Earthrise

Borman: Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty. Anders: Hey, don’t take that, it’s not scheduled. Borman: (laughing) You got a color film, Jim? Anders: Hand me that roll of color quick, will you… Lovell: Oh man, that’s great!

Haves and have-nots

If people in the Anglosphere don’t have to call Germany Deutschland, Armenia Hayastan and South Korea Hanguk, why do they HAVE to call Ceylon Sri Lanka, Burma Myanmar and Byelorussia Belarus?

If people in the Anglosphere don’t have to call Munich München, Florence Firenze and Prague Praha, why do they HAVE to call Peking Beijing, Bombay Mumbai and Canton Guangzhou?

A Renúncia de Jobs

August 24, 2011–To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Lucian Freud

1922-2011

Acabou

How 'Operation Kill bin Laden' Went Down

Senior Administration officials said they had been monitoring the compound since last August, ever since a courier known to be trusted by bin Laden, as well as the courier's brother, began living there. "Everything we saw — the extremely elaborate operational security, the brothers' background and their behavior, and the location and the design of the compound itself — was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected bin Laden's hideout to look like," one official said early Monday. "Our analysts looked at this from every angle, considering carefully who other than bin Laden could be at the compound. We conducted red team exercises and other forms of alternative analysis to check our work. No other candidate fit the bill as well as bin Laden did."

MORRE DIABO

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/bin-laden-dead-u-s-official-says/

Historinha corporativa

Uma pequena empresa inovadora faz um produto que chama atenção no mercado, aí então ela é comprada por uma grande empresa… que trata de acabar com o produto e com a subsidiária, que era a antiga pequena empresa inovadora. Quantas vezes a gente já viu esse filme mesmo?

O lado imundo da “reabilitação” de Kadafi, 2004-2011

Artigo do NYT falando sobre a familiar corrupção e a grande alegria dos ricos a lidar com a ditadura da Líbia.

Hoje, há 200 anos atrás…

…as principais ruas e avenidas de Manhattan foram definidas:

“Described by some historians as the single most important document in New York City’s history, the right-angled layout spurred unimagined development.”

A sãopaulização de Moscou

The activists say the city circumvented preservation laws and manipulated the process of protecting historical objects as it pushed the mansion’s destruction forward.

Mais uma da série “Clube dos amigos de Lula”

• Human Rights Watch: Syria: Al-Asad's Decade in Power Marked by Repression - Rights Suppressed, Activists Detained, Media Censored, Kurds Sidelined

• Repórteres Sem Fronteiras: Ten years after Bashar el-Assad’s installation, the government still decides who can be a journalist

This is the day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_20

Alguém tinha dúvida?

Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency 'supports' Taliban

The report's author spoke to nine Taliban field commanders in Afghanistan earlier this year.

He concludes that Pakistan's relationship with the insturgents runs far deeper than previously realised.

Some of those interviewed suggested that the ISI even attends meetings of the Taliban's supreme council.

The Rise of State Capitalism

The fall of communism did not mark the final triumph of free-market capitalism because it did not put an end to authoritarian government. The Chinese and Russian governments in particular have learned to compete internationally by embracing market-driven capitalism. But they know that if they leave it entirely to market forces to decide winners and losers from economic growth, they risk enabling those who might use that wealth to challenge their political power. Certain that command economies are doomed to fail but fearful that truly free markets will spin beyond their control, these and other authoritarian governments have invented something new: state capitalism.

Using this system, governments dominate key domestic economic sectors. They use state-owned and politically loyal privately owned companies to intervene in global markets for energy, aviation, shipping, power generation, arms production, telecommunications, metals, minerals, petrochem­icals, and other industries. The oil companies they own now control three quarters of the world's crude-oil reserves. These governments also control enormous investment vehicles known as sovereign wealth funds that have become vitally important sources of capital. In each case, the state is using markets to create wealth that can be directed as political officials see fit. And in each case, the ultimate motive is not economic (maximizing growth) but political (maximizing the state's power and the leadership's chances of survival).

The main characters in this story are the men who rule China, Russia, and the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf, but the apparent success of this new model has attracted imitators throughout much of the developing world.

Brian Duffy

1933-2010

O fotógrafo de “Aladdin Sane” do David Bowie.

Tchau, Hurley

So leaving the island became even harder now. And my current mainland residence can't help but feel a bit empty. Sometimes leaving the TV on helps.

Thanks Hawaii. For an amazing six years. I look forward to returning to your 'aina. And picking up this blog where I left off.

China

E os sujos segredos do sucesso:

For wages of up to 1,940 yuan per month (€230, or $285), the young man from Henan province spent his 12-hour shifts shoving plastic pieces into a machine that formed casings for Apple computers. Then he went home to sleep with nine colleagues in a room of one of the many dormitory blocks on the factory complex.

(…)

These opportunities for diversion don't change the fact that Foxconn workers have to spend their lives almost entirely on the complex. One cargo truck after another delivers components and carries away finished products. There are no warehouses at Foxconn. Once workers assemble a mobile phone or a laptop, the device goes straight to customers. This flow of products can't slow down. On Foxconn streets, workers are allowed to walk alongside each other only in pairs. If there are three of them, they must form a line.

(…)

The men and women in white uniform coats and bonnets are forbidden from holding personal conversations. This rule is printed on the flip side of their corporate IDs. The only sound is a whistle and hiss from the machines where they push green circuit-boards for laptops or credit-card readers. On eight different conveyor belts, they finish work on eight different products for several different world markets.

Open Letter to the President of Brazil

Don't misunderstand me. Brazil was already en route to democracy, but you helped give it a final, decisive push.

Something similar was happening in Poland, in South Africa, and in South Korea, where worker-based organizations and independent trade unions that rejected communist and capitalist cruelties were created and helped open the way to the great democratization of the last quarter century.

That is why it is with the most profound sadness that I see you embracing the incarnation of everything that denies human rights, social justice and all the good that liberation trade unions stood for. The picture of you alongside the Iranian tyrant, President Mahmoud Ahminedejad, as if he was the best friend of democratic Brazil, has shocked all democrats around the world.

São Paulo, Moscou

Trecho desta matéria do site da Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

A chronic dilemma facing Moscow planners and the city's nearly 9 million residents is gridlock. Cars in another chronically clogged city, New York, travel at an average speed of 38 kilometers an hour. In Moscow, the number is just 21, and it's only set to get worse -- Russia's Transportation Ministry predicts the number of cars in Moscow is set to double to 8 million by 2015.

The Genplan includes numerous plans for parking garages and improved traffic flow. But critics like transport expert Mikhail Blinkin say that for now, the city's mania for knocking down buildings and constructing bigger ones in their place outpaces any practical strategy on traffic management, and that there is simply no room for the capital's cars and trucks.

"I'll give you the simplest example. We demolish five-story buildings from the Soviet times and put up a 30-story building in their place. The surrounding transport network, for cars and public transportation, we leave unchanged," Blinkin said.

"I always make this comparison: if we try to pour five liters of water into a three-liter jar, it will overflow. But that's what we do every day."

The Genplan last month prompted a rare confrontation between city officials and the Public Chamber, a state oversight body. City officials walked out of a Public Chamber debate on the Genplan after chamber members attacked the plan.

Speaking at the meeting, Marat Gelman, an influential gallery owner and former assistant director at Russia's Channel One broadcaster, said the plan was motivated by greed and indifference. "For us, Moscow is love," he said. "But for Luzhkov, it's a vegetable plot to harvest from."