The Antoninos

"NASA feels it has to justify everything it does in practical terms. And Tupperware was one of the many practical products that came out of space travel. NASA feels it has got to flimflam you to get you to spend the money on space. That's b.s. We don't need that.

Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever".

Ray Bradbury

"The people that you love they change when you leave them behind".

Stuart A. Staples

"It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love;

so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false."

Pascal

Disturbing

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,625824,00.html

Das sementes que plantei em três lugares, ao longo do passeio entre o trabalho e a cantina, foram as que caíram em solo mais difícil as únicas que medraram.

"Other researchers argue that people are pretty good at seeing at least the building blocks of their friend’s personalities. And in certain realms, like judging intelligence and creativity, there’s evidence that our friends are actually more perceptive about us than we are, if only because any illusions they may have about us are dwarfed by the illusions we have about ourselves.
[...]
our conversations are usually meant not so much to gather information as to establish rapport and to bond - in short, to make friends. And we do that by focusing on areas of agreement and avoiding topics that might cause friction. Our natural tendency toward comradeship makes us, ironically, leery of learning too much about the people we’re befriending.
[...]
we’re good enough at picking out the important stuff to have a rough idea of what we’re getting in a relationship - and a rough idea may be all we really need. Swann and Gill coined the term “pragmatic accuracy” to describe the bounded, everyday knowledge that allows us to establish the necessary common ground for a friendship, or even a marriage. It’s just that the knowledge may never get nearly as deep as we think.
[...]
men seek out “side-by-side” friendships that center on sharing activities and interests, women look more for “face-to-face” relationships that provide emotional support and a chance to comfortably unburden themselves. Both require some measure of mutual knowledge to work, but they depend even more on a sort of nonjudgmental steadiness and presence. As much as anything else, what friends do is simply keep us company.
[...]
“If you don’t know everything about someone else, you still enjoy the time you spend with each other,” says Delia Baldassarri, a sociologist and assistant professor at Princeton who has studied people’s perceptions of their friends’ political attitudes. 'In certain ways, you may even enjoy it more'".

Drake Bennett, the Boston Globe

enter film critic mode

- "Towelhead"; the most disturbing movie for me since a long time, actually since Irrèversible (the only one that made me leave the cinema halfway through); a bit manipulative, and not even that convincing a plot, but can keep you discussing the subject of teen sexuality (and not that much that of racism) for a while

- "Harry Potter and the ball of fire or whatever"; great directing but not much of a story either, I'd say; the inner conflict of the bad guy turns out to be more of a whine than anything else, a bit shallow; worse, the Potter guy is also a teen by now but not yet involved in spicy activities with luscious ladies

exit movie critic mode

Há diferenças entre estes ladrões e os gestores do Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch ou BPN (em que JL tanto gosta de malhar). Basta pensar no enquadramento legal; ou ter noção das proporções, sensibilidade estética ou sentido de humor.

Mas não se deixe um romantismo bacoco encobrir as semelhanças. Nenhum dos moços trabalhou arduamente para justificar aqueles ganhos, não foram robins do bosque modernos, não eram sequer idealistas transviados a procurar financiar uma causa; a sorte que tiveram não foi a da lotaria, foi a de não causar mortes.

E, at the end of the day, alguns poucos levaram para casa muito dinheiro que não mereceram, à custa de tantos outros e deixando ao Estado o pagar da conta.

http://sorumbatico.blogspot.com/2009/08/mr-biggs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Train_Robbery_(1963)

Há muito tempo que um filme não me perturbava tanto. Talvez o que mais o fez depois de Irréversible (o único filme de que saí a meio; e que continuo ainda hoje a discutir).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towelhead_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irr%C3%A9versible

Uma marca da juventude é crer que há coisas inseparáveis: homem e juventude, homem e saúde, homem e mulher, homem e Deus.

Misturado entre o que ouvi, o que julguei ouvir, e o que me ouvi pensar. Devia ser sobre um filme, pelo menos falava a Catherine Deneuve.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffIaVzavIxE

Maccabees

At any point in time, about 10% of the adult population will report having some type of mental or
behavioural disorder.

WHO, 2001