não machucar o Eu. Eles são os filhos da minha geração de Orkuts, Facebooks, Twiters, onde as máscaras eclipsaram o sentimento de que somos todos iguais no mesmo mar.

Mas existe um elemento que não mudou, e nunca vai mudar: o que nos define é o que fazemos agora. O Eu se preocupa com o passado e o futuro, e passado são memórias que somem com o tempo e o futuro é apenas uma expectativa vaga. Não existe nada além do eterno Agora. O Agora é o nosso corpo reverberando vibrações pelo espaço-tempo do Todo, transmitindo e recebendo vibrações de outros para outros.

E que filtro cada corpo carrega? De que o futuro será igual ao passado. Que é tudo cíclico. De que a bosta de ontem será a bosta de amanhã. Este é o filtro do Eu que sempre odeia o presente, são estas as vibrações que passamos de um para o outro. Estamos espiritualmente aleijados.

Duvido que qualquer um de nós tivesse uma resposta melhor, perguntaram a um cientista o que ele faria se o mundo acabasse amanhã, a resposta: plantaria uma árvore hoje. Os cientistas normalmente têm essa visão do Todo, de que nós estamos entre as moléculas e as estrelas, entre o nada e o eterno, o Eu e o Nós.

Não espere que Star Trek nos mude do dia para a noite, o primeiro passo ainda é abrir um canal de comunicação com essa geração de narcisistas. Star Trek terá que ser Sexy, explosão e fúria para nos tocar, para arrastar o Eu para o mundo do Nós. É um longo processo, mas um primeiro passo foi dado para que invertamos nossas fases e assim transmitir a vibração de que, sim, podemos ser brilhantes.

Até lá, os cínicos irão rir disso, de que vamos dar as mãos e cantar We are the World. Mas mesmo esse coro é mais digno do que o mundo de Homer Simpsons que fomos obrigados a engolir. Homer Simpson precisa morrer, ele perdeu a graça.

>>>>> Ponte <<<<<<

...

Labels: Star Trek

posted by beckspace @ 5/03/2009 07:09:00 am

Movie of the Year:

Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle

...

posted by beckspace @ 12/28/2008 02:04:00 am

We’re all Brazilians now

"One point I think is really important in understanding the crisis is that there has been a huge increase in financial globalization just in the last few years — basically since 1995 (...) while we talk a lot about the US as a debtor nation, what’s really striking is the surge on both sides of the balance sheet. This has made the global financial system a lot more tightly linked, so that big economies are now experiencing the kind of contagion previously associated with emerging markets caught up in the 1997-1998 crisis. We’re all Brazilians now."

Paul Krugman

posted by beckspace @ 11/17/2008 12:23:00 am

Um Ensaio sobre a Americanização

Foi

Se foi.

Que triste foi o fim, quero dizer, o começo da carreira de Blindness. E eu diria que seu maior pecado foi levar para o inglês um filme que deveria ter nascido em português.

Meirelles quer curtir a vida internacional; quer fazer filme globalizado. Disse no Roda Viva que seu futuro é o cinema internacional; que pro Brasil só presta TV. No entanto veste camiseta da Seleção em entrevista gringa pra dizer que não é da laia deles; Fernando não está nem aqui nem lá.

Pés em dois mundos, porém em nenhum deles. Foi assim que Fernando entregou um filme indeciso; justamente em um tema em que se exige comprometimento sem concessões. Ele abriu a ferida mas achou mais rentável mostrar o lado doce. A equação não fecha: ele tentou manter sinais opostos nos dois lados da igualdade.

O filme desabou no Box Office.

Almodóvar nunca abandonou a Espanha e o espanhol. Blindness era para se chamar O Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira com Fernanda Torres no lugar da Juliane Moore com menos de um quarto do budget de um Weinstein. Podia ser até Claudia Raia. O mundo queria sabores diferentes e lhe foi entregue no lugar um produto pasteurizado em screenings embalado em thriller que não chega lá porque nem mesmo quer ser um thriller.

Vaidade ou arrogância, Fernando Meirelles se achou muito caro para fazer um filme brasileiro com a desculpa de que aqui não é rentável ou prático. Agora está amargando o preço de ser Americano:

I presume that nobody will deny the positive aspects of the North American cultural world. These are well known to all. But these aspects do not make one forget the disastrous effects of the industrial and commercial process of “cultural lamination” that the USA is perpetrating on the planet. An illusion was created that a supposed collective culture would arithmetically correspond to the sum of personal cultures.
de José Saramago em entrevista para os gringos.

...

My Review about Blindness:

This movie isn't really about a population that went blind, but about
imprisonment and its corrupted micro-power structures that we see in
every 'prison-break' flick. And it doesn't try to be subtle as A Flew
Over the Cuckoos Nest imprisonment but goes into black/white good/bad
no-shades of Stanford Prison experiment.

Strangely, Blindness has a condescending vision about blind people to
be so powerless, they even don't care were the bathroom is; they accept
the situation as victims passing through no madness and revolt that
hunger and abuse creates in a collectivity. The only one who acts is
the one who sees (Julianne) when is too late and for the wrongest
reason: revenge.

Women must hate this movie, Julianne's husband cheats in front of her
and she accepts it right away (sure, he has his male ego hurt by her
nursing him around, but her acceptance of his cheating just doesn't
make him feel even more pitiful?) They gone to voluntary rape and she
accepts it even having the greatest tool in the land of the blind. Does
it tries to portrait that a strong woman is the one above pride? (are
we in medieval Japan?). Maybe in another context it would be
reasonable, but the story never goes deep or clever enough for the
audience to agree with her passivity.

And many things doesn't make sense: the guards shooting blind people in
the head near the outside walls; no one helps them with masks
protecting themselves from infection; that only Julianne finds food in
the dark; that the blind people on the streets doesn't talk to each
other and behave like mindless zombies. What the evil blind King will
do with his stolen jewelry?

It happens because, like the book, everything are metaphors, symbolisms
and archetypes. The real consequences aren't there and it was a
conscious choice from the authors (Saramago, Fernando and McKlevar).
Maybe they were too blind by Nobel prizes and Oscars to see that this
tale doesn't bring nothing new to the table. But still it is their
microcosmos of our society.

