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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Scary face

A friend has told me that I get scary when I'm angry. Scary.

That took me by surprise, I must say. I know I make it obvious when I'm not happy about something (after all, I do rant a lot). However when I get really angry at something or someone I don't rant, nor yell or anything - I just remain silent. And with a scary look on my face that, it seems, insists on showing herself even when I'm not that angry.

That's a double-edged knife. Except when I am pissed off, that is when I choose not to speak to anyone, I do want people to come and talk to me, so I can get it out of my system and let it go, even if sometimes "exploding" at people, which really does not mean much, except that I trust that person enough to know it's just temporary. It seems bizarre, I know, and by most perspectives it really is, but that's the way I deal with that - it's part of who I am.

That's a bit different when I really get pissed off, because I withdraw from wherever I am and try to isolate myself, deliberately avoiding contact with other people, especially friends and loved ones, to prevent going really mad. Fortunately, very few people have ever seen it happen. The main reason I isolate myself is because I'm afraid of that trait of my personality - I'm afraid I might do or say soem pretty nasty things to people I really care about. This is the kind of stuff I don't want to get out, absorbing them and using the introspective moments I get from isolation to meditate about many things, which means that it tends to fade away.

As I like to think, that which is not solved by Time is made smoother by it. It means that even the most bitter fight between two friends can be put to an end given time and a good dialogue.

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Nice new toys

I have acquired new toys.

The first and foremost is my new set of speakers. Now I have a reasonable set of speakers with a sub-woofer, which means I finally can listen to music in a minimally decent way since early 2002, when a robbery at home took that away from me. I just hope my neighbors don't get too mad at me... =P

The other toy is my (finally acquired) pendrive. I've been needing one of these for some time now.

And, finally, the most useless of them, the new addition to this blog, which can be seen to the right. I really like last.fm - for some reason I like to know what I'm listening to. I mean, I like to know what kinds of music I listen to more often. I is a way of knowing myself better through the tracking of tunes I listen to, although that varies wildly accordingly to my moods. The point is also that I like to keep my playlist as eclectic as possible, and last.fm helps me make sure that it stays so.

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Towel Day!

Happy Towel Day, boys and girls.

I heard in the Phorums that today (actually, yesterday) was also the Star Wars day - the 30th anniversary of the first movie's premiere. Truly a remarkable day, wasn't it?

It was also remarkable due to the fact of a few of us productive members of the Physics Institute finally found a reporter willing to give us attention, and show people the other side of an important matter.

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Sometimes... I don't like being me.

Probably I shouldn't take it so seriously - to be honest, I think I'm being really harsh on myself since yesterday.

I almost messed up my girlfriend's life - she's on another country and was counting on me to run some errands that would assure her safe stay there.

I know why I'm making it so difficult for myself to just let it go. I just love her too much, and the thought that I've let her down is almost unbearable. The worst part is that, as always, when we read or hear something our brain makes it sound like a good thing or a bad thing, depending on our humor and its own strange criteria. And, in this mind state, everything I read only makes me remember the fact that she was counting on me - and I don't enjoy being myself that way.

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Misturas

Dia estressante (incluindo delegacia) + pisar na bola com a namorada que tá longe + vinho = tontura bem doida

=/

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Covardia é uma merda.

Um sujeito que agride uma pessoa porque esta está filmando a merda que ele e os amiguinhos "revolucionários" dele estão fazendo, e em seguida agride uma estudante absolutamente sem motivo nenhum - exceto o fato de ela ter estado na aula - escondendo-se em seguida por trás do "movimento" não passa de um covarde. Um cagão que não tem bolas no meio das pernas para assumir a merda que fez.

Piores ainda, no entanto, são os "líderes" desse "movimento", que ao invés de honrar seu discurso de "manifestação pacífica", ajudam a proteger esse sem-vergonha.

Seria cômico se não fosse patético.

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Self-inflicted brainwash

A esta altura do campeonato muita gente já deve ter idéia do que aconteceu no IFUSP hoje. Não vou ficar enchendo a paciência do leitor com mais um relato daquela zona - até mesmo porque a grande maioria de quem lê este blog é de lá também.

Só queria fazer alguns comentários. Como eu disse no post anterior, bixo = "massa de manobra". O dia de hoje só me confirmou ainda mais esse fato. O lado bom dessa coisa toda é que, como o instituto hoje amanheceu "bloqueado" pelos grevistas, não tive prova - uma chance pra me preparar melhor.

Enfim. Hoje fiz algo que não fazia há anos - junto com o Dudu, fizemos tricô com um deles. Aquele que apareceu por último, falando bosta no SPTV. Falo que fizemos tricô com ele porque o número de nós que demos nos argumentos furados dele foi bem grande.

