a post about pain 3

QUARTA

—woke up @ 9:30 : I'M SO SCREWED!

— speedreading : ACTUALLY, I'M FUCKED!

— work/study : HOJE NÃO CONTA

— jogging: 19 minutos!

a post about pain 2 : recap

SEGUNDA

— woke up @ 7:20 : GREAT

— speedreading : 0.5 BAD

— gym : 2h

— work/study : not sure, but probably bad

TERÇA

— woke up @ 9:30 : VERY VERY BAD

— speedreading : PLEASE KILL ME

— work/study : 4h, 5h ? NOT ENOUGH!

a post about pain

— woke up @ 9am : WRONG ANSWER

— speedreading: 1 : NOT GOOD

— jogging: 18 minutos e 40segundos : GOOD

— 20 x 2 abs 

— 20 x 2 push-ups 

— 25 tap toes

— 30 flexões de pernas

— work: 4h : WHATEVER porque quanto mais faço, mais me dão para fazer e não ganho mais por isso!

— study: TBD 

so annoyed...

i don't need no twitter to twit, you twat!

on birthdays, chemical unbalance... and the petty bourgeoisie

Maybe every little introspective mid-January entry should include a promise like this: “drink less alcohol, drink more water”. Still, after last year’s prize-winning excess, the couple of glasses of champagne I had ten days ago made me feel somewhat remiss.

 

Order should be restored and a friend’s birthday party seemed the right place for the reckoning. The host-consort gave us a hand, pouring glass after glass of sangria, although someone should tell him that his Tarzan-like policy of “you drink, I watch” could be grounds for a fatwa. The jury, though, was still out… and probably drunk, for I do not remember singing “happy birthday” to chairwoman Mao.

 

Would she not consent on such trivial, cultural reactionary endeavor?  Oh the bourgeoisie must be left to its own devices, to wallow in its particular corrupted traditions. Is it still a birthday without that pathetic song? Who, then, can claim temporary insanity? I demand a recount!! A reenactment of sorts! How is it that again the world is seriously out of balance?

 

Indeed we seemed shiny happy people for a while and that my friends calls for celebration! Order must be restored. 

ö? ö!

Esqueci-me: ela e as amigas enfiam-se em buracos de gelo nuas e comem frango.

E em grande contraste com a minha vida:

CNN: How big was music in your life before you joined the band?

Nina Persson: I've loved music my whole life. But I never really listened to a record and thought that was something that I wanted to do. I was interested in becoming a painter, an architect, a designer. Those are the things I was interested in. But music, I never took instrument classes -- it was a random thing to start doing.

CNN: Sometime a career finds you?

Nina Persson: Yeah and I was a person who was really helped by it. I was looking for something but I didn't know what it was and it proved to fulfill what I needed at the time.

Se eu soubesse tocar guitarra e cantar, ia para Nashville ou Malmö ou [...], em vez de aturar tretas mal importadas. E não estou a falar de música!

they're swedish made and are fantastic.

Malmö rima com....

A CNN tem um programa chamado My City_My Life. Esta semana coube a Nina Persson, a vocalista dos Cardigans apresentar Malmö.

Muito provavelmente a Nina não escolheu os sítios que os responsáveis pelo turismo de Malmö mais gostavam que ela tivesse mostrado.

Para mim é suficiente saber que fica na escandinávia e que há um bar que disponibiliza cobertores às pessoas que queiram ir para a esplanada. Eu, que já fui para a Faculdade, no Inverno, de tshirt laranja, calças de ganga, luvas, cachecol e gorro pretos, gostei muito da ideia e sei onde se podia aplicar em Lisboa. Amanhã há euromilhões, é preciso não esquecer!

part 1


part 2

suddenly, Bagle!

Iluminado pelo espírito do Aaron Sorkin, aqui de Telavive, uma ajuda ao Sr. Ministro das Finanças:

orçamento extraordinário
orçamento fora de série

e recessão (according fo Josh) é bagle!

a point about the method of academic reading

you are reading and, suddenly you are faced with the following «(Name, year numer: page(s) number)». What are you supposed to do? Go and read said book? Not go and read said book? Keep on reading what you were reading? If you chose to read the said page(s) of said book of said author... how can you be sure you'll understand what the author meant out of context?

If you decide to keep on reading what you were reading, will you not forget to go and check or, more importantly, will there be a point to go to the (name, year: page) mentioned before? Won't you be reading some other relevant aspect?

I trully do not understand this. I trully fail to even grasp this sort of «academic» reading. Where I came from, you would read (Name A, year: chapter about X) followed by (Name B, year: chapter about X) followed by (Name C, year: chapter about X). And that would be that! It would be annoying. It would be like reading the same thing over and over again... but you knew what you were doing!!

