Adam Victor Brandizzi

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” — Neil Armstrong, 1969

“Better if he had said something natural like, ‘Jesus, here we are.’” — Edmund Hillary, 1974

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fer1972:

The Olive Fairy Book illustrated by Kate Baylay

Noah Millman joined a lively HuffPost Live panel this week to discuss Luke Epplin’s critique of the ubiquitous “magic feather” theme in children’s movies, which emphasizes “the importance of never giving up on your dreams, no matter how irrational, improbable, or disruptive to the larger community”:

As with the titular character in Walt Disney’s 1943 animated feature Dumbo, these movies revolve around anthropomorphized outcasts who must overcome the restrictions of their societies or even species to realize their impossible dreams. Almost uniformly, the protagonists’ primary liability, such as Dumbo’s giant ears, eventually turns into their greatest strength. But first the characters must relinquish the crutch of the magic feather–or, more generally, surmount their biggest fears–and believe that their greatness comes from within. …

In addition to disparaging routine labor, these films discount the hard work that enables individuals to reach the top of their professions. Turbo and Dusty don’t need to hone their craft for years in minor-league circuits like their racing peers presumably did. It’s enough for them simply to show up with no experience at the world’s most competitive races, dig deep within themselves, and out-believe their opponents. They are, in many ways, the perfect role models for a generation weaned on instant gratification.

Millman elaborates on the “Bring It On” point here:

Last year, we took our son to see the Broadway show about cheerleaders, Bring It On, based (very loosely) on the movie of the same name. He had a great time – a better time than I expected, frankly – and he had some incisive things to say about the plot afterwards. Incisive and media-savvy.

Specifically, he asked whether the original movie was owned by Disney. No, I said; it was distributed by Universal. I knew it, he said; if it had been a Disney movie, the black team would have won in the end. This wasn’t really an observation about political correctness with regard to race. It was an observation about political correctness with regard to plot dynamics.

The plot (of the musical) involves a white cheerleader, Campbell, who should be the head of the squad at her all-blonde suburban high school, being unexpectedly transferred to a “diverse” urban school where there is no cheerleading squad. But they do have a really impressive dance crew. And so, after establishing that she’s tough enough, talented enough and game enough to win the respect of the crew, she sets about turning them into a cheerleading squad by any means necessary (including lying about the possibility of winning a college scholarship). Eventually the truth comes out, and Campbell has to face what kind of person she has become in pursuit of her dream. She apologizes to her crew-cum-squad mates, and, after a rather easy reconciliation, they go on to compete for the national cheerleading title.

In the competition, instead of playing by the rules and trying their hardest to win, they “do their own thing” – they focus on their art and on the effect they are trying to achieve, and don’t fret about whether they stay inside the lines or stay within the allotted time or perform the expected moves in the expected sequence. And as a consequence – they lose. They don’t even place.

That’s what my son noticed, and what he thought was an “un-Disney” moment: the decision to make the moral not “if we are all true to each other, then we can do anything, even win nationals” but “if we are all true to each other, then we won’t really care about winning nationals.”

fuckyeahcuteanimalss:

(via I Can Has Cheezburger? - Lolcats n Funny Pictures - funny pictures - Cheezburger)

zombienormal:

J.R. Witzel, Jugend magazine, 1901.

Via.

I’ll just leave this picture of an Angora Rabbit here

clitoris420:

this is so radical

en-selektive-erinnerung:

Could be worse

Penei mas consegui ler o tão comentado artigo do Marcos Lisboa e da Zeina Latif. Li a versão mais extensa que estava rodando por aí, mas o Mansueto nos informou que há uma versão mais nova, revisada e mais sucinta. Não creio que tenha mudado muito, porém.

Como leigo, leio essas coisas mais para moldar um conhecimento básico que para ter opinião. Ainda assim, digo que o artigo é bom. Como introdução à cultura de rent-seeking no Brasil, é até melhor que o livro do Marcos Nobre sobre os protestos. Me pergunto se o artigo padece do mesmo problema de ser meio repetitivo para quem conhece o tema, mas acho que não é: primeiro, porque os rascunhos já estavam andando de mão em mão há algum tempo; segundo, porque o propósito do artigo é explicar a tese do nacional-desenvolvimentismo, ao contrário do livro, que a explanava embora não fosse o tema principal. Mesmo que fosse o caso, o artigo deve ser muito bem-vindo para estrangeiros, posto que escrito em inglês. Não me surpreenderia se houvesse menos referências em inglês sobre o tema, especialmente tão sucintas e claras.

