Monday 29 September 2008

Canta camarada, canta

Canta camarada, canta
canta que ninguém te afronta
que esta minha espada
corta dos copos até à ponta.

Eu hei-de morrer de um tiro
Ou duma faca de ponta
Se hei-de morrer amanhã
morra hoje tanto conta.

Tenho sina de morrer
na ponta de uma navalha
Toda a vida hei-de dizer
Morra o homem na batalha.

Viva a malta e trema a terra
Aqui ninguém arredou
nem há-de tremer na Guerra
Sendo um homem como eu sou.

Zeca Afonso encontrou esta melodia em Canas de Senhorim, perto da terra onde eu cresci, tinha um texto muito prosaico e banal e ele transformou nesta música heróica e de luta. Combina com Goethe's "Stirb und werde".

Thursday 25 September 2008

Spare time occupation

"...und sie verbrachten ihre Freizeit mit Streit."
(Scholten, M. 1999)

Wednesday 24 September 2008

Reggae from Lousã

http://www.myspace.com/1lovefamily
Let me limit myself to observing the land use dynamics in central Portugal. One land use option is certainly using land as a stage.

Tuesday 23 September 2008

Grounded theory soultions

"If particular sensitizing concepts prove to be irrelevant, then we dispense with them. In contrast, the logico-deductive model of traditional quantitative research necessitates operationalizing established concepts in a theory as accurately as possible and deducing testable hypotheses about the relationship between these concepts. In this model the research is locked into the original concepts."

Charmaz, 2006

Monday 22 September 2008

Na mão de Deus

Na mão de Deus, na sua mão direita,
Descansou afinal meu coração.
Do palácio encantado da Ilusão
Desci a passo e passo a escada estreita.
Como as flores mortais, com que se enfeita
A ignorância infantil, despôjo vão,
Depus do Ideal e da Paixão
A forma transitória e imperfeita.
Como criança, em lôbrega jornada,
Que a mãe leva ao colo agasalhada
E atravessa, sorrindo vagamente,
Selvas, mares, areias do deserto...
Dorme o teu sono, coração liberto,
Dorme na mão de Deus eternamente!

Antero de Quental

Sunday 21 September 2008

"Wir sind gefangene."

Oskar Maria Graf

Friday 19 September 2008

"Amamos os nossos vizinhos"

Estive a lembrar-me da conversa com um velho jornaleiro da Beira Serra. Os imigrantes sempre pensam que se dão bem com a população local, pois os Tugas costumam em geral ser muito acolhedores e simpáticos. No entanto, não é assim tão simples. Então esse jornaleiro esteve a contar-me que às vezes trabalha a dias para uns Holandeses e eles fazem isto e aquilo, já viu? Então esses Holandeses até lhe pagam mais jorna do que ele pede e do que ele costuma receber. Mas em vez de ficar contente e calado, o jornaleiro contou que, se eles passam por ele enquanto ele está a trabalhar, ele lá continua a trabalhar, mas quando eles se afastam um pouco levanta-se e diz assim para sí "filhos da puta".
Portanto quando algum estrangeiro diz para mim com entusiasmo como adora os vizinhos, penso cá para mim: "espera até eles te porem fogo no mato!"

Thursday 18 September 2008

GMO news

Auf Wiedersehen, agbiotech
Henry I Miller The Hoover Institution, 434 Galvez Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, California

"In April, the rector and external advisory board of Nürtingen-Geislingen University "urgently recommended" that a faculty member terminate his field trials, which had begun in 1996, on insect-resistant and fungus- resistant recombinant DNA- modified corn. [...]
Also in April, the Justus Liebig University announced that it would stop its planned initiation of two small field trials of insectresistant recombinant DNA-modified corn after protests by activists and local politicians [...]
Germany is the only country in which the universities--which are normally refuges dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and to the freedom to perform legitimate research--have fully capitulated to hoodlums. One might expect such deplorable, dastardly behavior in Russia or Sudan, but in a major Western democracy it is inexcusable. [...]
This capitulation to the vilest sort of antiacademic and antisocial behavior is grotesque and has dire implications. Violent, antitechnology, antisocial activists of all sorts will now smell blood. If German universities continue along this path of circumscribing a kind of "Entartete Forschung", 'degenerate research', and allowing persecution of practitioners of certain intellectual approaches, such as the use of the most precise and predictable techniques for genetic modification, the stridency and absolutism of the activists' pronouncements--and their violent tendencies--will only increase. It is not hard to draw parallels with some of the excesses of intellectual persecution in the 1930s, when the regime's objections to Entartete Kunst, or 'degenerate art', drove out such great minds and innovators as Albert Einstein, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch and Pablo Picasso. Those who ignore the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them."

Come on, only two universities it seems have shown concerns over some genetic engineering research, it's highly grotesque to view it as a repression of the pursuit of true knowledge! In addition, the techniques used in genetic engineering are highly unpredictable and random, to claim they are precise is to try to make them seem to be something they are not. And, by the way, in what way does genetic engineering contribute to advance knowledge? And, most importantly, what legitimizes DNA manipulation?

Sunday 7 September 2008

How you can make me run away

Mit blosser Intelligenz kannst Du mich jagen.
/
Pure intelligence makes me run far-far-far away.

A presença das formigas

"Quero-te mais do que à morte
Quero-te mais do que à vida."

Zeca Afonso

Monday 1 September 2008

Everyone is an angel

Finally I've got the courage to look at the World Bank Development Report 2008 "Agriculture for development". I have to say I am largely fed up with all the talk on poverty reduction promoted by the rich & powerful. Everyone pretends to be an angel coming to rescue the poor.
My gut reaction to this holy discourse full of compassion for the poor promoting some more wealth accumulation strategies is to think: "if only the rich & powerful would disappear - everything would be fine".