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rolling and tumbling in Brazil

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Entries from December 2006

radical transparency

December 31st, 2006 · No Comments

While I’m opposed to the death penalty on both moral and practical grounds, I can’t feel sorry about Saddam’s execution. And this might be a good story to tell those who think his death will only worsen the insurgency in Iraq.
In fact, the overall effect of his death is the only thing about this [...]

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Tags: journalism · politics

making fools of themselves

December 31st, 2006 · No Comments

I realize how distasteful it is to dignify the Holocaust denier arguments in a public forum. But the opportunity to show how science and reason can triumph over ignorance and propaganda is too good to ignore. This qualifies as one of those “once in a thousand years” opportunities.
Scott Adams gives a perfect example of why [...]

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Tags: politics · speech

foreign looks on Brazil

December 29th, 2006 · 1 Comment

With the holidays, come the tourists. And some of them, like Tyler Cowen, have blogs, which gives us a rare opportunity to get a glimpse of how other people see our country. His post on the billboard ban in São Paulo is a great example of why I think more Brazilians should blog in English.
Not [...]

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Tags: .br · politics

what goes around

December 24th, 2006 · No Comments

It is no secret that this Workers’ Party administration has no sympathies for Varig’s problems. In fact, one might say that were it not for the Judiciary and the company’s judicial reorganization would never have gone through. Even after the auction, Anac (National Agency of Civil Aviation) stalled its homologation process and tried to strip [...]

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Tags: .br · aviation

iPhoneyGate

December 19th, 2006 · No Comments

So this is what all the fuss was about? For crying out loud, someone should ask Steve Jobs to do something about Apple fanboys, for things are starting to get out of control. It seems Apple Stores are running low on sense of humour these days.

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Tags: tech

helping freedom

December 19th, 2006 · No Comments

This is the sort of thing why I love Reason:
But if the filthy commies are hypocrites for only seeming to object to tyranny when it comes from non-commies, as the right is so quick to point out, what does that make the right-wingers who only seem to object to tyranny when it comes from commies [...]

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Tags: politics

baby steps

December 19th, 2006 · No Comments

Scott Adams recently said he doesn’t really worry about “any problem that we can see coming”. For similar reasons, I’ve never really worried about Brazilians’ apathy toward politics, and their seemingly incapacity to hold elected officials accountable for their deeds. It always seemed like a question of time for people to realize that if, as [...]

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Tags: .br · politics

some federation

December 18th, 2006 · No Comments

Here’s a great lesson for legislators and left-leaning pundits in general:
When the US government ended “welfare as we know it” in 1996, it handed responsibility for reform to the states. In so doing, it also created a real-world test of two competing economic strategies used to fight poverty. The results are in and the lessons [...]

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Tags: .br · politics

first post

December 18th, 2006 · No Comments

(In which one makes the proverbial presentation.)
If you were to sign up for Orkut, chances are you’d end up only finding communities where people speak in Portuguese. Even if its name is in English, it will most likely have been taken over by Brazilians who make no effort to try and communicate in some other [...]

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Tags: meta