A kind suggestion

The real issue about the crisis is probably not the current sacrifices that most people have to do (higher taxes, suppressed compensations, omnipresent cuts) but the feeling that the worse is yet to come. The feeling that every measure intended to satisfy the markets (that abstract entity that punishes us) will not be enough. What are the solutions, then, if today's sacrifices are not enough and tomorrow's will be an even heavier and pointless burden?

An increasingly growing amount of people in Portugal are opting for emigrating to Portuguese-speaking countries which are, in principle, in a better shape, such as Brasil and Angola. Perhaps unless you're a young professional, leaving your country seems like the most dishonorable solution of all; the most public demonstration that you are giving up. This is probably why a recent suggestion of the Portuguese prime minister appears so shocking. In reference to the high rates of teachers unemployment, the prime minister frankly suggested all unemployed teachers to leave the country, and to consider relocating in Portuguese-speaking countries. He was speaking about teachers, but we all got the kind suggestion. The suggestion seemingly caused a lot of controversy. A right-wing eurodiputate went further, and suggested the creation of a national agency for supporting emigration.

Many hard questions arise. What are your concrete alternatives (or hopes, of you want) if the prime minister of the country you live in suggests you to leave the country? Would the prime ministers of, say, France, Italy, or the UK suggest their unemployed citizens to leave the country? What can be inferred about the Portuguese character, based on the suggestions of the prime minister?

The Colombian photo album

In the typical Colombian photo album people are the most important element of every picture. A picture without people is as sad and pointless as a postcard---an extraneous concept to the average Colombian. What is the point of going to the Statue of Liberty if you do not appear in every single picture? We have seen the statue on TV and movies; no further pictures are needed.  In the logic of the Colombian photo album, the classic sights of every remarkable city (New York, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, you name it) become truly relevant and worth seeing if your friend or relative is there, even if she, he, or they completely cover/ruin the sight. Remember: it is not a picture of "La Gran Vía when we visited", it is "Us at La Gran Vía" instead. Out-of-focus pictures are OK: this is not about photography, it is about we showing off where we went. Pictures of less known sights become understandable thanks to our friend who points with his finger the detail we should not miss. A minor exception to the people criteria tends to be food and beer (especially that of strange brands), which is immortalized with enough zoom-in. The imaginative minds will always play with perspective so as to touch the Eiffer tower, the leaning tower of Pisa, or the sun itself with only two fingers! Photographing animals at the zoo is ridiculous unless you're in the frame---recall: it is better if you point at the animal. Those visiting London will create a separate album with them pretending making a call from the stereotypical red phone boot; otherwise, what's the point of going to London? Yes, touching a nice, expensive car in the street and taking a quick picture is fun. Taking a picture at yourself is always an option when traveling alone, when you're not able to ask for a picture in the local language, or when you're in Colombia---the one doing you the favor may run faster than you.

Used books

Last week I bought online a book that I consider fundamental for my research area. Reading most of that book and doing the exercises in it was actually my first assignment in my PhD studies. I only bought it now because during my PhD I used my supervisor's copy of the book. The book is quite old now (1989) and it is no longer printed, so I bought a used copy through Amazon.

For some reason, I expected a book used by some individual who found it useless for his own purposes. To my surprise, the copy I bought was actually sold by a university, the University of Westminster in London. Apart from a huge "Withdrawn" stamp in its first page, the book is in perfect state.  I found it strange that a university would be willing to sell a book that is a major reference in its area. Why a university library would need to sell a book? The university has an informatics department so there might be people interested in it. Perhaps they had more copies than those needed, but I thought that in those cases libraries would try some exchange with other libraries.

It appears so wrong to me that libraries would accept to sell their books, whatever their motivations could be. It feels as if they would be neglecting the knowledge contained in them. Oddly enough, in this particular circumstance I am lucky, as I was able to obtain a copy of a book that is out of print, but still it feels a bit strange.