Dito isto, houve uns pontos que me confundiram. Em especial, o índice Political System  que eles usam me pareceu estranho: contar o número de chefes de Estado e de partidos no poder nos últimos 13 anos é realmente uma métrica tão boa de democracia? Digo isso porque esperaria que contassem em um período mais longo, talvez, e essa métrica seria esquisita e.g. nos Estados Unidos. Esses são parâmetros universalmente usados? Provavelmente eu perdi algum aspecto do texto e estou falando besteira; se for o caso, podem me xingar muito no Twitter ou nos comentários.

As duas soluções propostas ao final – uma agência bem equipada para explicitar os custos de privilégios e a forçosa passagem de todos os benefícios pelo orçamento – são atrativas, mas precisam de um desenvolvimento político melhor. Afinal, uma solução que não pode ser implementada não é solução. Espero ver mais debates sobre essas possibilidades, eventualmente até projetos de leis, mas não vou apostar nisso por agora. Se souberem de algo, me avisem!

O legal do artigo, afinal, é o panorama histórico. Os autores foram bem claros e agradáveis de ler, e até onde senti parecem bem rigorosos. Para quem quer melhorar seu background sobre a história recente do Brasil – algo que muitos de nós ignoramos um tantinho – recomendo a leitura.

VDD

Staaaaawwwwp

Baby gorilla reacts to a cold stethoscope.

(via)

A neat paper from Schoenmakers et al of the Dutch Donders Institute reports on Linear reconstruction of perceived images from human brain activity

It introduces a new mathematical approach for decoding (or ‘brain reading’) the image that someone is looking at, pixel-by-pixel, based on the pattern of neural activity in their visual cortex.

The results were not bad:

On the top row, you’re looking at the actual letters shown to a volunteer during fMRI scanning. Beneath that, the estimated ‘reconstructed’ images, based purely on the corresponding brain activity.

Here’s where it gets crowd-pleasing and meta: in response to each of a certain six letters, the decoder estimated another output:

So you could say that we have a case of Brain Reading Reads “Brains” From A Reading Brain.

Note, however, that in this case all of the stimuli were single letters in the set B,R,A,I,N,S, albeit written in a variety of fonts.

So, although the decoder was attempting to reconstruct a raw image – not just pick one from a range of options as in many studies of this kind – it is perhaps no surprise that it always produced an output that had “lettery” features.

The method (a linear Gaussian algorithm) seems novel, however, in that it’s based on estimating the stimulus-response properties of each point (voxel) in the visual cortex.

I get a feeling that it’s less of a ‘black box’ than those other methods based on searching for whatever arrays of voxels happen to be associated with different stimuli.

Schoenmakers S, Barth M, Heskes T, & van Gerven MA (2013). Linear reconstruction of perceived images from human brain activity. NeuroImage PMID: 23886984

The post Brain Reading Reads “Brains” From A Reading Brain appeared first on Neuroskeptic.

gpoy

wilwheaton:

I am in talks with a watch company to possibly do an endorsement deal. It’s the first time I’ve been asked to do a product endorsement, and while it’s a really cool company and I love watches, it still feels weird. But I guess that’s where my life is at the moment, and if a company wants to help me support my family in exchange for me endorsing their product (which I wouldn’t do if I didn’t genuinely think it was cool), I don’t think I can responsibly say no.

That said … I’m going to show the company this series of images and make sure we don’t go down this road.

From Gábor J. Székely’s Paradoxes in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics, via Mark Chang’s Paradoxology of Scientific Inference:

A, B, C, D, and E make up a five-member jury. They’ll decide the guilt of a prisoner by a simple majority vote. The probability that A gives the wrong verdict is 5%; for B, C, and D it’s 10%; for E it’s 20%. When the five jurors vote independently, the probability that they’ll bring in the wrong verdict is about 1%. But if E (whose judgment is poorest) abandons his autonomy and echoes the vote of A (whose judgment is best), the chance of an error rises to 1.5%.