Another strange problem is the message: The good dog is the dog who
chose to not eat dead flesh from humans for survival. It should be:
good dogs bring dead human flesh to save you from hunger. That you must
do the unthinkable and distort the rules and morals of society to
protect who you care. Even if is wrong. But the authors of this story
see it as a savagery, that we turn into animals doing that. But isn't
that the Truth? Contradictorily, the story condemns the system, the
civilization itself in a portrait where authorities are heartless
bureaucrats that doesn't care about us. And it is just another
generalization that doesn't represent the whole truth, like stating
that all politicians are equally corrupted.

But that was the question that Blindness tried to bring: Can we live
with no authorities without turning up into savages? After all, this is
a story about the collapse of society and Saramago's sequel 'Seeing' is
about the entire population casting blank ballots after the disastrous
epidemic of Blindness.

This question fails profoundly as the movie states that people are
inherently good or bad; even in an apocalyptic situation this statement
made Blindness shallow as a Mad Max continuation. To be good or evil is
not in our genes, it is a choice, and that sometimes we are blind
enough to make the right choices.

...

Labels: Blindness, Fernando Meirelles

posted by beckspace @ 10/06/2008 06:17:00 am

Is possible a Batman without the Joker? No. But what that means?

To be so serious, or not? Or both? Or none?

...

Labels: dark knight

posted by beckspace @ 8/22/2008 05:03:00 am

Let's all praise Ben Stiller

Ben Stiller is the last guy on hollywood that has it. Mel Brooks had it, 70`s Woody Allen had it, or the Zucker-Abrahms-Zucker: To not take it not so seriously.



There is a perverse element in their humor: More cynic they are, more the punchline pays off. But then, it was not by chance that Jim Carrey gone after Stiller for Cableguy; and also was not by chance their humor got so dry, almost violent; like they did not laugh while doing it. it seemed that the Young Frankenstein formula was lost. Tropic Thunder is the opposite, it's warm. Somehow it felt like the old days of Animal House, Airplane and Steve Martin:



Not only Stiller is the last stand, he will make 400 million and will save Tom Cruise's career.

...

Labels: Ben Stiller, Tom Cruise, Tropic Thunder

posted by beckspace @ 8/19/2008 08:20:00 pm

The Brazilian VIP

Is nothing new that brazilians have an inferiority complex, that it comes in many forms and flavors. One of them is to be a VIP to feel better about ourselves, that we are not part of the middle class filthiness. In here we have a VIP structure for any service that you can think of, even colleges. Yes, colleges. The new wave of brazilians sees college as a service.

Today I tried to watch a David Lynch presentation at FAAP, the most luxurious college in Brazil. The only one that could afford Mr. Lynch's presence. The majority of their students are girls using 5 inches spike heels on daily basis; over-dressed for the night even in monday morning.






.

Only in Brazil to give tax exemptions to colleges that behave like Taj resort palaces.

...

Labels: david lynch, faap, VIP

posted by beckspace @ 8/08/2008 12:58:00 am

Brazil’s Intestine

...

Labels: brazil, daniel dantas, justice, STF

posted by beckspace @ 7/12/2008 06:18:00 am

Por Kotler, com Kotler, em Kotler

...

Labels: espm, kotler, marketing

posted by beckspace @ 6/05/2008 01:40:00 am

OK, admito

A propaganda é um defunto que nos sorri. Tirando das palavras do falecido Toscani, nosso mentor rebelde na ESPM. Mas acho que a palavra zumbi se encaixa melhor. A propaganda é um zumbi que nos sorri.

E como todo zumbi, a propaganda quer cérebros. O problema maior de enfrentar zumbis, é que às vezes o zumbi é seu amigo ou alguém da família, e você não quer matar o zumbi (a pancadas ou cortando em pedaços; regra No 1: nunca ateie fogo em zumbis).

Esse é o problema, a propaganda é um zumbi que nos sorri e ainda por cima, um amigo morto.

É assim que me sinto desde que parei de assistir TV: tem um monte de zumbis andando do lado de fora da janela. O jeito é fingir que é normal. Alguém assistiu o último filme de zumbis do Romero? Ele começa com uma banda de praça zumbis, que batem o prato, o bumbo e a corneta em intervalos muiiito lentos e desafinados. Parece um domingo à noite na televisão.

Daí no mundo de zumbis o jeito é você fingir que é zumbi também, senão eles vêm atrás de você. E aí é que eu me pergunto, será que está todo mundo fingindo serem zumbis para não perderem o cérebro também?

...

Labels: Toscani, Zumbis

posted by beckspace @ 4/21/2008 03:13:00 am

Escolhas

De tempos em tempos a vida nos obriga a fazer escolhas.

No final de nossas vidas nós somos estas escolhas. Para o bem, para o mal, ninguém pode se redimir do que é. E a cada ano, as escolhas passam, até o momento em que não há mais nenhuma.

As escolhas não vêm de dentro, elas nos acompanham; até o momento em que elas se despedem de nós. De certa maneira as não assumir é a escolha em si. É covarde, porém é uma escolha.

Quando as escolhas são proteladas para sempre a vida nos coloca em xeque-mate. Viramos espectadores, o nosso senso de propósito briga com a psique e mergulhamos na depressão de que nada vale. Somos obrigados a continuar com a vida quando ela deixa de ser nossa. E isso foi uma escolha.

É normal para quem protelou suas próprias escolhas sentir raiva de quem as assumiu. A raiva vem porque as escolhas não dão uma única chance, mas elas se repetem como um eco que aos poucos some no vazio. A revolução estava um passo a frente, e alguém atendeu o chamado antes, alguém que não deixou a vontade morrer em trivialidades. Quanto mais parecidos somos com nossos inimigos, mais nós os odiamos.

O que me dana é que todos são tão preocupados na superfície, mas descendo cinco metros na água onde a pressão dobra, a preocupação é uma manutenção descartável. Eu não me excluo disso e preciso mudar.

Pessoas fumam, bebem e meditam para calibrar o pé no chão; às vezes sentem remorso das escolhas feitas. Que às vezes uma pequena escolha pode mudar a vida em um sentido cósmico; que uma escolha pode fechar as janelas de outras, e se demoram anos para entender que antigas escolhas não estão mais presentes. Lucidez é um veneno para quem deixou as escolhas passarem. É difícil ser a mesma criança que éramos antes de apanhar da vida.