Sponsors for the crisis

As you may know, the financial crisis here in Portugal is rather serious. As in Greece (and Italy), the main problem in Portugal is the excessive public debt; this is in contrast to the kind of problems in Spain and Ireland, where the financial crisis is related to the banks' debt. To avoid bankruptcy, last year the Portuguese government negotiated a loan from the IMF and the European Union. Such a loan came with a number of very severe conditions on the way the country should invest its resources in the following years. These conditions are many and rather detailed; for instance, one of them says that the government has to sell one of the two public TV networks. For this reason, it is widely recognized that any ruling government (either left-wing or right-wing) will have very little opportunity to do something---apart from making sure such conditions are duly implemented, that is.

Among the different components of the Portuguese state, public transportation is in a particularly delicate financial situation. This includes the several companies that serve Lisbon (the buses, the metro, the ferries over the Tagus river) as well as the national railway company. The current debt associated to the metro of Porto is also in absurd levels. As a consequence of the huge debts these companies have to deal with, their services have been reduced or drastically modified so as to optimize resources. More dramatically, fares have increased significantly. Just in the Lisbon region they have been increased at least twice during 2011. It would not me surprise me if there are other increments before 2012.

In this context, the metro of Lisbon has started to reduce its services.  For instance, after 21:30h trains get shortened: rather than using six cars, they use only three. This idea first started in the blue line, which is probably the most used one. Today I have learned that they will be implementing this same reduction in the yellow line, which I use less.  This is a very reasonable thing to do, as you could see almost empty trains late at night.

In what appears to be another creative solution to the crisis, last week the most important metro station in Lisbon has been sponsored. Indeed, the metro of Lisbon has signed an agreement with Portugal Telecom (PT, the largest telco in the country) and now the Baixa-Chiado station is called the "Baixa-Chiado PT bluestation". This is the first time I hear of a public building (a metro station, in this case) which becomes sponsored by a commercial brand. As a result, every piece of public information in the station contains the PT logo; also, a number of video beans projecting news and PT ads have been placed in what I am sure is the largest, most transited station in Lisbon.

This sponsoring scheme is already common in stadiums and large venues, which are mostly private and very costly to build.  However, it is strange to see such a traditional place in Lisbon becoming sponsored, even if PT is still a public company. Can you imagine the Châtelet-Les Halles Orange station in Paris? Or the King's Cross BT station in London? (In contrast, I am not surprised at all to know that there is a AT&T Station in Pennsylvania.)

Needless to say, the new name of the Baixa-Chiado station is a rather cosmetic consequence of the crisis; many Portuguese are dealing with consistent salary cuts, new taxes, downsizing of public services, and general pessimism.  However, it is unavoidable to feel that, in the name of the crisis, certain "reasonable" limits are being overcome by things such as sponsoring a metro station. This is particularly troubling when you realize that surely there are ongoing actions which are less evident (and more disturbing) than changing the name of a metro station.

Summer owls

The main attractions of Jesolo, Italy are its proximity to Venice (40km, more or less) and its very long beach (the longest of Italy, about 15km). The town of Jesolo is actually two towns: the center (Jesolo paese) and the beach (Jesolo lido).  While the two are not far from each other, their character is so different that you think they're two distant places. While Jesolo paese does not appear to have a proper central square, the most remarkable thing in Jesolo lido is a seemingly infinite street in which everything happens; it has several squares along it and ends with a lighthouse.

Jesolo lido, however, only exists from May to September.  The rest of the year, the vibrant town along the beach disappears, and becomes an abandoned place next to the sea. It seems that no one lives there during the rest of the year: those who work in the hotels, restaurants, and many shops of Jesolo lido come and leave with the tourists. They are some sort of summer owls:  they work hard while most people are on vacation;  when tourists get back to their cities, they take vacations and start preparing the new season. Life manifests itself as a splendid duality.