Even more surprisingly, if B, C, D, and E all follow A, then the chance of a bad verdict rises to 5%, five times worse than if they vote independently, even though A is nominally the best leader. Chang writes, “This paradox implies it is better to have your own opinion even if it is not as good as the leader’s opinion, in general.”

On Christmas day in the late fifties, Nelle Harper Lee received the gift of a year’s wages with a note encouraging her to spend her time writing. She wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird.” What if everyone received the same gift?

Read The Blog Post Here »

Can’t wait till the Olympics? Then whet your appetite on rhetorical acrobatics as Congress and the administration look for excuses to continue aid to the Egyptian military after the Cairo massacre. You see, we favor democracy in the Mideast, (but not in the Gulf states) and we strongly oppose regimes which kill their own people (unless the killers are “strategic partners” of Israel, in which case we don’t mind). It is now obvious that the Iranian regime is a paragon of ordered democracy compared to Egypt. But as Congress calls for ever tighter sanctions on Iran, (a colleague recently showed me a Facebook request from an acquaintance in Tehran asking that if anyone was traveling there, could they please bring some eyedrops, now impossible to get in Tehran) while we pour aid into Egypt. Is there anyone who fails to understand why this is the case?

One interesting interpretation of yesterday’s bloodshed comes from the liberal Egyptian-American Issandr el-Amrani who says that the Egyptian military is trying to provoke extremism from the Muslim Brothers in order to entrench their own rule. If the Brothers can be driven to terrorism, long term military dictatorship will seem more reasonable. Issandr’s key graf is here:

Over the last week there was much talk of divisions between this segment and those symbolically important liberal members of the government, such as ElBaradei, over whether or not to negotiate with the Brothers or break their sit-ins. The camp that eventually won does not just believe that the Brothers are not worth negotiating with. They want to encourage it in its provocative sectarian discourse, its supporters desire for violence, and the push as much as the Islamist camp as possible into being outlaws. Those who nurture such eradicateur sentiment do not so much actually want to physically eradicate all Islamists as to provoke them into a situation where their political existence will be eradicated because they will have opted for violence. They are willing to endure that violence, even a return to the counter-insurgency of the 1990s, and sporadic sectarian and terrorist attacks, because they believe it will strengthen their camp and enable them to permanently block most Islamists from politics. This is why I believe I think that analyses such as this one that argue that such an insurgency is not possible any more are wrong – not only is it possible, but it is desired .

The United States has ample reason to stay out of this. Egypt’s generals have indicated they could care less what we think. If the Saudis want a military dictatorship in Egypt, let them pay for it. The United States gains nothing but enmity from millions of Egyptians by backing a regime’s brutality against half of its population. Hypocrisy and double standards may sometimes be necessary in diplomacy, but there’s nothing to gain from it here.

Aposto que todos estão ficando com córneas de cachorro.

comicbookcovers:

Tales Of The Unexpected #85, November 1964, cover by Jack Sparling

Scientists at the Smithsonian announced the discovery of a new mammal species Thursday.

According to Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the olinguito (Bassaricyon neblina) is the first mammalian carnivore species to be newly identified in the Americas in 35 years.

Researchers believe the olinguito — which is described as a cross between a house cat and a teddy bear, or “teddycat,” — should be considered the smallest living member of the raccoon family. The olinguito belongs to the carnivora order of the raccoon family. The animal is about 2.5 feet from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail.

The animal had been seen by humans before, but that it was a “case of mistaken identity,” Helgen said.

“It was in museums, it’s been in zoos, and its DNA had even been sequenced, but no one had connected the pieces and looked close enough to realize, basically, the significance of this remarkable and this beautiful animal,” Helgen said.

Scientists previously believed the olinguito was a member of its sister species, the olingos. Helgen said olingos have longer faces and are larger and less furry than the newly-discovered olinguito.