Outras vezes assumimos uma escolha errada porque era o que se esperava de nós, de que é o normal, o certo, responsável, digno. É a típica armadilha da vida da qual ninguém nasceu preparado e não existe como ensinar. Só podemos olhar para o passado e imaginar as oportunidades que poderiam ter sido. Podemos dizer que isto é uma lição, mas o trem já foi embora e a lição que fica é inútil.

Pessoalmente não conheço ninguém que tenha escolhido a pílula vermelha; quase todos nós dormimos e acordamos para acreditar no que quer que queiramos acreditar. Depois desta escolha interpretamos os personagens que nos foram dados, atuando para uma câmera que não existe --e canastra ainda. Somos canastras e espectadores; a terra continua girando indiferente, as estrelas olham para nós pensando demos a vida, a capacidade de mudar e entregar um sentido para o cosmos, e mesmo assim, mesmo sabendo disso, eles escolhem jiboiar até serem enterrados vivos.

Já fiz a minha escolha, boa sorte pra quem fica.

...

Labels: Blue Pill, Red Pill

posted by beckspace @ 4/16/2008 09:11:00 pm

Technological Singularity

Technological Singularity is upon us, it already started, the cat is out of the bag and has given birth to kittens. We are living this tech in our pockets: 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Watch Blood and Machines at TED by Ray Kurzweil.

GRAPH 1; GRAPH 2; GRAPH 3; GRAPH 4





and now…

WHY THE FUTURE DOESN'T NEED US
by Bill Joy, Java's father (Sun Microsystems' founder)

(excerpts; Wired 8.04, 2000)

Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior competitors.

The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently.

People won't be able to just turn the machines off

Human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race.

In a completely free marketplace Robotic industries would compete vigorously among themselves for matter, energy, and space, incidentally driving their price beyond human reach. Unable to afford the necessities of life, biological humans would be squeezed out of existence. Our main job in the centuries to go will be "ensuring continued cooperation from the robot industries" by passing laws decreeing that they be "nice" (Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics), and to describe how seriously dangerous a human can be "once transformed into an unbounded superintelligent robot." Moravec's view is that the robots will eventually succeed us - that humans clearly face extinction.

Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.

Because of the recent rapid and radical progress in molecular electronics - where individual atoms and molecules replace lithographically drawn transistors - and related nanoscale technologies, we should be able to meet or exceed the Moore's law rate of progress for another 30 years. By 2030, we are likely to be able to build machines, in quantity, a million times as powerful as the personal computers of today - sufficient to implement the dreams of Kurzweil and Moravec.

As this enormous computing power is combined with the manipulative advances of the physical sciences and the new, deep understandings in genetics, enormous transformative power is being unleashed. These combinations open up the opportunity to completely redesign the world, for better or worse: The replicating and evolving processes that have been confined to the natural world are about to become realms of human endeavor.

In designing software and microprocessors, I have never had the feeling that I was designing an intelligent machine. The software and hardware is so fragile and the capabilities of the machine to "think" so clearly absent that, even as a possibility, this has always seemed very far in the future.

But now, with the prospect of human-level computing power in about 30 years, a new idea suggests itself: that I may be working to create tools which will enable the construction of the technology that may replace our species. How do I feel about this? Very uncomfortable. Having struggled my entire career to build reliable software systems, it seems to me more than likely that this future will not work out as well as some people may imagine. My personal experience suggests we tend to overestimate our design abilities.

The dream of robotics is, first, that intelligent machines can do our work for us, allowing us lives of leisure, restoring us to Eden. Yet in his history of such ideas, Darwin Among the Machines, George Dyson warns: "In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines." As we have seen, Moravec agrees, believing we may well not survive the encounter with the superior robot species.

How soon could such an intelligent robot be built? The coming advances in computing power seem to make it possible by 2030. And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.



A second dream of robotics is that we will gradually replace ourselves with our robotic technology, achieving near immortality by downloading our consciousnesses; it is this process that Danny Hillis thinks we will gradually get used to and that Ray Kurzweil elegantly details inThe Age of Spiritual Machines.

But if we are downloaded into our technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human? It seems to me far more likely that a robotic existence would not be like a human one in any sense that we understand, that the robots would in no sense be our children, that on this path our humanity may well be lost.

It is most of all the power of destructive self-replication in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) that should give us pause. Self-replication is the modus operandi of genetic engineering, which uses the machinery of the cell to replicate its designs, and the prime danger underlying gray goo myth in nanotechnology. Stories of run-amok robots like the Borg, replicating or mutating to escape from the ethical constraints imposed on them by their creators, are well established in our science fiction books and movies. It is even possible that self-replication may be more fundamental than we thought, and hence harder - or even impossible - to control.

Artificial Nano T4 Bacteriophage ∇


In November 1945, three months after the atomic bombings, Oppenheimer stood firmly behind the scientific attitude, saying, "It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity, and that you are using it to help in the spread of knowledge and are willing to take the consequences." Two years later, in 1948, Oppenheimer seemed to have reached another stage in his thinking, saying, "In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge they cannot lose."

Nearly 20 years ago, in the documentary The Day After Trinity, Freeman Dyson summarized the scientific attitudes that brought us to the nuclear precipice: "I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles - this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds."

The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups. They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them.

Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication.

I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.

The new Pandora's boxes of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are almost open, yet we seem hardly to have noticed. Ideas can't be put back in a box. They can be freely copied. Once they are out, they are out. Churchill remarked, in a famous left-handed compliment, that the American people and their leaders "invariably do the right thing, after they have examined every other alternative." In this case, however, we must act more presciently, as to do the right thing only at last may be to lose the chance to do it at all.

As Thoreau said, "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us"; and this is what we must fight, in our time. The question is, indeed, Which is to be master? Will we survive our technologies?

We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes. Have we already gone too far down the path to alter course? I don't believe so, but we aren't trying yet, and the last chance to assert control - the fail-safe point - is rapidly approaching. We have our first pet robots, as well as commercially available genetic engineering techniques, and our nanoscale techniques are advancing rapidly. While the development of these technologies proceeds through a number of steps, it isn't necessarily the case - as happened in the Manhattan Project and the Trinity test - that the last step in proving a technology is large and hard. The breakthrough to wild self-replication in robotics, genetic engineering, or nanotechnology could come suddenly, reprising the surprise we felt when we learned of the cloning of a mammal.

Neither should we pursue near immortality without considering the costs, without considering the commensurate increase in the risk of extinction. Immortality, while perhaps the original, is certainly not the only possible utopian dream.