Jesolo is not really a big town and summer owls know each other rather well. They have been doing the same for years, perhaps not always selling the same products or offering the same food, but always doing their life during the summer.  So it is common for them to take vacations together, and to complain about tourists together. While many of the tourists who come to Jesolo come from northern Italy, a large proportion of them come from Austria, Germany, Denmark. It is then not a surprise to see business with signs in German and English. The love-hate relation between locals and the tourists is a marriage of convenience that makes part of the character of the town.

As in the rest of Italy, the most important day of the summer for Jesolani is Ferragosto. At this point, the summer owls are already tired of the season, and can reasonably predict how it will conclude. By then, they already know what went fine, and what they should do better next year. Together, tourists and locals share the traditional fireworks of Ferragosto, which mark the beginning of the end of another summer season. The same event triggers different emotions, though: while as tourists we realize how fast time passes on the beach, for the summer owls of Jesolo the fireworks evoke the hard work done, and the hope of some rewarding vacations far, far away.

The truth about reciclying

The other day, as a procrastination exercise, I cleaned up the desk at my office. The job consisted, essentially, in throwing away many drafts of my papers and organizing some other people's papers, for future reference. My desk now is quite tidy, and I am proud of myself. I ended up throwing into the bin approximately 1500 pages, among preprints and handwritten sheets. How come so many pages? It turns out that while producing a paper (and especially when a deadline approaches) I tend to print a lot of versions of the current draft---more or less, one draft per day---so after submitting I end up with ten or more copies of the same work. There is also the issue that I have problems reading from the screen, and prefer to read something by printing it and making annotations on the paper.

So I am pretty much unable to do ecological research. I always remember Alan, who is quite an ecological guy in his research: he hardly prints anything, he gets cool software tools so as to do everything directly on his laptop, and, perhaps most importantly, he seems to be quite consistent in these habits. He doesn't even use the air conditioning in his office, although this is a more arguable point. I wish I could be more sensitive in this issue; I tell myself that nothing is better than actual paper, and how annoying is reading from the screen. Still, I am unable to change my habits. I don't feel bad at all. The reason is very simple: recycling is useless.

Of course recycling is a very reasonable idea, in principle. However, I have come to realize that in the current state of the world, it is a rather useless effort. That is to say, the state of our planet is so critical that individual efforts (such as separating your trash, our concrete contribution to recycling) end up being essentially useless. We need more decisive actions, both from individuals and governments. Here's a simple idea: if wasting trees and paper is a problem, then a truly determinate action would be adding huge taxes on paper and ink so as reduce their consumption (and hence, their waste). Just like what some scandinavian countries do with alcohol. Wasting paper is just so easy, as paper is cheap and nobody cares about buying more. It is easy to think of similar ideas in other settings.

Needless to say, individual actions such as separating you trash are positive. We should continue doing them while bearing in mind that they're little effective---the overall sum of little efforts is still too small in the context of the problem. I have realized more clearly the environmental problems we are facing after visiting the US. It was shocking to me to see the different sense of proportion people have there. Distances are so huge; your social success seems to be represented by the size of your car. Sadly, waste also comes in absurd proportions. It seems to me that the positive environmental actions of an average European family in a week (separating thrash, riding bikes, using public transportation) are lost by the negative effects of a single American SUV which is used the whole day.

There is also the point of people feeling good about themselves when doing ecological efforts. That's a different story, though.

Bolillo

While the global economy collapses, people in third-world countries such as Colombia receive  reassuring messages such as "we are well protected against any potential crisis in the short term". Of course, this is a reassuring way of saying that we count too little in the world so as to be affected. With the financial aspect duly covered, we are thus free to deal with the important issues. In Colombia, these days, this unavoidably means football. In fact, these days the FIFA U-20 World Cup is taking place in eight Colombian cities. We were convinced that tourists from all over the world would come to visit our cities, drink our alcohol, sleep (and dance!) with our women, watch some football, and leave some foreign money in the process. This, apparently, hasn't been the case, even if authorities at every level are doing their very best in welcoming visitors.

