Copy-Pasta.

Now that I'm done with one of the crappiest courses I've ever had, I can even begin to think about studying classical electrodynamics for real. It is a very interesting subject, after all, despite the ugly math involved.

In other news, I can never cease to be amazed by the lack of ethics of some people. The director of the Physics Institute, where I study, has been accused of plagiarism. Regardless of his and his colleages' ethically questionable attitude, what really pissed me off is the fact that this case is most likely going to be left behind, with no punishment and, even worse, no memory of what happened. This seems to be the greatest problem around here: people seem to have no long term memory. In fact, most people seem not even to care.

I wonder what happened to these people to make them so unethical. Of all the reasons I can think of, not a single one seems reasonable.

Sometimes it's very difficult to like the place where I've studied for the last 8 years...

My only hope is that these people are just a minor portion of the whole.

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All is well that ends well...

...too bad it ain't over yet.

It's tomorrow - hopefully - that I'll get over with the due credits for my graduation. All I need is to do well in tomorrow's test - too bad the teacher is not exactly what I would call a good teacher... or a good role model for that matter. But I'm not getting into that specific matter here - at least, not yet.

The point is that I foresee a very unpleasant all-nighter tonight. The fault is, of course, mine, as usual - after last test's complete failure I actually tried taking the studies more seriously, but something happened along the way and here I am - clueless about half the topics I should know all about. But right now all I want is for it to be over. That way I can get away with it and keep being only a regular student...

When am I going to break the vicious cycle?

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'cause pi is good.

Sometimes I can't help but feel overwhelmed by the way some things happen in life. I think about people I knew years ago, and then wonder where they are now. Among these people there are friends I wish I had more contact with, and there are people I wish I got to know better.

But life follows its own path and the best one can do is to try and follow it however possible.

It's an odd feeling, though, when I begin to think how different my life would be if I had met people in other circumstances...

Things happen so quickly sometimes I just wish the world would stop for a minute...

Oh well. I must say, though, that despite the apparent depressive tone of this post, I am very happy. A bit worried - mostly because my deadline is beginning to show its ugly face on the horizon - but happy.

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Last post was the 100th post on this blog. I wish it were about something more worth the time I took to type the words, but unfortunately I didn't realize that until now, when I logged in to write something else.

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Isso é que é diálogo

Comunicado CRUESP nº 04/2007

O Cruesp e o Fórum das Seis se reuniram nesta segunda-feira para dar continuidade à discussão da pauta de reivindicações formulada pelas entidades, na qual o ponto central era a política de assistência estudantil, tema do mais alto interesse dos alunos das três Universidades (USP, Unicamp e Unesp), cujo investimento na área já é, de longe, o maior entre as universidades brasileiras.

O Cruesp lamenta informar que a referida reunião foi suspensa em razão de nova tentativa de ocupação, por um grupo de estudantes, do prédio da Reitoria da Unicamp, onde os reitores e os representantes das entidades estavam reunidos.

Não se consumando a ocupação da Reitoria, os estudantes invadiram, no final da tarde, o prédio da Diretoria Acadêmica da Universidade, um órgão da Pró-Reitoria de Graduação cuja finalidade é prestar serviços aos próprios estudantes, zelando por sua vida acadêmica.

O Cruesp condena mais esse ato de violência praticado contra a universidade pública, sobretudo num momento em que, através do diálogo democrático e construtivo, se buscava consolidar programas de apoio fundamentais para os estudantes (em particular aqueles oriundos da escola pública) e para a vida acadêmica das três instituições.

A seqüência das negociações entre o Cruesp e o Fórum das Seis ocorrerá tão logo as atividades sejam normalizadas.

Campinas, 18 de junho de 2007.

CRUESP

E esse bando de delinqüentes, marginais e desocupados ainda diz que quer o diálogo.

Diálogo é o cacete! Eles querem é causar. Não passam de massa de manobra de partidos nanicos, irresponsáveis e extremistas.

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Ideas are bullet-proof

So I've finally watched V for Vendetta. And I'm wondering what the hell kept me from watching this movie for so long.

I have absolutely no idea whether it respects the comics, but I really liked it - V's character is absolutely fascinating - and his lines are without a doubt the best.

However, I cannot help but feel that the story was under-explored. Everything seems to happen so quickly it becomes a bit difficult to keep up. And I want to see more of V-action.

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On the vicissitudes of using a PC

Today I've reinstalled Windows on my PC.

It's one of those things you have to do now and then, since it seems to periodically and inexorably degrade to a point where anything you do triggers some error.

The good thing is, at least this forces me to do backups, software updates and not-useful-anymore software removal. All in all, even if I didn't have to I probably would still do these periodic reinstalls.

This time, though, I reserved some space for installing Ubuntu - it's been a while since I last had linux installed here, and I'm willing to use it at home again. The reason? I don't know, but probably it's just because I want it...

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Trying out Safari

So Firefox has been getting on my nerves a lot recently. I still can't understand how it got so bad. I mean, I've been using Firefox for a very long time, and I had never have any problems with it.

Until recently, that is. All of a sudden, it became highly unstable, prone to stupid problems like freezing completely, disabling tab navigation, and other stuff like that. I got so annoyed I even considered switching to Interner Explorer. Honest.

