Filmes irmãos (II)

Santiago (João Moreira Salles, 2007)

e

Exit through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010)

Capitalismo (II)

"After a while, some people got up to leave. One was Saul Perlmutter, the astrophysicist. Another was a man named Murat Sonmez, an executive at the Silicon Valley software firm Tibco. Sonmez, like Arbess, had attended Perlmutter’s talk that morning, called “Dark Forces at Play.” He had been astonished by Perlmutter’s description of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, about how every time scientists look at the night sky through a powerful telescope they see the vestiges of events that occurred billions of years ago.

They walked out together and headed down the Promenade, toward the Congress Hall. The sky had cleared. The mountains, newly covered in snow, sparkled beyond the rooftops. Snow misted down from the pines like pixie dust; now and then, as the sun warmed the boughs, clumps fell noiselessly to the street. Sonmez began to tell Perlmutter about Tibco and its expertise in sifting through and finding patterns in the acceleratingly expansive universe of digital data. Tibco had designed the data-sorting software for Amazon, Federal Express, Goldman Sachs, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, eBay, the airlines, and the Department of Homeland Security. “We can prevent blackouts,” Sonmez was saying. “We can predict when a gambler at a slot machine will cease to be happy.” He explained how Tibco, on behalf of Harrah’s, had designed a system that can figure out when a gambler is about to encounter a loss of such magnitude that it will cause him to leave the casino and perhaps never come back. The casino’s Luck Ambassadors will then offer the gambler a free meal or a ticket to a show (Tibco’s software having determined that there are otherwise empty seats to fill or excess inventory to slough off), and distract the gambler long enough to entice him to return later, to continue losing money in palatable increments. At the moment, he said, Tibco was building an engine that will mimic the way the human brain recognizes patterns.

Such wonders amazed even Perlmutter, a man who passes the hours considering the mysteries of the cosmos. It sounded like just the thing he’d been searching for. He spent his days engaged in a visual analysis of unstructured data—looking, as he put it, for a needle in a haystack. Perlmutter, who is at Berkeley, said that he would like to visit Tibco in Palo Alto and talk about ways in which Tibco might be able to help him understand the universe. Sonmez said that he would love to hire some of Perlmutter’s Ph.D.s. They exchanged cards, shook hands, and parted ways."


THE NEW YORKER (Magic Mountain, por Nick Paumgarten, 5 de março de 2012)
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/05/120305fa_fact_paumgarten#ixzz1vRn3RiT2

Capitalismo

Do site da Amazon:

Prisons

Amazon.com delivers to penitentiaries, but we strongly suggest you contact the prison first to confirm that they accept deliveries and to note any special regulations the prison might have. Some prisons don't allow delivery of hardcover books. Others place a limit on the number of items contained in a package.
We're unable to affix any special labels or instructions to the packages and on the outside will indicate only the destination address, our company name, and our return address. We also cannot allow gifts to be sent anonymously to inmates; the sender's billing address will appear on the order invoice.
Because inmates cannot sign for deliveries, packages must be sent via U.S. Mail. While Amazon.com often sends packages via U.S. Mail, we also use UPS and FedEx. There is no way for customers to request a specific shipper. To avoid delivery problems, you might consider having the items shipped to you and then shipping them to the penitentiary via U.S. Mail.

Deleitando Ensena

(Universidad de Guanajuato, México)

"Las letras tienen amargas las raíces, si bien son dulces sus frutos." - Máxima de Diego de Saavedra y Fajardo (1584-1648)

"Ler é como ter uma esteira [ergométrica] no quarto: no começo, dá uma preguiça desgraçada, mas logo você toma gosto e já não consegue parar." - Máxima de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (1945 - )