Essa gente não entende o que faz, não tem a menor idéia das conseqüências de seus atos, e age como se fosse dona da razão e tivesse o direito de fazer o que quiser, enquanto os outros têm apenas o direito de concordar com eles. Discordar ou até mesmo tentar argumentar é egoísmo, anti-patriotismo, é "ir contra o movimento", é ser "contra uma universidade pública, gratuita e de qualidade". E, obviamente, muitas outras coisas...

A conclusão a que chego é a de que esse povo imagina que ler um resumo de uma resenha de uma obra de Marx é ser comunista. Imagina que é suficiente ler uma notícia sobre o que quer que seja, sem procurar maiores informações ou referências, e basear suas ações nisso. E repete tanto os bordões que aprende por aí que acaba acreditando.

Termino este post com uma pequena citação, de origem desconhecida:

As crianças que assistiam TeleTubbies cresceram…

Pois é, aquilo deu nisso!!!

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Some things never change.

Bixo sempre foi, e sempre será, massa de manobra. Faz anos que deixei de me importar com isso - bixo é BURRO mesmo. Não é preconceito, é meramente a constatação de um fato.

Merece destaque o post do Reinaldo Azevedo na VEJA on-line. Ressalto uma pequena passagem:

A questão não é saber se uma seita marxista cabe ou não numa universidade (não sendo a universidade chinesa, cabe, claro...). Patético é que marxistas brasileiros acreditem que podem fazer na USP o que Noam Chomsky faz no MIT. Com a notável diferença de que, lá, seus súditos não vão à luta para inviabilizar a estrutura que lhes garante a existência. Aqui, eles vão. Porque Chomsky exerce o marxismo na sociedade da abastança; e nós brincamos de marxismo numa ilha de abastança que é USP, porém cercada pela miséria dos que a financiam. Sim, também esse viés quase aristocrático dos nossos esquerdistas, que não aceitam ser povo, ficou claro aqui.

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Please yell if you're paying attention

I wonder how many people still visit this blog. Since there's seldom any comment to my posts, I cannot say if people read this or not. Of course, I have ShinyStat reports, but then again they show me only how many visits the blog has, and not how many people actually read it.

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Programming C++

Years ago, I was an employee at the Veterinary School of my university. Sometime around the end of 2003 I decided that was not what I wanted to do for a living; what I really wanted was to do research, to find new things.

I got that job because, in my first undergrad years, I loved computers; I actually spent more time programming than I spent studying physics. That changed with time, as I grew more and more tired of the everyday routine of solving trivial problems and not having the support from the people I worked for to grow up in terms of knowledge. Before that, I used to program for fun, and after that, it made me sick.

That was true until recently. For some reason, the "sickness" that programming gave me went away, and for some time now I've been wanting to do some programming. That would be cool. But the really cool part of this is that I want to program to help my life in the lab - I'm applying something I liked doing to something I also like doing.

So for a few days now I've been learning a new language, and I'm reviewing some programming concepts so I can take on the task. I will write this program, and the best part is that other people who usually perform experiments similar to mine want to use it as well. In other words, not only will I be doing something I really like, but I'll be applying it to my work and it is going to make other people's lives easier, too. I'm loving it.

Briefly, it's a program to help data treatment for small-angle x-ray scattering/diffraction. It will perform the necessary corrections for data interpretation and a limited data treatment as well.

I haven't felt this excited about writing code in a very long time.

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A Reitoria e o Leopardo

Este post do Super no Stoa me fez pensar um pouco a respeito de alguns assuntos aos quais não venho dando muita atenção há tempos. Ultimamente, quando alguém começava a falar de manifestações, passeatas, invasões e todo esse tipo de baboseira de revolucionários de fim de semana, eu vinha dando o mínimo de atenção e simplesmente não me envolvia na conversa.

Só pra esclarecer, continuo assim.

O pensamento que o post incitou na minha mente foi a respeito de como certas coisas não mudam e me faz questionar a diferença que a invasão da reitoria da USP vai fazer.

Ao mesmo tempo, eu tento justificar para mim mesmo as minhas posições a respeito. Afinal de contas, por mais equivocados que sejam os esforços do "Movimento Estudantil", as intenções que as suas reivindicações aparentam ter são boas. No entanto, a história parece não cansar de se repetir: invariavelmente, o bandejão e o circular são os primeiros a parar de funcionar, seguidos por "manifestações democráticas" por parte dos estudantes(?): estardalhaço, cartazes de extremo mau gosto (e não raro mal escritos também) feitos de papel kraft, invasões de prédios da universidade, batucada (que atrapalha as aulas), carros de som para a "companheirada", et cetera. A lista não acaba mais. O ponto é que de democráticas essas manifestações não têm nada: invariavelmente trata-se de uma minoria atrapalhando a vida da maioria. E depois, quando ninguém vai com a cara do "movimento", seus integrantes dizem que as pessoas são "doutrinadas", "autoritárias", "anti-democráticas", e outros adjetivos não tão educados.