"At the dawn of societies, men saw their passage on Earth as nothing more than a labyrinth of pain, at the end of which stood a door leading, via their death, to the company of gods and to Eternity. With the Hebrews and then the Greeks, some men dared free themselves from theological demands and dream of an ideal City where Liberty would flourish. Others, noting the evolution of the market society, understood that the liberty of some would entail the alienation of others, and they sought Equality."

Dalai Lama argues that the most important thing is for us to conduct our lives with love and compassion for others, and that our societies need to develop a stronger notion of universal responsibility and of our interdependency; he proposes a standard of positive ethical conduct for individuals and societies that seems consonant with Attali's Fraternity utopia.

(…)

People who know about the dangers still seem strangely silent. When pressed, they trot out the "this is nothing new" riposte - as if awareness of what could happen is response enough. They tell me, There are universities filled with bioethicists who study this stuff all day long. They say, All this has been written about before, and by experts. They complain, Your worries and your arguments are already old hat.

Do you remember the beautiful penultimate scene in Manhattan where Woody Allen is lying on his couch and talking into a tape recorder? He is writing a short story about people who are creating unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves, because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe.

Is required that scientists and engineers adopt a strong code of ethical conduct, resembling the Hippocratic oath, and that they have the courage to whistleblow as necessary, even at high personal cost.


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

"From these several considerations I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement, will naturally suffer most. And we have seen in the chapter on the Struggle for Existence that it is the most closely-allied forms, varieties of the same species, and species of the same genus or of related genera, which, from having nearly the same structure, constitution, and habits, generally come into the severest competition with each other. Consequently, each new variety or species, during the progress of its formation, will generally press hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them."

CHARLES DARWIN, The Origin of Species / Natural Selection / Extinction




∆ A representation of a mammalian neocortical column, the basic building block of the cortex. The representation shows the complexity of this part of the brain, which has now been modeled using a supercomputer. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade.


...

THE SIX EPOCHS:
(IN THE EVOLUTION OF PATTERNS OF INFORMATION)


(from Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil, 2005)


"First we build the tools, then they build us."
—MARSHALL MCLUHAN

"The future ain't what it used to be."
—YOGI BERRA

"You know, things are going to be really different! ... No, no, I mean really different!"
—MARK MILLER (COMPUTER SCIENTIST) TO ERIC DREXLER, AROUND 1986

"What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid. In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve the creation of still more intelligent entities—on a still-shorter time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past: Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work—the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals. From the human point of view, this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control."
—VERNOR VINGE, "THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY," 1993

"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make."
—IRVING JOHN GOOD, "SPECULATIONS CONCERNING THE FIRST ULTRAINTELLIGENT MACHINE," 1965




Epoch One: Physics and Chemistry.

We can trace our origins to a state that represents information in its basic structures: patterns of matter and energy. Recent theories of quantum gravity hold that time and space are broken down into discrete quanta, essentially fragments of information. There is controversy as to whether matter and energy are ultimately digital or analog in nature, but regardless of the resolution of this issue, we do know that atomic structures store and represent discrete information.

A few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, atoms began to form, as electrons became trapped in orbits around nuclei consisting of protons and neutrons. The electrical structure of atoms made them "sticky." Chemistry was born a few million years later as atoms came together to create relatively stable structures called molecules. Of all the elements, carbon proved to be the most versatile; it's able to form bonds in four directions (versus one to three for most other elements), giving rise to complicated, information-rich, three-dimensional structures. The rules of our universe and the balance of the physical constants that govern the interaction of basic forces are so exquisitely, delicately, and exactly appropriate for the codification and evolution of information (resulting in increasing complexity) that one wonders how such an extraordinarily unlikely situation came about.

Where some see a divine hand, others see our own hands—namely, the anthropic principle, which holds that only in a universe that allowed our own evolution would we be here to ask such questions. Recent theories of physics concerning multiple universes speculate that new universes are created on a regular basis, each with its own unique rules, but that most of these either die out quickly or else continue without the evolution of any interesting patterns (such as Earth-based biology has created) because their rules do not support the evolution of increasingly complex forms. It's hard to imagine how we could test these theories of evolution applied to early cosmology, but it's clear that the physical laws of our universe are precisely what they need to be to allow for the evolution of increasing levels of order and complexity.


Epoch Two: Biology and DNA.

In the second epoch, starting several billion years ago, carbon-based compounds became more and more intricate until complex aggregations of molecules formed selfreplicating mechanisms, and life originated. Ultimately, biological systems evolved a precise digital mechanism (DNA) to store information describing a larger society of molecules. This molecule and its supporting machinery of codons and ribosomes enabled a record to be kept of the evolutionary experiments of this second epoch.


Epoch Three: Brains.

Each epoch continues the evolution of information through a paradigm shift to a further level of "indirection." (That is, evolution uses the results of one epoch to create the next.) For example, in the third epoch, DNA-guided evolution produced organisms that could detect information with their own sensory organs and process and store that information in their own brains and nervous systems. These were made possible by second-epoch mechanisms (DNA and epigenetic information of proteins and RNA fragments that control gene expression), which (indirectly) enabled and defined third-epoch information-processing mechanisms (the brains and nervous systems of organisms).

The third epoch started with the ability of early animals to recognize patterns, which still accounts for the vast majority of the activity in our brains.10 Ultimately, our own species evolved the ability to create abstract mental models of the world we experience and to contemplate the rational implications of these models. We have the ability to redesign the world in our own minds and to put these ideas into action.


Epoch Four: Technology.

Combining the endowment of rational and abstract thought with our opposable thumb, our species ushered in the fourth epoch and the next level of indirection: the evolution of humancreated technology. This started out with simple mechanisms and developed into elaborate automata (automated mechanical machines). Ultimately, with sophisticated computational and communication devices, technology was itself capable of sensing, storing, and evaluating elaborate patterns of information. To compare the rate of progress of the biological evolution of intelligence to that of technological evolution, consider that the most advanced mammals have added about one cubic inch of brain matter every hundred thousand years, whereas we are roughly doubling the computational capacity of computers every year (see the next chapter). Of course, neither brain size nor computer capacity is the sole determinant of intelligence, but they do represent enabling factors. If we place key milestones of both biological evolution and human technological development on a single graph plotting both the x-axis (number of years ago) and the y-axis (the paradigm-shift time) on logarithmic scales, we find a reasonably straight line (continual acceleration), with biological evolution leading directly to human-directed development.


