Who’s to say what is right and wrong here?

I was once told the reason humans have two ears and one mouth was to ear twice as much they talk.

Use Your Mistakes; rigorous intellectual honesty, self-scrutiny, and trial and error. “You should learn to take a deep breath, grit your teeth and then examine your own recollections of the mistake as ruthlessly and as dispassionately as you can manage,” rather than mope and grumble. Respect Your Opponent; the essence of persuasion involves getting people to actually listen to you. And they won’t if you’re overly nitpicky, pedantic, mean-spirited, hasty, or unfair. The “Surely” Klaxon; treat the word “surely” as a rhetorical warning sign that an author of an argumentative essay has stated an “ill-examined ‘truism’” without offering sufficient reason or evidence, hoping the reader will quickly agree and move on. While this is not always the case such verbiage often signals a weak point in an argument. Answer Rhetorical Questions; Like the use of “surely,” a rhetorical question can be a substitute for thinking. While rhetorical questions depend on the sense that “the answer is so obvious that you’d be embarrassed to answer it.” Employ Occam’s Razor; “Don’t concoct a complicated, extravagant theory if you’ve got a simpler one that handles the phenomenon just as well. Don’t Waste Your Time on Rubbish; “Sturgeon’s law,” which states that roughly “90% of everything is crap.” While this may be an exaggeration, the point is that there’s no point in wasting your time on arguments that simply aren’t any good. Beware of Deepities; A deepity is “a proposition that seems both important and true—and profound—but achieves this effect by being ambiguous.”

Now I will retreat to the listening part.

Junior Wells

French Films

Generation gaps

“(…)Mankind might change as well. Several centuries hence, humans will have evolved, possibly into a different and unexpected direction. Again, a look into the prehistoric past illustrates the fact that modern man has populated the earth for a remarkably short period of time. Our defining features and characteristics emerged only within the last few millennia. It’s impossible to predict how humanity will evolve over the next ten thousand years – maybe future generations will curse us for burying precious nuclear resources in deep repositories instead of making them easily accessible. (…) We might not know what’s good for our children, but we seem remarkably convinced that permanent storage of nuclear material will still be seen as the best possible option a few centuries into the future. Some futurists discuss scenarios that posit a breakdown of communications between today’s civilization and future generations. They argue that mankind will evolve so radically that the humans of the future won’t understand the language and signs we use today to communicate. Yet their reaction is usually to demand even deeper, more permanent and less accessible storage – which is practically impossible.

(…) To our children, we should say: Sorry, but it’s a legacy you have to accept and safeguard. We did our best to keep the waste safe, and it it’s your turn to do the same. Maybe you will develop the technology to use it productively. And if you don’t, keep guarding it, and eventually entrust it to your children. Compared to the legacy that previous generations have left us – apparently without too much of a bad conscience about their waste, their toxins, and their destruction of the natural environment – this approach is remarkably responsible. It would also free significant resources, intellectually, politically, and materially, to try and tackle some of today’s big problems.“

And now for something completetly different, “(…)Esta infantilização das crianças e dos jovens gerou uns perturbantes bebés adultos que aos 18 anos ainda vão à consulta de pediatria, pois a idade pediátrica estende-se agora até aos 18 anos, onde entre imagens de ursinhos e cegonhas recordarão as ressacas dos festivais de Verão ou as histórias macabras sobre as crescentes agressões nas escolas, como a sucedida recentemente na EB 2/3 Ruy Luís Gomes, no Laranjeiro, em Almada, em que uma aluna foi violada por cinco colegas. Ou que, numa versão mais crescida, continuam a beber e a divertir-se enquanto um seu colega foi assassinado. Se Marlon Correia tivesse morrido, não na sequência de um assalto, mas sim numa fuga à polícia os seus colegas estariam muito provavelmente hoje de luto e vivendo uma forte indignação. Assim foi apenas um azar e a festa com muita cerveja vai prosseguir(…)”

Rainy Milo

C’est ça ksé bon

Acabei de chegar no cinema, fui ver o filme francês realizador pelo português Ruben Alves com vários actores portugueses.

O guião roda em torno da vida de um casal português em França, as aventuras e desventuras, os risos, as lágrimas, os palavrões e o bacalhau.

Pelo meio um fado que me trouxe as lágrimas aos olhos.

Love live the Queen

For about an year she was “my” Queen and she’s steping down leaving the throne to her son Prince Willem-Alexander after 33 years on the throne.

Nothing better than throwing the biggest party, the Koninginnedag.

I’ll miss her ‘wheels of gouda’ hats.