If there is no method to this, must I conclude this is art? And if it is art, should I have not been told in advance?

What is the virtue of a proportional response?

Eu gostava de saber como é que um país dá uma resposta proporcional a um ataque. E para que serve.

Episódio 3 da Primeira Temporada de The West Wing:
escrito pelo Aaron Sorkin

Admiral FITZWALLACE
All three scenarios are comprehensive, meet the obligations of proportional response and pose minimal threat to U.S. personal and assets. To turn our attention to scenario one, or Pericles One, to use its code name...

President BARTLET
What is the virtue of a proportional response?

Admiral FITZWALLACE
I’m sorry.

President BARTLET
What’s the virtue of a proportional response? Why’s it good? ... They hit an airplane, so we hit a transmitter, right? That’s a proportional response.

Admiral FITZWALLACE
Sir, in the case of Pericles...

President BARTLET
They hit a barracks, so we hit two transmitters?

Admiral FITZWALLACE
That’s roughly it, sir.

President BARTLET
It’s what we do. I mean this is what we do.

LEO
Yes sir, it’s what we do, it’s what we’ve always done.

President BARTLET
Well, if it’s what we do, if it’s what we’ve always done, don’t they know we’re going to do it?

LEO
Sir, if you would turn your attention to Pericles One.

President BARTLET
I have turned my attention to Pericles One, it’s two ammo dumps, an abandoned railroad bridge and a Syrian intelligence agency.

Admiral FITZWALLACE
Those are four high rated military targets, sir.

President BARTLET
But they know we’re going to do that, they know we’re going to do that. Those areas have been abandoned for four days. We know that from the satellites. We have the intelligence.

LEO
Sir.

President BARTLET
They did that, so we did this, it’s the cost of doing business, it’s been factored
in, right?

LEO
Mr. President...

President BARTLET
Am I right or am I missing something here?

Admiral FITZWALLACE
No sir, you’re right sir.

President BARTLET
Then I ask again, what is the virtue of a proportional response?

Admiral FITZWALLACE
It isn’t virtuous Mr. President. It’s all there is sir.

President BARTLET
It is not all there is.

LEO
Sir, Admiral Fitzwallace...

Admiral FITZWALLACE
Excuse me Leo, but pardon me Mr. President, just what else is there?

President BARTLET
A disproportional response. Let the word ring forth from this time and this place, you kill an American, any American, we don’t come back with a proportional response, we come back [bangs fist on table] with total disaster!

you... you... arghh...

Mas agora desatou tudo a divagar? Mas que *****!

THAT'S MY THING! EVERYONE KNOWS THAT! Jesus!

Vai mas é estudar! Mas que ... arghhh!

Ok. Que tal uma coisa tipo Tordesilhas. Tu ficas com isso do médio oriente e eu fico com a auto comiseração. (as long as I get to keep Telavive, of course!)

correlate yourself

Eu adoro esta definição:

Comparative politics is a subfield of political science, characterized by an empirical approach based on the comparative method. Arend Lijphart argues that comparative politics does not have a substantive focus in itself, but rather a methodological one: it focuses on "the how but does not specify the what of the analysis." In other words, comparative politics is not defined by the object of its study, but rather by the method it applies to study political phenomena.

Peter Mair and Richard Rose advance a slightly different definition, arguing that comparative politics is defined by a combination of a substantive focus on the study of countries' political systems and a method of identifying and explaining similarities and differences between these countries using common concepts. Rose states that, on his definition: "The focus is explicitly or implicitly upon more than one country, thus following familiar political science usage in excluding within-nation comparison. Methodologically, comparison is distinguished by its use of concepts that are applicable in more than one country."

A fonte é a wikipedia e os negritos são meus.

No que me fui meter!
E fazem-se teses de mestrado nisto? [F]ocus is explicitly or implicitly upon more than one country sem bolsas de estudo? E se é quase tudo método, quanto método é preciso?

mistake!

kanguru kanguru diz me tu

O ano não corre mal, mas há uma situação absurda: desde que deixei de ter internet, já paguei mais por serviço mau e ocasional do que quando pagava os €29.90 por mês pelo serviço relativamente bom. Como?

Usando a net móvel dos meus pais que deve ter o consumo extra mais caro do país.
Usando o "internetnotelemóvel" da tmn, supostamente grátis durante um mês, e reparar que ao exceder os míseros 100MB que temos por mês, em menos de cinco minutos, fiquei sem os €25 que tinha de saldo. O que já me aconteceu duas vezes.

Pronto, lá se foi a poupança! E lá veio a despesa.