Antropoceno: impacto humano no planeta

Why Information Grows

A complexidade do mundo econômico não está desconectada das leis físicas. Embora muitas tentativas metafóricas tenham sido feitas com ideias de fluxo e equilíbrio, insights mais apropriados estão associados à ideia da entropia da informação. Uma interessante discussão a esse respeito é encontrada neste interessante livro do professor César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows.

My strange clarinet

Hello people! Here are some pictures of my old clarinet. It's a wooden one, and it's a Normandy model. But I coudn't find any information about this specific model up to now. The guy who sold this to me told me it is about 80 years old. It's a Bb clarinet, but unlike the other clarinets I've seen around, this one has all its keys closed, a mechanism that resembles more a blass clarinet than a normal clarinet... Another weirds things: it is all in one wood piece! You can't separate it in two parts in the middle, as usual. Old design? If you have any information about this particular model (when was this kind of model made, why its mechanism is different, and so on...), please feel free to write!

Ela, a Navio

Just in case you need...

Bom, estamos bem longe do Halloween, mas de qualquer modo, não custa estar preparado!

Toward chaos

Modern life has taught us that both nature and humankind are more complicated than the dialectical notions of the nineteenth century supposed.

Raskin, M. G., Reconstruction and its knowledge methods.

In a good perspective

Title: A History of Mechanical Inventions
Author: Abbot Payson Usher
Brief Comments: The first chapters should be mandatory reading for everyone interested on history. It deals briefly with concepts of interpretation and with the importance of quantitative analysis whenever possible. The author carefully discuss, as well, the interconection of factors such as geography and culture, natural resources and technology. And a directy criticism is made against simple interpretations of history that take facts as part of a linear continuum through time. Usher knows that almost every society is always in a state of intercharge with its sorrounding in every aspect that matter, and that there is no single present time for a society, for each aspect of it - a particular technology, a particular institution - has its own dynamics of change. The proper term, as used by Usher, is "system of events". After such a wonderful and very open-minded introduction, the chapters to follow, dealing specifically on different aspects of history of technology, cannot be anything else but a delightful reading.

A little matter of irony

[Dear friend Souria, this one goes in English so that you can read it as well... I hope I'll be able to try some french soon!]

Is it all about irony? Two days ago I wrote this bizarre and untippical tale that started with a car accident. And now you guess what just happend! Wow, that wasn't a hard thing to guess, was it?

I had stopped on the red traffic light. I looked on the mirror and saw a car comming right toward me, and the driver was just... looking to his right to something more interesting than the stopped car (me!) in front of him! I tryied to get away from there but there were people crossing the street ahead so there was not much room for any saving maneuver...

It was not a serious crash actualy and only the painting was a little bit damaged.

What's the irony, after all? That I had a little car accident two days after writing about one, or that I only get involved in some problem with my car when I'm sober? May be I shouldn't be writing these questions in order to leave no room for future ironies...

Pois é....

"The lesson of history is that men never learn from history."

- Edward Luttwak, The middle of nowhere

The Intrinsic Nature of Things...

For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.

- H. L. Mencken

In due time: Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 - January 29, 1956), better known as H. L. Mencken, was a twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore" and the "American Nietzsche". He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century.

Read about H. L. Mencken on Wikipedia by clicking here.

Venus and Cupid

(or Aphrodite and Eros)

"Love is not something we can define. How can I resolve the meaning of the word if I claim to love my wife, my children, my dog, and my car? The only things they have in common are that they all cost me money and have to be washed, but that is not an acceptable analogy for love."

- in The 101 most influential people who never lived..., by Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan and Jefermy Salter

Process

A good process of growing up, socially speaking, can be ilustrated by the image of replacements of ambitions. The erosion of an old ambition without the coming of a new one, on the other hand, is a dangerous kind of internal death.

The Fundations

The story about free will released today on New York Times is a good one. The text is short and simple, and still full of references to many different branches of this lovely discussion.

Particularly, I was taken by surprise by the introduction of the Turing Machine by the end of the article bringing up the viewpoint of a world where we are but calculating machines but where the only way to know the outcomes of the computation is by letting the computation goes, which means that we will only know the outcome of our deterministic life when it really comes... And without prediction, the illusion of free will has indeed some place to rest into, and a lot of moral principles are spared from boring arguing....

On complexity

Complexity - The emergent science at the edge of order and chaos, written by M Mitchell Waldrop. Tells both the story of a science and a story of the scientists involved. It is a wonderful book to see how deep some questions could move those into looking for the answers of a science that had not been created yet. As for myself, I loved the reading and I already loved the subject. Reading a book like this is really a dangerous business for me, because I'm now asking what the hell is the reason why I am studying this so unambitious engineering stuff....? Do you know the answer? No matter what it is now.... few time left.