Tom Gauld

Tirinha.

Clipe do Dia nº 479

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tocando "Down By The River" numa festa muito doida em 1969.

Clipe do Dia nº 478

Gilberto Gil canta "Aquele Abraço" e "Back in Bahia" em 1979.

Clipe do Dia nº 477

Count Basie ao vivo em Paris, 1981. Dica do Pinho.

Clipe do Dia nº 476

Traffic, tocando ao vivo "Dear Mr. Fantasy" em 1972.

Darwinism

Darwin' theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe. It is the only known explanation for the rich diversity of animals, plants, fungi and bacteria; not just the leopards, kangaroos, Komodo dragons, dragonflies, Corncrakes, Coast redwood trees, whales, bats, albatrosses, mushrooms and bacilli that share our time, but the countless others - tyranossaurs, ichthyosaurs, pterodactyls, armour-plated fishes, trilobites and giant sea scorpions that we know only from fossils but which, in their own aeons, filled every cranny of the land and sea. Natural selection is the only workable explanation for the beautiful and compelling illusion of 'design' that pervades every living body and every organ. Knowledge of evolution may not be strictly useful in everyday commerce. You can live some sort of life and die without ever hearing the name of Darwin. But if, before you die, you want to understand why you lived in the first place, Darwinism is the one subject that you must study.
- Richard Dawkins, foreword to "The Theory of Evolution", by John Maynard Smith (1993)

Basic Economics

Both social and economic policies are often discussed in terms of the goals they proclaim, rather than the incentives they create. For many, this may be due simply to shortsightedness. For professional politicians, however, the fact that their time horizon is often bounded by the next election means that any goal that is widely accepted can gain them votes, while the long-run consequences come too late to be politically relevant, and the lapse of time can make the connection between cause and effect too difficult to prove without complicated analysis that most voters cannot or will not engage in. (p. 365)

Where there are elected governments, its officials must be concerned about being re-elected - which is to say that mistakes cannot be admitted and reversed as readily as they must be by a private business operating in a competitive market, in order for the business to survive financially. No one likes to admit being mistaken but, under the incentives and constraints of profit and loss, there is often no choice but to reverse course before financial losses threaten bankruptcy. In politics, however, the costs of being wrong are often paid by the taxpayers, while the costs of admitting mistakes are paid by elected officials. (p. 492-493)

The tendency of those who run an organization - whether profit-seking or non-profit, military, religious, educational or other - is to use the resources of the organization to benefit themselves in one way or another, even at the expense of the ostensible goals of the organization. How far this tendency can go can be limited by powerful outside interests on which the organization depends for its existence, such as investors who will either get a satisfactory return on their investment or take their money elsewhere and costumers will either get a product or service that they want at a price they are willing to pay or likewise take their money elsewhere. These outside interests are not as decisive in the case of non-profit organizations. (p. 581)

The market is as moral or immoral as the people in it. So is the government. The fact that we call one set of people "the market" when they engage in transactions among themselves and another set of people "society" when they exercise political power over others does not mean that the moral or other imperfections of the first set of people automatically justify having the second set of imperfect people over-ruling their decisions. (p. 594)

- Thomas Sowell, "Basic Economics, a Common Sense Guide to The Economy, 4th edition", 2010.

Clipe do Dia nº 476

Muddy Waters, ao vivo na Alemanha, em 29 de outubro de 1976.

Outra do Hume

"Hume's quotation is from a famous passage discussing the "motivating influence of the will" in hisTreatise on Human Nature and reads in full:

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. (T 2.3.3 p. 415)

The context is his discussion of what is sometimes called "moral psychology", the study of how we are motivated to act morally. In particular, he raises a question about the role of practical reason in moral motivation. Hume vehemently opposes the view, held by philosophers before him (and after him), that to act morally is have a rational grasp of moral truths. He defends an instrumental conception of practical reason, according to which the role of reason is only to find out which means helps achieve a given goal. Reason (or the intellect) plays no part in determining the goals. Our goals are set exclusively by what Hume calls the passions and what today is most often called desires.

Desires cannot be evaluated as true or false or as reasonable or unreasonable - they are "original existences" in our mind and arise from unknown natural causes. We cannot be criticized rationally for our desires (As Hume remarks, it is "not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger" (p 416)).

Reason is the slave of the passions in the sense that practical reason alone cannot give rise to moral motivation; it is altogether dependent on pre-existing desires that furnish motivational force. For Hume, this is not a fact we should lament (as moralists do) but a basic fact about our psychology."

Fonte: Philosophy Beta

Clipe do Dia nº 475

Funkalister, pra atiçar a saudade de Porto.

In The Shadow of Man

It has come to me, quite recently, that it is only through a real understanding of the ways in which chimpanzees and men show similarities in behavior that we can reflect with meaning on the ways in which men and chimpanzee differ. And only then can we really begin to appreciate, in a biological and spiritual manner, the full extent of man's uniqueness.
- Jane Goodall, "In The Shadow of Man" (1971), p. 245-246.

Clipe do Dia nº 474

Kadavar, da Alemanha.

Clipe do Dia nº 473

Dia de ver Black Sabbath.

Clipe do Dia nº 472

BB King, "Why I Sing The Blues", live in Africa 1974.

Clipe do Dia nº 471

27 Club: a melhor banda póstuma da história

Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain & Amy Winehouse.

(Conhecimento que só a Wikipedia torna acessível para você. Eu já doei 100 reais esse ano. Eles merecem.)

Por Que Não Sou Cristão

Claro que eu sei que o tipo de argumento intelectual de que falei não é verdadeiramente aquilo que impressiona as pessoas. O que realmente as impulsiona a acreditar em Deus não é absolutamente nenhum argumento intelectual. A maior parte delas acredita em Deus porque foi ensinada desde a primeira infância a fazê-lo, e essa é a razão principal.
Ademais, penso que a razão mais forte que vem a seguir é o desejo de segurança, uma espécie de sensação de que existe um irmão mais velho a zelar por nós. Isso desempenha um papel profundo na influência do desejo de crer em Deus.
- Bertrand Russell, "Por que não sou cristão", p. 36

Bingo!

Clipe do Dia nº 470

Bob Marley sempre rola.

Clipe do Dia nº 469

Metallica processou o primeiro sistema de compartilhamento de arte pela internet, obrigou que o Napster banisse mais de 300.000 usuários que haviam baixado suas músicas (ou seja, seus fãs) e pediu uma indenização mínima de US$ 10 milhões por danos, numa taxa de US$ 100.000 por música que havia sido baixada ilegalmente. Ah, e também processou várias universidades por terem permitido que o alunos baixassem música ilegalmente em suas redes.

Clipe do Dia nº 468

Black Angels tem algo de psicodelia grunge.

Clipe do Dia nº 467

Dica da Morena!