Epoch Five: The Merger of Human Technology with Human Intelligence.

Looking ahead several decades, the Singularity will begin with the fifth epoch. It will result from the merger of the vast knowledge embedded in our own brains with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our technology. The fifth epoch will enable our human-machine civilization to transcend the human brain's limitations of a mere hundred trillion extremely slow connections.

The Singularity will allow us to overcome age-old human problems and vastly amplify human creativity. We will preserve and enhance the intelligence that evolution has bestowed on us while overcoming the profound limitations of biological evolution. But the Singularity will also amplify the ability to act on our destructive inclinations, so its full story has not yet been written.


Epoch Six: The Universe Wakes Up.

In the aftermath of the Singularity, intelligence, derived from its biological origins in human brains and its technological origins in human ingenuity, will begin to saturate the matter and energy in its midst. It will achieve this by reorganizing matter and energy to provide an optimal level of computation to spread out from its origin on Earth.

We currently understand the speed of light as a bounding factor on the transfer of information. Circumventing this limit has to be regarded as highly speculative, but there are hints that this constraint may be able to be superseded. If there are even subtle deviations, we will ultimately harness this superluminal ability. Whether our civilization infuses the rest of the universe with its creativity and intelligence quickly or slowly depends on its immutability. In any event the "dumb" matter and mechanisms of the universe will be transformed into exquisitely sublime forms of intelligence, which will constitute the sixth epoch in the evolution of patterns of information.

This is the ultimate destiny of the Singularity and of the universe.

…

There are some laws that comes to mind:

Dollo's Law:

Amara's law:

Hanlon's razor:

Wirth's law:


Murphy's (Finagle's) Law:

Labels: GNR, Paradigm Shift, Technological Singularity

posted by beckspace @ 3/16/2008 05:38:00 pm

It's time to blame MKT

I knew that day would come, the day when a test audience would abort a movie. Spike Jonze is near to rewrite, reshoot, recast, restart an entire 70m-budget movie because the screening said that Where the Wild Things Are will not be another Harry Potter.

Kubrick hated screenings but acknowledged that they are necessary, that you only understand the real impact with a audience. But what's happening to Jonze is unreal, to remake a movie he just shot?! Screenings should be used to map distribution, to create communication strategy, to define a public for the film, and not... to define a movie for the public.

Under contract, Clint Eastwood doesn’t allow test screenings for his movies. And I don't think that's because he disagrees Kubrick, but because he must know the hysterical bubbles of speculation that arise and burst from these screenings.

The critical review from a screening is something like: the movie is slow (47%), confusing (35%) and depressing (18%), fix it. And there is more stupidity yet, a marketing paradox in the screenings: the generic test audience doesn't know what they are going to get. Is something like 'close your eyes and open your mouth' to test a cheesy puff when the girl thought in a bubblegum. She will hate it, it can be Prima Donna, she'll spit it. Is not by chance that only bubblegums survive the screenings (80/20 Law).

But aside this paradox, a test screening tries to give the generic audience what they want. And this leaves everyone that isn't 'generic audience' outside of the game. "Oh, my balls" is the future of the mainstream cinema if this lack of freedom continues. Cinema will not be special for anyone, it will be just... generic.

Jonze probably will not use Jim Henson puppets into his movie anymore. It will be a friendly CG like a cartoon to taste more like a bubblegum. Kids in this ridiculous endless protection to not be scared, depressed, with doubts or pain will be defenseless in a hostile environment (aka school), it's when their fathers decide to say 'he's not a kid anymore'. Jonze is the right guy to give us a movie about losing the innocence, because only nixon can go to china. No other director is more cynical than him to do this.

Here's an old test Jonze made with a Jim Henson puppet for the movie ∇

Labels: marketing, Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are

posted by beckspace @ 3/07/2008 12:57:00 am

It’s a hack

shame, they didn't need it

...

Labels: Cansei de Ser Sexy, CSS, Web 2.0

posted by beckspace @ 3/07/2008 12:07:00 am

Forgettable Times

The Oscars should be aspiring, oh well, it depresses me; each year its resemblance of a funeral grows. Is Hollywood dying? Movie business is not bigger than life anymore? Is just a business like any other now? The Ceremony looks like a motivation award for the best salesman.

The american cinema is shrinking in me; it’s the size of a bean and it once was time the size of the moon. They projected some scenes from past ceremonies that made me miss the time that I cared. Is easy to tell why’s different; I watched most of their movies and none hooked me. The same last year, and the year before that. Since American Beauty I stopped caring. American Beauty and Matrix were the last whisper before the long way down.

There is no risk today, no new real talent, no breakthrough. Everything we have now in the Oscar we already had before 9/11; from Pixar, Cohens, George Clooney to PT Anderson, there is nothing new. Nothing refreshing. Nothing. Today I regret that I cursed Titanic and Gladiator.

The lack of passion disturbs. It should be ‘Surprise me, astonish me’, but in the first frame the hope of it vanishes. My bored soul makes me watch The Office instead. Or Arrested Development… the TV series have so more heart than movies these days, but still, they can’t fulfill the hole left by Hollywood.

I want to blame the marketing. Movie MKT kills its art. Because all that 4 Ps, 7 Ps, new 4 Ps in MKT theory use an underlying principle: mapping consumer behavior. And survey after survey they seek what we want to have at what price. AVP anyone? The Survey said yes.

Art became one byproduct of MKT. Spielberg knows it, and he’s the last samurai, the only one who can fight a mass marketeer. And more the MKT becomes the universal reason to make movies, more frustrated will be the viewers. Because all you need is a big opening day, it can be garbage, all you need is a brainfuck trailer. And that’s why the telly has more heart than Hollywood, TV must deliver its promise, they need to hook us episode after episode. Studio heads don’t care if a movie fulfills any promise, the ticket is already bought. They are poisoned by this short-term thinking.

...

Labels: hollywood, marketing, movie, oscar, oscars

posted by beckspace @ 2/25/2008 01:00:00 am

Isso é Foda

e barato, e porra, a Nintendo não pensou nisso? Bem, é genial

Labels: breakthru

posted by beckspace @ 2/21/2008 11:41:00 pm

Tropa de Elite por Gringos

I’m friggin'loving the critics reactions to our brazilian reality, I mean… movie, Elite Squad.