Fortunately, another option has just appeared. I'm trying out Safari, Apple's gecko-based browser. It seems promising, and my first impression is good, despite the bugs (which are just bound to exist in a beta version such as this). Also, it has some pretty cool things, like a good bookmark system, an easy-to-use rss reader, a very useful history, and is visibly more lightweight than Firefox.

There are still some pretty annoying problems, though. For one, I still can't use gmail with it - there's some problem with accentuation that truncates the message... also, I can't type in anything in the Post Title field on blogger's posting system, because that triggers Safari to immediately die.

It seems promising, though. While Firefox continues to disappoint me, I'm feeling more and more inclined to make the switch.

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Cidade Limpa

A Lei Cidade Limpa entrou em vigor em 1º de janeiro deste ano, proibindo a maioria das formas de publicidade externa na cidade. Não só foram banidos os outdoors e anúncios gigantes (familiares de quem passava na Rua da Consolação, por exemplo), mas também os anúncios em ônibus e táxis.

A iniciativa é boa - apesar de as agências publicitárias terem esperneado até não poder mais contra a nova lei. Ela ajuda a diminuir a poluição visual na cidade, o que às vezes parece algo irrelevante em meio à agitada vida paulistana, mas que no fundo contribui para aumentar o estresse de quem vive numa cidade tão agitada.

No entanto, fico me perguntando qual vai acabar sendo o real efeito dessa lei na vida do paulistano. Nos últimos tempos eu venho percebendo a mudança significativa na paisagem da cidade por causa da remoção de toda a publicidade externa, e sou forçado a dizer que é bem provável que essa lei possa acabar tendo o efeito oposto do esperado.

Isso porque, no lugar dos anúncios, em muitos lugares ficaram os "esqueletos" abandonados das estruturas em que eles costumavam ficar afixados - postes de outdoor, pra citar um exemplo mais evidente. Quem passa na Marginal Pinheiros na região da Cidade Universitária ainda pode ver uma fila imensa deles, ainda ali, como fantasmas.

Mas o pior disso não são essas estruturas abandonadas - que, mais dia menos dia, vão acabar saindo. São as pixações e outras depredações visuais, tão comuns hoje em dia. Elas estão por todo lugar - evidência de que existe gente sem noção de que as idiotices que eles escrevem podem não agradar aos outros. Se a Prefeitura pretende ser minimamente coerente, ela deve tomar providências para limpar as fachadas da cidade e evitar que elas voltem a ser vítimas de vandalismo.

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Why I hate crowded places

Today was the Gay Pride Parade in São Paulo. The city's most prominent avenue, the Paulista Avenue, was completely taken by about 3,5 million people (according to the people who organized the parade). My girlfriend wanted to see it, and it was on the way home from her granny's house, so we would have to go there anyway.

First of all, I'd like to say I don't hold anything against other people's sexual options. Everyone should be free to decide about their own lives.

My problem is with crowds. For one, it's an experimental fact that people's intelligence decreases with the number of people in a crowd. Usually it's the lowesst individual IQ divided by the number of people. And so, people in crowds do a lot of stupid things. Like pushing other people like there's no tomorrow, just to walk from point A to point B.

And they drink a lot. A LOT. And drunk people are among the most annoying people in the universe. Not to mention when they throw up because they don't know how to drink.

Finally, there are those who don't go anywhere without wanting to pick a fight. All these people want is some uproar, tumult, chaos, disturbance, and stuff like that. And these are the worst, I might add - they are the ones who end up showing up in the newspaper when they spank another person, get arrested, or do some other stupid thing like that. Obviously, though, the fame goes for everyone who has anything to do with the event these Nature Mistakes were in.

All of these factors really have the power to make me really angry. In occasions like these I get so upset my stomach hurts, my head hurts, my whole organism gets upset.

But what really upsets me is that, being angry like that, I fail to take into account what other people want or think. I get obnoxious, stubborn, even stupid (after all, I'm another element of the crowd, and the intelligence decrease applies to me as well). My girlfriend was really looking forward to this particular parade, and in the end we didn't stop even for a minute to look around and see the good things that happen there - after all, and this I have to say in favor of gay people, they are usually more true to themselves, and more honest with other people, and in being so they become really interesting people because they are genuine.

Anyway, the point of all this gibberish(?) is that I hate crowded places because they bring forth the worst parts of my personality, aspects of myself that I don't like at all.

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Nothing really new.

I can't say I have something really new to post here - I'm posting really to simply not let the blog stay too long without being updated.

I began carrying lunch today - I mean, I cook it the day after at home, and take it on tupperwares to Physics. My hope is that this procedure will help me increase the quality of my meals. By the way, I'm feeling guilty because it's almost three weeks without sending Ju my "food diary". I should be more responsible.

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Electrodynamics revisited

Yesterday I began reviewing Classical Electrodynamics. One of the things I regret about my undergrad life is that I never got to actually learn anything about electromagnetism. The teachers for both courses I took were... incompetent, in the lack of a better term. All they did was recite the book and use slideshows to talk about the subject... exams were just as crappy, to say the least.

Of course, much of the blame is to be taken on me, too. I did not take the initiative to study it for myself... and now I'm having to catch up.

The funny part is, I actually like studying electrodynamics.

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Agora todos estão felizes

Já tiveram o que queriam. Agora deixem as pessoas sérias EM PAZ.

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