The football fever is so strong these days that we have almost forgotten that our former president reacts to everyday issues with insane rants on twitter. (In a side comment, it is worth saying that some weeks ago, his account was hacked; in an unfortunate---yet funny---choice of words he said that he had been penetrated by hackers.) With the young Colombian team doing reasonably OK, the spotlights are currently on Hernán Gómez, the coach of the professional national team. Mr Gómez's nickname is "Bolillo", which is the Colombian word used to refer to the baton used by policemen. In spite of this nickname---and apart from the vulgar way in which he expresses himself---until the last weekend we had no evidence of Bolillo's violent character. It turns out that last Saturday he got drunk and repeatedly punched a woman in the face. It is no clear what caused this reaction or who the woman is. Some say she's a disappointed lover, but who really cares? This guy is attacking women!

You will never be able to anticipate how public opinion in Colombia will react to this kind of introspective affairs. I purposefully say introspective because this is an unusual violent fact in an inherently violent country: we are quite good at killing ourselves. Violence against women in southamerican countries (and in Spain, I believe) is, sadly, rather common; the unusual thing is that this time it comes from famous people. Opinions were divided as whether he should resign to his job as coach or not. On the one hand, he did reasonably OK in last Copa América, and the qualifying round for the World Cup should start soon. On the other hand, this guy is attacking women! Surprisingly enough, he refused to resign for a day or so after the incident became public. What made him change his mind? A gentle phone call from the national team's main sponsor, who said that it would be inappropriate for the Bolillo to continue in charge of the team. The ironic touch is that the main sponsor is Bavaria, the largest brewery in the country (and subsidiary of SAB Miller). That is, the main provider of alcohol in the country (and as such, arguably the main indirect responsible for violence against women in the country) made Bolillo reason about his doings. How about that??

Race and Ethnicity

These days I attend a summer school in the US. The organizers have conducted a demographic poll among the participants, a poll that I found quite unusual. In fact, the poll concerns the race and ethnicity of each attendant. The organizers claim that this is information useful for the National Science Foundation (NSF). I have thought a bit about it, and I am still shocked by the kind of questions in the poll. Independently of sociological definitions, why on earth is it important to classify people by their race and ethnicity? It must be that I understood very little about the US and its culture. (Or that I am too used to the European way of thinking.) This is even more extreme in the case of the summer school I am attending, which has attracted participants from both Europe and the US almost in equal proportions; in some sense, this sort of questions would have been more understandable if the audience were mostly composed of US citizens.

Let's take a look to the questions and their possible answers. The first two concern the country of citizenship and residence of each participant. These are questions that I find completely normal. Then you should indicate your race; options included: white european, pacific islander, asian, african, native american, mixed race, and other. I chose mixed race, with the absolute understanding that we all belong to some mixed race, whatever race means. Afterwards, you should indicate your ethnicity; options included western european/north american, north asian, central/south american, eastern european, among several others. This seemed to be a geographical concept, and so I naturally chose central/south american. The last question asked whether I am the first member in my family to attend college. The answer was no. 

I have no problems to answer this kind of questions nor I find them racist in any way. I just find them quite odd to use this kind of information in some sort of government-related statistics (the background of participants in NSF-sponsored events?). My first thought was that this poll looks like something used like 30 or 40 years ago, not something I expected to see in 2011. I thought that in the in the US everyone was an american, independent of their origins or ancestors. So I wonder: what is the point of reminding everyone that, at the end, there is indeed something that makes us all different? What is the point of collecting information based on those differences? Will someone find that information useful in the future? 

Football and Life

It is intriguing to see how some people insist on seeing football as an abstraction of life. This is a two-way illusion: people are tempted to explain facts of life by means of football events, but also to exploit the random nature of football to find strange justifications for their own beliefs. I had already commented on the relation between football and justice. The recent four matches between Barcelona F.C. and Real Madrid, along with the fact that Barcelona has an amazing team, have only exacerbated this illusion to the most annoying levels. The matches were in fact considered by many as the utmost incarnation of the legendary battle of good vs evil; the overall victory of Barcelona was then recognized as the perpetuation of the noble ideals that only the good endeavors can bring.