REUTERS:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews

“For some reason, their work involves getting second jobs so that Neto works at the police auto shop while Matias goes to law school.”

It’s from Reuters, believe it. This guy on reuters doesn’t have a clue of what he saw. It has more:

“though the story is told in a confusing mix of time-shifting flashbacks, and at the end there's still no sign of the pope.”

HE WANTED TO SEE THE POPE! Fuck me. It continues...

"Neto and Matias have to make it through an odd sort of training camp that involves ritual humiliation. Then, they're handed high-powered rifles and sent into the slums to kill everybody."

Never saw a critic so clueless. But not every surprised critic is so dumb:

http://www.screendaily.com/ScreenDailyArticle

"the film could be read as a nihilistic, even reactionary statement - to wit, that in a corrupt world, brute integrity is the only response. But you rarely feel that Padilha and his collaborators are making this stuff up"

Variety calls the movie facist so many times, and even compares it to Rambo, and also says:

http://www.variety.com/review/

"a one-note celebration of violence-for-good that plays like a recruitment film for fascist thugs (...) Though pic was Brazil’s top grosser of 2007, arthouse auds won’t coddle to the inescapable right-wing p.o.v (...) Charges of fascism by pic’s critics aren’t merely knee-jerk liberal reactions, but an unimpeachable statement of fact."

This one also didn't get what it was about. After those reviews, Elite Squad won the Golden Bear, and they changed the approach to something more respectable:

"Jose Padilha’s controversial Brazilian crime actioner "The Elite Squad,” an examination of police corruption and gang violence, took the Golden Bear at the 58th Berlinl Intl. Film Festival on Saturday."

more serious, huh? But yet, they didn't accepted the golden bear:

"The Golden Bear win took local critics by surprise due to its mixed reviews, many of which accused the film of fascism and glorifying police brutality, but Padilha said the pic reflected the reality on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Some, however, welcomed the decision to award the only action film in what many critics described as an uninspired lineup."

another one, from indiewire attending the festival after the prize:

http://www.indiewire.com/ots/2008/02/berlin

"the overwhelming ugliness of that film has stayed with me, not just for its rank misogyny, dismaying though that was (women, we learned, are either weak and liberal, or sluttish, greedy and stupid), but also for its genuinely fascist sensibility -- never more evident than when one of the cops accuses a student of being scum, "like the whores, the pimps, the abortionists ... Er, excuse me?"

The critics were blind, but the berlinale jury got it: "the international jury of the film festival praised the film's depiction of the involvement of the drug barons and the elite squad in a deadly game of mutual dependence, corruption and brutality."

Padilha, the movie director, resumed it all “Many journalists didn't seem to have understood the film. I'm very concerned about that..."

Here's a review from someone who got the movie, and says exactly what we brazillians need to hear, it could be coming from some gringo's mouth, but no... ironically, it's from a PUC's professor, the university that Elite Squad portraits:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/globalisation/tropa_de_elite

"The black gear and chilling symbol (a sword inside a skull) are not just for show: the regiment is used to getting what it wants, if necessary via torture and killing. Don't forget, this is war. (...) The effect has been felt in Brazil's television news programmes, which now show Bope's latest operation or a helicopter-led assault by black-clad caveiras (skulls) who shoot drug-dealers (real or suspected? No one is asking) as they run for their life through the favelas. Tropa de elite has thus returned the debt it borrowed from reality, and with interest.(...) Brazil needs to learn how to live peacefully as a political community. The responsibility of creating it is one that all Brazilians must accept, including Capitão Nascimento, including artists."

Even so, that's the beauty of cinema, only looking from outside to understand what we are.

...

Labels: critics, elite squad, journalists, tropa de elite

posted by beckspace @ 2/18/2008 12:13:00 am

Classified information stolen from Petrobras while in Halliburton's custody

Well, reuters is not giving this news, so what a blogger can do?

Secret deepwater research data(*) from Petrobras disappeared while they were transported in a container by Halliburton. Including information of the giant Tupi oil field (12~30 billions of light crude oil barrels) under the Santos basin at 200km (125 miles) from Brazilian cost. *Petrobras deepwater research opened up a new horizon for oil exploration held in rocks beneath salt layers that reaches thickness of over 2,000 meters (660 feet).

The brazilian government is treating the stolen data as a matter of state using federal forces and intelligence to retrieve it. Two computers and external hard-drives were missing from a container leaving a Santos basin Petrobras oil platform to Macaé, Rio de Janeiro.

And I as blogger could ask... why a fox is the caretaker of the golden egg?

...

Labels: Halliburton, oil, Petrobras, Tupi oil field

posted by beckspace @ 2/16/2008 11:16:00 am

duas palavras compostas da moda:

posted by beckspace @ 2/16/2008 01:09:00 am

Obama, the band-aid

Why there are yankee troops over there? Oil. There is nothing else besides it. Whoever wins this election will be the man, or the woman, whatever, to tell their people in the most cautious way: “we can’t afford an Oil Crisis, no one can, if we leave Iraq, if Chavez halts the American supply, and if the Saudis turn their back to us, we’ll be back to the paleolithic age. That’s what is in stake, not global warming. At any time it can happen to us, and that’s the real terrorism. If it happens, it will be the big one, it’ll cripple our economy, the oil will not cost one hundred, but a thousand. And we will pay whatever the market charges us to oblivion. Because we need it for our survival, it’s much more stronger than an addict fix, it just can’t ever happen. We were lucky that we survived the first Oil Crisis in the 70’s because we had reserves, but now we don’t. That’s why we need this war. Sorry that the government said to you that it was about terror, freedom, democracy and a little revenge for 9/11. Otherwise, you would never agree.”

Ok, and now the least worst viable candidate is Obama. I watched every interview, every youtube manifestation, and I still don’t know who is he. I see a promoter trained to only answer in the safest way to not lose consumers. He says ‘Change’ and he says changes need to be ‘Responsible’. This is double talk. This is the basic ABC in the politics manual. "We can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission". Why US can't retreat? Oil. He can't say 'bring the troops home', but can say 'phased redeploy'. "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars" Maybe he was once against the dumb war, mainly because it was very dumb doing so without UN cooperation. But he was never against The war.

