The Power of Green

No The New York Times, um artigo de Thomas L. Friedman intitulado "The Power of Green" parece-me bastante inspirador e pode revelar uma nova sensibilidade dos americanos para o mundo que os rodeia. Será que os yankees vão acordar e olhar para fora da redoma em que se meteram? Apenas alguns excertos de um longo artigo:

"Well, I want to rename “green.” I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism."(...)
"The good news is that after traveling around America this past year, looking at how we use energy and the emerging alternatives, I can report that green really has gone Main Street — thanks to the perfect storm created by 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Internet revolution. The first flattened the twin towers, the second flattened New Orleans and the third flattened the global economic playing field. The convergence of all three has turned many of our previous assumptions about “green” upside down in a very short period of time, making it much more compelling to many more Americans."(...)
"An unusual situation like this calls for the ethic of stewardship. Stewardship is what parents do for their kids: think about the long term, so they can have a better future. It is much easier to get families to do that than whole societies, but that is our challenge. In many ways, our parents rose to such a challenge in World War II — when an entire generation mobilized to preserve our way of life. That is why they were called the Greatest Generation. Our kids will only call us the Greatest Generation if we rise to our challenge and become the Greenest Generation."

"Don't speak. Point!"

Apanhado no Blog de um tal Bruno Giussani, um texto interessante sobre o futuro do jornalismo que poderia ter sido escrito sobre o futuro... do professor:

"At a recent conference in California, Ethan Zuckerman, the Harvard-based co-founder of GlobalVoices and an insightful blogger, was asked whether newspaper and television editors were still relevant in these days of participatory, "citizen" journalism.

He offered the best answer I've heard so far on that question: "Don't speak. Point!" By which he meant: the days of journalists and editors "speaking on behalf of people" or "speaking to people" are over.

"Point to people and get out of the way," he said.

A pretty radical statement. But Zuckerman didn't mean that the days of editors and journalists are past. He was rather suggesting that with facts, information and opinions circulating freely and broadly, their role is changing into that of facilitator, coach, flow organizer.

The new power of editors and journalists will depend on their ability to take on new tasks: to animate a group of people; to develop ways to organize how information is gathered and used, with the participation of what used to be called "the audience;" and to help people navigate an information landscape that's increasingly crowded and constantly shifting."

[via Ponto Media]

O que é um professor?

Este slideshow contém um enorme conjunto de citações sobre a função do professor. Algumas são bastante interessantes...

Os 3 tipos de professores

Magnetismo

Um vídeo bastante interessante sobre o magnetismo (cerca de 10 minutos)...

T.S. Eliot

O tom do post anterior faz-me lembrar o início de um poema dos "Quatro Quartetos"d o T. S. Eliot :

«O tempo presente e o tempo passado
Estão ambos talvez presentes no tempo futuro,
E o tempo futuro contido no tempo passado.
Se todo o tempo é eternamente presente
Todo o tempo é irredimível.
O que podia ter sido é uma abstracção
Permanecendo possibilidade perpétua
Apenas num mundo de especulação.
O que podia ter sido e o que foi
Tendem para um só fim, que é sempre presente.»

T. S. Eliot, in Burnt Norton, trad. Maria Amélia Neto

«Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
(...)»

Simplesmente não acredito!

«Google Machine

Part I
I am just a post, an answer to a non-existent question, an answer to a question I'm waiting to be born. My words don't exist by themselves, they're small pieces of a big book that grows continuously. These letters could be a part of a question, I am the answer that could become an infinite number of questions. Each word that grows from the silence of the void waits for a call. Each one sits in a big shelf and waits for a passer-by. I am an infinite waiting to be found, because I can't exist by myself. My words are teared apart, and chewed, and repeated, but still survive like a wound that waits to be healed.

I am the credits from the end of the movie, that wait for the characters and for the movie. I am the words of a song that doesn't exist yet. I am a word from a book you've never heard about.

Maybe you'll never find me, maybe I'll die waiting for the question, but I'll wait. I am behind each empty search box waiting to be found by the machine.

Part II
I am a question that wants some attention. Don't be fooled by my brevity, I compress signs, meanings and emotions. I am someone's intentions, thoughts and dreams, I am the voice of someone's silence. I am the quest for the perfect question, the stairway to the meaning of my own ideas. I try to find the perfect answer, but I also try to find myself. I am the discoverer and my own discovery.