This is of course an artificial argument, but an argument that serves many purposes. It endows defeats with some sort of dignity, gives a legendary flavor to victories, and, most importantly, it enriches media and nurtures the business. The extreme positions adopted by both sides appear as a reasonable price to pay; they are just an anecdote of the battle. 

The side effect of the good vs. evil approach to football is pretty obvious: what happens on the pitch somehow becomes irrelevant to all. What it counts is what occurs before and after the match. Truly amazing.  As an example, consider Mourinho's admitted "plan" for the first UCL game. It appears that he intended to "frustrate" Barcelona during the first 70 minutes by populating the midfield with aggressive Pepe, who would cut every attack at any costs. Then, by the end of the game, with a tired and confused Barcelona, he would include an offensive player to try to win 1-0, thus getting some advantage for the second game. A ridiculous strategy, especially if you consider that it was the most convenient one for Barcelona. Then, after the Pepe vs Alves situation and Messi's first goal, the master plan failed. What did Mourinho do? Well, nothing. For instance, he could have well changed the team, to avoid any more away goals. Of course, conspiracy theories are more attractive to argue than coward tactics. Mourinho knows it, he went that way, and most seem to ignore his stupid original plan. 

The victories of Barcelona are also useful to hide the fact that his players are regular football players, not the well behaved boys they wanted us to believe they are. Here I think of the acting lessons by Pedro, Busquets, Mascherano, Alves. As economy, football is cyclic process, and Barcelona fans seem to be using this positive period to install the idea that their way of doing things is the morally correct one. They want us to believe that they excel now as a consequence of some core values only them can embrace. It is a rather pretentious way of presenting what it appears to be the conjunction of a number of positive circumstances: several extremely good players at the same time, repeated failures in the past that justify hiring a young coach, a political context that seems in accordance with the rest. Would Guardiola be as successful (and pretentious) as he is now, with different players, in a different team? Most likely not. Would Messi be able to have a long career? I seriously doubt so. Would brand new Xavis and Iniestas appear magically when the original ones are not available? Hardly, even if they claim to be the factory of the "good" football.  Granted: for the moment, they seem to have all the ingredients to have a historic football team. But please: do not push your luck. 

Padres e Hijos (and Berlusconi)

Padres e Hijos (P&H - spanish for Parents and Children) was a very popular daytime series in Colombia. As you may guess from the title, the series was centered around the members of a family (the Franco family) and their everyday events. It was broadcasted during 15 long years from Monday to Friday, after lunch. It is quite fair to say that, for very different reasons, a whole generation grew up watching P&H. In fact, it always had very high ratings and most people were more or less aware of the current status of the story, which was often surreal and with very strange turns of events.

In spite of its high ratings and popularity, it is also fair to say that most people watching P&H had very strong feelings against P&H. In fact, apart from the absurd stories, the quality of the production was quite low, with awful performances everyday. In particular, I doubt there is a single Colombian who doesn't have feelings against Daniela Franco, one of the characters in the series. Daniela was one of the daughters of the family, and along the years most of the plot concerned her adventures. This way, for instance, when Daniela was a teenager, she belonged to a gang and shoplifted for a while; some years after that, she was kidnapped by the guerilla (P&H was a very Colombian series); some years later, she got married twice and went insane. The hate against Daniela Franco was automatically transferred to Ana Victoria Beltrán, the actress portraying Daniela. In fact, after such a long time playing Daniela, Beltrán was unable to find a different role in Colombian TV and had to retire. (She recently participated in a reality show, with scarce success.)