Obama talks about reducing 80% of the carbon emissions by 2050; it’s hell easier to goal 2050 with bold standards than a realistic 8% in four years. He says that he supports biofuel, but as most politicians he sustained heavy tariffs on imported Ethanol, something that doesn’t happen with imported Oil. His position is what prolongs the biological economic impossibility of corn’s Ethanol. There are billions in interest always saying to protect the good old farmers. It means that every American will pay almost a dollar of taxes per gallon of Ethanol; the ethanol’s market will never make it in those conditions... even now that the international prices of ethanol are cheaper than Oil. The US taxes policy makes the citizens to embrace foreign Oil paid with military invasions, blood, dollar inflation and social security. Americans can say that foreign Ethanol is another dependency, but then, and that’s a great BUT THEN: is not concentrated on three or four countries. Which normally means war, not trade.

There is always a teleprompter for Obama; he can’t speak his mind in the same way Bush can’t speak his; that’s why Bush sounds dumb and Barack sounds thoughtful sometimes. He’s not so different from Ms.Clinton or John Kerry. Because truth is too harmful for the US Oil survival; it’s just too greedy for young soldiers to die for. Obama says that US need to be responsible with Iraq people... Bullocks. Soldiers know it. There is no fucking way that your presence there creates stability for the Iraqis, it harms them. It’s the fucking Oil stability that matters.

And now you and I are beginning to get why there is no real democracy. In a mega-corporationed world, the politic dynamics are just a bridge between social cries and lobby interests. There is no vision, no ideology, no utopia. Republicans and Democrats… what’s the difference? Even republicans are defending welfare.

In the end Obama is just another guy who got luck to be in the right place at the right time with the right smile. What he brings to the table is the same shit with discreet fashion that neocons already brought. Including the use of a nuclear strike.

They and us know how will be the future. Its something called Green Economy. And green economies require transparency. Transparency in all levels: from countable sheets to biohazard. Information is breaking to be free; you and I know this: transparency is forcing itself to society at this very moment. The status-quo is not accepting this and never will. And you know which side Obama is. And you also must have to know who will win in the history books.

And

Obama approved several money bombs for the war. He says this is a dumb war, but, again, he was lucky to not be in the senate at that time, or he would succumb to do as his democratic colleagues did, would approve the war. The real question is how ineffectual Obama will be; he knows that he can’t move the troops from Iraq in this mandate. There is no international agreement on whom belongs Iraq’s Oil. It’s a pick or drop situation. He won’t drop. Obama’s ambition in this matter is to create other… mindset; but leave Iraq? Obama says irresponsible. Iraq is no Vietnam. For more I like Gravel, he’s wrong on this one, perhaps Ron Paul too. Vietnam was between two geopolitical forces, this one is a war over oil. Every war is different, for more that the stupid teachers said to us, history never repeats itself. There are hedge funds to prove it. The future is so unpredictable that doing nothing is one way to go. And that’s the Obama’s political position.

Maybe the most intrepid move of Obama is to cut NASA funds to give it to teachers; okay, teachers need it, but he has to cut it away from science? Why not… the military, its so much less than 1%. And that would mean something. He can’t… the Oil, damn it.

Obama will give universal health care by doing the job right. That’s the plan: to use the taxes. That’s it: an act of will. Next.

He defends Net Neutrality. If you wanted a reason to vote for him, you have at least one.

There is another thing that maybe help you to vote in Obama: Fiscal Responsibility. And that means: Reaganomics. Pretty Republican. Who cares which party is he?

And the voters will choose the next American Idol and forget it.

I wanted Ron Paul to be the next yankee president, it could be a work of fiction.

...

Labels: biofuel, election, ethanol, iraq, obama, oil, usa

posted by beckspace @ 2/15/2008 04:25:00 pm

fishes out of water

digg, reddit and slashdot didn't make any noise about Spielberg and the chinese Olympics this whole week. What's going on? What really matters in there? I guess the Top Submitters don't read newspapers.

...

Labels: digg, reddit, slashdot

posted by beckspace @ 2/15/2008 02:57:00 am

Temos um Nome

Para a adaptação de The Office no Brasil, o primeiro e mais difícil passo é criar o background. Acredito que meio passo foi dado:

LINK

...

posted by beckspace @ 1/29/2008 01:45:00 am

Actual North

based on the early use of magnets in compasses they were named the "north pole" and the "south pole", with the north pole being the pole that pointed north. When it was later understood that opposite poles attract, a terminological dilemma arose: the Earth's North Magnetic Pole and the pole of the magnet that was attracted to it could not have the same polarity. By convention, the "north pole" of a magnet remained defined as the one attracted to the Earth's North Magnetic Pole, and by this definition the Earth's North Magnetic Pole is physically a magnetic south pole. Conversely, the Earth's South Magnetic Pole is physically a magnetic north pole.




The earliest reference to a specific magnetic direction finder device is recorded in a Song Dynasty book dated to 1040-44. Here we find a description of an iron "south-pointing fish" floating in a bowl of water, aligning itself to the south. The device is recommended as a means of orientation "in the obscurity of the night."


Geomagnetic reversal is a change in the orientation of Earth's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south become interchanged. These events, which are believed to last a few hundred to a few thousand years, often involve an extended decline in field strength followed by a rapid recovery after the new orientation has been established. Today the actual magnetic South is located at in northern Canada at 82.7° N 114.4° W.



...

Labels: North Pole, South Pole

posted by beckspace @ 1/29/2008 12:46:00 am

posted by beckspace @ 1/16/2008 11:18:00 pm

There is only one constant in the internet

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


beckspace says:
it's back
REGIS MAX says:
jp?
beckspace says:
mighty interweb
beckspace says:
there is only one constant in the internet
beckspace says:
it always drops

this message couldn't be send to all recipients:
it's back

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Labels: almighty interweb

posted by beckspace @ 1/16/2008 10:32:00 pm

The Ideological-Fetishism or The Disgusting Internet

Está em voga dizer que a internet corrompe a sexualidade masculina; não é por menos, uma mera visita em fóruns pornôs populares deixa qualquer incauto constrangido ou revoltado: Fist-fuckings, bucetas gigantes, bestialidades, sufocamentos; é normal encontrar vídeos de mulheres vomitando durante uma chupada.

There is a tendency to say that intenet corrupts the male sexuality; just a little visit in any hardcore porn forum would let the unguarded ones disgusted: fistfuckings, giant cunts, bestiality, chokings; it is easy to find women throwing-up during a deep throat.


