Brazilian Blogger Bashing! The respected Brazilian newspaper
Estadao decided to promote its new online presence by jokingly
producing a series of ads with obvious misfits and asking such questions as "Is this the guy giving you dating advice?" and
a video (youtube) comparing bloggers to monkeys. Bloggers
are outraged "Why would you read a newspaper that compares bloggers to monkeys?".
In today's newspaper, Estadao offers no apology but instead dryly recounts the facts. Meanwhile, the resulting controversy, with thousands of blogs weighing in, has driven a lot of traffic to their new site.
posted by vacapinta
on Aug 21, 2007 -
25 comments
He wasn't the greatest technician on earth (he only studied a short time with a teacher, as states his
biography), he wasn't really famous outside Brazil, in spite of the
many recordings available under his name, of his various talents (
drawing, designing a
new string instrument), but his playing is really endearing, and whatever the material,
originals,
bach or
chico buarque, he made his point across easily.
posted by nicolin
on Aug 11, 2007 -
9 comments
You folks out there in MeFi Town been keeping up with the
water themed
MeFi Music Challenge? There's been some mighty fine uploads for you to check out! But if there was
ever a piece of music deserving the
water tag, it's
this drenching wet masterpiece by Brazil's brilliant, eccentric musical genius
Hermeto Pascual, in which Hermeto and his band play bottles full of water, and flutes full of water, and, well, the lake. Música da Lagoa: water music at its very best. And its very wettest.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jul 6, 2007 -
8 comments
The city of Sao Paulo
passed an ordinance last year banning outdoor advertising; photographer Tony de Marco has been
documenting the skeletal remains of the advertising infrastructure throughout the city; the impact looks like the aftermath of a new type of atomic weapon that targets marketing but leaves buildings & people unscathed.
posted by jonson
on Jun 19, 2007 -
84 comments
What Brazil tells us about torture today. A thoughtful discussion by Clive James of torture in the context of the movies in general and Terry Gilliam's
Brazil in particular. Warning: occasional descriptions of awful behavior, and the reader may have his opinion of humanity lowered. "The historical evidence suggests that on the rare occasions when a state begins again in what a fond humanitarian might think of as a condition of innocence, a supply of young torturers is the first thing it produces... In the Nazi and Soviet cellars and camps, people were regularly tortured for information they did not possess: i.e., they were tortured just for the hell of it."
posted by languagehat
on Feb 25, 2007 -
50 comments
Composer and arranger
Rogério Duprat passed away on Thursday. Duprat had a substantial career in music for films and commercials, but he is best known for shaping the sound of
Tropicalia, the revolutionary stew of Brazilian folk styles, bossa nova,
MPB, rock, jazz, blues and psychedelica.
Some youtube clips:
Caetano Veloso,
Gilberto Gil ,
Os Mutantes, and
Gal Costa.
posted by hydrophonic
on Oct 31, 2006 -
8 comments
In
the 1930's,
Henry Ford transplanted
a tiny piece of America—complete with picket fences, fire hydrants, poetry readings, square-dancing, and English-language sing-alongs—into the Amazon rain forest.
Fordlândia was to be the largest
rubber tree plantation on the planet (over 70 million rubber tree seedlings) providing
material for the millions of tires
Ford Motor Company needed. It flopped. So he tried again, downriver a bit, with
Belterra. It flopped, too. By 1945, Ford threw in the towel having lost over $20 million, or roughly $200 million in modern dollars.
posted by CodeBaloo
on Aug 21, 2006 -
10 comments
Pickles - The dog who won the World Cup. There were two amazing events that happened in London in 1966 that focused on the Jules Rimet Trophy (aka The World Cup): 1:
England won; 2.
the 15 inch, solid gold trophy tall was stolen, held to ransom, and then discovered in a bush by
a dog called Pickles.
The English FA had commisioned a base metal replica, which - after the Queen awarded the trophy to
Bobby Moore - was substituted for the priceless trophy in the England dressing room, when
a copper swapped it with legendary Manchester United & England fullback
Nobby Stiles. That was the one which toured the country over the next few years - not the the real one.
The replica was sold £254,000 by Sothebys in 1997... to FIFA, whereas
the original was stolen again in Brazil, and has never been seen since. The replica is on long term loan to the
National Football Museum in Preston, Lancashire - though
they don't always tell you:
it's a fake.
posted by dash_slot-
on Jun 5, 2006 -
12 comments
Flora Brasiliensis [flash needed] was published between 1840 and 1906. It contains taxonomic treatments of 22,767 species of Brazilian flora. The beauty of the illustrations and the level of detail you can magnify to is magnificent (sorry, direct linking to example images is not possible but trust me, go and have a look).
posted by tellurian
on May 3, 2006 -
9 comments
Latin
America
Turning
Left?
