Uns instantes de lucidez
Por entre a cacofonia fadista da desgraça e do bota-abaixo, que abunda em tudo o que é opinião publica acerca do estado da nação e do mundo, é uma lufada da ar fresco, ouvir gente como Mário Soares no último Prós e Contras, a olhar para o futuro com inteligência e optimismo; ou gente como estes dois empresários portugueses, Gonçalo Quadros, da Critical Software, e Nuno Arantes de Oliveira, da Alfama, que além de sacudir o pessimismo, introduzem um intervalo de lucidez neste filme trágico de mau gosto intitulado "a crise". Se o futuro de Portugal passa por empreendedores com a qualidade destes dois, há motivos para sorrir:
Le Monde: crónica de uma queda anunciada
Tempos difíceis para a imprensa. Esperemos que os patrões dos jornais leiam notícias. O que nem sempre é óbvio: Le Monde on The Brink | Monday Note
Sobreviver ao Século XXI
Stephen Pinker, os novos média e o desenvolvimento humano
«NEW forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber.
So too with electronic technologies. PowerPoint, we’re told, is reducing discourse to bullet points. Search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge rather than dive to its depths. Twitter is shrinking our attention spans.
But such panics often fail basic reality checks. When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously.
For a reality check today, take the state of science, which demands high levels of brainwork and is measured by clear benchmarks of discovery. These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying. Other activities in the life of the mind, like philosophy, history and cultural criticism, are likewise flourishing, as anyone who has lost a morning of work to the Web site Arts & Letters Daily can attest. (...)». Continua aqui: Op-Ed Contributor - Mind Over Mass Media - NYTimes.com
So too with electronic technologies. PowerPoint, we’re told, is reducing discourse to bullet points. Search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge rather than dive to its depths. Twitter is shrinking our attention spans.
But such panics often fail basic reality checks. When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously.
For a reality check today, take the state of science, which demands high levels of brainwork and is measured by clear benchmarks of discovery. These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying. Other activities in the life of the mind, like philosophy, history and cultural criticism, are likewise flourishing, as anyone who has lost a morning of work to the Web site Arts & Letters Daily can attest. (...)». Continua aqui: Op-Ed Contributor - Mind Over Mass Media - NYTimes.com
Young and Innocent. Um grande Hitchcock esquecido
Um dos últimos filmes que o mestre fez em Inglaterra. Disponível para download em domínio público, aqui: Young and Innocent (The Girl Was Young) : Edward Black : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
Um livro importante. Ideias poderosas. De como o regresso de Deus está a mudar o mundo
«(...)The return of religion is bringing two big sets of problems. The first is the return of wars of religion. Did you ever think you would hear the phrase "wars of religion" again? It's something that we associate with the 17th century. The mid-17th century saw a determined attempt to drive religion out of politics. You basically saw, with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the establishment of the modern state system on the principle that the prince could determine the religious worship of the people who lived in his territory: cuius regio, eius religio.
That was the beginning of the great secularization of foreign policy, which went on throughout the 19th century, which was dominated by the balance of power.
Throughout the 20th century, you saw the resurgence of various ideologies in foreign affairs, but they were political ideologies, not religious ideologies. Even a decade ago, nobody really took the return of religion very seriously. In Henry Kissinger's great masterpiece, Diplomacy, a 900-page-long book, the word "religion" does not appear at all in the index. Somebody did a study of the four most important American foreign policy journals between 1980 and 1999. There were a dozen articles about religion in that entire period.
There's a wonderful quote from Madeleine Albright when she was talking with a bunch of Clintonistas in the late 1990s about the Northern Ireland peace process. One of the Clintonistas says, "Can you believe that we are talking about a religious conflict at the end of the 20th century?"
Well, we are now at the beginning of the 21st century, and you can certainly believe that we are talking about religious conflict. The world is very much out of its Westphalian box.