The search for the olinguito began in 2003, when Helgen saw a drawer full of skins and skulls he was unfamiliar with at the Chicago Field Museum. The records indicated that the specimens had been found in the northern Andes, about 5,000 to 9,000 feet above sea level. Helgen and his colleagues worked with Miguel Pinto, a zoologist in Ecuador, who had shot video of the animal. In 2006, Helgen’s team found the olinguito.

Helgen said of the discovery that he felt “sheer elation, just incredible excitement but at the same time almost disbelief. This animal had been missed by everyone.”

That’s because the olinguito tends to stay in the trees and lives in misty, high-elevation areas in Colombia and Ecuador. Helgen said there are four subspecies of olinguito in different colors and size in various parts of the Andes.

The last mammal species to be discovered in the Americas was a small weasel from the Peruvian Andes in 2000. The cuscomys ashaninka is a tree rat the size of a domestic cat. The name is a reference to the nearby city of Cusco and the indigineous people of the area, the Ashaninka.

“It shows us that there’s a long way to go to exploring the whole world, but especially maybe these cloud forests,” Helgen said.

What do you think of the olinguito?

[Photo credit: Smithsonian Museum/Mark Gurney]

Smithsonian Announces Adorable New Mammal, Olinguito is a post from: The Inquisitr

Meu comentário sobre o Egito no Globo News Em Pauta 

Existe o argumento de que os Estados Unidos, através de sua ajuda de US$ 1,3 bilhões por ano para o Egito, mantêm uma influência sobre os militares. Também dizem que este dinheiro favorece a paz entre egípcios e israelenses. Mas estes dois argumentos não se sustentam mais.

ATUALIZAÇÃO – Obama cancelou exercícios militares conjuntos com o Egito e condenou duramente a violência do regime de Sisi

Meu comentário na TV Estadão sobre a crise no Egito

Tanto a administração de Barack Obama, do Partido Democrata, quanto os dois mais importantes senadores republicanos na área de política externa, John McCain e Lindsey Graham, tentaram convencer o regime do General Sisi, no Egito, a evitar uma ação violenta contra a Irmandade Muçulmana. Infelizmente, fracassaram.

O General Sisi realizou um massacre superior a qualquer ação de Bashar al Assad antes da Guerra Civil da Síria, no primeiro semestre de 2011. Na época, um ataqueque matou 20 foi considerado repudiante. No Egito, segundo números do próprio regime militar do Cairo, são mais de 500 mortos. Este valor equivale ao de vítimas de 20 anos de regime militar no Brasil. Isto é, um dia igual a 20 anos.

A paz com Israel tampouco está garantida. O ex-presidente Mohammad Morsy, atualmente preso pelo regime de Sisi embora não tenha cometido nenhum crime, garantiu mais a estabilidade do que o atual regime e do que Hosni Mubarak. Isso mesmo.

Atualmente, o Sinai é terra de ninguém e com presença da Al Qaeda. Mubarak foi incapaz de evitar um conflito entre Israel e Hamas em Gaza em 2008-09. Morsy conseguiu negociar um acordo no ano passado, convencendo o grupo palestino a aceitar uma trégua com os israelenses.

Por este motivo, os EUA deveriam suspender a ajuda militar ao Egito até o general Sisi concordar em levar adiante uma transição real para a democracia, com a inclusão da Irmandade Muçulmana no processo. O Nobel da Paz Mohammad El Baradei, que vergonhosamente integrava esta ditadura militar, percebeu seu erro e renunciou ao fictício cargo de primeiro-ministro.

Que fique claro, Sisi é popular, assim como Assad é popular e Pinochet era popular.

Note que não defendo a Irmandade Muçulmana. O grupo errou quando estava no poder, chegando a desrespeitar instituições democráticas, e viu protestos de milhões de pessoas. Mas suas manifestações, até ontem, eram majoritariamente pacíficas e com um argumento louvável – a libertação de Morsy, eleito presidente democraticamente.

Lamentável também é o incêndio de Igrejas, embora não esteja claro quem sejam os responsáveis. 

Guga Chacra, comentarista de política internacional do Estadão e do programa Globo News Em Pauta em Nova York, é mestre em Relações Internacionais pela Universidade Columbia. Já foi correspondente do jornal O Estado de S. Paulo no Oriente Médio e em NY. No passado, trabalhou como correspondente da Folha em Buenos Aires