From the top
:
Lula da Silva*,
Lopez Obrador,
Nestor Kirchner,
Hugo Chavez*,
Alvaro Uribe,
Michelle Bachelet*,
Ollanta Humala,
Alfredo Palacio,
Oscar Berger,
Leonel Fernandez,
Oscar Arias,
Tony Saca,
Tabare Vazquez,
Martín Torrijos,
Evo Morales*
Manuel Zelaya,
Nicanor Duarte,
Daniel Ortega,
Rene Preval*.
posted by airguitar
on Apr 13, 2006 -
30 comments
The Roofless realm. Prestes Maia, is a
colossal abandoned clothes factory that towers over central Sao Paulo:
"At first glance Prestes Maia, which sem-teto members occupied in 2002, resembles a chaotic, multi-storey shantytown; cardboard spews out of its cracked windows, graffiti litter its walls and children rattle through its wide corridors on bicycles. But the community is meticulously organised." It was first occupied as part of the
Movimiento dos Sem Teto, an organized movement of homeless families and workers and now houses over 468 families.
But, now, an injunction has been issued for the repossession of the building. Everyone must leave by
February 15th but there is no plan and the authorities fear violence will erupt. There's a
Flickr community.
posted by vacapinta
on Feb 14, 2006 -
15 comments
Brazilian mayor outlaws death. Faced with a shortage of cemetary space, and other options outlawed, what are the choices?
"Of course the bill is laughable, unconstitutional, and will never be approved," said Gilson Soares de Campos, an aide to the mayor. "But can you think of a better marketing strategy?"
posted by Balisong
on Dec 14, 2005 -
20 comments
The second Indigenous Nations' Games of Para doesn't have a website and there's not even an AP story describing the events, but there are a lot of
photos from the games.
posted by hellx
on Aug 23, 2005 -
6 comments
Update on the killing of the innocent Brazilian man by London police at Stockwell station. A special report by the Observer reveals some of the key elements emerging from the ongoing investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Jean Charles de Menezes "wasn't wearing a heavy jacket.
He used his card to get into the station. He didn't vault the barrier. And now police say there are no CCTV pictures to reveal the truth." So now the inquiry will have to rely exclusively on eyewitnesses accounts. It appears the man they saw vaulting the barrier was one of the armed officers in plain clothes, while de Menezes "simply walked towards the platform unchallenged". The plainclothes armed unit that shot de Menezes was not the same team that had been following him from his London flat: "
there was a delay in calling an armed team to arrest de Menezes, which meant he had already entered the station by the time the officers arrived". Also, it appears that once inside the station, the armed officers had no radio contact with police on the outside. As new details emerge, more questions remain unanswered.
(As previously discussed
here and
here.)
posted by funambulist
on Aug 14, 2005 -
87 comments
Coke. Guns. Booty. Beats. In the slums of Rio De Janeiro, drug lords armed with submachine guns have joined forces with DJs armed with massive sound systems and rude, raunchy singles. Welcome to the most exciting—and dangerous—underground club scene in the world.
posted by Count Ziggurat
on Jul 30, 2005 -
23 comments
"We must remain faithful to the established principles of the scientific method and not allow theological beliefs and dogma to interfere," Pedro Chequer, director of the Brazilian government's AIDS program, said in an interview in Brasilía. [NYT link] Earlier this year Brazil was the first country to reject US aid for fighting HIV/Aids because of the provision in The Leadership Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003 which would have required Brazil, where prositution is regulated and legal, to condemn commercial sex work. Along with the global gag rule, which prevents NGOs receiving US aid from discussing abortion with their clients (or even from advocating for safe and legal abortions with their own governments), US policies based on theological imperatives are endangering women worldwide.
"Using a conservative estimate, U.S. assistance could have helped prevent 10 percent of the over 2 million deaths in developing countries from unsafe abortion over the past 30 years." Also:
The Global Gag Rule Impact Project.
posted by OmieWise
on Jul 25, 2005 -
11 comments
"When they emerged after 50 yards, the landscape no longer looked anything like the southern edge of the Amazon forest.
It looked like Iowa."
In Mato Grosso, Brazil the rainforest is vanishing. And all because of soybeans and beef.