Look at West Africa and Nigeria. You can see a potential conflict, a conflict between fundamentalist Islam and evangelical Christianity. Right along the 10th parallel, there are numerous potential wars or, indeed, real wars of religion going on. Many of the world's older and more intractable conflicts, such as the Palestine-Israeli conflict, are now getting an ever-harder religious edge. Whatever they were in the past, they are becoming real wars of religion.
As John was saying, by the mid-21st century, China could become the world's biggest Muslim country, as well as the world's biggest Christian country, which creates a huge potential for religious conflict and wars.
The problem, of course, with religion is that once it gets involved with politics, it makes things more difficult to deal with, partly because it solidifies loyalties, partly because it inflames passions. You can compromise over land eventually, but when it's a battle between truth versus truth, compromise is much, much more difficult. So wars of religion are coming back, and they are very, very difficult to deal with.
The second problem, of course, is the spread of American-style culture wars. Europeans have always looked at America and seen these culture wars as signs of, quite frankly, American derangement.
But these culture wars are now spreading to Europe and, indeed, to much of the rest of the world. Politics increasingly, in Europe and elsewhere, is being driven by questions of value, questions of identity, questions of the meaning of life. It's not just that old technocratic debate about who gets what and how we run an established welfare state.(...)». Está tudo aqui: God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World
That was the beginning of the great secularization of foreign policy, which went on throughout the 19th century, which was dominated by the balance of power.
Throughout the 20th century, you saw the resurgence of various ideologies in foreign affairs, but they were political ideologies, not religious ideologies. Even a decade ago, nobody really took the return of religion very seriously. In Henry Kissinger's great masterpiece, Diplomacy, a 900-page-long book, the word "religion" does not appear at all in the index. Somebody did a study of the four most important American foreign policy journals between 1980 and 1999. There were a dozen articles about religion in that entire period.
There's a wonderful quote from Madeleine Albright when she was talking with a bunch of Clintonistas in the late 1990s about the Northern Ireland peace process. One of the Clintonistas says, "Can you believe that we are talking about a religious conflict at the end of the 20th century?"
Well, we are now at the beginning of the 21st century, and you can certainly believe that we are talking about religious conflict. The world is very much out of its Westphalian box.
Look at West Africa and Nigeria. You can see a potential conflict, a conflict between fundamentalist Islam and evangelical Christianity. Right along the 10th parallel, there are numerous potential wars or, indeed, real wars of religion going on. Many of the world's older and more intractable conflicts, such as the Palestine-Israeli conflict, are now getting an ever-harder religious edge. Whatever they were in the past, they are becoming real wars of religion.
As John was saying, by the mid-21st century, China could become the world's biggest Muslim country, as well as the world's biggest Christian country, which creates a huge potential for religious conflict and wars.
The problem, of course, with religion is that once it gets involved with politics, it makes things more difficult to deal with, partly because it solidifies loyalties, partly because it inflames passions. You can compromise over land eventually, but when it's a battle between truth versus truth, compromise is much, much more difficult. So wars of religion are coming back, and they are very, very difficult to deal with.
The second problem, of course, is the spread of American-style culture wars. Europeans have always looked at America and seen these culture wars as signs of, quite frankly, American derangement.
But these culture wars are now spreading to Europe and, indeed, to much of the rest of the world. Politics increasingly, in Europe and elsewhere, is being driven by questions of value, questions of identity, questions of the meaning of life. It's not just that old technocratic debate about who gets what and how we run an established welfare state.(...)». Está tudo aqui: God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World
Massacres
Pois, de massacres sangrentos percebem os turcos. Que o digam os curdos e os arménios. Também achei graça à condenação do Kremlin, essa conhecida instituição de solidariedade universal. Que o digam os chechenos. Os da Liga das Ditaduras Árabes também têm uma legitimidade moral extraordinária. Enfim, tudo bons rapazes. Tal como os militantes do IHH, os do Hamas, os do Hezbollah, o Irão, os sírios, o Kadhafi, etc. Tudo boa gente. Pelo menos, reconheça-se, são talentosos na guerra da propaganda: PM turco acusa Israel de ter cometido um «massacre sangrento» - TSF
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