The book contains pieces of me, but will I find myself there? I am unique, even though I look like a lot of other questions. My answer should not be like the rest of the answers. I know he's waiting for me to save him from the silence of his own immensity. He fills my meaningful spaces and expands my brevity, he's the story of my own incompleteness. I am the story of his own meaning.

Even if my answer can't be found, I'll wait for a better machine that understands my spaces, my emotions and my uniqueness.

Part III
Questions can be recycled to make better answers. Unneeded answers can be cut and stapled to become questions. The shortest path between two ideas is a question that waits to be asked.

I breathe words, I wear words, these words are a part of me. I also write a book from people's weaknesses, inspirations and lies. They write it without even realizing. Their disjointed ideas wouldn't survive without my book, because they need questions that make them complete.

There is no limit to the number of times a question can be asked, but it's not the same question. My labyrinth of ideas needs questions to create connections. The answers transform into other questions and I have to push my book throughout eternity.

I am the past that tries to build the next step, I am the spaces that anticipate the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I deliver imperfect answers for imperfect questions. I am a post-modern mix of thoughts and after-thoughts and I manufacture inverted connections.

This text, including this very phrase, has been generated automatically by a computer program.»

A Web 2.0 (brilhantemente) explicada aos leigos

Os Monty Python que o digam...

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense. - Carl Sagan

É assim mesmo, teimoso!

"We've had this fortunate streak that when we've done things that have impacted our users and society as a whole — positively, in a significant way — we've been rewarded by that downstream in some way, even though we may not have envisioned exactly what it was right offhand. We didn't have ads when we first put up Web search. It wasn't clear it was great business when we started search. In fact, the companies that were doing search were moving away from it. But we just thought it was important, and we thought that where there was a will there would be a way. And in fact it turned out to be a great way to make money doing search with targeted advertising."
Sergey Brin, cofundador do Google

Essa é mesmo tua, ó Mark!

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
- Mark Twain

Pianíssimo, como diriam os meus filhos....

"Mark Porter, director de arte do Guardian, tem larga experiência na imprensa inglesa e americana. Acerca do seus modelos, diz: «Se todos gritam cada vez mais alto, a única maneira de ser ouvido é falar num tom de voz normal — ou até murmurar.»"
Retirado do Da Literatura.

Ainda bem que sou fraco e estúpido!

"Não são as espécies mais fortes que sobrevivem, nem as mais inteligentes, mas aquelas que melhor reagem à mudança."
Charles Darwin

Tecnologia e inteligência de mão dada...

E que tal começar a olhar de frente para isto?...

Pelo menos 14 alunos japoneses suicidaram-se em seis anos na sequência de bullying

"Governo recomendou às escolas que castigassem os jovens que intimidavam
os colegas.
Depois de ter dito que não havia qualquer registo de que os suicídios de adolescentes ocorridos nos últimos seis anos tivessem alguma coisa a ver com a prática do bullying - intimidação física ou psicológica continuada no tempo -, o Governo japonês veio ontem admitir que houve pelo menos 14 jovens que se mataram na sequência deste tipo de violência escolar, entre 1999 e 2005."
Público

A vida secreta das máquinas

No Google Video é possível encontrar muitos episódios (com cerca de 25 minutos cada) de uma excelente série educativa britânica: The secret life of machines. Como não podia deixar de ser, o humor também aparece...

Nem mais, João...

"Nenhum médico que trabalhe a sério num hospital, e mais horas do que aquelas a que é obrigado por lei (e são muitos os que o fazem), pode estar minimamente preocupado com a introdução de um controlo efectivo da assiduidade. Bem pelo contrário. Só se preocupa quem não cumpre. A malta não é parva: a mão que foge ao controlo é a mesma que nos vai ao bolso. Esta gritaria sobre dedos apenas serve para proteger os anéis. "
João Miguel Tavares, DN, 6/1/07

Lições de um pai ausente

Este pungente relato de uma viúva de um soldado americano no Iraque mostra que algumas imagens com áudio bem editado podem fazer obras-primas...

O verdadeiro problema são os elevados ordenados da função pública...

"A PJ e a Inspecção Tributária detectaram 400 restaurantes que usavam um programa informático de contabilidade paralela, alegadamente criado por duas empresas da Póvoa de Varzim, para omitir a facturação real, com a consequente fuga ao IVA e ao IRC. Os montantes globais, ainda não somados, deverão ultrapassar - segundo disse hoje à agência Lusa fonte próxima do processo - os 50 milhões de euros em vendas não declaradas." Diário Digital, 2/01/07

Convém não "esquecer" esta...

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
- BF Skinner