You may then be wondering: if everyone hated P&H, how come it had such high ratings and acceptation? Well, there are several theories. One of them says that for a substantial amount of people it became a habit to have lunch while keeping an eye on P&H. Some people would enjoy digesting their lunch by watching the lame performances in P&H. It was a masochist exercise, yes, but it could be really funny. However, my favorite theory is that people would watch P&H to feel better about their own lives. In fact, the absurd/sad/surreal stories of the Franco family (involving, for instance, multiple betrayals, miscarriages, tragic losses) would help many people to accept and perhaps appreciate their own existence, as they could say: "well, my family may have problems, but at least is not fucked up as the Franco family!". 

Oddly enough, the ironic nature of P&H came to my mind earlier this week, after hearing about the most recent scandals of Berlusconi in Italy. There is, indeed, a strong relationship between P&H and Italy. Let me elaborate. By now it is more or less certain that no matter what Berlusconi does, nothing will change in Italy. We have seen it multiple times: with every new scandal he surpasses the limits he had surpassed before, and with the same consequences. That is, none. The latest prostitution scandal is particularly embarrassing though. I am not sure if Italians realize how depressing this looks from outside. Most likely they don't, because otherwise they would do something concrete to remove Berlusconi from power. 

The situation is so critic, that in my view by now Italy is the P&H of the countries of the world. Indeed, a Colombian could say "well, my president is a despicable human being, but he doesn't sleep with underage prostitutes". A Portuguese could say "well, the crisis is so tough and the new taxes unbearable, but at least the head of state is not using our money to defend himself from mafia accusations." As a matter of fact, it is enough to pay attention to the latest scandal in Italy to somehow feel better about our own country. Just as we felt better about ourselves by watching P&H everyday after lunch.

Stray bullets (and other forms of happiness)

I have spent Christmas and New Year's eve in Colombia, after having missed both last year. This kind of holidays are certainly quite unique here; in the cold, snowy first world you can hardly feel the warm celebrations you can see here. It is hard to describe the feeling:  you've got to see it with your own eyes.

In a country such as Colombia these celebrations have their downsides. Oddly enough, getting together to celebrate can be quite risky. It turns out that in this period families get together, in many cases for the only time in the year. This can be quite dangerous: the mix of alcohol and old animosities within the family can turn a happy reunion into a violent fight. This year, authorities have observed an increase in the number of conflicts which are solved in a violent way, often with deadly consequences. This is not guerilla or drug dealers who conspire against Christmas: they're normal, decent people who get drunk, get irrational, and do stupid things. Stupid things such as hurting / fighting with / killing your neighbor, your cousin, the guy who stared at your girlfriend. You see, life can be quite fragile here. A very similar phenomenon is observed every year the second sunday of May, during Mother's day.

Life can be fragile, indeed. Something particularly common in Colombia are stray bullets. These holidays there has been a huge amount of people dying because of them.  Or at least that's the message media has been trying to convey in every possible way: they've been particularly eager to register the cases in which kids are involved, for instance. The other day almost the whole newscast was devoted to people dead because of stray bullets. You might wonder where all these bullets come from. In normal circumstances, they come from the encounters between the police and urban gangs, which most times occur inside neighborhoods. (It is safe to say that most Colombians know how to recognize the sound of a gunshot from that of, for instance, certain kinds of fireworks that produce a similar effect.) However, the number of stray bullets increases dramatically during Christmas and New Year's eve. You see, in Colombia shooting to the sky with a gun is a socially acceptable way of showing your happiness. Needless to say, not everyone has a gun and does this. But there are way too many guns in the wrong hands, and everyday many die because of stray bullets. I am not able to give a rational explanation of how shooting to the sky (and thus inadvertently killing a distant someone) is related to happiness. It is a way of demonstrating power, and some people can feel happy of being feared, I guess.

Not everything about the holidays in Colombia is violent or negative, of course. For instance, it has been observed that natality rates during September/October are higher than during the other months of the year. This means that many children are conceived during the Christmas period, a clear evidence that getting together with your beloved ones does not necessarily imply a risk.