Flecha Quebrada

O nosso mundo, a nossa sociedade… (uma flecha quebrada significa paz)

Category Archives: english

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”

William Ernest Henley

iWork’11 – Available Exclusively for Download

“Apple’s revised plans currently call for the company to launch the new productivity suite alongside the forthcoming Mac App Store, these same people say. The applications included in the bundle — Pages, Numbers and Keynote — will be available for purchase individually when the Mac App Store debuts.

Those familiar with the matter said it remains undecided whether Apple will also release a retail box version of the iWork suite, as it has been sold previously. Alternatively, it could become the first piece of major Mac software from the Cupertino-based company to be available exclusively online.”

source

Médicos Sem Fronteiras

Cirurgia na JordâniaSão quase duas e meia da manhã e após uma longa maratona de trabalho encontro nas notícias algo que faz desaparecer todo o meu cansaço.

A correspondente da BBC no Médio Oriente, Natalia Antelava, conta-nos como os médicos iraquianos andam a salvar vidas longe do seu país de origem. Na Jordânia, a repórter acompanhou uma equipa de cirurgiões que alterou a vida do pequeno Hussein e de tantas outras crianças afectadas pela guerra no Iraque .

The boy looked like an old man. His lips moved slowly, trying to stretch against his inflexible, badly scarred skin, and bandages covered his eyes.

But the voice that came out of his disfigured face was loud and cheerful and it filled the hospital room.

“I want to go back to Iraq, I miss my dad,” Hussein said.

reportagem BBC News

O Dia da Terra

Earth Day

In 1970 smog choked major U.S. cities and toxic waste flooded rivers. That same year nearly 20 million Americans participated in events on April 22, spearheaded by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, to draw attention to the environmental issues plaguing the planet and human health. Named Earth Day, April 22 has remained a time to celebrate restoration and stand up for the planet.

http://www.thegreenguide.com/earth-day

A Natureza e o Seu Benjamin Button

Jellyfish“A potentially “immortal” jellyfish species that can age backward—the Benjamin Button of the deep—is silently invading the world’s oceans, swarm by swarm, a recent study says.

Like the Brad Pitt movie character, the immortal jellyfish transforms from an adult back into a baby, but with an added bonus: Unlike Benjamin Button, the jellyfish can do it over and over again—though apparently only as an emergency measure.

About as wide as a human pinky nail when fully grown, the immortal jellyfish (scientific name: Turritopsis dohrnii) was discovered in the Mediterranean Sea in 1883. But its unique ability was not discovered until the 1990s….”

in National Geographic

Multi-Touch no Novo Windows 7

Desktop do Windows7
“The first public showing of Microsoft’s next major Windows update reveals an operating system with a familiar-looking dock and a more than slight emphasis on multi-touch displays.

Demonstrated at the Wall Street Journal’s D6 Conference, Windows 7 is described by observers from the newspaper as having a touch interface recognizable to “anyone who’s ever used an iPhone.

(…)

There will also be hooks for multi-touch throughout the entire Windows interface, Microsoft’s Julie Larson-Green has said while demonstrating the technology, although none of these have been demonstrated at this early stage. The software is being built with multiple simultaneous users in mind now that touchscreens and other peripherals free users from being tied to a keyboard.

“In the next few years, the roles of speech, gesture, vision, ink, all of those will become huge,” adds Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.”

O artigo completo é assinado pela AppleInsider e pode assistir à apresentação em vídeo da “nova tecnologia” nesta página.

The G-Econ Project de William Nordhaus

Torre da Universidade de Yale“The present study describes a project that has developed a geophysically based data set on economic activity. The project is called the Yale G-Econ project (for Geographically based Economic data).

The G-Econ data set calculates gross value added at a 1-degree longitude by 1-degree latitude resolution at a global scale for all terrestrial cells. These data allow better integration of economic and environmental data to investigate environmental economics, the impact of global warming, and the role of geophysical factors in economic activity.

On of the major results is to show that the true economic deserts of the globe are in Greenland, Antarctica, northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia.”

Abstract do working paper,
12 Maio de 2006

Descobri este projecto em Março de 2007 e acho que tem todo o interesse para os letrados em ciências económicas e sociais. A visualização deste indicador económico num mapa tridimensional permite uma leitura mais imediata das discrepâncias existentes entre países e, inclusive, as suas próprias regiões.

Através do uso desta metodologia, a questão da quantificação de outros indicadores de desenvolvimento pode ser explorada duma forma muito mais interessante:

Homepage do Projecto na Yale University

Working Papers da equipa de investigação

——
A foto é da simbólica Harkness Tower situada na Universidade de Yale

Nota: Aos leitores habituais, peço imensa desculpa pelo facto de nos últimos 4 meses não ter disponibilidade para elaborar comentários mais extensos. Cumprimentos :)

Nova Protecção Anti-Roubo da Intel

Intel Centrino vProCom o crescente número de casos de roubo de dados pessoais armazenados em computadores portáteis, eis que surge uma tecnologia que pode evitar “males maiores” (recordemos este em Inglaterra):

“Intel plans to release an anti-theft technology for laptops during the fourth quarter of this year, but the company isn’t offering many details yet (…)

In the event of theft, the technology will “basically lock the system, lock the disk, so people cannot be maliciously using and getting the data,” said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager (…)

The technology, which appears to render both the processor and storage inaccessible, aims to ease concerns over valuable corporate or personal data falling into the wrong hands when laptops are lost or stolen, according to Perlmutter.

The problem of lost data on stolen and missing laptops is a long-standing problem and a growing concern, particular for its impact on personal data…”

(ler artigo completo)