"If we were an aggressive tribe, we would have killed the land owners already," said Tupxi, one of the canoeists, who estimated his age at 77. "
good Washpost story...
posted by punkbitch
on Jun 12, 2005 -
27 comments
Pushing the open source agenda to the international stage. Brazilian Pop superstar / Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil, Grateful dead lyricist John Barlow and others participated yesterday in a World Social Forum gathering in Alegre, Brazil to urge a free open source software policy in the developing world. An open source constitutional discussed previously on metafilter
here.
posted by tidecat
on Jan 31, 2005 -
26 comments
Adenor Gondim has spent almost 50 years photographing
Bahia (English version will be available soon I hear, but the pictures speak for themselves). It's an enchanting
part of Brazil, not least because of the
sights and the
candomblé religion and traditions.
posted by keijo
on Dec 3, 2004 -
5 comments
More on arithmetic in the Amazon The 10/15 issue of Science has the official publication of Peter Gordon's work on numerical cognition among the Pirahã, and a companion article by Pierre Pica et al. on similar research among another Amazonian tribe, the Mundurukú. What with the U.S. election and the discovery of H. Floresiensis, this is not getting nearly as a much play as the pre-publication back in August of Peter Gordon's work.
Brian Butterworth has an
piece in the Guardian about both articles, and I've put some links, quotes and diagrams
here.
Compared to the reports on the Pirahã, the Mundurukú people, language, and experiments are all somewhat different, although the conclusions are broadly similar.
posted by myl
on Oct 31, 2004 -
19 comments
Canto do Brasil [Flash, sound, MiguelCardosoFilter] is a street-level view of Brazil made by photographer Geoffrey Hiller, more precisely a view of Salvador Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo.
Another amazing project of his is
Burma, Grace Under Pressure [Flash, sound], exposing Burma's beauty and sadness.
Also check
Eastern Europe: Visions & Icons [Flash] ,where Hiller's post-Berlin Wall photographs are accompanied by Lev Liberman's moving text,
New York City: After The Fall [Flash, sound], an elegy to New Yorkers affected by 9/11, and his
journal from Vietnam.
posted by Masi
on Sep 1, 2004 -
3 comments
Creative, cheap, participatory, the most innovative city in the world......Curitiba !! There may be no single, organic and
living font of solutions to many of the world's most pressing problems than
Curitiba (previous link from Wikipedia, and a bit more of a wonkish summary
here), a Brazilian city of 1.5 million that urban planners from around the globe make pilgrimages to, to learn.
On a budget a tiny fraction of those which
American cities have at their disposal, how did Curitiba become the world's leading model for urban sustainability and quality of life ? - with possibly
the world's most efficient and effective public transit system, a network of parks and greenery far beyond
Olmsted's visionary parks, 70% trash recycling, innovative social welfare systems, trees everywhere, and "Lighthouses of Knowledge" with small libraries and free internet access as well, a low cost open university system.....and flowers!
Curitiba's pedestrian-only (no cars) city center is filled with gardens.
posted by troutfishing
on Apr 13, 2004 -
34 comments
A giant game of telephone in the sky --For most of November in Yamaguchi, Japan, messages sent will be translated to japanese and back, and encoded as a unique set of flashes and redirected into the sky ove the city, flashing there until the recipient of the message retrieves it, transforming the skyline with
data as light--created by
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
Meanwhile, at the same time on the other side of the world, there's
Poetrica, on Sao Paulo, Brazil,
advertising billboards.--messages that also can't be read in public in their current form. You write something and convert it into a non-phonetic font. The visual messages are archived on the web site and you get an email when your message is displayed on one of the billboards--created by
Giselle Beiguelman
posted by amberglow
on Nov 1, 2003 -
9 comments
Reflect the pain and desolate loneliness inmates felt when serving time - time in a prison surrounded by a paradise that teased them with what was forbidden.
In 1985, before I left Brazil to live in the United States, I journeyed with some friends to surf at Ilha Grande. One day, while we relaxed on a remote beach, a group of military men suddenly appeared looking for some escaped prisoners. They advised us to stay together.
Hours later, a helicopter flew over the sea with two fugitives trapped in a net that was hanging from its belly. ...At that moment, a desire was born in me to see life within the Caldron.
posted by thisisdrew
on Oct 22, 2003 -
8 comments
US Olympic track and field athelete Gabe Jennings set out for Brazil from Arizona in order to learn the martial art of
Capoeira to train for the 2004 Olympics. Riding on a ten speed bike older than himself through Central and South America, Jennings was robbed nine times, got hit by a truck, was attacked by monkeys, and contracted hepatitis from eating off of the streets. Read
this journal of his travels and marvel at the 3600 mile trip taken by a man who hadn't ridden more than 50 miles previously.
posted by zsazsa
on Jun 19, 2003 -
4 comments
There Is Only One Carnival... but a lot of
sambas to go with it. Get Rio de Janeiro's 2003 songs here and, at least spiritually, join the
escola (
school) of your choice. It's the real stuff, guaranteed to put a spring in your step. If you get the French
Fashion TV channel, you can watch the
desfiles (
parades) live!
Oba! Oba![
Some Real, WM or something required - forgive the indefinition, I'm just back from the first Carnival party and a bit drubk. Last year's songs were featured in this post.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Mar 1, 2003 -
8 comments