Deixando a escatologia de lado, tudo isso são coisas que você nunca fará ou encontrará na vida real. Isso é bem claro, essa sexualidade desviante gera solidão. Nossos impulsos sexuais se desenvolvem em direção ao que nos atrai, como a luz do Sol para as plantas, e num piscar de olhos, a planta deu um nó em si mesma. Vendo tantos fetiches tão específicos aflorando e tomando conta da pornografia, é fácil imaginar que nesses extremos vem frustração de que é tudo pó, onde a única gratificação é de que existe um cúmplice anônimo na lente da câmera. Isso tudo está além da questão da homossexualidade ou qualquer outro estudo Kinsey.

Putting the nauseating part aside, those are things that you'll never do or will find in real life. It is very clear, deviant sexuality create loneliness. Our sexual impulses develops towards to what attract us, in the same way as trees growing for the sunlight; in a blink of eyes, the tree curled itself. Seeing so many specialized and specific fetishes taking the head of hardcore pornography, is easy to imagine that in those extremities frustration blows, where the only reward is that there is an anonymous accomplice in front of the camera lens. This is way beyond the homosexuality question, or any Kinsey report.


A mãe disso é o não-social. É o não-contato, a não-convivência. Isso gera a ausência de referencial: do macaco vê, macaco faz. E na hora que o macaco sai da jaula para a selva, ele quer voltar para a jaula, para casa, para o mundo seguro que ele conhece.

The main source of this is the non-social. Is the non-contact, the non-companionship. It creates the absence of referential: of the monkey sees, monkey does. And when the time comes for the monkey to be back to jungle, he’ll want to get back to cage, to home, to the safe world he knows.


Eu vejo isso acontecendo comigo em outros sentidos, minha visão de como o mundo funciona está, sem dúvida nenhuma, moldada pela internet. As minhas opiniões sobre tudo estão dissonantes do que aparece na TV, nas revistas e no jornal. Chego a ficar paranóico, afinal, a opinião de praticamente todos é moldada pela TV, revistas e jornal. Minhas referências soam vazias fora do mundo da internet, e assim minhas conversas sobre aquilo que me importa: na política, na ciência, nas artes, de tudo que é humano, me faz parecer um lunático.

And I see it happening to me in other ways: to my world vision, of how things work, it is, without question, shaped by internet. My opinions over everything are not tuned to what’s going on TV, mags and journals. Sometimes I get paranoid; of course, TV, mags and journals shape everyone else’s opinion. And all my references are unsound in everyone else’s world; and so all my conversations about what I care: politics, science, art, even sex, of everything that is human, makes me look like a lunatic.


É como se eu tivesse desenvolvido fetiches ideológicos, assuntos tão específicos que qualquer discussão de bar eu tenho que me controlar para fugir da imagem de lunático. Quando discutem Iraque, queria falar de Ron Paul. Quando discutem Big Brother, queria falar de reações 2girls1cup. Quando discutem iphone, queria falar de Steve Jobs. Quando discutem política, queria falar de economia-verde.

It's like I had developed ideological-fetishism, issues so specific that in any boozed debate I have to control myself to not show it to them, to not look like a lunatic. When people discuss about Iraq, I wanted to talk about Ron Paul. When they talk about Big Brother or any reality TV, I wanted to talk about 2girls1cup reactions. When they talk iphone, I wanted to talk about Steve Jobs. When they talk politics, I wanted to talk green-economy.


E o inverso é verdadeiro também. Fico alheio às referências do dia-a-dia, não assisto TV, não sei quem é a bola da vez, não sei qual é o assunto em pauta. E então tento ficar quieto para não falar merda. O que dificilmente acontece. E as minhas idéias de conscientizar o consumo, dinamizar a democracia, salvar o mundo através da liberdade individual, e de todas essas idéias de fundamento humanitário, ficam na goela porque é difícil encontrar meus iguais. Se falo, viro Dom Quixote. Ou pior, Policarpo Quaresma.

And the opposite is true. I alienate myself from day-to-day references, I don’t watch TV, I don’t know the flavor of the month. So I keep myself quiet to not mess with the discussion. And that’s impossible. Anyway, my ideas of consumption awareness, of new dynamics for the democracy, individual liberties, and all other ideas based on humanitarian principles don’t come out. If I do talk about them, I sound like Don Quixote, or worse, Policarpo Quaresma.


Acredito que as pessoas se filmando, gravando suas próprias reações ao assistir 2girls1cup é uma forma de aproximação. Como em uma prisão onde todos começam a batucar sem precisar de motivo. E assim, cada um em sua cela com o seu batuque se sente parte de um todo.

I believe that all those people filming their own 2girls1cup reactions is a way of coming together. As in a prison where everyone start to drum on something without any reason. And so, each one will come with a personal beat, divided in cells, will all feel part of the whole.


Aliás, as minas em 2girls1cup estão na verdade comendo chocolate.

By the way, the girls in 2girls1cup are eating chocolate.


Como fetichista ideológico, não consigo fugir das minhas compulsões, vou indo cada vez mais fundo. Assim como o cara que goza assistindo um cavalo comendo uma gordinha para coisas ainda piores. Não há esperança para mim.

As an ideological-fetishist, I can’t escape from my own compulsions; I keep going down and down. In the same fashion as the guy who comes watching a horse fucking a fat girl going to even lower stuff. There is no hope for me.


Na faculdade o que rendia de discussão inteligente era ralo, mas pelo menos era no olho, se conhecia alguém. Podia odiar o cara, mas nunca desmerecia a discussão. Agora, nos comentários do Digg e Reddit, nenhuma discussão é respeitada, ninguém se conhece, no entanto nada é ralo. Queria o melhor dos dois mundos, espero que isso não demore um século, não queria aparecer na comemoração da revolução usando bengala.

In college any discussion nearly intelligent was precious. But at the least it was in the eyes, you get to know someone. I can hate the guy, but I never demerit the discussion. Now, on Digg or Reddit comments, no discussion is respected, and you get to know no one, but something nearly intelligent is not that precious. I wanted the best of both worlds, I only hope that it don’t get one century to happen, I don’t want to use a walker in the revolution party.

...

Labels: digg, reddit

posted by beckspace @ 1/13/2008 07:48:00 pm