Cada vez eu tenho mais certeza de que tentar mudar as coisas na marra não funciona. Para quê ser um lemingue se se pode ser um leopardo?

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It's Alive!!

Some things never cease to amaze me.

Months ago my computer simply stopped functioning. It wouldn't start up for anything. I was afraid it was some problem with the motherboard and that I would have to buy a new one. After giving it some thought, I realized that it was much more likely that it was a problem with the power supply, since the problem was related to it.

And then I spent a few months procrastinating the acquisition of a new one so I could once again use my computer at home.

Last thursday I got access to a multimeter so I could test it and be sure - I didn't want to buy a new power supply for nothing.

So, last night I did the testing. I tested the supply, and - for my own surprise - there was nothing wrong with it. And so I went into testing other things, only to find that everything was fine. I tried, then, the AC stabilizer. Nothing wrong with it, either.

I looked at the power cable, wondered if Murphy had been that evil with me, and tested it. Heh. That was it. A malfunctioning (?!) power cable had made me spend more than three months without using my PC.

I replaced the cable, and turned the computer on. Didn't take more than a few seconds for it to boot and ask me for my password.

And so, here I am now, posting this from my own PC again.

PS: There was another little problem with memory, but it turned out to be just a bad contact, I hope. I just switched the slot and it worked...

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About the Mega-Rant

The Mega-Rant I started days ago should have been a triple post. However, laziness and other minor details kept me from posting here, and so it probably is going to stay just a single poster.

In other news, oh well, the Stairway to Heaven post was about me not knowing well enough what the heck my research project is about... =/

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Stairway to Heaven

Theres a lady whos sure
All that glitters is gold
And shes buying a stairway to heaven.
When she gets there she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for.
Ooh, ooh, and shes buying a stairway to heaven.

Theres a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
In a tree by the brook
Theres a songbird who sings,
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it makes me wonder.

Theres a feeling I get
When I look to the west,
And my spirit is crying for leaving.
In my thoughts I have seen
Rings of smoke through the trees,
And the voices of those who standing looking.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it really makes me wonder.

And its whispered that soon
If we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn
For those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter.

If theres a bustle in your hedgerow
Dont be alarmed now,
Its just a spring clean for the may queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
Theres still time to change the road youre on.
And it makes me wonder.

Your head is humming and it wont go
In case you dont know,
The pipers calling you to join him,
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow,
And did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul.
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How evrything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last.
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll.

And shes buying a stairway to heaven.

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The Mega-Rant, pt. 1

As I talk to more and more people I get the feeling that I'm not even near what I want to believe I am doing. I keep saying to myself that I'm doing my best in my studies, but I'm just a slacking bastard. Of course, I have to take into account that almost everyone here are either accomplished professionals or very advanced students. But, then again, I feel a tendency to depreciate my own work, not because of a question of merit, but because I have this annoying sensation that I'm not dedicating myself to this work as much as I should, and this worries me. A lot.
It worries me because in the last few years I've been nothing more than an average student. I'm not comparing myself to others, but rather to what I wanted for myself when I was in first year.

In the end, I'm not that sure anymore about my own dedication to my work. I mean, it's my work, dammit! I should care more about it!
Back when I was an undergrad student doing my scientific initiation work, I used to have this wonderful enthusiasm about what I was doing. Nowadays I miss that sometimes. I still feel motivated, but it is a different kind of motivation: what I'm going to do next. And I feel awkward about it, because I see other people here at the Workshop who seem to love their work in a way I wish I did, too. They always feel eager to share what they know and to find new things. And I envy that enthusiasm very much.
I think that now I can have some idea about how Einstein felt when he finished ETH and spent a year after that avoiding anything related to Physics.
I just hope that this workshop has the sort of effect on me that could make me regain the enthusiasm I once had.

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Congress Attendance Discipline

So It's been another big period without posts. I decided to just give up worrying too much about this and just post whenever I feel like it. Sorry people. I'll try to arrange a rss feed so people don't need to come here and simply not find anything new.

I've been in a congress since last monday, and will be here until friday. It's my first real congress, in the sense that it's the first one that's not hosted at my school, and that it's the first time thatI brought a poster to present.

It's being an unique experience, since many of the top scientists in the area are here, and most of the talks are very instigating. It's quite an tiresome activity, but I'm kind of getting used to it and, to be honest, I can't wait to get back home and start playing around withthe new things I'm learning here.

Gotta go now, another talk is about to start. I hope I can post something more detailed about the great stuff I found out here sometime soon.

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